I Do Believe They've Had Enough Of Me

I'm moving to Chicago

Hello.

I had a cute any funny and maybe just a little insightful piece about animals on the internet planned for this week but frankly I’m not in the mood.

On Monday some NYPD officers opened fire on a subway platform in Brownsville and hit four people, including one cop, two bystanders, and the man that they’d chased on to the platform after he jumped a turnstile. One of the bystanders sustained brain damage after a bullet grazed his head. The NYPD claim the fare evader had a knife, but can’t seem to get their story straight about it. A subway fare costs $2.90 these days. The officers in question were willing to risk the lives of 4 people at 73 cents a pop.

This immense fuck up makes me mad for a number of reasons. This shooting feels like the natural end point of a number of infuriating subplots in New York City politics over the last few years. Combine Mayor Eric Adams deploying more officers than ever into the subway system in order to get the city’s “swagger back” after COVID, citizens committing vigilante violence against other commuters they deem dangerous, NY Governor Kathy Hochul pulling the plug on a congestion pricing bill that would have funneled money into the decaying infrastructure of the MTA, and the MTA begging New Yorkers to stop skimping out on fares and something like this seems equally inevitable and frustratingly avoidable.

I want to make it clear that this is not some abstract concern on my part. As I wrote about in GUNK earlier this year, I’ve spent a LOT of time on the subway lately. I’ve been all over Brooklyn, North, South, Central, and as a result of the G train shutdown this summer, a lot further East than my usual travels would have taken me. The increase in police presence is palpable no matter what part of the city you’re in. This has not necessarily stopped fare evasion. If anything, the increased price of a ride and the overall increases in the cost of living have only made turnstile-hopping more common. I’ve seen people of all stripes and types slipping through turnstiles or holding the emergency doors open for other commuters. Could I identify any of them in a lineup? Of course not! The point I’m getting at is that the circumstances that led to this shooting are present at nearly every station in the borough. It is not hard for me to imagine a cop, bored of playing Candy Crush on their phone, getting overzealous at some teenager making a break for a train and blasting my skull open while I’m carrying my drums to a gig.

But of course they don’t shoot at guys like me. When I was 13 some friends and I got busted by an undercover cop for doubling up in a turnstile. All we got was a stern warning. We were traveling from Carrol Gardens to Park Slope. New Yorkers living out in East Brooklyn, one of the most neglected parts of the city, are not going to get the same soft treatment as dumbass kids in Park Slope. There’s a racial component to this and a co-morbid class component too. It’s only going to get uglier in the next few years too. This shooting happened at an L train stop. The L has been a reliable marker and engine for gentrification in Brooklyn from Williamsburg to Bushwick and now Ridgewood. It’s only a matter of time until rising rents drive the bohemian-student-hipsters further east along the L line. Same story every few years. People get squeezed out, the cool arts & culture get quickly upsold into high rises and upscale restaurants. I love the venue/bar Purgatory, probably the coolest place to play a show in 2024, but it’s presence in Brownsville is a sure sign of what the area around the Wilson stop will start to look like in a few years. I don’t need to spell this out, you know the deal.

There’s a lot that I love about New York City, and there’s a lot about it that leaves me exhausted. I’m tired of the bickering between the city and state governments. I’m tired of seeing more and more cops filling the MTA and feeling less and less safe around any of them. I’m tired of watching charming family sized buildings (like the one I’m writing in now) get torn down and replaced with impersonal glass monoliths. I’m tired of all my favorite venues closing.

New York is evidently tired of me too. In less than two weeks I will have been evicted from my apartment in South Brooklyn. By that time I’ll already be unpacking my stuff in ~*my girlfriend’s*~ apartment in Chicago. New York City is making it very hard for me to miss it. Sure, I will miss my friends and family. I will miss my job, which I am leaving just as I’m finding my groove at it. I will miss all the awesome musical collaborators I’ve worked with since 2017. But I will not miss “The City” as a concept. This is an unpleasant and stifling place to live. Everything great about it exists in spite of the dehumanizing grind it demands. It feels impossible to think of the future here. There is only the scramble to survive moment to moment. I’ve never felt like I’ve truly *lived* in any of the apartments that I’ve rented here, only that I’ve holed up there temporarily. I look forward to having the space to feel like I actually belong where I am. So while I expect spend a lot of time reflecting on what the last seven years meant to me, for now it’s goodbye and good riddance.

# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #

• The moment I finish this newsletter I have to do laundry so that I can pack up my clothes for the move. You know what clothes I don’t want to bother packing? My Lamniformes shirts. I only want to pack them up and send them to you. I want you to receive those shirts and wear them proudly. The same goes for my Lamniformes cassettes. It would rule if I did not need to bring them to Chicago. What I’m saying is that if you felt inclined to buy a shirt or a cassette from my Bandcamp page it would be a huge help.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 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, updated with a new song every Monday-Friday.

“III” by Molchat Doma (Belaya Polosa, 2024)

Internet chatter suggests to me that this Belarusian group had a moment of TikTok virality that has since passed. Happy to be late to the party so I can hear this on it’s own terms! What I’m hearing is mostly Depeche Mode cosplay, but there are far worse outfits to be caught in. Big fan of the long build up before the vocals enter.

“Who Knows Where The Time Goes” by Callahan & Witscher (Think Differently, 2024)

Alex Van Dorp (Altamira Records) sent me this record the other week and I spent the whole run time with my brow furrowed and my arms crossed. I gave the record my complete attention and felt alternatively flustered, frustrated, annoyed, and amused. This is a good sign that Callahan & Witscher are onto something with Think Differently, but the results made me squirm as often as they impressed me. Nowhere did I feel more implicated than on this song, which dredged up the memory of every mediocre concert I’ve ever played or attended. That is sadly a lot of time to suddenly account for.

“Beleza Pula” by Masayoshi Takanaka (Brasilian Skies, 1978)

This came on in the drive as Sam and I were driving back down to Gowanus after successfully recording seven songs worth of drums and bass for the next Lamniformes release. Felt like a victory theme. Japanese fusion musicians doing Brazilian samba pastiche scratches several of my itches.

“Leap of Faith” by IQ (Ever, 1993)

I’ve been digging into prog rock from the 80s and 90s for an upcoming project (and additionally because I love this shit). This era, the 80s in particular, is viewed as a fallow period for traditional progressive rock (we’ll get into the implications of that paradoxical genre name soon, I hope.) More than anything I think this take comes down to a distaste for the sonics of the 1980s, which leave the players exposed in high def/gated reverb clarity in a way that 70s production obscured. Of course in the case of a band like IQ, those same “cold” production qualities only highlight how tight these musicians are, making the second half of this tune an absolute blast to take in.

“Sex Ed” by Panthers (Are You Down??, 2002)

Shouts out to Zachary Lipez for going long on Panthers on his newsletter. As Lipez lays out this Orchid spin-off could only have existed in the 00s New York indie scene and yet don’t factor at all into the elements of that era currently getting regurgitated by the nostalgia engine. It’s impossible to imagine a band listing their favorite authors for a chorus in 2024 sounding anywhere near as cool as this song does. On reflection isn’t it weird that post-hardcore gradually got phased out of “indie”-ness and instead became a feeder system for mall emo boy bands? I think indie really lost something when it’s connection to hardcore got severed.

\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /

Here are five micro reviews from my high school and college collection of burnt CDs. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in 2021, 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.

Salvation by Cult of Luna (2004) - Post Metal

I learned about this band reading an interview with Aaron Turner of Isis where he accused Cult of Luna of being an Isis clone. I watched the music video for “Leave Me Here” and was instantly hooked. Sometimes bad press is good press. Cult of Luna are one of my all time favorite bands and this is their first great record. Patient, rhythm-and-atmosphere focused metal. The use clean vocals and pitched percussion give this one a unique flavor in their discography. Honestly this could go toe to toe with any Isis record. A real Magic vs Bird situation. Classic post metal record.

Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers (1999) - Rock

For about a month in 9th grade I listened to RHCP nonstop and then promptly never listened to them again. Very strange. This album was EVERYWHERE growing up. Learning how to play the title track on drums was how I figured out how to do ghost notes, so that’s cool. In general the rhythm section carries this record. Kiedis loses me immediately with that “ding dang dong dong ding dang” nonsense. The funk tracks are better than the soft rock ones. I don’t get the appeal anymore.

By The Way by Red Hot Chili Peppers (2002) - Rock

I remember this being the record I liked the most during my inexplicable and short lived RHCP phase. This one really leans into the soft rock aspect of their sound, more keys, vocal harmonies, less funk grunting etc. “Can’t Stop” felt like it was the biggest song in rock for a while. It helps that this album is mixed and produced very well. Goes down easy. It is cool to hear Frusciante mess around with his tone on each tune, but after a while it all goes down too easily. Feels like waiting in a doctor’s office for too long before an appointment.

Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers (1991) - Funk Rock

From what I understand this was the band’s big breakout in the early 90s, and “Under The Bridge” might still be their biggest hit. I don’t remember listening to this a lot when my friend burnt me a copy, but this is a lot of fun now. The band are playing their brains out. Even at 70+ minutes this album moves at a great pace because every groove they shift to is nasty. Kiedis is still a love it or hate it deal, but I think his blend of foul mouthed nonsense and sincere emotion kinda works here? Did not expect to like this one this much.

System of a Down by System of a Down (1998) - Nü-Metal

Everything that makes System who they are is already there on their debut, albeit in a rawer and uglier form. The first salvo from one of the most singular rock bands to ever get big. Who could predict that a band of Armenian and Lebanese dudes doing cartoon falsetto voices over Slayer riffs would make it this far? It’s not as airtight as Toxicity but it is a lot of fun. This one has a uniquely aggressive tone, in part because Serj really screams his head off on a lot of these tunes. Their most unhinged and zany album but also their heaviest. Great band, good debut.