The Rubber Room column is a weekly look at recent and notable releases that don’t fall into the rubric of traditional reviews or reviewed material—namely 7”’s, 12”’s, 3” CDs, EPs, cassette-only, DVDs and MP3-only releases.

The Holy Fire
In the Name of the World EP
[Militia Group, 2006]

The Holy Fire gets off the ground early with "Raised on Planes" and never slack off during their second EP (and second release). The band has a touch of Ted Leo's power pop, but they have a slightly more aggressive sound. The hardcore roots show through, but these songs have more to do with radio than the underground. The mix of pop aspiration and raw music—as well as the lyrical mix of anger, anxiety, and hope—makes for a compelling 20 minutes. Good in its own right, In the Name of the World also advertises the potential of this group to surprise everyone with a successful anthem down the road.
[Justin Cober-Lake]

Philip Krumm
Formations
[Idea, 2006]

The product of two Texas-bred undergrads, Formations bears its immaturity well. Only the bright-eyed without a sense of limits (or long-timers that have long since escaped them) would dare create such a gleeful mess. “Blue” Gene Tyranny mans the lower registers of the piano, molding slippery, amelodic forms from Philip Krumm’s score. Microwaves recorded from the South Pole fire-hissing salvos through and around the muddy piano, and Tyranny’s mainframe programming peppers the audio with sluggish echoes and spastic squeals.

This collision of anything and everything dates the performance back to the heady Fluxus days, when La Monte Young and company were so ahead of the game that contemporaries couldn’t even muster a backlash for some time. Krumm and Tyranny were in the thick of it, absorbing influences that surface throughout Formations. Combining elements of Cage’s aleatoric composition, Young’s drone sensibilities, and the technical know-how of early electronic pioneers, Formations exceeds the sum of its inspirations. Krumm and Tyranny were creating art, with all the brashness and belligerence that entails. The boundary-breaking confidence of this record is something to behold.
[Bryan Berge]

The Noisettes
Three Moods of the Noisettes EP
[Low Altitude, 2006]

The EP's title explains its objective, but it's a more cohesive four songs than you might expect. The band relies on Shingai Shoniwa's voice, which is equally at home in garage rock, classic rock, blues, or soul (all of which feed into the band's sound, leading to tunes that are both arty and gutsy). The punk snarls and blues growls meld into their own thing, a smearing of formal awareness covering a restrained aggression. Shoniwa's voice and the band's flexibility will earn critical acclaim, but the mix of high and low impulse should earn the group mainstream success as well (assuming the full-length lives up to the EP).
[Justin Cober-Lake]

Be Here to Love Me: A Film about Townes Van Zandt
DVD
[Palm Pictures, 2006]

This grim, compelling documentary tracks the troubled life and times of "songwriter's songwriter" Townes Van Zandt, the country-folk genius who could have expanded beyond his devoted cult following had he not obsessively pursued a sort of Rimbaud-by-way-of-Hank-Williams course of self-destruction. Director Margaret Brown adopts a more standard formal approach than The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack, which took on a comparable subject from a more personal vantage point; if she lets Van Zandt's chilling "Waiting Around to Die" play one time too many, hammering home an obvious theme, she also secures engaging testimony from a variety of sources, from the expected (Steve Earle, Willie Nelson, etc.) to the less predictable (Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley). Most valuable is her extensive footage of performances, home movies, and interviews, showing Van Zandt practically begging for his impending doom in the 1970s, then patiently swimming toward it through an ocean of booze for twenty more years. In a defining moment, an interviewer asks whether all his songs are sad; no, replies Van Zandt, some of them are hopeless.
[Whitney Strub]

Voxtrot
Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives EP
[Cult Hero, 2006]

Nothing on this EP hits like "Raised By Wolves," but it's all solid. In fact, it’s so bouncy and accurate that I almost wish there was a failure somewhere. Each of the five tracks shows good songcraft, a balance of emotion, and technical execution, but none of them are especially memorable. "There is some beauty in the thing that makes you sweat" epitomizes the joy and dedication you can hear in Ramesh Srivastava's art, but it's also not quite something you'll grab as your message board quote. Voxtrot's still a group to keep an eye on, but right now it sounds like one that's looking for a statement.
[Justin Cober-Lake]

V/VM 365
“The Kid Plays in the Sun” (030406)
[V/VM, 2006]

V/VM’s continuing free mp3 output of at least one a track a day is still spitting out classics. Here’s another sampling that covers some recommended picks. Try the label link above for access to the whole shebang.

“The Kid Plays in the Sun” is yet another first quarter peak for the ongoing V/VM download machine. Continuing the backwater ultramodern streak from last month, this spooky little shuffler is a crusty-eyed drum patterned discharge from the future. Additional percussion comes midway, courtesy of some brief tinkering with pots and cutlery, which sits oddly with an unkind bass line hum breathing on the verge of ventolin assistance. The song’s cultivated air of pixelated blood-flecked garroting is convincingly pitch-dark. Even with its tattered electronic demo vibe, “The Kid Plays in the Sun” still totally out-bleaks most audio that accompanies modern horror/slaughter.
[Scott McKeating]