Alcest – Public Assembly 2012 [uncut#5]
Brooklyn, Public Assembly 31 March 2012
Set List: Autre temps > Les Iris > Là où naissent les couleurs nouvelles > Les Voyages De L’Âme > Printemps émeraude > Écailles de lune – Part 1 > Sur l’océan couleur de fer > Percées de lumière > Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde > Summer’s Glory
Words by Lauren Jackson
Artwork by Karlynn Holland
Tools: Sony HVR-Z5U, Sennheiser MKH418S – M/S Stereo Shotgun Microphone
As a self-described hardcore fan, people are often confused when they find out I listen to black metal, especially black metal in the vein of Alcest.
How, they question, can someone who identifies so strongly with hardcore—typified by raw emotion and simplistically fast chord progressions—also identify with the complexity of a band like Alcest, a band whose influences and songwriting are as convoluted as the muddle of syllables in each French song title?
The answer is simple: For all its stylization, Alcest is at its core telling a simple story, just like any hardcore band.
Neige, who founded Alcest in 2000, isn’t crafting songs; he’s crafting portals into new worlds; worlds that the esotericists would call the invisible cosmos—places where all beings (both human and non-human) converge. Alcest’s music is spiritual, but without dogma. It is, as the title of their 2012 album suggests, les voyages de l’ame—travels of the soul.
Alcest transcends the bounds of black metal, shoegaze, post-metal or whatever other arbitrary terms one might apply to its sound because Alcest isn’t about genre—it’s about storytelling. And the story it tells (unlike most other extreme bands) is innocent and hopeful…hopeful in the way a crewman on a ship is hopeful that, after a long journey, he will one day wake up to land.
Les Iris
Blondie – CBGB 2006 [uncut#4]
New York City, CBGB’s 14 October 2006
Set List: Hanging on the telephone > Call me > The tide is high > The dream’s lost on me > I wanna be your boyfriend > Mother of earth > Rip her to shreds > One way or another > Poison heart > Please please
I’ve never seen so many camera flashes go off at a show. It was bizarre. It was Blondie ‘opening’ for the Dictators. It was the second-to-last night before CBGB’s closed down for good… When asked about my most memorable shows in New York City, I always have a hard time deciding between Erykah Badu in a Tribeca basement and this one. As a matter of fact, I still get the chills listening to Blondie’s acoustic version of “Hanging on the telephone”.
Please excuse the not so pristine recording quality. There was a lot of pushing and shoving, let alone this being a hand held shot to begin with. .
Tools: Sony HDR-HC1, Sony ECMHST1
Hanging on the telephone
Agalloch – Le Poisson Rouge 2011 [uncut#3]
New York City, (le) Poisson Rouge 22 March 2011
Set List: Into the painted grey > Falling Snow > The Watcher’s Monolith > Of Stone, Wind and Pillar > Limbs > Ghosts of the Midwinter Fires > Our Fortress is burning… II: Bloodbirds > Dead Winter Days> In the Shadow of our Pale Companion
~Across five albums, multiple EPs and and a career praised from its very inception, Agalloch have maintained their own brand of distinct dark metal. Whether manifested as sorrow (Pale Folklore), a windswept Pacific Northwestern journey (The Mantle) or philosophical exchange with Lucifer himself (Faustian Echoes), the Portland, Oregon quartet have melded a slew of musical, environmental and cinematic influences together into a well-honed, multifaceted feel as much as they have a tremendous body of work.~ (Asa E – Seattle, WA – January 2012)
NPR had the show recorded with “Pro Tools” by the club’s sound engineers. You can listen to the whole thing here.
Tools: Sony HVR-Z5U
Into the painted grey
Death Grips – Villain 2012 [uncut#2]
Brooklyn, Villain 19 October 2012
Set List: Come up and get me > Lil boy >Get got > Takyon > Guillotine > No love > The Fever > Black Dice > Spread eagle cross the block > Deep web > Lock your doors
Admittedly, before having seen Death Grips on this very day in October I was a passionate hater. I had seen Public Enemy, Consolidated and Crash Worship in their heyday and lived through the great ‘Brooklyn Warehouse Explosion’ decade. That is, after having had a solid punk and hardcore socialization. So how could I possibly embrace an outfit like Death Grips?! I’ll let Josh Strawn (Vaura/Azar Swan) do the explaining:
~Death Grips is punishing. In the beginning there was just the music, a brutal arthouse collaboration fusing familiar styles into something unfamiliar. Then came the hype, the hate, and the speculation about the bands intentions and authenticity. But Death Grips is just still punishing. In classic form, the music and the band outshine the hate and the hype, and bring constant evolutions to the table. What’s clear is that whether you like them or don’t, they don’t care. They “got some shit to say just for the fuck of it,” which is pretty much the manifesto of everything that’s ever been great in music.~
Tools: Sony HVR-Z5U, Sennheiser MKH418S – M/S Stereo Shotgun Microphone
Come up and get me
Portal – Knitting Factory 2010 [uncut#1]
Brooklyn, Knitting Factory 26 May 2010
Set List: Black Houses > Larvae > Illoomorpheme > Tempus Fugit > Writhen > Glumurphonel > 13 Globes > Werships
Portal are like a black hole. Where ordinary bands usually feed audiences with energy, these Australians suck them dry, mercilessly and jawdroppingly. They are without a doubt amongst the greatest of the contemporary boundary pushers. While we were busy shooting video and trying to wrap our heads around the sonic mayhem onstage, the inimitable Samantha Marble snapped gorgeous photos, which were published as part of brooklynvegan‘s coverage.
Tools: Sony HVR-Z5U, Sennheiser MKH418S – M/S Stereo Shotgun Microphone
Werships
Krallice
By Kim Kelly
The first time I laid eyes and fresh ears on Krallice was in a conceptual artist’s oversized studio, framed by boxes of wire and sticky with someone else’s blood. It was a rainy night in Queens. The Manhattan skyline stood slick and weary in the humid air, and the Hudson slithered by as languidly as a sated python. As summer light died away sweetly and darkness stole quietly into its place, the scent of burning flesh wafted by. A skinny man in a leather jacket brushed past me, and a woman in yellow tip-toed behind him. It was July in the year 2008, and with Dagon in tow, Inquisition had brought their occult black rituals to New York. An intriguing new band from the outer boroughs was slated to open the proceedings. A massive art space nestled on the banks of the river had been called into duty, and an unlikely mélange of leather jackets, cheap beer, silver necklaces and ballerina flats populated this alien slice of the city. Flanked by an upscale restaurant and a loading dock, the “venue” seemed as out of place there as its temporary residents, and no one was quite certain of what to expect. As longhairs and curious passersby gnawed bones and snuck swigs from carefully stowed bottles, a great rumbling came from inside the warehouse’s cavernous depths – a harbinger of things to come. As bodies trickled in, four men fiddled with instruments and twiddled knobs, preparing. And then – it began.
The juxtaposition of corpse paint, bemused and be-V-necked voyeurs, and a severed pig’s head lent an air of surrealism to that arresting, monumentally cathartic performance that that young band with the strange name and even stranger aesthetic had chosen to unleash. Whether or not we realized it then, Krallice had arrived.
Mike Pride Quartet: From Bacteria To Boys
From Bacteria to Boys featuring Darius Jones on alto sax, Alex Marcelo on piano and Peter Bitenc on bass is a Brooklyn based jazz quartet, led by drummer Mike Pride. I’ll leave it to the fine gentlemen below to fill you in on the details of Pride’s extraordinary craft. Let me just add that any dude pushing the limits of the avant-garde and experimental scene, while rocking a Ministry or Jesus Lizard shirt, is my kindred spirit. (((unartig)))’s live video anthology comes with all original text contributions by Arthur Goldwag (Best selling author of “Isms & Ologies” and “Cults, Conspiracies and Secret Societies”), Charlie Looker, Ben Gerstein, Jacob Wick, Jamie Saft, Peter Nye Kerlin, Byrne Klay, Mary Halvorson, Hank Shteamer, Kentaro Saito, Katie Young, Andrew D’Angelo, Kirk Knuffke, Keesha Mishawn, Josh Sinton, Jason Stein and Jonathan Moritz.
Crash Worship
Aktionskunst And Primitivism
By Alexander Nym
Almost unknown to everyone not involved with the West-coast experimental-/post-industrial scene, CRASH WORSHIP (or Adoration De Rotura Violenta, as they called themselves in Spanish) is one of those groups whose cult status looms over its actual period of existence. Allegedly founded as an experimental studio outfit by Markus Wolff and Simon Cheffins in San Diego in 1987, CW soon discovered an all-round artistic hands-on-approach to create more than mere music. Their enthusiasm to produce stickers, posters, and a startling variety of unusual articles (even daggers, according to Wolff, who’d go on to found WALDTEUFEL, an occult/norse-inspired project to explore his German roots) was also reflected in their legendary live shows: besides a powerful array of DIY-drumsets, distorted bass, industrial vocals and weird electronics, audiences found themselves actively involved in the shows when band members would rush through the crowd, spraying spectators with water, cream, wine, honey and, according to certain sources, sometimes blood, urine and other substances. The shows regularly mutated into quasi-dionysian orgies with half-naked people dancing themselves into a trance to the hypnotic tribal drumming reminiscent of masters of the genre like the post-industrial heroes of the MILITIA and TEST DEPT. brand.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Yuppicide – Retrospective
‘Do you know what a love letter is? It’s a bullet from a fucking gun. Straight through your heart.’ If said profound lines from Yuppicide’s song “True Love” reflect reality, then our video retrospective, covering the band’s complete lifespan from the late 80’s to the ‘last’ show in the 90’s and the current 2010 reunion, is indeed a raging machine gun operated by Trust Magazine’s Jan Roehlk. Singlehandedly and with a great deal of enthusiasm he conducted and compiled interviews with Don Fury/Producer & Recording Engineer, Pavlos Ioanidis/WreckAge Records and all four members of Yuppicide. A German translation of these interviews appeared in the June/July 2010 issue of Trust Magazine. Additional praise and thanks goes to Alicia Osborne and Rachael Guenther for their highly valued editorial services. This retrospective furthermore would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of Yuppicide’s own Jesse Jones, who alongside Patrick Baclet/Out of Vogue provided exclusive liner notes for the videos and also opened up his personal archive from which the retrospective draws most of its footage. Uncharacteristic of what one usually finds on this site, our Yuppicide video anthology features mostly non (((unartig))) recorded material. For those videos for which source info was available credits can be found at the end of the corresponding clips. Furthermore, please keep in mind that this project was started and completed back when a Yuppicide reunion seemed totally out of the question. As a result some of the interview questions are slightly outdated. Nevertheless, we decided not to nick ’em. We hope you’ll enjoy what is the visual account of a band that changed the face of New York Hardcore forever.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Skeletons – Video Anthology
“Music was my first love – and it will be my last. – Music of the future – and music of the past. – To live without my music – would be impossible to do. – In this world of troubles, – my music pulls me through” (John Miles). All cheesiness aside, thanks to Skeletons for reminding me of this simple truth. There was a time in my life during which I had forgotten what music means to me. But along came Skeletons, a band that is constantly exploring, evolving and rearranging itself – both compositionally and constitutionally. Sometimes a duo, sometimes an orchestral big band but mostly a quintet, the only constant in this gleeful Brooklyn outfit remains a never ending procession into the artistically unknown. Skeletons create pop songs for people who recoil from simple structured shallowness. Songs that exercise a lust for riveting creativity and songs that evaporate a colorful bouquet of styles and influences through a gazillion pores with every note played. If there is beauty in music – and I’m talkin’ unconditionally transcending beauty, not just some superficial pretty surface – then Skeletons are right at the heart of it. It is a very special gift that this band calls their own. Matthew Mehlan and company are able to reignite long lost sparks in self-proclaimed oversaturated burnouts like myself. Being talented alone hardly does the trick. To elevate mind-boggling craftsmanship to a higher level of seductive artistry one must also be part of the dedicated and rarely found few to whom music is their first love, and to whom it will be their last. In Skeletons’ case said dedication over the years intertwined with communal aspects such as the creation of their own independent and free-spirited art space, “The Silent Barn”, and taking upcoming Hip Hop crew Nine 11 Thesaurus under their guiding wings. If you will, Skeletons are 21st century hippies, a fine group of people who have overcome antiquated fashions and styles while keeping the general idea of a community driven sensibility for working with one another very much alive. Over the course of the last five years (((unartig))) documented the many faces of Skeletons both in New York City and Europe, the highlights of which are presented with this anthology. Alongside these A/V capsules come words by Jonathan Pfeffer/Capillary Action, Jocelyn Soubiran/Zebulon, Charlie Looker/Extra Life and Andreas Schnell/Trust/TAZ.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
UNARTIG 
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