jOoHSUhP - Two Reviews
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jOoHS UhP: 'Big' (jOoHSUhp Bandcamp)
So imagine this happened: Wayne's World has been mysteriously moved to below decks on the USCSS Starfreighter, Nostromo, where Brett and Parker hang out with Wayne and Garth, exchanging fart jokes, secret hand shakes and Grand Theft Auto hacks. It's a party where, when the Alien shows up, he brings along Face Huggers modified into Multi Chambered Hydraulic Turbo-Fusion CyberChill Dab-Ponics Bongs. Ripley, wearing a black tube top, camo pants, a pair of sick Nike’s, and a baseball hat with ‘BROOKLYN’ in big block letters across the front, arrives with a bag of pizza rolls, chili cheese fries, twinkies and Jonsey, her cat, who, unaccountably, is sporting a mohawk.
Oh, it's a party!
And if I were asked to sountrack this get down? I think I could do worse than suggest jOoHS UhP: 'Big'. (jOoHSUhP on Bandcamp).
jOoHS UhP is a tangle of 4 or 5 kids (actually, it's just two - but who knew!?!), who, I would guess, get together in someone’s basement, drink beer, compare skateboard scrapes and bruises, shit talk for an hour or so, and, then, inspired by one of them leaping up and yelling, 'My dick's so hot my pee feels cold', rummage around under the couch for a beat-up Roland or MicroKORG, plug in, hit record, and begin to assault their neighbor's ear drums and a variety of sine waves.
And it's a wild ride: here, it sounds like a Kraken caught in a closet with Raymond Scott and a rabid coyote; there, it blasts out amphetamine collages of noise with bursts of grunts, growls, frog croaks and bowel thumps.
There's a track, 'I'm Sorry,' that's a minute and a half of what sounds like an AI floor polisher going slowly mad in a dark hallway of the Overlook Hotel. Or ‘Black Cherry’ with a slow romilar roll, twangy, dragged out percussive thumps and a fuzzy, catatonic vocal layered over a sinewy trap beat and anchored by deep synth moans that burble up like something from a sea-sick whale. ‘Pretzels’ whangs against your head with a clatter of triphammer beats, industrial strength blarts and slow, queasy keyboard rumbles – while the singer sneers in a thick, greasy voice something about having pretzels in his eyes and having enough salt… oh, and garden gnomes!
Elsewhere, say on ‘Bitchin' In This Bitch’, they begin with some Depeche Mode perkiness laced with a high, clear, ringing icicle drip of tones that quickly morphs into a breathless race to jam in words and beats.
So imagine this happened: Wayne's World has been mysteriously moved to below decks on the USCSS Starfreighter, Nostromo, where Brett and Parker hang out with Wayne and Garth, exchanging fart jokes, secret hand shakes and Grand Theft Auto hacks. It's a party where, when the Alien shows up, he brings along Face Huggers modified into Multi Chambered Hydraulic Turbo-Fusion CyberChill Dab-Ponics Bongs. Ripley, wearing a black tube top, camo pants, a pair of sick Nike’s, and a baseball hat with ‘BROOKLYN’ in big block letters across the front, arrives with a bag of pizza rolls, chili cheese fries, twinkies and Jonsey, her cat, who, unaccountably, is sporting a mohawk.
Oh, it's a party!
And if I were asked to sountrack this get down? I think I could do worse than suggest jOoHS UhP: 'Big'. (jOoHSUhP on Bandcamp).
jOoHS UhP is a tangle of 4 or 5 kids (actually, it's just two - but who knew!?!), who, I would guess, get together in someone’s basement, drink beer, compare skateboard scrapes and bruises, shit talk for an hour or so, and, then, inspired by one of them leaping up and yelling, 'My dick's so hot my pee feels cold', rummage around under the couch for a beat-up Roland or MicroKORG, plug in, hit record, and begin to assault their neighbor's ear drums and a variety of sine waves.
And it's a wild ride: here, it sounds like a Kraken caught in a closet with Raymond Scott and a rabid coyote; there, it blasts out amphetamine collages of noise with bursts of grunts, growls, frog croaks and bowel thumps.
There's a track, 'I'm Sorry,' that's a minute and a half of what sounds like an AI floor polisher going slowly mad in a dark hallway of the Overlook Hotel. Or ‘Black Cherry’ with a slow romilar roll, twangy, dragged out percussive thumps and a fuzzy, catatonic vocal layered over a sinewy trap beat and anchored by deep synth moans that burble up like something from a sea-sick whale. ‘Pretzels’ whangs against your head with a clatter of triphammer beats, industrial strength blarts and slow, queasy keyboard rumbles – while the singer sneers in a thick, greasy voice something about having pretzels in his eyes and having enough salt… oh, and garden gnomes!
Elsewhere, say on ‘Bitchin' In This Bitch’, they begin with some Depeche Mode perkiness laced with a high, clear, ringing icicle drip of tones that quickly morphs into a breathless race to jam in words and beats.
My favorite, though, might be ‘No We Don't Wanna Make Good Music. We Tried And It's Boring’ where the boys throw in everything they got: slow-mo sexy vibe, a shit-ton of blips, bleeps, staggers and skitters, and, wouldn’t you know it, a drunk cowboy ramble that shades into a ferocious Capt Beefheart shouter.
What can I say?!?
‘Party on’!
*A quick note on production: I don’t know what these guys used to create and record the material here, but the sound is very good: clean (where it’s supposed to be); fuzzed out and dirty (where they want it); packed tight as the wire in a hand grenade with every bit of noise fit in like a puzzle and no pieces left over or jammed into the wrong spot. This release is clearly meant to be fast, fun and chaotic – which it is! Nevertheless, the whole package is put together with a fair amount of inventiveness and attention to detail and it’s interesting to take note of the casual professionalism that undergirds the silliness and makes it work. You know… Beavis and Butthead with mad skills.
I like the way they describe their sound themselves: ‘Beats so distorted you can't tell what the fuck is happening accompanied by over-compressed nonsense lyrics and other poorly mixed garbage. We got some good tracks too.’ ( https://joohsuhp.bandcamp.com/album/best-ovv-joohs-uhppppppp )
Yeah, they do!
@glasssrecords @joohsuhp
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jOoHS UhP: 'Juice. Feet. Milk.'
15 track album released 9-27-2022 on jOoHSUhp Bandcamp
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Dollar Store surrealists of sound, jOoHS UhP make a helluva clatter, mostly in a unique Anarcho-HipHop DNA strain all their own, ranging from something like Man Ray and Raymond Scott collaborating on the soundtrack for a Tex Avery animation of Duchamp's Cubist masterpiece, 'Nude Descending A Staircase (No. 2)' to that time a National Guard ammo dump caught fire on Uranus.
Sort of. But not quite. It is its own critter.
Blasting out piano plinks and brown notes with equal abandon, 'Juice. Feet. Milk.' is wildly inventive and extravagently entertaining, bursting at the seams with beats, blarts and bloopers. To my ear, there's a very welcome pitch of the kind of sonic overload and nosebleed, sledgehammer satire indulged in by Uncle Al back in the RevCo days of 'Beers, Steers and Queers'.
So, if you are intrigued by the notion of Bevis and Butthead helping the Beastie Boys pound out a cover of Throbbing Gristle's 'Hamburger Lady', then this buds for you.
Don't wait to hear it on the hydrogen jukebox in Mos Eisley's cantina -- snag it now:
jOoHSUhP on Bandcamp
