www.myspace.com/motionturnsiton

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The Silent Ballet gives an 8/10!

As everything speeds by, painting a blurred and shifting stained glass of keyboard solos and guitar wails, our train changes velocities in loud thumping [...]]]> A few new reviews are up for Motion Turns It On‘s new album, Kaleidoscopic Equinox (out Feb 16 via Chocolate Lab Records).

www.myspace.com/motionturnsiton

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The Silent Ballet gives an 8/10!

As everything speeds by, painting a blurred and shifting stained glass of keyboard solos and guitar wails, our train changes velocities in loud thumping rhythms of prog-tastic elegance and precision, leading our ears into tense freak-outs as easily as it crosses noise-powered electronic bridges into sweet melodies and meditative space-rock freedom. -continue reading

The Decibel Tolls

The typical snakey guitar lines you’d hear in, say, Don Caballero is replaced with insane fuzz and sci-fi sounds reminiscent of Raymond Scott.  Motion Turns It On is some of the finest tape echo-heavy ADHD garage prog I’ve heard since Hella. -continue reading

29-95

More than a great post-rock record, Kaleidoscopic Equinox is a way forward for the genre: out of the lonely, plodding, echo-filled doldrums, into the neon frenzy of the urban night. -continue reading

[sic] Magazine

This album is akin to the bastard offspring of Mothers Of Invention-era Zappa and Daevid Allen-era Gong, with some of the more bizarre qualities of Mahavishnu heaped on top of the sensibilities of dance-proggers Ozric Tentacles and with a curt nod in the direction of those kings of organised chaos, Broken Social Scene. -continue reading

Redefine Magazine

Bizarre math rock drumming beats from Steve Smith and time signature changes are the keys here. The guitars echo The Mars Volta’s initial days, spastic and in your face. But not in such a way that is ultimately uncomfortable or condescending. Vocalists Andres Londono and William Kenny use their vocal chords as just another realm to the madness, layering distorted and non-intelligible lyrics all over. -continue reading

You can’t really tell, but Matt is playing bass pedals with his feet [...]]]> This live video of The Houston Brothers playing a cover of “18″ by Monroe Mustang was recorded at Snug Harbor in Charlotte, NC on November 21. It’s a resounding example of how the brothers, Justin and Matt, tackle multi-instrumental duties live.

You can’t really tell, but Matt is playing bass pedals with his feet as well as singing and playing guitar and Justin is somehow coordinating one arm to play the drums and the other to play the keyboard.

The Houston Brothers’ new album, The Archer is set to be released digitally on January 26 via Chocolate Lab Records. You can stream the album here.

They gave it a 6.5 rating, which I’m assuming is out of a possible 6.6 points?

Artistic imagination, poetry, references, to begin from the [...]]]> In keeping with the string of international Clock Hands Strangle reviews popping up this month, I’d like to share the rough Babelfish translation from Italy’s Rootshighway.it review posted recently.

They gave it a 6.5 rating, which I’m assuming is out of a possible 6.6 points?

Artistic imagination, poetry, references, to begin from the cover, that they describe l’ interesting songwriting of Todd Portnowitz, in all probability l’ arm better than this quintet than Melbourne (Healthy, null to that to make with the far Australian earth) that musically it seems instead to place itself along a strengthened language Indian rock, many times over examined in depth in these years. All the here limit of their according to job for the Chocolate Lab (label that numbers in its row also Andy Yorke, brother of the most famous Thom and already leader of the Unbelieveable truth), from the onlooker tito it in Italian, Detached, evidently other callback to a lirismo that not difetta of inspirations ” alte”. In the same one title track it is pulled in dance Walt Whitman, more ahead c’ it is space for the English poet Keats, while Portnowitz, voice stridula and material from folksinger ” dylaniato” , it designs history d’ love improbable between statues that they are animated in a museum (To Meteorite in to Museum), between a scultore and its same work (To Stone Questions Its Sculptor) or more concrete sentimentali incomprehensions in a great city (New York) and onirici travels between desert (Desert Music, tito it never programmatico how much) and space (The Moon Looks Back).

Rappresentazioni originates them not c’ it is doubt, than a more grinding music and less eterea of the previewed one are accompanied however to, seen the arguments: left from a matrix folk, still obvious moreover in ossute the cited wefts of to to Meteorite in to Museum and Stone Questions Its Sculptor, the Clock Hands Strangle see again their sources of inspiration according to typical trajectories dell’ today’s Indians rock, with vaguely psichedelico a chitarristico sound, zoppicante and openings POP (you see also the solarità of contrast created dall’ I use of the breaths, with the trombone of Cristian Duran in beautiful extension in the end of Maria), arriving to lambire also a vague sentore alternatives country with Eve of Halloween.

In all this l’ impression that is gained some is of band a descent in its time, with all the pregi and the defects of who are aligned to a style without to reveal of unknown details. There are small ” follie” in the distance of the Clock Hands Strangle, between which a simple Instrumental, connection between l’ opening of Detached and the sound grungy of Desert Music, but also between the chitarristici releases of a As Is from fremiti nearly power the POP or, for back, between a little neurotic shunting lines of The Moon Looks Back l’ effect is that one of a band still in tries of personality. It did not have to find, for Todd Portnowitz could always dischiudersi a career in hermit, c’ it is from betting to us.

3 out of 5 stars (is universally undertsood)

Thus, that openings and at the same time title number bangs nicely; [...]]]> I ran across this review at a Dutch site, Altcountry.nl. I’m not fluent in Dutch so I used Babel Fish to translate. The translation is funny, but I see some good stuff in there!

3 out of 5 stars (is universally undertsood)

Thus, that openings and at the same time title number bangs nicely; transverse rattling rocks, larded with what weirde tempo rotations. Clock Hands Strangle deliver right a very well visiting card. That level can continue the vijftal Florida on Distaccati (Chocolate laboratory record/Sonic Rendezvous) considerable well. Passionate cowpunken the five, varied under the guidance of warbler/gitarist Todd Portnowitz, there lively on separately, with desertrock and street band music; in that sense Clock Hands do thus alternatively think Strangle of Violent Femmes and Meat Puppets. Especially the strange songstructuren of last ring through in Distaccati. Striking thus the sometimes heavily incited electric jet ears are which regularly softly clash on harmonica and acoustic jet ear – To A Meteorite in A museum and A Stone Questions Its Sculptor are in that respect pareltjes and beautiful songtitels moreover. trombone twinges, barrelhousepiano and chopping battle jet ears give to this elftal sharp, contagious songs to further colour.

Read original untranslated review: www.altcountry.nl/blog/2009/11/clock-hands-strangle/

Clock Hands Strangle‘s long-awaited Daytrotter.com session is up now and features an early version of “Morning Rumors,” which will appear on an upcoming EP, as well as “As Is,” “Distaccati” and “Desert Music,” which all appear on Distaccati.

Check it out here!

www.myspace.com/clockhandsstrangle

from volume 04 issue 02 // admin

Clock Hands Strangle: The Passion of Dispassion

Clock Hands Strangle: The Passion of Dispassion

Words: Evan Tokarz

Artwork: Courtesy of Clock Hands Strangle

Clock Hands Strangle explore detachment in their new album, Distaccati. Thanks to a frontman who loves modernist literature, Fellini films, and Bob Dylan, only a few moments go by listening to the album before you quickly realize that this is not a generic band making generic music.

Lead singer and songwriter Todd Portnowitz thinks of Clock Hands Strangle as a literary project. Like one of his major influences, Bob Dylan, he tries to center each track on the lyrics. For the band, the music is secondary, and used to draw out feelings that can’t be expressed in words.

“We’ll use any style we can to get across what we’re trying to do lyrically,” he says.

True to the literary influences, Portnowitz counts the esteemed Italian director Federico Fellini as one of the band’s influences. Fellini influenced the album’s title through La Dolce Vita, a film in which the character Steiner makes a modernistic comment about living outside of passion.

“It’s the idea of killing your personality,”  Portnowitz says about the album’s title. “It’s about asking how much of your self should be in the album, and how much should be objective.”

Portnowitz himself speaks Italian, having minored in the language at Gainesville’s University of Florida. At UF, Portnowitz majored in Literature, the influence of which shows in some of the lyrics. For example, on the title track, he sings, “Walt Whitman laid his blanket next to me/and said, ‘The more you know the smaller you grow/You may remain fat and sane/or follow me.’”

It’s clear Portnowitz has read a few books. The lyrics draws from dense sources – his recent readings include Anton Chekhov, Aristotle, and the The Life of Reason by George Santayana, the latter of which features passages such as, “It may be said, however, that principles and external objects are interesting only because they symbolise further sensations, that thought is an expedient of finite minds, and that representation is a ghostly process which we crave to materialise into bodily possession.”

Hmm, hmm. Yes, exactly. Wait – what?

Some of the songs, however, are about simpler ideas, such as trying to reach equilibrium in times of stress. This is the case on “Ode to Green,” a song that mixes science and philosophy. For the song, “green” is the equilibrium point, the middle. Red and blue are the polarized ends of the light spectrum: anger and sadness. It’s a paean  to calm, to leveling out.

“The lyrics on there are talking about no more blue, no more red – getting away from very drastic emotions. Moving away from extremes,” Portnowitz says.

Hailing from the 321 area code and beaches of Melbourne, Florida, the band has grown to love venues like The Social and New World Brewery. The band played throughout the state on 2007’s tour with Do Make Say Think.

Even though all the members of the band are from the South, sometimes the states of the Confederacy still surprise them.

“When we did a short Halloween Tour, we were driving through Alabama in the middle of summer and there was cotton everywhere – no green anywhere, just white,” says Portnowitz.

The lyrics of the twangy “Cotton” describe the event: “It’s cotton fields on/both sides of the road/Hey, driver, slow down/Roll down the windows/White, white taste buds/on the green tongue of the earth/Lick the sunlight/Be jealous of the worms.”

Portnowitz says it’s impossible to pigeonhole the band in a certain genre, due to the unique way the band approaches songwriting – because each song has different lyrics and influences, it follows that each song will have a different vibe and feel.

However, if he had to, he would describe the band as the opposite of a jam band, since they try to edit out so much. He describes Clocks Hands Strangle as heavily influenced by elements of pop, ‘60s classic rock, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and even jazz. In fact, he says Joni Mitchell influenced him more than anyone else did. “That’s the reason I started writing songs, because her songwriting is so well done,” Portnowitz says.

As for a band philosophy? “We like to take things seriously and take responsibility. We’re very concerned with doing something worthwhile, not just playing something because we want to go have fun. We do have fun, but we definitely take things seriously.”

Distaccati is out now on Chocolate Lab Records. Clock Hands Strangle are currently writing and recording new material.