Tonight will be crucial. Disappears will rip through their excellent Kranky release Lux and all the new destructive jams they’ve been writing and recording, and recent Hozac acquisition Woven Bones will talk a bunch of bullshit and trash the place. Louisville’s DW Box opens the show. It’s 8 reserve notes, doors are at 9 p.m., and ridiculousness commences until the law enforcement officials or hazmat show up to shut the damn thing down. This show will be upsettingly loud. On like Mao Xedong.

Zanzabar is located at 2100 South Preston Street on the western edge of Louisville’s dynamic Germantown neighborhood. After the show tonight, there’s a chance that it will no longer be at this location after either liftoff or implosion. No telling which, though. That’s some real conversation for your ass.

MP3 :::
Disappears – Pearly Gates
Woven Bones – With You Alone

It’s been a long time coming. For almost 18 months, the mysterious MP3s and live bootlgets of one Disappears, formed by Brian Case and company after various hiatuses (hiatii?) of his other projects 90 Day Men and The Ponys, floated around the Internet. A few 7″ inches mimicking Can’s Delay 1968 appeared, and the group was invited to play an early afternoon show at last year’s Pitchfork Festival. Now at last, Disappears prepares to drop their proper debut Lux on Kranky April 13 and make like babies and head out on their first headlining tour with Austin’s Woven Bones.

Shortly after their opening set for Tortoise back in February at Headliners, Brian was awesome enough to step outside in the cold with me for a few and chat. However, Brian, despite being a formidable presence on stage, is a polite and soft spoken dude, and Tortoise, despite being smooth on record, gets scary loud live. I wasn’t able to transcribe everything we talked about below, but that was probably for the best, as we shot the shit about Faust and whether we’ll have to time to go bowling in June when they return to Louisville, which may or may not be editorially interesting. Below, Brian discusses Disappears’ origins, their collaboration with Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley and some excellent Chicago noise bros, and why they opted to give away their early stuff.

:::

Right now, all of your releases are available for free download on your site. Though  it’s not super uncommon, it’s still a bold move. What led you to go that route?

We were just hoping that people would share with their friends. Not make money or anything, ya know. When we first started playing as Disappears, we wanted as many people to hear about it as possible. And we wanted to give it away so people would share the music with their friends. And ya know, people will be more inclined to check it out something new if it’s free than having to buy it, and then be inclined to come out to the show, which really works out in the end for us.

Has there been a good response to the material so far?

Yeah, I mean, it’s cool. We did our 7″ ourselves and they’re all almost gone now. I don’t know our traffic or anything or how many people have been downloading the songs…

Well, they’ve begun to spread across a few blogs, that’s how I found out about you…

Yeah yeah, and that’s definitely why we approached it that way.

Alright, so Lux is going to be the first official release on Kranky in April. What can we expect with the record? Will it be similar to the live show, a curveball, something in between?

Well, it has a bunch of songs from [Live Over the Rainbo], and a few that aren’t. They’re all different versions, so you’ll hear something different for sure. It’s funny because now live, we’re playing past it, playing more songs from the new new record – we’ve been writing a lot…

Yeah, I heard some songs tonight I didn’t recognize …

Yeah, yeah. Lux has been done for a year now. Now that’s it’s coming out, it’s cool, ya know, and we’re excited, and the next record is almost done too [laughs].

Was it a conscience decision to make your first full length a live album, or how did that come about?

Well, we did this tour with Deerhunter and Times New Viking and we had the singles at the time, but we wanted to make something like a CD. We didn’t want to count on just 7″s. We recorded a show and made 100 copies, but we didn’t mean for all the live songs to be out before our first album. Just a burned CD in a black slip case with a sticker.  It’s not our first full length, just a live document we were hoping people would share with their friends and get the word out.  It kind of took on a life of its own, being issued on LP and cassette by Plus Tapes and Rococco Records here in Chicago.

How did you decide to start up Disappears instead of continuing stuff like 90 Day Men and Ponys?

Disappears started between me and Graeme, of Boas, just doing some recording.  He really added a lot to the feel of the songs while we were demoing, and seemed to like them so we figured we’d see where it went.  He brought on Jonathan from the band, which i was really happy about and Jonathan brought on Damon, which was a real gift for us.  It was a really organic process and that was exactly how we wanted to play it.  I could never do music like 90 Day Men without the guys in the band, it was a totally unique experience to thefour of us and trying to recreate that would be a real disappointment.  As far as Ponys goes, we were taking a break when Disappears started so doing something like that didn’t even cross my mind as i was already doing it.  To me Disappears is sort of a bridge between those two bands – structurally it’s got the straight forwardness of Ponys but conceptually it veers more toward 90 Day territory.  With that said, I look at it as completely separate from those two – it is definitely the sum of its parts and I think we’re all pretty lucky we fell into it as easily as we did.

Speaking of 90 Day Men, any chance of a Lichens / Disappears collaboration?

Oh, maybe! We played a show with Rob and it was fun. I would totally love to do that. We did do a collaboration with this band with Rob called White/ Light. He put out a record with them called White/Lichens, and do shows together. So yeah, we made a record with those two guys, and they’re kind of a droney noise project with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth on drums. So, it’s cool. It’s all of Disappears, Steve Shelley, and these two noise dudes [White/Light]. Some guys are putting a 7″ out soon. We recorded a bunch of songs, but for now, just two are coming out. We’ll see what happens.

Awesome. And ya know, that’s something I noticed about Chicago when I lived there. Despite its size, the music there is totally interconnected.

Yeah, it’s a big small town.

Yeah, that’s kinda how Louisville is. It’s kinda six degrees of Slint and Bonnie Prince. I’m assuming that’s how this big Tortoise tour happened…

Yeah, totally. We know all these guys really well. A couple of us have worked with a couple of them, and we hang out outside of music. We were going to tour with them before, but had to pull out. And they asked us back again to make up. It’s more out of friendship than anything, and it’s cool.

:::

And from here, Brian and I talked about random stuff for a few minutes before heading back in to catch the remainder of Tortoise. Lux hits shelves, iTunes, and the Kranky catalog next week. Last but not least, the band returns to Louisville with a Decibel Tolls sponsored show at Zanzabar on June 10th with Woven Bones (more info). Should be a scream!

MP3 :::
Disappears – Magics

POSSIBLY RELEVANT :::
[Photos + Video] Tortoise and Disappears – Headliners, Louisville – 2.11.10

MP3 :::
Disappears – Lux
Woven Bones – With You Alone

Last Thursday was awesome. Though Tortoise boasts the pedigree and equity of “legendary,” I was actually more pumped to see Disappears. And they were utterly devastating. I always appreciate a band as loud as a Saturn V, and Disappears delivered the goods – disgustingly chunky guitars, tape echo on every mic, neanderthal drumming, reverb that shook Headliners Music Hall to its core – this band is ridiculous.  Disappears is truth.

As Brian Case discusses in our forthcoming interview, much of the set was very new material that may find its way past their Kranky debut Lux, out April 13. Unsure of the title of this one, but Disappears embraces the motorik like a loved one and cultivates decibel shredding more expansive than Manifest Destiny. Believe:

“Black Cross” was in fine form, as well:

Tortoise was also a treat to see live, though I’d be remiss if I didn’t honestly say that I enjoyed Disappears more. This probably had more to do with tertiary factors than the band’s actual performance. Tortoise was as tight as ever, but I felt their live show this time around suffered by not having, say, a visual element. Disappears didn’t need one, as Brian Case is a beast on stage, but the post-rock quintet, outside the double drumming extravaganza and John McEntire switching instruments every five minutes, hid behind their stacks of synths and computers – opting more to noddle in a detached sense, much like a jam band, than to engage the crowd. However, a couple of moments truly stood out, especially when Tortoise reached into their heavy metal bag and brought the motherfucking ruckus, as evidenced below. As an added bonus, you get We Listen For You’s Zach Hart’s mighty dome in the first video:

Overall, I still greatly enjoyed seeing Tortoise up close and personal – a very excellent bill all around. Keep your eyes on Disappears, though. There’s a statistically significant chance that, if our God is a merciful and loving god, this Chicago collective will fucking dominate 2010. Tortoise and Disappears storm Cat’s Cradle in Carborro, NC tonight and DC’s Black Cat tomorrow.

The folks at ProdSimp were rad enough to give us a pair of tickets to give away for the Tortoise and Disappears show tomorrow night, February 11, at Headliners Music Hall. Both bands rule hard, it’s going to be great, and you’re probably going either way, so why not save some coin and participate in our contest? To enter, send me some lyrics that Sir Wesley Willis could’ve penned about either Tortoise or Disappears (or both in the same song). I’ll start:

You are a rocking maniac
You were in The Sea and Cake and Gatr Del Sol
Millions Now Living Will Never Die is a rock and roll joyride
You really whip a polar bear’s ass with a belt

John McEntire
John McEntire
John McEntire
John McEntire

See? That was fun. You may either enter a comment below or shoot a message to kb [at] thedecibeltolls(dot)com. Need to see that shit by tomorrow at noon EST, and you’ll be notified by email that yours was the most awesome. You must either live in Louisville or be able to reasonably make it here to be eligible. If you don’t win, there will still be some tickets available at the door tomorrow night at 8 p.m., so don’t sleep on it.

MP3 :::
Tortoise – Dot/Eyes
Disappears – Old Friend

Somewhat of a strange bill, but I’ll take it. Two Chicago brain burning luminaries, Tortoise and Disappears, will be storming the castle known as Louisville’s Headliners Music Hall. While Tortoise is legendary, I think I’m more stoked on Disappears. Sofa king loud, dude. There are only a few select dates, and you can peep them on the Disappears blog here.

Tortoise and Disappears
Thursday, February 11th
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Rd., Louisville (map that shizz)
9 p.m. / 18+
$15 advance / $18 at the door
On Sale 12/4 @ 10am (at ear X-tacy and Ticketweb, presented by ProdSimp)

POSSIBLY RELEVANT :::
Disappears – Another Great Verb-As-Noun Band
Tortoise – Beacons of Ancestorship

MP3 :::
Tortoise – Yinxianghechengqi
Disappears – Lux

Disappears have the Anton Newcombe approach to the music business – give all your shit away on the Intarwebz for free, and worry about sustainability later. I dig that. Since I’ve been meaning to czech out these dudes for a while, it was rather easy. Thanks, guys.

Of course, it would be silly to say that their albums are worth every penny, unless they were majorly a bummer. But I’m happy to report the Disappears clearance special is a helluva deal – I just downloaded all three releases, and they’re really great. I would’ve certainly bought these records – I love this group. I prefer their latest release Live Over the Rainbo, and perhaps that’s a rather telling aspect of Disappears. If you sound best live, you’ve probably got a good group of bros to rock with. The group, out of Chicago, actually reminds me a lot of Louisville’s Invaders (who have a similar name as well – so double association there). Reverb-heavy fuzzy guitars, punchy rhythm, a shoegaze aesthetic, and a touch of retro chic on acid – Disappears are everything that’s great about rock and roll.

Disappears are touring with the Black Angels this fall, and as such, are playing a couple of festivals in the area, including Nashville’s Next Big Nashville (duh) and Lexington’s Boomslang. I reckon I’ll catch them at one of the two, and I reckon you should do the same. Their MySpace has all the dates.

And sweet sassy molassey, you can, as mentioned, grip all their recorded work on the band’s caps lock-heavy blog here! That rules. Disappears rule. I rule. You rule. Everything rules. Except this – that does not rule.

MP3 :::
Disappears – Hearing Things