A straight shot west out of Boston on I-90 will carry you, in two hours or less, to Western Massachusetts, where the country still looks like it did twenty or even 40 years ago: college towns, I-91 tracing the same lazy ladder from Springfield up through Holyoke and Northampton, Amherst and Deerfield. Out there it's taken for granted that the houses will be drafty, the winters uniformly long, and that, on any given trip to the local supermarket, one might spot Thurston or Lou or Kim or J, on-and-off locals for more than twenty years. {audio}http://www.archive.org/download/DinosaurJrDrawings/07Drawerings_64kb.mp3{/audio} ... Drawerings Read More ...
By way of decrying a society that left its citizens unbearably restrained, Edith Wharton describes how in New York in the 1870s, women would order dresses from their Paris dressmakers and then leave them in tissue paper at least two years before wearing them in public; the thought of showing them "in advance of the fashion" was unforgivably vulgar. Social life has changed, but cultural life seems just as restricted now – even Animal Collective are held back by trends that seem a couple of years old (and that they helped to invent). When I think back on 2009, I’ll first remember how our impoverished aesthetic generation repeatedly scraped the resin from the cultural trash barrel. Every second person is wearing neon leggings, and the ones who aren’t rock a ‘70s aesthetic, with high-waisted jeans and moccasins. Christmas sweaters are getting impossible to find at the thrift store. Ska revival. Garage rock revival. It never ends. Read More ...
For just over 10 years, London's Guapo has been working in the world of avant and progressive rock. The band's past is a bit hard to track with its numerous lineup changes and guest musicians. The most recent change in roster was the resignation of Matthew Thompson, the founding member of Guapo, which occurred just before the release of 2005's Black Oni. The departure of Thompson has left Guapo with percussionist David Smith and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O'Sullivan. Though O'Sullivan is by no means a founding member of the band, but he was essential in honing the sound on Guapo's last two LPs: Five Suns and Black Oni. These two albums have been pivotal in building Guapo's following of fans, so it's hard not to credit O'Sullivan as an asset to the band.... {audio}http://www.neurotrecordings.com/artists/guapo/audio/Guapo-The%20Selenotrope.mp3 {/audio} ... The Selenotrope Read More ...
Basic Atari Teenage Riot iPhone app philosophy by Alec Empire + London gig+ 4CD, 1DVD free download
The free iPhone app features all ATR albums and songs, all videos, a photo archive, bio, news updates and also a ‘Riotsounds Produce Riots’ audioplayer. This audio player includes all the sounds/WAV files that ATR used at the May 1st 1999 demonstration (very low sub basses, square waves, noise sounds which trigger hysteria and panic within the audience) & would make them available to every political activisit out there. The idea being that you can hook up your iPhone to a speaker system if there is a rally: Apple/iTunes is arguing that they still need to investigate further, because it is legally a grey area and ATR has been indexed in Germany before (censored). Read More ...
The Swans - THIS IS NOT A REUNION - Message From Gira + free discography download (20 CDs)
Michael Gira's re-activated Swans will be undertaking their first U.S. performances in 13 years, celebrating the Fall release of the first new Swans album since Soundtracks For The Blind (1997). The album was recorded by Jason LeFarge at Seizure's Palace in Brooklyn and is currently be remixed by Gira with Bryce Goggin (Antony & The Johnsons, Akron/Family) at Trout Recordings. Read More ...
The Ex are one of those rare bands that, despite being around for 25 years, have neither gone soft nor stagnated. The 23 tracks on this album all date from their first decade of existence (1980-1990), and if you compare it with recent milestones like Starter Alternator and Turn, you’ll see that while many of the Ex’s virtues are long standing, much has changed. The Ex grew out of Amsterdam’s once-fertile squatters’ subculture, and have always been politically conscious; Singles. Period. includes screeds that oppose American cultural hegemony, Dutch apathy, and eugenics. Their most recent album Turn likewise includes protests against globalization, consumerism, and cultural erosion, but its lyrics are quite nuanced and in touch with the grey areas of the issues when compared with the black and white prescription of 1981’s “Weapons For El Salvador”: .............. {audio}http://www.theex.nl/mp3/The%20Ex%20-%20Trash.mp3{/audio} ... Trash Read More ...
Dirty HC Punk explosion - Bristol scene Rise up + Disorder 9 free CDs
From The Cortinas to Lunatic Fringe and Disorder, Bristol had a huge Punk scene that has influenced, affected and stimulated a vast range of artists that operate in the city. Many of these artists produce music that wouldn’t necessarily suggest a Punk heritage but scratch beneath the surface of a lot of the major players in the Bristol milieu and you will find a fondness for the times of `spikey barnets’, limited musical ability, a `F*** You’ attitude and disrespect for the music industry and its poseur hierarchy. Read More ...
A live album can be many things: a candid snapshot, a footnote to a scene, or even just a thrifty alternative to studio time. Antlers, a collection of live Bastro recordings from 1991, is the rarest kind of live album: it illuminates a side of the band that, in turn, casts their previous work in a new light as well.“1991 has been called the year that punk broke. Some of it broke into the mainstream, but some broke into more irregular shards.” David Grubbs’s observation, from the liner notes to Antlers, could also describe the varied musical paths that led from his former band Squirrel Bait to the disparate ’90s groups he and his ex-bandmates went on to found: Slint, Palace Brothers, King Kong, Bitch Magnet, the For Carnation, Tortoise, and of course, Bastro. Read More ...
Japan’s Annual Penis Festival – Celebrates Fertility
KOMAKI, Japan — It's springtime in Japan and that means one thing. Actually, two things. Penis festivals and vagina festivals. It may sound like a sophomoric gag. But these are folk rites going back at least 1,500 years, into Japan's agricultural past. They're held to ensure a good harvest and promote baby-making. Maybe they should hold more such festivals. Japan has one of the world's lowest birthrates (1.37 children per woman), which experts blame on stagnant incomes and changing gender relations. Read More ...
Black-lip Rattail ............ These sorts of rattails feed in the muddy seafloor by gliding along head down and tail up, powered by gentle undulations of a long fin under the tail. The triangular head has sensory cells underneath that help detect animals buried in the mud or sand. The common name comes from the black edges around the mouth. Read More ...
All world secret underground bases build for space travelers
The following material comes from people who know the Dulce (underground) base exists. They are people who worked in the labs; abductees taken to the base; people who assisted in the construction; intelligence personal (NSA,CIA,FBI ... ect.) and UFO / inner-earth researchers. This information is meant for those who are seriously interested in the dulce base. for your own protection be advised to “use caution” while investigating this complex.Does a strange world exist beneath our feet? Strange legends have persisted for centuries about the mysterious cavern world and the equally strange beings who inhabit it. More UFOlogists have considered the possibility that UFOs may be emanating from subterranean bases, that UFO aliens have constructed these bases to carry out various missions involving Earth or humans. Read More ...
"I forgot to remember to forget," Elvis Presley sang in 1955. I know that it was 1955 because I just Googled the title and clicked on the link to the Wikipedia entry for the song. How cool is that? Not long ago, I would have had to actually remember that Elvis recorded the song as part of his monumental Sun Records sessions that year. Then I would have had to flip through a set of histories of blues and country that sit on the shelf behind me. It might have taken five minutes to do what I did in five seconds. I almost don't need my own memory any more. That strikes many of us as a good thing: the costs low, the benefits high. We can be much more efficient and comprehensive now that a teeming collection of documents sits just a few keystrokes away. Read More ...
These days, with all the pundits preaching doom and the impending collapse of society into some kind of Mad Max style wasteland, it's easy for us to imagine that the economy is as unhealthy as it's ever been. But any historian would give you a hard backhanded smack for even saying that out loud. History is full of economic idiocy, and here are five economic collapses that make 2010 feel like the Renaissance. Read More ...
Island of Ghosts: Hashima Island - Japan’s rotting metropolis
Hashima, an island located in Nagasaki Bay, is better known as Warship Island (Gunkanshima). The island was inhabited until the end of the 19th century, when it was discovered that the ground below it held tons of coal. The island soon became a center of a major mining complex owned by Mitsubishi Corporation. As the complex expanded, rock brought out of the shafts was used to artificially expand the island. Seawalls created in this expansion turned Hashima into the monstrous looking Gunkanshima; its artificial appearance makes it looks more like a battleship than an island. Read More ...
Dreamachine - stroboscopic flicker device enter you to a hypnagogic state - try it right here in your browser
The dreamachine (or dream machine) is a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William Burroughs's "systems adviser" Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain. In its original form, a dreamachine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 or 45 revolutions per minute. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency of between 8 and 13 pulses per second. This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves, electrical oscillations normally present in the human brain while relaxing. Read More ...
The Peyote Way Church of God - believe that the Holy Sacrament Peyote can lead an individual toward a more spiritual life
The Peyote Way Church of God is a non-sectarian, multicultural, experiential, Peyotist organization located in southeastern Arizona, in the remote Aravaipa wilderness. It is not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Native American Church, or any other religious organizations, though we do accept people from all faiths. Church membership is open to all races. We encourage individuals to create their own rituals as they become acquainted with the great mystery. We believe that the Holy Sacrament Peyote, when taken according to our sacramental procedure and combined with a holistic lifestyle (see Word of Wisdom), can lead an individual toward a more spiritual life. Peyote is currently listed as a controlled substance and its religious use is protected by Federal law only for Native American members of the Native American Church. Read More ...
The Marijuana Conspiracy - The Real Reason Hemp is Illegal
MARIJUANA is DANGEROUS. Pot is NOT harmful to the human body or mind. Marijuana does NOT pose a threat to the general public. Marijuana is very much a danger to the oil companies, alcohol, tobacco industries and a large number of chemical corporations. Various big businesses, with plenty of dollars and influence, have suppressed the truth from the people. The truth is if marijuana was utilized for its vast array of commercial products, it would create an industrial atomic bomb! Entrepreneurs have not been educated on the product potential of pot. The super rich have conspired to spread misinformation about an extremely versatile plant that, if used properly, would ruin their companies. Read More ...
Learn How to Pronounce the Iceland Volcano Eyjafjallajokull and remember; When He Erupted In 1821, it lasted 2 years
The last time Eyjafjallajökull erupted, it lasted 2 years stretching from 1821-1823. It also erupted in 920 and 1612. Eyjafjallajökull's eruption usually precedes an eruption for another Icelandic volcano called Katla, as it did in 1823. Katla's eruptions are usually more violent than Eyjafjallajökul's. Due to the second activity on Eyjafjallajökull volcano since April 14, there are thousands of flights have been cancelled not only in Europe but also some flights from Asia, America and other continents. More over, it was also reportedly more than ten thousands of air travelers still stranded after a plume of ash cloud spreading across thousands of miles. No need to repeat the same news in every single post, actually there’s an interesting thing from the Iceland volcano’s name Eyjafjallajokull. Pronunciation is so difficult for some of us. Even, many people still don’t know what’s the right pronunciation of Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Did you know that? Read More ...
The Drivers Of Tropical Deforestation Are Changing
A shift from poverty-driven to industry-driven deforestation threatens the world's tropical forests but offers new opportunities for conservation, according to an article coauthored by William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. "New Strategies for Conserving Tropical Forests" will be featured in the September issue of the leading journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Rhett Butler of Mongabay.com, a leading tropical-forest Web site, and Laurance argue that the sharp increase in deforestation by big corporations provides environmental lobby groups with clear, identifiable targets that can be pressured to be more responsive to environmental concerns. Read More ...
The CIA and the Nazis - Declassified archives document ties between CIA and Nazis - Where Is Hitler?!
The US national archives released some 27,000 pages of secret records documenting the CIA’s Cold War relations with former German Nazi Party members and officials. The files reveal numerous cases of German Nazis, some clearly guilty of war crimes, receiving funds, weapons and employment from the CIA. They also demonstrate that US intelligence agencies deliberately refrained from disclosing information about the whereabouts of Adolf Eichmann in order to protect Washington’s allies in the post-war West German government headed by Christian Democratic leader Konrad Adenauer. Eichmann, who had sent millions to their deaths while coordinating the Nazis’ “final solution” campaign to exterminate European Jewry, went into hiding in Buenos Aires after the fall of the Third Reich. Read More ...
A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution. They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent. Read More ...
The international community has come out in force to condemn and declare war on the Somali fishermen pirates, while discreetly protecting the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fleets from around the world that have been poaching and dumping toxic waste in Somali waters since the fall of the Somali government eighteen years ago. In 1991, when the government of Somalia collapsed, foreign interests seized the opportunity to begin looting the country’s food supply and using the country’s unguarded waters as a dumping ground for nuclear and other toxic waste. Read More ...
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use. There are one billion squatters globally, that is, about one in every six people on the planet. Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, "squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualized, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement. In many countries, squatting is in itself a crime; in others, it is only seen as a civil conflict between the owner and the occupants. "Squatters are usually portrayed as worthless scroungers hell-bent on disrupting society." Property law and the state have traditionally favored the property owner. However, in many cases where squatters had de facto ownership, laws have been changed to legitimize their status. Read More ...
9/11 has inspired a myriad of memorials who are scattered all across America. Some of them are of questionable taste, others contain strange occult symbolism while others simply piss people off. Here’s the five most offensive. Read More ...
The World's First Commercial Brain-Computer Interface + history of BCI
A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a brain and an external device. BCIs are often aimed at assisting, augmenting or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions. Research on BCIs began in the 1970s at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) under a grant from the National Science Foundation, followed by a contract from DARPA. The papers published after this research also mark the first appearance of the expression brain–computer interface in scientific literature. Read More ...
Seven theories of everything that pretend to describe the fundamental nature of the universe
We still don't have a theory that describes the fundamental nature of the universe, but there are plenty of candidates.
The "theory of everything" is one of the most cherished dreams of science. If it is ever discovered, it will describe the workings of the universe at the most fundamental level and thus encompass our entire understanding of nature. It would also answer such enduring puzzles as what dark matter is, the reason time flows in only one direction and how gravity works. Small wonder that Stephen Hawking famously said that such a theory would be "the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God". But theologians needn't lose too much sleep just yet. Despite decades of effort, progress has been slow. Rather than one or two rival theories whose merits can be judged against the evidence, there is a profusion of candidates and precious few clues as to which (if any) might turn out to be correct. Read More ...
The Secrets of Coral Castle and pyramids EXPLAINED by Leedskalnin's Magnetic Current theory
Coral Castle doesn't look much like a castle, but that hasn't discouraged generations of tourists from wanting to see it. That's because it was built by one man, Ed Leedskalnin, a Latvian immigrant who single-handedly and mysteriously excavated, carved, and erected over 2.2 million pounds of coral rock to build this place, even though he stood only five feet tall and weighed a mere 100 pounds. Ed was as secretive as he was misguided. He never told anyone how he carved and set into place the walls, gates, monoliths, and moon crescents that make up much of his Castle. Some of these blocks weigh as much as 30 tons. Ed often worked at night, by lantern light, so that no one could see him. He used only tools that he fashioned himself from wrecks in an auto junkyard. Read More ...
The T2K Experiment - From Tokai To Kamioka - Where is the anti-matter?
From the beginning of 2010, the T2K experiment will fire a beam of muon-neutrinos from Tokai on Japan's east coast, 300km accross the country to a detector at Kamioka. It hopes to investigate the phenomenon of "neutrino oscillations" by looking for "muon neutrinos" oscillating into "electron neutrinos". A million pound detector has been built at the University of Warwick as part of a vital experiment to investigate fundamental particles - neutrinos. Read More ...
The giant ALICE detector is already underway at CERN, and researchers are scrambling to add an electromagnetic calorimeter to capture jet-quenching, the newest way to look inside the quark-gluon plasma — the hot, dense state of matter that filled the earliest universe, which the Large Hadron Collider will soon recreate by slamming lead nuclei into one another. CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is known mainly as the accelerator that will soon begin searching for the Higgs particle, and other new physics, in proton collisions at unprecedented energies — up to 14 TeV (14 trillion electron volts) at the center of mass — and with unprecedented beam intensities. But the same machine will also collide massive nuclei, specifically lead ions, to energies never achieved before in the laboratory. Read More ...
Vadim Chernobrov & Russian secrets experiments with time machines
A disturbing story in the March, 2005. 1 issue of Pravda suggests that the U. S. Government is working on the discovery of a mysterious point over the South Pole that may be a passageway backward in time. According to the article, some American and British scientists working in Antarctica on January 27, 1995, noticed a spinning gray fog in the sky over the pole. U. S. physicist Mariann McLein said at first they believed it to be some kind of sandstorm. But after a while they noticed that the fog did not change its form and did not move so they decided to investigate. Read More ...
If you're trying to buy happiness, you'd be better off putting your money toward a tropical island get-away than a new computer, a new study suggests. The results show that people's satisfaction with their life-experience purchases — anything from seeing a movie to going on a vacation — tends to start out high and go up over time. On the other hand, although they might be initially happy with that shiny new iPhone or the latest in fashion, their satisfaction with these items wanes with time. The findings, based on eight separate studies, agree with previous research showing that experience-related buys lead to more happiness for the consumer. But the current work provides some insight into why. Read More ...
It's not just a good idea, it's the law: 186,287 miles per second. The fact that sound waves travel at a finite speed--roughly 330 meters per second--has been known since ancient times. It's obvious, really, when you stand back a ways and observe the falling of a tree or the clapping of a pair of hands, and the sound arrives noticeably later than the sight itself. The fact that light waves also travel at finite speed is much harder to notice, because that speed is almost a million times faster. But by the end of the Renaissance, astronomers--viewing events much more distant than a few hundred meters--had begun to suspect the truth. Read More ...
It was nearly the end of WWII. At that same time, scientist Viktor Schauberger worked on a secret project. Johannes Kepler, whose ideas Schauberger followed, had knowledge of the secret teachings of Pythagoras that had been adopted and kept secret. It was the knowledge of Implosion (in this case the utilization of the potential of the inner worlds in the outer world). Hitler knew - as did the Thule and Vril people - that the divine principle was always constructive. A technology however that is based on explosion and therefore is destructive runs against the divine principle. Thus they wanted to create a technology based on Implosion. Read More ...
The Size Of Our World or How Insignificant the Earth Really Is in the Universe
Compared to you and me, the Earth is really big. But compared to Jupiter and the Sun, the Earth is pretty tiny. There are many ways we can measure the size of the Earth. Let's look at how big the Earth is, and then compare it to other objects in the Solar System. The diameter of the Earth is 12,742 km. In other words, if you dug a hole down into the Earth, passed through the center of the Earth, and came out the other side, you would have dug a hole 12,742 km deep (on average). That's about 4 times longer than the diameter of the Moon. Read More ...
Strange Images from Space - Photos&videos of the Bizarre in Our Universe
Some weird and unusual objects are floating around in the cosmos. Space is always serving up something new, unusual, and unexpected. Here are images and explanations of obejcts that have amazed and delighted astronomers. Read More ...
Mysterious Radio Waves from Unknown Object in M82 Galaxy
There is something strange is lurking in the galactic neighborhood. An unknown object in galaxy M82 12 million light-years away has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before except perhaps by Ford Prefect. M82 is starburst galaxy five times as bright as the Milky Way and one hundred times as bright as our galaxy's center. "We don't know what it is," says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK. But its apparent sideways velocity is four times the speed of light. This "superluminal" motion occurs usually in high-speed jets of material bursting out by black holes. Read More ...
Unsettled Mechanism of Supernova Detonation Gets a New Twist
Type Ia supernovae, often used to calibrate cosmological measurements, may arise from merging white dwarfs, after all
When stellar cataclysms known as type Ia supernovae flare up far across the universe, their brightness and consistency allow astronomers to use them as so-called standard candles to measure cosmological distances. Just over a decade ago, two teams used the supernovae to show that the universe is accelerating in its expansion due to the influence of dark energy, a shocking discovery that thrust type Ia supernovae into the astrophysical limelight. But how exactly did these cosmic mileposts come to be? Read More ...
Black Prince, alien space probe, orbits Earth watching humans
Alexander Kazantsev, a Soviet author of sci-fi books, once said that a mysterious “unaccounted” satellite called Black Prince was spinning around Earth. The writer believed the object might be an alien probe, a messenger from extraterrestrial civilizations. Some people including scientists paid attention to the writer’s hypothesis.U.S. astrophysicist Ronald Bracewell was the first to take the hypothesis seriously. In 1960, he published a study to back his conclusions with data of practical radio engineering. Read More ...
Secret Robotic Space Plane Launched By US Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) has launched a secret space plane into orbit, carried in the nose of an Atlas 5 rocket. The USAF is not calling the X-37B a weapon or anything else, and the classified mission was broadcast live, but only for several minutes into the flight. The plane, built by Boeing, was originally part of a NASA programme but was later abandoned and turned over to a secretive USAF unit. There are no details on how much it costs or when it is coming back to earth, but when it does return the unmanned craft will land itself, using the onboard autopilot. Read More ...
Hubble telescope captures image of mysterious x-shaped object in space
Is that a smashed comet or an X-Wing fighter? Scientists are offering up their own theories as to what created the striking star-inspired image, which was captured by NASA's Hubble telescope in January. "Two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight," said principal investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. Read More ...
All Radio music can download from "free music albums"
Lightning Bolt - 'Don't Give A Fuck About Tinnitus' tour + 'Lightning Bolt: The Power of Salad and Milkshakes' documentary + free CDs
Brannavan Gnanalingam .......... Possessing one of contemporary music’s most incendiary live shows and a clutch of critically acclaimed albums, Rhode Island duo Lightning Bolt have earned wild praise from some of music’s bigwigs (the likes of Steve Albini, John Peel). Their drum/bass set-up might sound limiting, but the uncompromising music and textures they create are anything but. They have just recently released Earthly Delights, their fifth album, and first since 2005’s lauded Hypermagic Mountain, and is further example of their unclassifiable sound.
Their music straddles genres such as metal, noise, punk, prog, and favours textures, rhythms, and riffs over easy listening. Drummer/vocalist Brian Chippendale was kind enough to answer some questions about their m.o., and the new album via email.
There’s a physicality to your music which is kinda like the textures/images of avant-garde cinema, (or other bands like the Boredoms etc – what attracted you guys to conceive of music as more than an aural thing? Does having backgrounds in other forms of art help?
As the drummer the design of my instrument is based in physicality. And I am lucky and grateful that I stumbled into this instrument. I was a pretty physically active young person that began playing in bands (I wanted to be a singer but I lost in a sort of coin toss) and I was able to channel my athletic needs into making sounds. I also have never had much of an interest in drug use generally, but enjoy the possibility of a sort of creative mental expansion, and physical activity is in some way the poor mans amphetamine. Entering into a kind of "early man/berserker rage" and then returning to reality loosens you up, it cuts through certain illusions the world puts forth. Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site Was ‘minimalism’ an intended m.o. (e.g. by becoming a two-piece)? How important were minimalist composers e.g. Satie, Glass etc. in showing what could be done with very little? Or is this whole labeling process (words like minimalism, noise) itself limiting/frustrating for you two?
I would hesitate to call a band that employs 8 speaker cabinets and at times 6 amplifiers minimal. But, aside from that, we do have limitations, and limitations make what you have stronger. Maybe it’s the theory that if you take a person’s eyes away, their smell becomes more acute. Brian G experiments with new effects pedals from time to time and I switch my drums around here and there and dabble with electronics, but most of the time, the things that stick in our head and graduate to songs are the more primal things, the simplest things. Lots of bands at some point in their career return to their "roots" and just try to rock out again. We sort of return to our roots every night that we practice, eventually abandoning everything to rock. Oh, and I hum Phillip Glass over every song, but you just can't hear it! I think lately I have been humming The GoGos.
Your music requires loud and expansive speakers especially live – in the time you guys have been together, the way we consume music has shifted considerably to things like mp3s and i-Pods – has this technological shift affected the way you’ve constructed music, or affected the way that your audiences have approached your music?
If anything the shift to tiny speakers and the anonymous nature of downloadable music has strengthened the need for our, or any, live show. But we really haven't changed the way we are creating things. When putting together our latest album it was built with LP sides in mind. Which is at this point pretty arbitrary, but we stick with it. We will probably get with the program in terms of "the end of the album" just in time for "the end of the post album" phase we are in now. Its good to try and stay one or two steps behind technology, which at times is just a giant blind man stumbling though the woods. Though at other times that giant blind man can stumble upon a pot of gold.
Has being so renowned for your live shows proven problematic when it comes to recording in the studio – can you approach it in the same improvisational way as a live show given that it’s a ‘permanent’ recording? I’ve read that your albums have quite frequently ended up being a bit of both live and studio recordings.
Everything we have released on album has been played live in a some sort of studio. There have been a handful of overdubs. We generally go the route of recording several takes or versions of our songs and picking the most interesting one for the record. The newest record was entirely recorded in a small studio a friend of ours set up in our practice room. So we had a lot of time with no real studio expenses. Any recording is strange in that a week later you may play the song a new better way. But that’s how it goes. There are a few videos online of live takes of our songs that are cooler than the albums. We play tens of shows a year and release one album every 2 to 4 years, so you can see where our priorities lie. Though we generally jam in our studio hundreds of days a year, so that’s number one. Just jamming for ourselves. Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site Your music relies on happy accidents – is it hard finding these kind of spontaneous accidents while touring day-in and day-out, or while rehearsing in the studio? How do you keep things fresh?
Most of happy accidents come while jamming day to day. We record everything we do on cassette tape and go back and listen/take notes on as much as we can, which isn't nearly even half of what we record. We have probably have forgotten 90 percent of what we have played and worked on 10 percent. If even that. Most of the music we create goes the way of the wind. And some of it is probably the best stuff we have ever played. I think the freshness comes from taking time to do other things, to have experiences outside of music. So we have something to say. Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site
Your music feels very democratic – in the way you two interact musically, and the fact you play within the audience which adds a different level to the audience/performer dynamic – was it ever as thought out as that, or is that just the way it works for you guys?
Not much was thought out in terms of concept. It was more following intuition. playing on the floor grew out of us having grown tired of having the same experience in clubs, seeing bands in the same venue over and over and getting into a sort of rehearsed reaction to things. Standing in a certain corner, hanging out at the bar each night. Bands tend to have a certain sound coming out of the PA that homogenizes them. At one point I saw a band set up in the middle of the room, right next to me, and it blew my mind. We took this as our approach and it became ritual for us through lots of small informal warehouse parties in our hometown. Our floor style also grew out of playing empty rooms in the beginning and having to chase the tiny audience around. Things have changed some now though. In come places we have hit a wall with the floor show as the audience has grown beyond a comfortable size. Forcing us to reconsider the stage and look at its good sides as well. At some point an intimate event can be considered an elite and alienating activity. And a homogenized stage show can be seen as a tool for communicating to more people, people that may not seek it out but need it nonetheless. We are hoping to work on both levels.
Hypermagic Mountain sounded much tighter/more polished (relatively speaking) when compared to your early work (e.g. Lighning Bolt) – how much planning has gone into structuring your sound as the band has progressed over the years?
Again, it has all been fairly intuitive. At some points in our career it’s been fun to make more improvised music and at others it’s been great to tighten up the songs. We also have been careful about what we put out as formal recordings. We have hours and hours and hours of tapes more in the vein of the first record. Which was mostly cassette jams from practice. I have recorded every practice since that 1997 record on the same kind of Tascam 4 track machine with good old Maxell XLII 90 minute tapes. Some day the floodgate will open and everyone that wants to will hear 50 more "the yellow album" Lightning Bolt records. Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site How have you approached Earthly Delights – it’s taken four years to come out, what was the reason for the length of time taken for this record to come out?
Earthly Delights is really a continuation of the approach of Hypermagic Mountain. It’s all recorded in our practice space to a pretty simple recording setup, and much of it was mixed live as we played by our engineer/friend Dave Auchenbach. It took a long time to come out because we had such a long busy half year preparing, touring and recording the record, we just got tired of hanging out. So we took a year and half off and then recorded a couple more tracks for it. I wish we could say we are presenting a thing that we have been working on for 1400 days but it’s not the case. If it was it would sound much different.
Is there also a link to the Bosch painting [The Garden of Earthly Delights]?
That Bosch painting has been lurking around my subconscious for years, but the only real connection is in the name and actually one very subtle character reference in the artwork. It was more us feeling the need to put an earthy word in the title of what felt like a more grounded, rooted record. And then we have a little "Lightning Bolt Album Name Maker" machine we hook up that concocts the other "wild" word. Like Delights, Hypermagic, or Wonderful. Ther’es about ten more words left in the machine so we are good for 20 more years. Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site And as for Bosch, the name was a slight nod to the painting but really just felt like the best thing we could make using our 2 person democratic procedure. It had the ideas we were looking for with what felt like a more grounded, earthy record. We have been pretty overt about the names of our things. There is one little thefted item in the artwork from the Bosch painting but it’s hard to find.
On a slightly tangential and final note, one of my favourite American films from recent years was Ben Russell’s Black and White Trypps Number Three in which you guys have a starring role but the audience was the main focus – what did you guys make of the film, and its thematic preoccupation with the ‘transcendence’ of spectatorship (Russell’s words)? Did you expect your audience to actually look/behave like that?
I enjoyed the film and like all three films I have seen in that series. But I felt that film betrayed the audiences trust a little, and it is (as most effective art is), manipulative. Any band’s front row audience is probably pretty into the music, and if you slow down time, it will appear to a group of people lost in contemplative joy. Ben Russell realized that and made it happen, it was a good concept for a film executed well. But that’s the last time that specific group of kids will get up front and feel comfortable with themselves. Next time I see Russell with a camera pointed at me I may hide!
4.23 St. Louis, MO: The Luminary Centre for the Arts +
4.24 Louisville, KY: Cahoots
4.25 Oberlin, OH: Dionysus Disco
4.27 Brooklyn, NY: Club Exit
4.28 New York, NY: LPR
4.29 Middletown, CT: Eclectic House
* = with Wolf Eyes ~ = with Wizard Rifle ^ = with TITS & High Castle # = with Tokyo Death March + = with Parts & Labor & Spelling Bee
Lightning Bolt: The Power of Salad and Milkshakes' documentary
The Power of Salad & Milkshakes is a film by Peter Glantz and Nick Noe, featuring and documenting the Providence, Rhode Island noise rock band Lightning Bolt. The film follows the avant-garde duo Brian Gibson and Brian Chippendale on a tour of the states and features interviews of the band and their friends and family. Live performances, for which Lightning Bolt is renowned, were shot June 2–21 and July 14–15, 2001.
music news & cult free CDs 
Brannavan Gnanalingam .......... Possessing one of contemporary music’s most incendiary live shows and a clutch of critically acclaimed albums, Rhode Island duo Lightning Bolt have earned wild praise from some of music’s bigwigs (the likes of Steve Albini, John Peel). Their drum/bass set-up might sound limiting, but the uncompromising music and textures they create are anything but. They have just recently released Earthly Delights, their fifth album, and first since 2005’s lauded Hypermagic Mountain, and is further example of their unclassifiable sound.
