Ritual Device - Trademark of Quality Years

Here's another cheapo purchase I made at Amoeba, a 500-copy limited edition live tour CD by the Omaha, NE noise rock band Ritual Device, priced at a ridiculous $1.99. The disc features nine cool dissonant tunes in the vein of The Jesus Lizard, with maybe a touch of Tad (or is it just because of the band name, shared with a Tad song title?) and perhaps Nomeansno. But to my ears it's mostly a bit tamer Jesus Lizard, by which I don't mean a copy, just similar-sounding contemporaries. If you're a fan of the late-80s/early-90s pigfuck sound, you should enjoy this. (As it happens, this very show is available on YouTube as a rather high-quality video recording, so you can watch it there, too.)

PS: The singer and the rest of the band later went on to feature in (Men of) Porn and Ravine, respectively.

A RD poster featuring the very same Kozik art The Offspring later used for their "Americana" album, and their singer supposedly wears a RD T-shirt in the video for "Keep 'em Separated"... Strange.

Track listing:

1. Introduction (2:35)
2. Cirmumcised (4:37)
3. Etude In F# (3:50)
4. Manipulation (2:50)
5. What You Got (3:33)
6. Old Milwaukee (3:28)
7. Sucker (4:21)
8. Untitled (5:30)
9. New Song 43 (2:41)
10. Porkfist (2:20)

Download

Precious Wax Drippings - Ain't We a Wishin' Bunch

I'm back after a three-week trip to the USA, so I'll kick off the blog again with a nice little EP I chanced upon at the wonderful Amoeba music shop in Hollywood. Although the name of this band did sound familiar to me, I didn't really have any idea on how they might sound; but the price tag of $2.99 and the words "Chicago Recording Company" and "Iain Burgess" on the back of the sleeve convinced me to give it a chance. And sure enough, it's really nice old-style emo-indie-punk-rock, like so much of the stuff that was coming out of Chicago during the latter part of the '80s. It's only six songs long and the instrumental "Big Cheese" is no big cheese really, but it's quite enjoyable in that "nice band that never amounted to anything although they did deserve to" kind of way. Hope you like it!

Track listing:

1. Prayers (2:26)
2. Soulbait (1:55)
3. Big Cheese (1:52)
4. Clover (2:08)
5. Keys (1:45)
6. Furnace (4:37)

Download