THIS IS DEBASER

The Perfect Summer Mixtape

2009-07-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

It always seems like summertime is at least partially defined by the music we listen to during our breif, sunny respite from regular workaday life. Summer mixtapes are expertly crafted and then tossed into dusty corners under our beds when September arrives. This year, I've been listening to some amazing music to soundtrack my summer, but I never made an ipod-ready mix.

Enter Coralcola.

He has made the perfect summer mixtape. Old classics like K.B.'s "Running Up That Hill" sit comfortably alongside recent jams (Burial & Four Tet's "Moth") and at least one obligatory inclusion (that irresistible Phaseone "Daily Routine" remix). It's an impeccable collection of artists on this thing, and I'm not just saying that because my band is on there, too. We're really the weakest of the bunch, with Ohneotrix Point Never, Grouper, Julianna Barwick, M83, BOC and more in the mix. It's seamless, and brilliant, and perfect for listening to while gardening.

You can download the whole thing as two big, chunky, tape-transer ready mp3 files HERE.

And you can download the Coralcola Pandas remix--featured on this mixtape--here. GOOD STUFF.

2009-06-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

DEBASER's been practically dead for awhile now. I wish I could say it's 'cause I've been off in a cave like Johnny Cash or something, but really it's because Kyle and I have been sweating over our first full-length album. Read on:

Seven months of jamming, experimenting, recording, and fine-tuning have paid off: Ocean Sunbirds is now for sale via Brooklyn’s own Little Fury Things (CD-R) and Denton, TX label Animal Image Search (cassette).

Ocean Sunbirds is our first dip into the incandescent waters of album-hood, and as you might expect from a couple of hardcore music nerds, we put a lot into it. The EP was really just a collection of songs we had made—we were very stoked about how well it was received but definitely wanted to make a statement with whatever we did next. Our biggest concerns had to do with the same qualities we felt were present in all of the albums we thought were “good” or “great”. Regardless of whether or not we would actually achieve those same qualities, we were interesting in trying, anyway.

Great albums are consistent, from song-to-song, while still displaying range and providing unexpected surprises. They create a particular vibe, or conjure a specific set of images, and let your mind explore imagined spaces in a single listen.

We wanted to make an album like that—one which kept delivering an IV drip of uplifting tropical IDM, with some of the tribal elements from the EP dialed up, and with a wider amount of instruments and sounds present. Bands like Our Sleepless Forest were a huge influence, and we wanted to work with density; layering elements until the music reached transcendent capacity…In the first two tracks, we tried to push the limits of this sonic density, and hopefully set the stage for an album that tries to really “go there”.

We have to thank so many people for helping with this record, and playing on this record, or waiting so long for it. In particular, our guest vocalists really out-performed themselves. Alaskas took “Frozen Bayou” and “Startled by Sparkling Water” to the next level, and “Old Spooky and Moss Hut” would have been a weird disaster without the haunting vox and additional guitars from Big Spider’s Back. Blind Man’s Colour, in the middle of going blog-hype supernova, kindly sang on “Moon Bungalow”, expertly matching our vibe with syrupy melody.

We’re (obviously) pretty proud of this record, but what really matters to us at the end of the day is that we can share our music with friends and strangers alike, and that people seem to really be responding to it. In short, we’re stoked. We hope you will be too.

Click here to buy Ocean Sunbirds on disc.

Click here to buy Ocean Sunbirds on cassette.

Here’s what some other people are saying about the album:
“So, so tropical” – Alex Ruder, KEXP

“like being wrapped up in a huge blanket under really warm rain trickling off of palm trees”-Kyle from Blind Man’s Colour

“Upon first listening to this album, I had a vivid picture of all the nocturnal creatures arising from their hiding spots and livin' it up” –Aerophones and Aeroplanes

“Not that this scenery isn’t devoid of a haunted beauty, conspicuous beeping & tooting replaced by the screeching of exuberant birds, the brush of leaves dancing their sedate little dance, and a sun larger than you remember shining at an exotic angle through a tattered atmosphere” -20JazzFunkGreats

"A vast array of sounds cascade upward, building a wall of sound, drifting the audience off into a sun-soaked outer space... perfect for summer evenings" – Shock Mountain

“The album begins and ends in the middle of the urban rainforest and makes frequent stops at public pools and sno-cone stands along the way”-Animal Image Search

“Imagine you are sixteen, skinny dipping in a remote lagoon of clear water surrounded by cgi jungle animals with golden boom boxes...” –Little Fury Things

“Have liked much, take I all the morning with the disc, go to by ep” - Babelfish translation of someone on the Primavera Sound Message Board

Pope Draws Spock

2009-05-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

Paul Pope did a six-page comic starring Spock, that vaguely sets up Leonard Nimoy's cameo in the new prequel/reboot, for the most recent issue of WIRED magazine. As you might expect, it's pretty fucking cool, especially the vintage hair on teen Spock and a really cool glimpse of The Wrath of Khan. Pope's Shatner is a little wonky, but I hope this gets printed elsewhere or made available online anyway.

Check it out here.

2009 Eisner Award Nominees Announced

2009-04-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

So the noms for the comic book equivelant of the Oscars have been announced, and it's good to see that Omega The Unknown got a nod for "Best Limited Series". Other notable nominees include a repeat nomination for the masterful All-Star Superman for "Best Continuing Series". Some love was also given to Frank Miller's Elektra work in a reprint category, and The Umbrella Academy artist Gabriel Ba was a double-nominee for "Best Penciller/Inker" and "Best Cover Artist". The one person not nominated in any category--and who had undoubtedly one of the best years of their (incomparably brilliant) career? Grant Morrison.

The complete list of nominees is here.

The Weather's Too Nice

2009-04-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

It's been "shorts weather" in Seattle for the past three days and I couldn't be happier. The sunshine changes everything from the smell in the street air to a stranger's countenance.

Here are some songs that match our city's recent wonderful, golden vibe.

Sunshine Mix

Meanderthals - Kunst or Ars
Beacons - Fill Up the Holes
Tesla Boy - Spirit of the Night
The Diamond Center - Bombay Beach

Invisible Horizons

2009-04-02T17:02:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why I've abstained from blogging about the phenomenal new Phoenix record until now. Laziness? Craziness? Needless to say, it's impeccable--far exceeding my expectations, which were only that it would at least achieve the same level of unabashedly poppy accessibility that It's Never Been Like That had in spades.

But Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a different beast, kind of a mutant hybrid of all the different styles Phoenix have explored over the years, executed with effortless panache. The standout track--which, for some reason, I have not seen discussed anywhere on the blogosphere--is also the most radical and unexpected: "Love is Like a Sunset" (which I understand is to be dissected into two parts for the actual release).

But to experience the song as one whole is an amazing experience. At almost eight minutes, it's a near-epic sonic journey, with shades of space disco, a little New Order guitar, weird and unclassifiable distorted wails, and ultimately, California pop all delivered with off-kilter math rock timing as it slowly builds towards two triumphantly strummed guitar chords.

Phoenix - Love is Like a Sunset

Exclusive: Live Futurecop! Mix

2009-03-14T14:01:00.000-07:00

On Monday, Peter Carrol (one half of the amazing British electronic duo known as Futurecop!) performed at Freemont's Nectar Lounge, and I asked him to stop by the radio station for a quick chat and a live DJ set. Apart from being the nicest guy in the world, he really killed it on this live mix, which combines Futurecop! standards with some 80's jams and other surprises.

The mix in it's 23-minute entirety is posted below, ripped straight from the Rainy Dawg Radio stream. Dig it.

Futurecop! - Live Mix on Rainy Dawg Radio

Friday Mix

2009-02-27T10:46:00.000-08:00

Hang in there: Kyle and I have been pretty busy with band stuff and I've been waiting to break my silence on the second best record of the year so far, but to tide you over until then, I've thrown together a mix of like-minded, feel-good artists to match the sunshine that's currently invaded Seattle.

Linked below. Enjoy.

1. Suckers - Afterthoughts and TV
2. Tanlines - New Flowers
3. Blastoids - Fake Indians
4. Wisdom Tooth - Take Me Home to My Dog
5. Holzkopf - Edmonton No Vacany
6. Blind Man's Colour - The Warm Current's Pull

Random Friday Mix (Come On, Sunshine!)

Photo of Blastoids via kaygeemoney on flickr.

Universal Studios Florida x Coralcola

2009-02-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

Coralcola, the insomniac East Coast genius behind our favorite song of last year, and a good friend of both U.S.F. and DEBASER, has finally unleashed his ear-tingling 747 EP, and I'm stoked to write about it. He's already getting some well-deserved love on the blogosphere. But why wait for my recommendation? You can buy the tape right now by emailing coralcola[at]gmail[dot]com, and it comes with a free 320 kbps download for digital get-down good times.

Coralcola was also awesome enough to remix a demo track from our forthcoming full-length not once but twice. "Capri Sun Caravan" is a laid-back, sunset-gazing beach chiller, but in his hands it's become a deep house epic ("Dawn Edit") or an unpredictable dubby rager ("Dusk Edit"). Keen-eyed blogophiles may have spotted the Dawn Edit already on the Lemur Blog.

Free links below! Check it, dig it.

Universal Studios Florida - Capri Sun Caravan (Coralcola Dusk Edit)

Universal Studios Florida - Capri Sun Caravan (Coralcola Dawn Edit)

Color Rabbit - Space Placement

2009-02-06T10:18:00.000-08:00

Everything that I could express about Northhampton, Mass. artist Color Rabbit's awesome music could probably also be said about the charming DIY digipak his self-released CD is packaged in.

The incredible cover collage recalls Agnes Montgomery on a mushroom trip, and some of the tracks on Space Placement, a 9-track experimental odyssey, sound like fungus-saturated Person Pitch cuts. Or maybe it's just the hovering vocals and rim-tapping drums confusing things. The collage is doubly appropriate because the songs themselves sound collaged; Space Placement is a wondrous mish-mash of found sounds, guitar noodling, free jazz, spastic pedal gurgles, left-field samples, and the aforementioned vox...deft multi-instrumentation rendered with the innocent wanderlust of a candy-high child.

It's always awesome when noteworthy song-making shines through a fog of lo-fi fuzz, and the compromise between unbounded imagination and deliberate craftmanship is something that's evident in Color Rabbit's artwork (check it out on his myspace) as well as his music. Compare his "cracked wall is magic" to "blanket box", for example. And it's not a slight to say that Color Rabbit's tracks sound "scribbly", either (the title of the album is scrawled on the spine of the digipak in black marker). His tracks are like a ball-point pen, tethered to a daydreaming brain. Check out these two songs, and let your ears be the blank sheet of notebook paper:

Color Rabbit - Wondering Wandering / (ysi)

Color Rabbit - Take Your Time Snowflake / (ysi)

The Obligatory "Our EP is Out" Post

2009-01-16T12:40:00.000-08:00

If things have been slower and more sporadic on our little corner of the internet, I'll place the blame on Kyle and I devoting a lot of our free time to another collaborative project. Though we've been jamming and making our own for-fun records for awhile now (some of which regrettably surfaced on DEBASER in the past), this Fall we finally got our act together and hit a musical stride.

The tunes on our self-titled EP are kind of hard to describe. Nat, who runs Little Fury Things Records, described it on the site as "proper driving music for the carefree and generous soul" which is more or less what we set out to make. It's a nice compromise between the mono-synth-heavy stuff Kyle had been whipping up last year, and the swampy ambient messes I had been making--but with a distinctively electronic, IDM bent and some pan-global influences with a smattering of found-sound samples and propellant loops.

Click here to buy our EP for a scant five bucks. The page also has a lot of other rad new releases from LFT.

You can preview some of our tracks on myspace, and here's a free download for track 1, "New Cub":

Universal Studios Florida - New Cub / (ysi)

And even though the EP technically came out a week ago, our friend/super-musician Big Spider's Back gave us a generous write-up in a 2008 year-end list for Redefine Magazine.

OK, Color Me Stoked

2009-01-09T14:01:00.000-08:00

The last Phoenix record was amazing. In three years, I haven't gotten sick of it. It's straightforward, and catchy, and completely charming and always lifts my spirits. When it was announced that Canadian label--and home of Broken Social Scene--Arts & Crafts had signed them, I was excited. Time passed, and there was no word of a new record. Thomas Mars made a baby with Sofia Coppola.

With the vague due date of Spring 2009, Phoenix is set to give birth to a new album (finally), and it's going to be called Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (OK....). But the 40 second preview on their website gets me pumped. Yes, it starts out slow, and it's clearly more polished than It's Never Been Like That, but the song starts to really go there, and I'm full of hope that the preview is just the tip of the iceberg.

JPNDRDS Get Some Mainstream Love

2009-01-09T13:36:00.000-08:00

A tip of the hat the awesome Vancouver duo Japandroids (or JPNDRDS for the vowel-challenged) for popping up on Pitchfork today with a track "on repeat". Looks like their new record Post-Nothing, won't be self-released anymore, and is coming out on the Unfamiliar label this Canadian Spring.

DEBASER's always been a supporter of this band, and we were happy to have them play last year's Soundbites show for Rainy Dawg Radio.

Jenny took the photo from said concert.

(New) New Year Video is All Lost-in-Translation-ed Out

2009-01-08T10:14:00.000-08:00

The New Year have released a video for "Seven Days and Seven Nights" from their self-titled album of last year, shot entirely in an airport on grainy DV cameras. It's a nice compliment to their plaintive slowcore sound.

While I wasn't crazy about the self-titled, Matt & Bubba Kadane will always belong on a special altar inside my brain, and I'll still tell anyone unashamedly that "18" is my favorite song of all time.

Sad Day: The VHS is Officially Dead

2009-01-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

This story on MSN broke my heart this morning:
"The VHS format has finally died. Even though most of us probably thought it was already long gone, its death certificate was signed when Distribution Video Audio of Palm Harbor, Fla. -- the last major supplier of VHS tapes -- shipped the last of its salable stock."

I don't remember the last major Hollywood movie to be released on VHS (though I have seen a Life Aquatic VHS), and with DVD now facing extinction, of course it's to be expected...but hearing that it's "official"? That's a bummer. I wonder if the number of VHS snobs will double with this news; certainly the grainy aesthetic is making a comeback (all episodes of the Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! are dubbed to VHS before airing), but I'm not totally ready to compete with other format elitists for the last VHS copy of Soldier of Orange at Half Price Books.

"The feedback loop that is blog culture and digital music press"

2009-01-07T10:44:00.000-08:00

Every once in awhile you stumble across a metaphor that just knocks you on your ass. Sometimes they come from Dan Deacon (huh? what?), who had this to say in a myspace bulletin meant to clarify the tone of his upcoming record Bromst:

"[Bromst is] not as top heavy for partying and slightly more proportioned towards a wider set of emotions. I feel like a lot of media is focusing on that one word - dark - and I would just like to clear that up as it seems to be getting distorted through the feedback loop that is blog culture and digital music press."

Maybe it's just because I'm an English nerd and I get really stoked about certain strings of words and sounds, and the effect that they can have, but that really strikes me as an unnervingly apt metaphor for the blog-o-verse, and the complex web of mostly-digital outlets for music discussion and sharing.

The internet is a Boss DD-20 GigaDelay Pedal, and Dan Deacon just set my brain on reverse with the feedback turned all the way up.

Dig this cut from the new record which, frankly, does sound pretty much like vintage Deacon (this is not a bad thing):

Dan Deacon - Get Older (ysi)

Mighty Principle Post Pavilion

2008-12-27T17:52:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the triumphant, Christmas Day leak of Animal Collective's highly-anticipated Merriweather Post Pavilion, indie nerds like myself and Kyle have already had many heated discussions about the intricacies of its eleven tracks. One question that came to our minds was how much, if any, sampling was used on the record. With the mystery behind at least one of their many gorgeous sonic flourishes revealed ("Daily Routine" opens with a revelatory build-up of terse accordion samples which snowball into the glistening arpeggio which comes to punctuate each verse of the song), many questions still remain about how Misters Bear, Tare, and Geologist executed each track.

I was talking with Coralcola about the album, and he pointed out that "My Girls" seems to crib from or reference at least two different tracks, or as he put it, "That whole song is a combination of Chicago house and Mighty Ducks". Skeptical? Listen to this Jamie Principle cut and tell me you don't recognize the melody:

And the chorus-of-sorts that starts with "I don't need..." echoes this cue from the Mighty Ducks soundtrack, which plays over "the scene where Coach Bombay is mackin on Charlie's mom".

David Newman - Ice Sculptures Kiss (from the Mighty Ducks OST)

With the Web Sheriff on the prowl, I'm going to elect to not make the AC track available for comparison, but if you do a little digging, I'm sure you can track down "My Girls", and entirety of The Greatest Gift of All with few problems.

It's clear that these songs were just an inspiration for the Animal Collective guys, not unlike the "sampling" of this guy's illustrations for the album's optical illusion cover art.

Colouring the Void

2008-12-18T22:24:00.000-08:00

I first heard about St. Petersburg, FL two-piece Blind Man’s Colour from DEBASER’s long-dormant co-contributor Kyle, who had heard some of their Animal Collective covers on the fan message board Collected Animals (casual fans need not apply; apparently their membership has been locked for some time). Since then, the tracks have made the blog rounds, and the group has even merited discussion in the ever-growing Merriweather Post Pavilion thread on At Ease, where, with hopes of an album leak growing fainter by the day, the conversation has wandered.

Incidentally, my negligence in writing about Blind Man’s Colour actually ended up being a positive in the end, as Bradford Cox’s comments in a recent blog post actually heighten the relevance of Animal Collective-inspired artists. Responding to a fake email—begging for a leak—sent by a hacker from Geologist’s personal account, the Deerhunter frontman said:

“My advice to those who are so desperate for AC's album to leak is to pick up instruments and make your own version of what you would want it to sound like. Respect the BANDS wishes and wait till release day. Then you can compare your new songs with theirs. Who knows. Maybe your album will be the one people are wanting to leak next year.”

The BMC Merriweather Post Pavilion covers were actually recorded before the leaks of two authentic studio tracks (“My Girls”, “Brothersport”) from the upcoming album, so they’re pretty much exactly what B-ford is asking for.

But I want to talk about Blind Man’s Colour’s original material. Their songs sound remarkably like Animal Collective, but I’ve had a hard time discerning exactly why. Is it their choice of melodies? I thought it maybe could be some secret buried in their production technique, but according to band member Kyle Wyss, they rely on Reason software (and a bevy of live instruments like homemade jingle bells and nylon-stringed guitars) to achieve their specific sound—no Roland SP 404’s or 505’s in sight. And the soaring, reverb-laded elegance of “Jimmy Dove” doesn’t exactly recall the gurgling warmth of Feels, or the hyperactive freak-folk of Sung Tongs (I’m not even going to try and objectively describe Strawberry Jam’s overall aesthetic; it’s far too tangled up in my own nostalgia for last summer).

Anyway, when I listen to tracks like “Heavy Cloud Hustle” or “Jimmy Dove”, both from an as-yet-unreleased record called Season Dreaming, I really dig the parts that sound distinctly un-Animal Collective-y. Like the flanged out break down a minute and six seconds into “Jimmy Dove” for example. And the chip-tune quality of “Young Stones” from their Rainbow Faces EP is way more electronic than Animal Collective have ever been.

Check out their stuff, and I mean their own tracks, not covers, below.

Blind Man's Colour - Jimmy Dove (ysi)

Blind Man's Colour - Waterfall Freedom (ysi)

They also have a bunch of free EPs and stuff worth checking out, just go to their myspace or their blog.

White Rainbow at Rainy Dawg Radio's Local Music Showcase

2008-12-02T15:33:00.000-08:00

Sorry for how slowly things have been moving around here. Kyle and I have been pretty busy with a musical project (more on that later this month), and we had our hands full with the Local Music Showcase we organized through the UW student radio station Rainy Dawg Radio. All of the performers (Alaskas, Big Spider's Back, PWRFL Power, and White Rainbow) were great, and if you're interested in hearing the full thirty-six minutes of White Rainbow's live, improvised set, here's an mp3:

White Rainbow live at Rainy Dawg Radio's Local Music Showcase

It's pretty transcendent stuff. Good music to study to, doze off to, or meditate to (yes, meditate. People were actually doing this at the concert).

Photo via Omar.

Padna and Panda

2008-11-16T12:09:00.000-08:00

Despite a show full of glitches (mea culpa) the in-studio performance with Big Spider's Back went smoothly on yesterday's Floating in Space broadcast. Apart from playing new track "Warped", he performed a live "liberal reinterpretation" of Panda Bear's "I'm Not" that's a must-listen.

Big Spider's Back - I'm Not (Panda Bear cover)

Click here for mp3s of last year's live in-studio F.I.S. set by Big Spider's Back.

Oddly serendipitous that my Panda Bear shirt should arrive that same afternoon, and on a weekend in which I'd seriously been digging like-named artist Padna's "The Shore That Feared The Sea" (Little Fury Things recs). I especially like this track:

Padna - The Bird Song (ysi)

New Big Spider's Back: "Warped" Live in Portland

2008-11-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

DEBASER's favorite local artist Big Spider's Back performed a new track (tentatively titled "Warped") at Rererato in Portland recently. There's high quality clip online.

Big Spider's Back Part 3 from Do Yon Kim on Vimeo.

Hopefully he'll be playing it again on Thursday, Nov. 20th at Rainy Dawg Radio's Local Music Showcase.

2008-11-09T02:47:00.001-08:00

RAINYDAWG.ORG

2008-11-05T15:37:00.000-08:00

Tree Corpses Will Touch Your Soul

2008-11-03T13:25:00.000-08:00

From the final installment of Timothy Callahan's mind-opening 10-part interview with Grant Morrison about his All-Star Superman series, at Newsarama:

What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled. How mental is that ?

That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colourist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance.

And think about how that experience, the simple experience of interacting with a paper comic book, along with hundreds of thousands of others across time and space, is an actual doorway onto the beating heart of the imminent, timeless world of “Myth” as defined above. Not just a drawing of it but an actual doorway into timelessness and the immortal world where we are all one together.

My grief over the loss of my dad can be Superman’s grief, can trigger your own grief, for your own dad, for all our dads. The timeless grief that’s felt by Muslims and Christians and Agnostics alike. My personal moments of great and romantic love, untainted by the everyday, can become Superman’s and may resonate with your own experience of these simple human feelings.

In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time the Only time, honouring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end.

If we were able to capture even a hint of that place and share it with our readers, that would be good enough for me.

Read this comic series if you haven't already. Probably the best superhero comic of this decade.

Lichtenstein x ASCII

2008-11-02T17:45:00.000-08:00

This free online ASCII text generator is my new favorite boredom cure.

Floating x 3

2008-10-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

Much of my programming from this weekend's Floating in Space broadcast was made up of these mixes, which were designed to set the vibe for the show--which was to be more tropical and pop-orientated than my shows usually are, to accommodate my special guest, Ryan McPhun of The Ruby Suns.

I've decided to share them with you all.

FLOATING I

Jules, Marsen - Ou La Nostalgie Habite – Kompakt Pop Ambient 2007
Our Sleepless Forest – White Bird – Our Sleepless Forest
Mmmmmmmm – Good Brains

FLOATING II

Moskitoo – Wham & Whammy – Drape
Alphabets – Trembling Sensation – Nature Nature
White Rainbow – See and the Field Feels – Ambient Not Not Ambient

FLOATING III

Growing – Fancy Period (excerpt) – Color Wheel
Tycho – PBS – Past is Prologue
Tobacco – Hairy Candy – Fucked Up Friends
High Places – From Stardust to Sentience – High Places

Eye candy via Natl. Geographic

Ryan McPhun of The Ruby Suns on Floating in Space

2008-10-11T22:33:00.000-07:00

Today was the first broadcast of my spacey college radio show FLOATING IN SPACE since June. I was fortunate enough to have Ryan from New Zealand's own The Ruby Suns stop by for an on-air interview, and managed only to embarrass myself a little. You may recall that back in February, I was gushing about the Suns' second full-length album, Sea Lion, asserting that "While I'm hesitant to say that the Ruby Suns' Sea Lion is my favorite album of 2008 so far...I'm certainly pretty stoked on it at the moment."

For a couple months now, I've had no problem throwing it out there that it is, in fact, and probably will remain, my favorite album of the year. It holds up through multiple listens because underneath all of the sunny harmonies and beautiful melodies, there's some really wild sound collage/ambient/sonic bizarreness happening, which elevates the tracks and adds up to an incredibly dense (but not busy) album.

I had the chance to chat with Ryan about this exact aspect of the record, and he revealed that part of his entire goal with Sea Lion (all of the parts were recorded by him alone) was to add weird, unexpected and sometimes dissonant elements, so that they weren't just pop songs, citing Vampire Weekend as a band that makes decent, but uninteresting pop (hear, hear).

He also talked about his friendship with Pablo "El Guincho" Diaz-Reixa, and revealed that the Suns' chill cover of "Palmitos Park" was recorded in a hotel room, a moving car, and the bathroom of a venue. Before he had to split, we had a chat about sampling, and the headaches that copyright issues are still causing in the free-spirited indie music world.

Ryan also brought a copy of the Suns' contributory track to Bruce Perry's Amazon/Tribe project to play on the air. "Don't Trust the Dusty Fruit" samples some flute-playing from a tribe in Borneo. The double-disc charitable contribution (all proceeds going to Survival International) came out Tuesday in the UK.

The Ruby Suns - Don't Trust the Dusty Fruit / (ysi)

The Ruby Suns - Palmitos Park (El Guincho cover) / (ysi)

Good Brains + Prince

2008-10-07T15:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was spent mostly below ground, working away under fluorescent lights for long stretches of hours, with a bunch of homework looming on the horizon...thankfully there was a little surprise in my inbox courtesy of our old compadre Good Brains, who remixed a number of sweet tracks, including Prince's classic "I Would Die 4 U" which has been Good Brains-ed into a transcendent, Field-esque mindbomb.

Thanks, Jake.

Good Brains - Pppppp

The Paul Pope DKNY Line is Now Available

2008-09-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

And mostly sold out already. Shop or browse here. I like the black hoodie with the gal on it the best, but that shit apparently sold out in my size awhile ago.

Tonight I'm Seeing The Loudest Band on Earth in the Shittiest Venue in Seattle

2008-09-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

No offense to DEBASER's longtime home skillet Good Brains, who rocked the house recently, but El Corazon is pretty much a dump with a grumpy staff and I hope Mono in VCF, Sian Alice Group, and A Place to Bury Strangers use their cozmic powers in unison to splinter all of its walls and melt the faces off its bouncers.

I Forgot How Much I Loved This Song

2008-09-23T22:03:00.000-07:00

Must See: Good Brains Plays El Corazon Tuesday Sept. 16

2008-09-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

A few moons ago, DEBASER premiered a demo record by Jake "Good Brains" Teitelbaum, and soon we became the only place to keep tabs on new releases from our good and cosmically talented friend. Four albums later, the GB sound has evolved and, after playing various gigs around Bellingham, Teitelbaum is ready to sail into Seattle on a massive wave of good vibes; he's the opening act on an all-ages three-band bill Tuesday night at El Corazon.

Doors for this $8 show are at 7:30, with Good Brains set to go on at 8:00 PM. BE THERE!

Good Brains - Best of 7 vs. Death
Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook (Good Brains remix)

Tear Gas, Hate, Blood, and Balloons: The Stranger Covers the Republican Natl. Convention

2008-09-13T14:29:00.000-07:00

If you're itching for a piece of really fantastic journalism* I urge you to check out Brendan Kiley's report on the RNC for Seattle's alt weekly--and formative stomping ground for a teenaged yours truly--The Stranger (in this week's "Genius Awards" issue). Though it seems hampered by a word count (maybe?), there's enough razor-sharp reporting in Kiley's article "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to McCain's Speech" to make Upton Sinclair blush and gently re-adjust his thin-rimmed specs. The deliberate contrast made between schmoozing with Right-wing assholes--

"In the downstars bar, a delegate from Georgia is slurring about race in the maudlin tones of an old man lamenting the New South. 'It's like I always tell me daughters...if you see a n***er driving a limo, he isn't necessarily a drug dealer--he might be a chauffeur. And that's progress.'"

--and the horrific beating, torture, and sexual assault of protester Elliot Hughes by Minnesota police officers is startling and effective.

Despite presenting his press credentials, Kiley himself became one of many non-aggressive victims sprayed with pepper spray by borderline-sadist policemen and women (the city of St. Paul spent $1.9 million on pepper spray and tear gas for the convention, a staggering cost equaling only one twenty-third of the McCain campaign's record earnings for last month).

It's monumentally depressing to think about how little mainstream press coverage the horrors that went down in St. Paul recieved (Kiley's article is the tip of the fucking iceberg). At least Seattle residents can rest assured that there are inky little stacks of truth on nearly every streetcorner.

*likely a pretty idiosyncratic craving of mine, I know.

Ron Paul (Pope): My New Esteem for Former Presidential Candidate Ron Paul

2008-09-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

I always somewhat resented Texas Congressman Ron Paul (R), for his apparent primary-season allure among the college-age, frisbee-and-activism crowd (those should be Obama voters!), but now that he's out of the race--though admittedly, he would have been a vastly preferable Republican candidate--he's nothing more than a charming, brazenly Libertarian oddity, the kind I would like to keep on my shelf next to some Vintage paperbacks like a Kid Robot vinyl toy.

Imagine the shine in my eye, when I stumbled across this nugget of bloggy joy from last December, in which Ron Paul explains, with endearingly nerdy accuracy, why the "Berlin Batman" is his favorite superhero (for the record, I would like to note that I had only just read this story for the first time in the back content of the highly-recommended Batman: Year 100 trade paperback):

"My favorite comic book superhero is Baruch Wane, otherwise known as Batman, in The Batman Chronicles. "The Berlin Batman," #11 in the series by Paul Pope, details Batman's attempts to rescue the confiscated works of persecuted Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, from Nazi Party hands.

“Batman's assistant Robin writes in the memoirs, "[Mises] was an advocate of individual liberty, free speech, and free thinking... and so, should I add, the Berlin Batman." Batman, a Jew in hiding in Nazi Austria, was willing to risk his life for the sake of the promulgation of freedom, and I find this to be super-heroic."

Holy Shit. Ron Paul is a fan of Paul Pope, Batman, comic books, and specifically, Paul Pope's Batman comic books.

Tim and Eric Get Commentated

2008-09-13T13:25:00.001-07:00

On the Adult Swim website, there is now an insightful video commentary* by Tim Heidecker and Eric Warheim--along with other crew of their dada-meets-doodoo concept comedy show Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!--for their DEBASER-approved twenty-sixth episode, a skewering of corporate-sponsored, youth-targeting TV drivel (possibly the best episode they have ever made).

Additionally, their interview with Mike Sacks and Eric Spitznagel (whose name sounds like one of the phony ones assigned to fake TV actors in the Awesome Show reality) in the latest issue of The Believer is available, in full, online here.

*Just click on "extras"

Poison Diamonds Like Tears in Rain

2008-09-12T10:38:00.000-07:00

There's a song on the ADVENTURE self-titled that I thought was pretty good, but when Boeldt dropped a sample of Roy Batty's speech from the end of Blade Runner, all misgivings I had about the song became "lost in time, like tears in rain." The rest of the record is pretty sick, too.
Adventure is out September 23rd.

Late Summer Micromix

2008-09-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

1. Passion Pit - Sleepyhead (myspace)
2. Alaskas - Pronoun (myspace)
3. The Ruby Suns - Palmitos Park (El Guincho cover)
4. Jules, Marsen - Ou La Nostalgie Habite
5. Deru - Only the Circle
6. Alphabets - Freak Medicine, Like, Medicine (myspace)
7. Fuck Buttons - Colours Move (Mogwai remix)
8. Soft Circle - Ascend

Just sharing the love.

LATE SUMMER DEBASER MICROMIX.

Exploring More of 12K's Offerings

2008-09-10T12:47:00.000-07:00

I've been slowly working my way through 12K Records' remarkable catalog, and my attentions recently wandered to Moskitoo's album Drape, the first full-length from the lovely Japanese graphic-designer-turned-musician. All the songs were given the master touch by 12K's wunderkind Taylor Deupree, and are bouyant with the typical aspects of a 12K release--lonely pianos, percussive clicks and snaps, and atmospheric chirping, gurgling, and buzzing. But Drape stands apart with an idiosyncratic energy that's in contrast with the output of 12K's mostly ambient/IDM collective, and the vocals float, ethereal and Cacoy-like, above her delicately-woven compositions.

I've hand-picked some of my favorite tracks, which are linked below.

Moskitoo-Skie (ysi)
Moskitoo-Manima No Lemon (ysi)
Moskitoo-Wham & Whammy (ysi)

Paul Pope Draws His Girlfriend Reading WATCHMEN, Naked

2008-09-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

He also draws a mean palm tree, along with...pretty much everything else...in the world.

Last Night My Eardrums Got Fuckt. I Loved it.

2008-09-05T13:00:00.001-07:00

Here are some photos from last night's Fuck Buttons/Mogwai show. FB played some stunning new material (including some literally Gameboy-fashioned beats), and Mogwai brought the house down, with "Mogwai Fear Satan" being the obvious mid-set highlight.

Oh yeah, then there was this:

Fuck Buttons - Mogwai Fear Satan / (ysi)
Mogwai - Mogwai Fear Satan (live) / (ysi)

Old Photo Featured in NowPublic Article

2008-09-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

A photo of a Japanese Denny's in Nagoya that I took three years ago on a two-week trip to Japan has been included along with a batch of other Denny's-related snapshots in NowPublic.com's article "Man tries to cut off his arm at busy Denny's restaurant". Seriously.

For the record, American Denny's are much better. Particularly the one on Aurora and 244th. Shout out to my favorite waitress, Ms. Gloria Pearl.

"Jim" and "Derrick" are Totally Awesome, Dude

2008-09-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

Despite my initial concerns, the third season of Adult Swim's Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job (the amazing, boundary-pushing sketch comedy program from Bob Odenkirk's proteges and the evil wizards behind Tom Goes to the Mayor) has only been getting better with each episode.

Last night's episode was undeniably the most brilliant of the season so far, and probably one of their best efforts ever. Eschewing their regular "format" (if you can call it that) the entire episode was executed as if it were an MTV-style show--hosted by a lip-ringed Jim and Derick--complete with a phony corporate sponsor, a celebrity guest, a skateboarding sequence, and a bong shopping segment. Observe how impeccably they're able to spoof the pre-styled wardrobe of MTV on-air hosts, and their idiotic slack-eyed gaze and gestures.

You can watch the entire episode for free at adultswim.com.

Another Reason to be Pissed at FOX

2008-08-26T14:44:00.000-07:00

Anyone who is excited about the upcoming WATCHMEN adaptation* is in for some bad news if they haven't already heard about Fox Studios' lawsuit against the filmmakers. Nevermind that Warner Bros. (who is producing Zach Snyder's adaptation, due in March of next year) owns DC Comics which originally published WATCHMEN back in '86. Fox optioned the rights to the comic ages ago, and even though they never successfully moved forward with an adaptation, they are now attempting to block WB from releasing the picture. Apparently, it's within their legal rights, but it's all litigation mumbo-jumbo that's over my head.

This, however, is not: documents have recently been uncovered which indicate that Fox had plans to develop a WATCHMEN animated series of all things, and that the higher-ups at FOX couldn't even be bothered to pick up some copies of the graphic novel themselves!

And THESE are the people who are pissed that THEY aren't making WATCHMEN (i.e. not raking in mad dough come March because they couldn't get their shit together)??? Besides, it's not even a done deal that a subversive, two-hour-plus R-rated superhero epic with a down ending will be a financial slam dunk anyway. I guess it worked for The Dark Knight though, even though that film was "PG-13". Sure.

end rant.

*and apparently, that's a lot of people: sales of the classic graphic novel are way up, I was asked by two seperate cable installation guys if I had seen the trailer, and I bought coffee from a guy who had the book resting next to the register--this with the Entertainment Weekly WATCHMEN cover on the magazine rack behind him

A Placid State of Mind

2008-08-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

I recently snagged a copy of David Newlyn's album A Nervous State of Mind on tape, and it was just the calming, meditative ambient fix I needed. On this record, Newlyn's created the exact kind of music I like to attempt to make when I sit down with my laptop and a new Ableton file. Newlyn, of course, is much better at it--mixing layers of sound that coast alongside and above and below one another like a sonic statigraphy of guitar, Squarepusherey synths, and chirping percussion.

A Nervous State of Mind sounded great on my Panasonic RQ-2104 Slim Line tape player, with the hissing, fuzzy warmth of it's slightly-blown out speaker, but you really need to experience these tracks in high-quality mp3.

Newlyn also has a number of other musical endeavors (check out his myspace) and he runs a small label called October Man Recordings that has an impressive roster of similarly-minded artists.

Shout-out to Drew from Auxiliary Out for giving me the heads up on an Abandon Ship Records sale, where I sniffed out the Newlyn tape.

David Newlyn - Angels and Insects / (ysi)
David Newlyn - Loner / (ysi)
David Newlyn - Learning to Swim / (ysi)

Dr. Kanye West Suffers for Fashion, or Whatever

2008-08-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

After listening to the much-buzzed about "Swagger Like Us," the thing that stood out the most to me (something of a contemporary hip-hop neophyte) was Jay-Z's hilarious line about not being able to wear skinny jeans 'cause his "nuts won't fit". Kanye West (also appearing on the track, which he produced) on the other hand, is a rapper whose crotch is often snugly packed into a pair of hip-as-hell skinny jeans* and anyone familiar with 'Ye's blog is well aware of his obsession with fashion.

West's "passion for fashion"--audible on last year's Graduation, alongside the requisite claims about his virility and talent--is threatening to become the primary focus of his lyrics and I, for one, couldn't be happier. While I probably shouldn't cop to enjoying a song that's in VH1 heavy rotation, I can't get enough of Estelle's "American Boy", not only because of it's awesome hook, but because West's flows are among some of his best yet. His delivery is so fast and furious, it makes some of his previous efforts look palsied by comparison. Also consider this comically fashion-centric verse:

What’s your persona?
About this American rhymer
Am I shallow cuz all my clothes designer?
Dressed smart like a London Bloke.
Before he speak his suit bespoke.
And you thought he was cute before.
Look at this Pea Coat, tell me he’s broke.

which ends with the line "so to hell with all that rubbish" delivered in a great faux-grime accent.

Hopefully Kanye keeps bragging about his designer duds, because no one makes it sound as fresh and fun as he does. Either way, I'll be keeping one ear to the ground, because West's raps range so widely--from the endearingly terrible (that SNL freestyle), to the intentionally-simplified and catchy, to the impressive.

*like the pair of red American Apparel slim slacks he wore at the 2007 BET Hip Hop Awards

Alaskas in my Stereo

2008-08-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

Dillon James Rego is a local artist who operates under the name "Alaskas" and is pretty active in our flourishing local DIY and all-ages scenes. I first heard about him when he came in to record an in-studio performance at Rainy Dawg, and I was blown away when I listened to some of his tracks. Recently, I've been blasting "Pronoun" from my car stereo and it's become my official jam for late summer. I highly encourage you to download this song, it's delightfully Paw-Tracksy without being in any way unoriginal (between Rego and his friend Big Spider's Back, the 206 area code can suddenly lay claim to having more exciting, Animal-Collective-comparison-worthy artists than the entirety of the non-AC, non-Panda Paw Tracks line-up). "Farewell to Them All" is in a similar vein, but prominently features Alaska's idiosyncratic use of vocal samples and beatboxing for the rhythm section.

Ch-ch-ch-check them out.

Alaskas - Pronoun (ysi)
Alaskas - Farewell to Them All (ysi)

The Rhythm Computer Number Series

2008-08-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I linked to an mp3 by techno artist "ed function" that was part of a participatory Term Records open source project. The same artist, aside from continuing to produce ranging, interesting music, is responsible for a fascinating sonic experiment called "the rhythm computer number series". I highly recommend checking out all of his streaming myspace tracks--it's a revelation I would compare to hearing The Field for the first time (that experience of being totally absorbed in an electronic song while at the same time, your brain is reeling from its experimental brilliance).

All of the tracks were constructed using sample sets from different drum machines (only one machine per track--that's the trick):

"Part of the broader "limited editions" project established at the institute hyperwerk in basel, switzerland the project aims to examine sonic possibilities using only the basic sound sets of vintage drum machines. Through limiting the sound palette the project hopes to expand upon the digital potentials."

Seriously, check it out.

Post_Piano 2 Open Remix Project (12K Records still "really cool")

2008-08-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

12K Recs continues to impress me the more I familiarize myself with their catalogue and philosophy. For instance, I thought that "Term"--a sublabel of 12K that offers free music exclusively--was a really awesome discovery, and one of Term's coolest offerings is the Post_Piano 2 Open Remix Project, spearheaded by (occassional Christopher Willits collaborator) Taylor Deupree and Kenneth Kirschner. PP2OR is actually a riff on the Post Piano album by Deupree + Kirschner, which itself used a "sketch" by Kirschner ("Novermber 11 2003") as the source material/starting point for new tracks. Out of hundreds of submissions, twenty-one tracks made it onto the final "record" (available in full here). 12K's site also has all of the tracks available individually (for free, obviously) as well as Kirschner's original "November 11 2003".

I picked out three of my favorites:

Ed Function - Rheinsprung
Nature/Center - Snowshoes
Remote_ -piano_sequence [pp2_seq]

\\
Polaroid by Eivind Molvaer

Metaphysical Border Traffic

2008-08-19T15:13:00.000-07:00

I was glancing over K+V this afternoon, and an image by German artist Eno Henze caught my eye (I immediately followed the link to his site, mostly because I misread his name as "Eno Haze" which sounded totally awesome to me). It turned out to be a good decision though, as he's a multi-talented and far-out kind of artist and he has one particularly cool project called Metaphysischer Grenzverkehr II or "Metaphysical Bordertraffic II". Despite having had nine years of German language education, I had to babelfish his explanatory paragraph, and even after that, it didn't make much sense. Basically, it's a video projection installation meant to express...something...in a trippy, glacial way. More on the project here.

If you want a cosmic experience, try watching this rip of the installation while listening to Arp's "Odyssey (For Bas Jan Ader)".

Metaphysischer Grenzverkehr II from lambretta on Vimeo.

Arp - Odyssey (For Bas Jan Ader)(ysi)

...And We're Back

2008-08-18T22:44:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of activity around here. I've been having some serious computer problems, but I think everything has finally been resolved. Hopefully, things will start picking back up here.

Shit Yeah: New Growing Video Premiers on The Fork

2008-07-28T19:51:00.000-07:00

Oh man am I excited for the new full-length from Brooklyn-by-way-of-Olympia,WA ambient duo Growing. Pitchfork has the exclusive video from the track "Wrong Ride".

Also awesome: Dean (No Age) Spundt's label is releasing a DVD on August 18 that features live footage of various awesome bands performing awesome songs from their awesome back catalogues.

Here's the full list, with my highlights in bold.

Abe Vigoda: "World Heart", "All Night and Day" --These guys were rad opening up at that No Age basement show
BARR: "The Song Is the Single", "The B Side Is Silent", "First"
Black Black: "Emerald Forest"
Deerhunter: "Strange Lights"
David Scott Stone: "Throwing Paint"
Erase Errata: "Dark Cruising"
Finally Punk: "Live 1/Live 2"
Hawney Troof: "Out of Teen"
High Places: "Golden", "Greeting the Light", "Live"
Japanther: "Dragon Rider"
K.I.T.: "Star Sign"
Lucky Dragons: "Morning Ritual", "Sexy Proposal"
Mika Miko: "Business Cats", "Capricorinations", "Wild Bore"
No Age: "Boy Void", "Goat Hurt"
Pocahaunted: "untitled"
The Sads: "Nig Mini Moons"
Silver Daggers: "Movement"
Sissy Spacek: "Live"
Soft Boiled Eggies: "So High"
Soft Circle: "Moon Oar Sunrise"--It's worth noting that this song is INCREDIBLE, and I played it as many times as possible on my radio show last year.
Soiled Mattress and the Springs: "Tidal Wave"
Xiu Xiu: "Bishop, CA", "The Fox and the Rabbit"

Not So Mad Awesome Yet

2008-07-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

Last night saw the premiere episodes for the new seasons of two of my favorite (albeit for extremely different reasons) television programs.

AMC's Mad Men is nothing less than the smartest, most thought-provoking, character-driven drama on television, featuring an absurd attention to detail in recreating the early '60s setting, as well as a knack for adding depth to even the most tertiary of characters.

...so why all the schmaltz and pretension in last night's episode? Sure, there was plenty to leave me salivating over the story potential for the coming season, but the execution seemed off; everything was either tonally obvious (trying to lure new viewers, left curious by the marketing blitz and torrent of awards?) or arrogant.

A few hours later, I stayed up to catch the first episode of season three of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, and it's a miracle that show has even made it to three seasons, so I can be a little more forgiving that it ranked among some of the least laugh-inducing episodes so far. While the general premise of the episode--Tim comes back to life with the power of being able to generate porcelain tiger statuettes from out of thin air--was pretty good, something was missing, and a lot of the segments fell flat. Even the Dr. Steve Brule appearance was a let-down.

It wasn't all bad though, and I want to stress that I'm not rushing to any judgments about how these shows are going to play out across the rest of the summer. I have high hopes for both because lord knows, Sunday nights could use a little kick in the ass every once in awhile.

Secret Show Revealed: No Age in a Sweaty, Sweaty Basement

2008-07-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

I didn't bring a camera, but luckily my pal Sam did, and he took some great shots. The show was fucking nuts*, and has stepped into the imaginary boxing ring in the back of my brain to do battle with Dan Deacon, The Flaming Lips UFO Show, and the crazy Liars concert (for which No Age opened), for the title of best concert of the year. More photos on Sam's flickr.

Check out Randy crowd-surfing during the climax of "Eraser".

*It was about 80 degrees inside, with literally hundreds of people packed into the "venue", everyone was dripping sweat, and a girl got shoved into the cramped space Dean and Randy had to perform in, causing RR's guitar to become unplugged.

This is Where I Will Be Tonight

2008-07-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

Checking out Girl Talk's set at the Capitol Hill Block Party. Hopefully I'll also check out part of Menomena's set, and a top secret show in the area featuring an awesome, heavily-hyped band I've been lucky enough to see twice already.

The photos are from DEBASER's favorite shutterbug Jenny Becker, and they rank as some of my favorite concert pix of all time. She was at Girl Talk's legendary Chop Suey performance last year.

Burning Cash, Burning Robots

2008-07-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Daft Punk's feature-length silent concept film Electroma was finally released on DVD in the US, but buyer beware. Though the movie is stunning--and visually, philosophically, and emotionally rich--the hipsters over at VICE have seen fit to charge 22 bucks for a single-disc DVD with no special features, aside from a handsome metal case and a booklet full of pixelated screen-grabs from the film. Some days, I really wish Dov Charney had never made capitalism "hip". In any case, the film remains totally worth seeing, so borrow a friend's copy or something.

In a related note, I'm happy to report that this is the first mention of Daft Punk here on DEBASER in the year 2008. I managed to keep my promise not to blog about them for a solid seven months because, like The Dark Knight's Joker, "I'm a man of my word".

Lethem talks Omega, Hardcover due in September

2008-07-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Regardless of how you may have felt about uber-novelist Jonathan Lethem's conclusion to Omega the Unknown this month, you'll have to agree that the cover to the upcoming hardcover collection of all ten issues is pretty sweet.

Lethem was forthcoming about his thoughts on the series, and teased about his next novel, to my pals over at CBR:

“The story has some themes, I guess: conformity, franchising versus the small businessman, mediated versus ‘real’ experience, etcetera, but those are pretty much just what sneaked in when I wasn’t looking. In writing it, I concerned myself primarily with the character and material directly -- teenagers with problems, evil robots, corrupt and borderline-autistic superheroes, hamburgers, that sort of thing.”

“[The new novel] is coming together, and it should be published in the fall of 2009. It still doesn’t have a title, but I can tell you, it’s set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it’s strongly influenced by Saul Bellow, Philip K. Dick, Charles Finney and Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ and it concerns a circle of friends including a faded child-star actor, a cultural critic, a hack ghost-writer of autobiographies, and a city official. And it’s long and strange.”

Read the full interview here.

This Weekend

2008-07-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

We'll be at Sub Pop 20 this weekend, catching up on forgotten warriors of fallen decades like Red Red Meat, Beachwood Sparks and the Vaselines, along with more contemporary favorites like No Age, Wolf Parade and Ruby Suns. The festival is today and tomorrow, and to the best of my knowledge, tickets are still available.

The Long-Awaited Return of the Turn-Ons (or, "Curse" Kind of Turns Me On)

2008-07-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

For months I had been frustrated by the website of Seattle band the Turn-Ons, which promised that a new album was "coming soon". I'd been a huge fan of the shoegazey rockers ever since their awesome album East was released, and I vividly remember a concert they played at Sky Church where a stunningly-edited sequence of visuals was cued up to their songs on the enormous screen behind them and led singer Travis DeVries smeared fake blood all over his all-white get-up and splashed the crowd with Vitamin Water.

So imagine my delight at seeing that their new record, Curse, was finally available on their website in the post-In Rainbows release method du jour/pay-what-you-want model. Did it live up to my long-gestating period of anticipation? Could it top East as their best release? Would it merely eclipse their last effort, Parallels (which in and of itself was pretty solid)?

Yes and no. There are parts of this album that floored me. When opener "So Gone" kicks into high gear at the 1:47 mark, I was taken by the poppy production--and the instrumentation of the bridge recalls the whimsy of Jon Brion's I ♥ Huckabees score. Similarly, late-album standout "Suicide" gets really good 1:45 into the song, where a haunting guitar line and eerie children's choir-sounding backing vocals emerge and elevate the dreamy ambient quality of the track. I Also dug the mostly drum-less percussion.

"Crystalize" starts with a bang, and has a great guitar hook, with super-reverbed out backing guitars ala Cryptograms, and a well-panned pounding, organic drumline. It's also very poppy, but punctuated by fleeting moments of slight sonic breakdown.

"Cold Boys" has spacey vocals, with the guitar--effected in a way that's practically trademarked by the Turn-Ons--sent to left ear, and an MBV-esque drumline gradually leads the song into a driving, chugging chorus.

"1/11" is a hybrid of shoegazey guitar and treble-y 80's style guitar with awesome harmonic vocals. It calls to mind New Order's "Ceremony" and has the quality of being implacably nostalgic.

The album loses steam in its second half, but is redeemed by the weirdly poppy "Here She Is" (I can't help imagining the inexplicable Tim & Eric sketch "Here She Comes" as I type that song title) which is dangerously jangly but veers just shy of becoming twee or unnecessarily imitative of Brit-pop.

Overall, it's not the classic that (at least in my mind) East is, nor does it have some of the splendor that tracks like "Strange as Snow", "A Thousand Years", and "Robert Altman" had on Parallels, but it is a worthwhile new entry by this critically-overlooked local band.

Download, for whatever price you desire, at the Turn-Ons' official site.

From Curse:
The Turn-Ons - So Gone (ysi)

From Parallels:
The Turn-Ons - Strange as Snow (ysi)

From East:
The Turn-Ons - Skyscapers (ysi)
The Turn-Ons - New Jesus (ysi)

Spending the 4th of July with a Dead Patriot

2008-07-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a matinee showing of Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney's latest, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. As longtime readers may (or may not) be aware, Thompson's always been a hero of mine, and an enduring journalistic inspiration. The film was engaging and emotionally potent, but far from perfect--it was hampered by obvious musical cues and an overraliance on theatrical reenactments...and besides, how could any celluloid reality hope to operate on the grand scale necessary to capture the spirit of such a powerful and savagely idealistic life and legacy as Thompson's, one which was able to make even a mongrel conservative asshole like Pat Buchanan misty-eyed with remembrance?

I submit to you now a clip of two very talented, and very dead, journalists discussing the "grim meathook reality" of 21st century politics. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and Tim Russert on Meet the Press:

The New Mogwai Song Sounds Like Garage Band

2008-07-03T17:19:00.000-07:00

...In the best way possible. I can easily see a lot of people writing this off as flat and repetitive and that might actually be true, but there's some damn catchy synth work going on here. Besides, do we really want another slow-building guitar jam from Mogwai? Buy this already. This track comes from the eagerly anticipated The Hawk Is Howling, which is, like, a Springsteen covers album or something.

Mogwai - The Sun Smells Too Loud (ysi)

DEBASER Exclusive: Alphabets Interview

2008-07-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

I first contacted Colin Ward, a seventeen-year-old former Denver native with a large musical agenda who performs under the pseudonym Alphabets, about a month ago after stumbling across a link to his myspace on a message board. Colin got back to me promptly and informed me he was undergoing a move to Seattle and, last week, we finally met up and talked about his musical philosophy, his plans for the future and his influences. Colin was also kind enough to give us a few exclusive tracks from his self-released album, Nature Nature, available for download in the usual place, at the bottom of the post.

DEBASER: So I guess a good place to start would be your sound. How would you label your own music, or how would you like it to be classified? The songs on your Myspace seem pretty stylistically diverse.

ALPHABETS: I don’t know, I think it’s really hard for me to classify my sound, as it would be to fit anyone into one area. Definitely electronic, but there’s some organic sounds that are electronically manipulated. I guess that’s still electronic.

DEBASER: I was actually going to ask, how much of your recorded music is synth based or computer based versus organic or real instruments?

ALPHABETS: Usually it’s about 70% electronically manipulated real sounds, like voices or live keyboards and 30% digital instruments, samples and different drum kit sounds kind of spaced together.

DEBASER: And what editing program are you using, if you don’t mind me asking?

ALPHABETS: Just Garage Band on my Macbook.

DEBASER: And with Garage Band, are you using any external samples? Like the song “Blam,” I hear a little of the Field and other sample based minimal techno. It sounds like it could be a manipulation of a homemade sample.

ALPHABETS: Actually that song on the CD is an intro to another song. I just turned on my laptop and found some samples of hymns, some gospel song, and cut that up with one bass section and that’s it. Once I finished it and listened to it I was like ‘whoa, this is kind of, like, rave.’

DEBASER: [Laughs] Sure, I’d say maybe more IDM oriented than a club banger. So to segway then, do you want to talk briefly about your influences?

ALPHABETS: Well, recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Chopan. Just a lot of quieter stuff recently, which is weird because I’ve been creating more weird sounding, kind of abrasive songs, but at the same time I’m trying to incorporate elements I’ve heard in quiet piano, not using piano specifically in my songs, but I feel like… some bands have too many abrasive noises without melody, or they’re super melodic, so one of the things I’m influenced by is that intersection, you know? Heavy drum sounds, abrasive electronic feedback mixed with pretty gentle synths and more melodic sounds. Honestly I’d say my biggest influence on me was my previous instructor for music theory. He would give me these homework assignments based on themes, and each week I’d have seven songs to bring back to him based on that theme. So I started to think about ‘what do I want this song to do, when a stranger has it going through headphones, how do I want them to feel?’ I don’t mean for this to sound weird, but I feel like you feel music in your body. Any kind of music, it all has some effect on your body.

DEBASER: That’s really cool. So what were some of the themes he gave you?

ALPHABETS: Well there’s one song I made that’s on the CD I gave you that I made for one of the themes. It’s a really weird song but, I don’t know, I felt like I did my homework well. The theme was two things reacting with each other in nature, so I made this song that was just two synthesizers doing arpeggios. There are really deep sounds, which I wanted to be the water, and then there’s a bird in the water crying for help, so I made this noise with my mouth, like ‘whooip!’

DEBASER: It seems like a lot of like-minded artists are establishing themselves by working within a given time signiture or beat pattern. Do you feel like you go into a song with any pre-existing structure?

ALPHABETS: I find that if I put a song in 4/4 with a simple hip-hop tempo, like 120 bpm or something, the results of the sound is pretty poppy, so I’ve been working with 7/8 and other weird time signatures. I started playing music as a drummer in sixth grade and I just played drums until freshman year [of high school]. Then I started to get curious about melody and how I could put the rhythms I understood with melodies, and time went by and eventually I got a laptop and I realized, ‘wow, I can totally do this really easily.’ So usually its some sort of song or something a day.

DEBASER: Do you come back to those song sketches? When you’re cranking out a song a day, are you also working of going back and polishing old songs or do you work in a more cyclical fashion and move on?

ALPHABETS: Well, I don’t know, sometimes I’ll start something and I’ll think ‘this is sounding really good,’ and three hours will go by and I’ll have no idea what I just did, and then sometimes it’s the opposite, where mistakes come out really cool and I have that as a finished song. Then other times I’ll make little loops that I’ll expand on or use in a new song.

DEBASER: Alright, so let’s switch gears and talk a little about personal history. How long did you live in Denver?

ALPHABETS: Well, I was born in Atlanta, lived there for three years, moved to Connecticut and lived there for six years, then moved to Denver for the last nine years. I just moved out here [to Seattle], so I’m a little out of my element and I don’t really know how to express things.

DEBASER: Sure. And it kind of seems to me like Denver is carving out a scene, with bands like Pictureplane and BDRMPPL gaining steady momentum and [the venue] Rhinoceropolis getting name checked. Are you connected at all to that scene?

ALPHABETS: Yeah, I actually went on a short tour with Nick of BDRMPPL but he was in a previous band and I was in a previous band. I played almost all my shows at Rhinoceropolis but I mean, I only played a couple by myself. Most of the time I played in The Tudaloos. After my bandmate Nick went to college,I gradually started to feel that I didn’t fit in exactly in Denver anymore, it’s kind of hard to describe. It’s not really a love/hate relationship, but there are definitely things about that whole music scene that started to seem elitist or something, but I knew it was just a lot of social anxiety on my part. I had a great time playing shows, but the last couple I played in Denver, I didn’t feel like I was having as good of a time, because it became hard for me to enjoy myself in a large group of people. But I still wanted that connection with me and my recordings so I kept recording even though I stopped playing shows for awhile.

DEBASER: And what was your live set up like when you were doing shows in Denver?

ALPHABETS: Usually I’d create loops in Garage Band, and then I’d set up two drum machines and a keyboard, sometimes live drums and a mic. I’d start up the loops and solo tracks and add to the loops, add computer effects and then play on the synthesizer over the drum beat and the loop and sing sometimes.

I'd like to thank Colin for taking the time to talk to us. His album, Nature Nature, is self-released and available now if... you ask him nice enough.

Alphabets - Believe in You, Us, Everyone (ysi)
Alphabets - Lego Museum (ysi)
Alphabets - Starving Mammal Video Life (ysi)

It's About Time

2008-07-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it probably wasn't this that did the trick, but at least Kranky is finally putting the Atlas Sound record out on vinyl. What's better, they're including all those elusive bonus tracks formerly available only on the 4AD overseas version (complete with ugly typical-looking 4AD-style cover).

New tracks:
"Another Bedroom"
"It Rained"
"Stained Glass Swan"
"Abandoned Closet"
"Spring Break"
"ABC Glasgow"

Yes, please. It will be on record store shelves come the 28th of July.

On Shelves Two Weeks From Tomorrow

2008-07-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

Let's hope it's worth the wait.

Fucking with Code

2008-06-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed some very recent cosmetic changes...basically, I was making some slight tweaks to the layout, when all the code for the template was lost, so I started from scratch with this cleaner layout. It's a work in progress, sorry in the meantime for the eyesore.

With this and my computer battery dying on me, I feel that testy, old-school DEBASER attitude towards technology coming on...

FYI

2008-06-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

Gobbledigood Brains

2008-06-24T17:13:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post this for ages, but computer issues here at DEBASER headquarters have kind of shut down production until now. Jake "Good Brains" Teitelbaum cooked up this extremely worthwhile remix of Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust opener "Gobbledigook," swapping out Dodoist drums for driving synths and splicing syllables in typical Good Brains fashion.

Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook (Good Brains Remix) (ysi)

Shame is coming back to the redneck people

2008-06-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

One of pitchfork.tv's best installments, Juan's Basement, featured Silver Jews this week, complete with revelatory video interview segments with Dave Berman who, despite his incongruence, seems poised to reclaim the literary realm. According to this interview with Drowned in Sound, Berman believes "there seems to be room for [him] in that area," so let's hope a follow-up to his phenomenal poetry debut Actual Air is on the horizon. For now, Berman offers us a glimpse into his new works with this reading of "Top Ten Redneck Moments," a poem which, to the best of my knowledge, is unreleased. Head to Pitchfork.tv to watch the Silver Jews set.

Bruce Springsteen is a Fucking Eagle

2008-06-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

At first I couldn't figure out why Pitchfork was beefin' with Mogwai over their cover art for The Hawk is Howling. I think it looks rad.

Then I realized they were dissapoined because it is an obvious rip-off of Magic's album art:

New Big Spider's Back: Again, Agent

2008-06-16T17:45:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't post every time Big Spider's Back has a new song up if it didn't feel like the musical lovechild of Noah Lennox and Brian Eno was right in my backyard. Besides, somebody has to respond to GvB's endearingly obvious regionalism.

Big Spider's Back - Again, Agent/ (ysi)

More on the track is available at his blog. "Again, Agent" marks the first of (hopefully) many digital EPs, in the Atlas Sound model, with album art and everything.

Speaking of Atlas Sound and GvB, I have no idea why they chose to post "canal" from the new amsterdam midi virtual 7", when "Balcony" is the superior track by far.

Atlas Sound - Balcony (ysi)

Kind of Wish I had been at MOCCA This Year...

2008-06-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

From CBR's coverage of the 2008 Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art festival:

Looks rad. Last year, Paul Pope was there (in a hipster-y tank, natch) to promote Pulphope.

Debaser@ Big Spider's Back

2008-06-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

I have a contentious relationship with house shows. I've never been to the same DIY venue more than once, because I usually end up leaving with a sense of having witnessed little more than a smorgasbord of potential—some of it good, most of it not so much. Luckily, there was a draw for me Saturday night at the Dearborn House, which kept me planted to the concrete floor through two embarrassing acts (though props to the unfortunately-named The Great White Jenkins for coming all the way up from Virginia). I was there to see DEBASER's favorite local artist, Big Spider's Back, hold it down during a short set.

After all of his pedals, samplers, and other gear was set up, it began to interact with the venue's shoddy sound system, creating a loud buzzing noise that was diminished only by turning off all the lights, which ended up being a good thing; the darkness made the house less perceptible to nosy SPD who had responded to noise complaints during the first band's set, and the dimness of the small space—now lit only by the glowing interface of a Roland SP-404—was the perfect setting to absorb Big Spider's Back's transcendent sounds.

His set began with the instrumental "Flood", performed with the slide guitar and sampled breakdown that were present in his Rainy Dawg in-studio take, a subtle contrast to the buoyant acoustic guitar of the EP version. "Flood" seamlessly bled into "Evil Brothers", and when the deep layers of sound finally subsided into a whisper, and then nothing, the small crowd burst into the most enthusiastic applause of the night.

Throughout the rest of his set (the highlight of which was, unsurprisingly, the great "Untitled/Don't Make Me Laugh"), the practiced perfection of his live performance showed through—all of the complicated sampling and looping was pulled off without a hitch, perfectly recreating previously recorded versions. It probably helped that he had played a gig the night before, at Mars Bar.

Despite the meager showing, it was obvious that everyone really dug his set, and DEBASER's good friend Dean left with a new appreciation for Spider's Big Back (as confused attendees in the back of the room were calling him before he went on).

Big Spider's Back Setlist 6/7/08

Flood (ysi)
Evil Brothers (ysi)
Great Divide (ysi)
Untitled/Don't Make Me Laugh (ysi)
Perfect Machine (ysi)

Coralcola Performs "Heath Ledger" Live

2008-06-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

Coralcola just sent me this lo-fi clip of him playing the anthemic "Heath Ledger" at a gig yesterday opening for The Field.

He started his set wearing a wizard mask, to protect his anonymity Daft Punk/Cyberpunkers style, but ended up having to ditch it because it "was so damn hot".

So is the track. Check it out.

Frank Miller, 1982

2008-06-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

At the San Diego Comicon, when he was just the hot new writer on Daredevil, pioneering a new kind of comic writing. Pre-The Dark Knight Returns and any whiff of mainstream renown, in all his unassuming glory:

This photo is awesome.

EDIT: OK, I had to include this recent photo of Frank, too, for constrast's sake and because it amuses me.

New Big Spider's Back: The Road to Heaven

2008-06-06T13:42:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, I dragged my feet on posting this, but it's been up on BSB's blog for awhile now. The new track, a 10-minute-plus opus, was created as the soundtrack to an installation by video artist Karla Santos that exhibited at the Fulcrum Art Gallery in Tacoma from May 24th to May 30th.

It has the same serene beauty evident in songs like "Flood", and the delicate slide guitar work of tracks like "Evil Brothers" (EP version). In other words, more of the same good, dreamy stuff.

Big Spider's Back - The Road to Heaven / (ysi)

DEBASER Exclusive: Good Brains - This Is For You

2008-06-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

Two of my favorites:
Good Brains - For Floor (ysi)
Good Brains - For the Drive to Hana (ysi)

Full Album

Day Glowwed

2008-06-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

I first heard Pictureplane on HEALTH's recent remix album DISCO, on which they turned in a dandy take of HEALTH closer "Lost Time," swapping out low, tribal chants for lo-fi Wham-City synths and a jungle beat. I came across Pictureplane again exploring what appears to be a surprisingly thick Denver electronica scene. They don't appear to have a full-length yet (although one of their myspace tracks appears on something called "turquoise trail") but they do have a smattering of choice cuts on their Myspace, which also features this bewildering but awesome image in their About Me section:

Their best song, as I see it, is the appropriately titled "Day Glowwed," which begins with a fucked-with vocal sample and heavy percussion but soon bubbles into microhouse synths and a Deerhunter-esque chorus, until all the songs components come together in its final minute. If this track (or the equally badass "Flashion (Design Your Mind)") is any indication, this could be a big year for Colorado beat kids.

Pictureplane - Day Glowwed (ysi)
HEALTH - Lost Time (Pictureplane Rmx) (ysi)

Climbing Math Rock Mountain

2008-06-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

Glaswegian math-rock newcomers Errors just released their proper debut album, cryptically (Arctic Monkily) titled It's Not Something, But It Is Like Whatever. Last year's How Clean Is Your Acid Rock? EP made some waves with what Vice expertly labeled as "totally top notch fuzzy guitar stuff." In more precise terms, the music Errors makes heavily employs Battles/Don Caballero's sense of instrumentation (with a bit of borrowed sound from latter Mouse on Mars) but with the classic 4/4, oft-high register noodling of Minus the Bear and (recent DEBASER favorite) Bronze Fawn. Tracks like "Salut! France" and the obviously titled "Dance Music" have a certain italo-discotheque flair, while the album's longer numbers house its more unexpected sounds, like the brooding synth explosion of "Pump" and the heavily atmospheric, percussionless closer "Alot of the Things You Don't Isn't." Check out the utterly awesome "Still Game" below, or hammer-on up to their Myspace for album details and more tunes.

Errors - Still Game (ysi)

Pogo's Wonderland

2008-06-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

Traditionally, I've avoided posting YouTube remix videos--even the cool ones (Funky Shatner? Hilarious and awesome!)--because inevitably, they're just too gimmicky. Sometimes, though, you find one that really knocks you on your ass, like Nick "Pogo" Bertke's "Alice", a remix made using audio clips from Disney's Alice in Wonderland. The accompanying visuals are as trippy as you might expect:

What works about "Alice" is that it transcends the gimmick factor and is actually an impressive and highly listenable track. As it turns out, Pogo has three other tracks on an album "Wonderland" that derive their samples for the same source. All the songs are available for free on his lastfm page, but three are posted below as well.

Given our interest in impressive sampling of late, this was a very pleasant mid-morning surprise.

Pogo - Alice / (ysi)

Pogo - Lost / (ysi)

Pogo - UnBirthday / (ysi)

Praising Coyote

2008-06-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to blog on electronic artist Coyote for some time (technically, I did back in September). Not only because I rediscovered the immensely-listenable track "Pretty Wasted", but also because I've been digging "Going Out" as well--both are iPod repeat mainstays of late. Something about the dreamy combination of IDM and Dub dynamics really has been clicking with me, and I've been appreciating more about those two tracks every time I give them a spin.

For example, dig the layers of percussion at the beginning of "Going Out"--there's some crazy live, multi-instrumental percussion going on before that fat Daft Punk-style beat drops, which is then transformed by the successive snare hits (which turn out not to herald a coming eruption of sound, as might be expected, but rather a transition into a laid-back horn section joining the sonic conversation).

What's been frustrating for me is that there is such a lack of information on this artist/band which, with respect to the above-mentioned tracks at least, has hit on a formula that I find irresistible. I was able to track down a site that was selling their EPs, which had some links to mp3 samples of other tracks. While they don't shine like the bright diamonds that are "Pretty Wasted" and "Going Out", they're still not bad, and I've gone ahead and posted one of those clips below as well.

There was a rogue killer coyote running free in my neighborhood a few years back, but I don't know whatever became of it. Sometimes when I'm visiting my folks, I'll catch them in my high-beams before they scamper back into the woods and darkness.

Coyote - Going Out (ysi)

Coyote - Pretty Wasted (ysi)

Coyote - Beat Journey (excerpt) (ysi)

A Song of Partials

2008-06-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

I was re-listening to Collections of Colonies of Bees last full-length Birds last week, and it kind of floored me. It takes (me) a lot of time to digest a post-rock album, and I wasn't expecting, going in for maybe a second or third listen, anything miraculous. CoCoB create a harmonic, ambient aural space; you could say they're like "Tortoise-minus- jazz," but generalization is already kind of an epidemic within the genre.

All this to say, I heard for the first time today the newest release from Collections of Colonies of Bees, a 12" A-Side single released a couple weeks ago on Table of Elements white vinyl, a piece titled "Six Guitars." Two guitarists were set up with E-Bows and delay pedals to create sustained harmonic notes and loop them, two were told to finger pick and improvise within a certain scale and two were given "percusive hammers" to use on the strings (Hafsol-style) to create a "rhythmic backbone." The scales were devised through some mathematical process I don't feel comfortable summarizing, so I'll just quote the label:

The base note of each guitar in Six Guitars is tuned to one of two fundamental frequencies: 73hz or 109.5hz, respectively. This divides the players into two groups. From there, each guitar is tuned using the harmonic series, where each string is tuned to a different partial (a specific mathmatical ratio of the fundamental frequency). The harmonic series is the tonal information that makes up a note. It is described in terms of fundamentals and partials. The partials are harmonics that fall in line with the fundamental, but make the overall tone richer. Here, partials are treated as notes, and their frequencies are assigned to a particular string on the guitar. When played together they are completely harmonious with the fundamental frequency. Furthermore, since each string is tuned to a different partial, and each string has its own set of harmonics, the overall sound becomes even richer while still retaining an extremely consonant quality.

Check out their site for a .pdf of the score and a video of a full early performance of the piece, check out a sample of "Six Guitars" below, and order the rad white vinyl from, if nowhere else, Amazon.

Collections of Colonies of Bees - Six Guitars (Sample) (ysi)

DEBASER EXCLUSIVE: Coralcola Interview + New Track

2008-05-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

There's been murmurings across the blogosphere that America finally has an answer to Europe's sample-happy IDM prodigy The Field, and that this artist goes by the name Coralcola. While the comparison is certainly easy to make, Coralcola demonstrates a talent for crafting euphoric tracks out of creatively employed samples in ways that defy comparison.

If the 9-minutes-and-change opus Heath Ledger is any indication, then the hype surrounding Coralcola is to be thoroughly believed. DEBASER has been grooving on that track, and the other demos from Coralcola's myspace for awhile now, patiently anticipating his responses to our questions on his inspiration, methods, and opinions. Our wait is over, and we can now share a glimpse into the rising star called Coralcola, in this exclusive interview...

DEBASER: What are the primary influences on your sampling style? Is it fair to call you America's answer to The Field? I'd say your style is a little more idiosyncratic than that…

CORALCOLA: I would have to say sampling-wise, my biggest influences would be Daft Punk, and the Dust Brothers. Particularly the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique record. Obviously The Field records are a huge influence on me. When I first heard the track 'Over The Ice', something just clicked in my head. I recognized that Kate Bush sample immediately. I was making tunes composed of really tiny looped samples of old new wave tunes that were more glitch influenced than anything, but they didn't have any drums. I never thought anyone would get it....until I put 4 on the floor.

DEBASER: You have an EP scheduled to come out in the near future, and I know you're currently in the process of mastering it; could you speak briefly about the process of 'polishing' the demos that have been circulating?

CORALCOLA: I've got a lot of tunes that are like 90% done I would say...I like to let them sit and marinate for a while and go back to them. Listening to them after they've been chilling out for a while, you start to hear things that aren't there, but probably should be. Covering up little mixing mistakes as I go along.

DEBASER: Can you give your growing fan base any indication of when we can expect the EP or a proper album?

CORALCOLA: Growing fan base? Really? Hello growing fan base!! Haha. I have to keep pushing back stuff. I feel like a jerk, but I don't want to put out something people will listen to once and be like "ehh". The majority of the tunes are finished. It's just a matter of getting the artwork done, which I'm also doing myself. If all goes according to plan right now the records are gonna be available to anybody who wants them free of charge. The 747 EP will definitely/(finally) be out this summer, June or July the latest. That'll be a bunch of remixes and older stuff that wouldn't really fit on the other EP, which will be ready for the fall. I think it'll just sound better with leaves falling around and hoodies and pumpkins.

DEBASER: "Heath Ledger" is an interesting track. It makes me feel like I'm high on a sunny day in the 80's. And it feels really upbeat and optimistic, until you think about the title, and then it becomes this kind of bittersweet thing—a pulse where there isn't one anymore. Was that what you were going for, or was the title more of an arbitrary thing?

CORALCOLA: I'd say that's a pretty good feeling. I was too young to be getting high in the 80's. The story about the 'Heath Ledger' track is that I made it right after I found about his death. He was one of my favorite actors, and I was really bummed out. He was really young, had a kid, and what was sure to be an amazing career ahead of him, and it all just went away overnight. The track to me feels so neutral when I listen to it now, so I guess it could go either way when other people hear it. Truth is, I was just trying to make something beautiful out of something broken. It was my mourning song.

DEBASER: I like to think that we're in a sort of "golden age" of sampling, with Girl Talk, and guys like you and The Field…it could just be a matter of perspective, but do you feel like there is/you are a part of a kind of upswell in innovative modes of sampling?

CORALCOLA: I've always been fascinated by sampling. The first cassingle (damn I miss cassingles) I ever bought was Kenny Dope presents The Bucketheads - The Bomb. I wore that tape out. My Dad heard it and he was like "Why are you listening to Chicago?" and I had no idea what he was talking about, and then he played me the "Street Player" track, and my eyes just lit up. I thought it was so cool. There's definately a new wave of crazy sampling happening and it really excites me. Like Prefuse 73 stuff, there's so many different little pieces. Put them together and you've got something really amazing. Someday all the chord progressions, riffs, and lyrics will have all been used. Most of them already are. And I think people are getting excited about hearing older familiar things transposed into something fresh and different.

DEBASER: If you don't mind, I'm pretty curious about your method—how these very short samples are manipulated into these epic, evolving tracks. What software/technology do you use?

CORALCOLA: The demos on the myspace and all that stuff was made on a crappy old PC. I'm really fond of Ableton Live and have been for a few years now. At first I couldn't afford it, but the demo is fully functional except for saving and exporting. So I would record an arrangement, and then press record on Audacity, a nice freeware recording app, press play on the arrangement, and I would be able to get mp3s out of it. How's that for bootleg? I finally got the real deal for my 21st birthday and it's been no turning back since. You can't rip me away from my computer now. All day everyday, I rarely leave my room. But it's probably been the most educational couple years of my life. Teaching myself the software. Way better than anything I learned in that semester of college. I just spent every penny i had on a new Macbook. So I'm really psyched that I can play shows now. I was thinking about doing shows before and lugging my big old PC down with a giant CRT box monitor but that problem's solved now. Just a matter of getting used to the Mac, which is getting easier everyday.

DEBASER: How do you like to work? At what time of day or night, and in what frame of mind?

CORALCOLA: Late nights. Always. With a little green, if that wasn't obvious from hearing the tracks. I'm totally nocturnal and I'm living in the middle of nowhere so it's all peaceful and shit. Crickets all night. I feel a lot safer at night, like no one's looking over my shoulder. All the normz are asleep and I can do what I want. Usually when the sun's coming up I'll take a stroll around the neighborhood and listen to what I've made.

DEABSER: How significant is your source material in the music you create from it? Do you tend to cull from songs you have specific attachment to?

CORALCOLA: Oh for sure. Most of the stuff I sample is from the 80's because those are the tunes I grew up hearing. I love how even just a snippet of a old song can trigger memories. Like the second I hear Hall & Oates - I Can't Go For That, I get swept away to the cookie aisle of a certain supermarket that got torn down 15 years ago.

DEBASER: You've done remixes for Crystal Castles and experimental/noise group Astronaut, and it sounds like you have more on the way; do you have connections to any of the artists you've remixed?

CORALCOLA: I'm friends with the Astronaut guys. I like doing remixes, it's fun to put my spin on something that sounds a lot different to begin with. I'm doing some remixes right now for friends' bands, but I also like doing my take at tunes I'm just really feeling at the moment. The only connection I have to Crystal Castles is that I think Alice is a babe.

DEBASER: It seems like in the current climate of electronica music, the record label "sound" is always a big part of the buzz surrounding up-and-coming acts; Warp, Bpitch, Kompakt, Ghostly, etc. Do you feel like your sound 'belongs' on any one label, or any aspirations as to where you'd like to end up?

CORALCOLA: A girl on myspace called my tunes "dreamglitch" and I really liked that term. I guess the tracks wouldn't feel foreign on any of those labels, but I don't have my hopes up. If a label comes along that's interested in doing something together, I've got open ears and an open mind. But for now it's the last thing on my mind. I just wanna chill out, smoke some doobage, dance, and have fun.

Coralcola's debut EP 747 is due out soon, and he was nice enough to hook DEBASER up with a brand new "more dancefloor friendly" exclusive track.

Coralcola - Cleaner Than Dirt / (ysi)

All of his (thus far) available tracks also come highly recommended. Stream them on his myspace, and, for the love of God, download "Heath Ledger".

Coralcola - Heath Ledger / (ysi)

Naked People

2008-05-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

Could there be a more pleasant surprise in life then coming back from the Sasquatch Music Festival (where the Flaming Lips covered Led Zeppelin with Wayne Coyne boogy-ing onstage in a swirl of naked women) to find a new Sigur Ros song waiting for you, with the announcement that their new album will be out next month?

Sigur Ros- Gobbledigook / (ysi)

More nudity in the single's official video, made in collaboration with former VICE photog Ryan McGinley. View it here.

We're at the Sasquatch Music Festival

2008-05-23T23:54:00.001-07:00

And we'll re-enter this digital reality sometime on Tuesday, with coverage on Coralcola (exclusive content coming soon), Coyote, Bronze Fawn, and...a new Good Brains record?

Believe it.

Big Spider's Back Repost

2008-05-21T11:44:00.001-07:00

Now that DEBASER is Hype-Machine accredited, I thought it was time to re-up some Big Spider's Back mp3's.

From his live set on Rainy Dawg Radio's Floating in Space:

Big Spider's Back - Untitled (Don't Make Me Laugh)(ysi)
Big Spider's Back - Perfect Machine(ysi)
Big Spider's Back - Evil Brothers(ysi)

From the Self-titled EP:

Big Spider's Back - Evil Brothers(ysi)
Big Spider's Back - Great Divide(ysi)

From his blog:

Big Spider's Back - Trill(ysi)

If you haven't heard this guy's stuff before, dig on some of my consistent praise. Also fans: L.I.E. and Wuxtry!

Another Soundscape

2008-05-19T21:21:00.000-07:00

This is a 17-minute mix that I played on last Saturday's Floating in Space radio show. I try to make at least one of these sound collages for every weekly broadcast. This is far from the first I've made, but only the second I've posted on DEBASER.

Debaser/Floating in Space Soundscape for 05/17/08

1. Ecstatic Sunshine -Perrier
2. Ginormous - To Reveal Interiors
3. Manual - Twilight
4. Wing Body Wing - Four Tet

File size is 19.1 MB

The SOLARIS Soundtrack Does Indeed Rule

2008-05-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

The Stranger's Charles Mudede was compelled to blog on the awesomeness of Cliff Martinez's score for Steven Soderbergh's adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's sci-fi classic Solaris, after having it recommended to him by hip-hop artist El-P (profiled in this week's Stranger).

Mudede called it "a beautiful and meticulous work of movie music...it sounds like a soundtrack for a movie that has never been made...[it] does not connect with its movie, and so the music has a ghostly quality. It’s music without the presence and weight of its image."

I've been a longtime fan of both the film and the soundtrack. I try and play tracks from the OST on my radio show from time to time ("First Sleep" and "Don't Blow it" are incredible).

While Mudede is unnecessarily harsh on the film, he's true in saying that the music is incredible--I highly recommend checking out the soundtrack (but good luck finding it...amazon only has super-expensive imports).

Eventually I had to relent and buy it from iTunes, which is what I suggest you do right this minute. Sorry for the lack of free mp3s. Sentient planets posses no sympathy for our earthly quandaries.

Fonal Love

2008-05-14T09:46:00.000-07:00

I can't remember how I first stumbled across independent Finish psych-folk label Fonal Records; it could have been the overwhelming aesthetic appeal of their digipaks that caught my eye in a record store or, more likely, (full disclosure) it was probably a feature I read on Pitchfork that got me started. So yeah, Fonal Records was founded by Sami Sänpäkkilä in 1995, and supports a host of under the radar Finish folk/experimental/post-rock releases including, most recently, the newest effort from label mainstay Paavoharju, entitled Laulu Laakson Kukista, a warm, static and patient record that explores other-worldly atmospherics as a triumph of genre experimentation (this post was intended to focus on this release alone, but the hotheads at GvB beat me to it.)
While the new record is a few skips forward in terms of a maturing sound, Paavoharju's first record, 2005's Yhä hämärää, was more of a bedroom album for a ghost planet, like Zach Condon and Phil Elvrum teaming for a concept record about a haunted cabin. There is a trend in this music towards the unknown, and it casts an eerie glow over much of both Paavorharju and the Fonal record aesthetic in general; a sea green sunbeam smothering a dusty wooden chair is the closest image I can conjure up. And while artists like Paavoharju, Finish folk legend Lau Nau and the much heralded Joanna Newsom of the Far East, Islaja are all rooted in a strong cultural folk tradition, the best part about the Fonal label is its organic tendency to cross-pollinate between genres and sounds and transcend any one labeling. In fact, it was Sänpäkkilä, head of the label's project, titled simply Es, and his first album Kaikkeuden kauneus ja käsittämättömyys that drew me into the Fonal sound with its cough-syrup haze of post-rock melodies, unidentifiable instrumentation and masterfully layered, enchanting vocals. Es apparently released a second album in 2006 which I am now in the process of ordering; check out the smattering of assorted tracks below, cruise over to Fonal's English-friendly website (linked at the top of this post) to listen to more artists and browse their catalogue and, if you like what you hear, don't hesitate to throw them some currency. I guarantee that, if nothing else, you'll go bonkers over the packaging.

Es - Sadepäivät
Paavoharju - Valo Tihkuu Kaiken Läpi

Just a quick side note, Jason and I are going to be at Sasquatch! Music Festival this weekend so no updates until at least Tuesday. After that though, I promise I'll be back on my game with posts on Pyramids, Dan Friel and Surrounded.

Earth Has Demands

2008-05-09T11:19:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, May 17th, Rainy Dawg Radio is presenting a Spring concert featuring Seattle drone/post-rock/metal legends Earth, as well as Bronze Fawn (look for a post extolling their greatness, soon, probably) and Japandroids.

Earth's Hospitality Rider just came in to the office, and I have to admit, it made me crack a smile. Some of the things Earth will be requiring:

-6 bottles of premium beer--Heineken preferred.
-2 packs of Camel Filter cigarettes
-Selection of sliced cheeses

Rock n Roll.

If you're in the area, and want absorb Earth's awesomeness live at the Univeristy of Washington, you can grab some tickets at Ticketwest.com.

Oh yeah, and there's this:

More Big Spider's Back

2008-05-08T23:37:00.000-07:00

DEBASER and Rainy Dawg Radio's favorite local barista/musician, Big Spider's Back, has been catching on with a lot of our buds and fellow DJ's. For their benefit, and the benefit of the rest of the universe, I'm collecting some links to more Big Spider's Back.

First, there's the zen ambient/IDM track "Trill" from his blog (which also has some entertaining thoughts on lo-fi artists and MTV).

Big Spider's Back - Trill

Also from the blog is an older, acoustic guitar track credited to "Sister City". BSB says, "it’s a really ad hoc guitar instrumental a la john fahey/six organs of admittance. i wish i could go back and mix it a little but alas all the master tracks to these songs are long gone."

Big Spider's Back - Roam

Lastly, here's a link to download his entire five-track EP for free. This is the CD I grabbed from him--along with some choice chai--at the Bean & Bagel on NE 40th St., that first turned me on to his music. "Great Divide" is really good (another idiosyncratic + catchy melody, plus it just gets fucking AWESOME at the 2:00 mark), and the studio version of "Evil Brothers," is a nice contrast to the live version he recorded on my show.

Big Spider's Back - S/T EP

Debaser@ Christopher Willits and Stars of the Lid

2008-05-08T13:28:00.000-07:00

Another late entry in recent concert attendance: I had the pleasure to take in some awesome live ambientity from Guitar God Chris Willits and titanic musical auteur's Stars of the Lid in a warmly-lit, lounge environment courtesy of Seattle's Triple Door club. This meant that I could sip Oolong tea from a little ceramic cup while Willits shredded on his Fender Strat, stomping pedals, and sending soundwaves into oblivion (accompanied by the requisite trippy projections behind him). SotL, naturally, where amazing as well.

While the show was pleasantly mind-massaging but nothing spectacular, it encouraged me to explore Willits' discography more thoroughly, which has already proved to have been a terrific decision. For your consideration, I'd like to present three Willits projects that I think are worth checking out.

The first is Ocean Fire, his collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto, that provides calming, surf-like (imagine that--you'll see a trend emerge) walls of sound painted against gently clicking electronics. If you're not drawn in by the elegant album artwork, the music ought to suck on the back of your brain like a lollipop. As 12k records describes it, "Sakamoto’s gorgeous processed piano sound reflects Willits’ beautiful shimmering clusters of notes, a new aspect of Willits’ pioneering guitar/computer approach...together, their sounds merge effortlessly, creating deep and seamless swells of gigantic melodic waves." Bottom line: it's a concept record about the ocean. Fucking rad.

Buy

Another collaboration, Listening Garden, with Taylor Deupree, is more ambitious. Meant to recreate the sensation of sitting in a Japanese Tea Garden in Tokyo, Willits and Deupree combined field recordings from the actual tea garden with their own signature instrumentation--resulting in an album of droning impressionism that continues the great tradition of ambient music kick-started, arguably, by Erik Satie in 1917. The album's liner notes caution the listener to play the record only at a low volume, though upon popping in the CD, it becomes apparent that this is merely a little artistic obsessiveness on the part of Willits + Dupree, who want the songs to add a quiet soundtrack to the listener's daily activities.

Buy

Surf Boundaries came out on Ghostly Intl. in 2006 and is, as the French merch guy for Stars of the Lid kept insisting, "very poppy". It's best as a showcase for Willits' Dick-Dale-by-way-of-Kevin-Shields guitar skills, but it does seamlessly blend in vocal harmonies, and the chirps and buzzes of orchestras of electronic cicadas. All of which is very "poppy," certainly, but the album also takes the time to serve up some soothing, sands-in-the-hourglass ambient guitar work.

Buy

Willits is also the burned-out but no less intelligent host of XLR8R TV's "What You Talkin' Bout, Willits?" in which he offers tips and lessons on home recording. Episode One starts with the basics:

Episodes two and three get more complicated, but are totally worth your while, even if Willits' suggestions and knowledge are old news to you--his gear-head/surfer wisdom is both amusing and earnest.

Our Friend Drew is Famous

2008-05-07T22:18:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, No Age's fantastic full-length debut Nouns was unleashed upon the world. We've had a copy kicking around the office for awhile, but neglected to post on something we noticed in the CD booklet until now.

Those with deep enough wallets to tote home the version with the bonus photo booklet will spy a good friend of DEBASER on page 45. In the crowd at a Portland Yellow Swans/No Age show is Drew, the mad genius of experimental music behind the Auxiliary Out blog and the brilliant radio show of the same name.

That's him, right next to the dumbass flipping the bird. I would describe his reaction to finding out that he was prominently featured in a photo included with what is possibly the year's most hyped/anticipated indie release, as "nonplussed" or "indifferent".

No Age - Things I Did When I Was Dead

Buy Nouns

The Waitress

2008-05-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

Sam Green Illustration

Debaser@ Hot Chip

2008-05-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I was at Hot Chip. You wouldn't know it, because I didn't write about it. Now it's two weeks later. Omar was there, too, and I gave him my shit digital camera because he's tall and he takes purdy pictures.

It was hard to get a clear shot amidst all the swaying and dancing in the crowd, but these are the highlights:

Unfortunately they don't communicate the sheer awesomeness of the lightshow, which was by far the most sophisticated I've ever witnessed at a Showbox concert. While HC rocked mostly the newest material off of Made in the Dark, they totally sold the crowd on the tracks, proving that they have just as much impact as their older material. Predictably (though no less satisfying-ly), they closed their set with "Ready For the Floor," but the final song of their encore was an unexpectedly awesome cover of every one's favorite/most recognizable Sinead O'Conner song, "Nothing Compares 2 U"--which, yes, I'm aware was written by Prince and performed by The Family first.

Hot Chip - Bendable Poseable

Buy Made in the Dark on Amazon.com

Popewatch: So Now You're a DJ

2008-05-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

Jesus, Paul. Slow down before you get too cool, man. I wasn't ready for you to become the Girl Talk of psych rock and sci-fi film soundtracks for one night.

In a perfect world, there would be mp3s of this. Stay tuned for more Popewatch; he'll have probably built a working spaceship or something by the year's end.

Things I'm Finding Aesthetically Pleasing: Instruction Manual Edition

2008-05-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

I was looking up the instructions for an old switch pedal of mine I collected from a recent jaunt to my parents' place--where all my crap has been sort of loosely organized in the basement for the past few months following a ruinous Winter flood--and I was struck by how visually pleasing they were. Generally, instruction manuals tend to be pretty easy on the eyes: lots of stark white and clean lines, minimalist font and diagrams.

But dig the Japanese and Futura/Century Gothic-esque font choices, and the simple, unassuming images of the pedal.

Big Spider's Back Live In-Studio mp3s

2008-05-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

When I invited local artist Big Spider's Back onto my radio show last week, I was stoked to hear tracks like "Flood" and "Evil Brothers" from his self-released, self-titled EP played live. What I didn't anticipate was having my mind blown out the back of my head by what he referred to as two new tracks.

I'll refer to them as 1) an upbeat, chugging anthem that starts with layered guitars and builds into a frenzied sonic pinata of sounds exploding in your headphones*, before mellowing back out ("Perfect Machine"), and 2) a Paw Tracks-worthy ditty in which samples coexist in harmony with a beautiful piano coda and Wayne Coyne-esque vocals ("Untitled (Laid to Rest)").

And when I say that I think BSB realitically belongs on the same label as Animal Collective and Panda Bear, I'm not saying so just because he uses the Roland SP-404 (prominent in Jenny's awesome photos). It's because I think his music is really remarkable, and insane given that he's just a down-to-earth, realy chill guy working at a local coffee shop with no desire to make money off his music or "make it big". Listen to the mp3s below, generously hosted by Omar, and you'll see how the music of Big Spider's Back sounds as refreshing as his attitude on music + profit.

Big Spider's Back live on Rainy Dawg Radio's Floating in Space

Flood
Evil Brothers
Perfect Machine
Untitled (Laid to Rest)

Big Spider's Back on virb.com

*Dig the part at 1:51 where the new guitar line comes in and pours the metaphorical cement into the foundation of the song.

Popewatch: New Silkscreen, Painting on Glass

2008-04-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

Peep-worthy:

New printing of the now-classic Diesel silkscreen:

A painting on glass by Mr. Pope at an LA Soundstage:

From the Flickr.

A Soundscape

2008-04-25T14:33:00.003-07:00

This is an excerpt from the ambient/shoegaze/post-rock radio show I have planned for tomorrow afternoon, which is set to include a live in-studio performance from Big Spider's Back.

Debaser/Floating in Space Ambient Soundscape for 4/26/08

1. Manual - Azure Vista
2. Willits + Sakamoto - Ocean Sky Remains
3. Nudge - Dayrise
4. Growing - Peace Offering

File is about 18 1/2 minutes. There's a longer ambient/drone super-mix that I'll be playing tomorrow which includes Mudboy, Family Underground, Numbers, and Fuck Buttons.

Rainy Dawg Radio

Death By Audio is the Coolest Place Ever

2008-04-24T17:59:00.000-07:00

I knew that A Place to Bury Strangers' Oliver Ackerman was a pedal-making guru to the pros, but I had no idea he lived in the coolest venue/art studio/commune/pedal factory/practice space on this planet. Seriously, who doesn't want to grow up to be A Place to Bury Strangers now that they've seen this, from Pitchfork.tv (no embed link provided)? Shoegazing Reverb God is the new Astronaut, all the kids on the block are gonna want to be one.

Big Spider's Back Live In-Studio This Weekend

2008-04-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

Local up-and-coming ambient/poppy psychedelia artist Big Spider's Back will be playing a live set this weekend during my weekly online radio show, FLOATING IN SPACE. I'm sneaking in this shameless self-promotion only because I think this guy (who is, incidentally, an amazingly genuine human being who makes a mean cup of chai) has the potential to really go there. At least, I think he deserves to, anyway.

DIG THE HOUNDSTOOTH

His virb site his all of his tracks streaming, but if you want a download, here's one of the better, droney tracks from his demo.

Big Spider's Back - Flood

FLOATING IN SPACE airs weekly from 1-3 PM Saturdays on Rainy Dawg Radio. Tune in next weekend during the second hour to catch BSB's live cosmic pedal jam.