Shuffle No. 17 by Shuffle Magazine

sh uffle ALPOKO DON + TORCH RUNNER + STORMS OV JUPITER + JENNY BESETZT + OULIPO

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CAROLINAS’ INDEPENDENT MUSIC SOURCE

SHUFFLEMAG.COM ISSUE #17 FALL 2012

YEP ROC TURNS 15! Venerable N.C. label champions the venerable Bo White Border Wars King Mez Rapid Ascension Now Hear These Spider Bags, Temperance League, and more

MARK ROTHKO THE DECISIVE DECADE 1940-1950

September 14 January 6

Mark Rothko, American (born Russia), 1903−1970, No. 8, 1949, oil and mixed media on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 1986.43.147. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

This exhibition is organized by the Arkansas Art Center, the Columbia Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum, in conjunction with the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

1515 Main Street, Columbia, SC | 803.799.2810

columbiamuseum.org

Presented by:

Together again. Friday, November 2

Columbia, SC | 803.799.2810 | columbiamuseum.org

CONTENTS

MASTHEAD

YR15

CONTRIBUTING STAFF Music Editor Jordan Lawrence Contributing/Website Editor Bryan Reed Contributing Writers Grayson Currin, Linnie Greene, Corbie Hill, Jeff Jackson, Chris Parker, Eric Tullis, Patrick Wall Editorial Intern Samuel Baltes Photo Editor Enid Valu Contributing Photographer Thomas Hammond Design Taylor Smith, Patrick Willett

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Design Intern Alexandra Nelson Sales/Market Reps. James Wallace: Columbia, S.C. Sales Mgr. Bryan Dowling: Charlotte, Asheville Matt Evans: Asheville Christie Coyle: Greensboro/Winston-Salem Brett Nash: Charleston Phil Venable: Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill Josh Robbins: Charlotte Philip Shive: Events Coordinator/In-House Talent Buyer MGMT/DICTATORIAL STAFF Publisher/General Manager Brian Cullinan Managing Editor John Schacht Send Stuff To: Shuffle Magazine Attn: Music Submissions P.O. Box 1777 Charlotte, N.C. 28224-1777 For more info on submitting music, please visit: www.shufflemag.com/submissions Main Phone: 704.837-2024 Website: www.shufflemag.com Cover Photographs: Courtesy of Yep Roc Records Shuffle magazine is not responsible for your music tastes, just our own. Copyright Shuffle Magazine, 2012. All content property of Shuffle Magazine, LLC. No reproductions or reuse of this material is authorized without the written consent of Shuffle Magazine.

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To Do List Gear Alpoko Don Torch Runner Storms OV Jupiter Jenny Besetzt Oulipo Hot Spot: Winston-Salem Now Hear This/Editors’ Picks The Insider

Bo White

King Mez

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ONLINE EXCLUSIVES Visit us at shufflemag.com for more exclusive features!

ON THE ROAD On the heels of their fiery second LP, O' Be Joyful, the nomadic Charleston countryrock duo Shovels & Rope talk about their life and livelihood.

FESTIVE TIME OF YEAR Check out Shuffle's coverage of fall music festivals in the Carolinas including Raleigh's Hopscotch Music Festival and Asheville's Moogfest.

Photo courtesy of All Eyes Media

Photo courtesy of Moog

TO DO LIST EVENTS YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS

SEP 27-30 OROGREENSBT FES

Swans' Michael Gira

Photo courtesy of Swans

IN REVIEW Check out a selection of Editors' Picks that didn't make the print edition including a far-out comic book soundtrack and a potent indie rock EP.

Guided By Voices 09.17 The Orange Peel, Asheville Saint Vitus with Weedeater, Sourvein 09.19 Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh Mount Eerie 09.19 Duke Coffeehouse, Durham 09.20 The Grey Eagle, Asheville

OCT 7

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MOOGFE

Al Green 09.19 DPAC, Durham Fiona Apple 09.26 The Fillmore, Charlotte 09.27 DPAC, Durham Eternal Summers with Bleeding Rainbow 09.16 The Haunted Mill, Belmont Toro Y Moi with The Choir Quit, Can’t Kids 09.27 The Orange Peel, Asheville 09.28 Music Farm, Charleston

Nick Lowe 10.09 McGlohan Theatre, Charlotte 10.10 The Grey Eagle Asheville Melvins Lite 10.10 Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro 10.12 The Handlebar, Greenville (S.C.) Swans 10.14 Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh 10.20 Tremont Music Hall, Charlotte GZA (performing Liquid Swords) with Killer Mike 10.14 Brooklyn Arts Center, Wilmington Henry Rollins 10.19 Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia 10.20 Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh The Weeknd 10.20 The Fillmore, Charlotte The Intelligence with King Tuff 10.24 Duke Coffeehouse, Durham

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah with Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros 09.29 North Charleston Performing Arts Center, Charleston

Justice 10.25 U.S. Cellular Center, Asheville

OFF! with Negative Approach, Double Negative 09.30 Kings, Raleigh

Man or Astro-Man? 11.03 Ziggy’s, Winston-Salem 11.04 The Grey Eagle, Asheville

The Dan Deacon Ensemble 10.04 Blind Tiger, Greensboro 10.05 The Grey Eagle, Asheville

Visit shufflemag.com every Thursday for our weekly update of the best shows in the Carolinas.

Sic Alps 10.30 Krankies Coffee, Winston-Salem

Beg, Borrow & Steal By Patrick Wall

at Cothran, self-recorder of Coma Cinema, Elvis Depressedly, and Gremlins, has had a rough go of it lately. At the beginning of his most recent week-long tour, he lost his glasses in the Atlantic Ocean. At the end, he got punched in the face. Now, it’s a gray and rainy Tuesday in Columbia, and Cothran’s just finished moving most of his recording gear into the home of bandmate Logan Goldstein in a low-lying, forgotten part of downtown. He’s hocked a lot of his equipment, and much of what he still has is broken or borrowed. 1. Korg D3200 Digital Multitrack Recorder “I’ve had that board since I was 15. I saved up for so long to get it. That was my entire summer at Publix, doing the worst shit, and I would tolerate it because I knew I had to buy it. I think it’s from the late 90s or early 2000s. It’s like 32 tracks. For some reason I missed the boat hard on computer recording. I just bought the biggest one I could find, with the most tracks. And then I realized I could have bought, like Ableton or Pro Tools or something for way less. I made two records not knowing how to use it. Around Blue Suicide, I figured out how to use it." 2. Sigma Acoustic Guitar “It’s pretty old. [A friend’s girlfriend] gave it to me. It sounds as old as it is, which is cool. It sounds like it’s been through a lot. I’ve dropped it several times. I’ve stepped on it. I dropped it down some stairs once.” “It’s super durable, and it’s supposed to be a cheap guitar. And I guess it is, but, I don’t know, it’s been through just as

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shuffle seventeenn

Photos by Thomas Hammond

much as I have trying to move all this shit around. And it still works.” 3. Keyser Capo “I’ve never fucked with other tunings. I’m not good enough. That’s the best capo. They make all kinds of colors, too. There’s a patriotic one; I used to have that one. I only know the basic chords, so it’s like, ‘All right, I’m only going to play C and F.’ There’s like, probably, five Coma Cinema songs and two Elvis Depressedly songs that are just C and F. So I’m, like, all right, I’ll move the capo up three [frets] and play C and F again.” 4. Univox MiniKorg-700 “I had this Ensoniq synthesizer [an ESQ-1] that was really incredible, but it’s gone. It exploded or something. I use a shit-ton of Casio keyboards now. The Ensoniq was dope as fuck. I think Prince used that on Dirty Mind. It had the best tones, and you could manipulate it so hard. But there’s this battery

in it that only this one company made, and that company went under. So once that battery runs out, you’re fucked. You can get these repair kits on eBay, but they’re sketchy and kind of expensive. All the Elvis Depressedly stuff, I’ve used Casios and Yamahas, and I’ve had to borrow that stuff. I’ve used a Roland Juno on some shit. This Univox is cool as fuck. It’s the weirdest analog synth. Logan stole it from a school.” 5. Shure SM57 Microphones “They’re all I’ve ever used. For everything. I don’t know why. They’re cheap. They sound good as fuck. I’ve only used two mics for everything. What’s that Nas song, “All I need is one mic”? Nah, fuck that. All I need is two.” 6. Sock “It’s just a janky pop protector. I’ve never used it.”

The Toy Box

Carolinas music gear in review

The Bloke Amplifier for Guitar (Carr Amplifiers; Pittsboro, N.C.)

I AM

MUSIC, AND SO CAN YOU AREA MUSICIANS SHOW OFF THEIR GEAR

"Really, the only things I own in my life are these [microphones], that guitar and that [mixing] board. Everything else I’ve borrowed.” — Mat Cothran

Carr Amps’ new one, the Bloke, is meant to be a muscled beast. At 48 watts, it’s the Pittsboro, N.C., company’s loudest current amp, and this model’s touchstones — at least per company founder and mastermind Steve Carr — are arena-packing cockrock guitar tones a la AC/DC or ZZ Top. That sort of blaring, midrangeheavy overdrive is certainly an interesting area to explore, as much a basic tonal platform as an end in itself. And it demands a loud amp, which this unquestionably is. Yet the distinctive grille shape, meant to evoke a motorcycle gas tank, could just as easily be an offset art deco abstraction — the shape of a diner sign, say, calling to mind Elvis Costello's album art. And there’s as much of the pub to this amp as the arena, which may be its unintended strength. Cranked is cranked, and Carr’s latest behaves admirably at top volumes. But not every amp sounds as good quiet as this one does. With its tubes good and toasty, and with the volume at a polite level, the Bloke is at its most English and most nuanced. To be fair, it’s the low-gain channel that does this. The foot-switch high-gain sharpens the output at the expense of this amp’s gorgeous midrange. In the low-gain channel, with the EQ dials maxed and minimal drive, the bridge humbucker of a factory Jagmaster takes on a George Harrison Brit-blues feel. With the mids and lows zeroed and the highs maxed, you get the ridiculous nasal clash of “I Can See For Miles,” sans issue. Bring up the bass a little, and you get a raw pop-

Image courtesy of Carr Amplifiers

punk sneer. Tweak this channel, and you can summon Johnny Marr, Joe Strummer, the Stones and the Beatles, and even revivalists like The Strokes. It doesn’t really work with a Stratocaster, though. The singsong-y chime just turns to a dull thud against a circuit more geared to handle overwound PAFs or sharp twang — which is to say the Bloke is perfectly matched to a Telecaster’s bridge pickup. Even with the highs cranked, a Tele bridge is all tone and no pain, allowing me to really lay into this pickup in a way I rarely can without wincing. Bring up the gain and bash away at a barre chord, and you have London Calling. Round things out with a little more low and mid, and it’s Streetcore. It was hard to unplug the Tele and move on. High-gain is where the mod, New Wave, pub and punk rock tones turn to arena swagger: this channel turns the Vespa into a Harley. This is the humbucker channel almost exclusively: it’ll give you Zeppelin, sure, but also modern radio rock. It’s more nuanced and easier to control than your average Marshall, and it’s really nice to not have to wade through triple-lead channels and a sea of controls to find a good tone. But this aspect of the Bloke is a no-bullshit take on that brand’s signature sound. This is a very specific amp, even as a platform. The closest thing to a neutral soundscape is in the low-gain channel with the mids maxed and everything else dropped. Yet, even here, this amp is just so damn British. Anglophiles, take note. — Corbie Hill shufflemag.com

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BEN LOVETT If there’s a word to describe Ben Lovett, it’s indefatigable. Since beginning his career, the Georgia-born artist has built a strong reputation in both film and musical circles. Looking at his resume, it’s understandable; be it directing, scoring films, or producing, the 34-year-old Asheville resident has distinguished himself at virtually everything he’s tried. Beginning as a film composer in L.A, Lovett gained notice for the intensity of his musical arrangements. In 2009, he won The Brooklyn International Film Festival Best Score award, the first of many accolades the multi-instrumentalist would net. Lovett isn’t limited to any specific field though, and his latest — and most impressive — achievement is his debut album, Ghosts of Old Highways. Initially conceived as a stand-alone LP, the project somehow morphed into a surreal film about a Civil War soldier hunting down his past self in order to purge his soul of its sins. It may be a strange concept, but the execution is flawless. The movie is expertly produced with dazzling cinematography, and when experienced alongside Lovett’s haunting arrangements, it’s an awe-inspiring display of artistic virtuosity. The diversity of the album illuminates Lovett’s inherent talent. One song may be layered with dense atmospherics and the next with rustic chords and folksy melodies. Regardless of his approach, Lovett invariably creates a web of sonic nuances that effortlessly sucks you in. Every note and scene serves a purpose, as his AHA AVL appearance effortlessly displays.

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RAZOR & BLADE

SOMNI

Given the ubiquity of computers in electronic music, it’s always refreshing to see a band ignore convention and take a different route. Asheville’s Razor & Blade — composed of veteran producers Josh Naster and Joe Mattingly — excel at crafting haunting atmospheres void of software-aided production. The results are generally mesmerizing, as evidenced by their recent AVA AHL performance. The duo’s appeal rests in their ability to craft heady grooves without sacrificing visceral immediacy. Each track is a self-contained universe with its own warped logic, resulting in a constantly engaging listen. On paper it seems unlikely that someone could create danceable beats by sampling bits from Talladega Nights, but that’s exactly what the duo excels at — transforming the detritus of pop culture into deft and deep grooves. The band places strong emphasis on their live presentation, and the effort is apparent. Priding themselves on versatility, Razor & Blade never play the same set twice, resulting in an inevitably memorable experience. The duo’s anti-software stance likely comes from their experience as producers. Both members are masters of their trade, and would rather take an autonomous path than resort to pre-programmed pastiche. Wherever it stems from, the formula is working for the band, and their unique approach is a welcome one in a genre that often succumbs to tautology.

If the Minutemen had formed a band with Dan Deacon, they would have likely sounded like Somni. The band’s approach is anything but linear, and that’s a good thing. While the sheer amount of sound that the Asheville quartet throws out can be disorienting, it also results in an absorbing atmosphere that’s become their calling card. Deliberately avoiding convention, Somni is a vortex of relentless energy guided by tight melodic precision that serves as a foil to the group’s wall-ofsound approach. Best experienced live, their breakneck sound collages are intensified by crowd energy and pure volume. The incandescent drumming of Dave Mathes and focused bass lines of Nigel Gilmer add a grounding physicality to the assault, and aptly counterbalance Mike Mcbride’s atmospheric synths. This music is meant to be loud, and when the band’s parts come together they form a concentrated sonic attack, capturing listeners with unrelenting velocity. Listen to any one of the band’s songs and you may hear sounds from MPC programming layered over analog synths, or a rock-influenced beat seemingly coming out of nowhere. That’s the secret behind the band’s appeal: You’re never sure what’s coming next. The result is a highly addictive listen, and a wholly organic one. In addition to their AHA AVL appearance, the group’s landed a spot at this year’s Moogfest, and their debut album Almost Human was released last month.

Band bios by Samuel Baltes All photos courtesy of Moog Music Inc.

ob Moog was a pioneer in the creation of analog synthesizers. His inventions changed the face of music and continue to provide inspiration to musicians of all genres. Since 1978, Moog Music synthesizers have been designed and lovingly handcrafted in Asheville, N.C. As a “thank you” to the community that Bob Moog called home, Moog Music has created the AHA AVL series aimed at introducing the world to Asheville’s most innovative artists. Each episode is filmed in HD and multi-tracked in the Moog Store at 160 Broadway Street in Asheville. The series is taped in front of a live audience, with new episodes airing each month on videos.shuffle.com. Read on to learn a little more about the performers that will hit AHA AVL this quarter. The Moog Music Factory is located just north of downtown Asheville and is open to visitors each day. For more information about free Moog factory tours, visit http://www.moogmusic.com/content/visit-moog or call 828-239-0123\828-239-0123.

See all the performances at videos. shufflemag. com

DOC AQUATIC Since forming, the members of Asheville’s Doc Aquatic have carved a nice niche for themselves. Filtering classic rock influences through a bohemian perspective, the band’s infectious sound is rooted in the past and the present — with buoyant indie rock sensibilities working in tandem with hard-driving psychedelic grooves. Drawing on halcyon rock tropes, guitarists J.C. Hayes and Adam Grogan weave heady melodies over a pulsing rhythm section, resulting in a sound suffused with gravitas. There’s a cutting angularity to their approach that makes the music engaging and keeps it tight. Exemplifying this is the song “Headin’ West.” Layered with unconventional tempo changes and an indelible melody, it showcases the band’s off-kilter energy. Another key element is the band’s ability to stretch out without succumbing to inertia. As a live act, the group experiments profusely, but it’d be wrong to call what they do jamming; they instead inject a concentrated dose of psychedelia into instrumental breaks that accentuate the band’s unorthodox nuances. The group’s last album — 2011’s Distance Means — was a further evolution of their sound, and its irrepressible vitality and melodic deftness make it their best work to date. Despite relocating from Boone, the group’s fan base continues to grow, as their buoyant AHA AVL performances suggests.

snapsho

Alpoko Don Front Porch Rhymes By Eric Tullis

outhern author Ashley Warlick once described Greenville, S.C. as “a place that’s thought very carefully about itself and how it wants to grow…It’s not a throwback or theme park; it’s not quaint or cute. It’s just where we all want to go whenever we have the chance.” Her Greenville is a place “rich in dogwoods and azaleas, in shade” where kids “win national awards for their portfolios and become Presidential Scholars.” Greenville rapper Alpoko Don, aka Randrickas Young, isn’t one of those kids. On the song “Sideways,” he portrays the town in a drastically different way: “I’m dirty/ Movin' coke though the turnpike/ These niggas call me Michael Jackson ‘cause they know the Don turn white/ I live the goon’s life and move it to moonlight…/ Greenville, yeah we grindin ‘round here/ Sittin sideways with guns the size of dinosaurs...” On one hand, Warlick is right —there’s nothing cute about this city. On the other hand, given what Alpoko Don tells us, it’s not exactly the relocation destination Warlick describes. That shouldn’t prevent anyone from visiting. The city has protected its tourist attractions and kept danger away from its Victorian houses and art museums. But it can’t do much to quell the street reports bleeding from low-income areas like West Greenville’s Freetown community, where Alpoko Don was raised.

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Now, by way of the Internet, the rapper may have added another tourist attraction — his front porch. Earlier this year, he began uploading videos of himself singing and rapping while sitting outside of his home, pounding makeshift, lunchroom table beats onto his wooden, front-porch railing. After these videos went viral, his viewers convinced him to turn those songs into bonafide studio recordings. He made six of them available as streams on his website, then made an official video for another song called “Get My Paypa Dog.” In one episode, he flips the melody for Patti LaBelle’s “If You Asked Me To” into his own patio thumper, “Married to the Game,” outlining both the rewarding and painful realities of Greenville’s rap-or-die lifestyle. At age 30, Alpoko Don is long past the days of making beats on high school lunchroom tables. But he says that he learned a lot of it in West Greenville’s Antioch Baptist Church, where his interest in music peaked when he was 13. Today, that church influence adheres to a winsome, Mel Waiters-esque blues creativity, mixed with what would happen if a more agitated Scarface refit either Nappy Roots or Field Mob with goon experience. “I really got my swag after I got out of prison,” he says of his drug-related, eight-year prison stay that’s documented in the autobiographical music

Photo courtesy of Alpoko Don

video “All I Know.” “I don’t even make songs, I make movies,” he adds. Mostly he scores these movies with rough-stroke details. The first half of Don’s rap name is his own mangled mispronunciation and homage to the infamous Acapulco Gold cannabis strain. The second half is a shortened version of his original name, Dondada — a longtime moniker that his record label, Kidfire Entertainment, forced him to drop after learning that someone else had legally claimed it. He had to give up his name, and similarly, he might even consider trading in a rap career for a more behind-the-scenes position as a songwriter or ghostwriter. “Some of the hardest rappers that people are hearing now are coming to me, but I have to say what I need to say before I focus on that,” he says. “But I’m about to put a whole new twist on whoever I’m behind.” Alpoko Don asserts that he’s a “complete artist,” and just recently, he avoided another eight-year prison stay over criminal charges that he refuses to discuss in detail. Sure, future Greenville visitors will have a chance to see every attraction that the city’s visitors bureau suggests. But by the time they get there, Alpoko Don’s reputation might make his front porch a landmark in its own right. sm

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Torch Runner Hardcore Highwaymen By Corbie Hill

nyone who spends time around heavy bands learns quickly: It’s no contradiction to meet a crusty punkmetal band with aggressive antireligious sentiments, and discover the members are gracious, unassuming dudes. And that’s Torch Runner, sure enough. But the paradox of this Greensboro trio is that the hard-touring outfit almost always plays basements, yet somehow makes enough money on the road to remain solvent. “I think all of us have made huge sacrifices,” says guitarist Scott Hughes, a soft-spoken giant with an enormous beard and copious tats. He quit his job, moved from Virginia to the couch of bassist and vocalist Rob Turner, and got rid of almost everything he owned — just to play in the band. From his time sleeping in the old Torch Runner van to today (he currently crashes in a woodworking shop), Hughes hasn’t held a proper address in two and a half years. “But I wouldn’t trade any of it,” he says. “The experiences I get outweigh going home to a comfortable house.” With Torch Runner on the road so often, it’s almost redundant for Hughes to pay rent. Turner says there were three tours one year — putting

the band on the road for about six months. But, with drummer Josh Platt also a screen printer, Torch Runner shows up both with tormented, cathartic, yet surprisingly diverse albums for sale — like the recently pressed debut LP Committed to the Ground — and tons of other merch. It’s a rack of wicked shirts that really brings in money, sometimes enough to head home in the black. “Every time we go out, it’s easier and easier, and we play to, I guess, the right crowd for us,” says Platt. Often that involves playing house shows (at some, amps have to be stacked behind washers and driers) or basements where Hughes can’t even stand up straight. But that’s Torch Runner’s beloved natural habitat. “I don’t even feel like I know what happens at regular venues,” Turner says. “I just never even hear about it.” That’s a conceit that is close to Torch Runner's heart. The band's home base, Legitimate Business, was once a thriving DIY show space. And today, they say, new house show venues have cropped up to replace the Biz in that capacity. Yet Turner views this, as most things, through the lens of what he’s learned on tour. “Different cities are going through the same thing we’re going through here,” he says of

the dip in underground shows after the Biz was shut down as a venue in late 2011, as well as a subsequent upsurge. “I think Greensboro’s on the incline. It’s steadily gotten better for the past month or two.” During Torch Runner’s five years together, these guys have seen enough of Greensboro — usually from its warehouses and basements — to know. And their remarkable accomplishments — making money on the road, touring for weeks and still happily hanging out together the day they get home — are not limited to the road. Yet Torch Runner’s members don’t see themselves as scene veterans. “Music is just a medium,” Turner says, “a connection to the community.” It's a medium that enables these three friends to travel more than they could otherwise afford. And, when they do hit cool spots like San Francisco or Utah’s Zion National Park, the friends they’ve made get them insider tips on where the locals eat, hang out, skateboard or camp. “You got to see the whole country, and you only spent a couple hundred dollars,” Turner says “That’s pretty incredible. When you think about it in those terms, it’s so insane that we get to do that.” sm

Photo by Reid Haithcock

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Storms OV Jupiter Space Is the Place By Patrick Wall

n space, no one can hear … well, anything. Sound waves need air to exist, and outer space is a the closest natural approximation to a vacuum; its deepest reaches contain only a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter. That sparse density of matter makes the chances of molecular collision, the resulting transfer of energy of which creates sound, infinitesimally small. But our universe is not silent. In 1990, NASA released a fascinating collection of recordings made by Voyager I of electromagnetic interactions on Jupiter — charged particles from solar winds interacting in the planet’s magnetosphere. The resulting waveforms, when derived from the transmitted electronic signals and converted to audible frequency, hit the ear as an overwhelming drone, a series of ghastly whirs and crackles. Voyager II captured the sounds of the Jovian moon Io; its song is an eerie, ringing warble. Musicians have long looked to space as inspiration — Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets being but a particularly famous example. But abstract Columbia electronic duo Storms OV Jupiter use these interstellar symphonies as the basis for their own otherworldly drones. “I’ve sampled Jupiter’s magnetic fields for other projects I’ve done, and it’s definitely a huge influence on our sound,” says Tim Chappell, one half of Storms, “particularly on [the duo’s debut EP] Dying Screams of an Imploding Star. I used to

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sample different recordings from outer space, mix them together and then meditate on the sounds of the universe for hours.” Both Chappell and his partner Matt Chamblee have been involved with avant-garde noise projects in Columbia for years, “exploring the dark caverns and light-trapping singularities of sound,” Chamblee explains. Their fascination with space, along with their shared musical ambitions, sparked a collaboration following a February noise exhibition organized by Chappell. Their first practice — with Chamblee playing an array of synthesizers and Chappell making soundscapes with noise and drone generators— resulted in a massive wall of sound. It reminded Chappell of his lifelong enthrallment with space, particularly of Jupiter’s giant storms, so they took the dominant feature of the solar system’s largest planet as their namesake. “Even as a child, I remember being fascinated with the planet and its Great Red Spot,” Chappell says. “In a lot of our material, we try not to have a real definitive beginning or end to represent the infinite nature of our universe. As far as being fascinated with space, how could you not be? That would be like not being interested in your own existence. We are part of it. It is part of us.” Indeed, the sounds of space are in the duo’s DNA, and their five-month collaboration has

Photo by Justin Schmidt

already produced two albums with prominent interstellar influences. The overwhelming and alarming Dying Screams of an Imploding Star is anchored by the cataclysmic title track, a 21-minute drone composition of caustic feedback and wraithlike sirens. The expansive Cosmic Apocalypse is a 75-minute affair that collects malevolent whirs, hypnotic piano, sinister synthesized rhythms, piercing noise and dreadful pulses. Producing close to 100 minutes of diverse and daring music in such a short time seems a herculean effort, but for Chappell and Chamblee, it was unavoidable. “Every moment of the day, vibrations are traveling through us, within and without, completely enveloping the very essence of our beings,” Chamblee says. “Harnessing and channeling these vibrations into hypnotic, interdimensional soundscapes is as natural to us as drawing breath.” Given how quickly Chappell and Chamblee create, and with their sound having already expanded from the monolithic style of Dying Screams to the significantly more complex Cosmic Apocalypse, the universe — perhaps literally — is the duo’s playpen, one in which infinite sonic exploration is possible. “The day you stop expecting more new music from Storms OV Jupiter,” Chamblee says, “is the day the stars fall from the sky and interstellar magma engulfs the multiverse.” sm

The Ragged Orchids New full length release available September at your local record store or online. “Beautiful and light on the surface, a closer listen reveals deeper nuances that pay homage to some of Hart’s influences—Wilco, Uncle Tupelo, Tom Petty.” — Kristin Isgett, Greenville Indie Music Examiner “Hart has always loved good songwriting, and it shows in the high quality of his own relaxed, rootsy, pop-country compositions.” — Robin Tolleson, Overtones “Take Neko Case, Tom Petty and blend ‘em together with pedal-steel and harmony-driven Americana that we haven’t heard around here in years.” — John Jeter, The Handlebar “Ragged Orchids country-laced tracks, such as “Alone”and “Waste of Time,” bloom with pedal steel parabolas and lyrical melancholy.” — Matthew Wake, The Link

www.reverbnation.com/raggedorchids www.facebook.com/theraggedorchids

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Jenny Besetzt Arrested Development By Sam Baltes

“G

reensboro’s full of oddball bands,” says Jenny Besetzt’s John Wollober about the city’s music scene. “It’s a small scene, but one made up of groups that I feel aren’t looking to each other for inspiration — which makes for a lot of original music.” It’s an apt point coming from the 26-year-old, whose fuzz-fueled pop-rock outfit exemplifies the city’s musical diversity. Raised in Germany, Wollober chose the band’s name while still in elementary school. To clarify, there’s no Jenny in the band — the name instead stems from an after-school puppet show where Wollober randomly chanted “Jenny Besetzt” in an effort to capture the attention of his older sister. That says something about the frontman’s youth, no doubt, but also foreshadows the prevalence of childhood themes in his songwriting. “A lot of our songs are about that moment somewhere between 11 and 13 where you realize that the adults you trust most in your life have been lying to you,” he says, in order “to sugarcoat those unpleasant things they didn’t want to, or couldn’t.” Many key influences in the band’s music have their genesis in Wollober’s adolescence. He and guitarist Brad Morton were childhood friends, and though he doesn’t look the sentimental type — he’s heavily built and sports a fulsome beard — the

frontman’s tough guy appearance is leavened by a Beverly Cleary tattoo on his right bicep. His favorite book is The Giver — a novel that centers on a kid growing up in a dystopian society, struggling to reconcile intense emotions with a soulless world. It’s hard not to interpret this struggle in the band’s music, which is cognitive dissonance personified. “I love the juxtaposition of a strong driving rhythm section and dreamy, spaced-out melodies, something that really soars over something that really grooves, something gentle working in conjunction with something aggressive,” Wollober says. At its core, the group’s sound boils down to the interplay between Wollober and Morton’s crystalline guitar weavings layered over the urgent drive of bassist Jeff Bechtel and drummer Reed Benjamin. The resulting friction creates kaleidoscopic-like sparks, which are only intensified by the winsome synths of Kristen Morgan. Categorizing their sound is a point of amusement for the band’s members. They laugh off any suggestions of dream pop and instead suggest “sparklecore” as more appropriate. It’s understandable, though, as their sound is difficult to pigeonhole. Sure, there are traces of New Order — and halcyon shoegaze — but

overall, it isn’t evocative of any one source. This singularity is likely distilled from Wollober’s restless existence. “I think I was 11 the first time it hit me that music didn’t exist exclusively to express one’s love for Jesus,” he confesses. “I remember getting (Sonic Youth’s) Daydream Nation when I was 13 and being made really uncomfortable by a few of those songs. It just sounded so raw and aggressive, and was one of those epiphanies you have where you’re reminded that you can do whatever the hell you want.” Despite having existed for less than a year, the group has gathered considerable hype. Their first single, “Teenage Lions,” was featured on a recent Diggup Tapes compilation protesting Amendment One, and its lush textures make it an excellent representation of the group’s modus operandi. The band’s recently put the finishing touches on its debut LP, Only. “It took a lot longer than we thought it would,” Wollober says. “It started out as a four-or-five song EP, but a few months in we just decided to go ahead and make it a full length.” The album’s development reflects the band’s consolidation; during the recording process the outfit’s evolved from a haphazard bedroom trio into a road-ready quintet. Sometimes growing up isn’t a bad thing. sm

Photo courtesy of Jenny Besetzt

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Oulipo Primitive High Art By Linnie Greene

ive Oulipo’s latest EP a few measures and its title, Primitive Ways, makes sense — skittering beats and cavernous, reverberating vocals overwhelm as a few witchy howls drive the point home. The most obvious point of comparison for this Raleigh outfit might be Animal Collective,; it’s certainly the most common. By that token, it’s a reference that Ryan Trauley, the band’s leader and architect, has grown tired of hearing.. “I think in the broadest sense, we’re just an alternative rock band,” he says. “I think the recordings are generally a little more cerebral, but I think live especially, we’re definitely just a band.” In Oulipo’s case, “just a band” means an outfit whose youth belies a prodigious knack for songs that stand astride the boundaries of straightforwardness and abstraction. The six tracks on Primitive Ways are earworms to be sure, but the hooks are rarely the real selling point. Underneath resides something darker and, well, more primitive. Trumpet bleats manage to sound almost sinister on “Open Wide,” the brass a lone, almost dissonant accompaniment to the record’s insistent percussion. Electronic flares and cymbals hiss like a roughly awoken animal. Rising above the instrumental melee, Trauley’s sparse, simply delivered vocals evoke incantations, as if these

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Photo by Enid Valu

songs might be the electronic progeny of ancient chants. It makes sense, then, that Trauley cites everyone from J. Dilla and the Beastie Boys to Radiohead as his influences. Given the band’s disparate muses, Primitive Ways is an appropriately far-reaching affair, one whose sound is difficult for Trauley to categorize. “In terms of what I was thinking about, I was thinking of people that do really cool stuff with sampling, drum breaks and stuff like that — just really rhythmic stuff,” Trauley says. “I think we’re really trying, with the new EP, to not get into anything too — I don’t know what words to use. Tribal? Psychedelic, in any overt way.” Part of achieving that aesthetic came with the recording process itself. With its five members spread around the Tar Heel state (Chapel Hill, Asheville, Boone, and Raleigh, to be exact), Trauley and company crafted the recordings methodically, layering sounds and sharing them helter-skelter via the Internet. What started as fragmented noises merge into a cohesive and dexterous whole on Primitive Ways, which bears little resemblance to the DIY bedroom project that it is. With its latest, Oulipo has cemented its place alongside older, more established acts, many of which possess a wholly different sound.

“We’re all really stoked to be involved with what’s going on, and I feel like a lot of really cool shit is happening in Raleigh,” Trauley gushes. “We’re definitely psyched to be a part of that.” But Trauley’s aware that Oulipo bears little resemblance to bands that have put the Triangle on the national map of late. They share neither the charming folk experimentation of Megafaun nor the restless romanticism of The Love Language, but their complex and captivating style hints at an appeal that’s every bit as broad as those scene leaders. “I think it’s kind of been an advantage in a way,” he says of Oulipo’s uniquity within its scene. “We’re seeking out new space that’s different from what some other people are doing.” Name check Animal Collective or Megafaun if you wish, but the best explication of Oulipo’s approach resides within their own moniker. Pioneered by painter Raymond Queneau and company in the 60s, “oulipo” refers to an aesthetic of constraint and structure, one that evinces itself on the group’s latest. These are not, after all, the acid-washed jams that they initially seem; they’re great pop songs, built by offspring of high artistic theory residing in the digital age. sm

HAWKING HALLMARKS Yep Roc’s 15-Year History of Marketing Music Veterans By Jordan Lawrence

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airytales and Other Forms of Suicide, the provocative(ly titled) new album from Durham’s Old Ceremony, is a decidedly modern affair. Admittedly, that’s a strange thing to say about a record that relies so heavily on sounds that are easily cornered by overused, catch-all qualifiers such as “classic” or “traditional.” Opener “Star by Star” bends and contorts with seductively slapbacked guitar, the kind that’s been in heavy rotation since the 50s. “The Royal We” rambles along with a perfect country-pop shuffle, a supremely effective exercise that points to sources as disparate — in era and genre — as The Beatles and Old Crow Medicine Show. Along the way, there’s a Johnny Cash-style journeyman ode and a solid dose of lilting, late-Dylan balladry, none of which qualifies for that other tired tag line: “revolutionary.” The album, the band’s fifth, is also their debut for Yep Roc Records, the Haw River-based imprint that this year celebrates a decade and a half in business. Given its reliance on canonical rock and pop techniques, the record seems prime fodder for a complaint routinely thrown at the internationally respected label. A large part of the company’s success has been built on artists that were icons long before they landed at Yep Roc: Mod revivalist Paul Weller, New Wave godfather Nick Lowe, punk luminary turned folk revisionist John Doe and jangle pop master Robyn Hitchcock are a few of many examples. The label signs up-and-comers too — Cheyenne Marie Mize, Liam Finn, Jukebox the Ghost, etc. — but its collection of aging underground stars draws the label more attention. And though none of these artists are resting on any laurels,

their work — while relevant and popular — mainly focuses on expanding and perfecting past techniques. It would be easy, then, to paint Yep Roc as a home for conservative sounds and elder musicians, content to revisit old territory instead of paving new ground. Old Ceremony singer Django Haskins sees it differently. “I don’t really see what we’re doing, or even what Yep Roc’s doing, as a preservationist thing,” Haskins says, taking a break from a New York press junket to talk about his new record and label. He sees Yep Roc’s roster as a collection of like-minded artists all striving for a timeless sort of songwriting, a sound that would resonate in any era. “I certainly recognize that there’s not really a wave,” he explains. “Waves tend to be for more things that are happening and then are done. I think the whole idea is that this has always existed, and it’s a quieter art than some of the kind of genre-driven writing, where it’s like, ‘OK, we’re going to do this electro-pop thing,’ or ‘We’re going to do something that draws on Television and Talking Heads.’ Anyone who listens to music over a long period of time recognizes when these kind of new trends come out and burn out. I think of it more almost as a craftsman guild where you’re recognizing that there is a kind of a wisdom that builds on itself over time, but also, you have to make your own stamp on this tradition.” Fairytales sounds modern largely because The Old Ceremony take that last directive to heart. “Star by Star” explodes with a distorted, panoramic riff during the bridge, approaching the arena-filling atmospherics of U2 and Radiohead. The title track, which wanders patiently down familiar country pathways during the verses, revs in its chorus, a snarling guitar clawing at the song’s stately veneer while bass and drums stomp with frantic abandon. And “The Royal We,” which feels so comfortably commonplace for most of its duration, indulges in an oddball psychobilly solo near the end, turning the song’s sound on its head and bolstering Haskins’ monarch-skewering metaphor with an appropriate air of musical incest. Like many artists in Yep Roc’s line-up, The Old Ceremony deal in tropes that long ago entered rock & roll’s common domain, but their creativity comes through in the way they recombine them, carving out room to experiment while still respecting the achievements of the legends that came before them. It’s an approach that mirrors the output of the band’s label. “It’s a very crowded, small little platform for people to stand on in ‘cutting edge’,” says Yep Roc co-founder Tor Hansen, explaining why the label often opts for artists who drink from traditional wellsprings. “It’s cutting edge really for a very quick moment, and then it becomes sort of trendy. And then it becomes old and stale. To be messing around in that, there’s a few lucky people that are really good at it or just really lucky, that have a style or something that becomes very popular and therefore has good sales history or something like that. Some of it has great staying power too. I’m not trying to slam it. I’m just saying that if you want to break into that, either you’re at the very, very front of it, or you’re in a mix of a whole lot of stuff that I think is just hard to market.” 

(left) The Old Ceremony L-R (top) Tift Merritt, John Doe, Sloan L-R (bottom) Chuck Prophet, Nick Lowe, Liam Finn, Paul Weller, Cheyenne Marie Mize

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Yep Roc (cont’d)

Fountains of Wayne

The Old Ceremony • • • Back in 1997, Glenn Dicker and Tor Hansen cared little about the style or prominence of the artists they were signing. When the two music industry veterans founded Yep Roc in Chapel Hill 15 years ago, they were simply looking to use their knowledge to promote releases by regional artists that they felt deserved attention. The two worked together at Massachusetts’ Rounder Records, a rock-focused independent label that has since merged with the Concord Music Group. Friends who had played together in a handful of different touring bands, they decided to start an imprint with an independent spirit and a roster that they really believed in. In the beginning there was little similarity between Yep Roc’s artists, apart from the fact that Dicker and Hansen were drawn to their music. They released an EP from psychedelic funk-rock outfit Big Ass Truck. They handled the self-titled debut of the manic, rockabillyblasting Tonebenders. They peddled records from the semi-legendary Mayflies USA, a Chapel Hill power-pop band that was an important player during the town’s 90s heyday. They pushed road-weary country-rock by way of Mercury Dime. In the early days, there was little sign of a central vision at the core of what Yep Roc was doing apart from a defiant drive to do whatever suited them best. “The first records that we put out on the label were bands that were local bands that we really liked a lot, and they were all sorts of different things,” Dicker recalls. “It was all over the place, but the thing that they had in common was that they were all regional artists. And at that stage we felt that we wanted to do this thing ourselves and to have control over everything and really know the market. The market we knew at that time was a regional market.” But the Yep Roc that exists today wouldn’t exist without a solid and reliable identity. Now based in the green, overgrown out-lands of Alamance County, Yep Roc resides in a hand-me-down warehouse,

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All photos courtesy of Yep Roc Records

the kind of vacated textileindustry leftover that clutters rural areas throughout the South. The depot space houses Yep Roc’s sister company, Redeye Distribution. Ranking among the largest independent distributors in the U.S., Redeye claims such prominent clients as Warp, Barsuk, Thrill Jockey and Hydra Head Records. The unassuming front offices are where the label does its business. They hardly feel like the home of a successful independent imprint. The white-walled entryway is filled with the constant clamor of the label’s ever-active copy machine, and the narrow hallways are bedecked in faux-wood paneling that looks to have clung there for decades. But the memorabilia on the walls told me a different story as an impressionable, 21-year-old intern wandering the office three years ago. There were magazine covers dominated by the wrestlingmasked faces of Los Straightjackets, an elaborate box set released by Southern Culture on the Skids and a banner announcing the label’s 10th anniversary party, signifiers of sustained success that wouldn’t have been possible without a reliable stream of productive releases. “We wanted to continue to raise the profile of the bands and the artists,” Hansen says, speaking via conference call alongside Dicker. Signing artists with a history of success boosted Yep Roc’s brand and allowed them to pass on that exposure to their developing artists, anchoring the label with proven winners and allowing them to take chances on other artists they thought would pan out. “That was a driving goal. Being an underdog, small label, taking on an artist that already had a history, whether it was through Warner Brothers or whoever else, we would be presented with these opportunities, and we felt like if we focused on them, and we

gave them more attention and positioned them through the same outlets but giving them a little more boost or attention, we would super-serve what they had experienced previously," Tor continued. Buying into the philosophy that their status as an independent label was an asset and not a setback when it came to chasing weightier clients — especially at a time when major labels were dumping prestige acts in a race to match the trendy pursuits of their indie level brethren — Hansen and Dicker decided to pick up the phone and call any and all artists looking for a new label that they were interested in signing. That ambition and a commitment to fulfilling their artists’ needs paid off as they managed to grab Los Straightjackets and Nick Lowe in the early years of the new millennium. Since then, the label has landed a steady influx of nationally (and internationally) recognized talent, names like John Doe, Reverend Horton Heat and Gang of Four. “It’s almost like a bunch of old timers like us,” laughs Jay Ferguson of the Canadian power-pop outfit Sloan, who last year celebrated its 20th anniversary with the Yep Roc-released The Double Cross. He says that the label mostly stays out of his band’s way, serving as an outlet for whatever art Sloan ends up making. “It seems like that’s their specialty, bands that have a long career and are still making good records Jukebox the Ghost — and I think relevant records. The records that Paul Weller and Nick Lowe are making, they’re obviously not resting on their laurels. So I think that’s something specific that Yep Roc does well is keeping artists in the spotlight that do have a long career.” But Dicker and Hansen have built more than just a home for older acts that have yet to outgrow their relevance. The acts they sign align with Haskins vision of Yep Roc as a society of craftsmen, complementing acts — some older — some green — all pursuing sounds that are in some way timeless. The popinflected bluegrass of Chatham County Line is a fitting counterpoint to the folk excursions of Doe and Tift Merritt. The psych-inflected power-pop of Liam Finn is a natural extension of the work created by acts like Sloan and Robyn Hitchcock. And The Sadies, who have collaborated with Doe as well as Andre Williams, seem content to play house band to any aging songwriter in the label’s growing camp. Apart from Williams, all of the above will perform at Yep Roc 15, an October celebration at Carrboro’s Cat’s Cradle that Dicker hopes will highlight connections among Yep Roc’s varied catalog. “I think one of the things that we wanted to try to do that was hopefully interesting

to the fans was create something that’s kind of a unique situation and maybe draws lines between the artists and maybe helps explain a little bit better what the label’s about,” he says. “The artists are doing potentially collaborative things together, and there’s sort of a family feel to it in some way. We wanted to have a unique experience for the fans, but we also wanted to demonstrate that there is sort of a

"THAT’S THEIR SPECIALTY, BANDS THAT HAVE A LONG CAREER AND ARE STILL MAKING GOOD RECORDS..." —SLOAN'S JAY FERGUSON connectedness. There’s some kind of glue. We hope that that’s part of what we’re presenting in these shows.” Links abound between Yep Roc’s artists, but their most universal bond is the belief and commitment provided by Dicker, Hansen and their staff. Most music listeners don’t really care about the stamp on the back of the records they buy. They only care that the music sounds good. Yep Roc understands that. Dicker and Hansen sign acts they have faith in and then allow them to create as they see fit. For 15 years, that strategy has worked. “One of the things that we were grappling with when we were looking at this 15th anniversary thing was just, ‘What can we say as our catch phrase about our label?’” Dicker laughs. They settled on “Artist Driven Since 1997.” “It probably took the longest time to come up with something that everybody agreed with. At the end of the day, trying to find the lowest common denominator about us, that makes sense. It’s really just that we’re into what we’re into, and we’re following our artists. They’re the ones leading the charge. We’ve never been like label first and then the artists sort of behind that. It’s always been artists first. That’s the foundation.” sm

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Jim White

MUSIC TO DIE FOR With eclectic new LP, Bo White celebrates Mexico’s resilience in the cartel drug wars By John Schacht

n the mid-90s, when Charlotte musician and Kinnikinnik label chief Bo White was a middle-schooler in his early teens, he accompanied his church on a missionary trip to Mexico. White — who’d never been in a plane before — and his fellow missionaries, all older high school kids, flew over the Mexico City megalopolis before landing at Benito Juárez Airport. They then hopped a bus for their ultimate destination, San Luis Potosí, 270 miles to the north. During their week-plus stay at different host-houses in the SLP suburbs, the group attended services, ate exotic regional dishes, and took in some local color around the city’s main square. They also traveled into the countryside where, White says, they tried to put an infinitesimal dent in the region’s Third World conditions. He concedes that a bunch of American kids more “used to playing video games” weren’t able to do much, but now he realizes that was only a by-product of the visit’s real purpose. “The trip did exactly what it’s supposed to do,” White says in his soft, South Carolina-bred drawl. “It made an impression on everybody.” You can trace that impression forward a decade-and-a-half in White’s life. Now 30, White pays the rent as a music programmer at Mood Media Muzak in Fort Mill in addition to his other musical pursuits. As part of his job, he hunts down new music via Internet blogs and websites for the company’s varied playlists. During that task a couple years ago, White stumbled upon a story about Mexican singer Sergio Vega, nicknamed “El Shaka” for his laid-back bonhomie. Among his repertoire, the singer from the state of Sonora performed narcocorridos — colorful ballads that play up the exploits of drug dealers, not unlike gangsta rap here — which unfortunately made him a target for rival gangs who felt disrespected or excluded. In fact, after a spate of singer killings, Vega was assumed to have already been murdered when he appeared on an entertainment website in June of 2010 to insist he was in fact quite alive. But just hours later, assassins gunned Vega down as he drove to a festival performance. Newspapers listed him as the sixth singer of narcocorridos to be killed in the first six months of that bloody year. Back in Charlotte, White listened to Vega’s songs, which also included Mexi-pop and traditional forms like rancheras, cumbias, baladas, and

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Photos by Enid Valu

boleros. The songs’ variety and their singer’s humanity hit home with White — “the man just had a heart about him,” he says. So White decided to honor the country he visited as a boy, its long-suffering populace, and musicians like El Shaka with an album depicting and celebrating life amid the drug wars. He would name the Kinnikinnik release Same Deal/New Patrones. Depending on the context, “patrones” can translate to “bosses” or “patron saints.” It can also mean “patterns,” as in New Patterns — that too was among the sentiments White hoped to portray. • • • “It's hard to imagine a record made with clearer vision,” says Great Architect saxophonist Brent Bagwell, who heads a long list of contributing musicians White tapped for these 13 eclectic visions. “This is just one facet of Bo's musical personality, too. I'm convinced he could make a record in almost any style and — most importantly — mean it. He doesn't callously borrow from source material, but internalizes it, reflects it, and makes it into something new and personal.” That’s apparent in White’s resume. His production credits range from Great Architect’s inside-out avant-noise to Appalucia’s barnburning hoedowns. He’s added songwriting and essential guitar parts

at a gig in case he ever needed a horn-player; White finally got in touch a week before Engle left Charlotte for grad school. “You plan for the album as much as you can,” White says, “but sometimes you just have to let stuff fall into place and it has just as much of an impact as the planned stuff.” With no banda musicians available, White’s arrangements avoided on-the-nose genre instrumentation just as the songs steered clear of traditional Mexican forms. With the exception of the Spanish guitar-fills that joust with tuba, sax and strings over the syncopated drag of “Nervous Clamor,” there’s little here that grounds the music geographically. On the haunting bridge of “El Cantante,” White samples and then shades with eerie vibes a medley of native Taramarahura— whose ancient ways the cartels threaten — songs taken from an old Folkways recording. On the up-tempo “Ulama Con Marta,” he uses the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame ulama as a metaphor for the domestic bliss of a street-vendor and his beloved. But in both songs, highlife guitar lines and sympathetic horn fanfares bridge the Chicago experimentalism of a Jim O’Rourke or Joan of Arc and the West coast of Africa. There’s not a mariachi horn or oversized Mexican guitarron to be found. This cultural and genre mash-up persists throughout. “No Pain on Arrival” chronicles immigrants’ across-the-border hopes with a sprightly

to the gang-chorus pop outfit Yardwork, Black Congo N.C.’s highlife-flavored excursions, exnoise-rockers Calabi Yau, and his own myriad solo-plus-band iterations. White turned to the musicians in one of those acts — the jazzy guitar/ vibes/drums set-up of Duo Select — when he realized recruiting local Mexican brass musicians for the new LP wasn’t going to happen. So after scratching out chords and melodies on guitar in February of 2011, White got together with Charleston-based vibraphonist James Cannon and drummer Kain Naylor, who flew down from New York, and the trio sussed out each song’s vibe over a long weekend that March. “Originally, I had all these grand ideas, I was going to try and find some banda musicians in Charlotte and put together a group, but obviously that’s pretty difficult,” says White, whose Spanish consists mostly of Google translations. “So I thought, ‘I’ll just do an album my way.’ And this band is basically an amalgamation of every other kind of band I’ve done in a weird way: it’s kind of funky, kind of indie, there’s softer, more ballad-y, jazzy stuff.” During the next several months, trombone and tuba players, cellists and bassists , and a host of other musicians dropped by White’s Yauhaus studio — also his home and a former house-show venue — to record overdubs. There were happy accidents, of course, as there often are on the shoestring budget at which Kinnikinnik operates. Adam Engle, the only trumpeter White knew, had handed him his phone number years earlier

but poetic melody that runs Fagen & Becker jazz guitar and counterpoint horns through The Sea and Cake’s song structures; White brings alive the artistry and brutality of bullfighting on “Fiesta Brava” by having Lee Renaldo-inspired guitar feedback spar with baritone sax for two open-throttle minutes, a rousing chorus and melody emerging from the noise and bloody fury; the fluting horns, tuba blats and vibraphone shades that color “Juarez,” White’s ode to the murdered women of that cursed border town, closes the record with the wistful beauty of Arthur Russell’s most touching work. White’s unassuming nature would rightfully shy from such namedropping, and really the others are just signposts you pass on your way to Bo White’s world, a musical oasis bereft of borders or boundaries. Says Bagwell of the record’s unique arrangements, “At first, they might seem unusual, but repeated listening reveals them to be ideal and inevitable.” • • • The Mexican-born oligarch Carlos Slim, since 2010 the richest man in the universe, anchors one corner of the cover art for Same Deal/New Patrones. Illustrator Matt Nelson, White’s former Yardwork bandmate and ex-Yauhaus roommate, depicts the Eighteenth-century nun Sor Juana de la Cruz in the opposite corner. The feminist poet, mathematician and thinker came from privilege but dedicated her life to the poor. Those kinds of dichotomous pairings — a Colonial War minuteman armed with an AK-47; El Shaka’s family seal and the chemical symbol for cocaine; the extraterrestrial Soumaya Art Museum in Mexico City and a set of prison gates, etc. — mirror and echo the fully fleshed out characters that populate White’s narratives. Nelson took as his template Fela Kuti’s favored album-cover artist, Ghariokwu Lemi, and cleverly transposed some of the characters in White’s songs with those on the 

LP illustration by Matthew Jamison Nelson/Watercolor by Melissa Anne Carroll

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Bo White (cont’d)

cover of Fela’s 1989 LP, Beasts of No Nation. What could have come off as unearned chutzpah reads instead as tactful and relevant homage. “In a way, I would like to imagine that Bo and my process in creating this ‘package’ was much the same as Fela and Lemi's,” says Nelson, who now lives in New York City. “The end product directly benefits from a collegial relationship based on mutual respect and the shared creative caldron that was certainly stewed by living down the hall from each other.” Temperamentally, though, the Nigerian firebrand Fela and White come from very different places. The narratives make it pretty clear where White falls on hot-button issues like immigration and the United States' consumption-king role that fuels the cartel wars. But so far from the front-lines, White opts wisely for humanizing portraits and slices-of-life vignettes rather than pissed-off political rhetoric. Real people live in these songs, and their plight, however desperate or misguided, doesn’t annul their humanity. The assassin in “Sinaloa,” a strings-and-muted trumpet waltz, dances between sinister-shaded verses and a heart-swelling chorus proclaiming his love for his home state. In “Plurales,” White takes an “objective camera” to corruption in a tempo-shifting shuffle. The picture that emerges finds street-level drug-runners and high-end drug consumers, corrupt Mexican judges and racist American officials, all suffering the same curse: They’re members of “a wild human race stripped of its grace,” White sings with his David Byrne-like warble. If there are heroes here, they are the people caught in the moral and literal crossfire. Through resilience, they hang on to their dignity: The young woman who escapes her likely unpleasant fate by heisting a chollo’s car (“Promesas Para Ellas”), the street vendor who happily perseveres despite his lot in the shadow of a wealthy resort, the immigrants betting their lives on a brighter — and safer — future across the border. “I wanted to approach it from a way that somebody like Sergio Vega would write an album,” White says. He’d have his drug songs, his love songs, and songs about his mom.” In the end, we’re left with a portrait of a specific era and place that nevertheless transcends time and borders — especially the one inextricably linking these neighbors. If our fates are so entwined, as Same Deal/New Patrones passionately implies, why not let it be our kinder angels that unite us, rather than the weakest, darkest and bloodiest. sm

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930 South Chapman Street Greensboro, NC 27403 336.446.9194 Open Monday-Saturday 1-8pm

www.CFBGS.com

With My Everlasting Zeal, Raleigh Rapper Stakes His Claim By Bryan Reed istorians may argue the degree to which Napoleon Bonaparte’s self-coronation was planned or improvised, but one thing is certain. When Napoleon grabbed the crown from the hands of a probably bewildered Pope Pius VII at Notre Dame Cathedral that December day in 1804, he changed history. Tradition as far back as Charlemagne demanded a coronation ceremony, crown placed upon the monarch’s head by God’s earthbound representative. Napoleon upset the balance, putting his own power above the Church’s. An Internet search for the term “self-coronation” today yields a consistently critical usage, lobbed at self-aggrandizing politicians and pundits, at the until-recently ringless Lebron “King” James, and basically at anyone with the gall to assert authority where it hasn’t been earned. The self-anointed King Mez took the title on credit. The 22-year-old Raleigh rapper born Morris Ricks II chose a stage-name that speaks to his lofty aspirations, tenacious ambition, and the firm morality he sees as a counterpoint to an overly self-centered and materialistic rap field. “I feel like a king is someone who is very insightful, who’s meant to lead a lot of people, very humble but very commanding and authoritative

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Photos by fisdj.foto

whenever need be,” he says. “He treats women like queens, which is very essential, and you build a kingdom for your children, so one day, like the people who build the businesses, Rockefeller and all types of people, their kids are always going to be straight because they work so hard. Those types of things have a lot more to do with my name than anything else.” He understands that it’s a title he’ll have to live up to. That’s kind of the point. Morris Ricks II, the eldest son of two U.S. Army soldiers, was born

at Fort Campbell, Ky. and raised in Southeast Raleigh. His hiphop destiny revealed itself early. “Hip-hop was just always big in my household, man,” he remembers. “My parents played it in the car all the time. It’s all I really knew as far as music. They played soul music and other types of stuff, but hip-hop just stuck with me. I loved it so much, I had to just attempt it. I had to.” By the age of 9, he’d graduated from mimicry to freestyling rhymes of his own. Once he started to work out his rhymes on paper, at 11 or 12, there was no looking back. “It just stuck,” he says. “I kept wanting to do it, I was so excited about it.” But it wasn’t until 2006, when he heard Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor — a conscious rap record that made major mainstream inroads on the back of the skateboarding single “Kick Push” — that Ricks decided to make Mez a full-time pursuit. “He was one of the only artists I ever really listened to that was still himself after a major record deal,” Mez says of hearing the record at 16. “It was like, man, he’s continuing to be who he wants to be, and have a message in all the music” Three years later, Mez debuted with the mixtape, LLTK, a raw but able presentation of a developing talent. It was enough to garner some early attention and set the stage for the more personal and conceptual follow-up, 2010’s The Paraplegics, produced by fellow Raleigh upand-comer Commissioner Gordon, and highlighted by an affecting, autobiographical first-hand account of witnessing domestic violence. It was on The Paraplegics, its name a commentary on a sort of moral paralysis induced by conspicuous consumption, that Mez found his voice. Sonically, his elastic flow suits the low, dry timbre of his voice. Thematically, he utilizes unflinching realism as a vehicle for moral lessons. He raps, chillingly on “The Light,” “The day I was ready to hit the door/ Was when I found Mama hair on the kitchen floor/ And I was feeling like a conquistador/ Because that Glock 9, homie/ I was ready to explore.” That stark image gives way to lines of acceptance, and ultimately, the song’s redemptive moral. Earnest intent counterbalances the moments (and there are more than a few) where he tips toward didacticism — “When I’m spittin’, it ain’t never to get me richer/ It’s you hearing the song and knowing somebody with you.” “Hip-hop was built on that braggadocio, all that flyin’ and flossin’ in your lyrics,” Mez concedes. He’s certainly not opposed to having fun with boast tracks, but he most often aims for something more profound, exposing difficult and personal truths, allowing himself to be vulnerable in hopes his listeners might better relate to a flawed and hurt human than a gilded, hedonistic demigod. “It wasn’t really until people started making rap with a subject matter that touched people’s soul that it became something global, something more than music, like a movement,” he says. In 2010, not long after the release of The Paraplegics, Mez lost his mother. He moved back home to help his younger brother, then still in high school. He went to parent-teacher conferences, cheered at football games, and helped steer his brother’s college application process. He emerged from the grief more focused on his musical aspirations.

Last year’s short-form The King’s Khrysis, a rapper-producer collaboration with Justus League and Away Team producer Khrysis, found a reinvigorated and newly confident Mez refining his approach, merging hard-nosed experience with defiant optimism. “People want to do good, I believe, but it’s not easy to. So I try to be mindful of that whenever I make music,” Mez says, summarizing his most consistent thematic currents. The six-track EP ends with its title track, Mez sharing verses with Phonte, the Little Brother M.C. turned Foreign Exchange crooner, who “take[s] the fedora and put[s] back on the fitted” in a symbolic, if small scale, passing of the torch reminiscent of Jay-Z’s hat-tip to Lil Wayne on the latter’s “Mr. Carter.” All this stage-setting has led to what might be considered King Mez’s proper full-length debut, My Everlasting Zeal. Though it was released for free on the Internet like his previous mixtapes, there’s a clarity of purpose and consistency of vision his past efforts can’t match. It’s clear he knows it, too. Littered with signifiers of ascendant fame, My Everlasting Zeal tells the story of a talent on the rise. “I rep my city, but I’m hardly here,” Mez (who, it ought to be noted is currently residing in Maryland to be closer to family and frequent jaunts to New York) admits in the album’s “Intro.” In “About Me,” he’s adapting to seeing dreams realized, remembering humble origins and celebrating steadfast old friends; lamenting the fairweather fly-by-night affections of would-be groupies; and finally waxing philosophical on prison and drug abuse as the alternate roads his life might have taken.. “Highness” samples piano and soaring vocal melody as a backdrop to a slam-poetry detour that finds Mez declaring, “I know there’s a crown out there for me. It don’t gotta be the main one, long as nobody livin’ got the same one.” He repeats the line in “Reign.” Musically, he finds a sweet spot in a steady boom-bap backbeat, coaxing fluid melodic samples that contrast the clipped, chirping, sped-up soul nuggets N.C. luminary 9th Wonder always favored. On tracks like “Reign,” the melodic propensity tilts Mez toward pop. And in the midst of his evolving but consistent tropes of trial and redemption, he finds time for an R&B-laced come-on in “Tonight” (with help from crooner Drey Skonie). Still, Mez has a clear objective that trumps any diversions: “I see that crown like it’s gotta be mine,” he asserts at the opening of “The Town.” Mez’s coronation is the theme of My Everlasting Zeal. If the work he’s done so far has proven his mettle, now’s his opportunity to seize authority. He’s proven his self-reliance in music and in life, hustling his way into a full-time rap career, with clothing endorsements and satellite radio spins. But so far it’s been a self-directed effort. “There’s no money behind me, no major label, no major artist, no major push, no co-sign,” Mez says. “That type of stuff makes you want to work as hard as you possibly can, and you’ve got to be innovative and creative and figure out your own way.” But those days, he says, are coming to an end. His self-determination is a means, not an end. One day, he says with a present-tense confidence, he’ll be a big-label artist, on his own terms. In his mind, the crown is his for the taking. sm

shufflemag.com | 29

Take One Presented by Shuffle Produced by Six Foot Kitten

Shuffle has teamed up with the multimedia experts at Six Foot Kitten to create Take One, an exclusive video series available at shufflemag.com. Each issue we select one band, place them in a unique and intimate setting, and produce a high-quality video short ready to show off to the rest of the world. Our first installment with Andy The Doorbum can be viewed at: www.shufflemag.com/take-oneandy-the-doorbum Just released, our second installment with Company: www.shufflemag.com/take-onecompany To view all Take One videos or find out more about Six Foot Kitten production, visit www.SixFootKitten.com

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Winston-Salem

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Mum's the Word By Corbie Hill

inston-Salem’s Burglar Fucker, whose descriptors are just as hyphenated as the town's name (noise-scuzz, psych-punk, spacegutter-jazz), paint their scene as a healthy, supportive underground community that scuttles from one hushhush venue to the next. In fact, all they will say about the current coolest room in town is that it exists. They won’t talk details, for fear of drawing unwanted attention to an illicit show space. “I’d be a shit if I ruined the whole thing,” saxophonist Ryan Pritts explains apologetically. But his reluctance makes sense. To him, a tour of Winston-Salem starts in 2008 or 2009, with 444 — a huge Victorian house on Hawthorne Road that hosted weekly The Garage underground concerts. “The basement was 10-foot ceilings, totally soundproof,” he recalls of the spot where art students rented rooms month-to-month. But 444 died an ignoble death when an absentee landlord showed up and found evidence of near-constant shenanigans. Everyone was evicted. Pritts says the new spot is a bigger, better continuation of 444’s vibe. “It’s just kind of a mum’s-the-word sort of place,” says Burglar Fucker hollerer and baritone guitarist Anthony Petrovic. As with the best places for music, it also takes word-of-mouth to locate the finest food in Winston. “If you’re constantly touring, doing that grind, and all you can find is bullshit, this place is just chock-full of great little, tucked away, been-here-for-a-hundred years (restaurants),” Pritts says of his beloved local Southern diners. “They still serve this sandwich on a napkin and you eat standing up at the counter.” Pritts mentions traditional spots, like the 50-yearold Mr. Barbecue and J S Pulliam Barbeque, which opened in 1910, as well as Bib’s Downtown — a newer spot that boasts a large menu and

nontraditional recipes. Beyond that, Skippy’s serves hot dogs on pretzel rolls, and there are bakeries, Mediterranean cafés, Thee Oh Sees at Krankies and coffee shops. With spots like Washington Perk, La Providencia, Mooney’s, and Camino Bakery, it sounds like Pritts eats well. holds pot lucks and motorcycle workshops. Petrovic, who relocated from San Francisco It also helps to have Wake Forest and the School about two years ago, says it was one of the only of the Arts around. Even if Lockey doesn’t necessarily proper venues in town that helped endear Winston see his town as a music hub, he says performance art is to him. alive and well via these schools. “Krankies, it was one of the first “There is a multi-faceted culture here that, if you’re places I went here,” Petrovic says of the not in Winston, you haven’t really been exposed to,” combination coffee shop, hangout and he says. During the school year, there’s everything rock club. But what is now a healthy from operas and ballets to small plays at little business was once independent spaces, he says. a derelict industrial Pritts says downtown has lost building, which Pritts much of the menace it had when he says the owners saved first started coming to Winston in from destruction — or the late 90s. It’s been developed, and gentrification. the city subsequently updated the “It’s really warm,” streetlights, reversing the decaying, he says. “It’s all wood floors, and ominous vibe. big, giant, they-don’t-make-trees “It’s insane what difference that like-this-anymore wood columns. timeframe has made,” he says. “It’s Like an old tobacco warehouse way more acceptable and friendly kind of joint.” With a decent PA and okay and safe, even if you’re that’ll get loud and still sound nice, kind of a young person.” it’s an essential room. Only a few It isn’t any specific room that blocks away is the Garage, which keeps these guys here. It’s openhas been known for some time as minded locals — though the low a country-blues and Americanacost of living sure doesn’t hurt. friendly stage. Pritts and Petrovic played music Mr. Barbecue Drummer Ian Lockey doesn’t in Detroit, during the garage-rock seem to share his bandmates’ revival that spawned the White optimism. But like Petrovic, he also Stripes, and Pritts rarely noticed champions Winston’s low cost of living. Plus, he audiences crossing genre lines. He says Winston is a says, the town is equidistant to Asheville, Charlotte, refreshing reversal. and Chapel Hill. “I go to Carrboro to buy music,” he “It’s a really small scene,” says Petrovic. “There’s a says. “I go to Carrboro to go to shows.” couple of rockabilly kids and New Wave dudes and, Still, there’s something about Winston’s semilike, seven metal people. But everyone comes out and legit community spaces that he digs. Lockey is supportive.” sm mentions Hussein’s, a practice and party spot that

Thee Oh Sees photo by Ross Grady, The Garage photo by Hot Shot Creative, Mr. Barbecue phot courtesy of Mr. Barbecue

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NOW HEAR T HIS! Spider Bags Shake My Head (Odessa)

Temperance League Temperance League (Like, WOW!)

n 2012, you might be tempted to say that rock & roll isn’t enough, that to play your blues with the bombast and ebullience of your predecessors is adequate only to get you a regular weekday gig in the ignored corner of a terrible dive bar without the self-awareness to actually call itself Hell, and nothing more. It’s been decades since Zeppelin or The Ramones, The Faces or Nirvana last set their familiar hooks, an intercalary span that alternately includes the rise of hip-hop and heavy metal, industrial explorations and electronic music. It’s not that rock & roll is dead or some other such reductive poppycock; it’s that, by now, we’ve all seen that the far-flung form’s thrills can be replicated (and occasionally, arguably, bested) by folks behind laptops or in front of a DJ. Sure, it was Internet baiting at its most blatant when Spin called Skrillex the 100th best guitarist of all time earlier this year, but have you seen how fans respond to the former hardcore musician’s shows? It’s nothing short of musical mania. But what rock & roll does have is a variegated history, strains and layers that allow the smartest of those still in this particular alliterate thrall to mix and match ideas and enthusiasms into something that, even at this late post-millennial date, sounds fresh. Both Chapel Hill’s Spider Bags and Charlotte’s Temperance League do just that, twisting together often separate wires of rock & roll into unlikely wholes. On their third album, the brisk and incredibly fun Shake My Head, Spider Bags allow surf-rock

Spider Bags frontman Dan McGee leads the rock & roll charge. boogie and country-sadness bedlam to bleed through a primitive garage roar, adding finesse, subtlety and valence where some peers have taken — and will continue to take — the more facile path. With about a half-dozen guitars twisting and clawing over a simple rhythmic build, “Shawn Cripps Boogie” falls somewhere between post-rock and Krautrock, fun-neled through the wired brains of kids having a party in the basement. “Shape I Was In” ends with a shout-out-loud coda that exudes the spirit of an old soul session, one person’s solitary troubles turned into a reason to rejoice together. This isn’t rock & roll reborn or reinvented or recast for the kids getting off to EDM, but it is a recharge and a reminder that the energy of a

great rock band — and Shake My Head finally confirms Spider Bags’ place as one of them — defines irrepressibility. The self-titled debut LP from the Temperance League, meanwhile, doesn’t strike with the same surehandedness, perhaps to be expected from a semi-legendary live band who’ve never made a full-length. A two-guitar quintet fronted by a livewire romantic named Bruce Hazel, the League sometimes sounds too timid on tape to sell its mix of Springsteensized hope, punk-rock misery and Summer of Love wistfulness. But the attempts, even when missed, offer the same polyglot promise on which Spider Bags capitalize. Hazel and his men seem studied in the ways of several rock & roll eras, an unruly erudition that allows them to

fill these 12 songs with surprises and suggestions. (This record, after all, was recorded by Mitch Easter, a producer who’s actually part of a few key rock & roll narratives.) “Unwelcome Change,” for instance, rings out like The Byrds, but its restlessness suggests the firebrands that came much later — a suspicion confirmed by primal blasts like “Don’t Give Up” and the Westerberg-sized turmoil of the broken-hearted “I Don’t Wanna.” This band, then, makes familiar stops on a path that seems to be very much their own, a casual confirmation that rock & roll is far from finished exploring, even when guided by acts who might appear to be nothing more than prototypical. —Grayson Currin

Photo by Jeremy Lange

shufflemag.com | 33

NOW HEAR THIS The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats Transcendental Youth (Merge)

n 2005, Willie Nelson made the reggae album, Countryman. Admittedly adventurous, it’s also no understatement to note it’s not what Nelson does best. By the same token, Mountain Goat auteur John Darnielle’s flirtation with horn arrangements on his latest may be the natural culmination of the dispatching of his earlier boombox recording ethos for 2002’s 4AD debut Tallahassee. But it’s not his best work. The initial impetus for all the boombox hiss was to amplify the focus on words and keenly crafted stories. Darnielle’s tender cinema verité doesn’t translate easily to the big screen. The implied narrative distance is typically bridged in mainstream arrangements with broad-stroke romanticism — think Lou Reed’s “Romeo & Juliet” or Sprinsgteen’s “Jungleland.”

Floating Action Fake Blood (Harvest/Removador)

f it were possible to make one’s home within the confines of a record’s grooves, you could do worse than making a mortgage payment on Fake Blood, the latest from Black Mountain rhythm-and-mood auteur Seth Kauffman. Seemingly aware of the opiate air of the 12 tunes on his first release for Jim James’ Removador label, Kauffman opens with the appropriately titled “Ensnarement,” a short instrumental of strings and percussion, the audio equivalent of a breathing

34 | now hear this

shuffle seventeen

Floating Action

That’s simply not how Darnielle works. His closely observed snapshots ring with stark, Raymond Carver-esque truths like the observation that “some things you do just to see how bad they’ll make you feel.” That song, “Cry For Judas,” with its ode to those “who don’t slow down at all, and there’s nobody there to catch us when we fall,” is worthy of Springsteen, but the horns feel too frilly for such a straightforward sentiment. Here, there are no hulls of burnt-out Chevrolets, discarded graduation gowns or any other suitably cinematic signifiers. Instead, it offers the biting rejoinder, “mistreat your altar boys long enough and this I what you get.” Since Tallahassee, Darnielle has intermittently teamed with others for arrangements. On Transcendental Youth, the work of Fight the Big Bull leader Matthew E. White is too brash, straining for movie-score bravado when the songs’ characters are best suited to back alleys, basements and other low-light environs. A sizable contingent of simpler tracks are more successful. The sympathetically rendered homeless

man’s paranoia on “Counterfeit Florida Plates,” and the bounding, piano-propelled redemption of “The Diaz Brothers” are two solid examples. But best of all are the two folk-inflected tracks with the “Spent Gladiator” moniker. The latter is a devastating, metaphor-rich sketch of a man fighting for survival. Its dark, vaguely despairing air recalls Tom Waits as Darnielle explains, “Like the clock that ticks in Dresden, when the whole town’s been destroyed/Like the nagging flash of insight, you’re always hoping to avoid.” Darnielle works best where subtleties speak loudest. These are the secrets of furtive, nervy sorts, sneaking out the back. The overstuffed horn arrangements overshadow the craft and tone of the telling. While only featured on a portion of the album, their ham-fisted feel disrupts its continuity. No one begrudges Darnielle’s trying on a lusher sound. It’s just that some beauty is best experienced without a lot of makeup. —Chris Parker

exercise: out and in, out and in, and now prepare to stay forever. To that end, the subsequent “Alpine Shadow” is a four-minute spell of invitation and acceptance: its fuzzy guitars offer a warming welcome; its concurrently pattering rhythms chisel an understated but insistent tempo; and its gently stretched harmonies all combine to take the edge off like a late-night tumbler or toke. Half an hour later, when Kauffman eases into the country dub of closer “Working Man,” that feeling of preternatural welcome and ease still presides. From now on, when you consider great “vibe records,” Fake Blood should help set the baseline. But these tunes are not merely bleary-eyed stylistic smears. Rather, Kaufmann is the sort of musical polymath who can tie the Richard Manueland-Robbie Robertson maneuvers of “Harshness

of the Blow” into a rhythm more breezy than any The Band ever attempted. And for a guy whose sense of fuzzy production extends like a badge of honor and isolation, some of these tracks speak, as one might say, to what the kids dig. “Matador,” for instance, moves in surges of bass and slashes of guitar, with restless vocal lines cutting past one another and through sheets of simple electronics; it’s like a missing Menomena demo. With Kauffman’s falsetto in sweet, sad and perfect form, “Been Broken” re-realizes The Flaming Lips sans the studio push of producer Dave Fridmann. Given Fake Blood’s wry self-deprecation and hints of tragicomic despair, that sound and its itinerant symbolism — rescuing pop, in its various guises, from the major-money laboratories, for the would-be legends hiding out in mountainous climes — is kind of the point. —Grayson Currin

TheMountain Goats photo by D.L. Anderson, Floating Action photo by Sandlin Gaither

EDITORS’ PICKS I’m not typically a fan of “supergroups.” Random alignments of musicians famous for other projects rarely add up to the sums you’d expect from such quality parts. The Flute Flies are an exception. Comprised of crooning Rosebud Ivan Howard, the equally rich voice of Schooner’s Reid Johnson, and Zeno Gill, who runs the Durham imprint Pox World Empire, they formed four years ago to raise money for Cy Rawls, a cancer-stricken Triangle music super-fan who has since passed away. The Flute Flies The Flies are donating the profits from their engrossing Yes Means Maybe full-length debut to fighting the disease. Meeting in (Self-released) the middle ground between Schooner’s reverb-infused swagger and The Rosebuds’ punchy pop abandon, it’s a luxurious retro-fuzz excursion that would be easy to like even if its heart wasn't in the right place. —JL

O’ Be Joyful, the second LP from Charleston folk duo Shovels & Rope, indulges in a grand ole rock & roll tradition: myth making. The past four years have seen Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst traversing the country with “some beat-up drums and two old guitars,” they sing together on the chorus to “Birmingham,” Trent’s gravelly grit grounding Hearst’s high-flying country belt. Wisely, Shovels & Rope don’t bemoan their ragged, road-warrior existence for the entire record. But they do cash in on that Shovels & Rope reality with a collection of shambling vagabond anthems O’ Be Joyful that fuse garage-based blues and old-school country much (Dualtone) in the way of Jack White and Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose collaboration. Bar flies and broken hearts drift from town to town, shouting as much as singing over stomping drums and searing guitars. Be joyful indeed. —JL

Unforgivable, the new mixtape from Columbia’s Karmessiah, references and samples a six-year-old YouTube clip in which a dude brags about nailing a girl in an arcade bathroom and subsequently upbraids her for getting pregnant. Similarly, this talented MC and producer says some appalling things, but his charismatic delivery and absorbing, mercurial beats allow him to get off as a provocateur. Contrasting muscular bass lines with frenetic rhythms and layers of ominous synths, his tracks Karmessiah approach the confrontational creations of Odd Future. Unforgivable His relaxed flow would fit in well with that outfit as well as (Self-released) he builds to knee-jerk one-liners like, “I’m a humdinger/ Your wife, a cum-drinker.” Possessing enough style to own each controversial utterance, Karmessiah is a prime purveyor of intelligent raunch. —JL

Chapel Hill’s Russell Baggett is an exceptionally gifted singer and lyricist, his gruff, smoldering croon lending heat to slowly evolving narratives that climax in barbed and bitter kiss-offs. While these gifts aren't always the focus of his other outfit — the currently shelved Honored Guests, who bury folk-rock charm within art-rock complexity — they are the boon of Some Army. On this debut EP, which pairs three gems from a previous 7-inch with three equally impressive new offerings, the band retreats to experimental Some Army folk outposts frequently occupied by Wilco. But Some Some Army Army moves with a graceful restraint that sets the group (Self-released) apart. Shimmering distortion paints bleary, late-night vistas as Baggett moans poetic, skewering post-modern detachment with the passion of a fraught but faithful romantic. —JL

This Charleston act — a.k.a., Joel T. Hamilton — has a bandcamp page that promises the music will feel like avocados between your toes, scratch your back, and do the vacuuming. It’s absurdist promotion — until you start spinning Hamilton’s breezy-but-weighty songs, which soon seem capable of those pleasantries and more. Built from guitar fuzz, compressed percussionglitch, and myriad haze-making keys, Hamilton stacks these lo-fi elements atop summery melodies that shine Mechanical River through occasional minor-key clouds. The syncopated Astral Castle guitar and Casio blips of “Never Loved” sound like The (Shrimp Records) Love Language on a sunset cruise with Washed Out, while the tropical vibe of “Gimme Me” comes courtesy of Hamilton’s homemade cigar-box guitar, grounding the music in low-country roots. There’s a wistful undertow in a processional ballad like “By Fathers,” and the stately tempo of “Offer” strikes a reverent, humble tone. The contrast is welcome and provides real-life depth to what could easily have been just more run-of-the-mill synth pop. —JS

The trio Telecine includes Sin Ropas drummer Danni Iosello and bassist Steven Teague, but this debut is all Asheville’s Andrew Larson, who wrote and played nearly everything. Still, you see the attraction, especially for Iosello, who emerged from Califone’s sonic cauldron. Larson’s songs are vintage noise-rock from that band’s turn-of-the-century Perishable label: The sturm und drang of The Fireshow run through Red Red Meat’s noisemangled blues rock. On "Aluminum," distortion fuzz and Telecine bolts of feedback assault the melody winding through the 5 ep slinky beat, and the attack on “Every Town” is so relentless (Self-released) Larson’s voice rising above shines brighter for it. Even the chill “Coming Down with Her” sounds sinister, like Gishera Pumpkins. Closer “Drag the Devil” has it both ways, its delicate Sparklehorse glitch flattened by lumbering riffs and guitar effects in the middle eight. An impressive and promising debut. —JS

From Clapton’s cocaine wails to the string-buttressed eulogies of Lost in the Trees, records ripped from an artist’s pain are a powerful, but routine, occurrence. And yet, Dan Melchior’s The Backward Path sticks out. His wife, Letha Rodman-Melchior, is battling cancer and requires treatments not covered by her insurance. The proceeds from this LP will benefit her care, and Melchior appropriately provides wrenching and rewarding insight into the couple’s struggle. A garage legend who Dan Melchior consistently defies expectations, Melchior spreads The Backward Path seven arresting noise compositions between off-kilter (Northern Spy) odes akin to last year’s Assemblage Blues, spinning dark, impressionistic tales of lives warped by misfortune. “I have known the emptiness,” he sings at one point before quipping, “It made me nervous with its lack of jokes.” Bitter but resilient, it’s an overwhelming expression of resolve in the face of crushing disappointment. —JL

“Epic” is a phrase thrown at a lot of math and post-rock, but rarely delivered on in an urgent fashion. Wilmington’s Virgin Lung open their debut with a track that backs up its grand ideas and sets an ambitiously kinetic tone. “Emergence At Dawn” features multiple guitar lines twisting around each other to create a layered knot of melody for the immense rolling beat to hurl forward. When the gang-vocals kick in — “If you need some help/ Send up a flare” — you can’t help but think of the cathartic Virgin Lung choruses of posi-poppers Yardwork, only with urgency EP 1 rather than brotherhood at the fore. But the five songs here (Self-released) pick up steam throughout, the band deftly skirting metal (see “Black Cross Blue Shield”) and prog (“Marathon”) tropes by hammering classic guitar lines into sharp, angular corners, and realizing that fast-and-furious can be as emotional, melodic and cathartic as the usual slow swelland-release. —JS

For a full list of this issue’s Editors’ Picks, go to www.shufflemag.com

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Hopscotch at The Hibernian, the official Shuffle Magazine Day Party Two days of Carolina music not to be missed! Friday, September 7: Noon-5 p.m. Big Fat Gap, Jon Shain, Jason Kutchma, and Randy Whitt Saturday, Sept. 8: Noon-5 p.m. American Aquarium, Mipso Trio, John Howie & The Rosewood Bluff, Justin Robinson & The Mary Annettes, and th' Bullfrog Willard McGhee For more information please visit: www.hopscotchmusicfest.com

Free Your Mind, Your Free Jazz Ass Will Follow The nsider

By Jeff Jackson

ree jazz — it’s a place of outsized personalities, outrageous stories, and uncompromising music. There’s the performer who plays so hard that keys fly off the piano. The bandleader who claims to be from Saturn and outfits his 30-piece orchestra in space gear. The saxophonist whose ragtag gospel marches influenced The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The avant gardist whose White House recital moved President Jimmy Carter to tears. The group that dons tribal gear and lab coats to perform music that swings from vaudeville to African chants. And the free jazz legend whose music touched so many lives that a church was founded in his name.* Free jazz has a reputation for being intimidating and esoteric, but it’s often more fun and accessible than most straight-ahead jazz. Six years ago, my pal Jeff Golick and I launched Destination: OUT (www.destination-out.com), the first jazz MP3 website. We were inspired by the sad fact that some of the most exciting jazz albums were out-of-print and known only to hardcore collectors. We wanted others to hear the tunes that made us fans — and ironically, this was the same music most jazz critics warned people to stay away from! Over the years, Destination: OUT has been praised by Playboy and The New York Times, but we’re most encouraged by comments from readers who’ve been turned on by tracks we’ve posted. There’s this stupid idea that Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is the best place for jazz newcomers to start. But that album’s slick sophisticated abstractions have discouraged more potential fans than it’s inspired. Most Shuffle readers are more likely to dig, say, Miles Davis’s freaky and funky Bitches Brew or Sun Ra’s futuristic Disco 3000. This strain of free jazz still sounds fresh, provocative, and relevant. We believe a lot more folks would love this music if they’d get beyond it’s reputation.

But that’s only a small part of the sub-genre. Free jazz spans 50 years and numerous countries and includes music that’s so delicate it’s practically ambient, as well as tunes with a funk beat strong enough to shake the dance floor. There are albums that have strong echoes of freak folk, minimalism, gutbucket blues, exotica, hardcore thrash, Afrobeat, electronic beats, and more. It’s an entire continent of sound represented by tens of thousands of albums. Once you start digging, you’ll be amazed by the variety and vitality. There’s something for almost every taste and mood. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO LISTEN TO FREE JAZZ OR: HOW DO YOU TELL THE GOOD STUFF FROM THE BAD?

Relax and trust your instincts. Most people automatically assume that there’s something in free jazz they’re not getting. Like you need conservatory training to appreciate what the musicians are doing. Nonsense: It’s just sound. Sometimes it’s complex and abrasive, sometimes funky and buoyant. But there’s no code to be broken. As Gertrude Stein once said, “There’s no there there.” A newcomer listening to free jazz isn’t different than someone who’s just discovering punk, electronica, roots reggae, or whatever. The more you listen and expose yourself to different facets of the music, the more likely you are to find what you like. Maybe Ornette Coleman grates on your ears. Be honest with yourself and keep looking, because maybe Sun Ra or Matthew Shipp will excite you. If you can, see some free jazz live. Pieces that demand concentration when they’re coming out of your speakers often seem effortlessly absorbing in person. You may rush to turn off a Cecil Taylor album the first time you hear it, but live you won’t be able to take your eyes off the man. In performance, the music’s passion and exuberance is impossible to miss.

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT FREE JAZZ

(aka Avant Garde Jazz, aka Out Jazz, aka That Horrible Racket) IT’S ALL JUST NOISE

Well yeah, some of it is really noisy. Free jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock famously said, “I go onstage, and my intention is to make the first four rows bleed from their ears.” This is the strain of the music that’s influenced bands like Sonic Youth, Wolf Eyes, The Stooges, The Melvins, Lightning Bolt, and the like. Think of it as ecstatic freakout music. The sort of stuff that peels back the lid of your skull and rearranges your atoms.

IT’S TOO OUT THERE FOR ME

Maybe. But if you’re already listening to acts like Radiohead, Animal Collective, Sonic Youth, TV on the Radio, etc., then you’re ready. Without knowing it, you’ve already been listening to free jazz filtered through other sensibilities. Some of the classic free jazz albums might even sound too tame. sm Jeff Jackson is the co-proprietor of www.destination-out.com, Arts & Culture Editor for Charlotte Viewpoint, Founding Director of the NoDa Film Festival, and a member of the Obie-winning Collapsable Giraffe theatre company in New York City. He also teaches film at UNC-Charlotte.

John Coltrane.

*Answers: Don Pullen, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, 38 | the insider

shuffle seventeen

Photo courtesy of Jeff Jackson

To hear a sampling of free jazz MP3s, visit destination-out.com

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