Little Women
Darius Jones Alto sax, Jason Nazary Drums, Travis Laplante Tenor sax, Andrew Smiley Axe
While on the surface one might perceive a Little Women performance as chaos and mayhem, it is really the band’s very soul to let emotions run loose. Unlike many of their contemporaries, Little Women don’t hide under the ‘head music’ umbrella. “My Heart isn’t healthy” for example is easily the most beautiful piece of music coming out of Brooklyn in the last five years. My calling it the ‘emo song’ brings a big fat grin to Laplante’s face every time the subject matter comes up. What makes this particular composition so remarkably outstanding is its courageous use of melody. Not in a cheesy popular music context of course. Radio-conditioned mainstream listeners will still run screaming from anything this band will ever produce. What Little Women have so skillfully overcome are the limitations of abstraction by infusing an unfiltered stream of heartthrob into their catatonic onslaught. This is music that deeply moves me, to a level that is almost too pathetic to admit.
Below are a/v time capsules ranging from the early years all the way to the present. Additional text narrative comes from Charlie Looker/Extra Life, Weasel Walter/Flying Luttenbachers, Hank Shteamer/STATS, Matthew Mehlan/Skeletons and MV Carbon/Metalux.
[Weasel Walter]
Right now, Little Women is one of the most unique bands around who bridge the gap between high-energy free jazz influences and gnarly noise rock bombast. Their odd, angular compositions shoot beyond idiomatic constraints, made from sets of foreboding blocks containing intense molecular activity, rammed up against each other in inexplicable manners. The music seems to objectively reflect the internal behavior of the components of each sonic cell – the various instruments fighting, mocking each other, trying to mate in awkward counterpoint or slamming together in unexpected unision. There is a tortured feel to the music of Little Women, possibly the result of some very sick notion of black humor shared amongst its members. It slices like a hundred rusty razor blades, the wound cauterized by the hot wind from subway vents and spashed in half-drank cans of Red Bull . . . jittery, squirming and totally alive.
What truly differentiates them from the mass of identi-skronk units is their extremely sophisticated approach to total dissonance. The group is alarmingly full sounding despite their bass-less twin-saxophones, guitar and drums line-up because what we hear is not only the voices of the separate instruments, but the chaotic beating of difference tones created by aggressively manipulated microtonal intonation. To some this will be an annoyance – it creates a strong physiological sensation of panic, not unlike screaming babies or speeding ambulances! To some of us, it’s a conjuration of something beyond what can be heard or seen – Little Women create a jarring form of music inhabited by ghosts. Fucked up, weird, frantic ghosts. If you wake up screaming in the middle of the night after listening to their music, I’d call it a success.
Weasel Walter | Brooklyn, February 2010
[Matthew Mehlan | Skeletons]
When I was many years younger (before the internet existed as it does now) you used to be able to read or hear about all kinds of music without IMMEDIATELY hearing it in a pop up/embedded/blah blah or iTunes 30 seconds in 30 second sample… SO I used to take those words and or comments from friends and imagine these INTENSE kinds of musics I had always wanted to hear. I had this huge list of records that I would take to the library – you know records that were “cutting edge” “avant garde” “darkest of [blank's] career” – but I’d check em out and usually say “This is too eighties” or “THIS is dark? It just sounds like…” or “I’ve heard Jazz before… I mean, I bought Kind of Blue last Christmas with my Tower Records gift card” or “THIS is “hardcore” punk? …sounds like jocks singing Green Day but poorly recorded!” And though my musical horizons have broadened enormously since then, it’s still how I approach hearing music – going to shows, checking out records or snippets on the internet: THIS HAS GOT TO BE SOMETHING THAT TAKES ME OUTTA THIS MOMENT! Something capital B – Beyond the normal amount of energy, Beyond our social nice-ities, Beyond the comfort zone! Which is what I like about Little Women.
There’s sooo much music in the world! And so much that is happy to flitter around in that background. When I first saw Little Women play, the air was snapped outta the room and everybody’s face / Facebook status turned to “OMFGWTF!” One moment I felt like I was watching a car accident, then I was Little Mac from Mike Tyson’s Punch out and I just beat Soda Popinski and Doc is taking me for a jog to my new password, then some little brat stole my candy and is singing “Nah nah ne nah nah you can’t catch me!”, then they start screaming and sobbing into their horns and the set’s over and there’s that great feeling in the air where everyones wondering whether to clap and the sound guy has no idea what kind of music to put on. Their record “Teeth” is equally tight, purposeful, intense: 20 minute one-sided LP recorded live to two-track?!
A band like Little Women gives me time travel fantasies: that I could take this music back in time and give it to some poor writer to try and explain it on a page, so I could read it and imagine what it sounds like and then finally hear it. Or that I could travel back in time and hand music like this to my 14 year old self and say “SERIOUSLY DUDE YOU’RE GONNA LOVE THIS!” And if the world were mine, kids all over the world today would be wearing Little Women t-shirts and blasting this music like Macaulay Calkin in Michael Jackson’s (RIP) “Black or White” video, parents screaming.
Matthew Mehlan | Brooklyn, February 2010
[Charlie Looker | Extra Life]
Like all of the music which I find profoundly revealing, the music of Little Women embraces and consolidates vibes which are normally considered in opposition. The band renders these vibes non-dual, non-opposing, returning to the original place where they are one to begin with. This is the basis of magick in both the East and West, from the Tao to the Hermetic and alchemical traditions.
The main dualism which the band subverts is that of intellect vs. emotion. After all this time, our culture still regards the mind and heart as not only separate but at war. The new Diesel jeans ad campaign spells this out literally: Smart = brain / Stupid = heart , so “Be Stupid”. In a less crude but similar way, Indie music culture often subscribes to this. Bands play stereotyped roles : Witty College Nerds (smart), Primitive Psych Nature Children (stupid), etc. Little Women do not play this game.
Little Women’s roots in jazz music are most alive not in their instrumentation or sound, but more in their overall holistic artistic value system. Jazz culture has always upheld as values both instrumental proficiency and raw soul power; tradition and personal voice; structure and spontaneity; intellectual contemplation and pure violent action; the church (or college) and the streets; divine spiritual love and base sexual depravity; books and drugs. In the heyday of Bebop, these currents were seen as part of the same river and it was assumed that an artist would deal with all streams, striving for the universal. It is with this orientation that Little Women approach their music.
The band’s cosmic scope is also at work on a more specific stylistic level. Elements of punk, jazz, gospel and classical music are absorbed in the music without any sense of pastiche, juxtaposition or the demand of “reconciliation”. These styles are one in their music, as they are one at their source (the human Unconscious, God, etc). This non-duality can only be the result of monumental labor, not only of instrumental practice and group rehearsal, but moreover of rigorous personal soul-searching and the discipline of imagination. These musicians flex every artistic muscle they have, mind, body and spirit, as one.
To use the simplest platitude, Little Women is four musicians just being themselves. The intense beauty of their music demonstrates what a powerful force is unleashed when people search for the whole Self, non-divided, one. Looking around at how few musicians actually even attempt this shows how difficult and epic an undertaking it is just to be oneself. I love this band and I would encourage anyone who wants to experience deep artistic conviction to check them out.
Charlie Looker | Brooklyn, February 2010
[Hank Shteamer | Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches]
NYC’s own Little Women purvey noise-punk-jazz, performed by individuals who understand–would you believe it?–noise, punk and jazz. Crossover/fusion/what have you, it’s more difficult than it sounds. You’ve got Mahavishnu Orchestra, Last Exit, Black Flag (The Process of Weeding Out!), Coptic Light (RIP), the Thing and not too many others, in terms of ensembles who have truly comprehended and internalized the whole balls-vs.-improvisational-acumen concept. This is an extremely HARD ensemble. The music is built of spastic splatterpunk riffs–intricate yet whiplash-bestowing–played by a quartet (Travis Laplante on tenor, Darius Jones on alto, Andrew Smiley on guitar and Jason Nazary on drums) and fleshed out with various group atomizations. There are elements of necromantic Free Jazz at work here, certainly, but what really excites me about the band is the way they emphasize all kinds of subgroupings and plotted freedoms.
The most furious sparks often come from Laplante and Jones, who have an insane mental and sonic lockup. They “duo” in the way that soloists “solo,” namely they’ve perfected a method wherein they can both rocket forward headlong and intertwine with absolutely sound logic yet without obvious response cues or clichéd interactivity. They blow OVER each other more than WITH each other; watching them play–often actually staring each other down—is like watching two rams in one of those epic eternal headbutt battles. Constant, lavalike flow but both voices are there and distinct. Don’t even get me started on the ultraperverse, somehow weirdly Pissed Jeans-esque sobbing-and-vomiting-into-upturned-horns with which they have often concluded their sets. Smiley and Nazary lend a barbed-wire framework, gnarled yet sturdy.
Scary and incredible, the REAL punkjazz. Keep a peeled eye out for Throat, Little Women’s upcoming full-length, due in April 2010 on the great Aum Fidelity label (also home to Man’ish Boy, Jones’s great 2009 debut as a bandleader).
Hank Shteamer | Brooklyn, February 2010
P.S. The above is adapted from this Little Women review, which I wrote after catching one of their gigs in 2008. Having checked in with them in ’09, I can verify that they are still killing it along similar lines.
[MV Carbon | Metalux]
The drum is a viscous, patterned surface that lays heavy on top of uncontainable fluids. Thick beats counterbalance and ride high on metallic waves keeping them from splashing out all of their juices at once. You can float for a long time in these waters without feeling breathless. The initial panic is soothed when you realize that the players have gills and will keep you floating continuously on top of their well-structured chaos. Just when you feel you can sink below the surface to a silent and muffled place, you find yourself shot out of a silver blowhole into the prismatic mist of another whirlpool.
MV Carbon | Brooklyn, March 2010
Seven Sioux
Under what rock have I lived for the past 20+ years? That was the primary question circling around my head when I saw Seven Sioux killing it on Saturday, December 19, 2009 in Frankfurt, Germany. Of course I had come across these Austrians before but apparently never bothered to pay close enough attention to this diamond in the rough. It took the 40th birthday bash of one of my best friends, nearly 4000 miles of air travel, two and a half days without proper sleep and a gazillion liters of beer to finally get enlightened. Having been up since Friday morning, Seven Sioux laying ashes to the Exzess felt like… like taking speed, I can only guess. Their emotionally charged DC sound, reminiscent of all time greats like Rites of Spring and Gray Matter, won me over in a whirlwind and kept me going all night. Actually I didn’t go to bed until 7:30am on Sunday morning after having shot the shit with Seven Sioux’s drummer Pezzy all night. Talk about an adrenaline rush.
Below are impressions of said show, as well as words by Rainer Krispel/Seven Sioux and Daniel/Lay Screaming.
[Daniel | Lay Screaming]
The late eighties and early nineties gave birth to a wide network within the European Hardcore scene. Mind you, hardcore during that time and place was more associated with living up to self-set political and ethical standards than promoting dance floor justice by simply kicking the shit out of each other. The more touchy subjects were endless discussions on various ‘-isms’; words like homophobia for instance (although having been created in the sixties) suddenly popped up, years before the tabloids started making fun of the so-called political correctness. But hey, a lot of us tried.
One of the most prominent venues of that time was the Kapu in Linz, Austria. Along with places like the Blitz in Oslo, Norway or maybe the AJZ in Bielefeld, Germany it was a blueprint for an autonomous place that provided cultural access off the beaten path. Peter, Horst, and Rainer were part of the group that ran the Kapu – booking bands, carrying the heavy shit, cleaning restrooms and partying all night. Compared to other venues it was relatively well organized. The promoters’ private homes functioned as night quarters for touring bands and fans, and it is described as having been way cleaner than most of the other shitholes one could drink the night away in during that period. Bands existed in and around the Kapu, most prominently Stand to Fall and Target of Demand – with Rainer on vocals and Huckey on drums. After the split of TOD, Peter and Horst joined and started Seven Sioux. With Alex joining on vocals, the music gained an interesting twist when switching between female and male vocals; this can be checked out on their first LP (see Ebay. Rare, but not expensive) released on Germany’s X-Mist Records, a great label back then. From an outsider’s perspective it appears as if the Linz H/C scene was better connected and more sprawling than the one in Vienna. While the scene in Linz was already up and running, Austria’s capital later on followed in its footsteps with a lot of shows organized by ‘At Mountain’ group and, later, the Flex club in it’s original location.
What remained in spotlight are a couple of labels, distributors, bookers, merchandise companies, backline rentals and –most importantly – places, bands, and fans. Without the latter three the other occupations would never have seen the light of day, although some involved never understood this. The whole idea was based around music and the humble hope of finding better ways of communication between audience, band, and song rather than selling shirts in football stadiums.
By the mid-nineties a sudden enormous, grunge-culture fueled interest in any new and exploitable underground trend – almost as soon as it was given birth to. This happened partly due to the fact that a lot of old scenesters, after they had graduated from art school, realized that their punk and hardcore roots taught them everything one needs to know about the creativity of an underground scene and ways to profit from it. A good moment to bail out: Seven Sioux split in 1992.
Reasons: The usual. They continued under the name ‘Schwester’ (sister) and played a bunch of shows, sang in German, recorded in DC and called it quits.
Then suddenly, they were back. And I did not pay notice. I think I read some gig announcement in Trust fanzine, raised my eyebrows a little, thought “oh, another old band reforming”, and continued with something else. Seven Sioux released the “Argue Again” CD and, in 2006, the “we are not the scared people” CD that somehow (somehow = Andi from Trier) made it to my desk: Welcome back, but this time even better than the first time around. It is very obvious to connect the sound and the songs to certain bands that released their recordings via DC’s Dischord label, which set the standard for how to run a great label with a clear vision decades ago. In a world of carbon copy (“rock bands”) the Sioux borrowed some, but still came up with plenty of their own originality. Boy, what an album!
Very recently, “Hungover Kingdom” was released as an LP. It’s a punk LP for grown-ups – the soundtrack for a life in which you still love the same places you grew up in, still prefer warm cheap beer in bottles over anything else, and came to understand that the reasons for making music are equally as important as the music in itself. When you’re our age, you don’t argue as fiercely as you did when overthrowing the government didn’t work in the first place – teenage stuff. Instead you start to truly value those who – although work, family, declining health and receding hairlines keep us busy all day – write songs about this life and their experiences within. Issues that still matter, things that still touch our hearts.
Seven Sioux love what they are doing, they are doing it for the right reasons only, and the party’s over when drummer Pezzy goes to bed. Enjoy the video footage.
By the way: Stupid little hearts is not only the best song written about divorce, it is also my favorite song of 2009. And boy, I’m forty years old, I’ve heard a couple of good ones over the decades.
Daniel | Frankfurt, Germany, February 2010
[Rainer Krispel | Seven Sioux]
Linz, Austria´s third largest …hmm… „city“ is a strange place. Hitler went to school there and claimed it his favorite city – go figure! But in the end his plan to make it into a model town for his Aryan nightmare failed like his whole barbaric horror-trip. After WWII, the town became dominated by it’s steel industry, slowly trying to reinvent itself as a cultural centre, becoming Europe’s capital of culture in 2009. Something probably no one outside of Linz even noticed…
Yet for someone who wouldn’t settle for whatever kicks the mainstream „culture“ had to offer, Linz could be a great city with it’s 200.000+ people and it’s reasonable size. That is if one kept one primary objective in mind: Those that didn’t want to die of boredom had to create any non-spoon fed excitement or entertainment themselves. So quite a few people got off their butts to kick some ass, making for a fairly healthy music/art-scene from the early 80’s on. The local punx initially fed on this energy but slowly turned to developing their own thing, hooking up with ideas and music that filtered through the geographically close Southern German Punk/Hardcore scene. In a former youth centre called KAPU things started happening and Linz became part of the European hardcore landscape of the late 80’s/early 90’s, with local bands like Stand to Fall, Target of Demand and Seven Sioux. Many a great band played there, like Negazione, Capitol Punishment, Cheetah Chrome Motherfucker, Scream, L.U.L.L., Spermbirds, Jingo De Lunch, Kafka Process, So Much Hate, Life… But How to Live It?, Soulside, Shudder to Think, Sink, Heresy, All, Verbal Assault, Leatherface, Alice Donut, Fugazi, and No Means No…
Seven Sioux originally set out to be a Wipers cover band, as Rainer (Voice) and Huckey (Drums) felt sort of sidelined when their two comrades in Target of Demand moved to Vienna, limiting that band’s activities. With friends Horst (guitar) and Peter (bass) they started to goof around, and even got Wiper’s „Window Shop For Love“ down – before songs of their own started coming.
Those songs had lyrics in English as compared to Target of Demand’s German ones. Musically they were leaning more towards a „rock“ feel, as Horst did not deny his appreciation for Neil Young, but by the same token these songs were rather diverse sounding. Seven Sioux got tagged as “Dischord influenced”. All four Seven Sioux members loved the label and it’s bands, and „emo“ long, long years before that stupid term became familiar to the mainstream. During the recording of their first demo Alex joined the band. She was supposed to sing some back-ups only but then joined permanently. The female-male twin vocals (unlike John Doe and Exene Cervenka of X the Sioux’s vocalists were neither married nor a couple) became a trademark of their sound, to be heard at many gigs, on their X-Mist LP „Seven Sioux“ and on three 7“-EPs. When Alex left the band after moving to Vienna the boys in the band continued playing and released one more LP entitled „An Other“ (X-Mist) as well as a 10“ on Rainer´s own Angry Sun label. Seven Sioux soon after changed their name to Schwester, started singing in German and playing a set of all new songs. Before breaking up in 1994 they recorded one album at Inner Ear Studios with Don Zientara. By then the local music scene had become stagnant and somehow that whole hc-thing felt done and spent, music business bullshit having crept in over the years, replacing ideas and creativity. And fun!
With the exception of Alex, everybody continued to play music, Horst and Peter always playing together in several bands. Huckey became an Austrian Hip-Hop pioneer and legend with the amazing Texta. Rainer moved to Vienna, where he did bookings for a club and played in several bands as well. In 2002 Seven Sioux’s original line up played a gig at the KAPU as part of a benefit for Röda, an important and well-loved cultural centre that was flooded. A great and emotional night! Rainer’s daughter saw the band in action for the first time. It was a special moment for her to see all those people that crowded her earliest childhood memories together on stage, because the band used to hang out at her parent’s flat. Efforts to keep the band going came to nothing when no new songs were written.
In 2005 Peter wrote a letter to Rainer stating that he and Horst considered reviving Seven Sioux, asking Rainer if he would join the band for a last round of shows, playing the old songs. He did. Pezzy of the local outfits Deadzibel and Dealer Infamy took over the drums as Huckey was too busy with Texta. Alex would have loved to join as well, but found it too stressful as she was happy with her job and family. Shows went great, the new four-pieced Seven Sioux found great joy in their music (again). All of a sudden new songs were written and it was decided to continue. A friend offered studio-time to record the set of 14 old songs live in the studio. This session became the c.d. „Argue Again“ – the 10inch before the break-up was entitled „Seven Sioux Don´t Argue Any Longer“ – released by Vienna based D.I.Y.-label Fettkakao, soon followed by „We Are Not the Scared People“ containing all new songs. Shows in England and Edinburgh in October 2007 did the spirit of the band lots of good as did collaborating with Vienna´s Stimmgewitter Augustin, a 9-piece choir connected to the Augustin, a street newspaper in the vein of London´s The Big Issue. These 13 people on stage together are quite a sight when Seven Sioux and Stimmgewitter perform together! They also released a Picture-Vinyl 7inch. 2010 will see „Schmankerl der Schöpfung“, a 6 Song-EP by Stimmgewitter Sioux. In early 2009 Seven Sioux released „Hungover Kingdom“, again via Fettkakao. And – yessssssss! – on vinyl. It is probably the essential record of Seven Sioux MK II. The four grown-up punx of Seven Sioux (punx with jobs and kids, hell, yeah!) enjoy arguing, traveling, being a loud – sometimes sloppy – sometimes shithot, always passionate punk-band profoundly, as they do this they meet people and communicate anger, tenderness, ideas, love, hate, insights and stupidities through music. So why stop?
Rainer Krispel | Vienna, Austria, January 2010
Bloody Panda
An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when one celestial object moves into the shadow of another. The term is derived from the ancient Greek noun ἔκλειψις (ékleipsis), which is derived from the verb ἐκλείπω (ekleípō), “to cease to exist,” a combination of prefix εκ- (ek-), from preposition εκ, εξ (ek, ex), “out,” and of verb λείπω (leípō), “to be absent”. When an eclipse occurs within a stellar system, such as the Solar System, it forms a type of syzygy—the alignment of three or more celestial bodies in the same gravitational system along a straight line. [Wikipedia]
Coming to think of it, it’s probably safe to say that I’ve always been drawn to the ‘darker’ side of the sonic spectrum rather than finding much joy in the ‘happy camper’ corner. Like everyone else I of course occasionally do branch out to dip my beak into warmer waters and sunnier soundscapes. Although in the big pictures, the dark, the aggressive, the desperate, the tormented, the raw and the grim ruled my world in various ways from the get go. Consequently it comes as no surprise that with Bloody Panda it was love at first sight for me. No other band that I saw in the last 20+ years comes closer to being the artistic embodiment of a fully scaled eclipse, complete and utter darkness, cold and mysteriously ferocious. When these high priests of doom strike their first chord it feels as if they have the ability to switch off the sun with an organ note or a simple bass string. Yet their earsplitting compositional onslaught defies categorization. It is heavy but not metal, it is dark but not gothic, it is complex but not math, it is unorthodox but not experimental, it is atmospheric but not ambient. It is, frankly spoken, a monstrous beast on the loose, impossible to pin down, let alone classify with known musical genres.
Having followed the band around New York City since 2006, (((unartig))) is pleased and proud to finally present a selection of brutally magnificent performances, alongside an exclusive interview conducted for us by Fred Pessaro, Metal/Punk Editor of BrooklynVegan. Additional text contributions come from Aidan Baker/Nadja and Jan/Black Shape of Nexus.
[Fred Pessaro | BrooklynVegan]
There is no shoulder shrug reaction to Bloody Panda. The confrontational and awe-inspiring live juggernaut always elicits either a “wow” or “not a fan” – nothing between. It’s an indication of great art, provocation whether positive or negative.
Ever since my first live experience with them, I have aligned myself with the “wow”. The hoods. The screams. The wailing and aching female voice. The ambiance. And those riffs! Dear (dark) lord, those down-tuned riffs will rattle your innards, shaking loose anything resembling false/hipster metal.
Excellent tunage aside (evidence of that below), I’ve often wondered about the inner workings of Bloody Panda; how did they arrive at their vision for the band? I posed that question, and a few others, to Josh Rothenberger, Blake McDowell, and Bryan Camphire.
Fred Pessaro | Brooklyn, February 2010
Chicken or Egg: The tiny female lead singer joins a 5MPH doom band, or the 5MPH doom band adds a tiny female singer.
Josh: I played in bands with Bryan for the last 10 years. We teamed up with Blake and decided to explore some different paths: Eastern music, minimalism, expressionism, atmosphere, sloth. At this time we came across an ad in a record store. “Get ready to be in the biggest band in the world ASAP. Play music at the risk of your life.” We figured the ad was placed by some 300 pound bearded, tattooed metal dude. When we found out the ad’s true author was a 100 pound Japanese girl with a fetish for panda bears we became aroused. Yeah, I said “aroused.”
Yoshiko had this demo of 21 one minute songs. Little explosions. I heard certain things in that demo that made me think she could really be the centerpiece of a band doing majestic avant-garde metal. The marriage was a really fun process. It’s still in the works in some ways.
Josh (cont.): For example, the vocals on Summon were done a bit differently than Pheromone. For Pheromone the vocals were written simultaneously with the music (for the most part). On Summon only a few vocal lines were written with the instrumentation. Most of the vocal lines come from Yoshiko working through ideas, with me recording and layering various effects. Actually we liked some of this experimentation so much we decided to home record some of the vocal lines to get the exact swirling psychedelic sound you hear on tracks like “Miserere.” We embrace the limits and the boundless possibilities that technology provides. Overwhelming a low-fi recording device connotes the type of the onslaught we aim to bring to every live show.
Bryan: We formed around Yoshiko’s pheromones.
The theatrical element to the band is very strong. Is there an overarching concept that pits the executioner’s hoods against Yoshiko in short skirts/go-go boots?
Blake: No overarching concept. It was an experiment we tried several years ago and have stuck with because of the performative effect.
What is the inspiration for the theatrical element? Does that come from Yoshiko’s visual artistry background?
Josh: The masks were part of Bloody Panda’s fascination with the obscure. Smoke and mirrors. Things you can see but can’t quite clearly make out. Sounds you can hear, but can’t quite pinpoint. I’m more interested in the echo of a guitar chord than the actual chord itself. Shadow over the woman it’s attached to. Ghost over the dead body. I love Liz Harris (Grouper) for this reason. Listening to her music is like waking in a dark house with no memory of how you got there, and then exploring the room completely unsure as to whether you are dead or alive or dreaming.
Yosh is maybe taking part in the ritual of obscura in her own ways, hiding her face behind a wall of thick black hair for most of the performance.
We are currently exploring new means of conveying this theme of un-seeable dystopia in our live performances.
There seems to be a wide variety of artists that you have played with… the sunny happy hippies on Akron Family to Jarboe. Add to that the fact that your band is not the type to provoke a mild reaction. What was the strangest audience that you played to?
Josh: Since this band formed we have visited scenes for a night or two and then moved on. We appreciate and enjoy when a scene offers up its bed and a warm-cooked meal, but in the morning we ultimately continue on the journey. Ideas are exchanged within the cozy walls of our temporary homes, we learn much from “the scene,” but we have no intention of making a permanent home there. This nomadic existence we’ve chosen forbids us to become “extreme” in the way fans of certain genres desire. But that type of genre-extremism hopefully is replaced by the utter destitution of a journey with no destination, of an endless road that mandates we remain strangers in every house that welcomes us.
What is your favorite live show memory?
Blake: The crowd at the Whitehouse show at the old Northsix. A friend added us last minute and I’d venture no one in that crowd had ever seen us perform, or even heard of us then.
Josh: Maybe our first show ever at the old Continental. I remember hearing Yosh scream into the mic for the first time in a live performance. I looked at Richie – our drummer at the time – and we both flashed this same look of “I just shat my pants”.
Now that you have played with a glacially paced doom band, do you only listen to 1000 MPH grindcore and black metal now? Where does inspiration come from?
Blake: Inspiration comes from just listening. I carry a sound recorder with me almost all the time. Tape, listen, tape, listen,…. a lot of ideas come from sounds that would otherwise go unnoticed. Gamelan music from Central Java is a huge influence as well.
Bryan: Portal’s new record Swarth has been in constant rotation in my stereo. Theirs is the most sinister unrelenting aural decimation put to tape in recent memory. Their music is blistering and evil and provides more inspiration with every listen for me. As for the realm of doom, Fleshpress and Wormflegm carry the torch. For glacially paced mind-melting mysticism, nothing compares to gamelan music of Surakarta, Central Java.
[Aidan Baker | Nadja]
Some Thoughts on the Impact of Bloody Panda’s Music on the Citizens of Buffalo
I don’t remember exactly when or how Bloody Panda and Nadja first got in touch…one of us emailed the other at some point. I can say that we first played a show together June 19, 2006 at Tonic in New York City. I remember being impressed by the volume and the intensity of their show. And thinking that we made a good pair; they were almost flamboyant in a self-effacing way, faces obscured behind their masks, and we were the opposite, self-effacing in an almost flamboyant way, exposed but hiding behind our music…yet both of us equally loud and heavy.
We’ve since played a number of shows with them, always on BP’s home turf, yet the one show I remember best — probably for all the wrong reasons — was on one of their first tours: April 17, 2007 at Mohawk Place in Buffalo, NY (also with Beta Cloud and Ocean). Buffalo isn’t exactly our home turf, but we’d played there a few times and it’s closer to Toronto than it is to New York City, so it kind of felt like they were finally playing in our ‘hood…
Mohawk Place is a dive, no better word for it, in downtown Buffalo, which can sometimes seem like a bit of wasteland, especially after business hours. There’s a street sign that greets you out front of the bar that has on it pictures of a handgun and syringe with slashes through them and the caption: SCHOOL ZONE – NO DRUGS OR GUNS. Which we, as Canadians, find particularly absurd. Not that we don’t have drugs or guns in Canada, but we’re either a) naive enough to believe that people will have enough common decency not to bring guns or drugs into a school zone or b) cynical enough to believe that a sign isn’t going to deter anyone who would in the first place.
Anyway, as we were loading in, BP pulled up and tumbled rather dazedly out of a dirty van into the dim, dingy streets. They seemed somewhat non-plussed by the lack of activity and absence of people around and wondered if there would be any audience (a legitimate concern in Buffalo). Well, there’s always the Mohawk’s regulars, we told them…and there they were, hunched over the bar and nursing their beers like the permanent fixtures they were…decidedly unimpressed that a bunch of musicians were about to disturb the peace of their already numbed evening…
In the end, I think we had more people who actually come to hear the bands than there were regulars who didn’t — but it was a close margin. And whether BP took inspiration from those people who wanted to hear them or the distinct lack of interest from those at the bar, their set was particularly fierce that night. The regulars did their best to ignore all the sounds and vocal histrionics emanating from our corner of the room, but I’m sure their ears were ringing the next morning…some tangible impact at least…
Aidan Baker | Toronto, Canada, January 2010
[Jan | Black Shape of Nexus]
Usually there is some kind of personal approach to the bands featured on this site and that is what I like about it. Sadly I never met or talked to any of the Bloody Panda members and even more sad is the fact that I never experienced them live. So what can I write about them, that could be of any interest? I first took notice of Bloody Panda after seeing a comment they had posted on another band’s Myspace page. At first I wondered about their band name and honestly I was a bit bored with their comment writing style. It seemed lame to write from right to left, as I thought this was just another foolish attempt by another foolish band to be as evil, kvlt (or whatever) as possible. Sporting an image neither the people behind the band, nor the music could possibly live up to. So I ignored them and didn’t visit their Myspace site. Later on I bought the Kayo Dot /Bloody Panda split LP, of course because of the Kayo Dot side of it. After spinning the Kayo Dot side, I flipped the record and was totally blown away by this slowed down, diverse, somehow haunting stuff with its dominant organ sound and an almost archaic feel to it. Somehow with these two songs, my interest in Bloody Panda grew and my first impression got revised. Suddenly everything felt quite right: Their name, their music and their approach. As I got deeper into their world I got the feeling that they are passionate about what they are doing, but always with an ironic twist. Seeing, that Yoshiko surely has Asian roots even their band name felt like it was chosen with a touch of humor. Or is it a play on the panda-like corpse paint lots of Black Metal bands are sporting? I still don’t know, but I guess the feeling, that there is something more about this band than visible at the first sight kept them in my mind and made them stay there. With tons of bands floating around on the Internet nowadays, rarely does a band stay stuck in my mind and even less likely will a band get me into chasing down their records. Although Bloody Panda were able to! Checking their Myspace site today, still reveals no European tour dates, but once again confirms the impression they left on me. Because how could a band be wrong, with such diverse top Myspace friends as Kool Keith, Arvo Pärt and Krallice?
Jan | Mannheim, Germany, December 2009
Excepter
Five years in the life of Excepter: As seen through the eyes of (((unartig))) and narrated by Nick Sylvester, writer and editor of the downtown zine Perineum.
[Nick Sylvester | Perineum Zine]
The first time I saw Excepter was five years ago at Tonic, a small experimental music venue in the Lower East Side that slowly went under as the condos went up. I don’t think I had moved to the city yet but Excepter would be one of the reasons I’d be doing so eventually. The group performed something like musical theater that night: Caitlin Cook, who I remember being tall and blond and beautiful (I only saw her this once, so don’t hold me to it), wore a short fur coat and walked on and off stage into the audience, seeming aloof and murmuring into a microphone whose signal was treated with considerable delay and reverb. When she took off the coat, revealing a backless dress, you could count every one of her vertebrae, from the top of her neck and all the way down. I had never seen anything like that before. John Fell Ryan, who I am nearly certain was wearing his linen suit and a bucket hat, also looked the part of prophet, while the rest of the band played bass guitar, a drum set with torn cymbals, and a small drum machine. Sometimes the sounds made sense together, other times they did not. Each player held the other in quiet disregard. The crowd, which had been wall-to-wall, thinned out considerably. But for whatever reason, I had the distinct feeling that night of wanting to understand–who were these quiet, disregarding people, what did they read, what did they listen to, what food did they eat, where did they get their clothing, what did they worship, what did they think of the walls closing in around them.
This might be the last band I’ll ever have that kind of blind-trust relationship with–where if I didn’t like some new development of theirs, such as when Caitlin and Calder parted ways with the band (Cook had the best ‘haunted vocals’ in Brooklyn), or when newcomer Jon ‘Porkchop’ Nicholson abused his microphone privileges and nearly ruined the band’s show at Northsix, or when the band moved from swirling kraut-like head music and into something more industrial, I assumed I simply didn’t get it. Nate Corbin and Dan Hougland were meticulous beat makers and the stage was theirs by divine right. That was indisputable–no? John Fell Ryan was above the rules of mankind and simply could do no wrong. “I’d like to introduce our machines to you, but I forgot their names,” he said. “I’d like to shake hands with each and every one of you, but I’m on stage…”
Part of me suspected their performance was a gag on spirituality and ritual, not unlike a Kenneth Anger film or Jim Shaw’s Oist movement, but I still went to Church every Sunday. Like a Christian faced with biblical contradictions, I listened to the band’s early streams–MP3 recordings of several hour-long improvisations–and tried hard to justify the parts that dragged. You need the bad parts so you know what the good parts are… a nugget I had stolen from the Beavis and Butthead soundtrack. The last shred of taste credibility I had with Bob Christgau, Dean of Rock Criticism, I lost at a different, particularly flaccid Excepter performance at Tonic. The night Excepter were ‘banned’ from the Knitting Factory was an unbelievably difficult day for me. Here was evidence that this entire city was on Ritalin, that no one had time for anything he didn’t grasp immediately. As I re-read my own account of the incident—it involved a showdown on top of a bar, and some manner of loud, stoned shouting outside the venue, and Excepter were clearly in the wrong–I can’t help but laugh at how vehemently I took the band’s side.
Granted, my devotion to Excepter didn’t mean I didn’t voice some frustration. For a good while I struggled with my doubts as to the Meaning or Point of Excepter in the pages of the Village Voice and Riff Raff, the daily music blog the paper let me write. My concert notes (I took them at all their concerts) were manic attempts to divine the secret messages in what I refused to believe were anything but cosmic dispatches for better living. It’s no wonder that Dan Hougland, who had a friend at the Voice, relayed that he could never tell whether I really liked the band. The record reviews were even worse: “Side A moans and drones like their three earlier sets, but set to broken gear grinds and sawdust kid stutter, Excepter sound like toddlers humming overtones along with mall bells, or rock-star dads with the lawn mower,” I wrote about 2005′s Self-Destruction LP. “The band’s latest Sunbomber EP works that pop-through-bongwater angle everyone’s wanted them to do forever now.” Both these were supposed to be tall compliments, but I ended the piece with a hedge: “Maybe I’m just a mark.”
For all the words I’ve put down about Excepter, I don’t think I once said the full truth: This band changed the way I experience music. As a writer, I take a colossus of stimuli and whittle it down into a narrative–beginning middle end–leaving out less important details that might distract the reader, bringing others to the foreground because I want the reader to feel a certain way. And as a young music critic, I admit to having approached music in a very writerly way–trying to place meaning onto a song, or band, or concert experience, which is not unlike putting a muzzle over a wild animal’s mouth. I credit Excepter to beating that impulse out of me–to teaching me how to let things be.
I owe them one more. When I let my ideas get the best of me and humiliated myself at the Voice in early 2006, John Fell Ryan, his fiance and bandmate Lala Harrison, and the rest of Excepter came to my rescue. They named a recording after me, as if that show, which happened around the day I was offed, had some cosmic connection to my own unrest (“The Ballad of Nick Sylvester”). Maybe they were poking fun at me, but the fact was that my favorite band knew who I was, and they wanted me to know that. I was a pariah, to put it frankly–but still, John and Lala invited me into their Bushwick home for dinner and a private performance in conjunction with the release of Alternation, which might be my favorite Excepter album. They really didn’t have to. I was worthless to them at this point, and worse, my fuck-up may have caused them harm by proxy. It was one of my favorite nights in New York.
Over the next few months I would be lucky to have conversations with John about his creative process, the nature of happy accidents, the psychic toll of always taking the long way home–all ideas that inform my own attitude these days: Slow down. Get out of your own way. Let it happen.
That was three years ago–and as I finish off this piece, watching the roof of the building next to mine slowly sag from the weight of snow, checking the internet far too frequently as reports come in that these last ten years were the worst in American history, and now taking a second to remind you that the fantastic Clare Amory is also in this band, though I wish I knew her better–I worry I’m talking about this band as if it’s in the ground already. This is not the case. Their last two albums–Debt Dept. and Black Beach–are so different and wonderful in their own ways. The former is filled with gritty Chris & Cosey-like techno jams, the latter a minimally treated field recording of percussion and flute as waves crash the shore, with beautiful video accompaniment. The last time I saw Excepter was at The Maze at Death By Audio in September 2009, and it might have been the most compelling I’ve ever seen them.
But my favorite show of theirs was at Monkeytown on February 22, 2008, a/k/a Excepter Presents “Science.” As people sat on low-lying benches and ate three-course meals around the room’s perimeter, the band performed a live soundtrack to the space movies they projected onto all four walls of the vast white art space. (Monkeytown, I’m saddened to hear, is also closing soon.) The band had begun before people were let inside–a slowly throbbing, low-frequency rhythm that wrapped around us like a cocoon. It was the night I learned that Lala was pregnant; she was just beginning to show. It had been a difficult night for me so far: My longest and most significant relationship collapsed on the walk over to the venue. For reasons I forgot, we decided to stay together for the performance anyway. Something about Lala that night, moving carefully around the microphone wires, picking up her flute, putting it back after a few inspired notes… It is hard to explain, as it is so often with this band, but it made me feel better.
Nick Sylvester | New York City, December 2009
