Bounced Checks

( Released 2000 )

Bounced Checks revolves around a vaguely busted practice amplifier Walt had been carrying around with him since his move from Pittsburgh to Boston in 2000. This was during a sort of junk-rat phase in the post-art school career of Walt — everywhere he went, he found another old TV set sitting on the curb and plans were in slow-motion to build a giant bass-playing robot using a 150 pound iron jungle gym base for feet and a box full of half-assembled servos. We eventually tossed the iron thing under a neighbor’s back porch, but the amp actually proved useful.

Pulling the circuit board out and leaving the thing plugged in while poking around at the diodes and capacitors with bare fingers, Walt discovered that all kinds of whirls and pops and squeals could be coaxed out of the machine, sometimes even with a half-assured predictability. Walt and Johnny quickly pulled out the 4-track, a drum machine and some mics and got to work on some singularly weird combos. Over a couple days, they cobbled together Bounced Checks, which ends up being this weird sampler of genres all spoiled by the rotten tones of that amp. A pseudo surf polka gets smothered, some TR-808 sort of tones jab back and forth with grating bleeps and scrapes, and much more.

I love this record because, on top of the exhibition feel for the amp, there’s this dank atmosphere throughout all the bumpy switch-overs. There’s sort of this dreadful bunch of angsty horror film clips that inform that, but there’s also a waterlogged feel to the thing. A heavy sort of echo used here and there? Slightly fuzzy tape? I don’t know. This is also one of a handful of records recorded in the cave basement Walt and Johnny inhabited for one winter (before half the building burned up) — the oven would shoot fireballs on command, mice wandered around the apartment like they were browsing at Wal-Mart, and cars splashed water through windows from the alley above the kitchen. When I think of that moldy little abode, I think of this record.

“Syroos Rampage:”

“Brick On Head:”

“Early Warning:”

“Methadone Clinic 27B:”

Track Listing:

1. Syroos Rampage
2. Jesse from Sydney
3. Kid Stew
4. Final Notice
5. Unwelcome
6. The Colon
7. Wet and Slippy
8. Brick to the Head
9. Play It Safe
10. The Buck Stops Here
11. 6 People Wanted
12. Early Warning
13. Picture of My Butt
14. A Bad Idea to Begin With
15. My Dog’s On Fire
16. Methadone Clinic 27-B
17. (Bonus Track)

Sweetness

( Released 1999)

Sweetness is possibly the nastiest series of sound-stabs in the whole WMAS catalog. The whole thing was recorded in one day by Walt and Donnie Maleriamax with just a four-track, a mangled Yamaha keyboard, a handful of pedals and microphones. The songs are quick and aggressive and reflexive and imply a lot of retching action. The pair of plastic monitor speakers in play with this recording play a big role in deliberate scrapes with feedback that cover the thing like rug burn.

The recording of this album, in both slamming the tape during tracking and during mix-down, is one of the most painfully bleached out frying pan jobs I can think of ever hearing.

Themes? It’s an improv piece that left both participants nearly deaf for several hours after the recording, so anything you’re going to get out of it is pretty abstract. There’s a transporting (?) moment in a sort of apocalyptic rendering of “Peace Like a River,” a lot of feedback and crunched keyboard tone sparring, hobbled electronic beats climbing through shadows like spiders on busted webs, gnarled and sickening scatalogical screams and much more. It’s a bleak world, and the recording stands to this day as a kind of watershed moment in WMAS levels of musical irresponsibility.

Walt and Donnie actually packaged this album and sold a handful to a local record shop with artwork featuring the founding fathers of the United States drawing up maps.

“The Squealer:”

“Peace Like a River:”

“JWB:”

“Gift Certificate:”

Track Listing:

1. I Think I’m Going Out Tonight
2. Beginner Beat
3. Bass In Your Face
4. Such Sweet Thunder
5. Rocky Top Tennessee
6. Sweet
7. Not Sweet
8. Testing
9. War
10. Gift Certificate
11. JWB
12. Razors
13. Battleship
14. The Squealer
15. Peace Like a River
16. It Was a Special Night
17. Death
18. Pater Noster

The Fire Tape

( Released 1998 )

So the story here is that one day in July of 1998, a tornado touched down near the house where a WMAS was about to take place and knocked all the power out. What you have here, instead, is Meadornack, Schmartzky, and Maleriamax using a tape recorder to document themselves setting fire to random household objects. This is about what you’d expect it to sound like. A real treat.

“Dorito:”

Track listing:

1. Jordan Catalano
2. The TI
3. Baked Apple Pie
4. Dorito
5. Pen
6. Design
7. Chapstick
8. Pure
9. Garbage
10. Can
11. Holes
12. Orange
13. Hot Dorito
14. Nature’s Postlude

Labyrinth

( Released Summer 1998 )

Labyrinth is the first complete soundtrack project ever finished by the All-Stars, though the concept had been kicked around for while.  A sort of aborted sountrack exists for the Van Damme flick, Bloodsport, which more or less uses the same set-up as this one, is still lurking on a cassette in someone’s closet and will most likely end up on the B-Side Disasters thingy if that ever materializes.

That set-up:  a television (the big family living room kind with the wooden furniture-ish console and the fake drawers with the brass handles), a Tascam MkII 4-track, some microphones and some of the early multi-effects guitar effects pedals.  For Labyrinth, we added a keyboard.  Hit “play” on the VCR (yeah, a VCR), hit “record” on the tape, play whatever comes to mind.  That’s about it.

You can hear this one develop as it goes.  Here’s the personnel — Meadornack, Breadstick, Maleriamax and Leshmaltfe, which is the volatile group that churned out the head-scratchingly terse and limp My Bad.  The opening scene — that black space title credits sequence with the fantastical mirrors flying around and the white owl flying around, is given this sort of terrifying death-swoop wind blast treatments with some scrappy sci-fi 50s chords bleated out on delay.  It’s good.

For the next twenty minutes or so, it’s like no one knows what the hell to do — Breadstick is flipping through some keyboard themes from who knows where, people are grabbing the microphone, mumbling  and spitting and yakking and doing all kinds of sub-vocalizing.  Sometimes it seems the rules are to “talk” for characters talking, sometimes not.  These twenty minutes are the most challenging, sometimes in good ways and many times in bad ways.  At some point, Leshmaltfe splits.

Movements become a little more sparse, a little moodier, and finally it starts to come together.  “These Hands” begins the real party — discordant toy organ folding over itself, thudding lipping sounds, a whipping percussive rhythm on some sickening repeat (the source:  a mic thrown into a wooden cabinet, which was then slammed over and over from all sides, the sample then reversed).  This piece culminates in this bouldering avalance of great, fuzzy-speakered texture and they leave it alone, one vocal part popping in now and then in stabs of feedback so dry it’s like real-life personal memories bursting into flame inside your own head.

The thing is punchy — parts jump out like crazy now and then that feel like stepping on a broken bottle while walking peacefully down the street (barefoot?).

By the halfway point, there is real chemistry going on.   Slippy Breadstick is playing keyboards throughout and basically leads the way through, whether it’s just slamming down a sickly couple of underlying tones or hopping through some jaunty bits, like he’s the hunchbacked little piano guy in the saloon.  Does that exist?  Juicy mouth percussion duets with a lazy flange mic feedback, dogs talk, warbly piano backs up buzzing, almost gone speaker cones, delay pedals tend to malfunction.  It moves around surpisingly quickly and easily.  In the end, you have one of the most disciplined, varied, and explorative things the group has recorded.  The mics were covered in slobber and everyone had finished many cans of Pepsi.  It’s like the best of whatever you feel a thing has to be to sound intelligent while at the same time being completely retarded enough to comfortably play for friends as a joke.

In life, there actually exists a VHS copy of this film with the WMAS piece completely overdubbed as the audio tracks.  That’s right!

“Those Hands:”

“Down In the Junkyard with Augra:”

Track listing:

1. Title Credits
2. Pretending in the Rain
3. Curse of the Goblin King
4. The Man Himself
5. I Am Peeing in the Water
6. Getting Lost At First
7. Not a Lot of Progress from Here
8. Murkiness Prevails
9. Deep In the Labyrinth
10. The King’s Machine
11. Royal Puzzles
12. Those Hands
13. Beating On the Chest
14. Bubbling Water
15. Rough Crossing
16. That Guy Smells
17. A Classy Trip
18. The Poisoned Masquarade
19. Trashtime
20. Finally Getting Somewhere
21. Monster Pogo Big Guy
22. Opening the Door
23. What the Rocks?
24. Final Fight
25. This One’s for Toby
26. Back In My Bedroom
27. Closing Credits