For locals: punk-is-the-new-punk

ever since the punk explosion of late 70s underground musicians have been searching for the next thing to shake rock's foundations. In the 80s it was hip-hop, hardcore and new wave. In the 90s it was grunge, rave and nu-metal. In the 00s its been wave after wave of revivalist movements: garage rock, techno and ???

locally, a few revival-minded bands have grabbed the punk mantle and made it their own. Some have taken influences from punk's early years while others have taken from other sub-movements within ever-growing scope of punk rock music.

the music of White York expands on the folk resonances found within the punk movement. The band dwells in territory staked out by folk/ punk icons like Patty Smith and Tom Waits.



"we use a musical style that originates directly from a punk rock background, and we (more or less) have the accompanying ideology and attitudes," WY guitarist Alex Yoshi tells S3 via email.

basement-dwellers plates take a more purified approach to punk. According to Dave Anchovies, plates guitarist and all-around nice guy, the biggest single influence on the band is the '77 punk band the Wipers, which can be heard in the loud, tight, fast plates songs.

artvoice battle-of-the-bands winner London vs. New York is another high-profile local group proudly waving the punk banner. Their battle victory is no doubt a testament to punk rock presence and popularity in the local scene. WBFO Music Director Bert Gambini writes the band, who recently performed on the radio station's 'Live at Allen Hall' series, plays with "raucous spirit and high volume," which sound's like Yoshi's idea of what punk music should be:

"with 70's punk, there was a shift taking place in terms of how music was being treated. It was approached not as an arrangement of notes and rhythms that were foreign to the player, but as an invitation to take a simple pattern and intensify it, make it dynamic, make it explode."

Trystero @ Mickeiwicz Library (1.11.08)

grunge instra-metalists Trystero filled up the performance space at the Mickeiwicz Library with their sludgy-noise metal. Their sound borrows as much from 70's proto-metal (Black Sabbath) as it does 90s grunge (Soundgarden) and noise (Swans/Sonic Youth).



As revivalist instrumental rock moves from 80's angularism to 90's grinding swirl, you had to see this one coming; yet the band, with their cello player front and center, was anything but formulaic, and had success drawing, and keeping, a crowd from the bar in the other part of the building. No small feat for a place that offer very cheap European beer and indoor smoking.

November Top 5ive

The month that was... in song.

shapes have no religion - Bela's Shadow

In windchime rest stop scenic - Drivers to Warsaw

Somewhere on Christmas eve - Viva Noir

Trans Am - Brown Music

player piano - minuet

Neptune & Tentet/Octet @ Sound Lab, Sunday 11/18/07

a rudy sizzle review

the branding of music is at an all time high and it seems like there is nothing that can be deemed new, and/or original. I find myself dry heaving at the thought of modern rock music that is featured as the soundtrack for modern hybrid automobiles, teen-zit creams and fresh-breath enhancers. It’s true, I often throw up in my mouth when I hear the lulling sound of youth culture careening around the corner as I wait patiently for the Simpsons to come back from commercial break.

i also feel equally, slightly queasy when someone tells me about a band that primarily features homemade instruments and is adored by hipster geeks in the underground progressive music scene. Especially when that someone tells me that they are performing at Soundlab on a Sunday night and they are pretty well known in the “avant-garde" scene. Most of what occurs in the realm of “a/g” is generally summarized as the following simple catch phrase coined by a very jaded, but talented soul: JERK ART.

JERK ART can be as hard to swallow as teenybopper, emotional rock. Atonal noise can hurt. For real, especially when it is aimed at you from a small-platform stage at high decibels by a couple of dudes that do not care to offer songs or “compositions” even.

Buffalo duo Tentet/Octet allow little room for objective criticism as they pretty much are aware of the effect that overly distorted cacophonies can have on an audience. They perforate the air with “skronk” music, pitter-patter on drums, guitar and the occasional key line from the beloved Casio SK1. The redeeming quality of Tristan Trump and Kyle Price’s musical collaboration is that it is truly uncompromising. They deliver belches of loud freak-out with very little trouble and seem to be masterful in the craft of excessive drone and noise. T/O seem hell-bent on being too weird to pin down with song structures and genre specifics, but also too safely nestled in the warm chambers of “soft/quiet/weird noise here/occasional tantrum of drum fills then howling through halls of delay” sort of formula. They have performed as an accompaniment for performance art pieces and it worked relatively well in that medium. As far as being a live act to behold on their own, the lack of memorable melodies or dare I say, songs, make Tentet/Octet border line JERK ART.

upon entering the stage for their performance, Neptune struck me as a bit labored and overly gadget oriented, struggling to make the jigsaw puzzle of homemade electronics spill forth some noise for a simple line check. Once the trio from Jamaica Plain, Mass. strapped on their homemade sonic battle axes and spun out the first notes of their first piece were my perceptions smashed to bits.

they launched into primal percussive thumping via mutant makeshift drums and layered a whirling dervish of a rhythmic loop by putting forth low unrelenting currents of sound wave. The songs were channeled from another world, somehow bridging the gap between Kraut and electro-clash with the mixture of hand-assembled electronics and percussion. There was an exorbitant amount of tones pushed through the wall of rickety amps behind the band (mostly modified and re-built) and these sounds managed to encapsulate the entire room with their eerie drones and inescapable melodies.


the band all shared vocal responsibilities and, unlike most “avant-garde” indie bands, they actually understood how to establish melodic phrases, which instantaneously became earworms. Neptune delivered a live onslaught that blew away my expectations by a landslide and left me wanting more. Their spectacle was relatively short lived, perhaps that was my one and only complaint.

Postpunks pump up the jams

the faint stench of stale beer, smoke, and sweat seeps up from the Mohawk Place below; up and into the cramped second-floor practice space of the Exit Strategy. This is where much of the material on City of Microphones, the four-piece band's second record, was hammered out from countless writing sessions and free-form jams.

Microphones sees the band trading in much of their angular post-punkisms for more rounded-off muscular riffs and song structures. The result is more a compact and focused sound, ironically a sound they feel is more representative than their eponymous first album.

"on the first one you could definitely tell what our influences were," laughs Tim Turcott, drummer for the band. "(This record) is more of our own thing."

mark Constantino, Steve Kabza, Tony Flaminio, and Tim Turcott have all know or played music with each other for 12 to 15 years and their interpersonal chemistry is evident. They often finish each other's sentences without missing a beat. It seems only natural that City of Microphones is mostly a product of collaboration, a departure from their previous album.

"this one was definitely more -- all four of us in the practice space coming up with stuff," vocalist Constantino says. "A lot of the last record was Steve (the band's guitarist) coming in with these ideas; because he had tons of these ideas that he had written over (that) year."

the band recruited J. Robbins to help produce the new, beefed-up songs. Robbins' reputation proceeds him in many circles: he has produced iconic indie bands in the past such as Jawbreaker, Clutch, and the Dismemberment Plan. The result of the Exit Strategy's sessions with Robbins are guitar sounds that blaze like four-log fires and rhythms that rumble the cheapest of car stereos.

the album opens with "X-rays", a song that was written just days before the band left for Magpie Cage Studios in Baltimore to record with Robbins.

"he needed to hear demos of every song we were going to do so he had a rough idea and that was kind of troublesome," said bassist Flaminio. "He was fine with it. It ended up being one of his favorite songs."

the band said they knew what they had immediately after writing "X-rays".

"we got done playing that song, it was the first time we went through it," Constantino said. "And Tony looks at me and goes, 'I guess that song's done.' "


constantino's job as a Buffalo Police officer gives him a unique perspective as a songwriter and lyricist. The eleventh track on City of Microphones, "He has a Bright Future with British Steel", is about his view on lay-offs within the BPD.

"about four years ago, these guys that I was good friends with just got laid off and kinda left in the dust," he said. "A few guys I knew went from health benefits, a good job and a pension to tending bar three nights a week."

according to Constantino, the band is a relief from work and a chance for him to vent his frustrations. He said, surprisingly most of his material doesn't come from the streets of Buffalo.

"most of the lyrics don't come from dealing with people, like on a call." he said. "It comes from... (being a police officer) you get a really nice view of how screwed up government in this area is."

after their Cd release show, the band has a national promotional campaign being launched by Yarr PR in Detriot and plans on supporting the Cd with some dates on the East Coast including a One Percent Press Showcase in Athens, GA, the Lemuria Cd release show, and a stint with the Failure's Union, Tony Flaminio's other band.

city of Microphones will be available locally at Exit Strategy shows and in local stores after the Cd release show at 9pm on Saturday, Nov.24 at the Mohawk Place, their home away from home.

Top 5 for October

It's that time of the month again only here at silo3 it looks like you ARE gettin' some. Some top five local songs that is:

Ballast - the Old Sweethearts

Dissolution Soundtrack - Viva Noir

All to you - the hammond shutdown

Blown Away - VictoryLightBlackHoney

Battle Snakes - la Cacahouette

Pain in the Big Neck III

this year's Pain in the Big Neck 3 included more local bands than ever before. Six locals graced the stages of the two day twenty-two band festival, evidence of the strong presence that blue-collar garage/punk still has in the Queen City.

one of Buffalo's newest bands, who emerged from their basement earlier this year, plates(above) put on one of the best 30-minute sets of the weekend ripping through their modest catalog like the grizzly veterans they are. Their modern take on Ian MacKaye punk (Minor Threat+Fugazi) is a big middle finger in the face of trendy garage-rock revivalists and indie kids alike.

another new band/ familiar face that had a strong showing was the minimal-industral one-man-punk band Mannequin Stupor. Not quite punk or garage, Eric G's latest project has influences that run deep into 80's post punk and noise. The set had it's high cerebral moments and low-blow potshots. Watching Mannequin Stupor play, one cannot help but feel transported to NYC art-school hangouts somewhere around 1985. However, a post-backbeat drum machine gave the songs a modern twist, a nod to the right-now post-electroclash NYC scene.


if Mannequin Stupor was the festival's high-brow moment, then Ski-Mask and his Bucketmen were it's low-brow. Ski-mask's angry rants, constant dick jokes and potty humor have been his trademarks since the days of Thunderbird Theatre, his cable access show. The latest incarnation has the masked madman spewing his mini manifestos over free-folk electronica loops dotted with samples culled from AM talk radio, mostly of the religious variety. The set can only be described as a look into the mind of a maniac. Ski-mask has an extremely polarizing presence and makes no apologies for what he does. He definitely gave this year's fest a twist of the demented, something that is missing all too often in today's safe, color-by-numbers punk/alternative.

by all accounts, this years Big Neck Records fest was a blast. If Bart Hart and Co. continue the trend the next one can only bigger and more ambitious.