https://celluloidlunch.bandcamp.com/
CLR 21 Holt Bodish- Gorgeous
Holt Bodish, best known as the driving force behind Montana’s power trio Mordecai, steps into a more intimate and unfiltered space on Gorgeous, a collection of refreshingly shambolic home recordings that offers a deeper glimpse into his singular artistic sensibility. Crisp, wiry guitars cut through layers of cacophonous percussion, keyboards, drum machines, and anything else Holt has at his disposal. Like the detailed twang of certain UK DIY bands, the songs are propelled by experimentation. Layers of home-recorded first takes blend together in an analog haze, and beneath the noise, Holt’s unmistakably sharp riffs and churning chord progressions come into focus. Songs such as I Am Nothing recall the pop songcraft of Tall Dwarfs or The Clean, but here they are imbued with a looser, more chaotic energy, while Half Sunset leans into an effortless VU cool. Holt’s story-like, half-spoken vocals are less breezy than Lou Reed’s, instead sounding stark and intimate, like The Shadow Ring fronting a rock band. Hand percussion lends an earthy pulse to tracks like Bogus Refutations and No to Nothing, edging toward the folky mysticism of The Fugs or The Incredible String Band at their most hypnotic and exploratory. Rather than feeling deconstructed, these songs feel unconstructed, as if the ideas were captured the moment they formed, still warm with immediacy. Gorgeous draws its power from this approach, where the result is a disorienting and compelling sense of realness. - Kryssi B.
CLR 22 Drainolith's Montreal
On The Electric Hearse (2020) Drainolith time-travelled through various phases of gentrification in the Saint-Henri neighbourhood of Montreal to pay homage to a bygone era, distilling it’s essence out of time. With Drainolith’s Montreal both spatial & historic scope have broadened for a stranger & sparser psychic cartography. Opening with a rendition of les objets mutantes a 2010 poem by the mysterious Cassie Cornette, Moskos sets the scene of this record as exploration of the titular city’s terrain vague.I write from a public standing desk beneath a hardwood awning where the bike path ends & metaverse offices stand. When Electric Hearse was recorded this location was still an ambiguous dirt and gravel pit where free impromptu dance classes took place on a makeshift wood floor. A well manicured and overpopulated nursery now grows where weeds once wrought their chaotic & resilient networks. The piano that bridges these two incarnations of “guerilla park” now sits with a lock and chain over its keyboard cover. This is the best I can describe the state of Montreal’s terrain vague at the time of this release.Following the plaintive notebook synth wailing which closes side 1 we’re introduced to the no music crew “they can’t hear music, they only hear words” in Alex’s own. Chilling stuff. The sounds of spray paint cans & interstellar radio tones crinkle in the background.Separating the sci-fi sprawl of the album’s first part and the b-boy bouillabaisse of it’s second are Bourbs the street and Bourbs the guy “two legends. The sad tale of Jean Bourbonais – scenester who beat a guy to death and Bourbonniere, great street in Hochelaga, broad, lit and with a bike path.” This may be the first Drainolith campfire song.Before the shock of this change of pace has worn off a crisp 808 kicks in with a subdued and spacious groove over which Moskos intones “I keep my neck warm” evoking those long mid-winter walks home in the dead of night. Enter a slurring nasal Québecois tenor cracking jokes about Trudeau (senior) and inflation followed by a smooth Queb disco break.This collage of Queb curios (featuring a St. Henri name check) that makes up part 1 of the title piece reminds us of some of the many Montreals that have come and gone before. What sounds like a fog horn kicks off part 2 and the riff is continued lyrically with references to Jesuits, the fur trade, beloved metal band Voivod, LaSalle … is Draino’s Montreal real? Is anyone’s Montreal more real than another’s? The techies have descended from the metaverse upon guerilla park for lunch now and I know it’s time to go. Questionable fashions, French from France accents and sideways glances remind me this is not my spot. I head towards the Personal Records headquarters in Durocher and notice for the first time the sign demarcating Outremont at Hutchison and Beaubien. Arbitrary borders, mixed use cul-de-sacs, nth generation artist lofts – this is the stuff my Montreal is made of. Is it real? It’s ours.
