Joe 4 - Enola Gay 10"

Got this one in the mail clear from Zagreb, Croatia (it went DHL to some sorting center in Wichita, Kansas and then here by way of USPS...in other words it's traveled more than I have). Cool as all get out that Josip (one of the band members) sent this beauty to me.  10" oddness, cool ass graphics, a trippy poster, a digital download code (as seems to be the standard these days), rock solid tunes on what appears to be a little thicker vinyl than usual (not quite 180g) and only 250 of these gems made.  Josip sent me their BIO, conveniently in PDF format. Apparently this thing has connections all over the place...a Croatian band, on a label out of Luxemborg (Whosbrain Records), mixed in San Francisco and mastered in Chicago. Music wise this struck me right away as something that could very well have been released on Touch & Go or Amphetamine Reptile. In their bio they're compared Jesus Lizard, Janitor Joe (I've got them cued to post in the near future), Shellac, Tar (gonna post them too), and Johnboy. The bio goes on to say, "Songs emphasize the percussion and rhythm while guitar and bass lines are braided within and around the lock-step drumming and tortured/drill-sergeant vocals are sardonically delivered over the resulting melee. Lyrically, the songs deal with the impulsive nature of the individual and are concisely worded as repetitive haiku poetry." I don't think I can say it any better than that, and I would have never in my life found a way to insert the word "haiku" (Japanese syllabic poetry) and make it work. All I know (in a euphemistic way) is that I dug these guys from the get go. It's compelling music with a jazz sophistication and really 10"s is not enough. At under 20 minutes Enola Gay leaves you wondering what's next up their sleeves, but I guess that's going to be a wait and see kinda thing. My bet is that these guys are going to be releasing some more stuff, based on the momentum they've defined with these 5 tunes. My understanding is that the best place to get this thing from these guys is at their Bandcamp, available on vinyl or cd and as I said comes with a digital download. I usually like to post up something live from utoob, just to give you that live vibe, but according to Josip, "We are not really handsome guys, so we avoid being filmed or documented on photos too!" Gotta dig that (reminds me of when I got shit faced one night and joined a biker club called the UMF, the Ugly Mother Fuckers, but that's another story). Anyway, one of my favorite tunes (they're ALL good)... His Profile

...and something different this time, I'm embedding the Bandcamp player so you can listen to the whole thing, right here at the Relics

http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/track=3290264392/size=grande/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/