[Headroom at Baby’s All Right, photo by Michael Baca]
Here’s a tape courtesy of our buddy anazgnos, who hit up both nights of the L.A. California Flashback shows, put on by Black Editions to promote the latest volume of Tokyo Flashback. Headroom opened up night two with a burst of guitar pyrotechnics courtesy of Kryssi Battalene. In this context you can feel the connection between her distortion-drenched sound and the early wave of heavy Japanese psych like High Rise and Acid Mothers Temple.
Headroom have got a new EP out, New Heaven, in addition to a repressing (finally!) of Head in the Clouds, which disappeared rather quickly in its original release. Do pick up both those treasures, and enjoy some live Headroom too while you’re at it!
It was about eighteen months ago when the Mountain Goats played an epic show at Brooklyn Steel that we were fortunate to attend and capture. So the band’s return to the venue on the tour to support their excellent new album In League with Dragons, came with some real anticipation. And man, did the band deliver. John Darnielle was particularly loquacious on this evening (check out the number of “banter” tracks), but his comments were all on point. The Mountain Goats have achieved a level of stature that’s been earned in years of tours and albums, and it seems like the band has reached that point where it can enjoy and revel in its well-deserved respect. And while Dragons dominated the setlist early-on, the band did still deliver the types of old rare nuggets that still satisfy the grizzled veterans of tMG shows. Indeed rare songs like “Jaipur” (played less than 10 times in the last 10 years), “Spilling Toward Alpha” (3 times in the last decade) , and “The Coroner’s Gambit” (played two times before 2019) are the types of setlist surprises that make us keep coming year after year. But ultimately this night was about the new album, the strength of which makes us believe that the Mountain Goats will continue to be the gift that keeps giving.
I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards raised high inside the soundboard booth and mixed with a board feed mixed expertly as always by longtime tMG FOH Brandon. The result is another superb recording of this band from this venue. Enjoy!
Setlist: [Total Time 1:38:40] 01 [Vivaldi introduction] 02 Done Bleeding 03 Younger 04 [Coroner’s intro] 05 The Coroner’s Gambit 06 Jaipur 07 In League With Dragons 08 Sax Rohmer 1 09 [banter – old song partisans] 10 Spilling Toward Alpha 11 [banter – seeds] 12 Going to Port Washington 13 [banter – play what you want] 14 Maybe Sprout Wings 15 [banter – not going to die] 16 Waylon Jennings Live 17 [banter – country album] 18 Clemency for the Wizard King 19 [banter – pitchfork review] 20 Cotton 21 [banter – inner ear monitors] 22 Cadaver Sniffing Dog 23 [banter – Ozzy] 24 Passaic 1975 25 Lion’s Teeth 26 Sicilian Crest 27 [encore break] 28 Have to Explode 29 Possum by Night 30 See America Right 31 Game Shows Touch Our Lives 32 [banter – the long encore] 33 No Children 34 The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton 35 Spent Gladiator 2
A few weeks ago, the internet buzzed with discussion of “indie jam,” the term coined by Steven Hyden at Uproxx and referring, as many noted in response, to a constellation of bands advanced largely by Jeff Conklin on The Avant Ghetto. (We at NYCTaper are acknowledged by Hyden too, I’m obliged to mention.) In the article, musicians like Chris Forsyth (along with Garcia Peoples, Sunwatchers, Ryley Walker, William Tyler, and many others) are credited with “an inclination to meld all kinds of music — including indie, post-rock, folk, country, jazz fusion, and, yes, punk — and take it in adventurous and often improvised directions.”
“Indie jam”—or whatever you want to call it—surely wasn’t born in an out-of-the-way amphitheater in Raleigh, NC. But in September 2013, when we were first introduced to Forsyth’s far-out jams that were clearly referencing the Grateful Dead and Television, something was afoot. Is it time for us shrug off the legacy of Kurt Cobain’s distaste for the Dead and acknowledge the ongoing intersections of indie rock and jambands? Across the aisle, jamband fans are approaching the same questions, as the podcast Beyond the Pond seeks to introduce Phish fans to music outside the jamband ecosystem.
In the meantime, while the heads have been catching up to him, Chris Forsyth has released a series of increasingly great albums. The latest is All Time Present, in which Forsyth’s singular guitar playing weaves effortlessly between varied genres, from psych rock to, yes, even dance.
On Monday night we caught Forsyth’s Brooklyn record release show, appropriately opening for Träd, Gräs och Stenar. Joined by the latest edition of the Solar Motel Band, Peter Kerlin on bass and Ryan Jewell on drums, the trio play “Tomorrow Might as Well Be Today” and “Mystic Mountain” before being joined by Pat Gubler (P.G. Six/Wet Tuna) on keys for “Dream Song” and an absolutely epic performance of “Dreaming in the Non-Dream.” Returning the favor from last month’s Garcia Peoples record release show, the Solar Moteliers are joined by Tom Malach, Danny Arakaki, and Cesar Arakaki to complete the circle with “Techno Top.”
Chris Forsyth, Garcia Peoples, Dire Wolves, and Weak Signal play Market Hotel on July 27. You can find out what magic is in store from this insanely great lineup by grabbing a ticket.
The return of the Acid Mothers Temple stateside has become a yearly tradition and as a result the band has built its reputation in the U.S. as one of the most intense psych rock bands on the planet. This year the band agreed to play the show on the day that has become a kind of Christmas for heads — “4-20” at Market Hotel. Whether responding to the unique surroundings or the “holiday” atmosphere, AMT drew their largest crowd of the tour and played their longest set of the year. This show was 90 minutes of the most intense music we’ve ever seen from this band, which has evolved in personnel in recent years, but remains anchored by the ferocious lead guitar of Kawabata Makoto. New-ish guitarist and vocalist Jyonson Tsu was featured in Dark Star Blues and La Novia, and the band is blessed with Tsu’s intense vocals and intuitive interplay with Makoto. All in all, this was exactly what we’d hoped for from this band on this date, and judging by the diary entry for this date on Kawabata’s blog, the band was pretty stoked about the show too.
I recorded this set by substituting the Neumann hypers into the installed rig in the venue and the change was exactly perfect for this show. A small percentage of the board feed was used to fortify vocals and kick drum, and overall the sound is superb. Enjoy!
Download the Complete Show from Archive.org [HERE]
Acid Mothers Temple
2019-04-20
Market Hotel
Brooklyn NY
Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix
Setlist:
[Total Time 1:23:43]
01 Blue Velvet Blues
02 Dark Star Blues
03 Chinese Flying Saucer
04 Flying Teapot
05 Disco Pink Lady Lemonade
06 La Novia
07 Pink Lady Lemonade Coda
08 Cometary Orbital Drive
Over the course of these residency shows (plus bonus Queens show), I’ve said my piece about Ryley Walker and “who” he is musically, so I won’t belabor the point. Suffice it to say that even if you follow all things Walker, this unique collaboration is a standout, something not likely to be repeated. Walker made it known what an honor it was for him to play with these musicians. It was equally our honor to have heard it.
I recorded this set in the same manner as the other Union Pool shows, with Doug Graham’s outstanding house mix leading the way. Enjoy!
Thanks to Union Pool and Will S for continuing to book and host interesting and experimental music in north Brooklyn.
This year marks ten years since Animal Collective released Merriweather Post Pavilion, and coincidentally ten years since the recordings of their landmark gigs at The Bowery Ballroom and Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom crashed the NYCTaper servers. Since then we’ve seen Animal Collective countless times and have covered shows by each member individually, none more than Avey Tare.
Back in 2017, Avey returned to The Bowery Ballroom to play songs off Eucalyptus and preview his most current album, Cows on Hourglass Pond. Never content to linger in the same place too long, last week’s show at Market Hotel was heavy on the Cows songs, with one song each from Eucalyptus and Down There. The sole unreleased song from this set, “Enjoy the Change,” was also played back at Bowery but surprisingly didn’t end up Cows.
I recorded this set with Market Hotel’s installed Audio Technica 4051’s, combined with a board feed courtesy of the venue and engineer, Eric. The sound is outstanding. Enjoy!
Tracks [1:24:30]
01. Remember Mayan
02. What’s the Goodside?
03. HORS_
04. Eyes on Eyes
05. Taken Boy
06. K.C. Yours
07. Enjoy the Change
08. When You Left Me
09. Heads Hammock
10. Nostalgia in Lemonade
11. Saturdays (Again)
Those in the know around these parts have probably seen Garcia Peoples a handful of times or more by now — they’ve maintained a hyperkinetic schedule of local and tour shows that would be the envy of any hungry young band.
Listen to this set from Trans-Pecos a couple Sundays ago and you can understand why no promoter ever says no to these guys . This band is absolutely on fire right now, its players dialed in to a level that normally takes years. Being a private event, this was a “play what you want” set for the band, and they took that to heart, leading off with an extended improv that transitioned into their cover of “Laila Pt 2” by Agitation Free (which we first heard at Union Pool) followed by “High Noon Violence” from their brand-new breakout album, Natural Facts. After a spot-on “Total Yang,” the band were joined by Ryley Walker for an extended 16-minute improv that found Walker joining Tom Malach and Danny Arakaki as a third guitarist. Adding to the special nature of the proceedings, the band was joined by semi-regular member Pat Gubler (aka P.G. Six) on keys.
As the writer Jesse Jarnow memorably puts it, Garcia Peoples are “your heady, friendly reminder that it’s alright to let the sunshine in”. Arakaki, Malach, Derek Spaldo (bass) and Cesar Arakaki (drums) are after something here that’s so much more than being a Grateful Dead-referencing tribute band. In fact, their principal resemblance to a musician named Garcia is that each of these guys are skilled musicians with a hot improvisational streak, rarely playing a song the same way twice. Their sound lives in a zone all its own, and seems sure to cast a wide net far beyond the GD/Phish crowd. It’s no accident that they cover the likes of Agitation Free and Relatively Clean Rivers more frequently than, say, this alchemical rendition of “The Other One” with Chris Forsyth.
So yes, New York-based heads will probably end up seeing Garcia Peoples whether they specifically plan to or not. But really, you ought to plan to. A band this good should be top of mind for anyone who cares about how the best live music should sound.
I recorded this set with a soundboard feed and Schoeps MK5 cardiod microphones onstage. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!
Making music is an act of generosity — the sharing of your inner self with a public that may or may not appreciate or understand it. The music in the world that is great is also the music in which the artist is most honest with her/himself. Honesty often means getting close to the dark places inside you.
Ryley Walker’s music has always embodied a certain conflict. When Walker takes a fairly straightforward folk-rock album track and turns it into a live 15-minute jazz-psych freakout, I don’t think the change is just about the “freedom” of the live setting or a fundamental dislike of the album track. Maybe that’s part of it, but I see a contest of impulses — to be a commercially approachable troubadour or the more esoteric, improvisational player he’s been since his career began. Do you want to be the guy who wears British tailoring in leafy photo shoots, or do you want to be the guy who uses his trio show with Ryan Jewell and Steve Gunn to play 50 minutes of psych jams? Walker is both of those things — he’s good at being both of those things — but one gets the sense that he isn’t totally comfortable living solely as either. I get it: A lot of us want to be more than our headline.
There’s a well-known paradox of the “sad clown” — that people who are funny are often people who aren’t happy. Anyone who has caught Ryley live or read him in Viceor reads his Twitter knows that he is certainly the former: he can be very, very funny. Listen to his lyrics as sung, and you might be surprised: Most of Walker’s songs are varying degrees of melancholic. Even a whimsical-sounding tune like “Summer Dress,” if you listen to his delivery, is more anxious than it seems: for a person with a belly full of wine singing about green pastures of desire, the narrator sounds ill at ease. The song is especially vivid for me because it’s the first one I ever heard Ryley Walker play. That very first song lacerated me; I believed the voice I heard.
Generosity. It’s sharing those darkest places in yourself, but it’s also playing a huge fan’s birthday party at Trans-Pecos in the middle of the day, even though you’ve got another show in town that Tuesday (which ends up being a jaw-dropping improv set with Jewell, David Grubbs, and C. Spencer Yeh—check back here soon). This set (a duo of Walker and Jewell) encapsulated all of the different sides of Ryley Walker at once — from his best-known song (and total live jammer) “The Roundabout” to the not-often-played-anymore “Summer Dress,” to the ending jam, which hews closer to his most recent Union Pool shows — and also kills.
That Walker puts his conflicts out there for everyone to see is not a flaw, nor is one choice he makes more true or “real” than another. They’re who and what he is — honest to the point of ache, always pushing to be something more. The late 2010s don’t feel like a moment for generous spirits, but you don’t choose when you’re born, anymore than you choose to whom, or where. Yet here he is: a generous spirit, one for whom, on this particular day, I was especially grateful.
This Nublu night was ostensibly organized as the release party for Garcia Peoples new album Natural Facts with good friend of the site Ryley Walker as special guest. When Ryley decided to take some time off for personal reasons, the band invited another friend of this site Chris Forsyth, and Chris came north from Philadelphia on very short notice. The result was one of the more memorable shows in recent memory. The first set was a solid run through GP material, but it was the second set where the magic was revealed in an incredible hour-long jam sequence that approached legendary status. With Forsyth surrounded by the GP guitar section, the band added percussionist Ryan Jewell, and the double-drummer attack propelled the action through a 32-minute jam on a new Forsyth composition “Techno Top”. What followed were two covers that took the jam-packed crowd into another stratosphere. Of particular note is the tasty 1968-style high-energy “The Other One” which started on a buzz that never wavered through 19 minutes of pure bliss.
If you live in the Philadelphia area, Garcia Peoples is returning the release show favor to Chris Forsyth, as the two will perform together at Jerry’s On Front on April 27 when Forsyth releases his new record All Time Present. Our sincere recommendation is that anyone within any reasonable distance of that show on that night should not miss another magic night.
Eric and I recorded this set from an upfront location in the venue directly behind the DJ booth. The positioning did not permit a board feed, but the fortuitously placed high-end mics have yielded recordings of superb quality. We offer both for your enjoyment!
Setlist: Set 1 [Total Time 40:07] 01 Rolling Tides 02 Feel So Great 03 Break Me Down 04 Total Yang 05 High Noon Violence 06 The Spiraling Set 2 [Total Time 1:04:44] 07 Techno Top 08 The Calvary Cross [Richard Thompson] 09 The Other One [GD]
The long-running collaboration of drummer Chris Corsano and guitarist Bill Orcutt has been characteristically slippery, as their series of ridiculously limited LPs, 7″s, and tapes appear and disappear from merch tables faster than the duo can churn out another frenzied jam. Their latest collision, and first to take place in the studio, is called Brace Up! The cover depicts a stage diver in mid-flight, heading straight for an atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud—which is pretty much the best description anyone has come up with for what these two do. Back in January, Corsano and Orcutt once again joined forces at Union Pool, each playing solo sets before recreating that same intensity of the album with a duo set.
I recorded this set from our usual location at Union Pool at the soundboard, combined with a feed from FOH Doug Graham. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!
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