holy shit, this was one of the smoothest running fest's i've ever been a part of. it was on 4|20 and had no choice but to fucking rule. i'm not gonna proofread or really try that hard on this, but here's a recap.

i woke up at about 10 AM on the floor of my room, in my clothes, not remembering quite what had happened the last 2 hours of the night before, and why my girlfriend was missing, and why i somehow wasn't covered with vomit. the last thing i remembered was yelling at psychedelic horseshit and finishing a handle of kessler...then it faded out...nothing but darkness. the night before had been the Ettrick show, prosanctus / sword heaven /dead child before that. i was already dressed so there was no need to shower.

i got up and chatted with ettrick for a while, started smoking... Rat Bastard showed up at about 3 just at ettrick took off. the smoking continued.

by 5 o clock representatives from most of the bands had showed up so we entered all the band's (15 of them total) names into a hat to determine the line up. we did this a few times, and sort of stuck with the order that came out. this was a lot of fun, kind of like bingo or the lottery or something, but instead of "B-14" it's "relentless corpse" or "sky corpse" or "peasant graves". we should do this for more shows.

the first act was Quiet Pepsi. this is just matt busch playing the reed organ for about 10 minutes with his back faced to the audience. it was awesome, you could tell a lot of people were sort of uncomfortable and didn't know what to do. matt busch rules.

next up was Sky Corpse. pretty sick name. these guys are sort of terrible, but they do have actual songs, and you can't really hate them because they're all sweet dudes, especially Matt Bills, who used to be really good friends with my old roommate and we sometimes chill and smoke weed. i watched a few songs and then went back to the front room to smoke more weed.

Peasant Graves - I don't know what this dude's name is, but I've seen him around at some shows and i've don't think i've ever seen him talk. he's probably always thinking about death. i feel it. he played a pretty fucking doomed out set with his bass and a loop pedal or something, building up dark sounds and bass slides until it sounded like torture chamber music. i guess kind of like wolf eyes --- total downer vibe. sick. hope to see him play some more sets.

chill for a while, and smoke some weed with *********. thanks, man.

Twink Bully was up next. Twink Bully always plays behind a projection screen with nothing on it so you can see them, and takes gravity bong rips while they play. it's kind of a "fuck you" thing, I think. their set ruled - Aaron Klamut's drumming was awesome, he was wearing some kind of Pirate Outfit or maybe just a nice shirt (puffy shirt?) and tearing it up. these guys create some kind of wall noise shit but it's different than other bands i've seen, with dual guitars, nathen snell on synths and drums. hibb's and jaycees guitars are crunched out. their shirts are 5 dicks cumming on a pentagram. SICK!

oh fuck! i took another bong rip and sat down behind the drum set to play a Biff Boff Barf set. I don't know if I should review my own set, but Lazer and Rope showed up just in time and Lazer projected some WC Fields and 70's porn on top of us, so it must have been sick. i rocked out pretty hard for at least 13 minutes. ask mark about it or something.

next up was Jay Harmon and the Sprawl. Sorry I'm calling it "Jay Harmon and the Sprawl", I'm sure the other members wouldn't want that. I thought they were pretty cool but I couldn't really grab on to anything while they were playing, seemed kind of disjointed. cool video game glitch projections.

god, i was so stoned at this point. pretty much all day long. done usually smoke that much weed but noise conference on 4|20 kind of changes things. i think about this time i wasn't really talking to anybody except for maybe Max, who was just as stoned as me. I sat in the front room and zoned for a while, and heard Face Place's set. It was pretty awesome, what I heard of it. I wish I'd have payed more attention to this one because Jen and Mark always bring that real Wizard Castle steez!

Larry Marotta and David Reed's set brought me out of my chair, and I'm glad I checked it out. These two dudes have been on the noise/weirdo scene for a long time, and it shows. a totally far out set, Dave Reed brought the ice howls and Marrota played a lap steel guitar - the first time i've seen him perform on anything but an acoustic. fucking killer. if this combo ever happens again check it out, i hope someone recorded this!

on to the back room for Hasan and my brother, Ben. Hasan started out wailing on his sax and did it alone for at least 3 minutes, which got me sort of worried because Ben is always super reluctant to play shows and I thought maybe he was just gonna sit there the whole time and not play. but when he crashed in it was perfect - killer drums/sax free jazz for about 5 minutes, then hasan stoped and let ben solo for a while. ben always blows me away even though i used to listen him practice for hours every day, i'm still not tired of seeing him play. his arms look like rubber. play more shows ben!

oh shit, more weed, by this time the place is pretty fucking packed and the pot is really getting to my head --- i don't know what to do with myself....then Relentless Corpse solved my problem with a couple of suitcases full of harsh ass noise, this shit was pretty rockin', if i remember correctly there were some vocals too. fuck yes. feel the doom.

after nine bands, i needed sort of a break...or something...or someone to talk to? no. all social skills totally obliterated by this point, nothing to do but smoke more weed - so i didn't end up seeing Social Junk, but I heard they were rad and their drummer was really good.

OK, finally dark outside at this point. Getting really rowdy now, feeling better, drink drink smoke smoke ---- Psychedelic Horseshit time. I just saw them the night before, but this time matt had a bigger band. I had to run to eric's car to get some batteries. but when I got back they were jammin on some pretty groovy shit. Ross, who played in the Sprawl, was on a keyboard and suddenly busted out this fucking AWESOME keyboard solo. WHOA. where the hell did that come from?!? that was a total highlight, sounded like the zombies or something. shit yeah.

then, suddenly, I decide to play sax with the Out There Dudes, who have no idea what they're going to play, I hook up my shit and start to jam out loud as hell. i started to really lose my mind. fuck everything - fuck you - no one really knows what the fuck anyone is doing anywhere ----- that shit went on for a while. by the end i was sweaty and mad as hell...a good release but i was still full of energy and then Rat Bastard and the fucking Laundry Room Squelchers turned on their shit. If you've never seen the squelchers, it's basically a giant fight with a bunch of amps. like, rat's got these 4 mid sized amps connected to some blasting rave/trance/noise shit with strobe light on, and everyone throws them around and jumps on each other and it's a fucking insane madhouse. it ruled. Aaron Hibbs was squelching with them and at one point had two amps in his hand and threw one on me, so i grabbed it and started to really freak out. mosh pit with amps. crawling on the floor. fucking wasted.

rat bastard rules, the world is fucked, great noise fest. wish i'd have made it to cleveland tonight to see it again, instead i'm stuck here writing this shitty review.

post of the year

This review from John is great, but I just wanted to highlight the last few acts to play this thing as they all completely brought it:

Psychedelic Horseshit: Total Garbage Fusion Jam Band set. I’d seen them the night before (though my memory is super hazy) and asked Matt what they were going to do for their second show at the same place on back to back nights and he just said they were going to jam. The most “jam band” band to play INC by a long stretch. It kind of came together slowly, but after a while Rich (usually drumming) started playing this three chord bass line and just stuck with it over and over for the remainder of the set. Matt was shredding, and yea, the other guy, Ross, busted out this amazing keyboard solo. We were talking about it yesterday, and it was like he couldn’t even figure out how to make this cheap little dinky casio work for the first 10 minutes of their set, just sort of stonedly plinking away and then all at once, as if touched by the spirit of organist virtuosos past, he launched into some of the most soulful, in the pocket shit of the night. Great set.

Out There Dudes: It would not be unfair to call the two main guys in this band, Tom Derwent and Kevin, two of the weirdest guys in town. They both are kind of record collector/ hermit types, perhaps even a bit awkward at times, but they both come to and tape every show on little handheld cassette recorders, and they both rule. Neither of them give a fuck, and when they play, they straight up go for broke. Derwent trashes his guitar and Kevin shakes some sort of old electronic box around to make some crazy out there sounds. They have two slow hazed casettes available (both are fantastic), but I was warned they were going to go for something more rugged live. For this set, Adam Fleischer joined them on guitar (his metal fronted electric acoustic deal) and vocals, and lent an out there sort of bluesman presence to the whole thing. The fact that the sound was a dense wall of layered feedback and shredding and skronking notwithstanding. John Bennett busted out his old saxophone too and just got into it, playing with as much force imaginable for most of the duration of their set. Anyway, sure, it’s pretty easy for four guys with amplified instruments to make a hell of a racket for 15 minutes or so, but it’s not so easy for it to be as densely varied and ever shifting as these guys made it. Even though it was a wall of noise in the strictest sense, it was a perfectly constructed wall, one where you were able to isolate where every component of the sound was coming from. Look at Derwent, shredding on his guitar strings, and his contribution stands out, look over at John blowing away, and you hear the sax, look at none of them and hear a completely static roar, look at Adam mumbling something and sliding a slide over his guitar strings and hear it. Watch Kevin shakes that box and the reverby sounds come through. Way Cool.

Laundry Room Squelchers: They got set up and Rat says to me: “Hey man, this shit isn’t working” referring to the PA they were plugged into in addition to the three little Peavy amps they’ve got as their “INSTRUMENTS”. I go over there and notice that they just don’t have it plugged into the right input. I turn everything down, so it doesn’t blow the speakers when it comes back on, plug it into the right input, and turn it up just a little bit so Rat can hear that’s it’s working, like a sound check. He doesn’t say anything for like 15 seconds, and just looks at me. I say: “Is everything alright?” He says: “Yea man, just turn it up as loud as it will go” as if thinking anything different is idiotic. So there I am, and it feels like I’m orchestrating the Squelchers with the volume knob on the PA. As I turn it up slowly, the scrambled radio sounds that form the Squelchers source music becomes a gigantic roar, and exactly at the moment that it gets to be the loudest that I can make it go, the Squelchers are off and doing their thing. Rat slides all three amps across the concrete floor like a full 15 ft into the middle of the room, and then it’s just people freaking out all around. I see at one point Aaron with two amps, Max is jumping on him, someone runs by me (pinned to the wall with a huge grin on my face), and shoves an amp in my face and I swear to god it’s fucking Grand Funk Railroad or some shit blasting out of it. It doesn’t last long, but this new version of the Squelchers where it’s just crazed maniacs running around and terrorizing the crowd with amps has got to be the best shit of all time. Seriously.

Fuck, I missed so many shows last week...that review of the Squelchers makes me miss awesome noise shows. Hope something similar to this pops up soon, my ears are in the mood for some terrorism/rape.

I was really impressed by the consistency and quality of the bands that night. Everybody really brought their A game. I really like how the squelchers break the space between performer and audience. When it comes to noise jams, it has always been awkward hearing such aggressive and expressive performance while everyone is standing still. They shattered that barrier. That was my favorite Face Place jam that I have caught too. Everybody was so blazed on the couches they couldn't even talk while it was going on. The atmospheric effect of it really took hold that time. Everytime I see Kevin with that old hi fi reverb box I get stoked now, the sound he gets out of that thing blows my mind. By far the best I have felt about any show I have played, it was an honor to be on a bill with so many killer acts.

yeah, this was so much fun, and everybody who played was just killer. it was a pleasure playing with all!