 best album cover of the month in Vice (click it and see) |
Devin Gary & Ross is a mind melting three- man music making machine. Four Corners Bounce is their first record. The six tunes on it are full spectrum serving of psychedelia that includes washed out wanderings over well- worn terrain, bold ventures into a candy-col- ored abyss and a snappy title track that you will end up signing in the shower.
Don’t just take it from us. Here’s Father Yod himself, Byron Coley, on the record about the record:
Gary Panter is a bad penny. If he were German, the phrase might be, schlechter pfennig, which is much less euphonimous. So it’s a good thing Gary is no Kraut. But what the fuck is he? A Texan. A famous artist. A writer of songs, poetry and prose. As well as a gifted primitve musician. Thus, in this instance, bad means good, and penny means rennaisance man.
Panter first burst into the public gut in the 1970s with his Jimbo strip in Slash magazine, his design work for Ralph Records, and some really goddamn UGLY commercial art. A few people were also aware he was a musician, although many who discovered him through his first single— “Colahaus”—would deny the word actually applies to what he does.
After his next record, a collaboration with the Residents entitled “Tornader to the Tater,” people began to take his roistering a bit more seri- ously. A Japanese company even let him do a gorgeous bizarro-world country-and-acid LP called Pray for Smurph. That one was so good, people started to realize—hey, he actually is a musician!.
Moving from L.A to Brooklyn, he eventually fell in with the evil genius, Devin Flynn, who widened Panter’s aural palette and also to got him playing somwhere besides closets full of pot smoke. The duo cut a dandy album, Go Outside, then managed to corral the wildly talented Ross Gold- stein into their conspiracy. The results are this new record, and brother, it is a treat. They create miniature brain-damaged nuggets ranging from fake jazz to sloth psych with a nimble touch that’ll make your head squeal with pleasure. Marty Robbins might toss around in his velvet-lined grave
when he hears it, but screw him. All four of your corners will bounce like crazy. Guaranteed.
—Byron Coley, Victoriaville QC 2011
Side B
El Paso Peppermint Patty Meets the
Phantom of the Opera Cat Swim
Side A
4 Corners Loin Green After Donk
About the band
Devin is Devin Flynn, best known as the creator and illustrator behind the very insane Y’all So Stupid, a cartoon that once ran on Super Deluxe. In DGR, he does the drumming and a lot of the singing and more or less plays just about everything. About the same goes for Ross Goldstein—the Ross of the band—except he plays a lot more piano than percussion and in the art zone he does more photography and sign painting than crazy animation. The G in DGR is for guitar, played by Gary Panter, who also blows a little trumpet on this record. Gary’s been blowing minds with his art—paintings, album covers, illustration, comics, set design, light shows—since the late seventies.
For more information, to order records, or just chat about how awesome DGR is, contact Arbitrary honcho
