Last Minute

Why yes, I have been a shitty blogger lately, thank you for noticing! I’ve let this hypertext field lie fallow for months now, and for that I apologize. I will do my best to make amends, and coax this tender earth to bring forth new shoots of content for the nourishment and enjoyment of all.

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.

Decimated

Ever since I’ve moved to Seattle, there’s one event that is invariably one of the highlights of my year, and that’s Decibel Festival. The 4-day electronic music and media festival brings artists and fans from around the world to the city of Seattle, for a weekend filled with music that pushes boundaries, rewires brains, and shakes dancefloors, sometimes all at the same time. 2009 was my fourth year attending the festival, and my third year as a volunteer.

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 @ Oscillate

IDM doesn’t have the clout it used to. Once a nexus a of innovation, it seems to have been eclipsed by newer styles in the hearts of many electronic music enthusiasts. The revival of disco-derived styles and their crossover into indie/pop consciousness, and the spread of UK bass music (dubstep, etc.) have left little room for the genre in recent years. But the chin-stroking, headphone-centric style still has plenty of blood in its veins, and some of its key progenitors are putting out work as vital as ever.

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.

Two Weeks

Posting here just because I’ve been meaning to mention it: “Two Weeks”, from Grizzly Bear’s new album, Veckatimest (Warp Records 2009), which has been ruling my ears for at least two weeks so far. The video is intriguing and mildly creepy, but the song itself is a glorious, lush post-Pet Sounds gem. For some reason, there’s no Seattle or Portland stop on their current North American tour (grr!), though I did catch a couple songs when they opened for TV on The Radio a couple years back. Those of you fortunate enough to live in a city which they are favouring with their presence should check out the show, and let me know how amazing it was, so i can cry tears of jealousy.

(Note: You should really click through and watch the HD version of this instead).

Playtime

Well, that was a perfectly timed epic weekend. Perfectly timed as it coincided nicely with the 6 month anniversary of me and the Girl.

On Friday night, I came home to find a champagne bottle and sushi waiting, followed by a ridiculously decadent dessert. Can’t complain about that. Then we hit up several of the 80+ yard sales on Capitol Hill on Saturday, with pal Abby. Among the loot scored: a working NES and games for a mere $30, C.S. Lewis’ sci-fi trilogy for $1, a 35mm SLR with a 55mm 1.8 lens for $20 total, a sweater and some jeans, and more.  Follow that up with a little relaxation, then a jaunt down to the ID to shop for NES games at Pink Godzilla, and then to Georgetown for a signing by one of my favorite cartoonists, Jason, at the Fantagraphics store. As if that wasn’t enough, we met up with pal Valarie for drinks at Linda’s that night, and heard about the Sounders 2-1 win over the Earthquakes, finally breaking their streak of recent draws.

Sunday wrapped up the weekend with a sale on socks ($1-2 a pair at the U-Village Gap; guys, get your sock needs fulfilled cheap!), lots of video game playing, watching the pilot episode of the new BSG spin-off series/prequel Caprica, and more video game playing. Add generous amounts of wine and tater tots (oh, and hip hop and “your mom” jokes) to this last activity.

Not a bad couple of days by any stretch of the imagination. About the only downside was missing Art Brut on Friday…but hopefully we’ll have a chance to see them again soon.

The Field @ Nectar

There are a lot of seemingly negative words you could use to describe The Field’s music; droning, repetitive, simplistic. There’s one word you can’t use: boring. The Field is music stripped down to basic elements, then blown out, expanded, overexposed and pushed to extremes. Minimalism without restraint.

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…

Revenge of the Top 5

1. Summer in Seattle

Also known as “the best weekend of the year”.

2. Emerald City Supporters

Seattle has definitely welcomed it’s newest sporting institution, the Seattle Sounders MLS team, with open arms and sold-out games, but no one has welcomed them with more cheering, singing, drinking, and tifo-making than the ECS. If you’re planning on checking out a home game, or a viewing party for an away game, you should think about joining up. The t-shirt and scarf alone are worth the $30 membership, and the camaraderie and spirit are nothing to laugh at either.

3. Oddfellows Cafe & Bar (1525 10th Ave.)

Located in the Oddfellows building across from Cal Anderson park, this wide-open, high ceilingedroom is meticulously decorated with a relentless eye for detail. From the aged photographs, the vintage fixtures, and even the retro-styled Boylans’ sodas and old-timey candy and gum at the counter, everything feels straight out of a turn-of-the-century general shop. Plus, the massive slices of paninibread toast (served with jam and butter for only $2.50) look mouth-watering.

4. Star Trek (J. J. Abrams, 2009)

 I don’t remember which Star Trek movie was the last one I saw, but I remember it sucked. Hard. It was a Next Generation spinoff that looked and felt like an overly long TV episode, with a slightly upgraded budget and a poorly thought out plot. I remember mocking it loudly in the mostly empty theater with my friends, and we were high school nerds, firmly in the target market for this type of movie. This new reboot takes everything that was wrong with the tired franchise and chucks it out entirely, starting from the very beginning of the original crew’s story, but with a more accessible, less fanboy-centric aesthetic. The people who had managed this property had run it into the ground, and it took an outsider to take it over, revamp it, and make it into something that new audiences could be excited about again. All this, and they managed to keep the hardcore fans (mostly) happy as well. As someone who was never more than a casual fan, and one who had lost interest years ago, this is a welcome return to form.

5. Turning 30 at the Cha Cha Lounge

A low key affair that somehow combined good friends, giant crabs, margaritas, pitchers of Stella Artois, broken glass, frightened hipsters, helium voices, and a trip to IHOP that felt like a scene from Twin Peaks. And that’s about all I have to say about that…

Son of the Top 5

1. Iron & Wine at Sonic Boom on 15th

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.

We Gonna Party Like It’s the Top 5

1. Celebrating a welcome layoff

Did you ever have one of those days when your significant other carpools into work with you at 7:30am, only to get summarily laid off by a borderline insane employer at 9:00am? And you come home at 6:00pm to find that she, her sister, and their friend have already worked their way through two bottles of wine and a bottle of vodka? And within about an hour, there are several more people at her apartment and every drop of alcohol has been consumed and it sounds like a fantastic idea to walk up to Deluxe for their $5 burger special? And somewhere along the way some wine is thrown up on the sidewalk and $5 worth of bottled water is purchased from a corner market in order to meet their debit card minimum? Because I have no idea what that’s like.

2. Celebrating a new home and a birthday

Then there are those other days, when you get invited to a rooftop housewarming party on a 6-story condo in the center of Capitol Hill, and there’s a nearly 360° view of the Seattle area, including the Olympics, the Cascades, Mount Rainier, Cal Anderson park, the Space Needle, and any other notable landmark you could care to mention. Funny hats are worn, assorted meats are grilled, and multiple parties end up cross-contaminating each other and poaching each others beverages. And this is before the underage partiers start showing up and acting like jackasses, so you go inside and eat Guinness birthday cake.

3. Free Comic Book Day (Saturday, May 2nd)

I probably should have posted this last week, since anyone who doesn’t know about it has now missed it. But this yearly event is a great way to get non-comics readers into comics shops, out of curiosity if nothing else. It’s also a good way to check out some new comics that you might not take a chance on otherwise. Let’s face it, with comic book pamphlets clocking in at upwards of $3 a pop these days, free sounds awfully tempting.

4. Molly Moon’s on Capitol Hill (917 East Pine)

Ever since I moved from Canada twenty some-odd years ago, I’ve been missing one thing above all else, and that’s black licorice ice cream. I found it, once, at an ice cream shop at a mall in Eugene several years ago, but that one encounter was not enough to quench a two-decade urge. fortunately, Molly Moon’s has answered my prayers at last, with a salted black licorice ice cream. It’s not exactly what I was looking for, but it is a new take on my long-lost childhood favorite. Maybe I can convince them to make a tiger tail ice cream (orange and black licorice swirled), and really make my day.

5. Phonogram 2.2 (Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie)

Speaking of comic books, the second issue in Gillen & McKelvie’s seven part series, offering seven different music- and magic- infused takes on a single night in a London club, finally hits shelves. For those who missed the first series, Rue Britannia, Phonogram is essentially an extended metaphor that disguises musings on the cultural and personal significance of popular music as self-aware urban drama spiced with magic. I mean, really, why would you write a dry essay on the rise and fall of Britpop, when you could instead make it a keenly drawn comic book filled with sorcerous intrigue? The second series expands this conceit, exploring the subjective aspects of pop culture through the eyes of seven very different characters.

Return of The Top 5

1. The Return of Oscillate (Chop Suey, April 22nd)

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.