Animal Collective

Photo by Reidmix found on flickr.

Despite feeling like I got hit by a truck and having an intense fever I went with Moses and Lockett to see Animal Collective tonight at the Variety Playhouse here in Atlanta.

I can honestly say that it was the best show I've ever seen, beating out previous holders of that title, Circle from Finland (note to Circle: get a lightshow) and not counting Liars who always put on the best show I've ever seen every time I see them so don't count.

I was reminded of how much I miss going to see shows and having it be an experience. My fever broke in the middle of their set and I was sweating hardcore. It was literally like a fever dream of the little mermaid skeleton on ice. I am in awe. I don't think anyone comes close to matching their originality at this point... they are, in my opinion, the most relevant band active right now.

I would describe parts of the show as what it would be like to see the Orb circa "Adventures Beyond Ultraworld" as a live band. Did I mention the lights? I'm not being sarcastic about the lights. They fucked my head. It. Was. Actually. Fun. And. Exciting. It's been a long time since I've gotten to enjoy a show like that. Another word that kept popping in my head during the set was "universal." I don't think anyone could not find something to enjoy about the music I heard tonight, and there was also enough experimentation (not wankery) that it remained challenging and engaging.

I was thinking tonight about how older friends of mine are always talking about what it was like seeing My Bloody Valentine or Nirvana, bands that defined their era. I have a feeling I'll be bragging to my nephew about seeing AC back in '07.

This might seem like a total asskissing post. Trust me, it was good enough that I don't even care. I saw Radiohead at Stone Mountain with Lockett right after highschool and they had lasers and shit but I got bored. Then this chick who was selling frozen lemonade got me stoned and I ended up getting lost in the parking lot... the point i'm making is that AC put on a bigger show in a much smaller venue with much less fuss. Organically. And I wasn't even stoned. I had a fever.

Wow.

I have

the flu.

Jeff Weiss presents his Micromix

Greetings y'all, Jeff Weiss here. Before you start pelting your computer screens with rotten fruit, I'd like to offer up a Micromix that Bradford kindly invited me to compile. The collection of tracks focuses on perhaps my favorite period in music history, the period between '92 and '97 often referred to as hip-hop's second Golden Age. My other favorite period of course being the great boy band boom of the late 90s. LFO? O-Town? Those guys are fucking awesome.

Tracklisting

1. UGK-"One Day" Riding a simmering Isley brothers sample, Bun B and Pimp C spit one of the most gorgeous meditations on death ever recorded. "(Little known fact about UGK: their name is derived from the Uggs boots that they used to gang-bang in. Coke-dealing rappers love furry boots. Just ask Cam'ron.)

2. Lords of the Underground-"Here Comes the Lords"-With Marley Marl-supplied horns muffled under six inches of filth, the title track from the 1992 debut of severely overlooked Newark rappers, The Lords of the Underground, re-interprets and updates Little Lord Fauntleroy for the late 20th century.

3. Soul Assassins (Rza & Gza)-"Third World" From DJ Mugg's 1997 Soul Assassins compilation, this songs distills the essence of what made the Wu so special. Gza calmly constructs battle raps about cutting people's heads off with swords. The Rza squawks stoned and paranoid about wiretaps while name-dropping George McFly, Danny Devito and Tito Jackson. The track also serves as Bono's un-official theme song when he's doing charity work in impoverished nations.

4. Souls of Mischief-"93 Till Infinity" The best track from the best album from the best rap groups the Bay ever produced. It also includes the line "dial up Bridget/her man's a midget." Really, it actually does.

5. The Roots ft. Q-Tip-"Ital (The Universal Side)" I felt this mix needed at least one track from both the Roots and Tribe Called Quest. This was the compromise, a stellar collaboration from my favorite Roots record, 1996's Illadelph Halflife. Which unintentionally got its name because ?uestlove is dyslexic and was trying to spell Philadelphia.

6. The Pharcyde-"Passin' Me By" This was slated to be the soundtrack to Home Alone IV: Passed Over Passover, where Kevin is accidentally left at a Passover Sedar. Sadly, the film was never released and the Pharcyde's career abruptly went down the tubes.

7. Masta Ace-"Born to Roll" Was a huge hit in 1993 among schoolteachers who used it to soundtrack fire drills.

8. The Luniz-"I Got 5 on It Remix"-For the remix to their lone smash hit, "I Got 5 On It," The Lunix enlisted Bay Area royalty like E-40, Spice 1, Shock G, Dru Down & Richie Rich to create the ideal soundtrack for every weed purchase from here to eternity. Though I have never understood why anyone would just buy a nickel sack.

9. Goodie Mobb-"Thought Process" If you really liked last year's Gnarls Barkley record you probably never heard Cee-Lo in his prime, when he served as the centerpiece of Goodie Mobb, whose 1995 debut ranks as one of the five finest records the dirty south ever produced. This song also features spectacular early verses from fellow Dungeon Family alumni, Big Boi and Andre of Outkast, before Andre was brain-washed into thinking that he was Prince.

10. Geto Boys-"My Mind's Playing Tricks On Me"- "I sit alone in my four corner room lightin' candles" -Scarface originally opened the song with "lighting incense" but thought that candles seemed a bit more "hard-core."

11. Domino-"Sweet Potato Pie" This song really isn't about Sweet Potato Pie. Though I would still probably like it if it were. Even Herman Goring liked sweet potato pie.

12. Positive K-"I Got a Man"-Positive K was far superior to The Circle K and Special K (both the cereal and the drug).

13. Black Sheep-"The Choice is Yours Revisited" Great song. Won Dres and Black Sheep many fans in the pro-choice movement.

14. Camp Lo-"Black Nostaljack"




Video explain good.

15. Das Efx-"We Want Efx" Grimey, dirty, manhole-rattling sewer funk from Newark's finest circa 1992. The group's name was taken from the German submarine flick, Das Boot.

16. Jeru the Damaja-"Me or the Papes" About Jeru's feelings of the papal schism of 1378. In addition to being "a damaja" Jeru strongly believed that the papacy should've be re-located to Avignon, France. He also loved Pope Urban, mistakenly believing that his name implied solidarity with big city living.

17. Organized Konfusion-"Numbers" I have this theory that musicians who name themselves Pharoah tend to be awesome. See Pharoahe Monch, Pharoah Sanders. Pharoah Ramses the Great. Etc. Etc.

Download The Passion of the Weiss Micromix

fan appreciation day #1: oliver

Atlas Sound - Oliver.mp3

Coming soon: Ray Banhoff Day

Two For Tuesday

Calvary Scars / Green Jacket / Activa Suite (Microcastle Demos)

Calvy Scars is a new Deerhunter song we have been perfoming recently. I would like it to be part of a three song suite that would sit in the middle of "Microcastle." In this cycle I would like to attempt, though I'll probably fail, to kill off the adolescent character that haunts everything I write. Last year I saw this photograph by Peter Beste*:

The boy in the photo is being cruicified by his hero, a black metal musician from norway. This shit, I was told, Is real. I believed it enough to write a song from the boy's perspective which is,

Calvary Scars...

crucified on a cross in front of all my closet friends
crucified on a a cross (in front)
crucified by my hero who supplies the cross and nails
crucified with backstage passes
crucified on drum throne

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

crucified on cross revealed, finest wood and rope so thick
my arms, my wrists, would bleed for days
my arms, my wrists, would bleed for

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV


GREEN JACKET /// about first love

i take what i can, i give what i have left
then take by the hand what i have felt
what i see
grass grows grows green
autumn leaves burning burn burning burn
skulls pressed flesh on flesh
skullz pressed flesh on flesh

(two transposed videos)

SKLLS PRSED FLESHONFLESH

( ( ( ( ( ( ( a c t i v a ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) about first death

(we wasted our lives) wasted our time i trickled out creek would run dry
(poltergeist escapes cassette)
steam would rise our love atrophied and i tried hysterical peace.
worlds create themselves, fate led us straight to see graves marked for me
graves, dug for me.
(scrape, scrape)
I tried. I tried. I tried.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

These are very rough cassette four-track demos from two years ago. They were not made when I was in the best state of mind. Deerhunter is a band, not my solo project (atlas sound). These are songs meant for Deerhunter to work out together and build upon. There's a lot of work to do.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


*I just wanted to note that i wanted to post this and let you see the image that inspired the song, i didn't have a chance to ask permission to reprint the image. I want to point out that I am a huge fan of Peter Beste's photography. If I thought or am made aware that he had a problem with me making reference to his image I would absolutley remove it. Please go check out his other work: www.peterbeste.com
I also would like to note before anyone starts attacking this image or why I posted it that it is not pornographic, so spare me. Pornography is sexually explicit material meant to elicit a sexual response. That clearly is not the intention here. Pete is a documantary photographer and captures images and events as they occur in real life. I am too exhausted to take on the bullshit exploitational conservative people in our culture. They can go somewhere else. I am posting things that are relevant to the work i make. Deal with it or get the fuck out. And to all the anonymous pussies who troll around here and elsewhere (even those of you who operate huge influential webzines, etc.) I don't want your attention. I want your blood. Or alternately I want you to realize your hipocracy and get a life.

love,
coxy

A Sweet Lovesong from Sierra Leone / A Weekend in the Northwest

Sorry for the dry spell in posts. We flew out of Atlanta at 8:00 am on Thursday to play in Seattle and Portland with our sweet cute buddies Grizzly Bear. Lockett and I stayed up all night Wednesday and so we felt like shit for the majority of the weekend because it was hard to replace the missing night of sleep. The show in Seattle went okay but the borrowed gear was kind of shitty. Chris Taylor, Grizzly Bears bass player who doubles as head of the supreme council of instant haircuts gave my newly died burgundy (in homage to 1992 period Kurt Cobain NOT my so called life) hair the workout. After the show we drove to Olympia and stayed with Calvin Johnson who never fails to show me some amazing obscure piece of music. This time it was a collection of "hard to find r&b , pop, highlife, palm wine, juju, and coral music from africa, recorded between 1967 - 1972." The record, Lipa Kodi Ya City Council" was put out by a small label in portland called Mississippi Records. I had found one other compilation by them called "I Don't Feel at Home in this World Anymore," which was equally amazing. Calvin also had sent me another record they put out that collects old blues 78's but I have not had much time to explore that one.

The next morning we drove to Portland and checked into our hotel which turned out to be this weird sex hipster thing. It looked like an Ikea showroom and had a condom on the nightstand under a big red arrow that said "YES!" It made me nauseaus. No kidding, I spent the entire weekend feeling like a grossed out 10 year old boy. There was actually an adult toystore in the hotel next door to our room. I slept alone on a bed made for fucking. It made me more tired upon waking. It also made me realize how grossed out I am by the pathetic hetero or homo mating ritual of indie rock culture. Do I sound like an asshole? I'm not conservative. I'm just terrified. Therapy didn't work out so well for me I guess..

Friday we played a free show at an awesome space called Audio Cinema and met some awesome kids and scored free Nikes, which is nice because free shoes are always nice. After that Lockett and I went back to the sexhotel and took advantage of the free wireless and downloaded SNES emulators and Lockett played "Earthbound" while I downloaded Jim O'Rourke's "I'm happy and I'm Singing and a 1,2,3" B-52'w bootlegs from Jamaica and the soundtrack to Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Saturday we did a live session for KEXP which you can stream off their website at KEXP by going to stream archive and typing in "Saturday Sept. 8" and "4PM" it sounded pretty good. Josh's bass died after the first song, the new one "Calvary Scars" so there was an awkward Q&A session that didn't amount to anything bloggable (ha ha). Then I got to hang out with the Forkster of White Rainbow. He took me and Kristin to Mississippi and I scored that African LP ($7!!!) and another LP with early recordings of detroit girl groups ($4!!!) if you live in, or are visting Portland, I HIGHLY suggest you scope that place out. We walked in and they were blasting Forbidden Planet and had this cool kid that looked about 15 who was just hanging out and listening to piles of field recordings.. sometimes Portland seems like another planet.

Later that night L and I checked out the scene at the White Rainbow / Yacht / Dirty Projectors show. White Rainbow was sick as fuckkk. You will be hearing a lot more about him on here soon. Yacht was also cool but I couldn't see much because it was so packed. DP was good also but we had to ditch to go play with Bobby Conn. That show was also fun. Kristin says I am abusing my new Mutron III. I reminded her that she does not like Stereolab so she would never understand. I also reminded her that Ween used phasers. She rolled her eyes and looked away from me. The night ended with me and Bobby Conn doing his song "Angels" as the encore. Bobby was ACE and is the real deal.

We flew back this morning and I am emotional and tired (as the british say). I laid down and put on the African LP and took an ativan and fell in love with this song:

S.E. Rogie - Do Me Justice.mp3

It's a love song. I listened to it over and over. It is so sweet. I mean that in a way that doesn't exist in this day and age. Which is sad. Now there are only sexhotels with condoms that sit on the table next to you while you are sleeping and infect your dreams. Confusion is sex.

Love,
Bradford

P.S. excerpt of liner notes from this record "The music on one side Efik, my own language portrays the fact that life is nothing and we should not fear death."

P.P.S. Lockett will probably post something when he beats "Earthbound"

Three Elegies in Sound

These songs were recorded tonight from 3:30 am to 6:15 am.



take to the wind (for samuel beckett)

all my life
crawl to the wind, standing
try to embrace the gods i thought created
all my life i prayed to a god and watched it
take my friends away one by one
all my life pray to the wind the wind will take you
pray to stars the stars won't take you
but they will guide you away
spray towards the wind betray the wind
all my life the crypt was closed on the verge
on the verge of
all my life
take away take away
suffering
all my life all my life
(breath rhythm)
take to the wind
and maybe the wind will guide me

(Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish dramatist, novelist and poet.
Beckett's work is stark, fundamentally minimalist, and, according to some interpretations, deeply pessimistic about the human condition. His work grew increasingly cryptic and attenuated over his career. - from wikipedia.org)



always tired (for betty harris)

why is my heart so empty all the time?
why do i dream all of the different times
i had something bothering me?
why is it so easy to sleep all the time?
why do i dream so much i cry?
i need to know
how did you know my name?
how did you know my name?

(Betty Harris is not dead. This is a elegy for her recordings... "In 1963, her searing ballad "Cry To Me" hit #10 on the Billboard R&B chart and #23 pop. Though it was Betty's only major hit, she made a number of other fine soul recordings throughout the '60s. By the decade's end, however, Betty Harris decided she'd had enough of the music business and left it to lead a more conventional life.

Thirty-five years later, though, Sister Betty has re-emerged on the music scene. One of the first things she did in that regard was to e-mail me in mid-2004 upon discovering this website. Betty advised me that she now lived in my hometown of Hartford, CT. Stunned, I invited her to appear on The Soul Express, which she did on June 19, 2004.

Sept. 6, 2006: Betty and her family have relocated to Atlanta. She gave her Northeast farewell concert at Johnny D's in Somerville, MA, on Friday night, June 23rd." - (courtesy of http://www.soulexpressradio.com/BettyHarris.htm) Note: I occasionally see her at Thumbs Up, a diner I frequent with Lockett)




puppy in the window (for bo diddley)

i found my knife on the bedside table where i left it
took a look around the rotted times
dreaming of a girl who can heal these wounds
she says she's got my kid
dreaming of a way i can take that kid
i told the girl to wait and meet me downtown
looking at the windows of the golden shops
i look and i see puppy in the window..
how much is that puppy in the window?
is this puppy for sale?
i have a feeling i will make it mine..
feel my knife in my pocket.

(Bo Diddley is not dead either. This is an elegy instead for a puppy that was bought by him on a whim in 1968, he named the puppy "Saxaphone" and it lived three years before being destroyed by light. About old Bo.... "Bo Diddley (born December 30, 1928) aka "The Originator" of Rock 'N' Roll, is an influential American rock and roll singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is often cited as the key figure in the transition of blues into rock and roll, by introducing more insistent, driving rhythms and a hard edged guitar sound. He is also remembered for his characteristic rectangular-shaped guitar." - from wikipedia.org

Labor Day Rooftop Party NYC

Baltimore

My Sleepless Night in Baltimore

Ativan no longer aids in my sleeping process...









Dirty Projectors - Since I Opened.mp3
From Slave's Graves and Ballads

********************************
MICROCASTLE NOTES:

2. religion in the '60's

3. track homes. suburban architecture. the american design. a castle for each family which gradually decays. teenage boy's bedroom next to loud ac outside w/ boom box on window sill. smell of mildew and dead skin. panaflex.

4. vintage microphone pre-amps

5. the convenience of heterosexuality.

5.2 moth-eaten tolex on bass amp

6. twilight at carbon lake = coda for american song (with feeling)

7. smaller parts / more definition between parts / more hooks / less crawlspace / more focus on rooms / less expansive / more enclosed / ghost snares

8. less obvious focus on adolescence

9. entrance and exit of themes. subtitles.

10. possible clearance of slayer sample

11. possible clearance of betty harris sample

*********************************************

Can recorded "Monster Movie" in a german Castle....

from Stylus:

"The student said The Beatles were more radical than Stockhausen, the teacher laughed, they formed a band. They recruited the greatest drummer in the world (Jazz-trained—instilled with the motto “never repeat, never repeat” from the day he picked up sticks. And when given the freedom to play how he wanted? Decided to repeat forever.) and a giant black American singer, a sculptor evading the draft by travelling Europe. They recorded in a castle, strange nursery-rhyme inverting songs about getting high with Mary, about your father being unborn, weird, European psychedelic junctions. 20-minute jams about nothing in particular but keyed in to the rhythm of the universe. Oh yes. The singer couldn’t take the stress, or something, and left. The rest of Can spotted a Japanese man shouting at people in the street, and asked him to join their band. He did, and proceeded to sing in a made-up language for the next five years. (Later he would find religion, and become a Jehovah’s Witness, which is the mentalist inversion of Americans or Europeans “getting” Buddhism or Taoism.) "

**********************************************

Lockett as a child outside of "Castle Gates" with his brothers and father...

An Appreciation of Stereolab's "Blue Milk"

"Blue Milk" is the 11 and a half minute centerpiece to what I believe to be Stereolab's finest album, "Cobra and Phases Play Voltage in the Milky Night" from 1999. It might be my favorite song of all time.

When I was in high-school I idolized this band and saw them every time they came to Atlanta. I would show up at the venue three or four hours before doors to make sure I got to be front and center (right in front of Mary Hansen.) I saw them play this song three times and each time stimulated and reinforced the part of my brain that wanted to make music - on a stage - live. I could watch a band perform this song for three hours and be ecstatic.

I have collected several live versions of this song and have them at home on my external hard drives. I will post one as soon as i get home.

Live, Laetitia Sadier would play Tim Gane's right-handed fiesta red fender jaguar upside down (she's left-handed) and chime two notes over a squelching analog drone that was kind of creepy and mysterious. Tim and Mary would join in on guitars creating a counter-harmonic two-tone chime that sort of functioned as a fluid chord. The overall impression was that of Cabaret Voltaire circa "Nag Nag Nag" taking eleven minutes of a live set to cover a Terry Riley piano drone. Tim uilized a shurman filterbank that looks like this:

to create this spectral phantom harmonic noise sound that would ebb and flow, creating a totally hypnotic and organic pattern. Then it all explodes into what translated live as a complete cathartic freakout. Most people, I think, remember Stereolab in that era as being "retro-kitsch" or "loungey" or something. I remember them as being capable of melting my teenage mind with the fusion of hypnotic repition and punk rock dynamics (or lack of).

On the recorded version (an edited version of which is presented here) Jim O'rourke captures the creepiness and pop aspects of the song perfectly with distant sounding piano, what sounds like filtered cymbals, and physical tape editing. Gane's filterbank solo is especially well executed. I listened to this song and nothing else for the entire fall of my senior year in high school. I've always wanted write a song as interesting, hypnotic, and dynamic (not to mention creepy, in a kind of Suicide-esqe way.)

Music Critics (fickle as they are) did not respond so well to the song...

NME wrote an infamous review that began with the oh so clever pull-quote "Well, you have to admit they're good at what they do. But then so was Hitler...."

referring specifically to 'Blue Milk': "[It] is the 11-minute artistic centrepiece of this 'work'. We know this because it's the longest and nearly impossible to listen to. It features, innovatively enough, two chords going on and on. They may have some theory that this produces feelings of pleasure in the cerebral cortex. And yet, at the same time you suspect they labour under the laughable delusion that this is in some way pop music"

The response was pretty similar stateside....

from the "taste-makers" at pitchfork:

"Blue Milk," the stultifying fourteen- minute drone which slowly spins in the middle of Cobra and Phases Group Plays Voltage in the Milky Night like a interest- sucking blackhole, brings to mind Michael Snow's 1967 "short" film "Wavelength," in that it soars to new levels of vexation and artistic solipsism. Actually, Stereolab might take this as a compliment, since they named the first track on Dots and Loops after avant- garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, and they evidently lounge around in plastic furniture wearing thick turtlenecks, smoking long- stemmed pipes, and debating the subtle differences between Josef Alberts' blue and yellow paintings.

A slow zoom across a minimally- decorated city loft comprises the entire 45 minutes of "Wavelength." Set to the sound of a constant tone, which gradually increases in pitch, the zoom closes on a framed photograph of ocean waves. This is such a cheeky joke for a supposedly groundbreaking art film. The director drags the viewers through grating boredom to deliver a pun which is obvious from the first frame. Like most avant- garde art, it might have a valid statement, but it's not a process an audience needs to or wants to go through. A brief verbal description would suffice. On Voltage, their eighth LP, Stereolab sink so deep into their socialist cocktail jazz schtick that they typify this flaw. Frigid noodling, insipid harmonies, and unmemorable repetition lazily waft from yawning French- poseurs. Fractions of this soulless wankery might stimulate the academic, but when the album clocks in at nearly twice the length of "Wavelength," it becomes a Herculean test of human attention."

(hey, i figure they post stuff from our blog all the time (for no real reason), i should be able to reprint their writing without permission? right?)

Who is more pretentious? A band following its instincts or the writers who flex their cultural cross-referencing skills for credibility. I wish there were more "pop songs" like Blue Milk. Especially now in the era of Fall Out Boy and Coldplay. I think the closest thing to the aesthetic vibe would be a band like Animal Collective (who have had a similar effect on the same part of my brain upon me seeing them perform "loch raven" for the first time). Animal Collective have been embraced because this is an era in which weirder music seems to be thriving more..

Quick notes because I am running on reserve battery and my charger is in the van....

Tim Gane told me once when I met him that the original version of this song was edited (by cutting and splicing tape the old way) from 35 or 40 minutes to eleven. He gave me the set list on which it is listed as its alternate title "piano mode."

The Double LP of the album features "Blue Milk" as an entire side.. an extended 20-something minute version I've never heard. I have been trying to track the double lp down for ages but I always get outbid at the last second of somebody wants 50 bux for it which I don't have. If anyone among you has the double vinyl version PLEASE record the version of Blue Milk onto a computer and post it so I can space out to it on repeat for hours in the van. I WILL BE ETERNALLY GRATEFUL.

The sun is rising over Baltimore while I type this... listening to the song on repeat over and over. I never get tired of it.

Stereolab - Blue Milk (Edit)