New Pixies 4-Song EP

This morning I woke and found a fantastic email in my box - The PIXIES are releasing a new, 4-song EP... TODAY!!!

Way to keep that under your hats until the last minutes guys.

Go to Joup here and I've posted the first video and more information

NIN Hesitation Marks Tour Doc

Another in Vevo's Tour Exposed documentary series.

Ministry: From Beer to Eternity

Read my review of the fantastic new Ministry record on Joup.

Groovie Mann + William Tucker = Darling Kandie

While working on my review of the new Ministry record From Beer to Eternity for Joup I've been drudging up a lot of old school Chicago connections I'd either not known about or totally forgotten.

Ty Segall's FUZZ

This makes me wish that for this labor day weekend I had a garage. With an old, greenish-yellow refrigerator in it. And a lot of Hamms in that refrigerator. NO, scratch that. The Hamms fits aesthetically, but I wouldn't drink it so let's change that to something... Leinenkugel's, yeah. That'll do. And an older neighbor who notoriously stops by with joints of grass. Not good weed like we know it today, but certified grass. Like the stuff you could light up after a twelver and NOT get sick.

Listen to that glorious amp buzz around the 4 minute mark. This would have been a killer end of the summer album, but it's not out until October 1st (on In The Red Records). Oh well, there's enough advance stuff floating around for us to enjoy sampling it this weekend as most of the states kiss the summer goodbye (and we in socal continue to sweat our asses off as ours still builds to a head). Besides, it's not Mr. Segall doesn't have another album that just came out recently*.

.................

*

Grant Morrison Grant Morrison Grant Morrison

I missed a week of my comic column because I was locked in a recording studio with Mr. Brown working on the first Schlitz Family Robinson tracks in... a really long time. So Grant Morrison's Annihilator has become well-talked about news by now. Still, hearing him describe the new creator-owned book in this video made me so excited that I devoted this week's edition of Thee Comic Column  over on Joup to talking a bit about Morrison books I read before I knew who he was, and how they subsequently added a whole new level of appreciation to his work for me when I put the pieces together later and found that even before I knew who he was, Grant Morrison was writing comics that were among my all-time favorites.

image courtesy of legendary.com

Disappears

Chicago-based band Disappears recently released a new record via Kranky records. Minor Patterns is not from that record. It's from 2012's brilliant Pre Language. Upon first hearing the band last year via Mr. Brown I was immediately struck by the somewhat updated throwback sound. Now, I know "updated throwback" sounds ridiculous but it's something I've really come to like in another group, A Place to Bury Strangers. The meaning of the ambiguous and possibly even pretentious term is really just a nod to the fact that while doing their own thing - quite well in both cases I might add - there is a definite comparison in sound to be made of bands-gone-by. My two-second elevator pitch for A Place to Bury Strangers when I first fell in love with Exploding Head was, "Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste-era Ministry meets My Bloody Valentine meets Bauhaus. Ridiculous? Maybe, but it worked like a charm in selling more than a few records for the band when I had my retail job so I count it a success. Disappears is similar, in that just listening to the opening chords of Minor Patterns I get that same early-Bauhaus feeling of space within the song. Once the song gets going though, as with the rest of the album, there's an aesthetic comparison I feel can be made to both 80's Sonic Youth (or maybe that's just because Steve Shelley is in Disappears) and even 13-Songs Fugazi. It's that small club/loud amp sound and the knack for writing a song together, organically, as opposed to riff-oriented.  It's the definition of what indie used to mean. IT'S GOOD.

Anyway, don't listen to me babble comparisons at you, if you dig Minor Patterns, go buy the whole record Pre Language. Then buy the new one. I need to do that last part yet, but it's on the ever-growing list for sures.

Oh, and when you have a little more time to burrow into something, there's this:

Fugazi Live @ Chicago's Congress Theatre - June 23rd 2001

I was at this show. Shellac opened. The sound on this recording pretty much sucks but I had to post it for posterity's sake.

Another new TV on the Radio Track

Just sent to me via Mr. Brown. Awesome! Full article here.

NIN full set Reading Festival

I found this via Gigwise. I'm excited for the new record but not entirely positive I like some of the newer versions of older songs (Sanctified in particular) that I've been seeing in live sets that have popped up on the youtubes. I'm not saying their bad - I just happen to have an insanely protective relationship with Pretty Hate Machine and can't help but want to only hear the songs - or at least a song like Sanctified which is probably my favorite on the record - exactly as I know them. I fully understand that's my hang-up, not Reznor's problem. We'll see. I'm still really behind this band. I've loved them since Pretty Hate Machine came out and showed me the first glimpses of a poppier industrial sound (compared to Ministry's The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste PHM is poppier) and with the exception of not really ever caring too much for The Downward Spiral and The Fragile (both of which I've come back around to a bit in recent years) I think Reznor has had an amazing career thus far.

And I also think that career is far from over.

If you follow the link to Gigwise above they have some fantastic pictures up of the concert.

Rituals - Our Blood

I like this quite a bit. Brooklyn Vegan has the whole record by Rituals streaming if you go here. Or just go to the band's label One Big Silence's soundcloud.

Some of the colors and editing techniques used here, juxtaposed with very simple imagery create a nice antithesis to all the overblown hype that I unfortunately haven't been able to avoid swimming around the more mainstream aspects of the music industry. Rituals seems to exist deliciously on the fringe of that industry - the fringe of even the underground of that industry. That's the thing - by now even the underground has been assimilated and is a copy of a copy of a copy. That's why it takes sites like Heavenisanincubator and Brooklyn Vegan to help see what else is out there. I'm not saying all major industry stuff is bad - I did just post a doc about Passion Pit before this - but a lot of it is and sometimes even the good stuff therein surrender to spectacle making just for the sake of spectacle making.

image via the band's soundcloud

Passion Pit's Documentary

I still know very little about Passion Pit, but after initially dismissing them they won me over with their very upbeat and endearing song Take a Walk I've been meaning to learn more. Obviously since that was several months ago it's not been a top priority but here's hoping when I finally find time to watch this new doc they released it will help alleviate my cluelessness.

Reading Rainbow - Must Be Dreaming

I know nothing about this band, but am definitely interested in finding out more.

Bad Robot Mystery Teaser

I'm reminded of the first time I saw the teaser for Cloverfield, Super 8 and that weird Neil Blomkamp thing from a few years ago (and now that Elysium is out, just WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?).

Color me intrigued. Very, very intrigued.

New Polica

New Polica and it is nothing like what I would have expected. Well, maybe that's not entirely true. That dark, shadowy vibe that is often a result of lead singer Channy Leaneagh's haunting vocals and those starry-eyed keyboards is still there, but there's an almost frenetic energy I wasn't expecting that gives the track a very subtle 80's element. And the bass guitar - as a bass player first and foremost these days I'm always a sucker for great bass playing and this song has it tenfold.

Again, thanks to Brooklyn Vegan for posting this.

In Solitude

The thing that initially caught my eye when I read about In Solitude on Brooklyn Vegan for the first time this afternoon (here) is the word Solitude - whenever I see it in a musical context I always think immediately of one of my favorite Black Sabbath songs, track seven on the band's classic third album Master of Reality. Anyway, I followed the link, hit play on the above widget and my ears perked up. "Sounds a bit like Ghost" I thought. Then I read the article and saw that the Vegan mentions that, "The band, which may or may not contain members of Ghost BC..."

Whoah.

Follow the link back to read more, but it looks like Metal Blade is releasing a long-player from In Solitude on 10/01 and there are tour dates.

Cat Party

Wow. This morning at about 5:30 I was driving the 405 in the waning mists of darkness slowly unraveled their grasp on Los Angeles and Kid Sister on KXLU played a song by Cat Party. As soon as I arrived at work I looked them up and have pretty much fallen in love with them. There is an old school indie element, but it's been slightly anthropomorphized by a fuzzy, haunting wash, like walking through a familiar alley under the influence of some unfamiliar hallucinogen. Beautiful. Beautiful and a little unnerving.

Just a little.

Follow the widget back to their bandcamp and the album (which is fantastic start to finish) is a paltry $8. Now that's good eatin'!

FDP: Federal Bureau of Physics

image courtesy of digitalspy.com

Although Vertigo's new title was released as Collider for the first run of the first issue, legal reasons now dictate its title has been changed - for the better I believe - to FDP: Federal Bureau of Physics. Read about it here on Joup!

A Message from Hannibal Chau

I enjoyed this quite a bit, as I did the film.

Moderat II - Milk

MODERAT - milk from joppippoj on Vimeo.

So far this is my favorite track off the new Moderat record. I tracks like this, where I literally discorporate and fade into the trance of the music. Entire new record is amazing, but like I said, I keep coming back to this one for the moment.

Also, this is a fan-made video and I really like the visuals. They very much accentuate the tone of the music.

Cold Showers - BC

One of those awesome moments where I flipped on the radio in the car and went all the way to the left of the dial, to KXLU and the Part Time Punks show was on. This song specifically. I'd never heard this or anything about/by Cold Showers before. Immediately fell in love with this track. Some Sisters of Mercy/Cure undertones, a little Pixies maybe... old and new at the same time, or in other words I guess, timeless.

Thought Forms - Only Hollow

Evolution of a post:

3 days ago I pulled out Portishead's album Third. Easily my favorite by the band and an all around masterpiece in my opinion. During the listening experience I vaguely remembered reading about Geoff Barrow having another band.

2 days ago I remembered that I remembered Geoff Barrow having another band and vowed to look it up.

1 day ago I watched the new episode of Breaking Bad and thought about nothing else before or after due to its awesomeness stretching both backwards and forwards in time.

Today: I picked up the pieces after that first episode, contemplated waiting five more days until the next one and remembered Geoff Barrow. When I began tracking it down I was side-tracked on his label Invada's website by this awesome track.

Note to self: I still need to find out about this other band Geoff Barrow is in!!!

Tunde Adebimpe's New Band

Lots of new music surfacing again. Not too long ago TV On the Radio's new track Mercy surfaced. Now we get a track from TVOTR's Tunde Adebimpe's band Higgins Waterproof Black Magic Band. I really dig this a lot. The band's debut EP will be out 10/01 on ZNA Records (which I cannot currently find a website for) and as with all other TVOTR-related music I will be buying it.

Al Cisneros - Ark Procession

This is so not what I was expecting but I really dig it. Al Cisneros is an often over-looked giant in the underground metal scene, hailing from such insanely awesome and influential bands as Sleep, Om and Shrinebuilder (I really want another Shrinebuilder rekkid guys!).

This is from Mr. Cisneros' first solo EP, available on 8/20 from the always wonderful Drag City (the label which, incidentally, just released Andy Kaufman's Andy and his Grandmother, which Chester Whelks wrote a fantastic review of on Joup here).

MIRV - COSMODROME

Okay, this is both weird and awesome. Back in the middle 90's Mr. Brown found this record by an artist named MIRV titled Cosmodrome. MIRV (it's an acronym on the album cover - no idea what it stands for) was apparently a buddy of Les Claypool's who also played a few things on the record. Anyway, it's a concept record about a future where the ultimate tier as a musician was to play a place called the Cosmodrome. To do this though you had to be selected, and then you had to, um, have your face shaved off.

Awesome, eh?

Anyway, I have a dubbed cassette copy somewhere that I haven't seen in years. I never found a copy of the record in a physical record shop (believe me I looked) and now the things been off my radar so long that I'm not sure how I never tried to find it online. I just searched on ebay and amazon while typing this and found a wopping one copy on each, so it's apparently still fairly hard to come by.

The record is amazing. Very Zappa-esque, and it runs the gamut from blues to Primus-like weirdness to a crescendo - where the protagonist does indeed get selected and then have his face shaved off ("Don't be afraid, body alterations aren't that painful") that can only be described as frightening and machine-like.

So I just flipped over to youtube looking for something else, MIRV not having been on my mind in years, and here's a video from back in the day for one of the songs.

The internet truly is the human collective unconscious transmuted into tangible information.

Weird.

image courtesy of artist direct

New NIN track Copy of A.

I've been purposely avoiding watching/hearing any of the live clips that surfaced of new songs within the weeks since Lolapalooza. However, I just cannot pass up a studio track. Very much looking forward to this new record.

Via Brooklyn Vegan - follow the link there and they'll tell you how to download this track for free!!!

The Day The Clown Cried

I don't know a heck of a lot about Jerry Lewis' lost final film, The Day The Clown Cried. Mr. Brown printed me out a fairly large article about it something like eight or nine years ago, and after reading it we named a C-Building Kids track about it. It's Lewis' final, unreleased film and it has him as a German clown named Helmut Doork who is imprisoned in a concentration camp and attempts to lighten the other prisoners hearts with his, um, clowning.

What little I do know about this film also includes the fact that it's kind of a big deal that this footage has surfaced. Further proof that in today's world, if there is footage out there it will eventually find the light - C'mon Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me deleted scenes:

image courtesy of braddstudios.com

A Mix for Shadows

Shadow Play from laserknee on 8tracks Radio.

I made this mix sometime ago while working on an earlier incarnation of the novel I'm writing. The novel is dark - but not too dark. And it's mysterious. And there's a smidge of teen angst (just a smidge - I ain't no billy corrigan). Like that time you walked through the house/forest/cemetery that everyone in town said was haunted. That prickly, anxious feeling that inspires more than it condemns. I made this mix to help keep the tone while writing. The book has morphed somewhat. It's gotten a hell of a lot better and coherent. But the tone still works. And besides, this is a pretty good mix.

I always forget about 8tracks. But it's a really cool site and a good way to discover new music.