Earth: September 24, 2014 St Vitus – FLAC/MP3/Streaming Audio and Video

September 28, 2014
By


earth-9553
[photos courtesy of MaryAnne Ventrice]

According to frontman Dylan Carlson, Primitive and Deadly, the latest album from Seattle veterans Earth, is their best-selling album yet. That’s a big statement for a band that made its name in the 1990s, picking up some possibly-unwanted attention from Carlson’s connection to that other Seattle musician, Kurt Cobain. Or maybe the popularity comes from a hankering for music that is real, that is sweeping without being ostentatious, whose darkness matches the times in which it is made. Or maybe it’s just that good of an album — decide for yourself.

We last caught the band at ATP in 2011, with cellist Lori Goldston sitting in and a full theater to showcase their sound. St Vitus, Greenpoint’s already-legendary nexus for music of the heaviest kind, made for a different but maybe better fit, with the crowd packed in and the deep grooves shaking the walls. The band kicked off with Primitive tracks as expected, with Carlson rather politely introducing the name of most of the songs. This seventy-five minute set contained less than ten songs, in keeping with the band’s predilection toward drawn-out, slow dirge compositions that take their time unfolding. The band ended with a segue from new to old, with “Torn By the Fox of the Crescent Moon” from the new record segueing into their first-ever track, “Ourobouros Is Broken”. Earth continued their New York stand on the following night, and our only regret was not being able to join.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V microphones and a soundboard feed. We are very pleased to also include a full video of the set, featuring my recording as audio, from our friends at unARTigNYC, who more than anyone have helped to document the proceedings going on up in Greenpoint. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Direct download of full set: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the full set:

Video of the full set courtesy of unARTigNYC:

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.

Earth
2014-09-24
St Vitus
Brooklyn, NY USA

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

Schoeps MK4V (LOC, at SBD, PAS)>KC5>CMC6>Sound Devices USBPre2 + Soundboard>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, adjust levels, compression, fades)>Izotope Ozone 5 (harmonic exciter)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 1:15:55]
01 Badger’s Bane
02 Even Hell Has Its Heroes
03 [banter1]
04 Old Black
05 There Is A Serpent Coming
06 [banter2]
07 The Bees Made Honey In the Lion’s Skull
08 [banter3]
09 Torn By the Fox of the Crescent Moon>
10 Ourobouros Is Broken

Band
Dylan Carlson
Adrienne Davies
Don McGreevy

If you enjoyed this recording, please support Earth, visit their website, and buy Primitive and Deadly there.

earth-9562

Tony Conrad: September 5, 2014 Hopscotch Music Festival, Vintage 21, Raleigh, NC – Streaming Full Set

September 28, 2014
By


IMG_7692
[photo by acidjack]

The appearance of Tony Conrad at this year’s Hopscotch Music Festival was one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that makes a festival unique. Conrad is a living legend in a number of out fields, having made his name as a filmmaker, artist, musician, composer, teacher and writer. As a member of the pre-Velvet Underground band Theatre of Eternal Music, Conrad was one of the earliest progenitors of improvisational noise and drone music, making him an influence on a huge number of acts who had the benefit of newer technologies than the gadgets that Conrad built from scratch.

At the Vintage 21 stage at Hopscotch, Conrad began seated with a cardboard box in front of him, onto which he drew a rough circle that he cut out with an Xacto knife. A violin bow, when inserted through that space, created a drone effect that became the centerpiece of Conrad’s first composition. Offering this as a live recording doesn’t really do it justice; to watch Conrad create his art was as much an experiential pleasure as an aural one, if not more so. Conrad then moved to a violin, face painted black, with extra strings hanging off of it, and in drawing the bow across it, created new cascades of noise.

While improviser-in-residence was normally the influenced rather than influencer among the many acts he joined over the weekend, that was not the case when Moore and Conrad got together. The two created a dynamic noise piece that set yet another bar for the weekend. Conrad, almost giddy at his reception by the crowd, seemed almost as pleased to introduce Moore as Moore was to join the master. This was an experience that wouldn’t be repeated, in the weekend, or possibly ever.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed and Schoeps MK41 microphones. The sound quality is excellent. At the artist’s request, this set is streaming only. Enjoy!

Stream the full set:

Tony Conrad
2014-09-05
Hopscotch Music Festival
Vintage 21
Raleigh, NC USA

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

Soundboard + Schoeps MK41 (at SBD, DINa)>KCY>Z-PFA>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, levels, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects, imaging)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, balance, fades, dither and downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Improvisation 1
02 [banter]
03 Improvisation 2 [w/ Thurston Moore]

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Tony Conrad, learn more about him on Wikipedia, and buy his music on Discogs and iTunes.

The Sharp Things: September 11, 2014 Mercury Lounge – Flac/MP3/Streaming

September 27, 2014
By

9245_TheSharpThings_by_shootMEpeter
[photos by shootMEpeter]

Of all of the thousands reviews I’ve written for NYCTaper, the words needed to describe this performance by The Sharp Things at Mercury Lounge is certainly the most difficult. But these are just words. What the band did on this night was exponentially more difficult than anything I could imagine a musician would have to endure. On the morning of the performance Steve Gonzalez, the longtime and original Sharp Things drummer and multi-decade friend of the band’s protagonist Perry Serpa, passed away at the age of 49. I asked Perry to talk about the night:

He, Steve Gonzalez, was our drummer but also my best friend of almost 40 years, so he was very much a part of our family. We had found out about his passing during our soundcheck for this show and while I was ready to just walk away from it, my band, our bandmates, our family and friends insisted that we play, and so we did. And it was the best thing because the evening ended up being a wonderful, communal celebration of his life in a place that he loved playing.

The band is gearing up for the release of the third album in the four-album “Dogs Of Bushwick” series. Adventurer’s Inn will be released on Dive Records in November. This special Mercury set featured a mix of older numbers and included a few of the newer songs we’ll expect to hear on the new album soon.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps cardioids set up at the soundboard booth and mixed with an excellent feed provided by house FOH David. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!

Stream “Daphne’s Coming Over”:

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.

Sharp Things
2014-09-11
Mercury Lounge
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer: Dave Lefcourt] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, EQ, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 46:50]
01 [intro for Steve]
02 There Will Be Violins
03 An Ocean Part Deux
04 Dogs Of Bushwick
05 Love Me Indigo
06 Silver Anniversary
07 Storm King
08 [banter – weird beard]
09 Lament-A Million Things
10 Union Chapel
11 Daphne’s Coming Over
12 [outro]

If you download this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT The Sharp Things, visit their website, and purchase their official releases from the band’s online Shop [HERE].

Enemy Waves: September 5, 2014 Vintage 21, Hopscotch Music Festival, Raleigh, NC (FLAC/MP3/Streaming)

September 25, 2014
By

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The hymnal joke you hear at the beginning of this recording relates to this show’s location, in a once-decommissioned church known as the Long View Center, recently recommissioned by one of those “hipster churches” that, well, I’ll just leave it to this article to debate. What needs to be known about this show is that Enemy Waves is brand-new, though its veteran members aren’t, and they make some seriously angular, jazz-inflected, improvisational music. Perhaps that’s one reason Hopscotch Music Festival improviser Thurston Moore chose to draw some much-deserved extra attention to this new group with an appearance on their final number, which felt like one of Moore’s strongest collaborative appearances of the entire festival. It may also have had to do with the deep and weirdly varied resumes of the four members, which includes everything from drummer Jason Aylward’s time in full-on 80s metal outfit Valient Thorr to guitarist Paul Siler’s ownership of the King’s rock club and work with Birds of Avalon, to saxophonist Dave Mueller’s work as Heads on Sticks and multi-instrumentalist Crowmeat Bob’s improvisational playing with Tatsuya Nakatani, Eugene Chadbourne, and others. Bob also played some bass clarinet for the North Carolina-sited HBO TV series Eastbound and Down. 

The band members gelled quickly for a set that was well-attended despite relative remoteness from some of the festival’s other offerings. Hopscotch does a great job of pairing like-minded artists, and the combination of Enemy Waves with Durham, NC guitarist Matt Northrup, ambient act Helm and the vintage noise artist Tony Conrad (who also played with Moore; that recording awaiting approval) gave fans of mind-bending, you-have-to-see-it-live style music a palette that couldn’t be denied. The Waves gave us four tunes total, each of extended length, with my highlights being the sax-focused “Stronach’s Allely / Bleechie” and “Radiant III”, the latter of which closed the show with Moore on guitar. While there isn’t much to hear from Enemy Waves other than the two-song single on their bandcamp page, our hope is that this diverse group of musicians gives us more to enjoy in the future.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK41 microphones and a soundboard feed. While the design of the church building gives the music a bit of a boomy quality that is hard to avoid, I think it is a very enjoyable listen.

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.

Enemy Waves
2014-09-05
Hopscotch Music Festival
Vintage 21
Raleigh, NC USA

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

Schoeps MK41 (at SBD, DINa)>KCY>Z-PFA + Soundboard>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, levels, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects, imaging)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, balance, fades, dither and downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [intro]
02 Bone Marrow Transplant
03 [tuning]
04 Warriors Tabooed
05 Stronach’s Alley / Bleechie
06 [tuning2]
07 Radiant III*

* with Thurston Moore

If you enjoyed this recording, please support Enemy Waves by visiting their bandcamp page.

The Growlers: September 18, 2014 Bowery Ballroom – Flac/MP3/Streaming

September 25, 2014
By

16_The-Growlers_Bowery-Ballroom
[photo by Daniel Topete – full set at We All Want Someone To Shout For]

This week the Growlers released their fifth studio album Chinese Fountain to universally positive reviews. The album represents the continued maturity of this Southern California “beach goth” outfit. While the earlier records went for a kind of lo-fi scuzz-rock production, the new album is a stylistic shift to a more refined sound. The result is that the songs benefit. The Growlers have ultimately always been about the songs — three minute nuggets of melody, surf guitar and clever lyrics — and Chinese Fountain is perhaps their strongest set of songs. The tour in support of the album reached Bowery Ballroom last week and what a show it was. Nevermind that the show was opened by a ten-minute set of tongue-in-cheek karaoke by drag queen “Tina”, or that that mid-set there was an authentic Chinese dragon parade, or that it seemed that the entire band, crew and front rows of the crowd stage-dived for over two hours straight, this show was a monster. The band’s set lasted over two hours and consisted of virtually the entire new album and twenty-nine songs in total, and while the craziness went on all around them the music virtually never stopped. This is a show not be missed, and for those out West the tour continues through October before moving the Europe for November.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps mounted in our traditional Bowery balcony spot and mixed with an as-always outstanding board feed from FOH Kenny. The sound quality is quite excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Chinese Fountain”:

Download The Complete Show [MP3] or [MP3] / [FLAC] / [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.

Growlers
2014-09-18
Bowery Ballroom
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer: Kenny] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, EQ, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:56:00]
01 Gay Thoughts
02 Big Toe
03 Naked Kids
04 In Between
05 Acid Rain
06 Love Test
07 Black Memories
08 Hiding Under Covers
09 Row
10 Beach Rats
11 Wet Dreams
12 Dull Boy
13 Graveyard’s Full
14 Nosebleed Sun
15 What It Is
16 [Chinese Dragon Parade]
17 Chinese Fountain
18 Humdrum Blues
19 Tell It How It Is
20 Monotonía
21 Ol Rat Face
22 Good Advice
23 Wandering Eyes
24 Kick the Habit of Dredd
25 Sea Lion Goth Blues
26 Empty Bones
27 [encore break]
28 Drinkin’ The Juice Blues
29 Going Gets Tough
30 One Million Lovers
31 Someday

If you download this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT The Growlers, visit their website, and purchase Chinese Fountain from the Everloving Records website [HERE] or from the band’s online Store [HERE].

Phil Cook and Caitlin Rose: September 6, 2014 Trekky Records / Hometapes Day Show, Hopscotch Music Festival, Raleigh, NC (FLAC/MP3/Streaming)

September 24, 2014
By


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[photo by Dan Schram]

Continuing with our theme of one-off collaborations from the Hopscotch Music Festival, our final day show of the festival went down at Raleigh’s Pour House, where local Trekky Records teamed up with Hometapes (a recent transplant to Durham, NC) and one of the more unique performances came from a local-plus-out-of-town duo. Phil Cook and brother Brad, of Megafaun, have become mainstays of the scene around town, with their hands in all kinds of different aspects of the Triangle music world (including Phil’s current tour with Hiss Golden Messenger).  Caitlin Rose, of Nashville, is one of those nominally country singers whose work crosses over to the rock world. Fitting, then, that the two teamed up for a combination of Rose originals, old-time classics, and covers, along with some off-the-cuff and often-hilarious banter. The show gave off the feeling of a rowdy show in somebody’s dark living room on a sunny day, as the mingling crowd of people who seemed to all know each other socialized as the artists did their thing. The musicians’ vibe matched their crowd, with Caitlin and Phil keeping things loose and chatting with us as neighbors. If at times the clinking of glasses and the conversation got a little louder than it should, it didn’t rattle the musicians much, who rewarded us with a fun song selection as well as some impromptu contests and trivia. When Cook played Dylan’s “Only A Hobo”, it was hard not to imagine the song being played to the man’s original crowds, in Greenwich Village clubs as much a part of local social life as revered for the music going down. In its offhandedness, its at-times raggedness, its collaboration among old friends, this felt like the right kind of Saturday set.

As you may have guessed, the crowd was a little noisy during this one. I compensated for that by focusing heavily on a soundboard feed and mixing in just a little of my Schoeps MK41 microphones. So, despite the crowd, the recording is excellent, if you don’t mind hearing some bursts of chatter here and there. Enjoy!

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

Stream “Answer In One of These Bottles” [Caitlin Rose]

Stream “Only A Hobo” [Bob Dylan, as sung by Phil Cook]

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.

Phil Cook and Caitlin Rose
2014-09-06
Hometapes / Trekky Day Show
Hopscotch Music Festival
Raleigh, NC USA

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

Soundboard + Schoeps MK41 (at SBD, DINa)>KCY>Z-PFA>Roland R-26>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, compression, adjust levels)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, fade, amplify, balance)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [intro]
02 1922 Blues [Charlie Parr; sung by Phil Cook]
03 [banter1]
04 Sinful Wishing Well [Caitlin Rose]
05 [banter2]
06 I’m Sitting on a Fence Too Long [Phil Cook]
07 [banter3]
08 Answer In One of These Bottles [Caitlin Rose]
09 [banter4]
10 Only a Hobo [Bob Dylan, as sung by Phil Cook]
11 [banter5]
12 Learning to Ride [Caitlin Rose]

If you enjoyed this recording, please support these artists. Check out Phil Cook’s work at his website, and Caitlin Rose’s at her website.

SUPPORT NYCTaper




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