This show has Ovipositor starting out a bit out of tune and rough, but we seemed to have picked up steam along the way. A pretty strong second half or so, in my estimation.
https://archive.org/details/07-song-to-end-all-cancer-with-kinks-song
Plus, we actually did put a Kinks song in the middle of Song To End All Cancer, which was fun.
Kind of a strange review, but at least they listened to it!
https://contemporaryfusionreviews.com/jaded-jazz-journeys/
These recordings have been released as one side of a cassette release from Rotten Princess Records in Portland, OR, called "Everyone Needs a Bad Influence Vol. II".
Recorded raw, with no mixing, editing, or mastering. Lo-tech to the max!
Cover art by Melissa Crockett.
https://archive.org/details/cherryblossoms_202108
Photo by either Scarp Home or his former wife Sandra.
https://open.spotify.com/album/4VwfNKlTX6sThxqBl1iOr5
https://music.apple.com/album/1576683264?app=itunes&ls=1
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=birdsaw+pitch+black+lightning
After 18 years, this album is finally done.
About two years ago, the members of Birdsaw began talking about releasing the tunes that make up Pitch Black Lightning in some form. At some point last year, the engineer that recorded them was able to locate the original digital files for them, and he graciously shared them with us.
Since that time, we had them mastered and edited into their current form. I was hoping for some kind of physical release, but that's not currently possible. So, streaming will have to suffice, but I'm just glad that they're out in the world in some way.
Many thanks to Tom, Robin, and Dan, along with Matt Spatol, who did a great job of cleaning and organizing the recording into a coherent release!
I was going through a stack of burned CDr's, found this little nugget. The two songs on this page did not make it to the Silencer Assembly Bandcamp release, and they are definitely raw, but I just love the energy on them. Demos are cool.
https://archive.org/details/mail_20210815
This was an easy show to get, because Ovipositor bass player Laurin lived in this Berkeley group home. Not quite as wild as Barrington Hall, but an interesting assortment of people and their strange affectations. Fun times. In the photo atop this page, one can see the late Jason Batzer, doing his thing the way that only he could do it. Basement shows still rule OK.
This show has been up at Youtube for a minute, but I wanted to get the audio posted at Archive.org. Fond memories of a fun show that was kind of a last minute surprise for me. Amy Reed is great.
Nice to see Mika and his gangs' work acknowledged as being interesting music!
https://contemporaryfusionreviews.com/revolutionary-sonic-visions/
Many thanks for Birdsaw bass player Tom Jordan for using his skills to put this video together!
Some years back I decided to do an Infinite Plastic Internal 'zine. I got through three collages before getting distracted and not putting them together as such. Found them a few days back, figured I'd put them up here.
https://archive.org/details/bambooskinduo2
Many fond memories of playing with John Vaughn.
https://radicalmedicine.bandcamp.com/track/bhai-brother
I like this a lot. My drums paired with chanting in Bengali! Cool!
https://infiniteplasticinternal.bandcamp.com/album/drum-n-synth
Two tracks, recorded Summer of 2020 in my garage. I had intended to record more pieces, but my inspiration ran out, and I just stopped playing. It was weird, but necessary I think.
Nice little un-hostile review of the Feral Luggage CD, Diaspora Foci. Pretty cool to get a bit of recognition. I'm especially happy for Mika, he put in a lot of effort to get that thing out there into the world.
https://www.rootsmusic.it/feral-luggage-diaspora-focii/
Scroll down a bit of the English translation!
This combination of live/interview footage was filmed at Paradise Lounge in San Francisco, probably late 2000. I'm kind of proud of how the various band members sound cogent and humorous without being complete music industry twats, as well as good the live mix sounds.
This ink drawing was done by a young female artist whose last name is Choo. I noticed it after we played, and she graciously let me keep it.
Fun days, for sure.
I went out to my garage and actually played a little bit! Recorded this beat, thought it was neat, put it up on Youtube.
https://radicalmedicine.bandcamp.com/track/punk-bitch-jumpoff
Basically a couple of drum beats, paired with cool editing from Radical Medicine. Drum tracks recorded in 2018 or 2019 I believe.
Kimo's was a cool, funky little dive bar on Polk St. that had an upstairs performance space. I figure that there were a lot of drag shows there, as that area was, along with SOMA and Castro District, a welcoming one for gay culture in the City. It had a small stage, a nice dance floor, and a beat up, but fun, vibe. I recall playing there a few times over the years. Last time I drove past its former space, it looked as though it'd been transformed into some kind of eatery. Everything changes.
We became friends with the members of Chords Are Dead, and played some more shows with them. I definitely felt like an "old dude" to them. I was 36, they were all in their early to mid 20's. Last time that I heard about them, they had started playing again after a long hiatus.
Telomere Repair, from San Pedro, were intense, and I recall them getting into an argument during their set. I still have their CD, and I still like it.
Graphic design and screen print by Colin Frangos.
As I've pondered this post, there's been a lot of reflection about a time in my early 20's, when I lived in San Francisco, and had aspirations of being some kind of musical composer. I didn't really "go that route" in the traditional sense, but I have been involved in musical composition in one form or another from the late 1980's until 2020.
This piece is clearly just a simple chord, E, A, B flat, F flat, which is supposed to lead to a "cloud" of improvisation. I really do like the way that that chord sounds as an arpeggio, so it seems valid to me, despite the admitted simplicity of its conception.
Maybe someday it will be played, who knows?
Image Copyright 2021, Mark Pino
I found this review of Eight Durations, which came out a bit under a year ago, yesterday. Stoked on a friendly, perceptive review from the Vital Weekly web page!
"M-KAT ENSEMBLE - EIGHT DURATIONS (CDR by Edgetone)
While listening to this album my mind starts to go on its journey. Thoughts about The Rita, Miles Davis interviews from the 1970s, Le Monte Young, films abrasively rescored live in the back rooms of pubs, being on a stag do in Prague and hearing some freak jazz being played and dragging the party in to watch for a drink only for them neck their pints and wait outside petulantly mumbling when it was my turn to pick the next bar, having to sit in the hallway of an arts centre during an all-dayer of experimental music as what was being played was too loud and complex for me to get my head around on a rainy Saturday night and a dozen other fragmented memories come to me only to be gone in a second. Effectively ‘Eight Durations’ is the kind of album that allows you to get all internal whilst getting lost in its rich melodies and tones.
The beauty of ‘Eight Durations’ is how the songs are constructed I real-time. There were no preconceived structures or patterns. They just started playing and this is what M-KAT came up with. ‘Duration 3’ is either build around the Kersti Abrams’ ponderous saxophone lines or Mark Pino’s drumming. I can’t work it out. Either way, it doesn’t matter as they both give the other musicians something tangible to work around. Instead of playing call and response motifs or trying to mimic the others playing on their respective instruments they just appear to be going for it. ‘Duration 4’ feels like the most abrasive, and adventurous, track on the album. There is a horrific vibe to it that just gets gut-wrenchingly worse as the song progresses. The basslines feel like they are being ripped from the bass, rather than being played by one. The percussion sounds like it was made up of anything at hand and the levels of distortion are fantastic. When the flute kicks in at the halfway point the songs go up a notch.
‘Eight Durations’ is cavernous and cacophonous. The final throws of ‘Duration 8’ are glorious in their organised disarray. Pino is just going at it on drums. Abrams is delivering measured saxophone line after line. The bass is consistent but vanishes due to the bedlam all around and Andrew Joron’s theremin appears to be missing in action. I don’t doubt it’s there but it is hard to pick out once the machine is up and running. This album is a dream. A very wonky and tumultuous dream, but a dream none the less. (SR"
https://archive.org/details/ebola1
I went back and found these two tracks, recorded as some kind of demo (at least, that was how they were labeled). Really enjoyed the energy of them, so I figured I'd throw 'em up onto Archive.org for others to do so as well. In some ways, I feel as though this was ebolabuddha's finest moment, in purely musical terms.
