Sigh. There is perhaps no better metaphor for growing up — and more fitting for this tenderest of odes to Julian Lynch’s home state — than a young child discovering the most exquisite creature he has ever seen, then realizing he may have had a hand in wounding it. Stephanie Wuertz’ video is the thought that makes the grass in your parents’ backyard smell a little more bitter than sweet — the repressed horror of the time you crushed on your first lady bug without wanting to, cloaked in the uncertain costume of a dream. (more…)
I haven’t seen JMW in years, but I will always remember him as the formidable skateboarder, line-cook extraordinare, cosmic guitar shredder, and all around big-hearted bro with whom I had the pleasure of sharing a rickety duplex for a short time back in Western Mass. Late last fall, JMW took a bad fall from a three-story building in San Francisco. Though he survived to tell the story, life after the accident has meant countless broken bones, months of recurring surgeries, and thousands and thousands of dollars in medical expenses that he will be potentially be paying off for the rest of his life. Now JMW has always had a very tight group of loving and equally big-hearted friends, and I was extremely touched to receive an email this week from M. Erikson — another former roommate, and the other half of Sudden Oak — about a limited run benefit L.P. that he put out this week to help take some of the edge off. Named after a tome by French spiritual surrealist René Daumal, A Fundamental Experiment is ten-track compilation of Neil Young covers by a group of artists in JMW’s extended friend circle, including Matt Mondanile of Real Estate/Ducktails, Sun Araw,Julian Lynch, The Laurentide Ice Sheet, and several other talented folks hailing from both coasts of this wide land. Somehow I have no doubt that the Father of Grunge himself would approve. Submissions by Julian Lynch and Matt Mondanile below.
SIDE A
1) Julian Lynch – Sedan Delivery
2) Metal Rouge – Helpless
3) Sam Goldberg – Transformer Man
4) Swanox – Thrasher
5) Sun Araw – Barstool Blues
SIDE B
1) Stag Hare – Cortez the Killer
2) Laurentide Ice Sheet – Southern Man
3) Trevor Healy – Round and Round
4) Avocet – Expecting to Fly
5) Matt Mondanile – Look Out For My Love
Julian Lynch, “Sedan Delivery”
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Matt Mondanile, “Look Out For My Love”
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Edition of 300. Pick up a copy and learn more about the project via the Fundamental Experiment blog.
When I stumbled upon Maids at a one-off Upstairs CD-R show at Coco66 this Spring, I remember stopping dead in my tracks, covering my ears in pain, and being unable to stop mouthing the words, “Abandon All Hope All Ye Who Enter.” Behind a suffocating wall of smoke, the 2-man rhythm section of New Jersey’s Big Troubles could be seen down on the ground in matching child’s poses, bowing in deference before a projection of a giant floating head — not unlike the Wizard himself, pictured above. I could barely make out what type of gear they were using, but the squall they produced was so debilitatingly loud that I couldn’t help remembering the one time I saw Whitehouse play and actually experienced the sensation of my ear drums being stretched to the ripping point. Funny thing, is Maids sound like nothing like Whitehouse. As I learned when Sam Franklin (also of No Demons here) rolled up to Newtown radio last Sunday, they simply layer purring drones and lackadaisical pentatonic keyboard scales until the room gets so saturated with sound that you actually end up getting a little scared. Probably all the more so because they are clean-cut surburban dudes who play in indie rock bands and show up on stage with their shirts tucked in.
Underwater Visitations Episode #7: The Maids Episode
Download the entire episode here.
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Julian Lynch is a pretty busy fellow these days. There’s his upcoming summer tour, his second LP Mare — set to be released on Olde English Spelling Bee in the coming months — and now this new 7″, slated for June, 21st. “Droplet on a Hot Stone” and its B-Side, “Nen Vole,” are actually older songs from Lynch’s first LP, Born 2 Run. They are being re-issued on blue vinyl by Underwater Peoples, along with a CD-R of the entire album.
When you listen to “Droplet on a Hot Stone” and Lynch’s newer material from Mare side-by-side, you can clearly hear his growth as a songwriter. “Droplet on a Hot Stone” is covered in all the distant tape hiss and clicking that you would expect from a song recorded in an artist’s basement. Its overall sound is a good fit for a hazy and hot afternoon where — pardon me for a second — you really just want to “chill.” Julian’s singing is filled with a longing for something more, but also a hope for the future. Julian took the chorus’ melody from a 1939 recording of schoolchildren singing a song called “All Around the Green Apple Tree,” filled with the distant optimism of the tail-end of the Great Depression. Maybe we can all take a page from Lynch’s book and borrow some of that optimism for ourselves.
Julian Lynch, “Droplet on a Hot Stone” (Droplet on a Hot Stone 7″, Underwater Peoples)
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Last week, “Sunday Brunch with Chocolate Bobka” on Newtown Radio was home to a DJ coup d’état. I wish I could say that the Underwater Visitations team staged a veritable DJ hold-up (in the manner of Horsemouth in the film Rockers, Reggae patois and all), but the reality of the situation had nothing to do with musico-political resistance, and everything to do with scheduling conflicts. Though no omelets or mimosas went into making of this episode, Ari and I had a full plate indeed — so much so that we stretched our two-hour repast into three and a half.
Cameron Stallones of Sun Araw delivered an inspirational virtual DJ set from sunny Los Angeles, aptly entitled “Sunburn City: Heads Up High.” Over Gchat, Cameron described the mix to me as the soundtrack to a “lazer lazy day”: “it starts all dewy, and then it gets mad sunburnt.” I’m not so sure what Sunburn city is, but apparently the photo above — which Cameron provided in the way of visual accompaniment — shows all the people who are waiting in line to get there. I probably should have asked him to tell me a little more about the place when he called into the station from the side of the road — not to mention his thoughts on Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Soviet mystic mathematician PD Ouspensky, whom he seemed intent upon discussion before the show– but we did end up having a pretty fascinating discussion on triangles, hairless dogs, and Hubble 3D.
Just when we were about to pack up for the day, G. Lucas Crane of Silent Barn, Woods, and Nonhorse fame rolled up with his mobile tape-manipulation dashboard and spilled about a hundred hand-labeled tapes onto the floor. Shortly thereafter, he dove into a hour-long mash-up of sounds as widely varied as Indian Raga, a “How to Feel Good Without Drugs” self-hypnosis cassette, and a tape he recorded while watching at home and jamming along to it on a synthesizer. The resulting performance — which you can hear at the tail end of the episode below — was frenetic enough to provoke a small seizure. But like any instance of sensory overload – listening to every FM station on the dial at once, for example — if you let the whole thing wash over you in one long continuous wave, you’ll probably end up feeling pretty blissed-out.
“Sunday Brunch with Chocolate Bobka Takeover: The Nonhorse / Sun Araw Episode”
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Describing Julian Lynch’s music is difficult, period. But it is even harder to describe his music without falling back on certain buzzwords, terms that have been so overused by music journalists over the past year that they seem to designate everything and nothing at all. We might say, for example, that Julian makes blissed-out 21st-century psychedelia, waltzing lackadaisically through the bottomless archive of musical references (Western and non-) that the internet puts at our fingertips. (more…)
Some food for thought to accompany this gorgeous–and I find, very autumnal–new music video by Amy Ruhl, straight from an interview I conducted with songwriter, ethnomusicology grad student, and all-around good-natured fellow Julian Lynch this month on Orange You Glad, his debut lp: (more…)
Is there something in the water in Ridgewood, New Jersey, or does the Garden State just happen to be coughing up a lot of blissed-out psychedelia these days? Like childhood neighbor and long-time collaborator Matt Mondanile (Ducktails, Predator Vision, Real Estate), Julian Lynch has been churning out more quality homegrown recordings than we have time to digest. His sound, a one-man patchwork of vocals, wah wah guitar, bass, drums, and kitschy synth effects, carries the happy-go-lucky quality synonymous with recent Ridgewood output into the territory of the singer-songwriter.
Describing 
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Is there something in the water in Ridgewood, New Jersey, or does the Garden State just happen to be coughing up a lot of blissed-out psychedelia these days? Like childhood neighbor and long-time collaborator Matt Mondanile (Ducktails, Predator Vision, Real Estate), Julian Lynch has been churning out more quality homegrown recordings than we have time to digest. His sound, a one-man patchwork of vocals, wah wah guitar, bass, drums, and kitschy synth effects, carries the happy-go-lucky quality synonymous with recent Ridgewood output into the territory of the singer-songwriter. 
