This is my new crack.  Holy crap.  Within an hour, I had all these new artists from 30 years ago I need to check out.

Prepare yourselfes.

I have a feeling he looked up "Shadow Huntaz", saw that Funkarma produced them and went from there.

The translation makes it funny:

Lapsed & Nonnon my actually funny, meet with their irony, but pretty much the core of their own creation disillusioned

Text: Jens Pacholsky

In two moments to chase Jason Stevens and Dave Madden himself into Bockshorn. As would be the lengthy intro, in which a certain preacher voice of success and failure in a philosophy to the conclusion that both approaches depending on the perception. What was one to the success enough, the other is a failure. The transition is a pure question of awareness change. On the other hand, emerges as suddenly the meaning amusing phone call with her label Noiseam ad in the middle of the album, in which as a satire on current major change in the practices of the album is asked, neither is assigned to, even in the ears of the label owner sounds interesting. In both moments prove as Lapsed & Nonnon angetretenen musicians highest degree of clarity about her album.

The men from Salt Lake City, in all its irony that accidentally on themselves to the cynicism directed snatched. The album is boring. Uncoordinated beat constructions, which in ordinary Distortion flee attacks, abgehalfterte sound spectra from IDM and hip-hop, which somehow Funckarma want to be, but far ahead of the Shadow Huntaz producers slow. There is also a guest appearance by Shadow Huntaz-MC Nongenetic rather bad alibi. Between By then a few holpernd intonierte rape of Buck Dexter, Subtitle and Bleu Bird - more is not enough. "Death Of Convenience" sounds like no more than mediocre standard and as if Lapsed & Nonnon only the "How To Install 'tutorial read their software. As probably the perception of the success-failure of the two-cliff after the completion ago?

http://www.machinistmusic.net/reviews/lapsedcd2007.html

Russian to English translation:

(Angus Andrews, Julian Gross, Aaron Hemphill credit: Joe Dilworth)

nonnon

Liars Interview

Pants on Fire

1-18-08

While interviewing Yeah Yeah Yeahs in 2002, I asked the old “what are you listening to these days?” question and, for the first time, I was rewarded with a promising answer: “Liars”.  That night, my first encounter with Liars, proved so exciting and intense and unique, I had to lie on the grass outside the venue and skip John Spencer Blues Explosion.

Having seen Liars five times, I suppose it is, by default, my favorite band.  Despite the constant location jumping and chameleon act (from headshaking and bass-driven to introverted, grimy, singing about Witches to essentially percussion-based to their latest album, Liars, an immediate, riff-heavy thumper that reminds you of what it was like to discover rock at age thirteen), the band just gets more and more interesting to me.

As icing, they’re just damned nice guys who let you chat them up at the merch booth (guilty) when they would probably rather knock off and get drunk.  This conversation with multi-instrumentalist/co-founder Aaron Hemphill is no exception, as he graciously talked with me about his label, Mute Records, experimental music and my disdain for New York.

Q: So first off, do you guys really have assistants and people connecting calls, or are you really sitting in a minivan in front of your house right now?"

(There is a little confusion, as Aaron doesn’t realize that Mute Records called me then connected our call to him, like a civilian to The President.)

A: “Oh! Yeah, it’s not like that.  The Mute people have a big coordinated thing, like, it has to go through them so they know about the interview.  I guess it just helps them know what’s going on and so people can be directed to the magazine.  So it’s good for the article and the band, I guess.”

Q: I’ve just never had anything this formal before.

A: [Laughs] “I think it’s a lot smaller scale than one would imagine.  I think that the mention of a press agent might make the Mute people imagine this elaborate, Kafka-esque world of piled files and taped conversations.”

Q: Plus, you don’t want anyone to have your home phone.

A: “I don’t care about that: I never answer my phone anyway [Laughs.]”

Q: Mute seems pretty good about promotion and such.  Is it nice to have someone else doing all the leg work or would you rather be more hands on?

A: “No, there are things we want to be involved in and things we realize we’re not good at.  We’re not really interested in stretching the boundaries of The Interview.”

Q: So how was it when you were first signed to Mute? I can imagine being a little intimidated by it, suddenly being on the same roster as Depeche Mode.

A: “Well I didn’t think it was for real.  We were on Gern Blandsten at the time.  I remember we got an email and Angus is all, ‘Yeah, we have some email from Mute’ – I don’t think he had heard of Mute at the time.”

Q: [Laughs]

A: “Or if he did, he didn’t know what it meant.  I was like, ‘What? Blast First Mute?  Yeah, right, whatever. Just tell him yeah, sure, come to our show: if you’re going to joke around like that, come over and buy us dinner.’  I didn’t really take it seriously.  I grew up listening to a lot of that stuff, and I was familiar with Blast First, a lot.  I didn’t really think bands got signed that way, you know?  But now, after being in a band so long, and after seeing friends’ bands get signed, I think bands definitely get signed by some guy going to their show and all these ways that you think are so archaic.  I mean if you send a demo to Mute, and they like it, they’ll sign you.  I didn’t think it worked that way: I thought you had to know somebody.  But as big as Mute is, they’re based on these old school ideals.”

Q:  I find it really cool that they have Nick Cave and all these big bands yet they’re still out scouting for bands.

A:  “Well, yeah, Daniel (Miller), the founder and president of it, does it like everyone who loves music should do it, as if nothing ever happened and he didn’t have this huge roster of groundbreaking bands.  He just does it as if he’s still a fan.”

Q:  Really cool.  I can imagine him being intimidating.  He helped mix your last album – at least – right?

A:  “He listens to them all very carefully [Laughs.]  And he offers suggestions, and whether or not we want to take them is completely up to us, but, generally, with someone like that who we all have respect for creatively, even if it’s something we never thought of, if it comes from him it’s not like it’s coming from some suit who doesn’t know anything about music. So we’ll definitely take it.  He’s very close to us in that sense where we’ll just think about it, like ‘Oh I didn’t think about putting a phaser on this or blah blah on that’.  You just think about it because it’s him and he’s so sensitive and attentive.”

Q: And he wrote “Warm Leatherette”!

A:  “That’s just the tip of the iceberg!  He’s been part of things that you don’t even know, like he didn’t want to take credit for. I mean some people are very zealous about production credits and he is not; he’s very humble and just works really hard.  I’m sure there are records on Mute that you thought were produced by someone else and he’s probably had a major hand in the way those things sound.  It is intimidating at first, but the more we’ve gotten to know him, it’s just really valuable: if he likes something then it means so much on many different levels.  If he doesn’t like something then we really have to believe in something like, ‘we believe in this so we’re going against that’ if we’re not going to take his suggestions.  It just ups the ante of how much his pointers mean to us, which is an awful lot.”

Q:  Well, like you said, he’s not some suit.  He’s the boss, but he hasn’t forgotten that he was there, just making music, it seems.

A:  “Right.  He’s just a pretty amazing guy so whatever he says, we value pretty highly.  And not just, ‘The boss man doesn’t want this’, but, “Daniel, this really humble and incredible musician suggests this, or appreciates that’.”

Q: Your new album is nominated for “Avant Album of Year” for the PLUG Independent Music Awards. Do you think of yourselves as experimental, or are you sick of people putting that label on you just because you use creative sounds?

A:  [Laughs] “We’re always asked about being put into categories and what we think about it, and I think that’s changed; we recognize that, in order to talk about music or pass along music, you need that.  It used to bother us, and then it didn’t.  It’s funny you mention that award because I don’t have any idea how big this thing is, or if anyone knows what it is.  But we do notice that we do get put in the avant garde category and it makes us [Pauses] not mad, but like what the hell are you talking about?  To spare you a long run-on rant of what I think is experimental music, it’s like [Laughs] why can’t we just make a normal record?  Maybe some of that is our fault because we wear dumb outfits onstage, or throw guitars at each other.  I think we take it as a positive thing, or more ‘this is what it sounds like to other people and we think it’s normal’.”

Q: Well you’ve had experience with going to the edge of avant garde music and coming back; most people haven’t experienced (experimental guitarist) Keith Rowe. But because your song is on the radio and it’s “weirder” than everyone else’s – I actually think the latest Britney Spears song is weirder…

A: “Yeah! I think with our (latest) stuff we were really shooting to, not primarily to get out of that category, but just to have people forget about all this other stuff and listen to the song.  I think that is a characteristic of rock or pop; you don’t, with that kind of music, hear ‘oh, well did you know that this is two tape machines going out of phase?’  And so I think that maybe we have to try harder.  We just want to make songs like that, (that) are just enjoyable.  At this point we want to do that – it wasn’t like that before.”

Q: Well don’t change too much.  Rather, just keep on changing the way you naturally would.

A: “Oh no, we certainly wouldn’t change in reaction to that.  It’s just like, god, what the hell is so experimental about this record?”

Q: From experiences I’ve had with New York, the cool thing to do is hate things before they even become remotely big, or anyone hears about them.  Did you find a lot of that while living in New York?

A: [Laughs, hard] “You find that everywhere, not just New York, all the people who supposedly listen to music when it’s more about the social element of what music you listen to and how you can choose friends through that.  Those same people probably think it’s okay to like The Strokes now, after they hated on them, you know what I mean?  Now, it’s a more rapidly moving sort of hate/love/hate thing.  Remember when Nirvana got big and then after a long time it was okay to like them and not get bagged on by your friends?  That cycle moves so fast now, for some reason, and the music comes out so quickly.  I think it’s all dumb, and I don’t think those kinds of people are intrinsic to New York: those people are in every single town.”

Q: We definitely do that here in Salt lake too, but we’re kind of isolated and have to wait six months for a band from New York to tour before we can hate on them.

A: [Laughs] “Right.”

Q: Everyone paints Berlin as this scene with open arms: did you find it as such?

A: (Pauses) “As far as music is concerned, like this type of music that we do, or scene, or whatever, it’s the same.  I mean there are a lot of people who are open to new ideas and then there are a lot of people who do the same shit, you know?  I don’t want to generalize that to any city, like “oh that’s the quality of that city: Berlin is open-minded, New York is closed-minded and jaded.” Because I think there are smart people everywhere and there are dumb people everywhere. I feel like it’s a comfort zone for people to look for things to kill being surprised by anything, especially with music.  ‘This guy produced this so it should something like that’, and that’s stage one.  Stage two is it’s on that label so it should roughly sound like this; oh they’re from New York so they’re jaded and assholes, okay.  You know what I mean?  It’s almost like they want it over with before they even hear it.  That goes with what you’re saying that people hate bands before they’re even known.  I think cities are now as big a deal in that as who produced your record.  I think it’s just all these ways to not experience the music and be surprised, or not, by it, and not having that interaction with it when you listen to it.  It’s all this other sort of calculating before-hand junk.”

Q: Well, funny enough, the people I know in New York who do this are all transplants.  They’re making this mythology based on what they think it should be [Laughs.]

A: “Right! It’s all these factors with which people judge the band on.  There are people at shows before they’ve even heard the music and they’re going to be happy to hang out with other people with whom those factors clear with their taste.  Like, ‘Oh if you’re cool with that label and them being from that town and this guy producing it then why do we even need to hear it?  Let’s just hang out get drunk at the bar.’  To me, that’s just all stuff I want to avoid. 

Berlin is great if you make it great. There are just some cities where you can’t make it great, but I think it’s all how a  person works it.  That’s how I would rather look at it, and that’s how Angus (Andrews, singer) sees it, as well.  Because any time you put comfort in (relying on a place to do the work), that’s just bad.”

Q:  I have a request: will you play “We Fenced Other Gardens With the Bones of Our Own”?

A: “Yeah, we always play that song!”

Q: You didn’t on the Interpol tour, but I assumed it didn’t happen because it was a short set.

A: “Are you sure we didn’t play it?”

Q: Yeah.

A: “Really?”

Q:  I kept waiting and talking to everyone about it.

A:  “Something must have been something really wrong that night because we always play it. But we’ll play it this time.  I promise.”

Q: Does everyone in the world go nuts for that song like they do here in Salt Lake?  It’s kind of your tour hit.

A: [Laughs] “Yeah, they do.  But to be modest, I think it’s one of those rare moments where you can decipher what’s being said and people become elated and they’re not frustrated with ‘well I’m at the show, and I still don’t know what he’s saying or what that thing is doing’.”

Q: Well they know there is a chorus of “fly, fly: the Devil’s in your eye” coming up.

A: [Laughs] “Yeah, yeah.”

Q: On the Drum’s Not Dead tour, Julian’s (Gross) drum kit kept falling over during that song.  Your tech kept running out and setting it up.  I bet it was a pain for Julian, but we just ate it up.  But he had a new, shiny drum kit on the last tour.

A: “I think it was the same (kit).

Q: Alright, well take the latches off so it falls over this time.

A: “Maybe he’s just playing softer because he’s gotten wimpy [Laughs.]  He’s a wuss. God, I gotta tell him that: ‘This guy from Salt Lake says you hit weak now’. Or maybe he was trying not to sweat so much to look cool.”

Q: For all the Interpol girls.

A:  “Yeah, yeah.  Jesus!  You went to that show: what did you think of Interpol?”

Q: I didn’t stick around for their whole set because I’m not the biggest fan.  Their set was really calculated and a weird juxtaposition against you guys.

A: “Huh.”

Q: I know I was a little puzzled when I read you were touring with them.

A: “I don’t think fans of Interpol knew who we were [Laughs.]”

Q:  Well I was at the top of the stairs off to the side of the stage and I could see everyone watching you.  There were tons of people in front of the stage, no one was really moving, their mouths were open, but they were there, nonetheless.

A: “That was a great tour, for that reason.”

Then

Now(ish)

Bauhaus - Go Away White - 2008

01-Too much 21ste century

02-Adrenaline

03-Undone

04-International bullet proof talent

05-Endless summer of the damned

06-Saved

07-Mirror remains

08-Blackstone heart

09-The dog's a vapour

10-Zikir

Released on March 4th, 2008 worldwide.

"‘Go Away White’ was recorded in 18 days at Zircon Skye in Ojai, with singer Peter Murphy, bassist David J, guitarist Daniel Ash, and drummer Kevin Haskins playing together as a band in one room, taking first takes as final cuts. So, a new record but apparently a final one, the band having decided to release it as a posthumous swan song.

‘Go Away White’ is everything you would

hope Bauhaus would deliver as their final statement. Fronted by a cover photo of Bethesda, the angel of the healing waters in New York's Central Park, the music inside is pure cathartic renovation, a psychedelic glimpse into an enchanted moment. Aided in part by guitarist Daniel Ash's inspired use of Jimi Hendrix's own personal Vox wah wah pedal, gifted to him by Peter Murphy at the start of the sessions, it is pop as much as it is experimental."

So, with little hesitation, I put this on (don't ask me where I got it, but I will buy it proper when it comes out).  I hated it.  Everything really does sound like a band in a room, Kevin clacking his sticks together to count everything off. 

My first problem is really with artistic intent.  Yes, I think I’m cool enough to know what the band should have done.  In the past Bauhaus played their music 20% faster than the studio versions.  When I hear this, it just sounds all too slow, like these grown-up boys are finally slowing down.  That depresses me because it means I am next haha.  Okay. 

And knowing the way members of Bauhaus write music, chucking it out quickly and later honing it a little, this all seems too immediate, and I think they skipped the honing stage.  Or maybe they are out of great ideas (I could argue that Daniel Ash’s last great ideas ceased after Love and Rockets’ 1998 Lift album)?

But every argument I think up in my head about why I don’t like this album is something I thought when I heard their first album, a record that ties first with a bunch of other things as “number one, favorite”.  And I knew I would like it (today, I like it, yes) because I kept telling myself that I hated it.  In my head, any press is good press because it means I’m processing it.

I don’t have time to write much else about it, but I will mention my favorite moment.  Before the guitar solo on “Mirror Remains”, Peter Murphy says “solo”.  Daniel Ash does this chucka chucka line, something Peter Murphy should recognize as a Daniel Ash solo.  Peter Murphy says “alright that’s the solo there, of some kind”.  Daniel Ash yells from the back, in-between licks, “this is the solo!”.  “Alright!  It’s good!”, says Peter, in good spirits.  I don’t know why but it makes me laugh, hard.  And it is a good solo.  It’s one of two solos Daniel Ash does, and I find it pretty amazing that he still gets mileage out of it. 

Really, I hate it when bands coast on previous actions, but Bauhaus' sound, to me, isn't tired yet, so keep on truckin'. 

All I’m saying is, Bauhaus fans, give it some days to sink in. 

And they’re not back together anymore, so this is “the end”:

“We were getting along really well, but there was an incident that occurred,” drummer Kevin Haskins told Billboard, declining to elaborate further. “Some of us just felt that we didn't want to carry on as a working unit.”

Oh, brother.

“Now, there's a little bit of an empty feeling because we can't tour with it,” Haskins admits. “All the same, it's something we're very proud of, and we feel a lot of people will be interested to hear it.”

"The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz ensemble that grew out of Chicago's AACM in the late 1960s. The group continues to tour and record through 2006, despite the deaths of two of the founding members.

The Art Ensemble is notable for its members' use of costumes and face paint in performance. Also of note is the Ensemble's multi-instrumentalism, especially the use of what they termed "little instruments" in addition to the traditional jazz lineup; "little instruments" can include bicycle horns, bells, birthday party noisemakers, wind chimes, and a vast array of percussion instruments (including found objects). These two characteristics combine to make the ensemble's performances as much a visual spectacle as an aural one, with each musician playing from behind a large array of drums, bells, gongs, and other instruments. When playing in Europe in 1969, the group were using more than 500 instruments."

I wish I had an ill Association of Creative Musicians where I could find people to form a group like this...  Now it's all just assholes with computers.

I just thought of something relating to that last statement, but I can't ruin the film for you!  Let's just say that the movie is really, really good at letting you make assumptions.  And unresolved miscommunications.

My interview with Aaron Hemphill of Liars went really well, and I have much more material than I need for the article.  I'll have a print version and a much longer version ready next week.


*Don't get me started on how much I hate Sundance.  I wasn't really even a fan of the event, then I had a horrendous ten-day press experience up there a few years ago, so I'll spare you.  I still have those free Tiger Onitsuka shoes and the bag, though.  That was sweet.  Okay, there were some really great things (meeting Crispin Glover, hanging out at Nick Cave's party, watching Science of Sleep and listening to Peter Travers of Rolling Stone act like an ass haha, Beastie Boys press conference in an igloo et cetera), but was such a physically and emotionally draining thing to do for ten days...especially when you're drinking free Stella beers all day.

Actually, Dust Brothers' production was/is pretty goddamned important to my music-as-studio growth.  In other words, this guy totally gets it.

http://www.slweekly.com/index.cfm?do=article.details&id=83A5D220-BCB2-248D-E2B1FC87401BF62A&message=Your%20comment%20has%20been%20posted

Lapsed & Nonnon The Death of Convenience
About five tracks into Convenience, the local duo includes a talking skit satirizing the kind of material Eminem litters throughout his albums. Without giving too much away, it relies on the notion that L&N’s genre-jumping style is “unmarketable,” which seems a little self-defeating for such an original album. They do throw everything into the mix: hip hop, techno, dub, industrial—all glued together with glitches and the occasional guest emcee—but why show all your cards when you could have the upper hand? The album is far better than the Dust Brothers’ Fight Club score (the only example that I could think of that remotely resembles their sound), but I want to believe that that was what L&N were going for the whole time—that they don’t care if other people “get it” or not. MySpace.com/LapsedNonnon

http://www.gothtronic.com/?page=23&reviews=4428

I'm not sure this guy has an editor.  It's a funny review.

"The album of Lapsed & Nonnon is interesting, but a bit too calm and easy and well-produced for my taste. Halfway through the album I lose my concentration and there are too much rappers in my opinion. Some is fun on an album as this, but too much is simply too much. A better variation between interesting instrumental tracks and raptracks would make the music of Lapsed & Nonnon more interesting to listen to. For a next release I suggest these gentlemen to ask label companions like Mothboy for some help more often. "

You mean more than a remix and a skit from Mothboy?

Drummers visibly counting, guitarists scratching heads, guitarists crouched, messy hair and hooded sweat shirts, bassists laughing and goofing off then dropping wicked lines...

I've become the person I hated all through the '90s: the guy who won't shut up about Radiohead.

The band shouldn't have put this song as the first on the new album, as I'll never listen to the rest of the album.

Looking for payday loans?