HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!(?)!!!

Here's a new song I made up this morning after I took all my change to the bank. It turned out a lot spookier than I thought it would. I hope everyone alive has an amazing Halloween!

City Center "Haunted/Hawse"
Recorded October 31, 2008 Brooklyn New York between 11:00am-11:45am.
Sampler, vocals, acoustic guitar & electronics.

All You Can See Buffet

"Dark times, sometimes. Post-electrocution feelings, that anger that seems unavoidable but you should have seen coming. Under water killer whale, submerged and waiting for things that can't be fixed. Would you/take me back/to where this started/please."

---- Devin Touissant Tinsdale, "The Rebirth"

City Center "Blankets"
Recorded live to stereo mix October 28, 2007 Brooklyn, NY 10pm-10:25pm. Sample, vocals and electronics.

GROUPER/CITY CENTER 7"

UPDATE: I have no more copies of this beast left for mailorder. If you wanna get technical, we have 10 copies left for selling on tour, and I know Liz doesn't have any for mailorder either. There must be some out there still, try maybe Othermusic.com or Polyvinyl cause those are the distros who would most likely still have copies. Thanks a ton to everyone who got a copy of this release!

So super stoked to announce officially that there's some new jams on the way. In particular, a split 7" with new, exclusive songs from me and Grouper. I've talked about Grouper, my friend Liz's amazing music on maybe like 60% of my blog postings, so it's shouldn't be a big surprise that this I'm beyond overjoyed we've gotten to play some shows and now work on this record together. Liz's song is exclusive to this release, and recorded around the same time as her last amazing full-length "Dragging A Dead Deer Uphill". It's fucking mindblowing. My song is "This Is How We See In The Dark", which I wrote just for this release after checking out Liz's song and trying to write a counterpoint piece. I've been playing it live in every show since the end of the summer, so if you've seen me play at all, it might sound familiar. This demo recording was the first version of the song, and it's gotten a lot more refined/better since then, but it should give you an idea. Lots of tape manipulation on the vocals, muddy mishap vibe.

City Center "This Is How We See In The Dark" (First Version)


P.S>>>> CHECK OUT BRETT'S BLOG!

Regs/4 Track Delusion

City Center "Regular Feelings"

Norbit!!!

Sick today, feeling rawful. Brett made my night by sending me this Eddie Murphy impersonating Bill Cosby and then Richard Pryor mp3 though, so all is not so bad. He sounds amazingly like Richard Pryor on the second half.

You Won't Be Ready To Kiss Goodbye

Going super deep on this, the fourth Falltime mix. Will it ever end? No. Never will it end. Prepare to get bummed the fuck out on this one, cause no stone of depression and general end times was left unturned.

Fall Mix #4
Broadcast "Tears In The Typing Pool"
Beach House "Some Things Last A Long Time"
An already down song by Daniel Johnston made even lower by these guys from Baltimore. Murder. The reverb sounds are kinda corny, though, but that's a production thing...
New Order "Dreams Never End"
Echo & The Bunnymen "The Game" (demo)
Not sure if this song was ever a single, but the full band version is so charged up it could have killed it as much as "Lips Like Sugar" or whatever. This demo is rad cause he's losing his voice just a little by the end.
Eduardo Mateo "Nina"
This dude from Uraguay in the late 6o's fronted a psyche-y band called El Kinto. They were cool, but eventually he wanted to go solo. Thing was he was so stoned and careless that he would just wander off mid recording session or disappear for weeks on end. Eventually a record did get made and it was so rad it quickly vanished only to be freeked over by nerds 40 years later. This is a moment of the hash-blown breeze that the whole record kind of feels like.
Zombies "She's Coming Home"
Atlas Sound "Requiem For All The Lonely Teenagers With Passed Out Moms"
It's never been a secret that my singular initial inspiration for doing this blog was being so stoked on Bradford's prolific free song jamming on the Deerhunter/Atlas Sound blog. This song got me through last winter, on repeat for days on the subway and in the snow, sad as hell and no end in sight. In the context of a fall style mix, it just glides from one almost snow to the next longer night.
Arthur Russell "That's Us/Wild Combination"
Also been going so insane on this song lately. It's a deep sea cityscape and the feeling of the memory of what falling in love was when you felt capable of that.
Nite Jewel "Artificial Intelligence" >>> "Sulurlia"
This one-lady disco Los Angeles mudsling sound so far only has a CDR EP called "My CD" (!!!) that only gets sold at my work. The whole thing is pretty rad, so I threw on a couple of the songs.
Michael Jackson "Billie Jean" (Demo)
Even the King Of Pop isn't safe from the demo-down. I can't even believe this is real.
Guided By Voices "Peep-Hole"
Velvet Underground "I Found A Reason" (Demo)
Another song that makes me think of Ethan and little else. So much better than the version on Loaded and even better than Cat Power's pretty stellar version.
Non "Solitude"

Total Running Time: 45min 15sec

Download the mix here.
Love forever, however buried.

Hurt Head

Here's a new song that eventually some version of will be on a 7" from a new Ypsilanti label that's coming up. This is way rough, and the lyrics will no doubt change, but I made it up on the train home today to avoid a nervous breakdown. Hurray!

City Center "Unfinished Hex"
at night nothing gets better
ready for you to come over me
like failing rain
and i wonder what holds your
hands at your sides
and say an unfinished hex over me
and said an unfinished hex over me
at night nothing is ending
no one is the new one
the older one gives back
to the way that you love me
the way i love you
the way i will
and set an unfinished hex over me
and said an unfinished hex
over me

Alien Text Fiend

Silk Flowers is the new band from my really great friends Ethan, Avi & Peter. I have talked about them on this blog a lot already, so I won't go too into bio details, but they're a rad band and some of the best people that live. They do a sweet blog which is linked to mine on your right (-------------->),we've done a bunch of shows together, eaten so many meals (of various quality) together and hung deeply. Over the last few weeks I was lucky enough to get a chance to record their first few songs for a couple of 7"s that will come out in the next several months. They're gonna do a tour with No Age sometime in November, so check them when they come through your world. As an added bonus/preview I did this waaaay goth remix after listening to Psychic TV* and Alien Sex Fiend all day. I hope they like it and I hope everyone else does too.

*Today I was so stoked to be in the record store and see the 3rd and final annual report of Throbbing Gristle LP. It was $25.00 and there was also a 12" of "Eazy Duz It" by Eazy E for $6.00 and I really wanted to get them both. I normally don't spend that much money on records, but I was starved and out of it, feeling impetuous. Who knows. I asked the guy if there was any way he could do both for $30, kind of as a joke because it was only $31, and he froze me out super hard and was like "NO WAY NO DAY". Then he didn't charge me tax and when he wasn't looking I stole one of the vegan cookies out of the jar on the counter. Only the thing is, the girl who was the waitress fully WAS LOOKING AND SAW ME TAKE THE COOKIE and gave me these "whatevs" kind of eyes, but not in a nice way either. The morale is New York is weird, we all need to leave, we are in an economic depression and people are so afraid of fucking up their lives sometimes they forget how to live at all.

Silk Flowers "In This Place And Time" (City Center Remix)

CHECK OUT THIS RAT!

Near the end of the summer I stopped seeing as many rats in the subway, and got a little concerned. Like maybe there was a mass rat poisoning or something. On Saturday I saw so many rats, and this guy was one of the ones I took a picture of. The one not pictured was amazing because he had somehow scavenged half of a bagel that was way bigger than himself, and was dragging it like life's main trophy of joy through the gutter, trying to stuff both his overgrown body and the gargantuan bage through a hole in the concrete the size of a silver dollar.

There But Fir The Grace Of God Go I

The Gories are reuniting for three shows next summer. Great god almights. One show is in Detroit, one in Memphis and one overseas. This is day-making news. Full story was found here. I once wrote a song about Peg, the drummer from the Gories and a fictional scene where she and I were at the same wedding, and even though she was there on a date with Alex Chilton from Big Star, we both got really drunk and made out in the broom closet. In this imaginary world of song we didn't ever see each other again, but I would sometimes wonder about her and think of calling her, not knowing even where she lived, but pretty sure the life she led wasn't making her very happy. I realize that due to the complete projective, naive fantasy aspects of it, this song should have been written when I was a 13 year old boy who hadn't ever kissed anyone yet, but it was actually last year. THAT'S HOW GOOD THE GORIES ARE!!!!(??)!
In less embarassing news, we mixed down the Silk Flowers stuff for two 7"s yesterday and it sounds really really nice. I'm working on a remix that I'll probably post later today.

Weekend At Burton's

Fall Mix #3
Virgin Insanity "Don't Get Down"
This record was recorded in 1971! They may have been going for a folk thing, but the barely-musical drums and hyper ragged sweater vibes might just make this the first indie rock record.
Sonic Youth "Brave Men Run"
"Bad Moon Rising" is still Halloween is still the end of the world in a teenage paper cup. It's hanging out on the street by the newspaper boxes that aren't there anymore setting fire to small things and feeling small things so big.
Kate Bush "Cloudbusting"
Anne Briggs "Fire And Wine"
Kathy Smith "Blackbird And The Pearl"
I can't even tell if I like this record yet, but there's something painfully honest about it's vibe. Like someone who you meet in passing and they're so nice, but then they really wanna sell you something. Like a homemade bumper sticker or a communist zine that sucks or something, but they really believe in it, so they totally miss the societal not-coolness of what they're doing, or they know and just don't care cause they're on another level?
Arthur Russell "Lucky Cloud"
Psychedelic Furs "She Is Mine"
Still waiting for people to realize this band as an amazing force of the past. The sax is kinda corny though.
Lindsay Buckingham "It Was You"
Ya heard me. This is the lead dude from "Rumors"-era Fleetwood Mac on his 2006 solo record which sounds like some adult contemporary home recorded take on Sung Tongs or something. Dan H. was playing it one day and even though some of the songs get into some NPR territory, the whole thing really ruled. And you know I love when weird dudes fuck around with delay pedals.
Judee Sill "Jesus Was A Crossmaker"
Can't remember if I put this on a mix yet or not. It would be so rad to hear an acapella version of this jam.
Sunforest "Give Me All Your Loving"
Alice Cooper "Sun Arise"
The last track on teen-angst breakthrough album "Love It To Death" from Detroit devil-loving rock band is somehow this childlike vocal round about how the sunrise "brings back the warmth to the ground". AAAAAmaazing.
Jane's Addiction "Jane Says"
Second to the Dead Milkmen, I'm pretty sure Jane's is the most important band in a lifetime sense for me. Very few songs or bands hold as much of a place in my mind and history, from dancing at the Nectarine at teen night when I was 15 to multiple re-discoveries and extremely personal moments with these songs over the next 15 years. This song is a pretty obvious choice, but whens the last time you heard it at a bar or on the radio and were like "UUUggghh???" NEVER!!! It's always good. Right? Oh wait...
The Cure "Lullaby"
The extended, slightly electronic version from "Mixed Up". Just the hits.
Cluster "Marzipan"
Dark "Zero Time"

Total Running Time: 61min 30sec

Download the mix here.

I'm working on a bunch of new songs right now and have been recording Silk Flowers and some other bands as well. Maybe in the coming weeks I'll have some new City Center stuff or a bunch of remixes up. In the meantime, I hope you get something out of these long-winded fall jams.