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phaseone   thanksbutno

“On first listen, we assumed Phaseone was ensconced in L.A.’s hyper muggy beatfreak scene with dudes like Nosaj Thing, The Gaslamp Killer and Flying Lotus. But he’s actually from St. Louis, sharing little with those guys but a proclivity to making music that sounds like gumball asteroids falling from the sky. Lefse Records, the upstart imprint whose free compilation we shared a few weeks ago, is giving away his debut album Thanks But No Thanks; we’re passing it on because we think it’s excellent. You know those time lapse shots in Planet Earth where fungus grows out of stuff in a disturbingly beautiful way? This is like that happening in your head for forty minutes.” – rcrdlbl.com

teethmountainlp
u guys wanna get high and listen to a sick tribal drumming group from baltimore? this is a recent question i find hard to say no to… i’ve been hooked on these guys for a ‘go-to’, trance-out, herbally-enhanced jamband ever since i saw them open for dan deacon… i was determined to crack into this bands’ genius, and knew it would be equally heady/psychedelic/revolutionary since they were dan deacons’ supporting ensemble/tourmates… anyways, it rules and has infinite replay value… they remind me of yeasayer -vocals, +drone… sort of eastern swirly psych-grooves that shake and shift and mutate to the collective’s improvisational whims… it has the power to mesmerize/sedate/hypnotize… perfect for reading/dreaming/beinghi/replacingsilence/…

” You’ve heard this one before: A group of young (and more than likely college-educated) white people get together, pile instruments in a heap, and share a one-track mind to home, sweet, Om. Teeth Mountain’s mixed-bag lineup doesn’t re-invent the drum circle, but its members–listed as Andrew Burt, Andrew Bernstein, Greg Fox, Greg St. Pierre, Max Eisenberg, Max Eilbacher, Kate Levitt, Grace Bedwell, and Owen Gardner here, not all of whom played on the recording–do it with a sincere appreciation for the woollier end of late-’60s radicalism. Think long-robed cults coming for your children…

…this LP bristles with the meandering abandon of fretful discovery… Teeth Mountain navigates a rhythmic journey through steady-pounding floor toms, space-travel cello drones, and some cosmic-dust dashes of guitars or woodwinds or noisemakers or some other hand-powered sound source. “Black Jerusalem” and “Keinsein” vibrate with reeds ghosts and goblins floating through the background, while “Soft Beast” sounds inspired from any moment off that levitating Velvet Underground bootleg 1966, the one that’s nothing but two side-long instrumental slabs…

…the ‘doing it because it feels good right now’ vibe may be what makes Teeth Mountain such a woozy intoxicant. This is the sort of music that makes people reach for words such as “tribal,” “primitive,” and whatever so-called “exotic” world music is in fashion that hour, but Teeth Mountain couldn’t be more urban and Western if it was making hip-hop. Amorphous, wordless instrumental stew is the basic stock for group disquietude. And while the Baltimore zeitgeist right now may have not formally organized Ausser-Parlamentarische Opposition arm just yet– something about Teeth Mountain’s out-of-body aspirations reek of shared disillusionment, and once the many brains camping out on this mountain begin to see where they want to take their mettle, once they decide to trade the skinny jeans for the leather jacket and start designing guerrilla insignias, watch out. ” -BaltimoreCityPaper