Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0012

Fast and loose before I miss my self-imposed deadline.

I posted a new Heathen Disco show last week, check it out here.

More later, thanks for reading. This show and these words will be enough for you to chew on over the weekend.

Share it, pass it along, send in the music. PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA / [email protected]

New Discos 

WORST CASE SCENARIO Studies in Pessimism LP (L.G.)

(our action starts around trk 10)

Great why-the-fuck-not compilation of all the Worst Case Scenario stuff that wasn’t on the Vermiform LP (the best $5 you could spend in 2007, long after anyone cared, and it may go for even less now). Occasional hardcore punk (as in on whatever occasions made sense, not that the hardcore came and went) with two founding members of Unwound, just terrific broken riff full stack basement/trailer/camper panix, turning boredom into action. When this sort of thing stops being a reality in the world, man, just let me off the fucking planet. One-riff-better-than-another, but-wait’ll-you-hear-this-next-one sort of action, wrong notes, pounding beat, dude screaming his head off. I listened to a newer punk record today that I almost wrote about and it was such a bummer, seriously delving into topics that matter to society if its fringe participants are ever to survive in a rapidly heating/deteriorating planet, and it was like a really long shitty endless commute. WCS dude screaming “tell me like it ain’t / tell me like it never was” on “Umbilical Noose” accomplishes the same thing, but abstracted for the everyman, sloganeering their discontent into something you’d wanna come back to. I can see despair at any hour of the day. What I want is abandon, the sense of people truly letting go into conspired depravity. It might be in the past but is within reach once again.

CHBB s/t 2xLP (Soulsheriff)

An historic coupling near the six-way intersection of DAF, Malaria! and Neubauten, this collection chronicles four cassettes released in miniscule editions by the duo of Chrislo Haas and Beate Bartel back in 1981, seconds before they would morph into Liaisons Dangereuses. Good news for you, this thing rips big ugly gashes in your expectations: synths, tape loops and drum machines prepped for fetish menace in some hole where you’re gonna spend a weekend losing skin inside of two cages. Every idea anyone’s ever had about this sort of black leather chain dominant sorta transgression essentially happened here first. So much experimentation and melody/slam (or its opposite) going on track by track that any one of these ideas would have been (and has actually been) enough for at least one project to coast by on. Embarrassment of riches here, will take whatever hair you got and yank it til you scream. Whatever you think this is gonna be, it’s even better.

MAGIC FIG s/t LP (Silver Current)

Bay Area time tunnel to the Detroit UFO Factory for pop charge, psych swirl, exotica plange and prog demonstrations. Folks from groups I like (soccer shirt guy from The Umbrellas, singer from Blades of Joy doing a solid Margo Guryan lift) and others participate in what sounds like a challenge to write and a joy to perform, with all sorts of flourishes and left turns for which their other projects don’t always make room. The funhouse mirror approach is great for effect but if you want them to thread back to a reliable hook now and then, and you’re not gonna get it. That’s for another band. Magic Fig’s gonna zag, gonna zig. Ten pounds of Dacron shirts in a five pound bag. Curious what they’ll try next.

BITTER WISH Candle Finger LP (Carbon)

Two slow-burn sides of corroded power trio wander/blues stock ignition from a newly-documented guitarist (John Comune) and a Bardo Pond/Kohoutek laced rhythm section. Takes a bit to get going but around the 8 minute mark this thing starts erupting. Side B is even slower to get there and doesn’t mess about, with the guitar artillery coming forth and spent shells spillin’ over the edge. You got two dozen records like this – I hope, otherwise what kinda life you livin’? – and this one will make 25. Cool?

Archival Discos

CRAIN Speed LP (Automatic Wreckords, 1991; re. Temporary Residence, 2014)

CRAIN Heater LP/7” / CD (Restless, 1994)

Crain hailed from Louisville in the kinetic hardcore-informed space, teens who were contemporaries/acolytes of Slint, Bastro and Bitch Magnet and casting the shadow for Rodan/reconfiguration era, in thrall to it all, adjacent to Slamdek and all that local output that stays put (most of these guys were on the first Slamdek release by Cerebellum). I remember these records being around, owned both (got Heater for $5 the day I found all these Sun Ra records, Church of Anthrax and Agent Orange Living in Darkness, and how do you compete with that kinda luck?), never was in a position to see them play. Not gonna try to get into history lessons for things I don’t really even know about, but I always liked some of these records if not their entireties. In 2024 I mostly recognize the joy in young people pushing themselves as hard as they can to just get it out there.

Speed shows this most evidently – whoever was playing bass on this was not gonna wait around for the rest of these guys to catch up, so you hear some blown fills and guitar parts on tracks like “King Octane” that can’t match the complexity of this guy pogoing around. And it’s joyous – at least on the songs where they don’t feel obligated to slow down and get into the river mysteries of their forefathers. Because the band self-released this one, it is exactly the image they wished to portray – swerving off the tracks. I’ll bet they got good enough to do it live.

You can’t even find Heater streaming, whatever genius took the six-month stint at Enigma trying to sign contemporary bands musta got the boot really goddamn fast, but being in that moment put their song “Hey Cops!” in a permanent loop in my head, and may it fall into yours as well. Both records ably recorded in the Albini basement and full of all the earmarks such quality could afford.

I support wholeheartedly all the things that are going on with young bands here in Chicago because I’ve seen it happen before and the good it can turn out. It’s important. I hope it’s happening where you live too. It’s one of the last true hopes. Keep it burnin’. Dig these two up as I’m almost certain they will strike you differently than last time, and if it’s your first time, strap in.

Love you all (mostly),

Doug Mosurock