Headhat Records and Starving Raptors have teamed up to release an AMAZING charity-compilation, to benefit the New Hampshire SPCA. That's right, it's for kitties (and other animals).
This thing is, no exaggeration, 66 tracks long, and clocks in at almost 4 hours. It's only $5, which goes entirely to the charity, and features some phenomenal material.
My experimental-electronic outfit LeVautourEnsemble has a previously-unreleased, exclusive, otherwise-unheard track on this thing, called "Mamihlapinataei: Searching For Words In Other Tongues"... among an amazingly-diverse cast of characters, featuring some big names in indie-hip-hop, underground-celeb-types, and tracks that you probably haven't heard (but probably should) from as far away as Belgium, Australia, Japan... There's lots of exclusive content on this thing, and lots of things you'll hear and wonder how you POSSIBLY could have managed to sleep on up until now... Really, this is a QUALITY mix, from start to finish, that you absolutely need to hear.
Download it now here. (Dropped yesterday, MayDay, through Starving Raptors, available through Headhat later in the month.)
My solo musical outfit, LeVautourEnsemble, has just released our second record, "Machinique Meltdown," on the world-infamous Headhat Records!
Like the first LeVautourEnsemble record, (2010's long-delayed "...whose wings are a dull reality"... as well as Tipsy Cougar's notoriously chaotic 2011 album "Immaculate Conceptions" and a ton of other awesome and awesomely-odd stuff) this one is available to download for FREE/ donation through the "webhat" imprint. Download it here.... now. Because I said so. I mean, it's free, what do you have to lose??
Predictably, this record is an odd one. It's sorta-kinda a concept-record. It's sorta-kinda a response to a perverse challenge (I like challenges). It's sorta-kinda a hip-hop record (?!?) (emphasis on the sorta-kinda). It's sorta-kinda a whole bunch of things that it's really not at all.
As many who know me personally are probably aware, I get a strange sort of thrill from finding new odd-ball accolades for my press-kits ("... like a young CC Deville wielding an out-of-control fire-hose," anyone? "...mystical..."? lol) Well, from this one so far I've gotten an absolute GEM courtesy of Headhat label-boss/ noise-beat virtuoso Adhesiveslipper. (as if I needed MORE reasons to love Headhat to death.) This record, apparently... "has the headiest liner-notes of any record we've released so far." I'll take it! Thanks Dan! (To the rest of you, please take that as a challenge to listen to this record and give it the most out-there review [good, bad, outraged, indifferent, wtf, whatever]. It probably deserves it, and I'd love to hear what you think.)
Since I know that very few people even OPEN the file with the liner-notes in it for digital-downloads, I may as well just post those notes here, give you a taste of what this thing is about, what you're getting your eardrums into with this one....
LeVautourEnsemble- Machinique Meltdown
“Machinic, a word that does not exist, translates the French machinique, the adjectival form of le machin, a gadget, a watchamacallit.”
This footnote from editor/ translator Robert Brinkley’s notations to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s 1975 essay “What Is A Minor Literature?” provides part of the title and a sort of a point-of-departure for this collection of songs and sounds.
This album was spawned as an outlet for a meltdown of various sorts, in the immediate aftermath of a graduate-literature program which found me, by the end of the final semester, deeply immersed in attempting to understand and apply the critical-theory of Delueze and Guattari to a variety of research, writing, and art projects... resulting in a sort of troubling void where Deleuzian concepts such as rhizomatic mapping, deteretorialization, assemblages, “becoming,” and, of course, the ever-elusive “machinique,” acquired vast degrees of personal resonance on many different levels.
The resulting album was initially intended as a concept-record about varying sorts of apocalypses. In its finished form, in many ways it is this indeed... though, in true Deleuzian form, in a far more confusing, meandering, and easily-misunderstandable way than initially intended. You could probably refer to each resulting “song” on this short album as a “Plateau,” (and you probably wouldn’t be entirely wrong)... but I’d kind of prefer that you didn’t.
This album was recorded between January 2011 and December 2011, primarily at the LoftDeLeVautour, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. All instruments, sounds, voices, noises, etc were performed, created, and/ or mutated and heavily manipulated by Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour.
Again, in true Deleuzian fashion, I choose to refuse to explain anything about any track on this album with any further degree of detail within these notations.
For a taste of the record, as your download is downloading, and a taste for the accompanying video-footage (If I remember right, there's some sort of video or other for the vast majority of the tracks on this record if you visit my Youtube channel)... here's the intro-track, and the outro-track. Believe it or not, I totally feel that, over the course of the record, the transition between the two begins to make a little bit of sense.
Thanks to everyone who made the Pull Trouble From the Fire record-release show (AKA "Occupy Dodge Street") in Salem, Mass last weekend amazing. Lots of pictures, footage, etc is still coming in, but you can check out some stuff from my own collection from the night here. (special thanks to Crooked Streets and Harvey Mapcase for making the bill for the night that much more awesome, and Dodge Street for putting it on.)
And, oh hey, guess what? The CD-release event is passed which means... the record is now available! The initial run is fairly small and entirely self-released with no distro or support, so if you'd like a copy, for a mere $5, email me and we'll make it happen. In the meantime, take a listen and download a couple tracks from the album on Soundcloud.
... and now onto the next one. We've got a big show coming up that we're really excited about- We'll be opening for Marco Benevento at The Red Door in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (legitimately, no hyperbole, one of my favorite venues on the planet). This show is part of Marco's 3-week residency stint at the always-amazing Hush Hush Sweet Harlot music-series, and we are EXTREMELY honored to be a part of it.
Thursday, October 27th, The Red Door. 107 State Street, Portsmouth, NH. Doors at 7, show at 8. $17 in advance, $20 at the door.
Advance tickets are now available here. This is a tiny, intimate room for this kind of show, and there's definitely the possibility that it will sell out, so purchasing tickets soon would be a very good idea if you'd like to join us for an amazing evening. If you're coming, or for added details and conversations about the show as it approaches, stop by the event-invite, RSVP, and share it with your friends!
We've currently got the entire forthcoming record streaming for free on Soundcloud. AND... two of the tracks are available there for a limited time as free downloads! Take a listen, share with your friends.
Big news on the music-front (well, big to me, anyway.)
After a year hiding out in our clandestine studio on the New England coast, my first "real" band in years, Pull Trouble From The Fire, just finished our debut record (as of yet untitled), to be released soon, after a string of phenomenal sessions with Richard Marr at Galaxy Park Studios. It sounds amazing, I promise. Stay tuned.
We have also just booked out debut live show, staying true to our word that this would come as soon as the record was complete. We'll be headlining a show at Dodge Street in Salem, Massachusetts (yes, THAT Salem) on Thursday, July 14th, with Cardinal Law. The show is at 9, it's FREE, and it's "Thirsty Thursday," so, you know, drink specials and shit. Plan to come and get crazy with us. (I'm totally willing to help set up caravan/ convoy/ carpool options from various New Hampshire spots, [as well as possibly going in on a room or something, for those of us who don't have to work too early on Friday], so if you're considering making the trek down, be in touch. It's not that far, and Salem's a super-fun city. [Duh.]) I'm working on a flyer and a facebook event-invite today, I'll post it as soon as it's done.
In other music news, the second record from my solo-project, LeVautourEnsemble, "Machinique Meltdown," is coming along, slowly but surely. I dropped a new video of a track from the record this morning. Check it out.
After much delay, Tipsy Cougar, my noisy indie-electro/ "metro-grime" project, has finally finished and released our album, "Immaculate Conceptions," through our good friends over at Headhat Records.
... and, guess what? It's available right now, to download for FREE/ donation! Click here to get it directly, or here to browse the rest of the excellent stuff in the Headhat/ Webhat catalog!
I was going to explain a bit about this project and the gradual creation of this record, but... Just download it and see for yourself... I think this mess may speak for itself.
First off... As I alluded to in my last entry, after being "in the works" for the better part of ten years, the debut record of my experimental literary-electro project LeVautourEnsemble has finally been released!
To get this thing out, we've teamed up with a great little record-label out of Newmarket, New Hampshire called Headhat Records. The partnership is a really good fit for the project... Since 2001, Headhat's been putting out interesting, experimental, and obscure material, with a refreshing strategy that reminds us of a digital-updating of the D.I.Y. attitude of the cassette-mixtape labels we grew up with.
The record was officially released Monday, 10/4/10, and is available for download now, with album-art, liner-notes, etc, here... and the best part is? It's available for FREE (or optional donation if you're feeling particularly generous and supportive).
Don't forget to browse the rest of the Headhat catalog as well, there's a lot of neat stuff over there.
Check out Pull Trouble From the Fire. I've been making some noise with these guys lately... very exciting stuff, a ton of fun... very interesting things to come on that front I'm sure.
Following up on something else from my last entry, the show that I sat in with The Tuna Fish Discrepancy last month was a ton of fun, and I want to thank Ross and company immensely for the opportunity to tag along and mangle their songs.
Video-footage from almost the entire show is available here...
This is my personal favorite-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0YJFLZlT8Y
In news of other shows upcoming... mark your calendars... Friday, Oct. 22 will be the first in a (hopefully) recurring series of experimental electronic nights called "PASTICHE: an evening of post-modern sound-experimentation" at The Jam Factory (Next to Raxx, on Elm St.) in Manchester, New Hampshire... I will be playing an improvised LeVautourEnsemble noise-electro set, with The Attic Bits and The Ross Boyd Experience. A flyer and more details (particularly some crowd-response prompts to allow YOU to help me make my set as crazy as possible) will be coming in my next entry... hopefully tomorrow.
