Showing posts with label experimental music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label experimental music. Show all posts

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Thee Koukouvaya

  • Release Date: 2016/08/08
  • Label: Fiercely Independent Records
  • Copyright ©: Brian Wenckebach and John O’Hara 2016




This Is The Mythology Of Modern Death [Thee Koukouvaya]

Thee Koukouvaya released This Is The Mythology Of Modern Death on October 9, 2015:

[ indiessance ]
As a kid, I learned homekeys from a typewriting textbook. Then wrote some sci-fi shorts inspired by pulp fiction featured in Omni Magazine and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. One of my stories was published in the high school's literary magazine. The previous year, I wrote Don't Underestimate Sour Meat, which was shown to the editor, but may have been too controversial to publish.

What I did with story-scapes, the experimental electronic band Thee Koukouvaya does with soundscapes. Building environments with sonic elements for the imagination to discover and explore. Melodies, chords and sonic patterns resonating with quantum particles in carbon-based life forms. New soundscapes from Thee Koukouvaya's previous album titled This Is The Mythology Of Modern Death have been listed and described below by Brian of Thee Koukouvaya.



Thee Koukouvaya: This Is The Mythology Of Modern Death

The Magnetic State. Terra incognita, terra nullius, Ὑπερβόρειοι. A chill, a shiver: this is a land not of sightlines and landmarks but of the body and its responses. The first indications of success usually are a cold breeze passing over the hands. Victorian-era spiritualism was a domestic art, and the domestic sphere was the domain of woman. The belief, not unique to spiritualism, in the essential qualities of womanliness kept her shackled to the house, but it also opened a space for resistance, an authority and freedom of movement denied her by traditional expressions of spirituality. The clairvoyant claimed that magnetism was the source of her power, and in the magnetic state, she could communicate across vast distances. Meanwhile, a recent hypothesis claims that birds are able to follow identical migratory paths by interacting with the Earth's magnetic field: light strikes the bird's eye and splits apart entangled particles; if the polarized photon has a particular effect on these particles, the bird receives a stimulus that lets it know it is flying in the right direction. In effect, birds can see magnetic fields.

Anacaona. Resistance is not futile.

Chicago Warehouse Party, 1995. Went to lots of illegal raves in Chicago around 1994-95. One night the police, in full riot gear, busted up a party by charging at us from the freight elevator. They started clubbing people with nightsticks. Kids were getting dropped and cuffed and bloodied up. I escaped with my friends by climbing out the back window of the warehouse and racing down the fire escape.

Drunk Machine. The drinker does indeed find escape, he does indeed find a short respite and rest, but he returns from the illusion and finds everything as it was before.

40.207958, -74.041691. Fetal heartbeats juxtaposed with a nurses station. Coordinates identify the location.

Phantoms in the Last Age. The appearance of the spectral as symptom of catastrophe. Last as in previous, last as in final? Either way, the time is out of joint. Phantoms appear in order to issue warnings: things aren't supposed to be this way. As harbingers of this disjunction they transgress boundaries, move freely across planes, possess bodies. Despite this movement they are still not free, nor can they save us. They are irruptions of the past; they belong to the past. But it is often in the cracks and seams—where the joints come apart—where we might, in our peripheral vision, catch a glimmer of what it means to be free.

Prismatic Sun. The sky is a distant memory, as inexorably separated from us now as the past from the present. We see it now as through scales of fractured glass and never again as an unblemished dome of every hue of blue. The sun's golden light refracted, now a segmented wave, gleaming in all of its attendant colors. However apostate we may be in this world, there perforce we become apostles of the prismatic sun. And there is a voice. Are these the final plaintive gasps of a body subsumed by the prism, or the first words of a new being, bursting from this crystal case, one still without a language of its own?

A Life in a Portolan Chart. Modern cartography as a technology of control. In the period after ancient mappae mundi aestheticized geography but before longitude and latitude carved up the carcass of the sea, portolan charts recapitulated sailors' movements from safety to danger, their leaps between ports, thrusts into the unknown and back, the assembling of a body of knowledge. In place of the grid, rhumbline networks traced the movements of ships and the wind; drawn on a globe these lines would spiral away from magnetic north to its antipode. The era of the portolan chart was the last before cartography locked places into place.




Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Interview: Andrew Heath

art by April Monic

In an exclusive interview, Andrew Heath of the Mesa-based band, We Are They, talks about performing in Tempe, fan appreciation, and collective pastimes.

[indiessance]
There must be venues in California that appreciate how We Are They delivers metal to the masses.

[andrew heath]
Well, I wouldn't say we deliver much metal, but a lot of places that are sceptical of us at first are won over by the end of the show.

[indiessance]
Do you think the touring buzz will ever wear off any time soon?

[andrew heath]
Touring was definitely an experience with the highest of highs and lowest of lows. We're a dysfunctional family, so we can take it. We can't wait to get out there again.

[indiessance]
Which venue gives you the biggest headrush?

[andrew heath]
As for the biggest headrush, that usually depends on crowd response. I'd say our favorite shows have to include The Real Bar in Tempe, Arizona in September of 2006 because we packed a bar meant for about 150 people with 200+. The crowd was louder than we were, it was insane. The venue gave us two encore songs, much to the dismay of the promoters due to time constraints, because the crowd wouldn't stop chanting our name. Another show would be The Ridglea Theater's main stage in Fort Worth, Texas from this last tour. We played an open mic there on our first run through Texas and they invited us back to the main stage on our way back. It was incredible. The crowd loved it and we put on a great show. Ryan was so excited he forgot to put shoes on before the show.

[indiessance]
Have you performed at any total dives?

[andrew heath]
As for dives, we've played in sushi restaurants and even an abandoned building. Anything for a gig.

[indiessance]
The musical style of We Are They is eclectic. Could you help clear up any confusion, by describing the specific sonic ingredients that are combined to make up your music? What special quality or contribution does each member make? What are the main genre additives?

[andrew heath]
Wow. This one's always hard. The band was brought together from try outs, so no one knew each other before it formed. We've all evolved to love many, many different styles of music, so we just play with whatever sounds we like. Tyler will have a cool jam going on an organ and we'll build off of it, or Ryan will make a polka/jazz guitar riff and we'll go with it. Anything that sounds cool or fun to us is what we do. We don't have limitations or a specific kind of formula.

[indiessance]
In-between venues, the yellow line can get long. Travelling like sardines on road trips must get monotonous at times. What does the band do to break the monotony of a long distance? Any favorite DVDs? Do you have a favorite collective pastime?

[andrew heath]
We didn't have ANY luxuries on this last tour, so all we had was a deck of cards and Ipods. We played a lot of card games to pass time and whenever we found a place to stay, we'd watch a movie. The whole band is pretty big fans of the show Lost, so we have all of those on DVD, and we found a cheap movie theater in Florida during the tour to see The Dark Knight when it premiered. Andrew wouldn't let us miss it.

[indiessance]
Had read on the band blog that We Are They and the band's lead singer parted company; that was announced in September. But it takes more than that to make a band with a heavy concentration of talent to fall apart. Has this event actually caused the band to become more cohesive?

[andrew heath]
Yes, indeed. We're working hard to write new material and search for a singer. Andrew and Ryan are trying to see if they have what it takes to fill the slot if we can't find a replacement, but it's been a hard search so far.

[indiessance]
After checking out the We Are They MySpace profile, I get the impression that the band is not taking everything too seriously, and having fun.

[andrew heath]
Oh yeah. We love to convey our sense of humor and fun. We're not trying to be the next group of badasses to come into the music scene and destroy every other band. This is fun for us and we want everyone to know it and to come have fun with us. Even if you hate our music, we'll still hang out with you.

[indiessance]
Also noticed that you all seem to have an appreciative attitude toward your fans. Have your fans been reflecting that appreciation back?

[andrew heath]
Our fans have been great. We appreciate them so much. So many musicians will go out and sign autographs for hours and not look a single kid in the eye. I'd love to sit down and have lunch with every fan we have. I'd love to get to know them. We're here for them, and we'll respond to them as much as possible.

[indiessance]
What are some of the cools things fans have been saying?

[andrew heath]
We've gotten a lot of comments about how we're fun and unique and that's great. That's what we like to hear.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that our band is completely drug and alcohol free. We're not extremists who'll bash you for taking part in said substances, it's just not for us. We feel like it'd be a factor we don't want or need in our lives.




Thursday, October 4, 2007

Spoon



This Austin-based band has a solid long-term following—above ground and below. The tinny band name Spoon was inspired by the title of a 1972 avant-garde krautrock hit of the same title. These days, we use the tag experimental  to reference sound sketching bands that enhance the underground music scenery—and occasionally spike up on popular music charts.

Pitchfork contributing writer Eric Harvey gave Underdog  the if-any-track-was designation of quintessential Spoon pop single. Coincidentally, Spoon has a band member by the name of Eric Harvey who contributes keyboard, guitar, percussion, backing vocals.

Consumers use a spoon to scoop up every drop, as you should. Spoon's latest entrée Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, is a track listing of savory rock creations, and has nothing to do with the Heimlich manoeuvre. Also, any valley girl-ian gag me with a spoon reference is antithetic. Their latest sonic menu is a g-g-g-g-grower, according to the highfalutin critical crowd.
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