Clogs

- How the hell do I not have "Dressed to Kill" on CD?!? At least I have "Hotter than Hell," which was the point... but... "You're so young and so much different than I" Ha ha...

Emotional Feedback

-- Despite the snow that was (and still is) falling from this winter's next great blizzard, I finally made it out last night to see Neil Jendon's dream-pop/shoegazer band, Bugglette, who sounded great -- especially over the Bottom Lounge's massive PA. I am pretty sure that early on, I heard Neil playing the weird guitar intro from Rush's "Spirit of the Radio," but maybe I was hallucinating. The Bowie cover ("Boys Keep Swinging) hit the spot, too... I will put their newly released CD (which has a Kiss cover: "Goin' Blind") on after another espresso. On the news, the weather forecast is calling for "barabarically cold temperatures" this coming week in Chicago. Fuck. That should help with the next item...

-- After reading some interesting reviews, and getting a final strong recommendation from Joseph from Haptic, I have started reading Roberto Bolaño's novel, 2666, and I was sucked into it immediately. Joseph hooked me by telling me that the section called The Part About the Crimes, the longest section in the book, reminded him of BLOODYMINDED's "True Crime" CD, in that it acts as a descriptive catalog of the many women murdered and raped in Santa Teresa, a fictional Mexican border town that stands in for Ciudad Juárez, I guess, where a massive amount of crimes have been committed against so many maquiladoras. I guess that it gets Sadean in its detail. But I am not there yet...

Recent Listening

Luasa Raelon "The House of Flesh" CD (Highly recommended!)
Throbbing Gristle "The Thirty-Second Annual Report of..." (Ugh. Stick with "The Second...")
Boar "Survey on an Anthill" 3-inch CD + split CD with Kel's Backyard
Anemone Lodge CD
Test Dept. (various material from 1983-85; testing the waters to go later)
Lungfish (various albums)
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club "The Effects of 333"
Religious Knives (various recordings)

Redrot Update

The master for the Redrot "Deviant" 7-inch (B!109) is on its way to the pressing plant. More details to follow...



(Redrot - 10-11-07 - Raven Pit - Ypsilanti, MI, photo by Mark Solotroff)

Rare Mauthausen Orchestra on eBay

In case anyone is interested, there is a copy of the rare Mauthausen Orchestra "Five Years of Slaughters" LP currently up on eBay.

A Sharp Ringing in the Ears...

...thanks to NTRLWRM.

I made the trek (good thing that I brought a book) up to Metal Shaker last night, particularly to see Golden Sores (Chris from Number None and Steve from unseen|unknown [which also used to = Flux Bouquet?]) and NTRLWRM (Carter from Velnias). Enjoyable -- in very different ways -- sets from both acts... Golden Sores brought an excellent, complex, and increasingly aggressive drone composition built from analog synth (an Octave Cat!), mic'd bowed metal, lap steel, and voice. NTRLWRM featured ultra-harsh mic feedback through high-power guitar amps that ripped through the ear canal and nearly cleared the room. The surprise of the night was Boar, a guy named Alex from DuBuque, Iowa, who played a short, intense set of harsh noise/power-electronics, maybe in the vein of an abbreviated Control performance??? I have a couple of CDs to check out, to figure out what he is up to...

Status - 1/5

I just got back from the Post Office and all paid orders have now been sent out. I apologize for the slight delay caused by the extended New Year's holiday.

Super Eight Loop Update

Please note that the following information does not affect orders placed from the BloodLust! January 2009 Update. All new orders should be shipped by tomorrow, January 6th.

As a few people know, I was having some issues with the Super Eight Loop cassette series over the last two months, or so, while I was in the homestretch of wrapping up the project. I initially thought that I was having a problem with one of my cassette decks, but oddly, I could not determine if it was the mastering deck or one of several dubbing decks. It turns out that there were issues with two dubbing decks, but problems persisted after I replaced one of the failing machines. It took until recently, when I was preparing to duplicate and release the new Haptic "Repetition" cassette, that I discovered that I had received a large batch of defective blank media from one of my suppliers. This was a big setback, as numerous Super Eight Loop masters, as well as dubs made from those masters, were faulty. Luckily, I caught everything before any distro or individual orders were shipped. But this meant that I had to re-master several Super Eight Loop titles, which was both frustrating and time consuming. I still need to get caught up with some dubbing, but everything should be back to normal, shortly...

Addendum

Listening to practice space boom-box recordings, which sound rough but great... Older recordings, so they have "fill in" lyrics... Nothing that we can share, yet... But it is amazing to track our progress over the last month or so...

Praxis

Great "make-up" practice this evening. Getting singing/screaming voice back into shape. Things are definitely clicking...

Metal on Metal

As work continues on the new band, I have been looking back to some examples of classic industrial music to revisit how metal percussion is blended into different equipment set-ups. Over the past few days, I have been pulling out what remains of my Test Dept. material... some early cassettes and vinyl... I always wondered how/why (apart from the obvious of making crap techno) they tanked so badly when several of their peers maintained long and fruitful careers. My VHS tapes are all packed in boxes and I do not see myself re-acquiring the Test Dept. video on DVD, but at least some of it is on YouTube...