Dusted Reviews Artist: Pieters/Russell/Stapleton Album: Cold Sweat 7" Label: Ecstatic Yod Review date: Mar. 31, 2002

The 7” is a great format because it’s old. I don’t know how old and this 7” I hold in my hands here before me as I live and breathe isn’t old but only a few days or weeks or months but the format taken generally in a world-historical sense is older than say MP3 or DVD or CD or 8-track which might mean it’s less evolved or more pure but anyway when we reach absolute spirit we won’t need recorded music anyhow because we’ll all be singing to ourselves inside our head or with reason or within reason or beyond reason (without reason?) or something anyhow go ask Hegel as some others did Alice (but how tall is he?) anyhow it’s hard to find a wire recorder or a wax cylinder these days so you might as well buy a 7” or even this 7” especially if you’re a history major like me.

Also the 7” is small which means it’s portable. (Not potable! Get your damn mind out of the gutter. Anyway it’s solid not liquid or gas or plasma.) Is that a good thing? Well maybe if you have a portable record player or even a 7”man but they’re rare and rare means expensive. So maybe portability is a bad thing. But if you want to carry it with you from place to place without playing it in the places in between then maybe portability is a v. good thing. Anyway, small. Like the MiniDisc (now that’s a small format!) but not as small. 7” to be precise. Actually to be precise 6.9” (this one anyhow) which makes this one .1” better or .1” worse than an average 7” (unless the 7” industry like the candy bar industry shaves .1” to shave costs and 6.9” is industry standard so thus the 6.9” industry even if it’s a mouthful to say even if it does remind me of that great exchange in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure not the one about whether Rufus can play and he sez “A little” and then he starts wailing on the fretboard like a pro) depending on your choice above. (Didn’t choose? Get to it because it only gets harder from here.) Harder because I tricked you. Because you care about music not portability or the philosophical implicative vagaries of formatting. That’s why it gets harder. Because if you’re caring about music not formatting then size matters in a harder way. But which one? Area? Or circumference? Because grooves go in a spiral which is halfway between a trace of a circumference and a filling in of an area. For 7” diameter you have 3.5” radius thus 7p” and 12.25p sq.” respectively. p means pi means exactly 3.141592666666—out, Satan! Anyway a state once passed a law that made p exactly 3 so we have 21” and 36.75 sq.” worth of music, actually 20.7” and 35.7075 sq.” when you recall that x=6.9”, and taking the average to account for in-between ontological status of grooves we have approximately 28.20375 Ö2” worth of music times 2 because there are 2 sides. Minus the label in the middle but you can play that too, John Cage probably would have, so don’t actually subtract it. For that matter the hole in the middle, not that either. Do the math it all adds up to rock! Like I said a solid.

I could talk about the time it takes to play a 7” but I won’t because though there are things called 45s meant to be played at 45 rpm (revolutions per minute for those in the know) and things called 33s meant to be played at 33 rpm (ditto) I’m talking about 7”s and space not time and time can go at any rate you want that is any speed especially if you have pitch control so the time can be any. Like right now it’s 7:45 PM. But if I play this at this time tomorrow it’ll be 7:45 PM. Furthermore this 7” sounds the same at both speeds and both times, I know cuz I tried it except the tomorrow part.

So this 7”. First a digression. Australia as we all know is populated by ex-convict Britons. New Zealand on the other hand is populated by Flying Nuns and the Dead C. Back to this 7” which is populated by the Dead C as well that is at least Russell but also some guys Stapleton and Pieters and Russell (son of Russell).

So if you like the Dead C buy this…I mean, if you like the Sea and Cake buy this…I mean, if you like “The C in Cake” buy this…I mean, if you like Cake’s “In C” buy this…I mean I got it for free so you should too! Oh you want a review?

How’s this?

R. Meltzer once wrote, “(Tastes rather like beef Redd and the texture sure beats sushi!)” but he was writing about not rock but Foxx and not New Zealand or Australia but analingus and the other lingus (and not lingua or franca!). So I’ll write, “(Sounds rather like C Dead and no texture can beat kiwi!)”

Or this?

Murky gtr dronebuzz w/lil blots o’ drm solo action behind, then the murk thins and the drone speeds and the buzz bees and everything gets more rockist in a mostly theoretical sense. The flip’s got some freefloating screamsing w/o words to speak of vs. gtr spikedrones, all colliding like a freight train and a cargo ship both filled w/MARS-puke hot pants under order of martial law (the drms again). Except there’s no foghorn or lighthouse ’sides the music itself so these fools just keep going faster to deliver their precious cargo, kblam. [c/u 15]

Or this?

Crazy pops!

By Sam Frank

Read More View all articles by Sam Frank Find out more about Ecstatic Yod