SCHULTZ: SWEEP-PICKING THE FLUGELHORNS (A Very Partial Discography)

It's been months now, Schultz. MONTHS.
I can't stop listening to your rap album. I can't stop listening to the seeemingly endless stream of "fake" bands you created in the early half of this decade. You are a fucked up dude. In the BEST possible sense of the word.
For any of you as of yet unacquainted with Mr. Steven Schultz, I offer a brief primer on this mysterious recluse's history and whereabouts:
Schultz writes the excellent expatriate manifesto TOKYO DAMAGE REPORT from the comfort of his home in that city, expounding at length on the strange mannerisms, customs, and music of Japan; sometimes translating previously-untranslated novels in their entirety, sometimes sharing pictures, sometimes stories. It is an indispensable resource for not only the western Japanophile but for students of human nature in general, from the highest highbrow intellectual to the lowest lowbrow humorist.
Schultz, once upon a time, resided in the Bay Area of California, and collaborated with many indigenous musicians. We share mutual friends but have never met face to face. He even wrote for IllCon for a brief, glorious moment.

Left: Mr. Schultz also freelances as a terrorist from time to time.

But first and foremost, this guy is an insane fucking musician. Within the last few months, he has been releasing a steady stream of old recordings (via MediaFire) on Tokyo Damage Report, from solo albums to the aforementioned "fake" bands to "real" bands he was in to extended inside jokes that turned into full-length albums (check out "The Criminally Insane Project". It's really, really, really weird shit, and, in a way, seems like the perfect soundtrack for reading Illogical Contraption (but only on our very best days). Schultz's music is schizophrenic, well thought-out, offensive, funny, eclectic, and often, pretty stupid. Like I said, I'm hooked.
It's been MONTHS.

Below, I've posted my "Top 5" Schultz albums. There are many, many more, which can be located easily by clicking on the "my mp3's" tag over at Tokyo Damage Report. I highly recommend going over there and having a look around if you like what you hear, as Schultz always includes extensive liner notes, full lyrics, and conceptual backstory for everything he posts--something I am absolutely unqualified to do. Schultz is a madman, and a 100% "acquired taste". But if I can teach just one person about the terrifying wonders of his music--just ONE--then I have done my job. Please enjoy responsibly.


1) STEVEN SCHULTZ - I FORGOT TO GET A RAP NAME (2000)

As good a departure point as any. Tripped-out, off-beat, off-time rap songs about stalking Maury Povich, being a gay pirate, being a whale, being an Eskimo, rap-metal being lame, being the singer for Christian Death, and "other people's hypothalamai". A dark voyage into the horrifying depths of Schultz's psyche. Amazing, confusing, addictive, and hilarious. The sound effects in "Wackness Quotient: Intro" alone make this CD worth the cover price.

dl: FUCK A HARPOON
originally posted by Schultz HERE


2) PUNY HUMANS - NO ONE WILL EVER UNDERSTAND OUR GENIOUS (2002)

Bungle-esque mindfuck collaboration between Schultz and Impaled guitarist/all-around musical genius (genious?) Jason Kocol. The whole album is basically a complex series of obsessively-orchestrated funk/jazz/metal/avant-garde pieces structured around a series of inside jokes and samples from The Big Lebowski, and repeat listens will only serve to confuse you further. Guaranteed to make your head hurt.
Let's not forget about the showtunes ("What's Really Happening To Me") or the music-nerd ProTools psychobabble during the coda of "Sweep-Picking The Flugelhorns" either. Fuck.

dl: DEICIDE, IN THEIR MOM'S BASEMENT
originally posted by Schultz HERE

3) THE AMINO ASSHOLES - COLLECTED WORKS (2002)

Ever wonder what it would sound like if Morbid Angel covered Van Halen? How about Corrupted playing the theme song for Meow Mix brand cat food? Sinatra doing Black Flag? No?
Well, you suck. Because Schultz not only wonders such things, he actualizes them. The Amino Assholes are another of his short-lived "fake" bands, the concept behind which being "impersonations of bands and/or artists covering other bands and/or artists". Is your mind completely blown yet? It should be.

dl: MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW/
MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW/
MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW
originally posted by Schultz HERE


4) BUSUCHAN - DEFRAG MY HEART (2000)

I guess this is as close to a "rock" album as Steven Schultz will ever create, although it occasionally lapses into free-form Zorn worship from time to time as well. Schultz claims that this is his version of "romantic" music, which, if you think about it, is quite obvious: there are at least three songs about ASS ("Kingdom of Ass", "Looking All Deformed Like Cindy Crawford", and "More White Ass For Asian Guys") and at least two written on the subject of TESTICLES ("Take My Balls" and "Scrotum Symphony"). If Frank Zappa had sex with The Illuminatus! Trilogy, their love-child would look something like Defrag My Heart. Except even Zappa would have a hard time writing a piece of music as fucked up as "Terpsecholorean Splendor of Careening Trilobites".

dl: TAKE MY BALLS
originally posted by Schultz HERE


5) BOUNINJOUTAI (防人情隊) - TOKYO AIZO (逃狂愛憎) (2004)

Another "fake" band, this one an ESL/Japanese hardcore group bent on annihilating every living (and non-living) thing in the Land of The Rising Sun. I guess Schultz was pretty angry at Japan in general when he wrote this stuff, and the vitriol shines through. But, like everything he does, it remains pretty fucking hilarious at the same time. The process of creating Tokyo Aizo involved writing lyrics for 33 songs in Japanese, which he then filtered through a translation program back into English and published on TDR. The results are super awesome amazing Engrish fun! Check 'em out via the link below the album cover.

dl: UTTER DESPAIR AND SOUL DIARRHEA
originally posted by Schultz HERE

I apologize for the unabashed hero-worship, but Schultz deserves it. His music is like a big stinky onion--the more layers you peel away, the more pungent it gets. Only download this stuff if you have lots of free time to devote to it. You'll need it to decipher the heaping portions of hidden messages, shredding metal riffage, inside jokes, psychedelic lyrics, and sheer, unadulterated GENIOUS contained herein.


... All of which is, of course, just my way of asking Schultz to move back to the good ol' US of A and play lead guitar in my new band. PLEASE?

APOLLO ENDS by Sculptured

Schultz from Tokyo Damage - back again, with another WORTH IT FOR WEIRDNESS metal album.

Thanks to Cobras for big-upping my site.

Apollo Ends is one of the most amazing albums because it’s so fucking subtle.

Normally when dudes go all “avant-metal” in your pants, they try to bowl you over with super technical or super crazy stuff (like UNEXPECT or KAYO DOT or MR BUNGLE or whoever).

But “Apollo Ends” is fucked up in such a subtle way that you wouldn’t even know you had your mind blown, unless you got down with some sheet music and headphones. What I mean is, dude is doing the same totally middle-of-the-road melodic death metal .. . but playing mostly wrong notes. The type of melodic mistakes you’d normally expect from a musical beginner that didn’t know music theory. Except this guy is doing it on purpose, and it makes you kind of sea-sick after a while.

Seriously, after I heard APOLLO ENDS, I checked out his previous album SPEAR OF THE LILY IS AUREOLED and LILY was totally normal melodic stuff. Like dude clearly knows how to count his myxolydian modes and whatnot. IT MAKES NO SENSE.

Let me try to explain why this is so special: most people who do dissonance either go all “hi-art” style (Stravinsky, Schoenberg) or go all “evil” style (metal bands who play mediocre riffs with all diminished chords).

But SCULPTURED invented a whole new way to do dissonance: the melodies sound like someone was absent-midnedly humming them into a computer, while doing something else (minesweeper, porn, writing music reviews for obscure sites, etc.). . . and then had the melodies quantized by a really stupid program. So subtle , and so well-produced, it’s hard to believe it a) exists and b) is that fucked-up.

Like they they’d finished recording their little slick melo-death album and it was all super perfect but maybe the engineer didn’t get to blow the bass player as was promised, so late at night after everyone went home, the engineer maliciously pro-tooled the fuck out of all the guitar parts, pitch-shifting every third note a half-step off, while leaving everything else very glossy and super perfect. Except that scenario doesn’t explain the trombones.

Lots of trombones.

JOYLESS - UNLIMITED HATE

This is the first post in a series I'm going to call WORTH IT FOR WEIRDNESS: metal albums (all metal!!!) which are fucked in some way: either the production, the musical vision, the riffs, or whatever. Not something you'd listen to more than once, but enough to a) make you laugh or b) blow your mind. A mason-jar sideshow of metal freakishness. You can learn from their examples, although whether you're learning to imitate something or avoid it is basically up to you . . . and the voices.

This time: JOYLESS.

First thing: best cover ever.

Other First thing: the mix is basically bass and cymbals, with the occasional snare. Perhaps there is some guitars and drums back in the corner.

Second thing: the vocalist is a genius! Imagine William Shatner’s spoken-word poetry if Shatner had thrash training from Udo Dirkschneider. Plus add El Duce’s remarkable technique for putting emphasis on all the wrong syllables in a sentence.

Third : the arrangements! song one (INHERENT EMPTINESS) starts with an “evil laugh.” Then into blastbeats, then about 3 minutes of mid-‘80s mosh-part chugga-chugga riffing. Then more blastbeats, into . . . a blues jam? And then? They repeat the entire song two more times ? it’s over 13 minutes long.

Song two (YOUR CRYSTAL FRAGMENTS) is equally amazing: the guitars (now barely audiable because of 4 layers of overdubbing) play a mellow harmony like Metallica’s ORION. The bass player says, “Fuck you clowns, I’m going to play something totally dissonant and out of key.” And the drummer, not to be outdone, says, “Screw the lot of you, I’m going to play a funky little shuffle starting at 1:20 , because it’s 1996 and we just got the UK’s “Manchester Sound” here in Norway. Kids love the Manchester Sound!”

Also: there is a song called DIMENSIONS OF THE BLACKEST DARK.

I assume these dimensions are located inside the toilet pipes leading to the bowels of the enchanted forest. The toilet Immortal used during breaks on shooting the "Call of the Wintermoon" video. Fucking forlorn, man.

download

お～すっ！　何打コリャ！
This is Schultz from Tokyo Damage Report back again with something a bit more metal.

This LP always would be in the bins at the local record store in high school. I never messed with it on account of there was a naked lady, which a) gross, and b) anyone who needed sex to sell their music that bad probably was trying to distract the purchaser from the lame music. However, after Black Flag put out their 3d disappointing album in a row, it began to dawn on me that there would never be another "damaged" LP. Which made me want to get my Flag fix in other ways - so, like some crack-head who picks bits of drywall off the floor and tries to smoke it, I picked up Feast becuase it was on SST and had Chuck Dukowski in it. But I made sure to grab by the edges so I wouldn't touch the naked lady.

Anyway I put it on the turntable with scant hopes, and then HAD MY MIND FUCKING BLOWN.

This was like some '70s, Detroit, freak-out acid rock, mixed with Black Sabbath. Recently there's been a bunch of buzz about "proto-metal" and every single time I listen to some band that's been called proto-metal, it turns out that the band is proto-suck. (makes sense, since any band who is described as "post-" anything also sucks). WURM is the only proto-metal band anyone should listen to. Not only are the riffs catchy as hell, but the guitars are super dirty sounding. And the vocals.

Check that shit out.

To me, the mark of a great vocalist is not lyrics. Rock musicians generally are not that smart, and if you add musical conformity to the general dumbness and pretention, I mean. Can't tell you how many damn times I wished there was some button or Photoshop filter or whatever where you could press it and the lyrics would change into Italian / Russian / Spanish / any language I could not comprehend. So lyrics don't make a rad singer. Nor do tight pants. What does it? BEING ABLE TO SING IN A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT VOICES, AND SWITCH BETWEEN 'EM STRATEGICALLY. All the greats did this: H.R., Iggy Pop, and Atilla from Mayhem. Oh, and JAMES FUCKING BROWN.

And the Wurm singer - simon smallwood? Is that his name? This dude has that talent. He does what the BIG FOUR can do. Why is he not fully enshrined?!?!?

He can go from a crazy "dude-from-aerosmith-getting-shanked" scream to a demented Placido Domingo opera bellow, to a bluesy vocal. . . but it all sounds just unhinged.

Anyway, peep this.

And let me know if you know any other singers that got hella stylezzz like Mrs. Brown, Pop, HR, Attila, and Smallwood. おねがいします。

WURM

steel pole bath tub

Hey everybody, this is Schultzzz from Tokyo Damage Report. I'm on here now. Thanks Cobras.

Everybody’s got their one band that they think, “These guys should have been huge! They had it all, but they were SHOT DOWN AND IGNORED BY THE SAME CONFORMIST SHEEP THAT EMBRACED THAT SAME STYLE WHEN IT BECAME TRENDY 10 YEARS LATER, WAAAHHHHHH.”

And you know which band is MY “Waaaahhh” band?
STEEL POLE BATH TUB!!!!
Who?
Exaaactly.

Just from the name you might think they were some kind of joke psychedelic band like butthole surfers or caroliner rainbow or tragic mulatto.

And that would have been cool: all those bands were the shit. Sometimes literally.

But ? though it would have been easy for Steel Pole Bath Tub to join that scene ? they got down in their own way. They took the trouble to write actual songs, and although their shit was very chaotic and layered, it seemed (to me anyway) that every little bit was thought out and controlled with the control-freak finesse of Zappa. They were also one of those bands like CRIME or CELTIC FROST that did all their own graphics, so it wasn’t just music: when you bought their stuff it was like you were entering a whole other world.

Very few bands hit on all levels: blazing technical parts, super passionate, sweat-soaked live performances, creativity, hella dynamics between slow/fast/loud/soft , AND catchiness. I can count these bands: opeth, (wait, no, their live show is not passionate) dillinger (wait, they are the opposite of catchy), nomeansno (wait, they’re Canadian). . . hmmm, I guess that just leaves Bad Brains and Steelpole!

What Steelpole had that Bad Brains didn’t, though, was madd avant-garde technology. It wasn’t enough that the lyrics had elaborate storylines (seems like they went through a phase where they’d try to write a whole noir detective novel per song!), not only did they have layers of feedback (something that is impossible with all today’s protools/pod6/myspace/plug-my-guitar-into-the-computer bands) and crazy fast parts, BUT on top of all THAT, they would plop several layers of noise and sound-effect loops. They had enough gear to start their own noise band. Tape loops from the most obscure sources and thrift-shops in 9 states, home-made noise-boxes, and samples.

The guitarist was amazing: he could blaze out some crazy technical riffs, but he’d get so pissed-off, he’d stop in mid riff and just feed back or play a little improv bit because HE WAS EMOTIONALLY CARRIED AWAY. The drummer looked exactly like the lisping non-sequitur-saying guy from all the Airplane movies, and brought madd jazzy skills to the “tribal drums” thing that was popular at the time. The bassist was totally intense and cute. Dudes would come out looking normal: jeans and t-shirts. Then the feedback would come. Then the odd scraping nosie loops, the whole din of the naked city in your face. Then the voodoo drums would start. . . then guitar bits would come in. Quietly at first. Dudes would take turns singing about lost loves and back-stabbed detectives, runaway secret agents, bleeding hearts and Manson conspiracies. The tension would build, the drums would get louder, sweat would pour. Dudes would stomp on pedals and suddenly pre-recorded voices would echo out the speakers. Then : BOOM- the chorus would explode in a frenzy of catharsis, releasing all the built-up tension. And they did this shit on basically every song.

These guys had crazy dynamics way before pixies, noise loops way before neurosis, were emotional before whoever the fuck does that now, and were gay way before lady gaga. And then they broke up.

Aah, fuck it. What are YOUR top WAAAAHH!!! bands?

And oh yeah:

STEELPOLE ALL UP IN HERE.