Moodring
Scared of Ferret
Silber Records
www.silbermedia.com
Review by Kent Manthie
On their Silber Records debut CD, Scared of Ferret, Moodring is set free to do anything (and everything) they want. And they certainly go to town on this disc. It’s so rich and bountiful in its layers of sounds – mostly “effects”, a “kaos pad” as well as “hand percussion”, some electronic drum machine workings and some kind of hybrid of both.
Moodring is the brainchild of Mae Starr and Monte Trent Allen, who used to play in Rollerball and was, at first, a “side project”, where the two could show off their own stuff, on their own. Moodring was the result of this split, which, of course, became permanent.
Between 2005 and 2007, Starr and Allen put out six limited run releases on the Nilla Cat label. In 2007 Jesse Stevens joined the band, at first helping out in live shows, playing the flute and drums, but he was retained, therefore added a new element or set of elements, since he plays the flute, drums and those ubiquitous “effects”, which abound on the disc, but they don’t dominate the songs, rather everything complements everything else.
On Scared of Ferret, the debut full-length CD for Silber Records, Stevens is around and also acted as recording engineer. Also, the band is now a quartet, with the addition of Michael Braun Hamilton to the band. Hamilton plays a bass clarinet plugged into an effects pedal and – wow! Hip, dude – the added dynamism of Hamilton’s jazzy horn mixed in there is a boon to their sound.
If one was comparing Moodring to another medium of art, I’d like to think that it would be to Abstract Expressionism and its predecessors. It’s not quite as outre as earlier art “schools” in the early 20th Century, like Dada or Surrealism, but the symbolism of Abstract Expressionism that was expressed in its seeming simplicity or its abstractness that, no doubt to some, appeared to be nonsensical or mocking, et cetera and not seeing or understanding how certain things represent other things and that these “symbols” can represent political overtones, social critiques, introverted ideas or paeans to loved ones or even nothing at all, which is the funniest of them all because those are the ones that art critics purport to give a “meaning to” when none exists.
The first few tunes on Scared of Ferret are slow and tres experimental. Songs like the opener, “Pole Cat Intro” and “Rintin Fire” are rather atonal and structured with chaos and “noise” a la Sonic Youth at their best, live but sans the urbane grittiness of the latter.
On cut three, “#9”, Mae’s vocalizing kicks in and only gets stronger and stronger as the album goes on. Song six, “Colin Wilson” is a slowed-down, haunting tune that reminds one a bit of the early dreaminess of the Jesus and Mary Chain.
The songs that really stand out are “Into the Doom”, which is really groovy and features Hamilton, who gets a chance to really shine here, on his bass clarinet, as well as a fiery vocalization from Starr. It’s probably the best tune on here. But that is a purely personal thing, subject to change at any time. Also good is the aforementioned “Colin Wilson”, “Bulbul Tarang”, a tangy jazzy-psych-out mix, whose eclectic sound makes it all the more inviting; “The Weasel” is pure gravy, while “Ricketts” has a bitchin’ drum solo in the middle and is a nice penultimate track, while we go out with “Horse” a dirge-like composition that mixes the “primitive ambience” of the first part of the CD with the jazzy, neo-psychedelia of songs 6-10. - KM

Locrian
Territories
Silber Records, 2009
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Locrian is back at it again. Territories is the first release I’ve heard since I last reviewed them for a cassette tape version of an album entitled Burying the Carnival/Exhuming the Carnival, a tape with one song on each side, each clocking in at around 17 or 18 minutes, a metal-tinged-stoner-jam session-thing going on, but not entirely without structure; a “skeleton” if you will, of a musical idea layered with blankets of quicksand and bright sheets of white clouds and sunbeams, both in their respective “corners” but also juxtaposition of which gives Burying the Carnival/Exhuming the Carnival a unique touch and similarly, the promise of a productive and interesting future to come for these guys.
That promise came to pass on Territories, their latest release, on Silber Records. This time I got a CD instead of the novelty of a cassette tape – I say “novelty” because cassette tapes were still around .
They’ve started to diversify, got some stuff taken care of and in the process they wrote some new, original songs, not just in that they’re their tunes, but stylistically it seems to be peerless. Territories has a bit more musical comprehension to it; gone are the long-winded, thunderous, nihilistic jams of the previous work already mentioned, which is missed, I gotta tell ya. I guess Locrian had some new ideas about their direction or else maybe they just finally found someone that could write lyrics (! – ha ha- just kidding)
One track that’s definitely worth bringing up from the past, on Burying the Carnival/Exhuming the Carnival is track number three. It’s entitled “Procession of Ancestral Brutalism”. It sounds like it could be part of a larger overall concept – you know, a screwed up childhood that leads to one abusing themselves and those around him/her, but at the same time, if there’s brilliance in that chaotic little mind of theirs, there will always be the chance to document and write, write, write as much as you can – when you’re on the street, riding the bus, get home from taking a walk or something like that, so that all through the debauchery and depravity – which are usually the best years of one’s life! – things can be accomplished – poetry or prose can be written, songs can be written and all of the above can be done. In fact, many times it’s the chaos in our lives and around us as well as the stress and the catharsis we crave that makes one’s art come alive with passion.
Well, back to Territories. I think that Locrian has come a good distance since the cassette of theirs I reviewed a couple years ago. They have a tighter musical stance, ergo, the songs go somewhere and there isn’t just an endless drone with distorted guitars tweeking out over the horizon, also, the disc is no doubt longer, which is evidence of some effort poured into this as well as a cohesiveness that you can tell is genuine – even through the dark-brooding evil ambience that Locrian does so well.
If you hate metal and don’t want anything to do with it and don’t even like talented bands or any of that newer, so-called “experimental” metal/industrial stuff, then I could say, with confidence, that you wouldn’t like Territories, but all you headbangers and thrashers out there will dig this disc a lot and as soon as they come to your town to play a show you’ll be one of the first to hop on your deck and skate down to the box office to get yourself tickets. -KM