Former Members of Alfonsin & Bread And Circuits

On some old downloading binge I remember going after the band Breads & Circuits due to the involvement of Mike Kirsch & Jose Palafox of Swing Kids fame... And Please Inform the Captain This Is A Highjack! fame... And Baader Brains fame... And well. Just a shitload of really, really good bands. The band also includes Mag of Yaphet Kotto. But the true find I got out of this hunt was "Former Members Of Alfonsin" when I finally played their half of the split I was immediately blown away. So I am doing another double post.


First up is the split that brought me to discover this band in the first place! I did not zip the Former Members of Alfonsin section because the tracks are also on the full length I included. The songs are "Kinetic," "Devil's Vocabulary Test," "Hurricane" & "Magic Marker." Luckily they're even in that order on the full length.

Bread & Circuits sounds a lot like Please Inform or Baader Brains. You can definitely see where they were headed when you listen to it. It is not as sample heavy and holds onto some of the more aggressive tendencies of Swing Kids and Torches To Rome compared to the more tech-y style they adopted for the later bands. The vocals are distinctly Mike Kirsch's. That grating nasally yell of his sounds great surrounded by the heavy walls of guitar that this album has. The impact of "Shameful Library" is one that sticks.


I don't really know what it was about this band that got me immediately interested but within two songs I knew I loved it. I think it's that the guitar is boppy and sometimes approaches pop before stripping down into a flurry of quick hardcore riffs. It's fun like Books Lie or Dag Nasty except it's pissed off, political & straightedge.

Listen Here (Former Members of Alfonsin)
Listen Here (Bread & Circuits)
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Kill The Man Who Questions

Here is a band who's name I don't hear tossed around a lot but with members who have bands you more than likely have heard of; Limp Wrist and R.A.M.B.O.
Pretty different sounding bands and this third band is again quite different from them as well. It has Limp Wrist's snotty attitude and R.A.M.B.O.'s fun hardcore aesthetic at points. You have a male vocalist with a harsh raspy sound to his voice sometimes coming off like a Boston hardcore veteran--Though they're from Philly. You have a female vocalist with a bratty yell with just enough bite to make her compliment rather than contrast. They alternate lines back and forth through most of the songs but not in classic line for line style but usually closer to verse for verse.
Overall this is a crusty hardcore album that is driving at issues that bug them and is driven with the punk attitude. To try and slap them into a genre or put a tag on them would be both unfair and difficult. It's cool to make your own genres right? Simple, even repetitive guitar riffs with the vocal patterns rounding most of it out, but just spastic enough to stay interesting.

The band broke up in 2002. I have little else to say here since they're clearly fuckin' DEAD. Just get to the listening part, man.

Listen Here No Myspace
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New Brutalism

These two records are monstrous! "1999-2001" is a compilation of two of New Brutalism's records and an additional song on top of that. If you're a fan of the late 80's and early 90's noise-rock genre or any bands of the like of Shellac (or half of what Steve Albini touches) this will become an essential to your collection.
To describe this record in one word is a pretty large feat but I think I would stick with "tempermental." It has that gritty noise rock feel but will drop into slow plucking portions with tonnes of reverb. The instruments have a tinny metallic sound almost always with loads of reverb and I imagine the entire place would vibrate when these guys play. Want to add cool points to their pot? Well, the reason for that sound is they build all of their own instruments and equipment from aluminum. I do not think it can get much more cool than that.

"New Brutalism" is an architectural style utilizing concrete and repetitive geometric shape patterns. In many ways this describes their music style in quite an interesting way. Not to mention the fact that they are the architects of their own instruments.
Rather than rambling further I'm just going to post the extremely interesting write-up that was on their last.fm. These art snobs know they're doing what they do just how it should be done. With an amount of pretentious attitude that almost hurts but you can't chalk it up against them when you find yourself digging it just that way.

New brutalism, ethic or aesthetic?

Neither, new brutalism is 3 men, not special men, or famous men, just men. Men with names that don’t matter. New Brutalism is almost 7 years of money wasted or lost, vans broken and bent, blood, sweat, and never tears. New Brutalism is hell made from aluminum; guitars, drums, amps, any chance to apply that gem of a material that is not quite strong enough to be steel, but light enough to be useful, sliced like butter on a Bridgeport mill. New brutalism is 64 songs and counting, named by their number, sterile in origin and cold in execution. New brutalism is pure pretension dressed in black, as colour is for those who have a heart. New brutalism is by no means original, and new brutalism is comfortable with that. New brutalism builds upon a foundation previously laid, based on the minimal and honest, the raw and precise; new brutalism is architecture without architects, the banal and the wasted, the abandoned hulks in the rotting urban cores. What’s important to new brutalism is not the grass you cannot walk on, but the concrete you can, this concrete that has become an extension of our feet, the aluminum instrument an extension of our arms, the machines we hate but we use daily to our advantage. New brutalism is what we make, and what you make of it, but regardless of interpretation, new brutalism exists, and new brutalism works. When new brutalism is hot, let it be hot as the tongue of flame, when it is cold, let it be cold as ice; new brutalism hurts.

God damn art fucks why must you be so good at what you do!

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Masshysteri

Sometimes not being able to understand a band drives me nuts. That's how I feel about the Swedish band Masshysteri. The music is just so poppy and enjoyable that you know you want to be singing along but short of making up your own words you really have no hope. And from what I have heard that still would not do it justice seeing as the lyrics are really well written.

Musically this album feels like it could fit in well with a lot of goth or new wave (or post-punk) or whatever hell you want to call them bands like Joy Division or the Cure. It has that moody rainy-day styled guitar and bass lines. But peppy drumming and vocals that keep it alive. Their use of female vocals to shout the males really works well.

It honestly took me a couple of listens to really get into this album. I do not know what it was initially I just could not really get into a lot of the songs. Before I knew it though I suddenly found myself gravitating to picking them on the list every once and awhile then more and more. So if you do not get into it right off the bat I definitely recommend giving it another shot. See what happens.

Thanks to Joey for the heads-up on this band!

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Song of Zarathustra

That's right.. Another "Song of.." band.

Song of Zarathustra basically sounds like something that'd be on the three-one-g catalogue (but are on ebulition.) Vocally it sounds like any Justin Pearson band--Primarily Swing Kids. Throw in choppy mathy calculated guitar riffs that sounds like an aggressive Drive Like Jehu..Or...Again...Any Justin Pearson band....Primarily...Swing Kids.... Cough, cough.
Now--What separates it from that JP sound I keep toting? An organ and a drumbeat machine. So you now have a pissed off, less Jazz-influenced, less artsy-fartsy Antioch Arrow? I approve!!

I love this album and have been listening to it extreme amounts in the past two weeks. The album can get to feel a bit repetitive at times but the use of the organ can save that at a few points. It is not overdone and adds a haunting foreboding feeling to the tracks. I feel if they used it much more it would have added the same tone to a lot of the songs but the organ is drowned out in guitar and bass a lot which really saves these songs from getting too boring. Though "Mess of Zero" & "The Birth of Tragedy" both sound very similar BECAUSE of the organ so it's a bit of a curse, too.

Though the band formed in 1997 "The Birth Of A Tragedy" is their debut album and was not released until 2000 and occurs after the bands initial breakup and reunion. That's about as far as my knowledge of the band goes and that's mostly from reading about it so I had something to write about. I picked up a 7" randomly on an Ebay binge and was pleasantly surprised and grabbed this LP shortly after.

Oh, and one of the members went on to create the Hold Steady--This is much more my cup of tea, though.

p.s. I know I'm usually bad for how long I take to make posts but this time it's excused. Due to my move I haven't had internet for almost two weeks! Gimme a break.

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