{"id":153,"date":"2021-05-24T20:02:39","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T20:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aesir.visualmodo.com\/prebuilt-website\/music\/?p=153"},"modified":"2021-05-24T20:30:16","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T20:30:16","slug":"a-beginners-guide-to-garage-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aesir.visualmodo.com\/prebuilt-website\/music\/2021\/05\/24\/a-beginners-guide-to-garage-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"A Beginner’s Guide To Garage-Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

“M<\/span><\/span>y motto is: try everything, life is short,\u201d says John Dwyer, the leader of San Francisco garage rockers Thee Oh Sees. \u201cWe are growing at every turn. Every day you get a little older, a little closer to the grave \u2013 you should taste it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

A master of contemporary garage rock, he came into prominence as part of the fruitful San Francisco scene of the early 2000s. Since then Thee Oh Sees<\/a> have rattled out 21 LPs of bewilderingly consistent quality, under various iterations of their name, and Dwyer has written, recorded and released another 20 albums with other collaborators, encompassing everything from industrial electronics to improvised jazz and death metal.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview with Marc Maron<\/a>, Dwyer talked of his love of Scott Walker and, in particular, a scene in the Walker documentary 30th Century Man<\/a> when a percussionist is recorded punching a side of beef; Dwyer has similarly tried to master new sounds, be it a flute on Thee Oh Sees\u2019 Dog Poison or electronic bagpipes on his most recent Damaged Bug LP. His career is full of examples of how to explore genres on a shoestring, too \u2013 there are projects that are just drums and vocals (the Drums) or a hefty death metal record squeezed out of three people (Dig That Body Up, It\u2019s Alive). We asked him where to begin in his vast back catalogue.<\/p>\n

Coachwhips \u2013 Bangers vs Fuckers (Narnack, 2003)<\/h2>\n

Coachwhips rewrote the punk aesthetic for the 21st century. Raw, stripped back to the bones of guitar, drums and keys, their shows were chaotic and rambunctious. Bangers vs Fuckers epitomises that, squeezing 11 tracks into 18 minutes, and was notable for Dwyer\u2019s use of a telephone transducer rather than a microphone. \u201cIt was very simplistic and was meant to be bombastic and primitive,\u201d Dwyer says. \u201cDoing it the most direct path was key. The music was so abrasive and forward that no one would have noticed any of our innovation. It was a sort of as-much-as-you-can-squeeze-from-nothing aesthetic.\u201d<\/p>\n

OCS \u2013 34 Reasons Why Life Goes on Without You (Tumult, 2003)<\/h2>\n

\u201cThis goes hand-in-hand with the amount of marijuana I was smoking at the time,\u201d is Dwyer\u2019s take on this early OCS material, a stunningly delicate collection of untitled tracks that marks the only time an acoustic guitar has been given prominence in one of his records.<\/p>\n

Zeigenbock Kopf \u200e\u2013 IDM LP (KimoSciotic, 2002)<\/h2>\n