Monday, April 27, 2009

First Show Ever at The Malo Funhouse, Recordings and L'KEG Show on Saturday




We played a fun and crazy show at our house on Friday for Oliver's Birthday and all i could say is that we played a pretty psychedelic set. Denise played with us on the synth and then live drums. We were all so psyched about it because this is the first time that we are having show at our house which Rhea named the 'Malo Funhouse'. She says "Malo" stands for magick and love. Anyways, thanks to The Health Club who played a great set and for providing us with a PA soundsystem. Michael Nhat also blew everyone with his rapping skills. The night was truly a magickal one and everyone seems to be drifting in and out of such euphoric bliss due to some psychedlic happening. It was great just being around such a great energy of people.

Last night we started recording with Piry on an amazing analog tape recorder that he just recently acquired. We are recording maybe four or five songs with him and he's been really kind enough to help us out. His girlfriend, Zandra also has been helping us out making sure we get enough intoxication and spunk. harharhar! Anyways, its been fun, we still have to finish mixing songs for our tape release which we are hoping to release soon. We might also do some collaborations with Michael Naht in a song or two. So much new recordings coming out and we are so happy for everyone who has been helpful to us. Ive been learning so much about sound and production. Ive been assisting sound at The Smell on nights that I don't have anything going on and mostly observing people do it and lately talking to Piry about recording stuff. Im hoping to be able to do a lot of more technical production for our music in the future and perhaps be able to produce tracks that are more experimental in terms of what we could do with our available resources. Thats something to look forward to. Anyways, something to look forward to very soon in the near future is a show we'll be doing this Saturday at L'KEG Gallery with Cardio-Pulmonary, Lee Noble and Kid Infinity. Its gonna be fun. We'll be partying crazy style the night before that for Josh and Monissa's wedding at Malibu so we'll keep the spirit going 'til the next day. Yay! Thats it for now!

Monday, April 20, 2009

The Artshole

Anyways, we played a fun show at The Artshole in Sta Barbara on Friday night with The Littlest Viking, Cawcaw, and Bastidas. We got there early and caught up with Bastidas to get some really good Indian Food. After a little bit of chit-chat with everyone, The Littlest Viking opened up the set with their amazing guitar and drums interplay. They even managed to shake things up with a little dance number where Chris, the drummer used a sampler. It sounds really great and i was totally digging it. I told Chris after their set that I could totally see them experimenting with samplers and using weird sounds and samples. His style is very distinct and hi playing is so full of power, I wonder what other textures he could contribute to their sound if he could uses something like the SPD-S that I use. Either way, The Littlest Viking transcends any idea i had about music that appears to be mathy by nature (only coz im bad at math!)-they simply are a great band who have many things ahead of them. It was a pretty great place to play, its literally a commune of all these artists and we played at their yard which was filled with all these strange things hanging from the trees. They have a pretty good DIY community over there and there seems to be a regular people that support them. We also got to see Hoshwa and Rachel of Watercolor Paintings, who was making the cover for their vinyl release, which i assume is on Yay! Records. Cawcaw played next and I dig their sound, at first its hard to distinguish their sound but later on you simply get use dto the fact that they are Cawcaw. The vocals has this weird, quirky whiny voice and somehow he make sit work. I was really digging the rhythm section, with their dubby grooves. I got a Cd afterwards but were dissapointed to find out they d ont have any of the songs they played in their set. Its still a good recording in its own right though. We played a rather interesting set that night, a lot of experimenting with structure and sounds. I think wea re getting more used to our set-up. We were not sure on the drive there how the set is going to turn out but while we were playing it it somehow just made sense. It was a fun trip to play all the way to Goleta especially with our friends. Bastidas ended the night with two encores. They played all my favorites, "Mediterranean Oasis", "Dominos" and "Insects". These guys need to be playing for bigger audiences. I'm telling you.

Also, Goleta has a bad-ass market called the Isla Vista Co-op Market which we went into and got some Yerba Mate, healthy food and some good beer. Got pretty blazed up with a gravity bong that Shane, one of the guys that lived at The Artshole made. We drove back at around 2 in the morning and got home an hour and a half later. We could have stayed but we choose to go home so we can go the small press event at USC that day. Thats it for now, I'll post some pics laters yo!

RIP J.G. Ballard (1930-2009)



It was kinda strange that on the day I met V. Vale, publisher of RESEARCH Books at USC's SHELF LIFE: Big Day For Small Press last Saturday, it was the same day that J.G. Ballard passed away. The 78 year old author, who has been the subject of a lot of RESEARCH books and interviews by Mr. Vale, wrote a lot about disaster and experimentation. He first started writing short stories that were considered science fiction but not in the "spaceships and space explorations" kind of way. Instead he focused on the way communication affected the evolving present and of the "vast conformist suburbs" that was being dominated by mass media culture. Later on his reputation as an anti-establishment avant-garde writer kept growing and growing with novels such as "Atrocity Exhibition" and "Crash", which all became cult favorites. He also gained a new level of mainstream popularity in 1984 when he wrote "Empire Of The Sun", an account of his experience growing up in a civilian camp in Shanghai during World War II, which was later made into a movie by Steven Spielberg. Ballard, as a writer likes to challenge his readers. His writing, next to Phillip K. Dick is what I would call a "cerebral mindfuck". Many artists and musicians refer to him and his work and has made it possible for a much younger generation, like myself,to know about him and appreciate his work. And publications like V. Vale's RESEARCH makes sure that information about the author and his ideas are available especially since, the world we live in today is pretty much becoming what he has already seen in his visions - foretold in many of his stories' themes and subjects. As one writer put it: "Its a Ballardian world and we are just living in it.."

So long, Ballard.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Charles Darwin's Study On Orchids: INTERESTING




­"Most people are familiar with Charles Darwin's activities aboard the HMS Beagle and its famous journey to South America. He made some of his most important observations on the Galapagos Islands, where each of the 20 or so islands supported a single subspecies of finch perfectly adapted to feed in its unique environment. But few people know much about Darwin's experiments after he returned to England. Some of them focused on orchids.

As Darwin grew and studied several native orchid species, he realized that the intricate orchid shap­es were adaptations that allowed the flowers to attract insects that would then carry pollen to nearby flowers. Each insect was perfectly shaped and designed to pollinate a single type of orchid, much like the beaks of the Galapagos finches were shaped to fill a particular niche. Take the Star of Bethlehem orchid (Angraecum sesquipedale), which stores nectar at the bottom of a tube up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) long. Darwin saw this design and predicted that a "matching" animal existed. Sure enough, in 1903, scientists discovered that the hawk moth sported a long proboscis, or nose, uniquely suited to reach the bottom of the orchid's nectar tube.

­Darwin used the data he collected about orchids and their insect pollinators to reinforce his theory of natural selection. He argued that cross-pollination produced orchids more fit to survive than orchids produced by self-pollination, a form of inbreeding that reduces genetic diversity and, ultimately, survivability of a species. And so three years after he first described natural selection in "On the Origin of Species," Darwin bolstered the modern framework of evolution with a few flower experiments. "



source:

10 Science Experiments That Changed the World
by William Harris

Thursday, April 16, 2009

What The Fuck?


hehehe...

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

YOU.

The consumer conformism—the suburbanization of the soul—on the one hand and the gathering ecological and other crises on the other do force the individual to recognize that he or she is all he or she has got. And this sharpens the eye and the imagination. The challenge is for each of us to respond, to remake as much as we can of the world around us, because no one else will do it for us. We have to find a core within us and get to work. Don’t worry about worldly rewards.
Just get on with it!
-J.G. Ballard [Rolling Stone, 1987]

Bikeriding Days



So, we got word regarding Rhea's car. The first shop we went to said that its gonna take at least a THOUSAND dollars to fix the car. They said some part is bad ( surely its as bad as i am regarding cars!)and that for it to be in good shape again we gotta spend that amount. That didn't sound to good especially since we don't have that amount to spend. However, we went to another shop just to get a second opinion and the guys said that we can still use it to drive around but we just have to make sure its constantly oiled and lubed. That made us feel a little better especially with the show out of town coming up this weekend. They also replaced the brakes which have been very much needed in the past few weeks already. So, Rhea's car is back on the road. Its not in the most perfect shape but it will get us around..for now. I hope.

Anyways, we got some shows cancelled which is quite a bummer since we have been looking forward to them. Well, The Avant Garden shows that have been going on in Northridge at this venue called El Jardin have all been cancelled due to some issues regarding the owners. Im not entirely sure about the specifics but we know that they have pretty much cancelled all the shows they've booked for the month and have been looking for a different venue to throw shows.

And the drive to San Luis Obispo won't be happening at all because of some weird miscommunication between the guy that was helping us out and the venue. We are still hopeful to find something so that perhaps we can just drive up there the next day after our show in the Artshole at Santa Babara with Bastidas, CawCaw and The Littlest Viking. The people from DIY SLO have been helpful but they dont really have anything going on at that date. We were supposed to also go on one of the college radio shows but i guess they had overbooked bands. SO, that pretty much leaves us with not much options.

If anyone reading this (at all) can help in some way or another. We would truly appreciate it.

On Sunday, we went to the Easter Party at The Vermont House and saw Meho Plaza and VoicesVoices. Had such a crazy day biking all around LA. Earlier that day I also saw this amazing multimedia performance by The Big Art Collective at REDCAT. Thanx to Turtle who had an extra ticket and not knowing what to expect. i went thinking its gonna be a play or something but it turned out to be even more. It literally blew my mind away. It was hard to describe the experience but it was really a trip and a half.

Also, today is Bike To Work Day so give the car a break.

Thursday, April 9, 2009



Lately we have been experimenting in new ways to create music, we have tried incorporating our laptops with our live set-up and so far it seems to be working well. We are still not sure if we are going to do it like this permanently however, we felt it certainly gives a lot more texture to our usually minimalist songs.

Yesterday, we got news that Rhea's car (our ONLY official working car!) which has been in the shop since Tuesday, is going to take loads of money to fix. So, right now, we are both practically without car. Its been great riding our bikes around but its sucks during times when you need a car and living in Los Angeles, that seems really hard to avoid. We are trying to figure this out especially since we have some shows out of town in the next weekend. Worse case scenario, we might just go rent a car.

I've also been sick the past few days and haven't really done much and Rhea's grandmother recently passed away -so we were sort of in this weird vibe for a while but i think its safe to say that we are past that since last night we made some really interesting tunes late in the night. This is one of the best points about having our set-up at home and being accessible to us anytime. Our roommates Andrew and Ryan have been very considerate about us making so much noise late in the night.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

April First, Ye Fools!





Tonite will be a fun night biking around downtown. At first we will go catch White magic in OogaBooga.
Then off to the Smell for the FNB Benefit show and Donnie Pepper's birthday! Free Vegan Food! Yay!