Shit and Shine discography (UPDATE 2011 02 25)

Piero Scaruffi on Shit and Shine

http://www.scaruffi.com/vol7/shitshin.html

You\'re Lucky To Have Friends Like Us (2004), 7/10
Ladybird (2005), 8/10
Toilet Door Tits (2006), 7/10 (mini)
Jealous of Shit and Shine (2006), 7.5/10
Cunts With Roses (2007), 7/10
Cherry (2008), 6.5/10
Kuss Miche Meine Liebe (2008), 7/10 (anthology)
229-2299 Girls Against Shit (2009), 7/10

Shit and Shine is a London-based group formed by both British and USA musicians. Its typical line-up has multipled drummers and guitarists, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Crash Worship and other percussive-oriented post-psychedelic bands.

The limited-edition LP You\'re Lucky To Have Friends Like Us (Riot Season, 2004) concocted a seriously damaged nuclear fusion of garage-rock and heavy-metal music.

Ladybird (Latitudes, 2005) contained one 42-minute improvisation that defined their aesthetic at the border between the Velvet Underground\'s Sister Ray and a horde of headhunters. Other than a volcanic distortion, and vocals that occasionally swim through the intense heat, for more than half an hour there is only the incessant pounding of the drums. Then the noises become more prominent, threatening to derail the ceremony. Minimal and maximal at the same time, this suite is to psychedelic music what Lou Reed\'s Metal Machine Music was to progressive-rock: an abominable terminal point.

The (inferior) mini-album Toilet Door Tits/ The Biggest Cock In Christendom (Conspiracy, 2006) contained two lengthy tracks of the Ladybird kind. The 16-minute Biggest Cock In The Christendom is a concerto for looping beat and sound effects. The 15-minute Toilet Door Tits is another case of explosive distorted epileptic hyperdrumming dementia.

The double-CD Jealous of Shit and Shine (Riot Season, 2006) was slightly more focused on the music rather than the emotional impact. The result was another colossal nightmare, the 30-minute Practicing To Be A Doctor. This time the guitar distortion towers over the tribal beat, radiating a calm ferocity, and the vocals are to be heard only in the background, like ghosts from a distant hell. The similarity with the Velvet Underground\'s Sister Ray is much stronger. After 15 minutes a short pause lets the guitar downshift gear: it resumes as a mere counterpoint to the drums, while industrial noises invade the stage, and the voices join in a feeble choir.
By comparison, the massive distortion of Here Come The Vikings, the industrial chaos of When Extreme Dogs Go Wrong, the wall of noise of Unchained Ladies Shopper, the ghostly beats and alien voices of There Are Two Bakers Now, the electronic poem Hot Vodka, the electrical effervescence of Kitten Mask are merely snippets of a much bigger expressionist drama that remains shrouded in mystery. There is music for exactly one minute and 39 seconds: the ironic surf instrumental Seeing Life Through A Young Mans Eyes.
The second disc contained a revised version of You\'re Lucky To Have Friends Like Us.

Cunts With Roses (Noisestar Music, 2007) documents the first ever live improvisation by the band. It did not have any of the \"subleties\" of the third album, but it had the same visceral impact. In fact, it had only that: a colossal riff amid colossal drumming.

The single Cigarette Sequence (Skulltone, 2008) is an apocalyptic piece for multiple drummers and multiple bass players and multiple electronic noise makers.

Cherry (Riot Season, 2008) roamed wildly different territories, from the usual tribal drumming (ever less frequent) to dance-music. Despite the confusion, the class was still there: the sonata for epic swelling guitar distortion Cherry, the industrial-metal pounding cacophony of Cigarette Sequence, the avant-rock instrumental of the Neu and Faust kind Charm And Counter Charm, the massive droning doom nightmare of the 15-minute High Brooms (probably the album\'s standout). The ambitious crescendo peaks with a pounding chaotic 20-minute psychedelic freak-out, The Rabbit Song, although not their best. Unfortunately, too much is just gratuitous fluff, barely-sketched fragments, and really bad ideas. Overall, the album sounded less spontaneous, more fragmented and certainly less original.

Kuss Miche Meine Liebe (Load, 2008) collects the two pieces of Toilet Door Tits/ The Biggest Cock In Christendom and adds the ten-minute spoken-word kammerspiel Preventions Arise, the madly drilling drone of The Germans Call It A Swimming Head, the take-no-prisoners tribal bacchanal Kuss Miche Meine Liebe, and the heavily syncopated dub dance The Side Of The Road.

229-2299 Girls Against Shit (Riot Season, 2009) was more psychological and grotesque than beastly, with a surface that harked back to Red Crayola and the Butthole Surfers but also a core that resembled an alien organism grown inside an unsuspecting animal. Their subhuman tribal art yields two new peaks of musical savagery: the dense and manic nine-minute onslaught of Have You Really Thought About Your Presentation?, and the apocalyptic avalanche of distorted guitars and frenzied drums of the eleven-minute Roberts Church Problems. On a smaller scale an equal fervor of psychotic contradictions is achieved in the chaotic android orgy of 20 Years of Caring for the Nations Eyes, in the epileptic hardcore of Pissing on a Shed, in the random acrobatic cacophony of Kolchak The Night Stalker, in the hellish turbulence of Hotel Denmark, and in the tribal dadaism of USA Mexico,
The distorted industrial-dub ballet Penthouse Is Must is already from another planet, where violence is not the motive but the effect. The hypnotic pulsation of Friseur Nelson battles alienating electronic distortions, each one pulling the piece towards opposite meanings.
The ten-minute Girls Against Shit creates tension without any need for extreme sounds, but instead by constructing and setting in motion a discrete soundscape of tidal Hendrix-ian glissandoes and brief electronic emissions that is suddenly devastated by a horde of metal machines.
Their name was still the same, but their music had become a lot more sophisticated, incorporating ideas, techniques and stereotypes of a whole range of genres and schools.