Converse Rubber Tracks Live
King Tuff
Metz, Sean Bones, Devin
Wed, December 19, 2012
Doors: 7:00 pm / Show: 8:00 pm
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY
Sold Out
This event is 18 and over
Free Show. Tickets available through Ticketmaster. Subject to capacity.
http://www.musichallofwilliamsburg.com/event/190335/
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King Tuff
A more charismatic, enigmatic nomad of a furioso frontman/artist/guitar legend could not be imagined. You can't make this shit up.
Grinning gold teeth behind blonde shades, in black, skeletal denim, with a studded "KING TUFF" across the shoulders where feral locks fall around his infamous "Sun Medallion." With an acoustic guitar slung over the shoulder, King Tuff slinks through the abandoned halls of Detroit's Malcolm X Academy. His baseball hat reads "VERMONT." It's the 4th of July.
Will somebody please snap a photo of this animal before it escapes back into the wilderness from which it came??!!
Magic Jake pulls up on a motorcycle, riding left-handed with his bass guitar hanging from the right arm, shoeless.
Kenny arrives in a rusted van, drums stacked in the back atop a shedding sofa complete with coffee table and a thermos full of god knows what.
Captain Cox, prodigy engineer, is attempting to "fix" the mixing console, on his back, under the wires, a flashlight between his teeth and soldering gun in hand.
"COX!" I bark, "What the FUCK are you doing?"
"Just trying to get these channels to work," he laments.
"What's wrong with them?" I lean under the desk and practically fall into a pile of live spaghetti.
"I built them," he confesses.
King Tuff sits, center stage between Magic Jake and Kenny, his trademark guitar, Jazijoo, on his lap while the rhythm section diligently loops the groove under Tuff's frenetic fingering.
Silent on a marble staircase, a ghost of a child, King Tuff, expressionless, leans back into a half shadow, with rays of silver rings leaping under incandescent light. The sessions go long into the bordering hours of morning.
Never a dull moment. King Tuff exclaims, "I'm an expert on the vibraphone." I laugh, and then he performs one, perfect take. Seriously.
My familiarity with Was Dead, his last release, was limited. Under the avalanche of thirty-something demos, I'd selected 16 to record for his Sub Pop debut.
After investigating Was Dead I realized that, with his latest offering, his songwriting was stretching far beyond the thrill of the immediate dance-floor reflex and now revealed a songwriter with a keen eye inside everyone. That was the stuff that I was interested in. Embarrass me! I don't give a fuck about your ex-girlfriend.
King Tuff: "You always want to erase the imperfect in your beautiful face, and you think about the time you waste in this impossible place."
"Loop those fucking beats, Kenny!" was my mantra. I shout at the session! Millions of albums arrive daily, yet for Tuff, this is the only one. And I understand that perfectly.
King Tuff sang 16 songs in two days. We chant: "Nobody gives a shit!" This is not precious, it's priceless—ART. Make it, don't molest it.
But how? More frustration! More saturation! More immediacy! Filthier! Frighten me! Shake it 'til you break it! It's a perversion of a language that sounds like Rock & Roll. But new, again.
Rock & Roll is dead. King Tuff Was Dead. Rock & Roll is alive. King Tuff is dead. The passion is all there is. We ARE wild strawberries.
An artist should never be careful, nor should the audience covet. Take the shot! Embrace the imperfection. Create more music, carelessly.
We've created something here. King Tuff:http://www.subpop.com/releases/king_tuff/full_lengths/king_tuff should not be inspected or even listened to with critical ears. Cut your ears off. Rock & Roll is meant to be blasted into your cells, penetrated, and absorbed. It's a visceral experience.
Seek solace in solitude when you're dead. If you aren't able to recognize the genius in this epic album, then you're already dead. Kill yourself. Or get a job.
Your choice.
Stop here. Don't pay attention. Blast it! It's not precious; it's real. It belongs to you. Do what thou wilt. It's yours.
All that aside, this album fucking rules. I should know, I've heard it about a million times.
~Bobby Harlow
Grinning gold teeth behind blonde shades, in black, skeletal denim, with a studded "KING TUFF" across the shoulders where feral locks fall around his infamous "Sun Medallion." With an acoustic guitar slung over the shoulder, King Tuff slinks through the abandoned halls of Detroit's Malcolm X Academy. His baseball hat reads "VERMONT." It's the 4th of July.
Will somebody please snap a photo of this animal before it escapes back into the wilderness from which it came??!!
Magic Jake pulls up on a motorcycle, riding left-handed with his bass guitar hanging from the right arm, shoeless.
Kenny arrives in a rusted van, drums stacked in the back atop a shedding sofa complete with coffee table and a thermos full of god knows what.
Captain Cox, prodigy engineer, is attempting to "fix" the mixing console, on his back, under the wires, a flashlight between his teeth and soldering gun in hand.
"COX!" I bark, "What the FUCK are you doing?"
"Just trying to get these channels to work," he laments.
"What's wrong with them?" I lean under the desk and practically fall into a pile of live spaghetti.
"I built them," he confesses.
King Tuff sits, center stage between Magic Jake and Kenny, his trademark guitar, Jazijoo, on his lap while the rhythm section diligently loops the groove under Tuff's frenetic fingering.
Silent on a marble staircase, a ghost of a child, King Tuff, expressionless, leans back into a half shadow, with rays of silver rings leaping under incandescent light. The sessions go long into the bordering hours of morning.
Never a dull moment. King Tuff exclaims, "I'm an expert on the vibraphone." I laugh, and then he performs one, perfect take. Seriously.
My familiarity with Was Dead, his last release, was limited. Under the avalanche of thirty-something demos, I'd selected 16 to record for his Sub Pop debut.
After investigating Was Dead I realized that, with his latest offering, his songwriting was stretching far beyond the thrill of the immediate dance-floor reflex and now revealed a songwriter with a keen eye inside everyone. That was the stuff that I was interested in. Embarrass me! I don't give a fuck about your ex-girlfriend.
King Tuff: "You always want to erase the imperfect in your beautiful face, and you think about the time you waste in this impossible place."
"Loop those fucking beats, Kenny!" was my mantra. I shout at the session! Millions of albums arrive daily, yet for Tuff, this is the only one. And I understand that perfectly.
King Tuff sang 16 songs in two days. We chant: "Nobody gives a shit!" This is not precious, it's priceless—ART. Make it, don't molest it.
But how? More frustration! More saturation! More immediacy! Filthier! Frighten me! Shake it 'til you break it! It's a perversion of a language that sounds like Rock & Roll. But new, again.
Rock & Roll is dead. King Tuff Was Dead. Rock & Roll is alive. King Tuff is dead. The passion is all there is. We ARE wild strawberries.
An artist should never be careful, nor should the audience covet. Take the shot! Embrace the imperfection. Create more music, carelessly.
We've created something here. King Tuff:http://www.subpop.com/releases/king_tuff/full_lengths/king_tuff should not be inspected or even listened to with critical ears. Cut your ears off. Rock & Roll is meant to be blasted into your cells, penetrated, and absorbed. It's a visceral experience.
Seek solace in solitude when you're dead. If you aren't able to recognize the genius in this epic album, then you're already dead. Kill yourself. Or get a job.
Your choice.
Stop here. Don't pay attention. Blast it! It's not precious; it's real. It belongs to you. Do what thou wilt. It's yours.
All that aside, this album fucking rules. I should know, I've heard it about a million times.
~Bobby Harlow
Metz
There was a time, in recent history, when you needed to have at least twelve members to even be considered a band in Canada. It was nearly impossible to tour if you didn’t have access to some kind of personnel carrier, and making a record involved several years of tambourine overdubs. You know there were kids out there who just wanted to get in a van and play loud as hell through an Ampeg stack or a four-piece drum kit, but how could you call it a band if you didn’t even know a French horn player? By 2008, band membership had reached a critical mass. You’d go to a show and you might be the only person in the room who wasn’t playing an instrument. Hard times.
Thankfully, there are always a few naturally resourceful people who refuse to be intimidated or excluded from making their own wild racket in public. Alex Edkins, Hayden Menzies and Chris Slorach have been around long enough to know that if you can’t fit it in the van, it’s not worth bringing. METZ play like one brutally heavy instrument with three heads, slashing heavy-gauge strings, bending guitar and bass necks in weird unison, along with what is probably the loudest drumming you’ve ever heard. It’s a return to everything that’s good about loud, ecstatic live music; a frantic nod to Nation of Ulysses, Shellac, The Pixies, The Jesus Lizard, and Public Image Ltd. at their most vicious, while still carving out some heavy new business. They play the instruments, the amps, and the room.
Over the last three-and-a-half years, METZ have slayed in basements, skate shops, clubs, and festivals, sharing stages with Mission of Burma, Death from Above 1979, Archers of Loaf, Mudhoney, Oneida, Constantines, and NoMeansNo. I’ve seen a hundred jaws drop within the first four measures of their set. I once saw Alexander Hacke from Einstuerzende Neubauten approach Chris and rave about his bass tone.
It’s a formidable task to try and capture such a powerful live band on record. Luckily, Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck) and Alexandre Bonenfant were more than up for it. Isolating the band in an old barn for a week with a portable recording rig, Walsh and Bonenfant were not only successful in documenting the unrelenting live force of the band, but they also managed to add some new and staggering sonic textures to the recording. Waves of organic feedback and fuzzed-out drones build the classic tension that eventually drops into each track’s relentless, dissonant pulse. And somehow, the raddest thing about it all is the songwriting. It’s not just riffs. It’s something that some heavy bands don’t get, but METZ do really well—and they do it collectively. It’s a hell of an experience, listening to this thing.
With this, their debut album, METZ articulate with deafening clarity, what we’ve all known for some time: The world of good music needs a new power trio, and this is it.
Thankfully, there are always a few naturally resourceful people who refuse to be intimidated or excluded from making their own wild racket in public. Alex Edkins, Hayden Menzies and Chris Slorach have been around long enough to know that if you can’t fit it in the van, it’s not worth bringing. METZ play like one brutally heavy instrument with three heads, slashing heavy-gauge strings, bending guitar and bass necks in weird unison, along with what is probably the loudest drumming you’ve ever heard. It’s a return to everything that’s good about loud, ecstatic live music; a frantic nod to Nation of Ulysses, Shellac, The Pixies, The Jesus Lizard, and Public Image Ltd. at their most vicious, while still carving out some heavy new business. They play the instruments, the amps, and the room.
Over the last three-and-a-half years, METZ have slayed in basements, skate shops, clubs, and festivals, sharing stages with Mission of Burma, Death from Above 1979, Archers of Loaf, Mudhoney, Oneida, Constantines, and NoMeansNo. I’ve seen a hundred jaws drop within the first four measures of their set. I once saw Alexander Hacke from Einstuerzende Neubauten approach Chris and rave about his bass tone.
It’s a formidable task to try and capture such a powerful live band on record. Luckily, Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck) and Alexandre Bonenfant were more than up for it. Isolating the band in an old barn for a week with a portable recording rig, Walsh and Bonenfant were not only successful in documenting the unrelenting live force of the band, but they also managed to add some new and staggering sonic textures to the recording. Waves of organic feedback and fuzzed-out drones build the classic tension that eventually drops into each track’s relentless, dissonant pulse. And somehow, the raddest thing about it all is the songwriting. It’s not just riffs. It’s something that some heavy bands don’t get, but METZ do really well—and they do it collectively. It’s a hell of an experience, listening to this thing.
With this, their debut album, METZ articulate with deafening clarity, what we’ve all known for some time: The world of good music needs a new power trio, and this is it.
Sean Bones
Sean Bones' Buzzards Boy is one of an evolving artist setting out to test new waters only to find himself weathering a stylistic and emotional sea change. As with most second records, there's much to prove, but in the case of Buzzards Boy, Sean Bones transcends a varied stylistic past to reveal himself as an intriguing songwriter capable of truth and sonic spells.
On Buzzards Boy, Sean and his bandmates hooked up with a producer for the first time. Shane Stoneback was sought out for his uncanny recording methods (oil cans, toys amps) and his enthusiasm for the demos he was absorbing between his other name-brand projects (Fucked Up, Sleigh Bells, Cults) The sessions were brief and at some point during the week Bones resolved to taking on the rest of the project alone. Traveling between rehearsal spaces, bedrooms and eventually to the West Coast, he built an awesome second record from the foundation laid through this partnership.
The island he's trawling this time is darker and more lush. Tracks are swathed in reverby surf guitars and loose percussion. Its easy to imagine hearing this album out doors, at night. A full listen reveals a wide range of influences digested into something wholly Bones' own. "Tell Me Again" is a folky harmonium piece played over what sounds like the Miami Sound Machine. "Four Dub" explores open space and urgency. The sublime "Black Gold" starts with a scruffy hip hop beat until giving way to another one of those swoony boy-girl ballads that he's good at.
At the heart of Buzzards Boy is a romantic young man, worried about the world and checking himself for imagined damage. Somewhere in the storm came a renewed sense of purpose. Fittingly, the exuberant lead single "Here Now" was written last. Backed by Fool's Gold's Garrett Ray and Lewis Pesacov, the song brims with energy as an ecstatic Bones proclaims, "I'm here now, hold it down!." Whether he's here to remind himself or the rest of us doesn't matter - he track is his most confident and inspiring to date.
Bones will be releasing a limited number of physical, handmade vinyl copies of "Here Now" 7 inch records in February 2012, and a run of Buzzards Boy LPs the following May. Tours are slated for the Spring that'll see him play both with a band and on his own where he chops up his own music, lets us in on the process and basically hosts an off kilter dance party. There's also talk of another record in the can too. Considering his propensity for change and changing medias, it'll be interesting to watch this story play out.
On Buzzards Boy, Sean and his bandmates hooked up with a producer for the first time. Shane Stoneback was sought out for his uncanny recording methods (oil cans, toys amps) and his enthusiasm for the demos he was absorbing between his other name-brand projects (Fucked Up, Sleigh Bells, Cults) The sessions were brief and at some point during the week Bones resolved to taking on the rest of the project alone. Traveling between rehearsal spaces, bedrooms and eventually to the West Coast, he built an awesome second record from the foundation laid through this partnership.
The island he's trawling this time is darker and more lush. Tracks are swathed in reverby surf guitars and loose percussion. Its easy to imagine hearing this album out doors, at night. A full listen reveals a wide range of influences digested into something wholly Bones' own. "Tell Me Again" is a folky harmonium piece played over what sounds like the Miami Sound Machine. "Four Dub" explores open space and urgency. The sublime "Black Gold" starts with a scruffy hip hop beat until giving way to another one of those swoony boy-girl ballads that he's good at.
At the heart of Buzzards Boy is a romantic young man, worried about the world and checking himself for imagined damage. Somewhere in the storm came a renewed sense of purpose. Fittingly, the exuberant lead single "Here Now" was written last. Backed by Fool's Gold's Garrett Ray and Lewis Pesacov, the song brims with energy as an ecstatic Bones proclaims, "I'm here now, hold it down!." Whether he's here to remind himself or the rest of us doesn't matter - he track is his most confident and inspiring to date.
Bones will be releasing a limited number of physical, handmade vinyl copies of "Here Now" 7 inch records in February 2012, and a run of Buzzards Boy LPs the following May. Tours are slated for the Spring that'll see him play both with a band and on his own where he chops up his own music, lets us in on the process and basically hosts an off kilter dance party. There's also talk of another record in the can too. Considering his propensity for change and changing medias, it'll be interesting to watch this story play out.
Venue Information:
Music Hall of Williamsburg
66 North 6th St
Brooklyn, NY, 11211
http://www.musichallofwilliamsburg.com/
Music Hall of Williamsburg
66 North 6th St
Brooklyn, NY, 11211
http://www.musichallofwilliamsburg.com/
