Out of the Dungeon XVI: Hellgrammite Liners
The Mad Ramblings of Nicholas Vane
[Hellgrammite can be downloaded here][or you could find it on ebay]
[or just gmail:nosunliteforthemedia@gmail.com n get a wax copy]
[Hellgrammite, much like other NSFTM albums, was often noted for its insane packaging and odd album inserts as much as the plunderphonic folk music. For those who missed this - we here reprint the original LP liner notes written by NSFTM historian Nicholas Vane. These analyses were an integral part of the mythmaking/media fighting story of No Sunlite.]
I was lunching at Jimmy John's, listening to Crass' incensed martial beat, when I realized I hadn't a clue about the latest plottings of No Sunlite for the Media. My last rendezvous with the cellular collective was shortly after the hop-hip & spelunk-rock of Media Tricks. They'd just wrapped Mar-Lu-Ridge around their necks like a dookie rope. As they walked off the stage toward their metaphorical cities of refuge (to continue their studies, their ancillary art, their feuds), I gripped my notepad and wondered, "Well? What's next?"
This is next. Hellgrammite is next. The settlement of a couple hundred idle bets made in jazz salons, the letters section of zines, and bombed-out subway cars. The audience exhales; another escape effected. The word surrounding this release - if my sources may be trusted - is of pressure and deadlines, sandstorms shrieking against shut-up fires. You won't hear any of this from the crew; this far, NSFTM has been largely satisfied letting the work yield the responses, a maddening trait in directors, nourishing in musicians. As always for this prolific group, in the final tally tension is indistinguishable from sharpening. Their fears cause fears; you fill your balloon skin with their joy to learn where your leaks are.
The crew's still nagging at their latest long thread: restoring hip-hop glories. Some MCs have become carnival barkers, promising a glimpse at Zombi Hip-Hop, the living dead artform. But "hip-hop isn't a cadaver," Math explains in the notes to the lanky Zigaboo shuffle "Busting Up Bad Rap Tapes," "but it has dead tapes that need to be sliced and diced..." Math [last name withheld] is miles beyond the riggedy-ruff dip, that surfaced on mixtapes all across the Atlantic Seaboard in the late 90s. All his influences and experiences are the ipecac drawing purity from his guts. Check "Lincoln Flies Without Wings". Jana-engineered from palpable drawer slams and Kelly's [last name withheld] unpredictable key shaking, it's a perfect foil for an indignant outpour. " Rekkerd skips one time two times skips two time skips on the rekkerd ‘n’ time skips the time skips on the rekkerd ‘n’ it skips every time flip it on the side ‘n’ skip on the side flip it on the side ‘n’ every other side skips on the rekkerd ‘n’ the rekkerd one time skips every time ‘n’ one ‘n’ two times..." - this critic keeps flashing back to Linda Sharrock's "Portrait". Math makes the most of his solo turns, displaying a Genius-like flair for the acronym, and the vision of a hungry KRS-One. Is this the fevered projection of a critic, that most failed of artists? I direct you to these lines from "Crossroads": "Now in my younger days I used to shoot hoops/make news ‘n’ find groups with dope grooves/to make loops ‘n’ produce new hits, eat crispix/run track ‘n’ score tetris/start fires just for fun/‘n’ question why no one’s got rich..." And that's not even taking into account Rich's startling production, which flips an Apostles bassline into a Don Cherry passage as if the 70s were all about the marriage of free-jazz and art punk.
But don't get it twisted into producer credits, sample origins or MC assignments. This record bears a community's imprint. Some artists are forever associated with cities; Black Sabbath with Birmingham; Boogie Down Productions with the Bronx; Brutal Juice with Denton. No Sunlite, though they've repped hard for NOVA, are basements and stages. Westmo Basement, in particular, colors Hellgrammite. The crew worked out "Mandibles" and "Stomach" there on a windy January night. A capacity crowd witnessed the first public production of these woozy math-rock tracks, each a side of the same beaver's tail. Expectations were thick; like the perspiration on the assembled throng's necks, it could have evaporated in an instant. With the first stabs of bass from Josh and Neal [last names withheld], wielded like whirlbats, triumph. After the performance (which lasted all of 20 seconds), someone in the group decided "Mandibles" wasn't yet right. So they repeated it. Another play, then another, about fifteen times in all until the clamorous, AmRep-derived chant of "get it out" became a kind of cathartic refrain for everyone involved. Satisfied, Math counted in "Stomach" Fugazi-style, everyone scrambling for new instruments. Legend has it that Trippy was playing the sample of an outraged bum growling "I'll punch you in the stomach" through a Leslie cabinet running through a ring modulator running through a a modified Speak 'n' Spell running through a Cry Baby pedal running through a speakerphone! No matter the number of iterations, what is remembered by all was the immutable rage of the sample as it clipped and stumbled into a dyspeptic statement of limitation, which has become the current state of the song as you hear it.
Old equipment and old friends... the No Sunlite minds reached out to an old acquaintance from school, Mikey [last name withheld]. Drawing from the playbook of Colorado master provocateurs Longmont Potion Castle, Big Martha [real name withheld] hit him with a three-week phone barrage that elicited the kind of rage expression normally heard in primal scream therapy (and that only by the licensed). Initial reports indicated a collapsed lung, but after much negotiation Mikey signed on to Hellgrammite, even allowing some of the phone calls to be released on this record (it will be up to the listener to parse his contributions). On "Lyrical Lunar Lasers," SoCal stalwart Ben-Zoom Loco, who rocketed to notoriety via his Dungeon Records spots, tosses shouts to Blind Willie Johnson against a deconstructed, metallic boom-bap, the kind that Rammellzee rocked with Death Comet. And nearly every sung line is a group effort - listen to the record! To label this hop-hip alone aligns you with the old guard. Ask Betty, Martha, Trippy, Elizabeth, Josh, Liz, Kaitlin, Jack, Peter, Tyler, Julia, Jana, Neal, Math, Ben, Kelly...heck, even ask Morgan. When this far-flung collective joins vocal tributaries, I hear the wood-grain texture of shape note singing. The b-side closer "Dobson Eye" is the obvious exemplar while "Body Slam", at a shade under a minute, presents a stunning amalgam of backwoods gospel intensity and a wisp of the epic folk metal the crew flexed on 2006's Vytautas Swordblade. This is not eclecticism for its own sake, an assemblage of dead culture's clothing and rote remembrance's display. There be no zolo ostrich-masks here. The future is judgment, the present is work. Some have taken No Sunlite for the Media's brand of musical remonstrance as an art-school expression of Catholic guilt. I don't hear that. I hear a whole sick crew - as pinned as quantum particles - dragging a culture into the sunlight of reason and joy. As for the house of NSFTM, their music and maps all serve the Lord. Ride on the wings of the dobson fly. Summertime's coming.
-Nicholas Vane
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2 comments:
Heck yeah!
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