V/A- Records to Ruin Any Party (Voodoo Rhythm)

“Be TRASH and HATE the world!”

Led by the mysterious and obviously quite insane Beat Man, the Switzerland based Voodoo Rhythm is one of my favorite record labels, ground zero for the most primitive rock n’ roll, R&B, and slopabilly bands in the world. All their releases come packaged in beautiful digipaks with artwork that’s part pulp novel, part haunted carnival poster, and the hype sheets, written in Beat Man’s signature Swisslish, is some of the greatest yellow journalism I’ve ever read- according to him, the Zorros “Are sleazy elevator music played in a incredible lo budges porn movie”, and as far as the Monsters’ album goes, “nothing except the sleeve has a nice and positive touch”, because “this is negative to the edge. If you go for garage punk with power of today’s youth against nature generation, than this wax and plactic’s for you!” I mean, how do you argue with come-ons like that? And then there’s the music. Mutant rockabilly with fiddles. Jug bands playing funeral hymns. Screeching garage punk bands covering Europe and the Bee Gees. Apartment wrestling soundtracks. Swiss country and western music. New Mexican rockers from the 50’s that may not actually exist. It’s all here, all the craziest, most implausible bands on the planet. And the wildest part is, they’re always good. In fact, the jug/funeral band, the Dead Brothers, just might be one of my favorite bands of all time. Anyway, there’s so much great stuff in the VR catalog that they finally got around to putting together a label comp, just so you can get privy to all the madness they have to offer. On “Records to Ruin Every Party” you get everything from the frenzied early 60’s rockabilly of Jerry Nixon, the creepy tuba bleat of the Dead Bros, the froggy voiced, organ pumping freak rock of the Monsters, the drunk-punk gospel of Reverend Beat Man, the fuzzpunk savagery of Get Lost, and the slop-country of the Waltzloves, among many others. And in between tracks, there’s trailers for old hot rod movies. It’s like visiting a very musical mental hospital. To be honest, I’m not even sure how you get a copy of this, since I think it’s a promo-only kinda deal, but hell, yr crafty, ain’t ya? If you don’t already own any of the VR releases, you really have to pick this up, and find out what you’ve been missing. And no, you can’t have mine. I need it. I’ve got a party to ruin.