Longform Editions is a curatorial music practice created to foster and celebrate immersive listening experiences for the musically adventurous. Launched in 2018, Longform Editions was founded by Andrew Khedoori and Mark Gowing, based on the collective experience of their long running Preservation label. The organisation was originally born out of a desire to enable a deeper attention to listening utilising contemporary digital music delivery systems. Longform Editions was not conceived as a record label, rather it is more like an ever-evolving group show at an art gallery, but online, with music.
My suggestion is to load up their editions page; marvel at the consistent (and evolving) artwork that they have embraced over the last seven years and then click at random to discover something immersive. Maybe you'll land on Gavilán Rayna Russom, LCD Soundsystem member. Maybe you'll land on Rich Ruth, Nashville ambient composer. Maybe Susan Alcorn, the recently departed and incredibly influential creator in pedal steel. That said, I imagine it's the names you don't know that will be even more rewarding than the ones you do.
It's a shame that Longform is shutting down but I have the utmost respect for anyone that recognizes the limitations of an endeavor and chooses to start anew. It's a helluva body of work to say the least.
Generally speaking, I don't care to ramble on about myself. That said, I knew that with my new podcast YK World, I would want to provide some context for how the show came to be.. which would require a bit of a deep dive on me.
How We Got Here is forty minutes of looking back at my experiences with art, music and technology leading up to how I met Ross Wariner and launched yk Records. None of the episode talks about how the label actually functions but it basically does some broad strokes from the beginning to 2009, when the label begins.
I promise not every episode will be so self-indulgent but I do hope that the background provides some context for future episodes. And, yes, those are two perfectly awkward photos of me in college. Enjoy!
The Superbowl is this weekend, please consider following this kids lead and decorate yourself with ice cream. I mean, just try it out. Here's some videos I've been hoarding that I'm now ready to share:
Chazmo Finally Goes Home - this Tim Robinson / Sam Richardson commercial series has been around for a bit but this is the Superbowl version. A bit gruesome but a fitting end to the series. If you have not seen the others, please watch them.
February is the worst month - apparently this weatherman's screed against February is from 2016 but I'd never seen it before this year. His deadpan delivery is spot on. I don't agree with him but I love his vibe.
Fountain by Zilvinas Kempinas - there's not much to this video but this cassette installation piece is mesmerizing. I'd love to see it in real life.
Corgi Skateboard - America's Funniest Home Videos walked so this Internet video could run.
Mike Patton, Adult Themes for Voice transcription - I was already familiar with the vocal insanity of Mike Patton but was not aware that he released an album in 1996 called Adult Themes for Voice - a noise album recorded in hotel rooms while touring with Faith No More. It's difficult to listen to but this transcription from John Curry makes it a bit more engaging.
David Lynch on the Quest for the Perfect Milkshake - as you may know, David Lynch went to Bob's Big Boy every day for seven years. One of the reasons for this was the quest for the perfect milkshake.. which he actually obtained a few times!
David Lynch With His Boys - from the Eraserhead bonus materials, David Lynch hanging out with this five Woody Woodpecker dolls. He saved their lives. If this makes no sense to you, that's okay. It's Lynch!
Subpixel Snake - Friday Videos shouldn't be 5 minutes long nor should they be educational but this is both. It's also wild that this person built a game of Snake using only subpixels. You can't play it because you can't see it! But it exists.
The LaserDisc Turtle - apparently if you had a LaserDisc player and put the disc in upside down, you'd get this delighted little turtle. I love him. He seems so content to be wrong side up.
I recently became aware of ElasticStage, a UK based company that claims to make "vinyl on demand." They sorta explain how it works but are intentionally vague about it, presumably to protect their unique process. Based on what I can cobble together, my best guess is that it's a lathe cutting process on 140g black PETG (not quite the same as traditional vinyl) that is machine controlled in some way. Regardless of what they're doing, I had to give it a try. I am happy to report, after multiple orders - I am confident in the quality!
To that end, today we are announcing 20 copies of Talking With Hands excellent album Organic Machine. I am confident the quality is better than what you traditionally associate with a lathe cut, the packaging is great and it's an excellent way to hear the record.
Bonus! Today, Feb 7, Bandcamp is donating 100% of their proceeds to MusiCares, to benefit those affected in Southern California. So, go pick up some stuff on Bandcamp!
I'm sure there are many ridiculous creations from Brandon Hare to explore and enjoy but, today, I am imploring you to dive deep into Bluejeweled - "a mod for bejeweled 3 to add more blue."
Without spoiling anything I just gottta say, make sure you play it and make sure you play past Level 1. I don't care if you don't like Bejeweled or games of its ilk.. just click through!
The day before Fat Tuesday is called Lundi Gras (aka Fat Monday). On that day, the Krewe of Red Beans marches through the Marigny neighborhood, showcasing their incredibly unique bean-laden creations. This intro video gives you a great overview and taste of the creations but it's, truly, impossible to fully capture the magic of it all. Check this Camellia Bean Blog Entry for a taste of it.
It's also worth noting that while the creativity of the parade is incredibly impressive, the Krewe is also a huge hub for community good with their Beanlandia project. It's a membership program, a giant warehouse space and a commitment to ensuring that locals are taken care of. People tend to think of New Orleans and Mardi Gras as an excuse to just be sloppy drunk (which certainly happens) but it's a town deeply soaked in creativity and fellowship.
Artist EJ Hill created this massive Brake Run Helix installation inside of the MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art... which looks fantastic). It is a working rollercoaster that holds exactly one person and doesn't run that often. I love the museums writeup:
In Brake Run Helix, Hill inverts the experience of riding a roller coaster, transforming it from a shared ritual of joy and terror to an individual performance: only one person may ride the roller coaster, Brava!, at a time. Brava!’s single cart emerges from behind a two-story velvet stage curtain, moves across the coaster’s pink tracks, and ultimately comes to rest on the wooden stage, while onlookers observe from below. Visitors can see the roller coaster activated by riders throughout the day.
If you'd like, you can see it in action both from fan videos and official walkthroughs. I'm sure it was a delight to see in person.
Today I launched YK World, a brand new podcast about music, art and technology. I plan to use it to cover releases from yk Records but I also want to cover a wide range of topics - digital distribution, physical manufacturing, how film can inspire music creation, etc. etc. I say this all much more clearly in the first mini episode:
As I say in the show, I don't want to adhere to any strict format. I plan on having very short episodes, long episodes, episodes where I'm the host, episodes where I'm not present at all. I want to let it be a fungible experience. We'll see how that turns out! In the short term, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or wherever you like to listen!
I also forced myself not to put any tracking on the show. So, I will have zero insight into the number of people listening to each episode. Part of me feels this is a horrible mistake, another part of me feels like it is the most liberating choice I could possible make. I'll speak more on that in a future episode I'm sure.
In that first episode I mention the "The Nashville 100" playlist from Lance Conzett - 100 songs from Nashville artists that he finds influential or important. Many yk artists made the list and I couldn't be more flattered. Please go follow Lance and listen to that playlist.
When Totally Real Records announced The Speed of Time from phoneswithchords, I was instantly intrigued simply by the artwork - a cacophony of crackled paint forming a topographic map of sorts. Turns out the piece is called "The Whole Kitchen Sink" - which certainly makes sense.
Truthfully, there's a RIYL in the bio that cites "The Dandy Warhols, Pixies, Flaming Lips, R.E.M. " - bands that I know Bryan from Totally Real Records would not include in a bio if it weren't an accurate recommendation. Those are lofty band comparison to make but listening back, they are a great jumping off point. I'd throw in Sparklehorse, Goldcard and Sebadoh in the ring for good measure.
Of course, comparing one band to another band should only serve as a way to get you in the door - I don't mean to insinuate that The Speed of Time is ripping those bands off. There is a delightful bedroom style production to the record but only aids in making the fuzzy parts fuzzier and the intimate parts more intimate. "Are You Asleep?" and title track "The Speed of Time" are great examples of both, respectively.
Really enjoying the record and finding that it grows on me with each repeated listen. Tracks like "I Won't Let You Down" are enjoyable pop gems on first listen but feel like a wistful, explosive, yearning for spring on repeated plays.
Get it in your ears and make sure to follow along for future releases.
I don't know how I stumbled on the work of Ian Laseter Bush (aka Banshees Ritual) but I am poring over all of the details and style in every piece being offered up to the world. Over on the Poster Shop there are a number of Dawes posters, many with an incredibly amount of fine details to enjoy. Overall, it's the fun illustrative style that gets me but that details keep my eyeballs darting around.
If you, like me, are a fan of Failure, Autolux, Year of the Rabbit and ON*, get yourself over to NoiseZone on YouTube for a treasure trove of bootlegs, in-studio performances, TV broadcasts and music videos. Rarely am I tempted to download videos off YouTube but, in this case, it feels inevitable these will end up on a harddrive for long term enjoyment.
* There's not actually any ON here but you get what I mean. Also, if you're a fan of Swans, you should click through.
If you are unfamiliar, Chewbacchus is a Mardi Gras Krewe that celebrates all things sci-fi with their walking parade. This year the parade was themed as "Rise of the Superb Owl" - a nod to What We Do In the Shadows and a great way to get special guest Mark Proksch to appear!
This 90m video is delightful. The Mardi Gras walking parades are rife with costumes and floats that unbelievably impressive and often hilarious. There may be other parades like DragonCon or even ComicCon that have similar parades but none can hold a candle to the unique style here.
I recently watched Steve Buscemi's 1996 directorial debut Trees Lounge - an excellent little indie comedy-drama with characters making questionable decisions and an unbelievably stacked cast (tho, in 1996 maybe not so obvious that it was stacked). Definitely worth a watch.
I was also quite struck by the closing credits song from Hayden! Somehow I'd never heard this or just forgotten about it in the last 29 years. Regardless, damn good song.. time to revisit Hayden.
I recently became aware of San Francisco's Martin Olive - a photographer, dispensary owner and all around man about town. He even had a little viral moment last year regarding a response to some cat-caller on the street.
I stumbled across Olive because his friends are raising funds after he was shot. I know that's a shocking way to share brand new information about a person but there it is. I look forward to his recovery.
Last October, General Trust released GT1 – a compilation of all of the music he had released up to that point, along with a cassette only bonus track and a fantastic performance video for “If I Could Change Your Mind.” All good stuff. That release actually closed out the first "era" of General Trust, now begins the second era.
Breaking the seal on 2025, General Trust unveils “Apologia” – a brand new single available on Bandcamp and Ampwall this week (and YouTube, Nina, Artcore, Mirlo and Soundcloud). The track will hit traditional streaming early next week.
The track continues General Trust’s evolution and expansion through dark, foreboding compositions driven by synth and pop sensibilities. Only time will tell how this new era folds but it’s starting off with a gripping offering.
I help produce a podcast called Devalued; a show about the balance between art and money. There are many great episodes - Damon Krukowski! Steve Albini! Mary Mancini! Suzanna Cianni! - but, of course, I recommend subscribing and listening to them all. Most recently, host Michael Ackley got caught up in a work obligation and I had to step in as substitute! Swapping Michael for Michael, a classic switcheroo.
In this episode, we talk Radio Power with Jason Moon Wilkins and Emily Young - the Program Director and Events Director (respectively) of WNXP. They were kind enough to chat for a lengthy amount of time and provide lots of insights into how radio is still relevant in the music industry, how they strive to be a bi-directional part of the Nashville community and how artists can benefit from radio play.
With all the talk of streaming's abysmal royalty rates and the exhausting march towards automation (see The Ghosts In The Machine), it's incredibly refreshing to hear from these two about how much human involvement is required to make the station work as well as it does. I was quite happy to be a part of the interview, hope you enjoy it!
I was always an avid fan of The Books, the collage / sample-based musicians with four excellent albums and a load of delightful b-sides. I'd read rumors that they disbanded around 2012 in an unpleasant way. Half of the band - Nick Zammuto - released solo music but I always wondered what happened.
This 2018 Interview with Paul de Jong - the other half of the band - doesn't really give much insight into why the band broke up but it does provide some insights into their creative process that I'd never read before. Here are a few excerpts from de Jong I rather enjoyed...
Regarding The Books sample library:
A large part of The Books' creative process consists of finding, choosing and combining the right samples. On an album like The Lemon of Pink are hundreds, maybe even thousands. 'It could be a few words, a sigh or a whole minute of babble', De Jong explains. 'Background noise or a musical note. As long as it's interesting and I have the idea that I want to have something to do with it.' De Jong now has a gigantic archive in a kind of coach house behind his house, in which everything up to the digital age is welcome, from VHS tapes to cassettes and LPs. 'But nothing is mainstream, everything is obscure. For example, there are no feature films in there, only instructional tapes, from education, the medical world or the church.' The archive consists of about 350 boxes, which De Jong digitizes one by one. For this purpose, he has built a setup of ancient computers in a separate room. 'All they have to do is absorb video or sound. In the title, De Jong types out as many words from the fragment as possible. 'Then you can simply find samples later with Microsoft's search system.'
On the lack of looping samples:
'When I listen to how samples are used nowadays, I feel very related to how hip-hop cuts and loops. In The Books we never really looped, because I am absolutely convinced that you have to change something when you repeat it. If you repeat a recording identically, your subconscious immediately notices that. That does not mean that you hear more, but actually that you get used to it the second time and hear it less the third time. You hardly hear the essence of the sample anymore, but know it. That does create a lot of space for other elements, such as text, which occupies an essential position in hip-hop.'
There's plenty more but I'll let you go read it yourself.
Stumbling on this was a nice reminder to revisit all of the old releases from The Books but also a gentle nudge to listen to the latest solo material from both de Jong and Zammuto.
Vaporwave comes in many flavors but one style I had not yet encountered is the Grocery Store variant. Yes! We're Open is twelve soothing tracks overheard through the various aisles while you browse.
It would be understandable to call this muzak but it's not quite that. Like a lot of vaporwave, there's a lo-fi production quality to it that evokes a slightly unnerving atmosphere. Similar to The Backrooms, there's just something ominous about it.
Despite that underlying vibe, I enjoy it! It's good background music while you work as it does transport you to some other strange place. IMO, it's best to start with Track 2.
Thanks to attending SXSW more than once, I'm signed up to an infinite number of PR emails about new releases from bands. It's a lot of noise and I don't envy any publicist trying to break through that but, occasionally, something does break through.
I know nothing about Atlanta band Applesauce Tears but their latest release, Balcony Confidential, is an immersive and captivating listen. The largely instrumental album is cinematic, psychedelic and dripping with vibes. If you're a fan of Of Montreal, Black Moth Super Rainbow, reverb-y sax solos and a wash of synths, I think it's a safe bet you should hit play on this one.
Turns out they have twelve albums and have been at it since at least 2010. It's a delightful new discovery all around.
