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AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP |
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Here's the story from Todd Trick Knee: I'd heard inklings about AKE around the Green Bay area, as there was a small but devoted crew who believed them to be the best thing since sliced pizza, but it took a while before I actually got a chance to see them. Then, as now, they play out infrequently, a few times a year in Milwaukee and Green Bay. This was back before the Piranhas and Lost Sounds and that keyboard ilk were all the rage, and I have to admit that I'd never seen anything quite like it: keyboard squalls mixed into a train wreck of Devo- & Styrene- and other early Cleveland-isms, on which rode Keith's track announcer screams, monkey noises and 'tard coughs. Keith flipped out the entire time, nearly branded the audience with his walker and forced most of the crowd to the exits. The rest of us were entranced, and I've been an AKE fan ever since that day. After a few years, and right around the time that keyboards were suddenly (again) "the rage," AKE dropped their keyboardist and went to a twin guitar attack more in the vein of Alice Cooper/Halo of Flies. For a very brief period of time, AKE and Keith's other band, Sagger, were invited to play a good number of shows at Milwaukee's garage den The Cactus Club. In no time, Keith's "take no prisoners" honesty and allergy to scene (or any other) politics got him kicked out of Sagger and taken off the Cactus Club rotation. After a short time in the (great) Squish, AKE went back to business as usual, and brought keyboardist Maciek back in the fold. I decided it was time for them to put something out, and it took great effort to convince these outsiders to every scene that it was worth the effort, as bad breaks seem part of the overall AKE mystique. AKE recorded 'Trunk Lunker' themselves, did the artwork and had basic control over everything, which is the only way you can get a peep out of 'em. They did a great job, and this album is even better than I expected. No one's ever pinned down what this band sounds like, because they sound like AluminumKnotEye, but here are some labels laid out by crits & fans: Devo, Chrome, Residents, Halo of Flies, Styrenes, Pagans, Alice Cooper, and so on. "Scales in the Tub" is as catchy as they've ever managed, a swampy Scientists/Cramps mess; "Stiff" was one of the songs that was in their first setlist all those years back, here in a more streamlined "contempo" AKE style; "My Life As an Eel" is statement of purpose and a barnburner of future primitivism; and "Once Upon a Time in the Midwest" is an epic, pastoral rocker, a new direction for these guys. The smells, sounds, mass-murderings and weirdo quirks of the rural Wisconsin landscape are all over this thing. "Green Bay is kinda like Cleveland!" Horicon Marsh, 1,000 dead carp, the light in the hunting tower, shotgun to my brain etc. ....welcome to Weskahnsin!"- Todd Trick Knee For fans of: Black Lips, Godheadsilo, Catholic Boys, Halo Of Flies, Unsane, Black Time, Scratch Acid, Piranhas, Lost Sounds, etc. LP on Dead Beat Records, CD on Trick Knee Productions |
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