Aside from Young Jesus, Rossiter works in a variety of other styles and media, releasing poetry and zines and solo bedroom demos in semi-steady drip. As a way of gathering together this work into something a little more cohesive and complete, he’s teamed up with Pacific Nature records to release Neverending Catalog of Total Garbage Heartbreak Aggregate, a solo album which collects his various talents into one little package. The album comes complete with two zines, On Conceptual Beach (1 and 2), which combine abstract art and poetry in keeping with Rossiter’s aesthetic, the watercolours taking on the appearance of natural stains and the scattered words having a found quality, as though washed up on some shore ready-assembled in cryptic order.

A similar feeling exists on the music itself, with intimate bedroom pop tracks, surreal rock rambles and textured ambient collages existing in a kind of organic mess, what Rossiter calls “wonderful trash. Compost-style. Generative and alive and squirmy.” And while you might not consider compost-style your favoured musical genre or form, the description is almost perfectly apt. The record serves as an ecosystem in which seemingly disparate elements pull towards a common goal, a harmony granted by the ever-present Rossiter-blend of oddness and kindness which breathes life into every thing he touches. “There’s a joke embedded in a lot of serious things,” he continues. “And it’s an important joke – full of pathos and sympathy.”

Opener ‘Philadelphia’ creeps out from an ambient hum, an introspective song relaxed in a way only possible through immense familiarity. But there’s a sense of transience here too, a long, persistent consideration on the ephemerality of things in the vain hope enough cyclical brain work might suspend time sometime down the line. ‘Moms Guitar’ is equally concerned with passing time (“gonna go for a walk / through the streets where I grew up / record my mom’s guitar / that she got at 17”), while ‘Normal Dogs’ is built from an insistent guitar line and background flutters, Rossiter’s vocals arriving in a flood, as though some dam wall has collapsed upstream, passing in a brief and overwhelming flash. Lyrically, the song is no less fervid, a stream of consciousness that shifts and snakes through everything from playing basketball with Karl Marx to prairie dogs hanging out with normal dogs.

Sounding something like Old Earth meets Ben Seretan, ‘On Conceptual Beach’ is far more expansive, a layered instrumental built from guitar and eventually ambient backing. The closing minutes are populated by hazy field recordings, like snippets of home video as heard through a wall, sounds happy and holy and heartbroken, echoes from a time you’re on the verge of forgetting. ‘Mirroring’ opens with a plaintive vulnerability, though rises into something more defiant, the lyrics packed with vague statements of intent and concerned with love, while ‘Jangly Dusty Coast Closet Galaxy’ is wordless and all the more human for it, the sung syllable possessing a communal, almost transcendental quality.

‘Drop Smokes’ is a song about displacement, about pretending, about feeling alone and distant in places you shouldn’t, and ‘Inks’ is equally concerned with being confused and acting otherwise. ‘To Need a Brokenness’, meanwhile, is part bedroom pop song, part Phil Elverum ambient track, based around our need for something to preoccupy us, to add some semblance of meaning to our days.

We always leave our parts like this,
like we always need a brokenness.
Something un-fixable to fix

The slow, spacey instrumental ‘Julio Julio y La Soledad’ weaves it’s way across a six minute stretch before closing inwards to a single tone, a note which unravels into closer ‘Give Love To Myself’, a ferocious conclusion of harsh tones which threaten to overwhelm the lyrics. Something in this sub-minute epilogue feels relevant to the release as a whole, Rossiter still trying to communicate through all of the static and noise as though you’re right there next to him. One reading of Neverending Catalog of Total Garbage Heartbreak Aggregate is that of an experiment, Rossiter figuring out the best way to reach out and say something, to transmit a little of what he’s thinking and feeling to you across whatever divide, distance and distraction might separate you.

Neverending Catalog of Total Garbage Heartbreak Aggregate is out now via Pacific Nature. You can grab it via Bandcamp, including on cassette, complete with physical copies of the zines.

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STAY RAD SAV is a compilation of the best and brightest Savannah has to offer, curated by Furious Hooves and fellow label Soft Science. With no limitations in terms of genre or theme, the collection pushes in all directions, from noisy punk and slick slacker pop to gentle ambient swells and peculiar electronic experiments. Presented in collaboration with Soft Science, the compilation is split across two tapes and comes in a VHS-style trimpack, hand-numbered and limited to 200, complete with a 20 page zine featuring art/interviews from art collectives Fist City and The Clambake. Even the colours of the tapes sound special (rhodamine and goldenrod… I mean, right?).

With thirty varied and distinctive acts on show, you’ll excuse us for not writing a track-by-track breakdown. Instead, we suggest you buy a tape go digging for your own gems. Here are some of our current favourites:

You can buy STAY RAD SAV now from the Furious Hooves Bandcamp page.

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Mitski/Eskimeaux/Elvis Depressedly/Dude York

“Try as we might to describe why a night of live music can comfort us, relieve us, inspire us, confront us or sometimes even change us entirely, the actual phenomenon is something you have to be present to fully understand” – Erika wrote about the Mitski/Eskimeaux/Elvis Depressedly/Dude York show in Seattle, and drew some pictures too.

Daytime TV

“Lo-fi, psych-tinged, rock music, fusing the DIY indie rock ethos with mid 2000’s British garage rock” – Our thoughts on the self-titled EP from Daytime TV

Ought

Canadian rockers Ought have a new album coming very soon on Constellation Records.

Don DeLillo

“Don DeLillo is a hero of mine. The finest writer of our times… ” – We made a playlist of songs to soundtrack DeLillo’s White Noise, together with some gushing words.

K. Adem

“If further evidence was needed, Beautiful Dreamer confirms Adem’s eclectic songwriting abilities” – Our thoughts on the latest release from K. Adem.

Oh Pep!

“What should perhaps be labelled multi-instrumental indie pop, something akin to Sylan Esso meets Vampire Weekend” – We previewed the upcoming EP from Oh Pep! with some words about first song ‘The Race’

Sorority Noise

“Teenage, I’m-so-misunderstood melancholy is doubly effective, providing a sense of connection to anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in the throes of an adolescent heartbreak, while proving immensely gratifying to everyone else in the way that manufactured grief is always gratifying – a distracting and digestible simulacrum of suffering, a romantic and wistful removed-from-Real-Life pain, like watching an episode of The OC with your name in the main credits. But the thing is, anyone listening closely will soon discover that Sorority Noise are different…” – we explained why Sorority Noise are more than just another emo band

Typhoon

“Let it be known, the stripped back, piano led performance of ‘Prosthetic Love’ is gorgeous” – Typhoon put out a seven-inch featuring some lovely alternate versions of songs from White Lighter

National Museum Cardiff

Finally… We told you about the exciting things coming up in July at the National Museum Cardiff

The post Week in Review: #9 (6th-10th July) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Without getting too much into politics and the mind-melting confusion of the economy, British museums… are under threat from the current climate of austerity. What better way to ensure the survival of an institute than to make it central to the lives and well-being of the people it serves?

Luckily for those in the vicinity of Cardiff, the good people at the museum are not content with what they have put on so far, with a number of events and activities coming up over the next few weeks:

Fragile? Keith Harrison in Conversation – 19th July, 13:30

First up is a Q&A with Keith Harrison, one of the artists who was commissioned to design a piece for the Fragile? exhibition. Harrison will be joined by members of the National Museum Cardiff Youth Forum to discuss his work, and members of the public (i.e. you!) are invited/urged to send questions to ensure that the talk is as informative and interesting as possible. If you can’t get to Cardiff then do not fear, the Learning department twitter account (@MuseumCdf_Learn) will be beaming all the best bits onto the world wide web. To pose a question to Harrison, simply tweet using the hashtag #mute (or #mud for welsh speakers).

Full details for the free event can be found here.

P.S. If you needed further convincing, Spillers Records will be taking over the decks in the Fragile? exhibition ahead of the annual Spillers photo shoot on the steps of the museum. So why not head to the gallery before the Q&A (or linger after it) to soak up some good art and music?

DIY Zine Workshops 

The second cool thing going on is a series of zine making workshops, where highly trained individuals (ahem) will give you “Zine 101” and help harness the subversive energy of Chalkie Davies and his subjects.

It’s pretty much scientific fact that the coolness of your zine is exponentially linked to the thought you put into it, so you are advised to wrack your brains the night before and bring a selection of suitable materials to aid your creation. Have a poem you are too scared to show your friends? Put it in your zine and pretend it’s by someone else! Have a bunch of weird old magazines lying in your attic? Bring them along to butcher in the name of art!*

Of course, the contents of your zine will be limited only by the size of your imagination. You could make one to gush about the music you love, or scathing one about music you hate, or an angry one about the government, or far-out one in support of David Icke’s world views. You could make a statement about your identity or your dog or your football team, or maybe describe your excitement for the new X-Files/Twin Peaks reboots.

Details for the free adult event (18/19th July) can be found here, and for the family sessions here (for 21-24th July) and here (28th – 31st July)

*Although be aware that overly weird magazines might be confiscated on entry.

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