JUNGLE ROT - SLAUGHTER THE WEAK (1997)

According to my blood-spattered Mickey Mouse wristwatch, I'm wayyyyy overdue on sharing some completely mindless, boring, middle-of-the-road death metal with you guys, so as a deep, heart-felt apology, please accept this, Jungle Rot's very first full-length--the aptly titled Slaughter The Weak.
Str8 out tha mean streetz of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Jungle Rot are the very epitome of generic midwestern DM--the type of band that shows up fourth-or-fifth billed on every goddamn metal fest, always lurking at the periphery, rarely venturing outside their comfort zone or well-worn lyrical themes (which Metal Archives list as "War, Torture, Death, and Killing"). But that's their charm, really. Uncle Aesop put it thusly (in reference to Deicide's first album): "Sometimes you just want a hamburger... Not a bacon double cheeseburger, not a western burger and definitely not some pussified garden burger, just a burger, plain and simple."
Jungle Rot is a fucking hamburger, too. I like hamburgers.


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Deconstructing Disney Part 2, Tonight on IllCon Radio!

The art shown above was done by THIS GUY. Go buy his stuff please.
What's up, buttholes?
Not a Hell of a lot of time to nourish your brains today, let it just be quickly said that IllCon Radio is going to be fucking awesome tonight, as we are completing our 2-part 'Deconstructing Disney' series. Here's what Cory sez:

"We are very honored to have legendary Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump speak with us. Rolly worked very closely with Walt himself starting as an animator and eventually becoming a lead designer for Disneyland on such projects as The Haunted Mansion, It’s A Small World and The Enchanted Tiki Room. Rolly will give us a behind the scenes look at the crazy creative process and hidden backstage stories of the old days at Disney.

Also joining us LIVE in the studio is Leonard Kinsey, author of The Dark Side Of Disney, described as “The Anarchist Cookbook” of Disney travel guides. Leonard will give us the lowdown on how to have “adult” adventures at Walt Disney World. Yes, you too can have a vacation full of sex, drugs and rock n roll which truly makes it the happiest place on Earth."

Sounds like quite a show, but alas, there will be no Taco Bell Dorito Taco Locos Supreme featured this evening. Sorry.
Tune in here at 10pm, and don't be afraid to give us a call with your own psychedelic Disney stories at (415) 829-2980.

PS: I hinted at big things coming up on the podcast recently, and I'm now ready to release just a few:

1) Yes, the rumors are true. Gwar will be on the show in the very near future.
2) Yes, Municipal Waste will be on the show in the very near future.
3) Yes, my personal hero Sam McPheeters of Vice Magazine/Born Against/Wrangler Brutes/Men's Recovery Project/The Loom of Ruin will be on the show in the very near future.

That's seriously just the tip of the iceberg. More HUGE developments to be announced soon.
Buttholes.

THE IRON BUTTERFLY CONSPIRACY

Iron Butterfly, mid 70's. Philip Taylor Kramer pictured at far left.

I doubt that anyone with any sort of passing knowledge of music history doesn't know who Iron Butterfly is ("In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidda"?), so I'll hop right into the meat of this story without too much preamble. Let it simply be known that despite the fact that they produced only one hit song, Butterfly has existed in one form or another, on and off, for over 45 years now, experiencing probably double-to-triple as many lineup changes as IllCon stand-bys like Incantation or Napalm Death, all the while completely avoiding record industry trappings like "record sales" or "critical acclaim". They peaked in 1969, my friends, no secret there, but have managed to cling to life, like a horde of burnout zombies, ever since.
Today's story is only tangentially related to the band itself, insofar as it revolves around a dude (Philip Taylor Kramer, pictured above right with the sick pink Warlock) who played bass, sang, and played keyboards for the band for only 3 years (1974-'77), appearing on only two critically-panned albums (Scorching Beauty and Sun And Steel, both released in 1975). Taylor's story is a zany and mysterious one, and one that I was completely unfamiliar with until last week's episode of IllCon Radio (thanks to caller "Floyd from Arkansas" for the tip).

Philip Taylor Kramer's life story is speckled with high weirdness and scientific anomaly, to the point that his stint in Iron Butterfly remains a mere footnote. After his departure from the group, he acquired a degree in aerospace engineering via night school, which he applied to numerous technological adventures in the following two decades. Kramer's abrupt "disappearance" (death? suicide? transdimensional ascension?) in 1995 remains a mystery to this day, surrounded by rumor, conspiracy, and nefarious connotation.

Band photo from another early Kramer project, Gold. Phil is again pictured at far left.

Right: Photo of a skull identified as belonging to Philip Taylor Kramer, discovered in Decker Canyon (near Malibu, CA) in 1999.

After obtaining the aforementioned degree, Phil moved on to several odd pursuits, among them helping the US Defense Department develop a guidance system for their infamous MX Missile series in the 1980's (NOT the Brazilian thrash metal band). He rode the Silicon Wave of the late 80's and early 90's in Southern California, proving himself a pioneer in the fields of both facial recognition systems (see also: BIOMETRICS) and fractal compression (I still don't 100% understand how fractal compression works, but you can start HERE and work your way out).

Eventually (and strangely), he went into business with Randy Jackson (left)--NOT the American Idol judge/former Journey bassist, but brother of our old pal Michael. They formed a company called Total Multimedia, Inc., wherein Phil served as an executive from 1990 until his cessation-to-be in 1995. The company specialized in compression techniques for CD-ROMs (special focus on the previously-mentioned "fractal" offshoot), and their greatest claim to fame was that they "developed the first video compression capable of producing full motion video from a single speed CD-ROM" in 1992.
But Phil had other interests outside of business and CD-ROM compression. He had a burning desire to discredit the theories of one man, an evil tyrant whose ideas haunted Kramer to the bitter end:



Einstein: WHAT A DICK.
Seriously. Let's skip all the biometrics/facial recognition creepiness for a second and get down to the proverbial "brass tacks". Ever heard of a little theory called "special relativity"? I bet you have.

Wikipedia: "(Special relativity) generalizes Galileo's principle of relativity—that all uniform motion is relative, and that there is no absolute and well-defined state of rest (no privileged reference frames)—from mechanics to all the laws of physics, including both the laws of mechanics and of electrodynamics, whatever they may be. Special relativity incorporates the principle that the speed of light is the same for all inertial observers regardless of the state of motion of the source.
This theory has a wide range of consequences which have been experimentally verified, including counter-intuitive ones such as length contraction, time dilation and relativity of simultaneity, contradicting the classical notion that the duration of the time interval between two events is equal for all observers. (On the other hand, it introduces the space-time interval, which is invariant.) Combined with other laws of physics, the two postulates of special relativity predict the equivalence of mass and energy, as expressed in the mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, where c is the speed of light in a vacuum. The predictions of special relativity agree well with Newtonian mechanics in their common realm of applicability, specifically in experiments in which all velocities are small compared with the speed of light. Special relativity reveals that c is not just the velocity of a certain phenomenon—namely the propagation of electromagnetic radiation (light)—but rather a fundamental feature of the way space and time are unified as spacetime. One of the consequences of the theory is that it is impossible for any particle that has rest mass to be accelerated to the speed of light."

Would YOU trust this guy?

HELL NO. Philip Taylor Kramer, missile-maker, fractal compressor, digital-face-recognizer, and stony-hippie-bass-noodler, wasn't having any of this shit. His life goal was to disprove the theory of special relativity, to develop a "warp drive" via quantum mechanics that would not only negate Einstein's "you can't go faster than the speed of light" bullshit, but also open up the gates of the cosmos. After all, wouldn't the cancellation of "E=mc2" indicate such a possibility? Kramer believed so, but his highly-coveted personal research never had a chance to fall upon the unsuspecting public.

(Anyone else keeping up with CERN's baffling "beyond the speed of light" results over there at the LHC recently? Anyone? No?)

Kramer began getting paranoid about his studies, thinking that perhaps his ambitions about space/time travel might be ruffling some feathers with his previous employers (i.e. The Man). Shit started getting weird. I'll let Wikipedia tell you the rest:

On February 12, 1995 he drove to Los Angeles International Airport to pick up an investor. He spent forty-five minutes at the airport but failed to meet the investor. Kramer did make a flurry of cell phone calls, including one to the police during which Kramer said, "I’m going to kill myself. And I want everyone to know O.J. Simpson is innocent. They did it."
He was never heard from again. This led to a massive search, many news reports, and talk show segments including an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, America's Most Wanted, The Unexplained ("Strange Disappearances," first aired 5/7/2000), and Unsolved Mysteries some years later. An article in Skeptic reported numerous conspiracy theories about his death.
On May 29, 1999, Kramer's Ford Aerostar minivan and skeletal remains were found by photographers looking for old car wrecks to shoot at the bottom of Decker Canyon near Malibu, California. Based on forensic evidence and Kramer's emergency call to the police, authorities ruled his death as a probable suicide committed on the day on which he was last heard.

Cool. Seems pretty tidy. No loose ends to tie up here, folks.

Seriously, if you've SEEN The Naked Gun, you know this guy's innocent.

According to Kramer's family, he had never displayed any sort of self-destructive/suicidal qualities and was, despite his well-founded paranoias, a pretty content and easy-going guy. After all, he was a millionaire.

According to evidence gathered at the scene, he died with 40 cents in his pocket.

Nothing to see here.

Here's the previously-mentioned Unsolved Mysteries segment in its entirety. Warning: the audio is utter shit (turn it up).



More on the Iron Butterfly Conspiracy via Above Top Secret.

MONDAY MORNING (?) MEXICAN PORNOGRIND CORNER

Metal brothers, we are now in Day 10 of cold turkey withdrawal from lllCon West's benevolent mother teat. I have to say, I CRITICALLY underestimated the reach of Shelby Cobras's influence and the strength of his resolve. I see now the man will stop at nothing. See, my kid hasn't stopped throwing up for two days now. How did we go from pot shots at my spelling to attempted INFANTICIDE?? Well, it's gonna take more than a few chow showers from an 18 month old to weaken MY resolve. Thanks to Jason, who rightly reminds me of my sworn duties to uphold, MONDAY MORNING MEXICAN PORNOGRIND CORNER goes on.

Uritkaria Anal is this week's featured scumfuck porn-shilling monstruos. On Divine Depravation, they eek our nearly an hour's worth of microphone-too-close-to-the-mouth guttural ejaculations, glandular skinwork, and lyrical STDs. If one jam called 'Sifilis' isn't enough for you, don't worry, this record has two. I don't quite get what happened but the recording fidelity switches gears halfway through the album and you get like these alternate versions (maybe?) that let the songs breath a little more (which, really, is what pornogrind needs isn't it? just a little more breathing space?).

has anyone used Tako to ama for pornogrind cover art yet?

Jesus Christ, what kind of distortion does that guy use on side 2 anyway? Anyone know? Not the HM2; maybe that $50 Digitech unit? I dunno, it fucking RULES though. My first band, Sticky Bear, recorded STRAIGHT to some Maxwell 60 mins. (if we were flush that week; otherwise it was Sonys). My Peavey Predator came out sounding exactly like this.

DAT FONT

You know how bad you hate it when someone says your music all sounds the same? Yeah, well, every track sounds EXACTLY THE SAME here. Flip this on the hi fi, crack open a high life, and expand your horizons.

Uritkaria Anal - Divine Depravation

ENO

...and so it is that we reach the end of this series of Brian Eno posts, culminating with his 1977 album 'Before And After Science'.
It's been an epic trek, mostly uphill, but this is IT. No more. I can move on to writing bollocks about massively overlooked bands from New Zealand and how much I fucking LOVE Adventure Time With Finn And Jake. Or something.

Ironically this record also had as prolonged a gestation period as my posts, as Eno had begun moving into new musical territory after 'Another Green World' and had a great deal of difficulty in assembling the songs that would end up here. 'Before And After Science' would end up being the last overtly song-based record that Eno produced under his own name for quite some time.

1977 was also the year that Eno worked with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, aka Cluster - begatting the superb 'Eno & Cluster' LP - and worked with David Bowie again, on the second album in his 'Berlin trilogy'- 'Heroes' - as well as making repeated overtures to Talking Heads, a band whom he had fallen in love with during their UK tour with The Ramones.

Exactly how much he wanted to work with Talking Heads is made quite clear on one album track here, entitled Kings Lead Hat, a fairly bloody obvious anagram of the bands name...



...something that worked out nicely for Eno, as he ended up producing their next three records and making a rather splendid li'l record with Heads mainman David Byrne entitled 'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts', all four of which are amongst some of my favourite records of all time ('Fear Of Music' in particular)














The usual array of guests helped Eno to finally realise his vision here, after several false starts - the previously mentioned Roedelius and Moebius, Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith, Can drummer and Krautrock legend Jaki Liebezeit, bassist Bill MacCormick of Matching Mole and his Quiet Sun bandmate Phil Manzanera, the ubiquitous Robert Fripp, Free drummer Andy Fraser, the ever-execrable Phil Collins and Brand X buddy Percy Jones, again, and the disembodied voice of deceased Dadaist Kurt Schwitters (on the track 'Schwitters Rejoinder' natch).



Musically, the album is split between the more upbeat, jagged sounds of the first half and the more intimate, pastoral tones of the latter, yet still manages to remain coherent and, to me, utterly gripping. I also appreciate the inherent Englishness of the line "Ooh what to do, not a sausage to do" in the bouncy 'Backwater'. Yes, we really DO say things like that. Well, I do, anyway.

Now, for MY money, the centrepiece of 'Before And After Science' is the achingly beautiful 'Julie With...', as languid and lunar a song as any you could hope to hear.



...isn't that just gorgeous?

This really is a beautiful album, tonally, and one of my favourite Eno records. I hope those of you who haven't heard it before give it a listen and enjoy it as much as I do. So, get it here and dig in.




















...also, as a special treat because I've kept you waiting for so long, I've put together a package of Eno's non-album tracks - including a couple of singles and a BBC session featuring re-interpretations of tracks from 'Here Come The Warm Jets', an embryonic version of 'I'll Come Running' from 'Another Green World' and a Peggy Lee cover - which you can get here.








I've also decided to throw in a copy of The Winkies self-titled 1975 album in which they re-use the musical backing track to their version of 'The Paw-Paw Negro Blowtorch' and re-title it 'Trust In Dick', with rockin' power-pop results, just....because.
















Shame about the cover though. Mind you, it does give you an idea where they got their name from....

WHAT'S THE STORY, WISHBONE?

COOL STORY BRO.

Too much fucking metal on IllCon these days. Anyone remember Prog Blog Wednesdays? Fuckin' A. That shit was chill as fuck. I think everyone just needs to light up a giant hooter and tune in to some of this shit:



"Metal". Psshhht.


WISHBONE ASH (1970)

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PILGRIMAGE (1971)

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ARGUS (1972)

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PS: Did you idiots know that Stephen Hawking himself visited Illogical Contraption Radio last Friday? Or that he was chair-pitting at an Anal Cunt concert at Gilman in '88? Get caught up:



Almost as good as that time Michael Dorn called in, right?

Wicked Innocence- Omnipotence (1995)

Seems that everybody else is doing a thing on mid-90's DM post so I figured I oughta hop on the bandwagon. And I gotta quit the dolphins: the gayest cetaceans known to man. Plus my metal was challenged. I give you Salt Lake City, Utah's Wicked Innocence.





They are one of the first bands to inject a special kind of weird to their music, and not just regular weird, like say, Atheist or even Demilich do but the kind of abstract, bizarrist weird that Cephalic Carnage or Dripping would come to do.



The foundation is 90's death metal: Suffocation, bits of Atheist and hints of what Brutal Truth was doing then. But what they do with the influences is what makes them so weird. They don't rely on extraneous effects or carnival music. It's all songwriting, arranging the riffs in such a way as to give the whole thing a surrealist vibe:

Slam riffs give way to lurchy tech-ish parts then to melodic solos then to lilting twisted blasts. Riffs stop and start then start again. Sometimes they never go anywhere. This is all put together for maximum unpredictability and top awesomeness. Abstract bits of clean, droning vocals, jazzy fills, and spoken word are mixed in to keep it even weirder. Sometimes it becomes unwieldy, buy they always redeem themselves quickly. Atmospheric Death Metal this ain't. Unless the atmosphere is Suffocation peaking on mushrooms. If that's what these guys were going for they got it right on the mark.

This all combines for a masterpiece of surrealist brutal death, so hop on the crazy train. Here's their second Album, 1995s Omnipotence:

Where do you buy acid in Utah?

BONUS:

Wicked Innocence-Worship

Tonight on Illogical Contraption Radio 10pm-MIDNIGHT PST on FCCFREERADIO.com

How did a 5 foot tall, 100 pound Latvian immigrant lift, carve and engineer stones that weighed over 30 tons to create one of the most astoundingly beautiful and mysterious feats of mankind? Coral Castle, located north of Homestead, Florida, is an incredible stone structure that one tiny little Ed Leedskalnin single-handedly built over a period of 30 years, finally opening to the public in 1923. Leedskalnin would only work at night in pitch blackness and when asked how he could lift such huge objects by himself he would cryptically answer, “I have figured out how the Egyptians built the pyramids.” Witnesses to the creation of stone structure would claim to see huge boulders “floating” and “flying” in mid-air. Tonight we talk to expert Matt Emery of Leedskalnin.com to clear the air about this still unsolved mystery. Was it supernatural or scientific? Why did Billy Idol write a song about it? All this and more will be answered tonight!

After that it’s balls out, siqq ass, shit fuckingly awesome open lines so give us a call!

415-829-2980

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Send us an email! illconradio@gmail.com

Eno Meany

Life is full of things that slow you down and generally impede your progress. Mostly people, but also things like 'having a job with slightly awkward hours', 'wanting to make the most of your time with your special lady friend', the nebulous 'other commitments' and 'having a brain that hates and despises you and tries its level best to make things difficult whenever possible'. Ladies and germs, I'll level with you - add to those obstacles a general feeling of bone-tired weariness and a pinch of slack, and you'll have my situation in a nutshell.

I mean, I have been productive, just not as productive as I'd like to be. I've been writing music reviews for the fine folks at The Sleeping Shaman and, more recently, Bearded Magazine and tinkering with some new music equipment I recently acquired, but, well, it's not enough DAMMIT!!

I want more life, fucker.

...and so, without further ado, excuses and shameless self-promotion, we plunge into the plangent, comfortably warm waters of the third of the first four Brian Eno solo 'vocal' albums.














'Another Green World' was released in 1975, one year after the slightly lacklustre (IMHO) 'Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy', and the same year as his first 'ambient' album, 'Discreet Music', emerged. Tonally and in terms of mood, 'Another Green World' is closer to the latter i.e contemplative and somewhat tranquil. This tonal shift came about in the wake of a traumatic accident wherein Eno received a serious head injury that laid him low for a while.
I'm sure you've heard the tale of how Eno invented ambient music, as we know it, so I won't bore you with it, suffice to say that some of his resulting methodology and approach also rubbed off on 'Another Green World'.



...note the early use of a drum machine, set on 'bossa-nova' there.

On all of the Eno albums featured here, there are a number of other musicians featured, many of whom reocurr over the course of time - most notably Robert Fripp and bassist Paul Rudolph - and 'Another Green World' is no exception to this, boasting the obligatory Fripp, some viola from John Cale (who may well be featured in another of these mult-part posts in future), bass from Winkies man Brian Turrington (of whom, more in the next, final, post), mo' bass from Brand X bassman Percy Jones and drums from his Brand X bandmate.....Phil Collins.

Yeah. I know. Him.

Now, loathe as I am to attempt a defence of this purveyor of ultimate filth, this was 1975 and Phil was still content to keep his damn mouth shut and just play his drums, which he does with verve, aplomb, moxie and ....uh...possibly chutzpah herein.



'Sky Saw' there, the slightly alarming opening track of the album, contained a backing track that Eno would cannibalise several times througout his career, thus really getting his moneys worth from Phil Collins and, as I mentioned back in the first part of these posts, finding a genuine use for him to boot.

















Now, my personal musical highlight on this album would have to be the track 'St Elmo's Fire', which has fuck-all to do with the movie and everything to do with Robert Fripp's lyrical, liquid guitar solo, improvised on the spot when Eno told him he wanted a solo that sounded and felt like electricity arcing between two points on a generator. I think he nailed it...



...wouldn't you agree?

Ssssssooooooo, yes. There you have it. 'Another Green World'.




















Go get it.


* Nerd Footnote - Issue 23 of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, April 1984, featured a story entitled 'Another Green World', a definite reference to this album, given Mr Moore's musical inclinations and later use of song titles, lyrics and album titles as titles for Swamp Thing stories.