_______________
MetaspliceChurn
'Metasplice is the tandem of that guy from hair_loss and Dave Smolen. Both were great on their own, but as a team, they tend to tag a little harder, dig a little deeper, and down a lot more space-dance donuts. The easy way to explain the appeal of Topographical Interference is to invoke kindred spirits like Demdike Stare and Ensemble Economique. Yet these two lay it on a lot thicker, “it” being a strange aural substance known as digi-spray that cropdusts the arrangements with a layer of spice that more minimalist dark-dance folk lack. If it feels like Metasplice are rambling at times, it’s because they are. That said, they’re one of the few groups mining this sound with any semblance of bravado, laying down tracks a more enterprising chap might even be able to dance to.'-- Tiny Mix Tapes
__________________
ShedI Come By Night (50 Weapons)
'I have to explain that Shedding the Past is not like I wanted to shed something or to do something new or to leave something behind. It’s more to explain where the name Shed came from. That’s all. It’s a bit ridiculous I know, “Shed” the name — I know! [laughs] It was more to explain the name, where it came from. When I started with my label in 2003, this was the first sentence on my web page — “shedding the past” — but in that time, I thought I had to shed something. And actually the album name came in order to explain “Shed” — I’m not a garden shed or whatever! [all laugh] That’s it. There was a big idea behind it, but not on it, not while I made this album.'-- Shed
_____________________
MoonfaceHeaded for the Door
'Moonface is singer, songwriter, keyboardist, Spencer Krug, known previously by his former bands Sunset Rubdown, Wolf Parade, Frog Eyes and Swan Lake. The name originated in 2009 with the Sunset Rubdown limited 7-inch "Introducing Moonface." It was a mere two songs that Krug wrote and recorded alone in his Montreal home, which was never intended to make any big waves, but which resurrected in Krug a love for home-recording, and planted the idea that he would use the name "Moonface" for all future solo work. Moonface is now Krug's main focus and primary creative outlet. He is currently working on the next album with the above mentioned Michael Bigelow. The album is, as of yet, a pop-percussion experiment, the title and release date of which are both yet to be determined.'-- JAGJAGUAR
__________________
Clams CasinoAll I Need
'Mike Volpe. more commonly known as Clams Casino or Clammy Clams, is an Italian-American electronic musician and hip hop producer from Nutley, New Jersey. He started gaining recognition after contacting Lil B and sending him a variety of instrumentals. His production often samples spacey female voices—such as Björk, Janelle Monáe, Adele, or Imogen Heap. He is currently studying to be a physical therapist. He received acclaim from The Needle Drop and Pitchfork, the latter of which ranked his first mixtape, Instrumentals, as one of the top-50 records of 2011. He gained futher recognition due to his work on A$AP Rocky's mixtape and album Live. Love. A$AP.' -- collaged
__________________
Burial & Four TetWolf Cub
'British "super producers" Four Tet and Burial are known for collaborating, bringing in super-super types like Thom Yorke on occasion. Now they've quietly revealed a new joint effort minus the Yorke. Meet "Wolf Cub," a track Four Tet tweeted early last night with little fanfare or explanation. So far the best guess for the chilled-out track's future is Pitchfork's theory that it'll be the 13th release on Four Tet's Text Records label, since Four Tet included the phrase "TEXT013" in his 140 characters.' -- collaged
___________________
PrurientI Understand You
'Another one-man band out of Madison, WI, Dominick Fernow basically makes up Prurient with a theme of anti-technology and anti-electricity -- with the exception of his microphones and four-track recorder. Backing Fernow's stance up is his unconventional use of banging objects together to create music; playing with live wire, pennies, frying pans, toolboxes, scrap metal, and used shotgun shells are an example of some of his instruments. Through his many hours of recording in is home studio, Prurient recorded and released a split EP with PCDS in 1998 and a full-length the next year entitled Blades Steam Red Sweat, Inside the Things I Dread on his own Hospital Records.'-- collaged
___________________
Atom TMWellen Und Felder
'Uwe Schmidt, aka Atom TM, modern laptop legend and king of the pseudonym has been lost in the Chilean wilderness for the last eight years. We coaxed him out of hiding to come and talk about the science of living and breathing Latin American music, finally getting to a place where you can re-interpret Kraftwerk, the deep science of the cover version, his Japanese approach to collaboration, the rapid process of electronic music definition and the subsequent and irritating result of classification.' -- RBMA
________________
The Haxan CloakMiste
'I’ve been making music for more than 10 years now, and all I can really do is strive to achieve the most honest thing possible. This is what The Haxan Cloak represents to me - a desire for honesty - a clean channel between the conception and fruition of ideas. There isn’t really a concept as, personally, I’m uncomfortable with trying to consciously mask the music with a pre-determined idea of what it should be or say. I find this very counter-productive. The music does end up being quite melancholy in tone. Of course, there is the question of why record under ‘The Haxan Cloak’ and not just my own name. I am sort of obsessed with pre-1900s imagery and text . I was heavily into reading about the Salem witch trials for a time. Haxan is an old German word for witch, which I always found sounded and looked intriguing and somehow beautiful.'-- THC
________________
Laurel HaloThaw
'When an artist "finds her voice," it's meant as a figure of speech and signifies a certain kind of greedy perspective from our end that values neat narrative arcs and easily identifiable resolutions. It's typically reserved for someone like Laurel Halo, who's darted and dashed rather than having followed a simple trajectory over the past couple of years, recording a vast and diverse amount of material under her own name and as King Felix for six record labels (and counting). Halo finds her voice in a literal sense. She foregrounds vocals to a far greater extent than on her previous material, and while Quarantine veers from claustrophobic sci-fi dioramas to meditative synth drones to nakedly expressive confessionals, it's unified by an underlying perspective and personality that commands attention yet still leaves plenty to the imagination.'-- Pitchfork
______________
Locust Strobes
'Mark Van Hoen, who made a string of influential releases as Locust on R&S records in the 1990’s, all but retired the alias at the end of that decade. In May 2012, Van Hoen was invited to perform a live set on WFMU radio. In order to make the set more spontanious and add a further dimension, he asked friend and fellow musician Louis Sherman to collaborate. While improvising new material in Sherman’s Brooklyn rehearsal studio, It swiftly became obvious that the material sounded like Locust. Inspired by joint explorations with found sound sources and ambient textures, and sharing a pan-dimensional immersion in the length and breadth of analogue and digital recording, the duo performed a series of tracks live. This material, combined with previously recorded tape tracks dating back to 2006 form the bulk of their new album.'-- Editions Mego
_______________
Bee MaskLive @ Enemy, Chicago
'Bee Mask is the abstract and drone music project of the Cleveland, Ohio, United States native Chris Benedetto Madak. Madak's approach is difficult to pin down. While he frequently composes long-form explorations in excess of fifteen minutes, he also breaks his pieces into movements short enough to have already released a greatest hits-style compilation, last year's Elegy for Beach Friday. This tension between slow-burning builds and sudden fissures is magnified on When We Were Eating Unripe Pears, a short album of terse, disparate tracks that nevertheless flows as a whole. The record starts as granular squeaks and chirps flit above a molten synthesizer drone, gradually dissolving into it until they resemble bubbling water. As the drone morphs into a sluggish thudding pulse, Manak deploys an assortment of sounds—chief among them a wafer-thin, super-fast arpeggio and clanging tones—that give the feel of a mechanized gamelan session.'-- collaged
__________________
Demdike Stare Violetta
'Demdike Stare is the occult project of Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty. Miles is also known as Modern Love’s DJ MLZ or as one half of Pendle Coven. Sean Canty is the dedicated digger behind the Haxan events and a member of the respected Finders Keepers crew of vinyl vultures. The duo’s collaborative project tracks the sonic ley lines of cult soundtracks, Arabesque dubs and psychotomimetic ephemera with a proper Lancastrian twist. Their releases, notable for their beautiful cover design by Andy Votel, have included Symbiosis, Liberation Through Hearing, Voices of Dust and Forest of Evil. In 2011 the latter three were compiled as Tryptych.'-- last.fm
*
p.s. Hey. ** Scunnard, Hi, Jared. Yeah, the weather here is really schizo. It's like the days are montages of what feels like spring and then this cold, rainy drear that seems so two months ago. Glad things are good there, man. I saw your email, and I'll get to it pronto. Thanks! ** Thomas Moronic, I agree with you about 'To the Wonder'. Nice. Cool you liked the Julien and the Joyce. Yeah, really good stuff, right? Oh, and, wow, thank you a lot for sending me that you-know-what! It's going to pop up here next Wednesday. Really a big help, man. I really appreciate it. And it's awesomeness incarnate, of course! ** Misanthrope, Well, hopefully the hand is just freaking out and overcompensating and throwing some brief melodrama your way. Ouch. I don't know the Neph, of course, but, yeah, it doesn't seem like he's ready to be a rolling-in-the-overseas-clover-style UK- or Francophile. ** Bollo, Hi, J! What's the show that opens ... tomorrow, or, hm, today? Give us a peek via photos, if that's no problem. I had a decently chocolate Easter, even though I completely forgot that Easter was the reason the chocolate was bunny-shaped and was also why I was gorging in the first place. Good luck with the show/opening tonight, man. ** David Ehrenstein, That was some kind of definitive 'Call Me Maybe' right there. Thank you. ** Sypha, Gaddis liked 'Bright Lights Big City'? Now, that is something I would never have imagined. I wonder why. Maybe google will tell me. I love Beckett's novels, so I have to second Lee and Ligotti. Yeah, I got your email, and I'll try to write back to you today. I'm just way behind on so many things due to the recent trip, exactly. But I will. ** S., Sounds like your story has a solid destiny. Limp Bizkit, like, a new LB video? I guess they're still around. I guess I read that that guitarist with the 'spooky' contact lens rejoined them or something. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, wow. It's here! Everyone, it is a momentous occasion because the new issue of the super-great zine among zines Yuck 'n Yum is just now out, online, and available to all. You can find and read it here, and you simply must! Among the contents this month is a piece by our very own _B-A aka Ben Robinson about the Mike Kelley retrospective at the Stedlijk Museum in Amsterdam, and it includes an interview with yours truly. So, yeah. Go get your eyes on that zine! I'm excited to read your piece, and thank you so much for including me in it. It's a real honor. I'm going to finish up here and go right over there and dig in. ** Steevee, Cool, the review. Everyone, Steevee has reviewed the much discussed and much liked film 'Upstream Color' over on the Gay City News site, and, as always with Steevee's criticism, the rewards of reading are as plain as the noses on your faces. The review is here. Wonderful about the wisdom of the 'Sight and Sound' editor! ** James, Hey. Yeah, RIP Roger Ebert. That was a very poignant news. Ugh. Well, you're welcome about the book recommendations. Wow, cool that the editing is close to being finished. I envy you, man, if you don't mind my saying so. Oh, chapter titles. I keep changing my mind about them. I guess most of me thinks there's a kind trope/ gimmick thing about chapter titles. and I really don't why I feel that way exactly. But then I think they can be really beautiful and useful and be kind of like the titles of the poems in a poetry book. So, I go back and forth. Actually, 'God Jr.' does have chapter titles, as did 'The Sluts', so I haven't really moved away from using them. I just think carefully in each case about whether they need to be there, if they add anything, if the chapters are enhanced or twisted or made more complicated or something if they're titled. Not such a great answer to your question, I'm sorry. Trust your instincts? ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris. Very cool and awesome that the post's prop of LEK lead you to put her work on NMFS. So pleased by that. The last novel I made a physical scrapbook for was 'Period'. The scrapbook method was specific to the George Miles Cycle books. After that, I just made kind of online scrapbooks sometimes that weren't really scrapbooks at all. So, it's been quite a long time since I made one. It felt good, and it seems like it might help in the way that the scrapbooks used to help. Thanks a lot for filling me in on the readings. I guess it makes sense that there would be a bigger crowd in Austin. I guess I think of Austin as the Texas' center of what's happening, even though I guess a lot of the writers from your state who interest me the most don't actually live there. Hm. Yeah, I really like that Roggenbuck is a rallying point too. It's one of his real virtues. I'd really like to meet him sometime. Maybe his reach will reach to France once his work gets translated. Wow, even at Joakim's university. That's interesting. They do speak incredibly good English up there. I hope you have a good morning too, my friend. ** Right. I have a gig for you today. Especially if you're driving somewhere and can somehow get the gig into your car's sound system. But even if not. Even if you just daydream about roads today. Or even if you don't. See you tomorrow.