Love Of Diagrams >> You broke into my house and you stole it

Love Of Diagrams - "The Pyramid"

(Matador Records [U.S.] / P-Vine Records [Japan], 2006)

Since I was befriended by an Aussie on both RYM and Tumblr last week (two separate people), I knew my next post on here had to be a killer Aussie song.

With a killer bassline, spiky guitar, mammoth drumming, and a set of memorable lyrics, this song should've made Love Of Diagrams into instant indie rock royalty.  This song just destroys on so many levels, and is one of the most addictive songs I've ever heard.  Sonic Youth have been unable or unwilling to craft a tune like this since the mid-'90s, so I guess it's good that they finally kicked the bucket, but the point is that their progeny will always continue to churn out great music.  Just look at the list of bands at the bottom of this post for proof.

Note: Matador Records is still giving this song away for free; download it here.  That link is where I originally acquired this song, though this rip is from my own CD, bought in 2010.

I had been hearing a bit about this band as part of the whole post-punk revival of the mid-'00s, and thought about going to see them open for Ted Leo at the Spanish Moon in 2007.  Really, really regretting that.  They have apparently been broken up for a few years now, and, being from Australia, the chances are less than zero that they'll ever trek to Louisiana again.  The lyrics are apparently about rape, with "the pyramid" representing the vagina, which the intruder "broke into."  And what he "stole" was presumably the protagonist's innocence and/or trust in humanity.  So it's a fun & thought-provoking protest song in the best Gang Of Four tradition, but hopefully the lyrics are not autobiographical.

The video mainly involves the band members physically playing their instruments, which is the stupidest fucking thing in the world for any music video to feature. But an edgy "house" theme is used in it, tying in with the lyrics, and the visual effects are pretty amazing.  In fact, you'll never be able to get these colors out of your head whenever you hear this song in the future:

My sister had her appendix removed last week, so I made her this mix CD.  Last weekend, I met my future sister-in-law Mila, and lent her some CDs to copy (The Church's Heyday, Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation).  We also went to brunch at Commander's Palace with the whole fam, and to the Spring Garden Show at City Park.  It was my first time going to Commander's in almost 20 years.  Also went to Parkway Bakery & Tavern (best chicken po-boy of my life) and Angelo Brocato's later that night.  (Thought I was pretty clever for including a song about having a sliver of herself removed...  And the Black Flag song has the lyric "Keep me alive / Only you can do it."  And so forth with some other medical-related lyrics.)

I snapped this pic of an impressive Mammillaria bombycina (Silken pincushion cactus), a recent addition to the cactus / succulent greenhouse at the N.O. Botanical Garden.
I have three of these myself (tip: get one right now at Lowe's or Home Depot), but none of mine have clustered like this one, which must be 10-15 years old.

On Monday, I skipped the 2nd half of the college basketball championship to see a rock concert starring Merchandise, White Lung, and Glish.  Glish were great as usual, and debuted two new songs, but sadly didn't play longtime set opener "Collider."  Luckily they played the quite similar song "Sex."  White Lung just kicked all kinds of ass, especially on my two favorite songs of theirs, "Bag" and "Take The Mirror."  I expect them to go down as the key hardcore band of this generation.  Singer Mish Way seemed a bit annoyed with the crowd's passivity, and I was thinking to myself how their set would've spawned a serious mosh pit back in the '90s.  Oh well.  Merchandise now have a human drummer, and crooner Carson Cox now plays guitar, and they now have a sax player on a few songs.  So their sound was much fuller (and I would say sometimes too full / busy) as compared to last fall, when they only had two human-played instruments (guitar and bass), plus a drum machine.  DJ Wesley Stokes played some good stuff, such as Slowdive's "Morningrise," My Bloody Valentine's "You Made Me Realise," and CHVRCHES' "The Mother We Share."  And speaking of Sonic Youth, Carson wore a Chelsea Light Moving t-shirt.

I planned on seeing the movie Spring Breakers, but its theater run seems to be over.  I will say without shame that I've seen Ashley Benson's movie Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal about 5 times.  One of the most quotable movies ever.

Woman arrested for beating up boyfriend after he got wasted and sang that annoying Macklemore song, "Thrift Shop," 25.5 times on his 26th birthday - "Enraged, Samantha started to shove Lars, but he still wouldn't stop singing the song. So she grabbed him by the throat and started to choke him (wait, now it's the worst birthday ever)."  Couldn't you have at least let him finish the 26th rendition?  Now he'll subconsciously just be wanting to sing it even more.

Planets with similar climates: Drop Nineteens - "Delaware" (1992), Bleach - "First" (1991), A.C. Temple - "Miss Sky" (1988), Gang Of Four - "It Is Not Enough" (1982), Springhouse - "Enslave Me" (1992), The Black Watch - "Come Inside" (1994), Catherine Wheel - "Chrome" (1993), Moonshake - "Spaceship Earth" (1992).

Bare Minimum >> I can't tell if I own this or if it owns me

Bare Minimum - "Swim In Anxious Moment"

(Rx Remedy Records, 1997)

I had to dish out another Bare Minimum song to show their more atmospheric, shoegazey side.  This song title perfectly sums up the band's aesthetic.  There are no lyrics printed in the booklet, but I think I can make a few with confidence.  The lyric "Corkscrew you... I'm a shaky sugar" always gets a few laughs at cocktail parties, and the line "Yourself in season" (as in: hunting season) is a bit unnerving.
Fun Fact: This song was simply titled "Anxious Moment" on the promo CD.

As with most B-Min songs, there is not a reliable verse-chorus-verse structure, so the listener has to don the ol' thinking hat.  But it never gets tedious or feels like the band is being pretentious, since there are always plenty of visceral pleasures to be unearthed as the song unfolds.  This song goes through enough twists, turns and tempo changes to last most lesser bands a lifetime, and there are some baffling handclaps in the middle.  Joe Plummer's drumming is spectacularly understated and jazzy. The guitar tone starting at the 4:30 mark is about as good as it gets, creamy (as guitar tone freaks would say) and lullaby-esque, yet menacing and disembodied in that way that Sonic Youth perfected circa Bad Moon Rising & EVOL before they (S.Y.) became a "rock" band.  As I mentioned in the last post, Brian Speckman loved to sing about eyes, and this song was no exception.  He also used a very Southern-sounding drawl in this song, which sounds quite unique compared to your standard flock of male indie rock singers.  For such a creative band, this album's cover art really sucked, especially compared to their self-titled debut (which had different covers for the CD and the LP).  All Music Guide gave the album a brief but glowing 4-star review: "While more refined and accessible than their self-titled debut, Bare Minimum's sophomore outing is still a dense and difficult record; Brian Speckman and Mark Pinkos – credited with left and right guitar, respectively – together create a mighty racket, with the Branca-esque dynamics of their twin attack employing intricate rhythmic patterns and thick, atonal chord structures to forge an amorphous yet strangely taut post-rock sound."
All three of Bare Minimum's Rx Remedy releases used to be on iTunes, but I guess they were yanked due to slow or nonexistent sales.

I did a "Lost Classics" article on this album in February 2003 for my old online zine, Cold Comfort.  I began it by saying "This is one of those albums that lit a fire under me when I got it in early '99, and led to me inflicting this zine upon you all.  And the current dearth of albums like this is the reason why I'll probably discontinue this zine in the near future.  [I did.]  So... how can an album from 1998 already be a 'lost classic'?  Well, the sounds contained on this disc are indisputably classic, but as for the 'lost' part... let's just say this was destined to be lost before it even came out.  Zero promotion, practically zero touring, zero college radio-friendly tunes."  Then under the entry for "Swim In Anxious Moment" (I always did a song-by-song analysis), I said "Most horrifying guitar climax I've ever heard."
In the closing section, I said "For whatever reason, the even numbered songs on the album tend to be delicate, whereas the odd numbered ones are aggressive. (...) This is definitely not beginners' stuff.  For example, the listener has to be familiar with all the Sonic Youth and Slint clichés (i.e. atypical song structure, dissonant guitar work) to appreciate how brilliantly Bare Minimum avoids them, and even obliterates them. The album was produced by Phil Ek, best known for producing all six Built To Spill albums, and albums by almost every other Northwest band, including my beloved Lync.  Ek nestles this album in a womblike aura that suits the vocals and intricate guitar work perfectly.
For more on why this is a lost album, aside from the extremely difficult music, let's put it this way: Rx Remedy is (was?) a tiny daughter label of Sub Pop which apparently was a clearinghouse for S.P.'s acts with little commercial potential, and Rx Remedy never even had a website.  And their mail order catalog was always just a postcard sized scrap of paper included with the big Sub Pop catalogs.  The interesting thing is that, since Sub Pop has been 49% owned by Atlantic Records since 1995, every Bare Minimum release was theoretically funded by profits from the likes of Stone Temple Pilots, Phil Collins and Aretha Franklin.  Heads probably rolled when some Atlantic exec found out about Bare Minimum's existence.  Plummer went on to join experimental Unwound side project Replikants, and I don't know the whereabouts of the rest of the group.
Note: After putting this review up, I went to bed and looked through the new issue of Magnet magazine, and saw a photo of Joe Plummer as the drummer in the Black Heart Procession.  So it's good to see he's found a gig (although BHP are crap compared to Bare Minimum)."

I took this pic not long before the sun went down today, hence the lusciously long shadows coming from the blades of grass:

I couldn't find that promo CD I bought in '99, unfortunately.  I actually painted over the front of its paper-sleeve packaging with translucent pearlescent paint right after buying it, so it's one of a kind.  It has a press photo of the band in which one member is wearing goggles like it's no big deal.

Fun Fact 2: There's only music on sides 1 to 3 of the double LP; side 4 is just smooth, blank vinyl... smooth and reflective enough to use as a mirror, in fact.  I don't think I've ever seen that on any other record, though I've often seen etchings put onto sides of records where there is no music.

Fun Fact 3: You can see the series of dour little symbols on the CD, the CD jewel tray insert, and on each side of the records.  The first is a butterfly, the second is an umbrella, and the other two are hard to decipher.  When you open the CD booklet, it seems to be laid out so that each symbol corresponds to each band member's headshot.  Maybe this was some sort of spoof of Led Zeppelin's ZOSO?  Like I said before, Bare Minimum were some cryptic m.f.'s.

The most anxious moment I've ever had involving swimming was in early '94 at John Marriott's house next to UNO.  He was about 5 feet tall, a new student at my high school fresh off the boat from England, and really outgoing.  He and his mom had left for an errand or something while I was staying over there for the weekend one time.  For some reason I decided to teach myself to do a flip off of their pool's diving board.  This was in February or maybe early March, hence quite cold out, and I just stood there at the end of the board in my swimsuit for pretty much an eternity, pondering how to flip without over- or under-rotating, because I didn't want to somehow do a bad belly flop and be knocked unconscious and die while no one was there.  The longer I waited, the colder it got and the more I tried to talk myself out of doing it, but I finally did the flip and that was that.  I think we watched part of the movie Judgment Night that weekend but didn't like it.

Tue. Feb. 28th: I shot hoops at Ama Park and got pretty sunburned.  Later I went to a show at a little place in the 9th Ward called The Mudlark Theatre.  It was a Japanese guy named Tatsuya Nakatani on percussion, local cellist Helen Gillet, and local guitarist (and Anxious Sound booker) Rob Cambre on guitar.  (I had seen all of them separately over the years, but this was a very intriguing three-way pileup, so I had to go check it out.)  I got there late and only saw the last 5 minutes, but it was ultra-intense:

Since it was over pretty early (10:00ish), I walked around the French Quarter for a while.  I saw a woman playing cello for tips on the street, and asked her if she had heard of Helen Gillet.  She said yeah, and was incredulous when I showed her a video clip of what I'd just seen.  "Helen Gillet played two blocks from my house and I missed it!"  I ended up in a little Rouses grocery store and got some German honey, among other stuff.

Wed. 29th: Shot at the court on Annunciation Street, then went shopping on the Westbank, then played some full-court 5-on-5 at Ama Park.  After the other dudes all left for the night, I played some 21 against a guy who said he was 50 and had played for the U. of Texas and then for the Cleveland Cavaliers and in several European leagues.  I beat him in the first game, but he beat me easily in the second.  I never got his name, but if someone knows a player who went to UT, finished college ca. '84, then later played for the Cavs, then I'd have an i.d. on him.  He was 6'6", had messed up knees, and looked like Rick Fox, meaning sickeningly handsome, and looked closer to 30 than to 50.  It gave me inspiration that I'll be able to play at that age or beyond, assuming I take good care of my knees.

Thur. March 1st: Went down to Houma and got two more LP shelves from Office Depot, and some clay pots at an evil store whose name I won't mention.  Researched the Canadian indie blog sensation Grimes (Claire Boucher) in anticipation of seeing her live the following day, even though I didn't dig her music.  It's amazing how fast she has usurped the spotlight from the likes of Lana Del Rey, St. Vincent, Liturgy, etc.  Some sample reading:
Is Grimes the next BIG Indie Diva, or an overhyped product of the Corrupt Indie Machine?
Deconstructing: Grimes
(That Ohio kid who killed some of his classmates last week was apparently a Grimes fan and had recently posted at least one of her vids on his Facebook page.)

I should mention that she played at a local dive-y bar called The Saint last fall, opening for fellow Canadian techno-poppers Austra.  It was on the same night (Nov. 4th) that I was at the Boris concert, otherwise I would've gone.  I actually planned on going to both, but Boris ran long.

Fri. March 2nd: Drove into NOLA through a bad storm, put down some mulch at Barbara's herb garden, then went to the Grimes show, which was outdoors at Tulane.  I only caught the last song by the opening act, shameless '80s synth-pop replicators Born Gold.  For 30 entire minutes, Grimes sat on the back of the stage chatting with Born Gold.  This was her sound check period, so I wondered why she didn't at least pretend to fiddle with some knobs or check some wires or whatever.  All her equipment was set up before BG even played, so my point is, why not just play immediately after they finish, especially with a monster rainstorm looming?  So I was a little annoyed right from the outset.  Amazingly, the rain never arrived, and the front swept away the muggy 85º heat, replacing it with beautiful, breezy 70º perfection.  She finally came on, played two songs solo with some technical glitches.  Then Born Gold came on as her backing band for the majority of the set.  It was surprisingly good, and she's pretty entertaining.  She had more technical problems and exclaimed "Fuck! Fuck!" at some points, but soldiered on.  After 45 mins. she finally told us that the sunlight was giving her problems, since it was making it hard for her to see all the lights on her various electronic devices, and that she hence couldn't keep playing.  I only took three pics, and here are two:

She was shaking her head side to side pretty hardcore during at this moment, so I was surprised to have gotten such a nice focused shot.
Yes, that is a Bob Marley poster in the dorm window at the left; this is a college campus, 'member?

I bought two boxes of Girl Scout cookies that were being sold right behind the stage, then wandered around the campus for a bit looking for a show flyer.  I was going to give one of the boxes to the Mushroom, so I started walking back towards Pocket Park, where the concert was held.  I saw Claire was still there, talking with a Born Golder (Calvin) behind the stage, so I made the impromptu decision to give her a box of the cookies, and told her she did a good job despite the technical problems.  I later noticed that the cookies were fittingly called Thank U Berry Munch.  I probably should've shaken her hand or something, but she's so incredibly petite and skinny that I guess I subliminally thought I might injure her?  Sorry for all this info on Grimes.  If you get to see her or talk to her you'll find her energy contagious, and it becomes hard not to like her or her music, so I think she deserves all of the fame that's coming her way.  Compare her spazzy, unpretentious nature to the cool, calculated, detached demeanor of a St. Vincent (I like SV a lot, for what it's worth), or a Lana Del Rey (no opinion yet), or a Steve Malkmus (despise him), or a Laurie Anderson (dig her), etc.  Speaking of musical things that are grime-y, this show was better than the Dizzee Rascal "History Of Grime" tour that I saw in '05.

One last thing: An interview with her done in WTUL's studio right after the show.

Wow, I just realized that I have now contributed to the internet's Grimes Overkill.  It's funny how things work out sometimes.  I guess I'm just as fascinated by fame, hype, etc. as anyone else is.  And for some reason I just love seeing electronic music live, even if an artist's studio recordings are not something I'd want to listen to very much.

To cap off an interesting Friday, the lowly (to the untrained observer) Hornets shocked the defending-champion Mavericks despite having four players, three of whom are starters, out with injuries.  It's looking like a sure bet that someone will buy the team this month and thereby relieve the NBA of its ownership role involving the Hornets.  (For those who don't follow basketball, here's a summary: Rather than possibly let the team relocate to Seattle or somewhere else, the NBA stepped in and bought the Hornets last year when the team couldn't find a buyer.  This had never been done before in league history.  The Hornets lost superstar point guard Chris Paul to the L.A. Clippers in December and immediately became one of the league's bottom-dwellers, fueling speculation that the team would move, especially since a really wealthy computer czar from Seattle wanted to buy them.)
Unfortunately, the "Bountygate" scandal involving the Saints broke this same night.  The team will probably receive the biggest penalty in the history of the NFL for it.  Thanks a lot, Gregg Williams.

Photo montage by Josh Helfferich of cell phones before and after the iPhone; I think the relative sizes are incorrect, but you get the idea:

Sorry for all the pics and videos in this post, and I will try not to do it in the future.  It's definitely the most media I've ever put in one post, and I generally hate when people do that because it can cause your computer to slow down or freeze up.  But sometimes you have to live on the edge, and I have a big backlog of images and videos to share, so.  I'm a technical Luddite compared to most interneters of today, so I was surprised when I thought about all the various software programs and physical devices that were used in the making of this post:
Blogspot (blog software / website hosting) (duh) [free]
iTunes (mp3 player) [free with any Mac]
DivShare (mp3 hosting) [free]
Canon SD870 IS digital camera (photos) (also takes mediocre videos) [passed down from my mom when she got a new camera]
Flip Video camcorder (both videos) [given by my dad, who got it as a freebie at a business meeting]
iPhoto (photo editing) [free with any Mac]
YouTube (video hosting) [free]
PageSpinner (HTML editor) (excerpts from Cold Comfort article) [free trial software that I got in '99 and never paid for]

Planets with similar climates: Bright Channel - "Airborne" (2005), Bleach - "Seeing" (1991), Interpol - "Obstacle 2" (2002), Bailter Space - "Orbit" (1992), Slint - "Good Morning, Captain" (1990), Juno - "The Sea Looked Like Lead" (1998).

Colfax Abbey >> Could you complicate your mind?

Colfax Abbey - "Feel"

(Prospective Records / TRG Records,1995)

The song title and vocal stylings could lead this to be considered some sort of shoegaze-emo hybrid.  The pummeling drums and passive-aggressive guitars inflict a surprising amount of ear damage.  I can't overemphasize how dazzlingly creative and amazingly stupefying the guitar tones on this album are; it just might be the holy grail of tone in my book, along with stuff like early Verve, Hovercraft, early U2, early Sand Rubies, and Poem Rocket.  "Shanesong" in particular is just incredibly intense and dark, while retaining plenty of shoegaze DNA.  At a time when almost every true shoegaze band had abandoned its sound in favor of more dad-friendly '60s/'70s-oriented pastures, you have to hand it to Colfax Abbey for doing its uncompromising thing, and doing it with tons of panache, which means charisma.  I think I said almost the exact thing about Volplane a few months ago, come to think of it.  If anyone ever saw the Fax Abbs live, I'd love to hear about it.

I bought this CD, Drop, in 2001 or 2002 after hearing the band touted on the Blisscent mailing list, and I was blown away by it right away, as I was in a phase of worshipping stuff like Catherine Wheel, Verve, and Slowdive.  (Coincidentally, Verve's 1992 single "She's A Superstar" had a b-side called "Feel," compiled on their amazing self-titled EP later that same year.)  Every song on the album, except for one or two, is a perfectly-formed gem.  Listen to and/or download sample mp3s of every song here.  The band bio on that page says "And then from out of nowhere... Colfax Abbey. Four pieces of an ultra sonic puzzle. Droney guitars swirl around aural landscapes into a never ending infinity of ethereal delight. Colfax Abbey will thrill and delight all audiences young and old as they take the air around them and bend it into trance inducing guitar pop that takes you into the other side and beyond. From the heart of Minneapolis, the dynamic drumming of champion beat master Rob Walsh, the throbbing bass of Troy De Groot, the neo-psychedelic twists and turns of guitar of Mark Margosian, and the hypnotizing vocals of Christian Rangel come together to create a sonic assault of beautiful noise."


This band was from Minneapolis, was on a subsidiary of Twin / Tone Records, and had a name apparently borrowed from Bram Stoker's Dracula.  So you might think they're a shitty plaid-clad Soul Asylum clone with goth overtones, but luckily that type of band will never exist.  Half of this album, including "Feel," was recorded at The Playground studio in Chicago; the other half was recorded at The Terrarium studio in Minneapolis.  The Chicago tracks were produced by Keith Cleversley (Flaming Lips, Hum, Submarine, Morella's Forest, Spiritualized) and the Minn. ones were produced by Colfax Abbey & Ed Ackerson (of Polara).
Fun Fact: There's a "minus time" instrumental track hidden in the middle of the CD called "Drop," which is basically a lengthened and morphed loop from "Once In A While."  Well, it plays as a minus-time track in my car, but on my Mac it plays as just a hidden track at the end of song 5, which is "Silver."
I got their follow-up CD, Penetrate, the same year, but it's basically an instrumental space-rock album with four long tracks.  A few years back I bought their lone 7", "Chameleon" b/w "Silver," on eBay.  So I now have all whopping three things that they ever released.

Not much info is available about this band online, but this page has some interesting stuff, including a gorgeous acoustic radio performance of "Feel" which shows that it's a brilliant song even when stripped of all the guitar pyrotechnics, and also one of "Chameleon" (ditto).  Wow... Maybe more shoegaze bands should do unplugged albums?  Plus a pic of the Drop promo poster and a tour poster as the opening act for the Brian Jonestown Massacre.  He opened it by saying "Shoegaze monsters Colfax Abbey grew at such a fast pace once they got started, they went from opening in The 7th Street Entry to national tours in what seemed months. In concert, they perfected something I’ve never seen beforehand or since: even as the band was blissfully noisy & washed in droning sheets of sound, they were quiet, and you could carry on a conversation right in front of them. It was inviting & personal, yet very polished and produced sounding. Unique. Their two CDs & 7″ single are nothing short of beautiful."

Check out the wonderfully mutilated English by this overseas shoegazer:
"on the begining 'Snowshine' track i've been thinking this is like song from Nirvana (but its wrong)
i think Snowshine is the best track in this Album (agree or not... whatever!, thats what i thought)
for all over this track i feel dreaming, i dunno why"

I I took this pic of the beginning of my iTunes "bestGUITARtone" playlist on 6/14/06; you can see Colfax Abbey is well-represented:

I saw a young jazz singer named Sasha Masakowski twice at the Balcony Music Club in spring 2010.  I told myself and anyone else who would listen that she was gonna be a big star, and she's recently landed in a commercial (well, actually three different ones) by local lawyer Chip Forstall, who always enlists local musicians to do his theme song:

Also watch the version with just Sasha.  The "one man stands tall" line is clearly a joke, since you can see that CF is rather short.  The band members are hamming it up for the camera; rest assured that they do not do that in their real concerts whatsoever.  Apparently they all are graduates of UNO's jazz studies program.  Drummer Nick Solnick is an absolute monster, one of the best jazz drummers I've ever seen, at least when he's playing with actual drumsticks.  Sasha's bro Martin played bass when I saw them, but he's not in this commercial.  Their dad Steve is a local legend of jazz guitar.

I'm skipping a This Will Destroy You concert tonight at Siberia.  I saw them last summer in Baton Rouge, and they were good, but I don't know if I need or want to see any of these loud-soft-loud-soft post-rock bands more than once from now on.  And at $12, the cover is very high for a relatively unknown instrumental band.

I mentioned that I saw a local band called The Honorable South do a free in-store CD release party at Euclid Records a few days before Xmas, attended by about two dozen people.  Well, they're on the cover of the new issue of Antigravity zine:

I saw In The Heat Of The Night for the first time tonight, since I will fervently watch anything with Sidney Poitier in it.  I recognized the line "Where whitie ain't allowed" at about the 100 minute mark, since it was sampled in Abecedarians' song "Where Whitie Ain't Allowed" on their 1987 album Eureka.

'Piggyback bandit' puzzles high school officials in Northwest

Rock is the new jazz.  Sorry, rock. - "A visit to the Billboard Hot 100 today yields only two songs in the top 20 that could be argued to be “rock.” Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger” (#13) sounds utterly not like rock (dancebeat bass drum, the tinge of auto-tune, a chirping synth hook), and Gavin DeGraw’s “Not Over You” comes a little closer though it seems more like a pop throwback tune than anything with a genuine edge. Further down the chart there’s a little country and one indie-rock hit (Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks”) and that’s about it. The Black Keys in position 67 are pretty much the flag-wavers for “rock” in early 2012."  For what it's worth, I turned on MTV this morning.  They were showing a bunch of those teen mom shows in a row, so I scanned ahead to see when their next music-related show was, and there literally was nothing music-related the entire day.  They saw fit to air multiple episodes of That '70s Show, though.  This news is probably shocking to no one, which says it all.

Planets with similar climates: Drop Nineteens - "Delaware" (1992), Volplane - "Wash Away" (1997), Sunny Day Real Estate - "Snibe" (2000), Glide - "Water Falls" (1992), Verve - "All In The Mind" (1992), Catherine Wheel - "Texture" (1991).


CDs currently in my car: Band Of Susans - Veil, Temple Of The Dog - Temple Of The Dog, Slowdive - Souvlaki, Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul, Black Box Recorder - Passionoia, Massive Attack - Mezzanine, some mix CDs

A Place To Bury Strangers >> You make my dreams complete and then crash them down

A Place To Bury Strangers - "I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart"

(Self-released, ca. 2006; Mute Records, 2009)

The band first put this song on a self-released CD-R EP, recorded in 2005 or 2006, and then re-recorded it for their album Exploding Head on venerable Mute Records.

Original 2006 version:

2009 re-recording:

The re-recorded version is over a minute longer and has much clearer vocals, sacrificing little of the feral intensity of the original version, so I think most people will favor it.
As I've seen some other astute fans point out, this song is heavily indebted to both of the songs ("Beach Song" and "Take Me Down") that comprise Slowdive's 1992 flexi 7".  (Yes, Slowdive used to rock pretty hard for a brief while.)  And it even brazenly has the lyric "I want to take you down," and they also have a song called "Missing You" which is not a cover of Slowdive's song "Missing You."  If you want to hear the lyrics very clearly, go listen to the synth-y Broken Spindles remix on the "I Lived My Life..." remix single (Mute Records, 2010), which has the vocals mixed up high and has most of the pesky guitars removed.  There's also a nice choppy industrial remix on there by Secret Machines.

Front cover of 2006 EP

Back cover or inner booklet of 2006 EP

2010 remix maxi-single cover art

I've seen APTBS perform this song live twice, in Oct. 2008 in Baton Rouge at Chelsea's Café and in Sept. 2009 in New Orleans at One Eyed Jacks.  They are known for doing an extended noise bridge during the middle of the song (starting at the 2:20 mark), like My Bloody Valentine infamously do during the middle of "You Made Me Realise," and believe me, it's amazing live. The first time was amazing, mind-shattering, etc.  The second time was actually even better, maybe because the sound system was much better and there were a lot more people there, and because I was amped up to go on that rollercoaster again.  They play live using lots of fog and strobe lighting, like all bands should.  While singer/guitarist Oliver Ackermann is obviously the main focal point, drummer Jason "Jay Space" Weilmeister is an absolute monster.  I mean, holy shit, he was killing it, in a savage-yet-jazz-informed vein not unlike, say, John Stanier of Helmet.  The bassist is no slouch either.  They launch immediately into each song without even a millisecond of pausing, which takes a ton of rehearsal and ears a band the title of being "tight."  They have absolutely no time for between-song banter.  If you want that, go see fucking Guided By Voices or Lil Wayne or Elvis Presley or something.  When people talk about great power trios, let there be no doubt that APTBS is right at the top of the (my) all-time heap, along with Bailter Space, Unwound, Poem Rocket, Hovercraft, and a few others.  Listening to an entire APTBS studio album, on the other hand, can be a bit difficult, due to all the distortion and the relentless sonic overload.  Ackermann also makes guitar pedals guitar effects pedals under the name Death By Audio, and is sometimes overeager to show off his wares on record rather than backing off and letting the songs breathe a bit.

Speaking of breathing, I was able to overcome steady waves of toxic fog to take this pic of them at Chelsea's Café on 10/16/08, using a long shutter speed to get intentional blurs:

As Plexi once sang, "When I was looking at you, I didn't mind your foggy weather"

I unknowingly got into APTBS by hearing about a band called Skywave all the time on the Blisscent mailing list circa 2000-2001.  The main people talking about Skywave at this time were apparently members of Skywave.  I got kind of annoyed by this, but bought their "Don't Say Slow" 7" in the mid-'00s, and later got their full-length CD.  APTBS emerged out of the ashes of Skywave, with a very similar sound, albeit with less (or zero?) synth.  (Skywave's album was titled Synthstatic, and I remember getting a chuckle when someone on Blisscent erroneously transposed a few letters and called it Synthtastic.)  Some other dudes from Skywave went on to form the Joy-Divisionally-monikered band Ceremony.

Anyway, here is the original (ca. 2006) video for the original version of "Shadow Of Your Heart":

The inferior 2010 video for the 2009 re-recording:

That second video was shot by the guitarist from Sian Alice Group, who were the opening act at the APTBS show I saw in '08.

The Joy Formidable + APTBS spring tour, guaranteed by Blowtorch Baby to be the best live show you see all year or else you pay me $20:

03/12/12 - San Francisco, CA - The Independent
03/13/12 - San Francisco, CA - The Independent
03/14/12 - Los Angeles, CA - The Music Box
03/17/12 - Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre
03/19/12 - Minneapolis, MN - Fine Line Music Cafe
03/20/12 - Madison, WI - Majestic Theatre
03/22/12 - Bloomington, IN - The Bluebird
03/23/12 - Cincinnati, OH - 20th Century Theatre
03/24/12 - Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade
03/25/12 - Asheville, NC - Orange Peel
03/26/12 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
03/28/12 - New York, NY - Terminal 5
03/29/12 - Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer
03/30/12 - Boston, MA - Paradise
03/31/12 - Montreal, QC - Cabaret Mile-End
04/02/12 - Toronto, ON - Lee's Palace

Apparently, hipsters are taking hints from the Amish now

Romney tax plan adds $600 billion to deficit, analysis says - "Though the Tax Policy Center said Romney’s tax plan would 'reduce federal tax revenues substantially, the budget hit isn’t as severe as some of his competitors. The same group previously said former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s tax plan would increase the deficit by $1.3 trillion and that Texas Governor Rick Perry’s proposal would boost the shortfall by $995 billion."

The final sentence. - A blog whose ambitious goal is to post the last sentence of every literary work ever published.  Good luck.  Speaking of books, I bought one the other day (My Brother's Gun by Ray Loriga) because it had a blurb by Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo on the back cover reading "Like the rush of an electric guitar riff charging up your spine, Ray Loriga's voice angles, beautifully desperate, to grasp our place in these chaotic times."  Here is the book's final sentence: "It was nighttime now, and then it would turn into day and all the planes in the world would continue passing through that very same spot."  That's translated from Spanish, so it's not his actual words, but it's pretty good stuff.

Planets with similar climates: Slowdive - "Beach Song" & "Take Me Down" (1992), My Bloody Valentine - "You Made Me Realise" (1988), Plexi - "Fourget" (1996), ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - "Ounce Of Prevention" & "Prince With A Thousand Enemies" (1997).

Bright Channel >> Someone's chasing me in my sleep

Bright Channel - "Night Eyes" (demo)

(unreleased, 2003)

So, back to what I was saying in the previous two posts... In February 2002, Jeff and Shannon of Volplane reassembled with a new drummer, Brian Banks, and a new name, Bright Channel.
In my 2003 interview I asked "How is Bright Channel going to differ from Volplane?"
Jeff just said "Slightly less wine..."
Shannon said "Not as loud for one (or as many amps to carry).  I'd say the Bright Channel sound is more streamlined and articulated than Volplane, with a little more power behind it.  To use a Bailter Space analogy, Bright Channel's more Solar.3 or Photon, where Volplane was more Robot World."  (In my previous question, I had asked if Robot World was a big influence on them.)
I secretly died a little inside, and thought about how every single shoegazey band that I loved soon abandoned that sound for a more "normal" rock sound.  Examples: Catherine Wheel, Verve, Lush, Bailter Space, Ride, etc.  And worst of all was Slowdive morphing into frickin' Mojave 3, jeesh.  So I honestly wasn't expecting Bright Channel's music to impress me, much less amaze me, but that's just what it did.  I have to say I disagree with Shannon's "less amps" statement, because B.C.'s music is way louder / heavier than Volplane's.

Anyway, back to the interview.  Jeff later said "Our music was designed to be as hypnotic and suggestively psychedelic as possible.  However, it was done at high volumes.  Volplane caused a great deal of hearing damage to ourselves and to fans.  I don't think we were able to capture the type of air movement or "wall-of-sound" effect we wanted on our early recordings.  Bright Channel, on the other hand, is slightly trimmed down and more focused.  Instead of multiple digital delays and amplifiers, we are using more organic effects such as fuzz and reverb."

This is a demo of a song that appeared on their self-titled 2004 debut album.  I prefer this version because it's a bit slower (hence 10 seconds longer), and the album version seems a tad too rushed to me.  This was sent to me by Smelly in 2003, or 2004 at the latest, after I asked her to track some Bright Channel songs down for me.  She is so cool that her RYM username is a fucking Swervedriver lyric.  The other demo she sent me was a crushingly heavy / amazing demo of "Ice Field."  Steve Albini produced the debut album, but I don't know if he produced (sorry, "engineered") the demos; I'm guessing not.  I could spend hours talking about why I dislike his production (sorry, "engineering") style, but I won't.  "Night Eyes" is a very subtle song, with the vocals starting off low and reptilian, and later going to a higher register and becoming more beautiful.  The guitar parts follow a similar path, like a loyal puppy dog tagging along with its owner.  The song has a weird overall marching-band swagger to it, driven by a mutant funk bassline and billowing clouds of guitar.  The drums suddenly go ballistic in the final minute.  It's only my 3rd-favorite song on the album, but it's definitely sui generis.  Rock music for people who are bored with rock music.

I know this is an early (2002 or 2003) Bright Channel pic, because I used it in my interview in '03.
Note the images of trees projected onto them.  L-R: Jeff Suthers, Brian Banks, Shannon Stein

This is a pic from the roof of the Ogden Museum of Art, taken by by sister when we visited it last week.  (See previous post.)  That's a kinetic Lin Emery aluminum sculpture on the left, the Crescent City Connection bridge in the middle, then some unknown black sculpture, then the water tower atop the Cotton Mill apartments, where she briefly lived.  This is direct from her camera to my email, not cropped or color-adjusted in any way.  Even the clouds are just perfect.

Most of Emery's stuff is in the same vein, and she has a similar, but larger and much more famous, statue right in front of the New Orleans Museum Of Art:

I was surprised that one of my favorite (one-man) bands, National Skyline, released a new album last week.  It's good, though poppy enough to maybe generate cries of "sellout" from longtime fans.  Garbs is still a master of catchy melodies, and a little bit of extra chillwave is fine by me.

Today I played hoops for about 3 hours in Thibodaux, which completely derailed an intended trip down to Houma.  Better luck next time... I lent my Del The Funky Homosapien CD to this guy so he could play it on his car stereo while we played, but it skipped on a few songs so he had to take it out.  There were around 25-30 people playing.

An amazing thing I found out about on the History Channel on Saturday: The Year Without A Summer.  Last night I watched the season finales of Dexter and Homeland, and tonight was the season finale of Terra Nova.  The ultra-intense Homeland is the best show no one knows about.

R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens, The Chris Paul era in New Orleans, and Kim Jong-Il

Planets with similar climates: DUSTdevils - "Neck Surfing" (1990), True Widow - "Skull Eyes" (2011), Bailter Space - "Hard Wired" (1989), Failure - "Heliotropic" (1996), U2 - "Bullet The Blue Sky" (1987), Idaho - "Crawling Out" (1994), Live Skull - "Cloud One" (1985).