Press

Reviews of Ronk Ng Rool!

AUXILIARY OUT:
“Debut CD from Pat Kolodgy’s Ohio-based project Handglops.
I really dig Kolodgy’s songs particularly cause they’re almost always about playing music and they’re always buried in copious amounts of fuzz. To my knowledge, the term “noise pop” has never been so specifically (or literally) realized than on this album.

“The Weekend” rolls along on a crunchy Casio drum loop and distorted guitar chords while Kolodgy sings, as one might expect, about the weekend and seeing friends and listening to “your favorite music.” The arrangement is pretty minimal and mostly relies on the vocals for melody but Kolodgy totally pulls it off. “The Show” is one of my favorites, an 88 second stomper. It’s chock full of energy and everything but the great guitar line is slurred beyond recognition. “The First Party” is similar to “The Weekend,” singing about picking friends up and having a good time. It gives off just a little bit of a Jesus and Mary Chain vibe to me with a thundering drum machine and slippery keyboard both drenched in distortion that just glides along in its lethargic splendor. “The Meadow” flits along on a hollow skeletal melody that sounds more percussive than anything else. “The City” is similarly rhythmically focused with an unruly 8-bit drum machine and keyboard going a little haywire. “Throwing a Party” gets the blood pumping a bit more, with an uptempo drum beat and even a guitar solo wedged in there. “Start a Band” is another favorite. The lyrics are basically 2nd person instructions on how to make a band (“Play what you want to play/Don’t care how it sounds/Just do it”) which prompts me to suggest this be mandatory listening in all public schools. Kolodgy dials down the distortion a bit and it has probably the prettiest melody on the album so it’s a really, really great listen. “Playing a Show” is another great one with waves of keyboard continually cascading. “Something Fun” and “The Same but Better” make a great one-two punch in the twilight of the record. “Something Fun” is short, fizzy and surely something fun. “The Same but Better” is the flat-out best track on here. It’s a smeary mid-tempo number with a beautiful, whirring, wooly keyboard melody and solo that clinches it. Just a beautiful, unassuming track all around. The fitting finale “The Last Party” sounds like the grown up version of “The Weekend.” The bleeping drum loop is still intact but the vibe and the melody is more mature and features one of the best choruses on the album.

The record is pretty strong throughout cause there are no weak songs to be found. It has its standouts but each track pulls its weight. The record has a very singular sound——there’s not much variation between the songs——but it’s a unique sound. Furthermore, the production (if you can even call it that) is what makes the album such a strong unified statement as opposed to a collection of great songs. Definitely worth checking out, the best rock album I’ve heard this year.
CD available from Gulcher.”

PITCHFORK:
“Patrick Kolodgy and the Handglops crew really like to party. And play music. And party. The tracklist to their debut album, Ronk Ng Rool (released earlier this year on Gulcher) reads (and sounds) like a recollection of one really rockin’ Friday night, so blacked-out and blasted that all that’s left are the barest intimations of what followed what: “The Weekend”, “The Show”, “The First Party”. But boy, that first one must have been a real rager, if the song is any indication. The guys couldn’t have had much fun though, judging from the skull-splitting drumbeat that pounds through the entire thing like a hangover headache from hell. Meanwhile, a bittersweet melody pulses between vague banalities like “Getting ready for the weekend, gonna have a good time,” making the whole song seem frighteningly ominous. They just wanted to have a good time! But then… what? Did the party run out of beer before they got there? Did that hot bitty go home with that asshole from that other band we played with awhile back, that bad punk one with the naked drummer? The possibilities are endless. Whatever happened, though, I can only imagine that they went home (or to “The Meadow”, as the next song on the album has me believe) and then wrote this perfect encapsulation of that moment when the night goes from sweet to sour and all that fun, whirly inebriation becomes room-spinning, vomit-inducing, piss-drunk agony. Or maybe the moral of the story is that the party really was totally fun, and we shouldn’t forget how awesome those parties are, even when we’re lying in bed the next day, covered in puke, trash can next to the pillow. Yeah. I bet that’s it.”

IMPOSE:
“Wearing Jesus and Mary Chain on their sleeves and battling through a Midwest wasteland, Handglops keep it real in Toledo, Ohio. The feedback and fuzz is so huge and combative a part of these tracks that they comprise a sort of internal orchestra: there might only be one dude recording this shit at home, and it might only be performed live with two or three, but in the vacuum where these songs exist, there’s a horde of animated tape reels doing battle with six foot long lances made solely of static electricity.”

KZSU:
“Lo-fi, distorted to all hell, noise pop. Emphasis on distortion. Abrasive, dissonant, fuck-up-your-ears-when-listening-to music. Kids from Chicago write about partying and all the simplistic, raging, adolescent pleasures and present them in a completely fucked up, noisy package. Touches of punk, electronica, and pop rock, this is sort of like an amateur No Age. Really, this is for daring djs. This is so distorted that it is hard to sit through, and the production’s uber-lo-fi approach does not help the sound, either. 12 tracks come in under 30 minutes; these are short bursts of distorted noise for kids who live for the weekend. No FCCs detected.”

BOOMKAT:
“Originating in America’s noise heartland (the ever-fertile state of Ohio), Handglops joins a roster of likeminded scuzz-pop deviants on Gulcher, making a din that at times mirrors the new wave-flavoured fourtrack outings of Blank Dogs while at others slipping into the fizz-saturated universe of Wavves. When the bludgeoning distortion eases off a little, more often than not you’ll hear a pretty decent song waiting for you underneath, but all too often on Ronk Ng Rool the fuzz is a little overbearing and perhaps too unrefined for its own good. Regardless, there’s some fist-pumping good fun to be had here too: ‘The Weekend’, ‘The Show’ and the excellent ‘Start A Band’ best exemplify the rickety charms of Handglops, and despite the battering your ears are likely to take, chances are you’ll keep coming back for more…”

NO FRONT TEETH ZINE:
“HANDGLOPS � �RONK NG ROOL� CD
What is it about Ohio that spews out some of the most innovative, depraved and fucked up music? Maybe it�s how shit it is there… I don�t know but let�s not change anything! This is hands-down one of the most uncomfortable albums I�ve heard and thank God for that � things were getting way too safe and relaxed on my recent SHIVVERS / LUXURY / MOONDOGS bender… the odd thing is that �Ronk Ng Rool� (killer title) is oddly inviting through it�s uber-distorted almost time-free wall of noise-less noise. This makes MY BLOODY VALENTINE and the JESUS AND MARY CHAIN sound like Phil Spector produced them, this is anti-pop powerpop… man, I�m creating new genres as we speak (by the way I created Killed By Cuntry too, yes it�s spelled right) and I�m addicted to this. The sudden hard silences that follow the seemingly endless warpage are like beautiful stabs in sleep. OK, I�m talking shit now but if you could image three cheap radios playing simultaneously, one with TEENAGE HEAD, another with THE INJECTIONS and another with 20/20 you�re getting close � but one more thing, the radios have to be playing under water in a bathtub. If you�re gonna try this at home, don�t be stupid – use battery-powered radios. That�s what I did. Excellent album… Ohio�s shit, HANDGLOPS rips, Gulcher rules.”

WHAT’S NOT TAKEN YET:
“How this song is good makes absolutely no sense. It’s like some perverted My Bloody Valentine/Jesus & Mary Chain…and I love it. It’d be the perfect song to just sit down and put on repeat and try to dissect what’s actually being said over that over-powering distortion.

It’s primal in a way; I’ve honestly never heard any vocals so drowned out by the background that they’re almost tertiary in nature. Yes, tertiary. Secondary here is the space between the distortion and the vocals: that’s where you have your own space to make your own meaning outta this one. Like the title says, for most people, that meaning is gonna be your own first party, when you got so drunk or high that everything around you was the same pounding haze accompanying this track.

Reminisce.”

NEW YORK ROCKMARKET:
“You may not have seen it, but there was a recent track review on Pitchfork for this nearly unheard-of band called Handglops. It might not have been anything out of the ordinary for most people, but it was a fine day for Swarthmore. One of our own actually managed to make it out of the depths of languishing nerd-dom and get his music, his really good music, out there. Patrick Kolodgy, Olde Club sound engineer and all around really nice guy, is the main man behind Handglops, and is actually graduating from Swarthmore College in about twelve hours.
Normally, I wouldn’t post about Pat’s music. It draws on and ever-so-slightly mocks the burgeoning lo-fi culture of today’s indie world, represented by bands like Wavves. Handglops takes the lo-fi ethos to an extreme, producing what I imagine is for most a nearly unlistenable mash of sounds (that’s why I say I wouldn’t normally post his music- I try to choose fairly palatable things for this blog, and Handglops is probably best appreciated by other music nerds). He sings about common tropes of youth like partying and the innocent excitement of the weekend. There’s an earnestness, but definitely a mocking there, as well. His songs are kind of like the California lo-fi party scene looking at itself in a distorted mirror.
After reading the Pitchfork review, I couldn’t help myself but post on this. Not that I was particularly close to Pat, but Pitchfork hilariously says things about him like, “The Handglops crew must be pretty hard partiers, their music sounds crazy!!” In our entire year of working together, I don’t think I ever saw the guy anywhere on campus except for our music venue, and I certainly never saw him drink a beer. Even though the review gave a fair number rating, I think it totally missed the point. It’s just nice to know that the hegemonic P-fork does get it wrong.
You can download my favorite track below and check it out for yourself. I really dig it, but like I said, it’s certainly not for everyone. Either way, you’ve got to give it up for our current hometown hero. Congratulations are in order.”