echoplex

requiem for a dream

2007-07-26T19:03:00.000-04:00

i've been both too busy making music and too bummed about the end of tonic to effectively comment on it's closing. in a sense i still am, but i wanted to at least say a few words and post the photo above. i note with some small amount of black humor that this is my thirteenth post about the place (that's more than any other venue i've written about). for more eloquent words, read the words of the patrons on the website.

i was present for the last event of the venue at 107 norfolk street, which bianca almost didn't get into. we had a last techno-driven hurrah for the bunker's final night before they moved to luna lounge. in fact, i've delayed this post so much that the night has already moved again, to galapagos.

the DJ sets of spinoza and derek plaslaiko were great as usual, pictures were taken by seze, excellent drinks were served by heather (who is also the criminally underexposed electronic artist doily) of broklyn beats.

tonic was a great place, one of the few venues i felt at home in. it will seriously be missed.

the title of this post comes from the film of the same name

not to bury but to praise

2007-04-15T10:56:00.000-04:00

upon learning that sin-e was closing, i scanned the listings and found that die romantik, a band i’d been meaning to see, was playing one of the last days. other passengers were slated to play the same night, but they ended up performing as a hybrid with another band. the three original OP members played excellently as usual, but i’ve blogged about them so much i’ve decided to focus on die romantik, and the end of another LES club.

sin-e used to be a little coffee house on st. marks’ place that sometimes had musicians playing in a corner. it was an early casualty of east village gentrification and skyrocketing rents. when the owners brought it back as a live music club and bar a few years ago, they wisely moved down to the then-burgeoning but still-cheap lower east side. budget was probably what led them to a location somewhat further east than the no doubt pricier ludlow/stanton/orchard/rivington axis. unfortuantely, this may have been one of their downfalls as they were even further off the beaten path than rothko, another LES club plagued with ill luck. with nothing else on the block, there was probably a lack of walk-in business or nearby incentives to hang outside and re-enter to see more bands and drink more. lowering the latter incentive, in my opinion, was the lack of a full liquor license. for a non-beer-drinker like myself, this meant much less money spent; instead of multiple mixed drinks, i’d either have one glass of red wine or stay dry altogether. similar clubs, take note.

still, the new sin-e had a decent stage and sound system, and i’ve heard pre-show DJs playing some pretty good stuff mostly unknown to me. they also seemed willing to take chances on music other than the recent standard of hipster-targeted indie rock, and ultimately this was their biggest legacy and the local scene’s greatest loss at their departure.

case in point, die romantik. this is a trio of immensely talented musicians performing music that’s a bit moody, artsy, and very hard to pigeonhole, especially in the context of the recent wave of NYC rock bands. their CD cover and band portraits support the almost goth sensibilities of their name and some of their more melancholy songs. however, at least on this night, they uphold the indie “we’re just regular guys like our audience” look and attitude. to me this seemed to undercut the elements they already have that can make them larger than life.

the intensity of their complex playing and beautiful singing makes a greater argument for truly progressive elements (as opposed to “prog” wankiness) - the kind that inspire devotees to follow bands like dream theater, tool, and radiohead. i’m not comparing their sound to those bands, but they have the chops to be in the same league.

maybe they were just saving their best threads for when they get tapped to open for interpol (their song "tik tok" makes a good case for that), but it’s more than clothes. the talented guitarist takes what appears to be center stage, but shies away from it even when taking a lead vocal, and is (perhaps unintentionally) largely buried in the mix. the drummer, while also excellent at both playing drums and singing backup vocals, makes the unfortunate sartorial choice of a headband (commented on openly by the audience), confusing their appearance further. meanwhile, the lead singer and keyboardist is largely hidden behind three levels of synths (i could only get the above shot by crouching down right in front of the stage), since he also handles bass duties with his left hand. while i’m hugely impressed by his ability to do this, i can’t help but think a full-time bassist would allow him to be seen better and concentrate more on singing and giving the band focus.

one downside of the current “indie” mindset is the fear of appearing to try too hard. i don’t mean to assume that’s what’s at work here, but if the band are wary of seeming too serious, they can let their music and personalities speak for themselves. some tunes were of a more whimsical, quasi-french riviera vibe, and their between-song banter was very down-to-earth. this is enough to keep them from lapsing into self-parody, should they choose to tighten up their presentation.

all this is, in a sense, nitpicking, since the band is so good. this post’s title is sincere, applying to both sin-e and die romantik; any criticisms come out of a desire for things to be even better than they already are. i wish clubs that take chances could figure out how to make money and stick around without losing their adventurous spirit. i think bands like this should be raised up to greater heights than clubs like sin-e. a good sign is that they did have the most attention and appreciation of anyone that evening. as things tend to go in cycles of death and rebirth, let’s hope that, as sin-e’s star fades, die romantik’s will brighten.

the title of this post is a paraphrase from julius caesar.

when the going gets wierd

2007-03-28T12:59:00.001-04:00

the title of this post is a paraphrase of a partial quote from hunter s. thompson

try to misunderstand this girl

2007-02-22T12:53:00.000-05:00

lurking on myspace is a music page with thousands of friends and hits, of a little-known girl on a small indie label. except the music is not only not what's come to be known as "indie" in the past few years, but its creator is staunchly against any such scenes. "i dont listen to electro or whattafuck," her bio reads, "i just do it. 5 years ago i found out it was funny pushing buttons and rotating knobs to make stupid noises and make fun of those pretentious indie electroassholes. hey youuuu, i know it's just noise and screams, you dont need to remember me i know what i'm doing."

thus is summed up the music and persona of miss violetta beauregarde, the musical name of cristina gauri, a swiss-italian girl. no doubt many of her fans first saw or recognized her under the name aiki on alt-porn site suicidegirls [wikipedia link, safe for work].

that little backstory may influence some of the unbridled anger and attitude put forth. people tend to make assumptions once someone's posed naked for all the world to see. "first of all, i'm fat, so dont trust in the pics you've seen and most of alla dont add me if you wish to score me cause you could get slightly disappointed at seeing me in the real life," she spits on her myspace intro. google image results for aiki turn her up as tatooed but adorable, all smooth skin and big eyes. by contrast, miss violetta is often dressed "like shit" (in her words), sneering, screaming, dirty, bloody, and hunching over cheap gear common to noise artists.

except that the music isn't simply noise as she says. the lo-fi sounds and cheap keyboard/drum sounds are reminiscient of xiu xiu, but informed by the in-your face beats and breakdowns of kid606. her accented screaming might bring to mind such polarizing women as yoko ono or atari teenage riot's hanin elias.

you wouldn't think that anything listenable would come out of such a noxious stew, and to many it probably isn't. but her small-scale sonic destruction can be addictive, and the 16 songs in 20 minutes of her CD go by way too fast. songs like "flanger when you die" (see video below) end up sticking in your head with their rhythmic chanting - and they don't even make any sense. not that they need to. the way she spits out "flanger when you die, when you when you die, it's a flanger when you die, when you fuckin' die!" is the essence of punk, probably the most important element in this electronic junkpile.

miss violetta would probably be appalled to know that song also brings to mind a moment from indie rock giants pixies: between songs on surfer rosa black francis shouts "you fuckin' die!" and then launches into a lengthy explanation of why he said that. with violetta however, there is no explanation, except the blanket statement that she spends most of her time "hating," especially indie scenesters. even my emailed comparison of her to some of the bands above drew the response "ha ha i hate xiu xiu and atari teenage riot."

in fact miss gauri seems to hate anything that takes itself too seriously, so it's odd that her latest CD is housed in a dour gorey-esque black cover with a long latin title, even if the meaning translates into another pissed-off swipe at her potential audience ("i hate the masses and i spurn them"). some of the public has responded in kind, predictably and rudely bringing up her nude pictures and vague resemblance to a certain icelandic pixie in online comments on her musical output.

judging from her attitude, she's either thick-skinned or prepared to respond with both anger and impish humor; her website contains an invitation to download a video entitled "aiki_blowjob_double_penetration.mpeg" which appears to be a large white rat swimming downstream. meanwhile her myspace blog makes reference to acting in a hardcore porn movie with some italian rappers. whether this is true or not isn't the point; she's manipulating people's perceptions and desires. while several of her fellow suicidegirls tour in a faux-punk burlesque, shaking their asses to a predetermined beat, gauri tours with her own beats, rocking everyone else's asses. rather than sliding helplessly down a slippery slope others have gone down before, gauri seems ready to do whatever she wants on her own terms.

the title of this post comes from a song on mvb's latest album.

the anatomy of anxiety

2007-01-22T17:19:00.000-05:00

bellmer dolls are one of those bands whose name you hear that makes instant sense. then you see their name a dozen more times and remind yourself to hear them or catch a show. once you finally do, you’ll wonder what took you so long.

new york underbelly lived up to their name by coming up with a bill of bands from the wrong side of the gutter. the recent show at crash mansion also featured the funeral crashers and blacklist, both of whom i’ve written about before. both bands sounded excellent and played well to the packed crowd.

it’s still exciting to hear a band take the most basic, even hackneyed instrumentation of guitar/bass/drums/vocals and make something unexpected out of it. bellmer dolls seem to have three distinct musical personalities that blend together perfectly.

the dirty blonde, boyish drummer appears almost out of place in such a dark rock band. appearance and disposition aside however, he’s the perfect fit. he held down a steady but often syncopated beat while sitting bolt upright and still as possible for someone pounding with such power.

the bassist often had his legs so far apart he seemed in the midst of a slow-motion split. it was just to anchor his position as he attacked his instrument with almost tool-like lines, infused with enough edge and punk spirit to keep them from drifting into prog.

the word "anchor" is apt because without the others holding things down, the nervous energy of singer/guitarist peter would have the band spinning out of control. half the time he would let the guitar fall behind his back or even on the floor. once on the floor, the feedback magically, exquisitely played itself. at one point he actually stood on the neck of it, making me (and probably all guitarists in the room) wince. when he actually played it, his chords and lines were jagged splinters, but showing clear intent rather than pure wild abandon.

several times during the show he lurched off the edge of the stage, swaying ominously over the adoring crowd as if ready to pounce. once he did actually enter the audience, but it didn’t come off as a star trip, but part of losing himself in the music and the moment. doing this quite a lot of course caused some damage, including the drink i set at the edge of the stage before i realized the extent of his roaming. “you owe me a drink, peter,” i called up to him as he tuned up. “you owe me a blowjob,” he shot back without missing a beat. full disclosure: i’ve know peter off and on for years, and while we can hardly be called close friends, the above exchange seems fairly typical from nights at places like happy ending. i won’t be taking him up on the offer, but i’m sure there were plenty of people of both genders in the audience who would have.

all of the theatrics might be called over-the-top or distracting if the music wasn’t so damn good. simple and hypnotic, yet locking into something other than rote repetition, the band doesn’t just ape their punk, postpunk, deathrock, or even cabaret influences. they actually do something that has the shock of the new while keeping some of the basis of the old. this is a band that deserves to be heard and seen.

the title of this post comes from a book about hans bellmer, from whom the band gets their name.

huge ever growing pulsating

2006-12-12T22:07:00.000-05:00

prejudice can hold you back. case in point, my previous experience with the venue known as downtime was spotty at best. however, i wasn’t aware of its transformation into rebel by the folks at webster hall until last week when the beyond events calendar told me about rare appearances by two techno artists i like.

metope and joey beltram occupy nearly opposite ends of the techno spectrum. any more minimal than the former and you’re in basic channel or raster-noton territory. going more maximal than the latter and you’re in the overblown realms of eurodisco or hard trance. metope and the rest of the areal records roster came to my attention via excellent remixes for the last depeche mode album’s singles. i think of the label as a more fanciful belgian counterpart to ghostly, with their distinctive cartoony images and analog synth melodies flicky pulse. joey beltram, although he’s from new york city, seems to be mostly associated with german label tresor, favoring a repetitive pummeling that berliners love.

those two artists pretty much defined the two downstairs rooms open to the night put on by doojee. the front room, formerly downtime’s anemic main performance space, has been reconfigured as more of a lounge and small dancefloor, with couches and coatcheck off to the sides. a DJ only known as connie was spinning when i got there around midnight. she kept a good but chilled pace, working with the ebb and flow of deceptively simple beats, building to mini-peaks and bathing everything in a wash of synths before dropping the metronomic kicks again. in fact it was literally chilled with the entrance and two big emergency exit doors leaking cold air. definitely a good room to revisit throughout the night.

once i realized the double doors in the back actually led somewhere, i was even more amazed at rebel’s transformation. they’ve expanded deeper into the building and made the main performance space a 325-capacity venue with its own bar and a killer sound system.

punishing the large array of speakers when i walked in were atomic babies, two guys i’d never heard of before. different aspects of their sequenced music were constantly being molded live, making it live and breathe as they tweaked their array of classic and new techno gear. they pushed the envelope of their sounds to the borders of industrial/ebm without crossing over into the terrible self-parody arrived at so often by that combination. as with most techno sets, it was essentially one long track, or rather a series of seamless electronic vignettes driven by the same tempo. rather than settling into a hypnotic groove, atomic babies showed how much you could keep changing things up while still staying within a few parameters. this, and their expert use of hardware (as opposed to pure laptops/controllers), made them one of the more enjoyable live electronic acts i’ve seen in awhile.

after taking a break with more DJ connie (and thanking her for the excellent set), i was lured back into the main room by the sounds of armageddon on repeat. the thundering kick drums reverberated closer as i approached, and i knew that joey beltram was on. his style is singularly relentless, like a buildup and orgasm caught in a time-loop, constantly exploding and regenerating itself. i know he spun different records, because i saw him get them and cue them up. but unlike, say, derek plaslaiko, who is also a master at beatmatching, beltram somehow turns everything he spins into the same giant beast. i don’t say this as a criticism but as an awestruck compliment. it’s as though he’s creating a monster using the mindset of the borg (from star trek TNG); every record, and eventually you, will be assimilated. the throbbing, synthetic hooks were more like fragments of riffs. he may have some kind of sampling delay or looper in his arsenal to grab the weirdest half-measures from the coldest records and repeat them until they take over your entire being. whatever the method, the result was a floor full of ecstatic dancers, surrounded by a few onlookers and the requisite glowstick twirlers.

unfortunately i decided to call it a night at about quarter to three, so i didn’t get a chance to hear metope. a shame, because i really like his album. but i did leave there with the blood pounding in my veins and a resolve to return to future nights put on by doojee as well as shows at rebel.

the title of this post comes from a song by the orb.

dawn of the idols

2006-11-15T15:45:00.000-05:00

last thursday i went to something i’d been looking forward to for awhile: the wierd records compilation release party. somehow the wierd parties have slipped under my radar for the past 5 years. the three-record (plus 7”) set i picked up a few weeks ago at other music shows pictures and flyers from those parties, and it looks like i missed a lot, as did anyone who didn’t come to club europa that night.

one of the great things about wierd is that it crosses the artificial boundaries of genres and cliques. most of it falls under the heading of “coldwave,” dark but strangely danceable minimal postpunk made almost exclusively on old analog synths and drum machines (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). but there’s also a smattering of experimental noise, techno-industrial, and nouveau deathrock. so the crowd was also not the “usual” you might expect to see at an event like this - adhering to neither hipster nor goth or any other standards, everyone was free to simply enjoy the music for what it was.

i arrived too late to see column, but the dj’s trading off between sets spun a good mix of dark electronic music with a few obscure goth tracks that lived up to wierd’s unnoficial slogan, “very rare.”

diako diakoff worked very hard with his two cheap-sounding keyboards, impressively playing both at once, with only the drum patterns programmed. at times it was hard to tell if the defiantly lo-fi set was totally earnest or tongue-in-cheek.

nearly all the lights in the club went off for the odd band out of the whole wierd roster, the comparatively straightforward blacklist. visually and sonically, they fit in with the postpunk-inspired end of the LES indie rock scene but push closer to goth-rock such as the mission or sisters of mercy. even given some almost unnoticeable technical problems, they were easily the most professional and energetic act of the evening. part of this was due to the foundation being driven forward by bassist ryan, who also puts on the night hail and was involved in visions of the impending apocalypse.

but the crowd really mobilized for the next performer, tobias bernstrup. this was possibly aided by his penchant for over-the-top costumes (online you can see him as both schwarzeneggeresque soldier and drag-queen diva). he took the stage dressed head to toe in black leather and vinyl, topped off with huge blue plastic eyes and a giant claw that made him into some kind of fetishistic insect. his entire musical set played from offstage as he sang, swayed, and posed, more performance artist than musician. he got one of the biggest responses of the evening.

i was most interested in the next act, sleep museum. it takes a lot of strength, being based in NYC in 2006, to get up onstage as a one-man synth/drum machine act. most electronic performers these days bring along a mac laptop, maybe a few controllers. sleep museum and the rest of the evening’s performers took up the entire stage with gear and wires probably not seen onstage here in such quantity and vintage since depeche mode first toured the US in the early 80s. the music was a blend of pre-sequenced minimal synthesizer bleeps with live mixing and key changes. he topped this off with bleak, discordant singing, vocally and visually reminiscent of iggy pop drowning in echo.

the following act, epee du bois, took this sound even further, adding ever-darker layers of synthetic drones and electronic percussion while changing tempos. it was great to see cheyney thompson looking like the classic bookworm/science lab tech, generating such dark sounds howling into the void. this sonic/visual dichotomy was further underscored by the later appearance of sean mcbride, who’d also just crouched behind an onstage mixer for sleep museum’s set. mcbride has the dirty blond, clean-cut look of a member of haircut one hundred, but clearly knows his way around a synth far more than that lightweight combo ever did. together they played an incredible long dark instrumental piece. i eagerly await a full-length release from thompson's project.

after that, mcbride remained onstage for two more sets, the first with vocalist liz wendelbo as xeno and oaklander, and secondly in solo form as martial canterel. wierd impresario pieter schoolwerth was right to offhandedly call him “the genius of wierd records” when we met briefly. both sets were dead center on the coldwave sound, but unique in their own way, not an unenjoyable moment through the end.

soaking in the glorious analog noise, i didn't want to leave, knowing this sort of thing doesn't happen very often (although the wierd party has resumed weekly installments). hopefully this compilation and night will kick-start the growth of music inspired from dark obscure places.

the title of this post comes from the song of the same name by blacklist.

the sound and the fury

2006-09-26T14:07:00.000-04:00

anyone paying attention to the dates on this blog may have noticed the decrease in frequency of posts in the past several months. since i've been busy with my own sounds (nothing new online yet), it takes a lot these days to get me out to one of the many shows i recommend through upcoming.org at the right. this past friday at turned out to be a bill i couldn’t pass up since i had a free night: four dark rock bands whose names i recognized, hosted by new york underbelly. i’d never been to crash mansion before, so this was a perfect opportunity to check out two bands i’d heard of and linked to on myspace but never seen, and reaccquaint myself with two others who’ve been undergoing some changes lately.

the december sound hail from boston, so this was a semi-rare chance to catch them. i found them through loveless music group, which gave me a clue to expect some variation on shoegazer music. although i recall their songs online as good, they took on another dimension live due to the full depth of the guitar sound being given room to breathe. they had an unusual setup in that the lead singer/guitarist stood off to the side mostly facing the rest of the band, while the keyboardist took center stage. this subtly diffused the focus to the group as a whole, a very interesting idea. their songs were well-balanced between a distorted guitar wash and ethereal synth melodies, with the bass and drums keeping things grounded. they were impressive also in that they were not just aping my bloody valentine, slowdive, or ride, but focused on building their own sound from various influences. they built up to a crescendo of looped guitar noise and bowed out gracefully.

surprising me by being second on the bill were a place to bury strangers, who delivered one of their best performances. the drummer accidentally knocked his electronic pads off his kit early on, or they might have matched the destructive power of the knitting factory show i first saw them at. it’s hard to build a wall of sound as noisy and yet forceful as they do without the full effect of distorted and reverberating drums, but they manage very well. kudos also go to the soundman, who was able to make oliver ackerman’s vocals cut through the mayhem throughout, which i’ve never heard before. their new bassist seemed to fit in better than last time i saw them, and the drums had more regimented punch and less punky abandon. the wildness was left to ackerman, who attacked his guitar more fiercely as the set progressed. this culminated in his turning on the strobe light for the final song, which dissolved into a hailstorm of distortion before he decided to attack a fender twin reverb amp. he banged it on the floor repeatedly to cause a series of huge metallic thwangs that closed the set.

this was a tough act to follow, but the funeral crashers rose to the challenge. musically and visually, they hang at the turning point between punk and deathrock. they aren’t as unschooled or brash as early punkers, or as depressed and theatrical as deathrockers or goths. the singer’s vocals lie somewhere between bauhaus-era peter murphy and monotone ranters like jello biafra. the latter comparison was also driven home by the seeming socio-political bent to the lyrics i could make out. they also had three television sets, which might have been ready to flash some kind of media commentary, but seemed to be simply more of a visual element. while they had the most retro vibe of the evening, there are some good original elements to their music, particularly some forward-looking guitar work and the way it locked in with the bass at times seeming to create a third instrument.

this was the first time i’d seen other passengers (top photo) without a second guitarist, and the first time in well over a year when they had no visuals behind them. the first issue was due to a band member departure, and the second was brought on by the sudden tragedy of a/v queen berkoy’s computer dying. send condolences, donations, and offers to lend powerbooks to her email address.

these two missing elements pushed OP to new kinds of energy and noisemaking. second guitar duties were filled in by singer billy, forcing him to leave out his keyboards. obviously this made for a harder sound overall as well as a seemingly frustrated attention split between the audience and the fretboard. main guitarist kevin also filled in more spaces than his usual edgy effect-laden sparseness. the effect was almost like watching a different band than the moody progressive outfit they were developing into. their playing reminded me of the backed-into-a-corner (literally) energy of the first time i saw them at bar 169. they’re definitely worth seeing, as they tend to put a lot of effort into each performance.

towards the end, kevin made a quick effect pedal change that cost him his entire sound, so he angrily plugged directly into his amp and wailed away brilliantly without much audible difference. this came to an abrupt end as he took a backwards dive into the drumkit, still playing from the floor. james continued to beat individual drums while billy intoned a kind of impromptu requiem. the sound dissolved in chaos as they left the stage.

i hope crash mansion and new york underbelly keep booking exciting shows like this. it’s a good venue that deserves support and so do these bands.

the title of this post comes from a classic book by william faulkner

so bright, so strong

2006-09-20T16:08:00.000-04:00

a hope long-held by many became reality last year when nitzer ebb caved in to demands for a live reunion show. this was followed by the announcement of a 2006 world tour. having imploded personally and artistically in 1995, the two members have done a few other projects, but their classic records continued to play in underground dance clubs, expanding their reach to new audiences. when i went to a t.raumschmiere show in 2004, the hipster/techno crowd at knitting factory was being warmed up by NE’s “warsaw ghetto”, an early rare single. besides countless industrial bands, their influence has been heard recently in avant-pop/techno label ghostly international band kill memory crash and even t.raumschmiere himself. what they’ve clearly learned from NE is that if you have basslines and beats good enough, you don’t need much else.

the irving plaza show was opened up by another band following this template, albeit filtered through the berlin/detroit axis and powered by almost lo-res digital sounds. motor came to my attention via a remix for depeche mode. the word described the movement of the mix so well, i thought it was just a title and not a band name. the german/new york duo was joined onstage by a third tweaker, who added some very welcome live squelches and percussion to the proceedings. they weren’t especially visual (they had projected images but you could hardly see them as there was no screen), but they did their best. the kick drums pounded out sub-bass frequencies while every aspect of synthesizer filters was explored. while somewhat monochromatic, it has an edge missing from most techno and is excellent dance music. however, while the crowd listened attentively and applauded, they were clearly reserving all their energy and enthusiasm for the headliner. a rough spot to be in, but motor handled it well.

three triangular flags bearing the NEP (nitzerebbprodukt) logo and each of the quintessential “industrial” symbols from their first album (cog, hammer, star) dropped down. the live blond female percussionist strode onstage to whoops and applause - clearly a woman being able to hold her own in a very male-dominated field has garnered her respect in the short time she’s been playing with the group. in fact, there were a lot of women at the show, more than you might expect for such angry, masculine music. next bon harris came on to much greater applause, followed (after a calculated pause) by a roar for vocalist douglas mccarthy. while many industrial bands favor dehumanized, over-processed voice, mccarthy stands nearly alone as being one of the most distinctive vocalists in the genre.

i knew what to expect and was not disappointed. there is no better way for them to begin a show than with the quasi-metal buildup of grinding synths and halting drum rolls of “getting closer”. the tired rock cliché ending of the full band beating the last note of a song to death is inverted and synthesized into one of the best intros ever. bon surprised me and tag-teamed on vocals (as in the picture above), adding to the energy by criss-crossing the stage in a mirror of douglas’ movements. after that he went behind a second drumkit and manned the ubiquitous mac powerbook which has replaced their racks of gear.

not that the band need a lot. their music, like their lyrics, is a perfect minimal expression of directness and anger. from what little they give you, you can infer the rest. some may call their music mindless and simplistic. but really, when you’re faced with lines like “money for blood /don’t take that cash away / don’t take that cross away” mixed with a southern US-accented televangelist sample over a single relentlessly ominous bassline and punishing beat, what more do you need to understand their point?

because they’re so easy to learn as well as bring so primal, mccarthy had a lot of help with his lyrics on sunday night. the packed house tried to match his guttural scream word for word. i don’t know how he can even speak, much less continue to sing and shout after a few nights of shows. the thing about nitzer ebb is, there are almost no breathing points. no long ambient intros, no ballads, no extended solos during which anyone can rest. the music is full-on energy from start to finish, and all members are very physically active onstage. they did an amazing job, especially for a couple of guys in their 40s.

the set was almost the entirety of their classic ‘belief’ album, with the singles from their first, third and fourth albums. there were a few surprises in some of the less-known choices such as “captivate”. while i was initially happy they’d chosen to do the highly-underrated “ascend,” sadly it didn’t come off anywhere near the album version. on the other hand, “godhead,” which to me falls flat on the recording when the band, as ben put it, “tries to be slayer,” came off as powerful all the way through. it was especially great because the more widespread video/radio mix has re-recorded “clean” lyrics which completely erase the song’s original seedy, nasty, sexual lyrical tone. that song, and indeed many aspects of NE seeming to be an aggressively homoerotic experience, i was surprised to find out recently that mccarthy is married with kids.

clearly NE cares about their fans, which is one reason they inspire such devotion. mccarthy took time at one point to hand out bottled water, and thanked fans at the end of the show. bon harris lingered in front of the audience both coming and going, with a look of amazement and intense gratitude. he kissed his hands and offered them to the audience, bowing repeatedly and mouthing “thank you.”

no, thank you bon, for writing the best basslines in the world.

the title of this post comes from a collection of early singles by nitzer ebb.

two hearts beat as one

2006-09-06T09:32:00.000-04:00

i really wanted to go out last thursday and support my friend bianca’s DJ set, but when i found out ellen allien and apparat were playing live as a duo the same night, i had to take a rain check.

i ended up getting to hiro ballroom after midnight. there was a velvet rope and clipboard-wielding door person, who told punters the room was at capacity. presold tickets were honored of course, but not without standing on the same inexplicably barely-moving line as those hoping to buy. meanwhile, friends and associates strolled to the front of the line and got slipped tickets and immediate entry. the whole scenario seemed designed to hold things up just to keep up the show of a crowd of 10+ people looking anxious to get in.

once inside the ballroom itself, i noted the old-fashioned mini-stage with curtains, looking as though it was designed to barely hold a 4-piece jazz or doo-wop band. it jutts out of the same side wall the entrance runs into, which is a bad design move, since people wanting to see the stage competed with people wanting to come and go and order drinks. also, amazingly, several people in the packed room were smoking. perhaps being part of a hotel, the ballroom is exempt from the standard nightclub smoking ban. the final straw of this bad setup was the elongated tables surrounded by sitting people - right on the edge of the dance floor at calf height.

fortunately, none of this has anything to do with ellen allien and apparat. i saw them once before, playing separate opening sets for t. raumschmiere at knitting factory. sadly, allien only played a DJ set then, but she was so good at it and so fun to watch i didn’t mind. things have changed a bit since then, as she’s released an even better solo CD as well as orchestra of bubbles, the duo release she and apparat were promoting. like excited kids, they crouched together behind the cloth-covered tables of equipment as the DJ before them finished his set. each had a mac laptop, bluetooth mouse, and several external devices to affect their sounds. when they stood up, cheers rose.

they immediately launched into two tracks from the aforementioned album that were dark-edged, but with a joyous energy. their music together is a seamless mix of allien’s berlin techno roots with the artier twists and turns of apparat’s IDM bent, bound together by a secret love for pop melody that both have played with in the past.

on the third song, allien stepped away from the gear and picked up a microphone, which drew more cheers. she has a great voice for techno - she keeps her lyrics and melodies simple, she stays in key, she doesn’t try any vocal gymnastics, her voice cuts through the mix without being annoying. as savvy laptop artists, they had her a little processed so she fit into the music perfectly. a few times over the course of the night, such as on the excellent “way out,” she deliberately bent her melodies into yells, perhaps to introduce a more “live” element or simply prove it wasn’t prerecorded or auto-tuned.

however, after each turn at the mic, she seemed eager to get back in front of her laptop, which gets her much respect from me. sadly, women in music aren’t very encouraged to do much else than sing and look pretty, to sell their persona and the promise of sex. that allien is a musician and DJ first and a cute female singer a distant second in a male-dominated field is admirable. even moreso since her own music is so great. as a perfect example, her first vocal was her own “stadtkind,” which seems to have a semi-political bent rather than being personal or sexual in nature.

this was not a pure ellen allien show, however. her relatively straightforward, analog-sounding techno (excellent though it is) is given new dimensions by the digital sheen and inventiveness of apparat. it’s a near-perfect balance, as allien’s own compositions could sometimes be said to be a bit too simplistic, while apparat takes a few too many melodic and rhythmic twists and turns to appeal to more than the chin-scratching segment of the electronica crowd. the merging of their talents has resulted in a nearly-perfect union.

apparat also happens to be one of the more interesting laptop performers i’ve seen, because he makes such a show of tweaking his effects and doing jump cuts live. there’s also a fairly clear cause and effect to his actions, which i think is the main thing people miss when watching someone use a laptop. the top picture isn’t the sharpest i took (seriously low light in there, and i hate using flash), but it best captures the physicality of his gestures. one of his favorite tricks of the night was to loop a small section of a song and substitute it for the rest of the track, sometimes doubling the repetition as allien warped effects on top of it until a climax. this made the live versions recognizable yet clearly changed from their recorded versions. as a finale, allien handed him the mic, and after a moment’s hesitation, he grabbed it with both hands and let out a long, grating, ultra-punk rock scream before abruptly stopping the music. they gave each other a hug and a kiss and left the stage. so much for the ideas of laptop performance being cold, detached, boring, and unchangeable.

i’d been pretty tired before the show, almost considering not going, and the irritating venue made me want to leave right after (another DJ began almost immediately - an unenviable slot). but on the street i was wide awake, blood pumping with excitement at what i’d just seen and heard.

the title of this post comes from a u2 song.

the swinging reflective

2006-07-31T13:20:00.000-04:00

shannon of stars like fleas told me about an event they were playing that instantly made my "must go" list, which has been pretty short lately. the sheer quality, diversity, and number of artists involed in BAPlab 2006 made it more than just another live show, cool A/V night, or gallery opening. it was all of those things and more. it had to be to get me to go out to bushwick when i knew the L train wasn't running. a promised BAP shuttle bus never materialized, but the B60 took us close enough to walk.

once inside the massive warehouse space that is 3rd ward, my first stop was a clever piece by doug henderson, which i was interested to see because he mastered a CD for me. only inaubdible sub-bass frequencies play through the painted (and presumably water-sealed) speakers above, making the water move in interesting and unpredictable ways. doug said people would sometimes lean over trying to hear the sounds only to be surprised by a splash on their cheeks.

nemo hoffman's nearby video sculpture consisted of six small monitors, each showing a slightly different view of some secret underground pipes and machinery in motion. all the monitors were connected to a wooden speaker emitting somewhat muted sounds.

not far away in the photo lab, the first performace i saw was miya masaoka, who had set up a series of lasers which, when they sense something in their path, each triggered a different sound sample. her careful dance simultaneously created an industrial soundscape of crunching metal mixed with softer, more melodic snippets.

there was so much art that even the hallways were filled. looking down at a visual akin to a virtual saturday night fever flashback, i realized something that may not be apparent from the above photo: the ceiling-projected blocks of color were being knocked aside by anyone stepping into the area, after which they would resume their ordered positions.

immediately across the foyer from this discovery was the input end of jamie burkart's time is long. a camcorder captured the scene at the building entrance, showing the image on a tv and recording it onto a VCR. the door and videotape hung open, the recorded videotape stretched down the hall to a duplicate setup which plays back the tape at a much later time. it was hard to tell whether it was still working properly since i took my time getting to the other end, but the tape also formed an interesting divison of space along the wall in between.

the next room i stopped into had jake klotz operating his piece robot. the centerpiece of the installation resembled one of the leftover R2 units in star wars, except it talked more than C3P0 while it painted (it's appparently a rush fan) and rolled around the room.

free103point9, whose brooklyn shows i used to go to, had set up a room of three different artists' transmission works. prayer antenna is the most immediately impressive and obviously interactive; the radio antennae beaming in answers from on high can actually be heard in speakers inside the padded helmet.

it didn't occur to me to sit down at the table and wear the headphones in the immaculately staged wanderlost. i found out later that had i done that, i would have been drawn into a mysterious pulp radio mystery brought to life by darwing comparisons to all-too-current issues of privacy.

chop 10 is a tower of 10 identical radios, each one tuned to a top-10 radio station. each radio lights up and spits out signal in sequence, underlining their near-total homogeneity.

in the next room, the true meaning of “interactive” came into play. sadly, my picture shows little of this piece‘s true nature, which is created by each participant. a camera is trained on the chair, whose output is on the screen in front of it. when you step into the area of the frame, you see on the screen that it is divided into equal blocks, some of which show the action in real-time, some others a few seconds delay, and others delayed even further, and so on. it’s very disorienting seeing pieces of you arriving and departing at different times, especially as you can compare your actual cohesive appearance in the mirror to your right.

the hallway leading away from the next intersection was lined with planters with speakers imbedded in them, each one playing a different loop of bird sounds. pieces like grow are interesting because they force us to notice sound happening from multiple locations instead of a pair or speakers or headphones. the planters seem like a subtle hint that such musical sounds are all around us, in life.

ernesto klar’s piece above follows dust particle movement and turns it into light and sound.

the alphabet machine clicked and clacked as letters typed themselves. at first i thought it was typing the input for the nearby freudster projection, but that was by a different artist.

inside a vast industrial woodshop, i was assaulted by noise from various installations and performances. most interesting was the loud objects, in which three people (artists? participants? both?) soldered and connected microchips over a backlight while they were already hooked up to an amplifier. their work was projected on a screen behind them while humming, buzzing, and frying circuitry blared gloriously through the speakers.

not far away, people were amused by zipper orchestra (above), where 9 zippers control the motions of each of the people in a split video screen.

video works by ernesto rios played in a loop as the caretaker of the free103point9 room took a break from the oppressive heat in there.

road kills & other tragedies lit up a raw space in an alcove somehow reminiscent of a diorama at the museum of natural history.

across the room, the disturbing and disorienting combination of images and sounds from the wizard of oz and apocalypse now played out on giant shards of a film screen.

once i made my way upstairs, i was confronted with two rooms that seemed to be both functional and snidely artistic, albeit a bit disgusting. these were basically no-frills bathrooms - no doors, no seats, crumbling white plaster walls - with red spotlights on the business areas. black marker grafitti cheerfully beamed, "don't be shy!" i didn't oblige, as the stench made it hard to stay long enough to even snap the picture.

the warm light from her free clinic beckoned me into a room that also had artists selling handmade wares. but the space was dominated by the translucent screens in cross formation, hiding mysterious female figures sitting cross-legged and speaking in hushed tones. outside, artist suneet sethi played the part of the free clinician (a title intentionally loaded with multiple entendres), offering her services to onlookers.

in the next room was the largest performance space. video artists projected onto multi-faceted surfaces while a band artfully mixed laptop electronica with live brass. after watching for a little while, i turned to leave and saw some girls in a dark corner knitting thick white yarn into something unrecognizable.

i stepped out into the hallway and snapped this long shot of the video installation white noise, a piece expressing the artist’s feelings on media saturation and overload. as i was shooting however, i was drawn down the hallway to some familiar sounds i couldn't place initiallty.

living up to their name more than ever were vortex, one of my favorite improv groups in the city. as usual they were accompanied with live video by adam kendall. this was possibly the most dark and intense i have heard them playing, and the murky duotone images that swirled queasily on the screen matched perfectly.

after i made my way back through the main room to the upstairs bar area, i was confronted by aaron canton’s hanging globes. each of them slowly rotated to reveal the kind of imperative commands we face every day.

out the window, i noticed a series of pictures being projected on the building across the street. recognizing some of the people from earlier that evening, i later found out this was the first bushwick yearbook project by rafael fuchs. based loosely on the yearbook-style photo (complete with ugly seamless backdrop), each of the subjects starts out posing as they would for a DMV picture but after a series of shots they become more animated and individual.

once again i got as far as the hallway between the rooms when i was assaulted by an ominous sound, this time from pounding electronic drums coming from the darkest room in the place. handshake should have been called roomshake. the incredibly loud music wasn’t quite danceable, although you could try since it was a fairly regular beat. but it was constantly being subdivided by odd polyrhythms akin to amplified knives scraping on plastic. the result, besides a lot of head-nodding and irregular body-jerking, was that every kick drum brought several pieces of concrete and plaster down on my head.

i went downstairs for awhile and talked to greg shakar (who certain people may remember from the early days of backworld) about his installation, the analog color field computer. an incredibly minimal interactive piece, it’s simply a computer whose screen displays only one pixel and makes one pure tone. but with that you can choose the hue, brightness, saturation, pulse frequency and pitch of what comes out of it. multiply that by 5, each with a person or two tweaking knobs, and you have a near-infinite combination of never-ending, audience-made colors and sounds. sadly, it was too dark to snap a photo of, but greg said the piece may be shown elsewhere.

heading back upstairs, i ran into someone i know who does work for develop don’t destroy brooklyn. i mention this in the context of this blog because the kind of raw warehouse space this event took place is is getting increasingly difficult to find. development is a tricky subject (see my rant on the topic). it can be a good thing up to a point, but there are times when greedy and big-headed people overstep their bounds. that’s all i’ll say for now, except to go check out their website and read about what they’re trying to do.

on my way back out of the main space, i noticed the girls who had been knitting in the dark had set up a blacklight and were stringing up their work.

nearby, another screen showed a series of cartoonish short films on a loop. i'm guessing this was part of the night video series showing works by multiple artists.

when i stepped into the hallway, bass-heavy sounds of the apocalypse beckoned from the same room vortex had been in. again it turned out to be a familiar face: charles cohen (at right, who i’ve seen at the c.o.m.a. benefit as well as [r]ake's january show), making frightening noise with two other electronic musicians. i’m not sure who they were, because cohen was scheduled to play the downstairs room much earlier, while this space and time was supposedly another group, but they were excellent regardless. the man on the left controlled his samples with what appeared to be a virtual reality glove. different sweeps of his hand and finger motions triggered and warped several aspects of samples at once. try to imagine the sound of a car crash, amplified louder than if you were actually standing in front of it. then take that and repeat it at will, turning the glass shards into melting squiggles and forcing the metal through a giant blender. that still doesn’t quite capture how destructive the sounds were.

when i went back next door rj valeo was in the midst of a banging techno set in the same dark room handshake had been in (by then too dark for pictures). even with the heat sapping our energy, he had people moving, myself included. david last followed immediately with a killer extended version of his song “animal hybrids”, which blew away what i heard online. in fact the PA itself was literally blown away, twice. it was probably the heat, or a circuit breaker, but the music was really that powerful. people left after the first power outage, but he filled the room up all over again as the track mutated and kept on going. despite how hot it was, i danced with vigor until it got close to time for stars like fleas to go on.

heading towards the stairs, i noted a huge crowd in the hallway. functionality had won out over art, making the red-lit open toilets the most popular installations of the evening, even beating out the bank of 9 box fans outside the woodshop. participants and onlookers turned it into the ultimate interactive performance piece, proving that even amongst all the electronics, sometimes the call of nature is just too hard to resist.

stars like fleas initially seemed like an odd choice for this event, as they normally keep their electronics off to the side. even when shannon used to bring his full-size computer tower, monitor screen, mini speakers, and various outboard effects, the setup was only to add bits of field recordings and process various live instruments. he pared down to a laptop this time but used it more extensively with his acoustic guitar. pianist ryan smith (also of a million billion, grand mal, mason dixon, the silent league, and two more i’m forgetting) also brings a laptop for additonal processing. vocalist montgomery (better known to some as the mastermind of monkeytown) has been adding live effects to his voice, and cellist tianna kennedy (nyc projects coordinator for free103point9) sometimes favors a pedal or two on her instrument. multi-instrumentalist jon natchez (another fellow silent leaguer along with shannon) has also taken to playing a small bass synthesizer during one song.

the overall effect, particularly this evening, is of a battle between incredibly naturalistic and human acoustically-produced music, and very digital-sounding clicks, cuts, and mangling. the electronics mostly came out during chaotic noise pieces, crashing waves of computerized squelches that would recede into an extended intro to a more melodic number. humanity won out over machine-kind, not just musically but in the presence of a packed-out room of sweaty people who were willing to wait until 1:30 in the morning to sit in an airless space too small to contain this band and their growing fans.

even as much as i saw and heard, i still missed a lot. there were more installations than i could adequately photograph. lusine, ryan elliot, tim xavier, and ezekiel honig were all artists i planned to see, but SLF felt like the capper to the evening. i hope this becomes a recurring event, as i'm already looking forward to next year.

the title of this post comes from a CD collection of collaborations between various artists and experimental music masters nurse with wound .

kiss the eclipse

2006-05-31T12:40:00.000-04:00

i haven't been out to a loveless music group event in awhile, even though i've wanted to go. this past thursday had a lineup of four bands i really wanted to see, some for the first time, at northsix, a bigger venue than LMG usually books.

although i arrived way too early, fortunately rex nexus was filling the cavernous space with the harder side of shoegazer music, and doing a good job too. it was all the more impressive when he told me later that his entire CD collection had been stolen two weeks ago and he was spinning temporary burned copies of his own mix CDs and promos given to him by friends and bands.

alcian blue have some nice dreamy sounds on myspace. however i'm sorry to say this didn't translate live. the cure-influenced vocals and delicate washes of keyboards were steamrolled by the sisters of mercy-like drum machine and over-loud distorted guitars. that mix can work sometimes, but not for this band's music.

daylight's for the birds (top photo) have a new singer and bassist since the last time i saw them, as well as some nice new songs. amanda doesn't yet have the stage presence or character of her predecessor claudia (also formerly of on air library along with DFTB mastermind philip), but she does have a lovely voice, and i'm sure the rest will come together as this relatively new band finds their footing. some of the songs really gelled nicely, their pop qualities superior to the later OAL attempts, while their guitarist has his perfect shoegazer guitar sound down pat. those saddened by the former band's departure should take comfort in the growth of this new incarnation.

i'd meant to catch unlove when LMG had a show at pianos, but unavoidably missed it at the last minute. fortunately they were also on this lineup, bringing more pop and rock sensibilities to the night. i was interested to find out the bassist is also in tungsten 74, who i wrote about at another LMG night last year. he mixed a supportive/melodic approach with backwards and synthesized pieces, while the guitarist stalked around his area playing angular two-string riff fragments. the drummer was rock solid without being boring, and the singer's keyboard skills gave lie to the accepted wisdom that pretty frontwomen are incapable of doing anything other than looking sexy and singing. a muddy vocal mix was just about the only marring factor in their show. if all their songs were as arrestingly catchy and energetic as their first, they could be the next downtown indie circuit buzz band.

the main attraction of the evening was a place to bury strangers. although they didn't have quite the same impact on me as when i saw them at knitting factory, in many ways the show was better. they played in the dark with only sickly blue-green projected video illuminating them. the vocals were echoey yet more understandable, the guitar was a howling wall of sound. the drums should have been hooked up to the PA in order to process and pump them up to match the distorted reverberating power of their demos and KF show, but only the kick drum punched us in the chest like we needed. such technicalities are nothing to do with the band itself and their clear talent and dedication to a sound. the chief architect is clearly guitar pedal wunderkind oliver ackerman, who uses his own death by audio pedals to ear-bleeding effect. their sound mixes dark rockabilly, deathrock, and other dark abrasive underground sounds, but ackerman literally adheres to the term "shoegazer" with his deliberately downcast eyes locked on his pedals. the set ended with explosive guitar feedback that satiated the audience's desire to be saturated with sound.

the title of this post is the name of a rare song by my bloody valentine.

visions from the dark side

2006-04-10T16:17:00.000-04:00

i hadn't been to a death metal show in years, and probably the last time i went to one was when morbid angel was touring with their replacement vocalist/bassist steve tucker. it was good, but neither the material nor the delivery of those parts were up to par with those of original member david vincent. vincent left the band in 1996 to play in his wife's band, genitorturers. last year, after three original albums with steve, vincent returned. their latest tour found them at bb king blues club & grill, which has strangely become the nyc home of death metal in recent years. morbid angel are the best the genre has to offer, by far. they balance technique with brutality perfectly, and vincent arguably has the best voice of them all, being simultaneously gutteral and (mostly) understandable.

the set started out with a riduculously low-end shuddering ambient loop, pitched to such depths that it was impossible to tell what instruments were playing (other than the crowd's internal organs). a minor technical problem that had nothing else coming out of the PA before they started was resolved in a few minutes and the band was off. chief visionary trey azagthoth's off-the-hook playing was augmented by a new, younger second guitarist. his guitar and vincent's bass were solid, but of course only truly noticeable when they were not playing. the main dynamic of most metal bands since metallica is between the main guitarist and the drummer. in vincent they also have the bonus of a charismatic vocalist whose voice goes beyond the standard unintelligible "cookie monster" grunts. but most of all, MA are extremely proficient musicians, pushing the envelope of how harmonically weird music can get and still retain the sense of single-minded driving force required by the genre.

the center of this is the man-machine named pete sandoval, obvious from his dangerously opulent drumkit that dominated the stage. built as a kind of cage vaguely in the form of a 3D unicursal hexagram, it had 6 cymbals (!), 5 toms, 2 kick drums, snare and hi-hat attached to its sturdy frame. the roadie checking the tightness of all the joints right before the show was a sign of the punishment it was going to be taking. sandoval relentlessly punches listeners in the chest with kick drums you would swear no human could be playing. and yet he does, starting/stoppping and changing tempos and time signatures on a dime. on top of this, trey alternates between his uniquely dissonant riffs and completely insane guitar acrobatics. how he doesn't break a string when playing so many strokes so hard and fast, frequently yanking and holding the tremolo bar as far as he can, is beyond me.

those two players alone would make any band a powerhouse, but david vincent puts a more human (and humane) face on the violent-sounding music. not only are his words fairly discernable, but his between-song pronouncements always emphasize the importance of their fans. besides thanking everyone for coming several times, he pointed out the diversity of the crowd; besides the ubiquitous long-haired, scraggly, chunky, white metal dudes, there were skinny mohawked punkers, short-haired indie rockers, dreadlocked and bald black guys, a lot of hispanic people, and quite a few girls. vincent roared, "if we can all get along, why can't the rest of the world?" he also commended the crowd for doing the right thing in the moshpit, which is that when you see someone go down, you pick them right up, "because that's your brother." then again, he admonished the crowd whenever he didn't "see enough movement going on" and told them to "be a man" and "fuck shit up". he also asked everyone to flash the devil horns and grinned, "it don't necessarily mean we're angry, just that we're evil," backtracking oddly to add, "and there's nothing wrong with that!"

i really wanted to watch the band, but often my attention would be distracted by being pushed, pulled, or slammed into as somehow i ended up on the edge of the pit. it was going pretty much the whole time, so that meant over an hour of a near-constant workout, including my neck muscles as my head snapped in time to the pummelling beats. while annoying at times, it's pretty much to be expected at shows like this and it really gets the blood pumping, especially when you push back. considering this, it's a good thing i didn't bring my camera, although a few people risked theirs. the picture above is actually from infernal crusade, but i chose it because it looks pretty much like what i saw.

the crowd ate up almost every song, because everything played was from one of their first four albums with vincent. each title announcement or chorus elicited ragged screams and raised arms from the audience. often the band would run two songs together, including their encore of their slowest songs, "god of emptiness" and "world of shit." with most of the show running at breakneck speed, it's no wonder that every 4 songs or so the band took a break to tune up and stretch out offstage, while running a recording of another dark ambient keyboard interlude. a few times the tempo lagged a bit compared to the studio versions, but that's understandable given that these guys must be in their forties and playing music a lot more physically demanding than that of the much-lauded rolling stones. still, this was probably the best show and the biggest venue i've seen them at. although i could have done with a few more songs (and they'll probably never play anything written by former member erik rutan), i wasn't let down.

the title of this post comes from a song on the album altars of madness.

everything you know is wrong

2006-04-05T11:30:00.000-04:00

musical genres, at best, are meant to quickly define the general area artists are working in. at worst, they create rigid rules for people to follow and form templates for unimaginative musicians to rip off. but good or bad, one of the most irritating things about them is that so many of them are misnomers. either the word is a bad description, or the original meaning has been hijacked by something else. thus when faced with the simple question "what kind of music is it?" bands and listeners alike are left with an inadequate vocabulary to explain what they play and/or hear.

let's start with rock. shortened from "rock'n'roll," a reference to sex, it was once seen as the music of danger, rebellion, and (gasp) race-mixing, since it started as a hybrid of black-based rhythm'n'blues (more on that later) and white-based country/bluegrass music. since the beatles, this term has become synonymous with the mainstream, inappropriately used by the likes of entertainment weekly to describe anyone from madonna to backstreet boys and used to sell sports cars and sneakers. both the doors and the who said, "rock is dead" years ago, and they were right. like a sci-fi time-travel paradox story, every attempt to go back and reinvent the wheel of rock ends up creating an alternate timeline that takes it in yet another direction.

for example, prog or "progressive rock," came about thanks to the beatles' introduction of classical music to the rock vocabulary. this inspired some far more adventurous groups to explore the new artistic avenues the greater harmonic pallette opened up. unfortunately, in many cases it metastasized into an uncontrollable wank-fest of wagnerian proportions. that a musical form looking to expand should go backwards to an older form of music sounds regressive rather than progressive.

a reaction against this overblown style led to the beginning of punk, a nihilistic expression of desire to eradicate the ponderous corporate behemoth rock had become as well as the repressive political regimes of the time. but even punk was in a way a regressive form; it simply hit the reset button on rock back to when there were only 3 chords and the mainstream thought bands and their fans posed a threat to society. even the idea of punks as "a rebellious counterculture group" of "inexperienced" youths inevitably had to change (in practice, if not in statement). long after the sex pistols sang "no future" (while signed to corporate behemoth EMI) millions of punks live in that future, continuously gaining and sharing experiences to the point where the counterculture is part of the culture. over a decade after their big breakthrough, green day is one of the biggest bands in the world, and empty punk signifiers are in every store in the mall. so much for the destruction of corporations.

industrial was also supposed to musically wipe away what had come before, and did a better job of it by throwing out traditional ideas of melody, harmony, and chord structure. only the methods of promotion were taken from mainstream rock by its originators throbbing gristle. but a funny thing happened on the way to the history books. TG broke up, and the scene it started morphed into other types of music. new bands influenced by the harsh sounds simply sampled and combined them with kraftwerk-like programmability into dance music with a hard, aggressive edge that was the fulfillment of the early 80's underground term "death disco." instead of using that phrase, these new bands adopted "industrial" as their own. the final changes came when nine inch nails replaced lyrics about the horrors of war and the dullness of factories with expressions of personal angst, and ministry brought distorted guitar flirtation to the forefront and essentially became a metal band with drum machines and samplers.

meanwhile, to state the obvious, metal is a huge misnomer, since the substance or sound thereof plays no part in the music or lyrics. a true "metal" band would be einsturzende neubauten, whose pounding and scraping junkyard percussion made them as loud and frightening as any pmrc-hated group of alleged devil-worshippers. instead they're claimed as one of the original industrial bands. though "metal" is a blanket term referring to any number of subgenres using distorted guitars (speed, black, death, doom, the list goes on), it began as a diminutive of "heavy metal" which first referred to bands such as black sabbath and blue cheer. however, thanks to huge sales and mtv overexposure in the late 80s, the face of metal to most people is narcissistic, pop-oriented hair bands like poison. even r&b/dance artists janet jackson and en vogue each did a "metal" song.

r&b is supposed to be short for "rhythm'n'blues," but what's called r&b today bears no resemblance to the original musical style, except that it's still sung mostly by and for black people. made almost entirely with soullessly-programmed preset sounds, the music is more often a bed for the interchangeable singers' lyrical seduction attempts or pleas for their lover to return. unusually prescient, the music industry's term "urban contemporary" seems more appropriate, although few people outside those circles use it.

on the other hand, the industry ends up nullifying the term indie. supposedly short for "independent," this could mean anything produced independently, but generally means indie rock. this arguably grew out of the pioneering efforts of bands like pixies and r.e.m., who essentially created the college/bar circuit by relentlessly touring out of their own pockets. this means rock made in garages, bedrooms, backyards, rented rooms, recorded inexpensively and taken on the road without outside financial backing or input. that rarely applies to most of what gets called indie these days, especially since major labels started buying shares in their smaller counterparts. one would also think independent means unique and personal, but a whole culture of album artwork, appropriate names, and dress code has risen up around this as well. prior to this, the buzzword was "alternative," which met a similar fate.

goth is another style whose extra-musical signifiers are as important as its musical makeup. shortened from "gothic," in reference to old horror films with morbid imagery, the music initially grew out of deathrock, a darker and more theatrical mix of punk and glam rock. however, the visual style was more influential than the music, and soon anyone doing anything remotely dark or wearing lots of black became lumped in as "goth," whether the neo-classical world music of dead can dance or the manic-depressive pop of the cure. meanwhile, none of this has anything to do with the germanic tribe of the same name.

none of this is to say that all the music above sucks, although a lot of it does. personally, i like artists in every one of those genres, and more. i even like most of the bands mentioned above, even if it seems i'm giving them short shrift. genre names can be helpful as well as harmful, pointing like-minded people in the right directions or creating false expectations. fortunately, every genre has its redeeming qualities, and its best practitioners have aspects that raise them above the rest. of course, those aspects also usually set them apart so much that they transcend or exit the genre altogether, sometimes even creating a new one in the process. that's when things really get exciting: something that seems so new that no one has a name for it yet.

the title of this post comes from an interesting book and also happens to be a song by weird al yankovic.

nevermore

2006-03-09T17:02:00.000-05:00

raven cafe is gone. i learned through the grapevine that it was an electrical fire; the notice below names the cellar and first floor as the worst damaged, so apparently it started below the bar and worked its way up from the inside. supposedly no one was hurt, although i feel very much for the people who lived upstairs, as they now have to find new homes.

a staple of avenue a for as long as i can remember, i knew the raven as a goth/deathrock/punk/metal hangout open to misfits of all stripes, for those looking for somewhere to go after (or instead of) the regular clubs. whether jukebox or DJ's, the music was almost always good. because there was no dancefloor, there was no pressure to stick to danceable songs or crowd-please, although the crowd always seemed pleased anyway. however, no music played while x-files was on the tv.

there were barstools that i recall being more like tall thin chairs, as well as comfortable couches. a pinball machine, while rarely played when i was there, also functioned as both decor and additional warm light. and they probably had some of the cleaner nyc bar bathrooms i've seen (topped only by lucky 13 to the best of my recollection).

i never saw any judging or attitude at the raven. everyone there seemed to already be old friends. in fact, most of the people i saw there i recognized from other places. the bartenders were friendly, maintained a good ratio in their mixed drinks, and most of all, didn't seem like they would rather be somewhere else because they could just as easily have been one of the crowd (and some of them were, at similar clubs).

i played there twice at middle pillar's xmas party; once backing up my friend on some hank williams songs and once solo, covering elvis costello and sparks. the reception was warm, and the place felt a little like home.

apparently, the owners recently opened a new place in brooklyn, the boulevard tavern, which hosted a drown-your-sorrows get-together a few days later. i wish them and the other former tenants the best in recovering from this loss.

the title of this post comes from the raven by edgar allen poe. but you knew that already.

i refuse to need your approval

2006-03-03T12:47:00.000-05:00

every underground cultural phenomenon has a backlash. mainstream stereotypes remain pretty much the same, and that's what most people strive to be and acquire. head of the class. most popular. best athelete. prettiest girl. top seller. meanwhile, most of the time, and in most of the world, the nerds, geeks, and dorks are just that.

for the second time in the recent history of american popular culture there has been a "revenge of the nerds." some of the outcasts and iconoclasts have grown up to be musicians, writers, and tastemakers, creating their own little world and having fun, getting attention and getting paid. at some point, what was formerly a loose collection of alternatives to established rules becomes a style with rules of its own. that's when they start to attract notice as a group.

the knee-jerk tendency of those outside any scene, once it's been defined, is to lump everyone together and call them out based on common surface aspects. this doesn't take into account who's just doing their own thing and ends up being part of something bigger, versus who's following a trend. or, more importantly, who's a decent person maybe a little too into scene details, and who's using those details to be an asshole.

hipster. indie rocker. goth. metalhead. punk. hippie. badges of pride to some, insults to others. all words loaded with their own set of subcultural signifiers that other people think they understand, thanks to the wrong kind of media attention. the inevitable "how to recognize a (fill in the blank)" list makes the group easy to ridicule as a whole. meanwhile, it's only certain people who deserve contempt: the snobs in that scene (who would be snobs in any scene), and the outsiders who attempt to define the scene by its most obvious external characteristics.

the thing is, scenes are also self-policed. messily perhaps, but people are always calling each other out anyway. comedians aziz ansari and andy blitz recently made the above short film about snobby indie record store clerks. kudos to other music for allowing them to shoot there (especially since the video has a few potentially damaging grains of truth). this kind of thing is why there's no need for an article explaining and/or mocking an insular subculture, because it's already been done much better from the inside. external articles always get everything wrong. even if the particulars are straight, they misunderstand the underlying motivations because what drives them is inherently different from what drives their subjects.

and now some people are getting irritated that interpol is constantly in every magazine, xiu xiu's toys-meet-noise angst is taken seriously, and death cab for cutie is selling out places that used to be reserved for "normal" popular music. well, tough. the last major explosion of underground culture (1991-92) brought some good music to light. unfortunately, as usual, the same gold rush resulted in corporate co-opting of the culture, and crap coming out under the same banner as brilliance. the marketplace was flooded and everybody got tired of it. which just goes to show, it's not minor stylistic hallmarks that distinguish music/art/fashion, but something underlying which can't be cloned. and still no one gets this, from the major labels who try to cash in, to the fakers infiltrating (rather than desiring to be a part of) scenes, to journalists thinking they're going to expose something and tell "the real story".

i recall one such article a few years back surmising that goateed, plaid-shirted alterna-kids represented such a formidable group that they outnumbered and intimidated the poor hulking football jersey and letterman sweater-wearing masses. i find that hard to believe. no matter how much pitchforkmedia and all the most-read blogs and zines may mean to certain people, it's no match for the combined might of mainstream mundanity represented by the likes of rolling stone and people. even if people are saying "pitchfork is the new rolling stone," that still gives rolling stone a compliment and leaves pitchfork second. that type of dynamic is played out everywhere.

the badge of the anti-hip is as riduculous as the badge of the hip. the proudly normal, unhip and mainstream don't need to create a counter-counterculture in reaction to feeling shut out of any burgeoning scenes; their culture already exists. all they have to do is turn on the tv or walk outside and everything is there for them. there's no excuse for snobbery from anyone. but you can't blame people for trying to keep a good thing to themselves, when history shows the inevitable trajectory of discovery and assimilation means the end of their world as they know it (and they don't feel fine).

eventually, of course, the mainstream attention wanes, and the scene is left to its own devices. either it burns out in the magnifying glass of attention or slowly fades away, perhaps to be reborn as another scene a decade or two later. then a writer will suddenly look around and feel surrounded by a sea of otherness they realize has sprung up without their approval.

the title of this post comes from the game by echo and the bunnymen.

prime audio soup

2006-02-28T14:31:00.000-05:00

bb king blues club and grill wouldn't be the kind of place you'd expect to see an act like meat beat manifesto. for one thing, the menu contains quite a lot of meat (even the salad!), which makes me wonder what vegan jack dangers ate backstage. speaking of eating, being surrounded by low-lit tables with tourist-looking types ordering (probably overpriced) food while deluged by a distinctively un-bluesy noise onstage was another strange dichotomy.

the opening act was dalek, who went on sometime after the door time of midnight (!) and immediately assaulted the crowd with their own unlikely combination. what appeared to be a standard rapper/DJ duo turned out to wield powerbooks instead of turntables. pumping from the sound system were not the usual hip-hop breaks and funky loops, but gigantic ministry-like drum machines punching their way through a wall of my bloody valentine harmonic guitar noise with a layer of jesus and mary chain circa psychocandy sprinkled on top. as ben pointed out, the vocalist appeared to be a lost younger brother of fat joe and rapped in a style vaguely reminiscent of early ice cube (who, coincidentally, will also be playing bb king's in may). the tatooed "DJ" lip-synched key lyrics, poked repeatedly at his control surface, tweaked an outboard mixer and banged his head like a metal fan. the effect of the music was immediately impressive, but eventually wore a bit thin, as every song used the same basic arrangement. a little diversity and a bit more of a stage show or presence would help them immensely, since they already have a good foundation. at one point the beat dropped out and the noise built up to a prolonged multilayered roaring and screeching, but ben and bianca said what i was already thinking: "you can't hurt us. we've been to merzbow." still they were a decent opening act, more enjoyable than i thought they would be.

the main attraction itself is full of seeming contradictions. a skinny white british guy half-rapping/half-singing over techno-industrial dance music, sometimes with christian overtones, is pretty unexpected. throw in a barrage of bizarre and sometimes violent imagery on two screens and you have a recipe for potential brain overload. unless you're familiar with some of their previous shows, or perhaps those of emergency broadcast network (whose 1995 album telecommunication breakdown was produced by dangers).

usually the most prominent instrument in MBM's music is the drums; complex, driving, relentless except for the occasional roll. however, perhaps because of their recent surround-sound remix album RUOK in dub, the primary mover on this night was bass. huge, loping, subterranean basslines that could probably be heard and felt all the way in jamaica (well, maybe jamaica, queens). for most of the set, the bass turned the fast beats inside out and made them feel slow. the urge to space out was counteracted by the visuals, which included clips from the prisoner and scanners, to name a fraction of the fast-paced imagery that whizzed by. both video and audio from the clips were being manipulated back and forth (similar to a DJ scratching) with two laptops by keyboardist/VDJ ben stokes. they cleverly also had a motor-controlled camera onstage for moving shots of the band and video feedback off the screens. there was also a small camera trained on dangers which was mixed in when he sang. it was somewhat disorienting seeing him from the side singing to the sky while onscreen his enlarged, disembodied head looked directly at us, floating over a maelstrom of video effects. as interesting as the show was, including reworkings of "everything you are" and fragments of "psyche out", the evening wasn't complete until they played "helter skelter."

while ben and bianca said the set wasn't as great as the one last year at irving plaza, it was definitely worth going to.

the title of this post is a song on MBM's album actual sounds and voices, which incidentally was used in the soundtrack for the matrix.

the truth unveiled

2006-02-22T19:07:00.000-05:00

there are probably a lot of people who wonder why anyone would go out of their way, much less pay more than the price of a first-run movie, to see an art exhibit. of course, whether or not all that is worth it depends on the artist. in the case of german expressionist egon schiele at the neue galerie, this was a must for me. his paintings, drawings, and poster design represent one of the more formidable and recognizable bodies of work in modern art. that may seem like hyperbole, but it's given a bit of perspective when you factor in that he didn't live past his twenties.

schiele is one of those artists who learned the rules and then promptly discarded three quarters of them in favor of a distinctive style. his art academy work, which i'd never seen before this show, clearly rose to proficiency in a german classical manner during his years there. however, in 1909 you see the beginnings of a fluidity of line that comes from casting off the rigid art school techniques of careful measuring and needing to define every last area of an object in order to show form. by the next year his style was clearly defined, and his drawings from then on had the confidence and ability to show more with less.

in fact, some of his sketches showed so much less as to be disturbing. some figures have unfinished limbs and even missing heads. in some cases these omissions don't seem to be unfinished so much as being considered unnecessary in terms of getting across the thrust of the drawing or maintaining a simplicity of composition. this is even more clear in the cases when the figure has been colored in, sometimes in patches, other times in lurid detail.

one of the most unsettling qualities of schiele's work, when he did choose to fill in details, was his choice of tones and brush strokes to define skin. sparsely defined figures got blood-red splotches around key muscles and bones, around the eyes, on the genitals. more detailed studies or fully-realized paintings frequently favored a sickly green pallor, with patches of raw umber and more bloody reds, as though everyone had been beaten or infected.

however, this doesn't necessarily make his subjects ugly, simply more human. it reminds us of the veins and blood and bones just beneath our surfaces. in some cases the modeling of the skin is coupled with a gracefully posed figure. and then there were the commissioned portraits, in which he simply used his skills to render people flatteringly. these drawings effortlessly show the kinds of details that make you feel you're really getting a sense of the person's true appearance and character. in addition, schiele's poster design was as graphically arresting as his art, and even his signature had a look all its own.

of course, the most dramatic schiele works are the paintings, with their distorted bodies, strangely colored skin, and bold black outlines painted with a sure but tense hand. by 1918, he was the master of his own largely bleak and distorted world. sadly, schiele was cut down in his prime by the spanish flu, as were his wife and unborn child.

neue galerie is a nice place, but unfortunately the exhibition's setup and presentation suffered from a lack of clear direction. i'm not sure if was due to the nature of the rooms' placement, but nothing on the second floor flowed chronologically or in any other obvious way, and the crowd was left to wander somewhat aimlessly. the wood-paneled first room everyone is drawn to contained schiele's most immediately impressive and mature work, as well as personal artifacts in glass cases (including the incredible sculpture of a fellow inmate when he was in prison - molded out of bread). a second room then led to another smaller room with works of other artists, with no delineation between them. an ill-placed sign in an outer hallway read "exhibit continues on third floor", where we were left to guess that we should move counterclockwise. unless of course you bought an audio tour that told you where to go. being the sum of two private collections, the show lacked several major works including his arguably more widely seen version of the lovers. one of the great joys of seeing paintings and drawings in person is comparing what you know (or think you know) about a piece with the piece itself.

the dark wood-paneled souvenir store was also confusing. though schiele was the main draw that afternoon (the line was around the block and took 15+ minutes to reach the entrance), books of his work were scattered in three different sections. telling of a larger issue was the fact that there were postcard books of schiele's more popular teacher gustav klimt and a few other german or austrian artists, but none of schiele himself. there's something about his art that wouldn't really translate neatly into a postcard, something which makes people uncomfortable.

maybe it's for the best that schiele hasn't been commodified quite as much as his teacher or other great artists. perhaps taking a lead from certain pharmacists at target, some mailmen would choose to take a "moral stance" and refuse to deliver a postcard with a naked, spreadeagled, seemingly deformed woman missing parts of her limbs. or a recipient might say to the sender, "you sent me a picture of a gaunt, half-naked man who looks exhausted and diseased. what are you trying to say?" another option is that schiele would become huge in the manner of edvard munch, whose exhibit is now up at the moma; known only for one iconic image, the rest of his life virtually ignored by most of the world.

david bowie was quietly influenced by egon schiele; the cover of "heroes" was based on a self-portrait, and at some point bowie was picked to play the artist in a biopic (i'm sure this has since fallen through). his poster design and hand-drawn type probably influenced poster art and graphic design for years afterwards. these are the little ways popular culture is exposed to schiele's work, if not his name. for now, that will have to do.

the title of this post comes from one of the artist's paintings.

i can't stand still

2006-02-07T14:23:00.000-05:00

a free set by a new incarnation of dirty projectors gave me an excuse to check out soundfix records last saturday in williamsburg.

when i got there, to my surprise, the band was not playing in the record store, but behind it. soundfix occupies the corner of north 11th and bedford, a few blocks beyond the main drag of the neighborhood. the main entrance is in the record store, but past that is a small dark wood-paneled room with old-style chairs and a coffee table, which was filled with people on their laptops or waiting to use the restrooms. a push beyond, however, and you're in a coffee shop/lounge with plenty of seating options, from stools at the counter to tables with seats like church pews, to comfortable chairs and couches. an old bookshelf, or possibly something once used to display fine china, doubles as decoration/storage and a front for a raised DJ booth in the corner.

in the back, with only a few ambient mikes pointed in his general direction, dave longstreth led his trio through an acoustic set of his clasically off-kilter tunes. this man writes like a tin pan alley songsmith following his own muse instead of the marketplace. he starts off penning a melody that wouldn't be out of place in the likes of porgy and bess and then turns it into something somehow folky and avant-garde in its execution. he frequently shifts keys and tempos, plucking out jazzy chords no matter what kind of awkward fingering is necessary. he comes on like a 1940's crooner who isn't trying to seduce anybody and doesn't take himself the least bit seriously, then without warning starts belting out the melodies, unafraid or perhaps even determined to crack his voice with the sheer joy of music-making. he stretches out syllables into melismas more bizarre and complex than any r+b singer's, and the accompanying harmonies follow him down the winding path. it's as if dirty projectors can't stop churning out brilliant song ideas for a musical that will never be made, because their ideas come too fast and furious for anyone to stop and make a full-scale production out of them. then again, broadway's self-cannibalizing producers wouldn't know what to do with numbers entitled "finches song at oceanic parking lot" (longstreth seems to have a slight obsession with finches).

the sound was natural and resonant, and all three members could be heard without any microphone feedback. the atmosphere was relaxed, and the high tin ceiling not only enhanced the reflective sounds, it made me feel i was hanging out in just another brooklyn apartment listening to some talented guys sing and play.

i only made a quick run-through of the record store, but the prices seemed decent. that they had brian eno digipak reissues and a decent-sized jazz section as well as the expected indie rock and electronica was a good sign. i also noted the the manish boys/davy jones and the lower third 12" on display for trainspotters. throw in a good zine selection, two computer stations up front and a spacious area to browse and walk between the racks and you've got the most inviting music retail place i've seen in years.

the title of this post is the name of a don henley album, whose namesake is shared by the protagonist of the dirty projectors' the getty address.

in a landscape

2006-01-30T16:33:00.000-05:00

it's great when several different threads converge, and you realize how perfectly natural they all seem together. that seems to be the case with the concept of monkeytown in general, as well as the whole first night i went to see a performance in their new space.

in the fall of 2004, i had the good fortune to have shannon fields of stars like fleas respond to my call for an experimental band to share a bill at the tank (when it was still on west 42nd street) that also included akron/family. SLF vocalist montgomery knott was unavailable, but shannon and keyboardist ryan smith played an improv set. in attendance were a/v artist jeremy slater and video artist berkoy. ryan later played a show as a million billion with us at the final installment of angel's night dogs blood rising, where i had been blown away by experimental electronic artist charles cohen. i had seen the video and music work of adam kendall at DBR the previous year, and started going to his own night {r}ake, where i believe i met aaron halley. adam and frequent {r}ake performers vortex played a show in manhattan last december with tianna kennedy of free103point9 (which i first went to to see my first stars like fleas show), where i ran into jeremy slater, who offered us a show the following week which included aaron halley as well as video artist andy graydon.

all the while, montgomery had been running monkeytown, his mutimedia performance space and restaurant. this past wednesday, the venue played host to {r}ake, which has been looking for a new location since leaving the confines of m shanghai den. the lineup featured berkoy with aaron halley, patrick mccarthy, and sean smith (also of socks and sandals), followed by andy graydon & charles cohen, and of course kendall & vortex. ryan smith and jeremy slater were in the audience as well, nearly completing the circle (sadly, neither shannon nor angel were there).

recently, monkeytown expanded and relocated closer to the de facto epicenter of williamsburg, adding a candlelit front room restaurant/bar. the back room is a relaxed environment, seating 32 people on soft futons, surrounded by 4 giant rear-projection video screens and an excellent sound system. the performers play in the center as food and drink is ordered and served, quietly and with respect towards the artists.

the unnamed quartet started off the night, with patrick mccarthy and sean smith laying down beds of rhythm and texture with laptops. it was solid music, but aaron halley and berkoy brought in additional elements that made the experience come alive. as dj north guinea hills, halley is prone to lugging around a turntable and pile of records as well as miscellaneous toys and noisemakers, using whichever strikes his fancy or suits the moment. tonight he spent a lot of time pulling in bursts of radio static and attacking forcing squiggles out of the fast forward and rewind buttons of the tape on his old school boom box. meanwhile, berkoy shot live grainy black-and-white footage, often in super-closeup, sometimes creating video feedback or her trademark blurry cloud effect. in the most interesting portion, she superimposed an increasing number of ghostly figures, walking in and out of the giant machines.

charles cohen is always a joy to watch and listen to, as he calmly pokes at his incredible buchla music easel built into a suitcase. beginning with sparse, bird-like sounds, he added looped layers that didn't sound looped, building in complexity and depth. hard to believe the whole piece was being improvised live by one man.

andy graydon matched him perfectly, starting from nearly black screens with digital patterns which expanded and became more colorful and varied along with the music. the most disturbing image was what initially appeared to be the empire state building on fire, smoke pouring out in a stomach-sinking visual echo of 9/11. then when the shot pulled back, it was clear that it was simply a smokestack spewing thick fumes from in between the camera and the building. graydon later blurred and manipulated sepia-toned images of the now smoke-free tower, like some slow-motion snagged and decaying filmstrip.

vortex take the audience on an exploration that's always interesting. shoko nagai plays a variety of keyboards, from toy piano to synthesizer, this time adding a hohner pianet to her arsenal. satoshi takeishi takes shoko's playing, as well as his own intermittent beats on small percussive instruments, and warps them through his laptop and a variety of outboard controllers. {r}ake frontperson adam kendall's video often starts off as something fairly mundane, but quickly morphs into surreal, dark, and psychedelic landscapes, this evening's monochromatic water towers and shifting center patterns gave an ominous industrial feel to the proceedings.

the evening ended with naval cassidy and the hands of orlak, but i wasn't able to stick around. i paid my check for the excellent vegetarian lasagna (amazing, unusual ingredients, like nothing else) and left, looking forward to returning.

the title of this post is the name of a piece by john cage, whose "address" was the basis for the first performance of this evening.

i'd love to stay and chat, but you're a total bitch

2005-12-09T13:46:00.000-05:00

there are two different types of blatantly politically incorrect humor. the first kind is deliberately mean-spirited and only funny to bigots.  the other kind, while partially gleefully childish, can also make cutting social commentary.  the latter is generally used to get laughs because of how "wrong" the root of the joke is, while the former is used to justify that wrongness as correct. generally, a sarcastic tone differentiates the two, allowing a person to say the opposite of what they actually mean or believe. in print, this tone tends to disappear. the danger is that the line between a joke that is clever because it exposes bigotry, and a joke that capitalizes on that bigotry, can be very thin indeed, especially when played too convincingly. see andrew dice clay.

sarah silverman  is a prime example of humor that is both very fucked up and very smart.  jesus is magic, mostly a concert film with musical numbers and short interludes, is a catalogue of everything wrong with the world today, played with a smile and a straight face to the end of every gag, no matter how horrifying.

"i was raped by a doctor," silverman says. "which is so bittersweet for a jewish girl."  this seems to comment on the whole jews/money stereotype, marrying a doctor being a good move for financial security. this puts it in the latter category (revealing this unemotional and offensive way of looking at marriage).  of course the mention of rape, just about the worst thing that can be done to anyone, really crosses the limits of good taste, even for lowbrow humor - which is part of the point.  it's what makes us sit up and pay attention to the joke, even debate it.  silverman seems to know this, delivering her 99.9% deadpan lines with a slight air of self-mocking. never breaking her self-absorbed jewish girl persona, she calls herself into question by asking huffily, "what kind of world is it where a totally cute white girl can't say 'chink' on network television?"  well, obviously there should be no such privelege, but she did say it, and it aired.  apparently she was told in rehearsal that it was acceptable to use the word 'spic,' but she decided to go further by picking a word they did not approve of.  obviously, either word should be equally unacceptable, but finding out what would actually be let on the air reveals something about the different levels of racism (and the thinking behind them) in this country. anyone offended by these jokes without also reflecting on this is missing the point.

i've championed the family guy as a smart, edgy, hilarious show since it was on the first time.  it not only takes chances with the subject matter of its jokes, it also usually tells them in such a way that it requires you to think a bit before you get them, especially the dirty ones (when trying to get a boy interested in her, teenager meg offers, "i can't taste salt").  it's a way of getting around television censorship, but is also a way to make reference to all kinds of filthiness without actually wallowing in it.  a certain well-known playwright used to do this a lot.  sadly, after family guy's triumphant return this year, several of the newer episodes seem focused more on how outrageous they can be instead of what makes them funny.  in the years since FG was originally the air, reality tv has upped the ante on what disgusting things people are willing to watch.  rather than mocking this as it mocks everything else in the world, the griffins have become almost like a cartoon version of a reality tv family, so horrible i can't believe the quiet little town they live in hasn't kicked them out.  a big reason seems to be that the mother figure of lois has stopped being the smart, stabilizing voice of sanity and reverted to the wild ways of her bored teen years.  the jaw-dropping,"i can't believe they did that" of past episodes has given way to "i really wish they hadn't gone there."  unlike silverman's humor, a lot of the show's newer gags don't teach us anything about our hangups.

then again, maybe they're not supposed to.  dj assault is responsible for a song so blunt it's funny, so bad it's good.  i first heard the song "yo relatives" when assault himself played it at the adult. afterparty at bar eleven after their show at mercury lounge (which i also went to).  a streetwise male voice intones a one-way version of the dozens, spewing out "yo mama, yo daddy, yo sister's a ho."  the word "ho" then gets repeated ad nauseam on the beat, which is what takes it to the level of ridiculous parody and thus makes it funny.  in other words, it's so over-the-top, it can't possibly be serious.  or can it?  the rest of the song picks on different relatives, hurling the words "bitch,""gay," and "suck" at them with an equally cold matter-of-fact tone. assault's other songs are similarly offensive but not funny. if "yo relatives" was the only song he'd recorded it would have been perfect; in this greater context, he might instead be either a garden-variety misogynist or using potty-mouth lyrics for shock value. i can't say for sure what he means when he records something like that.  i can only know what it means to me when i listen to it.

sometimes an artist just taps into some cultural zeitgeist, collective unconscious, or what have you to deliver something that seems right even though it's wrong.  or maybe your relatives really do suck.

the title of this post is a classic line spoken by stewie from family guy.

machines for lovers

2005-11-29T13:06:00.000-05:00

ghostly international and its spinoff label spectral sound have been gradually insinuating themselves into my psyche since seeing their disco nouveau and idol tryouts compilations floating around a few years ago. more recently i realized that several of the times i was blown away at the bunker, the records or DJs were ghostly-affiliated. thinking this was purely a techno label, i was surprised to hear the more rock-oriented dykehouse and mobius band (who i've also seen recently). now i keep an eye out for anything going on around town with their artists.

first up at rothko last wednesday was dj plexus, who started late but still spun to a mostly empty room. damn the "fashionably late" attitude, this was great music, right from the start. the music was seamless, seeming to simply morph continuously into different versions of an endless minimal techno song originating somewhere between detroit and berlin. excellent choice of warmup dj. i had been thinking the turnout wouldn't be too good because it was thanksgiving eve, but by the time he finished, there was definitely more of a crowd, however reserved.

if i gave an overview of derek plaslaiko's set, it would sound pretty much the same as above, and yet it was noticeable when he took over. the energy went up a notch, his choices became a bit more aggressive. he was also very fond of creating tension by pulling out all the bass, adding a growing effect that would take over the entire room, and make us wait for the four-on-the-floor to drop back in. sometimes he mercilessly built it up for far longer than the expected duration, only to slam into a completely different but utterly appropriate record. again, non-stop, never a dull moment. people really got moving during his set. ben leaned over to me and ironically commented, "and they say electronic music has no soul."

audion was the main reason for being there. the techno-acid alias of matthew dear, this project's songs are 95% instrumental, and obsessed with two things: punchy, squelchy, grinding grooves and sex. there is no overt sexuality in the music, since it's instrumental, although the angry synths rubbing against each other at times make perfect sense with the simplistically raunchy titles. you would never expect this kind of raw, angry, beat-driven music from the calm, boyish figure onstage. using only a laptop and outboard mixer with effects, dear kept the music going for over an hour, wearing everyone out with his constantly great sounds. ben bowed out first, then even bianca succumbed to exhaustion and left. i was fairly drained, having been moved to dance so much by the earlier DJs. but i was determined to hear the hardest sounds this man had to offer, and i soon got them. the rhythms became more complex on top of the relentless kick drum, more layers of bleeps and bloops were added, and the synths squiggled more uncontrollably. the audience really got into it, whooping when they recognized a new synth riff. finally, he ended with "just fucking," a groove as single- and dirty-minded as it sounds. true to its name, it pumped away furiously until an abrupt finish. he had no stage show to speak of, but the music made that fact irrelevant.

after such a musical climax, i was ready to leave, and yet i saw plaslaiko setting up at the turntables again. i wished that wasn't the case because i hated to miss hearing more. no one record jumped out as being one thing i had to get; it was pretty much non-stop good music, just like the amazing second disc of the spectral sound vol. 1 compilation. one of the amazing things about ghostly/spectral-related music is its consistency. if you like an artist or DJ, they are pretty much great all the way through, with few exceptions. this night cemented that impression in my mind.

the title of this post is a record by spectral sound's hieroglyphic being.

give me something i can feel

2005-11-28T16:52:00.000-05:00

i've wanted to go to a u2 concert since seeing live clips for years. the band really seemed to put themselves into their performances, and however sweeping or trite bono's onstage pronouncements and lyrics might have been, he at least gave the impression of passionately meaning them. i thought i missed my chance when, after dialing and holding on two phone lines for 20 minutes solid, i was informed that tickets to their zoo tv tour were sold out. immediately after that, in my opinion, the band went swiftly downhill and i lost interest.

that is, until i realized that all that you can't leave behind was a pretty darn good album, but their tour was over by the time that sank in. a few years later, they released another album (not as good) and launched a world tour in support of it. but the fact that bono has been on oprah twice, and in news headlines relating to drop the debt, sending AIDS drugs to africa, and ending world hunger, looms larger than his band's new music. it seems like u2 playing on a flatbed truck in the streets of new york city made more of a splash than the single it was filmed to promote. in other words, u2's media presence is bigger than they are.

these were the central themes of their tuesday show at madison square garden, a venue i've never liked. being at the garden is a disorienting experience due to many factors: the sheer size of the venue, the number of people, the volume, the sound slapping back at you from various angles. because of this, entering during "vertigo" felt very apropos. i misjudged the door and performance times and sadly missed patti smith, whom bono later lauded along with tom verlaine's television and other late 70's nyc punk bands. people were constantly coming and going, whether to put beer into their bodies or drain it from them. ushers and security were at every one of the dozens of entrances. having already played the garden for several dates back in may and october, this last night in new york city had the air of being more than just a concert. this was an event, a victory lap, a celebration of the band's longevity, a noble cause, a lifting of the white man's burden.

the stage was designed in a strange not-quite-but sort-of-in-the-round manner. it was built at the end of the floor and not in the center, and still they sold every last ticket in the place including those doomed to look at the back of larry mullen jr.'s head throughout the show. the double-ringed stage (whose edges lit up in various colors) served a purpose of creating a special pit between the rings for the most fervent fans to be at the center of the show along with the band; at times the three mobile (and wireless) members strolled along the catwalk into the crowd. of course bono would actually reach out and even step into the sea of grasping hands. these actions didn't seem to coincide with any particular lyrics or have any meaning other than to give those directly involved a thrill.

the sound was probably the worst i've heard at the garden, and further seemed to distance the experience from the music. but music came through nonetheless, albeit mostly in a "you sing it now" type of way. anyone not familiar with "elevation" must have felt somewhat confused at the long stretch of nothing but two-note distorted squelchy guitar and indecipherable audience-only vocals. but of course u2 aim to please, because they know they wouldn't matter to as many people if they didn't, so they played a lot of songs people did know. bono also pulled his trademark trick of singing other songs over their own (tonight's quotes included "send in the clowns" and "rock the casbah" as well as pieces of other songs of theirs).

anyone too far away could always watch the four individual members close up on the giant video screens (see above). i'm fully in favor of using visuals, especially in concerts of this size, but i prefer them to be somewhat artistic. i've always felt just displaying the show from a fixed perspective increases detachment and heightens the sense of being at a sports event or just watching from home.

spectacle dominated over all. the ceiling sometimes lowered hanging strings of lights which doubled as very pixelated video screens, displaying a variety of colors. during "miss sarajevo" a dispassionate female head rotated in a loop; later, dozens of national flags scrolled by. during "love and peace or else," a stagehand at the back of the outer ring of the stage set up a floor tom and cymbal for bono to add additional drums - that is, if they were even miked (they were about as audible as his periodically strummed guitar). he changed some of the lyrics of "pride (in the name of love)" to include a reference to the assassination of jfk. he pulled a girl onstage to dance with him (which he's been doing off and on at least since live aid), except she bizarrely got a piggyback ride instead. before "sunday bloody sunday" (during which bono announced "this is your song now" twice, as if to distance himself from it), he put on a white headband. the video monitor revealed a seemingly hand-scrawled crescent moon, a star of david, and a crucifix, equating the three. later in the song he repeatedly intoned "jesus, jew, mohammed, it's true". he then pulled the headband over his eyes, crawling across the stage blind to find his mic stand and sing more. this struck me as both pretty powerful and somewhat contrived. a little internet research has unfortunately turned up that not only is the headband prefabricated (it's the logo of hip liberal clothing line coexist), but this entire sequence has been done several times before on this tour.

in the biggest and most interactive gesture of the evening, he asked the audience to light up their cell phones, which looked pretty amazing. the screeen asked the audience to text their full names to a certain number to show support for ending poverty. i figured "why not?" and did it. a few minutes later, my phone rang and i had a message saying "this is bono, thx 4 taking action with the ONE campaign 2 make poverty history. check out www.one.org on the web for more. peace." it was thoughtful of bono's automated web server to text me back so it didn't seem like a totally empty gesture. seriously, as a result of that, thousands will probably go to the website and see what they can do to help.

that sort of thing is great of course, and it's one of bono's saving graces, since he tends to irritate a lot of people. good intentions aside, much of this was extraneous and ultimately distracting from what i think makes up a good show: good music played with conviction and at least somewhat interesting to watch. i know the garden is hard to play, and grand gestures and big lightshows are ways in which bands try to play to the back row. but i felt less a part of the audience and less connected to the music and the people onstage than at any other show i've been to there. to me, u2 have become so large they are unreachable. they are still uniquely talented, and the causes they attach themselves to are worthy. but when people become bigger than life they also somehow seem no longer human, and thus harder to relate to and make people really care.

the title of this post comes from the lyrics to vertigo.

beat of the nation

2005-11-24T09:34:00.000-05:00

front 242 are a band in a strange position: neither fully active nor completely finished. in the 80s, they were part of the wax trax! label axis (by way of play it again sam) of "second-wave industrial" bands. basically hard electronic dance music, they (along with skinny puppy, front line assembly, and nitzer ebb) are responsible for the basis of what is (somewhat mistakenly) called industrial music today. throbbing gristle started it, and nine inch nails and ministry popularized it (by adding lots of guitars), but these belgians and their peers solidified the subgenre dubbed ebm, being among the masters of the burbling sequenced synthesizer bassline. kraftwerk may have invented the man-machine, but front 242 made the hybrid ultra-cool and more masculine. their vision has always been more terminator than metropolis.

after their brief brush with the big time (signed to epic records and playing lollapalooza), they dissolved into largely ignored splinter groups and guest spots on other people's records. they reformed 5 years later for touring purposes, but without original member daniel bressanutti. a slew of remix and live albums and one lukewarm new offering in 2003 have kept the name alive long enough to elevate them to the position of elder statesmen of their corner of the music world.

like last year's skinny puppy reunion tour, the nyc date was at irving plaza, where i also saw them in 1998. this time, they had the benefit of a huge video screen behind them, pushing name-brand self-worship (the only band of its kind who does this more, albeit vocally, is KMFDM), and cold, security cam-like imagery and intentionally glitchy animation. two supporting players (a drummer and a laptop keyboardist) took the stage first. then the band's most recognizable member, patrick codenys (whose swim-goggled face is the only one to appear on any of their CD's, 1991's tyranny for you) took his place stoically behind a virus keyboard. an ominous drone began, which quickly built up into pummeling beats. richard 23's processed vocals echoed through the sound system, until he bounded onto the stage, singing the first song by himself. when the next song began, jean-luc de meyer appeared to greater applause. many consider his sinister accented baritone to be the heart of the band's identity.

after a fairly strong opener, they continued with a string of songs unfamiliar to me and only somewhat more interesting to most of the crowd. one of the things i noted right away was the live drummer, seemingly a concession to rock show standards. front 242's music is clearly programmed, almost metronomic; at first the drumkit stood out as being nowhere near as powerful as the synthetic beats and pulses making up the bulk of the music. suddenly, out of nowhere, i realized they were playing "welcome to paradise," with its sampled evangelical exclamations, including everyone's ironically authoritarian-mocking favorite, "no sex until marriage!" this song finally woke the crowd up enough to really get them moving.

everything improved from that point onward. sounds began to separate, the synths became sharper and more defined. even the live drums seemed to make more sense, especially for songs like "religion," which contains sampled distorted guitar squiggles and was originally mixed by the same man who has mixed slayer. a few slower songs actually somehow approached being funky in a clunky electronic kind of way. i noticed a lot of reprogramming and updating of sounds and song structures of old material, much like depeche mode did for their 101 live album.

in a strangely solemn moment, richard 23 told the crowd that a huge fan of theirs named chris had passed away a few days before the show and dedicated "quite unusual" to him. after several more excellent selections from their back catalogue (including one acutally from backcatalogue), they announced the last song of the night. this was of course "headhunter," arguably the biggest dance club song of the genre. this is where the crowd expectedly went wild, aggressively dancing up a storm in a chaotic ballet of punches and kicks into the air. even the more jaded people (and i count myself among them) couldn't help singing along with the simplistic but classic chorus. then, when the song should have been over, they took it up several notches by adding a vicious new keyboard riff in counterpoint to the original. this made a good part of the audience go ballistic.

this was obviously the highlight of the night, and several people left before the encore. the songs were as good as the second half of the set, but mostly anticlimactic. however, to those of us who had been energized by moving furiously for half the night, "punish your machine" was very appropriate for its line "i feel so fucking alive." which is what a good concert should make you feel.

the title of this post comes from the band's song rhythm of time, which sadly, was not played. the picture above comes from release magazine.

echoes

2005-11-17T13:21:00.000-05:00

one year ago today, i started this blog out of one of the great priveleges of modern western civilization: boredom at work. my first post had nothing to say, but i said it anyway. now i only bother posting if something needs to be said; i don't have much time to be bored at work or anywhere else.

one of the things i hate about the time of year we're about to enter into is the lack of anything new or with real content. in its place is a lot of dwelling in the past and list-making. however, i feel there's a decent reason for doing something like that with this blog. while several entries were somewhat frivolous (or simply announced updates to my ocular spectra photoblog), there are other more read-worthy ones, which people may not have the inclination to plow through the archives to find. here are what i think are the more worthwhile posts of the past year, in chronological order (oldest first), named by their subject matter.

breakcore show @ siberia
pandatone, akron/family, stars like fleas @ tonic
subway photo ban
post-post-post-modern culture
hellsbells, george steeltoe ensemble @ free103point9
experimental dance with music by grundik & slava @ cave gallery
wobbly, keith fullerton whitman, sagan @ tonic
on gentrification
anarchy
pixies @ hammerstein ballroom
doveman + flashpapr @ tonic
la laque @ sin-e
female body image in mainstream american entertainment
colin potter of nurse with wound @ free103point9
new year's eve 2004
low, aarktica @ bowery ballroom + visions of the impending apocalypse
dirty projectors, the winter pageant @ tonic
in praise of leisuretown
stars like fleas, doveman, thomas fehlmann @ tonic
video as an instrument @ the tank
kid606, tommie sunshine @ rothko
WBAR radiothon: akron/family, dirty projectors, other passengers @ the west end
angels of light, akron/family @ tonic
xiu xiu @ knitting factory
onkyo festival: o.blaat, aoki takamasa, elliot sharp, otomo yoshihide, sachiko m + nobukazu takemura, yoshimitsu ichiraku. carl stone, taku hannoda @ japan society
choking victim: written on skin
the stone and nyc music venues
the church and fascism
flaming fire, the dewanatron, squaw @ galapagos + rubulad + contempt @ remote lounge
calla @ knitting factory
adult. @ mercury lounge
family guy live @ town hall
autechre, snd, rob hall @ webster hall
nyc photobloggers meetup
ashes and snow photography exhibit
edison woods, hopeforagoldensummer, the new radio band @ tonic
mahogany, auburn lull dj set @ the newly-opened cake shop
photobloggers 4 + other passengers @ sin-e
c.o.m.a. acoustic benefit concert for abc no rio
saints and lovers @ pianos
minor threat artwork mimicked by nike
a place to bury strangers @ knitting factory + the bunker @ subtonic
the lowered expectations of modern popular culture
get your war on
saxon shore, my best fiend, other passengers @ tonic
kid606, knifehandchop, eats tapes @ northsix
other passengers, a place to bury strangers, sonoma aero @ cake shop
to here knows when: autumn thieves, aarktica @ scenic
the strange case of jandek tickets
on stars like fleas
stars like fleas, flying, panicsville @ tonic
the bunker: end, monolake @ tonic
to here knows when: tungsten 74, my best fiend @ scenic
music media bias
jandek @ anthology film archives
merzbow @ knitting factory
arcade fire @ central park summerstage
stars like fleas @ northsix
calla record release show @ brooklyn lyceum
interpol @ webster hall
katrina benefit: sufjan stevens, akron/family @ bowery ballroom
live and recorded music
psychasthenia society @ collective unconscious
other passengers, skeleton & the girl-faced boys, my best fiend @ pianos
daylight's for the birds, the winter pageant, mobius band @ sin-e
xiu xiu, other passengers @ skirball center

the title of this post is a song by pink floyd.

down we go together

2005-11-07T18:47:00.000-05:00

thanks to the kindness of other passengers, i was able to see them open for xiu xiu at the skirball center at nyu. i was pretty excited even though i just saw the latter band at bowery ballroom in september and wrote about the show back in april. to me, this was a great bill, since the two bands have some similarities to each other, although they may not be initially obvious to fans of either one. both are considered to be within the broad realm of "indie rock"; both of them are dark and dramatic in their music, while remaining fairly ordinary in their appearance; both write somewhat melodic music with odd structures interrupted by shocking bursts of noise; both feature passionate lead singers who tend to get worked up and sweaty in their performance. after that, the similarities end, which made the pairing as strange as it was appropriate.

for this show, other passengers created short semi-improvised atmospheric pieces as both intro and connecting sections, building from singer billy's vocal effects and flanked by subtle noise guitar attacks from travis and kevin. they all played well, though they seemed to be plagued by minor sound problems such as balance (not enough bass guitar) and hum. still, they came off pretty well on the biggest stage i've seen them on (since i missed them at the bowery katrina benefit show). this was aided by the invaluable visuals of berkoy, who also had a much larger canvas to work with. the effect was probably not unlike like being at a late 60s pink floyd show. however, theirs isn't the kind of music you should take drugs to, lest you have heart palpitations and visions more disturbing than you bargained for.

speaking of disturbing, a CD i've since found out is the langley schools music project was played in between the bands. school children doing not-quite-on-key versions of songs by paul mccartney, the beach boys, and david bowie continued the weird vibe of the night. that it was a general admission show but with stationary seating felt very odd for both bands.

xiu xiu command the kind of hushed, rapt audience attention reserved for very few musicians. perhaps it's because the room was full of people who take jamie stewart's songs very seriously, or perhaps, in this case, it was because his voice wasn't loud enough in the PA. but even half-buried under the pounding programmed backing, electric guitar, and synthesized noise, his emotional intensity was clear. i recall a website announcement that producer/studio member corey mcculloch would be joining the live lineup. unfortunately, this hasn't happened yet, if it ever will; only caralee mcelroy joins stewart on harmonium, percussion, and background vocals. she also seems to have taken on a more expanded role in adding synthetic melodies and stabs of shrieking distortion. the two of them ran through the catalogue of musical self-laceration, pausing only to tune or change drum machine sequences while the people sat in quiet tension after each burst of applause. it's worth nothing that even playing a very full set of songs from their four CDs, some songs were still missed (particularly "sad guerilla ponygirl" and "fabulous muscles").

there were definite light moments to the show, though always shadowed slightly by the heaviness of the songs' subject matter. stewart announced almost apologetically that they were going to be playing the whole set in reverse chronological order, and he hoped that wouldn't make them "seem like dicks." after a particularly intense rendition of the casiotone-meets-new order-gone-industrial song "crank heart," an audience member asked "what was that last one called?" stewart deadpanned, "party time," which had a good third of the audience stifling giggles for the next 20 seconds or so. even though happy hardcore is a stated influence of xiu xiu, their version of it is so obviously warped by horrible personal experiences that the idea of a partying xiu xiu seems ludicrous. nowhere is their unique brand of "so horrible it's funny" more apparent than in the classic "i broke up," with its oft-quoted line "this is the worst vacation ever, i'm going to cut open your forehead with a roofing shingle" (the exact moment of which the above photo depicts).

a more nervous laughter greeted the band's final song, "helsabot." instead of one of the funereal recorded versions, its first-person tale of an "alcohol-fueled robot" was performed in such an offhand, light-hearted way, as if they were playing a fun cover of an old popular campfire song. but it's precisely because of his removal of camp that has allowed stewart to surpass his idol morrissey's ability to mix such personal, human horror with the right amount of black humor.

the title of this post comes from a morrissey song.

the loving sounds of static

2005-11-01T15:18:00.000-05:00

saturday night was the first show for daylight's for the birds, a band formed from the rubble of the imploded on air library (whose early shows and first EP i loved). unfortunately i got to sin-e too late to catch the band's bassist paul duncan playing a solo set. as a bassist, he's very good, so i'll have to check out his new cd on home tapes.

this band faces the same problems as their former incarnation, which i've touched on before: vocals getting lost in the mix. the soundman did his best to resolve the issues, but the two things that needed to happen were singer claudia deheza singing louder (and perhaps being given a hotter mic) and some of the other instruments turning down onstage. sadly, fellow OAL alumnus phillip wan's parts were also mostly obscured, although what came through was melodic and inventive. that aside, the band has talent and potential, especially when you factor in the songs on their myspace page. the poppier aspects of OAL failed to gel for me, but now the beautiful blurriness has become crystal clear instead of meandering somewhere in between. the new drummer is rock solid while not bludgeoning the beat, and the rhythm guitar chimes away beautifully. at times, the two instruments meld together in the classic shoegazer wash of ebbing and flowing harmonic noise, without relying on it as the cornerstone of their sound.

also eschewing traditional shoegazer techniques (while being informed by them) are the winter pageant. instead of walls of distortion and/or pop confectionery, they favor ethereal drones and expansive prog-like song construction. several changes have occurred since the last time i saw them. for one thing, they've replaced one of their guitarists with two others, which seems superfluous until you notice the additional layers this creates. they also seem to have replaced their last bassist with another (who also picks up a guitar for one song). however, the most striking difference is the mixing. singer byron's every breathy tone could finally be heard above the swirling ocean instead of drowning in it. even when heavily effected (which at times seemed a bit of overkill given the amount of effects on nearly every other instrument), his gentle tenor cut through and reminded the audience of a human soul at the center of the music.

mobius band is yet another ghostly signing that defies the label's categorization as a dance label. while most of their output (as well as their even more underground imprint spectral) is focused on a detroit-centric techno sound, this band seamlessly weaves their electronics into sunny indie rock tunes. the drummer's mostly-live kit was augmented by a few discreet electronic pads that blended in together perfectly. both the bassist and guitarist took turns strumming their axes and poking at the analog synth racks, often in the same measure. the singers' voices are both pleasantly nondescript in a midwestern sort of way (though they seem to hail from massachussetts and are now partially based in brooklyn). this is the kind of band that would be on morr music if they were german, as they frequently bring to mind the sound of the notwist axis. however, there's something far less precious about their songs as well as their presentation - there may be as much r.e.m. in their dna as d.n.a. in their rem. if they come up with a perfect pop tune, it's because they let it fall into place instead of constructing it with teutonic efficiency. neither better nor worse, just a slightly different vibe. it definitely works for them, and it worked for me too.

the title of this post comes from the new album by mobius band.

see the way

2005-10-28T20:09:00.000-04:00

i was planning to go to one more night of the pianos october residency of other passengers, but i hadn't planned on writing anything about it. as it turned out, all the bands and the resulting pictures were even better than i thought they'd be.

the opening slot was taken by my best fiend, who played a great night at tonic a few months ago, and also did well on a wednesday at scenic put on by loveless music group last month. fortunately, the show was pushed back from the original start time of 7:30. when i went into the room it was otherwise empty; a few people trickled in slowly. but shortly after the band took the stage, the place seemed pretty full for a cold and rainy tuesday night.

they played what may have been pretty much the same set as before, but they get exponentially better each time i see them. the two-chord vamping roots of their music seemed a bit more apparent this time (as opposed to the emphasis on the noisy electronic overlays before). however, their lead singer has really started letting go in his performance, especially in song sections where he's unencumbered by an instrument. the other guitarist/keyboardist also showed new strengths in feedback manipulation. the bassist and drummer were solid as usual, although i always wish the former would turn up just a bit more or perhaps get a compressor, since half his notes tend to get lost in the mix instead of punching through - he's definitely worth hearing.

i had never heard of skeleton and the girl-faced boys before i checked the night's lineup, but i should have, as much time as i've been spending at the ghostly international site lately. while the title track from their album git is all fractured miniature electro-funk, the live band is anything but. bandleader matt mehlan (formerly known simply as "skeletons" for his solo project) sings with a calm and lilting tenor that somehow brought to mind kevin drew of broken social scene. he's also one of three guitarists in the band, which at times seemed unnecessary. however, his songs and voice were good. in addition, the drummer was excellent, whether keeping a steady beat or breaking into subtle polyrhythmic workouts. also of note was the bassist, who seemed to be playing constantly in an unusually high register for a bass ( peter hook notwithstanding). even more exciting was that on the first and last songs, he left the bass alone and fiddled with a jacket he wore that was decorated with what appeared to be giant 3D dominoes. they turned out to be knobs for a custom-made mini synthesizer, which he constantly tweaked as the band played along. at times, the combined effect of mehlan's appearance and the sometimes rhythmically complex music that took strange unexpected turns made me think of richard d. james (sans evil grin) fronting an indie rock/freak-folk band. that may not be incredibly accurate, but the point is, they were much more enjoyable than i thought they'd be, and i look forward to them coming through nyc again.

the lighting had been good so far, but once berkoy started up her projector things took on a wonderfully murky atmosphere. her visuals have now almost become a sixth instrument in the band, the backgrounds affecting the overall tone of the performance. she shifts from stark whites to grey clouds, from amorphous bubble-like shapes to hard vertical lines, adding to the tension of the music.

not that other passengers rely on the visuals to make up for any deficiency. the band were clearly anticipated, as the room filled up well before they began. this was not a "see and be seen on the scene" show, all heads were pointed at the stage. playing no material whatsoever from last year's EP, and with no easy three-minute singalongs, they still had people enraptured with their brand of dark indie/prog-rock. the songs have no obvious verses or choruses, arrangements build up and break down, and there is occasional time-signature trickery. but these are not lyrically pompous, overly-long wankfests with faux-classical pretensions. this is music with heart and soul, as evidenced by the band's increasing onstage intensity. putting everything they have into each show is obviously working out for them; they'll be opening for the emotionally raw xiu xiu next week (tickets available to NYU students only until day of show).

the title of this post is a song by the aformentioned skeleton and the girl-faced boys.

you know nothing about wickedness

2005-10-27T15:56:00.000-04:00

i hadn't been to a psychasthenia society presentation in a long time, so when i saw it had moved to collective unconscious, i made sure to see it. i say "presentation" because the format makes this word seem more appropriate than "show." the core of the idea is a kind of "remix" of classic film noir images (actually using the hideous beast powerpoint, last i heard), recontextualized by an original story told live by jon keith brunelle. the results are often humorous, sometimes sociopolitical, and always engaging.

the concept, as well as his bemused delivery, struck me as an idea that, while having been done to some extent before (most famously by mystery science theatre 3000), had never been taken this far. brunelle's approach is more than simply mocking the original, replacing dialogue, or reacting to and speculating on the original actions and plot as laid out in the films. instead he uses these somewhat quaint, innocent images of yesteryear to illumimate modern tales of anxiety. dark, dramatic, jazzy music clips accentuate the performance as he advances the stills in real-time. it's also worth noting that in the age of omnipresent quick-cutting, he takes care not to overload the audience with a barrage of fast-paced visuals.

i first saw brunelle's unique vision at the tank as part of the day job event put on by spit and duct tape. he later expanded it in an approximately monthly show at galapagos, some of which i've written about before. during these shows (which were free or very low admission), he brought in a series of collaborators. in between a three-part story, a different laptop-based musical guest would play a short set while a video artist grabbed images from the preceding chapter and manipulated them live. in recent months, the lineup has been pared down to visuals by daniel vatsky and music by mad ep.

at the collective unconscious show, the trio offered what seemed to be a "megamix" or "greatest hits plus new material." using elements of previous stories about work, drugs, the christian right, he tied everything together with a thread involving deadly nanobots and added an additional story tying it all up at the end.

towards the middle, brunelle broke up the static staging (a necessary evil when all three members are behind laptops and mindful of keeping a screen in view) by stepping out front. here he became more animated, interjecting touching and funny fictionalized accounts of some of his own past experiences, illustrated with stills from the period. although seemingly unrelated to the other stories, these somehow helped put everything in a more personal perspective instead of just being a crazy sci-fi story with music.

speaking of music, mad ep has to be the most appropriate musical collaborator brunelle has worked with, along with end (some of whose sturm-und-twang "spycore" music makes short appearances in the show). matthew peters never lets his apparent love for hip-hop overshadow his original ideas or the needs of the story being told. his relentlessly inventive breaks and assistance with the show's musical cues are surpassed by his ability to use appropriate arrangements for each setting he comes into.

daniel vatsky has also grown into his role as visual foil for brunelle's straight-man film clips. putting the "psychedeleic" into psychasthenia, his use of effects is never heavy-handed, but visually stimulating and intuitively reacting to mad ep's music.

this conglomeration seems designed for a downtown theater crowd, as opposed to the chapter-and-intermission-based galapagos shows. although the show is no longer free, you certainly leave feeling like you've had your money's worth. in all honesty, i somewhat prefer the older format, because it was a bit more informal and broke things up more. i also found the new ending a bit superfluous (a preceding slide using the words "the end" enhances this feeling). but perhaps the club gigs were only warm-ups for this magnum opus, with more ambitious works to come (such as the inclusion of dancers at last year's performance at ps 122 (josh took some great pictures). whatever form the psychasthenia society takes in the future, it's not something to be missed.

the title of this post is part of a tagline for the lady from shanghai, some stills from which were used in the production.

is it live or is it memorex?

2005-10-20T13:31:00.000-04:00

some time ago on an email discussion list, the argument of live performance vs. recorded/mass-produced music once again reared its hideous and multifaceted head. initially concern was expressed over the future of recorded music, specifically the album format, a concern which i share. then the idea was put forth that as a side benefit, live music would and should completetly supplant recorded music.

there's no good reason why this should be an either-or proposition. i believe the creation of sound art in a recorded medium is just as valid as live performance. shows and recordings are two different experiences, and both deserve to survive. some artists craft recordings the way painters work on paintings - it's a slow process, and not usually exciting to watch. other artists thrive on live performance, but can't make a decent record to save their lives. still others somehow balance both. on the audience side, there are people who are never able to see a show (perhaps for monetary or geographic reasons), or simply don't like going to concerts (crowds, loud volumes).

another argument is that music is a social activity, and live, real-time interaction between musicians, between the musicians and the audience and among audience members is an important part of the overall experience.

if music is always social, why is the usual expectation of live concerts a one-way street for the most part? it's generally considered rude for people to socially interact with each other too much during a live performance; you're expected to direct your attention to the performers and be silent, or else make noises in appreciation of the performers at appropriate times. i know there are exceptions, but the situation i just described is pretty much the norm as i understand it. some musicians may change their performance based on audience reaction, some don't. these are variables, rather than hard rules about live performance that make it a truly interactive and social event by definition. everything else is optional, and people's enjoyment of the experience depends on how close it adheres to their own interpretations of a good show.

i agree that music can be social, and has varying degrees of interaction. but it's not necessary, and many people (both artists and audiences) simply have personalities that don't desire this, or don't make it a priority. often the sales of recorded music far outstrip concert sales of the same artists. it's simply not feasible for most musicians to be in as many places and perform for as many people as their recordings can get to. not only that, but in many cases (depending on the venue), the concert setting makes additional changes to the music that are unwelcome, possibly diminishing rather than enhancing the artist's music.

another point is, if music is always meant to be social, why are there headphones? listening on headphones is a very popular way of experiencing music, given the proliferation of portable listening devices. i also want to point out, lest anyone claim this is some kind of "diminished" experience, that headphone listeners are not entirely isolated. for example, walking outside listening on headphones, you can still hear ambient sounds of your (continually changing) environment, and you have the visual accompaniment of the scenery. this can certainly enhance the listening experience, although is not technically interactive (it's a one-way experience for you only). i almost always select music to listen to on headphones based on the journey i'm going to be taking, method of transportation, and time of day. i think others do this to some degree, although it may not always be conscious. a similar argument could be made for listening to music in a car while driving alone; it is not social, but does interact with the environment.

i understand the fear of music becoming yet another way in which people cut themselves off from each other (and potentially become like the ipod zombie above, snagged from by night, rockstar). by downloading and/or streaming mp3s, as well as ordering CDs online, it's now more possible than ever to get ahold of music without needing to interact with another human being. however, i think it's not a bad thing that that's an option, especially for those in areas where access to music is very limited, and access to people is simply something they don't always crave. besides, the music coming over the internet or arriving in packaged CDs is, in some small way, an acknowledgement of an outside world where these art works are made. they may even inspire listeners with a relatively hermit-like existence to leave their wired (or wireless) wombs and experience a live concert by an artist whose music speaks to them.

the title of this post comes from an advertising slogan.

this one goes out to

2005-10-11T19:00:00.000-04:00

due to an unfortunate mixup in times and the need to eat, i arrived late at the hurricane katrina victims benefit at bowery ballroom last week. i missed other passengers completely and caught only the end of grizzly bear. what little i heard made me wish i'd run upstairs sooner. further perusal of their website is making me regret missing them even more and want to order their CD.

in the past year, i've seen akron/family on stages as small as pete's candy store, and now here they are playing the bowery. it couldn't happen to a nicer, happier bunch of guys. their sheer joy in playing is evident every time i see them. at times, they've gone a little off the deep end in my opinion (there was a total noisefest at sin-e that i could have done without), but their post-post-rock noodling isn't for lack of talent or enthusiasm, but sheer restless inventiveness. fortunately this time, mindful of their short time onstage, they reeled it in just enough to have a good balance of melodic songs and freakout sections. at one great point, bassist miles seaton asked the bowery to turn up the house lights, while he reminded everyone of the seriousness of the reason they were there. the four of them then launched into an a capella spiritual, each of them taking turns at the same lead line while the others maintained a harmonic chant of the words "love and space."

i'd never heard of sufjan stevens before the recent flap over the cover art to his latest album. or if i had, i think i confused him with savath + savalas or some other electronica artist starting with an "s". but an mp3 blog had up his acoustic rendition of "the one i love" by rem, and it far exceeded my expectations. at the bowery, he opened with this, as if to say, "here's the famous cover song. now that's out of the way, we can get to the real stuff." or perhaps he wanted to open with a crowd pleaser to get people going. as he remarked, he's been touring with an 8-piece band, and by comparison the solo experience was "fairly terrifying." if his voice wavered at all from nerves, i didn't hear it; it would have been perfectly suited to the beautiful and melancholy songs he played. never have i heard an audience so large remain so quiet and riveted in place for one person with one instrument. he must have played for a half hour or so, but it seemed like it was over in minutes, it was so good. if you haven't actually heard him, he's definitely someone to check out further.

the title of this post is a paraphrase of the r.e.m. song sufjan covers.

home spun desperation

2005-10-06T21:54:00.000-04:00

interpol are one of those bands that elicit strong reactions in people, which is a good thing. either called the most exciting new messiahs of the new york music scene or annoyingly retro and derivative, everyone has an opinion. mine may be slightly tainted, although i always try for as much objectivity as possible. after missing them at brownies (r.i.p.) in 2001, i emailed them to get on their mailing list after hearing an as-yet-unreleased track online (then called "mascara"). imagine my surprise when i got an email back from carlos d, identifying himself as the dj i knew personally from goth clubs like alchemy and his wnyu radio show. i finally caught them when they were bottom of the bill on a weekday localbandsnyc show at bowery, playing to a mostly-empty room. i couldn't understand why this band had such a bad slot and turnout, since i thought their EPs were great. the next time i saw them was at mercury lounge, when the show sold out just after i got inside. from then on, it's been a steady rise of venue sizes and attention. my reaction to this is pride and satisfaction, since there have been a bunch of nyc bands who've gotten a lot of hype and several in my opinion haven't been nearly as good. i'm actually a fan of the bands interpol is accused of ripping off, and the resemblance doesn't bother me. this is saying a lot, because usually it drives me up the wall. but barring a few early tracks and vocal production choices, i believe the band has, after two albums, forged their own recognizable sound from the ashes of the old. even to the point where i recognize their own influence in newer bands.

interpol are the only band i can think of where the most famous member is the bassist (when he's not also the lead singer). carlos is easily the most recognizable one (due to his personal style, plus being the tallest and most mobile onstage) and simultaneously the most often singled out for adulation or ridicule. all of this surface noise is a shame, because in the process he's being very underrated as a bass player. in fact, hardly anyone talks about how inventive all of them are with their carefully interlocking parts, instead choosing to focus on 80's references and comments on their wardrobe or how "dark" their songs are (please).

judging from the final show of their tour sunday at webster hall, the hysteria surrounding interpol is still mounting. from where i stood, the staircase from backstage could be seen, and just the appearance of their legs caused cheers and screams. i also noticed what appeared to be someone videotaping their stage approach, as well as two professional cameras on tripods at the foot of the stage. i smell a live DVD with extras on the way.

this show was much better than the last time i saw them, at the hammerstein ballroom near the start of their tour. they'd clearly gotten the kinks out. there were no new songs, like at the end of their last tour before antics, but they did something i've never heard before; it could almost be called jamming. there were at least three songs that had extended intros or outros. you could almost hear them thinking "twelve inch remix!" these sections were generally minimalist, lots of drum variations with scratching and noise interplay, vaguely reminiscent of the hardest sections of dancier gang of four or early cabaret voltaire. i hope this hard-edged improvising is something they'll continue to develop. besides seeming like one of the few times they all had fun onstage at this show, maybe it'll get them a little more respect.

the title of this post comes from interpol's song hands away.

and then i see a darkness

2005-10-05T23:17:00.000-04:00

the brooklyn lyceum is a wonderful space. i'd only been there once before, to see an independent film. at that time, i didn't immediately take note of the lovely mix of gutted-out former opulence and decayed edges. but when i arrived there for the calla record release party, there was plenty of time to wander around observing and capturing those little details i'm so fond of. some of the results are on ocular spectra.

this was a bit of an odd event, since the venue doesn't do music shows all the time and calla were the only band playing. the main space is cavernous and dark, in many ways a perfect environment for calla. they must have known this, because they played with very low lights for most of the show. an antique rug and the line of speakers was all that differentiated the stage area from the audience.

the first obvious change since the last time i saw them was that they were back to being a trio. this made me happy right away. three instruments plus vocals and minimal samples is a good palette for them, espeically live. their former second guitarist switched to bass, which allowed the singer's guitar to be heard at optimum levels instead of fighting with another similar sound. as a result it had the best tone i've heard him get so far.

the new songs are definitely the most straightforward rock-oriented they've done (other than their cover of can's "mother sky"), but still remain unmistakeably calla in their construction and whispery vocals. a few songs (such as "it dawned on me") jumped out over others, but overall they maintained a heavy but midtempo dark rock atmosphere. at times a 60's pop sensibility peeked through the stormclouds in little vocal melody or harmony lines. they stuck exclusively to songs from their new album until the end, when they played the epic creepy funk-rock of "televised" and slow-burn mini-classic "fear of fireflies". the top picture was taken during the former, in a rare period of illumination made all the more blinding from our eyes being used to the mood lighting of the rest of the set. the band came back for a two-song encore before disappearing back into the darkness.

the title of this post comes from a song by will oldham.

forward motion, frame me in

2005-10-04T18:20:00.000-04:00

i've made an effort over the past year to update ocular spectra fairly regularly. the goal has been one picture per weekday, uploaded all at once for the week. some of the images have been turned into flyers like this one. the above image is one of this week's additions, taken last week at the brooklyn lyceum. this is the sort of thing i notice when most everyone else at shows is chatting, which is about the only time i have to shoot anymore.

i was inspired to start putting images online after i discovered photoblogs like rion.nu and whateverland's through gothamist. then i think josh tipped me off to the nyc photobloggers 2 event last year, and i made the disparate images i'd been snapping into a regular concern. i went to a photobloggers meetup and caught photobloggers 4 in june. the people i've met have been very nice, and several of them are linked from the site. i tend to just link to sites that have a vaguely similar aesthetic, like satan's laundromat's decaying buildings or overshadowed's dark sci-fi cityscapes.

as alluded to above, time has been getting short lately, so the site may not be updated as often in the future. although i'm not calling it quits, at this point i'm content to let it stand mostly as is. i think there's a clear style going on, something that might almost be called a "body of work." i'll be judging additions more harshly and may even be removing photos i'm not so fond of. there's no point in repeating myself or displaying substandard work. the site has always hovered between photoblog and gallery, just as my intent has been somewhat more than snapshots but less than a professional concern. as stated on the site, i save high resolution unmarked versions of all the images, in case anyone is interested in obtaining permission to use them (or in commissioning similar work for a project). contact info is also on the website.

the title of this post is from a lyric by adult, whose new CD i was listening to while writing this. their singer nicola kuperus is also a photographer whose darkly humorous work i love. i also wrote about their nyc show.

last trick

2005-10-01T03:18:00.000-04:00

i would never have thought a bill so left-field could pack a place out so much on a wednesday night. but when i got to northsix at the suggested time of 8:30 pm a few nights ago, i was told by shannon of stars like fleas that i was on the "to pay" list, since the show was "way sold out."

i almost didn't go to the show. i've seen SLF a lot, and written about them here several times. i didn't expect them to play again so soon, but they got the opportunity to open for deerhoof. i'd heard of the latter band by their association with labelmates xiu xiu (who i love). i tried to like them, but the mp3s i heard just weren't my kind of noise. flying, who supported SLF the last time i saw them at tonic, was also playing, along with a band i'd never heard of called lavender diamond.

although i liked SLF's last show, it was a very dissonant and noisy affair compared to their usual balance of tunes and improvisation. on this night they swayed in the opposite direction, sticking to pretty songs and more structured and harmonious improv interludes. i think the balance was better, although shannon later told me the lack of ambient sound reflection onstage was not very conducive to interplay between the musicians. as a result, they tended to link up in clusters, playing off the closest people they could hear. one of the best musicians for this is the slide guitarist, gerald menke. i had the pleasure of improvising with him at an SLF recording session, and hopefully it will turn up in some form on their next album. he listens very attentively and adds the perfect bits at the right times. overall the set was great, although there was a pervasive sense of sadness i've never felt in their previous shows. i'm glad this was their last live impression before going into more studio hibernation.

lavender diamond had a fun audience rapport, but musically they were a bit too straight-up for my tastes, although i like the recorded version of "you broke my heart" on their website. flying brought their quirky vibe, although sadly quite a bit of the crowd rudely talked through their set. i preferred their show at tonic, but they did well nonetheless, winning over a decent portion of the packed house. they sold their CDRs with handmade covers and were very nice people. by the time they finished it was pretty late, so i wasn't up for giving deerhoof a shot, though to be fair i've heard they're better live than on record. another time perhaps.

the title of this post comes from a song by flying.

blood on the floor

2005-09-29T18:31:00.000-04:00

as much as i find the above image funny (found by robin), it shouldn't be taken as disrespect towards throbbing gristle, at least not from me. they are one of the most important bands ever. that may seem like hyperbole, but it's true. love them, hate them, or anything in between, without them starting their "information war" on their DIY label industrial records, that genre of music would never have existed, or at least not in that form or with that name. somewhat confusingly for most people, it's been co-opted since the late 80's by a form of dance or rock music that was influenced by the early pioneers. i love those bands too, but to me "industrial" will always mean grating noise, the sound of factories, bleak imagery, intelligent lyrics, and confrontational attitude. all these things have influenced not only two generations of bands operating under that musical style, but also more poppy artists such as depeche mode and even suzanne vega, not to mention the sound design in movies and television shows.

i bring this up because TG have recently reactivated in the past few years, after disbanding in 1981. after an abortive festival event that turned into a one-off live recording session, the original 4 members have been working on mixing and making additional contributions to the new album. i've gotten to hear some of genesis p-orridge's work on it (through his co-conspirator bryin dall), and it sounds amazing. it should be out before the end of the year, barring a fatal teletubbies attack.

the title of this post comes from a TG song.

we found the light

2005-09-17T22:30:00.000-04:00

initially, i ignored the arcade fire. like shannon from stars like fleas commented to me, i thought at first they were another overly-hyped indie dance-rock act with pretensions of being the next interpol. of course, i based this assumption on the snippets of accolades, ubiquitous ads and name-dropping that have been unavoidable since about this time last year. i finally decided to give them a try upon seeing funeral in a listening station in tower records. i wasn't impressed right away. what i heard sounded very simplistic, following all the hallmarks of indie rock tradition. however, two things stuck in my memory: the quaint production/instrumentation (somehow reminiscent to me of magical mystery tour) and the frayed edges of win butler's voice.

after repeatedly listening to clips online, i realized i needed to give them more of a chance and got the CD. by the time i realized how great it was, they'd already come and gone from nyc twice. i thought i had no chance of seeing them until after a new album. fortunately, CMJ invited them back for a benefit for central park summerstage. my fellow convert shannon would have been there too if he wasn't playing in the silent league at another CMJ showcase the same night.

opening act belle orchestre sounded wonderful online, so i was even happier to get there early to make sure i had a good spot. i instantly recognized the upright bass player, since he's also in the arcade fire (and more than one person has mentioned his resemblance to a certain recent movie character). the violinist is also an AF touring member, but here she was clearly on of the main forces, at least onstage. she commanded the stage with both her playing and her body language. there were also a drummer, a trumpeter/keyboardist, and a french horn player. their set was brief but very pleasant. it had more passion than a lot of similar instrumental music.

next up were sound team, who came up from austin texas at the request of AF for this show. their name was apropos, as six young men lined up with their instruments as if on an assembly line. the singer reminded me a bit of hamilton leithauser from the walkmen, and when he pushed his voice he gained a weathered, joe cocker-like gurgle-and-rasp. since he switched between guitar and a distorted electric piano, at times there were 3 keyboards pumping away. i definitely appreciated the moog's sounds bringing some distinctiveness to the music. they took awhile to get both their energy and their sound mix going, but once they did they were fairly enjoyable, especially the very solid bassist. the crowd was thick by this time, and ripe with anticipation.

the arcade fire took the stage dressed, appropriately, for an early 20th-century funeral, which must have been horribly uncomfortable in the humidity. looking like a tattered chamber orchestra (there were 8 of them onstage, sometimes also joined by the french horn player from bell orchestre), they began at a stately pace with the album opener "tunnels". it quickly increased in tempo and excitement. whether they had microphones or not, every member was singing nearly every word of the song with all their heart, as was the crowd. from beginning to end, the show was like a giant celebration of spirit, both band and and audience giving as much as they possibly could and more. the unfamiliar songs came from their self-titled EP (mental note: pick up the recently remastered reissue). even songs i didn't care for as much were given new life in this setting. all the members switched instruments several times, which must have been a soundman's nightmare.

at any given moment, various members added percussion or roamed around the stage screaming key lyrics at the audience. there were several little improvised mini-tableaus enacted by various duos, as they would attack each other playfully with microphone cables, flags, lengths of tape, or their bare hands. rather than coming off as unprofessional it seemed like we were witnessing some kind of guerilla theater group who also happened to be musicians. they can't be called the tightest band in the world, but nothing registered as sloppy or mistaken, only an incredible outpouring of emotion and relentless energy.

towards the end they played three incredible renditions that, taken separately, could each have served as the climactic song to the night. the first was the fragile "in the backseat," one of the few songs that featured butler's wife regine chassagne on lead vocals. if she was impressive playing drums on the first song (as well as her backup yelping, piano and accordion playing), here she outdid herself. while she was playfully entertaining on "haiti", all coquettish looks and mock-mime motions, on this ballad she laid herself bare, singing and tearing at the air as though she was ripping her soul out at the memory of the song's inspiration. the ending was drawn out by every member repeatedly singing the gorgeous rising violin melody. the crowd was so quiet you could even hear the ones without microphones.

a buildup of dissonant noises coalesced into their popular single "power out," which was drawn out longer and felt like the end of the show. however, after the song stopped, it seemed like it was coming back for an extended jam session. instead the beat slowed down and somehow morphed into another favorite, "rebellion (lies)".

at this point i was more than satisfied. we were all hot and sweaty, both physically and emotionally drained (yet strangely invigorated). i couldn't think of a song i needed to hear that i hadn't yet, and i was ready to go home. if i hadn't been dead center near the front of a huge crowd i might have tried to leave. but i knew they had to come back. encores at big shows have become so de rigeur as to be predictable and boring. fortunately they didn't make us wait long to come back (something i always appreciate). i was hoping whatever they did wouldn't be some obscurity for longtime fans only that would pale before the preceding three songs.

the band barely had time to strap their instruments back on before butler said "this is a david bowie song." i cheered along appreciatively until my jaw dropped a few seconds later when bowie himself walked onstage. the crowd roared as they immediately launched into bowie's "queen bitch," one of my favorite songs on the somewhat under-appreciated (in relation to ziggy stardust) hunky dory album. the band basically playing backup to bowie. he looked and sounded great, although it seemed as though he was dressed as 'the thin white duke goes on caribbean holiday'. as if that wasn't enough, bowie then grabbed an acoustic guitar and led the band through their own "wake up," singing lead vocals on the first few verses. it was a perfect fit, since the song had always struck me as some kind of lost bowie tune penned for mott the hoople spliced with an earthier remake of "modern love". it was as though it was simply being reclaimed by its spiritual father.

with only three and a half months left, i will probably not see a better show this year. but i can hope.

the title of this post comes from "power out."

sonic decimator

2005-09-12T13:36:00.000-04:00

ever since a bob mould show years ago left me unable to hear myself say the letter "s" right after i left the venue (this condition went away by the next morning), i've been careful about my ears at live concerts. very often the volume is too loud and the high end is like razor blades in your ears to make up for poor equipment or increasingly deafened musicians and/or audiences. thus my first act upon entering a club is always to grab a napkin to stuff in my ears. it may not offer the best protection, but it certainly takes the edge off. sometimes it takes a few tries of getting the right amount to avoid blocking out too much. but there was one show i had to see which had me proactively stuffing in as much as i could possibly fit.

i'd always wanted to see merzbow. referred to as "the godzilla of noise," masami akita has over 330 releases (and i thought jandek was prolific), most of them probably more terrifying than any sound the average person would ever wish to hear. of all the artists working in the noise field, merzbow has emerged as the undisputed king (although he owes a great debt to throbbing gristle, who broke up in 1981 but have recently reactivated sporadically). how ironic then, that his nyc date was taking place on the same night as the jandek show. hoping against hope, i bought tickets to both shows. fortunately, jandek went on first, giving me plenty of time to get over to the knitting factory and meet up with ben, bianca, and josh.

i arrived just in time to catch the end of double leopards' set. i have to say i enjoyed what little i heard. not many people can take what seems to be a single note and make it interesting. 4 people hunched over various analog instruments, tweaking, strumming, and feedbacking away in a mesmerizing multi-layered drone. after that, jim o'rourke came on with a fellow noisescape compatriot. i'd been interested to check him out after hearing of him for years as producer, remixer, and now member of sonic youth. he started out interestingly enough, but quickly built to a noise level i realized i wasn't yet prepared to take. i took a long break for dinner. having just gone through a kind of endurance test at the jandek show (waiting in line for 90+ minutes, followed by a 90+ minute show of 4-5 very slow and similar avant-jazz songs in no particular key), i thought that aspect of my night was over. i couldn't have been more wrong.

akita took the stage armed with only two mac laptops and a tiny mixer. normally this kind of setup can put me off a bit, but it's not about visuals at all with this kind of music. it is 100% about sound. you close your eyes and let yourself go, allowing yourself to be taken to whatever places the music leads you. however, the places merzbow's music leads you may not be very pleasant. when i refer to his work as music, i'm doing it in the broadest possible sense, which is to say that music can be defined as organized sound. no matter how chaotic it may seem, there is a mind at work behind what comes out of the speakers when he plays. a lot of noise artists give in entirely to the chaos, letting the instruments make the sound for them, barely affecting the output except hitting switches or screaming over the top in a very rock-n-roll fashion. merzbow takes the opposite route. he calmly positioned himself between the two laptops and went to work as though he was designing a blueprint, clearly taking care and attention to detail as he stared placidly into one monitor and then the other.

the resulting sound couldn't have been more in contrast with his demeanor. it began with a low (and i mean low) frequency drone that began to ripple and swell, moving our guts around as surely as the club's subwoofers were being punished in ways they weren't used to. suddenly a harsh mid-high blast of white noise announced the onset of his main assault. i kept my head down and eyes shut, feeling the world change around me. eventually, as the sounds got denser and more high-end, i decided to sit on the floor. by the end of the show, several others had joined me there or simply left, unable to take it. but i was determined to stick it out and see where it went. rather than creating a series of similar noise pieces, merzbow played non-stop, adding layers and differentiating them from each other with subtle processing touches and stereo imaging. it continually morphed into different kinds of hellish sound. at one point, the most musical and human of the night, he looped a sound whose source sounded like a blood-curdling scream, which changed in pitch enough to become a very disturbing melody. that's about the closest merzbow gets to pop music. at other times, he dropped depth-charge bass pulses reminiscent of some impossibly malignant strain of acid house. at that point it seemed to be building to a climax, but several sounds dropped out only to provide a lower plateau to start from to climb to even greater heights. by this point i was swaying to the undulating rhythms that only prolonged listening to this kind of thing can reveal. it's a good thing i'm not into artificially altered states, because i was already taken to levels akin to being on lsd. a dose of the real stuff while listening to this could cause permanent brain damage. i had achieved a level of bizarre calm, although i was transported to an alternate universe. at this point you realize how literally physical merzbow's music is; you feel it more than hear it, since the volume and frequencies seem to affect changes in your body. my ears were relatively protected, but it was entering directly through my skull and causing shuddering sensations not altogether unpleasant. then, with a dive down in resonance, merzbow abruptly cut the sound.

the silence was glorious and rejuvenating, although punctured immediately by howls and applause of the faithful (or perhaps insane) who'd stayed through the entire 90+ minutes. i picked myself up and almost literally staggered out into the cool night, happy i had just experienced the most intense sounds in my life. the only thing that could compare would be an equal time spent standing right next to a running jet plane exhaust. it's a toss-up whether someone willing to do that is more of a glutton for punishment than a merzbow show attendee, but i'm sure the latter is far more rewarding.

the title of this post comes from a plugin that merzbow may or may not use.

the humility of pain

2005-09-08T23:54:00.000-04:00

by the time i arrived at anthology film archives at 6:15 pm this past tuesday, a line stretched around the corner. i spotted jon from aarktica further up from me. although we were advised to arrive at 6:30, doors didn't open until over an hour later. when we were finally let in, the first performer at the top of the bill was simply listed as "corwood industries." of course, almost everyone there knew this was the record label of jandek, the mystery man who'd never played a concert before last fall, and the few since then have been mostly in europe. i've been looking forward to this show since before my last entry about it.

to my surprise, the auditorium that held the concert was the same in which i'd seen art-house films before, including one of my favorites, ulysses' gaze. i'd assumed there was a larger hall for special events such as this. in fact it seemed as though the show was slightly oversold, with several people lining the edges of the room. i spotted three professional cameras and a mic high on a stand. stark yellow-white footlights cast tall shadows on the blank white screen, with deep blue ligthing around the edges.

barry esson, the man who's booked all of corwood's shows so far, repeated the advance request of no recording or photography from the audience (hence my intentionally blurry picture above of the line outside the venue). after a brief round of applause for him, he left the stage, the house lights went down, and the room went completely silent. the level of anticipation in most of the people present must have been excruciatingly high; you could feel it in the air. after another minute that seemed to stretch out longer, a door opened at the end of a dark corridor to the right of the stage, and shadowy figures came forward. i later found out from the jandek list who they were. the drummer was chris corsano who plays with six organs of admittance, among others. the guitarist was loren mazzacane-connors, who i'd heard of but had never heard or seen. the upright bassist was matt heyner, who's played in no-neck blues band. tentative applause broke out as they got behind their instruments, which then increased when several moments later a fourth figure appeared. looking exactly like recent live photos, the man known as jandek (it's fairly well known that it's not his real name) radiates an oddness, as though he's somewhat uncomfortable in his body. he is painfuly thin, his black dress clothes seeming to make up the bulk of his frame. a black fedora hid his eyes when he looked down, and when he looked up they were just as ghostly as the rest of his pale, gaunt face.

he sat down behind two gleaming silver korg tritons, an incongruously modern instrument for someone so staunchly lo-fi and basic in his arrangements. however, i was glad, since i'm not fond of the "atonal electric blues" style he sometimes plays (and which reportedly made up the brooklyn shows the next day). as it turns out, he stuck to the same sounds on each keyboard, two slightly different organ patches, one sharper and more dissonant than the other. after the crowd stopped clapping and had once again gone completely silent, he paused and launched into a set that could be called a sort of song suite. that is to say, the music and lyrics were very similar in all 4 or 5 long pieces played. they all began with a midtempo organ figure, followed by walking, murky bass played with the left hand. slowly the other players filled in the spaces, doing their best to distinguish the pieces from each other with their improvisations. his singing style on this night was also closer to the kind i prefer, higher in pitch and relatively more melodic. at many times it seemed vaguely related to the sprechgesang style favored by david tibet of current 93 (although not as melodic, manic, or apocalyptic).

i thought the resulting atmosphere created was incredible. to my surprise, the small sound system was clear and sounded full-range (although i'm sure the medium volume, sparse instrumentation, and dead silence of the audience helped). the spooky music was somehow both like being in a gothic church and a small jazz club. i was particularly impressed with heyner, who would play a different style and string with each hand. corsaro was wonderfully inventive and understated (anyone expecting the unschooled bashing of jandek albums like interstellar discussion may have been disappointed). i wanted to remove the auto-wah from connors' effects chain as it did no favors to the music. however, when he added minimal, tasteful bent notes and tone clusters, he was fairly effective.

in a sense the show was like a microcosm of jandek's entire oeuvre. on the one hand, one can admire the artist's willingness to share with the public what seems to be everything he's ever written, with such a singular aesthetic. on the other hand, there is a lot of sameness, and even to someone like me who's used to "difficult music," it seems like he could use an editor. i'd like to take a recording of the night and chop the best bits together into one long perfectly distilled piece.

there were many moments of weird, dark beauty in the music and lyrics. there was also room for brief flashes of humor, however subtle. in one song/story (when he gave up all pretense of singing and simply spoke), as a child he complains there's nothing to do; his mother tells him to go outside because there's always something to do. "so i went outside," he soberly intoned, "and did things". i had to keep from laughing at that, as well as his lyrical announcement, "i've been depressed." yeah, for most of the past 28 years it seems. regardless of his frequent references to depression, emptiness, nothingness, and a lack of a reason to go on, he did actually break into a broad smile for a few seconds at the end of one of the pieces, sharing it only with the other musicians. other than that, he didn't stray much from a glazed expression or make a lot of eye contact with anyone. he never seemed to really look at the audience, although his eyes were almost impossible to see from where i was. at the end of the set, he stood up stiffly, arms at his sides as if at attention, not moving a muscle, and faced the rest of the band as the auditorium exploded into applause. he turned without any acknowledgement of us and they all left the stage. and one of the stranger and more charged concerts i've ever been to was over, just like that.

the title of this post comes from a recent jandek album.

high bias

2005-09-06T12:00:00.000-04:00

in a recent discussion on the idm list, a certain publication was criticized for its bias towards a certain type of indie rock and against electronic music.

of course, any publication has a right to some kind of editorial focus. however, in several cases, this focus is not clearly stated, and can only be inferred through repeated perusals of their content. furthermore, as some publications (whether online or printed) get bigger, that unstated focus gets blurred, as they may praise both kraftwerk and the white stripes. however, this type of thing is the exception rather than the rule. and as far as kraftwerk goes, they are a hip band to namecheck right now.

this starts to create the impression that the publication is basically about music (or even say, independent music) rather than simply indie rock, while they still clearly give more weight and column space to stories about the brand of indie rock that had its roots in the mid-80's and rose to some kind of prominence and cohesion by the 90's. let me make it clear i'm not knocking this music or the people who love it. i love the pixies and many of their descendants (as well as the descendents), but there are other things out there.

on the other hand, electronic-based publications have their share of bias as well. i often see the same shutout that rock-focused zines show for the darker side of electronic music, such as industrial, dark ambient, power electronics, and breakcore, with a few exceptions. merzbow and kid 606 come to mind, but again, these are artists at the top of their fields.

in fact, it can be argued that simply by having the focus of one genre (electronic OR rock OR experimental OR hip-hop), any number of publications automatically turn their "focus" into bias. because good music is not often made in a complete vacuum, artists may be influenced by sounds outside their genre (or subgenre in some cases). those same artists can be unjustly lauded or ignored for their efforts. either the narrowminded publication dislikes the"impure" influences shown by the mostly status-quo music, or the artist is raised to the level of genius simply by looking outside their own backyard.

the hyper-fragmentation of music in the media has made it somewhat easier for artists fitting into one small niche to get some level of attention. each style has its own labels, club circuits, publications, charts, internet mailing lists and message boards; therefore niche artists have the chance to rise to the top of a very small game. at that point, they may have the opportunity to break out of the ghetto of their own making; they can be hyped as the best of their kind. that is, unless the tastemakers at larger, broader-focused publications have predetermined that said kind is not worthy of coverage. or worse, worthy of ridicule, simply because of guilt by association with a genre they don't understand.

this is both the blessing and the curse of genre- and scene-based music. there are two tiers of acceptance to fight through. before even getting to the top of a genre, you have to be clearly in one. not only does this hinder artists who don't think in terms of genre when they create, it also stifles creative growth in artists once they have landed in a genre. the prejudice against certain types of music is so strong that some artists avoid any association with their past once making the transition from one style to another. the examples that come to my mind are ministry (who went from new wave dance to thrash metal), and mikael stavostrand (who was in darkambient/industrial acts archon satani and innana before putting out minimal glitchy tech-house under his own name).

even this is simply another kind of trap: trading one narrow style for another. the music of these artists could be that much richer if they let their past or other outside influences in. but should they stray from a hermetically-sealed musical environment, they risk a loss of support from the genre-based publications essential in helping build an audience raised on this kind of fragmentation. thus they're left to deal with more mainstream, supposedly less-biased publications, who are just as used to the neat little genre boxes created for them, and give more time to more established artists, or those already with a buzz. and some potentially great music gets passed over or shot down.

i dont think genres are the culprit here - it's helpful to have signposts on the musical map to point listeners in a general direction. but after each musical explosion, when everything becomes a free-for all in a short period of time, the music world tends to readjust and recompartmentalize. the gates are closed off between cultures and influences. and we wait for the next explosion to set everything free again. i don't think music makers, listeners, or publications need to wait; we need to make it happen.

the title of this post is a kind of audio tape.

the revolution will begin next semester

2005-09-02T10:28:00.000-04:00

to here knows when has gotten a little bit better each time i've gone. it's also become free, which is a great thing to do for a wednesday night.

i was mainly coming down to see my best fiend, who i liked a lot at tonic a little while back, but i was happy i made it in time to catch the last few songs by tungsten74. billy from other passengers turned up, and my comment to him was "big black meets pink floyd". in retrospect, i'm not sure how accurate that remark was, but they are a hard, angular, noisy rock trio like steve albini's former band (although using a live drummer instead of a drum machine). on the other hand, they play epic and sometimes slow-paced instrumentals that favor spaciness as much as ear-bleeding, and played to a film of surreal cartoons (no flying pigs, but close) and film noir clips. none of the band faced the audience, as though the musicians were unimportant, merely conduits being inspired to create a semi-improvised soundtrack to the visuals. their energy carried off this unusual setup as they were equally pummeling and trippy.

after they finished, i finally met autumn thieves, who put on this night at scenic as loveless music group (as well as several others coming up soon, including one at cake shop). they take turns spinning music that fits the loose theme of the evening, although not as much my bloody valentine as you'd think - curve and ulrich schnauss were in the mix along with many others. one track that stood out was by bleep, who will be playing lmg's upcoming catch the breeze event at rothko.

my best fiend added two more namechecks to my list from last time: jane's addiction and secret machines. but they also had simple synth arpeggios like krautrock crashing into postpunk, as well as electronic crackles that would be at home on kid 606 or autechre's glitchier releases. when a band can evoke such diverse comparisons, you know they're very far down the road towards becoming their own unique thing. the guitarist and keyboardist switched places several times, and each handled both instruments with equal ability and vigor. the bassist's rig gave him increasing problems, but he played it off well, and the speaker-ripping pops were right at home in the joyfully haywire arrangement of their final song.

afterwards, i complimented the drummer on his ability and willingness to play with a drum machine. he seemed very enthusiastic about it, but downplayed his impressive skills. i then bumped into daniel lee, better known as the invisible kid, while handing him an earlier version of this flyer. his song "full speed nowhere" has to be heard to be believed. i also met the singer of ifwhen, who were playing later that night, but he told me he was fighting a similar sickness to mine, which reminded me i should be leaving. but i left there with a great feeling of a growing community of bands doing something a bit different in this town.

the title of this post comes from a song by tungsten 74.

signal to noise

2005-09-01T18:26:00.000-04:00

the bunker has become one of the most consistently enjoyable nights i've been to since angel's own late, lamented dogs blood rising. ok, so i partially found dbr enjoyable because ben and i were often spinning, but the other elements were good too.

when halcyon was on smith street i used to go to the experimental/chillout night undercity. the early part of the night at the bunker is sometimes a bit like that, depending on the dj. undercity alumnus spinoza hosts and spins, and a rotating set of guests man the decks (and/or laptops) the rest of the time. if you're thinking it's just another boring "techno" night, think again. danceable electronic music is the focus, but all kinds of crazy things get thrown in the mix. one great night had small change hitting us with stereo mc's "connected" and suicidal tendencies' "institutionalized".

every few months the bunker takes over both floors of tonic starting the upstairs acts at midnight. i figured i'd go since the last time i went was so good. keeping the tradititon of unpredictability this past friday was charles peirce, better known as end. i've been into his music since i picked up his debut CD on hymen a few years ago. i met him at remote lounge last summer after a mad ep show, while handing out flyers for one of my own. turns out he's a really nice guy, although the music he's done since his debut gives lie to his reserved personality. twangy surf guitars, maddeningly singsong melodies, and breakcore beats dominate his sound these days. i'm partial to the tongue-in-cheek, quasi-"easy listening" style of his recent percussions disc on tigerbeat6, but live he just goes insane. musically, anyway. physically, he spends most of his time in intense brow-furrowed concentration. this night i unfortunately arrived late, but caught the last part of his set which ended with some kind of manic children's tune. he was dressed as a long lost member of either kraftwerk or tubeway army. the place was packed and rightfully appreciative of his skills.

i was also downstairs for smartypants & local fields and david last, who pumped up the floor to ben and bianca's delight. in fact it was pumped up so much it sounded as if one of the speakers was starting to go, but it just added a raw edge to the already bleeping and farting synth workouts. giles hendrix did his usual great visuals, augmented by the presence of share mastermind ilan katin and others.

meanwhile upstairs, safety scissors pushed a slightly raw, updated retro-electro vibe. ben and i agreed that his instrumentals worked much better. dj olive seemed to take us all over the map with his set, which i enjoyed. i never liked we very much, but as a dj, he's great. monolake came on pretty late, unfortunately announcing something about a short set, which i was told had to do with the planned overseas live collaboration with deadbeat not working out due to internet connection problems. his music was definitely the highlight of the evening, several levels of musically-created ecstasy being reached by new sounds and themes at the onset of a new measure. the show exceeded my expectations based on the two CDs i have. i guess ableton live (which i assume he was using, since he designed it) really is all that.

the title of this post comes from an album by monolake's robert henke.

the primal white jelly

2005-08-25T02:45:00.000-04:00

even missing two of the acts at tonic last friday, it was another great night of music hovering between the borders of quirky experimentalism and enjoyable melodies.

i arrived just in time to hear andy ortmann performing solo under the name panicsville. i say "hear" because there were no stage lights during his set, only a faint light from the bar in the rear. resembling a scientist toiling away patiently in the middle of the last century, ortmann calmly tweaked several small effect pedals and a mini synthesizer. this minimal setup was augmented by a tube running to his mouth which enabled him to make his bizarre textures literally speak. he was able to create a variety of sounds, from warbly slow-motion ambient minimalism to speaker-shredding noise. it was the best such show i've seen since the one i saw of colin potter of nurse with wound at free103point9. in fact i noted a few similarities with nww, although ortmann is a bit darker/noisier and indulges in more "modern" sounds than their leader steven stapleton. i was one of several people immediately at the stage once he finished his all-too-short set, buying his very good solo CD.

next up was the band flying, who constantly exuded a refreshing naivete in their music and approach. their instrumentation and delivery suggests people who were never told or cared to learn the usual or "proper" ways of doing things. it's almost as if they've heard next to no music at all, but walked into an old warehouse full of instruments and toys and decided to pick up whatever struck their fancy, following some primal call to make music. this resulted in a lineup of a pianist/vocalist, an electric guitarist/vocalist, a drummer, and a singer who also played drums and various toys and bells. their songs all had the kind of structure that only comes from people shutting out the outside world while playing purely for fun, with stops/starts and other unusual dynamics thrown in to alleviate boredom that might arise from the lack of complexity in their chord changes. their hesitant unison and simple harmony singing bore a resemblance in tone to a number of indie rock wallfower types, but no one specific came to mind. i have to say this is one of the most charming and original-sounding bands i've heard in a long time.

stars like fleas pulled out all the stops with their show. this was the largest ensemble i've seen them with yet. several of the musicians they've recorded with for their next album were onstage, including a saxophonist, a harpist, and a pedal steel player, all of whom are excellent. another great addition was bandleader shannon's ukeolin, which he alternated playing between bowing and whacking it while adding computer effects. they started off with an unstructured piece that resembled a medieval plainsong, quickly morphing into barely-controlled chaos. this was followed by another similar piece which slowly became their beautiful new song "cicada". they followed this pattern of instrumental improvisations alternating with somewhat more structured vocal songs for the rest of the set.

the result was definitely a more noisy, avant-garde representation of their abilities. the crowd applauded with vigor when the band paused between suites of 3 or 4 songs that bled into one another. i could have done with a little more melody and less chaos, but that's partially because my tastes in that style run towards the more noisy and electronic rather than abstract modern classical tone clusters. i definitely enjoyed it nonetheless; when you're dealing with improvisation, part of the excitement and danger is that moments that don't work rub up against those that do. stars like fleas, in any incarnation, have far more of the latter than the former.

the title of this post comes from a track on andy ortmann's CD.

a sound i never heard

2005-08-23T10:18:00.000-04:00

sometimes coincidences are just odd enough to support the idea of the collective unconscious. just last week, i bought the moog documentary on dvd as part of a larger order. on friday, by chance i picked up a used moogerfooger murf pedal (the first thing i've ever owned made by moog). sunday i found myself at beacon's closet contemplating a moog t-shirt (i didn't get it). as it turns out, that afternoon robert moog died.

moog was always the name you looked up to (literally, on the backs of keyboards onstage) if you were a keyboardist growing up anytime after the 70s. i could never afford any of them myself, or else they were out of favor and hard to find for years. now the originals are part of the "vintage synth" boom and more expensive than ever on the secondhand market. these were inventions that shaped the world by imagining the sound of the future and then building it. only leo fender can claim as important a place in musical history of the twentieth century.

read the new york times obituary, the synthmuseum entry, and a 1997 interview.

the title of this post comes from a song by golden earring.

march of the wooden soldiers

2005-08-22T01:17:00.000-04:00

this shot was taken in a shop window after leaving abigail's masters photography show on my way to see the other passengers / my best fiend / saxon shore show at tonic. i'm not sure what sort of toys these are exactly, but i find them both amusing and unsettling.

the title of this post comes from a 1934 film.

softer than shadow and quicker than flies

2005-08-18T12:57:00.000-04:00

above is one of the new pictures added to ocular spectra this week. this was taken at a recent 14th street loft party i didn't bother blogging about because the headliners, kill memory crash, had their gear stolen, so we left. however, the night wasn't a total loss since i got some good shots like this one. i also took one i used for this flyer.

other ocular spectra photos were originally going to be used by ben and angel for the debut cd by their new musical project averauschen. however they decided to go for cover made of more textural materials, which is being worked on by josh. i'm looking forward to seeing how that comes out, as i'm a big fan of weirdly-packaged, limited-edition stuff. however, my photography and design are still available for similar endeavors. hint hint.

the title of this post comes from lullaby by the cure.

words may not come so close

2005-08-13T12:31:00.000-04:00

stars like fleas is a band who deserve more attention than they've been getting. while several avant-folk artists such as the excellent akron/family and devendra banhart have been more widely discussed, stars like fleas have garnered some serious respect by setting themselves apart from the pack. their music draws extensively from jazz and experimental improvisation, yet utilizes and contains electronics that would put off most purists.

the band is a loose collective of ultra-talented musicians centering around composer/arranger/multi-instrumentalist shannon fields and other members, several also in orchestral pop band the silent league. the wild card is singer/lyricist montgomery knott, who also runs the very cool monkeytown series of shows/installations. he reminds me of michael stipe singing in jeff buckley's range with the fractured imagery and emotions of thom yorke. but frankly even these are weak comparisons which fall away when listening to the band play live.

ok, full disclosure time. i have the privilege of being asked to play on the next SLF record. how much i end up on it is entirely up to them and how well what i did fits in with their vision. i won't give away too much of the process, but shannon and i share a love for both the extremely experimental and massively anal-retentive approches of music-making. we met when my band was looking for artists to play a show with us (and the aforementioned a/f) at the tank last year. this also led to our playing a show with keyboardist ryan smith's project a million billion.

if you're in nyc and like music that is delicately violent and out of the ordinary, make it a point to go to tonic this coming friday to see them and the intriguing support acts they've personally lined up.

the title of this post comes from a song on the last SLF album.

strange phenomenon

2005-08-11T23:36:00.000-04:00

i used to see the mysterious, forbidding, immense jandek section at mondo kim's and ponder who this strange, single-named person might be and what the music might sound like. but i have to admit i remained in the dark until the dvd release of the 2003 documentary jandek on corwood. the flashes of brilliance mixed in with the mystique gave me enough of a taste to want more. from what i've heard so far, the man's output itself is erratic, but that's part of its charm. that, coupled with the single-minded, minimalist design and information accompanying his 42 releases (to date) since 1978. regardless of your opinion of his art, he's fascinating because he's not only very prolific, but one of the original "DIY" and "outsider music" artists.

seth tisue's unofficial website has been one of the few resources out there (and still the best) for anyone wanting to know about as many facts as there are about this artist. which frankly, there aren't a lot of apart from the music itself. this is because jandek has spent most of his unique career living up to one of his ironically-titled albums, worthless recluse. until last year, when he played an unannounced live set at the instal 04 festival, his first ever. a few others followed, also in the UK. then a few weeks ago, the unthinkable was announced: jandek was playing 3 dates in the US, including one at anthology film archives in new york city. the choice of venue was just strange enough for it to be true.

then the ticket rumors started to fly. tickets would only be available at the venue. calls confirmed only that tickets would be available around august 8th. then other music (one of the few places in the city that stocks jandek CDs) was said to have tickets. unfortuntately i was unable to get to either place and they reportedly sold out within an hour or so. it's only because of seth's down-to-the-wire posts on the jandek list about a ticketweb sale (rumored to be around 80 tickets) and the fact that i was hitting refresh on a super-fast connection at the time tickets belatedly went on sale that i got some. by several estimations, the online allotment sold out in 5 minutes. longtime fans are definitely not pleased.

i understand everyone's frustration with the ticket situation as well as desiring "normal" practices like having CDs on sale at the venue. in theory (and ordinary practice), i agree. however, in some way, none of this should surprise anyone familiar with jandek. everything sourrounding him is unusual. so much of the mystery is all about lack of information. so jandek playing a place as quirky as anthology film archives is par for the course, as is next to no info on ticket sales and last-minute shifts in availability. with only 200 seats available, it almost makes sense to limit the knowledge necessary to secure tickets for such a rare show. sadly, this hasn't ensured the most hardcore fans getting tickets, only the luckiest and/or most resourceful. i count myself very fortunate to be going on september 6th.

the title of this post comes from a song on the jandek album living in a moon so blue.

wonder why i can hear you

2005-08-04T20:48:00.000-04:00

some types of music are harder to pull off live than others. that's why i have to applaud the loveless music group for starting a semi-monthly night called to here knows when, dedicated to shoegazer, dreampop, and other styles mixing trippy melodies with drones and noise.

newest east village club scenic is the former guernica, and more famously, save the robots. i never went to either of those, but the new owners seem to be doing things well so far. besides the nicely-designed upstairs bar, they put a very decent PA with proper monitors and plenty of outboard gear in the basement for live acts. this is a great thing, and i wish i could personally thank whoever signed that puchase order. even so, bands like the ones tonight fight an uphill battle with sound.

the problem comes from the template established by my bloody valentine and others. the main instrument is a wall of sound that puts the "harm" in "harmonic". this is usually chiefly layers of heavily treated guitars and keyboards. vocals (usually breathy and female) are also awash in effects, partially buried but tweaked and multitracked in the studio to be just the right balance with the supporting instruments behind the gorgeous ruckus happening up front.

autumn thieves seems to be one of a few bands at the forefront of several new local shoegazer outfits. the songs i heard on their myspace page are pleasant and well-recorded. they bring a portion of this to their live show by using the now-ubiquitous mac powerbook for rhythm and keyboard backing. the guitarist slashes up a storm, the bass is basically an instrument for counter-melodies, the lead singer (above) is very stylish and has a pretty voice. but as you can guess from my long lead-in, they face the same sound issues as anyone else mixing a delicate balance of instruments in a live setting. at times the waves of effects and distortion completely overwhelmed everything. i hope to see them again when these issues are resolved, because they seem to have some good ideas.

since one of their members is also the main organizer of LMG, this night is their baby. i'm very happy they put it together. this kind of music has gotten short shrift until recently (the lost in translation soundtrack, cover versions and reissues of slowdive, and general MBV-namechecking). still, they're aware that keeping to a strict definition of shoegazer isn't really an option when putting together a night if you want to stick around.

this is one reason i'm glad they also had aarktica playing. i hadn't seen them since their set at bowery ballroom opening for low. they showed just as much professionalism in this much smaller venue as they did there. as then, 6 musicians weilded various acousitc and electronic instruments (including an ipod for a few beats). they wove their trademark guitar loop-based pieces that expanded into songs and/or drone/texture explorations before collapsing in on themselves. aarktica leader jon derosa is also fond of switching his guitar to alternate tunings mid-set. perhaps because their layered sound comes from everyone playing extremely quietly rather than loudly, their mix was somewhat more successful than the other bands.

this night faces a lot of challenges (the wednesday slot, a relatively unknown club, a kind of music that's not hugely popular at this moment). for the sake of everyone involved as well as the nyc music scene, i hope it keeps going for awhile. it's time people realized there's a lot more going on in this city than indie rock.

the title of this post comes from lyrics to a slowdive song.

and your head is spinning from a loud guitar

2005-07-30T12:17:00.000-04:00

thursday at cake shop featured three angsty rock bands. i'm not a big fan of "rock" these days, but each of these have a slightly different take that sets them apart from the post-strokes wave of copycats.

i'd been curious to check out sonoma aero live since finding them on myspace. i did recognize one song i'd streamed off that site. other than that, for some reason, their songs were a little hard to wrap my head around, which is a good sign. they're a solid rock trio that thankfully doesn't adhere to standard rock chords, basslines, or drum beats. and yet, their approach was very direct and straightforward, hitting the kinds of marks indie rock fans like to hear. just when i felt their set was starting to suffer from a bit too much sameness, they changed up with a slower, more melodic song that showed a wider range.

it's a bit difficult to judge a band purely based on their live set. often the most obvious crowd response is to louder, uptempo songs, and a band sometimes tries to accomodate (such as interpol, who never seem to play any of their slower tracks live). i'm not sure if that's what happened here, but i think sonoma aero shows promise nonetheless.

other passengers, on the other hand, have dynamics to burn. whether within songs or from one to the next, they do the quiet/loud thing in a very original way. there are no obvious verses/choruses (although recognizable sections do repeat). i hesitate to damn them with the label "prog rock," because they are nowhere near as pretentious and navel-gazing as the worst of that genre. however, they are a progression in the line of dark-edged rock bands. on this night they were crammed into a space too small for the five of them, and even had berkoy sitting in their midst doing her projections onto a very makeshift screen made of sheets. regardless of the less-than-perfect conditions, they all made it work.

the small space and sound system also affected a place to bury strangers. there were no effects on the drums, and for some reason very little on the vocals as well. being crammed into the smaller space actually made them play faster and move around more. as a result, their show was more raucous and punk-sounding than the one i saw at knitting factory. it was still good, but i prefer the huge reverb/feedback-drenched wall of sound with dark melodies poking through. this was a warmup show for their opening slot sunday at bowery ballroom, which should be a great place to see them.

the title of this post comes from "the low spark of high heeled boys" by traffic.

we got aceeeeid

2005-07-28T21:00:00.000-04:00

this week new yorkers had two chances to see kid606, wednesday and friday. bianca, ben, and i chose the wednesday option, mostly because bitshifter is playing at the knitting factory old office on friday. apparently, not a lot of other people made this choice.

with doors at northsix advertised as 8:30 and the show scheduled for 9, i thought my showing up unintentionally late at around 10 would mean i'd miss openers eats tapes. turns out they'd only been on for 15 minutes or so. i assume the time was pushed back to allow more people to show up, but the room was sparsely populated, with the bulk of the crowd sittting on the bleachers (which always remind me of nirvana's "smells like teen spirit" video). i did like eats tapes and their simple four-on-the-floor techno with the requisite bleeps and beats in all the right places. i wasn't blown away but they did an admirable job in an unenviable position. most people there for kid606's manic genre-mashing and breakneck beats might be unimpressed by the duo's fairly straightforward analog worship. at one point they did add a screaming vocalist, who clashed with the otherwise great track. but i appreciate them trying something somewhat out of the ordinary.

knifehandchop took over right away with no break. this was a one-man laptop project. while he didn't have anything in the way of a show, he did bring the beats. he impressively shifted microgenres over the course of the set, calculating which one would take things up a notch. i liked it most when the kick drums were electronic, overloaded, and pounding relentlessly, with acid synths weaving their way in and out in short hook-like phrases. the music was damn good and kept a few brave souls moving a lot. he strangely ended with a track that could have been a new instrumental backing for a new depeche mode song (i mean that as a compliment). it was a nice way to end a good set, and wound us down a bit before the expected assault of kid606.

after a break of several minutes, i recognized miguel depedro walking by us towards the stage. he took his place behind his sticker-plastered laptop, external mixer, tb-303, and moogerfooger and did something unexpected: he opened with a total experimental noise glitchfest. after the inside of our craniums were scraped clean, he did something else i would not have predicted. he actually gave us the "acid set" that was promised to us at the rothko show months ago. i loved that show, because it was very high-energy; he started blasting on high and somehow still kept raising it to another level every minute, keeping the speed and number of samples at an incredibly high rate. however, it wasn't realy much acid in my opinion. this show fulfilled that description. he kicked in the 303 and tweaked his moogerfooger to mind-bending effect. the tempos were much more conducive to dancing steadily and the music was more lush. he still threw in his trademark crazy parts, most notably his totally glitchy, near-unrecognizable cutup of dj rob base & ez rock's "it takes two". i've always hated that song, but kid 606 has a way of taking tracks i don't like and twisting them until i do.

after the show was over, i caught my breath by the merch table where i picked up the new kid 606 CD and one by knifehandchop. miguel depedro wandered over to talk to my friend charles (better known as end.). since we i was nearby, we struck up a conversation.

i found out those of us who took the wednesday option made the right choice. as some may know, this show was originally to be at temple bar. miguel told me that fell through last week and was moved to northsix. then it turned out that friday at southpaw was somehow double-booked, so that show won't be happening. although northsix's spaciousness on wednesday night meant that my advance ticket purchase through ticketweb was unnecessary, i think i got the better deal than those who were waiting until friday.

the title of this post is a paraphrase of a classic acid sample.

excess of sorrow laughs

2005-07-26T18:05:00.000-04:00

thanks to gothamist for pointing the way to i am fucking terrified. with all the increasing tension surrounding the nyc subway system, most recently manifesting in the decision to have the NYPD conduct random searches of transit riders' bags, i needed a decidedly non-pc laugh. some of the pieces are hysterically funny. like any contributor-driven content, it varies wildly in cleverness, execution, and taste, but it's definitely worth a look, although it should overall be considered not safe for work viewing.

most of the entries (like the one above) appear to be in reaction to the recent london bombings. a really well-done one is this spoof of the london underground logo. as awful as these events are, nervous, giddy black humor is how some people deal with tragedy. it's better than just sitting around being fucking terrified.

the title of this post is a quote from william blake.

wish you were here

2005-07-20T14:59:00.000-04:00

tuesday night at tonic was the kind of local bill both music fans and musicians dream of. put together by fringe benefits, this lineup should be in a textbook on booking under "cohesive".

i had no real idea what to expect from saxon shore, other than the word "ethereal" which was mentioned in some posting online. it turns out they're an instrumental band, who could vaguely be placed under the heading "post-rock" (though i don't know of any post-rock band who actually likes being called that). some people might tell this band to get a vocalist, but that would just get in the way of the guitar melodies, multi-layered effects, and programmed keyboard backing. the cumulative effect ebbs and flows like a soundtrack but reaches the kind of crescendoes only rock instrumentation can provide. unlike some other bands of their kind, they knew when to stretch out and when to pull back, and always locked in perfectly with each other. fans of mono and mogwai should keep an eye out for this band's shows and CDs.

i'd seen the name my best fiend around, and like several others thought at first it was a typo. but there were no mistakes in name or otherwise from this band (aside from the fact that they should have invested in a straplok). they started off very slowly and deliberately, building on programmed percussion with live drums, bass, twangy distorted guitar and keyboards. at first, their music reminded me a bit of calla somewhere between their second and third albums, with vocals in the vein of love and rockets or t. rex. as they continued, the sound became a bit more diverse, while retaining enough focus to show these guys are doing their own thing. the opening and final songs were great, and the set in between held a lot of promise.

one of the elements that could benefit both of the above bands is visuals, especially in the case of saxon shore's instrumentals. my best fiend used very minimal lighting (strings of xmas lights on the stage, almost no overheads) to evoke a nice warm atmosphere but it may have been a bit too dark for the slant of their music. berkoy has been adding great and appropriate imagery to live music for awhile now, getting well-deserved respect from musicians and video artists. her subtly morphing shapes add another layer to the visual stimulation so necessary in a live performance setting.

like the last show i caught at sin-e, berkoy was here making the light dance for other passengers. unlike then however, there were no technical difficulties preventing the full force of her projections from hitting the band and the screen. i was hard pressed to choose which of my shots to post, since so many of them came out really well, revealing the symbiosis of human performance and live video manipulation.

the band started off quietly, but quickly shifted gears into the darkest and hardest show i've seen them do yet. while i was disappointed at the absence of their song "in the belly" (which you can buy on their EP), the new songs made up for it. they played with a fierce intensity that, to my joy, culminated in several minutes of completely haywire, looping waves of noise at room-clearing volume.

almost everyone in the band and audience was completely drained at the end of the set. all three bands got enthusiastic and lengthy applause. this was one of those shows that future fans will wish they had been at.

the title of this post comes from an album by pink floyd.

my new fighting technique is unstoppable

2005-07-13T18:31:00.000-04:00

get your war on somehow slithered into my consciousness sometime in 2002. i wish i'd discovered it sooner. in the first months following 9/11, i could have used this kind of caustic humor, the kind that can only come from shock, anger, and disbelief. instead, what we got was a horrendous, watered-down all-star update of the classic song what's going on. no surprise really, as mushy ballads dominated the pop charts during the first gulf war. mainstream culture mellows out in times of great upheaval. it's as though people need a collective artistic seconal drip administered to them 24-7 for the duration of their inability to deal with a stressful world.

david rees takes the opposite approach. he puts all the confusion, rage, hubris, and sadness we experience and witness into a brutal series of comic strips. since the images are all clip art, the characters are all frozen in stasis, as it sometimes feels like we are, watching the horror before us unfold. sometimes the result is much like watching a post-1990 george carlin special; so full of pissed-off, clever diatribes you're left more informed and enraged than anything else. other times, the mix is so over-the-top funny, you just have to stifle your laughter in between quiet mutterings of "i can't believe he just said that". his characters spit out what rational human beings think in the face of irrational world events, but most would never utter out loud.

rees once said in an interview, "what am I going to do now? wait for the next atrocity so I can make a comic about it?" sadly, he doesn't have long to wait and has been churning out strips fairly steadily for the past four years. the subject matter may shift slightly, from afghanistan to iraq to women's rights to the various characters who populate the political spectrum, but he always has something to say, straight from our "shocked and awed" brains.

when i contacted rees about how great i thought his strip was, i also told him he should make a white-on-black t-shirt out of the phrase which his website is an anagram for. within weeks he had them made and on the site for sale and i bought one. i wear it proudly everywhere except neighborhoods where i might be expected to prove its ridiculous claim. those who see the shirt who have never heard of the strip, or its predecessor, most often have the reaction "i don't get it." unfortunately, too many people don't understand the inherent humor in that obnoxious statement, or how often in life we're told something similar which is just as much a fabrication.

the title of this post comes from david rees' website.

lowered expectations

2005-07-07T15:58:00.000-04:00

there was a time when "pop" used to simply be short for "popular". what was "popular music" 60 years ago is now called "standards," 50 years ago is called "oldies," 40 years ago is called "classic", and, in an increasingly predictable cycle, 20 years ago is called "this year's trend".

in this same law of diminishing returns, the very meaning of the word "pop" has become as diminutive as its length. it's now looked upon (often rightfully so), as purely cheap, instant gratification. there's something to be said for that once in awhile, but as a steady diet it's more than unsatisfying; it's harmful. in the past, even such pieces of supposedly useless confectionery were crafted with enough care and skill to end up becoming longtime favorites. i don't see this happening in a world where success and failure are measured in incredibly short-sighted increments, such as "i won fifty bucks in the lottery this week" or "the company did well this quarter."

a recent slate article reports "the six major studios...actually took in more money from their movies in the first half of 2005 than they did in the same period in 2004." however, the long-term truth of the matter is that "the regular movie audience has been so decimated over the past 56 years that the habitual weekly adult moviegoer will soon qualify as an endangered species." and this despite the facts laid out in another slate article about rampant overspending on movie advertising. everything is about the short-term, making a big splash, getting to the top ten, and hoping it pays off later.

in a recent popmatters interview, joey goebel, author of torture the artist, assesses that pop culture's "virtues lie in the occasional bursts of creativity and originality that seem to slip through the cracks." i've never found this to be more true than today.

culturewars.org sums up one of john carey's points from his book what good are the arts? by saying, "to be taken right out of one's culture would be to go mad." to me, this implies that "culture" is like its biological namesake, what yogurt is grown from; something naturally evolving and necessary to human beings. this might be true of the majority of human cultures, but most western popular culture seems unnatural by comparison. it exists because of marketing and consumerism, twin beasts which feed on each other with little care for the nutritional value of whatever is being marketed or consumed, just so long as the process is happenning.

the unnatural becoming seemingly natural begins fairly early in the life of the average american. gene van tassel sums up a 1994 article from the journal of instructional psychology, saying that before even entering school, children have learned information "in a natural way without the formal structure and discipline that reside in most schools." in other words, children are pretty much born open-minded. once there, "they learn to pass tests and earn a diploma, but fail to use their education for their personal growth. in addition, they leave school unprepared to cope with the increasing complexity of the world in which they live." basically, the majority of students are dumbed-down as they pass through a restrictive and uninspiring educational system, in order to prepare them for the drudgeries of life. our brains are essentially repeatedly exposed to a series of controlled environments that stifle creative thought.

the exceptions are those who are deemed "creative types"; artists, musicians, writers, and others with a similar approach to expression. even their initial efforts are often dissuaded rather than encouraged. if these people fight hard enough to do what they do, and eventually recognized for their creativity, they're still looked upon differently, almost like society's idiot savants. and still, these people are expected to fall in line in their own way. the assessment that "creativity comes from creative types" is one of at least six myths about creativity. i agree that anyone is "capable of doing some degree of creative work," but we're discouraged from being in that frame of mind from an early age. and by "creative work" i'm not only talking about the "creative types" mentioned above, i mean anything remotely "thinking outside of the box." how sad that even the example i've resorted to using is basically a catchphrase used chiefly in the marketing and advertising fields.

composer sir peter maxwell davies, while perhaps weighing in from a more conservative side than i would normally tend to agree with, makes some good points in his 2005 lecture, will serious music become extinct?. "all of us are being educated to become good, docile consumers, so that we become incapable, or perhaps just unwilling, to question the status quo...pop music has become a big business beyond anything ever imagined in the musical world, playing its part in drugging constructive, creative thinking."

when many pop fans professed not to "understand" the radiohead album kid a, one frequent response was "i guess i'm not smart enough to like it." several music critics attacked it as a pretentious, self-conscious "art move". to these people, the band was previously following a clear musical and popularity trajectory, and this break with convention was immediately suspect. as much as the band has been lauded in some circles, they've also suffered much ridicule and a reduction in sales.

on the other hand, whether they know it or not, people are simultaneously so starved for innovation, they'll take it wherever they can get it. some people are calling the recent r. kelly song and video an "operetta" and heralded as a multimedia event. i honestly applaud r. kelly for trying to do something different, however, i think the chief differences between his mini-opus and most commercial r&b are almost negligible.

it's no wonder people's views and reactions are skewed, with muzak or tightly-formatted pop and adult contemporary stations being piped into many businesses. the vast majority of music that comes at the average person on a daily basis hasn't changed for the past 25 years. the same few rigid definitions of music exist, and anything outside those are a frightening or unknown prospect for most people. music is expected to fulfil the same function as scenery, being fairly enjoyable but essentially unimportant and certainly not requiring any attention or thought.

if a criticism of more unusual or so-called cerebral arts is that it's made for other artists, i think the criticism should be directed at the culture that kills the open-mindedness and creativity inherent (to some degree) in each of us. if people were encouraged to explore their own creativity, they'd have an easier time understanding others' expressions.

the title of this post comes from a classic mad tv series of spoof ads.

like the relentless fury of the pounding waves

2005-07-05T15:15:00.000-04:00

i'd heard of a place to bury strangers, but wasn't rushing to check them out purely on the basis of their charmingly morbid name, having been somewhat disappointed by ...and you will know us by the trail of dead at last year's siren festival. i assumed this was yet another indie rock band trying to stand out from the crowd with an unusual name. then i went to their website and found out how wrong i was. the sound that assaulted me was like a dream mixture of the jesus and mary chain, joy division, the sisters of mercy, and early cure. so when bianca emailed asking what was going on friday july 1, i told her this band were playing the knitting factory.

from the moment they took the stage something was different. the lights were kept extremely dark and only red. i can't even recall them counting off or starting to play; one minute there was silence, the next they were sudddenly there, attacking us with a wall of sound that pushed bianca straight to the floor to contemplate the rest of the set from the corner of the room. the distortion was a bit much, making it difficult to tell what the guitarist was actually playing. it simply became a whirlwind of electric razors with harmonics. at times the sound changed abruptly, no doubt with the aid of his own line of effects pedals he builds under the name death by audio. fortunately, the bassist brought an amp cabinet the size of godzilla and just as ferocious. even the drums sounded tweaked, although not as much as on their songs online. in all of this swirling mass of sonic destruction the vocals got pretty much lost, since they were low in pitch and bathed in reverb. in the end, all you could do was submit to the sheer unadulterated dark power of the noise, since the volume and lack of clarity made it difficult to latch onto anything like lyrics or melody, other than the tuneful basslines. i hope this band starts hiring their own soundman and getting better soundchecks. i have the feeling if we could actually hear what they were singing and make out a few more details they would be truly amazing. until then, i'm happy to go see them just to get bludgeoned by their instrumentation.

after the show, since we still, incredibly, had our eardrums intact (napkins in the ears, always a good idea), we decided to drop by the bunker at subtonic. this has had mixed results on other nights of the week, but the bunker is usually dead on and tonight was no exception. djs spinoza, movement, klevervice, and guest dj derek plaslaiko of ghostly international were spinning. i'm not sure who was on just after 2am, but the music was incredible, as were the visuals (see above). the sounds were hard, electronic, and danceable, familiar yet nothing i'd ever heard before. if the records were artists on ghostly, i can see i'm going to have to pick up some of their releases.

the title of this post comes from an obscure film.

do you say nothing yourself?

2005-06-28T12:18:00.000-04:00

in a musical landscape where "indie" is often a term thrown around to define a sound or gain street cred, we often forget there are truly independent artists and labels. people who work hard and stick to their underground principles, and make a difference and set an example. perhaps the most extreme and admirable example is set by dischord records, home of fugazi and their predecessors, minor threat.

minor threat were the blueprint for so many hardcore bands, whether straightedge or not. i know that and i'm not even close to an expert in that type of music. someone else who must have also known that apparently works for nike's advertising agency. in an obvious ploy to sell sneakers to skater kids, nike's recent ad campaign clearly swipes the cover art from the minor threat CD. the changes are so minor as to be negligible, and clearly not for parody, which would be the only halfway acceptable defense.

dischord is not pleased at all. the label has always stood for exactly the opposite of everything nike is really about. their ubiquitous ad campaigns aside, nike is reportedly one of the worst offenders as far as american companies using sweatshop labor (as detailed in the brilliant book no logo), though they claim to have stopped using it. in fact the company itself amounts to almost nothing; it's my understanding that barring a small board of directors and similar decision-makers, every function of the company is outsourced, which is what makes them so successful (and so untouchable should any part of their operation come into question), and their products so insanely marked-up. this is in stark contrast to dischord, a band-run label that practically invented DIY while keeping prices at a minimum.

whatever path dischord chooses, i hope nike's plan ultimately backfires on them. it would be great if the target audience for this campaign recognizes how blatantly they're being marketed to, their ideas being mocked and their intelligence insulted all the while. as consumers, we vote with our dollars or lack of them.

sadly, nike's true target audience may in fact not even be the hardcore punks or skaters, but bored middle class teenagers who don't know or care about the background of the situation and follow the thought process "that looks cool. skater punks are cool. nike is cool. i want nikes."

late breaking news, 4:22 pm: apparently the uproar over this has been loud enough to cause nike to pull the ads and apologize. still, they got what they wanted: tons of national attention for their brand. remember the old saying, "i don't care what you say about me, just make sure you spell my name right." i'd like it if somehow something could be done to teach nike a lesson that this isn't something they can keep doing. their sales going in the toilet over this would be nice, but i'm not holding my breath.

the title of this post comes from the song DIY by peter gabriel.

a white house, a white room

2005-06-27T11:14:00.000-04:00

as promised in my c.o.m.a. event post, i've added more pictures to ocular spectra, some of which were taken there. other recent shots were taken the night of the photobloggers 4 and other passengers show.

the title of this post comes from the song photographic by depeche mode.

couldn't call it unexpected no.2

2005-06-24T14:00:00.000-04:00

i unexpectedly had a second chance to hear saints and lovers, who i'd previously seen at gothamist's moveable hype 1.0. in fact, that was one of my first posts. i was already at pianos upstairs, and jasper mentioned they were playing downstairs soon.

for some reason, the vocals sounded like there was a wet sock on the mic. that's a real shame, because the singer has a really good voice, which somehow shone through the mud. i also liked the guitar-as-bass trick he pulled off with effect pedals. he did actually play bass for the first few songs, most effectively on a vaguely new order-ish number just before he switched to guitar.

while their stadium-sized guitar sound seems a bit out of place in a venue the size of pianos, and is perhaps overly reminiscent of the edge in spots, the band is very good. their songs have a sad-but-uplifting quality that i tend to like.

the closing song was worth the price of admission alone. the guitarist pulled a beautifully ghostly sound out of his gear completely unlike anything else in the set. the singer countered with a dry guitar rhythm until kicking in the big distortion at the climactic moment, lifting his voice to a dramatic wail while the drummer pounded it home. if their other music gets as good as this song, i expect great things from this band.

the title of this post comes from a song by elvis costello.

garden of unearthly delights

2005-06-23T01:07:00.000-04:00

on sunday c.o.m.a. held an acoustic benefit concert for abc no rio in the latter's LES tenement. i'd never been there and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. the performances were overlapping almost continuously in six different spaces throughout the building, including the garden. not only did i get to hear a lot of interesting music (above is bassist andrew lafkas), i got a lot of good shots that will be on ocular spectra soon.

abc no rio is a unique venue. it's basically an old building, not specifically made for live music, and so is actually a pretty exciting place to experience it as a result. often musicians crowded into rooms barely big enough for themselves, much less an audience.

the event was almost like an experimental lollapalooza. running back and forth between rooms, you were bound to hear something good. above is the self-described "secret bass player" who played in a trio with flautist diana wayburn and acoustic guitarist ty cumbie. at one point, i stood in the garden near the doorway in the perfect spot to hear three different sets of musicians playing simultaneously. that was a beautiful coincidence no one else could experience without being within a few feet of that spot.

the music ran the gamut from free jazz to beat poetry to electronic processing. i approached it like a smorgasbord and sampled a bit of everything.

i was mainly there to see robin's friend ed chang (above), who played in a noisy avant-jazz trio. i prefer his work on guitar, but it's fun to see him nonetheless, he's a great musician.

an unexpected pleasure was the quartet of (l-r, above) on davis, nick gianni, colin carew, and jerome james. a great blend of acoustic and electronic sounds. i want to hear more of them since they were one of my favorites of the day.

i'd heard of soundpainting, but it's quite another thing to see the walter thompson orchestra (above) in action. many of the players from the smaller ensembles were also a part of his lineup. thompson conducted the players with unorthodox movements to improvise at his commands. there was even some audience participation at the end.

i was happy to see charles cohen on the bill, since i loved his improv set with michael (sporangia/leisure muffin) last summer at dogs blood rising, which was one of the best shows ever at that monthly event. using the buchla music easel and a looper, he and joe lentini (on another synth and reverb effect) performed an ode to the south american rainforest. the music was transmitted through various speakers and radio receivers all over the room, enhancing the sense of space.

i caught the last few minutes of another dbr alumnus, nate wooley (above), because i heard a wonderfully hideous shriek from the garden, which turned out to be his trademark atonal trumpet. he was in a duet with a percussionist who had a lot of interesting instruments but used them discriminately.

this was some seriously underground music in a very raw space. after this i'll be paying more attention to what's going on at abc no rio.

the title of this post is a paraphrase of both a hieronymous bosch painting and an xtc song.

images of broken light

2005-06-19T15:02:00.000-04:00

nyc photobloggers4 was seven photobloggers presenting at the apple store in soho, displaying a great diversity of style (thanks to rion, who assembled the lineup).

i was especially happy to see a presentation from jay parkinson of darkshapesprowl (above). he prepared a series of images and bullet points that were as professional as a business meeting, but full of his own personal charm. this wasn't just onstage huckstering though; when i met him afterwards, he was as nice in person as he's always been in email. one of the main points he touched on was the fact that digital photography is often "too perfect," and his efforts to rehumanize the form through inventive photoshop processing.

keith of overshadowed has taken a different approach to that issue. he announced he was switching over to using a medium-format film camera. he gave a more specialized presentation, focusing on the stages his photography goes through from raw shot to final image. ironically, he often seems to be intent on making his photos hyper-real, larger-than-life, evocative of widescreen sci-fi cinematography, yet is now going for the analog, human element, perhaps as a reaction to his past work.

another photographer who loves to shoot in the subway at least as much as i do, but from a different perspective, is travis ruse. he uses images of his daily commute to document and reveal the lives of the people around him, bringing them into focus to others around the world. apparently he was inspired to do this by the negativity in the news and the knowledge that people in other countries must have extremely skewed views on americans. his pictures show that ordinary working folk are pretty much the same everywhere.

the human connection was also very much a theme throughout the work of mexicanpictures, pixietart, and go photoblog, who are all excellent. jenene of pixietart in particular showed a strong sense of community, pointing out people she and others have met entirely through photoblogging. in another interesting twist, elliot from slower.net showed no pictures at all and instead give a talk about the pros and cons of the interactive side of the medium.

afterwards, most everyone adjourned to merc bar around the corner, to have a beer on gothamist, but i had to run across town to sin-e to catch one of my favorite nyc bands.

other passengers have definitely matured as a band in the year since i first saw them at bar 169. the symbiosis between the members has always been obvious, but it seems to be reaching another level. this show was almost the antithesis of the last one i saw. here they were able to spread out on a real stage, with great sound and excellent mood lighting. this last enhancement came courtesy of berkoy, who created appropriately dark and shifting visuals projected directly on the band without the benefit of a screen. her work may not have been as immediate in this setting, but it melded perfectly with the music and was certainly superior to regular stage lighting. it was a subtle but effective addition to a great show.

billy, the singer, struck me as having almost an ian curtis-like intensity this evening. his shorter haircut and the lighting may have had something to do with that association, but the kinetic energy, desperate vocal tone, and wide-eyed stare are all his own. guitarists travis and kevin reached a peak in their call-and-response playing style. individually, travis tends to be more visceral and visual, while kevin plays little circular melody lines and gets insane effects. tobin's bass anchors the music while being extremely melodic, and james' rhythms are dead on but unafraid of syncopation. the two of them also seem to bring a serious dub influence to the foundation. their songs are never simple but almost always memorable.

they're only playing two more shows this summer before heading down to louisiana to record their debut full-length CD. i don't know how they're going to squeeze into the back of cake shop, but they put on a spirited performance no matter how small a space they're jammed into. try to catch them now so you can say "i saw them back when."

the title of this post comes from across the universe by john lennon.

a thousand words

2005-06-16T11:57:00.000-04:00

somehow i blinked and missed photobloggers3, but this time i'm prepared. anyone remotely interested in unique, beautiful, DIY photographic art should go to the fourth installment of what is fast becoming an institution here in nyc.

on a related note, i've added 5 new pictures to ocular spectra this week, including the one above. by the way, this wasn't set up at all; i stepped out of the subway near times square and there was the rose in pieces in the street by the gutter.

the title of this post comes from a famous (but apparently inaccurate) quote.

blur my thoughts again

2005-06-15T17:20:00.000-04:00

i've been excited about cake shop since long before it opened. as a former devotee of halcyon, i was familiar with the all-in-one shop concept. cake shop does actually sell cakes, but they also sell paintings and crafts, have a record shop in the back, and a downstairs bar and dj/live band setup.

though i'd been meaning to go since it opened several weeks ago, i was finally drawn to go by the short notice of a live performance by mahogany and dj set by auburn lull. both bands exist in a beautifully hazy area where shoegazer, drone, and slowcore meet. they're also both associated with the darla label/mailorder, where i've gotten quite a few great CDs. i gave just enough of this info to tempt angel, josh, and robin to come out.

besides the two-floor setup, cake shop differs from halcyon in that the musical focus is not electronica, but what can loosely be termed indie rock (although not as narrow as that sounds). it loses points in my book for not having a full bar, but it does at least seem to have a decent selection of wines for those who don't drink beer. other than that, it's a great little place.

upstairs, the front is dominated by a coffee shop-like setup where the cakes and non-alcoholic beverages are served. the cherry cheesecake made me roll my eyes at the first bite, which is a good sign. there are stools to sit at the counter as well as small tables and chairs underneath the paintings for sale.

the shop in the back is an indie record store browser's dream. the best-looking covers, pins, and magazines are displayed on the walls, a nice organized spot for flyers up front, clearly labeled and well-organized sections for both new and used vinyl and CDs, including a large selection of 7" singles. a nice mix of music too; hip enough to carry the arcade fire but not too cool to have a hall and oates record. speaking of which, go buy robin's brilliant oates t-shirt.

the downstairs is very clean-looking, with a mostly black-and-red color scheme. this continues in the op-art decor which robin pointed out are actually square-cut color copies. rather than thinking this was cheesy, we agreed it was a brilliant cost-cutting DIY thing to do. the stage area is also somewhat informal, since it's not raised off the ground and has the cbgb-like setup of an area to the side where more people can stand and watch. nearby there's a jukebox with a great selection of CDs rivaling those at bellevue and ace bar. there are comfortable cushions and couches up against the wall and moveable chairs for easy group conversing.

this wasn't going on a lot though, because the music was great. the DJs had the perfect mix of ambience which ranged from early cocteau twins to dubbed-out electronica. for a long time, someone seemed to be soundchecking (see above), although it was seamless with the DJ set going on and quite enjoyable in itself. when the real show began, mahogany played their set in total darkness, with friends of the band swelling their ranks to eight people. it seems like they only played two very long pieces, which began like something off of eno's apollo atmospheres and soundtracks and grew to a massive wall of sound. multiple effected guitars created swirling layers of echoing harmonies, while old drum machines and synths added quaintly robotic rhythms which became harsher as the pieces built up to a climax and then faded.

for some reason although i stayed dry that night, the hypnotic music gave me the sensation of being somewhat buzzed, even to the point where some of my memories of the evening aren't quite clear. it all went by quickly, which usually means a damn good time. i applaud cake shop for living up to my expectations and hope this great new addition to the lower east side stays around for quite awhile.

the title of this post comes from a song by auburn lull.

in the woods

2005-06-11T18:53:00.000-04:00

i hadn't been back to tonic since its rescue from imminent oblivion (and reinstatement of proper restrooms). since it's always a great venue for interesting new and avant-garde music, it's fitting that the first band i went back there to see was edison woods. i've been meaning to catch them for about a year, but they don't play very often. i was going to back out, but my friend and fellow photographer bianca convinced me to go after all.

i'd never heard of openers the new radio band, and tonic unwisely had no description next to their name on the bill. still, we turned up in time to see them and were pleasantly surprised. at first glance they're a simple jazz trio of drums, upright bass, and saxophone/flute. this is the kind of setup that could be very boring trad or improv jazz, but fortunately it was neither. the bassist had a solid groove and a great sound, laying down simple (yet not simplistic) lines which jumped into variation without losing the pulse. the drummer was locked in without being metronomic, intuitively sensing the right time to make changeups, and never overwhelming the other players with grandstanding. and much to my delight, the saxophonist/flautist played through a monstrous effects pedalboard, augmenting his inventive melodies and snippets with just the right amount of technology.

athenians hope for agoldensummer(photo above from their website) were pleasant and talented, but personal taste interfered with my enjoyment of their set when their songs took a bit too much of a backwoods twangy turn for me. i did like the initial mix of pj harvey-like vocals with sparsely earthy guitars, cello, and unusual percussion (for one song, the drummer shook a wooden crate of coke bottles in rhythm).

edison woods have eight members, and not one of them is superfluous. two female vocalists (one of them also playing piano and accordion), a guitarist, drummer, violinist, cellist, bass guitarist, and baritone saxophonist. from the moment the blonde singer took the stage her presence was palpable. they began with an accordion-driven instrumental, which set the tone for their set, freely alternating between vocal songs and understated chamber music pieces. several of the musicians clearly had a command of both conventional and experimental techniques. each of the players had moments in the musical spotlight, but took their turns with a quiet reflectiveness that suited the songs. the exception to this came at the end of the set when the backing vocalist stepped out front and shifted from breathy childlike whispers to a series of wordless crescendoes of operatic intensity. this was a welcome climax to the gorgeous restraint shown until then. i hope to see more of this band.

the title of this post comes from a great melancholic black metal band.

de profundis

2005-06-01T12:37:00.000-04:00

i rarely seem to make it to galleries these days (except for special performances/events like i wrote about at the cave gallery), but i had an inkling i should see the ashes and snow exhibit. all i knew was that it was some nice duotone photographs of a relatively serious-looking nature.

it turned out that the space it's being shown in, the nomadic museum, was built specifically for the show and will be taken down after june 6 once it's over. it was also built on pier 54. these added unusual elements helped make my decision to go into a certainty rather than a possibility which floated in the back of my head until it was too late. too often, museums and galleries are fairly sterile environments, their neutrality doing the work on display a disservice.

from the outside, it's fairly impressive, although seemingly incongruous with the anticipated photographs. the museum was constructed out of interlocking metal containers, much like boxcars, alternating in different styles and colors. unfortunately, photography wasn't allowed inside, and there were constantly ushers and security keeping an eye on the crowd and quietly asking people to move to the right and keep their cell phones off.

this last request confused me until i was inside. the structure's interior formed a long hallway, like something out of the emerald city. the lighting was much dimmer than the photo above (from new york architecture images). hidden in the upper reaches were speakers playing music that coincidentally reminded me of my dark ambient project a murder of angels. the photos were hung from the high ceilings by near-invisible wire, so as to seem suspended in the air. rectangular spotlights were trained on each print, which seemed to be somehow done on a surface akin to canvas. we had to walk down wooden planks in the center, because under the photographs hung on either side was a layer of clean grey-white stones that stretched several feet all the way to the walls. this had the effect of being in a zen rock garden without the flowers.

the pictures themselves were often of people deep in meditation with different wild animals. each type of animal was grouped in a series. all the locations were either in the desert or in water. the subjects were mostly either very young or very old, although there was a brief focus on a man and woman in their 20s or 30s.

i thought the most gorgeous and profound photos were those contrasting the tiny, smooth-skinned children with huge, rough beasts, especially the elephants. elephants being a symbol of memory, it seemed as though the inexperienced child was seeking knowledge from the wise creature, somehow communicating on a spiritual level. the photos with the young child and the very old woman struck a similar chord.

at the end of the hall was a theater, showing a film of the same scenes in the photographs, albeit from different angles. some sections were in slow motion. because of the movement and more obvious posing apparent in the film, i found it less affecting than the stills. even non-linear film such as this creates some degree of narrative by the simple fact of showing time passing and different actions taking place. this removes the viewer somewhat from the role of attempting to figure out what the story might be or creating one of their own. in addition, the deep-voiced narration was highly unnecessary since the beauty of the images told their own story. fortunately, i stayed out of earshot of most of it, and took a second look at the photographs on my way out.

none of the images above or my description can compare to being in this space, so i recommend people make it over there. although the $12 entry price might seem steep for a gallery show and short film, the amount of expense clearly needed to do the entire installation justifies it. the day i went was packed; hopefully the success of this exhibit will mean artists and galleries will take chances like this more often.

the title of this post comes from an essay by oscar wilde.

so tonight that i might see

2005-05-20T16:39:00.000-04:00

i was fortunate that josh emailed me to let me know last thursday night was the first nyc photobloggers meetup. since getting ocular spectra started last year and then going to the photobloggers2 event at the apple store last september, i've been curious to put some faces and names to the urls and great pictures i've come to know.

this took place at a bar called the magician. the first person i met was keith of overshadowed. until recently when things have been a bit busier for me, i've hit his site with awestruck regularity since his presentation at the apple store. he does a lot of photoshop work on a lot of his shots, but this enhances rather than diminishes his art. most of his photos make new york city into the beautifully dark sci-fi nightmare it must look like to tourists. we had a great discussion about letting the medium of the camera be a part of the picture.

next i met rion, who was jokingly referred to as "the ringleader" (she was the main organizer and mc at the photobloggers event). i was flattered she actually remembered my site. like keith, her work is very crisp and clear, though she seems to shoot a wider variety of subjects and has a more naturalistic approach. of course my favorite shots are the ones that aren't set up but look like they could have been, but her pictures also show a level of professionalism that belies the supposed "amateur" nature of photoblogs.

as i was talking to rion, running out the door turned out to be another favorite of mine, mike of satan's laundromat. he has a great eye for urban decay, which is one of my favorite shooting subjects. his chief interest seems to be signage, often humorous and/or ironic. i also respect him for having been through a hellish ordeal of being one of those unfairly arrested at the RNC last summer. he was, to the best of my knowledge, wrongfully detained at pier 57 in horrible conditions for over 24 hours and has pictures to tell the tale.

i also breifly chatted with adam of tozzer.net, whose work i wasn't familiar with, but i like now i've had a chance to check it out.

in need of something to soak up the booze we'd been consuming, we passed on one of my ludlow st. favorites, rush hour, because there were too many of us. we ended up at katz' deli, where i caused a minor stir by temporarily losing my meal ticket.

i sat with gene (who took the lovely shot of the chairs at katz' above) and lil, briefly discussing our different focuses in our work, since they have very different styles from me. they were both highly intelligent and pleasant. liz also impressed me with her knowledge of things japanese, an interest of mine that's been bubbling under for the past few years.

there were more people there, like martin and nick rhodes (no relation), but i didn't get a chance to speak to them. it was a nice laid-back time that made me anticipate the next photobloggers event in june even more.

the title of this post comes from an album by mazzy star.

move along now, nothing to see

2005-05-17T16:00:00.000-04:00

i wasn't especially looking forward to the autechre show on may 8, since electronic shows in places bigger than a lounge have had somewhat mixed results in my opinion (although i did enthuse about the kid606 show i saw). to me, autechre's music is headphone music. but between ben and bianca's coaxing and a few decent reviews on the idm list, i opted to give it a fair shot.

dj rob hall was surprisingly better than my expectations (which were zero since i'd heard nothing). the music was so clean and the beatmatching so seamless, you'd have had no idea he was spinning records. he made ben and i happy with a good amount of dark trance, spun in two different sets (the second of which was amazingly hypnotic). he also went with some detroit-like electro and harder beats. it's kind of a blur now, but a good blur. not an alcohol-induced one though; the drinks at webster hall were so expensive i stayed dry. however, the monumental sound system lived up to its reputation.

snd were also a good warm-up choice for autechre since both bands share the "never let the beat drop" tendency. snd favored textures that sounded like tech-house, but chopped them up incessantly so there was never a regular beat to be heard for a full measure. except for a few uninteresting bits, i enjoyed their set.

the openers at least had some kind of lights. autechre opted for near-total darkness. only the bar, the exit signs, and the glow of their own gear lit the main floor. i have to say i thought their first 9 minutes were boring. they pummeled us with tired kick and snare beats that anyone could have done. we had to strain to hear anything other than those two sounds.

then suddenly counter-rhythms came in, other elements dropped out, and for the next hour we were in a click-and-glitch-filled heaven. there might have been elements from various recorded songs used, but it mainly seemed like one giant long flowing improv set. although they had no show whatsoever, the music was engaging enough to keep people twitching and head-bobbing in all directions. some brave souls even danced. each new sonic variation sent the crowd into ecstatic whoops, and the careful introduction of sub-bass notes from time to time was used to devastating effect.

while i think a lightshow of some kind might have made things more interesting overall, another part of me can't help but think anything visual would have distracted from the intricacy of autechre's compositions and sounds. as it was, i was transported back into my headphones. except i was in a room full of people, and the headphones were wall-mounted and better than anything i could afford.

the title of this post comes from officer barbrady on south park.

phenomena at the height of their popularity

2005-05-04T16:48:00.000-04:00

this past weekend was hugely anticipated by me. besides the adult. show friday, saturday and sunday brought a type of joy i haven't had for over 3 years: fresh laughs from the family guy, which i've already enthused about here before.

last summer my best friend actually sold his devo tickets (one of his favorite bands), to go see family guy live as part of the montreal comedy festival on the same date. obviously this kind of devotion made enough of an impression that they decided to do it again in los angeles and nyc. all shows sold out, even at fairly high ticket prices. though my wallet wasn't happy, i knew i'd be sorry if i missed it.

the town hall is an odd venue for comedy, or maybe i just think so because my first show there was dead can dance in 1993. it had to be expensive for them to get. they also had to pay the stagehands, the director and cameramen, get a giant screen and sound system, and probably pay the 8 people onstage a little something.

after a brief announcement, they played "stewie's sexy party video" which you can see a clip of under the live in vegas section of "multimedia" on the official site. this was unfortunately marred by sound so bad i couldn't make out 3/4 of the lyrics. fortunately, the soundman turned up the volume and clarity by the time of the main show.

creator seth mcfarlane came out first, introducing the rest of the cast. executive producer david goodman had the thankless job of reading all the stage directions, followed by danny smith, who not only does a lot of good supporting cast voices, but is the originator of the mock-rage expression that gave birth to the infamous evil monkey. writer steve callaghan's best reason for being there was doing the midget's creepy dance from twin peaks. but mike henry was the night's secret weapon. he has one of the funniest faces ever, especially when gearing up to do one of his perfectly placed voices, especially dirty old man herbert.

all of the cast so far had cups of booze in their hands, except for smith who walked on raising a six-pack of coors light (to which one audience member did a joe swanson impression and bellowed "silver bullet!"). seth green topped him by entering with a glass of red wine and then having a stagehand bring him the whole bottle during the performance. mila kunis was inexplicably howled at various times during the night by a distinctly neanderthal chorus whom i would have assumed would be too dumb to get half the jokes on this show, but i guess they like the gutter humor. this element of course increased that night due to it not being on television as seth green admitted, "it's like third grade up here," but it was hilarious. alex borstein was a bit more risqué in general and appreciated the attention, while taking it with a grain of salt. when one man shouted "alex, you're hot!" she said, "that's really sweet, but you may be a closeted homosexual. those are the type of men who usually think i'm 'hot'."

the cast read through the classic episode "to live and die in dixie," which is one of my favorites. between the stage directions, ad-libbing, and audience reactions, the half-hour script was doubled or tripled in length, to everyone's delight. hecklers who crossed the line (mostly at mila's expense) were dealt with in brilliant form by one of the two seths ("you do realize you're in public, don't you? we're not just hanging around at your house while you're in your underwear"). in addition, mcfarlane and borstein came out front and performed a song from the just-released soundtrack cd.

then mcfarlane announced that the fans had "waited long enough" to see new material and introduced the first act of the first new episode. someone shouted out "i saw it on the internet," which prompted seth too look up with a brilliantly-timed mixture of sheepishness and mild annoyance. "yes, well...for the rest of the people...who were probably out that night...." as brian or stewie might say, ba-zinnng.

the whole thing ended up with a question-and-answer session which had predictably mixed success. the queries ranged from simple and uninteresting to really good, to outright vile (the last most often directed once again at mila kunis). it's one thing if a performer chooses to make sexual innuendo a part of their own schtick - for example, both mcfarlane and borstein willingly participated in visual sexual jokes on the split screen with seth green. on the other hand, kunis has always clearly seemed a little uptight and prudish in her public persona, and although she's not the greatest actor or voice artist, people should respect certain lines that shouldn't be crossed. fortunately, the others were able shift the focus back to comedy. it was a great night and money well spent.

even better, this was on the eve of the season 4 premiere. the first act, which i saw saturday, was hilarious, leaving no room for disappointment (including the expected dig at fox for cancelling them). the rest of the show was funny too, although not on the same level. the shows are usually appreciated with repeated viewings, as the reruns and dvd sales proved. i look forward to the next 34 weeks. it turns out some of the people involved in the show keep their own blog, so lovers of ephemeral minutiae can visit there often.

the title of this post comes from a hilariously overlong shredding given to another character by stewie.

adult entertainment

2005-05-02T20:43:00.000-04:00

context may not be everything, but it comes close. this theory was put to the test on friday at the adult. show at mercury lounge.

a few years ago, repeated mentions of their name along with the words "punk" and "electro," prompted me to check their website out. their raw, simplistic, underground, staunchly analog synthetic sound appealed to me right away. this was the part of the 80's mostly being ignored in the mainstream version of that decade's revival. it reminded me of a few of the darker tracks on my battered used copy of the some bizarre album. their striking DIY graphics and tongue-in-cheek photography also gave notice this was all part of a sort of postpunk art-school concept that had to be taken as gestalt.

however, when i got their first CD anxiety always, i was slightly disappointed. all the elements seemed to be there but the energy and interest were difficult to sustain for an entire album. still, tracks like "glue your eyelids together" (which has a great visual that goes along with it) and "blank eyed nose bleed" ("wouldn't it be nice to go to a party and be the only one there") appealed to my sick sense of humor. the buzzing monophonic synthesizers and cheap drum machines were making the kind of racket i liked as well. so i gave them another shot with their collection of singles and compilation tracks, and this time i was much better rewarded. so when i heard they were playing in nyc again i asked bianca if she was going, and got a "hell yes." ben snapped up a ticket on spec, but sadly they were sold out before angel or seze could get theirs. somehow nelly got in at the last minute; i never understand when this happens and i think it's unfair. is it sold out or not?

bianca was jazzed about openers gold chains with sue cie, so i checked out their website. i was instantly put off by the music. one out of three available clips was okay underground dance-rock, but the others were just not my kind of thing at all. i arrived at the club just as they were doing their last song. it was somewhat close to the track i liked (it may have even been that song), and i think they had a good energy that pumped up the crowd. they seem to be good at what they do, i'm just not fond of what they do.

adult. came on and looked pretty much as i expected: art school grad punks in black thrift shop clothes. anyone who says synth/drum machine-based shows always feature static or lazy performers should see adult. i admit they were not a visual and performing extravaganza, but they certainly were working what they had. vocalist nicola had to strike a balance between her dispassionate, siouxsie-meets-xmal deutschland delivery and keeping the crowd entertained. she settled on a disturbed, somewhat glazed grin punctuated by roaming eyes, demented stage stalking, and finger-pointing. the bassist seemed to be competing with 80's metal guitarists for "widest leg spread," although peter hook has him beat for lowest-slung axe. both he and the guitarist also had modest racks of analog synths and vintage effects boxes as well as the ubiquitous laptop for basic tracks. they clearly were making 90% of the music though, sweating as they changed up their catalogue in subtle ways.

the show definitely was more about preaching to the converted, although they denied the shouted requests for fan favorite "nausea". but for every familiar track, people erupted into furious pogoing, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. the sound was dead-on too, which is rare for this kind of band if the music's not all on playback.

i'm not sure what i'd have thought if i'd never heard their records or gotten into what i perceive as their whole schtick before seeing this show. i certainly liked a bunch of the songs i'd never heard before, but i think i had my ears ready for them. i concurred with ben's murmured assessment that night that they are a fairly monochromatic band, however nelly agreed with me that that's kind of the point. as a former art student myself, i can appreciate the use of a limited palette. a crappy beatbox, a bassline, a little dissonant guitar and synthetic squelches with tuneless vocals; what more do you need? how much more "we are punk so fuck off" can you get without becoming an unintentional caricature? the answer seems to be, create the caricature ahead of time and let everyone in on the joke. works for me.

the post title's play on words was used on one of the band's releases.

sharing the same sorrow

2005-04-28T17:20:00.000-04:00

calla played a semi-secret free show at the knitting factory this past monday. apparently it was part of a promotional push for the movie satellite, which was playing in the tribeca film festival. a swag table gave out promo versions of the soundtrack, which has a new song of calla's on it.

i've liked calla ever since i saw them at the late, great brownies in 2001. by coincidence, they were then on young god records, which i was already familar with because of michael gira, whose show i saw recently at tonic. since their first album, they've gotten progressively more "rock". in general this disappoints me, although i always end up liking what they do anyway because they're so good. for me this reached the nadir at the last time i saw them at bowery ballroom over a year ago. gone were the subtlety and electronic touches, and the singer's voice was drowned out by the distorted guitars as the band awkwardly "rocked out".

obviously, the making of their new album got a few things worked out. they played almost entirely new songs, and though they were more rock than ever before, it all made sense. their introverted moodiness has gotten a more extroverted sound, but it's no less dark or original. they had depth and dynamics, and layered weird samples in again. more importantly, it sounded like them, every note fitting comfortably instead of sounding like trying to fit in with the "noo rawk" explosion.

the best bands are the ones that walk their own path; calla is clearly still on theirs and hopefully will be long after any number of local trends have blown over.

the title of this post comes from the lyrics to satellite by elvis costello.

information overload

2005-04-27T04:04:00.000-04:00

this past saturday was one of those nights with too many overlapping attractive choices. in hindsight, i'm sure i'm forgetting a few. as josh said, there was ikue mori and charles cohen at the tank. however, i'd already seen cohen at dogs blood rising last summer, in an amazing duet with michael of sporangia/leisure muffin. i'd also promised my friend seze i'd see her friend's band flaming fire at galapagos, and she also said something about a wild crazy party elsewhere in brooklyn afterwards. feeling adventurous, i decided to go for the road not yet travelled.

it turned out that flaming fire were just one of several bands in a well-named night called ruckus. my friend bianca and i arrived mega-early since i mistook the door time for the band's showtime. i'm kind of glad i did; it meant i got to take some pictures, including the one above of a painful post-relationship poem installation floating on the water near the club entrance.

we also got to experience the bludgeoning attack of a duo called squaw. one man twisted hideous electronic squelches from his synthesizer while another pounded doomy minimalist grunge on his bass guitar. sometimes the bassist also added drowned-sounding baritone vocals. reminding me of godflesh without the drum machine or merzbow with a bassline, i preferred their take on noise-rock to others i've heard lately.

flaming fire started off with a spaced-out twangy bass guitar accompanied by laptop and an electronic device called the dewanatron, manned by the two musician/technicians who operate under that name. they dressed in shirts and ties under black judges' robes and added backing vocals to their glorious analog mayhem. the rest of the band came through the crowd chanting and writhing until they reached the stage. once there, they attacked the semi-free-form songs and didn't let up much for their entire set. shouting, shaking, mock-religious fervor, costumes, makeup, techno-voodoo rhythms, and general craziness ensued.

somewhat inspired by the wild abandon onstage, we were determined to turn things up a notch and headed over to the rubulad party. we cabbed it in the rain over to a dodgy spot near the bqe, and entered a small nondescript warehouse. nondescript that is, until we got inside. if nothing else, the decorations were a feast of overkill for the eyes. the blacklight paintings in one stairway (above) were only one example of the visual smorgasbord. decorations of various types hung everywhere, couches were covered in all manner of patterns, and the place was like a maze leading in and outside. the music was pretty diverse too; one room was all dancehall, one was classic soul, one was kind of techno/house, and there was a live band in another. we tried to get into the techno groove, but we were craving something a bit harder-edged. there were a lot of people there, including kelvin, the man who took part in the "human canvas" installation at the last choking victim. it was definitely worth checking out, but bianca and seze thought we should cut our losses and go to contempt, the monthly goth/industrial club in manhattan at remote lounge. getting there was going to be half the battle though, as cabs quoted us ridiculous prices based on our being helplessly rained on in the middle of a bad neigborhood. all seemed lost until some wonderful friends of bianca's turned up in a car as if by magic and gave us a ride.

one of our main reasons for going was the last-minute addition of dj abstract, who promised to spin more of his trademark downtempo gems in the upstairs lounge. sadly, we were too wired to fully appreciate the goodness he spun for us, since we arrived late, half in the bag, and searching for some brand of fun we couldn't define. he has his own perspective on the night, and i have to agree with him all the way. once he passed the decks over to another dj (who it turns out i knew, since there is one degree of separation in that scene), he joined us downstairs looking for the perfect beat. a kind of release came with the song "what's on your mind (pure energy)" by information society, but it felt to me like too little, too late.

although i had fun overall, and i wouldn't have changed the night for anything, there seemed to be a lesson hidden in the way things went. it seems like we were chasing after some transcendentally amazing time like eyes trying to look directly at floaters; the goal could never come into focus or be grasped. still, i guess it's all about the journey, right?

the title of this post comes from a song by living colour.

lowercase

2005-04-21T16:05:00.000-04:00

slate has posted an article on e. e. cummings. his cleverness and willingness to break the rules set him apart from the other poets i was forced to read in school, and had a lasting effect on me. the most obvious sign of this is my general refusal to use upper case letters (it's also faster and i think it looks good, but cummings was the initial inspiration). but he also did things that got up the noses of stuffy people and caused others to question the standards and practices of his field of art. those are immensely important things that need to be done once in awhile, but besides that, his poems were good.

the title of this post is a small subgenre of music.

a breath of scandal

2005-04-20T15:23:00.000-04:00

it seems there are a lot of people unhappy about the choice of the new pope. the uk's times online had an article on his chequered past as a member of the hitler youth. reading the facts and his responses, i can understand excusing his brief and unwanted membership.

unfortunately, the same courtesy hasn't been extended to other people with less direct connections to this horrific time in history. underground bands such as blood axis have been branded with the same stigma narrowly escaped by the new pope due to their usage of symbols such as the kruckenkreuz, also known as the crutch cross or jerusalem cross. if you search for info on this, most everything that comes up refers to it being fascist or nazi-related, when it was essentially a christian symbol. it was also used in seventeenth century alchemy and chemistry to mean crucible or acid, but its use by the church predates and outlasts that. as a recent example, above is a picture of pope john paul II receiving the jerusalem cross. further delving reveals that, "if anything, it is an anti-nazi symbol," as claimed by the christian falangist party, a pro-israeli political party who explain their reasoning in using it as their logo.

the supposed fascist/nazi connection comes largely from its use by engelbert dollfuss, chancellor of austria prior to world war II. dollfuss believed the kruckenkreuz, a christian symbol, would show austria to be better than the third reich because the latter had rejected christianity. the wiesenthal museum of tolerance website says that "austrian jews regarded dollfuss as their protector despite his anti-semitism, because of his strong opposition to nazism. in 1933 dolfuss was murdered in an attempted nazi putsch."

in one of the most popular american musicals, the sound of music, the character of captain von trapp wears the kruckenkreuz around his neck, and displays the austrian flag. when a swastika flag is hung on his door later, he tears it down - clearly a rejection of nazism. in all the mentions of this musical i've heard over the years, i've never known about this, or of any mention of it as sympathetic to fascism.

i just realized today is both hitler's birthday and the anniversary of the shootings at columbine high school. that coincidence was used to connect the dots when CDs of KMFDM and marilyn manson were found in the shooters' rooms, and the media tried to pull nefarious intent from their music and use of graphic symbols. its true that these and other bands say and do other things that allow people to point their fingers, but none of this is conclusive evidence for conviction in the ongoing public trials of opinion.

the bottom line is that people choose who they're going to go after and who gets the benefit of the doubt. the pope is in a much better position to directly influence opinions and major policies than a bunch of musicians. perhaps now that a german and former hitler youth resides in the papacy, christians and other protest groups will have to re-think their ignorant boycotts of artists exploring the ambiguity or original power of "tainted" symbols. yeah. and maybe blood axis will play a big show with death in june at the vatican.

the title of this post comes from a 1960 film set in austria.

i am the resurrection

2005-04-19T13:31:00.000-04:00

executive slacks perked me up with an entry about the new venue the stone. artist-run and artist-benefitting, in a soon-to-be-hip location (avenue c is the new avenue b, right?), this seemed like the perfect balm to soothe our pain from the impending demise of other nyc clubs. then i read the fine print: "the stone is booked purely on a curatorial basis. we do not accept demos of any kind."

since the space is funded purely "through the online sale of special limited edition CDs released yearly on the tzadik label," (there is no merch table or bar, although the website does ask for donations), it's difficult to tell them how to run things. you can't fault them for not being altruistic or music-oriented enough. a place like this even existing is a miracle in this town, and i hope it stays open and doesn't get into the kind of trouble that almost ended the similarly-run tonic (which thankfully has been saved for the time being).

because they're running things in such an above-board way, it's hard to split hairs over the implied elitism. it is after all, their time and money they're putting into this labor of love. i just think musicians will find it a little frustrasting that a new venue has opened that they have little chance of playing unless the unknown curators happen to have heard of you already. in other words, already be in the same scene and you have a chance. a very catch-22 proposition, and hardly a fitting replacement for the potential losses of both luna lounge and CBGB. although those venues haven't been too friendly to non-rock-based music of late, they have a fairly open booking policy in theory (and sometimes in practice).

new york city is still in the throes of a musical explosion not seeen here since the late 70's, probably even bigger than then. more spaces where musicians can play is a good thing right now. let's hope the eyes and ears of the stone are being perked far and wide.

the title of this post comes from a song by the stone roses. the picture above is a gargoyle from avenue c taken by joe chiffriller.

written on skin

2005-04-18T13:55:00.000-04:00

last tuesday saw another installment of choking victim, a monthly party at niagara thrown by liron. people prone to hunger late at night on the lower east side may recognize her as the super-nice girl behind the counter at the creperie. i always figured she had something more to her by the interesting choice of music always played on her shifts. fellow crepe enthusiast bianca, being the more gregarious one (those who know her are laughing at the understatement as they read this), immediately struck up a conversation and started going to liron's night. since this month had bianca directly involved and also featured dj abstract, who pretty much always spins things i like, i was honor-bound to go. and glad i did.

first stop was downstairs, to the cozy little tiki bar that looks a bit like it was left over from the place's days as king tut's wa wa hut. the DJ booth is a great little alcove that's not at all cramped, which made me want to spin there sometime. abstract was cooking up something a bit more pulse-quickening than the downtempo that usually sends me running for a pen and napkin to remember what new amazingness i have to buy. not all my cup of tea, but i definitely left with a better appreciation for a few more drum'n'bass tracks. he teased us with snippets of "james brown is dead," and the 2000 remix of "i sit on acid" had me laughing out loud, but then lords of acid usually has that effect on me.

upstairs musically was billed as "80's new wave/alternative." fortunately the DJs had more taste and variety than that sounds, certainly much better than the average "80's nights" popping up around town. things like echo and the bunnymen, morrissey/smiths, peter murphy, sometimes veering into a more deathrock or 90's industrial zone, mostly avoiding the more obvious choices but delivering a few familiar songs.

the artistic theme of the night (apparently it always has one) was bodies as "human canvas" for painting poetry on. bianca was the first to be painted on in the window of the bar, which drew several appreciative passerby. first her friend nelly wrote one poem on her chest, and then a man whose name i didn't catch continued on her arms and legs. after that, he was written on by liron herself (above), who supplied most of the poetry. bianca's calves were meanwhile covered in another original poem by a girl with a familiar face from nights spent at the raven. all the while, old horror movies and other bizarre clips played on the bar's tv monitor, while a crowd ranging from extremely-dressed goths and punks to normal-looking locals enjoyed themselves. you can also read ben's version of events.

the title of this post comes from a book on the art of japanese tattoo