Music

Justin Bartlett

Guest Spots: Doom artist Justin Bartlett’s current favorites

Justin Bartlett has created art for some of your favorite bands and labels: SUNN O))), Intronaut, and Southern Lord, among many others. A self-described “black-ink warlock from the grim and frostbitten raven-realm of Southern California,” Bartlett knows metal and doom aesthetics. It’s only natural that he knows of a few bands you should hear too.

Bands and Artists You Should Know
by Justin Bartlett

Constructing a cohesive theme for my guest column at ALARM was not forming in my skull. Top Ten Album Releases for 2010? Top Ten Favorite Artists? Top Ten Fish Tacos? Hmm…nothing.

Perhaps this needs to be more KVLT and underground…Top 10 Cassette Releases? Nah, the tape thing has been played out enough. Bear with me….Top Six Uses of Upside-Down Crosses on Album Artwork? Ah, fuck it, here’s a list of nine bands and visual artists that I enjoy, find inspirational, or simply think are interesting and who you should check out for yourself. All of the visual artists I’ve listed have created artwork for bands, but some of the musicians/bands do not necessarily have outstanding album aesthetics. Either visually or musically (and sometimes both), they weave together textures that are dark, grim, and, to a person with a penchant for the negative, often cathartic.
 
Blessure Grave

1. Blessure Grave

Blessure Grave was one of the best things to come out of San Diego’s rather lackluster and safe indie music scene for years. Although its post-punk sound gives a nod to some of my favorites — Joy Division, Death In June, The Cure, and The Chameleons — the band played with enough conviction and creativity to avoid being too derivative. Structurally, the band has a very strong pop drive to its material with an underlying bedroom black-metal atmosphere. Blessure Grave released a ton of EPs on vinyl and cassette, and Judged by Twelve, Carried by Six was one of my favorite releases of 2010. Unfortunately, the band broke up recently, but luckily I was able to work on a cassette cover for When I Die before its demise. Blessure Grave’s mastermind, Tobias [Grave], started a new band called Soft Kill.

Bob Log III

Bob Log III: Perfectly Demented Country Blues

With a trophy for “Strangest Band in Tokyo” under his belt, Bob Log III maintains an energetic and unpredictable air with flashy costumes, improvised sets, and nonsensical lyrics.

Disjecta

Gallery Spotlight: Disjecta

There is typically a sense of finality when an artist’s work is displayed on a gallery’s walls. It’s all about showcasing the finished product, and as a result, the viewer is usually unaware of the creative process that went into each piece. Gallery owner Byran Suereth would rather put the focus on an artist’s disjecta — the fragments and revisions that eventually form a final piece. So when Suereth formed his gallery in 2000, he thought Disjecta would be a fitting namesake. “Disjecta was an interesting name, and it also had a connotation for what we do as an arts institution,” Suereth says.

Disjecta

As Suereth started Disjecta, Portland’s burgeoning art scene consisted primarily of artists and collectives that operated informally out of warehouses. It was his peers’ DIY approach and the city’s creative energy that sparked his idea to create a gallery of his own. “For the first two years of Disjecta, we really fed off of that spirit,” Suereth says. “I wanted the ability to create and to give people in the space the ability to create.”

Killing Joke

Killing Joke: Honoring the Fire

Reunited with its original lineup for the first time since 1982, Killing Joke is back with more than just muscular riffs and soaring melodies — instead offering a homeopathic cure for the decline of Western society.

Kayo Dot

Record Review: Kayo Dot’s Stained Glass EP

Kayo Dot: Stained Glass EPKayo Dot: Stained Glass EP (Hydra Head, 1/11/11)

Kayo Dot: “Stained Glass” excerpt
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Toby Driver and his rotating cast of fellow multi-instrumentalists in Kayo Dot have always embraced the dizzying difficulty of modern composition and the wandering feeling that comes with 10-minute-plus art-rock songs. The heavier moments of its 2003 debut, Choirs Of The Eye (and of Driver’s previous band, Maudlin of the Well), might have tempted some to think of Kayo Dot as a prog-metal outfit, but even then, it wasn’t that simple.

Driver seems to be able to constantly mutate what’s at the center of his music — sometimes tasteful strings, sometimes creepily melodic electric guitar, but often a beautiful, tense mesh of fragments. The lone 20-minute track that is the new Stained Glass EP revels in that unique flexibility.