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.