From the Starkweather split
Thousandswilldie originally recorded 18 songs in November for a split with Starkweather. We had planned to go back and polish them up, but it took a while to do this. Mostly due to schedules not lining up and the like. Yong-Sung and I finally met up again with Jeff Davis (formerly of Voetsek) in SF, who also recorded Population Reduction and Acephalix. Here are a few tracks from that session. Recorded in November, remastered in May. Very excited about this.
Plagues [mp3]
Taking Greed to the Grave [mp3]
Pollution [mp3]
From the Goner split
Thousandswilldie recorded 9 songs with Forrest Lawrence at the Annex back in December of 2008, which was supposed to be for a split with Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire that in the end never came out. This material never got released, except for a few songs that ended up on promo CDs we made and handed out at shows. We talked to the Goner guys at Speed Trials 2010 and discussed doing a split 7 inch. So, I called Forrest and set up a session for polishing up some of the songs we recorded back in 2008. 6 of them are now going onto that split. Here’s an mp3 from that session:
Vatican Rape Counseling [mp3]
Demo 2007
Here’s the 9-song demo we did back in 2007 with Forrest. I must have given away like 500 of these things back when we first started. It’s always cool to see this on someone else’s blog. In some cases, the people sharing our demo actually bought a printed copy with artwork (they scanned the artwork and posted that as well). Thanks for spreading the word. Download
“I do music out of function. I’m not looking to be famous, I’m not looking to get rich off this. I’m looking to get what’s inside of me outside of me.”
– Henry Rollins
It’s been a long semester. Took my final yesterday after turning in a 15 page research paper on the avid social networking of digital natives and the social implications of (plus the proposal of a possible solution). Hopefully I get that sheep skin and can prove I’m a college educated Californian (it’s about time).
For those of you who haven’t been to a California state school or are unfamiliar with the CSU system’s budget cuts and bureaucratic setbacks, which always seem to adversely affect the students more than anyone else, it is that bad. If you’re an undergrad student who needs to speak with anyone behind a desk at SJSU for any reason, it’s like stepping directly into a Kafka novel in media res. You will get filtered from one conveniently oblivious bump on a log to the next, each slacker bureaucrat yawning in your face and telling you the last person you spoke with gave you the wrong information and sent you to the wrong place. The real joke is no department seems capable of communicating with another. Nobody can transfer calls, forward emails or make sure your files get to the right place. You begin to wonder what these people do all day and why YOU are the one walking around campus from one building to the next still not getting answers. In fact, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find out that your graduation advisors will switch without any kind of notification (at least not before you spend all week emailing and calling the individual who you believed was assigned to you). In other words, yes, student needs are ridiculously neglected. As the tuition goes up and the classes become more difficult to register for, the student services become increasingly frustrating, confusing and time consuming rather than beneficial.
Anyway, that’s one regularly scheduled obligation off my plate, which frees me up for things I haven’t had much time for in recent months. So, because my final was over in the mid to late afternoon, I hit the gym and went home to write music. My chops aren’t what they should be, but it felt good to focus on writing ideas for longer than an hour.
Came up with a lot of noise material for the new EP, “He Prayed For Armageddon,” which is a very important aspect of standing on a floor of bodies. Without all the programmed soundscapes and advanced sequencing, the songs don’t connect as well. I find a lot of bands tend to do that with their music. It’s commonly just a random batch of songs that all happened to get written for the same release thrown together in a semi-structured order. Those gaps of dead air, to me, are like amateurishly neglected canvas. Negative space, when used deliberately, is a very powerful thing. On the other hand, negative space, when left open simply because artist didn’t give those areas any thought, can weaken the overall effect of any work. That’s just my opinion, but when it comes to my own artwork and music, I like to think about every single measure and beat. It all counts.
I intend to make this release so much more dense, detailed and musically diverse than both “Teaching Pigs to Sing” and the Grotesque Disfigurement split. Those releases are much more straight ahead and blastbeat oriented, which is fun and intense, but after a while, it’s time to transform those ideas into something even more interesting. Even if it’s a fast album, I still want “He Prayed For Armageddon” to be more musically evolved and involved.
Left Hand Path Tapes is putting out a cassette versions of “Teaching Pigs to Sing.” I submitted the artwork about a month ago and it’s coming out very soon. Thank you and much respect to Rob and Amanda for releasing this. I love tapes. It’s a format I wish more people would keep alive.
Still working on finding a label for the Thousandswilldie & Goner split. We got some songs set aside for that recorded by Forrest Lawrence during very early 2009. None of it has really seen the light of day. I think we handed out some free promos with a song or two from that session. But we did 9 songs and just about all of it is still sitting on a DVD in my closet. It’ll be awesome to finally put this stuff out.
Arise has a new album coming out called “The Age of Kings is Dead.” Doing the artwork for that this month. Very much looking forward to it. “City At War” turned out great, so it will be good to follow that up. I always enjoy working from one release to the next, thinking about what will and won’t be continued from the previous work onto the current project.
Defiance has never been so liberating. Deny the will of those who attempt to stifle, control and confine. This is your art. This is your time. This is your expression. Genres, rules and scenes just keep you on a leash. Who makes the music? You or them? Are you one of them or are you [...]
