More Free Music from Eyes

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Levi Fuller

Man, Eyes are like the Tupac of 21st century psych bands or something. A year after I last wrote about them, letting you know about two free posthumous releases from these San Francisco noisemongers, they send word that they have released yet another collection of sounds, this one entirely improvised and called White Ash. I really wish Eyes were still a band so we could have them come up here and share a bill with Fungal Abyss (see BoW 27) that would just tear the tops of all of our heads off, but alas we’ll have to make do with listening to their generously provided recorded output and imagine what might have been.

Listen to or download White Ash via Bandcamp. It’s pay what you will, so feel free to throw a few bucks in the hat; I’m sure they’d appreciate it.

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The Noisy Rise and Regrettable Fall of Sip’s Odyssey

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Levi Fuller

Sip’s Odyssey first came onto my radar about a year ago, when they submitted the song “Devils in the Details” for Ball of Wax Volume 23. It was low-fi and weird, and seemed to have a thrift store’s worth of discarded instruments layered throughout it, along with some truly bizarre, Muppet-like screaming. Of course I loved it.

After a bracing performance at the Ball of Wax 23 release show, they turned right around and gave me the slightly menacing divebomb known as “Terrible” for Volume 24. I was starting to get used to these guys, and hoping they’d keep sending me their slightly unhinged tracks for the foreseeable future. Continue reading →

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Submit to Ball of Wax 28: The BoW Dance Party!

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Levi Fuller

Disco Ball of Wax via Flickr user vpickering

This is gonna be a fun one.

I have decided that Ball of Wax Volume 28 (Spring 2012) will be the Ball of Wax Dance Party installment – i.e., all things electro, dance, hip-hop, etc. I would love to hear submissions from any and all corners of the musical world. The official submission deadline is April 15th (what, do you have some other deadline that day to worry about?), but I’m already getting some great stuff, so the earlier the better.

Here’s how I want this to happen: My dream is for all of the tracks to be (or at least start and end) at the same BPM, to make for optimal dance mix flow. I have (somewhat arbitrarily) picked 120 BPM. If you have a totally killer track you want to submit that’s not 120 BPM (or 60 or 240, I suppose), send it anyway and let me know what’s up and I’ll try and make it work. But my strong preference is for 120 BPM tracks (again, if you speed up or slow down over the course of the song that’s fine, just start and end at 120).

See the about page for full submission guidelines. I can’t wait to dance to your songs!

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Lo Fine: “As You Turn Your Brim”

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Levi Fuller

Time lapse photography never fails to transfix me, especially when it’s documenting natural phenomena such as the movement of plants or the fluctuation of temperatures. This one shot video is incredibly simple, but there’s so much going on in the frame that you could watch it over and over, this time focusing on the thermometer, then the greens, then the outside world . . . and the fact that the song is yet another beauty from Lo Fine‘s Kevin O’Rourke (whom you can also hear on Ball of Wax 27) makes that repetition easy.

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Album Review: Swimwear – The Kissing Machine EP

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Phil Heron

The Kissing MachineSwimwear – The Kissing Machine EP
(2012, self-released)

Breezy and bright, Sydney’s Swimwear is a colorful collage of synths, dance beats and guitars. The Kissing Machine is a feel good debut E.P. to keep the record player bathed in sunlight until the winter sets in the Northern Hemisphere. Swimwear is the alias of Tim Derricourt – a name already familiar to regular Ball of Wax readers via October’s post on his other band, Dappled Cities. His solo adventure is not a complete break from Dappled (keyboardist Ned Cooke lends his wares across The Kissing Machine), yet Derricourt manages to carve an identity of his own and indulge in some fun beats in the process.

Continue reading →

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The Ball of Wax 27 Release Show: Words and Pictures

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Levi Fuller

Last week we celebrated the release of Ball of Wax Volume 27 at the Sunset Tavern. As always, it was a beautiful night of music. Also as always, I was too caught up in making CDs and coordinating things to do much in the way of documentation. Fortunately my friend Scott Bilstad was in attendance with his sketch pad, so I thought I’d do a little writeup and use his drawings to help give you a feel for the evening.

First up was Kevin Barrans and Friends, which in this instance was a group of his shape note singing comrades. Kevin’s song on the new Ball of Wax is an original shape note song, and the group sang that and several others for us without the aid of instrumentation (if you want to know more about shape note singing and what it is, check out fasola.org). It’s a rare enough experience to witness a live performance of this kind of singing, never mind at a rock club in Ballard. The audience was completely transfixed by this group of six and the deep harmony with which they sang; I couldn’t imagine a better way to set the mood for the evening. Scott didn’t draw this group at all, I assume because he was too captivated to put pencil to paper.

 Alicia Amiri, by Scott Bilstad

Continue reading →

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[glocal scene] Give Me Something Beautiful

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Phil Heron

GMSB - Live@McGillA recent trip to Montreal brought me into contact with a fantastic band with a grand name – Give Me Something Beautiful. Currently in the studio recording their first full length, Give Me Something Beautiful have a selection of EPs and a live recording available on their website.

The long, and slightly unwieldy, band name befits the uncompromising sound that Matthew Hills, Tyler Krebs, and Raphaël Pellerin have spent the past year moulding into their own – crushing drums, shrieking Jeff Buckley live at Sin-e vocals, and ‘cathartic rhythms’ all mix to give you something . . . er, pulchritudinous.

Continue reading →

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Man, Manifesto, Waitress: Sam Russell at Columbia City Theater

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Bart Cameron

It’s not that I want Seattle to change. But one day I’m listening to a damn good alt bluegrass band called Creeping Time at Conor Byrne when a herky jerky hirsute man jumps onto stage and belts out the beginning of a couple sentences and breaks into a low tenor rendition of a song I figured I should have known. And I think damn this is what this town needed.

It turned out this was local legend Sam Russell. A man who, from what I’ve been told over very very cheap beer and whiskey, has recorded 7 CDs dedicated to a waitress from Kenosha, Wisconsin. Not bedroom recordings. Recorded at studios. Great stuff from what I hear, too. I’m not saying I’m positive there is a 7-CD set of Russell albums somewhere. I’m saying I’ve been told this very many times, by different songwriters in town, over the very cheap beer and whiskey I drink. And following up at Sam’s website, I have found what I believe to be a manifesto. And a suggestion that the waitress in question is named Katie. And there will be an 8th CD. Continue reading →

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Back in MY Day: Nice Guys

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Indie Rooney

Mötley RöoneyBah!

Oh how cute! How adorable! Such a nice boy. Look at him playing that guitar, so talented!

Double-Bah! If that’s how your Jewish mother reacts to your music, you’re doing it wrong!

Time was, if you were in a rock band, you were an offensive, dangerous asshole. By definition!

Sex, drugs, throwing stuff out of windows, cheating on your groupies with other groupies (and then puking on them), snarky remarks, casual racism, spitting, that was all in the job description. Rock and roll was a glorious competition to see who could be the biggest douchebag with the biggest hairspray budget, ozone-layer-be-damned! (Spoiler alert: it was Mötley Crüe.)

Kids today, with their sweaters and texting and band names like “Pickwick,” are just too damn nice. WTF?

Oh sure, people say they want their musicians to be well-adjusted and unthreatening. “Oh look, she doesn’t have a drug problem and almost never stabs anyone, how sweet.” But it’s not true. We really don’t want that at all. Why?

Because nice people are boring.

What’ll we look for in the Behind the Music? Which one forgot to wash the dishes after the vegan prayer breakfast? I don’t think so. I’m changing the channel just thinking about it. Being Bobby Brown. Now that’s entertainment.

Thankfully, some scenesters have seen the light. Choking out sound guys in Ballard? Nice. Mad Rad? Nothing much recently, but still, thank you. Um . . . Dave Longstreth? Seems like a dick.

Dammit, it shouldn’t be this hard to think of examples.

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The Singer Songwriter Showcase

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Colin J. Nelson

How do you cleanse your musical palate, feed it something fresh and stimulating, free of cheep gimmick, empty flash, genre tunnel-vision? Ball of Wax, of course! Yes, good answer. Allow me to introduce another favorite of mine, The Singer Songwriter Showcase at The Copper Gate in Ballard.

The showcase takes place one Sunday a month (currently the fourth) in a very small, intimate velvet cave of sorts, called The Pussy Room (I assume the proprietors are as fond of cats as they are copper, and gates), accessed from inside the bar. The night consists of around four songwriters. Each hand-picks a few songs. Each plays, backed only by Steve Norman on pedal-steel guitar and Kubby Casual (also the evening’s host) on drums. Even if she or he has a band in real life. As players, Steve and Kubby have impeccable taste, and live only to serve The Song, drawing it out with spare ambiance and frame.

So you get the essence of each writer’s songs and style, in a small but satisfying portion. Continue reading →

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