A Whole Mess Of Andrew
7.21.14 by Mike Haley

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I’m not banging out mix tapes today like I was in my roaring 20’s. Those were some wild times, man. Staying up past 9:00, listening to records, drinking alcoholic refreshments by the several. I was like the James St. James of dubbing. Shit was super intense. One thing I’d love to do while making said mixes was to give them a theme. Fancying it to be a bona fide genius concept, I (on more than one occasion) put together cassettes called “Black & Blue” with a touch of Sabbath, Dice, and Flag on one side and some stuff like Cheer, Öyster Cult, and Ridge Rangers on the other. In retrospect not the most creative undertaking, but it definitely yielded me three or four extremely similar C60s. I recently rediscovered the cover, sans cassette, for a 40-artist burner I made on 1/31/03 called “Party Animals” with The Jesus Lizard, Bunny Brains, Pig Destroyer, Wolf Eyes, and, for whatever reason, White Lion. The point here is me gusta a good theme.

It would seem Rainbow Bridge is in the same camp, or at least was last month when they released the hour and a half comp “Potpourri Of Andrew”; A collection of 20 experimental-heads all of which had parents who chose the name Andrew or Andy for them. The misfit group of weirdo musicians include Tiger Hatchery’s Andrew Scott Young, Evil Moisture (Andy Bolus), Andrew Chadwick (aka Ironing), Andy Borsz of Slasher Risk, Gaybomb (Andrew Barranca), noise mainstay, and the man behind Panicsville, Andy Ortmann, Andrew Weathers, DumpsterScore CEO Andrew Quitter, and(y) more.

The comp opens up decently chill with the laid-back clank, jangle, and scrape of Andrew Scott Young’s fingers and bow on upright bass and finishes out with three minutes of Andy O’Sullivan’s patented harsh-as-fuck Goat material. The 18 jams between them  moon-bounce from Andrew Weathers’ acoustic guitar clarity to Andrew James MacKelvie’s berserk electronic splatter, but unarguably reside in a total noise zone. Possibly the definitive guide to Andrew and Andys in the world of experimental sounds, at least until Volume Two drops with Dr Dre’s power electronics debut (he’s an Andre but it counts).

“Potpourri Of Andrew” is limited to 50 copies, with some classic 8th grade notebook artwork, from the Rainbow Bridge bandcamp. Nosh up the entire serving of A-bones below.