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

Recommended listening: Christwrong (completely unnecessary)

This ended up being way longer than I thought, feel free to not even start reading it. I'm writing this early in the morning after we played a ridiculously fun show in Spokane (thanks again to everyone there). I think I'm too pumped on fun to sleep.

I was gonna write something about the stuff we were listening to and thinking about when writing the songs from the Vipe/Christwrong split, because I like to ramble about music, but I didn't have anything to do with the writing of the first two Vipe songs so here's what I was into during the making of each Christwrong release and a little about the recordings because that was the fun part before we played in Spokane the first time. D-Beat stuff is so derivative. It's all in how you mix it, maybe, so here's whose styles I was biting. I can't speak for everyone though.

CW1 was done because I'd wanted to do an Anti-Cimex rip off band for awhile, and then Ian showed me Shitlickers and it had to happen. Also we wanted something fun to do while taking a break from a grind bind we'd been working on that still hasn't come together. Someday, hopefully. Before I heard the Shitlickers we were going to make the recording sound similar to Raped Ass by Anti-Cimex but instead we went for a totally blown out bassy sound.

Not enough bands bite Shitlickers style, especially the way their recording sounds. Including us on later recordings. http://vxpxzine.blogspot.com/2008/05/shitlickers-interview.html here's a really good interview done years after. It's interesting to me how thought out the sound was.

CW2 was done because we had a show in Spokane and I decided that we would record something before every show we played. At first I wanted it to sound like GISM and I think that's still there a bit, especially in the first song and perhaps the lyrics. I'm not sure I can say anything eloquent about them right now but they're very interesting, and of course goofy:

Punks is Hippies!

The idea with the recording was a more polished version of the first one. I think I like it but I'm not quite sure what to think of it. We did it track by track for all but the last song which most of us had never done before.

Also I was listening to these albums a lot when I'd go on walks.

CW3 was gonna be more Tragedy influenced stuff like the last song on CW2 but Ian and I were listening to too much really rock 'n roll Scandinavian D-Beat stuff for that to happen. Also it's just two songs so who knows how it would have been had it been longer. Skitkids have been what I put on when I can't think of anything else for a while now. They goes down easy in an almost guilty pleasure way, which is kind of what the songwriting in Christwrong is like. Ian got me really into Herätys and the newest Totalitär albums too.

We wanted the recording to sound scummy, kinda like the last track on CW2. That song and the two new ones are the only ones I haven't used a DOD Classic Fuzz pedal for the main guitar sound.

I might write about Vipe sometime after there's more recorded stuff to show but for now this band is a huge inspiration and definitely worth checking out:

You can listen to and download the Vipe/Christwrong split here: http://controlforce.bandcamp.com/album/vipe-christwrong-split

or just download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?r287adzqqw3u7gw

Completely Unnecessary

Keith F- Sept. '08 to May '09

In August 2008 I moved back to Pullman and didn't do much. Sometimes I'd record in my room. All of these sounds were recorded between September 2008 and May 2009 and edited down now to be less boring. 8 songs in 10 minutes.