25 Suaves w/Roy (ex-members of Botch and Harkonen), the Guellos
Mon Sept 30, Graceland, $4.
JEEZUS. I just finished listening to the new 25 Suaves record, 1938, on repeat for the past five hours. I'm starting to hallucinate about being in some dark dive where black leather and long hair are the dress code and the only brain-cleaner on the sound system is the kind of metal/rock hybrid that penetrates earplugs like a flesh-eating virus. My head is spinning on a rotating lineup of shitty white noise; my gut is flattened by the tire tracks of guitar riffs that speed, skid, and do wheelies around '70s badass rock. Then there's the drums, cracking on my skull a two-ton rock 'n' roll egg, blending with the heavy sonic goo feeding back from the guitar. Somewhere in there are vocals, too--screamed words nearly impossible to separate from the mammoth noise surrounding them. It's all one giant fireball of the hard stuff, a sound that writer Mike McGuirk described as "AC/DC doing math rock" (but imagine "math" done at the light-speed that computers use to crack alien alphabets). This is the good shit, the kind of music that stabs your chest and grabs you by the collar, slamming your head into the nearest wall. And all this rock comes from only two people--guitarist Mr. Velocity Hopkins (Pete Larson) and drummer DJ Party Girl--and a really, really big amp.
This is the intensity of noise that comes from Larson--the man behind Bulb Records, the label that broke Andrew W. K. as well as bands a couple of hundred leagues deeper underground, like Ass Baboons of Venus, the Temple of Bon Matin, and Wolf Eyes. Larson's experimental skronk label likes it loud and offbeat. "Generally these people are a little bit sharper than most," he says of his bands, on the phone from his home in Michigan. "They didn't come out of the same framework that most musicians do. Like, Andrew [W. K.] started out in fashion. That's why he went to New York--he was going to be a fashion designer. He went to do an internship with Comme des Garçons, the big Japanese fashion company."
Bulb has been championing the whacked shit for a decade now, and Larson is compiling a book/DVD set to celebrate the big anniversary. Set comfortably under his label's wide umbrella, Larson's a misfit who has found his home. After playing in a self-described "retarded, spastic no-wave" act called Couch, Larson moved to Japan and formed 25 Suaves in 1998 with his current wife, Japanese native DJ Party Girl. The act stayed out east for two and a half years, during which time Larson got a taste of the national rock palate. "It's much more rigid," he says of Japan. "People expect you to fit into a genre, which is one of the reasons we didn't like playing over there. If you don't fit into a [set] genre they don't warm up to you that easily. I'm old--I was raised on '70s rock, and they don't know anything about that over there. Coming back to the States was a relief."
Although the music on his label approaches the kind of complicated experiments that can alienate traditional rock crews, Larson personally likes to keep his music more populist. His song "Party Disease" takes the Andrew W. K. mantra and mashes it down a noise-metal disposal. "That song's old," Larson explains of the first track off 1938, the band's fourth album. "That [came from] when me and Andrew were talking about making a band where the word 'party' was in every song, about how amazing that would be. And lo and behold, he did it. It's kinda funny."
The Suaves don't lean on the crutch of beer-commercial themes for material, but they are concerned about reaching a wide audience. "I went out into no wave and came back to rock because it seemed to make the most sense," Larson says. "You can do all this experimental stuff like no wave or noise, but you won't reach that many people. I started getting really bummed out about seeing the same 10 people at every show--people I didn't even find all that interesting.
"I just want to make rock for a bunch of drunks and give other people a good time," he continues. "Working this [straightforward music], at least you see people smiling instead of standing there with scowling faces, comparing you to every new noise thing that's out that day. To hell with that. As much as I love experimental noise or music, after a while it just becomes depressing. I'd rather play for a bunch of rednecks who will come up to you afterwards and be like, 'That was good,' and buy you a beer and have a good time. It seems more normal, like that's what music's supposed to be."
