John Maus - Cop Killer

Last December, 2018, Facebook started spamming my feed for an upcoming show of John Maus at the Great American Music Hall, which I simply ignored. I mean, come on, I'm not dumb enough click on sponsored posts or even turn them off cause I don't want to give FB any kind of data on what I do and don't like. I try not to even hover over the ads, with the mouse or my eyes. Never heard of John Maus, not interested.

But here's the thing. They don't need any more data on me. They got me figured! For the most part. I still get ads for terrible kickstarters cause I backed one one time (what? who didn't think invisible panties wasn't a good idea? hmm? we all thought it was golden.) and they think cause I watched an episode of American Gods that I must really be into Neil Gaiman and bombard me with ads for some online class/lecture that starts with Neil sitting in a leather chair and trying to look like an elder fictionier... or something (note: I am truly not interested in NG... unless he wants to give me a grant, or a loan, or a blurb, or will just glance at me from the other side of the room, what a dream!). Anyhow, finally came across John Maus and yeah, they got me figured out. Still, not about to click on any ads, though:

Nils Frahm - Says

I was at a friend's wedding and the place we stayed in had one of them creepy Alexa machines. My roommate has one. The kind that's always listening and probably recording me and my tastes to sell to North Korean by way of the Ukraine darkweb hackers... and Google.

Figured I'd try it out so I said, "Play modern, beautiful, experimental classical music." It played this piece second.

One thing I really like about this piece, and you can see him do it live, is that he really gets into what he's playing, I mean, he learns the mechanics. Not only has he dug into both the Roland Juno-60 (the constant arpeggiator in the background) and not only is he very well versed in the piano, he plays the Roland RE-501 like an instrument. He's actively playing/messing with the tape delay, the motors and speed and anything he can futz with. I first saw John Dwyer of the Oh Sees do this at the Chapel a few years back. I know I'm late to the game, people have been playing tape delays as another instrument since they came on the scene (terry riley, etc). But I've never had one. Frahm inspired me to go out and get one. Which I did! Totally stealing this guy's steez.

I can only assume that even though I travelled to Colorado for the wedding and don't own an Alexa, Alexa still recognized my voice and knew exactly who I was. Or, this really is just straight up modern, beautiful, experimental classical music.

Let's believe that.

At least for now.

screams - Death City One [1], You Will Set This City On Fire

Hey so, I released a little four song EP in 2018: Death City One [1]. You can listen to it for free, not that you will, but I thought I'd write up some production notes, just cause, hey, why not? I'll go song by song. But first, an intro:

DCO1 is made up of four songs, three of which I wrote this year (2018) and one that I wrote, jeez, I don't even know how long ago, two? three years? Talking about Under Cover of Dark. The idea behind this release was to keep going. My main band, Face Tat, is still around, still active, however, the other half of the band, Mike G, moved on over to New York, so you know, makes the whole jamming aspect hard. Yes, of course, there's plenty people can do from afar, such as Postal Service. Plenty of artists don't even meet in person, they just send tracks back and forth. And that's all well and good, but first you really have adapt your music playing style and process for a studio project. This ain't always easy.

I grew up playing in a bunch of bands that none of you have ever heard of, so I learned to play live with others. Really learned to write by vamping out parts. In the studio, it's all on you. There's many different ways to skin a cat and write a song. Some people jam, others write lyrics first, others strum guitar. Some people are very intentional and know exactly what they want to get out of a studio. For me, music is a process of discovery. I don't really feel so much like I write or compose music, but instead that I discover curious little musical ideas, some of which have been done before, but all of which I want to share. Thing is, the studio allows you to do anything, and sometimes that makes one feel directionless, and therefore nothing happens. I really had to dig in and just experiment. As time's gone on and I've built out more and more of my studio (which is nothing fancy, just a collection of synths, guits, and drums) I'm discovering more and more what I can do. So, these songs reflect a lot of studio growth and discovery. Case in point: You Will Set This City On Fire.

One of the things about studio writing, and most creative projects I work on, is that I write about 80% of a song in about one sitting, in just a few takes. But these takes are mostly terrible. I mean, they're great ideas, but they are not at all for public consumption. They're rough, lots of mistakes, maybe only a few good takes, but that doesn't matter, they're all scratch. I then spend a week or so recapturing the initial idea and recreating the sound clean (or sometimes dirty) and flesh out the body of the song. So, we're at about 95% here. After that, every single studio session is about grinding down the remaining 5%. Editing, overdubs, mixing (and mixing and mixing), mastering, making tiny little fixes. This is why deadlines are so important. The first 70% you can do in a day, the next 20% takes you two weeks, and the last 10% can take a month or longer. As you get closer to 100% and "perfection" the more it costs in time and effort. Is that little pop at the end that will take you three hours to edit out or do all over again worth it? Sometimes yes, but mostly no. Songs are never finished, just abandoned. And the only way for me to impose this is by deadline. My point here is I wrote YWSTCOF in one weekend, while my bud Al Lover was in town visiting. We hanged out one night and after he left I just a laid out this drum pattern and heavy bassline. I didn't really know what to do after that so I slapped on an arpeggiator for the chorus part, which I played by hand, meaning I was adjusting the tempo of the arp via knob twiddling. Sometimes I feel that arps that are so on time and in sync with the tempo with computer precision just takes the life and excitement out of the sound. Sometimes this is good, you want a cold, unemotional, detached feel. But for this song, it was supposed to be loud and dirty and messy, which it is.

After that, I wanted to play with tone. This song is nothing if not playful. Such as that Beastie Boys 808 tom at the end of the drum phrase. Everybody I played it for told me to take it out, but for me, that was the tone of the song. Dirty ass bass and drums with a playful tone. To accentuate this I added that twinkly arp in the intro (just a microKorg with the resonance turned up). To play with tone more I played that main melody on a Roland Gaia and then decided to get real cheesey and used some midi mens chorus preset in Logic Pro X.

Finally, about 95% done I showed it to Al Lover and all he said was, "you need some hella trappy high hats on that." So I asked him, "care to send me some hella trappy high hats?" So he did. I messed with them a bunch, but they're all Al. And he sent them to me remotely. Like this is some kind of real studio.

As if.

I made a something: Bahia de los Muertos

I made a something. I guess it's musical, at least the second part is. It is organized sound.

I went down to Baja for New Years Eve with Angel and a group of friends. I made field recordings of the weekend, both indoors and out. I mixed, edited, and arranged the field recordings as a stand alone soundscape/narrative of our time down there, in a not very chronological order. I was lucky enough to get Deena Rosen to read some haikus she wrote on the trip and the track art is a photo Roger Thomasson took from the house down there. 

The second track is loops made out of what I captured that I mixed in and out and then later set to music: piano, cello, microKorg. I ran a bunch of tracks through an RE-101 and laid down some droney reverb over the background. This created a susurrus that gave the project a dreamlike quality. I also noticed that the susurrus, taken as a whole, was hovering around certain notes: G, A, A#, C, and D#. That's an grouping: G and C fifth/forth; A# and D#, dominant fifth; A and C, minor third; G and A#, minor third. There's a lot of harmonic potential in there. But enough nerding.

I tried to make a melody out of all of that, but nothing stuck. I think part of the reason was the loops themselves, they were constantly making new arrangements every iteration, because the loops all have different play lengths. There's all sorts of new combinations of sound every second, though over time certain ones stand out. This creates a constantly shifting landscape which makes a consistent melody hard to apply, or at least for me it was hard. Every time I found an enticing melody it felt like I was imposing order instead of bringing forth new musical ideas. I tried to address this in the mix, but many of the tracks were recorded poorly. (I tend to record loud things and up close via low input as it cuts down on windnoise and popping and other recording artifacts, things I don't want, but this time some things were too far away or too quiet for the input level I had. Frankly, I really need to get a windshield for my handheld, you know, one of them dead cat/clown nose things to cut down on wind and increase my input level. Live and learn.)

So, because I couldn't really find a melody that represented the piece I ended up playing a bunch of little variations in free time, with no backing track, on a Rhodes piano. Then I threw on a bassline that's imposes a bit of order, some cellos to smooth things over and bring out some more emotional nuance, and a random-pattern microKorg arpeggiator. That sounds all fancy, but really, I just messed around with things and twiddled knobs until it good. One thing that didn't come out until the final mix is the musical downbeat that was captured on one of the recordings. It makes a kind of beat that's in the mix on the second track, "La Muerte Sueña," that I would've liked to have explored more, but I ran out of time. Next time, boost volume and mix everything first, before trying to write music. 

At any rate, I'm pretty pumped with the result. There's some real delicate sounds that I just love (the crickets calling back and forth to each other), so I'd suggest listening to this at at least 75% volume, maybe up to 85%, with some really good headphones, but I've played this on a lot of systems and it sounds good all that I've encountered.

Finally, I wanted to dedicate this project to Michelle Ybarra, who organized the trip along with Joanne Lee, even though she didn't make it down, and all the rest of the Bajajaja crew:

Angel Lowrey

Todd Sills

Benita Sills

Sarah Solomon

Roger Thomasson

Deena Rosen

Elizabeth Ly

Liam O'Donoghue

Julia Hathaway

It's on soundcloud and on bandcamp (at bottom), so take your pick:

Or:

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

Desert Daze 2012

Guess this tour diary is a bit late, seeing as how it's about Desert Daze 2012, but I just played Desert Daze 2018 and wanted to write about it and couldn't write about one without writing about the other, so here goes.

Back in 2012 I lived with two roommates, my Mist Giant bandmate Rap Dan and some guy called Al Lover, who's put out a thing or two.

Me, Al Lover, and long time goodbuddy and bandmate Mike G got together and made a few cuts: Al on an MPC-1000 doing beats and samples and Mike and me on fuzzed out guitars trading harmonic and melodic lines. It was simple, stripped down, and a lot of fun. We practiced, showed up, played some shows. Called ourselves: Al Lover & the Haters.

Well, we (and by we I mean Al) got invited to play down at the 2012 Austin Psychfest and then the Moon Bloc Party's Desert Daze 2012 music festival. So we booked up a few more shows, SF, Santa Barbara, LA, ABQ, Las Cruces, and a few spots I forget and took our show on the road. Mike and Al drove down to LA and played Burger Records while I stayed in SF to finish up some work thing, then I flew down and met up with them and off we went.

We played Desert Daze soon thereafter. It was crazy. I mean, it was great. They had the fest at an old beat up roadhouse called Dillon's down in Desert Hot Springs. Actually, don't know how run down that place usually is, might even be a fancy spot, but we didn't get there until day eleven of the fest. You read that right, they ran an eleven day music fest at a roadhouse in the desert. One-hundred and twenty acts, two stages, eleven days. So, you know place was hit kinda hard. I mean, actually, for an eleven day music fest, it wasn't as wrecked as it coulda been. But then again nothing is as bad as it coulda been, except Nazis.

Desert Daze set up some camping nearby for the attendees, but all us artists(!) got to stay in a nearby motor lodge type place. One of them two-storied horseshoe shaped deals with a big pool in the middle, though they didn't let us swim after dark and it's a fest, so nobody got to use it. The cool thing was that after the fest we got to go back to the motel and keep partying, going room to room, while the owner operators mean mugged us.

After the fest, we went back on the road and played some shows on our way to Austin, TX. Played the Trainyard in Las Cruces with the Cosmonauts.

Burt's Tiki. Blurry. Sry.

But the best show we played was to an empty lounge in Albuquerque, NM. Burt's Tiki Lounge (which moved locations by a block and then abruptly shut down earlier this year 😢). And but for the other bands and us and the bartender, there wasn't anyone else who showed up. At that point, some of us had toured a bit and some of us hadn't toured a bit, so some of us were dismayed at the lack of support from the locals and from the bands (all of whom jetted right after their set, an amateur move) and there may have been some talk about not playing the show cause it all seemed so pathetic. But that's an amateur move, you gotta show up, always play, barring you know accidents and flight delays, shit happens afterall, but you don't not play a show just cause no one cared to show up. Plus, at that point, we'd all drank our two free house beers, so you know, had to play.

Golec's wall.

And, of course, you never know what's going to happen at a show, even an empty one. We set up our merch, did a line check, and were about to go on when this shaggy haired kid showed up and asked if he missed Al Lover's set. Told him no, about to go on. And he stood right in front of the stage and bopped his head the whole time. It might have been a bit weird, one guy gettin down right in front of the stage in an otherwise empty room but for the amount of energy this kid had. I say kid cause he was like, I dunno, 24 at the time. He had a big smile and as soon as we were done he asked about merch. And asked us if we needed a place to stay. And do we want drinks? And do we like to party? He bought $60 worth of merch (which was everything we had) then threw in another $20 for gas money. Then he called his friends who were around the corner. So, we went and met them at this pretty swanky second story spot called Anodyne, happening place with a bunch of billiards tables, large selection of beers, and a lounge/library area that had a dog-eared copy of Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren, which appeared to have actually been half read (didn't make it a quarter away through that door stopper, myself). His friends were great, of course, had a few drinks with them, then went back to the kid's house and stayed up way too late talking and playing guitars. His name was Daniel Golec, but he went by Golec and was a great dude. Stayed in touch with him and I found out last year that tragically he was in a pretty terrible accident, struck by a car while on his bike that left him in a coma. The saddest part is I can't find any update online and his FB page is full of people asking for updates and people saying they miss him along with old grainy photos.

You never know who you're going to me or what's going to happen at a show. But you gotta play to find out.

(Hope you're doing well, Golec.)

Al Lover & the Haters.

The Behemoth in the rundown Trainyard, Las Cruces.

Entryway to the Trainyard venue.

Psychfest lineup. Everybody remember the Al Lover, nobody remember the Haters.

The Magic, happening.

Beauty Ballroom, our stage for Psychfest.

Golec's dog.

New Project: screams

Hey. So, working on a new project: screams. This is mostly solo while my other projects take their time. Hope to put out a bunch of older stuff that's been bouncing around for a while. Here's the first release:

All Art Of the Past Must Be Destroyed

Pierre Boulez died this week. What bummer. Still, he was around a long time. This guy was doing all sorts of great things back in the day. You should check him out sometime.

One of the greatest things he said, something that's stayed with me for a while: 

Okay, anyhow, here's some tunes by ol' Boulie:

Also, this list he compiled of the best of 20th Century music is a great list. The list is here.

Sounds: Deafheaven - Baby Blue

Sounds: Solvent - Think Like Us

This is good:

Sounds: Jonzun Crew - Ground Control

Time to get back to sharing good musics that I've picked up along the way. This one was a great find. If you know anything about my current band, Face Tat, you'll hear obvious similarities. I certainly did. Caught this track at an underground show in Oakland right after getting off tour and I was pissed. "Who's stealing my sound?" When I asked the DJ she said it was the Jonzun Crew, from 1983. I was blown away. Never heard of them. And when I saw their look, I was blown away:

Fuck yeah!

Apparently they were a Afrofuturistic take on the Parliment Funkadelic. You think? Anyhow, this track just slays. Love the vocoder. Can't believe this is a band that time almost forgot. Except one of the crew went on to help produce the New Kids on the Block. Yeah.

Give an ear: 

Behold: Face Tat - Open Up Your Arms

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat!? Face Tat's got a new single out! It's off our upcoming Spring 2016 full length. The track is called "Open Up Your Arms."

Check it:

We wrote this pretty quick, in early 2015, with the first batch of songs ideas for this album. I bought a new keyboard off a main damie of mine, Roger Thomasson, a Roland Gaia SH-01, and started futzing around with it, trying to figure that beast out and quickly came across this massive crackly bass sound. It just booms. Especially live. After that, we put that drone on it, which came off my microKORG, which is probably the best most capable little synth I've ever had the pleasure to work with. It comes with so many good stock sounds that you can easily manipulate into your own. The knobs at the top are pretty intuitive and if you really want to get deep in it, you can actually build sounds from the ground up with the function selectors that change what the knobbies affect. I mean, you really can do that with any modern synth: Akai, Nord, even the Gaia, it's just that I learned on the mK first and their approach is so easy to interact with, it's my go-to. And I hear it everywhere. Everyone's got one but they're so customizable that its sound doesn't get played out. I saw Flying Lotus last year and heard him drop this bass line that I immediately knew came from a mK. And sure enough, later on I saw an interview with him talking about his gear and bam, right there is a mK and he even goes on to talk about it. Anyhow, enough of the Korg plug here. (Korg, sponsor our next tour, dammit!)

That weird chime sound is actually from my Roland Octapad SPD-30, which is a cool little midi drum pad. Got some stock effects. Ran some chimes on the Octapad with some reverse delay and then futzed with the tuning of each cluster of notes. Meaning, lots of microtones. Like I'm playing A-C-A in the first part, but the C is tuned a few cents up, while the second A is actually a different pad and it's tuned a few cents down from the other A. With the delay it creates this shimmery, pretty, slightly discordant effect that lends itself to the dark feel of the song. Like our engineer who mixed this for us said: "This song is all about the feels." And they're pretty dark feels.

I rounded it out with that key solo also off the Gaia, which is a great sound that just dominates. Which is why it's only played twice in the song.

Mike started channeling more metal with his guitar around the time we started this album, which I'm sure you noticed. He put a ton of layers, different guitars, a bass guitar, and different room and close mic position, tried a few different amps, all to get that deep, deep chug. I'm sure he could say more about the guitars, a lot more, but he's not here right now. We through on vox and even some vocoder and used Ableton Live to write up some drums, and boom, there you have it. It didn't take us long to separate out the backing vocals into that more round-like give and take at the end, which he and I were both pumped about.

We mixed it over at Different Fur and then threw it up onto Bandcamp and into your ears. You are welcome.

Face Tat's on Soundcloud

Yeah, I know. Christmas came early this year. Or maybe it's just late from last year. Face Tat got itself a Soundcloud page and one of the things we put up on it was an ambient piece we did for Subliminal Message #2, a little dealie thing/live performance/ambient listen-in that we were invited to do at the Tides theater. And it looks like we're going to do it again for Subliminal Message #4 at the DeYoung Museum for a month long residency. They're be more about that later, but yeah, Face Tat's going to have some tunes up at the DeYoung for a month. In the meantime, you can take a listen to what we did last year. For my part I did a lot of breathing and monotone droning on an E note. I think I had allergies that day and started doing the deep breaths cause I felt like I couldn't catch my breath. Eventually, I did catch my breath and I didn't die, which is how I'm here typing this right now. Check the player if you want some trippy tunes, bra!

Hark! Er, Behold! New Face Tat Release, It's Your Funeral:

Hey, Hey, Hey Kiddies,

Well, it looks like we got ourselves a new batch of music from our favorite crime-fighting duo: FACE TAT!

It's Your Funeral, has dropped and you should have a listen, here.

And to make matters worse, they also released an album length video at the same time! Don't worry, it's only a three song EP, so it's not too long. Also, you don't have to stare at it the whole time. You can put it on in the background while you work or clean your toilet and dutifully ignore it while fulfilling your role as a supportive friend. Thanks, guys! Actually, on the real, I dare you to watch and not get mesmerized.

The video is pretty cool. What starts as a screen saver turns into... well, something more. It's computer graphics from 1968 I got off the Internet Archive. There's a linky on the Youtube info section. Check it out. Better yet, check it out, then buy it, then tweet it, then let the world know! Or just watch below.

Sounds: Eff Yeah! Tears For Fears covers Animal Collective - My Girls

Today just got gooder:

Sounds: Capricorn One - Scare Tactics. Simplicity Through Fear

Simplicity Through Fear. That's how the writer/musician/soundsist behind Capricorn One, Chrs Ovr, described this piece. Totally awesome. Get your scares on:

Music Video: Snake Plissken - Face Tat, Dungeon Mistress

Just a lil' something I cooked up for our track "Snake Plissken," off of Dungeon Mistress. Enjoy. Or don't. I don't really care.

I'm lying. I really do care.

Behold: Face Tat - Face Tat, Dungeon Mistress

Here's a little video I rustled up for my latest musical project: Face Tat. It's a remix of the Public Domain film Gamera vs. Viras (US - Destroy All Planets). Enjoy:

Sounds: Broken Social Scene - Sweetest Kill

This song sounds good.



End of line.

Sounds: Modern Skirts - Under Bridges and Overpasses

I like this song. Modern Skirts: