Jakob Battick & Friends

A Summary of 2011 (so far)

2011-06-09T13:35:00.017-04:00

This site is nearly non-functional, almost deceased. I have been seriously considering deleting the whole lot of this garbage/miscellanea. In the meantime, I will post a brief summary of the things that have occurred in the past long section of time since our last posting:

-THE PRAYERS & CURSES WINTER TOUR 2011:
A small-scale tour of New England back in January. We played the following dates:

SUNDAY JANUARY 2ND.
The Red Door in Portsmouth, NH w/ Greg Jamie (O'Death, Blood Warrior) and Dan Blakeslee.
-WEDNESDAY JANUARY 5TH.
Audubon Strings in New Haven, CT w/ Doctor Caterwaul's Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps & Book Slave.
-SATURDAY JANUARY 8TH.
Langdon Street Cafe in Montpelier, VT w/ Lady Lioness and Seth Gallant.
-SUNDAY JANUARY 9TH.
Radiobean in Burlington, VT w/ Lady Lioness and Seth Gallant.
-MONDAY JANUARY 10TH.
The Castle in Mexico, ME w/ In Houses In Trees & Jesse Pilgrim.
-TUESDAY JANUARY 11TH.
Poland Street in Portland, ME w/ Jesse Pilgrim, In Houses in Trees, Jacob Augustine, and Liza Victoria.

A special tour-only collection of demos, covers, & alternate versions of existing songs (and also some unreleased jams) was available for absolutely free at all of these shows. It was limited to 75 copies. Also, tour-only stickers were available for free, black & white 2.75"x2.75" vinyl stickers printed by STICKER GUY.
While on tour we officially sold out of the last physical copies of 'Heavy the Mountains, Heavy are the Seas.' A reprint/reissue is in the works, but no details have been nailed down at this point.

-Our first MA shows, the first of which (An official Deli Magazine event) was 01/23/2011 with the incredible Gem Club and Humble Tripe at Precinct in Somerville. The second show took place on 01/30/2011 at Chris North's house in Jamaica Plain with the Chris North dream quartet, Coyote Kolb, and Mornin' Old Sport.

-We released our latest effort, a short-form EP entitled 'Bloodworm Songs', via our own home-run imprint/project/deal-thing HORSEHOUSE Ltd.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://jakobbattickandfriends.bandcamp.com/album/bloodworm-songs"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Bloodworm Songs by Jakob Battick &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; Friends&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

There are still around 50 gorgeous hand-made copies of Bloodworm Songs available for national & international mail-order at our bandcamp. This release garnered a fair amount of press & attention from outlets both close to home and far away, the highlights of which were as follows:

"I think Jakob Battick is reaching maximum velocity and he hasn’t even put out a full length yet. Bloodworm Songs is his third EP in the past couple years, each with the promise of a long player on the horizon, and each one getting darker and weirder. This one is by far the darkest & weirdest yet, which means it’s fucking great."
-Justin Snow @Antigravity Bunny (MA)

"For those unfamiliar with Battick and his work this effect is intentional, the group plunges the listener under a blanket of noise and discord only to contrast the calm, soothing yet urgent mood of the rest of the music on the EP. Battick's minimalist style is evident here yet again, using hauntingly sparse rhythms he and his group of nocturnal shut ins weave a tapestry of loose ends and lamentations which ultimately conjure a sensation similar to standing on a cliff over the ocean just before dawn breaks. "
-Sean Esten @Hell is Only Knee-Deep (ME)

"Battick and Friends have tread into some new ground here - while retaining the organic, ethereal vibe that is like a hallmark of the band, sound-bite fragments and a rolling, wave-like presence throughout create an eerier atmosphere than usual, particularly on "My Second Bloodworm Song" which is surely the most harrowing track they've put out yet."
-Marilyn Roxie @A FUTURE IN NOISE (CA)

"Portland, Maine’s Jakob Battick & Friends finally return with their very unique take on contemporary folk music, once again turning classic tropes of 20th century Americana into haunted and eerie pieces of forward-looking yet history-informed “nightmarefolk”."
-Henning Lahmann @NOFEAROFPOP (Berlin)

"Battick continues to awe by repeatedly capturing such a vivid and distinct mood in his music. The further he wanders trying to find where he belongs, the more complex and intriguing this world becomes."
-Kegan Zema @MaineCampus (ME)

"“Leper K” is a sedated folk-ballad that rises from static ambiance to an out-right embracement of Claude Debussy’s otherworldly classical impressionism. Over a plodding acoustic guitar and a John Cale indebted screeching violin, Battick croons: “Deep within/The heart of the wood/And in the moon’s dim light/Lay me down there/Where the nightshade grows.” The track is eerily familiar and plays out like a distant memory, masterfully illustrated by the multiple reverb-drenched vocals and hazy instrumentation that Battick & Friends have comfortably grown into their sonic calling card."
-Kevin Steeves @The Usm Free Press (ME)

In addition, BLOODWORM SONGS was also featured at Toronto's GOLD SOUNDZ, Germany's DYING FOR BAD MUSIC, Sweden's SKOGSGOSPEL, and Boston's (always incredible) BRAINWASHED.

-Four physical JB&F releases were featured overseas at Oxford University's EDITIONS OF YOU DIY Music packaging exhibit. In the exhibit was the last copy of 'Heavy the Mountains', a single copy of 'Bloodworm Songs', and two one-of-a-kind handmade retrospective discs featuring demos, alternate versions, unreleased tracks, and some covers. These where showcased in the university's O3 Gallery at the Oxford Castle.

-We were voted Portland's Best Category Defying Act in the Portland Phoenix's annual year-ends. This was a tremendous honor and a pleasant surprise. We were in the running with Aleric Nez & Big Blood, among others, and felt/feel very honored to be placed alongside such stellar musicians/creators/composers/performers.

THREE ORPHANS

2011-02-08T22:20:00.001-05:00

WINTER TOUR 2011. PEOPLE GET READY.

2010-11-04T22:22:00.005-04:00

Been a long time since we updated this. The constant urge to delete this blog altogether grows stronger and stronger with each day.

We are currently booking our first ever tour in the first two weeks of January 2011. More details will come soon. Watch the above cartoon for a teaser of the vibe we'll be taking with us on this tour, or at least to catch our sarcastic and quaint nonsensical style of humor, or something. This will be a miniaturized trek through all of New England (hopefully) and also the very Eastern-most edge of New York. The spirit of Tituba the great witch of Salem will be guiding us on our way all those cold, cold nights in the cramped car. Send us beef jerky and hard tack to make sure we don't starve.

It's about that time for the monthly free track to be sent out to our mailing list devotees. Sign up below with this handy form:

Last month's free mailing list track was a demo of the brand new, unreleased song 'Leper K', so get onboard now and make sure not to miss all of our exciting whatevers. Whatever. Whatever. The blogosphere is immense and here we are dabbling.

I brought my old Korg Four-track to Portland from Bangor. I recently recorded two new songs ('Three Orphans' (Fuzzrock version) and 'The Black Ox') with Anthony Bitetti of Good Kids Sprouting Horns for a split to be released sometime in the future. More exciting splits are also in the works.

ALSO:

Radio/Mayo Street/Monthly Recording News

2010-09-08T10:20:00.005-04:00

I will be making my second appearance on DJ Roy Ghim's Liberation By Sound radio show on Wmpg this coming Tuesday, alongside our friends South China. As usual, the show runs from 3-5 PM on 90.9 or 104.1, if you will be away from the radio but would still like to listen you can always tune in via their live digital stream here. I plan on showcasing two or three new songs across the airwaves, including at least one song that has not yet been played at any shows. Jeremy and Jerusha of South China always do an excellent job and I would suggest that it's well worth tuning in just for their performance alone. We are making this appearance on the radio to promote our show next Friday at Mayo Street Arts:

Mayo Street Arts is a fabulous converted church performance space here in Portland (located at 10 Mayo Street) with gorgeous natural reverb. I played there recently with Moorhound and Jesse Pilgrim and really fell in love with the room. Something about the combination of acoustics and light, along with the vintage style curtain behind the mini stage, really felt like a sort of home for my music. I know that eight dollars for a show is sort of steep, but I really mean it whole-heartedly when I say that this lineup (Including Selbyville, wonderful floating guitar compositions from some special lovely place in the heart) is really special and worth serious consideration. Mark and I will be playing guitars and drums and playing more arranged versions of the new songs I/we've been working on all summer. It will be more of a special evening of special music in a special space than any old show, I promise.

One last bit of news. What was previously a Facebook-exclusive string of monthly recordings is now being moved to our mailing list. The tracks will still be posted to our facebook page for online listening, but subscribers to our mailing list will receive a monthly E-mail featuring a new recording attached and waiting for download. As always, I/we promise not to abuse the mailing list, and we will never flood your inbox with bullshit. Here is a widget to subscribe to our mailing list easily and quickly. This month's song will be sent out this Saturday the 11th, so subscribe soon or miss out!

MAILING LIST! JOIN NOW! FREE SONG!

2010-08-16T15:43:00.004-04:00

Photo by Katie O'Connell

We are currently offering a free download of the as of yet unreleased single 'Prayer' to anyone who subscribes to our mailing list within the next week. Basically, if you sign up between now and next Monday you will recieve our first Mailing List E-mail with the mp3 attached. 'Prayer' is a song from the NESCOM sessions back in January, with Ryan Higgins and Anthony Bitetti of Good Kids Sprouting Horns, a rowdy and rollicking woodsfolk stomper not unlike the old tune 'Her Limbs Are Little Bodies of Stars' (At least in terms of energy and verve.) The song itself is an old Swollen Spring Violets song dating from back in January 2008, here revived and morphed and re-sized into something bigger, faster, and stronger.

Use this simple widget below and sign up for the Jakob Battick & Friends Mailing List now. This will be a great way for you to keep in touch about our future doings, important shows, releases, limited offers and special merchandise, and also occasional free downloads and sneak previews of new releases.

NEW LOW BANDCAMP PRICE!/JOIN THE MAILING LIST!

2010-08-14T10:51:00.001-04:00

The Bandcamp version of 'Heavy the Mountains' is now available at the new low price of FIVE DOLLARS. This comes with four free downloads: a fuzz-rock version of 'Nine Brothers', demos of 'All that Really Lasts' and 'A Silent Prayer', and the lead-off single from our unreleased record, 'Prayer', featuring Anthony Bitett...i and Ryan Higgins of Good Kids Sprouting Horns. A TOTAL STEAL I TELL YOU.

Join the mailing list (I know it's sort of a convoluted process to join, my apologies) and you will recieve a free MP3 very shortly, an unreleased and very special mp3. Possibly 'Prayer' from HORSEFEATHERS.

The second Facebook-Exclusive track

2010-08-01T13:26:00.002-04:00

For those of you out there who are fans of Jakob Battick & Friends on Facebook, the second monthly Facebook-exclusive track has now been posted.

The Jakob Battick & Friends Official Facebook Page

This month's recording is a warped take on the old Misfits classic, 'Hollywood Babylon', which originally appeared on the Bullet single way back in 1978. Here, the song is transformed into a dingy de-tuned layer cake of guitars and far-off vocal presences, with an added microtonal soup/stew drone-out conclusion.

Simply head to the Music Player directly in the live feed of postings, or head to the application's permanent box on the left side of the Jakob Battick & Friends page. Stay tuned for the third posting in this brand new series, due out as soon as September rolls around.

BANDCAMP/Sneak-preview unreleased single from 'Horsefeathers'!

2010-07-31T00:20:00.006-04:00

We are now the proud owners of an official Jakob Battick & Friends Bandcamp page. You can head there to download our music either for free or for very cheap.

When you choose to purchase 'Heavy the Mountains, Heavy are the Seas in its entirety you also recieve free downloads of the original artwork (High resolution files) and four extra tracks. Among these four tracks are the following:

1) A previously unreleased "fuzz-rock" version of "Nine Brothers & The Wolf" originally recorded for as-yet-unfinished (In progress!) [Dog]and[Pony] film project. Think gnarled, snarling guitars and full drums, howling and yowling, etc.

2) The first ever recorded version of 'All That Really Lasts', a sparse reverb-laden lonerfolk version on nylon string classical guitar and layered voice. This track originally appeared on the now out of print 'The Painful Places Will All Fly From Me EP. For a long time this was Ryan Higgins' (Of Good Kids Sprouting Horns) favorite track from the Jakob Battick & Friends catalogue.

3) The original first demo of 'A Silent Prayer', with emphasized microtonalities and extra-dissonant Jesse Meunier-played cello at the end of the song. A rare and larval look into the creative process of Jakob Battick & Friends, showcasing a much more wounded, floating arrangement of the song that sort of festers while you listen to it.

4) A brand new, unreleased track from the forthcoming Jakob Battick & Friends release, 'Horsefeathers', which was recorded at NESCOM with Good Kids Anthony Bitetti & Ryan Higgins. This track, 'Prayer', is the lead-off single from the album and sports an up-tempo woodsfolkrock backing arrangment stacked with organs and many voices. This free track is reason enough to spring for the digital download, folks. It is seriously a big departure to the ears of those who were not around for 1800s Sea Monster or Swollen Spring Violets.

As I said, it is only with the purchase of HTMHATS in its entirety that you receive these bonus tracks. All recordings involved are high quality files with great fidelity, not shoddy underwater-sounding mp3s.

Also available from us on Bandcamp are the albums 'Some Songs in Chronological Order (An early retrospective of oddities and staples, now out of print) & 'Live at Hogfarm Studios (Our official live recording release from a show in Biddeford at the Hogfarm Annex in March) both for absolutely free.

Expect much more from our Bandcamp page one day soon.

I leave you with this tonight, for your listening pleasure:

Stickers Coming Soon....

2010-07-26T11:31:00.001-04:00

A brand new Jakob Battick & Friends sticker design:

NEWS

2010-07-21T18:13:00.006-04:00

Here is our schedule for the end of the summer:

Wednesday, July 28th, at SPACE Gallery:

-Jakob Battick (With some small-scale surprise mystery guest backing players along with one or two more standard Friends) opening for Brooklyn's La Strada.
-Tickets are seven dollars and available here.

Monday, August 9th, an excellent show at The Apohadion:
-Weirdo experimental arts & music space from heaven right in the middle of one of Portland's industrial areas. A very special show with some very special other acts, more details to come. Solo opening slot for the other groups.
-Admission is a suggested donation to support the musicians performing that evening.

Tuesday, August 10th, at Mayo St. Arts:
-A studio/performance space on Mayo St. in Portland in an old converted church. Playing alongside Jesse Pilgrim & Moorhound (Florida based songwriter). An evening of songwriting and solo performers.
-Admission is, again, a suggested donation.

Thursday, August 12th, at Bayside Bowl:
-A big big show for us, we're playing (As a small-scale version of Jakob Battick & Friends) alongside Jesse Pilgrim & The Bonfire, Billy Libby & Band, and Jacob & The House of Fire (Jacob Augustine's massive new Earth-smashing band, a full 10 or 11 or 12 pieces at their most formidable).
-Admission is $5.

Friday, August 13th, at Slainte:
-A solo showcase of new songs and sounds. This summer has been one massive stretch of songwriting and this show will be a loose, free showcase of mostly new songs and sketches. A good chance to preview the seedlings that will grow into the debut full-length record.
-No admission fee, opening slot for Sound Bundle & other local acts.

Five Favorite 21st Century Songs (Thus Far)

2010-07-14T12:01:00.016-04:00

A sequel to the recent post 'Five favorite 20th century songs'. Only ten years of the 21st century have past, but I'd like to name some songs that stand out to me as sleeper/keepers/reapers for the century thus far, standing here right now.

'Motion Picture Soundtrack' by Radiohead
From the album Kid A (2000)

The tail-end of the 20th century and the jagged tooth-line that has been the beginning of the 21st century are both ubiquitous Radiohead times. The band is everywhere, under every stone and in every hidden thicket of the music press, in addition to the covers of major music mags for album releases and even for less important reasons (When Thom Yorke is mad about something, which is all the time). We here at Jakob Battick & Friends know what it feels like to be bombarded with Radiohead at every turn and to not necessarily understand the raving gospel 24/7. Mark Dennis genuinely dislikes Radiohead, Roy Macneil is a diehard fan, Milo and his twin sister Joanna were practically RAISED on Radiohead. I find myself a massive fan of Kid A and little else, time and time again (Except for 'Street Spirit' and 'Pyramid Song', which are both so great). This being said, I constantly find myself looking back to Kid A as one of the most righteous albums of the 2000-2010 stretch, for sure.

'Motion Picture Soundtrack' is the surrealistic closer at the end of Kid A, sporting Disney-style (Apparently they were going for something 'Snow White', no joke) harp and operatic female backing vocals amid a somber, weary bed of what sounds like pump organ (Maybe just a plain ol' church-style organ?) and plenty of bittersweet melodic Yorke crooning. Juxtaposition. Juxtaposition. Juxtaposition. It sounds like the audio equivalent of Dark Side of the Moon ACTUALLY fused to the Wizard of Oz, not just a synch up, like the spirits of the two glued together. A devastating and strange end to a (largely) alienating and strange (But rewarding and glorious) album full of odd twists and sounds. The real triumph of 'Motion Picture Soundtrack' is the way in which it manages to fuse the odd to the beautiful and maintain all seriousness, all levity, and all emotional weight. In fact, to these ears, the instrumental quirks of the track only intensify the emotional severity. It's a brave move on a fearless album. Looking back now, it seems incredible and surprising for the first decade of the 21st century to begin with such a pioneering, out-of-this-world record as Kid A.

Did I mention the Sgt. Pepper-style backwards sounds and symphonic floatiness that appear to those patient enough to listen past the silence at the end of the 'real' track? That's the ever-present-on-Kid-A sound of Radiohead throwing a hissyfit and trying to be as obtuse as possible, and it's often intensely fascinating.

'Hiding All Away' by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
From the album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)

After 20+ years of howling and preaching and slaying it seemed that Nick Cave started to get just a little bit tired (Physically, not qualitatively). There was the pseudo-Christian phase of 'The Boatman's Call' and the post-substance haze of 'No More Shall We Part' that both pointed to a perhaps settled, calm, and older Mr. Cave. Only moments of these records (And 'Nocturama') pointed to a revitalized, furious Mr. Cave ('My Sorrowful Wife', 'Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow'). Both sides are honorable, as true Bad Seeds fans the world round know, but there is something to be said for a Mr. Cave that freely mixes the two. Then came 2004, along with the massive double-album 'Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus', and the Bad Seeds shit truly hit the fan. Love songs, death songs, ragers, crooners, ballads, & even explosions of noise and gospel all swirled together across the album's two discs, making for an overwhelming pile of fine songwriting to dig through.

'Hiding All Away' begins as a mid-tempo blues sleaze-out akin to Gainsbourg or Bukowski set to grinding and funking low-end rhythms. It's chock full of nasty, naughty, hilarious puns and built on a nonsense narrative that even Dylan could love. The lyric alone reveals an impish and restless elder Cave spinning tales of psycho-sexual madness, not exactly the portrait painted on 'Into My Arms' or 'As I Sadly By Her Side'. Then, there's the continuing unfolding of the arrangement. As each verse progresses the gospel choir gets louder, you can even hear them laughing at the lewdness of the lyric at points. Fuzzed-out lead guitars snarl and smolder around the edges of the verses, doing honor to the recent departure of lead-axeman and maverick genius Blixa Bargeld, and bass and drums stutter-stop in a herky-jerky fashion full of sweat and tension. Each verse shows just how brilliant The Bad Seeds can be as a backing band, all master players equally able to step off their instruments for a sudden downshift in energy as they are to snap quickly into a self-destructive burst of sound and skree.

The song just builds and builds and builds, then pulls back, and finally switches at the drop of a hat to a Southern-Gospel Armageddon of sorts. The choir goes nuts, the guitars run straight up the neck to high-end buzzsaw style lead parts, and the bass and drums repetitively batter the listener with up-hill/down-hill style runs. The spiritual connects with the sexual (In true Cohen fashion), and the whole kit and kaboodle combusts in paranoid/fervent/terrified/ardent energy. All the while, Nick is hollering and hooting in fine form. This is the sort of track that makes you do a double take and then immediately re-listen, twice. Who would have thought that some of the most vital and ferocious rock n' roll of the 2000-2010 gap would have come from a 47 year-old Australian man who, by all appearances, had seemed well past his days of screaming and kicking since 1997? The Cave/Ellis/Casey/Sclavunos side-project Grinderman went on to only further prove the point, as evidenced by almost pimple-faced Stooges-style tracks like 'No Pussy Blues' and 'Get It On', but the few key moments on 'Abattoir/Lyre' where The 'Seeds attempt to burn down the house are almost unequaled in terms of simultaneous brain and brawn and heart.

"God Bless Our Dead Marines" by Thee Silver Mt. Zion
From the album Horses In The Sky (2005)

Efrim Menuck is in touch with something very deep, very powerful, and very ancient at the same time that it is brand new. Along with the help of his ex-Godspeed and elsewhere pals in Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Tra La La Band he crafts riotous spiritual/political old-world/new-world songs of protest and dreams and hopes and wishes. Montreal's Arcade Fire released the best record of the 2000-2010 stretch with 'Funeral', I'll stand by that through and through (Although I won't write about it here because enough words have been thrown at that monstrous beast of an album), but Efrim and pals really trump their fellow many-membered-and-spirited Montrealers in terms of intensity, expansiveness, and sheer urgency. I know that sounds hard to believe, but one listen to this track from 'Horses In The Sky' should be enough proof for those with open-minds. The songcraft is non-conventional, multi-segmented, and even a little fragmented. The arrangement is part ghost Yiddish Klezmer band and part raging post-Neutral Milk folk-punk-ness (But not the sort played by Andrew Jackson Jihaad or the like). In the last three or four minutes the band breaks into an all-vocal round that will bring tears to your eyes. Milo recently had the pleasure of getting to see Silver Mt. Zion live, and I can't even begin to imagine the sort of emotional resonance parts of these songs must carry in person, when real flesh and blood humans are singing these lyrics at the top of their lungs.

They take patience as a listener, and they take a taste for eccentric sounds, but if you can pay attention you'll find that Silver Mt. Zion is making some of the most powerful, arresting, and moving music out there. 'God Bless Our Dead Marines' is the ultimate gateway into their music, at once accessible while also being experimental, melodic while being noisy and enraged. The lyrics read like a 'Bringing it All Back Home"-era protest song delivered with real clarity and heart. The string players (Many of whom also figure into the wonderful Black Ox Orestar) do their best to pull up the dust and spirits of old, moldy, beautiful folk forms over Efrim's winding and weaving ravings. Little else from the 21st century thus far sounds so out of time, so important, and so groundbreaking.

'Silent Shout' by The Knife
From the album Silent Shout (2006)

Electronic music was never really my thing. I used to be afraid of bands built on machines (Big Black and Air and a few others excluded, for not very good reasons). Then I heard The Knife (Thank you Roy Macneil).

Never before had I heard Electronic music so full of real, honest human emotion and feeling. It was also incredibly stylized, lost in an aesthetic world of its own that was dark, seductive, and sounded alarmingly singular. Now I see the light, I love Kraftwerk, Telefon Tel Aviv, and Cold Cave very, very much.

'Silent Shout' builds slowly from next to nothing (Single-note bass and bass drum loop) into a small arsenal of key textures and patterns. Everything is delightfully icy and at the same time infectiously bouncy. There is a world of atmosphere across the entirety of the album 'A Silent Shout' that is lacking on the previous record 'Deep Cuts'. That's part of why 'A Silent Shout' is so essential, it is an art record at the same time that it's a dance record. I will always be jealous of the bizarre vocal octave-jumper/shifters The Knife uses on 'Silent Shout'. The duo also has an incredible knack for using only the sounds they absolutely need while also somehow building walls of sound out a little more than nothing (And then, to top it off, they stripped their arrangements down even more at their sole live show in Gothenburg, Sweden and still pulled it off).

Wish I could speak in just one sweep
What you are and what you mean to me
Instead I mumble randomly
You stand by and enlighten me

In a dream I lost my teeth again
Calling me woman and half man
Yes, in a dream all my teeth fell out
A cracked smile and a silent shout
A cracked smile and a silent shout

That lyric. It's suggestive enough in its imagery and simplicity that it calls up a whole world in your head, a whole open-ended impression of a narrative. It's almost like Lorca's more terse, succinct poetry. A nocturnal world of dream imagery that is at once enticing and disturbing. The way the lyric of 'Silent Shout' is fused to the open-spaces and pounding kick drum in the arrangement always sticks with me. The Knife has been quoted up and down the block about their obsession with David Lynch, but that sort of aesthetic rings completely true through their music. Everything is just twisted into various degrees of oddness, from the vocal ranges to the hollowed-out and frozen arrangements to the music videos and costumes (PS, do yourself a favor, Check out Karin's cover of Nick Cave's "Stranger Than Kindness" as Fever Ray).

Enough has been written about The Knife (Just like The Arcade Fire), so I'll stop here. But, if you aren't already listening to The Knife you either live in your mother's medicine cabinet or you are (Like I once was) afraid of drum machines and keyboards and sequencers. As a convert to the cause that is electronic music, I can safely say that there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Robots and machines probably won't take over the world if you go out and buy 'Silent Shout' today. In fact, if you do, you'll probably thank me later.

'Cossacks Are' by Scott Walker
From the album The Drift (2006)

The Drift is one of the only records out there capable of absolutely terrifying me when I listen to it in the dark. What the hell did the orchestra think of the record when they were recording their string parts? If you don't already know Scott Walker, the man or the music, you can watch Scott Walker:30th Century Man instantly from the comfort of your computer on Netflix RIGHT NOW. Highlights include: Scott directing a collaborator on how to punch a mound of beef to get just the right percussive sound on one of the tracks, old-timey footage of the (glorious) Walker Brothers on TV shows, and interviews with the fine guys and gals who have helped Scott make his very specific and demanding solo records since 1967.

I am not exaggerating when I say Scott Walker has the voice of a long-dead spirit. His arrangements and songs are full of pseudo-dissonances and straight dissonances in varying degrees of listenability. His lyrics are like no other, maddened dispatches from a history-obsessed mind that has read far too much Modern-era Surrealist poetry. There are no genre tags in existence that could do his music credit. If pressed, I would call it 'Undead avant-crooner'.

'Cossacks Are' is the most listenable track on 'The Drift', followed by 'A Lover Loves' (The first and last tracks, respectively). This song splits the difference between Scott's interest in crooning/torch-songs and avant-classical/experimental music the world over, making for an almost melodic listening experience when compared to the rest of the record. The bedrock of the whole track is a stuttering tambourine-laced (yes, tambourine) drum track coupled with a pulsing low-down bass line. On top of the whole instrumental bundle is a spidery, knifing guitar part that isn't that far off from some of The Jesus Lizard's more down-tempo efforts. The hired orchestra lays a steady, tense trebly chord over the proceedings, as Scott wails about cossacks and fields of white roses and cowboys and popes and moving arias and what have you. Really, the lyric book is indispensable. It's heady, gruesome, terrifyingly beautiful stuff.

There are moments in the song where everything drops down to just a pounding bass drum pulse and Scott's floating white-sheet voice. These are the spots where I lose it and have to remember that I'm just listening to a record. That's how powerful The Drift is. To test this out for yourself, download the record and listen to "Hand Me Ups" VERY LOUDLY while laying in bed in the dark.

"That's a nice suit"
"That's a swanky suit"
"Been a pope like no other"
"I'm looking for a good cowboy"
"A rare outcry makes you lead a larger life"
"You could easily picture this in the current top ten"
"Medieval savagery
Calculated cruelty"
"It's hard to pick the worst moment"

But really, The Drift is an unbelievable record. It's full of darkness and insanity, and scraps of Western song-and-dance float on through. 'Cossacks Are' is one of the coolest, weirdest songs to emerge from the darker recesses of the 21st century yet. It took Scott more than a decade to make The Drift, and it may take him even longer to make the next record. We know, though, that when the next record is released it will emit all sorts of unholy weirdness into the auditory soundscape of contemporary music.

HANDY INDEX OF THE SONGS ON YOUTUBE FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE/DISPLEASURE:

Radiohead 'Motion Picture Soundtrack'
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 'Hiding All Away'
Thee Silver Mt. Zion 'God Bless Our Dead Marines'
The Knife 'Silent Shout'
Scott Walker 'Cossacks Are'

The first in a (hopefully) long line of Facebook-exclusive recordings.

2010-07-08T12:25:00.004-04:00

Posted now, for your listening, is the first in a planned series of monthly facebook exclusive tracks. If you 'like' Jakob Battick & Friends on Facebook (What used to be considered being a 'fan' of Jakob Battick & Friends, before the Facebook B.S. gods decided to change the terminology for no apparent reason) you will henceforth have exclusive access to a brand new Jakob Battick & Friends recording. At this point, it seems these exclusive recordings will lean more towards drastic reinterpretations of older songs and brand new covers that point to our roots and influences, making for an eclectic bundle of tracks to follow in the coming months.

IF YOU ARE NOT YET A FOLLOWER OF JAKOB BATTICK AND FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK AND WOULD LIKE TO BE, SIMPLY HEAD TO THIS LINK (Provided you already have an active Facebook account) AND CHECK THE OPTIONS UNDERNEATH THE PHOTO AT THE LEFT OF THE PAGE:

Jakob Battick & friends Official Facebook Page

For this month's selection we are proud to offer a recently recorded cover version of 'Crowds', the obscure piano-driven pseudo-torch-song by 80s goth legends Bauhaus. Originally the second track on the first side of the 'Telegram Sam' EP, this song has been a sort of obsession for me through the years. The original is twinkling, sparkling, lovely, and all the rest, it stands out boldly from the rest of Bauhaus' mostly-dated catalogue (Forgive me for admitting that, and understand that I do love the classic Bauhaus sound, dated or not) as an authentically gorgeous little ballad-type song. Of course, as with all Bauhaus songs, the lyrics get a bit silly at points ('A pixie, thin and forlorn/A count, white and drawn'), but thankfully Peter Murphy's melodic talents always overshadow his more melodramatic lyrical moments.

Here, we've embellished the stark minimalism of the original song and transformed it into something slightly grander. Piano has been changed into a bed of layered and sometimes distant electric guitars, the slight percussive pulse of a pair of egg shakers has been added, and a cloud of DIY-cellos unfolds from the middle of the track through to the end. This is the newest JB&Friends track to be released since the January 2010 recording of 'Heavy the Mountains, Heavy are the Seas'.

Head over to the facebook page and take a listen, keep your eyes peeled for each month's exclusive track. Also, tickets for our July 28th show at SPACE Gallery (Our first real show at SPACE GALLERY!)with brookyln's LA STRADA can be purchased here. The show is going to be laced with surprises, unexpected guests, and smaller-scale reinterpretations of the most massive tracks from 'Heavy the Mountains' alongside some more obscure choices.

Photo/Five favorite 20th century songs

2010-06-27T11:54:00.009-04:00

Five of my most favorite songs from the 20th century, compiled here for your potential agreement/disagreement:

Roy Orbison "In Dreams"
from the album 'In Dreams' (1963)

I like to think of Roy Orbison as the first 'rock n' roll' musician to inject that holy bittersweet melancholic, dreamy, floaty, and heartbreaking beauty into the form. Obviously he had too many part-time sad-sack contemporaries for this to be true, but he was the first (mostly) full-timer. This song wraps it all up in one go. Extended, multi-segmented structure, huge and sweeping vocal lines that tug at your heartstrings, and one of the finest, most tragic (But, like all of Orbison's best, simultaneously hopeful and longing) lyrics of the era.

Leonard Cohen "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong"
from the album 'Songs of Leonard Cohen' (1967)

A rigid rhyme scheme turned unobtrusive, pleasant almost. The shining golden treasure at the end of Songs of Leonard Cohen for those first-time listeners brave, curious, or patient enough to make it all the way through Lennie's debut record without copping out early. I've learned the lyric by heart several times over, but it will always sound eternal, maybe even sacred, to my ears: 'I heard of a saint who had loved you/so I studied all night in his school/He taught that the duty of lovers/is to tarnish the golden rule/Just when I was sure that his teachings were pure/he drowned himself in the pool/His body is gone, but back here on the lawn/his spirit continues to drool' . The real bonus here is the drunken-and-broken outro, where Mr. Cohen opts to wail a mournful keening melody (In a register that is entirely shocking for a man with such famously limited vocal chords) over an extended fade-out. The lonely flute and whistling accompaniment on said refrain is just to die for.

John Cale "Big White Cloud"
from the album 'Vintage Violence' (1970)

Cale's one of my biggest heroes, arrangement-wise & production-wise & songwriting-wise & fiddling-wise & singing-wise. This song is just massive, all high and droning gorgeous treble over a rock solid and steady low-end drum and bass combo that simply keeps on sailing, shining verse and chorus after shining verse and chorus. It's full of elation, release, and absolution. There is a dull, painlessness trapped in the lyric and the arch-melodic arrangement that speaks from a place not quite as wondrous as the first superficial listen would have you think, but that is the song's genius. It's full of a certain sort of surrender to the world, a baptism in the wonder and chaos of it all.

The Smashing Pumpkins "Thirty Three"
from the album 'Melon Collie & The Infinite Sadness' (1995)

Sure, Billy Corgan has a Bono-times-two sized ego and a boatload of control issues, but the man could certainly write awesome songs back in the early to mid nineties. "Thirty Three" is one of the most aching and bittersweet songs I have ever heard (The music video is one of my all time favorites in the medium), no exaggeration. Here, Corgan has studied My Bloody Valentine's 'Sometimes' and Slowdive's 'Dagger' and condensed their greatness into four minutes and eleven seconds of shoegaze-meets-chamber-ballad brilliance. Almost all of the Pumpkins' entire recorded output is heavily indebted to the sonic experimentation of the English Shoegaze scene, and this song is the pinnacle of that influence in their discography. Twinkling pianos, surging and coalescing electric/acoustic interplay (Thanks to ace production team Alan Moulder and Flood. We can thank the former for that classic Creation Records sound, and we can thank the latter for some of the grandest, most flowing production jobs 1995-present, overly-slick or not.), and that pounding, distant, looping percussive track all combine to make an arrangement equivalent to a beginner's guide to Shoegaze-hallmarks (In a great way). Plus, Corgan's often overly affected voice is in good form here, with just the right ratio of angst to nostalgia for the lyric and overall tone. Wade Linebaugh, this one's for you.

Van Morrison "Sweet Thing"
from the album 'Astral Weeks' (1968)

'I shall drive my chariot/down your streets and cry/Hey it's me, I'm dynamite/and I don't know why/And you shall take me strongly/in your arms again/And I will not remember/that I ever felt the pain/We shall walk and talk/in misty gardens all wet with rain/And I will never, never, never grow so old again'.

The master track on Van's Joycean opus, 'Astral Weeks', 'Sweet Thing' is Van's finest moment as the searching, seeking Celtic folk-jazz wonder-poet of his youth. No verbal description could do it full justice, the magic of this era of Van's work is entirely emotional, visceral even. All of Astral Weeks finds Mr. Morrison casting his memory back, searching through his memories and recollections to assemble some deep, monstrously powerful work of pain and joy. Astral Weeks, Moondance, right up until Veedon Fleece, all of these records paint a portrait of a man both haunted by and enthralled with his own past, and there's something in that predicament that we can all relate to. Right around 1974, the quality and authenticity of Van's songwriting begins to drop off from album to album, but his recorded output up until that point stands, even today, as one of the most cosmic, spiritual, and moving bodies of music yet released. 'Sweet Thing' is the penultimate composition of that period. Though it's peers are many and extraordinarily strong, it remains unflinchingly essential, perfectly timeless and astonishing.

Jared Fairfield- "Mysteries"

2010-06-09T12:05:00.004-04:00

Jared Fairfield (Of Orange Door West, Asesquimal, and Mark and Jared) has finished, out of nowheresville, a brand new full-length album of songs to release to the world. Entitled 'Mystereies', this is Mr. Fairyfield's most cohesive, diversive, and confident collection yet. Have a listen to the title track right here:

Jared Fairfield- 'Mysteries' by jakobbattick

Jared's music is indebted to 60s wanderers and freaks like Pearls Before Swine, The Incredible String Band, Marc Bolan or Vashti Bunyan, but (in my eyes) it easily transcends this stylistic base and comes from somewhere much more 'now', somewhere even more cosmic and vast, someplace so surreal it could even be considered beyond decade and time despite its being 'now'. At his most experimental, Jared works in almost noise/textural territory, employing drones and madness to craft massive walls of broken-structured sculpture-songs, and at his most approachable, Jared writes gorgeous, aching little woods-psych-pop songs that are good enough to break the hearts of sensitive record nerds everywhere. I have to always stress the fact that Jared comes to rest in a psych/cosmic style not out of trendiness or fashion, but out a natural obsession with all things yearning, melting, spiritual, effervescent, and fleeting. I read an online review of his recent release The Great Boiling Atom that quickly tossed him off (but positively so) as being "indebted to Devendra Banhart's early four-track recordings". NOT SO FOLKS. Jared is highly concerned with space and atmosphere, just as much as he is concerned with building wild, odd arrangements on atypical instruments (Peanut violin thing, autoharp, clavinet, $3 kazoo, kids' flute thing, etc.) and just as much as he is concerned (often) with sweet, beautiful melodies. What I'm trying to say here is that Jared has his own thing, his own sound, his own approach, his own obsessions, his own very unique spin on a whole mishmash of culture both new and old.

In listening to this new release all the way through, I can safely say that it goes several lightyears beyond The Great Boiling Atom. Whereas the latter was fractured, noisy, and only barely held itself together, Mysteries has something approaching a sort of classical entire-album structure, with a slight return on the song 'Feelings' and a definite distinction and flow between and from song to song. There are moments of fragile, whispy, miniaturized loveliness a la TGBA, but it also pushes the lusciousness of its soundscape even further. Mysteries is made up of real, actual songs (for the most part), whereas TGBA was more of a collection of mad sketches, snapshots plucked quickly from Fairfield's bizarre mind and left to rest in their early stages of development.

Over the course of Mysteries, I was most blown away by the madcap and free-wheeling range of sounds presented. The influence of 60s yeh-yeh pop (Francois Hardy or Frances Gall) is evidenced in both Jared's wild, unabashed falsetto singing, and also in the impeccable classic pop structures and sensibilities of tracks like 'Mysteries' or 'The Queen'. Then, there are the completely unexpected Fuzz freakouts like the solo at the end of the title track or 'Real Men'. There are moments of 'Mysteries' that sound like lofi garage Hendrixisms or, better yet, lost Black Sabbath absent-minded jamouts that got all fucked up and freshened up with a freer, more chaotic approach (Think The Stooges on "LA BLUES", perhaps). I could go on and on, but there are many more details to be revealed (Including the actual album cover itself) in the immediate future.

I say all of these things not because Jared Fairfield is my friend, or because he is a fellow Mainer. I am always blown away by the sheer fact that Jared is so hush hush with his work, and by the fact that more of the people who have heard it have not flipped for it entirely. 'Mysteries' is the album that, if properly put out into a scant few channels here and there, could easily convert the audience that Jared's music really deserves. I can honestly say, in my best effort at not bullshitting all of you out there, that 'Mysteries' (Although imperfect to some degree, like all things and like all local music endeavors especially) is a real sleeper classic Maine record, a valid and powerfully strong entry into this whole world of "NEW WEIRD AMERICA" (Everybody has hopefully always known that America has been really weird at its core, so I don't fully understand the urge to label it as such now and all of a sudden) hogwash that the music press and critics keep traipsing through around every corner. Keep your eyes peeled at those weird shops in and around Portland to pick up a real copy sometime this summer. More news is on its way, more secrets, more songs, more samplings, more rantings, more almost-hyperbolic praise.

Daily Sun feature/Grouper @ SPACE Gallery THIS SUNDAY!

2010-06-05T11:51:00.004-04:00

Matt Dodge of the Portland Daily Sun wrote an excellent little spot on the solo show at Slainte last night:

"Jakob Battick is a tough act to define. Hillytown blogger Bryan Bruchman tried to pin it down prior to last week's Hillytown Presents show at Slainte, saying, “I've seen him do really experimental kinda stuff, to a straight-up loud rock set, expanding the songs and making them almost epic with huge sounds.”

With a rotating cast of characters wielding everything from guitars to accordions, Jakob Battick & Friends shows have ranged in intensity from the lone frontman delicately whispering into the mic to a full band, riffing away, stomping effects peddles and reaching crescendo after crescendo. “It's designed as an organic unit of myself and whoever I've been playing with,” said Battick.

At tonight's show, Jakob Battick will take the stage alone, using the performance as a means of exploring new sounds and notions, independent of his regular collective, who according to Battick have “burrowed deep under the mossy stones of Deering Oaks to sleep for the summer.”

Battick counts the avant-garde stylings of the Velvet Underground as an influence, but eschews the term. “For us, Velvet Underground is a huge influence, and they were all over the map,” he said.

The band has a hard time pinning down a genre for his music; any attempt at categorization is a running joke within the band. “We jokingly refer to it as nightmare folk,” said Battick. “It's folk rooted, you can call it dream or art-folk, but not really psychedelic, more of sort of a dramatic, spacious sort of thing.”

Battick describes the band's music as having evolved quite a bit from it's stripped down, noisy beginnings. “We're much more bold with everything, we upped the dreaminess and the broken, psychotic elements,” he said."

SPECIAL NON-JAKOB BATTICK & FRIENDS SHOW SPOTLIGHT
Sunday, June 6th @ SPACE Gallery
$8, 18+, doors at 8:00pm

(Photo by Bryan Spencer)

Liz Harris (Who plays under the moniker Grouper) is playing SPACE Gallery this Sunday night. Grouper is ethereal, spacious, pseudo-ambient songwriting, in the vein of artists like Flying Saucer Attack, The Cocteau Twins, Windy & Carl, or even Jeff Buckley's more dreamy efforts. Portland is EXTREMELY lucky to get this chance to see Grouper right downtown, in the heart of Congress St., for only eight dollars. At this point, I can't believe that I haven't heard more about this show, or heard more people getting excited for it.

Our good friend, Pete Swegart (Of Butcher Boy), recently tipped me off to the gauzy, aquatic magic that is Grouper, and I could not thank him enough for it now. Basically, Liz sets up (Or so I'm told/Or so I've read) with a bunch of effects units and her guitar, and proceeds to bury her audience in layer after layer of swirling, sleepy sounds. For a sampling of her music, I suggest listening to the crucial single "Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping" from her most recent (2008) full-length 'Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill':

(Forgive the video, for which I cannot vouch. It is some unofficial fan video, could be cool, could be a throwaway.)

As if all of this weren't enough, Planets Around The Sun will be playing their primal, ritualistic improv-jams between all of the sets of the evening. A group called Animal Hospital is also playing (I haven't heard them, but I have been told/read good things), and local Meleana Cadiz opens up. Sounds like a really phenomenal show, if you ask me.

Easily some of the best photos of us yet (From Jon Donnell)

2010-05-25T13:13:00.004-04:00

Check out these incredible shots Jon Donnell got of us at the Slainte show last Friday:

For the record, our show was a tremendously smashing time. Slainte was full of friendly faces, and for the first time ever there were people bopping and grooving to our music. It was a gorgeous evening. Many thanks to all who came out to see us and Selbyville + Mileagres.

AND NOW:

A showcase of new songs, a few covers, some new tricks and spells for y'all.

OH I LOVE IT, YES I LOVE IT #5

2010-04-28T18:20:00.009-04:00

Apologies for being nonexistent lately. Big shiftings have been going on in the Jakob Battick & Friends camp as of late. Our last group show until September is tomorrow night at Slainte, free, alongside Mileagres (From Brooklyn) and Selbyville. Come out and see us, please, we implore you. This will be a big event for us, a Hillytown Presents show to dismantle ourselves for the summer. We will return in September with many new songs and tricks up our collective sleeves.

Some images from our performance WMPG appearance on Roy Ghim's Liberation By Sound:

In addition to performing "Nine Brothers & The Wolf" live for the first time ever as a group at WMPG, we also got to sit in as Dylan Metrano's backing band for his performance (Dylan is the mastermind behind New England underground legends Tiger Saw). I, personally, was geeking out the whole time. For our set, we performed the aforementioned "Nine Brothers & The Wolf" followed by "All That Really Lasts". Dylan performed "All of My Friends" and "The Tiger & The Tailor", with us backing him (Alongside Lazarus!). Many thanks to Roy Ghim for being such an excellent guy and being so patient with us sound-wise.

And now, apologies for the long, long gap between this and the previous installment, the latest OH I LOVE IT!:

Selected Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Chosen & Discussed by Jakob

Strange violence abounds, child-eating included. Strange beasts are hiding in the woods. Shining golden birds, talking foxes, old-world spirits, and even the devil figure into these little stories. Brilliant Nordic folktales full of light and darkness. I bought this book today at Strange Maine for three dollars and I am more than excited to read the whole thing over the course of this soon-to-be-extra-brilliant summer.

7 Year Rabbit Cycle
Chosen & Discussed by Sean Kennedy

7 Year Rabbit Cycle could certainly be referred to as a "super-group;" containing musicians formerly from Deerhoof, Mr. Bungle, and Ten Organs of Admittance, the band accommodates a great collection of influences. The group released 3 albums, "Wind Machines," "Ache Horns," and "Animal People." This band has remained in my library for nearly four years and "Ache Horns" continues to edure as one of my favorite albums.

"Ache Horns" contains numerous qualities from various genres ranging from free jazz to progressive, frpm noise rock, to ambient. Each track contains thick textures and rich atmospheres that are inspiring to say the least. They range in duration from a minute and forty seconds to ten minutes and thirty eight seconds, each being as equally moving as the last. The album opens with an untitled track which features a single xylophone and a simple chord progression which slowly becomes ambient, it acts as a beautiful introduction without exposing the contents of the rest of the album. Throughout the entirety of "Ache Horns" each individual sound communicates with one another. Each voice is emphasized; The bass slowly navigates through every progression, while the drums provide rich texture that compliment the stutters of the guitar, then vocals roll into each, playing off of the deeply textured rhythm. The sound has a structure similar to a book, it works to a crescendo and then gradually falls into the next composition. Within this structure one can feel a narrative, and through this each track - each movement - becomes a chapter.

With this direction of a "book" being known, I will not reveal the details of more individual tracks as that would be a "spoiler." What I will say though, is that I do not dislike ANY of the tracks, which is very rare. However, three personal favorites are "1234," "Puppies," and "Magic Yam Part 2." The composition of the album in it's entirety should also be emphasized, it is so well orchestrated. Each track transitions into the next remarkably well and it continues to remain fresh as well as deeply exciting throughout the whole.

7 Year Rabbit Cycle has been discontinued, but there a various projects now in existence featuring members from the band. Some of which are Badgerlore and Common Eider, King Eider.

"Howard's End" by E.M. Forster
Chosen & discussed by Wade Linebaugh

Don't let godawful publishing choices food you--the stupid cover on the Penguin Classics edition of Howard's End makes the book look like hours of pure boringsauce. Which, sure, if you hate books it might be. But if you're keen on really well-wrought characters loving and being funny and being disappointing (just like real people!), this book is real nice.

Here's the thing. Forster was a brilliant, progressive interesting fellow. All that's pretty nice but what i love is his willingness to interrogate his own interests with his characters. His distrust of the metropolis in Modern England wasn't revolutionary, but it wasn't dogmatic and simplified like, for example, Eliot's was (at times). Forster is much more like Joyce in that: Joyce left Dublin because of its "paralysis" but then spent every moment of the rest of his life reconstructing it, writing it literary love letters, viciously skewering it...Forster works out some fantastically interesting issues about urban decay in the Modern period in this slim book about two sisters, Margaret and Helen Schlegel. It's never as simple as a pastoral country set up against a browning, impersonal city: Howard's End explores space and in so doing also obliquely thinks about England's Imperial project which at the time was still in full swing.

The last thing worth noting in this brief OILIYILI is: sexual panic. Forster was closeted for his entire life; he stopped writing in the 1920s (the teens, really!) and lived until the 70s because he couldn't write about it and couldn't write about anything else. Howard's End is one of only a few novels he wrote and it's fantastic to see the way relationships work (and don't) in a text by an author haunted by affection.

I will do my best to continue making posts here over the course of this summer, though I will be focusing mainly on my songwriting in preparation for our debut full-length. The internet is very spotty where we live now.

Newbury Comics (National Record Store Day, today, 04/17/2010)

2010-04-17T22:52:00.003-04:00

Today was a great day.

One hundred thanks to Sean Carroll for inviting us to partake in his excellently orchestrated shindig today, it was a real blast.

BIG NEWS/PHOENIX REVIEW

2010-04-14T23:38:00.004-04:00

Firstly, Bryan Bruchman wrote a lovely little review of our set at Slainte last Friday for the Portland Phoenix. Check it out here. A favorite quote:

"The crowd was thin, but those who paid attention were fully consumed by the haunting waves of delayed guitars and vocals that filled the room — especially during a stunningly dreamlike rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire.” Battick’s sound is developing at an alarming rate, getting bigger and darker with each move. Though still a young musician, it’s clear that the prolific songwriter has a lot of musical ideas inside him that will manifest publicly in the coming years"

And now, for the MASSIVE NEWS. The good fine folks at [Dog]&[Pony] have set their sights on expanding into a full-fledged record label, and they've invited us to be one of two premier recording acts for the immediate future. We are extremely honored to take up this creative partnership alongside our dear friends, Good Kids Sprouting Horns. Look for massive new changes and output in the coming year, as we look towards several new projects with Nick & Krister.

In addition, Nick has been kind enough to make us a facebook fan page. Become our fan here and receive current news concerning our projects, shows, and all the rest.

First Review of "Heavy the Mountains..."

2010-04-08T09:52:00.006-04:00

The first review of "Heavy the Mountains, Heavy are the Seas" was released in print today at the University of Maine Orono Campus. Kegan Zema, of The Maine Campus, writes:

"If dreams had a soundtrack, it might sound something like Jakob Battick & Friends. Battick, a Bangor native now residing in Gorham, creates drearily poetic music that is so long and drawn-out, it seems to put listeners in a trance. His latest release, “Heavy the Mountains, Heavy Are the Seas,” encapsulates his spacious sound with four lengthy epics".

To read the rest of the review, click here

Several New Shows Announced

2010-04-06T11:33:00.003-04:00

Here is the itinerary for the month of April (And one date already scheduled for May):

-Friday, April 9th @ Slainte (Preble St., Portland)
We will be performing a drumless wall-of-sound set alongside Seth Gallant, touring sadcore-esque songwriter from Vermont/Maine. Free, 21+. Starts 10:00 PM.

-Saturday, April 17th @ Newbury Comics (Maine Mall Road, Portland)
We've been invited to join Newbury Comics' festivities for this year's National Record Store day celebration. We will be doing a somewhat toned down set sometime in the afternoon. I've been told that Marie Stella, Covered In Bees, An Evening With, The Sophomore Beat, and The Watcher will also be playing throughout the day.

-Tuesday, April 27th @ WMPG (Liberation By Sound Radio, 3-5 PM)

DJ Roy has been kind enough to give us a small slot on his excellent local radio show, Liberation By Sound. We'll be playing the same day as both Tiger Saw and Lazarus, two acts that I look up to very much.

-Friday, April 30th @ SMCC, (Fort Road, South Portland)

Southern Maine Community College is putting on Arts Celebration day, focused on their art department and art students/faculty. We've been invited to be the musical entertainment for the day, and we will be performing around 4:00PM to roughly 4:45PM (Full-band with drums).

-Saturday, May 1st @ UMF (Maine Street, Farmington)

Matt Houston of Pamola is putting on another concert on the University of Maine at Farmington campus. We will be doing our full-band thing, Pamola will be playing, Butcher Boy will be playing, Red Medicine (Pamola side project) will be playing, and more. This is a free show, more specifics will emerge in time. These bands that we are playing with are all excellent, furious, and fearless groups on the outer fringes of energetic, DIY, philosophically punk-rooted music. The last time I saw Pamola I thought old old spirits were going to emerge from the walls and possess everyone present.

FREE LIVE DOWNLOAD (Five Songs, Good Audio)

2010-03-25T18:37:00.006-04:00

We are proud to present a free download of our set at Hogfarm Studios in Biddeford last Wednesday. The audio here was taken from the videos David Littlefield shot, and these tracks sound surprisingly excellent. The bass comes through, the definition of the two guitars, even the accordion and the violin come through consistently, it really stands on it's own as a document of the current live sound we've developed.

Jakob Battick & Friends
Live at Hogfarm Studios
03/17/2010

Front Cover

Back Cover

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

1- She Hears What She Cannot See (7:00)
2- Multiple Greens (7:04)
3- The Yellow Bird (4:19)
4- All That Really Lasts (6:23)
5- A Silent Prayer (7:41)

NEW SHOW

2010-03-24T21:58:00.001-04:00

Deli Magazine Interview with Will Ryan

2010-03-24T12:35:00.004-04:00

The interview with Will Ryan of Deli Magazine New England has been posted on the website's main page. You can view the text, with accompanying image, in it's original context HERE. Here is the transcript anyways:

The Deli: How and when did you get your start and what does the "Friends" in your name refer to?

Jakob Battick: I started playing music at the same time that I started recording. I would craft these song cycles of loner folk on an old four-track tape machine, like soundtracks for little strange cartoon worlds, and give them to my friends. I remember banging on dollar store cutlery in my garage to make drum tracks. From there, I passed through loud fuzzed-out noise rock things to slow and wilted dreamfolk things. I formed bands, 1800s Sea Monster & Swollen Spring Violets & Mt. Moon. Somewhere along the line I decided to use my own name, but added "& Friends" to pay honor to the loose, formless collective that accompanies me both on stage and on record. We're all friends, some of us are family. The people I play with are very important to me and to the overall sound we make, so I like to pay them as much respect as I can.

The Deli: You guys remind me of Flying Saucer Attack and some other early 90s dream pop/shoegaze bands, though your sound is much more diverse and very modern. Who are your influences?

Jakob: At the moment, I've been obsessed with Nico's Desertshore album. Modern era composers like Ligeti and Bartok and Stravinsky mean a lot to me as well. Leonard Cohen is a kind of guiding light for us, a champion of sorts. At the same time that we're heavily into Slowdive and Low and The Red House Painters, we're also really into Nick Cave and Tindersticks and dusty old folk things from Europe and The Clash and even things like Drive Like Jehu. I would have to say as well that most of my musical inspiration comes from art and cinema and poetry, Murnau and Chagall and Goya and Lorca. The title of our new EP comes from a Rilke poem.

The Deli: There are current acts like Grouper who seem to be doing similar things to you guys. Do you think the ambient aesthetic is becoming more and more relevant to popular music?

Jakob: I wouldn't say that what we do is "ambient", but I think I know what you're referring to here. We're certainly very purposeful, if not obsessed, with space in sound, both in tone and production. There's a lot of reverb and delay in our guitar work, and a great deal of our recordings are produced in such a way as to suggest a sort of auditory landscape. Atmosphere is integral to our music. But, I wouldn't say that this sort of space-conscious aesthetic is becoming more relevant, I think it's just that there's a whole generation of kids out there that grew up in the wake of 4AD and Creation and the whole ethereal undercurrent of the 80s, and now they're coming of age and making music of their own. I think that the long-term influence of people like Jason Pierce and Peter Kember, or Kevin Shields, is finally being felt on a very widespread and definite level.

The Deli: What's the Portland music scene like? How's your music fit in?

There are a lot of places to play in Portland, a lot of supportive people out and about, and a lot of great bands. But, like any scene, the Portland scene has its tribes and factions. I'm very thankful that we've always found bands we're interested in to play shows with, from era to era within our sound, but I personally think we've never really "fit in". We've always seemed to be the younger brothers to the whole scene, working out on the fringe in our own ways and carrying on. I spent this past summer in Burlington, and it was nothing like Portland. People were far less friendly, less helpful, and no one really seemed to care what we were doing because we weren't playing bar music. Perhaps I just had a bad experience or didn't find the right places to play, but it certainly made Portland seem much more attractive to me from there on out.

The Deli: How do you approach the "experimental" side of things and what does that word mean to you?

I just try to write music that interests me, music that I would want to hear, music that provides a certain release or emotional connection when I perform it. I'm always taking traditional or "proper" ideas and skewing them or stretching and chopping them. I never consciously try to be experimental, it's just that I get bored with certain songwriting mechanics after a while and new things start to interest me. Along the way, they all get combined and assembled into the different versions of the songs I write. Experimental, as a word, has almost endless connotations in my mind. It can range from the wild, in your face side of things, to a more subtle and subversive approach. I have no idea where my music falls, or if it's even really experimental, per se. It's rooted firmly in the narrative, melancholic, balladic American & English folk traditions, but at the same time it is also rooted in the more expressive and open-ended world of underground sounds, what you could call 'experimental music', post-punk or 20th century classical or otherwise. I like to sing pretty songs just as much as I like to throw myself around, so where does that leave me?

The Deli: How do you approach writing and composing songs? You seem to use very specific instrumentation, which gives the sound diversity.

Jakob: Images come into my head, scenes from movies or from memories or paintings, and I try to match the music to the image as best I can. It's a vague process of word writing and music making, combining and recombining until the whole thing feels appropriate. I also like to demo my songs, often a handful of times, before I decide what arrangements feel best. Sometimes the visual-musical link is very conscious, other times it's more of a passive, unconscious thing. My music and my songs are always in a constant state of metamorphosis as a result of all of this. I'm still reinventing and addressing the songs I wrote two or three years ago, I don't like to just leave them the way I first wrote them. If they can't be pushed further then I leave them, but if there's still potential locked in their structures I try to find it.

The Deli: You blend a lot of folk and ambient elements. How do you foresee expanding with those aesthetics?

Jakob: I've been scouring through all of these Central and Eastern European records my Grandfather brought back from Germany and Austria. In a sense, I've been trying to find some understanding of my cultural identity as the child of the children of immigrants, on my mother's side, and as the great great grandson of now-deceased immigrants, on my father's side. That has been a fascinating thing for me, and it has felt really beautiful to reconnect. In any case, I think these sounds will be brought to bear on my songwriting in the future, respectfully of course. We've already got a violin and an accordion, I'd like to see what I can do with digging up some of those old secrets in music and absorbing them into something new and different. As far as the whole atmospheric side of my music goes, it's become a force of habit, I couldn't try to erase it if I tried. These two disparate strains are informing my songwriting right now, in turns and twists.

The Deli: You're releasing a new EP, Heavy the Mountains, Heavy The Seas, at the end of the month. How would you describe the sound on it compared to what you've already recorded?

Jakob: Really, for the first time in my life, I've recorded a collection of songs that I don't quite know how to describe to someone. There are a lot of different directions suggested on this one. The old things are all recombined here, the folk and the floating, with something new. It has melody and structure, but it also has noise and texture and howling. It's a seance record, I wrote it for someone close to me who passed away. I'm writing my own new spiritmusic(s).

The Deli: What was the recording process like?

We ran into some issues with digital errors while recording the drums live. Other than that, everything was very smooth. We do need to consider moving to a studio, or getting some outside help, for the next one, though. We've pushed home recording to the point where we can just barely capture the sounds and arrangements in our head. It really felt like a Herculean effort to pull this whole thing together. I've been thinking of working with Tony from Good Kids Sprouting Horns on the next one, I have faith in his production style. He's one of those guys who can make things sound big, but also strange and dirty. I think also, that we might move to a more fitting locale. "Heavy the Mountains..." was recorded in a little house in a sleepy neighborhood in Bangor, but I think we need to start looking for abandoned houses and such, something that suits the music and the process more. Recording, to me, is a ritual, every aspect of the act is important.

The Deli: What are your current and future focuses for Jakob Battick & Friends?

Jakob: Right now, the big focus is writing and selecting songs for the eventual first full-length album. These three EP releases we've done so far have been sketches and interpretations, steps on the way to the real deal as it were. One day soon, I'll finally be able to pick the eight or nine or ten songs I want to record for the debut. It needs to be something I can be really proud of, something that accurately reflects both where I am and where I will be heading musically. Then, we'll find a location and some recording help and start setting the thing down in stone. I've been working towards this consciously for about a year and a half now, and it will probably be another year before we begin the debut, if not more. Then we can start thinking about setting up a tour and doing all those silly lovely things musicians usually do. We'll have to scavenge through the wreckage of the economy for some terrible day-jobs and fit playing music in and amongst all of that. Maybe everyone will quit on me and I'll have to put together a new band. Only time will tell, I suppose.

--Interview by Will Ryan

Preview "Heavy the Mountains" in its entirety!

2010-03-23T12:04:00.006-04:00

You can preview the entirety of "Heavy the Mountains, Heavy are the Seas" on Last.FM as of yesterday. Completely free, easy, almost like cheating. All four songs, all thirty three minutes of the baest. Be patient, it unfolds slowly and purposefully from the get-go, and it is easily our most experimental release yet, not the sort of album you can just put on in the background at Gram's house while you dig through photo albums from the old country.

CLICK HERE TO PREVIEW
"Heavy the Mountains, Heavy are the Seas"
ON LAST.FM

The interview with Deli Magazine's Will Ryan should be posted on their New England branch website soon. Plans for a release of the audio from our Hogfarm Studios performance last Wednesday are in the works. We love y'alls.

Hog Farm Studios Videos

2010-03-22T12:35:00.000-04:00

All videos by David Littlefield, filmed 03/17/2010 when we opened up for Dust from 1000 Yrs.

(There are three more from the night's set elsewhere on youtube)

Recent Show Photos

2010-03-21T16:38:00.000-04:00

03/17/2010- Hog Farm Studios in Biddeford, ME with Dust from 1000 Yrs. (Photos by Elizabeth Kohler):

03/19/2010- Experimental Dorm Room Concert/Release party for "Heavy the Mountains, Heavy are the Seas" in Robie 408, Gorham, ME (Photo by Marisha Drown)

We recently filmed our session with Georgia and Asher at GOCAT TV here in Gorham and it was a very pleasant experience. Will post the videos here as soon as they're on the internet.

Oh I love it, Yes I Love it #4

2010-03-20T17:05:00.006-04:00

Harry Partch
Chosen & Discussed by Jared Fairfield

There is something inside me that doesn't want me to create. It is fear. Fear of failure. Missed opportunity. Fear of unshakable regret, guilt. It is the ghost, the family bastard, akin to me. Artists of the past stand as gods, immobile statues of translucent blue marble. Who am I? Am I a sniveling insect? I see my reflection in a darkened window. I am translucent too. I can see the howling trees behind me. Quartz in the snow sparkles through my eyes. The stars are inside of me. Nature tangles itself with humanity, ashen dull days are exhaled in ominous grey clouds that hang over the river.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay Self-Reliance: "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." I so profoundly experienced this recognition recently, in the preface of Harry Partch's book, Genesis of a Music. Harry Partch is influential to me on a merely superficial level. He rejected twelve tone equal temperament -- most widely used in western music -- along with creating his own 43 tone scale and many instruments used in his compositions within his system; these things excite me, they appeal to my rebellious young mind. Academia along with it's thoughtless tradition is shunned, and rightfully so. You owe nothing to tradition, other than to pick through it's carcass for some bits of fresh meat.

In Genesis of a Music(of which I've read only the beginning so far), he writes something that just recently has impacted me very greatly. I feel like it was enlightening, a stripping down of a concept so that it's core was revealed to be so simple but so true that it made me laugh out loud. But, along with the power of this truth came a burden that I felt almost instantly. Here is what he wrote:

"Music, "good" or not "good," has only two ingredients that might be called God-given: the capacity of a body to vibrate and produce sound and the mechanism of the human ear that registers it. These two ingredients can be studied and analyzed, but they cannot be changed; they are the comparative constants. All else in the art of music, which may also be studied and analyzed, was created by man or is implicit in human acts and is therefore subject to the fiercest scrutiny and ultimately to approval, indifference, or contempt. In other words, all else is subject to change."

Nothing is absolute! The universe expands! The possibilities in music are literally infinite. I will reach my hands into the darkness, the unseen, and pull out something, one thing out of the infinite. It seems so absurd. It seems impossible now to look upon my music the same ever again. It seems overwhelming, the human life so fragile and finite facing the infinite in all directions. Churches stay open because it's easier to have a basic mould of morality than to walk the streets at night, pulling at your hair, writhing beneath heavy uncertainty, undestined and unfated. Academies stay open for similar reasons, to have moulds ready to form to. It takes it's half-assed theories for self-evident axioms, and builds high upon their shaky foundations. Why not form your own theories? They will be just as arbitrary as any professor's, but they will be yours! Any thought that forms in your head is your own, and it is as equally viable as any of the dusty books that professors and elitist cunts sit upon to raise themselves up over you.

Purely aesthetically, Partch's music falls a little flat for me. I've listened to it enough so that his tonality begins to catch on and make sense, but still, it doesn't seem to grip hold of me so tightly as his ideas. Many of his instruments either do not hold the potential to be carried into new realms of beauty, or they are too new for their potential to be realized fully yet. His obsession with speech is too much for me. I don't think that speech is a good starting point to base music upon. Speech is not concerned with sounding eloquent and beautiful; it is concerned with the communication of ideas. I fully accept music as existing outside the puny and counterproductive languages of men, and celebrate it even. And Partch encourages this dissent in his book, a questioning of all ideas, including his own. In this way he is similar to Emerson, in that both of them advise their students to follow their own ideas, no matter who they contradict, including the masters themselves.

Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" (30th Anniversary Edition)
Chosen & Discussed by Ryan Cutler

Following a break up around a month ago, I purchased Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run” 30th Anniversary Edition box set to set my heart on the right road. When I spotted this cheap, used version of arguably his finest work, I bulged like Bruce’s biceps in his “Born In The U.S.A.” days. Included is a DVD of Springsteen’s first trans-Atlantic show in London at the Hammersmith-Odeon in 1975. Springsteen and the E Street Band entered the town not ready for the hype that preceded them and with this unexpected frenzy, unleashed a collection of songs from “Greetings” to “Born to Run” unto London.

This film documents an incredibly magical, transcendental event that set the tone for Springsteen’s performances. Springsteen has the talent to take a song and make the listener believe in the songs motive and its characters, to propel the listener into a narrative that is relative (given that the listener is lost, in love, and poor to middle working class) to one’s own life. The Hammersmith show takes Springsteen’s best narrative works and gives these songs even more desperation, energy, and depth: the music forces you to be alive. This recent break up I’ve experienced, a pinnacle event in my emotional adult life, has plummeted me deep into the emotions of “Nebraska” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad”, but “Born to Run” and the Hammersmith performance has the power to bring me out of crippling, overtly dramatic emotional experiences. This is what I believe to be Springsteen’s greatest achievement.

He opens with “Thunder Road” stripped down to just piano and voice, providing a subtle intro that doesn’t climax the show too early, but still packing enough desperation to allow the band to overcome throughout the show. The most charming moment for Springsteen that I’ve seen comes in the third song “Spirit in the Night”, where he climbs under the stage, enveloped in darkness, rasping the lyrics and losing his big, goofy hat. The moods are turbulent throughout the 2 hour performance: from the desperate sadness to the utterly inclusive feeling of 50’s Sam Cooke style rock. The music forces you to be included in the communal rapture; it forces you to be alive."

Tadeusz Borowski
Chosen & Discussed by Jakob

Tadeusz Borowski was a Polish writer who survived both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau. His collection of concentration camp memoirs, "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen", is a devastating and unbelievably powerful text. In the face of Borowski's hardships, our own everyday troubles mean nothing. He writes with a stark, frank style that is oftentimes brutally ironic, and he had a vision and perspective that allowed him to occasionally find pure, transcendent beauty inside a living Hell.

Borowski spent a number of years toiling in the labor forces (Specially selected groups of prisoners who were forced into cooperative work with the Nazis, effectively being forced to aid them at a hands-on level in carrying out the holocaust) of three separate concentration camps in Poland and Germany. He had gone to school as a young man to one day be a publishing poet, and spent only three years of his early adult life as a free man before being captured by the Nazis. Miraculously, he managed to survive by working the labor forces throughout the course of the whole war and was eventually liberated by the allied forces in 1945. Despite his own unlikely survival Tadeusz was haunted by the role he played in the camps and carried a perpetual guilt for the remainder of his short life. He would ultimately commit suicide at the tragically young age of 28, almost six years after being freed from the camps, leaving behind a scattered and inconsistent collection of short stories and poems as his creative legacy. His wife and newborn daughter (Born three days before his death) were left to find their own way in his wake.

Borowski is a crucial and oft-forgotten figure in Holocaust literature, and he stands as a sort of larger-than-life sacred figure in my eyes. When I use the word "sacred" to refer to Tadeusz here, I am not speaking in terms of a narrow, limited sense of spirituality but of a universal, limitless realm of human importance. Even at his most broken and hopeless, Tadeusz' insights were permeated with a singular and fragile grace that defies all explanation. He did not deny the insanity of his situation, or the unfathomable cruelty of his oppressors, in some moments he even wrote with a nihilistic perspective almost devoid of positivity or expectation. His work stands as a perfectly harrowing testament to the horrors of the 20th Century and the Second World War precisely because of such unapologetic honesty. There is no cleaning up in his writing, no neatening of the edges, no censoring. At the same time, though, his endless sensitivity and insight makes for much eternal poetry within the framework of his stories:

"Why is it that nobody cries out, nobody spits in their faces, nobody jumps at their throats? We doff our caps to the S.S. men returning from the little wood; if our name is called out we obediently go with them to die, and we do nothing. We starve, we are drenched by rain, we are torn from our families. What is this mystery? This strange power of one man over another? This insane passivity that cannot be overcome? Our only strength is our great number; the gas chambers cannot accommodate all of us."

HEAVY THE MOUNTAINS, HEAVY ARE THE SEAS

2010-03-14T17:32:00.002-04:00

Now producing all 150 eventual copies. Going slow but going well:

Custom-made Kinski stamp image on each disc, manufactured by the good folks at Simon's Stamps, hand-glued cardboard digipak cases purchased from Stumptown Printers. Front cover photo by Chelsea Lauryn Dowd. Blank white discs from Discmakers (Not the most organized major disc-supplying company, I found out. Good blank discs, although I would not recommend them to anyone after my experience this time out).

This Friday (March 19th), a special release show for both "Heavy the Mountains, Heavy are the Seas" & Milo Moyer-Battick's "Oh Kestrel" is being held at our headquarters in Gorham, ME. Silkscreened posters will be available, and copies of both albums will be for sale or for free (depending on the release). This is an experimental invite-only, especially small-scale room show that we've been scheming up for a while now. We'll be airing the whole thing live on ChatRoulette for giggles as well.

"Heavy the Mountains, Heavy are the Seas" will be available officially for five dollars this Friday, March 19th. If anyone is absolutely desperate to score a copy, just drop an e-mail over to jakob.battick@maine.edu and we can work something out.

NEWS

2010-03-05T15:20:00.003-05:00

We've been invited to play a very special show on St. Patrick's Day in Biddeford at Hog Farm Studios with Dust From 1000 Yrs.. Hog Farm Studios is an independently run arts and performance venue on Main Street in Biddeford, and we're very honored to have been invited to play such an excellent venue. In addition, Dust from 1000 Yrs. are a fascinating little experimental lofi-noise-folk-psych-stuff band on tour from Indiana. We're very excited to play with these guys, make sure to check out their music, really great stuff coming to Maine from far away.

We've been slowly chipping away at the split release with Jared Fairfield, the core instruments of all four or five tracks have been recorded, all that remains are auxiliary string and horn parts to be played by Roy and Mark.

We're still working with the folks at GOCAT on performing on Gorham local television. An invitation to play at SMCC in April has also come our way, which is a great opportunity to play in a location where concerts rarely occur. One last recording session at NESCOM is scheduled for the third week in March, and we play Slainte tomorrow night with Huak, Britney's Spear (Featuring Thom Hamill of Scarborough post-rock myth/legends Sand In Fire), and Pamola. This show is completely free and located at 27 Preble St., right off Congress Street in Portland. Huak and Pamola are old favorites and friends of ours, and Britney's Spear are currently out on tour from Worcester, Massachusetts. Their sound is one part agitated post-punk-dance-jitters, one part dream-rock-shoe-float-sound (Coming from ol' Thom Hamill himself), and two large, hefty parts SST-style hardcore (Think Husker Du and Black Flag), adamantly DIY individuals on a small-scale DIY tour through Maine, Vermont, NY, and Mass. Come out and support these upstanding young gentlemen.

Jared Fairfield Split News

2010-02-26T00:17:00.008-05:00

"The oldest woman brings a black hen, kills it, and lets the blood flow
into the hollow on the hearth, which is then smeared over with clay; and
next she roasts the flesh of the hen, while two others bake cakes of
flour prepared especially for this purpose. When everything has thus
been made ready, the head of the family, taking a cup of wine, pours
half of it into the fire; and then, putting a cake upon his head, he
cuts it into four parts, springing about the room all the time."

Recording for the split with Jared Fairfield has officially finally begun. "The Yellow Bird" is the first piece we've chosen to tackle. The roaring wind and light rain outside will feature in the first ten seconds of the track, thanks to Roy and Milo's excellent rain-capturing and presence-projecting skills.

Bad News

2010-02-22T14:42:00.004-05:00

So, major news from the folks at The Deli Magazine. Apparently the information that advertised "free studio recording/mastering time" as one of the prizes for the New England band of the month poll was incorrect and should have not have been posted. This means we will not be recording the full-band sound in a studio anytime in the immediate future.

However, a review by Dylan Martin of our set at Geno's on February 4th was just posted over at the Deli Frontpage, which is an excellent little nugget of positivity to help counteract the let-down of the recording issue.

A particularly fine excerpt taken from Dylan's piece:

"A year ago, Jakob Battick’s songs would have sounded almost gentle and quiet—with the support of acoustic instruments and maybe some light drumming. With a year passed, the group has changed and know have a sound that’s jagged and loud. While the songs are still rooted in folk music, the group isn't afraid to show a little contrast between the soft and sharp. This was especially evident in the elegant sounds of Roy MacNeil’s violin set against Mark Dennis’ pummeling war-drums. It was during these moments that the folk switched to a more tribal sound. "

Here's a great photo from last Friday night's Bangor House show, taken by Ruth Moira Worboys:

The split with Jared Fairfield has been delayed over the past few months, but ideas and excitement are mounting again. Here's to hoping it actually gets finished this time around!

WE WON + Oh I love it, Yes I Love it #3

2010-02-19T13:26:00.004-05:00

(Check out the Bizarre Throbbing Gristle placement in that BMI ad at the top. WTF?)

It is a very proud day for us, we officially won the Deli Magazine New England band of the month poll! A thousand thanks to everyone who voted, left positive comments, and supported us for the past two stressful weeks. Hypothetically, if all goes as expected, we now will get to record in a real studio and master our work afterwards, which could mean that one day we may release a 7" or something. Who knows. We really could not have done this without the phenomenal surge of support from all of our friends, family, and listeners. We will be forever indebted to all of you for even this small triumph. Thanks a million.

"Oh I Love it, Yes I Love it" #3

1) Okkulte Stimmen Mediale Musik
Chosen & Discussed by Jakob

A three disc box set of supposed paranormal recordings. You get the essential glossolalia tracks, electronic voice phenomenon tracks (EVP), possessed children tracks, and spirit medium communication tracks along with the more elusive bits (Think the last Harry Houdini seance, chants sung by Aleister Crowley himself, Leslie Flint channeling Oscar Wilde, and Chopin supposedly being broadcast supernaturally where no Chopin should ever be broadcast). As with all of these sorts of things, it is virtually impossible to tell which tracks are fake and which tracks are more legitimate, or if any of them are legitimate at all. However, they're still fascinating little audio documents of modern superstition and fear. Most of these tracks sound very very old, which also adds a certain aura to the proceedings. I can't tell for the life of me if this is an actual product for sale or just an internet bundle, but in any case you can find it here (A fantastic blog for drone, acid-psych, experimental, & ultra-obscure weirdo 60s/70s records).

2) "And The Ass Saw The Angel" by Nick Cave
Chosen & Discussed by Milo Moyer-Battick

Over Christmas vacation I finally had time to read Nick Cave's first novel "And the Ass Saw the Angel" (which I found used in a used bookstore in St. Albans, Vermont. go figure). for a while I had been intimidated to read the thing as the first few pages depict a gory trailer-trash birth, which ends with a broken glass bottle 'c-section'. I decided then it was a winter-book. The plot is laid out sometimes in third person, and sometimes in first person, in which case "Ah" is substituted for "I" ('And the Ass' takes place in the deep American south). It's general mood does not change much from it's initial grim and gritty outlook, as one of the two newborns soon dies. This occurrence produces one of my favorite quotes of the book:
“and with one grub-sized knuckle ah knocked out a message, using a system of coded raps, taps and gaps that mah brother and ah had devised while adrift in the purling fremitus of the womb. Do-Not-Forget-Your-Brother-Reply. But mah brother did not… Undaunted, ah told him what life was like, and inquired about any special powers he may have developed in Death”

This kind of bittersweet imagination is present throughout the novel. The detail in his descriptions is often overflowing; you can visualize Nick hunched over some writing desk with a candle burning, aggressively pronouncing each word in a sentence. Cave has an immense vocabulary, including bits of phrases or metaphors that come straight out of his song lyrics ( “long crags and sunless cracks” for example). It goes without saying that avid Nick Cave fans will grin when they come across these recognizable lines. I believe ‘From Her to Eternity’ was either released or in production when this book was being written, and concurrent American southern themes are apparent in both works. Themes of mass flooding, torture, filth, holiness, salvation and re-birth make up a few of the many biblical references made in ‘And the Ass Saw the Angel‘ (many of which, however, went over my head). The initial pace of the book admittedly slows, but the 300+ pages go by fairly quick. The shifting dynamic of separate narrators often leads to strange twists (especially when the main character’s mind begins to go). The ending is slightly predictable, but still well executed. I recommend to in-depth fans of Nick Cave, blah blah bah. Generally, moments of innocence and beauty (like the quote above) make the otherwise gritty novel worth sticking to, but I still stand by my first impression that this is a winter book.

3) American Football
Chosen & Discussed by Mark Dennis

I wanted to write about Dawson's Creek tonight, but I couldn't exactly boil it down into something small and concise enough for an OILIYILI entry. But it is seriously great and next time you have a week off you could do far worse things than sit down and watch the whole series.

Tonight's required listening is the entire American Football discography – it's only twelve songs, so that's not a whole lot to ask. I choose American Football tonight because I want to write about the power of wordless music. Now if you've done your homework you're probably thinking “but Mark, 75% of American Football songs have words in them!”. Right you are, but it doesn't really matter. These twelve songs have been some of my absolute favorite pieces of music for almost two years now, but I don't actually know any American Football lyrics. Sure I know a couple here and there, but I could never karaoke a whole song or write one down on the cover of my trapper keeper while I'm bored in math class. Yet these songs have been constantly drifting in and out of my earspace for two years. How could I not know the words? It's simply because, as is so often the case in worthwhile music, the words just don't matter.

Now I'm not saying that the words never matter. Lots of excellent music, including a good majority of JB&CO's rep, is intensely lyric-driven. That's all fine and dandy, and I don't want to belittle or disparage any budding poets out there. But for so much amazing music, the words don't matter at all. The difference, I think, is a matter of intention.

In my six or seven years of taking myself seriously as a creator of music, it has become exceedingly obvious that the most noble purpose in writing music, the reason for creating that results in a product with the most integrity and universal appeal, is the raw encapsulation and expression of emotion. Music functions best when it's expressing something that language is incapable of adequately representing. But the human voice is such a beautiful and powerful expressive tool. How then, do we reconcile the need to use words with the incapability of words to achieve our goal? Ultimately, the words will fall short and somehow fail, but it doesn't really matter. As long as the delivery is right, as long as the whole sonic architecture does what it needs to, the actual syllables being used are insignificant. I don't know what words Mike Kinsella is singing, but I know exactly what he's feeling.

It's actually a lot like Dawson's Creek. The characters use all these impossibly big words and don't sound at all like the teenagers they're supposed to be. The dialogue is absurd and forced, but in the end, you still feel exactly the way they want you to feel. In the end the words don't matter.

The words don't matter.

Geno's Set Videos (By David Littlefield)

2010-02-10T08:24:00.003-05:00

First and foremost:

We have been doing relatively good in the polls this whole time. However, every vote still counts, and if you haven't voted yet you should consider doing so ASAP. Spread the word, tell your friends, do anything you possibly can to get the word out.

GENO'S SET, THE NIGHT OF 02/04/2010
(Filmed by David Littlefield)

Song 1- "She Hears What She Cannot See" (Patric Cunningham cover)

Song 2- "Multiple Greens"

Song 3- "The Yellow Bird"

Song 4- "All That Really Lasts"

Song 5- "A Silent Prayer"

Many many thanks to David for doing such a wonderful job documenting the evening for us. Also many thanks to Mark for having such a fierce mustache, and to Jon for his fantastic dress-and-tights combo that night.

WE'RE IN THE DELI MAGAZINE NE BAND OF THE MONTH POLL!

2010-02-06T13:12:00.002-05:00

Somehow we have been nominated and placed in the running for the Deli Magazine New England's Band of the Month Poll. If we win, we will receive a two week spot at the top of their website and free recording/mastering time in a studio somewhere (Which would enable us to capture our newest full-wall-of-sound arrangements in professional fidelity, which is something we've been struggling to do for a long while now). You don't need to register or give and e-mail to vote, or anything of that sort. All you need to do is head over to the link below, check the righthand side of the page for the poll box, and click "vote". I know this is a very strange turn of events, and a strange proposition, but if you're reading this we would love it if you would just consider voting for us, no more/no less.

TO VOTE:

http://newengland.thedelimagazine.com/

And now, some photographs taken at Thursday night's Geno's set by Justin T. Brown:

Portland Press Herald

2010-02-05T13:15:00.005-05:00

Click on the images to view larger sizes:

Many many many thanks to Mike Olcott.

Geno's was terrific last night. Planets Around The Sun are well on their way and their own personal path through the world of spiritmusic(s). Never have sounds and rhythms carried my mind to such a strange place. You have to experience it to believe it.

Good Kids always do a great job. As fantastically impressive as "Give Up The Gost" is, I think on certain nights they even surpass it live. Their is a certain broken ferocity to Tony's vocal presence that is even more full in person, and the weight of the drums and bass (When the bass is used) is just phenomenal in concert.

(David Littlefield got all of our set on video last night.)

Another "Oh I love it" coming shortly....

Nine Brothers & The Wolf

2010-02-02T00:14:00.004-05:00

A preview from the forthcoming EP, which will be officially titled "Heavy The Mountains, Heavy Are The Seas". There are three other songs apart from this one, and this is the ballad of the bunch, the nylon-string acoustic number, the newest song that I have yet recorded. I figured, since this has been trickled out on twenty or thirty free CDs at the past two or three shows, this might as well be THE track to unveil first. As it stands here and now, let this song be dedicated to the late Elizabeth Csamerda, and perhaps to Richard Walter as well.

Nine Brothers & The Wolf by jakobbattick

It should also be mentioned that Thursday's (Feb 4th, same day as our upcoming Geno's show with Planets Around The Sun and Good Kids Sprouting Horns) Portland Press Herald will feature a Jakob Battick & Friends questionnaire/interview along with a nice b/w photo from our set at The Big Easy recently. Mike Olcott was gracious enough to write to me and give us this coverage, and for that I am very very grateful. Keep your eyes peeled, pick up a copy.

SPACE Gallery photos

2010-02-01T00:04:00.002-05:00

Taken by our good friend Chelsea Lauryn Dowd:

Jonathan Donnell took some great color shots that you can see here.

Elaine De Kooning died today in 1989.

SPACE Gallery video, "Oh Kestrel" images

2010-01-27T18:56:00.004-05:00

Willow and John have center stage while "The Yellow Bird" takes flight behind them at SPACE gallery on a miserably rainy Monday night. Filmed by Marisha.

Milo finished his Oh Kestrel project! He has approximately thirty copies of the CD waiting to be claimed by anyone interested:

Limited edition cat covers, each copy has a different cat:

Default alternate cover for when the cats run out (Also included inside the cat copies):

Four panel black and white insert:

These things are packed with goodies and other images/inserts/etc.

SPACE went well, we did two extended versions of Milo's pieces, a cover of Patric Cunningham's "The Moon & The Bird", "It's A Grace", "Sister Song", a cover of Leonard Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong", an abbreviated version of "A Silent Prayer", and the new piece posted above ("The Yellow Bird"). Thirteen copies of a free sampler entitled "1/25/09" were given out, each including the finished mix of the unreleased track "Nine Brothers & The Wolf" (Which will be eventually released on "Heavy the Mountains, Heavy are the Seas").

Looking forward to Geno's next week.

Oh Kestrel

2010-01-19T17:47:00.003-05:00

Milo is working on the packages for what will be his first album, entitled "Oh Kestrel". This handful of sounds and songs (8 compositions in total) is a sort of auditory landscape, almost like a field recording from some imaginary wilderness at points, or long lost ceremonial folk melodies at other points. Accordion is the main instrument throughout, but there are bits of finger-plucked acoustic guitar here and there, booming and minimal percussion off in the distance of some tracks, and this gorgeous water sound he recorded with the help of strange pans. Needless to say, I am very very excited for the first thirty copies to get out into the world. However, I am even more excited for the bright and odd musical future this surprising and unexpected EP suggests. This came out of nowhere, and now my head is full of strange and beautiful dreams of what "Oh Kestrel" will lead to in the future.

I will be posting more as images, news, and potentially mp3 samples surface.

Cezanne was born today in 1839.

Heavy The Mountains.....

2010-01-15T17:41:00.005-05:00

"Don't be afraid to suffer heaviness,
return it to the Earth- to the Earth's own weight;
heavy the mountains, heavy are the seas.

Even the trees you carried to plant
as children, have long since become too heavy for you.
But wait, for there are pauses...there are spaces..."

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Yves Tanguy died today in 1955.

More photos

2010-01-14T19:50:00.003-05:00

Photographs from today's NESCOM session, the last until February.

I have a plan for a new EP in the works already, I'm hoping it won't vanish into thin air. More mixing for the independently-produced EP tomorrow, might be pushing that one back to February for unleashing as well to ensure proper mixing.

Troy Fish is a great man for inviting us to record with him.

Leaving a parting gift tonight:

"Wish I could sail in a big black boat
With a big white sail over me"

Lewis Carrol died today in 1898.

Photos- House show, NESCOM, and a flier.

2010-01-12T18:39:00.002-05:00

The Geno's show has been finally worked out:

Secret Bangor House Show @326B:

These two taken by Marisha:

These three taken by Ryan Eyestone:

There is talk of making a loud band this summer. A loud record is being made at NESCOM this week with Troy Fish, here are some photographs from today's session:

NESCOM has an amazing and beautiful array of high quality gear and all the rest. I look at their massive supply of sound equipment and find myself amazed, but simultaneously taken aback. I find it hard to believe that any real and heavy art can be made in such a manufactured and sterile environment, and yet great albums are made in spaces just like these each and ever year (I would wager that less great albums are made in top-notch studios these days, and more in creaky old houses and home studios and weird fields and beyond). I am very thankful for these sessions, and very excited to hear what comes of all this work, but I already know that each day will show me a little more how such formal and "professional" environments are really not for me or for my process.

Mixing on the "real" new record of the experimental new material is going slow but good. A lot of audio errors and clipping and red levels. Each struggle is a great opportunity to learn. Very excited for this one.

Story Time

2010-01-05T18:27:00.009-05:00

I just wanted to share this:

"The Yellow Bird"
From "Folktales of Hungary" by Linda Dégh

Beyond the seas, on the yonder edge of the wide world, there was once a hunter who went in pursuit of a bird for seven years, trying to shoot it down. But he never shot it down.
     The hunter had a wife and a daughter. They lived in the forest. One day, the hunter sent his wife to the well. But a violent storm came on, and the woman was struck dead by a stroke of lightning. Well, they buried her, and he was left alone with his daughter. But he never gave up his pursuit of the yellow bird.
     Time wore on, and a year passed by. The hunter sent his daughter to the well. But again a violent storm came on, and she too was struck by a stroke of lightning. He was left all alone. And for seven years he lived in grief in the forest. He went about in the forest and got along somehow. One day he fell ill and he died. There wasn't anyone to bury him. The carrion beetles and the blow flies finished off his unburied corpse. His skull split up, and the rains filled it with water. Then the yellow bird flew there to take a sip of water. But as it alighted on the brim of the skull, the split up parts closed over the bird. Then the bird broke into song: "In all your life you never ceased to pursue me. Now that you are dead, you've caught me. But of what use is that to you?"
     So both were dead, and there was nobody to bury them.
     That's all of it.

NEWS:

The split with Jared Fairfield is slowly crawling out of the void. Here is the cover, far from finished:

Jared sent some phenomenal recordings that he's done for this and they crushed my heart. Here's the full-band version of "The Queen", probably one of my most favorite things he's ever done:

The queen (Full Band Arrangement) by jakobbattick

ADDITIONALLY!

Jesse has almost finished the Tea & Oranges Website. Expect good things upon completion, as in free downloads, EPs, prints, stickers, and the second Daydream Extravaganza. We've been internet-homeless for far too long, and much has changed in the meantime. Border Towns has a new EP that never got released properly, Jared released several albums and EPs under his name and the old Askeemal moniker, and Captain Hollow formed out of the ashes of In Houses In Tree's apparent collapse. Everybody cross their fingers....

"Oh I love it, Yes I love it" #2

2010-01-01T23:11:00.008-05:00

Time again for that monthly selection of our current favorites:

1) Current 93- "Soft Black Stars"
Chosen and discussed by Jakob

I've been digging my way through Current 93's endless back catalogue of releases. The End-times folk of "Thunder Perfect Mind" has only recently come to my attention, and that album is proving to be a real masterpiece as I have become more and more familiar with it over the past few days. The earlier album "Christ and the Pale Queens Mighty in Sorrow" immediately caught my interest because of its freewheeling and heretical assemblage of drone, ballad, and noise. However, "Soft Black Stars" immediately stands out, in my mind, as a total classic among and apart from the rest of David Tibet's monumental output over the past 28 years or so.

Tibet belongs to that relentlessly experimental contemporary class of artists and musicians who eschew traditional notions of songcraft and fixed musical identity in favor of a metamorphic and genre-devouring approach to music that focuses far more on narrative, lyricism, texture, and atmosphere rather than the usual fixations of melody, rhythm, and meticulously drafted structure. For this, Tibet is a hero in my eyes, an explorer on the edge of unknown and often frightening territory in sound and music. Ironically, it is partially the relative lack of this sort of alien musicality that makes "Soft Black Stars" such a startling work in its own right, and simultaneously an excellent way to try to find an entrance into the weird and daunting world of Current 93.

The album is made up entirely of the gorgeously melancholic piano of Maja Elliott and Tibet's half-spoken, half-sung poetry. This minimalism is a large part of the reason that "Soft Black Stars" stands in stark contrast to the rest of the C93 oeuvre. Additionally, the songs here possess a rare melodic sensibility that is much more accessible than Tibet's usual style, and the songs have a sort of wilted, bruised quality both lyrically and musically. "Gothic Love Song" is possibly the most accessible Tibet song ever (and the most tongue in cheek), but it's still miles from your typical tear-jerker torch-song, and tracks like "Larkspur and Lazarus" or "Whilst the Night Rejoices Profound and Still" have undercurrents of desperation and surrender that are very very captivating, with wildly transformative and romantic narratives to boot. It's the sort of music for rainy, grey days and lonely weekends, somewhat broken and very weary, but lovely nonetheless. It is exactly this seemingly exaggerated fragility that appears to be Soft Black Stars' immediate and initial flaw, and the album leans more to the side of poeticism and sadness that most would be quick to deem pretentious or affected. To me, in relation to this album, these descriptors are rubbish. I listen to Soft Black Stars and hear a wholeheartedly authentic collection of reflections on life and love that is bittersweet and nostalgic for sure, but also loaded with the heavy searching and transcendental potential of something much much more. Live videos from this era of Current 93's existence are also worth investigating, with Tibet pushed front and center in all his vulnerability to absent-mindedly sway and shuffle as he becomes lost in the sheer power of his words.

2) Philip Glass- "Solo Piano"
Chosen and Discussed by Milo Moyer-Battick

Last week I acquired my own copy of Philip Glass’s “Solo Piano” album. And although I’ve grown to love his more orchestrated ‘fuller’ compositions, the broken-down piano arrangements on “Solo Piano” have become easily my favorite Glass pieces. The repetition of one particular melody played throughout most of the album ( a melody that is always worked-on and expanded upon, beginning on Metamorphosis 1) quickly became familiar and even personal. Really beautiful. I’m not sure that the word “minimal” really applies to Solo Piano, for the arrangements are repetitious, but by no means simple; the melodies themselves are quite simple, but the dynamic and structure of the melodies are much more complex. The song “Mad Rush” in particular contains wave after wave of massive sound. The songs are so repetitious that at certain points my focus wanders, but then a quick change in dynamic brings me back. Good album for making art to, but I wouldn’t categorize it as ‘background music’ at all.

3) "Ask the Dust" by John Fante
Chosen and Discussed by Jared Fairfield

This novel is one of those wonderful examples of truly human character, a display of unrepressed and internal dueling emotions so tightly knit, that it tops even Crime and Punishment in my mind. The book is fluid. It flows seamlessly through good humor, then wretched pain; joyous love, then aching regret; cold atheism, then apologies to God. The narrator and main character, impoverished writer Arturo Bandini, possesses all these essential human characteristics in excess. We are taken through the depths of his contradictions, confusion, and chaos. His Catholic background clashes with his admiration of Nietzsche. He is at once disgusted and annoyed by the waitress at the bar down the street, and then is infatuated by her. He proposes marriage in a telegram and then immediately regrets it, trying to catch the messenger before he delivers it. He is enamored with his own skill at writing, then is sickened by himself, his weakness, his artistic impotence, which feels all too familiar with me:

"Sometimes an idea floated harmlessly through the room. It was like a small white bird. It meant no ill-will. It only wanted to help me, dear little bird. But I would strike at it, hammer it out across the keyboard, and it would die on my hands."

Charles Bukowski wrote the introduction in the copy I own, and the debt that he owes Fante is great. The sentences are simple, but there is a poetry to them, they are carved into the page. There is real craft in them. John Fante is a master in my mind, easily as valuable to American literature as Walt Whitman.

NEWS:

Working on a February show at Geno's still. Planets Around The Sun have confirmed, they're excellent local psych-noise-improv eccentrics. Still waiting on the other group I had picked out to confirm or not. Here's hoping...

Next week we lay down the drums for our new recordings, and the week after we'll be doing some sessions at NESCOM with Troy Fish. Expect weird and new things in the coming months. I think, in regards to what was going to be the new EP we've been self-recording, our project has blossomed into a real monster that may take much more time and end up containing many more songs than we had initially expected. Only time will tell, and I will hereby stop speculating on the issue and instead only bring up these recordings when real progress and presentable material has been produced. It's silly to speculate, anyways.

News

2009-12-24T14:50:00.002-05:00

Recording and rehearsing has been going on non-stop for the past four days now. Guitars and bass successfully tracked for both "Always Returning/Never Returning" and "A Silent Prayer". Vocals tracked as well for "Always Returning/Never Returning". A new song for the new release, currently titled "Nine Brothers and The Wolf", has been written and tracked in the majority. Mark will be laying down his drum tracks in almost a week and a half, in the meantime "All That Really Lasts" and the vocals for "A Silent Prayer" are next on the list. In the worst case scenario, these recordings will be extended to include February break for mixing and final tweaks. If a great majority of this stuff is finished by January 18th, though, I am sure that most of it will see the light of day in an intermediate, transitional, and sneaky way for those who need it most. Things are going really well, and if all of this goes off as planned we should end up with a very proud record, something certainly worthy of being the legitimate and serious follow-up to A Burial In Seven Births.

A show is in the works at Geno's for February. There is a secret house show in Bangor on January 9th, which will be full of pleasant surprises for long-timers who show up (Let's just say that a very old and loud 1800s Sea Monster track is being dusted off for the first time in a long, long while, among other things). I will be distributing the last copies of "Nosophoros" at that show and then I'll have to start coming up with ideas for the next free CD. We also have two very special performances coming up at the end of January. We've been invited to play on a local access channel in Gorham, on a musical series entitled "Sessions From The Shed". The people at the station are very nice and were adamant that we come play on their show, which was a wonderful surprise. It will be strange to be on constant rotation throughout the day for all the old ladies watching local access. Secondly, Words & Images (USM's student literature and poetry magazine) has invited me to play at their annual release and readings party at SPACE Gallery, which is very very exciting. Apparently the amount of space on stage for us will be tiny, so the lineup will consist of myself on reverb electric and Milo on accordion. Mark Dennis may make an appearance on delayed floaty guitar, one never knows with the Dennis. We'll be playing instrumental pieces and shorter songs between readings, and a miniature set during the intermission. This is a wonderful challenge for me as a musician and songwriter, and the possibilities have got my brain all riled up! I've always been interested in soundtracks and functional music, so this is a real honor.

Here are some more photos from our set at The Big Easy last Friday. These are really great, and they were taken by Justin T. Brown:

24 Hour Obsession #1 with Mark Dennis/Yurt Show photos and recordings

2009-12-21T22:31:00.006-05:00

Another new soon-to-be-series of posts from a JB&Friends family member!

24-hour obsession #1 – The Weepies
By Mark Dennis

Some days, everything just sort of falls into place and an album finally clicks with you. For me today was one of those days, and the album was, of all things, Say I Am You by The Weepies. For the unfamiliar reader, this sort of cutesy twee pop is by no means my usual fare. The Weepies, however, have done a lot of things really well in making their music into much more than it initially seems.
The thing that immediately grabbed and kept my attention is that this album is full of fantastic, beautiful harmonies. There is something really magical about the interaction of two separate human voices singing with the same spirit and feeling, and when push comes to shove, it’s probably the best thing that happens in any music. I certainly feel like it’s one of the most important things I contribute to Jakob’s music (this is probably The Jeff Factor, which is very different from The Geoff Factor. I’ll go into details on these concepts another time.) If this year’s obsessions with Richard and Linda Thompson and South China have taught me anything, it’s that there’s extra beauty in the shared singing of an intimate couple, and in this regard The Weepies offer plenty of additional proof. Above all else, the tastefully written and sublimely executed harmonies are what makes this record initially noteworthy in comparison with its peers.

Say I Am You is a calming, contemplative, peaceful album. There is something very warm and inviting about Deb Talan’s voice that encourages the listener to just relax and be at ease. There are a few songs that fail to realize this atmosphere, and those are undoubtedly the weakest tracks on the album. Yes, I’m looking at you “Love Doesn’t Last Too Long” and “Take It From Me”. The former is guilty of being downright depressing and using a progression with far too many strong tendency tones (tip for aspiring songwriters: never use true minor tonalities. You will either sound like a shitty blues variant or some sort of awful baroque throwback and the song will just suck). The latter is guilty of outpacing itself and sounding dangerously close to late-career Alanis Morissette. The rest of the album, by and large, is a tasty blend of folk and pop that is both immediately accessible and increasingly rewarding with each subsequent hearing. Say I Am You is, at the end of the day, an album that feels really nice without requiring a big emotional investment. And we could all do with a bit more of just feeling nice.

News

Pictures from our show in Alna, ME on December 12th have been developed! These were taken by Dan at Lee & Rachel's Yurt. Pete Swegart's band Butcher Boy and Tete Beche also played.

Our set that night consisted of an acoustic cover of "Lost In The Supermarket", "All That Really Lasts", "Multiple Greens", "Prayer", and "Her Limbs Are Little Bodies of Stars". This particular show served as a fun foray back into the older folksy songs of two years or so ago, featuring two Swollen Spring Violets songs (Prayer and Multiple Greens) and one song written at the extreme tail end of 1800s Sea Monster (Her Limbs). Performers included Milo on accordion, Roy on violin, Dan on acoustic guitar, Jonathan Downs on acoustic for "All That Really Lasts" and Alek Maliski on drums for both "Multiple Greens" and "Her Limbs". Lee Michael was kind enough to tape the shindig on his miniature barbie karaoke tape recorder and to send the tape along to me. I've digitized the set, which unfortunately doesn't include the Clash cover (Not a big deal though, as I could have done much better), and decided to make it available here for anyone interested. Be warned that the fidelity is very spontaneous and direct, this is typical one-track mono cassette sound, quick and dirty. However, I think the spirit and passion in "Multiple Greens" and some of the others was captured very well through this no-frills recording approach. Additionally, Roy's violin is captured beautifully and candidly here at several points throughout the set.

I have been stewing on the idea of returning at least partially to four-track recording for some experimental ideas I have in my head, and seeing Lee Michael and Rachel play as Tete Beche at the show (And hearing their fascinating tapes) was a really inspiring and thought-provoking experience for me that has sharpened my inclination to return to analog at least partially here and there. All of this having been said, let's let this rough four-song bundle of recordings stand as a tribute to the wild and totally unique magic cooped up in that tiny yurt in Alna . It should be obvious to most upon first listen that this is really only for the dedicated and honestly interested, the open-minded, the thoughtful listener. If you're looking for polish and sheen, this is something else altogether:

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE SET VIA MEDIAFIRE

Big Easy/New Shirts/Limited free CD/New Demo

2009-12-19T12:50:00.006-05:00

We played our first show at the Big Easy last night. Sound was fairly solid, despite the fact that I feel like I can never actually hear how the music really sounds as soon as monitors and fancy microphones and mixing boards and direct inputs become involved, it all just becomes detached and re-arranged and unclear to me. We were definitely also the odd band out in the lineup.

We started our set with a cover of "She Hears What She Cannot See" (The old Mt. Moon song written by Patric Cunningham of In Houses In Trees and Captain Hollow, who has been basically like family to me throughout the years) that built from just electric guitar and singing to bass, accordion, viola, and drums throughout the song's structure, as each member of the group took the stage successively in turns. "Worm to The Robin" came next and I still doubt its usefulness as a bar song, but then again the music seems to almost never be the real focus of a concert at a bar (Which ultimately makes most bar shows seem pretty lame). We played "All That Really Lasts" with drums and bass and all, fleshing it out with more dynamics and a much harder kick and impact on the choruses and especially on the nasty outro. For our final song we played "A Silent Prayer" for the first time with a rhythm section. I am tremendously proud of this song, both as a piece of music and as a piece of performance, and I look forward to playing it at more shows in the immediate future. The recorded version currently on our myspace is much much much more subdued than the live version, which is full of tension and release and a truly exhausting outro that is the most ferocious thing I've played since way back in the 1800s Sea Monster days. I hadn't thrown myself around a stage as much as I did last night in a long time, and I still wasn't up to the old standards of complete surrender anyhow. Here are some lovely pictures Marisha snapped:

I spent most of the day yesterday in the print shop heat-setting new t-shirts and printing up some covers for another limited-run giveaway CD to hand out at the show last night. Here are some photos of both:

These new shirts are a little more adventurous and experimental than the last ones. There are some new color shirts (Green and a few new shades of blue), and a whole slew of new color schemes (Red/Yellow on black, Green/Yellow on Green, Lime on Dark Blue, Dark Purple on white, and some experimental layered shirts with repetitious ghosting of the image and a partial "stereo" vision effect all on black and light blue in shades of white, grey, and tan intermixed). Once again, these are eight dollars each and completely wash-safe, fabric inks for permanency, heatset by hand. Most of these are medium sized this time around, although I have one or two smalls and one or two larges. These have been consistently going very very fast, so if you want one of these in particular please speak up (Message me, comment on this post, e-mail me if you can find my address or have it) and I would be glad to help you out.

This is "Nosophoros", a sneak-peak of the sounds to come in these new recordings happening over winter break. The cover is hand silkscreened on heavy brown paper, in low-contrast ultra-dark blues, and there is a tracklisting handwritten on the inside of each copy. I gave out around seven last night, and I plan to distribute the last five or six at the next show (Which will hopefully be a house show I'm arranging in Bangor in early January). The sound featured here is more indicative of our new direction: more experimental, more abstract, more dissonant at points, exploring alternate tonalities, feeling free to stretch out on select instrumental passages, etc.

1- "Always Returning/Never Returning" (Brand new song, very rough demo)
2- "A Silent Prayer" (Original demo/sketch)
3- "Landscape With Saint Jerome" (Acoustic demo from "...The Painful Places"
4- "Limetree Arbour" (Nick Cave Cover)
5- "All That Really Lasts" (Live audio from our Dog & Pony session)

I have been hiding this first new song for a while now, but I've finally decided to share it with whoever's interested. This is intended to be the opening track on the next EP, and it features an extended instrumental introduction that unfolds over the course of two or three minutes. The second half of the song explodes into a marching-paced minor-key chant, surrounded by ringing guitars and alternately droning/howling voices on all sides. I apologize for the mix distortion at the end of the song, I plan to correct this in the final version. Keep in mind that this is the first recorded version of this song, and that it is a very rough sketch in terms of sound quality and production. I would recommend that this be listened to quite loudly on a decent pair of speakers. Enjoy!

"Always Returning/Never Returning" by jakobbattick

It feels great to finally have a somewhat solid core of invested and proficient musicians behind me, rather than the far more organic and lumpen mass of players I had been using recently. The focusing of our arrangements is definitely teaching me a lot and proving to be a beneficial experience. Many thanks to Milo Moyer-Battick for his accordion, Roy Macneil for his violin and viola, Mark Dennis for his drumming and guitar, and Dan Littlefield for his bass. I would also like to thank Geoff Zimmerman for getting us the show last night, we really appreciate it.

Current Influences and Inspirations

2009-12-15T02:34:00.005-05:00

The music I make is closely related (Almost dictated, even) by the images that are floating around in my mind in any given week, month, or season. The experience of writing music, for me, is oftentimes a game of matching sound to visuals. Paintings, films, prints, drawings, daydreams, atmospheres, and photographs are the largest influence and impetus for all of my songs. If someone could track my visual obsessions from period to period, I'm certain that the trends and strains present therein would easily explain the changes in the tone and style of my songwriting from that period. The connection is really powerful, and I would love to meet other people who operate in the same fashion.

Goya is a massive favorite of mine right now. All of his work, across periods and mediums, tends to have a deeply haunted, ghostly quality to it. In his earlier portraits and commissioned genre scenes this ethereal darkness is much more subdued and runs more like an undercurrent below the surface of the image. In later works, especially the Quinto Del Sordo series, the nightmarish quality in his work bursts through to the forefront and almost takes over his entire visual focus. Even still, the beasts that wander through his nebulous landscapes have a very gloomy and nocturnal feel to them, rather than the more cartoonish and surreal monsters of, say, Hieronymus Bosch. Goya's fully mature work is the art of insanity, of fever dreams, and of a vast bleak plain of disorder and fear. To me, I see direct metaphoric parallels to the sound of Gyorgi Ligeti's Requiem or some of Nick Cave's earliest and emptiest post-Birthday Party solo albums (Moments on From Her To Eternity for sure).

Max Ernst, a German painter who bridged the gap from Berlin Dada to a very peculiar and personal take on Surrealism. Ernst is a master of vast, eery, cavernous space, and a great majority of his painterly works have a wonderful floating, weightless feeling to them. He is unlike the other surrealists in many ways and, to me, is the most varied and interesting individual lumped into that half-assed collective. I am just as inspired by his early collage drawings as by his middle period dream murals and his later hallucinatory futuristic-organic frottage landscapes. However, the real crown jewel in the Ernst catalogue, to me, is ultimately his series of collage-novels. These works are permeated with a deep sense of mystery, and they toy with purposefully suggestive and open-ended imagery to create a mess of potential dimension and meaning, depending on the viewer. The way in which Ernst deconstructed and reassembled 19th century prints and illustrations into such lyrical and gorgeous scenes of metamorphic poetry is just incredible. I find myself fascinated with finding parallels between collage in fine art and certain anarchist sound-collage noise-assemblage techniques in music concrete, industrial, and underground music across the board. There is something inherently political/philosophical and brilliantly radical in both worlds of the technique that I am desperately attempting to come to terms with in some of my own work.

A better sampler video can be watched Here, but it is no longer embeddable and so I had to substitute the more disturbing one above. All of Herzog's film collaborations with the actor Klaus Kinski are among my most favorite pieces of cinema ever. Nosferatu, in particular, is especially weary and hazy, all sleepy and old-world (My favorite vibe right now). Great vampire movies are hard to come by and, in my opinion, most of them fail miserably at surpassing Murnau's original Nosferatu (Yes, that is the WHOLE movie). However, Herzog really did the unthinkable with his rendition of the seminal vampire film and transcended the legacy of Friedrich Wilhelm into some other bizarre territory altogether. This film has had a defining influence on my life, as silly as that sounds, for the past year or so. It's not just a silly obsession with the imagery of Nosferatu (As the t-shirt designs may lead you to conclude), but a fascination with something much more elemental at the core of the story of Count Orlock and Jonathan Harker, and the look and feel of that deserted and decrepit castle. I can't fully explain it right now, maybe one day I will be able to. For now, all I will say is that this film is the guiding light for the new material I have been writing and recording recently.

That's all for now. We're playing the Big Easy this Friday in Portland. "A Silent Prayer" will be fleshed out in all its droney-stormy dynamism, and I hope the drunks don't kill me.

DOG & PONY FINALLY!

2009-12-09T23:24:00.003-05:00

The Dog & Pony Video session has finally aired! Many thanks to Nick Poulin and Krister Rollins for being such wonderful, encouraging, and great guys.

Jakob Battick + Friends from [dog]and[pony] on Vimeo.

The house show in Portland went great Monday night. I played, for the first time, a cover of Depeche Mode's "The Things You Said" and I think I might make it a recurring feature in our sets for a bit. Mark and Milo accompanied me on floaty electric guitar and accordion, respectively. No photos were taken as the lighting was all moody and intimate. Private tiny little shows with a superbly interested audience are definitely proving to be my favorites. Many thanks to Jazz & the residents at Monroe Street for putting up with our glacial reverb-ness.

Yurt show this weekend! My mind is stewing with thoughts of getting back to Bangor to record new pieces through late December and early January. Hopefully an apartment show can materialize in Bangor in that time period.

"Oh I love it, Yes I Love it" #1

2009-12-06T15:35:00.002-05:00

News:

The Dog & Pony video episode is officially set to be online this Tuesday. Myself, Milo Moyer-Battick, Mark Dennis, Roy Macneil, and Ryan Cutler all performed on a handful of takes of "All That Really Lasts" (The newest and most successful arrangement yet, not the same as the version that appears on The Painful Places Will All Fly From Me), pseudo-dissonant gnar-classical-slowcore outro and all. I am currently preparing the second small run of tee shirts to be printed, all in light ink on black fabric, and I already have some orders in. If anyone wants one, let me know, because the first run went extremely fast. Once again, they cost eight dollars, are completely hand-silkscreened and heat-set, and are totally washable and dry cleaner ready. Here's a preview of the image, as painted on the screen (This is just a vague approximation of what the shirts will look like):

I have a show at an apartment in Portland this monday, planning a new cover to open the set, and it's going to be a very nice, intimate, down-home affair. These are easily my favorite sort of shows. Kudos to Jazz Aden-Wood for the invite to play.

Now, Introducing the first series of continuos monthly-themed posts:

"Oh I love it, Yes I love it" #1
Recent cultural obsessions chosen & discussed by JB&Co.

1) Nurse With Wound's "Homotopy to Marie"
(Picked & Discussed by Jakob)

I have been stewing extensively on the nature of microphones, studio production, and the endless aspects of recorded music & the way we experience it. Nurse With Wound is a band that directly confronts these issues in my mind. When you listen to a NWW album, you are confronted with terrifying sounds assembled from tapes, broken circuitry, electronic signals, and the occasional real instrument (Long before Wolf Eyes got around to making this sort of thing an uber-cool hip thing to do, bless their little confounding hearts) all arranged as a nightmare soundscape. There is no illusion or pretense of a real space being presented, or EVEN of a real band or group playing, the focus is almost always entirely placed on the studio and recording desk as an instrument itself. Most of the tracks on record, presumably, could never be accurately reproduced, only variations, although I have never seen them live. The overall aesthetic of NWW is one very very similar metaphorically to the dream collages of Max Ernst, the old German Dada/Surrealist visionary. It almost seems that albums like Homotopy to Marie are near-perfect musical equivalents to Une Semaine De Bonte (Ernst's stream of consciousness collage-novel) or some of Hans Bellmer's photographs.

2) Of Montreal's "The Bird Who Continues to Eat the Rabbit's Flower"
(Picked & Discussed by Jesse Meunier)

This one's an extended EP of their early recordings. Its weirdo jangly bedroom pop with a Beatle-esque bent. Extremely catchy songs that are generally upbeat or kind of silly with some melancholic and kinda fucked-up undertones smattered here and there. Some really great offbeat lyrics in this one, like in "On The Drive Home"; "I was crying my eyes out/ everything I drank turned to tears/ cherry cola tears/ iced tea tears." Some really nice use of slide guitar, especially in the aforementioned.

I've learned to love the Yoko Ono cover "I felt like smashing my head through a clear glass window," which closes the album. I'm not a huge fan of the beginning, but around the middle of the song, the feel changes, and Kevin Barnes' kid-like voice singing out desperately about how messed up this family is, is goddamn heartbreaking; "Trying to get their love is like watching ice cream melt when you're hungry / They gave me a watch that's guaranteed not to break / But my Mommy and Daddy broke up last fall." and "Daddy, I'd rather have you dead than crazy."

3) "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski
(Picked & Discussed by Wade Linebaugh)

I was completely prepared to hate House of Leaves. Besides the bulk of it and the footnotes (and second- and third-order footnotes) and its sometimes-moniker 'Infinite Jest Jr.', it just seemed kind of douchey in its mysteriousness. And mysterious it is. The plot and everything are fairly complicated to get into, and the book is complex but I'll focus on the biggest reason I'm really enjoying the time i've spent with this book lately: House of Leaves is a trade paperback that revives book as art-object.

It may seem ultrapostmodern and purposefully weird, but this book calls attention to itself as an object, assembling collages and letters and odd indices and incorporating typography and graphic design into the narrative. It forces you to interact with it in unexpected ways, with the text mimicking the labyrinthine house at the center of the book. House of Leaves is a semi-horror story semi-love story that constantly questions its own truth, leaving readers to investigate the evidence that loads its appendices. That investigation gave me a special relationship to the book and leads me to the most redeeming thing about it. House of Leaves is enthralling to read. It's not just something to appreciate intellectually, but a book that propels you through its 700-page bulk quickly simply because it's actually interesting.

Csamerda

2009-12-01T20:09:00.011-05:00

The benefit concert at the Universal Unitarian Church in Bangor this past Saturday night went off without a hitch. I made eight copies of a special mix CD (Seen above) of some of my more obscure demos, alternate takes, and little odds and ends and distributed them to particularly kind, helpful, and appreciative members of the crowd. The CD was entitled "Csamerda" (The last name of a long-ago great, great, great and so on Hungarian grandmother) and the art for the cd was made of cut out sheets of discarded Marden's fabric, in a lovely blue and white vaguely European folk-pattern print.

Here is the tracklisting for the CD:

1- "A Colony of Choirfish"
(Brief tape Instrumental, 2007)
2- "It's A Grace (Only Bodies Can Impart)"
(Original demo, from "Some Songs In Chronological Order" 2008)
3- "The Worm to the Robin"
(Mt. Moon demo from "Bless Those Sleepy Sleepy Lights", 2008)
4- "Sister Song"
(From "Hiding In The Orchard", 2009)
5- "I Love You"
(Tape song from "The Twelve Ways To Grace The Stars", 2006)
6- "Her Limbs Are Little Bodies of Stars"
(From "She Can Be The Bear She Wished She Was", 2007)
7- "As Before If Not More"
(From "Hiding In The Orchard, 2009)
8- "Limetree Arbour"
(Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds cover, unreleased, 2009)
9- "Massive Moth, My Dreamfield"
(Mt. Moon demo from "Bless Those Sleepy Sleepy Lights", 2008)
10-"All That Really Lasts"
(Acoustic demo from "The Painful Places Will All Fly From Me", 2009)
11-"Multiple Greens"
(From "Some Songs in Chronological Order", 2008)

Musicians on these recordings include: Krissy Barker (Voice, xylophone), Patric Cunningham (Drums, voice), Mark Dennis (Guitar, trumpet, voice), Ryan Higgins (Voice, bass), Joe Mcleod (Euphonium), and Milo Moyer-Battick (Accordion).

In addition, here are some photos Jacob Folsom snapped of the set:

NEWS!

The Dog & Pony live video session has been postponed indefinitely, it will most likely come out in a week or two. The song being featured has switched from "Multiple Greens" to "All That Really Lasts". Work has begun on a new split release (Internet download and limited edition handmade small-run CD-R) with Jared Fairfield. My side of the split will feature all new recordings of my most recent material, including fully fleshed out arrangements of "A Silent Prayer" and "All That Really Lasts", along with at least two new brand new songs (And the sound is headed in some very exciting directions). Jared's half of the split will feature all new songs he's been tinkering with, some of which have a very floaty psych-baroque feel to them, stately almost. Expect gorgeous and peculiar things on his part. All the recordings for this release are scheduled to be finished by the end of January. In all likelihood, my half of the split will see an eventual release as my newest EP, on the same scale of production and dissemination that "Hiding In The Orchard" saw around that time last year. These new sounds will be the sort that may alienate most folks, so be prepared.

Welcome!

2009-11-26T00:06:00.004-05:00

2009 is coming to a close, and it is my intention to turn this blog into the eventual catch-all single-stop for all media related to Jakob Battick & Friends. Myspace is of little use any more beyond arranging concerts and easily hosting a bundle of recordings. Expect images, recordings, merchandise, news, links, written musings, videos, and more to all be presented primarily here from now on.

In recent news, Milo and I have learned to silkscreen. I made some single-color tee-shirts with my Nosferatu design on them, all in small and medium in various shades of blues and blacks. All the shirts were hand printed with quality fabric ink and heat-set by hand with a standard clothing iron. I'm selling them for eight dollars each:

Here is a photo of Milo wearing a dark blue shirt with bright green ink:

The video session we recently completed with Dog & Pony should be going up tomorrow. "Multiple Greens" was recorded in its classic full-band folk-rock arrangement, and "All That Really Lasts" (A New song) was recorded for potential inclusion as an extra bonus video on the eventual second Dog and Pony DVD coming out next year after the second season of their videos is completed.

I recently made new runs of all three of my major releases thus far: The retrospective odds n' ends album "Some Songs in Chronological Order", the electric-guitar-and-reverb shoegaze/slowcore floaty EP "Hiding in the Orchard", and the four-song acoustic EP of brand-new compostions entitled "The Painful Places Will All Fly From Me". They come complete with black and white artwork hand-assembled onto recycled Bingo Card backings, in Cd-r form, for three dollars each.

"Some Songs...":

"Hiding In The Orchard":

"The Painful Places...":

I will be playing a show in Bangor this Saturday evening (11/28/2009, 6:00pm) at the Universal Unitarian Church at 120 Park Street. Also playing are Jason Unterreiner from Wood Burning Cat, Good Kids Sprouting Horns (Tony Bitetti's great great great new group, think uber-confessional broken loud droning casio and shuffling heavy rhythmic drums type songwriting), Captain Hollow (Dreamy emo-tinged guitar rock from Ryan Higgins, longtime close friend and ex-member of Mt. Moon and 1800s Sea Monster, one-time member of Patric Cunningham's In Houses In Trees.), Pamola (Good friends, highly expressive, cracking breaking exploding at-once-gorgeous-and-devastating math/emo/noise/avant-rock from southern Maine), and more. This is a benefit concert for the Shaw House for troubled and wayward teens.

I also have a show in a yurt in the middle of the woods near Damariscotta (across from 1805 route 218, Alna, ME, 04535) at 6:00 on Saturday, December 12th with Pete Swegart (Great country/folk punk from southern Maine), Good Kids Sprouting Horns (Again, I just love this band), and Lee Michael (Think crazed folkpunk experimental lofi moonshine stuff, real real visionary weirdness from a very peculiar revisionary fever-dream version of rural Americana).

Following that show, I have a gig at the Big Easy Friday December 18th in Portland Maine opening for Geoff Zimmerman and his City Flower Reconstruction Band, sure to be an interesting bar show. The music we make either leaves bars befuddled and disappointed or somewhat surprised and pleased, on bad nights and good nights respectively.

That's a lot for now, so I'll leave it at that, but there's much more to come.