Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Herb Alpert - Rise



... and speaking of Mr. Alpert, this is a classic. When I hear this I can practically taste the 70's. What do they taste like? Numbness cut with baby laxative.

The Southbay's Finest Bookstore: The Book Frog



The Book Frog. The nicest staff. The most knowledgeable staff (a feat unto itself). A completely independent, "we're doing it on our own and F$^K Corporate culture" bookstore. And... a Literary Titan!!!

(and props for the Herb Alpert at the end!!!)

Am I Evil?



Remember when they were a good band? I know, I barely can either...

Bloody Cuts Films Presents - Lock Up



I posted another one of these a while back and have been wanting to go back and watch another. The one I finally landed on is Lock Up and just like Don't Move it is fantastic! An excellent Horror short with a truly frightening pay off. Go to Bloody Cuts Films website for more shorts and thanks again to Bloody Disgusting for getting the word out about Bloody Cuts and turning me onto them.

Cat Rapes Dog - Dead Boys Don't Say No



... and my the first track I heard by CRD is the one that made me listen to more. I quickly consumed Biodegradable and have been a fan since.

New Cat Rapes Dog from "Life Was Sweet"



One of my best mates, a man I like to call Monsieur Viderstrom introduced me to Cat Rapes Dog many years ago and has since generously kept me into their rekkids. He texted me last week that the first track off CRD's forthcoming "Life Was Sweet" had hit the youtubes but I've continuously forgotten about it. Things have been a bit pear-shaped and as such I've not had the attention span to continue to work a full timer, work on my novel and see to a suddenly fairly fertile period of song-writing for Christian Fisting's (hopefully) soon to be announced Free Digital E.P. Anyway, I've gotten a lot done in the last few days in all corners and as such I'm taking periodic breaks in writing tonight to get back into posting. So here's that new Cat Rapes Dog. God Hates Christians.

FINALLY!!! =- NEW TV ON THE RADIO - "Mercy"



I'm just gonna go ahead and put this on repeat until the new album arrives, hopefully sooner than later. I LOVE this band and they're new stuff always drops at just the right time. Note the gorgeous 80's-lush keyboard in the chorus and that massive guitar lead that comes in over the top of it and just takes the whole track to another level. I read a while ago that this album would not be on Interscope, so hopefully the moment it's done it will drop!

Windhand - Woodbine



I've never heard Windhand before, but I saw the album cover on Brooklyn Vegan here and had to know if it sounded like it looks. It does. What's more, from the opening note of this track I knew I loved it. Then the vocals kicked in and I REALLY LOVED it. Spectral, thick and heavy but melodic. Reminds me a little of The Work Which Transforms God-era Blut Aus Nord (the vocals more than anything else) meets Electric Wizard. Really cool. Here's the trailer for the album out soon on Relapse, and if you hit that BV link up top there's some more information on that always awesome site!

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Liner Notes

Some of my favorite things in the world are the Liner Notes in old Black Sabbath albums. There's something so... clinical and pragmatic about the way they're written. Just their inclusion in the packaging flies in the face of anything you'd ever see in most of the music industry today, so they are very much evocative of the time and compliment listening to the records quite nicely.

The Actual Farmhouse from The Conjuring



I saw The Conjuring yesterday. Fantastic! I've been waiting almost twenty years for someone to make a movie out of the stories I read in Ed and Lorraine Warren's The Demonologist. Finally it's happened and we once again have James Wan to thank for doing such a great job. I'm writing a piece about the Warrens for Joup, in the meantime I will post whatever I dig up in the research here, starting with this retrospective of the farmhouse the movie is based on, the most recent owner Norma Sutcliffe interviewed by the eldest daughter of the Perron family - the family whose experiences the movie is based on.

NEW MAN MAN!!!



Another case of something I watched for everyday for so long and then, the moment I stopped watching it arrived. I like all Man Man's records but 2011's Life Fantastic, to me, was really a level up. It still receives regular play in my car and now we have On Oni Pond due Sept. 10th on ANTI. If Head ON is any indication, this will be another game changer for the band.

Dunkleziffer - See It



DJ extraordinaire Mario Cotto just played this on KCRW - it made my night!

Saturday, July 27, 2013

My Take on Summer Slaughter, 7.20.13 HOB Sunset Strip

image courtesy of my own bad self
Stupid name for a tour but a pretty awesome show. Read my dissertation on Joup here.

Boom! Studios' Day Men

image courtesy of ifanboy.com
New comic from Boom! Studios - read about it in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column on Joup here!

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

So How Was Dillinger's Set at Summer Slaughter?



Shortly before DEP took the stage last Saturday as the headliners at Summer Slaughter I was talking to the guys in local LA band Vishuda, who I met earlier in the evening. Nice bunch'a guys. We talked music between a couple of the sets. They invited me to their gig the next night at Sunset HOB's Voodoo Lounge, but unfortunately as I often regret to have to intone, I wake up at 4:30 in the morning so shows on any night but Friday or Saturday are just not a possibility (hence why I've missed everyone from Nick Cave to Savages this year so far. Well no, the Nick Cave was because the show was $130 a ticket - a price we found ONLY applied to the LA. Wouldn't pay that for Jesus to hand me free redemption. I LOVE everything Mr. Cave does, but no way... but I digress. I'm half asleep...).

ANYWAY, the Vishuda guys had not had the pleasure of having seen Dillinger live. As the strobe lights began to run test sequences and the lights crept slowly into darkness they noticed my sudden nervousness and asked me what to expect. I expressed my apprehension for standing where we were, so close to the stage, shook their hands and made my way to a little spot three or so steps off the floor. Why?

The first time I saw Dillinger Escape Plan was in '99 at the Chicago Metro. It was the first leg of Mr. Bungle's California tour - my friends and I saw them three times that year - and while standing pretty much right in front of the stage, not having ever heard of the Dillinger Escape Plan before, suddenly the room went pitch black, the strobes started and the... things that took the stage  - which of course I later learned were insanely talented and death-defying individuals - in that looked like demons. I mean, I was literally fucking terrified. The whirling frenzy of shapes that threw and spun their instruments around them like giant bipedal spiders looked like they were coming off the stage to take us all to hell. Add to this the fact that, having never heard their epileptic, machine-gun vomiting sound before I was caught off guard sonically as well and you'll understand me when I say again that I was really, really afraid.

After the trauma from that show wore off and I adjusted to the musical style I became a Dillinger Escape Plan fan for life.

Fast forward to 2002. My friend Hawk (not the General) was the drummer for a band called Tub Ring at the time and they were opening for Dillinger at, once again, the Metro. Hawk invited me to roadie for the 'Ring so I could hang out backstage. It was awesome. By this time original Dillinger singer Dimitri Minakakis had left the group and been replaced by Greg Puciato. I got to meet Greg and a couple of the other guys briefly - Hawk and I were standing just off stage as they ran out and began to tear the place apart. At some point during the set we made our way up to the backstage balcony where Hawk and I subsequently had a bird's eye view (no pun intended) of a moment unlike any other I have ever seen at a live show. In the heat of the moment during the climax of a song (can't remember which one) guitarist Ben Weinman tore his guitar off his back, smashed it against the stage and then proceeded to hurl it into the crowd, where it hit some chick dead in the face!

Let me say that again and please understand me when I tell you, this is no exaggeration. Dead. In. The. Face.

My love affair with Dillinger Escape Plan deepened. I didn't like seeing someone get hurt, but the sheer chaos - there really is no other word - of a Dillinger Show is, in my opinion, something worth experiencing. But then again I haven't been hit in the face yet.

Two years later in 2004 I saw Dillinger again at the TINY Fireside Bowl in Chicago (RIP Fireside). It was August in the Midwest and as such well over one hundred degrees outside, so inside a tiny bowling alley/DIY venue... well, let's just settle on it was bloody hot! Because of this the Fireside's management had box fans set up on the stage to try and help alleviate the oppressively thick air that confronted the bands on the stage, really little more than a glorified riser (which is part of the reason the place was so damn awesome). The Bronx - another of my favorite bands - played before DEP and managed not to destroy anything regardless of how apeshit they went, but after Dillinger came out, within about two songs Puciato had demolished all of the fans and was whipping their shattered carcasses around the room. I'd not seen Dillinger since that Fireside show but three times is the charm, eh? As I said, I've learned to appreciate the complete insanity that occurs when this band plays, but I've also learned to stay an appropriately safe distance if I'm not currently in the mood to take chances. Well, Michael, the bass player for Vishuda took the above video. I don't know that anyone got hurt, but... well just JESUS! What else can I say? I've seen Mike Patton do something similar in an old Bungle video, but I'd never see this live and in person before.

Thanks to Michael from Vishuda for getting such great footage of this and I'm sure as his band has some tracks up on the old interweb I'll be posting them. Heavy and psychedelic with some prog thrown in for good measure, that's roughly how Vishuda described their sound to me last Saturday night. Definitely something I want to check out.

Yeah, I saw that live. From a safe distance.

I'm just sayin'...

image courtesy of comicvine.com

I have never used an emoticon.

Monday, July 22, 2013

New Fuck Buttons Tomorrow



Finally! Something like four years since their last record.

Revocation



Saturday I attended the, ahem, Summer Slaughter at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. Here's the list of bands.

Rings of Saturn
Aeon
Revocation
The Ocean
Cattle Decapitation
Norma Jean
Periphery
Animals as Leaders
Dillinger Escape Plan

I'm currently writing a review of it for Joup - despite the ridiculous name for the tour it was a very good time. Revocation is a band I'd never heard of that I really, really liked. Here's their bandcamp. I came home from the show and looked them up, found this and downloaded it for free from the Scion AV website, which is apparently the car Scion's lifestyle marketing division or some other such nonsense. A car company with a lifestyle marketing division? This is indeed a disturbing universe in which we cohabitate with giant slug gods of the apocalypse (aka corporations). All I had to do was give them my email and I received the record for free. Not sure how this benefits the band (hopefully they all received free Scions and then they sacrificed them to the nether beasts of Metaldom) but I'm sure the corporation made it worth their while to some degree. Anyway, the album is really good, old school thrash with a death-metal twist. If you grew up with megadeth's Rust in Peace (before asshead mustaine re-recorded and ruined the vocals) or Testament's Low you'll probably dig this. Revocation's not reinventing the wheel, but maybe because I'm not aware of anything current that scratches this particular itch I'm really enjoying it. My advice: skip Scion and download it for $4.99 from the bandcamp - it's well worth it.

RIP Dennis Farina



More bad news earlier today: Dennis Farina died. Today sucks!

I was first introduced to the man in Crime Story, a show I LOVED when it aired back when I was a wee lad in the 80's. I haven't seen it since, but I have such strong memories of certain things from the show, like when two of the characters (Ray Deluca? without looking it up I think that's right or at least close) and someone else hiding out in a nuclear testing area made to look like a subdivision? And Farina, always awesome. Then of course who could forget Mr. Farina in Guy Ritchie's Snatch, one of my all time favorite performances in one of my all time favorite movies.

New Jesu in September, New Pale Sketcher NOW!!!



Well, I received some bad news today in the form of an old friend passing away. Not someone I knew terribly well - he was an older guy who was a regular at the bar I tended in Chicago from 2001 to 2006. Every year when I go home to Chicago he's one of the few that I see. I didn't agree with a lot of what he said, but I loved the guy. A lot.

Well, I walked in the house dreary from the news and when I fired up the old Com-pu-ter Brooklyn Vegan helped take the edge off by posting some fucking awesome news:

New Jesu record out on September 24th. And the title hit home: Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came. Leave it to Mr. Justin K. Broadrick - the guy's a legend for all the right reasons. Along with this BV dropped news of a new Pale Sketcher over on that particular Broadrick project's bandcamp. Here's one of them, go to the Vegan page for more of the particulars and hit the bandcamp full throttle for more Broadrick tunes.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

First Veronica Mars Footage out of ComicCon (via Aintitcoolnews)



I still maintain that the first season of Veronica Mars is among the best stories I've ever seen on television. All three seasons are great, but season one just really, really hums. GREAT writing.

Via Aintitcoolnews where they have more info here.

Night of the 80's Undead

image courtesy of jasinmartin.deviantart.com
Great new comic, Night of the 80's Undead. Read about it HERE in this week's Thee Comic Column, only on Joup

Friday, July 19, 2013

Nitzer Ebb - Join the Chant



Oh, why not?

To make up for angering you with that Pearl Jam/Motorhead comparison (not really a comparison, but could easily be mistaken for one. ANYWAY...)

Pearl Jam - Mind Your Manners and Pass Me the Motorhead Greatest Hits Eddie, Would'ja?



I swear, when I first heard this last week it came on the radio in the background and just based on the guitar and snare drum I thought it was Motorhead. Then the chorus has a little bit of a 'State of Love and Trust' thing going on. I respect the hell out of this band, but haven't cared about anything they've done in SOOOOO long. Ten's a classic, Vs. has a handful of great songs on it (Go, Animal, WMA) and Vitalogy has Satan's Bed. After that... well, Matt Cameron joining made me a little interested but not enough to actually get to know anything. This album will probably be the same thing - I'll ignore it. Maybe not, but probably. However, right now I think this song deserves chronicling. It's not great, but it's interesting just for the sake of the above-mentioned confusion.

The Walking Dead Season 4 Trailer



Fresh from Comic con (no I'm not there - I never go). It looks like the show may finally be coming into its own with this next season. I know that's hard to say from a trailer, especially one for an entire season of a tv show, so maybe its wishful thinking. Or maybe its just something different about the tone. All I know is for every episode of AMC's The Walking Dead I've liked so far there's been about a corresponding three I didn't like. The book is still my #1, so we'll see...

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Cities in Dust

This song just became very important to me. More on this later.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Evil Dead - First 10 Minutes courtesy of bloody disgusting

I cannot wait to own this. Thanks to the almighty Bloody Disgusting for posting this. I don't care what anybody has to say about this, I LOVED it. And, as my friend Ray pointed out, the fact that THE car is sitting at the cabin, already there when our new characters arrive, well, that means it's cannon. Now granted THE car gets transported into the past at the end of Evil Dead 2 doesn't really argue convincingly to me, granted that Raimi re-writes the specifics of each movie as he goes.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Cross My Heart Hope To Die - Rollercoasting



Totally reminds me of old Tricky. Props to Warren Ellis for Tweeting this.

Pretty in Purgatory Band Trailer (via Bloody Disgusting)


The first 37 seconds or so of this sounds like In Slaughter Natives to me (esp. the drums), and that is a very cool thing. Then I'm not so sure. I like the tone and the iconography, if only just. Curious to see if I like the rest. via the Almighty Bloody Disgusting - follow that link to read more details about Pretty In Purgatory.

image courtesy of Bloody Disgusting

Hospital Nights

image courtesy of my own bad self
Late night in the hospital. Sunday morning my wife went into the hospital. She's ok, but they're keeping her for a few days. Thus, I spent the night and will be spending subsequent nights laying at her side on a strange fold-out faux-leather sofa bed thingy. It's not comfortable, but it's not uncomfortable either, so take that to mean whatever. It's strange. Hospitals are big buildings, and I've always harbored a strange fascination/excitement at the prospect of what goes on in large, modern buildings in the middle of the night. Last night I was fairly out of it so other than penning what I now believe was probably a completely incoherent message to the inimitable Chester Whelks I pretty much just passed out. But I dreamt. Boy did I dream...

In the first 'episode' of the dream I was in a small, possibly New England town. There was a lot of running around. I got the impression that there were people I knew there and also people who were recovering from something. I am unsure whether this was recovery from something that happened to them or something they did to themselves. At some point I believe I ventured off from the others - I was in an old New England style house, real old, as in run down. I was running through the house. Then other people were there as well, but I don't think it was the same people. I take this to me an overturning of acquaintances? Or perhaps, because I've been in contact with quite a few people I've not talked to in a while of late that could factor in here as well. These new people were also running, only behind me. Not quite sure if they were running with me from something or chasing me. Either way the tone was the same - there was something terrifying behind me/us.

I had tried to take someone out of using what I believe was an old book (of course!) to conjure the devil. It may have been my good friend The Goatchild. He did not listen and the next thing I can remember after the frantic chasing is running alone, up a broken, dilapidated and gently curving staircase. There were pieces of the balustrade missing, and the stairs themselves, while solid enough below my feet, looked a lot like the rest of the house in that it was old, dusty and unkept. Suddenly from behind and above me a crazy, screeching, evil monkey swung out over my head and attacked me. It bit my right hand on the top, opposite where my palm would be. I screamed and grabbed the monkey. It jumped back toward the underside of the floor above and I caught its head with a ball pein hammer, grinding its skull so that I could actually feel the bones break and the brains squish.

It was disgusting.

The monkey was a representation of the devil (which I should point out I don't believe in in the traditional sense, except for about three hours after I watch The Exorcist) and I had the feeling I was marked. I woke up stretched out on the little chair-thing, buzzing like a live wire from the fear that carried over from my dream. There's a window just in front of where my head was. It looks like this during the day:


Not too scary, right? Well, I woke up sleeping on my stomach, facing out the window. Along with the fear, when I surfaced out of the dream I brought with me this little voice that insisted that I had had similar dreams before, and that I was marked by the devil (who again, I don't believe in in this Christian/Hollywood way) and that these occasional dreams were his way of manifesting to me. While all this was running through my head I scanned the darkness outside the window. Across the street, beneath a tree there was something that looked more than a little like a human-shaped dark shadow...

The Art of Punk - Black Flag


One of the first things that made me feel at home when I moved to the South Bay of this sprawling Metroplex of Los Angeles in 2006 was the widespread love of the band Black Flag. Now, I wouldn't necessarily consider myself the biggest fan, in fact although I love Henry Rollins I'm not all that interested in his years in the band. As a fluke I suppose back in high school a friend of mine whose house our fairly large and obnoxious group occupied on a weekly and often nightly basis for our deeds of debauchery had an older sister who had really turned him onto a lot of old school punk and it was in the center of his lair of debauchery* that I first heard and immediately fell in love with Everything Went Black: Black Flag, The First Four Years. This record was part of the soundtrack to the adventures in that house, along with Fugazi, Sugar, Social Distortion and Slayer.

Anyway, the other obvious distinctive attribute of Black Flag is Raymond Pettibon's art.

.................

* From my unpublished novel The Ghost of Violence Past (copyright 2009 Shawn C. Baker):

"Imagine pulling up to a nice suburban subdivision… wait. It’s 1993 and every house is two stories with a basement, let’s say starting between 100k-300k, including your house.  Now imagine you pulled into your driveway Friday night after a hard week of work only to find that up and down almost every block for as far as the eyes could see there were cars – not just cars but cars that obviously belonged to teenagers. Cars with Misfits and Soundgarden bumper-stickers; the Powell Perelta skateboards’ bird skull logos on Mini Vans; Phuck clothing decals on Taraus’; Broncos and old Buick’s covered in stickers for bands like Pearl Jam and The Red Hot Chili Peppers to try and camouflage the fact that they hadn’t had a paint job or any rust work in years. Chevettes, Cavaliers and even a Mustang or two, all draped with images and phrases all mostly unknown to you, unless you too had one of these troubled almost-adults housed under your roof. As a middle-aged suburban parent with the house, spouse and 2.5 kids you would recognize the automobiles for what they were because of course teenagers drive what their parents throw away or replace.

In other words, you’d recognize trouble.

And you would smell it even better when you decided to do a couple laps around the old subdivision and try and pinpoint what was going on and where. You’d circle the streets for a while and then maybe you’d be a little unnerved to see that those cars, those relics that remind you of when you were a no-good punk kid getting fucked up on your dad’s gin and your mom’s pills, were all releasing their cargo of drunken, stoned, up-to-no-good teenagers onto the lawns and sidewalks surrounding and leading up to one house.

That house.

The same house it always is. The same house everyone in the neighborhood fears will one day unleash a horrible perpetration on the rest of the people of the subdivision. The same house everyone who owns one of those overpriced cookie-cutter domiciles has called the police on at least half a dozen times in the last year.

This was Ralph’s on the first Friday after junior year ended and it wasn’t just the stoner social event of the year. It was the punk, grunge, new-wave, raver, whatever social event of the year. Every disparate misfit ‘clique’, every awkward social denomination was out in full force.

Neighbors beware.


We pulled up in Duke’s car around eight. First off there was no place to park anywhere nearby, and really that was probably good because as we made our first pass by the house I knew the police would be patrolling like crazy, probably stopping any car they saw leave to check for intoxicated teenage drivers. A ton of people, none of whom I knew, were standing on the driveway and lawn being anything but subtle while smoking joints, talking shit, whatever. One guy actually stood in the street and attacked Ralph’s mailbox with a pair of nunchuks."

New David Bowie Video for Valentine's Day



Via Brooklyn Vegan.

The Next Day has remained a favorite of mine so far this year even though the seemingly endless influx of new records has kept it out of the almost-constant rotation it occupied for about a month after its release. This video is an interesting contrast to the previous two from the record, The Stars (Are Out Tonight) and The Next Day in that it's Bowie without any guest stars, going it alone. I'm normally not a fan of seeing the musician perform in the video because those performances are almost always staged, however I think the point here is not to suggest to us that Bowie is playing, but to give him something to do that is congruent to the song while the directors present us with the strange metamorphosis that the icon goes through while on display. I don't know that this 100% does what they wanted it to do, but it definitely doesn't fail either. And with the photography so strong and the art direction so simple but effective we are treated to enough to make this an interesting and enjoyable watch. Of especial beauty to me was the close-up shot of the guitar strings vibrating, the choice of the guitar because it reminds me of Bowie's late 80's rock group Tin Machine, and the way the directors light the radical facial expressions that come over Mr. Bowie as the song, about song shootings, reaches its soft-spoken conclusion.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Jean Michel Jarre's Equinoxe



A few years ago, while working at the bookstore, my good friend David spoke to me about the artist Jean Michel Jarre. I knew I'd heard the name enough to know there was some kind of a 'new age' connotation surrounding it, but not enough that I'd ever had anyone discuss Jarre's work with me, let alone introduce me to it. David is older than me and had a smattering the man's records from back around the time of their release. Based on David's discussion of Jarre I don't know that I'd consider him a fan per se - as an avid scholar and mathematician he seemed more the kind of person that would have been interested in Jarre's work at the time of its release based on the new technology and thought process that went into it. Basically this is synthesizer-composition and probably felt like someone using new technology (at the time) to make the type of compositions formerly performed with strings and woodwinds. During Jarre's heyday (70's/early 80's) this may have been akin to the future meeting the past, or mad futurist fiction meeting Mozart.

Or maybe not. Either way, like it or hate it there's something here. I've always believed that innovation is not always pretty, especially in retrospect. Equinoxe is not a place I can go often, but in the years since I copied the disc from David I've learned there is a very particular mind frame that I am sometimes in where I can hear this the way I'd imagine David first heard it, and that's pretty cool. Another example of time travel via one of the senses.

Just never all of the senses.

David Lynch - Making of The BIg Dream



I've been meaning to post this for a while, however by the time it first came to my attention (via bloody disgusting I believe) it was pulled down, and then I kind of got folded into the complex arrangements of the last two weeks and time and space and new music kind of disappeared. Well, I've resurfaced - somewhat - and now I have to post this. Mr. Lynch continues to be one of the most delightful, inspirational organisms walking the planet today and an artist that, even when horrifying me, still can make me smile. The Big Dream came out today and I've yet to buy it, but I think I will be able to return to normal existence soon and sit down and listen to it. That will make me happy.

New John Frusciante!!!



via Exclaim, whose got a whole lotta information on the new record, Outsides here.

New Jucifer via Brooklyn Vegan



Ahhh Jucifer... I discovered them when I heard the track Amplifier on Chicago's St Xavier University radio station (that's 88.3 if you're licking) back in the early oughts. Amplifier is irresistible 90's pop rock that kinda plays like the girls from Veruca Salt* singing for Nirvana. (though it came out in 2002). Here, in case you haven't heard it, take a moment to indulge:



Anyway, I picked up that record, I Name You Destroyer and the entire thing is just great. Very eclectic approach for a two-piece. Next came a copy of their first record, Calling All cars on the Vegas Strip.
image courtesy of spirit-of-metal.com
 I talked them up to a bunch of friends and took them to see the band at Chicago's Bottom Lounge (in its old location as since I've lived there I believe they've moved). What we saw was totally different then the record. It was... metal. I mean, three-fingers-up-and-two-down rock lock metal. This was totally different then the recorded material I'd heard thus far.

Then I bought the E.P. Lambs and I began to understand.

Since then Jucifer's sound has congealed into a more coherent whole that synthesizes their 'live' sound and the benefits of multi-tracking in the studio. And because of this it's gotten better. Then a brief departure in 2010 with Throned in Blood which, from my few listens to it, stands as an amazing testament to old school, nineties metal. It's good, and once again it's hard to imagine that much sound comes from just two people. Then again, when you see their stage set-up, it begins to make sense.

image courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan
Anyway, Brooklyn Vegan ran an article about the forthcoming next album by the band, released next week and entitled за волгой для нас земли нет and I'm excited. Go to the Vegan here to read the full article and see the bizarre album trailer as well.

..........
*Not totally into what the 'Salt did, however their voices combined in a way that was very, very hot.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Chester Whelks interviews Paul Colilli of Simply Saucer...



... I'd never heard Simply Saucer. However, after hearing them and reading the interview, as Chester says, I am an instant convert. Colilli has a new solo record which I've embedded above - go here and you can purchase it on his bandcamp. Read the interview and check out another track that Chester embedded on Joup here.






Friday, July 12, 2013

Lo-Pan - Sasquanaut



Band name a reference to one of my all-time favorite movies?
Check.
Ohio?
Check.
Sabbath-influenced stoner rock riffs?
Check.
Monkey Astronauts?
Check.

What the hell's not to like. Go to the band's bandcamp and buy it here.

Via Brooklyn Vegan.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Drumcondra, Ireland You're Haunting My Dreams...

Image courtesy of geograph.ie
It's been nearly ten years since I was out of the country. I've never traveled abroad as much as I would have liked to, however I've done a small amount. Problem is (not really a problem though) when I do get out there's really only three places I like to go. There's other places I want to see, but only three places I go: England, Ireland and Scotland.

Now, this morning I dreamt seemingly non-stop about Ireland. Specifically for some reason I dreamt of Drumcondra, a suburb of Dublin. I don't know much about Drumcondra - I was there during the earliest days of 2002 with my friends Grez and his cousin Tony and a certain other person who, well, scared the hell out of me and almost inadvertently got me killed. In a nutshell, she was crazy. Beautiful, but crazy. And I paid for that.

Anyway... I didn't dream about any of this; none of these people, none of the places I was at while I was there. What I dreamt about were a bunch of places and people I never encountered before in 'consensual' reality but in the dream felt like I'd met and now somehow stumbled into a very pained remembrance. I was with my wife and my folks, we were walking the green streets of Drumcondra, and suddenly I wandered away or fell behind for a moment and then lost them, only to enter a place and recognize it immediately. From there it seemed I climbed and descended endless staircases, on almost each level re-meeting people I had somehow forgotten and only just then remembered, but remembered in a way that made them very important to me. New bonds were established and then somehow there was someone following me - chasing me even - and I was trying to avoid them. When a confrontation eventually happened it was for naught, and then this older dude at work who I don't particularly care for (nothing against him - just keep my distance for perceived reasons) showed up and whisked me back to where my wife and family waited.

What the hell?

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Brand New - Jesus Christ



I think this was the first song by this band that really hit. I remember I had dismissed them and then - and this is back like seven years ago (!) - three of my friends from Ohio band Blue Karma were staying with us while they met with a new manager (I think that was the purpose of the trip) and one night while we stayed up late and drank and played one another music they threw this on. I was reluctant at first but I remember Jeremy saying, "Listen to this, this was made to be timeless," and I focused on the music and suddenly had an epiphany: Brand New is an awesome band and The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me is an unbelievably crafted album made as a mark against time and a chronicle of youth slowly drifting into the uncharted waters of adulthood.

image courtesy of wikipedia.org

New Pelican!!!



There's a bunch of info on the upcoming album and tour on Brooklyn Vegan. I dig these guys, and this new record will be released on the mighty Southern Lord records! How's that?

Monday, July 8, 2013

McRad - MyWeakness/McShred



A 20-something year mystery is ended. McRad.

Bones Brigade Video 4: Public Domain



Holy crap - I am STOKED that I found this. At Mr. Brown's suggestion my wife and I just watched the Bones Brigade Autobiography documentary. Brought a damn tear to my eye. And Rodney Mullen - I knew he was WOW as a skater, but WOWWOW as a person as well. All those guys.


Sunday, July 7, 2013

Twin Peaks Season 3 Twitter Feed (not official, obviously)

image courtesy of the wonderful welcometotwinpeaks.com


Twin Peaks Season Three Twitter Account.

So I really like this: a twitter account that's titled Twin Peaks Season 3 - it's a wonderful bullet point fan fiction for season three. The whole 140 characters or less really helps this play in a way that doesn't suffer the usual baggage of fan fiction (not all, but a lot) and this guy (or girl) really has the tone down. It's not perfect, but it's close and the few times they step out of the tone it works too.

Obnoxious and Anonymous Video Interview w/ Jen Lynch



I have no idea when I'm going to find the time to watch this, but that doesn't mean I can't share it!!!

Poststardom Depression - What You See is What You Get



This band haunts me. Another great find of my wife's, back in '05 shortly before we moved across country. Little bit of Stereophonics, little Queens, but entirely their own thing. There's a fuzzy debauchery that hangs over the album this is on, Prime Time Looks A Lot Like Amateur Night, the entirety of which is every bit as fantastic as this one track. Need to hunt down Jeff Angell's other bands, The Missionary Position and Walking Paper, the latter of which also features Barrett Martin of Mad Season and Screaming Trees, Duff McKagan and contributions by Mike McCready (according to good 'ol wikipedia).

Jacques Renault



About a year and a half, maybe two years ago I get set to go into the grocery one night. I'm by myself and it's the first time I ever think to throw my headphones in while shopping. Seems a bit weird, but what the hell, every moment with music is a moment grand. I scroll through my ipod and right hand to Maude I see the name Jacques Renault. It's a techno song (to use a super generic label because I'm tired). I listen and it's pretty damn awesome. I repeat it a second time while I shop. I have no idea how this artist or song came to be on my ipod (this isn't it - I'll find it and post it). But then I remember what became of Jacques. I remember my former roommate Tim almost beating the actor who portrayed him in Twin Peaks, Walter Olkewicz's ass. I remember Leland, duck-taping his wrist to the side of the bed. I remember...

So this is what he's been up to since Leland played "Pillow Face" with him? Cool beans. Glad to see he's made something of himself. Slimmed down a might too. Visit his soundcloud page here and check out some more cool stuff.

Evolution of a Post: Black Walls





Tonight I've a restless, stirring going on behind my eyes. You may have noticed from the increasingly flowery way I'm turning these last few posts into prose. Part of that's because I'm still a little disheveled from last week's weird experience with the NIN/David Lynch video, and part of it is because I've had a kind of off week working on my book. Regardless, I worked today - been up since 5 or 5:30 AM (it's almost 1:00 AM here now). Came home, went to write from about 5:30 to 8. Watched Night of the Hunter. Then watched TV Funhouse. Now am surfing - it's been a slow couple of weeks for music stuff. I've always got Heavenisanincubator to turn me on to awesome new stuff, but there's been a general disinterest in my own head with a lot of the stuff I find on the other sites I frequent. Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan, Gigwise. Not too much going on in those quarters. Sick of hearing about jz, daft punk and north west's progenitor. Then on Exclaim I find a new song by an artist working under the name of Black Walls. Something about the image the soundcloud player they have up for the new song "Mary of the Shrines" catches my eye. It reminds me of Sunn 0))). The words "Folk" and "Drone" are used. I'm pretty damn hard on acoustic guitar (Zeppelin does it so well they ruined it for most) but the track's great, listen to it and read about it here. I google Black Walls and find a bandcamp page from last year. I'm excited.
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Brand New - At The Bottom



This song still hits just as hard now as it did the first day that I heard it. We need some new Brand New. God and the Devil are Raging Inside Me is a masterpiece, and Daisy is even better - there's a guttural, haunting quality to this band's music. In it I can feel layers of childhood eclipsed by the inevitable rise of age; the drowning of promise and dreams with the unfortunate responsibilities life tends to push down our throats.

It's years ago now, but here's the review I wrote for Daisy after I first heard it.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

TV Funhouse



Probably the most fucked up, awesome show EVER. It's not really a surprise that this didn't go more than 8 episodes. Watching these puppets snort Christmas Cheer and assault unwitting passersby with their obnoxious caroling is just... disturbing. In the best possible way of course.

Mr. Brown ordered the set of both TV Funhouse and the best of TV Funhouse SNL and had them sent to my house. I'm sitting here with a pint enjoying the warped, twisted genius of Mr. Robert Smigel. Has it really been 13 freakin' years since this was on the air? Good lord...

god bless us Robert Smigel, each and every one of us.

1988 - The Year Marvel Comics Destroyed Pittsburgh

image courtesy of wikipedia.org
Wicked comics from the 80's - read about it on Joup!

Friday, July 5, 2013

Ministry - Twitch (full album)



You know, despite considering myself a pretty big Ministry fan since the early 90's I've never owned this album. I'm not even really all that familiar with it.


Ministry - Same Old Madness



It's always a trip to hear old Ministry. And I mean old as in the Arista years. Regardless, this is still pretty awesome and I'm kind of surprised a song like this wasn't eventually re-worked. It would have lent itself nicely to being 'industrialized' in the later incarnation of the group.

Revolting Cocks - You Often Forget (Live)



I'm not sure what year this is exactly, but it's OLD SCHOOL. It's been a Revolting Cocks kind of day. Beers, Steers and Queers and Linger Fickin' Good are regular staples of my everyday listening diet, but I cracked out the pre-Connelly Big Sexy Land yesterday and it's been stuck in my CD player off and on since.