Rabbits Full of Magic

In the spring and summer of 2003 when the Kiwis were joining the Black Lips and the Lids on the first Die Slaughterhaus releases, I went around with a tape recorder and captured practices, jam sessions, ambient talking, the DSH yell, the start of a boxing tournament, and other miscellaneous noises. For some reason I kept switching the tape on and off, so it's more music concrete-abstract than anything narrative. It starts in the Alphabets house (home of the Alphabets, Wet Dreams, early Deerhunter shows, etc) and the rest is at the 2nd Die Slaughterhaus, which was right down the street. This is all culled from one day. Gives you an idea of how much music was going on back then...

DSH Ambient Tape - Alphabets House Jam
DSH Ambient Tape - Slaughterhaus 2
DSH Ambient Tape - Phonepunk & Misc
DSH Ambient Tape - Spooks Rehearsal
DSH Ambient Tape - DSH 2 Backyard

Visit my flickr page for my archive of Atlanta 2KXX Musical Artifacts. Photographs from the original Die Slaughterhaus, ancient flyers from pre-Black Lips days, Deerhunter setlists from some of the few shows I played with them, gig posters from the Super Madrigal Brothers 2002 tour with Momus, etc. etc.

Labels: black lips, deerhunter, die slaughterhaus

Black Lips in Japan poster by Julie Hines of Georgiana Starlington & K Holes

On my flickr page I recently uploaded a trove of Die Slaughterhaus early 2000s show posters and flyers. It's a small collection because probably hundreds of flyers were made for Atlanta shows in 2001-2004, but it's a pretty good catalog of bands that were playing around in the early Die Slaughterhaus scene during that period.

Labels: black lips, deerhunter, die slaughterhaus

On their myspace page list Julie, Jack, Arish, Andy, Aaron, Andrew, Adam, Lil, Nick, Cameron and Vashti as band members. It says alot about their recordings, which often sounds like its being made by a gathering of friends sharing a love of music rather than a band with an MO. But the fact is that principle songwriters Jack and Julie Hines love what they do, and their musical aspirations are infectious on a spiritual level, attracting talent from around the world (via Atlanta, NY, Berlin, and beyond). Their debut 7" from Army of Bad Luck looks like a treasure found in the attic of a log cabin; illustrations that look etched in wood (by Jennifer Kordner), a liner notes insert page from a 19th century diary, and the beautiful golden hue of the record itself. They even have a version where the jacket is screen printed on actual wood. More bands should treat their releases with such loving attention towards tactile detail.



The music included is haunting and timeless psychedelic trances from the Old West. Recorded by King Khan and featuring one of the Black Lips (Jack can be seen here in their first -- and best -- music video) the layered production is brilliantly cinematic. Acoustic guitar, Great Plains electric leads, muted organs, slides and percussion that is casual yet at the same time seems like it's being played by a band of gypsies. Georgiana herself Julie Hines lays down some seriously mystical vocals that are at once tender and spooky and really make the songs stand out even more than they already do. Jack takes the lead on Side B's Bobby Gentry cover ("Ode to Love"), which works so well with the atmosphere they are weaving I had no idea it was a cover in the first place. "Cowboy Lullaby" closes things out with a silly and super minimal ride into a tremelo sunset. I could not think of a better place to ride off into.

videos:
Georgiana Starlington - Hard Grave (official music video)
Georgiana Starlington - All the Good Times

photos:
Georgiana Starlington live at the Bowery Ballroom 03-09-09 photos by Lyndsy Welgos

Labels: black lips, georgiana starlington, king khan

I'm getting ready to fly up to NY to play a show with old friends Jack and Julie Hines who were in the Kiwis and Tabitha and The Grown Ups and I've played music with them longer than most people in my life. They are playing a show opening for The Black Lips at The Bowery Ballroom on March 9 in Georgiana Starlington and have invited me to be guest keyboardist so I have been practicing along to their recordings. This is my favorite song "All the Good Times", cos it's sad but feels good in a way that Hank Williams songs always do. I was about to practice when I opened the window and saw that it was snowing in Dunwoody. Magical!

Yesterday Woody from the Balkans came over with some 7" he had made and new materials that just arrived in the mail. We commenced a Cave Paint Records casting session, making half a dozen psychedelically-tinted records and testing them out. There is a little bit of surface noise but no deteriorating in sound quality or volume as further casts are made from the same mold. People concerned about Cave Paint Records fucking up their turntables should have nothing to worry about cos me and Woody have both been playing them on our nice systems to no ill effect. Balkans 7"s by Woody Shortridge for Cave Paint Records will be available at their show with King Khan at the Masquerade on March 10!


Friday was a big Atlanta show at the Variety Playhouse and I had an absolute blast (thanks for getting me in Bradford!). Gentlemen Jessie kicked things off doing a professional job duplicating his catchy, dancey, and fun records for an audience made up most of high school kids and their grandparents. It was cool to see all the acts playing to a younger audience; I could totally see myself being a high schooler planning on this show for months and months! Me and Jessica Juggs got a kick out of how into the music the kids were.

Atlas Sound played a really cool set, most of which I had never heard before. Bradford commanded the samplers and drum machines solo, which had a really cool visual effect due to smoke machines and lights that seemed to swirl with the music, leaving just his silhouette visible through the fog. He busted out a Bo Diddley "Who Do You Love" sample that turned one track into into a jungle canopy with electronic birds, and covered a 13th Floor Elevators track too (he told me this later, I'm bad with my 13th Floor Elevators song titles..) and I remember one song had a really cool spot-on Dirty South drum machine set with the coolest finger snap sound ever. He also played my current favorite Atlas Sound song, which has this really silly riff that is like some kind of Perry Kingsley 60s moog-funk transported to the distant future. He did this back when he opened for Stereolab in Athens a year ago and me and Bradley shook our asses off laughing in glee.


Black Lips pulled off an awesome spirited show that looked at every album they released except the 2nd (despite my calls for "MIA") and it was so cool to hear "Fad", which took me back to the time I was having a house party when I lived on Holly St and Lou had just gotten the DVD of the music video and we all crowded around to watch it and the audio didn't work. When they played "Bad Kids" they busted out the toilet paper rolls and when they did "Juvenile" the crowd took turns stage diving which was pretty fun. Best part of their show was this song they recently recorded with King Khan that was heavy on the gospel and went "Does he hold you like I hold you?" Sing on, brother, play on drummer!

Labels: atlas sound, black lips, cave paint records, gentlemen jessie, georgiana starlington

Finishing the Spooks album cover was a fun experience because while I kept working on different designs in the back of my mind was always a problem with the 3D effect. See, there is little online about how to do 3D art. There are certainly some forums and websites and people have made some awesome freeware software that will combine two separate images into a single 3D image in a number of different styles. Along with the red-cyan thing there are methods involving sequential field swaps and polarized images and other tricks. But the standard red-cyan method, the one everyone knows from comic books and b horror movies, is the way to go unless you want to shell out some big bucks.

The main problem was creating it entirely in After Effects, from 2 dimensional images. You see this done alot in music videos and commercials these days because AE has an easy to use 3D mode that people call 2.5D, which basically means you can take 2 dimensional elements and position them in 3 dimensional space, sort of like making cardboard cutouts or a shadowbox or something. You make a composition, then duplicate it, then add a camera to each one, moving it slightly left one on and slightly right on the other. Pretend they are eyes. Finally, you make a 3rd composition with the two on top of each other and go to effects->perspective->3d glasses. Simple as that.

The problem is figuring out how far away to make the background, how far apart to make the two different camera, etc. Eventually I figured out that using drop shadows greatly increased the 3d effect. I always felt the background was too busy and abstract to be effective for a 3d effect until I created this spiral halftone from a photo of the old Die Slaughterhaus, which reminded me of one of the ideas we have for the video projections, of ghosts flying out of a spiral. No matter how far back in the Z axis I placed it, the background still didn't make the main ghost and text pop out. So I simply went in one of the compositions and moved it right a couple of times, which totally worked, meaning the more separated the images are the more in the distance they will seem when using anaglyph glasses. Also, doing this made it much more psychedelic when you are looking at it without the glasses.

The back cover was funny because Mark had come over with a little brush and some black ink to write out all the song titles and once we got that done we had no idea what to do really. The original idea was going to be a huge graveyard where all the song titles where written on the tombstones, but there just wasn't any time to do this and I had serious doubts about how to make it look right. I was playing around in Blender when I came up with this graveyard-looking Die Slaughterhaus logo with a skull and bat on it. Getting the right effect took 2 solid days of work, even after the damn thing was modeled and was a huge pain in the ass but I really like how it came out.

Now I just have to get together a good amount of psychedelic video stuff for the Halloween show. I already have a bunch of 3d films in my collection (Amityville Horror, Friday 13th, Jaws) and am working on some really wild looking stuff. It will be amazing!

Labels: 3d, anaglyph, black lips, die slaughterhaus, spooks