The Rep

The Jandek live records are my favorite thing to buy these days.

I am not a Jandek superfan. I heard Lost Cause when I was in college after reading the Byron Coley SPIN article. Previous to that, I heard a dude who worked at a record store in Florida talk about him. That dude didn’t really like me, so I never asked more.

Now, I am totally obsessed with these live records. I only have four, but they total ten hours of music. Here’s a big list I have in my head about these records.

Here what I like about the records that has nothing to do with the music:

- They are inexpensive: Yesterday I bought Brooklyn Wednesday which is a FOUR disc set in a slipcase. 17 BUCKS.

-They are all starting to really look the same in a really cool way: Manhattan Tuesday and Brooklyn Wednesday have very similar pictures of very lovely green rolling parks. I like that they look nearly alike, almost like issues of a magazine.

-True to form, you never know when one is getting rolled out: They just show up on the shelf. Imagine that. You put out a record and people find it. Conversely, since they are being released in chronological order, you know what the next one will be. You just don’t know when.

Here’s what I like about them musically:

They are all really different in sound and shape: The angular attacks of Glasgow Sunday are a world apart from the languid dewdrops of Glasgow Monday, which is a world away from the cavernous blackout of Manhattan Tuesday and the charged electric jam of (at least the first disc of) Brooklyn Wednesday. And all four of these records are played by the same seven or eight musicians.

They are concept albums within live albums: Well, two of them are. Or, maybe they are song cycles. Anyways, there are titles and subtitles to these records, which gives you more to think about? (Maybe this belongs in the top column?)

They contain some of Loren Connors’ hottest playing on record: Seriously, the distortion and wah on Manhattan Tuesday are SICK. He tears it up on the first disc.

They have Chris Corsano on them. No further elucidation required.

There’s more to say about these and I suspect that those who have dedicated a lot of thought to the man deserve to have your ear on the subject. I really hope every single one of his shows are released on CD. The show that I saw here in Boston was fraught with intensity and humor, just like these records. These are special documents that deserve lots of attention.

new and old tools

I got a MacBook Pro recently and I am slowly trying to make music with it. About twice a week or so I run Live, MSP, Logic and even GarageBand and try and make sound come out of this thing. No results so far, but I can immediately sense the efficiency of the the device when it comes to rendering audio. While this is deeply painfully obvious to most people, it took me a very long time to switch. I think it will be three months or so before I can produce music with this computer. I still have the four samplers on deck at all times.

The two on the bottom are SP202’s, both of them sound pretty rugged and only send a stereo signal from the headphone jack. Same for the SP303, which is on top and has the handsome red highlights. Those three things (minus the new 404 that I bought a few months ago) were the entirety of my setup for at least four years, with the addition of this little guy:

The circuit-bent Casio SK1 is the BC Rich of electronic instruments. People were so psyched for these when they first made their way out of the hobbyist circle and onto EBay and the like, but now suddenly people find them a little cheesy, which they may be, but a good chunk of my last record was made with this box. I asked a local noise guy if he’d want to buy it off of me the other night and he made the best “no way dude”.

Listening this weekend:

and La Otracina’s Tonal Ellipse Of The One on Holy Mountain, which is awesome.

Poor Britany. Leave her alone.

back to life

hey, trying again…

New cassette “due locations”is out…try longlongchaney/second sleep for copies or email me and I can hook it up. It’s a small edition and will become part of the reissue box set that exists in my mind. If anyone is up for a multi-cd Trojan Records style box set of Brendan Murray solo, lemme know. Not kidding.

Also, sillage, my collaboration with Seth Nehil, will be out this coming week. Try Sedimental direct and buy the Tim Feeney/Vic Rawlings duo cd at the same time, as they are two of the best musicians in the world. Period.

Other stuff in the works that I blogged about here for some reason. Soon this page will be everything and the old hmtl nightmare of my website a distant memory.

Other people’s records: the new Giuseppe Ielasi on 12K is, unsurprisingly, a total masterpiece. Listened to “Das Machen mit den Schwefelholzern” by Lachenmann awhile ago and it changed my life. Howard Stelzer’s taken a break from his usual activities and finished two cds: “Bond Inlets” and “Go On” are the best he’s ever done. Seriously, he’s synthesized CV, Broken Flag and NZ drone styles into two elegant sound masses. It’s on. Battles are awesome. Can’t wait to listen to the Teiji Ito and Invite The Spirit reissues I just got. All of the Teiji Ito packages have been great and I have wanted to hear Invite The Spirit since I read about them in Option when I was 12. Since I play guitar more these days, it’s probably a good idea to pay attention to Henry Kaiser. Right now, I am listening to MMM for the first time ever.