#roosterjake

Brad Shumacher is The Night Grinder. A Sound Engineer, Bassist, Drum and Synth Programmer from St. Louis, MO, he has also just recently made the journey to the West of the Midwest, Denver, CO. I am going to attempt to live review Side A of his album, Immediate Content, with the following tools/substances:

(note: I reviewed the whole Album, Sides A & B, but of course, when I saved it as a draft, somehow half was lost. I will now pour scalding tea over the Laptop)

1. Cane Sugar Root Beer/ice water 2. Dope Sony Surround Sound Home Listening Device 3. iPhone5/Arielle's MacBookPro 4. pisser, couches, open space and snacks within 25 feet 5. my ears/The Night Grinder's Immediate Content oh, and it's morning, but I don't have a job, so I'm gonna get hella medicated... Immediate Intro Reactions/\Street Justice II: My roommates have to think I'm crazy. I'm perched over a laptop with a huge speaker blaring a rave right into my right ear. The Bass is so grimey, just my style, in the vein of Mudstep, really driving and distorted, a perfect mix for the ridiculous noise, which right at the end of the 1st track, Street Justice II, transmutates into a temporary beautiful synth sequence. Mystery Glitch Dance Party, or as The Night Grinder calls it, Quartz Aorta, is a smearing of drums and bass to melt your feet into off-rhythm dancing. Street Justice IV eases into it's Gameboy Music destiny, before becoming just much more experimental than all that, with Jazz Noises and Crunchy Drums that don't come in the Factory Settings. Heavy Lotion takes me through moods with feedback wood sounds I don't really wanna discuss on my public blog. But that's what I came here to do, so basically, I'm having sexy thoughts about electronics right now. Like, all the patches and sample pads and keys and drum pads I've ever seen are flying through my mind and I'm falling for Kraut all over again. I feel like I'm in my old apartment in my Parent's 4-family, listening to Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream and Can, except they got the bassist I always wanted them to have. And hired a Japanese Woman to just drive a kick drum the whole time. Past Mind RIP wipes ya clean. Smooth and nerveless in its pursuit of your attention, it comes quick like a forest rain on a camping trip. Yes, you can trip to parts of The Night Grinder's sonic assault. But even Past Mind starts to warn you that you may not be as done with it as you were thinking you were when you weren't thinking. The rhythm presented in a composition with very few traditional rhythm sounds is so on point. This is a soundtrack for the late night lawbreakers, skateboarders and graffiti writers. My roommates wouldn't dare complain about this. They know what it's like to try to just put the past to rest. Side A ends in Winter '13/'14, a winter I experienced close to, but not at all with, the physical body of The Night Grinder. I don't feel an immediate connect with the content, until the Bluesy Mids of the bass start to shine through. The ruffling of the background noise is familiar to those of us who made it through Last Winter in the Midwest. Subtle explosions of noise begin to take over with borderline trapped-cat, turned glass shatters, now a distorted cracked sample. But it's all very precise this time around, falling off a cliff of almost too chaotic noise to a bass line, and a wind gust to fade Side A of the LP out.