But for the moemnt, I just wanted to mention that, in case you haven’t yet heard, I will be competing in the 6th annual Seattle Laptop Battle tonight at Chop Suey. I know, I know, that’s no notice at all, really. But it would be splendid if you could pry yourself away from your seasonal festivities and come out to cheer me on, or pick up on of my new (and free) CD-R promos.

That’s all for now…but expect more here in the New Year, if not before.

Volunteering for the Festival is always an interesting experience, and usually a great way to meet people (or at least people-watch). It’s also usually a little disorganized, despite the best efforts of the Festival staff. Last minute issues always pop up, signals get crossed, people don’t show up for their scheduled volunteer shifts, and so on. But everything ultimately works out, and I’ve never seen a major disaster arise from one of these situations.

For example, at the opening gala at the Seattle Art Museum (which also doubled as a 10th anniversary party for the Ghostly Internationallabel), the Decibel merchandise that Donna and I were supposed to be hawking didn’t show up, leaving us a little confused as to what we would be doing. We ended up running the Ghostly merch table that evening, selling Tychoprints, Ghostly t-shirts, and CDs (end even a branded Ghostly beach ball!). We ended up having a blast selling this stuff, all while watching Clark Warner and Michna DJ, followed by a live set from local favorite Lusine, whose new album, A Certain Distance, just came out on Ghostly. It went so well, in fact, that we ended up scoring some free CDs and posters, and giving some of the Ghostly kids a ride up the Hill to the Mad Professor show at Neumo’s.

The next night was another merch shake-up, as we arrive at Motor for the dubstep showcase, only to find….no Decibel merchandise again! Instead, we got shifted to door duties, and spent the evening taking money for tickets and trying to figure out guest list and will call issues. It was a busy night, as the crowd steadily grew to capacity, and people kept flowing through the door right up until 1am, when we stopped worrying about ticketing. As a bonus, we had a good sightline of the stage, meaning we could see pretty much the full show just by turning around. Dubtek and Monkeytek weren’t all that amazing to my ears, but Boxcutterwas better than I’d expected, and UK Dubstep champions N-Type and Caspakilled the decks with choice cuts. I saw a lot of people walking out with limited run dubplate singles that night…

Saturday was my first evening without a volunteer shift, and while $140 worth of sushi kept me away from a couple of the opening acts I wanted to see, like Nosaj Thing and 214, the rest of the Bass Lovers Unite showcase was pretty incredible. Daedelus absolutely killed it with a much harder set than I’ve ever seen him play, while still keeping the retro-inspired whimsy he’s generally known for. The real highlight of the night, though, was Mary Anne Hobbs, the BBC Radio 1 DJ for the late night experimental music show. Her taste-making selections were on point, mixing the expected (Joy Orbison‘s ecstatic anthem ”Hyph Mngo” made an early appearance in the set) with new and unheard cuts.

The Decibel in the Park event on Sunday started off nice and mellow, with an deep and textured set from Kilowatts (I missed the actual opening set by DJ Eddie, who I’m sure was excellent). Sub Swara brought a dancehall infused performance next, which didn’t exactly keep my interest, but provided a nice background for the people watching and relaxing in the mild fall afternoon. The Gaslamp Killer took over with a varied and entertaining DJ set, full of banter and flailing arms, but we ended up skipping out to go warm up over a bowl of pho.

The grand finale took place at Neumo’s, and I showed up in time to catch Jerry Abstract taking the stage, dressed in a fur-lined parka, and watched him unleash some driving minimal techno from behind his laptop. It was an unrelenting set that got the steadily building crowd moving, right up until he knocked his laptop from the stage, killing all sounds for a few minutes. Fortunately, no serious damage was sustained, and the beats were flowing again shortly. Then Tim Exile took over, with an insane improvised set built on a capella vocals, beatboxing, drum machines, and spastic effect processing. This was truly a next level live performance, very demonstrative and engaging. Especially the part when he left the stage, and continued his set using nothing but a wireless headset and joystick. Absolutely mind-boggling.

As usual, there’s so much going on at this festival that I missed some sets that I would have loved. I didn’t see any of the Optical content this year, which is often a sensory immersion highlight. I didn’t get to any after hours events, due to other obligations that prevent me from being out to all hours of the morning. But of course, one of the main draws of the festival is that there’s so much to take in, and such a wide range of styles that you’re almost guaranteed to see something amazing, and discover something you never would have expected. This year was no different in that regard, and I’m sure next year will be the same.

Jega can be counted among  these progenitors, and his live set at Chop Suey last night served to demolish any doubts about the vitality of IDM, and serve as a reminder that the “D” in IDM is just as important as the “I”. the (admittedly sparse) crowd was happy to keep time to Jega’s erratic drum explorations using their bodies.

The set started off on a slower, mellower note, full of lush pads, rich melody, and drum patterns that skittered underneath it all. As the night progressed, the music became less melodic, pushing the synths to the background in favor of ever more intricately sliced breakbeats and noisy pulses, moving from the quiet, contemplative end of the musical spectrum all the way to full-on breakbeat madness. He even played an encore, an oddity in electronic music circles, that kept the intensity notched at its highest setting.

Openers ndCv and Obelus kept the mood calm and spacey before Jega took the stage, playing very textural, hip-hop tempo pieces in the vein of Boards of Canada or Seefeel. The transition into Jega’s more laid-back material was smooth, easing us into the quickly escalating pace of his set. This is where IDM excels; while there are certain touchstones of the genre, it’s very freeform when it comes to tempo and mood, and this set of artists brought the audience along on a tour of plenty different mindstates.

You can describe a typical Field song as such: take a sample of a recognizable pop song. Now trim it down to the point that it is unrecognizable. Less than a syllable, less than a full note, just a pulse of sound that hardly bears any relation to the original. Loop this, over and over, with a slowly shifting bed of pulsing delay and a steady, deep kick drum pulse. Slowly (and I mean ssssssllllllllooooooowwwwwwwwlllllyyyyy) add in layers of hihats, filtered synths, and occasionally a melody buried beneath it all. Do this for 7 to 10 minutes at a time. On record, it’s a recipe for spacey bliss-out sessions, where you can close your eyes and coast on crescendo after crescendo, waiting for the tension to break with the introduction of one more element in the mix, then feel it build again, over and over.

It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that will drive a crowd wild, but somehow it does. On stage, The Field is a band, or something that can pass for one (two guys hunched over mixers, one guy running live visuals, and one guy switching between bass and drums), and they push the shimmering, pulsing songs farther and deeper, with the live instruments guitar filling in the edges. Parts stretch out longer, grooves run deeper, the echoing feedback is more volatile. And while they didn’t get the entire dancefloor moving, they had the cluster of dancing bodies in  the center of the room begging for more, with their hands and their voices raised.

I was too tired to stay for The Juan MacLean afterwards. Was it lack of sleep the night before, or was I exhausted just by listening to the overpowering wall of sound that ended The Field’s set? Probably a little bit of both…

I’ve never seen Iron & Wine before, and I’m not really sure if I can say that I’ve seen them now. The crowd that showed up for this free in-store performance at Sonic Boom’s tiny little shop on 15th Street in capitol Hill quickly filled up the available space, and proceeded to spill out onto the sidewalk for the duration of the 30 minute set. The thirty or forty people who couldn’t fit inside (myself included) stood on the street, craning our necks and hoping to catch a glimpse of Sam Beam through the windows, and over the heads of the rest of the crowd, as wisps of music drifted out of the front door, audible only when traffic had stopped. At one point, a man climbed up on his friend’s shoulders and yelled “I can see him! He’s got a beard!” drawing a chuckle from the rest of us. A little girl sitting on her Dad’s shoulders turned to him and yelled back “You’re weird!” All in all, it was worth it, just for the sheer random adventure of it all.

2. The Field: Yesterday & Today(Kompakt/Anti- 2009)

 Axel Willner’s second album as the Field is richer, deeper record built on an expanded palette. Where From Here We Go Sublime pushed the building blocks of pop micro-samples to it’s limit, Yesterday & Todayopens the horizons, incorporating processed vocals and live drumming on some tracks. This set of songs is just as rich and hypnotic as the acclaimed debut album, with John Stanier (of Battles) contributing some extra rhythmic heft in a couple places.

3. SkipScreen (Firefox extension)

For those of you who frequent the many anonymous file-sharing services available online today, such as RapidShare, MegaUpload, zShare, etc., this plugin is a real time saver. you know that annoying little clock that pops up before you’re allowed to actually click on the download link? the one that begs you to buy a membership tot he site? This extension skips it, or at the very least bypasses the additional confirmation that’s needed in order to begin the actual download. Now, why anyone would want to visit anonymous file-sharing sites I can’t begin to imagine….

4. King City 2by Brandon Graham (Image comics/Tokyopop)

As announced by the artist himself, King City 2 will finally be seeing release! The first King Citybook, a sci-fi spy epic that wraps a sweet and sad story into a world filled with aliens, cats used as weapons, zombie wars, and drugs that turn a users body into more drugs, was published by Tokyopop a couple years back, to mountains of critical acclaim and molehills of sales. The second book lingered in limbo for ages, with an uncertain future as Tokyopop slashed its roster and dropped titles left and right. But now Image will be reprinting the first book as a series of 6 monthly installments including new material, followed up by the debut of King City 2, in the same monthly format. This probably the most exciting comic book since Paul Pope’s THB, and that’s no small praise.

5. Bonkers! in 3-D at ReBar

So, honestly, the 3-D didn’t work all that well. The first 100 people in the door at Re-Bar this night were handed a pair of old-school red-and-blue foil 3-D glasses, to be worn during Looptid’s live visual presentation at 11pm. The red lens was a bit too dark, or maybe the projections weren’t bright enough, but somehow, the projected images of geometric abstractions and vintage softcore (censored by giant “Bonk!” text blocks) failed to leap off the screen. That’s OK, because the music leapt off the speakers in its place. Erictronic’s set combined techno, shuffle, 12-bar blues, and numerous other incongruous genres; Nerd Revolt’s live debut went without a hitch, rocking the dance floor with waves of slick sub-bass. Travis Baron and Dietrich Shoenemann kept the wheels of steel in effect the rest of the night.

I didn’t actually make it out to this event, but it’s return is quite welcome. The long running experimental electronic night is a much needed alternative to the prevalence of dance-oriented electronic music events in Seattle. I’ll definitely be paying attention to future line-ups at this monthly.

2. No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

The Coen Brothers movie was a fantastic, atypical thriller that helped expand the vocabulary of cinematic expense, while frustrating moviegoers expecting a straightforward resolution. It turns out the adaptation was incredibly faithful, thought there’s something about McCarthy’s sparse prose that accentuates the methodical amorality of Chigurgh. You never get inside his head, but you don’t need to, and you wouldn’t understand him any better if you did.

3. Korg DS-10 for Nintendo DS

What could possibly make the Nintendo DS, a portable video game system with innovative control elements like a touchscreen, microphone input, and dual displays, even better? How about a full-fledged modular synthesizer, drum machine, and step sequencer modeled on the Korg MS-10 hardware synth, all in one convenient cartridge? With plenty of memory for saving preset sounds and patterns, my Nintendo DS is now a secondary portable music studio.

4. Moth/Wolf Cub by Burial and Four Tet (Warp Records)

No artwork (well, black on black artwork, which might as well be no artwork). No previews online. No tracklisting. No advance copies. Two of the most unique producers around join forces for one super limited edition split vinyl release that sold out in no time at all. Yes, this is on my top 5 even though I haven;t seen or heard it. But I’m anxiously awaiting the appearance of the vinyl rip. Preferably in FLAC format…fingers crossed.

5. Food Lifeline

I spent a few hours here on Saturday, helping sort 2,500 pounds of frozen carrots into 3 pound baggies with a group of Virginia Tech alums. This non-profit turns 95% of it’s donations into food that it distributes to the needy and hungry of Western Washington on a daily basis, with the help of volunteer groups and donations from grocery stores and food producers. Last year they gave out 21 million pounds of food from a variety of sources. They have a letter carriers food drive coming up, and there are other ways individuals can help out.

Bling bling, y’all.

2. Fell – Fermé Ferme

A new full length album from Seattle’s John McCaig (for these keeping track, he was the mastering engineer on the first two Miniature Airlines releases, and also hosted this site on PanicNow, back in the day). This album is filled with rich, unique sounds, including idiosyncratic processed drums and monophonic synthesis, and it’s soon to be available in lossless FLAC format, for the low low price of $8.99.

3. Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon’s next novel, the follow up to the sprawling 1,000+ page epic Against the Day, is a relatively sprightly 384 page detective novel. For those keeping track, that makes it his second shortest novel, just behind the brief Crying of Lot 49 and nowhere near the massive heft of Mason & Dixon or Gravity’s Rainbow. Of course, the brevity does not guarantee the new book will be straightforward; nothing Pynchon has ever written fits that description. Fans of literature both dense and delirious should note the date August 4th on their calendar, and be at their local bookstore for this release.

4. 214 live at Broken Disco (Chop Suey, April 17th)

At the latest installment of Seattle’s best electronic music night, the main dance floor was nearly empty early in the evening, with the sole exception being one young woman in flapper-esque clothing dancing in the center of the room as a handful of heads bobbed to the beat. How can this be you ask? The simple answer is that the real party was not on the main floor, but in the so-called make-out lounge, where Seattle-based prodcuer 214 was laying down some seriously intricate, yet still groove worthy music, somewhere in the no man’s land between IDM, electro, and minimal techno. And the kids who came out that night were eating it up, myself included.

5. Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban  by J.K. Rowling

Yes, I am only just now getting around to reading the Harry Potter books. And I have to say that this has been my favorite one so far. Maybe that has something to with the fact that I saw the first two movies before reading any of the books, or maybe it’s just that this book has the perfect balance of light whimsy and dark intrigue. I’m now on a deadline; I’m going to need to finish Books 4, 5 and 6 before the next movie hits theatres, as well a catch up on the other movies.

The music on his three full-length albums is composed with the aid of Amiga computers, outdated samplers, and an assortment of musical oddities, from melodica to Moog, then topped with his voice (and once in a while, his sister Becky’s). It’s dense, spastic, ADD-inspired pop that can’t keep still, and doesn’t leave so much as a 16th note of rest, yet still retains a bewildering accessibility. It would be impossible to re-create these compositions live, without hiring a rather large band of rather talented musicians, ones who could keep up with his off-kilter rhythmic sense and non-traditional arrangements, so instead he relies on prerecorded backing tracks, and lot of personality.

As soon as the first note of his live set started, he was off, twitching his arms and bouncing around the stage uncontrollably, snapping back into position at the mic whenever it was time to deliver some lyrics. This sort of quirky, bouncy pop isn’t exactly what I would expect before Junior Boys, but it definitely works. Leaning heavily on his new album, Parallax Error Beheads You, but drawing on material from all three full lengths, he kept the crowd bouncing and laughing, despite some regrettable sound issues. Is Neumo’s trying to convert their bass bins into sonic weapons for military use? For the most part, it wasn’t too bad, just extra loud and fuzzy in the low end, but the bass-heavy track “The Entertainment” suffered the most from the sternum-rattling pulse of low end. He finished up with a cover of “Goodbye, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen Adieu”, and then departed for the merch table, to sell limited edition downloadable versions of his record packaged with a can of soup. Seriously.

Now normally, it would be tough to follow up an act like Max Tundra, but Junior Boys benefited from being 1) incredibly popular (the entire dancefloor and balcony were packed to capacity by the time their set started) and 2) extremely tight. Augmenting their synthpop with a live drummer, the band played through pristine renditions of some of their best material, bringing a huge cheer when they closed out their main set with “In The Morning”, and drove the dancers into a slow-burn frenzy during their encore with the long krautrock crescendo of “Under The Sun”. The only song I was hoping to hear that they skipped over was “Bits & Pieces” “Dull to Pause” [Thanks for the correction, Donna!] from the new album, Begone Dull Care. Even with this omission though, their set was satisfying and fun, if not as innovative a spectacle as Mr. Tundra’s opening set.

It seems like only yesterday that Peter Broderick was here at Nectar, opening for local alt-folkie Tiny Vipers. Well, maybe not yesterday, but it was barely more than a month ago. Now here he is again, on the same stage, with the same assortment of instruments and looping devices, playing some of the same songs, for a somewhat larger crowd. There’s an odd sense of deja vu, but also a sense of anticipation. When he introduces the folk song that his father played for him as a child, those of us who were here for his last show know that the introduction becomes a part of the composition. We watch the faces around us as we wait for these little surprises to crop up. We know that look people get at those moments of musical epiphany, because we were here making that same look not too long ago.

It would be easy to write off his little musical tricks as gimmicks, but they’re not simple novelty. There’s a real sense of showmanship to them, of acknowledging his methods and incorporating them into the creation, rather than trying to make everything seamless. He keeps reminding you of what he’s doing, layering, looping, and manipulating; not as a way to distract from what he’s actually playing, but as a way to heighten appreciation. Not only is a he a brilliant instrumentalist and singer, but he’s also thinking and planning two steps ahead of himself at all times.

At one point he had the whole audience repeat some spoken lines after him, while recording us with a handheld recorder. Supposedly, this will be included somewhere on his next album.

For all of Peter Broderick’s talent as a solo musician, the real main event tonight was Efterklang, the 7-piece (8 if you count their soundman) Danish/American collective responsible for the 2007 album Parades, a sweeping epic that somehow combines melancholy indie rock, wisps of electronic texture, choral vocals, and marches. Going in, I was a little worried. How can something so huge, so layered, and so intricately arranged, be reproduced by a handful of musicians?

I was wrong to be worried. Experiencing these songs live was every bit as rich and rewarding as hearing them on record. All 7 of the musicians on stage sang and played multiple instruments, often switching instruments or spots on stage mid-song. Between 7 part vocal harmonies, and a miasma of guitar, bass, drums, piano, violin, flute, trumpet, glockenspiel, shakers, tambourines, and laptop, there was never a sense of anything lacking from the arrangement. Not to say that it was overwhelming, or overworked. They moved from stately and restrained to dramatic and bombastic, delicate to aggressive, ecstatic to bittersweet.

Since this was the first date of their US tour, we were also treated to the world premiere of several brand new songs, many of them only known by working titles like “Loose Ends” or “I Was Playing Drums”. These new songs were just as intricately crafted as the more familiar material, feeling just as fully realized and well-thought-out. They’re going to be spending time on the road, playing these songs every night and refining them. I can’t even imagine how good they’re going to sound once they’re finally recorded.

I missed this band when they came through town a year ago, and I regretted it immediately. Now I regret it even more, having seen them fully live up to their potential on stage. But at least I got a chance to rectify my error, and now I know not to miss them again.

Miniature Airlines: The plan is to have some sort of new release out by summer. That could possibly be a full length album, one or more EPs, or something else entirely. I’ve got a lot of mostly unreleased music waiting in the wings, I just have to find a direction and finish it all off. Which is actually more work than it sounds like. I’d also like to create a music video of some sort. This one falls more into the “flicker of an idea” category so far. Oh, and I’d love to update the website.

Superficial Hero: My old indie rock band is undergoing a slow-motion sort-of resurrection, and I’d like to see some payoff for that. We have a bunch of old songs and a handful of new ones to finish, then we need to figure out the logistics of getting the songs recorded properly while living in different states. But I’m getting a lot of ideas for this aspect from my next item…

Droomstyyg: Timm & I have been recording our friend Andrew’s black metal project, Droomstyyg, for a little while, and the results have been great so far. We’re working in a relatively quick and dirty style in Logic Pro, and our goal so far has been to record a song a week, in a 4-5 hour session (including stopping for beer and pizza). I’m learning a lot about Logic’s workflow, and can’t wait to put some of that knowledge to work elsewhere.

Unnamed Synthpop Project: I’m excited about this one, but it’s a little back-burner right now. This is another Timm & Dylan collaboration. We’re planning on performing as a live synthpop duo at some point, with live vocals. We need to finish a lot more music and work out a live setup to make this happen, but I think we’ve got a good chance of pulling it off. I’ve been working on a cover song in this style to get my feet wet, and it’s been going well.

D.iscontent: Our label/crew has been around for about a year now (I just renewed the domain name!). We’ve managed a few releases and a couple of shows in that time, and I’d like to see us busier this year. More performing, more recorded output, more stuff in general (videos, podcasts?). I’d also love to release music by someone (not counting remixes) besides the two of us, and I’d also like to make sure it’s worth their while to do so.