"Anywhere USA" DVD (director: Chusy)

This is an odd little indie that features a cast of mostly non-actors from small towns. As a distinctly American portrait, this one is packed with backwoods rednecks, trailer-park denizens, shaggy stoners, racists, and damaged children. But that's not to say that director Chusy is judgmental. On the contrary, "Anywhere USA" cuts through the stereotypes and shows all the fragility, naivete, and tragic figures that exemplify the American landscape, whether we're proud of it or not.

The film consists of 3 short tales, all unrelated aside from looking at the underbelly of mainstream society. It's a well-shot, well-directed set of vignettes with heart and humanity (and definitely a sense of humor) And with a hip indie rock soundtrack (including Devendra Banhart), this one was surprisingly endearing. Worthy. (MVD Visual)

Young God Amazon Sampler

With the monumental SWANS reformation tour presently assaulting eardrums across the United States, frontman Michael Gira's label, Young God Records, has released a free downloadable 86-minute sampler of the label's history, including work from Gira as SWANS and Angels Of Light, plus work from Devendra Banhart, Larkin Grimm, James Blackshaw, and Akron/Family, among many others.

It's available from amazon in the USA for absolutely FREE. Fans in the UK have to pay, as do Germans (though amazon.de has a discounted rate it looks like).

The link should be here:
Young God Amazon Sampler

Plastic Crimewave Sound - "No Wonderland" CD

Reissued from an apparently quite rare mammoth double-LP, this well-stuffed CD revisits a wild and woolly psychedelische-kraut monsterpiece from this Chicago collective. Gathering their farthest out-there guitar drones, noisy garage riffs, and freak-space-punk jams, PCS harvest a rich and deeply visceral strain of darkly-lit stoner head music. If names like Can, Acid Mothers Temple, Amon Duul, or Hawkwind mean anything to you, then this groovy set of tunes will easily satisfy. Guest appearances by new-jack hippie-folksters like Devendra Banhart or Josephine Foster are token, but the real meat and potatoes here are the long, enveloping motorik fuzz-jams that demand head-nodding and suggest some rather wicked altered states. Primal, powerful, and trance-inducing, 'No Wonderland' is a real triumph for you "heads". (Prophase Music)