Taste of Little Italy
Sean Burdeaux of Paper Forest If you run a search for albums tagged “San Diego” on Bandcamp, you’ll find some interesting stuff. In this new column, we sift through the recent Bandcamp postings and report on our findings.
Musique De Crasseux v5.0, Red Lotus Klan: It’s not hard to imagine this six-and-a-half-minute monster of an instrumental hiphop track emerging straight out of the subconscious of a psychotic serial killer. With its fevered electronics, dissonant strings and ferocious, muscular beats, it’s the kind of thing you’d listen to while making an omelet out of somebody’s brains.
As the Days Gray the Eyes of the Dogs, Paper Forest: Songsmith Sean Burdeaux has been cranking out quirky, incisive indie-pop for years, and he recently uploaded most of his recorded output. The selections include this charming album of lo-fi bedroom blues, whose pensive, low-key acoustic tunes owe as much to Modest Mouse as Mississippi Fred McDowell.
Stunt B%$@h, B.Slade: A gospel singerturned-pop “imagineer,” B.Slade (aka Anthony Charles Williams II) explores a broad range of territory on this new album, but he keeps his two singles fit for the club. The banger “Tipsy” finds him dishing out a massive dose of dubstep bass, while the R&B slow jam “Girlfriend” features his strong, sultry falsetto.
Winter, In Ashes: According to notes that came with the album, this guitar improvisation was recorded while the player wore a hood designed to “induce mild asphyxiation and hallucination.” As one might expect, the results are stark, ghoulish and totally gnar—there’s slow strums, brutal plucks and the occasional grunt, and it sounds like it was recorded in a dank, cavernous dungeon.
Hezus 45, Hezus: The latest effort from members of the elusive Dirty Drums crew, this two-track 7-inch finds drummer Ian “IMD” de Cerbo, his wife Doreen and fellow Dirty Drummer Danny “DRB” Barragan conjuring hypnotic melodies, smoky grooves and some of the deepest, wildest beats this side of L.A.’s Low End Theory. The digital version costs a mere $2, but if you can find a copy of the limited-edition vinyl, buy it before somebody else does.
Email peterh@sdcitybeat.com or follow him on Twitter at @peterholslin.
