Chris Rehm – Blinders
Chris Rehm has gotta be one of my favorite dudes workin right now. His solo work on the Salivary Stones tape was a slab of pink drone bliss and the mathy noise pop album he did with his pal Sean Hart as Caddywhompus remains to this day one of the catchiest & most listened to records in rotation. So clearly Rehm’s a fuckin champ. PLUS, he runs Chinquapin Records out of New Orleans and all of the music he makes is available for free downloading. Including Worries, Etc.
Worries is Rehm’s seventh solo release in 4 years and right off the bat, you can tell it’s more developed and intricate than his last tape. Instead of just straight up drone noise, there’s all sorts of extra stuff going on. The muffled industrial machine beats from before take a higher priority now, chugging away making some Usputuspud-like disco drone. Now there’s strummed http://www.health-canada-pharmacy.com acoustics with depressed vocals echoing “I just want you to give a fuck” and pulsing space dust shooting through the heart of frozen moons. One of my favorite tracks is “Blinders” which starts outs with mumbling ghosts hiding behind curtains of xylophone kaleidoscope static and then blurs into bombastic Fuck Buttons noise bliss. So fucking cool.
The individual songs on Worries, Etc. are perfectly unique, each one sounding a bit different than the last, but all flowing seamlessly into the next. This could have been one half hour long track and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.
This is a beautiful record, tender, harsh, euphoric, and occasionally danceable. If you’ve yet to experience life through Rehm’s ears, now’s the fucking time. But if you’re already a fan, Worries is essential, it’s filled with more elaborate sounds fused with the noise pop elements from Caddywhompus. Seriously, what more could you ask for? Oh right, IT’S FREE.