Air Conditioning 'Bachelor Party' 7"
Culled from their appearance at the 2004 No Fun Fest in Brooklyn, NY, "Bachelor Party" and "Barrels of Seized
Ephedrine" swirl up a storm of humidity and mosh. "I felt like I was in Mouthpiece", stated Robert, after the
raucous performance left no shirt unstained and many injuries to complain about for the next week. The incessant
pre-performance chattering proves that there's a lighter side to this harsh world.
There are 3 test pressings, each on black vinyl with United test pressing center stickers, in plain white
dust sleeves. There are 200 copies on black vinyl, each with a folded 14" x 7" paper sleeve and a 2" x 3" insert,
of which there are nine slight variations.
01 - Bachelor Party
02 - Barrels of Seized Ephedrine
Dusted Magazine:
The latest offerings from this Allentown, PA noise trio, who operate somewhere in between the structured
noisescapes of Sightings and the cathartic, no breaks approach taken by Hair Police. Air Conditioning uses
traditional rock instrumentation, but wrestles them into submission with an assortment of busted pedals and
electronic devices, sometimes rendering the drums an afterthought. This music inspires “Fight Club”-style
moshery for the under-21 set, too young and with too short of attention spans to have enjoyed youth crew,
so in many ways this sound is theirs. The “Bachelor Party” was recorded live at the first No Fun Fest;
following a long spoken intro, the band rides its equipment like mechanical horsies in front of a supermarket.
Apparently more of this performance (considered by many the highlight of the entire weekend) could not be
salvaged from a DAT recording destroyed in mid-performance, but what remains finds a more focused mix than
what appears on their latest studio single.
Agony Shorthand:
Who or what is AIR CONDITIONING? I don't know, but this 45 showed up in my in-basket a couple weeks ago with
no information on the sleeve and plain black labels on the single itself. The old “delibro-obscuro”, hunh?
You noise cats are just bonkers. Both songs are live-to-small-drunk-audience. One features some near-rock at
about the halfway mark, along with an opening field recording of the audience waiting for the band to tune up.
The other black side features more “we left the mic on” found sound and a bunch of shapeless noise and feedback.
A real motherfucking time bomb, these fellas!
Blastitude:
Side A: People talking and shouting in a rowdy atmosphere. I feel like I'm listening to one of the many verité
argument tracks on Cock ESP's We Mean It This Time (1999). Then the band starts fooling around with their
instruments a little bit, tuning-up noise, and it's starting to sound like a different specific verité record,
that Sun City Girls bootleg 7-inch Live For Chilly (1993). (Yeah, there's a couple references everybody in the
world's gonna get.) Eventually the band starts playing and from the get-go it's huge and holy-shit heavy; toxic
sludge that would possibly bury the entire worldwide noise-rock scene if it was just let loose. Unfortunately,
because of all the opening fiddling around, the side abruptly ends well before the song does. Side B: the same
thing again? I really think it is. And, as I have since learned, it IS the exact same thing again; when Air
Conditioning played in the ridiculously packed downstairs room at No Fun Fest 2004, their DAT player only picked
up about 5 minutes of their set before it was knocked to the ground and broken. And here's that 5 minutes, twice.
It's cool and people into fucked-up records will like it -- I mean shit, they only made 200 copies, and they were
sold out a few months ago -- but don't let it be your intro to the band. Listen to any of the full-lengths, or
go see 'em live!
Released March 2005. Co-released with White Tapes.
