Pink Metal

Pink Metal is the name of a recent album by CJA, aka my friend Clayton Noone. It's really good.

As sometimes happens, the site I write for asks me to review albums which are put out by friends -- this is never easy. Luckily, to date, they've never asked me to review anything by anyone that I know that absolutely sucked. But regardless, it always makes me a bit nervous and I procrastinated for a while -- 'til eventually one day recently I was washed away in a flash-flood of enthusiasm and got the damn thing written. I'm worried that it's a bit too hyperbolic, but what they hey -- I really, really like this album and I'm so proud for CJA.

Here's the review.. it'll be going up on Foxy Digitalis this week sometime anyway, but I thought I'd post it here as well:

CJA
PINK METAL
PSEUDOARCANA 2xCDR

Pink Metal is a massive double CD-R wrapped in a super goofy garish hand drawn heavy metal style handmade sleeve-booklet. Sound-wise you're looking at 80, 90 minutes of fuzzed-out smashed solo(-ish; the occasional drummer guests) guitar noise slurp-rock jams, synth blurts and acoustic strum-a-ludes, all facing the wall, mumbling into the mic and avoiding your gaze kinda detached/sociopathy.

It's packaged in an oversized thick paper, black, white and purple multi page booklet, adorned with awesome high school-binder heavy metal / Dungeons & Dragons imagery, huge muscled demon warriors, swords and maces, and slain foes laying heaps on the ground, strange fiery aliens, Silver Surfer like creatures firing lasers from their fingertips, spike headed beasts, samurai warriors, cloaked demons, dragons, and growling wolf beasts, ultra violence, and decapitations, skeletons, zombies, ninjas and more (drawn by CJA's brother Richard Noone). All black and white, but with all the text in a garish bright purple, blood dripping metal font. (-- Aquarius)

It doesn't get much more nonchalant than this. Nary much of a consideration is made to the listener; be there or not. Pay attention or don’t. This is CJA's monochromatic, meditative, self-medicated imperturbable strum and blur at its most expansive; at the same time its eclectic compilative sprawl of around 25 tracks is more focused than you'd expect, and probably the closest you'll ever be allowed to get inside the CJA truck.

Pink Metal is the most complete statement of outsider free-form grunge-skuck monochord folkisms and downer distorto-noise conglummery I can think of in the ten or more years since Gate's The Dew Line. It's like lowering a bucket of molasses fug over your head and eyes. It's probably the end of rock. 9/10

Maybe you should listen to this while you (try to) read my review:

CJA - My Dog's Blue Collar (5.64 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Yep.

EDIT
There's another track here.

Imagined response to a number of good points made in an argument by a person with whom it's impossible to reason, recorded here for posterity

It's all too easy to hide behind this wall of intentional obfuscation. I'm all for stepping into the glare of the spotlight of critical appraisal.

You on the other hand

, you refute my position on a number of key points. And you're the leader of the pack. And, I am easily led.

Don't talk to me about Ingmar Bergman. Don't talk to me about My Bloody Valentine. Don't talk to me about anyone else who is dead.

...

This seems to be just the right track for the day after you get wrecked on valium and martinis and sleep for 11 solid hours.

It's the b-side of a 1996 Labradford 10" single, Scenic Recovery. (I found it here.)

Labradford - Underwood 5ive (4.71 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Nice ae? Like I said one time the other day to this guy, no wonder Labradford were my favourite band for most of the nineties.

NZ music month in Wgtn

In honour of NZ Music Month, at the Wellingtonista we have been talking about our favourite Wellington bands. I chipped in with a list of my personal favourites (Wellington music month 4: gettin' serious) which included:

The Avengers
Bailter Space
Birchville Cat Motel
The Elephantmen
The Garbage and the Flowers
The Labcoats
Little Bushman
The Phoenix Foundation
Primitive Art Group
Signer
Surface of the Earth
Andrew Thomas
Trinity Roots

Other contributions:
Wellington music month 1: guaranteed Emo-free
Wellington music month 2: favourite songs for the forlorn
Wellington music month 3: getting Noizy
Wellington music month 5: The dub strikes back

Drinking and eating and rocking and rolling

Over on the Wellingtonista, I wrote about Negroni cocktails, free gigs at the City Gallery, and Aro Community Fair.

Now. On also on this Friday night March 23th, The Stumps are playing at Happy with our friends Zombie Fuck! and Public Toilet Ltd.



There's plenty happening, yes there is...

Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma: Wed 14th March

I have joined the staff of the Wellingtonista website; fun times beckon. As I mentioned in my introduction, I'm looking forward to the challenge of making much more sense about many things much more of the time.

My first post was about the Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma gig at St. Mary of the Angels on Wednesday night, 14th March.

Unfortunately I won't be able to make it to the show, because I am going to see Comets on Fire the same night. To be frank, I love that all this fantastic music is coming through Wellington at the moment, but i really, really hate when shows collide like this.