I stumbled on Dark Beloved Cloud sometime in 1999. Back when the label was still based in New York. I was digging for a copy of Fly Ashtray’s Clumps Takes A Ride, yet another cassette that suffered the same fate as the Mommyheads tape I’ve written about… curdled in the heat of early-90’s South Floridian sun. And just like Swiss Army Knife, Clumps became progressively harder to find as the years went on. The fact that even in their “heyday” both were relatively obscure, compounded their elusivity further.

After a few emails and a never-realized design trade, Dark Beloved Cloud’s owner, Douglas Wolk, confirmed that he did indeed have a copy, and kindly hooked me with Clumps in both plastic and vinyl. A couple more generously stuffed envelopes later, and many other DBC artists found their way into my collection and onto my plate of earfood — Azalia Snail, The Magick Heads, Spaceheads, some Uncle Wiggly that I never knew existed and Fly Ashtray guitarist James Kavoussi’s almighty alter-persona, pHoaming Edison.

Fly Ashtray deserves and likely will receive a post of their own here someday. They’re among the handful of bands whose music fundamentally altered the landscape of listening for me. In fact, they were a shoe-in before I ever even dropped the needle. Their name alone detonated an avalanche of pre-pubescent memories — Star Wars and Micronaut figures manning the cockpit of my parents ashy, functional version of their namesake.

Then as now, Fly Ashtray’s sound swings the ~25yr gamut from quirky pop, deeply explorative noise to neo-psychedelic heaviness. Even when coupled with a frequent helping of silly lyrics and song titles, the hallmark of their home/rec mastery is never lost. Kavoussi’s solo releases as pHoaming Edison bear the brilliant genetic signature of Fly Ashtray (and vice-versa) garbled in crap-sounding lo-tech splendor. Occasional cover tracks easily finding a place in the ranks of an unrealized list of tops (should I ever realize the need to write one).

When Douglas Wolk moved to Portland a few years ago, he made the coastal switch with a new addition to the family and a few book titles in tow. Namely, the much-heralded Reading Comics and his 117 page critical introspective James Brown: Live at the Apollo for Continuum’s 33⅓ book series.

It turns out Wolk is also one of the hardest working men in the music/comic critic business. Lucky for us, he brought Dark Beloved Cloud along with him and still finds time to bring the precipitating noise.

Noise that is made readily available via the DBC catalog and the ill-conceived (not ill meaning ill, but ill meaning ill) Singles Club. A collaborative means of sampling the label’s catalog in the form of 3-inch CD singles swapped in exchange for the investment of your own creative time and effort. Design a cover for the latest single, send it in and get the single adorned with someone else’s cover artwork. A simple, brilliant concept that Fly Ashtray is currently wielding for the release of their latest plate, Pantswind Folder. See? Totally silly album titles as well.

If you dig the links below, get in on both collabs and find yourself far from disappointed.

s|b Muxtape v.0002 → HYPOBLAST! Fly Ashtray + pHoaming Edison
The Dark Beloved Cloud Muxtape

Dark Beloved Cloud: Precipitated / Band Pages / Singles Club / covers
Douglas Wolk: Lacunae / Reading Comics / JB 33⅓ / 52 Pickup / Slate / Savage Critic / Kottke Interview
Fly Ashtray: off.site, blog + mspce / Discog / Videos / Song Titles / Thanks Mauvis
pHoaming Edison: mspce / Silly Bird

 

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Received a bubble-lined manilla from Ecstatic Peace last week (Thanks AK!), packed with good, good stuff more than worth mentioning. Here’s my tops:

Free Kitten Inherit
Its been over a decade since Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Julie Cafritz (Pussy Galore) and Yoshimi P-We (Boredoms) released a Free Kitten disc. If you’ve been waiting since Sentimental Education, it was well worth it. Inherit is what you’d get if the combined lucid dreams of all three and their former/current band mates were pre-recorded while listening to Evol’s Shadow of a Doubt, only with a distinctively dirgey backbone. It’s like the more noisy, experimental passages of each, fine-tuned into one brash, hypnotic and totally accessible sound.

Track 01. Erected Girl (6:45)
Track 03. Seasick (3:24)
Track 04. Free Kitten On the Mountain(7:51)
Track 09. Bananas (2:49) w/ J.Mascis on drums

Awesome Color Electric Aborigines
This album would have certainly been included on the tracklist of any Thrasher Skate Rock comp, as easily as I would have coveted it by album cover alone in the forbidden racks of the Golden Triangle heavy rock aisle when I was a kid. Unabashedly heavy, distorted, power rock wrapped in a sheet of White Lightning. Critics will doubtlessly cite obvious references to Detroit in general and the MC5 in particular when bashing Electric Aborigines for all the things that make them the great continuation of the lineage that they are. If this doesn’t make you want to load up the van, drop acid and head out the weird wilderness, then enjoy your dirt nap. The soundtrack of Summer unbridled.

Track 01. Eyes of Light (5:43)
Track 02. Already Down (2:42)

via: Ecstatic Peace / Free Kitten (PK) / Awesome Color (PK)

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Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (part 3/4) (42.8MB, mp3.zip, MF)

via: i was an infinitely hot and dense dot
(mc,mg: pt.1 / pt.2)

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Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (part 2/4) (42.8MB, mp3.zip, MF)

via: i was an infinitely hot and dense dot
(mc,mg: pt.1)

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I first read the name Mark Leyner while pouring through the pages of Mondo 2000(*), a short-lived and decidedly poignant introduction to the emerging cultural phenomena of networked computer systems, psychology, psychedelics and art. It was also my introduction to the personally life-altering thoughts of many personas of that era including Terence McKenna, Anne and Alexander Shulgin, Robert Anton Wilson and Jaron Lanier, just to name a few.

M2K was in publication during the early years of the internet era. During the transition from BBS to the web. A time when web browsers (Mosaic anyone?) were first able to display images inline, when the term cyberspace was not only used sans tongue-in-cheek, but heralded the clarion call for the social, cultural and human evolution that the internet seemed to promise. William Gibson’s science fiction made manifest, Terence McKenna’s visual ingression of linguistic intent and Timothy Leary’s final playground. Leyner’s book My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist was published in the fertile hotbed of this era and into the literary epoch of cyberpunk, reflecting it’s hyperactive and hyperlinked hyperreality.

The World Wide Web of 1993 was a dangerous and beautiful place. Remeniscent of Gutenberg’s printing press in terms of it’s disruptive effectiveness as a tool of the cognescenti and commonfolk alike. The information flowing through it allowed and demanded the very freedom that echoed and fueled it’s democratizing intent.

Leyner’s work was as dystopian as that of his cyberpunk brethren, but it came with a twist; it was fucking hilarious. A bonfire in which no form of thinking (eschatological or otherwise) was left unscathed. Where the hedonistic, self-indulgent and ego-driven herd of star culture icons lived on to ridiculously preserved, medically plausable ends. Where the soup of the day was primordial soup, “ammonia and methane mixed with ocean water in the presence of lightning”.

Instead of everyman cyborgs with military weapondry on-board (ala Gibson, Jeter etc.) Leyner’s characters were mesomorphic cyborgs that whipped out 35 pound phalli made of corrosion resistant nickel-based alloy and a metal oxide membrane for absolute sub-micron pebnetration of petrochemical fluids. Where mono zygotic replicants could avoid transgressing the incest taboo via a miniature shotgun blast of gene fragments, altering their genetic matricies so that they would longer be mono zygotic replicants. Where secreted couples could meet in dreams and apocalyptic deformation bombs could disfigure everything within blast radius in the same chapter that referenced TV Guide digests of wonderfully absurd shows starring the likes of Brian Keith, Buddy Ebsen, Nipsey Russell, and Lesley Ann Warren.

My Cousin, My Gastoenterologist is classic Leyner, and I feel, his establishing tome. An amphetamine overdriven run-on thought train, slicing through a scatter shot pop culture landscape with the urgency of a pedal riveted to the floor.

Thinking now back on the time it was written, a time when I took M2K’s manifestos SO seriously, believing in the inherent evolutionary change agency of the web. Even then I couldn’t keep from laughing with Leyner, whose sci-fi scenarios seem far more relevant and in full fruition than Gibson’s hard-browed visions. Especially now that the web has primarily devolved into a vehicle for mass marketing, branding and porn.

Thanks to Leyner, I can laugh with the absurdity — welcoming every bent doctrine and obliterated principle as everything unfurls in the stark blue sheen of prime time, and still revel in the sub-experiential, subversive carrier tone that rings at the heart of it all.

Thanks finally to my good friend, Brian Knapp who picked up the cassette version of the audiobook at Powell’s in the 99 cent bin back in 1999, and the tech that has made it relatively easier to pass along.

I’ll be uploading each part over the course of the next few days.

Here’s the first:

Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (part 1/4) (42.7MB, mp3.zip, MF)

related: Salon / Follow for Now / Links / Petition to Force Mark Leyner to Write Another Novel, (thanks Sampsell)

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Not unlike the last couple of Silver Jews releases, I’ve been giving a pre-release of their latest, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea heavy rotation in hopes that it will grow on me (thanks DaveE!). In the midst of the first spin, I was surprised and stoked to find that one of the tracks is a cover of one of my favorite artist’s songs, Maher Shalal Hash Baz’s, Open Field from Blues Du Jour.

Oddly enough, I was also in the middle of adding to a list of questions I’ve been working on for a future interview/post when it played. I love that shit.

Here’s the original, and it’s cover…
PS. Does anyone know the name of the artist that did the (possible) cover?

Maher Shalal Hash Baz: Open Field (1.3mb, mp3.zip, MF)
Silver Jews: Open Field (4.9mb, mp3.zip, MF)

Maher Shalal Hash Baz: Acetone Interview / Bookmat review of Blues Du Jour
Silver Jews: Drag City / Pitchfork: David Berman interview

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Not sure how I found Stephan Balleux’s archive of densely gobbed, skeletal and amorphous works. Probably FFFFound!… Wherever I sourced it, I’m certain it was one of his uniquely rendered skulls that initially caught my eye. Armed with paint thick enough to pass as sculpture, sculpture precisely rendered enough to be CG and with plenty of actual CG thrown in too, Balleux has amassed quite an intriguing and inspiring collection of low/high brow art. Intentionally synaesthetic stuff that’s both intimately personal and universal at once.

Stephan Balleux: Cipher, Bullet Proof’s Anatomy & PaintingPainting Project.

Speaking of skulls, no mention of them would be complete without pointing to the Skull-A-Day project. A repository of daily cranial content either found or created by it’s founders, Another Limited Rebellion, including a rad looking paper skull project with articulated jaw that’s just begging for customization. I also found an open dir full of rad S-A-D weirdness. Check it — Theme songs no less.

ALR / Skull-A-Day: Papercraft Skull (109kb, PDF)

And of course, no mention of paper projects (skulls or otherwise) would be complete without mentioning the Readymech series — which includes FWIS’s own downloadable take on brain-casings, readymade for print-and-fold DIY goodness.

FWIS / Readymech
Series 001: Skeletron (Black, 81.3kb, PDF)
Series 001: Skeletron (White, 80.2kb, PDF)
Series 002: Thunder Eater (589kb, PDF) & Headhunter (140kb, PDF)

via: Stephan Balleux / Skull-A-Day / FWIS / Readymech / FFFFOUND!

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Scorces is the strange child of two Charalambides members, Christina Carter and Heather Murray (formerly of Ash Castles on the Ghost Coast). Their label’s namesake is synonymous with their sound —beautiful, haunting and wholly other.

Scorces opened up the Thurston show at Doug Fir Lounge on 10.25.07. They also opened up my mind, utterly possessing it for the duration of their set. The concept of sirens kept returning, until my search for definition folded under the lull of their call and the weight of their performance.

Comparisons can be drawn to an associative vocal array ranging from the space whisper of Gilli Smyth to the thick and layered barrage of Diamanda Galas, but the closest reference I have to the resultant affect of Scorces is related to a new years party I attended many years ago in Coral Gables, Florida. That night, the drumming and chanting of three Afro-Cuban Santeros gradually culled me toward an extremely deep state of trance. Sans chemicals and completely without expectation or explanation. One minute I was following the building and wandering syncopations, the next — face to face with one of the drummers who was no longer drumming but instead, standing mere feet away from me. Nodding in knowing recognition as I slowly regained focus.

By replacing the drumming with the duo’s densely effected slide and pedal guitars and the chanting with echoed coos to wailing glossolalia, Scorces performance resounds as strikingly similar. It left me affected, haunted and yearning for more.

In the ensuing search, I found a live performance of theirs from Brian Turner’s show on the almighty WFMU circa 2003 with Double Leopard’s Marcia Basset. A gently psychedelic inversion of their more overdriven show last month but just as alluring and now, ripped and shared for offline listening until more winds its way from across the distant waves.

Scorces via: Brian Turner / WFMU (.ra)
One ( 25mb, mp3.zip, MF)
Two ( 22.1mb, mp3.zip, MF)

Related: Heather Leigh / s|b_tube: 01, 02 / Charalambides
Reviewed: Stylus / Tiny Mix Tapes

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Time is strange. The way life moves through it — often stranger.

I saw my first Sonic Youth show in November of 1988. Daydream Nation tour. Mudhoney opened up at the Roxy in LA. GSD had turned me on to them the year before with Sister, spun on a turntable underneath the desk on his side of the Transworld dual stair chasm separating our drafting tables. It remains one of my favorite albums to this day.

Any music freak has a short list of bands and musicians whose sound fundamentally altered their sense of what music was or could be. Sonic Youth was one such band for me, and the affects ran deep. I entered the Roxy that night, with clear and certain intent to capture the way their sound affected me through acid-tinted 16mm Nikkor. By the time they destroyed the stage with an encore of I Wanna Be Your Dog with MudHoney, I had done all that I could to fill the only roll of hi-speed film I’d brought along. After managing to navigate back home (a sleeping bag under my desk at the PowerEdge in Carson), I spent the rest of the wee hours developing the night’s shots. One stood out among a handful of keepers as the one.

The next day, I brought the negatives to Andy Jenkins. The Master Cluster were busy finishing production on their latest issue that included a feature on Sonic Youth (The Guitar as a Weapon). Spike took the negs and made prints suitable for HomeBoy’s huge format. In the end, Andy chose the same one I felt had marked success from the previous night’s mission and ran it as the opening spread for the article. Inspirational photog and friend, O, had shots in there too including one of my favorites for the cover — a shot of SY’s 2×4 crafted quiver box brimming with worn and detuned guitars.

Years pass.

Around the same time I started this site, I purchased a new scanner with a negative tray in order to gather a bunch of shots for my week as poster at Crailtap. I scanned the Roxy shots along with some pics of Mike Watt from a Firehose show around the same time and disseminated them amongst the old zine-circle guard.

Soon after, Andy responded requested them once again. This time for inclusion in an issue of Monster Children he was guest editing. His caption for the photo read:

…I’ve always thought it totally captured their essence… a violence of swirling noise with free-tuned guitars. This shot has haunted me ever since I saw the first print.

I included the photos in one of the first posts here.

A couple weeks later and long before Monster Children went to press, I received forwarded emails via Swank, Lew and Andy from Lance Bangs who was helping Thurston in tracking me down regarding the same shot. I’d later find out from Thurston that he’d seen it reproduced in a French zine while on tour a few years back, and filed it in a box full of clippings. He’d run across it again while digging for inspiration in coming up with graphics for the cover of his first solo record in over ten years, Trees Outside the Academy. The photo credit miraculously was still intact. After a few conversations with Thurston and Andrew Kesin of Ecstatic Peace, all was set for it’s use. Old friend and Nemo owner, Trevor Graves hooked up some drum scanning at work, and before long, pre-release copies of Trees designed by Andrew K. were in my hands.

I found out too late to attend, that that the 20th anniversary Daydream Nation tour was going on at that time, and read that the Roxy show in ‘88 was where Sonic Youth caught the ear of Geffen’s Mark Keats.

The coincidences didn’t stop.

Friends and fellow Nemo folks, Adam Bagerski and Justin Dickau, launched a Nemo sponsored limited edition poster project. Working with a couple local venues, we would be designing and silk screening posters for a few select shows to hand out freely. Having seen my photo, but knowing little about it’s use for Trees, I was picked to do the poster for Thurston’s 10/25/07 show at Doug Fir. Justin and I spent an evening pulling 100 posters in his studio apartment / silkscreen lab.

Silver (rocket) and Gold (connections) on Black.

The crowning moment of the weird lineage surrounding the photo came the night of the show. After growing up with plenty of SY around, my kid had discovered and become a second gen/teenage fan of Sonic Youth on his own. Bethany Flugum from the Fir kindly arranged for him to get in for the sound check, and by the end of it, he and his friend were backstage with the bands having the rock and roll fantasy of their lifetime.

The show was great — from the wailing, hypnotically alluring siren call of Scorces to Thurston’s flawless set.

I shot some more photos, distributed posters and was kicked down with enough merch sporting that same shot from nearly twenty years ago to leave me in awe, thankful and fully satiated with yet another confirmation that with enthused and certain intent, anyone’s work can transcend time and end up in the right place at the right time.

Thanks to all for another loop on the wild ride.

ADDENDUM: There are a few remaining posters slated for future release at an updated version of the Nemo site. If you’re interested in one sooner than later, just let me know.

Thurston Moore: Trees Outside the Academy
Frozen GTR (5.6mb, mp3.zip, MF)
Trees Outside the Academy (8mb, mp3.zip, MF)

Thurston, Doug Fir 10.25.07: s|b_tube

via: Ecstatic Peace / Nemo / Bend / Doug Fir

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Some MF DOOM / Madvillain / V.Vaughn ringtones to vibe the cell with fingers crossed in hopes of a higher-cap iPhone with Flash onboard and a new DOOM slab to the table sooner than later.

doomtone_alert_backend.mp3
doomtone_curls.mp3
doomtone_popsnot_1.mp3
doomtone_popsnot_2.mp3
doomtone_potholdrs_1.mp3
doomtone_potholdrs_2.mp3
doomtone_raedawn.mp3

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