So it has been some time since I posted the last album here, but of course I have to think of the shareholders and get this in before the end of the musical year. Since the last one I've done some recording, played a show with (and in) The Instruments, thought about stuff, gotten in touch with my feelings, etc.
And now here it is; a new album coming in right at the end after all critics' end of year lists have already been written. (The acclaim will have to wait until next year, when my debut album for Teenbeat will hopefully be racing up the charts and I'll have to play 37 backyards at South By Southwest.)
I've been embroiled in litigation with the 2012 London Olympic games over the title for this one, so I had to wait until the games were over to release this new EP. Also, you know, the summer, people are doing things, whatever. To make up for it, this one is like four times as long as they usually are, and encompasses a number of recording sessions instead of just one like they normally do. Just FYI for the completists.
Also, I'm playing with (some form of) The Instruments again! We'll be playing some of the awesome score that Heather McIntosh wrote for the movie Compliance, which is burning up the charts, and probably some Instruments hits as well. I'll be doing a solo opening set, so it'll be like the release party for this EP, if one has a release party for something that you just put up on the internet. It's at Zebulon, in Brooklyn, Sunday August 19th, probably earlyish Sunday night rock time? Come on down if you are in the area--I'll buy you a drank.
Very excited to be performing with my man Otto Hauser at The Stone on Sunday May 6th. He's doing a series of I believe mostly improvised drum duets with Anders Griffen; I'll sit in on a few, and maybe Loren Stillman also. Maybe some of what I do will sound like this new digital seven-inch. (The title refers in general to when you discover a strange imperfection about someone that is super-compelling. Specifically, it's about the moment in the song "Under Pressure" where Bowie sings "keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn", and the word "slashed" has all this crazy mouth noise on it, but they left it in because that whole track is just 100% straight up genius and they knew better than to get fussy with it. And also some crazy mouth noise on the Hospitality record, which I also love.)
To say that the Stone is one of my favorite places to play doesn't quite do it justice; it's an honor to be chosen to play there, and I've been very fortunate a few times now. There aren't many performance spaces that have a built-in history of listening strong enough to help a performer; when you get to play in one, you feel supported by the work that has already happened there. Stoked.
So this week was the Chickfactor 2012 mid-week long weekend 20th anniversary concert series; an amazing event that brought a lot of people and bands together who certainly otherwise wouldn't have made it to the same place at the same time, and being a special guest to play a True Love Always song was a singular honor.It made me reflect again on how we can, if we choose, make the past possible by connecting with it now, to go against time's arrow and enter creative time to nurture the past to connect it to this present, and future. I suggested the audience send some love back to the 1992 version of themselves, which I think creeped everyone out, but I was serious. (Pretty much every word in this paragraph needs quotation marks around it, but if you're still reading you probably are already on the same page about the ultimate non-linearity of time, more or less.)So that's what it meant to me. Anyway, I figured the best way to celebrate was to do some more improvising, since that is another thing that collapses regular time, and who doesn't need that? Also it was a hell of a party. Thanks Gail O'Hara!
What seems like an eternity ago, not in the way that a month ago does but more like the way that 1991 does, my guitar teacher went out of town for an extended period and left his vinyl in my apartment. I think he intended for me to actually listen to it, but, regardless, I did.
There was so much amazing stuff he turned me on to in absentia, or at least gave me a chance to actually hear instead of just read about. (Of course back then actually hearing things was difficult.) There was all the Fripp/Eno stuff, the Henry Cow/ Art Bears/ Fred Frith stuff, and then there was all the ECM stuff. Who amongst us did not briefly try to play a 12-string guitar after first hearing Ralph Towner? Then, 20 years later, most of us decided we were probably never going to get good at that and it was easier to just get an octave pedal and fake it. Thanks, Tony.
The problem with having a rigorous, uncompromising aesthetic is that it makes it very difficult to deviate from it without feeling like you have somehow gone a little soft. So if you want to maintain your experience of my body of work here without feeling the triple-ply softness that is reminiscent of Drake, when you listen to this new EP you should by all means avoid the second version of "Inner Moment Freedom" that contains an actual overdubbed actual guitar solo. Usually I don't do that, so this time I did, unless you don't listen to it, in which case I have maintained an unbroken strict "one-take, all-improvised, no edits, no overdubs" policy for like 25 releases here. (It is the first take of the guitar solo if that makes you feel better.)
There have been many times lately when really all I want to hear is the sound of a guitar with a bunch of wood and metallic stuff shoved through the strings, run through a bunch of delays and a Rat pedal.
And then there is the rest of the time, when I just want to hear the song "Some Guys Have All The Luck." So, one stop shopping here, basically."Skullpile Sunrise" is named after a song by the same name by 90s Charlottesville art-metal band The Middle Way (featuring members of Hedonistic Cravings). We did a show together, and it was also the first show of the (can I say it?) extremely twee indie-pop band Charming. After Charming's set, I looked at their set list and I was very impressed that one of their songs was named "Skullpile Sunrise"; it took me longer than I would like to admit to realize it was actually The Middle Way's set list. But I still think that is one of my favorite song titles of all time.
New Laconia is the name of what I assume must be an extremely dour and lugubrious car service; it is also the name of this new EP.In related news, my recent releases are rocketing to the top of the charts: #1 with a bullet in the "prepared guitar" category, and finally charting in the "free improvisation" category at #27. As DJ Khaled says, we the best. (Again, I point this out only to note that, based on the number of listens I have received, this means that almost nobody is listening to anything. As you were.)
