Posts Tagged &#8216; soundboard &#8217;

[Photos courtesy of Paradise of Bachelors]

The great folklorist Alan Lomax always feared that the mass culture would destroy regional styles of music, creating an indistinct, homogenized whole with no sense of place. While his thesis hasn’t totally been proven wrong, the scope of technology and the fervent interest in music fostered in part by it today allow people to reach beyond their borders to preserve such styles, as well as present them to a wider audience.

Enter the Black Twig Pickers, playing Appalachian old-time music of southwest Virginia the way it’s meant to be played. Their music aims to both preserve tradition, as well as expand upon it in ways that distance and lack of technology couldn’t in its earlier years. The Twigs are regulars at the Hopscotch Music Festival, having provided tunes for the Three Lobed/WXDU Day Show the past few years, but this year they were also able to join our friends at Paradise of Bachelors for a full set on their lovely outdoor stage.

The Twigs have had a great year so far, releasing both their excellent Rough Carpenters LP along with a split 7″ with Steve Gunn on Thrill Jockey. Carpenters takes the scope of the Twigs’ music a little farther afield in the Appalachian tradition, bringing in new regional influences and showing more emphasis on dance numbers. This set began in transition from the Pelt set moments before, as Pelt members Mike Gangloff and Nathan Bowles segued the outro drone from that set into the traditional bluegrass number “Dan Friend’s Piece”. From there, we got a short and sweet frolic through the Twigs’ catalog, including “Old Christmas Morning” and “Rough Carpenters” from Rough Carpenters. At a festival that featured everything from black metal to electronically composed ambient music, this was an opportunity to take a brief step back in time to honor a tradition whose influence, even as it has morphed and change, well exceeded its original borders or its original players’ wildest intentions. Were he still alive, Lomax might see a show like this, and find comfort yet.

I recorded this set in the same manner as the other sets at this show, and the sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Rough Carpenters

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

Black Twig Pickers
2013-09-07
Paradise of Bachelors / WXYC Day Show
Louise “Scottie” Stephenson Amphitheatre
Raleigh, NC USA

Schoeps MK4V>KC5>CMC6 + Soundboard>>Edirol R-44 [Oade Concert Mod]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, adjustments)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ)>Audacity 2.03 (tracking, fades, amplify, balance, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Dan Friend’s Piece
02 The Route
03 [tuning/banter]
04 Rough Carpenters
05 [tuning]
06 Brushy Fork of John’s Creek
07 Old Christmas Morning
08 Merry Mountain Hoedown

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT the Black Twig Pickers, visit their website, like them on Facebook, and buy Rough Carpenters and their other releases from Thrill Jockey.

Ovlov: October 15, 2013 Oh My Rockness CMJ Show, Cameo Gallery – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 30, 2013

[Photos by acidjack]

It’s always gratifying when you run into a friend at a show that you didn’t plan to see, and their first reaction to the band you came to see is “holy shit, these guys are good”. The Connecticut band Ovlov, comprised of three brothers, were one of my most anticipated acts of this year’s CMJ Music Marathon, and they brought everything they had for this Oh My Rockness-sponsored set at Cameo Gallery. For those who didn’t already know how good they were, they surprised them.

Ovlov synthesizes influences from a number of big-time ’90s touchstones, the most obvious being Dinosaur Jr., abetted by vocalist Steve Hartlett’s incredible resemblance to J Mascis’ vocal delivery. If you closed your eyes, their song “The Well” could almost be Dinosaur Jr. circa 1991. The band’s latest record, Am, doesn’t shy from these influences, nor should it. It’s no accident that Ovlov might well share a record collection with well-loved contemporaries like Speedy Ortiz; Sadie Dupuis does guest vocals on Am. As with any correct CMJ show, this one offered a glimpse into what this band had to offer, and they maximized the punch of their eight-song set, with many Am wonders combined with some slightly deeper cuts. CMJ did exactly what it should for this band — give them a shot at a wider audience. I have no doubt that Ovlov have earned it.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed from the Cameo engineer and friend of the site Gary Atturio, plus Schoeps MK4V cardiod microphones ideal for this kind of room. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream “The Well” and “There’s My Dini!”

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

Ovlov
2013-10-17
Oh My Rockness CMJ Showcase
Cameo Gallery
Brooklyn, NY USA

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

Soundboard (engineer: Gary Atturio) + Schoeps MK4V>KC5>CMC6>Sound Devices USBPre2>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (fades, tracking, amplify, balance)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 32:26]
01 The City
02 The Well
03 Nü Pünk
04 Really Bees
05 There’s My Dini!
06 I Got Well
07 Blue Baby
08 Moth Rock

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Ovlov, visit their bandcamp page, and purchase Am from Exploding In Sound records [HERE]

Thee Oh Sees: October 27, 2013 285 Kent – Flac/MP3/Streaming

October 28, 2013

[photo courtesy of We All Want Someone To Shout For blog]

Lou Reed died on Sunday morning, October 27, 2013. If that fact is important to you, then by now you’ve read the hundreds of excellent tributes across the web. The man was complicated, but one thing is for certain — his vast and ubiquitous influence over multiple genres of music and musical lifestyles will be felt for generations to come. So it was abundantly appropriate that on the night of his death, one of New York’s premiere DIY venues — in a warehouse no less — hosted one of the country’s premiere garage-rock bands. I don’t think its a reach to say that if Lou Reed’s life had not taken the path he began nearly fifty years ago, 285 Kent and Thee Oh Sees would not exist, or at least exist in the way they do now. ToddP recognized the importance of the evening, as his house music was all-Reed for virtually the entire night. And as Thee Oh Sees were about to take the stage, the ipod mix queued up “Walk On The Wild Side”, and a natural and spontaneous cheer arose from the packed house. As John Dwyer approached the mic, he dedicated the set to Lou, and began to play. And play they did. Thee Oh Sees are one of today’s most engaging live acts, but this performance was special. Each song was a bundle of kinetic energy and it seemed as if the crowd was of one mind, moshing in beat to every single song for this meaty and lengthy set. The band is on tour to support their latest album Floating Coffin, and while the setlist included more than half the album, there were also plenty of old favorites. Thee Oh Sees play locally again tonight (Tuesday October 29), at Irving Plaza. As of this writing, there are less than 100 tickets left. We’ll be there, and if you’re reading this, hopefully you will be too.

I recorded this set by mounting the Sennheiser cards on the beam ten feet from the stage and mixed it with a fine board mix. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Block of Ice”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Thee Oh Sees
2013-10-27
285 Kent
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard + Sennheiser MKH-8040s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 24bit 48kHz wav file > 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 1:24:54]
01 I Come From The Mountain
02 Toe Cutter – Thumb Buster
03 Block of Ice
04 Contraption – Soul Desert
05 The Dream
06 Tidal Wave
07 Tunnel Time
08 What’s Over There
09 Strawberries 1 and 2
10 Meat Step Lively
11 [tech break – bad cable]
12 No Spell
13 [tech break – power strip]
14 Dead Energy
15 Minotaur
16 Lupine Dominus
17 [encore break]
18 Carrion Crawler

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Thee Oh Sees, visit their website, and purchase Floating Coffin from Castle Face Records [HERE].

Caged Animals: October 17, 2013 NYCTaper CMJ Cake Shop – Flac/MP3/Streaming

October 28, 2013

[photos by Amanda Hatfield]

The Sixth Annual NYCTaper CMJ Day Party at Cake Shop was headlined by a band fronted by one of our favorite people in the music world. Vincent Cacchione has been a friend of the site for years, going all the way back to his days as guitarist in Shilpa Ray’s band, through the emergence of Soft Black, and ultimately his current project Caged Animals. 2013 has been a big year for the band, as Caged Animals released a universally praised new album In The Land of Giants in September. Their set at our Day Party was a celebratory affair, with the band asking and receiving crowd participation throughout. Vincent’s engaging personality is infectious but the other members of the quartet, including his sister bassist Talia, keyboardist/vocalist Magali Francoise and drummer Patrick Curry were all involved in the party atmosphere. The band performed songs from all of their releases including “Teflon Heart” that we’re streaming below. Sadly, as our show ran up into the night show, Caged Animals were only able to play their allotted 30 minutes — next time we’ll hope for more.

I recorded this set in the same manner at the J Fernandez set and the sound quality is superb. Enjoy!

Stream “Teflon Heart”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Caged Animals
2013-10-17
NYCTaper CMJ Day Party
Cake Shop
New York, NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + On Stage Audience Matrix

Soundboard + Sennheiser MKH-8040s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 28:50]
01 [intro]
02 Too Much Dark
03 A Psychic Lasso
04 The Sound of Thunder
05 Girls on Medication
06 This Summer I’ll Make It Up To You
07 Blood Money
08 The Mute and The Mindreader
09 We’re Playing With Fire
10 [banter]
11 Teflon Heart

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Caged Animals, visit their website, and purchase In The Land Of Giants from their Bandcamp page [HERE] or from the links at the Lucky Number Music website [HERE].

J Fernandez: October 17, 2013 NYCTaper CMJ at Cake Shop – Flac/MP3/Streaming

October 25, 2013

[photos by Amanda Hatfield / Soundcloud photo from Six Point Twitter]

The plethora of good bedroom recording artists presents an enigma for booking shows. For every successful transition to excellent live band (Wild Nothing, Purling Hiss) there are a dozen or more who can’t get beyond solo-guy-with-laptop on stage. When we learned that the excellent Chicago dream-pop artist J Fernandez was coming to NYC for CMJ shows, we jumped at the chance to book him. Fernandez has been releasing a series of singles over the last few years on local labels, and last year Morning Ritual Recordings compiled them all on an excellent release No Luck / Olympic Village. But we had no idea what he’d be like live. It was within the first thirty seconds of the first song that I quickly realized that J Fernandez isn’t just a bedroom pop act, but indeed a superb live band with abundant talent and stage presence. Justin and the band paced through many of the tunes from the compilation and a few new ones, and live the tunes took on a very tasty psychedelic feel not prevalent on the more two-dimensional recorded tracks. We are streaming “No Luck”, the title track of one of the EPs and a featured track. Given the quality of this performance, we hope that J Fernandez and the band come East more often.

I recorded this set with the Sennheiser cardioids mounted above the front of the stage and mixed with a soundboard feed. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!

Stream “No Luck”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

J Fernandez
2013-10-17
NYCTaper CMJ Day Party
Cake Shop
New York, NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + On Stage Audience Matrix

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 30:08]
01 Between the Channels
02 Malleable
03 Read My Mind
04 Casual Encounter
05 No Luck
06 Wasting the New Year
07 Fading Out

If you download this recording from NYCTaper PLEASE SUPPORT J Fernandez, visit his blog, and purchase No Luck / Olympic Village from the links at Soundcloud [HERE].

Parkington Sisters: October 10, 2013 Joe’s Pub – Flac/MP3/Streaming

October 20, 2013

[photos by Chris Battaglia]

The Parkington Sisters are a great story. The group are all the biological children of musical parents and each of the sisters is a remarkable talent in and of themselves. But as a group they are a breathtaking display of vocal and instrumental proficiency. Last week at Joe’s Pub, we experienced the live Parkington Sisters and the show was simply mesmerizing. While sister Rose is the most frequent lead singer, along with playing piano and guitar, it would be a mistake to focus solely on her talents. Ariel and Sarah play viola and violin and produce stunning harmonies. And Nora provides much of the percussion, additional harmonies, and is the unofficial band onstage spokesperson. The Sisters’ set was a nice mix of their recorded material and some neat covers, and included much of their brand new EP Inside My Head (title track streaming below). The personal highlight of the evening was a song that I believe is an unreleased original track called “Fall To My Knees”, which begins with Rose solo at the piano but develops into a full-on sister harmony number of depth and poignancy. We hope to hear more of this song on the band’s next release. It has the potential to deliver the huge fan base that the Parkington Sisters deserve. We are streaming it below.

I recorded this set with the Sennheiser cardioids mounted adjacent to a floor beam about twenty feet from the stage and mixed it with a mono board feed. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!

Stream “Inside My Head”:

Stream “Fall To My Knees”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Parkington Sisters
2013-10-10
Joe’s Pub
New York, NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:04:49]
01 Ours By The Day
02 Plastic Islands
03 Cruel
04 September
05 Fatal Heart
06 Stay [Rihanna]
07 Fall To My Knees
08 Me Oh My
09 Try For You
10 Siren
11 Shadows
12 Jolene [Dolly Parton]
13 In The Pines [Leadbelly]
14 [banter – intros]
15 There There [Radiohead]
16 Inside My Head
17 [encore break]
18 Everything Will Be OK

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT The Parkington Sisters, visit their website, and purchase their official material from the Store at their website or purchase the new EP Inside My Head from Bandcamp [HERE].

Minks: August 31, 2013 Captured Tracks CT5 Festival – Flac/MP3/Streaming

October 16, 2013

[photo by Derek Klevitz courtesy of QRO Magazine]

In their brief history, Minks has been the quintessential Captured Tracks band. Their debut album By The Hedge was shrouded in mystery — not much was known about the artist and the lyrics were often hidden in deep reverb. Minks also didn’t play many shows. And of course the sound was heavily influenced by the early to mid-80s Brit post-punk. This year Minks has returned with their second album and the band has most certainly evolved. Tides End is a significantly warmer album than the band’s debut, and Minks have taken a higher profile in support for the album. Band leader Sonny Kilfoyle has even done a series of interviews. At the CT5 Fest in August, Minks set was certainly upbeat, as Kilfoyle bantered good naturedly between tracks and the band worked through an excellent set of material from both albums. We’re streaming “Doomed and Cool” which certainly captures a definable New Order influence to the band’s sound and was one of the tightest tracks performed. Minks will play NYC again at Mercury Lounge on November 21.

I recorded this set in the same manner as the two previous sets from this Fest and the sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Doomed and Cool”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Minks
2013-08-31
Captured Tracks CT5 Festival
The Well
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard + Neumann TLM-102s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, downsample set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 36:15]
01 Ark of Life
02 Everything’s Fine
03 Funeral Song
04 Playboys of the Western World
05 Hold Me Now
06 Margot
07 Doomed and Cool
08 [tuning]
09 Painted Indian

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Minks, visit their website, visit their artist page at the Captured Tracks website, and purchase the new album Tides End from the Captured Tracks website [HERE].

Birds of Maya: September 7, 2013 Paradise of Bachelors / WXYC Day Show, Hopscotch Music Festival (Raleigh, NC) – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 14, 2013

[Photos by acidjack]

If certain people are to be believed, Birds of Maya is the best rock n’ roll band in Philadelphia. Which, considering how essential that city’s rock tradition has been to the genre in the last few years, is saying a hell of a lot. In recent years, acts like Purling Hiss (the newer vehicle of BoM’s Mike Polizze) and Spacin’ have gotten a lot of the ink, but Birds of Maya is what started it all. After killer sets from fellow Philadelphians Spacin’ and Chris Forsyth earlier in the day at the Paradise of Bachelors / WXYC day show during Hopscotch Music Festival, it was only fitting that the day ended with the BoM mothership blasting us off to 1969 with some epically heavy chooglin’. Rarely bothering with such studio niceties as polished production and carefully laid out song titles, Birds of Maya’s official releases soar on the pure adrenaline of monster riffs made with total commitment and no bad attitudes. Ready to Howl, for example, is a double LP consisting of three songs – “Friday”, “Saturday” and “Sunday”. That’s how they roll.

All of that made BoM an ideal coda to a perfect weekend outdoor show, as the band roared through four epic-length tracks. That old Spinal Tap line about cranking your amps to 11 isn’t, it turns out, a figure of speech — Birds of Maya pushed out enough onstage volume that the amps seethed with fuzz. This set of continuous music brought all the heat of the band’s LPs, with the spontaneity and good vibes of the live setting to boot. Just listen to “E.O.I.”, streaming below, to get an idea of how it felt to see these guys in action.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V microphones and a soundboard feed. As noted, BoM’s amps were cranked, causing the board feed to distort a little. So, this sounds similar to a Birds of Maya album — loud, fuzzy and raw. It’s a thing of beauty. Enjoy!

Stream “E.O.I.”

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

Birds of Maya
2013-09-07
Paradise of Bachelors /WXYC Day Show
Louise “Scottie” Stephenson Amphitheatre
Raleigh, NC USA

Schoeps MK4V>KC5>CMC6 + SBD>>Edirol R-44 [Oade Concert Mod]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, adjustments, EQ to SBD)>Izotope Ozone 5 (tube effect, compression, EQ)>Audacity 2.03 (tracking, fades, amplify, balance, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [intro]
02 Sie Kleben
03 E.O.I.
04 Black Foot Kin
05 Cosmic Honeyshaker

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Birds of Maya, like them on Facebook, and buy their records online at Midheaven Mailorder.

Zachary Cale: September 27, 2013 Union Pool – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 8, 2013