Thursday, February 15, 2007

You're thinking about equilibrium.
I've been itchin' to put some rare-ish stuff up here lately, but since my somewhat hard-to-find shit is all on vinyl and since I'm pretty ignorant on how to transfer vinyl to Tyler's computer, all that stuff is gonna have to wait. HOWEVER, I remembered I have a copy of Horses' (maybe) lone release--a 4-song cd-r they sold at one of their few shows, with Q and Not U and some annoying "dance party band"/garbage at North Six about a year and half ago. Horses featured 3 ex-Black Eyes dudes (non-shrieking vocalist Hugh McElroy and the two guys who played drums, whose names I can't remember...one of them's named Dan, I think?) and a guitarist (not sure about her name either) from DC-based mathematicians Et At It, and managed to last about a year or so before packing it in and moving on to other things (much of which can be investigated at the Ruffian Records site). They weren't too far off from what Black Eyes was for the three years they were together--a no-wavey, heavy-on-the-rhythm post-punk band that always sounded fresh and galvanizing, while nearly all of their contemporaries sounded either incredibly forced and mediocre or simply awful. But where Black Eyes seemed to trade almost entirely in desperate reactions to weird social/political/sexual interactions, Horses felt a little more subdued, even kind of spooky (low, chanted vocals; darker tones; lots of talk about death) while still throwing in the kind of polyrhythms and bass grooves you might have found on Black Eyes (but none of the free jazz skronk you might have found on Cough, unfortunately). Their cd-r sounds like it was 4-tracked or possibly even layed down on a boombox--there's literally no other information about the recording or the band aside from what's written on the cover (see image above)--so prepare yourself for some definite rawness. They played so many more songs at that show, though, and I wish they'd had a chance to lay them all down and put it out. Shit was tight.

Horses - "Track 1" (from 4567)
Horses - "Track 2" (from 4567)
Horses - "Track 3" (from 4567)
Horses - "Track 4" (from 4567)

I know I'd said that yesterday's song of the day would be "Is It Me You Really Love", but it was actually The B-52's "Whammy Kiss", if only for the part that goes "He cannot stand to go into work/when he needs some whammy love". That's pretty romantic, right? Today's song is the not-so-romantic "Grounds For Divorce" from the forthcoming Big Business jam, which is pretty much full of songs of the day. Site of the day is a pretty thorough look at You Can't Do That On Television.

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