Updates, art, etc.

A few updates...

My acoustic duo, Old Vine, is working on 3 simultaneous demo-records, and posting new content regularly to our Bandcamp page as they become available. One is our "real" EP, Cavernous Spaces... an album of original-material and original-arrangements of creative covers.

The second is a live-demo of covers from our bar-entertainment set, called Voodoo-Folk Live; B-Sides and Covers.

 The third is a record of oddball remixes of our tracks, called Voodoo-Folk Reconjured!

So... Listen, "like", and follow us on Twitter.

We are currently in the process of sculpting our content for two different sorts of sets, both as bar-entertainment, and playing original content in music-venues. We are always for hire, so book us as entertainment for your bar/ event/ party, or to play creative indie-rock shows in your performance-space. Email for details.



I've also re-started an old habit of posting video-demos of new songwriting material to my youtube channel... Here's a brand new one.

In other news, I'm having a sort of "friends and family" liquidation-sale at my Etsy site. If I know you personally, or you're "local" enough to know who I am in any sort of personal way, message me personally before making an offer on any pieces that you might want from my site... I have WAY more of my own material on the walls of my studio than I would like at the moment, so any reasonable offer will be considered.

New Music (Tonal Couture, Solo-stuff, Snazzmobb)

A few music updates. I've been pretty busy as a musician lately. Here's some stuff I've been working on.

Snazzmobb is still plugging away at refining our set, now that we've finally settled into a refined bass/ drums/ keys trio arrangement... we're currently polishing edges and editing our press-kit, hoping to start shopping it to venues and promoters soon. I'm not going to lie, it's been a tumultuous year for the outfit, with quite a few strange setbacks befalling the initial lineup I set up a year ago this month, with the intent to fast-track the act to playing out quickly and often by mid-winter of last year. Through that time-period, we ended up writing a set three times longer than it needed to be, featuring songs from all the various phases of the band's still young, yet already rocky, lifespan. That long-form set meandered and wandered, was probably interesting in some ways, but not at all moments what we had initially set out to do. We've recently sliced that set by a third, leaving the content that reflects what we sound like NOW, and we're really happy with what we're almost ready to unleash. Accordingly, the demo that we recently released already feels outdated, as it was recorded as a duo with a bit of a different focus... I hope to drop some sort of an accompanying single soon to demonstrate the current feel of our content.

I recently also started playing with a downbeat instrumental dub act on the seacoast, called Tonal Couture. This project is POLAR opposite from Snazzmobb, and I LOVE that. While the snazz is a rambunctious, high-energy, venue-focused dance act, Tonal Couture is super relaxed and ambient, better suited for swanky martini-lounges and chill-out-rooms. It's fun to play, and fun to listen to. We record our sessions, and we've made select cuts available on our Bandcamp page, as part of the possibly-fictitious un-album (quickly becoming a bizarre future box-set of some sort), called "Future Rarities and B-Sides Without A-Sides." There are 12 tracks up at the moment... check them out, and enjoy.



Also, I've started working on a post-LeVautourEnsemble phase of solo-content. This time around, I'm using my own name (well, sorta... I'm dropping this stuff as "Bernard LeVautour," which is how I've usually billed myself in recent musical-projects) and promising myself to drop the "experimental" schtick and finally make music that I would actually want to LISTEN to. Expect sparse, down-tempo electro-jazz type stuff, mostly... because that's what I tend to actually be most into. Here's the first track I dropped to debut that sort of content...

Help Wanted- Consummate Performer/ Snazzmobb Keyboardist.

Want to play the coolest key-rig in the business? My band Snazzmobb is looking to fill a hole in our live-lineup. 

We are looking for a consummate, energetic performer to join our show, to spazz out behind this contraption while filling in some holes in our live sound. 

While a skilled keyboard player would be the ideal fit, this role, to be perfectly honest, is not particularly musically challenging if the right person doesn't choose to make it such. First and foremost, we are looking for an absolutely electric performer with a basic working knowledge of music, the ability to push buttons and follow directions. Someone who is, say, usually a guitarist, with a good sense of rhythm and the desire to put on an explosive show, could be as good a match for this role as someone with professional synth experience.

Job responsibilities would involve playing some very basic keyboard parts (many of which are already written) on this rig, which is extremely simple and easy to use (it's built from a mid-'80's Casio- an ultra dummy-proof keyboard.). Additionally, this person would be responsible for controlling a rack of assorted noise-making junk... pushing play-buttons on sampling-devices, cuing loops, etc... basic tasks that would free up the hands of other members, to allow us to do more of our trademark spastic performing and less gear-juggling and button-jockeying. All such tasks are carefully and clearly documented on extensive set-notes ("$nazz-Note$") that we meticulously (compulsively?) update following each weekly session. 

This act has been practicing primarily as a bass/ drums/ vocal/ noise duo for the past several months, following some complications with the original lineup that was put together in the Fall of 2012. With this arrangement, we have an entertaining set of songs written, a demo, a press-kit, and a stage-rig, all nearly complete and ready to start booking shows, waiting mostly on finding the right person to fill this particular role. We also collaborate remotely with a cast of talented individuals for song-craft, sample-production, etc, such as Adhesiveslipper (Noise-wizard/ Headhat Records bossman), Sammie Ryan (Sinestetici), etc. 

Ideally, this act will perform live (hopefully soon) as an extremely high-energy bass/ drum/ keys trio. Despite the stage-rig built extensively out of modified pieces of mannequins (this keyboard rig is just one of several elements that work within a coherent visual theme) this is most definitely NOT a concept-art project. Our goal is is merely to entertain people, to make weirdos dance, to offer audiences a crazy good time, to turn concert-venues into really wacky parties while we play. If this sounds like something you could get passionate about, you might be the person we're looking for. If so, we practice on Friday mornings, usually 10:30 to 2 or so, in Hudson, New Hampshire. Email me at bernard.levautour@yahoo.com if you're interested in giving it a try. Feel free, of course, to share this with your friends if YOU'RE not who we're looking for, but you think you might know someone who is.

In the meantime, here are a couple examples of the sort of thing we're doing, a couple teaser-videos we've dropped with some content from our forthcoming demo "The Violent Taste of Hot Sauce"-

New Snazzmobb content!

My new band Snazzmobb posted a new video-teaser yesterday. This is the second released track from our forthcoming demo-EP "The Violent Taste of Hot Sauce." (watch the first one, "Real People, Real Sex," here.)

This one's the only content that we didn't write in our current set (ready to debut live soon... peel your eyes.) This is an original medley arrangement, with all due respect and reverence to His Purple Highness.

Enjoy, and feel free to share with your friends.

Pull Trouble From The Fire gets a bit less clandestine....

Pull Trouble From The Fire, the band that I've been playing with, that I spoke of in the last entry, is making yet more gradual moves to step out from the shadows and become a tad less secretive. (Click on the band's name to check out the Facebook page, and click "Like." You know, if you're into that sort of thing. Which you are.)

We dropped a teaser-video and some photo-content this week.

Enjoy.

{Special thanks to Macalastair Ming of Tipsy Cougar for stopping by our hideout to catch some video-footage and photos at practice.}

Pull Trouble From The Fire...

Since this summer, I've been playing, for the first time in a very long time, with an actual band, that actually practices, with an actual functional lineup (whoa, right? I know, strange). We've been keeping it pretty well under-wraps up until now (and I'm certainly not going to pull the curtain back all at once)... but the first hints of that band are now on Facebook. Stop by and "Like" us... because you WILL. And you'll want to have the inside scoop as soon as more content starts to drop... I promise.

To be perfectly honest, I had been actively avoiding joining a new "real" band for quite a long time... but these guys approached me at a time when I REALLY needed an outlet, so I agreed to sit in with them, see what they were up to... and, honestly, they turned out to be far too good to not become more seriously involved with. No joke. And as most of you know, I'm pretty damn jaded about most "bands" (hence all the solo/quasi-solo-projects intended to question conventions like "listenability"...This one isn't like that.) Like whoa.

LeVautourEnsemble... back from the dead.

Sometimes projects that lay dormant for a while come surprisingly back from the dead.

I didn't see it coming, but in retrospect, my accidental decision to revive LeVautourEnsemble seems to make sense. The project was started while I was extremely busy with schoolwork as an undergrad. I think about things in an unusual way sometimes, so occasionally, when I was working on writing something or understanding a literary-concept, I would need to make some noise, drop a "soundtrack" for the scenario to tape in order to arrive at my "Eureka!" moment. LeVautourEnsemble was my solo-project dumping-ground for the outcomes of such sonic experimentation. The medium was mostly electronic, but quite a bit of other sonic textures slipped through the filters at various times as well.

During the couple of years I took off between degrees, I didn't need L.V.E.. I had collaborators around, and time on my hands. Fun records from both Tipsy Cougar and Swords We Swallow came out of this time. My first semester in Grad.school, however, I was back to the grind, with little of the vague "I'm a musician" time to work with that I had gotten temporarily used to. I still had sounds in my head, though, ideas that couldn't be worked through in any medium but sound. That's just how I work. So I kept a recording-file open on my macbook, and my equipment plugged in and ready to go, and when I hit a road-block, I would open it up, make a bit of noise, and let off some scholarly steam.

I ended up working on one track over the course of a single semester. It's called "Metamorphoses"... it's kind of a sonic and conceptual mess (as the single audible product of an entire semester should be, right?), but I'm fairly happy with it, considering...

So, between a new track that fits succinctly into the initial purpose of the project, and the video that I posted on Christmas Eve that I could think of no better umbrella to throw under, I guess LeVautourEnsemble is back... and my record "...whose wings are a dull reality." WASN'T really "completed" in 2006 like I thought that it was.

The track is available streaming on both Myspace (click here), and on our new Facebook fan-page (click here). Become a fan/ friend/ whatever... and let me know what you think! (Additional audio and videos from the project are available at both sites as well, and I would assume that more will follow. But as you can probably tell, this one's pretty much out of my control at this point.)

Welcome to 2010

Happy New Years.

I have a break from classes, and yet, so much still to do.

I have little new to write, really (although a whole lot in the works), but I figured I would sign on and share some footage of how the Tipsy Cougar crew rang in the decade at the Swords We Swallow Studios. Sara and I decided that, rather than going out, we would spend a quiet New Year's Eve at home, feel snazzy and drink martinis... then Ming and Dean joined us, which ended up proving that, in the right circumstances, four people can make for the most raging party in town. We ended up rocking out some pretty neat abstract, improvised electro-folk... noise... There are quite a few videos of this chaos floating around the interwebs right now, but this one (although long, I'm sorry) captures bits and pieces of most of them, and sums up the fun (and entertainment) of the evening nicely.

Scatter-Brained Notes, Notes From a Scattered Brain.....

If you read my last couple of entries, you might have noticed mention of a fairly full-slate of planned near-future entries. You may also be noticing that its been a little while since I posted those last entries. So, here's the deal...

Since I posted those last entries, Sara and I (and thus, Swords We Swallow) have moved into a new apartment/ studio-complex in Dover to get situated on the seacoast prior to starting grad.school at the University of New Hampshire in September. We've done alot of packing boxes, loading boxes, driving, unloading boxes, unpacking boxes, decorating, organizing, working to get the dog accustomed to the new surroundings (and in turn, getting myself accustomed to living with a small furry dog) and then trying to find time and patience to decompress after this. At the same time, I've been juggling two restaurant jobs in two different parts of the state (which means more driving...) and it's probably worth noting that the new one that I've started has caused a bit more anxiety than anticipated in several regards.

Basically, what this all boils down to... is that I have more than a bit of communication burn-out at the moment. I'm well aware that over the past few weeks I haven't been nearly as good at answering my phone, responding to emails, writing past-promised reviews, etc, as I would like to be, and I apologize. At the same time, however, I am trying to allow myself to get it out of my system while I can, before school starts.

I still have several entries partially written, and now that we're settled in to the new place, I plan to start regularly posting them again. Look for a Civil Vain review, a Lady Gaga critique, and possibly an entry on the imminent demise of the restaurant industry as we knew it, as well as several other tentatively slated pieces, in the very near future.

In the meantime, Tipsy Cougar finished the recording of our debut record, "Immaculate Conceptions," before Sara and I moved out of the Cougar Pad in Manchester... Here's a video of the last track that we completed for the record, "Manchester Song," that we filmed while recording.

Tipsy Cougar - Manchester Song


If you've been following the band at all, you probably know that we record completely live, with as few overdubs as we can manage. This particular track was recorded entirely on two-track cassette tape, with absolutely no addition tracks added... and I'm still incredibly happy with the way that it turned out; a personal goal of mine (the video's audio is from the camera's mic, not the album-version). I believe that the video was a recording of the take that we ended up using for the record.

We're currently working on brainstorming creative ways to package and distribute the record, bypassing the conventional music-industry as completely as possible.

Tipsy Cougar is now also on Facebook! Visit us, become a fan!

Swords We Swallow has set up our new studio in a room of our new apartment in Dover... We recorded an improvised track and video after we had set up the equipment, but we've decided not to make it available because, well... after a day off of unpacking, decorating, and setting up equipment, we'd had quite a bit of wine... and that's pretty evident in the quality of the material. We're currently debating about posting edited segments of the film, as it's marginally entertaining... but we're also working on turning the material that we improvised into an actual song and recording a better/ more complete/ less annoyingly "abstract" version.

In the meantime, here's a photo of our new set-up...



More such photos are available for your perusal on our Myspace and Facebook pages.


So, basically... stay tuned, peel your eyes. I plan to post more in coming days.

A Pair of Past-Related Reviews; Part 4; "You and I... walk by the... sea"; Conclusion.

While reviewing the new records from Jason Hebert and Cameron Audet, and musing on my own musical projects over the past few years, I noticed some interesting parallels between the body of work that our front-stage trio has collectively produced post-Rusted Tricycle. Both the similarities and differences between all of our musical trajectories are somehow coincidental, or somehow a part of the structure that we grappled off of separately after gaining our footing together with that band. Who knows.

Post-Tricycle, all three of us played in rock bands at one point in time or another that had a certain degree of “commercial viability,” and arguably (these comparisons are inevitably a bit subjective) achieved more of that sort of success than we did during our time with the Trike. After that, we have all recorded and performed with an acoustic project, and have all at least dabbled in one form or another of electronic music. I suppose that, musical trends being what they are (as discussed a bit within each of the reviews posted prior), these latter two could be claimed about most of our musical peers from the emo/ pop-punk scene of that time. I don’t really know. Nevertheless, these similarities seem noteworthy to me, considering how stylistically far-removed both of those formats are from the genre that Rusted Tricycle played.

Looking at the acoustic and electronic music that the three of us have produced independently of one another, it’s all very different, and we seem to all arrive at our influences and reasons for gravitating toward those sorts of music from very different junctures. These differences, however, remind me of a running joke that we had while R.T. was around.

I remember that we used to tease each other a bit that the front-stage trio of the band was accidentally similar in structure to a boy-band, where each member has a different “character,” stereotype, and demographic. Jason was the “indie/ emo” guy, with a flair for more serious and dramatic emotional songwriting and stage-presence. Cam reflected the “pop-punk” schtick, sentimental, light-hearted, and endearingly goofy. I was the “punk-rocker,” appearing onstage with liberty-spikes, Misfits tees, and a more rambunctious performance-demeanor.

As we’ve grown up, both musically and personally, in the time since R.T., the differences between all of our projects in both the electronic and acoustic formats are almost startlingly predictable when compared to an evolving and maturing version of our Rusted Tricycle “boy-band” stereotypes. Jason’s music has been consistently emotionally complicated, multi-layered, and dramatic, with almost epic tendencies at times. Cam has honed his pop songwriting skills, playing soft, catchy music with “pantie-melting” tendencies. My own music has usually veered toward the abstract and avant-garde, conceptually chaotic and intentionally inaccessible to most audiences even remotely “mainstream.”

I don’t want to get into too much of a “nature vs. nurture” argument about how much of both these similarities and differences were derived from our experiences with Rusted Tricycle all that time ago, and how much was just aspects of our personalities that inevitably came to similar conclusions that would have been reached regardless of the time with the Trike. I merely thought that these “Where Are We Now” parallels were interesting, and I figured that I’d share.

The next time you see one of us playing out somewhere, yell for a Rusted Tricycle song. It will either get a laugh, or a scowl with a “damn you, Bernie” attached, which would be amusing either way. Who knows, maybe we’ll actually remember how to play one (I know that I heard a recording of Cam doing a version of “Seashells” not that long ago, and I’ve been known to occasionally bust out “Cherry Coke” when playing acoustic… my favorite was an impromptu version once with cello and synth). Hell, yell for “Slit.” That would be REALLY funny.

"Unexpected Situations on a Crowded Street," a preface in poetic explanative expiriments.

"Beyond superstition, I was aware, in a manner more forceful than anything my academic research had brought home to me, of the extent to which my identity and the words I utter coincide, the extent to which I want to form my own sentences or to choose for myself those moments in which I will recite someone else's. To be asked, even by an isolated, needy individual to perform lines that were not my own, that violated my sense of my own desires, was intolerable." -Stephen Greenblatt, "The Improvisation of Power (Epilogue)"

Unexpected Situations on a Crowded Street, Revisited.

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

Full circle…
Riot.
Unexpected situations on a crowded…
Street.
What street?
This street,
That street,
The same

As the space in which we
Make these noises now
Sits a mere block-and-a-half from
That pad we inhabited
When I was a child…
In fact, I can almost see it from our
Grime-encrusted back-window as
I stand now sporting
Straight edge tattoo-work
Chain smoking Specials, sipping
Cloudy Green Fairy and red wine…
Life…
Blood.

To those who think they’ve
Kept tabs on my back-catalogue
So much of this must
Seem a bit strange
So bear with me a bit as I lay myself bare,
I tend to think in some sort of semi-logical trajectory
This makes some semblance of sense,
I swear.

I’ll slit my
{Insert something
Censored here}
For you,
I really will…

This game of performance is a Riot

Leaving faceless idols of divinity hanging
Upside-down from trees,
With banners of perversity
For its own sake,
And so many dead
People from a country that
We all doubted that the song ever
Really had anything to do with…

As the circular nature of this
Riot
Leaves me battling
Myself now,
Pitting what I
Should do against
What I seem to have to…

As after trying to quit
Cold-turkey so many
Times, I pull the
Tourniquet so
Tight again to
Inject “Music”
And “Performance,”
The stuff that seems to
Kill, into my veins with
Rhythmic pulsing pump and
Flow again, banging out
Noise with these people who
Shared the same first ironic
Moronic cult of a “band,”
Performance-art shams,
Devoid of Concept besides
In anachronistic retrospect,
A willing pint we call and
Raise.

As I battle the
Balance of
Sounds I can’t
Seem to cease making
With the words that
Prove my passion,
Squeezing my own
Voice within perversely
Problematic rehashes and
Re-fires of words from the
Past that I put in my
Mouth that weren’t really my
Own,
And try to make them fit
With what I really
Can’t stop needing
To say,
In speech and sounds,
In synthesis.

With this fire,
Raging blue with
Volatile and toxic
Plastic, we
Burn symbolic streets.

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

“Cops can’t do nothing’, even though they have those guns,
Youngsters on the sidewalk, glassy eyes turned to the sun.
You stand in amongst the throngs, try to stay alive,
Chantin’ pro-rebellion songs, smothered by the hive.
Ground comes up to meet your head, scattered mates call your name.
You’re gonna be left for dead, playin’ your private/public riot game.”

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

{The preceding is a piece of word-collage poetry that I posted on the Myspace blog for my electro-rock outfit Tipsy Cougar, who recently finally started posting some actual "music" to our site. It's intended to serve as a strange sort of preface to the next piece of noise that we intend to post, a drastically divergent reworking of the long-forgotten Moron Cult/ Pseudophonics song "USOCS". This seemed to be an ironically fitting choice for the outfit, as all three active members of the band were at one point or another at least tenuously part of the older act (in fact, depending on definitional technicalities, and at different junctures, Moron Cult was all three of our "first" band.) Thus, I must give credit where it's due and point out that some segments of the above that appear in quotations were originally written by C. Charles ("xian") Dyer of that outfit (while sitting next to me in driver's ed. class, in fact). Also, references and lyrical fragments are borrowed liberally throughout from many bands that I've contributed to in the past (we could make a game of it, if you like... cookies of some sort should go to those among you that can pick out and identify the most...)... This would probably be as good of a time as any to point out that if you haven't taken a listen to what I'm doing with Tipsy Cougar yet, you should. Conceptually, what I'm attempting there in auditory form is very similar to some terrain tread often within the pages of this blog.}

This is Boston, Not L.A...Still.

As green versus yellow fire spit across the nation this month, renewing long-forgotten divergent styles of shit-talk, the pertinent dialogue for a moment turned to “cultural rivalries.”

Glancing through an assortment of articles and snippets on the subject in the Boston Globe one slow morning at work, I was reminded of how strange of a chasm still sometimes sits between pop-culture and the counter- or sub-, the mainstream media and the underground-/ arts-media… and how well the idea of this sort of “cultural rivalry” can sometimes demonstrate this. What seems pertinent and obvious within one lifeblood can often fall irrelevant on deaf and confused ears within the context of another.

The articles in the Globe (and, as I’ve noticed since, most other mainstream sources that covered the “broader” implications of the basketball playoffs) seemed to want to insist (with a suggestion that, to the readership, it would be a given, an obvious assumption, something only briefly worth mentioning as an afterthought for those of us living most extremely under a cultural rock) that the rivalry between Boston and Los Angeles, culturally, as cities, was forgotten since the days of Bird and Magic, and completely dominated by sports over all other elements, paling in comparison to the Boston versus New York rivalry, which is driven (obviously) by the same sort of sports-first cultural tunnel-vision. Duh.

There are those of us, however, within the varied readership of these mainstream publications who most definitely do not live under cultural rocks, yet were still a bit surprised by these supposedly “obvious” assumptions.

For those of us who grew up and live daily within various facets of an art-driven “counter-culture” ( I use that term hesitantly, but am unable to come up with a succinct replacement that better conveys the idea), the pertinent rivalry has always been Boston vs. L.A.

The “forgotten rivalry,” huh? I assure the staffers at the Globe, to musicians and artists in the Boston area, the bad blood with the city of angels has never completely left our minds, while the feud with New York has always seemed more like a fairly good-natured (albeit violent) sparring about sports among “friends.” Hell, with the distance separation being as small as it is, holding legitimate grudges between Boston and New York would be incredibly creatively and culturally limiting for artists and musicians. We trade shows and gallery-appearances on a weekly basis; our cultures and tastes are similar enough any sort of “real” rivalry would be self-defeating. Whether the team-flag-waving fanatic is willing to understand or not, for the sub-culture there is a daily, pragmatic need for us to leave the Red Sox vs. Yankees grudges in the pubs and on the fields.

If the mentions of rivalry in the media-coverage was limited to sports-fanaticisms, I would concede the cultural over-looks as aspects of a suburban-mainstream American culture outside of my realm of most-adequate experience. Unfortunately, license has been taken to translate “sports” and “culture” into interchangeable terms, and translate the entirety of one into the limited scope of the other. “Cultures” were contrasted, in ways that had nothing besides context to do with sports.

The arts scenes in both New England and Southern California have been acutely aware of a “cultural” chasm separating them for quite a long time. Having worked as a musician extensively in both parts of the country, I can assure you that this separation is far more fundamentally life-style-based than any assumptions that a mere sports rivalry can caricature during a play-off period pitting one commentator’s accent against the next, or compiled lists of celebrities residing in one locale over another (which reminds me that I should point out for those in my readership that are bound to quip that I’m not even “from” Boston [the city proper] or a citizen of the commonwealth of Massachusetts that EVERY of the articles to which I’m referring that boasts of Beantown’s celebrity roster lists Adam Sandler, who has largely touted his allegiance to the neighborhood that he’s from mere blocks away from where I grew up and currently reside [once again] in the Queen City of the Granite State… not to mention Aerosmith, who’s members hail from a rather rural area even further north in New Hampshire [and I would prefer not to even mention the rednecks from Godsmack, as I consider them a bit of a disgrace to the state]…)

Flipping stations on a car-ride during the playoffs, I caught an afternoon DJ on WBCN spinning The Freeze’s “This is Boston, Not LA” as a rallying-cry for Celtics fans prior to the evening’s game. Great song, great compilation… and I promise, it spoke to so much more than basketball, and still does, to New England punk fans. When I got home, I cued up The Showcase Showdown’s classic Boston anti-Cali-anthem “213.”

I promise, for artists and musicians, this rivalry has nothing to do with basketball. I am disappointed that “credible” and well-staffed publications such as the Boston Globe and the LA Times, who operate in cities whose “dominant” cultures are more dominated (possibly ironically) by the “sub”-cultures than most others in America, seem to be completely and naively oblivious to this.

Lamenting a Lack of the Eclectic; A Preface to a Record-Review.

I never would have thought, prior to leaving Arizona, that I would be spending a clear and cold New England winter evening sitting on a spot on the bank of Manchester’s Lake Massabesic familiar to me for mostly forgotten reasons from years past, lamenting the local lack of certain types of musical acts that I had taken a bit for granted for the time that I was in Phoenix.

To be rather blunt, some conversations with varied musician-acquaintances in New England since my return have not proven terribly optimistic. It seems that the musical situation in these parts has stagnated quite drastically; for all my digging around to see what’s new and what various players are up to, it seems that nearly every act falls into one of three categories, none of which I can seem to get particularly excited about.

There’s a peculiar sort of distinctly “American” (*cough* redneck) shout “metal” that doesn’t seem to exist to the same extent anywhere besides here. This sort of thing is mostly perpetrated, apparently, by musicians who were playing in bands heavily influenced by Korn and The Deftones back when that sort of thing was viable, and, in an act of collective panic when nu-metal proved outmoded, added a dose of influence from Slayer and Pantera for the sake of “credibility” so that they could claim (in a naive bout of angry irony) “Hey look, we play real metal now”… this is something that I could rant on for pages, but I‘ll spare you, with just the reminder that, if you look at its history and formative influences, Heavy Metal is a distinctly European phenomenon. I know, to legions of guys who are much larger than I am with Kerry King goatees and tribal tattoos these are fighting words. Oh well.

There seems to be a bizarre revival of mid-’90’s-Boston-style tough-guy hardcore and street-punk, played mostly by guys who were a bit too young to have been terribly involved in those scenes the first time around (I mean, I was pretty young when I was listening to the older guys lament about the good-old-days, and I could have baby-sat most of this new crop…), with some acts and performers who have apparently been hanging on through the last decade and are now seeing their popularity unexpectedly resurface (the number of recent “reunions” that I’ve heard about by bands that I saw at Café Savoi and The Elvis Room when I was fifteen boggles my mind).

…And then there’s the glut of bands playing a cookie-cutter form of “screamo” that passed its flavor-of-the-minute lifespan at least two years ago. You know the type… whine, scream, whine-whine, scream…octave-chords, octave-chords, breakdown, octave-chords, breakdown, breakdown… Slanty-hair, girl-pants, white-belts... you know the cliches, you get the drill.

(Of course, I’m leaving out the “I was on a music-based reality-TV show a year ago and now I play acoustic cover-songs to drunks and draw big crowds who think I’m a ‘celebrity’” phenomenon… This is by far the most disturbing to me of all, but it’s a different cultural animal entirely that needs a much wider scope to tackle adequately)

Add to this what seems to be a near-complete lack of consistent or reliable venues, lack-luster and clique-ish crowds, etc. (sound familiar, Phoenix? These seem to be national concerns right now) and I’ll admit that I’m in no particularly educated position from which to review the state of the “scene” around here, as I have yet to get wind of any shows or performances that sounded even remotely worth attending, or any new act worth giving a listen to and getting excited about. (If anyone in my readership feels able to help me out in this regard, I’m all ears… but I’d prefer to steer clear of anything that falls formulaically within the aforementioned categories, which, I know, makes your task considerably more difficult.)

In short, what the New England music scene north of Boston seems to be lacking right now is the emphasis on ecclecticism that I earnestly felt was in the air in the area when I left a few years ago. There was a time, in fact, shortly before I left Manchester, when I might have even complained that a potential problem with the state of New England music was that everyone was trying a bit too hard to be different, to the extent that most of what was going on was almost "artsy" to the extent of being unlistenably abstract. I am utterly confused as to how things have apparently headed in such a polar-opposite direction in such a relatively short period of time.


These thoughts lead my mind to early scribbles in a “blogs to write” list that I jotted down when I first started posting here.

When I initially thought to review it, “This is My Boomstick” by Phoenix’s “The Stiletto Formal” was a bit closer to being a “new” record than it is now. I kept putting it off, however, as new ideas found their way to my pen, and thus this page, faster.

At this point, it’s a bit late, but seems a pertinent undertaking, if based on my personal present local-music-woes, if for no other reason.


…to be continued.

More Asbjorn music, and Portishead fan-geek-ery...

Alright, so...

In my last entry, I pretty much blatantly ASKED you to call me crazy. I requested that my readers psychoanalyze a recent dream that I had, and the only responses that I received were from a couple of people that know me personally extremely well. The rest of you are slacking. You almost passed up an opportunity to tell me I'm as off my rocker as you think that I am. But it's not too late. I'm still curious. Let me know what you think is dancing around in my subconscious.

In other news, as more notes of continuation of my last entry...

Shortly after I posted last with recent updates from music projects affiliated with the Asbjorn Poetry and Arts Collective, Nat Ward's Aperture project posted a set of new dark ambient electronic tracks to their page. Definitely solid mood-music and atmosphere and texture tracks well worth checking out.


In broader musical news, after a rather questionable decade, things are starting to look up. Retrospectively, of course... but after cultural situations spend a time falling backwards, sometimes it takes looking into the recent past (a point prior to things going awry) to move into what is to (positively) come.

Yes, I sound like a fan-geek. Yes, this is old news in the music blog-o-sphere.

But, as I see it, this is one of my only massive cultural weak-spots. The only issue on which I AM, admittedly, a bit of the fan-geek.

That's right, I'm talking about Portishead.

If you haven't heard, they're back.

Here are some videos of new songs from their recent All Tomorrow's Parties appearance.

Strange Dreams and Music, Music Out of Strange Dreams...

I have finally gotten around to establishing an online presence for the acoustic/ eclectic-folk songs that I've been dabbling in for years and am just now starting to focus more of my musical attention on. So, check out my new music profile on Myspace, listen to the songs, add me, and leave some feedback.

What's up on the site right now are merely some extremely rough mixes for the sake of the songs alone, and most is not even, honestly, terribly "new" material. In fact, the only track that's actually "new" is the first one on the player, "The Substance of Logic." It is dedicated to someone who would have heard it prior to now, had she bothered to open the package that I sent her. The second song, "Symphonies and Dorian Dreams," was briefly debuted on the LeVautourEnsemble site a couple of years ago (when it actually was a "brand new track"), but I soon realized that it was not nearly "electro" enough for the record that I was putting together for that project. The other two songs currently on the player ("The Box" and "13.5%") were composed and recorded shortly after I moved to Arizona, about four years ago. Both require some lyrical tweaking and new recordings, but what I have will have to serve as sufficient examples for the time-being.



>


In other musical news from the Asbjorn Poetry and Arts Collective family...

I have added a spirally, surreal instrumental jam called "The Pits are Deep" to the Myspace player for the Phoenix lineup of The Green Sea.

I added two more tracks from the LeVautourEnsemble record "...whose wings are a dull reality..." to the player for that project for free download.

I tossed a couple more tracks from Ashes of Frost's 2001 "release" "Mysts of the Iced Morn" up on the retrospective profile for that outfit.

Wes Hopeless, my principle collaborator in the Phoenix lineup of The Green Sea, has added a new song to the profile for his electronic project, Entropy 33.

Jacob The Dandy has recently added a new track called "Expletive, Expletive" to his iSound player that's pretty neat.


In other news, I had a very strange dream last night that I can't seem to get out of my mind. I was on some sort of "family vacation" (although I don't recall any members of my family being present). My car was stolen, converted into a convertible, and used as some sort of a suicide-bomb on a cul-de-sac. Meanwhile, I was left to care for a baby that wasn't mine, who quickly and before my eyes began to age and grow. She rapidly became a toddler, a cute little girl placing her hand in mine for protection, ad then a competent, well-spoken, smart and well-mannered young woman, pulling herself closer into me as she aged, kissing me, as we walked together, still hand in hand, toward the burning wreckage of my now-topless little white car.

Go ahead, psychoanalyze me. I personally have no idea what this means.

Gimmicks, Grimy Glitz, and Chaos, remembering Stych, Part 2.

“You got- something to say, don’t need …” Ben bellowed at the crowd, who were most likely by this point closer to disgusted and annoyed than anything else, in a baritone-ish delivery that wasn’t quite talking, singing or yelling, but had elements of all three, and definitely wasn’t rapping either. He teetered on the edge of the stage, like a giant version of the Roadrunner, catching himself repeatedly to prevent a fall, just before the Coyote (the rest of us spasming on the stage behind him?) could catch up and push him over the edge. As he “sang,” his hands kept in continual motion; stealing hats from audience members and placing them on the heads of unsuspecting girls at the other end of his enormous wingspan, tossing out torn pages of ridiculous gimmick-porn mags, obscenely taunting the dancers that we had brought to occupy the cages that this venue happened to have perched on the corners of the stage. A devilish smirk stung across his face the whole while.

Later in the show, I thought that it would be a good idea to attempt to enter the cage with the dancer that was closest to my side of the stage. I forgot, however, that I was wearing a guitar around my neck, and needed room in front of it for my hands to move in order to continue to play it. Naturally, despite my somewhat diminutive size (Ben often jabbed at me between songs with derogatories implying in creative/ offensive ways that I was pale and malnourished) I got stuck. I found myself in the entrance-way to the cage (which, for those of you who’ve never had the privileged and enlightening experience of being on the performing end of a stripper’s apparatus, is basically just two of the bars that are spaced ever-so-slightly further apart), attempting to continue playing, while trying to figure out if it was more feasible to get in or get out. Meanwhile, the dancer decided that, rather than help me, it would be more entertaining to continue dancing and laugh at me, and draw the crowd’s attention to my plight. We had, after all, brought her and her companion along for the purpose of entertaining the crowd, and with that purpose in mind, I can’t begin to claim that she made the wrong decision. After the song concluded, I was able to remove myself, only by removing my guitar and edging it out first, while Ben stood making mock head-scratching gestures between me and the laughing crowd. “You know, I’m not typically the type to complain that strippers are too thin, but… when that kid can’t fit into the cage, the openings might just be a bit too small. Hell, look at him. He turns sideways, he disappears!”

Ben jumped across the stage to the edge closest to the bar. “This next one’s dedicated to the bartender jerk with the pompadour that we can’t seem to distract away from him god-damn game of nudie video-poker. I heard that he’s an Elvis fan.”

“Want to listen to the king? YOU look like an Elvis fan…” The little girl’s voice on the sample ripped through the crowd (yeah, you guessed it, the name of the act and samples throughout the show were lifted and modified from the most inappropriate source that could have been chosen; a Disney cartoon intended for children, which also happened to strike a strange resonance with our caricature-ish front-man), and we launched into what was probably the noisiest cover of “Heartbreak Hotel” ever attempted.

From certain angles, this act could possibly have been ridiculously entertaining. For the same reasons, from absolutely every angle this act was just absolutely ridiculous. The thing was, to at least a couple of us involved in the project, that was completely the point. Stych wasn’t shock-rock, that game’s been done. We weren’t trying to be over-the-top, or support any sort of initiative to bring physical entertainment back to music. To some of us, Stych was mostly an experiment in the validity of incoherent gimmicks, a foray into the absurd, a performance-art pastiche of conflicting elements of how entertainment is currently sold and marketed (even the music itself was composed of countless elements that were intentionally ill-fitted for each other, absurd change-ups, and gimmicky dance-riffs stolen from genres that were completely not what we were selling ourselves as). The members who weren’t completely on the same page in this regard only added a validity and earnestness to the endeavor that couldn’t have been accomplished had we all been concept-artists dealing in the art of gimmickry, intentional revelers in the ridiculous.

And, hell, most of all, the chaotic (and absurdly loud) experiment that we called Stych was more fun than most of my other musical endeavors that had “legitimate” musical aspirations (but, prove themselves, in retrospect, not much less gimmicky) combined.

Gimmicks, Grimy Glitz, and Chaos; recalling the strange and short-lived mess that we called “Stych,” part 1.

Fumbling around with my guitar this morning, I stumbled onto a set of riffs that I hadn’t played or remembered in a few years.

A corresponding mental image struck me. I was crouched behind a set of unnecessarily-large speaker cabinets, wearing a big black Stetson-style hat, a black bandana pulled ranger-style over my face, and my matte-black power-strat with glittery silver letters of the word “Doom” propped on my shoulder like a frontier rifle.

A sample from a Rowdy Roddy Piper film spilled far-too-loud over the house P.A.

“I have come to kick ass and chew bubble-gum.”

“du-du-du-dutu-du.” I protruded from my shelter in a burst of silver smoke, aiming the deafening sound-bullets from my headstock into the confused and laughing crowd.

“…and I’m all out of bubble-gum.”

“du-du-du-dutu-du.” I stepped further onto the stage and out of the fogger’s blur, still cradling my musical rifle, targeting now Nat Ward, who stood bouncing and rocking with his fretless bass on the edge of the stage, clad in black besides the giant rubber Woody-Woodpecker head that he wore as a hat, and Ben Spellman, a large man taunting the crowd explicitly with his microphone, bobbing the two giant, multicolored antennas of hair that protruded from the front of his head.

“Oh my god,” a female voice on the sample shrieked.

“du-du-du-dutu-du.” I let my guitar sling itself down to the extent of the strap, and took a backwards dive, chest-level left-foot first (late-’90’s Boston pit-boss fashion) into the front rows of the crowd.

“bang!” I bounced my way back onto the stage.

“du-du-du-dutu-du.” My weapon was faced at Taco Dave this time around, smirking at me from behind a triggered drum-kit, surrounded by absurd stacks of the speakers and sub-cannons that were connected to it, a robot on some sort of audio life-support, as I lunged towards him in time to have mounted the speakers and be romping over the top of his kit by the time he hit his hi-hat twice and I dove back onto the stage as we launched into the frantic verse riff of the song Full Storm.

(…to be continued… if anyone out there happens to have digital-copies of images or videos from this or related "experiments," they would prove appreciated contributions, as I currently have nothing of the sort.)

In other news, I finally have some promotional graphics for this site that you'll start seeing around. Here are some examples, which I am willingly, as always, subjecting to the general criticism.

...Ice Metal In Retrospect... "The Perfection of the Hideous"...

"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places."

Yes, that's me, "Bernie Vulture," apparently dressed as a zombie in a snowbank. I played guitar ("Rhythm and Lead," according to the liner-notes of "The Virgin Forest...") in (Ashes of) Frost.

"For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries."
Kate "The Ice Queen" Kirby. Vocals.

"They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia."

Johnny Scarecrow. "Rhythm and Melody" guitar, bandleader.

"The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands."

Mac "The Bass Barbarian" MacDougal. Bass. Obviously.

"But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England;"

Sir Nathaniel Ward. Synth, keys, sequencing, sampling, noisemaking, etc. I think at one time we called him "Dr. Doomsday"?

"For there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous."

Nick Drouin. We had all sorts of derogatory nicknames for this kid, mostly out of harsh respect for the fact that he was WAAAY too good for how young he was at the time. Child, Princess, Nicky-poo, etc... sorry Nick. Drums.


"Of the hideous... Of the hideous... Of the hideous..."

The first flyer that I made for Frost. I was told that it was "too punk-rock" and that I wasn't allowed to make any more.

(The quotes in bold above the proceeding pictures are from the introduction to H.P. Lovecraft's "The Picture in the House," which we used an audio-rendering of, read with an expert-level of spookiness by Dark Dave, as the introduction-sample to most of our sets. I wish that I knew how to host and post audio, so that I could put that track up [it's featured on the "Complete Ashes of Frost" disk that I referred to in the last post] because it's quite excellent and entirely worth hearing.)

A later flyer; I believe that this is for a show that got re-routed to the Icy Cavern Of Death with the entire crowd in tow; I think I sprained my ankle, most of the band drank alot before we played, and alot of other strange things happened...


A flyer for a show with one of our favorite bands to play with, New Haven Connecticut's organic trip-hop darlings Tarmak... I miss that band quite alot...


The insert cut-outs for an extremely low-budget cassette compilation that we released/ were featured on...


A newspaper clipping, with my boots.


The rest of that picture. "Bernie Vulture of Frost goes Hard Core in Manchester." Hilarious. Press-kit fodder from near the outift's end...


This has been a presentation of Battleaxe Promotions, New Hampshire. Whatever that means.

Ashes of Frost, 7 Years Later.

Fall and early winter in New England is the sort of setting in which well-written heavy metal makes the most sense to me. Maybe it's because, then, that I'm back in New Hampshire at this particular time of year that, of all the bands that I've played with in the past, one in particular has been a recurring theme of conversation in the last couple of weeks.

At this time seven years ago, six of us were crammed into the extremely cold and dank basement of a colonial farmhouse on a hill in Candia, New Hampshire. It is apparent now that the music that we were creating there was intrinsically influenced by our surroundings and sensations at the time that, years later, that still proves to be the element that the music skillfully speaks to.



My first encounter with the band was as a spectator. I was requested by Johnny Scarecrow, the guitarist and band-leader, to attend their first show. Although the band that played that show was very different than what Frost was to become (the band was called merely "Frost" until very near to its demise, when the "Ashes of" was added) I was captivated by the vibe that they created. Within a week, I had been brought on to play guitar for the outfit, at the same time that the band was working on making a couple other post-first-live-experiment changes, like adding synthplayer Nat Ward to the fold. (I'm oversimplifying quite a bit and very knowingly leaving things out; If I were to relate all of the anecdotes of this act and time period that I personally find relevant or entertaining this entry would be a book.)

Within less than a month of Nat and I joining the band, we were working on our first recording, attempting to go it ourselves in that cold basement that, by this point, had adopted the snarky name "The Icy Cavern of Death." What we recorded during that time-period became (originally) a cassette-tape titled "The Virgin Forest is the Devil's Last Preserve..." (a quote from Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible'). That recording undoubtedly has some sonic "issues" (we were dealing with a VERY loud six-piece in a VERY small concrete box; I distinctly remember sitting with Scarecrow by the fireplace upstairs with headphones on, trying to get the mix right, exchanging scared looks and shrugs), but it could be argued it also captures the frigid atmosphere of our songs and our mindsets better (or more succinctly) than our later recordings. The last two songs on the music-player above, "Witchhunt" and "SMDR," are taken from that early cassette (that I have since done a bit of remastering to).

Later in the band's career, a second EP was recorded, in something closer to a "real" recording studio. This record was titled "Mysts of the Iced Morn," and was definitely a more "competent" recording, if not quite as "cold"-sounding as the first (I tend to think recording in the summer was part of that. I think others might lay blame also on the band beginning to decline and lose its focus by this point.) The EP was never officially released, but the first two songs on the player above ("Lullaby" and "Nightmare") are taken from it.


A disc containing both records, in addition to remixes, outtakes, and samples used in our live shows, labeled "The Complete Ashes of Frost," has been sitting on my shelf since shortly after the band's demise, and I still don't quite know what to do with it.

I think I'll post more pictures tomorrow, as while packing my car for the recent drive across the country I found a briefcase stuffed with promotional materials from several of my past bands, much of which I found to be quite hilarious. In the meantime, visit the retrospective Ashes of Frost page on Myspace.