Monstrous Media!

Things have been good. Really good. I’ve spent the last week or so with Liz in and around Kaikoura, a small surf town on the South Island’s east coast. We landed at a beautiful free camp on the beach with just enough time to meet some excellent traveling companions that would soon become our family for the week. We had a gluttonous, glorious hot holiday on the beach in New Zealand. Below is a video recap for those too lazy to read or scroll down.

This is me in front of the gorgeous mountains that butt right up to the beach on one of the first days at the camp. There was about 14 of us total camping in Kaikoura for the days surrounding the holidays; some British, some French, some Scottish, some American, some Dutch, and some German. A healthy mix.

As expected, we dutifully celebrated the second annual Ephemeral Day and spread the love onto our new comrades. For those of you who don’t know, Ephemeral Day is a holiday I invented that traditionally takes place on the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere; the shortest day of the year.

Groups all over the world come together and work to build structures that are designed to burn. This was our structure; a pentagonal prism built of driftwood and adorned with a sun-bleached goat skull.

As the sun sets on the shortest day of the year we burn our structures in unison to acknowledge the ephemeral nature of each day and many other things in life. This year, the holiday couldn’t have been more appropriate. A group of strangers came together for a few days, built together, cooked for each other, ate together, and became friends only to disband shortly after never to see each other again.. ephemeral friends.. ephemeral as FUCK.

Christmas eve I collected bits of cash from the crew and went to the town butcher to buy as much of a pig as I could with the intention of roasting it on the beach. He gave me a huge pig log stuffed with apples and sage and stuffing… enough to feed 20…mmm. I built a spit and a fire pit and we slow roasted the sucker for 4 hours whilst basting it with honey and soy. SOO good. Along with that we also had fresh caught New Zealand crayfish and a beach-smoked fish caught in the brackish water near camp. Not so bad.

This is the sunset god gave us on Christmas eve… no photoshop.

After Christmas the majority of the crew departed and Liz and I hoofed it to Arthur’s Pass for some tramping. On the way back we found a cave system with a river flowing through it that took about 45 mins to meander through. This is liz at the entrance. It was so beautiful down there. Kinda freaky with no guide or idea whether or not we’d survive.

The New Years Eve blue moon was particularly incredible for me. Right as the sun was setting the huge, blazingly bright lunar orb began rising over the horizon exactly opposite where the sun had just rested. The spotlight kept us well lit all night as we pranced through the foothills to the beat of secret drum and bass gatherings. This is a 40 second exposure of the full moon (notice the constellation Orion showing up nicely above the moon).

Liz and I achieved our goal of staying up all night for the sunrise. New Zealand is the first country in the world to see the sun rise each day. I am so happy to have seen the first view of the sun that 2010 had to offer.

Now I am in Christchurch taking care of some business and waiting for Christina to get here so we can get back on the travel train. SOOOOO excited.

And here’s what I’ve been listening to:

Surfer Blood – Swim

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Atlas Sound – Shelia

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Yeasayer – Rome

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If you can remember, we all entered this decade together with Limp Bizkit farting out one of the worst mainstream rock records of all time, 2000’s “The Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water”, whilst The Backstreet Boys and *NSync battled for the number one slot on TRL.

These were dark times. Since, rap/rock has ceased to exist entirely and, at least for the time being, it seems that the world has tired of boy bands. We can all give ourselves a pat on the back for eradicating that one.

We’ve witnessed the demise of tangible media, namely the compact disc, in exchange for digital versions of the audio we love. Following the CD closely down the tubes went the entire mainstream music industry as it was once known.

Thanks to this, the shift in the way we listen to our music, and the proliferation of the internet, music of all kinds became nearly as accessible as the air we breath.

Because the mainstream had become polluted and failing, casual listeners turned their attention toward the underground. This enabled independent artists to become noticed by larger audiences and prosper. With the internet on their side independent artists were defining the large-scale musical trends of the later quarter of the decade.

Everyone was making music, everyone was experimenting, and everyone else was listening. When music becomes as ubiquitous as it had by the end of the 2000’s it gets difficult to single out the true gems of an entire decade past. The flawed mainstream had skipped over nearly all of the true genius musicians of the last 10 years, unlike during the 60’s and 70’s where the artists in the limelight deserved the respect they got.

My thoughts are that the true stars of this decade haven’t yet been truly acknowledged by the world and that one day they will surface and be properly celebrated.

This was a substantial decade for music, even if the world doesn’t quite know it yet. I think we can all agree that we’ve seen a paradigm shift in popular music as we know it and the years to come are only sounding better and better. The following are the 10 most decade-defining records, in order of release.

Relationship of Command – At The Drive-In [September 2000]

You Forgot It In People – Broken Social Scene [October 2002]

The Ugly Organ – Cursive [March 2003]

De-Loused in The Comatorium – The Mars Volta [June 2003]

Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? – The Unicorns [November 2003]

Satanic Panic in the Attic – of Montreal [April 2004]

Come On Feel The Illinoise! – Sufan Stevens [July 2005]

Strawberry Jam – Strawberry Jam [September 2007]

In Rainbows – Radiohead [October 2007]

Sea Lion – The Ruby Suns [January 2008]

Don’t forget to check out Michelle’s equally outstanding best of the decade list!

2009 was a substantial year for me. I directed my second music video. I learned how to play the ukulele. I moved from Portland to New Zealand. I designed the album art for 3 records. I’m extremely happy to be alive.

The year in music was a good one as well. It never seems to be that substantial as the records are being released one at a time but in retrospect, the albums I’ll remember are great ones. Here’s a list of my favorites from the year past.

The Happiness Project could not have earned a more appropriate title this year than Honorable Mention. The experimental efforts on this record were certainly respectable, commendable, honorable, and certainly worth mentioning. Charles Spearin recorded interviews he conducted with members of his everyday schema on the topic of happiness and took select spoken word clips to put to music. The goal was to extract and celebrate the inherent melody that we all speak with on a daily basis. Very cool concept, flawless execution. Applause. Read more

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The anticipation for this record was so intense that it almost didn’t even matter what Grizzly Bear did with it, just so long as they made me feel like I was the receptor of a pop-sermon again. And they did. Beautiful songs, sparkly production. This record is great, but I do still question it’s staying power. Read more

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Dear Everyone, track down this record. It’s the first full-length from Portland’s languid alt-sprawlers, Inside Voices. It’s simply marvelous. The tunes are minimal and slow, but thorough and strong. This record is meant to be listened to whilst driving across the mid-western United States in your pick-up looking at oil derricks imagining them as dinosaurs… at least that’s what I do. Most importantly, this is a debut that makes me eager for the follow up. Pay attention. Read more

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MINT CHICKS! Lo-fi pop-rock is still awesome. This record immediately captivated me and still continues to. Some of these tunes are so fuzzed-out I can’t tell if there are a million layers of music to pick through or if it’s feed-back. Way to blur the lines dudes. Read more

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Uhhh, have you HEARD this record? This is like future dance-pop if it were made 2 years ago. I’m talkin beautiful streams of vocal harmonies chopped up and scattered atop laptop-synth beats. These guys sing like angels pining for love in the club. Initially this was a guilty pleasure for me, but now it’s just a straight up pleasure. I wanna make a record like this.

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Why isn’t Jeffery Jerusalem famous? This guy’s production habits are unhealthy. He meticulously tweaks EVERY measure of EVERY beat making it impossible, but enjoyable, to notice every blip or sample he’s layered into these masterpieces. Jaw-dropping at times, Mr. Jerusalem has the glitch of Aphex Twin and the soul of Diana Ross. Read more

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Ear butter. Does anyone else love the title to this record as much as I do? Not to mention the cover.. and the songs are good too. Actually they’re mind-bendingly incredible, original and yet somehow as familiar as your mother’s lullabies. Truly pushing music in the direction it needs to be going. All members deliver dumps of strange, creative and appropriate vocals over some of the coolest guitar work in rock and roll. Read more

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Bromst gave me a lobotomy. I feel like I lost part of my old brain, a piece of reality, and gained some kind of new blissful insight into the existence of everything; a 12th sense. Dan Deacon is a wizard. This record entirely changed my perception of what electronic music could be. So dense, so methodical. Schizophrenic. Brilliant. Read more

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I respect the hell out of Animal Collective. They appear to effortlessly chuck out new material almost in jest, as if they’re just testing us, seeing if we will swallow what new material they’ve haphazardly conjured. They push our limits as listeners and in turn are stretching what experimental music in the mainstream can get away with. In the grand scheme of Animal Collective’s oeuvre Merriweather is their pop record, easy on the ears, but still even when what they’re brewing is meant to be easy to swallow, it’s still completely new and completely different than anything that’s been done.. and in turn inspires everyone. When was the last time a new prog band released a record that wasn’t described as “Animal Collective meets ____________”? Exactly.

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Merrill Garbus, a.k.a. Tune-Yards, may be my single biggest reason to play ukulele. I want to be her. She took that instrument, otherwise forgotten, and played they most whack sounding, dissonant freak-pop into her four-track backed by the home-made clink-clank of pots and pans. She touches on reggaeton, trip-hop, soul, rock, and tribal nonsense all while belting at the top of her lungs til her eyeballs are about to fall out of her head. She’s incredible. This record defines a high point in the year and a milestone in my life. Read more

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It’s when bands like Micachu and the Shapes come along that I regain my confidence in the future of music as a whole. At times, it appears to me that bands taking a crack at experimentalism are bombarded by the tidal wave of nonsense being generated by other bands elsewhere having an experimental month and, in turn, it becomes difficult to sort out what new ideas are rubbish and who is actually on to something. Micachu is like the old lady who spends her afternoons sorting through heaps of trash for the gems she chooses to take home, polish and put on her mantle. Aptly named Jewellery is a magnificent mash of dirty beats, clanky guitars with a perfect dusting of sprite synths and sweet vocals. The drums on this record honestly sound like a rusty collection of pots and pans whilst the guitar, almost inaudible at times, sounds like a homemade shoebox banjo with fishing-line strings. I suppose what I’m getting at here is that Micachu has successfully taken a step that many of us have been trying to take for the last 2 years; Jewellery delivers insightful new song structures but still has an addictive pop charm, has an appropriate electronic element but still sounds like it was made in someone’s basement. Way to go Micachu, now what do we do after everyone copies you? (from a previous post.)

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The collaboration is finally finished. One of my best friends, Will Schneider, and I have been collaborating across the world for the last four months to put together this all-ukulele Beatles cover album for your listening pleasure. Have a listen to the samples below and if you like what you hear, head over to the offical website for the full album experience.

If I Fell – Royal (Me)
Please Please Me – FWS4 (Will)

I recently recorded a version of the holiday classicWinter Wonderland for a Portland Christmas compilation organized by my friend Paul Laxer. You can listen to all the tracks and download the album for free here.

It’s been a while since the last update of my New Zealand status, I know. This is mainly due to the fact that I’ve been sedentary for some time, specifically the last 2 months. I’ve been living in Wellington, the nation’s capital, holding down a job at a bar, serving locals their beverages of choice. Well, I tired of that so I quit. Wellington was great to me but it’s time to move on. And plus, my very good friends Liz and Patrick are visiting me from Oregon so I’ve since been on a little holiday within a holiday. Here’s a tiny recap:

After they arrived in Auckland I scooped up my guests and together we shot down the length of New Zealand’s North Island making stops at select points along the way. Above is Mt. Ngauruhoe, a key feature on the Tongariro Crossing.

Here’s is a dead bird in a beautiful pose. Photographed by Liz at Ruapuke, a beach outside of Raglan.

This is the view from a stop along a gravel road north of Palmerston North where we decided to spend the night. The only thing nicer than ending the day with this scene was waking up to the same one.

That night we played around with long camera exposures and writing with Liz’s LED headlamp. Beautiful stars that night. Here’s my ‘Royal’.

After racing down the length of the North Island we jumped a ferry and landed safely on the South Island. This is my first visit to what’s said to be New Zealand’s better half. Above is Liz having a successful run at driving on the wrong side of the road with Patrick in shotgun. I have to admit it’s a luxury to be driven around in the back seat of such a fine automobile.

We made a bolt to Abel Tasman National Park to get in some more beach time and do a bit of the world renowned track within. This is Patrick standing next to a tree on a rock. My words don’t quite do justice, do they..?

And for the finale, a lovely shot of me and my BRAND NEW BIKE, Buddy. I built Buddy at a free bike collective in Wellington. He and Gerty are getting along just fine, so far.

That’s all for now. I hope everyone is well and getting ready to enjoy their respective holidays.

And here’s what I’ve been listening to:

Stardeath and White Dwarfs – New Heat

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Neon Indian – Deadbeat Summer

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I’ve just finished the artwork for The Chairy Arms upcoming release, Amber Street Lights. Keep yer eyes peeled for the actual, tangible release coming this winter.

The Chairy Arms Myspace

Whoever gave me this album, own up. You deserve some credit. François Virot’s Yes or No must’ve been sitting in my “to be listened to” queue for the last 4 months at least, before one of his infectious tracks forced it’s way into random play, and then into my consciousness. I have no doubt that this record was awarded to me in a huge music swap at some point in time and never given proper attention. Well today, I’m here to declare, that this stuff is mesmerizing.

Mr. Virot is a french songwriter who has the vocal inflection of Avey Tare circa Pullhair Rubeye, only if Avey had a good voice and could actually carry a tune. Virot’s instrument of choice is acoustic guitar often backed by hand claps, snaps, vocal ticks and other forms of bodily percussion. Other than that it’s his enchanting wail that leaps all over the melodic spectrum grabbing listeners perched on all levels of any given auditory wavelength. His songs are sweet but abrasive, catchy but foreign (not just cause he’s french). Try him.

After doing a bit of research into the world of François Virot I came across a lovely, startling coincidence. On his myspace he has a direct link to the page of amazing french 8-bit-synth-garage-pop band Clara Clara. This grabbed my attention because Clara Clara had a track represented on this year’s Friends and Friends of Friends compilation, organized by me and put out by Portland’s Tender Loving Empire. The song rules. Clara Clara rules. So it turns out that Mr. Virot plays drums in Clara Clara and is sibling to one of the other members. Fancy that. Virot’s rule. Clara Clara will also appear on a split with Kickball due out next spring on TLE.

François Virot – Cascade Kisses

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François Virot – Say Fiesta

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Clara Clara – Dolphins

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Hi everyone. Sorry it’s been ages since my last post but often when I don’t publish for some time I get stuck in a writer’s block cycle that’s difficult to break.

However, the recent news has prompted me to return with a tiny ice-breaker. Hopefully you’ve all heard, but just in case you didn’t, I’m happy to be the first to tell you.

Scientists have confirmed the existence of water on the Moon. The above picture (although not too exciting itself) is a photograph of the plume of water and ice made by the probe that NASA shot into the Moon.

Now, I can already hear some of you saying, “So f-ing what?” I’m not gonna gush on here to try and convince you of why this is a tremendously awesome discovery… instead, I’d just like to point out that this is an incredibly substantial feature about our Moon that humans, before like yesterday, we’re not aware of. This means that from this day onward, it is every human’s task to change the way they think about the Moon. It is, in fact, not a desolate, barren rock desert like we have all been led to believe for the last century. This epic discovery shows us that the Moon is a truly dynamic and active celestial body that is worthy of our foremost attention and respect. Plus, water equals the ability to sustain life. Ever entertained the idea of living on the Moon?.. well it’s about 9 million times more reasonable a concept than it was yesterday.

I’m getting to a point here…

To elaborate on my point a bit further, I present Topic B; dinosaurs. The above illustration is of Dilong paradoxus, a tyrannosaur. You will note that it is covered head to toe in feathers. This may look strange to you because dinosaurs are supposed to have scaly, leathery, brown and green skin, right? No. Actually, surmounting discoveries over the last decade plus have taught us that a large, LARGE portion of the dinosaur kingdom was elaborately feathered. Household dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptor had grand displays of vividly colored feathers covering their entire bodies. Fact.

Now, I can already hear some of you saying, “Big f-ing deal.” What I’m trying to point out is that we humans all share a collective understanding the universe. This collective knowledge, what we call fact, is an ever-evolving, rapidly shifting awareness that we have to be on top of. Humans have to be prepared to abruptly rework our understanding of the way things are, the way things were, and the way things will be. It is imperative to our growth as a species to have the ability to accept a multitude of realities as they present themselves. Question everything, understand the facts, and do your homework. There’s a lot to learn.

Here’s what I’ve been listening to:

Julian Casablancas (Dude from the Strokes) – 11th Dimension

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The Dirty Projectors – Ascending Melody (B-side)

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Dead Man’s Bones – My Body’s A Zombie For You

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If I could actually successfully kick myself and do any decent amount of damage, lord knows I would be doing so right now. I’m mostly angry that my dumb ass only got around to giving the Mint Chicks a good listen until NOW. NOW that I’m living in their country of origin, New Zealand, and NOW that I’ve conveniently terminated my resisdence in the city that they’ve since relocated to, Portland, Oregon. We did the ol’ switcheroo, the Mint Chicks and I did. I remember so clearly reading about them in the local weeklies and thinking that the descriptions of their tunes were right in line with something I’d enjoy. They’ve been playing low-key off they radar shows in Portland ever since they moved there a few years ago. The story goes that they left New Zealand after a quick rise to near super-stardom for a more un-noticed, out-of-the-spotlight lifestyle. It’s true, they are a big deal here. Their videos get played on the local music television stations and everyone knows who they are. They’re even returning sometime this year to headline some huge national music festivals. This elusive phantom band has grabbed my attention for more reasons than I just listed, and they are as follows:

The Mint Chicks’ new record, Screens, fucking rules. It’s like a blow-pop you dropped in the dirt. Screens is a pop record, specifically, it’s bubblegum pop but it has a just the right amount of contemporary modernization to push it past the its-all-been-done realm. The vocals are often fuzzed out in a lo-fi styling and electronically chopped to pieces. There are gritty synths and tinny drums speckling the record like shiny pieces of gravel and hair stuck to said lollypop. This record is fun and easy to listen to, but it engages and forces you to listen deeper and see what actually going on. When I first got it I seriously listened to it six, yes, six times in a row.

The Mint Chicks – Red, White, or Blue

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The Mint Chicks – 2010

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The Mint Chicks – Don’t Sell Your Brains Out, Baby

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Another reason that I have a boner for the Mint Chicks right now is that they do though provoking excellent experiments with new tunes. Recently, they released a new song, but the only way to hear the song was to go to a web site they’d set up with four separate videos embeded within it. Each video contains a separate part of the song, and when played simultaneously they come together to formulate the new song. It’s an absolutely brilliant way to engage your audience a in the fibers of your art (though not the first time, see The Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka). I love it and I would love to see many, many more experience-based musical endeavors be celebrated and proliferated throughout the mainstream. Cheers, Mint Chicks.

Watch the four video song thing here.