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...

Snazzmobb album-release!

My indie-dance-rock trio Snazzmobb dropped our demo-EP, "The Violent Taste of Hot Sauce," last week!

It is available for free streaming and download on  our brand-new Bandcamp page... Five tracks are streamable live, plus four downloads rounding it out to nine if you choose to download!



Also, more of our material is now available on Youtube!

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.}

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.