Meg Baird is a singer-songwriter who first rose to prominence as part of storied psych-folk outfit Espers, a Philadelphia collective whose three full-lengths crystallized the sound of the more somber and sonically kaleidoscopic elements of the mid-aughts “Freak Folk” scene. Between Espers’ second and third records, Baird released Dear Companion, an understated but deeply affecting solo record consisting primarily of covers and traditional songs. Those who fell immediately under Meg’s spell had to wait an excruciating four years for the follow-up, Seasons on Earth, which arrived on Drag City this Fall. Some songs find Baird joined, variously, by Marc Orleans, Steve Gunn, and Chris Forsyth on guitar. The focus on originals and the inclusion of other musicians expand the sound ever so slightly, though it’s still grounded in Meg’s signature playing style and voice. I spoke with Meg just before she played a show to celebrate the release at Brooklyn’s Union Pool.
VR: Your first solo LP, Dear Companion, was just your voice and guitar. What was the impetus to bring in additional players for this record?
Meg: It happened pretty organically. It was all people that I knew and it was like, “Oh, we should play together,” and then just following through. I didn’t know Marc [Orleans] too well at first but I’ve gotten to know him through D.Charles Speer & The Helix. Steve [Gunn], he actually lived in Philly, so I’ve known him for a long time.
Everything moves. Vibration runs through everything…
These ideas are central to Ron Rege Jr.’s Cymatic Theremapy performances. In a fusion of science, visual art, and sound, Rege (often with the assistance of Diva Dompe) creates a truly interactive, often magical experience. The set up is relatively simple: a liquid (usually water, or water and corn starch) rests in a plastic bed in the center of a speaker. When Rege’s theremin kicks into gear, the liquid gradually starts to vibrate as the sound waves coarse through it. Over time, these movements become more and more visible, and as the audio reaches its peak, the liquids often take on absurd shapes, giving them the appearance of living organisms.
While it is easy to fantasize that Rege is some sort of Frankenstein-like mad scientist in this equation, he often seems just as startled by the way sound morphs the liquids as we are. These performances, which have taken place mostly at small art galleries and bookstores in the Los Angeles area thus far, feel much more like participatory teach-ins than demonstrations. Participants are often able to pass speakers around as the liquids dance, their minds widening with wonder as they internalize the vibration themselves. While Rege has not reinvented the wheel with these experiments, he has brought to light the undeniable and often wondrous relationship between sound and motion.
As the year winds down, talk turns to year-end lists and best records, tracks, music videos, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Everyone from major publications to the avid music fan wants to talk about the year in music as an event that can be summarized and critiqued objectively. I feel an obligation to form well-reasoned opinions about records I could care less about even hearing. The new music I spent the most time listening this year was a specific brand of drone and contemporary experimental ambient music. This music appears on established labels such as Type and the vinyl division of the Foxy Digitalis empire, but also smaller outfits that only put out a few releases a year like California’s Emerald Cocoon, Massachusetts’ Barge and the charmingly low-key DNT Records have all made crucial contributions to my personal experience of new music over the past year.
The year began with the final missive of a duo who loomed as large as any over the preceding decade, Yellow Swans. Going Places, Yellow Swans’ final full-length released on Type nearly two years after the group’s disillusion set a very high standard for billowing, psychedelic drone with noise and electronic flourishes. It’s always easy to credit a posthumous release with more meaning than it might deserve in a different context, but Going Places is a near perfect swan song. A distillation of the group’s distinctive approach that combines harsh feedback with beautiful melodies and a judicious use of processed vocals. The record bridges the gap between trailblazing psych-noise veterans of the British school like Skullflower and Ashtray Navigations and the daunting legacy of defunct 00s operators Double Leopards while showing the way forward for some of the fresh-faced (and not so fresh-faced) drone upstarts I would spend the rest of the year listening to.
Richard Skelton
Also arriving on Type at the beginning of the year was Richard Skelton’s Landings. This magisterial record, a tribute to the haunting terrain of Northern England, utilizes traditional string instruments, field recordings, and electronic processes to conjure a deeply felt atmosphere of strong, arch emotions. Landings is a classical record in certain formal aspects, but is immediately accessible to anyone with even a passing interest in drone, ambient, or deep listening music of all kinds. Both Yellow Swans’ and Skelton’s records demand attention and focus. The easy pull of pop music is absent, and in its place is a stark, subjective appeal. This appeal is rooted in the musicians themselves. Yellow Swans is a direct reflection of the chemistry that exists between Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman. Likewise, Landings puts some of Skelton’s innermost thoughts, hopes and longings to music (an artist’s edition of the record features a book of poems and essays by Skelton). Enjoyment of this music presupposes the desire for a genuine personal connection with the artist. I find myself drawn again and again to these records not just because of their sonic qualities, although they are uniformly compelling, but because the force of artistic personality comes through so strongly and creates a galvanizing feeling of affection toward the performers. It’s impossible to enjoy Skelton’s tour of the fraught geographical and psychological landscapes of Northern England without having a personal curiosity about it. When so much of indie rock, once revered for its thoughtfulness and sensitivity, feels like a po-mo put-on filled with recycled riffs, this idiosyncratic and occasionally pretentious music makes for a convincing antidote.
Next up: The sound galaxies of Emeralds and Expo ‘70
Yellow Swans, “New Life” (from Going Places) New Life by _type
Guitarist and composer James Blackshaw is a singular force in underground music. From his earliest releases on standard-bearing labels like Digitalis and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, to the expansive, stylistically diverse sound of his two most recent full-lengths for Michael Gira’s Young God Records, Blackshaw has simultaneously explored the sonic possibilities of the guitar and the outer reaches of his own considerable compositional talent. The result is a discography defined by Blackshaw’s virtuosic playing, with each record a finely focused exploration of a playing approach or atmosphere. Blackshaw has just release his latest,All Is Falling, and has embarked on a brief North American tour in between stints supporting Swans in Europe.
Blackshaw’s tourmates are the accomplished electronic and processed guitar duo Mountains, old friends who make for a solid double-bill for interested punters. “Generally a lot of people are really interested in both even if they didn’t know one or the other beforehand, it’s a good match. Its been a lot of fun and I enjoy watching their sets night after night which I can’t always say. Even if you like something, it can be hard to watch people play sets ever night. Its been really good, though.”
Recent supporting slots for Swans have found receptive audiences in Europe and the UK, “Swans have quite a diverse fan base but I was concerned that a big chunk of people – if it’s not super loud they’d be like “What the hell is this folky shit?” – you know, this nerd up on stage. But they went really well. Generally speaking, it seemed like a lot of people who went to see Swans ‘got it,’ which is as much as I can ask.” Not all UK shows have gone as well throughout Blackshaw’s career, however. “I think UK audiences cans be really tough. I think I can say that as one of us. For years and years, truthfully, I didn’t massively enjoy playing London for example. Its gotten a lot better, I think people have become more receptive and interested in what I’m dong. I’m from London and I love London and I like Londoners but we’re not always the warmest people.” (more…)
“The Delicacy of Rock-and-Roll.” Sometimes it’s the most counterintuitive statements that point us to what we’ve been intuiting all along. “Delicacy” is not a word I would ever use to describe what critic Dave Hickey calls the “dominant art form of this American century”– his, the 20th. But in its playful untruth, its insouciant “fuck you” to anyone who ever said rock was just a question of amplification and cheap chord changes, the title of his 1997 essay is rock-and-roll enough to grab anyone who really cares. The song Hickey sings here isn’t just about rock music; it’s about the relationship between art and politics, and it’s sweeping and ambitious and convoluted enough to recall the quixotic excesses of prog. It jumps from memoir to critical commentary, words like “contingency” to thoughts on why “order sucks”. It touches on everything from experimental film to the abstract expressionists to jazz, and it doesn’t satisfy with a melodic resolution until the last page or so– when Hickey actually starts talking about rock.
But his language is so grounded in the everyday, so free of virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake, that Yes and King Crimson would probably be insulted. If “The Delicacy of Rock- and-Roll” locates the political character of art in a certain will to freedom, and tries to show how different types of art embody that will in different ways, Hickey speaks from the place where that freedom begins, and probably also ends– from the heart of the individual subject, recalling a particularly memorable encounter with art in a particular time and place. The essay begins with a story from his college days in Austin, TX. The young Hickey is attending “Underground Flick Nite” at a local YMCA; he is a member of a left-wing political group that meets there that same day, and he and his comrades are hoping for an evening of explosions and group sex. What they get is anything but earth-shattering: an abstract montage of colors by Stan Brackage, and a film by Andy Warhol, consisting entirely of a static shot of a man getting his hair cut.
Leaving Records is a Los Angeles based label run by Matthew David McQueen (also known as matthewdavid) and Jesse Lisa Moretti. The operation is based out of their pyramid, which is tucked away in the green hills of Mt. Washington. Their releases float in that immaculate space where the electronic meets the organic. I could throw a number of adjectives at you right now, but let’s go straight to the source, and get the story in Matthew and Jesse’s words:
Why did you start Leaving Records?
While I was working at dublab (for non-profit internet radio posse out of Los Angeles), there were daily encounters of untapped musicians from many scenes. I presented the label idea to my favorite artist Jesselisa, and she agreed to head all visual direction. We had been entirely dialed-in to the Los Angeles music and art scene at Florida State University, being head-on immersed in a wonderful art department and college radio station.
It was something that we started in our living room, cutting and pasting away at our new homie dak’s debut release. The silk screening, the tape-dubbing, it was all done as an art project. It wasn’t long until we realized the project was one we could let others see and hear through the pipelines of dublab, sort of re-injecting all of the amazing music we had come across through that very same community of world-wide listenership and art.
Nothing would have happened without the other, having complete confidence in Jesselisa’s craft and design being visual director of the label, and her having trust in my curation of unheard music, we began… It’s so valuable working closely with our artists to develop their first records, to develop the album art, it’s all an intensely personal experience for us, everything is seeming made together. we learned a lot from dublab, they exposed us to a lot of the artists we have and are currently working with. (more…)
Ask any 20-something indie rock lover in New York what they’re doing this weekend, and they’re bound to rattle off names of North Brooklyn concert venues that aren’t technically supposed to exist: Monster Island Basement, Secret Project Robot, Death by Audio, Silent Barn, Shea Stadium, Party Expo. Check the show recommendations in The Village Voice, The Times, and even The New Yorker, and you will discover these cartoonish monikers sprinkled alongside trusty Manhattan standbys like Bowery Ballroom and Webster Hall.
Semi-legal concert spaces in Williamsburg and Bushwick are evolving from niche attractions to popular above-ground destinations. And yet they seem to have everything working against them, aside from their underground cachét: no budget, no liquor licenses, NOISE, far-flung geographical locations, and the passionate belief that quality live music should be accessible to everyone — even those too young to drink. So how are New York’s DIY venues staying open, despite all the economic and legal obstacles?
Truth be told, not all of these venues do stay open. Market Hotel, a dilapidated old bank building in Bushwick that once attracted up to 600 concert-goers at a time, closed its doors to the public last April after being raided by cops two nights in a row. Over on the Williamsburg waterfront, Paris London West Nile shut down this summer when its landlords increased the rent; neighboring venue Glasslands, meanwhile, became so popular that its owners decided to purchase a liquor license, weed out minors at the door, and go legit. (more…)
As of Tuesday, October 5th, The Social Network has 47 thousand Facebook friends and counting. Director David Fincher’s dramatization of Mark Zuckerberg’s rise from Harvard computer geek to Silicon Valley billionaire, the promotional posters inform us, is not only the “movie of the year”; is also “brilliantly defines the decade.” Whether we agree with Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers or not, we do not need him to tell us that the story behind the world’s most popular social networking site smacks of the generational. Facebook is a product of the millennium generation; along with Gmail, Twitter, and MySpace, it is bound to play a starring role in the history of a communications revolution tied to a specific time (the early 2000s) and place (the Web). But Travers seems to confuse history with its representation: is it The Social Network that is “definitive” of the decade now drawing to a close, or the flight of dorm-room inspiration it depicts?
In his choice of subject matter alone, Director David Fincher gambles on two basic assumptions, both asking that we suspend disbelief. First, he presumes that it is possible to recreate the past foibles and feuds of public figures — individuals who are still very much alive — and somehow resist the dual pitfalls of biased storytelling and historical inaccuracy. (According to Zuckerberg and other witnesses, he failed.) Second, The Social Network departs from the premise that it is possible — even desirable — to take stock in a massive social and cultural transformation when that transformation, to date, is still in its infancy. Mark Zuckerberg’s accidental brainchild may have a whopping 500 million friends and counting, but its ultimate impact on the quotidian of its subscribers — like the Facebook interface itself — remains as open to determination as it was in 2003, when the idea took seed. (more…)
From Harmonia to Neu!, early Kraftwerk to his solo recordings, Michael Rother is a living legend in the world of experimental music. After Harmonia, his project with Cluster’s Hans Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, made its final live appearance last year, Rother resurrected the music of Neu! in a living tribute called “Hallogallo 2010”. Formerly a duo with the late Klaus Dinger, the group now consists of Rother on guitar and electronics, bassist Aaron Mullan (longtime Sonic Youth sound engineer and guitarist/vocalist in the band Tall Firs) and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who has also recently appeared in Pete Nolan’s Spectre Folk project.
Live, the Hallogallo experience is a combination of grooving uplift — provided by Mullan and Shelley’s expert rhythm work — and maximalist processed guitar maneuvers by Mr. Rother. Rother has a long association and appreciation for All Tomorrow’s Parties, and has participated in ATP events on three continents. “I like the ATP family. I’m friends with quite a few of the organizers and it’s great to see their faces again everywhere. I’ve seen them in the UK, America, and Australia. They have a good selection of music and [the festival] has a very pleasant feel.”
Although music is at the heart of ATP, the event is distinguished by its diverse selection of extracurricular activities. “I was too late to baseball, I haven’t played cards yet, but we played tennis yesterday,” explains Aaron Mullan. “Hard court, it’s good. Not too many people [at ATP] are actually good at sports.” Despite his renowned sound-mixing abilities and longtime association with Sonic Youth, Mullan is such a modest guy that we wonder how he was drafted into Rother’s Neu!-reviving supergroup. (more…)
Maybe it’s because I never thought it would happen, but the pairing of Green Gerry’s cockeyed folk with the dazzling precision of a military spectacle keeps blasting me with a combination of awe and seasickness. In fact, clicking play on this video for “I Am Getting Old” felt kind of akin to discovering an intricate mosaic of spores on a slice of leftover grilled eggplant. Who in their right mind would find this dying sigh of a love song to be a fitting soundtrack for a kaleidoscope of uniformed motorcyclists? Not to mention that unforgettable gaggle of admiring military brunettes, applauding in deadening unison before videomulching away? I suppose Green Gerry’s music is not in its right mind, but that’s kind of what I like about it. (more…)
