poisson d'avril

WE'VE MOVED: aprilfish.net

2009-01-03T00:31:00.003-05:00

I've moved over to Wordpress.

Go over to aprilfish.net and explore new, exciting fields of blogginess including:
--1000 Times Yes: my project where I will review 1000 records over Twitter by the end of 2009!
--Updates on my upcoming 33 1/3 book, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
--Notices on various DJ gigs I'll annoy people with around Brooklyn
--Some snarky meta-punditry, which is so very lacking on the internet
--Widgets!
--&c.

See you next summer!

Rss Test

2007-02-25T20:41:00.000-05:00

Hi.

where you been?

2006-08-02T05:10:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the post drought.

I've been trying to pull a Paul Wall over here and get the internet... well, you know.

So, look: www.paperthinwalls.com

why my life sucks in '06

2006-06-17T15:54:00.000-04:00

Money raised by poorly attended stoop sale: $66
Cost of thai food delivery since I couldn't leave the stoop: -$16
Cost of NY Dept. Of Sanitation fine for putting up flyer for poorly attended stoop sale: $-75
--------------------------------------
Total: -$25

the land of rape and honey-mustard

2006-06-03T02:36:00.000-04:00

1. Some of my friends don't watch MTV anymore. I want to let them know what they're missing. Here's two actual slices of the demoralizing-for-all-involved dating show Next. They're like haikus... but ones that uplift the spirit into a frenzy of praying for the rapture!:

Carpe Equus
I don't like girls that are cocky... unless it means they can't get enough of my c[bleep].
I hope this feline gets to see my tiger-like sex-u-al skills!
I don't just ride horses, I'm hung like one

O RLY factor
"Democrat?"
"Next!"
"Whatever... I don't even know the f[bleep]ing difference."

2. Speaking of dudes in cowboy hats, I got to interview Al Jourgensen of Ministry! You can read it in Revolver (spoiler alert!: "He wasn’t even sure if he ass-fucked it or pussy-fucked it!"). Here's my fave exchange that didn't make it in:

What was the last day job you held?
The last job I worked was at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. And the motherfuckers, man. I’m 18 or 17. I got the job 'cause i thought the chick behind the counter was hot and i wanted to work the cashier with her. So I get the job and think, “Man, oh, man, I’m gonna get laid!” Instead, they give me this stupid suit to wear and this paper hat. And they send me back to this walk-in cooler that’s a bout 30 yards long where there’s, I swear to god, like 10 thousand dead chickens. They were up to my knees. I had to wade through dead chicken carcasses. And they told me my job was to pluck the feathers off of them. And I was like, “Fuck you!”

I turned around and before I could do anything about it, the door slammed and they locked me in the cooler! And I had nothing but this stupid-ass Kentucky Fried Chicken uniform on, freezing my ass off, knee deep in chicken carcasses and my job was to pluck feathers. I pounded on the door, screamed my fucking head off, freaked out. About six hours later someone hears me pounding on the door and I quit. I went vegetarian for 17 years after that.

A new Ministry album is a terrible thing to sleep on: Ministry - "Rio Grande Blood" MP3

Plundertronix!

2006-05-29T11:20:00.000-04:00

Girl Talk - "Friday Night"
from Night Ripper (Illegal Art)

The crippling immediacy of cueing iPod data turns me into a 10-year-old. I'm constantly trying to relive that neck-hair-raising euphoria of hearing my fave song over-n-over-n-over with no regard to the fact that making tape-edit remixes of "U Can't Touch This" (yes, I actually did this) was keeping me from doing my social studies homework. I haven't been eating my vegetables (Steve Reich, Cold Crush Brothers, Gong) 'cause I can just have ice cream all day (Fall Out Boy, D4L, Ying-Yang Twins)

That's why Girl Talk made the best album of the year: it's a scientific impossibility for there to be a better album! This Cleveland copyright-molester is a cross between Hollertronix and John Oswald, taking 164 of the most unfuckwithable songs ever--Missy, M.A.R.R.S, M.I.A., Madonna--and turning em into the empirically proven best party album in the history of humanity.

Throw away your record collection now. All the staples are here ("Wait," "1 Thing," "The Whisper Song," "Hypnotize," "Laffy Taffy," "Random," "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House," "Heartbeat"), so you won't need those MP3s anymore. All the best PARTS of songs are here (the rimclick solo in "Cannonball" and nothing else, the "ooh-ooh-hoo-hoo" from that Rentals song and nothing else), so you won't need those either (you should really lose that Rentals album anyway, though). Even the best parts of songs you don't like are here (Girl Talk exploits the listenable 8 seconds of "My Humps" to glorious results).

Matos puts it simply: Girl Talk takes a song you like and then mixes it with "Galang"... where can you go wrong? Personally, I like that it does the mash-up thing without the laptop-hunched sting of an oh-so-clever juxtaposion (WTF I KILLED MR. COLLIPARK WITH MY BIG FUCKING DICK!!!11). The word 'mash-up' doesn't do this album justice, since the songs don't lose their unique flavors to a pixel-pushing dormdork giving something a wacky title. It's more like a candy shop record, all your fave treats on view, and you're forced to shove them all in your mouth for pure Super-Squishy delerium.

It deserves to be more populist than it ultimately will be (linking Elastica and Ciara won't get as many news articles as something stupid like mixing Rubber Soul with "Rubberband Man"), so be sure to buy a copy and play it in mixed company. Offer to DJ a school dance and just play Night Ripper. Drive around the mall for an hour and blast Night Ripper. Air drop Night Ripper on your hometown like humanitarian aid. Get on my level. Feel my heartbeat. Pump up the volume.

Buy it here
Download it here
Hurry before over 164 lawyers descend on this thing!

---
Period - "Period" (excerpt)
from Period (Funhole)

The cuddly art-honkers from Braxtoncore squigglerband Zs have been putting on an exceptional series of shows at the Cake Shop called "From B To Z," showcasing lots of local outer-outer-limit talent.

Last night's show was a sweltering joy featuring terrifying aggro-jazzers Owl Xounds Exploding Galaxy, moan-wave sirens Imaginary People, sexy-retard hardcore smirk-offs The Fugue, and psych brooders Eystek

Since I just spent 20 minutes tracking down links for a half-dozen subterranean avant-wonks, I'll keep the rest mercifully brief. Period is the side-project of sproingly Zs keyboardist Charlie Lookner (here on guitar) and flurry-tantrum drummer Mike Pride of Dynamite Club. Together, they sound like Derek Bailey covering the Melvins--stiltedly jerking through washes of bent guitar drone and jazzpunk drumflutter for 26 neck-cracking minutes. Their album is on FuckingA (which is Zs' CD-R label) and is only, like, $6!

austin stories

2006-03-31T16:07:00.000-05:00

Having spent four days at the greatest music festival in the world (whose name doesn’t appear on my 1040), I couldn’t wait to add to the perpetual cyber-stream of “OMG! I was there!!!”s. Here’s my SXSW 2006 wrap-up in convenient bullet-point format. Hopefully this will prove easy-to-read, as opposed to bogging down my hypothetical readers with a murky wading pool of pithy zeitgeist-surmising bullshittery and flighty internrrd-impressing prose. Except the last sentence. That stays.

The XX best things about SXSW XX!

I. Fuck By Fuck You
Hundreds of shows booked by SXSW’s crack staff, and the best spectacles are still the ones curated by badge-burning loose cannons and renegades. The eighth annual Fuck By Fuck You, hosted by chaos-corralling Austin party-monsters Gorch Fock, was a backyard blowout fueled by local energy, local talent, local brewskis and a complete drought of industry douchebags honking coke off business cards. The Gorch Fock performance itself was a Buttholes-rivaling circus freakoff initiated by a demented B-52’s from Hell: double drumming, triple guitaring, strobes, smoke, and a high-flying trombonist performing stunts of derring-do and fuck-you.

Meanwhile, a two minute walk away, housed on the tiny porch of a Hispanic dive bar, NYC loft-dweller Todd P had booked over 50 of the most eclectic, intense and gripping underground and under-underground bands around. With a second stage on the back of a van called the Rambler, it was probably the most important show going on anywhere the zip code. Flying V-strapped retro-metallers Night After Night did skateboard tricks, Erase Errata made tap-bass cool, Drums And Tuba honk-honked to oblivion, DMBQ threw chunks of limestone at the house kit and the Bats were the fucking Bats!

It was insanity from all angles. “Every band wanted their own fucking perfect time. Unfortunately, good for them is perfect for a lot of other bands, “ says his P-ness. “Stage management for over 50 bands over a four-day festival was just hell... in the rain. But fortunately, all turned out rad.”

Celebration, Big Bear, zZz, Knife Skills, Kalas, Wooden Wand, the Double, Measles Mumps Rubella—next year just spend money on a plane ticket, and use the badge money for a Brontosaurus-worth of ribs at Iron Works.

Measles Mumps Rubella play a... um... porch song trilogy? ... I got nothing.

II. P.O.S.
As recent as CMJ 2005, Minneapolis MC P.O.S. (“It takes a Nation Of Ulysses to hold me back!”) was a hulking high hope greeted with an underwhelming response and a Craig Finn guest ramble. One record later, he is a screaming typhoon of pure bloodletting fury (performing at, appropriately enough, Emo’s) that connected with each and every high-fiver, screeching “Yeah, right!” as both an offensive measure and defense mechanism. Here’s my personal treaty to any blog-perusing hip-hop fans: Easy with the with coke-rap, bunky. You go to basement shows, listen to Song Of Zarathrustra, are awkward around girls, hate Bush and have trouble multi-tasking. Welcome back for the first time.

Once he gets a couple in him, Craig Finn can't shut up about Predator.

III. Stepping it up
Who knew twangy Kansas City battle-rapper Mac Lethal would grow into a fiery crowd-killer? And could get the most applause of any MC I saw all weekend by ending a freestyle with the Konami Code? Who knew a great-on-paper band like New Order/Naked City grind-wonks Genghis Tron could grow beyond a novel gimmick into a heart-stopping Tubeway Terrorizer? Also, have you seen Man Man recently?

Great Redneck Hope: Two out of three? Discuss.

IV. Accidentally catching an Art Brut set while walking down the street towards an inferior show.
If they weren’t playing “Formed A Band” (and yelping “Art Brut!” like they were the Mike Jones fronting the Blues Explosion), I might’ve missed the pokey blokes. I especially enjoyed the revised bridge to “Emily Kane,” wherein lead Brut clarifies that he had, in fact, run into Emily seven months ago, and realized he wasn’t in love with Emily Kane, but “in love with being in love with Emily Kane... when I had no troubles... except homework.”

V. Spank Rock
Winner for most blog-worthy lyric of the festival: “Shake it ‘til my dick turns racist!”

VI. Text messaging
I don’t know how I watched bands, when was too busy poking around my phone, trying to figure out how to make a semicolon. Here’s some actual responses to a text sent by me that simply said: “Tell me something good”

Moose: I am hanging out with a friend I haven’t seen in 14 years. That’s good. No luck on the show front this hour.

ChrisWhite: Acoustic Drive X Truckers is the most punk Ive seen.

James: The plastic constellations just killed it

AmyP: Morrissey!

VII. Realizing Brooklyn Vegan won’t be enjoying himself as much as me.
You could fill an ark with the amount of dead things I ate. The sampler platter at Iron Works was better than any sampler used on stage. The pulled pork sandwich at Stubb’s can be eaten in the time it takes to walk a city block if you’re dedicated enough. Two bratwursts quarrelling in the basement of your stomach, agitated by the bowel-bursting bass of grimer Sway is the best worst feeling in the world.

VIII. Puerto Muerto
Desolate prairie funeral music as bleak as a shallow grave—performed by a scrawny ringer-teed guy and a high-soaring girl who both look like they could be Mad TV regulars.

Aw! They're so cute when they sing about the vultures picking at your bones!

IX. Hipster-free hipster parties
If we caught that quasi-ironic-metal Sword/Saviours double bill in Brooklyn, it would have been an insufferable clusterfuck of ironic haircuts, ironic band T-shirts and un-ironic alcohol problems. But in the middle of this industry geekfest, it was like Kiss’s Revenge meets Revenge Of The Nerds. Sadly, the frail, brittle frames of hipsters and geeks makes them both pretty poor candidates for moshing. I was totally king of the pit for the three seconds it existed.

X. The Annuals
These guys are so new to Ace Fu, you can still see their ass-prints on Eric Speck’s couch, these feral popsters are like Jane’s Addiction meets Extreme Sufjan. Plus they’re like 19 or something and paint their faces. Kind of krauty in that Secret Machines way, but not ruined by Alan Moulder production. Yet.

The mascot for the Ace Fu Underdogs!

XI. Badges
Seriously, why can’t people wear nametags all the time?

XII. The super-cute gals handing out hangover juice on Red River St.
Enough to contemplate alcohol abuse.

XIII. Having lunch with a bunch of bloggers
No need to remember what you said, since it’ll all end up on the internets anyway.

XIV. Belong
One big fuzzy note to wear like a blanket.

Belong can play soul-wrecking ambient fuzz, make bunny shadow puppets.

XVII. Putting faces to names
It was great meeting all the writers, editors, publicists and label-owners that I talk to every day. Can’t wait to experience the morbid embarrassment when I forget who you all are by CMJ in September.

Daedalus. I just thought this picture was nice.

XV. Mogwai’s light show
More fun than looking at a bunch of really serious-looking Scottish guys.

Mogwai was so loud and awesome that I lost the ability to see reds and yellows.

XV. TTC
Le crunk.

Freedom rappers, TTC

XVIII. Meeting Pitchfork's Ryan Schrieber.
Ten years in and still less jaded than you.

XIX. Weird Weeds
Double true .

Weird Weeds: was "Wacky Tobaccy" taken?

XX. Our friend having food poisoning and violently puking all over the yard repeatedly in the middle of the night, and making such inhuman noises in the process that our other friend thought he was having sex with someone.
Too bad I missed Whitehouse.

show us you're nuts!

2006-02-24T16:00:00.000-05:00

Finally making a career decision I can support, UK dorkspazz chortlecore goofus-rockers Test-Icicles have split. They leave behind timeless songs like "LMNO Hoes" and an eternal flame of frothing, well-deserved hype not enjoyed since the days of the Datsuns.

For a somber obituary, CMJ posted this news story: Test Icicles Go Balls Up. Seismologists are still calculating the final vibrations from the waves of lolz following the release of that headline (submitted by our own Jessica Suarez).

I thought we should come up with some alternates. Here's my list, featuring contributions from Jessica, Matthew Field, Eric Davidson, and bossman Steve Ciabattoni. Feel free to add your own! All you need is a working knowldge of the English language and an 8-year-old's grasp of subtlety!

Test Icicles Disband—Are they Nuts?

Test Icicles Sacked By Label

Test Icicles Finally Dropped

Test Icicles Call It Quits—And Right When They Had It All In The Bag

Test Icicles Taint Career With Nasty Break Up

Test Icicles Finished Before Scratching The Surface Of Their Potential

Test-Icicles Reunion? Members Still Stiff

Test Icicles Break Up: No Baloney

Test Icicles Over, Still Living High On The Hog

Test Icicles Log Out

Test Icicles Leave Without A Peep

Test Icicles Give Fans The Shaft

Test Icicles: Tool And Die

Test Icicles Quit, Have Name That Sounds Suspiciously Like Genitals

UPDATE:
02.27 // From gigwise.com // Test Icicles Blown Away By Fans' Reaction

02.28 // More from Jessica // Test Icicles Leave Fans Hanging

the internet's alright...

2006-02-07T20:14:00.000-05:00

...if you like this.

booze clues

2006-01-31T20:31:00.000-05:00

thanks to the ever-astute rob sheffield for articulating the thought i've had in my head for a few months, but have been too lazy to formulate into a linkable meme.

"Weirdest ad campaign: those Hennessy "Never Blend In" billboards with Marvin Gaye, who could not be here today to collect his royalty check, as he was shot to death by his alcoholic dad. It's like sticking Brian Jones into an ad for swimming pools."

Just wanted to send an extra special bonus beats shout-out to Miller Beer for getting Flavor Flav--someone whose life has been ravaged by substance abuse problems--for your snarky ads. A CGI approximation of John Bonham is awaiting your phone call, boys!

cleanin' out my closet: 2005

2006-01-10T22:59:00.000-05:00

To clean out the right scroll of my blog. Here are my 50 favorite records and 20 favorite singles of 2005. Collect them all.

top 50 albums
1. dalek – absence
2. jesu – jesu
3. farm fresh – time is running out
4. orthrelm – ov
5. m.i.a. – arular
6. clipse – we got it 4 cheap, pt. 2
7. odd nosdam – burner
8. mouthus - slow globes
9. fm3 – the buddha machine
10. animal collective - feels
11. deerhoof - the runner's four
12. father’s day – spank the world
13. growing – his return
14. quasimoto – the further adventures of lord quas
15. lcd soundsystem – lcd soundsystem
16. alvo noto + ryuichi sakamoto – insen
17. blueprint – 1988
18. mannie fresh – the mind of mannie fresh
19. lichens – the psychic nature of being
20. system of a down - hypnotize
21. mike jones - who is mike jones?
22. gate to gate – i turn black keys
23. paul wall - the people's champ
24. konono no. 1 - congotronics
25. oren ambarchi - triste
26. why? – sanddollars, the ep
27. keith fullerton whitman - multiples
28. sage francis – a healthy distrust
29. excepter – throne
30. antony and the johnsons – i am a bird now
31. run the road
32. opeth – ghost reveries
33. black dahlia murder - miasma
34. earth – hex: or printing in the infernal method
35. princess superstar – my machine
36. radio pyongyang
37. mary gauthier – mercy now
38. supersystem – always never again
39. eluvium – talk amongst the trees
40. big bear – big bear
41. the perceptionists – black dialogue
42. beanie seagal – the b. coming
43. high on fire – blessed black wings
44. felipe and forte - shaggy black
45. slim thug – already platinum
46. wooden wand and the vanishing voice – buck dharma
47. wolf parade – apologies to the queen mary
48. prurient – black vase
49. sunnO))) – black one
50. kanye west – late registration

top 20 singles
1. ying yang twins - "wait (the whisper song)"
2. my chemical romance - "helena"
3. fall out boy - "sugar, we're going down"
4. d4l - "laffy taffy"
5. r. kelly - "trapped in the closet (part one)"
6. lcd soundsystem - "daft punk is playing at my house"
7. david banner - "play"
8. kanye west ft. jamie foxx - "gold digger"
9. four tet - "smile around the face"
10. antony and the johnsons - "hope there's someone"
11. mike jones ft. slim thug and paul wall - "still tippin'"
12. mike jones - "back then"
13. trillville ft. snoop dogg - "some cut (remix)"
14. three six mafia ft. young jeezy, eightball and mjg - "stay fly"
15. system of a down - "hypnotize"
16. paul wall ft. mike jones - "they don't know"
17. the game - "dreams"
18. amerie - "1 thing"
19. daddy yankee - "gasolina"
20. the legendary k.o. - "george bush doesn't care about black people"

making plans for nigels

2005-12-22T20:58:00.000-05:00

sunnO)))
northsix, 12/18

Indie-snobs must have really convinced themselves that they like sunnO))), since only 1/4 of the room cleared instead of the usual 1/2. The smoke machine reached the very back corners of the club, and the bowel-cleansing bass tones vibrated through the bleachers: a safer way to catch a cheap thrill than, say, sitting on the pool filter

But the real treat was the cryptic on-stage audience-baiting from black-metal purists Nachtmystium. Quoth Nachtmystium lead singer Azentrius before launching into one especially brutal number: "We don't give a fuck about any of you nigel hipsters!!!"

Naturally, I was curious. At first, i thought he must have been trying to make a reference to Arthur magazine, who dillegently (though reverently) fan the flames of black metal's recent hipster currency. Or maybe Azentrius was pointing to the ironic posturings of Spinal Tap's Nigel St. Hubbins?

So, I asked Azentrius, a boisterous fellow with a mischevious grin hidden behind a wall of sweaty brown hair, at his merch booth.

Apparently, Wrest, the dude from nihilistic one-man blackest-metal juggernaut Leviathan came up with the term in a moment of inspired mysanthropy. Azentrius is just spreading the word. i cannot resist to do my part:

NIGEL HIPSTER
('nI-jel 'hip-st&r)Noun: Anyone who appreciates or supports black metal for ironic reasons, or because they find it humorous.
Ex.: Azentrius says that this article was written by a nigel hipster.

film falm!

2005-12-11T03:53:00.000-05:00

Syriana
Remember that scene in one of the shitty new Star Wars where it's like, "Blah blah blah trade embargos blah blah?" Imagine that for two hours.

Chicken Little
Meh.

Chicken Little In Disney Digital 3-D
OMG!!! WTF!!! And I get to keep the glasses?!

Harry Potter And The Something Or Other
Wasting a weekend reading a kid's book is stupider than petitioning a record company for a new Fiona Apple record. Why don't you just spend the afternoon in front of the microwave so you live two days less? Watching a two-hour kid's movie, however, is rad for the creepy ending that looks like a Chris Cunningham video.

The Repenetrator
I don't give a fuck if we are watching a reanimated zombie splatter-porn... don't talk in the movie theatre, asshole!

Walk The Line
This is a very cool date movie if your girlfriend is sick of you taking her to midnight showings of reanimated zombie splatter-porn (like mine is). I call dibs on the role of Rick Rubin in the sequel!(PS - If you buy the cast recording to this, that means someone gets an advance on a script for Legally Blonde 3).

Capote
First the Clutters die. My faith in the New York Film Festival voting bloc promptly followed.

"Yeah (Thanksgiving Stuffing Mix)"

2005-11-24T14:22:00.000-05:00

Animal Collective: Webster Hall, 11.20.05
LCD Soundsystem: Nokia Theatre, 11.23.05

Animal Collective is the best jam band on the planet. Even when they are tuning up and poking at their outputs it sounds gorgeous. A stage light could fall on Geologist's little work station, and you could play the sound at your wedding.

Firstly, "Tonight At Webster Hall: Animal Collective"... what the fuck planet is this?

Seriously, we are at Code Ween here! Once the hippies get ahold of this (the real hippies that play digeredoo and do capoeria moves in the student union yard at football schools, not the drippy boho simp urbanites at the show in hand-stitched fairy gear), it is fucking over. Close your ears, and AC even looks like Phish on stage. Avey Tare wiggles his little furry oysterhead like Trey Anastasio, and Sea Deaken gets downright white-funky. (By the way, openers Excepter are the worst jam band on the planet.)

Speaking of pot, why would you bring depressants to an LCD Soundsystem show? At the risk that you might accidentally dance? Next time, I will fucking narc on you to the flashlight guys and not think twice.

LCD's James Murphy is like chubby, scruffy nerd who made a record in his bedroom in college and now gets to have a band. I don't know if music writers relate to his story, but I'm shocked that crits don't beat him up because they are jealous that this geek somehow fell in the in crowd and made it--as opposed to having to write about music instead of play it. I wonder if he mispronounces "Rakim" wrong in "Losing My Edge" on purpose.

skzzz! [dispatch 002]: FM3

2005-11-19T10:51:00.000-05:00

Manufactured on a lark (and a two year struggle) by Beijing noiseambient duo FM3, the Buddha Machine is an unobtrusive little plastic box that plays nine programmed loops from a tinny speaker. From a clinical two-second micropulse to a marathon 40-second suite, the lowest-fi loops find bliss, transgression, freedom and sophisticated novelty in a clunky bit of technology. Subsequently, the mysterious little monolith has hit the record geek nerve center in spite of (or probably because of) its $23 list price and complete uselessness to such contemporary interactive mediums as iPods and turntables.

Although he's one of the most progressive voices in modern sound design, with eardrums as steady as a glasscutter's etching hand, FM3's Christiaan Virant still does most of his listening with a beat-up Discman purchased in Hong Kong six years ago. The tranquility-sculptor was born 37 years ago in Omaha, Nebraska to a mom who sang Buddhist chants around the house and a dad who studied Zen. Virant moved to China when he was 20, studying literature, history and philosophy, and formed FM3 in 1999 with Chinese keyboardist Zhang Jian. FM3 built a rep around China and Europe (they've yet to play a show America), for the most still and quiet performances around, so tense and risky that people are afraid to roll cigarettes, shift their weight or even breathe at risk of disturbing the duo's spider-web-thin trickle of sound. Only the tiniest of drones come out of the Buddha Machine but, as Virant explains, so much went into it.

How did the Buddha Machine come about?
I had wanted to do this little box for many, many years. China is a bit of a weird market. You can be famous but not be rich. People know FM3 but we don't really make money, so we never really had the capital to make the little thing. We had a dinner with [Dutch boutique label] Staalplaat in Amsterdam where I sketched out the design of this box. Literally, within the first 10 seconds of our description he said, "Do it. I'll fund it. Just do it." Staalplaat agreed to buy 300 of them. Those 300 are completely gone. The very original one was black and we won't repress them, so now the only ones available are the six colors—white, red, green, this kind of orangish-yellowish thing, blue and pink.

Where did you get the idea for the machine?
It was about 10 years ago-but my mother tells me it was earlier than that. I was in a temple in South China. In temples they're always playing chants over and over and over, and I always thought this music was being piped in. Then I noticed this little box on the altar, and it was pumping out lo-fi, dirty, digitalized-sounding Buddhist chants. I was thinking, "Is it just a tape recorder just on perma-loop?" Then when no one was in the room, I checked it out and it was just a dedicated loop player. This was 10 years ago! So I went to the gift shop-every temple in China has a gift shop where you can buy little Buddhist icons and all this stuff-and I asked about it. They had two, so I bought them both. At that time they were quite expensive—80 Renminbi, which is about 10 U.S. dollars. I could have dinner for a week on that back then. I bought one for me and sent one off for my mother.

There are ones that light up and glow and play different chants, some will go for loops as long as 120 minutes before they recycle, other ones take AC power, some have like 140 different loops in them. The factories that make these products are actually attached to the temple, physically or economically. So when I started tracking down how to make one of these boxes, they didn't want to have anything to do with me. First of all they don't really "do business"—they're not set up to have customers and take orders. And then the second thing, when they do take orders, they deal on the volume of 200,000 of these things. I went to them and said I wanted to make 300 and they laughed and said, "Go away, little boy." I don't know if you've seen any of these old kung-fu movies where the guy wants to train in the Shaolin temple and they say "Go away, you're not worthy," and he just keeps going back and finally they let him in. So I just kept pounding at the door of these companies, took these guys out to dinner, slowly befriended them and chatted them up over a two year period. It was a fun band project to do… a little bit different than putting out another CD with a four-color booklet.

And it's not even some brand new technology, it's pretty prehistoric as far as digital mediums are concerned.
Well [FM3's] music is traditionally very, very quiet, and even though we originally used computers, we were always working with really dirty lo-fi samples or sounds. The music really fits with that medium. If we were a noise band and had done this same box, we don't think it would have the same reception. The music is kind of soft and quite pretty, even the jarring noise that it creates adds to the music. The early prototypes had even more noise, they were really dirty because of the way the circuit board was wired, and I was a fan of that earlier generation. Now we're in the fourth generation and it's evolved in to a bit more clean device. And a bit louder too.

The free loops on your web site are very clean.
Those may even be WAV files. Those were the original files given to the factory, so you can hear the difference in what they sounded like when we gave 'em to the factory and what they ended up like on the little 8-bit audio chip inside the box. One thing I tell everybody is that one reason that I made the box was because I was lazy. I wanted to make sound installations easier and quicker to do. One of the ways I used to make money in Beijing was doing sound installations for various art openings or gallery openings. I got really tired of having to wire up all these installations all the time and I thought, "Gosh, if I can make this box, I could literally walk into a gallery with a piece of double-sided tape and stick my boxes on there, turn them on and walk away. It's like an instant sound installation!

What are some of the more unexpected reactions to the box?
One of the major things we didn't expect is that people would buy more than one. When you're an artist and you have a CD, if you can get your friends to buy even one, you're lucky. But when we took these things to Mutek [Festival in Montreal], first they would come up and buy two, then they'd come up the next day and buy six. Our very first customer was Brian Eno. I popped it out at dinner and instantly he said, "I want six." And when I went to his studio in London he bought more. So from our very first customer, people would buy multiples of this, especially now that people see the whole color series laid out. As an artist you would never ever run into someone [wanting] to buy six copies of your CD. Or even three. Unless you're some type of Duran Duran pop idol and a teenage girl buys two copies of your album. It's just unprecedented for an underground independent artist to be selling multiple copies of their music.

A CD has a set of implied rules, but the Buddha Machine forces the listener to cater it to their own desires—deciding what loop to play, how long to run it, whether it should be ambient or a deep listening experience.
That's something we didn't think about. Maybe because it's something new, it forces people to look at music in a different way. The first buyers were our musician friends, and they took it not as a playback device, but as an instrument. A lot of our friends, big household names in the electronic world, are using this as an instrument, or as a sample bank to create their own music. There's a project with a Berlin label that will be a number of other artists doing music using the Buddha Machine in their own compositions.

I haven't lived in the U.S. for so many years. Living in China, you're really outside a lot of the dialogue of pop culture that goes on in the West, you're kind of off in your own little world. What we didn't think about was the impact of the iPod on American culture and how people would relate this to the iPod—especially when the white one came out. So one of the interesting things is how in the U.S. it's really hit this cultural nerve of people so awash in digital selection that they're happy to have some kind of reductionist solution to their digital problems. This is something we didn't think of because in China, we're not really awash in iPod culture yet. The U.S. has been the most interesting for me because it shows me how out-of-touch I am in what's going on over there. But it's also really satisfying because people have ascribed a lot of importance to this little Buddha Machine that I didn't even think about. A few reviews have said it's the ultimate answer to the iPod generation. And that it's lo-fi and it's retro, but at the same time it's very modernist. So, I have to thank all these reviews in the U.S. for making me sound like I'm a much more thoughtful and creative inventor than I really was!

How about in Europe?
In Europe, people like it because they like the simplistic, minimalist design. And I think there's less analysis about the music industry and downloading. People here just like it for purely the whimsy concept: "Oh look it's a cute box that plays music." Japan is really interesting. When I was originally trying to get it distributed in Japan, they wanted to pay me a really low wholesale price. Their argument was that, in Japan, things made in China are considered really cheap and low quality. I said, "Well, look. It's a CD, but better!" Their argument was that it was worth less than a CD.

Do you have a recommended way to listen or the Buddha Box or do you like the democratic nature of it?
These nine loops are all taken from earlier FM3 works, so people who know us will recognize some of the bits of songs. These were our favorite bits of our music over the last two years and had a lot of thought on how to arrange them. The order of the loops is the recommended listening pattern.

The way we perform live with the Buddha Machines is Zhang Jian and I have devised a sound art card game, where we sit across from each other at a card table where there are six Buddha machines lined up. We each pick three Buddha Machines where I throw down-well, I don't "throw down"-I place down a Buddha Machine with a loop, and he can add to that or take away that "card." We build up the music based on these simplistic card game rules. We even break down our own order and it become a sound art game. We just came up with his game in Amsterdam last month. It's very visual, people get to see that we're doing something. We play completely unamplified as well. No wires, no mixers, nothing. Just a table, us and the Buddha Machines. Since we know the music pretty well by now, we're able to build really nice songs out of these nine simple loops, with an ebb and flow over a performance.

How long is a typical performance?
You know, it really is a game that someone can win or lose. It has some really basic rules. In future generations of the machines we're gonna include a piece of paper on how to play. Whether I win or he wins, it's usually about 35 to 45 minutes depending on how fast we play.

So really the best way to listen to them is to buy a bunch?
[Laughs] Yeah, it's nice to have about three. Robert [Henke] from Monolake bought [a bunch] at Mutek and the way he listens to them is that he turns them all on, puts them on different loops and then puts them around the house in all the corners. So as he's walking around his house in the morning, going from the kitchen to the bathroom to his bedroom, he's walking through different loop soundscapes. When Zhang Jian sells them after shows, he always tries to sell two at a time. He holds up two to each side of your head, so you get a stereo Buddha Machine effect. He's really into the idea of people should buy more than one.

Maybe we should throw a Buddha Machine party.
[Laughs] That would be so cool! I was just in the Ableton Live [music software] office in Berlin and, as a joke, I took a Buddha Machine into their cafeteria, turned it on, and walked away. I came back an hour later and there were 15 engineers surrounding this machine like it was something out of 2001. They were just loving it. I was saying to Robert [of Monolake], I should come to your cafeteria, perform for 30 minutes and sell the Buddha Machine over the lunch hour." How cool would that to do a tour of only geek software companies? I'll give a free performance in your cafeteria as long as I can sell Buddha Machines.

How do other people listen to it?
Someone told me they use the number nine loop, the jittery two-beat fast-recycling loop to annoy their cat with. God knows why anyone would want to annoy their cat.

Have you heard of anyone having sex to the Buddha Machine?
[Laughs] No. No one's told me about that yet. One thing I can say on the record is that, so far, the Buddha Box is not a groupie magnet. It's more of a geek magnet.

Check out the nine loops in clean, safe digital form here

Text originally from cmj.com

afro-punk'd

2005-11-18T12:55:00.000-05:00

Konono No. 1 - S.O.B.s, 11.17.05

Konono gussied up their show for America. No homemade amps. No homemade mics. The menacing air-siren-styled speakers on stage were not hooked up to anything—they didn’t even have wires! They using an octave pedal ferchrissakes!

Essentially, the only reason Konono No. 1 gets to play in America is because they have a cool gimmick. No talks about what they actually sound like. Hell, what do they sound like? It’s not Afro-Cuban enough to be soukous, there’s not enough guitars to be chimurenga and too many mbiras to be juju. Bossman Ciabs says they’re just Congolese street music with a history in trance, but that ain’t gonna get people to buy $12 appletinis at Joe’s Pub.

No, Konono No. 1 boasts hipster cachet because they built their own equipment out of car parts. Accordingly, the crowd was mostly from the white nerd constituency—all transfixed by band who didn’t bring their ingeniously re-gutted amps, the same amps that glitch out their sound into fuzzy bursts, making them kin-in-timbre to the Boredoms and Amps For Christ. I feel kind of duped that such a “must-see” event show was essentially just a damn good African dance band—the same kind that play here all the time, but I somehow never make it out to. The same ones that the hipsters dismiss as fodder for the socks-and-sandals NPR crowd who doodle kokopellis on the back of their stock portfolios.

I feel like a real schmuck because I haven’t made it out to an African dance show since Oliver Mtukudzi in Prospect Park last year. I’ve seen like five Growing shows in that time! Mtukudzi’s band was livelier and rowdier than Konono… and there were actual African people in the audience!

Senegalese drum/dance troupe Cheikh Tairou M'Baye And Sing Sing Rhythm are playing in December. Who’s going with me?

witty headline that references an obscure line from a popular rap song

2005-11-17T01:26:00.000-05:00

criminy. where does everyone find time to update these things?

i've got bucketloads of ideas and no time to commit them to pixel-form.

consider this officially an anti-post. and read this interesting thing while i think about what's going on my year-end mix cd (hint: blowfly).

toury spellings

2005-10-12T03:41:00.000-04:00

Touring is awesome. The Replacements drunkenly disassembled a moving tour van piece-by-piece as it barreled down the road, gave it an impromptu paint job, then pissed on the ashes before returning it to the dealership. Reznor and Manson used some groupies for enema spelunking, then had a shit-stream derby, taking bets on whose liquid lady lunch would travel the speediest. Mudsharks get misplaced, ants get inhaled and everyone puts their junk in a plaster mold… I, however, am curled in a sleeping bag in Boise, Idaho, happy as a sperm in Rob The Bod’s tummy because the band that let us crash at their house has wireless internet connection... and clean towels!

If I have learned one thing on this tour, it is that I am a pathetic bitchmade prima donna. While the other guys are busy drinking and stinking, guzzling homemade strawberry moonshine in Raleigh and sleeping on beaches in Pensacola, I’m trying to find 175 words to write about the the new Fat Lip record (spoiler: it’s disappointing). I can’t be the only one, can I? Penn Jillette toured in a separate bus from his tourmates the Residents because they partied too hard. The Residents! DFA1979 and Sage Francis both admitted to me they spend an inordinate amount of time in front of laptops than in laps. So, in hopes some other limp road-weakling stumbles across this site, I selflessly present:

How To Survive On Tour When You Are A Sniveling Pussy

1. Use WUBBA: the Weingarten Beneficial Baggie Approach™
In a gallon Ziploc bag, stuff a clean T-shirt, a pair of underpants and two clean socks (and a handkerchief if you have crippling allergies like me) for every day you’re going to be on the road. Do this up to 14 times. Then when you land at someone’s house, you can just grab a bag and—voila—fresh clothes every day! Plus you can stuff the dirty clothes back in the bag when you change!

2. Shower every day
Shower right after every show so you get the show stink off you right away. For me, it’s usually the stink of cigarettes, but for many it’s the stink of failure and dashed dreams. Whatever your stink is, wash it away immediately. Even if the party is still going on, hop in the shower. If you’re the drummer, like me, trust me no one is going to miss you. Also, people never notice if a little bit of shampoo is gone, so feel free to sneak a little glob. Just because you have a hipster beard doesn’t mean it can’t be a luxuriously conditioned soft-as-velvet hipster beard.

3. Know what foods you can eat
If you’re lactose intolerant like me, eating hastily prepared diner chow and nasty fucking gas station food all day might give you a case of something neither you nor your vanmates want to deal with. Know the best snackies that are moo-free!
Candy bars = Fuck no!
Junior Mints Real chocolate? = Hell yes!
Scrambled eggs = Better ask for “unfluffed”
Orignal Pringles = Yum!
Salt & Vinegar Pringles = For some reason, no
General Mills Bugles = No!
Tom’s Bugles = Why, yes!
Oreos = Yes, yes, yes!
Mini Oreos = No, no, a thousand times no!
Sugar Wafers = Mmm. More!
Funyuns = God is testing my faith

4. Bring an air mattress
It fits in a little suitcase and it’s like sleeping on a cloud. Even though it’s a cloud that gets a little more cat hair on it every night.

six reasons my cmj was better'n yrs!

2005-09-28T13:08:00.000-04:00

[Fun fact: this post was banned from the CMJ blog for being too "biting."]

I am the worst music editor in the world.

I know how to take out a serial comma and add a news hook and all that jive, but my unhip, insular tastes seem to be limited to an audience of myself. The blogerati packed all the cool shows, all of which I willingly allowed to escaped my radar. Lady Sovereign? Missed her. Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah? Them too. Arcade Fire and David Bowie? Hopefully they did “Dancing In The Street” and everyone had a Friendster group grope.

My night was spread among as many sparse-to-moderately attended shows as my dressed-to-unimpress ass could run to on a Friday night. I spent seven minutes in the Spin Lounge, feeling like the fat kid in gym class, while the DJ spun the song from Ghostbusters II. I got turned away at the door to the Vice Party. The door guy looked at my shorts and my X Wild Gift T-shirt and dismissed me with, “Sorry, sir, but this is a private event.”

Assuredly my CMJ was far superior to his, even though I didn’t witness a single minute of music that wouldn’t have a Vice or Arthur staffer upchucking a spicy mix of PBR and vegan cupcakes all over the soundboard. My therapist says I revel in my outsider status to feel superior and level the playing field, but since the playing field in the blogosphere is as level as any, here’s my guide to the most fantastic Friday night of uncool music ever. And why I'm awesome.

8:00: Richard Buckner @ Rothko
What: Indie country troubadour who looks like a badass in his photos sometimes
Awesomely Uncool: He pulled out an e-bow in like three minutes flat.

8:20: Castanets @ Sin-e
What: Dreamy free-folk freaky folks from New York with gorgeous, gorgeous harmonies.
Awesomely Uncool: They could roll with Fursaxa and Six Organs if they weren’t quacking into a clarinet mouthpiece.

9:00: P.O.S. @ Irving Plaza
What: Hulking dude who raps like Sage Francis and sings like Daryl Palumbo.
Awesomely Uncool: Would be super-famous if the indie snobs would get over their quasi-ironic worship of Juelz Santana and Young Jeezy.

10:15: Yip-Yip @ Lit
What: Wiry Orlando spazmos dorking out on analog gear. Like the Locust with no bass, drums, guitars or vocals.
Awesomely Uncool: They wear costumes and like ska.

11:15: Subtitle @ Sin-e
What: Blunted glitch-hop from six-foot tall L.A. motormouth
Awesomely Uncool: Dissed by RJD2 the night before. The Deadringster refused to let Sub borrow his direct input box at the Urb party. Get over yourself, dude, you’re named after a fucking robot!

12:30: Cryptopsy @ Don Hill’s
What: More Dillinger-than-Dillinger tech-metal complete with hair-whipping and Klingon skullets. The kids were too much in awe of their prowess to even mosh. Watching the drummer was like watching a John Holmes movie—uncomfortable, funny, and jealously inducing.
Awesomely Uncool: Metal.

vma sumac

2005-08-29T01:29:00.000-04:00

7: 30: The Video Music Awards is always filmed on film instead of videotape. It feels like mom telling her goth daughter to please not wear the corset just on Christmas Eve since gramma would get a case of the howling fantods.

8:00: Green Day must seriously be hurting for those Lookout! royalties if they have to dress like AFI. I sure hope Gogol Bordello breaks huge next year, ’cause I wanna see Billie Joe rocking a Cossack hat.

8:25: Susie just told the best Beavis And Butthead joke of the night. When the steel drummers came out for Ludicris’s It’s A Small World Fiasco, she says, “Uh oh… here comes Big A Little A”

8:36: Those Acuvue eyeballs in the white suits are gunning for a cease and desist order. I don't think the "Act Of Being Polite" covers trademark infringement.

9:01: “Please welcome the one and only Usher.” How did everyone find their seats?

9:10: Seeing R. Kelly play two gay men, with seamless transitions between the topper and the bottomer, was the most transcendent piece of theater I’ve seen all year. It was like Hamlet meets Herman’s Head meets batshit crazy R. Kelly. Too bad it had to end with an ampitheatre of people cheering a guy for choosing the type of spur-of-the-moment hetero action that makes conservative types believe in “conversion therapy.”

9:42: After seeing Diddy conduct his way through a couple of decade-old Biggie numbers with an orchestra (after already doing the orchestra thing on VMAs like seven years ago), I could only think one thing: Why couldn’t they get Bam Margera to host this?

10:59: Good work, Diddy, on not defusing the Fat Joe/Fitty on-stage tantrums. It’s OK. I mean, you’ve never had experience with people beefing at awards shows. Nothing bad could possibly come of this.

11:20:
I can't believe I missed A Pug's Life: The Dog-umentary for this.

Also, check out this adorable pug blog and forget the last three hours happened.

fuck her gently a.k.a. a banner entry

2005-08-16T23:42:00.000-04:00

A thesis away from a masters degree at the University Of Maryland, David Banner is far more educated than myself, and most of my asshole buddies. He knows how to play the angles, spitting that contridictory diction, the perfect mix of ign'ant and ingenious--sneaking all kinds of deliciously militant rabble-rousing in between crowd-pleasin' crotch-tuggin'. I could yap all night about his morality plays, 40-oz-and-holy-water spirituality, political dogma, et al. But Simpsons Season 6 came out on DVD today, and I'm even more sick of hearing myself talk than you are.

Banner acts unruly sometimes, sure. But he makes sure to point out that all the reasons he makes mischief is because he has an abusive uncle sam. After hearing Mississippi: The Album, I was convinced that, if he didn't drown in corporate quicksand, the Magnolia-state mean-mugger could be our generation's Marvin Gaye. Though I'm quite content with dB being our generation's Chi-Lites ("Give More Power To The People" : "Bush" :: "Oh Girl" : "Like A Pimp" ).

J-Shep offered these eloquent werrds about the Ying-Yang Twins' sexy and/or creepy and/or completely-fucked "Wait (The Whisper Song)"

I think everything but my ass is a feminist. To clarify: "Wait," "Get Low," and especially "Georgia Dome" are lyrically vile, violent, and inexcusable--but I still dance to them, and that's hard for me to reconcile, especially since I know the answer to the question "What Would Andrea Dworkin Do?"

Ying-Yang's pro-fem skits and stripper-sympathetic collabo with wet noodle John Mayer, tacked onto the U.S.E. post-shitstorm, are totally insincere (tho, I stand by my theory that "Wait" is just crass role-playing with a willing and patient lady--seriously, if you whispered in some stranger's ear "I'ma beat that pussy up," you ain't gonna get four more minutes worth of whispering, since both yer peepers will be marinating in a Super-Soaker-sized typhoon of hot mace).

If anyone can make rasper-rap appealing to nihilistic thugsters and liberal sympathizers, it's DB... David Banner's "Play" is the cum-soaked olive-branch. A white flag damp with tha fluid that wets ya when ya do it. If Banner can already sneak explicitly conscious messages into the implicit-at-best gangsta world, he can make a "beat the pussy up" song that's ball-draining fun for men and the women who (for whatever reason) tolerate our insensitive asses.

Check the technique:

Cum, girl, I'm tryna get your pussy wet
Note the use of the word "trying." He has no unrealistic expectations. He doesn't consider himself some sexual marvel like some brash twurkaholic Ying-Yang riffraff. Those insensitive alliterative fucks! They think just the sight of their penises should send ladies into orgasmic rapture. Even a faint glimpse of their mythical meat should have you undulating and throbbing, desperately hungering and clawing the walls like some feral animal. Wait 'til you see it!... To paraphrase Larry David, the only reason women fall in love with us is to get past how ugly a penis is. The Ying-Yang Twins are fronting and wasting your time. They are straight phallobustering!

Work that clit. Cum, girl
David knows where the clitoris is! That already makes him better than 75% of all men. Note how Ying-Yang go right for the "pussy." If you showed them where the clit was, they'd probably give it a noogie or something stupid like that then high-five each other.

Finger-fuck your pussy like you want some, girl/Work it like a nigga straight licking on your pearl
And he gives head, too! OK, techinically the girl is doing all the work in this scenario, but, seriously, this is on some Chaucer shit.

I'ma beat that pussy up/You get it wet enough, I might lick it up/Lickey, lickey, lickey, like a peppermint swirl/Lick that clit/Cum, girl
Fine. Fine. He still uses violent, brutalizing language sometimes. That surely sucks and I bet he'd probably blame it on Rumsfeld or something. But YYT don't talk about cunnilingus once, and Banner's not even halfway through the first verse and he's already offered it twice. Who said chivalry is dead?

Damn, cause your ass so chunky/Bring it here sweaty, 'cause I love it when it's funky
He doesn't care if you're heavy. Or if you've showered.

So, yeah, David Banner cares about your needs. Especially if your needs involve getting fucked "'til your pussy aches." He doesn't say "bitch" once. And I'd even like to think Banner would even go with "lady" over the more condescending "girl," but one syllable sounds better.

Of course, any quasi-feminist musings on my part mean absolutely nothing since, hey, I'm not a woman. So, let's ask one! My rad girlfriend, Susie, hasn't heard "Wait" or "Play" because of where she lives (ie, under a rock). So, since she is incredibly patient and quite good at putting up with inordinate amounts of my bullshit, I'm going to use her as a guinea pig for a psycho-sexual experiment (read: a smarmy blog post). I'm going to whisper six song lyrics into her ear--either from "Wait" or "Play." This should conclusively prove if Banner is really the kindly Southern gentleman I imagine him.

Uh, I wanna see your legs shake/Take you to the crib, we can fuck til the bed break.(DB)
[snickering]. I don't know what to say. Will you? I kind of like that one.

We need to make our way to the bed/You can start usin' ya head/Ya like to fuck, have ya legs open all in the buck/Do it up, slappin' ass, gurl the sex get rough (YYT)
I think you can do better than that.

Lemme work ya slow, lemme see it going in/Then you pull it out, put your fingers in your mouth/You make a nigga wanna fuck your ass on the couch. (DB)
Like what kind of couch are we talking here? I'm really not turned on by this. Maybe it's the rhyming.

You might had some, but you never had none like this Just wait til' you see my dick (YYT)
[Pause] Penises are kind of ugly.

Cum girl, I'm tryna get your pussy wet/Work that, lemme see you drip sweat (DB)
I don't know.

Hey bitch, wait til' you see my dick I'm a beat that pussy up (YYT)
I have a pussy of steel. I'ma beat that dick up.

Conclusion: My girlfriend is awesome.

skzzz! [dispatch 001]: JUSTICE YELDHAM

2005-08-11T23:29:00.000-04:00

A writhing, contorting, nauseating, sensational screamingfuckingbloodymess, the 33-year-old Australian glassjaw who performs as Justice Yeldham And The Dynamic Ribbon Device has a show so visceral, so alive, that it can move a room full of the most jaded noisenrrds to gaping-mouthed wonderment. The pock-marked bloke born Lucas Abela, mischievously takes the stage of Denver avant-loft/noisenik playhouse Monkey Mania wearing a belt surrounded by distortion pedals and a single contact mic limply dangling from a wire. He squeezes a tube of KY Jelly all over his weathered mug and into his mouth. He clicks on the pedals and presses he face to a triangle of glass. Hideous black garglescuzz pours out of the speaker, each yelp, hum and fart matching his face’s disgusting rubbery contortions. The sounds are inhuman, but their patterns are most definitely familiar, a hyper-distorted screech-tantrum howling in bone-rattling harmonies, all set to the bittersweet aroma of warm lube. He leaps into the crowd, face twisted into apoplectic distortions, and begins seizuring.

And here is where everyone starts flipping the fuck out.

Abela gnaws on the glass like a lion gutting an antelope. Each sickly crack jettisons through the distortion pedals, blorts out the amp and is followed by the screams of shock, fear, joy and various combinations of the three.

The glass comes smashing down on his face. He waits, panting, for the cheers and screams to die down. His cheek is oozing blood from a sharp red line. His earlobe is sliced open and spitting a steady stream down his neck onto his KY-soaked shirt.

“Thanks, everyone! I have 7”s for sale!”

How did you begin working with glass as a vehicle for sound?
Originally I was a turntablist in the loosest sense of the word. I made monster turntables using industrial motors and played them with swords and shit like that. When I was offered my first tour outside of Australia in ’97, I couldn’t bring my instruments with me and had to try and rebuild these things with limited time in Osaka. Obviously the new ad-hoc versions sucked. The motors weren’t as powerful and every time I would put down my stylus sticks, the motors would just stop. So in order to make a sound at these shows I resorted to shoving what only can be described as amplified skewers into my mouth and vibrated my lips. Since then I’ve been moving away from the decks and have been concentrating on manipulating amplified implements with my mouth.

In January of 2003 I had a show at Lanfranchi’s, a DIY space I am involved in here in Sydney, where I was planning to play a garden hoe. During sound check I noticed a broken sheet of glass staring at me from the corner. It immediately occurred to me that this material would be perfect for my playing as it would enable my audience to view my vocal technique which was being hidden behind the metal of the hoe. So I stuck my mic onto the sheet and was instantly blown away with its resonant capability. I played it for the first time that night and I've been having a love affair with it ever since.

Where do you get your glass? And how do you decide whether a particular piece of glass is right for you?
I scavenger it mostly from the street, at home I collect it and I have a glass library at the dualPLOVER offices just waiting to be destroyed. On tour if there is enough time, I like to find glass from the immediate area when I arrive and occasionally I've broken into abandoned buildings to smash sheets out.

My personal favorite piece that I’ve ever found was in Beirut, Lebanon. Around the corner from the venue I found a pile of this beautifully thick window glass in a disused parking garage above the Beirut-Damascus Taxi Stand, which had been a notorious execution site during the civil war. Amongst the pile was a stellar piece with a Beirut-Damascus taxi stand sticker on it, a highly symbolic and quite provocative image for my Lebanese audience who already thought I looked like a suicide bomber with my pedal belt.

These days I can just smell glass. ln Kobe, where I didn’t have time to go look before the show and asked the promoter to have some ready for me. When I arrived he hadn’t been able to locate any after looking all day. I immediately peeked in the small gap you find between Japanese buildings and found two windows just sitting there.

The glass you find always differs I’ve played everything from textured bathroom stuff to security sheets with reinforced metal embedded into it. This one lot of shelving glass I found in a squat in the Netherlands was weird in that it would not break over my head, no mater how hard I brought it down. Eventually I discovered that if I placed it on my head and slowly tried to bend it over my head with some force it would eventually explode and shower the audience three or so meters in all directions with tiny shards. I used to enjoy playing differing types but more recently have become fond of standard 3-to-4mm thick window panes as it’s easier to get a note from than thicker glass and won’t break when you touch it like the thinner stuff.

I carry a glass cutter these days and like to shape the sheets into a scalene triangle usually a meter long and half-a-meter wide. This shape makes it easier to hold, play and slide up and down my face. I also find I can make some great sounds by playing the pointy bit.

Your site says the show in Lisbon was the bloodiest show of all. When did you realize how deep you had cut yourself?
Well, I cut myself right at the very start of that show. The sheet just broke as I raised it to my face to play and lacerated my forehead. Fortunately [it was] right across my frown-mark so the scar is well-hidden.

I didn't realize it was bad until the blood literally starting flowing across what was left of the glass as I played on. All I can remember seeing is this unfocused stream of red running across the glass, beautifully backlit by the venue’s lighting. I must admit, this unnerved me a bit and affected my playing somewhat, so musically I don’t think it was my best presentation ever. However, I finished it off nicely. It was carnival that night in Lisboa and the stage at ZDB has a shopfront window just to the left that looks directly out onto the streets, which where teeming with people. I noticed a crowd had gathered around the window trying to figure out what was I was doing inside, so I pulled the mic from the remains of the sheet and stuck it directly onto the shopfront window. Then I played the window like a motherfucker for a final minute or so. When I stopped and stepped back, the entire window was RED, apparently someone called the cops.

Although some of my performances can be bloody, I’d like to point out that this is simply symptomatic and not my goal. I don’t want to be a G.G. Allin type character. What I do is not a sideshow and I sincerely believe that the glass is a true instrument and that its playing is the most important part of what I do. I concede I’m also a showman and try to use the danger element to excite my audiences, biting and smashing the sheets, but I do not go out of my way to cut myself up. For instance the last tour I did was 40 shows, and the only truly bloody ones where Nashville, Easthampton and Tokyo. If people only came for the bloodsport, then there should have been a lot of disappointed people at the other 37 shows.

It’s also quite cathartic experience for me, if I can say such a word without being taken for a wanker. When I play I get into an ecstatic state, lost in the music, almost so much that the pain simply doesn’t register. I honestly don’t perceive the pain while playing. I’m more likely to wince when cleaning up afterwards and get a small shard stuck in my figure even though earlier I was shoving its parent piece down my gob!

What do your parents have to say about you cutting yourself open every night for a month?
I tell my parents as little as possible, they know I play glass but don’t know I intentionally crack it over my skull. My worst facial scar happened in Brisbane, where my parents live, and I had to go home that night with this two-centimeter-long gash on my cheek. They wanted me to go get stitches, but I knew better. I said it was an accident, which is true. I play with my eyes closed most of the time, and was so disorientated I walked into a wall while playing, lacerating my left cheek. And [I told them] that I’m careful, which is also true… to an extent!

Besides his glass candy and shattered theatre, Yeldham runs the whimsically weird record label dualPLOVER. He may or may not have 7”s coming out on a couple of fancypants American noise labels later this year.

MP3: "230304 Zurich"
Video: Live In Rochester 250305 (slow-loading but totally worth it)

hate the player, hate the aim

2005-07-10T21:23:00.000-04:00

WhineyG666: Dude, what's Nick's AIM

Amy: Why?

WhineyG666: Because I want to know how the fuck this Juan MacLean record is "nihilistic." Fuck is he talking about?!

Amy: i dunno, nick is always hearing stuff in records that i don't hear. must be his overdeveloped brain.

WhineyG666: or our natural ability to spout convincing bullshit
WhineyG666: Look, I'll do it right now
WhineyG666: Who is Mike Jones? is the most existentialist record of the year. His self-referencing style ("Mike Jones!") is so hyperbolic that it can only be percieved as an ironic exaggeration of his own self-hatred concerning his solipsism, pegging himself as the ultimate anti-anti-hero.

Amy: nice
Amy: but deep down, that might not be bullshit

WhineyG666: Also, back then hoes didn't want him. Now hot hoes all on him.

Amy: Right, even though he's the same size.

das oath

2005-06-26T19:24:00.000-04:00

I [state your name here],

Do hereby swear off using my impressive-albiet-limited musical knowledge to impress, intimidate or influence friends, family, acquantances, employers, co-workers, prospective employers and prospective sexual partners.

I realize that erecting a mental depository for history, detritus, ephemera, rumors, urban legends, apocrypha, liner note musings and cryptology was a defense mechanism acquired in adolescence from being [pick one or more] unpopular/fat/uncoordinated/pimply/ awkward/socially maladjusted.

I realize that, at the time, identifying with musical artists was an easy and reletively acceptable form of escapism. I realize that being able to intellectualize my quasi-rebellious obsession with [pick one or more] punk/alt-rock/metal/rap, was a way to forge a personality and justify my leanings. This helped me feel "validated" when people made me feel worthless.

Now that I am an adult, my well-honed habits of hermetic absorption and intellectual browbeating serve me no purpose. I have met many people who enjoy my company because of the quality of my character, not because of the entertaining ways I spout trivia factoids... and certainly not for the depths of my ability to deride things in clever ways. I am currently employed because of my strong work ethic and pleasant demeanor, not because of my judgemental nature and/or the number of records that I own. I have had, at the very least, an adequate number of sexual experiences.

I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now.

this bird has flown

2005-05-28T10:23:00.000-04:00

I would like to imagine that people in New York—especially people at a Boredoms show—would be erudite enough to know that yelling “Freebird!” isn’t funny. Not ironically, not-post-ironically, not as an anthropological field research study, not ever. Honestly, two months after the Beavis And Butthead episode that aired over a decade ago, it stopped being funny. Forever. In perpetuity. Amen.

“Freebird!” isn’t an ironic joke to me, it’s a tragic reminder of the swampy cultural abyss that is the “Sunshine” State. In Florida, the ghost of Ronnie VanZant still sags limply, like a confederate flag on a humid, windless day. The song’s 14 minutes are a bloated as an alligator’s rotting corpse on the emergency lane of I-75. It makes “Stairway To Heaven” look as swift, lean and lively as a Bad Brains song. Just hearing it makes me itch a row of imaginary mosquito bites until I’m scabby and raw.

So for whatever reason, someone yelled “Freebird!” at the poor, hapless Boredoms. And someone yelled “Rock And Roll McDonalds” at Fantômas. And someone yelled “Slayer!” at every single show I’ve gone to in the last three years.

Here’s a handy guide to the “clever” things that you yell at shows...
(And some succinct reasons why you’re an asshole)

1. Yelling the song you want to hear
What you’re saying: I sure would like to hear [insert song]. What’s the most obnoxious way I could express this?
What we hear: Look, band. I know you went through the trouble of making a set list because I can clearly see it taped to the monitor. I know you’ve been diligently practicing your set for weeks and weeks. I know you take great pride in the show you've worked so hard on delivering us. But could you tailor it to my specific tastes, like, immediately?

2. Yelling someone else’s song
What you’re saying: Oh, man. This delicious non sequitur will really get a rise out of all those uptight squares at the Clutch show.
What we hear: I was in gifted class so I have an inflated sense of self-worth. Everyone please revel in how weird and irreverent I am.

3. Yelling “Slayer!”
What you’re saying: What a brilliant juxtaposition between the sensitive mewing of Mirah and the thrash metal of Slayer!
What we hear: Slayer’s really funny because I used to like them when I was 13. But I abandoned them ever since I discovered my self-importance and sacrificed my true drives and opinions in favor of impressing others with my carefully calculated façade of "sensitivity" and "intellectualism."

4. Yelling "Slayer!" at a Slayer show
What you’re saying: I like Slayer.
What we hear: Slayer!

5. Yelling “Freebird!” as a joke.
What you’re saying: I still think it’s funny to yell “Freebird.” Even though it’s been 12 years since I’ve ever heard anyone besides myself even politely snicker at it.
What we hear: I wish people liked me. I must the only one at this AC Newman show without a girlfriend. Try harder, man! Try harder!

6. Yelling “Freebird!” as a ironic meta-joke
What you’re saying: I’m sooo beyond those stupid assholes who yell “Freebird” at shows. I take great pride in knowing I have such a solid grasp on cultural trends that I can be just a tiny step above them... even though they are so banal and insipid, I wonder how they can pull themselves away from Desperate Housewives to even drag their pathetic husks to a bar (haha, zing, dude!). Also, I still think Alf, Care Bears and Steve Perry are inherently funny and that’s why they are all drawn on my shirt in magic marker.
What we hear: Woo. I sure love to drink PBR!

7. Yelling “Freebird!” sincerely because you seriously want to hear “Freebird!” right now.
This has never happened.

--
For more information on yelling "Freebird," consult your local library. Or read this awesome thing.

I rock more than Clara

2005-05-22T00:51:00.000-04:00

Some thoughts while watching Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey

Hornbuckle: What a missed opportunity that Genesis didn't use a theremin for "Invisible Touch."

---

(after the KGB smashed all of Leon Theremin's gear with an ax)
Me: I bet that sounded cool. Wee-o-ooo-*smack*
Marie: You think they were turned on?
Me: I know I always am when I'm smashing shit.

--

I found that essence quite common, actually

2005-05-18T00:53:00.000-04:00

In honor of the reunion, here's a list of bands that don't sound like Gang Of Four.

Liars = Public Image Limited
!!! = Pigbag
The Rapture = A Certain Ratio
Hot Hot heat = A far, far less Certain Ratio
Moving Units = An unequivocably uncertain ratio
The Fever = Tubeway Army
Franz Ferdinand = like bad Wire or something
Futureheads = XTC
The Killers = Duran Duran
The Bravery = The Killers
Bloc Party = The Cure. Don't you people have ears?
Radio 4 = Kind of.

seism0))logy rocks

2005-04-30T20:00:00.000-04:00

Throw out those Khanate, Sunn0))), Ulver and Earth CDs you scammed from Kim's and bow to the sound of the actual fucking planet Earth... (the heaviest goddamn thing on Earth!).

Jacob Kirkegaard's Eldfjall on Touch:
This CD consists of geothermal recordings of vibrations in the ground around the area of Krisuvik, Geysir and Myvatn in Iceland. The recordings have been carried out using accelerometers, vibration sensor microphones. These are stuck into the earth at various places around the geysirs, mapping the sonic aspects of volcanic activity at the surface of the earth. A stick can be attached, to be inserted into - for example - the earth at desired places.

I love you, Southern Lord, but you got sonned by nerdy Brits.

who's that peepin through my chat window?

2005-04-27T20:12:00.000-04:00

Soul machine Cee-Lo Green and ubiquitous/heretofore overrated plunderphonicist Danger Mouse join forces as Gnarls Barkley. Some loops from the new jawn are up here

Starter similes
Like Al Green meets Dr. Who.
Like if The Love Below was listenable.
Like Cee-Lo Green and Danger Mouse.

Holy fuck, listen to the whole thing or you'll miss the best Cee-Lo indie-nrrd cover ever. Better than dropping the hot Talking Heads B-side science on Trick Daddy's "Sugar." Better than the drum loop from Pork Soda he copped on the first record.

blitzkreig beat-bop.

2005-04-24T22:42:00.000-04:00

Went to the Basquiat retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. Insanely comprehensive and more-than-filling in it's scope. It ends on June 5, what are you waiting for?

Apparantly the Brooklyn Museum people are a bunch of fascists:
1. They made me check my bag, thus thwarting my attempt to discman-mix about 10 period-era hip-hop CDs into my domepiece while I viewed the works. More arguement for an iPod, I guess. No matter, I settled for the audio guided tour anyway (note: total ripoff, totally useless and full of completely wack music).
2. I wanted to remember the name of a painting so I could read more about it when I got home. I pulled out my cell phone to make a voice recording and within milliseconds, a museum guide scurried to me and told me "No pictures."
Meanwhile, my Luddie ass is holding the clunkiest, cheapest, shittiest cell-phone in history, which I'll be lucky if i can make a phone call on. I explained I was making a recording and she meandered off.
Two minutes later, she comes back and said "No recording. I talked to my superior and he says you can't record audio of the museum." God forbid a bunch of yuppies in their April sweaters end up on a Negativland album some day. I explained AGAIN what the fuck I was doing (mental note: bring a pen next time). And she runs off, frustrated. I later saw her talking to another grad-school dropout in museumwear and pointing at me.
3. They won't let you in without a shirt no matter how bad you have to use the can. (thanks to Ken Marino for that gag.)

The exhibit was well-done, even though the word "hip-hop" was mentioned a total of once. But for all the talk of Basquiat capturing the frenetic syncopation, frenzied streets and cluttered headspaces of hip-hop, I can't help but think that hip-hop never really capturing Basquiat's use of color. Take Boy And Dog In A Johnnypump. His left arm, strong and vibrant, his right arm limp and melting--the same duality of strength and vulnerability that fuels the best rap songs. The songs--same year, 1982 (forgive the obviousness of the choice, por favor)--that immediately come to mind is "The Message" and "New York New York", a perfect strength/vulnerability doubleshot. But if Melle Mel's arm were to melt, shit wouldn't bleed neon picks and Easter greens, it would be grays, blacks, browns (despite those suits the Furious Five would wear). I never noticed Basquiat's colors, and it made the static timbres of my attempted hip-hop mix look dead wrong. Shoulda brought Street Jams: Electric Funk Part 1 and called it a day. Cybotron bleeds pink for sure, y'heard?

Ah well. Here's what i TRIED to listen to before Broolyn Museum peeps shut me down.
1. Rammellzee and K-Rob - Beat-Bop (natch!)
2. Blondie - Rapture (Trivia: Basquiat's in the video somewhere)
3. Fab 5 Freddy - Change the Beat
4. Afrika Bambaataa & John Lydon - World Destruction
5. Afrika Bambaataa & John Lydon - World Destruction Remix
6. Melle Mel & Duke Bootee - Message II (Survival)
7. Treacherous 3 - Yes We Can-Can
8. Grandmaster Flash And The Furious 5 - New York New York
9. Rock Master Scott And The Dynamic Three - The Roof Is On Fire
10. Whodini - Five Minutes Of Funk
11. The B-Boys - 2,3 Break
12. Fresh 3 MCs - Fresh
13. Run DMC - Hard Times
14. Run DMC - It's Like That

But seriously, if you're gonna go, this is WRONG. Bring some Charlie Parker instead. My overthinking got me nowhere but a checked bag from the Museum Police.

personal journalist vs. the, um, personal journalee

2005-04-19T00:42:00.000-04:00

Sage Francis let me sleep on his couch. Here is the CMJ cover story to prove it.

You'll never tell by the picture, but motherfucker out-bearded me by three months.

Woonsocket, represent