Schlaze Cubed was an instrumental trio consisting of Matt Carlson on keys and synths (an Arp Odyssey in particular, as I recall), Jim Paschall (The Past, Display) on guitar, and Matt McLemore (also of The Past) on drums. I believe this CD-R from 2005 was their only official release. Fans of This Heat's first album take note. This will absolutely scratch that same itch.
Before he was a prolific modular synth experimenter, releasing solo music on such labels as NNA and Draft, before he was one half of the synth + bass clarinet Thrill Jockey duo Golden Retriever, before he was in Parenthetical Girls and did much of the orchestral arrangements for their Entanglements album, Matt Carlson was basically your average prolific music-obsessed intellectual merv. We've already covered his high school output with the band Portal, but this post is about the various home recording projects he worked on in the post-Portal years.
He was always working on something. There was Aerboxe, an instrumental experimental synth project, and Vertex, which I believe was a concurrent project, a duo consisting of Carlson and The Past drummer Matt McLemore. In the link below, I've included 3 songs from each of these projects. I'm guessing they're from around 2002.
In 2005, Matt self-released a solo CD-R, exploring his interest in pop by way of Jim O'Rourke on his debut solo album, Making Time, which features Matt singing, and playing acoustic guitar, synth, drums, dulcimer, and more. This was the first release on his own Bucket Factory Records. You can see what Matt's up to these days by going to bucketfactory.com.
We got 99 posts and, uh, this is one. I'm going to let Mr. Rambo have the centennial post, but before the videos, I just want to say a little something in the holiday spirit.
I'm not sure when exactly I found Arthur Rambo's blog. Back then it was called He/Sheattle. I think it was around the time of the Doomsday 1999 post. I'd loved that band, and was trying to find out what became of them. (I did find, eventually, that the charismatic frontman Zack Carlson moved to Texas, worked with the amazing film fans at the Alamo Drafthouse, and, oh yeah, WROTE THE BOOK ON PUNKS IN FILM.)
I poked around the previous posts, and added it to my Google reader. It didn't take long for me to notice that Arthur was posting about a lot of bands that I knew at some level personally around high school and college. Raft of Dead Monkeys, The Prom, Drowning in Lethe,The Vogue, Soiled Doves, Suffering and the Hideous Thieves. The list goes on. Once he posted about March 15th and Portal, I knew something was up. Either I knew Arthur or I WAS Arthur. I contacted him, and as it turns out, I wasn't him, but I did indeed know him. Let's just say we had once shared a fleeting affinity for lawn bowling. Longish story. So anyway, before long I was in the proverbial Wonkavator, posting about my favorite things, from the lone album by Display (who, unbeknownst to me when I wrote the post, were actually back together after nearly 10 years and a few months away from playing shows) to the Christmas EP by Fishboy and Carleen Jean Death Machine.
Of my 19 posts, the most popular one is clearly the unreleased Jough Dawn Baker LP. As far as I know, this had only been in the hands of friends of the band, and we were fortunate enough to be the first blog to post it online. This is the kind of thing that gets me excited about posting here. It's our hope that those of you who like this blog will check out and like our Facebook page (we post extra stuff there), tell your friends, and mostly importantly, SHARE YOUR STUFF WITH US. Demos, unreleased/unfinished albums, self-released records, scans of flyers, stickers, photos of shows, VHS tapes, whatever you have. If you can't get it into a digital format, we can help. We just want to be a conduit for all the amazing post-grunge music. This is for everyone who spent their nights at the Old Firehouse, The Grange, Ground Zero, The Velvet Elvis, RKCNDY, and The Paradox.
So, I guess this has turned into my Thanksgiving post. I'm thankful for Arthur for inviting me to write here, for all the people who've made the great music we get to share, and for you, for sharing our love of this stuff.
Now, as inferred by the title of this post, for those who don't haven't liked us on Facebook or may have missed some posts, here's the second batch of videos I've posted from my own VHS tapes.
Raft of Dead Monkeys - Reunion show 1-03-04 at Studio 7
Suffering and the Hideous Thieves - Las Vegas 9-23-03
When Jim Paschall moved back to Seattle recently, he didn't just get Display back together, he also un-dormanted (I swear that's a word. Go ahead and challenge, man, you're just gonna lose a turn.) his other band from the same era, Male/Female. Initially a side project where he could play mainly guitar (he played bass in Display), Male/Female continued after the breakup of Display, and released one (to my knowledge) CD-R EP in 2006, Slow it Down in the Mineral Bath.
Along with Paschall, the art noise kraut groove punk foursome comprised Eric Yates, formerly of Portal and recently of Tit Pig, on synths, bass, and sometimes guitar, Emily Lohuis on drums (now Emily Moore, as she is married to Display's drummer Danny, thus obligating them to regular marital drum-offs), and John from the New Avenues, whose guitar duties have been handed over to Colby Ford for M/F V2.
Vermilion, spelled with one "L" for some unknown reason, were a two-headed beast from Everett. The first head was the Texas is the Reason/Roadside Monument - influenced emo period of 1998-99 or so, wherein the lineup consisted of high schoolers Eric Yates on guitar and vocals, Eric Junge on drums, Danny Oleson on bass, and Colin McBride on guitar. This lineup produced a couple demo tapes, one of which is included here.
The second head of the beast emerged after Yates left to focus on Portal, the remaining members listened to tons of Slint and Don Caballero, and Bryce Shoemaker was brought in handle the increasingly math-y guitar duties. Danny took over the vocals, which became less and less frequent, and shifting complex time signatures and complicated, dynamic instrumentation became their calling card. They put out a CD-R and lone 7-inch (both also included here) before driving out to Chicago to record with Steve Albini what would be their only LP, "Flattening Mountains and Creating Empires", featuring artwork by Roger Dean, aka the guy who painted all the Yes album covers.
After going their seperate ways, Colin and Danny opted to get away from all the complexity and started the pop band Speaker Speaker. Eric Junge started Patrol with Doug Lorig of Roadside Monument (a major early influence), Bryce formed Bronze Fawn, and Eric Yates kept bouncing around between bands, most recently as a member of Tit Pig.
Update: I finally got around to the other demo tape of theirs that I have. I'm guessing this is from 1999. 5 songs, plus a 3 song set that I recorded, probably at the Grange. Download that here.
Alright, so this one qualifies on something of a technicality, and I'm ruling in its favor because I always look forward to listening to it around the holidays. A home-recorded 12-song Christmas CD-R from I believe 2003, given out to family and friends of the duo, Eric "Fishboy" Michener, a prolific Texan musician, and Carleen DeCamp (now Micheneer), an Everett native who moved to Texas after playing in several Everett-based bands. So, this was recorded in Texas, but there's enough Everett in it to totally qualify. Between the upbeat rock of "That's What You're Getting for Christmas" and "It's Tomorrow!", the not super serious but still poignant melancholy of "xHappyx xHardcorex xXmasx", "Lonely Santa", and "Werewolves on Christmas", and the brief but instantly memorable "Cowbell Christmas", this one is a winner all around (a winter winner, if you will). Guitar, drums, piano, synth, jingle bells, glockenspiel, whistling, what's not to love?
I wanted to include this with my previous post for The Past's full-length, but several sets of equipment refused to comply. Not to be deterred, I eventually got this 5-song cassette transferred to my computer. I've been listening to it a lot, and remembering the first time I heard it. I'm not from Everett, but had recently befriended an Everett dude who'd moved down to Bothell, where I went to school. He'd just gotten a copy of this tape, and during theater class he put it on the stage's sound system and turned it up loud. We heard about 20 seconds before the teacher yelled something like, "WHAT is THAT?!". Confused, and seeking to prevent whatever illness could be caused by the relentless repetition of oddly tuned guitar riffs and noise, he literally ran over to the console and turned it off, hastily pulling the tape out of the machine, so that it could not infect any further. Now, I'd known this teacher my entire life. My parents were best friends with he and his wife. I knew him better than any non-family adult in my life. To a high school kid, seeing music cause such a negative gut reaction from a parent-like figure can only mean that you're on to something great. And we were.
All the copies of this tape were recorded over existing tapes. Mine was taped over a lecture from a motivational speaker. I've included a minute of so of his speech, as I feel it contributes to the experience of listening to this tape.
Worth noting is that I feel this tape has the definitive version of "Psychosis" (called "Seen and Not Seen" here, though), especially in how it ends with an Echoplex loop.
A longtime favorite for the kids of the late 90s Everett scene, Jeff and Keeg was the short-lived duo of Keegan Douglas and Jeff Scott, formed after Keeg's band Luner Lander broke up. I believe this was their only release, a 4-song tape, spray-painted gold (I hear there were some silver ones, too). Straightforward guitar-based pop songs about girls, with Brian Wilson-inspired falsetto vocals and the occasional Phil Spector drum beat. I went to the Old Fire House one night with a friend, and Keeg, who I didn't know but who knew my friend, was walking around with a grocery bag of the the new tape, handing them out. I saw he and Jeff play a few times, the set consisting of these four songs played by just the two of them, Keeg on guitar and Jeff on bass, both with matching blue Fenders, holding them in shifting coordinated positions with the song, as if the garage was American Bandstand in 1964. A cassette in a boombox filled out the band with keyboard and drums.
A short while later, Jeff and Keeg recruited a couple other guys, and were Jeff and Keeg and John and Jim, then simply The New Avenues. See here for my post on them, which features a redone version of the tape's classic closer, "No November", a song which I've heard multiple girls swear is about them. Whatever the truth may be, it's a great little pop song, and I'm very happy to share this tape with you. Enjoy.
The Past were a mostly instrumental and entirely arty trio from Everett, two-thirds of which went on to form Display. With their giant Sunn amp cabinets and arsenal of vintage effects pedals, Jim Paschall and Jeremy Cooper unleashed waves of moody Sonic Youth and Krautrock-inspired riffs over Matt McLemore's spare but highly specific (and a bit funky, in a DJ Shadow sort of way) motorik drumming. One of my favorite memories of any show I've ever been to was at a house where The Past opened for FCS North. When their final song ("Agneta") ended, Jeremy tapped on his Echoplex, which then replayed his entire guitar part from the beginning. He and Jim peeled back the grillcloth of their amps, shoved their instruments completely inside, and as effects filtered feedback accompanied the ghost guitar, the band joined the crowd in watching the end of their set. Fantastic.
After a couple years and one short tape, they released this full-length self-released CD-R. It was limited to 100, but I think only a few dozen were actually made, as they broke up just they put this out (my copy is number 1, by the way). I also have their cassette ep and a live video, both of which I intend to transfer soon, but keep encountering uncooperative equipment.
The New Avenues were a pop band out of Everett, led by the falsetto-voiced and charismatic Keegan Douglas. After the demise of Luner Lander, Keeg continued to explore his Beach Boys obsession, writing guitar pop, accompanied by a bassist and as I recall, a cassette of the drum parts, as one half of Jeff and Keeg (more on that later). Eventually, they recruited Jim Paschall (Display, The Past) and a second guitarist, John, and went by Jeff and Keeg and John and Jim, before settling on The New Avenues. I believe this 5-song EP came out in 2002, and after listening to it innumerable times, it still always puts a smile on my face. If anyone has copies of later New Avenues material, or the subsequent band Talladega (in which Danny replaced Jim on drums), please let me know.
