2007
Glen and the Boys - Fun Songs
Mooneo - California Dreamin'
Glen and the Boys - Chiefton Ridge
Grandfather Dad - Sometimes I Dream
The Obo Tones - Rainbow & Wind
Glen and the Boys - Preludes
Glen and the Boys - Wagner And Me
Glen and the Boys - Icecaps
Johnny Steel & Mike Mineral - Demos
Glen and the Boys - Color Field
Glen and the Boys - Arthur Reitzenbets Peint Une Fille
Glen and the Boys - CD1
Glen and the Boys - A Chance Collected
Glen and the Boys - Fanfare for a Festival
The Water Kings - Grisneytown
Glen and the Boys - Skimmilk
Glen and the Boys - Live in Brooklyn
2006
Glen and the Boys - The Moon
Glen and the Boys - Massacre
The O.A.K. - Anytime You Want!
2005
Gunzi Mas & Mr. Obo Tone - The Ghoul In The Pew
Gunzi Mas & Mr. Obo Tone - Welcome To Our Universe
Welcome To The Universe Of None
It would make less sense to go about it like this, but like the artists i am reviewing, sense factors little into my thought process at the moment. What does filter in? bewilderment, confusion, rage........
you see, i had been sitting in my town house the other evening, and out of nowhere i hear a loud thud on the front door. Who the fuck would be bothering me at 130AM, certainly no one i know.........i approach cautiously, expecting to see some shadowy figure waiting for me with some sort of crude weapon, angry, most likely a punk musician whose band didn't make it into my list for the new yorker. well i have very little to say to these punks anyhow, seeing as how they scoff at the fundamentals of music, i will scoff at their end of the world homage to anything deconstructive..........
as i opened the door, i saw a box, similar to one a pack of baseball cards would be shipped in, not a cd of course, but who left it and why? as i get nearer to the box i can smell rubbing alcohol and cat piss.......and the box is no doubt completely soaked with a match on the right corner, conveniently taped onto the face of a demented smiley face. what kind of sick fucking joke is this?
as i peeled open the box, with a set of rubber gloves of course, i noticed a cracked, obviously beaten up cassette tape with two hideous faces on it. welcome to our universe.
most of the faces had been washed out, but what i could make out was that one of these boys was literally trying to devour the other one, in a very snake like manner. cracked and squeaking upon removal, the tape looked as if it had been dipped in a pool of blood, therefore rendering the once clear interior completely useless and what seemed to be at first playless.
there was another interesting tidbit in the package, a small baggie of black powder, in a dime-bag, with instructions to “consume before listening”.
were they serious? did they expect me to honestly consume something so obviously poisonous? seeking the advice of a friend to inspect the powder, i left it on my desk for an entire week before i thought about actually listening to the thing. After inspection, it was noted that the powder was probably some sort of very strong opiate, most likely a cousin of opium.
three hours later, i have the tape in the stereo, the black powder in a bowl...........here goes nothing. as i take the last hit of the black powder, i hit play. with a loud whine and a click the tape starts...............
strange, slowed down looped over voices.........guitar echoes, the entire thing sounds like it was recorded in someone's basement which had long since flooded with water. off kilter echoes make the entire room spin. the voices play off either ear as if recorded by an engineer with a degree in literature. there is what i would call a lack of production, and a lack of anything close to a tonal center. it seems the entire first song is structured around a series of six notes looped with little to no regard for rhythm.
there are very strange noises going on, guitar feedback, a sort of strange call and response between guitar and monster voice............the song does not necessarily go anywhere but actually stays on one consistent repeating phrase, slowly being cut off and reintroduced as the rhythmic thud of some obviously untrained percussionist slams against what can only be described as a very crude method of recording.
after this brain-bending jaunt into the banal, i expected more of the same. but no, the first track was the easy part.
they call themselves gunzi mas & mr. obo tone, like a sideshow folk duo with a penchant for babies, rape, murder, and mythical mexican heroes. the guitar, which often leads the songs, seems to be the mature of the group, while the vocalist seems to yell about whatever goes with the melody of the guitar at the time, not lasting long of course, because these boys change tunes quicker than most can change a radio dial. “suds, suds, suds, suds”. case in point. if there was a genre for this music, it should all be collected in the grand canyon, and set ablaze from a very great height.
many times the vocals and guitar diverge on two separate paths, as if these boys had no songwriting sense at all, but a rather masturbatory sense of self indulgence. one slight highlight to the second track is when gunzi utters “it’s almost over when the children speak”, as if to discuss the adult child relationship as one that has a dominant adult losing ground to his child when he learns to speak, and thus now able to learn about the world.
“santano habichuelo” is here. “encharito” is here as well. not to mention the glorious “jimmy banders”
as mr. obo tone occasionally showboats on guitar, gunzi seems to find himself lost, simply asking mr. tone “why you gotta hit the high note jazzman?”
taking a queue from vivaldi’s winter, the third track is what seems to be a completely unedited cut, like most of the other tracks, but seems to be missing a vital chunk of the first minute. their main problem is that they don’t really go into the recording with a sense of what they want to do. it is as if they merely hit record and see what happens.
“in my backyard i like to call matrad i like to eat it with a dank” what the fuck is that? even more ridiculous “get it groovin for me fat man, get it groovin for my wild deuce haircut”
did he really just lose his pick and sing about it? “will you kick me in my nuts?”
on the fourth track, it is told that mr. gunzi and mr. obo have switched places, and the results are disastrous. “gronde tuton, ruba di di di di ruba da..........i sing two times saaaaayyyy.....”
gunzi’s guitar playing is that of a bass player desperately trying to do something only using one note at a time, and mr. tone seems to be focused on the ridiculously operatic and repetitive. “rustlin leaves, rustling leaves, rustling rustling rustling rustling leaves
“q-w-e-s-d-f-g......slim jim im tripping......” i am not paid enough for this. oceanside quotes?
as they get into the simon and garfunkel without the poetry, they liken themselves to a bunch of dada acoustophiles, recording through some sort of paper filter that makes it seem as if the medieval and narrative have anything to do with each other. “georgie boy lost his way one day on a hill where they would come look for him” gunzi then proclaims, “it was the greatest” without any context. so much for consciousness. so much for logic. so much for almost anything you could feasibly call music.
“would they sing you a song if you were a mockingbird?”
in a horribly terrifying move gunzi proclaims “your face is mine! your face is mine!”
it would make more sense if this album was literally a bunch of random lyrics thrown out of order with a similar thing being.
and just as you think you have entered some back alley hellhole of music, they redeem themselves with the number “sound frontiers fighting forest fires fires fires fires”, an acoustic duo that seems to completely change the tone of the band, from some horrible enfant terribles of folk to the rather classical and conservative, stately acoustic guitar duo. there are actually some beautiful moments here, as the obvious lead of mr. obo moves around the center of mr. mas’ guitar notes.
but don’t get too comfortable yet, they still have the ability to get strangely ghoulish. they seem to go back to a sort of spanish influenced buildup of guitar dueling, with mr. tone taking the lead in some truly frightening 32nd note runs. and before you know it, the nightmare is over.
While i would say that the group shows some promise, especially in the sense of trying to push forward into a new realm of songwriting, they are too overly amused by their own nonsense, they lack the seriousness of musicians with a goal. They are certainly deranged, and gunzi’s lyrics would obviously send him to an asylum if anyone were to find out his true identity. It is not so much music as a ragged attempt at deconstructivism, a half hearted melange of noise and off pitch shrieks.