january 16th @ westgermany: CHILD ABUSE (us) + GARY WAR (us)

child abuse (new york, lovepump united) according to their label "bring together playfully wild keyboards, throbbed bass stabs, stuttering piledriver percussion and demonic vocal fits. Brutal, catchy, complex dissonance bent grind." label mates on lovepump are pre, aids wolf, health, usaisamonster, crystal castles, and indian jewelry, whose frontman brandon davis we had two weeks ago with his side project terrible eagle. child abuse formed in around 2004 with luke calzonetti playing, so he says, a crappy casio keyboard and oran canfield on drums. the two were later joined by tim dahl on bass. they all also perform in different projects, oran canfield moreover had his memoirs published last year. it is their first time in europe with child abuse. "there's nothing clear-cut about our music," says calzonetti. "it's more surreal than anything. it's complex music but not so complex that you can't find any fun in it."


quotes:

"Child Abuse is logical result of an entire generation raised by Nintendo and overbearing, Tipper Gore-admiring moms. 'Reading is for people who don't vomit, and Morbid Angel lives in my closet next to my porno!' the band seems to shout with its avalanche of Casio squeals, death-metal percussion, and forgot-to-take-my-Thorazine howls." flavorpill

"the video-game synth sounds and chaotic swirl evoke modern sub-genres like Nintendocore, noise rock and post-millennial grindcore—all well-worn territory by now and bound to lose flavor with an over stimulated, ADHD-addled public. But Child Abuse places those elements side by side with older reference points: industrial, death metal, primitive thrash, crust punk, vintage prog rock and more. This reflects a depth that even aficionados might not necessarily be expecting when they turn to music like this." new york press

 "the band sorta shuns music itself, replacing chords with harsh keyboard and bass fuzz, rhythms with repetitive mechano-death drum battering, proper singing with Luke Calzonetti's freakish, unhinged Tasmanian devil growl. And despite the album's extreme degeneracy, Calzonetti and his bandmates have a hell of a good time destroying music. Child Abuse is a wacky troop of noise-rock anarchists, setting off stink bombs underneath the upturned noses of pretentious experimentalists like Black Dice and Wolf Eyes" prefix mag





gary war (new york, shdwply records) just released after 'new raytheonport' in 2008 his second album 'horribles parade' in 2009 on sacred bones. in 2005 he had been touring europe with ariel pink alongside john maus, where he had also been on stage with panda bear. with gary war it is his first time in europe.


quotes:

"it's about as close as pop could possibly get to Noise without losing it's pop-ness altogether. Imagine taking a slice of early 1980s psychedelic pop, say, Arthur Brown's criminally underrated 1982 album 'Requiem', slapping it on the turntable and lowering the needle. Now apply a blowtorch to it, one of those little ones they use to crisp up creme brulees. When the grooves are getting gooey, just beginning to melt together and stick to the needle, but while there's still traces of music there, just before the sound dissolves into a cacophonic blur -- that's Gary War's album. That's not to say War -- who's currently based in New York, and plays all the instruments on the album -- doesn't have hooks and choruses. He has a super-abundance of them ... Sometimes there are several choruses per song -- on "Highspeed Drift", at least two, on "Costumes" there are one, two, three, or four, depending how you look at it. War tears down the fences between verse, chorus, bridge and solo and lets the categories flood into each other. The more you listen, the weirder things get. There are songs that aren't single songs but more like several melted together, and songs that never quite become whole, frozen in a perpetual becoming." the wire

"his sound's clearly (or murkily, to be more accurate) rising out of an Ariel Pink-ish bedroom-studio haze, but War's songs go further and freakier off into the psychedelic sunset, as if he's rolling with Black Dice instead of Pink's muse, R. Stevie Moore. Structure and chaos lackadaisically tussle in War's music, resulting in beautifully contorted and distorted tunes that continually surprise and stimulate. Amorphous androgynous genius" the stranger

"when an act comes along such as Gary War that seems to conjure the ever-changing zeitgeist of psychedelia out of the ether, it's remarkable. His songs not only pay homage to the bands that have brought us to these crossroads over the past half of a decade, but they also seem to walk us through a sound scape of styles, and in the process, Gary War carved out his spot in the ageless catalog of psychedelic music. Gary War, the mysterious upstart from Brooklyn, NY" victim of time

"more akin to the (Ariel) Pink Warrior than to say Herr Blank Dogs; War seems firmly rooted in the lounge style that both Pink and to a lesser extent John Maus have perfected as filtered through the confines of a second hand tape player and a good bet on a large 70's leaning tape collection. All comparisons aside though Mr. War does have a pretty good handle on his sound and flits between the dark corners of tape-his flourished crooners shifty of synth anthems with palpable ease." raven sings the blues

"the music on the albums "New Raytheonport" & "Horribles Parade" nearly escapes description except to make comparisons with stuff like early Grateful Dead crossed with early Cure." drowned in sound

"the extensive use of synths are reminiscent of ’80s new wave bands, this combines with complex mixing which has the feel of underground sci-fi films and psychedelic rock of the late ’70s. By combining these elements Gary War creates something new and compelling" indiebandsblog

"Gary War remains one of New York's best-kept secrets. A krautnoise terrorist with a psych-rocker's acid-soaked hear" village voice

"less Lisa Lisa than Nite Jewel, but without John Maus’ madman disco" nme




decks: johannes playberlin, jimmy trash




date: january 16th, 9pm
venue: westgermany, skalitzer strasse 133




links:

child abuse

gary war