P22: Human Snake (Post Present Medium)

From our own, Mr. Jim McHugh:

“Droning Anarcho art-damage fiercely female-fronted, utopian and intent on forwarding Cal-Arts meta-punk concepts as manifested by BPeople/LAFMS, the totality of Su Tissue’s music, or Mike Kelley’s band-like collective with Tony Conrad, The Poetics.

Nine jagged, disciplined critiques of the forms of rock are smuggled onto our plates as ‘prudent exercises in the collective rearing of offbeat protest tunes in punk's tomb’ (from the one sheet). Only two tracks extend much beyond two minutes (and most stand between 50-100 seconds) but measured dynamics define this music as much as palpable wrath: we are ratcheted with purpose into new, off-kilter zones as we careen with zeal far-left.

The treble-textures alone connote both a studied historical awareness of LA Underground Rock and the urge to unpack punk’s raw materials. Layered violins loom at the opening, evoking Conrad, John Cale’s early-70’s SoCal folk-rock, and the strange perfect songs from Raincoats’ Odyshape. Guitars chime like early Arthur Lee, drone like Bruce Licher, and grow gross a la Joe Baiza; at one point a propulsive melody in the high bass-strings, perfectly dinky and Urinals- shaped, creates glassine surfaces for the guitar to crack like D. Boon, then shatter into clawlike fractals a la Pat Smear on the Lexicon Devil EP.

Matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve heard a record this abbreviated, brusk and action-packed in its compositional, political and rhythmic grist since those epochal early ear-gouges that did us all in: Germs 7-inches; Meat Puppets 1; Paranoid Time thru Buzz Or Howl; the early Monitor EPs and Black Flag’s Damaged.

Here’s how it lands: enraged, bilingual vocals testify to an ominous entanglement with today’s direness. They don’t deign to float “meta” and meaningless above anyone or anything worth decrying or defending. It’s that balance of distance and engagement, analysis and action, theory and praxis that has this music feeling like effective medicine that also tastes amazing. Drop your jaws.”