Notes From The Record Room: Ween (some shopping), The Cramps, Nu Jazz, Chat Pile
Record Room: Monday, 6/15
Current listening: God Ween Satan by Ween
Life events aplenty. We’re a little tired in this house. But, the temps have been nice at least.
Memorial Day weekend saw a turbulent four-day stretch. Friday, though, my family and I were able to celebrate a day offline and do some shopping. Walked into Siren Records for the first time in months and walked out with the new Ween [brown box] box set, a 10-CD discography that cost less than the prohibitive amount I’d had stuck in my head.
Other buys included the latest Neurosis album, An Undying Love For A Burning World; a used copy of Patti Smith Group’s 1979 LP, Wave; and Government Plates by Death Grips, clear variant and also used.
I did also make the mistake of buying two Jon Savage tomes: England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond and The England’s Dreaming Tapes, which is a heavy near=750 page companion to the former mammoth volume. I don’t know why I fool myself into believing that I’ll actually have a chance to read the books I buy. As it is I have three new books on deck: How Black Music Took Over The World by Melvin Gibbs, This Woman’s Work which is a compilation of essays edited by Sinéad Gleeson and Kim Gordon, and I still have to finish up the 33 1/3 book I picked up on Nirvana’s In Utero, though that shouldn’t take too long.
There are not enough hours in a day to spend, without guilt, on things one enjoys. Unless you have money, of course.
The Cramps
Gravest Gravy
Vengeance Records
Releases: 8/21/26
Henry Rollins has been enjoying his current chapter as a rock archivist of sorts, his time now devoted to circulating unearthed tracks and albums from numerous artists including The Adverts and U.K. Subs. Best kept secret until recently though is Gravest Gravy, a collection of songs from an October 1977 recording session of The Cramps helmed by Alex Chilton. Five of the tracks from this session had apparently found ears via singles and a 1979 compilation called, Gravest Hits. The other tracks, however, were lost to time until now. Along with this new album, The Cramps’ label, Vengeance, has been reactivated.
Rollins wrote an excited post about Gravest Gravy on his KCRW radio notes page for his 5/29/26 broadcast:
Fanatic, you might remember over the last several weeks, I’ve been telling you about a record Larry Hardy, Ian (MacKaye) and I had been working on. Not the excellent U.K. Subs EP, which was just unleashed, but yet another. The press release went out two days ago, so now I can tell you all about it. We’ve been waiting for this moment!
On August 21, the Cramps’ label Vengeance will be back in action! First up is a release that’s going to blow your mind. It’s called Gravest Gravy. The title is in reference to the Gravest Hits 12”.
Several weeks ago, Larry was going through the tape vault of the Cramps. He came up upon 7 ¼” reels. After a bit of inquiry, he found out these were mixes of tracks the band recorded in October 1977 in Memphis, Tennessee at Ardent studios, with the great Alex Chilton producing. These would be the same sessions that inflicted the first two Cramps 7” records upon the yet-to-be-infected. Wait, there was a time before the Cramps?! It seems hard to imagine, but yes.
Legend tells us that the band had been planning on recording their song TV Set as their first A side with another track or tracks. Mr. Chilton advised that they record everything they knew and the best songs would make the record. Luckily for all of us, that’s what the Cramps did. The result was a whole bunch of Cramps music you’ve never heard.
Lux (Interior) and Ivy (or, Poison Ivy Rorschach) mixed nine of the twelve tracks in North Hollywood in 1989. Alex Chilton mixed three in Memphis. For reasons lost to time, the project was shelved, even though they had the tracks mixed, the cover photo selected, and a title.
Larry decided Gravest Gravy must come out. It might not surprise you that we got to work immediately. Brian Kehew transferred the tapes. I selected the keeper mixes, then sent them and my notes to Ian MacKaye, whose ears I trust more than anyone. He listened to all the mixes and agreed with my selections. He volunteered to do some level adjustment and EQ work on two of the tracks at Inner Ear Studios with the great Don Zientara. Ian and Don turned that around very quickly.
Several days later, after a running order had been determined by multiple drafts, bounced back and forth between Ian and myself, the tracks landed at Infrasonic Sound in Nashville. Engineer extraordinaire Pete Lyman, mastered the tracks superbly. We had an amazing record that we couldn’t tell anyone about. Several days later, the test pressings came back and the team was floored. It sounds great.
Usually, something like this would take between 10 to 15 months or even longer to come out. Larry decided that sooner was better than later. Works for me! Gravest Gravy will be unleashed on August 21, in multiple color variants and CD.
Fanatic, words can barely describe how awesome this record is. You might know that in the early live sets of the Cramps, they did a number of covers that soon left the set as original material edged them out. Those who pay attention to bootlegs or have been in the world of tape trading, might remember the Cramps playing a great version of Hungry by Paul Revere and the Raiders. There’s no way the band would’ve ever put that down on tape, right? It’s on the album, with Alex Chilton joining on keyboard. Also, from their early sets is Problem Child, written by Sam Phillips. You might remember me telling you many times over the years, right before we listened to the Cramps doing their rippin’ version of Rocket In My Pocket released in 1958 by Jimmy Lloyd that I’d pulled from live recordings, that sadly, the band never did a studio version. Well Fanatic, I was wrong! That too is on the record, and it sounds so great. Also, making things interesting, you get versions of tracks that ended up on the Psychedelic Jungle album. The way they sound with Bryan Gregory is quite different.
Rollins also provided an extensive dive into this effort for this interview with Loudwire:
My copy has been pre-ordered and I’m eagerly awaiting its August arrival.
Nu Jazz
Un Jazz
Orange Milk
Releases: 7/24/26
“369” is a new single from Un Jazz, an upcoming release from semi-metallic fusion band, Nu Jazz. As a bio, Nu Jazz explain themselves to be “a 6-piece interference comprised of members whose aesthetic backgrounds are as disparate as they are complementary.” Considering how ambitious the genre-blending is in “369,” their pitch is sound… no pun (or puns) intended. Built upon swirling polyrhythmic beats, sturdy low end, and undulating synths, melodic screams are filtered through heavy autotune, so trap signatures given different context. Stabs of brass precede the bridge, the anchor loosened well enough to let the band jam a bit before the track’s gradual climb in intensity closes things out.
I can actually stomach the autotune.
Un Jazz is out July 24th via Orange Milk.
Links:
Nu Jazz — Instagram / Bandcamp
Orange Milk — Official / Instagram / Bandcamp
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Terrorbird Media:
Today, experimental New York group Nu Jazz announce Un Jazz, their second studio album and label debut out July 24 via Orange Milk. Situated at the underground interstices of free jazz, hardcore and electronic music, Nu Jazz describe Un Jazz as "Woodstock '99 at Montreux Jazz Festival," a fragmented amalgam of genres and maximalist noise. It is wartime music for the digital trench: a sharp critique on contemporary life and the power structures that corrode democracy, individuality, and independent thought.
To introduce the album, Nu Jazz share lead single "369." The track is a jagged waltz, traipsing through simmering lows and frenetic peaks with righteous anger and abandon. It's a track that brings into focus the band's singularly inciting sound and everything they've been building toward, a restless testament to the unyielding curiosity and perennial outsider status of its members.
With individual projects that have drawn attention from Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, Artforum, The FADER, Dazed, Document Journal, Resident Advisor, PAPER, and The New York Times, the six members' aesthetic backgrounds are as disparate as they are complementary. Across the album, Danny Orlowski (Deli Girls) hurls caterwauling screams, their sputtering, blown-out vocals in lockstep with Ryan Easter (WRENS), whose blistering 16th-note abstractions and synth-like effects carve out a new space for the trumpet. Ben Shirken (29 Speedway, Ex Wiish) uses modular synths and jagged samples to build churning worlds that teem with glimmering fog and propulsive glitchy loops. Adam Turay’s (The Narcotix) incisive riffs bloom and weave, buoyed by a rhythm section of Kevin Eichenberger (CGI Jesus), whose deft bass lines and compositional instincts provide a structural anchor for John Bemis’s (Murderpact) rich rhythmic palette of swing, breakbeat and hardcore influences.
Since forming in 2022, the band have honed their sound through extensive live performance across spaces such as Pioneer Works, Public Records, Long Play Festival, Cafe Oto, Trauma Bar und Kino, Jazz Is Dead, and Hyperreality Festival. Un Jazz is the most realized expression of their convergence: an indefatigable spirit slashed against a timeline so bleak it outpaces any fictionalized dystopia.
Chat Pile
Who Loves The Sun
The Flenser
Releases: 9/4/26
Chat Pile’s distinctive brand of Unsane-adjacent seedy underbelly metal will be committed to yet another full-length LP, Who Loves The Sun, which is scheduled to release 9/4 via The Flenser. Ever the paragons of bass-quaking bleakness, “Deep Blue,” the lead single from the upcoming album, features the lyric:
“Break my face and call me your friend.”
Chat Pile’s signature plunge-n-pummel, (DEPTH METAL?!?!), is accompanied by a twisted and abstract living scenario that looks like American night terrors, well-dressed figures cast as helpless and vacant while a young girl feeds them and dances, smiling. At points, congregants arrive and the tone takes on cultish appearances, the timeline shaky and the happenings open to interpretation. It’s appropriately uncomfortable.
Who Loves The Sun is up for pre-order from The Flenser.
Links:
Chat Pile — Official / Instagram / Bandcamp
The Flenser — Official / Instagram / Bandcamp
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Rarely Unable:
In a world increasingly shaped by disposable content, Chat Pile answers with something defiantly real and organic, a mentality that permeates Who Loves The Sun, their third full-length record.
Since the band's formation just over six years ago, the Oklahoma City-based quartet Chat Pile has grown from a scrappy passion project of four local film and music enthusiasts into one of the defining heavy acts to emerge from the 2020s underground. Ray B. (vocals), L. Manhole (guitar), Stin (bass), and Cap’n Ron (drums)’s crushing, crass, and cathartic take on noise rock resonates in this cracked reality. It captures a raw, undeniably human essence that’s increasingly fleeting in an age marked by ceaseless torrents of algorithmic slop, technological overreach, and the cold, crestfallen state of society. Nothing about Who Loves The Sun feels synthetic."This record focuses on my grievances with the modern world," says Raygun.
"AI, genocide, climate change, the power elite, $$$$ hoarding pigs - all that shit fucks up your life and mine. The band is definitely stretching out their abilities on the album and I too felt inspired to go further - as a huge fan of Boston, I like to think Brad Delp is somewhere up there, smiling down, as I take the layering to new heights, but who can say? We have fun with it." Stin adds "This album contains a healthy dose of the usual Chat Pile airing of grievances against the state of the world, but deeper at it's heart I feel Who Loves the Sun is grappling with the challenges of trying to keep one's humanity in a time of extreme anti-humanity."
As a first taste of the album, Chat Pile shares the menacing track "Deep Blue". Stin comments, "This is the first track we wrote for the album and the one that helped set the tone for the whole thing. I personally love this because it sounds like Chat Pile doing a Billy Squire song. It's our 'Lonely is the Night', which is actually a fake Led Zeppelin song so who knows what the hell we're actually doing here?" And Raygun adds, "Technology is rapidly ruining our lives, all promise seemingly squandered on the worst things, like killing people, wasting resources, destroying art- shrinking our brains and pulling us further apart than ever before."
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
