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3 Steps to Quitting: The Voyage to Nowhere (Killer Buds, 2010)

For: A shoetring-budget version of The Knife's Tomorrow In a Year minus opera, MZ Mona Mars, First Dog To Visit The Center of The Earth

Byline: Sequel to "Lost in Hyphy-Space". Totally deranged/awesome bedroom pop-space odyssey.

I guess there was a time when the term "garage rock" was tied to actual bands playing in garages because they were too poor to afford practice space. Perhaps your band still practices in a garage but we can agree that the term has packed up and parceled out to guys with bad (expensive) haircuts paying producers to sound raw (expensive/bad). Following in it's wake with the reduction in price of recording equipment and software we have a tidal wave of the avante-bedroom-pop-electronic-synth thing, that fills up the inbox of small blogs like this one. This may fall into that category, but the ironic thing here is, I actually sought this out. After being duly impressed by the Killer Buds 2009 release MZ Mona Mars, and the broad range of the weirdo bands that sail under the Killer Buds collective flag, I gobbled up the cryptic titled ABCC without hesitation. This is my journal of where we went and what we saw together. From what I could discern 3 Steps to Quitting is a loosely held together concept album of sorts. Something like the field notes of an extraterrestrial scientist trying his hand at universe forming. The lyrical fluctuations are observations of star-formations and blackhole birthquakes. Cousins to the objective stance The Knife took on this years Tomorrow In A Year as they tracked the evolution of mankind from single-celled organisms to bustling, fallangeed creatures. The synth washes (a big plus on last years MZ project) are pared down a little bit, but the beats still sound like mutated outputs from consumer-grade drum machines and programmed keyboard beats. Vocals are pitch-shifted down or run through a million whirligigs of computer gadgetry. Songs like "step 2: almost there" feature snippets of organic acoustic guitar strumming and relatively clean melodic singing. Rhythm-heavy rock instrumentation take form in angular guitar lines and catatonic bass lines on "black holes - the beginning of space. Fans of TOME favs First Dog To Visit The Center Of The Earth and Boyfruit should take note. Plus, the killing buds are giving all this away for freeez on their website!

Ryan H.

Killer Buds website. Download this.

MZ Mona Mars

Raws (whenever.09, Killer Buds/We're Petrified!)

Byline: Lost in Hyphy-Space

For: The bass lines to Usher's "Love in this Club" or Lil' John's "Snap yo Fingers, JJ, Clark

Grab your neon colored stunner shades. Put on that jumpsuit. We're going to Ghost Ride the Millenium Falcon all the way to the hottest dance party in the galaxy hosted by MZ Mona Mars. Synth heavy dance music in a galaxy far, far away. T-Pain vs. Logan's Run. Well, anyway. I could go on. But you kind of get the point right? Totally spaced buzzing synths, scuzzy low end bass hits, a whole Rapman cache of special effects piled into a gloriously catchy back beat. Space Crunk? Whatever you call it, MZ Mona Mars has got it going on in spades. Just try not to listen to the pitch shifted vocals on "Eagle/Evil Eyes" without getting giddy. The rest of the 22 minutes of the album are just as exciting, until I recently overdosed on Isis, Raws was playing non stop in my house, on my i pod. They remind me of a way less hyped Holy F*word, if that one song "Lovely Allen" wasn't on the LP. Brilliant programming and timing, just when one line gets comfortable, bam, switch yo' style up and MZ Mona Mars is rolling on a new tempo. This is so 3008. MZ Mona Mars is a mysterious product of a mysterious SLC collective of gloriously skewed pop musicians, who when together, form a Voltron-like musical entity known as We're Petrified! They are playing a show on the 31st at the Woodshed, and all this has made me curious enough to check it out. I may just have to skip my 1,000th Silver Antlers show, which is a bummer in itself. The great thing about this album is that it is straight up free! Please do yourself a favor and jam to this with the few days of 100 degrees we have left.

Ryan H.

Download Raws Here