A New Lantern Review

Sick Review of Deliver Me From Nowhere - this dude "gets it." He is also a big Omon Ra II fan - this guy has good tastes.

From My Great Machine

Lantern, the brainchild of Zachary Fairbrother (guitarist of the late great OMON RA II ) have just dropped the amazing tape "Deliver Me From Nowhere..." for your ear holes to digest. Its a romp through protopunk blues that will leave you howling at the moon like a woodland maniac.

The opener "Crude Vessels of Sound" is a mind melting tour de force of power guitar pyrotechnics. It builds slowly over a serene Midwestern plain, then doused with gasoline, set on fire, and scorched to cinders, leaving only charred remains to bake in a harsh desert sun. Reminds me of Neil Young's solos for the "Dead Man"soundtrack mixed with a little early Ash Ra Temple or perhaps Guru Guru and a heavy dose of FUZZ. I'll be listening to this monster when the super volcano explodes in Yosemite. Check out the justifiably, virtuous music video shot and edited in part by Alex Hungtai of Dirty Beaches and Jackie Lachance.

"Feeln' Like I Might End Up Dead" is straight up death row blues, with Zachary murmuring over gentle guitar lines about strange dreams. "Come On Rip Let's Take A Trip" is harmonica laced, Native American drumming, reverb drenched, Appalachian backwoods snake handling, coal miners music. Seriously folks, that harmonica sound is religious magic to warn all non-believers to get their shit together before the second coming.
"Screemin' Dream" is a Bo Diddley party stomper complete with twangy drum smacks/handclaps and chunky guitar riffs. Get down and grungy to the Hasil Adkins cover of "I'm Happy" recorded in the back of some scuzzy West Virginia redneck bar at 2AM. The closer "In The Night Alone" starts off as a stripped down 50's slow dance, then drops off into Lynchian nightmare territory of doom laden keyboards, complete with rain sound effects. I feel like I should be walking back to my apartment to find my own dead rotting body on my bed ala'"Mulholland Drive".
Dig this tape hard ya'll. I think you'll be hearing a lot from Mr. Fairbrother in the future and I'm looking forward to see where he's gonna take us next.

Weird Canada Won!

Weird Canada Won the CBC Radio3's search light contest for best Canadian Music Website!!!!

Congratulations to Aaron, Jesse, Marie, Jenni, and all the contributors. You all work so hard to make the site great - And a HUGE thank you to everybody that kept voting, it was not all for nothing.

I hope they offer Aaron a radio show, I think that would be a great decision on the part of CBC.

I wish we could all be together to celebrate - perhaps there will mini celebrations across the land whether it is dancing in your room or out with friends.

Here is the official WORD.

-Z

Light Saber Noise

Thank you to my friend Naho for passing along to me this nice exhibition of light saber noise courtesy of mixed media artist Atsuhiro Ito.

-Z

Weird Canada

So I contribute to a blog called Weird Canada - most of you probably are familiar with that site as I check my stats and a lot of my traffic is directed from there. CBC's radio 3 as had a competition this month to find out what is Canada's best music website. Starting from the bottom 100 or so or whatever we have made it to the final stage of the vote - the top 10. 

We feel that if Weird Canada wins this will be a small cultural victory for Canada. We will have toppled many mainstream industry blogs and will have stricken a wake up call to the CBC that underground music is important to Canadians. That Weird Canada is a strong force for new music in Canada. Many artists that have been featured in Weird Canada in the last year haveseen their music travel far and wide. While I know all these band's work so hard promoting their music and honing their craft - no doubt has Weird Canada's effort helped their cause. 

Artists like D'eon, Grimes, and Dirty Beaches - to name a few have all been covered early in their careers on Weird Canada. These artists music has been released on foreign labels and since been covered in major media outlets and blogs like Pitchfork, Vice, MTV, BBC - even D'eon appearing on Thom Yorke's playlist - but have seldom received support or radio play from the CBC. We feel that we cover the best of Canadian music at Weird Canada and we are always trying to expand our scope. Now I live in the United States and I hear my friend's talk about bands like Gobble Gobble, Make Out Video Tape, and Long Long Long - all of which have been covered early in their starts on Weird Canada. I wondered if they would have known about them if their wasn't a Weird Canada.  

Here are some inspiring words from Weird Canada founder Aaron Levin sure to get your DIY blood flowing - and please vote for Weird Canada HERE

-Z

From Weird Canada

CBC Radio 3 is running a pyramidal voting scheme, vetting Weird Canada through a triumvirate of keystrokes, sinusoids, and opinionated minds. A conspiracy of this calibre must be met with deep suspicion and deliberate candor. They pit us against each other – our fellow publishers. They split our fans – those beautiful beings. They place the unbearable suffering of expectation on all who speak their name. Ye wyld typists vie for the last shard of national recognition.

Our radio Narsil has us deep in the trenches, spending weeks at your foot begging for another integer. In the heat of the mud no ideal will last. All succumb to it. Thick. Greasy. Swelling with the rainbows of fallen candidates. In the beginning we shouted “No! This voting scheme shall not stand! Free it all! Let the streets run wild with the multitude of our opinions!” But now, as the blue skies turn black, I face you filled with the adrenaline of conviction. We believe. We want to win. We write these very words to justify our victory grip.

Thanks to your support, the absurd notion that Weird Canada may win has become a reality. We have blown away all the flagpoles and are staring blankly into the void. The Top 10. Why is this important? Why does this matter? Win or not, Weird Canada will remain an exploratory experience for the brazenly adventurous. We will always focus on our northernly kin and enthuse, physically scan, and hyperbolize all the wonderful manifestations of creative potential this country has to offer. Our daily operation will continue, delightedly, into the unheralded cassette oblivion.

However, the Canadian psyche is shifting. Winning this contest may push it further into our camp. The middle ground of indie music is disappearing. The plates are grooving under due pressure from self-recorded geniuses and the industry cannot will not handle it. So we’ve come to you, our people from coast-to-coast, to ask for your vote. A vote along the streams of time. A vote for the only entity proudly bearing the emerging flag of a new northern identity. An identity not born in the offices of minor-majors, but one bursting with the charged, chromatic life festering within tape dubbers, cd burners, pressing plants, and photocopy machines.

We. Are. Northernly.

VOTE WEIRD CANADA

Hearts,

Aaron Levin
Weird Canada
weirdcanada.com

PS – No sign-up. Two Clicks. Vote daily, every 24 hours, until our star shines ever brighter.

Fuzz has changed my life.

The Atlantic just did an amazing article, complete with sound samples, about the history of fuzz. Fuzz has changed my life since I picked up the Zvex fuzz factory a couple years back. Although, I have always been a fan of the fuzz, on the school yard my favorite song was 'Satisfaction' which popularized the use of the fuzz.

Check it out the article here.

Also you can watch the documentary Fuzz: The Sound that Changed the World on Dailymotion, below is the first part.

Does anybody want to give me a Univox Super Fuzz?

-Z

FUZZ 01
Uploaded by crazy-fuzz. - See the latest featured music videos.

Buddha Box 2.0

Last year I composed a new piece for Obey Convention IV called Buddha Box 2.0 for four electric guitars and electric bass. The piece is very simple to play and I've uploaded it for all to download and in my dreamy hopes, perhaps in some circumstance, a group of beings might want to play it.

You can listen to the performance here on soundcloud. I think I had more fun making the score than the piece - The score is actually mostly text based. The graphic score exists mostly as an accompaniment to help the performers "get in the vibe" although neither the text or graphic score existed at the time of the performance, I just told them what to do. I am planing on doing some screen printed versions of the score as well.

Thanks to Emily Robb, Ryan Kirk, Jason Eastwood, and Luke Corrigan who all helped realize this piece and a special thanks to Darcy Spidel for programing it and Lukas Pearse for recording it.

You can download all the files you need HERE.

PS. This is Avant-Lard's 100 post! Thank you all for following!

-Z

Buddha Box 2.0 by zacharyfairbrother