In our year-and-a-half on the information highway, we had the good fortune of witnessing what was at once a very prolific time, a very confusing time, and a very exciting time in underground music. Instead of quoting ourselves, we combed through the 100 features and profiles we've published to bring you some reflections from the folks who inspire us.
Underwater Peoples' Evan Brody
I cite this moment when Sawyer and I were sitting outside our sophomore dorm room at college. We said to each other, "Man, we’re bored. We want to do something more exciting." --Interview with Jenn Pelly, May 2011
I see politics and art as separate trajectories. There's a political dimension to music, to the extent that it would be a disruption of the regime of the sensible... but it certainly isn’t collective mobilization against the state in the name of radical equality. The protest lyric is a poor substitute for radical political thought or a new idea of politics.
AZ: Is that why you have protest lyrics in your music?
The idea there is that sums up the impetus, lyrically, of all genuine art. It's an explosion. It's a Molotov cocktail in the fuckin' police station. It's rights for that which can have no rights, to the extent that it anticipates a world to come-- not this world. --Interview with Emilie Friedlander & Ric Leichtung, July 2011
All of these things operating in synchronicity: like ringtones, flat-screens, theater, cuisine, fashion, sushi. I don’t want to call it “virtual reality,” so I call it Far Side Virtual. If you really want to understand Far Side, first off, listen to [Claude] Debussy, and secondly, go into a frozen yogurt shop. Afterwards, go into an Apple store and just fool around, hang out in there. Afterwards, go to Starbucks and get a gift card. They have a book there on the history of Starbucks-- buy this book and go home. If you do all these things you’ll understand what Far Side Virtual is-- because people kind of live in it already. --Interview with Emilie Friedlander, November 2011
I remember during the [Harald] Grosskopf panel at Unsound Festival, Laurel Halo said something interesting about grappling with a world that is completely and totally inundated with technology. There's something about dealing with period technology that makes us feel more human or more relatable. Something about getting the whole machine purring feels very cosmic and brings technology back in harmony with art. --Interview with Daniel Gottlieb, June 2011
AZ: It’s funny that there are indie bands coming up now that would kill to use the equipment that was frustrating to you back then.
I like the idea of it as well, but there are too many problems! --Interview with Blondes, Emilie Friedlander, & Ric Leichtung, May 2011
High Wolf
People like to ask me where I live, and sometimes I give different answers. There is a new 7” coming on Baselic records, and the label guy asked me what city I was from. I was with a friend, and we were talking, and he said I should say I was from Djakarta. So I did, and then it was on many websites. On the High Wolf MySpace, it says that I am based in Brazil. Many times people think I’m from Los Angeles. When you hide something from people, they really want to know it. --Interview with Samantha Cornwell, March 2011
Cleaners From Venus' Martin Newell
I’m very flattered that people like my old stuff so much but really, it was me and Lol [Elliott, from Cleaners] in the kitchen! We were broke but inspired and enjoyed listening to it. But I think the biggest pleasure we got out of it at the time was that I used to make homemade beer, and Lol used to make these candles, 'cause he didn’t have enough money to pay his electricity bill. So I used to swap some of the beer for some dope that someone else used to grow, and we would make our own music on cassettes that Lol stole. And I thought one night-- stoned, drunk, listening to music by candlelight--, "We’ve thoroughly enjoyed ourselves tonight, and it’s cost nothing!" That was sort of the epitome of anarchy for me: generating our own everything. It was fantastic. --Interview with Richard MacFarlane, June 2010
After getting a sense of his musical tastes, I finally asked [Speculator's Nick Ray] what kind of music he played (I hate to assume genres these days). "Pop," he replied, then let a beat pass before explaining. “But not in the popular music sense. ‘Pop’ is no longer defined by what’s actually popular; it’s defined by a structure. You know, melodies, guitars, catchy hooks.” --Marissa A. Ross, December 2010
AZ: Recently you’ve toured and collaborated with Ariel Pink. How has that been?
He’s one of my best friends, and it was totally effortless. I think artistically we are the same. It’s like "skillful non-skill." The greatest advice that he’s given me was, “Whatever it is that you’re doing, don’t figure it out.” --Interview with Samantha Cornwell, January 2011
The core concept of now age is we're living in “ghost-modernism.” It's not really like post-modernism; it's beyond that now. It's gotten to a point where the past is just recapitulating itself through kitsch and nostalgia. Every new gesture is just an imprint of an old gesture. We're haunted by so many other past styles and tastes in so many ways. I'm interested in the creation of a new relationship to time, where it's not being recapitulated, but instead looking into the present moment and really seeking out music, materials, structures, people, fashion, and whatever is within this lens of the present. --Interview with Ric Leichtung, November 2011
I've always had a powerful sense of the space-- physiological, emotional, spiritual-- invoked by music. I've always used music that way in my life, using it to create, augment, and enrich experiences. I don't think of myself as a songwriter at all, because what I'm after is some distillation of that effect, creating environments with certain properties and relationships. So often those moments in music that have powerful effects on me are fleeting-- like an outro, or a couple bars right before the second chorus. I'm interested in evoking those spaces so that I can stay a while. --Interview with Michael C. Powell, September 2011
NNA Tapes' Matt Mayer & Toby Aronson
Matt: With harsh noise in general we both noticed a shift in the mid '00s. Like Toby mentioned, a lot of the dudes doing the harder noise started doing ambient, which seems like a total 180 shift. It created a lot of interesting results, where the noise influence would rub off on the ambient and vice versa, creating this cool hybrid. And now where we are in 2011, it's all become smeared together.
EMA
I feel like the pendulum has to swing back at some point. I’ve always really liked lyrics, and I’ve always really liked vocal stuff, and playing a lot and going to noise shows, I’ve felt in some ways unwelcome. There’s this unwritten rule saying, "You can’t use lyrics that people will understand." I thought there were supposed to be no rules. [Noise] turns into the most codified, regimented form of music, which is not what it should be at all. When Gowns first started off, some people didn’t know how to take us. They were like, "This band might be cool if they didn’t sing." I wonder if it's something about the idea of masculine, abstract sound experiments, and not allowing a range of emotions to come through. For a lot of people who are doing experimental music, at some point it becomes like, "I built this Max patch that does this." It's about the experiment, and the set of parameters. You’re supposed to be tuning out everything but your ears. --Interview with Samantha Cornwell, June 2011
Emeralds' Mark McGuire
We have always somewhat embodied our surroundings and our heritage in our sound. In Ohio, there’s a huge middle class, and a lot of people work their whole lives... there’s always a feeling of struggling, and the feeling that Cleveland's like the joke of the world... We're not a cultural mecca; it's not where all the big stuff's happening. There’s definitely a lot of people out of work, and there’s poverty: it makes people, it's a tough city. But people from Cleveland are proud that they’re from there... It's this kind of tense, dark, and industrial place that has a lot of hidden beauty and a lot to offer, and that comes across in our music. --Interview with Ric Leichtung, February 2011
I got an e-mail once after I was like, "Holy shit, I'm going on my first tour!" I put it on Facebook or something, and Dominick Fernow wrote to me saying, "Congratulations." He had just joined Cold Cave, things were happening for him, and he was like, "Best of luck to you, thank you for having the courage to succeed." It occurred to me that for so many people, it's very hard to feel okay with success, because success is not cool. It supposedly tarnishes your thing; it ruins little pockets of scenes and the self-importance that comes from thinking you're the only people in your town that are doing something. That's what stops a lot of really talented people from sharing their music and turning it into a career. --Interview with Emilie Friedlander, November 2011
With 2,175 posts in 16 months, you're bound to miss something. We've gone ahead and gathered some of our favorite tracks from now and yesteryear that didn't get much play, but deserved it.
[All photos by Erez Avissar and Erik Liam Sanchez]
Altered Zones is proud to present some photo memories of our unofficial CMJ showcase at the New Museum last Saturday:
Dive
Altered Zones is excited to announce the set times for our unofficial CMJ extravaganza at the New Museum tomorrow. Atlas Sound recently jumped on the bill, and there also a few new names on the Nuit Blanche New York-curated roster of visual artists, which will include Alice Cohen, Liz Harris (Grouper), Luke Wyatt, Miko Revereza, Camilla Padgitt-Coles, Stephanie Wuertz, Todd Ledford, Olivia Wyatt, James Thacher, Ethan Vogt, and Brock Monroe of Joshua Light Show.
Altered Zones takes place at the New Museum, located at 235 Bowery in Downtown Manhattan. It starts at 7:30 p.m. and costs $20 for New Museum members and $25 for general admission. Buy tickets here. This event is 21+. Beer will be provided by Brooklyn Brewery.
Theatre:
08:00 pm (downstairs) Dive
09:00 pm (downstairs) Teengirl Fantasy
10:00 pm (downstairs) Light Asylum
11:00 pm (downstairs) Eric Copeland
12:00 am (downstairs) Trash Talk
1:00 am (downstairs) Atlas Sound
Skyroom:
08:30 pm (upstairs) FORMA
09:30 pm (upstairs) Xeno & Oaklander
10:30 pm (upstairs) Prince Rama
11:30 pm (upstairs) GRIMES
12:30 am (upstairs) AraabMUZIK
Lobby (DJs):
Awesome Tapes From Africa 8-9
Weird Magic 9-10
Todd Pendu 10-11
Main Attrakionz 11-12
Ayshay 12-1
Update: We are thrilled to announce today that Atlas Sound has joined the lineup of our event this Saturday at New Museum! More information, as well as set times, will be revealed Friday.
This Saturday, October 22nd, Altered Zones is throwing an unofficial CMJ party at the the New Museum. Inspired by the idea of setting some of our favorite artists from the DIY music world in the museum context, we've teamed with our parent site, Pitchfork, to put together a line-up of AraabMuzik, Grimes, Teengirl Fantasy, Trash Talk, Eric Copeland, Prince Rama, Light Asylum, Xeno and Oaklander, FORMA, and Dive, not to mention a killer stable of DJs, including Awesome Tapes From Africa, Weird Magic, Todd Pendu, Main Attrakionz, and Ayshay.
Visuals will be curated by Nuit Blanche New York, will feature Alice Cohen, Grouper's Liz Harris, Luke Wyatt, Miko Revereza, Camilla Padgitt-Coles, and more. The New Museum, our city's only museum devoted exclusively to contemporary art, will be donating a portion of the proceeds to the 2012 New Museum triennial, which is an international exhibition of emerging artists.
Altered Zones takes place at the New Museum, located at 235 Bowery in Downtown Manhattan. It starts at 7:30 p.m. and costs $20 for New Museum members and $25 for general admission. Buy tickets here. This event is 21+. Beer will be provided by Brooklyn Brewery.
MP3: araabMUZIK: "Streetz Tonight"
MP3: Eric Copeland: "Krankendudel"
MP3: Light Asylum: "Dark Allies"
MP3: Prince Rama: "Rest In Peace"
MP3: Xeno & Oaklander: "Sets & Lights"
[Photo by Aurora Halal]
Working within the traditions of two decades of synth innovation-- the kosmische sounds of 1970s Germany and the tauter, more claustrophobic minimal synth music of the '80s-- the Bushwick, NY based trio, Forma, comprised of George Bennett, Sophie Lam, and Mark Dwinell make cosmic music for people who live surrounded by concrete. Forma's music is an interaction between the flux of improvisation and the structures of repetition and elongation-- a mastery of analog equipment and an embrace of that machinery's inherent instability. As counterpointed rhythms gradually unspool, and drones and arpeggios helix around one another, we find ourselves in a world that is lush and spacious, discovering its terrain alongside the band itself.
As I found out when I caught up with them at their performance/recording sanctuary, The Schoolhouse loft, the crammed urban environment of Bushwick has been significant in their musical development. Discussion ranged from the uncoordinated accumulation of their instruments and their recently Zoned In debut LP to the philosophies of their forebears. This was the day after their record release party at The Schoolhouse, where they added one such inspirational musical personality, Richard Pinhas, to their growing list of admirers.
I discovered this A.T.R.O.X. track buried deep in one of the later volumes of the essential Tribute to Flexipop bootleg series. Clearly kosmiche-inspired, the track stood out from the usual, arpeggiated, minimal cold wave weirdness endemic to these compilations. Not simply a bit of nostalgia, but more like a reworking of the sounds of early Kraftwerk and Cluster using newer, 1980s synth technologies. Try it on repeat.
Look out for Falls Of Time, a 2xCD reissue of this Italian group's complete output on Spittle Records in June
FORMA bursts to life with each interlocking element fully in place, as though we've skipped the development and gone straight for the climax. This feeling probably has something to do with the Brooklyn synthesizer trio's unique writing and recording process. Mark Dwinell, Sophie Lam, and George Bennett tracked their LP debut in the Summer/Fall of 2010 at Bushwick DIY venue The Schoolhouse; they sourced the material on FORMA from sprawling improvisations, some up to fifteen or twenty minutes in length, and recorded live to stereo with no overdubs. Each of the album's ten tracks sounds like a meticulously constructed and preconceived arrangement, but is in fact the natural culmination of these fibrous electronic explorations, workshopped in the live setting-- a snapshot of a broader idea that extends in both directions, past what the ear can hear.
Just as one shapes a vase with movements of the hands around a spinning centre of clay, Forma nuance these core ideas with touches of texture and rhythm, shifts in dynamic and timbre. Their pared-back motorik pulses bow low to their Kosmische predecessors from the '70s, and the warm, propulsive synthwork of Cluster and Harmonia looms particularly large. The beautiful "FORMA 230," similar to Cluster's "Fotschi Tong," is built upon a foundation of soft, throbbing drones, with a stream of melodies and arpeggios coursing through the negative space. The track is delicate and light, as though it were floating within its own self-contained bubble of sound. Likewise, on "FORMA 235," an intricate melodic counterpoint soars higher and higher, larger and larger, on the back of Bennett's constantly evolving drum patterns. While the influence of Krautrock is never far from the surface, Forma's compositions are much more tightly focused, recalling minimal synth. Their collection of analog electronics may square with the spacious '70s vibe, but the whole is always harnessed to the punch of an '80s drum machine. As Dwinell calls it, Forma's is a process of "alchemy": searching for inspiration, but also innovation, at the crossroads between the two musical lineages.
The decision to open the album with "FORMA 237A" and to close with "FORMA 237B", taken from the same session, is key. Each vignette seems to materialize from nowhere, only to ebb away to make way for the next. Bookended by these bridging tracks, they become part of a single, continuous idea -- itself composed of multiple parts. Ultimately, FORMA seems to capture only a brief, 35-minute moment of a sound life that seems endless and infinite, stretching upwards and outwards into the boundless terrain of space-- the one their ancestors explored, before them.
FORMA is out May 16th on Spectrum Spools
Forma is the Bushwick, BK trio of Mark Dwinell, Sophie Lam, and George Bennett; they practice and record out of local underground venue the Schoolhouse, own enough Roland synthesizers to fill a small bus, and describe their sound as a "singular vision of cosmic Krautrock for a new age." The band just announced the release of their self-titled debut LP on John Elliott's Spectrum Spools imprint, a sub-label of Austria's Editions Mego. Listen to album single, "Forma 230," for their signature blend of motorik pulses, synthetic counterpoint, and tactile drones. Definitely an artist to keep your eye on as DIY Brooklyn makes its way into the Age of Aquarius. --Emilie Friedlander, Altered Zones
Forma LP is out May 16th on Spectrum Spools
By now you've heard enough about the secret Jeff Mangum show that happened in Brooklyn last weekend, but you probably haven't heard enough about the show's opener, Forma. A live electronics trio, composed of Mark Dwinell, Sophie Lam, and George Bennett, have a No Laptop™ policy when creating their spontaneous space-infused, retro-futuristic improv jams. Tracks are recorded straight from the mixer with no overdubs or edits, and use simple numerical naming convention to define them. What does this mean? Hopefully that there's at least 236 more songs like these. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones
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