Dirty Knobs – NUMBERTHUMPER

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Happy Bandcamp Friday!

And this time around I *do* have something new for you. It’s called NUMBERTHUMPER by Dirty Knobs and it’s kind of a weird one. What can I say? Sometimes ideas need to be pursued to their natural end if for no other reason than to get rid of them and make way for others. A just really wanted to use the numbers I recorded ages ago, and I really needed to make something painfully loud and distorted. Here’s my best explanation:

a lost, shambling machine the size of cities, all clanks and shakes and fretful whirrs, broadcasting a series of numbers that have lost their meaning, yet must be spoken, the still air pushed by overdriven vibrations, an invisible wall flattening the night as the machine drifts through a relentless fog illuminated by cloud bursts of faint green and yellow light, plods over ash covered fields, animals watch it pass with dull curiosity while the furrowed trail the droning, broken machine leaves behind fills with bubbling tar and rust and steam, pools of water with no moon to reflect.

Hope the helps.

(it didn’t, did it?)

ACQUIRED: Squarepusher – KAMMERKONZERT (Limited Edition)

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The new one from Squarepusher, KAMMERKONZERT, just arrived. I’ve been listening to the download from Bleep since it released a couple weeks ago. This time around we hear Tom Jenkinson (the pusher himself) inhabit an entire jazz orchestra sprinkled with his trademark bass guitar gymnastics, electronic jabs and throbs, frantic drums (both real and programmed) and a full compliment of string, horns, and woodwinds played at a thousand notes per second down to softer, thoughtful, languid interludes. In other words, it’s a Squarepusher record all right. But die-hard fans of his drill & bass style might be disappointed in this much more organic, flowing, modern classical form (see also: ULTRAVISITOR), echoed in the album art that features multiple exposure black and white photos of what seem to be traditional acoustic instruments on a dark and mysterious stage. All very Blue Note Records-esque and it’s obvious that Jenkinson wants this to be considered a recording of a sweaty, intense live performance despite it all coming from just one guy. At times it can come off as a bit of an impenetrable whirlwind, but its mastery of the form is undeniable.

NOTE: This is the first time I’ve ever seen a hidden track on a vinyl record. It’s on Side 1 where after the third track there is a silent locked groove (meaning it will just keep spinning but not moving the needle forward.) But there is a fourth track beyond that that can only be heard by picking up the needle and placing it on the track manually. (You can see the gap in tracks in the photo below.) This hidden track is a short piece a la SOLO ELECTRIC BASS 1.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Cry…

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…except for your other three crew members and close to a million people watching the livestream back on Earth.

Today as the astronauts aboard the crew-christened Integrity (formally Orion) officially flew further from Earth than any other humans before, they took a moment to request a name change for two unnamed features on the moon’s surface. First they asked for one to be named Integrity (obvious), and the other to be named after commander Reid Wiseman’s wife who passed away a few years ago. The dedication ended with them making sure it was spelled correctly, “And you spell that C A R R O L L.”

I’m not sure if this name change suggestion was a surprise to Wiseman or not, but the immediate result saw all four members of the crew bursting into tears, then floating across the cabin into one big group hug.

Listen, life on Earth has never been easy, but right at this moment it feels like a lot is going very wrong for VERY STUPID reasons. To see these four humans unashamedly showing love and support for each other LITERALLY as far removed from the world as anyone has EVER been, is nothing short of an extraordinary, monumental moment, blasting out a beacon of hope brighter than any celestial object.

Just incredible.

ACQUIRED: SUNN O))) – sunn O))) (Loser Edition)

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Received the new two disc self titled LP from SUNN O))) yesterday. “You should put that on right now and play it loud as fuck,” I was instructed. Not a problem.

If you are at all familiar with SUNN O))) then you have a very good idea of what this sounds like. If not, imagine if the universe were a couple of fuzzed out electric guitars played through a parallel universe of amps at a rate of several eons per chord and you might have some idea of what they achieve. While not everything is played at a glacial pace, “slow” and “massive” could be used to describe any of the songs. And with very little exception those guitars and their wavering, thrumming tones, vibrating both together and at time at-odds with each other, are all you hear. But it is such an all encompassing riot of sound that you will envision a vast symphony of players. When each song inevitably ends it’s as if a great pressure you hadn’t noticed building is suddenly lifted and the silence becomes briefly disorienting. At least if you are listening to it though a hefty sound system in a room at reasonably high decibel levels, and you should be.

Dirty Knobs – SCORCHER Vinyl and CD Release via elasticStage

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(Jump right to the order page here.)

It’s been about five months since it was released and I’m just now getting around to talking about the on-demand via elasticStage vinyl release of SCORCHER by Dirty Knobs.

For a much more detailed step-by-step run through of the experience you can check out this post about my three-part ROOMS release. The SCORCHER process was exactly the same regarding the album page creation and ordering/shipping process. tl;dr It’s very reasonable, fast, and sounds great.

SCORCHER is quite a different album from ROOMS, and it’s given me a better feel for the sound quality that elasticStage delivers. This time is felt like the disc’s surface noise was a little more present, but this could be because the music on SCORCHER is much more dynamic so one is prone to turning the volume up a bit at the beginning which also increases the volume of the surface noise. (I am always turning the music up, and up, and up as I go, just generally speaking, so your milage may vary.)

So this is not an audiophile quality product by any means, at least as far as the vinyl is concerned, but it is still, in my estimation, worth the cost and worth checking out if you are a musician or band looking for a way to sell directly to fans without having to rent a storage space to house 1000s of copies and deal with shipping out of an extra bedroom.

You can listen to SCORCHER here and buy the digital download (starting at just $1US) there. You can order the on-demand vinyl and/orCD copy here and get all of my elasticStage releases here.

LISTENING: Cylob – IN DYSTOPIA

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New Cylob!

I first heard Cylob way way back in the Rephlex days with songs like “Cut The Midrange, Drop the Bass” and “Rewind! (Vocal),” both of which can be found on the CYMPLY THE BEST 93-01 compilation along with many other greats. I played the hell out of both on my radio show.

The songs on IN DYSTOPIA feel both similar and far removed from the feeling of those earlier tracks. Here we have songs with unexpected chords and progressions, arpeggiated in lock-step, but also like a sort of free jazz where it feels like anything could happen at any moment. The unifying factor is the dominant use of vocoder, text to speech, and other robot-like vocal effects which, for me at least, are timeless. While I might have a tough time wrapping my head around some of those songs, I’m always drawn in by the vocals. Especially on the album closer “I Achieve Full Freeze” which I’m pretty sure is simply about vocoding. Can relate.

PHOTO: This is What You Want

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Working on a custom paint job for the Cross Bone Gundam Maoh and realizing it’s a bit like the (literally) crazy robot in Hardware, one of my favorite movies. Really. If you like industrial music even a little, you need to see it. It’s kind of beautiful (and kind of bad, but still). I covered “The Order of Death”, the PiL song used in the end credits. It’s in the Endless Compendium.

ACQUIRED: Earth Tongue – DUNGEON VISION

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Got the new album DUNGEON VISION from the New Zealand fuzz rock duo Earth Tongue. Artwork is fantastic (I passed on the super deluxe version) and perfectly reflects the music’s mystical and arcane feel. The amount of power these two infuse into their often dirge-y yet playful classic metal songs is impressive. Their videos are also all spot on and worth checking out.