D.A. is a synth duo that formed in Texas, where they reportedly produced ambient music for isolation tanks, and recently relocated to Los Angeles. Their name stands for “Dallas Acid” on occasion, but is also the initials of the two bandmates, Michael Dials & Xian Aegon. Although not associated with or reportedly even aware of the synth revival led by V.A. favorites like Emeralds and Infinity Window, they certainly fill an aesthetic gap within that like-minded group. Their sound is as much Southwestern as it is Sci-Fi and suggests landscapes and endless horizons, as opposed to the more introspective vision of Northeast operators or the stoned brain-fry of Midwestern basement rats. Read the rest of this entry »
“When I was approached by La Otracina’s Adam Kriney about making a video, he very generously told me to pick any song I’d like to work with. Naturally, this made me feel like a kid in a candy store. I was attracted to the track “Hail Fire” because it had this really engrossing atmospheric quality that stood out to me. I also found that the song structure was kind of unusual, which I felt would present an interesting challenge in terms of editing. Read the rest of this entry »
Death Unit at Coco66 in Greenpoint, January 29, 2010
At the midpoint of the last decade, it seemed possible that noise music was ready to reach an audience beyond a core group of hardcore scene aficionados, record collector nerds, other musicians, fringe Euro art enthusiasts, and Midwestern basement hangers-on. Wolf Eyes toured with Sonic Youth and released the epochal Burned Mind after signing with Sub Pop. Carlos Giffoni inaugurated his first No Fun Fest with a mind-boggling line-up of artists from all corners of the scene. Giffoni’s own No Fun Productions tracked the development of noise from 2005 onwards with a carefully curated selection of just over fifty releases in five years, a surprisingly lean number of offerings from a scene known for its sometimes comical prolificacy. Lightning Bolt was gaining some overground attention with a brand of hyper-charged punk that merged noise and thrash metal with the strong aesthetic appeal of the legendary Fort Thunder collective. Read the rest of this entry »
In October 2009, Visitation Rites kicked off a virtual music video residency with Los Angeles video artist Samantha Cornwell. Our concept: Samantha pours through dozens of MP3 submissions from bands all over this wide, wide land, selects a few that tickle her imagination, and responds with a video representing her subjective experience of the sound. This video for Brooklyn’s Love Like Deloreans, a Kosmiche-inspired synthesizer trio who I swear lifted Union Pool half an inch off the ground last time I saw them play live, is the second installment of the project, which debuted with this video for “Demonzblood” by The Lame Drivers.
It’s hard to take a descriptor like “nu-goth” seriously. First off, nu/new/neu anything automatically translates to “boring retread” no matter how many deep influences one cites (FYI: White Car is RIYL Front 242 — OMG!). More to the point, who really wants a goth revival? Sure, there were once some innovative bands that could loosely be described as goth (the whole UK Coil/Current 93/Nurse With Wound axis comes to mind), but how many Skinny Puppy records are being sold off wholesale by fashion-conscious thirty-somethings as we speak? On the other hand, seemingly irrelevant historical moments, like early Cabaret Voltaire, seem weirdly prescient in light of the inexplicable success of Cold Cave. Read the rest of this entry »
Postcard for Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland Autopia, 1955
Trekking in the January sleet into the far corners of darkest Bushwick has its rewards. Last Sunday, McGregor from Chocolate Bobka and I had the pleasure of doing an hour-long guest spot on Arthur Magazine’s new weekly emission on Brooklyn’s Newtown Radio, broadcast out of a unexpectedly cozy enclave on the fourth floor of an unmarked industrial warehouse. The subject du jour was Retro-Futuristic Utopias, so I arrived at the studio expecting to pull together a spiel on Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland Autopia, the Ecological Art movement of the late 1960s, and Douglas Trumble’s 1971 science-fiction classic Silent Running. Instead, we ended up spinning some warped 21st century psychedelia, eating cookies courtesy Arthur Radio co-host Harry Painter’s grandma, and dancing like the slow section of a slow school. Read the rest of this entry »
Today is a big day for Visitation Rites. After subsisting for months on expired Trader Joe’s enchiladas, spotty café internet connections, and 99 cent dreams, we are now to ready to step it up to the major leagues of grassroots music blogdom and strike out with our own “TV on the Vimeo,” which VR-consultant and “internet personality” Jon Williams christened thusly last night. And while it may be hard to believe, we didn’t have to suffer through months of flashing Aunt Jemima and belly-fat-reduction banner ads in order to pull it off, because we took those off the site a long time ago. Actually, all we needed was a video camera, a bedroom editing lab, and my very lovable roommate Brendan Toller who, I am finding out, just so happens to be the man behind I Need that Record, a documentary on the death (and possible survival) of the independent record store featuring the likes of Thurston Moore, Ian Mackaye, Chris Frantz, Noam Chomsky, and Lenny Kaye. Read the rest of this entry »
This one creeps up on you. I have yet to catch a live voyage by the two Brooklyn space cadettes who record under the name Future Shuttle, but there sure is some lovely gravitational tug-and-pull going on in this collaboration with Blondes, whose beats always drive hard towards center of the earth. And I wouldn’t ordinarily expect the whoooop of this loop to provide enough knob fodder for an entire song, but these four former Oberlin chums somehow manage to extract mile upon three-dimensional mile out if it. Are we really hearing just the same thing repeated over and over again? Each time they edge in with new frequencies, I have to do a double-take. Read the rest of this entry »
The underground is currently experiencing a golden age of solo guitar activity. Although tragically overshadowed by the death of Jack Rose, 2009 was a watershed year for experimental and classically minded operators, including crucial releases from major players spanning the stylistic pantheon. Sir Richard Bishop, Tom Carter, Pete Nolan, Glenn Jones, and Mr. Rose himself (solo and with The Black Twig Pickers) were joined by debuts from the likes of Willie Lane (whose debut solo outing Known Quantity, released on his own Cord-Art Imprint, was one of the most slept-on releases of the year), and Steve Gunn. Read the rest of this entry »
Death Unit at Coco66 in Greenpoint, January 29, 2010
It’s hard to take a descriptor like “nu-goth” seriously. First off, nu/new/neu anything automatically translates to “boring retread” no matter how many deep influences one cites (FYI: White Car is RIYL Front 242 — OMG!). More to the point, who really wants a goth revival? Sure, there were once some innovative bands that could loosely be described as goth (the whole UK Coil/Current 93/Nurse With Wound axis comes to mind), but how many Skinny Puppy records are being sold off wholesale by fashion-conscious thirty-somethings as we speak? On the other hand, seemingly irrelevant historical moments, like early Cabaret Voltaire, seem weirdly prescient in light of the inexplicable success of 
Postcard for Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland Autopia, 1955
The underground is currently experiencing a golden age of solo guitar activity. Although tragically overshadowed by the death of Jack Rose, 2009 was a watershed year for experimental and classically minded operators, including crucial releases from major players spanning the stylistic pantheon. 
