Watch A Bruce Russell Doc Made By His Daughter.

27 minutes with Mr. Noisy- a documentary about Bruce Russell from Olive Russell on Vimeo.

27 Minutes With Mr Noisy is a documentary about Bruce Russell of the Dead C filmed by his teenage daughter for her English class. The doc takes you on an expedited romp through the Dead C's musical legacy along with candid insights by Russell into his inspirations for making art, literature and music. Review the Dead C's catalog, including the their new Armed Courage full-length HERE.

Dead C's One And Only Video.

Video for "Truth" off the Damned album also featured on the Vain, Erudite and Stupid: Selected Works 1987-2005 compilation. Explore Dead C catalog HERE.

The Dead C Take The Cover Of The Wire Magazine.

Congratulations to The Dead C for taking the cover of July issue of the Wire Magazine. Looking good gentleman. Explore The Dead C catalog HERE.

Podcast #39 Is A 23 Minute Party.

Podcast #39 features the best and brightest Midheaven exclusive releases with an Oct. 12th street date. Hear music by Fresh and Onlys, The Dead C, Peter Gordon, Articles Of Faith, Jello Biafra and Keith LeBlanc from Terminal City Ricochet DVD & Soundtrack, Neko Case from the Widower soundtrack, Susumu Yokota, Seeland, Gavin Russom and Delia Gonzalez. Download and streaming options can be found at the usual destination:
REVOLVER POD PAGE.

It's Time For Podcast #29.

Podcast 29 covers releases that hit the street on May 25, 2010: Rudi Zygadlo, Swindle, Ty Segal, Manatee, Grovesnor, Castevet, Neverever, Tobacco, Coffins, Twin Sister, Secret Chiefs, Dead C, and the Spits. Download and streaming options can be found at the usual destination:
REVOLVER POD PAGE.

Demystifying A Lark - The Making Of Clyma Est Mort.

The lore behind the Dead C's simulated "live" album Clyma Est Mort has stemmed 'tis a many discussion amongst a select clan of fascinated freaks. For those so inclined now is your chance to get the nitty-gritty on the making of this mythical sonic beast. Prepare yourself for a detailed narrative by Est Mort's sole official audience participant Tom Lax of Siltbreeze. Click HERE for Tom's tell-all for Volcanic Tongue.

Double Dose Of Dead C On Dusted.

Artist: The Dead C
Album: DR503 / Eusa Kills
Label: Ba Da Bing / Jagjaguwar Dustedmagzine.com Review date: Jan. 28, 2009

Prior to the release of their career retrospective Vain, Erudite and Stupid in 2005, I hadn’t heard any pre-Harsh Seventies Reality material from the Dead C. My college radio station didn’t have the records, I’m lazy on the downloading tip, and copies of their first two albums, DR503 and Eusa Kills, weren’t crowding any store shelves, used or new. The compilation provided an eye-opening context for the band’s work: namely, they’ve barely changed at all over their run. There have been certain detours, but setting aside a slight fidelity increase, you could probably fool me into thinking that their entire output was recorded in several lengthy, mind-blowing sessions. I’ve never met a Dead C fan that negged on any period of their work, a fact that their consistency goes a long way toward explaining.

This isn’t to say that every piece of tape recorded has been genius, or that it’s impossible for one to single out a favorite Dead C record. However, I think those judgments have more to do with listener preferences than any objective differences in the band’s approach. I gravitate towards The White House, but that might be because I get down more with never-ending psych jams than mindfuckery like Future Artists, and those two records just happen to tilt toward those two poles. The richness of the band’s concept – conflating punk and psychedelic release through basement noise-crust – allows them indulgences and demands ceaseless exploration; fortunately, 20 years later, they’ve stayed true to the idea, and the creative well still hasn’t run dry. Moreover, unlike brothers-in-arms Sonic Youth, they haven’t abandoned punk rock restlessness for classic rock maturity. Rather than “advance” or “progress” or “develop the sound” or “take huge steps forward,” the Dead C remain in the thick of the fight. It’s a huge middle finger to an industry that sporadically pays attention, to “career,” to losing the plot as one gets older, to not trusting one’s instincts.

So, early Dead C material is just as essential as anything they’ve released, and not only for historical value. After getting a taste of the early stuff on Vain, it’s a huge pleasure to hear these releases in their entirety, newly collected on two beautifully packaged vinyl reissues. Overall, these albums and EPs might be more song-oriented than what followed, but they’re undoubtedly of the same minds and spirits.

DR503, released on Flying Nun in 1988, splits its time between borderline-pleasant drug-noise-pop like “Speed Kills,” rock throwdowns like “Max Harris,” and curveballs like “Mutterline.” As much as DR503 keeps the listener guessing, the release that it’s packaged with, The Sun Stabbed EP, hits more extremes than any of the four releases presented here. “Crazy I Know” is lighter than air, a reminder that the Dead C did share a label with pop bands. Two tracks later, “Bad Politics” provides a straightforward punk rush, probably the most “rock” track that the band has recorded. On the flip side, “Sun Stabbed” and “Three Years” manage to hit all these bases and more, lurching from driving rock to pure noise to hazily chiming guitar noodlings.

Two years later, Eusa Kills tipped the scales almost entirely in the rock direction; excepting the pitch-black rushes of “Maggot” and “I Was Here,” the album lives up to its reputation as the group’s most accessible album – accessible being, of course, a relative term. Though undeniably their own, one might mistake some of these tracks for SY or Labradford demos. Their sonic signifiers complicate that reading, and the gobsmacking cover of Tyrannosaurus Rex’s “Children of the Revolution,” breaks it completely. Titled “Children,” it’s a flat-out perfect moment, full of humor and knowledge. On the one hand, it’s a wink towards the record geeks; on the other, proof of the Dead C’s dominance – no chance in hell could your basement rock group sound as awesome as this. The Helen Said This EP completes the package with the title track, a deep cut of beautiful space-rock, complemented by “Bury (Refutatio Omnium Haeresium),” one of the group’s most impenetrable workouts.

Few groups in the underground are revered as much as the Dead C, and these reissues underline why. Right out of the gate, they sounded like no one else, and 20 years later, they still haven’t lost the chops, smarts and balls that are on display here.

By Brad LaBonte

Tiny Mix Tapes Reviews The Dead C's Bowery Ballroom Show.

Dead C / Northampton Wools / Sightings / King Darves
[Bowery Ballroom; New York, NY]
[10-13-2008]
Original Post

It's with some serendipity that New Zealand noise-rockers the Dead C would be making an appearance in New York at the same time the actual Dead Sea scrolls would be on display at the Jewish Museum in the very same city. Indeed, for both, a Manhattan appearance is equally rare. Though there exists no tour t-shirt to document the scrolls globe trekking, the band, the Dead C are on record as having only made one journey to the states before this tour, to play the Los Angeles chapter of All Tomorrow's Parties back in 2002. Like the scrolls, the Dunedin, New Zealand band's extensive back catalog has been ruminated over, each new release pored over for meaning and intent, and as is the case for both, new paradoxes arise out of every examination of their output.

New York City parking regulations had me circling the Bowery Ballroom 20 or 30 times before settling upon a viable spot to stash my ride. Unfortunately, I had already missed openers King Darves. Bummer. So it would be Northampton Wools that would whet my live music whistle for the night. The guitar mangling duo of Thurston Moore and Bill Nace invoked the spirit of Derek Bailey, as the two started out with spacious, delicate amblings only to build towards further rupture and the all-out guitar squall Thurston has manifested in over a bazillion projects. In a particularly pleasing moment (after several awkward silences), Thurston, in a fit of fury, slammed a file against the strings and continued to absolutely maul the guitar that sat torturously, crying out for help upon his lap.

Sightings continued the guitar abuse with their skronk 'n' pummel routine. Rich Hoffman provided plenty of dyspeptic "bass face," switching from slinky-snake charming riffs to retard rumble, while Mark Morgan danced around the stage doing a hybrid Russian folk dance mixed with a modified version of the limbo. The synth pad/actual drum drumming of Jon Lockie further accentuated Sightings half-man/half-machine hybrid attack. The whole Sightings package kind of sounds like what Einstürzende Neubauten would if they were around in the late-'60s — call it industrial-edelia if that suits you (it shouldn't). Not recognizing this song cycle from their latest Through the Panama, it stands to reason these new jams are to be featured on some sort of new album, which has me atwitter with schoolgirl-like excitement.

Dead C took the stage last and culminated a night of discordance. Mike Morley's lethargic drawl wove a dream-time musical language with Bruce Russell's guitar noisiness. Russell, in a perpetual Quasimoto slump, leaned over his guitar, not necessarily playing it, but maybe exploiting it, inserting a small metal strip between the fretboard and strings and producing a steady stream of feedback from the small amp he had in front of him. The drumming of Robbie Yeats was impressive; holding together amorphous rock tendencies can't be easy, but he pulled it off. Their set was full of peaks and valleys, build-ups and let-downs, while an underscore of atonality held it all together. The performance for the most part lacked the energy of some past recorded shows (gotta love that video of them on New Zealand television) and opted for more unilateral unfoldings and subtle crescendos. Although the sheets of sound built up by the C reached some transcendent heights, I felt, overall, they kept it mired in a sort of cosmic funeral dirge. Dead C have to be commended for their unique vision, their disregard of convention, and the sheer influence they have bequeathed, which makes it tough to decry such a seminal and legendary band for being "boring." To save face, I'll revert back to that old axiom about Wagner's music and say that, like the German composer, Dead C are better than they sound.

Dead C Secret Earth Review in Orlando Weekly.

The Dead C live at the Great American Music Hall Oct. 16th 2008.

C CHANGE
New Zealand trio strips down
The Dead C: Secret Earth
Label: Ba Da Bing
Format: Album
Media: CD
Genre: Recording
Original review

Upon emerging from semi-hiatus two years ago, New Zealand grub-note merchants the Dead C made two executive decisions ---– one long overdue and the other cynically pragmatic. In 2006, the trio issued a catalog retrospective – the term "greatest hits" is tough to apply to a band with lower name recognition than Wolf Eyes in the States – called Vain, Erudite and Stupid: Selected Works 1987-2005. Last year saw the release of Future Artists, a restrained display of grumbling noise presented in five instrumental movements. It doesn't matter whether guitarist-singer Michael Morley, laptopist Bruce Russell and drummer Robbie Yeats were cashing in on the present noise vogue or merely following their tectonic shifting-tone bliss – Artists was a late-career master stroke.

Their new album, Secret Earth, released this week, marks a return to the trio's early roots. Treble-heavy chordal themes are introduced and slowly, excruciatingly crushed into powder, propelled by tinny drums and cymbals and narrated in labored, unintelligible syntax by Morley. The instrumental glower and gloom is dialed back to almost loungey levels on "Mansions," and it feels like a head-fake on par with the surprise of abrasive noisers Sightings' menace-shorn 2004 release, Arrived in Gold. On "Stations," feedback is almost another instrument, gilding a turgid, rattling churn that seems to last forever; distended vocal lines push back against the clattering, blackened current, seeking a foothold but finding none. Yeats' fancy kit work on "Plains" provides a mooring force for the prevailing maelstrom of shredded riffage that envelops existentialist sentiments like "No one knows who you are/Drift and peel away."

Characteristically, of course, this gray buzz-saw whirlpool sounds like it's being played thousands of miles away and beamed to us by satellite telephone; as vague coherence gives way to a pummeling, eternal flail, all sense of place and time is lost. We'd settle for nothing more, or rather, nothing less. This is the desiccated vein the Dead C mine best, and it's a relief to see them back at it again.

BY RAYMOND CUMMINGS

A Couple Dead C Show Previews.

Philadelphia Citypaper
The Dead C
Sun., Oct. 12, 9 p.m., $12, with Blues Control and Pink Reason, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684,
by Brian Howard

The Dead C are largely unknown in the U.S. (and throughout most of the world). I could say you sound like the Velvet Underground's most scabrous feedback blown up and improvised into mantras of morbid malevolence, crossed with the early Fall's relentless repetition and ramshackle production values. But that may be oversimplification. How do you describe your sound to people who've never heard the Dead C?

You really can't do this easily. I think your reference points are good enough, if you are talking to a well-schooled music fan. I try to explain that we look and sound like a rock band making the most cacophonous racket you can imagine—but really we're something else. Our music is pretty well 100-percent improvised using rock instrumentation, but it's almost completely unmusical, certainly devoid of melody. If you imagine rock music is like landscape painting, our work is extreme abstraction.

Time Out New York
The Dead C + Sightings + Northampton Wools + King Darves
Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey St (between Bowery and Chrystie St)
Lower East Side
212-533-2111

Prices
Tickets: advance $15, day of show $18

Description
Dead C's new Secret Earth is the New Zealand sludge trio's most satisfying outing in years. The group finally banishes the ambient laziness that tarred its past few releases and breaks a sweat, submerging simple chords and rock-steady percussion in vats of choleric feedback and low-fidelity crud. Lots of bands bury their tunes beneath scuzzy feedback, but Sightings is unique in that neither element seems primary: Its music could just as easily be termed rock-tinged noise as vice versa. Also playing are Northampton Wools—that's Bill Nace and Thurston Moore—and New Jersey's King Darves, who crafts fine little handmade songs.
When
Mon 7:30pm .

Full Dead C US Tour:
10/12 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s (w/ Blues Control, Pink Reason)
10/13 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
10/15 Seattle, WA @ Nectar Lounge (w/ Six Organs Of Admittance)
10/16 San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall (w/ Six Organs Of Admittance)
10/19 Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle (w/ Wolf Eyes)

Dead C Review in Village Voice

Reviews
More Slow, Indecipherable, Brutal Beauty From the Dead C
By Mike Wolf
Tuesday, September 23rd 2008

What does it mean to say that a band has returned to form, when doing away with form was kind of the point to begin with? The Dead C's 2007 album, Future Artists, found the New Zealand trio mainly immersing themselves in electronically generated tones 'n' drones (with a few metal scrapings for flavor), and while it's hard to begrudge a 20-year-old group their indulgences, it's far from the most thrilling excursion in their bulging, misshapen catalog. Secret Earth, though, is the stuff: the largely improvised anti-rock that characterized their '90s output, which brought them to the attention of Sonic Youth and, subsequently, the rest of the Northern Hemisphere underground.

Nothing moves like this band's music: rolling and roiling, inexorable yet indifferent, an unstoppable object impelled by unreasonable forces. Think of the creeping lava that created the Dead C's country thousands of years ago, horrific in its time but resulting today in beautifully fractured terrain, like the islands in Otago Harbor, pictured on Secret Earth's cover. Don't let any TV biker-hippies fool you—this is real freedom rock, free of the codified mannerisms and looks (and chords, structures, and sales figures) that make up late-capitalism-era rock music.

As any Iraqi will tell you, though, freedom ain't always pretty. Bruce Russell's guitar never met a note it didn't—well, it's possible that roaring, keening guitar has never met a "proper" note at all. Michael Morley's mostly indecipherable vocals drift between moaning and wailing. Drummer Robbie Yeats is closest to convention, his spare but crashing work marking the disorienting darkness of Secret Earth's four long songs. The songs stubbornly refuse to develop; their rewards lie not in where they go, but rather in the way they just go. "Plains," which simply smokes for nine minutes, most immediately resembles rock, but it might take a dozen listens for the riffs of "Stations," the album's longest piece, to begin to define themselves as some other-dimensional blues. (Do people stick with an album that long anymore?) Two-thirds of the way through the track, a line that I want to believe goes, "It is such that I'm unsuuure . . ." drips out of Morley's mouth, offering as much justification as there could be for the Dead C.

Secret Earth streets on October 14th. Upcoming US live dates are as follows:
10/12 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s (w/ Blues Control, Pink Reason)
10/13 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
10/15 Seattle, WA @ Nectar Lounge w/ Six Organs Of Admittance
10/16 San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall (w/ Six Organs Of Admittance)
10/19 Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle

Dead C Tour The U.S. - Pitchfork Hears It First.

Legendary kiwi noise rockers, The Dead C, return to the states for a limited run. Details below were taken from a Pitchfork news article that was posted earlier this week.

The Dead C Reveal Rare U.S. Tour, New Album, Reissues...and tour-only 12"!

Fun fact about the Dead Sea: it has a lot of salt and stuff.

Fun fact about the Dead C: the Earth has circled the Sun some five times since the long-running experimental New Zealand combo last toured the U.S., and 13 times since their most recent visit to the East Coast.

That all changes this October, as the Dead C have announced a brief Stateside visit, kicking off in Philly on the 12th and wrapping just a few days later in the Chi. All kinds of noiseniks and other weirdos are coming out of the woodwork to support the Dead C on this trek, including Thurston Moore's Northampton Wools project, Wolf Eyes, Six Organs of Admittance, and Sightings.

So what's the occasion for this rare overseas voyage? Why, a new Dead C record, naturally. Secret Earth packs in four presumably long tracks and arrives October 14 on CD and vinyl thanks to Ba Da Bing.

But that's not all! Ba Da Bing is also teaming with Jagjaguwar to reissue on vinyl a pair of Dead C classics originally released by New Zealand's legendary Flying Nun label (the Clean, the Chills, the Bats, the Verlaines, etc). Eusa Kills and DR503 are due to hit shelves in mid-fall in double-LP form, and each packs in the extras. The former boasts a pair of cuts from the "Helen Said This" 12", while the latter crams in six jams off the The Sun Stabbed EP.

But wait, there's more! When the Dead C barnstorm the States this fall, they'll have with them a new, limited edition, tour-only 12". Take that, giant pool of brackish water.

Secret Earth:
01 Mansions
02 Stations
03 Plains
04 Waves

DR503 (vinyl reissue):
01 Max Harris
02 Speed Kills
03 The Wheel
04 Three Years
05 Mutterline
06 Country
07 I Love This
08 Polio
09 Angel *
10 Crazy I Know *
11 Fire *
12 Bad Politics *
13 Sun Stabbed *
14 Three Years *

Eusa Kills (vinyl reissue):
01 Scary Nest
02 Call Back Your Dogs
03 Alien to Be
04 Phantom Power
05 Now I Fall
06 I Was Here
07 Children
08 Bumtoe
09 Glasshole Pit
10 Maggot
11 Envelopment
12 Helen Said This *
13 Bury (Refutaio Omnium Haeresium) *

* bonus track

C-span:
10-12 Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's #
10-13 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom ^
10-16 San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall %
10-19 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle $

# with Blues Control, Pink Reason
^ with Northampton Wools, Sightings
% with Six Organs of Admittance
$ with Wolf Eyes

Mike McGonigal's Rave Review of Eat Skull On Pitchfork.

Eat Skull:
Sick to Death
[Siltbreeze; 2008]
Rating: 8.3
Original review

On their first album Sick to Death, the Portland, Ore., band Eat Skull mashes together almost everything that's great about trashy art-punk, weirdo fuzz-garage, skuzzy punk-pop, Kiwi garage-rock and off-kilter bedroom-strum. If you adore the weird songs on the Not So Quiet on the Western Front album as well as the Urinals, Raincoats, Gordons, Swell Maps, Homosexuals, Tronics, Desperate Bicycles, Television Personalities, Axemen, Guided by Voices, Chain Gang, those Messthetics comps, and very early Pavement, then meet your new favorite band. You should know, though, that this record sounds like it was mastered by a deaf person. It's all super-distorted and in the red; even the "folksy" numbers are louder than fuck. But once your ears adjust, you realize that it's all killer, no filler.

Lots of acts are mining similar territory these days. To name the most obvious adherents, Sic Alps, Times New Viking, Psychedelic Horseshit, No Age, and Tyvek have each hit upon their own twisted formula for reinventing noisy art-pop. For some reason, all these groups have decided that the best way to record is if all your songs sound like they were taped on a thrift-store answering machine using its built-in condenser mic, in a tiled bathroom, when you're really high. Was there some sort of convention held where it was decided this is how records are supposed to sound now? Does Tom Lax of Siltbreeze have nude photos he'll release of all these band people if they ever set foot inside a proper studio? And who came up with the "shitcore"/ "shitgaze" term for this stuff? That's the silliest thing I've ever heard. I personally wouldn't mind being able to hear more of what's going on in some of these songs-- ironically, you can catch the distinct parts of the music way better when you go see these bands live.

Arguing against this approach is useless, and if I do it any more I'll turn into Andy Rooney. You might as well walk up to your favorite Scandinavian death metal act and asking them to please write paeans to puppy dogs. Some things are just genre conventions, and you deal: in this corner you get songs about burning churches, and in the other you have more distortion and hiss than Slay Tracks. You'll notice I have not yet used the phrase "lo-fi" in this review. That's because I greatly dislike that term. In its 1980s/90s heyday, "lo-fi" referred to such a wide variety of acts-- Daniel Johnston, Dead C, Sebadoh, Supreme Dicks, Grifters-- that it was functionally useless right from the start. At most, "lo-fi" defines an alleged method of capturing sound, similar to the way that "indie rock" refers to a supposed distribution method and nothing else (aside from "rock"). I am reminded of Jean Dubuffet's quote, that "there is no art of the insane any more than there is an art of dyspeptics, or an art of people with knee complaints." Um, but I digress.

Unlike the current army of Anglophiles rocking the basements across the land, this quartet is as in love with American punk as they are the Commonwealth stuff. They shamble into a muffled memory of U.S. hardcore on songs like the Nervous Gender-ific "Beach Brains" or the wonderfully incomprehensible "Stress Crazy". But there's a surprising amount of variation between sounds and songs on Sick to Death; at times it seems like a various artists comp rather than one band. Here they are channeling GBV and the TVPs on the acoustic lament "New Confinement", while "Puker Corpse" is what the Gun Club would have sounded like if they only made soundtracks to haunted houses. The organ-driven shoutalong "Punk Trips" is a glorious pop song that pits multiple melodic hooks against one another, each of them competing for your heart. I dare you to not get it stuck in your head for days.

- Mike McGonigal, July 14, 2008

Upcoming Eat Skull live dates:
07/15 Davis, CA @ Delta of Venus
07/18 Portland, OR @ Slabtwon
07/27 Portland, OR @ Rottue (PDX Pop Now Festival)

Naked On The Vague 7.3 Pitchfork Review.

Naked on the Vague
The Blood Pressure Sessions
[Siltbreeze; 2008]
Rating: 7.3

You could argue that Sydney, Australia's Naked on the Vague are a bit of a 1980s-retro band, but only if you're thinking about the dark side of the decade-- no wave instead of new wave. Their first full length, The Blood Pressure Sessions, is mired in Reagan-era dread. Released last year on the Australian label Dual Plover and now given a U.S. vinyl treatment by Siltbreeze, the record drips with hollow contempt and dull scorn. It's the Southern Hemisphere's dark photo-negative answer to Times New Viking's Paisley Reich.

Comprised of keyboardist Lucy Cliché, bassist Matthew P. Hopkins, and a drum machine, Naked on the Vague churn out stripped-down and monotonous post-punk. The rhythms are primitive; the most animated songs rely on little more than the incessant thud of a bass drum. Likewise, any pretense of harmony is chucked out the window. As a result, it's easy draw a straight line from a Naked on the Vague song like "All Aboard"-- with it's slanted riff and stone-age drum loop-- to the esoteric scuzz of the past. But although Naked on the Vague wear some influences on their sleeves-- whether that's downtown noise, Flying Nun Records, or Huggy Bear LPs-- The Blood Pressure Sessions is more than just skilled homage. The band's take on post-punk is familiar but also tight and contemporary.

Naked on the Vague aren't abrasive in the Dead C sense, out to fully lobotomize their audience with skree and treble. In fact, when compared to the production value of other records released on Siltbreeze-- a label whose reputation was built on shrill hiss and white noise-- The Blood Pressure Sessions is startlingly clear and intensely silent. "All Aboard" is sheared down to the most meager of ingredients-- one circular drumbeat, a bass riff, and a and a malnourished keyboard melody. There's nothing else, not even amp hiss. But all of the negative space enhances the pervading sense of desolation. None of the instruments resonate and each lyric hangs in the air for only a moment before vanishing back into the void, as if the band are performing in a vacuum chamber.

Naked on the Vague also have a penchant for dubby textures that have more in common with the current Fuck It Tapes school of psychedelic music than to no wave. "Brown Sun/Sydney Lane Road" is six-minutes of clanking abstract percussion and flat vocal drones. There are accordion trills and lonesome trumpet farts thrown into the mix, but the sounds are hardly lush. Rather, they're restrained, like something from a claustrophobic horror-movie soundtrack. These moments alone don't divide them from the weirdos of yesteryear. Where no wave had a marked self-important streak, Naked on the Vague are self-aware. Although dark, their lyrics seem to drift around at the edge of black comedy. "Horse, he's sick/ Horse so sick," sings Lucy Cliché during the appropriately titled "The Horse, He's Sick". We're talking some distance from Michael Gira yelling, "All I can do is kill" in straight-faced earnest.

It's stupid to dismiss or embrace Naked on the Vague as merely the product of their influences. The Blood Pressure Sessions is an enhancement of an idea started a long time ago. During the 80s, bands responded to poverty, vacuous culture, and bad government with music that was appropriately nihilistic. It's not surprising that Naked on the Vague have been able to tap into that mindset 20 years later; the more things change, the more they stay the same.

-Aaron Leitko, April 17, 2008

The Dead C Review In Spin

It's definitely a new area, for the Dead C have found their way into Spin. An unlikely destination but no one is complaining. Below is a review posted on Spin.com.

The Dead C
Future Artists
(Ba Da Bing!)
Online Review

August 6, 2007
Eternally kranky Kiwi punks prefer noise over pop.

The Dead C

From the late '80s into the 90s, this clamorous, lo-fi New Zealand trio flailed agains the country's thriving indie-pop scene (centered on the Flying Nun label), occasionally creating an outright squalid masterpiece like 1995's White House. They've not budged an iota since, as the cheekily titled Future Artists attests. An overdriven guitar resolutely obliterates the verses of "The Magicians," leaving room aplenty for long, unyielding excursions like "The AMM of Punk Rock" and the apt "Eternity." Throughout the Dead C's din of slow and stubborn drum-thud coupled with wheezing chord organs is as cantankerous as Grandpa himself. ANDY BETA

Hurrah, The Fourth Revolver USA Podcast Is Ready For Your Listening!

On the fourth installment of the Revolver USA Podcast you can hear up and coming tracks from such righteous artist as; A Hawk And A Hacksaw and the Hun Hangar ensemble, Black Devil Disco, Blues Control, Chris De Luca vs. Phon.o, Daedelus, Dead C, Mansbestfriend, Michio Kurihara, Neurosis, and Spider Bags.

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Simply go to http://web.mac.com/revolverusa

And click on the Subscribe Button (You can also hear/view them from that page as well.)

Or cut and paste the following RSS feed into iTunes' Subscribe To Podcast box (or via another podcast aggregator) :

http://rss.mac.com/revolverusa/iWeb/Revolver%20USA/revolver%20usa%20podcasts/rss.xml

Our podcasts will appear on a weekly (or whenever we can get our act together) basis featuring the latest distributed by Revolver USA. They are enhanced podcats featuring album artwork and links to various sites.

New Dead C Reviewed By Dusted.

DustedMagazine.com contemplates the future of the Dead C's Future Artists album scheduled to be released later on this month.

Artist: The Dead C
Album: Future Artists
Label: Ba Da Bing!
Review date: May. 3, 2007
Online Review

It's been four long years since New Zealand's merchants of grimy noise-rock released The Damned. In that time we've seen bands like Wolf Eyes and Sightings (to name just a couple) rise to, if not fame, certainly some reasonable recognition for plying similar waters. The title of this album's first track may contain some indication that The Dead C know their place: "The AMM of Punk Rock," while self-referentially winking, isn't far off. The Dead C have, for the past 20 years, been toiling on the sidelines showing how to improv your way through territory that isn't quite rock, isn't quite punk, isn't quite noise, isn't quite anything but what it is. Whether it's something you will enjoy is quite another question, of course, and it's certainly unclear how The Dead C feel about your answer.

That first track is 13 minutes of desultory drum hits, mildly buzzing static and squeaky scrapes. That buzzing static may be the one constant throughout the album's five songs, all of which flaunt a distinct layer of audio crud. For 10 minutes, "The AMM of Punk Rock" remains a formless, meandering sound field, with occasional irritating high-pitched bleeps, before it coheres into a vague chug, powered by feedbackish noises. It's followed by "The Magicians," unique here both for its brevity (just under four minutes) and its song-like form, complete with laid-back vocals (it's the only one here that's got 'em). Despite the singing and strumming guitar, the drums remain simple thumps hidden behind a curtain of clanging guitar scree, and the whole contraption rattles along like an old truck, threatening at any moment to fall to pieces.

That feeling of impending collapse lingers over the whole album. The glitchiness of "Macoute" often resembles a motor in need of a tuneup. Its stereo field of whooshes and buzzes is interrupted by stop-start noises, odd breaks in the flow of time. "Eternity" is thick with atmosphere, a dark, dank guitar strum with ringing drums that over time becomes filled with jagged guitar textures until a crude, driving riff begins to poke through the rough, Skullflower'd noise. "Garage" closes things with angular, awkward guitar plucks and strums over muttering static and occasional interjections of electronic bleep. It eventually breaks down into vaporous waves of hiss and crunch, with sporadic guitar strums, until it comes to an end with a lethargically wavering buzz which abruptly cuts off.

Future Artists raises many questions, from its title - are they themselves the artists of the future, or are they waiting for some future in which to become artists? - to its intent. For every moment of intrigue, there are moments of aggravation; for each recognizable string pluck, there are abstract fields of sound to be plumbed. On first listen, the seemingly purposeful and self-conscious lack of focus was more annoying than interesting, but subsequent airings began to reveal rewarding details. It's an album that doesn't allow for early conclusions. Only time will tell whether Future Artists receives further listens or is relegated to the status of not-fully-baked. The jury is still out.
By Mason Jones

Dead C Compilation Revered By Tiny Mix Tapes

Tiny Mix Tapes delves deep into the Dead C's career-spanning Vain, Erudite and Stupid compilation. And for those of you who can't get enough of uncompromising improv rock, Future Artists, the band's first new album since 2003 will be released on Ba Da Bing at the end of May.
Full online review

The Dead C.
Vain, Erudite and Stupid: Selected Works 1987-2005
[Ba-Da-Bing; 2006]

Styles: post-punk, free-jazz, noisy guitar improv, industrial
Others: Throbbing Gristle, This Heat, The Fall, early Sonic Youth
If I had but one word to describe The Dead C., it would be
"underappreciated." I thought the band's mix of noisy abstractions,
post-punk, and pure sound art on a 4-track would make them a college
favorite overseas, akin to Sonic Youth in the mid-'80s. Such is not
the case. When I interviewed Bruce Russell in February, he said the
New Zealand band's fan base is extremely small in their homeland. The
band scored an opening slot for Sonic Youth in 1992, and many popular
local acts were dismayed. In the liner notes to Vain, Erudite and
Stupid, Nick Cain, a fellow New Zealander, expresses his initial
discouragement with the band's perceived ineptitude. He chalks it up
to the average New Zealander's unfamiliarity with the history behind
the band's sound aesthetic. He writes, "It shouldn't be forgotten that
New Zealand is a very young country, and one with about zero history
of freeform — or 'experimental' or avant-garde — music whatsoever."

Though the band's fan base lies mainly in Great Britain and the United
States, coverage of the band by the media in these countries has been
slim. Until Mike Crumsho's phenomenal Dusted Magazine article on the
band, virtually nothing of substance has been written about the band
in our little digital music community. The Wire is the only print
magazine with the stones to cover the band avidly, and they hardly
touched upon what the classic sub-underground label Siltbreeze meant
to the band's career. So, when Bruce Russell told me in an interview
last year that Ba-Da-Bing was issuing a two-disc anthology to
celebrate the band's 20th anniversary, I thought The Dead C. were
finally getting their due. After all, this is the perfect year to
release such an endeavor. Experimental music is rapidly gaining an
acceptance among the indie rock set, and there seems to be a rapid
production of new, strange, great, challenging underground music.

Much to my dismay, when I received Vain, Erudite and Stupid, the
career-spanning Dead C. compilation, it came adorned with a huge
sticker that touted the group as a "new favorite band" for those who
like "Lightning Bolt, Sunn 0))), Wolf Eyes and Growing." Not only do
these bands sound nothing like The Dead C., but the oldest band in the
group has existed for only half as long. The Dead C.'s sound is
steeped more in the smart, philosophically-driven sounds of post-punk
and free jazz than modern, rock-based experimentalism. The band's most
engaging output relies on gritty, live-in-the-studio (or on 4 track)
recording techniques. They sometimes layer their recordings by
employing a trick they learned from The Fall, improvising the song
atop the original recording without listening to the recording. The
modern "out" music enthusiast may be thrown by the close listening
required to absorb the band's textural brilliance.

But, if I judge the album by its cover sticker, I become a part of the
very same problem that limited The Dead C.'s audience for so many
years. If the sticker succeeds in selling more records, the band will,
ultimately, gain more listeners. When placed in the player, Vain,
Erudite and Stupid's genius speaks for itself. The hazed, almost folky
sonic attack of "Max Harris" begins the double disc splendor with a
whirlwind of ambience and freeform fury à la Bad Mood Rising. From
there, the anthology guides the listener through The Dead C.'s
stunning career.

Disc one follows the band from 1988's DR503 LP to 1994's odds and ends
collection World Peace, Hope, et al. This disc showcases the band's
evolution from lo-fi revisionists of '70s post-punk to free-jazzers
guised as a post-punk outfit. Most of the songs have lyrics and follow
some sort of structure, albeit not verse-chorus-verse. Almost all the
songs close out with open-ended jams seeping from the basic structure
of the tune and sifting through vast deserts of avant-garde stylings,
from ambience to drone to harsh noise. The band more closely surveys
these textures on disc two, which chronicles the period from 1994's
The Operation of the Sonne to 2003's The Damned. In this period, the
band traveled further away from conventional song structure, until the
majority of their tunes could be classified as compositions.

There will surely be some dispute over the anthology's track choices,
as the band had to summarize their 20 years of work with two 70-minute
discs. The tracks selected from the band's landmark double album Harsh
70s Reality, "Constellation" and "T is Never Over Pt. I & II," were
lumped off the CD version due to time constraints, and are not
necessarily the best representatives of the album's sheer glory. The
tracklist also features no real rarities or hard-to-find tunes. The
past six years of the band's career, which yielded a double album, two
LPs, and a split 12" with Konono No. 1, are represented by six songs.
Thus, those listeners getting their first dose of the mighty Dead C.
from Vain, Erudite and Stupid learn little about what terrain the band
is shredding these days. The three post-millennial albums by The Dead
C. are, by strides, brilliant and intriguing, but I'd side with
Siltbreeze Records head honcho Tom Lax's liners and label the band's
years on the Siltbreeze imprint as their best.

Of course, their Flying Nun and Xpressway output is equally
impressive. The majority of this material finds the band exploring
ways to showcase their sonic diversity within the constraints of
actual song structure. During this period, the band's indebtedness to
post-punk heathens like Throbbing Gristle and This Heat is apparent,
but the band's voice, albeit embryonic, dampens any critical "clone"
cry.

"3 Years" is exemplary of this period, with its forceful, disjointed
dueling guitars. Mike Morely investigates the exuberance found in
applying Mark E. Smith's "repetition, repetition, repetition"
aesthetic to his rhythm guitar line, alternately slowing down the
tempo and revving it up and stressing certain chords in the
progression. Bruce Russell adds interstellar atmosphere with
excursions into drone, feedback, and Godz-style skronk, while Morley's
singing, which is close to an outback version of Lou Reed's sing-talk,
is gentle and rhythmic, providing the melody where the guitar lines
leave gaps. Robbie Yeats' militaristic drumming builds the dark mood,
melting it all down into an exciting bad acid feedback fuzz fight that
hints at what was to come in the band's career.

"Helen Said This," the band's first Siltbreeze release, is a
masterwork. It marks the moment when the band used their influences as
a launching pad, rather than an anchor. Included on the anthology in
its entire 11-minute splendor, the song is a jagged shard of lo-fi
post-punk. The song begins with a sort of art-punk guitar take on the
Wild West gunner showdown anthems of Ennio Morricone before whittling
down to give way to the lackadaisical, almost tandem dual vocal
delivery. Throughout the song, the disjointed vocal lines and stern
rhythm guitar allow the band to explore far out regions in each bridge
while remaining grounded in the basic song structure. With each
repeated verse, the band gains mountainous intensity until they
combust with fuzz guitar mayhem. As the explosion simmers down, the
guitar lines slow down and the band delves into industrial textures,
until the song wades in an ambient cooling pool. A beautiful
call-and-response results with slowly blossoming chords and chiming,
machine gun strums being accentuated by guitars played like percussion
instruments.

Many of The Dead C.'s songs follow a similar formula. "Power" uses the
whistles, moans, and hums of feedback derived from a fervently
strummed guitar in place of the customary rock guitar solo.
"Constellation" virtually recycles the "Mighty" riff but lets each
chord bleed in droning distortion. By this time, coming up with a new
riff seems less important to the band than examining the possibilities
of the riff itself and seeing how much they can skew a song structure.
After five minutes of Morely's singing and the purring riff, a
different recording is spliced into the song. Psychotic yelling
replaces Morely's usual delivery. The distortion that once provided a
tourniquet, allowing the guitar fuzz to linger, gives way, and the
resonating notes end with sharp feedback shanks.

"T is Never Over Pt. I and II" is a four-minute supernova of
inter-spliced ideas. Beginning with a 30-second foray into isolating
minimal industrial soundscapes, the song is an exploration of the
formlessness of ideas coming to fruition. While a guitarist tries to
conceive a riff in the background, sharp dissonant guitar infusions
and what sounds like a Ham radio transmission overlaps the jam. Pot
and pan percussion and wavering, formless guitar sound chunks blot out
the background session, and the song becomes a metaphor for The Dead
C.'s future recordings. The idea trumps the song, and in the end, the
shapeless sound is more interesting and absorbing than it would be if
it were fully realized.

Eventually, The Dead C. threw any sort of song structure out of the
window of a moving car and recorded the results. "The Marriage of
Reason and Squalor," from 1994's high-water mark three-piece drone
suite The Operation of the Sonne, is a 14-minute void wherein sci-fi
B-movie synth effects, amplifiers humming white noise, and jagged
guitar lines heighten a spoken philosophical treatise. Words have now
been pushed to the background in favor of droning electronic
interactions. When the words fade out, one is able to stare into a
meditative infinitude with the resulting sound clash.

Save for the thrash 'n' clang noise rock of The White House's
"Bitcher," much of disc two operates on a similar plane, sacrificing
lyrics and melody for sound design. "Repent IV," off 1997's
sound-collage Repent, sounds like a spaceship flying over a no-wave
band practice. "Head," from 1997's rock-based Tusk, jitters with an
overlay of scary post-psychedelic guitar noise, while Yeats keeps a
steady drum beat and Morley conjures a dark, angular boogie.

The centerpiece on disc two is "Tuba is Funny (Slight Return)" from
2000's double disc The Dead C.. Many other selections from the double
disc are steeped in industrical, electronic soundmaking rather than
The Dead C.'s usual guitar excursions. On "Tuba..." the band chooses
to create a groove akin to something off Miles Davis' On the Corner.
The chords of the repetitious bass/brass line are forceful and sly,
but they give the band enough leeway to delve into a pit-of-hell
guitar assault underneath the groove. As a bonus, Robbie Yeats' tribal
percussion lends an even more occult feel to the song. When the tape
finally shorts out and the song is sucked into infinity, the magic of
The Dead C. is apparent. Here is a band that can do virtually anything
and draw little or no attention to themselves. They create layers of
sound but record it on primitive equipment using primitive techniques,
effectively hiding their glory from inattentive listeners. Vain,
Erudite and Stupid suggests that perhaps the band is not overlooked
and underappreciated, just hidden in plain sight.

by S. Kobak