Spectre Folk / Kurt Vile / MV & EE / Pink Reason / Christian DeRoeck [Monster Island; Brooklyn, NY]
Tiny Mix Tapes original review
“Do you want to hear it mellow or do you want a chunky version like Lil Wayne does?” Matt Valentine asked the crowd gathered in Monster Island’s basement, just a few steps from the East River. “Chunky!” someone shouted from the corner of the room. Of course, drawing a link between the New Orleans rhymester and the "freak-folk" of MV & EE might seem a little absurd at first, but since Valentine brought it up, let’s roll with it: both are quite prolific, releasing a spectrum of releases that range from DIY to major label-linked affairs, and both have a morphing sonic territory that includes that very realm of chunkiness.
Valentine and Erica Elder were joined by two percussionists for their set, but the chunkiness really came from Valentine’s guitar stylings, which, whether acoustic or electric, have a thick, deliberate, but also natural sound. The duo focused on their latest release, Drone Trailer, kicking off with its opening track “Anyway” and finishing up with a swirling take on the title number, which progressed from a blanket of banjo noise to a soaring electric guitar outro.
MV & EE were by no means the only notable act of the night, though. Christian DeRoeck, formerly of Meneguar and Woods, kicked off the night, and Pink Reason followed, amping things up with dual guitars and drums. After Valentine and Elder did their thing, Kurt Vile did his: effortless but intricate folk held together with grit and simple honesty. Spectre Folk (Pete Nolan of Magik Markers) brought things to a close with tinny percussion loops, noodling guitar wanderings, and occasional vocal spurts. The crowd had thinned by this point, but Nolan meandered on as chatter floated from the back of the room and Valentine and Elder lounged and listened nearby. He was a spectre to some, but not all. And that seemed perfectly fine with him.
by Lincoln Doolittle
Philadelphia CitypaperThe Dead C Sun., Oct. 12, 9 p.m., $12, with Blues Control and Pink Reason, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684,
by Brian Howard
The Dead C are largely unknown in the U.S. (and throughout most of the world). I could say you sound like the Velvet Underground's most scabrous feedback blown up and improvised into mantras of morbid malevolence, crossed with the early Fall's relentless repetition and ramshackle production values. But that may be oversimplification. How do you describe your sound to people who've never heard the Dead C?
You really can't do this easily. I think your reference points are good enough, if you are talking to a well-schooled music fan. I try to explain that we look and sound like a rock band making the most cacophonous racket you can imagine—but really we're something else. Our music is pretty well 100-percent improvised using rock instrumentation, but it's almost completely unmusical, certainly devoid of melody. If you imagine rock music is like landscape painting, our work is extreme abstraction.
Time Out New York
The Dead C + Sightings + Northampton Wools + King Darves
Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey St (between Bowery and Chrystie St)
Lower East Side
212-533-2111
Prices
Tickets: advance $15, day of show $18
Description
Dead C's new Secret Earth is the New Zealand sludge trio's most satisfying outing in years. The group finally banishes the ambient laziness that tarred its past few releases and breaks a sweat, submerging simple chords and rock-steady percussion in vats of choleric feedback and low-fidelity crud. Lots of bands bury their tunes beneath scuzzy feedback, but Sightings is unique in that neither element seems primary: Its music could just as easily be termed rock-tinged noise as vice versa. Also playing are Northampton Wools—that's Bill Nace and Thurston Moore—and New Jersey's King Darves, who crafts fine little handmade songs. When Mon 7:30pm .
Full Dead C US Tour:
10/12 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s (w/ Blues Control, Pink Reason)
10/13 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
10/15 Seattle, WA @ Nectar Lounge (w/ Six Organs Of Admittance)
10/16 San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall (w/ Six Organs Of Admittance)
10/19 Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle (w/ Wolf Eyes)
Reviews
More Slow, Indecipherable, Brutal Beauty From the Dead C
By Mike Wolf
Tuesday, September 23rd 2008
What does it mean to say that a band has returned to form, when doing away with form was kind of the point to begin with? The Dead C's 2007 album, Future Artists, found the New Zealand trio mainly immersing themselves in electronically generated tones 'n' drones (with a few metal scrapings for flavor), and while it's hard to begrudge a 20-year-old group their indulgences, it's far from the most thrilling excursion in their bulging, misshapen catalog. Secret Earth, though, is the stuff: the largely improvised anti-rock that characterized their '90s output, which brought them to the attention of Sonic Youth and, subsequently, the rest of the Northern Hemisphere underground.
Nothing moves like this band's music: rolling and roiling, inexorable yet indifferent, an unstoppable object impelled by unreasonable forces. Think of the creeping lava that created the Dead C's country thousands of years ago, horrific in its time but resulting today in beautifully fractured terrain, like the islands in Otago Harbor, pictured on Secret Earth's cover. Don't let any TV biker-hippies fool you—this is real freedom rock, free of the codified mannerisms and looks (and chords, structures, and sales figures) that make up late-capitalism-era rock music.
As any Iraqi will tell you, though, freedom ain't always pretty. Bruce Russell's guitar never met a note it didn't—well, it's possible that roaring, keening guitar has never met a "proper" note at all. Michael Morley's mostly indecipherable vocals drift between moaning and wailing. Drummer Robbie Yeats is closest to convention, his spare but crashing work marking the disorienting darkness of Secret Earth's four long songs. The songs stubbornly refuse to develop; their rewards lie not in where they go, but rather in the way they just go. "Plains," which simply smokes for nine minutes, most immediately resembles rock, but it might take a dozen listens for the riffs of "Stations," the album's longest piece, to begin to define themselves as some other-dimensional blues. (Do people stick with an album that long anymore?) Two-thirds of the way through the track, a line that I want to believe goes, "It is such that I'm unsuuure . . ." drips out of Morley's mouth, offering as much justification as there could be for the Dead C.
Secret Earth streets on October 14th. Upcoming US live dates are as follows:
10/12 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s (w/ Blues Control, Pink Reason)
10/13 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
10/15 Seattle, WA @ Nectar Lounge w/ Six Organs Of Admittance
10/16 San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall (w/ Six Organs Of Admittance)
10/19 Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
Legendary kiwi noise rockers, The Dead C, return to the states for a limited run. Details below were taken from a Pitchfork news article that was posted earlier this week.
The Dead C Reveal Rare U.S. Tour, New Album, Reissues...and tour-only 12"!
Fun fact about the Dead Sea: it has a lot of salt and stuff.
Fun fact about the Dead C: the Earth has circled the Sun some five times since the long-running experimental New Zealand combo last toured the U.S., and 13 times since their most recent visit to the East Coast.
That all changes this October, as the Dead C have announced a brief Stateside visit, kicking off in Philly on the 12th and wrapping just a few days later in the Chi. All kinds of noiseniks and other weirdos are coming out of the woodwork to support the Dead C on this trek, including Thurston Moore's Northampton Wools project, Wolf Eyes, Six Organs of Admittance, and Sightings.
So what's the occasion for this rare overseas voyage? Why, a new Dead C record, naturally. Secret Earth packs in four presumably long tracks and arrives October 14 on CD and vinyl thanks to Ba Da Bing.
But that's not all! Ba Da Bing is also teaming with Jagjaguwar to reissue on vinyl a pair of Dead C classics originally released by New Zealand's legendary Flying Nun label (the Clean, the Chills, the Bats, the Verlaines, etc). Eusa Kills and DR503 are due to hit shelves in mid-fall in double-LP form, and each packs in the extras. The former boasts a pair of cuts from the "Helen Said This" 12", while the latter crams in six jams off the The Sun Stabbed EP.
But wait, there's more! When the Dead C barnstorm the States this fall, they'll have with them a new, limited edition, tour-only 12". Take that, giant pool of brackish water.
Secret Earth:
01 Mansions
02 Stations
03 Plains
04 Waves
DR503 (vinyl reissue):
01 Max Harris
02 Speed Kills
03 The Wheel
04 Three Years
05 Mutterline
06 Country
07 I Love This
08 Polio
09 Angel *
10 Crazy I Know *
11 Fire *
12 Bad Politics *
13 Sun Stabbed *
14 Three Years *
Eusa Kills (vinyl reissue):
01 Scary Nest
02 Call Back Your Dogs
03 Alien to Be
04 Phantom Power
05 Now I Fall
06 I Was Here
07 Children
08 Bumtoe
09 Glasshole Pit
10 Maggot
11 Envelopment
12 Helen Said This *
13 Bury (Refutaio Omnium Haeresium) *
* bonus track
C-span:
10-12 Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's #
10-13 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom ^
10-16 San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall %
10-19 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle $
# with Blues Control, Pink Reason
^ with Northampton Wools, Sightings % with Six Organs of Admittance
$ with Wolf Eyes
Naked on the Vague
The Blood Pressure Sessions LP
(Siltbreeze)
Original review from Doug Mosurock's Still Single feature.
I think my attentions were elsewhere when I caught this band at their label showcase down in Austin, my mind having just been turned into a paste by Eat Skull, and the virtual threat of some scene big shot who kept glaring at me any chance he got. Next time, dude, make a move, because you missed your shot at the title. Anyway, talked to Lax afterwards and NOTV was the band he had the most to say about; kept on going off on how they make music that fits in with the old Australian label M-Squared, that they were true to the roots of new wave, in that brief window before we were able to classify it. I like to stick to my guns, but I also have an outsized amount of respect for Siltbreeze and almost all of its works, and I knew this wasn’t some barbecue hoax from nowhere. I’m glad I’ve gotten the chance to spend some quiet time with this motherfucker of an album in the meantime. Co-ed duo wanderings of a decidedly dark and altogether chilling nature, either bending in a beautifully ebbing continuous tone meander, or thumping chest with steel-eyed intensity a la the better days of Lydia Lunch, all drum machine and black dye and squealing synthesizer, deathrockin’ and boppin’ along like … well, like a band that hasn’t yet been informed of “the rules” and went off on their own gut instincts. It’s often so hard to separate goth action from a teenage-level sense of propriety, that thing that makes all but the memories of youthful exposure to such stagey bleakness and sexualized danger so hard to stomach as the years go on. Naked on the Vague pull this off pretty effortlessly, and that’s a feat worth checking out. Very highly recommended. 500 copies.
Upcoming US live dates:
04/03 Philadelphia, PA @ DANGER DANGER GALLERY
04/04 Brooklyn, New York @ Secret Project Robot Party @ Monster Island (w/ Pink Reason, Tyvek, Psychedelic Horseshit)
04/05 New York, NY @ CAKE SHOP
04/08 Providence, RI @ AS220
04/09 Florence, MA @ YOD SHOP
04/11 Detroit, MI @ UFO Factory
04/13 Toledo, OH @ MICKEY FINN"S PUB
04/16 Chicago, IL @ AV-AERIE
04/18 Iowa City, IA @ THE CAVE OF SPIRITS
04/19 Minneapolis, MN @ ORGAN HAUS
04/25 Seattle, WA @ FUNHOUSE
05/01 Portland, OR @ THE TWILIGHT (w/ Eat Skull)
05/03 San Francisco, CA @ HEMLOCK TAVERN
05/11 Los Angeles, CA @ FAMILY
05/16 Los Angeles, CA @ THE SMELL
05/20 Los Angeles, CA @ DING-A-LING
Mr. Doug Mosurak of DustedMagazine.com takes a stab at Pink Reason's outsider ways.Artist: Pink Reason
Album: Cleaning the Mirror
Label: Siltbreeze
Review date: Apr. 19, 2007
Online review
It’s pretty easy to see how some might conflate loneliness with isolation. Green Bay, WI’s Kevin de Broux, who performs under the moniker Pink Reason, knows the difference, and his music does all that it can to stem the tide that runs between these two poles. He’s got his work cut out for him; at one point, Goth and its dyed-dark culture had enough support to fan out to American suburbs, and nascent teenage minds were desiccated with a musical mope that truly spoke to their Byzantine emotional maladies. Anything slow, sad and dirge-like was more or less relegated to names written in Sharpie on purple Jansport or with paint pen on black leather. Pink Reason’s musical output thus far speaks to a past consumed by Goth, but also an awakening of the sensibilities that subvert the ornate perfection that most Gothic music seems to rely upon. Nowadays, Goth factions are by and large marginalized by Hot Topic and Torrid mall culture, forced into spectacle (VNV Nation on the industrial side, the Faint for indie chunks, and Dresden Dolls for fine arts students ‘n’ grads) or abuse (any number of eyeliner-bearing metallic “screamo” choad bands), but you’ll give me back that time in our lives when it could have also mean the Cure, or Siouxsie, or Dead Can Dance for the sake of my argument, thank you very much.
His first single projected a mysterious loner vibe, pinned mewling like a specimen to a Kate Bush album cover. For its reissue, its strange, blurry sleeve photo of a bleached-blonde, gender-bent gothling was replaced by a drawing of a swastika fashioned out of cocks and balls, swapping one mystery with another. Cleaning the Mirror, Pink Reason’s debut full-length, presents a series of similarly stark and ambiguous imagery: a dead sunflower, a commode, a mostly-empty fridge, a picture of what looks like de Broux grappling with a bar bouncer. Likewise, gently-worn, suggestive ready-mades have soaked into de Broux’s soil, and are represented in all of the material he’s released. Barely-there, sustained acoustic death marches atomize into the still air, leavened by virtually no production value whatsoever. Tape hiss (and tape disintegration), outmoded drum samples, even a phone ringing in the background point to Cleaning the Mirror as a record made at home on no budget, time and roommates permitting. Culled from some three years worth of material, these six songs grind away with a phantom brilliance, their glacial tempos and stumbling progressions freed of pop structures to give the impression that they have truly come from a big, stark nowhere.
Surface listens find Cleaning the Mirror in league with a type of lo-fi aesthetic that lines up with the early 1990s and their impending revival, right down to the reactivated Siltbreeze imprint whose name this album bears. Labels like Shrimper and Road Cone built their lowercase aesthetics on drowsy, hand-produced cassette releases by groups like Bugskull and Refrigerator, two examples in particular that share in the charred, dented-can charms that Pink Reason reproduces. The twice-removed alienation that drove groups like Black Tape for a Blue Girl and Lycia merit reference as well for the replicated crawling crush and apocalyptic melancholy gathering at their stone feet. That these songs are essentially loose blues-based mantras separate Pink Reason from much of the forlorn pack. That de Broux uses three singing voices (one jarring and awkward, on “Dead End,” the record’s most upbeat offering, another a Mick Jagger-esque drawl, and a third a recently-awoken moan that allows itself to sink below the music into mystery and incomprehension) distances itself further. That the mood prevails here (and on more recent recordings - check Myspace - done with a full band that blast through newer material with unmitigated feedback and the harsh, angsty energy that once propelled Sebadoh) keeps things unique. Starting sardonically with “Goodbye,” de Broux’s sanguine, descending chords float by like tumbleweeds decelerating in the fields after the freight train blows past the dusty fields. “Thrush” fogs up the proceedings with a Booker T.-esque organ replacing the guitars, its altered and off-kilter musings ringing through behind slow patterns of drum machine and clanging metal. “Motherfucker” haunts like Jandek (or more accurately, Luxurious Bags) but with the twang of Neil Hagerty’s preternatural Stones worship. “Storming Heaven” disposes of an icy, industrial beat in favor of the record’s most bleak and faded moments, the master tape even giving way in the middle, as likely to a mechanical flub as to material fatigue.
Through it all, the music remains compelling, de Broux understanding that when certain expectations from the singer-songwriter equation are removed – fully splitting off from any pulsebeat that might have charged this music while still keeping consistent with his own ways of seeing – the end results pay off dividends. It’s a puzzling gambit that intrigues, forcing the audience to dig deeply into the material in order to examine it, and at the same time keeps de Broux and his motives handily obscured. He’s somewhat of a character in person, one who doesn’t put forward any tangible sort of outsider vibes. And it’s that character which really makes these songs snap, even in their morbidity and emotional violence. Records like this one could easily underscore the undoing of so many other acts’ contrived and twisted efforts, a sonic lamprey attaching fear and self-doubt onto the audience’s shoulders and off of his own. Music like this has never failed to find its host, from which it will feed hungrily.
By Doug Mosurak
Upcoming PR tour dates
05/18 Chicago, IL @ WHPK 88.5 FM
05/19 Chicago, IL @ Ekhart Quad @ University of Chicago
05/21 Green Bay, WI @ Main Stage
05/27 Orlando, FL @ Wet T-Shirt Wild Weekend (day show)
07/14 Seattle, WA @ Funhouse
07/16 Portland, OR @ Rotture
07/17 Oakland, CA @ Stork Club (w/ Wooden Shjips)
07/18 San Francisco, CA @ Hemlock Tavern
07/19 Sacramento, CA @ Fools Foundation
07/22 Omaha, NE @ Cleavers
Spectre Folk / Kurt Vile / MV & EE / Pink Reason / Christian DeRoeck [Monster Island; Brooklyn, NY]
