
See Aki Onda's solo performance at the European Sound Delta / Ososphère in Strasbourg, France, in 2008. The footage was filmed and edited by Vincent Voillat (Collectif MU). Via The Wire online.
Experimental Music, Media & Performance in Buffalo, NY (Soundlab & more)
The world is a sick place, full of uptight repressed people who don’t know how to just lighten up. But Monotonix is all about levity − levity in spirit and levitation (you know what we mean if you’ve ever seen them live). It’s about rock ‘n’ roll being not only fun, but funny.Download the mp3 here. Monotonix visited Soundlab as part of the Fuck Yeah Fest on 07/06/08.
On September 8, 2009 Monotonix will release Where Were You When It Happened?, their first full-length debut and follow up to 2008’s Body Language EP. Where Were You When It Happened? roils and rocks with frenetic glee, shows a lot of skin, and is over before you know it.
But before you truly get to know the record in the biblical sense, Monotonix have released a little tantalizing peak into the album with the track “Set Me Free.”
When everything is going wrong, remember that the world is not so bad. Monotonix can release you from the sickness of this world through the prowess of rock and roll.
It's been a minute since we've heard anything from the Philly-based indie rap producer and (more recently) singer-songwriter RJD2, but that doesn't mean the man hasn't been busy. In a mammoth post on his MySpace blog today, RJ lets the world know exactly what he's been up to. RJ now has his very own record label, RJ's Electrical Connections. And the first artist on the label is RJ himself, which probably made for some easy contract negotiations. Writes RJ: "I am now a free agent, working for myself."RJD2 hit Soundlab on 09/20/04 with Diplo and Rob Sonic. On 04/23/06, he returned with Soul Position (RJD2 and Blueprint) with One Be Lo.
To celebrate his new label's existence, this week RJ digitally reissued a ton of rare material. On Tuesday, Your Face or Your Kneecaps, In Rare Form, and Things Go Better Instrumentals, three comps' worth of B-sides and rarities that RJ previously put out on his old imprint Bustown Pride, were released digitally for the first time via RJ's Electrical Connections. Your Face or Your Kneecaps features two previously unreleased bonus tracks. Right-click here, to download "Find You Out" from Your Face or Your Kneecaps.
On October 20, RJ's Electrical Connections will drop a huge vinyl-only box set on the world. RJD2 2002-2010 will include the LPs of vintage RJD2 releases Deadringer, The Horror EP, and Since We Last Spoke, as well as The Tin Foil Hat EP, which contains seven new, unreleased songs. (No The Third Hand, but maybe that's for the best.) RJ also promises "a hand silk-screened, signed and numbered poster, a download card for exclusive treats, plus a beautifully printed box." That's a lot of RJD2!
Finally, RJ also reports that he's done recording his next full-length, The Colossus. He says it'll be out "early this winter", but he hints that this means 2010, not 2009.
It's been four years since sound collagists the Books released their last proper LP, 2005's Lost and Safe, but Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong are "well underway" with the as-yet-untitled follow-up, due early next year. The long gestation process makes sense considering the painstaking work required for each of their found-sound tracks, which are usually made up of tons of tiny samples from all sorts of unique and/or forgotten sources.The Books performed with Todd Reynolds and The Sleeping Kings of Iona at Soundlab on 05/01/06.
"We started collecting audio tapes and video tapes on our last tour and we came home with a mountain of stuff-- around 4000 tapes," said Zammuto in a recent phone interview. "There's an unbelievable amount of treasure to go through, and that's what we've been up to over the past few years."
The duo are set to show off about a half dozen new compositions on a two-week tour of the U.S. next month, each one paired with exacting, synchronized videos that are often as impressive as the music itself. Click on for details about the new record (including a song based on Talkboy tapes) and some insight into how these guys distill thousands of hours of found material into something that's not only enjoyable but enlightening.
Dan Deacon gets his own mini-me in this cute-overload puppet clip courtesy of director Natalie Van Den Dungen. A ghost with an eye-patch and a skeleton pirate also star in the video for "Paddling Ghost", a highlight off the laptop guru's recent Bromst LP.On 04/01/05, Dan Deacon played Soundlab with Height w/Bow and Chugga Chugga.
You've already read that Central Market, the new solo album from Battles noisemaker Tyondai Braxton, is coming out next month via Warp-- September 14 in the UK, September 15 in the UK (the vinyl will have a bonus track). And you've heard one track from the album, "Uffie's Woodshop". Well, now we've got something else for you. Click here to hear album centerpiece "Platinum Rows" a 10-minute nu-classical piece that combines rushing strings with rabid kazoos and spy-movie guitars.Battles performed at Soundlab on 4/02/07. Guitarist Tyondai Braxton performed, with Parts & Labor, at the second Soundlab's soft opening on 10/26/03.
"Platinum Rows" sounds something like what might happen if you asked the guy who made the squeaky-voice noises on "Atlas" to score a Warner Brothers cartoon from the 1940s. It will make you dizzy.
YACHT are hoping you've got the remix itch from listening to their sunny new album, See Mystery Lights, which got a Best New Music nod a couple weeks ago. Now you can download the instrumental tracks from the album over at the Creative Commons-friendly Free Music Archive. You can also get your indie karaoke on with voice-less versions of YACHT dude Jona Bechtolt's early tunes and the tracks he did for the Blow's Paper Television here.Yacht played Soundlab with Dirty Projectors and Vampire Weekend on 08/27/07.
Freak-folk stalwarts MV & EE get ready to blow your mind all over again (man) on October 13, when they drop Barn Nova via Ecstatic Peace! The album features J Mascis on "drums, guitar, plate reverb."MV & EE first played Soundlab as part of the Tonight Let's All Make Love in Buffalo festival, on 07/09/05. They returned on 08/01/06 to share a bill with Ravid Padmanhaba/Steve Baczkowski Duo.
If nothing else, this new and somewhat maddening High Places video--in which Rob Barber and Mary Pearson wander hills and dunes and trees for twelve long minutes to no particular purpose--is an excellent delivery vehicle for its song, the still-lovely and leisurely "Late Bloomer." Those looking for a slightly more galvanizing experience might try the mixtape the band just made with Hisham Bharoocha (whose Soft Circle provides the other side of "Late Bloomer"'s 12") for Vice, which goes from vintage Nausea to Underworld in three moves and from Underworld to the Delfonics in just two. It's a tape with a keen arc and a keen ear and, like everything else these days, a Drake cameo. Full tracklist and download at the Vice Music Blog.High Places and Soft Circle played Soundlab on 02/11/08.
Health&Beauty is a long-standing, radically shifting unit centered around the compositional ideas of Brian J Sulpizio. At any given moment, he is probably working on a Health&Beauty record as well as recording the musical work of others and playing drums in various improvised groups and pop bands. Brian uses mostly The Guitar within the Health&Beauty idiom, but usually incorporates sequencing and improvised performances by friends and self. Varying from solo to trio in live performance, Health&Beauty sets involve carefully sculpted pop songs with frequent improvisational digressions.
Good-time classic-rocking James Murphy-produced Philadelphia quintet Free Energy have come up with an appropriately celebratory Scott Thrift-directed video for their eponymous "Free Energy" fight song. The lyrics let us know they're "young" and "alive" with time on their side and all of that good stuff, while the images second the emotion. It is fun watching the group tear into their '70s guitar parts and hardcore cowbell hits amid a sea of friends and balloons. As I tried to describe when posting their "Dark Trance," they tap a mix of '90s slacker-rock, Television via a Strokesian update, and something Cheap Tricked-out. This time also keep your eyes peeled for the three wolf moon t-shirt.Free Energy hit Soundlab on 9/10.
Across four extended soundscapes, psychedelic Denton post-metallers Pyramids team with seemingly everywhere/highly collaborative Toronto duo Nadja to create expansive ambient dirges that feel both fragile and heavy. You get the blast beats and wraithlike black metal vocalism of Pyramids' gorgeous self-titled debut on the airily pummeling "The Sound of Ice and Grass" and for sections of the highly triumphant closer "An Angel Was Heard To Cry Over The City Of Rome," but elsewhere the Texas quartet meld with Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff to create something entirely new: A spacious, darkly illuminated naturalist drone. The collection includes well-chosen guest spots from Cocteau Twins/This Mortal Coil bassist Simon Raymonde, Albin Julius of Der Blutharsch, and Mineral's Chris Simpson. The Mineral/Gloria Record frontman provides haunted vocals for "Another War," a track you can lose yourself in right now.On 08/23/07 Nadja graced Soundlab's stage with Beta Cloud and Mutus Liber.
Julian Koster has a specific vision and saw-singing sound for The Music Tapes, so you shouldn't be too surprised by much of what goes on in the Pluto-homaging "For the Planet Pluto" video. It features background vocals by fourth graders from Barrow Elementary School in Athens, Georgia and stars Major Organ And The Adding Machine's Kiran Fernandes and Sophie Fernandes. Speaking of organs, you'll also spot Kevin Barnes playing "The Slightly Sinister Father."The Music Tapes hit Soundlab on 02/28/09 with Icy Demons.
Our last look at Asobi Seksu came via "Me & Mary," the first single from their third album Hush. In that vein, the New York dream-poppers are releasing a limited-edition 10" that includes a slightly different version of Hush's "Transparence" along with two unreleased tracks from the Hush sessions and a remix of the title track by Aa. For now, here's Yuki Chikudate & Co. digging into the sunny (then icy, windy) "Transparence." Hardcore indie-pop trivia buffs will note a new introduction.You could have seen Asobi Seksu on the Soundlab stage with Besnyo (or maybe you did) on 09/16/06 .
The Rolling Stones and Deerhoof have roughly three things in common: They're both comprised of carbon-based life forms, they both make some form of rock music, and they are both liked by arty filmmakers. That's pretty much it.Deerhoof hit Soundlab on 05/10/05 with Needel and Ho-ag.
The huge gulf between the Rolling Stones and Deerhoof is going to get a little narrower soon, though.
Artist Adam Pendleton has chosen Deerhoof to star in BAND, a new multimedia work that refashions Sympathy for the Devil, Jean-Luc Godard's 1968 Stones sorta-doc. BAND will intercut images from Sympathy with footage of the infinitely less decadent Deerhoof recording and rehearsing in Toronto. Pendleton will wrap up his filming when Deerhoof plays a free show at Toronto's Yonge-Dundas Square on September 17, one of the Toronto International Film Festival's "Future Projections" events.
In a press release, Pendleton said of Deerhoof, "I was really looking for a group that balanced experimentation with a slightly pop, slightly rock sensibility and had a dynamic performance presence and style... Deerhoof had at it all."
Squeaky Wheel's Silent/Sound Film Festival is an annual event that pairs local sound artists with a classic silent film. This year, local poet Mike Basinski (UB Poetics, founder of Bufffluxus Group) will perform a live vocal soundtrack to FW Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924), a silent film that tells the tale of an experienced doorman at a fancy hotel who is absurdly demoted to lavatory attendant. Stunned and humiliated, the old man struggles to carry on with his life. After finally accepting his loss of status, he unexpectedly inherits the fortune of a gentleman who passes away in the hotel's bathroom. With this unexpected happening, the former doorman's life goes from bitter emptiness to ultimate worldly fulfillment. Watch this classic outside on the stairs of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery!Michael Basinski is a veteran of Soundlab and Basta!/Big Orbit Gallery "Murder the Word" events.
Michael Basinski is the curator of The Poetry Collection State University of New York at Buffalo. He performs his work as a solo poet and in ensemble with the EBMA and his own group, BuffFluxus. Among his many books of poetry are HEKA (Factory School); Strange Things Begin to Happen When a Meteor Crashes in the Arizona Desert (Burning Press); The Idyllic Book (Michel Letko, Houston, Texas); Mool, Mool3Ghosts and Shards of Shampoo (Bob Cobbing's Writers Forum); Cnyttan and Heebie-Jeebies (Meow Press); By and The Doors (House Press); Un-Nome, Red Rain Two, Abzu and Flight to the Moon (Run Away Spoon Press): Poemeserss (Structum Press) and many more.
In a year full of quirky, mesmerizing art-pop records, Dirty Projectors' Bitte Orca is right at the top of the heap, its sideways guitar riffs and starchy R&B vocal affectations still revealing themselves months later. So here's some good news: the band recorded a few extra songs during the Bitte Orca sessions that didn't make the album, and we'll get to hear two of them soon.Dirty Projectors have performed at Soundlab 3 times: on 06/29/05 with Wind Up Bird and Nat Baldwin; on 04/18/06 with Why? (and "The Getty Address," an animated film by James Sumner); and on 08/27/07 with Yacht and Vampire Weekend.
On September 28, Domino will release a new Dirty Projectors EP called Temecula Sunrise in the UK. It'll feature the title track, as well as the Bitte Orca highlight "Cannibal Resource". But the real selling points here are a pair of new tracks: "Ascending Melody" and "Emblem of the World". The Domino website says that these two new jams will involve "the band's signature rhythms and stunning singing." Nice.
Lightning Bolt has unleashed the first attack from their highly anticipated new album Earthly Delights. "Colossus" lives up to its title, clocking in at over seven minutes of trademark Lightning Bolt bass/drums/mask-mic-thing attack, leveling everything in its path.Check out Colossus, from the new album, here. Lightning Bolt played on the floor at Soundlab on 03/28/07, a slamming performance captured in several rough clips posted to You Tube.
For the past ten years, Ben Chasny has been recording under the moniker Six Organs of Admittance. His first self-released recordings, put to tape in his birthplace in the California Redwoods, were homespun abstractions that paid equal homage to the subtle string pyrotechnics of infamous hamburger gobbler John Fahey and the brute expressionism of modern day noise mongers such as Japan's Fushitsusha. Somewhere down the line, Chasny fought his way through the fog of bowed cymbals and drones to become a halfway decent songwriter. On 2003's Compathia, Nikki Sudden, Bud Light, and cheap thrills came together to create a new chapter in Chasny's musical existence, and he's been writing the wave ever since. His latest release, Luminous Night (out tomorrow on Drag City), abandons the frightened psychedelic yelp of its predecessor (2007's Shelter From The Ash) and delivers a dream-like suite of hopefully desperate tracks. We recently got in touch with Chasny to discuss the new record, higher forces, and hardware.Click here to read the interview. Six Organs of Admittance has played Soundlab 3 times, first on 04/17/04 with Sunburned Hand of the Man and Pengo; second on 10/10/05 with Hush Arbours and Warmer Milks; and most recently, on 01/30/08, with Mick Turner (of Dirty Three) and The Lochs.
About G. Lucas’s music: “I do what’s called ‘tape manipulation’ if you’re being literal, or ‘weird shit’ if you’re watching me jam on the floor at a sweaty basement show. I record samples onto common cassette tapes and mix them by hand crossfader-style through effects, and into a found-sound wall of shifting texture. I know, I know, don’t tell your mom. I also play tapes and sing affected vocals in Woods and do a solo drone project called Nonhorse. It’s all very abstract and insectoid.”Read the rest here.
G. Lucas’s top five favorite albums: Stevie Nicks’s Bella Donna, Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, Love by Love, Can’s Ege Bamyasi and any Billie Holiday album
The last amazing concert he saw: “Are you kidding? It’s all a blur…Magic Markers at Shea Stadium. Unstoppable.”
"Epileptic Seizure Comparison" (1976) is one of Sharits' most elaborate and violent installations. Sharits writes: "Seizure Comparison is an attempt to orchestrate sound and light rhythms in an intimate and proportional space, an ongoing location wherein non-epileptic persons may begin to experience, under 'controlled conditions'Š the majestic potentials of convulsive seizure."[1976, 16mm, color, sound, 34 min]
When SOTC caught up with Mount Eerie's Phil Elverum on the phone a couple weeks ago, he wasn't quite ready for us. "Just let me turn down my Nirvana," he said before asking me to call him back. It felt very appropriate. The Washington native's latest, Wind's Poem is an ode to the massive guitars of grunge and Kurt Cobain at his absolute creepiest. Just don't call it black metal. Elverum turned off the Nirvana and helped clear the air about a lot of things, from touring with a full band to Buddhism to Elverum's enduring love and artistic affinity for David Lynch's Twin Peaks.Continue reading here. Phil Elverum played Soundlab on 10/31/07 with Privacy and Al Larsen.
Eli Keszler and Ashley Paul's electro-acoustic take on freely improvised music eschews the one-way, outward expressiveness of American free jazz, instead clearing a space for sonic exploration where noises and gestures inhabit (rather than transcend) unique aural environments. Featuring Keszler on drums, bells, bowed metal, guitar and contact mic and Paul on reeds, electronics and voice, the duo shapes open-field blasts of clattering noise interspersed with sustained high-pitched tones and discordant rattling percussion. The effect is subtle and aggressive, open-ended and full of stark contrasts, filled with dark shadows and bright sonic clusters. Joining them on the bill at Soundlab this Friday is the Steve Baczkowski/Nola Ranallo duo, who are celebrating the release of their new CD, "Live at Soundlab," which incorporates "elements of noise, harmony and pensive retreat" through an equally boundary-less mix of elements that includes improvised sax, avant-garde vocals and manipulated turntable.
“Big Church,” by the L.A./Paris duo Sunn 0))), begins with a female chorus. Then a low-tuned, distorted guitar powers up like a muscle car, and the juxtaposition between the chorale passage — all altos and sopranos — and the creeping guitar pattern (baritone and bass) is striking. Both move slowly and with great intent, beauty colliding with darkness, melting into a mysterious other. This other glides into a layer of orchestrated feedback and male chanting, courtesy of Attila Csihar, too quiet to comprehend. Then a long drone, a solitary church bell and a swath of rich silence that proves John Cage’s theories. Another guitar ignition bursts forth, as though Sunn 0))) guitarists Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, joined on this track by Earth founder Dylan Carlson and Oren Ambarchi, have discovered and unlocked an infinite cavity inside their guitars.Read more here. Sunn O))) performed at Soundlab on 07/01/04 with Orodruin
There are no drums. The beauty is the anticipation, the waiting for something big to happen. It’s 10 minutes long, so we’re not in any hurry. Where epic rock songs of yesteryear such as “Sister Ray,” “In a Gadda Da Vida” and “Losing My Edge” find beauty in serialistic, Steve Reichian repetition, fewer are the extended songs that use space and time to craft something huge, which takes patience and concentration to resolve. The prog-rock bands of the 1970s made long songs that took advantage of the space, but ELP, Yes and King Crimson used the full album sides to show off their chops and quote melodic patterns from baroque and romantic sources. They used “classically trained” as an excuse.
Sunn 0))) offer big ideas gradually, thoughtfully, create a monolith of sound and then mold it into something graceful but menacing. It’s no accident that their new album, Monoliths & Dimensions, features a cover painting by sculptor Richard Serra; the band’s output feels heavily inspired by Serra’s massive series of Torqued Spirals.
West Coast Sound recently sat down with Sunn 0))) co-founder Anderson at the offices of the record label he co-owns, Southern Lord. Located in East Hollywood, the second-floor Lord HQ is much less dark and menacing than the records that the label, a consistently surprising and barrier-busting metal imprint, delivers. We asked him about the genesis of “Big Church.” What follows is an edited transcription of the conversation.
Multi-instrumentalist Eli Keszler is one of a coterie of exciting new Boston-based musicians whose music pushes the boundaries of noise, drones, improv, and electro-acoustic composition. Using a variety of percussion instruments, as well as guitar and electronics, Eli creates intense drones and fast, rhythmically complex pieces. In addition to his solo work, he currently plays in a number of ensembles including a new trio with keyboardist Anthony Coleman and reed-player/vocalist Ashley Paul, a duo with guitarist Geoff Mullen, and a longstanding partnership with fellow multi-instrumentalist Steve Pyne called Red Horse. He has a pair of CDs out on REL, both of which showcase his extraordinarily dynamic playing.Check out the interview here. Eli Kesler performs with Ashley Paul at Soundlab on Friday, August 7. Joining them is the duo of Steve Baczkowski and Nola Ranallo, celebrating the release of "Live at Soundlab."
What you oughta know about Oneida, Brooklyn's finest (and most robustly prolific, extravagantly aliased, and relentlessly propulsive) art-rock band, is that they just put out Rated O, the second in a long-threatened "triptych" of releases, spaced out by a year or so and collectively, informally dubbed "Thank Your Parents." Rated O is a three-CD set. A trilogy within a trilogy. Oneida do not do small gestures, nor, come to think of it, do they do mere gestures at all. Their muscular, maximal minimalism—i.e. pick a chord and bash at it for the approximate length of your daily commute—can provoke awe, hypnosis, or profound irritation (a passive-aggressive Wikipedia clause: "In addition to the use of repetition that easily outstrips the patience of most casual listeners . . ."). But above all, it's simply overwhelming, in length, in scope, in intensity. They aim to outhammer a drum machine the way John Henry outhammered a steam engine.Read more here. Oneida performed at Soundlab on 08/03/06 with From Monuments to Masses and Sleeping Kings of Iona