AUSFLUG 30.4.18 1. Mai, Geld, Kapital, Marx

Billy Bao  Dialectics of Shit LP (Parts Unknown)
Billy Bao  Fuck Separation 10” (S-S)
Billy Bao  Accumultion EP (Xerox Musik)
Billy Bao shot to micro-stardom wit’ a bullet last year on the strength
of a stunningly powerful guitar-freakout 7” whose enormous sound was
only slightly mitigated by the virtual impossibility of tracking a copy
down. Well, here comes an appropriately apologetic deluge of what we
used to call in The Industry “sonic fuckery.” The mysterious
conglomerate that revolves around Mr. Mattin (no first names please) has
managed to hit all the marks, and not just on the level of mere vinyl
format (well, no 6” flexi releases … yet), while simultaneously
functioning on three almost totally distinct stylistic planes. In order,
from small to big: The 7” sounds like the EP that Harry Pussy never
released on the Bad Vugum label. It’s 10 short bursts of squall and
screaming that functions as the true successor to all those early 80s
hardcore EPs that packed a similar number of songs onto a single
platter; and it plays at 45 rpm! Apparently the theme of the record is
reflected in the title, in that the songs are supposed to pile up the
phlegm and sturm as the thing plays through but I have to say that until
I was told this it didn’t really register. Anyhow, it’s really fresh and
doesn’t get old fast, unlike “real” hardcore, soooo, next we have the
10” and here is something else entirely. Honestly. BB sits down in a
candle-lined, eggcrate-shrouded studio cave and just jams out two
sidelong modern stoner-metal-jamz that echo no band that I am currently
familiar with. I find myself glancing back over to my older Earth
titles, hell, their first couple of obscuro EPs, to find a similar
touchstone. I admit, I’m not up on indie metal moderne, but this No Wave
metal of Billy Bao’s is enough to make me think twice about my reflexive
boycott of Boris and Sun 0)))-- maybe I am missing something. If Greg
Ginn had heard this in 1984, we’d have yet another o/p SST product to
vainly scour the understock for, but this is available in the actual
here and now. And, upon closer listen, the title of the damn thing
starts to resonate, I think they are slowly combining and re-forming two
songs at the same time on this. Clever apes. Now I feel like I failed a
math quiz the first time a round, and now I’m going back over my
scribblings and spotting my errors in the polynomials. What-ev-er, the
concept is not as fascinating as the stuttering sonics anyhow, gimmie
another beer and fuck Mr. Whitaker-Connolly and his fucking geometry
proofs. Finally, their LP, of which the only truly negative thing I can
weakly conjure is that the title is kinda dum. On this record, Billy Bao
takes the No Wave that dominates the 7” and infects the 10”, along with
the metallic churn and the dead-lunged vocals, and adds another
dimension: They’re actually a noise band. A couple of tracks on this
have “imperfections” built into them, “skips” and harsh static and wot
not, that had me out of my stuporous languor and over to the rec player
in no time … fuckers. That’s way more upsetting than Whitehouse
instructing me to rape the next door neighbor’s 10-year old daughter
(purely conceptual critical trick there, since no actual children seem
to live in my neighborhood). But when Billy Bao isn’t making me blow
nonexistent fluff off my needle, they’re swamping my stereo with a
sickly twenty-generations-removed blues vomit that recalls nothing so
much as a Civil War-era hospital orderly absently humming to himself as
he gathers up hundreds of severed limbs for disposal. It’s violently
dissociative in the most life-affirming way, and the only rough
comparisons I can honestly make to are the much-missed Scando gorillas,
Brainbombs. All in all, these three releases are the early contenders to
make 2008 the Year of Billy Bao.  —RW

Etrange Ressac

Le compagnon idéal du disque de Minitel est à mon sens le 45t de Billy Bao “Accumulation” sorti sur Xerox Musik. 10 titres d’une minute, 5 par face. Une pochette noir & blanc qui dit tout sur l’absurdité de l’accumulation (tous les 45 tours chroniqués ici par exemple…). Dès la face B c’est la loi martiale, les bottes, le bitume, un grognement à peine étouffé dans un silence étourdissant. De plus en plus de bottes. Des tambours. Mais les grognements se font plus insistants. Face au mur. Au mur de la face B où le chaos est là. Les flammes, le désordre, la confusion sourde. Les voix graves, happées, criantes, se mélangent comme lave en fusion. Puis coulent, s’arrêtent, recoulent. Incandescence. Destruction. Billy Bao.

Mass Media Distro (USA)

Truly evil and chaotic "music", mind blowing improvisational hardcore
noise. This is more scathing than the new DYSTOPIA more brutal than any
grind I've heard, BILLY BAO puts it well..."there is no rewind button
for your desperation". Brutal and downright frightening.

In their music Billy Bao, a Bilbao-based band consisting of the singer of the same name, guitarists Mattin and Xabier Erkizia and drummer Alberto Lopez, blend harsh rock-informed noise with an explicitly political approach and rigid formal interests. This 7” on the Xerox Music label from London is concerned with the concept of accumulation, both as one of capitalism’s central principles and as formal principle that structures the release as a whole, its visual and acoustic aspects.

Each of the ten tracks, titled “1” to “10”, is exactly one minute long, with the music getting denser from track to track, just as the recording quality changes from mono on side one to stereo on side two. The first track presents a highly reduced repetitive structure and with each track a new element is added, so that the music gradually grows into dense blasting noise that ultimately drowns all structural remains (although supposedly still repetitive) in feedback and seemingly out-of-control guitars, percussion and vocal howls. Billy Bao’s vocal style is vehement, yet not outright aggressive but rather developing an effective theatricality with prolonged vowels and choked screams that render his grim statements even more urgent. He offers harsh, condensed prose, that drastically exposes capitalism’s (mal-)functioning, and crosses fatalism with imagined acts of hostility. By track three or four trying to understand the lyrics is futile, but they are printed on the cover, arranged in a chart, which illustrates that the number of words increases by one with each line and thus, of course, recurs to the principle of accumulation once more.

The musical intensity and conceptual coherency that distinguish this release as a whole result in remarkable energy. While totally occupying the listeners’ attention and flooding their perception with sounds it also allows, or even demands, the distance necessary for reflection. Billy Bao’s work is a noteworthy exploration of the possibilities of politicizing sound – drastic beyond fashionable signs of criticality (which of course doesn’t mean that fashion cannot or will not change).

Magnus Schaefer

Bilbotik dator Billy Bao. Disko kontzeptualak egiten dituen R&R talde zaratatsua da. Gitarrak muturrera eramaten dituzte, bateria erritmo minimalekin lagunduta. Hala, Accumulation binilozko singlean, grind core-tik hurbil dagoen minutu bateko hamar kantu bildu dituzte, eta doinu guztiak bata bestearen gainean metatzen dira. Fuck Separation, binilozko hamar hazbetekoak, aldiz, diskoaren bi aldeetan banaturiko kantua jasotzen du. Gitarrek intentsitatez beteriko kantu amaigabea josten dute, mugak suntsitzeko.

- Julen Azpitarte -

#18 (Deutschland, by Magnus Schaefer)






Dusted Magazine

Billy Bao
Accumulation 7” EP
(Xerox Musik)

Pretty irritating little platter courtesy of our man from Lagos. Ten one-minute tracks, with side one only feeding into one stereo channel. Each successive track adds an element to the mix, until the end the “song” in question is completely obscured. Other of Billy Bao/Mattin’s output has had at least the essence of listenability. He/they don’t give a shit with this one, and I’d almost say it’s to their credit, only this is not the type of single you’ll want to play more than a few times.
(www.mattin.org/Billy_Bao.html)

Saturday, 28 June 2014

'Accumulation'
Billy Bao
2008

Review by Brayden Bagnall

Genre/s: Noise Rock, No Wave
For Fans Of: Coughs, White Suns, DNA, Swans, Boredoms

Billy Bao are a noise rock band who hail from San Francisco, and are named after their singer, who is apperently from Lagos, Nigeria. Cool.
Also the band have stated that they don't care about copyright, and ecourage bloggers (such as myself) to share their music. Cool x2.
Accumulation is a surprisingly accurate description for such an abrupt title. The structure for this EP is literally laid out before you on the cover - lyrics and all - with ten songs that begin and mono and converge into stereo at the middle. What isn't explained is that each song is only one minute long, and are practically identical - except each new track adds a new layer, tying in the theme of Accumulation. Neat, huh?
While hearing the same song 10 times may sound boring and a little futile, it really isn't - at least in the case of this EP. Building off the thumping bass and drum lines on the first track, each addition brings a new element of chaos to the mix - more guitars, more vocals, more drums and more noise just grinding against each other for sonic superiority. You're basically listening to this band become progressively more unhinged and manic as Accumulation progresses, and it begs the question - are they evolving or devolving with each passing track?

TRACKLISTING:
1. Accumulation
2. Of Frustration
3. Accumulation Of Capital
4. Their Bank Accounts Increase
5. A Revolution Detonates In Your Head
6. Bring Them Crisis, Fuck Their Future
7. Nothing To Lose, Your Future Is Fucked
8. There Is No Rewind Button, Your Future Is Fucked
9. Burning Your Skin In Front Of The Police Station
10. While Watching Their Stock Rise, Your Miserable Fucking Life Dies