Thanks to Greg Fox, John Also & Ben Bennett for taking part and to everyone coming out. Special times fer sure. Oh, and thanks to Grasshopper, isa christ, jeff donaldson & millions for jamming this year. Like I said, special times.
So, as I’m sure you’ve already read upstream, I recently had the pleasure of rolling/jamming on Champagne of Fests IV with Telecult Powers, and as much as I don’t fancy myself a “blogger,” Witchbeam is creeping at me for a retrospective account. As I did sleep on two couches associated with him in two different states in the last two weeks, I suppose it’s only fair that I comply…
Highlights:
Perfect scale for the fest (two nights, 7-2) and a totally different, albeit equally high-quality vibe from last year.
Main Stage PA at Now That’s Class substantially improved and still mindbendingly overpowered for the room, with predictably mindbending results, particularly during Mike Shiflet’s set (probably the strongest live showing I’ve seen/heard from him to date, which is truly saying something!) and Emeralds’, a circa-30-minute take on “Genetic,” which was basically like being brutally deprogrammed through full-spectrum riff tonnage. ”The Continuing Story of Counterpoint” for the Abu Ghraib generation. ”Fucked up” doesn’t begin to describe it.
Killer afternoon beach trip with Kate, Road Chief, Big John, Tarantula Hill gang, et al…and speaking of said gang, Nautical Almanac feat. Weyes Bluhd was multi-tendriled, symbiotic, and perfectly confounding. Arguably the finest “general-purpose” (i.e. excepting VoV last summer) NA set I’ve seen to date. Oh yeah, and Julian was there, too! Got to see him blast a Synaptic Foliage set for the first time as well, which was a perfectly unhurried/focused basement chiller of the highest order!
Telecult Powers and Grasshopper pre-fest jammer at Bent Crayon (and hanging at Bent Crayon in general). Speaking of TP/Ghop, I finally got to hear Hex Breaker Quintet in action, and true to the form of both constituent units, the results were utterly unlike anything else of the contemporary moment; dual modular/dual processed trumpet, all thru 4x mic’d amps in floorcore-revival zone with oceans of class to spare. Crazy quasi-post-chamberjazz dynamics around the edges, with a massive and lusciously detailed journey into the nebula at the center. Someone get these dawgs on wax asap, and while you’re at it, get that Fragments/Moth Cock crossover into some sort of disgusting aspic! One of the better head-scratchers of my entire “summer vacation,” that!
Huevos a la Mexicana and pickled carrots at Mi Pueblo.
Schurt Kwitters Open Mouth tape reish’d on wax, and Hanson distro table in general! Dilloway also in peerless form headlining night one, in tandem with Robert Turman, a duo that’s audibly gone from “collab” (i.e. “gentlemanly exchange of ideas”) to “project” (i.e. “fully articulated parallel universe“) in the year or so since I last heard it, to phenomenal effect. Two of the finest players in the game right now, and always a pleasure/privilege to witness. Their recent Medusa tape is a total ripper as well!
Lowlights (basically also highlights, albeit introduced by minor bummers):
Drink tix only good for Dortmunder??? Not clear on why Great Lakes is hell-bent on pushing the worst thing they make (it’s like this in Philly, too), but whatever. I talked them into giving me Bell‘s Oberon anyway, and speaking of amazingshitfromMichigan (WORST SEGUE IN THIS ARTICLE, I KNOW!), I finally got to check Dog Lady after a couple years of Wyatt and Dilloway talking him up to me and could not have been more psyched by what transpired…incredible next level in the evolution of Michigan basement dub and one of my favorite memories of the entire trip. Total jawdropper.
Neither Viebranz nor Delzoppo represented in the lineup this year! Admirable anti-conflict-of-interest stance (insofar as they curated the whole affair), but still, would’ve been sick for us out-of-towners to have the chance to check ‘em in current incarnations.
Walk to Almanar still as grueling as ever. Seriously, fuck the entirety of West 117th between Detroit and Triskett.
Kate ate my spinach pie. I’m pretty sure she really enjoyed it though, so this is maybe more of a neutral point than a totally negative one.
Someone ran non-flavored coffee through the flavor grinder at Root Cafe. German chocolate cake aftertaste fucked up my life for a solid afternoon. (Root Cafe is cool though…don’t wanna imply that this is par for their particular course!)
No Skin Graft set! (Still, it’s only fair to note that Wyatt kicked all sorts of ass in Jerk and DPI, respectively.)
Lechuguillas hanging but not jamming! Chicago crew out in force, though, and permutating with rust belt-specific agility: high-density splatter jazz from Forbes/Laughlin and pummelling basement scum-rock from Naked Island, a new post-post-hXc agglomeration of Tiger Hatchery/Heat Death/Chemtrails. Rulers, all.
Not nearly enough time in town to catch up with everyone! Very much wanted to get Bbob and Kristen’s take on their recent and welcome revival of duo Fluxmonkey, which delivered everything I could have possibly wanted from both the “wonky” and “ludic” columns simultaneously. VERY different and equally beautiful approach from their more “polite”/restrained second stage performance at VoV last summer!
Joe playing lamer gig on the other side of town and not on hand to be with an AUSTRALIAN woman.
Basically, that’s it, right? I have this idea that I may follow this up with a “best of tour trades” review over at Deception Island before too long, but really, I’m probably not excited enough about the internet to follow through, so yeah. Who knows.
I’ve known Adam Egypt Mortimer forever, back at the Nexus, long before it became Barbelith. We chatted a couple of weeks ago and he kept hinting at something big coming up on the horizon, and hell, this must be it.
Sinatoro, a man with no past and no memories; the sole survivor of a car crash in the middle of a desolate American desert road. When he encounters the beautiful daughter of a cult leader, she convinces him to help defeat the forces of evil, which have overrun her town. His journey pits him against the world’s most dangerous gangster and allies him with a deranged astronaut, a drunken cowboy, and an army of hobos. As Sinatoro travels through an American landscape made of pop culture nightmares, he struggles to understand who he is and why everyone is out to get him.
So fuck yeah, congrats Adam. Exciting news. So hey, did this get you the gig?
UPDATE
Adam talks about it a bit over at his blog/website:
Award winning comic book writer and psychedelic baddass Grant Morrison is giving me a script for what might be one of the most insane American movies in a decade. SINATORO is a psychedelic science fiction revenge thriller set in a landscape made of American pop culture nightmares. Grant and I have been looking for years to do a project together. When he pitched this thing to me I had pick pieces of my blown mind up off the floor before saying, enthusiastically, FUCK YEAH LET’S DO THIS. I’ve pretty much ALWAYS wanted to direct a Morrison story.
The Green Man. If you spend any time in the woods you may know this guy. I haven’t seen him since I moved to Brooklyn, not even in Prospect Park, but we were pretty tight back in Ohio.
He’s a spirit of pagan origin, but like all great ideas he winds up in cathedrals all across Europe. He has a another name and form as Jack-in-the-Green, a few pics are included, and many cousins such as Cernunnos, Sylvanus, Derg Corra, Green George,John Barleycorn, Robin Goodfellow, Puck, and the Green Knight, all of which partake of the Green Man’s nature; Shakespeare calls out Puck as Robin Goodfellow in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream…
that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?
So it looks like excepter.com got swallowed into a red tape black hole, update your bookmarks to http://www.excepter.net
Friday, August 13th check out the return of Sexxxual Iceland. Essentially Excepter/Telecult hybrid super group Virginal Volcanoes with our ladies. With Emerald’s side slab Outer Space & Drainolith, at Party Expo, details forthcoming.
We moved the temple to Ohio for a few days last weekend for the Champagne of Fests, and while there we took a side trip to Windsor to check out the 50 foot Mary. A beautiful and impressive site, it’s cool to see the feminine goddess of Christianity honored in such a grand scale in rural Ohio.
Note the world’s largest rosary in front of her, encircling the pond and ending up at a large crucifix/statue of Jesus at the the other end, also holding crucifixes. I bet if you looked hard enough you would find a little Jesus holding another rosary, to infinity.
Make sure you click the thumbnails to see the full pictures!
telecult.powers@gmail.com The online home of Telecult Powers, the technicians and custodians of the divine Temple of Pei. The Temple of Pei resides in an astral plane but can be entered during the live performances (aka “Black Meditations”) of Telecult Powers. Also name of Telecult’s cassette label.more →
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TempleOfPei God quit fucking up my mind so I just put a bunch of hot sauce on blueberries.
TempleOfPei By Request: Champagne of Fests IV Retrospective by @bees_removed http://bit.ly/dzOlr3
