Happy Friday!
I’m going to keep this letter short. I spent the early part of this week in Chicago. Once I flew back I was swept right into the tide of my life. I’ve spent the second half of the week pin-balling across New York, picking up keys, feeding cats, retrieving old musical equipment, and preparing for an interview. That interview should be starting right around the time your receive this email, though by the time you’ve read it might be long over. Wish me retrospective luck if you’d like.
This is not a bad week to be caught without time to write. As you’ll soon see below in ##### The Self Promo Zone #####, I have a new-to-the-internet piece of writing roughly the length of my weekly introductions. I think the piece came out really well and it’s received encouraging feedback. Thanks to planning in advance the other recurring features are all set. Scroll below and you will find five songs from my ~~~~~Listening Diary~~~~~ featuring new and old favorites, as well as five \\\\\Micro Reviews///// of my 2000s CD collection. Taken as a whole, a fine newsletter.
I have enough time to say maybe one interesting thing. I’m reading Falling Man by Don DeLillo. Reading Falling Man makes me think about Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon, and about reading Bleeding Edge in Chicago and then New York roughly eight years apart. Falling Man makes me think about New York, though surprisingly not as often as Bleeding Edge does. Its concerns are far more granular. The two novels are neighbors, not family. Crossing from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back again, I can look up and stare out at the city’s lower end from the Q train window before returning to the book. I’ve had dreams a little on the weird side the last few nights. I’ve had disquieting memories of an old level from Dynasty Warriors 4 that gave me nearly identical trouble at ages 13 and 32. The level is a recreation of the Shu invasion of the southern Nanman territories. I remember the first time I booted up my Playstation 2, a small black box containing a child’s idea of the future at the edge of the millennium. I remember looking into that box through the surface of the television, selecting the Memory Card with my controller, and being washed in cold light from the empty grey on the screen.
# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #
For the July issue of GUNK, I wrote about my experience carrying my drum equipment across Brooklyn, reflecting on how the phrase “bring your breakables” applied to the drums, the human body, and the MTA. While this piece has been available in print all month, it’s only just made it to the internet as of this week. Please give it a read and send the GUNK crew some love.
Bellows are hitting the road for a quick run across the East Coast with the DIY icon Terror Pigeon. You can find a full list of dates and locations on Terror Pigeon’s website!
After a successful expedition upstate to Troy (we broke even!), Laughing Stock will return to the city limits on August 17th to enter the STONE CIRCLE, alongside A Sword, Shira, and French Kiss.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a Spotify playlist with all of this year’s tracks here.
“La Raza” by Luis Gasca (For Those Who Chant, 1972)
Shout out to Aquarium Drunkard for putting me onto this one. Excellent Latin jazz with a backing band of Return to Forever and Santana members (including Santana himself!). Definitely some shades of Bitches Brew though way less cluttered. Plus, look at that album art. Whew. If I ever get back into physical media this will be a must-own on the strength of the design alone.
“Guided By The Moon” by Knocked Loose (A Different Shade of Blue, 2019)
I’ve spent a little too much time lately on newer music, so I decided to revisit some favorites from the recent past. I wasn’t too hot on this band’s new record, but Blue is a monster. This tune works best in context of the whole record, that drum fill leading out of the end of the song is a hilarious dead end by itself, but even in a sub-optimal setting it kicks major ass. I love how the drummer goes with closed hi-hats to start the groove off, giving the band an actual runway to the room-leveling heaviness that they typically aim for.
“The Emerald Pearl” by So Hideous (None But A Pure Heart Can Sing, 2021)
Maybe one of my favorite heavy songs of the decade so far. Shades of spaghetti westerns, Francis The Mute era The Mars Volta, and Envy, all powered by an excellent drum performance. A smorsgasbord of great sounds. Outrageously high energy. Like scaling a mountain with a chamber orchestra on your heels and the sun in your face.
“Bring On The Dancing Horses” by Echo & The Bunnymen (Songs to Learn & Sing, 1985)
Two weekends ago Laughing Stock drove up to Troy, NY to play a show at Eldorado Bar. Judging by the posters hanging on the walls Eldorado (stylized as one word, perhaps for SEO reasons?) specializes entirely in punk and hardcore shows. Well, the minute Laughing Stock got off stage from our soundcheck they immediately switched the house music to a post-punk playlist nearly identical to our internal influences playlist. Somehow none of us recognized this tune, though. Lovely stuff, I had the chorus stuck in my head for most of the drive back home.
“Leave Me Alone Pt.2” by Cam’ron (Purple Haze, 2004)
~*My girlfriend*~ and I like to listen to rap while driving around. At one point “Oh Boy” came on and ~*my girlfriend*~ asked me if Cam’ron had any other songs. I immediately commandeered the aux and cranked Purple Haze. I don’t know if I can think of a rap record more rewarding to revisit. You never need to “decode” what Cam is saying, but his lyrics are so dense with clever turns of phrase that it’d be impossible to catch and appreciate each one on the first listen. My personal favorite from this time through:
“I wouldn’t say I’m Nino at The Carter/I’m more like the plant in Little Shop Of Horrors/But I don’t say feed me Seymour’/I say feed me Dame, feed me Lyor/Epic, they used to feed me detours/Roc-A-Fella, they feed me C-4”
And that isn’t even half of the lines he gets out of just that one rhyme scheme. Effortlessly cool.
\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /
Here are five micro reviews from my high school and college CD collection. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.
Old Money by Omar Rodriguez Lopez (2008) - Progressive Rock
ORL has released a preposterous amount of solo material outside of his The Mars Volta catalog. I had no idea where to start so I picked this one up arbitrarily [Editor’s Note: I’m pretty sure this was the only one of his records available at my local record store, so it maybe wasn’t *that* arbitrary]. Instrumental fusion-ish guitar rock. Extremely vibey/psychedelic. Great playing, as you would expect. Kinda formless and meandering, but it keeps wandering into cool ideas so it works.
Mob Rules by Black Sabbath (1981) - Heavy Metal
I bought this used from a guy that I also bought a five string bass from senior year of high school. Years later I saw the same guy guitar teching for Tribulation when they went on tour with Deafheaven and Envy. Small world! This is the second Dio Sabbath album, now with Vinnie Appice on drums. It’s so fucking good. Monster grooves, a more upbeat style from Iommi & Butler, and Dio hams it up like only he can. “Country Girl” is maybe the most underrated Sabbath tune, relatively speaking. Catch me on the right day and I’ll tell you to your face that Dio Sabbath is better than Ozzy Sabbath.
Process of a New Decline by Gorod (2009) - Death Metal
French tech death. Their first album got a lot of web buzz but then people kind of moved on. Weird because they only got better from there. What I like about this band is that they find ways to make this genre funny. Their riffs pull right up to the edge of clown town before zooming back into death metal proper. Not too zany, thankfully. Good stuff if you’re into this sort of thing.
Toxicity by System of A Down (2001) - Nü-Metal
The record that started it all (for me). I heard “Chop Suey!” when an older kid put it on at a birthday party I was attending when I was 11. My life has never been the same. This opened my ears to heavy music and political music that wasn’t Bob Dylan. It made System of a Down into stars in spite of their airplay being diminished after 9/11. Incredibly catchy, hilarious, heartfelt, politically charged, and it sounds like a million bucks (Andy Wallace, everyone). I don’t agree with all of the lyrics (science is pretty neat imo) but “Prison Song” and “Deer Dance” are relevant to this very day. One of my favorite albums ever.
Spirit Animal by Zombi (2009) - Progressive Rock
I saw this band open for Isis and got hooked. They’re a synth and drum duo who get compared to 80s Rush and Tangerine Dream. On this record they notably added guitar to some tunes. It opens slow, but once it gets going its pretty cool. Very methodical and deliberate music, based on repetition and gradual change. It’s a cool vibe but sometimes it slips into the background.
Oh, yes. My introduction was to SoaD was their first record. One day at school a classmate was like here, listen to this, and passed me his headphones. For me and my gothic-industrial rock attuned ears, it was a revelation. I hadn't imagined it was possible for music to be so HARD.