anybody like noisy art-punk or experimental rock?

[dNA]

So i've been working on some new music with a drummer for the last few months, and two weeks ago we started recording some more involved demos at my house. It's been the first really solid project i've worked on since I moved to Portland, and really my first serious collaborative effort in years. So while I'm not super duper in love crazy excited with everything we're playing, it feels really really good to be working on something and have some direction for my creative ideas.
I had something different in mind when i started this project, but it seems like we're at our best when we're being loud and aggressive; a total one-eighty from everything I've been working on myself in the last two years. We decided to just start tracking songs and overdub the other parts ourselves until we find more people.

these were pretty quickly thrown together, so i know there's a lot of fine-tuning we could do. but i feel pretty good about the material considering how short of a time we've been playing together. it's all pretty lo-fi, and we haven't really scratched the surface of adding bass and other instruments (potentially piano, other keys, horns). recording and mixing when you're working with all live instrumentation is b*tch. i'm used to mixing like 70% programmed/electronic sounds with some guitar, vocals, minimal percussion. so this is all new territory for me.

let me know what you guys think of these takes. unless of course this just isn't your style of music. then feel free not to let me know.  :icon_thumright:


(UW doesn't seem to want to upload my attachments so here's a link)
http://soundcloud.com/dan-mazuz/sets/early-demos

 

[bagman67]

Me likey.  Guitar tones are nice and crunchy, and your time (and your drummer's) are pretty solid.  I like the kinda stutter-time of the "Underwater Birds" piece.

And also, good for you - I pretty much play on my couch until my family tells me "That's enough, Ian - give us a break."  Would that I had time and energy to put into a serious collaboration with another muso or two.

And finally, I applaud you keeping your demos down to just a few minutes.  It's really easy to hang on to a good idea for far too long.

Also, an aesthetic principle per Tom Herman of Pere Ubu, which you may or may not find useful as you venture into art-punk territory:

"The best guitar part is the one that requires you to move your fingers the least."


peace

Bagman

 

[dNA]

thanks man! i'm glad you dig and i really appreciate the comments. I moved out to Portland for the music scene and to pursue playing more actively, so it's been really rewarding to work on something tangible. All the material is stuff that I'd written on guitar and we developed the structure and dynamics between the two of us. It's really cool to see how working with another person can pull out a whole other side to your own writing that you don't even know is there. I'm really enjoying the chance to play a little noisier and looser and overall more energized. Very different from the mellow atmospheric stuff i've been working on.

Also, an aesthetic principle per Tom Herman of Pere Ubu, which you may or may not find useful as you venture into art-punk territory:

"The best guitar part is the one that requires you to move your fingers the least."

I think I'm going more for the energy and grit of punk, but not necessarily the musical content. I'm into minimalism, but the strict punk ethos is too monotonous for me. Once we get more people involved and we can approach writing from a less guitar-driven direction, I'd like to diversify a lot more and have some chances to actually play a lot less.

 

[back2thefutre]

No

 

[Patrick from Davis]

One of my favorite bands ever is the Pixies.  So dissonance, howling guitars, and chaos in a bottle is pretty familiar.  They also had an amazing knack making melodic artsy stuff in the middle of the storm.  Anyways, they were/still are a lot of fun.  The other artsy noisy punkish band I always liked was Superchunk.  Precision Auto is just a blast to play, although I can't seem to get the feedback solo right...
Patrick

 

[BDI]

I really dig this. Your playing is just great- gritty but clear and not too lo-fi crap sounding. The drumming is in perfect timing and I love the dynamics in the songs. Cool stuff buddy. Punk on!  :icon_thumright:

 

[dNA]

thanks BDI. I'll be sure to let Jeff know you commented on his drumming. and i appreciate the dynamics comment - really stretching the dynamic range of the music is something i like to do and i want to explore more, as i've started to get more into jazz, classical, funk, world music, and all sorts of other stuff that's just way more dynamic than most rock music.

i put two other demos we've started on there, but only one's really been worked on at all and the other is just the basics. Plus there's a take of a song we're working on called Cold Winter, but that's just a recording from practice. i just wanted to be able to share with people that we're working on different stuff

 

[Wana_make_a_guitar]

I think you might dig The Drones.

 

[dNA]

I think you might dig The Drones.

thanx. I am always down for musical recommendations.

 

[stefan]

Really enjoyed Oceans, nice work I'd say the drums are a little high in the mix for that track, but not in the others.

What guitar are you playing here?

 

[dNA]

Really enjoyed Oceans, nice work I'd say the drums are a little high in the mix for that track, but not in the others.

What guitar are you playing here?

thanks for the comment on the mix. i'll check into it.

as for guitars - all the first takes were done with my Artcore, which has been my main guitar forever now. depending on the song, overdubs were either more of that guitar or my ibanez Artist. bass was played on my Warmoth.

 

[Cletus]

This is pretty rockin, I would file it under proto-punk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXLZeL59gfc&feature=player_embedded#at=23

 

[dNA]

those kids rock. give a couple more months of practice and they'll be the next Yeah Yeah Yeahs. and i only half mean that joking

i think i'm gonna take the "punk" label out of the title. it's one of those words that i tend to mean one thing but everyone has their own definition. Same thing with the word "indie". I always think of indie meaning independent, not a genre... but people seem to think i'm talking about bands like MGMT when i say indie. *sigh*

 

[Cletus]

those kids rock. give a couple more months of practice and they'll be the next Yeah Yeah Yeahs. and i only half mean that joking

i think i'm gonna take the "punk" label out of the title. it's one of those words that i tend to mean one thing but everyone has their own definition. Same thing with the word "indie". I always think of indie meaning independent, not a genre... but people seem to think i'm talking about bands like MGMT when i say indie. *sigh*

Both punk and indie have been debased. I love punk rock, but for me it's one of those if you've heard of them anywhere mainstream they aint punk rock. Green Day for instance, but there's HEAPS of others.

 

[AutoBat]

I never considered Green Day to be Punk.
I'm a fan of Rancid though, possibly one of the most well known punk bands out.  Their radio hits were mostly off of the more reggae-ish album, but overall they're definately punk.  Might be getting older and not as gritty, but it's still punk to me.

 

[dNA]

I wouldn't agree that Green Day isn't punk. I mean, they're not oldschool punk. and yes they've gotten poppy as hell. and well, i think all of their later stuff (probably starting with Warning and going forward) wasn't really punk. But they certainly started out as a punk band. straight-forward songs, distorted guitar, chord-based playing with lots of downstrokes, plenty of room for the bass to play more notes, solid tasteful drumming, unpretentious lyrical content. They were definitely at the forefront of punk's pop assimilation, but then again so was Nirvana.

i can't say i ever listened to a ton of punk. my punk influences range from Choking Victim, Anti-Flag, a little Rancid, a few songs by Black Flag to the more pop-punk and emo side of things like Brand New, AFI, Blink-182 and Boxcar Racer. Never really got into the Ramones or Sex Pistols... liked some Clash, but they hardly fit the typical punk style so i don't know where they fall in the scheme of things.

i find that i'm less directly influenced by punk music, but i'm influenced by other music that was influenced by punk: At The Drive-In/Mars Volta, early Modest Mouse, Blood Brothers, Appleseed Cast, System of a Down was huge for me in my youth. Godspeed You Black Emperor/A Silver Mt. Zion and Mogwai have both cited punk music as a major influence.

when i think of punk, at least in terms of what it means to me as a creative influence, I think of two basic concepts
1) You don't need to say a lot or play a lot to make a powerful artistic statement. I think this is the side of the punk music scene that went on to spawn so many offshoots that might be musically unrelated in a lot of other ways. i think this part of the philosophy eventually became the underlying philosophy of a lot of independent music in general.
2) Sometimes it's alright to be a little bit noisy, chaotic, ugly, or lo-fi.  for me, it's all about using this stuff in moderation and as a device rather than as the foundation of what i do. but somebody had to do it to an extreme and do it really well first. "Rise Above" by Black Flag was one of those songs that made a big impact when i was like 15 or 16.

this song (and band) kind of sums up my feelings on the subject:
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Baiog9Rqz3U[/youtube]