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:

http://clydewebb.bandcamp.com/album/into-it-im-growing-up

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".

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

Favorite Music of 2010 Part 1

This is a list of my favorite music for each month. I'm not sure if I'll talk about anything that came out in 2010, this is just what I was listening to. It'll be divided into "Favorite" and "Other Stuff". I feel like I have to do this. I really used music to get through this year in a different way than the past couple.

January
Favorite: In January I got into a lot of stuff that became my favorite in the months to come. My favorite was probably still This Heat from the year before, actually two years before. Early January was probably the last time I listened to "Deceit" and really focused on it. If I was forced to, I'd probably say that's my favorite album, even though I barely listen to them anymore. They just meant so much to me the first time I heard it, and it'll take a long time for that to wear off.

Other stuff: I remember listening to "Stigmata" by Skitsystem a lot at the beginning of the month, which was definitely one of my favorites of 2009. I remember writing in my journal about really being into Leadershit which I'm listening to right now and reminded me to write this. When I got on a Greyhound towards the end of the month to go out to Seattle I was listening to their album. I downloaded a bunch of old Italian hardcore that's still some of my favorite stuff right now, but I didn't get into that until a few month later. Also I got into Twelve Hour Turn at the end of January. The first time I listened to "It's Your Move" I had to stop what I was doing and close my eyes till it was over which hadn't happened in a really long time.

February
Favorite: Probably Twelve Hour Turn. For most of the month I listened to them a couple times a day. For about a week I listened to the last album and ep before I got out of my sleeping bag in the morning. And "It's Your Move" still gave me chills.

Other Stuff: I remember listening to "Through Silver In Blood" while laying on top of a dune in the middle of the desert which wasn't as fulfilling as I wanted. I finally got into the third Cursed album while out in the desert. I think the quote at the end of it stuck out to me more than the music though. I also got really into Cripple Bastards "Variante Alla Morte" album while walking around in the desert and riding on a bus. When I got to New Orleans and was staying with someone they asked me what music I was into and Cripple Bastards was all I could think of. Those stick out the most but I know I'm missing something. I was listening to a lot of music then.

March
Favorite- Daitro. Their side of the Sed Non Satiata split. I got really lost listening to that. I didn't like it too much when I first heard it, but then I was listening to it a few times a day. The last song was my favorite. I noticed myself always stop what I was doing and listen for when the vocals finally came in.

Other Stuff: I was listening to Yob's newest album alot too. The 20 minute last song i listened to at least 15 times. I listened to it a few times in a row one night when I couldn't sleep along with the Daitro song. I remember writing down something about only long songs keeping my attention. I wasn't listening to Twelve Hour Turn as much. I was in Jacksonville for a week, which is where they're from but didn't realize that until I was gone. I think at this point I was pretty through with everything that was on my mp3 player but didn't have a way to get anything new.

So that's it for part 1. I don't know when I'll finish this but I'll try to have up through September before New Year's and then finish up in 2011.