Down Is Up discusses music that falls slightly under the radar of our usual coverage: demos and self-releases, as well as output from small or overlooked labels and communities. This week, Jenn Pelly highlights music from San Francisco's Flesh World, Copenhagen's Hand of Dust, and a new set of reissues from cult Portland punk band Dead Moon.
01 Flesh World - The 2008 noise-pop boom spawned a whole new era of clangor and melody in miniature—Dum Dum Girls, Crystal Stilts, the Pains—most of whom have moved on to stake out higher-profile territory in the rock scene. One band from that wave that went a bit overlooked was San Francisco trio Brilliant Colors, who put out 2009's Introducing and 2011's Again and Again. Maybe they're more fresh on my mind because my roommate Pier wears their t-shirt around our apartment all the time (she got it at the memorable 2011 Brooklyn warehouse gig they did with Bad Banana). So when I came across Flesh World, this new punk band featuring Brilliant Colors singer/guitarist Jess Scott—not to mention members of the long-running queercore/hardcore bands Limp Wrist and Needles—I felt inclined to hit play. Imagine the spiky melodies and washes of reverb that must be ingrained in a songwriter who has done two records for Slumberland mixed with the driving intensity of cold, post-punk spirit—skull-piercing guitar feedback, scratchy riffs, anxious drum builds, ominous moods, and bright guitar hooks when you'd least expect them.
02 Hand of Dust - It's rare that I'm grabbed by a band on the basis of a YouTube video alone, but last year I was intrigued by one from the Copenhagen rock trio Hand of Dust—as featured in the first installment of this column. Anyone paying attention knows Copenhagen has recently been in no short supply of bands like this: tense, poetic, sky-summoning rock groups pulling from goth and neofolk. Hand of Dust's urgency resurfaced with one of the best tracks from last year's Dokument 1 compilation, and now they've finally let go their great, concise debut EP, Without Grace or Glory, for free on Bandcamp and on 7" vinyl in the U.S. through Blind Prophet. The band, it turns out, is led by Bo Høyer Hansen, a former member of the raw black metal band Sexdrome alongside Lower's Anton Rothstein and Loke Rahbek of Vår, Lust for Youth, and Posh Isolation.
03 Dead Moon reissues - Mississippi Records has recently done a fine job of bringing the catalogue of barebones, country-tinged Portland garage-punk legends Dead Moon back to vinyl. (The band's husband-and-wife duo of Fred and Toody Cole currently play in Pierced Arrows.) Now fellow Portland label M'Lady's Records will bring Dead Moon's incredible and largely overlooked collection of albums back into print on CD. "Dead Moon are my favorite American group," said M'Lady's co-head Brett Lyman. "They are a beautiful distillation of a lot of the values and ideas that I cherish about making art and music." On February 11 they'll reissue 1988's In the Graveyard, 1989's Unknown Passage, and 1990's Defiance, and on March 11 1991's Stranded in the Mystery Zone, 1992's Strange Pray Tell, 1994's Crack in the System, and 2000's Trash & Burn, with more to come.
Check out the trailer for the 2004 documentary Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story:
And their 1988 debut: