The Bower Bird

I haven't posted here in months and I don't plan on reviving anything at the moment. However, I did resuscitate my other blog, Quietly Take To The Ship, as a home for a new poetry project called The Bower Bird.

The beloved Spaceship was sent to the hangar as I prepped for grad school and I haven't had the time or energy to drag her back out again. It will probably stay that way for the foreseeable future unless summer has other plans. We'll see. In the meantime constructing a bower of thoughts will be my primary focus and you're welcome to keep abreast of my progress. I have no idea where I'm going with it, only how I'm going about it.

Heh heh, I said "breast".

SHAMELESS, TARDY SELF-PROMOTION!!

Hey followers of haphazard bloggery, particularly those based in the Brooklyn area, come check out my band tonight, Thursday, August 6. Yeah, I said it. Mine. The other three bands that are playing are all seriously awesome and check-out worthy, but we, Warmth (or "Warmph" if you're so inclined, which I am), are opening. That means we get this party rolling and, boy, will we ever. Here's the sweet, sweet flier.

I know, I know, I should have posted this a few days ago for fair warning, but we were busy practicing! Practice is important if you want to be good at anything. Except for blogging, of course.

Eagle Twin —The Unkindness of Crows

Back in March a few friends returned from SXSW with real good things to say about a couple bands they caught down in Austin. One of those bands was Eagle Twin, the new project from former Iceburn "collectivist" Gentry Densley. At the time I was not aware of the connection and, really, there isn't too much to suggest one—aesthetically anyway—between the two. The Iceburn Collective was, for the sake of brevity, a music-major's hardcore band that, over time, morphed into a sprawling avant-garde jazz ensemble. I'm not familiar with their whole catalogue, but what I know never ceases to impress; straight-up punishing, heady, hardcore jazz in the early days to free-form jazz improv later on. Good stuff that I need to get further into, but I digress...

Eagle Twin, on the other hand, is a far cry from the cerebral hardcore-cum-jazz of Densley's former work. Here, with his baritone guitar, he has teamed up with drummer Tyler Smith to form a wondrous hybrid of doom on their debut, The Unkindness of Crows. "A hybrid of 'doom' and what?" You may ask. That's where this duo gets interesting.

As they hail from Salt Lake City, there is a noticeable lack of the "sludginess" found in their peers from more humid climes. Eagle Twin, much like Kyuss or Earth's Hex album, is a strictly desert West affair. Wind howls, blows sand and tumbleweed and carries your scent off to the scavengers who've taken brief refuge from the sun. This is monolithic stone, canyons and salt flats; a harsh, yet majestic landscape that holds a deep echo of banditry, solitude, peace and foreboding. Think of the forgotten country Americana of Hex occasionally interspersed with Kyuss-ian grooves and you'll have a rudimentary idea of Eagle Twin.

While the Kyuss comparisons might be a bit of a stretch, their low-end fire rumble was always Dr. Gonzo tearing through Death Valley. Eagle Twin keeps toward a slower, Earth-like pace, but with more growl and grime—here a mixture of sand and motor oil—seeping through. These towers of doom happen to also be new labelmates, as The Unkindess of Crows is being released by Southern Lord. I highly, highly recommend picking this up and checking them out live, as they'll be touring with Earth (yay!) and Pelican (blehh, boring) later this fall.

YOB—The Great Cessation

Following the breakup of Middian after numerous hassles and setbacks, Mike Scheidt has returned with a reformed YOB and a new album. Though bassist Isamu Sato left for good following 2005's The Unreal Never Lived, drummer Travis Foster is back with new Middian (I'm an idiot) bassist Aaron Reiseberg filling Sato's spot. The result of this collaboration is The Great Cessation, an album that could just as easily been dubbed a Middian record (if not for those sue-happy jackasses in Wisconsin) as much as a YOB record.

Given that I can listen to The Unreal Never Lived repeatedly without ever remotely glimpsing boredom, it would take quite a feat for this trio to top that record with their new release. Still, I'm finding The Great Cessation to be a very enjoyable listen. It's not as demanding a listen, the riffs being generally more straightforward with less overt psychedelia, but there is something to be said for this record's simplicity.

I know a few people whose major complaint with YOB had been their tendency to meander and repeat excessively. There is little of that here; the songs are shorter and more focused, much like those on Middian's sole release, Age Eternal. However, the tempos have slowed again to proper YOB levels, eliciting those strains of dread and feelings of being gradually dragged ever downward.

So far my only issues with this record is the lack of immediately memorable riffage. For all its supposed excesses, The Unreal Never Lived had these in spades and some of the major themes and phrases on The Great Cessation seem more like b-side material from those sessions. They're all still really good, but they don't blow me away. Perhaps with some time and a few more listens I'll find myself humming these at work or something, but at the moment it's still too new.

Despite any minor complaints that I have at the moment, I like the album and consider it a continuation of good form. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't have expected such right off the bat. If these guys gel—which, given their somewhat shared histories shouldn't take long (again, dumb by above implication)—a follow-up to this record could be the cat's tits. Regardless, I'm gonna keep my eye out for any tours because I've never seen YOB live and I wouldn't consider catching these songs any sort of disappointment. This may not end up being one of the top records of the year, but I highly recommend picking it up because it could be a rather impressive grower, if not an immediate "whoa!"

Joyeux 14-Juillet!

Do something French, like burn a prison to the ground or dress up and clean stuff in a sexy way, like these darlings!

Fun With Sports Headlines

Normally someone else points these things out to me. Not today, no, I got this one all on my own:

Ronaldinho promises to fill Milan's Kaka gap

Haha, that's funny.

Bust Out Yr Tape Decks, The Dead Hand Is Here

Good ol' boy and local low-end superstar Tony Gedrich (he of STATS, Extra Life & Archaeopteryx notoriety) has a new cassette tape label called Damage Rituals. Forget vinyl as a lasting medium, you can put these mothers in your pocket (unless you're a giant fat person in which case you'll have to eat a few of those Snickers first) and have a legit excuse to use the forlorn and jilted ghetto blaster that's sitting in your closet.


Mr. Gedrich teamed up with John Delzoppo of Cleveland's Clan of the Cave Bear and put together Dead Hand: Human Machines: a righteous mix of 27 wacked out, awesome bands for your listening nightmares. Some of these bands I knew already but now there are a bunch more I'm going to have to check out because ALL of these tracks are awesome. That's right, there isn't a stinker among them. I'm not going to list all the bands and link to them—everyone is listed on the Damage Rituals myspace page—but among the greats here are VAZ, Yukon, Animal, Zs, Child Abuse and Drunkdriver.

If you're looking for mp3s or any shit like that you're outta luck. This is all magnetic tape lovingly contained in beautiful plastic: material of the future! It sounds like a tape, plays like a tape and if you treat it badly, it will unspool all over your significant other's leg (if you have one, which I highly doubt). Go dig $6.50 out of your digital couch before Billy Mays screams at you from the great beyond and paypal that shit to Tony & John, you will not be disappointed.

Incredible Fireworks Crotch Fail

Oh man, this is great, just in time for the holiday!




via the consistently incredible Sportress of Blogitude [SoB]

Sixty Symbols (of Physics & Astronomy)

Tonight I got one of the best assignments I've so far received writing for Tilzy.tv (My review is now up here); I got turned onto Sixty Symbols. A project by Brady Haran, filmmaker-in-residence at Nottingham Science City, Sixty Symbols is a series of short primers that explain the significance of some of the most important concepts in physics and astronomy. Let me tell you it's absolutely fascinating and completely brilliant. At the moment I've only had the time to watch a few of these (and there are still more being produced), but I'll be spending an inordinate amount of my upcoming free time checking the rest out.

To get a taste watch this one one Jupiter:

Margaret Atwood - Year of the Flood

Have you read Oryx & Crake yet? Well you have until September 22 to pull your head out of your ass and digest it. And while you're at it start taking survival courses because, if civilization continues to head in its current direction, we'll all be needing them. Atwood's near future feels a lot like the one whose soundtrack was written by GodspeedYou!BlackEmperor.

The coasts have drowned, deserts have expanded, urban zones have devolved into ghettoized brownfields and the upper echelons of society dwell in fear behind the heavily-surveiled walls of scattered corporate compounds. Governments are no longer relevant, if they even exist. Here, in the compounds, the brains work towards creating a plasticized, genetically-altered "utopia". To anyone who has read Oryx & Crake this landscape and the horror of the book's finale is all too familiar.

While Jimmy and Glenn (of O&C notoriety) play out their destinies in the compounds, out in the "pleeblands"—the decimated, near-anarchic urban wastes—the tales within the Year of the Flood are being fleshed out. They reveal, over the course of twenty-five years, the first-person accounts of several people affiliated to various degrees with God's Gardeners, a religious sect whose leader, Adam One, has perfected a sort of squatter-punk synthesis of deep ecology and gnostic christianity. The gardeners are trying to preserve an unadulterated human relationship with nature and its mysteries, however misguided it may at first appear, though they may be the last hope when the technological world collapses.

Margaret Atwood, being Margaret Atwood, is going to make you think and at the same time make you incredibly uncomfortable with your own beliefs. Think religion is a sham and a waste of human energy? Prepare to loathe Adam One for his blatant hippie charlatanism whilst agreeing with some of the more radical tenets of the gardeners and the revelations of their theology. As an atheist who makes solid attempts to live in an ecologically-sound manner, this all gave me fits.

Fits are all well and good, but what about the causes of this near-future societal and natural collapse? Humans are clearly to blame, but not necessarily for the reasons so many would argue presently. Sure, warnings about climate change went unheeded as did those of overreliance on technological innovation to solve human problems. The main culprit of our problems has been an inexhaustible hubris; that we think we can outsmart and manipulate nature as we study its ways. There is clearly value in learning, studying and admiring nature and its processes, but it's when we begin to think we can control for an outcome we desire that the hydra appears.

Just as today too many people have an uncomfortable—if not downright hostile—attitude towards the presence of chaos in nature, Atwood's future of the "waterless flood" (which is better understood if you're already familiar with Oryx & Crake) is a security nightmare on account of this obsessive-compulsive disorder, much like if the first world suddenly plunged into the third. Frankly, the scenarios outlined here don't seem that far-fetched because there's no reason why it won't happen. Do-gooder organizations are constantly trying to plan for this type of future, but this future cannot be planned for and that is THE problem to which humanity has to acclimitize.

The easiest thing to do, of which I'm certainly guilty, is to laugh and shrug off the corny pseudo-religio-environmental spiritualists because most of their philosophies are half-baked and specious. However, as is clear with God's Gardeners there is merit in such philosophies (hence a major reason why religions are still around) because they allow people to act even when they don't fully understand why they're acting. If this makes sense then it should be clear why I was having fits and yet loving this book at the same time.

I'm not sure the last time I felt so completely intellectually challenged by a book that, simultaneously, so fully entertained me. There is constant action—often with disgustingly violent outcomes—and the ending never gives itself away, suspense building until the finale. This "review" does so little justice to a book that I hope receives major plaudits when it hits shelves. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy at work and I took my time reading it because I didn't really want it to end. I just read Oryx & Crake a few months ago and that blew me away. Now this arrives as a sort of companion volume. I'm not sure how they're going to market it, but it stands alone as a novel and there doesn't seem to be any indication that it will be marketed in connection with O&C.

So mark your calendars for September 22. I have to stop rambling because this will just get more and more disjointed if I continue. Margaret Atwood, you are an absolute genius. The type of genius that crushes my spirit by writing the best goddamn book (fiction or poetry) possible that, yet, inspires me to wrack my brain for something 1/10 as worthwhile and hope it means something to someone. Bravo. Again.

Utter Negligence...And 2 Awesome Shows

Please forgive me, for though I did see a modern dance performance last night—putting me in the running for "Most Cultured Knuckledragger" on this here internet (Though, sadly, not on that other internet.)—I've otherwise been a lazy and a boring person. However, I'm pleased to report two upcoming shows that are probably gonna rock like that ancient Yucutan metor that killed everything. Go to them.

Tonight, June 17
Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow St.
8:00 pm
$7

Animal — Do they write that? Is that improv? Are you...you're dancing again. Well I'll be...
Upsilon Acrux — groovin' spastic LA robotparty rock'n'roll
Multitudes — I don't know anything about these guys, but I'm intrigued.

(i think that's the correct order, with Animal headlining.)


Tomorrow, June 18
Death By Audio, 49 S.2nd St Williamsburg (btw Kent & Wythe)
8:00 pm
$ ?cheap, though

STATS — one of my personal favorites, they've got a new ep out.
Upsilon Acrux — see above. go see them twice, it'll be worth it.
Clan of the Cave Bear — i wish this would have been the soundtrack to that awful old movie

(again, pretty sure STATS is headlining this one)

So now you have no excuse to stay indoors; even I am going outside. And then back inside for rad music. Oooh, this is exciting! You know what else is exciting? Good modern dance. Yeah, and I'm not just saying that because I have a vested personal interest in the matter. I'm actually looking forward to going to another one. I'll leave it at that lest some fanatic assail me for shattering his/her illusions of my crapulent twit-dom.

STATS - Marooned

Lately I've been waiting for that awesome big something to come along, smack the last of the awful sickness I've had out of my face (I was down for the count with who-knows-what for a week) and, by extension, give me something actually sick to write about. Thursday comes along and in my emailbox appears a note from the STATS dudes offering up their latest e.p., Marooned.

Not so many weekends ago, while hanging out with bassist Tony Gedrich (who also plays in Extra Life, worth checking out), Tony busted out the unmastered recordings. A bunch of us rocked out to them and probably drooled a little more than Tony was expecting, so I had baseline expectation of what I was gonna hear. Also, STATS has been playing this stuff for their past few live shows, but one can never quite be sure how it's all going to transition from the live set to the recorded tapes.

Well I can now unequivocally state that this three-song, 19 minute e.p. is bloody-nose inducing. They really cranked the low-end here for maximum womp. There's no way to say this without sounding like a total tool, but STATS is fucking groovy. Groovy math. You wanna get a bunch of epileptics with Tourettes to boogie? This is the perfect band for that. Give them earplugs, too, because it's necessary.

Big dumb smiling, mouth-breathing, gut-evisceratin' jazz tunes. These guys are friends of mine and perhaps the nicest guys around and always a hoot to play shows with; I've called them the most underrated band in Brooklyn and I stand by that. STATS creates the most thouroughly thought out goofball music that's not actually goofy or stupid, but just what awesome rock 'n' roll music should be. For thinkin' folks. Mischievously dark and, yet, positive. It's gonna give your kids their first cigarette, show 'em dirty magazines and help with homework just to keep on your good side. Because they look like good kids and yours shouldn't be hanging around with those dirty long hairs down the street with the illegal firecrackers.

Not murderers or rapists!

So now that I've said all this crap, how do you get your hands on Marooned? At the moment they have it available for free download, all you have to do is email them at [statsbrooklyn at gmail.com] and they'll send you the link. Then go donate some money to them for their efforts (paypal info will be in the email) because they put way too much effort into making these awesome songs extra awesome. To get a feel for what this is all about visit their myspace where they've posted the track "Yo King". I dare you to try and get it out of your head. I also dare you to figure out how they piece their songs together because, frankly, I find the prospect of an actual answer too daunting and frigtening to ask them.

These Dirk Nowitzki Photos Were Rather Prescient After All

My friend Stefan has long had a major mancrush on Dirk Nowitzki and a few years ago was lucky enough to meet the big German personally. Stefan's family has deep ties with the local Ukrainian community and during the summers they have lots of interesting cultural events out in various rural spots outside the city. One of these events is a sort of "Tranny Prom" that, while unfamiliar to most Americans, remains a cherished—and rather progressive!—part of Ukrainian culture.
When Stefan asked Dirk if he would join him for the festivities he, apparently (and this is just Stefan's word), was delighted. These kind of events are pretty big in Germany, too, and not at all something he'd been able to do much since coming to the states. Stefan's parents got some photos, of course, and though I'm sure he didn't want all his friends to see them, his sister posted some on her Facebook profile.
What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Well, today ESPN.com featured this headline that, contextually, seemed to make no sense:

Report: Tests show Nowitzki woman pregnant

"Whoa, who does the editing over there, eh?" Yeah, seems silly! However, for the few of us in the know, this is hardly a surprising revelation and unfortunately for Stefan, he seems to have blown his chance at being the father of a future "gigantic great white basketball hope".

Kids In The Hall - Potato Salad

I've been watching the NHL Playoffs on some feed from Canada. 1) I love that the commentators are so polite with one another; they're very agreeable (one of them is even named "Gord"!). 2) Listening to them and then seeing the Canadian commercials has made me nostalgic for my formative years:

Powell To The People!

Yesterday I had the good—and random—fortune of meeting actor Keith Powell when he came into my store looking for an Edward Albee play (I forget which one now). You may recognize him from 30 Rock and/or Law & Order and/or some commercials, but I recognized him because I wrote the review of his hilarious web series Keith Powell Directs A Play for my Tilzy.tv gig.

Normally I don't try to chat up the celebrities that come into the bookstore, but since I had a "personal connection" I felt it was a no-brainer. He seemed genuinely enthused that I had liked his little pet project (and probably also that I recognized him) and told me that he's waiting to hear back about financing for a possible second season of KPDAP. It was one of those "Hey, people can be really cool!" moments that kinda made my day. In return I thought I'd try to spread the word about Mr. Powell's talents, so go check out his website, www.PowelltothePeople.net, where you can find a bunch of shorts he's done. In the meantime, get started on KPDAP right here with the first episode:

I'm An INTRONAUT Fanboy!

This weekend I became calendrically older and, thus, had to drink excessively, which I'm using as my excuse for not posting. But the real reason for my lack of anything lately has mostly been because I've been listening to the same 20 songs over and over again. (I also read Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake which was incredible, but as I have the galley of her fall release, Year of the Flood on the way, a future post will be dedicated exclusively to that...).

For some folk listening to the same fists-full of songs is commonplace. Not for yours truly, as I, to keep from "overdoing it", am chronically compulsed to listen to something different (not necessarily new) every couple days. The last two months have been completely different, however, as I have listened to at least 1 Intronaut song per day. I've never done this before, as far as I can recall, even when I had my first musical crush on Dinosaur Jr when I was 13.

I first saw Intronaut in 2006 when they played Rocky's (or Rockstar or "the mermaid bar" or whatever name of the week it had at the time) here in Brooklyn with Mouth of the Architect and a few other bands. For whatever reason I kinda forgot about them until late last summer, just about the time Prehistoricisms came out. Of course, I was unaware and didn't hear that album until January, but by that time had completely digested the Null and Void eps and chewed the cud several times over.

This past weekend, for my birthday, they came through NYC opening for Mastodon alongside Kylesa, though I wasn't there because Mastodon's new album is garbage and a few of us stubbornly refused to get tickets until it was too late. So I missed out on seeing them. Anyway, hopefully they'll be back around this way and I can fully appreciate their extraordinary aurallingus skills live. Maybe someone will make a new music video for one of their songs, say..."The Cavernous Den of Shame". That song is awesome. Here's one for "Australopithecus" done by Sera Timms. It would appear she took filmmaking lessons from Adam Jones (of Tool, not "Pacman" Jones).

Bernie "Pretty" Purdie - 16th note shuffle

Thanks to Chris for this; it'll put a little air in yr high-hat...

Rep. Alcee Hastings Seems Like A Cool Guy

This is awesome. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fl.) reads a bunch of...well, just watch, it's great.



I highly recommend watching the other video in the original post, too. [kissingsuzykolber]

Thoughts to Nurse On: Torche & Harvey Milk

Now that I have secured future passage to the July 26 Torche/Harvey Milk show at MHoW, feel free to go secure your own. Last time I saw Torche was about 3 years ago at the now-defunct Siné. I recall being very impressed, but there was little to indicate at the time of what they would soon be capable. This is exciting, particularly since I'll be missing Intronaut and Kylesa next weekend. I think I've listened to at least one Intronaut song every day for the past month or so. They're gooooood.

(Also, while I'm here, apologies for the lack of posts. Little of public interest has happened to me lately.)

Dave Cullen - Columbine

For those who are not aware, today is—besides International Weed Smoking Day and Hitler's Birthday—the 10th anniversary of the "incident" at Columbine High School. It's an odd trifecta of coinciding anniversaries and, added to the gloomy weather here, unhelpful in distilling any sort of positive vibes from the day. This particular Columbine anniversary also means that it's been ten years since I graduated high school, as I was also a senior when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attempted to "out-mayhem" Tim McVeigh's demolition of Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Building.

What? Did you just ask me to define "out-mayhem"? Why didn't I just call it a "school shooting" like so many people have done for the past ten years? Well, I'll leave the nuts and bolts of this to journalist Dave Cullen, whose new, exhaustively researched book, Columbine explains nearly everything you could possibly want to know about this seminal closing event of 20th century America. I say "nearly everything" because there are some things nobody will ever know about this, but Mr. Cullen seems to know all the rest.

Having come of age during a period of media-induced fear and hype over school shootings I'm sure I'm not alone in being a bit morbidly fascinated with them. Combine that with my sociology background and picking up this book was a no-brainer. I had done some minor researching into Columbine a year or so ago and it was Cullen's original stories for Slate that initially caught my attention (though I didn't make the connection when I first picked up the book) and had me thinking differently about the whole ordeal. Columbine wasn't a school shooting perpetrated by some disaffected loners; this was a botched massacre whose plan was hatched by one popular, intelligent—though psychopathic—kid with an intense hatred of mankind and his suicidally unstable friend.

The evidence for this is now overwhelming, but it wasn't easy unearthing it. Though Cullen was there from the beginning, he outlines how the county sheriff mangled the investigation and did a similarly poor job trying to cover up that fact. Many myths surrounding the shootings that are still taken as gospel are exposed to extreme scrutiny and none of them survive. The mass media—a few local papers excepted—did an incredibly poor job of separating facts from a good storyline and it was those early mistakes faulty judgment that spiraled chaotically into the school shooting narrative familiar today.

Cullen's book is valuable not only as a history of the actual event and a record of all the threads that became knotted this day ten years ago, but also as social reading of mass media and information dissemination. The narrative took on a life of its own that defied clearly contrary evidence and fed back into the ongoing tale of sterile, fearful suburbia. Utilizing the personal effects of the two killers, Cullen revealed the true nature of Eric and Dylan, the psychopath and the seeker who practically dared the folks around them to discover their heinous plot. The two who, because of the faulty profiling of the "school-shooter type", were able to plan their attack because, frankly, most people never suspected them as the loners ready to snap (one mother, whose warnings were ignored, excepted).

Columbine is one of the best non-fiction works I've read in a while and there's little doubt that Cullen poured all his energy into making it a work of art. His portraits of all the involved parties, from the parents to administrators to teachers to fellow students to law enforcement, are sympathetic and caustic in all the right proportion. And while there are clearly parties that are more at fault than others, Cullen never sinks to any immature blame games. The descriptions of psychopathy are engrossingly chilling and the pain of all the affected families and individuals bites the reader no matter how much you try and disengage. A commendable achievement in journalism and a noteworthy work of social history.