November 2009

The Archives

• 11.17.09
  Hudson Mohawke’s ‘ZOo00OOm’   Singles (0)

  

  The Warp debut by Glaswegian Ross Birchard is certainly one of the most interesting albums that 2009 has dropped in our collective laps. Butter is a beautifully chaotic swirl of influences: L.A. glitch-hop, smears of Warp’s spacier back catalog, and at its weirdest there’s charmed allusions to 1970’s prog/experimental masters The Mahavishnu Orchestra. It’s a wonderfully experimental affair, something far more worthy of the Warp branding than the label’s current top seller Veckatimest.

  Trying to pick a song to feature here was a bit of a challenge. On the whole, Butter is a long and twisted affair, a bit exhausting to listen to from front to back. It’s strangely uneven too, with some songs congealing more than others, though that is often the byproduct anything so experimental. Still, it’s still one of the best this year has brought forth.

  When I first took a pass at the album, the track that kicked my ass the hardest was ZOo00OOm, because…well, I’m a sucker for a killer synth lead. Amidst the hard stomping ghost of an electrified Dilla beat and the fluttering Casio bleep accompaniment is a hard synth that creeps out an almost cheesy sci-fi sounding melody. It’s one of the more linear and charmed tracks on the album; equal parts head-nodding wonky goodness as well something to put on at high volumes to scare the piss out of your cat.
  

  
  Hudson Mohawke – ZOo00OOm

  
  

  Seriously though, I’ll throw $20 bucks on the table for whoever can get Outkast back in the studio and have Hudson Mohawke produce the album. Fuck, that would be epic.

  Also epic – the Butter album cover:

  

  Butter was released by Warp Records on October 27th 2009

• 11.16.09
  Why? – Eskimo Snow   Album Review (1)

  

  There’s a lot contained below the surface of Eskimo Snow and what’s underneath is not entirely an uplifting affair. The album, which was released in late September on Anticon Records, is almost completely devoid of the hip-hop sheen that glossed both Elephant Eyelash and Alopecia and what is left settles with much more heft and weight. Much of the humorous subtext is gone as well, though the wordplay left behind is no less clever. The album gives off the air of a defeated narrator, be it Yoni himself or the character he’s woven into the band’s three albums, someone who has laid down his arms in light of the arriving war. The first two albums settled a mixture of reaction to the world around him with wry commentary, Elephant Eyelash brimming with a bit more uptempo sadness followed by Alopecia’s growing frustration. Put in context, the core of Eskimo Snow, in both lyrics and music is something more introspective

  I had the pleasure of interviewing Yoni back in early 2006 just before one of their opening shows for The Silver Jews at Chicago’s Double Door. The read I got off him then was a sincere one, as he was a genuinely kind and grounded guy who spoke with as much sincerity off the stage as he did in his lyrics. Between then and now, one has to assume that as you progress as a person of interest in the public eye, there is a divergence between the self you present in your art and the self you live. Over the course of the last two albums, it’s safe to guess that more of a ‘narrative interpretation of Yoni’ has crept into the lyrics. The process of exposing yourself through your art, especially to the extreme that he does can create two representations of one’s self. Even with those ideas are taken into account, Alopecia and Eskimo Snow were born of the same recording sessions, so to say that there’s an evolution over time could be a less than true guess.

  Character analysis aside, when you take away the hip-hop sway and gloss humor, what’s left at the core is a dense affair. The same themes of morality, self image, and mortality run through the core of this record. The songs stand strong individually despite the brief length of some, like the hypnotic album opener These Hands. This pairs a rising coo of discordant backup vocals with Yoni’s comparison of his own life’s progress to his father’s. The deep reverb on his voice paired with the lonely piano chords makes for something that creeps under the skin and at under two minutes is gone before you really recognize what is going on.

  
  Why? – These Hands

  
  

  Another highlight rests with Into The Shadows Of My Embrace, which leans on a swirl of keyboards and xylophone as it marches toward an almost melodramatic musical and lyrical peak where he sings about the extreme of his confessional nature. The kind of straight pop style that he uses in songs like this and Alopecia’s Simeon’s Dilemma and Brook & Waxing were a shift in style that I had to really wrap my head around, but the way they’re executed it grows on you.

  Why? – Into the Shadows of My Embrace

  
  

  With the tour supporting this album, there was a pretty interesting shift in the band’s setup. My last show in Portland was them with the charmingly enigmatic Phil Elverum, this time doing what could best be described as epic Anacortes sludge metal. Why?’s live setup for this tour featured Andrew Broder and Mark Erickson of Fog, so that the full band that participated in the Eskimo Snow and Alopecia recording sessions was present. Earlier tours, they’d shift up the arrangement and subtract elements to perform the songs live, but the full roster of folks on stage allowed for a pretty fair recreation of the album’s sound, down to the barely there backup vocals on Against Me which I always chalked up to reverb. Usually, Yoni would have a setup of a snare drum and a keyboard hooked up to a few effects pedals, but now he was able to function more as a lead man, free to move around the stage untethered. Overall, the show was the most solid and confidant I’ve seen them yet, a reflection on the changes musically and lyrically on the album.

  Ultimately, Eskimo Snow chopped up snippets of someone’s life, very much not my own, but the emotion behind it all rings true with me. The feeling of frustration and exhaustion, that I feel a lot of people are suffering through as the world lets loose what could only be described as a massive economic sigh. The emotional pull of the album is more important than the specifics of musical influences or which track hides the cleverest lyric, as Eskimo Snow yields a rewarding listen weather you take the stories as truth or fragments of Mr. Wolf’s own mythos.

  Eskimo Snow was released by Anticon Records on September 22nd 2009

• 11.12.09
  What Have I Been Up To?   Rant (1)

  

  As each month ticks by and I’ve barely scraped together half a sentence for dear ole’ Taking Tiger Mountain, you might wonder: what have I been doing in the meantime?

  A lot and a little, as difficult as it is to express…one of the major projects that I’ve been working on for months has finally reached a small milestone. It’s not at all music related but the first issue of Devil’s Due Publishing’s forthcoming mini series Jericho: Season Three – Civil War has finally been sent to press. The six issue mini-series picks up exactly where the canceled CBS television show ended and I think it will be a massive treat to both the fervent fan base of the show as well your average comic book reader. This is the first title that I’ve edited from start to finish and it’s certainly been a massive learning experience for me along the way. I’m very proud of the end result that is issue #1, but I do recognize that there’s still 5 more issues to go. If you enjoy comics or the show, please check it out when it hits the stands November 25th.

  

  Above is cover #1A, drawn by the fantastically talented Scott West. Hire him…well, once he’s done with the Jericho covers for me.

  In addition to crafting the Jericho mini, I spent a some time earlier this year prepping for and succumbing to the whirlwind that is San Diego ComicCon. I got wrangled into planning and managing the Devil’s Due booth and it was certainly an experience. The usual potent mixture of too little sleep, too much booze and people overload coupled with the whole “responsibility” thing makes for a surreal few days. Definitely some good times and positive things have come of my time down there.

  Now, none of the above has anything to do with music, but but I’ll throw it out there that posts should be resuming again. If not for the few folks who may still check back, I need to resume writing for myself. My life has been pretty nutty and I think, while it’s not looking like it’ll calm down anytime soon, I’ve just settled into the fact that I have to adapt to the din that seems to always surround me and write anyway. There’s been a bit of a silent identity crisis, both for me and the site over the last few months…a debate about what the function of this site has been and what it should become. The content I hope to have here is less of a “Hey, here’s a new single from this band!” and more expanded commentary on what is appealing to me. A lot of times it’s easy to pop off a few words about a new video or leak, but better thoughts seem come with time. As I’m always thinking about music, I will continue to create content for the site that will be, with luck, worth the read.