The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Thomas Moronic presents … Kevin Drumm/An introduction

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Links

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

*

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.

24 Comments

  1. DavidEhrenstein

    Merci Monsieur Moronic! To be perused with great interest.

    Fascinating about you and Ashes and the French Dennis. I have this image of translators getting exasperated and collapsing over their computers, only to rouse themselves got to some Café in Le Marais and bitching to beat the band over their café au lait.

    Tnaks to Giselle Vienne and Catherine Robbe-Grillet you've become a theater star in France and Christophe (and perhaps Grandieux as well) a film star. Maybe they could do the same for Ashes.

  2. Damien Ark

    Kevin Drumm is amazing. I've listened to "Just Lay Down and Forget It" over a hundred times, one of my favorite drones to meditate to. Sheer Hellish Miasma is also one of the best noise albums ever made. I actually wrote a story based on "Hitting The Pavement" a long time ago that I may rewrite.

    I'm sure you guys know about the collab he did with good ol Jason right? Gr8 album, in my top 15 for this year. His new one, "Shut In" was really soothing as well.

  3. DavidEhrenstein

    Bon Appetit!

  4. Hyemin K

    @Thomas Moronic, thanks for the post. So good to see this day. Wonderful Kevin Drumm. Thank you!

    @Dennis, so glad you feel better. And happy to read you got your friend Zac back. I somehow deeply understand that excitement and happiness with your favorite person, doing plain things and working, though that's not my current life, which is fine. Nothing to report on my side other than "working," but I have a small question, do you think your early poetry is closer to the spirit of Robert Bresson? I was wondering for a little long while.

  5. Bill

    Very nice Kevin Drumm overview, Thomas. I'm quite fond of the 1st solo guitar CD, so prickly and exciting back in the day…

    That sounds like a very fine NY/Iceland itinerary, Dennis!

    Haha, I doubt that my rasping is that interesting. But if it keeps up, I'll fire up the recording software.

    Started reading some Gordon Lish short stories. Very odd, but intriguing.

    Bill

  6. Thomas Moronic

    DavidEhrenstein – Thank you as ever, David.

    Damien Ark – Yeah, that The Abyss record is fantastic. I really like it. What else has made its way into your top records of the year so far? It feels like there’s been a lot of really strong, interesting albums this year. Really exciting.

    Hyemin K – You’re welcome!

    Bill – Thanks, Bill. That first Drumm album is remarkable in my opinion. I like how what he was doing with it already felt just so defined and sealed into itself.

    Dennis – Thanks for having my ramblings again. Hope you’ve had a cool weekend. Oh, what did I think of Stranger By the Lake? I enjoyed it. The things that stood out for me were the repetition and hermetic quality of the film, very contained and limited in this way that I liked, and which made for this rhythm that kept pulsing through the film. It felt more about that than the actual content/story for me, which I found interesting. So yeah, it was good. The collaborative thing is one of a couple of things with Steven Purtill that we’re doing. And the meal with my for my boyfriend’s friend’s birthday was nice. So much amazing Chinese food – the vegetarian options were crazy good. My mouth is still watering.

  7. _Black_Acrylic

    This is exciting: remember Shaye Saint John, the mangled YouTube star who got her own DC's Day in 2009? I got a Facebook message this morning from a film director in California who's making a documentary about her late creator Eric Fournier. They want me to be in it after reading our 2009 Yuck 'n Yum article. Super cool if this happens, and all I can say is OMG.

    I was on YouTube this morning and SSJ has become something of a viral hit in the years since, with 1.6m views for the Hand Thing alone. It's also striking how ahead of the curve those videos were.

  8. Paul Curran

    Excellent overview, Thomas, thanks, man, beautiful sounds, and I can totally see what you get out of writing with him/them sounds around you. Hope things UK / writing-wise are going well?

    Dennis, Yes, good all round(!),I was on antibiotics for the first time in years at the end of summer for some weird Tokyo virus that hit the back of my neck and head and they gave me an MRI which was fine and actually quiet psychedelic if you've never had one for anything serious I guess. Kind of coolly fitting about French translators' difficulties transporting the Marbled Swarms…I've Been writing something everyday on my possible J-novel, and researching stuff along with that, all that fun kind of early days. The typhoon wasn't much here, just everyone off work/school etc, not as bad as one last summer where some new apartments up the hill behind us got evacuated, and where they've since stopped building, but there's another, bigger one coming now, maybe as you read ths,,,.

  9. Thomas Moronic

    Paul Curran – Hey Paul. Glad you got the Drumm thing. Stuff here is good I think. Mainly just lots of work trying to edit my novel and get things finished and get the book feeling how it needs to. Your Japanese boom sounds exciting. How far into it are you?

  10. kier

    thomas, been spending my weekend delving into kevin drumm, thanks so much for the intro! i really like what i've heard.

    hi coop! haha, yeah it's totally like 'time served,' you nailed it. did zac track down a copy of that editing program, get to do any editing? must be exciting! i still haven't gotten my iceage, is it awesome? i'm guessing it's awesome. this weekend i met a friend and had some coffee, ate some pizza (B+) and saw 'gone girl' which was totally okay. the film. hanging out was fun. i bought some new water colour paint and did some drawing and i went for a walk in the autumn weather. the colours everywhere were amazing. took some photos. that's about it. how was your weekend? bon?

  11. etc etc etc

    Mr Coop–
    Just got caught up on the posts w/ .gif novella included–been a long weekend so the shock of the ingenue – horror genre is always appreciated. Speaking of which i've been delving quite deep into the new Iceage-you've heard already i'm sure?? "Against the Moon" is killing it for me right now.

    In "literary" news, it turns out Seidlinger got burned out about halfway through the week on the Mainline thing, and never got to my "Exsanguination," which is a bummer b/c I feel that thing was a bit of a silver bullet for CCM, but alright cuz I guess I'll just slip it in at the next Mainline next year? Plus now I guess I got a pretty honed manuscript to send out again–trying to count the positives, though the endless dry heaving of sending things out gets a bit old, as i'm sure you know.
    Also, saw the robert wilson / rufus wainwright thing at bam last night about shakespeare's sonnets; got a bit 'whimsical' for me there, but some cool interspersed moments. not much to do with shakespeare hither or thither.
    in any case, maybe/hopefully i'l see ya when you pop over for the "kinder" super soon!

    hope you're fully on the mend,
    c

  12. _Black_Acrylic

    So this is a mini SSJ documentary that the guy made in 2012 and it's pretty good. I'm filming a 5 minute clip and sending it tomorrow, and will be sure to mention DC's, Kier and all the YNY details. Hollywood or bust, as the saying goes.

  13. Keaton

    I'm back. TOS violation. Anyway… "Do you even lift, bro?

  14. Thomas Moronic

    Kier – Hey dude. Ace that you liked KD. I was hoping his thing might appeal to some of your tastes and I'm glad that it did.

  15. steevee

    I'm planning to go to Other Music tomorrow and see what Drumm CDs they have in stock.

    In the meantime, I've been listening a lot to Kendrick Lamar's new single, "I", and the new Flying Lotus album. Have you heard these? (Lamar is featured on the latter.) The Lotus album reminds me of late '70s Weather Report if they had a lot more taste and discipline.

  16. Misanthrope

    Thomas, A splendid day you've put together here. Of course, I'd be lying if I said that I got it or understood it or knew what any of it meant. But your passion about this form is certainly inspiring, and I'm glad you get joy from it.

    steevee, I just listened to that Kendrick Lamar single (which sounds very much like something I've heard before, but I can't put my finger on it; though that's typical with most hip hop and rap). It's catchy enough, but I couldn't understand a word the guy was saying.

    Dennis, Be my guest re: the whirling ball of twink knives. I'm not good enough to do anything with it language-wise, so have a go if you want. Just be sure to wink into the camera as you're accepting your Pulitzer and get asked about that whirling ball.

    Speaking of ideas to steal…I've got one anyone can have. Of course, maybe it's been used before. Who knows? But here it is: an older man -say, 40s or 50s, or older, if you like- travels back in time and falls in love with and develops a romantic relationship with…his younger self. How young is up to whomever uses this. It could be his 12-year-old self -scandalous!- or his 20-year-old self…still kind of scandalous. (Just be sure to give me a wink as you're accepting that National Book Award.)

    Ha! I thought you might feel that way about an Amis Nobel. I don't know, I love the guy. I think he's put out a substantial body of work that's been consistently good -sometimes great- and interesting. Time's Arrow, London Fields, Money, and his latest, The Zone of Interest, are all outstanding works. That would qualify him for me.

    Same with ol' Cormac too. And…you. Of course, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass when I say that. As I've always said -and nobody ever fucking believes me- before I ever met/knew you, you were always in my "Top 5 Living Writers" whenever I'd discuss such things with people. No bullshit.

    But I was thinking. I guess one's in more exalted company if he or she is in the group of great writers who never won a Nobel. Hmm, maybe not exalted so much as crowded. I don't know. Now I've tired myself. 😉

  17. Sypha

    Misa, you know, awhile back on Facebook I told Andrew McKinney an idea I had for a short story (that actually popped into my head years ago) in which a pedophile scientist devises a time machine so he can go back in time and have sex with himself as a child, under the assumption that he can't be jailed for fucking himself. What can I say? Sick minds think alike. 😉

  18. Misanthrope

    Sypha, Very well, then. Yours preceded mine, thus making mine unoriginal, even though I didn't know about yours. Strangely, as I thought about it throughout today, it morphed into what I wrote. But my original idea was to have the guy go back in time to molest himself as a child. So our ideas were essentially the same.

    Though the more I'm thinking about it, the more possibilities are there. Like going back in time and falling in love with Hitler or some other major horrible figure in history.

  19. rewritedept

    thomas-

    sweet intro. kevin drumm is a name i'm only marginally familiar with, so this was a good jumping off point. gonna look into his stuff further, for sure. thank dude!

    d-

    what a weekend. not in the best way. one of my finches, richard carpenter, died earlier today. somehow, he disemboweled himself. i was really sad, and cried for an hour or so. but, i decided it would be no good for karen to be left on her own, so we went and got a new finch. his name's kurdt, and they seem to like eachother a whole lot already. i'll miss richard (he had the prettiest songs), but those things happen.

    i think i got iceland mixed up with something from yr scandinavian vacation. sounds like a really fun trip either way.

    that makes sense, re: the LFY/croatian amor show. i always get dates mixed up, so.

    i think i'm going to see the slackers again on friday. super excited. i love that band. you mightn't, since they're really reggae/ska-ish, but their singer, vic ruggiero, is one of the best songwriters going these days, so maybe you would?

    yeah, i think yr work would not have sat well with myself at 13 either. granted, at 14 or 15, i started to read stuff like hunter s thompson, hubert selby jr and burroughs nova trilogy. but yeah. i think yr work would probably have been too much for me at 13. didion, on the other hand, i'm surprised i didn't start reading earlier.

    how was yr weekend? did you tell kier all about it above? i'll scroll up for a full report. hope yr monday doesn't suck. talk soon.

    -me.

  20. MANCY

    Hey Dennis – Glad you are feeling better, obviously, and the GIF novella on Friday was sublime. I have had that Final cut Pro 7 vs 10 issue in the past… I am one of those that has always stuck with 7, warned off of the newer versions by others.

    Thomas, wonderful day, I have been really getting into KD over the last couple of years, especially Sheer Hellish Miasma and Necro Acoustic.

  21. rewritedept

    ps. i think my favorite thing about TMS is how, every time i revisit it, i keep intending to hunt for clues and solve the mystery, but the story's so great that i just end up sucked in and blown away. like, the story's so great that it distracts one from the mystery.

  22. Thomas Moronic

    steevee – Cool. Let me know if you pick anything up. I remember the one time I went to Other Music they had some cool stuff.

    Misanthrope – Hey George. Yeah I didn't think it'd be your thing musically but cool that you got something from the day – thanks,buddy.

    Rewritedept – Thank you Chris. Sorry to hear about your bird. RIP.

    Mancy – Hey man. I just sent you an email. Yeah those two are stellar Drumm choices for sure. He's a full on masterpiece maker.

  23. jonathan

    Hi Thomas
    this was awesome! too much love for Drumm! gonna have to check out that puriant split.
    hope your good!

    Hi D
    im being quick cause i know its late but hey again 🙂
    good to see you yesterday. hope the evening was fun!
    Berkeley & Aoki soon.

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