Xome - Blind Frenchies and Pork (1995)

Blind Frenchies and Pork by Xome

On The Miracle of Levitation, Xome's "Children Recognizing Meat as a Main Dish" is Track 4. Although he had recorded his own music (not the right word) for years already, his first live performances and releases came while he lived in Japan (contemporaneous to Brent Gutzeit and Michael Hartman's short stays there.) Xome released his debut album Blind Frenchies and Pork in 1995 on his own label Negatron Heavy Industries.

Xome, aka Bob Scott, is a harsh noise project. From my understanding of the history of Xome's gigs via his website, his harsh noise is an act of daring overexposure, of smashing taboos and even tips into misdemeanor lawbreaking. A great gig leaves audiences with a night of memorable audio/visual trauma. Unlike the live instrumentation and junk sounds of other improvisational noise genres, harsh noise forgoes them for digital equipment made to layer static, distortion and feedback. The genre hasn't much use for rhythm, tempo or other traditional musical qualities in favor of...well, mostly just texture. The result is a heavy dose of abrasive static and ear-piercing tones. Like on a TV, the static is random and patternless and painful and damaging if you spend too much time with it. But it's still possible to get lost in it and hear things from the other side: from Bob Scott to, say, Carol Anne's ears.

So what can you hear? Depends on the recording. "Calcutta" starts with squealing tones that waver in amplitude and seem to change their texture as they ascend or descend in pitch travelling through the various machines. All the while, Xome layers in a contrasting ambient recording of bells, strung together and shattering in an otherworldly way. A consistent quality of these walls of static and feedback tones and distorted recordings that leave your ears ringing and send your dog to the other room is that they sound small, as if Xome were taking the most sensitive microphone in the world and holding it, not to his equipment, but to their wires to record the miniature traffic of atoms and electrons. It's the sound of the electrical blown up to a level of disturbing power.

Specificities, though, seem almost beyond the point. Xome prefers the live setting. For harsh noise, in all its will to disturb listeners and push boundaries, is a troll's genre. The improvisation is as much a reaction to the audience as what noise is being made. The performances, like the reactions, are physical, and there might not be anything more satisfying to the harsh noise maker than the physical reaction of the audience walking out the door.

Here is the discography surrounding Xome's debut album:

face 23 (1994 tape)

split (1995 split tape with Stimbox)

Clip Off (1995 compilation song on The Sound of Samsara)

Blind Frenchies and Pork

Children Recognizing Meat a Main Dish (1995 compilation song on The Miracle of Levitation)

Xome Live at Gear in Koenji, Tokyo

Pass the Headphones!!

Diaper - The Brown Suit (1994)

"Art Rock Takes a Holiday" by The Mercury Players

The other band to precursor U.S. Maple (Track 3 from The Miracle of Levitation) is the indie band Diaper. Diaper released their only album The Brown Suit in 1994 on Weed Records.

Diaper is a throwaway band name. The band itself was probably intended to be just that: a little project pulled together by friends and a will to just "make a record" in your early 20s. Drummer Pat Samson and guitarist Todd Rittman had already played together with The Mercury Players and would later form U.S. Maple. Rittman recruited high school friend and cellist Kera Schaley (previously of dOUBT) to round out the trio. The recording was rushed, the release push nearly non-existent and the "album-release tour" a couple of concerts in Chicago and Athens. As presaged by their name, the album fell into obscurity.

Despite this, the three together sound cohesive and well-practiced. They embrace the minimal spareness of their band's makeup and recording space: a barn, mostly. They create a very direct record, as a result, without much semblance of production. The guitar is simultaneously ominous and glittering; the cello welcoming and fragile. The songs, like a lot of early 90s indie songs, find themselves in love with dissonance and minor chords and sound more like variations on a musical theme. Even with the band members' respective musicianship, their songs can turn plodding in these variations and the cello lilts towards the lullaby. It's only when Schaley or Rittman embrace the noisier potential of their instruments, like the concluding breakdown on the instrumental "Off" or the quite funny opening strums on "J Mascis Is God," that Diaper keeps the album from becoming comatose. The lyrics match the sonic mood, sung alternatively by Schaley and Rittman. They're dark, brooding and sarcastic; or so I've read. I couldn't make out half the lines as the vocals are much too low in the mix. In the end, there's not enough ambition or inspiration to elevate the album beyond a local curio, but the band never really intended it to be anything but that—and it's certainly more valuable than just a diaper.

All information here about Diaper comes from Kera Schaley's point of view through a (much needed) interview conducted in 2010 by Evan LeVine writing for his blog Swan Fungus. In his article, he's uploaded a couple songs if you want an idea of what the band sounds like.

Here is the discography for Diaper:

Box of Headaches (compilation album of unreleased recordings by dOUBT)

Hollywood or Bust (1992 single by The Mercury Players)

Don't Run, It's Your Dreamgirl (1992 EP by The Mercury Players)

Wrong (1994 single by Double Boar)

The Brown Suit

"Judas's Payment" by dOUBT

"Bliss" by Martyr & Pistol

Pass the Headphones!!