The self-titled release above is from 2015, self-issued on Fu Manchu‘s At the Dojo imprint, and as you know if you pushed play, readily available to stream, download and own in a four-song 10″ edition on vinyl. The root of this five-track digital version, however, is in a three-song 1990 seven-incher called Kept Between Trees on Slap a Ham Records, which along with a couple other early singles — ’92’s Pick-Up Summer and Senioritis, ’93’s Don’t Bother Knockin’ (If This Vans Rockin’); this is all on Discogs, so don’t mistake it for arcane knowledge — mark the years of transition of the San Clemente, California, band from the teenaged hardcore punk of Virulence‘s reissued-in-2010-as-a-compilation If This Isn’t a Dream (discussed here, review here) to where Fu Manchu would be by the time they released their debut album, No One Rides for Free (reissue review here), in 1994.

Engineered by Billy Anderson (Acid King, Neurosis, hundreds of others) and produced by the band with Jonathan Burnside (Melvins, Clutch, hundreds of others), Kept Between Trees originally included its title-track, also renamed to “Trapeze Freak,” as well as “Bouillabaisse” and “Jr. High School Ring (7 Karat)” on the B-side. The lineup for the nascent Fu Manchu was guitarist Scott Hill, drummer Ruben Romano, bassist Greg McCaughey, and vocalist Glenn Chivens. Hill, McCaughey and Romano were in Virulence, and by the time they got to No One Rides for Free, they’d apparently be tired enough of lead singers for Hill to take over that duty. Fu Manchu — the five-track EP streaming above based on Kept Between Trees — helps fill in some of the evolutionary missing links between what Virulence was and what Fu Manchu would become.

Obviously no accounting for the growth of a band is ever going to be complete, whether it’s a documentary film or a listen-back-for-context piece like this, because of things like life experience, both individual and collective among the members of the band, the influences at the time and the growth into one’s own that invariably happens among committed artists over however many years (ideally all of them), and the inherent incompleteness of any human narrative to convey what actually happened and when, but there’s value in hearing the proto-lurch in the guitar line of the two-minute “Bouillabaisse” and realizing that this was Fu Manchu in the process of learning what manipulating tempo could do to make a song sound heavy, having taken inspiration from what was around them, be it slow-Slayer thrash divergence the tonal presence that grunge brought to punk and noise, and directed it toward what were the the ends of their own craft at that point. This too would change over time, as the members of Fu Manchu changed, in terms of lineup, yes, and also as people and a group. As they grew up, in other words.

Last week, after I posted the discussion of Virulence, Scott Hill left a comment highlighting some of their earliest points of inspiration:

…Started as a hardcore punk band, then saw BL’AST! Live in 1985 then got the Melvins Gluey LP then stared listening to a lot of the Swans and late period Black Flag and a band called Gore from overseas……..then around 1988 heard and saw TAD / Soundgarden / Nirvana / Laughing Hyenas / Big Chief / Mudhoney / Dinosaur JR / Sonic Youth / Monster Magnet / early White Zombie and changed to Fu Manchu……

Swans, Black Flag and the Netherlands’ Gore into TAD, Big Chief, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth and Monster Magnet, etc. — one would be lucky to be alive in 1988-1990 and to have heard those bands, though one would hear some of them soon enough on the radio as commercial media embraced grunge and alternative rock in its wake. But thinking about Kept Between Trees, the noisier aspects of Fu Manchu‘s sound, the organic bringing together of weighted distortion, riff-led groove and a disaffection that on “Kept Between Trees” itself (which got retitled at some point, morphing into “Trapeze Freak”), with its punch of low end and ready howl on the turnarounds, feels specifically born of Black Flag, was already in the processs of coming into itself.

In its most expanded form — that is, as 2015’s retrospective Fu Manchu rather than 1990’s Kept Between Trees, with “Blowtorch” and “Flashin'” added that were recorded around the same time and went unreleased — this offering still only runs five songs and 16 minutes. It’s not the most in-depth studio catalogue of Fu Manchu‘s 36-years-ago ouevre. But I feel like especially considering the punk foundations from which they emerged, it makes sense that they would have turned to recording and releasing singles for a few years as they sorted the lineup, probably focused on live shows, and eventually made their way to making a full-length.

And to be sure, some of who Fu Manchu would be is audible in the material of this era, limited though the amount of it ultimately is. The start-stop riff in “Jr. High School Ring (7 Karat)” is prescient of the kinds of grooves on which the band would make their name throughout the mid- and late-1990s, and already in the upped density of “Blowtorch” and “Flashin’,” one can hear the exploration taking place of just how heavy Fu Manchu could and wanted to get. Organic creative progression. Trying new ideas. Building from one thing into the next. In many ways, Fu Manchu have continued this process all along, and it’s a defining feature of their work.

But to go back to before they ‘figured it out’ and to hear the iterative steps as they happened is a reminder that most bands, most art, don’t emerge ready-made. Some certainly appear to, and maybe if you heard Fu Manchu doing “Regal Begal” on your local FM station in 1996, you might think it was all brand new, but the truth is that there’d been over a decade of work leading them to that point. In that way too, Kept Between Trees is a critical document of the beginnings of this band. It tells you what they were doing, where they were going, and portrays the evolution in progress. Especially noteworthy, while one can hear likenesses to the names Hill listed in that comment above, already Fu Manchu were beginning to differentiate themselves. The niche they’d end up finding is still their own.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

I’m writing this later in the day than I generally would. It’s just after 1PM. We had a meeting at The Pecan’s school and it went long. For my own future edification, I’ll mark it as the first time outside-district placement was brought up even as a hypothetical to the team. Nobody’s respone to that, by the way, was that it was a terrible idea and/or unnecessary. When I asked if my genius-ass daughter was currently on track to finish a second grade curriculum by the end of the year, the answer was a solid maybe.

More meetings is how we first proceed. Those will be next week. Next week my other two Hungarian classes pick up (one of which I still need to register for), so time will be tight. I’m going to try to review the Pelican EP and maybe one or two other things, but if it’s light like it’s been these past weeks despite the fact that things are actually happening as everybody returns from break and starts rolling out 2026 announcements for records, tours, festivals, whatever it might be, I’m doing life stuff. I’ll write as much as I can, like always.

Honestly, a lot of this week I spent distracted ahead of this meeting that happened this morning, and I can still feel my body being ‘keyed up’ from being in that room. Part of me wants to take a shower about it. Part of me wants to take a nap. Part of me knows he should start his Hungarian homework. Also vacuum, reading, fucking off, going to buy bananas because we’re out and I forgot to bring my wallet when I went to take The Pecan her lunch so I couldn’t go to the store (which I realized of course right after I walked into it), and whatever else.

Anybody want to do a Zelda update? I might finish A Link Between Worlds when I’m done with this post. It’s not the longest game, but it’s a fitting successor to A Link to the Past, and given my 35-years-strong affection for that game, I can’t think of a higher compliment to pay it. Outside that franchise, I bought Dragon Quest XI last week off Facebook Marketplace and have been enjoying the early going of that. I played the first three Dragon Warrior games on NES, did Dragon Quest VII on PlayStation, so not my first time among the slimes and such, but it’s fun by which I mean deeply repetitive while you grind and explore. You can run up and smack monsters before you fight. I find that enjoyable. The Pecan’s been neck-deep in various Mario Party titles on the Switch. I don’t know which ones because in my view they’re all awful — I’ve always hated mini-games; even in A Link Between Worlds, there are heart pieces I’m kissing up because I don’t want to do the race, the target-shoot, whatever it is; I’ve done the same as I’ve played through the Zelda series, 2D and 3D — but when they’re not infuriating her, she’s enjoying herself. There is a fair bit of yelling at the tv involved though, and so I’m not sure how long the delve will last ultimately. “Are you sure you’re having fun right now?” is a question she might be asked on a given evening the last two weeks or so. No answer beyond the strongly implied “fuck you.”

I admire her persistence, of course — not that she hasn’t proven her ability to stick to her guns in everything she’s done for the eight years she’s been alive — but I also believe there’s value in walking the fuck away from a thing when it’s not working for you. That whole “quitter’s never win” ethic is reasonable until it’s applied needlessly to things you don’t actually want to be doing. Sometimes you need to move on.

Are we still talking about video games? Yes, but also the school, or sports, a job, whatever else, hypothetically. I ask myself if I still need this site in my life all the time. It’s an ongoing conversation I have. With me.

I’m light on plans for next week beyond catching up on news that I’m already behind on and reviewing whatever hits me hardest. I guess that’s not the best ‘stay tuned!’ teaser for the week to come, but hell, it’s Jan. 9 and the world has ended like three times in the last fucking week. My brain is elsewhere. How about everyone goes on a general strike and then I’ll blog more.

Fuck fascism. Fuck ICE. Fuck you if you think extrajudicial murder by regime-backed paramilitaries is okay. One more time, just to be clear. Get fucked. Forever. I will never forgive the contingent of my countrymen who have put the United States where it is. This regime will end — they all do — and for the rest of my life, I will carry a special hate reserved for just these people, most of whom look a lot like me. If you’re one of them, then you too can eat shit and die for all I fucking care. No safe space here for nazis.

Everyone else, have a great and safe weekend. Have fun out there and keep your head up as best you can. I’ll be hanging in and back on Monday with more.

FRM.

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