Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band: October 24, 2014 Rough Trade & January 10, 2015 Palisades

January 19, 2015
By

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NPR pretty much nailed it when they described Chris Forsyth’s music as “the intersection of Television and The Grateful Dead.” Add to that casual mentions of Neil Young and Richard Thompson, both of whom Forsyth has recently covered, and you get a fairly accurate portrait of his music. But musicians—the good ones at least—are more than just vectors for their influences. Forsyth’s first album with his band, Solar Motel, made it clear that here was an original songwriter working within and pushing the boundaries of a musical tradition. Forsyth’s guitar playing comes off as effortless and his looseness is counterbalanced by the Solar Motel Band’s ability to jam as if a single consciousness.

Here we have two sets, one recorded just days before the release of Intensity Ghost and one a short few months later, though long enough to have let that album’s jams percolate. The sets are nearly identical in setlist; the Palisades set substitutes a cover of Richard & Linda Thompson’s “The Calvary Cross” in place of Intensity Ghost’s “Yellow Square” from Rough Trade. Each features the same as-yet-untitled new song, an impressive jam to rival “The Ballad of Freer Hollow” for dominance as the band’s signature tune. Forsyth does an admirable job on vocals with “The Calvary Cross,” managing to carefully convey the song’s significance without resorting to affectation. “Intensity Ghost” is an exercise in guitar soloing bookended by an urgent jam that highlights the band’s ability to craft more tightly-wound rock songs. Finally, each set closes with “I Ain’t Waiting,” a slowed-down jam that eases you out of the Solar Motel headspace you’ve just inhabited for a good three-quarters of an hour.

Acidjack recorded the Rough Trade NYC show with Shoeps MK41’s set up at the soundboard, with a board feed from FOH Cam. The Palisades show was recorded with the AKG’s set up in front of the board, with a board feed from FOH Ariel. Both sets sound outstanding. Enjoy!

Download the Rough Trade NYC show at the Live Music Archive

Download the Palisades show at the Live Music Archive

Stream the complete Rough Trade NYC show:

Stream the complete Palisades show:

Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band
2014-10-24
Rough Trade NYC
Brooklyn, NY

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

Soundboard (engineer: Cam) + Schoeps MK41 (DFC, PAS, at SBD)>KCY>Z-PFA>Sound Devices USBPre2>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (exciter effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [44:27]
01. Intensity Ghost
02. [banter]
03. The Ballad of Freer Hollow
04. [banter]
05. Yellow Square
06. [banter]
07. High Castle Rock
08. [banter]
09. I Ain’t Waiting

Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band
2015-01-10
Palisades
Brooklyn, NY

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

Soundboard (engineer: Ariel) + AKG C480B/CK61 > Roland R-26 > 2xWAV(24/48) > Adobe Audition CC (align, balance, mixdown, compression, fades) > Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ) > Audacity 2.0.5 (tracking, tagging) > FLAC (24/48, level 8)

Tracks [48:37]
01. The Ballad of Freer Hollow
02. High Castle Rock
03. The Calvary Cross [Richard & Linda Thompson]
04. Intensity Ghost
05. I Ain’t Waiting

Remastered August 2018

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Chris Forsyth. Visit his website, like him on Facebook, and buy Intensity Ghost from No Quarter.

Steve Gunn: January 11, 2015 Rough Trade – FLAC/MP3/Streaming Full Set

January 15, 2015
By


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[photos by Jill Harrison]

One of the very best songs on Steve Gunn‘s Way Out Weather is a song inspired by Steve’s former noisy neighbor. In lesser hands, such banal subject matter might result in a bit of a dud. But Gunn turns the humble beginnings of “Milly’s Garden” into something wonderful and universal, a meditation on unease and the desire to move on. We last saw Gunn at Rough Trade in October, with his full band in tow, so this was a very different, but equally special kind of performance. Celebrating the first anniversary of the once-troubled (by noise complaints, at least) venue, Gunn played this gig solo but left the songs’ guitar explorations. Again, in lesser hands, a ten-plus minute “Old Strange” as a solo opener might not work — but Gunn’s kickoff to the night was magical. Poking fun at his trademark relaxed demeanor, Steve warned the Sunday afternoon crowd at the outset that they might fall asleep, but the house gave him their rapt attention, hanging on words shorn of everything surrounding them but his lone guitar. Gunn was in fine form, making us laugh in between songs that he played with dead-serious intent. To put an exclamation mark on the evening, Gunn closed with “Lurker”, which first debuted on the Three Lobed Recordings boxed set and was a treat as a full-band version back in October.

Since its inception, Rough Trade has been a valuable add to a neighborhood whose venues are depleting rapidly. Even if its surroundings may be fancier than the DIY spots that came before it, hosting an artist like Steve Gunn for your anniversary show proves that the Rough Trade folks intend to remain a credit to what this neighborhood was.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK41 microphones and a soundboard feed from house engineer Kyle Lawrence. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

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

Stream the complete show: 

Steve Gunn
2015-01-11
Rough Trade (1st Year Anniversary)
Brooklyn, NY USA

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

Schoeps MK41 (FOB/DFC/PAS)>KC5>CMC6>Sound Devices USBPre2 + Soundboard (engineer: Kyle Lawrence)>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, harmonic exciter)>Audacity 2.0.5 (tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 57:47]
01 [intro banter]
02 Old Strange
03 Shadow Bros
04 Water Wheel
05 [banter2]
06 Wildwood
07 [banter3]
08 Way Out Weather
09 [banter4]
10 Milly’s Garden
11 [banter5]
12 Lurker

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Steve Gunn, visit his website, and buy his albums, all of which have “buy” links here.

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Fat White Family: December 20, 2014 Baby’s All Right – Flac/MP3/Streaming

January 14, 2015
By

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[photo courtesy of Gretchen Robinette – full set at Impose Magazine]

Fat White Family is not a subtle band. In an era of “chill wave” and “chamber pop” and “nu gaze”, these former South London squatters are loud, rude, and beholden to no artificially-defined style. If you want to know what type of music they make, just consult one of the band’s song titles — “I Am Mark E. Smith”. And while the music of The Fall is clearly an influence, Fat White Family doesn’t simply sneer. They sweat, spit, expose themselves and generally make a depraved mess of the whole thing. But don’t let the stage antics hide that musically, Fat White Family is an entertaining band playing a contemporary British garage rock. Their debut album Champagne Holocaust was originally self-released but after gaining some notoriety in the UK — positively and negatively, the album has been released in the US by Fat Possum Records. The band was in the States for a while in the Fall and made a splash during CMJ for not only their music but the stage antics. In December, Fat White Family did a two-week residence at Baby’s All Right and we caught the final night in what would be the band’s last show in the US until March of 2015. This set is a full one and perhaps the longest time-wise of all of the recent US shows, encompassing basically all of the songs the band worked up for the live show which includes much of Champagne Holocaust and only two older tracks, the aforementioned “Smith” and the band-name-generating “Bomb Disneyland”. We’re streaming “Heaven on Earth” which begins and carries through with a familiar surf-garage guitar line that makes the song perhaps the most accessible of the set. Fat White Family will return to the US in March and we’d recommend catching their highly entertaining show at least once.

This set was recorded by House FOH Devin, who provided a superb live mix of the multitrack. There are also cardioid microphones installed on the lighting rig about 15 feet in front of the stage. In post-production, I mixed the two sources and the results are quite excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Heaven on Earth”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

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.

Fat White Family
2014-12-20
Babys All Right
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Soundboard + Audience
Multitrack Recording

Multitrack Soundboard (engineered and recorded by Devin Foley) > Devin mix Wav files + Room mic wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, setfades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 53:10]
01 Auto Neutron
02 Is It Raining In Your Mouth
03 Heaven on Earth
04 I Am Mark E Smith
05 Wild American Prairie
06 Special Ape
07 Cream of the Young
08 Touch the Leather
09 Wet Hot Beef
10 Garden of the Numb
11 Bomb Disneyland

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Fat White Family, visit their Facebook page, and purchase Champagne Holocaust from the Fat Possum Records website [HERE].

Mark McGuire: January 7, 2015 Baby’s All Right – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

January 14, 2015
By

Mark McGuire

Formerly one-third of the neo-kosmische band, Emeralds, Mark McGuire has amassed an impressive discography not only with that band but also as a solo musician. Since 2007, I count nearly fifty solo releases, not even to mention ongoing or one-off collaborative projects such as Inner Tube (with Charles Berlitz) or Skyramps (with Daniel Lopatin). Yet as prolific as he is, live performances seem much less frequent. Beyond their scarcity, however, McGuire’s live performances are notable for being a new and unique experience each time you see him. For instance, at a performance during 2012’s Unsound Festival, he spent a good deal of the set playing bass guitar; and for last year’s Big Ears Festival a majority of the performance was made up of shorter songs paired with lyrics, compared with his usual long-form instrumental jams.

McGuire’s Baby’s All Right set features three lengthy pieces, two of which are new and one previously released. “Noctilucence”—named for the phenomenon of summer clouds shining at night (and yes, I had to look that up)—hails from a 2014 EP of the same name released on Dead Oceans. New song and set-opener “Entity” layers shimmering guitar lines over preprogrammed beats, illustrating the type of guitar work for which McGuire is best known. And finally, “2015 Jam” begins with a sound collage underpinned by some light atmospherics that eventually develops into a throbbing beat joined by overlapping guitar solos. By far the most intense song of the evening, the crowd’s sense of release at its conclusion is palpable even on the recording.

This set was recorded by Baby’s FOH Rubes Harman, who provided a stereo board feed as well as a recording of the house mics. I mixed these two sources in post-production and the sound is outstanding. Enjoy!

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.

Mark McGuire
2015-01-07
Baby’s All Right
Brooklyn, NY

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded by Rubes Harman
Produced by Eric PH

Multitrack Soundboard (engineered and recorded by Rubes Harman) > Rubes mix Wav files + Room mic wav files > Audacity 2.0.5 (mixdown, fades, amplify, downsample, dither, tracking, tagging) > FLAC (level 8)

Tracks [41:43]
01. Entity
02. Noctilucence
03. 2015 Jam

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Mark McGuire. Visit his Bandcamp page, like him on Facebook, and buy Noctilucence and Along the Way from Dead Oceans.

Rangda: January 9, 2015 Baby’s All Right – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

January 13, 2015
By

Rangda

Rangda is the dream team of psych, bringing together three titans, each with equally impressive credentials: Sir Richard Bishop, guitar (Sun City Girls, Brothers Unconnected); Ben Chasny, guitar (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire, 200 Years, New Bums); and Chris Corsano, drums (Flaherty-Corsano Duo, Flower-Corsano Duo, Thurston Moore, Sunburned Hand of the Man, and the list goes on indefinitely from there). Each is independently responsible for his own staggering discography and so their team-up conjures lofty expectations.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Rangda is more than the sum of its parts. Performing live, each member inhabits his own third of the stage, hardly looking up from his instrument; and yet there is a communion among them that is unseen, intangible—it’s spooky action at a distance. These live renditions are largely faithful to their studio counterparts, oscillating between wild frenzy and repetitive motifs drawn from eastern psych ragas. Bishop’s and Chasny’s guitars rage and duel, Corsano’s drums provide context and setting for that drama to unfold.

We caught up with Rangda playing an early Friday evening set at Baby’s All Right as part of a two-date jaunt to coincide with recording a new album. Here, they play songs from both proper Rangda albums, False Flag and Formerly Extinct, and add a longer song that’s either brand new or a modified take on “Gracilaria,” which appeared on a split 12″ with The Dead C. From False Flag, they do “Bull Lore” and the longform set-closer “Plain of Jars,” which builds to a noisy catharsis before resolving into a rhythmic, repetitive guitar jam. “Majnun” and “Night Porter,” both off Formerly Extinct, come off as riffs on some of Sun City Girls’ more accessible, song-oriented material.

We unfortunately weren’t able to get a feed from the room mics, but luckily the stereo house feed from Baby’s FOH Rubes is more than adequate. The sound is outstanding and allows you to hear each guitar in its own channel (that’s Chasny left, Bishop right), just as it sounded in the room. This one sounds great on headphones. Enjoy!

While there are no further Rangda dates scheduled for now, each have upcoming solo dates and/or releases. Chasny’s new record as Six Organs of Admittance, Hexadic, is out February 27 on Drag City and a tour in support of it is scheduled. Bishop’s new record, Tangier Sessions, is also due out February 27, and is also on Drag City. Corsano has a host of upcoming dates, with Ava Mendoza, Joe McPhee, and others.

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.

Rangda
2015-01-09
Baby’s All Right
Brooklyn, NY

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded by Rubes Harman
Produced by Eric PH

Multitrack Soundboard (engineered and recorded by Rubes Harman) > 2 x Mono WAV(48/24) > Audacity 2.0.5 (fades, EQ, balance, amplify, downsample, dither, tracking, tagging) > FLAC (level 8)

Tracks [50:04]
01. Plugged Nickel
02. The Vault
03. Bull Lore
04. [New Song]
05. Majnun
06. Night Porter
07. Plain of Jars

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Rangda. Buy False Flag and Formerly Extinct from Drag City.

Deer Tick (performing Devo’s “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!”): December 29, 2014 Brooklyn Bowl – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

January 12, 2015
By



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[photos by acidjack]

Deer Tick celebrated their tenth anniversary as a band this year. In that ten-year span, they’ve pursued a musical vision that’s almost proudly unpopular, serving up Replacements-inspired traditional rock n’ roll during a time when the sampler became king. Not quite retro enough to attract that crowd, nor cutting-edge enough to make the critics swoon, the middle ground they pursued turned out to be a hit with one group that did matter — fans. They showed up in droves, on freezing weekday nights during a busy part of the year, to watch the band play a series of anniversary shows at Brooklyn Bowl that promised a new cover album each night, and slews of special guests. The band’s prowess as a cover band has been well-known for a while, popularized by their Nirvana-covering in particular.

Kurt Cobain loved the New Wave greats Devo, so it felt fitting to join Deer Tick for their cover of the band’s landmark album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! on the Monday night before New Year’s Eve. Joined at times by opener The Districts and former guitarist Ian O’Neill, the appropriately dressed “Deervo” didn’t let us down, giving renditions that hewed closely to the originals while adding John McCauley’s signature vocal grit. After burning through that 38-minute record, the band took a quick breather until returning as themselves for a second set that also leaned heavily on covers, from NRBQ’s “I Got A Rocket In My Pocket” to the closing medley of Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freightliner Blues” and the unavoidable 80s classic “La Bamba”. McCauley’s wife Vanessa Carlton was in tow, joining the band on its own “In Our Time”. Deer Tick’s onstage antics may have mellowed some, probably for the better, but their music is still showing all the energy that drew those crowds in the first place. Here’s to another ten years.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed from the band’s engineer Justin Ripley, with a mild amount of audience microphones from my Schoeps supercardiods thrown in. The house mix was highly compressed, as evidence on the recording, but the sound is overall quite good. Enjoy!

This recording is now on the Live Music Archive.
Download the complete set: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the complete set: 

Deer Tick (performing as Deervo for Devo’s “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!”
2014-12-29
Brooklyn Bowl
Brooklyn, NY USA

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

Soundboard (engineer: Justin Ripley) + Schoeps MK41 (directly right of SBD, PAS)>KC5>CMC6>Sound Devices USBPre2 >> Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter, imaging)>Audacity 2.0.3 (fades, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
Set 1: performing as “Deervo” on Devo’s “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!”
Set Time [38:02]
01 Uncontrollable Urge
02 (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction [feat. The Districts]
03 Praying Hands
04 Space Junk
05 Mongoloid
06 Jocko Homo
07 Too Much Paranoias
08 Gut Feeling (Slap Your Mammy)
09 Come Back Jonee
10 Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin’)
11 Shrivel Up

Set 2 [Set Time 53:36]
12 Easy
13 Born At Zero
14 The Curtain
15 The Dream’s In the Ditch
16 I Got A Rocket In My Pocket [NRBQ]
17 Twenty Miles
18 Something to Brag About
19 [banter1]
20 She’s Not Spanish
21 In Our Time [w/ Vanessa Carlton]
22 [banter2]
23 Mr. Sticks
24 [banter3]
25 Ashamed
26 White Freightliner Blues [Townes Van Zandt]
27 La Bamba [Ritchie Valens]

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Deer Tick, visit their website, and buy their records in their online store.

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