Looking Forward to Looking Back

I started writing somewhat free form year end lists a couple of years ago, recapping my own thoughts on the music of the year in an informal, personal style. Astutue readers may notice I skipped that tradition at the end of ‘07. I’m not exactly sure why. It just wasn’t a massively inspiring year for music in my opinion, and the thought of struggling to put together a few paragraphs of coherent thought on a subject that could basically be summed up by the word “meh” just didn’t appeal to me. Sure, there were the usual highlights (In Rainbows) and near misses (Volta), and old rediscoveries, but not enough to resemble an actual list.

So why am I writing this? Because this year is already way different.

There has already been a full list’s worth of inspiring, fascinating music, and there’s promise of even more on the way. I started off the year obsessed with the new Why? album, Alopecia, and it has yet to lose it’s quirky, neurotic charm. Re-arrange Us, by Mates of State, was released at the perfect time to become the soundtrack of my summer, and finds them expanding their sound to much grander dimensions, without losing any of it’s affectionate appeal. Then there’s Efterklang’s brilliant Parades, technically a 2007 release that I didn’t hear until recently. I’m still kicking myself for skipping their show at Nectar recently. Dosh put out a great new album that’s been in heavy rotation, and Daedelus has become some sort of pop chameleon on his latest record. I’m still digesting a glut of new music from Autechre (one album, one bonus remix album, and an hour and a half of downloadable remixes!), and a small serving of Joan of Arc songs (one album, but lyrically layered so deeply it feels like 4).

I’m actually looking forward to looking back on this year, especially with some of the promising upcoming releases that are impending (Mogwai, Ratatat, Venetian Snares, Beck?). 2008 has been exciting so far, and shows no sign of slowing down.

The Moment of Panic

Last night was the big D.iscontent show at the Baltic Room, where Timm and I debuted the live sets we’ve been working on almost non-stop since the beginning of the year. It was a lot of fun, with great visuals, a lineup of excellent DJs on either side of our live sets, and good turnout (especially for a holiday Sunday).

But there was one moment of sheer terror.

We’d showed up to sound check early in the evening, getting all or connections sorted out and hooking up all the gear to our laptops and the mixer. Everything was sounding good, and it was great to finally hear the sets on a big, booming PA. Timm’s set ran smoothly, and towards the end I got up behind the DJ booth to set up my gear next tot he decks. I get everything powered up and running, fire up my software, and take a look to make sure the software is responding to the gear.

And guess what? It’s not.

I restart the software. Still nothing. I unplug my gear and plug it back into the laptop. Nothing.

I turn to Timm with a sinking feeling in my stomach, and tell him he needs to cover for me. He’s a total trooper, so he improvs the end of his set, dragging out his last song longer than planned, with more variation than he’s practiced. Meanwhile, I hit the power on my laptop and begin the long slow boot back into Windows.

When it finally boots up, I plug my gear back in. Up pops a window, asking if I’d like to install new hardware. This is the moment when I reeeeeally start to worry. I cross myself and mutter a few obscenities. Fortunately, the solution is simple; I switch the two USB cables for my MIDI gear and audio interface. Everything clicks. My software responds. Disaster averted. The show goes on as planned. Which is good, since I was one more error message away from committing ritual suicide.

Static Gliding

I should probably mention that a new project just launched. Go visit D.iscontent! What is it? It’s a label-like, crew-like thing founded by myself and Hjalti, where we will be releasing music and gathering together other Cascadian musicians for collaborations, shows, etc. We’re accepting demos if you’re intrigued by what you see and simply must be a part of the excitement.

In case I haven’t mentioned it here yet, the live debut of the D.iscontent crew takes place on May 25th, at Static Glide Part 2, with Miniature Airlines (aka your truly) and Hjalti playing live PA sets at the Baltic Room, with DJs Travis Baron and Levitation Device keeping things bouncing. It’s free before 10, so you have no excuse for missing this. It’s also my birthday, so you have no excuse for not buying me drinks all night..

Static Glide Part 1, featuring Telephone Jim Jesus and DJ Egadz, went off last night, but not exactly as planned. Originally slated for the VIP Room at Neumo’s, the show was merged with Broken Disco at Chop Suey at the last minute. Damn Seattle Fire Marshall, making things all complicated! It still went off well, and hopefully interest will carry over onto our show in two weeks.

The Longest Day

Some things don’t go as planned.

The idea was to go out for a couple of drinks, to wind down and relax after a long day that included a trip to Portland and back for Stumptown Comics Festival. Everything started out exactly as planned. Enjoying some Newcastle, talking life and sports and politics with Timm and his friend Bill at the George & Dragon. the usual football (soccer for you Americans) crowd had thinned out after the game, but soon a different crowd started to filter in. Then flood in. The friendly neighborhood pub was soon filled to bursting with frat boys and sorority girls out on a pub crawl through Fremont. The Britpop soundtrack soon gave way to Gnarls Barkley and Modest Mouse, then AC/DC.

At some point, a trio of dudes (one who was returning to his native Denmark the next day) with curdled Irish Car Bombs joined the table, and proceeded to chug them and try to pick up some ladies. The ringleader of the group was actually pretty accomplished at this, and had soon dragged a handful of blonde college girls to the table. They didn’t stay too long, since the rest of us were busy talking about Scandinavia.

Our little cross cultural experience was fun, but we decided to pack it in and walk up the hill to our apartment around 11:00, just as the frat atmosphere was becoming too much. But we were thwarted in our plans when we ran into one of Timm’s co-workers and a posse of Portland kids who were visiting Seattle and going on their own little pub crawl. We somehow got dragged right back to the George & Dragon, and before we knew it, all but two of the Portland kids had left, and it was last call.

And what do you do with out-of-towners in Fremont at last call? Make a trip to the troll. And since you’re in the neighborhood of an ex, as was the case for one member of our little group, you might as well throw in a little doorbell ditch while you’re at it.

In most circumstances, that’s the point where you call it a night. Unless someone mentions food, of course, and then it’s basically required to take a trip to Beth’s. There’s a 30 minute wait, which means we got to hang out in the cramped, sauna-like gameroom in the back and play Gauntlet until out table was ready. Breakfast (I guess I can call it that, since it was around 3:00am at that point) was a round of eggs and hash browns for four of us, and a twelve egg omelette for adventurous number five, which was almost completely polished off in an impressive display of appetite.

We finally got back home at 4:00am, and despite having had several rounds of coffee at Beth’s, I managed to fall immediately into a deep sleep.

It only lasted about 4 hours though, so don’t ask me how I was able to summon up the energy to walk back down the hill and get my car from where I’d parked it near the George & Dragon this morning. Or how I had the energy to participate in a photo shoot this afternoon. It’s been a whirlwind of a weekend, with a bare minimum of sleep, but it’s been completely worth it. I feel physically tired, but mentally refreshed. And now I’m going to listen to Minneapolis by That Dog on repeat a few times and call it a night.

Why? & Mt. Eerie @ Vera

It’s an odd pairing, but in someon’es mind, there was some theoretical sense to it. Pairing a scruffy, mystical folkie from Anacortes, known for hushed, sacred songs backed by a nylon stringed acoustic guitar, with an equally scruffy, neurotically self-revealing pseudo-rapper/indie rock star playing with a full, fractured band. Luckily, in practice, it worked out beautifully.

We came in during Julie Doiron’s opening set, and my first thought was “Cat Power clone”. Serene’s Feist comparison turned out o be more apt as the set drew on though. She was standing alone on stage, gently strumming and fingerpicking an electric guitar and talking compulsively between songs. I think she might have spoken more words than she sang during the set. But there was something charming about her songs, delicate but occasionally fierce, sweet and sad.

I’d never seen M. Eerie before, despite several opportunities to do so. I wasn’t sure what to expect either. Phil Elverum solo, a full band, some odd configuration of exotic instruments and woodland spirits? It turned out to be Phil Elverum, joined by Julie Doiron on backing vocals, and another guitarist, playing all new material that they had written and recorded during the previous week. A giant sheet of handwritten lyrics, festooned with underlines and notations as to who was singing what part, was unfolded and served as a cheat sheet and setlist, and they plowed through a batch of songs so fresh they had to refresh each others’ memories between songs. Even with limited visibility of the stage, it was a great experience. the audience was unusually quiet and still, rooted in place as the music flowed from the stage. At one point, the projected videos on the back wall displayed some sort of metal scrapping in process, showers of sparks building and cascading in unplanned synchronicity with the rise and fall of the music. They even slipped in a cover of Björk’s “Undo,” which fit in perfectly with the haunting and sometimes desolate originals.

I’d seen Why? before, once as a band and once as a guest with Hood, reprising his role as an additional vocalist on songs from Cold House. This time, the band was back in force, with frontman Yoni’s brother Josiah on drums and vibraphone (usually at the same time, amazingly) and bass at one point, and a slew of additional keyboards, guitars, basses, and percussion being passed around the remaining musicians. The musicianship of the Why? live band is incredible, both for the range of instruments and the range of textures and tones they produced. Yoni switched off between glockenspiel, keyboards, bass, guitar, and a couple of drums and cymbals while singing. The brothers Wolf even split drum kit duties on one song, with Josiah playing the kick drum with his foot and Yoni playing cymbals and snare while he sang.While guitar and bass were prevalent, the vibraphone and glockenspiel took on a lead role in many of the songs, floating on top of a bed of warped synths and rhodes piano. Except for obscure gems like “Early Whitney” or “Darla,” they played all my favorite song, mostly from Elephant Eyelash and the new, stunning Alopecia. The full house demanded an encore, and got the only song that I was really hoping for, “By Torpedo or Crohn’s”.

Earlier in the evening, the soundman had been playing C&C Music Factory between sets, that combined with the all ages crowd and darkened room to give me a feeling like I was at a Junior High dance circa 1990. It was another of the night’s many odd pairings, but this one didn’t work as well as the other musical matchups did, for reasons that are probably obvious.

Checklist

I’m feeling pretty accomplished this week. I finished the seventh in a series of annual T-shirt designs I’ve been doing, finalized a logo for an upcoming project, made some headway on a webpage I’m working on, and gave some critiques on an essay and a live electronic set. In between all of that, I managed to fit in a BBQ in the beautiful Seattle weather on Saturday, meeting some cool new people and their cool dogs (and hanging out on a rooftop overlooking downtown), brunch, too much coffee, and a football game (of the European kind). I even managed to fit in a little reading and a little BSG.

That is what weekends were meant to be.

All Muxed Up

Since the Internet at large is going all ga-ga over this Muxtape business today, I figured I’d try it out. It’s pretty awesome. A little quirky and slim on features for the moment, but definitely useful, and if it improves as promised, I can see it becoming an internet fixture. Assuming it doesn’t become too big for it’s own good first.

Anyways, I threw together a muxtape featuring music I’ve made, in bands or on my own, over the last 8 years or so. I don’t have any music available from my first band from high school, Leviathan, or I would have a track from each of our releases (So What? and Alarmingly Stylish) up. I don’t have any tracks from my old (possibly resurrected) electronic duo Car Stereo Destroys Michael Bolton Tape either. But other than that, there’s something from pretty much all my musical projects represented here. The post-Leviathan indie rock band Superficial Hero, the solo 4-track project The Sigmund Fraud, my electronic project Miniature Airlines, and even a (thankfully) unreleased rehearsal track from the short-lived three piece The One Two Three Foes. It’s roughly chronological, and it’s a wide range of stuff, from tape-hissy demos, to full band recordings and all-digital creations.

Maybe someday I’ll get ambitious and track down some Leviathan material, rip some cassette recordings, and make it truly representative of my musical “career”. Until then, enjoy what’s there.

Welcome to the Apocalypse

IMG_5172, originally uploaded by successless.

This photo doesn’t really do it justice, but the end of the world took place on Saturday night.

My house was overrun with fallout refugees, zombie killers, and plague victims. The only recourse was to drink copious amounts of alcohol and hone our survival skills through minigames.

When it was determined that we were skilled enough to survive, we left the comfort of our temporary shelter and descended upon the nearby Buckaroo Tavern for more supplies and reinforcements, paying no mind to the curious stares of the poor unfortunate souls who didn’t realize it was all over.

Armageddon ended with yellow cake (the edible kind, not the radioactive kind), cartoons, and much needed sleep. Then we woke up, and everything was back to normal. Mostly.

A Week In The Dark

I just finished my first week of work at my new job. It was hectic and stressful, but not because of the job itself. More so because my key broke off in my ignition on what was supposed to be my third day. What seemed like a simple matter for a locksmith to deal with turned into an ongoing ordeal involving a new ignition, a $1000 bill, a bus trip from Redmond on Friday night, and a lost day of work. Things start looking up, and something has to come along and rain on the parade, I suppose. Hopefully I’ll get my car back today.

On a more positive note, I’m really enjoying the new Hot Chip album. Almost as much as the new Why? album. And I’m still wrapping my head around the new Autechre. Every time one of their albums comes out, it takes repeated listening over several weeks to really get inside it and understand what’s happening, musically and technically. By the time my copy of the limited edition version arrives, I should be ready to take on the bonus disc…just in time to go see them in April.

As for now though, I’m gonna watch some participatory democracy in action at the Central Library, then do some relaxing and try to forget the whole car ordeal. Music will probably help. So will red wine.

End of an Error

I’m a free man. I walked out of my workplace for the last time this afternoon. The job that I took essentially out of desperation, three months into a brutal streak of unemployment, is done. Over. No more. The mismanagement, lack of work, poorly thought out assignments, and gopher work? All done. I made it out just short of my one year anniversary, which is still longer than I would have liked.

And so, I gave myself a five day weekend before starting my new job.

About that: it’s a $5 and hour raise. But there is a commute. I’ll be working in the Belly of The Beast. Well, maybe not the belly, but something close to the belly. More like the Pancreas of The Beast, really.

All in all, things are looking up.