EMERALD COCOON

yek koo, Purple Pilgrims, LA Lakers tour 2012

2012-01-25T01:21:00.000-08:00

West Coast: (yek koo w/ Purple Pilgrims and LA Lakers)

March 26 - Oakland, CA

March 27 - Davis, CA

March 28 - Portland, OR

March 29 - Seattle, WA

March 30 - Arcata, CA

March 31 - San Francisco, CA

April 1 - Sacramento, CA

April 2 - Los Angeles, CA @ Dem Passwords

East Coast: (yek koo with LA Lakers)

May 2 - Brooklyn, NY @ Zebulon

May 3 - New York

May 4 - Providence, RI

May 5 - Boston, MA @ Whitehaus

May 6 - Northampton, MA

May 7 - Albany, NY @ Helderberg House

May 8 - Syracuse, NY

May 9 - Toronto, Canada

May 10 - Pittsburgh, PA

May 11 - Baltimore, M

May 12 - Philadelphia, PA

Touching Them, Touching You - A Love Song for the Dead C

2012-01-25T00:20:00.000-08:00

is the first in a series ofmultimedia installation andperformance works in which I situate myself in the position ofa Hagiographer, visually depicting the lives of my musical saints. Thefirst hagiography is on the Dead C (an experimental rock band formed in Dunedin, NewZealand in 1987/88).

For the next few weeks, using kickstarter I'm raising money to help cover building and production costs. For more info, description, and a montaged video clip of my project click here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/784787498/touching-them-touching-me-a-love-song-for-the-dead. I appreciate your support and welcome any donations you can offer....there's also special gifts for those who contribute including the upcoming yek koo LP, limited edition CDrs, artwork, and performance series passes!

The exhibition and performance dates are:
Exhibition: March 24th - April 22
Opening Reception: March 24th, 8pm
Performance Series: April 20 - 22

At Human Resources Gallery
410 Cottage Home St

Chinatown, Los Angeles CA 90012

Ashley Paul - 'Leave Mine' video

2012-01-24T23:36:00.000-08:00

Beautiful video by Gretta Johnson for 'Leave Mine', the B-side to Ashley Paul's contirbution to our Alone Together 7" series. We still have copies of the 7" available here.

Emerald Cocoon Label Profile

2011-12-27T22:48:00.000-08:00

R.A.D. Vinyl blog has done an interview with us as part of their label profile series. Click here to check it out.

THE NEXT WAVE: AN INTERVIEW WITH ASHLEY PAUL

2011-12-20T23:00:00.000-08:00

We first met Ashley Paul when she was passingthrough LA on tour with the equally brilliant Eli Kezsler. We were hipped to her existence by the LuckyDragons, who told us “you, of all people, should go to this show”, so we did,and as they so often are, the Lucky Dragons were right indeed. Her set seemed to condense the entirehistory of avant-garde music into a half hour procession of one extendedtechnique after another as scored for a one-woman orchestra of acousticinstruments. Byron Coley described the‘Hidden Face/Leave Mine' 7” Ashley did for our Alone Together series as ‘theghost of an avant chamber orchestra dragging itself through the streets at dawnlooking for an angry fix’ - and he’s not wrong. Slowly rising reed shrieks and ringing crotales creepy slowlyaround light breathy vocals – a tremoloed teisco twangs and erupts into suddenslides… Ashley is fusing soundworldsthat have no business being fused: conceptual/physical, improvised/composed,avant/folk, mind/muscle - and as such sounds like no-one else but herself. We harassed Ashley via email to ask her afew questions about her methodology and influences. Read onwards, but rest assured that after all questions areanswered her music remains permanently and unassailably alien andbeautiful…

Ashley's 7" is still available at Emerald Cocoon.

Emerald Cocoon: How are you finding your new home inBrooklyn? What takes you there? Musically how does it compare?

Ashley Paul: Brooklyn is great. Eli and Imoved here in July but are just now starting to feel settled. Its funny, youknow, I really hesitated for a long time on whether or not to come back herebut now that we are here it really feels right. Providence was awesome butfinding work there was really hard. It was just time for a change and thisseemed the natural progression. I was playing here a lot and was totally sickof the middle of the night commutes back home after shows, you know?

EC: It definitely takes time feelingsettled. We moved to a new place in June and are still unsettled. Are you originally from New York? I know you've toured extensively in theUS and you were on the West Coast playing the On Land festival in SanFrancisco, what are your thoughts regarding the differences in approach to thiskind of music on the east and west coast?

AP: I am from Des Moines, IA. I moved east forcollege and stayed here. Hmmm, I don’t really know how to answer about thedifferences on each coast. There are some, it seems, but I don’t really knowhow to put them into words…

EC: Your music seems to be a mix of elements from manydisparate sound worlds - what do you find yourself listening to forinspiration?

AP: Its kind of weird but all I really listento right now is old jazz. Johnny Hodges, Jelly Roll Morton, early Ellington,Earl Bostic, Ace Cannon…you know, with the smatter of Cage, Feldman and ConlonNancarrow; been listening to Nancarrow a lot! Oh, and the new Geoff Mullen LP“Accidental Guitars”. Its so good.

EC: How did you get into early Jazz? Did you startwith free jazz and work your way backwards or was it vice versa? Isn't yourfather a musician? Did this have an impact on your playing?

AP: I have a very musical family. Mygrandfather was a clarinetist and saxophonist, my dad is an amazing rhythmguitar player and my sister is a vocalist. My house was always full of musicwhether it was Chopin, opera, jazz, or musical theater. My first true love wasPaul Desmond. He is the reason I play the saxophone. I wanted to play like AP:Paul Desmond and my dad to play like Jim Hall and I started transcribing allthe RCA Victor recordings when I was ten or eleven. I became increasingly intomore experimental musics as I got older. First Roland Kirk and Ornette, then NoWave and it sort of a spiraled out from there. I sort of lost it the first timeI heard Arto Lindsay. I'm a big fan. I feel very lucky to have been raised insuch a musical household. I think just being surrounded by so much music at anearly age, and then having an incredibly supportive family had the largest impact.

EC: In terms of recording, which came first, Aster or yoursolo work?

AP: Solo work. It basically started with mefooling around on garage band. I was terrified of recording, it seemed likethis totally complicated impossible thing and then I realized how amazing itcould be. Learning how to record completely changed my music. It wasa revolution! My first solo CD (DOL) was recorded all on garage band using theinternal mic on my computer. That was all I could do. Since then I’ve learned acouple more things and I guess have figured out a system I like and that worksfor me. I love mixing. I spend hundreds of hours mixing. Its compulsive! As far as Aster, Eli and I record most ofthose live. We set up a bunch of mics and record a whole album in a few days,then sort of take turns mixing tracks, passing them back and forth till theyare done. With my solo work, I record one track at a time piecing albumstogether little by little, sometimes holding onto tracks for a few years untilI feel like it’s the right place on an album for that song to fit.

EC: The first Metal Rouge release was recorded entirely onan internal computer mic too. Surprising how well that works! Doyou find yourself altering/re-composing the mix or are you just trying to getan accurate representation of what you played and recorded (or composedbeforehand)?

AP: Oh no. For me part of the art of recordingis the ability to make it as perfect as you possibly can. I spend hours andhours fine tuning little details.

EC: You are in several projects, 'Aster' with Eli Keszler,'Paul and Maurey' with Sakiko Mori, 'Oxtirn' with Geoff Mullen and Keszler, andAnthony Coleman’s 'Damaged by Sunlight'. How does your approach differ in eachof them?

AP: Well, in “Damaged” and “Oxtirn” I ammore of a side woman. I am there in a supportive role, which is really nice.Less pressure. I also play almost exclusively winds, which I love and don’treally get to do as much anymore. In my solo work and “P & M” I play ahandful of instruments, usually simultaneously. It’s a constant challenge, butreally exciting. I had to learn how to play music all over again, how tohandle playing a saxophone and a guitar at the same time presents weirdobstacles…you are limited in so many ways and at the same time have so manymore options. I am still always freaked out performing with that set-up. Withthe saxophone, things are safe and easy, with all the new things I am totallyvulnerable.

EC: About playing unfamiliar instrumentsOrnette Coleman says: "I'll try any instrument. If you're doingsomething you've never done before, it's easier to feel more relaxed about it.When you're doing something you have done before, and you can't make it anybetter, then it starts the worry". Can you relate to that statement atall?

AP: Yes and no. Of course I want to pushmyself, it is so much harder for me to do what I do now than just play thesaxophone. I've played sax 22 years. It's part of my body. Playing saxophoneand guitar and singing all at the same time in front of people, that’sterrifying. Playing anything other than saxophone in front of people freaks meout. I do understand what he means, you are allowed a different sort of freedomwhen you play other things because you don’t feel the same weight of theinstrument. You are forever changed when you study one thing so intensely. Itshard to let go of all that work and time…all that’s in you head. I thinkplaying other things has allowed me to open up the saxophone to that placethough. It is really difficult to describe but I do think playing other thingsand not worrying, just doing, was super important.

EC: As you release more albums, you seem to be inchingcloser to "song" - is this accurate? How do you define"song" and what is your interest in it?

AP: I guess song is where I come from. Myheroes growing up, and still now, were always super melodic. I definitelyneeded to pull back from that for a little while, as my interest in morecontemporary music and sound art grew, but now maybe I just feel like those twoare intertwined. The songs and the sound, they are both there.

EC: So is it safe to say that sound isyour primary consideration rather than song?

AP: No. I think making music is my primaryconsideration. I’m trying not to differentiate. What it is, the label, it isnot important. Its not anything really, and a little of everything and maybejust something else entirely…the next wave.

EC: To what degree are your piecescomposed/improvised? Do you place much importance on one or theother?

AP: They are composed. There is improvisation,definitely, but they are composed. My roots are in improvisation but I use thatnow mostly as a tool in order to make these little pieces.

EC: You studied at New England Conservatory yet your musicdoesn't sound like what one would normally associate with 'conservatorytraining'. How important was your experience there? What did youtake from it and what did you leave behind?

AP: Thanks. NEC was an incredible place forme. It is a real gift to be able to just make music all the time with suchincredible people. To be constantly thinking about it, surrounded,challenged. To meet and work with such great people…Joe Maneri, AnthonyColeman, Ran Blake. Three of my heroes. I spent years trying to become a greatsaxophonist and musician, then reached a wall and just wanted to be myself, tohave my own voice…for me, that was process of letting things go. All that workI did, it colors everything. I couldn’t do what I do now without the technicaltraining, but what I strive to do now comes from a different place. It’s soincredibly personal. It’s not about sounding like I have great technique. I’mjust trying to be honest with myself I guess.

EC: About the process of finding your ownvoice: I know it must have been a long process, but was there any eureka-typemoment along the way when you knew you had broken that wall?

AP: No eureka moment. It took so long. I spentyears totally frustrated. Working. Not working. Gardening. Sitting. Then one dayI guess I was just where I needed to be. For now anyway…

EC: You gave us an amazing Twombly-esque imagefor the cover of the Alone Together 7" that was painted by your mother. I'm interested to know the background to this - were you surrounded byart from an early age?

AP: Yes. My parents exposed me to an immenseamount of art, music, dance and theater. They were pretty amazing! Not at allyour typical Iowa parents, it kind of blows my mind when I think back on itnow. My mom took me to museums and theater and art classes and taught mehow to do just about everything craft oriented you could imagine. She didn’tstart the oil paintings though until I left for college. Now she is producingincredible work and showing. It is pretty cool.

EC: Do you have any thoughts of touringsoon, in the west coast perhaps? CA?.....LA?

AP: Eli and I are doing a little mini tour inmarch here on the east coast and hopefully heading to Europe in the spring. Wehave a new Aster record coming out on 8mm. I also have a new solo LP coming outin January on Orange Milk and hope to tour for that. I have been reallyenjoying playing solo. I definitely want to come back out CA asap. The last fewtimes have been completely amazing!

Open Melody 2011

2011-11-13T13:26:00.000-08:00

@ UC IRVINE

for more info check out: http://acrobaticseveryday.com/

SOULFUL DUST: AN INTERVIEW WITH YEK KOO

2011-11-02T17:42:00.001-07:00

As Yek Koo, Helga Fassonaki (also of Metal Rouge) has issued long-form void blares on Seymour Records, Digitalis, Stunned and most recently as part of Emerald Cocoon's 'Alone Together' series. Here in her first ever interview as Yek Koo she discusses soulful dust, Dictaphone honesty, applying for an artistic license and why her new single isn't a pop song.

Yek Koo's contribution to the Alone Together 7” series is still available for order over at Emerald Cocoon.

Emerald Cocoon: How did Yek Koo start? Can you talk about the genesis of Yek Koo? I know you were doing stuff before Metal Rouge and it wasn’t Yek Koo yet.

Helga Fassonaki: It was an evolution. Before metal rouge I was doing a lot of solo stuff…it was very conceptual and influenced by being in art school at the time. It was more of a mistake that I started performing live. I was doing a lot of sound installation type work at Elam School of Fine Art in Auckland, New Zealand and word got out to musician/artist Tim Coster that I was doing experimental sound/noise stuff at Elam. He was organizing a music show at Canary Gallery and pushed me into it…I mean asked me to play – that ended up being my first ever live show.

EC: And what were you playing? Were you playing santur?

HF: No I wasn’t playing santur just yet. I wasn’t actually playing music…I mean, I picked up instruments my entire life and made sounds and jammed with friends here and there before moving to NZ, but I was never in a band and never considered myself a musician…I always considered myself an artist, but loved music very much and sound was a material I was very attracted to in my art practice. So because I didn’t actually play music at the time, when Tim asked me, for some reason I accepted and then had to figure out how to transform what I was doing in my studio into a live performance. I had been taking apart tape players and manipulating them and playing and amplifying the tape heads – it was these two old tape player message recorders that I found in this electronic surplus shop. I had been taking them apart and playing around with the internal electronics, using contact mics to amplify them. I was also learning MAX/MSP as a way to create interactive sound work. I had made this simple ring modulator patch that I used to manipulate/modulate the tape-head sounds for my performance. I was into the idea of taking the insides of something, the internal workings of a machine and to start with that as my sound source. It was quite primitive. All the max patch did was do what an effects pedal would do -alter the sound. I was never actually into electronic music or that type of sound and was pretty disconnected emotionally to the sounds that I was making – they were mainly these abstract experiments, relating more conceptually to my art practice.

EC: Do you think that wouldn’t have happened unless you went to art school? That these were results of being in art school?

HF: Um, pretty much. Prior to New Zealand, I used to make sounds and manipulate them using the computer for films I'd make. I listened to a lot of different kinds of music, but was never into these particular sounds as music. I viewed these live performances as something more than just the sounds… more like a visual and aural time-based event and sound was just one of the elements. Though I never considered myself a sound artist either. I really came to dislike that label. My live performance approach was (and still often is) influenced by David Tudor’s approach of never really knowing what lies beneath the electrical circuitry - this idea that performance can be as much of a surprise to the performer as it is to the audience really intrigued me and helped me cope with my technical illiteracy and phobias and embrace the act of performance itself - something I was really getting into.

EC: Apart from the materials that are obviously different (now you're playing guitar etc) what separates that from Yek Koo?

HF: As I continued performing live, I incorporated other elements/instruments like the santur (Persian dulcimer) and slowly bringing more physicality and humanness to my playing. I enjoyed actually playing instruments and wasn't interested in creating computer-generated sounds. The computer felt foreign and abstract to me, not manual and expressive enough. So I eventually ditched it and ended up using just santur, contact mics, and a couple effects pedals…slowly bringing in some vocals (but so subtly, they were barely audible). I was still trying to integrate my music and art practice when I finished school, but I was getting more involved in the underground music scene in Auckland and eventually worked out that I was an artist who plays music. So yek koo took root as my solo music project when I returned to the states, the major difference being that my influences are more music rather than visual art…but really, more recently I've been finding these arbitrary lines we draw between and around what this is and what that is really unnecessary. Visual art and music, are both forms of art, as are writing and gardening. I like to pick up the material that I feel makes the most sense and best represents what I'm trying to express at the time…so really what it comes down to is what I do take with me from project to project, like my influences and approach.

EC: So the stuff you recorded under your own name is not going to see a reissue anytime soon?

HF: Interesting you should say that because none of that stuff was ever supposed to be recorded…the only reason I ever recorded anything that I did live or sound projects/installations was as documentation - not to be bootlegged or sold as a commodity. The fact that some of that documentation fell into the hands of audio nerds who feel it should be released in material form is out of my control but not something I endorse.

EC: You talked about the differences between pre-Yek Koo and Yek Koo, but obviously there's a big difference to the way you approach things in Yek Koo vs Metal Rouge.

HF: I feel like the approach is similar but the process is different. What ties all my projects together is my use or treatment of music as sound material moving through time…I remember the Dead C talk about a similar approach in one of their interviews, where Bruce Russell said, ‘Sounds are fundamental, songs are not’…you can have sounds without songs, but you can’t have songs without sound. So even in yek koo where its more pre-composed, I approach everything I play as sound material rather than a musical part, like what I’m doing with my voice is treated as a undulating vacuum of tones, rather than a chorus line. If I have words to say, I say them and that creates some context, some poetry, but never a chorus line. In this sense I can never be ‘pop’. My approach in both projects is very non-technical and I allow emotion and an idea to push and pull the sound. This is actually similar to installations I used to make where I allowed the physical environment and/or objects to push and pull the sound. Now it’s more of what I experience and the collision of my brain with the outside environment along with my ability to push my instruments that create the sound. I feel like in Metal Rouge we’re still pre-composing, but they're very loose unwritten structures that we fill in as we play. I often still compose with Metal Rouge stuff, but it happens as we’re playing…the composition unravels as we play and then we try and remember what we did or what works. We often communicate metaphysically with each other. With yek koo I have a script that I follow, lyrics and rhythms that I memorize but both processes use sound in a similar fashion and both come from similar influences, motivations, and ethics. I have no real musical training…I did learn how to play the flute when I was younger and played for 7 years, but I hated it. I didn’t know about Eric Dolphy then…if I had watched him play the flute back then, maybe I'd have a whole other perspective. When I was a teenager, I asked my friend to teach me how to play guitar and he told me to just play with him. After attempting to 'jam' with him he said, ‘don’t ever learn how to play cause you will never be able to go back to where you are now’. At the time I was a little annoyed, now I understand. And because I don’t know how to play any of the instruments that I actually play, I can treat each instrument equally, a tool to create a certain sound.

EC: Then there’s no one instrument favored over any other, any instrument will do, it’s the process of each instrument that’s important?

HF: Well, that said I really like the way voice, guitar, and more recently pocket trumpet feel. I guess its really about the range of sound I’m able to create with each one and my relationship to the instrument at a certain phase that leads me to hang onto it more than others...it has a voice that compliments my own, etc…so yeah, there’s definitely instruments I favor but why I’m attracted to them is for the vocabulary they help me shape, form, and express. For example, I can create the greatest range of emotion using voice, which I treat as an instrument. For one, it’s closest to you physically and emotionally and emanates from within you - it’s the most honest and unique to your own makeup. The funny thing is that I had a phobia of singing for a really long time and wouldn’t go near a microphone and still wouldn’t if I considered what I do with my voice as singing.

EC: So what’s your relationship to sampling? You sample stuff quite often.

HF: I use it as another sound in yek koo. Because of the logistics of playing solo and wanting to bring in certain sounds, I’ll sample some beats that provide another element. I usually write my own part first and then find other sounds (mainly drum beats or drumming) that I think go with what I’m doing. Maybe If I found other musicians to play with me, I wouldn’t sample…I don’t know.

EC: So it’s purely a practical concern?

HF: Sometimes I have a conceptual reason for using a sample…like in the album I’m currently working on where I’m sampling a band who the album is actually being made for…no more details on that just yet. I’m always pretty open about what I sample…I learned it from the best (Dead C and Gate).

EC: At least half of your recordings are done using a Dictaphone. Why? What is it about Dictaphones?

HF: It’s just something I felt when I first started yek koo, that it all had to be recorded on a Dictaphone. Not sure why except that I really liked the immediacy of it and I really felt like it recorded most accurately on some respects how primitive and raw my playing was…I was just starting to play guitar and not knowing how to play…

EC: So the Dictaphone was meant to enhance what was already there?

HF: Yeah and it added another layer of buzz and distortion that I liked – like it was another layer of sound, its own instrument so to speak. Hmmm…this is starting to sound like what I was doing with the tapeheads on the old recorders in my early performances – amplifying the sound of the machine. Huh, what do you know? The immediacy was actually a big factor – I like that the recorder feels so close to the source - no mics, no mic cables, no mixer – just a simple recording of soundwaves to tape. And to be honest, I’m not really into recording, I’m way more into live performance.

EC: Why do you prefer live performance?

HF: I like the immediate action of live performance. Whenever I play, I can never repeat the same piece exactly…even if it’s a highly structured song…I will still not follow it, just because I’m incapable of doing that – it’s a handicap, but a handicap that has added to my style. So because I can’t play the same thing twice, practice can be like a new experience for me each time…even during tour where you play the same songs over and over again…I can make something repetitious go out of sync so quickly. So even practice can be exciting, but when it comes to recording and post-production, my interest starts to dwindle because I lose emotional engagement with it…the technical stuff gets in the way. I feel about this with art as well that often the idea itself is the most exciting part – that once you start to realize your idea and create it, you often start following this planned outline which is not always exciting. Sure, the process could be fulfilling, but it’s never as exciting as when it was first manifested in your head.

EC: Then the question is: why not just come up with the idea and write it down? Why make the object?

HF: Exactly. Why make records?

EC: Exactly, why do you make records? Aren't you working on a record right now?

HF: (laughs) Yeah, and as you know I’ve been sitting on the recorded/mixed material for about 6 months. There you go… But okay, I’m going to be a bit of a hypocrite here and say that I guess what’s exciting about the process is the drive to see the finished piece…what it ends up looking like, sounding like. I like objects, I like records, I just don’t like the time between recording and the final output. I wish I was more patient. Also, putting out vinyl costs a lot of money, so you can’t always see the material result of what you’ve done right away. So by the time the record comes out you may be somewhere completely different emotionally which is probably good, because you don’t want to be so attached to something you release out into the world, you need to let go. Whereas with performance, there’s a certain presence about it. I guess the performance and the record are just two very separate things to me and the way I approach playing and performing doesn’t always come across in the recording. With this mysterious album we’ve been hinting about, I did a few things I’ve never done with yek koo before…I used a four-track (not a Dictaphone) to record most of it and I overdubbed, and composed the tracks before I learned how to play them live. I still don’t know how I’d play them live. But the live part will just be a different thing.

EC: The A side and the B side of the Alone Together seven inch sound radically different from each other. Obviously the recording style is different, but why do they sound so different?

HF: I don’t know, people have said that and its mentioned in reviews, but I really don’t know and don’t necessarily feel that way myself…except that maybe because Side B, Flame Creation, was recorded live onto a Dictaphone and Side A was composed and recorded on a four-track - that does change the sound a lot. But there are a lot of similarities…for instance, they both sample the same artist, the singing style is very similar…I definitely don’t consider ‘Oh Woman’ a pop song…though I guess the beats I’ve sampled for that one are a lot more rhythmic. And they were both composed using the same approach.

EC: Do you think then it’s only the recording methodology that makes people think that?

HF: Yeah, because I think the Dictaphone adds this honesty to it…at least in my situation because I’m playing so primitively…when you record multitrack – you can dub things in, dub things out…its cleaner and it can change the sound a lot. The Dictaphone adds dirt and grain, similar to my way of playing so it captures that aspect really well.

EC: Do you think there’s a deficit of honesty in music today?

HF: I’ll be honest: yes.

EC: But you’re fixing it one Dictaphone at a time?

HF: Well, I don’t think the dishonesty is necessarily in the recording process or recording outcome…there seems to be a darker dishonesty, a dishonest disguise over the motives of making certain music in the world that we currently interact with.

EC: So you like good honest dust?

HF: hmmm, maybe just soulful dust. Dishonesty is allowed with your artistic license…as long as you're sincere about it…as long as you've got guts to back it.

EC: Maybe you should have to sit a test before you’re allowed to get your artistic license…

HF: yeah nah, I hate tests…but maybe this one's necessary.

ART IS TIME: AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTINA CARTER

2011-10-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

We’re proud to present this extensive interview with Christina Carter, covering her creative philosophy, the legacy and purpose of art, the immediacy of the visual over the audible, the continuing buy-out of the underground and many other topics that most other musicians are too scared to go near. Take a deep breath and read on for some very real insights from a present and future master of form and formlessness.

Christina’s contribution to our Alone Together 7” series is still available for order over at Emerald Cocoon.

Emerald Cocoon: What was the first album that made you realize 'I can do this'?

Christina Carter: There wasn’t one. It’s more of a history of mini-realizations involving many more things than just music albums adding up into beginning to ‘do this,’ before even knowing whether or not I could. That’s the thing. I didn’t know if I could do it before I started doing it. I hoped that I would eventually create the conditions that would enable me to learn to do it. And ‘it’ wasn’t just about music. It was about creating, expressing, using, interacting, establishing…. Entering into a whole life, a whole process, a whole legacy… About a sort of belief in this realm… It’s difficult to relate in a way because it becomes this attempt at detachment from self as well as this attempt to completely enter into the self. You have to detach from the self to believe it is possible to do it, to become something more than at first you believe yourself to be capable of, while making the ego serve that pursuit rather than serve your own sense of image or largeness or stature or place in the material world… It is not about me, and at the same time it must be about discovering my sound – but with the purpose of making an offering into that realm…

EC: Can you talk a little more about ‘making an offering to that realm’ and what you mean by that phrase? Do you feel a duty to do good by something that exists outside yourself, and seems to have animated art since time immemorial?

CC: You know it’s like an offering that you make to the gods. It’s kind of up in the air whether or not they’re going to accept it, but if you take the right steps it should prove itself worthy. Although there’s always the chance that you have a misunderstanding about the steps, or that it is a particularly capricious group of gods… But, you want to give something, show respect, add to the prayers, so to speak… Yes, of course I do have that sense of having a duty to do good by something that exists outside of myself. I’m very much a believer in there being something that exists outside of myself, first of all. Second of all, if one isn’t concerned with the idea of doing good toward this aspect of our humanness, what aspect/s is/are being honored instead? This one thing pretty much has been my calling for a long time. This is changing a lot with how things are developing. But I know the aspects I’m not going to put my energy into doing good by. They’ve got plenty of help already. So, I think in terms of other ways people try to enrich our collective lives. Art is just the most compelling thing to me and always has been.

…I wanted to play music and write and make art from as early on as I can remember wanting to do something. Three, four years old. But it was about from thirteen or so that questioning and investigating the psychological and technical aspects of what constitutes being an artist began, and then from eighteen or so beginning to put those observations into sustainable action… Early on, coming into contact with the Surrealists’ emphasis on the subconscious was a big part of this. People in Houston who were making music were a big part. And then, the music in the late 80s/early 90s that was called ‘lo-fi’ was a big part. That was part of the technical insight. It became immediately apparent with what the people in Houston and others were doing that were much more experienced than I was in thinking about the technical aspects that all of the trappings of money driving the recording process, i.e. studios, expensive equipment, engineers, producers, were completely unnecessary. And since I had no allegiance to any of that anyway in fact had never even considered those things up to that point it was a simple matter of hearing that fact and understanding it…. But I don’t think any album can make you realize you can do it. It is the drive to do it that makes one listen to music or observe art (and life/people) in a certain way that is about extracting information, answering the questions that you are seeking to answer… And by entering into a legacy, I mean that true art is the origin of all human beings meaningful relationship to the world they are born into and it became at some point, the ongoing opposing force to the spiritual, material, and political malaise that human beings experience in this world they are born into. It is evident that this world we experience now is not the world as it should be for us as human animals. Unfortunately, we’re lost permanently in this opposition between these forces… Reading Kenneth Patchen’s novel ‘The Journal of Albion Moonlight’ recently was a real gauntlet. It’s still affecting me, and I think unfortunately (in a way) drummed up some un-ignorable doubt in my mind about the value of continuing to wrestle artistically within this opposition. The end result seems to be a re-dedication to this, but you know it’s hard. It’s bleak sometimes, and the difficult truth is that creating can be a hardship. Can be. And I’m not talking about writer’s block… So my point is, once you have realized “I want to do this,” you have to realize “I am doing this,” then you realize “I am capable of doing this,” and then you have to keep realizing those things, especially “I am capable of doing this” over and over.

EC: This a recurring battle for us also: how deeply can art enter into this opposition before it becomes simply a polemic? Do artists ultimately have a responsibility to enter into this battle at all? Or is it not possible for them to avoid it?

CC: I don’t know. In a way I think the artist’s biggest responsibility is to himself. This is in contradiction to a lot of the things that I’m saying here in this interview. But I really feel that a true artist naturally, in thinking about himself, creates art that bears a sense of responsibility toward others. When an artist is honest in the process of his art making it becomes something greater by default. The ‘battle’ though, I don’t know. The whole thing troubles me. It really does. You know, why not just live? Don’t think. Don’t worry. Simple. But, as much as it would be nice, the dichotomy between our animal natures and the culture we have built around us is troubling. I question it again and again. If other artists can turn it off, it’s reflected in the art, I think, but at some time they’ve probably wrestled quite a bit along the way… and it’s not like only cerebral art can address these issues, quite the contrary. There are so many different directions to come at it from… It might be possible to avoid it for a time, in the sense of attempting to dissociate the art from these concepts, But I think these issues are so sticky that they return despite brushing them away.

EC: How conscious are you of being part of a historical continuum in terms of this process/legacy/realm? Do you see the idea of a historical lineage as a useful tool or an albatross around the neck?

CC: Pretty conscious of it in the sense that I appreciate the historical continuum and so enter into it willingly. I don’t see it as a useful tool or an albatross around the neck, rather as something that just is. Though today I questioned what would it be like, as far as a useful tool, to see oneself outside of the continuum and maybe even opposed to it.

EC: What inspires you to record solo? Is there a certain state or setting you have to be in, or can you will the correct state and setting for recording?

CC: Oh god, it’s complicated! I think inspiration is an infrequent but important visitor… Yeah, there has to be a lot of willing of the correct state. The correct setting… That’s always been my living space. But it’s a difficult proposition. The last place I lived it was impossible to record. Not enough privacy, and a neighbor that demanded virtual silence after 10pm. It seems that the wee hours of the morning are better to record, but that’s not an absolute either… There’s never really been a correct setting. So that definitely takes being able to create a certain mental buttressing. Against the presence or potential presence of others. The sounds of traffic. The evidence of domesticity. The practices of domesticity… The state is a state of decision. Inspiration when it comes upon you is a remarkable thing, but it’s a misunderstood animal. Sometimes it isn’t so forward. It kind of hangs back and waits for you to approach. Sometimes it can’t be stopped from jumping all over you… But yeah, I’m not the type of person who has a routine either. There’s no playing, practicing, recording schedule enforced… I guess the solo part is it is just very hard to play with other musicians that can meet each other in a meaningful sonic space… The social aspect of music making is almost completely unimportant to me. Most of the time the results are more to me important than anything else, especially for recording… When the social part is important to me is after playing. I have had some incredible times hanging out between sets and after shows with folks. But if I want to relate with someone I’d rather talk and kick back and relax, not try to establish rapport through the music itself… But back to the state or setting: sometimes it’s a series of thoughts I’ve been having, sometimes a series of feelings, sometimes one very big and imposing thought or feeling… I just want to record… There is this thing about defying the neutrality of speakers by emerging from them. If you can make the music and voice come forward out of those speakers into the room as an almost physical, but certainly psychological, presence it’s a magical thing. That’s impetus enough… Now my current living space is a lot more conducive, so it’ll be interesting how that affects things.

EC: Where does poetry end and song lyrics begin?

CC: Poetry turns into song lyrics, but song lyrics don’t turn into poetry… so, there’s no point at which poetry ends. There is just the beginning of the manipulation… I tend not to think about these things too much. I mean I just engage with it. But as to what really happens, I never take song lyrics and manipulate them into poetry, but I do take poems and change them into lyrics. Also prose writing gets changed in this same way.

EC: How did the idea for the many breaths subscription series come about? What were its successes and its failures?

CC: I guess the idea came from wanting to do something outside of the bounds of the formal music ‘industry,’ however loosely I participate in that, and to engage in more direct contact with listeners. Also to set up a very challenging proposition for myself. The individual recordings made just for the subscriber gave me this framework to see how far I could go into various music modes I had been thinking about for a while, most specifically to stretch out farther with song length or piece length than ever before… I don’t think its successes have become apparent quite yet, or its failures. Or, whether or not it can even be evaluated in that manner. It was draining, I know that… after completing the project it seemed that maybe I had stepped into a place that shouldn’t have been stepped into. Or I suspected that that was possible. It is difficult to talk about without it seeming like I am saying it was a negative experience. Emphatically it was not. But, there was this feeling of perhaps having given over too much psychic energy to this proposition, to individual recordings for individual people… This is an open question to me… That’s part of the investigation to do another subscription series and see if that question can be answered more definitely… There were things that I had planned on trying that I never tried, such as an all-talking thing I had been thinking about. Maybe that could be defined as a failure… The new Many Breaths release ‘Trickster Who Is Like God’ came out of doing that series, so maybe that could be defined as a success. It is a sixty plus minute song, and it is definitely a song, not a piece. It is like taking a six-minute song and stretching it out for an hour with compositional coherence in tact. In other words, it isn’t like a six-minute song with a 54-minute jam stuck on the end. And lyrically it really allows for this opportunity to bring out alternate implications of the words. Every line could be interpreted three different ways, so then it starts to seem as if there are maybe three different points of view or even narrators embedded within this one body. I don’t know, it’s fascinating to me to have these multiple possibilities. But they aren’t completely open ended. There are definite limits to the interpretation possible because of what is purposefully put into the song. The tone of the singing voice adds into that – it’s changes. And, hopefully all of this leaves an impression of to the listener of multiplicity within a container. In other words, there is something binding all of this multiplicity together, in the music, in me, in them, in the world.

But to add something else to this discussion about the subscription series: my way of thinking, in general, is usually to examine the difficulties or problems with whatever it is. At least in my analyzing things, I tend to do this and it can come across as off-putting because the things that go smoothly seem to me to not require as much analyzing. This is the second interview in which I’m talking about the series, and essentially saying the same thing. Although in the Pitchfork interview because of its being extensively truncated and edited the reader doesn’t get as complex of a discussion as here, this is still very simplified. I want to say something different here, and not overlook the positives, which revolve around two things: the people who subscribed, and manifesting the desire to do something like this. But what I’m saying is that even in discussing the positives, it has to be a simplified conversation. Otherwise it could go on for another twenty pages! But, I got concerned that the subscribers would read the Pitchfork interview, or this interview and think somehow I was unappreciative of their role in this thing, or somehow blamed them for the feeling of the exhaustion. Actually when I first completed it, I didn’t feel the exhaustion yet. It was after a while. I started to think about certain effects in my life, and thinking maybe this was at least a part of the cause. I’m talking about events of the psyche. These sort of spiritual events. But the people who subscribed are a small, patient, and amazing group of people. Without them I couldn’t have done it in the same way and with the same terms. But, if you think of this as a sort of religious experience maybe that touches it a bit. Where the powerful experience and contact and dealing with energy – my energy, outside energy, repeating energy, but not the subscribers’ energies - causes something that is a little hard to term as just positive. If I don’t do it again, it’s not because I’m rejecting the whole, but because I’ve determined it’s not necessary any longer. It might be demanding on the subscribers too in terms of waiting for the music. So maybe it’s also not necessary in those terms either. I don’t know. It was/is an experiment. That I can interact with people that want to be part of an experiment is amazing. I think it shows there’s something still left of the spirit of things that is alive. People willing to take a chance on things. That’s one of the main things I wanted to do is take a chance, and manifest that way of being. Something sort of un-tamed. It’s just if you can imagine setting out to completely empty yourself creatively for hours straight at a time, improvisationally, alone, for memory, hopefully you can imagine some amount of eventual questioning of the process. And also imagine that having a process that forces you to do that as being worthwhile.

EC: Any thought of re-visiting that ‘all-talking’ idea?

CC: No, not really. It has to be rethought in a different way, conceptualized differently. But honestly it hasn’t been in the forefront of desired processes/outcomes in a while. There’s this dangerous aesthetic ground with executing an all-talking idea, and if it didn’t happen when I could really envision it, it seems to be a dead-end. At the time I thought of connecting it to movement. Of course, the listener wouldn’t be able to see the movement, though they might be able to hear some aspects of it. So maybe it wasn’t entirely an all talking idea.

EC: What is the story behind the ‘Message, Vol.1’ CDR? Do you have any other plans to work in installation form like that again? Do you think of art and music as interchangeable?

CC: Yeah, there were plans to work in an installation form again in Houston, and in New York City, but I could never get it together time wise in one instance and in the other the gallery didn’t end up being interested in doing it. That’s something that’s been put on hold in general. Most important is to get back into recording and visual stuff and writing in general… I decided to go back to school and get finish getting a degree, so that’s been taking up a lot of time. Too much time. And that’s not even close to being completed yet, and now there are a lot of doubts about that whole pursuit anyway… These questions could be spun off into so many different directions… But, so that Many Breaths release isn’t actually the pages from that particular installation… it was inspired by it. The cutting up of diary into miniscule pieces… The installation was in San Antonio and was a couple of years worth, maybe more, of diaries cut up with scissors into very, very small pieces and all put into this yellow plastic shopping bag and the diary covers, those grammar school composition notebooks, arranged in a semi-circle suspended over the bag, along with one particular drawing from the diaries in tact… That design (as far as the arrangement of the covers) was done by the curator. My thing was simply the importance of having those items together and the very specific arrangement of the bag. It was supposed to be folded down to look like a sack full of something, sort of bulging, and so that the contents could be seen emerging out of the top very slightly even from a distance. But that part didn’t get translated to the actual exhibition. It was something hard to communicate – the visual meaning I was going for. So you could just see the bag and had to actually walk up onto it to see that there was something inside. That’s not the way it was supposed to be… Anyway, I had been sort of obsessed with cutting things up for a while, and that carried over into the release… But no, I don’t think of art and music as being interchangeable at all. What I think of as being interchangeable are the conceptual tools used, mentally, to create them both. And the relationship of the artist to his visual work to be similar to the musician to his sonic work. But, then you get into manipulating the actual materials and results and there are major differences, especially if you want to talk about painting versus music. Painting can achieve an immediacy that music can never ever achieve. Music is less flexible in this regard, because a painter can achieve the temporality that music must work within by being, for example, monumental enough that it is impossible to take in the painting in one visual contact moment or by being inlaid enough with information that the mind struggles with it visually and does not perceive an instant summing up of the image. Music can do nothing but lead the mind through time, no matter how repetitive, forceful, or aurally demanding the composition.

EC: That’s very interesting to hear, because it’s normally music that makes claims to immediacy. Is that fact that music has to be considered along a linear timescale (minute two must come after minute one) something you’ve ever attempted to work against or transcend?

CC: Music claims emotional immediacy, it’s true. But upon reflection, it seems to me, that what is really being referenced is emotional intensity of a lasting nature (and one that is easily recalled.) What I’m interested in are the things that happen immediately, before emotional interpretation and I think it is visual art that has a more intense, immediate, mentally stimulating impact than music. Music because of the linear timescale has to be interpreted – emotionally and intellectually - continuously, through and within time. Painting etc. brings all of its information at once, perhaps a lot of it subliminally. There is no need for interpretation in time for its impact to be felt. To make another comparison, when a person first sees another person who they find attractive, they instantaneously have multiple lines of association created without thought. Now apply that to work that doesn’t seem to overtly court beauty, but maybe instead to court grandeur, incomprehensibility, or pure sense impression. The lines of association that are triggered are very interesting to me. It is that experience that I don’t believe music to be able to provide.

EC: There is a strong visual element to the many breaths press releases - so strong in fact that it seems like the visual presentation and the music are inextricably combined. Can you talk about your visual work and how it relates to your music? Are your working methods similar for both?

CC: Sometimes they are similar, as they both can employ this sort of detachment of construction, as in modular blueprints for basic layering. But, mostly no… The thinking methods are similar. I think of them both as involving manipulatable parameters and certain retractable and expandable properties… But feeling methods are so different. I never feel emotional about the visual aspects… Using hands in that way is something that’s never connected with my overt emotions for some reason. Maybe because I was pegged as someone lacking in that ability early on in life… But with the visual stuff I am trying to overcome all of these aspects of whatever, record covers, jackets, information, etc… There’s this strong desire to make this really unwieldy, thick, complex thing without resorting to any of those gimmicky obviously nihilistic things where you have to destroy it to get to the music, or it destroys the music. I don’t want it to have power like that, but to kind of be changeable, flexible, seeming like maybe it would grow some if you left it to its own devices… or that maybe in the stuff I was doing with the multiple pages the sense that it could be part of some larger set of pages… I don’t really feel like I want people to redesign the package themselves, but in looking at it, you see it is possible. The owner could change it if they wanted to. With the puffy ones made out of tissue paper they could rewrap it completely differently. There is enough material for it to be something else. You don’t have that with just a square of cardboard. And obviously they could put more pieces of paper in the ones with multiple pages and it wouldn’t be out of place… And of course, it was very important to stop having duplicated images. Everything handwritten. But this is ridiculous and takes so much time. These pieces don’t just represent time. They are time. They are the direct result of the time of my life being used…Handwriting is so fascinating, and an interesting thing is that a lot of people are frightened or worried by it. So that handwriting of the song titles and etc. is not an adjunct to the art. It is the art.

EC: I love the idea of art IS time. It seems to me that obviously the end result takes priority for you, but that the process itself is almost as important. Is this true?

CC: Yes, definitely the process itself is almost as important. Maybe of parallel importance… And I very much would like people to understand that aspect. The process is ritualistic, in a way, but it also certainly brings in concepts to me of representing very real, concrete vestiges of experience. The process is not, has not been concealed from the listener. At the same time, it doesn’t follow that there is no artifice. Different aspects of the process are shown in different works. Some are more ‘polished’ than others, but it is all there at some point in the work as a whole. And, going back to the ritualistic aspect of it, a human being’s hands touched the things that the listener is touching. The maker’s breath, thoughts, feelings, sacrifices, physical motions are all contained within and connected with it. It’s like a spellbook, a mystery book, of a life, and a mind. This is to me why art stays with us so long, so strongly. They are not just ideas, but particular ideas of particular people that resonate in their complexities. It is a sense of something outside of mortality, which brings in all kinds of problematic issues! While this aspect fascinates and attracts me, it also troubles me because it makes me consider that perhaps art is also a manifestation of the more problematic parts of our human nature after all. This goes into what was so affecting about the Patchen novel Albion Moonlight to me. There’s this whole mini-thesis in it about the wrong turn, or fall of man. He seemed to place it symbolically within the painted caves of Europe, with the urge to become something more than animals and participate in this creation of space and time and meaning outside of presentness, animalness. But now, that we are here this art sustains the part of our culture, our souls that resist leaving behind our human nature as we become ever more regulated and consumerized and roboticized. We try to stop this progression, or at least mitigate it by creating, being creative, being deeply invested in leaving our mark on not only the present, but for posterity. I hope people understand that in the future, this music and art and etc. may not even be graspable to people because they want nothing that mysterious and insubstantial to grasp. Although people believe the ‘information age’ to be obsessed with the insubstantial, it is all about (in my opinion) creating a space where there is only the substantial, that is, where there is no tension between substance and non-substance. Everything is related to from the position of hardness, even though it may be nothing but words floating in space… It sounds funny to use an old-fashioned word like roboticized. It just seems we had imagined this for ourselves a long time ago… I don’t know. There are a lot of theories of my own making, as well as ones pieced together from other sources, that go around and around in my mind. No answers, a lot of questions, and a lot of theories.

EC: Were your tracks Obelisk / Tholos on the Alone Together 7" improvised or did you have a composed idea, structure before you recorded?

CC: Improvised. But it’s also important to define that term. I mean, no I didn’t know exactly what would happen when I recorded the two songs. I had already tried to record in my almost impossible to record in apartment with a completely different approach and it just fell flat to me. They were more like songs, and maybe they were fine, but they were obviously wrong. So my boyfriend and I went out to Giddings, Texas which is about an hour east of Austin where his family has a place that’s a lot more private and I recorded what ended up on the single. In that sense, I knew what the music wasn’t going to be like. I knew it would be vocals and bells. And then, there is a language that one builds up over time. Also this almost innate sense of narrative structure that comes together instantaneously. No, innate is the wrong word. It is something that gets fostered over time, but becomes imprinted within. So there are these structural capacities within that get activated. There is a certain amount of conscious thought involved, and a certain amount of subconscious activity. A lot of ‘pure’ improvisers bemoan this fact. But, god, if this isn’t one of the most powerful parts of artistic technique and skill than I don’t know what is. Then other techniques come in play to control that process, or conversely loosen control over that process. Any player comes up against the stumbling block of potentially overusing certain language, but I am definitely in favor of acknowledging and respecting your own personal language and being glad for it. For enjoying sounding like yourself, and representing an individual living, breathing, viscerally bodied, passionate, thinking human being. The photograph that I sent you that ended up on the back of the 7” was, incidentally, taken there at the house in Giddings with the bells I ended up using before I knew that it would be recorded there and before I knew those bells would be used.

EC: Do you think the idea of ‘free improvisation’ (in the sense Emanem/Incus other European labels in the 70s etc) is an oxymoron?

CC: No, it isn’t an oxymoron if it is meant in the limited sense that it is the jargon of a specific language. They are talking about “free” from the particular moves of a certain type of music that is structured with certain characteristics. It’s when the idea comes into being that not only the characteristics of certain kinds of musics must be flouted, but also that characteristics of being a human being should be flouted as well that I have problems with it. Freedom from. Freedom to. But, the characteristics of human beings are changing. It’s not so hard to leave them behind maybe… So, no I don’t think inherently it is an oxymoron, as the words can be manipulated at will to mean different things… It is part of a spectrum of philosophies about what all of these things mean. How one should live one’s creative life. How one should perceive creativity. How one should promote creativity. I just have a very different orientation, while at the same time having interest in and respect for some of the progenitors of that sound. But, I have a feeling that particular philosophy of negation (certainly not upheld by a lot of the earlier musicians) has the potential to become quite a dead-end like a lot of previous sounds, but maybe that possible result is the oxymoronic (to stretch the meaning of the word) because the premises are explicit and utopian.

EC: Are you currently working on any new solo material?

CC: No, no… The last thing was the Alone Together stuff. The last month has been spent getting settled in my new place, starting back up with the studies and working a lot more at the day job. And it’s unclear where my mind is going to turn next. There’s this new freedom with having a dedicated room for recording, or almost dedicated room. I’ve been so used to working for a long time now mostly in whatever bedroom I had… There are a couple of releases that are in the finishing stages, some reissues and some new things. There’s a Many Breaths reissue of Future In Past, and a Root Strata reissue of Masque Femine on vinyl. Also the new Charalambides album Exile on Kranky and the new Many Breaths release mentioned above.

EC: In what form will Future In Past see a re-issue? I’m very interested in knowing why you chose that particular release for reissue as it’s very high up Emerald Cocoon’s imaginary ‘if only we had the funds’ reissue campaign. There’s a particular tension to that release and I’m wondering where exactly it comes from. Is it simply that it’s a live album, or is there something else to it?

CC: Future In Past will come out as the next Many Breaths CDR, with the usual approach of a handmade cover, but maybe some variation on the original cover concept as well. I want to do this one next because I feel like it will be taken in a different context now that more solo releases have come out. It seems like it sheds some light on the development that happened, both by showing what were the germs of ideas further explored and by showing what were the aspects that haven’t been explored as much (so far). And yes, there is a particular tension to that release that I don’t think comes from simply its being a live album. Maybe it has to do with the fact that it documents the first live show that I ever played, and what came out of that sense of intention, control, and purpose in other early live shows. It was paramount to be completely transparent and detached; to let the music speak for itself. Also, there are some very intimate recordings on there – one that was sung alone, without any kind of audience, and others with virtually no one in attendance. I’ve wondered if it would be possible to regain that sense of tension, and I am skeptical. The tension, although purposeful, came organically out of the process that was happening at the time. Now, it would have to be super-imposed onto the different process happening now. It might be interesting. There’s nothing wrong with the attempt in principle.

EC: Do you have a recent favorite album?

CC: I’ve been listening to Richard Youngs Amplifying Host. You know, it’s very unusual for me to listen to an album a lot and for me “a lot” means maybe two or three times in a week. It’s a listening habit established a long time ago, when working at Record Exchange and there was just so much music to hear that it seemed foolish to get hooked onto one thing (which should not be confused with being indifferent, unmoved, or not liking whatever music it happened to be). I still feel that way, I suppose. Though for various reasons, now I find myself becoming a listener who does go back more frequently to certain records… Anyway, Richard Youngs is an artist that I invariably get excited about when a new record is coming out, buy it right away, and do listen to it and have it become more of a part of my ‘daily’ life… I think he’s a genius – flat out. He has created his own sound world over the years; it changes but it’s still his sound. His melodies are gorgeous but never cloying, and his voice is this perfect instrument. The songs/pieces always have this developing sense of natural narrative. They never seem like they were closed systems, at the same time they have a structure. They never seem like they’re just ‘hanging there.’ This makes me think of the difference between a really well done tunic, and one that’s poorly done. One maintains its shape, which is seemingly simple while enhancing the shape of the wearer, and the other shows how difficult it is to design a good looking, simple dress even though superficially it very much resembles the better constructed dress. It is terrible when a dress looks like a sack hanging on someone. It’s terrible when music is poorly designed as well, and unfortunately there’s a whole lot of that out there at the present, and I don’t see that changing. So, I wish more listeners would train their ears to hear the difference in the music, and really hear it, so it becomes as obvious as what the eyes tell you when you see a piece of clothing designed and sewn by someone who puts no thought or care into its construction, or perhaps is even ignorant to the basis of superior construction… And it sounds strange to me to hear myself say these things, but this is what has been realized over the years. I’m not talking about static, orthodox methods of constructing and creating music. Methods are translatable, changing, flexible, slippery, contradictory. But they are discovered though intensive processes. They are revealed through difficult work. And I don’t see a respect for that (or maybe knowledge of that) nowadays. This image of music making being a perpetual (boring, superficial) party as portrayed in a Bacardi advertisement is so tiresome… Of course, if one doesn’t care about creating anything lasting… On a more positive note, another album that I’ve been listening to lately is the new Haunted House Blue Ghost Blues LP. It was funny, because I had just listened to the first one not too long ago and were lamenting the thought that they probably wouldn’t make another, and this new one thankfully popped up shortly after… And I’ve been going back and revisiting some stuff: Dead C’s early albums and Leslie Q Presque Vu…. It’s a sincere hope of mine that the concept of music making being an artistic activity that requires guts would re-emerge in the general consciousness.

EC: Can you speculate on where the attitude of music as a ‘perpetual party’ comes from? We were talking about knowledge of a historical continuum previously – do you think the idea of music being a perpetual party comes from a lack of historical perspective? Or is it simply the artistic manifestation of the ‘bigger better faster more’ mentality that we’re all been hemmed into via advertising etc (“And now that we’ve got more / we want more” – This Heat)?

CC: No, not from a lack of historical knowledge but from a lack of historical context. Maybe a lack of political context. The bigger, better, faster, more mentality certainly negates any kind of political contextualizing… I see it as cultural gentrification, really. The same way it is happening to most major, and a lot of not so major cities and towns, it is happening to the ground of underground music. There is no more resistance to transferring values onto it that were once foreign. The ‘neighborhoods’ that used to be liveable, interesting, populated by all sorts of ideas and people are being bought up and homogenized. The people and ideas are subsequently being scattered and losing their force as viable cultural entities. It’s the music writers who know what is going on and go along with it and don’t say anything that really puzzle me. Does anyone not wonder why all of a sudden there are certain artists and labels everywhere, after not so many (if any) concrete accomplishments? I’m certain that the fact that the major labels have nowhere else to go but ‘down’ is a big factor. If you follow the lines with agencies and labels you find that there is so much money being pumped into establishing these values in the underground that it cannot be anything but the successful implementation of attempts that were made in the early 1990s: fake independent labels, independent labels with very little integrity bought-out, manufactured ‘artists,’ etc. Fans are apathetic to these patterns or simply not equipped to interpret them. You find yourself strangely being brought back to the days before the American underground became strong, despite now, seemingly, the ‘underground’ proliferating. The proliferation is of a microcosm of the larger system, not a system resistant to it. The question is: why does it matter? Not many people seem to realize what is being lost. I’ve asked the question several times lately, and no one seems to want to answer. Who do you want making music? There’s this false idea that those who want to do it strongly enough will go on despite dwindling interest, sales, and attention. This idea that true artists will find a way to overcome all of these obstacles. But when an artist isn’t well off, maybe even poor, it starts to become an impossibility. The musicians and labels that will be able to survive are those who are subsidized. The paradigm of musicians making their money off of touring, instead of recording doesn’t hold for the person who has to work a job year round just to get by. Because unsubsidized touring does not work in the US at this point. And what kind of art can a person create when they have no time to themselves to create? There can’t be a vibrant, real American underground without a politically and economically conscious population. So, of course the idea of it being a place of perpetual party precludes serious consideration of these issues, and therefore leaves it wide open for exploitation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, and it’s not a conspiracy. It’s the same pattern that has repeated over and over. At this point, what is different though, is that there just seems to be an utter lack of any kind of counterweight. And it doesn’t have to be ‘square’ or dry, or dull. That’s the part about historical context vs. knowledge. Yeah, you can take the work of all these incredible artists and musicians from the past and just look at it aesthetically, but it had more meaning than that. It wasn’t just a sound, or a look – it encompassed an orientation to the reality around them, and in many, many cases (those that are relevant to what we’re discussing here) an overt (or sometimes just naturally embodied within) resistance to the reality they found themselves surrounded by. Their stuff meant something more and hoped for something more for us as human beings.

NEST, YEK KOO, EZRA BUCHLA - SEPTEMBER 19. 2011

2011-09-12T21:46:00.000-07:00

September 19, 2011...Human Resources...9PM...$5

Nest (New Zealand)
Nest is a moebius strip consisting of Andrew Scott (guitar) and Nigel Wright (laptop) originally formed in Auckland, New Zealand in the early 2000s. Guitar serves as sound source for the laptop, which processes the guitar and spits it back as slow rising blasts of full spectrum sound, laying the bed for the next interaction. An improvisational human feedback loop. A loop which finds the players relating not TO each other, but rather THROUGH each other - a unified organism, dissolving the contributions of the individual into an dense amorphous evolving sound object Ever inwards. Andrew is one half of Metal Rouge (with Helga Fassonaki) and Nigel works solo and is one half of Cathedrals (with Tim Coster). First US show.

with

Yek Koo
Helga Fassonaki (of Metal Rouge) solo. Real-time ritual punk channelings.

Ezra Buchla
Viola, vocal, laptop, synth – increasing complex and beautiful musical cages.

Human Resources:

410 Cottage Home St

Los Angeles (Chinatown)

NIGEL WRIGHT, METAL ROUGE, QUEEN VICTORIA - SEPTEMBER 15. 2011

2011-09-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

SEPTEMBER 15, 2011...Boy Manor...9PM

Nigel Wright (New Zealand)
Long time stalwart of the Auckland free-sound underground, Nigel creates pieces of cavernous free flowing electronics unhampered by the narrative musical constraints of 'beginning', 'ending' or 'development'. Huge clouds of unhinged circular deep rumble, direct from the cathedral of the sky. In the tradition of Rosy Parlane and Thomas Koner. If if you'd rather: like Fennesz or Tim Hecker only with more guts. Nigel also performs in the duos Nest (with Andrew Scott of Metal Rouge) and Cathedrals (with Tim Coster). First LA performance. http://nigelwright.bandcamp.com/

with locals:

Metal Rouge
Helga & Andrew Vs Babylon. Punk minimalism. String trance. Two as one etc. http://emeraldcocoon.com/MetalRouge_home.html

Queen Victoria
Lone voice in the LA wilderness. The songs unwind and spool out over the night, like a drop of black ink in water. Recent tape out as part of Stunned's amazing last batch.

.........

Address:

970 Everett #1

Los Angeles, California

(off Sunset Blvd. in Echo Park)

Sunken Interview, September 2011

2011-09-04T12:01:00.000-07:00

The first ever interview with the seafaring duo of Antony Milton and Stefan Neville as Sunken denies darkness, discusses their lost live album, reveals Rosy Parlane's organ harvesting scheme and suggests that we may have an ear problem. Their 'New Zealand Eels' LP is available now through Emerald Cocoon. Also be sure to check out the link at the end of the interview for an exclusive mp3 of a Sunken live set at Cross Street Studios September 2007 originally slated to be part of their ill-fated live cdr ‘Burley’.

Emerald Cocoon: When did you guys first decide to do a project together, when did Sunken first come about?

Stefan Neville: All I remember is not long after I met Leighton Craig & became a fan of his organ duets with Eugene Carchesio, Antony got a reed organ off Marcel Bear & I went to Wellington with my reed organ on Pumice business. I knew Antony loved Leighton & Eugene too so we decided to copy them.

Antony Milton: That’s right. I was pretty obsessed with organ tones at the time- that reed organ from Marcel in particular (the A.M CD Orla was recorded the day after I got that actually…). Stefan suggested an organ jam.

EC: Orla is definitely the most Sunken-esque of the AM albums. Do you still own the Orla? Any chance of an 'Orla II' album by AM ever appearing someday?

A: I actually gave it away to Rosy Parlane when I moved house a couple of years ago... I have a slight regret about that now as there have been times when I’ve thought it would be the perfect thing for some texture or another I’m trying to realize… One of my favourite things about it- and in hindsight this may actually have played a part in the nautical themes of Sunken- was that it had a monogram of a sailing ship on it.

‘Orla II’. It's possible actually. I recorded a whole lot more on it the day after the day after I got it from Marcel… Those files are on disk somewhere and I’d always thought they would make a good release one day. They were much more raw than the ones that came out on Orla.

S: I found another of those Orla organs on the side of the road in Mt Wellington. I gave it to Rosy Parlane. My reed organ has no brand name but it looks like a small coffin or a big primitive laptop.

A: So Rosy's got 2 Orlas??? Or did I give mine to someone else?? Ha. I remember he wanted it but the details of who got it are kind of lost in the haze of the move itself…

S: I remember where Antony's Orla went! I drove up to Hamilton & gave it to Sugar jon!

EC: What are your motivations for Sunken and how do they differ from your solo projects?

S: I just like playing with Antony. Its different for me cos its got Antony in it.

A: I reckoned there was something about our music that sounded somehow seashanty-ish – I could hear ocean swells and the wind in the rigging... So that became something like a guiding principal in terms of thinking about that project. For me anyway- I was pretty engrossed in the Patrick O’Brian books at that time.

EC: Reviews of New Zealand Eels describe it as a shipwreck, a feeling of drowning longing sad blues and sinking vocals…was this your intention (I understand you considered it a pop album?)?

S: Well yeah cos its all sing songs & groovy. I was actually singing about dancing after a few pints, having a tepid spa & then filling out my census form all pissed. I think those reviewers are reviewing the press release more than the record.

A: I never thought of it as a particularly dark record.. Maybe next time we should set out to do a dark record specifically and see what happens? Haha. And I agree that Stefan seemed particularly hearty that day. His singing was super-pop I thought- like an especially sublime Pumice set. It's possible I sabotaged his exuberance with my minor key sensibilities?

EC: What's the story behind the legendary lost Sunken live album?

S: Legendary? Nah just some useless label apparently put it out on CDR, never sent us copies & never replied to our emails. What were they called again?

A: They DID reply to emails- sometimes- in which they promised to send copies. But these never arrived- the postage costs from Canada to NZ must have been too much for them, couldn’t scratch together the requisite $10… It was frustrating- I had had a hard-drive melt down and lost my own files for that record so I can’t even burn copies for ourselves… Maybe it's on a filesharing blog somewhere? I’d go and have a look but for the new downloading laws here in NZ that mean I would likely be fined for downloading our own record… I can’t actually even remember the title now though. Haha.

Corps Mort was the label.

(ed: if anyone reading this actually has a copy of this please contact us via Emerald Cocoon)

EC: What is the Sunken recording philosophy? It seems like the recordings are recorded in such a way that the recording process itself is important to the musical outcome?

S: Its real casual and careless. throw a few mics around the room & get cracking. All done live & made up on the spot. Quick mix and a bit of editing and it's done.

A: A common approach in the Sunken recording sessions was to have at least one of the mic’s running through a reverb or delay pedal, feeding back through some computer speaker or something giving everything a woozy slipping feel. As often as not one of the mics would be my contact mic’d violin- the room sound as it resonates in old varnished wood… All the recs so far have been to cassette 4trk.

Try to give it your all- not hold back due to any shyness at weird facial contortions or embarrassing ecstatic states.

Editing is a BIG part of it - there's a lot of dross to be cut away and I’m a big believe in putting time into shaping albums so that they work according to some sort of internal logic…

S: I didn't know you did that with the mic's Antony. Makes sense. All my stuff happens in the air before it gets to the recording mic. Again small speakers are important.

EC: Is the violin the strings I can hear being plucked (I think) on 'Census'?

A: Yes.

S: yep.

EC: New Zealand Eels sounds radically different from the previous two Sunken albums, is there a reason why? How did this change come about?

S: It changes a little bit with different keyboards used for different sessions. We used this rubber floppy roll up keyboard on NZ eels. Good bass on that thing. I didn't think it was all that different to our other releases? What's so different?

A: It's less spacious perhaps? Busier and more overdriven. It's all from a single session and a particular arrangement of instruments and mics in a room. The mood of that day. Stefan's drunkenness… My own drunkenness (is that the session where I spilt a beer on my analogue echo unit??)

EC: It's different in that it feels less laminal/horizontal and more active than the other ones. The other two have a kind of surging upwards feel to them, whilst NZ Eels is sort of simultaneously more concise and more exploratory (there seems to be more sound sources on it than there were on the previous Sunken albums?). I could, of course, be making all this up.

A: It was a slightly different line up of instruments- Stefan's roll up keyboard. Not so many taped down organ keys maybe?

S: You guys got weird ears. I don't reckon it's that different. I wasn't drunk at the session tho. I think I was passing through Wellington after touring down south with The Nothing & was singing about a horrific hilarious night Id just had in Nelson.

EC: You both live in different cites, Stefan you're in Auckland, while Antony, you just moved to Wellington from Christchurch. How often do you get to play together? Does the fact that you live in different cities mean that when Sunken does get together, the recording sessions are particularly focused and intense?

S: No its like I said before, just real casual & easy. It happens when it can happen which isn't that often. That's a good part of it too I reckon. I saw Antony last week for the first time in ages & no one even mentioned Sunken.

A: No, it's like all good friendships- when we sit down to do Sunken it's just us sitting down and doing Sunken.

EC: Do you consider yourselves more of a recording or live project?

S: I dunno. It's a band.

A: I with Stefan on that answer- what else to say? I like making the records and enjoy playing it live.

EC: Could you ever imagine Sunken touring?

A: I would love to tour Sunken. I’ve really enjoyed the live shows. Getting the ducks to stand nicely in a row has been the problem so far… Every time we have some vague tour outline in mind something crops up. One or other of us will sink into abject poverty, illness, or some other kind of life crisis. We are a genuine shipwreck band!

S: We have talked about it. We nearly went to Australia last year but I had dramas and cancelled. I'd love to do a short tour. I'm not paying for it.

EC: Apart from the live album which may or may not exist in the physical world, are there any other Sunken recordings waiting to see the light of day?

A: YES!! Stefan recently found the great ‘lost session’ tapes down the back of his couch and as I remember it these recordings were amongst the best we ever did. And I think we are both keen to get together to do more recordings soon as well.

S: The last session we did which was after NZ Eels but still ages ago is pretty good. I keep forgetting to send it to Antony. Who wants to release it?

Download: Sunken live set at Cross Street Studios September 2007

Metal Rouge Interview - January 2011

2011-07-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

Below is the full unedited text of an interview by Richard MacFarlane that appeared in edited form in the Christchurch Press in January 2011.

i first heard the storm veil / desert champion tape from you guys and it really blew me away, real electric, dirt road kinda vibe. that kind of 'lightning'/ravaged vibe is on the newer stuff you sent me for sure; is there a particular sort of energy you try and harness with metal rouge?

Andrew: I prefer to start with a blank slate and harvest whatever’s in the air, but there is certain kind of energy that we strike when things are going well. It’s a kind of energy that was there from the very first time we played (which was actually released on Tim Coster’s Claudia label), and although we don’t always set out to get there, often that’s where we wind up. I guess you could say that when things work well we’re releasing what is in us all the time rather than trying to harness anything outside of ourselves.

Helga: I agree that there was a certain energy there the first time we played that was already inside us, but we had talked a lot about bands and concepts we were interested in prior to playing so when we did finally play for the first time it felt natural and instinctual. When we started playing with a drummer we started to develop structures that were open enough for us to fuck around with and break them up if we needed to, so we were able to constantly renew and harness that energy.

that sound seems most easily equated to the happennings on not not fun, i guess they showcase the "psych tonalism" you mention on a lot of their releases. do you hang out with those guys much in LA? (wait do you guys live in eagle rock as well? i went there when i visted late last year...)

Andrew: Britt and Amanda who run NNF are friends of ours and we hang with them quite a bit, but the words ‘psych tonalism’ were coined before I’d heard of NNF. I think when I wrote that phrase I was thinking more of bands that approached psychedelic music from a viewpoint of pure sound ecstasy rather than as a rock genre, people like the Taj Mahal Travellers and Angus Maclise etc. There’s probably a few people on NNF that fit the bill, but I think NNF has refined its vision considerably over the last few years and is probably concentrating on a kind of music that isn’t all that related to those kind of concepts now. NNF seems to be more sort of in a space where it is playing with the idea of where ‘pop music’ starts and where it ends – people who filter pop structures through underground production strategies – hazy borderline areas. So yeah, NNF are good friends, as are some of people on the label, but think conceptually we’re in slightly different zones. And no we don’t live in Eagle Rock, up until recently we lived in Echo Park (close to Eagle Rock). Who knows where we’ll live when we get back?

why did you guys decide to come back here for a bit?

Andrew: Family, friends….I haven’t been back to NZ in over four years. I miss it. The land feels ‘right’.

Helga: I went to art school in Auckland and lived here for three years so it’s been nice being back and catching up with friends…and playing shows. I’m excited to see the South Island, which I was too poor to travel through the last time I was here.

i just came back from a few years overseas too and christchurch seems to have changed HEAPS since i remember, i think partially earthquake-related but just in general. is there anything you guys have noticed being different since yr return?

Andrew: Everyone told us that we should get prepared for some sort of earth-shattering change, but honestly I haven’t noticed that much. The main change I can see is that central Auckland is becoming ‘cleaned up’ to the point of blanding out entirely. It’s like they want to make the central city into one giant shopping mall – it’s so clean and nice that it has no spine or teeth. Thank god K road is still soldiering on.

Helga: I’m bummed Brazil café is gone. It had the best coffee in Auckland. Also some music friends have moved to other continents or cities. It feels quieter, which I remember it being during the holidays, but coming from chaotic LA I think the ‘quiet’ is really accentuated.

i was talking to heather leigh ages ago about jazz and her kind of improv which has that dirt road vibe too (ie the devil if you can hear me LP), talking about albert ayler quite a bit. is jazz something you guys are into? or into certain aspects of in terms of metal rouge?

Andrew: Yes. Hugely. Jazz was a decent portion of what I listened to in NZ, but it became a huge focus once I moved to the US where jazz records of rare genius are cheap and plentiful. Also moving to US gave me a greater understanding of what jazz means after seeing it in the context of it’s native culture. It made realize what a fucking radical proposition the music of many of the early free jazz players really is. The doors those people opened are immense. Obviously what we play is far from jazz, but we lift many approaches and concepts from it, sometimes consciously and sometimes less so. We don’t have the technical ability of jazz players, so often we’ll take a jazz concept and just use it as a kind frame or boundary – not something to play literally, but an idea to keep in our heads to help shape the music. Sometimes we’ll try and play in the style of a jazz musician who’s been on our minds, but because of our technical deficits or because you can’t necessarily play a guitar or a lap steel like a horn or a drum the idea gets misshapen, which is the process by which it becomes ours.

Helga: My knowledge of free jazz came later than Andrew’s and I can’t listen to as much of it as he does. I’m definitely more selective, but it’s still a huge influence on how I play. A lot of my vocal training has been listening to Linda Sharrock, Patty Waters and Sainkho Namtchylak. I prefer jazz that still has the energy of rock music. Like Fela Kuti who was mixing elements of jazz freedom with James Brown type funk. But then I also have a enormous appreciation for jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman, who I was privileged to see play in LA recently. I mean he’s legendary for crossing jazz lines to include non-jazz elements.

what does "psychedelic" mean to you?

(sorry if that's broad/arbitrary, just had some interesting viewpoints on that recently from various people)

Andrew: I love the term psychedelic and will apply it to almost anything at the drop of a hat. I regard Metal Rouge as a psychedelic band, without a doubt. I like the definition that I first heard from Pete Swanson – that psychedelic means ‘mind manifested’. With that in mind, any art that is consciously trying to demonstrate some aspect of the workings of the mind can be considered overtly psychedelic. That means anything with a degree of improvisation to it is psychedelic. Anything that is willing to let in a lack of conscious control by the artist is psychedelic. I’ve heard it argued that all music is innately psychedelic. I also enjoy the idea of psychedelia as a prism through which things can be viewed. I enjoy viewing various musics that aren’t traditionally thought of as psychedelic through the lens of psychedelia. I think art that is truly psychedelic is always slightly frightening, maybe even slightly threatening because it’s beyond conscious control – then you begin to ask ‘who’s pushing the buttons’? Most people don’t know and aren’t prepared to know their own minds.

Helga: I agree with most of what Andrew said, although I don’t think that all improvised music is psychedelic. I think that if music becomes too academic it loses its ability to become psychedelic. Some improvisation falls into this trap. ‘Mind manifested’ is a great definition of psychedelic.

there's a certain aspect to yr guitar wailage that calls back to some 90s sonic youth (more experimental jams) and yeah harry pussy and stuff like that; do you feel indebted to that very much?

Andrew: For sure. For me Lee Ranaldo’s ‘East Jesus’ and Thurston Moore’s (along with Tom Surgal and William Winant) ‘Piece For Jetsun Dolma’ were total revelations for me when I was in high school and were the doorways to a whole different world. I don’t think those albums (and some others of that era ‘Broken Circle/Spiral Hill’, ‘Not Me’ and ‘Klangfarbenmelodie’) have really received their due as serious music, probably because the ‘famous rock band’ baggage attached to them. I’m still slack jawed when I listen to either of those albums, it’s some of the greatest guitar music ever made. And yeah Harry Pussy are also an influence – was really happy to see Bill Orcutt finally receive his due as a guitarist over the last 12 months or so, but it mystifies me to think that people only really noticed how formally radical his playing was when he moved to acoustic. I don’t think you can really approach the guitar and drums the same way after hearing a Harry Pussy record. Hell, you can’t even approach recording the same way after hearing ‘Ride A Dove’.

i think also there's a streak of violence or volatility in yr music that characterizes yr sound a lot for me, whether it's landscape responsive or something more politics-based ie war and current situations; is that something you explore actively or anything?

Andrew: Being that our music is largely (although often not entirely) improvised there is a violence and volatility to it insomuch as there is violence and volatility in the world we move through. We keep a reasonably close tab on current events, political/corporate maneuvering etc and it effects our music indirectly. We do have titles that have political implications, but those titles are applied to the tracks after they’re done, not beforehand. In some ways the political landscape is an unavoidable player in the creation of any music/art so far as politics can shape the psychic environment in which a work is created and thus end being at least partially responsible for the shape of the end work. For example when I first moved to the US Bush was still in power and there was a kind of psychic pall of doom hanging over the country, everybody had their heads down. One way or another everybody making music during that era was dealing with that issue, whether they were aware of it or not. I think this happens with everyone, there’s just different degrees of awareness of it, or perhaps different views as to how important it is to acknowledge. Personally I find it pretty important – I like the idea of taking an abstract piece of music and seasoning it with meaning – making it ‘about something’. Sometimes that ‘something’ is in the air in which it is created. I’m not really interested in art that is just about other art, I’m interested in attempts to grasp a greater totality. So for me that means trying to somehow use my own music to understand some of the species-wide tragedies we’re involved in due to the lack of a just system of social organization. It’s probably not as effective as terrorism or lobbying, but it’s all I’ve got.

Helga: I don’t think we create political songs, but our political beliefs definitely find their way into our music…its hard for it not to when you’re aware of how your countries politics effects your society and the rest of the world. When Obama got elected a lot of artists in the states thought everything was cool and suddenly they had nothing to say. They thought all the problems were magically resolved and stopped giving a shit. There’s a real lack of punk-ness in the music that’s happening right now. The reality is that there’s tons of negative shit happening politically right now and even though I’m not about expressing my political viewsliterally in the music I make, music is an avenue for emotional expression. As an artist I can’t separate my emotions from what I make, so even though I’m not making ‘political’ art what I see and hear around me manifests itself emotionally. I like to look at periods of history to see how the politics and culture of the time relates to the music and art that was being made. I wonder how this time period is going to look in hindsight?

Bill Orcutt, Peter Kolovos, Metal Rouge - July 16, 2011

2011-07-07T13:39:00.000-07:00

BILL ORCUTT

PETER KOLOVOS

METAL ROUGE

SATURDAY JULY 16 / $7

@ PUBLIC FICTION

749 Ave. 50th

Los Angeles (Highland Park)

90042

Simon Comber (NZ), Yek koo, Un Ciego, Queen Victoria - JULY 9th 2011

2011-07-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

If you're in town this Saturday, July 9th, you don't want to miss this unusual lineup!

Simon Comber (NZ) - New Zealand troubadour in the lineage of early Flying Nun songsmiths such as Martin Phillips, Graeme Downes and Robert Scott. Back from an east coast tour with Barbara Manning in support of his new e.p.

Yek Koo - Helga of Metal Rouge solo. Guitar/sample/vocal blare-out. Shamanistic amp chants.

Queen Victoria - LA's most reclusive artist. Slow tangles of metallic guitarism with melancholy narratives.

Un Ciego - Andrew of Metal Rouge solo. Heavily amplified nothing. Futile existential flailing. First time to unleash his mysterious solo project in LA!

Bring some $$ for the touring artist please...
BYOB

Boy Manor / 9PM

970 Everett, #1

Los Angeles, CA

Brute Heart (MN), Warm Climate, and Metal Rouge - June 19th, 2011

2011-06-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

SUNDAY JUNE 19th @ Public Fiction
8PM SHARP!!!!

BRUTE HEART (MN)

"Brute Heart pushes further into quiet instrumental minimalism/abstraction, not just as an expression of artifice, but of worldview. These people have found a sound and learned to communicate to one another with it..." -Doug Mosurock, Dusted Magazine

WARM CLIMATE

"Los Angeles-based musician Seth Kasselman has been recording under the Warm Climate moniker for over a decade now. During this time, his project has undergone various stylistic and personnel changes, but the last few years have seen him craft arguably his most accomplished and boldly inventive work to date. His past two releases on Stunned, including this year’s Camouflage on the River Wretched, feature an almost baffling mixture of sounds and styles, incorporating elements of glam rock, psychedelia, pop, dub, drone, and jazz. But Kasselman deftly weaves these sounds together in such a way, creating something that is truly unique, especially amongst the current cassette underground." -David Perron (Foxy Digitalis)

METAL ROUGE

"...slide guitars, vocals and percussion into the void with the holy ghost style of Albert Ayler re-routed to the sound of wailing steel." - Volcanic Tongue

.........................................................................................................................................................
PS. Please show up on time if you want to see all the bands....this time 8PM means 8PM, not 9, not 11, not 1am. This is due to some recent lame harassment/conflicts from neighborhood uptighters. To respect Public Fiction in supporting and letting the show still go on, we will need to end the gig at 11PM.

Ira Cohen 1935 - 2011

2011-04-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

"Imagine whatever you will but know that it is not

imagination but experience which makes poetry,

and that behind every image,

behind every word there is something
I am trying to tell you,

something that really happened."

- from 'Imagine Jean Cocteau'

Open Letter to Jeffrey Dietch

2011-04-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

Open Letter to Jeffery Deitch, all MOCA staff and all artists participating in the Art In The Street exhibition.

Firstly I would like to address Mr. Deitch. I am writing to express my dismay at your act of censorship in deciding to whitewash Blu’s anti-war mural out of existence. There are so many things wrong with your decision to do so that it’s hard to even really know where to begin. Firstly let me say that your idea that you were whitewashing the mural out of respect for the veterans association and the ‘go for broke’ monument is completely flawed. In what way would the mural belittle the lives of the men the go for broke monument commemorates? You mention that putting the mural there is like putting an anti-smoking ad in front of someone with lung cancer. Crass analogy, and completely false. Obviously the intended audience of the mural is not the war dead, or their families, just like anti-smoking ads are not targeted at people with lung cancer. This much is obvious, so your anti-smoking analogy just falls flat on its face. If anything the proximity of the mural to the monument deepened the gravity of both the monument and the artwork and expanded and extended the meaning of both. I mean really is this what American culture has become? A country where it's now taboo to explore the role that industry has in perpetuating war? Really it’s nothing new that the powers that be don’t want these issues to be publicly discussed, but what shocks and amazes me is that MOCA is the new gatekeeper for such issues. Blu’s work was an obvious allusion to coffins returning from Iraq draped in flags. What’s interesting is that you chose to play out the role of President Bush, making sure the coffins are not seen by the media or public, who have, of course, ‘delicate sensibilities’. In this way art mirrors life. I guess you could say that you, unwittingly of course, completed the work for Blu.
Do you have any idea how backwards your actions make this country look? That we are so militaristic that even the director of a museum of contemporary art in what is supposedly the most liberal state in the country can’t tolerate art that poses questions about the causes and effects of militarisation? Do you have any idea that this countries inability to discuss these issues is already contributing to it’s decline and eventual downfall?
It was infuriating to hear you say that you had ‘done more than anyone’ for protest art. Let me assure you that your view of your position in regards to ‘protest art’ or street art of any kind is woefully misinformed. Street art doesn’t need you or any of the institutions you have been associated with (banks, universities, galleries) to approve of it or contain it in tidy white boxes for it’s continued existence. This is art that rose from a DESPERATE SOCIAL IMPERITIVE, not the world of ‘high-culture’ where desperate young artists need to court aristocrats for scraps. You may think that you are helping this art by throwing some money at it, but the reality is that the entire reason this art exists is to drive people like you and your donors out of existence. You who would commodify blows to the system until they become coasters or dorm-room posters, you who would stifle political debate in a climate of corporate control and endless war, you who perpetuate the myth that art needs the approving nod of dealer galleries, cultural tombs, banking institutions to exist. You are the enemy. For every handful of people you can co-op there are hundreds more who are committed to tearing down everything people like you prop up. The sad thing is that you probably think that you’re part of the solution, not part of the problem. I feel sorry for you.
In ending I must, in a way, thank you Mr. Deitch. Thank you for proving many of my greatest concerns about the ‘high culture’ industry to be irrefutably true. By showing your true face you may have, inadvertently, done many people a great great favour.

MOCA Staff: I hope Mr Deitch’s actions have drawn into stark relief what kind of organization you are actually working for. Please no longer assume that you are working for some kind of champion of the avant-garde or disseminator of forward thinking culture. MOCA has shown it’s cards, revealing itself to be nothing but a guardian of establishment values, run by the rich for the rich, not adding to the conversation about what America is or could be, but instead stifling the conversation dangerously. Unfortunately America has now structured itself in such a way that we are all afraid of how we are going to pay next months rent or power bill and nobody wants to rock an already unstable boat, but nonetheless I hope you can all find it in you to let MOCA understand the gravity of what it has done. I hope you can all let MOCA understand that by stifling art that will cause debate and discussion that they are further adding to the political polarisation and lack of dialogue in this country – a trend which has disturbing long-term consequences.

Artists in the exhibition: To the best of my knowledge the silence from you all on this issue has been deafening. Street art at it’s best exposes the hypocrisy of power structures. Life is short, but art is long. What do you stand for?

Blu: In so far as your mural forced the hand of those want to protect the status quo to show themselves for what they really are, it was a total success.

Sincerely,

Andrew Scott

Topping Bottoms, Deep Magic, Metal Rouge - March 11th

2011-03-07T12:40:00.000-08:00

TOPPING BOTTOMS
DEEP MAGIC
METAL ROUGE

3 . 11. 11 // 9PM // $5
public fiction . 749 Ave 50 . Los Angeles . CA . 90042

Yek koo - New Zealand Show

2010-12-31T17:24:00.000-08:00

Sunday January 23 2011 - Christchurch
YEK KOO (Helga Fassonaki) w/ LA LAKERS and PURPLE PILGRIMS
@ HSP
Level One/84 Lichfield Street
Christchurch 8011

Metal Rouge - New Zealand Tour 2011

2010-12-31T16:30:00.000-08:00

January 15, 2011 - Auckland
Wine Cellar w/Pumice and Nigel Wright

January 21, 2011 - Dunedin
Chicks Hotel w/Eye and The Strange Girls

January 22, 2011 - Christchurch
HSP w/Adam Willetts, The Renderers, and Anthony Milton

January 25, 2011 - Wellington
Happy w/ 1/3rd Octave band and Ming(Campbell Kneale)

Top 10 favorites for 2010

2010-12-21T18:19:00.000-08:00

WikiLeaks - Julian Assange (top-left), Ornette Coleman live at Royce Hall (right), Peaking Lights (bottom-left)

Helga Fassonaki's Top 10:

1. Just Kids biography by Patti Smith
2. Gate - A Republic of Sadness LP
3. Bill Orcutt live at Synchronicity
4. Peaking Lights on US Honeymoon Tour – all their sets were phenomenal
5. Josephine (Jefre Cantu and Tony Cross) playing harmonium and violin as Andrew and I walked into the reception room dressed in white. A surreal mixture of the familiar and foreign and the most poetic energies moving the air as they created angels and mystics and a cool breeze that magnetized the moment.
6. Aster (Ashley Paul and Eli Keszler) live at Root Strata Festival
7. Ornette Coleman live at Royce Hall, UCLA
8. Barn Owl live at Bottled Smoke Festival, Los Angeles
9. Operative live at Root Strata Festival
10. 23 Skidoo

Andrew Scott's Top 10:

1. Wikileaks
2. Modra @ Highwire Gallery
3. City Peoples Farmers Music @ The Echo Curio (RIP!)
4. Barn Owl @ Synchronicity
5. Hanging out with the Jooklo Duo in LA
6. Inca Ore @ Synchronicity
7. Tom Carter @ Echo Curio
8. All the Peaking Lights sets I saw this year (9 of them!)
9. Josephine @ Eagle Rock Center for The Arts
10. Ornette Coleman @ Royce Hall (despite Flea's guest appearance)

Black like our hearts....

2010-11-13T20:21:00.000-08:00

Metal Rouge guest on one track of one-man ambient metal maven Husere Grav's new self-titled CDR out now on Small Doses. Edition of 82, with hand burnt photos on the sleeve. We have a couple of copies, so hit us up if you're interested.

New Releases / New Distro Items / Metal Rouge website

2010-11-07T22:11:00.000-08:00

Soooo..... Better late than never I guess. It's been out a little while, but for all those who aren't on the mailing list, EC002 has arrived:

"Sunken's previous two albums on Pseudo Arcana were long form chord-organ driven flights into the heart of the ecstatic blaring sun. Despite Antony Milton (The Nether Dawn, Glory Fckn Sun etc.) and Stefan Neville's (Pumice) lovecraftian attempts to posit Sunken as sea-shanties sung by sailors lost to Cthulhu at the bottom of the deepest darkest ocean, somehow their surging reed driven organs and vocal streams broadcast via cracked electronics seemed to suggest sailors breaking free of the weeds and swimming towards the light, and even, occasionally, breaking the surface. Their first vinyl release New Zealand Eels however, is a tentacle shot from the abyss to drag the sailors back down into the service of the lurker in the deep. Bleak, black and completely drowned, New Zealand Eels beams five submarine tracks from the lost to the lost through the milky darkness. With the vocal melodies pushed to the foreground and the instrumental origins of the music obscured as never before by damaged baby monitors, power starved dictaphones, tape saturation and spring reverb, Sunken are now finally, truly lost to the abyss. Two drowned sailors invite you to breathe in the water, forget about life on the surface and lay down with the kraken amidst the curling weeds. "What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men." – H.P. Lovecraft Edition of 300 with free digital download. Thick reverseboard sleeves with art by Stefan Neville."

The covers are beautiful, we're really proud of this one. Pick up a copy over at the website.

Also in the distro section we have limited copies of a non-Metal Rouge Helga Fassonaki and Andrew Scott duo 7"....

In other news there is now a Metal Rouge website, which mostly came into existence due to myspace getting even worse than it already was (hard to believe possible, I know). All Metal Rouge new release new and live dates will be posted on the website from now on... Metal Rouge mini New Zealand/Australia tour is happening in Jan/Feb - details soon. Also the first Nest show in almost 5 years is happening in Auckland this December!

peace,

- Andrew

More Dead Heroes: RIP Marion Brown

2010-10-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

Marion Brown

Artist

1931-2010

Noah Howard earlier this month, and now Marion Brown. 2010 is turning out to be as bad of a year for free jazz heroes as 2009 was. It was literally yesterday that I was thinking of writing ESP Disk to ask them to make sure to include Alan Shorter's 'Mephistopheles' on the CD whenever they get around to reissuing 'The Marion Brown Quartet'. The original school are dropping like flies, but their music is still sweet fire that sustains.... Marion Brown, one of the few free jazz musicians of the era whose music is perfect for a rainy night like this... Metal Rouge owes a debt to Brown for sure, his 'Three For Shepp' being one of the inspirations for 'Three For Malachi Ritscher'...

Interesting previously unpublished late period interview with Marion over at Ni Kantu.

For the uninitiated 'Sweet Earth Flying' is a good place to start - featuring Muhal Richard Abrams and a nice 70's organ-driven vibe. You can download it here.

How to mark a passing? How to note a passage? How to connect the rain on my window with the crying horn on my stereo?

Goodbye Marion. Rest in peace.

On Land Festival - Thoughts by Ned Raggett

2010-09-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

And some final On Land Festival 2010 thoughts
September 10, 2010 — Ned Raggett

ROYAL TRUX MAJOR LABEL GLAMOUR

2010-09-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

METAL ROUGE US Honeymoon Tour 2010

2010-08-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

Metal Rouge (LA), Sam Hamilton (NZ), Jane Austen (NZ), Currer Bells (NZ), Peaking Lights (WI)

US TOUR AUGUST 3 - AUGUST 29. Check out dates/places below and if you're in town, come hoon on some kiwi love and slaying music!

08/03/10 - Tin Can House in San Diego, CA w/Sam Hamilton(NZ), Peaking Lights, and Jean Wilder

08/04/10 - Yobs in Tempe, AZ w/Peaking Lights, Sam Hamilton, and Currer Bells

08/05/10 - Wunderkind/Coalmine space in Albuquerque, New Mexico w/ Peaking Lights, Sam Hamilton, and Currer Bells

08/06/10 - Further Shoppe in Boulder, CO w/ Peaking Lights, Sam Hamilton, and Currer Bells

08/07/10 - House show in Kansas City, Kansas w/Peaking Lights, Sam Hamilton, and Currer Bells

08/08/10 – The Mill in Iowa City, Iowa w/Peaking Lights, Sam Hamilton, and Currer Bells

08/09/10 - Secret Show in Minneapolis, Minnesota w/Peaking Lights, Sam Hamilton, and Currer Bells

08/10/10 - Good Style Shop in Madison, WI w/Peaking Lights, Sam Hamilton, and Currer Bells

08/12/10 - Empty Bottle in Chicago, IL w/Sam Hamilton, Zelienople, and Zela

08/13/10 - The Robinwood Concert House in Toledo, OH w/Sam Hamilton and Jane Austen

08/15/10 - Spotty Dog in Hudson, New York w/Sam Hamilton and Jane Austen

08/16/10 - Helderberg House in Albany, New York w/Burnt Hills and Sam Hamilton

08/17/10 - Flywheel in Northampton, MA w/Sam Hamilton, Jane Austen, and Bill Nace

08/18/10 – The Starlab in Boston, MA w/Sam Hamilton and Jane Austen

08/19/10 – Tuxedo in Providence, RI w/Sam Hamilton, Jane Austen, Keith Fullerton Whitman and Geoff Mullen

08/21/10 – White Slab Palace in Lower East Side Manhattan, NY w/Sam Hamilton and TBA

08/22/10 – Silent Barn in Brooklyn, NY w/Sam Hamilton, Jane Austen, Greg Fox, and Diablo

08/23/10 - Highwire Gallery in Philadelphia, PA w/Sam Hamilton and Modra

08/24/10 – Terrapin Station in Pittsburgh, PA w/Sam Hamilton, Rob Funkhouser and Jane Austen

08/25/10 – Skylab in Columbus, Ohio w/Sam Hamilton and Jane Austen

08/26/10 - Rachaels cafe in Bloomington, Indiana w/ Sam Hamilton, Rob Funkhouser and Jane Austen

08/27/10 - Pizza Power in Lawrence, Kansas w/Sam Hamilton, Jane Austen, and Jonathan Nilsson-Nagel

08/29/10 – Rhinoceropolis in Denver, CO w/Sam Hamilton and Epileptinomicon

ECSTATIC KNOT - July 26, 27, 30, Aug 1, 2

2010-07-20T10:45:00.001-07:00

Emerald Cocoon presents ECSTATIC KNOT: 5 nights of music at the Echo Curio in celebration of the union of souls, love through friendship, love over distance and love through time. Liberated beings from as far away as New Zealand and as near as Echo Park converge for a state of the union conference on transcending linear time via minimal electronics, psychedelia, song, drone, dance, stasis, self-generating systems and obsolete technologies made shamanic by pure artistic will.

ECSTATIC KNOT July 26 – August 2

Monday July 26
Jane Austen (NZ)
Queen Victoria
Tim Coster (NZ)
Sam Hamilton (NZ)
Lucky Dragons

Tuesday July 27
Faraday Trippers
White Leopards
Ezra Buchla
Currer Bells (NZ)
Sean McCann

Friday July 30th
Sleepwalkers Local
Mark Sadgrove and Tim Coster (Japan/NZ)
W-H-I-T-E
City Peoples Farmers Music (NZ)
Warm Climate

Sunday August 1
Huzun (NZ)
yek koo
Peter Kolovos
MHFS (NZ)
Face Plant

Monday August 2
Ged Gengras
Sun Araw
Metal Rouge
Peaking Lights (Madison, WI)
Robedoor

All shows start at 9pm. $5 donation suggested.
Echo Curio is located @
1519 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90026

MONDAY JULY 26
Jane Austen from New Zealand via most of Europe will be painting the most delicate of audio portraits via barely there laptop, vocal and electronic exhalations. Queen Victoria brings a necessary glimpse of winter to California via six strings of minimal melancholy. Tim Coster from New Zealand via Australia steps away from his 12 or so other bands for a moment to knit a carpet of his trademark slowly unspooling almost-melodic textures and drones (plus he'll be hocking wares from his new Fictitious Sighs imprint). Gorgeous organic electronics. You may remember Sam Hamilton as part of New Zealand's live film project The Parasitic Fantasy Band that toured the west coast last year blowing every unsuspecting mind they came across. Sam has reconfigured his sound world (amazonian insects, glitch, misc instrumental overload) into sprawling synth pop odysseys and rich and dense as the tropical ecologies they're influenced by. Local heroes Lucky Dragons will end the night with the musical equivalent of a group hug. Nice.

TUESDAY JULY 27

Faraday Trippers bring a triple dose of sliding electronic weirdness via innately psychedelic electronics. White Leopards bring deep space flange via internal synth narratives. Ezra Buchla is devastatingly singular on whatever he touches, whether its laptop, synth or violin. I have no idea what he'll be pulling out for this show, but that's half the beauty of it. Currer Bells is the duo of Angeline Chirnside (Jane Austen) and Tim Coster. Preserving the gossamer delicacy of their solo sounds but adding to them the possibility that the atomistic sound fragments might at any moment coalesce into sparse and haunting song. Sean McCann visits from Santa Barbara having dropped a recent piece of sublime ghost-work on DNT Records. Heavy shrouds of massed bedroom psych chorusing. Sublime.

FRIDAY JULY 30

Sleepwakers Local will kick things off with a prog orchestra channeled through one man via guitar/vocals/casio. Mark Sadgrove & Tim Coster (from New Zealand via Japan and Australia) will follow with the stateside debut of their long running duo collab. Ultra-minimal investigations into tightly wound knots of pure tones and feedback processes. Pure sculptural sound. W-H-I-T-E brings you ecstatic tunnels of brightly-coloured keyboard pop. City Peoples Farmers Music (NZ) are everyone's favorite talent-free offensively confusing simultaeous folk monologue duo. Warm Climate is everyone's favourite unclassifiable power trio. Angular art-rock intensities.

SUNDAY AUGUST 1

Huzun is Tim Coster and Andrew (Metal Rouge)'s duo project. Deeply sorrowful abstractions, no ugly sound. First US show. yek koo is Helga from Metal Rouge's solo project. Feral vocalizations run wild over sampled free percussion and infinite-repeat guitar blare. Trance states are reached. Peter Kolovos is mining a deep vein of split-second guitar satori. Like fireworks if your eyes were ears. MHFS (from New Zealand via Japan) is not to be missed. Mercurial, intellectual and visceral. Tokyo-based Mark Sadgrove's MHFS project is undoubtedly the most challenging, unpredictable and personal thing to come out of New Zealand in as long as I can remember. Better than your band. Face Plant is Aaron Coyes from Peaking Lights' solo project. Strip the songs from Peaking Lights until only the texture and tonality remain and you have Face Plant. Pure.

MONDAY AUGUST 2

Ged Gengras is required by California law to play in at least every second show in Los Angeles. Minimal modular drone? Italio-disco? It's luck of the draw. Its win-win anyway. Sun Araw is a sun-soaked portal into a land of lush horizontal vibes. Sounds for the jungle mind. Serious. Metal Rouge are busy kicking the legs out from under rock music, dissolving the technicality of jazz and maximizing minimalism. Peaking Lights are the new face of dub whether you admit it or not. Come lay your head on a pillow of sweet smoke. Robedoor are like being at the Fillmore in 1966 but having a really really bad time. Merciless bad acid sounds.

Bill Orcutt, Peter Kolovos, Nondor Nevai/ Ben Wolcott, Metal Rouge

2010-03-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

Bill Orcutt, founder/guitarist of the legendary Harry Pussy is playing his first LA show in probably over 10 years- just put out one of the best LP's of 2009 -- real direct raw sound.... rare rare appearance...

joined by:Peter Kolovos, Nevai/Wolcott & Metal Rouge---
http://www.myspace.com/peterkolovos
http://nondornevai.com/news.html
http://www.myspace.com/metalrouge

Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 8:30pm

Synchronicity Space

4306 Melrose Ave.

Los Angeles, CA

Metal Rouge - Trails

2010-03-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

Metal Rouge - Trails LP

After a period of semi-hibernation and technological downgrading Metal Rouge are back with the first full length missive by their new trio formation. On Trails lifers Helga Fassonaki (lapsteel/vocals) and Andrew Scott (guitar) are joined by true-crime aficionado Caitlin Mitchell (drums) for a free floating investigation into Lew Welch’s mist-ridden disappearance into the norcal wilderness on one side and a raging fit of white magic against urban-planning hell on the other. Mumbling low-fidelity chord flares, dual slide attacks and reverb-drenched vocal confusion underwritten by stuttering free cymbal play and outright rockist brutalism combine to make this perversely their most approachable release yet. Come get lost. Recorded at Green Machines 09, Mastered by Pete Swanson, Photo Art by Lemule Barbour. Edition of 300.

TRAILS - EC001 LP

Andrew and Helga's Top 20 for 2009!

2009-12-31T21:20:00.000-08:00

Andrew's top 20: (not in any particular order...)

1. Electric Miles Davis - I've been a Miles denier for some time, but this year the dam finally burst. The gateway drugs were 'Get Up With It', 'Big Fun' and 'Pangea'. It was all over after those 3 albums - now anything from '69 to '75 is fair game. It really blows my mind how dissonant and twisted some of this stuff is for music that's supposedly 'funky'. Pangaea is dark as all hell....

2.Kings With Straw Mats (a film by Ira Cohen) - Ira Cohen wanders around the Kumbh Mela festival in India documenting the largest gathering of Hindu holy men on the plent that occurs once every 12 years. Cohen makes the whole thing into a fractured pseudo-doco in his own inimitable way, by letting voiceovers that start factual meander off into psychedelic poetry. He wanders around smoking hash and communing with sadhus like the wonderful old wizard he is. At one stage he gets an X-Ray of hi head taken so as to preserve evidence of hi state of mind at the time. Its the sort of film that makes you want to drop the charade and wander off into the sub-continent, get lost for a decade of two...

3. Ornette Coleman - The Shape Of Jazz To Come - I've also been a wee bit of an Ornette denier from time to time. I think the main issue with his early work is that my first exposure to it was via the 'Beauty Is A Rare Thing' boxset, which jams all his Atlantic albums together into a whole lot of mammoth 72-minute discs. After 5 or so discs of that you can't really tell the difference between the tunes any more, its just too much. Seems like all the Atlantic era Ornette albums are carefully structured AS ALBUMS and not just a bunch of jams and must be listened to that way for you to commune with them. For a long time this album was on my work computer and often when I was the last one out of the office after a day of buy/sell banality this is the only thing I felt like listening to. 'Lonely Woman' and 'Peace' are two of the most beautiful songs ever written. Me and Ornette's relationship is still a little distant, but we're getting closer.

4. Milford Graves & Don Pullen - Nommo - One of the few albums on Thurston Moore's (in)famous free jazz top 10 that I hadn't heard until recently. Heavy tumbling piano percussion action. Just another album in a long list of crucial free jazz sides that are criminally out of print (Marzette Watts' second album anyone?).

5. MV & EE live @ the Curio - 'Twitchin'' is one of the most beautiful things I had the fortune to witness live. It didn't leave my head for weeks. It still hasn't.

6. This Nissennemondai video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozn-w2qX0P0
Just watch it. Loud.

7.Manfred Schoof - European Echoes - Almost the same line-up as 'Machine Gun', but even heavier if you can believe that. Seminal.

8.Ashley Paul live at Synchronicity - Just when I'd almost lost faith in live performance along came this totally out of the blue. Percussion, sax, bowed strings - so much poise. Sounds bit like like Matchless Recordings roster Vs. the VHF Records roster (which in my universe is about as big of a compliment as you can get). Felt so REAL. Made me realize how little so many performances I have to attend have to do with actual sound.

9.On Land Festival in San Francisco - Epic sets by Pete Swanson, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Tarental, Brendan Murray, Barn Owl and Christina Carter in particular, but really the whole thing from start to finish was filled with beautiful people.

10. 'Bakari Dian' by Super Biton de Segou - Have been looking for this song for years after I stumbled across them practising it when I was in Segou, Mali. Before I could ask anyone who they were or what they were playing I was ejected from the practice for illicitly recording them and the song has been haunting me ever since. I could believe it when I stumbled across it on volume 3 of the African Pearls series - was like finding a download of my mind on someones ipod.

11. The Parasitic Fantasy Band's west coast tour - They had America eating out of the palms of their hands by simply being exactly who they are. They can't even help it.

12.Ezra Buchla @ the Fractal Mind Gaze Hut - He played an unexpected set at the end of one of our shows in Oakland. Vocals, laptop and violin in total darkness. Completely floored everybody in the room.

13. Max Roach and Anthony Braxton - Birth and Rebirth - 'Solid' free jazz album - solid as in no fat but no surprises either. Sometimes you just want and album like that, you know? Two known geniuses casually cat and mousing with each other in a tried and true manner. Love the cover - Max Roach just exuding authority...

14. Catacombz @ ding a ling - This may seem like lazy shorthand but it really was kind of like Neu! piloted by Black Flag. If there was one show this year that could have been four times as long it was this one...

15. Plutonium Farmers @ Church of the Friendly Ghost - Blew my fucking mind. Two drummers, one guitarist and pretty hard to nail down in mere words. The only guitarist I can think of working in the same realm as Bill Orcutt, for sure. Kind of the same vibe as Ascension but way less combative, way more huggable. I couldn't believe it when they pulled out an Andrew Hill cover. Completely on fire.

16. Getting the plug pulled on us in Lubbock, Texas - We felt like we were Stravinsky premiering the Rites Of Spring or Cage reading Empty Words. Its amazing what a positive experience playing for a bar full of cheerleaders and football players who are openly hostile to your art can be.

17. Lee Ranaldo @ Spaceland - Played the whole show with a guitar that was hanging off a rope from the ceiling. He looked like a child - gleeful eyes lit up - just lost in massive jagged ring-modulated space flames of distortion - he was so totally present - right there with it, riding it. Totally inspiring.

18. Keith Fulerton Whitman - Taking Away - The best album he's ever done quietly masquerading as a humble little cassette...

19. Portishead - Third - Don't even get me started. Best album I heard all year, hands down. Note to self: run everything through a space-echo.

20. COPS - ...is the only TV show I like. It pains me to admit it.

Helga's top 20:
(not in any particular order and very unlike Andrew's...not an essay)

1. On Land Festival in San Francisco curated by Root Strata - particularly performances by Operative, Christina Carter, Pete Swanson, Keith Fullerton Whitman, and Alps - the whole event was infested with good people, music, and pure vibes.

2. Horace Andy - In Dance Hall Style

3. Electric Miles Davis - WOW, this blew my mind!! Especially because I had been avoiding Miles Davis forever!

4. Magic Lantern live at Museum of Neon Art - they actually ended up playing at Nick Malkin's (from Queen Victoria) house because the property manager came and started ripping out their cables out of their instruments just when they were about to play...because it was 11pm or something lame. Everyone then migrated to Nick's house and this ended up being the greatest Magic Lantern show!

5. Pharoah Sanders - Summun, Bukmun, Umyun LP (1970)

6. Ghana Soundz - Afro-beat, Funk, and Fusion in 70's Ghana, Vol. 2 LP

7. Roasted Bananas with melted chocolate - a Eve Gordon specialty that I got to try for the first time in Big Sur in pitch darkness whilst watching a raccoon crawl up a tree.

8. Christina Carter - Lace Heart LP

9. Low Light Situations live at Echo Curio - smokey jazz, whoo!

10. Pete Swanson - Unlimited Options CS

11. Sam Hamilton's Peruvian dish of quinoa topped fried plantains and tomatos, garlic, lemon, coriander sauce. hmmmmmmmmm! but best best in company of Sam Hamilton and Eve Gordon.

12. Nisennenmondai live in UK. (watch Andrew's you-tube link!!)

13. Freedom Now DVD of Sainkho Namtchylak featuring William Parker and Hamid Drake.

14. jefre sei getsu ledesma - namu kie butsu CS

15. Patti Smith live at the Santa Monica Pier for free - this wasn't her best performance but what she said was just so fucking inspiring!

16. Sun Araw live at The Smell

17. BBC Wild China six-part series boring as hell but I'm hooked!

18. Twin Peaks - watched the whole series from beginning to end and became obsessed with coffee, donuts, and cherry pie....and agent cooper

19. Portishead - Third

20. Going on tour with Parasitic Fantasy Band - Nutz and fuzzy, warm and hairy...all love.

Emhemeroptera 01 - 05 Box Set

2009-12-13T19:25:00.000-08:00

METAL ROUGE - Ephemeroptera 01 - 05

These box sets were wiped out of our hands before we had a chance to put them up on our site, but they're still out there somewhere.

A five volume series inspired by aquatic insects – their beauty and decline. Mayflies, Stoneflies, Dobsonflies, Caddisflies etc. – the first victims of chemical pollution – alien, forgotten, voiceless. The indistinct, the tiny, those that dwell under river stones, those that pass from this world barely imprinting themselves on human lore - their silent extinction an unnoticed monument to human ignorance. We dedicate this series to them. The series takes its title from the taxon name for the order of Mayflies, the adult forms of which can live for as little as two days. As the mountains melt to fill the river beds, as the river beds are swallowed by the sky, as documentation comes to an end, we cast these recordings into the flames.

Each copper Box is hand specialized with a spraypainted image of a gnat and includes all five Ephemeroptera CDrs.
SOLD OUT!

Try Mimaroglu Music Sales

Immersion Program: somewhere between the dust and the light

2009-11-08T18:36:00.000-08:00

Opening reception Sunday November 13 from 7-10 PM with music performance by Métal Rouge

Immersion Program: somewhere between the dust and the light from Summercamp ProjectProject on Vimeo.

For more info, check out: http://summercampprojectproject.blogspot.com/

mind ur head

2009-11-03T22:31:00.000-08:00

An Evening of Out Sound

Saturday Nov. 7
8:30 pm

sound performance by

Métal Rouge (Helga Fassonaki & Andrew Scott with Caitlin Mitchell)

Still LIfe With Bomb (Ted Byrnes, Ari DeSano, Gregory Lenczycki)

Ur (Steve Kim, Ron Russell, Gabie Strong)

Las Cienegas Projects
2045 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, Ca 90034

www.lascienegasprojects.org

Sainkho Namtchylak @ Planetarium, Chorzów, Poland

2009-10-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

she is my throat singing hero!
Helga

post Root Strata ON LAND festival

2009-09-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

We were so absorbed in the magical performances and people at the Root Strata festival that we completely forgot to take photos....here are a few that we somehow managed to take but they in no way represent how fuckin' awesome the gathered spirits and music was. Below is a link to Ned Raggett's review of bands and musicians that performed along with some better photos.

Ned Raggett's review:
http://nedraggett.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/thoughts-on-the-on-land-festival-in-san-francisco/

Thanks Jefre, Maxwell, Root Strata, and everyone who made it happen!

ON LAND

2009-09-15T10:39:00.000-07:00

If you're in or around San Francisco, come check out the ON LAND festival!

On Land
September 19th & 20th
San Francisco, CA
Curated by Root Strata
Sponsored by Aquarius Records
Co-Presented by KUSF & KALX

Hosted by The Swedish American Hall
& Cafe DuNord
onlandfestival.com

Tickets available at
cafedunord.com

LIMITED FESTIVAL PASSES available for $35! Available only by calling Cafe DuNord box office (mon-fri, 2pm-6pm: 415-861-5016) to purchase over the phone!!

Sunday, September 20th
The Swedish American Hall
$20
Grouper
Christina Carter
Ilays Ahmed
Barn Owl
Sun Circle
Common Eider, King Eider
Brendon Murray

Saturday, September 19th
Cafe DuNord
$10
Tarentel
Keith Fullerton Whitman
The Alps
Ducktails
Pete Swanson
Joe Grimm
Operative (Scott Goodwin)

Saturday, September 19th
The Swedish American Hall
Early Show!
$10

Starving Weirdos
William Fowler Collins
Metal Rouge
Darwinsbitch
Jim Haynes
John Davis
Danny Paul Grody

More info about musicians at: http://www.onlandfestival.com/

Ephemeroptera 05 is here!

2009-09-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

METAL ROUGE - Ephemeroptera 05

The final volume in the Ephemeroptera series, the final release on Seymour Records and the first release to feature a trio formation of Metal Rouge with Caitlin C. Mitchell on drums. Three tracks: two slow burning caverns of reverbed strings and one brutal trio blow-out dedicated to our favourite physicist. When cities fall silent, when our species fails itself, when the facade of sentience finally breaks - there still at the bottom of streams and rivers: caddisflies and mayflies spinning their webs.... Edition of 50 CDR

Please go to our Emerald Cocoon Website to purchase.

AUGUST 28th, 29th, and 30th - Don't Miss!!!

2009-08-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

3 RAD SHOWZ

AUGUST 28th ECHO CURIO 9pm
Adam Willetts (NZ)
yek koo
Ged Gengras
VSLS (SF)
$5

AUGUST 29th SYNCHRONICITY 9pm
Pumice (NZ)
Adam Willetts (NZ)
Albert Ortega
Metal Rouge
$5

AUGUST 30th ECHO CURIO 9pm
Pumice (NZ)
ing
Greg Muon
Metal Rouge
Sleepwalkers Local
$5

CLUB DING-A-LING AUGUST 11th

2009-08-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

Featuring garage afro-kraut sounds of CATACOMBZ (Milwaukee), the driving acid fuzz of INYAN KARA (Madison), the horizontal black doom of GOLIATH BIRD EATER, and the unrefined free spiritual music of METAL ROUGE. Tuesday August 11th at Hyperion Tavern. This show is free, but you can support the musicians by buying them a drink or buying some of their awesome music or just by coming!

Club Ding-a-Ling

Hyperion Tavern
1941 Hyperion Ave
Los Angeles CA 90027
cost: free
Starts 9:30PM

New Site, New Label

2009-07-29T00:17:00.000-07:00

Our Emerald Cocoon Website has finally launched. We still have a few things to refine and add, but for all its worth, here it is:
http://www.emeraldcocoon.com

Jackson 5 & Michael w/Lady Reagan

2009-06-25T22:17:00.001-07:00