I’ve just about reached the halfway point of grad school.  All I have left is one final, or 10 hours worth of work, and then I can fly back home to Los Angeles.  What better time to start a blog.

Behind Your Face will be my forum for what goes on in my head.  Expect a bunch of writing (ideally) about the things that I think about.  If you already know me, it’ll be like a more fully formed version of our gchat conversations.  If you don’t know me, ummm, you’ll see what you’re in for soon enough.

The goal is to update this blog on a near daily basis.  We’ll see how that goes.  But for the time being let’s assume I’ll keep to my word.

P.S. I’m usually better at manifestos than this.

I’ve just about reached the halfway point of grad school.  All I have left is one final, or 10 hours worth of work, and then I can fly back home to Los Angeles.  What better time to start a blog.

Behind Your Face will be my forum for what goes on in my head.  Expect a bunch of writing (ideally) about the things that I think about.  If you already know me, it’ll be like a more fully formed version of our gchat conversations.  If you don’t know me, ummm, you’ll see what you’re in for soon enough.

The goal is to update this blog on a near daily basis.  We’ll see how that goes.  But for the time being let’s assume I’ll keep to my word.

P.S. I’m usually better at manifestos than this.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been following Zach Hill fanatically for about 7 years now, ever since that Locust show where Hella first turned me on to brutal prog.

What’s more, I can’t think of a single Hill-related release I dislike. Each one of them, from the discombobulated, amelodic chirping of Nervous Cop, Damsel and The Smokers to the more melodic intentions of The Ladies, Bygones and Chll Pll, is a necessary part of a progression.

The only question, really, is where this progression is leading. Is Hill simply trying to jam with every able-bodied improv guitarist and underground vocalist in America? 

I, personally, don’t think so. To me, Hill’s recorded works so far have seen a drummer trying desperately to meld melody with melee. Many of his experimentations so far have pitted an out-sound prodigy against performers with perhaps less talent but better Pop sense, all in the name of producing an album Normal People might actually like. 

And, with each new forage, Hill is coming closer and closer to achieving that once-unthinkable goal of perfecting a nine-armed percussion onslaught that can charm you with its melodic skill.

Volume 2, which once again sees Hill and Mick Barr — Octis, Orthrelm, etc. — form a hellish tandem, is not one of these melodic projects. Far from attempting something new and original, 2 makes its aims simple from the get-go: To SHRED-SHRED-SHRED like a cook with huge head o’ lettuce and a shiny metal countertop. 

If you think Hill indulgent, then, Volume 2 is not for you; wait until his record with Wavves comes out. If you, conversely, gobble up everything the poly-limbed drummer does with aplomb, go ahead and stack this atop your mountain of vinyl.

What I really like about Volume 2 is its relentlessness and its surprising inventiveness in the face of such brutal consistency. 2 sounds a lot like Shred Earthship, but there’s a death-metal sequence near the beginning that breaks things up a bit, not to mention jamming so ferocious it’ll latch onto your ear and rip it off like a junkyard Rott.

 Sure, I get lost in the litany of fret-taps and slides and runs and glides like everyone else, but it’s not about each individual fill or solo as much as it is about the lumbering monster they create. 

And you’d better be ready to swallow every inch of girth the duo have to offer; 2 fills up both sides of vinyl to the edge, leaving the listener with little options but to deep-throat the entire apparatus.

Prog Happenings will be a semi-regular summary of the various events that have punctuated the prog landscape recently, as well as some of my thoughts on each. Basically they’re the events that don’t justify an entire post, but are still worth talking about. So without further stalling:

Dream Theater Wins ‘Spirit of Prog’ Award at Classic Rock Awards (http://bit.ly/23iZRW)

This past Monday Classic Rock, a UK hard rock magazine, had their yearly Roll of Honor awards, and Dream Theater was presented with the ‘Spirit of Prog’ award. Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman presented the award to band leader and drummer Mike Portnoy and had some very high praise of the group during the presentation.

For all the crap I dish out on Mike Portnoy and Dream Theater on this blog, I’m glad they got this award. Without them prog would probably be a dead genre, and Portnoy in particular has done a lot to promote progressive music in the main stream. I personally wouldn’t have ever become enamored with the genre if it wasn’t for Dream Theater, so I think this award is absolutely deserved by the band. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop ripping them though.

Emerson, Lake, and Palmer Reform for Performance at High Voltage Festival in the UK(http://bit.ly/4hZq83)

ELP, one of the classic prog rock groups that your average music fan might at least recognize the name of if they were alive during the 70’s, will be reforming for one performance at the new High Voltage Festival being held next July in the UK.

Older prog fans are giddy with excitement over this. Personally I’m going to be interested in seeing how the band has aged. While they didn’t stop making music on their own, the group last performed together in the 1990s. I’m predicting that they won’t be lighting any more cannons on stage, MAYBE one if they’re feeling spry. Seriously, Greg Lake is one of my personal prog bass heroes, so I’m praying there will be a recording of this at some point.

Mars Volta Fire Drummer Thomas Pridgen. Maybe. Kind of. Anyone know if this actually happened?

Rumors are flying all over the web right now about the current status of the Mars Volta and their drummer Thomas Pridgen. A recent show was canceled with fans at the venue being told by security that the band had fired their drummer during sound check. The band and Prigden have been totally silent about the rumors thus far, which only adds to the speculation. Fans are fairly split right now on 1) whether or not this is true, 2) whether or not losing Pridgen would be a good or bad thing, and 3) who should take his place (Zach Hill and former drummer Jon Theodore seem to be the most popular choices).

I personally love Pridgen, so I hope these rumors are just that, rumors. That being said, the Mars Volta’s line-up has always been growing and shrinking on the whims of Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, so I’m preparing myself mentally for this rumor to be true. I’d love to see Theodore back with the group, as he’s a drummer with great energy, great chops, and a unique style behind the kit. However I’m guessing the door between Theodore and the band has been nailed, screwed, and welded shut, so I don’t expect that reunion to happen any time soon. Keeping my eye on this one…

Between the Buried and Me/Cynic/The Devin Townsend Project/Scale the Summit Announce US Tour (http://bit.ly/8IDu0)

Almost as if to prove that progressive rock is starting to flourish in the US again, fans will be able to feast on this prog smorgasbord starting in January of 2010.  BTBAM have seen an absolutely huge growth in their popularity since appearing as a supporting act on last year’s Progressive Nation tour, large enough that they are headlining this tour that contains two other prog heavyweights, Cynic and Devin Townsend.

Cynic is a band no one in the world knows outside of prog historians, as they recorded one integral album in the history of prog before disbanding. Their reunion was something prog fans have been asking for for over a decade, so the fact that they’re serving as a supporting act here is kind of surprising. Devin Townsend is one of progressive rock’s mad scientists (in fact, I think we ONLY have mad scientists). Some consider him to be a more metal, more more balding, more Canadian Frank Zappa. He’s one of the darlings of the prog online community, and living proof of how the internet has impacted the genre. Scale the Summit is another beneficiary of the Progressive Nation tour, having been the opening act on this past year’s US leg. They’re very young but many people see this as being a good thing, and predict many quality albums in their future as the band continues to mature.

A comical, probably unintentional coincidence on this tour is that it features bands with growling vocals (BTBAM), computerized vocals (Cynic), weird-ass vocals (Devin Townsend), and no vocals (Scale the Summit). If you’re the kind of person who’s bothered when the douche bag next to you at a concert is singing louder than the band, you won’t have any problems on this tour.

Umphrey’s Mcgee S2 Shows Walk The Line Between Progressive and Hippie Bullshit (http://bit.ly/2zNYtv)

Progressive jam band Umphrey’s Mcgee has come up with a very…creative concept for some of their shows. Their “Stew Art Series” lets fans suggest themes that the band then uses as inspiration for a totally improvised concert. Fans can use cue cards, text messaging, and other media to suggest themes before and even during the show, and it’s up to the band to them turn these concepts into music.

While I think this is certainly a ‘progressive’ effort, I’m unsure of whether or not this will actually translate into quality music. UM is absolutely the band to undertake this effort, as I think they’re among the best improv jamers on the planet, but this just seems like an exercise in hippie silliness to me. To be fair I’ve only heard the samples from the first show that the band has provided on their blog, so I don’t know what the overall product has sounded like so far. The list of themes I’ve seen fans come up with have also been fairly entertaining, like ‘mudslide on mars’ and ‘Chaka Khan at an Iron Maiden show’.

Cracked Tells You How to Be a Prog Rocker (http://bit.ly/2FYtec)

While I wanted to cover most of this in the second half of my post on Stereotypes in Prog rock, cracked.com has done a great job in poking fun at the genre I love. Check it out if you want a good laugh. Now I just need to figure out how I can write the second half of that post without looking like I blatantly plagiarized from this…

Thank you!

A ton of people have started reading this blog in the past few days, so I just wanted to say thank you to anyone who stops by. Hopefully you like what you see and will keep coming back to read my bullshit.

was it really just a year ago that nathan williams was a virtual unknown? are we, as an independant nation so fixated on being cutting edge, yet retain those retro-roots that we insist on hyping something so inexplicably unexplainable: the cut-budget, dinky production and the manic breakdowns of a slacker 22 year old?

fuck yeah man, zach hill is his motherfuckin’ drummer.

hear two new songs performed oat the daytrotter studios below.

wavves on myspace

download:

- sunbear

Hooray! Sargent House has announced via Twitter that Nick Reinhart and Zach Hill will be releasing an EP soon under their crazy/punk outfit Bygones.


The EP will be titled Spiritual Bankruptcy and will be only available on vinyl or CD.

No word on a release date yet. More news as it arrives.

This track comes from their fucking amazing debut full-length by- which was released just two months ago. It’s called “Nu Cringe”. It’s my favorite track off of the album. I literally dance to this song on my more limber mornings.

Bandcamp Profile
MySpace
Purchase by-

Bored riff

There’s a turf war in indie rock. Wavves vs. Black Lips. The scantly attended Wavves show at Emo’s last Saturday suggests Austin is a Black Lips town. All apologies.

Photos: Street Scene Day 1

The only word to describe this set was reverb. A little too much of it, perhaps. I couldn’t even make out what was being said in between songs.

I’ve found the Wavves stuff to be quite a grower. And I think now with the addition of  drummer, Zach Hill its going to keep growing in to my ears. He drums in Hella (myspace here), Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s El Grupo Nuevo, and recent collaboration with Prefuse 73, Diamond Watch Wrists.

Here’s a new track from Nathan Williams and Zach Hill as Wavves.

And a Video here…

Wavves plus Zach Hill, motherfuckers…

following the now infamous “barcelona breakdown” of wavves singer/guitarist nathan williams, he has bounced back quite resiliently, inducting hella’s zach hill into his noise-pop project and churning out some jam-worthy tunes. the latest, dubbed ‘hula hoop’ is a punk-rock frenzy that finds williams spouting blitzkrieg adeges of “going insane and i can’t take it!”. hill’s a treat to watch too, isn’t he?

wavves on myspace

- sunbear

WAVVES was Nathan Williams of California.

WAVVES is now Nathan Williams & Zach Hill of California.

This is a new song. It’s called Cool Jumper.

It’s really fucking rad.

Download, listen, & enjoy.

WAVVES – Cool Jumper

MySpace

i always thought wavves was pretty cool, until now. beach-rock extraordinaire has apparently decided to increase the value of the wavves stock by throwing drumming champion of the planet zach hill into the mix as a permanent member. now i think they’re really cool. wait till about 4:45 and then let zach hill take care of the rest.

can’t wait to hear the next album.

download:

wavves – cool jumper

-grizzly

Can we please let Bygones be … Bygones?

[Quick note: Post number 51 already!!! Time flies, holmes.]

Leaving for the Roskilde festival in a few hours. Getting psyched here. Been blasting some Marnie Stern while packing tonight since she’s playing this weekend. For all of you that are going, this is a must. Both me and David love this (and I mean, the drumming as well. What can you say, Zach Hill is a big favourite too). Gaaaaah. Good to see her live again!

For the rest of you, at least check out This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It And She Is It (2008). You won’t be sorry!

/ Mikael Nordlander.

Bueeeno, con esto de estar en Londres todo agosto tengo esto más abandonado que de costumbre, así que voy a tratar de hacer una entrada sobre un disco que la verdad, me ha gustado bastante y que me he hartado de recomendar.

Aparte de tener un título cojonudo, la portada mola mil y te hace imaginarte un poco por dónde va el estilo del disco.

El álbum, que se nos presenta como un “grupo nuevo” no es más que otro de los alter-egos del amigo Omar, y como cabría esperar, guarda algunas similitudes con sus otros dos proyectos más importantes: El toque personal se nota y, pese a no llegar al casi jazz de algunos de sus discos en solitario muestra similitudes con ellos; por otra parte, la influencia de las compañías que frecuenta en este disco se nota, y las composiciones van encaminadas por donde todos los fans de The Mars Volta esperamos, aunque tampoco llega a las cotas de psicodelia y locura máximas que encontramos en la “banda madre”, pero se mantiene en un agradable punto medio que te hace poder escuchar este disco y disfrutarlo plenamente sin la necesidad de pensar en si mejoraría bajo el efecto de sustancias psicotrópicas y/o alteradoras de la conciencia.

Sin embargo, este álbum es un excelente remedio para los que hayan pensado que “Octahedron” les ha quedado a medio hacer a Cedric, Omar y compañía, grupo dentro del cual no me incluyo porque soy un fan mojabragas admiro mucho el trabajo de esa gente.

Entrañables frikazos, a cada cual peor.

Lo que me primero me ha llamado la atención en este disco y me ha hecho ponerlo de primero en mi lista de discos pendientes por escuchar es que este disco surgió como una colaboración del Sr. Rodríguez-López con Zach Hill en la percusión, que ya se ha incorporado oficialmente a la lista de amigos de Omar, porque ya tienen otros dos discos preparados bajo el nombre de El Grupo Nuevo.

No le hacen falta tantas baquetas al hombre, con un par ya las lía gordísimas.

Para los que se estén preguntando quién es el tal Zach, decir que es conocido por ser el batería de Hella, Team Sleep (el proyecto paralero de Chino Moreno de Deftones) o Goon Moon, además de haber lanzado un disco en solitario altamente recomendado.

En cuanto a la producción, ha sido realizada por el propio Omar y, cómo cabía esperar, ha sido lanzado por su propio sello, aunque yo le encuentro un problema: Hill se mete en el papel y puede parecer que resalte demasiado, como el amigo Thomas Pridgen en los últimos discos de The Mars Volta, sin embargo el estilo y la técnica que tiene lo hacen merecer una escucha centrándonos sólo en la percusión.

Y de regalito, para quien quiera escuchar algo, las promos del álbum:

Of all the correspondence I pretend to receive for the sake of introductory sentences, the most commonly expressed concern is my lack of new-music coverage. “Ho-ho, whassamatta?” no one snarkily expectorates. “Too old to tongue-kiss anything waxed, loosed, or laser’d after Moby’s Play?” Let me assure that nonexistent detractor I feel his imaginary pain. So today I’ll rave about an album that won’t be out until August 4, courtesy of the artisans at Sargent House. How’s that for new?

Bygones are a pair of sinewy gents who rock with their caulk guns ready to seal rhythms tighter than the hip pocket of an emo tween. You might recognize Zach Hill from Hella. At least I do. I love those guys, two ne’er-do-wells thrashing a racket like an ear-scrub with industrial-strength algebra. I’m not as familiar with Bygones bandmate Nick Reinhart, an alleged triple-threat in his own malice unit, Tera Melos, but that will be rectified soon. As an English freak, the “math rock” moniker turns my nutsac a putrid crimson, but if the numbers game was this bracing I’d have let mathematicians wire abacuses with my viscerae years ago.

I’ve heard their super-duo debut, by-, and love it to pieces (literally; I used the shrapnel to carve a heart o’er my soul). But I must sit tight on my crush until closer to release day. No, no — the burden is mine.

This I will divulge: It’s hard to describe the music they make, ’cause there’s so damn much of it. Most bands are perfectly happy playing one song at a time, satisfied with upstanding structures of tried-and-true verse/chorus/verse, catchy hooks, and see-ya fadeout. Bygones, on the other hand, back a truck up to the studio and dump everything through the roof. Why play one number straight when you can thread another 92 through it and draw blood?

Nick’s guitar precision at such astonishing velocities is incredible and intense. He wrenches jagged thorns of noise from his grumpy beast and slams them into each other with angry-mob aggression while Zach on drums drinks and drives with nary a thought for his own safety. I worry for Nick’s own well-being on “Nu Cringe” when he shovels through his six-string into his ribcage then back out his spinal column like he’s taking an alternate route to his wallet.

It isn’t all frantic, of course. There are tiny delights. For instance, the squooshy synth squeezes that open “Fool Evolved” with the same trenchcoat-degenerate glee that majestically telegraphed those sequences in Crown-International sexploitation flickers where the cheerleader conquers the gas man.

All told, by- illustrates what the band’s all about: wresting sublimity from chaos, like in its cover shot of the Dirty Projectors’ Amber Coffman commencing scarf on a drippy Sloppy Joe. There’s a precision in this filling mess that’s good to the goopy last drop.

Bygones
by-
(Sargent House)

Track listing
01 Cold Reading
02 Click on That (Smash the Plastic Death)
03 Not What It Is But What It’s Not
04 Nu Cringe
05 Fool Evolved
06 Spray You With Your Own Trip
07 Expelled
08 Up the Shakes
09 Ex-People
10 Error

Release date: August 4
Pre-sale: July 1

Check out “Nu Cringe” and “Fool Evolved” at the Bygones’ official Myspace page here.

As the world turned its eyes to millions of gushing Grizzly Bear reviews on May 26, a shit-hot record dropped with little fanfare (HERE is the only review I could find, and while I like the writing I don’t feel they quite Got It).