At the end of March, a commenter suggested that Excepter’s “Kill People” video “would never see the light of day if they didn’t know all the right people.” Well, what if we put it this way: That tripped-out, ritualistic mind-crunch might never have seen the light of day if Excepter didn’t know the right drugs. (Or, yeah, maybe they have naturally surrealistic minds … hugs not drugs.) Regardless, they got some more folks on their side with the tamer time-lapsed solar panels of “Sunrise,” but have gloriously returned to claim their award as most outside(r) inside band in Brooklyn for “Any And Every.” The video, directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer, was shot in Hollywood over Passover 2008 (one month ago today). It finds the band sacrificing Oscars, starring a map, visiting Boris Karloff’s star, wandering graveyards, burnings $20 bills, and the Excepter guys and gals getting orgiastic in a hot tub. All that, and it’s not only SFW, but recommended.

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Last time we checked in with Excepter, the veteran Brooklyn crew was killing people and causing a ruckus amongst our commenters, who didn’t see any redeeming values in the electro-savants black magick. Well, they’re back! The Fingered-directed video for Debt Dept‘s “Sunrise” takes a more minimal approach then we’ve seen in the other audio/visual moments for the album. No giant burgers. No bloody rituals. Just solar panels. Or stadium lights. Or something or other in time-lapse. It’s pretty. And it just might be an entranceway into the band for folks who haven’t been too fond of ‘em previously.

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In their newest expanded form, Brooklyn weirdos and hard workers Excepter have upped the madness of their already aesthetically specific John Fell Ryan-directed videos. It was great watching them with a giant hunk of meat for “Burgers,” and now they’re out to “Kill People.” To refresh your memory, in JFR’s Debt Dept notes he explained the track: “Originally titled ‘Guns and Roses,’ this workout brings to mind the old NRA clause, here reduced to its essential conclusion.”

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As mentioned a couple weeks ago by way of a “Burgers”-munching Pies N Thighs trek, those lovable noisemaking Brooklyn rascals Excepter are back in expanded form with album the fourth Debt Dept (the first for Paw Tracks) and it’s a double-stuffed, teaming doozy. Sunglasses-sporting frontman, ex-No Necker, and archivist, John Fell Ryan appropriately provides “footnotes,” helping to explain the group’s incanted, ricocheting record. For instance, guitar-plodded “Entrance” is described as “a sequence used to inaugurate the band’s first performance with the Animal Collective” and therefore “a natural choice to open our first LP for our new label patrons.” The claustro electronics of “Shots Ring” are “a meditation on last season’s school shooting” which perhaps “proves prophetic as elements from next season’s pop up in multiple-layered verse.” Let’s see if you can figure what lurks behind the menacingly catchy drill instructions of “Kill People.” Chant along after the jump.

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Not all of Stereogum’s favorite sounds conform to what folks expect us to cover. In this space, resident Bananafish fetishist Brandon Stosuy focuses on bands, albums, singles, and villages in Sweden that may otherwise pass by unnoticed. This week’s eclectic virtual milk crate contains Nadja, Valet, Svarte Greiner, and something extra from Excepter.

Since 2004, Aiden Baker and Leah Bucharkeff have gotten better and better at making a mighty clamor as Nadja (Baker began the group as a solo project in ’03). Things are especially jam-packed on the Toronto duo’s Bliss Torn From Emptiness, a reworking of an earlier CD-R, which layers guitars, shape-shifting drum machines, fuzzy electronics, bass, and the mastering of ex-Khanate, current Khlyst dude James Plotkin into a bigger 43-minute excursion. The new Bliss is divided into three 18-minute tracks, but if you don’t stare at iTunes, they blend into one piece. The freakishly reliable Canadian label Profound Lore, who’re releasing the record 1/29, were kind enough to let me stream all of part two — see how it goes from an M83 choir-of-angels to a purring-then-lapping piano-esque sectional after the jump.

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To these ears Excepter can more or less do no wrong: Conjuring Suicide, Cabaret Voltaire, and some anonymous beat-box pranksters swirling stoned through a blender, their deconstructed, echoey, stylish synth ‘n’ beat field scapes add up to one of my favorite all-time New York oeuvres.

I usually spot 1/4 of the band, Dan Hougland, at (or outside) Other Music, where he spends his workdays. A couple weeks back, though, we ran into each other at Gang Gang Dance’s Retina Riddim DVD release party, so I asked him if he wanted to talk about work for the column. He was into it, obviously, and it turned out the rest of guys were also gainfully employed … at art moving, gardening, and archiving.

You might’ve caught Carrots/KKKKK, their recent split Paw-Tracks 12″ with Panda Bear (members also did the video for Panda Bear’s “Bros”) or Alternation, the denser/musique concrete(ish) full-length released on 5RC last year. Though bringing home the bacon through various means, the band remains prolific: Tank Tapes is out now on Fuck It Tapes and The STREAMS 01, a double “retrospective edit” CD of the band’s excellent STREAMS series, will emerge on Fusetron “whenever it gets back from the printer.” After that expect “OP,” a double 7″ from the Swedish label iDeal Recordings, the “(Flip Those) Burgers” 12″, and the Debt Dept long player, on a label TBA.

In honor of Excepter’s recent five-hour MP3 STREAM and member Jon Nicholson’s upcoming seventy-two hour live sound/installation performance piece at Grace Exhibition Space in Bed Stuy, we offer you the longest Quit You Day Job to date.

You’ll find “Entrance” from the forthcoming STREAMS 01 at the very bottom. As John Fell Ryan noted: “It’s fitting; it’s partly about ‘work.’”

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