Freshly sharpened pencils, lumpy apple slices and All Tomorrow’s Parties: it must be back-to-school time! Located in upstate New York at a country club with a capacity of only 2,800, this music festival sounds exactly like the liberal arts colleges I would have sacrificed myself at age 17 to attend. But instead of semesters of boredom and years of loans, this is just one big orgiastic weekend, September 11-13, partially curated by free love-enthusiasts The Flaming Lips.

The Sunday lineup, hand-selected and headlined by the Lips, includes Super Furry Animals, Boredoms, Crystal Castles, Deerhoof with Martha Colburn, and best of all, No Age performing Hüsker Dü with Bob Mould. I’m seeing colors right now. Check out the full line-up here.

In related Flaming Lips news, a new digital EP, titled “Songs from The Future Album Embryonic” is available to ATP ticket purchasers for free, and at basement bargain price for the rest of us. The three-song sampler should get you salivating for their first studio full-length in three years, coming out this fall… It’s about damn time.

photos from the LA Boadrum 8/8/08 by madic

This year’s Boadrum 9 is taking place at Terminal 5 on (you guessed it!) 9/9/09. The show is not going to be free..But tickets go on sale today for $25 and you’ll be happy to know that the real Boredoms will actually be there this time! Last year the Boredoms were at the LA Boadrum while Gang Gang Dance led the 88 drummers here in NYC along the Williamsburg waterfront. Rather than having 99 drummers this year, the Boredoms will be joined onstage by only 9 drummers. Probably still going to be an epic drum-related sight so get your tickets early cause September is just around the corner.

After a brief hiatus last week (we were, as Bill Murray says in Caddyshack, “Unavoidably Detained”) we’re back with a selection of decidedly anti-summer anthems.  Now, we’re not anti-summer, far from it, but seems we’ve largely been rotting your teeth out with sugary pop confections for the past few months, so it’s time to get that tinnitus rattling around again, just in time for yr spangly Memorial Day festivities.  Onward then, into the murk.

We stumble out of the gate this week with Ancestors’ II on Youth Attack! Records.  McCoy’s proper vinyl pressing of a hyper-limited (100 copies) cassette, this virgin white slab is a flailing piss storm of schizophrenic BM that’s utterly despondent and horrifyingly toxic and, at times, sounds like it’s being interrupted by shortwave radio blasts from WWII.  While not exactly free-form, each side (composition?) is essentially structureless, meaning there could be one song or 45 and you’ll never know the difference.  Their harsh malevolence rains down like battery acid as a completely blown-out morass of humanity struggled to find shelter from the pain.  Limited to 333 copies and (surprisingly) still available at YA!’s site.   

Dredged from the sewers of somewhere is Fresh Meat’s “Saw Her” b/w “Man or Woman?” on Breathing Problem Productions (Rusty from Total Abuse’s label).  What you get here are two sides of ultra lo-fi shit-core that sounds like the brainbombs being given a lobotomy in a dumpster, or someone running Poison Idea through a meat-grinder whilst they are still playing.  The whole mess sounds like it’s being held together by cheap apoxy (as much for the high off the smell as anything) and fueled by even cheaper beer.  People have compared them to Drunks with Guns, but in reality, this sounds more like actual drunks huffing aerosol fumes, unable to tune a guitar and puking on the 4-track; so basically, it’s fantastic.  Still available here but who knows for how long.

Perhaps the least abrasive thing we have this week is the new Young Widows/Melt Banana split on Temporary Residence Ltd.  The second volume of YW’s split singles series pits the Lousiville noise-rock heroes against Japan’s three-headed spazz hydra.  On the A-Side, Young Widows are at their AmRep-aping early ‘90 best here with “Long Live the New Weight”, cranking out a terse, bottom-dwelling rocker that makes liberal use of ear-scrambling distortion.  On the flip, Japan’s Melt Banana take things in a more Boredoms-centric direction than we’re used to with “Pain in Ash”, creating a dense, poly-rhythmic foundation for their twisted melange of supersonic sound and toning down their frenetic grindcore in favor of gurgling, organ-stabbed understatement.  Head on over to TRL’s website to pick up a copy (or subscribe to the series if you are so inclined).

Just like Dr. Dre we’re keeping heads ringing this week, and while we can’t promise we won’t next week, we do have some lighter fare coming up in the weeks ahead, so make sure to stay tuned (and hydrated).