"Nails Dig In" writing-soundtrack....

I recently finished the first completed draft of a piece of short fiction that I'd had in the works for quite a while. I'm in the process of sending it out to some gracious readers willing to provide some feedback for future edits, help me get it out of my own head for a bit...

In the meantime, I figure I may as well share an idiosyncratic yet essential aspect of my writing-process. Many of my pieces of writing are composed to a dedicated "soundtrack;" as a musician and a writer in whose writing music and sound tends to play a large role, it's essential for me that the piece that I'm working on maintain a particular "sound" in the style that it's written in. Most of the "tone" of my writing is based first-and-foremost on sound. Therefore, I make a playlist of the sound and tone that I'm trying to achieve (often, like this one, including songs of my own that were composed exclusively for the purpose of capturing and understanding the "sound" of the piece of writing at hand [not all of my own pieces on this list were composed explicitly for that purpose however, some just fit the mood well] ) and listen to that exclusively while writing and editing.

Here is, then, the "soundtrack/ playlist" for a piece titled "Nails Dig In (In The Mouth of the Wolf)."

(wink/ hint/ wink to those who stumble on this while helping me edit/ reading for submission/ reading the work if it happens to get published somewhere; these tracks also feature/ include a few easter-egg internal-references within the work that add additional layers of meaning.)

1) LeVautourEnsemble- Physical Consent

2) The Stiletto Formal- ...tastes like black licorice

3) Placebo- Protect Me From What I Want

4) LeVautourEnsemble- Hybrid Eyes

5) Crystal Castles- Not In Love (feat. Robert Smith)

6) Miike Snow- Plastic Jungle

7) LeVautourEnsemble- Mamihlapinatapei; Searching For Words In Other Tongues. 

(Sorry, this one is currently unavailable. It's slated for a forthcoming compilation as a "previously unreleased" track, and it wouldn't quite be "unreleased" if I dropped it here, now would it? ;) )

8) Bright Eyes- Lover I Don't Have To Love

9) Yeasayer- O.N.E.

10) LeVautourEnsemble with Antoine 518- Wave (Our Confusion Is Just What We Need)

(this is another in the previously-unreleased category, this one a recent collab-track, but I'm dropping this one here. That's right, this is exclusive-type-shit. Brand new, just for you.)

11) Bloc Party- Like Eating Glass 

12) The Strays- Life Support

13) The Mars Volta- Ilyena

Crazy Chicken Prints now available on Etsy!

Because the logistics of selling mail-order art baffle me a bit, I finally broke down, revived my long-dormant Paypal account, and started an Etsy shop.

At the moment this shop is just for the variations on the Crazy-Chicken photo-reproduction prints that I've recently posted about making available (there are two different designs now!), but in the future I may or may not make one-of-a-kind pieces available here too, if there's interest in that sort of thing.

Check it out, here-

"Watching the Bridge Come Down; A Tribute."

(I haven't posted any poetry here in a while... largely because my writing-output mostly veers in alternate directions these days. I do have a couple pieces in the pipeline for attempted publication at the moment... but here's one that I wrote off-the-cuff after watching a Portsmouth, NH landmark, the Memorial Bridge, being dismantled last week. Figured I'd post it here as a sort of an homage.)

Watching the Bridge Come Down;

A Tribute.

We take a pilgrimage to the port,

It seems like it just has to happen.

There’s something symbolic, as we’re

Standing in the crowd on the pier,

Watching the trusses taken apart,

Broken down and placed onto the barge below.

We’re loudly cracking jokes, saying how

We want to see an explosion,

Something cathartic,

Pissing off the old-people,

Keeping their odd and silent vigil. 

But that’s our role here,

As we retreat to a bar to follow

Our own sort of vigil with beer...

Our own sort of tribute.

This is our city, our pier,

Our bridge, our bricks,

Our own pieces of rusted, incompetent steel.

And none of us want to say

(but we’re all thinking)

That there’s something important

About the idea that the 

Bridge isn’t burning 

Or exploding

But being gradually taken apart, 

To be casually, slowly, cast down the stream,

That resonates for us in a way where

We don’t really want to

Verbally express the connections

We can’t help but draw in our minds. 

Prints!

My infamous "crazy chicken" design is now available as a limited-edition custom print!

Think of this as the LeVautour equivalent of the soup-can or Obey-giant. THIS is my pop-art manifesto. Get with it.

$10 for a basic, unframed, 8x10 matte or glossy print. Framing options, custom colors, bizarro printing options (I'll find a way to put this on ANYTHING you want...) are totally available, and pricing is negotiable. Get at me. 

bernard.levautour@yahoo.com

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 news/ updates.

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!

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.