Posts Tagged ‘ north carolina ’

Landlady: September 6, 2014 Hometapes / Trekky Records Day Show, Pour House, Hopscotch Music Festival, Raleigh, NC – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 6, 2014
By

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[photos by acidjack]

Brooklyn’s Landlady is a really good live band, and they’re good in a way that flatters their musical skill as well as drawing a crowd. Where most music has to make a choice between being interesting or mass-appealing, they seem able to do both, to hang in a narrow band that includes acts like Vampire Weekend, TV On the Radio, and The Dirty Projectors. That I pulled those references from the prior decade isn’t unintentional; Landlady feels like the pleasing synthesis of a few different strands of late-aughts rock, created and executed by Adam Schatz and his bandmates since 2010. Schatz has called Landlady’s songs his “big songs”, and the veteran brings a certain big-tent gusto to the songs that makes them distinct from other projects in which he has been involved, like Man Man or Father Figures. It’s as if Schatz — a multi-instrumentalist himself, including saxophone — distilled some of his other project’s textural complexity and general weirdness into something still-complex but more ready and willing to be liked.

That was all in evidence on the final day of the Hopscotch Music Festival, as Raleigh’s Pour House packed in for the Hometapes / Trekky Records day show. Landlady were representing the former, an outfit recently moved to Durham, North Carolina, and made their label proud. It’d be easy not to care about a day show crowd on a festival’s last day, just near the end of a month-long tour. The band had played Hopscotch Thursday, traveled to Richmond, VA on Friday, then back to Raleigh on Saturday because, as Schatz put it, “we like you”. The band treated us like a special crowd, too, giving us a brisk but powerful set that awakened even the most jaded and hungover festivalgoers. Landlady’s music has an at-times tribal quality to it, abetted in part by the use of two drummers, and that gives the music a festive air. Songs rarely stand still, shifting textures and ideas more often in the space of a single number than many bands achieve in entire albums. True to Schatz’s reputation as a showman, the band saved probably the two biggest standout tracks — “Maria” and “Above My Ground” for the end, though “The Globe” would come in a close third. That final number “Above My Ground” gave Schatz a chance to give a mini-speech mid-song in which he ruminated on the impermanence of things before exhorting the audience to sing the song’s one-word refrain — “always”. As Schatz said, the song is about having lost something, and you got the sense that Landlady would genuinely miss us. They are, after all, a band that stands out the most when they have a packed crowd to watch.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK41 microphones and a soundboard feed from the Pour House engineer Jack. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

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

Stream the full set: 

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. Feel free to re-post the Soundcloud links.

Landlady
2014-9-06
Hometapes / Trekky Records Day Show
Hopscotch Music Festival
Pour House
Raleigh, NC USA

Hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK41>KCY>Z-PFA + Soundboard (engineer: Jack)>>Roland R-26>x24bit/48kHz WAV> Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

01 Under the Yard
02 Girl
03 Washington State is Important
04 [banter]
05 Dying Day
06 The Globe
07 [banter2]
08 Maria>
09 Above My Ground (extended version)

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Landlady, like them on Facebook, and buy Upright Behavior from Hometapes.

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

September 28, 2014
By


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[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.

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.

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.

Sunburned Hand of the Man: September 5, 2014 Three Lobed / WXDU Day Show, King’s, Raleigh, NC (FLAC/MP3/Streaming)

September 23, 2014
By


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[Photos by acidjack]

Review by David Schwentker.

If you’re not a denizen of noise/experimental circles you might not be aware of the legendary Sunburned Hand of the Man, the Massachusetts band who since 1994 have produced several fine albums and over 100 releases (mainly self-released CD-Rs and cassettes) in what it might be fair to call “random” fashion. The band has included any number of players over the years, but is anchored by John Moloney, who joined us at last year’s Three Lobed / WXDU Day Show during Hopscotch Music Festival for a collaboration with Thurston Moore (which is slated as an official release … keep your eyes peeled). This was the collective’s 20th anniversary as an entity, and it seemed like the right move for King’s, and a show sponsored by two organizations that respect experimental music, to be their showcase.

Eleven years after being featured on the cover of “The Wire” and touted as being leaders of the “New Weird America” genre, the band had been somewhat dormant in recent years, as releases slowed and band members focused on other projects.  In June, the band departed on their first U.S. tour in several years, a brief jaunt down the east coast as a 7  piece band, including newer, younger band members alongside seasoned vets.  On that trip, plans were solidified to take part in this years’ Three Lobed day show during Hopscotch.  Sunburned’s membership is always in flux; on tour, it has often been whoever was available to get in the van when the time came to hit the road.  For the brief September tour built around this Day Show performance, they were a tight, 5 piece unit and included Chad Cooper, who co-founded the band with John Moloney, but had not toured with the band in the United States since 1999.  Longtime guitarist, Paul Labrecque was along for the ride as well, giving us a look at a version of the band not seen in the U.S. in quite some time.  Talking to the band before their set, there was a palpable excitement from the players about the music they had been making each night of their tour, and what was to come during this afternoon set.

Like the band’s recorded work, this single piece, entitled “Blues For Richard”, was deeply outre, a melange of organic, found and electronic sounds that brooded and whistled. At its beginning, the piece felt unsettling, like a late-afternoon hike into an unfamiliar wood. Band members began the set on the floor, turning knobs that would anchor the piece’s future movements. What there were of lyrics came just over twelve minutes in, in the form of chants and spoken/read lyrics, supplied by Greta Svalberg.  As the guitars turned up and the drums kicked in, the atmospheric sounds turned to a slow burn, psychedelic groove, pushed and pulled by Moloney’s expressive drumming and Adam Langellotti’s elastic bass.  Labrecque’s guitar work becomes more and more frantic, while Cooper’s homemade electronics continue to ramp up the intensity.  The band threatens to collapse upon itself a couple of times, coming out on the other side heavier and insurgent each time, before finishing in a blazing, explosive three minute stomp that melted a few faces.  In short, this half hour set is an excellent summation of everything that makes this band great, unpredictable, and worthy of exploring their vast catalog of recorded music.

I recorded this set in the same manner as all of the recordings from this showcase, with Schoeps MK4V microphones onstage and a soundboard feed. The sound quality is phenomenal on this one, maybe the best of the entire day show (which is saying a lot). Enjoy!

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

Stream the full set: 

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. Feel free to re-post the Soundcloud links.

Sunburned Hand of the Man
2014-09-05
Three Lobed Recordings / WXDU Day Show
King’s
Raleigh, NC USA

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

Soundboard + Schoeps MK4V (on stage pair)>KC5>CMC6>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, fade, amplify, balance)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Track
01 Blues for Richard

Musicians
Chad Cooper – electronics / percussion
Paul Labrecque – guitar / electronics
Adam Langellotti – bass / electronics
John Moloney – drums
Greta Svalberg – vocals

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Sunburned Hand of the Man, visit their facebook page, and buy their records. A lengthy discography is here, and your best bet to buy all in one place is probably Discogs.

Hiss Golden Messenger: September 18, 2014 Rough Trade NYC (FLAC/MP3/Streaming)

September 19, 2014
By


IMG_7819
[photos by acidjack]

I have only seen Hiss Golden Messenger once before with a full band, a revelatory performance at the 2012 Hopscotch Music Festival. Since then, I have caught Mike Taylor several times in what one might call his de facto state, as the solo artist on his own, playing songs the way he did for his stripped-down, four-track album Bad Debt. In my time following Taylor’s work, I have come to see HGM as the embodiment of two different instincts — one, the band-leading artist drawing on his love of audience-pleasing, crowd-moving southern rock and gospel found in particular on Haw and Country Hai East Cotton; the other a man alone in a kitchen beside a sleeping baby, wrestling with his demons as the tape spools away like time. The challenge, and the reward, of Hiss Golden Messenger is the ability to reconcile those impulses.

This set at Rough Trade NYC, sponsored by Aquarium Drunkard, began with one of my all-time favorite HGM numbers, “Red Rose Nantahala” from Haw. As that song segued into the upbeat “Saturday’s Song” from Taylor’s Merge debut, Lateness of Dancers, it almost told the story of the latter-day band in two songs. The first finds Taylor pleading “Oh Lord, let me be happy” and “let me be the one I want”. The next, from an album that by all rights should take HGM to the “next level“, is a grown-up father’s song, about wanting to cut loose on the weekend, drink some whiskey, Sunday hangover be damned. The character in that song seems resolutely himself. Content at last, hangover be damned.

After that second song, Taylor slapped his guitar and noted that a Hiss Golden Messenger tour used to just be him and that single instrument (that’d be as recently as March, when he played a tour de force performance at Mercury Lounge). Today the band is a five-piece that features longtime collaborator Scott Hirsch on bass, Matt Douglas on saxophone, vocals and guitars, Megafaun‘s Phil Cook on keys, banjo and vocals, and Matt McCaughan (Rosebuds, Portastatic, Bon Iver) on drums. In some ways, the band reflects Mike’s changing circumstances, not only as a more known musician, but as an ever-more-firmly entrenched member of the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, North Carolina music scene whose players pop up as regularly on each other’s records as they do at one another’s shows. Lateness feels less like a purely Mike Taylor album and more like a Triangle music album circa 2014, at a time when the scene is flourishing in all sorts of ways, but also ever-more-mindful of its roots. It leans, then, more toward Mike’s country-rock and gospel impulses, and that’s a fine thing.

So when we heard the Poor Moon classics “Blue Country Mystic” and “Call Him Daylight” in this new configuration, they were part of the “dance portion” of the set, an entire concept new to HGM sets that I’ve seen. “Daylight”, in particular, became a twangier, country-funk number, and as Douglas’ sax breakdown hit, the most striking thing of all was that people actually did dance. I shook my head a tad at a reckoning with god inspiring that reaction in people, but when Taylor hit the song’s final, climactic verse, the chills were there. As far as southern rock-via-HGM goes, it’s hard to beat “Lucia” from Lateness, or the equally compelling “Raven (Snake Children” that followed. This was my first time hearing both of these songs live, and they seemed to benefit most from the band and this setup (which isn’t surprising, since these players recorded them). Similarly, the Lateness material I had heard live before — “Southern Grammar” and “Chapter & Verse” — sounded better-realized than ever.

In another sign that today’s HGM is a more collaborative effort these days, the show’s final song was played on the floor, unamplified, with Taylor and the band pressed in on all sides by fans, performing “Drum” as the crowd added its own percussion and sang along. “Take the good news / and carry it away”, the crowd sang, rendering Mike’s voice just one among many. Hiss Golden Messenger has grown from one man and one instrument to a true band, and the good news for us is, they’ve got many miles left to travel. “We’re going to play a lot of shows this year. I guess everybody up here needs to get ready for that,” Taylor told us earlier in the set. That goes for you fans out there, too — here are the current tour dates.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V microphones at the soundboard and a stereo feed from house engineer Cameron. The sound quality is outstanding, though of course note that “Drum” was sung on the floor unamplified, so it sounds like that. 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.

Hiss Golden Messenger
2014-09-18
Rough Trade NYC
Brooklyn, NY USA

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

Schoeps MK4V (inside SBD cage, PAS)>KC5>CMC6>Sound Devices USBPre2 + Soundboard (engineer: Cameron)>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, adjust levels, limiter)>Izotope Ozone 5 (light EQ, imaging, effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (fades, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks:
01 Red Rose Nantahala
02 Saturday’s Song
03 [banter]
04 Mahogany Dread
05 Day O Day (A Love So Free)
06 [banter2]
07 Busted Note
08 [banter3]
09 Blue Country Mystic
10 [banter4]
11 Call Him Daylight
12 [banter5]
13 I’ve Got A Name for the Newborn Child
14 [banter6]
15 Lucia
16 I’m A Raven (Snake Children)
17 [banter7]
18 Southern Grammar
19 [encore break]
20 Chapter & Verse (Ione’s Song)
21 [banter8]
22 Drum [played on the floor]

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Hiss Golden Messenger, visit his website, and buy Lateness of Dancers from Merge Records and his other records from his shop. And see the band on tour.

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Spacin’ & Purling Hiss: September 5, 2014 Hopscotch Music Festival, Tir na Nog, Raleigh, NC (FLAC/MP3/Streaming)

September 17, 2014
By


IMG_7703
[photos by acidjack]

Day two of the Hopscotch Music Festival was one filled with surprises. I started the day with the Three Lobed / WXDU Day Show and its many one-off collaborations, and ended with this last-minute collision between Philadelphia’s twin scuzz-rock juggernauts. Purling Hiss and Spacin‘ are the best kind of kindred spirits, both being offshoots of the band Birds of Maya. That, and each of them crank their amps to eleven and check any and all pretension at the door. The combined band played three of each others’ songs each, including Spacin’s classic cover of MC5’s “American Ruse”. The six songs stretched for a total of forty-five minutes, offering ample opportunities for guitar pyrotechnics from all. If minds hadn’t been blown enough already, the band was joined for the final number, Hiss’ “Almost Washed My Hair”, by Philadelphia harpist Mary Lattimore (fresh from her Three Lobed/WXDU collab with Thurston Moore) and Steve Gunn (similarly on deck after an epic performance with William Tyler and members of Yo La Tengo, which is posted here). If you doubt how a harpist can make her presence felt with four blaring guitars already on stage, well, you ought to get to know Lattimore, who added a layer of musical complexity to the roaring proceedings. If today was the day of collaborations, there couldn’t have been a better way to end it.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed from Tir Na Nog engineer Brandon plus Audio Technica 3031 microphones back by the board. Unfortunately, my request to place the mics onstage was denied, meaning they were fairly far back in an echo-y room. As our recordings go on this site, the quality is not the best, but the vibe comes through loud and clear. As the band’s own albums hew to a “lo-fi” aesthetic, perhaps in some ways the recording is true to that. With that caveat, enjoy this exceptional performance!

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.

Spacin’/Purling Hiss
2014-09-05
Hopscotch Music Festival
Tir na Nog
Raleigh, NC USA

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

Audio Technica 3031 (at SBD, ROC)+Soundboard (engineer: Brandon)>Roland R-26>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 [Total Time 45:49]
01 Sunshine No Shoes [Spacin’]
02 Titchy [Spacin’]>American Ruse [MC5]
03 Learning Slowly [Purling Hiss]
04 Run From the City [Purling Hiss]
05 [tuning]
06 Almost Washed My Hair [Purling Hiss]*

* with Mary Lattimore on harp and Steve Gunn on guitar

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT these musicians. You can pick up Spacin’s records at their bandcamp page, and Purling Hiss’s records at their bandcamp page and their latest Weirdon over at Drag City.

Daniel Bachman and Nathan Bowles: September 5, 2014 Three Lobed / WXDU Day Show, King’s, Raleigh, NC (FLAC/MP3/Streaming)

September 16, 2014
By

"photo by PJ Sykes"
[Photo by PJ Sykes]

As I said in our last post about the co-sponsored Three Lobed / WXDU Day Show during Hopscotch Music Festival, one of the things that made this best-curated-of-the-fest day so special were the number of one-off collaborations that went down. Nathan Bowles has been all around the scene for a while now, lending his banjo and other skills to such diverse acts as the drone wizards Pelt, the Appalachian-influenced Black Twig Pickers, Steve Gunn, plus his solo work. Daniel Bachman, who has been on the site twice, is as prolific as he is talented. His latest release, Orange Co. Serenade appeared on the tiny North Carolina imprint Bathetic Records around the same time that the Virginian chose to relocate to Durham, NC.

For this very special first-time collaboration, Bachman and Bowles (joined by local guitarist Zeke Graves) chose to pay tribute to classic southern sounds, first serving up an acoustic version of Jeffrey Cain’s “Moonshine Is the Sunshine” from his 1970 album For You, followed by the legendary North Carolina guitarist Link Wray’s “Waterboy”, which turned into a massive sixteen-minute guitar freakout with Graves and Bachman’s dueling electric guitars backed by Bowles doing a turn on percussion. From the day’s first act, we ended up hearing one of the highlights of the entire show.

I recorded this set, as with all of these sets, with Schoeps MK4V microphones on stage and a soundboard feed from the King’s staff. The sound quality, particularly on the Link Wray song, is outstanding. Enjoy!

Download the recording: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the full set:

Daniel Bachman and Nathaniel Bowles
2014-09-05
Three Lobed Recordings / WXDU Day Show
King’s
Raleigh, NC USA

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

Soundboard + Schoeps MK4V (on stage pair)>KC5>CMC6>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, fade, amplify, balance)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 32:10]
01 [intro]
02 Moonshine Is the Sunshine [Jeffrey Cain]
03 Waterboy [Link Wray]

Musicians (in alphabetical order)
Daniel Bachman – acoustic and electric guitars, vocals
Nathaniel Bowles – banjo, percussion, vocals
Zeke Graves – electric guitar, sruti box

If you enjoyed this recording, SUPPORT these musicians by visiting their sites and buying their stuff. You can find Nathan Bowles here and buy his stuff here; Daniel Bachman’s latest can be purchased from Bathetic Records here.

Spoon: September 5, 2014 Hopscotch Music Festival, Raleigh, NC – FLAC/MP3/Streaming Set

September 15, 2014
By


SpoonBoles
[Photo courtesy of Rodney Boles]

Even before they were popular and therefore backlash-ready, Spoon caught flack for not being “interesting” enough. Their music has a consistency to it that I find oddly divisive. Most bands would be lucky to have one sequence of tunes as good as their high watermark, Gimme Fiction, while Spoon has come close to that feat on almost every record. Maybe this year’s They Want My Soul will be applauded as the stylistic tweak that convinces the doubters, but who’s to say for sure. If you wanted experimental music, Hopscotch Music Festival offered lots of excellent examples. But if you’re an organizer trying to pack in your festival’s public stage on a Friday night, the right move is a band so dialed in at their craft that they’re a sure thing that’s nevertheless a thrill. Spoon aren’t a flashy band, or a gimmicky one. They’re in that rare category of music’s winners, whose success is hard-earned and whose work still deserves the love. If consistency is a sin, then let’s let more bands sin the way they do.

Spoon packed Raleigh, North Carolina’s City Plaza on the festival’s penultimate night more than any other band would or did. It’s safe to guess that most of this crowd had not heard the new material live, so they gave it to us right away with “Knock Knock Knock” and “Rent I Pay” before dishing up the last-decade classic “Don’t You Evah”. The band’s cadence never wavered, and the crowd showed as much love to each of the new songs as to Gimme Fiction mainstays like “The Beast and the Dragon Adored” and “I Turn My Camera On”. The former song gives the band a new North Carolina connection, as Hiss Golden Messenger recently covered the track, with Raleigh-area mainstay and touring member Matt Douglas on keys.

One had to grin at “Outlier”, from They Want My Soul, a key-driven song that’s the most stylistically au courant of the new material, and one that might be interpreted as a question mark to rock fans themselves. It also drops the album’s best line, which gives Spoon’s own view about bland “indie” tropes: “And I remember when you walked out of Garden State / ’cause you had taste, you had taste / you had no time to waste”. When they followed that with “The Underdog”, warning its subject that having no fear of the underdog is a mistake, you had to think this was the part of the set that frontman Britt Daniel had reserved to talk about his own band. The band’s brief encore consisted of with “Inside Out” from the new record, “The Way We Get By” and the closer, “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”, sending the festivalgoers into a night of music that was just getting started.

It’s worth noting that Spoon owe a good bit of their success to one of North Carolina’s finest institutions, the Durham, NC-based Merge Records, a little label whose cultural reach makes you sometimes forget how small and independent they really are. It was on Merge that Spoon hit their groove and found their broadest audience. Being here in Raleigh, on the fifth anniversary of a festival that serves as the entire state’s musical ambassador, felt necessary and right.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V cardiod microphones just in front of the board dead center. While you can hear some people chattering at points on headphones, the sound quality is overall excellent. Enjoy!

Download the set from the Live Music Archive: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the full show from the Live Music Archive:

crowdshot
[crowd shot by acidjack]

Spoon
2014-09-05
Hopscotch Music Festival
City Plaza
Raleigh, NC USA

Hosted at nyctaper.com
recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK4V (FOB/DFC)>KC5>CMC6>Roland R-26>24bit/48kHz WAV>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (fades, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 1:10:57]
01 [intro music]
02 Knock Knock Knock>
03 Rent I Pay
04 Don’t You Evah
05 Small Stakes
06 Who Makes Your Money
07 Don’t Make Me a Target
08 Do You
09 The Beast and Dragon, Adored
10 I Turn My Camera On
11 I Summon You
12 Outlier
13 The Underdog
14 Got Nuffin
15 Black Like Me
16 [encore break]
17 Inside Out
18 The Way We Get By
19 You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Spoon, visit their website, and buy their records in their store and at Merge Records.

 

 

White Lung: September 3, 2014 Glasslands and September 6, 2014 Hopscotch Music Festival – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

September 11, 2014
By

White Lung ChadKam
[photo courtesy of Chad Kamenshine – complete set at The Artistree]

The band White Lung has been floating around for a few years, garnering positive review more than well-deserved. Their third LP Deep Fantasy (Domino Records) manages to improve on 2012’s Sorry, a considerable feat considering how strong this act was the last time around. Frontwoman Mish Way usually wins plaudits as the band’s special sauce, taking some of the best things we all used to like about Courtney Love (strong voice, personality, pop sensibility, distinctive look) and putting them out there in a more-focused package. But one ought not to lose sight of Kenneth William, without whose guitar playing this excellent band couldn’t be quite where it is, which is clearly a peak. As more than the sum of some quality parts, White Lung straddles that line between accessible punk and non in the best of ways, and the feeling is even better felt live. You don’t have to be a fan of this music, even, to be impressed by the tenacity and poise with which they do it.

Both of the site’s editors caught the band in the same week — first nyctaper in New York at beloved Glasslands, then acidjack as his final performance of the Hopscotch Music Festival in North Carolina, where the band proved that they were a righteous choice for the traditionally-strong spot of final night headliner in one of the festival’s many venues.

The Glasslands set was recorded with our installed Naiant cardioid rig mixed with a superb soundboard feed provided by house FOH Josh. The Hopscotch set was recorded with Schoeps MK41 supercardiod microphones and a soundboard feed from the Hopscotch veteran engineer Wayne of Roanoke, VA, a man whose understanding of this high-ceilinged space deserves plaudits. Both sound excellent. Pick your poison, or do the right thing and download both. Enjoy!

Stream “Down it Goes” from Glasslands:

Stream “Face Down” from Hopscotch:

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

Download the complete Glasslands 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.

IMG_7772
[photo by acidjack]

White Lung
2014-09-03
Glasslands Gallery
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer Josh Thiel] + Naiant X-R Cardioid > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, set fades, downsample) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper

Setlist
[Total Time 38:49]
01 Drown With the Monster
02 Face Down
03 [banter – hi Amy]
04 Syncophant
05 Bad Way
06 Bag
07 Wrong Star
08 Thick Lip
09 Two of You
10 Blow It South
11 Snake Jaw
12 Just For You
13 I Believe You
14 Down It Goes
15 Take The Mirror
_________________________

White Lung
2014-09-06
Hopscotch Music Festival
Kennedy Theater
Raleigh, NC USA

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

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

Tracks [Total Time 34:35]
01 Drown With The Monster
02 Face Down
03 Syncophant
04 Bad Way
05 Bag
06 Wrong Star
07 [banter – bright]
08 Thick Lip >
09 Two Of You
10 Blow It South
11 Snake Jaw
12 Just For You
13 I Believe You
14 Down It Goes
15 Take The Mirror

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT White Lung, visit their website, and purchase the Deep Fantasy from the Domino Records website [HERE].

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