Project updates...

Having just returned from a somewhat tumultuous trip back east, I'm sitting at a Phoenix coffeehouse, loving being back in such a vibrant city, and excited for making fun and positive things happen for our future here... so I figured it was a good time for an update.

The Green Sea has changed formats yet again... because... why not? What we've been doing lately is some sort of live-improv noise that usually falls in a somewhat electro-punk-meets-comedy-rock vein. Basically, we've found that we thoroughly enjoy playing extended-sets without content, making absolutely everything up on the spot... which naturally incurs some hilariously unpredictable lyrics and sudden genre-shifts. We now have a site on Bandcamp, where you can stream or download loads of various fun content... We currently have four records up there- our debut EP from 2006, two live-improv mixtape records, and an ongoing collection called "...bits and pieces..." that houses lots of stuff that hasn't shown up or been appropriate for any of the other albums.

You can find all of that here-

https://thegreensea-az.bandcamp.com

We've posted some goofy videos from this phase, too, on my Youtube channel...

Such as these-

I've also begun working on a solo-record... (at the moment it's separate from the electro-jazz album I mentioned in the last post, but time will tell... I've got a few tracks from it up on my personal Bandcamp account since relocating to the desert... This is an indie-rock record at its core. I'm making the dusty, wild-west rock songs that occur to me, without trying to sculpt them into any particular context. This record is a snap-shot into my mind at the moment, as it evolves... It's called "Future Tense." 

Take a listen here- 

https://levautour.bandcamp.com

More tracks, and some videos, from that will be shortly forthcoming. 

And as always, new original art, prints, customized instruments, stickers, t-shirts, etc. are being added almost daily to the Etsy site where I sell my visual-art work... I've been pretty productive in that regard lately...

www.etsy.com/shop/levautour

...and more is to come soon. 

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!

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.

Snazzmobb content-teaser.

As I mentioned at the end of the last entry, I do have a third project-installment update coming, about visual-art. Soon.

In the meantime, though, I have a couple more music-related updates to tack onto the last post.

First, my band Snazzmobb now has a sample-track from our forthcoming demo-EP streaming on Youtube!

This song was inspired by a spam-bot that was harassing the band's Twitter account (@Snazzmobb) mercilessly for a while. We got literally HUNDREDS of messages a day for about a month that just read, "Real People; Real Sex!" (followed by a link that we're not quite dumb enough to open.)

New LeVautourEnsemble record out now!

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. 

Questions may be addressed directly by email, at bernard.levautour@yahoo.com




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.

(LeVautourEnsemble- Preface)

(LeVautourEnsemble- Hybrid Eyes)

Pull Trouble From the Fire CD-release show (and a fan-made video!)

My band Pull Trouble From The Fire's CD-release show for our self-titled debut EP is fast approaching! Friday, October 7th, at Dodge Street, in Salem, Massachusetts, with our good friends Crooked Streets and Harvey Mapcase. Be there.

Yeah, that's right. It's a Friday night in October, in Salem. So, yeah, it's going to be pretty insane. You're not going to want to miss this one.

Get details, and let us know if you can make it here.

This is the cover to the forthcoming record. The artwork is by Bill Fennel. Bill also recently decided to make a music-video/ short-film to one of the songs off of the forthcoming record, and did a great job. Check it out, it's pretty neat.

Pull Trouble From The Fire debut-show video-collection!

Thanks to everyone who helped to make our debut live show a very fun night.  Here are some videos.

Intro/ Roach-tree-

Gaslighting-

Long Shiny Black Hairs-

Trainwrecks-

Dead Wait-

Stay Awake (courtesy of Bill Fennell)-

Outro-

Music updates, part 1

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.

You As You As Man-Consciousness-System

Last night I finished and posted a new video for another track from LeVautourEnsemble's forthcoming second album, "Machinique Meltdown."

This one comes about as a response to a sampling-duel with Ross Boyd of The Tuna Fish Discrepency, prodded and mediated by Adhesiveslipper of Headhat Records. It's on, Ross. Can't wait to see what you make of this absurdity.

In my contribution to this excellent game, I mashed the wacky sample in question up in a steaming pot of  crazy-broth with some robots, kittens, bass, beats, and spirally chaos. Who doesn't like those things???

As per usual (or at least often) with LeVautourEnsemble content, I think a little disclaimer is in order here. Since I've had some issues in the past relating to online censorship of nude mannequins (no, I'm not kidding. When I initially dropped the current logo for this site, among similar images from the same concept/ photo-shoot of Miss Chloe Claustrophobia, I was flagged on several websites by the content-gestapo who apparently can't tell plaster from flesh...), I should probably point out that anything in this video that appears in any way naked is NOT human. Most often it's a robot... sometimes a kitten.

Pull Trouble From The... OCD Diaries...

Pull Trouble From The Fire's recent teaser video has been used as a "mood music" sort of soundtrack-clip to an entry on Bill Brenner's very cool and ultra-informative blog The OCD Diaries.

Check out the entry here... and take a read, this blog is really fascinating.

Also, Mr. Brenner has issued a challenge to the band for more content, and we love challenges, so, in due time, we will be more than happy to comply.

(tangentially, I have no idea whether or not this had anything to do with the selection of the video or the issuing of this challenge, but it definitely crossed my mind while reading the blog that there might be more than a bit of common-ground between the subjects discussed there and the tone and content of Pull Trouble's songwriting...  we definitely have tended to veer, thus far, toward subject-matter that has to do with quirks of the way the human mind functions... or [more often, rather] has trouble functioning...  whether accidentally or not, then... it seems an appropriate match to me...)

(P.S.... baby-step-goals to get back into active music promo- I'm trying to get that video to hit a triple-didgit view-count by the end of the weekend, which would be {by far} the first on the Asbjorn Collective Youtube channel. Help out, share it with your friends? Please? Maybe?)

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.}

Some Poetry...

Larger Constructions: Dedicated to the Influence of Walt Whitman, The Performance-Artist, Not the Poet, Documenting his Projects in Poetry.

I’m like a
Journalist on
Assignment, embedded
With a community
Of Artists,
Made up of
Mirror-reflections
And shattered
Refractions of
One.

Of course, to
Get the inside
Scoop, the
Journalist must
Also be a
member of the
Community, his
assignment part and parcel
Of the projects of the
Group.



And, some more poetry... this time on video, accompanied by live beats... This is "A Trilogy of Poems About Music."

Finishing Projects, tying-up pre-semester loose-ends...

... or, how many items can I cross off my "I don't have time for this during class so I better get it done now" list in a week?

In my last post, I linked to audio of a song that I had recently completed for LeVautourEnsemble... This week, I finished putting together the video for that track, pieced together out of footage snapped live while I was recording the track, on the webcam of a tiny blue netbook that I like to call the "baby robot." Obviously, there was quite a bit of editing involved here as well... Check it out.



I have also started a new Youtube channel for the Asbjorn Arts Collective. This channel is intended as a sort of evolving museum-collection, a kind of dumping-ground for content from myself, my collaborators and my friends... if you're interested in contributing content, or have material elsewhere on youtube that you'd like me to add to the page's "favorites," email me. The goal is to make this channel into a sort of one-stop-shopping destination for odd, abstract, and interesting videos from artists affiliated with present, past, and future incarnations of the collective. Stop by, check out some videos, leave some feedback, subscribe to the channel.

Dirty Jobs; a retooling of the term for the stay-at-home-circus-set.

“That’s a pretty
Dirty job, isn’t it?”
I heard a woman a-
Cross the way with a
Vicious case of
Couch-ass say to
The mover as he
Hoisted her hideous
Blue-leather sofa
From a second-story
Slider... And it made me
Think.

What has a “dirty job”
Become? I mean, it
Could be argued that,
In the present condition of
American Capitalism, any time
Green paper or false credit
Changes hands a job is
Being done that is, on
Both ends of the exchange,
Inherently “dirty”...
But that’s an argument for
Another debate, and I will
Thus leave it, for now, in the
Periphery...

As I was overhearing
This, I was knee-deep in
A critical-essay dense with
Requisite references, realizing
That I was about to
Engage in a career as a
Professional Name-Dropper.
Realizing it is apparently rather
Uncouth to begin a piece of
Writing without the required,
However unrelated and irrelevant,
Quotes from Greenblatt, Jameson,
Frye...

I was in the middle of
Thinking aloud, “What the
HELL does that quote have to
Do with this essay?!?” when
My speakers shuffled to a
Song from one of my own recent
Records; that someone had
Lately described as reminding
Him of the cacophony, the
Layers and spirals of sounds,
Of standing in the middle of
An airport tarmac, without earplugs.
(I think it was intended, and
Thus taken, as a compliment.)
And I recalled my meticulous attention
To the texture of the dirt on the
Beat, the cloudy veil to
Mask my voice, and remembered
That this was “dirty” on
Purpose. I had worked hard
To make it such. Ok, then, let’s
Break it down a
Bit.

We work with... words,
And noise, and visual
Images (both tangible,
For their own sake, and
The combined construction of
All or parts of these thing...)
We’ve become, of
Course, compulsive
Multi-taskers, obsessive
Interdisciplinarians...
We are expected, at the
Same time that we,
Even more, expect
Ourselves to be,
Minutely specialized,
While being, at the
Same time, back-
Breakingly diverse...
We all become
Jacks of all
Trades though
Masters of one
Miniscule detail of
How to pull all of those
Together, to
Construct from it
Our individual
Microscopically
Diverse
Niche.

In most cases, our
Parents weren’t circus
Performers. Even when
They might have
Been artists, critics,
Musicians, whatever,
They would never have
Thought to jump
Through the flaming
Hoops we douse
With oil and light
Ourselves.

Can you look at me with
An “honest” twenty-first-century
Face (whatever that might
Mean) and tell me that
These aren’t “Pretty Dirty
Jobs?”

The difference I see,
However, between this and
How that term was used
In the past is that,
Unlike, for instance, the
Garbage-man (except, of course,
That rare yet somehow
Commonplace specimen that
Takes such perverse pride in
The beat-to-shit and disregarded
Stuffed-animals that he tacks to
The grill of his truck)
Is that we REVEL
In the dirt, it’s rather
WHY we do the jobs,
Instead of a hinderance
From holding them, as it
Might be for perspective
Garbage-men.

“Isn’t that a pretty
Dirty job?” the
Woman with the
Couch-ass said to
The mover, as they
Watched me sitting
On my patio, rabidly
Scribbling in the
Margins of my copy of
A cumbersome anthology
Of the complete works of
Milton...


Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour (w/ S.W.S.)- Dirty Jobs (poem)