CAVES CAVERNS

2011-11-27T22:38:00.000-08:00

JK from CAVES CAVERNS/LOST TRIBE has been doing bedroom dark synths & sequencer stuff, limited tape out this month

THIEVES OF SHILOH

11/14 STRANGE MATTER

2011-11-13T09:57:00.000-08:00

OCTOBER

2011-10-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

WEDNESDAY 10/5: Krautrock Legend Hans-Joachim Roedelius At Strange Matter
FRIDAY 10/7 - SATURDAY 10/8: RAINBOW BRIDGE NOISE FESTIVAL
SATURDAY 10/22 CHEAP FE$T III at Strange Matter

Hans-Joachim Roedelius, the 77 year old Berlin musician and former member of Kluster, Cluster, and Harmonia, is an early champion of experimental electronic music, from Kluster's deconstructed, proto-industrial soundscapes to Cluster's spaced out, phaser Krautrock explorations and his work in Harmonia, with Brian Eno and membersof Neu!, collaborating to create soundscapes that mixed analog synth, psychedelic guitar and tape loops. Roedelius began recording solo LPs in 1978, brewing minimalist batches of looping keyboard meditations using pre-beatmaking technology. His solo recordings move from Cluster style space hooks to breezy swaths of warm ambient tones, contemporary with Brian Eno's vivification of the genre. The solo material veers into new age/soundtrack cuts of ambient mellowness; his overall discography tops 80 titles.

Roedelius' 2011 US tour starts at the All Tommorows Parties festival occurring this weekend in Asbury Park, NJ, with Roedelius joining Simeon from late 60's New York electronic/psych freak outfit Silver Apples to perform as Silver Qluster. The tour concludes, appropriately enough, at Moogfest in Asheville, NC.

The recent August 2011 passing of Kluster/Tangerine Dream founder Conrad Schnitzler emphasizes the importance of catching important musicians while they're still around. Congruously, with indie-rock tastemakers' shift in recent years to electronics/synthesizer tunes, it would be shameful to miss out on a rare Richmond appearance from an original leading light of analog synth/krautrock/ambient electronic experimentation.

Opening the Strange Matter show is Roedelius' tourmate, XAMBUCA from Asheville, NC, and Richmond's top dog of noise and manipulated electronics, Gary Stevens, performing as Head Molt. The show will also have visual projections by VJ Megan McKissack.

WHAT: Hans-Joachim Roedelius At Strange Matter!
WHO: Hans-Joachim Roedelius, XAMBUCA, Head Molt. Visuals by Megan McKissack
WHERE: Strange Matter, 929 W. Grace St
WHEN: Wednesday October 5, 9 PM

NIGHT 1 @ AMMA HOUSE
https://www.facebook.com/AmmaHouse
505 N NAYLOR ST, ALEXANDRIA, VA
5PM - $5
(do not park on naylor st!)

+ AUTONOMOUS KELOID (PA)
+ YELLOW CRYSTAL STAR (MD)
+ BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT (DC)
+ CAUSTIC CASTLE (VA)
+ GHOST VOLCANO (MD) + CINCINNATUS C (PA)
+ VIOLET (DC)
+ DECAPITATED HED (MD)
+ FUN (PA)
+ BITCH HOUSE (VA)

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NIGHT 2 @ CANDLE HAUS
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Candle-Haus/106223792792291
4039 HALLMAN ST, FAIRFAX, VA
5PM - $5

+ TWIG HARPER (MD)
+ DEAD PEASANT INSURANCE (OH)
+ FASCIST INSECT (OH)
+ NARWHALZ (MD)
+ SEX COMPLEX (VA)
+ RAPE APE (VA)
+ PREGNANT SPORE (MD)
+ MUTWAWA (VA)
+ FLOODBEAST (VA)
+ LOLLY GESSERIT (MD)
+ FLESH CONTROL (VA)

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* BE ON TIME!!! SUPPORT EVERYONE PLAYING!!! SOME OF THE TRAVELING BANDS HAVE TO PLAY EARLY!!!
* BYOB
* DON'T BE A DICK TO ANYONE OR TO THE VENUES
* DON'T BE MESSY, CLEAN UP YOUR SHIT
* DO NOT LOITER OR BE LOUD OUTSIDE, THESE VENUES ARE IN NEIGHBORHOODS
* DON'T SKIMP ON BRINGING MONEY, SUPPORT THE PERFORMERS, ESPECIALLY THE OUTTA-TOWNERZ
* HELLORAINBOWBRIDGE.COM

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+ AUTONOMOUS KELOID: The fantastic wacko sound works of the noise noob Michael Freund from the surrounding suburbs of Philly. The first time I saw him perform, he danced around like an idiot to amateur dance music that sounds like a 10 year old made it. The next thing I know, an invigorating noise performance came out of nowhere with the use of feedback, pedals and whatever else he was fumbling around with. It had the whole crowd saying "oooooooh I thought that was gonna suck, but it was awesome!"

+ YELLOW CRYSTAL STAR: Infinite drone activation of expanding dimensional perception. Progressive guitar trance, collaged tape prism of portals in/out/in never-ending. A seemingly chaotic interpolation of chants, sources, samples, melodies, and lyrics, pieced together as a more complex vibrational language filtering down through the transforming dream.

+ BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT: Chester Hawkins makes music that combines aspects of noise, drone, krautrock, sample-plundering, dark ambient, and kosmische electronics to produce a multi-layered feast for the brain.

+ CAUSTIC CASTLE: Soundscapes using a technique called no-input and further processes the signal thru analog and digital pedal effects. His approach ranges from exercises in restraint to cathartic harsh noise. One-half of the prolific Insects With Tits.

+ GHOST VOLCANO feat. Craig Hodgkins: A Baltimore-based weirdo noise collective with an ever-rotating line-up of guest musicians paired with the three core members Justin Marc Lloyd, Andy Livingston and Mike Pursley (the latter two make up the group Mold Omen). Turn tables, strings, tapes, records, fucked up electronics, vocal chord spasms… anything goes.

+ VIOLET: Sounds made from cassette tapes, various pieces of electronic equipment and other found items manned by the one and only lord of Sonic Circuits, Jeff Surak. Just because he's old and only drinks expensive beer doesn't mean his sets aren't compelling and stimulating.

+ DECAPITATED HED: Casios, cassettes, loops, grooves and other things. A diverse outfit from a man who is very concerned with quality over quality, Baltimore's own Timothy Wisniewski. A recent short conversation with him consisted of him telling me about his new recording. "It's fucking harsh man..."

+ FUN: Eccentric sound artists (one of which performs solo as Newton) and Breathmint Records champs from Philadelphia. Who KNOWS what they will come up with this time. I've seen experiments with huge glass bowls. I've heard cut and chopped layers of audio that is impossible to decipher. I've heard they can take up an entire room with their antics.

+ BITCH HOUSE: A brand new outfit from two of the hearts of this year's fest, Cat Kutz and Sam Walker. I don't know how to describe them. I've never even heard these assholes. All I know is that they asked me to put them on the bill, and they were both too sexy for me to say no. Something tells me it's gonna be some bad ass witchy shit.

+ TWIG HARPER: Who is Twig Harper? I would completely understand if you've never heard of this guy. He kept begging us to let him play the fest and after much pleading, we decided to give him a few minutes to fuck around with his electronics. Actually, none of that is true. Rainbow Bridge Fest II wouldn't be the same without him. He's a genius. Not trying to swing from his nuts or anything, but his performances are complete and utter psychedelic, spiritual fuckery and stimulation. He often performs with Max Eisenberg (DJ Dog Dick) and his wife Carly as Nautical Almanac. He's been blessing the community with his compositions for many years. Brace yourself.

+ DEAD PEASANT INSURANCE: It wouldn't be from Cleveland if it wasn't scummy as fuck. This ridiculous, abrasive band produces some odd form of noise-rock fronted by Amanda Howland, the queen of screeches and howls (no pun intended). Also, on guitar, we have Wyatt Howland aka Skin Graft, one of my favorite noise artists of all time. Wait. Did I call them rock? Fuck that. This isn't rock. This is guitar sludge, electronic noise and free-jazz-influenced drumming that will probably knock the walls of Candle Haus down.

+ FASCIST INSECT: Doomy, industrial, noisy sludge formed early 2007 in the depths of Cleveland, OH. They've made their way through many genres but will probably be melting your faces with pummeling assaults of thick, dense frequencies created with actual instruments!

+ NARWHALZ: This crazy dude, back and forth all around the east coast, could bring anything from hypnotic gameboy-like disorder to the mere DJ-ing of terrible 90's music and bad jokes. Hypnotizing repetition into exploding chaos. Power-electronics for art kids. My kind of shit!

+ SEX COMPLEX: The brainchild of wall-obsessed Matt Boettke, one of the main dudes behind the organization of this years fest. Sex Complex is a collective, and several guest appearances may or may not appear. Passionate, introspective, emotional harsh walls and power electronics.

+ RAPE APE: Virginia's mister Simler brings you a power electronics attack, rudely named and frighteningly performed. This one half of Cash Slave Clique will shatter you with blasts of tinny, harsh reverb, swarms of feedback and pure verbal assault.

+ PREGNANT SPORE: Pregnant Spore is Justin Marc Lloyd of Baltimore, MD. Emotional, spiritual, cathartic release and growth through intense, honest, abstract sound. Or, in the words of an anonymous reviewer, "Bizarre, intriguing and often alien-like noise compositions with occasional dream sequences of a highly emotive caliber. Being engrossed in the captivity of a live pregnant spore set (or listening to a recording session with a quality set of headphones) is a puzzling, moving and hallucinatory experience."

+ MUTWAWA: "World Radio DJs, esoteric mystics, Alien Shamanists, Radio Machete Mob, Necro Zulu, mutating transmissions received from Sirius star system, broadcasting live from deep below Africa." In other words, 2 freaks from Richmond, VA, including Gary Stevens, the mastermind of Head Molt.

+ FLOODBEAST: J. Russell of Caves Caverns bringing you some distorted tape dub heaven! Minimal yet overwhelmingly impressive.

+ LOLLY GESSERIT: Depression, sexuality, science fiction in a noisy, tender form. Moody, vaporous, trashy, artistic. You might have seen this dude on stage with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'm not even fucking kidding. He's been all over L.A and Rhode Island but now resides in the murder capital.

+ FLESH CONTROL: Pure sonic assault by Leo Heinzel of Richmond, VA and Flish Records. You may have seen him convulsing alongside Head Molt's Gary Stevens in their Flesh Molt collaboration sets. Devastating frequencies and shattering volumes. Unrelenting harsh noise without being the same old static wall you hear everywhere else. These sounds are actually interesting. Get raped by a lazer and have your scalp peeled off over and over and over again. Pay attention because this won't last long. If it did, you'd surely die.

7:00-Flood Beast
7:15-Champagne Of Rats
7:30-Monolith Zero
7:45-Broadcaststatic
8:00-Teen Dreams
8:15-Vveed Vvulf
8:30-Sacajaweeda
8:45-Microwave Windows
9:00-Dave Smolen / Hairloss
9:15-Suicide Magnets
9:30-Zack Kouns
9:45-HNY
10:00-Frailty Of Angels
10:15-Reverse Baptism
10:30-Contortionist Jazz Exotica
10:45-Head Molt
11:00-Sex Complex
11:15-Pregnant Spore
11:30-Heavy Breathing
11:45-Tinitustimulus
12:00-Fun
12:15-Drums Like Machine Guns
12:30-Cheezface
12:45-Abiku
1:00-Radio Shock
1:15-Mutwawa
1:30-Shams

INSTANT PLEASURE FEST

2011-09-13T23:31:00.000-07:00

JK curated the first night of the two-night INSTANT PLEASURE fest as an autumnal equinox celebration through improvised noise and psychedelia and electronic experimentation. It is free, but donations are very much encouraged for acts driving down from northern origins. FRAILTY OF ANGELS is Evan Craig's bastard electronics-brutal-droning-noise project. FLESH CONTROL is Leo Flish's incarnation as a white high gravity Masonna, ripping spectrums howling in the void most static. PJB is Paul Joyner's psychedelic electronica, trippy post industrial pop. DARK SEA DREAM are a shoegazing metal institution that may or may not be around much longer. CAVES CAVERNS are psychpunk, described as "1985 Butthole Surfers mixed with Helios Creed". DJ SHRAVNASTY is the strobelight darkwave disko, absolutely wrecked Couch Heaven that one time.

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=239202162792816

REVOLT OF THE APES.com presents:

INSTANT PLEASURE- RVA PSYCH FEST 2011

---------------------------DAY 1------------------------------
Doors at 8:00 pm

Equinox occurs at 9:04pm- introduction and welcoming

9:10-9:30 Frailty of Angels
9:40-10:00 Flesh Control
10:10-10:40 PJB (DC)
10:50-11:15 Borborites (DC)
11:25-12:00 Dark Sea Dream
12:15-12:40 Caves Caverns
12:40-1:40 DJ Shravnasty/+?

DAY 2 is organized by Ryan Muldoon (REVOLT OF THE APES blog) and Kyle Harris (Diamond Center). It will feature more touring acts, for the most part mostly rocknroll-oriented psychedelia. It features our Richmond friends Mutwawa (best band in Richmond, Suppression vs. Head Molt percolating soundclash), Palindrone, Gull (traveling mystick), and The Diamond Center (heavy psychedelic pop, rhythmic pulses, Austin Psych Fest alum)

Doors at 5:00 pm

6:00-6:30 Palindrone
6:50-7:20 MUTWAWA
7:40-8:10 Last Remaining Pinnacle (Virginia Beach, VA)
8:30-9:00 The Flying Eyes (Baltimore, MD)
9:20-9:50 Gull
10:10-10:40 The Sky Drops (Wilmington, Delaware)
11:00-11:30 Black Box Revelation (Belgium)
11:50-12:20 Morning After Girls (Australia)
12:50-1:20 The Diamond Center

Both nights are at STRANGE MATTER (929 W. GRACE STREET, RICHMOND VA)

POSITIVLAND/FLOODBEAST/DYLAN LANGUELL/CAVEDWELLER

2011-08-25T23:31:00.001-07:00

FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE HOSPITAL
8:00 PM

POSITIVLAND (last blast/gathering of positivland vibrations/group hugs/psychic dissonance for a while, PARTYGANG,, LEO/WOLFGANG/JOE LEGZ/JK from Caves Caverns/Lost Tribe)
FLOODBEAST (jruss/caves caverns tape loop,on-u-dub fuzz tones)
CLOSE YOUR EYES IM CHANGING (Dylan from TWILIGHT MEMORIES big anticipated piece/meal/possible SENDOFF)
CAVE DWELLER (low country carolina psychedelic drone)

COUCH HEAVEN RIP

2011-07-27T23:10:00.000-07:00

RIP COUCH HEAVEN,

RIP KIKI WATSON

WHO THE FUCK IS BRENT QUICKLAY

GEORGETOWN PUNX

2011-06-30T13:57:00.001-07:00

Friday July 1st

SLOW FIDELITY BLAST-OFF SHOWCASE SUNSPLASH

at MOCA Gallery 1054 31st St NW, Washington DC

feat.

PJB (the man)

Flood Beast (JRuss/ Caves Caverns dubsperience, heavy space wa-do-dem)

Giant Subaquatic Life Form (JK Caves Caverns/Lost Tribe kraftwerkian attic deluge of synth)

Borborites (Avant Fairfax crushers)

Moon Pie (DC/Philly psych-pop/relationship study)

Age of Heroes (slow-fi family jams)

Ancient Noir

Ace 12 & Ben B

georgetown jamming. like skipping class and riding a 30-bus down Wisconsin avenue.

Merchandise at Couch Heaven 6/18

2011-06-15T22:36:00.000-07:00

this saturday, june 18th, 9:00 PM
Saturday night summer kicker at COUCH HEAVEN, downtown Richmond.

MERCHANDISE . .. florida bummer shoegaze punk/synthdrummachine stuff, ex-Neon Blud/Nazi Dust/etc, Their STRANGE SONGS (IN THE DARK) record was on a lot of people's top ten last year, download their records. http://merchandisetheband.wordpress.com/audio/ [merchandisetheband.wordpress.com] »
SEX OF DISTANCE (Travis Miller's ongoing electronic productions, as seen at that PME jam at Reference Gallery)
FLOOD BEAST (golden shower of dub/noise/psychedelic tape loops, Caves Caverns)
TEEN DREAMS (WITCHMOND/RHYTHM BANDIT/charlottesville teenage noiser)

whatever that meanz

2011-05-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

This weekend, we'll be playing a stacked festival in downtown Richmond, right next to Third Street Diner. Philip's PURE MUSIC EXPERIENCE, should run from the afternoon until after last call. We're supposed to play after midnight Friday night to close out the first night of the EXPERIENCE. It's also allegedly the end of the world according to some Christian flim-flammers. Anyway, we're playing with a bunch of our friends, a couple bands feature Caves Caverns dudes, and a handful of young art freaks, rappers and some chillwave triangle babes probably, whatever that meanz.

DIG IT.

DATES: MAY 20th, 21st
TIME: DOORS OPEN AT 1PM EACH DAY
LOCATION: http://www.referenceartgallery.com/
PRICE$$ -NO MORE PRESALE TICKETS - 5 DOLLARS AT THE DOOR(MANDATORY DONATION) FOR THE WHOLE FEST

~~MAY 20th~~

Flesh Control (LEO rules, like white high-gravity Masonna)
Flossed In Paradise
Le Sphinxx
Miranda
Dylan Languell (Twilight Memories homie, played sax with us at 100th show may include members of Caves Caverns for this set)
Gage
Three Brained Robot
Teen Dreams (Rhythm Bandit/Witchmond excitable teen's new dream)
sanka
Whoarfrost
The Magick Report
Headmolt (a gift every time, space funeral power electronic cosmic dream no sleep)
Flute
ROY G BIV
Positivland
Caves Caverns (will probably be drunk)

~~MAY 21st~~

Cat Sex
Mutwawa (two best dudes)
Symbols & Pencils
Michele Seippel
Tungs
Ami Dang (with Kate Levitt)
Narwhalz (Of Sound) (as "scene" on Judge Judy)
MAS Y MAS
ahnnu
Lil Ugly Mane (Couch Heaven gripping)
Nidra
The Eurotics (punx)
Bermuda Triangles (Tony Lynch from Caves Caverns on drums, Triumph of The Bill)
Les La Britanica
Lost Tribe (JK from Caves Caverns on goth synth/smoke machine, best new band of the last year in Richmond, Joy Division/Amebix/Christian Death)

Schwarz DJ SET + TBA

CCHEECKK THE WEBBSITEE:: http://www.pmexperience.tk/

open up the gate

2011-05-16T23:04:00.000-07:00

Kawabata Makoto & Pikachu and Muguguymen made us all happy the other night.

LAST MINUTE SHOW AT SPROUT IN RICHMOND TODAY

last minute freaky show at Sprout today, tuesday, May 17. 9:30 PM

GA'AN (ex-COUGHS, FIELDED) - Chicago synth-space-prog, far out tripped out heavy prog, with a lady singer who kills like Bjork or Zola Jesus.

MUTWAWA (Suppression/Head Molt/Bermuda Triangles) - throbbing beats and nauseous electronic manipulation, noise veterans in the house percolator

YARDWORK - ragged sonic youth/wipers noisy punk, ex-SAIL/MANNEQUIN

KAWABATA/PIKACHU at STRANGE MATTER

2011-05-13T17:14:00.000-07:00

Kawabata Makoto & Pikachu from Acid Mothers Temple/Afrirampo at Strange Matter

Longtime experimental & psychedelic musicians from Japan, Kawabata Makoto from Acid Mothers Temple and Pikachu from Afrirampo (as well as past collaborations with Acid Mothers Temple) will be playing at Strange Matter, a late show starting at 10:00 PM. Kawabata Makoto is known for his wild hair and even wilder space-melting acid rock guitar playing in Acid Mothers Temple, almost exaggerations of dripping psychedelia and the far out sounds of Krautrock, before that with heavy burners Mainliner. Pikachu previously played in the all lady duo Afrirampo, who were as much a catchy all girl garage punk as a psychotic Japanese noise rock experiment with screams that recall their Osaka freakout brethren the Boredoms.

Now, together on this tour, the duo plays an expansive psychedelic sort of no wave play a sort of psychedelic no wave that ascends from tribal drumming and Pikachu chanting to the hot insane guitar playing one expects from Kawabata. Pikachu quit the Acid Mother’s Afrirampo collaboration to study percussion in Africa and the girl is all over the place all while also singing. Videos of recent show Pikachu descending upon the crowd in flurry of drumming and far out singing and Kawabata Makoto steadily shredding long slabs of psychedelia building up to exciting sweaty psych-punk climax.

Worth it to catch a couple of Japan’s established experimental rockers in a freeform duo, anyone who’s seen Acid Mother’s Temple has an idea of how its going to go down. Dig the Kawabata Makoto & Pikachu duo at Strange Matter, Sunday May 15^th, with Mugu Guymen, Caves Caverns, Head Molt, and Articulate Chewbecca (Adam Smith + Dylan Rhythm Bandit krautsplosion)

A recent recording of the duo is available for free here, http://soundcloud.com/riotseason/pikacyu-makoto-birth-star

86 REALITY UP 95 2011

2011-04-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

CAVES CAVERNS 86'N REALITY

MON 4/18 - ARLINGTON, VA - GALAXY HUT w/ CIGARETTE

TUE 4/19 - NEW CASTLE, DE - MAIN MAN'S HOUSE w/ HOLY DIRT, SACAJAWEEDA, THE HEADIES

WED 4/20 - PHILADELPHIA, PA - MARVELOUS w/ DRUMS LIKE MACHINE GUNS, KOHOUTEK, ANCIENT CREATURE (GONDOLA + BABES)

THUR 4/21 - BROOKLYN, NY - DEATH BY AUDIO w/ NO SKY GOD, LARKIN GRIMM

FRI 4/22 - RICHMOND, VA - DEAD CAT MUSEUM w/ BROKEN WATER, ANTLERS, THE TWO FUNERALS

SAT 4/23 - FAIRFAX, VA - AVANT FAIRFAX at OLD TOWN HALL w/ 500 MG (Bardo Pond), THE BLACK TWIG PICKERS, KOHOUTEK, HUMAN ADULT BAND, DRUMS LIKE MACHINE GUNS, FUN, HEAVY MEDICAL, SCOTT VERRASTRO/NATHAN BOWLES PERCUSSION DUO

NEW SHIRTS, DO YOU WANT ONE? CAVESCAVERNS @ GMAIL.COM.

FUTURE RICHMOND SHOWS IN THE JEEB SOUND/86 REALITY SPECTRUM(CAVES CAVERNS, TATE HOUSE, GIANT SUB AQUATIC LIFE FORM, FLOODBEAST) inlcuding FIELDED, DAVILA 666, KAWABATA/PIKA CHU DUO, GA'AN)

WOODS ON PINE STREET BOOTLEG TAPE

2011-03-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a low fidelity bootleg recording of Woods playing Will Delicious Smith's old house on Pine Street, from 2008, when Woods was a three-piece, Jeremy, Jarvis, and Christian, when WOODS FAMILY CREEPS LP came out, so when they were a burning lo-fi psych-folk trio. Taped on a Panasonic handheld tape recorder that I assumed was dead after I left in my parents backyard overnight in the rain with the Ghostbusters soundtrack in it.

(picture from Joh M)

WOODS ON PINE STREET, MARCH 2008

1 DON'T PASS ON ME

2 NIGHT CREATURE-PSYCH JAM

3 RING ME TO SLEEP

4 BE STILL

5 BLOOD IN THE SAND

6 MILITARY MADNESS (GRAHAM NASH)

7 CROWD DEMANDS WEED JAM

8 WOODS WEED JAM

http://www.mediafire.com/?5vvy628c4op3hez

AH HUNNIT

2011-03-16T21:03:00.001-07:00

ONE HUNDREDth CAVES CAVERNS SHOW at Sprout was awesome. Many thanks to Richmond peoples who came into the spot for the celebration, Kohoutek and Frankzig and Cosmic Hum Sara & Greg, Patty Conway, Mark Gibson & his Baklavian Charity, Tubevision Greg & Good Show Steve, Sprout motherfuckers & their Moste Potente past, Dylan Languell for skronking heavy.

check out Tubevision's video of our Sprout show, JK, Mike, Tony, JRuss, Dylan w/Sara, Greg, and Mark on double oil projections.

APRIL CAVES CAVERNS TOUR EAST COAST 2011

Mon APR 18 ARLINGTON, VA @ GALAXY HUT w/ CIGARETTE

Tue APR 19 NEWARK, DE @ house TBA

Wed APR 20 - PHILLY, PA @ MARVELOUS RECORDS w/ AMPS FOR CHRIST, DRUMS LIKE MACHINE GUNS, and KOHOUTEK/CURANDEROS

Thu APR 21 - BROOKLYN, NY @ DEATH BY AUDIO w/ NO SKY GOD

Fri APR 22 - RICHMOND, VA @ COUCH HEAVEN w/ ANTLERS, BROKEN WATER

Sat APR 23 - FAIRFAX, VA @ AVANT FAIRFAX w/ AMPS FOR CHRIST, 500MG (Bardo Pond), BLACK TWIG PICKERS, KOHOUTEK, DRUMS LIKE MACHINE GUNS, HUMAN ADULT BAND, FUN, HEAVY MEDICAL, SCOTT VERRASTRO/NATHAN BOWLES PERCUSSION DUO

Kohoutek coming to Sprout 3/14

2011-03-07T15:55:00.000-08:00

Kohoutek coming to Sprout 3/14

Kohoutek has been an improv psych collective since 2003, when the group was cultivated at DC DIY spots 611 Florida Ave and the 7^th Street Warehouse Nextdoor. The instrumental lineup is always a malleable beast, changing from show to show, tour to tour, always held down by the percussive king/Kohoutek mastermind Scott Verrastro. Kohoutek's always cosmic sets vary but include Verrastro’s wash of free-jazz bells and brushes leading into a heavy stomps of ultra-heady space rock with thick slow-burning psychedelic guitars bucking and echoing, typically backed with burnt crackling homemade electronic noise and field recordings from 804Noise collaborator Scott Alison. Kohoutek has other times enlisted the screaming saxophones of outsider-jazz misfits Paul Flaherty and Little Howlin' Wolf into their free improv freakout. Last summer Kohoutek melted downtown loft, Couch Heaven as the backing band for George Kinney and as a five-piece Kohoutek set before Kinney stepped in. Kinney is notable for being in the 1960's Texas psychedelic rockers GOLDEN DAWN, known for their cult-collectors LP 'Power Plant', whom Kohoutek is touring to Texas this March to play with again at South By Southwest. Kohoutek sometimes makes use of Richmonder Damian Languel ,of terrifying acoustic-electric performance ensemble Twilight Memories of the Three Suns, playing distorted noisy broken synth blasts or other times blowing free on a didgeridoo or channelling Roland Kirk, puffing through wooden panflutes. Once a Kohoutek set finds its plateau, it rides it out in the heady zone where Hawkwind finds Neu! so you hang stay high, only to come down to minimal percussion and a fried buzzing in the back of your skull.

Definitely brings to mind the free-psych contemporaries of Sonic Youth's SYR long playing instrumental records as well as the swirling heavy psych rock of White Hills, the urgent jazz-inspired electric improv of Nels Cline, the New England experimental collective Sunburned Hand of the Man and the manipulated deconstruction of 'Beaches and Canyons'-era Black Dice. Jam band types who have taken an heroic dose could probably appreciate the freeness and elevation of Kohoutek’s jams bordering on the most far out moments of “Dark Star” or whatever, but Kohoutek has no intention of campfire singalongs, bluegrass impersonation or anything resembling traditional song structure, its all mindfuck, have a seat if you’d like.

Kohoutek takes their name from freaked out 1973 LPs from both Sun Ra and Father Yod & The Spirit of '76. Kohoutek's Scott Verrastro has performed in collaborations with Sun Ra's saxophone player/current Arkestra bandleader Marshall Allen and in 2008, Kohoutek played a week of East Coast shows opening for the touring lineup of Father Yod's Yahowa 13 band. Cosmic approval for head music. A handful of live recordings are available for free download at http://districtofnoise.org/?tag=kohoutek

Kohoutek plays at Sprout Organic Cafe & Market at 1 N. Morris (at Main St) on Monday March 14th, at 9:30 w/ Caves Caverns (100th show, Richmond psych-punk) and Frankzig (talented meditations for classical Spanish guitar conquest). All sets will be visually enhanced with Greg & Sara’s Cosmic Hum psychedelic oil projections.

J. Russell

spring fervor

2011-02-26T17:33:00.001-08:00

spring fervor

Upcoming Caves Caverns

MARCH 12th - WASHINGTON, DC - VELVET LOUNGE w/ KOHOUTEK, PAUL JOYNER BAND, and LUGER (psych from SPAIN)

MARCH 13th - RICHMOND, VA - STRANGE MATTER w/ SHARDS (NC hardcore punk), SEX MOVE, and MIRRORS & WIRES (NJ surf punk/Agent Orange instrumental cuts)

MARCH 14th - RICHMOND, VA - SPROUT w/ KOHOUTEK, FRANKZIG, COSMIC HUB PSYCHEDELIC LIGHT SHOW

APRIL 18th - ARLINGTON, VA - GALAXY HUT w/ CIGARETTE

APRIL 20th - PHILADELPHIA, PA - MARVELOUS RECORDS w/ DRUMS LIKE MACHINE GUNS, NEWTON (BREATHMINT RECORDS) , CURANDEROS (Kohoutek/Bardo Pond improv collaboration)

APRIL 22 - RICHMOND, VA - COUCH HEAVEN w/ BROKEN WATER, ANTLERS

APRIL 23 - FAIRFAX, VA - 2011 AVANT FAIRFAX FESTIVAL w/ Michael Chapman, Kenny Millions, Kohoutek, Black Twig Pickers, Drums Like Machine Guns, Human Adult Band, Heavy Medical, FUN, and Scott Verrastro/Nathan Bowles Percussion Duo

geographically holes to be smoothed out, on the smoothness tip.

313

2011-02-21T22:26:00.000-08:00

2011-02-13T23:01:00.000-08:00

CAVES CAVERNS on tour APRIL 2011

April 15th - 23rd.

Still getting worked out, should have cities/dates figured out in a week.

Tour will start in Memphis, TN on the 15th and end on the 23rd at the AVANT FAIRFAX FESTIVAL. Get ready. New tapes, new shirts, all four cavernous dudes.

2011-01-27T21:50:00.000-08:00

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 6th at STRANGE MATTER 929 W. GRACE ST

PRE-INTERNATIONAL NOISE CONFERENCE BANGER IN RICHMOND.
FIVE BUCKS goes to
Three touring acts coming through town (two from AUSTRALIA), sending a couple racks of true Richmond homies down to Florida for INC (Head Molt/Mutwawa/Leo Flish from Positiveland/Twilight Memories dudes)

HEAD MOLT//BAYLIES BAND//OCCULT BLOOD// IVENS//POSITIVELAND//GIANTSUBAQUATIC LIFE FORM//FLOODBEAST//FRAILTY OF ANGELS

<<<>>>
<<>>

. .… … . . HEAD MOLT (GARY STEVENS NOISE LIAISON “SPACE FUNERAL”)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsOJs9fHXA0

. . . . . ...,,,. POSITIVLAND (leo/wolfgang smiley face ecstasy male enhancement)

... . . .,,, . . KING CLOPS (the return of the KING. aftershower funk/post LSD musk/VIDE DROME IS REAL) this shit right here http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs924.snc4/73736_1432416381610_1568910078_30927816_1821468_n.jpg

… … … . BAYLIES BAND (MASSACHUSETTS FREAKOUT ROCK, I.N.C. TEMPLE OF BATIN, ETC) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdI3EsWYJ2g

. . . . . .,,,, ..OCCULT BLOOD (Australian noisy dark shit) download their STEPHEN HAWKING cassette http://terminalescape.blogspot.com/2010/08/occult-blood.html

. .. ,, , , ,. IVENS (Australian noise hip hop ala Dalek/Food For Animals)

.… … … GIANT SUBAQUATIC LIFE FORM (JK’S MYTHIC KRAFTWERKIAN CONSTRUCT/PSYCHIC CONTROL VESSEL)

.… . … … FLOOD BEAST (J.RUSSELL’S LIBRARITORIUM DUB FEVER MISCONCEPTION) http://ia700108.us.archive.org/2/items/CheapFest2/12-Floodbeast.mp3

..... ..., . . . . FRAILTY OF ANGELS (brutal droning bastard noise skull electronics/THE YOUTH ARE GETTING OSCILLATORS) http://frailtyofangels.bandcamp.com/

2010-12-30T09:28:00.000-08:00

TWENTY TEN

CAVES CAVERNS

DOWNLOAD COMMUNIQUE (2010 Cassette)
http://www.mediafire.com/?hndxyzqjyim

” they channeled some serious Hawkwind-Acid Mothers-F/i vibes and shoe-horned a lot of sonics into a short set … Apparently the guitar player for Caves Caverns plays the keys for locals Resin Pyramid who put on another stellar opening set at the Moon Duo gig. Really interesting stuff … well worth checking out in town if you need to get your feet off the ground.” (Mr. Atavist)

The free-form, instrumental heavy psychedelia that this Richmond band plays on their latest release, a four-song, forty-minute cassette, has many worthy antecedents. Most prominent are Ash Ra Tempel’s epic Krautrock space jams and Hawkwind’s acid-soaked biker rock. These trippy jams will pry open your third eye. (Andrew Necci, RVA Magazine)

“Improv psych from this Richmond 4-piece. Swirling fuzz, squealing saxophone, and a theremin cameo ensures this cassette to be an auditory interplanetary medium for your neurons. It’s a little more relaxed, but it’s a sound that lies somewhere between Raccoo-oo-oon and Comets on Fire. Less than 100 cassettes made. Get one from Sounds From the Pocket.” (http://ongakubaka.blogspot.com/2010/05/caves-caverns-communique.html)

56. 1/10/10 COUCH HEAVEN w/ Kohoutek, Gondola, Richmond, VA

57. 1/11/10 THE TRIPLE w/ Bermuda Triangles, Holy Sheet, Richmond, VA

58. 1/14/10 LAST MONTH GALLERY 101 S. ADDISON w/ Balaclava, Sexy Crimes, Richmond, VA

59. 3/15/10 THE TRIPLE w/ Ultra Dolphins, Fuzz Orchestra (Italy), and Guadalupe Plata (Spain), Richmond, VA

60. 3/17/10 Club 1808 w/ Prince Rama, How I Quit Crack, Reading Rainbow, The Beets, Austin, TX

61. 3/18/10 THE COMPOUND w/ Magic Jewels, Telepathik Friend, DD/MM/YYYY, Death Sentence Panda, Videohippos, Austin, TX http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apHMzDnGbPE

62. 3/18/10 THE PARLOR w/ Rusted Shut (earlier show), Austin, TX

63. 3/20/10 MOOSE LODGE w/ Telepathik Friend, Zs, Venision Whirled, Bubblegum Shitface Experience, Austin TX

64. 3/20/10 21st St CO-OP w/ Thank God, Atlas Moth, Suplecs, Austin, TX

65. 3/30/10 COUCH HEAVEN w/ GUNSLINGERS (france), Human Smoke, Richmond, VA

66. 4/19/10 THE TRIPLE w/ Kohoutek, the Styrenes, Richmond, VA

67. 4/22/10 STRANGE MATTER w/ The Catalyst, Field Day, Creta Kano, Richmond, VA

68. 4/28/10 THE TREE SWING HOUSE w/ Cigarette, Riverdale Park, MD

69. 5/6/10 THE TRIPLE w/ VINCENT BLACK SHADOW, Cough, Kill Your Brain, Richmond, VA

70. 5/15/10 THE TRIPLE w/ Bermuda Triangles, Vialka (france), Blake Midgette, Gary Stevens DJ (new age space library) Richmond, VA

71. 5/29/10 STRANGE MATTER w/ Head Molt, Positiveland, Big Ass Chicks, Richmond, VA

72. 6/06/10 HADAD'S LAKE, RUMORS BOUTIQUE PARTY w/ Two Funerals and DJ DIRTY FINGERS

73. 6/19/10 COUCH HEAVEN w/ TASHA YAR and Buck Gooter, Richmond, VA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFfxAMhNLak

74. 7/5/10 THE TRIPLE w/ Floating Colors, Churches Burn, STREET PIZZA, Richmond, VA

75. 7/9/10 THE SUBMARINE w/ Human Smoke, Buck Gooter, Layne Garrett, Moon Pie, more, Washington, DC

76. 8/24/10 STRANGE MATTER w/ Windhand, Souvenir's Young America, Richmond, VA

77. 9/10/10 STRANGE MATTER w/ Dadfag, Mutwawa, Human Baggage Richmond, VA http://vimeo.com/16981208

78. 9/20/10 STRANGE MATTERw/ Mondo Drag, Main Street Gospel, The Diamond Center, Richmond, VA

79. 9/28/19 STRANGE MATTER w/ Tinsel Teeth, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, Richmond, VA http://vimeo.com/15516427

80. 10/12/10 STRANGE MATTER w/ Two Funerals, TV Budha (Israel), Richmond, VA (as 2-piece TATE HOUSE)

81. 10/23/10 COUCH HEAVEN w/ TITAN, Head Molt, Old Swampy, Richmond, VA (TATE HOUSE)

82. 11/01/10 STRANGE MATTER w/ Bermuda Triangles, Rhythm Bandit, and The Intelligence, Richmond, VA

83. 11/08/10 STRANGE MATTER w/ Neon Blud, Mutwawa, Flora & Fauna, Richmond, VA http://vimeo.com/17179342

TATE HOUSE/BERMUDA TRIANGLES TOUR 2010

84. 11/11/10 STRANGE MATTER w/ Buck Gooter and Head Molt, Richmond, VA

85. 11/12/10 BIRD NAMES house show, Athens GA

86. 11/13/10 Alabama Music Box w/ Bermuda Triangles, Mobile, AL

87. 11/14/10 ALLWAYS LOUNGE w/ Bermuda Triangles, Lovey Dovies, Dummy Dumpster, New Orleans, LA

88. 11/15/10 816 Calumet St. w/Bermuda Triangles, B L A C K I E, Limb, and Somosuno, Houston, TX

89. 11/16/10 The Shit House, Bermuda Triangles San Antonio, TX

90. 11/17/10 EAST SIDE ISLE,Bermuda Triangles Austin, TX

91. 11/18/10 Club 1808, Bermuda Triangles Austin, TX

92. 11/19/10 The Cavern, Bermuda Triangles Dallas, TX

93. 11/20/10 The Dairy, Bermuda Triangles Memphis, TN

94. 11/21/10 Bettys, Bermuda Triangles Nashvile, TN

95. 11/22/10 Thee Killing Floor, w/ Bermuda Triangles, Projexorcism, DJ Heavy Flow, and Smell The Rott, Hickory, NC

96. 11/23/10 The Night Light, Bermuda Triangles, Chapel Hill

97. 12/06/10 STRANGE MATTER w/ Taco Leg, Trass, Richmond, VA

NEW YEAR, TWENTY-ELEVEN, AWH FUG

2010-12-26T18:39:00.000-08:00

2010-12-13T22:14:00.000-08:00

January 8th ....... Couch Heaven . . . downtown . . . . shhhhhhh
.................................................................
........ THE GIFT (DC gothy grunge punx, ex-Turboslut/Exosus)
........ CAVES CAVERNS (psych-weed-stuff)
........ FLECHETTE (actually good post-hardcore, dudes from Resonance)
...... + 1 TBA

media en la nariz

2010-11-26T11:09:00.000-08:00

Mike, Tony, JK, and the BTs back from tour in time for Thanksgiving feast bash at Couch Heaven.

TATE HOUSE recording some stuff. Something cool possible in the future for its release.

MONDAY DECEMBER 6th at STRANGE MATTER

9:30, bucks for international touring band

. . . . . . . . . . . . CAVES CAVERNS (last show of the year?? who knows) http://vimeo.com/17179342

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TACO LEG (lo-fi punk, dirge pop from AUSTRALIA, record out on FAN DEATH RECORDS) http://testostertunes.blogspot.com/2010/01/while-back-i-went-on-trip-to-real.html

. . . . . . . . . . TRASS (a k a CUM DIAPERS a k a PENNY RIMJOB, awesome experimental anarcho reimagining of CRASS, feat. a cello if they can find one) http://vimeo.com/17061544

. . . . . .. .. . + 1 TBA.

NOVEMBER shows/tour

2010-11-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

BERMUDA TRIANGLES/TATE HOUSE (1/2 half caves caverns, spacebanger surf)

TATE HOUSE will have a new tape on tour, maybe some RESIN PYRAMID/CAVES CAVERNS tapes also.

Monday Nov. 8 @ Strange Matter, Richmond, VA CAVES CAVERNS/NEON BLUD/MUTWAWA/FLORA & FAUNA (mem. Antlers)

Thursday Nov. 11th @ Strange Matter, Richmond, VA w/ Head Molt

Friday Nov. 12th @ Eyedrum, Atlanta, GA w/ Nuclear Power Pants, Buffalo Bangers, and Bird Names

Saturday Nov. 13th @ Alabama Music Box, Mobile w/ Swamp Wompus

Sunday Nov. 14th @ Allways Lounge, New Orleans, LA w/ Lovey Dovies, and Dummy Dumpster

Monday Nov. 15th @ 1816 Calumet St., Houston, TX w/
B L A C K I E, Limb, and Somosuno

Tuesday Nov. 16th @ The Shit House, San Antonio, TX

Wednesday Nov. 17th Austin, TX

Thursday Nov. 18th @ Club 1808, Austin, TX w/ Reflux Man, Unisex Bicycle, Bubbleface, Os Ovni, Lead Pipe

Friday Nov. 19th @ The Cavern, Dallas, TX

Saturday Nov. 20th @ The Dairy, Memphis, TN

Sunday Nov. 21st @ Betty's, Nashville, TN w/ Red Dawn Chong

Monday Nov. 22nd @ Thee Killing Floor, Hickory, NC w/ Projexorcism, DJ Heavy Flow, and Smell The Rott

Tuesday Nov. 23rd @ Night Light, Chapel Hill

Mike, JK, and JRuss each played solo sets last week at Cheap Fest II, curated by Gary Stevens (head molt/mutwawa), with other friends from VA and PA. CUSTER FLUX/HAPPY SCRAPPY archived the whole thing. check it out

http://www.archive.org/details/CheapFest2

GIANT SUB-AQUATIC LIFE FORM - JK

KING CLOPS - MIKE

FLOODBEAST - JRUSS

the other stuff rules too, that TWILIGHT MEMORIES.... set fucking kills.

2010-10-13T10:31:00.001-07:00

SATURDAY OCTOBER 23

COUCH HEAVEN, DOWNTOWN RICHMOND, VA

TITAN (Brooklyn prog-psych, ex/current ZOMBI, MASERATI, LA OTRACINA)

CAVES CAVERNS (cosmique sloppedelic garbage rock)

+ 1 TBA

SATURDAY OCTOBER 30

STRANGE MATTER, 929 W. GRACE ST, RICHMOND, VA

CHEAPFEST (noise/experimental showcase/free-for-all)

feat. friends HEAD MOLT, HOW I QUIT CRACK, POSITIVELAND, TWILIGHT MEMORIES..., CAUSTIC CASTLE, BRIAN MORSEBERGER (DRUMS LIKE MACHINE GUNZ), and more

THREE CAVES CAVERNS SOLO SETS AT CHEAP FEST

KING CLOPS (M. Raftery bedroom nuyorican mysticism explosion, the sound of beads of water on a sexy lady, aftershower funk dish network)

GIANT SUB-AQUATIC LIFEFORM (J.K. stands for JEWISH KRAFTWERK, cosmic pingponging, psychic control and cheap synths)

FLOOD BEAST (J. Russell library dub for fever dreamers and Euro-free jazz jackoffs)

MONDAY NOVEMBER 1

STRANGE MATTER, again

THE INTELLIGENCE (long-running west coast garage rock)

BERMUDA TRIANGLES (triangular homies, chromatic lifers, new jams of frightening and funky post-punk freakitude)

CAVES CAVERNS

ORDER (long running Harrisonburg rockers, pop-lockers)

MONDAY NOVEMBER 8

STRANGE MATTER, where else

NEON BLUD (tampa florida truly ruling SONIC DEATH/SONIK LIFE NOISEPUNK, ex-Cult Ritual, favorite band from SXSW adventure)

MUTWAWA (Head Molt vs Suppression soundclash, dis is a (mental) TAKEOVER/PERCOLATOR)

CAVES CAVERNS

+ 1 TBA (will know by the end of the week, Dry Spell dropped off)

owl

2010-09-25T23:37:00.001-07:00

CAVES CAVERNS ...... DIAMOND BLACK HEARTED BOY ....... TINSEL TEETH (Providence freakout punk) ....... RETARDED GENIUS (STINOON KEISTER) at STRANGE MATTER TUESDAY SEPTMBER 28

2010-08-31T22:01:00.000-07:00

life is the only thring

2010-08-30T10:59:00.002-07:00

upcoming Cavernous Bullshit

MOON DUO w/ RESIN PYRAMID 9/14 at Strange Matter
Witchmond Festival in Charlottesville (NU-BRIDGE AFFAIR)
Mondo Drag/Main Street Gospel (ex-BJM) at Strange Matter
Neon Blud/Mutwawa/Dry Spell/ Caves Caverns
EVERY PIECE OF TRASH IN TOWN aka MIKE RAFTERY & THE OFF DUTY SAILORS . . . . CAVES CAVERNS DICKS Halloween Tribute

Bermuda Triangles Caves Caverns southern trip postponed til November

life is the only thring

2010-08-30T10:59:00.001-07:00

2010-08-17T18:06:00.000-07:00

RICHMOND AUGUST 24th

STRANGE MATTER 929 W. GRACE, BEER, VIDEOGAMES, NO DANCING, PETE

WINDHAND (return home from tour, true doom rock, ex-ATP/Facedowninshit)
SOUVENIRS YOUNG AMERICA (rich psychedelic plateaus of Americana)
CAVES CAVERNS (cosmic sloppedelic rock jam)

pepper pot

2010-08-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

still booking FALL TOUR WITH BERMUDA TRIANGLES

next show AUGUST 24 at STRANGE MATTER
w/ WINDHAND (return home to Richmond from tour//// WINDHAND are great doomy stoney rock band, dudes from ATP and Facedowninshit/Attitude Problem, vibes like Saint Vitus meets Kyuss, do check out, powerful dixie lady singer)

2010-07-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

We'll be playing at Old Bridge Festival in scummy Anus'ville, VA next weekend. Last year bummed us out, but what the fuck ever, we're down... down again . . . more trucker speed and teenage ravers copping feels in dark shamed in minivan headlights, girls punching boyz, boyz building tents, meat marinating in summer rain, LIFESA KREW, last year we took a nap before played and I was wearing US Navy swimming trunks and then I get aggro at Arby's. Who knows, it could be a beautiful thing. pack yr shit.

Caves Caverns
Body Cop
Kohoutek
Cigarette
Bird Names
Hume
Dustin Wong

I guess we're playing at 1:20 Pee 'Em on Saturday.
so guess no one will see us

CALIGULIAR

2010-07-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

BOOKING OCTOBER TOUR WITH BERMUDA TRIANGLES
MIND'S EYE PYRAMID GALACTIC ABUSE
SOUTHEAST US to TEXAS and BACK TO VIRGINIA

need help with
ATHENS, GA
ALABAMA
BATON ROUGE, LA
DALLAS, TX
NASHVILLE

send emails to CAVESCAVERNS (@) gmail.com

7-14-10

2010-07-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

GEORGE KINNEY w/ KOHOUTEK
TEXAS PSYCHEDELIC RANCH - - - GOLDEN DAWN - - - POWER PLANT
peer of the 13th Floor Elevators, George Kinney of Austin, TX 60's psych-blues-rock band THE GOLDEN DAWN will be performing with Scott Verrastro's abstracted improvised psych, free-space blowout collective KOHOUTEK.

CAVES CAVERNS
Couch Heaven's house slop psych punk four-piece. Jeeb Blast Gyroscopic Mountain Planetarium Collapsing Rock Formations

GUN OUTFIT
Olympia, WA sonic guitar dreaminess, windy northwest bad moon rising SST flannel trio

FRANKZIG
excellent no bullshit silence-commanding studies in classical Spanish flamenco guitar. Speak Spanish or Die.

PALINDRONE
Christian Brady (Meadows/Antlers/Hume) and Steph Barrow (Meadows) playing lovers duo garage rock. ECLECTIC BAHAMIAN

COUCH HEAVEN

Couch Heaven video

2010-06-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

CAVES CAVERNS at COUCH HEAVEN feat. PROJEXORCISM JUNE 19, 2010

pry open yr third eye

2010-06-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

RVA Magazine Review

Photos by JO MORENO

Caves Caverns - Communique (soundsfromthepocket.com)
The free-form, instrumental heavy psychedelia that this Richmond band plays on their latest release, a four-song, forty-minute cassette, has many worthy antecedents. Most prominent are Ash Ra Tempel's epic Krautrock space jams and Hawkwind's acid-soaked biker rock. These trippy jams will pry open your third eye. Andrew Necci??

june 19

2010-06-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY JUNE 19th

8:00 PM FOR REALZZZZs

ELIZA'S BIRTHDAY AFFAIR

at COUCH HEAVEN (downtown, back stairs through alley)

TASHA YAR (ex-US CHRISTMAS, NC space/psych/hawkwind/neurosis feat. PROJEXORCISM)

BUCK GOOTER (harrisonburg noise punk/theremin/drum machine/industrial)

CAVES CAVERNS (house band surf psych slop rock lobster bisque bitches)

bring Eliza a present, don't bring any douches or dicks. bring dough for touring dudes

hey dadz

2010-06-14T09:51:00.001-07:00

doin' it in the park

2010-06-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

. . . . CAVES CAVERNS SUMMER 2010

. . . . . . . . SATURDAY JUNE 19th at COUCH HEAVEN (downtown, upstairs couch chill, back steps from the alley between Marshall & Broad)______ TASHA YAR (heavy NC space rock/psychedelia, ex-US-CHRISTMAS, the Hawkwindy dude), BUCK GOOTER (virginia mountain town industrial LSD punk rock meditations), CAVES CAVERNS (4-piece cosmic slop punk trash psych) 8:00 on the real tip. DOWNTOWN RICHMOND, don't invite a horse police. richmond, please repost.

FRIDAY JULY 9th WASHINGTON DC at THE SUBMARINE (lamont street house show, formerly known as The Curling Flower House) with BUCK GOOTER and some DC TBAs.

SATURDAY JULY 10th NEWARK DE --- NEW VENUE WHERE THE EAST END CAFE USED TO BE . . . . VA INVADES DE w/ CAVES CAVERNS (richmond), PIZZA (sterling), HAIL HYDRA (richmond), FIELD DAY (richmond), CIGARETTE (arlington), WILLIAM WESLEY & TINY SOCKETS (TAZEWELL)

WEDNESDAY JULY 14 RICHMOND VA at COUCH HEAVEN (downtown, couch chill, back steps) KOHOUTEK w/ GEORGE KINNEY (Texas 60's psych icon George Kinney of the GOLDEN DAWN, peers of Roky and the Elevators, backed by SCOTT VERRASTRO's KOHOUTEK ENESEMBLE, playing GOLDEN DAWN POWER PLANT CLASSICS as well as psychedelic free exploration), with CAVES CAVERNS and FRANKZIG (beautiful classic guitar meditations, conquistadores paz y guerra) and PALINDRONE (lovers duo, Christian Brady and Steph Barrow of Meadows/Antlers/etc)

. . . . . . . . . . .

probably still got some CAVES CAVERNS/RESIN PYRAMID tapes left.

check out Gary Stevens and Jason Hodges new thang MUTWAWA, fucking speed percolater KRAFTWERK/MERZBOW/CA$HMERE electronic dance noise manipulations.

here's their first jam piece.... RADIO MACHETE MOB . . .

2010-05-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Saturday Night 5/29 at the former Nanci Raygun/Twisters/etc.... Strange Matter, arcade games, french fries, beer. what a way to spend part of yr Memorial Day weekend bender...

HEAD MOLT, CAVES CAVERNS, FLESH CONTROL, BIG A$$ CHICKS
Browning's birthday, or someting.

2010-05-20T06:42:00.000-07:00

Richmond VA 9:30 PM
MAY 29 (Saturday) Browning's Birthday Affair w/ Head Molt, Street Pizza, Caves Caverns, Flesh Control, and Big Ass Chick at Stange Matter (929 W. Grace St) Richmond VA 9:30 PM
JUNE 19 TASHA YAR (ex-US Christmas, the SPACE ROCK electronics side), Buck Gooter, Caves Caverns, maybe 1 TBA at COUCH HEAVEN (downtown, follow the rules)
JULY 9 DC show TBA w/ Buck Gooter, others TBA
JULY 10 (Saturday) VA Invades DE somewhere in Delaware w/ Pizza, Human Smoke, Buck Gooter, Caves Caverns, Field Day, Hail Hydra, William Wesley & the Tiny Sockets
JULY 15 TBA in Richmond, Kohoutek and George Kinney from 60's Texas psych band Golden Dawn/contemporary of the 13th Floor Elevator, for fans NUGGETS PSYCH. Take a listen http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LJU76SAH

early nocturnal

2010-05-18T07:17:00.000-07:00

download our COMMUNIQUE tape from this Ongakubuka dude's blog. He's got a bunch of other good rips of psych and fuzzy stuff. I'm satisfied with his reference points.
"Improv psych from this Richmond 4-piece. Swirling fuzz, squealing saxophone, and a theremin cameo ensures this cassette to be an auditory interplanetary medium for your neurons. It's a little more relaxed, but it's a sound that lies somewhere between Raccoo-oo-oon and Comets on Fire. Less than 100 cassettes made. Get one from Sounds From the Pocket."

http://ongakubaka.blogspot.com/2010/05/caves-caverns-communique.html

no justice no piece of pecan pie

total bore

2010-05-12T16:31:00.000-07:00

upcoming Caves Caverns stuff

MAY 15 (Saturday) BERMUDA TRIANGLES record release show w/ Caves Caverns, Blake Midgette, and VIALKA (france) at the Triple, Richmond VA 9:30 PM
MAY 29 (Saturday) Browning's Birthday Affair w/ Head Molt, Street Pizza, Caves Caverns, Flesh Control, and Big Ass Chick at Stange Matter (929 W. Grace St) Richmond VA 9:30 PM
JULY 9 DC show TBA w/ Buck Gooter, others TBA
JULY 10 (Saturday) VA Invades DE somewhere in Delaware w/ Pizza, Human Smoke, Buck Gooter, Caves Caverns, Field Day, Hail Hydra, William Wesley & the Tiny Sockets
JULY 15 TBA in Richmond, Kohoutek and George Kinney from 60's Texas psych band Golden Dawn/contemporary of the 13th Floor Elevator, for fans NUGGETS PSYCH. Take a listen http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LJU76SAH

Split C-25 with RESIN PYRAMID, probably available at the BTs show on Saturday. RESIN PYRAMID is JK "Jeeb" and Will "Delicious" Smith playing something kinda like Amon Duul II/Kraftwerk/Sun Ra. Sometimes JRuss will squeel on a saxophone and dub some bells in and out.

pussyduke

2010-05-09T20:18:00.001-07:00

CAVES CAVERNS from COMMUNIQUE TAPE
"TAKE THE JAY TRAIN"
http://www.mediafire.com/?ojqj0igzzfd

wadmalah

2010-05-04T20:20:00.000-07:00

upcoming may joints....

THURSDAY MAY 6th
. . . . . COUGH (heavy doom in Electric Wizard mode, loud as fuck, now with second guitar, heavy fuzz riffs and psychedelic exploration)
. . . . VINCENT BLACK SHADOW (Baltimore stooges blowjob psych punk, as good as it sounds, BALTAMONT style)
. . . . . KILL YOUR BRAIN (harrisonburg freak rock metal, dudes from Buck Gooter and Creedence Clearwater Revival Revival, last RVA show before the end)
. . . . . . . CAVES CAVERNS (friendly enough dudes, the 69th spelunking)

SATURDAY MAY 15th
. . . . . BERMUDA TRIANGLES RECORD RELEASE SHOW (so good, tropical fright & funky post punk, probably one of the best live bands out of the mid-Atlantic)
. . . . . VIALKA ( "micro-orchestra" from FRANCE)
. . . . . . CAVES CAVERNS (psych jams on two free pitchers)
. . . . . . BLAKE MIDGETTE (viceroy of Richmond comedy, as seen reading Bukowski at Crossroads, sometimes wears a PAGENINETYNINE shirt)

4/28 Washington DC/Maryland

2010-04-25T14:49:00.000-07:00

Bermuda Triangles are on tour up and down the east coast with their new LP... get that shit, great live band, funky & frightening I keep saying. We're playing a show in that DMV-area at the Tree Swing House, where I went to shows like 7/8 years ago when I was in high school, now Paul Joyner and Metal James live there. Paul Joyner's gonna play, we're gonna play and the Bermuda Triangles are going to rule.

6107 43rd St Riverdale, MD 20737
BERMUDA TRIANGLES
PAUL JOYNER BAND
CAVES CAVERNS

get freaky, respect the spot, its almost metro accessible.

Colossi of Memnon

2010-04-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

Monday night, 9:00 PM (for real) at the Triple (3306 W. Broad St.)

. . . . . . . . THE STYRENES (70's Cleveland proto-punk/art-rock/weirdo outsider rock, featuring members of fellow 70's Cleveland rocker proto-punk bands the ELECTRIC EELS and THE MIRRORS)

. . . . . . . . . . KOHOUTEK (Philadelphia based, DC-rooted free imrov psychedelic abstraction collletive, elements of kraut-y space rock, electronic noise manipulation, free-jazz percussion and improvisation, so good, always a trip)

. . . . . . . . . . CAVES CAVERNS (fuzzed out space jams, JK cut off his hair)
The Styrenes should be real interesting, weirdo outsider rock, pre-punk, art-punk stuff that came out of the 1970's Cleveland punk scene that included The Dead Boys, the Pagans, Pere Ubu, the Electric Eels, Rocket from the Tombs, and the Mirrors. Cool early incarnation of weirdo punk with psychedelic tinges. Listen to DRANO IN YOUR VEINS:
http://www.clepunk.com/sounds/styrenes/drano.htm
Kohoutek is cool as fuck, great heady space improv, honestly informed and influenced by the canon of space rock psychedelia and the free sounds of jazz improvisation. you will trip out..

Also VOLCANIC DUST corrupting european air travel may have sent us a special gift for this show. If the VOLCANIC DUST prevails, it will be a true gift to anyone who comes to this show.

clarendon

2010-04-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

"something tells this me band isn't going to be very conversationalist"

poor cliff

2010-04-02T18:12:00.000-07:00

also, evidence from Austin

eyeball

2010-04-02T17:04:00.000-07:00

Gunslingers show at Couch Heaven was real awesome. Those Frenchies are pretty unstoppable and the frontman is true entertainer. Check them out on the rest of their East Coast jaunt

04/02/10 LA OTRACINA, GUNSLINGERS at M-Room, Philadelphia, PA
04/04/10 LA OTRACINA, WHITE HILLS & GUNSLINGERS at Cake Shop, NYC, NY
04/06/10 LA OTRACINA, GUNSLINGERS at AS 220, Providence, RI
04/07/10 LA OTRACINA, GUNSLINGERS & GHOST BOX ORCHESTRA at Butcher Shop, Allston/Boston, MA
04/08/10 LA OTRACINA, GUNSLINGERS at Cafe Nine, New Haven, CT
04/09/10 LA OTRACINA, GUNSLINGERS, PYGMY SHREWS & PINK REASON at Death By Audio, Brooklyn, NY

We sold enough of our tapes and shirts (all of the tie dyes, in fact) to pay off my South Carolina speeding ticket almost completely, which rules, thanks Richmond homies. Stay comfortable in that shit.

JK has recorded an awesome tape of his eccentric, dusk-til-dawn in the basement-psychedelic space loner jams. Really awesome stuff, he records it all himself, calls it DERELICT SPACECRAFT
Give it a listen, let him know what you think.
Here's a sendspace of that motherfucker http://www.sendspace.com/file/m6bs33

We're playing two shows in the DMV as the kids are REPPING these days.

April 12th in Arlington, VA at Galaxy Hut with PIZZA
and
April 28 in College Park, MD at the Tree Swing House with all around pals BERMUDA TRIANGLES, DIAMOND BLACK HEART BOY, and PAUL JOYNER.
Bermuda Triangles should have their new LP which will rule. The combination of Paul Joyner and Chino Black Boy is a meeting of the minds I really anticipate being awesome.

the snooze that you choose

2010-03-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

us four Caves Caverns fellers have returned back to Richmond from our Austin vacation. the 1,500 miles there were enough for us to have lost our minds by Houston. ... . .. . big thanks to Justin Waters whose interest in us and putting out the COMMUNIQUE tape was the first step that got us truck it out west. The Moose Lodge show we played, while initially overwhelming turned out to be one of the best sets we've played, really happy about that, ruined the pseudo-SG, thanks to the teenage who turned on Raftery. Thanks to Polly and Ralphie for doing it up and not making us play in the cold darkness of the Moose Lodge outdoor patio. Much love to Richmond expatriates/ruling Austin-sherpas Joey Magic Jewels (Joe too) and Joe Leggzzzz (and his TELEPATHIK homies) and Ryan/Shaggy. Holy fuck, it was good to hang with ya'll. Miss Stephanie B deserves credit for sticking around us strangers and being warm and friendly and generous with the Nat Shermans. Will J'Rot, as usual always a real pleasure, stick with us kid, you'll get some pizza out of it.

We still have some shirts and tapes left, so hit us up about getting that if you want $6ppd for shirt/$5ppd for tape/$10 for both. CAVESCAVERNS (at) GMAIL.COM
I got a speeding ticket in South Carolina, help me out with that. or something.
they look something close to this

RICHMOND SHOW
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . COUCH HEAVEN . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
TUESDAY MARCH 30th . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
........ GUNSLINGERS (psychedelic speedy kraut punk from FRANCE, 2/3 ALUK TODOLO)
.......... HUMAN SMOKE (bluesy sludge punx tuned to negative, RVA)
.......... CAVES CAVERNS (Richmond space trash)
. . . . . ..... KING DOME (mysterious fuck metal)

same COUCH HEAVEN rules as always, enter around back, DO NOT lock yr bike on Broad St, don't bring a shitty attitude or any shitty dudes, do bring some money for the band from fucking FRANCE who rule, do intend to chill on a couch with some fun to share with yr couch'd brederen. email the CAVESCAVERNS gmail if you've got any questions.

also playing in May with WHITE HILLS (NYC/ONEIDA), VINCENT BLACK SHADOW (Baltimore cum rock), and COUGH (the heaviest, the slowest, the best). Can't wait for that shit.

citrus dish

2010-03-12T18:41:00.000-08:00

NEW CAVES CAVERNS CASSETTE RELEASE COMMUNIQUE OUT NOW ON SOUNDS FROM THE POCKET (AUSTIN, TX).

LISTEN TO MEDITATIVE SPACE CUT, DUKE ELLINGTON HOMAGE "Take The J Train" (http://www.mediafire.com/?ojqj0igzzfd)

four piece Caves Caverns
in Manchester munch krush groove
heavy improv psychedelic punk,
sonic hondo FREE smoosh, trouble funk
JEEB SOUND fuzz-cording, all green ark jazz.

TWO RICHMOND SHOWS
before AUSTIN mindmeltspringbreak

SUNDAY MARCH 14th GALLERY 5 (200 W. MARSHALL, JACKSON WARD)
GONDOLA - philly heavy space truckin' boogie.
SOUNDS OF KALEIDOSCOPE - DC/Philly shoegaze/noise pop
CAVES CAVERNS (sloppedelic pranksters)
FRAILTY OF ANGELS (young lovers dark BASTARD NOISE affair)

MONDAY MARCH 15th THE TRIPLE (3306 W. BROAD ST, nothing district, drop shots)
ULTRA DOLPHINS (mystical lifers with new album)
FUZZ ORCHESTRA (Italy, radical fluxus kraut sounds)
CAVES CAVERNS (shipping out of town after this show)
GUADALUPE PLATA (Spanish blues-fuzz)

AUSTIN SXSW MADNESS
WEDNESDAY MARCH 17th
Escapes IV
Yellow Fever (9:30pm), Light Pollution (9pm), Quiet Hooves (8:30pm), Prince Rama (8pm), Popo (7:30pm), Reverse X Rays (7pm), Peter and the Wolf (6:30pm), Male Bonding (6pm), Terror Pigeon (5:30pm), Nice Nice (5pm), Wild Yaks (4:30pm), How I Quit Crack/Caves Caverns (4pm), The Beets (3:30pm), Reading Rainbow (3pm), Eternal Summers (2:30pm), Many Mansions (2pm), Spiked Punch (1:30pm), Geoff Reacher (1pm), Futurebirds/Corndawg (12:30pm), Boys Who Say No (noon) at Club 1808 [a] [m] [$5 lightly suggested donation

THURSDAY MARCH 18th
Melty Brains presents
Telepathik Friend (6:30pm), Death Sentence: PANDA! (CA, 5:30pm), Magic Jewels (4:45pm), Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez (MD, 4pm), Video Hippos (MD, 3:15pm), Caves Caverns (VA, 2:30pm), DD/MM/YYYY (Canada, 1:45pm), Boys Who Say No (Canada, 1pm) at 5615 Jim Hogg Ave. [free]

SATURDAY MARCH 20th
Prophase Records Showcase and BBQ @ 1908 Lightsey Rd, Austin

12:30am: Kuschty Rye Ergot (mem. of Kohoutek)
11:30pm: Jason Simon (of Dead Meadow)
10:30pm: George Kinney (of Golden Dawn)
9:30pm: Janina Angel Bath
8:30pm: Grant Hart (of Husker Du)
7pm: Yahowha 13
6pm: (The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope
5pm: Kohoutek (w/ George Kinney)
4pm: Gondola
3pm: Dark Sea Dream
2pm: Caves Caverns
1pm: The Tennis System

COUCH HEAVEN

2010-01-08T00:56:00.000-08:00

*** SUNDAY JANUARY 10th ***
GONDOLA (Philadelphia super rockin heavy space truckin' trio like old Dead Meadow, members of (Sounds of) Kaleidoscope)
KOHOUTEK (Incredible DC/Philadelphia improv psych/noise/ collective)
CAVES CAVERNS (local neer-do wells)
8pm Couch Heaven (DOWNTOWN), donations
message for address if you dont know!

PSEUDOBRUITISMUS AFRICAMUS

2009-12-31T10:21:00.000-08:00

COMMUNQUE

2009-12-14T05:57:00.001-08:00

new Caves Caverns tape, four piece lineup recorded in Lakeside in December 2009, "COMMUNIQUE", get real paranoid.

playing with BALACLAVA at Chinae's art gallery January 14th, Richmond, VA.

COUCH HEAVEN

2009-08-22T21:40:00.000-07:00

Our pal SILVER hooked up a recording of our August 21 show at COUCH HEAVEN in downtown Richmond during Best Friends weekend. Our first show with Tony on drums.

http://www.divshare.com/download/8261974-03e#

rule it.

dynamite boogie

2009-07-31T00:38:00.000-07:00

cave caverns show list
1. 5/21/08 SPAZZATORIUM w/ MC Homeless, Human Smoke, Manchester Black, greenville, NC
2. 5/23/08 KILLING FLOORS w/ U.S. Christmas, Stronghold Crusader, Human Smoke, Smell the Rot hickory, NC
3. 5/25/08 THE LODGE w/Jerusalem, Human Smoke Disembowelment Party Blacksburg, VA
4. 5/26/08 GARAJ MAHAL w/ Beasteater, Human Smoke, King Bee Pounding Mill, VA
5. 6/13/08 NARA SUSHI w/Inter Arma, Deadsea Richmond, VA
6. 6/21/08 DUDE MANCH (618 E. Franklin) w/La Otracina, Nathaniel & Jameson duo Richmond, VA
7. 7/03/08 SAXBYS COFFEE w/ Snorklewacker (busted by bike cops before Snorklewacker could play) Richmond, VA
8. 8/13/08 NARA SUSHI w/valkyrie, caltrop, ol’ scratch Richmond, VA
9. 9/01/08 WALLACE ST HOUSE SHOW w/ Snorklewacker and randos Richmond, VA
10. 9/03/08 artist underground cafe w/ mystery of two, yardwork Richmond, VA
11. 9/09/08 Will and Jennifer's house show (pine & spring) w/ CROM, snorklewacker Richmond, VA
12. 9/20/08 HELL BLOCK BASEMENT w/ CBR (moved from WALLACE ST. HOUSE after cops busted that show) Richmond, VA
13. 10/26/08 DUDE MANCH w/ U.S. Christmas, Dark Castle, Acheronian Richmond, VA
14. 10/27/08 GALLERY 5 w/ghastly city sleep, jonathan vasser, brontosaurus Richmond, VA
15. 11/13/08 NARA SUSHI w/caltrop, curtains of night, hail hydra! Richmond, VA
16. 11/23/08 (early) RUMORS boutique w/ Two Funerals, Field Day,Julie Karr Richmond, VA
17. 11/23/08 (later) RIOT HOUSE w/ Drunkdriver and Triac Richmond, VA
18. 11/26/08 The TRIPLE w/ Gull, Yip Yip Richmond, VA
19. 12/19/08 The CZAR w/ Sweat Lodge, Puddin' Pops Richmond, VA
20. 12/20/08 The Velvet Lounge w/ kohoutek, ultrabunny, and plums Washington. DC
21. 12/21/08 RIOT HOUSE w/ Count Von Count and APE! Richmond, VA
22. 1/04/09 RUMORS w/ Chromeblower and Puddin' Pops Richmond, VA
23. 1/05/09 213 PARK PLACE w/ Chromeblower, Deer Gear, and Big Girl, Newark, DE
24. 1/06/09 THE CHARLESTON w/ Chromeblower, Siberians, and Michael Jordan, Brooklyn, NY
25. 1/08/09 (early) FORNICATION FORTRESS (busted by cops after noise complaint) Baltimore, MD
26. 1/08/09 (later) THE GIRL CAVE w/ Brainworms, Chromeblower Washington, DC
27. 1/09/09 THE TREE SWING HOUSE w/ Pizza, Tideland, Paul Joyner's Psychedelic Jam Band, and Chromeblower Riverdale, MD
28. 1/26/09 POSITIVE YOUTH FEST at ST STEPHENS church w/Ingrid, Nihilith, the Guilt, New Habitat, the Feed, and Eubonics, Washington, DC
29. 2/16/09 NARA SUSHI w/ Hawks, and Animal Magazine Richmond, VA
30. 2/17/09 the CZAR w/ The Catalyst, Peer Pressure, Fat History Month, Baylie's Band Richmond VA
31. 3/07/09 the CZAR w/ Field Day, Rapid Cities, Animal Magazine Richmond, VA
32. 3/08/09 The TRIPLE w/ MI AMI and Thank You Richmond, VA
33. 3/18/09 The CZAR w/ Lord Jeff (as 2-piece CAVES) Richmond, VA
34. 3/22/09 The CZAR w/ Mass Shivers, Hail Hydra, In Circles, the Black Powder Richmond, VA
35. 3/27/09 CHURCH OF CRYSTAL LIGHT w/ These Are Powers, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, Jefferson "Mayday Mayday" Vimana Richmond, VA
36. 3/31/09 RUMORS w/ Ultra dolphins, purple rhinestone eagle, and windhand Richmond, VA
37. 4/09/09 NARA SUSHI w/ Head Molt, New Thrill Parade, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, Pastures/Scott Noose, TWILIGHT MEMORIES OF THE THREE SUNS Richmond, VA
38. 4/15/09 DUDE MANCH w/ La Otracina, Richmond, VA
39. 5/18/09 TINDERBOX w/ Screaming Females, Bellafea Richmond, VA
40. 6/09/09 NARA SUSHI w/ Dark Meat, Golden Cities, Caustic Castle, Richmond, VA
41. 6/18/09 NARA SUSHI w/ U.S. Christmas, Pontiak, Ultra Dolphins, Richmond, VA
42. 6/20/09 NARA SUSHI w/ Nihilith, Fine Lines, Richmond, VA
43. 6/26/09 COUCH HEAVEN w/ The Ulitmate V.A.G, 500mg, Head Molt, Richmond, VA
44. 6/27/09 THE GIRL CAVE w/ Totally Stoked, Ended, Washington, DC
45. 6/28/09 THE SPOT w/ Big Girl, Holy Dirt, Tit Patrol, Wilmington, DE
46. 7/27/09 NARA SUSHI w/ Trifle Tower, Dark Forces, Awesome, Richmond, VA
47. 8/01/09 OLD BRIDGE FESTIVAL w/ Gay Knowledge, Hume, Grass Canyon, Buildings, Google Earth, Amissville, VA
48. 8/21/09 COUCH HEAVEN w/ Head Molt, Scarcity of Tanks, Richmond, VA
49. 8/25/09 266 SOUTH CHERRY w/ Gay Knowledge, Cigarette (Dirty Paws), Say No! To Architecture, Richmond, VA
50. 8/26/09 THE TRIPLE w/ Pizza, Tideland, NAAM, Richmond, VA
51. 9/29/09 3001 E. BROAD w/ ALUK TODOLO, LUSSURIA, Richmond, VA
52. 9/30/09 THE TRIPLE w/ Bermuda Triangles, I Need Sleep, Richmond, VA
53. 10/02/09 THE LIGHTHOUSE w/ Bermuda Triangles, Trophy Wife, I Need Sleep, Washington, DC
54. 11/19/09 HOG'S LAIR w/ Snack Truck, Thank God, Richmond, VA
55. 12/11/09 COUCH HEAVEN w/ Antlers, Cold Toast, Galt, Richmond, VA
56. 1/10/10 COUCH HEAVEN w/ Kohoutek, Gondola, Richmond, VA
57. 1/11/10 THE TRIPLE w/ Bermuda Triangles, Holy Sheet, Richmond, VA
58. 1/14/10 LAST MONTH GALLERY 101 S. ADDISON w/ Balaclava, Sexy Crimes, Richmond, VA
59. 3/15/10 THE TRIPLE w/ Ultra Dolphins, Fuzz Orchestra (Italy), and Guadalupe Plata (Spain), Richmond, VA
60. 3/17/10 Club 1808 w/ Prince Rama, How I Quit Crack, Reading Rainbow, The Beets, Austin, TX
61. 3/18/10 THE COMPOUND w/ Magic Jewels, Telepathik Friend, DD/MM/YYYY, Death Sentence Panda, Videohippos, Austin, TX
62. 3/18/10 THE PARLOR w/ Rusted Shut (earlier show), Austin, TX
63. 3/20/10 MOOSE LODGE w/ Telepathik Friend, Zs, Venision Whirled, Bubblegum Shitface Experience, Austin TX
64. 3/20/10 21st St CO-OP w/ Thank God, Atlas Moth, Suplecs, Austin, TX
65. 3/30/10 COUCH HEAVEN w/ GUNSLINGERS (france), Human Smoke, Richmond, VA
66. 4/19/10 THE TRIPLE w/ Kohoutek, the Styrenes, Richmond, VA
67. 4/22/10 STRANGE MATTER w/ The Catalyst, Field Day, Creta Kano, Richmond, VA
68. 4/28/10 THE TREE SWING HOUSE w/ Cigarette, Riverdale Park, MD
69. 5/6/10 THE TRIPLE w/ VINCENT BLACK SHADOW, Cough, Kill Your Brain, Richmond, VA
70. 5/15/10 THE TRIPLE w/ Bermuda Triangles, Vialka (france), Blake Midgette, Gary Stevens DJ (new age space library) Richmond, VA

heavily mindfucked and doomed to a grim fate

2009-01-25T15:58:00.000-08:00

This is a band that i can never get sick of discovering new songs by or videos of, because they're just the most stylish, adept motherfuckers on the planet and they know it. when i get lost in this it feels like i'm in deep space, my skin is on fire in the vacuum of space, i'm slowly spinning around the edge of a black hole moments before my existence is crushed into nothingness, the universe as i know it ceases to exist and i'm dropped out the other side of consciousness as an irreparable vegetable, so incapable of explaining what just happened to me that i'm committed for life to be a ward of the state, jabbering about "sonny bono memorial parkway" and "buffalo chips" to whatever civil servant or lithium zombie happens to pass earshot, heavily mindfucked and doomed to a grim fate.

jruss pointed out the other day that four yawning man songs--including "paseo lindo," the song in david markey's 90s space broadcast burning palms (jennifer's coffee table), which was the first thing that led me to this band in the first place--are available on an ep from 2005 that floats around on ye olde soulseek called paseo lindo.

i finally got it and it is Awesome.

on first listen, in fact, i'd say that the only real problem with paseo lindo is there's not enough of it! in fact, knowing how prolific these dudes are/were and how righteous this particular set of songs is, you become almost insulted once you're hooked, can't believe this shit is only 12 minutes long when it's clear there's hours of material out there, you just gotta get some more, you're sitting on your hands wondering when the fuck that 30-song compilation is ever going to Really come out...but who knows at what sort of pace the obscure machinations of old stoners' musical/pseudobusinessventures truly function? how can you even ponder this kind of shit? just put it on repeat!

this little ep is just as Epically Sonic as the other yawning man 4-songer, pothead, but ultimately because of much different reasons, chiefly due to its songs being more concise distillings of the jazz/surf side of yawning man than that disc overall, but also due to the incredibly spontaneous nature of the live recordings and how sharply defined an image of a constantly evolving group of musicians this remarkably short release depicts, not in spite of their lo-fidelity origins but rather in unabashed celebration of them--that's what pushes paseo lindo fully into focus as a searing, 12 minute blast of pure desert dusk vibe, corroded tape head and speaker cable that demands to be played at neighbor-annihilating volume for as long as you can legally get away with.

the first song, "paseo lindo," births fully-grown from a four count, a perfectly dizzy, fuzzed gary arce guitar lull entwines with lazy bass chording and steady, stuttering sixteenths on the hi-hat all the way into uptempo breaks that come on like the manson family frying the banana splits alive and ebb out into an intricately picked solo that sounds like a dobro fucking itself through a hollow-bodied wormhole. the first time i heard this song i was deep in third-eye hypnosis and it made me a True Believer in this band, i don't know what else i can possibly say about it.

the middle two songs ("crack harder dry" and "fine of papa chile") are both under three minutes long and ride much surfier, simplistic backbeats than a lot of the more modern yawning man stuff does which comes off at moments as almost double nickels-worship, but more of a fury of pointed reverb and twang. both songs also flirt heavily with a bit of double-picked deltones-style maneuvering, ultimately meet deep, heavily jazzy fake-out endings, cut out on real traditional slam-door surf endings.

the last song, "catamaran," i already had, it has really tape rubby Epic vocals that border on cheesy but after many listens i have realized fucking rule, not just because kyuss covered this song much later (so it's cool to see a fixed point in History where one desert monster spawns another,) but because the lyrics are almost certainly about flying above storm clouds while tripping on LSD, which indubitably both a.) rules! and b.) if you are reading this, makes total sense at this point.

YAWNING MAN - PASEO LINDO EP

BY MICHAEL E. RAF-MAN

dawg on dog

2009-01-24T22:41:00.001-08:00

REALITY

yo capital photographic motherfucker and truest of responsible southern dude, TONY LYNCH accompanied us on our winter tour with thems Chromeblower troublemakers, so dig this material, get down and get with it.

Go to DELAWARE
Go to BROOKLYN
Go to DC & MARYLAND

we all have
to laugh.

swirl

2009-01-24T09:17:00.001-08:00

hamsterdam

2009-01-19T14:12:00.001-08:00

2009-01-19T08:41:00.001-08:00

Free Jazz / Punk Rock

In a New York City nightclub, a skinny little Caucasian whose waterfall hairstyle and set of snout and lips make him look like a sullen anteater takes the stage, backed up by a couple of guitarists, bass, horn section, drummer and bongos. Most of his back-up is black, and they know their stuff: it's pure James Brown funk, with just enough atonal accents to throw you off. The trombone player, in fact, looks familiar, and sounds amazing: you look a bit closer, and of course, that's Joseph Bowie, bother of Lester, both of them avant-garde jazzmen of repute. But then the anteater begins to sing, in a hoarse yowl that sounds more like someone being dragged naked through the broken glass and oily rubble of a back-alley than even the studied abrasiveness of most punk rock vocalizations. The songs are about contorting yourself, tying other people up and leaving them there, and how the singer doesn't want to be happy. After a while he picks up an alto sax, and out come some of the most hideous flurries of gurgling shrieks heard since the mid-Sixties glory days of ESP-Disk records. The singer/saxophonist's name is James Chance, and you have been watching the Contortions.

Across town in another club, what looks like the standard rock 'n' roll lineup saunters onto a stage set right in the floor, making it impossible for anybody in the room except those at the very front to see. The group consists of two guitars, bass and drums. Then their lead singer wanders out from in back, casting a baleful imperious eye over the crowd. She is short and chubby, filmily dressed with waxy black hair and a ring in one nostril. Her name is Lydia Lunch; she used to play guitar in a way that has been compared with Chilean torture chambers. Now she just sings, and surprisingly enough, what was once confined to a banshee wail to match her guitar work has now broadened, from Ilse-She-Wolf barks to little-girl mewlings and back to banshee wail again. They open with "Diddy Wah Diddy" and run through a contemptuously short set of originals and carefully chosen covers like Nancy Sinatra's "Lightnin's Girl." Interestingly enough, the sound of the band is a lot closer to the jungle than that of the Contortions, less strained and more sensual; one of the guitarists doubles on sax and guitar-synthesizer, and the jams are short and to the point. The name of the group is Eight-Eyed Spy.

Finally, back home at CBGB's, original spawning ground of the late Seventies punk revolution, Richard Hell and the Voidoids are running through one of the final sets of their career. Ironically, where the group used to put on sloppy sets in front of small but adoring audiences, now they're playing incredibly tight, slashing rock 'n' roll to a packed house consisting mostly of rubbernecking tourists and suburbanite teens who have heard about all this punk stuff and finally found the courage to come down and check it out, and for whom it wouldn't make much difference which band was onstage. But for those who are there to listen, it's obvious that the Voidoids have something more than the usual punk engine-gunnings going for them: in the dense mesh of guitars are, unmistakably, quotes from and elaborations on Miles Davis lines off albums like Agharta and On the Corner; if you listen and look closely, you can tell that this incredible stylistic melding is emanating mainly from the guitarist over stage left, a quiet, balding guy in sunglasses named Robert Quine. When the Voidoids break up, he will make an album of instrumental improvisations with guitarist friend Jody Harris (ex- of the Contortions) and a rhythm machine.

Just what is all this stuff? Well, guess what, folks -- the end of the Seventies, with its apparent exhaustion of forms and general disgust with what has come to be known as "fusion music," has brought us what seems at first glance to be the unlikeliest fusion of all: punk rock and free jazz. But it's been a long time a-borning, and it has antecedents. If you want to know how we got to such a strange common ground, or perhaps if you just want to be pissed off, read on.

But before we get into this thing, I think it might be good for writer and reader to have a little eyeball-to-eyeball chat, if only to clear the air. As a probably regular follower of this magazine, your musical tastes I'd imagine are a little more refined, at least in certain directions, than the average person's. Not trying to butter you up; it's just that, let's face it, for most people the whole subject of music and its relative importance in one's life can be summed up by the sales figures of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. For most people, music, if it's thought about much at all, is thought of as an underscoring for the far more important concerns of day-to-day living: music of any kind is a good thing, as long as it knows its place and stays there.

That leaves the rest of you, or us, depending on exactly what and how much we are going to be able to agree upon. Now, without getting too snobbish about it (snobbery being an affliction unfortunately endemic to a great many jazz fans), I think we can assume that in general good or great jazz is music of a higher caliber than a good deal, if not most, of the more pop-oriented stuff coming out. Duke Ellington was better than Paul Whiteman. Thelonious Monk was better than Roger Williams, comparing John Coltrane to Boots Randolph would be making a bad joke, and so on down the line. The music these figures produced, I further submit, was better not because it was any more technically complicated, or because Ellington and Monk and Trane had the greatest chops of anybody who ever lived (even if they might have), but because of some rare wellspring of feeling inside them that caused them to create art that moved mountains, changed history, has endured and will continue to.

I'm discounting chops and the technical end because as far as I'm concerned that sort of thing has basically nothing to do with what's in a player's heart, and expression of passion was basically why music was invented in the first place. A lot of people don't see it in quite those terms, of course; their absolutism takes another form: they think you have to "know how to play" your instrument according to some preset and as far as I can see arbitrary standards before anyone can even begin to take you seriously. They further think that the more technically proficient a player you become, ipso facto the better music maker, or let's say maker of better music you become. Why do they nurse this curious notion? Probably because they have been brainwashed, but who picked up the first bar of soap? It seems to me that this kind of thinking is by definition quantitative rather qualitative: you can sling arpeggios all over the place, you can freeze the baby in the bathwater and mail the ice to Siberia, but the fact remains that if you take one note, any note, and let two different people play it, what comes out of one's axe just might be nothing more than the note, whereas through some magic the other's note might be just a little more expressive, probably because there was something, a kind of inner urgency and yearning, behind it. And all the conservatories and theory books and virtuoso chop-flashings in the world aren't gonna make one iota of difference in regard to that one humble note.

A good example of this dichotomy is the old argument (which never should have been an argument in the first place) about who was better, Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie. Now, I would be the last person in the world to say anything against Dizzy Gillespie. I will concede that technically Dizzy from the starting gate could wipe the floor with Miles and everybody knew it, but Miles has always had something so emotionally compelling in his playing that he changed our lives in ways that Dizzy, magnificent as he is, never really did. I'd say put it down to the fact that they must make two different kinds of music, both valid, but it has been observed more than once that, at least until On the Corner, Miles' playing never seemed to change so much as its context; Miles likes the middle register, apparently because it's where he can best summon his quiet fire, and has seldom gone for cascades of notes where a few with optimum soul would suffice. But let it be remembered that when Miles first appeared with Charlie Parker in the late Forties, a lot of people said he couldn't play, was a downright embarrassment to Bird. And you know something? If you listen to some of those old sides, you can hear Miles flubbing up here and there, an adolescent fumblingly finding his way. Obviously Bird heard something in Miles that all those detractors didn't, and obviously he was right. What's perhaps even more interesting is that when John Coltrane, the "sheets of sound" man himself, first joined Miles' band about ten years later, people said the same thing about him: "Coltrane can't play."

Maybe it was because he had a bit of R&B in his background, and for a lot of people into jazz that was strictly anathema at the time: you could hear them imperiously snooting about the presence of Chuck Berry and Big Maybelle in the movie Jazz on a Summer's Day, things like that. Hell, Coltrane used to walk the bar in, I believe it was Philadelphia: can't you just see him, the author of Om and A Love Supreme and Meditations, Ohnedaruth Himself, strutting the length of that thing kicking over whiskey glasses, probably sloppy drunk himself, driving the crowd to a frenzy with those raw, fartlike, obscenely loud and unquestionably tasteless and vulgar "HONKs!" and "SQUEEEs!" immortalized by Flip Phillips and Illinois Jacquet in the old Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts? And people called Phillips and Jacquet "tasteless" and "unmusical" too. But the way I always saw it, all that honk-squee stuff was just one part of rock 'n' roll getting ready to be born, a great cry of freedom from the constraints of "good" music, perhaps even the cerebral conceits of bebop. And a decade later you could hear that same gutbucket approach resurrected in things like Roland Kirk's solo on "Hog Callin' Blues" from Charles Mingus' classic Oh Yeah album. It's great that Kirk and Mingus had all the technique to let their eruptions slide on through, but as far as I'm concerned all the technique in the world is never going to make somebody like Al Dimeola or Stanley Clarke or Chick Corea or Herbie Hancock at this point, or almost any of those fusion cats matter a damn once their latest little space opera slides off the charts, 'cause if they ever had any soul they lost it by now. So now you know at least part of my prejudices in front.

Another part is that I love rock 'n' roll in its basest, crudest, most paleolithically rudimentary form. That's right, I love punk rock, and I'm not apologizing to anyone. As far as I can see, what Philips and Jacquet were doing on those Jazz at the Philharmonic sides was kind of the punk rock of its day. What's more, I don't give a good goddamn if somebody can barely play their instruments or even not at all, as long as they've got something to express and do it in a compelling way. Because to me music is any kind of sound made by one human being that moves another one. I suppose that validates a lot of stuff I consider total rubbish, like the aforementioned DiMeolas, Clarkes and Hancocks of the world as well as all the Jethro Tulls and Emerson, Lake and Palmers. But any musician is only as good as his attitude, chops be damned or fall where they may, and rock 'n' roll is all attitude. It was originally conceived as an outburst of inchoate obnoxious noise and that's what most of the best of it has remained. In other words, punk rock is as venerable as Little Richard. Admittedly, there have been some people over the years who have made rock that was technically (more often technologically) complex and musicologically erudite and still not be worthless -- the Byrds come to mind -- but trying to turn the blare of the outcasts into something arty and thereby respectable is as sick as the attempts made over the years to "upgrade" jazz by polluting it with all sorts of European classicist elements (the efforts of John Lewis and Gunther Schuller, few others, excepted).

Okay: by any standards of "good" music, rock 'n' roll is just a lot of garbage noise, always has been and always will be or it's not rock 'n' roll anymore (cf Billy Joel). Great jazz is great art. But I submit that, when it's not arty, garbage noise can also be great art. Because great art is anything that stirs the human breast in profound ways that may even have deeper psychological and social implications, and that's just exactly what, say, the Sex Pistols did. You may despise them, but they can't be denied their impact. Who cares if they had no talent (a contention I consider debatable anyway)? Their talent was for aural carnage and rabble rousing.

The reason for all this blather is that I'm just about to try and convince you that punk rock and the very best jazz can not only coexist among one group of musicians performing together at one time, but that successful examples of said mutant hybrid already exist in abundance. That's right, Iggy and the Stooges were every bit as good as Archie Schepp, and John Coltrane could have played with the Velvet Underground. (I more or less proved this contention the other night when I went on WPIX-FM in Manhattan and simultaneously played "Race Mixing" by Teenage Jesus and the Jerks on one turntable and the short version of "Nonaah" by Roscoe Mitchell on another, saying "Get ready all you tape hounds, because we have here a vintage unreleased take of Roscoe jamming with Lydia Lunch and the Jerks at the last Montreux Festival," and most people apparently believed it.) It's all music, and has more qualities in common than many fans of either genre might at first think.

For instance, both free jazz (which, with rare and minor exceptions, is probably the only kind of jazz which should ever be mixed with rock 'n' roll -- things like Blood, Sweat and Tears were Vegas lounge acts) and punk rock are musics with no explicit existing fundamental rules. That's why Ralph Gleason once more or less admitted to me that he had no idea whether Archie's Three For a Quarter, One For a Dime was a great album, a good album or an abortion, and that's why we currently have the highly laughable spectacle of punk partisans from all over the map claiming that this or that favorite group of theirs is great, while the other guy's is obviously garbage, and hardly anyone can ever seem to agree on which is which.

Also, beyond a certain point both punk rock and free jazz give up all sense of structure. Result: atonal anarchic spew. Now if somebody told me that some new group was nothing but a bunch of horrible atonal noise, I'd be the first in line for tickets, but like everybody else I have my own highly subjective places where I finally draw the line. I love Teenage Jesus and the Jerks but can't stand Siouxsee and the Banshees (their classic fourteen-minute version of "The Lord's Prayer" excepted). I lived for Africa/Brass and Ascension, never could quite make up my mind about Meditations, and found Om totally unlistenable. I told old Ralph that on sheer quality of a fairly easily perceivable emotional authenticity, Fire Music can be recognized as a masterpiece and Three For a Quarter, One For a Dime as masturbation. On the other hand, since we had that conversation, it has become common knowledge if not conventional wisdom (The Hite Report, etc.) that masturbation is good for you, so if I still owned a copy I might re-audition Three For a Quarter now and discover that Archie was up to a wank there ten years ago I wasn't experienced enough to appreciate yet. I do know that I put on Om the other night for the first time in about a decade, and found that I actually liked it, but I suspect that this may be due to my conditioning by all the punk rock I've listened to over the past few years having broken down my resistance to welters of squawl.

What fascinates me, has in fact since the late Sixties, is the points of intersection. That you could take a bunch of guys who had just held guitars in their hands for the first time in their lives yesterday, put them together with someone who'd mastered tenor saxophone over a 25-year span of rigorous discipline and dues-paying, and come out with something that was not only not oil and water, but aesthetically valid and emotionally compelling.

I'll be the first to admit that I know next to nothing about music technically, but the way I always looked at it, it made perfect sense that you could take one guy playing two moronic chords over and over again, let one other guy whoop and swoop all around him in Ornettish free flight, and if the two players were blessed with that magic extra element of conviction and the kind of inspiration that produces immense energy if nothing else, then hell, they could only complement each other. Because, to get just a little cosmic about it (any free jazz critic has a right to at least once in each article), the two principles of metronomic or even stumblethud repetition and its ostensible converse of endless flight through measureless nebulae should by the very laws of nature meet right in the middle like yin-yang, etc.

All of this, of course, relates intimately to the search for new forms and absolutely open-ended freedom of expression that all the arts were undergoing in the dear, dead Sixties. I can recall my own shivers of delight when, in early 1965, I first heard the Yardbirds and the Who unleash their celebrated deluges of searing feedback. It struck me immediately that this was one element which perhaps more than any other gave the rock renaissance of the day a full-fledged shot at matching the experimental forays that jazz had been experiencing since the turn of the decade.

Of course, the Yardbirds and the Who were, almost from the beginning, relatively accomplished musicians in the rock arena, which was increasingly falling prey to the sort of chops-mania which would eventually give us such abominations as the worship of guitar players who got compared with jazz giants just because they had the stamina to play scales for an hour or two at a time (in other words, to hell with Duane Allman and the Grateful Dead).

No, what I wanted to hear was "Louie, Louie" with Albert Ayler sitting in (which should not be confused with Ayler's own rather pathetic attempts at crossbreeding/crossover like New Grass; he had the right idea, but went about it all wrong).

Again, since a lot of you probably think I was out of my mind then and have obviously degenerated even more by now, let me remind you of two things. Number One is that for the first couple of years he was playing sax, Ornette Coleman was misreading the bar clef by a third, mistaking C for A, which many people feel accounts for his "freaky" sound then and now. (It might also be instructive for those who think the whole idea of punk rock a hideous upchuck in the face of all musical values held by right-thinking citizens to recall that almost exactly the same things were said about Ornette, Cecil Taylor, et al. when they debuted: Downbeat critics regularly slagged off classic albums like Africa/Brass, Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard and Eric Dolphy Live at the Five Spot Vol. One, and one of them called Ornette's Free Jazz album "psychotic.")

The second little story I'd like to dig up comes from A.B. Spellman's beautiful book Black Music: Four Lives, wherein Cecil Taylor recalled jamming once with a schized-out bassist who just happened to wander into the club one night, played a set and then ran out in a typical paranoid spasm after the set but before Cecil could ask him who he was, where he lived and maybe get his phone number. Cecil said that this guy didn't really know how to play the bass at all, but that because of that he did things that more schooled musicians wouldn't even think of trying because they had been taught that there were immutably fixed "right" and "wrong" ways to do everything. Which Cecil felt was a crock -- he said that if this guy had stuck around, he might have had a shot at being one of the great free bass players.

A quantum leap in terms of rock 'n' roll freedom occurred in the late Sixties, with the appearance of the aforementioned Velvet Underground. Building on the possibilities opened up by the Yardbirds and the Who, the Velvets, perhaps even more than someone like Jimi Hendrix, redefined the meaning of noise in rock. Lou Reed's solo in "Heard Her Call My Name" in 1967 was so ahead of its time that even I found it a little abrasive, whereas now it sounds right up to date and totally fresh; and the collective improvisation that he and the rest of the Velvets (who were all musical primitives except for a conservatory-trained Welshman named John Cale who studied under Cage and Xenakis before abandoning "serious" music to form the Velvets with Lou) laid down in the 17-minute "Sister Ray" is probably the finest example of extended jamming anybody in rock has put on record to this day.

One band they inspired was the Stooges, who in their 1970 album Funhouse (still available on import, as are the Velvets' experiments in repackaged anthologies) let a young Ann Arbor saxophonist named Steve McKay honk and squawk and shriek his way through a whole side of the most primitive, grinding fuzztone-feedback punk. Obviously McKay had been listening to people like Ornette and Ayler, and other rock 'n' rollers of atonal bent have not been shy about crediting their influence. Captain Beefheart, Tom Verlaine and the Contortions' James Chance have all attested at one time or another to the effect on their playing of Ayler specifically; around the time he was cutting things like "I Heard Her Call My Name" Lou Reed said in interviews that he'd been listening to Ornette and Cecil a lot, and he's recently returned to jazz-rock amalgams in a big way, collaborating with Don Cherry on last year's The Bells.

As for Beefheart, the Ayler influence is unmistakable in tracks like "Hair Pie: Bake One" on his monolithic masterpiece from the late Sixties, Trout Mask Replica. When Beefheart put together his Magic Band for that album and its successors, he taught everyone else in the group how to play their instruments according to the logic of his own revolutionary musical conception: some he taught from the ground up, others he had to force to unlearn everything they had ever been taught. Drawing equally on Delta blues, Howlin' Wolf, free jazz and the whole gutbucket rock 'n' roll tradition, Beefheart created a unique new musical language. In a way, he stands outside not only styles but time -- I saw him a year or so ago in New York, and his approach, while it has not changed startlingly in the last decade, remains as uncompromising, unduplicated and unduplicatable as ever. It swings, it rocks, it's filled with wildly unpredictable hairpins turns through blues, dissonance, atonality and sonic dada, yet through all this it remains so distinctively earthy you can dance to it. But then, you can dance to an awful lot of Ornette's stuff, too.

If Beefheart still seems to stand alone, he has spawned a whole generation of musicians who credit him as a major influence: the Ohio art-school conceptualist group Devo, Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols (now back to his real name John Lydon in his new band Public Image Ltd.) and the Clash have all credited him as a major formative factor in each of them finally stepping out to make that godawful racket. From the same neck of the woods as Devo come Pere Ubu, who combine Ornette/Ayler sax flurries, synthesizer murk, guitar distortion, and a deep industrial rhythmic force somewhere between clank and drone. They claim to be heavily influenced as well by the sounds issuing from the factories all around their native Cleveland/Akron grounds. Probably because of that, Pere Ubu's music has a rhythmic quality that doesn't flow in the sense to which most rock and all blues-derived musics have accustomed us. When you first hear them, what they're doing may well sound upside down and backwards, and it may keep on sounding that way. For my money, their best work is their earliest, on the import EP Datapanik in the Year Zero, though if you like that you might want to check out their three albums, The Modern Dance, Dub Housing and New Picnic Time.

Almost certainly the most interesting experiments at what I like to think of as the real fusion music have occurred in New York City. A lot of people credit the late Television and their leader Tom Verlaine in this department, although for my money Verlaine's guitar playing always sounded more like John Cipollina of the old San Francisco acid-hippie band Quicksilver Messenger Service than anybody else. The first real-deal punk-jazz mix I heard around this town came from the recently disbanded Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and mainly from their lead guitarist Robert Quine, a brilliant musician who has somehow figured out a way to combine what Lou Reed was up to in "I Heard Her Call My Name," James Williamson's [guitar] work on Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power, and a heavy dose of the Miles Davis sound that began with On the Corner and grew into something genuinely new.

In the past couple of years there have been almost too many experimental bands in New York to keep track of. The one that's gotten the most publicity is the Contortions, led by Ayler/James Brown devotee James Chance, who plays what is, according to your taste, either the most godawful or most interesting new sax around. Certainly at its best his playing, primitive as it is, has an edge and fury that's missing from the recent work of most of the holdover "free" players from the Sixties. Unfortunately recently he's cut back on his sax work to concentrate on perfecting his James Brown imitation, which isn't too convincing. He's released two albums, Buy Contortions and Off-White, under the name James White and the Blacks, the former more interesting than the latter, but the best work by the original Contortions (who were canned last year, owing to certain unfortunate aspects of Chance's temperament) is still on Brian Eno's 1978 anthology of Lower Manhattan "no-wave" bands, No New York. And come to think of it, his sax work has a precursor in James Brown, too: that guy who stood up in the middle of the title cut on Brown's Super Bad album and took that horrible raggedy solo which probably got him fired.

The last time I saw Chance he seemed to have paled (no pun intended) considerably, though his new band had a trombone player who was an absolute motherfucker. Later I found out that this was Joseph Bowie, brother of Lester Bowie, and he has been leading a somewhat more funk than punk group of his own called Defunkt around the New Wave clubs recently. Also more on the jazz side, though he plays some of the same venues, is the much-publicized James "Blood" Ulmer, a musician who obviously has lots of ideas that in my opinion he hasn't worked out to their fullest yet. (Though maybe that's the point with all his stuff.)

More interesting than Chance's current work is Eight-Eyed Spy, led by former Teenage Jesus and the Jerks lead singer/guitarist Lydia Lunch. This time she's just singing, and her band, which includes some ex-Contortions, is probably the most interesting group in town right now -- certainly they're the closest thing I've heard to what Beefheart was up to. You can also hear Lydia singing with some entertainingly Kenton-like charts behind her on her recent album Queen of Siam, which also features several guitar solos by Robert Quine.

I don't know if Arto Lindsay of D.N.A. and the Lounge Lizards has learned a C chord yet, but I do know that he's listened to "I Heard Her Call My Name," and that D.N.A. (also on No New York) carry that particular form of aural sandpaper to new extremes, which is a compliment. The Lounge Lizards, a group also featuring horns, play what they call "fake jazz" -- i.e., they don't really know the changes in the traditional sense, but they maintain a beatniky cool that never comes off camp and their instrumental explorations are interesting and refreshingly free of the oppressive solemnity that mires so many experimental groups.

There are more new bands of this ilk forming as I write these words, and where all this will end up is anybody's guess. Me, I keep nursing this suspicion that since almost nothing new has been going on in the American popular arts in general for a good while and a nostalgia-addicted nation keeps cannabalizing its own past (cf. Grease etc.), free jazz just might be the next big mass produced, promoted and consumed musical fad. I have distinctly mixed feelings about that, but as far as I'm concerned almost anything is better than the kind of fusion music we've been served endless courses of the past few years. And I do know that from Frank Zappa to Pere Ubu is not so vast a step, that experimental music has never been more alive than at the beginning of the Eighties, and that if I were you I'd waste no time in getting the hell out there and checking all this stuff out.

the swallow's eye

2009-01-17T21:38:00.001-08:00

i can't remember when

2009-01-17T20:18:00.000-08:00

2009-01-12T00:02:00.000-08:00

in the future

2009-01-11T23:41:00.001-08:00

positive juice fest

2009-01-11T17:02:00.000-08:00

CAVES CAVERNS will be playing first at Positive Youth Fest 5 at St. Stephen's Church in Columbia Heights, Washington DC, 6:00 PM Friday January 16th . . . . . .
awkward opening slot total freakout before the dinner break.

peep the schedule, get yr mind blown and informed with radical ideas.

Doors on Friday are at 5:00 P.M. We plan to start promptly at 6:00.

FRIDAY! (5-10)

Bands:
Caves, Caverns; Eubonics; Fine Lines; Ingrid; Monument; New Habitat; Nihilith; The Feed

45 Minute Workshops:

Veganism and the Environment
Prisons 101
Anti-Sweatshop Labor
Bike Safety and Care

SATURDAY! (3-10)

Doors are at 3:00 P.M. We plan to start promptly at 3:30.

Deathrats; Foozle (Ex- Braceface Mini Punx); From The Depths; In Heaven and You; Maybe, Baby; Pygmy Lush; Remainder; The Fordists; The Guilt; Tsarina

90 Minute Workshops:

Safer Sex
Student Organizing

45 Minute Workshops:

Radical Mental Health
Radical Technology

the fire

2009-01-10T22:57:00.002-08:00

early january tour is over. back in Richmond. walked home past SKYY Jazz Palace while dudes boasted the after hour joint's current state of affairs . . . . "THEY'RE LETTING BITCHES IN FOR TWO DOLLARS, THEY'RE LETTING BITCHES IN FOR TWO DOLLARS, THERE'S ONLY FIFTEEN OF 'EM, BUT DEY WILDIN' OUT!". Its a breath of fresh air after being tucked into a station wagon for a couple days.

tour was fun and yet not freaky enough. warmer weather will do us all better.
enjoyed all the bands we played with, big girl and deer gear in Newark, Siberians and Michael Jordan and a shit ton of personal pan pizzas in Brooklyn, Brainworms, Tideland, Paul Joyner Blues Explosion and Pizza in DC for sure were excellent. Much love to the Girl Cave in DC for being the best DIY happening in DC, keep it glorious. Also much hoarse shouting to Chromeblower, Brooklyn pop punk, feedback and youthful fucking up, dudes were fine tourmates, stay catchy.

our 60-minute tape that can be called TIME CAPSULE for lack of a better sobriquet can be ordered online from COSMIC DEBRIS. If yr in Richmond, we can hook a tape up in person.