beyond the limits

Japanther reviews Creepy Teepee Festival

Posted on 12.04.13 by Ian Vanek of

Incomplete festival review and contest. Kuma Hora, Czech Republic – july 13th, 2012. 
All the concert goers looked like the future people in Bill and Ted’s. One of them   floated up and shyly asked if I’d judge a contest of a few new bands playing the fest.  I took this request from the future very seriously and these reviews are the result.

Planety: Pět minut za městem
A dreamy crash-boom-bang traditional pop sound played with force. Heavily effected up beat lead guitars smells like Czech grunge. The lo-fi approach and flavor has me dancing around the room. It doesn’t even matter that I don’t understand a word, I instantly liked Planety’s simple approach.
LISTEN:

 

KRISTEN: An Accident!
Loopy intricate guitar & bass paired with sparse open drumming and repetitive vocals. Solemn interesting indie noise music. I believe the late Jean-Michel Basquiat would have loved this Polish trio. Aggressive jazzy dance jams with free form bits scattered all over the place. BRAVO!
LISTEN:

 

Piotr Kurek: Coda (Digitalis – sold out)
Insanely surreal video game sounds pushed together by analog keyboards. Like being trapped in a 8 bit haunted house while wearing a lead suit. I like that this Warsaw artist is working with dance companies and artist residencies. I’d love to see the results of those efforts someday.
LISTEN:

 

Aches: Fine Tongue EP on EXITAB label.
Colorful droning loops with nice organic feeling. Super creepy “stalker vibe” vocals and ultra slow drum machine beats. Painterly guitars that seem dream like over what sounds like screwed up jungle beats. This Brit relocated to eastern Europe and interesting results abound.
LISTEN:

 

Mile Me Deaf: Call Us Rats – Fettkakao Sampler – Fettkakao 2011 // fett022 
Sarcastic psychedelic pop music. Driven by a collective beauty and tight guitars. From Fettkakao, the same Vienna label that brought you PLAIDED and VORTEX REX, two additional pop groups with a very unique takes on the form. I recommend all three whole heartedly.  
LISTEN:

 

Rouilleux: Zugzwang
Hand made black and silver digipack. Slow sad wash of tortured guitar. Like a long folk song sung underwater. High smokey vocals sung under a curtain of effects. Rouilleux is very depression influenced but still the balance of noise and songwriting is pleasant and keeps the listener engaged.
LISTEN:

 

S ND Y P RL RS: DARK MATTER book + cdr, 22 pgs, Colpa Press
Nice warm German drone that lasts and lasts. The book would certainly enhance the experience of the piece, alas I didn’t get one. Still I enjoy the warm, slow building rumble this Berliner produces. Sounds like living in a jet engine or a steam ship. Just like any long trip, after about 40 minutes, S ND Y P RL RS slowly fades out and ends…
LISTEN:

Chris Weisman – Songwriting as Pitch Noise

Posted on 01.04.13 by Zac Philips of ,,

Texture, timbre, mood, vibe: today, music journalists and musicians alike tend to keep the bulk of their eggs in this well-padded basket of aesthetic signifiers. These amorphous musical elements don’t lend themselves very well to language, and so their privileged status in music writing is a little ironic. When the fascination with aesthetic categories swells to the point of eclipsing the more tangible tonal, structural and lyrical aspects of songwriting, writing ostensibly “about” a specific piece of music finds itself in the absurd position of holding the indescribable above the inscribable. Similarly, musicians captivated with aesthetics face some pretty limited prospects for developing novel material if the possibilities of musical novelty are relegated to an abstruse realm of effect and intention.

All this to say: what happens if, instead of resorting to “fifth-dimensional namecalling” by attempting to stabilize unstable aesthetic signifiers so that writing makes more sense, you hone in on the representable, repeatable, linguistically communicable content of a piece of music? What happens when there are no rules but structure still matters? What happens when there are no rules but a C# is still a C# except it’s arguably happening more like a Db right now, or you’re playing in a nonstandard tuning so it’s a C# on the fretboard but an A on the stroboscope?

What happens is this: you write some music infused with your engagement with the event of this language. I don’t care if C# is any more “real” than the “suburban vibe” of the new Real Estate record; I don’t care if you name and remember your chords or write down your melodies (I usually don’t). Sure, the premise that C# is any more ontologically stable than timbre is indefensible; both are theoretical as far as I’m concerned. The difference lies in the availability of pitch to the interactivity of language. As Socrates said to Theaetetus, “the notes, as every one would allow, are the elements or letters of music.” And as soon as you hit that C#-on-the-fret-but-A-in-pitch on the fretboard, you are dealing with a multivalent empirical phenomenon: that C# and that A are characters you get to respond to, favor, position, make speak, or deny, etc., all the infinite dramaturgical possibilities fostered by the God Position and the corollary Position Of Worship. Privileging tonality in music doesn’t mean presuming to answer the question of knowledge, of objective forms, etc.; instead, it opens up 1000s of ways to frame those questions.

Chris Weisman – Os Tonokos Token (from Bentonia on Blueberry Honey) (right click/save as)

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Chris Weisman: “Pitch Noise is the aesthetics of Noise — shock collages, maximum sensuality, letting the materials speak in their own tongues — but focusing on pitch relationships rather than timbre, texture, costume. What seems reactionary — but is radical by virtue of 1) being unpopular 2) requiring an education in theory and analysis — is the privileging of exactly the elements that were traditionally hierarchically higher in Western Classical music. For example Debussy believed timbral and decorative elements were awesome but must serve the higher powers of cadence, form, tonal drama; that the real music is what can be captured on the notated page. You know like you can read a poem aloud in all these different ways — and those ways make a difference — but the poem is really somewhere else; it can be real all these different ways but ultimately the poem is unreal, abstract, like geometry or math or a game. These are the star systems I try to encounter. When I bring them to earth I might try a pedal but the real work is already done.“

American civil rights attorneys suing the state often worry about inducing “bad law,” i.e. when legally uncontroversial cases based on clear precedent are heard in districts spellbound by the unshakeable ideology of pro-government, anti-plaintiff cronyism. The danger is that a ruling will prove influential, either with respect to the merits of the particular case or by introducing concepts that constrain future litigants seeking redress for violations of their constitutional rights.

During the Tang dynasty, kung-an (公案) referred to something like the precedent resulting from a legal ruling. You know it now as koan. Lin Chi said, “If you want to get it, you’ve already got it — it’s not something that requires time.” Because the practice of writing songs is time-consuming and characterized by intense focus and deliberation, there is always the danger of creating a bad public precedent! Let me try to explain what I mean.

“If you do not see what I do not see, then it is quite natural that it is not a thing. Why is it not your self?” When it is taken up in thought rather than lived, the concept “pitch noise” is a pedal, too, only available to be turned on after the work is done. The institutional many-face of music may ask, “do you want to play the changes or do you want to change playing?” But you don’t have to list your sources in citationless anthropology. Participant observation is the name of the game, and if you’re doing it right, the one you’re watching looks back, failing to see not having to try.

Chris Weisman – The Mask Is The Face (from Hi) (right click/save as)

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PERVERT EGO, PINK COLOR, COCK AND KRAUTROCK MIXTAPE: Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu Interviews Fabrizio Palumbo of Larsen

Posted on 20.03.13 by Jamie Stewart of

 

Fabrizio Palumbo is — there is no other way to say it but — a true and pure artist in the most constructive and devoted means of understanding what that word can mean. When you meet him, just with conversation, he transports you to a place of a more fervent and a deeper creativity than you imagined that you had in you. When you play with him, using the simplest of musical gestures, he takes away the inhibition to try something new while not being afraid to be yourself.

There are a handful of people who changed my life, totally, the way i think, the way i see the world and how i hear music. His prodigious music career is incredibly worth opening yourself to, going from a dark grinding to free hearted and touching. He has also booked some of the most incredible art music of all time: Current 93, Six Organs of Admittance, Swans, Genesis P-orridge and Baby D, filing the world with art that few others would dare to stand behind.

From Torino Italy, pull back the curtain and open your mouth!

Continue reading →

An Interview With Jason Meagher, NATCH : A Series Of Collaborative Recordings From Black Dirt Studio

Posted on 16.03.13 by Adam of

Basically, Jason Meagher of Black Dirt Studio is doing it right.  A fellow fighter against the evils of pale pop music.  He’s a sympathetic audio engineer by all accounts and it seems to me his time with No Neck Blues Band provides a unique window into the world of free-form improvisation.  

Meagher’s track record is admirable.  He’s made records for the Black Twig Pickers, Blues Control, Charalambides, Eleven Twenty-Nine, Expo 70, GHQ, Steve Gunn / John Truscinski, D. Charles Speer & the Helix, Stellar OM Source.  

He’s playing with Pat Murano as K-Salvatore (their first gig in a decade or so) as part of the Spy Music Festival at Death By Audio on Friday, July 6th.  

I got in touch with Jason to ask him questions about the fairly new and ongoing NATCH series.

—

Jason makes each NATCH session conducted at his studio available for free download on NATCH website. You can also stream and get them on Free Music Archive. Or even more simply, at the bottom of this post.

 

Play these while reading the interview :

Aaron Moore & Carter Thornton – Josef Ituk

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Dave Nuss, Rahdunes, Stellar Om Source & Aswara – Consolamentum

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Pat Murano & Tom Carter – Prophets And Martyrs Are My Witness

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Zachary Cale, Mighty Moon & Ethan Schmid – Trees Don’t Sleep

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Dave Shuford, Margot Bianca & Pigeons – Dickel’s Dream

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Black Twig Pickers & Steve Gunn – Sally In The Garden Sifting Sand

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—

What prompted the move upstate?

City living was something I’d done my whole life. My wife and I talked a lot over the years about moving up north and there were some circumstances that came about that allowed us to do that, so we did.

So the move wasn’t to start the studio. How did Black Dirt come about?

I’d been recording for years on a 4 track, but never with any real investment in it as a process. In the years leading up to the move I was involved in recording The Suntanama up at the Hint House on a Korg digital machine and I totally got the bug, bad. There would be weeknight sessions where everyone would split and I’d stay until the early morning hours, killing a bottle of rum, dicking around on the machine with little to no idea what I was doing, trying to make things sound good. There were mic sims on the machine that were named 57, 421, 87, etc and I had no idea what those numbers meant! Didn’t know the difference between an insert effect and a master effect… Of course, the great thing about recording is you can approach it from a very caveman perspective. What is this thing, what does it do if I put it here, move it here, turn this knob, etc. Eventually you get a feel for making things sound ok. And once you’re there, it is an easy jump to “I think I’ll start recording other people.” Which lead to Black Dirt. The timing was perfect. The bug had evolved to a full blown disease and there was nothing else I wanted to do than record music.

Black Dirt is situated in a rural area only 60 miles away from New York City.  Are you saying the shift in geography wasn’t intended to influence these potential recordings?

Well, it would be nice to say something like being in a rural area in a basement creates a vibe somewhere between Big Pink and Nellcôte, but I don’t think that is the case. From my perspective there’s not much of a difference between recording here and recording in a city, except there are less adult distractions in spitting distance. Most sessions start in the daylight and end deep into the nighttime darkness, there are few to no windows, not much fresh air in the lungs, etc. That’s kind of the same everywhere. I have heard from artists that being isolated is a great thing; that it is nice to get away from their lives, the routine, and focus on the music. For city dwellers I would imagine that seeing so many stars at night, or wild animals in the daytime, can be a nice feeling on a break, rather than a bodega or a delivery truck. That said, I have had people book time here based on the seasons – the strangling heat of August, the long nights of February, etc. Artists have utilized field recordings here as well – insects and frogs in summer, air pressure drops in late winter, rain, birds, etc.

I wanted to model the experience artists would have at Black Dirt on some of my own as a musician. One was to include a sense of hospitality that I learned from staying at Byron Coley‘s places in Western Mass over the years as a young man on tour. We built an apartment for the artists to stay in while they’re here and on long sessions (and even sometimes on weekend sessions, time permitting) we’ll cook a meal for the band, take a nice break, drink some wine, get away from the pressure for a few hours. The other was the laid back, not on the clock, homespun feeling I experienced recording at Paul Oldham’s Rove Studio in his farmhouse in KY and Jerry Yester’s place in AK. All of those places had a profound effect on me and so by virtue of transference, perhaps Black Dirt can have a similar effect on others, and perhaps wouldn’t have been possible in a city setting.

So, tell me what is NATCH all about.

NATCH is about recording people without focusing on the fact that people are being recorded. It is like an anti recording session. Get some talented people together, hang out, play some music. Music comes naturally. Without the concept of success or failure lurking in the corner of the room, if you give anyone an instrument, they’re going to make some noise on it. These sessions hopefully kinda get back to that feeling, even if the people coming here are really good players.

How did the series come about? How has it evolved after the initial release?

It got to the point here that when I wasn’t working, I wasn’t recording and I never started recording with the express idea that it would be a j-o-b type job. In the early days of the studio, Dave Nuss (NNCK, Sabbath Assembly, etc) would book these one off sessions where he’d get people together up here and just make music. He did one with the Family Underground that became the Christian Family Underground LP on Woodsist. Another with Jakob Olausson. One that became the band Amolvacy. The last one he did was with Rahdunes, Stellar Om Source and Aswara and nothing ever came of it. I had fond memories of the music they recorded and one night I decided to just start a mix and see what came of it. I was reminded of those sessions and how much fun they were. I was aware of the Daytrotter series and had recently been hipped to the Shaking Through series in Philly and it all just clicked. Why not set up some sessions that could be done fast, free and fun?

The first couple of sessions I booked were with people who had been to the studio before. Along with the artists, I had no idea what was going to happen at first. One thing that has changed is that I’ve begun inviting up artists who have never been here before, which has been amazing. Also, the sessions have begun to take on an internal rhythm – whether that is because there is a document of what has already happened, a watermark, and therefore a bit of an expectation on the artist’s part as to what they want to accomplish in the short time here, or if the walls are just vibrating a certain way when that energy of the first couple of hours of each session unfolds.

Collaboration is obviously a very important element to the series, could you elaborate as to why?

The main reason was to try and keep the sessions away from feeling like a demo process. If NATCH was a series of one artist or group coming up to do their thing, there’s a good chance it could become a testing ground for their next release. Or simply a promotional tool. With recording technology the way it is, what would distinguish a NATCH session from a recording done at home to a laptop or digital 2 track? By putting people together who have never played with each other before, the hope is to keep it in the moment, maybe find some middle ground between the artists that they might not go to on their own. There’s been a nice side effect of the series, in that some of the artists have continued to work with each other after their session.

What do you look for when pairing artists?

First and foremost, people who I hope will get along, socially and musically. I’m still waiting for the uncomfortable “clunker” session, but thankfully that hasn’t happened yet. Also, the artists should share some kind of intangible thing musically, an aesthetic, a particular nuance to the way they approach sound, where they are in their personal arc in their relationship to sound. And I’m thinking about the pairings like a sonic jigsaw puzzle – what instrumentation might work in a traditional way, or non-traditional way. Lately I’ve been inviting larger numbers of people to a single session with an ear towards a kind of one off band experience rather than a pairing of two single artists. We’ll see how those sessions turn out.

What kind of hang ups do you see when a band comes in to record with a record deal already in place?

Well, there’s an obvious focus on getting it right, for better or worse. You know, someone is paying for the time and the artists want to maximize it and make it perfect. “Are we nailing it?” “Does it sound as good as the demo / rehearsal / live show?” etc. That is all important, but there is a lot of amazing music to be found in the cracks between those questions as well as in happy accidents. Most contemporary budgets don’t allow for much experimentation in the studio. I’m not talking about writing, but trying a different approach from the one that has been hammered out in rehearsals. Another common situation is the “Come and get me when it’s my turn” scenario. During a session, it is impossible for everyone to be committed to focusing on every sound the entire time, but a lot of doors are closed when half the band thinks that they’re done with their contributions and partially check out for the remainder of a session.

I also do a large amount of artist funded projects, where the goal is to shop around the recording after it is done. That brings along a more intense dose of maximizing in a different way as well as the specter of “Will anyone be interested in producing this?” hanging out over the artist’s head the whole time.

What is your most prized piece of equipment at this point?

The default snarky engineer answer to this question is always, “My ears!” The piece of gear I love the most right now is actually something I have on semi-permanent loan from Jimy Seitang, an Alembic Superfilter. It has really changed the way I balance across the frequency spectrum over the last couple of years.

Is there a pinnacle collaboration for NATCH?  Any artist, any band (past or present), who would you choose?

How about Allen Toussaint and Leon Russell? Or Michael Hagerty and the Kinks? D Charles Speer & the Helix and Kaleidoscope? AMM and the Dead C? Fahey and Jack Rose… I would’ve retired after that one!

What’s in store for the future of Black Dirt?  Any specifics on tap?

Well my advice to anyone considering starting their own studio is, don’t do it! At least not alone. The biggest drawback of being isolated is the lack of community around the studio. It would be great to host listening parties, summer cookouts, NATCH style jams, etc, here, but it is just not feasible without a local scene. I’d love to be able to move out of the basement in the near future to have some more flexibility with mic placement and live off the floor recording, natural reverb and ambiance, as well as having some more space to incorporate a machine room to get some of the noisier gear out of the control room and bring in a 24 track tape machine. There seems to be a scene percolating on both sides of the river between Beacon & Hudson including Rosendale, Kingston, etc, so maybe a move a little northeast might be in the future. Any readers out there looking for a similar setup and a partner, get in touch!

There are some exciting NATCH sessions coming up including Dave Nuss and Michael Evans, Michael Chapman with Steve Gunn, Jimy Seitang, Nathan Bowles & Marc Orleans (tentatively calling themselves The Woodpiles), Ben Chasny & Hiss Golden Messenger, maybe something with Betsy Nichols, Dan Melchior, Jon Lam, and the Helix rhythm section – Ted Robinson & Steve McGuirl. I’ve been talking to some other folks as well, tho’ nothing is written in stone, they are equally exciting!

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You now deserve to download :

Dave Nuss, Rahdunes, Stellar Om Source & Aswara – NATCH 0

Black Twig Pickers & Steve Gunn – NATCH 1

Dave Shuford, Margot Bianca & Pigeons – NATCH 2

Aaron Moore & Carter Thornton – NATCH 3

Pat Murano & Tom Carter – NATCH 4

Zachary Cale, Mighty Moon & Ethan Schmid – NATCH 5

—

Adam of Northern Spy, responsible for this stimulating interview, also gave us his label’s plans for 2012 :

“. In August, the first Diamond Terrifier (Sam Hillmer of Zs) full-length drops.

. In September, we’re dropping a box set.  It’s four discs of material compiling the complete sextet works by the band Zs.

. Also, we’re putting out a new record by Dan Melchior called ‘The Backward Path’ which features overdubs by C. Spencer Yeh, Ela Orleans, Sam Hillmer, and Haley Fohr (Circuit Des Yeux)

. October, we’ve got a recording by John Butcher made at the new Issue Project Room space (110 Livingston).  It’s a solo performance in the empty room.  

. And we’ve got the epic follow up to Infinite Ease / Good God.  The record is called COL and it completes the Colin L. Orchestra trilogy.  This is Colin Langenus’ band. Colin was in USA is a Monster.  Now, he’s got the Colin L. Orchestra, CSC Funk Band, and Alien Whale.

In November, we’re putting out a collaboration between the duo of Loren Connors & Suzanne Langille with the painter MP Landis.  This will be the first record by this duo in about 2 decades.  The record was made in one day, live in the studio, with no overdubs.  We projected paintings by MP Landis.  Suzanne and Loren were seeing them for the first time.  They played to the paintings.  This will be out on CD later in the year.  Two tracks from the session are getting pressed on a limited 7″ which will be available this week with original art by MP Landis.”

Learn more here.

Mutwawa

Posted on 02.03.13 by

“Pazuzu, Lord of Fevers and Plagues, Dark Angel of the Four Winds with rotting genitals from which he howls through sharpened teeth over stricken cities….”
(William S. Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night)

A recent PEW/Psychedelia American Life survey revealed that Astral Travellers spend between 10-15% of their off-Earth time in MUTWAWA.

MUTWAWA is an acid Rorschach blot (bloat?) for seekers & questers.

Some samples have been brought back from the Astral Plane, and decomposed into their constituent parts by dark-side-of-the-force chemists.

We know what MUTWAWA is made of, but not how or why.

The Association for MUTWAWAN studies held its last congress at the summit of the Great Pyramid of Cholula. No agreement was reached about MUTWAWA’s Ontology and Ontogeny.

Several theories vie for supremacy:

MUTWAWA is the ectoplasm of the ghosts of the victims of 20th Century imperialism jacking a séance convened by Green Velvet.

MUTWAWA is the conventional-direction-of-time-countervailing-ripple produced by the achievement of consciousness by military drones after entering contact with ancient Balinese spirits, aka the future echoes of a Jodorowsky-class singularity.

MUTWAWA are Wolf Eyes squashed at the revolutionary disco.

MUTWAWA are being trained up by Add (n) to (x) and Gibson’s Digi-Loa to go into the black fibre wastelands of the matrix, and whip the floor with the Lawnmower Man’s ass.

We look forward to the hypothesis testing & methodological developments that will be afforded by the release of their new cassette, ‘Lamashtu Pazuzu’, where some have already pointed out that they have their ‘Dinosaur X Moment’.

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MUTWAWA – Lamashtu Pazuzu (Right click/Save as)

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MUTWAWA – Epsilon Eridani (Right click/Save as)

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Check their bandcamp here, get the tape there.

our weeks on soulseek – 2

Posted on 08.11.12 by

A) The Merciless Wheel Of Novelty (2012 records)

Two weeks ago, OSR tapes put out the first album of Better Psychics, twenty tracks of collaborative live mixing between Chris Weisman and Zach Phillips of Blanche Blanche Blanche, both international ambassadors of Brattleboro, Vermont.
It kind of sounds like a blend of early Psychic TV albums and Sebadoh cassettes, with sprinkles of woodsy experimental folk and acousmatic bossa nova on top. (it’s outstanding).
I never buy cassettes, as the closest tape player i could use is in the old family car, but I pre-ordered theirs as an inticement to finally get my driver’s licence and drive around while blissfully listening to it.
You can download the album (then consider doing a donation) and/or order it here.

This one is short but it kills me:
Better Psychics – I bet I can write one more (right click/save as)

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Better Psychics - What stays

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Better Psychics - With my attitude

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I guess I have a thing for every band John Dwyer plays in, as they cover the entire spectrum of genres that naturally stroke my ears, from garage punk to weird doo wop and drone psych pop. However it seems that, lately, The Oh Sees have been favoring their binary rock’n'roll side (close to Dwyer’s older band, The Coachwhips), to the detriment of the numerous other facets that made the superiority of their first records. But now their new album is out on In The Red and it’s quite a gem — great name, great artwork, wicked songs. The tracklist of Putrifiers II is somehow based on a chiasmus, with rowdy garage tunes both opening and ending the record. “Cloud#1″ provides a graceful contemplative transition towards the middle of the album, which is very 60s sounding, but in a way that freshens your bronchial tubes, spruces up your hair and takes you on a fuzzy journey where Nico and John Cale (“So Nice”) are striving to deprave the Everly Brothers (“We will be scared”) while impish voices fuse with Can-like instrumentals (“Lumpine Dominus”). Makes my day.

The Oh Sees – So Nice (right click/save as)

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The Oh Sees – We will be scared

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The Oh Sees – Lupine Dominus

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Natural Snow Buildings is an impressive French experimental duo who have released about 20 albums since 2001. They were/are mostly released on outrageously limited series, so the only way to listen to them is through culture sharing. Night Coercion Into The Company Of Witches, one of their best albums, was first issued in 2008 with 22 (yes, twenty two) copies, but people who love to manipulate cumbersome objects before listening to music can rejoice, as Ba Da Bing just made a three CD/four Lp reissue (yes, it is almost three hours long). Judd of Ba Da Bing speaks the truth: “Natural Snow Buildings make melodic, orchestrated, folk, droning compositions with layers of guitars, chants, woodwinds, percussive bells, distortion and delay. On Night Coercion, they push to extremes, producing layers of stereophonic sound both nuanced and grandiose. This record is the ideal introduction to the band’s sound, building harmonies upon noise upon harmonies, and providing a clear explanation as to why their albums (even the ones that aren’t so limited) sell out so immediately upon release”.

Natural Snow Buildings - Kadja Bosou (right click/save as)

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everything’s okay

Before suffering from big health problems leading to huge financial ones (like most indie musicians from the US, he didn’t have any medical insurance), right before retiring from music and going to work with chickens and goats in a farm, Sir Jason Molina recorded eight songs with just guitar, rawness and his elegant voice from Desperate Land. I have to admit I’m not a huge supporter of his whole Magnolia Electric Co. era, but Autumn Bird Songs arouses the same kind of shivers in the stomach as his majestuous Lionness album with Songs:Ohia.
It seems the vinyl/book countaining these songs is already sold out, and you can only buy a mp3 version through Amazon, so we recommend to get the album on Soulseek or other culture sharing software, then send a direct donation to Jason Molina instead.

Jason Molina – A Sad Hard Change (right click/save as)

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Songs:Ohia – Lionness (right click/save as)

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B) We don’t care about the release date anyway (non-2012 records)

African Elegant – Sierra Leone’s Kru / Krio Calypso Connection was issued as a tape in 1992 by Original, a long dead label devoted to publishing compilations from mysterious parts of the universe. It is of course out of print, so you’ll have to create or use a Soulseek account and actively search for it. After listening to this album five times in two days, I was planning to write an elaborate review but then I got too busy dancing and smiling like a half-wit, and then I REALLY had to play Dishonored, so here’s a few words from an highly reliable source instead (Cliff Furnald of RootsWorld):

If there is a measurement of pure joy, perhaps it is in the music on this disk, twenty two tracks of unadulterated delight. The palm wine style of Sierra Leone is probably best known through the recordings of S.E. Rogie, but Original ‘s J.S. Roberts has dug deep for some exhilarating early 78s by Ebenezer Calender, Famous Scrubbs and a number of tracks of less known Kru and mandingo artists. Palm wine music is a close relative of Trindad’s calypso, developing in the same period, and influenced or becoming an influence on that popular island style in the fifties. The music grew from the jamming of African sailors, Caribbean soldiers and locals in the bars of Freetown, and the easily stowed instruments they favored like the mandolin, guitar, accordion, and banjo became the backbone of the music. With the addition of percussion, and some wonderful brass sections, these songs mirrored not only the rhythms of calypso but also its topical tendencies, with stories of local events, politics and everyday life. It’s a real “chicken or egg” thing, and Robert’s investigation into the roots of the music related in the liner notes do little to clear up the mystery. While the roots of the music may remain shrouded in history, the music itself is no mystery at all. It is simple, open euphoria.

Hey Mississippi Records, why not reissue it ?

Ebenezer Calender And His Maringar Band – The Stolen Chicken (right click/save as)

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A. Cambah & His Kankaray Tarrancis Society – Sandoh Kanu Koh (mandingo) (right click/save as)

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Dinosaurs, Norwegians and Epic Ensemble in the discotheque – a few 2012 records

Posted on 29.10.12 by Jonathan of

When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth – Jeans Shopping With Jesse (Made In Kansas)

 

More blown out fucked up fuzz from When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. Had been waiting to hear this one for a considerably long time once I knew it was coming out. Didn’t realize it was going to be as limited as it is though, apparently only 100 made of this mean piece of wax. And mean is most certainly the right way to put it. To anyone that felt the need to unleash the aural bleeding that came as a result of their previous release Peaced, then Jeans Shopping With Jesse (Made In Kansas) will undoubtedly be exactly the type of heaping trash that fills that need once again. Not as punishingly treble heavy as Peaced, but rather more so of a complete culmination of noise being thrown at the listener this time around. It’s hard to resist the comparisons to Rusted Shut, but this certainly fits the bill. No less filthy, that’s for sure, but maybe a bit less frightening. You get that these guys might actually have a sense of humor behind all that distorted crust…or maybe a big drinking problem. Who knows? Surprisingly though, Jeans Shopping for Jesse isn’t the type of monotonous trudge through noise that you might expect it to be. Some of the best moments here are the groups abilities to subtly let the tracks set in with a level of claustrophobic nature, eventually becoming an overwhelming amount of noise before either fading out or cutting off completely. That of which is often followed by brief tracks of full-frontal noise that approach the ferocity and pacing of noise-punk. Absolutely relentless and pretty jarring at that. Fans of the genre certainly should give this one a try.

When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth – Jeans Shopping With Jesse (right click/save as)

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When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth - Jah Fingies

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+ their amazing previous record, Peaced, available for free download. In the bands own words: “This album was recorded in our practice space in the month of April 2010. We were very drunk, and very stoned. We’ve recorded quite a bit of stuff before, but this recording actually captures realistically what we do and how we do it. Cheap, loud, and drunk”.

You can buy last copies of these two Lps here.

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Neon Blud – Discotheque Deathbed (Vinyl Rites)

The collective that just keeps on giving, that being the folks down south that have helped spawn projects like Cult Ritual, Merchandise, and so on. This LP comes from yet another outlet under the name Neon Blud. Those out there probably know them from their split with Diet Cokeheads or releases on Fan Death and Drugged Conscience that came out awhile back. Previously I had known them as more of a noisier pop group that had a very prominent early Sonic Youth thing going on, however things have changed up fairly dramatically with their new full-length Discotheque Deathbed. The label Vinyl Rites mentioned Live Skull in the description, which if you’re looking for my attention, that’s a fairly good way to get it. A track like “Tick” certainly channels this more than anything, but I’d be lying if I said this album greatly resembles the band. I certainly hear the connection though and I’m loving it. Neon Blud have more so driven their sound down the path of late 70’s/early 80’s goth heavy post-punk but spreading out amongst a far more abrasive landscape of feedback and atonal droning noise that seemingly cycles its way in out of this album in an unobtrusive and effective manner. This is a much darker and noisier band than I imagine people were prepared to hear, and more importantly its one that has stepped out from a more confined songwriting approach and really allowed themselves to take this in an interesting direction. Most of the tracks are rather lengthy, filling the spaces nicely with repetitive bass lines that develop the sort of “disco” beat that they are looking for. And generally on more than one occasion per song, things lead in and out of explosive waves of noise before dropping back into a locked groove. Vocals are present, but likely merely only for the added effect of the depressive and bleak mood the album seems to function on. Really cool stuff. Not sure if this is the last output that we’ll hear from the band or not, but if it does indeed happen to be, then this is a fine way to go out.

Neon Bud – Tick (right click/save as)

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Neon Bud - Temple

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This album is sold out, so you’ll have to look for it on Soulseek.

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Staer – Staer (Gaffer Records)

Some pretty warped instrumental noise out of Norway from these three gentlemen known as Staer. Due to locale they are most commonly linked back to Noxagt, which actually fits quite well musically. Despite being a three piece, these tunes pack a thunderous amount of sludgy rumble. It’s hard to simply call these guys a “sludge” band though, despite these songs stomping along in a slow motion hulk like style. Things however tend to take on jazzy feel, but as if it were stuck in mud…slowly shifting from one atonal riff to another. Described as precise in execution, it’s much dirtier sounding than one would gather from reading that. It may be precise, but it certainly sounds the part of something that would be a destructive mess visually. Staer aren’t completely opposed to hitting a run of simple rhythm, as evidenced by a track like “Sex Varnish”, which basically focuses on one big bouncy riff throughout the song while surrounding it by free drumming and a multitude of guitar effects. That latter seems to be a recurring theme throughout this self-titled debut. The trio certainly have a good grasp of the fun things that they can do with their instruments and they make it very well known on this album by pushing sounds and effects that one would assume would require someone in the background twisting knobs and such. Maybe that’s the case and I just missed that somewhere, but no matter it certainly works for them. The songs are heavy and just about as wildly out of control/demented as a band that is said to be in control can be. Really nice debut from these guys.

Staer – Det Ar Nyar, Javlar (right click/save as)

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Staer – I Roll With Creflo

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This one is available through Gaffer label. Head on over there to grab yourself a copy.

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V.Vecker Ensemble – In the Tower (Majorly Records)

V.Vecker Ensemble was spawned out member Keith Wecker’s idea to start the collective after spending time playing in Glenn Branca’s Symphony #13: Hallucination City and Anthony Braxton’s 2010 Sonic Genome Project. Having a fairly nice size of talent surrounding him already in the Vancouver underground, he enlisted the services of Brody McKnight and Andrea Lukic (Nu Sensae), Daniel Presnell (Von Bingen), Liam Butler (No Gold), David Rogers (Basketball), and Corey Woolger (Cowards). This LP is the first recorded output from the collective and features one long instrumental piece split on to both sides of the record. The first movement is a nice slow burn mix of psych and creeping noise. The use of sparse santur at the beginning of the track, as it slowly melds into a swirl of complementing sounds, gives the entire piece a bit of an exotic feel. This far less of the controlled chaos type of approach that I was kind of expecting with this, but rather it ends up being a wonderful tension building exercise of melody and subtle noise. The pieces eventually cools down, which provides the opportunity to flip the record to move on to the second piece of the composition. The second side continues a bit in the same way, but things get a bit more claustrophobic on it. The santur again provides a skeletal shaping of exterior sounds as a way to introduce the slow inclusion of guitars and bass, while both drummers keep things slightly nailed down with a steady beat. However, with this portion of the composition by the end of it the instruments all eventually reach the same atonal apex of noise to finish the piece off with a loud steady trance-like pound. Really dig this, look forward to more.

For those interested in picking up a copy of In the Tower can do so by hitting up Majorly Records.

The Staircase Conspiracy Tape Vol. 1

Posted on 13.10.12 by Gonçalo of

Picture by Joseph Stuefer (http://www.flickr.com/photos/josefstuefer/)

The Staircase Conspiracy is an imposingly complex, fluid and organic mixtape/collage showcasing Discrepant‘s musical randomness and embracing lots of points of collision with Cedric Stevens’/The Syncopated Elevators Legacy atmospheres (see Discrepant’s previous post on the subject here).

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The Staircase Conspiracy Tape Vol. 1

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Download the whole pack.

Tracklist:
Cédric Stevens - Between The Battle and the Sheets (Fennesz Remix)
Roy Porter - Tleilax
Marcel Duchamp - The Creative Act
Ben Frost - Stomp
Andy Moor & Anne-James Chaton - Une Histoire De L’aviation
Leyland Kirby - This is the STory of Paradise Lost
Liz Green - Bad Medicine
Cédric Stevens - Vanda (excerpt)
Oiseaux D’europe (excerpt)
Tremor- Caracol
Petrona Martinez - Sepitema (Thornato Remix)
Burning Star Core - Hopelessly Devoted (excerpt)
Third Eye Foundation – Lions Writing The Bible
Benoit Poelvorde - Mer Du Nord Poem ( from Man Bites Dog)
Oiseaux D’europe (excerpt)
Acid Kirk - Hillary Fuzz Station (Excerpt)
Werner Herzog - On the Obscenity of the Jungle
Paul Cantelon - Theme For The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
Nils Frahm - Familiar
Robert Mitchum - Preacher Song (from Night Of The Hunter)
Acid Kirk - Hillary Fuzz Station (Excerpt)
Drifting Bear Collective - Cum Jack Frost (Excerpt)

Death Grips stick their cock in the eye of sony music, release their new album for free, let anyone make money with it, then change their mind about it

Posted on 01.10.12 by Gwendolyne of

Many people wound up on this post through various sources (Death Grips Twitter account, Brooklyn Vegan, Tiny Mixtapes, CorruptFork…). If you’re into weird hip hop, you should also listen to the amazing band Clipping. They are not this week’s epicentre of the Hype, but they do mindblowing music.

Don’t let machiavelian PR schemes fool you, the bear is the actual album cover.

Last february, I was disappointed to learn that Death Grips, a wonderful trio making angry fractured hip hop (with The Magnificent Zach Hill on drums, Andy Morin on keyboards and Stefan Burnett on vocals), had signed a major label deal with Epic/Sony.

Ex-Military Mixtape, their first album, was released under a Creative Commons non commercial licence, allowing people to copy, distribute, display, and build derivative works based on their music, as long as it was for non-commercial purposes. Consequence ? Ex-Military was shared hundreds of thousands of times. It turned Death Grips into one of the most famous indie band taking a real alternative stance on the actual copyright system, acknowledging people’s right to share. AND it is an awesome record.

Download full version of Ex-Military Mixtape (or instrumentals + acapellas version).

Then they signed with a Major. Obviously, it wasn’t just a greedy move (anyone who knows the bands members will agree on this), but rather a “we’ll have big distribution and total control over creativity” blah blah thing. Death Grips stated they would release two albums this year via Epic: The Money Store (last april), and No Love Deep Web (planned this October).

When the Money Store came out, Epic/Sony predictably barred them from using a Creative Commons licence. The band then decided to act naughty: they leaked the album on Youtube anyway, allowed people to download a bunch of tracks, leaked the instrumentals after an incredible hide-and-seek game in the deep internet. Death Grips also are the most legally-downloaded band on BitTorrent in the first half of 2012 (oh my god, 34,151,432 downloads of weirdo hip hop noise music). The Money Store truly is an amazing piece of music, but the whole album wasn’t released under a Creative Commons licence, so legally people weren’t allowed to share all the tracks, remix it, etc.

However, it seems the honeymoon between Death Grips and Epic is officially over.
Death Grips tweeted today “The label wouldn’t confirm a release date for NO LOVE DEEP WEB ’till next year sometime. The label will be hearing the album for the first time with you”.

Ten hours later, they released their new album for free. Tons of websites have already reported it, but it seems only a few (i say “a few” because i’m polite, i actually read nothing about it – edit: Death Grips and others have spread the A&D post you’re reading, thanks to them, and Consequence of Sound wrote a piece about it) noticed they didn’t just “release it for free”: they allow anyone to make money with it.

According to the Archive.org download link they’ve posted themselves, this album is indeed released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence, a veeery open one. Of course, it lets people share and remix the music, but contrary to the previous licence they chose for Ex-Military, it also authorizes commercial uses without asking permission, as long as the music is still credited to the band. Yes, you can use Death Grips’ music in a TV ad (for an energy drink maybe?), or in a big commercial movie. You don’t have to wait for a physical release date, you can start a record label instead, press and sell 10,000 copies of this album without even asking the band NOR Epic/Sony if they are okay with that. Well, if you’re not an asshole, I hope you’ll send Death Grips some money.

Some people (Hi Sean!) are wondering if the whole operation is a PR stunt. But the licence chosen debunks such hypotheses because it implies that Epic/Sony don’t have exclusive commercial rights on Death Grips’ music anymore (while a Creative Commons Non Commercial licence would have allowed Epic/Sony to retain exclusive rights on commercial uses). There’s no way a major compagny would accept such a licence as part of a PR scheme. Actually I think it is the first time a band signed on a major label releases an album on a CC Attribution 3.0 licence.

Anyway, i wanted to say a big THANK YOU to Epic/Sony for pissing off Death Grips and pushing them back to the arms of Creative Commons. Sharing is Caring, blah blah blah, Amen.

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EDIT 10.4.12: Death Grips have now changed the Creative Commons Attribution licence into an Attribution-Non Commercial one. It means you can share or remix the work, but NOT use it commercially without permission. Several explanations are possible:
- They didn’t know what kind of licence they took in the first place (I doubt it, as it wasn’t their first Creative Commons release and Death Grips themselves shared this A&D post via Twitter).
- They changed their mind.
- Epic/Sony made them change the licence, so the Major Company can still have exclusive commercial rights on Death Grips music. As the Major Company has paid for the recording of No Love Deep Web, this scenario is quite likely.

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Death Grips website was down for a while. I thought it was collapsing because of too many visits, but serious prominent yet corrupt press talked to Zach Hill, and he confirmed Epic/Sony took the website down! And then Epic/Sony denied it! And then the website came back! Then it disappeared one more time! Then it is here again! Woo! (my guess is their web hosting company had a problem with the penis cover)

Thank God/Santa Claus/Richard Stallman, you can also download the full album via Archive.org or via Bayfiles or stream it via Soundcloud (who didn’t like the album cover either apparently).

Clipping – Our world is a ruin

Posted on 11.09.12 by Gwendolyne of

 

I suppose you have noticed it, more and more blogs/webzines/old medias have developped the quite peculiar habit of getting carried away by bands that have recorded only one or two mp3s, and/or to write about records which won’t be released until several months.
These cultural phenomena have deep and multiple causes, although today we will briefly touch upon a few of them:

On the media side
If you want to get some attention among the thousands of billions of posts cracking everyday on the interweb, you have three options:
1) To be the first
2) To be interesting
3) To be funny

To be interesting is difficult and takes a lot of time without any certainty of any achievement. To be funny is a gift from the gods and, as an unfair but logical consequence, is not accessible to everyone. To be the first thus is the easiest. And writing about something months prior its release, or about someone still in his foetal state, is a good way to be the first.

On the band/producer side
The goal is to create artificial buzz with tiny bits of a piece of work. You can’t verify and judge by yourself, you have to believe the teaser. Without even acknowledging it, a lot of small indie labels use the same marketing methods as the movie and video game industries. Sometimes their teasers reach unexpected heights of vacuity : “Hey, a-band-you-don’t-care-about has just released the TRACKLIST of its new EP! Let’s all talk about it!”

On the “everyone” side
We’re all addicts to the Novelty Orgasm. We want to be connected to the Flux of Now, to listen to new music as soon as it has been recorded. As if music obeyed to a darwinian process, as if The New was, in itself, superior to The Old.

These are troublesome facts because they are largely scattered, almost systematic. When we’ll write the Tablets of Stone of A&D, we shall include these two commandments : Don’t write about a band until he has released at least one full album.
And Don’t write about it until you have actually listened to it.

But of course, a few bands would lead anyone to bend these rules. For instance, Clipping:

 

Clipping make hip-hop. They are a weird, noisy, radical hip hop trio. Two guys twiddle bleep bloop machines producing krrrrrrrr and ssshhhh and sometimes jkl<dy!!_*hfsd sounds, while a third one declaims demented lyrics in fast forward mode. We had some very good deviant hip hop recently (Death Grips, Shabazz Palaces), and one can expect the same kind of febrile excitation here.

At first (thanks to Brian Miller of Foot Village/Deathbomb Arc), I listened to this song, Loud:

 

It just drilled my ears. Actually I needed it to accompany me in the bus, at the supermarket,  or at the golf club. Clipping didn’t care about me and didn’t include a download button so I bravely ripped it from Soundcloud and listened to it 321 times. But it was only one song, so I had to curb my enthusiasm.

Then I saw this video:

 

 

Ok Gwendolyne, they seem to not suck live (I have a slight tendancy to speak to myself when i’m moved emotionnally). Their show at Enter The Interweb confirmed this assumption:

 

My expert detective skills a basic internet search coupled with a few questions to Brian Miller taught me more about the identities of Clipping’s members. One of them already is an undergound star : Jonathan Snipes of electro dance punk metal joyous pop hardcore band Captain Ahab. Jonathan makes all his music available digitally on a free donation basis (go listen to the last Captain Ahab album, The End of Irony).
Another Clipping dude has been involved for a long time in the let’s-release-crazy-experimental-modular-synth-music-limited-to-30-copies scene: William Hutson of Rale. He releases limited cassettes on numerous labels and runs Accidie Records.
And then there is Daveed Dibbs, rapper, actor, educator with a lot of messy hair and an insane flow. Dave released his first solo album for free last January (grab it here).

And now the time of the first Clipping release has come: A tape just came out on Deathbomb. It only is a three songs/ten minutes tape, but it will make a rain dance happen in your panties. At least, it finished to wow me and to get through all my ethical principles. Listen below to Face (an hysterical swoop), a studio freestyle, and Broke (dark, slow track). Hail Clipping.