DECAYCAST Guest List: Bran (…) Pos “EOY TOTALE 2019” Bay Area Multimedia Artist Chooses His Favorite Mind Bending Media of 2019

DECAYCAST Guest List: Bran (…) Pos “EOY TOTALE 2019” Bay Area Multimedia Artist Chooses His Favorite Mind Bending Media of 2019

 

EOY TOTALE 2019

some of things that flicked my tick this year by bran(…)pos

Headboggle “Polyphonic Demo”  – Ratskin Records

40+ one-minute diddies catchy as fuck, and always weirdy. Then the dude practiced the pieces and toured them and they got better and deeper. Each live show I saw of Derek this year topped the last. Bubble machine finale at the Dildo gave me the creepy-happy chills.

 

Patrick Cowley “Mechanical Fantasy Box”  – Dark Entries Records

https://www.darkentriesrecords.com/store/vinyl/lp/patrick-cowley-mechanical-fantasy-box/

This got a lot of spins from me and combined with the release of the same-titled “Homoerotic Journal” creates an amazing document of a period of San Francisco that is increasingly becoming as lost as one of those self-driving cars stalled in a SOMA intersection.

 

Sahra Halgan Trio “Waa Dardaaran”  – self-released

Sahra has an incredible voice and energy and this trio combining her song stylings from her native Somaliland with a tight rockish energy brought by French musicians Aymeric Krol and Mael Saletes puts big smiles on my face every listen. I wore out their 2016 EP “Faransiskiyo Somaliland”, and was super excited to see they had a new release on Bandcamp this year.

 

XUXA SANTAMARIA “Chancletas D’Oro”  – Ratskin Records

Haven’t stopped playing this record. Sits right in the 2019 groove for me. Poppy, hard, sexy, smart as hell, and just a really fucking well-produced record. Won’t be surprised when this band blows way the fuck up. I promise I won’t be a hater when that happens.

 

Ed Balloon “The Dubs”  – Deathbomb Arc

Like nothing else I wore out this year. “Dreamworld” may be my favorite pop song in many years, and this tape was certainly my summer soundtrack of 2019. I’ve yet to see him perform live, and I’ve heard he brings it. Excited to see/hear more in 2020.

 

Dos Monos “Dos City”  – Deathbomb Arc

Another tape I played to death and memorized. I love these fools’ energy and sharp vocals riff on each other like the jazz samples they so well-employ in the production. Fun as hell and got me through some bike rides I have no business putting my knees through.

 

WAXYTOMB “Imminent Fold”  – Gilgongo Records

https://gilgongorecords.wordpress.com/tag/waxy-tomb/

Strange and gorgeous futurewrong electronic rhythms and vocals LP packaged alongside a 10-inch glossy “visual lyrics book” with amazing computer art by JulesLC, this is hands-down one of my favorite new weirds of 2019.

**** You can also read our review of the album here 

Sir Artful Cornhole Doily “Sings the All-Time Greats”  – Planetary Magnetics Corporation

http://www.planetarymagnetics.com/music-1

Imagine The Frogs slapping a baby around with a rubber fish covering the best/worst songs of your ok-boomer life. Yeah, this fella has more musical ability in his damp palms than any of us deserve, and we should be so lucky that he is putting music out in 2019 and beyond. Good luck finding this tape, but try contacting Planetary Magnetics hq in New Orleans direct.

 

The Residents “Mole Box”  – Cherry Red Records

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/the-residents-mole-box-the-complete-mole-trilogy-preserved/

A longtime favorite set of music from a longtime favorite band came out this year collected, remastered, and filled with tons of extra material and documentation. The Residents alongside Cherry Red Records have been firing out reissues of all their classic material lately, but none of the pREServed editions have been as exciting and revealing to me as this set. A runner-up would have to be the Record Store Day BS reissue, filled with ancient Rezzy material I had never heard. Residents 4ever.

 

Chromatics live at Mezzanine SF June 12, 2019

I’ve been a casual fan of Chromatics, but this live show put me over the edge. So great to see this unit form the music live and fill a club. This being the last show of their first tour in many years, there was real emotion on stage and in the audience. Their new record “Closer to Gray” has been on repeat play for me, but nothing recorded from this band has quite captured the energy of the live show in my opinion.

 

Evil Moisture/Thomas Dimuzio/Demonface/Ava Mendoza/Hobo Sonn live at Peacock Lounge December 18, 2019

https://www.residentadvisor.net/events/1360084

James Decker/Resipiscent Records has been putting on monthly experimental shows for a few years now at venues around SF, but the much-needed SF series has really found a home at Lower Haight’s Peacock Lounge. I had the pleasure of working sound and sitting front row for this particular gig, which really brought a fantastic close to 2019 with solid to spectacular sets from every act, including maybe my favorite solo Ava Mendozaset ever.

 

RaffyTaphyASMR “ASMR raffy’s 3 hour video”

The king of tingles is back! After a lengthy break from any new material, Raffy came back strong in 2019, and his 3-hour video of all new good sounds quietly blows out the competition. Other ASMRtists have trouble coming up with a continuous 20-minute session without looping, and here Raffy remains strong and relaxing with unique content all the way through a full 3 hours. At least, I think that’s the case. I’ve never made it through the whole thing awake.

 

Biggest Crock of Shit 2019

“Cambodian Rock Band” by Lauren Yee with (some) music by Dengue Fever at OSF

Remember those Cambodian Rocks comps from the 90s? How about that 2014 documentary “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten? Cambodia’s Lost Rock ‘N’ Roll”? Playwright Lauren Yee and band Dengue Fever hope that maybe you have forgotten about artists like Yol Aularong, Ros Serey Sothea, and Sinn Sisamouth as they front this disingenuous music play about the Cambodian genocide. “With music and songs by Dengue Fever” blasted all over the promotion and program with little to no information explaining that about half the songs are cover songs from this classic and tragic period of music and history. Dengue Fever has made a career of this kind of charlatanry and unfortunately theater folk are as susceptible to this kind of shortchanging of history as anyone I know. This play is a HUGE hit and will be produced everywhere in 2020. Almost every theater person I’ve talked to about it loves it. Every music person I talk to about it gags. I have way too many thoughts but suffice to say nothing in the arts irked me more in 2019.

 

Late entry (direct into my veins): Follow Your Heart “Siracha Vegenaise”

The Belgian concept of mayonnaise on fries has always disgusted me. After trying this incredibly addictive vegan spicy sauce during the recent holidays at Follow Your Heart’s longtime Canoga Park home, I have to revise all former thoughts on the matter. In 2020 you will find me dead of heart failure with an empty bottle of this shoved direct in my throat. I will have died happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

bran(…)pos is the ongoing audio-visual-performance-noise-musique-brain-bend of Jxxx Rxxz from San Francisco, CA. Rodriguez has been performing and recording under this moniker since 1996 with releases on C.I.P., Resipiscent, Ratskin Records, Animal Disguise, and Chitah! Chitah! Soundcrack

You can follow Bran (…) Pos at:

www.soundcrack.net

https://branpos.bandcamp.com/

Advertisement

DECAYCAST#036: NIHAR BHATT : V/A: ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE DJ Mix

DECAYCAST#036: NIHAR BHATT :  V/A: ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE DJ Mix on RATSKIN RECORDS, 2017 

IMA “Meshes”
TERROR APART “Perfectly Nowhere”
BIG DEBBIE “E.P. Hypnosis”
AH MER AH SU “Write This Off”
SNEAX (LaTron + Obsidian Blade) “Till The End 100%”
Piano Rain “Last Year” Remastered
PRIST “Still Movin'”
FORBIDDEN COLORS “Green Smiley Face Sticker”
BONUS BEAST “Direct Dive”
ZEEK SHECK “7777-01-07 Son”
JOSHUA KIT CLAYTON “Morning Rasp”
HIROSHI HASEGAWA “Homeobox”
MALOCCULSION “Walk Of The Dead, Part One”
S.B.S.M. “Godzilla”
POD BLOTZ “The Current”
MOOR MOTHER “CTM Five”
BRIAN TESTER “Chrono People”
GOLDEN DONNA “Wired For The Worst”
THE CREATRIX “D B No Moral Universe”
CIARRA BLACK “Don’t Say It, Volume 1”
RUSSELL E.L. BUTLER “Technofeminism House”
ZANNA NERA “In My Veins”
JASMINE INFINITI “Scratchy A”
ELROND “Hart Start”
DIMENTIA “Specimen Identity”
PARALYCYST “Untitled”
SHARON TATE FETUS EXPLOSION “Personal Brand”
V.E.X. “Ride The Time”
arc “Breathe Couplings Undulation Map”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On The Origin Of Rogue Pulse / Gravity Collapse: About two weeks to the day before Ghostship, we returned home after days of protests; as always feeling defeated, BEING defeated another day of violence enacted upon the communities’ consciousness; Witnessing the beautiful families of oakland wading through never ending rivers of trauma enacted on all marginalized communities through state sanctioned violence and racism in Oakland, and the Bay Area at large. A compilation will not solve this, a thousand compilations will not solve this, but we have done nothing to combat this and we have to start somewhere. ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE is an uncertain yet thorough attempt to demonstrate to propose a restructuring of how artists, labels, promoters, venues and other “institutions” and INSTITUTIONS use their privilege, time, talents, and resources. But before we could do that, and begin to unpack the complexities around all of these issues, in one single night, the community lost thirty six souls, including founding members of our collective, artists on our label, family members, and so much more in Ghostship and then months after RP/GC was released, almost a dozen more in the San Pablo Fire months later which displaced hundreds of longstanding Black members of the community, and lastly the North Bay fires. There is only so many ways to process or not process this stuff, but we came up with a compilation. We weren’t sure how long it would be, who would be included, how we would present it to the public without exacerbating the commodification of grief, and without taking visibility away from traumas enacted against the Oakland community at large, outside of the “artistic” community. We weren’t really at all sure how we would divide up the money, how we would promote it, but sometimes you don’t have any other fucking choice, even if it raised $100 you never know how far that could go.. Ghostship was, and still is a horrendous blow to our local creative community, many of whom had already been resisting against the structural wrath and chaos of a white supremacist, sexist, capitalist culture, and therefore already just struggling to create and survive, day by day hour by hour minute by minute. In short, many communities were fragmented and tormented long before Ghostship, and Ghostship, for many of us, brought a blade of mass trauma slicing through reality, grief, chaos, distrust and confusion that uprooted the community in so many different ways. The Immediate Fire relief fund literally saved people’s lives by the way and all the love should be given to them and those working on the periphery as well.

What was crucial for us was linking in those deeply affected and lost in Ghostship fire while also keeping the financial and conceptual focus on the organizations we chose to support before the fire, Black Lives Matter and St James Infirmary in San Francisco. Before we knew it, it was out. It was like the best and worst possible distraction, and in MANY ways, postponed a lot of the mental and physical healing that members of the collective needed to do for ourselves but at the same time it was, and still very much is an entry point for beginning the process. For me personally, this has easily been the single most important release I have ever been a part of for numerous reasons, but the single biggest reason is because it saved my life, literally, so many times I cannot even count and it did that by showing me the undeniable ferociousness of our community. Every track on ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE, came as a blessing, a hug, a shoulder to cry on, but also they came as weapons, one hundred and eighty seven weapons, and we couldn’t be happier with the finished offering, as it strives to demonstrate the unrelenting power through all of the trauma and grief that our community and the people of Oakland, through various intersections possess and present with every moment that they exist. Nihar’s essential, heartfelt, and nearly perfect distillation of the thirteen hours of Rogue Pulse / Gravity Collapse, carefully and masterfully sharpens heavy stones of grief into razor blades of warmth, love, creativity, and determination of our community like daggers to the throat of a broken, corrupt system. Every tear shed will eventually freeze to form an icicle to thrust into the socket of a system which has cast away so many amazing, beautiful, creative, people.

This mix is one for everyone who has lost a loved one at the hands of systemic violence. Your tears will not go unnoticed, and this is just the beginning.

This mix is one  for  everyone who has  lost a loved one  at the  hands of  systemic violence. Your  tears will not go unnoticed, and this is just the beginning.  

Follow Nihar’s projects NINE, \ LEFT HAND PATH & SURFACE TENSION

The physical edition of  ROGUE PULSE   / GRAVITY    is SOLD OUT  as of  Today, but the  digital download is  available HERE ON BANDCAMP  via RATSKIN.

 

-MD. Dec 1, 2017

 

DECAYCAST#033 DECAYCAST Premieres: BEAST NEST “Pluto” Video

BEAST NEST “Pluto” Video Premiere :

(video directed by : malocculsion)

The efforts of  Bay Area  artist, musician, healer, promoter and educator  Sharmi Basu are seemingly endless and  so far reaching  that  before  one has the opportunity  to grasp  and contextualize  one action in the  greater realm of experimental music, they are onto the next.

production still from “Pluto” video

Between constantly touring, and  releasing last years  “Taste Of India” cassette (Ratskin), a new  Tour  EP  for  her  recently completed  European tour,  running  The Mara Performance Collective,  which self describes as “a performance and improvisation group that is centered on shared politics and identity.  The MPC is focused on radical people of color, that is non-white folks, and is emphasizing those who identify as queer, trans, and/or womyn of color.”, and it’s offshoot, Brown Noise  , have become staples for many new  and  experienced artists to gain and refine their “chops” so to speak outside of the  white male patriarchy which has historically taken up so much space in noise and  underground communities.  Most recently, Basu was  a  part of The Universe Is Lit:  the bay area’s  first ever Black and  Brown Punk Festival with  fellow curators Shawna Shawnte, Jade Ariana and Titania Kumeh, and recently opening for electronic music’s den mother Suzanne Ciani at the  San Francisco Electronic Music Festival,  Through all of this, Basu has both ears, a dog and a mic to the ground in the  forefront of  experimental music, politics, and community building.  She  even contributed a track to the recently released  “Rogue Pulse /  Gravity Collapse” compilation (Ratskin)  which spawns twelve hours of music in direct support of  Black Lives Matter,  St James Infirmary, and The Oakland  Immediate Relief Fund, which  consisted of  Basu and  several other femme organizers who took  and  distributed donations after last year’s Ghostship tragedy which claimed the lives of thirty six souls of the  Oakland and  bay area

BEAST NEST . Photo:  Gabby Gamboa.

creative community, many of whom were  close to Basu.   Despite all of this  loss, chaos, and  uncertainty with these  violent, chaotic, shaking and bleeding times,  Basu marches forward  and  continues to help  pave the way for the  decolonization of  experimental, underground, music and  art. A  necessary, radical  action, like many aspects of confronting white supremacy,  which is long overdue.

Today, Basu releases a video for  “Pluto”  which is  from the B side of the “Taste of  India”  cassette, released in an edition of  100  cassettes on Ratskin in fall of last year, which can be viewed above.  The video blends analog and  video  synthesis, feedback, found  footage and  digital  video processing. Make sure to  click the  HD option in the  youtube window for  maximum definition, as the  video is  visually dense. Please make sure to    Follow her Bandcamp,  or   Soundcloud  orrrrrrr  main website for more information and  current shows. She also has a Patreon which has some amazing  incentives!

 

 

CORAL REMAINS (formerly Styrofoam Sanchez) On tour NOW! check dates below!

CORAL REMAINS (formerly Styrofoam Sanchez) is a post industrial sound and sculptural installation personifying the trash island in the pacific gyre. Spawning from a hybrid of human DNA and trash, CORAL REMAINS is a dystopian, amalgamated magnification of failed civilizations, spliced rogue technologies gone awry spawning dark pulses of technological neurosis and inner psychosis . When fish put fin to sand then you’ll understand, fish can carry guns. CORAL REMAINS represents the last molecule before total conversion of humans into futuristic trash receptacles. Human, your skull will be in a museum.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1582825008659649/

Decaycast#008:TriskaiDECAYaphobia (Random Shuffle 13000 Milliseconds CD)

Here is TriskaiDECAYaphobia :  a sneak peek into a randomized segment of (Triskaidekaphobia) 13000 Milliseconds CD comp on Raskin Records!
Boasting infinite reshufflability, this is a 4 min 33 second spin of the dice through 13’s…..Enjoy!

TriskaidecayaPhobia Track Listing:
Mr. Stonecipher _ GMBH
Tarantism_Glacial Remains
Monolith Zero _    13 second test
No Gods No Masters   _ 13
Sword Heaven _    Old Town
Teeth Mountain _      13
Skozey Fetisch _    Neon Black Moment Mine
The Insect Explosion  _ Outburst
Praew Jik_  Decolonize your Mind
The Adjective Noun _  Fort Lauderdale is Now
Hagony _ 13 seconds of Cum
Nero’s Day At Disneyland _ Enter Text Find Words
Xdugef  _ Technical Difficulties
Joltthrower  _ No Carbs, No Calories
Hiroshima Rocks Around   _ Bonsai  Bonzai Attack!
A War Amongst The Trees _  Conquered space
Cut-Up Make-Up   _ Deeper Deeper
ASTRO/Hiroshi Hosewega    _ Insect Melancholoy
Uvovu _    Youk Heavy
Dave Phillips< _   Scutigera

click cover to order…

http://www.ratskin.org

215+ plus bands doing 13 second songs, featuring tracks from< MATMOS. VENETIAN SNARES. COCK ESP. RICHARD DEVINE. WHITE MICE. I AM SPOONBENDER. PANICSVILLE. THRONES. SWORD HEAVEN. NO DOCTORS. DAVID SCOTT STONE. EVIL MOISTURE. TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN L.A. TARANTISM. RUBBER O CEMENT. ASTRO. GREENMIST. DAVE PHILLIPS. PIGS IN THE GROUND. SHARKIFACE. ANALOG SUICIDE. NO DOCTORS. LAETITIA SONAMI. WOBBLY. BLEVIN BLECTUM. LOACHFILLET. ANTENNA FARM. and tons more.. ++++ order from ratskin.org

ratskin.org