[photo credit]

Its not a stretch to say that Oakley Hall are a different band live than on their albums. The acoustic becomes electric, the shuffle becomes a romp, the picking becomes searing guitar solos. There are few bands who can pull off such a switch, but at the Knitting Factory on Friday, it became obvious why this band has built such a solid live reputation after opening stints for Bright Eyes and Gillian Welch. Additionally, their latest release 2007’s I’ll Follow You appeared on quite a number of best-of-year lists, and further enhanced this band’s solid reputation.

We received advance permission to record this set from Oakley Hall, through their site and Jesse the bass player. We set up in the balcony, perhaps a bit further back than we would have liked. The recording is a bit boomy and lacks the clarity of our previous Knitting Factory recording from a similar location (Meat Puppets in August on nyctaper [here]), so we applied some minor EQ in post-production to accentuate the highs. Enjoy!

Oneida was also recorded and will be offered in the coming days.

Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].

Oakley Hall
2008-02-29
Knitting Factory
New York NY USA

Digital Master Audience Recording
Recorded from Front of Balcony Far Left

Neumann KM-150 (AK-50 Hypercardiods) > Monster Cable > Apogee Mini-Me > Digital Coaxial > M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 > 24bit 48 kHz wav > Soundforge (set fades, level adjustment, slight EQ, downsample) > CD Wave > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac

Thanks Oakley Hall (via Jesse) for permission to record!

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper
2008-03-02

Setlist:
[total time 54:00]
01 Eyes, Lock and Steel
02 Hiway
03 No Dreams
04 If You Can See Them, They Can See You
05 All the Way Down
06 Superpowers
07 Volume Rambler
08 Rue the Blues
09 If I Was in El Dorado
10 Confidence Man
11 Having Fun Again

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Oakley Hall, visit their webpage, and purchase I’ll Follow You directly from the Merge Records website.

Oakley Hall has another NYC show coming up soon. They are scheduled to perform on March 15, 2008 at Glasslands Gallery.

[photo credit]

In another fine example of when great things happen to good people, last month Black Mountain‘s new album In The Future debuted at #2 on the British album charts. When these folks are not performing crunchy hard neo-progressive rock, three members of the band work for a non-profit organization that assists the poor and homeless in their hometown of Vancouver. The album was released by the fine folks at Jagjaguwar, a label that has produced some outstanding releases in the last few years.

At Glasslands last Saturday, their set was primarily the new album, and displayed a simple reason for their popularity in the UK. The music is heavily influenced by classic Brit blues-rock and prog — as if the band listened to Meddle, Zep II, Benefit and Paranoid on heavy rotation, but yet retained their own personality. The set really hit its stride in the back to back new numbers “Wucan” and the epic “Tyrants”, after which guitarist Stephen McBean chided a 4-camera video crew for filming instead of dancing. One blog thought the film crew was nyctaper, but as our readers know we do not record video. Nevertheless, the packed and overheated crowd bobbed their heads through the rest of the set, and called the tired band back for a rousing “No Satisfaction” encore.

This recording is from the same rig at the Bon Iver set. We relied too heavily on the soundboard feed, but this was less of a problem for the Black Mountain recording, since the drums did not overpower the other instruments. Additionally, the extremely talented sound technician for Black Mountain, a terrifically nice guy named Remco, adjusted the drum levels about 10 minutes into this set and the result is much more balanced. Again, we should have mixed more audience microphone into the matrix, but are still quite pleased with the results. Enjoy!

This recording is now available for Download in FLAC and MP3 at Archive.org [HERE].

Black Mountain
2008-02-23
Glasslands Gallery
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard/Audience Matrix

Soundboard + Front of Board Neumann KM-150s > Edirol UA-5 (Oade Digimod) > digital coaxial > M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (set fades, level adjustments, downsample) > CD Wave 1.95 > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac

Recorded and Produced by
nyctaper
2008-02-29

Setlist:
[total time 1:15:00]
01 Night Walks
02 Stormy High
03 Voices
04 Queens Will Play
05 Wucan
06 Tyrants
07 Druganaut
08 Thirteen Walls
09 Evil Ways
10 No Hits
11 [encore break]
12 No Satisfaction

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Black Mountain, visit their webpage, and purchase In the Future directly from the Jagjaguwar label website.

[photo courtesy of Matt Bologna]

It has not been since our very first Bjorkestra experience at the late great Tonic club, that we’ve experienced this orchestra in a real jazz club. Monday night at Jazz Standard, Travis Sullivan and his superb band of musicians celebrated the release of their new CD Enjoy on Koch Records. We were invited to attend and record the late show. Bjorkestra delivered a stunning display of both orchestral interplay and individual improvisation within the structure of Travis’ unique arrangements of Bjork’s material.

Our close proximity to the stage gave us a special view of the interplay between the musicians and the pleasure that each player seemed to derive from the performance. Our recording reflects some of that joy, as the humor and banter is evident. Our belief in the strength of the performance we had just experienced was confirmed when Travis remarked to us after the show about the power of the set.

This is an outstanding clear recording, as our position gave us a direct line to the band. Much of the amplification of sound on the recording is directly from the instruments themselves. We mixed in a small amount of vocals from the soundboard feed to compensate for the volume of the instruments on stage. Minor quibbles exist for the clinking and clanking of food plates in this dinner club, and some balancing that was necessary in the first minute of the recording. Otherwise, its a tremendous listen. Enjoy, indeed!

There are three older Bjorkestra recordings archived on nyctaper (here) (here) and (here).

Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].

Travis Sullivan’s Bjorkestra
2008-02-25
Late Show
Jazz Standard
New York, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Audience/Soundboard Matrix

Soundboard + Upfront Neumann KM-150s > Edirol UA-5 (Oade Digimod) > digital coaxial > M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (set fades, downsample) > CD Wave 1.95 > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac

Many thanks to Travis for permission to record.

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper
2008-02-26

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:09:22]
01 Joga
02 Army of Me
03 Cocoon
04 Pluto
05 All is Full of Love
06 [band introductions/banter]
07 Human Behavior
08 Its Oh So Quiet

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Travis Sullivan’s Bjorkestra, visit their website, and purchase Enjoy directly from Bjorkestra or the Koch label.

For our California readers, Bjorkestra will be on tour in the following places next month:

Date City Venue
Wed 03/05/08 Santa Cruz, CA Moe’s Alley
Thu 03/06/08 San Francisco, CA Yerba Buena Center For The Arts
Fri 03/07/08 Sacramento, CA Harlow’s Night Club
Sun 03/09/08 Los Angeles, CA Safari Sam’s
Tue 03/11/08 Santa Barbara, CA Soho Restaurant & Music Club
Wed 03/12/08 San Diego, CA Anthology

[photo courtesy of Jason Bergman Photography]

There has been so much written about Justin Vernon’s outstanding Bon Iver project and the story behind For Emma, Forever Ago, that I have no intent to repeat. Last night, Justin provided a live glimpse into what makes these basic songs so compelling — his ability to capture the simple aspects of life with poignant humor and charm, and present it within a basic band structure.

This week, Emma was released on the Jagjaguwar label, and one would expect the beginning of the blogger backlash. This might be the fate of an artist whose hype exceeds the talent, but Bon Iver heartily deserves the last six months of praise. If a live performance is the ultimate expression of a musician’s artistic value, then Glasslands was the proof positive that Justin is the real deal. He handled the huge crowd, some technical problems, and the weight of expectations with grace and fortitude.

At nyctaper, we consider ourselves quite fortunate to see live performances of such quality. We are doubled blessed when the artist and the management afford us authorization and guest list access. Bon Iver gave us all three, and we offer much thanks for this courtesy, and as well we thank the staff of Glasslands.

We placed our microphones in the same location as our last Glasslands recordings (Avey Tare/Deakin/Kria [here] and Rings [here]), and in order to avoid the persistent crowd chatter and bar noise, we brought along hyper uni-directional microphones. We were also given access to the main mix of the soundboard to capture a “matrix” recording. Unfortunately, we didn’t trust our room equipment enough, and relied a bit too heavily on the board mix. As a result, the mix is not properly balanced, and there is quite a bit more kick-drum in the mix particularly during louder moments. We do believe this is still an excellent recording, but offer it to our readers with the knowledge that should have done better. Enjoy!

Black Mountain was also recorded and will be offered in the coming days.

Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].

Bon Iver
2008-02-23
Glasslands Gallery
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard/Audience Matrix

Soundboard + Front of Board Neumann KM-150s > Edirol UA-5 (Oade Digimod) > digital coaxial > M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (set fades, downsample) > CD Wave 1.95 > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac

Recorded and Produced by
nyctaper
2008-02-24

Setlist:
[total time 37:33]
01 [introduction]
02 Flume
03 Lump Sum
04 [banter]
05 The Wolves (Act I and II)
06 Blindsided
07 For Emma

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Bon Iver, visit his myspace page, and purchase Emma directly from the label.