westside audio laboratories, for real though

ALOHA "Self-Titled" 7"ep *ws#20* Bowling Green,Ohio.. a town built around a university, one of many towns just like it. When you live in such a town, you come to realize that beauty is a rare thing, and that beauty can sometimes be power. Born out of BG,OH is Aloha, and this is their debut recording. Three songs which are dynamic and full of motion, driving rhythms, chiming guitars, complex vibraphone accompaniment & dual male vocals, sweetly sung or yelled as need be. They're playing songs that are the sound of love ending, the sounds made by the words you're too nervous to actually speak as they bounce around in youre head & the music made everyday by your own heart that you never even notice. Gloriously pretty & equally powerful.

FLASHPAPR "Pain Taped Over (Forever)" LP *ws#19* The music to rest youre memories on, played by the kids down the street. Flashpaper is a mostly improvising, sometimes orchestrated group made up of violin, bowed bass, sparse guitar and occasionally joined by haunting, quiet vocals & steady simple drums. This LP is a collection of recordings made at home or in performance by the band over the course of their first year. The songs skip in and out of folk, free jazz, semi-classical, ending up in a completely different place all-together. Reviews have made comparisons to the Dirty Three, Rachel's, Palace, etc, but that's a little too easy. Not just another violin band or bunch of idiots trying to emulate the music of a different time. This is some of the most honest and emotional sound you're likely to hear for some time. And when the snow starts to fall, you'll understand.

MINI-SYSTEMS "Self-Titled" 7"ep *ws#18* "Things are saying, things have been said. All around the world, things are forming. The snake. No! Now! Right! And There are bringers of the snake; they bring, they travel, they.. they bring THE SNAKE!" Malfunctioning electronics, broken toys, beats by the f-ing pound.. I have no idea how most of the sounds on this record were made, but I understand a brilliant noise when I hear one. The Mini-Systems have created thier own language, one of jumbled noises & deteriorating glances at culture. To give you long enough to try to decode the whole mess, this record is close to 19 minutes long, the most for your money & then some. Members of Nautical Almanac, Bitchen Summer, Maximum Cloud. Remaining copies have new, different covers. Plant a seed, name your universe.

MAGNETS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA compilation cassette *ws#16* An incredible 28 band collection showcasing the entire spectrum of the Westside sound. 94 minutes of unreleased material from AAB, Alivia Zivich, Ron of Japan, Beast People, Nautical Almanac, Gravitar, Freejumps, Tiger 100, House of David, Stars of Jazz, Amps for Christ, Swedish Erotica, Morsel, Mouse Brothers, Twig Harper, Walking Singers, Chore, Menander Pattern, Flashpapr, Butler, Danger G-20 Band, Kangoo, Isis+Werewolves, Action Cats, Data Cadet, Ohio & an amazing solo performance from Steve Kenney. Highly experimental & electronic, a few remixes too. The first 100 copies were packaged in fake fur, but those are quickly running out. The remainder are packaged in foil, less fuzzy but just as astounding. This was a great undertaking & stands as our last ever release on the cassette format. Once these run out you might as well throw your walkman in the street $5.00 ppd

AMPS FOR CHRIST "The Secret of the Almost Straight Line" 7"ep *ws#15* Barnes (formerly of MAN IS THE BASTARD) makes beautiful music on hand-constructed guitars, sitar & electronics. White noise fuzz flows under folky & celtic-inspired instrumentals. Visions of mountains in Southern California and thoughts about the evils of corporations, set to traditional melodies & osscillation static. Amps for Christ has a few other records on the Vermiform & Shrimper labels, but this is the only 7" so far, and all the tracks are unreleased anywhere else. Not as many pictures of skulls as before, but amazing for different reasons.

OHIO "Self-Titled" 7"ep *ws#13/pel000) NOVEMBER 1995 - WINTER 1998 This single stands as the only document of this incredible group. Repetative and driving instrumentals, simple themes that drift and continue, based around the rhythms & ornamented by spare guitar, bells and glowing Farfisa organ. The music reminded me of being a child & being really certain about everything. Members & ex-members of many other bands made up this supergroup, too many to bother listing, but all were different & great. Recorded by Warn DeFever, and very well, a split release with peloton records. Not many copies are left of this second pressing, but the ones that do remain are on slick white vinyl with new grey covers. A great work.

PLANT THE FLOWER SEEDS Compilation Cassette *ws#11* This is more of a science project than a comp. This tape collects recordings made by people when they were under the age of 13, the results being sometimes funny but usually kind of creepy and disturbing. Contributions include "songs" by Nick Smith, Ghost Town, Andrew Wilkes-Krier, two sixth-grade metal bands: Edge of Reality & Dead Roostez, a short play about a vague kidnapping with lots of sound-effects & a side-long outer space/submarine adventure story by Spence, age 10. 32 minutes total & also in short supply. Kids..

DATA CADET "Life Pod" 7"ep *ws#10* The second 7" by this sound machine. The sound of Data Cadet is hard to define on paper. The songs were so well structured that they sounded like they were falling apart. Super-tight rock that stops in mid-sentence and turns into weird keyboard blips & interplay between percussion and non-musical guitar noises. True to the Westside sound, this record was recorded on four-track and put together with various random recordings in a collage-style concept 7". A really great & most overlooked record. Members of Data Cadet went on to form All Hands and Propellor. Sun Ra might have been into hardcore for awhile. Who knows?

AAB "Bright Dole" cassette *ws#9* AAB (aka Ancient Art of Boar) was the title fo the music that was made by Andrew Wilkes-Krier for aw hile in his early teens. Although the majority of the AAB material was harsh noise, "Bright Dole" is a musical masterpiece, a document of a specific time that was spent under awe & fascination with Gary Numan, Bauhaus, King Diaomnd and other unlikey influences. Analog synthesizers play upbeat pop songs, ambient noise, mid-80s goth rip-offs & just strange & beautiful music. The mixing is also bizarre & heavy on stereophonics, a good recording for headphones. Gifted musicianship & dramatic concepts.

GONDOLIER "Self-Titled" 7"ep *ws#8* Drawn out & pretty rock, complex rhythms & epic songs. This was Gondolier's first record (not to be confused with the single on Makoto, which was way later in the game) and held two songs: a somber, lovelorn anthem which built & built, rolling out of a slow and flowy beginning into a climactic, melodic point & then just stopping dead. The other song a wordless and slow composition, way too moody for lyrics. In the same vein as Hoover, June of 44, Sl*nt, etc. Cool & glistening screened covers, not too many left.

CHORE "Magic-Marker Redemption" 7"ep *ws#7* "Soda Noise" 7"ep *ws#1* The start of this entire ridiculous mess. Chore was three young people playing noisy & melodic punk music in an attempt to better understand their lives. Weird time-changes, rumbling bass, strong & steady drumming, nasally vocals & piercing guitar, all rolled into a few songs about growing up, being sick, being well, walking around & the unavoidable broken hearts. "Magic Marker Redemption" has Hannah West as cover star, some copies are left on clear vinyl & it includes the trampoline songs that gets stuck in your head for years. "Soda Noise" has five songs, was recorded earlier & happens to be the first Westside record endeavor/mistake. Don't be surprised if you order one & get both. Don't be surprised if you order neither & get both. Awesome band or not, its hard to sell records by a band that doesn't play anymore. Two members of Chore went on to form Lovesick.