Mark Meat

I know nobody who looks exactly like Mark Meat. But in keeping with recent meat related filmy substance (and, likewise, with sometime cats of Fanch,) I've found it necessary to include a link here. Running around in Indiana, at least so it says, Mark Meat's got three songs there on IUMA. The first, Crime Free Loving, is an instrumental and, well, it flowed a bit around my edges, though not in an entirely unpleasant way. Need Your Love is a soulful, silly, highvoiced funky nuthouse tune that's catchy as all hell. Reminds me a bit of Neon Sandwich, who used to also run around in Indiana, or so I was led to believe. Not sure where to find those guys anymore to link to as all lines are erased at the tip. The final Mark Meat track, It's My Duty To Disappoint You is half evil sounding and half wacky, again, with that pitch-shifted stuff going on under or over a grungy, riffy sort of guitar maneuver. All around everything there's just a. Just. A. Yes.

Steve Leiberman

More from the man behind Bop Bop Bigger Bab-'el, Steve Lieberman.

Meat Me in The Bop Bop Gun

SoundClick's been doing good on the streaming stuff for the past week. Everyone is encouraged to go stream something. You'll glow in the dark afterwards, trust me. It's a mystical experience. The Throbz, totally overload everything on Meat. But there are bongos, and a guitar line that isn't overloading anything. There's a sort of stoner vibe. It's pretty cool, but the song's called Meat, man. Titles don't get any better. I think one of Fanch's other cats was called Meat, too. By me, anyway. I just realized that. There's something incredibly wrong with BOP BOP BIGGER BABel, in an incredibly right way. I'm loving this BOP GUN song. Everything's distorting, there's a big bed of everything all blurred into a noisy pile, with a flute thing jumping out clearly, a drum machine (I think), and his punk-goofball voice. In his own words: "one man performing Electronica epics using real instruments as bass guitars,flutes,trombones and exotics." One of the listed influences is Jethro Tull, and that influence is clear in another track, Preach the Deuteronomy. That flute amazes me. And there's a trombone or something. Listen to it all, eat a pancake, sit on a pile of cardboard. Yip yip.

Not Anybody

Rick Williams is not Bob Dylan when he sings Good Life. There's a rhythm guitar. There's a lead slide guitar, probably using a battery as a slide. There's his voice not being Bob Dylan. "If you don't understand this song maybe you better listen and sing along." In Boycott McDonald's there's a lot of yelling. And noise. Help Unwanted is a marvel of technological dance music. There are instruments all over the place in this one. One time the vocals are on key in the one part, and one time in the chorus there's this part where the doubled vocal harmonizes. Jiving Around is exactly the same as the McDonald's song. I think it's the same song. Except this time it's called "Jiving Around." King Size Zero is where this guy is not Nirvana. There are drums, though. If you're still listening to these songs, by now you might be getting irritated. But then! Road One (rock version) comes on, and it's different. It's almost the same, but it's not, there's this different sound. The guy still almost doesn't ever hit a right note, but the drums, which might be a machine this time, sound fuller. It's almost as if this song, this rock version, this majestic explosion of spirit, was not recorded on a boom box. Just as I'm getting ready to state that this is really an excellent song, it just sorta stops. But that's okay, brevity is the soul of something. There are two more tracks on the site. I'll leave it up to the reader to form an opinion on those.

Trying to Stream Something

A sort of ambient, floating space; Jay C James with He Became a Satellite. A little bit Porcupine Tree, a little bit ChromaKey, but very cool. Soundclick's streaming is terrible at this point. If you like what you hear in the beginning download the mp3. The other two tracks don't do much for me, though the lyrics in Birthday are well done. Iuma's streaming is even worse, I can get nothing out of the radio stations. However, I'm able to stream music from random artists the stations try to play, and so I've found: From: joey Date: 02-12-2001 21:54:21 Subject: suck i listen on the site and say it suck So says the first commenter to The Basement Lounge Boys' site; how could I not listen? Floating somewhere around novelty and insanity (is there a line between?), songs like Lisa's Erection, American Psycho and Eat Out Babies try to find decency and punch it in the teeth. Then there's I Want Your Kids which has a little Residents going on, almost, until all that yelling starts. (Yeah, it's not exactly yelling. Tastes more like Doctor Pepper.) This stuff's all pretty well produced, good mixes and all that crap. Stylistically there's a lot of bouncing around.

Ode to a Cat

Broken Pin are, sometimes, broken. For example, in covering Linus and Lucy (Charlie Brown theme), they're broken. This isn't to say I don't enjoy the brokenness, and it's not to say that maybe it's not broken on purpose, but the song's been changed enough that it's recognizable and wrong at the same time. But then there's You Are My Sunshine [cover with llatan], which is just kick ass. It's broken, too, in some very obvious ways. Nearly 10 seconds before the female voice kicks in there is a whole buncha extra hiss added; presumably this is llatan, and presumably she recorded her part somewhere else, like maybe through a PC microphone. But this brokenness highlights for me what's so great about this free mp3 hosting stuff. And there are three covers of this same song available. Furthermore, Fanch's cat is currently broken. And Fanch's cat is Pin. And if that don't get him posting something here I don't know what will.

Killing Off the MP3s, One Dot at a Time

Down went stationmp3.com, down went musicbuilder.com. MusicBank.net silently sunk beneath the rising tide. Now mp3.com, which had already taken to sucking in its only-3-tracks-per-per mode of operation some time ago, is imploding. Whatever shall I? Do? nothingnothing? This linking to unheard-of mp3s thing, demonstrated here in a haphazard, not-done-nearly-enough method (what can one expect when ones halakamates all refuse to offer input?), is going to be in trouble if there are no longer any sites for storing/streaming/downloading unheard of mp3s. Already for my "recent" posts I've had to rely on linking to individual artist sites, which usually means I find what's already being linked to from someone else, and so the "unheard-of" part sort of flies out the box. Whatevershalli? In the coming some-period-of-time, I'm going to link to some artists who I linked to back when I started the Slippery Stump stations on mp3.com, from which this place, in some roundabout sort of way, descended. A lot of the artists there don't have links to other sites of their own, so it's going to be difficult dealing with those. I'm downloading some mp3s now from those artists into a central repository here, thinking later maybe... something will happen. Everything will happen. IT will be glorious. I am wound like a pinenut. This may be a nasty business. As I search through the artist sites the mp3.com sites link to, I find that a good many of them link back to mp3.com when it comes to the part where they're supposed to be giving out mp3s. It's all a cyclical helical gizmo, and we're bound to eat our own tails because of it. For now: Bad Calm Zero is housed at Sound and Chaos. They were highlighted at our Slippery Mellow Stump station. I'm linking that now in the off chance anyone can get there and find what musics we had to show you there before it joins its dead brethren. Other Slippery Stumps: Slippery Stump Slippery Indie Crack Stump The Charred Stump The Slippery Kick Stump The Slippery Blue Grassy Stump Also: this gathering of artists from my stations idea was prompted by Mickale from Black Water Music, who sent me an e-mail. He's trying to centrally collect links of mp3.com artists, and is looking for help. Once I've gotten my stations taken care of I'll probably send him the info.

Gone and Back from Gone

I'm back from a long dunk in a slow tub with some things to say. First, off the usual topic of Punch the Pancake: halaka.org is back online. There will at some point be some explanation of what that was all about, if anyone's interested. No clue whether it'll stay online for any period of time right now, either. Second: Brad Sucks. He's an artist with some great self-produced music, and additionally he's put a compilation together called Outside the Inbox, which is, according to the site, "a compilation of songs inspired by and titled after the subject lines of mass-email (spam)." I'm especially fond of I Got Your Letter by Verbose, Urgent Business Relationship by Sir Frontalot, Urgent Business Confidential by Uncle Azathoth, and Look and Feel Years Younger by Brad Sucks. There are other great Brad Sucks songs on the site: We're Not Friends has a kick ass chorus and some "ooh ah" vocal harmony stuff that's wonderful. Listen to everything though if you can, this guy's good. Alright, so it's a short return for now, but the rest of the everyone are in an oilcan at the bottom of the ocean and I'm just trying to find a towel.

ghosts in the headphones

In my headphones right now, with all the gain on all the available knobs pumped all the way up, I'm picking up the very faint voices of some (German?) foreign broadcast. It's barely a whisper, it comes and goes, the buzzing is ... Now I can hear an english speaking voice, "USA and North Korea..." with some accent I can't quite make out. "All sides must strive to seek a common ground..." Oh shit, it's going through the MXR delay. Maybe that's what's picking it up. No, playing with knobs again I find that it's all coming through the PRS guitar plugged into the mixer. There's enough sound now that I may be able to record it. Is it picking up something through the floor? I blew out my ears picking up the guitar, the cable's faulty, the click when I moved the thing was deafening. I'm trying to record it now; the voices finally returned. I recorded some very amplified, very quiet (but made amazingly loud) noises with it first. These voices, though. Ghosts. Ah, got them. They're barely there, but they're there. These are important moments for me. No one reads the moments.

Sometimes, without Answer

1. Mr. Fawzi Halaka, a contract Arabic-speaking interpreter, be assigned as the interpreter of record in CR 2003-006790-001

found again by accident the thing i never lost

Sometimes I don't want to put any words down; there's no need to interpret because the music's speaking so firmly right to the very center of me. It shifts my chameleon self so that I'm not who I thought I was before listening. On tapestry - 2 Aaron Lennox, who is phrase, plays (and possibly loops, though I'm not sure) an acoustic guitar piece that fully takes my spirit and throws it out to float above some calm ocean. Halfway through the piece there is a low-mixed humming that just... there aren't any words, like I said. as we see shall none be(excerpt) showcases a beautiful and soft female voice and a haunting melody. There's not a piece here that doesn't maintain this strange, ambient, otherworldly spell; once I get there I can't imagine leaving. The production is perfect, leaving in sniffles and breathing and cat-noises and the occasional chuckle, all only serving to enhance the effect somehow, to more fully express the soul of the material. Aaron Lennox is also a part of Rain Theory. They're from Middletown, MD, which makes us practically neighbors. If you want to stream all of the phrase songs (and I know you do,) click here.

Hurricane's Eye Had Told Us Sideways

Here we have start your intros. temptation never comes easy, which is a long, mellow, slowly building song by J no. Melodic acoustic guitar and quiet ambience, then some distortion, then back again. Like it.

off topic, right onto the green, green grass

Project Halaka is apparently all about real estate. For sale? Rent? Who can tell. Quoting: "5 pieces, each of 4000 m², with road and electrical line nearby. Sea view. flat area on hill, 10 km. from Adamas in the exclusive area between Provatas and Psathatika." And, there's a picture.

Destroying What We're Pointing At

Paris Green, who continues to be a bunch of bands who aren't called Paris Green (I think,) changed all their songs around as soon as I reviewed them last time. Instead of fixing the old post, I'm updating this one. I think they're going to put those other songs back at some point, but in the meantime listen to Howard Roark Laughed - Delitescens Percipiere and Plastic Fur - Sanaa Recumbent, both of which are mellowish electronic experimentally-sounding atmosphered-with-samples pieces of song. And both of which are cool as hell. There's also still an Emoticons song up there, but since I already mostly pointed that stuff out last time, go there fer yourself if you wanna hear it. I'm getting lazy in my laziness.

The Mark that Appears On Their Forehead

Anna Herbener, whose last name must've been created in a letterblender, or maybe a drawer, is really something. She's covering some other songs on her Iuma page here; these are well done and at any rate her cover of The Way got me to come and check out her page. But the real center-piece for me is The Japanese Quince, with its semi-creepy starkness, excellent (excellent) lyrics, and her incredibly distinctive voice.

But the Clamp was Firmly infirm

Paris Green sound like someone different on every song I've heard so far. That's a good thing, and probably (at least partially) explained by the fact that (based on their very brief bio) they're more of a collective of individual songmakers than a band. Synthetic Planes is a mellow instrumental that's mostly done on acoustic instruments. Mailbox Gary - Stuff They Had To Do is a fairly straightforward electronic piece for the most part, but gets pretty wiggly near the end. Which is good. summer without jUne is where the real good stuff happens. This is what we need more of; strumming acoustic guitars, half-out-of-whack singing. They're singing about "being here is like drinking warm bleach, you're always in my view but just out of reach." And that's definitely what it's like. I see that the three tracks I really dig are all lumped under the (band-name?) The Emoticons. They're all listed as album 1. So go there and be the bean. "This Candle of Forgotteness / It makes me wanna miss you all over again." Mmmm.

Got the Bag

I have a new beanbag RIGHT IN MY NIPPLE, here. Everyone, ALL FIVE MILLION OF YOU READING THIS THREE SECONDS AND A HALF AFTER I POST IT, drop everything you're doing and go listen to Got the Bag. The band, or the guy with a band-name, is Happy Plant Family and this time there are only TWO damned songs listed and no link to anywhere else to learn anything else about this goddamn bag. There are SO MANY UNANSWERED FREAKING QUESTIONS. For instance, where'd the bag come from? Where's the bag now? I assume the song's over, so what did Happy Plant Family do with the bag? Do they still got it? Or has it been usurped? THERE IS NO WEBSITE THAT I SEE THAT CAN ANSWER THESE FUCKING QUESTIONS, and they're all the way in fucking Iowa. I don't even know what that's around.

Bring the Music

Frustrating. Can't find anything much right now about PLiMP, but having just listened to Bring the Music I've gotta spread the spread. (I found this track because I think it may have been reviewed against one of ours at Garageband.) Lots of chaotic, acoustic groove going on (and I mean "acoustic" as in "non-electronic," which is a tough thing to find in these days of the patios, and the horticulturalist pantihose.) Shouty singing and a forefront toy-sounding recorder kinda deal. My whole real player crashed now, of course, so listening to the other two songs available on there just isn't working. So this is all you get. Leave it or put it in the bucket on the way out.

I feel like I'm listening to Star Trek for a minute during Nommy The Faph's Lick My Eye_Stare. Then I start feeling like I'm dancing too much for a minute, or I'm in a... there's... see there's rhythm and what the hell's that there for? It gets kinda industrial there, then abruptly all ambient again. I think the teleporter's broken. You can also listen to Track two from 'Monday's Key', which must mean something in one of those strange languages I'm always hearing about.

Hey you missing membranes: taskot only has two tracks listed. The first one's not bad, but you should stream twophase, because it's fucking creepy.

I'm Probably Bound to Deceive You After All

(This is probably a temporary move, putting this here. Then again, maybe not.) Chonk has music (31 of the music) at soundlick (pause to turn on word wrap.) Chonk has a webpage at www.chonk.org. This computer has nothing but static-like gigantic noise-hole to come out of the speakers, but earlier I heard ONE ENTIRE OF THE ONE SONG of the Chonk on the soundclick and it was well enough alone to prompt me to want to go see what's the what. And I've seen it, without hearding it. So go heard it, I think if you have a bone in your testaclees you'll like it. Annie Feed Water are weird kids. That's what I titled the message I sent myself earlier to remind myself to go here. So there's something good there in their 33 (thirtythrees) musics. I understand that it's possibly stooping down to a bumperlevel to say "kids" about these people, but I'm an old man so I'm allowed to say whatever I want.