Month: October 2014 (Page 1 of 2)

‘Despite his own solo successes, Tobin Sprout will probably always be known as the one-time four-track wizard and songwriting side kick to Robert Pollard in Ohio’s lo-fi pop kings Guided By Voices. Though less prolific than his boss, fans of the group were quick to take note of Sprout’s irresistible song craft. Relegated to a handful of appearances on each release, the singer/guitarist penned GBV favorites like “Awful Bliss,” “Atom Eyes,” and “It’s Like Soul Man.” Sprout left the GBV camp in 1997, pursuing the solo career he launched a year earlier with Carnival Boy.

‘Tobin Sprout began playing guitar at age eight, teaching himself on the Silvertone his parents purchased for 25 dollars. In his late twenties, Sprout began making his first appearances on a Dayton, OH, scene dominated by metal acts, cover bands, and the occasional coalition of fiery punk youth, with his band Fig.4. Formed in 1983 with bassist Dan Toohey and drummer Jon Peterson, the group only released one 7″ during its existence, breaking up before completing their full-length debut. After the split, Sprout enlisted the help of Dayton resident Robert Pollard to finish the album.

‘A frequent attendee at Fig.4 shows, Pollard’s early offer to join the group was (rather ironically) rejected. Needing an outlet for his own growing backlog of compositions, Pollard formed Guided By Voices shortly after. The band’s Forever Since Breakfast EP was released in 1986, followed by the full-length Devil Between My Toes a year later. Sprout continued to stay in touch, adding his guitar to a couple of tracks on Devil, but eventually moved to Florida, taking a job as a designer and illustrator for See magazine.

‘Upon returning to Dayton in the early ’90s, Sprout found Guided By Voices hard at work on their fifth album Propeller (1992). Impressed with Pollard’s songwriting talents, Sprout joined the group mid-way through the recording, making his GBV songwriting debut with “14 Cheerleader Coldfront.” The band began using Sprout’s home studio, pleased with the intimacy of four-track fidelity. Eventually a recording reached Scat Records who signed the band for the Propeller follow-up, Vampire on Titus. The group’s home until their 1995 signing to Matador, the Scat-era saw GBV honing their home-studio skills, culminating on Bee Thousand. One of the group’s best-loved releases, the album was cut entirely on Sprout’s four-track.

‘Token Sprout appearances followed on each subsequent album, peaking with his four contributions to 1996’s Under the Bushes, Under the Stars. Shortly after, weary of the band’s increased touring, Sprout moved with his family to Michigan. Though much of his spare time was dedicated to painting, he continued to write, releasing the occasional 7″ and two full-length collections, Moonflower Plastic (1997) and Let’s Welcome the Circus People (1999). He also wrote a number of songs for his Eyesinweasel project, 14 of which were collected on 2000’s Wrinkled Thoughts. Demos and Outtakes appeared in 2001, but Sprout was uncharacteristically quiet after its release, only popping up here and there on hard-to-find 7″ singles. During this time he also cut a full-length studio effort in his Leland, MI home studio. The finished touches were collected as Lost Planets & Phantom Voices, which appeared in February 2003.’ — collaged

 

 

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To My Beloved Martha
‘That one was mostly done on an Alesis ADAT and a Studio 32 board so I can go up to 16 tracks, which is what I’d like to do eventually. The stuff that I did on Moonflower Plastic, outside of the studio stuff, was done on an 8-track cassette and a 4-track cassette and there’s a big difference in the sound quality of the ADAT.’ — TS

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Martin’s Mounted Head
‘My ultimate goal is to get a 24-track analog machine, but it’s just expensive. You’ve got to have somebody that can work on it, and you’ve got to find one to begin with. They’re expensive and a problem to maintain and there aren’t really a lot of people up here who could even work on it. So eventually I’d like to do that, but for the time being I’m just going to be using the ADAT because it seems to be working out pretty well and it’s easy to use and there’s not a lot of problems like with a tape machine.’ — TS

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It’s Like Soul Man
‘I’m drawn to the analogue sound mostly just for the saturation point that you can get with tape and you can’t get it on the ADAT. They are getting better to where you can get a nice sound on them but they still don’t have the warmth that you get from tape, I don’t think. A lot of people say they can’t tell the difference, but I can hear the difference in a lot of the stuff.’ — TS

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The Last Man Well Known to Kingpin
‘There’s a couple of microphones that I still use. There’s an Electro-Voice that’s more of a stage mic that I still use just because it has more of a crisp sound to it. And then I’ve got a CAD E-100 vocal mic that I’ve been using – I was using that with the 8-track too. That’s got a nice large diaphragm so it really picks up the vocals really well. Aside from that I still use the Memory Man [analog delay pedal] occasionally on some vocal sounds because that was really the only thing that we had on the 4-track for effects. It was just an echo and a chorus on it.’ — TS

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Get Out of My Throat
‘I studied graphic design and illustration. When I finally got into it I did graphic design. I was painting at night and eventually started showing my work and that just sort of took off. So I was able to get out of graphic design and just paint. It all sort of wrapped around the Guided By Voices stuff that was going on. I was able to do that at the same time.’ — TS

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All Used Up (live)
‘I would say I made a living as an artist before I made a living as a musician. I was always into both. I had a guitar when I was in fifth or sixth grade, and we had bands in the garage and stuff, but nothing ever really took off. Drawing and art were things that just came really easy to me. It always seemed like that’s what I wanted to do and that’s what I ended up doing. It was always easy for me and I couldn’t figure out why other people can’t do that. But you get into other things, and I can barely balance my checkbook.’ — TS

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Curious Things
‘One of the biggest things that I notice is little kids are getting into GBV. We’ve been doing these all-ages shows and there are these five and six-year-old kids that are there with their parents. And they’re right up front and they’re singing. They know all the words. It’s like we’ve got this whole new generation coming up, and that’s pretty exciting. We were in Chicago, and about four or five rows out there was this mother holding her daughter, who was singing every word to every song. It’s incredible. So we have a new generation to write for.’ — TS

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Water on the Boater’s Back
‘Sometimes when writing songs they come out right away if I have the lyrics already written. Other times I’ll spend all day on it. It just depends on the song. It doesn’t matter the length of it, it’s just a matter of how long it takes to get all the pieces together. A lot of times I’ll start with just the instruments and them maybe throw a vocal at it and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, the next day I’ll go back in and hopefully you forget about what you did and things will happen. Some days just fly by because you’re just involved with the song, but it varies. It’s usually done within the day.’ — TS

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Liquor Bag
‘The wires, the set up, the machines that don’t work when I need them to.’ — TS

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Indian Ink (live)
‘When I was in Fig.4 we played an arena and were booked to play after the Ohio Players. The place was packed, but as soon as the Ohio Players were finished it emptyed out. We played to about 10 people in the largest venue I had ever played in at that time. It was very intimidating but we just went with it. It looked good on the poster, as if the Ohio Players opened for us.’ — TS

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Courage the Tack
‘I don’t know that it matters, I use to think it did but I think It just comes down to staying excited about writing. And that comes from inside.’ — TS

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Earth Links
‘I just wrote a song on the piano. I like it , it has rolling notes that flow from one chord to the next. Its very beautiful. The words are nice too. I’m thinking of trying it with drums.’ — TS

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As Lovely as You
‘I’ve been hearing some music from the 40s that my Dad has, big band, Frank Sinatra. It really is amazing, the pure sounds of the recordings, just one vocal, no overdubs or effects. The songs are all well written, every note and word means something. It has changed me.’ — TS

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The Crawling Backwards Man
‘Harry Nilsson, I wish I could sing like him. He had a great voice. The Moonbeam song is one of my favorite. “First of May” by the BEE GEE”S It is the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. It makes me feel good to feel sad.’ — TS

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Sentimental Stations
‘I enjoy reading about American history; right now I’m reading The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, about the Battle of Gettysburg. The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston is a great book—all about the creation of Disney and about the development of the art and the artists behind the scenes.’ — TS

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Popstram
‘I’m sure I picked up the style of the 60s singers because that is what I grew up listening to. My grandmother gave me the first three Byrds albums for Christmas, and I would listen to the radio at night—The Ronnettes, Left Bank, The Bee Gees, The Hollies—and I’d pick out all the parts and add some of my own. So I think it’s a cross between American and British psychedelic.’ — TS

*

p.s. RIP: Claude Ollier. A great loss. And now there’s only one Nouveau Roman writer still alive: Michel Butor. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. It was my great pleasure, thank you! You’re already nearing the end of your trip? Wow, that seems fast for some reason. That hotel: we stayed there the first time because we really liked its profile, and we didn’t really know where it was vis-à-vis central Tokyo. But we kind of fell in love with it, and we ended up enjoying the traveling to and from the center. There’s a subway stop about 10-15 minutes walk from the hotel, which isn’t bad. The rooms there are beautiful. We always stay in a Tatami room, which you can see if you click this and scroll down. The prices aren’t so bad for Tokyo, from what I can tell. And we like Meguro itself, so, yeah, that hotel has become our Tokyo home away from home. Well, naturally I think moving there is a dreamy idea. I love Tokyo so much. I miss it all the time. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. He sure didn’t seem very appealing in bed in the YSL film with his pencil mustache and greasy, smirking, cartoonily grease-ball demeanor. Oh, thank you so much for the post! It’ll go up here on this coming Friday! Thank you, thank you! There are posters for ‘Horns’ all over Paris at the moment, and, man, is it a bad poster. ** Nick, Wow, hi, Nick! How the heck are you? Yeah, ‘300,000,000’ is a really, really amazing novel. Take care. Yeah, what’s up? ** Tomkendall, Hi, Tom! Hi, buddy! How are you? What’s going on, man? ** Marilyn Roxie, Well, it’s very nice to see you, Marilyn, my pal. You good? Please fill me in on your goings on, if you like and don’t mind. ** Kier! It’s righteous: the book. That’s funny because I just watched part of the film of ‘Destroy, She Said’ the other day while I was putting together a post on Duras’ films. ‘Honored Guest’, ooh. Joy Williams is so, so great! I’m reading a bunch of stuff, I guess, yeah. I guess I’ll do a ‘loved books’ post about some of them soon. The sculpture just disappeared early in the morning the next day. I think the janitor did something with it. But it was so spectacular, I’m sure they didn’t throw it away. It’s probably in the dungeon. Cool about the letter from the clinic! My last two days … hm, okay, I guess quickly, err, … The day before yesterday, … oh, I think I mentioned that my friends the artists Scott Treleaven and Paul P are in residency here right now, and I wanted them to meet Zac and vice versa, so we all had a coffee, and that was really nice. Zac and I went to see this concert by the guy who did that phenomenal Hatsune Miku vocaloid opera The End’ last year, but his music was drab and really not very interesting when just played on the piano with lame video projections, so we left at the intermission. And I worked and stuff. Yesterday, my agent was in town so I had a coffee with her and caught her up on my progress on my novel and heard about the biz re: my books. Then I met up with Zac for a coffee and brief hang out near the Pompidou. Then I worked some more. Then in the evening Zac and I went to Gisele’s to see her before she splits for the ‘Kindertotenlieder’ shows Montreal today. So, they were nice, mildly eventful days, I guess. I can’t remember what else happened. I’m doing a long interview for the Spanish version of Esquire Magazine that I need to finish today. I think other than those outings, I was just home trying to catch up on my projects basically. What did Wednesday do to and for you? ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien. The new Blake novel is phenomenal, his best I think. Well, when your writing fails you, it’s always the right idea to stop and recharge. The ‘I miss writing’ thing when you abandon it for a while is pretty good fuel, so, yeah, probably a good move, and probably a positive move and not apocalyptic or anything like that. ** Bill, Hi. I was pretty way into Nick Cave from the Birthday Party up through ‘Funeral, Trial’, and then I kind of drifted away. Do they know why this hoarseness thing is so lingery? (Ha ha, Blogger’s spellcheck really, really wanted to change lingery into lingerie. We had a protracted little war over the word there for a minute.) ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. I think it’s my favorite of Blake’s too. It’s a wowzer. No problem on the slackness. I get a little greedy re: Halloween, I’m sorry. I read about that street thing the other day, and I want to see that one of these years. Looks awesome. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Oh, man, that’s cool. Nice of you to come in. Hope you’re sufficiently de-tired by now. ** Sypha, Yeah, I think that’s where I got the retirement idea. Nice about the horror movies. I should be doing that. ** Etc etc etc, Hi, man. Oh, Ira, yeah, I just saw him the other week. If he’s in a good mood, I’m sure he’ll be happy to regale you with stories. Tell him you’re my pal. That should add some perk to whatever mood he’s in, I think. Thanks about the LHotB line-up. I’m proud of it, yeah. Every book was tops, and I plan to keep it that way when I restart it. Oops about the Matisse show. Did you see the Gober retro and that sculpture group show whatever it’s called? I’m curious to see those. ** Steevee, Hi. That’s funny, Etc etc etc just mentioned seeing that film the other day. I think he wasn’t completely wild about it? How was it? ** Chris Cochrane, Mr. Cochrane! Chris! Hey, hey, man! I’d love to see you too, but all in-person bets are off at the moment until I see how much I’ll actually be in NYC and how busy. We’ll connect through some medium one way or the other for sure. ‘Soused’ is so good! ** Misanthrope, You must have a swanky 7-11. The 7-11’s coffee near my LA pad is misery incarnate. Mm, yeah, that joke, hm, I don’t know, man, ha ha. ** Postitbreakup, Hi, Josh. I understand. Well, I’m rotten with emails almost across the board. Also, in that recent one, you showed me something that was not intended for my eyes, and I didn’t read it for that reason, so that’s probably one reason why I didn’t respond, not that the words ’email response’ and I are ever trusty friends under the best of circumstances. I’m sorry, and take care, man. ** Keaton, Man, how do you keep unveiling all these awesome posts at such a high rate? I don’t how you do it. I guess I’m just really slow on the upswing. Well, I know I am. Another great beauty! Everyone, a day without a Halloween themed post is a sad day, but, luckily, today is not a sad day, or it won’t be, if you go over to Keaton’s. Hint, hint. ** Rewritedept, Hi. Oh, I liked ‘King of the Hill’ a lot. That sounds good. Rattling people’s need for pleasantness inspires questions and not necessarily interesting ones. Part and parcel. Goes with the turf. Okay cool, about the taco place. I’ll be game if I’m there. Thanks! I wouldn’t anticipate a friend acceptance from Zac because he only friends real friends and sometimes artists he likes, and I don’t think he knows your stuff, but, hey, you never know with him. I am happy about the S-K reunion, you bet, duh. ** Schlix, Hi, Uli! I’ll let you know. I asked Gisele about that last night, and she said there are gigs in the works but nothing firm at all yet. Have a lovely day! ** End. Tobin Sprout usually gets overlooked due to being the second songwriter in a band beside the genius Robert Pollard, but he’s great, and he’s a maker of many really exquisite songs, and he’s one of my great favorites, so I hope you like the gig. See you tomorrow.

The reason I’m calling this day An Introduction could probably be best explained by linking to Kevin Drumm’s discography. At a quick glance it’s clear that Drumm is a prolific artist, and his work spans many areas that I probably wouldn’t be able to do justice if I were attempt to characterise and categorise them all. So, with that disclaimer out of the way, I’ll try and focus on certain points of his body of work that are specifically exciting to me, and the reasons why, and then … yeah, I guess if you’re into it you can go searching for more. In short: Kevin Drumm is a genius.

I think I first got into Kevin Drumm after reading this interview with Jim O’Rourke where he talks about giving up playing the guitar after realising that Kevin Drumm had already done or achieved everything that he would have wanted to do with the instrument. O’Rourke is one of my all time favourite artists, so it was high praise indeed.

And so I started digging …

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One of my all time favourite records by Drumm is Imperial Distortion, which I have often turned to as a soundtrack for when I’m writing. It creates such a perfect, unique mood. Completely inspiring and singular. I just found an article from FACT that profiles that particular album:

IMPERIAL DISTORTION: KEVIN DRUMM’S MODERN MASTERPIECE TURNS FIVE

Chalked up on Hospital Productions’ release schedule before it was even finished, the album was originally planned as a balls-to-the-wall collection of primal fuzz pedal experiments, an idea that was quickly canned when Drumm came to the decision that the results simply wouldn’t “stand the test of time”. A subsequent creative block forced him to rifle through his archives, and in doing so he came across a handful of pieces that he since has slightly disparagingly passed off as being “go nowhere tracks”. The resulting collection of odds and sods, recorded over a thirteen-year period between 1995 and 2008, became Imperial Distortion, and, thanks to some warm persuasion from Hospital’s Dominick Fernow, Drumm even kept the original title despite the fresh set of material being very much at odds with it. So we have an ambient album on a noise label, compiled from mostly archival material and given a title that would make people assume, quite wrongly, that it would be along the same lines as Drumm’s career-defining Sheer Hellish Miasma. It shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did.

It’s important at this point to think back to 2008, and while it doesn’t seem like very long ago, the sprawling U.S. noise scene was in flux. Wolf Eyes had hit their blood-belching high in ’06 with Human Animal, and Fernow himself had already begun to tip from the feedback-laden, barely-listenable aural oppression of Black Vase into the almost melodic synth-led electronics with ‘06’s pre-emptive Pleasure Ground and ‘07’s irrationally static Cave Depression set. It was in 2008 when the sun-starved basement dwellers who had pored over hand-sprayed (and probably unplayable) Hair Police CDRs in ’05 and saved their allowance for the hotwired Casio SK-1 they saw on Craigslist in ‘06, were looking for something a little different. You must remember that it was around this time too when a trio of Midwestern stoners known as Emeralds suddenly shot from being a band who sold a few tapes here and there at noise shows to being a worldwide sensation. Solar Bridge slipped out on the Hanson imprint in ’08 and helped shift the tides – the kids who used to be totally happy splicing their first tape loop, and screaming into the grubby cup on a broken pair of headphones now wanted to make new age music, and the same beardy dudes who had discovered how to break their hand-me-down synthesizers a few years earlier now wanted them repaired and spitting out arpeggios.

This instability could have been what caused Drumm to abandon his early attempts at Imperial Distortion. His comments that he was worried his tape noise experiments might not “stand the test of time” are telling indeed. Time was moving quickly, and the scene’s tolerance for his particular brand of harsh noise appeared to be waning. Certainly another crack at 2002’s Sheer Hellish Miasma would have been a mistake. It was a record that had pre-empted the general, if short lived, obsession with corrosive American noise, and to this day stands as one of its most successful sonic signifiers. Arriving notably early in the U.S. scene’s development, it emerged on Mego very much after the Austrian stable had cemented its legacy, feeling stylistically long way from the mischievous laptop hiccups of Pita’s Get Out or the well-pruned maximal experimentation of Hecker’s Sun Pandemonium. Fittingly then, when Imperial Distortion did finally see the light of day, it had a very similar effect on its listeners – it was the kind of album that we didn’t yet know we wanted. Drumm had been dabbling with minimalism for decades, but it hardly mattered – Second’s crystalline experiments and Comedy’s organ studies mostly fell on deaf ears compared with the near-universal acceptance of Imperial Distortion.

Taken from/continued here.

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Another firm favourite is Sheer Hellish Miasma, which I don’t need to really describe too much, given the accuracy of the piece’s title. It has a cool, metal inspired cover and gets bonus points for being released on one of my very favourite record labels, MEGO. Beautifully noisy and noisily beautiful. Here’s a review from Pitchfork:

When Rhino decided to reissue the entire Mego back catalog in 2022, they came across notes for alternative titles to this particular disc, Kevin Drumm’s third solo release, and first for the electronic Viennese label. Some names scribbled down (and ultimately scratched out) included: Brain Scratch Avalanche, Tooth Filling Freebaser, and Demonic Wasabi Colonic. They were all in the running until the eleventh hour it seems, each brandishing the palpable sense of (dark) power coursing through them, as well as boldly proclaiming grievous bodily harm of a most agonizing sort. All of the vetoed names had their own je ne sais quoi, I’ll admit. And yet the decided upon title conveyed the sensation succinctly, as the vagaries of the “Miasma” in the final title somehow qualified this intense listening experience.

Back in the winter of ‘ought-two, when I first heard this Kevin Drumm disc (he was still into Norwegian death metal in those days), a blizzard had just hit the city and snow was flurrying and thick on the ground. It was my first time ever through such weather conditions and I was crazy enough to venture out into it for a few thrills, with this music strapped to my head. While familiar with Drumm’s earlier work, always the aural equivalent of a “Fisherman’s Friend” (be it by prepared guitar or synthesizer), Drumm was blasting the sinuses clean and viciously chapping the knuckles with a clarity and enhanced eucalyptus flavor unfelt before. The opening glitches were mere forbearer of the whiteout to come. What roar I presumed to be outside in the cold was already inside my cavities, and I was well beyond the turning point before even reaching the front door.

Hitting the pavement, every step was treacherous, uncertain. Thinking the storm already at its apex, it took only a minute or two before I realized it was just beginning. The snow was blowing about thick, obscuring the eyes, numbing all sense extremities, and making penetrating vision impossible beyond twenty feet. The wind was a two-by-four to the face, and it was coming from both left and right channels. I turned it up to keep my ears warm, as it had already blown off my earmuffs, and the headphones were suffering, crackling under the extreme frequencies.

Vast drifts of clean, pure snow were expanding everywhere, and the white noise that flossed through the cerebellum made perfect sense, flushing out my stuffiness in a fast-acting manner. Aside from the severe nasal drainage (in public no less), there was an underlying nastiness to it all. Drumm, hiding within all that white, was not merely packing together some frozen snowballs for further assault, but opening portals of treacherous black ice underfoot. Combined with the vociferous gales, it threatened to knock me on my ass at any moment. And with the slicks all leading to vast puddles of a most heinous slush, piss-pocked and tire-gray, it took all of my balance and willpower to hold steady throughout.

The meteorological climate was quickly turning into the frozen-solid core of “The Inferno”. Nearly a twenty-five minute journey to trudge through, I shuddered at the fact that I was barely halfway home, and the conditions were only growing more ferocious. All the chained tires on the street spun like reckless turntables and cars careened into brick buildings left, right and center. The snowplows were out in full force, but they were ungrounded, buzzing and crawling ever closer, crunching rock salt and scraping towards me. It was a sound very much like the Approach of the Valkyrie’s Vacuum, sucking and forever oncoming with this gritty, hairballed roar of eternal Norse vortices. I fell into it about eighteen minutes in, and it felt like certain death-metal doom. That’s when the dental-drill blizzard of the world around me peaked, revealing the Metal Machine Music axe at its black, bloodied valentine heart. All its cold, coiled, single-string essence was finally laid bare. I was alive and kicking in its eye, feeling the beautifully brutal essence of the storm emanating out of my head. The rush felt like Valhalla, with Vikings hacked into steaming chunks on the frozen battlefield. It rocked!

Taken from/continued here.

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Kevin Drumm’s first album is amazing in that it’s solo guitar, but unlike any other solo guitar (or guitar solo for that matter) that you’re likely to hear. He doesn’t focus on guitar work anymore, having seemingly found all the logical conclusions of the instrument that he wanted to or perhaps could. This album crystallises some of the investigations into the guitar perfectly. It was recorded directly to tape in 1996 and released in 1997. It has been re-released by Thin Wrist Records.

“Looking back at Kevin through his formidably individual tunnel of works, it’s hard to remember that his first official recorded statement would be caught sneaking into bed alongside history’s milestones of “solo instrument improvisation.” Or that, in turn, it also would be caught trying to sneak out of the house built by Father Jazz, into a backyard that still hasn’t quite been fenced off yet. Those running around Chicago chasing down the sound in the mid-90’s should’ve already known about this guy and his contributions both in and out of the relative spotlight. For those far from the city winds, thankfully they might’ve gotten the message in the form of this missive. In the afterglow of later love letters titled “Sheer Hellish Miasma” and “Imperial Distortion”, it’s absolutely overdue that this first musty green postcard be dug out, polished off, and framed.

Judged by its understated title, “Self-Titled” aka “Guitar” is incredibly literal — what you hear is what you get. In the simplest considerations, the ensuing connotations and possibilities are wide open; the real-time velocity of urgent decision and movement are wrapped in a clearly-mapped compositional endurance that continues to stand firmly in the relative spotlights of this day. No surprise then, that even all these years later, we would still be trying to figure out exactly at which table Kevin should squarely sit.

They say that every kid who heard this record immediately went out and grabbed a busted guitar with a scratchy selector switch, ready to subject their friends to fuzzy pauses of amp hum. I know of at least four.”

– C. Spencer Yeh

Taken from/continued here.

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Next is COMEDY, which was released on the aforementioned Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai label. I actually got this on CD when I was in Paris visiting Dennis and Kiddiepunk a few years ago. I picked it up at the awesome (and sadly dead) Bimbo Towers record store.

Finally reissued on Jim O’rourke’s Moikai imprint. Comedy is Drumm’s third album, recorded over two years ago. It floated around in a provisional version, entitled Organ, for quite a while and caused a genuine bidding war between labels, at least five of them, which caused our Kevin to retreat in his special endearing way, and ultimately decide not to do anything at all with it. During this hibernation, Organ underwent some changes, being dissected and bisected and now including three electronically generated magnifications, bookended by the original monolithic organ recording. The album opens and closes with this would be title track, and it’s awesome. ‘Organ’ is firmly in line with monster-minimalists Tony Conrad and Phil Niblock. The recording of this could honestly be heard over a block away from his apartment. The middle pieces are, like his album Second, extrapolations of microscopic detail and will be familiar terrain to fans of Bernhard Gunter and the Mego scene. But Drumm is so all-American, his sense of intuition over form is totally there, that classic intuition that got us all the patents.

Taken from/more here.

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A prized possession is the Necro Acoustic set. Just amazing.

“Christ, where do I start with this one. I don’t for one minute claim to be a Drumm expert so there is no point reviewing this in reference to Drumm’s previous work. So I’ll simply review it as a noise fan. Necro Acoustic is a five CD box set of noise goodness released by Lasse Marhaug’s excellent Pica Disk label. As a package it is very nice indeed with the five separately titled discs a mix of old and new Drumm, noise and drone. In fact, to be fair, Necro Acoustic is five new Drumm records conveniently packaged together.

From the outset, I’ll nail my colours to the mast – Necro Acoustic is overwhelmingly brilliant. My problem is how to describe it to you with even a sliver of intelligence. Sure it is all about distortion and layers and blips but so is a Merzbow record and this, my friends, is a very different beast indeed. I don’t plan to write about all the discs but to give you a taste if what to expect my two favourite discs are Decrepit which includes tracks recorded between 1998 and 2009 and the single track record Organ from 1996.

Most tracks on Decripit are previously unreleased except for a couple at the end which appeared on vinyl in various guises. It runs the gamit from harsh noise, high-pitched drones to repetitive electronic nirvana (Totemic Saturation). What Drumm does on the majority of the track is produce sketches in manipulated and controlled distortion. It is some of the most intelligent and clever noise you may ever hear.

Organ was recorded by Jim O’Rourke in 1996 and made an appearance in an editted form on Drumm’s album Comedy. This is the first time the entire piece has made an appearance on any format. The track itself (all 50 + minutes of) shifts between mid-level drone and doom laden distortion all created with an organ and various filters and effects pedals. As a listening experience it is a strange one and the only words I can think of to describe it are it invokes a gentle malevolence. It’s the kind of drone track that begs to be played on the best equipment available.”

Taken from and continued at this rather cool blog.

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Kevin Drumm has also taken part in a load of collaborations. This one, with the always fantastic Prurient, is especially interesting to my ears.

“With so damn many records pouring out, there are precious few artists who strain against sagging shelves and actually merit the “must hear” designation. One of them for me is Kevin Drumm. Widely known “guitarist” and relentless disassembler of technique, expression, and expectation, Drumm has recorded seminal solo records (first on Perdition Plastics, then the epochal Sheer Hellish Miasma), tussled in some notable duos (with, for example, RLW with Ralf Wehowsky), and even shown up to upend some “jazz”-based sessions, with Weasel Walter and Ken Vandermark.

All Are Guests in the House of the Lord is a somewhat new trajectory for Drumm – a libretto. Paired up with Prurient (Dom Fernow), this six-part suite (once in circulation on a cassette) is moody, somber, and filled with detail. Throughout this recording, the music flirts with cheese via Hammer horror effects (Fernow’s screeching recitation of the disc’s title, or cornball synths), resulting in a sound that’s challenging in ways both successful and unsuccessful. There are passages where Drumm’s flinty musical personality – guttural feedback, metallic scrapings, and sine waves – doesn’t fit neatly with Prurient’s more cinematic, even narrative approach. But there are times when, as in “On This Slab,” it works very well indeed, drawing you into its distinct space.

I found myself rarely paying attention to the recitation (there is apparently an actual libretto, which has prompted innumerable – and to my ears somewhat sloppy – comparisons with Robert Ashley), and concentrating more on the sound of the vocals. The pieces work quite well on this level. The cavernous loops on “There Died Venus” sound like someone ripping a hole in the music. There’s very effective use of “field recordings” (kids shouting in play) on “Though the Apple is Rotten.” The rumbling setting of “In Long Rows” – with Fernow’s muffled, pitch-shifted voice – reminds of the Giant in Twin Peaks. The closing “Comes Another Brood” – what story is being told here? what slaughterhouse narrative are we being led through? – sounds like the innards of a charnel house, a voice resounding bleakly within the infernal machine. I like listening to this record without feeling compelled to answer questions about narrative, which would surely reduce its pleasures for me, though your mileage may vary.”

Taken from here.

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So that’s an introduction to Drumm’s work for those who are unfamiliar, and perhaps a reinforcement of the guy’s magnificence for those who are up to speed with him. Now it’s time to take a listen.

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Links

Kevin Drumm’s blog: http://recreationalpanick.blogspot.co.uk/.
Kevin Drumm’s Bandcamp page: http://kevindrumm.bandcamp.com/.

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p.s. Hey. It’s the weekend, which gives you a relatively awesome amount of time to get to know, or, if you’re already knowledgeable, luxuriate in the work of the fantastic music maker Kevin Drumm, all courtesy of the savvy and bright-eyed scribe and d.l. Thomas Moronic. A thorough delve is highly recommended! Thank you ever so much, Thomas. ** Sickly, Hey. Oh, wow, thanks. The magical ingredient is one of those magical ingredients that only work if the person(s) for whom it’s intended doesn’t know what it is, and, on top of that, the magic was only for Zac, sorry. Thank you about the novella. Yeah, I’m extremely interested in the form. The narratives can be constructed effectively, I think, but they’re damaged by the limitations of the source materials and by the associations the original materials have, which one can work with or try to erase/destroy by how you position them, and the damage becomes as important to the narrative as the ‘story’, and, most excitingly of all, I think the rhythms of the gifs themselves are really important, and combining the rhythms, by which I mean both the actual thump/looping tempo and the rigid visual movement, the simultaneously alerting/hypnotizing effect of the strict, repeating movement, side to side, back and forth, deeper and towards the surface, and how that movement effects the eye, and how you can work with the difficulty of making the eye negotiate really conflicting movements/rhythms. I don’t know. That may make no sense, but I think the form is extremely interesting to work in and kind of serious in a way. I get that about ‘Goldeneye’. I mean I get why that would be exciting and interesting. Yeah, sure. I don’t know ‘Counterstrike’. ** Tosh Berman, Right, I think you did mention that Japan creates an actual thoroughfare. What can’t Japan do, I wonder? Thank you. Ashbery is known here. The fact that he lived here for a while, and his translation work, and his championing of Roussel and other French writers in the US, and his status as an immense, important English language poet is known. There was an Ashbery celebration/conference here a few years ago. But he has been barely translated. My French publisher POL is his publisher here, and I think they’ve put out one or maybe two books by him, and when I expressed my excitement to them about that, they said that the work was almost impossible to translate with any loyalty to the work. So, I think he’s read here mostly in English and pretty much only by people whose English is good enough to get it. ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks. Yeah, well, he’s one of those writers whose work is overwhelmingly influenced by French lit but whose work is, at the same time, incredibly American, and the transference of his stuff into French is apparently impossible without massive compromises. Incredibly weird to mention myself in light of Ashbery, but, for instance, in terms of French-originated work being anathema re: the French language, my ‘Marbled Swarm’, my French novel, is proving to be basically impossible to translate. It’s on its third translator now after the first two translators couldn’t find a way to do it, and it may well end up being abandoned entirely. Oh, Van Dyke Parks, I can see that. ** Steevee, Hi. Him doing Roxy Music would be very curious, it’s true. ** Bill, Hi. Thanks about the hands. I hoped so. The Iceland plan is that, first, we go to NYC for ‘Kindertotenlieder’ and also for NYC fun/exploration, and also to document a Fujiko Nakaya fog sculpture that’s currently on view upstate at the Philip Johnson House for our documentary film on Nakaya’s work. Then we’ll fly to Iceland where we’ll rent a 4X4 vehicle and spend about 10, 11 days driving around the circumference of Iceland exploring it via auto, feet, snowmobile, etc. as much as we can, as well as hopefully getting as close as possible to the erupting volcano, and then we’ll spend a couple of days in Reykjavik checking it out before heading back to Paris. Should be really incredibly, obviously. You as Tom Waits is an exciting idea, although sorry, of course, about the reason. You have recorded or will record yourself in this state, won’t you? ** Sypha, Oh, shit. I try hard to avoid gifs from those TV shows everyone watches and talks about, but, since I’ve never seen them, I do accidentally end up incorporating gifs from recognizable sources with pre-set strong associations, and I hate when that happens. Oh well. Wowzer, 900 pages, my head hurts. Cool that the book is being fruitful in your head, though. ** Thomas Moronic, Hey, Monsieur. Oh, you know, I just this morning realized that I might never have told you that I was launching the Kevin Drumm post this weekend, and, if that’s true, I apologize. My memory was fusty for a bit there. Anyway, it’s amazing, thank you! Thank you about the gif novella. Yeah, as I’ve said, I’m really excited about the form and working in it. You should write that Crystal Castles thing. They were kind of sublime and perfect in a way. My weekend should be nice. I still haven’t seen ‘Stranger by the Lake’, and I really need to. How was it? What’s the collaborative project? ** Kier, Hi, King Kier! Thank you about the novella. Wow, that’s so weird and meticulous or something that the diagnosis will take that long. Wow, I don’t understand medical stuff at all. Or official psychological stuff either. Cool, I hope you get it quicker. Weird, it’s like, what do they call it in the legal system, …’time served’? Oh, COD meant ‘care of delivery’, and it probably was never an international thing even when it was common, which was basically pre-Fed Ex and all of that kind of stuff. Please do save me a zine. Today is finally the day I’ll listen to the new Iceage, excited! Pizza! Oh, wait, C+, never mind. My day was okay. Worked a bit. This and that. Phone stuff. Zac and I were supposed to get the organized footage for our film yesterday evening, but the guy who did it kind of fucked up and used a very old version of Final Cut Pro which isn’t compatible with Zac’s up-to-date version, so the guy has to redo it or rather reformat it so it can be imported into Zac’s version, which will take until Monday, and that was very frustrating. And, until then, Zac’s going to try to track down an old version Final Cut Pro so he can at least start looking at the footage. Anyway, that sucked because we were really excited and raring to start editing. I was putting together my upcoming LA spooky house post for the blog, and I found this homemade haunted house being done by these kids and their dad in their garage, and they’re trying to raise a little bit of money through Kickstarter to do it, and it’s really cool because it has an actual hand-built dark ride in the spooky house, which I’ve never seen before, so I donated a little money to the cause. When I checked this morning, they’re getting close to their funding goal, so that’s good. Otherwise, mm, not much. How was this weekend in regards to your life and your fun and your art and your happiness, my pal? ** Zach, Thanks, Zach! Its true, the gif is really, really interesting thing, I think. Weirdly unnerving and complex and fraught and all these other things that don’t make sense relative to how simple they are. And I find combining and juxtaposing them to create narratives really, really interesting. Oh, wow, cabin! Just to chill and be one with nature and that kind of stuff? Don’t walk too far away to pee. Or I wouldn’t. Have fun! ** _Black_Acrylic, Thank you kindly, Ben. Glad the event was fun even with the sadness. Sadness and fun can be really cool combination, though, sometimes. Inspiring or something. I don’t know about ‘Ida’. Hm, think I’ll not chase it down. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! Me too, about feeling better. And thank you ever so much about my gif novella! How are you? What’s going on? Was the typhoon intense in Tokyo? ** Rewritedept, I would think 13 might be a wee bit young for my stuff, or for a large proportion of the 13 year-old set probably. I’ve never been to Iceland before. No, didn’t get my Indian food fix. Soon. Quesadilla sounds sweet. I eat them pretty much every day. Super easy to make. I missed the CA/LfL show because I was sick. Ace about your mom’s job! ** Misanthrope, You’re making the whirling ball of twink knives?! Oh, you’re not. Hard to do. Maybe it would work as something to create in language. Ooh. Tempting. The only reason I’m not gong to steal that idea from you is that it won’t fit in my novel, Or … hm, Question: just in case, can I steal it from you? Ha ha, no, Zac’s fear factor and mine are pretty much aligned, meaning no, he survived the novella in one piece. Amis winning the Nobel? Hm, I guess weirder things have happened. Maybe not many, ha ha. ** Jonathan, Hi, J! Thanks a lot, man. Yeah, Chapter 12 was kind of the centerpiece or godhead of the novella or something maybe. So glad you loved the hunting museum! One of the world’s great treasures, that place. Yeah, let’s talk today and make tomorrow’s plan. Excited to see you and that you get to meet Zac and that you’re up for helping his friend and about everything else! ** Okay. Kevin Drumm, amazing, Mr. Moronic, amazing. You’re all set for the weekend. Enjoy, See you on Monday.