Black Dots

Tracks:

Don't Need It
At The Atlantis
Pay To Cum
Supertouch/Shittfit
Regulator
You're A Migraine
Don't Bother Me
Banned In D.C.
Why'd You Have To Go?
The Man Won't Annoy Ya
Redbone In The City
Black Dots
How Low Can A Punk Get?
Just Another Damn Song
Attitude
Send You No Flowers

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Recorded in June, 1979, these 16 tracks comprise the first-ever sessions by the seminal New York hardcore band. The sound quality is excellent, the band trashes mightily, and the style hasn't dated in the least. --Jeff Bateman

Customer Reviews:

It does not make the hair on the back of me neck stand up..........2007-04-11

Unlike most of the (hardcore) recorded output of this band (up to "Rock For Light" anyway). Though it's GREAT to hear them just play sped up 70's american punk. Very much in the vein of the grittier punk acts of the american East Coast of 1979 (you hear NO THUNDERS, but plenty of DEAD BOYS).

love it.......2006-10-22

I don't know how I missed this one when it was first released! I had just figured it was the newer line-up who brought us "Rise". I must not have looked very close.

This album really rocks... but not in the Bad Brains punk way--more like Stooges... call it pre-punk. Some of the arrangements here almost sound like another band covering Bad Brains. Not that different, but it's really odd for me to hear these tracks having listened to their other stuff for so long. It's sort of like if you only heard "Rock for Light" and then years later heard their first release ("Bad Brains"). But in that case, the difference is subtle... here it's a big jump into the roots that I didn't even know existed.

The recording quality is quite good. Not only because you wouldn't expect much from a 4-track early Bad Brains. It's definitely better than "Bad Brains".

I can't stop listening to this--so many great versions: "Supertouch", "Banned in D.C.", "How Low Can a Punk Get?"... and "Don't Bother Me" is cool because it was reworked later. I will say that H.R. is just a tad reserved. Instead of just off the wall wild screams it's closer to "yeah yeah yeah" in-between the main lyrics... where, in later recordings, he's inserting yells from another world. But that's a pretty minor nit-pick. As an aging punk maybe I'm not hard to impress--but this is the best music purchase I've made in a long while. I had to wait a few weeks before writing this review because I'm often suspect when I really dig a CD on the first listen--but this one hasn't worn off at all.

One of the best by one of the best.......2006-09-30

This has got to be one of my favorite of all the records these guys have done... It's all material from their early years, and it has all of the same energy & drive that you would expect from one of the first & most influential punk bands of all time. Don't get me wrong, I love most of the stuff they did in the last few recordings they did as the original members, but all the releases have a different sound; none really better or worse than the others. If you're looking for a more metal/punk sound, I would suggest to listen to 'Quickness' or 'I against I', since this release has a much more raw punk feel to it.

We can do most anything, we've got that supertouch.......2005-12-11

This is the Bad Brains as early as you can find it - 1979, recording a live demo at Don Zientara's (who later became the legendary producer/engineer of Minor Threat, Fugazi, and just about everything important to come from DC) fledgling Inner Ear studios. The band members all set up in different rooms, leaving H.R. having to stand outside to prevent track bleeding. You can hear crickets from Don's yard coming through his microphone between tracks. It doesn't get any more real than this.

Before Rastafarianism, dreadlocks, metal, and even reggae (for the most part), this is the Bad Brains SLAMMING through a full set list of TOP NOTCH hardcore punk of a quality that has scarcely been achieved by ANYONE - in fact, one of the few who DID manage to best it were the Bad Brains themselves on their 1982 self-titled album.

There are some classic Brains tracks on here that you may know already, but they're not the same. They're slightly slower (don't take that as "slow") which is sometimes good and sometimes bad in retrospect. If you're used to "Don't Need It" from the first album being the fastest song in the world, you may be a bit disappointed by its more "free" sounding pace here. However, if you're a guitarist, this may be your only hope for finding out what the riff actually IS. (I know it's been a blessing to me.)

Some songs are much better in their versions here, though. Prime example---"How Low Can A Punk Get." It's "just-right" fast on here, not the overly thrashing version on "Rock for Light," and sounds a thousand times more menacing and convincing than that version ever could hope to. "Don't Bother Me," which was later re-worked on the "Quickness" LP, is contained here in its original, ULTRA-raw version, and will certainly have your eyes bulged in amazement by the end with the heavy realization that you just heard what might be the greatest punk song ever (that no one has ever heard). Also, the way-ahead-of-its-time sludge breakdown on "S***fit" may sound even HEAVIER here than it does on the self-titled!

It's also cool to hear some of the stuff on here that the Brains later dropped - there are some bluesy, Jimi Hendrix-to-the-bone parts that show up for fractured moments of time; the reggae on here sounds more like lovers' rock than dread or dub; and "Redbone In The City" finds HR doing a hilariously unexpected Johnny Rotten impersonation.

If you're a fan of punk rock or the Bad Brains to any level or degree, you cannot go wrong with this demo. Pick it up and get a mind-numbing history lesson from the best in the game.

GREATEST PUNK ALBUM OF ALL TIME.......2005-09-26

I remember picking this album up in 95 when I first got into punk and it was one of the best albums I had ever heard. I still listen to it today and the bad brains remain one of the few punk bands that I can still stand to listen to. The Bad brains burst on to the scene in about the early 80s combining hardcore D.C. punk rock with a unique reggae sound. I personally feel that this there first album and IagainstI are there best works but this album has a certain punk rock quality to it in the recording and in the music and lyrics that I just love. It really is sad that bands dont make music like this anymore back in the 80s it was all about your local scene and going to shows and supporting the music you loved. Now its about slick record executives trying to make a quick buck off of the latest trend or fad. This music takes me back and reminds of what it was like in the good old days if you were there you will dance around your room just like the old times. If you werent youll wish you were. CLASSIC

Average customer rating:

7th Seal
Cybernetic Erosion
Manufacturer: Black Flame Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Death Metal | Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000PY6D5C

Product Description

Cybernetic Erosion was the industrial dark wave project for former Blood Stained Dusk member Agathos who appeared on the 2003 Continuance of Evil album in the Rhythm guitar slot. The upcoming release is the final piece of music that Agathos completed before his mysterious death just a few weeks ago making him the second individual from the Blood Stained Dusk roster to have fallen prey to the clutches of death in less than 2 years. We hope that all of you will enjoy his final offering to this world. Stay tuned for updates about the release of this album. Blackened mid-tempo EBM in the vein of WUMPSCUTT, MENTALLO AND THE FIXER, LEGENDARY PINK DOTS and NEPTUNE TOWERS (DARKTHRONE's Fenriz is thanked as Gylve Nagle along with DHG, VED BUENS END, KVIST, ULVER, ABHORYM).

LONESOME ROAD (THE CRAWFORD VARIATIONS) (198889)

Average customer rating:

Polansky speaks with directedness and conviction

LONESOME ROAD (THE CRAWFORD VARIATIONS) (198889)

Manufacturer: New World Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Jazz | Styles | Music

Classical | Indie Music | Stores | Music
ASIN: B00005AV8K
Release Date: 2001-04-01

Tracks:

I. Opening
II. Little Black Dots
III. Chorale (I)
IV. After Subono (I)
V. Waltz (I)
VI. Unison/Octaves
VII. Chorale (II)
VIII. Gendn (for Marc Perlman)
IX. Unison
X. Waltz (II)
XI. Chorale (III)
XII. Chorale (IV)
XIII. Chorale (V)
XIVa.
XIVb.
XV. Very fast and loud
XVI. Chorale (VI)
XVII. The Hensley Deviations
XVIII. Quietly, peacefully
XIX. Cengkok and coda
XX. Song
XXI. Fast
XXII. Phantasy
XXVa. Slowly
XXVb. Very legato
XXVI. Middle
XXVII. Melody and accompaniment
XXVIII. Rather fast
XXIX. Soft, slow, very rubato
XXX. Fast, swing
XXXI. Still fast, swing
XXXII. Faster
XXXIII. The Independence Movement (for David Rosenboom)
XXXIVa. Very lyrical
XXXV. Fast
XXXVI. Very slow, very quiet
XXXVII. Ballad
XXXVIII. Steady
XXXIX.
XL. Slow and pretty
XLI.
XLII.
XLIII. Fast
XLIV. Waltz (III)
XLV.
XLVI. Legato, slow, soft, rubato
XLVII. Three keys waltz
XLVIII. After Subono (II)
XLIX.
L. Chorale (VI)
LI. Gently, freely

Album Description

Lonesome Road (The Crawford Variations) is a set of variations on Ruth Crawford's harmonization of the folk song of the same name. Her arrangement was published in Carl Sandburg's The American Songbag (1927). The piece is in three sections, seventeen variations each. Those in the middle section (XVIII-XXXIV) are generally longer and more developed than those in the outer sections. Often, corresponding variations in the three sections have similar structures (for example, Variations I, XVIII, and XXXV are closely related). Lonesome Road (The Crawford Variations) was composed over the course of one year spent in Indonesia (June 1988-June 1989).

Like Ives's Concord Sonata (and Polansky's fluid piano writing will bring Ives to mind so many times!), Lonesome Road begins with some of its more difficult material. The second variation's perpetual motion, with furious cross-rhythms of five against six and seven between the hands, may make you despair of finding clarity, but hold on. Variation III is the first of a series of chorales and waltzes that actually make the first of the three overall sections easier listening than the other two. Variation V is a thorny waltz, followed by a fun and not-too-complex variation that rips through parallel octaves. At Variation VII, the piece takes a turn toward more accessible territory. Variation VIII is the first in which the influence of Indonesian gamelan—the metallic percussion orchestra Polansky and his wife studied in Surakarta—is audible, this infusion of gamelan technique into piano playing being one of Lonesome Road's most original features. The patterns aren't strictly repetitive, but they keep hitting the same notes over and over in a quirky kind of counterpoint.

Larry Polansky was born on October 16, 1954, in New York City, and grew up on the border of Queens and Nassau counties. His early ambitions as a jazz guitarist were eventually shed when he decided that he was more cut out to be a composer than a performer (though he still plays guitar publicly as well). Like so many in the 1970s he fled to the West Coast for a more liberal academic environment, where at the University of California at Santa Cruz he studied with James Tenney and Gordon Mumma, and became friends with Lou Harrison.

Customer Reviews:

Polansky speaks with directedness and conviction.......2001-09-07

Music: