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[03 Dec 2004|11:11pm] |
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music |
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Flying Luttenbachers, The Void |
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[31 May 2004|04:18pm] |
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mood |
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whiskey & coke |
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music |
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my rock band |
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What's up with all my posts for the last 4 months being reviews of shit? Maybe I just don't care. People still read this? Maybe it's easy enough to ignore my monthly post. I've spent all weekend in my apartment, moving at random between my bed and my mixed work station.
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| Flying Luttenbachers and Corsano/Flaherty @ Elbo Room : 2004-05-27 |
[28 May 2004|11:45am] |
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I arrived as the Murder Murder/Mochipet amalgam was setting up. As the house music faded out their clarinetist and trumpeter launched right into some high power freeform noodles with lots of electronic manipulations. The laptop buzzed and spurted and the dual drummers rattled around. Then the clarinetist kicked at thin air and the drummers started pounding out a really heavy and slightly twisted beat. It was a strong start, but the rest of their set was inconsistent and I often found the playing (especially from the horns) annoyingly aimless . When the clarinetist feebly attempted to play a trombone I was strongly reminded of my own high school free jazz band and felt a burn while I mused on why we never got to open for the Flying Luttenbachers. But it really wasn’t that bad. At their best, they reminded me of Fe-Mail’s electronically-processed french horn and vocals with added drums.
Next was Corsano and Flaherty. I had forgotten who these guys were, though I remembered Corsano’s name from his collaboration with Thurston Moore (I actually knew these players from their Live at Tonic album with Moore and Shoup), so I wasn’t sure what to expect. As they set up, I noted that Corsano (on drums) looked like some of the well-groomed skinheads I knew in college and Flaherty (on alto sax) looked like the white-bearded curmudgeons of the Nihilist Spasm Band. After Corsano’s last-minute aborted idea to add a suspended tom, the duo started in on their high intensity free jazz. Corsano was undeniably the main attraction as he rolled around his set with awesome proficiency. There’s not much to say about his playing other than this fucker rocks. He gets more sounds out of his three-piece drum set with different sticking techniques, head-dampening and other wildness than most people can with a kit twice his size. One of the highlights came early on, when Flaherty took a long solo while Corsano left his set to look for something. He went up the scale until he was blowing out piercing feedback-like noises and was then rejoined by Corsano’s fury. Corsano provided some great whale-call accompaniment to Flaherty’s solo by pulling rubber mallets across his floor tom. Using the same technique to begin his own solo later was probably the only part of the performance that wasn’t totally amazing – it didn’t flow right – but even that part wasn’t too bad. I was amazed that there were so many people in attendance and that the music was so well-received, but maybe I shouldn’t have been, considering this is San Francisco.
As the Flying Luttenbachers took the stage I was worried that they would sound weak in comparison to the previous act. My fears were fortunately unfounded. Their sheer rock power compensated for any unused slick proficiency. The group played all new material (as far as I could tell), which was of varying quality. A lot of it had very punk rock sounding chord progressions, which does not seem like a direction the Luttenbachers should pursue. One or two of the songs were stylistically very different, but really fucking good. My favorite piece had really slow and heavy drum and bass parts in shifting meters with a fucked up atonal, arhythmic guitar solo, which reminded me a little of “Sympathy for the Devil” for its loose style. Weasel seemed a little defeatist as he shook his head and laughed at the group’s occasional mistakes, rather than casting his normal look of hate. It was probably a worse show than the previous Luttenbachers’ performances I’ve seen in recent months, but it was still great.
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[10 May 2004|08:32pm] |
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Miba, The Corplate Problem |
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I'm reading a CrimethInc-related book on travel, In Search of the World, and it's a giant crock of shit. Some of it is interesting and many contributors have generally good intentions, but it's not coming off well. Typos and grammatical errors abound, and the layout is shit. Worse yet, most of the ideas are bogus. One author (clearly of the cooperative) writes an essay that supports "experiencing difference," which is later what Hakim Bey describes as the horrible tourist way of travel. I would assume the CrimethInc author would be in agreement with Mr Bey, so it's pretty fucked that he gets his ideas ass-backwards. The Guy Debord excerpt is insultingly full of nonsensical pseudo-intellectual jibberish and pseudo-science. I never realized that guy was so full of shit. Even more wrong-seeming is the continually expressed idea that "bourgeois" life is pathetically boring: there is nothing interesting in tourism, no worthwhile life could be spent primarily in only three places (home, school and piano lessons). What makes "wild" life better? Are these people too numb to subtleties to find magnificence in the mundane? Not even mundane, really... I think they really are into merely experiencing the difference. It wasn't just a mis-reading of Hakim Bey. They are the loser tourists they supposedly loathe, except with a punk rock attitude. The Hakim Bey piece, by the way, is pretty good. These hooligans, however, didn't reallly deserve to make a book.
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| 3 shows |
[10 Apr 2004|02:35am] |
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Time to catch up on show reviews.
March 5. I got to Recombinant Labs Compound and noticed Fe-Mail was about to start the show, despite the fact that they were supposedly headlining. They fucked around on computers for a little bit. It sounded like works in progress in the style of Maja’s album, Voice. I got the impression they just wanted to play with the spatial effects allowed by the 16 speakers. It was okay, but I was not impressed. After three pieces, they moved over to their table of gear. Maja let out a shriek and they rocked it. This stuff sounded more like their album and was pretty great. Not much else to say about that, I guess. Zbigniew Karkowski closed the show. He fired up a huge wall of noise that held pretty steady. Right as we were being lulled into a trance state, bass ripped into all of the speakers and made it sound like the roof was coming down. More bass play vibrated the building in interesting ways, then I literally fell asleep standing up. A burst of noise woke me up as I started to fall, then the show ended. My ass had been blasted.
April 3. A month later I return to RLC. Kaffe Matthews opens the show. I am surprised to find out Kaffe is a woman. I don’t know why I assumed she was a man... She started recording samples of her playing a theremin-like thing, then started layering the samples. Some board problem cut her sound and replaced it with a loud buzzing. The problem was fixed and she resumed playing, somewhat shaken. It took her a while to build up some momentum and I was not interested. Eventually she came to terms with the earlier board problem and the fact that the magic spatial effects weren’t working and rocked it out. The last part of her performance was very good, but not spectacular. She ended on a sour note by explaining the sounds should have been swirling around the room. Tough titty. I don’t want to hear it. Plus, that’s not too professional. AGF was next. Glitchy beats and broken singing. High synth lines reminded me of R&B. I was totally amazed. I didn’t have great expectations for her performance, but she created a perfect blend of abstract sound, blip-hop and vocals, all in realtime. I felt really engaged in listening to the music – more so than at any show I can remember. Hardly a second of spacing out. AGF was accompanied by a young woman projecting things onto the wall. Mostly weird patterned paper filtered through negative image and granulating effects, plus with some sort of delay. It was a good compliment to the music, though I wish she would’ve made more use of printed words to parallel what AGF was doing with her vocals. Akira Rabelais closed. This was one guy, who was possibly Akira, accompanied by two RLC soundmen. It started out pretty badly with boring sounds struggling to become interesting by panning between the 16 speakers. It didn’t work. Then some stupid slowed-down breakbeat came in and looped for a really long time. Eventually they got it together and played some beautiful delicate music. More shakiness in the performers than usual for a RLC show, but AGF more than made up for it.
April 10. Arrived at the show while a duo (Sixes?) was performing something like a cross between a Mike Kelley/Paul McCarthy performance and Wolf Eyes. Not too far from Neon Hunk, actually. They were doing a mock carpentry show with processed sound – live video feed to a TV next to them on the stage. Then they cut to some ridiculous commercials on the TV. They returned with more music to end the show. The music was pretty good, if unfocused. I wasn’t really in the mood for the performance aspect, but it grew on me. It was hard to settle in to the venue as there were tables and chairs ridiculously strewn about the middle of the room, and the band’s camera on a tripod right in front of the stage. I snatched up a chair as soon as someone got up in order to become part of the problem rather than a victim of it. Meanwhile a solo guy (The Bran?) had been setting up in the back and would’ve started immediately after they finished, but the power cut out. Then he took 5 or 10 minutes to reset his electronics and the power went out again. Another delay and he got it going. Lots of delay and reverb. Single notes on a keyboard. Kind of lame. About halfway through he stood on his chair and started playing real minimal drones, and yelling into a microphone in unison. This stuff was pretty good, and he kept the quality up for most of the remained of his set. Then another guy with funny facial hair (Tarantism?) did a very similar set, except with vocals and guitar running through pedals rather than keyboard and vocals running through a laptop. This was better than the previous guy, but it still was far from mind-blowing. Prurient took the stage immediately after the guy finished, having already set up his big wall of amps. He stood shirtless in front of them with a microphone in each hand and his back to the audience. The amps were up full volume and he clicked on the mics and unleashed the fury, controlling the sounds with the positioning of the mics. This fucking blasted my ass. It was incredibly loud and filled with tension. I kept anticipating monster guitar riffs about to come in to match the monster feedback, but of course that didn’t happen. Eventually, he started yelling into the mics and swinging his arms more. Reaching down to the bottom amp, he brought in some lower frequencies, then ended the performance. Another solo performer, Kites, took the stage with a very similar set-up. The same wall of amps blasting out his distorted headset mic and sine wave generator. Really loud minimal tones and drones with occasional noise crackles. He had funny emo hair and stood with a silly emo posture. Slightly inferior to Prurient, but still pretty good. Hair Police closed the show out as the only band with more than two people and also drums. Other than that, it sounded pretty much just like Kites. The drummer wasn’t really impressing me and they seemed to have bad attitudes so I was a bit annoyed. Still rocking of course, but Prurient stole the show.
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[29 Mar 2004|12:04am] |
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mood |
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Tecate |
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music |
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Kites, "Milkweed Arrows" |
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Yikes. I ain't been on here in a while. I'm making considerable progress in Destiny of an Emperor. My band has been rockin and my job has been suckin my cock. Not much else going on. Here are some quick movie reviews:
Storytelling: One of the ugliest movies I've ever seen. As far as cinematography and such goes. Especially the first part. It must've been on purpose. John Goodman and his wife are pretty funny. The script is the most important element here. It's a bit too obvious at times and also a bit too smug, but I dig it.
Lost in la Mancha: The catastrophes are not as interesting or catastrophic as I had hoped for. It wasn't that interesting. Partly because of the events documented and largely because of the stale filmmaking.
Powaqqatsi: Like a much crappier version of Koyanisqqatsi. I fell asleep.
Thirteen: An afterschool special with some tits and bush. Every imaginable cliche is employed. It's almost hard to believe the thirteen year old had adult help in making this film.
The Rules of Attraction: I felt like I could relate to this movie the first time I saw it, but I definitely couldn't this time. It seemed rather empty. I think I liked it the first time around because of the tension caused by watching such a nasty movie on a first date.
The Lord of the Rings (1978): Some interesting animation, but a horrible adaptation of the story.
I could go on and on, but I'm sure this is not very interesitng. A verbose return to LJ.
SWOOPS -- THERE IT IS!
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| Carsten Nicolai and William Basinski @ Recombinant Labs Compound 2004-02-21 |
[22 Feb 2004|01:19am] |
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We rolled up to the Recombinant Labs Compound around 9:30. William Basinski was at the console, and I figured he was a German from his wild MIDI mullet. He's actually from Brooklyn, I later realized. His music was quiet new age washes. Quiet enough to hear Carsten Nicolai's projectors humming in waiting, as well as some obnoxious people endlessly talking right behind us (depsite the nasty glances). I didn't dig this music too much. Too boring, too quiet. Then Philip Sherburne did some good DJing that seemed to incorporate Charles Curtis and other minimal stuff. Carsten Nicolai, a real German, took over and it was immediately apparent he was ready to rock it. Crazy overblown squarewave shapes were projected onto the walls and started vibrating with his hums and buzzes. Deep bass and snaps, crackles, pops started coming in, and every now and then a funky groove would pop out from the experimentation. This was the best part of the evening. He eventually worked his way into really loud and heavy polyrhythmic beats. There were some great moments in this and it was good overall, but it was not as awesome as the beginning. I decided to sit down and let the subwoofers vibrate my body for maximum enjoyment. The light show got brighter, then the show ended.
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[11 Feb 2004|10:07pm] |
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music |
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sounds of norway -- kheeeeeeik |
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NES update:::
MetalStorm is the shit. You can reverse gravity in this bitch! That's the sort of thing more video games should do.
Destiny of the Emperor: A clone of Ultima or Final Fantasy. Gameplay more like FF, but appearance almost an exact match for Ultima (as far as menus and such go). Pretty fun so far. You don't have hit points - you have armies of hundreds of men.
Nobunga's Ambition: Actually Nobunaga's Ambition. Like Destiny of the Emperor, it's about unifying a nation under your imperial rule (Japan here, China for Destiny). It's complicated and fucking hard.
The Immortal: Freaky ass music.
Silent Service: The bomb.
A number of these games, notably Nobunaga's Ambition, reek of hamster. I believe they were in the cage with the beast. Some had turds on them. Yikes!
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[07 Feb 2004|04:49pm] |
I just bought a bunch of Nintendo games at Thrift Town. My old roommate had a Nintendo with all the games you could want, but I've had an embarrassingly small collection since I moved out (though I was able to acquire a free NES). Here's what I got:
Tecmo Bowl
MetalStorm
Destiny of the Emperor
Off Road
Final Fantasy
The Immortal
Silent Service
Plus my two favorite games:
Ultima: Exodus
Mike Tyson's Punch Out
And the totally awesome-sounding:
Nobunga's Ambition
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| Vanishing and Chromatics |
[07 Feb 2004|01:45am] |
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music |
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the flying luttenbachers |
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Some really shitty band opened. Girls wearing underwear. Aging men. I left to buy some fish.
Chromatics were totally different from the last time I saw them. The cute girls are gone and have been replaced by a drum machine. This adds more regimentation to their sound. They sounded more like Ghost Orchids than the Chromatics (or maybe some R&B act), but they were still pretty good.
The Vanishing commanded everyone to get naked and I was a little annoyed until I noticed that the singer really did bite the bullet and perform topless. They rocked like usual and seemed to have much more delay than normal. That, of course, was appreciated by me as it created a huge wash of vocal/sax/feedback/whoshing sounds over the fat synth and driving drum backing. All this and titties too.
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[20 Jan 2004|10:57pm] |
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I ate at my work's cafetaria for the first time today. It sucked - even worse than my last job's. My grilled chicken sandwich was crappy. And my potato salad had too much pickle relish in it. And maybe too much vinegar. Anyway, it tasted funky. Plus, the grill master was a dick.
grill: you want fries with that?
me: do you have potato salad?
grill: whatever.
me: i'll just have potato salad.
Then he gives me fries.
another customer: do you have french bread?
grill: no.
guy: i saw somebody with french bread, where did they get it?
grill: 7-11.
Now I thought that shit was hilarious. But he still gave me fries I didn't want. And the french bread was clearly from the sandwich buffet ten feet in front of the grill.
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| 14 January 2004 @ Elbo Room |
[16 Jan 2004|09:50am] |
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mood |
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at work |
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music |
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Black Sabbath, "Electric Funeral" |
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Caesura started out fairly strongly with a pretty good angular rock song. I think it was one of those things where you hear the downbeat wrong at first, but maybe I’m wrong. I liked their second song even more: free drums playing against short looped guitar parts. The guitar was mediocre for most of this, but I liked what the drummer was doing a lot. Unfortunately, their next song sounded a lot like a cover of the Rapture, as did the rest of their set. Much of the crowd seemed to first start getting into the band when they made this switch, but they instantly lost my interest. Don’t take the easy way out, guys.
The crowd stormed the stage as Deerhoof was about to play, and I got claustrophobic. A four-foot-tall girl next to me seemed to think it was standard practice to lean on strangers you stand near at a concert. I had hoped Deerhoof would play last so I could leave early, but no dice. I was never too impressed by their albums, though I liked their cover of “My Pal Foot Foot” on Better Than the Beatles. I had prepared myself to endure a boring and physically uncomfortable show, but it actually greatly improved my opinion of Deerhoof. Really cute melodies fragmented enough to be really interesting and enjoyable. I most liked how they often switched between precise and “sloppy” playing. Their set was great; now I’ve got to listen to their albums again, though I suspect their live show is just much better.
Most of the Deerhoof crowd left before the Flying Luttenbachers started, which I appreciated. There’s really not much to say that isn’t in my previous two reviews from a month or two ago. The show notably started out rather quietly, which was fortunately fixed after a couple songs. Maybe the volume never quite made it up enough or maybe I was too far from the stage, but the show didn’t seem nearly as intense as their last two performances. That didn’t seem to be a problem for the moshers or the people that tried to start some fisticuffs (both things I never really saw at a Luttenbachers concert to this degree). The ridiculous sampler interludes, which are obviously just filler to play while the guitarist tunes, were fewer, which was also good. I keep mentioning this in hopes that word will get to Weasel to cut it out. Anyway, I was rocked.
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[10 Jan 2004|04:20pm] |
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mood |
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Keystone Ice |
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music |
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Miracle Chosuke, "Nemesis" |
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 I am The Fool
The Fool can signal a new beginning or change of direction - one that will guide you onto a path of adventure, wonder and personal growth. He also reminds you to keep your faith and trust your natural responses. If you are facing a decision or moment of doubt, the Fool tells you to believe in yourself and follow your heart no matter how crazy or foolish your impulses may seem. For a full description of your card and other goodies, please visit LearnTarot.com
| What tarot card are you? Enter your birthdate.
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[08 Jan 2004|07:10pm] |
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I believe that the reason I smoke and drink every day and my wife is overweight is because we watched TV every day for the last four years.
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[06 Jan 2004|12:20am] |
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mood |
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charles shaw |
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music |
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kid606 |
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2$ wine is the bomb
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[30 Dec 2003|05:45pm] |
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mood |
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Keystone Ice |
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music |
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US Maple, "Tan Loves Blue" |
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My cousin just told me I look like Peter Fonda in this movie...
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[27 Dec 2003|12:18am] |
As far as I can tell, I've only seen 5 major-motion-picture-type movies made this past year. So my top 5 movies of the year are:
1. Willard
2. The School of Rock
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
4. A Mighty Wind
5. The Real Cancun
They basically all sucked.
I've definitely seen tons of great movies from 2002. I think the bleak reality of independent/underground film distribution is the cause of this.
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[15 Dec 2003|09:36pm] |
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music |
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the sick lipstick |
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You're Avant Garde Indie. You listen to abstract music like free-jazz and Krautrock. You drink too much coffee and you scare the fuck out of the rest of us. We're afraid to call you pretentious because we know that we all just don't get it. There are few of you out there, and most of you will probably die soon.
You Know Yer Indie. Let's Sub-Categorize.
brought to you by Quizilla
I took the liberty of correcting their spelling of "avante".
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