“We remember it well now, our younger days, when we got the cassette deck for the car. The windows always rolled up, closing us off to the outside world. We moved steadily as things rolled by, always with the cassettes playing at the loudest possible volume.” [via]
Joshua Z-P (of Roadside Picnic Podcast and A Room Forever fame) and his friend Adam Helms were recently asked by Type Records (home to Svarte Greiner, Deaf Center, Grouper, and Koen Holtkamp, among other phenomenal bands) to compile a mix for their Typecast series. “So a mix we did – one of epic and biblical proportions which we now share with you. This isn’t your older brother’s black metal – there’s no Dungeons & Dragons posturing while wearing corpse paint. Just pure, brutal, lo-fi nihilism full of tape hiss and vinegar.”
Cirrhus, Horrid Cross, Haxan.
All tracks were transferred from cassettes, save the Akitsa song. There’s Bone Awl and Ash Pool and freakin’ Ancestors and a bunch of even more obscure shit I don’t recognize at all.Holy balls, this mix is awesome. Sadly, the vast majority of our readers will find it unlistenable. So unless you enjoy making your eardrums hemorrhage with tinny, shrieking, blood-gargling KVLT AS FUCKNESS, please back away slowly from this post without making direct eye contact, and click here instead.
My favorite web discovery of the past couple of weeks is Headphone Commute. First of all, I love the name. It instantly conjures images of foggy morning train rides and late-night buses – hands in pockets, head in space, bobbing along to the music. From the “About” page:
Headphone Commute is an independent resource of candid words on electronic and instrumental music. The range of covered genres includes electronica, glitch, idm, drum’n’bass, breakcore, dubstep, trip-hop, modern classical, post-rock, shoegaze, ambient, downtempo, experimental, abstract, minimal and everything in between. HC is not associated with any artist, band, record label, promoter, distributor or retailer covered by the reviews. There is no hidden agenda behind these words. What you see is what you get. All that means is that we share our love for music because we want to – not because we have to.
A word of caution – this blog is is easy to get lost in upon first visit! Between album reviews, in-depth interviews with labels like Somnia and bite-size interviews with artists like Max Richter, on top of my favorite Headphone Commute feature – mixes available for download, it’s kind of impossible not to spend hours reading, researching and hoarding new music. It’s thanks to Headphone Commute that I found out about The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and had my ears taken to their special place by this incredible Best of 2008 Modern Classical mix. I actually can’t recommended this one enough, especially if you’re somewhere that’s beginning to show signs of autumn. Stunningly beautiful, moody, inspiring. For more mixes see Intelligent Breakcore mix and Ten Favorite Mixes of 2008. Happy listening, comrades!
Zucker’s considerable talents as a dj and curator tie directly into more personal reasons why I adore the guy: I’ve never met a better listener or a more relentless seeker. It has always seemed to me that Zucker’s primary ambition in life is to make this lonely world more beautiful –and therefore more bearable– through tireless creative striving. His latest, arguably most stunning offering yet is A Room Forever:
A Room Forever is an art project realized as a curated series of limited edition 12″ record LPs. Packaged in a custom-made box with high quality digital c-print covers and letter pressed inserts, each record features and original musical composition on one side and a field recording on the other.
Pressed in one-time editions of 300, A Room Forever takes a unique and personal approach to the vinyl record LP. Conceived as a physical manifestation of the Roadside Picnic Radio Podcast, the project draws upon the rich history and mythologies of audio recording to produce a final object of art that will resonate uniquely within each listener.
More than anything, A Room Forever is inherently about the act of listening.
My copies of the first three records arrived in the mail today. Machinefabriek & Matt Davies (EVP – 001), Svarte Greiner (EVP- 002) and Koen Holtcamp (EVP-003) are all huge talents working in relative obscurity, but with worshipful cult followings. Each edition is beautifully designed and printed, featuring exquisite photography by Kurt Mangum and individually hand-stamped/numbered.
Cover for EVP-002, featuring work by my favorite Norwegian, Erik Skodvin (under his Svarte Greiner moniker). In keeping with Zucker’s fascination with the haunted history and mythology of audio recording, the abbreviation for this series is “EVP”. A wee hint to those who already own one the records: look closely for the mysterious messages etched into the vinyl. My hair stood on end when I realized what they were.
The LPs are selling out very fast. Order them now from Aquarius Records, Boomkat, Other Music or Forced Exposure. Painstakingly well made, rare, and imbued with a sense of mystery and longing, A Room Forever is one of the most collectible limited edition vinyl runs you are likely to see for years to come.
Pardon me, are you part shark? What I mean is, if you don’t constantly keep moving, exploring, and devouring, does it feel as though your organs might implode from sheer doldrums? Do unfamiliar smells and sounds intrigue rather than offend you? Are you an incorrigible know-it-all, scoffing openly at poor, unwitting souls who declare Mike Patton’s work to be the utmost pinnacle of musical wackiness?* Would you enjoy traveling to an exotic third world locale with nothing but a ukulele and a homemade shank?
Recently, Jesse started a podcast feed for the benefit of everyone who’s not living in Boston or near a computer each Wednesday from 6 pm to 8:00 pm E.S.T. So “tune into the sounds of the Finnish Underground, Tuvan Rock, Asian Psychedelic, Russian Lounge, and Inuit beat boxing” and be ready to shake your tuchus.
*Dear rabid Bunglers, please do not hurt me. I give mad props to Mr. Patton. But the world is vast and strange. I implore you: venture bravely beyond the Tzadik catalog on your next record-buying excursion.
As a follow up to this post, here’s a bit of Saturday morning listening as we build our own machines, courtesy of Studio 360. They cover some interesting lesser known aspects of Tesla’s life, his life in New York and more. Direct download link is here: direct download link. Enjoy!
Mer mentioned the Roadside Picnic podcast here a few weeks back. Hosted by a gentleman named Joshua Zucker, this podcast’s chewy contents are some of the best brain fuel I’ve had the pleasure to absorb in quite some time. The past couple of episodes were especially fitting with the belated arrival of rain in Angel City, and I must take a moment to reflect.
Each installment has a somewhat melancholy-sounding theme, but I’ve so far found this to be the ideal multi-purpose station. It’s marvelous for letting the sound flood and take over just as well as having it as low ambience while painting, writing, reading, or whatever sinister activity you choose to engage in. I suggest you try the former, first.
Roadside Picnic is a blend of ambient drone, atmospheric distressed instrumental, and occasional vocal tracks. At full volume the experience is akin to drifting through walls of dense noise, sometimes falling into pools of melody and being pierced with emphatic shrieks. Like tuning a radio in a radiation apocalypse; faint signs of life puncturing the static of a scorched world. Listen.
I’ve already mentioned the freeform radio station WFMU a few times on C.H. and I surely will again. Based out of Jersey City, this listener-supported outpost of obscure music and culture has been a constant source of delight to me since the mid 90s. Before then, I had no idea that kind of integrity or diversity existed in radio.
Today I’d like to make specific mention of Tom Scharpling’s modestly titled “The Best Show on WFMU”, a comedy segment that often features indie-rock luminary Jon Wurster masquerading as various call-in guests. I can’t think of anything more entertaining to listen to on this chilly Sunday evening than their mind-blowing gaff “The Music Scholar”. The Music Scholar
We all know at least one real-life Charles R. Martin: that elitist snob propped up at the end of every single hipster dive bar in the universe, oozing condescension and pretentiousness, a dismissive amateur musicologist given to Cooler-Than-Thou histrionics and compulsive one-upmanship. Wurster cranks these characteristics up to 11, reducing the most elitist Pitchfork writers or Bedford Avenue disputants to fleecy wee lambs by comparison.
Initially, exposure to composer/performer Judy Dunaway and her “virtuostic balloon-playing” broke my brain. But after the giggle fit subsided, I realized I was genuinely in awe of the woman, for many of the same reasons I’ve long adored Harry Partch, Hans Reichel, Clara Rockmore, and Klaus Nomi. Like them, Dunaway is utterly fearless in her approach to her craft, and unflinching in the face of inevitable backlash from both her classical and avante-garde contemporaries. (It takes ovaries of steel to play Lincoln Center with nothing but an amplified balloon between your knees, ah tell you whut.)
Her Etudes No.1 and 2 for Balloon and Violin (2004) are particular favorites of mine, perhaps because they’re what my own stuffy classical violin instructor would undoubtedly have dismissed as “good musicans behaving unforgivably.” I’m at a loss to accurately describe the music… imagine what an orgy of parasitic wasps being slowly pressed to death between two lubricated sheets of mylar might sound like. New York Press writer Kenneth Goldsmith likened Dunaway’s live performances to witnessing “Cab Calloway in Munchkinland… Olivier Messiaen on helium.”
Dunaway’s own statement of purpose is more straightforward:
My own work … does not come out of a void. Creating a large body of work for balloons has allowed me to develop a vocabulary outside the realm of oppressive classical heritage. It has raised the ordinary and mundane to the status of high art. I have fetishized this simple cheap toy in my music, as the violin has been fetishized for centuries by Western European-influenced composers. In an era where the progress toward a woman’s control of her own body is threatened, I have coupled myself to a musical instrument that expresses sensuality, sexuality and humanity without inhibition.
Musician/filmmaker Joshua Zucker is one of very few folks whose tastes I trust implicitly. Episode 13 of his thematic Roadside Picnic podcast just went up. As always, it’s an astonishing mix of sounds and genres, lovingly and seamlessly compiled. Put on your best pair of headphones, and drift.
