Mothers: October 15, 2015 NYCTaper Unofficial CMJ Show, Cake Shop

October 26, 2015
By

mothers2

The “taping” community is not a large one, and among people who have similar tastes to us that do it, the number is even smaller. We’ve long-respected the Athens/Atlanta site Southern Shelter for both its excellent taste in music and its high-quality recordings, and we look to each other for inspiration for the next bands to check out. The Athens band Mothers is one that Southern Shelter has talked up for a while, making us extra-stoked to be able to include them in our unofficial CMJ day show. Other sites caught on in the meantime, with Stereogum naming them a “band to watch” just a day before our show.

The Cake Shop room was at capacity for this set, and it’s no wonder why: Mothers, whose debut LP is anticipated in 2016, truly are an up-and-comer you can’t miss. Frontwoman and songwriter Kristine Leschper’s songs have a depth, breadth and ingenuity that sets them apart. In addition to her powerful voice, the songs feature complex arrangements that at times recall math and noise rock — a part of Leschper’s evolution as a songwriter as the band’s debut has come closer to fruition. This band, like many these days, began as Leschper’s solo project, but its expansion makes it more than the sum of those parts. She’s got an excellent team around her, and during the four-song span of our show, they gave us a taste of their range. “It Hurts Until It Doesn’t” is emblematic of Mothers’ evolution as a full band, whereas “No Crying In Baseball,” one of few songs actually released and this set’s closer, is considered an outlier to the rest of the band’s style. We hear the influence of some classic Athens bands in their sound, including the New Wavers Pylon (who we’ve recorded twice) and Warehouse (who we caught this year). It’s easy to see why they’ve caught on, making several “best of CMJ” lists this year, as this is one of those lucky few acts that lives up to the hype.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V microphones in front of the stage together with a soundboard feed from the Cake Shop engineer Jeff. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Download the complete set: [MP3/FLAC]

Stream the complete set: 

Mothers
2015-10-15
NYCTaper Unofficial CMJ Show
Cake Shop
New York, NY USA

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

Schoeps MK4V (onstage)>KC5>CMC6 + Soundboard (engineer: Jeff)>>Edirol R-44>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, fades, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ, image)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Copper Mines
02 It Hurts Until It Doesn’t
03 Hold Your Own
04 No Crying In Baseball

If you enjoyed this recording, please like Mothers on facebook and check out their songs on Soundcloud.

Obnox: September 12, 2015 CAM, Raleigh, NC (Hopscotch Music Festival)

October 26, 2015
By

Obnox
[Photos by Rumbleseat]

David Schwentker reports:

Lamont ‘Bim’ Thomas has kept time in plenty of great bands over the past 20-plus years (Bassholes, This Moment In Black History, Puffy Areolas, etc.), but in the past few years he’s hit a real stride as a guitarist and frontman, releasing a string of albums that continue to increase in both quality and quantity, under the name Obnox. Having played a headlining show on the festival’s Friday night last year, and set to play another one the night of this show as 1/3 of the supergroup Blaxxx, the festival saw fit to go ahead and book Obnox to play their official day party. The setting for this year’s party was the Contemporary Art Museum, a sterile, wide open space that can be an odd venue for a garage punk show, especially with 4:00 pm afternoon sunlight streaming in through the building’s expansive windows. While perhaps a little bemused by the setting and time of day, Thomas blazed through a tight nine song set, accompanied on drums by the “best bandmate he’s ever had,” the powerful Roseanna Safos. While Obnox has released three full length albums this year on the 12XU and Ever/Never labels, most of this set is drawn from the band’s earlier singles and first LP, including covers of Don Howland (Thomas’ bandmate in the Bassholes) and Andre Williams songs. A slight bummer if you were looking forward to hearing the newer songs in a live setting, but not a lasting one, as these songs are catchy and rockin’, and if you can’t have fun at an Obnox show, then I can’t help you. Plus, this recording makes a nice compliment to the Obnox show at the Cake Shop in NYC, posted on this site earlier this year, as the sets only share two common songs.

This recording was captured by area taper Rumbleset, with the same setup as the Moon Duo recording previously posted on this site: two sets of mics, Church Audio CA-11s on the ceiling and Shure SM-57s on stage, combined with a soundboard feed. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Obnox returns to NYC on November 6 for a show at Pianos. Tickets are available here.

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

Stream the complete show:

Obnox
2015-09-12
Hopscotch Music Festival Day Party
CAM
Raleigh, NC USA

Three separate audio sources were used to create this recording:
1) Church Audio CA-11 (cardioid) stereo microphones mounted on the ceiling > Naiant Studio PFA phantom power adapter.
2) Direct line-level stereo board feed. (Technician was Roger Dennis, RMB Audio)
3) Stereo pair of Shure SM-57 microphones at 90 degrees, diaphragms about 10 inches apart, on a stand at the front of the stage.

These three sources were captured with a Tascam DR-680 MKII recorder as 48 kHz, 24 bit wave files.
The files were mixed and processed with Audacity and Magix Audio Cleaning Lab

Taped and mixed by Rumbleseat

Tracks [30:52]
01. Rock N Roll Babylon
02. Bitch! Get Money!
03. [banter]
04. Jack N Jill [Don Howland]
05. Without Aa Soul
06. Dr. Dank Vs. Dr. Middie
07. [banter]
08. The Get It Inn
09. I’m Bleeding Now
10. Only Black Man in South Dakota

Support Obnox: Facebook | Buy Wiglet, Know America, and other Obnox records from 12XU

Zs: September 8, 2015 Bowery Ballroom

October 26, 2015
By

zs_live_2012_hi-res
[photo from Zs website]

Our recent post of the great Greg Fox’s Hopscotch Festival duo set with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma reminded me that we had this Zs performance from September at Bowery Ballroom in the archives. The chance to go back and produce the recording gave me a second listen to what was at the time an excellent set but in retrospect is really one of the most astonishing shows we’ve seen all year. Zs opened this night for Thee Oh Sees (posted here), an odd pairing at first glance but one that gave band leader John Dwyer a chance to reunite with Zs founder Sam Hillmer after years playing in parallel music scenes. Sam founded Zs fifteen years ago, and while the band has been a fixture in the DIY scene since 2000, the personnel has morphed over the years. The current trio of Sam, Greg and guitar wizard Patrick Higgins has coalesced into a unique mix of noise, jazz, and avant to form a truly superb musical conglomeration. The band’s latest album Xe was released on the excellent local label Northern Spy in January to very strong reviews.

This performance at Bowery lasted less than an hour but kept the crowd transfixed for the entire set. For a 500-strong who came expecting some raging gararge rock, the powerful avant trio must have been a bit of a culture shock, but most picked up on the vibe pretty quickly. Zs worked through the new album in order, skipping only the opening track. The centerpiece of the set was the nearly nineteen-minute “Corps”, which gave each band member a chance to take center stage and showcase their immense talents.

Zs will be playing another local show at Palisades on November 20.

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream the Complete Show:

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request, and feel free to repost the Soundcloud links.

Zs
2015-09-08
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 48:11]
01 [introduction]
02 Woolf Government
03 Corps
04 Weakling
05 Xe

If you Download this recording from nyctaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Zs, visit their website, and purchase their new album Xe from Northern Spy Records [HERE].

Protomartyr: October 17, 2015 Ad Hoc Car Wash

October 23, 2015
By

Protomartyr-11-edwina-hay
[photos courtesy of Edwina Hay as featured in Impose Magazine]

This was the week of the overwhelming, PR-driven quasi-festival known as the CMJ Music Marathon, meaning there were hordes of tired concertgoers and touring bands around by the time the week wrapped. Taking advantage of that, and perhaps bringing the vibes of our own scene back to earth were the already-legendary concert promoters/magazine Ad Hoc, who rented out a vacant car wash (and its adjoining parking lot) to put on a sprawling ten-band bill that boasted the best of local and touring acts. This event felt like an appropriate evolution for the neighborhood that once housed the best-known DIY venues of the prior decade: Here you had an unused commercial space converted to creative purposes, albeit this time with plenty of bathrooms, quality (and cheap and cold) beer by the can, and even a couple of food trucks.

If you went to a CMJ event this year, chances are you might have caught Protomartyr, who were all over the place at this year’s fest making the case for their recently-released third record The Agent Intellect. The Detroit band saw some heat from their last album, Under Color of Official Right, but consensus seems to be that it’s this new offering that is going to break them into wider consciousness. That’d be a more than fair outcome, as this thirty-minute, ten-song set showed off the best of their material, including “Scum, Rise!” from their previous record and a decent chunk of the new album. Frontman Joe Casey doesn’t exactly match the band’s sound or words, performing as he does in a weirdly-dapper dark blazer and sunglasses, but beneath that veneer boil bleak, personal tales set against the backdrop of the band’s hometown, such as the signature track “Pontiac ’87”. Though you could see the daylight streaming through behind the band (filtered only by the yellow car wash sign), they held the atmosphere where it needed to be, trapping the nervous energy within the stripped brick walls. Compared to some of their harder-edged peers who would share the stage throughout the day, Protomartyr were a bit more “musical” band than some of the other fare, and that’s part of what makes them special. If this CMJ was “their year,” then I say they’ve earned it.

I recorded this set with Audio Technica 4051 microphones and a soundboard feed from Ad Hoc’s staff. The sound quality reflects the “DIY” nature of the venue, but is still quite good. Enjoy!

Download the complete set: [MP3/FLAC]

Stream the complete set: 

Protomartyr
2015-10-17
Ad Hoc Car Wash
Hand & Detail Car Wash Center
Brooklyn, NY USA

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

Audio Technica 4051 (LOC, FOB, PAS) + Soundboard>Roland R-26>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, edit SBD)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects, image)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 30:45]
01 Devil In His Youth
02 Cowards Starve
03 I Forgive You
04 Ain’t So Simple
05 Want Remover
06 Scum, Rise!
07 Pontiac 87
08 The Hermit>
09 Clandestine Time
10 Why Does It Shake?

If you enjoyed this recording, please like Protomartyr on facebook and buy their records from Hardly Art.

The Dead Tongues: September 23, 2015 Rough Trade NYC

October 22, 2015
By

IMG_3153

There’s plenty of heat coming out of Triangle music scene in North Carolina these days, as seems to be the case every half-decade or so. The reasons are several — the region’s overall economic and social diversification and success; the rise, congruent with that, of Durham as the region’s cultural third pillar as it already was a research, medical and education anchor with Raleigh and Chapel Hill; a stellar music festival to highlight the region’s best acts. But with the rise of an insular scene — fueled by a relatively condensed list of publications, social networks, venues and bands, where shows are a place where everybody knows your name, there’s a danger, too. Sometimes it’s hard for friends to be honest about the quality of their friends’ work; there’s a tendency [DUCKS] to promote at least some material that may not reach the heights promised by the homegrown hype.

Which is a long way of saying how refreshing it was to come across Ryan Gustafson, who plays both solo and as a band as The Dead Tongues. Because, even in a crowded field, Gustafson shines as a songwriter of exceptional merit. I first saw his band at Hopscotch, one of many that had been recommended to me as “really good” by various folks I know in the area (sadly, that recording is lost). I’ll beg Ryan’s forgiveness for taking that recommendation with a grain of salt, one which washed away quickly as I watched he and his full band perform.

On the road with Phil Cook as part of his “Guitarheels” band, Ryan opened that show at Rough Trade NYC with his own solo set consisting of entirely unreleased material, played by Ryan on banjo, guitar and harmonica. It’s almost unfair to compare him to the people who come to mind, so I won’t drop names, but suffice it to say Gustafson’s maturity and storytelling ability approach that of big names you’ve heard of. I’m especially partial to “The Broken Side of People,” “A Pair of Stained Glass Eyes” and “Wildflower Perfume,” but it’s hard to play favorites with Gustafson’s work. What’s for sure is that his forthcoming album (details TBD) is something that I’ll await, eagerly.

I recorded this set primarily with Rough Trade engineer Danielle DePalma’s soundboard mix, together with Schoeps MK4V microphones. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

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

Stream the complete show: 

The Dead Tongues
2015-06-26
Rough Trade NYC
Brooklyn, NY

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

Soundboard (engineer: Danielle DePalma) + Schoeps MK4V (FOB, DFC, PAS)>KC5>CMC6>Edirol R-44>24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, fades, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, balance, dither, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Lost in Baton Rouge
02 [banter]
03 Graveyard Fields
04 My Companion
05 The Gold is Deep
06 The Broken Side of People Everywhere
07 A Pair Of Stained Glass Eyes
08 Embers of Midnight
09 Wildflower Perfume
10 Black Flower Blooming
11 Empire Builder

Musicians:
Ryan Gustafson (solo)

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT The Dead Tongues by buying their music at their bandcamp page.

 

Spray Paint: October 16, 2015 Union Pool (R.I.P. SVT CMJ Party)

October 22, 2015
By

Spray Paint

It’s been a mere six-ish months since we last caught Spray Paint. And in that time, the band has released not one but two new albums: Punters on a Barge and most recently, Dopers. Each album finds the band exploring new sounds and textures, but don’t think that they’ve abandoned their minimalist sound—these new tunes are still unequivocally Spray Paint. Dopers especially is darker than any material they’ve released previously, working up unsettling themes and making music you might use to soundtrack a Troma film. If you’ve heard Spray Paint before, these albums are more of what you love. And if you haven’t: meet your new favorite band.

In contrast to April’s show, which featured many of the bands earliest songs like “Spock Fingers,” “Squaw,” and “Pink Pus,” this one leans more heavily on the newer material. “Polar Beer” is one of the (many) highlights off Punters on a Barge so I was very pleased to hear that one live. “Thrash Master,” “Signal Master,” and “Bad Times” are off Dopers and my appreciation for them has only increased as I’ve absorbed the record. At their current pace I’m sure they’ll have some new music out soon—in the meantime, I’ve got some heavy listening to do.

Spray Paint wrap up their short tour with a record release show tonight (Oct. 22) at Hotel Vegas in Austin. Be sure and catch that if you find yourself out that way.

I recorded this set from our usual location in Union Pool with a board feed from FOH Robert. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

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

Stream the complete show:

Spray Paint
2015-10-16
Union Pool
Brooklyn, NY

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by Eric PH

Soundboard (engineer: Robert) + AKG C480B/CK63 > Roland R-26 > 2xWAV (24/48) > Adobe Audition CC (align, mixdown, normalize, fades) > Audacity 2.0.5 (downsample, dither, tracking, tagging) > FLAC (16/44.1, level 8)

Tracks [32:07]
01. Bring Dumpster Back
02. Ian’s Theme
03. Polar Beer
04. Middle Relief
05. Thrash Master
06. Canadian Trash
07. Signal Master
08. Bad Times
09. Ultimate Umpire
10. Rest Versus Rust
11. Cussin’

Support Spray Paint: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Buy Dopers and other Spray Paint records from Monofonus

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.