this is a double cassette with 4 bands, each gets their own side: Gang Wizard, Occasional Detroit,
Grey Skull, & Powdered Wigs. Out now on Scumbag.
,ang ^/izard
also on myspace.(showinfodar)
New one recorded
during our trip to Europe is out now:
this is a double cassette with 4 bands, each gets their own side: Gang Wizard,
Occasional Detroit,
Grey Skull, & Powdered Wigs. Out now on
Scumbag.
2 other recent Gang Wizard releases are Atlas of Cancer
12" & "I Remember You From the ParTy In Long Beach" 7"
Please click the images above to find ordering info.
In the early part of 2007 Gang Wizard toured Europe and
went to Florida for the first time,
here is a radio show we did on VPRO:
http://www.vpro.nl/programma
and here is video of us playing Fat Cat's Open Circuit Festival:
http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat
pictures of us in Europe:
http://deathbombarc.com/images/gang/opencircuit/gwOPEN.htm
our album Byzantine
Headache is out now
on Load Records: check out mp3 of
"don't let rep33 ever fuck with your facce"
from this album
get it at
LOAD
COMING SOON:
split cs w/ Rale on
Teenage Whore Tapes
(image below)
3" cdr on
Abandon Ship
3" cdr on
Phase!
cassingle on
Human Conduct
Everybody Turned Into A Baby
12" on
Pendu Sound
12" on Greentape, Lost Treasures of the Underworld,
olFactory, and tanzprocesz
a 7" on ????? feat a remix by Captain Ahab, image is below:
art by Max Gudmunson
Recent releases:
sorta
trying to figure out our discography lately... let us know what we missed
mp3 (from jeckyl loves hyde):
running with a halo in hand
mp3 (from live at long haul):.
e
mp3 (from live at long haul):.
f
mp3 (from split w/ d yellow swans):.
mens
Bio:
Kank Qixarth hoots, makes noise,
observes, yowls. Give a
walrus a stack of
Dead C, Pere Ubu, and Fushitsusha CD's, an amplifier that feeds back the
moment it is turned on, and convince it to mate with a leaky beanbag, and
you are not far from the Gang Wizard experience.
Kank Qixarth's commitment to incompetence is long-lasting and thorough.
Qnak Wixxxar's love for volume is robust and self-destructive. Www Wwww's
lack of social skills is almost complete: they are capable of asking in a
slurred voice: "Would you like to do a split 7-inch?" Qan Qanqan's
live
show is ludicrous, occasionally brilliant, and usually painful for all
concerned. Gang Wizard is a load of sweet bullshit and this biography is a
load of sweet bullshit and this group of scary noiseniks are really just a
bunch of nerds who fill themselves with Ethiopian-food flatulence and go to
the Smell and rip out a giant amplified fart and expect you to like it.
Gang Wizard has more recordings than it knows what to do with. Most of them
are split 7"s put out with bands that have since been forgotten, put out
on
soft, flat-sounding lathe-cut vinyl. For some reason this glut of
recordings has created a sort of mystique. Some of the records are good,
some of them are terrible. Some of the records contain the exact same song
as other records; it is up to the listener to determine whether s/he has
been swindled. Gang Wizard's previous juggernaut _El Cortez Buy'y'a Drink_
was released on ten labels, including Ecstatic Peace, which has the
privilege of releasing the newest GW record _Jeckyll Loves Hyde_.
Knaq Qniksith is a potlatch for the heads of three notorious record labels:
Blackbean & Placenta Tape Club, Deathbomb Arc, and Tape Mountain. Gang
Wizard's guitarist is a lisping patriarch who wears flip-flops and worships
Steely Dan. Gang Wizard's other guitarist and drummer look like identical
scrawny twins and met when Jake sold Christopher a copy of "Congo
Bongo" for
the Intellivision. Many other people followed: the hairy guy in the shark
costume, the two seamstresses, the woman with the banjo. Nerds! Ganb
Wibbard is from California. Gang Wizard's live show can be heard from blocks
away. Gang Wizard is a snarling ocelot with a toy piano. Gggg Gggggg will
continue whether you listen or not.
Band Photos: (under construction. see http://www.pbase.com/pistolswing in the meantime)
Press:
Dusted review of Byzantine Headache
================================
On its previous recordings, the 14-strong Los Angeles
catharto-core collective Gang Wizard sounded a lot spazzier than this.
Byzantine Headache is, at least by noise scene standards, an ambitious
record, packed with slow-cooking long-form numbers, short on tossed-off
digressions, and played with both confidence and abandon. It showcases a Gang
Wizard that’s paid its debt to pure noise, and is headed somewhat purposefully
toward… not the formalist aggression of Lightning Bolt, exactly, but something a
lot heartier, more complex and more intriguing than what most of its
contemporaries are doing.
Byzantine Headache’s best
songs start from simple structures, usually the sort of drones and rhythms that
flow from construction sites across the nation. As this repetition builds to a
simmering hypnosis, they bring on the feral hollerin’, the ear-searing lead
guitar crunch and the clamor of whatever noisemakers might be lying around that
day. A pervasive, unselfconscious sense of humor gives it a humanist spice that
a lot of these records don’t have. The result sounds more like a brutal
garage-rock hangover than any pseudo-doom sludge or new-no-wave antagonism. But
it never consigns itself to any camp.
Yes, “The Pretty Ape” is a grating tangle of speed-freak cartoon-character
bleating, guttural bellowing, and naught else. It’s hard to miss that one. But
it only lasts about a minute and a half. The initial layouts for “Soft Crust
From 00,” “Another Misplayed Endgame” and “When the Song Begins” are damned near
bluesy in their moody, repentant simplicity. And those all last a damn sight
longer (the latter two are in the 10-minute neighborhood), which gives them all
the time they need to develop. On these songs, Gang Wizard sounds less like a
noise band and more like a particularly adventurous rock band.
Anyone can stick a Q-Tip too far in,
but getting a good
sunburn takes some patience. And those needles can signal a wild variety of
sensations, even when they’re pegged in the red.
If you’re the sort of person who enjoys an occasional “is it ‘harsh noise’ or is
it ‘power electronics’?” argument, “Metal Coax Concrete Warm String Plastic
Tithe, Remember Dials” is a potential argument-settler for either side. It
immixes dizzy ranting, repetitive digital beeps and a dirty, organic swirl of
drums and guitar, and does equally proud by Throbbing Gristle, the Dead C, and
long-suffering, tilt-prone pinball machines everywhere.
Like any good, adventurous rock band, Gang Wizard flaunts a catholic musical
vocabulary, defines pat classification at every turn, and never sounds a whit
pretentious. When you’ve got a real monster of a record on your hands, debating
its particulars is both amusing and pointless.
By Emerson Dameron
Wire Issue 244 June 2004
Size Matters by Byron Coley
=====================
...Split release of the issue this time has to be the one shared
betwen Gang Wizard and D Yellow Swans. Live In The Men's and Women's
Restrooms The Placebo, Arcata, CA (Deathbomb arc/Collective Jyrk/Tape
Mountain DBA034 3" CD) is just what it says. The groups were touring
California together and ended up one night at a weird community
center in arcata, where they decided to try something a little
different. They set up for acoustic sets, and performed them from
inside the bathrooms of the joint, to get the full effect of the
lovely tile acoustics. Anyone familiar with the approaches they both
take - they rage in rather different way, usually, but the guitar-
groan and electro-puh they both offer is aggro heavy - will be a bit
surprised. But the surprise is good. There is the same kind of
shimmer here that one gets when, say, Sun City Girls make acoustic
loom work part of their schtick. Enormity, strangeness and charm, all
wrapped up in one shitty package.
Arthur July 2004
Bull Tongue by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore
=====================
"For some reason, we still think of Gang Wizard as a band with its
basic thrust in punk muddery. Why this continues to be our sad lot I
dunno. 'Cause their new split eponymous LP with Algebrassiere (Black
Bean and Placenta/Breath Mint/Deathbomb Arc/etc) is a gush of air
that is free from all known styles. There is talk (in some quarters)
that the Algebrassiere side is the free-er of the two, but such
conversation is just a lotta bull! Show us one single non-destroyed
form on the Gang Wizard side and we'll gladly eat your hat. Sure, the
tools that these young Californians use are "rock" tools, but the
stuff they get out of them is purist munge. It varies between
accreted noise-form (feedback laced, natch) and the kinda free-plonk
that makes hot ducks wiggle from sea to shining sea. And truly, they
seem to be introducing some new instruments into the mix as well,
although the sonics are too crabby for us to get anything like a firm
handle on what the hell it is they're actually doing. Beside pleasing
the bejeezus outta listeners, that is. Algebrassiere are from
Baltimore and their blow is sweet and weird in a way that almost
recalls some of Smegma's early early crudity. Stylish!"
web press:
Dusted
review of split w/ Friends Forever
Blastitude review of Robert, 11/98 and
other hits
cassette
Blastitude review of El Cortez Buy Y' A
Drink cd
Signum article on the 7th Annual Olympia
Experimental
Music Festival with many Gang Wizard photos.
Sunny Day's Out review of Live at
Longhaul
Infoshop CDr
Want more info on Gang Wizard? Want it all! Want to
know the secret
of all secrets!
Then join the Gang Wizard yahoo group today!
(also, good way to contact us)