the sediment club press
"Earlier this year, Kurt Gottschalk described seeing 4 young people -- who looked like they were born in 1990 -- playing music in the vein of No New York 1978. Could these teenagers even know about Teenage Jesus & The Jerks? he might have wondered. The group was opening for Brown Wing Overdrive at Cake Shop, and they called themselves The Sediment Club.
Oh! I realized that was WFMU / Free Music Archive volunteer Austin's band, and -- to answer Kurt's question (which I get the sense had already been answered by the end of the Sediment Club's Cake Shop set) -- Yes, they know their shit from James Chance to James Brown, everything under the Sun Ra. I found this out first-hand because Austin spent much of last summer digitizing WFMU live sessions for the FMA by the likes of The Magic Carpathians, Hat City Intuitive, and Alan Vega. On top of that, his parents played in groups like the Bush Tetras and the Voidoids, so they probably have some of the coolest record collections around. And the entire Sediment Club was excited to perform in the same WFMU live room that had recently played host to The Damned and Chrome Cranks (who Sediment Club member Amina cited as one of her favorite bands of all time!).
The Sediment Club meld their wide-ranging influences into something original and great in its own right. The group features Austin on guitar and vocals, Lazar on bass and accompanying vox, Jack on drums, and Amina on synth. They played ten originals plus covers of Pere Ubu/Rocket From The Tombs (Life Stinks mp3) and The Residents (Hello Skinny mp3). Download 'em here or listen in-context from the WFMU streaming archive.
All 10 Sediment Club originals are here on the FMA, and I decided to post this after hearing Panic Fun Berlin(mp3) on Brian Turner's show yesterday. Some of the songs had already been recorded, and will hopefully see an official release in the near future. Others were brand new, including and Derail Clean Slate God (mp3), on which Austin trades his skronk guitar for a contact-mic'ed hand saw run through a delay pedal.
Sediment Club is playing August 29th at Brooklyn's Market Hotel. Details here on their myspace, along with streaming audio from their forthcoming studio recording..."  // WFMU's Beware of the Blog


Soft Spot Records released a great reissue of AA's 'Essential Entertainment' a while back, which I'm surprised to see they still have copies available? So if you think the Sediment Club is another band from days of old new wave that deserved a rerelease you wouldn't be half wrong. The first few listens of this single I was convinced The Sediment Club was another brilliant unearthed band I'd never heard of from the early 80's. How they are pulling this off so sincerely in 2010 is a god damn accomplishment. Like the first time I heard Gang of Four's 'Entertainment' it's so completely jarring in arrangement and so awesomely nonrhythmic with back and forth vocals and organ? way. I want to hear just how the hell this is working so well over and over. Why is no one else doing this?
The A-Side 'Panic Berlin Fun' is a bunch of elements playing separately but coming together in such a kick in the ass reaction to the no-fi garage punk scene. It's yelling/spoken vocals repeated, crisp barely distorted guitar, with a solid bassline waiting for this jangly whammy bar unplayable riff to keep you guessing. The organ works off this mess of guitar sounds so well. The title of this track reminds me of a store awning on 14th street, 'Funny Cry Happy Gift' it makes no sense grammatically, forget the articles, blast the message out as simply as possible. This is completely out there on it's own in such a genius way.

'No More Earth' is a frank list of things that will be absent when it all ends. The guitar is so haphazard it's on a mission of it's own...it's eerie how much this could have been the best continuation in direction for Go4 that they never tried to explore.
No think tank / no septic tank / no thurston moore / not any more / No (more earth) no (more earth).
It ends with a countdown to 1, and the songs over, all they needed was 2 minutes to completely smash it all apart musically and forget the whole god damn world, to reinvent the direction of music.
An amazing debut single from this band I will definitely be trying to see on the 19th at 13 Thames Street in Brooklyn.

WFMU has a great piece about this band with a bunch of tracks from a recent station appearance...it's a shame what an amazing NYC music resource in free form programming I can't listen to continuously. It makes me want to have a walkman again, just to walk around and tune that shit in.
The Sediment Club are a 4-piece No Wave group from Brooklyn, New York. Their debut EP puts a modern and youthful spin on familiar post-punk tropes, bringing to mind the deranged and bizarrely catchy innovations of the Contortions and early Pere Ubu. Four songs filled with existential ranting, squirrely atonal guitars, and spastic keyboard stabbing atop hypnotic basslines and propulsive drums. Limited to 500 hand-numbered copies.
Get it from Soft Spot Records. // 7  i n c h e s blog