Cock Rock Disco (MySpace) may be my new favorite label. Though their website is liberally drenched in cheesy '70s polyester-and-porn graphics, there's nothing retro about Cock Rock Disco. In fact, most of the label's artists--from the well-known "Miami Knight and Debonair Slave to the Soundwave" Otto von Shirach (whose latest ear-monster Oozing Bass Spasms I just reviewed) to mysterious mad scientist of sound Vorpal--sound like they come from some remote future...a strange, surreal place where radioactive epileptics stagger and twitch among the melted ruins of 20th-Century pop culture. If you're looking for quality breakcore, experimental, and IDM music, then Cock Rock Disco should be one of your first stops--mainly because they offer a number of albums by representative artists totally free! Let's have a look at some of those free albums, shall we?
CRD is the brainchild of one Jason Forrest (a.k.a. "DJ Donna Summer"), who founded the label in 2001 primarily as an outlet for his own material, though the label has subsequently grown to include many more artists from all over the planet. Like many indie label founders, Forrest was interested in creating a label to promote a specific genre of music--in this case, breakcore and experimental electronics--but the scope of Cock Rock Disco has expanded over the years to include a wide range of electronic styles, offering something for everyone, though still focusing on music that I like to call "spasmolytic freakout jams."
Dev/Null (MySpace) is one of CRD's premiere artists, and this Alston, Massachusetts-based madman's latest free EP, Necrobestial Sadobreaks, is an ugly, vicious album of thunderous metallic violence that manages to smash black metal blastbeats and grinding electronics together while still creating suprisingly catchy tracks. The opening song, "gorechestra," is a stirring number that sounds like it should be the end-credits theme for a hyperkinetic zombie movie: ominous orchestral samples twine with 2000bpm beats to create images of howling undead hordes tearing each other limb from limb in a cannibal bloodbath that would make Ruggero Deodato himself queasy. Four shorter pieces, "grind1" through "grind4," are built entirely from savage speed-metal samples and shredded beats; and though the longest of these pieces is just over a minute in length, they still feel like complete compositions rather than throw-away sketches simply because each little track packs more development and movement into thirty seconds than most artists can jam into an entire album. "Zombie sunset" is almost shocking in the way it combines a frenetic beat with a languid, downright pretty, melody, and "society of defilement" splices heavy metal with spastic electronics and ominous bells to close the album on a high note. Though short, this EP is a monsterwork seething with intense musical ideas: the perfect soundtrack for the splatterpunk movie in your head!
Vexkiddy 's (MySpace) Knocking Out Numbers , on the other hand, is a horse of a different color. Or rather, colors. Swirling, neon-bright, 'shroom-generated colors. The group describe their music as "micro-rave, not breakcore" and...well, that's as good a description as any, I guess, for music that really defies any convenient genre description. What we have here are nine tracks, each precisely three minutes and three seconds long, that mix zippy beats with all manner of musical samples: acid-techno electronics, big band sounds, cabaret sounds, and sounds that cannot possibly have earthly origins. The introductory number, "Arguments Yard (backyard propaganda)" features skittery beats, blippity acid electronics, and a surprising sample of the Twilight Zone theme song that just comes out of nowhere as if to let you know--just in case you haven't realized it yet--that you're not in Kansas anymore. All of the other tracks are prettymuch the same, and they blend together so seamlessly that, for all intents and purposes, this album can be considered one giant mix, with all manner of blurred, chopped, sliced, bit-crushed, and mangled sounds stitched together into an exciting festival of breakbeats that is, at times, surprisingly melodic. That's what makes Vexkiddy stand out: amid the chaos of frankenstein beats and hallucinatory sound, there are moments of calm melodic bliss, which clearly hearkens backs to Aphex Twin's Richard D. James album and gives listeners' brains occasions to rest. In fact, this would be a great album to give to someone who has never experienced this kind of music before: it's challenging, yes, but not completely alien in structure or sound. Imagine the Greys from Close Encounters of The Third Kind attempting to communicate by blasting back at us samples of human music all blurred and blended together into a collage of sound in order to show us that their thought processes are clearly different than ours, yet share a certain common appreciation for certain sound structures, and you've got a good approximation of where Vexkiddy are coming from.
The UK's Ladyscraper (MySpace ) is a howling-mad beast of a completely different spectrum, one that destroys any eye that its falls upon, so be careful with this one! Albums like this should come with warnings like "May Cause Brain Damage" or "Danger! This album contains sounds that can damage the spacetime continuum." Their free album, The Death of Mary Poppins, will literally curb-stomp your ears and may result in the sudden implosion of your speakers. Imagine the most furious, most Satanic death-metal imaginable done entirely with electronics, minus the idiotic growling/screaming/farting vocals, and you've got a close approximation of The Death of Mary Poppins. Filthy gabba kicks and staccato snares crackle beneath lacerated synth squeals and julienned samples. But here's the thing: Ladyscraper may be incredibly harsh--and believe me, by the time you're done listening to this album's ten tracks you'll feel like you've just been beaten senseless in the most horrendous mosh pit in hell--but their music is most certainly full of fun! Wait. What? How can music that practically knocks your teeth down your throat be fun? Well, it is! Because Ladyscraper clearly are not SAD-crazed Norwegians or goat-slaughtering Brazillian lunatics. This album samples Bugs Bunny and Beavis & Butt-Head cartoons and all manner of humorous other sources, for god's sake! It's full of quirky little audio winks and nudges that let you know that Ladyscraper isn't here to roll you for your wallet and leave you for dead--they're just working out a metric tonne of nervous energy and thrashing around madly for the sheer joy of the adrenaline headrush that wickedly harsh, aggressive music gives you. There are even moments of neat little melodies on some tracks, like "Hooke," and you'll be surprised at the variation that this tour-de-faceplant album offers up. But be warned: you might melt listening to it.
And finally, there's Vorpal 's (MySpace) The End. This album is more like an EP, to be honest, in that it contains only six new tracks and three remixes of tracks from Vorpal's extraordinary debut album, An Incomplete Guide to Vorpal Music. But the title track, "The End," is a whopping 16:18 long! After the horror-flick bloodbath of Dev/Null, the psychedelic spasm of Vexkiddy, and the aural beatdown of Ladyscraper, Vorpal's music sounds positively tranquil--the broken junglebeats of "The End" and the skittery rhythms of subsequent tracks like "further ruminations on a theme from the first track of my last album" and "some sort of a travel theme" are submerged in brittle but beautiful washes and smears of tranquil ambience. The beats may be sparse and held together only by shoestrings and wads of Dentyne, but the soundscapes that swaddle them like soft, fuzzy clouds of bioluminescent eiderdown soften their broken edges and create a very unique listening experience: both spastic and relaxed at the same time. A friend of mine described this album the best, I think, when he compared it to lying in a cool, shady field trying to calm down after you've just run a mile trying to burn off a meth high. Even as your heart is flailing in your chest and your blood is fizzing in your veins, the clouds above you are sliding by in slow, delicate motion and slowly, slowly, the shadows are lengthening as the sun sets. In light of that metaphor, The End is a perfect title for this album. Lastly, a few words about the remixes: Mothboy's reconstruction of Vorpal's own reconstruction of Eric Satie's "Gymnopedie" isn't so much a remix as a completely original track that just happens to feature a few samples on loan from Vorpal's track, but labelmaster Jason Forrest's mutation of "autechnicolorschranz" is a wicked mix of ominous synth stabs, hacked acoustic guitar lines, and tachycardic beats that gives this otherwise laidback release a shot of whatever the heck Bruce Banner injected into himself that turned him into the Hulk.
So there you have it, ladies and gents--free music from Cock Rock Disco! And this is just a small sampling of the free releases available on CRD's downloads page. Also check out DJ Donna Summer's mixes, Dev/Null's rave-a-licious 92-94 Oldschool Jungle Mix, and many others: there's something here for everyone...though, of course, by "everyone" I mean poisonous mad monsters from the toxic sewer-swamps of Tromaville.
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