Tuesday, October 22, 2013

DISLICH on CVLT NATION

Het Dummy,

Dislich was being put on CVLT NATION becuz why not? They are smart for and are doing a The Misfits cover album. Album: Earth A.D.

We are Doing "Hell Hound" from that et al.


We are also doing another song for that, idiot. That one you can't know for yet. It the bon(er)us. Don't be stupid. You hear it.

Cvlt Nation also write one thing about us: http://www.cvltnation.com/dislich-stone-guardian-review/ and we are to think thatis the coolest. Thanks friend ones!

You will check this out. I will repost for you later. its Gonna have that link you know. This is one update.

Dislich is fast and approaching a mess, maybe a van, we hit a dear in Pullman. The radiator broke. We have some new songs, and our "set 2" is almost done and stuff. This means a new album. Our albums are our sets. The new album will have...: more d-beat. You don't like d-beating? Fuck you. We like it more. Don't push me.

My future is in an oblong box.

SCUZ anagram?: SUCZ thus, SCUZ SUCZ.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Smuts Cassettes


I somehow ended up with a dozen Smuts Demo cassettes. I thought they were all gone. If you want one I'll just charge you shipping. Or if you're around Seattle I'll give you one:

ctrlforce@gmail.com

Saturday, August 17, 2013

FIRE!!!!!!!!

Fuuuuuuuuck...

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Ian Patrick Corrigan


Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Favorite Albums 2013

It's almost X-mas in July, which is my official halfway through the year marker, so here's the list of my favorite new-to-me albums I've gotten into in the first half of 2013, in mostly reverse chronological order. I've also been purposefully re-listening to a lot of old favorites I haven't heard in years, but that could be its own list:

João Gilberto - João Gilberto (the 1973 one)
Bert Jansch - Bert Jansch
Teenage Fanclub - Songs From Northern Britain
Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque
Pete Swanson - Man With Potential
Junior Murvin - Police and Thieves
Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Split Enz - True Colours
Razor - Evil Invaders
Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind
Violent Future - Demo
Naomi Punk - The Feeling
Steve Roach - Structures From Silence

Sunday, July 14, 2013

New Vipe


Here's one of the new Vipe songs with bass, drums, and one track of guitar. I think it sounds pretty sick. Ryan and I recorded bass and drums for ten of the songs a couple months ago and now Ian and Ryan are adding guitar to those and recording guitar and drums for six more.


Sunday, June 2, 2013

Pseudo Youth Demo

(Click the pic for the link.)

Tim and I recorded this a few months back when I was living in Boise and he came down to visit. I finished mixing it this afternoon. It's just three fairly short songs.

We were trying to make pop rock songs that didn't sound like Tim Blood while still doing a lot of the things we like about pop rock that happened to be part of Tim Blood. I guess the most noticeable difference is the drum machine and keyboard. We always talked about having an organ player in Tim Blood but it never happened so this was kind of fun.

As a "real" release I wouldn't be happy with it, but as a demo I think it's nice. If anything else ever happens with this "band" it'll happen really slowly.

Friday, May 31, 2013

Panther Force Possessed By Metal

Recent Bandcamp search "buzz".

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Clyde Webb, Blah Blah, Vipe, Blah Blah

I can't sleep so here's an update. 

I'm moving again. Maybe some more music will come out of it. I've been breaking my rule about being prolific. 

I've been working occasionally on a post about 10 albums I think are "near perfect". I might never finish it but having the list is nice. More importantly:


I'm surprised no one has talked about this already. Clyde "went electric" and made an album with Ryan in Moscow a few months ago. I think Ryan took a bunch of pics he might post when he has time. It's definitely his best yet. I played a few of the songs with him in "Clyde Webb and the Seans" a year ago or so. It was a lot of fun but when we tried to record it turned out terrible. This album sounds way better than we ever did. Also a lot of the songs I heard every night on the summer tour we did together but they sound way better electric. I'm just rambling but really I'm just glad it was made so I can listen to it. To me it's easily the best thing he's ever done and that's exciting.

Feel free to not read any of the rest of this:

There's new Vipe stuff in the works. I have to mention it occasionally so I don't forget about it or something and also to get other people excited about it. Ian and I have written about 15 or so songs. Vipe was the easiest and surprisingly most satisfying musically overall of any band I've ever done. There was plenty of difficulty getting stuff to work but I always thought the music worked too easily well and came off sounding how we wanted. It always felt like we were pushing ourselves without any of the baggage that sometimes comes with that. Getting along and getting the recordings together was always a stressful hassle but whatever.

My songs are mostly from stuff that was initially written for other projects but came out sounding like Vipe songs more than anything. Actually I don't know how much they sound like Vipe as much as they were written in the Vipe frame of mind. Once I decided they were Vipe songs they changed a bit. I don't know, they were written all over the place and are kind of varied but to me they sound super cohesive. Who knows, varied and cohesive probably mean different things in my mind than they do to someone else's ears. I also have some ideas for more jammy parts which we never did as much as I think we might have wanted to. Either way, lot's of blast beats and 4/4 so, you know, rock and roll. 

Ian wrote six songs a year ago or so. I think he wrote a few more that turned into a couple Smuts songs and maybe something else. Either way the six songs sound to me like more extreme versions of his stuff from the Downsided split. But they're also weirder in a different way. I'll have to just see how they come together.

I don't know when it'll get started and it will probably be a year after that when it gets finished at the rate stuff's been going. It also might end up being two releases depending on how it goes recording. If it happens it will probably be a continuation of the first two recordings but maybe more removed. As in more dissimilar from the second recording than the second was from the first. Mostly because of the amount of time between them. It's like I (and I assume everyone else) has already had ideas for a hundred new recordings instead of the dozen or so between the first two. 

I feel like musically Vipe was always solid but the recordings always turned out weird and were recorded under kind of strange, stressful circumstances. Or maybe the circumstances were normal but the way we came at the music was different? I think the circumstances this time are going to be a lot stranger. With the bands I've been in, most of the time we each record our parts days or weeks apart from each other but have practiced together quite a bit before recording. The last Tim Blood wasn't that way cause we weren't all in the same town and I don't think this new Vipe will be either cause we're even more spread out. 

Despite everything I feel like if it happens it will be the best thing we've done. I have too many ideas and trust everyone too much for it to not come together well. If the genre concept for the first recording was "hardcore and skate punk" and the concept for the second one was "post punk, proto grind and skate punk" then the concept for this is maybe "thrash, screamo, jangly alternative, grind and skate punk... and hardcore".

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Just A Couple Updates

New stuff up on the Control Force Bandcamp page!!

http://controlforce.bandcamp.com/

Dishlich's demo and both Smuts releases. Just some aggressive rock music. Dislich played their first two shows with Smuts in Moscow and Spokane on Monday and Tuesday. They'll probably end up being Smuts last two shows. It was a fun time of reunions.

I'll let someone in Dislich write about their demo. It's Ryan from most Control Force bands, Sol from Cougar LS, Crue from Swellbows and Joe and Mellisa who have been living at the CTRLFORCE HQ for a couple years now. You probably know all these people if you're reading this. Sick grinding rock.

The Smuts Demo has been on a Smuts Bandcamp since January but I finally put it on the Control Force page. The newest Smuts EP was recorded for our mini tour which ended up only being in Olympia, Moscow and Spokane. It's five new songs that were originally gonna be part of an 18 song full length. I'm glad we decided to record the songs we'd learned as a tour ep cause it'll never happen now. There's one unfinished outtake from recording that's just missing vocals. It might get put up someday. Who knows what will happen to the rest of the songs that were written. Also the best thing about it is the Master of Disguise cover art by Cle.



There might be some old releases put on the Bandcamp page in the next couple days and some new recordings of old songs that never got finished are in the works.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Swelbows Recording Sessions!

Swelbows

Recently, I was asked by Moscow Skate-Thrash legends Swelbows (you know, like Swollen Elbows that you get when yr thrashin' and you eat shit elbow style) to help them record. They told me that they "just had no idea what they were doing." Usually I think of this as a great advantage, especially in the technical arts, because it forces you to be creative, but I am also of the belief that sometimes you just have to let someone who knows what they're doing help you out. So I agreed--out of my own humble narcissism--to record them. My only requirement was that they had to shred fucked up hard-thrash sick style...and they delivered (on day two, but who's counting).

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of the dumb-ass process, we'll first introduce this sick ass bands members:

First, we have Ben on Bass Guitar. I chose Ben first because he seems to be the tallest and the band's glue factor. Not that they don't get along, but Ben retains a constant positive attitude that is essential to any successful rock band. (And interestingly enough, I didn't get a very clear picture of him, but I think this is how he'll want to be remembered...)


Next we have Same. Sam is also the glue of the band. He is proficient at guitar, shows up on time, and seems to make things happen. Sam is a man of action.


After Sam in the chronology of this post, but before him in birth, and younger at heart, we the drummer Riley. Riley is the band's thrash robot. He can perform any action with a cool precision that makes you think he's not doing much, but then you hear his chops and you are surprised by the variety of in his beat lexicon. He also plays a sick 18" Paiste crash cymbal like me but cooler, his explicitly reads "RUDE" on it. Riley also does not like to get up early in the morning, but then again I am only able to make this observation based on the sheer fact that there must exist people who get up late in order for the identity of the "early riser" to even exist at all. The 2 identities are locked in a dialectical relationship, but I don't feel like aufhebungin' right now so yr gettin' some lazy Hegel. Riley's chill:


And last, but easily the hardest mother of em all, we have my fellow band mate Crue. Crue is the glue to this band, as is everyone else. But Crue is unique in his love of punk and his generally solid demeanor. Crue is always ready to get shit done and he doesn't bitch unless it gets shit done. I like Crue. Here he is shreddin' or whatever's cool:


Also present was the infamous DJ formerly known as Dreadlock Holmes but now Zoig (aka Mo). Mo was the wildcard, not in the band, but totally necessary. Mo is always necessary. You can't have acid house or dubstep without Mo.

(Don't let his innocent look deceive you, Mo fucks shit up on the turn tables!)

On to RECORDING

The recording process was, like every epic quest, rather arduous. We recorded at Moscow's famous punk house, called The Bayou House. The Bayou House is a pretty mysterious place. It's in between two businesses and next to some RV storage by a quasi-Swampy area (technically a wetland flood plane) hence the name "Bayou" (maybe).

This house had one outlet in the entire place that was grounded. We didn't think grounding would present a problem, but it turns out stable power is necessary to run a stable recording system. So the first day of recording, we had repeated issues with drop-outs and strange computer problems I've never experienced before, like the computer told me that one of my RAID hard drives kept "timing out." Maybe it was being bad, so the main hard drive punished it. Giving physical phenomena funny little stories is what scientists do. So technically I'm a computer scientist. So you should take my professional opinion seriously.

Anyway, to more properly situate the series of events. I'll keep my self-interested digressions to a minimum from here on out.

The first day Crue and I packed up all my shit and hauled it over to the Bayou. No pictures, it was totally boring.

Day two of recording and on to our theoretical methodology. The dudes told me that they "just wanted it to sound good." I interpreted this as follows: we decided to go with a "live" setup, i.e. the whole band plays together while I capture the magic. We, like always, used my Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 firewire audio interface. It can record 8 tracks at once, and we used a resolution of 48 khz. To spice things up a little though, we used DJ Not My iPod Future's sick ass tape recorder his living father gave him:


This thing is weird and cool. It has a condenser mic built in, which is perfect for room sound, and that's exactly what decided to use this thing for--room sound. We (I) wanted a room mic to capture the unity of the whole band at once, but I was out of inputs on my interface. I've also wanted to try mixing tape and digital for awhile, so what better excuse? Except, I decided we should use a better mic than the onboard condenser, so we set up my Audio-Technica AT4050 condenser at about head height and ran it into the tape machine's "line-in." Here's a pic of the mic on its stand:


You can see I tried to set it up in a spot that was a fair distance from everybody so as to capture the "simple oneness of the fourfold" to quote Heidegger. Speaking of Heidegger, that's him on the desktop of my work station (I suppose I wear my influences on my desktop):


That's where I sat getting very cold while maintaining technical order.

Gear

As for the gear, we used a bunch of shit. For guitars, I brought DJ Not My iPod Future's Peavey half stacks, my Mesa-Boogie cab, and some Sunn amps (specifically, FeMel Dolphin's silver-face Sunn Concert Lead, which has a broken reverb and distorion circuit so we just used it for power, and we used my "new" Sunn Coliseum Lead amp for bass guitar). Pics:



^For Crue we used Sam's Line 6 Spider amp into the Sunn Concert Lead then into DJ Not My iPod Future's Butcher Cab. Elaborate but necessary. And Crue shreds on some sick Dean flying V.


Bass is pretty straight forward when you have sick gear. The Sunn's settings were 5's across the board and into the Mesa. New strings on Ben's Ibanez Gio bass made all the difference.


Here is Sam's set up. His amp is some wicked Crate 30W 12" tube pre combo. Unfortunately, it didn't have a speaker out, so we couldn't hook up DJ Not My iPod Future's cab, but we left it there cuz it lifted the amp up making it easier for everyone and the room mic to here. Sam's guitar on the other hand is a real fucking gem, IBANEZ ICEMAN (RIP Pig Champion):


Mics

As for mics and their placement. On Sam's rig we did an SM57 straight up. No frills.


For Crue, we tried to give his odd rig its own character and so we used the weird EV RE50B broadcasting mic, which has about the same frequency range as a 57, but with a shock absorber. I saw President of the United States of America Barack Obama talk into one of these once, they must be good:


And on Ben's (my) bass rig we used an Audix D6 with a special edition aluminum casing:


As for the drums: Riley has some nice Tobacco burst Pearl kit:


Pretty sick kit really.


For the toms we used some really nice Audix ADX-90 condenser tom mics that I borrowed from my FeMel Partner, Cliff Plimpeton's brother Dylan. We also borrowed the aluminum D6 from him. Thanks Dylan!


Here is generally how we tried to place them--wide so we could get as much ambient sound from each cymbal as possible. The idea is that these will double as tom close mics and the cymbals mics. Funny thing though, every time you hit the drum they kind of revert to their natural position over the drum...whatever.


As for the kick, we used another D6 on the reso head, so its not pictured, but I think you can see it in Riley's pic above. Riley has no port hole on his reso head, so the D6 is like a 1/2" from the head. Riley's iron cobra double pedal is sick too.


On the snare we used my Shure Beta 87a. It's a handheld condenser and so it works really well on snare. I pad it up and use my suspension mount just in case it gets smacked.

Conclusion

So, here are some final pics and thoughts:


Here's a good pic of Ben just phattin' out that tone...


A quasi group shot to give you a sense of the space.


And Bass Kitty, which Ben insists is the secret to his tone.

Okay, so recording these guys was wild. The first time we tried recording, the computer fucked everything up. The second time went as smooth as could be hoped though. Everyone showed up and no song took more than 3 tries. They did a really good job.

Also, as a teaser, here is a rough edit of their track "Skate and Destroy". You can really get a sense of their style here, no frills. Except the triggered kick, but these guys wanted it to sound good, so I went with what was easy. And below that is a video glimpse into the studio atmosphere!




SICK!

New and Old Art Films

Everyone else seems to be posting. So I thought I would too.

Here are some Art Films made by CTRL FORCE through the years.

Repetitions 1:

This video is by Herb and Scuz.



Repetitions 2:

This Video is by Scuz and DJ Not My iPod Future.



Repetitions 3:

This video is by Scuz.



The theme of these art films is obviously repetition. This is because they will keep happening.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Recording Vids


Tim's legs record, hehe!


Smuts' natural space compression.


Mirce and Mike (HOD) record some Downsided toons*!



*hehehehe!


Friday, January 11, 2013

Fox Council Explanation


Finally got around to putting this thing up. This recording was written at two weird times. Here's an overlong explanation because I'm unemployed and sentimental, if you like that kind of thing:

 The music was written on a broken twelve string I found in the trash on a 15 minute break at work using a couple leftover Fox Council riffs to get started.  Ryan and I practiced a few hours later and I came up with two lines I repeated for every song. Then we played a show opening for Stable Comings (the first one at One World). 

About a week later we recorded them in the garage of the Pink House in Moscow. I dubbed a bass track too but I don't know what happened to it. I hadn't played any music in at least a year besides recording myself breathing into a re-verb pedal or some shit in my room. About a month later we started Tim Blood so it was kind of forgotten.

Eight months later when I got back to Moscow I moved into the garage of the Pink House then slowly leeched my way into the house. I remembered the recording and decided that finishing it was probably the most important thing I could be doing. Let's see I kind of lost my momentum; I wanted to say something about how I was feeling when I wrote the lyrics. I wrote lyrics in this notepad I had written a bunch of shitty lyrics in while traveling. The lyrics that ended up in the songs were the best of the bunch. I finally threw the notebook away a few months ago.

Um, I was feeling weird all the time. Really good and really bad. I would stumble home after hanging out for days and days, walk into Tim and Bethany's room, drop my pants to my ankles and fall asleep. Compared to my whole life that was pretty atypical behavior. When I would wake up in the late afternoon I'd go into the garage and blast music with garage door open. It felt pretty cool. Right outside the garage was a huge hill and then some shitty apartments beyond it that I liked to look out at. I'd sit there and try to write positive lyrics while everyone else was at school. 

The first song is about driving back and forth from Seattle to Pullman and then playing some Loose Cannons shows. The title "Angry Suns" was the working name of the band when we first recorded. I think it was a play on the Indian Summer song "Angry Son" which I was listening to everyday, but "Angry Sons" sounded too goofy at the time. 

The second one was about not being a wuss all the time or something. Also about realizing I could be equally miserable or happy almost anywhere. 

The third one was about sleeping all day I think. I must have enjoyed it cause it's called "Good Day". The long quiet acoustic guitar part at the end was recorded at this time too.

The fourth one was about waking up for a split second and seeing snow out of the huge windows that took up the whole southern wall of the bedroom, then waking up later that day to no snow on the ground. I'm pretty sure the third and fourth song were written as one song initially but maybe not.

I felt like the last song needed more lyrics and syllables than the other four but had run out of anything at all good in my notebook or head. I tried to get Ryan to write some but he was too busy with school so I just left it.

As soon as I finished it I put it on the internet. I felt pretty good about it. I decided to call it Fox Council cause a few of the riffs were written right after we recorded the first Fox Council and I get nostalgic. A little while later we somehow played a show with Microbabies with Ian on bass. We tried to do the end part of the third song but fucked it up. Other than that it went well. I missed Microbabies because I immediately left to go to Seattle with Peter, but that's a whole other story (involving Kurt Cobain!). 

I didn't realize how short it was until I listened to it months later. I think initially I'd had some idea about screamo songs with grind mini-song structure or something silly, but I forgot that pretty quick and it just felt right to end a song after ten seconds or whatever.

Thanks!

Thursday, January 10, 2013

New Product

Just kidding, I don't use hairspray, man.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

SMUTS BAND

Photo by Ellen
Here's a picture of our new band from our second show at midnight on New Years and some video from our first show at the Hummingbird of Death Record Release Party!:




We have a 9 song demo tape we'll be selling at our next show in Boise on the 19th. Or you could send an email if you wanna buy one.
There's a couple tracks from it here: smuts.bandcamp.com

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

NEW YEAR POST

Favorite New-to-Me Music of 2012:
  1. Steve Roach - Mostly 'Structures From Silence' and 'The Magnificent Void'. As soon as I got internet at home again I got serious about getting into New Age and Ambient music. Steve Roach is my favorite so far. This is the most recent fave but it's on my mind the most.
  2. Disclose - I've known about them for years but really started listening to them all the time this year. Every release is great but I listened to 'Nightmare or Reality' the most.
  3. Enya - I found some Enya cassettes at a thrift store which reminded me that I liked New Age. When I was an early teen Enya was the only non secular music my dad would play on Sunday.
  4. Darkthrone - I didn't really get Darkthrone till this year. I don't know why I didn't try earlier.
  5. Death Metal - I continued listening to lots of Death Metal as usual. My favorites that I got into this year were Grave, Dismember and Bloodbath.
  6. Billy Bragg - This was my walking around music for the first half of the year. I only listened to 'Back to Basics'.
  7. King Diamond - Also from earlier in the year. I don't think I could have appreciated it any earlier in my life. I listened to 'Conspiracy' the most. 
I listened to way less Pop/Rock 'n Roll music than the year before. Also I feel like I didn't spend as much time listening to music as past years but that's probably cause I broke my mp3 player in a car door halfway through. 


Music Goals:
  • Record at least two Smuts releases
  • Record at least two solo releases
  • Practice guitar more
  • Listen to more Jazz and Classical music

Personal Goals:
  • Read as many novels as comics (read less comics!)
  • Write more (letters, journal, lyrics, etc.)
  • Start School
  • Be less negative
  • Take care of myself more.