As in Ventura Vox. I just finished lead vocals for Ventura about fifteen minutes ago.
That leaves just backing vocals (including some gang vocals; I’ll be recruiting soon if you’re interested), guitar leads, and some shakers and things to do.
Not bad.
There was already a lot to love about VFE pedals. Peter has developed some truly creative circuits (like the Mobius Strip dual delay with crossover, and Triumvirate multi-band distortion), he’s up-front about the gain structure and clipping of all of his pedals (if you haven’t looked, you’d be surprised how hard it is to find out about the actual clipping that goes on inside of most pedals), and his standard six-control layout offers more flexibility (and often, multiple clipping options!) than most other companies for the same price.
But this week, I found out about the Built by AJ pedal line, which just takes it over the top.
Meet AJ – my neighbor who lives on the next street over from the shop. AJ has multiple diagnosed mental illnesses (out of respect for AJ, I won’t disclose more) … For about a year, I have been teaching AJ how to build pedals. Unfortunately, AJ has reduced fine motor skills, which are absolutely critical to efficiently building VFE Pedals. This means that the pedals AJ builds take more time, and are sometimes not as “pretty” – particularly with the internal components.
AJ is hard-working and dependable, so I have created a system where you can support AJ and get a VFE Pedal at a discounted price. How it works is simple – order a pedal from this page at about 24% off, and AJ will build it for you … They are held to the same high standards when it comes to tone & durability as all other VFE products – and are backed by VFE Pedal’s standard 1-year warranty.
Support AJ by getting B-stock pedals built with A+ heart!
How cool is that? I have my eye on an AJ-built Triumvirate and/or an Alpha Dog. Or, maybe AJ will learn to make the Fiery Red Horse…
I’m doing a house project today, and went to the Ace in Westport for some supplies, which is right next to Half Price Books. So I fell in there, of course. And what do I spy in the $2 rack?
Yep.
Not autographed, so no one’s in trouble.
:-)
I’ll go ahead and imagine someone’s got it ripped to their computer and iPod, backed up off-site, and was just de-cluttering their place.
(This is not the first time this has happened in Missouri. I found one in Warrensburg the night Shacker played there, which must have been ’03 or ’04.)
When you tune a note, like a guitar string, to A, you’re tuning to the pitch at 440 Hz, right?
Probably. But it wasn’t always that way.
Bobby Owsinski, one of my favorite music-related bloggers, wrote recently about how the A=440 Hz standard came to be, and some alternatives. He says that prior to 1940, A = 432 Hz was the most common standard, and he links to a paper that dives into the history of the definition of A a bit deeper (including some Nazi-related conspiracy theories, which I don’t endorse). Here’s a video of a snippet of music, one version tune to A=440, the other to A=432:
The paper also talks about the A=444 standard. While I prefer A=432, I’m also interested in A=444 because both my tuner (Boss TU-2) and Drew’s (TC Electronic Polytune) can be adjusted to tune to A=444, but not A=432. I’m trying to talk him into trying tuning to A=444 for a few weeks, to see what it feels like.
Or, maybe we could approximate A=432 by consistently tuning everything five or 10 cents flat.
Have you ever tuned to anything other than A=440?
Mars Lights (Howie, Drew, and Matt!), Demos (Cory, Greg, Jarek, and James), and (TBD) descend on the Bourbon Theatre Saturday, November 23rd, for an early show. Mark it. Details to follow.
Architects’ free show at the Sandbox was perfect yesterday in KC. All of the new Border Wars stuff, plus some old favorites. I love what they do, and it’s never more clear than when the band comes crashing in together after a short pause in a song; it carries weight, it moves air, it’s heavy and it dances and it slugs you in the chest.
Picked up a couple records at Vinyl Renaissance (can’t say no to $1 Sugar) and a little piece of gear at Big Dude’s Oktoberfest, too, and spent the night re-calibrating all of my presets on the TimeFactor to the tune of a Great Divide Hibernation. Good times.
Distilled good vibes, above.
I have fixed the handles of my bass cab that broke at the last Dark Satellites show in May, have retrieved the cab from Drew’s, and will be happily busy re-amping bass tracks I recorded earlier this year this weekend. The tracks are for Ventura, another EP of mine, and Cory’s album.
We’re nine years old today, which is a bit hard to believe. Happy nine years of listening to us banging on about this or that love or bit of existential angst on this or that guitar or synth.
That’s really all for this year, but I’m putting together something big for next year.
For those of you who like such things, and/or find our vocals indecipherable, I posted the lyrics to Side 3 over at the Mars Lights site today. -h
“Ruff Stuff,” from Mars Lights’ recent Side 3, hides something in its structure that you might not have noticed, but probably have felt as you’ve listened to it.
We’ve done a fair amount of messing with the blues before. (If you need a primer on the blues, check Wikipedia here; I’ll be referring to the shuffle blues variation, with V-IV-I-I as the last four bars.) “Straight Shots,” “Break This Dollar,” and “All Tied Up” are all essentially built around blues progressions.
In “Straight Shots,” you can hear the change from the I to the IV chord in the first verse right before I say “See the war down to the wire every time if they can,” and the V when the intro riff repeats at the end of the first verse and goes into the “I want a touch” part. “Break This Dollar” starts out with the I, hits the IV on the pre-chorus (the very first “Break this dollar…”), back to the I for the chorus, then the V-IV at the end of the chorus under “You got to get out!” “All Tied Up” is even bluesier; the first verse outlines what is almost a standard 12-bar format (some of the chords are held for slightly different lengths, but the progression is right there). The rest of the song is variations on that, with the long V leading into the end riff.
What’s different about “Ruff Stuff” is that the 12-bar progression is spread out over the entire length of the song; we only go through it once. Here are the chords to a slight variation on the standard 12-bar shuffle blues, a “quick four” with a IV chord in the second bar:
I – IV – I – I
IV – IV – I – I
V – IV – I – I
The whole intro and first verse correspond to just the first bar of this progression. The second bar, the IV, is the guitar break and chord change right after “I could stand your dark, stand your dark,” and the third and fourth bars of the progression are the second verse of “Ruff Stuff” (“Show me your toughest…”).
The next part, beginning with “It’s a bomb, you’re a test” matches bars five and six of the progression, the IV chord. In the original arrangement, there was a third verse to go with bars seven and eight of the blues, but we cut it, so there’s a deviation from the form there.
The V produces a noticeable change on the final “Sing!” of “Shadows sing, shadows sing!” and the break into the bridge of the song, which functions as a long riff on the V – IV section of the blues, before returning to the I (“Show me your ruff stuff!”).
I have a lot of fun twisting up the blues into something I imagine, for most people, is unrecognizable, but retains some of that amazingly timeless emotional push and sense of narrative and motion. When we’re writing parts to go along with a main riff, I’ll usually at least play around with something based around the IV or the V chord against the riff to see if it produces any sparks. Often, with a variation or an extra chord, it will, producing something with some musical roots along with my own aesthetic sense. If you write, try it! If you don’t write yet, a blues is a great place to start.
Of course, I don’t think any of it would be possible without high school jazz band. Thanks, Mr. P!
Mars Lights practiced with Matt this week for the first time in a long time, and it clicked immediately and felt awesome. Drew’s getting us a show at the Riot Room ASAP. Based on what we messed with, the set will likely include:
The last two Drew and I have played at the Czar Bar and Replay shows last year. “Stars Above” is a riff that’s been around for a long time, but I just finished earlier this year during my big Mars Lights writing burst. “All The Time In The World” and “No Witnesses,” which we also did at the duo shows, are contenders.
My gear upgrades – Sunn amp and POG for the bass synth, GT500 and TimeFactor for guitar, and my Epi ES 355 guitar itself – really shone in rehearsal. I could hear myself better, and my tone stood up to Drew’s without needing to be overpoweringly loud.
Really fun. Made my week.
What a beautiful surprise; seven years after Anti-Anti (which I still listen to regularly), Snowden returns in top form on No One In Control, hitting all the marks you might want based on their past work, and subtly expanding on it, too.
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The band’s bread and butter is a backbeat-leaning, dark new-wave dance jam, coupled with stuttering kick/bass rhythms and a droning key or guitar line (see “Hiss,” or “Not Good Enough”). They’re so good at these, they don’t get old. No One In Control also twists and stretches this template successfully, building the title track up slowly over the course of seven minutes that could go on for twice that, integrating a cool, retro synth-stab sound with “The Beat Comes,” or dialing down Snowden’s usual burn to a simmer on “Don’t Really Know Me,” focusing rather than cutting its energy.
What can I say about the perfect “Anemone Arms?” Its simple, pure, eternal-but-counterintuitive theme? The beautifully understated arrangement? I invite you to give yourself over to it, especially if you’re in need of a moment of grace.
Every time I hear this record, I’m grateful Snowden made it.
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I’ve tried for a couple weeks not to be disappointed by Errant Forms, unsuccessfully. But, I love Ladyfinger. Their show at the Riot Room a few months ago, with mostly material from the new record, was great.
In the end, though, “Dark Horse” is the only good song (and it’s really good) that shows any growth from the band. “Blue Oyster” and “He Said She Said,” relegated to the last two tracks of the album, adequately invoke the old Ladyfinger; the rest of the set is toothless and meandering, two words I never expected to use about Ladyfinger’s music. Plus, “Meathead” is simply embarrassing in its unintentional irony. It’s a dumb, reductionist song trying to snark at dumb, reductionist stereotpyes.
My expectation that this album would be something other than what it is is something I’ve been wrestling with and trying to suppress before forming a solid opinion about Errant Forms. One angle on art that I like thinking about is sussing the artists’ intention, and the extent to which they accomplished it. Other than from “Dark Horse,” I haven’t gotten any sense of why Ladyfinger made this record. It feels mostly checked out of its own existence. The guitars are muted and indistinct, and the drums are fussy and tapped. I think my disappointment has more to do with the specific recording, not the band or the songs (since the live set was energetic and a little edgy). I’d gladly trade my copy of Errant Forms for a bootleg of the Riot Room show.
As a Ladyfinger listener, I needed to know what this album was. It’s good to know, but I hope the next one has some bite.
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Palms’ self-titled debut is exactly what you’d expect from the press blurb; a Chino Moreno (Deftones)-fronted Isis side project. Ambient metal, or some such. In spite of that, I like it a lot and have it in heavy rotation, but that doesn’t mean it gets a strong recommendation by MR|Review.
Nothing here will reach up and grab you. Overdriven, heavily delayed arpeggios permutate around Chino’s moans and steady, sometimes angular, rhythms. If you listen closely, you’ll notice details changing from section to section. Otherwise, it mooshes all together. Rinse, repeat. “Patagonia” is my favorite example.
The first half of closer “Antarctic Handshake” indicates a direction forward, should the group ever convene again. It has a straightforward dream-pop feel that, maybe blended 50/50 with the languid space-rock of the rest of Palms (start with the metal section of “Mission Sunset,” guys) and written into complete songs, could be noteworthy on a wider scale than “interesting metal supergroup side project.” I hope Palms makes that record, but in the meantime I’ll dig revisiting this one periodically.
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Aesop Rock’s Skelethon is over one year old, but I won’t relax about it until I’ve done everything I can think of to convince you to check it out.
It’s basically a perfectly-executed record, with Aesop Rock rapping over his own intricately-constructed beats; arrangements as tight as German engineering, every ounce of sound aimed squarely at making your head nod *so* *hard,* and it never lets up. I’m jealous, in an inspired way, of how thoroughly Rock executes his singular vision and practically forces his point of view on listeners.
Ahh, words don’t do it justice. You have to bang this once, and then tell me if you don’t feel it.
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Elder’s Dead Roots Stirring – is it or is it not metal? – is so inviting and infectious it should spill over from stoner/doom/desert rock silos. If you love this shit like I do, you’re welcome. If you don’t (yet?) but have the slightest interest, here’s a gateway.
Hitting the sweet spot between straight blown-out blooze and alternately broken and augmented psychadelic riffing, Dead Roots Stirring is that kind of heavy that puts a smile on my face. There’s a joy in volume, a release in mutual submission, and egolessness in waves of fuzz.
Twelve-minute guitar jams aren’t for everyone; I get that. Just don’t assume they’re not for you until you’ve listened to a couple good ones.
| MR|Review directs readers’ limited attention among works via ratings, and within works via prose, focusing on works where our opinion diverges from critical or popular consensus, or we have significant insight that compliments or challenges readers’ aesthetic experience. | MR|Review totals to date: | ||
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Must-hear! | 2 | |
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Recommended | 13 | |
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Good | 9 | |
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Fans only | 10 | |
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Skip this | 3 | |
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Owww! My ears! | 0 | |
I’ve created some codes that will let you download Side 3 for free; leave a comment (including your email address, which will not be published) if you want one, and I’ll shoot a code over to you. -h