Here's a preview of one of the tracks from the DLSODW tape.
No Words by WhenSkiesAreGrey
Ordering information here.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Locrian Interview w/ Scott McKeating (Foxy Digitalis)
Thanks to Scott McKeating for the great questions.
There's a link to the interview here.
-----------------------------
Locrian
by Scott McKeating
Chicago’s Locrian have just dropped their first vinyl LP, “Territories”, and it’s a split release across 4 excellent labels – any of which alone would be a strong enough indicator of the records quality. With guest appearances from Andrew Scherer (Velnias), Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded), Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), and Blake Judd (Nachtmystium), this moves away from their drone source and into a more black metallicised and noisier ‘territory’.
Can you sum up Locrian with a current genre tag for the real lazy bastards out there?
Terence: I call it obsidian-gaze.
You’ve got links to Bloodyminded, but where they come across as in extremis you guys seem a little more mysterious?
André: We’ve been friends with Mark Solotroff for just about as long as we’ve been playing together. I guess we initially played with Bloodyminded and then we played on some of Mark's shows. He’s been really supportive of us and we’re really big fans of the stuff that he does now and the stuff he did before we were friends with him.
Terence: That is good that it is mysterious, even if slightly. Good.
What’s your relationship with black metal as ...as a style?
André: I generally like black metal as a style a lot of the time (when it's done well), but I can’t think of anyone that we’re directly influenced by. I grew up in northern NY state, on the boarder with Quebec and a lot of the music that influenced me in my development was hardcore music that bore a lot of similarities to black metal, though I’m not sure that the music that I listened to at the time evolved in response to black metal. I tend to think that this music developed in parallel evolution to the black metal that was coming out of Europe at the time rather than from any direct black metal influence.
Generally though, I don’t listen to much black metal. As with any style, there are people that do it well and people who don't. I like groups that are doing really creative stuff with the genre, like Menace Ruine, but at the same time there are some groups that are doing things musically that I'm interested in, but that I can't listen to because I can't really get into the message behind it.
Terence: I do, I would definitely say that first Abruptum was a pretty big epiphany for me, or how intense Emperor's In the Nightside Eclipse is with the keyboards.
...as collectors?
André: I really don't own much black metal. I try to keep my belongings to a minimum so I really try to keep my music collection to a minimum.
Terence: I have really enjoyed the new Ruins of Beverast, Skagos and other things.
André: If you mean black metal releases as objects, then I think that it's interesting what some black metal bands are doing lately in order to remain 'kvlt' and different from more wider known black metal bands. In a lot of black metal, there's this emphasis on individuality, anonymity, and not-being-like-everyone-else. I'm interesting in how these ideas come across in different black metal releases. There are a few current black metal bands that I'm familiar with that only release music on tapes. The reason behind this, I think, is to reinforce this idea of the inaccessibility of their music.
...as an ideology?
Terence: We're not satanists, or even trying to push any of those cliched buttons. I would say sonically we're very negative and we seek to generate a lot of that blackened aura around what we do. There are a lot of black metal bands who do that well, but there are also a lot of 'kosmiche' bands who can do that as well.
André: These are big questions and ones that I could write extensively about. I like a lot of themes that pop up in some black metal. I don't know if there's any one ideology. You have all of these flows between different scenes, perhaps you could call these ideoscapes. Some of the ideoscapes I'm interested in: an emphasis/worship of nature; prophecies of the future; and the bleak outlook of the world that's typical of a lot of black metal.
I'm not really interested in black metal bands that utilize satanic themes since it seems pointless to me to write another song about satanism, paganism, or religion. I just find those topics to be really overemphasized in metal in general although I'm sure that these themes are important to some people, not me though. On the other hand, I'm not interested in artists who incorporate ideas about race or nationalism into their music. For instance, I liked Akitsa musically until I read an interview with them and found out about their Quebecois nationalist stance. It would be a longer conversation if we wanted to analyze why nationalism and race pop up so much in black metal, and the noise scene.
I'm also really bored with the fetishization of Norwegian black metal, specifically the hate crimes that were related to this scene in the 1980s. I think that all of the scholars, journalists, and fans have really exoticized the black metal culture in that area which has added to misunderstading of the issues fueling the violence of that era.
Terence: I think having been involved in such politically polemic scenes with hardcore I just because so skeptical of bands whose definition is around some certain ideology, it all reminds me of either a youth group or horrible young republicans gathering, where like you're supposed to forgive the unoriginality and horrid logic because of a supposed shared ideal.
André: Black metal to me is also interesting as an identity. It was great playing with Horna recently because we got to share a dressing room with them. Not that we usually get a dressing room, but they were these pretty normal metal dudes until about an hour before they played and they asked us to leave the dressing room. The venue put all the free beer for the bands in the dressing room and all the bands got sick of waiting for the beer so I politely asked them if I could come in the dressing room on the premise that I closed my eyes. So I ran in there and grabbed a bunch of beer, but the entire time I had my hands over my eyes with my fingers split so that I could see what was going on which was interesting: all these kind of macho dudes putting on each other's corpse pant. Apparently, they got really mad at some of the other band members who were supposed to be able to use the dressing room and it essentially came down to the fact that there's this liminal stage between when someone in a black metal band is a normal dude and when they are their alter-ego (not that all black metal bands have this alter-ego). It was really embarrassing for these dudes to show themselves to anyone in their liminal stage because of its inherent ambiguities: each person isn't really in their normal state, but they're not in their full corpse paint state either.
The promoters gave us food for that show too, so it was interesting to watch these dudes in corpse paint eating Doritos afterward.One of our friends got some cool secret pictures of those dudes doing that.
Also, it's interesting how far some of these black metal bands go in order to repulse people. Back to the Horna show we played, Horna and another band utilized rotting pig heads as part of their performance. These guys weren't getting a new pig head every night of the tour, they just put the rotting head in a garbage bag and left with it afterwards. I can't imagine having to ride in a van for two weeks with the same rotting pig head. I mean, some of these guys really make this idea of repulsion a part of their identity and they have to suffer for it.Of course, I'm just using Horna as an example, since there are other bands out there that are very similar.
Do you work on a release with a particular idea/concept in mind? Do the titles reflect what you were working towards or what you give birth to?
André: I think it’s different at different times.
In general though, we work really intuitively so it's usually a surprise what will come out.
Did Territories come together by accident in increments or was it something you were looking to work on as a project?
André: After we recorded Drenched Lands in July 2007, we started collaborating with Andrew Scherer quite frequently in our live performances—probably from September 2008 until early 2009. Unlike many noise musicians, we really haven’t collaborated with anyone else until we started working with Andrew from Velnias on drums. When we recorded “Territories” we had been performing with Andrew for a few months. We knew we wanted to record something with him and we had some other people that we wanted to collaborate with. We essentially had about two song ideas before we recorded that album.
We’d been fans of Mark’s work in his multiple projects and we knew we wanted to bring him into the studio for a collaboration. We essentially just recorded as much as we could for about two days and at the end we were able to convince our friend Bruce Lamont to come in to do some saxophone stuff and Blake came in at the end to record some guitar parts. For a while we weren’t sure that we were going to release it because it was really hell to record. We recorded it in January 2009 and we left with some rough mixes, but the mixes sounded so fucked up that we just wanted to scrap the sessions. It was probably in April or May that we finally got around to mixing this album and we ended up being pretty happy with it at the end.
Most of the stuff on the album is entirely improvised. When we recorded it we figured that we would just pick through later and put together like puzzle pieces.
Terence: In the end it really came together and had a certain flow from the harsh beginnings through ambient passages toward the more metal sections. It felt a lot like King Crimson's Islands to us so we wanted to pay homage to their massive influence over us through the title and some of the artwork, ours being more earth bound and decay laden of course.
-- Scott McKeating (7 April, 2010)
There's a link to the interview here.
-----------------------------
Locrian
by Scott McKeating
Chicago’s Locrian have just dropped their first vinyl LP, “Territories”, and it’s a split release across 4 excellent labels – any of which alone would be a strong enough indicator of the records quality. With guest appearances from Andrew Scherer (Velnias), Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded), Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), and Blake Judd (Nachtmystium), this moves away from their drone source and into a more black metallicised and noisier ‘territory’.
Can you sum up Locrian with a current genre tag for the real lazy bastards out there?
Terence: I call it obsidian-gaze.
You’ve got links to Bloodyminded, but where they come across as in extremis you guys seem a little more mysterious?
André: We’ve been friends with Mark Solotroff for just about as long as we’ve been playing together. I guess we initially played with Bloodyminded and then we played on some of Mark's shows. He’s been really supportive of us and we’re really big fans of the stuff that he does now and the stuff he did before we were friends with him.
Terence: That is good that it is mysterious, even if slightly. Good.
What’s your relationship with black metal as ...as a style?
André: I generally like black metal as a style a lot of the time (when it's done well), but I can’t think of anyone that we’re directly influenced by. I grew up in northern NY state, on the boarder with Quebec and a lot of the music that influenced me in my development was hardcore music that bore a lot of similarities to black metal, though I’m not sure that the music that I listened to at the time evolved in response to black metal. I tend to think that this music developed in parallel evolution to the black metal that was coming out of Europe at the time rather than from any direct black metal influence.
Generally though, I don’t listen to much black metal. As with any style, there are people that do it well and people who don't. I like groups that are doing really creative stuff with the genre, like Menace Ruine, but at the same time there are some groups that are doing things musically that I'm interested in, but that I can't listen to because I can't really get into the message behind it.
Terence: I do, I would definitely say that first Abruptum was a pretty big epiphany for me, or how intense Emperor's In the Nightside Eclipse is with the keyboards.
...as collectors?
André: I really don't own much black metal. I try to keep my belongings to a minimum so I really try to keep my music collection to a minimum.
Terence: I have really enjoyed the new Ruins of Beverast, Skagos and other things.
André: If you mean black metal releases as objects, then I think that it's interesting what some black metal bands are doing lately in order to remain 'kvlt' and different from more wider known black metal bands. In a lot of black metal, there's this emphasis on individuality, anonymity, and not-being-like-everyone-else. I'm interesting in how these ideas come across in different black metal releases. There are a few current black metal bands that I'm familiar with that only release music on tapes. The reason behind this, I think, is to reinforce this idea of the inaccessibility of their music.
...as an ideology?
Terence: We're not satanists, or even trying to push any of those cliched buttons. I would say sonically we're very negative and we seek to generate a lot of that blackened aura around what we do. There are a lot of black metal bands who do that well, but there are also a lot of 'kosmiche' bands who can do that as well.
André: These are big questions and ones that I could write extensively about. I like a lot of themes that pop up in some black metal. I don't know if there's any one ideology. You have all of these flows between different scenes, perhaps you could call these ideoscapes. Some of the ideoscapes I'm interested in: an emphasis/worship of nature; prophecies of the future; and the bleak outlook of the world that's typical of a lot of black metal.
I'm not really interested in black metal bands that utilize satanic themes since it seems pointless to me to write another song about satanism, paganism, or religion. I just find those topics to be really overemphasized in metal in general although I'm sure that these themes are important to some people, not me though. On the other hand, I'm not interested in artists who incorporate ideas about race or nationalism into their music. For instance, I liked Akitsa musically until I read an interview with them and found out about their Quebecois nationalist stance. It would be a longer conversation if we wanted to analyze why nationalism and race pop up so much in black metal, and the noise scene.
I'm also really bored with the fetishization of Norwegian black metal, specifically the hate crimes that were related to this scene in the 1980s. I think that all of the scholars, journalists, and fans have really exoticized the black metal culture in that area which has added to misunderstading of the issues fueling the violence of that era.
Terence: I think having been involved in such politically polemic scenes with hardcore I just because so skeptical of bands whose definition is around some certain ideology, it all reminds me of either a youth group or horrible young republicans gathering, where like you're supposed to forgive the unoriginality and horrid logic because of a supposed shared ideal.
André: Black metal to me is also interesting as an identity. It was great playing with Horna recently because we got to share a dressing room with them. Not that we usually get a dressing room, but they were these pretty normal metal dudes until about an hour before they played and they asked us to leave the dressing room. The venue put all the free beer for the bands in the dressing room and all the bands got sick of waiting for the beer so I politely asked them if I could come in the dressing room on the premise that I closed my eyes. So I ran in there and grabbed a bunch of beer, but the entire time I had my hands over my eyes with my fingers split so that I could see what was going on which was interesting: all these kind of macho dudes putting on each other's corpse pant. Apparently, they got really mad at some of the other band members who were supposed to be able to use the dressing room and it essentially came down to the fact that there's this liminal stage between when someone in a black metal band is a normal dude and when they are their alter-ego (not that all black metal bands have this alter-ego). It was really embarrassing for these dudes to show themselves to anyone in their liminal stage because of its inherent ambiguities: each person isn't really in their normal state, but they're not in their full corpse paint state either.
The promoters gave us food for that show too, so it was interesting to watch these dudes in corpse paint eating Doritos afterward.One of our friends got some cool secret pictures of those dudes doing that.
Also, it's interesting how far some of these black metal bands go in order to repulse people. Back to the Horna show we played, Horna and another band utilized rotting pig heads as part of their performance. These guys weren't getting a new pig head every night of the tour, they just put the rotting head in a garbage bag and left with it afterwards. I can't imagine having to ride in a van for two weeks with the same rotting pig head. I mean, some of these guys really make this idea of repulsion a part of their identity and they have to suffer for it.Of course, I'm just using Horna as an example, since there are other bands out there that are very similar.
Do you work on a release with a particular idea/concept in mind? Do the titles reflect what you were working towards or what you give birth to?
André: I think it’s different at different times.
In general though, we work really intuitively so it's usually a surprise what will come out.
Did Territories come together by accident in increments or was it something you were looking to work on as a project?
André: After we recorded Drenched Lands in July 2007, we started collaborating with Andrew Scherer quite frequently in our live performances—probably from September 2008 until early 2009. Unlike many noise musicians, we really haven’t collaborated with anyone else until we started working with Andrew from Velnias on drums. When we recorded “Territories” we had been performing with Andrew for a few months. We knew we wanted to record something with him and we had some other people that we wanted to collaborate with. We essentially had about two song ideas before we recorded that album.
We’d been fans of Mark’s work in his multiple projects and we knew we wanted to bring him into the studio for a collaboration. We essentially just recorded as much as we could for about two days and at the end we were able to convince our friend Bruce Lamont to come in to do some saxophone stuff and Blake came in at the end to record some guitar parts. For a while we weren’t sure that we were going to release it because it was really hell to record. We recorded it in January 2009 and we left with some rough mixes, but the mixes sounded so fucked up that we just wanted to scrap the sessions. It was probably in April or May that we finally got around to mixing this album and we ended up being pretty happy with it at the end.
Most of the stuff on the album is entirely improvised. When we recorded it we figured that we would just pick through later and put together like puzzle pieces.
Terence: In the end it really came together and had a certain flow from the harsh beginnings through ambient passages toward the more metal sections. It felt a lot like King Crimson's Islands to us so we wanted to pay homage to their massive influence over us through the title and some of the artwork, ours being more earth bound and decay laden of course.
-- Scott McKeating (7 April, 2010)
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Land of Decay 009 Out Now: Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words: "No Words"
Artist: Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words
Title: "No Words"
Format: Cassette
Catalog Number: LOD 009
Edition Size: 100 Copies
Land of Decay is pleased to announced the our newest release, “No Words” from Sweden’s Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words. Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words is the project of the Swedish musician, as well as designer, Thomas Ekelund. His “Lost In Reflections” album was one of our favorites from 2008/2009 and this music follows that album’s trajectory: minimal, haunting, and minor. “No Words” is both ethereal and unsettling.
The artist recorded the music for this release in summer 2009 at Keiller’s Park, Göteborg, Sweden. When Skies are Grey originally released this material in two editions: the first and edition of 23; the second an edition of 46. We were lucky enough to get copies of the original release and we are honored to be releasing this edition.
The Land of Decay version contains artwork and design from Terence Hannum, as well as bonus material that was not included in previous editions of the release.
Track Listing:
A1: No Words
A2: No Words
B1: Forgive Forget Regret [Not available on original release]
Ordering Information:
Price: $7 USA/$10 Rest of World @ postage paid
Please send payment to: landofdecay@gmail.com
Bloodlust! Sold Out of Locrian "Territories"
Note from Bloodlust! today stating that the label is sold out of "Territories."
Link here.
If you're in the U.S. then Land of Decay and Small Doses have copies left (though not many.) There's ordering information below.
Re-post from Bloodlust! Website
--------------
BloodLust! Sold Out of Locrian "Territories"
Please note that BloodLust! is sold out of the new Locrian "Territories" LP. Please check with the band or with the co-releasing labels for remaining stock. Thank you for the strong support on this release!
-------------------------------
If you are in the U.S., then you can still order copies of the album from Small Doses here or from Land of Decay, by sending $18 ppd to: landofdecay@gmail.com.
If you are in Europe then you can get copies from Basses Frequences here or At War With False Noise here.
Link here.
If you're in the U.S. then Land of Decay and Small Doses have copies left (though not many.) There's ordering information below.
Re-post from Bloodlust! Website
--------------
BloodLust! Sold Out of Locrian "Territories"
Please note that BloodLust! is sold out of the new Locrian "Territories" LP. Please check with the band or with the co-releasing labels for remaining stock. Thank you for the strong support on this release!
-------------------------------
If you are in the U.S., then you can still order copies of the album from Small Doses here or from Land of Decay, by sending $18 ppd to: landofdecay@gmail.com.
If you are in Europe then you can get copies from Basses Frequences here or At War With False Noise here.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Locrian "Drenched Lands" Review from Meridian 9 Zine
Link here.
There's also an interview w/ Locrian inside as well as a track from "Drenched Lands" on the zine sampler.
----------------
There's also an interview w/ Locrian inside as well as a track from "Drenched Lands" on the zine sampler.
----------------
Locrian on "Soothing Soul Suckers" Radio
Link here.
Locrian "The Columnless Arcade" on Soothing Soul Suckers radio, right where the track belongs: between Mastodon and Motley Crue.
---------------------------------------------
Playlist below
Neil Young & Crazy Horse/Ragged Glory/Over And Over
Bob Dylan/Live 1975/Isis
Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention/One Size Fits All/Po-Jama People
Van Halen/5150/”5150″
Built To Spill/Carry The Zero/Forget Remember When
Ruinzhatova/Close To The RH/Close To The Edge
Magma/Wurdah Itah/C’est la vie quin les a menes la
Ya Ho Wa 13/V/A The Source: The Untold Story Of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 And The Source Family/Live At Beverly Hills 1973
Boris/Pink/Farewell
Cop Shoot Cop/Ask Questions Later/Surprise, Surprise
Mercyful Fate/Don’t Break The Oath/A Dangerous Meeting
Iron Maiden/Live After Death/Revelations
Manowar/Kings Of Metal/Hail And Kill
Motley Crue/Too Fast For Love/Starry Eyes
Locrian/Territories/The Columnless Arcade
Mastodon/Remission/Emerald
High On Fire/Snakes Of The Divine/Bastard Samurai
Dio/The Last In Line/I Speed At Night
Enslaved/Frost/Yggdrasil
Locrian "The Columnless Arcade" on Soothing Soul Suckers radio, right where the track belongs: between Mastodon and Motley Crue.
---------------------------------------------
Playlist below
Neil Young & Crazy Horse/Ragged Glory/Over And Over
Bob Dylan/Live 1975/Isis
Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention/One Size Fits All/Po-Jama People
Van Halen/5150/”5150″
Built To Spill/Carry The Zero/Forget Remember When
Ruinzhatova/Close To The RH/Close To The Edge
Magma/Wurdah Itah/C’est la vie quin les a menes la
Ya Ho Wa 13/V/A The Source: The Untold Story Of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 And The Source Family/Live At Beverly Hills 1973
Boris/Pink/Farewell
Cop Shoot Cop/Ask Questions Later/Surprise, Surprise
Mercyful Fate/Don’t Break The Oath/A Dangerous Meeting
Iron Maiden/Live After Death/Revelations
Manowar/Kings Of Metal/Hail And Kill
Motley Crue/Too Fast For Love/Starry Eyes
Locrian/Territories/The Columnless Arcade
Mastodon/Remission/Emerald
High On Fire/Snakes Of The Divine/Bastard Samurai
Dio/The Last In Line/I Speed At Night
Enslaved/Frost/Yggdrasil
Thursday, April 1, 2010
"Territories" Review from Yellow, Green, Red
Link here.
---------------
Locrian Territories LP (At War With False Noise / Basses Frequencies / BloodLust! / Small Doses)
If it takes four record labels to put out one album, so be it, so long as it’s as nicely produced as Locrian’s Territories. Continuing in the spirit of cooperation, this one features a number of guest players, including none other than BLOODYMINDED’s Mark Solotroff on vocals and synthesizer, the type of collaboration any Chicago-based freak would envy. Speaking of synths, Territories has a lot of them, practically dominating the landscape where metallic guitars once reigned. There are still some fierce black metal guitar riffs here, which make for a nice balance, but my money’s on the synth-drone mood pieces; there might be just a little too much china cymbal for my tastes on the thrashing metal tracks. Their metalwork here is better than I am recalling, it’s just that when a track is credited to Solotroff’s synth and vocals, a bass guitar and another synthesizer, how can anything top that?
--------------------------------------
---------------
Locrian Territories LP (At War With False Noise / Basses Frequencies / BloodLust! / Small Doses)
If it takes four record labels to put out one album, so be it, so long as it’s as nicely produced as Locrian’s Territories. Continuing in the spirit of cooperation, this one features a number of guest players, including none other than BLOODYMINDED’s Mark Solotroff on vocals and synthesizer, the type of collaboration any Chicago-based freak would envy. Speaking of synths, Territories has a lot of them, practically dominating the landscape where metallic guitars once reigned. There are still some fierce black metal guitar riffs here, which make for a nice balance, but my money’s on the synth-drone mood pieces; there might be just a little too much china cymbal for my tastes on the thrashing metal tracks. Their metalwork here is better than I am recalling, it’s just that when a track is credited to Solotroff’s synth and vocals, a bass guitar and another synthesizer, how can anything top that?
--------------------------------------
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