In Space, No One Can Hear You Cry…

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…except for your other three crew members and close to a million people watching the livestream back on Earth.

Today as the astronauts aboard the crew-christened Integrity (formally Orion) officially flew further from Earth than any other humans before, they took a moment to request a name change for two unnamed features on the moon’s surface. First they asked for one to be named Integrity (obvious), and the other to be named after commander Reid Wiseman’s wife who passed away a few years ago. The dedication ended with them making sure it was spelled correctly, “And you spell that C A R R O L L.”

I’m not sure if this name change suggestion was a surprise to Wiseman or not, but the immediate result saw all four members of the crew bursting into tears, then floating across the cabin into one big group hug.

Listen, life on Earth has never been easy, but right at this moment it feels like a lot is going very wrong for VERY STUPID reasons. To see these four humans unashamedly showing love and support for each other LITERALLY as far removed from the world as anyone has EVER been, is nothing short of an extraordinary, monumental moment, blasting out a beacon of hope brighter than any celestial object.

Just incredible.

ACQUIRED: SUNN O))) – sunn O))) (Loser Edition)

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Received the new two disc self titled LP from SUNN O))) yesterday. “You should put that on right now and play it loud as fuck,” I was instructed. Not a problem.

If you are at all familiar with SUNN O))) then you have a very good idea of what this sounds like. If not, imagine if the universe were a couple of fuzzed out electric guitars played through a parallel universe of amps at a rate of several eons per chord and you might have some idea of what they achieve. While not everything is played at a glacial pace, “slow” and “massive” could be used to describe any of the songs. And with very little exception those guitars and their wavering, thrumming tones, vibrating both together and at time at-odds with each other, are all you hear. But it is such an all encompassing riot of sound that you will envision a vast symphony of players. When each song inevitably ends it’s as if a great pressure you hadn’t noticed building is suddenly lifted and the silence becomes briefly disorienting. At least if you are listening to it though a hefty sound system in a room at reasonably high decibel levels, and you should be.

Dirty Knobs – SCORCHER Vinyl and CD Release via elasticStage

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(Jump right to the order page here.)

It’s been about five months since it was released and I’m just now getting around to talking about the on-demand via elasticStage vinyl release of SCORCHER by Dirty Knobs.

For a much more detailed step-by-step run through of the experience you can check out this post about my three-part ROOMS release. The SCORCHER process was exactly the same regarding the album page creation and ordering/shipping process. tl;dr It’s very reasonable, fast, and sounds great.

SCORCHER is quite a different album from ROOMS, and it’s given me a better feel for the sound quality that elasticStage delivers. This time is felt like the disc’s surface noise was a little more present, but this could be because the music on SCORCHER is much more dynamic so one is prone to turning the volume up a bit at the beginning which also increases the volume of the surface noise. (I am always turning the music up, and up, and up as I go, just generally speaking, so your milage may vary.)

So this is not an audiophile quality product by any means, at least as far as the vinyl is concerned, but it is still, in my estimation, worth the cost and worth checking out if you are a musician or band looking for a way to sell directly to fans without having to rent a storage space to house 1000s of copies and deal with shipping out of an extra bedroom.

You can listen to SCORCHER here and buy the digital download (starting at just $1US) there. You can order the on-demand vinyl and/orCD copy here and get all of my elasticStage releases here.

LISTENING: Cylob – IN DYSTOPIA

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New Cylob!

I first heard Cylob way way back in the Rephlex days with songs like “Cut The Midrange, Drop the Bass” and “Rewind! (Vocal),” both of which can be found on the CYMPLY THE BEST 93-01 compilation along with many other greats. I played the hell out of both on my radio show.

The songs on IN DYSTOPIA feel both similar and far removed from the feeling of those earlier tracks. Here we have songs with unexpected chords and progressions, arpeggiated in lock-step, but also like a sort of free jazz where it feels like anything could happen at any moment. The unifying factor is the dominant use of vocoder, text to speech, and other robot-like vocal effects which, for me at least, are timeless. While I might have a tough time wrapping my head around some of those songs, I’m always drawn in by the vocals. Especially on the album closer “I Achieve Full Freeze” which I’m pretty sure is simply about vocoding. Can relate.

PHOTO: This is What You Want

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Working on a custom paint job for the Cross Bone Gundam Maoh and realizing it’s a bit like the (literally) crazy robot in Hardware, one of my favorite movies. Really. If you like industrial music even a little, you need to see it. It’s kind of beautiful (and kind of bad, but still). I covered “The Order of Death”, the PiL song used in the end credits. It’s in the Endless Compendium.

ACQUIRED: Earth Tongue – DUNGEON VISION

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Got the new album DUNGEON VISION from the New Zealand fuzz rock duo Earth Tongue. Artwork is fantastic (I passed on the super deluxe version) and perfectly reflects the music’s mystical and arcane feel. The amount of power these two infuse into their often dirge-y yet playful classic metal songs is impressive. Their videos are also all spot on and worth checking out.

PHOTO: When the Heat Goes Out

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photo of auguste sitting very close to the space heater.

We’ve been having some mystery issues with our furnace and water heater that are (hopefully) now resolved. But the other day the heat went out in the evening which here in northern Minnesota means that the house started to get cold pretty fast. Because of this potential situation we have a few electric space heaters that keep things bearable while we wait for the nice furnace men to arrive.

Auguste, our almost 18 year old orange and white tabby cat, does not have any problem with this situation. He and the heater became fast friends and I suspect that he’d be fine with this being a permanent feature.