Archive for category Sounds
Datapusher “Less Stress” Mix
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Sounds on September 6, 2010
The description is that it’s “melodic drum n bass” but I am not sure what that really means. What it sounds like, is a submerged, floating world of synth layers and stalking beats. Includes cuts by Makoto, Seba, Hobzee, and Silent Witness among many in the nearly two dozen selections Datapusher mixes together for this set.
Sketch: Mark Holub of Led Bib
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Sounds, Visual Arts on August 15, 2010
I was reading a great one page write up in Jazzwise about how the In a Silent Way album by Miles Davis changed drummer Mark Holub’s life (it changed mine as well, hence the interest). The profile image is this campy number of him with a newsboy cap and an unlit pipe that I started working from.
I did not get very far, but it was a brief but fun diversion. Ballpoint pen, Tombo brush pens, some gouache, and a small amount of color touch-up in PS CS3.
BTW, his band Led Bib, is really a great bit of electric jazz-rock noise that deserve your attentive ears.
Outside Lands
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds on August 15, 2010
Day One
- Missed watching The Pimps of Joytime (even though I wore pants most suited to such an occasion) and only heard the last moments of Gogol Bordello (but those moments were very full of win mind you).
- Lunch was from Farmer Brown’s Little Skillet: fried chicken, waffle, red velvet cupcake. Not very healthy, but that is not what you at that for.
- A mint mojito iced coffee from Philz. I do not usually do coffee any way beyond plain black, but this was a pleasant departure.
- Dessert came in the form of a bittersweet chocolate number from Three Twins Ice Cream.
- The Rebirth Brass Band was quite impressive, including a cover of LeVert’s Casanova that goes well beyond the arrangement limitations of the original. The growth of a kind of regional sub-genre in New Orleans that merges second line jazzy brass with hip-hop and soul inflections is something anyone can enjoy casually, and for more studied ears brings new things with additional listens. Not sure if I like these guys as much as Youngblood Brass, but they are pretty close.
- Big surprise discovery for me was Beats Antique; part burlesque/belly dancing sideshow, part electronica meets middle-eastern expedition (think electric oud, clarient and accordion in the lineup), part percussive dance party, all awesome.
- Dinner was some “Argentinian BBQ” from Primo’s Parilla, and it was mad good. This was followed by more coffee -this time plain black, this time from Sabores del Sur.
- Wolfmother was ok, but oddly reminded me of Billy Squier live a lot, but when they did a cover of Riders on the Storm by The Doors they really came alive.
- Tokyo Police Club surprised me; they are still a tad dull in terms of stage presence but they sound much better live than they do on record.
- Bassnectar; not a lot to see, but you can certainly feel the vibe (mostly from the low end) they bring to an event. I love dirty, skeezy synth bass and monolithic breakbeats, and they provided an ample amount of both.
- Thanks to my buddy Vishal for the ride back into town and for hanging out during part of the Cat Power and The Strokes gigs.
- Outside the venue were scads of very haggard hippy wannabes selling “Ganja Candies” and the like. These people look less likely to “Make Love Not War” and more like “Make Scam, And Run”. Smelly little patchouli punks.
Day Two
- Only stayed a few hours; both K and I were pretty tired from yesterday I suppose, and just didn’t have the gusto for a full second day of OL.
- Al Green was a bit of a disappointment, with the venue just not suited to the kind of soul revue he does best. Singing tunes like Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman wasn’t what we came for either. When he did sing though, it is safe to say that the Reverend still has chops and knows how to take the stage.
- Chromeo was excellent. Pat Gemayel’s use of the talkbox may put him as the only true sonic heir to Roger Troutman (and I am not saying that casually).
- Phoenix sounded quite good, as did Garage a Trois (the latter of which really comes off as some strain of Zappa meets the MC5 meets Ornette Coleman on major psychoactive drugs) which I kind of ex[pected. The surprises were how engaging The Temper Trap were and Janelle Monae wasn't (she also was annoyingly late). Amusingly, the very diva-esque Monae was later spotted in full regalia roving past us on the back of a dusty golf cart. It was an interesting juxtapositioning of random with WTF.
- Tacos from El Huarache Loco, jambalaya from Anchor & Hope, and more Philz coffee. All good, son.
- Sadly, I left the storage card for my camera back home, and have no images from the second day. Ah well...
VoTD: Rita Redshoes
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on July 31, 2010
A Portuguese artist that sings primarily in English, Rita Redshoes (aka Rita Pereira) has a fun, earthy alt-pop sound.
The video has some quirky choreography that reminds me of stuff Toni Basil may have done in the 80s.
Album review: Vernon Reid – Mistaken Identity
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on July 30, 2010
I wrote this initially a long time ago for my original music blog, but figured I’d report it here and clean up a few formatting errors (and add a picture).
Vernon Reid
Mistaken Identity
1996 Sony550/Epic
Produced by Prince Paul, Teo Macero & Vernon Reid
Personnel:
Vernon Reid – guitars (both real and imagined), whispering
Masque:
Don Byron – clarinet, bass clarinet
DJ Logic – turntables
Leon Gruenbaum – samchillian tip tip tip cheeepeee, theremin, melodica
Curtis Watts – drums
Hank Schroy – bass, fretless bass
Additional personnel:
Lawrence Fishburne, Sekou Sundiata – spoken word
Graham Haynes – cornet
The Crazy Baldheads – percussion
Beans, Chubb Rock – raps
When I first picked up and listened to Mistaken Identity, I had been anxious for years. The album was Vernon’s debut with his name only on the marquis, and it had been delayed over 2 years. Rumors were few, because no one had any idea what on earth he had planned. By the time it made it to shelves, no one knew what to do with it.
Had this type of album been released in 1969-1970, it would have been placed on the same footing as Bitches Brew or A Tribute To Jack Johnson, by Miles Davis. This album is a colossal explosion of power, a calamity of finesse, and an atomization of primal force suited up in the finest arrangements.
It was also an album released to no promotion, by an artist who had been laying very low for a few years, and in the beginning of the era that we have now in terms of the music industry: if we do not know how to categorize it, we will ignore it.
And no one would have known what the hell this thing is. I love this album, have listened to it from every perspective, and still have my doubts as to what it really is.
Just looking at the line-up, you have a mix of some of NYCs finest underground avant-garde jazz and funk players, some serious heavy hitters in the production chairs, and a cross section of stylists brought together into one mans kaleidoscopic musical tour de force. No style or method was taboo, and nothing was played safe. This album is one of the 10 greatest albums in my collection of thousands, and is one of the top 5 of the 1990s as far as I am concerned.
Vernon came off the then dissolution of his band Living Colour, and took fragments of what he had done within LC (as well as his various session work and his stints in bands like Defunkt and Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society) and produced a form of Attention Deficit inspired sound collage and frenetic collisions of spiralling aural chaos. This is an album for someone that wants to sample all the sections of the music store in one go, but in a way that everything works.
This album works, both in that many tracks work on their own, but that in their wildly divergent characters, they actually produce a rather interesting collective result. It is King Crimson and James Brown and Bad Brains and DJ Shadow and Nirvana and Eric Dolphy and Zappa and Blaxploitation films and Stanley Kubrick musically interpreted paranoia and the kitchen sink and some of the adjacent plumbing as well as the main line back to the city resovoir. There is some underground hip hop, campy spoken word interludes, biting situational skits (including one as a bonus track), strange noises, serrated riffing, angular solos and the only time that clarinet and industrial have been melded in a way that works. This is the ultimate indie album.
The album was never followed up with a successor. Vernon’s sophomore album, while very impressive in its own right, was a much more straight ahead, linear affair. The closest you get to a natural heir to this is his debut under the Yohimbe Bros. moniker (with DJ Logic oddly enough), Front End Lifter.
Ryuichi Sakamoto – Out of Noise
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on July 14, 2010
I have had this on rotation intermittently since it was first released, and it occupies a really nice pivot in the relentless explorations of Sakamoto. It bears earmarks of his cinematic scores in spots, the minimalism of his collaborations with Alva Noto, and even some of the more subdued moments he has recorded with David Sylvian, but it sits well as its own statement.
The opening nine minute Hibari is an almost Steve Reichian bit of taking a seemingly simple motif and repeating it with never ending subtle variations until it takes on a melancholic kind of pulse. A lot of the electronic drones and washes have a certain grit that prevents any new-age flatness. If anything, the lushness is hidden behind a thin veil of the aforementioned austerity. Closing track Composition 0919 is also very Reich-like, but is arguably the only aggressive, staccato cut, and it closes the album.
Depending on how your ears arrive at it, this album could be music for nocturnes, or a soundtrack for elegaic winter mornings. In the Red really made me think of the latter; like it’s something I should have playing while drinking black coffee while looking out a window into a gray morning near the shore of some rainy beach.
Tama is the closest that the album comes to something sounding more sinister and menacing than sad or plaintive. It is held together by a lot of found sounds and minor key swells, and it would be very suitable for a David Lynch film.
For all its austerity, I find myself never getting irritated or bored with Out of Noise; the tone of his piano performances, and the fluidity of his phrasing is some of the best in his long career. The arrangements he chooses are emotive and rich, even when at the most ambient and seemingly ready to dissipate moments. Some of the emotional capital is tucked in loosely under pithy, occasionally scattered snippets of sounds and pads. It is graceful music, sometimes -I find shortsightedly- called “cinematic” (a term seemingly used by most others for tunes that people think belong in an art film but aren’t symphonic/classical enough for their tastes otherwise) when really its probably better to say that under the right environment, it becomes narrative music, making you tell a story to yourself…out of the noise.
Jojo Mayer v2
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Sounds, Visual Arts on July 9, 2010
This one may end up colored/painted/thrashed or I may leave it this way; I started drawing one head shot and then scads of hand/stick/drum/cymbals to overlay but so far this is the only configuration that has worked.
This is Jojo Mayer, who is probably the greatest technically accomplished drummer since Buddy Rich,and whose musical span is pretty wide: Screaming Headless Torsos, Nerve, Me’Shell Ndegeocello and others, covering an approach that is both hypertechnical, yet accessible and not overtly flashy.
Here is a sample of Nerve: [link]
And here with Depart: [link]
A Stone on the Corner
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds on July 8, 2010
Halfway down the first leg of my commute on the Vasona trail last week, I burst my back tire and had to hoof it to the Lightrail station. But before I got there, I sidetracked on a whim to On The Corner Records, where they had stacks of vinyl and cd’s from a purging at college radio station KSCU (Santa Clara University).
As I filleted through the selections, I noticed the person the proprietor was having a conversation with sounded very familiar. So familiar I felt compelled to wedge into the exchange and “ask a stupid question”…was he who I thought he sounded like?
It was, in fact, exactly who I thought it was…Greg Stone.
Yes, Greg Stone, of Stone Trek, was hanging out at On The Corner. Stone Trek was the radio show I listened to uninterrupted the longest; from about the age of 12 to my early 20s, I gorged once a week on a buffet of prog and jazz-fusion, which included my first exposure to bands like Giraffe, Marillion, King Crimson, Gamelon and Allan Holdsworth. Greg seemed to know everyone in those scenes and could get them to visit and/or play unreleased or bootleg material regularly. Somewhere I still have a live version of Giraffe’s This Warm Night on a TDK cassette that I consider a personal favorite, recorded off his radio show, as well as bootleg GTR, and other esoterica.
We ended up talking for the better part of an hour about his salad days at KOME, the more recent run at KFOX (abruptly brought to a close for reasons that make no sense, since he was #1 in his time slot for rock stations in the area) and about random bands like Pete Bardens, Genesis, and Kevin Gilbert.
It was one of those really strange moments when someone you listened to religiously on the radio -no face to the voice for all those years- all of a sudden materializes in a rather startling way. In a cool way actually, but nonetheless totally randomly.
VoTD: Afghan Whigs – Debonair
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on June 27, 2010
Just because Ty Wenzel reminded me recently of how good Dulli & Co were one of the highlights of the 1990s. This was their first appearance on Conan. For more, hit up Last.fm
subZERO Festival
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Observations, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on June 5, 2010
Yesterday was the 3rd annual SubZERO Festival. It was also Drawing Day 2010. I scribbled with a brush-tip pen in a small sketchbook while commuting up in the morning, and on the way to downtown SJ.
Ate at Eulipia and reminisced about the remains of what once was 10 feet above me (the Ajax Lounge). Eulipia still has a passable, but largely staid menu at this point. What it does have is location and aesthetics, as I ate street/patio-side and watched some of the live music, a fashion show and various species of pop culture casualties stroll on by.
I ran into Avery of Corpus Callosum (he was hauling a rather large bass drum, pictured below) and he told me that besides their stage gig they were also doing music for a puppet show. Bear in mind, I’ve seen ‘puppet shows’ done by CC and its associates, and they are quite impressive in style and substance, but any puppet show involving a 12 foot puppet robot operated by three people with teeth made of knives is worth seeking out.
Stopped in the Anno Domini Gallery, which is now my favorite spot down in SOFA these days; they had some great stuff overall (I had never heard of Dimitri Drjuchin before, but I am happy I know of his work now), but of particular interest was a show of Bob Dylan inspired material done by the uber-alpha illustrator Barron Storey.
It was the closest to the days of the old SOFA Street Fair that I had seen in that area since the days of the first SOFA Street Fairs (read: before it turned into a pay-at-the-gate for a lite, sanitized version of what it started as).
I wish I had taken more photos, but the camera battery went kaputski.
rd.io
Posted by zeruch in Observations, Sounds, Technology, linkedin on June 3, 2010
Been playing with the just launched rd.io for the last 90 minutes or so. There are things I’m not sure I like, things I definitely like, but so far nothing I definitely dislike.
VoTD: Yeasayer – O.N.E. (live)
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on May 22, 2010
So they are a little on the posturing hipster side in terms of just about everything else, but their tunes pull all the elements of 80s new wave and synth-funk that I enjoy. I first heard this track as part of some mix on KSCU, but this live version works really well (and shows that they can actually perform what they record).
This is likely appealing to the same people who drool over MGMT (hence the pretentiousness factor that the Pitchfork crowd requires)* but I find this generally more listenable than anything I’ve heard from MGMT so far.
* Is it just me, or are Pitchfork bands (and their fanbases) the new Prog-Rock scenester hell?
VoTD: Karin Park – Don’t Stop Now
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on May 15, 2010
Karin Park is someone I discovered recently via a remix of Ashes by Grey Ghost & Mezzir. Her general sound is pretty stark and catchy, with a clean proto new wave sheen.
Herbie Scores Miles Biopic!
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on May 4, 2010
Herbie Hancock is going to be scoring the Miles Davis biopic starring and directed by Don Cheadle. I am a rather large fan of both musicians (with my favorite Davis lineup being the famous ’second quintet’ in the late 60s with Hancock, Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams). And now, two works named for Herbie and Miles tunes; Mwandishi and what is possibly one of the greatest album titles ever, You’re Under Arrest You Have The Right To Make One Phone Call, or Remain Silent So You Better Shut Up.
Truth be told, I think Cheadle is quite underrated; between Hotel Rwanda, Traitor and his spots in the various Oceans films, he’s a consummate performer, and well suited to playing Miles.
Vinyl Remix: Grace Jones
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on April 30, 2010
I haven’t put one of these out in a while. The vinyl remix series lives on, this time with one I started working on in 2004-5, based off of the sleeve to the 12″ release of Slave to the Rhythm from the incomparable Grace Jones.
I sincerely love her late period music (her first few albums were pretty much pedestrian disco), which combined a keen pop sense with a weird mix of dub, jazz and avant-garde bits thrown in. While Grace gained celebrity for her completely larger than life appearance and brash behavior, her music really has become sublime with age. She collaborated with everyone from Brian Eno and Sly & Robbie to Tricky, Wally Badarou and Wendy & Lisa.
I quite like her voice in both its modes: stentorian talk-singing, and torchy chanteuse.
This has rice paper, acrylic ink, acrylic paint, halftone, alcohol-based markers, pentel brush pens, and God knows what else, processed via Photoshop and Inkscape.
VoTD: Devo studio
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on April 24, 2010
Devo probably conjures up very specific memories for people of a certain age. Much of their artistry was in their ability to chokeslam popular consumer culture with tongue rigidly planted in cheek.
The video is also pretty good for people who are pure outboard gear heads.
VoTD: I Blame Coco – Caesar
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Sounds, Visual Arts on April 14, 2010
So Sting and Trudie Styler have scads of children, of which some have started music careers of their own; initially his oldest son founded Fiction Plane, and now Coco Sumner has I Blame Coco.
This is pretty much equal parts current en vogue hipsterism, yet oddly one feels like there is a certain genuine quality that goes just beyond the pedigree. Her voice actually has moments that sound like her father in the inflection. Frankly, at this point Coco is 10000 times edgier than her father, who -when not in the company of his former Police mates- is a fully realized dullard.
Listening Skills
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on April 14, 2010
Over at Noiseaddicts they have a little audiotest to see if you can “hear like an audio engineer“.
…a series of approximately 1khz sine waves, in sets of two. In each test I’d like you to try to discern which tone is sharper than the original tone. Pitch is measured in tones, and cents. A semi-tone is considered one pitch. Thus, A# is a semi-tone higher than A. A cent is a percent of a tone. So 50 Cents up from A would be half way between A and A#.
I can apparently, but given my proclivities at record shops and music clubs, this should not be terribly surprising.
VoTD: Cath Coffee – Say What You Say
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Sounds on April 7, 2010
Cath Coffee first graced my ears when she handled the chorus vocals on Elevate my Mind by the Stereo MC’s (of which she has been a long time member), but I have also enjoyed her collaborations with Terradeva, Tricky and especially her solo work (of which there is sadly little).
This is the only video I could find casually; a mix of skittering drum beats, floating synth and a bubbling bassline to graft around her vocal lines, its a pretty good cut. If you can find the single releases for Tell Me or her insanely original interpretation of Strange Fruit (made famous by Billie Holliday), pick them up.
There is nothing remarkable about the video. I simply was really wanting to plug how much I enjoy her output.
Terence Blanchard Quintet @ Stanford
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds on March 12, 2010
Drawn freehand in pitch darkness during the show; hence the likeness (or lack thereof)
Went and saw Terence Blanchard’s Quintet, along with a 40 piece orchestra, to perform his latest work: A Tale of God’s Will: A Requiem for Katrina, itself an extension of his soundtrack work for Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke documentary.
Blanchard has evolved considerably since his Wynton-esque early days, and much to his credit has leapfrogged over that shamble to play truly emotive post-”Young Lion” straightahead with a genuine quality to it that is more than just playing to convention.
Requiem is a trenchant but nuanced work that takes one through an emotional spectrum of surviving through and past Hurricane Katrina. Blanchard -a New Orleans native- does not sugarcoat or overly sentimentalize the music, but he doesn’t just heave guilt or pontificate either.
It all centers on the experience itself; the shock, the rage, the sadness of loss and even the joy (of finding loved ones still alive, of coming back home to start again, of the simple act of not succumbing). The sense of hope that pervades even in the musics darkest sounds is something a less self-aware and mature composer or player could never pull off.
Of note, his band, especially drummer Kendrick Scott, is really a well oiled machine that grooves. Terence himself can really push some serious air on his trumpet. Of note, he is the only other person besides avant-garde muso Jon Hassell to use a harmonizing effect on his horn that gives it a rounded, lush, spacey tone. But where Hassell uses it to create spectral washes and hallucinatory atmospherics, Blanchard goes for floating clusters of sustained, cathartic release.
VoTD: Bryan Beller & Co “Greasy Wheel” live
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on March 10, 2010
Recently I did some transcription work for Bryan Beller (an interview with extreme metal icon Steve Digiorgio), who besides being a topline musician himself, writes for Bass Player magazine.
So, since that issue is now out, I figure why not put some extra attention on Mr. Beller, who is just a great guy all around. Go buy his cd’s, see a show (as you can see above, it is worth it). The gig above is an extended cast that includes people like Nick D’Virgilio (Spocks Beard), Joe Travers (Zappa Plays Zappa) , and a great bit of lead guitar work by Rick Musallam. It grooves quite righteously.
VoTD: The Cult – Love Removal Machine
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on March 4, 2010
In the heady days of early MTV, The Cult was one of those bands that appeared theatrically silly, but whose riffs and melodies were compellingly catchy. A weird new wave mix-up of the Doors and Led Zeppelin crossbred with a post-punk mentality, I still think Love Removal Machine was the apex of their catalog, but by no means the only good part of it.
GAFFTA Processing Workshop
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, FOSS, Out and About, Sounds, Technology, Visual Arts, linkedin on February 27, 2010
I’ve been going to a Processing workshop at GAFFTA, and its been pretty rockin’ so far. While I can’t say I’ve created anything really show-quality, I like the potential of adding code to my toolset. I had been following the development of Processing for a few years, but figured if I spent actual money for an actual short, intense workshop, I might succeed at getting up and doing something rather than just lurking. So far, so good.
For those of you who want to see what can really be done with it, check out OpenProcessing.
Yehudi Menuhin performs Bartok
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on February 25, 2010
The Violin Concerto #2 is downloadable, and it’s one of the better classical works I’ve found so far that are freely available under a CC license. For more Yehudi Menuhin, there are several more recordings also available here, which is all a subset of the Archive.org 78RPM collection.
VoTD: Pomplamoose covers EWF’s “September”
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on February 9, 2010
I had been hearing tracks from this outfit on college radio for a while, but never knew who they were; ends up they are local.
Wu Tang vs. The Beatles
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on February 4, 2010
Just so it’s clear: WU-TANG!…and the Beatles.
This is another one of those edge cases where creative brilliance trumps IP law. Well, maybe not trumps it as much as provides an amusing snub.
Ben Allison – Buzz
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Observations, Sounds, Visual Arts on February 4, 2010
Because I just finished a rather out of the blue freelance gig doing a quick turnaround interview transcription for a great writer (and musician) at Bass Player magazine, I think it is going to be Bass Week here.
But I am on an acoustic bass kick these days, so…
The first time I heard Ben Allison was from a copy of his solo album Riding the Nuclear Tiger (it was a promo copy in a cutout bin at Streetlight Records and just seemed so removed from the rest of the jazz section…I don’t think I had even heard of the Palmetto Records label until that album). It rocked my face from ear to ear.
I spent something like $2.95 on it. It was worth full retail, and I have been a devotee of Ben Allison ever since.
Buzz came out in 2004, but I didn’t pick it up until last year. Yeah, I can be a bit behind the curve at times. What can I say, there’s a lot of great stuff out there, and sometimes you lose track of things.
The title track is probably the one that has the most memorable melody line, and it just sticks with you – offering itself as this kind of mirth-filled , mid tempo jaunt. Green Al kind of shifts around in an almost jam band vibe, but with more suggestiveness and finesse than most jam bands could aspire to. The use of flutes on Mauritania gives its seven minutes a breeziness and self-assurance that straddles 60s Blue Note and 90s Groove Collective in all the best ways.
Allison likes to stay rooted in the jazz idiom, but will throw curve ball inflections of hip-hop and funk, gutbucket blues and squeed-out avant-garde digressions, but it stays pretty coherent — like he’s just playing with your head a little…keeping things just off kilter enough to make sure you are paying attention.
A lot of the album isn’t upbeat as much as it seem kind of just…content. Not in a lazy way, but in a self-affirming kind of way…a “hey, if you don’t feel like conquering the world today, you don’t have to, but if you do, go right ahead…just don’t stress yourself out doing it” way. It’s relaxed, without being a sonic sedative. Well played without being a technical showcase. Ben has it down.
The image above was done by me sometime in 2006 and is based of a photograph from his own EPK. It is pencil, acrylic ink, acrylic paint, triplus pens, tombo markers, gouache, water soluable colored pencils on bristol + digital
J*Davey at Yoshi’s SF 2010-01-28
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on January 30, 2010
The Brooklyn Circus came to town, bringing only a central attraction: J*Davey. They landed and raised a ruckus for the normally not so unbound party spot that is Yoshi’s SF. The last shows we saw at that venue were Roy Haynes and John Zorn’s Electric Masada, so this was indeed a notable departure.
The show began just before 11PM and carried on for 90 minutes, starting with a better-than-the-original rendition of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, taken from its Pixies inspired grunge dynamic to a kind of bump and grind electro-funk dirge. Almost melancholic and detached, yet seething.
From there, or supercharged duo covered a pretty broad swath of material from their earlier output like The Beauty in Distortion/Land of the Lost, some new cuts from their forthcoming major label LP New Designer Drug and a scorching rendition of Get Together from their just released (and free to download) 5 track EP, Boudoir Synema: The Great Mistapes.
The only tracks I would have liked to have heard and didn’t was Mr. Mister and their cover of Zappa’s Dirty Love.
K & I sat front row and almost center and were treated to a full frontal attack by frontwoman Jack Davey (real name Briana Cartwright), whose retro-futuristic sleazy punk-funk divadom recalls aspects of Jody Watley, Dale Bozzio and Sheila E (and by proxy Gwyn Stefani and even Toni Halliday).
The pair together seem like characters created by Charles Bukowski or Warren Ellis, and given a record contract and a license to make mayhem on stage…which in this case they did at regular intervals:
- Shifting between slinky poses and caroming into mic stands in an almost drunken punk rock fashion, Jack Davey could be called an elegant mess.
- Jack Davey singing a song while perched on top of the table next to ours and drawing attendees into orbit around her, trying to vie for her attention.
- Allowing a few dozen members of the audience to bum rush the stage and dance shamelessly like everyone is watching and none of it matters.
A highlight was the campy torch-song approach that had Jack Davey writhing on the stage next to Brook L’Deau playing acoustic piano. I took enough reference shots that an illustration of some kind will get out for public consumption soon enough. BTW Brook, I dug the WWI era airmans cap and the Municipal Waste t-shirt; that’s some style right there.
Now beyond all the antics and performance, the most important part of all this is that they make some of the best new pop music out there. You can hear all of it being condensed into an tweaked out, kinetic planet of the inherently eclectic, but still cohesive enough with solid beats and melodies to have not lack any commercial accessibility. The songs are fun, and impeccably produced. L’Deau uses a battery of sounds that really does evoke both Larry Blackmon and Brian Eno, yet sounding totally new and non-derivative too. Davey can sing well, but opts for creating a full overall presence rather than beating an audience into submission with belting laryngular seizures.
Go get the EP, then go buy the previous releases, then go buy the new album when it comes out, then go see them live. Actually, you do not have to do the above in that order, just do them all.
There is already posted footage, although the quality is a bit lacking.
On a side note, we ate at Yoshi’s restaurant, and they have a desert with creme fraiche ice cream covered in toasted rice. That is some next level addictive a la mode-ness.
VoTD: Simple Minds – This is Your Land
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Sounds, Visual Arts on January 28, 2010
Simple Minds are mostly remembered in the US for their least interesting songs. Here is one which features cameos from Stewart Copeland, Lisa Germano and Lou Reed, and is far better than Alive and Kicking or Don’t You Forget About Me ever was.
MyKeneally…an Odyessy into Beer For Dolphins, Zappa, Atari, Snoop Dogg, a really good Pulled Pork BBQ sandwich, and other things essential to a healthy outlook on life.
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds on January 26, 2010
A few months ago my former musical co-conspirator Greg Kucharo decided to embark on a small venture: book a MyKeneally date at a private venue in Orland (or thereabouts), a diminutive spot on the fringes of HW 32 with a total population barely over 6000, known as Elwood’s Cyberpunk Saloon.
Greg got me into Keneally over a decade ago; I generally enjoy anyone that can musically context switch from playing something like Zappa and the play in a mock-rock outfit like Dethklok. Keneally was not a tough sell to my ears, and he is great on stage. The opportunity to give some small contribution to putting something like this up was also not a tough sell to me.
To quote one description of Keneally:
Long acclaimed as one of the world’s most creative and intense guitar players, Mike Keneally’s talents as a vocalist, songwriter, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist …and has built a body of work of remarkable inventiveness and originality.
He has recorded with/performed or produced with Zappa, Kevin Gilbert, Lyle Workman, Kaki King, Solomon Burke, Henry Kaiser…and on and on. Bryan Beller ain’t no slouch either, having been a long established bassist with Keneally as well as his own solo career and session work, and as a columnist in Bass Player.
Greg and his family, myself, Keneally and Beller all stayed in the same hotel in nearby Chico, and Saturday afternoon was spent having lunch at the restaurant attached to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company at the edge of town. After that, a quick rest stop back at the hotel, then off to Elwood’s to set up.
Elwood’s as a structure is unassuming on the outside and isolated on a sideroad of a sideroad, but the inside it is a whole different animal. It has ’stadium sofa seating’, whole Atari consoles plugged into various TV screens, arcade video games (notably Ms. Pac Man and Zaxxon), a full bar and DJ booth, small library stack, and really resembles something that might be a mix of Bladerunner and Munden’s Bar from Grimjack.
The house next to Elwood’s (the home of the actual owner) provided a supply of home-cooked goodness, with a particularly tasty pulled pork sandwich option.
It was perfect for the event.
Pre-show activity included hauling the gear in, setting up, drinking coffee, and watching Greg get his ego handed to him by Beller playing Rockem Sockem Robots.
The show itself started with keneally on acoustic, ran into a rocked out electric middle section, the glided back into a more chilled mode towards the end. There was no real set list per se; the duo ran through a swath of Keneally material (from the early Beer For Dolphins era on through the most recent bit of awesome, Scambot 1), there was some Zappa (Inca Roads is extremely non-trivial, and was various shades of awesome here), a solo Beller piece that evoked Jaco in ways I found profoundly engaging, and some hilarious cover diversions:
- An impromptu riffing of ELPs Tarkus
- Most of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, with just a dash of cheekiness
- Upon the mention that Snoop Dogg was playing at the Senator Theater in Chico, Keneally and Beller broke into the Peanuts theme (get it, Snoopy…never mind), with Keneally on guitar and keyboards at the same time. I have video footage, and if they let me post it here, I will later.
- A snippet of XTC’s Mayor of Simpleton (everyone agreed that XTC is quite full of win).
- Beller led a brief sojourn into Rush’s Xanadu, and then a shot of Tom Sawyer.
The casualness of everything made the gig so much more enjoyable. Everything was relaxed, but the performance was beyond solid, as clearly everyone onstage and off was having fun.
After the show, Mike actually joined some of the audience in a brief round of Rock Band. Showing impeccable taste, they opted for Talking Head’s Girlfriend is Better.
For a while after we kept playing records, and I hovered in the DJ both with a few others picking options from the vinyl stacks, staying pretty much in a strictly 80s mood.
The next day we all had breakfast in the hotel restaurant before I fell into a dull haze on the drive back to Berkeley, and then got back into the zeruch-mobile to home base.
Much thanks to Greg for pushing for this and finding the venue, and to Mike and Bryan for being gracious people and performers. It was truly remarkable.