Young Pilot Astray

dyvnzmbr

2011-05-28T19:52:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit late to this, but one of my absolute favourite music blogs out there, DAYVAN ZOMBEAR, has started up a Kickstarter to fund DZ TAPES, the record label that's soon-to-be-a-thing. I can't tell you how much great, great stuff I've gotten from that page; it's an absolute goldmine of everything falling under the umbrella of "Experimental", from noise to pyschedelia to lo-fi pop with a whole lot of made-up genres that sound like exactly the sort of thing you want to hear. So with your contributions, DZ TAPES is going to be releasing original up-and-coming artists (oh god, "up and coming", did I really...) which, if the rest of the blog is any measure of taste, will all be fantastic.

Don't think I'd ask you to donate for nothing, though. For your donation of $8[US]/$10[CAN/MEX]/$12[THERE ARE OTHER PLACES?], you'll get a tape (and MP3s) full of ~exclusive~ tracks by a bunch of artists that fall into the (vast) DYVNZMBR vibe, including some big[ger] hitters like Foxes in Fiction, Sleep In, and Chris Rehm (who recently put out a killer record called Worries, etc which I have yet to write about and yes, I do hate myself for being so slow on it). The real cool part is that your donation also buys a tape for one of the contributing artists, so they have something to cherish/sell/show off for their efforts. And you're helping launch what's sure to be an incredible label. Win/win/win.

PUT YOUR MONEY HERE

you know it's b-a-d when I have to visit my own blog to remember my formatting

2011-05-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

Vit - -
[black metal, sludge, doom]

Yeah, doom-laden blacksludge. It's the sort of record you have to slowly peel and grind off your skin after listening to it - it will do everything in its power to suffocate, bruise, drown, and otherwise oppress you and if you're the kind of cat who's still around after reading that genre checklist and soaking in that beautifully bleak cover art then you're the ideal to candidate to be locked up in that shack yourself (look closer & don't come back until you see it). Luckily, Vit are a part of the movement in black metal that has, sadly, only really come around recently, wherein a) outside influences are a-okay, and b) "oppressive" and "bruising" don't mean triple-digit BPM all the way through (wait, is that a-okay? Am I being untrue? Can black metal be "a-okay"?). The draw here, and what makes this album infinitely more engaging, is the use of dynamics. The slow passages, the clean passages, the ambient passages - once the riff does kick in, it's a hundred times more brutal after being teased at for minutes at a time. Likewise, there's a huge doom influence, making this a fairly plodding record throughout (plodding as a positive thing, natch) meaning that when the tempo is dialed up it's all the more electrifying. Really, I can't remember the last time "sort of fast" was this thrilling, but it just speaks to the expert sense of pacing from start to finish. Thrilling in a "I wish I was dead" sort of way.

Download/listen/stream.

Buy from Music Ruins Lives (ltd. to 100)

Sleeping Heart

2011-04-19T09:42:00.002-07:00

Giles Corey - "Sleeping Heart"
[goth-folk]

Giles Corey- Sleeping Heart from Justin Donais on Vimeo.

Easily one of my most anticipated albums of the year is the upcoming full-length by Giles Corey - aka one half of Have a Nice Life - which has been a long time coming, having demos kicking around the internet since basically HANL came out as totally a thing. Totally downer doom-country that, while not explicitly about being crushed to death, is nonetheless thematically heavy and oppressive with the music ranging from stripped-down voice-and-guitar suicide notes to surprisingly lush ghostly full-band Americana. Pre-orders should be going live soon, and of course the packaging is going to be phenomenal and include some lengthy, vague/threatening "book" that is sure to end lives.

2011-04-19T09:42:00.001-07:00

MUSIC IS GREAT

2011-04-08T02:19:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, hi
Hi
Hey
Yeah
OK
Last month+ has been nonstop reading reading reading with some writing writing writing. Obviously not one of those writings was here but academia called, y'know. Thousands of words later, countless hours in my study, and I think I'm back in action, and I think this time I might mean it. Maybe. Hm.

Thanks to everyone who has continued to send me stuff over the last few weeks/months - sorry to everyone who has continued to send me stuff over the last few weeks/months. I'll get around to it. Really. Feel free to resend it, and feel free to totally call me out in the subject line -- I deserve it.

YPA 2.0
STARTS
HERE
(soon)
(I still have exams ok sorry)
(and like, a job)
(patience)

luv,
Calvin/YPA

guys

2011-03-25T23:31:00.000-07:00

I dunno, guys. Music is kinda lame.

help me out, guys

2011-03-09T22:38:00.000-08:00

Caddywhompus - "Age of Wild Spirits" (single)
[experimental pop, post-everything, proto-somethingelse]

Yeah, with a name like that, you know you're getting in to something good. "Experimental pop" is way too vague, I know, but that's really what it is. It's an entirely manic single: impossible to follow but curiously hook-laden thanks to the vocals. It's a total blast to actual hear something that you can't predict, from the drone-swell build-up to the spazzy bursts of blastbeats and all sorts of off-kilter mathy riffing recklessly thrown about when it's not a flattening wall of sound. The sort of song that begs to be immediately re-listened to even if you didn't like it because you'll want to try (and fail) to understand the thing. But, I mean, you won't not like it, that's impossible, sorry.

Now there is where you help me and help yourselves: if you click that link below and download the single, and do it 7498 more times (or tell your friends of whatever, this thing just needs to hit 7500 downloads total), the new Caddywhompus EP gets released right then and there instead of in May. I, for one, can't wait that long for more of whatever this is, so download it and get all your bros to do the same.

DOWNLOAD.

Kurdaitcha

2011-03-01T20:31:00.000-08:00

Mamaleek - Kurdaitcha

[black metal, experimental]
Alright, quick one today, basically to tell you to go listen to this. Yeah, yeah, it's tagged "black metal", but only because "post-black metal" would be silly. But this really is beyond what you think of as black metal; absolutely recklessly creative. I could say a million more things about this but I don't feel all that qualified having only listened to it once. What I can say in absolute confidence is that there are exciting things happening in black metal once again, and it's all coming from an anonymous bedroom in San Francisco. Grim, huh? (Ok, maye not all of it, because the new Gnaw Their Tongues is fantastically out there for the genre, too). The whole thing is available as a "pay what you want" download or as a high-quality, limited to 150 vinyl record.

Download | Donate | Buy

Also, here's why I haven't been keeping up:

bear with me

untitled

2011-02-15T08:49:00.000-08:00

Planning for Burial - (Untitled EP)
[doomgaze, black metal, post-rock]

It's a bit unnerving when one single band - or, for that matter, one single musician - can so deftly capture and combine all my favourite things about music at once. Planning For Burial has done that twice already in two decidedly different ways: once with the sprawling, heart-wrenching filthy post-gaze (whatever) Leaving and then again on the, relatively-speaking, clean-cut slowcore on the split with Lonesummer. The new single here - originally intended as a 7" which sadly never came into fruition - is self-described as a meeting of these sounds, but more than that, it's a perfection two. Opener "I Hope You Will Pick Me Out" is even more grim, ferocious and blissed out all at once than anything on Leaving, and "Annick" was basically born to break hearts, sounding like an even more low-key Low with guitar solos ripped straight from late-era Talk Talk (yeah, I know, right, could things get better?). This is probably going to start slipping into slack-jawed fanboyism (if it hasn't already), but really, check it out. No one is forging sounds as sublimely as this.

Download/stream/buy.
(Physical CD limited to 60 copies w/ exclusive extra-long alternate take of Leaving's soul-crushing eponymous closer.)

musikdramen

2011-02-11T21:46:00.000-08:00

Wahlheim - Songs That Are Not Part of Ambitious Musikdramen
[pop, emo, home-recording]

Mid-fi mid-90's emo-pop with morbid goth sensibilities & irresistible melodies so you know you've already clicked that link. This is the first/only release by Wahlheim, a two-song digital 7" which might sound silly in theory but it's a 14mb download so divide that by sides A/B (i.e., 2) then go and collect the grey matter dripping out of your ears when you've realized what that means. It's shamelessly catchy and fairly upbeat but it's presented with such a killer aesthetic that you won't have a problem checking it out. Besides, Wahlheim sounds grim as fuck, so you know these ~~infectious~~ plague-bearing choruses are in good hands.

Download.

Also available: this picture of a bluejay

blackout

2011-02-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

Expo '70 - Blackout
[psychedelic, drone, space rock, noise]

Download/stream/buy here.

Two half-hour blissed-out excursions into whatever cosmic voids Expo '70 tore open in Ithaca and Manhattan (tracks 1 and 2, respectively). It's Expo '70 doing what Expo '70 do, have done, and will continue to do indefinitely at an alarming rate, made extra alarming by how good it is. Recorded live, allegedly "on less sleep than you can imagine", the duo takes things to the more weightless side of their sound with impossibly huge, dense celestial drones that refuse to be anchored by the comparatively timid drum machine. Two sprawling pieces of improvisation and neo-psych meanderings prove the band to be at the top of whatever game it is they're playing, if for some reason their expansive and curiously/appropriately highly-rated discography hasn't tipped you off yet. Stream it for free above or throw $8 out for a limited (200) CDr.

fast reverse

2011-01-20T12:09:00.000-08:00

Orange Blossom Flyover - Fast Reverse
[shoegaze]

Download/stream.

Short & sweet nine-minute EP of beat-driven shoegaze. It's an interesting take on the style, pushing the surprisingly lively beats to the front but it works, especially in the closer "Vicarious Rooms of Gold" where the guitars and vocals feel more rhythmic, too; those shoes are tapping. The whole EP is really just driven - it has a sense of momentum that, elsewhere in this genre, gets lost in the cavernous reverb and swirling modulation. It's about as focused as you can get while still feeling a million miles away.

Also worth checking out is the Fresh Horrors from Hades "EP", which is just the 7-minute "So By Your Spells": a gorgeous, hazy backwards-looking free-fall. The complete opposite of the above EP but absolutely worth a listen.

Minajah

2011-01-18T08:38:00.000-08:00

True Womanhood - "Minajah"
[Moombahton]

REEL TOO REAL by truewomanhood

Sublimely catchy new one from post-indie forerunners True Womanhood. This is part of their immensely cool "Reel Too Real" series which is cool for reasons other than the dense punning I mean, look, all the songs are recorded on this. Did you see ? Yeah, this synth-heavy stuttering grove was done through that monstrosity and, I am explicitly told, not through Ableton. I don't have a strong grasp of how electronic music is made & performed, really, but I have the inkling that Ableton makes it easy and this was not and that's good: reverb-drenched analog anti-technology fun-times dance tune. Bear with me when I say it's not "obvious" dance music aside from the rave synths (Moombahton synths?); no grating 4/4 drum machine beatdown, just organic & beat-driven & incidentally danceable.

whatever, dude

2011-01-04T08:50:00.000-08:00

Tree Hopping - The Beat Band
[tropical lo-fi]
Recommended if you like: dancing in an exotic tin can telephone

Stream it.
Download.

Back to school back to work it's January oh man c'mon. Tree Hopping, though: we have Tree Hopping, thank god. The Beat Band is ferociously energetic and, despite being apparently composed mostly of loops and samples, is a coherent little package. It's a brisk half-hour but really, anything longer would've been exhausting because this LP is relentless, chock-full of funky rhythm and wooping and sloppy guitar and shimmery keyboards; really, all in all, an album put out in entirely the wrong season 'cause it's summer in a .zip. Or maybe this is entirely timely - rays of tropical post-punk shining through yr S.A.D. Yeah there's tons of "no-fi bedroom pop" or whatever making the rounds right now, but Tree Hopping has flavour rather than the drab dourness that is most of the contemporaries. Fun fun fun and really a feel-good record throughout; every bit as colourful as the album cover. If the first two tracks don't hook you then winter has claimed your soul and you need this more than you know.

viddy well, little brother

2010-12-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

People still make music videos. Did you know? I was surprised, really; thought that it was a bit of an anachronism in an age when people can't be bothered to look at an album cover, never mind commit themselves to a video. But they're happening, and they land in my inbox from time to time, and it's the holidays, and I'm still behind, so let's both take it easy then, right?

Mickey Brown - Soul Glo promo

Mickey Mickey Rourke- "Glo" from A.P. Fischer on Vimeo.

I can barely keep up with the emails I get, so I've fallen really behind on Mickey Mickey Rourke's manic release schedule (here as Mickey Brown, collaborating with Lester Brown). Which is really lame on my part, because his material is some of my favourite in "the genre", whatever it is. Droney, noisy, ambient, electronic, whatever. Y'know, that Oneohtrix Point Never / Emeralds / whatever psychedelic swath of sound. Fantastic stuff.

Listen to all of "Soul Glo".

Keith Canisuis - Inner blue, outer red

Keith Canisius - Inner blue, outer red from Keith Canisius on Vimeo

Speaking of psychedelic mess, good lord - I feel like should be dancing to this track but I'm afraid of my brain leaking out. So just sit tight at let this vaguely catchy, maybe danceable, wash over your ears/eyes. Very cool, lush electronic beats and synths practically drowned in delay and reverb. Almost like Panda Bear, only I promise you it's not nearly as boring.

More tracks/more albums and some of them are even free

Pregnant - Wiff of Father

Pregnant - Wiff of Father from Cinema Caldera on Vimeo

Very slick, even professional-looking video: the kind of which you might have actually seen on TV in an era gone by. Story-telling intercut with "performance" footage & what-have-you. Incredibly tight song, too, with hypnotically minimal guitar work and enthralling repetition that really hits its stride when the vocals come in. Lots of layers all barely fitting together, as maximal as minimal can get. I'm also super late on this one, so, like, is this guy popular yet? He should be. I'll definitely be writing more about this.

Hear more/buy more.

Hear Hums - Cerebellum/Woo

Cerebellum/Woo - Hear Hums from Hear Hums on Vimeo

Young Pilot Astray: getting to you two months late or within the day. No compromise. I guess Hear Hum lucked out, emailing me the same day I planned on updating. Or, rather, I guess I lucked out that such a fantastic band emailed me. I hate to equate bands with other bands other than for the sake of "check this out if you like x" (what no I didn't already do it in this exact post what are you talking about no), but I am obligated, personally, to carry this one out: this is the band I wanted Animal Collective to be. This is what they hinted at on Feels, this is the sort of sound they fleetingly held dear, and that is what really breaks my heart about that band is that they were so close to being something really cool. Instead, bless 'em, we have Hear Hum, who don't exactly reference that per se (ok ok Avey Tare comparisons will be made in the vocals, ok ok that's it, sorry), but have the same essence if I may be a complete jerk-off and use a word like that. It's a huge sound, it's an organic sound, it's full of discovery and wonder and bombast and between the introduction and the climax is all fits so remarkably naturally. Incredible. Definitely going to post their LP here ASAP.

pretend nothing happened oh wait it didn't

2010-12-14T20:48:00.001-08:00

Planning For Burial/Lonesummer - Split

[black metal/doomgaze/whatever]

Recommended if you like: the colour black, emotions [negative]

Preview for Planning For Burial Lonesummer Split by Planning For Burial

OR stream/download/buy the whole thing here.

If you're anything like me - and I daresay any casual readers here are - then genre-blending (done correctly) is something that probably tickles you in a way. Mount Eerie's Wind's Poem, for instance, was my favourite album last year thanks in no small part to its sublime and entirely natural fusion of black metal and Elverum's trademark timid folk. Now if we could just get John Darnielle to drop a hyperliterate death metal opus, we can officially be done with music. But until then, I guess, the search goes on.

Planning For Burial should be familiar as the project that released one of my other favourites from last year, Leaving, which melted together some of my favourite things in the world (post-rock, shoegaze, doom, black metal) into a lurching beast of a record. He's back, with no-fi necromancer Lonesummer, who plays bedroom black metal with a big helping of sad on top, and together they've put out a fucking downer of a record which, of course, I implore you to buy.

The Lonesummer half is possibly my favourite Lonesummer material to date, opening with the absolutely punishing )ironic old-timey radio samples aside) "Joy is a Burden" and sort of pulls off a black metal/noise fusion that I really thought Wold were going to do after all this "herp derp My Bloody Valentine meets black metal" bullshit I read but no no no this is much better, don't let the Wold comparison scare you off; this is what I wish Wold were like. Elsewhere, "I Wish I Could Delete Last Night" is the poppiest black metal track this year and will make a really neat song for your Myspace profile. And yeah, "Your Eyes Always Shake Me" is nothing like either of those either - essentially the ballad of his batch - and yeah, yeah, and yeah. This is black metal loves black metal as much as it loves telling it to go fuck itself.

The flip side is the first new Planning for Burial material in too long and dials back the kitchen sink approach of Leaving into a more focused set of tracks, which is refreshing because it really makes this EP feel separate from the rest of his canon so far, as an EP should. Glacially paced, morbid and brooding and dense fog music that downplays the (comparative) bombast of the full-length. "Sleeping in Separate Rooms" is an entirely gorgeous daydream, all blurred and half-speed, and "If I Knew What to Say" eventually collects itself into a surreal, lush synth-heavy slowcore rumination.

Also worth mentioning is that Thom - Mr. Burial himself - put this split out on his Music Ruins Lives label, which is ideologically my best friend-turned-record company and has already put out a few really worthwhile releases (including a Have a Nice Life cassette and a full-length by blackened genre-mockers Airs), so pay attention and don't miss anything.

MUSIC RUINS LIVES

Yeah, we're doin' this

2010-11-23T08:35:00.000-08:00

Oh man, what a month, man. And man, you would not believe the amount of things to which I had to attend. But, man, we're back, and thank you cats for keeping the submissions rolling in & I gotta say, the readership is on the small side but "quality of quantity" all the way because I haven't disliked a single thing I've been sent so far. I guess I'm not on the "master list" that gets a line every time a band drops an album, but instead I seem to get things on a case-by-case basis; people send things in after having read the blog & getting a feel for what I'll dig. & I dig it, cats, I dig it. So if you're in Cygnets, Mickey Mickey Rourke, Planning for Burial, Lonesummer, Bikini, Pre-compass, Dongles, Aura, The Slaves, or wow I am behind but I haven't forgotten.

True Womanhood - "Night Prowlers"

[dream pop, sort of]
Recommended if you like: reverb, beats, bass; all of the above but not in dance music

Download "Night Prowlers

nite prowlers by truewomanhood

If I can just quote the email I got from the band: "The song is almost entirely made up of samples we made by clanging pieces of metal around in a mile-long sewer tunnel + bass guitar, 808 drumz, and vocals- all run through a severely malfunctioning tape delay."... are you not already enthralled, allured, excited? This track really straddles the line between "totally bangin' good-time" and "dark experimental whatever", especially in the opening where the sewer-pipe Cthulhu beckons against ominous drones and drum machine clapdowns (of course). Then the whole thing eventually swells into throbbing basswork and that promised 808, which is I guess danceable but there's just so much going on all around the core here that it's hard to really tell what you're supposed to do. Well, to start, go download the track above & give it a couple listens, try to figure it out & grab the Last Rites 7" coming out soon.

TRUE WOMANHOOD

2010-10-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, still here. Sorry if you've emailed me regarding wanting to be posted: it's actually super cool that I can't keep up with it. That sounds sarcastic, I admit, but I'm being serious. I'm now at the point where, if this pace keeps up, I'll be able to run this blog solely on artist submissions. So keep 'em coming. I've got a lot on the backburner right now, so if you've emailed me in the last couple weeks then just hang tight, it will be coming!

In the meantime, been five kinds of obsessed with this jam, so dig on it while I take care of life.

skinnypricks

2010-10-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

High in One Eye - Skinnypricks
[noise rock, hardcore]
Recommended if you like: Lightning Bolt (but they feel too tame for you), Jesus Lizard (but they're not noisy enough for you)

Download/stream here.

Less than 10 minutes of spontaneous, lo-fi aggression, apparently written and recorded in the space of two hours. This either is completely your thing or it is not at all, but it's free and less than ten minutes long, so make it your thing. It's surprisingly good for something more or less unplanned; there's a lot of really cool ideas going on. Especially in the drum-heavy assault and battery of "Tease" (best vocals on the EP?) or downright doom-laden "Jack-of-all-trades". Which eventually segues into 80's thrashy black metal worship before devolving into Daughters-esque dissonant riffing. But really, you saw that coming. Absolutely primal.

High in One Eye bandcamp page
(also includes another EP and a single up for free)

2010-10-08T17:05:00.000-07:00

Neil Milton - Elements

[modern classical, ambient]

Recommended if you like: aching beautiful modern composition; elegant piano work; An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death by Eluvium

Neil Milton - elements (2mf012dd) by beneathusthewaves

Download "Air (or, The Dragonfly)”

Neil Milton is relaunching his label, Too Many Fireworks, with a personal EP dubbed Elements - devoting a track to each of the four elements and its finale to “Aether”- and talk about making a comeback: fans of Eluvium and early A Silver Mt Zion material should take note, because this is minimalist modern classical at its finest.

A brisk eighteen minutes divided into five tracks is ideal: enough time for thematic development and listener engagement without becoming rote like so much “ambient” music can. I'm not entirely sure if music this lovely can really command attention; I'd say it politely requests it and you'd have to be inhuman to say “no”. In any case, it never becomes background music, as each of the tracks does bring an idea to the table, like the fluttery “Air” or the appropriately weighty, tectonic “Earth”. Hands down the best part of the release is its subtle adherence to theme: “Air” doesn't begin with sampled wooshing and “Water” is entirely devoid of prefab waterfall recordings. Instead, a track like “Fire” excites with its vibrant strings and “Aether” is minimal, spacey and gorgeous. You're forgiven for your preconceptions, though, because such a broad and general subject matter could be handled entirely tactlessly. Thankfully (mercifully) Milton handled the concept wisely and colours his compositions with the concept instead of forcing them to fit it.

The whole thing streams for free right there, a few inches up, so you have no excuse to not already be listening to it. For your listening convenience, you can also download an MP3 of the first track. And if you're the type to do so, please support both Neil and his revived label. At the very least check out the stream: this is truly sincere and majestic music.

Buy the EP

Too Many Fireworks
Neil Milton

chin up

2010-10-06T18:28:00.000-07:00

Former Ghosts - Welcome to Old Love
[electronic, synthpop, post-punk]
Recommended if you like: sad 80's bands (New Order, The Smiths), sad 00's bands that sound like sad 80's bands (Cold Cave)

Download.

I dare you to find an artist who is simultaneously as prolific while remaining as [relatively] unknown as Freddy Ruppert. This Song is a Mess But So Am I put out a ton of great, great music before he retired that moniker and started work on Former Ghosts, where he's finally beginning to get some of the attention he deserves.

TSIAMBSAI (oh, wow) was rightfully put to bed after it accomplished what it needed to, and its short but brilliant existence alluded to an incredibly heartfelt, sincere and disarmingly honest songwriter who, for a moment, seemed to have finished with music altogether. Luckily, he came back with Former Ghosts, which tackles much of the same musical territory but with perhaps a bit more reservedness, which is not meant to be a qualitative judgment in any sense. This Song was a deeply personal, cathartic outburst in the truest sense of the word: it was an outburst, it was violent, it was messy and noisy and tragic and equal parts full of energy and defeat.

Former Ghosts, by contrast, is more contemplative and refined, while retaining the personal intensity that Ruppert has become known for. And if the man has any other calling card, it's for working working working nonstop on whatever musical project he's invested in; I'd reckon Former Ghosts has more b-sides than album tracks. Welcome the Old Love culls together some outtakes from his forthcoming LP, New Love, again recorded with Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart and Zola Jesus, aka Nika Roza Danilova (who has since become a bit of a household name since the first Former Ghosts album dropped, I hear). Accompanying the b-sides are remixes and covers curated by Ruppert, highlighted by (personally speaking) "Chin Up" as remixed by Friendzone. Also worth noting is the unreleased "Old Love Introduction" featuring Sam Mickens and a blink-182 cover. Oh yeah.

'I don't wanna leave the swamp tonight'

2010-10-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

Sun Hotel - Coast
[Post-gospel/swamp (indie-)rock]
Recommended if you like: the idea of country-doom era Earth having a teenage son with Fleet Foxes (oh yeah, we doin' this)

Download.

Sleeper hit of the year? I'm going there. Completely out of left-field, Coast arrived in my inbox recently and completely floored me, it came and perfectly filled a little void in my musical life where there was a quiet (hidden) craving for something uplifting and fantastically full of life. (Not to knock any of the brooding downers I've received lately - my heart is still with you cats (or not with you, if that's the more appropriate, brooding downing answer).

Seriously, though, click that big, blue link above and listen to "Palms". Go on, I'll wait. I'll even give you enough time to listen to it twice, because you will listen to it twice. You're welcome for that new mixtape staple. An absolutely perfect blend of melody, harmony, and dynamics; the sweetest, swampiest, most concise faux-post-rock you've ever heard. And that's it, you're hooked.

Sun Hotel have a wonderful energy about them, a youthful sort of abandon, but instead of throwing it all to the wind and hoping something comes out of it, there's an undeniable focus and maturity to the songwriting. There's adolescent desperation and earnestness coupled with sublimely refined vocal harmonies. I don't mean to tout my own analogies here, but really: give Earth a pulse and give Fleet Foxes some grit and you've got a vague idea of what's going on. Calculated clean guitar play can and will, at any minute, shift into tweedy Americana dirges and so to does the warm crooning twist into shouts and chants. This is probably completely brilliant live, so see to it that you catch them if they're in your town. Punk rock energy without punk rock bullheadedness.

Coast is really just an entirely charming record. Down-to-earth lyrically, undeniably infectious musically, and, above all, cohesive despite all its disparate elements. An incredible spark captured on tape - a bright, bright flash of brilliance and life you should already be listening to if you've read this whole entry/have faith in me. Have faith in me.

voiceless & floating

2010-10-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

Mickey Mickey Rourke - Inner Gazing
[Ambient, drone, noise]
Recommended if you like: Birchville Cat Motel (but you wish Campbell Kneale didn't want to kill you with music), chill-as-hell dreamgaze or something like that I don't know

Download.

Massive collaborative introspective blissed-out drone excursions, boring straight into yr daydreamin' skull. Incredibly warm, full-bodied, slow-breathing tunes that will either pass right through you or entrance you, but eventually will add up to a meaningful experience. Not to say Inner Gazing isn't immediately gratifying - it absolutely is - but it's something you'll want to [digitally] spin a few times to let it sink in and really discover what the collaborators bring to the table.

If you're going to be uncooperative and demand immediate satisfaction, then just listen to "Stay With Me" (feat. Universe) because this is probably one of my favourite jams of the year. Maybe not the best representation of the album as a whole because it's decidedly darker in tone than a lot of what else is going on here, but it's insanely menacing, sort of in a Grouper or Giles Corey kind of way; a subtler menace. The Foxes in Fiction joint is pretty sweet, too - called "Koopa" - so a song featuring an artist you probably already know as being super cool and with a title referencing Nintendo should get you to at least check this out. I know you kids like Nintendo.

Additionally, there's a fairly expansive collection of Mickey Mickey Rourke tunes online, either for free download/stream or a dirt-cheap download, so if you're digging all this spaced-out drifting (and I can't see how you're not), then definitely check it out.

The Fading Voice Of The Old Era Speaks To Us, But Where Are The Ears Left To Hear It?

2010-09-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

...And The Earth Swarmed With Them - The Fading Voice Of The Old Era Speaks To Us, But Where Are The Ears Left To Hear It?
[Post-rock/experimental/shoegaze]

Download.

Core members Mitchell Johns and Kat Stanbridge may not exactly be household names quite yet, but the fact that they've roped in Ted Parsons (Swans, Jesu, Godflesh) to play drums and Justin Broadrick to mix the thing certainly says something.

Admittedly, ...And The Earth Swarmed With Them sounds nothing like the help they've roped in (okay, aside from the Jesu-y intro) but instead go for the murkier, darker end of post-rock: no triumphant, cathartic crescendos, but instead brooding, slow-burning cascades, like the moody-as-hell opener "Everyone Will Fade" or the apocalyptic "The Slow Decay Had Already Begun". And not to underrate the rest of the EP - it's incredibly atmospheric and solid throughout - but it's the closing "Slow Decay..." that really elevates the album. It feels like the whole record was building to this moment, slowly introducing the tones and colours and voices for the first 15 minutes and then dragging it all together for the last 6. The incredibly smooth bass/violin interplay in the intro is cool enough, but the frankly earth-shattering full-band eruption - complete with wailing, chill-inducing female guest vocals - is astounding.

Really, the band is setting itself up for success: a free EP, with an all-star supporting cast and stellar artwork, all backed up with a unique sound and hints at even greater creativity. And don't doubt them because of the tags here: it's post-rock, but it's not formulaic; it's heavy shoegaze, but it's not Jesu-worship; and yeah, it's experimental, but it's far from pointless self-indulgence. Truly music from - or maybe causing - the end of the world.

Sick Twisted Fuck

2010-09-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

Not music related, but if you're into gory, horrific, violent, misogynistic, misanthropic, disturbing films - the kind that only Japan seems to deliver good and proper - check out Sick Twisted Fuck. I'm a fan of his Youtube videos (under the moniker Sculpting Fragments), so its nice to get more reviews, and with added stills and (hopefully) clips and such.

I'm sorry, this number is no longer in service

2010-09-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

It's no understatement to say that Robotic Empire played a big role in my musical development, way back in the early aughts when HXCMP3 was a thing and Robotic Empire and their artists gave away MP3s with reckless abandon. They had tons tons tons of exactly the sort of thing I was looking for at the time: mean, obscure, distinctive hardcore/metalcore/screamo/grind/whatever. Circle Takes the Square, pg. 99, Circle of Dead Children and Pig Destroyer are probably the most relevant names on the [huge] list, but I ate it all up, and there were tons of under appreciated gems in the mix - Transistor Transistor, Hassan I Sabbah, Pink Razors, Stop It!!, etc. (Side note: furthermore, for some completely inexplicable reason, Robotic Empire also gave me my first songs from Isis (huh?) and, erm, Opeth. Yeah, they put out an Opeth record. Back in my day...) But today is all about Employer, Employee. Finally.

For the uninitiated - and that seems to be far too many - Employer, Employee played, uh, metalcore, sort of. But with none of the windmilling, breakdown-ing, bass dropping, chug-chugging bro-core genre tropes that have come to define that sort of music as of late. Employer, Employee play an honest-to-god fusion of metal and hardcore, taking the heavy grind of the former and slapping it across the face with spastic bursts of the latter, all the while with some borderline-mathy chops to back it all up. Some of their most adventurous material came after their full length sic[sic], on the Mother Spain & the Wayfaring Myth 7" where the opening track contains this entirely epic string quartet interlude and if your primal instinct to tear shit up is not triggered the instance that the vicious "YOU'RE GONNA DIE" scream unleashes a fucking savage every-core assault in your face, then seriously reconsider your life and how you've lived it up until this point.

Their discography LP was released yesterday after literally years in the making (I checked out their Last.fm page out of curiosity, and saw my own post from January 2007 expressing my excitement for their undoubtedly soon to be released collection) and boy was it done up in style. For $12.99 you get a clear 12" record limited to 300 copies with a pin, a patch, an insert, and a free digital copy. Seriously. I got the 7" for $5 and have never been able to find the way out of print CD, so $13 for a beautifully made piece of vinyl with tons of free bonuses is an absolute steal. Snatch that up before Robotic Empire realizes how insane this price point is.

SERIOUSLY, GO BUY THIS RECORD.

Employer, Employee - Nil or the Nile
Employer, Employee - One Count of Mutiny

Carnival

2010-09-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

Sleep In - Steady
Sleep In - Amorous
Sleep In - January

I really want to hate Sleep In. Not because I don't like the music - I do - and not because Hamish Duncan is a jerk - he isn't, at least, in my experience - but because he has accomplished so much with his music despite being only 19, thus making me look like a lazy, untalented jerk for also not putting out 4 full-length albums of shoegazey psychedelic meandering. Well, shoot.

And really, the whole discography is pretty grand. Incredibly solid. Unprecedentedly solid. It's a whole mess (in a good way) of genre-hopping/defying denies your (read: my) best attempts at pidgeonholing. It's noisy, it's trippy, it's vaguely catchy, it's expansive when it's not being minimal, it's straightforward when it's not being obtuse, and its the sort of thing that will take more than one listen to grasp (which is my excuse for not posting this much, much sooner after I said I would). From my experience, the whole Sleep In project is just a vast outpouring of ideas, the sort of project that really couldn't have existed, say, 10, even 5 years ago. Truly a product of the digital age, and certainly a musician who understands what it takes to be a musician in this era and, furthermore, knows how to take advantage of it. You can grab Sleep In albums for $1.75 from his own label, Nightgull Records (oh, yeah, he runs a record label, too. At this rate, the next Sleep In release is going to be "the cure for cancer") or get a digital double-album from Enemies List Home Recordings for $5. I literally spent more on bus fare this morning.

I've posted some tracks from Carnival - available with Pyramid from Enemies List - to give you the best 'snapshot' of the Sleep In M.O. From the spacey, wintery jams of "January" to the straight-ahead psych-rocker "Steady" (Magic Lantern would be proud (and also look for a disarmingly spot-on Thurston Moore impression), it's incredibly diverse but smartly unified. You know, they way they used to make albums.

All To-more-oh's Pah-tees

2010-09-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

Woah, it's that time again already? The hell, man. All Tomorrow's Parties 2010 came outta nowhere. Partially because I hadn't planned it 4 months in advance, partially because the line-up was a smidgen weaker than last year, but all that aside, it was a stellar weekend as always.

Brief note from the editor: I kind of struggle with the idea of a festival review because all in all, it's a bit pointless. Concert reviews as a whole are also of limited use, and this is especially true of concert reviews in the blogosphere wherein the writing is more or less there to convey a sense of I was there and you were not, sucker. Plus, more often than not, it seems to slip into "my god, this was absolutely [pick one: life-changing/-affirming, transcendental, the show of a lifetime, an "experience"]" and general fanboyism turning from review into, y'know, fanboyism. Besides, of how much practical use is a live review? An album is a singular experience, more or less the same for everyone outside of personal set/settings. A concert, however, is subject to a million different x-factors: your state of mind that day, your physical condition, the conditions of the venue, technical issues, et al. The best I can do for you now is tell you "yeah, this show was very good, you should uh... have been there, because it will never, ever happen again".

The Scientists playing was apparently a Big Deal, and I wish I could've cared more, but honestly, by 6pm Friday night I was toast after working all day Thursday and then taking an overnight bus to NYC (and then another 2 hours on the bus to get to Monticello). I was asleep on my feet for most of their set. I also don't care about Mudhoney at all. Yeah, we're off to a good start here.

But hey, goddamn, were The Stooges a wake-up call or what. Iggy Pop is still one of the greatest frontmen ever, even now that he bears a striking resemblance to an actual mummified corpse. Pits were moshed, claps were clapped, choruses were sung along, you wouldn't really know that this material was some 35+ years old. Phenomenal set, spot on.

But really, just look around and look at the black tshirts and overgrown neckbeards: it's Sleep that are the band of the night. And boy do they ever uphold their reputation as metal's most blunted, with a solid 2:1 ratio of amplifiers to band members, moody green lighting and a background projection that looks like the most stoned glacier you've ever seen. Hell, even the attempted-but-failed classical guitar interlude was probably conceived in a pre-show session. Snafus aside, it was pretty flawless stoner doom, with resin-thick guitar tones and pitch-perfect raspy bellows. An absolute marathon of a set, too, clocking it at over two hours.

Beak> were a surprise highlight for me, having never heard them before and only knowing they, uh, had some connection to Portishead and Portishead is great. Really atmospheric electronic-based sort of stuff, kind of like Hail to the Thief-era Radiohead. Perfect balance of creepy moments with danceable bass grooves.

Apse had one hell of a light show, that much is certain. I only caught a bit of their set but it was pretty bizarre post-everything that probably warrants a closer listening than I gave 'em.

Everyone seemed to be all shaken as to how loud Fuck Buttons were, so maybe my hearing is just deadened at this point, but it didn't seem all that unbearable. I wouldn't expect anything less, really, because this brand of body-movin', uh, - power-drone? progressive post-techno? - demands volume.

Text of Light should've been really cool - Lee Ranaldo deflowering his guitar to avant-garde 70's film - but came off as too hyper-artsy for its own sake. There's a big deal made about the projections and such, but they're just there for aesthetics, really, because whatever unholy noise was being torn from those amps had little-to-no correlation to the visuals. And I reckon the "little" correlations were coincidental.

Another band outta left-field was Fursaxa, with her (their?) fantastically pretty-sounding folk based around drones, harp and cello. Sort of a toned-down Natural Snow Buildings-vibe, minus the viciousness that band sometimes finds itself in.

Now, when Tortoise are good, they're really damn good, but when Tortoise are mediocre, well, they're really average. Tortoise here were pretty average. Flawless musicianship, sure, but it's not exactly a thrilling live show. Maybe I'm missing something, because everyone else was super jazzed (ba-dum) about their performances.

Shellac was fucking Shellac. Shellac ruled. It was Shellac. Damn.

The Breeders were five kinds of fun. Not the Pixies, and they never will be the Pixies, but once I got past that it was solid pop. And hey, it was super neat to see 90's alt-rock staple "Cannonball".

Explosions in the Sky were every bit as cathartic as they are on record. Yeah, I could pan them a bit for being one-dimensional, but when it's as powerful as this, who cares? Even I think I'm a pretentious douche for bringing that up.

Sonic Youth aptly made up for their Eternal-heavy set from last time I saw them by busting out a setlist I only could've dreamed up. "Candle", "Hey Joni", "'Cross the Breeze", "Eric's Trip", "Cross the Breeze", "Stereo Sanctity", "Catholic Block", "Expressway to Yr Skull", "Death Valley -69", and more but you get the idea, this was perfect. Screaming fields of Sonic Love indeed.

NOW, BUILD YOUR OWN SUNN O))) & BORIS REVIEW:
Opening:

"I had always heard that Sunn O))) were best experienced live..."
"The lights dimmed, smoke filled the stage, and the Hooded Ones began to..."
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW"

Overwritten metaphor/quasi-genrefication:

"Searing tarpit sludge assault"
"Pangaea tearing itself apart"
"Cosmic funeral dirge"
"BRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIWWWWWWWWWWWW"

Conclusion:

"Transcendental; a truly euphoric performance"
"Merely describing it as a 'concert' doesn't do the band justice..."
"GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNN"

I know you've read about Sunn O))) before. Yeah, it might have actually been a few of those things, but goddamn does the fetishization of this band in music criticism get a bit long in the tooth.

So yeah, all in all, 10/10. Great show. Check it out. You should've been there.

"CHAOS... REIGNS..."

2010-09-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

I'VE BEEN BUSY, OK?

But with like, actual things, not the nonethings that tend to keep me away. Most noteworthy of which was attending All Tomorrow's Parties, which was fantastic and might warrant a write-up. Also, that whole Antichrist movie, I dunno what to make of it. I want to like it, what with all the incredibly moody atmospheric touches and bizarre torture (which may have trumped August Underground in my books for "most disturbing genital mutilation"), but at other times it borders on ridiculous and awkwardly "artsy". Worth a watch, though.

Something to check out right now: Silber is putting out a wicked cool webzine called QRD, which is basically the guitar nerd equivalent of "Dear Penthouse..." as some of the more innovative musicians out there (folks from Melt-Banana, Master Musicians of Bukkake, Tera Melos, etc) talk about their techniques, tricks, and, most importantly, their gear. Hop on it.

Things in the pipeline: Sleep In, America Addio, Kissing Club, etc.

Terrageist

2010-08-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

Fielded - Another Time

A new track by [Lindsay] Fielded found its way into my mailbox the other day and hot damn does it not tickle the little soft spot I have for slightly left-field female vocalists with minor reverb fetishes (Zola Jesus, Terror Bird, Pocahaunted, No Art, et al.) Really, the female voice, in the right context, can have this sort of spectral quality that you can't get from that other sex. You know, that sort of menacing gentleness that would otherwise be just plain ol' menacing? Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, that Zola Jesus name drop is a good start: Fielded has the same sort of incredibly strong voice, only instead of love-lorn goth balladry its a bit less bleak, albeit with the same super warm, full synth lines. Ya dig? "Another Time" also locks into a faux-tribal tom groove and builds and builds on that with palm-muted guitar chugging (but not that nu-death sort of heavy chug chug chug) and more spot-on keyboard augmentations. Lush, full, strangely catchy, check it out.

The new Fielded album, Terrageist, is out on Catholic Tapes, so give them a shout if you want it - cassette limited to 100.

Fielded on MySpace

You looked like a religious man

2010-08-11T22:48:00.000-07:00

Yeah, "electronic side-project from a metal musician" is a tough sell - with no thanks to Dauði Baldrs or whatever the fuck it is that Mortiis does - but thankfully, what Inachus sets out to accomplish isn't just a sloppy attempt at "dark atmosphere" but instead is a group of songs and sketches of ideas from Oceanus's bassist, Rob Honey.

Really, there's nothing "metal" about Inachus, despite the fact that, apparently, some of these ideas could potentially be worked into Oceanus material. Rather, it's all in the downtempo/ambient vein, and respectfully ambient at that, with the 7 tracks clocking in at a breezy 22 minutes instead of relying on their sheer undeniable girth to become "atmospheric" because, really, what doesn't create an atmosphere when you're subjected to it for 12 minutes at a time? But I digress. Ahem.

The EP is incredibly coherent despite the album info making it sound like a bit of an odds & ends affair, with dreamy reversed synth work fluttering about and tying together tracks along with the smart use of samples giving the work a distinct feel. The album works best when this all comes together, like in the gorgeous opener "I Stared Into the Sun" or when "Memento Mori" finally brings all its elements together. The rest of the pieces are shorter and, appropriately, contain smaller ideas, but all work together fantastically. Hell, I think "flow" is the word of the day here, because this is really smooth as hell and I feel like I should stop there before it sounds like I'm talking about more about a crisp Stella on draught, but it really is sublime how the last three songs work together, and not unlike that Belgian slice of golden heaven, you barely realize each one passing until it's too late and ~~you're half in the bag~~ the album's over. The pulsing, distant piano of "As The River Grew" sneaks up and blossoms right before your eyes in "Three" before folding back and snaking away in [the oh so aptly named] "A Logical Conclusion".

Download the entire EP.

And, as always, if you dig it, buy yourself a copy. Limited CDr with bonus tracks. You know you love that kinda stuff.

www.myspace.com/inachusuk

Seeding the clouds

2010-08-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

Right off the bat, Whitesand/Badlands are a band that I'm going to get along with [ideologically]. Their debut double-LP is limited to 250 copies at a cool $20 (post paid), which immediately sends a couple of messages: first and foremost, they care about music as an art, and two, obviously put out a product they have to be proud of, because pressing vinyl - especially independently - does not come cheap or easy. You can also download this at high quality in a pay-what-you-can set-up where that 'what-you-can' becomes discounted from the price of the vinyl, should you choose to buy the physical record after loving it digitally. Which you will.

Like I said, putting out vinyl independently shows both dedication and pride in a piece of music, and Seeding the Clouds is such a fantastic piece that certainly deserves proper release like that. It brilliantly straddles genres or outright draws-and-quarters them as it sees fit, taking an overarching, dense shoegaze aesthetic and drenching it in beautiful natural reverb, ably throwing in vaguely post-rock complexities and elsewhere taking a kitchen-sink approach, like the heavy, doomy break towards the end of "Whale Song".

What really makes this album special is its albumness, it's natural flow and unified feel as an album, which is becoming an increasingly rare art form. Moreover, its an incredibly nuanced set of songs; you remember how your first spin of Loveless went, don't you? It's very much like that: at first, it's a one-dimensional blur of a daydream but one that begins to open up if its given proper attention, when the ghostly male/female vocals begin to coalesce and the riffs really begin to emerge through the vast space of this record and begin to sort of make a bit of sense (but not too much, not enough sense to lose it's spectral appeal).

So if you're going to come looking for choruses and climaxes and things all-together obvious then yeah, look somewhere else. You're not one of the 250 people this album was made for. But if you're the sort of person who is going to put into an album as much thought as the artists did, then you'll be plenty satisfied when the end of "Witch Hunting" pokes its head through the smoke or when "Brandspeakeasy" lures you in with its almost-nonsensically murky opening and then pulls your farther than you thought it ever could.

Whitesand/Badlands - Brandspeakeasy

Download/buy the album here.

Minor vacationing

2010-08-02T00:19:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, you know how summer is, don'tcha? I've been busy, and for the next week I am actually out of town, so if I promised to post your stuff, I apologize sincerely and will be putting it up ASAP. Really.

Lots of super neat updates comin' at ya. Check back on Thursday, and then maybe Tuesday. Then things should get back to my loosely established "normal".

Songs to sleep next to

2010-07-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

I've written about Devin Hildebrand (Dth) before, being quite found of his unique collage work, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that he had more new material so soon. Songs To Sleep Next To moves away from the focus on found sounds and, through that shift, really exemplifies some fantastic songwriting, something all too rare under the umbrella of "ambient".

Opener "Pruny Hands Felt Health" might be my favourite Dth track yet, absolutely lush, organic, intimate but sounding huge beyond its scope. It is a song to sleep next to, not a song to sleep on or with or under; it's music to take you to sleep, not put you there. The whole album is downright lucid, entirely dreamlike and weightless but it never lets go entirely, never succumbs to useless "ambiance" or droning wanderlust or forgettable meandering and is always aware, always in control. The smart collage work isn't entirely lost either, with half-imagined nature sounds uniting the first two tracks and vocal samples popping up later in the album's somewhat more abrasive middle section (featuring a collaboration with noise/drone maestro Chris Rehm, who, likewise, is doing tons of cool things in the genre on the more caustic side of things (Salivary Stones is an absolute must-hear.)

If you're feeling lazy and need some loose comparisons slapped together to condense my opinion into a sound bite, then boo on your lazy readership, but I will reluctantly tell you that if you like Atlas Sound at its absolute most somnambulant or the Sparklehorse/Fennesz collaboration, then you'll find tons to like here. And if that doesn't help you at all, then just listen to it anyway: it's short, it's free, and worth your bandwidth.

Stream/download the whole thing here.

When we finally fall asleep

2010-07-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

Digital media is awful and that is a fact. You can get your "FLAC" or your ".WAV" or whatever bitrate or rip you want but it's so far removed from experiencing an album that it makes me cringe. Yeah, yeah, Ye Observant Reader, I do post MP3s (or M4As if I'm being a bitch), and they certainly have their advantages, namely their convenience. But it's a reproduction, at the end of the day, a snapshot of a sculpture; an introduction, a starting point, not an entire experience in and of itself. This might be coming off as horrendously pretentious, and maybe it is, but there simply some albums that are incomplete statements without a physical package.

We All Inherit the Moon understands this. Hell, lead member Adam - and honcho behind Future Recordings - seems to swear by this. Every single item he puts out - every CD, LP, tape, book - is so lovingly assembled and fairly priced that it's a shame he doesn't run music as a whole. We All Inherit The Moon releases get the slightest bit of extra love, too, and the new lathe cut 8" is fantastic in presentation and execution. Crystal-clear square vinyl (careful with those corners, though) and a succinct 4/5 minutes of music per side, with possibly my favourite WAITM material yet. Languid, almost shoegazey atmosphere with post-rock spirit that really breaks through in the absolutely gorgeous final stretch of the song when the strings come in full bore (well, as "full bore" as this sort of thing gets). Seriously beautiful music, occupying a lovely little niche between ambient and post-rock, being a million times more dynamic than the former without breaking out in full-on crescendo like the latter. Really, the band's only getting better and better as time goes on. Stellar stellar stellar, in every sense of the word.

We All Inherit the Moon - When We Finally Fall Asleep

Your favourite artist is going to die this year.

2010-07-12T22:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry, it's true, but musicians are apparently on God's hit list this year (Jay Reatard, Mark Linkous, Dio, Peter Steele, Devon Clifford (You Say Party! We Say Die!), Malcolm McLaren, etc.). Tuli Kupferberg, leader of the beat-poetry nutters The Fugs apparently passed away today. He was 88, so at least it wasn't exactly untimely or completely left-field, but it's still a huge loss. I'll admit I didn't explore The Fugs all that much until recently, but even in such a short time it's easy to appreciate the man's talents.

The Fugs - Boobs a Lot

And apparently the man upstairs has moved on to comic book visionaries, too. Harvey Pekar also kicked the bucket at 70. If you haven't read any of his stuff, please, do yourself a favour, get down to your local library/book store/friend-with-good-taste's-house and check it out. Equal parts sad, funny, and always brutally honest. Imagine if Bukowski did sequential art instead of poetry and you've got an idea. If nothing else, American Splendor is a fantastic meta-biopic that's absolutely worth your time.

Pedestrian Pop Hits

2010-07-10T16:22:00.001-07:00

So a lot of you folks have stumbled on this blog because you're looking for Ariel Pink's "Pedestrian Pop Hits", apparently. Now instead of being a constant disappointment, here it is. One huge sixteen minute barnburner, and yeah, needless to say it's pretty far removed from his compact acid-fried pop jingles. Massively layered/delayed vocal tracks spiralling skyward and crashing back down into a sadly understated murky ocean of bass work and nonstop guitar, alternating between silky smooth half-solos and jagged mildly-fuzzed out dissonance. Hey, is "understated ocean" simultaneously contradictory and a simply awful metaphor? Thought so. Oh, and John Maus on keyboards and lump of shimmery psychedelic nonsense. Boss.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Pedestrian Pop Hits

Lucky for you, you can still pick up a hard copy over at Southern (1000 copies, all numbered, plus a real swanky fold-out package. More origami-esque than your standard fold-out.) While you're there, also grab Mount Eerie's entry in their "Latitudes" series, it's fantastic. And while I was there I realized they also used both a water-themed metaphor as well as the word "shimmering", so there you go. Whatever.

I don't even

2010-07-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

So, Kid Cudi did a song with Best Coast and Rostam Batmanglij (from Vampire Weekend, I'm told) to do a song for Converse. Er, okay then. Check it out. And Wavves did a song for Mountain Dew? What's going on? What's next? I'm don't mean to come off all like "derp, sellouts"; this just doesn't make sense to me. Though it does sort of offer up some fantastic possibilities: can we get the newly-reformed Swans to do a jingle for Doritos ("Blood, Honey and Spicy Cheese (Sha La La La)"? Also, have you ever seen so much bold in your life?

I'll assume you have that Converse ad playing right now and, if I know my readership, you're hopefully as baffled as I am. I wasn't sure how those three artists would collaborate smoothly at all, and it turns out they can't. It's like three entirely unremarkable b-sides stitched together because shoes said so, and the last time I took advice from shoes I had a whole lot of explaining to do. I guess we should be thankful that "All Summer" isn't explicitly about shoes, but rather, er... drinking water? And chilling the fuck out. Well then.

THIS WEEK IN CAPES: Sky Saxon wears a real gassy one in what I understand was a surprisingly popular single in its time. I hate to give credence those cro-magnon dullards who swear on their Led Zeppelin shirt collection that "music today sucks", but if a fuzzed-out barbaric assault like "Pushin' Too Hard" actually charted 44 years ago then maybe something is amiss in popular music.

Does this count as a real blog entry yet? Dagnabbit.

No words

2010-07-03T23:41:00.000-07:00

Review: Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words - "No Words"

Seriously, the [sorta] new Dead Letters etc cassette is fantastic. For fans of: ambient music not created with this.

An Index of Birds

2010-06-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

How often has a band you liked changed for the better? Lateral, non-opinion changing changes don't count: the new Wavves stuff, for instance, is super polished and catchy as hell, but it's still fundamentally what Wavves was always trying to be, just suddenly accessible. And slow-burning changes don't count either, so A Silver Mt Zion's half-decade-plus growth from depressive chamber music to cathartic yelping Klezmer romp is out too. I think I've entirely lost sight of what I was getting at, but the basic point is the new Carta album is different and really damn good, so let's work from there.

Yeah, people have whined about the transformation from post-rock business to this new slowcore kinda sound, but ask yourself: how many more post-rock bands do we need, especially when criminally few are worth listening to? Carta, instead, have transcended with brilliant results, combining the grandiose post-rock composition with very Low-esque subdued vocals. It's fairly languid in an entirely positive way, but they've still retained their roots and the dense instrumentation swells and gives way in all the right places. It's beautiful, it's depressing, it's strangely catchy at times, and really just a fantastic record. If you're into that sort of "slowcore/shoegaze/post-rock" genre-straddling a la Low, iLiKETRAiNS (I'm still not sure if I love that band name or cringe every time I write it, but I mean, trains are neat) or Toma then give it a listen.

Carta - Building Bridges

As per usual, the fine folks at Silber are treating you well and offering the CD real cheap or a high-quality download even cheaper, so definitely check it out here. Read the other reviews, too, if for some reason you doubt me.

I'm livin' in the doldrums, yeah

2010-06-14T00:21:00.000-07:00

Goddamn, when did people start caring so much about Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti? Recently? Around then?

Seriously, though, all of a sudden this man's everywhere, and it's blowing my mind. "Round and Round" is tearing things up, and rightfully so. It's got the chorus of the summer, of course, but retains a bit of the trademark strangeness and is sort of wildly progressive for a pop song. I mean, seriously, how many ideas are crammed into these 5 minutes? The entirely misleading introduction? Or the misleading first minute with the red-herring chorus? The weird segue telephone call? The strangely sincere-sounding quiet section? Have you heard the real chorus? Yeah, he deserves this sudden attention, no doubt.

(ok, reader, stop here and skip the next four paragraphs unless you either a) like Ariel Pink a lot, or b) like reading a lot of my writing. You've been warned.)

Now, I promise not to turn this into one a "I was there first!" sort of hipster pissing contest (I was tossing around some portmanteau of "hipster" and "pissing" but it would have been more of a visual pun), so I say this as a fact and not as a boast or "holier than thou" proclamation, but I have been listening to Ariel Pink for years. It's been a slow, steady evolution to where he is now - the ultimate refinement of psychedelic weirdness with 70's radio staples and off-beat humour - but I'm partial, either because of nostalgia or legitimate preference, to his earlier albums. BUT OH LAWD, when isn't that the case with anyone and their favourite bands? Yeah, yeah, I know.

The Doldrums is one of those albums for me, one of the records that can instantly take me back to a very specific time. Namely, at the end of high school where I was cautiously allowing some vague semblance of "pop music" into my library, no longer preoccupied with being as extreme/abstract/br00tal/outsider as possible (though whether I accomplished any of those is debatable). In any case, I checked out Ariel Pink on a whim, picking up The Doldrums and being, er, very confused. Not by the lo-fi aspect, I had expected and accepted that, but just the music. It was thrilling, really: when was the last time you were legitimately interested enough in an album to listen to it repeatedly to try to understand it? I don't need/want to get into a "back in my day when we bought our records" thing, but y'know.

Point is, it was album I worked at liking. Which I don't mean to be as image-conscious as it sounds. I mean, I liked the album, sure. I liked the aesthetics. I liked the sound. I liked the ideas. I just couldn't really reconcile it all. I couldn't understand Ariel Pink. I couldn't understand this weirdo no-fi beatbox-pop. And there weren't any resources to help, either. Now it's pretty clear who he is. And hell, he has a band. He has the actual Haunted Graffiti. All I knew when I had The Doldrums in my walkman was: 1) Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti is really just Ariel Pink, jamming/beatboxing into a tape-recorder, and 2) Animal Collective liked him enough to put out his albums.

TOTALLY SIDETRACKED FOR A MINUTE: Have you read the new Chuck Klosterman book? It's pretty cool. There's a whole chapter on irony and Weezer, focusing on how Weezer confuses people by being entirely unironic and earnest about their lyrics, and etc jaded society etc. Point being, I love this idea with relation to Ariel Pink, because I think I fell into the same trap. Not knowing a single thing about this man, I really couldn't tell how seriously I should take it. I think I want him to be completely serious. I want to believe he beatboxed all the drums because he had to. I want to believe he is entirely serious when he tells us that "good kids make bad grown-ups" in his pouty, childish whines of "growin' up means getting a job/oh, I don't wanna grow uuuup!". I want to never know why he refers to both "Kate" and "Cathy" on "For Kate I Wait". I love this complete mix-up of irony or earnestness and mystery and I am completely overanalyzing an album Ariel Pink shat out years ago.

(SPEAKING OF IRONY AND ARIEL PINK: the 16-minute track "Pedestrian Pop Hits" makes me giggle.)

So here it is, folks, one of my all-time favourites, in it's murky no-fi glory. One of very few albums I both like every song on and know every song on, intimately so. Just download it already.

ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI - THE DOLDRUMS

Leaving

2010-06-02T15:16:00.000-07:00

Oh yes, I've been waiting to talk about this record proper for a while. Planning for Burial has finally gotten a proper release for the full-length Leaving, which has been in the making for quite some time, apparently. And does it ever show.

Leaving first dropped, to my knowledge, towards the end of 2009 with a fairly quiet online release that didn't get to nearly enough people but nonetheless blew the minds of pretty much everyone who heard it (myself included, natch). Among those people was Dan Barrett, one half of Have a Nice Life and owner of Enemies List Home Recordings (HANL, Nahvalr, American Addio, Afterlives, etc.). So rather than a modest online release and quiet home-pressing, Leaving got the EL Treatment, meaning: a) super-enthusiastic label support, and b) super-fantastic packaging. Seriously, if nothing else, this is a strong case for why you buy your goddamn music: hand-numbered, hand-assembled, stark but beautifully presented.

And yet there isn't nothing else, there's so much else, much more than this clumsy segue would have you believe. Hyperdespressive doomgaze, heavy in all the right places and impenetrable atmosphere throughout. It occupies much of the same ideological space of its labelmates, which is not to say it sounds like Have a Nice Life, but it's similarly fashioned faux-black metal aesthetics with doomy rumblings and shoegaze density (can I go ahead and coin "doomgaze" as a genre already? It sounds right. It feels right.) Really the whole thing is stellar throughout, but if you need to be convinced in the next five minutes that you need to own this, go ahead and check out "Memories You'll Never Feel Again", which is probably the heaviest waltz I've heard in a while. Heavy, heavy guitar work, enthralling piano banging, soaring melodies on top of it all before it collapses under its own weight into listless groaning and xylophone. Killer, killer stuff.

Planning for Burial - Memories You'll Never Feel Again

Buy it now while you still can.

This used to be a free release, but it doesn't seem to be now that it's gotten an official release, so I'm going to respect that (oh shut up) and point you towards this preview track and some Planning for Burial b-sides.

Please buy this, though. Really. Both the artist and the label deserve your support fully.

Next up: New stuff from Silber Media, who have also done a lot to get a bit of your hard-earned money.

My favourite nuts beginning with the letter "P"

2010-05-25T20:37:00.000-07:00

1. Pecans
2. Peanuts
3. Pistachios

Pecans are the obvious choice, naturally, but the rest of the list was a bit difficult. The pistachio is a fantastic nut, don't get me wrong, but eating the thing is a whole other story. The shells are sometimes entirely closed, not split open, making extracting the actual nut a chore. You can put in your mouth and bite it, sure, but then you have to spit out the shell, which is both a pain and rude, depending on the context in which you enjoy your nuts. All the salt also tends to stick to the shell, meaning you have to put the shell in your mouth anyway. Delicious, but is the payoff enough to warrant all that?

Even a perfectly prepared pistachio, however, will still lose out to the peanut, if only for the latter's versatility. It's sort of the "classic nut", the ubiquitous nut; you can't really hate on the peanut, unless you're allergic, but I get the impression that peanut allergy is sort of a fake idea. Peanut butter also does wonders to the peanut's score. It really stomps all over the other butter spin-offs. Almond butter is a fairly disgusting rendition.

In other, music related news: I've been a bit uninspired lately, and rather than rhyme off some schlock and post a link, I'd rather give you, the reader, something to read, though I reckon 9 times out of ten you're just looking for that bold, blue link. Hmpf.

In any case, things will be coming. Let me tell you about them: some cool new stuff from Silber and a proper presentation of Planning for Burial.

I would also like to take this time to remind you that I am 100% open to artist submissions. I even encourage it. Send me your stuff. I will listen. I will talk about. A couple dozen people might read it. Cool, huh?

Also, did you know that The North Sea wrote a song for me? It's true! And it's a doozy.

The North Sea - Calvin

Reading

2010-05-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

Do you enjoy reading? In particular, words I have written? Then this might just tickle your fancy.

If it doesn't, I'll update this soon, pinky swear.

Oh wait, here I am

2010-05-09T16:29:00.000-07:00

Yeah, ok, the quasi-habitual bimonthly "here I am back to blog etc" obligatory whatsit. No really. I think I mean it this time. (Maybe.) There's been hell of circumstances, plus being all busy with my quote/unquote day job and my quote/unquote day life.

Speaking of tangents, I also thought, maybe, since music is all so totally my entire life (refers to generic treble clef tattooed on wrist and/or ankle, hearts and stars all surrounding it) that using it as an aid in brooding and mulling and other more foreboding ways of thinking that maybe just maybe that is something I shouldn't, y'know, do. Maybe it ain't good for me to have men who want to be suiciding or already have to be whispering sweet nothings in my ear[phones]. Maybe I need to be put in a more positive mind frame. Maybe less Joy Division, Giles Corey, Jandek, Scott Walker, Swans, Zola Jesus, Death in June, Former Ghosts, Hrsta, etc, etc, etc.

Run-on sentences and general blubbering aside, what do we do about this?

oh hell yes

Husker Du is what we do about this. New Day Rising is what we do about this. Sure, there are definitely some downers on here ("If I Told You"), but in terms of sound it's an incredibly life-affirming album. It's also perfectly acceptable to leave the title track on repeat for 15 times and call it a day, because goddamn, "New Day Rising" is as fierce and ambiguously hopeful/hopeless in its simplicity as anything on the album; really, the perfect title track/opening number.

New music, new attitude?

Maybe.

Whatever, Husker Du rules.

DOWNLOAD "NEW DAY RISING".

In case you haven't heard:

2010-04-08T19:14:00.001-07:00

GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR REUNION

Get yourself some live bootlegs to tide you over until you find out if you live in or near one of the "9 American towns" they'll be playing come winter.

I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day

2010-04-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

"Excuse" is an ugly word; it has connotations of lie, like a reason that is a lie, at least partially. But "I've been busy" isn't a lie, per se, it's just such a bad reason that it feels excuse-esque. So there's my reason (however poor) for not keeping up with this, though I'm sure it must feel like an excuse to one Devin Hildebrand who emailed me a few weeks back about his sound-collage project Dth. Excuse me.

A lot of this new EP seems to stem from forlorn distress, from the slightly heartbreaking title I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day to the individual songs ("I Always Feel Like Crying (For Mom) is a knee-jerk " :'( "), but musically it isn't quite so hyper-depressive, nor is it as explicitly annoying/boring as sound collage can be. After the clusterfuck and appropriately titled opener "[!]" the album unscrambles and is surprisingly delicate and deeply personal, culling samples not just from random found-sounds but "From our VHS labelled "X-mas '95 / Jodi". It's all set to understated ambient instrumentation, some synth drones and acoustic guitar mostly, it seems, but nothing to overpower the star(s) of the show here (though that being said, cut-up sample set to a live drum beat at the end of the title track is a definite highlight). The whole album is beautifully balanced, between collage and composition, between the vaguely hopeful and the utter despair, between cacophony and ambiance but, somehow, it always ends up an entirely compelling and a quietly disturbing experience.

The highlight here is probably the closer, "Humans are like Ripples", which is probably the simplest in terms of structure and use of samples, but is strangely hypnotic as a whole crowd of people is asked "how was your day?". It sort of epitomizes the forces at work on the album, as the answers range from humorous to somewhat worrisome (sometimes simultaneously) and the music fluctuates accordingly, apparently with some science behind it:
Notes on a set scale (0-20, including halves of numbers) droned accordingly to numbers spoken in spontaneous dialogue prompted by "how are you feeling today, 1-10?"

Basically, I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day is a wildly curious set of songs, which is meant entirely as a compliment. It's the sort of quiet headphone listening for one of those days. When you're not quite sure you want a pick-me-up or if you'd rather throw on Unknown Pleasures as a hold-me-down, then go ahead and try Dth. It'll kind of do both to you, and you'll like it, promise.

Click here to download/stream the whole thing.

I'm still alive.

2010-03-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

Just sayin'.

Pillows & Prayers Vol. 1

2010-02-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

I'd like to call this one a "hidden gem", but in contains in itself so many more hidden gems that we'd get into a very messy intergemuality or somesuch thing. A much better way of describing this, in immediate retrospect, would be a treasure trove of hidden gems. Ahem.

Pillows & Prayers was released in 1982 with the strict order of "pay no more than 99p" printed on the cover. The dirt-cheap LP is a sampler from Cherry Red Records, featuring a bunch of sorely underrated new wave/post-punk as well as a few heavy-hitters, including Everything But the Girl, Felt and Quentin Crisp. And when those are the "popular" bands on the compilation, it certainly says something about how underappreciated it is.

It's a solid listen all the way through, but if I had to pick-and-choose favourites, The Monochrome Set's angular post-punk "Eine Symphonie Des Grauens", Thomas Leer's synth-heavy "All About You" and Ben Watt's acoustic faux-jazzy "Some Things Don't Matter" would be top picks, alongside The Nightingales and Eyeless in Gaza (holy shit, that is a rad name for a band.) Throw in a spoken word track and a poetry piece by Atilla the Stockbroker and you've got a well-rounded mix. It was worth your 99p 28 years ago, and it's definitely worth the 10 minute download now.

DOWNLOAD: Pillows & Prayers Volume 1

And yes, there is indeed a Volume 2. If anyone's interested, let me know!

Tied to Stone

2010-02-03T21:40:00.000-08:00

Prurient's Adam Tied to Stone might just be my favourite noise album. Which is funny, because a few years ago I would've scoffed at the notion of a "favourite" noise album, or in fact, "better" or "worse" noise in general. I'll admit it: I was dismissive of the genre as a whole. I could appreciate noise in a context, such as in The Velvet Underground or Sonic Youth's early material, but concrete noise was over my head. But I suppose approaching a whole new genre can be a bit daunting, and one as anti-... music... as noise can be especially inpenetrable.

Now I'm by no means any sort of noise guru, but I at least have an appreciation for the genre, and listen to enough that I can finally answer people who ask me what makes a "good" noise album? How can one man's static be "better" than another?.

Adam Tied to Stone, as previously mentioned, is a decidedly "good" noise album. First and foremost, I think noise (by and large) can't be judged by "musical" standards - melody, rhythm, composition, etc. - but by "sound" standards: by its texture, volume, power (if I dare be so artsy-fartsy abstract). "Adam" is absolutely ferocious in terms of texture, a clipping, engulfing mess of static. Additionally, we have possibly my favourite distinguishing feature of Prurient, and that being vocals. Crank this to 11 and try not to get goosebumps during the first overdriven scream.

What also sets Adam... apart is - get this - variation. "Bad" noise is lazy noise. Bad noise is laptop looping. Bad noise can be made in 15 minutes with little care or attention. "Returning Rape", while just as destructive as "Adam", is audible different: there is a decidedly different texture, and the synths at the end even reveal different instrumentation. A big step, really, in an age where noise can be entirely "laptop music" (which is why earlier noise is so fascinating, with all the homemade instruments and guerilla tactics). "Tied to Stone" even has a goddamn beat.

So if you're noise-curious, give this a listen. It's out-of-print, but it's still kicking around and highly recommended - coloured vinyl, hand-numbered, the works.

Download: Prurient - Adam Tied to Stone

Silber Records

2010-01-24T21:57:00.000-08:00

Alright, minor slip-up on my year-end recognition of labels doing great things, but in my defence, I only became aware of this one towards the end of the year. Which is really a huge loss on my part, because these folks are among the newfound breed of independent music organizations that "get it": they get what's going on in the industry right now, they get how to find and work with undiscovered talent, and they get how to make it work for them.

Silber Records has been alive and kicking for over 10 years, doing the noble - and difficult - act of releasing varied and consistently great music. It'd be fair to say the focus is on "ambient"[ish] music, running the gamut from post-rock to the darker side of drone and noise, plus a healthy bit of experimental everything on side (is post-jazz a thing? There might be post-jazz). Something for all the kids, y'know?

Odds are, if words like "ambient", "post-rock", "drone" and "noise" have kept you reading thus far, then you're going to find something you'll like here. And for the avant-curious, everything is up for free download or cheap purchase, so you've got nothing to lose and horizons to broaden. There are literally days worth of free downloads and I still have a lot to sink my eager teeth into myself, but here's a couple of favourites I've stumbled upon:

Remora - Guitar Antihero

Download.

"Brian John Mitchell (Remora) boosted the sound to the next level by using five guitars, a bass, & four amplifiers instead of the standard single guitar & amp. The additional guitars were staged around the main amplifier to act as drone instruments. Probably the loudest Remora show ever (reports are it was heard clearly a block away) & often on the cusp of losing control of the wave of sound, the piece ended with Mitchell nearly throwing up from the volume exposure."

If you're not going to download this based on that quote alone, you're not my friend any more. Massive, hypnotic noise, pretagged as "guitar terrorism" and I can't say I disagree. Brian is also the head honcho at Silber, so evidently this label is in good hands.

Aarktica - Live at KUCI 6/15/05

Download.

Probably the most subtle of the Silber releases I've listened to so far, Aarktica tip-toe the thin line between post-rock and dream-pop/shoegaze: slow, methodical build-ups and blissful wall-of-sound embraces, with the surprise (and lovely) addition of vocals, horns and electronics. Don't be scared by the "post-rock" tag, I promise you this is not Explosions In The Sky-lite or crescendo-core.

Moodring - Live

Download.

Sorry, I'm really at a loss for how to describe this band. It's seems to be pretty free-form, and I might describe the drums as "free jazz-y" if I was rhythmically-inclined enough to make judgements about such matters; it's noisy but surprisingly listenable and the people involved in this are obviously talented musicians. I'll just go ahead and call this "pigfuckjazz" because it feels like a fairly concrete summation.

So go ahead and download and don't feel guilty. If you dig it, though, buy yourself a physical copy and throw some dollars at 'em through their online store. If nothing else, search through their archives for something that tickles your fancy. I can almost guarantee you'll find something.

Best of '09 part 3/2

2010-01-13T23:30:00.000-08:00

Er, yeah. Just wanted to rap 'bout some of my favourite live moments from '09, which I had originally intended to do as part of my previous post(s). Oh well!

HANDS DOWN BEST CONCERT EXPERIENCE OF THE YEAR/MY LIFE AWARD

All Tomorrow's Parties 2009 - Kutsher's, Monticello, New York

All in all, it was one of those events, one of those eye-opening, not-life-changing-but-certainly-uh-really-great experiences. Really, it was a bit of a dream come true: 3 days in New York (and actually only my second time out of this country), staying at a hotel with an absurdly fantastic line-up of artists, playing music all-day (hats off to Oneida, who holed up in the bar the last day of the festival and literally jammed all day). Boredoms, Suicide, Deerhunter, Atlas Sound, Melvins, Boris, Shellac, Circulatory System, Black Moth Super Rainbow, The Feelies, Dirty Three, Grouper, Bob Mould with No Age, The Jesus Lizard, David Cross... it feels surreal just typing the [incomplete] list, but seriously... just, holy shit. I also left early on Monday morning, having bought bus tickets for the evening, so I could spend the day in New York City. Being the complete dork that I am I did spend half of it record shopping, but caught the essential sites by and large. Can't wait to do it again.

Highlight: My girlfriend asking Dominick Fernow (aka Prurient, and the owner of Hosptial Records, hands-down the best (er, only) store I've ever been to for noise/drone/whatever stuff - check it out if you're ever in the city) if he knew of any good ice cream places nearby, a question which he answered thoughtfully and politely, instead of screaming distorted S&M mantras at us like I had braced myself for.

BEST VALUE AWARD

Broken Social Scene - Harbourfront Centre, Toronto

Broken Social Scene is infinitely kind to their hometown. Last time I saw them in Toronto (the November previous to this show), they played for two-and-a-half hours, and the whole gang was there, even Emily Haines. And for some reasons, Brock Isaac from Modest Mouse was there too, and played a couple of his songs with the whole BSS crew backing him up. So how on Earth do you top that? How's abouts a free, outdoor show right on the lakeshore? And how about playing for two hours, bringing in literally every BSS collaborator (including the oft-absent Feist and filming the show for an upcoming movie? Hot damn!

Highlight: The all-too-rare performance of "Almost Crimes".

"OH MY GOD, IT'S REALLY THEM" AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN THE FIELD OF APPEASING MY FANBOYISM

SONIC YOUTH - Massey Hall, Toronto

I want to call Sonic Youth the most "solid" band I listen to, but "solid" carries with it impressions of overwhelming adequacy - I mean "solid" in the unwavering sense, like an old friend or favourite nightstand ("favourite nightstand"...?). Really, I can't flat-out say I "hate" any particular Sonic Outing: their occasionally ill-recieved early albums are incredible, Daydream Nation is one of very few records I dare call "perfect" (or, if you had talked to me in the month leading up to the show, "best fucking record ever goddamn recorded, motherfucker! SCREAMING SONIC LUV!"), their "pop" records are damn catchy and I think, in all seriousness and earnestly not just to be contrary to popular opinion and revel in my own fandom, NYC Ghosts & Flowers is a really great record (really). Ok, maybe The Eternal was just "solid" in the accepted meaning of the word ("Antenna" is grand, though), but they killed it live.

Sonic Highlight: "Death Valley '69". THEY DID "DEATH VALLEY '69".

DOUCHIEST AUDIENCE

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE - Sound Academy, Toronto

One part "recent superstardom", one part "inappropriate opening act", and one part "shitty venue" all came together into one decidedly unenjoyable mess of an evening, explained as follows:

Part one: I'm not going to be one of those "they suck since they got famous derp derp" asshats, it just so happens that Animal Collective changed as they got famous. Compare Merriweather Post Pavilion to Feels. Now imagine which would be more exciting live. The dancefloor-friendly anthems on MPP would probably be the obvious choice, but fact of the matter is that watching three young men fiddle with synthesizers for an hour isn't all that thrilling, and for some strange reason people only really got into the groove during "My Girls" and "Brother Sport", if "got into the groove" is taken as "spilled beer and stumbled in rhythm, sort of".

Part two: I like Grouper, I really do. I'd love to see her play in, say, a church or gallery, somewhere where the audience can sit and enjoy the atmospheric reverb-folk properly. Grouper should not be opening to a crowd with beer and "My Girls" and the inability to muster up the respect not to boo.

Part three: The Sound Academy is just the worst venue in the city, period. Nigh inaccessible without a car and stupidly laid out (if you're in the front row, it will literally take you 10-15 minutes to get out of the place). Blah.

OTHER RAD SHOWS OF 2009

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT - The Music Gallery, Toronto
Warm-and-fuzzy music by hyper-friendly musicians, at one of the more intimate and well run venues in the city.

MV+EE with WOODS - Whippersnapper Gallery, Toronto
Tiny space, tiny audience, but loud as hell and an all-around hippie-friendly, space-folky good time.

"TALES OF THE UNCANNY" - Yonge & Dundas Square, Toronto
Do Make Say Think, Final Fantasy and Robert Lippok joined forces to play a soundtrack to a silent horror film at a free outdoor show in the heart of downtown Toronto. Amazing, in concept and in execution.

FUCKED UP with WOMEN and VIVIAN GIRLS - The Phoenix, Toronto
Look, just go see Fucked Up if you ever get the chance, ok?

Ok, done reflecting - future ho!

Best o' oh-nine: part 2/2

2010-01-11T10:24:00.000-08:00

OUR BROTHER THE NATIVE - Sacred Psalms

Will you people just listen to this goddamn album already? Severely underappreciated band, for reasons beyond my comprehension. Wonderfully organic, lush, experimental pop-music. Buy it already.

Our Brother the Native - Well Bred

CHILD BITE - Split 7" series

A series of 3 7"s with Big Bear, This Moment in Black History, and dd/mm/yyyy. Spastic-but-catchy [genre]core, and, above all, fun fun fun. Three different vinyl colours, interconnected sleeves, and a strong-case for why 7" singles rule. Check it.

I've also decided that more year-end write-ups are going to be a bit redundant, since they're fairly obvious choices that you've already read umpteen blurbs about (that, or simply the fact that I find the longer the list goes on, the less enthusiastic I am about writing it because I feel you're less enthusiastic about reading it), but for anyone curious (anyone?):
DO MAKE SAY THINK - Other Truths
ATLAS SOUND - Logos
SONIC YOUTH - Live at Battery Park
WE ALL INHERIT THE MOON/THE ASCENT OF EVEREST - Split 12"
TWINSISTERMOON - The Hollow Mountain

MORE INTERESTING RECOGNITIONS OF 2009

FAVOURITE LABEL OF 2009
*based not necessarily on the strength of their releases for the year but, rather, my general appreciation of their M.O., etc.

FUTURE RECORDINGS

Run by former Indian Summer member Adam [Lastnameescapesme], Future Recordings - excuse the phrase - keeps it real. One of the few labels out there that really understands that the music industry game is changing (along with another personal favourite, Enemies List), FR offers up free downloads of all their releases (and yeah, they're pretty much all worth downloading), and sells their merchandise dirt cheap: all CDs for $7, all LPs for $10 (although they seem to be jacking up the prices all the way to a fairly absurd twelve dollars) , and at-cost (if not under-cost shipping). And this does mean all CDs, no matter how work-intensively the production was (such as Goodnight, Sleep Well's EP, which came in a printed box, with a handmade sleeve and a patch, all hand-tied together), and yes, all LPs, even the gob-smackingly beautiful We All Inherit the Moon release, the description of which reads like record nerd's wet dream: 180g vinyl, hand-etched B-side, signed 8x11 art print, and sewn-and-printed sleeve... $10, folks, why hasn't this sold out?(!).

RE-RELEASE OF THE YEAR

HAVE A NICE LIFE - Deathconsciousness

It's Deathconsciousness. It's on heavy vinyl in a lovely gatefold. It's the last pressing of the famous 70+ page booklet that accompanies the album. Buy it while you still can. I'd also like to nominate Voids as freebie of the year. Download it.

PACKAGING OF THE YEAR
tie
TWINSISTERMOON - The Hollow Mountain
SUNN O))) - MONOLITHS AND DIMENSIONS (2xLP)

Monoliths & Dimensions is suitably monolithic on vinyl (oh fuck, I need a break from writing...): translucent dust jacket, printed sleeves, heavy vinyl, poster, etc, etc. Sure, you pay for what you get, but it's a beaut, really.

Likewise, The Holow Mountain costs a pretty penny (luckily I grabbed mine for $40 when it went on sale, but now this sucker's getting $200 on eBay), but again, maybe even moreso than the Sunn O))) LP, you can tell how much work went into this: hand-screened jacket and a stunning full-colour booklet, along with a hand-numbered LP by the fine folk(s?) at Dull Knife.

BEST O' OH-NINE

2010-01-05T21:25:00.001-08:00

Severely delayed, yes, I know, but life, as it is, tends to get in the way, so the holidays combined with various personal detours on the road to the grave bumped "blogging" down on my list of priorities just a smidge. But hey, new year, new attitude, GO TEAM.

So let's just get this out of the way:
ALBUM OF THE YEAR: Mount Eerie - Wind's Poem

Thank you, Phil Elverum, for giving me one of the only albums this year to immediately give me that warm, fuzzy feeling right from the outset that says "Calvin, you're going to live this." Wind's Poem had me at its buzzsaw 'hello' with "Wind's Dark Poem", took my hand and dragged me into its dense foggy flaming forest home. An absolutely blissful union of black metal aesthetic with folk sensibility, it's the dirty little crossover that Elverum's been flirting with for a while and finally decided to embrace, with really stunning results.

(Side note: what is it with sensitive folk musicians and their black metal? Owen Pallett rockin' a Mayhem shirt, John Darnielle's oft-mentioned love of metal, and one of my favourite local artists, Wyrd Visions, who is quite literally plays acousitc black metal (and even did a cover of "Freezing Moon".)

So yeah, there it is, my album of the year. You can sleep tight now. Unless you wanted to see something else in the ol' top-slot, in which case, maybe some honourable mentions will sate your lust:

LIGHTNING BOLT - Earthly Delights

"Skull-fuckingly heavy" feels like a bit of an understatment when talking about
Earthly Delights, but severed head gangbang lead-ski biathalon borders on silly. This one really took me by surprise, and could very well be my new favourite Lightning Bolt album. Crushingly focused and engagingly experimental, it's really an exhausting listen, but ridiculously satisfying. I fucking dare you to not bang your head when the drums come in on "Colossus".

Lightning Bolt - Colossus

NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS - Shadow Kingdom

Yeah, ok, the cover is fairly hideous, and yeah, I'm a complete Natural Snow Buildings fanboy, but fuck, this is good, ok? Ok. Triple LP, double CD, comic-book... this thing is massive (and boy, was it priced accordingly). Maybe even a bit too big for its own good, but when the drones are as completely engulfing as these (see: "The Fall of Shadow Kingdom"), length is a bit of a moot point. Maybe not the best starting point for new fans, maybe not enough new to satisfy the grumpy old ones, but it's still an undeniably solid slab of thoughtful and charming (yeah, charming. Read the back of the comic, or listen to an interview with the band. Charming!) maelstorms.

RICHARD YOUNGS - Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits

I've already talked a length about how swell this album is, and whaddaya know, it survived the year and made it onto this list. Unfortunately released with a total pressing of less than 300, this is Youngs at his most overtly catchy and pop-oriented. Synth-heavy, layer-heavy, but positively skyward melodies. A depature, really, but which new Richard Youngs album isn't one?

LINK REMOVED. (but on the plus side, this is getting re-released!)

Part 2 coming much sooner than this part took to get here.

Hey look, a thing!

2009-12-09T15:22:00.000-08:00

Yeah, sort of back in the saddle. Expect typical end-of-the-year shenanigans in the coming weeks.

Anyways, I was on my way to school the other day, and being a commuter student from the next town over means I arrive at school either a) way too early, or b) during class. Being the dilligent student I am, I tend to go for the first option. So I arrive a solid half-hour before I need to for an 8 AM class, meaning the campus is essentially dead. I set up camp in the cavernous main hall and planned to do some much-postponed reading and listen to some tunes.

Appropriately, I decided to put on some music that, much like my reading, had fallen on the wayside. And while I didn't exactly regret puttng off Northanger Abbey, postponing Tobias Hellkvist and Dead Letters Spell out Dead Words's White/Grey/Black was pretty stupid on my part. Super dense celestial drones, ebbing and flowing with the just the right amount of ebb... it's wonderful stuff for lonley winter mornings, really. If you've got an empty field or long, snowy bus ride in your near future - and you count yourself a fan of the somewhat epic brand of ambient by Stars of the Lid or Eluvium - be sure to give it a listen. Although the decidedly "Black" part of the collaboration lives up to its name, so maybe I should qualify the field should be "devoid of life" or your bus ride to school should be "in a potentially dangerous blizzard." Or something.

Tobias Hellkvist and Letters Spell out Dead Words - White/Grey/Black

Sorry, folks.

2009-11-26T22:32:00.000-08:00

End of the semester at school, so this writing-for-pleasure has taken a backseat to writing-for-my-degree. Sorry!

& extra sorry to whoever is in Toronto on a Mac right now and has been checking for hourly updates the last couple days; stay in there champ, updates soon!

Dust, American Dust

2009-11-14T22:58:00.000-08:00

Personally, as a musician, I have a hard time with making simple things engaging. It's probably not just me, but when I'm writing, I have the tendency to want to make things as grandiose and epic as possible - that's engaging, surely. Surely, I tend to think to myself, that a piece must keep evolving and twisting and turning to be involving. It's entirely desirable, but that's the rut I seem to be in. Thank god for artists like Pete Fosco, who make such a powerful case for simplicity that it makes me want to give up ammenities such as, oh, multiple instruments, overdubbing, et cetera.

I can't tell if it's genius or simply confidence that makes Dust, American Dust so compelling: is Pete Fosco doing wonderful things with guitar, distortion and reverb in an elaborately calculated way, or does he just sit down and instinctively know something great is going to come out? It could certainly be either, really; give it a listen and see if you can tell where it's composition and where it's improvisation.

In any case, what matters here is the sound, maaaan. Hazily floating somewhere between aggressive-harshness and dreamlike-fuzz, Dust, American Dust sort of sounds like a shoegaze guitarist lost in space: all loud guitars and reverb and fuzz and feedback, but with no band for context, it all feels very lost. Very surreal, very sublime, kinda harsh, kinda scary. You know how it is.

Pete Fosco - Dust, American Dust

This thing is sadly out-of-print, and I'd love a copy, so if anyone has one they [for some strange reason] want to sell [or give] to me, get in touch. In the meantime, buy some other releases from Digitalis Industries - tons of cool stuff on there

In colonial times, we fought for our right to own - and whip - slaves

2009-11-10T06:27:00.000-08:00

If you can't manage to see the tongue-so-firmly-in-cheek-it's-practically-ripping-a-hole nature of this album, then you either haven't heard it or are entirely unfamiliar with the likes Anal Cunt or GWAR or with, really, the entire notion of parody in heavy music.

Slave Whipping Blasphemy is the supposed duo of Sir Reginald and Seamus DeVille, allegedly both full-fledged members of the KKK and having appropriately grim, blurry band pictures in full attire. Hailing from the deepest recesses of Texas and kicking out some completely twisted, but actually really fucking good black metal, SWB have gotten a fair share of internet flak for their racist themes, unsurprisingly. But godfuckingdammit, if you can't see the inherit humour of a KKK-led black metal band, or song titles like "The Kall of the Kvlt Klux Klan" then the entire internet must be a large, scary, terrible place.

What separates this from most parody-metal is that this music is actually sort of good. I only say "sort of" because I am kind of hesitant to admit it, because this is actually a wickedly solid 20 minutes of lo-fi blasturbation. "Nigger Anthem Massacre" serves as well as any black metal intro in terms of setting the atmosphere - in this case, the colonial south - and each of the 8 following tracks is legitimately memorable and distince, which is much more than can be said about many a modern metal album. Take, for instance, the eerie bellows in "Uncle Tom's Cabin in Flames" of slaaaaaaa-aaave whipping blaaaasphemy, slaaaaaa-aaave whipping BLACK METAL which is ridiculous on paper but awesome on record, so I guess your enjoyment of it will be based entirely on your frame of mind. "Abraham Lincoln, I Fucking Hate You" is a comedy classic, and faux-grim black metal satire abounds in almost every track (such as having your slaves plow your fields UNDER THE FREEZING MOON).

Physical release was limited to 10 copies because it was so fucking kvlt.

Slave Whipping Blasphemy - A Kall To Whips

Now, the real question is: are you going to leave your Last.fm scrobbler on while you listen to this?

Kram Ran

2009-11-01T22:02:00.000-08:00

I'm not patriotic in any sense of the word. As Bill Hicks once said, "my parents just fucked here, that's about all." But nonetheless, I can't help but be proud when two parents fuck in my country and produce some legitimately exciting musicians, the latest of which I've been introduced to is Kram Ran.

Hailing from Winnipeg (a city fondly reflected upon by many in the Canadian music scene), Kram Ran is a one-man affair culling influences from... well, shit, everyone according to his Last.fm page: "A Silver Mt Zion, The Robot Ate Me, The Microphones, Radiohead, Xiu Xiu, Tim Hecker". Which isn't entirely inaccurate, really. The beginning of "A Death & Kill" tricks you into thinking that Silver Mt Zion influence is at the start of the list for a reason, before segueing into a jumpy piano riff and positively manic vocals calling to mind Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart quite handily. Kram Ran seems to channel Xiu Xiu fairly often, actually: "To Dance With Your Dear Dread" opens with a searing wall of keyboard destruction and the buried, desperate vocals and, later, "And Once Upon a Time" recalls a certain singer's quiet, barely-in-tune whimper; it also reminds me of the brilliantly naive vocals on Our Brother The Native's latest, if that's a point of reference for anyone of you (and if not, get the newest Our Brother The Native, goddammit). But hell, the comparisons are started to piss me off, so I imagine anyone associated with the Kram Ran camp was tired of it since I brought it up.

What probably wasn't clear in that last paragraph is that this actually, truly is an excitingly original EP. I'm not going to go into detail because I really want you folks to hear this yourselves, but definitely grab this thing; it's free, and completely worth your time. With equal parts fraught desperation and contemplative crooning (check out "Kill Then Give" for a good mix of both; the falsetto breaks halfway in give me the shivers, I tells ya), and, appropriately, a lush blend of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, A Brief Affair of Limping and Gathering of Clipped Wings is one of my favourite home-grown EPs of the year.

Download the whole thing and/or buy yourself a copy here (only $5)

Midterms are over, hooray!

2009-10-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

I had to catch an early bus to school this morning. Luckily the bus stop is 5 minutes from my house and there's a Tim's across the street, so I could grab a muffin because I overslept and didn't have time for a proper breakfast. I got a chocolate chip one, but I could tell it was touching a banana muffin, which ruined a solid half of the muffin top.

Anyways, it's about 6:55 AM at this point and I stand around the bus stop, waiting for the [always] late GO Bus to arrive. The stop is on a fairly major street that runs through the whole city, and connects to two highways and most of the major roads around these parts, so traffic was pretty dense come 7. I'd been standing around eating for a solid 5 minutes before I notice a dead cat on the road, next to the curb. It looks fairly intact considering how dead it is.

Now every time a car goes by I cringe, because this well-preserved dead cat is about 3 inches away from becoming decidedly less well-preserved. I turned up my music because the only thing worse than watching cat brains paint 5 of an 18-wheeler's tires, I reasoned, would be the sound of cat skull cracking, or worse, of not-quite-dead cat screaming (though I was confident it was thoroughly deceased.)

The bus came eventually (late) and it too managed to miss the cat. I got on the bus and gave the driver my overpriced ticket, sat down, and didn't hear any cat-crushing as we pulled away from the curb.

It wasn't there when I got off the bus 8 hours later, nor was there any noticeable pool of blood/sinews/bone fragments, so I assumed all went well.

What I'm trying to get at is I'm done midterms now, so things should be picking up here again. And to keep things relevant to this post and this blog, I'll probably post some Birchville Cat Motel when I get home from work. Sound good?

Midterms

2009-10-22T18:47:00.001-07:00

I'm balls-deep in midterm essays right now, but that should wrap up by the end of the week & I'll be back on the ball. Sorry for the lack of... anything.

Put My Dream on This Planet

2009-10-14T20:45:00.001-07:00

If you're not familiar with Jandek, I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia article on him, because it's one of the more intriguing stories in contemporary music, especially since rock and roll has lost much (read: all) of its mystique.

A quick run-down: a man (herein referred to as Jandek for convenience's sake) release a bunch of outsider folk albums in the late 70's/80's, disappears for a while, comes back with a trio of spoken word albums, experiments for a while, then randomly plays some live shows for the first time... ever in the mid-2000's. Why is this so interesting?

Well, we barely know who Jandek is.

He releases his own albums (on a label called Corwood Industries, which, in addition to being owned by Jandek, releases only Jandek material), has offered only 2 official interviews ever, and makes only sporadic, largely unannounced live appearances. During his hiatus, it was assumed his output was a result of a manic recording session resulting in over a dozen albums, but then he came back, decidedly older sounding, and we're led to believe he's still at it. Hell, there was no way to confirm that he was even the gentleman that appears on almost all his album covers until he played his first live show nearly 30 years after releasing his first album (which itself was released under a different pseudonym, under the guise that it was a band that released it).

Put My Dream on This Planet is one of his "experimental" albums: almost an hour of unaccompanied voice, half-singing and cripplingly depressed. "I Need Your Life" is a 28 minute plea of uncomfortable desperateness, that might be laughable if it weren't so serious and, well, sad, in every sense of the word.

I don't even care if I'm in a wheelchair
Or in a bed
Unable to move
For all I know
It's better than what I did today

"It's Your House", likewise, is a grovelling mess but a bit more poetic, as The Representative from Corwood demands a house made from granite and iron, denying all frills and extravagances in his quest for solitude and stability ("no glass, no wood, no plastic, no brick, no shingles, no aluminum siding, no syn-thet-ic [dramatic pause; our narrator desperately trying to find what he doesn't need] fibres") until he surrenders the building (presumably to whoever's Life he Needs), turning it into a symbol of commitment. Or trying to, anyway. Sad, really.

"I Went Outside" clocks in at only 1:18; for most of the song, he tries to find his shoes, and when he finally gets out, it's only snowy and cold.

Call it a sad mess of regrettable poetry or a brutally honest account of a personal crisis, either way Put My Dream on This Planet is enthralling, though difficult to listen to in terms of subject and presentation. Are you man enough?

Jandek - I Need Your Life
Jandek - It's Your House
Jandek - I Went Outside [COMING SOON - my internet's being a bitch]

If you want to buy some, check out this flyer and mail the man a cheque.

FORMER GHOSTS NEEDS YOUR HELP

2009-10-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

I was incredibly psyched to see Former Ghosts (aka Jamie Stewart + Freddy Ruppert + Nika Roza, aka Xiu Xiu + This Song Is A Mess But So Am I + Zola Jesus) this Friday as a treat after a week of mid-term essays and non-stop reading, but alas, they've had to cancel because for reasons unbeknown to the public, the venue pulled out leaving these folks stranded.

Right now, they're looking for a place to play, otherwise there will be no Toronto show at all. So if anyone out there in the blogosphere can lend a helping plan, PLEASE contact ryancraven@theagencygroup.com .

This is guaranteed to be an amazing show, so someone, please, throw a bone to the fine folks in Former Ghosts.

Thanks

Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits

2009-10-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

I'll just come out and say it: Richard Youngs is probably my favourite contemporary solo artist. He's been releasing music pretty much nonstop since the early 80's, and has dipped his feet in enough to genres that I suspect he'd have to graft a third foot onto his left ankle to become any more diverse. From drone, free jams and noise to minimalist folk and half-hour piano ballads, this guy's got his bases covered. And just to make sure he's got even non-existent bases covered, he'll quietly throw out some completely left-field albums. So if you aspiring free-acoustic/kazoo artists have something planned, just know that Youngs beat you to it with New Angloid Sound. And watch your back, Jandek: Summer Wanderer is stiff competition in the "Best Independent A Capella Album (Male)" category. And if any of you motherfuckers are planning on recording over an entire album with an alternate take of that entire album, you'll probably kill yourself after listening to Autumn Response, because you won't do better. Sorry.

Basically, every time you pick up something that says "Richard Youngs" on the cover, don't think for a second you can even guess at what you're getting. The only constant is his consistently high quality of output; this may be total fanboyism, but Youngs hasn't really done any wrong.

So what are you to make of Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits, then? It's synth-pop. Of course.

Incredibly lush synth-pop at that. Layered synths, twittering drum machines, and, of course, Youngs's brillaint voice, dubbed and sounding more majestic than ever. It's a charmingly simple album, too, contrasting sharply with some of his more multi-tiered epics like River Through Howling Sky: simple melodies looped and piled on to each other, catchy choruses... really, it's just a great synthy/poppy record.

And y'know what? I'm gonna give you the whole thing. This was released in only 2 pressings, each tragically limited to 100. It would be an absolute shame if more people didn't get the chance to hear it.

Richard Youngs - Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits

Since you can't buy this album, show some support and buy some of his back catalogue from the fine folks at Jagjaguwar.

Enjoy, and feel free to comment.

ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES: PART THREE (Sunday)

2009-09-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

Alright, finally wrapping up this tedious and boringly written review.

This was the day of the festival I had been really holding out for. A bunch of legendary bands doing legendary things, all in the same building, and things kicked off with Japan's almighty Boredoms. Let's just get this out of the way right now: the festival could've ended right after their set and I'd've been 110% content. The building could've caved in (sure felt like it was going to). I could've suffered from post-infant death syndrome. Heart failure. Spontaneous combustion. Anything. For the 70 minutes that the Boredoms were on stage, there was 70 minutes of the most hypnotizing, enthralling, exciting music I've had the privilege to see in person. Nine drummers in perfect unison, Yamantaka Eye in the centre with his seven-necked guitar, beating, jumping, wailing, crooning, calling, beckoning, yodeling, screaming, thrashing... screw words, this was positively transcendent. Someone posted the whole set on Youtube, so get on that.

Not to be outdone by ridiculous stage-setting, the Caribou Vibration Ensemble followed, with a huge line-up of 15 if I recall correctly. Three drummers, auxiliary percussion, guitars, brass, woodwinds, and electronic fuckery courtesy of Four Tet. Very cool idea, great execution, but almost every song had the same climactic "last song" explosion feeling, kinda of dampening all the following climaxes (insert your own joke here.)

Proving that Japan is the leader of eclectic vaguely-heavy nuttery (sorry, Netherlands), Boris handily cranked out another festival highlight by playing Feedbacker in its entire slow-burning, cataclysmic glory. Flawless, really, which makes it hard to talk about. But how fucking cool is a double-necked guitar in a red-light stage fog? Yeah, thought so.

Crystal Castles are right up there with Animal Collective in the "admittedly hipster-friendly faux-indie that is enjoyable on record but atrocious live" category. Painfully loud throbbing bass combined with Alice Glass's off-key and off-time shrieks and squawks were thoroughly difficult enjoyable. Which is a shame, because I want to dig this band more than I do, really. Danceable but not obnoxiously so, and a vaguely punk aesthetic should make for a good time; then again, maybe it's more punk to go on stage drunk and kick out some half-assed jamz? Let's not talk about punk, actually. We all know where that goes.

Arguably the most legendary of the day's line-up was Bob Mould (if you are Googling this name right now I swear I will kill you) playing Husker Du songs with No Age, which is the closest many of us youngin's will get to seeing Husker Du live. What I admired most about the set was how No Age wasn't just Mould's house band for the hour. Rather, they played together, trading off vocal parts, gelling very well and playing extremely tightly. And closing with "New Day Rising"? Pants = officially soiled.

Now, here's where I lose you: I don't really care for The Flaming Lips. I don't hate them, I'm just terribly indifferent. So when my options were "watch them play until 1" or "get a decent sleep for an early departure tomorrow", my girlfriend and I leaned towards the latter. That being said, the 10 minutes we caught seemed to be the wildly entertaining live show the Lips are known for: costumes, confetti, balloons, the whole 9. Fun time, to be sure.

Ah, I really can't wrap this up eloquently. I didn't enjoy writing this. I'm sure it was awful to read too. Sorry folks, things'll pick up from here.

ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES: PART TWO (Saturday)

2009-09-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

Let's get right into things: Sufjan Stevens kicked things off with by playing Seven Swans through; I can't say I particularly care about Mr Stevens (nothing personal), but it was a solid set of lazy folk that was by all means enjoyable, and probably something much more if you cared about the man/album.

I really want to love Grouper. On record, the dreamy/droney cave-born acoustic-thing works wonderfully. This is late night headphone music at its finest. As such, live it loses a bit of what makes it so great, since instead of walking through the snow at 2 am contemplating life and other such deep meaningful things, you're standing around with a bunch of other folks staring at Liz Harris for 40 minutes. I think I'd dig this a lot more if she met me behind an old church and played at midnight, but in a concert hall, it loses something.

Circulatory System carries the rainbow-flame acid torch passed on from Olivia Tremor Control and played a lively set, with a comfortable mix of catchy pop and all-out psychedelic jams. Again, they continued the early-afternoon theme of "enjoyable but not remarkable", but [also] again, it ain't nothin' against the band. It's entirely possible I was too excited for the latter half of the day, but that would be unprofessional, wouldn't it?
& alas, no surprise Jeff Mangum sightings. Dang.

Bradford Cox played his first set of the day as Atlas Sound on the decidedly more intimate second stage. Sure, on any "technically" level this was a fairly atrocious set with numerous technical problems and restarts and "hold on just a minute"s, but fuck it, I love Bradford Cox. He could run over my dog and I would not be able to get mad at him. Infinitely friendly, charming, and a great performer. One of the festival highlights for me.

Unfortunately, due to major jet-lag in my travelling company, we had to retire for a bit of the afternoon, but there was nothing I was particularly dying to see, but I have heard that Black Dice and El-P kicked out some fairly serious jams.

Shellac welcomed us back and nearly killed us, easily eclipsing every band in terms of volume during sound check alone. I'm not gear-heady enough to tell you what kind of amps they were using, but it looked like some sort of military equipment: a large, chrome box for an amp head with a solitary oversized dial on the front. As expected, they were tight as hell, kicked out some riff-heavy tunes and generally straight-up^rocked a lot harder than any of the bands there. You know, in that "fuck art, bang yr head" kinda way. No nonsense. Well, as no nonsense as "Squirrel Song" can get.

As the evening came to close, I get the feeling that whatever mastermind-cum-evil genius planned this festival twisted his moustache and cackled maniacally as festival goers were forced to choose between a serious conflict: Deerhunter or The Melvins? Fuuuuuck. After great, great deliberation, I decided my love for the Melvins was too deep and had been going on since middle school and I could not pass up the chance to finally see them live. I was able to catch the start of Deerhunter's set, though; "Cryptograms" and "Never Stops" lead me to believe I missed great things. Dang.

But hey, it's the goddamn Melvins. The Melvins! Fuck! They did not disappoint at all, even if I still find the two drummers thing a bit superfluous. A great mix of new and old stuff, including some of my favourite tunes from each era ("The Talking Horse" and "Hooch", respectively), but with such an expansive discography, you really can't please everyone, you know? (I was secretly holding out for "Honey Bucket", but what can ya do?) That being said, that's by no means a knock against them; they've been at it for 25 years now and it definitely shows. Plus, I caught an interview with King Buzzo earlier in the day, and it really makes me wish his legitimately hilarious banter carried on to the stage.

The night closed with Animal Collective, a band which I want to like but infuriates me to no end. Feels is a fantastic record. Their earlier, more experimental material circa-Here Comes the Indian has some great hidden gems ("Hey Light"). They even have some killer pop tunes in their recent discography ("Peacebone", "Brothersport"). But live? It's one giant piss-off. They've seemingly abandoned everything pre-Merriweather Post Pavilion, save for "Fireworks" and ditched any semblance of organic music, sticking exclusively to samplers, save for the rare guitar. What results is a bunch of overly-indulgent jams on frankly annoying loops, and with a hilarious amount of reverb and delay on the vocals rendering the hooks indistinguishable from the electronic clusterfuck. Great songs like "My Girls" lose their punch and dynamics. Garbled, unfocused, and frankly boring. Which is a shame, because on record, even their new material is largely enjoyable; minimal but still engaging pop songs.

PART THREE, THE CONCLUSION, COMING SOON.

ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES: PART ONE (Friday)

2009-09-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

Feel free to skip the first couple of paragraphs; the meat of things starts below the personal back story, but if you wanna come along for the whole ride, go right on ahead, sailor.

The multi-day music festival is not something we really "do" here in Canada. We get some one-day things rolling through my neck of the woods (Virgin Festival, Warped Tour), but unfortunately, many of those one-day things all-day suck (Virgin Festival, Warped Tour). I remember reading through issues of Terrorizer (a British metal magazine (that is, about, not forged from, metal) in high school, and being absolutely floored at the weekend heavy metal camps, where European metalheads could congregate in a field out in Germany, bring a tent and some beer, and rock the fuck out for three days straight while an amazing line-up played from noon 'til dawn. Wacken, Bloodstock, Graspop... a dime a dozen over there.

As time went on, my tastes changed, but I was nonetheless jealous of the folks across the pond. How's this for an idea: take a really great band, have them pick a bunch of other really great bands, and have them all play over the course of a weekend? Bloody brilliant!, I'm sure they said over tea, adjusting monocles, etc. And so for many a year I was insanely jealous of the UK's musician-curated festival called All Tomorrow's Parties.

Eventually, ATP found it's way to North America, specifically New York, but actually specifically to Monticello, a nowhere town two hours from New York. And fuck, the line-ups were just as stellar and the whole experience sounded absolutely incredible.

So I went.

Earlier this summer, my girlfriend and I were browsing the line-up of old festivals, drooling and gawking and how cool would that be-ing. It would be so cool, it was decided. So a after a few extra shifts at work, some emails, some bus tickets, we set it up. September 10, we are leaving on a Greyhound bus from Toronto to New York, arriving the next day. Rad.

(At this point I will spare you the boredom of the 10+ hour bus ride, but just for the record: the new "extra leg room" Greyhound buses? Bullshit. They're uncomfortable as hell. The leg room is fine, but they went and fucked up the back and neck room, which made sleeping next to impossible.)

Unfortunately, due to Manhattan traffic and a missed transfer we missed The Drones playing Wait Long By The River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By. So I can't say much about that. Or anything, really.

The Feelies were up next and we were able to catch 80% of their set, wherein they performed Crazy Rhythms in its entirety. The jangly post-punk felt kind of flat on record, but the songs are definitely there, and live they absolutely nailed it. Super high energy for an album conceived almost 30 (!) years ago and a rock-solid performance. Here's hoping the reunion isn't just for touring.

Continuing the night's "Don't Look Back" agenda, where bands faithfully recreate entire albums live, Dirty Three (with Nick Cave on piano) did as much of Ocean Songs as they could fit into their one-hour set. Hyperdelicate post-rock doesn't normally translate into thrilling live show, but Warren Ellis was able to bust out all matter of kicks and jumps and wildly frontman-like behaviour all while cradling a violin and more than making up for his lethargic bandmates. Luckily, Cave's appearance didn't overshadow the material; his additions were subtle and tasteful, and the set was flawless. Definitely a highlight.

Suicide performing Suicide (as the ATP website affirmed, "their first LP", not actual suicide) was one of the main things that sealed my decision to make the journey to New York. Nothing short of legendary, the duo were wildly inventive for the late 70's; when punk was a guitar-bass-drum affair, Suicide worked as a duo, with drum machines and keyboards, with songs often being just an abrasive, industrial rhythm under half-singing punctuated with manic shrieks and bursts of noise. Now, 32 years later... things are bad. Real bad. A set list is one thing, but lyric sheets? For your own music? And having the sound guy read them was just sad. A deadpan roadie saying "Ghost rider. Motorcycle hero." into the microphone made me cringe. And so did Suicide themselves. It was like watching that drunken, creepy, "funny" uncle do Suicide karaoke at your family reunion. "Rocket USA" was especially embarrassing, as Alan Vega mumbled and groaned and generally showed his age. Admittedly things clicked a bit as the set went on, but it was still kind of... sad.

I never really got why everyone went apeshit over Panda Bear. Sure, Person Pitch was groovy, but it wasn't as mindblowing as you'd be lead to believe. Reverb-drenched minimal loops and Mr Lennox's soaring chorusy voice are lovely and all, but each song is just that on top of a creative sample, and it all becomes very samey very quickly. So live it's no surprise that the loops become more annoying (and unpleasantly bass-heavy) to the point of incoherency, the vocals do their normal Panda Bear thing, and the "show" consists of a man standing at a mess of wires in front of a projection for an hour. Monotonous, really.

David Cross did a funny, if extremely drunken, set, and I don't know what else to say about a comedian. He spoke well, I guess? Nice voice? Good jokes? He was a comedian, and he was funny. What more do you want?

I only caught about 10 minutes of The Jesus Lizard before being so impossibly tired I could not stand it, but much unlike Suicide, they seem to still be hauling ass despite their age. David Yow immediately found his way into the crowd, and right off the bat people/fists/feet/bottles were flying. Would've been a great time had I not been dead on my feet.

Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3... sometime. This is kind of a tedious thing to write. Is it tedious to read? Let me know.

COMING SOON

2009-09-15T23:01:00.001-07:00

- All Tomorrow's Parties write-up (PREVIEW: shit was dope brah)
- something droney
- the best band name ever?
- frequent updates

STAY TUNED

The Big Gloom

2009-09-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

Comparing bands to other bands is Cloud Strife-sized double edged sword with a greased hilt. On one hand, sure, it's the easiest way to sum up a band's sound, to say they sound like Band X, Band Y and if Band Z had a baby with Band A while Band C cut the umbilical cord, but it also seldom does justice to neither Bands X nor whatever band you're trying to talk about. So when everyone compared Have a Nice Life to Joy Division, My Bloody Valentine, and Sunn O))) among others (I think I heard Swans somewhere), I did my best not to immediately shit myself 5 times and die, because how on Earth could a band live up to those veritable legends?

Well, shit, they just about did.

And the only reason it's "just about" and not "absolutely" is because this is still a young group.

So, instead, maybe that should read shit, they fucking will.

Poor formatting and excessive curse words aside, this band truly does combine the best of all the aforementioned worlds. Joy Division's uncomfortably depressing lyrics, My Bloody Valentine's wall-of-sound, Swans' repetitive, hypnotic song-structure, Sunn O)))'s... ok, this comparison has always been kind of lost on me, but whatever. Throw that in with a vague black metal aesthetic (the non-ridiculous kind) and a healthy DIY spirit and even a sense of humour (keep up with the Enemies List twitter) and I swear this description is still not off base: Have a Nice are indeed all of that, quite handily.

Though I feel like I'm already falling into the negative-side of this comma-happy band roll call: Have a Nice Life are still a unique force, and not merely derivative of any of the aforesaid.

"Hey now", said the Blogosphere, "this band is old news, mate. Remember early 2008, when everyone went totally apeshit over Deathconsciousness?"

Yes, but there's plenty of reasons for things to get apeshittier (?) now: grab a copy of the recently-pressed Deathconsciousness 2xLP, complete with huge explanatory booklet. Why the hell hasn't this sold out yet? Do your thing, internet. Or if you want some instant gratification, stream the whole thing here and then download the just-released b-side/demo compilation Voids. Worth your time and hard drive space, pinky swear.

Alright, I'm going to quite my fanboy gushing now. Dismissed.

I have no excuses.

2009-08-28T15:38:00.000-07:00

Summer has been busy, and [some pun about pilots, astrayitude, etc]. But I'm hoping to buckle down now that the school year begins anew and my spare time won't be so occupied with summer things. You know how it is.

Anyways, how about Magic Lantern, eh?

I don't have much specific insight into this record, mind you. Nothing particularly profound or interesting or enthralling to share with you. Just some superb psychedelic jam stuff that will probably give you a contact high if you listen to it loud enough. Great fuzzy tones, great buncha musicians, all around a solid slab of improvisations. Think Acid Mothers Temple. You like Acid Mothers Temple, don't you?

Magic Lantern - Deathshead Hawkmoth

Exciting news!

2009-06-18T18:51:00.000-07:00

So yeah, I've been a bit off track lately, but I have real reasons this time!

In an exciting turn of events, yours truly is a new staff reviewer at The Silent Ballet!

What does this mean for you, faithful readers? Well... nothing much, really. There will be slightly more "professional" sounding reviews up over on TSB, and this blog will remain an open forum for me to discuss whatever. Furthermore, just a reminder I'm always up for checking out your recommendations or even your own band. Just send me an email or leave me a comment.

You’re either crazy or dead, you just weren’t well bred.

2009-06-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

Curious circumstances tend to breed curious albums, and generally the results are charming, unique, and can give an added layer of distinction to an already great album. Take, for instance, Ariel Pink beat boxing the drums on The Doldrums, or With Throats As Fine As Needles holing up in an abandoned bunker to record their self-titled album. Not that these quirks can save a bad album, but it’s always an added pseudo-sentimental bonus in an age of Pro Tools and recording budgets that could drag a third world country out of debt.

What is so remarkable about Our Brother The Native is their youth: releasing their 2006 debut on FatCat Records at the ages of 16 and 18 is incredibly impressive, and makes this now-trio either almost or barely 20, barring any sort of time machine-related accidents. What is equally remarkable is the rate of maturity and refinement of their sound, which results in Sacred Psalms being an early contender for one of the albums of the year.

Immediately clear from the opening “Well Bred” is the impeccable production: there is no studio-based “fullness”, but rather an entirely organic feeling lushness about the whole record; in fact, “lush” (in the “pleasantly full-bodied” sense of the word, not the colloquial bastardization) is probably the best adjective to encapsulate the feel of the album. Perpetually layered (and yet somewhat subdued) vocals and organ drones form the basis for stuttering acoustic percussion and all matter of idiophones and stringed instruments including guitar, banjo, mandolin and probably more and probably some I identified incorrectly and probably instruments I’ve never heard of. All ten tracks are positively flourishing with this feel, this cherry-blossoms-and-sunset sort of colourful je ne sais quoi, this mood which I’m going to stop wasting adjectives on because it’s meant to be experienced and not talked about.

Also set forth in the opener are the clumsy, though frequently lovely and often clever, lyrics. And “clumsy” is not meant here as an insult, but in the sense that they weren’t penned for metre or rhyme, but to fit with the song (or vice versa?). Though as odd as the chorus of “Ph. D, BA, I am your doctor, so listen to what I say” may seem, Our Brother The Native make it as restrainedly catchy as their timid vocals will allow. The rest of the hooks in the album are omnipresent, no doubt, but require some work on part of the listener; Sacred Psalms is a textbook “grower”, with each additional listen revealing some eccentric chorus buried so deep it takes five listens to uncover.

If there is any critique to be brought against the album it’s that this all-pervading feeling is truly all-pervading, with most every song having the same super-layered, faux-catchy vibe. Tracks that break this mould are unsurprisingly the standouts: the sample-focused, reverb-drenched “Dusk” brings to mind a lost Set Fire To Flames track, while “Sores” brings its chorus to the forefront and serves as one of the more immediately memorable numbers.

That being said, the quality of the album is such that any feelings of repetition are quickly pushed aside by feelings of “well hot damn, this is a fantastic record!”. At this rate, I’m impossibly excited to hear what Our Brother The Native will be doing five years from now, and quite honestly, a little scared about how brilliant another morsel of maturity could make their next album. Until then, we have Sacred Psalms, and we have one of the year’s best.

Our Brother the Native - Well Bred
Our Brother the Native - Someday
Our Brother the Native - Sores

As always, buy what you like. Pick it up here if you're in North America, or click here if you're across the pond.

New layout

2009-06-10T12:17:00.001-07:00

Ya dig?

I realized there are a million other blogs using the "minima dark" thing, so I thought I'd switch it out for something else. I'm digging the sparseness. Tweaks to come.

Y/N?

SHOW REVIEW: Isis w/ Pelican + Tombs

2009-06-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, yeah, another show review, sorry. Then again, since the uploaded MP3s get a minimum number of downloads, are you actually here for the writing for serious? Hm!

Anyone into the whole post-Neurosis/"atmospheric sludge"/"post-metal" sort of schtick (which I still haven't heard a satisfying catch-all genre name for) knows that this is a sort of dream line-up. Pelican and Isis? And these Tombs cats getting all sorts of buzz about 'em? For $20?

Tombs didn't quite slay me as hard as I was told they were going to, but they nonetheless played an enjoyable set of doomy black metal, which managed to keep things interesting by actually slowing down once in a while, throwing in some noise & ambient(ish) passages and generally being solid musicians.

Pelican, after finally micing their drums properly (make your own joke making fun of their drummer now, I know a lot of you folks hate the man) did their usual sludgy, riff-heavy instru-metal that, in [mentally] sober retrospect was pretty same-y, but in a live environment, it just straight-up rocks, for lack of anything more articulate. Heavy as hell, supertight musicians; great metal, great time.

Also in the "better live than on record"-category this evening (2 out of 3!) are the headliners, the almighty gods ov sludge (or so I'm led to believe), Isis. I can't really articulate why their set was so amazing (which is a bit worrying, considering I'm pursuing an English degree and all, but I digress), but these cats have perfected their craft and are a rock-solid physical entity in the concert hall. Not shying away from "quieter" moments for the live set, they made brilliant use of heavy/soft, loud/quiet dynamics, something the preceding band should make notes about, and something the crowd should recognize and mosh accordingly to; if moshing is ever appropriate at an Isis concert, it certainly isn't during the intro to "Dulcinea", you stupids. The set was mostly new material, but it was the old stuff that really slayed: the aforementioned "Dulcinea" was amazing, and the definite highlight was Panopticon's "In Fiction."

I daresay this was the best show of the year so far. This statement may not last the month, though: Sonic Youth on June 30th? Fuck. Yes.

(P.S. The Eternal is pretty cool. Needs more listens. "Antenna" an immediate favourite. Fragments efficient.)

life gets in the way of blogging

2009-06-08T23:39:00.000-07:00

Yeah, sorry. Not dead, just busy.

Tidbits:

- Kayo Dot were disappointing
- Pelican/Isis were incredible
- New Sonic Youth LP out today
- possible exciting personal developments to share
- new Our Brother the Native is incredible, review soon
- fuckin' Mare reunion show this month

Update soon, pinky swear.

As we fall into static our hearts sing

2009-05-28T20:42:00.000-07:00

I'm not gonna lie, folks, I don't know where I'm going with this entry. I just got a bunch of kewl new muzak, but it's all on vinyl and I can't be arsed to find downloads or lug my turntable down here and make my own MP3s.

First item of business: Have a Nice Life's Deathconsciousness is finally on vinyl and up for pre-order! Get yourself a copy now; I know I sure as hell am not missing out on this again. If you haven't heard of this, it's basically a pitch-black shoegaze double album put out in early 2008 that took certain online music communities by storm (although it's fallen slightly out of favour and is not longer "album of the decade"). Lo-fi, homemade, and beautifully lush in a paradoxically dark way. It's a fucking beast of a record in every sense of the word. Download "Bloodhail" and start the Enemies List love.

Second item: yeah, I've splurged a bit and got me a handful of new records that I'll be talking about in the coming while. Prurient, The Mile End Ladies String Axillary, MV+EE, Woods, Nadja... if, for some reason, any of you have a preference as to which (if any) I write up, lemme know.

Final item: ok, I've got a thing! All this talk of shoegaze reminds me of a swell find: Toma. Unassuming name (although a quick Google search brings up "TOMA Foundation for Burned Children", which is equal parts horrifying, funny, and sad) and the fairly Explosions in the Sky-looking artwork aside (not an insult, mind you), this album is actually unique in the remarkably overcrowded post-rock genre. Shock! Gasp! Awe!

Opener "Sins Of A Solar Empire" sets the pace nicely, with a typical feeling post-rock sort of jam, but without the same quiet-build-intense formula; instead, Toma have some actual balls and keep it loud with a wonderfully blissed-out, expansive, and remarkably full sound. They mix up their other songs a lot, too, so if this record is anything, it's continually (and pleasantly) surprising: "This Day" is a fairly straightforward shoegaze song, not totally out of line with A Place to Bury Strangers (i.e. loud guitars, quiet vocals, good times), whereas "This is the End of Everything" is a beautiful, piano-led pseudo ballad.

One of the things that makes Toma stand out are the vocals. The singer (sorry, I can't find any proper credits for this record, so I'm going to continue making vague references like that. You know, when you're at a party and you forget a chap's name, so in a hilariously sitcom-esque fashion you do your best to always refer to him as "man" or "dude" or "brodawg"? Yeah, like that. I should also note that I am led to believe that this is a solo project, based on the write-up on the band's Myspace? If so, this whole shebang is fivefold as impressive as I thought. Holy fucking parentheses.) has an astounding, deep, rich voice perfectly suited for the massive music; sounds a lot like the fellow from iLiKETRAiNS (I still do not get that band name whatsoever), and times, like a slightly less polished Scott Walker (but to compare anyone to Scott Walker is sort of silly.) I can honestly say that, when he really pushes his voice, it's absolutely chilling; I literally got goosebumps in the climax of "Terrorforming", and it's definitely one of my favourite music moments of this year so far.

Could it get better? Hell yes it could: the whole thing is free. Do yourself a favour and give it a shot.

SHOW REVIEW: MV+EE w/ Woods, $100

2009-05-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

Folk rock extravaganza at my favourite local art gallery for $10? Sign me up.

First and foremost: the Whippersnapper Gallery is a fantastic venue. It is easily accessible by public transit (I'm looking at you, Sound Academy), suitably intimate (read: small), and since it is, at its core, an art gallery, it makes for a lovely place to see a show. As if that weren't enough, there's a very nice bunch of folks who run this place, and do their best to support local talent at a minimal cost to both the artists and the visitors. Seriously, catch a show or exhibit or party or anything you can there; this place deserves your support.

As for the show, it opened with $100, a local alt-country band getting a decent amount of buzz about them lately. That being said, I can in no way appreciate the genre they play, so I don't feel as though I can fairly say anything about their performance another than "I didn't like it" and "the free nachos at the makeshift bar were delicious and free."

Woods were undoubtedly the band that people came to see, as the crowd ballooned to twice its size after $100. They're the latest little buzz band, I hear? Whatever, it's well deserved: these guys write some viciously catchy fuzzed-out folk-pop, and balance it nicely with some psychedelic/jam elements. And, as if I needed more reason to love them, their live tape... player? Performer? Tapist?... is wildly entertaining: some sort of noise S&M enthusiast, masking himself with sideways headphones and abusing the shit out of a pedal-board-cum-DJ-set-up-cum-noise-factory. But despite the image, his drones and squeals and back-up vocals were tasteful and subtle, and added a ton to their live show, especially when things got far out, man.

I was kinda saddened that literally 75% of people left before MV+EE even began setting up, but fuck 'em, the hipsters only missed out on a great set. (I must also shamefully admit I had to leave somewhat early to catch the last bus home) They played with whatever band it is they have now (I believe it's the Golden Road) and kicked out jams from Gettin' Gone and the recent Drone Trailer, with each song being twisted and stretched into extended country-fried jam sessions, the highlight for me being the reinterpretation of the folk song "Hammer", with Erika Elder sounding as lovely live as she does on record, and Matt Valentine grabbing the Telecaster for some downright heavy fuzz riffage.

In addition to playing amazing sets, both Woods and MV+EE are composed for an extremely friendly bunch of people who manned their own merch booths and were more than happy to have a chat, and seemed genuinely grateful to everyone who talked and bought merch (and, y'know, certain drummers from certain jam bands gave props to certain bloggers for wearing a certain Comus shirt, which was also cool (certainly).

Great bands, great sets, great venue, great nachos... what's not to like?

Check 'em out if they come to your neck of the woods, and definitely stop by the Whippersnapper if you're in the GTA.

P.S. sorry it's been all live reviews lately; I'll get back to the usual this week!

SHOW REVIEW: Wolves in the Throne Room w/ A Storm of Light, Krallice, & Thrones

2009-05-19T18:55:00.001-07:00

Alright, updates should be back to normal now that, as of tomorrow, my school year is done (finally). And yeah, Tuesday updates aren't "normal", but I know all 4 of you are pining for something new to sate your need for my inimitable prose.

Normally, we all know the role of an opening band: to waste time before you get to see the band you paid to see. Ok, or bands the headliner respects and wants to expose to a wider audience, whatever. But by and large, these are not particularly groups you care about (my last show review completely notwithstanding, mind you.) Well, and to break some internal structure and acknowledge those last parentheses, this line-up was another exception: thee almighty eco-friendly epic black metal ensemble Wolves in the Throne Room, supported by A Storm of Light, Krallice and Thrones (just in case you didn't read the title, natch.)

A Storm of Light are a Neurosis-worshipping trio who, unsurprisingly, feature the ex-visuals... guy (visualist? visionary? visionsman?) from Neurosis themselves, who has also served stints in Red Sparowes and Battle of Mice, so the sludgy-credentials here are at waste-thick ooze out ofthat scene in Saw III with all the pig guts. (Which reminds me, I just saw Saw V, and how bullshit was that? (Along with Saws II-IV, mind you (but I digress!). Part of me wanted to think "oh my god, this is going to be so boss! And this album art is bomb, too, this will be the best damn thing since Isis!", while part of me knew that "all of these post-Neurosis bands are the same, ugh." Well, the latter turned out to be true, and while the female guest-vocals gave them some distinction, its by-and-large the same pseudo-atmospheric dirge tuned to drop-whatever.

(However, I did pick up their gorgeous Primitive North split with Nadja for a cheapo $20 (and you all laughed when I put off buying it!) and it's definitely worth your time, especially for the sidelong Nadja blissy, fuzzed-out drone that they do oh so well.)

Krallice were definitely set to impress, too, since they're the closest thing to a black metal supergroup since the short-lived Twilight, although curiously none of the members have any blackened credentials: the "ex-member of..." rollcall includes Astomatous, The Flying Luttenbachers, Orthrelm, and, inarguably the biggest draw, Colin Marston, of Behold... the Arctopus and several more-or-less interchangeable post-everything tech-wank bands. While I expected some sort of iffy, tech-black sort of deal, I was pleasantly surprised that there was nothing overly showy and the emphasis was on fierce, riff-heavy black metal. Shame about the minor sound problem (the vocals would overpower the stage-right speaker), but done well enough to spark my interest in the band. Well done.

By this point it seems like I could devote an entire entry to just listing the former projects of the acts on this bill: take Thrones, the solo project of Joe Preston. It would probably be easier to list the bands he hasn't worked with, but his resume includes tenures with the Melvins, High on Fire, Earth and Harvey Milk. And when you've played jackhammer on a Sunn O))) track, then no one will ever question your bad-assery again (and since apparently a bunch of you are questioning just how boss this guy is, he's loaded his everything with fucking bears.) Stylistically he was the odd-man out, opening with a lengthy drone/doom sort of thing that audibly confused some of the crowd, but this sort of thing is right up my alley, and goddamn did he make an oppressive layer of noise just looping his bass and fiddling with some samplers. Immensely powerful drones, followed by some extremely Melvins-esque "stoner rock" or whatever the tag is that one gives meaty-sounding, low-end heavy hard rock.

And finally, Wolves in the Throne Room have come out of whatever backstage ritual they were performing before the show and... well, carry it onto stage, as they dimmed the lights, lit candles, and cranked the fog machine to 11 to create a wicked atmosphere; this is how black metal is meant to be heard. For a bunch of outsider pseudo-hippies, Wolves can, to put it lightly, tear your fucking head of with raw black energy. Incredibly tight and remarkably aggressive compared to some of their recorded output, they were able to get heads a-banging' more thoroughly than any other band on the bill. (As a side note, $15 shirts are definitely the way to go; way to go, guys.)

For an open-minded metalhead, I'd dare you to find a better evening for $18.

SHOW REVIEW: Animal Collective w/ Grouper, May 16 @ the Sound Academy (Toronto)

2009-05-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, Animal Collective are the hipster garabe I've ever heard, but I wanted to believe it was just the Internet being the hate machine that it is wont to be. But fuck, Animal Collective have amassed the douchiest fan base ever, and yes, it's because of Merriweather Post Pavilion (and no, it is not the next Pet Sounds, goddammit.)

Don't get me wrong: I earnestly do like the band, and have for quite sometime. The last time I saw them was back in 2007 when they were on the verge of releasing Strawberry Jam. It was a good show, by all accounts: good sound, good set, good crowd.

Yeah, good crowd. I wish this remained true but alas, no. Grouper opened the show with a (slightly overlong for an opening act) set which I wish I could say I enjoyed, but it was drowned out by drunken chatter, sober chatter, booing, cries of "ANIMAL COLLECCCCTIVE!" and frankly disrespectful behaviour all around". I hate to sound like that bitter old man telling all the kids to git off his lawn (again), but seriously, some ounce of decency would be nice.

When Animal Collective did finally come on, I was pleasantly surprised they opened with "Chocolate Girl"; I'd like to think it was a conscious choice as a big "fuck you" to everyone there for "My Girls", and it did seem to leave the crowd a little disarmed (though it, unfortunately, didn't stop random "WOOOO!"s in the middle of the goddamn song). And guess what, folks? Your shitty cell phone pictures are going to look just like everyone else's. Put away your phone and enjoy the show. Did you really pay $25 so you could text in a new, exciting locale?

Though speaking of "My Girls", it was abundantly clear that that was why the majority of the crowd was there; that was when people starting dancing, that is when people did (could only?) sing along, that was when people decided it was a good idea to rush the stage. Same during "Brother Sport". And "Summertime Clothes". Hey, wait a second...

All in all, it was a decent set with decent sound (highlights being "Leaf House", "Comfy in Nautica" and the extended "Fireworks" jam) marred by the most obnoxious crowd I've ever counted. And as if I needed more reason to hate the Sound Academy (besides its absurd location, bottleneck exit and overpriced shows), what sort of venue allows drinks to be taken into the main concert area? The designated drinking area is designated as to keep drinks out of the show so you aren't stomping on cans or getting Heineken spill on your legs.

Fine enough show, but I'm not sure if I could deal with another crowd like that should they come back to town.

Setlist:
1. Chocolate Girl
2. Comfy In Nautica
3. What Would I Want Sky
4. Lion In A Coma
5. My Girls
6. Guys Eyes
7. Fireworks
8. Leaf House
9. Brother Sport
Encore:
10. Chores
11. Summertime Clothes

Zero sleep = zero insightful blog(ging)

2009-05-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

Again, my schedule is taking a hit because of school; my poor time management skills meant I was up til roughly 4:30 am scrawling out an essay on art philosophy (Weitz vs Collingwood, for those keeping score at home.) Not to mention I'm at school from 7:30 am until 7:30 pm, so I've just got this quick apology on break before handing in my essay & sitting through a 3 hour lecture. So yeah, sorry folks; anything involving any remote creative effort will likely be... bad. See? I can't even come up with a clever way of telling you of the bad-ness.

Oh God, it's getting worse!

Here, how about something totally passive?
This is what my summer concert schedule is looking like so far, and seriously, it grows by the week. I'm incredibly excited, and you viewers at home can expect reviews of all of 'em.

May 16 - Animal Collective w/ Grouper
May 18 - Wolves in the Throne Room w/ A Storm of Light, Thrones, Krallice
May 21 - Unwigged & Unplugged: An Evening with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean & Harry Shearer
May 22 - MV+EE w/ Woods, $100
June 4 - Secret Chiefs 3 w/ Kayo Dot
June 7 - Isis w/ Pelican, Tombs
June 11- Do Make Say Think, Final Fantasy & Robert Lippok
June 13- Bell Orchestre
June 17- Patrick Wolf w/ Jaguar Love
June 18- Absu w/ Glorior Belli, Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, Sothis
June 20- Circle Takes the Square w/ Titan, Lords
July 10- Holy Fuck w/ Winter Gloves
July 11- Broken Social Scene & Explosions in the Sky w/ Apostle of Hustle, Thunderheist, & more!
July 16- Fucked Up w/ Women, Vivian Girls

HOLY SHIT.

The hollow mountain

2009-05-07T09:28:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you may have inferred by now, I'm a big proponent of buying records and physically owning music: artwork and packaging is absolutely vital to fully experiencing an album the way it was meant to be heard. And what arrived in my mailbox the other day is, perhaps, the greatest affirmation of that fact: The Hollow Mountain by TwinSisterMoon.

Scans aren't quite going to do this thing justice, but give it a look. In person, the booklet is a huge 8"x8" piece of screen-printed gorgeousness, tucked inside a beautiful hand-screened sleeve with a slab of hand-numbered vinyl (19/105 here.) Let's just say thank goodness it came in a protective record sleeve.

I was almost hesitant to play this thing: what if my hand slips? What if the needle scratches this beyond repair? FUUUUUUCK. But yeah, eventually I found my testicles and played the thing and wow. Like most releases by Natural Snow Buildings and all related projects, this is truly a record to crank to 10 and get lost in.

The structure of this album is a lot like that on his portion of the 3-way split, The Snowbringer Cult: eastern-tinged drones interspersed with acoustic folk. The drone numbers are standard fare for Mehdi Ameziane, which is to say, fucking awesome. All matter of instruments I can barely pronounce ebbing and flowing like a Lightbright melting underwater on acid. Sure, it's pretty same-y to his Natural Snow Buildings stuff which, in turn, is pretty same-y to isengrind (aka Solange Gularte, aka the lady-half of NSB) but when it's all so great I can't really be bothered by it. It's the shorter, simpler folk tunes that make TwinSisterMoon stand out: although technically unremarkable and all following a similar arpeggiated chord pattern, Ameziane's falsetto is gut-wrenching, and to have the lyrics finally printed only adds to the experience, giving grounding to the otherwise indistinct wailings.

I daresay this is the most accessible material from the project, and certainly from the whole NSB collection: the folk songs are beautiful, and the drones are all soothingly psychedelic (as opposed to some of the stuff found on Nigh Coercion...) and in digestible lengths of less than 10 minutes (sorry, no 46-minute "Song for Laurie Bird" here). Probably the perfect gateway to anyone who's had this project. The vinyl sold out immediately, but there is going to be a CD version on Ultra Hard Gel with a bonus track to boot.

In the meantime, you can get your TwinSisterMoon fix with the 3-way split The Snowbringer Cult, still not sold out (?!) which is actually a better introduction to this French psychdronefolkgaze madness, so ignore what I said before.

From The Hollow Mountain:
TwinSisterMoon - Bride of Spirits
Note: Dull Knife, thankfully, made sure this LP was sold only to people who wanted the record, not to the notorious eBayers who re-sell these things at several times their original price. As such, I am respecting their wishes and only giving you the sample MP3 they have on their own site.

From The Snowbringer Cult
TwinSisterMoon - Amantsokan
TwinSisterMoon - Kingdom of the Sea

Of boy bands and sludge

2009-05-04T09:19:00.000-07:00

How exactly a sludge/doom band adopted the same name as a boy band I suppose isn't the most important thing about this band, and certainly something that's been pointed out so many times before it's incredibly unfunny by now, but... c'mon, what the fuck?

Anyways, the 5ive in question (or 5ive's Continuum Research Project as I believe they are now known, for reasons entirely unrelated to the pop group, I am certain) are an instrumental sludge/doom duo from Boston, who yes, you're right, can be compared to Pelican in that both bands write vocal-less epics with molasses-thick guitar tone. This is something you'll dig if you're into the whole Neur-Isis set of bands ("post-metal" or "metalgaze" or whatever god-awful portmanteau you want to sick upon this sound), or if you just wanna straight-up smoke a bowl and orchestrate it with some sludgy, stoner riffage.

The thing that, for me, really sets this band apart, besides the plain fucking awesome riffs is the drumming. One thing that almost prevents from fully enjoying a similarly-styled album, The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw (by Pelican, natch) is the drumming. It's so thin and bland and if there's anything interesting going on, it's overshadowed by the guitar work. 5ive is a duo, and while the guitar is absolutely huge, the drums are, both literally and sonically, responsible for half of the sound, and they establish themselves from the get-go. After the faux-drone into in "Gulls", when the riffing comes, the bass drum makes it's presence felt and makes sure the low-end dominates for the rest of the record. My drum terminology is at best uneducated and at worst flat-out fucking wrong, but Charlie Harrold definitely seems to focus on creating huge rolling tom/bass backgrounds which, compared to others in the genre, is really damn awesome. Not that he doesn't mix it up, mind you; the uplifting cymbal smattering on "Polar 78" is entirely responsible for the song's feeling and direction.

Not to put the guitar aside; after all, Ben Carr is the entire rest of the band, and has six strings to compete with a whole drum kit, and does a perfect job with a huge, fuzzed out tone that is de rigueur of the genre. I'd be curious to see if it holds up without the benefit of studio overdubbing, but as the record stands, it sounds fantastic. And goddamn, if "Gulls" isn't one of the cooler riffs I've head in a while, although by and large this album seems more focused on a wall of sound than distinct riffing, which is absolutely fine by me.

As if you needed more motivation to buy the record, the cover art is absolutely fantastic.

So it seems my school's internet is hella slow, to the point of barely functioning, for some reason. MP3's will be uploaded later tonight, sometime after 9.

Like an amplifier should

2009-04-27T18:58:00.000-07:00

Yes, here it is, back on track, for now. Sorry if the next few entries don't match the exceedingly high standards I started out with, but I am sick and tired and busy with you've heard all this bullshit before get to the music goddamn.

If there's one thing I really do like when it comes to music, it's shoegaze. Terrifically loud, noisy, dense, occasionally poppy, and even the general aesthetic is just so damn cool. A little pretentious, maybe, a little ridiculous, sure, but those are words I'm totally comfortable associating myself with.

Holler, Wild Rose! sort of fall under this umbrella. Sort of, yeah. "Marylawn Hair" is My Bloody Valentine worship at it's finest, with that frankly glorious wavering synth wading through the mix. And "Holler, Wild Rose!" has a fantastic, almost post-rockish explosive intro. But instead of falling into fuzz-on-ten, reverb-on-eleven, three-two-one-LOOK-DOWN tedium, Our Little Hymnal is one of the most delightfully varied debut albums I've heard in a while (even if I am several years behind on this one... oops.)

From the flat-out, wall-of-geetar gaze sounds to surprisingly delicate acoustics to spirituals to tastefully done ambient interludes to whatever sort of "indie rawk" you wanna call it, it stays interesting and, more importantly, stays good. It's loud, it's soft, it's melodic, uplifting, heartfelt; wickedly solid record. They should have a new one coming out sometime soon, and the only thing out there besides this is the limited-to-200 Yarn EP. which is a nice little stopgap between albums.

I did my best to give you some representative tracks, but as always, if you think you'll dig the rest of 'em, throw some dollars at 'em.

Holler, Wild Rose! - Marylawn Hair
Holler, Wild Rose! - Sun Vines

ohhh shhhiiiiiii-

2009-04-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

sorry,
been real busy with school/work
exam time, you see
I've been pretty dead this week
back to regular thing soon

Cover version extravaganza! Part one.

2009-04-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

I basically wrote this just so I can share what has become one of my favourite covers ever, but then decided it could (potentially) become a nifty idea to come back to in future entries (i.e., when I am too lazy to do something original (woah, meta.)

The cover song is a funny thing. It used to be the primary type of single in the early days of the music industry, where songs by black musicians would be stolen, reworked (and usually totally pussied-up) and performed by white groups, earning ridiculous sums of money for zero effort. Now, it's not quite as common for a band's biggest hit to be a cover (lol Gary Jules), but what's most alarming is that a discomforting amount of modern covers are not recognized as covers by the [dang ol'] kids these days [who won't git off my lawn]. I cringe when I think of how many 14 year old girls think My Chemical Romance wrote "Desolation Row."

However, the "cover" can also be fascinating when a band completely reworks a song and actually makes it their own; it's a fantastic way of paying tribute to an influence. And these are the types of covers I will be presenting.

Today's pick is "Only Shallow" by Nadja, song originally by My Bloody Valentine (but you knew that, right?) Both bands are known for their huge wall-of-guitar sound, with mouldy molasses-thick fuzz, barely-there vocals and just generally loud-as-fuck all-consuming soundscaping. I imagine a brief bio of the coveree would be superfluous to most of y'all, but regarding the coverer: Nadja are a drone/doom duo comprised of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff based right here in Toronto (ok, right there in Toronto since I'm technically in a different city) and are, hands down, the most prolific drone-duo the city has ever seen (an oft challenged position, no doubt.) Not only do they have a fucking absurd amount of releases in an amazingly short amount of time, but they are almost unanimously high-quality.

With regards to the cover, I can't think of a band more fitting to cover thee almighty My Bloody Valentine (except maybe A Place to Bury Strangers). You can tell Nadja are deeply indebted to them, and their cover is a brilliant tribute. In a truly Nadjian move, the tempo has been halved; the [pseudo-]iconic opening drum roll of the song is slowed to a lazy pace, with the guitars and keyboard following suit. However, the slower speed works stunningly well here. Combined with the thousands of overdubs and no less than 5 fuzz pedals turned up to 12 (all figures are estimates), it proves to be even dreamier and more ethereal than the original. Completely mesmerizing, and completely worth the time for fans of either band, or folks who can dig a nice shoegaze tune in general.

Nadja - Only Shallow

Hey, whaddaya know, these cats just put out a whole record of covers. As always, buy what you like.

I am a filthy, lying whore.

2009-04-20T21:13:00.001-07:00

Sorry, something came up that took priority over writing that 3 people will read.

Update Tuesday, hopefully with something significant.

Sorry

2009-04-20T07:15:00.001-07:00

Last week got super busy.

Update today, promise.

With Throats As Fine As Needles

2009-04-13T18:46:00.000-07:00

Cool recording techniques, to my knowledge, always yield cool albums. Set Fire to Flames set up a bunch of equipment in a condemned house for a week with a whole lot of drugs to see what would happen, and put out the stellar Sings Reign Rebuilder. Sunn O))) set up shop in an old Norwegian cathedral to do Domkirke and churned out some of the best material of their decade-long existence (chiefly "Why Dost Thou Hide Thyself In Clouds?"). With Throats As Fine As Needles formed a four-man drone supergroup (featuring members of Nether Dawn and Birchville Cat Motel), then holed up in an abandoned bunker with portable instruments in a concept that, on paper, pretty much makes my dick explode.

Luckily the dick-explosion pretty much carries though on to record, too. (Wait, "luckily"...?) As one would could guess based on the talents involved in this project and the circumstances they put themselves in, this is abrasive, varied, noisy, and hugely reverbed stuff. It's all very layered and extremely dense, with so much shit going on it can't help but meld together into some blissed-out drone grooooooves, man. Especially the first track, where it feels like all four of them are going full bore and it comes off sounding like a much more evil Vibracathedral Orchestra or Natural Snow Buildings (both of which are terrible comparisons at face value, but imagine each of them were... locked in a bunker with battery-powered instruments.)

The packaging for this thing is swell too, with a hand-dyed rice (?) paper sleeve, so I'm assuming each of these is going to be unique. Less than 999 copies left, so get it while you can.

With Throats As Fine As Needles - I
With Throats As Fine As Needles - II

Flags Of The Sacred Harp

2009-04-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

Sorry, today's entry is going to blow ass because I am operating on very little sleep, having pulled an almost-all-nighter to finish (and, for that matter, start) an essay & whatwith work the night of, before, and after, I am effectively dead.

Jackie-O Motherfucker (yeah, sorry, no spiel/context today) are a group musicians (OH SHIT!) who seemingly vary in number/instrumentation on an album-to-album basis, but there always seem to be guitar/drums/bass/something that is bowed and/or squeezed and my goodness every ounce of my creative energy is well and truly sapped.

Point is, they play some brand of sound which can be loosely umbrella'd under "psychedelic folk", usually in perfect proportions of "psych" and "folk" (at least on the album I'm talking about here), although they are certainly not afraid to go full-bore into either genre (take the alarmingly pleasant "Rockaway" compared to the cacophonous ending to "Nice One"). Speaking of "Nice One", they need more songs like this: abso-fucking-brilliant. The minimalist beginning slowly building-up to the psychy-noisy-folky-freakout is really goddamnn cool. That being said, if you like what you hear here, the whole album is definitely worth your money (though you can probably find it cheaper than this...)

Wow, sorry this was so shit. Better writing next Monday, I pinky-swear.

Jackie-O Motherfucker - Nice One
Jackie-O Motherfucker - Hey! Mr. Sky

Black metal ist kalt

2009-04-06T09:37:00.000-07:00

Metal is fucking ridiculous. You know, I know, metal fans know it. I don't mean this in a negative way, but it's really fucking ridiculous. Power metal is fantastically whimsical, death metal is laughably brutal, and thrash metal is practically a cartoon.

But nothing whatsoever can match black metal (bolded for emphasis/grimness.) The attitude, the aesthetic, the fashion...
hell, it almost feels as style-conscious as the "scene/emo/whateverthefuck" 'movement'. It's gotta be grim, it's gotta be frostbitten, it's gotta be so invertedly necro and recorded in your basement onto a limited edition tape that if it isn't, you're a fucking poser so go listen to Job For a Cowboy you fucking gay-ass poser scum FUUUUUUUUCKKKKK HOLY SHIT I HATE YOU YOU SUCK SO MUCH.

(Admittedly, this fervour has died down somewhat in recent times; acts like Darkthrone and Satyricon are looking more like angry old men then costumed servants to Satan, and newer bands like Nachtmystium and Wolves in the Throne Room look downright friendly.)

Nonetheless, this sort of attitude means a lot of black metal is shitty, sloppy, aimless, indistinct, blast-beaten nonsense. So when bands come along and try something new, something a little more grandiose, with a little more thought and a little more effort (well, make it a lot more), a lot of people absolutely lose their shit (see: Deathspell Omega, Wolves in the Throne Room, etc.) However, one of my favourite black metal releases in the last few years (and, in fact, one of my favourite metal releases) is just well-written straight-up black metal: no keyboards, no female vocals, no extended ambient passages. Fucking I.C.E.

Imperial Crystalline Entombment, comprised of Mammoth, Blizzzard, IceSickKill and Bleak (yes, really), are pretty much a pure black metal ensemble hailing from the frostbitten fjords of Waldorf, Maryland ("pure" meaning guitar + bass + drums + vokills, not "pure" in the Aryan, National Socialist Black Metal way(see: Gestapo 666, Slave Whipping Blasphemy, etc.) What sets them apart is that they actually put noticeable time and effort into songwriting. There are choruses, there are vocals, there are hooks, and they do it all without dipping into "melodic black metal" territory. The lyrics are a tongue-in-cheek (?) story about the coming of Ravaskeith, and his bringing of an apocalyptic end in white. While the subject matter is ridiculous (word of the day!) and the lyrics not particularly deep/meaningful, they are written with... get this... metre and rhyme. The syncopation of the vocals and the rhyming does wonders when it comes to making a memorable, satisfying experience.

Mammoth rise in winter guise,
Take this child to the frozen side,
Empty human born of flesh,
Throw him, to the cold white death!

Buy it if you like it.

M4As, sorry:
I.C.E. - Hypothermic Possession
I.C.E. - Cascade Cavern Catharsis

Ghosts will come and kiss our eyes

2009-04-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

If I had a dollar for every band that "features members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor", I'd probably have at least twelve dollars. A Silver Mt Zion is the obvious choice, then we've got Set Fire to Flames, Fly Pan Am, Exhaust, 1-Speed Bike, Black Ox Orkestar, Molasses, etc, etc. Not to say I dislike Godspeed (actually quite the opposite), nor do I dislike many of the side projects, but it just feels like they're goddamn everywhere.

One such project I ignored for far too long was HRSTA (spelled with little dots below the RST, but who has the time to do that?), featuring Mike Moya (ex-Godspeed, lolz) and, perhaps more excitingly, Brooke Crouser (Jackie-O Motherfucker (note to self: do blog on Jackie-O Motherfucker.)

Moving away from the grandeur of the former and the folksy noisefuck of the latter, HRSTA are sort of a middle ground between the two extremes (to underwrite everyone involved in this comparison.) This is a superbly atmospheric record, with all matter of organs and related instruments providing minor-chord drones while the reverb-y/tremeolo'd-to-hell-and-back guitar lines wrap their way around them (or is it the other way around..?); and, of course, Moya's vocals fit perfectly, and whatever little couplets of lyrics you can decipher are wonderfully creepy, too. His voice reminds me of Mehdi Ameziane from Natural Snow Buildings, and, at times, even of Thom Yorke's more restrained moments (a la Kid A, natch.)

As always, support the band whenever you can.

HRSTA - Entre la mer et l'eau douce
HRSTA - The Orchard

Comus rape, Comus break, sweet young virgin's virtue take!

2009-03-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

It's always a pleasant surprise when the most interesting and experimental bands you can find were actually active 40 years ago. Such was the case when I stumbled upon Comus roughly over a year ago. A tragically short lived and largely-membered group of musicians from the UK who released one of the most "out-there" albums of the early (early early) 70's, First Utterance. Seriously, it is difficult to conceive that must like this was released in 1971, and even harder to imagine it was conceived 2-3 years before that. HOLY SHIT.

It's sort of hard to describe, but imagine a group of medieval minstrels on LSD on acid playing some sort of proto-freak folk (in the sense that this is freaky and it is folky, not in the sense it's that made-up genre people sometimes label Animal Collective as.) Thematically, the song varies in themes from rape to more rape to torture to rape and torture (to the oddly out-of-place celestially-themed prog-rock wankery of "The Herald", which is probably a metaphor for rape (i.e. "flutes", etc.)

None of this would really be half as interesting as it is if it weren't for Roger Wootton vocal style, which ranges from yelping to screaming to warbling to sometimes actual singing; definitely download "Song to Comus" to see what I mean, because it really makes the songs extra-special. EXTRA SPECIAL.

Most exciting of all and most extra special is that the band recently announced a goddamn reunion after a 35-ish year split. I will donate any part of my body (you hear that, Comus? Any part.) for a Toronto date. Please.

Comus - Diana
Comus - Song to Comus

Comments are always appreciated. Tell me what you like, what you don't, want you want more or less of, or send me some recommendations or anything. And if you wanna link to me, I'll link to you. No homo.

My holy bones are best for breaking.

2009-03-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

I don't think I can throw enough "crossover"s or "post-"s into a genre description to make This Song Is A Mess But So Am I communicable in just words. Experimental-electro-noise-crossover? Harsh post-dance with industrial influence? -core?

This was a project started by Freddy Ruppert after the death of his mother, so as one can imagine, this album follows a frantic sort of emotional roller coaster. That being said, the variety works surprisingly coherently: from straight-up noise ("God and Cancer") to straight-up dance ("Song for Donna Ruppert") to acoustic experimentation ("High Fives for Jamie") to creep-rock ("Bones Bones Bones") to God knows what they are all tied together quite nicely, by both Ruppert's distinctive voice and the subject(s) at hand.

What really sets this apart from other experimental electronica, and in fact, most music as a whole is the passion behind this record. Every note and every word is absolutely meant which is far more than you can say for a distressingly large percentage of current artists. We're talking a pg.99 level of feeling here.

Appropriately, this project was laid to rest after it had run its course for Mr. Ruppert, at which time he graciously made all the project's material free for download. I'm still going to put up a couple MP3s in case you aren't quite ready to commit to a whole .zip file.

Since you can't support this band, give his new band, Former Ghosts a listen.

This Song Is A Mess But So Am I - God and Cancer
This Song Is A Mess But So Am I - Bedridden and Dancing

Is it just me or was this entry not as well-done as my others? Something feels off.

Nice schedule commitment, stupid.

2009-03-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry, computer problems yesterday. New post up maybe tonight, but I've got an emergency band practice. Say, could this count as an entry?

No, ok, fine, I owe you cats an actual blog. But hey, if you're in the GTA, swing by the show tomorrow, eh?

Ruzan Orkestar

A Trap For Judges (& a schedule for blogs (this one (now every Monday and Thursday)

2009-03-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

Doesn't it seem like the more "extreme" a genre gets (in any direction, i.e. extremely harsh or minimal or whatever), the more it has to do to be interesting? Noise, drone, ambient... all fairly interchangeable and indistinct, for the most part. There is simply only so much you can do with white noise/single-digit BPM/holding down a C on your Korg. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy all the aforementioned genres, but it's very easy to get burnt out and jaded with it all.

My first drone experience was, as it is for most people, with Sunn O))) (unless you're uber-tr00 and listened to Earth.) I didn't quite "get it", again, as it is with most people. Not that didn't understand, per se: I was a fan the Melvins' doomier, proto-drone, dirgey, [ominous-sounding-D-word] material, especially "Hag Me" off of Houdini. But what the fuck was with Sunn O)))? Ten minutes long, no discernible "riff", no nothin' as far as I was concerned. Admittedly, I was 15 and was much more interested in death/black/thrash at the time, so I probably wasn't in the best frame of mind.

A couple years later, when Black One came out, I (NOTE: this is not a blog about Sunn O))) and this story is indeed going somewhere, but feel free to skip this paragraph if you want to get to the meat and potatoes of this thing.) decided to pick it up and give the band another chance, especially since this album had a number of guests and seemed to be a fairly varied album. Which it actually was. Oren Ambarchi, John Wiese, Wrest and Malefic (of Leviathan and Xasthur, respectively) doing vocals HOLY SHIT. And it worked: almost every track stood out. The tremolo riff (riff?!) in "It Took The Night to Believe", the goddamn netherwordly screams in "Cursed Realm (Of the Winterdemons)", and, perhaps my favourite, the huge harmonics in "Cry for the Weeper." Drone could be more glacial paced guitar sludge, and I'm doing my best to come up with a "it only took me the night to believe in the genre" sort of joke, but I can't.

So with a newfound interest in the genre, I set out to see what other "experimental" drone I could find. Boris's unpredictable, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach; Earth's sun-baked southern doom; Asunder's monolithic funeral dirges. And, just recently, I have discovered, perhaps, the crown jewel of them all (ok, aside from Boris, but they're not really drone, ya know?): Asva.

What You Don't Know Is Frontier is absolutely massive. Oppressive, haunting, ethereal... every buzz word you use when talking about drone applies here, the only difference being these words actually mean those things now.

More than anything, it's the simple things on the album that are most effective. As I'm sure you can tell from the pictures, these are slightly more mature doom merchants, but it really does show. Take, for instance, the organ (keyboard? Synth?) in the opening title track. This is what takes it beyond most other drone. It's very basic but goddamn if it doesn't unlead this nightmare fuel.

The highlight of this album (not just for me, but for everyone, it seems, according to Last.fm , too) is undoubtedly "A Game In Heaven, Hard Work In Hell." Words aren't going to do much for this one, but let's say it starts of very droney (surprise!), builds with some eerie, indistinct female vocals before, out of completely nowhere, fucking bulldozes you with a glacier made of onyx and hate. I don't really want to ruin the track actually, because I do hope you'll shit yourself the same way I did when I first spun this record. Shit yourself with pure awesome.

I encourage you to buy this record if you like what you hear. The band, like a lot of people, have been affected by the current economic situation, and because of lack of money had to cancel a European tour scheduled for next month. Buy it straight from the band, cut out as much of the middleman as you can.

Asva - A Game In Heaven, Hard Work In Hell

New schedule

2009-03-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, so starting tomorrow there should be a fairly regular update schedule. New posts Mondays and Thursdays. Until then, watch a Swans live video. Definitely my favourite band at the moment.

Holy hell, I am slow with updates.

2009-02-25T20:46:00.000-08:00

Even though an overwhelming 3 people read my last entry, I am compelled to do another one. Sorry it took so long, all of you cats waiting for a new 'un; school, work, etc, etc. You know how it is.

Anyways, not too long ago I was able to track down a vinyl copy of Half-Eaten Guitar by Wyrd Visions. The LP was released some 2 years ago to only 350 copies, and I was able to find one brand new at Rotate This which made me sort of sad that it hadn't sold out. Then again, I first heard this chap back in October when he opened for Mount Eerie, so I shouldn't be chastising anyone's laziness regarding this record.

I don't know quite how to classify what Colin Bergh does under this moniker. I mean, sure, it's acoustic, that's a start; it's not exactly folk, mind you. Black metal? Ergh... yeah, actually. Acoustic minimalist black metal? Post-black metal? Fuck it.

Live, these songs are all done through an extensive loop pedal work out, and it feels the same on record: layers and layers of fairly simply phrases. The "riffs", if they may be called such, are undeniably black metal, just slowed down and played sans buzzsaw distortion. His cover of Mayhem's "Freezing Moon" really puts it all into perspective, and then you notice the ultra br00tal crescent moon/inverted cross artwork... the pink throws you off, don't it? And you wouldn't think the innocently titled "Air Conditioning" would be a full-on distortion black metal piece a la [Burzum's] "The Crying Orc", but there you go.

Anyway, if you can focus for a period of time longer than 5 minutes, give this track a listen and then buy the album (the CD is still in print.)

Wyrd Visions - Bog Lord

Back in the saddle with The Black Vase

2009-01-22T11:38:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it's been a while. How've you been in the last... year and a half? Good? Good. I've decided that Facebook notes aren't quite the proper outlet for writing about the things I write about, mostly because the things I write about aren't things my Facebook friends particularly care to read about. So here you are, my wider audience, and maybe some of you cats can dig what's going on here.

Despite the blog title, I don't really have a particular theme going on, or, in fact, any rhyme or reason behind what I post outside of the fact that it's something I like. And if you like it too (or dislike), you should drop me a comment or somesuch thing.

--------

Prurient is the moniker under which Dominick Fernow creates a shitload of noise (to be eloquent, of course), which mostly lands on the "harsh" side of the genre (as opposed to "gentle" noise, I suppose?) Which, for the uninitiated, means that some of these frequencies will likely, at proper levels, damage hearing and kill dogs (possibly. Probably.) Seriously, though, crank the volume way the hell down for "Roman Shower", the scathing 15-minute endurance test that opens Black Vase. I am by no means a conisseur of the noise genre, so perhaps I "don't get it", but I can see no point to this opener other than to sort out those who will not stick around for the next 50 minutes.

However, for those who can brave the (literally) piercing first track, what lies ahead is one of the few albums in the genre that can actually hold my interest. Ironically, in a genre that has pushed music to its very outer limit, to where music arguably ceases to even be "music" in any traditional sense of the word, most of it feels painfully samey and boring. You can only listen to so many kids running a distortion pedal through a loop until even walls of scathing white noise become yawn-inducing, much the same way death metal becomes hilariously pedestrian when every single band is doing their best be the extreme opposite of that.

But this is where Prurient comes in and makes noise that feels as if it has purpose, direction, meaning: as if he knows he is still a musician and still writes songs. Of course these terms are all still used with regards to noise and not traditional music, so when I say direction, I don't mean in the sense of "Godspeed You! Black Emperor slowly winding up some explosive climax after 10 minutes of hazy meandering", but more like "an explosive climax on a scrambled porn channel, all colours distorted and organs miscoloured but the last 10 minutes of hissing moans did lead to a static money shot." Various tribal drum beats all reverb'd to hell and feedback sirens/controlled squeals seem to direct the underlying/overlaying noise, with Fernow's indescernable static screams belting out some barely-there lyrics about S&M, rape, and all matter of such material that would make de Sade proud:

Show me how it's done
Open me up
Make me lick it up
Replace my air

Anywho, I've rambled enough. These tracks are .m4as, and for that I am terribly sorry; I will do my best to make future posts in mp3. k? k.

Prurient - Silver Flashlight
Prurient - Soft Crack

Comments always appreciated.

popping that blogspot cherry

2007-07-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

The whole point of this blog is to share with you music I've come across that I like. I suppose it's sort of a masturbatory practice in a way, but hey, you'll get some new, rockin' and, above all, free tunes.

So I'm going to start this off with the artist from whom I stole the URL, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. Essentially, this Ariel Pink chap is the only person on Animal Collective's Paw Tracks label not directly involved with Animal Collective. All of his recordings are done on an 8 track (on his own, I believe) and as such have a very lo-fi sound, to the point where you will wonder how on Earth this man not only got signed, but signed to a large enough label that you can indeed find his albums at a good HMV (although $15 overpriced, mind you, but a feat nonetheless). But under all the layers of tape-crack and hiss are absolutely brilliant pop songs. Imagine if some demented pop-songwriter lived in a cave two doors down from your room, kickin' out the jams loud enough for you to get some distant taste of the utter genius going on.

This one's from an album called The Doldrums, arguably one of his lesser "accessible" albums, but at the same time his best. Give it a chance & try to get past the recording quality.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Good Kids Make Bad Grown Ups