Wikipedia is great

Today's featured article is Slayer. I love it when shit like that happens. Otherwise I have no real news. Tomorrow night (Thursday, 6/28), all you NYC kiddos should head over to Rockstar Bar in Williamsburg (S.5th/Kent) and see a bunch of rad bands play.

Nothing much and next week

Alright, I definitely got lazy during the past eleven days and haven't posted a damn thing. Been focused on other stuff other than finding music and writing about it. I think I posted about shows I wanted to go to (but probably didn't) and I will mention now that the mighty Team Dresch is playing in Brooklyn tonight. Since I've never seen them live, I really should go, but it's a friday night and they're coming out with a new album, so I get the impression that they'll probably tour again. Who knows.

In other news, this is going down next thursday. NYC folks should check it out:

Constant Entertainment Overload (an update/short essay)

Okay, okay, I f'd up stupidly this weekend by neglecting to mention that last night (yeah, sunday night) there was gonna be a kickass show for anyone in the general NYC vicinity. Maybe it had to do with the fact that my band was playing and conflicts of interests could have arisen. But fuck it, my band is good, and I will state that right here.
Now, when you're in a band, you get used to the fact that only about 15% of the time are all the bands on the lineup awesome and agree that everyone else was awesome as well. Last night at Fat Baby was one of those nights. So here, check out these bands:

Archaeopteryx - This off-kilter bass/drums "metal" combo is heading out on a two month tour right now. Most likely that means they'll be in whatever town you live in/live near. Go see them.
From Cocaine to Rogaine - Just met this metal/core instrumental trio last night. Young band putting together some impressive tunes. I haven't listened to the demo they gave me yet, but I will today, so I'll update soon.
Stay Fucked - I've posted about these fellas before, and they've never failed to impress. Unfortunately they'll be taking a brief hiatus as bassist, Tony, is one half of Archaoesohdjfshotx and will be gone on tour.
Warmth - My band. I won't write about us. It's already lame enough that I've mentioned it.

Suffice to say that there is a really amazing undercurrent of strange, difficult-to-classify heavy music going on in Williamsburg right now. Jazz- and math-influenced not-quite-metal with a serious diy/punk attitude. Bands that seem doomed to repeat the lack of notoriety that too many of our influences have endured. While the neighborhood becomes more well known for its influx of condos and i-bankers and shitty derivative pop-music bullshit, there is really some incredible music happening. In a city where there is a constant entertainment overload, it's easy to avoid going to shows where a bunch of "no-name" bands are playing. I'm as guilty as the rest of 'em, particularly since there's so much of the same "trendy" stuff happening. It really sucks to go to a show to see some friends play and just be bombarded by three other shitty bands who just seem to have latched on to some shallow conception of what music is about. Hell yeah that's a pompous statement. Part of the reason that I keep this blog going is that it's a lot of work to keep up on innovative music when there's so much horrible background noise hiding the good stuff. I'm not content to just let some hacks get famous because somebody-knows-somebody and they dress "right." This just might be the last thing in my life that I'm still a hopeless romantic about. New York can jade a person right quick, but I'm also finding that this city can still be fuel for some romantic musicians.

Ah, that felt good, corny and necessary.

Enslaved is so good

Alright, I feel really ignorant sometimes when there's a fantastic band out there that I really should know about, but just don't. This is how I feel about Enslaved right now. They've been around for 16 years now and have released 9 full albums. I didn't really know anything about them, but their latest album, Ruun made so many people's "Best of 2006" lists that I had to pick it up. Of course, I'm broke 80% of the time, so I got it a good year after its release date (May 2, 2006). But whatever, Ruun is so ridiculously fantastic (except for track 2, which I haven't warmed up to at all yet) that I can't stop listening to it. When I first heard the term "progressive black metal" I wasn't quite sure how to imagine it, but wow, it's right up my alley. And by alley I mean a glorious enema of buzzing guitars, squealy/screechy vocals, melodically dark keys passages and wonderfully varied drumming. I love great black metal drumming in all its blastiness, but here there's plenty of change in terms of style and structure that it opens up beautiful new black metal paths. Man, I have a wicked boner for these guys right now, it's bordering on embarrassing. Fuck it. I know exactly why this made so many lists for last year. I also have to dive into their back catalog and boner up on my Enslaved history. This is gonna be fun.

In other news, my little affair with Enslaved got in the way of my big crush on the new Dinosaur Jr album, so a full review of that will have to wait. However, since Dino is playing here in NYC next week, I can do some big awesome thing to celebrate. I also finally just got my hands on the final Bucket Full of Teeth installment, IV. I'll be writing about that soon, too, because it also rules. What a good fucking haul this week.

Dinosaur Jr

Still completely kicks ass. Finally got my hands on Beyond and, well, I've only made it to track three, but so far it feels like where they probably would have gone had the original lineup not taken an 18 year hiatus. So far the only thing that feels different is the production sounds like 2007 instead of 1987. But it still sounds and feels like Dinosaur Jr. This album could have been utter poo-filled donut. Nope. I'm gonna return to paying attention to this quintessential J Mascis guitar solo. Be back later with a full report.

Google Strikes Again

Sorry for the utter lack of updates lately, but I do have a handful of records that should (and I emphasize "should") be arriving today. That means good things are coming, but I always say shit like that.
Anyway, the real reason for this post is that Google has developed an amazing new way to distract you from work. Or in my case, given that I work in the amazing world of NYC real estate, a plausibly work-related way to procrastinate.

Google StreetView. (c'mon, do I really have to link to that? ok, fine.) For serious nerds like me, you can now tour street-level through Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. For now this is way to awesome, though I'm sure at some point it'll get tired. Fortunately, the good folks at Google are probably already working on that.

I've also more personal news to spew, as my band, Warmth, has a bunch of shows in the city during the next month. If you're into mathy noise rock, or noisy math rock, come check us out. At the very least, come to the show with Stay Fucked and Archaeopteryx, because they're awesome.

Coliseum, Young Widows Tonight

I'm gonna try my hardest to make this show tonight despite my head feeling like a balloon: it's allergy season, baby. 538 Johnson in Brooklyn is hosting Coliseum and Young Widows, so I'm pretty psyched. For anyone who hasn't been to this spot, it's a huge loft that a bunch of guys live in and throw shows fairly regularly. The building is about halfway between the Morgan and Jefferson stops on the L in the lovely industrial park area. Go check it out.

I know I haven't posted on any new albums recently, but I will try to soon. I've been busy immersing myself in Stephen Hawkings' A Brief History of Time and having my mind blown. Oh, and speaking of science-y things, some friends of mine have a new comedy/science blog up called Cyborg-Bonanza.

General Site Update Time

I'm not at all sure why I didn't do this a long time ago, but I just relabeled (as in, seriously labelled) the posts on here all the way back to the inaugural post on 3/8/06. So now you can come on here and find old posts by category. Any sane blogger did this while they were posting, I however, did not. I also recently added one of those cool maps and a site counter. So the site counter didn't register the millions (read: hundreds) of hits I got in the past year.
Now I've gotta say "What's Up!" to Iceland and France and New Zealand among others. I'll be back shortly with some new stuff I hope; I have my personal birthday to attend to this week.

Diapers...in a good way.

My first musical crush, Dinosaur Jr, will be dropping their new album, titled Beyond, tomorrow. Original lineup...it's been nearly 20 years since Bug. I completely forgot this was happening and peed myself a little. A lot. I peed myself a lot.

Find Yourself a Waterfall

One of the few things I miss about life in the Mid-Hudson Valley is the waterfalls. Back when I was living there we'd pile in cars during the summer and drive from Poughkeepsie to a sweet, secluded spot about 45 minutes away. After a short hike through the woods, there was an amazing waterfall with a huge pool at the base. The water was generally cold as hell, but if you timed it right, the sun would filter through the trees and keep everything a perfect temperature. Me and my friend Dave used to not bathe and use that as an excuse to go to the falls every few days. It was amazing.
Anyone who knows me well knows that my stories, if they have a point, generally take way too long to get there. So there is a point to the above story, particularly if you've ever had a transcendent experience with a waterfall. Not too long ago somebody posted two tracks from a French band named Year of No Light. I loved the two tracks and couldn't wait to get my hands on the full record. I can't even remember who posted those tracks (though a huge Thank You if it was you). All I can really say is go buy Nord straight away. Get it straight from the band. Crucial Blast is releasing it stateside; get it from them. People have been throwing around all sorts of crazy descriptions of this band. "Brutal shoegazer" and "The Cure playing sludge" are both hilarious yet fitting. I put it on and, while digesting, memories returned of sitting under those falls being crushed by constant torrents of water. In my opinion the territory covered is where I would have preferred Isis gone after dropping Celestial; heavy, predominantly dark atmospherics mixed with industrially-tinged post-metal. Although they don't really sound like them, YONL remind me of City of Caterpillar and may be a functional equivalent in this genre of what CoC was to their Virginia hardcore counterparts.
Writing about music never makes any sense, just go check this band out. I really hope they tour here, I'll be there in a second.