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Ahab - The Divinity of Oceans

Ahab’s second full length The Divinity of Oceans is the third in their Nantucket Trilogy of musical releases based off of New England whaling narratives. The first being their long out of print EP “The Oath”, the 2006 album Call of the Wretched Sea, and now The Divinity of Oceans.

A friend of mine got me into them through their previous album based off of Moby Dick. The influence of the book over the album is such to where some of the lyrics are pulled directly from Melville’s text and essentially set to music. The album and band’s music is self-stylized “Nautical Funeral Doom Metal” which means that it’s slow and deliberate metal which rather than trying to flay the silken flesh from your alabaster bones, attempts to crush you with despair and the inevitability of life’s cold end with an obvious nautical twist to the Doom Metal genre. Musicians clearly not content to keep remaking Black Sabbath records like others in the genre.

Call of the Wretched Sea was a revelation for me. I have a tendency to avoid gimmicky music so an album based of Moby Dick performed by a German band had a bit of an uphill struggle to gain my interest. Yet the strength of lyrics and music coupled with a “hollow” production enveloped me and allowed me to feel what it would be like to be on a ship headed to an uncertain fate. Choppy riffs were interspersed with almost ambient elements that sounded as though they had been recorded beneath the sea. Even the growled vocals, an affectation I typically despise, matched the theme and tone of the project and it was as though Neptune himself were relaying the tale of the doomed sailors to you while also coupled with clean singing and what came across as chants from the ghosts of dead sailors. It was amazing and it was unique and it introduced me to the Funeral aspect of Doom metal which I hadn’t really heard before. So I eagerly anticipated this release.

The Divinity of Oceans opens in media res with the nearly thirteen minute song “Yet Another Raft of the Medusa (Pollard’s Weakness)” based on Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale ship Essex by Owen Chase, said to be the inspiration for Moby Dick, Melville having been given a copy of by the author’s son. The song is about a ship attacked by a sperm whale and the tragedies befalling the crew while ALSO drawing allusion to the famous French Romantic painting The Raft of the Medusa that depicts another nautical tragedy that also devolved into cannibalism. However, the album does not ever mention the attack explicitly devoting the whole of it to some unknown time afterwards where the crew’s fate has already seemingly been decided.

The songs then go through the mental state of what it must have been like to be on the rafts as sailors curse their fate and God and given into despair, as sailors ironically recall dark songs sung in happier days “Death to the living, Long life to the killers, Success to sailor's wives And greasy luck to whalers” Then with what feels like an inevitability in the tale, the crews, months at sea, then resort to cannibalism.

The music for this album is amazing with riffs becoming themes that are built upon and recalled and reworked later on. As the tracks “Redemption Lost” and “Tombstone Carousal” utilize similar musical cues and structure to play against each other while also leading to the final song on the album “Nickerson’s Theme” which pulls together the various elements that had been running through the album into an excellent conclusion. There is the return of the growled vocals, but there is also a great deal more clear singing utilized as well. The music goes through slow almost ambient portions to blast beats hidden beneath the layers of guitar and bass and wails of despair.

The production and songwriting are top notch, where the previous album felt a bit hollow, this one feels full and expansive, not as though you are trapped in a ship, but rather that you are trapped on a raft with nothing but your dead companions for company and your memories of a better life as you are lost in your own mind and your own sins. This is a heady album and is worth a listen even if you do not consider yourself a metal fan.

Further Reading:
Essex (Whaleship)
Raft of the Medusa

Simian Mobile Disco, The Fiery Furnaces, Dark Meat, The Neatherlands @ The Pool Parties 8/09/09

I’ve been a fan of SMD for quite a while. Back before electro and indie dance merged to become fidget they had a part in creating some nice, rolling anthems, the most famous of which is probably Simian vs. Justice’s ubiquitous “We Are Your Friends” a song that was tragically inescapable and whose popularity became something of an in-joke for my DC rave friends.

What really made my group of friends take notice was the mix they did back in 2006 for NME when NME was trying to push their whole new rave movement. The music was really fun and exciting and largely new to us as DC dance culture wasn’t really…adventurous. It was a small market that was getting smaller for an audience that didn’t really seem to appreciate risk. An evening of dance was a warm comforting blanket and social event rather than a chance to try things out. Repetitive beats and repetitive events.

Thankfully, PA is just two hours away and New York, four, so those of us who wanted something a bit more, could go out and get it. So, we did when Simian Mobile Disco came to PA in early 2007. It was all electro / indie dance / protofidget anthems but we didn’t care, because it was loud and it was fun and it was what we loved at that moment and no one else was doing it in DC.

I have a lot of love for SMD and was really excited to see them again. It had been a while since they were even on my radar, so I was really curious as to what they’d be playing, of all the genres, I didn’t expect it to be pretty much just straight banging techno.

The weather was once again an oppressive humid summer heat sapping your strength and soaking your shirt minutes after leaving the house. We gear up, head out and arrive in time to catch the first act of the day, The Netherlands.



You can see from yesterday’s review that I liked them. Timo Ellis, the singer/ guitarist used a Health like bank of effects pedals to put his wonderful chunky psyche doom while Hannah Moorhead’s bass and keyboard filled the walls with equal presence as Japa Keenon O’s drumming was able to plug into a variety of styles. Do yourself the favor and check them out. The Pool Parties didn’t sound like the best venue for them, as they indicated they tend to use more psych lighting and their style of dress and sound was far better suited to a club rather than mid-afternoon in the sun. It doesn’t matter because the music was awesome regardless.



Didn’t know anything about Dark Meat, but a quick peek at their MySpace page showed active members as 19 and the quick snippets that I listened to put me in the “this sounds like it’s going to be some hippy jam band bullshit,” one of the few genres which I cannot get into despite repeated attempts. Seeing them set up in face and body paint with full horn section, two different organs and multiple percussionists put the fear of Phish into me.



What actually came from the speakers was wild discordant noise that sounded half- structured and half-improvised but fast and wild as a bad idea and just as infectious. The songs were about “a fucked up bloody white guy I saw last night” “how our entire band is on drugs” and I couldn’t quite get the measure of them before they had spun out of control. There was a gentle moment when Sutra Streamers were they carried to the crowd enveloping people up in bright colorful paper, some voluntarily, others not and this was shattered when the song’s power slowly escalated back to full banging mania like having a conversation about politics on the internet, civil and laid back until at the end everything was smashed and destroyed and then… exhausted, the band carried themselves off stage.





I’m not super familiar with The Fiery Furnaces, but what I’d heard wasn’t unenjoyable. Clever lyrics and music that seemed a bit twee for my tastes. Friends told me that when they perform it could be unpredictable with what you’ll actually get. What we got was a four piece sans keyboard and pretty straightforward arrangements and a set list with songs predominately all from the new album or at least unfamiliar to the people I was with.



Simian Mobile Disco opened up with a reworking of an Animal Collective song and from there spent the next hour and a half that we stayed with wall to wall banging techno. It was great, but it was really exhausting to listen to as there was really nothing much more beyond huge synthlines and expanded kicks and bass. I loved it but I couldn’t take too much of it without wishing for something a bit more to break it up a bit, but the audience loved it and members from Dark Meat came on stage with a trombone and trumpet and played into the microphone so we had a mix of analog and digital entertainment. The set up was three pioneer CDJs and two mixers, so there was no Ableton tomfoolery there, which is a shame because I think it would work well with all of their various musical interests.







I think I was in the minority for this because everyone that came out had an absolute blast and danced despite the horrid heat. The crowd found the group strength to hoist up a Sousaphone player and have him crowd surf while playing. I left happy with what I’d heard and eager to hear where they go in the future.

The Netherlands – Gato Au Chocolat EP

The Netherlands are a three piece band which pulls from 40 plus years of metal / psychedelic / progressive rock tradition while integrating a tongue in cheek element that is unlike that of similar bands like Panther Tracks in that it comes across as a bit subtler. The band is made up of musicians who’ve worked with acts such as Cibo Matto, Daniel Johnston, and Silver Rockets and for this project take on mantels which have more in common with 70s arena dark glam such as Alice Cooper and Kiss while playing music which calls to mind Dio era Sabbath or Electric Wizard mixed with more outré bands such as Melt Banana or sludge like Big Business.

The four tracks on this album are diverse enough that it seems like they’re trying to play around with their influences rather than provide a singular artistic vision around which the tracks would gel.

“Warleola!” Opens the EP providing a short chunk of pre-Hair Metal / Thrash separation recalling Van Halen in a party down mood. “The Gogo Dancer” is a wall of stoner / sludge fuzz with a repeating refrain imploring the subject of the song “take it off / take it off”. “Gato Au Chocolat” is three and a half minutes of slow moving psychotidelica distortion that morphs into a fast blast of double time along the same musical themes. “Six Things, Plus Two” is punk guitar and structure recalling the more inventive of post hardcore music paired with the nonsensical vocal inflections of Melt Banana.

A quick look through iTunes (the only place I could see to get their music unless you’re lucky enough to see them live and get a CD) seems like they have recorded about a full album’s worth of material but have only released it in the form of three EPs. I’m going to inquire if there’s a better way to get this music because the YouTube video for songs such as Cocainne Knightz look like there is a wealth of creativity and more importantly, fun to be had with this band.

Seriously, check it out.

Peelander Z, Adam Matta @ YoYo Open 2009

Full Flickr Set

I feel like I’m going to be doing a huge disservice to Peelander Z while trying to write about them. It’s truly one of those “you had to be there” concert experiences. Previously when people would tell me about their shows, it would start off weird and then get into improbable and the after action reports of the antics would build until as a listener, I would nod saying “un huh, un huh, that sounds wild” while not really paying attention anymore, because I was certainly convinced that the person was just fucking with me.

This past Saturday was the Yo-Yo Open, an exhibition and contest that aims to advance the sport of Yo-Yo in the eyes of the public. As a child of the 80s, I’m familiar with the advertisements for Duncan showing kids pulling tricks like Walk the Dog, around the world and other now primitive, if not quaint, feats. I was prepared to learn and see some people do some impressive tricks, but I don’t think I was really prepared for what I experienced.

I’m really ignorant about most of what I saw, but it looked like people playing really elaborate games of cat’s cradle with themselves in more and more elaborate configurations. My camera was far to slow to capture any of the movement and give what the performers were doing any justice. This is a total cop out on my part, but check out stuff by Mark Montgomery, Rei Iwakura, and Hiraku Fujii on YouTube to get a sense of what was happening. While this was very exciting, we were there predominately for the free musical acts, Adam Matta and Peelander Z.

Adam Matta is a vocal percussionist, or in a less accurate, yet more common parlance, a beatboxer. Using his vocal chords, a few effects pedals for looping and an exhaustive knowledge of breakbeat and mental creativity he was able to build layer upon layer to create more than just beatbox routines, but actual songs. What was really impressive was the amount of power he could get behind his kick drum emulation, pushing out enough bass to perfectly replicate how it feels in the audience to have an instrument on stage doing the same thing. Check out his stuff on MySpace, it’s rather quite impressive.

Peelander Z is essentially The Aquabats meets Shonen Knife. Cute simple pop songs with a veneer of punk and a space ton of theatrical aspects and crowd participation, which rather than the feel-good alternative education Dan Deacon style of crowd participation; this is what it would be like to hang out with the cool kids who’ve loaded up on caffeine and too many hours of Sentai shows.

The songs seem to consist of only verses, “TOO MANY MIKE” “WHAT A HEALTH” shouted as fast as possible while Peelander Yellow, the vocalist and guitarist runs around grabbing people to put them on stage, Peelander Red jumps, climbs, runs, and crawls while playing the bass, while Peelander Green keeps time with a huge amount of flair and arm crossovers.

Every aspect of the show seems geared to getting the audience involved. They pulled people onstage to bang on percussion, they showed people how to play the parts to the songs making instant musicians out of random people, had a limbo contest, and at one point pulled everyone named Mike onstage for a group photo. It was wild and anarchic and far more punk than three teenagers sneering through songs aping bands sneering through songs aping bands sneering through songs aping bands.

Do absolutely everything in your power to go see them live if you can.

Moshi Moshi Showcase @ South Street Seaport 8/7/9

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I’ve really only been a fan of the record label Moshi Moshi for the past few years. Their most popular successes are bands that are somewhat inescapable in certain circles, Lykke Li, Bloc Party, Hot Chip, and the like. Good music, but beyond Lykke Li, not really my thing.

My introduction to them was when I was trying to hunt down releases from Best Fwends, a two member spastic electronic pop band out of Texas. Moshi Moshi released their EPs and the compilation/album Alphabetically Arranged and their online store through Greedbag was the only way to get this music, rather frustrating considering they are an American band but thankfully it was easily downloaded.

This order got me placed on their mailing list, which introduced me to a whole host of new bands that I now enjoy. So the opportunity to see the 10th anniversary tour at The South Street Seaport as part of the 2009 River to River fest for free was very exciting.

The South Street Seaport stage is a great place to see shows. Tucked away between a mall which would rather you remember it as a fish market and a tall ship, the small area for music manages to fill the entire area with rich full sound. It’s a lot of fun and pretty singular in a city filled singular places to see music.

On the bill were Slow Club, a folk / pop band I have fell immediately in love with since I took a chance on their first single “Because We’re Dead” on a whim, The Wave Pictures, a band with which I was only nominally familiar, and Casiokids, a newer band who I had heard but never seen but had heard good things about live.

I got there fairly early and secured a good space and waited. Eventually, I was joined by Eatsdirt and then began the inevitable slog through time.


Slow Club

Slow Club is made up of Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor. Charles plays guitar on most of the tracks and Rebecca is percussion and sometimes accompanying guitar. Their songs are your standard folk songs about love and loss and such but there is a pleasant uniqueness in their tone and a degree of playfulness and wit which seems to be missing from most dreary acoustic duos of this nature. Seeing them live was wonderful, they had good banter between each other and the audience and were very pleased to be there, happy with the turn out, the venue and quite pleased when people in the audience knew who they were.


Slow Club

Their album was just released and they played through a number of songs from it and the songs benefited from the pared down experience of a guy with a guitar and a girl with a drum set played live and loud. The live version of “Because We’re Dead” was compacted in some sections and expanded in others and it was truly a treat to hear live.


Slow Club

Wave Pictures is a three piece out of Whymeswold in the UK with the standard three piece configuration of Guitarist / Singer, Bassist and Drummer performing songs which have a kind of longing which seems to be rooted at the heart of a lot of music that comes from small towns. David Tattersall’s music draws from a number of various musical genres and traditions but in the music that was chosen last night there were quite a few which had guitar solos which went from a minimal melodic structure to a go for broke wall of jangly sound around which the bass walks and the drums roll.


Wave Pictures

As someone who was not really familiar with the music, they were very enjoyable. I think the stand out song that we heard from them was probably “Tiny Craters in the Sand” from their most recent album If You Leave It Alone which opens with “I cut my hair and you grew yours / there always has to be the same amount of hair in the world” and becomes a surreal love song which corrupts typical imagery in these types of songs. The title comes from growing old together to the point where you lose your marbles and as they roll to the sea, they leave perfect tiny craters in the sand.


Wave Pictures

All of their music was filled with this kind of marvelous metaphor including a holiday trip form hell whose name I didn’t catch.


Wave Pictures

The final act was the one I knew the least about, Casiokids an electronic funk outfit from Norway. The drummer came out wearing an enormous monkey head and then things got strange. Every other European band I’ve seen this year has looked miserable in the surprisingly mild summer here. Casiokids came out with members wearing a crushed velvet suit, a yellow sweatshirt and long sleeve shirts. Looking online their country’s average high is 69 degrees Fahrenheit in August. Add that to the high energy show, it’s really kind of impressive.


Casiokids

The music the band played was long drawn out funk stompers that had the whole pier dancing. A few members of the band shared the singing duties, but all of their voices were so fragile and crystalline when laid over the driving grooves underneath.


Casiokids

Around the midway point, Rebecca from Slow Club came out and added percussive duties and re-energized everyone in the crowd and in the band. Charles donned the full monkey suit and danced around with a tambourine to everyone’s enjoyment.


Rebecca of Slow Club performs with Casiokids

Casiokids were a lot of fun and I hope they tour more often so everyone who missed out can get a chance to see them.


Casiokids


And then Eatsdirt and I had gyro over rice and it was delicious.

Amanda Blank - I Love You

“Art must be beautiful. Artist must be beautiful.” This refrain repeated over and over by Marina Abramovic for her short film project Art Must be Beautiful as she combs her hair with a hard plastic comb and a hard metal brush scratching her face in the process is the first image that sprung to mind when hearing Amanda Blank’s “Make Up,” and acid filled throwback to early electroclash.

The song is about a woman trying to make herself look good for a potential suitor. It starts simply, listing make up and techniques “Blush / Eye Liner / Hush / See What you Made Me do?” but with it there is a sinister, hungry element to the whole song carved out with minimal lyrics and reverb and echo placed at the end of lines which drag the final word to a cavernous oblivion of want. “If I wear a dress, he’ll never call / so I’ll wear much less, I guess I’ll wear my camisole” speak to the whole desire to be noticed by an object of affection. It’s a really unique song in structure, production and lyrical content and shows a kind of universal honesty present in the lyrics on a album filled with the typical snarling arrogant swagger which has always been in hip hop (the next song, Gimmie What You Got opens with a repeated verse of “Hottest Motherfucker on the Whole Damn Block”).

I’ve been a fan of the whole Baltimore Bass Connection / Spank Rock circle of artists since becoming aware of them in 2006 through randomly buying a copy of the first Spank Rock album YoYoYoYoYo. Having spent most of my late teens and early 20s going out clubbing in Baltimore and DC in the early and mid 90s, I was exposed to a lot of Ghettotek, Baltimore Club, Booty House, Hip Hop, House and Breaks. Thanks to the Mid-Atlantic DJs from that era , I was given a musical vocabulary into which the Spank Rock album easily plugged. From there I went out and discovered some of the stuff I had missed like Aaron LaCrate and started to put words to music and artists I had heard out previously like learning more of the Unruly Records artists / producers.

Amanda Blank kept coming up, usually in conjunction with Spank Rock and a few years ago she and XXXChange managed to put out Get It Now and while it was good, I felt the track “Shake ‘Em Down” was the strongest track on that single. However she grew seemingly from strength to strength, gaining exposure with verses on a number of in crowd remixes and releases culminating with, oddly, a part on an officially sanctioned Britney Spears remix.

So there is a degree of expectation coming into this album. She’ll rap fast, she’ll spit sex rhymes so nasty Lil’ Kim would blush, the production will be top notch, and it will be a fun, if ultimately disposable, party record geared towards tracks rather than songs. This is where I was wrong; really, really wrong. I underestimated Amanda Blank’s ability and reach, which was really dumb on my part. However, we have been blessed with one of the strongest albums I’ve yet heard this year.

The album opens strongly with an up tempo party jam “Make it, Take It” which is built more on recent rock than on current hip hop memes. From there, the album moves to “Something Bigger, Something Better” a slower song whose content is breathy in places, which really stands out as you can hear her sharp intakes of breath in contrast to the breathless track before. The third track is the absolutely amazing “Make Up.” “Gimmie What you Got” features Naeem of Spank Rock who spends his verse ripping into critics with his typical amazing speed “say something / tweet tweet motherfucker” “Lemme Get Some” really reminds me of Lilly Allen lyrically with the whole “leave me alone” vibe that carries through up to the Chuck Inglish guest verse. “Shame on me” sounds like it’s written for modern pop radio with its swelling synth laced chorus wherein the singer laments the loss of a recent lover. “A Love Song” is an absolute amazing riff on LL Cool J’s “I Need Love” with a very 808 sounding drum line to further reinforce the time and place of the original song. “Dj” is a very New York Freestyle sounding track with a bubbling tom and straight-forward bass line. “Might Like You Better” is the sex song with pretty amazing production work and a very dance hall influenced drum element and chorus lifted from Romeo Void’s “Never Say Never”, I understand why it’s the single, but I think that it’s really one of the weaker tracks on the album. “Big Heavy” is slice of neodisco / synthpop madness. Lykke Li features on the last track “Leave You Behind” a ballad about getting over someone.

Taken as a whole as presented, Amanda Blank’s debut album I Love You can be taken as an album about seeing someone, wanting them, having them, losing them then finding the courage and strength to go on with your life. It doesn’t fit perfectly into this mold and to get it to truly do so, you’d need to switch a few verses on a few tracks and the track order, but it this album is more than just a collection of singles to sell ring tones and contains tracks which I’m certain I’ll be revisiting in years rather than forgetting the whole thing in just weeks. This album is worth your money and your time.

See all my Amanda Blank Pictures from Sirenfest 2009

Edit: I was able to find the piece "Art Must Be Beautiful" on Youtube.