Psychedelic : Shoegazing : Reverberation
Awesome! Irdial and the Internet Archive now have this convenient embedded widget (provided below) that allows you to play just about the entire set of The Conet Project. If you’re not hip to the Conet Project, it is an expansive collection of mysterious number stations broadcasts. Click the “next” button to browse through the various recordings. Way creepy, decidedly fascinating.
I try to avoid the Decibel Tolls becoming too much of a personal blog. But I need some help, dear readers. If you’re in the Louisville metro area, and know of people who are hiring, shoot me an email: kb [at] thedecibeltolls.com. Craiglist and other job boards are nothing but scams and pyramid schemes, and blind resume distribution has been less than fruitful. But I’m hirable as a motherfucker – like crazy skillz.
Those who are helpful in operation job get will be handsomely rewarded, like cookies, or more awesome photos (see above).
Moody, blacker than black slowcore folk superstar Boduf Songs, fresh from dropping How Shadows Chase the Balance on the flawless Kranky label, will bring joy to all the girls and boys this fall in his first national tour. Since it’s his first one, be nice ya’ll! The tour includes two New York shows and a shit-ton of art galleries. The jaunt across the upper midwest and northeast also includes some on-air playin’ and spitballin’ on Pittsburgh’s low power but pretty darn good WPTS before his performance later that night on Nov. 19th. If his live show bears any of the intensity of this recent work, do not drink before these shows, lest you want to leap off a bridge later that night. Continue reading ‘Boduf Songs on His First Tour (They Grow Up So Fast)’
One of the best compliments you can receive as a musician is the notion of irritating music writers. The Dead C has always been one of the most difficult groups to describe. Like many psych rippers and no wavers, much of the Dead C’s repertoire specializes in noise and structure breakdown. But simply labeling it as noise is shortsighted, as the Dead C operates as more of an improv group. There’s always been “structure,” more or less, and if you listen closely, the Dead C often comes across as a damaged Spacemen 3, Space Needle, or other fuzz-heavy, post-punk-informed groups with the word “space” somewhere. There are solid songs throughout, always head warping, and always fed through multiple demonic filters to cultivate that otherworldly presence. Continue reading ‘Navigating the Dead C’
Post-punk pioneers Wire were oft recognized as a group in a strange nether region – one that was too artsy to be punk, too punk for the art kids. Wire was angular and minimal, with gorgeous melodies remaining subtle and rewarding. As such, it makes total sense to extract those under-the-surface pop structures, add dense layers of sound that the band sometimes hinted at, and reimagine this begrudgingly poppy gem as shoegazing, whose artists also tended to be begrudgingly poppy. Continue reading ‘Imagining Wire As a Wall of Sound’
Gotta shout out to Evan at Swan Fungus again for locating more difficult-to-find holy relics. Today, it’s a Dead Meadow bootleg, sometimes referred to as a Live on WFMU recording, though Evan points out that it’s actually a somewhat lost Peel Session.
Dead Meadow releases some of the highest caliber Hawkwind-esque mind-melters today. Of course, in the studio, you can saturate each track with reverb and panning techniques to make anything sound pretty good. This is where Dead Meadow prove themselves as an awesome band – they absolutely smoke live. “Drifting Down Streams” is cultish. Continue reading ‘Dead Meadow Peel Sessions’
A friend of mine once wrote that his first experience seeing Six Organs of Admittance live caused pure dimension, in addition to believe things that were not true. He was convinced his apartment had a fourth room, which it did not, and he was ready to take a hammer to the bathroom to discover it. This, of course, only scratches the surface concerning the mystical power of Six Organs’ incandescent, eastern tinged, enveloping psychedelic modal noodling. It’s barely conceivable what some would do to grip the rarest of Ben Chasny’s repertoire. Lucky for us, RTZ (Return to Zero) curates some of the rarest and some of the best on one priced-to-own brain burner. Continue reading ‘Six Organs of Admittance Returns to Zero’
