My Castle of Quiet

What is metal, or rock for that matter? While others scramble for last-minute sub-subgenrefication, I am happy just to watch those umbrellas widen, and the envelope swell and burst. Occultation are such a band, one that tastefully mines not-immediately-recognizable influences, and much like that pre-job interview adage, "just be themselves, they'll be fine." Fine they did do, having grown leaps and bounds since the impressive Somber Dawn demo, to a sound that defines itself throughout their debut full-length, Three and Seven, on Profound Lore.

That first demo, and an early, related live video clip, led to their My Castle of Quiet invitation, and it was an easy call for yours truly that the band was indeed a perfect fit to the horror-gloom purveyed weekly on the radio program. These complex, richly haunting songs marry almost to an absurd ideal with the essence of MCoQ, such that it was an easy decision to host a live performance, positioned to promote their groundbreaking first release.

Here's their set, short, sweet and brimming with power >

A heap of cobwebby thanks to Bob Bellerue, creator of the Ende Tymes Festival (this weekend!), who engineered the session with his usual aplomb and almost empathic understanding of the band's sonic goals and emphases. Thanks also to Tracy Widdess of Brutal Knitting for smashing up my gritty iPhone captures into a thing of beauty.

So it goes with "heavy" bands nowadays; it's the ones that defy easy genre-fication that are closest to my heart. Sure, black metal is amazing, but it's the projects that don't let the sound play them that really shine. And so it is with punk-noise bands like Drunkdriver, Tinsel Teeth (ed., avoid name dropping), and our guests a few weeks ago, Wretched Worst.

Wretched Worst appeal to me in the same way Flipper does, that feeling of almost falling off the building, as though things might get reckless in the room at any moment. And they carry on the tradition of anything-goes experimentation, forged by the Subterranean Records scene in the 1980s, where one can just grunt, or make one very sparse, metallic noise with great earnest, or let a good, collective drone just go, for five or more straight minutes. Noise-brut, one might call it. These indefinable, maniacal songs are regardless quite pleasing to the ear.

But make no mistake, one could also hear Wretched Worst and get none of what I just wrote, and just find their head swirling in heart-jarring thrusts, very sexual and wildly human. Hard as hell. L'humian désenchaîné.

So before I take on airs even more, let's just get to their set, and let that be the proof in the pudding. Quite righteously engineered LIVE by Diane Kamikaze.

Thanks to singer Matt (Matt Minter, WW vocalist), who does most if not all of the band's record-and-tape packaging art, and is a unique talent; maybe the closest references I could cite would be Raymond Pettibon, and 80s, L.A. punk-flyer art in general, but with an ultra-modern, disturbing-horror angle as well. Thanks also to the band—Aaron, Thad and Brian (who will join us again on The Castle, playing drums with The Gate on April 27), and thanks to Tracy Widdess for mashing up my (and possibly Diane's) captures of the band, to create the glorious portrait that accompanies this article.

Dig it! Wretched Worst on bandcamp.

FUN—as I've come to know the Philadelphia-based combo, its sounds and membership, I realize how truly appropriate the name is for what they do. FUN are able to apply clever, inventive, fresh ideas to their improvised music-making, minus all the beard-stroking and pretentious, high-minded, music-conservatory-based conceptualization and back-patting that often accompanies similar activities.

For their FUN Go! America! tour, a 50-year project that involves one performance a year, each in a different state, on the very date that that state was inducted into the Union, FUN came to New Jersey on December 18th, to WFMU's Studio B, to render two unique, smartly conceived and individually distinct long-form improvisations. The concept of the tour alone is staggering, and relies upon FUN's members having access to interstate transportation, and living long enough, to execute the mass concept in its entirety.

Backed by an American flag, adorned with their name in silver duct tape, and a host of gear ranging from plastic soda bottles to radically modified electric guitars, Mat and Jonny donned Kennedy and Nixon masks ("lifelong enemies") to render their first set, which begins with the delicious sound of carbonated-beverage-pouring, and takes flight from there. Set two, entitled "A Stroll In Jersey City," involved a studio-stationed, close-mic'd cel phone, into which they called in, while walking around the neighborhood of WFMU's building, making music from whatever they encountered on their walk.

Engineer Bob Bellerue and myself certainly had a great deal of FUN, recording the sets and watching the action put forth live and in person. These sets were broadcast the following Friday a.m. on My Castle of Quiet, though it was critical to the concept that they were recorded on Dec. 18th, the very date of NJ's 224th anniversary of statehood.

Thanks again to Mat, Jonny, and their friend Kevin, all of whom were present for the rendering of similarly intriguing sets on the Castle on the last day of December 2010, that material also resulting in a dynamic set of remixes, aired on the show the following February. Thanks as always to Bob, for his invaluable, sterling engineering skills, and to Tracy Widdess, for once again rendering my performance photos into art.

Mister Matthews is one of those individuals, to be counted on one or two hands, that can truly be called My Castle of Quiet royalty. Having appeared on the show a total of four times, MM first appeared with Telecult Powers, the duo of himself and Witchbeam, the first band to ever play live on The Castle, and a project that helped to shape my notions of what the radio show itself was going to be. Later on, Telecult returned with Lala Ryan of Excepter, performing the Modern Rites of Pei, a performance that will go down in WFMU history, as they successfully conjured pledges during our 2010 marathon. (This performance was also partially filmed for an eventual documentary film on the station.) Later still, he returned with the Hex Breaker Quintet, a combination of Telecult Powers and Grasshopper, two bands that most definitely have shaped Castle history, and finally, this much-in-demand solo performance, which exemplifies the breadth of MM's work, both as High School Confidential and The True Color of Venus Revue, two very different projects from the electronic maestro; the "head" and the "hard," rendered with equivalent expertise.

Though both pieces deal in the bliss of repetition, they are radically different from one another, the High School Confidential track rooted decidedly in the universe of harsh noise, and the TCoV selection recalling the electronic works of Terry Riley, a 70s-soundtrack-meditation for safe travel of the mind and spirit (though perhaps that latter classification could be argued on behalf of either work, solely dependent on the listener's expectations and needs going in.)

Tremendous thanks to Mister Matthews for bringing it, with focus and attention. Perhaps more than many, MM is really a listener; he takes his creations by the hand and guides them where they're meant to go. Huge thanks also to Bob Bellerue, who engineered the session with his customary aplomb, and also guested as co-DJ for a portion of the evening's programming (the full, three-hour archive can be heard here.) As always, Tracy Widdess made great work of my iPhone capture of the artist, perfectly summarizing the visual accompaniment to the music as rendered. All in all, it was a rewarding broadcast—in a welcoming environment, surrounded by friends, Mister Matthews delivered another live performance for the eternal archives.

Black metal has been, for years now, my power food—visceral nutrition for the body and spirit. For three hours on October 7, the heartiest of metal meals was served up on WFMU by the Southern-California collective known as The Black Twilight Circle. A grouping of ~than a dozen projects, the BTC releases most of their work on their own Crepusculo Negro label, and styles run the gamut from high-powered, tuneful hardcore (Mata Mata) to raw, darkly atmospheric gut-punch black (The Haunting Presence), to the most esoteric of psych-informed, highly creative bm (Shataan, Kuxan Suum.) Many, but not all, of the players in the collective are Mexican-American, so there's that intriguing and arcane element (for most of us Anglos, anyway) of Mayan folklore and symbolism that also serves to make the BTC bands so fascinating and somewhat impenetrable.

The individual members of the BTC are all incredibly talented and accomplished multi-instrumentalists as well, so depending on which project has taken the stage, different players make their unique contribution on different instruments. This evening was, without a doubt, one of finest radio events I've ever hosted, the power staggering, and the range of styles represented incredibly impressive. A total of seven bands played sets that night (a WFMU record?), each project completely distinct from the previous, and each equally magnificent in its own way.

There's been a high call and a clamor for downloadable versions of these sets; one listener even posted their own rip to that week's playlist in the interim, before this post came into being. These mp3s were cut from the Adobe Audition .wav files, recorded live while the bands were playing, in uncompressed glory. Tremendous thanks are due to WFMU's own Diane "Kamikaze" Farris, who crafted a dynamic live mix, which apart from the performances themselves, has received much praise in the ensuing weeks. Thanks Diane; could not have done this without you.

Virtually every band on the BTC's east-coast tour played a set that night, though even three hours does eventually run out, and Dolorvotre were unfortunately cut down to one, temple-smashing number, "Brilliant Brightness," nonetheless a highly apropos way to cap off the event. Here now are those sets, in the order in which they were performed. Where the live performance was rendered continuum style (as in the case of Arizmenda and Kallathon), I kept that flow, ripping the set as one, continuous mp3 file. Other sets, like those of Shataan and Volahn, had clearer stopping points, and thus the mp3s have been broken up accordingly.

Endless thanks to Eddie and the BTC band members; you're welcome back any time. Depicted: Volahn; photo by the author, manipulated by Tracy Widdess.

Support Wm Berger on WFMU!

Pat Murano waited a good, long time to fly completely solo, but when he did, it was worth the wait for performer and listeners alike. Starting out as a founding member of the No Neck Blues Band, and during that time, co-founding and co-piloting the excellent project K Salvatore (I owned and enjoyed many K Salvatore recordings before I made the connection that Pat was involved), Pat became even more active in the past half-decade or so, starting the outstanding and distinctive black-metal band Malkuth (or "Mal-koot," as our French friends render it.) Malkuth was, to say the least, a surprising move, that someone from two of NY's premier improvised-music combos would also have up his sleeve a groundbreaking, one-of-a-kind voice in metal's much-maligned and misunderstood bastard-son subgenre. (You can hear Malkuth's Jan 2010 live My Castle of Quiet session by clicking here.) As if that weren't enough, in the last year, Pat whipped out yet another great improv duo, the excellent Key of Shame, with Mark Morgan of Sightings (you can hear KoS on Brian Turner's show, coming up September 6), and last but surely not least, his mind-expanding solo project, Decimus, which made its WFMU debut two weeks ago on My Castle of Quiet.

It goes almost without saying that Pat has a lot of music in him, all of it remarkably parsed out with little or no stylistic overlap, and without question, Decimus is the most melodic, uniquely psychedelic and focused (naturally, being a solo oeuvre) of the lot. This performance, rendered live without a score and only minor beforehand preparation, is a supreme effort in patient, mindful listening, and responding in kind, a focal point, a beam of individual will with little precedent in New York music. To render evolving, encompassing drones, and/or high-volume collage or "wall" noise as it's called, is an achievement in and of itself, and we've heard many a great session along those lines on The Castle—hopefully I've presented the "cream" of local and nationwide artists working in that milieu—but to do something like Decimus is another matter entirely, in that it's one individual really sounding like a "band," and as Pat expressed in the post-session interview (and I paraphrase), to change the environment in this way is to change people's minds via suggestion. In my personal view, the Decimus works achieve this in spades, and as a result sit comfortably alongside some of my most-favorite music—because a true journey occurs, and to follow that composer's gentle suggestion, to take the journey, is the great joy of listening.

This particular set, "Decimus H" (as Decimus LPs are numbered, and digital and/or live works are lettered) is highly recommended for fans of Conrad Schnitzler (R.I.P.), Asmus Tietchens, instrumental works by Throbbing Gristle, and for a more contemporary reference, Hive Mind. It's sure to please, in general, fans of the more electronic side of Krautrock music, and post-TG global-"industrial" electronics.

Huge thanks to engineer Ernie Indradat for helming yet another successful Castle session, his sensitivity to many types of music is plainly evident in the body of work he's done with the show. And yet again, Tracy Widdess saves the day by making a valid rendering of my amateur photo capture of an artist who plays in near-complete darkness. Boundless gratitude to Pat for sharing this excellent work with WFMU and My Castle of Quiet listeners.

Decimus has many recordings available, including several on LP (two of them very new) and more for listening and download or purchase on his bandcamp page.

In a creative universe where everything but everything is postmodern, where citation of creative influences is unnecessary and irrelevant, where "might appeal to fans of ____" doesn't go the mile or two that it used to, what impassions me personally about a band? Why this one and not so many others? I'll try and delineate.... It's the casual earnestness, for one, the way Lady Piss just do, simply lay it down, jumping from one well-written, expertly crafted song to another, with notions of "rock" or "punk" or "metal" or "heavy music" casually abandoned in the face and favor of free-flowing creativity. This is what they do, this is who they are, and miles-above-average song composition and arranging is so very key to their presentation, and sets them obviously apart (to my ears) from the mass of bands on myspace, or Facebook, or wherever. Noel's intelligent, gloomily animated, on-key and fully immersed horror-host delivery of the lyrics and vocal element of the band also propel Lady Piss forward, in a way that simply eludes many bands of their ilk. It's just the right alchemical balance of everything—a perfect moment in time in the form of a rock band.

I hear echoes of The Birthday Party, The Jesus Lizard and many of my historical favorites in these seven songs, though none of that would matter a whit if the songs weren't so damn good and rendered with the irrefutable oomph of a mass UFO sighting. Any band that drives from Baltimore to New Jersey to play an unpaid session at 12:30 a.m., on a moderately popular show on a widely beloved radio station (that and one gig in Brooklyn two nights later) has the right stuff in carefree abundance, and the need (because to "want" is childish) to put their stuff forward in a forum like The Castle, where I made it very clear that I believed in them, supported what they were doing, and felt wholeheartedly that they had the ability to reach greater heights in their field. By now, it's my hope that most regular Castle listeners know that the invitation to an artist to perform live on the show is never extended flippantly, or without this core belief. Like many who have come before me, I choose to believe in music, and its performers, rather than God or such other misty intangibles.

So, enough leaden praise—you've got the point; here now are the songs. 

Expert and enthusiastic live engineering by Diane "Kamikaze" Farris. Colorful, high-impact manipulation of my band photo as always by Tracy Widdess of Brutal Knitting. You can pick up a copy of the Streaming e.p. (all six songs are featured in this set) by writing to Lady Piss on myspace, or through bandcamp, where you may choose to purchase a record with a free download code, or just grab the digital album—such greatness to be had for three measly American dollars. Endless gratitude to the band for making my birthday number 47 something more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been.

Taking into account all my years on WFMU, including my original tenure doing the weekly Hip Bone program (1984-1999), this live performance, a world debut by the Raspberry Bulbs 4-man combo, is one event that I shall place among the highest, most gratifying events I have ever had the decided privilege of presenting on the radio. Infused as it is, with a taste of the original rock 'n' roll energy, spirit and earnest delivery that made parents in the 50s fear Gene Vincent, and corporations in the 70s suppress the efforts of The Sex Pistols, this RB set is music + power defined. Something to spring on my hopefully appreciative grandkids.

I purchased the Raspberry Bulbs' debut cassette, Finally Burst...With Fluid, in 2009, from the man himself, long-time Bone Awl drummer, founder/proprietor of Seed Stock records, also known as He Who Crushes Teeth. My intense Bone Awl fandom re-ignited, as he described the tape as a solo project of his own, and my need to be on tap with all things Bone Awl was further satisfied, when I got home, and played this little motherfucker of a tape. The similarities to the parent project were there, sure, but the songs struck an instant chord of originality as well, owing more to first-generation punk, Oi!, and garage rock, and goddamn if the songs weren't catchy as hell.

Thus began a casual email discourse between Mr. RB and myself, I knowing that the tape (and the others that followed) were a one-man effort. I nonetheless threw it out there that were he to ever organize a combo to render this material live, the My Castle of Quiet program would be a welcome place to roll the dice, the invitation was open.

Fast forward to the first third of this year, and much to my pleasant surprise, a Raspberry Bulbs appearance on the show, not only a live set but a sheer *debut* of the newly formed RB combo, was now in the planning stages. And here it is, fulfilling and surpassing any expectations I might have had, like human gunpowder, well-rehearsed and ready to take the world over. Saying "thanks" at this point seems trite, despite my earnest gratitude, as RB & Co. surely know by now that they killed it, bagged it, and took it home.

What to say? Live appearances will follow, and I can't encourage you strongly enough to attend one or all (Saturday 6/30 @ Red Light District, as part of Burning Fleshtival III, and Sunday, 8/21, as part of a great bill @ Secret Project Robot.) Much credit must go to WFMU's own Diane "Kamikaze" Farris, who engineered the set, and lent her expertise, while at the same time being open to input from the band, and myself, as the live sound was fine-tuned. Thanks also, as always, to Tracy Widdess, for rendering my abysmal-as-ever iPhone capture of the band, making it something worth looking at more than once.

All hail the 'Bulbs, finally burst.

Some two weeks on from the event, I still find analysis of J. Soliday's complex and challenging performance on my show a bit like chasing smoke. The sounds defy ready analysis and/or categorization. I feel compelled to return to my admittedly oft-used ready comparison of the INA-GRM composers, the correlation in this being perhaps most valid, more so than in the case of any other previous MCoQ guest performer. But instead of coming armed with a through-composed score, magnetic tape and a few razor blades, Soliday instead covered one of our tables with an array of gear with which he is clearly intimate, and "composed" instead in real time, with some of the most-focused, and at-ease, improviser's sensitivity that I have ever witnessed.

These two sets are like a free-flowing dance of sound, with the clompity-clomp of horse hooves sliding easily into electronic bleats, sewage-tunnel drones, air-vent clatter, chirping-bird dialogue, short-wave distortion—hell, be ready for anything and everything is about all I can say—a seemingly effortless collage of a somehow very organic brand of circuit-bent electronics, rendered by a true master.

Set one is the clamor of jarring, busy-but-smooth juxtapositions, while set two leads us down the path with Francois Bayle-like layered drones, a glorious dissonance of about seven minutes, until the sonic horde returns, having learned a few tricks on their sojourn. This music certainly has the ring of Soviet or Eastern-European science-fiction film as well, and Artemeyev is another comparison that comes readily to mind. One listener noted "epic soundtrack" in the playlist comments, and I wholeheartedly agree,

I certainly cannot thank Jason enough for completing the circle, from Castle listener and fan, to live performer / guest, as his craft is mighty, and was a more-than-welcome fit to our weekly proceedings at The Castle. Bob Bellerue, stalwart Castle engineer and clearly a Soliday fan, brought great sensitivity to his engineering of the session, making for a seemingly effortless performer / engineer collaboration, and Tracy Widdess colorfully stomped my paltry iPhone captures of the artist. 

To hear the full 3-hour program archive, including artist interview, see here for multiple streaming options. 256 kbps mp3s are downloadable immdediately below.

Jason Soliday Web home

Soliday on Discogs.

Academic credentials have I not, but to my experienced ears, Rust Worship's live set, from my program of 27th May, would be a ready thesis for any student of "serious" electronic music, both in its breadth and voluminous content. It also proves, beyond any doubt, that "noise" is no longer even a serviceable adjective for the newer, DIY brand of electronic, improvised music. I point to composers like Bayle and Parmegiani often (perhaps too often, I admit) in the case of performers like Paul Haney, because these are not only my favorite of the INA-GRM school, but also because their best works have gravitas as well as innate listenability, buoyancy even, in comparison to their contemporaries like Varèse.

I met Paul Haney at No Fun Fest 2009, as I was preparing for a return to WFMU's airwaves, as the concept behind My Castle of Quiet the radio program was gelling in my mind. Paul was instantly very open with me, very personable and bold with his opinions and personal points of view, on any number of subjects, not merely music. He was eager to talk, to express himself, and it's this amiability that shines through in Paul's music, and it's been enjoyable for me, as a fan of Rust Worship, to witness Paul growing the project, to the point where experimental stabs and jolts evolve into thoughtful, in-the-moment composition of great variety and emotion.

This 45-minute journey in sound is album-like in its movements and complexity, such that it cannot be easily digested in a single lump; hell, it's taken me a week and a half, and multiple listens, just to assess how I feel about it, and to analyze its successes. And as I began to launch into my post-performance spiel that evening, the one many bands and soloists have heard, about how it's wise not to immediately rate one's live radio performance, but to judge it over several listens and come away from it for a while, etc., Paul said, "I feel pretty damn good about it right now," and he's been just as quick in the past to hang what he thought was a poor Rust Worship performance—not an egotist or a back-patter, just honest.

So it's my suggestion to listen to "Suite of Exhaustion/Recipe of Problems" good and loud, on a good system, over and over a few times; take it in like any good work of art, sonic or otherwise, and don't race to the finish line. There's a lot going on in this piece. 

In a few short months after that first meeting, Paul was guest DJ'ing on The Castle, and I found him to be a person of excellent taste, and ready always to spill over with praise for the music he loved (his Obsolete Units label and its excellent track record being further evidence of this.) His live solo Rust Worship performance on the show now brings things full circle, to the point where Paul's work must be praised and analyzed, much like the live and recorded work of the icons that got him there. The piece's guitar-based coda serves to remind us that our performer cut his teeth listening to Dead C and Skullflower records, and the grand tradition of abuse of signal-processing gear that got the whole ball rolling in the first place.

Thanks to Castle listeners, for giving in-the-moment praise where praise was due, and to Bob Bellerue for sterling and sensitive session engineering, certainly due in part to witnessing Rust Worship develop as I have. This week's photo of Rust Worship in action was taken by your host and author, at a RW performance in Nyack, NY, and photostepped—"Rusted," if you will, by Tracy Widdess of Brutal Knitting fame. Thanks especially to Paul Haney for bringing it, even after local public transportation had had its way with him, hence the piece's title.