eat pizza and fall short of our parents' expectations.
07/05 :: The Men :: DC9
07/06 :: Friends :: Rock and Roll Hotel
07/15 :: Killer Mike/El-P/Mr. Motherfucking Exquire :: Rock and Roll Hotel
07/16 :: OFF! :: Fillmore
07/19 :: Chromatics :: Rock and Roll Hotel
07/20 :: Lower Dens/No Joy :: Rock and Roll Hotel
07/22 :: Dent May :: DC9
07/24 :: Iceage/Dirty Beaches/Satan's Satyrs :: Black Cat Main Stage
07/25 :: Liars :: U Street Music Hall
07/28 :: Agalloch/Taurus :: Empire
The director, KevinLuna, has produced one of the most compelling narratives of any music video so far this year, a perfect match for Dirty Beaches, one of the most engaging performers currently touring. This video may be the first time I've been so keenly aware as my voyeurism developed into self-hatred that tapered finally into an apparently unanswerable moral ambiguity, umm...more or less like drinking alone at a children's toy store during the Friday night closing shift.
Alex Hungtai is currently on tour in Europe--great job if you can get it--and you can track his progress over on his blog. His new 7" (b/w Electric Chair) is out tomorrow on Suicide Squeeze.
No, I'd never fucking heard of this guy. But the loose, cat blood scrawl on the floor beside my bed augured his coming. I write my dream diary in cat blood, so what? I bet you write yours with a Sharpie, downchuh, ya prissy fop?
Dirty Beaches covered the desolate "El Dorado" by Mattress at a recent Blackcat meltdown (and at other stops along the tour) and you would never guess how faithful he was being to the original. As mind-opening as the Dirty Beaches live set turned out to be, I realized that I'd have to chase this one to the root. Dismiss all the reverberations of Suicide and Roy Orbison and burrow my hands into the synth-loosened soil.
So without further fucking around, let's swivel our super awesome, spaceage Herman Miller chairs toward the CCTV. Now shut your eyes, little girl. Shut um and let's to see what we can see:
The opener from Low Blows:
Mattress :: El Dorado
Mattress :: Roll Roll Roll
From the Portland Mercury:
It wasn't mere '80s nostalgia that drew Marshall to synths. The groundwork of his appreciation for Gary Numan and Suicide was laid by his love of author J.G. Ballard, the sci-fi bard of synth-pop. Ballard spoke to Marshall's own pangs of future shock. "I'm overwhelmed by the pace culture's moving in," Marshall says with another chortle. "There no longer seems to be a zeitgeist. Or there are 1,000 tiny zeitgeists."
The Reservations (Rex Marshall's post-Mattress project) :: Live Forever
Mattress :: Bad Times
http://www.dirtybeaches.blogspot.com/
From Analog Beach (the Dirty Beaches blog):
Had the pleasure of finally meeting Rex tonight in Portland, AKA Mattress, AKA Reservations. Who was a huge influence on the conception of early Dirty Beaches back in 2006 after I saw him perform at Cagibi in Montreal all alone on a stage, crooning. Armed with tape machine back up tracks, pedals, and other machinery, he rocks the mic like a shadow dancer in the night. Incredible voice.
Mattress @ the Pink Room playing God knows what:
Mattress :: Pollution @ the Lafayette Footbridge:
From videographer's description:
On June 23rd Mattress brought his gritty, uncontrolled moves and electronic music to the railroad footbridge on 20th and Lafayette in Southeast Portland to perform his song “Pollution.” This turned into the craziest setup of any episode yet after the generator failed to start. We ended up powering the whole shoot (computer, mixer, amp, tape player and microphone) off of electricity from a car cigarette adapter. Our crack team of sound engineers — Matt Huiskamp, James Jacobsen and Clemeth Abercrombie deserve some recognition for their electronic miracle-making that day.
Mattress @ Burgerville (2 songs):
From Dusted Magazine writer's blog, Still Single:
There’s a little bit of sleaziness to the whole thing, like it could slip into some seedy, non-existent cocktail lounge or the middle of a Ween record, that really helps you notice that Marshall has written real songs and is not just dicking around with spontaneous, uninspired notions.
Now aren't you glad you let daddy have the remote?
Zoo Music and the blog, I Guess I'm Floating, have a ten day old mixtape up curated by Dirty Beaches. This one's made up of mostly older jamz, rap songs, and sonic graters.
The internet is packed away in some box underneath sanity and sobriety, and we're in no rush to dig those out, so bear with us while we work out our inner-demons for one goddamn minute. Here's an offering to quell the deafening cacophony of our single follower.
Beaming in from deep space like some lost Lee Hazlewood bootleg karaoke session, this cut comes from Dirty Beaches' upcoming full-length, Badlands, on Zoo Music March 29th.It'll be interesting to see how this stumbling lament will hold up during the upcoming tour with Dum Dum Girls and Minks (March 6 at Black Cat). While it's easy to imagine Dum Dum Girls' psych-harem jangle, I kind of picture Dirty Beaches' Alex Zhang Hungtai as the opening eunuch, passed out drunk mumbling that he doesn't give a damn about anything. And that's totally and completely cool, since I'll be doing the same exact thing.
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