The Octagon is The Trashies 5th full length album. Stamped cover. From the press:
"The Octagon is uncanny and cracked, scrappy and manic —
the work of a band at wits’ end. It’s the 5th album by The Trashies, and a
model for bucking late-career complacency: The Octagon sounds like
nothing in the dada-bards of garbage rock’s madcap discography. The production
skews homespun-to-crude; the songs, whether woozy or chittering, feel frenzied.
Still, it’s occasionally gorgeous, and boasts flights of lyrical invention. Passages
of illegible noise — probably power-tools, maybe a twisted tailpipe — cede to
infernal couplets (“Heavy Door”) and sauntering prettiness (“Fresh Honey”). The
Trashies, split between Oakland and Seattle, recorded The Octagon across
a span of three years in various living-rooms and rehearsal dens throughout the
Pacific Northwest. It’s co-released by Oakland’s Fine Concepts and the band’s
own 24/7 Records, and features artwork by Max Nordile and Erin Allen, [LP] hand
screened at Fine Concepts Laboratories." - Sam Lefebvre
"The most important gunk-rock band to come out of the
Northwest in our lifetime, the Trashies—Ron Wolfman (guitar/vocals), Jesse Cody
(keyboards on trashcans/vocals), Ricky Ticky Tahvi Router Table (drums), Billy
Goat Brown Note (bass)—have renewed their vows of idiocy for their fifth
full-length album…
Step into The Octagon.
Exploring new art-gunk crevices, The Octagon stretches
out classic Trashies sounds and concepts into cough-syrupy new shapes.
Wandering further away from their 2004-era speedy satire punk with each
release, the Trashies of The Octagon haven’t forgotten their roots as
much as they’ve let them ferment into a mind-altering stew. The straightforward
parody has warped into allusions of deeper freak-dom. Less Spits/Reatard, more
Fall/Beefheart.
The trash has aged into a fine compost.
Recorded by resident producer Wolfman, The Octagon pushes
the Trashies into more experimental zones—uncomplicated electronic drums,
bizarre sound samples, and vertigo-inducing vocal layers are smeared over their
more familiar spiraling bass, guitar, and keyboard riffs.
Album opener “Dumb 2 B Smart” honors the Trashies tradition of
rejecting all things intelligent; the music is being on DMT at Home Depot. A
choir of gurgling mutants falsetto through “Fresh Honey”—an ode to outdoor
toilets—backed by the most actually-very-beautiful music on the album (synth
lines and guitar noodles as tranquil as the untouched blue liquid in a fresh
Honey Bucket).
The demented hootenanny that is “Shovel”—the ballad of a man with
nothing but a shovel in a single-occupancy tool shed—reminds us that no
Trashies album is complete without the fecund brain of Jesse Cody; a worm of
many words, his savant monologues/ramblings/squealings are particularly genius
on this album. “I received a shovel when I burst from the womb/Now I just have
a shovel and an empty room.”
Like a tropical fungus eating through a construction site, “Heavy
Door” and “Rhinoline My Mind” both feature the combination of steel drums and
power tools (someone had to do it). The album’s title/final track is a mutant
ringmaster bleating word salad over a dilapidated carny groove. There are other
songs, too, but you get the idea.
This is music to lick toads to. Bless this mess." -
Emily Nokes
RR-006
Cassette:
$5 + $3 media mail shipping & handling
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