NO ESCAPE, SUCKAS!!!

I made this label for my beautiful queen, Tanya.

www.tanyamoniquejewelry.com

David Arner and I are playing at the Deep Listening Institute in Kingston on Saturday, January 14th.  We play amazing music together.  Like it, you will.

Fucking Christmas.  Fucking over.  Tipica '73 be spilling out my speakers and I must say that the clave rules.  I defy you to not want to move while this music is on.  Nothing to do with anything.  Focus.  Cascara making my head knock.  Tata Guines solo.  Taste, maturity, control, class.  Listen to his resolve.  Can't fake that shit.  Short stabs of verbosity.  Bongo bell incessant.  Focus.  Focus.  Focus.

Ritmo.  Ritmo Universal.

Yesterday I talked to my brother about the Harmony of the Spheres.  He told me that he was at church recently and that the pastor--or whatever the fuck you call him--started rapping about how everything is music; everything is resonating.  I could hear that my brother had a lucid moment about a very simple and irrefutable truth:  everything is vibrating.  From imperceptible sounds--by our limited vessel's means--to all colors and on to white light the electo-magnetic spectrum be holding it down.  It is a service of continuum meant to remind us that there is nothing random or out of place/order in this now.

 When I started my serious experiments in sound one of my early partners was Garry Scott Davis- or GSD as he is known in the skateboard world.  Garry was one of the first "professional" skaters.  He had the first street specific deck.  He invented the Boneless One.  He is an important and seminal American Cultural Pioneer.  If you have the time, look up his work.  It is honest, deep and uncontrollably unique.  One of my favorite human beings for sure.

We used to have all day sessions where we played trees, grass, shoes, toys; we'd amplify garden tools, glass, air conditioners--nothing was safe from the contact microphones.  There were times where our commitment to the sounds we were creating manifested themselves in colors that our ears could see.  You read that right, ears could see.  Quite the opposite of contemporary music lovers that are taught to hear with their eyes--more on that later...Without the use of drugs--GSD never did any--we'd trip on whatever the universe was delivering.  A favorite memory is playing the local supermarket.  Chip bags, cabbage, glass containers, the multi-timbral and harmonic drones of the coolers, freezers and air conditioners all can be utilized physically and passively to create an orchestra that you couldn't create only experience.

Everything is Music.

When I lived in Los Angeles it was difficult to find venues that were open to experimental musics.  There were two places in the early nineties that catered to adventurous musics; The Alligator Lounge and later, The Smell.  As one of the faithful ten or eleven people that went to the Alligator Lounge every Monday night to hear sonic relevance, I remember being enveloped in a gift that introduced me to many amazing artists, the most important to my UNDERSTANDING OF MUSIC was Billy Mintz.  The Alligator Lounge scene lasted for two years or so.  Those who were there already know this, but I must say that the run there--curated by Nels Cline-was one of the most consistently revelatory musical offerings maybe ever.  I'm not hyperbolizing either.

The players were mostly older and the scene seemed a little insular.  Being a young dude--twenty-three years old--seemed to place me on the outside.  This was before Vinny Golia started using Cal Arts students in his bands and never was there a younger person on the stage.  During this time some dudes started up a club in North Hollywood called The Smell.  The Smell was about eight feet wide and thirty feet deep; like a giant shoe box.  It was shitty and didn't seem serious or that it would last.  In fact one of the dudes didn't know who Captain Beefheart was.  Surprising and maybe telling somehow that this dude ended up moving to downtown L.A. and having the hippest alternative venue in the city.

Garry and I had been plying our wares anywhere we could.  There wasn't much of a scene so sometimes we played open mic nights.  There would be a dude doing stand up, several singer-songwriter performers--boy does that shit never change--and then Garry and I.  Garry would be playing one of the guitars he built with wire or rods for strings and I'd be in another part of the room playing trash, tin cans, pots or whatever.  Sometimes I'd bring a drum set to play for five minutes.  Most of the time we'd get heckled, or ridiculed.  Occasionally people would step to us and say they dug it.  No matter.  We had to do it.  Movement is always good.

After getting nowhere with Nels--I even did a record with him--on the booking front we got booked a few times at The Smell.  My dad came and saw us perform once.  I don't remember exactly, but we probably started our set playing toys, trash and found objects.  I would go around the room and outside finding any objects that had a sound I might want to use.  After that Garry would start playing guitar and I'd get on the kit and we'd play INTENSE.  Many drummers make me snicker when they tell me of their "thunderous" or "powerful" attack.  Not to be diminutive, but adjectives need only apply when they're true.  Garry and I played with push that can't be trumped, only matched.  So dad got hit with some shit that he most likely had no background with which to understand what what the fuck we were doing.  We finish our set.  Our sets were mostly challenging, loud, dissonant and dense.  But they were also unequivocally honest and their intent was positively to uplift.  Make a joyful noise, dig?

The gig is over and we're packing up and my dad walks over to me, says he liked it and has this look of  a new understanding on his face.  I can't recall if he said this that night, but soon after the gig he says, "So, Matthew, you think that everything is music?"  I told him I do in fact think that; know that, even.  He nodded as if to say, "Wow.  I get it."  What he got was the reminder that everything is music.  He also got a fundamental understanding of his first born son's beliefs and values.  Not long after that my dad gave me an advertisement that was in the paper.  It was a picture of this chef standing behind a skillet with two hamburgers on it.  His hand was over one of the burgers like it was a record he was about to scratch on.  His other hand was holding the spatula to his ear like he had DJ headphones on.  The caption at the bottom reads: "There's music everywhere, if you know where to look."

Besides my life, it is the best gift he ever gave me.

"MUSIC IS THE HEALING FORCE OF THE UNIVERSE"

                                                       --Albert Ayler

Adam Diller and I have been collaborating on music for around ten years now.  Our mutual friend Billy Mintz introduced us in Seattle.  Since that meeting we've done all kinds of crazy shit.  We've Kamikaze-ed the streets of Seattle and NYC. We've done cross-country tours. We've recorded under freeway underpasses, train switching yards, (the band was BNSF with Jason Anderson    http://www.thrilljockey.com/catalog/index.html?id=102116--more on that band in posts to come)and two million gallon underground cisterns (http://www.lineimprint.com/editions/cd/line_024/).  There's more, maybe I'll post later...

In 2007 we lived together in a little carriage house in Brooklyn.  It was a shithole.  But, we did LOTS of work there.  And, we LEARNED lots there too.  We steeled ourselves on how the fuck we were going to make a music that was interesting, had solid integrity and didn't alienate anyone.  We were both absolutely SICK of the avant-guarde cognoscenti sniffing at our asses every time we played someone's uptight gallery or dedicated "performance space."  Absolute fucking hack, all that shit.  Besides, music is for PEOPLE, and as far as I understand it people equals everyone.

I play music as a service to human beings.  My intent is to cleanse and heal.  Firstly myself; then others who can appropriate the music for their own benefit.  I'm not going to speak for Adam, but I know and feel that the music we create together is a work for All.  The colors, timbres, rhythms, melodies and harmonies are designed for movement.  Even a negative reaction is still movement.  And movement is energy.  And energy is good.

http://ninetyninecentdreams.bandcamp.com/album/2010

If you're so inclined to peep out our music, make sure you give every release a try.  They're all different and designed to be there own little cinematic realities.  Try this:  download any of the records, put the album on your flash-drive or cd  or cassette( Go, Williamsburg!)  and go for a drive.  The music will be trans-formative. I have done several cross-country trips while listening to 2010.  I'm not sure how, but the music will somehow become the perfect soundtrack to your trip.  Try it.  Let me know how it works for you.

Here are a couple videos that Adam made for some tracks of 2010.  They are relevant to the music and our changing times.  Enjoy them shits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46PyMEa_9PQ&feature=plcp&context=C307049bUDOEgsToPDskIEpC7A1UHxDxItZbwLWws9

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BggdpeBAE3E&feature=related

Peace and Blessings.

Crane out.

Well, can't believe a lot of things that happen or not.  Most of the time my lizard eyes just observe the reflected light that tell my brain that I should do nothing more than just laugh.  So I do.  Let me pick a random absurdity:

A couple of days ago I was taking out a bag of recyclables.  Our landlord doesn't have a recycling bin for us tenants, so we appropriate the bins that are at the apartment complex next door.  I'd like to make it clear that we're talking about recyclables; not trash or furniture or items that are problematic refuse.  I'd also like to make profoundly clear that recycling bins are a FREE service and that the collection company makes money from the recycling materials that are left in the bins.  I do not need to address the importance of recycling.

As I'm walking away from the bins I'm approached by a mini van with a slight, dark haired lady at the wheel.  She's got a son in there too.  He looks about ten.  She introduces herself as the apartment manager, and then asks me if I used her recycling bins.  Befuddled, I answer an awkward yes.  Then the shit starts.  Without actually saying don't use her recycling bins she goes on a five minute diatribe about, well, I'm not sure, but ultimately I figured out that what she was really saying was I'm forbidden to recycle in her bins.  She made sure that I understood that the bins are hers.  I wanted to tell this lady to eat a dick, but the ten year old buffered my impulse.  I instead curbed my desire to let loose and told her that I wouldn't use her bins and to take care.

I am a liar.  I used HER recycling bins last night.

Eat a Dick.

Yo.  Just got done uploading the cd covers for my upcoming solo percussion disc.  I know, no one wants cd's. No one wants vinyl either, got plenty of it on hand...I've recently acquired a used Macbook and I'm getting it tuned up and dialed in so it will have no problem committing my excited molecules to the hard drive proper.  It's probably going to be quite an Afro-Cuban referenced offering.  These days I play as much conga, bata and timbales as drum set.  Skin on skin is the realest sound.
When it's done, each disc will be put in one of these hand drawn sleeves.  Most of my art is done with Sumi ink and black marker.  I love the boldness, errant textures and definition these afford me.

 

On another note:  I went hiking this morning at Black Creek.  All the trails crest this little mountain and drop you down to the shore of the Hudson.  When I made it to the water and my rising phoenix tendencies kicked in, my forest and river fed reflections brought forth a new maxim for the people:  Common Sense, Not Commerce.  I ain't no pinko or commie Whole Foods blowhard.  I like stuff, too.  I'm just saying that it is unacceptable to keep destroying our home.  Destruction is the dominating element in the 21st Century.  We need to kill that noise. No longer can this unmitigated war on natural resource continue. What to really do?  Not sure, but me thinks shit will be very NASTY before things get consonant.  These values are enforced by people with guns.  They think their helping...Oh, and another thing, just because you read Noam Chomsky, are a strict vegetarian, listen to NPR religiously(pun intended) and/or drive a hybrid with your Chacos hanging loose does in no way indicate you're participating in a solution.  You're participating in a calculated delusion.  Remember, NASTY.  I'm pretty sure that's going to be the only way. Thank you and goodnight.

This is the latest release by .99 DREAMS.  It is called "5,6,11" because that's the date we recorded the sax and drums.  This recording session took place at 14 Wall Street in a heavily fortified underground vault that was abandoned.  This location is directly across the street from the New York Stock Exchange.  JP Morgan used to call the 31st floor penthouse home.  The guards didn't even search our cases that were full of gear.  Weird.  The sound in the vault is insane.  Probably one of the most evenly tempered recording spaces I've ever recorded in.  The physical and frequency responses of this room were supportive and alive.  If you like the sounds and want to know about the drums I used, get at me.  Same for the sax.  No Such Thing as Quit, Muthafuckers.  Ever.  Peace.

Where you'll find the rest of the music...http://ninetyninecentdreams.bandcamp.com/

Here's some stuff I dig.  Here's also some stuff I drew.  I promise to be better organized about this thing once I gets a rhythm with it.  Peace.