nyctaper Recordings

concert discussion and free flac downloads

Chuck Johnson: September 8, 2017 Three Lobed / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree (Raleigh, NC)

October 1, 2017
By

As a multitalented musician — a soundtrack composer, rock guitarist, and solo guitarist, among other things — it was nonetheless an exciting turn when the Bay Area (by way of NC) artist Chuck Johnson released Balsams, an album of pedal steel compositions that invented what Pitchfork rightly deemed a new genre unto itself: “country post-rock.” This being the annual Three Lobed Recordings / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree at King’s in Raleigh, NC, Johnson did the only-partly-expected, playing a Balsams track, “Riga Black,” but reworking the original into an extended ambient meditation. There’s an undeniable grace and peace to the work that melded perfectly with the afternoon’s inclusive, forward-looking vibe. We never miss a chance to see Chuck in action, and Balsams is yet another evolution the career of a gifted and visionary artist.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V microphones onstage plus a soundboard feed of Evan Lamb’s house mix. The sound quality is outstanding! Note: If you purchased an earlier version (before 10/1/2017) of this from bandcamp, go back and snag this version, as it has been re-mastered to remove some glitches from the original.

Chuck performs at the Ambient Church in Brooklyn this Friday with Windy & Carl. Check it out.

Chuck Johnson
2017-09-08
Three Lobed / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree
King’s
Raleigh, NC USA

Schoeps MK4V (onstage, DFC)>KCY>Z-PFA + Soundboard (engineer: Evan Lamb)>Zoom F8 (24bit/48kHz WAV files)>Adobe Audition CC

(align, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Riga Black

PLEASE SUPPORT Chuck Johnson: Buy this recording via the bandcamp link above, and buy his other recordings on his bandcamp page | Buy Balsams via an independent retailer

Dorji-Toth Duo: September 8, 2017 Three Lobed / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree (Raleigh, NC)

September 27, 2017
By


Tashi Dorji and James “Wooden Wand” Toth are both favorites of ours, each having performed some spectacular sets of music that we’ve featured in the past (and more to come). Dorji is a modern day avant-guitar master, while Toth — best known for his Wooden Wand songwriting — can move fluidly through several genres, as comfortable in singer-songwriter mode as he is with the way out. This Three Lobed Recordings / WXDU Hopscotch day show set featured the two men doing more of the latter, as the two men wove together a one-of-a-kind ambient noise improvisation. The mysterious box you see Toth in front of in the picture is the Octatone, a rare, handmade instrument by Forrest Marquisee of Virginia-based Forest Floor Studios, which you can learn more about here (watch a YouTube demo here). You can’t have one of these legendary day shows without a spiritual out performance, and this collaboration was that highlight for us this year. The connection between these players was such that this creation didn’t even start with a roadmap; what you hear is the organic evolution of two music minds in the act of creation. It’s a special moment not to be repeated, and it’s part of why I never miss a Friday at King’s in the early weeks of September.

I recorded this set with Evan Lamb’s house mix plus Schoeps MK4V microphones onstage. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Tashi and James play at Black Iris in Richmond on October 21. Check it out if you’re in the area!

Tashi Dorji / James Jackson Toth
2017-09-08
Three Lobed / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree
King’s
Raleigh, NC USA

Recorded and produced by acidjack
Hosted at nyctaper.com

Schoeps MK4V (onstage, DFC)>KCY>Z-PFA + Soundboard (engineer: Evan Lamb)>Zoom F8 (24bit/48kHz WAV files)>Adobe Audition CC (align, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 improvisation

Tashi Dorji – Guitar
James Jackson Toth – Octatone

SUPPORT TASHI DORJI AND JAMES TOTH: Pay to download this recording (click the bandcamp link above), and buy stuff from them: Wooden Wand | Tashi Dorji

Cap’n Jazz: September 23, 2017 Brooklyn Steel

September 26, 2017
By


[photo by Norman Brannon via Instagram]

Cap’n Jazz have reunited once again in 2017, having last done so in 2010 (both of which shows we covered ). If you’re not aware of the band, they’re more or less the godfathers of the so-called “emo” genre, spawning not only a wave of spinoff bands, but many imitators. With only one record to their name, the easiest point of entry is the Analphabetapolothogy compilation, first released in 1998. This show at Brooklyn Steel, billed as the band’s last U.S. reunion show (for now) was a freewheeling, crazy-making night of almost compulsive stage diving, silly stage banter, and rapid-fire delivery of the band’s favorites (plus that A-ha cover there near the end). If you had said to me prior to this night that Cap’n Jazz are more popular than ever, I’m not sure I’d have believed you, but the full floor at this massive venue (compared to sub-1000 capacity Brooklyn Bowl and sub-500 capacity Maxwell’s seven years ago) more than made the point. This was a show that put enthusiasm and energy first; if the band’s all-out delivery and Tim Kinsella’s shirtless stage diving didn’t necessarily mean he hit every lyric or the band hit every note, it couldn’t have mattered less. If later iterations of this style were criticized for being overly self-serious, they didn’t learn that from the brothers Kinsella and the current Cap’n Jazz crew (Victor Villarreal, Sam Zurick and Nate Kinsella), who put together a stage show that was really a show, the kind of experience fans want on a Saturday night. As Kinsella fumbled through a semi-serious cover of A-ha’s “Take On Me,” followed by the relentless closer “Ohh, How I Love You,” it felt like the right kind of sendoff before this pathbreaking band heads to Europe. This may have been the “last U.S. show” of this reunion, but no doubt we haven’t seen the last of these musicians, in one format or another.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK41V supercardiod microphones at the soundboard, adding a pair of Audio Technica 853 shotgun microphones to add in a bit more direct sound. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Cap’n Jazz
2017-09-23
Brooklyn Steel
Brooklyn, NY USA

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

Schoeps MK41V (at SBD, PAS)>KCY>Z-PFA + Audio Technica 853 shotguns>Sound Devices MixPre6 (24/48 WAV)>Adobe Audition CC (mix down, limiter)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [intro]
02 Oh Messy Life
03 In the Clear
04 Basil’s Kite
05 [banter1]
06 Puddle Splashers
07 Planet SHHH
08 The Sands Have Turned Purple
09 Yes, I Am Talking To You
10 Little League
11 [banter2]
12 Tokyo
13 We Are Scientists
14 [banter3]
15 Olerud
16 Forget Who We Are
17 Que Suerte!
18 [banter4]
19 Take On Me [A-ha]
20 [banter5]
21 Ohh How I Love You

PLEASE SUPPORT CAP’N JAZZ: Website | Bandcamp

Nicole Atkins: September 9, 2017 Mercury Lounge

September 25, 2017
By


[photos by Will Oliver and We All Want Someone To Shout For blog]

Its hard to believe that the last time we checked in with Nicole Atkins, it was three years ago. Our extended review of her album Slow Phaser and the Bowery Ballroom show that we recorded concentrated mostly on the record’s clear 1970s AM radio influences. For that album, Nicole put her stamp on the diverse styles prevalent in that decade’s pop. Three years later, several major events in Nicole’s life have guided her approach to the new album Goodnight Rhonda Lee, including her move to Nashville, dedication to sobriety, and marriage.

Goodnight Rhonda Lee is clearly an album faithful to its surroundings — both in the existence of multiple regional session players, and in the distinct sound of the record. Similarly to Slow Phaser, Goodnight Rhonda Lee is clearly influenced by the 1970s, perhaps not AM radio but more from that unique time in Nashville when the permissiveness of the 60s finally seeped into the old music town and brought a freedom to the country music capital that it had never experienced before. For about three or four years, the long hairs finally reached the mainstream — perhaps personified best through the career of Kris Kristofferson. When legend Johnny Cash recorded Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” in 1970 and took the song to Number 1, it represented the triumph of the new. And on the other side of Tennessee, Elvis welcomed new bloods Eddie Rabbit and Ronnie Milsap in the recording of his 1970 hit “Kentucky Rain”. Both songs communicate a drop-out melancholy that seemed to permeate the best of the new country during this time frame. But the melancholy also represented a distinctively different feel to the sound in the studio itself. The newly available technologies offered greater multi-tracking and effects not standard to country music that permitted the use of rock-styled guitars, reverbed piano, horns, and strings. Its that identifiable early 70s new Nashville sound that Nicole Atkins captured with stunning authenticity on Goodnight Rhonda Lee. Sure, there’s the album opener co-penned with Chris Isaak that could have been written for Patsy Cline or the neo-soul of “Listen Up” that would sound great covered by Aretha. But for the most part, the album really feels like a Nashville record and the songs themselves — struggles with alcohol, love, and a life in the music world feel at home in the country capital. And ultimately though its remarkable that the album itself wasn’t even recorded in Nashville, but rather at Niles City Sound in Fort Worth Texas.

The tour in support of Goodnight Rhonda Lee finds Nicole Atkins fronting a five piece band performing stripped down versions of the album material. There are no horns or strings but the album’s piano is present and guitarist Steven Cooper fills up the rest of the sound with tremendous tone and technique. Cooper is a young Nashville guitar wiz who seems destined for a long and productive career. At a packed Mercury Lounge last week, Nicole and the band performed a 75-minute set with much of the Rhonda Lee material and a few surprises. The set opened with a nice tribute to the recently passed Holger Czukay as Nicole brought back her cover of Can’s “Vitamin C”. Another major moment came when guest Tommy Stinson joined the band to perform a world premiere of his duet with Nicole called “Too Late”. The song was actually released this week. And the Slow Phaser track “Who Killed The Moonlight” took a detour through the Rolling Stones “Miss You” (remember that 70s pop influence). But the focus of this show was the fantastic material from the new album and it was clear that not only the massive talent of the singer but also a crack band were able to pull off the songs live. This show was that good.

Nicole Atkins has one more show on this tour, Friday night in Virgina. But she’ll be back with a bunch of shows in November, all dates [here].

I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards mounted at the soundboard and mixed with a perfect feed from house FOH Alex. This recording is absolutely superb. Enjoy!

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream the Complete Show:

Nicole Atkins
2017-09-09
Mercury Lounge
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [engineer Alex] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > 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 1:10:16]
01 Vitamin C [Can]
02 Darkness Falls so Quiet
03 Brokedown Luck
04 [banter – sinkhole]
05 A Little Crazy
06 Listen Up
07 Maybe Tonight
08 Cry Cry Cry
09 [banter – Louise Goffin]
10 If I Could
11 Goodnight Rhonda Lee
12 Who Killed The Moonlight/Miss You
13 [banter – Tommy intro]
14 Too Late [with Tommy Stinson]
15 [banter – so horny]
16 Sleepwalking
17 A Night Of Serious Drinking
18 A Dream Without Pain
19 [encore break]
20 The Way It Is

PLEASE SUPPORT Nicole Atkins: Website | Pledge Music | Single Lock Records

The War On Drugs: September 19, 2017 Terminal 5

September 21, 2017
By


[screen capture from this video]

This is what the “next level” looks like. On the heels of the release of their 2017 major-label debut, A Deeper Understanding, The War On Drugs showed up for a two-night stand in New York, first at a packed Terminal 5, to be followed by a sold-out Central Park Summerstage on this Friday night. If the band’s Radio City show in 2015, right after they signed with Atlantic Records, portended what was to come, here we were, in the thick of the actual next step. I won’t retell the story from that 2015 post, but it’s worth a read if this is your first time with a War On Drugs recording from this site.

Being on a major label, or selling out lots of bigger shows, doesn’t signify whether a band is “good” or not, or worthy or not, of course. In fact, this part of the process can be a nasty trap for many musicians — anyone who knows anything about Nirvana or a zillion other bands can tell you that. But in the case of this band, the product of years of hard work, with a wide-open, intricate sound that screams for a bigger stage, it’s the right result, and it’s one that validates Adam Granduciel’s songwriting efforts in particular. Granduciel is the perfect vehicle for big-tent lyrics, writing songs that are both personal and universal, and the sound he has developed is of a piece with that. Beginning with Lost In A Dream, and continuing in a major way with A Deeper Understanding, War On Drugs albums have a precise, densely arranged, melodic sound with an almost otherwordly sheen to it. Of course, what’s funny about that is that it’s so unusual today. If you grew up in the 1980s, or listen to much music from that era, having albums that sounded good was table stakes for even cult-favorite bands. Studio budgets, and album sales, were different then. Many fewer bands show up these days with fourteen instruments credited to a single track — nearly half of them, in many cases, played by Adam Granduciel.

To reference the 1980s, and stalwarts like Tom Petty and Springsteen in particular, is not to malign this band at all. If anything, this show at Terminal 5 underscored that The War On Drugs are rightful heirs to that personal-yet-massive rock style. Like the best of their forebears, The War On Drugs are also able to translate their studio sound to the stage. Perhaps in a nod to many of the newer fans in the audience (one of us got asked if we first heard of the band on NPR), this set focused exclusively on the last two albums, and the band was so dialed-in they could very well have been playing the album over the PA. Of course, that would have deprived us of the added guitar pyrotechnics, and the joy of realizing, for the umpteenth time, that even in 2017, a band comprised of talented musicians of limited gimmickry but exceptional live performing skills can still make it big, can still mean something to people who these days are more accustomed to “musical precision” coming from an Ableton Live setup.

In this broad-reaching survey of the band’s last two albums, the band’s other most remarkable quality — consistency — was evident, to the point that it’s almost impossible to focus on a highlight. But for me, The War On Drugs song that will always best-represent this evolution in the band’s journey is “Under the Pressure,” which so elementally captures both Granduciel’s mindset in the making of Lost In A Dream, but also in many ways the enormous weight of the band’s current success. It’s another of those songs with specific meaning to its author that is also able to capture an almost-universal anxiety among its listeners. To see a band that we personally have liked and supported for so long reach this point — not only making it to this proverbial “next level” but thriving against the pressure — is a special and rare thing. To hear, even in the relatively few snippets of stage banter on this night, how they remain the same people who played in tiny bars ten (or even six) years ago, is rarer still. I have to acknowledge, briefly, that I realize this band doesn’t “need” the support of a website like this, but their treatment of us as fans, both in the past and today, says a lot. We appreciate it.

We each recorded this set from our usual location directly at the soundboard, acidjack’s with Schoeps MK41V microphones and nyctaper’s with Neumann KM150s. The sound quality of each is excellent, and both versions are offered here. Enjoy!

Special thanks to The War On Drugs, their management, and the Terminal 5 staff for allowing us to record the show. 

Download the nyctaper Neumann version of this show at Archive.org [HERE] [MP3] / [FLAC]

Download acidjack’s Schoeps version: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream acidjack’s version here:

Stream nyctaper’s version here:

The War On Drugs
2017-09-19
Terminal 5
New York, NY USA

Hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK41V (at SBD, DFC)>KCY>Z-PFA>Sound Devices MixPre6 (24/48)>WAV>Adobe Audition CC>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects, image)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 In Chains
02 Pain
03 An Ocean Between the Waves
04 Strangest Thing
05 Holding On
06 Red Eyes
07 Knocked Down
08 Nothing To Find
09 Up All Night
10 You Don’t Have To Go
11 Burning
12 Eyes to the Wind
13 [encore break]
14 Under the Pressure
15 Clean Living
16 In Reverse

************************

The War On Drugs
2017-09-19
Terminal 5
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Recorded at Soundboard Booth

Neumann KM-150s > Sound Devices 744t > 24bit 48kHz wav > Soundforge (post-production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:47:30]
01 In Chains
02 Pain
03 An Ocean Between the Waves
04 Strangest Thing
05 Holding On
06 Red Eyes
07 Knocked Down
08 Nothing To Find
09 Up All Night
10 You Don’t Have To Go
11 Burning
12 Eyes to the Wind
13 [encore break]
14 Under the Pressure
15 Clean Living
16 In Reverse

PLEASE SUPPORT THE WAR ON DRUGS: Buy A Deeper Understanding from their website

Purling Hiss: September 8, 2017 Three Lobed / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree (Raleigh, NC)

September 19, 2017
By


[photo by Paul Spanbauer]

As longtime members of the Purling Hiss bandwagon, we’re always excited to see this band play live, and even more excited by the big-time reception those live shows usually get. That was the story here at the Three Lobed Recordings / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree, where the Hiss set found the room at its most-packed point of the day, and for good reason. Mike Polizze and his current cast of co-conspirators (Ben Leaphart on drums, Pat Hickey on bass) brought the full amount of heat to the King’s stage on this sunny mid-afternoon, kicking off with the classic PH tune “Mercury Retrograde” before venturing into a long-haired rock version of Spacemen 3’s “Walking With Jesus.” It was the best kind of cover, abandoning the melodic, low-tempo Brit-psych of the original to boil the song to its rawest essence. After that, we headed into the deep Hiss catalog for “Run From the City” and “Almost Washed My Hair” (2009 and 2010 respectively) before the band sprung a final goodie, a song so new that it doesn’t yet have a name. What we do know about the song is, not-shockingly, it’s a fusillade of hard-charging guitars and ecstatic vibes. Like most things Purling Hiss, it rocks.

I recorded this set with Evan Lamb’s soundboard feed, together with Schoeps MK4V microphones onstage. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Purling Hiss
2017-09-08
Three Lobed / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree
King’s
Raleigh, NC USA

Recorded and produced by acidjack
Hosted at nyctaper.com

Soundboard (engineer: Evan Lamb)+Schoeps MK4V (onstage, DFC)>KCY>Z-PFA>Zoom F8 (24bit/48kHz WAV files)>Adobe Audition CC (align, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Mercury Retrograde
02 Walking with Jesus [Spacemen 3]
03 Run From the City
04 Almost Washed My Hair
05 [untitled]

Purling Hiss:
Mike Polizze – Vox/Guitar
Ben Leaphart – Drums
Pat Hickey – Bass

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Purling Hiss, like them on Facebook, and buy their latest records from Drag City.

Rosali: September 8, 2017 Three Lobed / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree (Raleigh, NC)

September 18, 2017
By


[courtesy of Three Lobed’s Instagram]

It just wouldn’t make sense to have a talent like Rosali Middleman, who performs as Rosali, show up for a Three Lobed Recordings / WXDU Hopscotch day show and NOT do double duty. So after tearing shit up with the Long Hots earlier in the day, Rosali took the stage again to play her own material, including songs from her forthcoming second LP. Her 2016 debut, Out of Love, arrived like a confident tailwind in a year that was a veritable sea of tumult, and it’s worth revisiting it if you missed it then. This full-band set (featuring Nathan Bowles on drums, Paul Sukeena on guitar, and Dan Provenzano on bass) beefed up certain songs like the key Out of Love opener, “Good Life” as well as making a first (for many of us, at least) showing off new songs like “If I Was Your Heart” and “Dead and Gone.”

These Three Lobed / WXDU day shows tend to have a way of revealing themselves, with the internal logic of the order of (often) wildly divergent styles of bands evident only once you’re standing in the room. Such is the case with Rosali’s position near the end of the day. “Rise To Fall” is a new song of hers, and while certainly the emotional and musical highlight of Rosali’s set, it may also have been that for the whole day, as Middleman’s voice soared over the thick zone of guitars. It felt like an affirmation of all that is right about this day, every year, as a band that had started their set with a measured country-folk number was suddenly blowing the doors off the place with a huge rock song. These shows also have a way of veering from the intellectual to the contemplative to the delightfully weird, but somewhere, there’s always the urgent, throbbing heart, and for me, that was this moment. Stay tuned to Rosali’s bandcamp to find out more about the forthcoming album version.

I recorded this set with fellow taper Randy’s ceiling mounted AKG 460s together with the house mix by Kings’ Evan Lamb. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Rosali
2017-09-08
Three Lobed Recordings / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree
King’s
Raleigh, NC USA

Recorded and produced by acidjack
Hosted at nyctaper.com

Soundboard (engineer: Evan Lamb)+AKG 460/CK61 (FOB, DFC)>Zoom F8 (24bit/48kHz WAV files)>Adobe Audition CC (align, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 If I Was Your Heart
02 Good Life
03 Hangin
04 Dead And Gone
05 Blind Bird
06 Rise to Fall

SUPPORT ROSALI: bandcamp | Facebook

Long Hots: September 8, 2017 Three Lobed Records/WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree (Raleigh, NC)

September 15, 2017
By

I can’t even give you a link to Long Hots on the Internet, because there ain’t one. But maybe you’ve heard of such bands as Rosali, Hothead, and Spacin‘. Ah, right, now you get the idea. So named for a kind of hot pepper, I assure that this band is prepared to bring the fire. My now-annual journey to the Three Lobed Recordings / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree is never complete without a total surprise, and seeing “Philadelphia’s most anticipated band” playing their third-ever show was certainly one of them. These women didn’t spend a long time onstage, but they used their fifteen minutes well, handing us two doses of feral guitar shredding and general disrespect for the integrity of our eardrums. This band played their fourth show, the following night, with Purling Hiss, so if you didn’t figure out the RIYL on this one, I can’t help you. Head over to bandcamp, throw these powerful women some love, and make sure some more Long Hots is in your future.

I recorded this set with a combination of onstage Schoeps MK4V microphones and several soundboard channels from house engineer Evan Lamb. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Long Hots
2017-09-08
Three Lobed / WXDU Hopscotch Afternoon Jamboree
King’s
Raleigh, NC USA

Recorded and produced by acidjack
Hosted at nyctaper.com

Soundboard (engineer: Evan Lamb)+Schoeps MK4V (onstage)>Z-PFA>>Zoom F8 (24bit/48kHz WAV files)>Adobe Audition CC (align, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 They Do What We Want
02 One Chip Over the Line

SUPPORT THESE MUSICIANS: Rosali | Spacin‘ | Hothead

Diet Cig: September 8, 2017 Bowery Ballroom

September 14, 2017
By


[photos by Joe Saturday]

Its hard for me to imagine that someone exists who actually doesn’t like Diet Cig. The duo exudes such positive energy and real enthusiasm for their music that it’s infectious in a live setting. This is not world-changing music, but two-minute pop song relatable slices of life. When Pitchfork assigned an intern whose last piece was likely in an Annandale creative writing class to review Diet Cig’s most recent album, the result was a tragically misdirected hit piece that managed to be both tone-deaf and indicative of a wider problem with publications like Pitchfork. Sometimes music doesn’t have to have a larger meaning and when the writer savages the musicians for failing to meet a false standard, it says more about the writer’s inadequacies than anything the music set out to achieve. To paraphrase Billy Bragg, Diet Cig don’t want to change the world, they’re just looking to sing some pop songs.

At Bowery Ballroom on Friday night, the band played to a sold-out crowd and all of the good vibes coming from the stage were returned all night. This was a crowd in love with the band for all the right reasons. Sure, lead singer Alex Luciano opened the set by declaring that all of the band’s show are safe spaces and later she gently chided the dancers in front to keep it fun and not too physical, but it was more than that. Luciano played a wireless guitar on a nearly bare stage — drummer Noah Bowman was set up to the far left — in order to be able to dance, run, jump and literally never stop moving throughout the set. Her unbridled ebullience drove the hour-long set from start to finish, to the point where the briefest of breaks were only to catch her breath. Diet Cig performed just about every song they’ve ever recorded — from their debut EP and a double-sided single on Father/Daughter Records, and all but one song from their first album I Swear I’m Good At This released this year on Frenchkiss. The show also featured the debut performance of the song the band wrote for the Amazon tv show “American Girl” called “Together We Can Conquer Whatever”. When the band returned to play their very first recorded track “Harvard” as an encore, it brought me back to the initial time I heard a pre-release promo of that very track. The song made me smile that day and a few years later, this Bowery show did it again many times over.

Diet Cig has a handful of US dates remaining before they spend much of the Fall touring throughout Europe, all dates here.

I recorded this set in our usual manner in this venue, Schoeps from the front of the balcony mixed with a board feed. Other than a few bits of static from Alex’s wireless guitar, the sound quality is very representative of the set with bundles of energy and non-stop movement. Enjoy!

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream the Complete Show:

Diet Cig
2017-09-08
Bowery Ballroom
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > 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 51:00]
01 [introduction]
02 Sixteen
03 Bite Back
04 Leo
05 Dinner Date
06 [banter – slumber party]
07 Cardboard
08 Sleep Talk
09 Breathless
10 [banter – rollercoaster]
11 Scene Sick
12 Pool Boyz
13 Apricots
14 Maid of the Mist
15 [Tummy intro]
16 Tummy Ache
17 Blob Zombie
18 [Conquer intro]
19 Together We Can Conquer Whatever
20 Link in Bio
21 Bath Bomb
22 Barf Day
23 [encore break]
24 Harvard

PLEASE SUPPORT Diet Cig: Website | Frenchkiss Records Page | Father/Daughter Records Page | Bandcamp

Sunburned Hand of the Man: August 28, 2017 Rough Trade NYC

September 12, 2017
By

Sunburned Hand of the Man are such a disparate psychedelic force (with over 100 releases to their name) that you can’t ever guarantee what’s going to come out of them. For this set, we got a ten-person band on the stage of Rough Trade NYC to play a four-part improvisation that the band referred to as the “Blizzard of Zoz.” Compared to some of the sets we served up to you last year, the “Blizzard of Zoz” was a bit more of a groove-driven affair, expanding over 42 mind-melting minutes from a low drone into a tight groove, then heading into freakout territory. Don’t worry, these sets were plenty noisy, too. The intensity of the proceedings was maximized by the Mad Alchemy liquid light show going on behind the band, which absorbed us all through the end.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK22 “open cardiod” microphones and a soundboard feed from Noel Ford, engineer of Dinosaur Jr. and several other bands. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Download the complete set: [MP3/FLAC/Apple Lossless]

Sunburned Hand of the Man
2017-08-28
Rough Trade NYC
Brooklyn, NY USA

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

Schoeps MK22 (at SBD, DFC, PAS bar)>KCY>Z-PFA + Soundboard (engineer: Noel Ford)>>Sound Devices MixPre 6>24bit polyWAV>Adobe Audition CC (align, mix down, adjust levels, compression, limiter)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects, image)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Blizzard of Zoz Pt 1
02 Blizzard of Zoz Pt 2
03 Blizzard of Zoz Pt 3
04 Blizzard of Zoz Pt 4

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