Posts Tagged ‘ math rock ’

Dodgeball: September 9, 2018 Trans-Pecos

December 2, 2018
By


[photo by nyctaper]

Back in the last decade when every sub-genre of music had a silly moniker, a particular type of intelligent polyrhythmic punk was clumsily called “math rock”. These days there aren’t really blogs around anymore to invent awkward genres in lieu of actually reviewing the music, but the descendants of the bands who got tagged as “math rock” are having a heyday of sorts. Boston’s Pile seems to be the granddaddy of this little movement, which also includes bands like Spirit of the Beehive, Palm, and Brooklyn’s Dodgeball. In the several weeks since this September show where the band exhibited the best traits of the current crop of mathies — strong sense of rhythm, challenging but rewarding melodic structure, and a great songcraft — Dodgeball released a new four-song EP, three tracks of which appear on this recording. The EP Turns Out I Was Just Really Bored continues the evolution of a band we expect to continue to grow in stature to the point where these cozy nights at Trans-Pecos will likely be a thing of the past.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps capturing the onstage sound mixed with a solid board feed. The recording really captures the energy of the set quite well and we think it sounds great. Enjoy!

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream the Complete Show:

Dodgeball
2018-09-09
Trans-Pecos
Queens NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + On-Stage Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer Eric Lemke] + Schoeps CCM4u’s > Sound Devices 744t > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (post production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 26:04]
01 Edging
02 Swayze
03 Cig Bowl
04 Veggies
05 Robert Parsnip
06 Palm
07 Rock Song 1
08 Nu

PLEASE Support Dodgeball: Bandcamp | Facebook | Twitter

Palm: January 29, 2016 Palisades

February 3, 2016
By

IMG_1376

The band Palm bring an impressive amount of music experimentation to the table, especially for a fairly young band. The compatriots, who met at Bard College upstate, but now reside in the independent music hotbed of Philadelphia, claim to be short on formal training, but I’m calling B.S. on that. Or rather, if their ability to produce intricate, jazz-inflected songs filled with unusual, shifting time signatures is something they just came up with on their own, then formal training may as well hang it up. On this packed weekend night at DIY-ish Palisades, the foursome came ready to wow us, playing only one song from their standout 2015 LP Trading Basics, released by Exploding In Sound. So we got the (relatively) hooky “Ankles” from that record, paired with a slew of relatively new or very-new songs, many of which the band themselves don’t have titles for. You could see that at points the members were feeling the songs out among each other, casting glances across the stage, but you wouldn’t have known it without looking at them; this material feels dialed-in and ready for primetime. What Palm are doing certainly has its cultural touchstones — some of the great “math rock” bands of mid-late-90s like Faraquet, Smart Went Crazy, June of 44 and Polvo — but it’s also daring and fresh at a time in “rock” music where the norm is more often party music that keeps a low bar. If the band’s subsequent releases have anything in common with what we heard tonight, or Trading Basics, then we’re going to be impressed by them for a very, very long time.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK22 open cardiod microphones onstage together with a soundboard feed from Palisades FOH Ariel. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Palm
2016-01-29
Palisades
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded by acidjack and nyctaper
Produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK22 (ORTF, stage lip)>NBob cables>PFA + Soundboard (engineer: Ariel Bitran)>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, narrow onstage image)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [new song 1]
02 I Don’t Want to know
03 Ankles
04 [new song 2]
05 Crank
06 [new song 3]
07 [new song 4]
08 Two Toes

SUPPORT Palm: Facebook | Bandcamp

This Will Destroy You: February 27, 2015 Saint Vitus – FLAC/MP3/Streaming/Video

March 1, 2015
By

IMG_8333

This Will Destroy You, of San Marcos, TX, just crossed the decade mark as a band last year, with the excellent record Another Language. In the broad sense, they share company with the dynamic instrumental bands that get lumped together as “post-rock” — Mogwai, Explosions In the Sky, Caspian, etc. But if this two-night stand of shows presented by BrooklynVegan at Saint Vitus proved anything, it’s that they don’t let labels stop them. Saint Vitus, best-known as NYC’s destination for the heaviest of heavy music, made a good fit for the band, as they led off with the thunderous “Little Smoke” that pummeled us from start to finish. TWDY may not be a black metal band, but their sonics are definitely toward the darker end of the spectrum, a kind of soundtrack to the end of the world.

But just when you think you’re going to get nothing but 80 minutes of soft-loud dynamics and blaring guitars, TWDY changes things up. Bursts of electronics seep in, between the ratcheting drumbeats and the mournful guitars of “A Three-Legged Workhorse”. Or there’s “Grandfather Clock”, basically a full-on IDM track, followed by the texturally dense standout track from Another Language, “Dustism”. But if the band proved there was more to them than just getting loud, when they were loud, they made it count, as on the climax to “Black Dunes” or “There Are Some Remedies Worse Than The Disease”. This show ran a touch longer than the previous night’s effort, closing with the ironically-titled “Quiet”. This burner of a Friday night show had been anything but.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V cardiod microphones and a soundboard feed of the mix by TWDY’s engineer (if you have his name, please give him a shout out). As with everything at Saint Vitus, the sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the complete show:

Video of the complete show:

This Will Destroy You
2015-02-27
St. Vitus
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK4V (LOC, at SBD, PAS)>KCY>Z-PFA>Sound Devices USBPre2 + Soundboard (engineers: Nick + TWDY’s engineer (please provide name if you have it))>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, adjust levels)>Izotope Ozone 5 (harmonic exciter, EQ, imaging)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 1:23:24]
01 Little Smoke
02 A Three-Legged Workhorse
03 War Prayer
04 Burial On the Presidio Banks
05 Grandfather Clock
06 Dustism
07 Black Dunes
08 There Are Some Remedies Worse Than the Disease
09 Communal Blood
10 [banter]
11 New Topia
12 Quiet

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT This Will Destroy You, visit their website, and buy Another Language here.

Maps & Atlases: April 19, 2011 Bowery Ballroom – FLAC and MP3 Downloads + Streaming Songs

April 25, 2011
By


[Photo by Megan Barron.  See her Flickr stream here]

It is a not-uncommon trope on this site that bands tend to give it their absolute best when playing their first Bowery Ballroom show – it’s a big moment for any band, and the venue itself is nearly perfect – spacious yet intimate, welcoming, and outfitted with an excellent sound system. Maps & Atlases took full advantage of their breakout moment this Tuesday night, as they played an outstanding set to a welcoming 16+ crowd fueled more by the band’s incredible music than the typical NYC crowd’s favorite combo of alcohol and smartphones. In note-perfect form the band covered the best material from their first full-length, Perch Patchwork, as well as classics from their EPs like “Ted Zancha,” “Artichokes” and “Everyplace Is A House.” Maps don’t sound like any other band out there today; vocalist/guitarist Dave Davison’s voice remains in a class by itself, and their unique, polyrhythmic rock could probably wow a class of music students as easily as it did this young Bowery crowd. That uniqueness may have been an impediment at first, but people are clearly “getting it” now. It doesn’t hurt that their live show is a bit of a contrast from their more lo-fi sounding albums; turned up loud, their music is more celebratory than it seems on a scratchy EP, and more importantly, live, you just cannot miss how dialed-in these guys are as musicians. That was best in evidence during an epic seven-minute version of “Daily News” from the You Me & the Mountain EP, a mostly-instrumental track that was perhaps the strongest song of the night. The band also gave us a rare treat by doing a cover song (not part of their usual repertoire, other than their cover of Cast Spells’ “Glamorous Glowing”), a short, faithful rendition of Elvis Costello’s “Radio Radio”. While there was no post-show acoustic set from the floor like there was at the intimate Mercury Lounge show last year, this set still outshone that one. It kind of had to – it was their “Bowery moment.”

Kenny, the regular sound engineer at Bowery Ballroom, truly outdid himself this evening with a flawless mix. While the Mercury show also included a soundboard feed, the sound quality of this set, with the Schoeps microphones running into a custom built analog preamp, is better than that one, in my opinion. Enjoy!

Stream “Daily News”:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/M2180M&A0210/16 Daily News.mp3]

Stream “Radio Radio”:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/M2180M&A0210/20 Radio Radio.mp3]

Direct download of MP3 files [HERE]

Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].

Follow acidjack on Twitter

Maps & Atlases
2011-04-19
Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY USA

An acidjack master recording
Recorded and produced by acidjack for nyctaper.com

Equipment: Schoeps Mk41>CMC6>Oade M248>Sony PCM-M10 (24/44.1)
Position: Balcony, LOC, mics on clamp extended toward soundboard, DIN
Mastering: 24bit/44.1kHz WAV>Audacity (set fades, tracking, amplify and balance)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 1:01:25]
01 Pigeon
02 The Sounds They Make
03 Artichokes
04 [tuning]
05 Israeli Caves
06 [banter]
07 Ted Zancha
08 [banter]
09 Will>
10 The Charm
11 [banter]
12 Witch
13 Everyplace Is A House
14 Living Decorations
15 Glamorous Glowing [Cast Spells]
16 Daily News
17 [banter]
18 Solid Ground
19 [encore break]
20 Radio Radio [Elvis Costello]
21 If This Is>
22 Was

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Maps & Atlases, visit their MySpace page, and purchase Perch Patchwork from their official store here.

Medications: July 23, 2010 Littlefield – FLAC and MP3 Downloads + Streaming Song

July 28, 2010
By


[Photos courtesy of Jonny Leather]

Our friend Jonny Leather has been putting on well-rounded and uniformly excellent showcase shows for awhile now, and we were pleased to have the chance to cover another of them last Friday night at Littlefield. As Jonny’s shows often do, this show spotlighted some bands from outside New York; in this case, the headliners Medications and Deleted Scenes are our Amtrak neighbors from Washington, D.C. Medications may not be a household name up here (yet), but they have an impeccable Dischord pedigree. The band is the brainchild of Devin Ocampo and Chad Molter, who also founded the influential math rock outfit Faraquet. Prior to that, Devin did time in one of my all-time favorite D.C. bands, the short-lived but phenomenal Smart Went Crazy. Medications are a more accessible band than either of its predecessors, retaining the intricate, instantly recognizable guitar work that Faraquet was known for, but with more melodic vocals and traditionally structured songs that reflect the members’ love of not only 70s punk and their contemporaries in the Dischord scene, but also their love of 60s pop. Despite the fact that all hell was breaking loose outside weather-wise, the weather couldn’t keep fans away from this show, which found the band playing through almost all of their recently released CompletelyRemoved, which is one of the strongest new records I have heard this year. Ocampo and Molter (as well as Mark Cisneros, who joined the band for this record) gave the crowd ample evidence of their chops at this show, playing the hell out of their instruments even after the PA feed was shut down due to the venue’s noise restrictions!

I recorded this set with a combination of a stereo soundboard feed provided by the Littlefield staff and the Schoeps microphones. The sound quality is excellent, though I do note that there were some fluctuations in the volume of the soundboard feed as the sound team had to reduce the volume due to the aforementioned noise restrictions. These adjustments should be mostly inaudible to the listener. All tracks are tagged for easy importing into iTunes or your favorite MP3 system. Enjoy!

This Recording is now available to Download in FLAC or MP3 and to Stream at Archive.org [HERE].

Medications
2010-07-23
Littlefield
Brooklyn, NY USA

An acidjack master recording
Recorded and produced by acidjack for nyctaper.com

Equipment: Schoeps CMC641+Stereo Soundboard Feed>Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) (24/44.1)
Position: ROC, at left side of sound booth, mics at 7.5?, pointed at stacks
Mastering: 2×24bit/44.1kHz WAV>Audacity (mixdown, compression of peaks, set fades, volume adjustments, downsample to 16bit)>FLAC Level 8

Tracks [Total Time 42:21]
01 Seasons
02 Home Is Where We Are
03 Long Day
04 [banter/tuning]
05 We Could Be Others
06 Tame on the Prowl
07 [tuning/banter]
08 Postcards
09 Brasil ‘07
10 Rising to Sleep
11 [tuning/banter]
12 For WMF

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Medications, visit their website, and purchase CompletelyRemoved direct from Dischord records here.

SUPPORT NYCTaper




Email

Email nyctaper

DISCLAIMER and LEGAL NOTICE

nyctaper.com is a live music blog that offers a new paradigm of music distribution on the web. The recordings are offered for free on this site as are the music posts, reviews and links to artist sites. All recordings are posted with artist permission or artists with an existing pro-taping policy.

All recordings and original content posted on this site are @nyctaper.com as live recordings pursuant to 17 U.S.C. Section 106, et. seq. Redistribution of nyctaper recordings without consent of nyctaper.com is strictly prohibited.

nyctaper.com hereby waives all copyright claims to any and all recordings posted on this site to THE PERFORMERS ONLY. If any artist posted on this site requests that recordings be removed, those recordings will be removed forthwith.