At War With Metal

AFTERBORN AG'IN

2008-10-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

The 'scuses are many why I haven't been poking up like you wanted me to around here for a year or whatever. Solidarity with Rettman, consumption of bitter seeds, too many nights of "sobriety", continuing to have my laptop be "stolen", and just general weariness of the eyes, mind, and fingertippies. But eff it, I Am Hurdlejumper, and I am back because NOW FEELS RIGHT. There's been a new synthesis (so tempted to CAP that as well, but hell if I'm gonna give you the edge of dismissal on schizo grounds) and temporary or not, some sac up in my head emptied all the noxious neurofactor and my boddy (yes, two 'd's, 'cause we're also pals us two) dumped that crap into the River Isis (I's is) and now that I've had a whole weekend of rollaround with no regret, no second-guess'd manouvers, well, felt the time to touch down 'pon yr screens. I AM PUSHINK THRU (yess caps).

"Why the new mood?" you ask, "and where does this leave yr krumbled rantish behaviors of yore?" Well that's a valid question and one I'm sure I'd care to answer if I had butta clue. As it sits, all I know is that something to do with the cooling air temps prior to the full hit of ballfreeze that is as always (always!) en route has linked up the different factions in my brain in a conductive wiring that keeps the roles bawling and the desire for balance and charity most humanizing. Total lack of meanthinks or sadcrappenings, at least for a while, is what I am saying to you now.

"And so I guess whatchoo been listening to, then?" you figure you might as well ask, 'cause otherwise I'll probably start blogging about denimwear again or some such. Well, I have been listening to SO MUCH that it just isn't unfunny. I mean, what, I give you an overview of the past year? Now? Or just a smidgen of the current angles I'm working? I'm not thinking like that, no, so be patient pups. I'm sure it'll weasel it's way in, but for now I'm finding some footing while footing is good. I'ma write about just about nothing, or more or less nothing, 'cause, well, (1) I've been reading Javier Marias so I suppose that's my headspace (not quite nothing, but almost, or at least not much) and (2) THESE WORDS JUST KEEP A-COMIN'. Who am I to shut 'em down?

So now that yr reluctantly inching lips towards spigot, eyes casting a gaze imploring me to go easy on the pump, hoping the swelling juices aren't dosed in weird and sour'd reuptake uninhibitors, or maybe hoping that they're just not *too* sour, crossing yr joss and thinking on the crassest of jass, I'll let you know that I have been hardly working, churning and reinterpreting all that eargristle that's been chumming my way. That's right...

I made a damn song on a tape.

That's right, after a year of being terrified of my own keyboard (okay, not even my own keyboard but the keyboard of another), following the year plus prior to that where I did what but occassionally haul off on a few 'graphs and mebbe once in a moon tune up in mossy basement cache (and not even my own basement, natch, but that of a brother) I stunned myself to the brainquick with the utter realization that alla this record collecting and side hunting and cake gobbling was, yes, in part to broaden what I was aware of in terms of what music, exactly, was. I mean, it took a while, as it would if you were raised on a tennis racket and Cruisin' 1962, but that is some never ending push I can now tell you that, and what it became also is like some kinda me hunting out what toes I had to not step on. See, deep deep down I've always been a total rocker, you know this. It comes thru. But what I was up to was tendin' way too much towards "internet music huckster guy", and a fairly fake-ass one at that. Whuddadda whuddadda whuddadda? Who does THAT by choice?

So my quest for "inspiration" turned into a lookout party for what bases were already covered, a sorta "who don't I want to rip off", which became absurd because I was not producing shit, which yes does make me horrid. A "patron", if you will. Gross. But not so gross, I suppose. Because I finally got good and rum hungover this weekend, or still morning-drunk, perhaps, and sat down all by my lonesome with my cheap ass setup in my nice ass clothes (priorities, rockers!) and I made a little tune. Or, more to the point, I started making a bunch of little tunes, and connecting dots that I didn't even know I had pinpricked in my own melon. Whoda thunk, you go and shiver in a corner with a stylus for a couple years and some creases actually start acknowledging shit. It's good time, after all. Sense has been made of my existence!

So, yes. I am now an artist. It is true. I'm not making any grand claims to life-changing-ness on any of yr body parts (not just yet) but I'm no longer so bummed by all the slabs that I miss out on by necessity. I have my own slabs, thank you! I'm gonna add some more stuff and figure out how I wanna get them offa tape and yes then throw them up here. You don't believe me but you also don't have a finger on the epic juices of imbalance coursing through me right now, so off with ye and come back when I'm quite ready.

Hemming and Hawing

2008-03-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

They call the Irish "Donkeys", or at least so I read in Bonfire of the Vanities, but the obstinacy of a Finn is tried and true as they come; they just stay quieter while drinking the bleak winter away. So it is that my heritage often keeps me from doing lo.gical things such as hemming my damn pants, even when I'm not what you'd call a tall motherfucker and every spring of my life has been a month-long shuffle through ankle sucking muck. Perhaps I'm just content to work for pants money, perhaps I just need to reduce the hem width of my purchases and improve on proper "stacking". No matter! I stay the course, pruning my calves and preserving sock bands as stank tattoos, twisting a lip at the capillary action of cotton in grim denial.

But what really gooses my ass about spring is the immediate reminder that whilst I was huddled, reading ever-so-slowly through books that everyone I aspire to emulate has already polished off and/or dismissed, like, twice, people have actually been accomplishing shit in this town. I find it hard enough to contain the rolling boil in my veins during my first stroll from the bus stop sans parka, unsheathed and translucent and engorged, when I have only an amorphous concept of that nagging sense of non-accomplishment from a good season wasted feeding and loathing, let alone when local folk start posting actual hot trax to their goddam myspace pages. Myspace! The gall. And that I had to locate them via 20jazzfunkgreats! So far away. I stumble, refusing to look at the puddles lest they mock me: "You may be from here, but you are not of here." Good luck at SxSW, say hi to the Siltbreeze camp...

Zola Jesus
Dead Luke

In remembrance of weeks past as I curse the slush of today...

Sheltered Life #3: Bitter Pills for Winter Chills Part 1 Part 2

Make a Change... Kill Yourself - Life Revisited - II
Magik Markers - Most Beautiful City on Earth - I Trust My Guitar, Etc.
Sixteen - Chapel of the Chimes - Hex
Electric Eels - Agitated - Eyeball of Hell
Bone Awl - Offering to Me - So I Must Take From the Earth
Satyricon - Mother North - Nemesis Divina
Grey Daturas - Golden Tusk the Endearing - Dawn of the Catalyst
Motor Ghost - Golden Promise - A Gold Chain Round Her Breast
Flaherty Corsano Duo - Whiskey and Soda - Steel Sleet
Dead C - LA Confidential - split w/ Hi God People
Birchville Cat Motel - Chi Vampires - Chi Vampires
Weakling - Cut Their Grain and Blaze Fire Therein - Dead as Dreams

Hazmat Jigs

2008-02-20T18:20:00.000-08:00

It was a simple truth: Nothing could ever be perfect. "Duh," came the follow up thought, leading to a ricocheting cat-and-mouse game of neural pathway tag between the two brainfarts, the bleak slab reasserting itself again and again in pointless argument with the monosyllabic, echoing thok, "Duh". An unintentional and uninterested mantra. It would have been purifying, had anything been anything but pure to begin with.

At first he had been slightly peeved that the coffee machine seemed to not be pushing quite a full cup out. Over time, a dose of the stuff seemed to stop almost a full centimeter below the upper lip of the cup. True, the coffee was free, and he could just have another cup... but that gap... it seemed wrong. Something needed calibration. What if the level kept dropping every dose? He'd be denied precious sips at least in ratio to trips to the machine.

Of course he didn't complain. That would have been some bullshit beyond even his petty capabilities. He suspected nobody did. It was minor and who could possibly care? These people weren't petty. Or, as he watched himself do, they at least suppressed that pettiness in service of pleasant civility. Everywhere! All of his days it was like this, throughout this town. Affability! Good will, tattered about it's edges! Well, perhaps not on a case by case basis; as he got older the servicework performed by current undergraduates seemed to have a certain -- sneer -- to it, but a general aura of complacent (self? he couldn't tell) satisfaction seemed to pervade the streets he shuffled through. No complaints here! Tip-top! And why should he rock the boat? Indeed.

Yet one day the level of coffee was higher. He could only assume that a routine servicing had resulted in a recalibration. Nobody needed to point it out, someone was checking on it as part of their scheduled maintenance, their supplication to that aura. Self-correction! We're already on top of that! Been penciled in for weeks.

This made him think of when he worked at the coffee stand in the University's Student Union and how much variability there had been in the mass of grounds produced by the buzzing grinders. Sometimes the coffee company would send somebody in, and they would invariably grind batch after batch, tweaking the clockwork to achieve just the right throughput, the air reeking of Breakfast Blend, everyone achieving caffeine buzz and blacklung simultaneously, no burnt tongues, no dead canaries. And yet, the batches... they wavered. They chose their own fate, did it on the fly.

But this, this single serving coffee had just the right level. His nose twitched slightly at the invitation to awaken, his tongue throbbed with expectation of the impending heatwave. He lifted the cup and started strolling...

Coffee curled over the styrofoam lip, the antithesis of the big, icy Superior breakers he used to see violating the cement walls jutting out into the Great Lake. No, this was tiny, black, and scalding. His thumb caught it at the base, on a small scar that used to look like a half moon, the result of a glass broken during one of his rare excursions washing dishes between 2003-2004. A translucent brown drip bulged as his skin blushed.

This set off the game of tag in his mind, the Duh-Sutra. No caffeine yet, even! After he sat down, he thought: Christ, I wonder what the sidewalks will be like after all this snow melts.

Sheltered Life #2: "Repetition" Part 1 Part 2

Faust - It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl - So Far
Faust - Munich/Yesterday - 71 Minutes
Pole - Warum - Steingarten
Isolee- I Owe You -Western Store
Pole - Pferd - Steingarten
This Heat - Repeat -Repeat
Eyes and Arms of Smoke - In Three Houses - In Three Houses
Anaksimandros - Lappi Fast Witch - River of Finland
Anaksimandros - Run With Vishnu - River of Finland
Kemialliset Ystavat - Musta Metsa - Kellari Juniversumi
Kemialliset Ystavat - On Patsi Metsa - Kellari Juniversumi
Phillip Jeck - Spirits Up - Surf
Es Sateenkaarisuudelma III - Sateenkaarisuudelma
Galbraith/Neilson/Youngs - Track 2 - Belsayer
Terry Riley - Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band - A Rainbow in Curved Air

Resurrected by Hi Bandwidth Angelz

2008-02-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

Jesus shit, I just noticed how long it has in actuality been since I last sproinged forth my fever dreams onto google's unsuspecting serverbots for the enjoyment of your eyebeams. Well, that weren't my intention. Maybe back around Thankssgiving I tried to squee shut the tap jus' a bit to pressurize and metabolize a more -- significant? personable? purposeful? carefree? gluten free? -- flow, and wound up rather Thanksgiving up [Har!]. Hibernating. I can afford nice beer now, even been taught a bit on how to make an acceptable batch, and our living room's been rearranged to allow sweet couch-fed access to my turntable, so I can slap singles off 'n on without any effort, which is pretty much exactly as things should be. And, you know, shit... "Happy families are all alike." And so I conform, somewhat, and then what do I tell you of interest? Oh, but I'm still legit. Things don't still piss me off sometimes: I screwed some much-craved goulash up last night, it took forever for Netflix to send us the second disc of the Wire's fourth season, and other things sometimes inconvenience me for minutes or even hours at a time. Life is hard all over, I guess.

My laptop is still stolen as fuck, but we just bought a real live supported internet hookup. Yeah, I know... total sellouts. Still, now when I have a sixer and can convince my lady to stop demanding mutually fulfilling conversation and/or lovemaking, I can log on here via her (other) machine and tell you all about my stuff! My opinions! My "thoughts"! Again! It's like old times.

And so to kick of the deluge or trickle of effortless, directionless posts that I will once again spend valuable time and eyecells on over Russian lit, I offer you the first edition of the newly retitled for 2008 broadcasting masterpiece, my gawdamn radio riot:

Sheltered Life #1 part 1 | part 2 - theme: Welcome to the Outhouse

Velvet Underground - Sheltered Life - Something Different
Neon Pearl - Forever - Neon Pearl
Black Swan - Echoes and Rainbows - Black Swan
Michael Chapman - One Time Thing - Galactic Zoo Tape Club comp
Crosby and Nash - Where Will I Be - Galactic Zoo Tape Club comp
Lee Hazlewood - Autumn's Done Come - Galactic Zoo Tape Club comp
Paul Metzger - Orans - Deliverance
Isengrind - Perseid Meteor Shower - Golestan
MV & EE - Snowstorm Blues - Mars Delta
The Byrds - Blue Canadian Rockies - Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Elephant Micah - Distant Things - Hindu Windmill
Ai Aso - Unknown - Umerumonoizen
Les Rallizes Denudes - Unknown - Deeper than the Night
Marissa Nadler - Fifty Five Falls - Ballads of Living and Dying
Ben Nash - Rebecca - cassette
Alice Coletrane - Journey in Satchidananda - Journey in Satchidananda
Keiji Haino - Unknown - Watashi-Dake?
Jacob Olausson - Welcome Traveler - Moonlight Farm
The Patron Saints - Shine on Heart - 7"
Liz Green - Bad Medicine - 7"
Natural Snow Buildings - Wisconsin - Dance of the Moon and the Sun

Positive Outlooking for Something to Do

2007-11-17T10:34:00.000-08:00

Dunno if it's the chill Nov drizzle or some shit just got slapped out my neurons, but I've had an Ichi the Killer DVD-box-guy (no I ain't seen it) rictus stitchgrin on my internal mug for the past little while now. Yuz, happiness, and here I am to mope about it.

Seriously, it has got me panicking. I mean, how did I get here? How do I stay here? Maybe it's something as easy as having Burial release a new album come every couple months, but I dunno it seems like the ol' dopamine receptors wouldn't be able to handle that onslaught. Y'know how there's a track on th' new Untrue called "Endorphin"? And how it indeed causes a blush of diffusion every time that pitched up voice sings it's little lament and the other one says something about flashing lights? Yeah, that's running me low on whatever compounds it is that my brain needs to make that shizz. Mouse pushing a button here.

And fuggit, I don't really feel like getting into all the other musicks right now. Mostly I want to shout loudly out in appreciation of those dwindling blahg authors who are posting rarely but still slip one out now and again. Woundedgalaxy, Crud Scott, Blastitude, Rettman, Siltblog, the list goes on (I know yull be back, OS Gams). Yeah some of yerz are linked at the side but I don't bother to update them bits and just wanted a live and direct message to let you know that when yuz do get around to slopping something up, it's enjoyed by the soppers. Spreading love like a true ladderclimber, but you know that I ain't got no rungs anyhow. So keep doin' it, as often or as rarely as you feel, but at least make this ridiculous foray into internet ass kissin' worth somethin'.

I dunno, fine. One other thing getting lotsa spin here has been the Bvdub Requited Love twelve on Styrax. It's like if Substance & Vainqueur did a breakup record. It's like if deathprod moved his bod. If Dulli grooved to Carl Craig 'stead of all that motown. It's gluttonous. Real butter.

Now... somebody get me that On the Corner box, tickets to "No Country For Old Men", a cheese basket, and yes I still listen to stuff with guitars, asshole. If it's any good, and that's in an objective way.

2007-11-05T09:39:00.000-08:00

The midsized outflux of all manners of weirdos I useta spend my days with and the general pain of not having a centralized home CD stereo line has driven me out to do things in public like I would generally avoid. Though I haven’t yet tried public urination to the same extent that some of the aforementioned weirdos tended to partake. Nah, I’ve been trying to attend “cultural” events and shit. Like concerts or Jim Trainor film series or personal appreciation exercises of the Boss Burger at Nick’s Cafe. Word on the street is that Wolf Eyes goon Nate Young is gonna be showing some films while playing contact mic’d woodblocks or somethin’ the selfsame nite that Andrew W.K. is bringing his guru show to the Union. I’m deeply crossing fingers that this could lead to hijinks and inevitably to moi talkin’ some good natured shit about the lower peninsula to these tape fiend trolls. Worthy events continue to roll out in this town; very disappointing to a dude who just finally managed to replace the halogen bulb on his reading lamp in time for the late year bleakness.

Which reminds: thanx also to Glass Candy for gracing the High Noon in the opening slot for those prison colonist ADD churls. It was a pleasure “observing” you in your mighty attempt to move the twee toddler masses to some form of action other than their moschops lumber.

I suppose you were thinking that maybe this place was dead. I guess now would be as good as any time to letcha know that I plan to maneuvering my updates here to be more aligned with personal diaretics and mentionings of musicks and other interests that are perhaps more on the obscure sides. Might as well admit that I’ve somewhat sold out “the scene” and I have been/will continue to offer up semipro squeegee filth on more “available” sides or matters as a contribuwhore at Shiv/Shill/Shine. E.g. a post on New Age tapes and how they’ve helped me achieve enfrightenment would be placed here, whereas a post on something like my everexpanding appreciation of Mark Hollis would likely work it’s way out over there, much to Hasting’s chagrin I am sure. Is it already outta print? I’ll rub it in yr face here. Available on Amazon? There. I’ll probably talk about Burial’s Untrue at both places, ‘cause it is the Alpha and the Omega of 2007 and beyond.

And fine, if you want some kinda insight into my current general mindset via statistical analysis, here’s a sampling of my current most played albums on my work computer, unordered just to piss you off:

Daniele Baldelli – Cosmic: The Original
Pauline Oliveros – Accordion and Voice
Isengrind – Golestan
MV & EE – Mars Delta
Grey Daturas/Monarch – Dawn of the Catalyst
Twinsistermoon – Levels and CrossingsAndrew Chalk – Blue Eyes of the March (still haven’t heard pt 2, dammit)

Perchta Plate

2007-10-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

I've brought up elusive and ethereal androgydroners Natural Snow Buildings here before, and once again I'll jump into the fray, unafraid to come off like that kinda dude pushing stuff that you just aren't gonna get hardcopy of at this junkture.

Over the past year, the pairing responsible for the immersive double cdr "The Dance of the Moon and the Stars" have now sallied forth to blip radars with a few solo specks, furthing their distinctive aesthetic in pressings of fewer than 40 apiece.

I'm really not quite sure what to tell you at this point. I feel prick enough pushing these micro releases on ya without devolving into too much of the prose that this kinda stuff inspires. Shit, I've already used "ethereal". What else? "Haunted"? "Gossamer"? "Devotional shamanic seance"?

It's all true, folks, and it's no throwaway derivative tripe, neither. Each of these discs (which, for posterity's sake, I suppose I should explicitly identify as Twinsistermoon's "When Stars Glide Through Solid" and "Levels and Crossings" and Isengrind's "Golestan") is a testament to careful craftsmanship and production, both the sonic contents and physical package. While yr not likely to be holding the swank foldout trays and art paper liners any time soon, unless you already are, I do recommend googling around as it seems that some kind souls have made a good deal of this stuff available across the wires.

As a brief rundown of my personal thoughts on each release, Twinsistermoon's first, "When Stars...", has the deepest middle-of-the-night rooftop-twirling moondance vibe, everything coming off like there's no end in sight for the inky blackness (not that you'd want there to be). Shingles are flying off ledges, but nothing's hitting the ground. In contrast, "Levels" maintains a similar vibe while occassionaly suggesting a few approaching rays of dawn, or an overtired dew-dropped hike along a dirt road, pantscuffs soaked by the weeping grasses.

"Golestan" is a bit more abstracted, pulling back on some of Twinsistermoon's lushness for a slightly more arid, though none less beautiful, soundscape. Without Mehdi's sickly-sweet vocals, things focus a lot more on ear-to-the-dirt drone maneuvers, with a couple dirge-marches finding an unlikely shared space between gentleness and menace, evoking to this brainpan a parade of animal skeletons moving somehow playfully towards a mirage of springwater.

Well, yeah. Figured I'd go and get all convoluted and I did. That, I s'pose, is all I can hope for. This stuff is definitely worth looking out for for the amazing sonix, and with any luck some bastard will start a campaign up for wider releases so package fondlers can have their proper fill as well. A bone? Thrown:

Twinsistermoon - The Solar Cross - Levels and Crossings (Sendspace link)

Isengrind - With it's mouth to the south and it's tail to the north - Golestan (Sendspace link)

The evil thing 'bout open doors

2007-09-17T18:37:00.000-07:00

Terribly unsatisfying post here to puff out an excuse. Poor timing and an unwillingness to man up and haul more than two grocery bags at a time led to me holding my own front door open to the very person destined to steal my laptop. My hand is now forced with the unsatisfying option of public bloggery, an endeavor that grants no small challenge for us paranoid types who hold back from flasking it or obvious paper baggery. Now that I'm outed as both an easy mark and an excessive pussy when it comes to public drinking, allow me to further unsatisfy you with the fact that my current machine of fortune doesn't sport the necessary free gigs to pass around files to some type of repository in which I can disseminate them for the good of the internets. As such, please enjoy looking at playlists with no accompanying audio content. At War With Metal: combining the technological advances of print media with the hideous layout options of fucked-with Blogger templates. Could a slow death be far behind?

Insufferable Picks: 09/07/07

Velvet Underground - Sheltered Life - Something Different
Amaryllis - Zoroaster's Prophecy - Bread, Love and Dreams
Kaleidescope - Faintly Blowing - Faintly Blowing
The Bummer Road - Too Much is Not Enough - Deep Space Circuit
Al Green - Here I Am (Come and Take Me) - Call Me
Kuupuu - A3 - Unilintu
Paavoharju - Valo Tihkuu Karken Lapi - Yva Hamaraa
LSD-March - Track 1 - Empty Rubious Red
Charles Mingus Sexted with Eric Dolphy - Jitterbug Waltz - Cornell 1964
Liz Green - French Singer - 7"
Sandy Bull - No Deposit No Return Blues - E Pluribus Unum
Cem Karaca and Kardaslar - Passion of Gold - Puskullu Maruk
Mala - Learn - 12"
Kromestar - B1 - 12"
Massive Music - Find My Way (Kode 9 remix) - 12"
Rustie - Jagz the Smack - EP
Ohm - Scales - Happi EP
T++ - Allied or possibly Tensile - Allied/Tensile 12"

Insufferable Picks - 09/14/07 - Featuring my only guest ever Davey J keeping the hit count high...

Pink Reason - By a Thread - 7"
Ronin - Kuru - 7"
Fabulous McClevertys - Landlady Wants the Rent - More Bedbugs (scored from WFMU 'cause I'm cashed up like that)
Tomutonttu - Pimeyden Pentu - ehdohttelee
Grouper - Close Cloak - Way Their Crept
Moolah - Terror is Real - Woe Ye Demons Posessed
Pink Floyd - Interstellar Overdrive - Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Six Finger Satellite - Race Against Space - Law of Ruins
Blonde Redhead - A Cure (???) - Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons
Astral Social Club vs Birchville Cat Motel - Live mix - Who the fuck cares?
Wire - Three Girl Rhumba - Pink Flag
Television - The Fire - Adventure
X - In This House that I Call Home - Wild Gift
Replacements - Androgynous - Let it Be
David Bowie - Future Legend/Diamond Dogs - Diamond Dogs
Bob Dylan - Temporary Like Achilles - Blonde on Blonde
Quicksilver Messenger Service - Who Do You Love Suite - Happy Trails
Wire - Reuters - Pink Flag

Updates to continue sporadically as I can balance my buzz with the outside air... new doltery debuting elsewhere real soon like... spreading too thin to win in the latter 2k7...

Private Static Void

2007-08-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

Talk about failure to acheive momentum, failure to deliver. Well, what can I blame? Currently dealing with flaky stolen ISP connects after our (slightly) more stable boot signal hauled ass at lease time. I'd just head to some dodgy cafe but that would mean leaving the trusty turntable behind and I'm not gonna try to type up these loads with pumpkin bar cream cheese smeared about the keys and fuckin 'whatever' on the stereo. I say 'whatever' 'cause I can't even be bothered to name names. All crap! That's my gist, if you must know.

Naw, I maybe just exaggerate, maybe just a little, or so I hope... I mean, how would I even know since I'm not even on the spot to hear whatever possibly crap/possibly not hardbody jams are going down in my local cafes? I'm just salty and in the best possible way having brokend out the ol' Volkurah/Bone Awl/Hammer/Vordr split tape I picked up a ways back from AQ. Sometimes a dip into this shit is refreshing for us not immersed in the scuzzy BM underworld, not unlike a lye jacuzzi. Convinced me to vacuum the apartment, at least, as well as bitch about "the kids", so that's alright. Time to revisit Funeral Mist as well, I suspect...

Through circumstances, as always, beyond my cuntroll, I've been off the air the past couple weeks. Outta town two weeks back, once again, and then I go in yesterday to find that the tower isn't actually broadcasting, so programming is only bein' distributed via the webcastor. Well, oiled up though I was to slip on some lovers rock, I took pause, thought it over, and figured that my jams of the week were best suited to car cruisers who just couldn't snag 'em, so I ducked out and let the auto-stream of Melt-Banana and what have you continue unabated. Fanatics of skree everywhere rejoiced herkily.

But! Next week, I promise. It's the final pre-semester dispatch, and I can say with as much confidence as I'm capable to muster that I've got some "shit" planned for two weeks from now, at the launch of the new semester schedule. No worries, I've clung to my Friday evening 7-9pm slot, so you needn't readjust your sleeping patterns on my account. Not that you can sleep, with that conscience of yours, or so I'd hope.

Fine, fine, what about some commentary on tunes? Again, I continue to have an increasing backlog of sharing ("Backlog of Sharing" is also the name of my new upcoming single, now that I have a spankin' new Cubase "dongle"... just ye wait) to get through, but it still just ain't the time. But I'll throw a bone in continued justification of my time spent here.

Another tape I've been returning to frequently is this Ben Nash spooler. Now, usually the cassettes I handle (which really aren't a ton, all things considered) make use of the format with some fi-deprived bashmint, scuff, blur... sonics that generally revel in slopping all over those magnetic bitties with glee and haze. This is a different sort; some work at providing clarity went into the productions at hand. Clarity is a relative term, though, as the attention to details in separating the tracks 'pon which these movements were recorded serves only to allow the diverse instrumentation to more greatly coalesce into one of the more enjoyable stoned basement-to-backporch style melancholic-n-introspective collections of tunes I've heard in a bit. Maye it's just the oncoming autumn, but I was starting to worry I was just done with this kinda thing. The first track of side B, Kuan 9873, is what really gets me here, with a lurching horn (?) stab/drone working into some meat-and-potatoes fingerpicking that, to these Deadwood-inflicted ears, conjures some kind of immenent saloon threat or dirt-road backstab. I think the medium also helps this one to stand as a low-key affair... hand drawn, photocopied notes seemingly at odds with the production values, and the case mine came in cracked in the mail, jus' adding to the dusty-booted charm. Shoddy internet keeps me from providing much info, but the liners offer up www.blackestrainbow.co.uk and www.myspace.com/bennash1 as possible nodes of interest.

I drooled over the stone-vacuum-cold of the Echospace project/label with their CV313 twelve before and the Model 500 Starlight remixes 2x12" is another peak, this time offering at least a cashmere shrug's worth of warmth along with the ice-dance. The original mix of this so-I'm-told classic techno track is another dart in my skull, directing me to correct my damn self and go back to all the stuff that I once dismissed due to the burgeoning first-rave batch of tepid trance and whatnot. Can't believe I used to think all "dance" was to be associated with gaudy glossy postcards advertising rediculously named warehouse events with poorly assembled 3D imagery in service of 300bpm cheesefests and chill rooms. Fool! The sinewy chords that hover above the mutating, slightly threatening bassline, man I coulda been with this. Well, I was an idiot. I'll be sure to work out the grooves of this copy in repentance, though.

The A side continues with the Soultek mix, which mutates that bassline into a robot talkbox larynx and eventually works up into quite the dreamy tapestry, with some plinked piano keys, a "supple" counter-synth stroking that talkbox with a velvety-gloved chipfinga, and some nicely spun chord bursts weaving in on occasion to just kinda hang, if that's alright.

The B side features Deepchord's take on Starlight, and ups the implicit-threat factor while dropping the temperature, all without affecting the ever-important suppleness. But synthetics can be supple too, as the pleather of yore would attest to, and as such I feel both compelled and disturbed, afraid I might get freezerburn offa some liquid cooled overclocked circuitemptress. HAL eBerry? Guh.

The highlight of this set for me has to be the second twelve, though. The Echospace mix and dub are really about as much as I could hope for in dance music. This track instantly transforms any room (or at least my loft, the only spot I've had chance to listen) into an ivory-laden observatory, suddenly brimming with partygoers clad in a somehow-mixture of elegant Victorian intricacy and Berlin-chic minimalist. It's the gawdamn Diamond Age, awright? I've said it. Starlight, indeed.

The Convextion mix on the D side dubs up original to aquatic proportions and adds some shuffle, inverting and submerging your view of the stars into a dimmed olympic pool. Dranks still afloat on black poly trays, it's odd how little resistance the liquid offers up against the gyration of my pale ass.

Clin Shits

2007-08-09T17:59:00.000-07:00

As much fucking promised, here at long last is a steaming batch. Would offer comment, but got a 12 pack of Bud and two discs of Deadwood. Surely no blame can be levied?

Insufferable Picks: Handsome Sweat Lodge - 08/03/07 (Part 1) (Part 2)

Pink Reason - By a Thread - 7"
Arvo Part - Spiegel im Spiegel - Alina
Blues Control - Behind the Skies - Puff
Charlie Parker - Funky Blues - Laird Bird
Mendicant, Friends - Let it Ring - Bed of Rocks
Drive Like Jehu - Do You Compute? - Yank Crime
Burning Brides - Plank of Fire - Fall of the Plastic Empire
Seishokki - ??? - Organs of Blue Eclipse
Angus Maclise - The Joyous Lake - Counter Culture Chronicles
Bo Hein - Burmese Golden Drum - Princess Nicotine
Mighty Baby - A Jug of Love - A Jug of Love
The Go-Betweens - Love is a Sign - 16 Lovers Lane
Catholic Boys - 7 and 7 Is - Dead Ball 7"
Luomo - Class - Vocalcity
CV313 - Dimensional - Dimensional Space 12"
Coki - Red Eye - 12"
Quiet Village - Too High to Move - 12"
Pan Sonic - Valhtovirta - Aaltopiiri

Post Mortem Synthetics: Dub Six Feet Deep

2007-08-05T12:39:00.000-07:00

For now I'll allow the Fader their time in the spotlight, letting them shamelessly take over my favorite pastime, namely dropping refs to the Double Deuce U.G. for no good reason. Please, let a man eat his hot wings in peace, cantcha?

Anyways, no freak scent here at the moment. Just more capitulation to them who mark twain on our eardrums, collapsing cochlea and all that good stuff. Can I get a resounding shudder? Thankew.

Andy Stott - The Massacre EP - My limited experience with the Modern Love label has not been unlike getting my head dunked in a bronze toilet bowl full of cognac. It's rough, but sophisticatedly so. This 12", comprised of the tracks "Unknown Exception" and "Massacre", is my first exposure to the work of Mr. Stott and it's a cruiser. Sticking for the most part to the lower registers, there's plenty of deep string stabs urging one and all to back up wit' a bit of shuffle in their step, with just enough hidden twinkly-star stuff to assure you that the moon is still surrounded; them stars still hold the floor. Can I possibly stand behind that statement? This man is a threat, and I'd bet a well-dressed one at that. Style, but certainly not over substance. Bucketloads 'pon bucketloads of deep, bottom-of-the-swimming pool substance to be considered here. Move careful-like.

CV313 - Dimensional Space EP - Metronomes. Syrup. One huge fucking Q-tip, smeared in greasy static (kinda a gray, bitmapped earwax, that) and keeping the way you just gotta tick-tock-tick-tock... lubricated. More proof in the ever-strengthening axiom that two chords are one more than enough for emotional resonance. You just gotta be detached enough; that's the seemingly contradictory part. Hell, you figure out how to explain incompleteness to me and I'll write it up better. See... this isn't minimalism... this is the fucking void.

Burial - Ghost Hardware EP - I've heard talk that Burial's working on a new album. Rumors that this may be the last transmission cast for some time while the pressure cooker is set to deal with the certainly epic expectations for that sophomore full length. I'm not sure that I'd call this twelve an evolution of the sound. Perhaps a refinement. All of the elements that made me 'n everybody else splatter jism all over his debut are here in spades, though something makes it seem like Burial's control over his source material is more powerful than ever. A necromancer, stitching these disembodied coos and moans and raindrops and reversed thunder rumbles into clicks and crackles and revitalizing them into a lurching, melancholic trainer-clad cadaver. Can I just say one thing? Burial's tracks are still some of the only stuff of the past year that can actually send shivers all up in me. It doesn't rain enough these days.

V/A - Box of Dub - Certainly no snack sized portion here, rather one massive comp of straight exclusives by a whole cadre of heavy hitters. Comprised of "Dubstep and Future Dub" ('s on the box!), the collected trax here certainly seem to lean a bit more towards some actual skank, though there are certainly plenty of neon strobes interrupting the mix I-96 style. Too many high points to keep track of, though the Sub Version/Paul St. Hilaire tunes do certainly knock. And that Kode 9 has eye beams comin' outta yer ass.

Steam Drops and Riding Crops

2007-08-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

Still not a buffed jewel to show; I'm running too holy fucking much to take such time as to man the loupe. But to keep you in the loop (ho!): in brief, next Tuesday is WSUM DJ nite at the King Club. 9pm-2am. I assume something like $5. No, I haven't made any effort to let those in power schedule me to spin (I book my club dates lone-wolf style... and fail), but your attendance may allow them to let me do such things at the future versions that will happen if you drink enough. That's right, your booze tallies the odds of me havin' a chance. Show some assistance, or all these goddam 12"s were bought in vain. Not that I mind listening to them in thc comfort of my own home. It's just a bit of public ~~adulation~~ adoration would be... nice.

Also, peep Trick Knee Productions, throw this Todd fella a few bucks, and snag yrself the Pink Reason and Catholic Boys 7"s. As good as slab bacon. Now back to sweatmoppery, no wind for editorializing proper.

Heatslave

2007-07-30T18:05:00.000-07:00

And damn. I figured everybody might be spending more time working on reddening up their flesh or at least porchifying their lives during this time of year, but here I come ready to play nice in the gentle wave pool of the internets and Monsieur Rettman goes and turns it in or something. I'm sure dude has his reasons; fuck he doesn't really need a reason, but I hope his spew continues to seep from varied sources on occasion. Time will tell. Time never shuts up.

In his stead I can at least offer solace on the local level as beloved Franc is upping his ante. Unchained on his own unedited and ununderwritten endeavor, he's favored pick 'round here to "run the game", which in Madison blogosphere terms is most like a dented Mouse Trap with half the pieces missing or cracked, but I can picture him diligently working a lighter underneath some plastic army men, trying to fuse some extra cage-links out of repurposed green bazooka-chunks. Hope remains.

Summer reading aside, I'm buffing a few "pieces" (of crap, natch) to uphold my promise of content-gush. Radio playlists and casts will resume after this Friday. In the short term meantime, a brief overview of what I "feel" I've been listening to most lately:

Charlie Parker - Laird Bird 4CD - Quadromania
Pink Reason - Cleaning the Mirror - Siltbreeze (yup, still!)
Blues Control - Puff - Woodsist (ditto!)
The Go-Betweens - 16 Lovers Lane - Jet Set
V/A - Box of Dub - Soul Jazz
CV313 - Dimensional Space - Echospace

Shocked? Thought Nought. More soon! Haggard smiles!

A Week Late and a Weak Lay: Quincy duz the Fork

2007-07-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

The original pitchfork festival, circa 1909

Much like noted jazz-hater Tom "Samhain" Breihan, I went to this year's Pitchfork Festival. This may initially seem at odds with my general game plan, based on what I post here, but let me offer the following reasoning: though perhaps one might think I'd generally go to like the X-Million Tongues Festival or Terrastock or Mutek or whatevs, I was generally broke then. This was cheap, I wasn't technically broke, and I had a ride. Plus, why do I have to explain myself to you? I'm a goddam web presence, no matter how minor. Going to P-Fork was practically my duty, as such.

I didn't even make it to the big Friday hullabaloo, which was I guess okay by me because "living" music and blah blah plus I've never bothered to listen to Spiderland. No reason. Anyhow, what I did actually make of the dustbowl tourney on Saturday and Sunday I rather enjoyed. For the most part, music was secondary, which is I think maybe the average P-Fork obsessives unofficial motto. Auditurus esse inconsideratus, according to one translation site.

And that wasn't a bad thing at this event. I knew a bunch of people in attendance, and they were friends and often had cigarettes to bum. I reunited with a kid my high school cohorts and I used to give an extremely hard time to 10 years ago and won some kind of moral victory over him when Clipse did not, in fact, suck. I got to catch a bit of Craig Taborn, whose Junk Magic I picked up based on (yup) a Pitchfork review several years ago and who were more psyched out than any of the "psych" bands that I glimpsed at the fest. And De La Soul somehow made me feel like I was in 11th grade again and just discovering Stakes is High (my fave for whatever reason I care to choose), a grade for which any association would usually be horrid but was pretty much alright by me at this time.

But back to my cynical/cliche'd view that P-fork attendees don't give a fuck about music. Is it a testament to the never-winding-down digital music turnover that, one week after the fact, you totally think that the fact that I'm writing a post on this festival is far too little, far too late? Yes you did. And if you didn't, well, then fuck me. 'Cause that's the basis that the next few paragraphs hinge upon.

Tom "Jinja my Ninja" Breihan (note: I actually think he has a fairly strong batting average of posts for someone who has to write something every day; I'm just making these names 'cause I'm smallfry and poking fun is rad) this week brought up how fractured the music industry is. Long tail ish, a bunch more bands are selling a lot fewer records. P4k's rise as a cultural entity along the same time that filesharing blew the fuck up lead to it being a major player within a certain fragment of the shattered coke mirror of the music industry. Sure, major player is now a relative term, but I'm fairly confident stating without having done any research that there are at least a few bands that don't have day jobs any more based on the strength of Pitchfork reviews.

I know that this is all shit you've probably heard before, and you're starting to panic that my recently mentioned new found stability is leading me into the deep well of "refried beans" style blogging. Truth is, I've been peeking at Pitchfork on a daily basis since 2000 or so. Sure, I actually read a lot fewer of the reviews these days and don't really check the news and kinda wish they still had a little special daily section of track reviews instead of the incorporation of streaming tracks with little commentary (though I guess their commentary has in general become less meaningful to me as well...), but they maintain enough connections with critics of generally good taste that there are still reviews of some very worthy releases that slip into the mix, not to mention their "Month in..." columns.

As a whole, I suppose Pitchfork has become some kind of morning comfort-zone habit, along with half a pot of coffee and a back slicked with sweat from overlayering on my walk to work. I think it's like this for an awful lot of people. Sure, their canon doesn't always push my "give-a-fuck" button, but it's nice to check on something that so many people go to to feed on for their dose of aural culture. And this year's festival rolled with that aesthetic completely, with reasonable prices, lines that (at least for me) moved a lot more quickly than I thought that they would, and scores of midwesterners standing and swaying amicably at assembled talent from around the globe. Truly the potroast of the festival circuit.

Even with the shortcycle trendwatchery so pervasive and so maligned (unless we're over that by now), the Pitchfork brand and namesake festival are both somehow consistent, dependable entities that can still cause large numbers of people to assemble and smoke grass together in a dingy baseball field. And that's something that I can at least partially get behind, even if I've only heard Glostick Koran once, and against my own will. Now excuse me; I must run and have my Xanax scrip refilled before my next post.

Mental Mastication, or How I Learned to Start Thinking Through a Straw

2007-07-17T20:59:00.000-07:00

I've been entering and exiting loops of such varied curvature and circumference that while it might seem outrageous for me to attempt to placate you, deer-reader, with bold claims of Things is Gonna Change Round Here, but I assure you that that is indeed the case.

After a couple months worth of shattered bank balances and hopeful flailing there have been some seismic shifts that have left me one pancreatic dancer. Old endings. New beginnings. I can now put down my paranoia-stick and lack-of-funds-bucket and focus on the important stuff. Also, I can focus on this blog.

May be that you're quick to forgive. You may have been under the impression that, this being the rare Wisconsin season of "summer", I may have been off and away from these jelly-stained keys, sipping hefeweizen on patios far and varied. Though there will be a marked increase in this kind of activity, I've decided that I might as well be the prick wiping jelly off his keyboard while abusing the plethora of free wireless signals puncturing the skulls of this city. I'm also getting some sort of a haircut. It has to be this way! We grow old!

Anyways... yup, changes. While I'm certainly not sinking so self-indulgently low as to come up with actual claims to format or frequency ossification, I will be bold enough to state that you can expect an increase in updates, and I'll even hint at vague non-linear correlations between said increase in verbiage and scope of "coverage".

I'll get back to the music shits as well right quick. I am just now settling in enough to dig through recently acquired stacks, some of which include some gems that are now downright dusty in this eAge, not to mention I oughta be in town to take care of my radiowave duties for the foreseeable future. And holy shit! I've just now had time to give full listens to Blues Control's Puff and Pink Reason's Cleaning the Mirror! These fab jams deserve (and have received elsewhere) a great deal of praise that I'm not gonna take the time or space to elaborate on now; we just went grocery shopping for the first time this month and I've got some toffee crunch cookies that look better than you do at this moment. But I'll be back -- Fasten yr seatwelts and prepare for siftoff.

Bean Cry

2007-07-08T21:21:00.000-07:00

I finally get a meager new batch of skree to absorb when malevolent intent ships me off to Boston for a week without an iPhone or anything. Primates! So if anyone knows of worthy evening doings between Tuesday and Friday nights in the greater This Old House area, please let me know: quincyhoist@gmail.com. Otherwise I'll be yellowbooking the names of FE employees offa their top ten lists and looking for clues in my trusty ol' DFW. Stupid shit like that.

SweatLord

2007-06-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

I'm just the kind of asshole who'll try something like growing his hair out and training for a marathon at the same time. The humidity is off the charts and my wiry mane will soon be not unlike a burnt shock of dirt-honey... in the proper glint of course. It's the perfect weather for backseat swigs of Old Krupnik and clinging to the grass of the state park of your choice in hallucinogenic frenzy. To paraphrase a certain B-More Gutter track in a Breihanian manner, Ninjas from each side of this fair city, tear these walls down.

That's right, greenhouse emissions have pushed up primo August 1974 listening time to the tail end of June. Freakish. Soon enough we'll be listening to Pran Nath's Midnight at, like, 8:00pm. I went out and bought a damn bathing suit; it may be my only chance. I'm missing having a portable music player more and more. I may have to start saving or donating plasma once again.

Still haven't found a warehouse to let me unload my Andy Stott, Substance & Vanquier, et al. Wisconsin only wants Armen Van Buren. Fuckin' backwoods guidos, us. Still, who'm I to bitch?

Insufferable Picks 06/15/2007 (Part 2)

Salah Ragab & the Cairo Jazz Band - Ramadan in Space Time - Ramadan in Space Time
Disrupt - Foundation Bit - 12"
Rhythm & Sound - Spend Some Time - 10"
Mala - Changes - 12"
The Peverlist - The Grind - 12"
Ellen Allien - Trashscapes - Berlinette
Claro Intelecto - Lacan - 12"
Timeblind - Copy Copy - Ghostification
Skream - Bahl Forward - 10"
Linstrom - I Feel Space (M.A.N.D.Y. Remix - 12"

Full Kustom Churl

2007-06-21T18:54:00.000-07:00

A year or possibly likely two years ago, a bunch of wretched chums and I got together and made a recording. We made a bunch, actually, but there was only one that we had the foresight to name "Cicada Husk". I think that was a damn good name, and I remember the tune well, since that was apparently an apt description for more reasons than the abundance of delish corpses strewn about the landscape, awaiting our forks as we smudged mascara and made epic junkie poses to ourselves...

Nah, but we did actually name one of our fetid blasts "Cicada Husk". I don't remember what it sounds like, even though it's on this very computer, because I've been so damn mismanaged that I don't know where the appropriate "dongle" (shaddup) is to allow me access to the ultra-encoded Cubase files on which it resides. What I'm gettin' at is I haven't listened to shit this month. New shit. Old shit.

A man needs a break sometimes, and that sometimes is June, a historically broke month for yrs truly. A month in which dubstep finally makes it bigtime into "Buzzfeed" (don't ask how I knows; it ain't right). A psilocybin-tinged internal month in which the hott new drops can all wait 'til after I blow my fireworks budget over the next couple weeks. If I miss 'em... my loss. It'll be a bummer, but I've got pleny of neurons working out their feedback weighting schema as is, so I'll eat some good raw meat and let 'em build up before getting back on the smash course.

Oh, I'm still listening to tunes... working hard to catch up on the archives of "my shows"... the 'FMU fanchild's angle on his own personal mamma's beloved daytime "stories" (okay, fine, I'm a latchkey kid)... but I'm not thinking about them... I'm just too sweaty for that kinda thing. It's all soft-focus pontoon boat rides and borrowed bottles of High Life for now. And that's okay. That's what I imagined Frame possibly being a good mental map to under certain sun-glints.

Yeh, there'll be catchup to play, for sure. Plenty already threatening my salivary glands for when I wake up in a few days. I just wanted to let you all know what Sir Quincy was up to on his summer vacation... now get that ruler away from my knuckles.

Insufferable Picks 06/15/2007 (Part 1 of 2)

Zaimph - Incandescent Landscape - Mirage of the Other
Kuupuu - Seitseman Kuuta / Kaivo - Klusia
Gram Parsons - Hearts on Fire - Grievous Angel
Kan Mikami - Track 5 - Live at Kouch University 1972
Loren MazzaCane Connors & Kath Bloom - Last Fair Deal - Sing the Children Over
Satwa - Can I Be Satwa - Satwa
Charles Mingus - Goodbye Pork Pie Hat - Mingus Ah Um
Jakob Olaousson - Silhouette - Moonlight Farm
Suede - So Young - Suede

Scandal Hatch

2007-06-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

Something of a placeholder here. Just returned (okay, a few daze ago) from Indianapolis. Shitwork. Couldn't even bother to find the cheap local brews, though corporate tabs of others were certainly fondled & caressed. Now I wait for travel reimbursement and don't even check out release lists for fear of want. Desire is too easy and I've finally found a hole to 'up in and maybe cheap out a jam or two, so there's that. Scary, though... my hunch and paunch are somewhat without a direction to lurch in, with all temporary rekkid-dodging. YOU ALL RELEASE TOO MUCH GOOD LIMITED RUN SHIT. Fuck, man, how many $100 4 disc Rallizes boots can they put out? I just can't keep up. But that shtuff should be spread anyways; no one person meant to hoard it all. So I'll sit here recuperating and pickin' my sunburnt forearms. Back on the air this Friday after outta town false starts. Looking to mebbe fellate Seth Rogen for perhaps sparking the "don't be a brah douche" movement. We'll see how this perpetuates... Tru Gritt...

Rote Tomb

2007-05-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

Buried in a paper/ill-used Illustrator mess pavin' the road for Indianapolis 2k7: Makin' it One Week After the 500. Work conference. Just my style, a weeklong free booze event. That said, I'll still be back on the air this Friday in a full two-hours-of-glory 7-9pm set and oughta be back to Madison in time for another on the 8th. Still trying to get local paid werk doing it live and in person to help justify my record expenditures (though they've been down of late), so holler if you have a spare turntable, a mixer, and a houseparty/venue that needs hott limittted tuunes mixxxed poorrly.

'Nuff self-aggrandization. A hoot and a holler to the Daniel Carter/Evan Louison duo, whose Pilate Navigator (semireferenced last post) release God's Faithless Bride is proving itself to be
a primo guff-flutter maw-meld for my Dead Guy Ale-inebriated evenings. I keep both stereo channels working for you, my bros. Wind instrument laden incense type aural loungewear that doesn't sacrifice the energies of it all. An appropriately sequenced trackmix including a three-ways stretch all under a minute a piece. Nite blues, that soft humming throughout. Alleyway thwacks, amplifier cabbiedrones, I dunno whodunit. Keep doonit.

Anyways, found a couple of Wisconsin's finest river-tube-rides complete with cooler-tubes, so expect a sunburnt or drowned Hoist by next-coupla-months' end. Audio comin' soon...

The Armpit Rose

2007-05-23T21:53:00.001-07:00

And like that, the internet's back on. How? Why? Those are questions for the fools that man the connection, that fess up to the bill collectors. Not us. I told y'all that I'd be on this thing like a recent college grad on his last tasteful taste of undergrad 'gina, now off to collar'd shirts besides "the stripey" (but plenty more of those, too) and paychex that tap directly into "the leer". You know the one. (Bitter much? Yup. Well... yup...) Word on the street is that buttoning the top button is the new popping the collar... get up on it but quick!

Oh, gosh. I don't feel like offering up music news tonight. I'm sorry. I have no analysis worth offering. My "recently played tracks" is mostly bases I've covered here, 'cept for some Pilate Navigator gush, which is good... but another time, another time... My fave reading lamp is burnt out and uses special bulbs that I haven't bothered to locate, 'cause to afford before next Friday would be to sacrifice the purchase of one last twelver of longnecks, and it is too nice out, friend. Wouldn'tcha think? Wouldn'tcha drink? Anyways, but between this and my home 'net having been down, well, I haven't even been massaging my tonearm for the past coupla few days. No, I've been wallowing in the upper level, where the A/C don't reach too well, trying, trying, to stay focused on goddam Gravity's Rainbow and what the goddam fuck do you literary types foist upon us. References to engineering parameters in the same 'graphs as violent sex? No-ones allowed to re-read my earlier classtype dazes off to me w/out my permissions, I'd hope. Anyways, I perhaps blame this lazy jumble on my chameleonic need to make awful attempts at either assimilating or being assimilated by, not sure which... onwards! To kill the goodwill!

No, for tonight... what? Murder in Madison? Done to deth. Ha! Already. No, not funny. I walk there too. But... kinda funny, in bad taste. Okay, fugginhell, fine... Music. News.

Shit.

First, I'd bet more than I know already, but I saw a sign thing for a Memorial Day skree sesh featuring some fine "Cali" boardshorts types. 'S a block away from my place. 'S a fuckin' soundclash! Make sure to fill up on burgers first, cooked or otherwise. Donate, 'cause I'll be too broke to! Swank.

Second, just a note on weird overlapping of things. I attended this Starbass event last Friday, the one that I mentioned a post or so back. In a generally unprecedented overlap of my dull-ass life (it only means that I'm boring) and the occassional bit of semi-meaningful media that I manage to consume (in this case Martin Clark's latest "Month in Grime/Dubstep", a/k/a "The only Pitchfork link worth clicking")... aside from dear "Franc", of course, who very frequently manages to scatter worthwhile twitters about that I can find some kinna connexion to... anyways, in this particular overlap, well... I realized the potential of that agressive nature of "the 'step" at this event. I mean, the stuff was pretty hard up in there. It was off-putting. Headspinning. I mean, I lurve Armour's "Iron Man" but perhaps when everything is fully beatmatched strung together and EQ'd into a massive steamroller of a thing... well... I mean, I don't think that's my thing. "Meditate on the bass weight" and all that, THAT I can abide. No slight against Mr. cutFucker et al. They def had a grand selection (though outta personal pref I'd rather not hear Mims for at least one evening, but hey)... 's just... I think I like this whole bastard-techno branch idea more 'n more... keep the weight, but reduce the urging of people to do spinkicks. Again, just personal pref. And spinkicks certainly do need doing, too! What I'm sayin'... shit... I dunno what I'm sayin.... okay, nuthin' doin'... this Lamborghini Crystal tape has got my head but GONE... sorry... dun...

Dos Doses

2007-05-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

A short post to continue my onslaught. This one to give shine to two upcoming events in our rapidly-draining-of-students area that I may or may not be present at. I hope to attend both, but there are... issues... at play.

First, Pink Reason returns and plays in a place that I assume is preferable to the Klinic. Though I'm not sure, 'cause I don't think I know "Luke". But check out the Reason's MySpace for some (vague) details. I was told this was gonna be fairly low-key, donations and BYOB, so I'm not gonna throw up the address. But I bet Kev'll let you in on it if you ask. If not, you oughta be more polite!

Another thing that I really know about nothin' about except time and place is some kinda DJ thing at the Mercury Lounge on Friday. Now, I haven't been to the Mercury in some time so I cannot vouch for their "system" but this is supposed to be bass-ish, as in it is an "event" titled "STARBASS". My main interest here is the presence of one "cutFUCKER", who comes up just under "Vito's Madison Grill" when you google "Madison dubstep". I know very little about what to expect here... absolutely nothing about the other DJs. As so, I wholeheartedly urge you to go. ~~Stalking~~ Browsing his myspace info, I can see a respectable stepper pedigree amongst his friends list, and also he apparently earns significantly more than I (possibly at a job that my girlfriend once interviewed for; fuck) so his stacks will probably just make me give up, not to mention the implications of actual technical abilities at this kind of thing. Roll one. Not sure about cover or time or whatever.

Siftin' Cream of Wheat thru my Underdeveloped Fingers (Searchin' for that Fellow Chaff)http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

2007-05-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

Aardvark: Resurrection

I've been catching up on all the internets that I missed out on whilst off on "donate your wits to the foreign kids" duty (they learn nothing, those "types"). After finishing off looking through at the coverage of BEST NEW WAYS TO WEAR PANTS+SHOES (hey, some of us need extra help... like you weren't in remedial reading or something), I eventually got around to checking out what people were sayin' about all the great new music that I can play softly in the background of my apartment while sorting bills-to-ignore or cutting the bad parts offa carrots (for guests; I'd never waste like that for myself) or what-have-you.

The gist of what I've seen is that 2007 has been a pretty great year for most musics (sorry, rap [at least saleswise]). To echo a large cross-section of my readings, music steez is hitting on many cylinders this year. We're closing in on the halfway mark and already enough heat has been brought that global warming is threatening to become something more than just a total myth. Folks' collections are so burgeoning that they don't even have time to pore over the liner notes, effectively putting all that remedial reading tutelage to waste. It even seems that on some level the peoples are starting to call out mediocrity-peddling-via-blog-hype type outlets in perhaps as constructive a way as could be more or less hoped for, though perhaps I've just put on higher-angled blinders or that's just some kinda retaliatory meme in and of itself. I'll save that for another dark day of typecraftery.

Anyways, amongst the things that have somehow managed to excite me outta my gourd is the promised continuation of Arthur mag. Yeah, I know plenny of people who were all but bored outta their skullbits by the last few issues; I didn't even bother to check 'em myself. But I'd be an even bigger choad to not fully admit that Arthur played a huge part in blowin' up my mind a mere four or so years ago. Sure, not every issue was a total knockout, but fuck it was more consistent then this here digisquat and yer reading this aren'tcha? The Babcock man has made some remarks as of late insinuating to those of us outta-the-general-loop that the new control structure may allow for some rejuvinated hijinx and quote-unquote name naming. This would be great for those of us generally separated from true, "on-the-street" zine-culture and in constant thirst for scene-politico-gossip. It's kinda a glue that keeps the broad underbelly of our grand Weirdoworld (I'd have to say Plastic Crimewave in the Kevin Costner role and maybe Paul Flaherty as the odd moleman in the oil tanker, but I'm flexible on this as these choices were made completely arbitrarily) stuck together, allowing a revitalizing huff of fume to those of us stranded far from "the arteries". Lifeblood!

Actual tune-wise I'm going to try and bring up a few sides I haven't seen mentioned much, though there's a great many choice cuts deserving of mention that this necessarily omits. Dig 'em up elsewheres; that sidebar clutch of links isn't there 'cause I ignore those fine scribes.

First up, the Siltbreeze renaissance is truly a glorious thing for those of us too busy sagging our Foundation Super Co bigshorts in 95 to know "whassup". Much has been said here and elsewhere of Pink Reason, Times New Viking, er, GBV... y'know, Lax does good. I haven't seen large chunks spewed re: Sapat's newish (so far as I know) album Mortise and Tenon. Well, I like it and want to say so. These Louisville huggers share members (huh) w/ the likes of Valley of Ashes, Virgin Eye Blood Brothers, etc... and there's certainly some longform percussive roachburners that harken back to the schtuff I've heard by them fine shadowdwellers. Here these are mixed with a grabbag of stuff that makes at least some of use think of maybe spytheme biker-rock, stargazing cudgel-tosses, twang-drive sax mope... often in the same track! Makes me think of those glorious moments of revelation had once in a blue moon within the confines of gravel parking lots.

Next up, Ruth White's Seven Trumps From the Tarot Cards has the distinction of being the first Creel Pone I've had the pleasure of manhandling. Why I waited so long to nuzzle this label can only be explained by the fact that I'm an idiot. This lil' doozy, containing a work consisting of 6 tracks representative of the mystical symbolism of the tarot deck and a clutch more from a commissioned work titled Pinions. Scads of knob twiddle ranging from electro-forest mushroom-pixel waltzes to pink clouds gauzing over harpsi chord strikes to moments of sheer melancholic beauty that I just wasn't ready for. If you get your hands on this, be advised that the liner notes are copied in a larger, legible manner here. One of those labels that now stares me down, wishing to reserve a full section of my stacks for its own purposes. Damn.

Lastly, I'd like to touch base on a couple 12s that have been gang-raping my pitiful home "system" as of late. First up is the Scuba - Braille Driving/Martsman - Step Up (Berlin) snazbot on the mixed-couples Hotshore label. Scuba, for his part, keeps things creeping just below the suface with a surfeit of pongs, swoosh, and one hell of a gnarly set of distorted bass-stabs. The beat keeps from getting too flashy but maintains that knock. Martsman kicks things off with a foggy crouch and the ghost of a TI-85 before suggesting via some filtered phantom snares that you stroll a bit faster... shit, too late. There's the bass. Snagged? Yussr. Fine, pummel away all you like... then a bit of a break and the damn TI asks if you've had quite enough. No? Here, smell my finger... I mean these flowers... makes me wanna shout "JOHNNY CAGE".

Next up is Disrupt bringing things fully back ganjawards with Tubby ROM Module/Foundation Bit selections on the Werk label. Surriously, the headspace that both these sides bring to the table melts me shoulders down every time. Puff, indeed. The horn skank leering, the riddim on both side just doin' it's masseuse thang, the oh-so-subtle synth bits... I fuckin' love this. Total salve.

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My last post contained just a bit of a fib: I didn't post up my last set of the semester. To make things right, here's that rolla. Another dubstep-heavy beatpie.

Insufferable Picks 04/27/07 (Sendspace lynx)

Random Trio (Cyrus) - Indian Stomp - Random Trio EP
Quiet Village - Can't Be Beat - Whatever We Want
Digital Mystikz - Misty Winter
T++ - Space Pong // Philus - B1 (pH EP)
Kromestar and Walsh - Panik Room
???/Max Romeo - One Step Forward (Edit)
Loefah - Rufage
Loefah - Disko Rekah
Todd Terje - Eurodans

Assholes Without Clout: Quincy duz Paris

2007-05-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

Irresponsible, irrepresible, and full of that ol' panache, I neglected to inform you that I was gonna be abroad for a week. I can tell by my jealously watched and obsessively inflated stats page that you fine folk (both of ya!) were consistently slathering at the bit for fresh content. Not quite sure if this is gonna sate the need since I've been pretty much detached from sonics and the other assorted bullshit that usually finds its way onto this veritable Outlet of Disapointment; awash in a babble I cannot comprehend and exposed to nothing but fibrous hi-cultural type vistas I would be lying if I spoke of anything but Air India's superior beverage service or the Parisian's rigorous appreciation of exact change.

That said, now I'm flat broke and all cultured out. So consider this post the harbinger of a deluge of boredom. Join me as I lurk out the rest of the month in squalor. I won't have any new audio links for two weeks or so, until WSUM's summer schedule kicks in. But then... oh, then. The fools gave me two full hours a week, so I'll certainly be getting closer and closer to cursing on the air as I try desperately to fill up my alloted timeslot. Until that starts, tho'... expect more, I dunno, reviews and sun-baked hysteria straight from my dust-caked brow. Promise + threat.

Narc tags

2007-04-27T19:45:00.000-07:00

Observations one might make because one is writing a post on a Friday night -- yes, while drinking, but drinking in moderation because one is planning on running the Crazylegs tomorrow (and but of course hoping to consume enough finish-line beer to make up for the entry fee):

Do not try to post while listening to anything by Pissed Jeans, or you will indeed just bake a big self-loathing birthday cake of a post and throw it in your own face. With the trick candles (that you couldn't even properly afford) still lit. Der TPK, on the other hand... you just drink faster and pump not only your fist, but also a balled up foot-fist.
Yes, my interest in dubstep is still kinna perhaps under the "new found" banner (not sure how long that lasts, though I think the "junior member" stamp is permanent), and I've probably only snagged enuff twelves for like one full four-hour bar-closing sesh, and who here in this town really wanna hear that stuff anyhoo? I mean, aside from a few chosen disciples (of the genre, not myself, in case that needs clarifying)... but still when I try to check specific parents of this bastard child (I'm glancing nervously at drum and bass, here), I feel... I dunno... pummel'd. Like someone just came up with the idea of huge, monochromatic Pixie sticks and they're all stacked on one of those flatbead lumber trucks and they just started tumbling off and I'm riding behind but I can't steer because my night-vision goggles are malfunctioning... and I just don't know if this is a good thing, but I swear if I start reffering to weed ciggies as "spliff" in a Cockney accent I'm shooting my goddam self.
Fuck an Adult Swim: Three Animation Films of Tadanori Yokoo, thanx to WFMU and all responsible. I think this is my favorite thing ever so far this month. Note: syncs up pretty much perfectly w/ Der TPK as well. Next I'll try Toshi Ichiyanagi's Opera For... will report back.

Now to watch Rome and Titus Pullo da Don in max effect.

Insufferable Picks: Unstuffed, Unpicked, Unknown

2007-04-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

No promises of correct spelling/ordering/title transcription... I know there is an Ada track in there somewhere that didn't pop up, and probably some other stuff too... but here's the fruit of my decrepit loins for the past 3 weeks or so. What I've offered up. I mean, what I offered that others made and I just forgot to play through both channels. What I knicked the vinyl of. What I mumbled over, out of breath, full of sweat.

Insufferable Picks 03/30/07

Jan Dukes De Grey - Sun Symphonica - Mice and Rats in the Loft
Ash Ra Tempel - Light: Look at Your Sun - Schwingungen
Velvet Underground - Symphony of Sound
Paul Lebrecque and Valerie Webb - An Acre of Stone (For Racing) - Trees, Chants & Hollers
Morgen - Welcome to the Void - Morgen

Insufferable Picks 04/13/07

Chinaboise - The Greatest Story Ever Told (Work is Hard) - The Greatest Story Ever Told
Unknown - Choubi Choubi - Choubi Choubi! Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq
Silver Apples - A Pox on You - s/t
Honny and the Bees Band - Psychedelic Woman - Ghana Soundz
Funkadelic - Hit it and Quit it - Maggot Brain
Andrew Chalk - Excerpt from Goldfall - Goldfall
Massive Music - Find My Way - 12"
Burial - South London Buroughs - South London Buroughs EP
Appleblim - Vansan - Soundboys Ashes get Chopped Out and Snorted 12"
Peverelist - Earstwhile Rhythm - 12"
Scratchy - Stick a Pin - Dump Valve All-Stars Vol 1

Filling in for Y Mae 04/15/07 (Part 1) (Part 2)

Soft Machine - Slightly All the Time - Third
Os Mutantes - Quem tem medo de brincar de amor - A Devina Comedia
Black Swan - Walking My Monkey - Black Swan
Vitalic - Poney Pt 1 - OK Cowboy
Timeblind - Copy Copy - Ghostification 12"
Uusitalo - Paskaa Musaa - Tulenkantaja
Burial - Versus - Mary Anne Hobbs Warrior Dubs
Shackleton - You Bring Me Down - Soundboys Ashes get Chopped Out and Snorted
Blops - Tartaleta de Frutillas - Blops
Andrew Chalk - Exceprt from Goldfall - Goldfall
Miles Davis - The Ghetto Walk - Complete In a Silent Way

Insufferable Picks - 04/20/07

Otterman Empire - Texas Radio - 12"
3/3 - Open a Window - Sanbun no San
13th Floor Elevators - Slip Inside This House - Easter Everywhere
Supersilent - 6.2 - Supersilent 6
Joshua Jugband 5 - Track 2 - New comp on Gulcher
Footsie - Showerman (Instrumental) - 12"
Geeneus - Congo - Tempa All-Stars Vol 1
Junior Boys - Like a Child (Carl Craig Remix) - 12"

Subbing for Waka Laka 04/21/07

Tamio Shiraishi and Sean Meehan - Bridge Side - In the City
Ruth White - Love Gives Wings - Seven Trumps fromt he Tarot Cards
Fursaxa - Aegean Lore - By the Fruits You Shall Know the Roots
Hototogisu - Side 3 - Floating Japanese Oof! Gardens of the 21st Century

I've gotta admit that my home listening is skewed real deep towards Andrew Chalk and I'm still just trying to really get a good dig into those Vinyl-on-Demand boxes. All switching between glistening toneribbons and some mutant ape-synth loop shrapnel up in here. I've gotten confused...

Panik Boom

2007-04-17T17:49:00.000-07:00

I've maybe been a bit derelict of late, but what the hell? I've been trying to turn a dollar. Okay, maybe spend a dollar. And guess what? I've succeeded. Several times over. Many more, in fact, then times I've managed to bring one in. Which you'd think would leave me plenty of time to tinker 'round here, but it's just that... I couldn't think of what to say. You make me shy, and I somehow wound up with about 2,200 pages of library books to skim (and then tell you I read), so consider this a lucky break from my strained-pupil norm.

What with these dollops of sunshine and the induced euphoria (always with that doubled edge, natch), listening habits have ranged far and wide, or as far and wide as I care to wander. Maybe I need new chukkas; you can be the judge of that.

First off, I seem to be smelling quite a whiff of excitement over Dizzee Rascal's forthcoming release. Yeh, what I've heard is good, but I'm sensing an awful lof of chatter collapsing all the many facets of his chosen genre into him and him alone. Roll Deep recently put out Rules and Regulations, and it makes me wanna bound about on an overcast day as much as ol' Dizzee's output. Solid. If yez prefer to stick to Dizzeeing yourselves, I also found "Showerman", the first 12 released on Rascal's Dirtee Stank label by one Footsie, to be most cleansing to my spirit. New meaning to "spit-shine". On the instrumental-grime-type tip, most certainly I recommend the enjoyment of Dump Valve All Stars Vol 1, on the lovingly named Dump Valve label. Now I don't have to pretend I have any chance of understanding them crazed patois flows. Kidding! I know every word, every turn of phrase. I just forgot it all just now, is all...

And of course Skull Disco 06 is the fucking shit. I don't even need to tell you. Or make a Keef Richards joke. Christ, don't make me make a Keef Richards joke. Dudes are prescient, 'nuff said.

'K, you needn't fret, I know how completely ridiculous it may look for some sleepy-midwestern chump to be writing like he can possibly tell you, fair reader, something about the UK urban music scene. So let's move on for now...

My enjoyment of the "free-er" musics (which for the sake of this post apparently means "rhythmless" or "of a rhythmic nature that could be construed in some kinda 'communal ecstatic basement smokeout'"... either way, I'm wrong) does normally tend towards the less harsh of arenas. What can I say, I'm a candy-ass school-boy who needs something soothing after a day at m' desk. That said, this Vinyl-on-Demand stuff responsible for so much pocketbook damage is just mind-fucking-bending. I'm definitely not confident enough to say that I've listened to the Maurizio Bianchi Evidences Vol 1 - Final Industrial Music box or the Broken Flag Retrospective box enough to get a grip on what's going on here. But both have peeled back every damn layer of my skullflap like some crime scene photo and readjusted the appropriate neural networks into something that, given time, may develop the required radial basis functions for comprehension of the cloaked truths these folks are willing to share. Hidden layers indeed.

When given a break from these required training sets, I do gotta say that Tamio Shiraishi & Sean Meehan's In the City lp on the Old Gold label is doing quite the spectral number. Whafting freetone reports from assorted NYC lost locations... side "Bridge" and side "Garage", to be exact... leave my lobes tickled and my peachfuzz loosened. Not exactly the starburst drones of Andrew Chalk or the seasick pianos of Basinski... this stuff more kind of contemplates bent twists and hints that it could maybe squall if it wanted, but would much rather play butterfly net with the hum of cars on the overpass that is rather prominent in the side "Bridge" recording.

Yeah, there's more too, but this is already a super-epic post by my standards, and I'll try and leave some so I might think of more to write at some near time. I've got a bunch of playlist 'n archive stews to chuck up as well, but I'm a bit lazy to work out transcribing 4 hours worth of tunes for now, so check back or something. Oh, and try and enjoy whatever weather your getting; that's important.

Pink Reason @ the Klinic TONITE, Madison lapdogs attend!

2007-04-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

Rarely do I get meaty about local haps; much as I love this town (and 8 years deep, I'd better I suppose), my fave thing to love about it is generally hoarding slabs in my apartment with a sixer, as if I hadn't been clear enough already. Still, from time to time people much greater then I set up worthwhile occurrences that I get to claim witness to without lifting any kind of community finger (aside from mebbe dishing out a fiver or some such).

Some time ago I got wind of Green Bay dude(s) Pink Reason. While their physical output at the time was not somethin' I was able to snag through means I was knowing enough to take, their myspaz offered up a few choice cuts and there was some live action on WFMU. All showing total proof that Green Bay somehow proved good... some folks obviously doin' right while I was up there squandering time makin' cardboard and slouching at the Townline (cruisin' Main was no option for someone with night vision such as myself). Not that indications didn't point to possibly similar pastimes for the heads responsible. Threadbare basement couches and dusty Blatz mirrors sprang to mind. Musty dogs. Have I seen this dude on South Broadway? It just kinda sounds like one mighta.

Since then they've put out a full-ass album on everlovin' Siltbreeze. THAT Siltbreeze. Straight up honesty: I haven't snagged that yet either. I was kinda waiting to pick it up in person. Up 'til now I've had but the above-mentioned samples of Pink pudding to placate my perceptions.

Well, the pudding is proving itself in the flesh tonight, when the Raison d'Pink will sully themselves at the Klinic at 9pm. Details at the Daily Page, 'cause I just ain't got the time right now. All I know is they better have some hardcopies of their chuuch of lurch style sonix in the pink for a hardbody such as myself. And many thanks to Ivan for reminding me about this. I've been too engrossed in staring at the holes developing in my jean-crotch to remember to check my calendar and remember these damn things. See you tonight, bluddy...

Dubble Doozy / Bubblin' and Boozy

2007-03-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

Today I laced up a ridiculous pair of white patent leather sneaks that feature not only pink but also snakeskin accents for the first time. Best christmas present ever. If these fuckers get scuffed, I'm done for. It's absurd... I walked about a little but just couldn't stop thinking about my damn feet. You know what? I'm gonna scuff the bastards. Then there's just no worries.

Insufferable Picks 03/16/2007 (sendspace) Count how many times I say fantastic! Count 'em!

Toshi Ichiyanagi - Music for Living Space - Obscure Tape Music of Japan Vol 5 - Omega Point
Kan Mikami - ? - Hoi 1973-1992 - PSF
Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band - Dawn - Present Egyptian Jazz: Ramadan in Space Time - Art Yard
Group Doueh - Cheyla Ya Haiuune - Guitar Music From the Western Sahara - Sublime Frequencies
Jakob Olausson - Queen Bee - Moonlight Farm - De Stijl
Mighty Baby - I'm From the Country - Mighty Baby - Lightning Tree
Phylyps - Trak 1 - 12" - Basic Channel
Edip Akbayram - Arabam Kaldi Yolda - Edip Akbayram - Shadoks Music
Thomas Brinkman - Geschlossene Kiste/Initiation_locked box - Klick Revolution- maxErnst
Shuttle 358 - Frame - Frame - 12k

Insufferable Picks Misconducts the Beats - 03/23/2007 (sendspace, once again)

Kromestar - Side A - Kromestar EP - Fantastic 3
Random Trio - Lost City - 12" - Random Trio Productions
Pinch - Punisher VIP - 12" - Planet Mu
Coki - Shattered - Tortured/Shattered - Tempa
Benga and Walsh - Military - Military/Panik Room - Hot Flush
Shackleton - Tin Foil Sky - Soundboys Bones Get Buried in the Dirt Vol 1 - Skull Disco
Panasonic - Murtaja - 12" - Sahko
Mala - Bury Da Bwoy - Bury Da Bwoy/Hunter - DMZ
Rhthm and Sound feat. Shalom - We Been Troddin' - 10" - Burial Mix
DQ1 - Wear the Crown - Tectonic Plate 2 - Tectonic
Closer Musik - A Closer Dancer - Closer Musik - Kompakt

Y'know... I just can't bring myself to do it. Are Cadbury's eggs available yet? I'm gonna go check... and yes I will "spin" at your child's birthday party. For chocolate.

Heaterz 'n Bleaterz

2007-03-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

Yet anotha Mystikz re-press -- the Stuck/Neverland 12" -- not to mention Bury Da Bwoy/Hunter... man, I'm scrawling a sharpie DMZ stencil on my double decade Veriflex, you bet. Today was the first day of the year I had an actual excuse to be slicked w/ sweat 'pon my stroll home from le office, and of course the next logical step was in this case Blonde Doppelbock and plenty thereof. Followups w/ T++, Salah Ragab & Cairo Jazz Band, Hot Flush 12s, and der TPK proved me right on the sweat front.

Many thanks to the multitudinous internet presences -- only Noz' Posse on Blogway springs to my currently befogged mind (Holy Shit XXL.com redesign... new blood indeed), but I pray there are more --for the Devin the Dude reminders. I finally checked out the new tracks and fuck yes I'm getting back into the weed game stat. No more paranoia, my doobie ashtray is cleaned and polished and jus' fuckin' reddy kilopott. FYI I broke Tryin' to Live in on my headphones during my first 'n only trip abroad, which happened to be to the lovely Netherlands. If your initial experiences w/ said album were as perfect... contact me. That said, To tha Xtreme didn't hit me (heh) quite as hard, but I wasn't going anywhere cool that time. I'm headed to Paris in a couple months, tho', so I dunno now what the fates will be stashing for his new 'un, Waiting to Inhale. Initial reaction is that my personal calendar is marked, and I'm str8 enough for now that I'll even remember. Promise.

Not sure who noticed, but my own personal ~~daddy~~ radio prog is kinda chunky. As in, fuck if I have been putting thought to staying on point as of late. Just enuff thought to keep the indecencies down until I get that late nite spot (HOLLER). For example, below is yet another archival sendspace link. During the (thankfully few) voicebreaks, notice that I totally forget how to speak. Let alone the questionable track choices. Pshaw.

Insufferable Picks - 03/09/07 (sendspaceroo):

Tindersticks - Until the Morning Comes - Waiting For the Moon
Matt Valentine - Hats Off to Bob Malloy - Space Chanteys
Beat Happening - Grave Digger Blues - Black Candy
Susanna and Her Magical Orchestra - Love Will Tear Us Apart - Melody Mountain
Paul Metzger - August - split 12" w/ Ben Chasny + Chris Corsano on Roaratorio
Natural Snow Buildings - Wisconsin - The Dance of the Moon and the Sun
Edmond de Deyster - Side B, Pt 1 - Selectie 01
Shackleton - I Want to Eat You - 10"

Well, sue me if I feel that I've "grown" enough in these few short, nourishing weeks to try something a lil' new, a lil' stupid. So... NOT this Friday (03/16, when I shall be playing my normal mix of carved sub-turkey and resplendent sparklebeat) but NEXT Friday (03/23, if I did that add thing right) I will be attempting an entirely electronix-ass-shake type set. 'Cause I wanna. That's right, all dubstep, minni techno, broken house... ummm... well, needless to say there will be no attention paid to beatmatching, blending, or setting the correct pitch on the turntable. I just wanna do it. And thought you should be warned if you actually listen and aren't, y'know, into that kinda thing. Done poorly.

Note that this isn't a permanent genre-shift. While I've got this 1 hour timesnot I may decide to do this on occassion to "get the jitters out" before realizing what I'm best at: Slapdash conglomerates of all that is fetid. Word is b, eyes in back etc etc.

Shudder the windoze

2007-03-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

What can I say? I've been drained. Charging. Chagrined. Naw, most actually things are overly complacent. So whadamI gonna bitch about here? Snowbanks are receding. Soon dudes will be blasting tinny Floyd on State St whilst making cosmic space paintings for yokels in letter jackets. I fooled the brah at the liquor store into charging me for only a bottle of Piraat and got three Atomiums for free. Wasn't even trying! I couldn't if I wanted to! I gotta fuckin RAISE for chissakes. This whole undertaking seems so... indulgent.

I HAVE BEEN WEARING A BATHROBE ALL AFTERNOON.

As a means to show my utter goodwill in the laziest way possible, I direct you to this fine site, currently hosting a megamix of just what I wanna hear right now.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go slushin'.

Dullard's Ball

2007-02-28T17:34:00.000-08:00

I'm not smart enough to keep from posting after being forced to once again man the Greyhound to Bullshit Cornfield, Illinois for the second time in two weeks. That duffle bag of Comet-cut blow ain't gonna haul itself, though, so whatever. Last time I recall winding up discussing a deep desire to huff Greg Dulli's dong whilst wearing an all-over-print hoodie and flat-brimmed fitted, which perhaps made people from Cleveland to Croydon think I might be the type that read the Fader or some such. Apologies and much blushing. This is what happens when you are stuck in a place where you cannot get even decent goddam french fries.

I wish I could pretend to even possibly point out some damn item of interest, but fuck if I am lodged without anything but cable and a book that I can't even begin to work up the desire to read. I guess it's as okay as anything else; this has given me ample time to find out that it seems like everyone across the whole damn interworld is bored as well. Of everything. Damn!
I guess that's this pre-spring shit. What do we do? Buy colorful shoes? Just give up?

My guess is you all will figure something good out and I'll jump on that shit post-haste, by which I mean a few months after the fact. But as early as next week I oughta at least be retching forth some form a' fannee oafishness from the comfort of my own carpetstained caverns.

Insufferable Picks - 02/23/2007 (sendspace'd mp3)

The Bummer Road - Death is My Friend - Deep Space Circuit - Time-Lag/COM
Les Rallizes Denudes - (I forgot what track) - End of Heavy Groove - Univeve
The Dead C - Your Hand - The White House - Siltbreeze
Home Blitz - Stupid Street - Live Outside 7"
Moolah - Courage - Woe Ye Demons Possesed - EM
Sun City Girls - Apna Desh - 330003 Cross Dressers from Beyon the Rig Veda - Locust
Sun City Girls - Blue Mamba - Torch of the Mystics - Majora
Gatekeeper - Tomb - Soundboy's Bones Get Buried in the Dirt Vol 1 - Skull Disco

Sway Lung

2007-02-19T23:03:00.000-08:00

Bidnass trip (shuddup, I stack that) to Urbanal-Champaign (whurr?) means extra writingness 'cause what the fuck else am I gonna do? Nothing as glorious as, say, Lethal Weapon or "Maui Fever" on at the moment. Plus, they made the mistake of giving me a smoking room and selling 40s until midnight, so reel in the reek and let the glory be thine... goddam radio update:

Insufferable Picks 02/16/07

Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch - Out to Lunch - Blue Note
Pandit Pran Nath - Raga Kut Todi - Raga Cycle, Palace Theatre, Paris 1972 - Sri Moonshine
Kode9 & the Spaceape ft. Ms. Haptic - Curious - Memories of the Future - Hyperdub
Z-Ro ft Tanya Herron - Continue 2 Roll - I'm Still Livin' - Rap-A-Lot
Rhythm & Sound ft. Paul St. Hilaire - Never Tell You - 10" - Burial Mix
Armour - Iron Man - 10" - Tectonic
Matias Aguayo - Radiotaxi - Are You Really Lost - Kompakt
Group Doueh - Eid for Dakhla - Guitar Music From the Western Sahara - Sublime Frequencies
Solar Anus - The Extreme North - Skull Alcoholic: The Complete Solar Anus - tUMULt

Archived mp3 thinger (sendspace link)

------------------------------------------

Anyway, things that seem appropriate right now if never again:

(1) My Love (shuddup) intro: "Let's take a trip to Dubai" re-read as "Let's take a class at DeVry"

(2) A chopped and screwed (possibly also slopped) version of the Afghan Whigs' "Summer's Kiss" is the white label I need right now, but will probably regret in the morn.

So much to regret in the morn. Why isn't "Deadliest Catch" on?

The name of this dispatch is "Mastiff Fluxions", and that's all yer gonna get.

2007-02-13T20:06:00.000-08:00

WHY I GIVE SO MUCH AS A DAMN

an essay in three uneven parts

Pt.1 - Foundations: Moon boots and crop circle haircuts

A wee shit, moving to cross the street to the playground where one could dam the spring melt into deathtraps for plastic alpha dawgs and their robot ilk. I trip on the gravel and lay on the street gazing dully at an impending car, putting up little resistance as I am dragged hairways to my front door, at which a parent of mine is informed that I am not to be trusted, in terms of being competent at getting somewhere such as across the street. I spend the next 6 years amassing a large collection of NES cartridges that my eyes no longer allow me to play.

Pt.2 - Evolution: Throw it all on out there/That which does not stick will at least rot and fertilize the soil for the next at-bat motherfucker

I show up at the doorstep of college with fat pants of materials ranging from corduroy through denim to "shiny blue", and yet nary a trance record in my collection... just some double copies of Toasted Marshmallow Breaks and but a single turntable. I stole a low-grade flyer offa the short-lived Green Bay shopwall from which this vinyl was procured, a shop of nothing but four-on-the-floor tech-house and "turntablist"-area beatjuggler ammo. The flyer was for an Archers of Loaf/Butterglory show I was not able to attend. 'Round here all levels scavenge for something to with which to affiliate, every step of the way. I buy a Triple Rectifier with my paper mill cheddar and spend a year or so wearing plain black fitted t-shirts and playing black SG in a poor shadow-fax of Lifetime.

Pt.3 - Finale: Gross markings in a growth market

The power of the internet has given everyone a 500 GB hard-drive of the hottest shit imaginable (of which, if posting statistics are to be believed, at least 100GB feature Lil Wayne). I blush uncontrollably at Rettman's lashing, sweating profusely through my Diplomats "Ramones logo" t-shirt (no, not the foil print one, fool)... goddam!!! I already ordered those Mighty Baby lps!!! Should I be embarrassed? I'm still not quite sure. Should I even be able to afford those Mighty Baby lps? Can I really afford those Mighty Baby lps? I guess I'm embarrassed. HELL FUCKIN' YES I'M EMBARRASSED. He's right, you know. I'm even meta-embarrassed for the number of times I've mentioned Rettman on this thing. Not that he doesn't deserve the credit, the man is good. It's just probably weird to a guy for some internet-place to constantly see reference to his internet-place or radio presence or whatever from some quasi-faceless kid's internet-place off inna boonies, unless your that Kottke fellow and make a living off of it. And the Archers of Loaf for that matter. Why do I always mention them? I don't mention Animal Chin. Thank goodness for that. I could just delete this whole post right now and start from scratch, but that would somehow be less "true". I'd live each day knowing I removed words from play that I at one time considered offering up to all of the internet bored enough to care. Of course, I'm not changing ways or anything. Dubstep twelves are still in virtual shopping baskets. I swear it ain't a fad. Brooklyn kids are still sometimes capable of artsounds worth the hard earned cash of the midwest. Hell, I can't afford my teeth but I can still afford records. But Tony, c'mon, I still need a gauge, a compass. I've already got those Byrds lps and have watched live YouTube footage of "Beautiful Child" enough for the time being. I'm a bit late to the game, but I know that yr print zine went hidden sometime before I 'came in' and a dude's gotta worry when one of the few sorta-almost-regularly updated beacons in his eternal night sky gets so, I dunno, pessimistic. Keep grindin through this winter and beyond! For the children! Pleeze!

No, you must have meant eRgotism.

2007-02-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

Archival book keeping for the sake of my mirror-gazing tendencies and self-insufficient ways. For your records, archiving challenges led to no available audio for my subpar set on 02/02/2007. Furthermore, the show for which I have provided linkaction, 02/09/2007, was cut short by a fire alarm about 3/4 of the way through, so I take no responsibility for the last 15 minutes, during which I have no idea what is being played. Not that I know the rest of the time either.

Insufferable Picks playlist4posterity dated 02/02/07:

Che-SHIZU - I'm Dancing in My Heart - Nazareth - PSF
Vampire Belt - Snake Out - Dead is Ok - Hot Cars Warp
Them - I Can Only Give You Everything - Them ft Van Morrison - Decca
Neon Pearl - Urban Ways - Neon Pearl - Acme
The Wooden Cupboard - 1 - Boiling the Animal in the Sky
Mrtyu - The Burning Ground - The Burning Ground - Battlecruiser
Mala - Blue Notez - 12" - DMZ
Carl Craig - Televised Green Smoke - More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art - Planet e

Insufferable Picks playlist for 02/10/07 (Sendspace mp3 link):

Talk Talk - I Believe in You - Spirit of Eden - Capitol
Burial - Broken Home - Burial - Hyperdub
Craig Talborn - Junk Magic - Junk Magic - Thirsty Ear
Fushitsusha - 1.3 - Live 1 - PSF
Kimya Dawson - It's Been Raining - Hidden Vagenda - K
Satwa - Blue de Cachorro Muito Louco - Satwa - Time-Lag
The Witch - Black Tears - Lazy Bones - Shadoks

Beersoaked entries back on deck. You can't keep a down man good.

Blanch all night

2007-02-05T15:59:00.000-08:00

There is just a little goddam bit less every day. Energy. One fat-assed cold front just sitting on us. Passing a little wind, perhaps, but the resultant chill (to my experience) isn't making anyone crabwalk faster then they already would in this lethargy of forsaken particles. Gah, it just pushes you into a doorway and forces you to write pap like that.

Pap. Huh.

But yeah, not kidding at all about the idleness in the air. In these times I seek out Schnapps ("giving menthol a sort of okay name") and practitioners of longform drone. Like I can be asked to flip a 12" single every <=7 minutes right now. Trust, it hurts.

Fortunately, there is relief to that end as well. I have finally clutched the Vodka Soap tapes and they soothe and are sooth. Still, like a chump I have not auto-reverse. Further proof that life has only eroded since my "heady paperroute days"[tm]. How could a manthing tire of these mantras? It doesn't matter. Just tired in general. But the guy has laid it out here in little magnetic strips: He's thankful so you don't hafta be. Just puddle around and let him descend the curly straw.

When the devotionals just don't work in any accounts, I have been switching up to queen of phantom limbs Marcia Basset's latest Zaimph traimph, Mirage of the Other. Meat of all temperatures will certainly appreciate where she's ~~going~~ gone with this. Claws of many sizes of cat bared, in assorted denominations not discrete. But does that make them continuous here? I can't even tell; it's a glorious kind of claybath that has me up in arms against the frost on our lone window here, and making endless variations of those hand-tricks that look like footprints. When all day is nocturnal, this is the way to go, I have a hunch.

Groaning fulcrum of malfeasance

2007-01-29T12:44:00.000-08:00

Much as in my experience nary a comfort-zone's been kept intact without a pivot to something sour: an essential truth is not something to be fucked with. For instance, a liquor store isn't gonna take a check in town no matter how soon yr next payday; best to operate under the pretense of grocery procurement at some place with combined lunchmeat/six-pack resources.

No, that's a lie. I'm straight dry 'til Thursday, but my my what a winter warming we've got in store then. I've been scoping online retailers of genuine Keweenaw copper tankards, that one might partake as his ilk was meant to partake... in a situation conducive to the conduction of current. Then we hit up that Chimay in charged fashions.

I best tell you now, here it is... a playlist, an mp3 link, do with it as you will... Presented: Insufferable Picks, Vol. 1:

Ed Askew - Little Eyes - Little Eyes - De Stijl
Ai Aso - Umerumono - Umerumonoizen - Pedal/Tiliqua
Les Rallizes Denudes - Enter the Mirror - Underground Tracks 70s - Blue Cheer
LSD-March - Black Bouquet - Suddenly, Like Flames - Last Visible Dog
Skream - Midnight Request Line - 12" - Tempa
Loefah - Twisup VIP - 12" - DMZ
Prins Thomas - Goettsching - 12" - Full Pupp
Ø - Helium - Eetteri EP - Sahko
Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - Run - Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - Eskimo

http://www.sendspace.com/file/vclzvk (Good for I dunno how long, don't be shocked... and if yr easily confused as I am, look for the lil' shaky arrow. That's the download link thinger there.)

So, whaddelse? It's been an internal debate on trajectory and the second-plus order tracings of initial+boundary conditions to figure how much I can claim to aim for becoming lograde 21st century Molloy or Suttree, or perhaps only 22nd century Fackelman.

Nah, I kid. I'm sturdy for the time being. Solid. Perhaps curdling a bit in these days of voluntary self-caging sans self-medication, but what you pay is what you get, fairly significantly. And what I've got is about a DVD-and-a-half left of the Wire that is available in this format, and then friends shit gets lost but fast, I worry. Or I guess maybe I just move on, but to what? I feel that anything else will seem like, well, Becker. And Netflix is keeping those Extras DVDs at arms length for the time being. Oh, life, you can be so damn cold to those of us adrift and a full week away from getting to partake in what is, apparently "the best meat lottery I've ever seen". Literally, you sicko. Laugh now, we'll see whose got $50 worth of choice, fresh cuts come this time next Monday...

My teeth never fit together the same way more than twice anymore; they make a pill for that?

2007-01-22T15:44:00.000-08:00

Spent the day with spiced lamb and onion-whiff on my knuckles. Gotta admit... I liked it. Probably gonna do a bit of raw dabbing each morning from now on; a man what's found his scent is a man what's found his calling-card.

Of course, if yer yust yelling like yours unruly, not really calling per se, the assumed difference being the existence of a known and specific recipient of yawps emitted, then a card of calling is certainly perhaps a bit unnecessary. Like leaving a thank you note tacked in the Mariana Trench. Ah, life.

This week has certainly been what oughta be/is referred to somewhere not right here as "Basinskiesque" with dusk/twilight aligning tantalizingly with the ol' day-ending mental whistle-blow and snow drifts and billowing grays. Not sure what the 'Ski-Mask himself would say of the connotations I synth 'n sync up w/ mind-pics of Wisco's great many rotting farmhouses and fugue-state fields but it has been a bit since I've checked his new (whatever that means in his case) material. Until I get to it, Andrew Chalk's woodsleeve'd LP Goldenfall certainly did the trick just yesterday, with but three consecutive spins to hook my cheek to the crystals of nostalgia gettin' blown 'bout therein. Neon Pearl reissue on Acme, the Witch Shadoks reissue, Elephat Micah, and the new Dead C/Hi God People twelver have all been getting plenty spin as well 'round these rugs. Plenty of teardrop refraction to all the blot and beat within these fine disks, I must say.

And shit, I don't know but I guess I just really gotta mention the Natural Snow Buildings 2CDR. This is the pinnacle of gland-tugging weepish-redeye prostrate-at-the-quilt drone that I've had pleasure of in the past bit. I mean pure dramalite hot chocolate bliss. Animal Psi spoke of it some time ago, and crap, Sigur Ros is mentioned so I guess I'd better rip a copy for my Mom and eat some cream cheese brownies. It's backseat-of-the-family-car fantastic. Hope for that Time-lag reissue, I guess, 'cause it's apparently true that there are only 19 copies and I e-mailed faster than you to get one. I'm not sure if I feel obligated to post a track or what, shit I guess I will. There's 25 of 'em, and all good so here's but a tease of that mixing bowl.

Natural Snow Buildings - Dance of the Moon and the Sun - (YSI link) [if you wanna I take this down, just please tell me good sirrah... quincyhoist (grout) gmail (merkin) com.]

And for the record I haven't gone totally eyeliner droop on you. I certainly crave the Vitamin D-synthesis-ability to be able to handle all the Project Pat et al, but dammit my man-moon is hoverin' just right this week so cut me some slack.

Also pleeze remember if you're not a total choad to tune into WSUM (streamable) or 91.7FM in the lesser Madison area this Friday, 1/26, for near-cherry on-airy debasement. Do 'er. Pleeze. Justify my drudge.

Slump Kings

2007-01-14T15:20:00.000-08:00

Who knew that, what with all the searching for "culture", wallowing at home attempting to differentiate myself from other carpet-dwellers (using my mind), questioning why is it that my eyes feel, well, the only word for it would have to be sour, and all that other winter-season-type recreational loathing (reflective, refractive, but never responsive), well whoda knew that the one thing keeping me from happiness wasn't just repeated listenings of the two Rhythm & Sound 10"s I currently own, or even the two Basic Channel 12"s, or balling up my lethargy-cultivated Brillo-chinned slack-jawedness with the crash and shimmer catharsis (sorry) of them ol' Fushitsusha sides... no, dude... it's a slow cooker.

Ahem:

"If I gotta stew, I wanna stew witchoo"

And that's all there is to it. Now there is a chance against the vinegar foot smell. Now there is opportunity to claim I am a gourmand while really I just sit and smell the two year old spices from the once-merely-decorative spinning rack slowly melt meat and tater, and it's like my weekend has a reason to live. Now I get to claim I am "pairing" it with Trappist ale or whatever.

Now I just throw crap in a pot and turn a knob one click to the right.

And it has proved to me that the less I am involved with this stuff, the better it turns out. I actually have my girlfriend turn the knob that one click, just to make sure. And know what? It works.

I was tempted to apply this less-involved-is-more approach to other aspects of my life, but then I realized that I already do. Need some work-help, coworker? Somebody already wrote this little open-source hunk of code that is much more streamlined and effective then what I'd put together! Want to hang out? Too bad, I've got a Netflix subscription and a library card motherfucker!

Seriously, this is the best winter ever. Recommend some books to me. Oversized print ones.

---------------------------------------------

Outwardly, though, in relation to something else: We're finally getting a bit of snow. Normally I only resort to weather discussions when I'm actually forced to make chatter w/ the many strangers out there, but this time it's serious. I'm glad we finally get to dabble in snow, not because I own an old bedazzled Young Jeezy shirt or anything, but 'cause it totally sets some mood for the Sähkö Finnimal (doble perdón) techno that got repressed last year, if I know right (possible).

Back when I was a bit more hormonally crazed and of liquid assets I once made the mistake of listening to Pan Sonic's Aaltopiiri during a solo 2am drive between Green Bay and Totally Nowhere, Wisco. I'm just disclosing that the "beats" "crafted" of negative charge pulses and whatever-cycle hum they fuck with just make a solo driving man all foggy-headed and incapacitated. Do not operate equipment, I suppose might be the words. I guess I should just feel lucky that it was prior to the massive Kesto causing certain low-speed collisions.

The Sähkö releases I've had pleasure to clutch have, like most of my fave things, managed to rewind my skull and make me realize what a doof I was thinking I thought that things were the way things weren't. Total repiping thru & thru. This stuff is supposedly all from 'round back '93-ish and makes me wanna ice chip up a puukko and throw up a discotheque inside a Lappi reindeer. Makes the cynical detachment and empty-vessel nonemotion of all them model facial fotos look like the blubbery histrionix-passionstorm of *ahem*...

"[Vainio's kickdrum] was soft and cool,
[his snares] were clear and bright,
but [he's] not there."

All the releases I'm currently filthying w/ my nubbins are under the name Ø, which is apparently pronounced "Ohm" but I like to think of as "Null Set". I can't share, 'cause all I've got is vinyl, but there's digital media available if you click about. I would advise that yes, you bother tryin' to find [them]. I swear no attempts at synergy here; I doubt myself capable of any "nergy", but here's a link to some actual facts (that I think I maybe got offa 200lbu tho' I don't see it in the nasty sidebar anymore), if you want further reading.

To be Young, Ig'nant, and Overwhelmed With Ass

2007-01-04T17:05:00.000-08:00

I'd be one helluva prick to try and tell you it was a new year like you didn't roll into it dutifully glazed and devoid of purpose, completely aware that we're one year further in the Grand Cycle (I see you, 2012). I did the same, avoiding the upper-fuel'd melee and opting for a quiet night of brews and Ghost Dog. And I won't begin to imagine the concept of suggesting that change need be made 'round anybodies practices, regimen, habits, ad infinidumb.

But dammit, this is my first honest year of semiconsciousness with no obligatory book-"learning", degrees looming out of grasp, or accruing student debt (just payments!). And so a change seems in order around the Hoist household. That change, mon amis: I promise to drink less beer and more Hennessy ("The Kindest Gift") whilst at this keybored. At least while the bottle holds out.

No, but there's some actual stuff I need to get working on, and I just wanna blather all about it on these internets. First of all, I am putting my scant collection where my slit-like mouth is and opening up airwave-shop at the local WSUM. Starting January 26th, I'll be doing my best to dodge cuss words from 7-8pm every Friday. It's a measly hour, and you've got nothing better to do. It's after happy hour and before any ass arrives at your local "hot spot", throw it on while you're debating the merits of pairing a can of drained tuna with a warm, half-empty tallboy. And mebbe if you ask nice I'll pass archives along if you miss out.

Second, not to be left behind by my filthy frere Aaron Low Rent (no internet presence, thank your lucky stars), I guess I'll make grand, possibly spurious claims to releasing some tape or cd-r or if you folks really paypal the hell outta me 7" on my own vanity label, Get Drunk or Drunk Trying. I am stating this for the simple reason that by claiming it on the internet it will become true, and this is the only way I can finally will this kinda shit into existence. If you couldn't a' guessed from that adjective splatter-of-diminishing-returns last month, I know I'm just not cut out for the music review cockfight, which, when coupled with the fact that I think I've finally forgotten all semblance of quasi-trained musical abilitiy, sets me up just about perfectly to get real creative. Hell, I've got a Groovebox, which makes me at least as qualified as Peaches, and she sells tons of rekkids to non-Canadians. I'm kidding about this one as much as I was about the duckboots, folks.

Finally, lest you think my admittance of critical mess indicates some sort of cessastion of this here anagram-titled digital scratchpad, you best try to think again. In an attempt at recovering some type of bowel regularity, I am really trying to move all my myriad excretory functions to some kind of consistent schedule. Read it how you will, this "consistency". But damn, a man needs a purpose, something to keep the abject vibrational terror that claims ones chest each early afternoon from driving him to the consumption of blinding quantities of rye. My eyesight ain't what it used to be, yesterday I walked into a bicyclist, and if holding back on posting every time I feel left out by all the critical love for, say, a Susanna and the Magical Orchestra or whatever means that I can offer you some cask-er strength rant at a slightly future point, then I say how many fucking analogies can a dude attempt to juggle in one paragraph anyways?

So in summary, Welcome! new year. I hope you enjoy my transition to grotesque self promotion and a transfer of my simmering, volatile internet emotions not unlike the shunting action of a cirrhotic liver.

Remember: It's better for everyone this way.

deathprod - the contraceptive briefcase II - from imaginary songs from tristan da cuhna (YSI link) [if there is beef w/ my uploaded tunes e-mail me at quincyhoist ut gmail dut com and I'll rip that fucker down, promise]

Pain in the annual: Fuck it. Just fuck it.

2006-12-20T19:09:00.000-08:00

There is other stuff I liked this year, but I am tired from hating on bottles for awhile. Tomorrow I start my spree of lazing and cable, so why should I write then?

My favorite thing of the year, I must tell you, with no doubt, is the genre Pitchfork called "boring" in their paragraph on their least favorite favorite single of the year. It be dubstep. And I like to be bored by it.

Yup. Digital Mystikz/Loefah/Skream/Twitchy Droid Leg/Shackleton/Appleblim/
Milanese/Kode 9 & the Spaceape... this is what made me finally decide to smile at some point in time some months ago.

My overall fave of this fave was no doubt Burial, though. I wrote some stuff on Burial sometime. He made it onto a few Pitchfork staffers individual lists, and I think both Dusted's Crumsho and Igloo Mag's Luca Maini (sic?) loved this shit, making it officially enjoyed by the people with the best names in criticism. Dig on.

I think next year I may for the first time in my life attempt to do a standard top ten countdown thinger, 'cause this made me keep forgetting stuff and was just kind of rancid.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to browse Tectonic plate 10"s on Forced Exposure. See you later.

Pain in the annual: The more I like it, the less I write about it. Which is why I never talk to my friends.

2006-12-17T14:42:00.000-08:00

I'm running outta time to finish telling you how awesome my rekkid collection and worldy experience expanded this partially fine year. I shall enter this final week of probable posting prior to an extended holiday scotch-nogg hiatus with the intention of arbitrarily listing as much arbitrary stuff as I can. Actualize!

Dogfish Head expensive-ass beers: At first I totally balked at dropping $13 on four beers. Then I saw the magic number: 15%! That's a lot of percent. The drunk made me feel kinda stoned, and after two beers I was pretty much done for, My Name is Earl being beyond my grasp.

John Cale NY in the 1960s reissure box/Angus Maclise Counter Culture Chronicles: Birth of the drool. The Maclise day-names that Blastitude posts w/ their frequent updates are better than any webcomic in existence, except possibly Achewood.

Choubi Choubi on Sublime Frequencies: Iraq has crazy drums. I am submit.

Uusitalo - Tulenkantaja: I felt quite like a sexy lady, wrapped in silks and such. I touched myself and was dissapointed. I touched someone else and it was on.

Various Productions - The World is Gone/Junior Boys - So This is Goodbye: A couple of melancholic cirquit torchsmiths here. I want both these bands to do covers of Never Land (A Fragment) (or other Floodland track of their choice) on a split whitelabel 10". If you know how to speak with Canadians and reclusive Britfolk, please inform them as such.

Pain in the Annual: Satisfaction, Confusion, anything ending in a good shun.

2006-12-13T19:32:00.000-08:00

But on a personal note, did I mention that I've finally stumbled into the fake real world this year? I've hid out ruining my credit rating whilst still munching government cheese for over half a decade, and I finally broke (hah!) into the big time this year. Man, whatta waste.

Yeah, yeah, real rough, sure. I really did figure that having some embossed paper would in fact help me make just enuff to keep me in food, rekkids, beer, and quality outerwear. Well, shit, looks like I haven't figured everything out quite yet. But I'm working on it.

Funny thing: I've got a few applications out there. One to help usher in a cleaner fuel economy via komplicated katalytic kemistry, and one to build a better mousetrap. Ok, rat poison. Just somebody gimme something.

I mean, I really oughta be able to do more than just sit gape-eyed wishing I could hear Bone Awl and licking gifs of Skull Disco 12" artwork. Dammitall, somebody just cut me down.

On a side note, do not mix tap beers and americanos and tuna melts.

Pain in the Annual: Short and sweet, but I do dig Loren Connors

2006-12-12T19:54:00.000-08:00

Two more hits for you, my sweet rooks. I keep this short 'cause I just don't have the concentration. For which, I suppose, I oughta include Rogue brewery on my year-end list.

Loren Connors -- Night Through
A New York avant blues institution or some such, hadn't really heard anything from this chappy until last year. Late to the ballpark, my hotdog is cold. Lucky for me Family Vineyard put out this three disc set of many of his impossible-to-locate assorted-format releases. My penchant for abused slides throbs with glee. Now I gotta check his Haino collabos...

This Heat -- Out of Cold Storage
I guess this'll make this post a collection of condensed entries on expanded retrospectives. Prolly 'bout right. I went through hassle to get this beast (but you needn't!), and am now likely shitlisted by ReR head-honchos in not one but two English speaking nations. Fortunately, the lovely 6 disc package isself has convinced me to prepare to return to a prelingual status, meaning said nations needn't worry 'bout me for long. Plenty of klang and jaggedness, yup, and
somewhere they snuck int he meloharmonee to take one back to how it all should have pushed forward, if only we weren't in a place where none of this has been available for as long as I've been cognative. 'Til now! Heed. We needn't have yet another year of Bloc Monkees. Need we?

Pain in the Annual: Nocturnal emissions with MV & EE, nightmare rituals with Ultra Eczema

2006-12-10T15:29:00.000-08:00

MV and EE are some prolific folk. I guess when you just get high on yr "fake farm", as Tony Rettman puts it, you have plenty of time to rub up against your muses. Well, must be a lotta lube or some pretty chafed muses out 'round these two and their oddly named cohorts. Fine by me, as long as they keep the bowls singing and the earholes ringing.

As usual there's been a lot of stuff coming outta their camp this year. As of late they've been performing and recording massive posse cuts with their Bummer Road affiliates. I haven't had the pleasure of hearing Green Blues yet, but I hear it is yet another "smoker". I have, however, mawed down on their highest profile release this year, Mother of Thousands, on that oh-so-lovely Time-Lag label. And guess what? I dig.

Mother of Thousands do indeed keep it deep and distant, with the inverted-folk strain that MV keeps on lock. Plenty of ghosts playing harmonicas, trees plucking strings, grassturbation, etc. A real evenin' time spinna and reverb winna. Brain massge.

The Ultra Eczema label, on the other hand, has been releasing it's unfair share of creep and lurk for when yr in that squinty mood rolling 'bout in empty, crumpled cans. The Guam River and Spykes w/ the Casket Sinkers pitcher discs stay real crackly, total Detroit action. Much less aggressive than a lot of the stuff the dudes involved are known for, more of a circling-at-twenty-paces-with-jelly-stuff-dripping shadow-tones. Tomutonttu instead decides to color everything as everything all at once, and the resultant flourescent bleed really fucks up one's screen. Jessica Ryland as Can't confesses in a way that makes you feel glory in your own damn guilt. And last on the list of what I've had the pleasure of partaking of, Edmund de Deyster's posthumous archival findings on Selectie 01 are the loneliest abused basement synth tones I can recall hearing. All this stuff really gets a dude in its own way. Ultra Eczema, you go.

Pain in the Annual: Might as well mention the Clipse as well [w/ bonus riff on criticism]

2006-12-07T16:02:00.000-08:00

I'm putting the Clipse album on my-year end wrap-up series mainly because it got released. I probably fall dangerously close to some variant of the grotesque hipster template, midwest strain, that is rumored to be the primary component of the 70,000 or so folks that chose to buy this album within the first week of it being freed from it's long-term POW camp. A rough sketch of the characteristics of this lowly beast of turdin', as pertinent to this discussion:

Feels obligated to include at least one semi-arbitrary (based on critical acclaim) rap album on their best-of lists
For the past few years, that's probably gonna be "crack rap"

There's been chatter about Hell Hath No Fury being "underwhelming" and I would agree with that to an extent. I think it's way more consistent than their debut, but the consistency comes without the peaks that that album had, though so far it's much easier for me to listen to HHNF all the way through. Of course, I still thing both (not just vol. 2) of the We Got it 4 Cheap mixtapes are the best of the bunch, but that's that hipster strain controlling my will. But those mixtapes really (really) got me rooting for these dudes to have the chance to get this record out. And they did. So I'm happy, and yeah I'm glad to listen to it.

Since I don't fuck w/ leaks and have only had a few days to dig, it would be stupid of me to put it super high on my "awesome!" list. It is certainly not a total jump-out-and-blow-my-mind-immediately affair, but has all the makings of a potential grower, so I'm keeping it back here at December 7th status. And that officially puts me above quota for hip-hop on the list.

As a bonus tie-in best-of thinger, since I was too busy stuffing my face and downing port on some corporate dime last night to keep you fed with my advent calendar-like streak, Status Ain't Hood posted a bit on critical acclaim doing it's thang to push some of these Clipse records out, and Idolator has been doing a fair amount of discussion about where music criticism is at these days. A common point that's been brought up on both is that there's ome kinda threshold where the constant web-hype helps acts that are gonna sell below some value x, and isn't gonna matter with artists that sell above y. They didn't exactly seem puzzled by this fact, but didn't really get into the possible why of it. I figure it's that most of our nature is like cultural ground chuck that us chosen few can self-righteously form into delicious rare patties and gnash at with condescending bicu-lture-spids, but that's just my kickass chosen-one outlook.

Well, long-tail more-buying-fewer-is-better bullshit stats aside, my second addition to the list this post 'round is the sea change of the music industry, as witnessed from my awfully myopic perspective, this year. I'm having a hell of a time keeping up with the limited-run art-edition "beardo" stuff with no commercial aspirations because too much awesome stuff in that field is coming out too quickly. It's a financial Black Death for dudes like me, and I love it. Even on the higher-distribution end of the IndieCorp spectrum, I think if I squint just right I see a little drop off in the overlap that seemed to be what last year's critical consensus trafficked in. Don't get me wrong, blog servers must have some raw dicks yet from the critical circle jerk crowding their bandwidth, but I think perhaps splinter cells are sprouting up, miraculously reducing the chaffing. Fuck, I'm sorry about typing that.

What I'm getting at is some folks are actually talking about the obvious change in every aspect of the music industry. People are kind of worried that maybe music doesn't matter anymore. Nobody buys it or whatever. The overarching blandness of most levels of music coming out these days drove this fella to the subcultural depths that I generally trawl these days (stay tuned on this list, fuckers! Obscure masturbation promised!) and I really doubt I'm the only one. I don't know if there's some metaphor for that in the overarching cultural landscape of our nation. The number of pre-beaten white ballcaps I often bear witness to casts some doubt. But whatever, some shit is changing and I've heard stasis is where death lurks.

Pain in the annual: Kicking Mule Workshop makes me gay for jeans

2006-12-04T20:19:00.000-08:00

A year ago a pal of mine bit "the bullet" and got a pair of those pricey-ass Nudie raw selvage blah blah jeans. I was pretty jealous. I dunno, to paraphrase the disco king in Freaks & Geeks, I'm not a good looking man, but I started paying attention to how I dress, and, okay, not grooming so much, and I wound up broke with a wardrobe that was outta fashion in like 3 weeks! I dunno, most jeans have those odd wear patterns pre-made so it's only conceivably "naturally worn" by you if, say, you spurt bleach-jism and have an awful habit of clawing at your clothed thighs with gardening implements.

That's why these Kicking Mule fuckers are so great. They don't even stick stitching on the back pockets for branding. Nope. Just a little hint of brand recon via some "turned up selvage" at the "coin pocket" (see, that's not so gay sounding). I feel like a fatter, shorter James Dean! I've started rolling random things up in my shirt sleeve and pretending they're unfiltered ciggies!

It gets even better, though... much like the aforementioned dude's Nudies, being raw means I'm actually not supposed to wash these things for like a year. That's great! 'Cause like everyone, I secretly love the scent of my own fart, and that is now literally woven into the fabric of these things for all time. In the sake of rock-star fashion.

As women's fashions continue to oversmoke crack to dizzying new heights of excess (this year's legging revival, especially when they started dabbling in stirrups, and next years ultra high waists, and to the person that figured out how to breed banthas for footwear-hide, good work, man [like how I used the geek reference to attempt to deflect your attention from the fact that I know about current ladieswear trends? Did it work?]) it is good to know that I am not expected to dress like Sinbad or John Leguizamo in "The Pest". I spend enough time cultivating antisocial tendencies without having to actively shun hobbled styles.

So thank you Kicking Mule, for letting me spend more than I care to admit on a pair of jeans that I really do like a lot. Because they just ~~fit~~ smell right.

Pain in the annual: Trae's Restless makes me uncomfortable in a way I might just like.

2006-12-03T17:38:00.000-08:00

As a northwoods boy through and through, I know approximately jack shit on the true weirdness of Texas. Sure, I can dig on the Thirteenth Floor Elivators because they rule and appreciate the Butthole Surfers because I fear them, and yes I acknowledge that summer a year ago was Houston's time to shine in the rap game, but that's only because media sources told me so. I don't actually understand the source of all of this, why Texas is so damn looming a mindframe. I won't mess with it, be sure of that. But Trae has added a whole new dimension to my understanding of the state.

As I told y'all, summer 2k5 was a big 'un for H-Town rap. Mike Jones, Paul Wall, blah blah. I think Chamillionaire's big thing came out this year, and I loathe that Ridin' Diry song to the extent that I twinge a bit when I scroll past the awesome UGK album of the same name on my playlist in association. I think I remember reading something on DJ Screw just after he passed, but was too young to appreciate the glories of sizzurp and what have you. But in the small hunk of icy water that I paddle in, Restless seemed the go to Houston album of this year.

Really I only saw it mentioned in a few places. Cocaine Blunts, So Many Shrimp, and then Status Ain't Hood jumped on the bandwagon mumbling some shit about "Portishead if they listened to rap" or something. I didn't really see that part on most of the tracks unless I squinted, but maybe the sliver of extra buzz in that capsule is what pushed me over the edge into buying a damn copy (though by all means Noz's approval should be all it takes to get me on the horn screamin' at some distributer to mail me their last copy of some soon to be OOP collection of bangers).

I don't know much about Trae. His posse is called Assholes By Nature, and his sorta congested-nose baritone flow makes me pucker a bit when he says "Assholes", but that's 'cause I'm a twat. The disc is a pretty big downer, with a lot of chopped vocal samples and a lot of Trae basically wanting to be left alone, which I can dig at this juncture. I used to listen to it on my way home from work towards the end of summer when my iPod still worked, and probably wound up looking salty to people just by correlation. It was great in the steamy days of August, which I assumed were the closest we got to the weather of Houston.

As October rolls around, I tend to put aside a lot of my rap for icier electronics, morbid-er (fuck you it's a word) dark jams, or freeform improvisational shit more in tune with getting my mind set for the local hibernation season. Last week I pulled Restless outta my stack when I was waiting for a phone call not to come, antsy (see the connect?) and was shocked by how well a lot of this jawn traslated to our frozen tundra clime at the moment. There were little tinkles I hadn't noticed in some songs, and the sadness really popped in a way that I could munch on as I hated on the outside atmosphere. Much as I feel when I dabble with the black metal in the bleakest of times, except with some tinge of warmth that could only be granted by everlovin' cough syrup.

In conclusion, I recommend this album if you know that everything is pretty much bullshit when you get right down to it and that whatever you might as well just stay in and re-read your collection of Sandman comix, you fuckin' goth.

Pain in the annual: I arbitrarily rate shit for the rest of the month.

2006-12-02T11:43:00.000-08:00

Year-end best-of lists suck. If it matches up w/ your tastes, then you're a sheep, a lemming, a pathetic fuck that uses the term "indie rock" and subcribes to at least one pseudo-edgy glossy rag. Did you know that there is a coffee shop in Madison called "Indie Coffee"? I am torn, the coffee is decent but I truly wish to firebomb the signage. Whatever.

On the other hand, if the list doesn't overlap, then you're an oddish shutin outsider or an obvious know-nothing suburbanite. Freakish beard-growth or watcher of Scrubs. Take your pick.

Since I like dragging out discomfort and engaging in loss of face, I am spending the rest of this month arbitrarily selecting objects, concepts, or some other bullshit that spazzed my mind out this year and telling you all about my lowly obsessions.

First on my list is electronics and tech companies. I have loved these pungent choades for the pure amount of self-satisfaction I have gained watching their recent product launches fail miserably. I've been rooting against the PS3 for about a year for no real reason. I've never owned a PlayStation of any version number, but was more or less neutral towards them. Hell, I rarely played games on whatever obsolete system I owned at the time. The PS3-vs.-Wii matchup got me riled, though. Not because I feel any nostalgia for my heady NES days. I hate those cover bands. I hate those t-shirts. I am haunted by trying to figure out what the point of the Jaws game was when I was a child, or how anybody thought Abadox could be beaten without cheat codes. No. I just wanted Wii to win, for some reason. Sony just seems kinda like some guy with an expensive haircut that pops his collar, y'know? So thank goodness that this seems to have actually happened. The shortish Asian man in Nintendo is trouncing his ass but good (I think). I got nervous by the fanboy chatter bubbling thru my channels 'round the PS3's launch, but I think the numbers are speaking for themselves by now. Oh, and all the people that wrote articles on what a stupid name "Wii" was... fuck off. It is a great name. Not that I'll buy one, I doubt it. That is all.

I was also going to discuss the Zune, but what's the point? This is going to be a weird memory that whatever channel does what VH1 did back when I last saw VH1 will poke fun at in a sub-30 second segment 10 years from now.

Now it's about 2pm and that means time for me to start my Saturday beer-drinking regimine. Goodbye until I rate some more shit in a random manner soon. Purchase for the holidays!!!

Of grout fingernails

2006-11-27T19:57:00.000-08:00

Went back to the wombishness for the past few days and between gorge, microbrew, and sale bourbon I am a revamped bufoon. I did find that my whiskers have evolved so that fewer than three blades are of no use. Wha' the hell do they put on the "aloe" strip anywho? Some nourishing agent, I know that. We can never go back.

This week has been/seems to will be still a patch of obscene late-season downpour whilst my beloved boondox bygone abode is already withering in snowmobile baiting flurries. My windowshopping nostalgia for assorted extreme outerwear gives me anxiety pangs like you'd wonder how long 'til I'm checking Ski-Doo jackets on the outskirts of East Wash w/ "a plug in". No, it is goose down I crave, puffy things and odd acronyms.

And yet for all the puff I want to wrap, I can only stand to hear shards and gritt thwobs... ol' Pan Sonic and drooling at Boomkat's promise of DMZ restocks and hoo jeez what the fuck season we got upon us...?

My life in garbage

2006-11-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

I just signed on to be my apartment buildings garbage-dude. Each week I shall don gloves and drag our cans to the curb. I shall pick up whatever refuse has been carelessly dumped about the grounds and uphold the moral code requiring that I not dig around looking for materials to lord over my neighbors' heads as "sensitive".

I have two highly technical BS degrees, for which the average starting salaries are $50,000 and $60,000/yr.

I am doing this for $40/month. $40 that I need.

Know this for what it is: An analogy for everything that I post on this very space. All I know is trash.

Don't get me wrong, I love the trash that I know. I'll roll in that wadded up wet newsprint all day. If I go to buy beer with some of those friends of mine that sometimes force smokes on me, and when they leave their half-smoked cancer stick on a ledge outside the store, I'll leave my smoldering ciggie on the ground. And we'll both pick 'em up and keep puffing afterwards like it was no thing. This is my way.

That said, I grant Sam, author of the Stylus piece I mentioned yesterday, that he was pretty much spot on. I was merely taking advantage of my 'net-given right to totally misinterpret all that I take in and spew forth whatever my knee-jerk reaction might be. Did I say right? I mean duty. Some facts:

No matter how many Tad or Big Drill Car tapes I had back in "the day", my music-seeking methods are strictly electronic at this point. Hell, I don't even read Bull Tongue no more. My tastes are virtual.
Not listening to Total Chaos never scored me any pussy. Not that I would have listened to them anyways, had I known.

It is probably a bad idea to post things that discuss bands you know nothing about other than that they are from Chicago, no matter how tangentially the discussion relates to said bands.

Alright, so I've learned my lesson. And posting is officially and thankfully returned to something I only do while consuming alcohol or whatever you send me in the mail. If you need an address, lemme know.

Dincision

2006-11-14T17:52:00.000-08:00

I am trying to figure out if this one section in Stylus Magz CMJ overview-thing is midwest-sneering condescension or if it's just my eternal paranoia... hard to tell from it these days...

At the Rapture show on Tuesday night, we met two kids from WVLP, which broadcasts out of Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. Naturally, they couldn’t have been more excited to be at CMJ; the school bought them badges, train tickets, and a week in a hotel room. But when we asked them whom they were most excited to see, we didn’t hear established bands like The Shins or the Rapture. “Definitely Bound Stems!” they enthused. “And Chin Up Chin Up.”

Ten years ago, there’s no way these Midwest college kids would have even heard of these bands, much less come across the country to see them. Now, apparently, these were some of the marquee acts at CMJ.

Wait... isn't Chin Up Chin Up from the midwest?

Not that I care. I've never heard 'em. Or that other band. And I'm certainly no webmusicnews muckraker, I shall leave that to Gerard (thanx Hastings [sheeshy-shit, am I showing the crossmarketing blogpollination love and semicoherence today... re-up on my meds, you ask? {Now I understand why all the DFW-style footnotery is sometimes necessary}]). But dammit, I am a midwestern-bred backwoods fucker, and I know me some bands. Because of the internet these days, perhaps... but even in my ultra-secluded bohunk/podunk/mojunk Peninsula of Origins (to be explained in issues #1-5 of the autobiographical miniseries I'm in negotiations w/ Vertigo to produce) we found some copies of Flipside and Maximum Rock 'n Roll at certain tobacconists of high standing. All the internet's gwan done is made me drop significant finances on crazy-ass Japanese psych box sets. I know me some fuckin' bands, chump.

Alright, I should name my shit. In fact, mebbe it was way close a parallel existence to Wounded Galaxy dude's amazing mixtape experience, right down to the Archers of Loaf decimating and reconstructing my conceptions of how to get a paper route done right. I bought Speed of Cattle, too-- in Wisconsin fucking Rapids. My mixtape didn't have any Total Chaos on it, but my friends were into that shit. I avoided it, knowing full well it would never score the pussy I craved, which is not to say I ran out and bought all that damn Fat/Epitaph stuff either, ok? (I'm actually digressing here because reading that post freaked the hell outta me the same way my batshit soft post on the graphic novel Blankets describes that terrifying book experience. And looking for the link to that post I noticed that I linked an Archers of Loaf song there... I am sweaty-trembly amidst the synchronicity.) Butanyways, butanyways... so these things still filtered up to the nether reaches, and from what I've heard about certain areas of Indiana (okay, just Bloomington) somebody in that state stayed hip to certain thangs in the apparent total void of pre-web midwest.

Yeah, I'm kinda blowing that two-paragraph section outta proportion for an article on how excited some dude from Poughkeepsie was to go to CMJ. I usually blog while drinking, which helps me keep things mercifully brief, unintelligible, and not-over-considered. Tonight I blog on a random evening binge of coffee drinking, which apparently is all that separates me from the stale-clove action I took so much glee in observing only yesterday. I shall take note of this and make sure to consume only barbiturates and their ilk prior to future posting.

That said, I meant to leave you with proof yesterday of my dubstep name theory, but in my stout I neglected to do so. Take this and forgive.

Hatcha & Benga - Progression - from the Science Faction: Dubstep comp (YouSendIt link)

I can't be sure, but these dudes likely have like awesome W)taps jackets or something.

Mass

2006-11-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

I picked up a sampler of stouts to keep things heavy, in honor of the Sunn O)))/Boris jawn as well as all that dubstep that has been oozing my way as of late. So far all I can tell you is that Big Bear Black Stout is pretty good, though after reading half of Denis Johnson's Already Dead I'm wary of any CA beverage that ain't just wine. Also learned that dubstep producers enjoy single word names, generally of 2-3 syllables, that are often impenetrable to my midwestern eyes, but tend to evoke feelings of people in really cool jackets hanging out in dark warehouses with much better smoke then I've seen.

Aside from booze and big ol' wavelengths, my fave thing of today was the bitchfest that broke out following Chris Ott's skewering of the Decemberists in the Village Voice. Yeah, some dude panned Altar on this site too, but so far as I care to check (I didn't) nobody from/dating a member of Sunn O))) or Boris logged on to register a rebuttal that lead to a total goatee-fest of back-n-forth that practically reeks of stale cloves and, like, yellow'd literature or something.

P.S. my Kalevala-source song-cycle dropping t-minus 8 months. Just "engineering" shit.

An obscenity implemented

2006-11-08T21:04:00.000-08:00

Today was a day to eat the blackened chilis. Seek them out. Perform your own residence time calculations. Fully mixed? Much like the casserole, yes. Perhaps because of the casserole.

I should have mentioned my sin: I did not crumble chips atop. My psychic jetstream trailer weeps from its walls.

Lured by nonexistant cheese snacks

2006-11-07T21:13:00.000-08:00

It's that fingerstyle time of year, and we undoubtedly plucked the vote accordingly. I performed my s(iv)ick duty and promptly got back to my evening of digesting the best damn casserole I've every taken large spoon to mix.

Autumnal Fire is going out. This is a shame, I need my cup maintained. That smoky taste alongside some Sandy Bull (whom I was recently hepped to by some more informed types) is truly the way to keep stable embers aglow. Chase with garlic toast.

Fewer than five dozen

2006-10-29T19:18:00.000-08:00

It was a night of failed cookies. Probably didn't beat the eggs hard enough. Eggwhites are what peaks things, right? Like, airbubbles and what-have-you? Well, the cookies were too spread. Probably would have been okay for cookie-bars, but nobody really likes cookie-bars, probably.

It didn't really matter, anyways... she had gotten bored and wandered off before the completion of the next-to-final batch. Perhaps not just bored, though, as he had been kind of overbearing and tried to tell her how to dollop the spoonful of cookie-dough onto the sheet, and she had kind of said "well, why don't you just do it" and he acknowledged that he couldn't do any better of a job, that the eggwhite should have helped things peak (he thought) and that the mangled cookie-hunks that had been scraped from the first few batches were, generally, up to snuff in terms of taste, at least, if not so much aesthetics, which really was not his thing, anyways.

She also mentioned, after what seemed (to him anyways) like just a couple nibbles that she was tired of cookies, which kind of was like just telling a dude that your tired and whatnot, let it be done with, whatever.

But that wasn't it, just that, either. Also, why couldn't he at least smell the cookies? That had been his main source of inspiration behind this, anyways, to get the aparment all oven-warmed and cookie-smelling. He knew that baking cookies emitted a scent. He thought that he remembered candles (possibly available at the mall) that were cookie-scented. He knew he'd smell cookies (or whatever he was baking, for that matter) back when he lived with his parents. Did aparments have smell-acoustics? He considered that often he only recognized the smell of what had been cooked earlier in the apartment when entering from outdoors.

Maybe that was it. He hadn't left the house all day. She had, but he hadn't. She didn't smell the cookies, either, but she had allergies. He maybe should try to at least leave the house once a day. Even Sundays.

But that's just it, he hadn't left the house until about 5:00 the night before, and that had made him kind of anxious because it there were a lot of people in town, people he had seen flowing into town on the walk home from work on Friday, and they were all gonna be wasted and there was nothing like walking sober amongst the wasted.

Of coure, after he had left the house that one time the day before, and mingled with those he had so feared, he wound up no longer sober indeed, and much more non-sober than he really intended to get, but he wasn't really suprised, given the circumstances.

And he had felt all right the next morning, pretty good in fact. Especially knowing the clocks all fell back, and he had an extra hour, like someone who knew how to cheat at cards, let alone play them. Why the hell did he actually own a cribbage board, anyways? Every time he played he was too fucked to remember the rules for the next time. In fact, most games were like that. He was doing more reading than game-playing, though he thought that maybe his choice of authors and texts and such to be questionable in in-the-know cirles, probably. Some in fact picked as randomly as a dart thrown at a dart board from a list posted by someone (he didn't know at all) who denounced another list as being picked as randomly as darts thrown blindly. Which just so happened to be the only way he knew how to throw darts.

At any rate, he figured he might as well scrape the cookie-chunks and the few actual, genuine cookies that made it throught the ordeal into a tupperware box and cross his fingers that, when he got home from work the next day, the apartment might offer some comfort in some way.

This Heat - Sleep (mp3)

Gets all twitchy (and but for what)

2006-10-22T16:42:00.000-07:00

I know you've been enjoying "QH blogs about the weather" about two-fold as much as I have been enjoying the weather itself, but I think you've gotten the "lowered temps = lowered expectations" parallel by now. The sleet-dirge played out last night and the excesses of consumption it may or may not have inspired do little to drive this point further home.

But fuck driving points home, how about staying home? Like sleeping on the floor all day listening to like Corrupted and goddam there is still something living in the walls, chewing and scraping. Walking around tapping on corners with a broomstick in your underwear does not a feeling of comfort inspire. Troubled/empty mind. Vague hiccup of the terrible.

Oh, wait. I'm listening to Corrupted right now too.

But all is not peach-rot and cream-curdle here. I was, indeed, lent a guitar in the sleet. Daily practice? Calloused physically for the hermit-winter? Mantras, ragas, and self-repair?

Dinty Moore beef stew?

Denim vests?

An extension of my beard-lease?

Trim'd or grim'd?

Wood filth

2006-10-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

Got not-suckered into going someplace I kinda dislike for happy hour today. I will say that I welcome buck fifty pints of Guiness any way I can get them, and as long as it stays dead during those hours and some Mingus comes up on occassion then I'll be back. Next thing get some complimentary meatballs, if you wanna play the game.

I have been digging thru WFMU's vast archives this week for reasons that will soon be clear. I am about to delve into the Aircheck section, with its vast offerings of -- lord help me -- esoteric talk show samplings from years and decades past. Tony Rettman does indeed rep the dubstep on his 2am-6am slot, and even mentioned Green Bay way back in July! Green Bay... by gosh.

I am trying to contend with the omnipresent massive amounts of full italic+caps LOOM that exist in the current climate. These final months of the year oughta be hectic in a blunt, heavy way. Political upheave! A few more weeks of valid album releases before the holiday music ghetto! End of the year round-ups! GREs! Failure! Oversleeping! And of course, Scotch-Nog!

Yes, it is going to be one downhill trudge through the bitter wind.

Glory be.

Occluded fronting

2006-10-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

A return to healthforms and I think I like that. We've got a purple chair that offers supreme crosslegged support. A little lamp. A turntable. I do jack shit for hours each day. WFMU and WSUM archives at work. Vinyl at home. Human tape. Scan // listen // eat a big fuckin' steak. The leaves are pretty much dead by now. I'm ready; batten means both to secure and to overeat. I am covering my bases. I rarely rock a belt.

Let us have the whipping snow.

I think that I hope that we get it big and deep this year. I have no reason to think that I won't regret my wishes should they come true. But I'm getting fed up with this frozen gravel bullshit.

Slay me down

2006-10-10T20:56:00.000-07:00

I'm a spigot. No other descriptive means. Fuck me drainpipe, I was flingin' snot all 'bout swivel office chairs and what have you. I feed my illness with old heaviness. Skweetis. My Black Ass. Mouth Breather. Good god damn jams. Unflappable.

I let all my clothes get dirty and then ran 'em through an undersized washer/dryer. Only way to acheive a consistent spore-whiff. See if I can't maintain this through the winter.

And still, there is a phrase that I cannot forget, though I don't know where it came from:

Jeans slicked with chicken grease.

This seems pretty ultimate to me. Like, the high point of man fashions. I'm kinda working on it but I prefer chickens in rice dishes and whatnot, less often do I partake of the North American Rotiserrie, though that is not by design.

I have winter planettes, small moves that I'll make in the dimness. Gotta find a copy of the Striborg joint. And also Solar Anus. But not too worried about Bathtub Shitter, that one I'll leave for the true heads. Next month begins a dark phase, most unfortunately aligned with the rising calls of "hipster metal". Fuckin' Rearden metal, and don't you forget.

I am an object.

Black Boned Angel - Track 01 - Supereclipse

[C.K. pleeze don't hurt 'em]

Wreck loose // A seed is drowned

2006-10-08T20:11:00.000-07:00

This time of the year I get "wracked" with things: illness, guilt, uppers, etc. But none of that gonna let me down, not this time, nuh-uh. 'Cause I've just discovered the powers of apple cider vinegar. Mix that shit up with soy sauce and some garlic wok oil and reduce and you start feeling pretty damn cookworthy. I get odded out by myself though 'cause I only like cooking while listening to that old jazz or even old timey-r crackledelic folk style. Mingus Ah Um or Goodbye Babylon (the box you need) and that is what gets me to do anything beyond chopping cilantro in ramen and calling it pad thai.

I further bummed my damn self by going to the ol' Barnes and Noble for some Sunday evening browsing and to compound that whole I am getting older I flipped through the Fader and kind of glared at an issue of Magnet and didn't see a copy of the Wire and then bought the fuckin' Economist. Tryin' ta better something. But yeah, I actually learned something already from the first two pages and it wasn't, like, that some people still mistakenly like Beck (what I learn from Wired) or that some people mistakenly every liked the Hold Steady (just about any other glossy). Anyways, I guess it's my problem 'cause I keep my eyes peeked at all this shit-media, but Arthur only comes out every other month and Blastitude is updated like once every 2 decades or something. I need more lest I ever have to start sacrificing breadth for depth.

Speaking of which, I still haven't seen any interspeak on the MF Grimm triple disc that I just found out got released sometime. If you review music and are reading this tell me what to think 'cause I liked The Downfall of Iblys quite a bit but haven't heard from that dude since he did the whole GM/beef with Doom/what have you thing.

Oh yeah, why is adult swim so closely affiliated with underground rap music now? Is this okay with people in general? I don't watch that shit, so I don't know. It always makes me think of my ol' fat manager back when I waited tables, always imitating that fucking meatball thing (I think). Sucked.

Also, if anyone has a spare copy of the Book of Am LP version please send it my way 'cause that shit is expensive and I need it "for review purposes".

I'm gonna make this winter the first in which I run crazy in the mountains.

Meatsinge

2006-10-03T17:40:00.000-07:00

Illicit web access occured (shockingly and lasciviously!) today. I can't explain the tech side of it but it seems wobbly, with the net occasionaly realizing I oughtn't be here and popping me off. Fortunately my preternatural hacking skills are honed to the point that I regain my footing with no conscious effort. Like Han said to Chewie, "back door? Good idea." And before you get to thinking that network jacking is "wrong", somebody stole a bottle of our laundry detergent. It wasn't anything fancy, but it makes for good excuses to keep the chain alive.

As in everything I'm a good several+ years behind on whatever you might speak of. I just got a Netflix account and some tasty rhinovirus that added pressure points to sinus spots and made horizontal restpostures all kinds of infeasible. In defense of the maintained relevance of Four Star, I notice they have a superior selection of at least Jodorowsky and actually have a copy of The Harder They Come. Now they just need an underground shuttle system as well.

It is October and I am growing a beard and reading Suttree. This is the season of backwoods. I wasn't shitting about those duckboots, either.

Speaking of which, I noticed on the Pitchfork review of some Ann Arbor group called Canada (huh?) they were making Sufjan (won't mention him often, sorry) ties and used the descriptive phrase "Upper Peninsula layers of harmony, cello, Rhodes, harmonica, banjo, melodica, glockenspiel, zither, flugelhorn, sleigh bell, wineglass (crystal), pad (paper), etc. (etc.)". I admit that as a slightly younger-un I was a tad excited at this newfangled Sufjan guy putting a whole song called "Upper Peninsula" on his album. Most facetime my region had ever gotten by a critically acclaimed act, I'd say -- though Weird Al is getting a terrifying number of shoutouts 'cross the 'sphere, and I'm pretty sure he checked in on a county fair or three up there -- and that kinda warmed my lake-effect numbed heart. Of course, that song is about poor-ass K-Mart and Payless shoes shoppers, the kind of thing I tended to avoid after noticing that only clean edit tapes were stocked, but it still had some stuff I *erm* dug. Still, to have the entire region I grew up in now solely affiliated with fey multi-instrumental tweefolk stylee, well, cuts me deep. Especially when it's always done by fuckin' trolls. Of course the whole elliptical thing then happened to me when I realized that Sufjan is now considered NPR tunesmithery, NPR being what I was consistently subjected to during our hour long drives through the bleak snow up there (to get to Payless, natch).

It's enough to make one soil himself with visions of a new world order.

That said it is time for me to make some Tuna Helper. I know that's not as backwoods as the little juice-carton shaped box of "chili" that I have, but I need to save that for lunch tomorrow.

Service with denial

2006-09-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

Apologies to everyone... I'll be on again soon. Whoever firewalled our stolen wireless signal can gnaw on my bitties. I'm sneaking this in on my lunchbreak, but "blogging" from "work" just ain't how I roll.

Those of you in Euroville: hunt out Various -- The World is Gone -- available now on nekkid gal vinyl and CD from those folks that may still let Badly Drawn Boy release t'ings on occasion.

Also, the Ghostface interview link I put up is wrong. Hastings put the correct one up. I think I creeped him out. Sorry Hastings! But thanks for the link! Also, I take back the David Foster Wallace stuff I said. I had had a bunch of wine.

Bossism vs. Flossism // U Be Tha Judge!

2006-09-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

Went down to Chicago for a good Vienna frank, had my fill. What the hell are those skinny peppers anyways? Ain't no juice on these hipsters. And the fashion update of my fall, IL(L) edition is thus: boys w/ bookbags rock the tight knee-lengths that the rich gals don'd all summer. I'm glad the gauchos didn't do that.

Now where's my effing poncho?

I'd like to point out that the Driftless Pony cubs resorted to the most face-smashing show I've attended in, I dunno, quite some time! Prolly since I saw the Finns rip thru locally, what, a year ago? Taut 'n wire-ee. Live audio is apparently captured, but you'll have to simulate the four day bender yerself. Worth the effort!!!

Next CheckListBox on the menu: That first TVOTR track on th' new "Return to Frito Castle" -- "I was a lover" -- well, is it that they dig William Basinski? Is that a Basinski-loop? I did 15 seconds of research and turned up a resounding "hmm". But I like Basinski and I like dying horns, and damn'd if those dudes didn't kill the horn in a horny enough manner to make me smile. I skip some of the tracks on the CD, or at least consider skipping them, like that one that goes "WOAH-OH-oh-oh" repeat repeat, and the dubious psueduoacapella-w/-fingersnaps thing. I don't actually skip them though, they're still quite alright. And the stuff that's good is really quite good. I think.

If I wasn't under strict attention-blindering at my "job", I would say that I was super glad that Gawker Media Federation and Snarkporium launched their new music blog, Idolator. The world needed something better the crap music blogs that help feed the Pitchfork Perpetual HypeCycle Machine (Stereogum, I glare yer way) and while I'm not sure that they'll provide more tasty info than, say, Cap'n Noz, they'll at least be updated ultra-regularly in tru-pro Gawker style, and appear to be willing to -- as young gunns! -- keep that glorious Gawker snark pointed at just about any of these (to paraphrase them) daisy-chainin' blog barons of the banal.

That said, I was kinda happy to see one of my more fave Madison reviewers of failed weeklys and (if I recall correctly) horrid student newsrags (BOOYAH, fuckers. Thanks for never having enuff content for even 10 minutes of class. Bitter waters!), Hastings Cameron, does a blog thing for one of our local internet media outlets that I used to never read (swear!). Any doubts about his media prowess can refer to his sex-interview (no John Leguizamo) with Ghostface here. Much better than the time the Onion tried asking him a few questions and basically got bitchslapped by nonverbality. My one worry is that he begin to rely too much on the Tom Brehain / XXL blog footnoteclusterfuckery. While it kinda works for them often, and I know he explained it as a method for digressions in one of his introductory posts, in the superfast media of todays blogocracy it kinda feels like other places already have that style on lock. And Kris Ex already uses as many proportionally as David Foster Wallace, so no metaexcuse either. Unless he's already read Everything And More: A Compact History of Infinity, in which case he can sing their praises like a G.F.P. Cantor. Still, though, it is a good look for Madison, whose general blogscape leaves me feeling like everybody learns to interwrite on the Craigslist Rant's & Raves board arguing with racists. So you go, Mr. Cameron.

I would pass you lucky lads on pounds more helpful references to separate the internets eternal chaff from the more Wilford Brimley-approved wheatstuffs. But the internet is way too fucking big already and I've got shelving to put together to hold my ever-precious LPs. So until next time keep that cream cheese on yr knees and read some Octavio Paz. It's grand stuff.

Stuart Littles

2006-09-13T21:22:00.000-07:00

With no vittles...

fuck w/ me = sent to hospitals.

Thank U Mac Dre (RIP) fo one amazin summer.

Yr eyes are fucked.

2006-09-12T19:47:00.000-07:00

I am playing with code for no good reason but to express m'damn self, hypertexually. Deal, shit be changing more over the next few days. Yeah I know that I coulda saved the changes elsewhere so you'd only see the final product but I'm not one for excitement like that. Anyways, my eyes are totally bleeding for now so all you get is that I dressed like a regular propenent of Brit laddish culture circa '96 today. At least Laura suggested as much.

Y'nobs.

Liturgical flowers

2006-09-11T21:52:00.000-07:00

As much as I consider myself a man of science, I gotta yet convince myself that you can drink the cheaper wines. I go into the shop and immediately start checkin' the bottles. I'm settling on a $13.99 limit. Nah, $20.99. We can do that. I'm sure it's still great (scientifically). At least the bottle of "Dragon" that I drank of tonight was most tasty. New science: how do it mix w/ chocolate peanut butter ice cream? Test underway.

I got a librarly card todaze.

I honored the Touch & Go thinger by listening to both Jesus Lizard albums I own. I think I've sold off much of the other T&G stuff I've had. No more Man... Or Astroman?, I think I still have Calexico about somewhere. I do gotta thank them for turnin' me on to Love 'cause they played Alone Again Or at Luther's Blues a couple years back -- a show I went to alone and sullen, natch -- and it reminded me of how awesome 'that Bottle Rocket tune' was. Hey! They all awesome!

What else is awesome: Kan Mikami. It is that time of the year again.

The inescapable clutches of synchronicity

2006-09-08T15:23:00.000-07:00

I at some point wrote some post bitching about Greg Dulli. Go dig for it if you want, I could care less. Basically I bitched about how the Twighlight Singers kinda started sucking. I still haven't heard their new album, but they're not what I'm talking about right now...

HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE AFGHAN WHIGS ARE REUNITING...!

I eat my shoe. And food. And my entire goddam leg. This excites my whee little parts to no end.

Odd bit... I was wearing my vintage Gentlemen-era Aussie tour t-shirt today that I bought a few years ago for too much on eBay.

I must be some psychic type of superfan.

Or Mr. Superlove.

Yeah.

A honed onus on your Hanes anus

2006-09-05T18:14:00.000-07:00

I turn my back for a booze-soaked moment and already we're 5 days deep into my fave month outta the year. The icing on the proverbial cake squirted 'cross my proverbial nipples this afternoon when I watched my coworkers one by one stalk off to class, with me softly cushioned in the knowledge that all I gots is the responsibility of not completely fucking my shit up at work for once (or twice).

Nah, I jest. I hold that shit down. It is how I get paid.

But really, I started writing up some damn weekend review notice for you all to check so you were aware that that Quincy fuck surely consumed his share of beers, ensuring that his selection covered the range of prices that any respectable hipster-shit would dabble in. But that is on some serious boring Facebook steez, and we do things in a different, glittery manner. How glittery you ask?

Dude, I went and browsed a store dealing in the finest of $250 selvage denims. With a coworker manfriend.

And my girlie was outta town.

So we roll plenty glittery when the fancy strikes, but I added my own touch. See, I still haven't popped this blister and rather then bandage it up for society's sake I just let the damn thing hang out. The guy working the store kept trying on their $200 oxfords and stuff on in front of me. I think he noticed the pus-bulge and feared I would spill my savage stagnant seed all over their vintage circa-1740 hand-beaten Puritan-style rockstar-pants or whatever. He was probably right, and I can't afford that stuff anyways. So perhaps it was all for the best.

At any rate, I still haven't punctured the damn thing -- no needles about since we moved, y'see -- so if any of you wanna let me know how long you've gone with an intact blister and if these things start to smell like fish oil or dead eggs, please drop me a line 'cause I'm getting nervous.

Faster blade

2006-08-31T16:24:00.000-07:00

Staring at computer screens. Staring at yourself in a mirror and wondering why your chest looks so caved in. Staring at pictures of Siouxsie and the Banshees. On the internet. Staring at the biography of Karl Lagerfeld. On Wikipedia. Listening to Guam River New Maps of Hell again. Listening to Rhythm & Sound Never Tell You again. Fudge bog. I like that. I read it again and I think I'll keep it in its homoerotic Smeagol glory.

This is what could be called a funk, folks. But tomorrow is my first payday. ALSO a long weekend. I am planning on a 'bender of significance'. I hope you have eager plans of skullnumbing for this very special time as well. Soon there will be a bounty of soft, sugary macintosh apples and cider and the sweet corn will be over. Soon I will stare out the window and maybe read The Poetics of Space and maybe listen to endless repetitions of Sun Blindness Music and practice at becoming gaunt. But first a weekend of such illicit debauchery that I can hopefully short my synapses out to the return of the bastard kids returning to the streets. No more empty. Just empty.

I'm Jesus with a laser gun and you're all going to hell.

2006-08-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

Definite autumnal whiff tonight. While jogging was somewhat overcome by a shroud of nostalgia with an oddly optimistic bent. It wasn't like I felt too much hope for the world at large or anything, but who does anyways? We don't want hope. We want chocolate with a caramel filling, a la mode, and hell yes throw some damn Hersheys syrup on there too. Fortunately, I have scraped up each of these things and am going to kill my own damn self Cathy-style before I get tooken out. Sugar and then beer while listening to the nihilistic stylings of the Velvets and PiL and then sinking into a fudge bog with Guam River and Spykes. Tainted love.

Ruffage

2006-08-29T21:23:00.000-07:00

I am alarmingly adept at shifting to typing sans left pinky, making me curious if I would be a good match for the Yakuza. I could set up their illicit networks while listening to dark sounding acidic dub basslines courtesy of the DMZ imprint. I'll need to practice sunglasses-at-night, and that'll be hard for a dude like me. People might get hurt.

Fast 'n bulbous

2006-08-29T10:18:00.000-07:00

I burned my pinky on scalding Prego last night, so everything I do is with an effortless air of extended-digit elegance. Except it looks like there is a maggot under my skin. I am like the cryptkeeper of class.

You know what I need? An ice cold can of Squirt. Stylish.

All the things R&B could stand for

2006-08-28T22:16:00.000-07:00

Keep on the lookout for my smooth jams project dropping early '07...

Introducing Bungalo Sh'Nasté.

For the lovers.

Pour 'K?

2006-08-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

No boss no boss no boss no boss no boss no boss...

Yesterday I got to drink free beer while standing around a bunch of incoming grad students. Rep the akward stance. Still, the beer was free and I managed to snake all kindsa pitchers before anyone else got to 'em. This lead to the inevitable Pel Meni over-vinegaring, which lead to an abrupt ending to my consumption and me passing out on our living room floor at 9:30pm while listening to Bola Sete. Woke up stone sober at 2:00am just in time for my erstwhile lovemuffins to stumble in drunker than I was. Hilarity was had by all and now she's called in sick and I'm leaving work early. Thangs bode well for the weekend. Geeb.

Burial

2006-08-23T19:38:00.000-07:00

Mostly, I want this to be a shout out to the Burial dude, who is apparently 'just a guy' from South London. I'm not gonna claim I can keep track of all the different pirate radio breeds and spliced strains of urban musicks that seep out thru pirate radio and what have you over there... I remember reading some kinda mag article about 2step and garage a couple years back, and yeah my interest was piqued, but I think this was even before I knew about Forced Exposure and the wee number of releases that they manage to pack in. So my initial exposure to such things was, like, the first Streets album and then I remember having trouble finding Run The Road and there's just massive gaps in there. So by no means should I be feeling I have the background to speak on these things. But speaking wrongly is a pretty major reason of why the internet exists, so I'm just throwing this out to thank you, anonymous South London guy, for making this album, and for somehow lining shit up so I could listen to it tonight. It worked out really well.

See, my girlfriend is training for a marathon. I, not wanting to bloat up at home while she exhibits grim determination and iron thighs, somehow managed to quit smokes (unless drinking w/ friends...) and take part in most of her runs. Tonight that entailed 7 miles under some intense overcast skies, the type I've gotta think are a dime a trillion 'cross the pond, at twilight. We found a new branch of the extended bike path that goes for a good ways along some train tracks, past plenty of loading docks and a coal dump, and then splits off on this arrow-straight ditchrun that goes farther than we ran out. By the time we turned around, it was well past official twilight time and on into deep dusk. Bikes would occasionally whir past, generally shocking the righteous shit out of my nightblind ass. At one point, before I got back to what I would call 'populated Madison', it sounded like we were getting chased by some incredibly pissed off geese. Didn't know that geese could do the whole terrifying apparition thing, but they dove into the role with gusto, to say the least. Never saw the bansheefuckers. Thank god. I bet they had teeth.

Anyways, right around the final mile and a half, I start noticing lightning. Not suprising, since like I said it was overcast when we left. Hell, the first thing the radio announcer told me when the alarm went off in the morning was not to expect much sun today. Which was actually bullshit, 'cause I wore the classic long-sleeve under short-sleeve tee combo with wild expectation and was let down. Until the run. And then the lightning.

So anyways, we get home and I take a super quick shower so I can run and snag some Budweisers 'round the corner before 9:00. I already know I'm gonna put on the Burial disk when I get back, and I'm kinda sweatpalmed 'cause I'd read reviews around the internet (google 'em, they're all over) and somewhere described it as driving thru sleet in a city or something. And I like that. And the weather seems roughly appropriate, semiapocalyptic, and so I get back and throw it on and shit, man it's really good. I feel all kindsa things coming from it, but also a numbness, and I don't know, all the fucking hip things in the world are wrapped in this thing, but not because it wants to be hip or even really knows hip. It mostly knows some dimness and some reflected lights from different oblique sources, and yeah plenty of slush, and 20,000,000 other hunks of flesh and gear that I just am gonna have to digest over the next season or 4. Criminy. Jiminy. No. Wait. Partway through Prayer, a tornado warning siren comes on from out in the city. It hits just the right pitch, subtle oscillations making me get up and creep about my apartment trying to figure out if this is coming from the speakers or thru the deckdoor... and... shit... the siren dies off, with that mourning fucking downward glissando, right at the end of the fucking track. You nearly destroyed a city, dude. Cool.

So thanks, from the breadbasket, the heartland, over here in collegevue, USA. Ya done right by all manner of musicks and spirits and such. Thanks much and for anybody else reading this lonely ghost shit, search it.

Mind over matter, look out for the splatter

2006-08-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

This is pretty bad. Haven't been in our apartment but a week and we're getting a replacement toilet. It is unplungable, if such a term exists. We have to keep our bathroom door shut because it smells like we flushed Death Himself in there. This is only made more poignant having just watched Eraserhead. What's down there? Will it ever be explained?

But once again, I can't complain that much... apparently our downstairs neighbors have been flooded and Death Himself has invaded their whole damn living space.

That's us: Makin' friends outta the new neighborfolk with a quickness.

I don't necessarily expect to survive the night between septic shock and being hunted down by pissed off basement dwellers.

Flood, Track 1 -- Boris (from Flood)

The soul shot known to make 'em shell shocked

2006-08-21T15:16:00.000-07:00

I've just been informed yet again that I bear striking resemblance to a turtle. Shit is cold. But I guess it's my fault that my adams apple lends a disjoint appearance to my neck. Also, my penchant for wearing bulletproofs. What can I say, I love Fif! Anyways, like your animal-familiar is any better. I once met someone that said her power-animal was ants. Had to be real careful where you walked. I couldn't make this up.

Run this shit

2006-08-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

Things to avoid doing within the first 1/2 mile of a 10 mile run:

1) Rolling your ankle
2) Tripping on gravel

Tally

2006-08-19T19:00:00.000-07:00

Rolling to the High Noon in a few for what I will call the closest sonic equivalent to a ball pit pizza party planetarium bowling party I care to attend.

Just wanted to list it out for you, so you knew:

GOT!

1. Stereo! Sound!
2. Chairs
3. Carpeting
4. Groceries
5. Weak stolen wifi

NOT!

1. A couch
2. A rear molar
3. My paycheck

I hope to utilize a can of cheap Hills Bros. coffee to remedy the wifi issue, but have to finish that shit first. Grounded.

Crouch if you must

2006-08-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

We're trying not to break our new apartment, but it is certainly schooling us in many directions. Never have I had to realize again and again that simple things don't just work. We have had an alarming amount of bathroom-challenges in the few days we've been here. Today the rear tank of the toilet was flooding! The floater ball-thing popped offa the lever-arm thing! Now I am somehow terrified of what might be going on in the dishwasher. Or that the A/C will start converting air to Zyklon-B. It could happen... air is a fluid. Much like liquids are fluids. Call me a pundit.

On the ups, we got a purple chair today. Laura wanna go with a straight "gay grandad" aesthetic and I am so down. I still haven't managed to put together my damn stereo, but every day I'm a bit closer to that sweet ecstatic communi0n with my earholes. Until then, I have the unending companionship of Red Stripe hipster beer. It is totally my jam this summer. And we do have a little CD player on the loft level, so I can at least listen to some Thelonious to make me hate the unpacking a little less each evening.

Soon we'll even go grocery shopping. And then begins my quest to quook. I could post photos of my past Pad Thai attempts but you would ask what's up with the stroganoff. Enuff. My DiGiorno should be done right now, and I need another Red Stripe.

P.S. -- Thanks to whomever didn't proteck they wireless neck. Boo to "citywide" wifi. Boost that shit. I'm gonna build a signal boost antenna w/ a Dinty Moore can with the quickness, cross your fingers or get gravy on your toes.

Smoked out

2006-08-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

Dave, could you hook me up with one of these?

Boxed out

2006-08-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

Reg'lar updates resume sometime between tomorrow and Friday.

I just moved, stupid.

I didn't break the circle, but then it turned out to be an fuckin oval twisted at the middle anyways, or maybe a double helix...

2006-08-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

it's been harder to tell since we shot Euclid (or at least clipped his eyelids).

Man I really apologize for dipping into subAnticon blogpost titles that go well beyond the limit imposed by the fine folks at Blogger, but this real world is just a bit intense for a crazyeyed bottlecap like myself. Popped off, tha's what.

So as my first honestly full official day of lost class, I took it upon myself to get up on this "illustrated novel" by Craig Thompson, Blankets. I'm sure everybody gets eerie shakes from shit on occassion, but when you grow up in what is generally considered the boonies to the flyover states you really don't expect to have eerie (fuckit -- EMO) occurences where major hunks of your adolescence are thrown back in yr face as part of a 600 page epic comic book (fuck you yes it is). When yr tryin' to figure out if you recognize that building from back in the day when you ran cross country freshman year -- a comic book building, dammit -- this constitures a major reason to return to that eight dollar bottle of Phillips Blended Canadian. So here I am, finally done with college after seven bloated years and getting wistful over a region I haven't spent significant time in for eight. Am I being cleansed? Lashed? Aw, hell, by this point it's just the whiskey anyways but I'm still straight creeped. It's like I should give you folks someting offa Diary or Pork Soda or, jeezus, Infrared Riding Hood if only I still had a copy. Well, shit. You get somethin' offa Icky Mettle to fully represent a busride to at least one specific forensics meet at the building in question. My life never need be told again. All paths are dug (with scoops not shovels). My only respite is in the knowledge that I am bringing duckboots back for winter this year.

You think I jest.

Watch.

Archers of Loaf -- Learo, You're a Hole

The Wreckoning, Pt 24

2006-08-07T19:42:00.000-07:00

I never been tooken out.

I am DUNN DUNN DUNN, hearme?

Whiskey from the bottle... see you tomorrow.

The Wreckoning, Pt 23

2006-08-06T16:31:00.000-07:00

Better late than never, keeping my fingers crossed for the sweater weather...

Tears for Fears -- Mad World

The Wreckoning, Pt 22

2006-08-04T20:03:00.000-07:00

much like Destro how I command the cobras
touch like Gestapo and demand all the hoes bras

Any takers for my ghostwriting talents hit me up on my hip.

The Wreckoning, Pt 22

2006-08-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

Part of my tooth fell off last night. The floodwaters are gushy-ushy-ing. I went to the bar last nite after working (not finishing) my report, which I am now supposedly doing. Rumor has it.

R.I.P. Aruthur Lee. I'd post a track, but I'm not on my musical computer. Anyways, if you don't own Love's Forever Changes as of now, you needs to remedy that. I am surrious.

The Wreckoning, Pt 21

2006-08-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

And so the Wreckoning series of content-slender stinkposts turns the drinking age. Normally I would be the complete embodiment of restraint, but this is major in a major way. Something special. AND I happen to have crossed the "Quality-Care Line", by which the standards of all remaining assignments have been reduced to bargain basement levels! Plus, there is no way to make a "quality Power Point presentation" anyways, to even pretend to make an effort to that effect would just prove that I'm not worthy of the higher education I've been ignoring for years. As such, I call down a BEER from the FRIDGE. Then I promise I'll totally finish the next report for real. But first, that beer. Yes, this is becoming "a pattern".

Coley Jones -- Drunkard's Special (from the Anthology of American Folk Music)

The Wreckoning, Pt 20

2006-08-01T20:41:00.000-07:00

Movement is not possible, I passed out at 7:30 out of a desire to survive. I cannot finish this, my work. It is not due until Thursday; tomorrow will be hell. But tonight is hell, just ask a meat thermometer. If they don't let me sleep in the aisles of Econo Food, then at least my blood shall run ice cold, a slurry of chilled bile and clotted hate. 80% done, but 97% decimated. It's a hair-split race to that end line now, and Hollywood has ruined any retrohumorism of a "them Duke boys" joke. Karma, indeed, is a bitch.

Leviathan -- Suckling at the Teat of Revenge (from Verrater)

The Wreckoning, Pt 19

2006-07-31T17:28:00.000-07:00

Dyed my fingers purple today. Too bad the Dipset movement has beeen losing steam for "a minute now". I guess Prince? Who knows. But I got a crazy purple index finger. I'd take a picture, but it's too hot. Nosir. Instead, I'm going to drink the last beer and read Sandman comix. Yes, there is a lab report looming. I'm gonna go work on it in the air conditioning. Just lemme drink this beer first, okay?

Cam'ron -- Purple Haze (from the Diplomats Vol. 4 mixtape)

SYKE.

2006-07-30T10:39:00.000-07:00

Because I love you so much I am indeed gwan post the oft-and-on mp3 that YOU. CAN. HAVE.

MUST have.

Why? In one week I will have much less purpose in life... no more courseworks to take at the moment... and let's just say I'm trynna fill a void. Plus these musicbits are much fucking cooler than what those other dudes share.

In honor of this weekend's insane heatwave (yet again, thanx), I give you the sultry summer sounds of...

Honny and the Bees Band -- Psychedelic Woman

Off the eversteamy Ghana Soundz comp. Stays fresh for 7 days, kiddos. Butter up.

The Wreckoning, Pt 18

2006-07-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

While a buncha my friends and such are off to watch some dumpy overhyped shit at the Pitchfork festerval I'ma be doing some fucking hardkore lab reporting on -- wait for it -- heat exchangers. Get it? And it's gonna be all hot outside? How do I exchange that? So classic it wounds (but don't kill).

Desire for booze: My, how you've growed up. No wonder my Friday is to be filled to the brim with Optimator, Yokel, and some fancy dvds courtesy of Four Star Video Heaven. Carnivale (season 1, disc 4) and Fitzcarraldo if you must know. And to think that yesterday I all planned to continue lab-report-workin' on thru today. FOOLISH.

The Wreckoning, Pt 17

2006-07-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

Running 'cross knee-deep streets with a garbage bag over my head. You can call me the ghost of hefty past.

It's a well ordered lunchtime parade up in here, except I'm outta cream cheese. Peanut butter and cream cheese sandwhiches = the pros choice.

It's been all Stax this week... Otis, Rufus, Carla, Booker, "Can Your Monkey Do the Dog?"

You don't wear continental clothes or stetson hats.

The Wreckoning, Pt 16

2006-07-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

Trapped at the office over my lunchbreak... I'm not going back to the lab until it stops lightning like jesus out there. Woah.

If you have to wake up at 4am, I strongly suggest having "Time of the Season" come on the oldies station to prod you.

The Wreckoning, Pt 15

2006-07-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

Just had to say I'm 60% the fuck done.

Listen to Black Moon. "Buck 'em Down" has the most mind drubbing bassline I have heard in some time. Go find it.

The Wreckoning, Pt 14

2006-07-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

I've gotta admit, surely I could come up with better post titles then rehashing and reheating this over and over again, but that's not the point. The point is to drag you, fine reader, through this monotony with me. Denied brown sugar for yr Brimley-oats. Trust me the Rainbow will return to this Curved Air in two weeks time. Until then, just shuddup and help me pick at the drying asphalt, will you?

This is a bit sly, but I've been slacking. I can't help it, it's the semester-point where some part of my mentis demands that I make distinction between home-space and homework-space. Meaning: when I'm at the apartment there is just NO FUCKING WAY that I'm gonna get up on that responsibility-swingset and pump my brain-legs for any length of time. Nope, rather I will do that thing you always did to younger siblings where you pull yrself and 'set up the supporting side-pole and then release yourself, steel smirk matching the swing rungs as you give first lessons in inertia, parabolic trajectories, and the law of Big Kid Wins.

It should be noted that in this "loose" analogy (Whoo! Feel me shake my limbs all willy-nilly!) I am the older sibling and lab reports are little chump-targets. Meaning that when I am done with them they remain woefully underdeveloped and exhibit extremely muddled attempts at communication.

Maybe I should listen to fewer slurred booty raps and more intricate synthesizer music when I write these things. Then again, the Clipse arguably utilize way more Pyrex than I ever will, so who knows.

Friday Bonus Beats

2006-07-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

So the Stella is gone for now, it's 3 hours 'til happy hour, and I'm feeling this summer drizzle we've been getting all afternoon (just a touch of autumnal in there) and I'm waiting around my office for another 45 minutes until I finally has to meet my lab pardner and, ugh, do some work (3 hours 'til happy hour -- say it with me). I am a benevolent man, perhaps even a bit keen on you, so I'm breaking the Wreckoning cycle -- today is just like that, it's spring break after all -- and giving you some links.

Don't call me pathetic, it looks good on me.

Return of Cocaine Blunts -- Okay, it was a few days ago but I've been buried. Noz does it the best, no joke. Makes me realize that I'll never, never, ever be schooled.

Bruce Dickinson saves his peeps -- New Wave of British Heavy Air Lifts.

Stereogum ~~is a~~ gets hack(ed) -- One of the sites that greatly heightened my precipitous decline from caring about "indie rock" gets a come-uppance. His password was "Sufjan"?! Is that for real?

Truth. Also, if you are 50-65 years (nobody over 65 is capable of understanding what a computer even is, duh) odds are you have no "practical knowledge". Expry.

The Wreckoning, Pt 13

2006-07-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

I am officially halfway done with this bitch right... about... now...

And you know what I'm doing at 11am on this hazy Friday morning?

Sipping on a Stella.

For once the incompetence of my labmate (more on this later) paid off. Unable to finish the report due this morning, she's at home flailing around w/ whatever she's got. This is awesome, since I've gotta pretend we're doing research on our next project, meaning I can't hang 'round the lab. Nope. I'm at home, sipping on a Stella.

Spring Break!

The Wreckoning, Pt 12

2006-07-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

In a flailin' attempt at more than some ellipses and codewordz...

Looks like bunches of lightning struck right around our house last nite. Woke up at 3am to terrifying ruckus from the skies, wasn't sure whether to close the windows so demons couldn't enter or leave 'em open so pressure wouldn't blow 'em on our trembling bodies. Opted for the latter. No wonder all those spiders made a dash for our bathroom.

Slower lab day gave me some time to fuck about on the internet, such as now. Interesting things I saw:

Pitchfork does one of its occassionally redeemable articles (oooooh) w/ the Keith Fullerton Whitman interview. Not actually super-informative, but I just always dig the dudes phrasing. The only album of his I ever owned was Playthroughs, which I liked a lot. I use past tense 'cause I lost it, and it still irks me. I've been frozen tryin' to decide whether I should get another copy of that, one of his other equally recommended jawns, or plunge and get a trifecta. Anywayz, that one was one of my first drone albums and was all taut tonal interweave, from what I recall. I remember listening to it while donating plasma and feeling kinda, I dunno, replicant. Other redeemable Pitchfork works are the Six Organs of Admittance features. Those seem to turn out nice.

Also of note, the Fader linked to a producer of jewelry and such that makes these. I have daydreamed for some time now of a pendant w/ da U.P. prominently featured. I guess I'd be happy to rep the whole state. And the diamond-on-yr-birthcity? Gushtastic. Look for yours truly to be reppin' to the fullest whenever it is I ain't broke no' mo'.

Awright, chumps... I really gotta get back at this game called life. Go make fun of Canada or something.