Fall Mix #1: Before Leaves Sink

Sorry for the momentary silence, college has been increasing in demand of my and Starlon's time so we haven't really been able to post updates or new reviews. In fact I haven't really been able to sleep well since about a month ago, so I'm slowly trying to adjust everything to its correct flow in life. But who cares about that, let's get to the point of this post. Every month from until the end of this year I am going to post at least one self-made mix for our reader's ears. Ever since I really got into music in middle school I've always enjoyed making mixes for myself and friends; it's a great way to introduce people to music they may not have known about and it lends itself to a sort of thematic creation. Generally though it's just a really nostalgic past time for me as it lets me reminisce on particular experiences associated with certain tracks and new experiences associated with listening to it now in a new context. Blah, blah, blah.

Anyways, here's the track list, I'll do a micro review of each one for the sake of explanation! (Link to acquire is below the picture)

Before Leaves Sink

Right Here

01. Sun Kil Moon - Bay Of Skulls (from Admiral Fell Promises)

One of Mark K's best late and current period songs, the sparse instrumentation and Kozelek's always sweet vocals create something that couldn't be replicated with an orchestra. The record itself came to me when the winter was the whitest and the mornings were coldest. Watch out for the beautiful classically influenced guitar parts.

02. The Teeth - Oh, Bessy (from Carry The Wood EP)

The Teeth always makes me sad, even in their upbeat songs their lyrics hit home a bit and remind me a lot of juvenile experiences. The instrumentation is very 1960's, a more sentimental Velvet Underground? Lovely underrated band that shouldn't have broken up after one album.

03. The Mabuhay Singers - Kapantay Ay Langit (from Pista)

Oh boy. This band is a popular singing group from the Philippines who sing a bunch of old standards. The only reason I even have the CD is because my friend Mark happened to have it playing in his car after his mother left it in the tray. Either way, it's nostalgic as hell, the cheesy arrangements, the vocals, the mood; all perfect for the coming cold days.

04. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where... (from Shut Up I Am Dreaming)

Back when Spencer Krug first got a band together for Sunset Rubdown the appeal was immediate, the dare I say mid-fi production, grand lyrics, magical prog instrumentation and nervous energy led to a unique sound that was Krug's own. This closing number encapsulates all that and blows it up right in your face -twice.

05. Animal Collective - Street Flash (from Water Curses EP)

There's a certain charm to this song with Avey Tare's childish and abrasive vocals, they sound a little sad. The guitar ust shifts in and out as rhythmic sound effects and a creepy screaming sample flood in. It's perfect. But when Avey starts screaming, I tear up, he's losing his sanity or something. I don't know what else to say, it's a sentimental song.

06. Plexi - Star Star (from Cheer Up)

Last year I went on a road trip with my friend Mark to Long Beach to visit another close friend. Since my hometown of Carson was on the way and I had to purchase a gift for my girlfriend's birthday, I stopped by an old plaza that I would frequent in my childhood. Most stores were gone and the bookstore I'd usually frequent was gone as well but was having a liquidation sale. I found this album there. A mix of noise and alternative rock, the album surprised me with this sweet string filled end. I always remember that whole adventure with this song.

07. Yoko Shimomura - Someone calls me... Someone looks for me... (from Parasite Eve OST)

When Parasite Eve came out and I was a easily scared child I would be freaked out by its chilly trailer that I'd see in my local EB Games (RIP). It would take me until winter 2010 to actually play the game when I borrowed it from Mark. The cold days spent playing the game were a nice cozy time, and the fact that the game is set during Christmas season just nailed this association into my head. This lovely little piece plays in one of the final secret boss battles, which I haven't got to yet. Maybe this year.

08. Scott Walker - On Your Own Again (from Scott 4)

"You're on your own again, and you're your best again. That's what you tell yourself. I see it all the way as far as anyone can see. Expect when it began I was so happy I didn't like me." The dread of the end of the year nearing in song.

09. Teenage Cool Kids - Beg to Differ (from Denton After Sunset)

This was one of my absolute favorite songs from last year and the record itself grew on me with repeated listens. The mood of the lyrics, the mood of the melody and instruments, it fits that early morning feeling of being somewhere you don't want to be. The chorus just lets it all out with a hailstorm of distortion and frustrations. My first semester of adjustment to college mornings/mourning(s).

10. Grizzly Bear - I Live With You (from Veckatimest)

"You brought us this far, we'll do what we can." An eerie and beautiful song that fits the falling of the leaves in autumn. As the approaching end of the year follows along it's hard for me not to adapt this twisted love song to the end of a year's worth of living. The song plays to the strengths of Grizzly Bear's ability to subtly build a song with many mismatching elements; a real underground powerhouse. 

11. Koko Komine - After the Red Poppy Journey (from Mobile Suit Victory Gundam: Score II)

Victory Gundam is by far the slowest and most depressing of the myriad of entries in the franchise to watch. It has a certain charm with its terrible early 90's animation style and the overly sentimental writing, not to mention the underlying themes of ecological preservation. It's a sad show and this song is sad too. But there is something about the flute and the strings, both hopeful of the new season that approaches.

12. Bottomless Pit - Pitch (from Congress EP)

Crushingly uplifting is how I'd describe this song from Bottomless Pit, an East Coast post-punk band that formed from the ashes of Silkworm. The song opens with a tired vocal delivery by Tim Midgett with slowly driving instrumentation until it explodes into "When you KNOOOOOW". It's heartbreaking really, he sounds strained in the higher registers but it makes all the difference as the band plays more intensely throughout the rest of the track until ending abruptly. It perfectly captures both the melancholy and hope for the ending seasons of the year and what is left to come.

What is water?

Recently there has been a lot of talk over the author David Foster Wallace (DFW) since the biography by D.T. Max, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story reveals many different personal and frankly strange things that you wouldn't expect from a writer such as DFW. One being that he was a womanizer that even said to Franzen that he was put on the Earth to have sex with as many women as possible. Not only that but also there is the whole whine fest going on with Bret Easton Ellis (the writer of American Psycho (note I have to tell you who he is. We see who is going to be remembered in 20 years)) who keeps complaining about all the attention Wallace gets compared to him. 

One of Ellis' main problem with DFW is that he considers him a pretentious dick which is a very ubiquitious argument that to me is faulty. If anyone has ever read any of his nonfiction it is clear that he writes with the utmost sincerity and this is most exemplary in his "This is Water" speech. In the speech he cuts the bullshit that most graduaton speeches have about the real world. He doesn't tell them that the roads are painted with gold and their dreams will materialize purely based upon the hard work they put into things. He doesn't tell them about how great and fun life is going to be and when they wake up they will face the suns loving rays with gleaming white teeth. He cuts to the chase and tells them their once hedonistic and solipsistic lifestyles is not a sustaining one.

Part one:

Part two:

Finished The Pale King a while ago ,but since I have a lot of homework I have postponed my review as well as the second half of my experience at FYF.

About 100 pages into The Marbled Swarm and I am loving and I advise all two of our readers to check it out. It is a very clever little book. 

Song of the day: Animal Collective - Moonjock

There are certain sounds that we all can attest give us goose bumps and essentially make us feel a sense of excitement that cannot be matched by anything else. I think for me personally, the most exciting tracks fall between “Lost Outside the Tunnel” by Aztec Camera to "Carlotta Valdez" by Harvey Danger to “Southern Point” by Grizzly Bear (these are completely impulsive choices and I’m sure an academic sensed introspection would last pages). Regardless of your choices, the tracks essentially encapsulate a sense to physically run and jump around; i.e. get hyped motherfucker.

Now I usually never find a track that gets me this excited nowadays, if anything I’ll find this joy in music that was released a few or many years back, it’s a plague of discovering next to zero excitement in recent releases, and that’s not counting ‘genuine’ excitement; that kind that doesn’t wear off after the initial misleading hype. So color me surprised as hell when I find myself returning to Centipede Hz, probably the most hyped and anticipated release of this goddamn year.

And while I do love a great majority of the tracks on the album (dat fucking first half holy shit) the track that prepares me for everything is opening track “Moonjock”. Starting up with some creepy vocal loops that eventually lead to a repeated “One… One… One…” and explode into the hard hitting snare and hi-hat, it’s just fucking exciting. This continues into a glorious build-up of delayed guitar, distorted organ and bass, and sound effects until Avey Tare begins to sing a deliciously catchy melody and leads to this schizophrenic stuttering that blends into the chaotic soundscape.

Emphasis on the chaotic by the way, the song and majority of the first half of the album doesn’t relent on the sheer amount of sound effects and textures that just fly around like flocks of deranged birds. And while many could call the messy and layered sound of “Moonjock” and Centipede Hz as directionless or just plain ill-composed, when the final chorus of “We ran it out, ran it out” begins repeating in all it’s chaotic glory at the end of “Moonjock”, you realize none of that even matters and you proceed to get lost in the midst of the happy noise. Excitement like that just can’t be faked.

FYF Day One: Deadly Dust Clouds

After three days of reflection, I must say that FYF was one hell of a music festival. Though the crowd was filled with "rebels" (note the quotes. I know most people would recognize them but I really want to emphasize this) it was still none the less extremely fun. The first day was great starting with "Fidlar", a drug fueled skate punk band with very loyal and very "rebellious" group of followers that recited each line and smiled from ear to ear each time the chorus came to scream, "I drink cheap beer so what? fuck you". Here the fans continued to push and stomp in a camaraderie sort of passion which sent up dust that coated absolutely every exterior part of your body and worst of all your lungs. Once the you inhale enough dust it only came out towards the end of the day, when the sun was completely down and you wished you had a jacket and then and only then do you get to feeling of absolute pressure on your chest. Each breath in is a struggle to not sneeze, but once you do your hands would be filled with black mucus that looked like it came from the film "Prometheus". Though this wasn't common only to this particular show by "Fidlar" it was in fact an ongoing problem at FYF in the past years.

Since that FYF takes place in some crummy park near Chinatown, the grass is already nearly dead and the places that don't have dying grass is filled with lazily tossed wood chips over dirt which is where most of the punk shows unfortunately take place. Really no matter where the shows take place (except in the large tent designated for electronic music and comedy) you are most likely going to be hit by airborne dust. So last year when "Death From Above 1979" played to a massive audience on the main stage positioned on a dying patch of grass, I and many other festival goers almost passed out due to the inability to find clean air. Something they considered this year when they passed out free bandannas at the "Fidlar" show. I have now realized I have digressed and I am far too lazy to work this into a larger picture.

After the great reckless fun of "Fidlar", Bryan and I made our way over to see "Moonface", a kraut rock band fronted by Spencer Krug known mainly for his work in Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade (both projects that I am vaguely aware of. Both known by Bryan). From a ignorant point of view the jams were long, equally proportionate and absolutely emotional. The last song, "Quickfire, I Tried" is a perfect example of this with its strong emotional content and its huge finish in which Krug pulls out the book (I haven't read it myself but it is very famous) "The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao" and begins reading frantically from the first paragraph.

Next we swung by to see the Men do the last part of their very country set which to me was pretty boring. Their last song was actually noise rock song that was really sloppily done. In fact it was pretty big turn off to not only me and Bryan but to the whole crowd who quickly left. 

We went back to the punk stage once again to see the "Cloud Nothings" but we came in towards the end of Red Kross' set which was pretty much derivative hardcore. Though I am a big fan of hardcore music and even emo music (might as well make this digression as large as humanly possible) I am really adverse to revivals because in the end all people do is re-do the good and bad parts of a genre of music in this strange ode like fashion. With "Red Kross" all of their music was all taken directly from hardcore, as in, they were using exactly the same chords from bands during the 80s. So much so that I believed they were a cover band which deeply saddens me since the whole punk ethic was supposed to do something new and fresh that no one else was doing. This brings me to "Cloud Nothings". Their brand of emo is very new, but at the same time very stale. They appeal to the basic conventions of the genre and add a few things in. This was clearly shown with their set which was filled with "passionate" moments which neither moved me or provoked me to look deeper. Then their extremely long instrumental intermissions seemed to be just frustrated wankery. There was nothing really "great" about it, it was just plain boring. (this is all my opinion of course)

After the disappointing show, we swung over to the stage where we seen the Men to hear the Vaselines and reflect on what has happened so far. As the song "Molly Lips" played in the background everyone was fervently awaiting last year's favorite act, "Future Islands". To explain "Future Islands" in simple terms is to do the band an injustice. Though their music is not terribly complicated the whole dynamic of the band live is. In reality the music is really just simple synth pop with a distinctive synth sound, but the lead singer, Samuel Herring's, voice and stage presence is an anomaly. At points in a song he may sing something with a strong voice but once the chorus hits (or some emotionally charged part of the song hits) his voice turns into this weird lion like growl which fits his equally strange and demon-like stage presence . At one point he would be just standing there with his hand in the air looking at an invisible (and metaphorical) piece of his ex-girlfreind then the next moment he would be on the other side of the stage with his hand in his mouth swallowing it with a demonic stare. It is something that cannot be easily transmitted into text by such an awful writer as myself.  So without tarnishing what this show was I will not go any further detail  and move onto "Hot Snakes".

Bryan and I caught only a small part of "Hot Snakes" so we could watch "James Blake" and for guys that are well into their 40s they were pretty great. The lead singer that is well known from the post-hardcore band, "Drive Like Jehu", Rick Froberg, did not sound his age at all. He sounded just as good as his days in "Jehu". Once again this is a situation in which Bryan knew the band more than me.

James Blake was the conclusion of the night and (for me) the best act at FYF. It might have been the constant haze of marijuana or the absolutely tiring day of music, but it was an entrancing act. The whole set list was well put together and not once was there a moment where I cringed at something being off or boring. The transition from record to live was great. The live band all contributed equally to the overall sound of the music. There wasn't a moment where there was something unncessarily added. Even the vocal effects weren't too bothersome. To my (and possibly Bryan's surprise) the set did not only consist of his music from his critically acclaimed debut album ,but he also played two songs from his more future garage EPs.  One being the grand "CMYK". He ended his set perfectly with "Wilhelm Scream" which also wrapped up the first day of the festival.

I will post my thoughts on the next day and overall my idea on the whole festival in the future for all four of our readers.

Pedal passion

Recently I was very lucky to obtain three new pedals for my extremely low budget pedalboard, if you can even call it that. I initially started out with a used chorus pedal around 2007 because I liked Andy Summers' (of The Police) tone and wanted to play along with some songs. I eventually came to realize that while that was all good and fun, it wasn't really an effect that I utilize much and still don't to this day.

Eventually I settled for a cheap Boss ME-20 multi-effect pedal since I was pretty low on cash and didn't have any clue what craigslist was. The most influential factor though probably came from borrowing my friend's unused digitech multi pedal. It was a pain switching between effects cause it only changed through numbered presets. It did go to 99 though, but switching between 1 to 34 with only a few seconds between song transitions was a bit of a pain.

Anywho it appears that it has taken me the better of five years to finally obtain an addition in the form of a Boss DD-3 delay earlier this year. It was an essential purchase as it finally gave me some freedom in terms of delay shaping. So now finally I was able to make a major revision to the amount of pedals at my disposal!

Here is my newly acquired amount of pedals:



I've already used the RV-5 extensively for a little secret project. The RV-5 reverb is extremely versatile compared to the limited options on the ME-20 and I really enjoy the ethereal sounds from the modulate setting. The TU-2 is mainly going to be used for it's daisy chaining option but it's good to have such a standard pedal handy. The RAT by far is the pedal I will need to experiment with the most as it is a very versatile distortion that can really go into mega fuzz territory or be a nice noisy overdrive.

It also helped that I was able to snatch the pedals all for under $200 considering one of them costs that much new. The guy who sold me the RV-5 and TU-2 was a really cool guy and had his own in-home studio with a shit ton of great equipment (grand piano, tons of pedals, sweet guitars, keyboards upon keyboards, antique organs, etc). Apparently he also sold a microphone to the The Mars Volta's touring bassist, Silver Lake is a sweet area.



The only thing I am aching to get now is a Electro-Harmonix POG, which is a super awesome polyphonic octave pedal. I've been skimming craigslist for days looking for something but it's always tough to throw down more than $100 for something used, not including gas usage. Either way, this has been a great week for gear additions and it'll definitely help in coming up with new sounds.

Song of the Day: Xiu Xiu - The Pineapple Vs. the Watermelon

My first introduction to Xiu Xiu was through their second album and very scary(or sad. In reality I have no clue what emotion you can place on it. Listen to the opening track, "Sad Pony Guerrilla Girl" to understand what I mean) album "A Promise". After a few listens I fell in love with Jamie Stewart's songwriting and absolutely crazy range. He could go from a seeming whisper kind of singing into an intense scream. Unfortunately for about a year Xiu Xiu remained hidden in my large library of music until I eventually had the urge to listen to more of the project which lead me to find the absolutely amazing "The Air Force".

The whole album is filled with self-deprecating lyrics, crazy synth sounds and extremely catchy sad tones. Tthe entirety of The Air Force (to me anyways) has no bad song, but if I was to chose my favorite it has to be "The Pineapple Vs. the Watermelon."

Right when the song starts you get drawn in with this very smooth bass, soft guitar arpeggios and a constant bass drum kicks. When Jamie Stewart starts "whisper singing" you get this up close emotion that is unavoidable. The lyrics tell the tear jerking story of someone praying for the return of someone that has killed themselves and because of the minimal song structure you get hit with every single emotion.

Pretty sweet album cover right? Slowly truckin' along with The Pale King (you could check my progress on Goodreads), I should be done with it by the end of this week and hopefully be starting (when it actually arrives) the Marbles Swarm by Dennis Cooper (whom has a great blog that I have recently been posting on. He is such a very nice guy that will respond to your comments (no matter how asinine and poorly written they are)) or if that comes in too late White Teeth by Zadie Smith. She is widely known for being a funny and talented writer from Britain. For her extremely intellectual discussion about her book and literature in general with Michael Silverblatt (the world's greatest reader) from KCRW's Bookworm click here.

HAHAHA oh God, I was going through the labels and seen Harry Potter.
God help you Bridgette, God help you. 

Song of the Day: The Dismemberment Plan - Superpowers

The Dismemberment Plan have always been a band that had great amounts of empathy towards its subjects. Songs like 'Tonight We Mean It', 'The Things That Matter', and 'Gyroscope' presented their relatable subjects of isolation, loneliness, rejection, living as a young adult and general humanity with a sense of self-awareness that is modest and honest. It's that sense of songwriting that would grant them their immense cult status among their loyal fan base and set them apart from other peers.

Yet it's the cut 'Superpowers' from their 2001 album (their last so far) Change that exemplifies the band's empathy to new heavenly extremes and showcases their late-career songwriting complexity. With a dreamy synth and persistent drum beat that never relents but never overbears, the song is accompanied by The D-Plan's signature funky bass lines and melodic guitar lines. But the most revealing are Travis Morrison's quiet sweet vocals proclaiming various contrasting experiences that continue for the rest of the song:

"I have seized with the ice cold rage of a lover betrayed,half a million miles away.

I have cried so hard for hours and not known why, I never do."

But the most telling of these lyrics comes from the chorus resigning that "I guess you could call it superpowers/But no one is going to save the world with what I've got", revealing a self-awareness of the limitations of empathy, a proposed 'superpower' by many but that doesn't quite get anything accomplished beyond its acknowledgement.

Perhaps 'Superpowers' signals a maturity of self-awareness for The Dismemberment Plan that acknowledges a futile attempt of empathy for all humankind: one that clearly couldn't be handled by the narrator of the song, and with descriptions of 'an indigo light from silvery towers surrounded by rocks and stones as far as the eye can see', it wouldn't be far off to speculate that the only one who would is God himself. Luckily, we can only relate.