(Finally) Available for free download!

here: http://quixodelic.com/site/category/the-utica-flower-company/

Okay, let’s do this again…

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UTICA FLOWER COMPANY2.0

Through the winter of 2006 and spring of 2007 I made a lo-fi psychedelic-pop record called ‘The Utica Flower Company’ with three guys from Cozy Home Records – Paul Burnout (The Real Burnouts), Bobby Rogan (Fig Mints of Your Imagination), and Luke Humann (Arthur Rules). It wasn’t released until a year later through the Cozy Home, but looking back I’m still very fond of that haphazard little collaboration.

The title track on the record was about a secret basement beneath a flower shop where ‘revolutionary people meet and records play for your soul’. In early 2009 I stumbled over an old email to Paul Burnout where I said that some day I’d like to start an actual Flower Company just like this. At the same time we were working on Quixodelic Records and had been referring to the collective, featuring artists from all over the globe, as The Utica Flower Company. So it wasn’t as giant a step as it sounds going out and buying a ship with the intention of sailing around the world.

On the 1st of May 2009, the Mardi set sail from Jacksonville with most of the collective on board. You can read about our adventures here:

theuticaflowercompany.wordpress.com

Now this is where is gets really weird. Eventually our imaginary ship sailed off the edge of the world and the four surviving Company members (myself, Simon Piler, Becky N, and Warchalking) escaped on an inflatable dinghy called The Ark with nothing but some cigarettes, rum, and a handful of salvaged musical instruments to keep us entertained while we drifted through the Unimerses.

Thankfully we had an old 4-track to capture the songs that have since been compilered and made available as ‘The Utica Flower Company 2.0′. These include (in my opinion) some of the most poignant songs Simon has ever written, three brand new Becky N tracks (fans of hers will appreciate that 3 new songs is nearly a year’s supply), a brilliant new Warchalking track called ‘Daydreamer Gasoline’ concerning the perils of smoking Rongovian tundra, two salvaged songs from cassettes made by some guy called Willoughby Toad, me re-singing the first Wheelies song I wrote in 2006 having ignored music for 9 nears previous, and all four of us singing together on ‘The Utica Flower Company Refrain’. It is understandably very different from his older sibling, limited by our lack of instruments and creative exhaustion from the previous year’s calamities, more folk than psychedelic, but crackling and popping with the same lo-fi genuine goodness. As different as it sounds, I am equally proud of the results and almost every song features some form of collaboration between its creators. I wrote ‘I’m In Love With You’ then Simon re-wrote the words before singing and played it six million billion times better than I ever could. Warchalking does backing vocals on Becky’s lovably diggable ‘Shark Ark’. I sing backing on Simon’s epic ‘Lung’ and duet with Becky on her ‘Things We’ve Done’. She plays accordion and Simon plays trombone on Willoughby’s ‘Ballad of Willoughby Toad’… the list goes on. Something that on paper should sound like a compilation of four Quixodelic artists somehow ends up sounding like a coherent-ish record and an audio postcard penned as a keepsake for ourselves.

Much of the coherence is to do with Simon Piler’s diligent mixing and mastering of the finished record, a feat which required him to sneak in and out of an alternate universe via a little door at the back of his brain throughout the summer at great personal risk to his own sanity. For this reason alone I hope you take a couple of minutes to download our imaginary little record and have a listen.

And we hope you like it.

Smally

A little retrospective mix-tape I made for CLLCT – featuring various great songs from all your favourite quixodelic artists that have previously released records in the store or been featured on The Daydream Generation compilations. Nothing new, but a lovely listen nevertheless.

Download the zip here

Listen to the record & hear plenty of more great music over at www.cllct.com

Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth

Syd Lane from The Loaded Whispers says there are two kinds of music – “That which moves you, and that which doesn’t”. I challenge anyone to tell me that the music she and poet partner-in-crime Jeremiah James make doesn’t fall into the former category.

From the first song I ever heard (“Easily Loved / Easily Hated” on Daydream Generation 6) I knew that this was very special music, but nothing prepared me for just how mind-blowingly great a full-length Loaded Whispers record would be. It was a weekday and with an early morning working start I was planning on being asleep no later than midnight when I first downloaded “All Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth”. My intention was to listen to a couple of songs before I drifted off. In actual fact from the moment “I’ve Got Sunshine” magically burst into my ears utterly stunning me to the pillow in amazement, there was no way I was drifting anywhere until the last notes of final track “Up The Shore” had rung out.

The composite elements of this self-recorded Dublin duo are actually quite simple. Syd Lane has one of the most incredible voices you are likely to ever hear, gliding and soulful, carrying hers and Jer’s words over stripped back tremelo electric guitar or shimmering piano melodies. At the root of it all is simply great songs – heartfelt without being mawkish, and cool enough to carry even the most charged of emotional content to a different stratosphere in your mind. An instantly recognisable breeze of sound blows through the recording moving it in the same direction, so even though a whole handful of genres are toppled like dominoes (psychedelic folk, piano pop ballads, Pixie-esque guitar, country-tinged folk blues, and 60s acid rock & roll), it’s the consistency that kills you – that feeling that the flawless songs surely at some point much reach some kind of logical conclusion and snuff out. But no, even as the playful (and damn brilliant) Carpenter’s nod right at the very end makes you grin, The Loaded Whispers are still whispering away from you.

Stand out tracks? Oh where do I begin? “I Got Big Dreams” is beautiful and poignant and timeless, could have been written in any of the last five decades and been loved by any of its generations. “Tell Me How” is almost like hearing Nico hitting high notes – so good that it appears (quite rightly) twice on the record. “Eidolons” is a feisty boy/girl duet full of fire barely concealing the laughter below the surface. “Charlotte” is the kind of song that someone would have sold their own Grandmother for to put in Marianne Faithful’s mouth in 1965. “Suicide In The Trenches” is a lyrical heavyweight synchronised to perfection in Syd’s voice. And if I had to pick a favourite of all the songs it would probably be “Sick of Writing Sad Songs” – I don’t think a day has passed since I first heard this record when I haven’t gone back to it at least once, with it’s rolling majestic piano and understated explosive melodies. Some days I’ve listened to more times than I can count on my fingers and toes.

So there you go. If you haven’t heard The Loaded Whispers before then now’s your chance – I can vouch from experience that “Artists Use Lies…” is as great an introduction to a genuine talent as you are going to find this year. And if you already know about them, then I’m sure you will have been nodding your head in agreement through these clumsy paragraphs where I’ve attempted to convey just how great a record this is. Sometimes when you discover a band whose music you love you get an insatiable urge to go out and find every song they’ve ever recorded and gorge yourself over the following weeks and months and hopefully years of your life. In this instance though, I feel completely different – I want to savour this one, give it weeks at least to go back to it again and again, hear things I didn’t hear the first twenty times around, and re-hear the things I’d happily hear twenty times more. Listening to it now as I write this I still feel as stunned as I did when I first heard it on the wrong side of midnight. Long may the wind of song whisper.

You can download THE LOADED WHISPERS “All Artists Use Lies To tell The Truth” for FREE at our Quixodelic Record Store!

THE LOADED WHISPERS

Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth

DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE TODAY

download it at Quixodelic Records

Every once in a while a record lands in your life and blows you away. This is one of those records – an intelligent and heartfelt collection of folk-psychedelics, with songs that will linger in your mind like ghosts long after they have played. Dublin’s THE LOADED WHISPERS are probably as great as lo-fi musicians get, combining the brilliant poetry of Jeremiah James and the unmistakeable mind-blowing voice of Syd Lane, over fuzzy stripped-back psych guitar and dancing piano keys. “Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth” is a perfect introduction to what they do, with so many stand-out tracks that all you can do is let the record play out from beginning to end. And that really is the truth.

Find out more about The Loaded Whispers – here

The interview of interviews? Quite possibly. Either way, this is one long and mightily interesting reads, so strap yourselves in, get comfy and dig on it.

1 How did you get into making music? 

I think I was singing little songs from a very early age, and I’m sure that my father would sing his (unaccompanied) songs to me as well, when I was very young.  My first song didn’t really have a name, and was only one line long, repeated over and over – Òwe gotta do one thing, we gotta put the lights on the Christmas tree.Ó  I was probably about 3 or 4 years old.  I remember singing it while crossing the old (now demolished) blue bridge over the Eau Claire river, near my early home in the Shaw Town area of Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  It is strange to be a kid. 

My entire, ill-absorbed exposure to sheet music consisted of my stint as a trumpeter with my high school marching band.  While the more technical fineries bounced off my brain, I’m pretty sure I learned several pretty important things in the band – first and foremost, that a band is not [!] about the lead player, (which I certainly wasn’t,) but rather about the balance and blend of different simultaneous tones that made up the music.  I also had lots of practice moving in time to music.  Nowadays it  kinda works in reverse;  when I move in time my brain just spits rhythms back out.  A lot of my songs are written while I’m walking around.   

Soon enough I bought my acoustic guitar and started playing songs with two of by best childhood friends, Brendon Hertz and Joel Rorher.  We became Something About Pirates.  None of us really knew how to play our instruments, but Joel had a bass and an amp and Brendon had an cheapy keyboard of his Grandmother’s.  (I think he had taken lessons at some point.)  The best part of the whole thing, I think, was that we learned to play our instruments together, however strangely.  At first, we were really rudimentary, almost shockingly so.  At some point we had a few songs and decided it was time to try our hand at recording, and with a single computer microphone went on to record ‘Goat Farm’.  It’s a pretty bad album, but at that point,  I was hooked. 

I went to college, studied the (oh so sweet) patterns of nature and met Adam Gregory Pergament.  His poetic brilliance/madness would strongly influence the way I looked at music, and how I went about it.  By following his band, StoneFloat, I certainly learned a lot about the business of music – at first as a fan, but then carrying amplifiers, running lights, and eventually their soundboard.  Most of all, I loved the wild energy of music.  I became a passionate seeker of good environments for music to occur in.  Streets and alleys are usually alright, so I did a little busking.    

After a while, as all local bands seem to, StoneFloat broke up.  Of course, Adam wasn’t about to give up, so he focused energy on a new project, CHIME Collective.  Chime was practically a circus, but we called it a big band.  We met at the (late) Madison Center For The Creative and Cultural Arts (MCCCA), run by Jon Taylor Hannah, a free jazz musician out of the Chicago AACM.  The MCCCA  really was a nasty, boomy box of a room and it always sounded like you were playing with reverb on.  This was complicated by the fact that CHIME was huge – sometimes as many as twelve musicians would show up, though you never could really tell how many would attend..  Besides, CHIME was completely improvisational; partly, I imagine, to woo Mr. Hannah himself, or at least impress him, but mostly because we just enjoyed the freedom of flow.   

Sometimes our music was a sonic quagmire; an impossibly multilayered morass of dischord.  (To be honest, I sometimes really liked that washed out, oceanic noise…)  At other times, it clicked, and was extraordinarily metrical or funky or sparse.   I signed on with my guitar and began by playing short patterns of notes (or sometimes even single notes) for minutes at a time, as a background to the main players.  I did a lot of experiments with relative amplitude and delay during these early sessions – and I think it began some reiterative calculations that my rhythmic heart is still computing today.  This is where Def Mute comes into the picture.  He’s a splendid keyboardist, but somehow he’d always take up a seat at the grand piano in the room full of amplifiers and drums.  I absolutely loved his appreciation for the quieter members of the band, and I’d spend a lot of energy matching rhythms with him – sometimes we were really the momentum behind that avalanche-behemoth that was early CHIME. 

Around that time I had a realization – my playing had gotten stuck in a rut.  While using standard tuning, I kept on the same, boring patterns I had learned very early on.  I didn’t know any other way to do things, I suppose.  So, I retuned.  I think it was in the middle of a jam, actually, when I realized a newly-replaced string on my guitar was very out of tune (as they tend to be).  The only strange part was that I was enjoying the sound that it was making.  So, I reached up and began de-tuning the entire instrument, experimenting right then-and-there with new combinations of intervals.  That really describes CHIME best, I think – it was a sound laboratory.  And we, of course, were the Experimentalists.  Shortly thereafter, I settled on the open tuning that I’ve used ever since. 

CHIME bottomed out in the winter, when everyone in Wisconsin is glum and just trying to survive.  We dwindled to three musicians – Adam, myself, and Tom Kourakis (the wildest and most undisciplined virtuoso I’ve ever met).  As the ensemble shrunk, I found myself becoming more and more of the musical leader of the group.  I think that was partly due to my intimate knowledge of Adams words, and my understanding of how to interpret them.  We started playing as a ’sonic setting’ for modern (aerial) dance, something I will never forget – watching dancers swing and whirl to your music is probably like nothing else.  I became enormously infatuated with motion and dance – quite a bit of my music during that time was descriptive of something in motion.  (see Cattle Tracks…)  I also made enormous amounts of short recordings on cassette, worked at (the now defunct) King Club as a sound technician, and started to register thoughts on the relationship between a sound and it’s ’sonic environment’. 

That’s pretty much how I got into making the music I do today.  Yowza.  (You poor, belabored readers.) 
 

2 Where are you from and what’s the music scene like there?   

I’m from the state of Wisconsin, around the Great Lakes region of the North American Continent.  We’re a heavily glaciated place, though not currently, despite common belief.  Plenty of oak and pine, some lakes (~15,000) and lots of fresh air.  I hail from Eau Claire – it was a lumberjack town, then a tire town, but now it’s probably known for it’s computer chips, I think.  [I'm also happy to announce that downtown Eau Claire is finally bouncing back after the construction of the 'Urban Sprawl Shopping Mall' in the late 80's.  Hurrah!] 

In Wisconsin, the music scene operates at it’s maximum potential in capitol city, Madison.  Honestly, it’s rather quiet.  Madison is the kind of place that nurtures the music of human beings, which surprisingly isn’t ravishingly popular among most human beings.  Wisconsin doesn’t kick out many famous musicians, (The Violent Femmes and Bon Iver come to mind…) but I do think that Wisconsinites appreciate live music; local music.  I guess we’re a place with a lot of bar music.  (There are a lot of bars, after all…)  My time with StoneFloat and working at The King Club really shocked me into understanding that live music is still the black-market, traveling minstrel show that it used to be in the olden days, except with more electricity and drugs and publicity.  I am often startled by what people imagine a musician’s life to be like – they account for a delicious creme puff diet of fame and wealth – while they manage to forget the long hours, weather, driving (=money), equipment/venue troubles, publicity(=money) and preparation actually put into a show.  Besides, the resistance to new ideas expressed in sound can be enormously reactive and swift; especially in bars!  I think it’s absolutely necessary to understand that as a modern folk musician. 

The finest music in the upper midwest is probably made in Chicago.  (Sorry, Minneapolis…)  It’s a real pleasure to enjoy the solitude of the Northwoods and still be so close to that epicenter of music and art.  I especially love the Artists for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM) group, and the related musicians – Roscoe Mitchell the foremost.  Venues like The Velvet Lounge or The Hungry Brain are special refuge for the waning sonic wanderer.   
 

3 What is New Radish? 

New Radish is a creative fellowship.  By this, I mean that it is a network of generative individuals; artistic, scientific, technological, and physical.  It is focused around the archive and transfer of creative information.  Basically, it is a giant stockroom/taproot of magical alchemical ingredients, computer programs, short musical videos and photographs.   I guess it came from the realization that if the ‘information class’ were more altruistic with their scraps of creative energy there would be a greater overall output of creative energy from the group.  (For the same reason that recycling or thrift-stores are a useful idea – they concentrate excess energy in a single area so that it is easier to find.)  The fun part is that anything goes with New Radish – the more it is like a piece of strange junk to you, the more likely it may be useful  to someone else.   

I can see The Utica Flower Company satisfying a lot of my New Radish goals – it’s probably just a matter of having enough space and organizing information appropriately.  That Flickr site is a great start.  As I see it developing, a Radish Fellow in Rhode Island could take a photograph today, and a Radish Lass in Great Britain could make a show-poster out of it tomorrow.  Or, you could hear your own recordings from a dentist’s appointment turning up on one of my next albums – you never know.  

4 You seem to have an endless back catalogue of records – what are they and where can they be got? Which is the best Simon Piler record to begin with? 

I really do love to record, and since I don’t play out too often my albums are the bulk of my musical process. 

My full discography is included on my myspace page (myspace.com/simonpiler).   All of my recordings are available in CD (hard copy) or electronic (MP3) formats, save for the ‘music journal’, which is only available on cassette tape.  I really hope to have the capability to distribute all of my music on cassette soon, because I’ve become quite a fan of the sound of tape.  Are other folks, too? 

You can download ’songs from home’, my latest album, from the Quixodelic Records store for free.  (Yes, FREE!  Boogie!) 

Otherwise, if you’d like to listen, you can contact me via myspace (myspace.com/simonpiler), or send an email to The Utica Flower Company – our email address is theuticaflowercompany (at) gmail.com.  CDs are send through the mail free of charge.  You can also contact me by snail-mail at our physical address: 

Simon Piler and The Atom Band

1325 S. Farwell St.

Eau Claire, WI

54701 

Just make sure you indicate what recording you’d like, and how we can get it to you - that is, provide either an electronic or physical address. 

Ah, but which recording are you best suited to?

I will be honest.  I cannot give you a very direct answer – but wouldn’t you like to decide for yourself? 

I think that ’songs from home’ may pick you up and move you.  I believe in strong winds, and I think it’s worth a listen.   

However, I’d really recommend ‘garden.’ as the best album to start with.  It is concurrent to my time spent playing with CHIME, and the indirect product of a related boom of minor recordings, my ‘music journal’.  (The music journal was sort of a running sketchbook of sounds and musical bits that I kept for reference.)  The summer that I recorded  ‘garden.’ during was a happy, carefree time for me, and the tone of the album reflects that, I think.  It’s the very essence of me at that time – sympathetic, whimsical and strange.  It is fine music for alley-listening. 

If you’d like to try a slightly darker fare, I would recommend ‘Short Score’s Album’ (also called ‘EXIT’.)  I was quite sick with pneumonia, but too stubborn to go to a doctor and living in a filthy little room in one of the snowiest Wisconsin winters on record.  In addition, I was going to school full time, running sound at night, and playing with a psychedelic garage-folk/metal band as a bassist.

The record spans the time of my sickness and some of the following recovery.  Needless to say, it deals with death, apocalypse and convalescence in a very palpable way.  I think it may be the most important record to me, regardless of its significance to others. 

In the spring of 2008, I moved out to the Great Plains of the North American continent.  It’s a truly open space, and very vast.  The volume of the space begins to act on you almost immediately as you settle there – the tips of your toes are just aware of an unimaginable depth and stillness.  The Plains are a place of wind and soil.  It is a simple place; even stark.

I worked for a bit as a field-scientist and met Scarytoes, a very friendly Texan (and subsequent member of the Atom Band).  While we were out on a work hitch I dreamt the entire setting and plot to the short play, ‘A DISASTER’, in a single night (while sleeping/sweating in the top bunk of a trailer during a tremendous summer thunderstorm at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota).  

The play is a musical (specifically, an oratorio,) and the music from the play along with the rest of the recordings I made with Scarytoes on The Plains make up ‘A DISASTER’.  It leans towards Americana and folk quite heavily – probably the most of any of my albums.  So, if you’re into drama or folk music, ‘A DISASTER’ is a good bet. 

Around the same time I wanted to release three EPs simultaneously.  It was sort of a way to laugh in the face of rigorously marketed music.  In the end, the EPs weren’t released simultaneously, but I did eventually release three: ‘theatre music EP’, ‘Test’, and what would become ’songs from home’.  [Note: Actually, none of the original recordings for 'songs from home' made the final album!  The originals were extremely loose and raw - all of them recorded on the same boombox I used to keep the 'music journal'.  Most of the tracks were short improvisations on electric guitar recorded in my childhood bedroom at my parent's home while I was visiting for my brother's high school graduation party.] 

‘Theatre music EP’ is strange. (Please don’t listen to this album first!)   It’s not for those predisposed to the law-and-order of pitch.  It IS for those who like drama, especially comedy.  It’s also for the few true clowns left in the world.  (Released Halloween, 2008.) 

‘Test’ had an alternative title – ‘Five Goddamn Love Songs’.  It is for people who like love songs but don’t know the first thing about being in love.  Do you think you are in love?  Who are in love with?  If you can answer the first question but not the second, ‘Test’ is for you.  (Released Election Day, 2008.)??

5 Who are The Atom Band?

The Atom Band cannot be found as the solution to any equation and are at best probabilistic.  In short, they are illusory.  They are the mythopoetic accompanists to my music, and consist of the few icons of tall-tale and legend that I have encountered and collaborated with over the years. 

The Atom Band is:

Brendon Hertz (Yanpa) – Atom Band bandleader and player of trumpets, flugelhorns, and keyboards.  Singer of harmony vocals.  His side projects include Jump the Wagon, a splendid Eau Claire band.   

Def Mute (Okaga) – Dr. Beat for the Atom Band.  Plays saxophones, xylophones, keyboards, and electronic instruments.  Accompanies me by shouting, whistling or waxing lyrical.  Supplies sound and video samples.  His side projects are many, but include Tycho Broham, a Chicago IDM group. 

Scarytoes (Eya) – This friendly Texan hails from the hill country – Austin way.  He acts as ‘Need-Be-MC’ for the Atom Band and plays occasional rhythm guitar or kitchen percussion.  Supplies homebrew.  He’s also necessary for our occasional bursts of clowning. 

Emerson ÒHamboneÓ Betchkal (Yamni) - Our favorite muscular drummer and bearer-of-nicknames.  Also known as Hammy, Hamster, or affectionately as Emmy.  Philosophical compatriot and supplier of emotional stability. 

Lieutenant Spark (Yata) – Our most mysterious member, principled by chaos and the unboundedness of nature.  There is a certain, distinctive probability that he is any given person at any given time.  We have reason to believe that Spark is, in fact, supernatural, and is probably drawn to most thoughtful sonic explorers of the world.   

I should also mention at this point our most beloved electricity enthusiast, Sir Matthew the Mighty, Champion of Science, First Court of The Solar Corona (Tat?).  What infamous group of tone-scientists is complete without their all-seeing engineer? 

6 You’re into making musical videos – what inspires you and how do you go about making them? 

I like to collect all kinds of creative information, and video is a rich variety thereof.  I am continually amazed by the patterns and forms of nature and how video captures those over time.  When I  manipulate video, I like to make those patterns much more apparent.   

In terms of drama, I like spontaneous, poorly-acted situations with lots of jump cuts.  (Hee, hee, hee…)  I guess I like ghost movies, too.  Sometimes we do puppet theatres, though I have never managed to make a puppet the least bit expressive.  I’d like to do some dance videos, but I have to get brave enough to ask people to dance in them and organized enough to clearly explain how I’d like them to dance.  I would also like to mention at this point that Scarytoes and I are the unofficial mythopoetic spokespeople for GLEEM toothpaste.   

When I make a video, I like to spend as little time as possible filming.  It forces me to use scraps of video, sometimes the same clips over and over.  I use a still camera to shoot all my video, which reduces the resolution quite a lot.  When I edit, I like to really speed along, and let things fall into place.  If I can edit a two minute video in less than an hour, I’m very happy. 
 

7 Your music is very lo-fi (in a spontaneous good way) – is that by design or circumstance? How do you go about capturing a song (from conception of the idea to the finished recording)? 

With honesty, the lo-fi textures of my music result partly by intention and partly by accident.  I think certain kinds of noise are very beautiful.  The ear has only such a threshold of perception, towards which information is frayed by noise.  You can use this to a sonic advantage.  True noise like a mist that partially obscures sounds.  It offers a pervasive color and texture of frequency that you can’t get from an instrument – the incorporeal blur of dream, as I see it.  Besides, isn’t randomness just delicious and creamy? 

The other half, of course, is that my recording methods are far from perfect – I record pretty much everything on cheap microphones in almost any sonic environment.  I use tape quite a lot, which is obviously noisy. 

Process is important to me because recording is (typically) the end I work towards while composing.   It’s kinda odd, then, that I spend a very short time actually recording sounds.  Instead, I spend quite a bit of time/energy creating an atmosphere suitable for creativity.  My geographic location has a huge amount to do with it, and the space where I live – both will undoubtedly draw certain repetitive behaviors, feelings, and observations from me.  I believe that we are the sum of our experiences, insofar as they remain with us for a time and change us.  So, I try hard to be aware – awake or asleep.  

Should I pick up an instrument and play it, I try to ‘tune’ my style to my mood.  If something is not sympathetic to the trajectories or patterns of my life at the time, I try to amend it, and make it better.  It is through this process – somewhat similar to the scientific process – I can slowly improve my musical description of a complicated feeling or (e)motion.  I like to record on the fly, that is, improvise, because it keeps my mind free for evaluation, not bogged down in wrote memory.  Of course, improvisation can be frustrating, because you might not be able to capture what you had expected at first.  It helps me to warm up by playing several ‘throw-away’ one minute song-sketches before recording.  (Thankee, Roscoe Mitchell.)  It also helps to have an idea for a song in your head and to knead it by walking about and singing it in all different ways (and in all different sonic environments).  It’s sort of a beautiful yeast-like subconscious consumption of a song’s harmolodic sweetness – converting it to a rising sourdough soul-bread.  Yes, time and motion can work out quite a few musical roadblocks, BUT, if I let my bread rise too long, it’ll collapse in the oven.  I like to record a song no more than a few days after ‘kneading’ it.   

Once we get the first few tracks down – usually guitar-bones or keyboards, then we add supplemental textures.  I’m usually pretty particular about arrangements.  The right mixtures of frequencies are very important, I think- they must be sympathetic to the overall feeling of the song.   I rely on Def Mute extensively for his delicacy and attention to instrumentation.  The physical recording environment is a big deal, too.  When I was recording ‘Short Score’s Album’, I built a little blanket-tent in my already tiny room to make it sound even closer.  At my current residence in Florida, the walls are stark wood – all very reflective surfaces, and so things sound a lot more roomy.   
 

8 The pure poetry of your words are really great – what are the main themes you find yourself revisiting, and what other writers do you like? 

Thankee, sir.   I certainly enjoy writing.  

Almost all of my songs are about things that I actually experienced; asleep or awake.  So I tend to write a lot about my dreams and nature.  I like to write about death, too.  Most of my poems are mystical observations, but recently I’ve spent time on much more tangible topics.  I appreciate myths, and so many of my songs end up using parallels to the old stories.   

Besides myth, I read a lot of poetry and drama.  Alfred Jarry, the ‘grandfather of dada’, comes to mind (though I’m not sure he’d fully appreciate a label like that).  I also like August Strindberg, Gary Snyder, and Sun Ra.  I can’t really discount the musical poets that I appreciate – I was hugely influenced by my friend and teacher, Adam Pergament, of course.  I also like the way that Frank Zappa writes his lyrics – they’re almost like the words to a play or opera.  Tom Marshall, the lyricist for Phish, was an early influence, as was David Bowie.  And what list of musical poets would be complete without Bob Dylan? 

To me, writing is about describing something. I’ve enjoyed quite a lot of technical and scientific writing for it’s sheer clarity, and so it has influenced me as well.  Mathematics is an extraordinarily frank language, though I often have considerable trouble understanding it! 

9 What’s the weirdest musical instrument you’ve used on a song? 

That’s a hard one.  I’m a diehard kitchen percussionist, so I use plenty of strange percussive devices – bicycles, washing machines, keys/silverware/loose change, and my favorite; the refrigerator-shelf washboard.  Really, the weirdest ‘instrument’ I’ve used is a room full of noisy, cranked-up amplifiers, computer fans and radio static ‘washed’ clean by the noise filter in (the freeware program) Audacity.  The effect-as-programmed is quite glitchy, and the result is a beautiful, warbling, birdlike melody.  (Listen to ‘wizeen’ on the album ‘garden.’)   

I also occasionally use a cheap microphone designed to record phone conversations (illegal in some of the states, I believe).  I only mention it because it’s wonderful as a post-effect to introduce feedback into a previous recording.  Call yourself up, place the ‘tapped’ phone in front of an amplifier playing the passage of interest, and hit record.  The resulting recording with be similar to the original, but will include feedbacks at the resonant frequencies of the phone casing.  Crazy.  (If you listen carefully to ‘muse’ on ’songs from home’ you may see what I mean…) 

10 What next for Simon Piler? 

Well, I’m back to the grindstone already, writing new songs and recording them with my usual fever.  I’ve got the first threads of a new album working through the sewing-machine of my brain, and I suppose it’s only a matter of time until I produce a tangle of appropriate size and complexity… 

I’m also collaborating with Namu the Disco Whale (a cetacean out of Chicago) on a short EP – should be quite interesting, I think… It has to do with the protein CYP2D6, one of the enzymes of the liver responsible for breaking down toxins in the body.  Remarkably, it’s not present in some people.   

Probably some jumping-in-dreams and pestering Sir Matthew the Mighty into making computer algorithms for me.  Some cartoons for the Wordpress page. 

I will laugh at tree frogs because they are small and weird animals with sticky legs and arms.

UFC1

Out Today

Ever wondered where to start with the 19 records we’ve released/co-released or re-released through our very own QUIXODELIC RECORDS?

Well wonder no more. For those of you new to this musical curiosity shop of free downloads, then why not try on The Utica Flower Company’s first ever sampler (imaginatively titled “UFC1″)? A single track  lifted from each of the records, songs I’ve been listening to far too many times since the first ever Quixodelic Record (Warchalking’s “Stratum”) burst from The Void in March 2008. Dig on the psychedelic sounds of bands like ROLLERCOASTER, THE ORANGE DROP, UBERFUZZ, CODY HIGH SCHOOL, BROKEN MONO, and ROCKETSHIPS OF LOVE, sing along with the lo-fi folk/pop of JANE GILMORE, KALEIDONAUTS, SUCKS TO LALA LAND, BECKY N, SIMON PILER AND THE ATOM BAND, THE WHEELIES, THE PLAYGROUND and JAMES REDMOND, or even try putting something genre-defying like DEAD CANARIES or WARCHALKING into your ears. And if none of that floats your boat there’s always the magic of FIG MINTS (OF YOUR IMAGINATION), or the weirdly wonderful secret and anonymous DAYDREAM UNDERGROUND. In a nutshell that’s something for almost everyone and everybody they know, and hopefully will point you in the right direction before that download-trigger-happy finger starts a-clickin’.

Just click here

to head to our QUIXODELIC RECORDS store if and when you’re ready

Oh, and if 19 free tracks are not enough to convince you to have a listen, for the first 50 downloaders we’ll be giving away our exclusive… wait for it…

UTICA FLOWER COMPANY FREE CUT OUT AND KEEP TOP TRUMPS

No shit.

And you thought a cut out paper moustache with Sgt. Pepper was cool?

Smally

The Psychedelic Gods said “Let there be sound”, and there was sound.

Triptacular, primal, headmelting, sonic melodies that brought them to their knees beneath the holy strobe of kaleidoscopic colour. And The Psychedelic Gods heard it was good – so very fucking fine – but after several triptacular, primal, headmelted, sonic hours of said melodies, they could no longer hear themselves dream and commanded the sound to stop. And stop it did.

But then, as they closed their drug-heavy eyelids weighed down with cosmic visions, they heard something within the thick folds of silence, just a guitar and a voice entwined in The Void. The guitar was acoustic, with uncut strings that rattled magically together, rolling out beautiful and simple lines lifted from faraway days when girls wore flowers in their hair (and some men did too). The voice was simply beautiful, young and gently carrying the timeless wordstreams of one Bob Dylan. The Psychedelic Gods heard it was good and kept their drug-heavy eyelids closed, and as they collectively began remembering, smiles broke out like old black and white flowers on their faces.

Now I’m no Psychedelic God, but that’s pretty much how I feel whenever I listen to Sucks To LaLa Land. As a singer/songwriter, Visalia’s Keith Crain effortlessly loads his songs with promise – here is the unmistakable sound of unconscious raw talent, finding its feet and growing all the time. Cover versions are perhaps an essential part of this process, the study of great songs, dismantling them and singing them again for fun. Even more amazing, is that Keith somehow makes other people’s songs his own, born again in the eardrums, yet armed with the minimum of tools. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still holding out for the first collection of original songs, but in the meantime these eight cover versions of Dylan classics will keep us ticking over expectantly. As an introduction to the sounds of Sucks To LaLa Land, Dylan and Crain are a perfect fit – legendary words of the past reppearing in the present, sung by a brilliant brand-new voice. This isn’t a lazy re-take with a postmodern production twist craving thirty minutes of listening time and fifteen minutes of fame, it’s an unintentional free tribute to an old master that accidentally becomes a bedroom floor testament to a rising star.

Okay, so Dylan isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but arguably his biggest stumbling block has always been his voice. Bob Dylan was a poet rolled into a songwriter – it logically follows that even the most ardent cynics could potentially find something to love on this record with a different voice behind the wheel. There is no guarantee that the best hand-glider makers make the best hand-glider pilots. Keith Crain is undoubtedly one of the best hand-glider pilots I know – he doesn’t take chances, he just… well he glides doesn’t he? And it’s a joy to behear.

For those of you (like me) whose lives were explosively altered and reconfigured by Bob Dylan when you were well under thirty, there is plenty to get excited about. It’s hard to tell if the song choices are pure gold, or whether raiding the Dylan back catalogue is inevitably going to produce results, or even if it’s just that Keith could turn his attention to anything and make it sound that way (check out Daydream Generation 4 for a diamond acoustic version of Radiohead’s “Creep”). Songs like “All I Really Wanna Do” and “It’s Alright Ma” sound suddenly alive again, like hearing them for the first time over. Elsewhere, “Love Minus Zero”, “He Was A Friend Of Mine”, and “Song To Woody” incredibly sound as if they were written for Sucks To LaLa Land to sing.

Curiously for an artist, Keith himself is on the money about his own record saying “Well Under Thirty is a tribute to Bob Dylan. If you like Bob Dylan I’m sure you’ll like this album. If you hate Bob Dylan I hope I can at least show you how powerful his songs were and are. I don’t sing like Bob Dylan. Nor do I play the harmonica. It doesn’t matter”.

The Psychedelic Gods opened their eyes at the end of the record and blinked beneath a canopy of circus stars they’d made together many milleniums ago. “What was that?” they asked in unison.

“Sucks To LaLa Land” said a passing hand-glider maker.

“It’s great!” they blew, motioning for the hand-glider maker to press play again.

And he duly obliged.

Download “Well Under Thirty” for FREE at the Quixodelic Record Store link above

Find out more about SUCKS TO LALA LAND: here

always greener

so they say;

autumn rise, but winter fall,

blue white blankets over all,

and all along that green grass grows

spinnin’ and a-spendin’, never to say,

“here we’re sown, and here we’ll stay,

misted in the droplets of the sprinkler’s spray.”

severe is ice and hostile, wind –

starkly unfit to survive in.

if you think you have money, well, you better be sure.

people are drifting from door to door,

grasses increase their dormancy,

and birds are left to forage.

the herald’s horn froze to her lips.

soon, all ears ring with notes she splits.

and now you know the spring will come,

rains gonna fall and roll, roll, roll!

warmth is born of the frosty soil,

and the greenest grass to grow.

so they say.

sold for wind

so, sing high, you travelers, sing low,

don’t you know your feet know where to go

but your brain is blind to the tears you cry

on the lowly dust of the open road?

if your heart is broken, love,

if your heart is broken, love;

if your heart is broken,

(if) your mind is gone,

well, you’ve still got that morning’s song

and the rolling dust of the open road,

that rolling dust of the open road!

saturday

plants do grow in crooked rows

and the streetlight call them all in line, love

streetlight call them all in line.

sweetly swift and floating sky,

clouds do roll on summer’s sigh, love,

clouds, the rippled fabric, sigh,

i’ve got some time.

(oh, don’t you say what you will now,

oh, don’t you say.)

i am loose, and made of glass,

a rippled place for light to pass, love,

a rippled station of the last whip-poor-will’s cry.

sunset red is all we got and

apple branches reaching, knock;

apple branches, leaves and trunk.

listen up, now!

eight o’clock and where’s the time went?

the concrete steps of a monument

the concrete stepping of my soul,

sent spinnin’.

lo swing

pop’s groove

allometry

big birds lay

big eggs.

muse

you say there’s something that needs finding,

out there in that rugged world,

and so you go, but you’ll be back, someday,

oh, yes, this i say.

raindrops fall from a big grey sky

rhododendron blossoms, pink in hue,

i smile at you, there’s nothing i can do,

so i say, “see your travels through.”

chorus:

and i know that you will find it in the end.

maybe not tomorrow, but who knows,

it could depend –

on where you are and whom you call your friends.

i’m aimless, obsessive, without you –

old folks feeding pigeons at the park.

i count the hairs upon my head.

i don’t know where you are,

but anyplace i dream is much too far.

chorus

when i go out at night,

streetlights line a blanket of orange light.

(and) i sleep much better when you’re by my side,

but otherwise, i will do just fine.

chorus

set out on my old red rocking chair,

smoking my pipe here in the dark;

smell the midnight roses, and suddenly,

there you are,

and when i die they’re gonna throw our constellation

they’re gonna throw our stars into the sky.

and after all, you’ve found it in the end.

a testament of wanderings written by a pen,

and now you call that whole, wide world your friend.

hop skip junket

constituent rock

i don’t care for their politics.

it isn’t what i’d choose.

it’s just that all their policies

are riddled up like rules.

i’d not sell mine to media

to make some sparkly show.

no, i would give my politics

some soil on which to grow.

and what i’d like from senators

is stars and some night air.

i often have a feeling that

they do not even care.

and what i like from presidents

is forests, thick and wild.

however, it’s more likely

i’ll be treated like a child.

but maybe that’s better

than being treated like

a rock                (inanimate)

a brick               (commonplace)

a stump              (useless)

a fence post       (target for manipulation)

some dirt            (below them)

a pair of gloves  (to be cast aside).

Out Today!

Now this is exciting. Been a long time since we first heard and were blown away by River Speak English’s “Puzzle Piece” on Daydream Generation 2. A year and a half later and we’re made up to be hosting one half of the aforementioned collaboration’s debut record. “Well Under Thirty” is a collection of Bob Dylan covers by Sucks To LaLa Land’s Keith Crain – as well as being a beautiful introduction to this talented singer/songwriter, it’s arguably as great a collection of Dylan covers as I’ve ever heard. Listening to the 8 tracks featured was like discovering Bob Dylan all over again.

You can download it for FREE at the Quixodelic Records link on our site right now

& find out more about Sucks To LaLa Land at www.myspace.com/suckstolalaland