Alaskan // The Weak and the Wounded

I only consider two bands “brutal,” so I guess it’s saying something when one of those bands is Alaskan.

If you’ve listened to Angel Eyes, you should have some idea what this band brings to the table; thunderous, hard-hitting guitars with the occasional scream. ”The Weak and the Wounded” starts out right away with a fuzzy, distorted tape recording from the movie Session 9, a lesser-known psychological horror movie that Alaskan uses to set the hasher underlying tones of the album. The story, told thoughout the album via sound bits, are of a mental patient struggling to control her multiple personalities and uncover a tragic event that happened in her childhood. From there, the instruments take over, forming layer upon layer of sound until reaching a wall of feedback and static. I must say, that for a band this “new” it’s a great start.

Let me get on to packaging, though. When this album was presented to me the very, VERY first thing I noticed was the cover. Just look at it; the first impression had already set the mood, and all the band had to do was deliver something equally devastating music-wise and I’d be satisfied. Well, since I’m writing this, yeah, they did a fantastic job with this release. It’s thirty minutes of hardcore, guitar-smashing insanity. Don’t get me wrong, its got its soft spots, but they are ultimately overshadowed by the other factors that contribute to the dark “doom and gloom” feeling.

Recommended.

Code: The RFCP (Part 1)

I love statistics, and I love getting them automatically.

That’s why I “created” the RFCP (Rockets Fall Chat Protocol.) For those wondering, I run a Debian Linux server here at my house called “Rockets Fall,” and the fact of the matter is that I’m not always motivated to go around and check every service for errors/notifications. I made a simple Python library for GNTP so I could get updates when I was on my main PC, but I needed something to keep track of everything when that computer was off. IRC was my next challenge; I created a module for my SwanBot library, but I found that there was no way to log the data in a sane way, so I went off to code my own protocol.

I admit, I’m the not the biggest fan of Sockets in Python. Not only do I not know how to utilize them that well, but when I discovered I’d also need threading I about dumped the project. Through some miracle I managed to piece together a working, semi-understandable series of scripts that Just Work™.

One thing I really push in my projects is ease-of-use, so I specifically made the client library require only about five lines of initial “setup” code. Of course, that’s the bare minimum; it’s entirely open for improvement and extension if you have the time to hack through rfcplib.py. But lets get back to that thing about logging…

Email was out of the question, but I liked the idea of a “post-office” where messages were kept until I removed them myself. Here’s how a standard user-to-channel message looks:

MSG:Luke:Hello World!

Notice how the channel isn’t mentioned anywhere. I kept it that way by design; I don’t want this becoming just another IRC ripoff.

And here’s how “MAIL” works:

MSG:Luke:Ben:Hey dude!

Then Ben can login and type “GETMAIL” to receive the message from me. In my next post, I’ll be detailing how I apply it to my network. Until then, you can grab the code here: https://github.com/Jetstar/Rockets-Fall-Chat-Protocol

I AM ABOVE ON THE LEFT // Discography

When it comes to making completely off-the-wall music, this four piece group -I Am Above On the Left- has it all figured out. Imagine, for a second, if Set Fire To Flames showed up to a concert where the previous band started a mosh pit among the crowd. In an attempt to please the rioting attendees, Set Fire To Flames dropped the ambient-ness and tried to emulate the preceding band.

In short, that’s what I Am Above On the Left sounds like; a complete mess of distortion and nonsensical guitar noodling. This is partially unfortunate, because nine times out of ten it sounds awful, and then there’s that one time where it sounds okay. Just okay.

Their first album I’m just going to briefly cover- “An A-Bomb to Wake Up” is the most “accessible” of their releases. I kind of want to be joking about that, but as crazy as the band gets on this album it’s nothing compared to “Astro” (their latest record.) With “An A-Bomb…” we’re dealing with what sounds like completely random post-something with absolutely no vocals, which is probably for the best with it all taken into consideration. On the song My Kidney Is In Bloom it sounds like they literally start detuning their instruments, then break into a semi-listen-able breakdown/headbang session while one of the guitarists plays unrelated high-pitched notes with added amp feedback. It sounds insane (and it is,) but it’s okay. And like I said earlier: Just okay. Nothing more.

Don’t even get me started on “Astro.” Yeah, it’s nothing like the heavy, distorted material on the last album, but there’s hardly anything there; long, stretched-out periods of ambiance then LOUD DISTORTED GUITAR. For example, Track 8 is 4 and a half minutes long, three of which is a single. drum. beat. playing over and over. Then guitars.

It’s disturbing how strange this band is. It’s 11pm and I have to be up at 6am tomorrow for school, but I have the speakers up and everyone in the house is listening to what could possibly be the best, worst band to ever exist. Don’t ask why, but here’s a video. If you want to hear something remotely good, skip to the last minute or so. No promises.

All Lights – Demo/Self-Titled

On April 10th, 2010, I released my first album.

Around the time I made this, I hesitated to call it an “album.” It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but it was just different enough to turn people around from the hopeful “Oh, you play guitar?” to severe disappointment when it isn’t what they expected it to be. I can understand that to a degree. Yeah, it’s not something you’d hear at a rock concert, but that wasn’t the idea.

The “All Lights” project was an adventure in making something cohesive. In the end, it didn’t turn out that way; songs could be played in any order and the overarching feeling would still be the same. So what was left at the end of the day were 3 songs, none of which (at the time) felt right or particularly unique. I put up my guitar and never played it again.

It was April 4th, the day after I recorded “Last Report”, when the Collateral Murder video was released to the masses. After watching 39 minutes of aerial footage, I felt a very strong sense of opposition against everything. The images stayed with me to the following day. Even though the album was done, I went back out into the garage where I had recorded Last Report, and began to play it with the video flickering in the background. You’d think if I recorded the music, I’d understand it; but it wasn’t until that moment when it finally clicked. It occurred to me that I had unintentionally made a song that almost orchestrated the destruction.

Last Report was recorded in two sittings: The first part (entitled “open silence drifting open”) was easy enough to play. In-fact, that part was a re-recorded version of the very first track (which was inevitably axed from the release.) When it come to the last part, “a long pause on signal hill…”, I adjusted my delay pedal, hit record, and started playing.

I loved songs like Low’s “Do You Know How to Waltz?”, that ended with a 10+ minute-long drone that built into an intense, explosive peak. With no idea on how to make that kind of music, that’s what I started to play. I did everything on the fly, for the first time, and about half-way through finally figured it out; I’d hit my distortion pedal with the delay pedal set to keep notes playing for a very long amount of time. This meant I could build a layer of sound, then ease the pitch of that lower until I had a deep, booming sound, with the static of a maxed-out distortion pedal at a constant pitch. Exactly what I wanted.

The next few months I considered releasing it. I had confidence in the other songs, but I never got around to actually doing it. Well, here it is. Keep an open mind:

ALL LIGHTS // Demo

Download

Passenger – Broken Hearts Of Brothers Lost / Bury My Teeth

Passenger was (emphasis on was) a post-rock/math-rock band from Chicago. Their first major album, which clocked in around two hours and 40 minutes, was never officially released. Why?

Sam, ex-Passenger drummer, was writing a novel to accompany the album. While the exact details of the story are unknown, a good amount of detail is portrayed via song title; much like Redwall or Watership Down, the story involves a battle between animals (in this case: Owls and rabbits.)

hello everyone. my name is dave mata. i was in a band called passenger from 2002 to 2005-when my best friend (drummer of passenger) samuel vincent, took his own life. we decided to end the band and maybe do something else. the record available for download here is what would have been our second self released album “the owls are restless”. it is a 20 track, 2 hr. and 40 min. instrumental album, which was meant to be released as a double disc concept record about an ancient war in a magical forest between owls and rabbits, with a mid length fairy tale, and documentary dvd on the writing and recording of the album, in the fall of 05 or spring of 06.

According to a fellow band member, Sam spent a large amount of time filling notebooks with his story, during which Passenger received endorsement from someone who could make their dream come true: an official release of the album they had all spent so much time on.

So about two years ago I hired a couple kids that told me they were in a band. I blew them off but they were persistent and continually hounded me to at least check them out…

I finally broke down and gave them a listen and was completely blown away. They were an instrumental post rock band with a huge plan to write and self release a double disc concept album.

The story was laid out. Sam (the Drummer was actually writing a short novel to accompany the albums). It was based on an epic war between rabbits and owls. They wrote two cd’s worth of music and did a respectable job of self recording it.

I jumped on the chance to help them out, we did demo discs and made huge plans. The album was completed it was just a matter of time until they could afford to release it.

Then Sam’s car was broken into, and the bag containing all of his notebooks was stolen. Like that, months upon months of work was gone. Sam took his own life shortly after.

Members of Passenger decided that it was best to leave the band behind; split off, start something new. It was out of respect, I guess, for Sam.

All of the above quotes are taken from this page. As you can see from checking that link, the man who offered to help the band get the album recorded and eventually released uploaded the actual album itself. However, I feel it’s necessary to provide a backup just in case that website (or the file themselves) are taken down.

Here is in my opinion, one of the greatest albums that most people will most likely never hear:

PASSENGER //The Owls Are Restless

download

Hype: This Will Destroy You – Tunnel Blanket

Here’s a band nobody can make their minds up about.

On one hand, they released the Young Mountain EP, an energetic and massively brutal album. Then there’s the other stuff, which is a mix of relaxed ambient and focused, intense guitars. First, I was losing hope in them a few months ago; the sway from above-average post-rock to a more ambient style was a bit hard to accept. Then, as you can see from a post I made a month or so ago, I heard “Brutalism and the Worship of the Machine” from their split with Lymbyc System. I’m not going to say anything more about it, so read the post (and come back.)

So they figured out how to do proper ambient music, now they just have to combine it with the style people fell in love with. Ta-da! The folks over at wearepostrock answered with the below video. Since post-rock is largely without words, I’m going to stop typing and let you enjoy it rather than making you read about me enjoying it. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s “Black Dunes” from their yet-to-be-released album, Tunnel Blanket:

THIS WILL DESTROY YOU // Black Dunes

Review: 65daysofstatic // We Were Exploding Anyway

So I heard the new 65daysofstatic album sucked, which explains why I’m reviewing it now and not the month it was released. I don’t know what it is with people and change, but the moment one of the tracks from We Were Exploding Anyway leaked most “fans” went completely stupid in the head. Apparently, going out on a limb and making something that doesn’t sound like your last two or three albums is asinine and will cause everyone but the most hardcore of fanboys to give up and burn everything related to your band in the street. Sucks for those guys, because this album is awesome and you should feel bad if you don’t like it.

The first thing I noticed about We Were Exploding Anyway is that it has some tracks that would be perfect for some underground rave party with lots of flashing lights. To me, it’s not much of a departure from what they used to play, but this album definitely sways from their original, more organic sound. To explain a bit better: It’s harder to tell the difference between the electronics and real, live instruments. It doesn’t really make that big of a difference to me; music is music and 65daysofstatic is music. People who are upset that this album isn’t anything like their old material and keep complaining that “it’s not post-rock like their old stuff” are the same people who probably say things like “Led Zeppelin is a horrible rap group.” Maybe they don’t play post-rock, but at some point you have to realize that having 10 tracks tagged as “electronic” in your last.fm playlist is better than having 10 more plays of some generic by-the-numbers instrumental band.

Highly Recommended.

65daysofstatic // Dance Dance Dance

Music Monday (Thursday Edition): Angel Eyes – Vincent

I’ve always said I’m going to do a write-up on Angel Eyes, but for one reason or another it never gets done.

This right here, to your left, is Angel Eyes. Based in Chicago, this metal-fused-with-post-rock band has been my little secret for a year or two now. I don’t want to classify them as sounding similar to any other band, and this is mostly because the sound that blows out of my speakers at max volume is something completely unique. Read that line a few times; Angel Eyes is no Isis/Pelican wannabe.

ANGEL EYES // Vincent

According to the band’s website, this 1-song release is dedicated to a child named ‘Vincent’ who passed away at a fairly young age. With that in mind, this song demonstrates what I believe to be a good example of the grieving process; Vincent goes from low-hitting distorted chaos to reverb-riddled drone in just under 20 minutes. Yeah, 20 minutes. Me too.

What’s so killer about this song is how much emotion is conveyed through instruments alone. There’s a few minutes of lyrics too, and if you doubt a mostly-instrumental band’s lyrics, you’re about to be proved otherwise; they deal as much damage as their guitars do.

ANGEL EYES // …and for A Roof A Sky Full of Stars

This 26-minute EP only manages to crank out two songs, which are ironically titled ‘One’ and ‘Two’. This was the first album I heard by them, thankfully, because this is probably their most cohesive release by-far.

The lyrics in ‘One’ talk about the pains of growing up, and subsequently looking back on the loss of innocence that comes with being an adult. ‘Two’ follows with a similar theme of coming to terms with your own mistakes and accepting life as it is; even if that means accepting the fact that you’ve become the person you swore you’d never be. That’s my interpretation, but they say it better:

“The stars in your eyes are stolen,” I thought. “That will never be me.” But after years of denial it happened. I’ve finally come to grips with the fact that the sky fucking fell. I am, for better or worse, an adult. I realize now that this was inevitable – nothing lasts forever and it’s how we deal with it that counts. In recognition of this fact I wrote this for you: “May you always see the sky ’till the end of your days, may the stars always shine, may your stars never fade.”

Highly recommended.

Preview: A Beautiful September / All Lights – Human Intervention

A Beautiful September / All Lights - Human Intervention

(part 1: A Beautiful September)
Friday Night
Roads
(part 2: All Lights)
I am above on the left

(8/16/2010): Music Monday

Topping my Last.FM charts this week is Brick City Love Song by Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles. As average as Riding…‘s debut album (A Boldogság Minden Reményét Elragadták) was, this single song more than makes up for it. Their first attempt at an album came off as a semi-failed attempt to sound like something they weren’t, and while Screwdriver was an awesome song with a chilling field recording, the rest dropped short. Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles isn’t directly comparable to any one band, but they’re a mix of upbeat Godspeed You! Black Emperor and some of the less-boring songs by The Monroe Transfer.

You can download Brick City Love Song here. Don’t worry, you aren’t ripping off the band; they release all their music for free. If you’re lazy, here’s a link to the song on YouTube.