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About the Prank Yesterday Afternoon

Published

on April 2, 2009

in General Communique, MP3 and Publicity Stunts

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vamps About the Prank Yesterday Afternoon

Well sheeit, if I knew that so many people were coming over to see me and peep the Vampire Weekend demos, I would’ve cleaned up a little more around here. Ya know, some fancy animated GIFs, better karaoke performances, cOoL vIdEoS, vacuumed a little, etc.

A couple of thoughts on the prank/social experiment yesterday:

1) I knew Vampire Weekend was popular, but holy shit, I had several thousand visitors within a couple of hours. I have ambivalent feelings about this. On the one hand, the exposure of The Decibel Tolls to a new, wide audience was great. On the other, it’s disheartening that a lot of better bands and artists don’t receive those nice perks of the massive hype machine that the Vamps were able to produce. Sad on the inside. But whatever, that’s how the world works, right? I forget who said it, but I always enjoyed the quote “morality is the way the world should be and economics is the way the world actually is.”

2) The Vamp crowd is decidedly a younger crowd, yet seems more mature than many of the people I encounter through other stunts this blog has produced. The responses I received yesterday all showcased people with a pretty good sense of humor. Whereas the fake Billy Corgan Twitter yields a lot of flame mail from the Pumpkinheads, an older crowd, I received a lot of good responses in the comments and my inbox that made me say “touché.” Thanks for being good sports, ya’ll.

Now, some people were curious about what exactly the tracks really were. Here’s the revelation:

“Tube Socks and Trust Funds” – Oh… oh, you thought it was the Vamps at first, but then realized… fuck, it’s “Gumboots” from Paul Simon’s Graceland. FML.

“Cape Cod Shuffle” – This is Captain & Tenille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” (a staple of the Keep Louisville Smooth DJ set). This was included because, I think, if Vampire Weekend increased their coolness by 400-500%, they would probably come pretty close to the good Captain and his shipmate Toni Tenille.

“Just a J Crew Holiday” – This is my friend Mark Evans with an old project of his called Lesbian Peanut Butter (I caught that reference, Mark). They wrote original music as well, but this track is their riverboat folk cover of KoRn’s “Blind.” When discussing KoRn, do you have to type in toggle case? Is that AP style? Anyway, thanks again, Mark. That song rules!

“Hello to You, Africa!!” – Nope, not Merzbow. It’s Kites, from his 2006 album Peace Trials, which is probably my favorite power electronics noise album. The composition of this song represents my feelings that the Vamps probably don’t really care that much about Africa. Since there was some interest in this record, I’ve included additional MP3s below for your consideration. If you dig it, you can grip that album over at Load.

“Country Club Blues” – this is ol’ Kenny Bloggins doing a one-take a capella karaoke of Collective Soul’s 1994 smash hit “Shine,” with a little spread chorus and reverb added for effect.

MP3 :::
Kites – Dirt
Kites – Flag Torn Apart

Monoshock – Walk to the Fire

Published

Norwood Derr

on March 30, 2009

in Noise Consultations

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333 Monoshock - Walk to the Fire

[Editor's Note: This is Norwood's first article for the Decibel Tolls. Welcome him, and let's avoid the normal flaming we have here on this fine music blog, nerds. Don't scare him off too soon, now.]

Last week, I was editing a chapter on garage rock for Piero Scaruffi’s revised rock catalog when I stumbled upon a band that begged me for my curiosity. One of the few reviews about this outhouse-rock group was written by Julian Cope (for one of his album of the month pieces). I skimmed through his review, finding the nihilistic mumbo-jumbo of rock gold more and more appetizing. The more I researched, the quicker I found out that my dear uncle Scott Derr was one of the contributing madmen. It’s a small world after all! Cope surely did a good job selling the band on paper, and now I had a blood connection. I thoroughly scanned the world wide web before finally unveiling the 24-karat cacophony that is Monoshock’s first, last and only LP, “Walk to the Fire.”

monoshock_band Monoshock - Walk to the Fire

“Walk to the Fire” shows off the raw power of the Stooges, the improvisational debauchery of the Velvet Underground, and the schizophrenic swagger of Pere Ubu; all finely minced, thrown into a blender, and garnished with a bit of apocalyptic satisfaction. There’s just something about the amateurish indecency of “Walk to the Fire” that sounds strikingly original. This feeling of sordid wonder juxtaposed with frontman Grady Runyan’s aesthetic framework makes “Walk to the Fire” one of rock music’s most fascinating “Jekyll and Hyde” records. You could enjoy it because of its “no-fi” garage-punk sound, or because of its potent expeditions into the psychedelic avant-garde.

The record as a whole will blow your sails due south; whether your heading there or not. Made up of college buddies Grady Runyan (vocals, guitar, e-bow, violin), Scott Derr (vocals, bass, guitar, brass, blender), Rubin Fiberglass (drums, percussion, vocals) and Aluminum Queen (saxophone), Monoshock mixes sloppy proto-punk with sophisticated free-form experimentation. “Walk to the Fire” is simply another example of punk rock’s “Fuck it, I’m a teenager” ethos gone horribly right. Everything seems to go wrong on this record, and that’s the provocative beauty of Monoshock’s design. The chaotic mess of guitars, drums and orchestral instruments proves to be much more prophetic than ignorant. More singular than homogenous. And more honest than fraudulent. When listening, I often forget that running saxophones through oscillators, and aimlessly howlin’ away on brass isn’t the norm in rock music, but Monoshock does it with an unwavering conviction.

The opening track “Crypto-Zoological Disaster,” begins with a head bobbin’ Pere Ubu riff that steadily marches until it abruptly decomposes into a degenerative, DNA-like, orgy of half-conscious noise. After getting lost in the masochistic crescendo, Runyan and company come full-circle, bringing back the riff in a final tour de force.

“I Took You to it Baby,” Monoshock’s destructive ballad, features the group’s most conventionally catchy instrumentation. Fortunately for us, Runyan’s apathetic wailing combined with a belligerent, yet hummable, guitar melody makes you want to turn up the volume, pound the gas with your lead foot and flip the bird to the next copper you see on the open highway.

The almost primitivist “Astral Plane” sways back and forth like a drunk seaman, soon to be hanging over the ship’s railing in a sickening stupor. This uncanny, vaguely psychedelic sound appears all over “Walk to the Fire,” contributing to the record’s subtle hallucinogenic mystique. The track’s climax is marked by Derr’s disastrously fulfilling brass solo.

Monoshock’s “Walk to the Fire” will likely grab you by the neck, and wring you for every last penny. Sometimes being wrong feels oh so right.

MP3 :::
Monoshock – Astral Plane (Take Me)
Monoshock – I Took You To It, Baby
Monoshock – Leesa

WFMU’s People Like Us and Their Futuristic View of the Atomic Age

Published

Kenny Bloggins

on March 11, 2009

in Visual Aids

. Comments

01 WFMUs People Like Us and Their Futuristic View of the Atomic Age

I don’t toss around the word “brilliant” too often. I recently rediscovered visual and sound collage demon People Like Us, and it’s absolutely brilliant. I find old film reels, archaic educational videos, public domain images, technology that was supposed to change our lives but didn’t, and general oddities of American industry terrifically intriguing. People Like Us, the A/V project of Viki Bennett, combines all these images with a Raymond Scott-esque audio pastiche.

People Like Us do tour and perform installations occasionally, and I had the pleasure of seeing them back in, I think, 2004 when they came to my school. Their live show is, in essence, a live VJing of these images and sounds. I saw it sober, but I wish I was stoned. And of course, People Like Us is associated with the mighty, avant-retard WFMU. Unfortunately, Viki’s show Do or DIY is not on the current schedule (though she fills in every now and again).

Below are some of my favorite videos. The first is 2003’s The Remote Controller, which features “found footage sourced from educational films to explore the way human body and machine interface in the 20th century.” The second film, “Resemblage,” features a lot of the images I saw at the live show. The last is 2005’s Story Without End, extracted from “a public domain film of the same name made in 1950 about the development of microwave radio transmission and the transistor.”

UbuWeb hosts these videos, and I encourage you to visit them. The site compiles a variety of audio and video from “outsider” artists, and it’s incredibly awesome.

Locrian is Perfect for a Sunn O)))-ny Day

Published

Xavier Van Zandt

on March 9, 2009

in Praise and Malaise

. Comments

l_0c327a4395f341f88af3036ce62a7be5 Locrian is Perfect for a Sunn O)))-ny Day

I had an opportunity to sit down with the latest release from Chicago drone duo, Locrian, but hadn’t packed my bag for the transcendental journey on which this slab of sound sent me. Drenched Lands is 6 tracks clocking in at just over an hour and thick with layers of droning synth and strings. Despite the traditional association of the locrian mode with metal, Locrian is surprisingly easy on the ears, bringing in a slow tide which eventually crescendos into a powerful swell. There’s a raw fury lurking underneath the glassy smooth sea giving you one hell of a ride without ever smashing you onto the rocks.

The opening track features a repetitive Slint-like riff backed by subterranean synth which leads seamlessly into the pulsating “Ghost Repeater.” Closing my eyes I saw Kurt Russell on the barren ice in John Carpenter’s The Thing. This is the modern-day counterpart to Morricone’s masterful score of one of the creepiest films of the last half century. Drenched Lands indeed conjures up desolate post-industrial landscapes teeming with hidden peril.

“Obsolete Elegy in Cast Concrete” punctuates the mood pieces with stabbing guitar attacks and distant howls building frantically to a reprise of the album’s melodic opening. The alternating dissonance and consonance pushes you right to the edge of discomfort before lulling you back into the fold. The 30 minute epic final track, “Greyfield Shrines”, brings the storm to shore with an unyielding torrent of feedback and noise which eventually relents so you can breathe again.

I’m not a fan of unbridled noise which feels a bit too much like each musician is off on his own personal journey. But Locrian imposes an order on the chaos and the result is a surprisingly mature effort which feels a lot more dangerous than it is. Drenched Lands is a harrowing thrill ride down a dark, remote highway but there’s no risk here of running off the road.

MP3 :::
Locrian – Epicedium
Locrian – Obsolete Elegy in Cast Concrete

The Decibel Tolls Best Albums of 2008

Published

Kenny Bloggins

on December 10, 2008

in Praise and Malaise and Year-End Action

. Comments

playin The Decibel Tolls Best Albums of 2008

Oh good, glad to see you like my illustration. Yeah, I had some downtime and wasn’t feelin’ too creative or too much in my graphic design game as far as doing something special for The Decibel Tolls year-end list. So Lana and I started talking, and it came to us that it would be hysterical to do a collage with people like Bradford Cox eating that Ezra Comma dude from Frankenstein Weekday or whoever, and Franz Ferdinand… stuff like that. I didn’t have time to add Lil’ Wayne. And then I had to make, like, the fuckin’ universe as the backdrop. That’s how we roll here at the Decibel Tolls – no fun, tasteful graphic to designate this article as the accumulative best-of list. Nope, just crude images of artists I like with their heads detached eating shitty bands. I’m additionally thrilled that I was able to describe the image even further despite the fact that it’s already annotated. I rule.

I put some serious thought into this list, and did a bunch of narrowin’ down. There were other jam hives I was rather infatuated with this year, such as releases from Magik Markers, Burning Star Core, and Vivian Girls. But I wanted to do just the standard top ten this time around. No reason to not do things standard every now and again… Continue reading ‘The Decibel Tolls Best Albums of 2008′

The Legendary Pink Dots – Still Legendary, Probably Still Pink

Published

Kenny Bloggins

on November 18, 2008

in MP3

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61buFsx61nL._SS500_ The Legendary Pink Dots - Still Legendary, Probably Still Pink

I just found out that nordic beasts The Legendary Pink Dots quietly released a new full-length very recently called Plutonium Blonde. And as you can expect, like contemporaries Lilys and Psychic TV, they’re still all over the place. Plutonium Blonde features it all: psychedelia, noise, and hell, even a few dance ditties. Continue reading ‘The Legendary Pink Dots – Still Legendary, Probably Still Pink’

No-Fi Psych with Sic Alps, US Girls, and The N.E.C.

Published

Kenny Bloggins

on October 21, 2008

in MP3

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sic_alps No-Fi Psych with Sic Alps, US Girls, and The N.E.C.

I should be releasing my best of 2008 list next month at this time. As a preview, you can bet that San Francisco’s Sic Alps will be firmly planted in the northern latitudes of the list. This isn’t your father’s unwashable, filthy, no-fi psychedelic rock scuz – Sic Alps twist, creak, and thump, taking you on a cosmically damaged romp through west coast good vibes and future shock trepidation.

Why I didn’t czech out the group earlier is a mystery to me. Their debut Pleasures and Treasures was released on Animal Disguise, home to my good friends Warmer Milks. The latest, U.S. Ez, has a comfy place on the Siltbreeze roster with the likes of Charlambides, The Dead C, and hey look, U.S. Girls (see below). Sic Alps certainly drink from the same goblets as the highest in psych rock royalty, but they also bring the goods to back up their seat at the table. Continue reading ‘No-Fi Psych with Sic Alps, US Girls, and The N.E.C.’

Women Shatter Glass Ceilings, Eardrums, Et Al.

Published

Kenny Bloggins

on October 20, 2008

in MP3

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women Women Shatter Glass Ceilings, Eardrums, Et Al.

I love the new self-titled album by Women. It’s currently available on the near flawless Jagjaguwar label, and since it’s based in Bloomington, serves as possibly the only really awesome thing about Indiana. As you can see, Women is (presumably) four dudes. Sausage fest!

I was introduced to Women (that sounds so odd) by a fellow Tiny Mix Tapes writer who proclaimed that Women is prefect for anyone who “gets their dick up to Animal Collective.” I was certainly intrigued after that statement, especially since he said the word “dick.” And while I would concur that the Calgary band sometimes evokes the more menacing material on Here Comes the Indian and Danse Manitee, Women are by no means a knock-off. Whereas Animal Collective has always exuded a playfulness and childlike veneer, here be dragons within Women. The crescendo of the excellently titled “Lawncare” wants to pillage your village and breed with your women (pun intended, motherfucker). Continue reading ‘Women Shatter Glass Ceilings, Eardrums, Et Al.’

The Dow is Down, Noise For Obama is Up

Published

Kenny Bloggins

on September 30, 2008

in News

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chip_barackwebres The Dow is Down, Noise For Obama is Up

Words do no justice to the awesomeness of above illustration. As reported earlier, the noise community has stopped tinkering with feedback loops for a moment or two in the name of civic engagement. Noise for Obama, with a most triumphant Wonderful Rainbow-themed background, launched roughly two weeks ago and now has some artist statements up with pledging of support and general thumbs-upness for Obama. Continue reading ‘The Dow is Down, Noise For Obama is Up’

New Monuments Tour, Shred, Repeat

Published

Kenny Bloggins

on September 5, 2008

in News and Rockshows

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This is cross-posted from Tiny Mix Tapes. I tell ya, it’s damn near impossible to stay on top Burning Star Core news considering Yeh’s prolificism (is that a word?). I don’t even try. Anyway…

Minimalist psych overlord, violin ripper, darling of Wire Magazine, and owner of Tony Conrad’s entire catalog C Spencer Yeh (of Cincinnati’s Burning Star Core) is teaming up with Borbetomagus founder and Wolf Eyes buddy Don Dietrich and snare shredder Ben Hall, of Graveyards, for high-fives and to scald a few scalps with their new noise supergroup called New Monuments.

Continue reading ‘New Monuments Tour, Shred, Repeat’