Doomsday Disco

Panico are a band from Chile and their debut album, Subliminal Kill (Tigersushi), sounds like they take a lot of psychedelics.

My hunch was right. Last week I spoke to Eduardo from the band and he told me about the time they filmed a TV show on acid. “It was back in the time we lived in Chile,” he said. “We were performing a playback so we didn't have to play our instruments for real. It was great and the TV studio was full of lights, it looked really nice but our performance was a real disaster. We couldn't stop laughing. At the end it was a very bad idea, we looked like we just had escaped from the psychiatrist. We got fired from the show.”

For Eduardo drugs are door openers to the chaotic, messy side. “I guess everyone's deranged, but it all depends on how you decide to assume it or not. Drugs help a lot,” he says. To judge from the slightly paranoiac energy of Subliminal Kill Panico's drug of choice isn’t mushrooms or peyote, but rather cocaine. Whatever the case may be, Subliminal Kill is the record for all your late night, dirty dancing parties this summer.

You wouldn't play Wolf Eyes at a party unless it was your house and you wanted everybody to leave, but they've just released a rare live recording called “F*ck the Old Miami” (Important Records). It's a limited 12" pressing with a playable etching on the B-Side, hand carved by the band.

Like a lot of people in the noise rock game Wolf Eyes build and customize their own sound generators. A new acquaintance for me is Dutch electronic composer Michel Waisvisz, who has developed a whole range of sound boxes since the seventies. They all generate sounds by the use of touch. He's worked exclusively with theatre and performance music for the past twenty years but now he's about to release his first record since 1978, titled In Tune (Sonig). The album is comprised of live recordings made between 1977 and 2000. The result is a pretty heady sound trip. In Tune balances sonic experiment with the ridiculous in a way that bears more than a passing resemblance of Bruce Haack's happiest music box excesses. Above all, it's a fun record.

Including a mime artist in your live act comes right at the end of truly weird things to do if you're in a rock band. But it was never more than an elf step away for the folks in leather jackets and Fu Manchu moustaches that made up the German kraut rock movement in the early seventies. Can performed with a juggler on stage at least once. I'm not sure if Faust ever did that though. That's why it's a good thing that Hit Thing just released Impressions, a DVD consisting of eleven tracks with accompanying videos that you can scrutinize looking for circus dwarves and the odd troll. Older stuff like “It's a Rainy Day”, “Why Don't You Eat Carrots?” and three previously unreleased tracks are included. It's not an essential DVD, but it's still a nice little history lesson in sound and image. That is, if Teutonic progressive music with a proto-industrial edge is what makes your sack tingle.

I’ve saved the best outer limits disco record to come out in many weeks for last. It’s Konrad Black from Vancouver that brings us the dubby slasher acid 12" single “Draconia.” Released through Mathew Jonson's Wagon Repair label, “Draconia” is a dubby, minimally funky ghost ride, while the b-side, “Jefferson & Braeside” is electronic grime disco driven by a weirdly skewed bass riff and sample of a scared girl sucking air (presumably from an Argento movie). The record is as mind-boggling as you'd always want electronic dance music to be in your best nightmares.

JOCKE BÄRG