dennis.ca

When I left work this afternoon the ambient outdoor temperature was a face-slapping 38 Celcius (that's 100 Fahrenheit for all you metrication hold-outs). What better way to spend a sweltering evening than watching a ball game and catching up on my sorely inadequate fresh music intake?

My latest craze is a band named Messer Chups, which I know next to nothing about apart from the fact that they hail from Russia. My affinity is more than likely linked to a shameless love of Shadowy Men from a Shadowy Planet, which isn't an altogether dissimilar sound.

How to describe their overall vibe? Take a bunch of surf instrumental records, horrid Ed Wood films, Elvira, and a plastic orange pumpkin full of Halloween candy... Jam them into a conversion van with shag carpeting and drive full speed into a brick wall. You'll get something resembling the Messer Chups.

I found the band while sifting through the now-defunct Comfort Stand Recordings. There's still lots of interesting stuff to be had there, even though no new content is being added. Most of the techno/sample/loop stuff isn't my cup of tea. Too bad, because if it were I'd have landed on a veritable gold mine. Another interesting source for oddball music I encountered is WM Recordings.

But really, tell me how you go can wrong with an evil/cute/glaring/goth bass player named Zombie Girl?