Just look at this, and listen to it:

The one playing the sitar is Evan, of the Modern Human Show. If I had to say this reminded me of anything, it would be the Taj Mahal Travellers as produced by the Howling Hex.

**This was posted on the prior incarnation of this blog, right before it tanked. There are some other older posts which will be resurfacing in the future. A few of the bands mentioned in this article were kind enough to say “hello!” after it went up the last time, and I wish I could put their comments back up with the text! Whatever, I guess it’s progress. Thanks to everyone for being cool.

I will begin with a quote:

“Since March 2003, The Hop-Frog Kollectiv has been hosting monthly experimental art, music & poetry gathering.  To celebrate HFK is hosting two nights of the best experimental music Los Angeles has to offer.  From ear piercing harsh noise to noise rock to asiatic dreams and melodies, the two nights features the Kollectiv’s dearest friends and mosted respected artists from the LA area.   The festival will be fully documented for the upcoming Dung Mummy DVD/CD compilation.  Each night features sax wielder, Steve Mackay who played on the seminal Stooges album, Funhouse.  In addition Steve had been a member of the Violent Femmes, Snake Finger and has led the international Radon Ensemble with members of Sikhara, Amps fo Christ and much more.”

Or, from http://www.hop-frog.com/dungmummyWHATSDUNGMUMMY.htm…

“Dung Mummy is an ANTI-fascist experimental arts institution hosted by the hop-frog kollectiv.  It is our goal to give artists a voice and platform that would otherwise be shunned by the Los Angeles/Hollywood  matrix of hell-hole politics and depressing, self-confidence bleaching antics.  We are dedicated to political dissent, artistic revolution and experimental realization.”

…All of which sounds good to me. So I went to the second night of the 5-year-anniversary Dung Mummy festival, only scantily informed.

I did know a few other things going in. Most of these things stemmed from my purchase not long ago of the Post Asiatic sampler, “Lost War Dream Music.” Disc 1 is hypnotic and nearly entirely awesome. Tracks by Seattle’s eccentric guitarist Bill Horist, the brilliant percussionist-mystic Z’ev, and the deceased madman Muslimgauze are interspersed with tracks by bands with names like Amps For Christ, Refrigerator Mothers, Hop-Frog Kollectiv, and other weirdnesses. I can’t always tell one track from another, but that works to the disc’s advantage.

Disc 2 hasn’t sucked me in so much. I will give it time.

(And, btw, there’s a vinyl edition which contains ENTIRELY DIFFERENT MUSIC by some of the same bands. The sound on that one is thick and fat and chewy and wonderful, and the disc itself is INSANE to look at. If you can find it, get one.)

The CD’s notes and the online literature refer to something called “Post-Asiatic” music which basically amounts to the largely uninformed appropriation of traditional Asian musical elements and the running with said elements in a variety of directions. I can dig it - I listen to lots of Japanese rocknroll, bunches of traditional Vietnamese, Balian, Tibetan Buddhist and rural Chinese music among other things. I could probably call my own music “Post Asiatic” (though it would give my Taiwanese-American girlfriend fits if I did) but I prefer “Post World.” In any case, the results of this not-so-cohesive-as-it-sounds movement are varied in quality and sensibility and liking some of it is no guarantee of liking all of it, though it makes for a nicely information-rich cultural system when it all gets banded together.

As the reader is by now aware, the Hop Frog Kollectiv has much to do with the Dung Mummy Festival, and several of the bands from the compilation were on the bill for Saturday night. Actually, the bands I initially thought I wanted to see were mostly billed for Friday night, so I thought of going then even though I first heard of the thing on Friday afternoon.

But then I saw that Steve Mackay, saxophone player from the excellent album “Fun House” by the original Stooges, was performing on both nights and that on the second night he would be backed by Liquorball. Liquorball is associated with Grady Runyan. Grady Runyan is associated with Monoshock and with The Bad Trips, bands which have put out two of my favorite records. I listen to The Bad Trips more, and it is newer, but Monoshock has things that sound more like “songs” if you’re into that. Anyway, I dig Grady’s guitar playing and I went and took in Saturday night mainly to see him play.

There were more bands on the bill than is almost conceivable. Here is a rundown of what I was into:

Openers Metal Rouge played a kind of improvised noise for guitar, keys and voice (man on guitar, woman on keys and voice), all treated heavily with electronic effects. This music was not at all in any kind of realm of jazz or blues-derived improv. It was more akin to Japanese freeform in that it started somewhere and moved, when it moved, to somewhere else without following any clearcut precedent of any kind. This kind of thing is amazing when you hear it for the first time - I am well acquainted with the type so for me the novelty was in the personalities and the instrumentation. I liked her voice alright, I enjoyed the guitar player, some of it was bracing and some of it was enveloping and some of the squiggly high notes were very funny. I think this group probably works better live than on CD (unless recorded in just the right or just the wrong sort of way).

The third group did something similar but added a woman on drums, whose tribal pounding really made it. They took the freeform improv thang and added hypnotic groove to the equation. I boogied. This group, whose name I do not at the moment recall, included a singer-with-effects who also played bits of keys and recorder, plus a bass and a guitar if my memory serves. Noisy and fun.

Next up was howardAmb, a duo who flat out blew our minds! Instrumentation = James (electronically treated voice, Q-Chord) and Stefan (drums, electronic drums and samples, treated voice). They played polyrhythmic songs and things that might have been trancey jams. Their energy is loving and wonderful. They were giving out free copies of their pre-release CD - I’ll report back when I’ve listened to it. Go and see this band.

Hmm… I recall enjoying Amps For Christ a lot. They had a roto-koto, a spinning mechanism with strings and pegs that has to be seen to be understood though it still doesn’t come easy. They also had other strange instruments. One looked sitar-ish. Not sure. Music was free-jazzy in a traditional-Vietnamese-musical sense of the idea. Amps For Christ has a track on the Post Asiatic sampler disc 1.

There was a collaboration between Catastrophic Mermaids On Parade and Hermit The Flog. It was mellow, low-key, electronic and rhythmic and included live bass and guitar as well as samples and sound effects. I liked that one a lot, also, though Hermit’s other live set only did so much for me. His pieces on the Post-Asiatic sampler are all rite-on, though.

There was a band from San Diego called San Kazakgascar. They were the most straight-up thang we saw - guitar, bass, drums, group vocals - they’d function alright in any highbrow watering hole. But the arrangements were screwy-cool, tribally rhythmic, chanted syllabic, vaguely implicating of surf music somewhere deep back in the lineage but not in any kind of overt way. The guitarist’s strat looked WAY out of place in that room full of weirdness, but it sounded fine and they made us both dance. Props fer sher.

I should say, too, that the room was instantly inviting. The vibes were cool. Couches and chairs, crazy tapestries and art and weird stuff written all over the walls, freaks everywhere - the people running it were WAY nuttier than the “audience,” some of whom looked a bit lost or otherwise confused. The most interesting audients always turned out to be performers eventually to the point where I wondered after a while if we were the only two there who weren’t actually involved in putting on the show!

Good feeling. We walked in and it was like being back in Seattle but without some of the attendant cliquishness. I mean, I love and miss Seattle but I always felt like a leper when I walked into a new scene. These people make eye contact, and they talk to you if you smile. Although on the other hand the smallish crowd was SO mellow I was wishing for some of my wilder pals from up north to shake things up a bit.

Alright, now we come to the “finale” - Steve Mackay and Liquorball. It was close to 2am when they started and we were falling asleep. If they’d been anything but unreal good I woulda been dragged and started grumbling about leaving. But guess what? They KILLED it.

The closest analog I could think of would be Acid Mothers Temple if they’d relax a little bit. This music was fast and driving and pounding but not generally invasive. It made me want to move.

Grady played mainly wash-of-sound guitar including dalliances with a slide and an e-bow, some strange hand-techniques I didn’t recognize, some wah sweeps that reminded me of, well, me… There was a dude devoted entirely to some kind of oscillating rack, a thunderous left-handed drummer, and a thunderous bass player. There were two saxophones, Steve Mackay and another guy with shorter hair. The second horn played more in the way of spaced-out overblowing and atonalities and such - did it very well, too, I dug it, it wasn’t just chaotic noise for noise’s sake. And Steve’s devotion to the groove (he was shouting about it after the set!) was exemplary. He was psyched to have a tight band behind him that he could just groove out over - even if his idea of a tight band is a rumbling wad of space noise from a parallel wavelength! His stage energy is comparable to that of Seattle’s Joe Reno (artist), if that means anything to y’all…

They played til they blew a fuse and the power went out. Awesome.

Apparently Steve and Liquorball just played a string of shows together. I hope they do more. I hope they record. I’ll dig it all. Totally great. Psychedelic ecstasy. Thanks, guys.

Carrying on, I am, about June 19 2008, summer solstice observed in 5-Land this year…

Here’s the other cool thing that happened.

While I was packing up after the set, talking to my friends before they left, etc, this heavenly music came on the PA! It sounded like something in the style of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, though it clearly wasn’t them as the voices were not so deep. Definitely African, though. An angelic choir. I turned to Nick and demanded to know what bliss I was hearing!

He turned me on to Katy J Arnovick. She’d produced an album in the Moshaweng Valley of the Kalahari Desert. Really. A collection of recordings of children’s choirs. She’d just received the finished discs that afternoon. I was her first sale. My neighbor Alex almost immediately became her second sale.

The album is called “The Kalahari Experience: Voices From The Moshaweng Valley,” and it’s wonderful. Thank you, Katy!* (And thank you also to co-producer Aaron Mason… And I happen to know that co-executive-producer John Osiecki knows his business as well, so thanks to John at Bell Sound… He engineered some of Lady Z’s sessions last year and the year before.)

I’m not exactly sure where or how you get copies of the CD, but start with www.hopeforourchildren.com, which is where Katy and Aaron have posted photos of the Kalahari Experience.

*I believe she also engineered the debut CD by howardAmb, called “PolyPhasic.” I have not heard that CD, and I understand howardAmb has “overhauled” their sound since… Their most recent disc is GREAT, tho, and their live set is worthy of your attention.

I had a good night on June 19th… Which come to think of it was almost the solstice, so let’s say this was my solstice festivity for 2008.

There is a band here in Los Angeles who call themselves ELEMENOPY. They are two guys, Joel and Nick, who play various instruments. Nick tends to play the drums, but he also plays the guitar, and he also sings. Joel tends to play the guitar, with lots of loops and effects to make it sound like many more than two people on the stage, but he also plays the bass and he also plays the drums. And he sings.

They sound great - I’ve been out to see them twice and will do it again for sure. Their songwriting is unusual both in construction and degree of heart-felt-ness. The arrangements are tight, and they’re really fun to watch! They tell you about the songs and they move around a lot and the sounds are amazing and it isn’t boring.

ELEMENOPY hosts a weekly show at the Unknown Theater, which is mainly a stage for theater-type performances - plays, and like that. It’s very cool of the Unknown Theater to let them do that, as it allows for the existence of a venue for music that might not be this week’s hip recreational sound, and without the hyper-real ambience of a club show.

Plus the stage is still set from the evening’s theater performance, so there’s always some distinct surreality to the look of things. (On the 19th of June, there was a sort of rickety stairway-looking thing that went nowhere. I wanted to see that play - got busy moving house - goddamn it.) And the cheap beer is free all night. Are you there yet?

ELEMENOPY was cool enough to give me an opening slot on June 19th 2008. I got to play in the lounge, which is really in the same room as everything else, just not in front of the bleachers. So people tend to wander around, sit at the bar, very chill. I planned a set for electric guitar and “singing,” and I convinced six of my friends plus Lady Z to come out and hang - which would never be enough to make a club happy, but nobody ever even asked me what my draw would be. I believe they actually listened to the tunes on the website and made a decision based on that.

Other than my friends, there were twenty or twenty-five people hanging around. Good bunch of folks. But would they dig it?

Next thing to happen, is it turns out Joel is down with disease and won’t be making it. No set from ELEMENOPY tonight! A big drat, especially as press was expected. Nick agreed to play some congas with me, though, and resultantly I had a BLAST! Cos as much fun as it is to play a show in the first place, it’s usually MUCH MORE FUN to play with other people.

here is a picture:

**

Nick is a terrific conguerro. We played for about 35 minutes, extended jams on my tunes, and although we didn’t have time to get what I would call super-deep, we definitely got in it. Some of the tunes had to be radically rearranged on the spot - “13 Sheep” as uptempo Meters-style funk, for example - but everything worked out and I believe most of the people there sat and listened for most of our set.

A lot of the people in the room had been there for the play, or had been in it. I talked to a few of them after and found more good people than I am used to finding in a room full of strangers in Los Angeles. I look forward to seeing some of them again next time I get a free Thursday night…

(There’s more, but it gets its own post cos it’s that cool!)

**iPhoto by audient Steven Cox

9-3-2008
NOTE: This album has just been remastered to good effect by Adrian Woods of Neon Brown. It sounds fine in Los Angeles, especially through a home stereo. Also through home stereo in Seattle. Haven’t tried it in the car in L.A. yet.

I’m just sitting here listening again to “Variety Pack Destroys Everything,” because I am updating their SonicBids EPK

(hint: Variety Pack has a SonicBids Electronic Press Kit. You can hear some songs there and read about them and like that. I think they also have a Myspace page, but the less said about that, the better. You can probably get to it from their SonicBids EPK)

and I listened to it a bunch when they gave it to me back in December, in fact I drove all over Seattle listening to it, and then I played it a bunch in Idaho. But I don’t know that I’ve tried it out in L.A. yet, which I really ought. I’ve got it on headphones, and not very good ones, they bump on the low end and don’t give you much room on top so it’s sorta like listening through cotton balls but it’s what’s available, right now. And it isn’t hurting much ‘cos they sound GREAT.

“I Was Born To Be A Cagefighter” is an instrumental by Woody - Guitar. It rocks. “Funk Song” is a tight jam with a low-key vocal condemnation of brainless media culture, courtesy of Charles - Keys. “Max The Hydroxide” is a sweet instrumental, also from Charles. “Soggy Tennis Shoes” is a kickass Woody song with a great melody. “Cadillac Walker” is a narrative groove-ballad by Charles, in which I especially like the vocal harmonies. “When You Wake Up” is an epic weirdness, credited to Evan - Bass. “Camel Song” is a twisted little pop song boogie from Charles, to wit: “Eat with the camel before he eats you.” And “Lightly Salted” is another epic, this one credited to the whole band.

But that’s a just a surface glance at the form. The content is really what it’s all about. And to get to the content, you should put on headphones, sit back in a dimly lit room and stare at the insanely detailed Buddhist iconography on that calendar, or the weirdo abstract painting on the dining room wall. And dig the tones. The electric guitar, for example, sounds like it’s made of wood. Which it is. It’s warm and thick and it talks to you like it knows what it’s saying. The keys are thick and fat. The drums (Patrick - Drums) do much more than tick and tock, and sometimes they even hum. The bass is big and round and the percussion (Luke - Congas, Timbales) rattles and clatters joyfully.

I engineered this recording (and I keep wondering if Evan did much eq when he mixed this all, anyway I’m just curious how much of this tone is my doing, for an answer to which I can always check the original tracks which I think I still have.) But I didn’t play any of the instruments, and I had nothing to do with the mix, so I can’t take any credit for how boss cool the music on this disc is. 

This is a good CD. Taken as a whole, not just as single tracks. And it’s good in a car, as I said. Probably not great for washing dishes or background music at a tea party. But then again, why not? It will help to clean the air.*

*Especially good for cleaning the air is a tune called “The Larynx” which is found I think only on the Cadillac Walker E.P. Long jam in 6/8. Super-ambient epic nice-ness. Oh, wait, it’s on their myspace page. Alright, here’s how you get there: http://www.myspace.com/varietypack40

ps - the way to hear this band is live, should you find that you have the opportunity to do so.

My self-published CD-R of acoustic guitar playing and singing, called “It’s A What?” has been reviewed by a German web-publication called FolkWorld, specifically by a man named Adolf Goriup.

You can read the review here: http://www.folkworld.de/36/d/cds3.html#five

That is, you can read it there if you can read German! Otherwise drop the review into http://babelfish.yahoo.com or some other web-based translator of your choice.

It’s a pretty good review, especially when you look at what he said about some of the other guys…

Thanks Adolf, and thanks FolkWorld!
love and good luck,
5-Track

by the way, you can listen to tracks and even buy “It’s A What?” from CDBaby

Mr Christian Peet has posted an mp3 of which I am a part. Check it out if you like, as per the following:

Go here: http://christianpeet.com/more/index.html

Then scroll down to “Recordings,” opening your mind nice and wide as you do so, and once you are firmly in the present moment and/or spaced out to Neptune and back, listen to anything with “Y Road” in the title.

Listening to this jam, one of MANY MANY MANY that we recorded in the early months of 2002, caused me to think a lot about improvised music and what it is and what it means, and also about the ritual potential of a musical bond. Also about poop. And what’s more, I wrote it all down.

But anytime I blog some long spiel like that, I end up wishing I hadn’t done it. So I’ll tell you what. If you want to know what I think about improvised music, or ritual potential, or poop, or anything else, you write me an email. We can discuss it.

I will say this much:

FEWMETS means “Dragon Poop,” and it is my word for artifacts of purely improvised music, intentionally created or otherwise.

cool
5

Hello!

They call me “5“

I am a musician. I used to live in Vermont, then Seattle, and now I am based out of Los Angeles. Musta done something wrong in another life. I am here because my wonderful girlfriend Z lives here. Four years of her here and me in Seattle was plenty.

It seems that, in the process of moving from one web-service provider to another, I have misplaced my blog, known previously as Neptune Research (offical blog of the Big Skunk Ape Project). I had been ambivalent about blogging, anyway. But in the week or three since it vanished, I have thought of enough things I wanted to say that I am starting a new one. So it goes.

So hello again, and as the case may be, welcome back!

Neptune Research, by the way, is the name of my imaginary recording and production company, through which I release real CD-Rs and study the relations between real music and the universe, multiverse and/or metaverse. You can get the CD-Rs at www.5-Track.com/cds

The Big Skunk Ape Project is harder to explain. It’s, well, the BIG project. You know? The big “Skunk Ape” project. Basically it’s a larger conceptual form meant to contextualize my own work and that of many other people with like-minded intent. The full scope of the Big Skunk Ape Project is not known to me and likely never will be. More on that in the near future.

If I stumble onto posts from the old blog, lurking around my hard drive, that I think need to also still be lurking around the web, I will repost them. Otherwise, this should all be fresh shizz. For instance, a lot of mp3s of random improvs will turn up here. Also photos, scans of posters, and the occasional rant about a show (or a book or a movie or a band or whatever I think needs ranting about). I will also post here when I have a gig. Also when I release a CD-R, which happens about as often as I change my socks. Don’t think about that for too long.

The Big Skunk Ape Project will shortly merit its own wiki. I will keep you updated about that, here, too.

Thanks, and good luck,
5

PS: I began this blog with a WordPress “theme” called GREEN GIRL. I am not a girl, although I Iike girls quite a lot (the one who comes with the GREEN GIRL theme is very pretty, yes?) and I am fond of the color green. The merits of the color green were introduced to me by my first college roommate, Jeremy Romagna. It took a while to grow on me. Now I am a fan. And no, I don’t mean he started me smoking weeds. I am referring to the actual color. I am particularly fond of a nice acid green - that’s a VERY BRIGHT GREEN.

I will talk more later about other colors that I also like.