Monday, January 31, 2011
Don Hertzfeldt: Pwning Animation Since...
And, since I mentioned him in Dina's post,
Here are some awesome Don Hertzfeldt videos...
Here are some awesome Don Hertzfeldt videos...
Dina Kelberman: Pwning Indie Comics Since...
For the adventurous music lover out there, if you have at any point in the past year or so visited Tiny Mix Tapes, there is a good chance that you've stumbled across the art of Dina Kelberman. She illustrated their year-end headings for 2010 and contributes to their comics section with her online series, Aperiodic Comics. She also has a slim little perfect bound title called Important Comics: A Collection of Unquestionable Merit & a monthly "periodical" called The Regular Man which is now about 15 or so issues deep and consists of a single page foldout comic. And she's a genius, pure an simple.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Subtle Lip Can - Subtle Lip Can (2010, Drip Audio)
RIYL = Kingdom Shore, Zs, John Wiese
A goal this year on Forest Gospel is to not worry so much about keeping up with the Joneses. This means that there will be a lot more reviews of albums not released in the present calendar year. That said, Subtle Lip Can’s 2010 self-titled debut is still very new, having been released less than two months ago. And Subtle Lip Can is exactly the reason why I recommend that you, young music fanatic, abandon the rat race for the hippest, newest, most obscurest grail of instant music holiness of 2011. Because it was released in 2010. By a band named Subtle Lip Can. Muscular, taut and hellish, Subtle Lip Can’s debut wraps itself into your subconscious with a contortedly fingered, godly grip, flexes then wrenches. You could call it free jazz or noise or both, but ultimately Subtle Lip Can’s sound can’t be categorized. The album feels mythical and utterly prehistoric, bleak and catatonic, menacingly restrained and methodically supernatural. I could tell you that the trio features Isaiah Ceccarelli on percussion and piano, Bernard Falaise on electric guitar and Josh Zubot on violin, but I could probably just as easily convince you that the album was conceived by a trio of demigods and recorded using a sampling of lacerated tendons, marbled sinews and splintered bones. The band’s invented a tonal vocabulary all its own; a language crimped, parched and folded; a sound that communicates a different kind of communion. Absolutely, most definitely essential listening.
Runst From Thag by Drip Audio
Destroyer - Kaputt (2011, Merge)
I had plans to write this album off, but somewhere around step 6 or 7, plans changed. I guess if you take the T. Rex out of the Destroyer, things get all weird and bad-sexy-awesome. Who knew?
Destroyer - Kaputt
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Deerhoof - Deerhoof Vs. Evil (2011, Polyvinyl)
If you were to ask me who my favorite band was sometime in the last few years, I would have said Deerhoof. Pretty much since I've known who they were I have wanted to marry them (well, actually just Greg Sanier). Their new album, Deerhoof vs Evil is super solid as you would expect. But mostly, HOW OBSESSED WITH THIS SONG ARE YOU!?
I think I have listened to "Super Duper Rescue Heads!" at least 20 times more than I have listened to the rest of the album, 'cause it's baseline is sooooo kickin'. Still don't know what I think about the flamenco guitar that comes in a couple tracks before, but Imma gonna say I'm ok with it.
Essex County
I recently finished reading the collected Essex County, which consists of three graphic novels. Combined it's a hefty book, over 450 pages. The drawing are uniquely gorgeous. There is a lot of brush work and scraggly lines. I love how raw it is.
Chris Rehm - Worries, etc. (2011, Chinquapin Records)
RIYL = Tim Hecker, Belong, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
Last year, Chris Rehm established himself as the new white noise with his gorgeous treatment of texture and volume on Salivary Stones. The spiritual descendent of Tim Hecker, Christian Fennesz and Belong, Rehm's vividly conceived sound sculptures managed to wow me in a way that few other noise/drone records have. Worries, etc. (his now 4th solo effort) is billed as the follow-up and companion piece to Salivary Stones; equally brief, the album's also equally impactful and soaringly beautiful. In addition to Worries, etc. being a delicious, dense slab of ear candy, Rehm's sparsly placed vocals (gracing two tracks this time around) are absolutely divine additions to the mix. The short, ghostly sad-folk reprieves nestle in seamlessly with the rest of the album and represent one of the reasons Rehm's work is so uniquely resonant in a sea of dronester wannbes. Stream or download Worries, etc. here.
"Worries" by Chris Rehm
Thank You - Golden Worry (2011, Thrill Jockey)
RIYL = Ponytail, Battles, Deerhoof
Glory be; the ceaselessly gracious Thank You are back and even better than before. Wait, what? You don’t remember Thank You? Their debut album was Terrible Two... Nothing? Oh man, you best get on top of that. A blessedly blustery piece of mad-mathy rock workouts, that one is. And Golden Worry? Similarly blessed, wide-eyed, grinningly (though, not mischievously so) aggressive, superlative, superlative, math, superlative, superlative, rock agility, ad nauseam, sans nausea. The wide-smiling, hard-hitting glory of Golden Worry is the dog who, road-tripping across the Midwest, has his head out the window, jowls flapping madly, tail wagging relentlessly, all the energy in the world and just glad to be alive. Golden Worry fits that, even amidst its chant-happy, prog-heavy, drum-limberingly airy, out-rock gung-ho-ness. It’s there; a master class rock album that flips and turns effortlessly, bursts wildly, and satisfies. And satisfies.
Thank you - Pathetic Magic
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Forest Gospel is Awake.
Forest Gospel became tired and took a nap. Now that we're awake again, we're a speck different. We are no longer pseudonyms. We are Nick and Erin (happily married) and others, potentially. Things'll be looser. There are no longer rules governing FG (not that there were any explicit rules before). We expect we'll still post plenty about the music we enjoy, but also about other things we enjoy as well.
This may include but is not contractually limited to: art, fiction, poetry, graphic novels, web comics, maps (Nick loves maps!), films, animation, music videos, zines, video games, typography, skateboarding or Audrey Hepburn.
Forest Gospel then, in the shell of a pistachio nut, is the collected cultural interests of Nick and Erin Potter; a marital dialogue of taste; a catalog of awesome; or whatever.
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Also, if you're interested, we've setup a Forest Gospel page on this new website called Facebook...
Monday, January 17, 2011
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