I mean, I can ramble (and have) about how remarkable it is that all of your talented neighbors come together each year to fuel the largest all local music festival in the nation. I can posit that Detroit is just a world onto itself, musically, with a range of multifaceted bands, styles, personalities and ideas...all germinating throughout its motoroil stained alleys and stones' throws from its dillapidated houses and run down gas stations.
From the glowing beauty of pure-catchy pop to the swagger of rock n roll to the dynamism of hip/hop and the ferocity of punk - all bubbling up between the cracks of.... oh you know how it goes.
But with Blowout - not only is one offered the chance to romp and reel through four long nights of music, a hundred or so different bands packed into fifteen venues (starting in Detroit and then predominantly through Hamtramck) - but you're given the chance of... chance.
Maybe you're familiar with, er, "the scene" round here. Maybe exstensively...moderately...or just somewhat. Maybe you already know who you want to go see.
But if you have no idea - well, then the whole week becomes a fun-house of potential musical revelations. (It could also be a montage of mediocrity more attuned to a house of horrors if you're just unlucky with your random selections...) - Whatever it may be - it's a choose your own adventure scenario.
My longwinded point- we all know the hullabaloo of Detroit; its a confounding underdog that's stricken with staggering talent - and - we all know the glories of Blowout; but never under-appreciate the value of "finding your new favorite band..."
Finding ...as opposed to searching. The band that no one told you to go see, the band that didn't get any hipster buzz, the band that you stumbled upon...and then, had your mind blown.
nothing to fear...nothing to doubt....and nothing to say...just yet...
~
I am trying to write about another band.
But the giddied cacophony of the internet has intervened to shove another, bigger band, down my throat. All day long across the gaping digital sidewalks of The Facebook, and knotted seaweed sprouts of blog upon blog upon blog,I felt this surreal, internet-set avatar-equivalency of being swept up with the pursuing hoard of screaming fans chasing down the four mop tops in the “Hard Day’s Night” video.
Only instead of the Beatles, this was Radiohead. The Oxford esoterikans have released their eighth album today (King of Limbs, for digital purchase/download, a day early, likely purposely, than they’d previously announced) and music journos, however savvied or diluted, tripped awkwardly onto their laptops, sprinting off without a stretch or a warm-up…
Scoops are ludicrous in the internet age. Who are you trying to impress? A review of a Radiohead album will not hold much water on a day like today…the converted, the crazed and the longtime connoisseurs will be too busy drowning themselves in the sounds – squirreled away somewhere, head-between-headphones, nestled into their breakfast nooks or basement laundry rooms or bedrooms, or trotting along with their iPods, taking in this latest piece of work from an already highly acclaimed band (to levels of digital-era deification), ...then, who really cares what you think…
...the UK’s Guardian prefaces its initial post with an acknowledgment that this is merely the “first…” review… a nod to its apparent need to "get the story out" so to speak. But, whether telling or not, they seem to think it “hardly sounds like a band breaking new ground.”
So this begs the question, …whether, especially since their 2007’s In Rainbows having utilized an ingratiating/intriguing “pay what you want” price tag and now with Limbs'-comparable ‘tablets dropped down to the mountain’ abruptness of arrival… have Radiohead albums become more about the experience? The discovery experience, particularly.
The same excitement and, yes, legitimate exhilaration, that we all, around the world, shared today, after clicking…and listening.
Click and listen. And know in the back of your mind, listening to those sparse yet striking guitars, spectral strings mingled with synthesizers and chilling wafting vocals as they emit into your ears…that you are synced up with many, with your veritable Radiohead nation. Or, take heart in being (or convincing yourself that you are) an outsider to the madness, the somewhat partypooper who stands at the side of the auditorium shaking his head at all these screaming fans (yet still nodding his head/tapping his toe).
Something zany happened today. And the sheer energy of those around you demanded that you yourself, if not now, then certainly later, give your own attention to it. Is it some sick water cooler phenomenon? Can we not resist running alongside the mob of screaming fans, down the alleys of the internet, chasing our new Beatles?
In any case…there’s nothing that needs to be said about this record right now. Because it’s your record. We’re at a maddening point where it will not make any difference what anyone writes about it today...
We’ll just have to, as the Guardian suggested,…wait for those “second…” and third reviews.
Pop song transcendentalist Jon Visger (of Mason Proper) has spent the last year or so fleshing out his beat-driven, more electronic-laden project Absofacto, continuing through an equally urbane, florid and evocative tract as the more indie-rock leaning project parenthetically referenced above.
By that same token, Absofacto also finds Visger indulging his seemingly incorrigable bent toward galvanizing any and all possibilities of structure, sense and delivery for a pop song's perceived format. So... less like some gallantly iconoclastic indie-pop writer like a Win Butler or a Kevin Drew, Absofact has found find Visger becoming more fully realized as a producer-type (a sonic chef, so to speak) that would blend the earthy acoustics and sinews of a bending electric guitar to the shimmering buzz and gleam of synthesized bass and the instantaneously coax of shuffling sequenced beats (more like a Dan Snaith, if you will).
Anyway - I'm burying the lead - Absofacto has paired with instrumental hip/hop producing duo 10k Citiesfor a new 7" split - Kiko - which is out, now, today...and for the rest of -ever, on Dovecoat Records. The artwork above is by Michigan-based Silent Giants. Copies are limited to 500 and are only available via Absofacto's Bandcamp or topspin.
So - Kiko is where the pair of electronic-leaning trio can meet in a sort of middle ground; with 10k Cities having cut their teeth on the art of the remix (and with Visger, himself, having dabbled recently with Ra Ra Riot and a few more), they can hook arms and dosey-doe for a few tracks that showcases each's knack for a genre-defiant song-building that's bristling with plenty of zest and left-field zooms, but still maintaining a dreamy allure.
KIKO7" TRACK LISTING A. Kiko by Absofacto & 10k Cities B. 80844264@81 (Love Song) by Absofacto
Boisterous albums can be intimate. Every so often, you hear an album that effectively translates the brimming excitement and inexorable motivation of the band. Not quite like the cliché of “being in the room with them,” and not merely the dynamism of the tracks that have been recorded (or, “captured”) but particularly intimate in that you, uncannily, become in tune with the people, the people behind the instruments, the people in the studio, the person at the sound board.
Really, said Akron/Family singer/multi-instrumentalist Miles Seaton, “There’s no real way to describe ‘inspiration’ on this basic, mechanical level…(for it) to be realistically digested by people who are, already, overloaded with information and don’t have time. The reality is, the generous thing to do, as an artist, is…”
He pauses. What does it really, simply, merely, come down to…?
Anyhow – this weird and invigorating “connection” can be found and felt on the Portland(/New York) based trio’s fifth proper full length, the curiously titled S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT (Dead Oceans). Equally surreal, sublime and smorgasbord, Akron/Family churn out a wooly folk/rock flushed with a transcendental wanderlust; equally electrified and psychedelified. After more than eight years together, the trio (with Seth Olinsky and Dana Janssen,) have assuredly bonded, with a camaraderie qualifying a “familial” bond, but also to the point of remarkable synchronicity –to the point of an almost telepathic tri-way of reading each other to facilitate an almost second-nature comfort level for the controlled chaos of improvisation.
“We’re not really a big rehearsal band,” Seaton quipped. “We figure out what to emphasize and how to frame it and just go for it. It has to do with us getting to a place where we’re communicating withone another, clearly, what we want to accomplish, and then reaching a decision. Then it’s just a matter of quick execution.”
Indeed. They took some time to hunker down with Chris Koltay at High Bias , on the fringe of Corktown, near the slopes of the emaciated Grand Central Train Station, in SW Detroit. Koltay recorded Akron/Family’s 2009 affair, Set Em Wild, Set Em Free.
But, actually, the album, (S/T II) was “born in (Japan),” Seaton said. “…An incredible, wild inspiration to us. Going there, we had been going in a million different directions, trying all these different things. And we were shook with surprise with how amazing it was; it shocked us back into place, it grounded us and there was an explosion of creativity that occurred around us there.”
The band seemed to find a muse in the land of the rising sun, spurred by their touring of Japan with Deerhunter through summer 2009, combined with what Seaton remarked as a particularly inspiring performance that Akron/Family attended, by Japanese noise-legends the Boredoms at last years’ All Tomorrows Parties festival.
“It was inside of us,” Seaton said, of this ‘explosion of creativity.’ “So, when we got to Detroit, there was a level of the rugged, feral nature taking over, being in the skeletal-ness of that city. Detroit’s kinda been vacated. We were hanging out at that train station, literally and metaphorically. There’s some poetic aspects to that.”
“I do feel like there’s a level of intimacy achieved in (S/T II). Our first record was almost entirely recorded with one crappy SM57 microphone in a shitty sequencing program. We embellished it in the studio. But, we were creating in a vacuum; we weren’t out in the world, in the scene, listening to a bunch of bands and approximating it, none of that. I feel like it was just this intimate, very direct sharing that was happening. That intimacy was very important.”
“When you improvise and when you are free and are making really loud, like—literally loud statements, there’s a level of everyone in the room being together, because they’re all being sucked up in the loud sound; everyone’s hearing it, they’re all having their own experience but everyone’s hearing it, so there’s this intimacy that can occur, or this sort of presence that can happen. I feel like there’s a capability in loud, really extreme musical circumstances, that can really happen but I feel like we hadn’t realy thought about it htat much or paid attention to that quality.
"Where, before, when we were first playing and Michael Gira (of Young God Records, their first label/collaborator) first heard us (at Pete’s Candy Store, Brooklyn), we used to get so quiet! It would be total silence. We’d sit in silence for a whole minute with an audience and everyone would be together in this silence. It wasn’t about us being interesting or about people being interested in us, it was just about the moment that was there. We tried to suffuse that more radical energetic expression, on a sonic level, with that intimacy and that intention.”
“Intimacy, that drawing people in, was the real intention behind the record.”
Akron/Family returned to work with their previous sound molder/collaborator, Chris Koltay, for S/T II. The band have made a personal, professional, and in some ways, cosmic, connection to the consummate, Detroit-based engineer (whose resume includes Liars, Deerhunter, No Age). “We’ve gotten close enough to him, at this point, where we kind of use him as a spirit animal. He really puts his heart and soul into what he’s doing; I feel like he really understands the musicality of sound. I can’t say enough about how awesome he is…On a sonic level, he just gets it.”
Akron/Family albums up to now have spanned from stripped down, obscuro-acoustic based folk experimentations, to saturations of eclecticism with banjos, sitars, and synthesizers under tribal/spiritual chant-churning drum circle-esque trance tumblers, to keyed-up, guitar-surged, raucous whirls. S/T II, with its cool; its confidence, its grace, balancing dreamy/hazy acoustic sways with the more cacophonous, rock-leaning exuberance, they blend funk and blues, to sun-soaked Americana.
What’s been steady throughout is, first, of course, their striking, honeyed harmonies and their penchant for found sounds spackling the edges of their songs. Set Em Wild Set Em Free and its predecessor, Love is Simple (2007) seemed rapt with the earthy/woodsy vibe, furled by cricket chirps, whereas their first album opened with the melodic elements of a cellphone. S/T II balances the elucidation of the outdoors with the tangled, humming wires inside a computer.
“There’s definitely a weird nature aspect to technological stuff; technology sort of apes natural processes in a lot of ways; that’s just something we’re interested in. When I first started listening to John Cage or just more abstract music, there was this potential expansion; I’d always kind of enjoyed sound, like, I enjoyed the hum of an air conditioner or an engine or something, so I started to get into those sounds and it became musical to me in this way, to where I felt like I could walk around and be surrounded by music. So, for us, there’s this level of wanting to encourage and bolster that experience in listeners.”
He regaled Akron/Family performing at an abstract space, outside, at a festival on the East River in New York, when a boat went by and its horn blew seemingly in key with what another performer was doing. “There was this electricity. This real presence can happen when you’re really present in that sound. I feel like you can carry that presence into life and I feel like it’s lead me to feel happy. On a basic level, I walk around and I feel like I’m in a different world.”
“I feel inspired!”
~
Akron/Family returns to Detroit, to the Lager House (not far from Koltay’s studio); and to a town that the band felt “very cared for, there…it’s a really amazing town.”
And, this date, 2/22 at the Lager, it being a week and a half into their 2011 tour, Seaton said, “I feel like we’ll be there just around the time when we’re starting to get crazy…”
"...kind of dark and mysterious and kind of noisy...and, kind of like living in a haunted house...like, ya know, the crazy kid up in the attic with his weird poetry and nursery rhymes..." (-drummer Eugene Strobe)
"...like the Monkees if they were kind of bummed out and on LSD..." (-guitarist/engineer Jim Diamond)
"...(people) just wanted to hear some garage soul, hehe, but...what we were doing had all these bizarre references and bizarre things flying all over the place...which sound normal to me now..." (-bassist Matt Smith)
"...it's an interesting bag..." - singer/guitarist Troy Gregory "...and one of my favorite bands..."
Charismatically creepy...and inherently chameleon, The Witches's brewed a psychedelic pop and gory/glammy rock shuffle that elucidated a dimly lit basement haunted by an irresistably piquant pack of dissonant and obscure ghosts simmering up from the grout.
Conjured in the mid-90's, the Witches blurred genres and influences as much as they blurred the boundaries of the spirit world; sublimely sinister scenarios howled and trounced out as raucous seances that effectively undermined the locks on your door meant to keep out both the paranoia and the phantasmagoria.
But, once that door broke open - you realized, weird, provacative or even snarling as the sound was, that this was the kind of rock n roll party you never wanted to leave; a strange psychosis you could identify with, decorated with an eye and an ear that showed reverance for a galaxy of outsider art and varied nostaligas, whether it was cable-access TV's hey-day of Ghastly and Ghoul, or the minable aesthetic value of KISS' blood-splattered ouevre.
These demons had hearts! And all these mutant bubblegum pop songs were delivered with this tumbling, hook-heavy rock sound, warmed with a playful punch and shimmying jangle, but still haunted by a raspy baritone crooner...
That distinctive voice belonged to Troy Gregory, whose eerie/entrancing poetry and melodies served as the base for all Witches tunes.
Sixteen years on (and, after three years of unintended inactivity), The Witches have reformed its longest-held line up of players to celebrate the release of A Haunted Person's Guide, their veritable best, or defining, or canon-spanning collection, on Alive Naturalsound.
After five albums, four record labels and a procession of a dozen steadily contributing members, its likely that the band has never yet been properly documented because its identity still feels opaque...
Like the portrait could never be painted 'cuz the subject kept restlessly jittering off of the stool and out of frame - only to return with a new face, or new faces...or maybe grinning with fake vampire teeth.
"When the 'space-rock' thing was happening in Detroit in the 90's, people were calling The Witches space rock," said drummer Eugene Strobe (2001-present). "Then, when the 'garage rock' thing was happening, they called us garage rock. It seems like by our nature, we're just open to different forms of music. (It's) just the raw feeling of music, that raw feeling tranlsates well into those kind of genres, I guess."
"...the sound of the Witches? I imagine that's what it sounds like in Troy's brain all the time," said drummer Deb Agolli (mid-late 90's). "He invites some friends over to round it out and to have a few laughs with...at least that's what it was like for me."
"It's...." Gregory said, "...just a name for one of the things where I'm getting together with other people. The same as people get together to go bowling, or a church picnic or a convent! In the Witches--it's just that collaborative thing..."
"It was like being a member of a fun weirdo gang," recalled Agolli, who now co-owns a video post production house (Crash Edit) in Royal Oak. She first saw the Witches at Zoots when Scott Michalski (of the Volebeats) was drumming. She told Gregory she loved the songs and that should she'd be up for it -should there ever be a need for drumming.
And that's how it went, said Gregory. "It was...whoever can do it." (Until the line up finally would settle with Nash (The Alphabet, Electric Six),drummer Strobe (Cosmic Light Shapes)
The band, itself, was initiated by songwriter/producer Matthew Smith, back in 1994, by way of his coaxing Gregory's words out into the world, to be fleshed out by members of his group, Outrageous Cherry (including drummer Deb Agolli, bassist Chad Gilchrist, guitarist Larry Ray).
Gregory, having at that point just ended his tenure with NY heavy metal band Prong, moved back to Detroit and, as Smith puts it, "locked himself in his room and started writing songs that sounded like The Archies..."
"He was playing in heavy metal bands," Smith said, "in early 90's in Flotsam & Jetsam and Prong and all that, surrounded by all these metal people who didn't know who Charles Mingus was or any of the kind of stuff he was listening to, so he started calling me on the phone again." The pair of them started their first band (with drummer Mike Alonso) in the late 70's, as 12-year-olds fatefully situated in the same metro Detroit neighborhood. In the 80's, they went down separate roads, Smith went off to college while Gregory went off to California (where the latter delved into its burgeoning heavy metal scene).
But in 93-94, they realigned. Smith visited his friend, having then, so freshly re-settled into his hometown, to hear/read these songs. "(He) completely abandoned the whole heavy metal rock thing and started writing these bizarre songs. I kinda forced him to record a whole albm and just kept bugging him... So, he had this finished record with this really bizarre production and I offered my band to be his back up band."
Then things got experimental. "The idea was the amplifiers had to have a lot of reverb," Gregory said.
"I remember there being like five guitars on stage," Smith said. "They would all have to play the same parts, exactly. But, with everybody playing in unison, a bunch of guitar parts, not too loud but in unision; it creates this resonance effect that's really hypnotic."
The Witches, early on, were based around a revolving cast, which often included members of Outrageous Cherry. It also featured guitarist John Nash (of The Alphabet and currently Electric Six) who had collaborated with Gregory on an early Witches prototype project Mice Termite. "I carried over...like when a company gets bought out and some employees keep their job. I was paid in reverb."
They stated playing around Detroit, at Zoots and The Gold Dollar (when it opened in '96,) . Gregory said some nights he'd grab whoever was available to come up and sit in with the band.
"People would say: 'Oh! Like Phil Spector?'" Gregory recalls. " '...Well, not really like that...' We were messing with these kinds of Morton Subotnick kind of ideas, or, maybe not so much Subotnick...more Morton Feldman."
Gregory's early songs, often with straight three-chord pop structures, "had a real character," Smith said, "and seemed to represent his personality pretty accurately. Those songs were a good format for his stream of consciousness-lyrics and for him to be himself; he wasn't restricted by the stylistic trappings of the day."
Rehearsals were like loose hang out sessions, said Agolli--who hosted a few at her Ferndale home, back in 96. Gregory brought lyrics and skeletal structures to then be fleshed out. "We would play each song once each. There was a comfortable level that was completely liberating. Everyone fell into place when someone started a jam; no questions, just play."
Let's Go to the No-Go Zone
But, back to those early gigs in 96; once they started, "(Gregory)'s writing exploded and he just started writing hundreds of songs. He'd show up to practice with 20 new songs each time."
Smith/Gregory's collaboration was highly complimentary at this point (early 90's), having "hooked back up," they found they were digging the same sounds and styles: Velvet Underground, Joe Meek, bubble-gum pop and the Rolling Stones. "We found our niche as songwriters by working together," Smith said. The pair had tried writing together in the very early 90's as side projects (away from Gregory's Prong or Smiths' Volebeats/OC) but it didn't start "hitting the mark" until that genesis of the Witches. "We were arriving at that moment of grasping (songwriting) at the same time."
But, Smith said, once Gregory found his own niche, it led to an "onslaught of songs..." and thus, by the time the still loose "group" had found an outlet to release its humble debut, Gregory already had the next album's worth of songs written and decided, instead, to just move forward with the fresher material. What wound up as the Witches' proper, realized "debut" was 1998's Let's Go to the No-Go Zone.
By this point, they had settled into a five piece.
Engineer Jim Diamond (of Detroit's renowned Ghetto Recorders) was just getting his operation off the ground when he met Gregory around 1996. Diamond said he would have to "bug people to come up" to his downtown studio, a place that would later become somewhat of a landmark for fateful recordings with the White Stripes, the Sights and many other notables.
"Somehow we ended up doing a live Witches record in early 97, (No-Go Zone). We had a party and a keg of Motor City Brewing Works (John Linardos and I were roomates at the time). Sometime after that I joined and had the idea to play electric 12 string gutiar tuned down to a low b-note. I always thought our guitar blends sounded so good."
Thus, the No-Go Zone line up of Gregory, Smith, Nash, Diamon and Agolli played through 97 and 98. Smith and Agolli had to depart eventually, due Outrageous Cherry's accelerating album output. Cory Martin (an original member of the Electric Six), Matt Hatch (an original member of The Go) and Wolfman Bill Peterson (of the Volebeats, Medusa Cyclone, Wytchhyker) joined the group in time to record what would prove to be the Witches' most well-regarded album, Universal Mall (1999-2000...produced by Diamond at Ghetto Recorders).
"...When I get interviewed," Diamond said, "I usually get asked -what's a favorite record (of mine), and I usually say (Universal Mall). Troy and I had a lot o fun in the studio and made those records fast." This would be the recording location/set-up for the following two Witches albums-- 2002's On Parade and 2007's Thriller. "A favorite memory is a drunken, shirtless Troy yelling at Nash and I about how we needed to deconstruct some song or another. ...We talked him down."
Furled with smoky organs, singed with bluesy guitars and pounded forth with instantaneous strutting beats, the ballads of Universal Mall - a balance of rock n roll swagger and psychedelic/blues surrealism - likely formed at least some shread of an archetypal sound in the minds of Detroit's music audience... Indeed, there was an energy surrounding it that was likely spurred on by the whole "garage explosion" of the time (...White Stripes, Dirtbombs, Doll-Rods, Go, Sights, OC, Detroit Cobras...and more).
"The local music scene was busting at the seams," said Agolli. "I don't think I saw a national act for years because the stuff that was happening in our own back yard was so fucking great it was not to be missed. (With No-Go Zone's recording) at Jim Diamond's, it seemed like every band in town was in and out of there. I loved working with Jim, to me it seems like the track is practically mixed by the time you finished recording the song."
Universal Mall's dynamism was what piqued the interest of bassist Skarich - who started following the band right around that time. Strobe, meanwhile, had been playing drums with the blues power-trio, the Sights when he crossed paths with Witch-chieftain Gregory. The two of them would soon join (roughly between 2001 to 2002).
On Parade / Thriller
The Witches were again a five piece following Universal Mall - with Cory Martin still on drums (and Strobe as 2nd guitar). But, in early 2003, Electric Six's fateful "Danger! High Voltage" single would jettison them to worldwide popularity and an increasingly demanding tour schedule led to Martin's departure. Diamond had already moved on, becoming busy with his then-contributions to The Dirtbombs.
Strobe moved to drums. The band moved back into Diamond's Ghetto Recorders. And the result was their third album, On Parade (on Fall of Rome Records); the subtler 10-song display was more of a straight ahead rock n roll affair...still shadowed and grimed with the characteristic, boisterious gleam of Gregory's lyrics and strutting hooks.
Fall of Rome and likewise Alive Naturalsound are both headed by people who can be counted as Witches enthusiasts. Mark Rome, who worked with a few other Detroit bands, was a fan of The Witches, just as Alive's founder Patrick Boissel. Put another way, selling the Witches was never a top priority for Gregory. It's more that he's worked with people who have believed in him, or shared his drive/inspirado/penchants... Bewitching, indeed.
"I don't think anyone in the band has ever been that proactive (about) promoting," said Skarich, namely because of the band's unique existence - which is always dependent upon others' personal availability.
"I have no problem making it," Gregory said, referring to the galaxy of his work, which includes filmmaking as well as music. "But, this distribution thing, it's a whole other business."
"(Boissel) thought (Haunted Guide) was right as this 'introduction' to people. It's weird how the songs have gotten around over the years; it seems with the Witches records that more people tend to trade them, or tape them or have them suggested from a friend. Rome, a gentlemen, a good guy, he was really into the music and we liked him. But people still came to us and said 'I can't find the albums...' Not that we were expecting the distribution level of Rihanna or something. Eh, people are busy - it's hard to find out about things...I spend all my time making music."
And that's what it came down to... This man, this songwriter, this rampantly idea-spewing, song scribbling maniac... simply spent to much time engaged in the work to really save any time foisting it upon A&R desks and poking publicity agents.
"Prolific is putting it mildly," Smith said. "It's definitely like Robert Pollard (Guided By Voices) or something...that level of being prolific."
"Troy is so out there," Strobe said admiringly, "he's like the sparkplug."
"Troy is extremely prolific," Agolli added. "There was never a shortage of new stuff to play."
"I truly think Troy is one of the most talented people around," Diamond said. "I've told people that around the world, and will continue to say it."
Yet, still, The Witches struggled somewhat to find an audience, whether it was in distribution or whether it was in distinguishing itself from the rest of the early 00's "garage" scene.
Haunted Person's Guide is poised to show you and the world what you've been missing heretofore!
A Haunted Person's Guide (to The Witches)
"I knew of The Witches," said Boissel, "but I hadn't realized the extent of Troy's body of work until he sent me his albums. I thought the quality of the music was so amazing that it needed a second chance. I came up with the idea of a compilation; an introduction of sorts, of the Witches. I think the album stands on its own among the band's discography."
After Toronto-based Music for Catsreleased Thriller (in 07), the band went into sort of a holding pattern. "The band never broke up..." Gregory said, "we were just all doing other things for a while...." (Strobe began teaching at the School of Rock as well as developing his own project, Cosmic Light Shapes; Skarich toured with LCD Soundsystem through 2008; Nash toured constantly with Electric Six and is currently producing said-band's forthcoming record; while Gregory spearheaded the Stepsisters as well as reactivated a new band for his solo material). "The whole idea was: we'll try not to force this stuff so much..."
Boissel got turned onto the Witches by Smith. The rest...leading up to February 25th's release show at Small's, is history.
"I like the Witches because they didn't sound like anything else," Skarich said. "A lot of bands wear their influences on their sleeve and I've been in bands like that. But I've always liked the bands that have a sound that is themselves. The Witches didn't really have any sort of influence outside of very broad genres, like the -psych and 60's pop stuff. Troy's a fun guy, he's a good guy--I like his outlook on life."
Skarich continued: "He's mentioned that he really liked this line up (Nash+Strobe+Skarich), but I think there's been plenty of great line ups. Everbody's easy going, there's no primadonnas, nobody's really in charge...which, heh, can be a bad thing sometimes..."
Skarich said that he, Nash and Strobe are "pretty introverted, quiet, and mostly shy. Troy-is the extrovert. The one who can talk a mile-a-minute. There's a kind of dichotomy there. Troy might have a hard time being in a band with himself."
Nash said, "Troy has a very magnetic personality and he is easy to work with. Phil is indifferent and Eugene is enthusiastic. Like Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman--it was instant synergy."
Strobe said: "Phil is the silent rock that keeps the foundation with a smirk and witty sense of humor; John is the quiet genius on guitar, whose sometimes overshadowed by Troy's boisterousness. Troy is the sparkplug, John is the wick, Phil is like the wind, or something...and I'm the stones trying to help Troy ignite... Well, Phil is as much the wick as John is the wind. Or maybe we're all different elements of the Earth. Troy is definitely the boisterous element, whichever one that is, I don't know if it's sulfur or...salt?"
Gregory: "Phil Skarich's sense of humor is just brilliant. Gene is never one to say: 'I'm bored.' And if he's bored he'll do something about it. And Nash, just an easy guy to hang around with and I really like the way he plays guitar. It's just, like, someone you really like making music with--when you get together you tend to inspire each other and give each other ideas."
"One thing," Gregory surmised after recently reuniting with this line up in the run-up to the release show, "playing with these guys, well, has always been wonderful, but, it's got even more of this other kind of groove happening, now."
The band plans to tour later on, in the spring, including trips to both coasts, Chicago, New York and hopefully Europe. "(Recording) a (new) single is a great idea," Nash said, especially, "in this day and age. It's like the music industry is starting over again from scratch, except minus the industry and making-money part."
"The history of the Witches...it's one of those Detroit bands that have shared a lot of members," Strobe said, "either just for a little while or for longer; which was kind of the Detroit-mantra for a bit. The Witches brought different elements of the Detroit music scene together and presented it on stage; people could jump off and do their own thing for a while and come back. That was the beauty of the Witches. It was more a revolving cast of influences and musical sounds, playing through the framework of these particular tunes."
"I get this impression," Smith said, "judging from people's reactions of hearing those records, years later, that this stuff just sounds really fresh to people now. So, maybe this stuff was just ahead of its time, maybe what we were doing then- while at that time it just frightened people, it all seems pretty normal now."
Milo: ...are people catching up?
Smith: "I think so..."
~
Matt Smith is currently producing the next Outrageous Cherry album and preparing a tour for the Volebeats. Jim Diamond is wrapping up recording work on The High Strung's forth coming LP. Deb Agolli, along with raising her two sons (age 7 & 10) continues to run Crash Edit in Royal Oak. The various hours logged at audio recording studios (through bands) helped Agolli make the switch to video - and Crash Edit's been going for 10 years now.
A special editorial note, before the next post...which concerns the Detroit-based rock group, The Witches.
This casual and rambling musical memoir (Deep Cutz) hasn't necessarily had any stringent aim - but it's definitely spent most of its time unpacking the cluttered house of Detroit's music "scenes" (through the 2nd half of the last decade).
Whatever the cause of this incorrigable inclination towards this regions music, it's onsetting moment is: The Witches. Seven years ago, I saw my first "local" show...The Witches at the Magic Stick. But, before that even - it stemmed from a song placed on a mix, made by my friend Pierce Reynolds (DevilFish / Oscillating Fan Club) - "Demons All Around Her" by The Witches.
I won't get romantic on the details. It's that old cliche of "...and I was hooked!"
But, the Witches, themselves, are a curious specimen, when they're scattered onto the examining table amongst all the rest of the "garage-explosion" era bands (-many of whom, it should be underlined, are still working, playing and touring today, the Witches included, beyond the fickle sustenance of an media-attention explosion).
As the next screed will highlight - they were, possibly, the paradigm of that scene (98-03)'s
"tradition" of sharing and switching members. Inevitably I can't help conjuring an albeit cartoonish image of its unique frontman (and ever-consistent member/leader), Troy Gregory, with his black-dominant wardrobe, darkly circled blood shot eyes and short yet tussled hair... And thus, see the Witches as the outsider type, the eccentric kid rooting around in the shadows with his notebook at the edges of the playground, talking about spirit worlds, demons trees and creeping through other people's galaxies...
It should be noted (and will be noted again), that my "door" to the Detroit music scene was a little album called Sybil - an ensemble compilation dreamt up by Troy Gregory from 2002 that brought 13 different Detroit bands from that era together to play backing band to a batch of his songs. The title referenced the Sally Field movie about an early poster child patient for schizophrenia - as the album, front to back, would shift personalities for each track (including The Dirtbombs, The Sights, Outrageous Cherry, the Volebeats and the Wildbunch). This was a haunted person's guide to the Detroit music scene, as I saw it.
The densely intertwining branches in the Witches "family tree" demonstrated by the various connections to other bands by way of its revolving cast of players, not to mention the nuances brought to each recording by the various influences and talents brought in by each player, is just one of the many things that make the Witches unique. They were never garage - and never quite space-rock and never quite psychedelic... definitely not goth and not-exactly pop...
Thus they did stand out...and yet...they didn't... There were some of us who loved (and love) The Witches - but their shifting line ups (and inevitably shifting periods of activity) were one of many reasons they remain a bit of a mystery...
For the amorphous indie-music world, 2007's Person Pitch, by Panda Bear (one-third of Animal Collective) was...kind of a big deal...some propping it in hyperbolic verbiage deserving of the 2nd coming of Pet Sounds... and maybe it was for the blissfully-fuzzed-out atmospheric-groovers-and-shakers.
Such fervor has lead to the ears of the internet already bending upward, awaiting for Pitch's follow up, Tomboy...which isn't slated for release until mid-April.
That said, Noah Lennox (a.k.a. Panda Bear) has returned to his studio in Lisbon to craft a follow-up (having focused recently more-so on Animal Collective-related affairs). Just like <-that band's ubiquitous summer jam from 2009, My Girls, Panda Bear's new MP3 relies on a langorious, bass-gurgled little shimmy that hooks back with this instantaneously catchy hand-clap -while we get this drifting melodic ballad that not only pares back disorienting delay effects but also is arrayed with quite a bit of words, comparably more expressive than the 1 or 2-sentenced looped lyrics from some of Pitch's entries... Anyhow... Paw Tracks is offering a glimpse:
Brooklyn (by-way-of Ann Arbor) electronic composer and glitched up beat purveyor Shigeto is bringing his left-field hip/hop varieties back to his home town, (@ The Blind Pig) on Feb 18th.
Zach Saginaw's dizzying, episodic Full Circle came out on A2-based Ghostly International last year... Now, Ghostly is unveiling a Remixes EP, with nine of Shigeto's tracks retooled by an impressive group of artists from around the world, including Mux Mool, Samiyam and Mike Slott.
(Ghost Family Reunion - April 2nd) ~ The Ghost Family is comprised of three loud, vigorous rock bands - two of them from Ypsilanti, one of them from the Waterford/Highland-area... These outsiders have banded together to form a tight unit - of friendship, of music, and of a mitosis-mirroring spawn-and-spread of shared inspiration.
Jehovah's Witness Protection Program (left, above), join Err... (the two gents below) and Sharky & the Habit (bottom) to form this sonic committee that ranges from coarse punk, to sense-stretching noise rock, to curious blues-and-funk hybrids, to resurrecting the raucous rolls of the American Underground.
JWPP - the Ypsi's imposing one-two rock duo punch - are finishing up an album with Brandon Wiard; their third release, but first proper full-length.
"Jehan (Dough) and I have been playing together since 1997," said singer/guitarist Anthony Anonymous. In the early 00's, their first, and later-on respective other bands had dissolved and they lost touch with several of the close connections they'd made throughout the SE-Michigan music scene. When the pair realligned to start JWPP in December 06, "we were starting from scratch."
One particular connection remained, drummer Brandon Moss (of Ann Arbor-based Bear Vs. Shark...a group Dough & Anonymous had played with through the early 00's). "Moss's new band, Wildcatting (now Bars of Gold) ended up being our connection to Loco Gnosis and that brought us a whole new family within which to work. Being outside the closer-knit Ferndale/east-side based Loco family still left us in a position where we needed other bands and friends to play with and enjoy the camaraderie-of on a consistent basis out in the Ypsi-area. Some time in 2008, we met a group called Err... and we played a show with them at the Screaming Eagle (in Ypsi); that night was more fun than a frog in a glass of milk..."
Err... the slightly more punk-ish side to JWPP's slightly more rock-ish side, would help Dough/Anonymous form the "Cult of the Two-Pieces." This penchant for inter-band collaboration would later lead to what has become the Ghost Family Collective (with Sharky). "Lots of what came after," Anonymous acknowledged, was due to the motivating force of Err...'s singer/guitarist Joshua Tafelski (aka Flu-Shot).
JWPP's full length will be out on Loco Gnosis, hopefully in late Spring or early Summer. Wiard, "a super close friend" had done "a great job of working" on their last single (which became an EP) that the duo didn't think twice about returning to Pretty Suite Recordings. "Brandon (Wiard) can and wants to do something good for us," said Anonymous. "Just like working with Loco, or Ghost Family Collective, and anyone else we hold dear - there is a personal connection that makes the rest of it so much more fulfilling in the long run. We will make this record together!"
JWPP plays Woodruff's on Feb 26th with Easy Action and Mazinga. They also hope to add some more out-of-state shows (after their Blowout peformance in Loco Gnosis' showcase).
"Jehan and I are definitely hitting a peak of comfort with each other as musicians and friends. We've both gone through a lot in these 14 years, and it's only made us closer friends and better partners as far as the band is concerned. For all the talk I do about love and hugs and camaraderie, and for all the super close friends I feel like I have--I believe, without a doubt, when it all shakes out, my brother Jehan will be there for me...gumming our milk toast and giving the youngsters something to laugh about."
Their collaboration on song structuring is as strong and vital as ever. "I'll say this about Jehan, lately a few people I really respect have given me props about my looping. Now, I'm the first to say I don't know crap about playing guitar. I just play what I play...but I don't understand guitar like most guitar players do. I wrestle it more than I play it. What it really requires is the desire to fight through the mess at the beginning, to find good parts that work as layers, and...it requires a GREAT DRUMMER."
"We want to share our love for rock and roll with as many people as possible. Not for se sort of congratulations or money, but becuase of the way it feels when things go right. From the outside, the idea of a dirty rock and roll band hugging and loving their friends who come to see them seems cliche and i get that. But, truth is, when things are clicking and our friends and Ghost Family are there, I feel something that simply can't be denied and as long as people give us the space to squeeze into and rock, we will be there to rock it."
-Anthony Anonymous, the "mayor" of Ypsilanti
More on Ghost Family:
"A triage of incorrigibles," as James North of Sharky puts it.
"...a group of michief makers in musician's costumes," says Sharky's Paul Clos, "...who have banded together to have good times and hug anyone that is willing to be hugged...Oh, yeah, and play rock n' roll."
Sharky & the Habit have six new songs that they'll be recording through February for a likely EP. "Explosive," says North, "no pop songs, still a blues element, but crazier in it's layout."
~
"Ghost Family is one of the best things I've been apart of," said Tafelski, who, with drummer Larry Johnson, forms Err...
"Best thing about it is the love and support. I hope we can expand this Family into a growing community of musicians that want to share our passions and ambitions."
Spurred on by Jeff Howitt of Loco Gnosis, the trio bands have formed a still-gestating Ghost Family Collective...which could just as likely be a label onto itself, or a spearheading force for local music festivals.
Err...are hoping to get recording started this month, to finish their 2nd album. They're also working towards releasing a compilation-viral video/CD of The Ghost Family - in time for the "Ghost Family Reunion Show" on April 2nd at Woodruff's.
"We've put a lot of hard work/sweat/blood/lives into this music and would love to see Michigan come back and evolve into a more prosperous music scene," Tafelski said. "I really feel the love is out there and now it's time to embrace it with a hug...and never let go..."
Carolina-based pop producer Toro Y Moi brings a brand new game on his 2nd proper LP, Underneath the Pine(2/22 on Carpark Records), that being considerably less reliance upon the laptop.
So goes "chillwave..." so goes songwriter Chaz Bundick's computers... (some of them, anyway). Comparably to the way Ariel Pink recently displayed, gracefully with Before Today, how he could retain his signature while shifting onto thicker pages within broader (or stretched) frames, Bundick also seems to have, on some levels, merely gathered a few more supplies (maybe sliding in cds from a varying batch of fresh, (yes obscure) influences into the disc changer in his trunk, while still smoothly rolling, grooving, and fuzzily rollicking down the same moonlit roads. Live bass, live drums and organs warm the palette, while the shimmering drizzle of synthesizers are wrung out a bit measuredly, subtly...
It'll be a journey, still... Any listener who's lucky enough to be wearing headphones at the midway point of "Good Hold" will know what I'm talking about, and thus, end up grinning with the same glaze-eyed look. "Elise" will, likewise, flex his recent penchant for esoteric French/Italian jazzified-orchestral soundtrack composers from the late 60's/early 70's...
"Some of us went down to the streets to take part on the 25th. ...And some of us are now in the studios...." -Rush (of Arabian Knightz)
Listen to a special report from PRI's The World (from Tuesday) on "Hip-hop for Revolution" to hear about how rappers and hip/hop artists in Cairo and all across North Africa are galvanized to form the soundtrack for the unrest endemic throughout the region.
![Deep Cutz - [[Uncutz]]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj56Cy6ejCrNHSD2kFvaVuF4KxeWxvSzDiAy8Qkrjg0RD74ZVaNFczlCm7F-YxRrwevxWXonBDJFBi03G1Lr_jbFWSpu9WS1jhuzgiuZizcLgWLBkIq26ZR6OqJJIfRrDw3YzWw3opFkgs/s730/Deep_Cutz-HEADER.jpg)
But with Blowout - not only is one offered the chance to romp and reel through four long nights of music, a hundred or so different bands packed into fifteen venues (starting in Detroit and then predominantly through Hamtramck) - but you're given the chance of... chance.
My longwinded point- we all know the hullabaloo of Detroit; its a confounding underdog that's stricken with staggering talent - and - we all know the glories of Blowout; but never under-appreciate the value of "finding your new favorite band..." 
But with Blowout - not only is one offered the chance to romp and reel through four long nights of music, a hundred or so different bands packed into fifteen venues (starting in Detroit and then predominantly through Hamtramck) - but you're given the chance of... chance.
My longwinded point- we all know the hullabaloo of Detroit; its a confounding underdog that's stricken with staggering talent - and - we all know the glories of Blowout; but never under-appreciate the value of "finding your new favorite band..." 
~
