So, to recap: Sassy Deathgasm will be going into a consistently updated web format zine with a hard copy quarterly. I’m pretty excited about it and already have some fantastic guest contributors lined up.

Cheers and happy holidays.

Artist: Various
Title: Alphabets & Animals
Label: Godxiliary

All in all, not a bad electropop sampler. Website Godxiliary proposed that 26 artists create animal-themed compositions for the compilation,and then for whatever reason sequenced the tunes in alphabetical order. Most of the songs hold up fairly well, and while the intentions of the theme are a little hazy, it really doesn’t matter much. It’s difficult to avoid arbitrariness on some level when putting together a comp., and while there are plenty of examples that fly in the face of that assertion, there are more which support it.

“Alphabets and Animals” is also an open-source project and is offered as a free download at the venerable Archive.org. You can also get a copy of the disc itself, a roughly presented black handmade which recalls early hardcore packaging in some ways.

While the commons on this disc is that these artists are all considered electronic, there is a tangible feel of basement aesthetics present, resulting from a wide range of instrumentation. “Boa Constrictor” by artist Sound is a great example. As an almost electro-acoustic pop outing, the song features harmonica and some primitive sounding found drum instrumentation. And so it goes. The record is quite varied, often humorous and for anyone interested in the many paths of pop, it’s difficult to imagine that someone would reject everything on the disc. And as a free download (http://www.archive.org/details/GXDL05), who can complain?

P. Somniferum

*

Artist: Ard Bit
Title: Spanon
Label: Symbolic Interaction

Sometimes as a writer, as a critic in this case, there inevitably comes a point where he or she has to write about music that they’re pretty much indifferent toward. In this scenario, it’s often the case that the writer neither likes nor dislikes the material—that in fact, it doesn’t inspire much of anything—whether it be passion or intellectual consideration. It’s at this point that the writer has to ask his or herself whether they respect what the artist is doing. It gets to the heart of what criticism is. There’s nothing more difficult than writing about a subject which inspires neither passion or noetic contemplation. As a writer, it may be one of the greatest challenges of all. When we write fiction, for instance, it’s typically the case that we write about subjects with which we care about in some way, so the dilemma is rarely encountered in that arena. In any sort of art criticism, there will come a time when we’re faced with the problem described above, and though I’ve dealt with it in various ways before, I thought I’d take this opportunity to describe the problems a writer faces when they are dealing with music (in this case) that they are utterly indifferent toward.

The first important thing is that this indifference doesn’t reflect negatively on the artist. Naturally, we humans have varying interests. So I asked myself, do I disrespect what Ard Bit is trying to accomplish, and the answer is clearly ‘no.’ I respect that he is working on solving the problems he sees as a musician, and working passionately to do so. It’s just that this music doesn’t move me.

“Spanon” is electronic music influenced by dubstep. In its mood, it is evocative, to my ears, of many of the same emotions as, say, Autechre. Ard Janssen, aka Ard Bit, is a serious student of the music he creates. He studied electronic composition at The Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatory of The Hague and earned his degree in 2003. While the document is in no way my cup of tea, it reflects the earnestness and love of music. The one strong element of the disc I recognize is its architecture. Not the beats or the lineage of where dubstep came from, but angularity of the music. However, other than that, I don’t have much else to say. Those who like dubstep, those who dig Autechre, you may well like this music, so I would recommend it to anyone interested in either of those. In fact, anyone interested in electronica, a very loose term, might well do themselves a favor by listening to “Spanon.”

P. Somniferum

*

Artist: Arrington de Dionyso
Title: Music For Two Tape Recorders
Label: sPLeeNCoFFiN
10 of 10.

A cleverly packaged dual cassette release by Arrington de Dionyso, the “case” is actually a gutted book with a hand-drawn front and back cover. The inner sleeve also features a splendidly fucked illustration with the following instructions:

“Simultaneous recordings made on two tape recorders, 10-08-08. For best results play both cassettes at the same time, starting at any section on either cassette.”

I really love the spirit of experimentation here, not only because it hearkens back to true experimental music as defined by Michael Nyman in his important, influential book “Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond,” but also because it puts the experimental aspect in the hands and ears of the listener. The music, to a large extent, is derived from drone, but is in no way a pure form of that music. I’ve listened to both cassettes individually and then in concert as recommend by the artist and have come to the conclusion that the recommended form of listening is indeed the best. Listening to the music in ‘dual mode’ really seems to bring out the most intriguing elements of timbre. It also allows him to, if not surpass (probably a poor word choice there), distinguish himself from the overt influences his music seems to invoke—Tuvan throat singing and perhaps even Dada sound poems.

Arrington de Dionyso appears to take his work very seriously, and to excellent effect. As mentioned before, he has an earnest interest in timbre, and moving parallel with that interest is a deep concern with harmonics, sideswiping to create some stellar microtonal effects. This music is to be distinguished from the wide-ranging misnomer often applied to sophomoric artists who either call themselves experimental or have been called as much by critics who no know better.

The instrumentation on these records sound like some sun-directional reeds, but the playing is so anomalous it’s difficult to tell exactly which reed instrument(s) it/they are. Paired with the multi-instrumentation is also the afore-mentioned vocals. In the end, the effect is both emotional and unsentimental. If you can find a copy, do yourself a favor and get it. He’s also a member of Old Time Relijun, whose recordings come highly recommended as well. What a great recording it is.

P. Somniferum

*

Artist: Axemen
Title: Scary! Part III
Label: Siltbreeze

Long known underground stars from New Zealand, The Axemen are now gaining some well-deserved notoriety here in the States thanks to one of our finest labels, Siltbreeze. Tom Lax has again exhibited sterling musical sense in repressing “Scary! Part III” and “Big Cheap Motel.” And while it’s not an easy task trying to pin down their sound, especially considering the variety of their entire discography (much less the territorial span of music on this release), I’ll give it a shot.

On my first listening, I immediately drew a comparison to Royal Trux, but that was basically drawn from the majority of vocals on the record, featuring some of the coolest, junked-out vox either before or after the Trux hit the scene. From the get-go, the song “Heart Bullet” features some insanely fucked up vocals and word play. Unlike a lot of New Zealand music, the vocals are uncharacteristically mixed up and not buried in the instrumentation. It kind of paradoxically makes the voice seem like another instrument—I’m at a loss finding (other than Herrema) anyone to compare the vocals to while maintaining any real dignity. Suffice it to say that they’re easily in the upper echelon of all rock vox, and it’s continued across both wunnerfuly screwed tracks on the double LP set.

Though the music is varied, you never get the feeling that the album was thrown together as pieces. As incoherent and absurd as it is, the record has a marvelous cohesion, at times overtly a downer, such as the track “10 Miles (as the crow flies)” and other points like the near-sinister, hardcore influenced “Join the R.A.F.” It’s near-put impossible to fix these fellers into any genre, and that’s a damn good thing. Not only that, it’s a fucking difficult thing to pull off convincingly, yet the Axemen do so with, well what’s the write word, grace? How about ‘instinct?’ That seems more apropos. It’s an instinct which speaks more to an overall aesthetic than does it any attempt to play this or that style of music.

This one of the strangest records ever sludged to wax, and it’s caused that compulsive collector in my to try and track down any and all of their recordings, which, from what I’ve read, is going to be a formidable task. This is no surprise since they formed around 1981 and have recorded pretty consistently since, and even through the broad spectrum of music the venerable Flying Nun label have pressed over the years, The Axemen stand totally on their own. Flying Nun wasn’t their only label over the years—there have been several, but as an American touchstone, it’s appropriate to mention them as one of the better-known imprints to bring up.

All I can tell you is that, even on this one double LP, influences include American hardcore and DIY, Beefheart (though nothing obvious springs to mind at the outset), a sort of Zappaesque sense of humor, bizarre synth music, employ of loops and on and on. The Axemen are their own entity. The only downside to this is that it took so long for an American pressing to go down. I’ve heard that they’ve met with largely great critical press on their recent tour of the U.S. One can only hope that it continues and that we see them again very soon.

P. Somniferum

*

Title: The Black Box
Artist: various
Label: Flingco Sound System

I’ve tried now for a couple of months to get into this little novelty gadget and appreciate its idiosyncrasies, but I can’t. The Black Box is a hand held, plastic tombstone which runs either on batteries or via an A/C adapter. As far as content goes, the compilation is not unlike RRR’s locked groove records. It holds 9 tracks of dark ambient, spoken word and noise pieces. There is a little more control than one might expect as you can select loops to play infinitely (or until the battery dies) and can move from one loop to the next. When I’m feeling especially cynical, I simply ignore items like this. The audio is horrible, but it does have a headphone jack so you can improve the single speaker output on the device. However, when I’m feeling a little more generous, as I am tonight, I’ll give it more than a glance. The sounds on it aren’t too bad, but there really isn’t much to go on as far as delving into a track. Then again, this is hardly a conventional recording, so I guess that doesn’t make too much of a difference. The artists featured on the box are FSS artists and include Cristal, Haptic, Wrnlrd and Annie Feldmeier Adams. Unfortunately for them, if you haven’t heard them before this isn’t the best introduction to their work. On the other hand, if you know the artists and enjoy them, then this just might be the kind of gimmick you can enjoy. You can decide for yourself. Go to the site at http://www.flingcosound.com/theblackbox.html and there you can view a picture of the box and get the label’s skinny on it.

It’s kind of like a Halloween toy, and the music definitely has a goth slant to it. The highlight of the disc is a meditation, a spoken word piece which simply repeats the mantra, “I will not kill myself today.” What’s so great about that? Well, the fact that the voice is a dead ringer for Marlon Brando, and the loop is great for laughs.

P. Somniferum

*

Artist: Children of Scaremidget
Title: Invocations
Label: El Tule Tapes

This recycled cassette is one of the most mysterious, brutish releases I’ve heard in quite awhile. To describe them as absurdist only grazes the sane insanity on this release. Decadent, hopeless, but most importantly, humor of the cruelest, most vile sort. The theme? Well, one side of this ultimate example of DIY is primarily poorly recorded evangelistic hymns, and who knows how long those putrid renditions of death-loving Christianity existed on this marvelously fucked tape. The only way they can top this is that it gets devoured by a $1500 cassette deck.

Reminiscent of the ultra-rare recordings of The Splice Girls who existed in the mid to late 90′s, they released a long series of thematic recordings of embarrassment and degradation, of moral inertia, most of which were designed to disintegrate via various chemical treatments, being drug behind cars in mud etc. I heard on more than one occasion that customers of The Splice Girls were outraged that this almost inevitably happened. Well, when music is currency for drug trades, ahem, you get art that dies. Along the way to the tapes of literal self-destruction, the point revealed was simple: The process underscored so many existential cliche’s, but to my mind most of the recordings were the perfect marriage of form and content, also known as feces and piss.

Enter our current lovelies, Children of Scaremidget. Aside the near-nihilist snatches of sound and tape manipulation, COS tread the same ground as the afore-mentioned Splice Girls, as well as being reminiscent of Costes and Suckdog at their respective peaking nadirs. Paragons of smut they were, the standard during the golden shower era of shit tape music, such as when the “Drugs Are Nice” LP ruled the top 40 millimeters of swirling bowl water. Well, that aside, the tape itself has a prank element to it—or does it? I sense no real irony here. On one side there is Southern Gospel. In fact, it’s peppered throughout the cassette because it existed on the tape before COS made the wise decision to use the dilapidated Christian worship of death. As I recall, The Splice Girls did the same on several recordings. I realize that many people hate this kind of anti-art, but I think dung like this is as necessary to the vitality of moving music and performance forward or backward or sideways, because, let’s face it. When you’re this fucked up, the inner compass fails almost always. It’s rather amazing how something so decadent, toneless, and untalented can provide the counterweight for all those lame asshole carbon copies out there.

A SERIOUS MAN

The epic Coen Brothers (creators of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, BURN AFTER READING, FARGO and more) direct their next irreverent comedy, this time featuring a down-on-his-luck professor desperate for a little help or a lucky break. Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik who seeks advice from three rabbis after his wife announces a divorce, his unemployed brother won’t get off the couch and his children run wild at home and school.

Directed by
The Coen Brothers
Written By
The Coen Brothers
Cast Includes
Michael Stuhlbarg, Sari Lennick, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, Adam Arkin

Awards
Language
English
Official Site

ANTICHRIST

Legendary Danish director and Academy Award® nominee Lars von Trier (DANCER IN THE DARK , DOGVILLE, BREAKING THE WAVES) calls his latest piece “a very dark dream.” ANTICHRIST took home a nomination for Cannes’ Golden Palm and won lead, Charlotte Gainsbourg, the award for best actress. After the tragic death of their son, a struggling couple (Gainsbourg and two-time Academy Award® nominee Willem Dafoe) retreat to their cabin in the forest. While unsuccessfully attempting to cope with their grief and guilt, the couple travels into horrifying territory in this graphic, theological horror oeuvre of which Roger Ebert says “It will remain in my mind. Von Trier has reached me and shaken me.”

Though Pam and I missed the music, we were fortunate to hang out with Lee and New Zealand’s The Axemen and make a trip over to Dealy Plaza after the equipment was loaded into their rental. I’ll refer you over to Lee for firsthand reportage of the sounds. I was fairly wrecked that I missed both of those bands, but hopefully the future holds at least a few more opportunities to see ‘em.

The Axemen are an amiable and humble bunch and all seemed to be conspiracy buffs, with mini-rants on, of course, Kennedy, but also Waco. I was walking and talking with Stu, the drummer, trying to explain to him my take on how conspiracy theory in America has been hijacked by right-wing nutters and that it didn’t serve the same philosophical entertainments as it once had for me, but we didn’t have the necessary allotment of time to get into it. What happened instead was akin, on my part, to a conversation partially heard through a wall of a cheap motel room: “…conspiracy…at one time…hacking ontology and epi…right wing…paranoia serious…” There was the obligatory mention of Robert Anton Wilson. I can only speak for myself, but I was far too frazzled by this point to get my point across and any meaning which might have arrived at its intended destination was mostly debris the result of a night of pile-ups and trying to crunch too much into too little space.

I did have a great, brief conversation with Dragan (guitars) as we talked about New Zealand’s famously brilliant scene(s). I mentioned that within the diversity NZ bands have represented over the years that there seems to be a shared aesthetic emanating from that beautiful, tiny island. Dragan noted that it might have something to do with the economics for artists there. He said that there was a lot of equipment sharing happening, so it stands to reason that NZ seems to represent emulations, this in the grandest sense of the word, where it means that a scene is a cohesive whole. Everyone who loves NZ pop and and sub-non-genres realizes that upon a closer look underneath the surface there are worlds of distinction happening in their music, layers obscuring layers and a rich history of psych, punk, pop and all points in between (and way outside of the perimeter) , but I thought Dragan’s comments were a noteworthy paradox within the conversation about individualism and art, and whatever your take might be, the parallels and mirrors of aesthetics occur within a great diversity of personalities, attitudes and approaches. The Axemen’s music is itself a microcosm of the strange clash of contradiction and similarity New Zealand seems to have it’s thumb all over.

Regardless of our missing the music, it turned into a pretty swell and eventful after-hours crash of cultures, including a connect-the-ATMdots convoy in order to withdraw the cash to get a copy of their reissue “Scary! Part III,” (Siltbreeze). Always best to try and get some merch from worthy bands while they’re on the road, for obvious reasons.

And great to hang out with Lee, with our usual conversation, and even better that Pam was finally able to make it out and participate. There are some great events on the horizon in Dallas, but I’ll leave mention of those until later.

I found out along the way that Borbeto is playing in Houston sometime this upcoming week. Not sure yet if I’ll be able to make that, but if I do, expect the same mangled accounts of that as well. I’ll probably lean heavily on previous shows and write my 7th grade compare and contrast essay.

One other thing: The Axemen and Times New Viking are playing Birmingham this upcoming Wed–so do yourself a favor and support both of these great bands. For anyone interested in a long-player, you have to check out one of New Zealand’s best and most criminally kept secrets. You can find a tight historical summary of The Axemen here.

Until next time, strap yourself into Lil’ Bastard lest you find your genitalia spread across your stylized dashboard instruments.

And of course, what blogroll would be complete without the cursory tribute to Mutant Sounds. They’ve nearly defined what a credible blog dedicated to making available all the music we should hear. Hat tips to all, but the roll has just begun.

What was that? No, I haven’t added Mats’ blog from Broken Face yet, but I will. I will…along with a slew of great blogs.

Coolmunity. More to come.

What I’m listening to now?

1. Greet Bijma Kwintet – Dark Moves
I got this from the very famous Mutant Sounds blog. Very enjoyable. If you’d like a copy, check it out here. You’ll find a decent review there. The real treat is the music itself. Discog available here. This shit is heavy on freak vox, so if the glottis is your g-spot, then smile. Big.

2. R. Keenan Lawler - The entire discog. My good pal Lee at Womblife turned me onto his stuff and I’ve been stunned since. Clocks fall off of walls. Ants wear tophats. As I’ve said before, my reaction was similar to hearing Derek Bailey, Davey Williams and Keith Rowe. Not in the sense that his style or approach is similar, but in the sense that Lawler proved to me once again that the guitar can be versatile, shocking and new. His playing absolutely gorgeous. As far as I can tell, and I haven’t done any research or anything, but he often makes use of bowing the strings. The results are unique. I choose to use that word without any superlatives. The music speaks for itself.

3. Social Junk – Born Into It SJ are a great new band, the latest outing from Foxy Digitalis is without a doubt incredibly strong, but doesn’t approach the gutsy intensity of the live experience. If they happen to show up in your little burg, be sure to step out, float to the gig and dance. Great new voice from Philly and I’m already anxious to hear anything new by these fucking squares. Godspeed to SJ.

4. Joy Division’s entire discography. I go through major kicks, kicks colossal enough to match and double my chemical nadirs. Paradoxically enough, it’s nourishment enough to keep me alive. I’ve always loved JD, but recently they’ve just made the black to comm back to comm. I don’t really need to say much more. I’ve just been diggin’ them. My preferences for their material are for the first two LP’s. The songs: Well, “Isolation” for personal reasons, but I think “The Eternal” is one of the most gorgeous tunes ever laid pipe to tape.

5. Hanging Thief – s/t

I’ll let Brad of Foxy Digitalis say it, and I do that because he’s right:

“ltd#80: hanging thief s/t c66 $7 US/$9 INTL
I’m keeping this one simple. it’s huge. absolutely fucking huge. thirty minute drones that span the colossal Oklahoma skies. hanging thief is barn owl + altar eagle. recorded live in green country when barn owl trekked through on their way back home. two guitars, synthesizer, electronics, & vocals light the night. so many good times were had. edition of 150, pro-dubbed & imprinted on high-bias tapes.”

It’s probably sold out, but be sure to check and see if it is or not. If it is, there are plenty of groovy, muy mainline fucked titles from which to choose.

Since so much of that last blog (Rippost) had to do with last year’s election and my gullibility for getting involved in such a futile endeavor, I thought it best to just start fresh again. Anyone who knows me understands that I absolutely do not see these blogs as a never ending journey, but a portrait, or better fragments in time and therefore subject to its confines. My blogs are a chart of moods, if you will, and I’m just as happy deleting them and starting with flexible, new, fragrant baby bones.

So for this one, seeing as how it’s October (one of my favorite Pep Lester tunes), I’ve decided to start out with posting about some of the music that struck me as special in some way this year. This by no means that this music was released this year. I find it nearly impossible with the glut of releases in their plethora of formats to keep track of even a fraction of them with any authority. Props go to Brad and Eden at Foxy Digitalis, for whom I write under the the gnome duh ploom P. Somniferum, rife with poor profreading [sic] skills, Lee Jackson, my good friend here in Dallas who thoughtfully pens Womblife and is an ex-colleague and present pal I met via the now legendary Swedish psych journal Broken Face (Hi Mats!), and of course my loving and far too sweet wife of mine, Pam, who once made me cry on a drunken night whilst listening to Joni Mitchell. She will pay for that.

Broken Face was, of course, a proper hard copy print zine–something I wish we had more of these days. I know the ease of the Internet and the economic factors are good reasons not to revert to the olden ways, but you can’t outbook a book and you can’t outzine a zine. Perhaps it’s as much fetishism as it is mere aesthetics, but I couldn’t give less a sliver of a pixie toe. I like what I can hold in my hands.

As usual the blog will cover whatever I feel like writing about (or not) that particular day. Right now, it’s music, literature and art–and as far as I can tell, music is infinitely more culturally valuable than any puppet show political agenda. I’ll be back at that eventually, but I’m fried to a charred crisp on that blazing grate for the time being. I will republish a few things back from Rip Post which I think remain relevant today, but for the most part, expect more art, less politics.

The first thing I can recommend is the 16 CD reissued masters of Beatles material. I’m usually very cynical about reissues, but this one delivers. They sound fantastic, and if you can’t afford them all in one fell swoop (around $200 methinks) they are available piecemeal.

So, here’s the rambling which includes a few of my favorites from the last year. Included in this is the full text of an interview with the incomparable Barn Owl from Foxy Digitalis (http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/features.php?which=411). Also included is an interview with Megafaun, who seem to be one of the most well-rounded bands out there today. There are also a few reviews I penned in the following. I’m sure I’ll be adding more to this, including units such a the wunderkindercore of Tenniscoats, but for now..

One thing I was thinking about, seeing as how it’s a graying year, is writing about music that stood out to me over the last year. These things take time. I typically don’t make lists. What I have in mind here really doesn’t equate with that sort of list, either. The thing I’m considering is discussion of the music which made the greatest impact on me over the last year, so it could be from years past. Not all of them, but it would necessarily create that option.

The first band,though, is a fairly new band to me: Megafaun. I think I heard their first LP “Bury The Square” over a year ago. In fact, it was that record which lead me back into exploring what Table of the Elements were up to. I rather unconsciously forgot all about them and what they were putting out, so I missed out on several years of TOTE releases. It was my good fortune to randomly download that LP via Soulseek.

I can think of very few bands who can even approximate the vocal presence of this trio. And it’s not that the vocals, either lead or harmonies, are the band’s strength. It’s one of many expert features they perform with elan. They make clean getaways mixing absolutely stellar songs with and endless but well tempered throng of hooks from which to draw. They sneak in bits of tape experimentation and ambience, lending their music a nearly unwitting surreal, stream of consciousness perspective. They dip into many sonic wells for inspiration: bluegrass and folk, avant sound art and sonic sculpture, concrete dabbling, incorporation of drone characteristics, barber shop quartet (seriously, maybe the only band who could have pulled it off outside of something Brian Wilson might conjure). A good percentage of the strings employed comes from the banjo. It’s usually picked slowly, bringing the dominant melody to the fore. Rarely do we hear blistering Kentucky picking. Because of that, we get a rarefied take on bluegrass and folk, often sporting psychedelic aspects bandied throughout a recording.

Also, the records, both “Bury The Square” (2007) and the newer, distinct but consistent “Gather, Form and Fly.” (2009) There’s something refreshing about a band not pursuing a frantic, [overly] prolific release schedule. The time spent on making the most of these innovative songs is obvious. Megafaun are hardly ever anything but delightfully unexpected. The song I’m listening to right now, “Columns” (off of the second LP) blends Carribean percussion with only hints of equatorial beats. The decontexualization works is a Technicolor wonderland which segues into electronic explorations, both ostensibly formless and improvised. On the off chance that sine manipulations are composed, well all the better that something so unconventional would be formulated on paper. It would be an interesting score to look at, particularly if one were to take in song after song.

Following “Columns” is another banjo-driven West Virginian log cabin mountain song with a pristine, golden melody. The longest day features not only the male voice, but a welcome female forging a harmonious duet. As with most of their more conventional material, the songs are impecabbly arranged and build as skillfully and gorgeously as they inevitably end.

I may work out more on this band. Right now I can think of no stronger ensemble around, and the fact that they’re a 3-piece makes them even more intriguing. I’ve seen live footage of them nailing their material.

From their site:

This is the Summer of Megafaun.
Picture
photo by DL Anderson
Their highly-anticipated second album, Gather, Form & Fly, is a monument to a band that hundreds have experienced on stages, under trees, in galleries, on floors, in headphones, and through radios-with-the-windows-down over the past three years. All the hints they’ve given us — from songs Stereogum described as “mournful, slow-blooming banjo-and-white-noise-laced epics” to tours with The Rosebuds, Arnold Dreyblatt, and Akron/Family — have culminated in a record that is an ode to death, love, musical history (from blues to musique-concréte), community, tradition, and experimentation. In all, it’s an ode to the listener.

Based in Durham, North Carolina, Megafaun was built by brothers Brad and Phil Cook and fellow Eau Claire, Wisconsin, native Joe Westerlund. The trio, plus longtime friend Justin Vernon (a.k.a. Bon Iver), made the cross country move together from WI to NC as the band DeYarmond Edison, ultimately splitting in 2006. Megafaun was born from those ashes and proceeded to record the remarkable album Bury the Square in 2007. They found a home on the road, collaborating with friends (they also joined Akron/Family and Dreyblatt as backing band) and developing an American musical language that is exquisitely translated by this year’s Gather, Form & Fly.

“Megafaun pickles rickety back-porch folk reconstructions in a brine of chaotic field recordings and organic, free-form atmospheres…so ingeniously balanced that it stands a chance of satisfying both folk and experimental music fans.” – Brian Howe, Independent Weekly

Brad, Phil, and Joe have been playing in bands together since 1997, after meeting at jazz camp in Wisconsin as teenagers. Life’s been an additive — and adaptive — process since then, bound by a rare and long-lasting commitment to a friendship that has always been set to music. With the end of DeYarmond Edison, a paradigm-shift was imminent. “Brad and I left our primary instruments behind and picked up secondary ones. We booked a seven day tour with out having written any songs,” said Phil, revealing the seeds of the improvisational spirit that both Megafaun and their fans now cherish and exalt. “We’ve become song writers collectively and individually through the birth of this band,” added Joe, “and Gather, Form & Fly marks a huge growth and change in our thinking about time and song form.”

Megafaun’s past three years ripple with the power of varied experience usually reserved for a lengthy decade: 250 shows over the past two years, supporting tours doing double-duty as backing band/collaborator with nearly every notable and diverse tourmate, and musical exploration spanning albums, generations of musical history, and fathoms of personal exploration. That self-survey daringly brings itself to the stage: “We thrive on situations that allow us to expose our nuances, our imperfections, and our spontaneity. We are not afraid of the imperfect set, but are afraid to limit ourselves to the non-spontaneous nature of recitation,” said Joe. That same spirit informed the album, which was self-recorded in three bedrooms, a kitchen, a yoga studio, a living room, a basement, and in a forbidden university piano studio that they had to break into to find an in-tune piano. In act of further embracing the new, Megafaun brought in Chris Stamey (the dBs, Holsapple-Stamey, et al) to help mix and guide Gather, Form & Fly, adding another dimension to the superb result.

“We have an all-inclusive, listener-sensitive, tradition-hungry, innovative and genuine practice of improvisation. The stylistic spaces we inhabit during these improvisations can span influences from dissonant 50s electronic music, musique concrete, and free jazz; to a melodic consonance associated with traditional American folk and popular song forms, as well as some traditional influences from other parts of the world (African, Cuban, South American Rhythms). Really, we feel all these musical styles (academicly-based or not), when incorporated in the improvisational life of this band, become part of our own folk tradition.” – Joe Westerlund of Megafaun

Gather, Form & Fly rings out in its honesty to its makers and, thus, to its listeners — both on wax and on stage. Phil, Brad, and Joe move with awareness of their every move, acknowledging in near-unison that this album share’s Bury the Square’s broad stylistic and emotional palettes — group percussion, cacophony, drone, and folky narration will not disappoint — but also reveals sounds and words that have been, somewhat silently, with them all along. There are the moments, present in every song, that will turn heads toward speakers, turn eyes toward the sky, and turn all notions of music on their sides, if just for one shimmering and genuine moment. And then, almost anywhere this Summer, you can go see them live — and hear it all again, for the first time.

“I love that when we talk to each other, names like David Tudor, Anthony Braxton, Avett Bros. and the Band are mentioned in the same breath. We are attracted to people who are always searching and always honest. That’s the core aesthetic we are drawn to.” – Brad Cook of Megafaun.

I wished I could have seen them live. I’ll have to pay more attention.

Other bands who’ve really grabbed me are the related Renderers and Renderizors from N.Z. Both are incredibly psychedelic but the latter is probably the more outward of the two. I believe there’s a member of Sandoz Lab Technicians in the mix if that’s a clue.

I’ll have to write more about this later. I’m stoned, the Xanax has hit and I’m waning. It’s cloudy and fairly cool out…probably upper 60′s and it’s almost 4 A. Probably time to think of bed. More tomorrow
*
I got some good sleep and woke up to check out Megafaun’s tour schedule. Turns out there going to be in Austin with Bon Iver (fairly good folk stuff), but for nearly 32 bucks after fees. That’s on top of the drive to Austin. They’re also playing somewhere called Marfa, TX., but I haven’t a clue as to where that’s at and I’m afraid to look. Might as well be in Belgium.

Both of those Megafaun records are so good, but I with all that’s coming up: move, surgery etc., it’s almost impossible to justify spending anything close to that kind of money to see a band play. Speaking of money, I should have gotten some yesterday because I’m almost out of smokes. Both Pam and I smoked a boat load last night. I think she took more than just two hydros–which is fine–I have no problem with that, but she was so cute and chatty.

And another media event upcoming: “Where The Wild Things Are” is due out Oct. 16th. Anyway, I can learn to love this Bon Iver stuff as well even though he doesn’t strike me as wildsided as do Megafaun. It is rather idiosyncratic though.

But getting back to what I was writing about last night before I ran out of gas, which was bands and music that made an impression on me over the last year, and as I pointed out, the music didn’t have to originate last year. So two other bands of tight relations really got to me. New Zealand’s The Renderers and The Renderizers, both of whom I mentioned above are spellbinding in their own way.

Because of the membership of the izers, they seem to be a little further out and less tethered to conventional form than do their seed. That makes the Renderers no less alluring, even often puzzling in the way they use notes as pure expression over any scaled or predetermined approaches to making music. I wish I knew the names of their songs better–something I’m sure I’ll grow more familiar with as time goes by.

Foxy D sent me some great stuff this year. And they also sent me a load of shit as well. I often find it hard to write about electronic music, particularly stuff that might fall loosely under the horrid acronym IDM. There was Autechre…then there were the rest. I often wonder if they send me that tripe on purpose. I’ve gotten downright ugly in some reviews, even calling one duo Guantanamo Bay music. I can’t even take credit for that one: that was Pam’s. But what I’m writing about at the moment is music from this last year which has impressed me.

I would be remiss if I left out the fact that I’ve gotten a lot more into Townes this year. Again, it’s going to take a lot more intent listening to achieve intimacy with his music, but it caught my ear enough this last year to garner repeat playing. The purity of grief and the spare happiness thrown into white light relief carries the weight of the music, which is itself a very natural, Texas country-western thing. Yes, said bio.

Another project, which I believe is solo, is Eric Hardiman’s Rambutan. It’s tablecore as far as I can tell–blissful, beatific electronics. I wrote a review of one of his releases:

Eric Hardiman, aka Rambutan and contributing member of Albany’s scorch-masters Burnt Hills graciously gives us “Broken Infinity.” This is brain-belting free psych at its best.

When 10 shows up in my brain, it glows green because in my synaesthetic way of seeing numbers, ten is gooey, good-natured sonic plutonium—oozing electro-cosmigel. Oh dear, forgive me my lack of technical music vocabulary…but I’m meeelting.

There’s not much information provided with this limited release of 100, but I’m guessing it’s guitar and/or electronics. Unless you’re a gear head, what the fuck does it matter? Somewhat ambient, explicitly psychedelic, these portraits of whuthefuck are evocative of glacially paced kaleidoscopic lava birthing new species of extra-terrestrial birds dreaming cull systems called out by warning deliberately of bloody rivers, dying planets and angelically demonic states of ornitheological bird brains. There are no bleeding ears here, but fantastic elixirs stirred into a weird slurry of feedback and color wash. Keep feeding us from your beak, Eric.
P. Somniferum

There’s something about it that I just dug at the time and I find myself listening to it–not over and over, but revisiting it from time to time to reaffirm my original thoughts and feelings about the recording, and each time I rendezvous with it, “Broken Infinity” just seems to get better and better.

Eric also plays in Burnt Hills with Jack. I’m not as gaga about them–they’re very Vermonster–and that’s not a bad thing, but you can really feel the lulls in the improvisation at times and it sometimes has the potential to pierce the blister. Eric’s other project, which opened up for none other than Faust the other night, Century Plants, seems pretty cool as well, but they deserve a lot more attention if I’m to put them in this autumn recap.

My box has frozen up three times now today. I’ve had to run some diagnostics on it. The inevitable dread it produces is not only losing my writing but utter interruption of my flow. I feel like I’m just beginning to get back to writing clearly. Problem today is I’ve only got a one beer, well, not even one now, 3 pills and a touch of pot. I’m wanting to white out. I want to get gone and write all day. So, back to the story:

I’m now listening to The Renderizers’ “Submarine.” I’m not sure it’s their only outing but it’s a true beauty and breaks all conventions upheld by their kinfolk. It’s a great mix of NZ downer anti-rock and something like shoegazing no-wave subterfuge. I love it for its pathos and irreverence. Before I go any further, yes, I used the term “shoegaze.” Just give it a slide. It’s shorthand. This is a journal. Conventional wisdom dictates that nearly all things down the overgrown trails of broken effects have their trailhead at the Dead C. There’s truth in this, but there’s also laziness in the assessment. It’s like easily throwing in a reference to Sonic Youth when one hears dissonance and prepared guitar. That said, there are similarities here. I get the feeling that NZ is a lot like the UK with regard to how tightly knit the music scene appears to (sometimes) be. More specifically, there seems to be an engineering aesthetic held down there where vocals often get buried in the swirling, clashing death rattles of once expensive electronic toys for overgrown boys. It’s always provided a nice contrast to vocal-prominent engineering we hear so much of in the greater Western hemisphere.

I’m listening to a song right now, “Twister,” and it features just the sort of free floating, neck tapping slurs which have made NZ sound so unique to the rest of the world. Of course, not all NZ bands sound like this, not even within the niche world of “underground” psych. Like The Renderers, The Renderizers make use of folk melodies and then explore that as a core from which entropy ensues. They take it further than their brothers and sisters, though, creating a much more hallucinogenic listen. In both cases the female vox is a welcome addition to a predominately boys club–and that’s internationally speaking.

Now, what’s all this seemingly pointless writing about? Trying to get back to writing about music since I still have reviews to complete for FD. I’m not even sure which ones I have to do except that the vinyl has priority. I need my turntable. I need some good stereo equipment. When we move I’d like to put up a good system–with great speakers. I’m more concerned with great speakers and a good, quality turntable that doesn’t wear LP’s out prematurely. Those are probably the two most important things to me.

Anyway, I’m sure there are plenty of other bands and artists I’ve left out. I know there are. So as they come to me I’ll write about them here, hopefully, and get myself going again. I’m a little worried about the depressive crash I’ll have after I run out of pills. I really just wish Dr. Morgan would go up to at least 60 of these as opposed to 30. Reminder: go to calendar, mark date. Now. Which is done. Other mundane but necessary things: confirm moving date this Saturday with Cowboy movers.

Back to the subject at hand. Social Junk is another quickly progressing band which caught my ear, especially after seeing them live. When I first heard them they were finding themselves through Sonic Youth. By the time they released their FD CD, “Born Into It,” they ventured further down the dirty path of power electronics and a strange nod toward Suicide. Lee and I saw them up in Denton and it sealed the deal for me. This although they only played as a duet. I’m not sure what was up with the third member. Lee just informed me that he is a she. Makes sense.

Another band I’ve quite enjoyed this year, or bands…Barn Owl, Elm and Hanging Thief. All excellent. In fact, I think I’ll reprint the Barn Owl interview from FD here for my own records:

Barn Owl
by Dave Miller

Barn Owl is the San Francisco based duo of Evan Caminiti & Jon Porras. Over the last couple of years they have released a number of home spun discs chalked full of a potent mix of loner acoustic fingerpicking and all out metallic bombast. Their next album, ‘The Conjurer’ will be released on Root Strata this fall.

How long have you guys been working together? How did you meet and find a common interest?
Jon: I guess we’ve known each other for almost 4 years now, originally met in an American Indian Science class at sf state university. Great class, all about ethno-botany, horticulture, ecology and metaphysics, we were both reading Hesse’s Narcisiss and Goldmund at the time, I guess that was our common ground. I remember seeing evan and saying to myself, “ok that guy is a long hair too, I bet we might get along”.

Evan: Yeah its funny, people always ask us if we’re brothers. It feels like we’ve known each other for much longer than we have. Maybe a past life kinda thing, if you’re into that.

You both played in metal bands before creating the entity that is Barn Owl. How do you think this affected your musical vision, and have you considered taking the metal sound to the next level with an even harsher sound than you currently offer?
Jon: I think being in a metal band rooted a deep interest in exploring the capabilities of the electric guitar, and playing loudly. I remember in high school building a drone on a friend’s delay pedal and being totally fascinated, I had no idea what that experiment would lead to in the future, but playing metal gave me the freedom to rebel against conventional modes of playing.

Evan: Well, looking back on the gradual progression from thinking of music in more traditional metal terms…linear and technical, to the way we now approach it, which you could say is a more vertical and atmospheric approach, everything has changed. You know, Sabbath and Earth 2 will always be an influence but I don’t think we’re gonna be rocking any blast beats or double bass pedals or anything.

If you could sum up your sound and your goals in a few sentences, how would you describe them?
Jon: One goal may be developing a reciprocal relationship with music, involving not the control of sound, but the luring of it. I love the way Toru Takemitsu articulates it, “Rather than on the ideology of self-expression, music should be based on a profound relationship to nature—sometimes gentle, sometimes harsh. When sounds are possessed by ideas instead of having their own identity, music suffers.”

Evan: Well, I look at what we do as a form of meditation. At a minimum, we hope to make people feel good. At a maximum we hope to induce a total out of body experience. Its kind of like how Bruce Nauman, tongue-in-cheekingly said “The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths”. It’s hard to know what exactly it is we’re getting at, and it all depends on what the listener wants to get out of it. There are so many ways to interpret sound and its effect on the mind. The experience of ‘the other’ and experiencing something outside of oneself, greater than oneself is a big part of music for us.

Also, in more strictly musical terms, we are interested in both density and space. By density, I mean filling a room with the physical presence of sound, and by space I mean the relationship of pitches in a given time frame and their decay, which us something we may have explored the most on “The Conjurer”.

Tell us about how you guys get your ideas. What inspires you? Are your drones always planned out, accidental, or a little of both?
Evan: I find that some of the best inspiration comes to me after a hike or time in a natural environment of solitude. We’re lucky to be close to so many beautiful forests, mountains, and beaches here in San Francisco. It’s strange because I don’t really find much direct musical inspiration from living in the city, but love being here because it’s a place where there is such a rapid exchange of ideas and culture. So you could say the concrete itself isn’t inspiring but the ability to go to see all kinds of different music from all over the world definitely opens up doors. It’s when I leave the city that some other unfamiliar sort of voice comes into my head and things really shift around in my mind.

The drones are improvised and composed, but always based around a loose structure. Some things we’ve done are very much composed with slight improvisational embellishments, like many acoustic guitar pieces. Accidents can be great…I suppose that’s part of the awesomeness of feedback, its this element of sound you can’t completely control, you have to wrestle with it a bit and that kind of sound-determining-its own course we find often produces results far more interesting than something a human mind could attempt to rationally or intuitively produce.

Jon: Its difficult to pinpoint, but id say other music and other musicians are one source of inspiration. We’re always seeking new bands, composers, musicians to set off that spark, but many times moments or experiences are even higher forms of inspiration too, being in the woods at night, cicadas in a field, driving through the plains.

I would say our drones are mostly composed, although the nature in which they are formed allows for unplanned results. Sometimes we’ll talk about an idea, and when we start to play, it evolves into something different altogether, something we could not have expected. It is exciting and something we love about playing drone music.

Will you make it to the Midwest or East Coast for a tour?
Jon: Yes

Evan: We sure hope so. There are tentative plans for such a trip next spring.

Tell us more about your interest in visual art. Evan definitely has a gift for stunning drawings, and am I correct that Jon has an interest in photography? Besides wowing us with your album art, do either of you hope to pursue these mediums further?
Evan: Thanks for your kind words. Drawing has been a passion of mine since I was really young. I study printmaking in school, but many printmaking techniques are relatively new to me, so its been fun to explore them as Barn Owl has evolved. I’ve always been really into black and white, high contrast images, so printmaking is conducive to my vision in many ways. Also, I’m sort of obsessive about the connections between music and image and really enjoy attempting to convey how something sounds through a visual medium in a way that avoids obvious connections and favors a more symbolic approach. I’m really excited about two newer projects, I did a big lithograph that is the cover for “The Conjurer”, and a couple etchings for my upcoming solo album. Also, I just did the cover for Ajilvsga’s LP “The Muddy Banks of the Arkansas”, which I really enjoyed. I hope to work more with other bands.

Jon: I have an interest in photography, it’s more a hobby then anything else. But in terms of visual art, I’ve been working on a few video pieces that are accompanied by music. Mostly light damaged images, very slow moving and fractal inspired. There will hopefully be a dvdr out on root strata in the near future.

What visual artists/music artists influenced you the most?
Evan: Ahhh so many. In terms of music, Fushitsusha/Keiji Haino has been a constant lately, as well as Alice Coltrane. I’d say the big influences that really shaped Barn Owl’s sound would be John Fahey and La Monte Young. In terms of visual artists, Olafur Eliasson is the first that comes to mind. His installations are really thought provoking, challenging your idea of individual perception and making you carefully consider the nature of ‘reality’ through seemingly simple installations, so I guess you could say it had a lot in common with some drone music. Besides that, Bruce Conner is an endless source of inspiration.

Jon: Well I can say that hearing Earth2 changed the way I listened to music at a young age, and opened my ears to an alternative definition of what I considered musical. Of course people like La Monte Young, Rhys Chatham and Tony Conrad have further guided us along an alternative musical path, as well as virtuosos Bismillah Khan, Pandit Pran Nath, Toru Takemitsu, the list could go on and on really. As far as more modern players, Haino, Tom Carter, Matthew Bower, Dylan Carlson, there’s no denying these are the dudes that paved the way for us, tons of respect.

Please describe the difference in vision between your solo efforts as Elm, Higuma, and Evan Caminiti, and your collaborative effort as Barn Owl.
Evan: Well, to start off, I think one element that has always been a big part of the vision of Barn Owl is apocalyptic themes and that sort of doom influence. In anything we do the Raga influence seems to seep in, however slight it may be. The visual element of sound has always been big for us also, as well as the spatial relationship of sounds. In exchanging ideas it is probably more common one of us will say, “think…Mojave desert at sunrise”, rather than actually playing a riff.

Jon: Elm is simply a way for me to release the material that I record at home, usually alone and in a dense blanket of fog. For now I’m working with hazy, dreamlike atmospheres, I try to evoke an entire experience with elm, a headspace to lull in, to drift off into. I was also really inspired by the one-man black metal band thing, completely aside from the actual music, the ability for one person to create the experience of an entire band or orchestra was really appealing to me. I want to exploit the capabilities of home recording and home production to evoke a place of mystery, a mark of the unknown.

Evan: Vision is always changing, although there remain underlying themes. With Higuma there is a pretty big evolution currently taking place. Higuma is my partner Lisa and me, and at first we were focused totally free improvisations, but more composed elements are beginning to enter into the equation and we’re exploring this realm at the intersection of the aesthetics of what I suppose you could call noise and new age, which has been extremely cathartic.

In my solo work I’d say the big difference is an emphasis on the guitar. Overall, there are less vocals and other instrumentation than you will find with Barn Owl or Higuma. I suppose I consider myself first and foremost a guitarist, guitar was my first great musical love. Most of the time these days I approach the instrument with a deconstructive, transfigurative approach without getting all tabletop, but I also like to visit traditional themes rooted in blues, north African styles, and Raga. Feedback is also a constant obsession.

Are there any other projects that you want to pursue besides your current three solo projects and group project? If so, what would you be interested in exploring? I think another partnered venture, other than Barn Owl might be interesting.
Evan: We’ve played together once as Portraits, which is a big drone collective organized by Jefre Cantu Ledesma. Hopefully there will be more of that to come. Also, we collaborated last spring with ALTAR EAGLE in a project called Hanging Thief. This was recorded in Tulsa, OK the day before a big storm hit so there is there kind of ominous energy that surrounded the session. And John and I have been collaborating with our friend The Norman Conquest, who recorded and produced “The Conjurer” with us. We’ve got a few other special things in the works we can’t yet reveal.

You are putting out quite a bit of work lately: Evan, soon on Students of Decay and Digitalis; Elm, soon on Digitalis; and Barn Owl, recently on Digitalis, soon on Root Strata, and the debut of your label, Electric Totem. Any reason why so much is being released lately?
Evan: You know, its sort of strange because many of these things were completed a while ago, they’ve just taken a long time to get released for one reason or another. The SoD cd-r is some material that is over a year old. The upcoming Root Strata album “The Conjurer” was recorded last Fall. The two solo discs for Digitalis are probably the most recent things in terms of when they were actually recorded, so I think they are a good representation of the realms we are now exploring, individually and as a team. The first Electric Totem release is a live recording from when we were in Vancouver, BC last summer. We timed the release to coincide with our west coast tour this summer.

Who are some other artists that have gotten your attention lately?
Evan: Aluk Todolo is the first band the comes to mind. Absolutely killer.

Jon: Onna, and yes aluk!!

What instruments/equipment do you use?
Evan: Fender amps, mostly Gibson guitars, lots of delays (favorite currently being mxr carbon copy, which is all analog), fuzz, bows, slides, ebow. The list goes on…we’re big on keeping things live and having no laptops or anything on stage. Tube amps are also really important in terms of sound and presence.

Would you say that there’s been a progression in your musical output? If so, what do you think would account for it?
Evan: Yeah, while we have a good grasp of what sounds we want to create it is a constantly evolving process.

What other stuff are you guys into?
Evan: Friends, food, movies, beer, hiking…

Is there anything else you want to say about anything? Here’s your soapbox.
Evan: Thanks to you if you’ve taken the time to read this, and thanks to all who have supported us.

Jon: Magic is real.

– Dave Miller (11 August, 2009)

10*2*09

Woke up feeling a little better today I guess. Slept til around 11 and woke up finding Pam here. I think she’s burned on the woman she’s working for, and who can blame her. She has to babysit the other daughter which takes time away from the care she’s supposed to be giving the sick girl. I don’t know how she does the job she does anyway, though I must admit I’d have a harder time being a vet than a nurse. It’s a rough job and it takes its toll. My hat has always been off to Pam in that regard, my respect immense.
Here it is Friday. The day before our move. The day where we break out of our little prison, and now that this day is upon us I almost feel guilty for saying such a thing. This is where I got reacquainted with Pam. Where I got to know her again and sat outside and drank for nights on end, laughing and telling stories. Repeating stories because we were so torn up we forgot that we told them the night before. It’s where I got to meet John and Amelia. So at the risk of sounding sentimental, I should be grateful for that. On the other hand, it’s just another place on Earth. I’ll float around between the two for a while.

So back to music that really struck me over the last year. Lee has turned me onto a guitarist, R. Keenan Lawler, who is very good. Hearing him for the first time had a similar effect as hearing Bailey for the first time. It sounds new. Not even Jim O’Rourke did that for me. Rowe, yes, but it’s been a long time since I reacted that way to playing. I’m still sorting out his different material. There was one thing he did where his knob twisting clearly detracted from the beauty of his playing. That’s the only minus I can think of right now.

Other records which impressed this year:

Stephen R. Smith – Cities
“Rarely have a I heard such a gorgeous document….ever…ever read one, ever seen a painting such as Smith’s “Cities.” He’s a brilliant multi-instrumentalist, and on his latest masterpiece he strikes such an elegiacal, excruciatingly bewitching document that I find it hard to put into words. The expanse of emotion and timbre alone are nearly ineffable, and to simply say the word sublime is, well, an understatement.

Smith has an uncanny knack for unconventional melody—his constructions are at once mundane and insane. It’s partly due to his unorthodox instrumentation and the way he mixes his instruments. And that brings us to the way he textures his tones and constructs his timbre, as well as the way he uses the sound of the space in which he records. For a long time, Smith has brought us a plethora of ways to make music, to construct organic—even natural, found sounds—to us in the most musical ways possible. Though “Cities” often uses more conventional means, he in no way sacrifices the utter elegance and sometimes brutality with which we’ve come to know his music.

Here, mixing strings, found sounds, literal mic contact for percussion and a few effects bandied about, our, and yes I’ll say it, our genius doesn’t fail us. Bring to it what you will, but with Smith we truly have an artist of such eclecticism, adventure, mortality (and all its implications) and immediacy that he cannot possibly be ignored.

One of my favorites, I admit my bias. But I do so gladly.”

Another new voice, new to me, that has promise is Stefan Kushima. While the CD I reviewed didn’t sport anything radically new it did succeed in being utterly fucked up. I don’t think it’s one of the year’s best, but I think it shows mucho promise. As usual, I’m not good at compiling lists. I can hardly remember who I’ve heard when, which is either a testament to a) my fizzling memory or b) ultimately, how difficult it is to impress upon me. I figure it’s somewhere in between. I get really excited easy when I first hear something that strikes my ear. Then the inevitable breakdown begins. Not all that glitters.

So, I took my two final hydrocodones to wake me up in a good mood. They’re doing it, but it’s such a tease. Four is my usual, so I took a Xanax on top of it. Ah, pills. I also have a few tiny buds left which I’ll save for later on.

Theo Angell also struck me with his record “Tenebrae.” There are similarities undeniable between his material and MMVV, but that isn’t a bad thing. Personally, I find it hard to keep up with all the MMVV releases. They all whorl around my empty head, but as I was riding up to Denton the other night with Lee we couldn’t help but give our respective kudos to their cosmic folk.

So anyway, working on getting this last bit of moving going on. Listening to music. Television off, and it’s been a thing of preference as of late. It’s a day to day fight against malignant ubiquity, the.

As usual, there’s never a year that goes by that a significant chunk of that time is spent listening to Tall Dwarfs, which has to put them up there with my all time pop favorites. For me–and I’m sure I’m a minority here–they surpass Big Star and that entire family tree. Nothing against them, but the sheer inventiveness of TD is alone enough to persuade me to adore their music. This isn’t even mentioning the spectrum of emotion they cross with their music. Equally intriguing are their solo projects. After listening to “Gold Lamé” I was more convinced than ever of Alex’s overall contribution to the TD body of work; something I’m sure Chris would readily acknowledge.

If weather bodes well at all, I got up and it was ecstatically chill outside. Lovely. Big baby blue blanket dome. So, I’m drinking copious amounts of caffeine and have the company of my beloved wife *mystery girl*–she seems a little paranoid about mentioning her by name, so I’ll have to come up with something snarky to replace her usual designation. She’s sitting right here next to me so as soon as I get up and leave I suspect she’ll look over just to see what’s being said. I can safely say that the weight of the recent past weeks is being lifted knowing that we’re moving tomorrow. Now the trick is to turn on all these seemingly prosaic happenings over the last month or so into something more magical, something with which I can work for fiction, but fuck, I can hardly type right now. Glad to see I’m back at it again.

I meant to include that Jim Carroll passed away on the 11th. I can’t underscore enough how big of an influence he was for me when I was an adolescent. I think that’s where his work began and ended, though. I hardly consider him a major writer of the 20th C., but he’s a prominent footnote to post-beat/punk literature, and if I’m going to fucking include Peter Laughner in that same case, then Carroll definitely deserves to be there. As for Laughner, I always felt a kinship with him because of his true to action nihilism. Some call it sadness. I call it a legitimate reaction to the world. We need our losers. We should embrace them. Without contrasts we’d have nothing left but the blandest lowfat yogurt left. If by contrast you might think I mean materialistically successful Wall St. crooks, that’s not what I’m getting at. Other than them ruining the lives of millions of Americans, I’m talking about more successful artists, whether they deserver it or not. Artists of all stripes: visual, audio, musicians proper, poets, writers, gonzos, performance artists and those who can’t distinguish life from art.

I can’t say that I’ve gotten a real grip on the Dallas/Denton nexus, but I’m getting there. Lee is discussing a possible festival–to which I’ll lend a hand, but only a few fingers. The last time I did that it bit me in the ass. I can think of all the little (and big) things that lead up to me to be such a fucking curmudgeon. I’m not anti-social, but I’d sometimes enjoy being more willing to get out and do something. Going to sleep and sleeping right through the improv gig the other night did me no favors. At least I wasn’t obnoxious, though. I was just drunk and took too many pills. Silly me. But I think that as time goes by I’ll find a nice niche here. There are plenty of people knowledgeable enough about music here–all kinds of music–that I should find somethting I can eventually fit in with and possibly start doing some work. Artistic work. Which is something I want to do when i get to the new place. Painting always helps me articulate both sound and words, and while I’m not as interested in sounds now as I am in words, the whole of expression seems to lend itself to a rounded, full experience. No doubt though, I need to work on character sketches.