The Antlers

Bear
or, Children Become Their Parents Become Their Children

There’s a bear inside your stomach, a cub’s been kicking from within. He’s loud, though without vocal cords, we’ll put an end to him. We’ll make all the right appointments, no one ever has to know, and then tomorrow I’ll turn twenty-one, we’ll script another show. We’ll play charades up in the Chelsea,
drink champagne (although you shouldn’t be), We’ll be blind and dumb until we fall asleep. None of our friends will come, they dodge our calls, and they have for quite awhile now. It’s not a shock, you don’t seem to mind, and I just can’t see how.

“We’re too old.”
”We’re not old at all.”
“Just too old”
“We’re not old at all.”

There’s a bear inside your stomach, a cub’s been kicking you for weeks, and if this isn’t all a dream, well then we’ll cut him from beneath. Well we’re not scared of making caves, or finding food for him to eat. We’re terrified of one another, terrified of what that means. But we’ll make only quick decisions, and you’ll just keep me in the waiting room, and all the while I’ll know we’re fucked, and not getting un-fucked soon. When we get home we’re bigger strangers than we’ve ever been before. You sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor.

The Antlers // Bear

Say Hi (at a bowling alley)

Wednesday 3/25 2:49AM Plaza Duckpin Bowl

What the Shasta? Who plans a show with four bands on a Wednesday night to start at 10P? At a duckpin bowling alley. The first band called...hmmm, beats the hell out of me... went on at 10:53. Long night to say the least, but it wasn't bad. Just bizarre.

When we arrived there were roughly 45 people in attendance and it only dwindled from there. So you can imagine what the show was like when Say Hi went on at 1:10A. They played for about 30 minutes, a practice really, and I don't blame them. When your opening band and the janitor are your only observers, you don't feel bad about phoning it in. But despite the shitty PA and small crowd, they weren't disappointing.

Telekinesis who played right before them, also from Seattle, kicked some duckpin ass. They were great and I'll write about them later, but this post is exclusive to SH. Shhhhh.

Since the place wasn't crawling with maggots, I asked Eric Elbogen (the creator and only real member of Say Hi) a few questions. Then later on, we had an interview in my dream that picked up in exactly the same place. Above is a photo of me taking a photo of him plus the photo I took of him. Brilliant!

Here's how the whole thing went down. Remember, I was already destroyed at this point.

ES: Love all your cover art, who does it, you?
Eric: No, there are a group of guys in Seattle that do it.
ES: That's cool, so do you do the art?
Eric: What?
ES: I noticed you have a shitload of tour dates.
Eric: Yeah, I...
ES: Have you ever performed at a place like this?
Eric: Well we've never played at a duckpin bowling alley before, but I'm kind of digging it.
ES: This place is weird. Did you see the guy at the bar with no teeth?
Eric: Oh the guy...
ES: Is it ok if I put one of your songs on my blog?
Eric: Sure.
ES: Great. Thanks.

This is how the interview continued in my dream:

ES: Would you perform a private concert on my blog?
Eric: Yeah.
ES: Really?
Eric: Yeah man, it's really hard to be heard these days, so we'll do it.
ES: I really like dolphins, do you like dolphins?
Eric: I don't have a car.
ES: I'm a lawnmower.

That's when Eric turned into a woman and we danced outside by the empty pool.

Thanks for the dance Eric. It meant a lot to me.

The new album Oohs & Aahs is a nice mature evolution of his previous albums. If you like his more popular tracks like Northwestern Girls, These Fangs and Sweet Sweet Heartkiller, then you'll appreciate this collection of songs. If you don't, you're a dick. Every track is titillating, so tit it today. I mean get it. I'm 8 years old, sorry.

Say Hi // One, Two ... One

The Love Language

Really lovely album from The Love Language. I couldn't express my thoughts any more cleverly or eloquently than this post I found on their MySpace page taken from somewhere else:

"After three decades of sonic observation, you start to realize what really good music sounds like. You know what you like. You like the Beatles. You like Thin Lizzy. You like Stevie Wonder. The declaration, “You’ll love this band!” no longer arouses much excitement. You’ve heard thousands of bands, millions of songs, and find little incentive to embark on any audible adventure when “The Boys are Back In Town” has already been written. In terms of music, we download it, we burn it, but we rarely really listen to it. Perhaps I’m being selfish, but I listen to the Love Language because they write music I wish I’d written. I often picture myself playing these songs for some awkwardly shy, yet strikingly beautiful French girl on a jetty in Quebec, romantically duping her with my plagiarized sentiments. Dishonest, yet undeniably feasible. I could figure out those chords on guitar, and placidly convince some girl that these thoughts and feelings were my own. It’s not like trying to pass off “Blackbird” as an original composition. As you strum, you begin wishing that these poetically mundane moments were parts of your own past, until you realize that they are. That’s what the Love Language is to me: The modest declaration of the universal obvious. Songs written about apartments you’ve lived in and rotary phones that you’ve hung up. Although McLamb’s arrangements are typically overcast, each song reminds you of the towering trees that relish each falling drop. That there are winners and losers, but sometime tragedy makes the most beautiful story. After all, no one would remember the Titanic had it not sunk. That is the Love Language- the celebration of the sinking ship. Bon Voyage."

– Jon Kirby, Wax Poetics

Thanks Jon. I’ll give you credit this time, but next time it’s all me.

The Love Language // Nocturne

{ x }

Fleet Foxes // Meadowlarks

Miwon

Continuing to swim around in the huge heap of Deustch sent to me by Forced Exposure. I feel like Scrooge McDuck.

Miwon hit up das Berlin club scene as a DJ for awhile but it seems he's more into his studio these days. He's been recording on a label City Centre Offices, based in Manchester y Berlin, with which I am heretofore not familiar but seems pretty tight.

This track, "A to B," is indeed the most accessible on the album. That's why I chose it. It takes from Fleetwood Mac with singers Maho Masuda, from Japan, and Sibylle Fendt, who also took the photo below. If you know Fleckfumie, their guitarist Nick Gloeckner is also on here, along with Galaktlan, who is from Estonia, on synths.



Miwon // A to B

Shitkatapult - Strike 100 compilation

Shitkatapult is the mostly electronic label out of Berlin started in 1997 by Marco Haas, who is also the artist T Raumschmiere. Sascha Ring, who is the musician Apparat, helped run it for a while but has gone back to strictly makin his own music.

Strike 100 came out at the end of last year to mark the 100th release by the label. It's 2 discs of ambient fuzz that alternates between soft and prickly with also some environmental sounds, though many of the songs do have annunciated beats, and vocals even.

Man it's really hard for me to decide what to upload.

Okay okay okay. One from each disc: Felix, for whom google turns up sparse info, at least in English, and Fenin, whose English isn't very good but who knows the word "homies." A lot of these guys seem to cite reggae and dub as influences, which I find interesting.


Flier for an Apparat CD release party. I might have died.

Felix - Outside on a Cold Day

Shitkatapult // Fenin - Lastkahn

interlude

just wanted to explain the delay since the last time i posted-- my sister's house burned down so i have been cleaning soot, etc, in my spare time. everyone is okay except Duke, a dog who did not make it.

this next one is for you, Duke.

Trouble Andrew

Long story short, professional snowboarder and skate fiend, Trevor "Trouble" Andrew tears his ACL in 2004 and begins to record beats in his down time after being influenced by his girlfriend Santi White aka Santigold (formerly Santogold) to get off his broken ass and do something sweet with musical instruments. He lays down some tracks, some time goes by, the tracks get some attention, and finally after many boring years, they’re remixed and remastered to form Trouble Andrew, the album. Influenced by 80s punk and 90s rap, this multi-sport thrill sucker brings something quasi-unique to the table.

I imagine this dude’s already getting a lot of buzz and even some radio play, but I’ll bet you a pickle this would be better if he wasn’t already a famous ass bag. Yes, I’m jealous. No, I don't shave my legs. Yes, I love pickles. Anything else? Jesus.

Trouble Andrew // Uh Oh

B Fleischmann

From Vienna, B Fleischmann started out as a drummer, touring with bands all over Austria. In 1998 he turned into a laptop nerd, but he still uses real drums and other acoustic instruments, too.

This song is from his newest album, Angst is Not a Weltanschauung!, on Morr Music. The album includes a rework of Daniel Johnston's "King Kong" and vocals by Sweet William Van Ghost and Marilies Jagsch (in this track).



B Fleischmann // 24.12.

If you like this, B has more downloads on his site, plus links to some of his own favorite music.

Forced Exposure

The IDM boat draweth nigh, along with a bunch of other stuff. For real, WRIR got this massive shipment in from my favorite music distributor of all time Forced Exposure.

I won't bore you with the details, but my love for Forced Exposure is so great that I as an audience member once made David Day, another audience member and at the time Forced Exposure's college radio contact, stand up in a room of maybe 200 at a CMJ panel discussion to talk about his company.

In the 80s and early 90s Forced Exposure was a zine published out of Boston (on newsprint), focusing on punk and obscure music as well as literature, with contributers like Lydia Lunch, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth.

Now they distribute music, ranging from rereleases of 1920s fiddle music from Baghdad to the entire Shitkatapult catalog to re-pressed Norwegian psychedelia from the 60s to free jazz and composers and ambient noise to English warehouse bangers. Look at their index of releases for March. Dazzling.

Basically half my career as a music director has been spent begging FE to send me stuff. Incidentally, they supply a lot of the electronic vinyl to Plan 9, too.

So anyway I am fulfilled, and guess what, I consider it both my job and my pleasure to share my musical joys with you. My next several entries will all draw from this boomshower of sweetness that arrived in the mail last week.

So there, too, music distro isn't dead after all, is it? Just shitty music distro. Thank you, Forced Exposure.

Circlesquare

Do people mention INXS ever when they're talking about Dance Rock?

This guy, Jeremy Shaw, is from Vancouver but lives in Berlin. Whenever music people talk about moving to Berlin I think of Stephen Daedalus in Paris with puce gloves carrying a flower. Ha.

Anyway this is fucking sick. What I'm listening to is Circlesquare's new release from !K7, Songs About Dancing and Drugs. Apparently his previous album, Pre-Earthquake Anthem, was like "a molasses drip laced with codeine" so I'll have to check that out, too.


The children of scientists are more predisposed to have Asperger's.

All Live But the Ending

Dark Dark Dark

Another show this Sunday, March 8th. ! Dark Dark Dark plays at Thanky Space gallery on Brook Road. 7pm.

From their page on their label Supply and Demand's website:

When Nona Marie Invie (accordion/voice) and Marshall LaCount (banjo/voice) first began to play and write music together, they had no intention of starting a serious band - they just needed a way to earn passage to New Orleans. Marshall had run away from home to spend a summer sailing and singing down the Mississippi river on homemade rafts, and Nona had spent time hopping freight trains and wandering across the US and Europe. With no desire to settle down, the two set out, picking up band members Jonathan Kaiser (cello/voice) and Todd Chandler (upright bass) along the way.

Wait, really? ...I am having another JT LeRoy, fiction-vs-hype episode.



Dark Dark Dark // Trouble No More

Mi Ami

Yes, I like this band for other reasons besides their name. Please.

More dirty freakouts.

But also, they have good taste in cities/locations. Yes, there is the choosing to name themselves after my favorite city of my entire life so far, but there's more.

They're hitting up Belfast on their European tour. And not only that, they're playing at the Menagerie, at the Ormeau Road on University Street. Shitty dive not without highly unprincipled paramilitary affiliations. They play Reggae and Soul and won't let you wear football colours inside, and it's the only bar I could reliably find Newcastle Brown, too. I have mad respect for a band who can manage to book the best seedy bar in a foreign city.
UPDATE: Belfast informant tells me that Menagerie was freed from paramilitary associations and is now owned by David Holmes. I guess that explains why the music got better. Informant assures that Menagerie is still way seedy.

But anyway, and perhaps even better, Mi Ami is coming to Richmond. (To the Triple.)

We are all travelling through space and time.



Pressure

Mi Ami plays with Thank You at the Triple on March 8th. Vaya con dios, dudes.

Hell

Hell has been active as a dj and producer for 30 years. He is also the founder and boss of the label International Deejay Gigolos (Miss Kittin & the Hacker, Dopplereffekt, Terence Fixmer, Fischerspooner, Tiga, Vitalic, Jeff Mills...).

This track I'm posting is from his new album Teufelswerk. He's divided it in two by the themes of Night and Day; Kruder of Kruder and Dorfmeister helped produce the Day half. Drops in late April and I completely cannot wait... there's a Hawkwind cover on it. Hell's last album, NY Muscle, is so so brilliant.

Hell is short for Helmut btw.


The Angst & The Angst Pt 2


Hell was German GQ's Man of the Year in 2003.

Bonus: In 2006 Hell also produced this track, which I love, for G Rizo.

Eye Wanna C U

Here We Go Magic

DIY DIY DIY DIY DIY DIY

so down for polyrhythms

ATAVISM RESULTING FROM OVERCULTIVATION OF HUMAN SOCIETY

face paint and amniotic fluid have turned out to be pretty hip among civil types in the end, though, haven't they? my ski instructor lives in yogaville.




Only Pieces

god, i keep liking stuff that's been featured on npr. decrepit. only bangers after this, fur real.