Posts Tagged ‘ core sound binaurals ’

Heroes of Toolik: January 30, 2016 Union Hall

March 30, 2016
By

Heroes of Toolik
[photo by John Baumgartner]

Neil D. reports:

Placing Heroes of Toolik in the music pantheon is such a difficult task that it might be best just to list their collective past affiliations, as provided by the band’s website:

(Glenn Branca/Rhys Chatham’s Merry Band/Ben Neill’s Mainspring/John Myers’ Blastula/SEM Ensemble/New Music Consort/Virgil Moorefield Ensemble/Lounge Lizards/Arthur Russell/Television/Nona Hendryx/Gary Lucas/Washington Squares/New York Blues Project/The Waitresses/The Neon Boys/Uncle Bob NYC/ The Modern Lovers/David Johansen/Elliott Murphy/Arthur Russell (again)/Gary Lucas/Rhys Chatham (again)/Jenny Get Around/The Hillfillies)

If this brings to mind an unclassifiable collision of several flavors of avant-indie weirdness, that’s not a bad start. You can clearly hear a fair bit of Television influence — Billy Ficca’s distinctive drumming will have that effect on any band, though Arad Evans’ and Robert Poss’s guitar playing is in places sufficiently Verlaine/Lloydesque as well — but then there’s also Jennifer Coates’ only slightly country-inflected fiddle and vocals, and longtime Modern Lovers bassist Ernie Brooks, and trombone of all horns, here courtesy of John Speck. It’s actually kind of remarkable how straightforwardly tuneful it all sounds, at least compared to a baseline of, say, The Scene Is Now. Writing up their previous appearance on NYCtaper, Acidjack described the result as “a brand of well-informed rock n’ roll that draws on these influences without over-complicating itself,” and I have nothing to argue with there. (Except possibly the lack of a preceding apostrophe on “n’,” about which AJ and I are going to have to have a talk.)

This was the headlining set at Union Hall from the show where I also recorded Antietam, and was captured with the same recording setup. Big thanks to Evans for permission to record, and for his patience (and yours) for the delay in getting this posted. You can buy Heroes of Toolik’s recordings here, and also find out about upcoming gigs — none listed at the moment, but they have a new CD in the works, so stay tuned.

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Stream the complete show:

 

Video:

 

Heroes of Toolik
2016-01-30
Union Hall
Brooklyn, NY

Soundboard > Sony PCM-M10 > WAV (24/48) + Core Sound Low-Cost Binaural mics > Church Audio ugly battery box > Sony PCM-M10 > WAV (24/48) > Sound Studio (light EQ and mixing) > FLAC (16/44.1) > Tag > FLAC

Recorded and mastered by neil d

01 Bede
02 Something Like Night
03 Young Venus
04 Again
05 8 Mile
06 Aquarium School
07 Crazy Doll
08 Perfect

Support Heroes of Toolik by buying music from their website.

Mission of Burma: February 7, 2014 Bell House – Flac/MP3/Streaming

February 20, 2014
By

mission-of-burma-29
[photos by PSquared Photography]

Since we covered three shows on this particular night, it fell to neild to record this show. He reports:
The longer Mission of Burma’s career goes on, the stranger it gets. It’s not just that they disbanded at the peak of their popularity and reformed years later — there are plenty of other bands that have done the same, though only MoB can lay claim to having broken up thanks to their guitarist’s self-induced ringing in his ears. (As Roger Miller memorably described it in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, “In September a middle E appeared in my left ear. And in December a C-sharp below E formed. … They’re forming fairly interesting chords that never leave.”) The greater oddity is that the “reunion” now feels more like a seamless continuation after the band’s two-decade break: Before their hiatus in 1982, MoB issued one full-length CD, one EP, and a handful of singles; since then, they’ve released four new albums that easily compare with, if not surpass, their early material. And their live shows likewise haven’t missed a beat, with the only concessions to Miller’s once-career-ending tinnitus remaining a plexiglass screen in front of half of Peter Prescott’s drum kit and Miller’s guitar amp being pushed to the front of the stage to create something of a sonic bubble amid the earsplitting volume.

For this show at Brooklyn’s Bell House during a quick three-city trip down the East Coast, the band opened with a trio of songs from 2012’s inventive Unsound, then veered into some vintage material from Forget, a new compilation CD of early rarities. The remainder of the set was a nice mix of more recent material with some older anthems (“That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate,” “This Is Not A Photograph,” “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver”), plus one surprise during the first of two encores: a cover of the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” that segued seamlessly into the B-side “Rain.” It was unexpected in precisely the way that has come to be expected at Mission of Burma shows.

Stream the Complete show from Archive.org:

Download the Complete Show in Flac or MP3 at Archive.org [HERE]

mission-of-burma-23

Mission of Burma
2014-02-07
Bell House
Brooklyn NY

Source: AUD > CA-14 cardioids > Church Audio battery box > Line In > iRiver H320 (Rockboxed) > AIFF > Sound Studio > FLAC

Roger Miller: guitars, vocals
Clint Conley: bass, vocals
Peter Prescott: drums, vocals
Bob Weston: tape loops

Recorded by neild

Setlist:
01 Fell Into The Water
02 Sevens
03 Sectionals In Mourning
04 He Is She Is
05 Eyes of Men
06 Thirteen
07 Man In Decline
08 Period
09 Secrets
10 That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate
11 Feed
12 Forget
13 Mica
14 This Is Not A Photograph
15 Red
16 [encore break/loops]
17 Dirt
18 Spider’s Web
19 Paperback Writer [Beatles]
20 Rain [The Beatles]
21 [second encore break]
22 1001 Pleasant Dreams
23 That’s When I Reach For My Revolver

mission-of-burma-40

All of Mission of Burma’s recordings are worth buying (you can get some via their website store), and, needless to say, go see them live whenever you can. Prescott warned in 2008 that he didn’t think the band could physically handle playing more than “a couple more years”; while they’ve already handily outlived that prediction, as we learned back in 1982, you never want to take anything for granted.

Superchunk: September 27, 2013 Bowery Ballroom – Flac/MP3/Streaming

October 2, 2013
By

superchunk-71
[photos by PSquared Photography]

I couldn’t make the Friday night Superchunk show, as I was attending The Suburbs at Mercury (recording very soon). But fortunately, intrepid correspondent neild was there for the capture. Neil reports:

“First things first: Not to contradict our fearless leader, but Superchunk didn’t technically go on hiatus after 2001’s Here’s to Shutting Up. There were occasional shows and EPs here and there, whenever Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance could take time away from their main gig running Merge Records. But the band’s masterful 2010 CD Majesty Shredding still deserves to be ranked with the most impressive comeback albums of all time, featuring instant classics like “Digging For Something” and “Learned to Surf” that melded the band’s guitar crunch with McCaughan’s pop hookery more deftly than ever before. And this year’s I Hate Music (spoiler alert: they don’t actually) is more of the same – or rather, another step forward in the same direction, stretching the band’s boundaries while still staying true to its strengths in rocking out.

This show was the first of two nights at the Bowery Ballroom (the second is available here), and the sold-out crowd was not disappointed: From the opening clap-along bars of “This Summer” (a throwaway single release from last year that might just be their catchiest tune ever), the band was in fine form, with McCaughan bouncing around the stage for almost the entire hour and a half of music. (As my spouse, a Superchunk first-timer, remarked with understatement, “Mac sure has a lot of energy.”) With Ballance sidelined by ear problems, drummer Jon Wurster’s Bob Mould band mate Jason Narducy subbed in as a replacement, and was an excellent fit both on bass and on backing vocals. The setlist featured a spate of songs from I Hate Music, plus a selection from the band’s catalog that managed to be almost entirely different from the next night’s set; “Skip Steps 1 and 3,” “Hyper Enough,” “Rope Light,” and “Driveway to Driveway” (streaming below) were among the highlights here that didn’t reappear on Saturday.

I recorded this from the Bowery’s left balcony, which made for reduced crowd noise and a nice direct sound from the left speaker stack. It was recorded with two sets of mics, Core Sound Binaurals and Church Audio CA-14 cardioids, which were later mixed to provide optimum depth and presence.

Do not sell this under any circumstances, buy all of Superchunk’s records if you don’t have them already (did you get their 2008 EP Leaves In The Gutter? you probably believed that “hiatus” thing and missed it, didn’t you?), and by all means, do yourself a favor and go see them live when they come to your town.

(Special thanks to nitcomb for the setlist.)

Stream “Driveway to Driveway”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] or [MP3] (off site) / [FLAC] or [FLAC] (off site)

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.

Superchunk
Bowery Ballroom, NYC
September 27, 2013

Source 1: AUD > CoreSound Binaurals > MM-EBM-1 battery box (with bass roll-off) > Line In > iRiver H320 (Rockboxed) > AIFF
Source 2: AUD > Church Audio CA-14 Cardioids > Line In > iRiver H320 (Rockboxed) > AIFF
Mixing: AIFF > Sound Studio > FLAC > XAct (for SBE and tags) > FLAC
Recorded and mastered by neil d
Extremely light dynamic compression in Sound Studio

01 intro
02 This Summer
03 FOH
04 Me and You and Jackie Mittoo
05 Learned to Surf
06 Skip Steps 1 and 3
07 Staying Home
08 Void
09 Out Of The Sun
10 Kicked In
11 Nu Bruises
12 Low F
13 Animated Airplanes Over Germany
14 Rope Light
15 Digging For Something
16 Slack Motherfucker
17 encore break
18 Tiny Bombs
19 What Do I
20 Brand New Love (Sebadoh)
21 Hyper Enough
22 encore break 2
23 Driveway To Driveway
24 The First Part

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Superchunk, visit their website, and purchase I Hate Music directly from Merge Records [HERE].

Jon Langford: July 9, 2013 Maxwell’s – Flac/MP3/Streaming

July 23, 2013
By

langford
[iphone photo by neild]

Longtime NYCTaper correspondent neild made his last trip to Maxwells:
“The very first time I went to a show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken was to see the Mekons, for a show in July 1991 when the Leeds-bred country-art-punk combo was touring in support of Curse of the Mekons, the album that got them kicked off A&M for being “commercially unsatisfactory.” This was at a time when the Mekons played in the New York area every few months (usually at Tramps or the Marquee), and I don’t remember much in particular about the show, except that Jon Langford and Sally Timms, then recently split as a couple, bickered both terribly and hilariously, and that the show ended with Jon and several other Mekons thrashing atop each other, and their guitars, on the floor. And that the whole thing was wonderful and anarchic and both so rock and roll and so anti-rock and roll in a way that only the Mekons have quite ever been able to pull off.

Almost 22 years later to the day, I made what will be my final visit to Maxwell’s to see Langford and his usual New York cohort (bassist Tony Maimone and drummer Steve Goulding, with only longtime violinist Jean Cook absent) play their farewell gig at the club, which as everyone reading this no doubt knows by now will close forever at the end of July. I was on vacation on the West Coast when I got an email about the show, which was due to take place just one day after I was to arrive back east on a red eye; of course, I immediately ordered tickets, because one more chance to see Jonboy at the greatest rock club in the world was something I couldn’t pass up, jet lag or no.

It didn’t disappoint. After taking the stage solo to play “Luxury” from his recent album Old Devils while waiting for Maimone and Goulding to make their way through the Maxwell’s crowd to the stage, Langford launched into full-band renditions of several songs from his 1998 solo debut Skull Orchard, a still-unparalleled masterpiece focused on his hometown of Newport, Wales (“Tubby Brothers” is about a real-life undertaking firm of that name); the rest of the set highlighted both Waco Brothers classics like “Walking on Hell’s Roof” and other solo material, including his recent, haunting Bloodshot single “Drone Operator.” After a break for drinks, the band returned to do a string of Mekons songs, more Jon solo material, and a set of covers before closing things out with the ur-Mekons track “Where Were You?”

It all amounted to both a eulogy for and a celebration of Maxwell’s, which was only fitting for an artist who’s spent the last several years selling paintings based on faded publicity photos of dead country music stars. For a fuller review, including a nice sampling of the jokes that peppered the evening (only some of which were about Sally Timms farting), see Will You Miss Me’s report on the evening.

This recording was made from two sources: a pair of cap-mounted Core Sound Binaural mics about ten feet from the stage, plus a soundboard feed. (Huge thanks for Maxwell’s soundman Mitch for his both his help in this area and his terrific mix for the night – NYC-area clubs, this man is a free agent come August 1, so get your dialing fingers working!) Despite some minor mishaps with a balky cable and some errant breezes from the Maxwell’s a/c system – one of the few things that’s changed there in the last 22 years – I was able to finesse it all in mixing into a recording I think you’ll all be happy with. Especially if you’re a fan of fart jokes.”

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

Stream the Entire Show:

Jon Langford
2013-07-09
Maxwell’s
Hoboken, NJ

Recorded and mastered by neil d

CoreSound Binaurals + soundboard > MM-EBM-1 battery box (with bass roll-off) > Line In > iRiver H320 (Rockboxed) > AIFF > Sound Studio > FLAC > XAct (for SBE and tags) > FLAC

Tracks:
First set:
01 Luxury
02 [banter – Billy Bragg]
03 Tubby Brothers
04 Youghal
05 Butter Song
06 Trapdoor
07 Death of Country Music
08 [banter – did the Waco Brothers ever play here]
09 Walking on Hell’s Roof
10 Drone Operator
11 [banter – some of my friends’ fathers]
12 Pill Sailor
13 [banter – I went to the doctor]
14 X-Ray Style (Joe Strummer)
15 [banter – the Three Johns broke up in this room]
16 Death of the European
17 Deep Sea Diver

Second set:
18 Memphis, Egypt
19 Lonely and Wet
20 [banter – Rico’s accordion is dead]
21 Slightly South of the Border
22 Dickie, Chalkie and Nobby
23 [banter – smells and tastes]
24 Millionaire
25 [banter – ooh, doggie]
26 Are You an Entertainer
27 Good Year for the Roses (George Jones)
28 Before I Grow Too Old (Fats Domino)
29 Sentimental Marching Song
30 [banter – a funny joke in Chicago]
31 Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You (Dolly Parton)
32 It’s Not Enough
33 [banter – guitar solo]
34 Big River (Johnny Cash)
35 Nashville Radio
36 Big Spender (Shirley Bassey)
37 Wild and Blue (John Anderson)
38 Wreck on the Highway (Dorsey Dixon)
39 Where Were You

If you download this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Jon Langford, visit his website, and purchase his official releases from the Bloodshot Records Website [HERE].

Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby: December 1, 2012 Maxwell’s – Flac/MP3/Streaming

January 11, 2013
By

Amy Eric
[still from this video]

Intrepid reporter and frequent NYCTaper contributor neild was out in Hoboken in December (weren’t we all), and he was fortunate to capture the unique couple of Amy and Eric. He reports:

If you only know Wreckless Eric from his late ’70s Stiff Records hits (“Whole Wide World,” “Reconnez Cherie”) and Amy Rigby from her breakout ’90s singer-songwriter albums (“Diary of a Mod Housewife,” “Middlescence”), man, have you been missing out. The duo have been a couple on- and off-stage for close to eight years now — ever since a chance meeting at a Yo La Tengo Hanukkah show, hilariously related by Amy in her new song “Do You Remember That?” — and recently relocated from a small town in France to an equally small town in the Catskills. Fortunately for their U.S. fans, this has meant a lot more local performances, with a recent tour for their new CD “A Working Museum” culminating in this return to Maxwell’s, a perfect showcase for their country-folk-meets-psychedelic-punk duets and always-riotous stage banter.

A Working Museum is Eric and Amy’s third album together (plus one brilliant 7-inch, “Bobblehead Doll/Teflon Wok,” available from their website), and most of this set is drawn from it, along with a handful of songs from their previous albums plus a few solo favorites. This show also featured the surprise addition of special guest Chris Butler of the Waitresses, who added acoustic guitar and percussion on several songs, including an epic set-penultimate performance of “Whole Wide World.”

I recorded the audience portion from about ten feet back of stage center with Core Sound binaural mics; I’d planned to hook up a separate recorder to the soundboard, but when one of my cables turned out to be bad, heroic Maxwell’s soundguy Carson stepped in and burned a soundboard feed directly to CDR. (There were a couple of SBD dropouts, one at the start of the show and one in the middle of “Whole Wide World,” but these were mostly inaudibly patched with the plain AUD recording.) The result is an excellent matrix of possibly the best of several Eric and Amy shows I’ve had the pleasure of attending. Huge thanks to Carson for his help, and to Amy for signing off on posting this here.

Stream “Whole Wide World”

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.

Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby
2012-12-01
Maxwell’s
Hoboken, NJ

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and mastered by neil d

Source 1: AUD > CoreSound Binaurals > MM-EBM-1 battery box (with bass roll-off) > Line In > iRiver H320 (Rockboxed) > AIFF > Sound Studio
Source 2: Direct SBD feed > CDR > Toast > AIFF > Sound Studio
Mixed in Sound Studio > AIFF > XAct > FLAC

01 intro
02 Astrovan
03 When I Get Out of Breath
04 Ballad of Easy Rider
05 Another Drive-in Saturday
06 Please Be Nice to Her
07 Til The Wheels Fall Off
08 Duvet Fever
09 Rebel Girl, Rebel Girl
10 The Doubt
11 Days of Jack and Jill
12 Genovese Bag
13 Zero to Minus One
14 Teflon Wok
15 Bobblehead Doll
16 Do You Remember That
17 Whole Wide World
18 Dancing With Joey Ramone

If you enjoyed this recording, please support Eric and Amy by visiting their websites amyrigby.com and wrecklesseric.com, and purchase A Working Museum and their other recordings from their online store: http://www.amyrigby.com/amyshop.html.

Yo La Tengo: December 24, 2011 Maxwell’s – Flac and MP3 Downloads + Streaming Song

January 4, 2012
By


[photo courtesy of Eardrum NYC]

We are fortunate the longtime friend of the site and part-time contributor neild was able to capture the Yo La Tengo Hanukkah Night 5 / Christmas Eve show this year.

neild reports:
As soon as I spotted Tara Key limbering up her guitar on Saturday, I had a good feeling about Night 5 of this year’s Yo La Tengo Hanukkah run. Having seen Tara many times with her excellent band Antietam, as well as sitting in with YLT this spring at the Bell House, I couldn’t have been more thrilled to see her introduced as the night’s guest guitarist while Ira Kaplan makes his deliberate return from the disabled list. The band started slow, literally, with their quiet version of “Big Day Coming,” the beautiful “Crying of Lot G” (one of the best in YLT’s mini-genre of domestic-argument songs), and a weird, droney, slowed-down version of “Upside Down” from 1991’s May I Sing With Me. It was all lovely and enjoyable … and then the band kicked it into another gear, starting with the three-guitar version of “Double Dare” (James McNew switching from bass to acoustic guitar), which was only one of the best versions of that song I’ve yet heard live. Things only got better from there: Georgia was absolutely on fire behind the drums (when Hubley’s on fire, no one can touch her!), and Ira and Tara’s guitars intertwined magically on the rocked-out songs that followed, especially a brilliant “Decora” (cf. “Double Dare” re: “best versions ever”). The main set culminated in *another* version of “Big Day Coming,” followed by YLT’s cover of “Little Honda,” (streaming below) which devolved into a noise jam to end all noise jams that has my ears still ringing 24 hours later. Add in an encore that featured comedian Jon Glaser performing Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” as his character from “Delocated” – it turns out that this is a song that’s always cried out to be sung through a voice modulator – and it was an epic, epic night, even by Maxwell’s Hanukkah standards.

(For still more on the night’s festivities, check out the writeup by Tim Harris of Antietam on yolatengo.com)

The show was recorded with Core Sound binaural mics, mounted on a stand at the corner of the Maxwell’s sound booth, fed into a Microphone Madness battery box (with moderate bass rolloff) and then to an iRiver 320 running Rockbox. Big thanks to Carson for all his help, and both Carson and Mark for creating a great mix that brought out the nuances of the quiet material while keeping the high-decibel songs from being reduced to white noise. (“Little Honda” excepted, and that was intentional.) I’m going to stop gushing now, and go listen to this show again. You should do the same, if you know what’s good for you.

Stream “Little Honda”:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/Y6644YLT9879/14.%20Little%20Honda.mp3]

Direct download of complete show in MP3 files (HERE)

Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].

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.

Yo La Tengo
2011-12-24
Hanukkah Night 5
Maxwell’s
Hoboken, NJ USA

Digital Master Audience Recording

Core Sound Binaural Microphones > MM Battery Box > iRiver 320 (Rockbox) > 16bit 44.1kHz wav > Soundforge (level adjustments, set fades, downsample) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Recorded by neild
Produced by nyctaper
2012-01-03

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:33:08]
01 Big Day Coming (slow)
02 Stockholm Syndrome
03 The Crying of Lot G
04 Demons
05 Upside Down
06 Beanbag Chair
07 If It’s True
08 I’m On My Way
09 Double Dare
10 Five-Cornered Drone
11 Orange Song [Antietam]
12 Decora
13 Big Day Coming (fast)
14 Little Honda
15 [encore break]
16 Rock and Roll Santa [Jan Terri]
17 [banter – Jon intro]
18 Night Moves [Bob Seger]
19 Yellow Sarong [The Scene Is Now]

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Yo La Tengo, visit their website, and purchase their official releases from the store at their website [HERE].

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