we got some kind words thrown our way this week:

impose says:

I’m sure they’re out there, I just happen to have five dolla, and this is where I will blow it all.

Yesterday, Brando Skirts hit us up with a delightfully eclectic mix of damaged rock songs, more often than not guitar-based, but most of the time weighed against fantastically freaked out vocal loops, or a rolling hill of feedback, horns on the fritz, heaps of dual-melody dissonance, found sound city Frequencies, vocal harmony. It almost feels like a throw-back to an earlier time when bros made dissonant post-punk and Sonic Youth reigned as the one and only right way. 2003? Maybe just 2010, this stuff is great.

the fmly says:

Brando Skirts are writing that messy, fucked up, and wildly intriguing sound that changes color with every play. I just downloaded their first record, Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo, for free over at Proyekto Records and it’s definitely conjuring up those early anticon. feelings. Maybe it’s the gross weather right now, but these tunes are laying over me like a mud bath. It’s difficult to distinguish where one sound ends and the other begins, but it feels damn nice. Stoked for the record to grow on me…but I should probably take a shower first before stems start sprouting.

thanks, dudes! reminder: you can download that first record ovah huur.

“Formerly, silence was the time lapse between sounds, useful towards a variety of ends, among them that of tasteful arrangement, where by separating two sounds or two groups of sounds their differences or relationships might receive emphasis; or that of expressivity, where silences in a musical discourse might provide pause or punctuation; or again, that of architecture, where the introduction or interruption of silence might give definition either to a predetermined structure or to an organically developing one. Where none of these or other goals are present, silence becomes something else – not silence at all, but sounds, the ambient sounds. The nature of these is unpredictable and changing. These sounds (which are called silence only because they do not form part of a musical intention) may be depended upon to exist. The world teems with them, and is, in fact, at no point free of them” – John Cage (from page 22 of Silence: Lectures and Writings)

John Cage about Silence

See Also: John Cage in the kitchen; 27 sounds and diet advice

Anyone know where to find the John Cage interview in which the length of his answers are determined by a random value computer program?

By Carter Maness

Since I mainly publish in mainstream publications with strict word counts and content restrictions, there’s always a wealth of material left over. Many of my subjects are vaguely crazy/fascinating artists, musicians, historians, etc. who have something to say that’s a little more out there than your normal, run-of-the-mill canned responses. So, should I waste this material? Oh hell no! This is the first in a series that we can call Three Questions. Our primary subject is Mark Borthwick – an iconic photographer, musician and proponent of communal, postmaterial art. 

What is love? How does it relate to your photographs?

You are love. It’s not a product, it’s not a material thing, it’s not another being. I would be careful about love. It’s misinterpreted. It’s like me taking pictures of pictures. I am vibrating with the trees and they with me. The connection between the two of us is energy. That’s all that’s happening.

I find myself taking pictures of trees and nature – the same things everyday. I repeat them everyday. That’s my vibration. That’s me falling in love with everything I look at. It’s the same for you in that context. If you are looking at work and you go, “this is something that brings me joy,” that’s your love vibrating.

Why create an alter-ego then? Who is Will Shine? I would usually think of a new identity as something that separates those vibrations that make up your “real persona” from a constructed one.

Will Shine… I guess it’s a vibrational feeling felt. It’s a feeling. It brings me joy to share because the other peoples’ enjoy. It’s giving something back. It’s charity. Once again, I love creating communal opportunities where people can gather. Will Shine is neither I or any other, it’s a feeling. It opportuned itself as that. Now it’s one. It’s joy.

When did the name come to you?

It just appeared one day. Will – willing to be. Will willed itself to shine. One day I wrote Will Shine in a sentence and it just jumped out at me. It became my name when I play music because it’s fluid. Sometimes people will ask if I’m Will Shine or the band is Will Shine… It’s the same thing.  

By Luke Kozikowski

Tomato,
lettuce,
bacon,
honey-glazed turkey,
italian dressing,
but on a hero or a roll?