Earth Strikes the Bottletree Cafe!

...which sounds only a little more apocalyptic than it actually was...

What it was: Earth on tour to support their newest release,
the excellent + atmospheric Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light (Pt. 1)...

So, Earth's line-up this time around was Dylan Carlson on guitar, with cellist Lori Goldston, longtime collaborator Adrienne Davies on drums, and Angelina Baldoz on bass... (sorry, no pix from the show, cuz neither of us that attended had a camera worth a shit on us).

Surprisingly, the volume was not overpowering, though as songs progressed the dynamics certainly included some increase in volume that workt quite nicely to help with the songs swelling to epic proportions...

If you haven't gotten the chance to check em out yet, do so at your earliest opportunity! Like, now, motherfucker! Even at a reasonable volume, this is some trance-inducing stuff... not so much drone as spaghetti-western instru-metal, played in slow-motion...

Along with a few others, the setlist included:
  Blackwater Slide (a cover of a tune by *Ann Riggs*?  - sorry, I wasn't listening so well to words when they started... had me musick ears on!)
  Old Black
  Father Midnight (both from the new one)
  The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull (from the 2008 album of the same name).

Click here to watch an earlier show of theirs at the same venue here in Birmingham, memorialized on our local PBS station on their We Have Signal (Live at the Bottletree) series. (Also archived on the series' site are shows featuring Tortoise, Pelican, Man or Astroman? + tons more... check em out!)

All Hallow's Eve

...kinda sounds like a feminine hygiene product for Wiccans, dunnit?

So, Halloween is around the corner + maybe you're looking for some truly creepy music to play at your party or in yr spooky-ass frontyard/haunted haus. Or just 'cuz you are a weirdo... Me too, pal. We've posted Halloween music lists here in the past, so why bother to be innovative? Yeah, me neither... so I recommend checking out the following stops on the Halloween music road-less-travelled:

Fantômas - Director's Cut
Mike Patton fronts this ensemble of fellow twisted Bay Area musicians - Dave Lombardo (Slayer), Buzz Osborne (Melvins) + Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle), and this release is a solid selection of film musicks, all reinterpreted by the 21st Century's bastard son of Freddie Mercury + Mel Blanc...

Here's a vid for their rendition of The Omen (Ave Satani):


And along those same lines (to me anyway... I used to get these two songs mixed up when I was a young'un), here's Botch's disturbingly beautiful + wakka-heavy take on Carl Orff's O Fortuna from Carmina Burana:


Mystic Fugu Orchestra - Zohar
John Zorn + Yamantaka Eye send you on a mind-ride to the early 20th Century. These recordings aren't particularly scary musically, but the atmosphere is rife with crackling LP surface noise that surpasses the suppressed volume of much of the music itself. Knowing the music of both Zorn + Eye, I kept expecting a blastbeat explosion at normal volume that would rupture my eardrums + melt my speakers... never happened, but somehow I still expect it every time I hear it. Like the music'll be different when I hear it this time... Or maybe the next time.

Continuing in the vein, but back a bit more to traditional-stylee scaree, here's the theme song from Suspiria by Dario Argento's favorite band, Goblin:


And here's the extra-creepy Die Rache Krieg Lied Der Assyriche by the extra-metal band Nile:

That one always scares the crap out of me... "Ia! Pazuzu" indeed.

And, finally, in the same vein (haw haw) as the Alice Cooper Band, Kiss, the Cramps, the Misfits and other "scary" bands, check out Acid Witch's full-length metal release Witchtanic Hellucinations. Here's a vid for October 31st:



And that is all, my fiends... have a hoary + hellish Halloween!

Tortoise - Prepare Your Coffin [video]

Tortoise - via Pitchfork's website - unveils the first video, "Prepare Your Coffin," from the upcoming full-length release Beacons of Ancestorship. Artsy bastards...

Less than four minutes of your life, with black + white filmij and neo-Morricone/electric Miles sound; Tortoise puts the 'mental' in 'instrumental'...

If the embed window above does not work (which is likely since the fuckin' HTML code I used is utterly changed once added to the blog... WTF???)...

WATCH IT HERE!

Schizophonia... Same Silly Storage Schism

...or "That Fuckin' iPod!"

I am screwed... my friggin' iPod is full at 60Gb, but I am still importing my collection into iTunes. So far, I'm roughly 10Gb over capacity, and that's before importing all of my music collection or adding any other media... and I am not getting a new iPod for Christmas this year. Santa already emailed me + it's all switches + ash for me this time... (sadly, that's all I deserve...)

While I take a shoehorn to my iPod in a last-ditch effort to stuff in a few more gigabytes of space, please dig this mildly risque' video...

The song is "My Baby" by Figplucker. Figplucker is me, and often also includes drummer Matt McKinney.

Eric Beetner crafted the video (evidently from old stripper reels), which was immediately yanked from MySpace + YouTube for adult content violations. So screw those guys, we're hosting it ourselves. Let us know what you think!


Watch the video here!