Saturday, July 29, 2006

pseudo-interview with Greg Backus



Greg Backus is part of the percussive arm of the intoxicating band Warmer Milks that my band played with about a week ago, as it goes with the formula of this blog, I wanted to know what made him tick, so I asked:

FL: to begin, what kind of stimulus do you respond to the most: aural, visual, etc?

GB: Reruns of daytime television game shows. Viscerally stimulating. Dinah Shore's talk show - a real winner. Really probably emotional or idealistic stimuli, largely internal or interpersonal. I like silence and memory, history and science fiction.

FL: what is the primary source, other than the most obvious (music, film, visual art, etc) and what are the most direct effects of this stimulation on your art?

GB: The primary sources often seem to be just some idea. Think about something specific - you just realized your house was on fire. Or instruments or sound sources become character voices in a dialogue or a chorus.
The most obvious "sources" would be the doods in the band. Our paintings, drawings and designs are ours and our friends. It's hard to differentiate between different "sources" of stimulation. Creation itself is stimuation and is a very immediate feedback loop. Hopefully the immediate source is someone who is doing something really cool in the immediate context.
We all seem able to inspire each-other occasionally.
Make a bunch of accidents and see how they sound together


FL: what kind of imagery does the act of creating music conjure in your head? can you give a semi-detailed description of your mode of thought while creating music, visual or otherwise?

GB: Primitive. Visual becomes secondary to the audial which is something somewhat rare in the history of each individual sensory unit (read: person). Vision becomes a sense by which reality is supported where it normally defines it. The acronyms that Stanislaw Lem made up in his stories, absurd compound words. Non-sense. Phonemes. Gibberish science - SMASH THE REACTIONARY MIND! I've become an association engine.
How to build and how to break. How to foster an environment that can contain some powerful freak weird howlings and sounds like puking, like someone's sick in the corner or draw out from it with the first book you read in hand - I am a pit full of self.


FL: if you could pen an artist's statement regarding your music without relying on favored terminology (cross-referencing, genre pegging, ect.) what would it say?

GB: I thought that Stevie Wonder and the Beatles were the same person when I first started listening to music. Oops. That's name dropping.

FL: can you give a breif explanation of why you decided to make music in the first place and why "experimental" music is appealing to you? what draws you to it?

GB: I was able to connect emotionally more often than with other "sources". experiemental music appeals to me because it is so subjective.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

SOUND (1967)

Some generous soul on youtube disected this amazing short film into three segments. If you haven't seen it, or know nothing about it, it is 30 minutes in length and features John Cage and Rashaan Roland Kirk, among others. The general statements made by this film can and should be taken as dogma by anyone interested in experimental music. So here, I present to you,the Nicene Creed of noise:

PART 1


PART 2


PART 3

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

the week

unfortunately it seems that nothing really interesting is happening this week!

if you know of anything at all, send me an email: freneticlove@gmail.com

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Introduction to AMH

Andrew Michael Hilburn will be contributing material to this project from time to time and is one of my closest collaborators. As an introduction, rather than telling you fruitless information on his life or his person, I will present you with a blurb he sent me recently:

Noise is the new pop. The new pop is realizing the only good record label is your own. What is noise? Ask that question to a million different music addicts and get a million different answers. The addiction is still the same. Users one in all. Gooey wet dew drops of static springing to life sound explosions. After the towers fell the reverberations of digital fragments rocked us into fits of dronedom. Paralyzed epileptic fits of puzzle players. Break down the barriers. The net is not a tool! It is a medium!
Feedback is a being. Communicate with her. Love her for she loves her children. Stroke a flower and a chord and it is the same poison. It is love. Noise rock rockets lockets of crystal information- frenetic love gives you all!

-AMH 2006

Monday, July 17, 2006

update #1

a couple of shows I just found out about:

ON TUESDAY July 18 The Psychedelic Journey Band is playing at club dada in dallas.

also on tuesday: THE SLOW MO VIDEO FESTIVAL at secret headquarters in denton

ON SATURDAY July 22 at metrognome collective it would be beneficial for you to see ONE UMBRELLA because they are great and a very esteemed part of the austin noise scene. ALSO PLAYING: excercise tiger and professional juice

the week in noise

on mondays, you should expect a somewhat comprehensive list of any show that we deem interesting for the week ahead:

here is the list so far:

first I would like to plug a show that I am personally involved in (oohh is this ethical?)

ON THURSDAY July 20 you all should come check out WARMER MILKS, an amazing folky/bluesy aggro-noise maelstrom from Kentucky,along with urtu and violent squid at THE HOUSE OF TINNITUS located at 628 Lakey st. in denton (its a house party so I suggest you mapquest it.)


ON FRIDAY July 21 there are two events that may be of interest to you:
At Counter Culture Vintage (mockingbird station) in dallas, there will be a display of new artwork by Nevada Hill along with music by members of idi amin playing under the monicker "Zanzibar Snails"

Also on friday you can catch Chris Garver at rubber gloves, the other acts involved aren't really of my taste but here they are anyway: Voot Cha Index, Teenage Symphony, and (sorry, but this is one of the worst bandnames I have come accross in a long time) hardin sweaty and ready to go.

ON SUNDAY July 23 you can catch our friends shiny around the edges also at rubber gloves on an amazing bill with castanets, phosphorescent, and sara reddington.

at the moment, this is all we have gotten wind of, but if anything else pops up, we will post periodic updates throughout the week.

also, feel free to send suggestions to freneticlove@gmail.com

J.M. 07/17/06

Friday, July 14, 2006

BE EXCITED:

Chris Garver's upcoming album "e4/e5" promises to be amazing, I've already heard five of the tracks on the self titled e.p. Mr. Garver has been distributing at shows, and every one of them has effectively blown my mind.

he says he will be winding up production in mid august, here's the tracklist:

01. The Exhausted Cause
02. No Ideas but in Things
03. Wasp in the House
04. The Southfork Luncheon Blues
05. Pack Up the Going Home Tantrum
06. Oh What for You?
07. Birds of a Feather
08. Speaking Never Swings the Oar
09. Lost Fearsome
10. Put the Papers Away
11. Heaven's Thirst & Death's Lapse
12. Your Parrot Winks, Exactly
13. Blood, Ink, & Print

you can here "Heaven's Thirst & Death's Lapse" along with "Wasp in the House" here

-J.M. 7/14/06

Thursday, July 13, 2006


REVIEW: B.C.E, the Debut CDR by IdI*AMIN

"Harmolodic Modulation;" its a concept explored by Ornette Coleman in his masterpiece "Skies of America" in which he purposefully voiced certain parts in stark contrast of eachother in order to create an aural illusion of earth and sky: a tonal environment intended to represent physical space.

Whether or not it was their intention, IdI Amin has successfully created a similar effect on their debut album "B.C.E." From the first track on, this work created a vivid sound portrait in my mind of a virtual Antichton of the Pythagoreans, or counter world, in which I could practically see the black trees growing downward into a bubbling black gloo, with their roots extended out into the gravity free void.

The high pitched intonation of Michael Chamy's sin wave generator creates a desolate sounding sonic wind that weaves itself through the beastial blurts and squeals of Mike Forbes's sax clashing with the atonal, metallic scrapes of Nevada Hill's guitar.

On the second track "Carbide" one can imagine from the filtered and flanged pops and belches, the bubbling primordial goo that the savage sounds of this record seem to have arisen from. These sounds range from the quiet brooding and buildup of tracks like "GNU" and "Pomba Gira" to the all out tribal warfare of scathing noise and scattershot percussion presented in tracks like "Angioplasma" and "Cro Magnon."

Metal often gets pegged as the official music for all that is dark in this world, If that's true, IdI Amin is the official music for all that is dark in the universe.

-J.M. 7/13/06

ps. you can listen to some tracks and buy this album here

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Frenetic Love is a blog dedicated to pushing an agenda of "personal experimentation" in the North Texas scene and beyond. We plan on acheiving this by providing in depth personal and intuitive responses to music created in and around DFW.

Now, what I am refering to by "personal experimentation" is a sense of wonder that is so often lacking in our music "scene" (if you can call it that) However, we have noticed that there is a small but dedicated group of musicians in denton that are steeped in this wonder, every sound they make is an experiment, not the kind that implies any sort of "unknowing" or "inability" but instead, a deep need that comes somewhere close to spirituality. We plan on looking at music in this way, instead of criticizing it, we want to embrace it tonally and give the reader a real reason to be excited by music.

with that being said,

what you SHOULD'NT expect from this blog:

Name dropping cross references that show our deep and guru-like understanding of indie culture, reckless comparissons and genre pegging, holier than thou judgements, harsh criticism (if we don't like it, we won't even mention it) or the overhyping of any band that has already had the word "buzz" attributed to them (unless it is a tonal description of a specific "buzzing" sound)

what you SHOULD expect from this blog:

In depth descriptions of what music does for us, thoughtful analysis of music's role in modern society, reviews of records we like and think you may like too, suggestions for interesting shows in and around north Texas, and the occasional tangent on whatever seems worthy of writing about.

The next post is going to be a review of IdI*Amin's debut cdr "B.C.E."

but that will come next week.

also, here is our email address if you want to contribute or ask questions:
freneticlove@gmail.com

Frenetic Love is also a record label and will be, in a couple of months putting out our first two releases:

the Strategies of Beauty Vol. 1 Live Compilation featuring amazing performances by all of the bands that performed at strategies

and

Violent Squid's cdr "You're on Vacation"