Category: Music

Given my level of ethnic paranoia I’m sorta shocked . . .

. . . that it never dawned on me that the dwarves in Snow White, etc., are Jews—especially because I was already familiar with this and this and a slew of earlier print sources (see e.g., the “Lead” section of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table, Richard Wagner’s descriptions of Jews, etc.) as well as stuff like this, and so on.  

Anyway, just no idea where my game was at for this one to have given me the slip for four decades.

Continue reading “Given my level of ethnic paranoia I’m sorta shocked . . .”

More from Our Man in Brussels

Sorry it’s taken me so long to post an update from our man in

Arthur et ses bons amis
Arthur et ses bons amis

Brussels, Arthur Lacomme.  As you’ll recall he and his pals built some frikkin’ awesome! costumes/instruments/noisetoys for the Carnaval Sauvage de Bruxelles.  You can see more pics and vid on Arthur’s website.

I love a lot of things about both this Carnaval Sauvage de Bruxelles thang and Arthur’s contribution to it, bot most of all I love their costumes. When I was very little my mother was a docent at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and so my earliest memories are of that museum, and especially their collections of Native American and African ritual art and “material culture.”  I’ve always loved the dance costumes they have in their collection (similar to those shown below, which are in the AIC), and the dances that went with them, which were exuberant and otherworldly to me (much like the sounds that I like to dig out of unsuspecting electronics).

(Picture Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)
(Picture Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Arthur also pointed me to a few of his fellow Brusselers (Brusselman? Brusselsprouts?) similarly pushing out into the fringes of the Good Noise.  I’m loving this!

Here’s Why the Eye:

 

and this is Hoquets:

PRO-TIP: Get both of these vids playing simultaneously in separate windows on your computer; the sounds layer-up in a fun way.

OMFG awesome things are happening in Rustbelt hiphop!!!

  • Tunde Olaniran: OMFG, Tunde Olaniran!  From the sadly infamous Flint, MI, Tunde Olaniran is superfantastically trans-everything.  Go listen to Transgressor and then buy it and then listen to it again and again and again.  I seriously absolutely equally love every single track on that album.
  • iRAWniq: Another Michigander, she has a fun mixtape, but I’m sorta preferring her more polished EP Black Girls on Skateboards, and the single “Cunt”
  • Passalacqua: I’m still exploring these guys, both from Detroit; been loving everything I’ve tried by them. This mixtape is a low-risk place to start, but I’m leaning more toward their albums CHURCH and Passalacqua, and the Banglatown EP.
  • Noname: This poet/rapper from Chicago is awesome, the natural inheritor of the crown Lauren Hill dropped after releasing The Miseducation of Lauren Hill.  Noname’s Telefono mixtape is absolutely mandatory listening.  Go grab it now!  Hell, at the very least go right now and listen to track number one (“Yesterday“) and tell me you don’t absolutely love Noname without reservation.  GO!

Here’s some poppy Tunde to play us out:

Simple DIY Guitar Stompbox Demo: Seeing is Believing; Be Hear Now (pun!)

A reader recently asked for audio samples of a few projects from my first book, so I made this quick lil video:

(Daaaaamn does that fuzz tone wail—and it’s literally ~$5 in parts!)

You might need headphones to hear the detail on the straight tremolo, but the throb becomes really pronounced at the end when I chain the two effects together.

In the process of uploading that demo video, I stumbled across this guy’s build of the Single-Chip Space Invader synth from my most recent book.  Oh, man, do I love that Star Wars lunchbox he used as a case! So rad!

Any of this look rad?  You can download a “jam pack” of complete projects drawn from both books. Click here now to get your free Junkyard Jam Pack PDF!