Hot Toasters - "Fish and Doctor" 7"

Hot Toasters – “Fish and Doctor” 7”

Drag City, 1994

Acquired: Love Garden Shotgun Room, 2008

Price: $.25

Hot Toasters hail from Japan and they are very clearly insane. In the best way. Japan is a strange and fascinating place. How would you feel if your country lived in isolation from the rest of the world up until 200 some odd years ago? You would probably be weird too. Over the years, I have had Japanese music and culture ruined for me by some really insufferable Japanophiles and I have only recently opened up my borders for things Japanese (i.e. Sushi, Haruki Murakami, anime, Japanese Baseball (which is fascinating and way more grueling than the American Pastime by the way)). I’ve always loved the great Japanese filmmakers, but that was always the exception (and Guitar Wolf, but Guitar Wolf sort of transcend national heritage). Still, my intake of Japanese music is very very limited. The “Fish and Doctor” 7” was Hot Toasters’ sole release, and it’s really a crying shame that they didn’t do more because this 7” is drop dead awesome. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a band navigate multiple genres within the same song with such ease. “Fish and Doctor” mostly plays like a jaunty, almost folksy pop song that devolves into guttural, sludgy metal halfway through before returning to the sweet, jet setting pop and then blending the two together in a really fun way by the end. It’s fun, it’s silly, it’s great music. “YUKIWATARI” has a bit of a ska flavor to it provided by trumpet/saxophone/accordion, and while it’s more straightforward than “Fish and Doctor,” with more lighthearted pop verses and punky choruses until the whole fucking thing melts down at the end in a wash of guitars, bass and skronky saxophones and horse-like screams. Awesome. The other b-side, “Milk,” rolls out the metal chops once more and once more blends them with the various elements that comprise the 7”s other tracks. There’s a weird sax solo in the directly after a minute of pummeling metal chords before the song morphs into a big, catchy indie rock song. It’s unselfconscious genre bending, which is really the only kind of genre bending I can appreciate, and after listening to this 7” a few times I’m legitimately sad that this is all the Hot Toasters I’m ever gonna get.

"Yukiwatari"

Richard Franecki - "She Just Goes a Little Mad Sometimes" 7"

Richard Franecki – “She Just Goes a Little Mad Sometimes” 7”

Stomach Ache Records, ~1994-1995 

Acquired: Love Garden Shotgun Room, Used, 2008

Price: $.25

 

Though released on a Mexican record label, Richard Franecki’s contact information is for a PO Box in Milwaukee. The little Love Garden-affixed sticker on the sleeve reads “Founder of Vocokesh (ref: one of the best tracks on the DRAG CITY comp).” I’m positive the Drag City compilation referenced is the Hey Drag City comp which I swear to God I found a copy of when I was cleaning out the record room at Half Price Books St. Paul the other day. I know I saw it, and I hope I attached my name to the sleeve because now I wanna take it home. It feels like fate. Plus it has tracks from Silver Jews, Smog, Pavement, Red Red Meat, and Palace Brothers. And of course Vocokesh. I can’t find any information that has a release date for this 7”, but Hey Drag City came out in 1994 and the single released directly after this one on Stomach Ache came out in 1995 so I think one of those years is probably accurate. And now I can’t stop thinking “Shit, I better go find that Hey Drag City comp tomorrow because I WANT IT.” All of that nonsense aside, Richard Franecki’s 7” is weird. It’s funny, as I was typing that Jenny said, “This is weird.” It is! It’s really weird, almost sound collage-y despite clearly being constructed of guitars and unsettling synthesizers. The b-side “Its Not as Though Shes Some Sort of Raving Thing” (great song title by the way) is like mid-tempo industrial music for a horror movie. Actually, so does “She Just Goes a Little Mad Sometimes,” but with a weird space-age synthesizer dropped in here and there. The percussion sounds like it’s coming up from the bottom of the well in that movie The Ring. I really can’t think of something else that sounds like this. Apparently Franecki’s former band F/I split up because they wanted to move in a more “song-oriented direction” and that is how Vocokesh came about (apparently the band’s sound is a blend of industrial and space rock). On these two songs you can clearly tell this is a guy who’s main musical interest is to dabble in the haunting and the abstract, and while this isn’t the sort of stuff I will put on every day, I’ve listened to this 7” 3 times in a row and can see something beautiful lurking beneath the discord.

Here's a Vocokesh track in lieu of a Franecki number.

Note: I’m a sucker for great band names, and the catalog insert for Stomach Ache Records is chock full of them! In addition to notables such as Palace Brothers, Sun City Girls, Gastr Del Sol, and Thurston Moore, we’ve got releases from Bong Trauma, The Bring Downzz, Steeplesnakes, Kill Everyone Now, Masonic Youth, Pork Queen, Pee 69, and really the list just goes on and on.