elephant 6 holiday surprise (chicago)

Just to be clear, this post refers to various recordings from the Elephant Six Holiday Surprise concert which took place in Chicago, IL                                                  all photos by Andy Resek
at the Bottom Lounge on 10/21/2008.

Apparently, there is a plethora of recordings popping up from this show (which is, of course, never a bad thing). You know what, I don't feel like writing a real entry about this right now, so here's the rub...

NPR has posted a very listenable soundboard recording of this show which you can read about/listen to here. Now for the caveats... 1) Both the streaming version and the podcast are encoded @ 128 kbps in joint stereo. If you intend to download this recording directly from NPR's website, I recommend the podcast version because the streaming version clips pretty badly. 2) For some reason, the NPR recording lacks three tracks. Not only that, they happen to be three of the most outstanding tracks in a night full of outstanding tracks. As if the lack of The Music Tapes' "The Minister of Longitude" and "The Television Tells Us" weren't bad enough, they didn't include Jeff and Julian's performance of "Engine" either. At first I thought it had something to do with the fact that it was an un-mic'ed performance, but "The Fool" was played under identical conditions, and it appears on the recording. 3) Being a soundboard recording, this one sounds a little bit sterile at times.

These things said, the NPR recording probably provides the most consistently enjoyable listening experience out of the three recordings I've heard from this show. It does not, however, serve to recreate the LIVE experience as well as either of the two audience recordings. Only one of the audience recordings is currently available online (because I'm lazy), and it can be found at any of the following:
                                                            dimeadozen.org
                                                       thetradersden.org
                                                the-zomb.com
Thanks to "mrscorpio81" on E6 townhall for recording and posting this, his lovely, audience recording.

As most of you probably already know, I made what I consider to be a really good audience recording as well, and I promise I'll get that posted by week's end. PROMISE.

That however, is not why we are here today. As a courtesy to everybody on E6 townhall, who apparently loathe both bittorrent and lossless music of any kind, I took the liberty of tracking out the NPR recording (with no additional loss of quality [that means no re-encoding]), as well as filling in the gaps with my own recordings of "The Minister of Longitude," "The Television Tells Us," and "Engine." All of this in craptastic 128kbps joint stereo. I do apologize if there are any noticeable hiccups between tracks, but one cannot directly edit the waveform of an .mp3 without re-encoding it, so there's really no recourse for the man who otherwise tirelessly smoothes over blemishes in his audio projects.

Anyway, I'll post the link in the Comments section as soon as it finishes uploading, and I'll post my recording A.S.A.P.

Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England!

Edit: Jeff Mangum (written for search engine indexing purposes).

white stilton with apricot

Has it really been almost a week since I've updated? How easy it is to forget. I've got a bunch of posts brewing right now, but I know I really should complete all the unfinished ones first. Anyway, here's the last new post (hopefully) before I give the old ones the attention they deserve. I don't know if you're into cheese as much as I am, but man, oh man, have I got a recommendation for you. Two words: English Stilton. Tonight's cheese is an apricot stilton purchased from Trader Joe's in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I started out by doing what I do with everything I'm planning on eating: place it on my tree painting. Visual walkthrough follows...


Once I was satisfied that it was on the tree painting, I decided to plate, slice, and cracker the feisty little block...


Well, as you might be able to guess, one thing led to another...


Which led to another...


Which led to another...


...and the aftermath (if you didn't consider the preceding picture a sufficient display of aftermath)...



RECIPE FOR A TRULY PATHETIC EVENING ALONE:

1      Block English Stilton  (with fruit)
2-5   Bottles of Decent Beer
20    Crackers
2-3   Cigarettes
1      Naked Body  (For 2 Naked Bodies, see "Formula For A Truly
              Badass Evening Together," unfortunately not featured
              on this blog.)
1      Adequate Supply of Insulin  (natural or synthetic)

SMiLE: reconstructed

I suppose a lot of you are already aware of the plethora of SMiLE mixes, reconstruc-tions, remixes, mashups, mixdowns, et al. floating around on the internet, so if you're already well-familiar with them, feel free to disregard this post altogether. For those of you who aren't well-familiar, however, you're in for a real treat. An ungodly amount of literature exists about The Beach Boys' "lost" 1967 album, SMiLE, so there's really no point in me producing an under-informed and half-assed history of it for you. As a consolation prize though, I'm happy to save you a few keystrokes...http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=beach+boys+smile

...I have homework to do now, but this just finished uploading, so if you positively can't wait for a little content, you may download Wrightfan Presents SMiLE 5.0...here. This is probably my favorite SMiLE mix, for reasons that I'll explain later. Stick around though, there are at least two more mixes to come, thorough comparisons, and a SMiLE reconstruction toolkit (just in case you want to add to the extant volume of crappy SMiLE mixes). Wow, I am so tired. Why am I awake now (it's 7:30 am). We're about to drive down to Cincinnati to surprise my grandparents. This is Purple Chick Presents: The Beach Boys' SMiLE - a stereo reconstruction. The bonus tracks will be posted later. BYE (right now, it is not my concern whether or not you like this)!

*Also, Disclaimer: I'm really afraid I'm going to get my nuts cut off for this, but I have converted these mixes from FLAC (lossless) format to MP3s for overall ease-of-use and familiarity. Feel free to listen to, share, and do whatever you want with these mixes, but make sure that you allow everyone with whom you share them the opportunity to download them in their original, intended form.

In original, FLAC format:

The Beach Boys 1960s Wrightfan presents SMiLE 5.0 (FLAC)

The Beach Boys 1960s SMiLE - a stereo reconstruction by Purple Chick (FLAC)

tbc...

stars and stripes: huntsville, al (installment 1)

Welcome to the sprawling Southern metropolis of Huntsville, Alabama. Although rich in heritage and cultural history, Huntsville has its sights set firmly on the stars, dreaming of a brilliant tomorrow to rival its storied past. We take pride in what we do, and (coincidentally) we do it well. Yes, this truly is the stuff that dreams are made of.

This will be the first of five installments in the "Where Are They Now: The Stars and Stripes of Huntsville, Alabama" series, featuring the meteoric rise of local talent from 2002-present. The first artist on our tour of Huntsville's rich musical past is a hardworking group of young men currently performing under the name, Thomas Function. Variously billed in the past as The Panic Buttons, Alabama Jihad, Le Espionage, Magazine Love and featuring a rotating set of players, they do us a great honor with their patriotic and respectful performances, delighting old and young members of the community alike. Recently, as Thomas Function, these local heroes have sung the heavenly sounds of their gospel far beyond the borders of their beloved Madison County. They will always call Alabama home, but it seems that distant galaxies are now within their reach! Good luck on your journey, boys!

Alabama Jihad (2002-2005) (?)


"Ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep."
     - Benito Mussolini

Demo 2003

 02. 
   03. 
     04. 

tbc...

Thomas Function (2005-Present)

(Look How They've Grown!)

Celebration! [2008]

 05. 
   06. 
     07. 

tbc...

the folks from mother's mixer

This album has been simmering in the back of my mind for almost three weeks now, and although I've been checking back in with it every few days, I don't know whether or not I'm really getting as much out of "The Folks From Mother's Mixer" as there clearly is to get. That doesn't mean I'm not loving it, because I certainly am, it's just that I'm a little dubious about recommending something on the basis of an incomplete understanding of what it means to me. Also, it's in my car right now, so I can't even take a picture...I guess I just figured if I didn't get something down on paper, this whole blog would end up on the scrap-heap. tbc...

 08. 
   09. 
     10. 

I've decided to post only the first 11 tracks, which is their self-titled debut album. If you like it, I'm sure they'd really appreciate it if you went out and bought the whole thing. Their follow-up is equally good, but better-produced and intended to be more "easily accessible" I think.

The tracklist and download link are in the comments section below. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

savaloy dip **UPDATED**

Ok, ok. So I didn't buy this one, but even better, I got it as a gift in the mail (one copy all the way from England). I certainly would have paid for it given the opportunity, but Alan Price's 1974 album, "Savaloy Dip," was never even issued in the first place. I had been dying to hear this record for ages, and it is only through the kindness of two perfect strangers that I am now able to say that I have. To the best of my knowledge,    "Savaloy Dip" hasn't surfaced on the internet yet, and I know for a fact that it is featured on very few traders' bootlists. I doubt that the delightful individuals who went out of their respective ways to grace my mailbox with this presently unreleased gem would want to be mentioned here by name, but they should certainly know that I will never put this album on without remembering their thoughtfulness.

That said, here is what I can tell you about this album:

"Savaloy Dip" was slated to be Alan Price's follow-up to his rather successful 1973 album, "O Lucky Man!," but the recording company (Reprise) rejected it for unknown reasons, and it was unfortunately never released. Somehow, a copy of the master tape was still delivered to the Ampex plant in Illinois, where an unknown quantity of 8-tracks were manufactured before Reprise was able to pull the plug. Although Reprise issued orders to destroy all manufactured copies, at least a few of them escaped and have since been discovered and preserved for posterity. After the album's rejection, Alan decided to scrap all of the material except for one track, "Between Today and Yesterday," around which his proper follow-up to "O Lucky Man!," 1975's "Between Today And Yesterday" would be based.

Additionally, I can unbiasedly tell you that the Reprise execs who gave the orders to scrap this album were a bunch of idiots. I've only listened to it twice through since it came in the mail this afternoon, but it is every bit as wonderful and thoughtful as I could have hoped. This album should be listened to neither as a discarded, dug-up, orphaned, or aborted project from Alan's musical past, nor as a botched musical experiment to fill the gap between "O Lucky Man!" and "Between Today And Yesterday." "Savaloy Dip" definitely stands on its own as a meritous album in its own right. Prepare yourselves for a truly wonderful album by one of my favorite artists!

I really don't know anything about the lineage of this copy. I can tell you it's got to be at least a 4th generation cd-r, probably higher. All tracks were copied to my computer with EAC. I used a very light filter on them to remove some of the tape hiss, and I patched the title track, "Savaloy Dip," back together, as it was originally split up across two sides of the 8-Track. I did the best that I could, but if anyone out there would care to give this thing a proper re-mastering, I'll gladly send her/him the original .wav files.

**UPDATE**
I received another copy in the mail last week, and it's obviously sourced from the same 8-Track tape, but from the first listen, I could tell it sounded slightly better than the first one. Anyway, I decided to go ahead and do a spectrum and frequency analysis of the track, "Over and Over Again," from each disc. If you're interested in this kind of thing, feel free to have a look at the results. The graphic on top is from the first disc that I received and originally posted, while the one on bottom is from the second disc that I just got a few days ago. Now, I don't have a great eye for this kind of thing, but you don't really need one to see (on the spectrograph) that the first copy has gotten mangled somewhere along the line. Also, a sharp dip in high frequencies is present on the frequency analysis of both copies. Normally, this indicates that what you've got is .mp3 sourced, but this may be a result of the original 8-Track transfer instead. Once again, if there's anybody out there with an informed opinion on this matter, please chime in.

Now, on to the good stuff. I've been doing a sufficient amount of tinkering with Audacity since I originally made this post, and as a result, went about fixing up the title track, "Savaloy Dip," in an entirely different way than before. I also ran a slightly lighter hiss removal this time around, with a minor rumble correction. The earlier posted copy definitely ended up sounding a too muddy as a result of the filter I used, and I really do apologize for that. I think I did a pretty decent job on this one though. My most recent purchase, which, believe you me, you'll be hearing about in the next couple of days, certainly had a lot to do with the better production value on this updated copy. That said, my original offer still stands to anyone interested in giving this fantastic album the makeover it's been so unfairly deprived of for the last 34 years. If you downloaded the previously posted version of this album, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE replace it with the newly posted one, ESPECIALLY if you're planning on circulating it in any way. I guess that's all. This has been a long and draining update, so please ENJOY!

 03. (original) 
 03. (repaired) 

   04. (original) 
   04. (repaired) 

     05. (original) 
     05. (repaired) 

The tracklist and download link are in the comments section below. Delete your old copy, enjoy your new copy, and please let me know what you think!

les gants blancs du diable

I returned to school this afternoon from an all-too-short mid-semester break. Not a bad coming home present though, this ghostly fellow was resting safely at my doorstep, directly from Vadim Music, a European label specializing in "rare grooves & reissues." It's the soundtrack to the bizarre, little known, 1973 animated film of the same name: "Les Gants Blancs Du Diable." Composed by the late, Karl-Heinz Schäfer, I bought this on sort of a whim. Given the massive quantities of library music I've been ingesting lately, in addition to the many "La Planete Sauvage" (Alain Goraguer) comparisons I've heard about this one, it seemed like a good fit. I'm going to let the Vadim Music sales pitch do most of the descriptive work for me, but I will say that although I'm enjoying this album tremendously so far, I think "La Planete Sauvage" is justifiably the better-known of the two. Goraguer is still the unrivaled king of atmospheric, martian funk in my book.

Vadim Music write-up:

"Within the oh so elusive club of the cult soundtrack, there exists one rare record which provokes a deep fascination and evokes a unique charm for those having heard of it, or those lucky enough to have listened to it (but an exclusive few). A veritable Holy Grail, relentlessly pursued by many, each hoping, one day, to own a copy of this unique and unrivalled work.

Les Gants Blancs du Diable simply isn’t like other records. Its preciousness comes, first of all, from the fact that it was never re-edited (neither on CD nor vinyl), before Vadim Music’s release, and that the rare copies in circulation suffered from a slight sound degradation, the result of a fault at the time of pressing.

Regardless of any imperfections of the technical kind, the music encompassed within its precious grooves instantaneously reveals its dreamlike and addictive character from the very first listen.

A drug for the senses, opening the doors wide into a fantasy world, shaped by unique musical forms: jazz tempos played on tablas and grooved with free form sitars, chords at the abyss’s very brink, held back by reassuringly rounded bass sounds, lightening electricity escaping from epileptic guitars, and the voice of an angel singing the colours of magic, existing only within this music.

Somewhere between feline jazz, crazed orchestral pop, opiate jerk and lunar funk, the music turns on its multiple charms, seemingly led by a longing for both violence and calm, the driving force behind the record’s dramatic power.

A power culminating in its two emblematic themes, Utopia and Couleurs, breathtaking and elegant melodies, casting a radiant light across all in their path.

A tragic beauty, somewhat reminiscent of the sombre notes of the La Planète Sauvage soundtrack, another hidden treasure from the 70s.

At the helm of this strange vessel we find a certain Karl-Heinz Schäfer, a discreet arranger of German origin, having led from the shadows of French studios (for Christophe, The Rockets and Claude Ciari amongst others...) and who would subsequently go on to writing other soundtracks, with varied success (La Grande Trouille, Zig Zig, L'Empy reinte des Géants, Extérieur Nuit, Polar).

The music from Les Gants Blancs du Diable entirely surpasses the (minor) status of the Laszlo Szabo film for which it was written, breaking its way free to attain its status as a totally independent and complete work."

Listen to some samples and buy it here.

The tracklist and download link are in the comments section below. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think! Also, if anybody out there has anything, and I mean anything, else by Karl-Heinz Schäfer or Alain Goraguer, please drop me a line. I would love to hear more.

l'enfant assasin des mouches

Thank you, Wazoo Records employee. As of recently, I have a new hobby. It goes something like this... I walk into a record store and ask the person behind the counter to recommend something good. Inevitably, he or she will not do as I've asked, but instead, ask a question in return. "Well, what kind of music are you interested in?" or "Could you name some artists that you like?" No, no, no. I want to hear something that you think is good, not something that you suppose I will enjoy based on my reported listening habits. Anyway, this is the result of my latest visit to Wazoo Records in Ann Arbor, MI. The goal of any of these excursions is to walk out of the record store with a new treasure, having learned as little about it as possible while purchasing it. Anyway, three steps outside of the store and I look down at the packaging..."Shit!" I don't know if you can tell from the picture or not, but the cover of this thing reads like an advert in a music magazine. The first couple of bolded entries that my eyes amble across convey something very troubling. "I am an idiot, I have just re-bought an album that I already own." Fortunately, this turned out not to be the case, but please bear with me for a moment as I attempt to recreate my visual experience for you...

FROM THE ARRANGER OF
"L'HISTOIRE DE MELODY NELSON"
COMES THE PSYCHEDELIC SYMPHONY THAT
INSPIRED THE WRITINGS OF
SERGE GAINSBOURG
WHICH TURNS OUT NOT TO BE THE ALBUM JUST MENTIONED
BUT SOMETHING BY SOME OTHER GUY,
JEAN CLAUDE VANNIER
AND IT IS CALLED
l'enfant assasin des mouches

Thank you, and I applaud you for your patience...

Anyway, I do consider myself a big Gainsbourg fan, and the arrangements on "Melody Nelson" are clearly the best of his career; needless to say, I quickly and brutally clawed my way through the cellophane wrapping to get at the liners.

To be continued...