In a few short weeks our strong community of lovers, amongst the rest of the world, will live the rest of their lives embracing this consensus: Mutual Benefit is a boss with the heart of a volunteer. On Jordan Lee’s forthcoming The Cowboy’s Prayer, featuring long-time Mute Benny collaborator & bff Andrew Morehart of Share-a-tories, Marc Merza of Lizard Kisses, and Sammy Yager of Birthdays, there exists this tangible reflection to understand one’s personal desires within the universe at large. In the case of this album, Jordan’s reflections take place during a road trip through his birthplace of the American Midwest. Raised in Ohio, with time spent in Austin, and currently residing in the Boston area, “things are different than they appear” rings a true blue meaning when acknowledging the territories of which Jordan has known home. Too often humanity finds solace in the concept of home, and not often enough there is a voice to remind us that the world beyond our immediate vision is a radically new experience… and that we should hope to explore the faces, places, and headspaces within these regions for the bettering of not only ourselves but those involved in our life. We cannot merely accept diversity, because it is the understanding that we are all one that is necessary. What makes The Cowboy’s Prayer such an enriching experience is that Jordan does not mean to preach this philosophy, but share in the discovery.
The Cowboy’s Prayer, originally a poemmade famous by Badger Clark in 1906, is an acknowledgement of the spirituality of knowing salvation in the inherent freedom of man; that if life is not as open as the sky, fluid as the elements, or genuinely honest, then he would prefer not to have involvement in the affairs of the living. Brilliantly, this piece of writing continues to hold value in modern context as Clark shares, “I’m no slave of whistle, clock or bell. Nor weak-eyed prisoner of wall and street,” enforcing his personal belief in working directly as a part of nature as opposed to that which aims to destroy and recreate our shared organic value. Fifty years later Roy Rogers adopts the Cowboy’s Prayer [video] as a sentiment within his Riders Club. Rewritten, yet serving the same message, Rogers shares his own belief in collaboration and understanding nature as a community as opposed to individually. For anyone who has ever had a conversation with Jordan Lee, you’ll agree that these gorgeous themes are revealed as part of his plane of thought immediately. He fronts a solo project that we have never known solo in recording or performance, and curates a record label [Kassette Klub] of global gems that he finds akin. Sounds like a dreamboat to me.
I’m more often then not outside of the Beyonce camp… couldn’t even tell you any of her recent hits, but I came across this cover the other day by Sonnymoon and just have not been able to get these palpitations out of my head. It’s raining in Los Angeles and this is my complement to the weather.
Wednesday evening marks our second dinner & a show in Brooklyn, and we seriously can’t wait to spend the night hanging out with y’all! Hear Hums have packed their sounds of the wilderness for the long drive up from Florida, ready to bring on the bodily gyrations that come along with their soon-to-be-released Opens. We also can’t wait to reunite the hums with our darling enchantress Emily Reo, this is her last NYC show for a very long time so we’ll be debuting her visuals, new handmade merch, new tunes, and enough sweet casio tones to keep your heart warm through the winter. We are also so lucky to once again be accompanied by the presence of our bff the Spookfish, after three years of keeping up with his travels through Asia, Europe, and a stint as one of Grouper’s choirboys in Portland it’s with the largest smile ever that we can welcome our young man home. And before the sounds begin I’ll present a really fun workshop I call Writing Home that will officially launch later this month! You can find the fbook event & read more about our festivities right here, all food will be vegetarian and vegan friendly.
It is entirely possible that, instead of overlooking, ignoring, bickering, quarreling and periodically maiming and killing each other wholesale, we humans should be devoting our energies, emotions, thoughts and plans to furthering the larger purpose of which the earth and its inhabitants are small segments. In a word, that we humans should be acting as a responsible part of a functioning whole engaged in the vast enterprise of being and becoming.
Whatever our ultimate tasks may be, our immediate problem is three-fold:
(1) To make the earth the fittest possible living place for all of its inhabitants;
(2) to organize human society in the way best calculated to achieve that objective; and
(3) to make every reasonable effort to prepare ourselves to play a meaningful part in this cosmic drama to which we have been assigned.
-Scott Nearing
Tonight’s tune is brought to you by Los Angeles’ Julia Holter who just released her Tradgedy LP, a loose reinterpretation of Hippolytus, with our friends at Leaving Records.
We’ve just made a couple amazing announcements over at MJ MJ Records!
Uno – Our next release, Catamaran, is up for pre-sale! Catamaran has crafted an incredible 55 minute long opus of a full length. We’re just amazed that we get to put this record out. His sound is thick, juicy and completely his own. Peep that cover art by Z. Zimmerman, the cassette comes with a fold out insert with even more dank arts inside. Stream and download four tracks off his debut at the MJ MJ bandcamp, you will be so glad you did. Below is “Holidaze”, just a taste of the journey that awaits -
Our baby boy Dave premiered the album opener, “Reggie” over at Stadiums and Shrines today – Check it!
Dos – We’ve got something special for ya, or rather, a special for ya! MJ MJ is running our first ever sale to say thank you to our friends and hello to some new ones. From now until xmas when you get any two of our tapes, we’ll give you the third one for free! And don’t be shy now, when we say any, we mean any – our entire catalogue is fair game including the pre-orders. So grab Serious Sauce Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 for yourself and get Yalls for yr special somebody. Or space out with MAYMOK and sad ghems and surprise your mom with her very own copy of Vacation Dad. Tapes for everyone! Since the Big Cartel platform is a shade unforgiving here’s what you have to do to complete your order. Check out as normal from our store with any TWO tapes in your shopping cart. Send us a message along with your paypal payment letting us know the third tape you desire and we’ll send it along with your order. It’s pretty simple, but if you have any trouble send us an email – mjmjrecords@gmail.com – and we’ll help you out.
That image above was created by Champoy Hate, a FMLY favorite and a member of LA’s lovely Magick Orchids. Magick Orchids is just one of many rad musical projects that contributed to this new digital mixtape, Vanity Loves Company: Vanity Projects Autumn/Winter 2011. You’re welcome to download the mix via bandcamp, and feel free to share it with your friends!
Vanity Projects is a new label from LA. Earlier, we released my solo album Princess, and later this month we’ll have the new album from Magick Orchids called Origins of Grinding. Many of the artists on this mix have upcoming releases through the label, although a few are just friends.
The mix includes totally new jams, completely unreleased until now, by Pizza!, So Many Wizards, and more… And like every good LA compilation, it has more than one collaboration with Michael Nhat.
Montreal’s AIDS Wolf has been touring behind their assaultive new album, Ma vie banale avant-garde, for about three weeks. They’re finishing this weekend with shows in DC, New York, and Boston. These are the dates.
After that,member Alexander Moskos continues touring as Drainolith, his disconcerting, cold, yet oddly inviting electronic noise project. That tour will hit LA for a few days, including a show at Dem Passwords on the 25th. You can RSVP on Facebook.
I asked Alexander and his fellow AIDS Wolfers, Yannick Desranleau and Chloe Lum, to share some video influences. Here they are!
Slyy is a Boston based producer genius duo comprised of Bug Eyes and Milochondria. Together they create the perfect harmony of IDM and pure smooth beatcraft. Their first full length collaborative effort is Serious Sauce Vol. 2. And oh my lord, it’s a doozy. Over the past few months since we got the masters not a day has gone by where we haven’t listened to part, if not all, of this odyssey. SSV2 is literrally the perfect soundtrack to just about any activity. This tape has been on constant repeat weather we’ve been cooking, cleaning, Mario Karting, feeding the snake, partying, chillin, throwing shows, biking, working or whatever. It’s constantly intriguing and enjoyable every time you hear it. It reminds me of when I first heard Boards of Canada or MF Doom. There is just something infectious and satisfying from a perfect beat, and that’s exactly what Slyy delivers. When we put this on at an Animal Town FMLY Dinner show the whole party starts to vibe and all the doobies come out. There’s just something magic about this record. I encourage you to get on some meaty headphones and enjoy the full cassette over at the MJ MJ Bandcamp, but if you’re short on time there are some samples below for your streaming pleasure. Both songs start off slow and reward your patience with a perfect groove that is unmistakably Slyy. SSV2 is available on cassette for five bucks and digital on a pay what you want basis from yr boys at MJ MJ.
Putting videos together really isn’t a strength of mine, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be a whole lot of fun. A few weekends ago I got together with a few friends and shot a short PSA on the effects of the meat industry upon global climate change, deforestation, and the world at large. The more I’ve taken the time to think about the ritual of meat the more I’ve also developed a thread in relation to sexuality, both are highly fetishized and in Western society I’ve found value in comparing the default carnivore to the default heterosexual. Of course it’s all a part of the larger issue which is the industry of prescribed culture, but still fun to think about and a conversation piece rich for discussion. Anyways, enjoy the video and hopefully I have the confidence to make another someday about another subject I’m interested in. If you dig the tune, I’ve included it for download!
The first week of June gave us Haunt U Forever, Ricky Eat Acid‘s tenth release since May of 2010, yet with his strides in experimentation between EPs the familiarity I hold onto exists in the underlying character of Sam Ray‘s music. Rich in texture and with clear intent, Sam has the fingerprint of a young man curious for experiencing the diversity of his craft as he actively explores new methods in producing and recording his sounds.
Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere, released today, finds progress in documenting sounds representative of time and place as an audio journal. Recorded through the summer the album casually carries themes of intimacy and isolation that are the bread and butter of my personal winter listening, and Sam has shared with us a document of his own person so gorgeous it’s liable to be worn and adorned as a necklace resting just over the heart; but that’s just what we’re personally doing with our cassette. It was a pleasure to take the time to chat with Sam about his new record, and be the lovely voice that presents to you… Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere. Download the album for free and/or order a cassette right here.
FMLY: Your new album, Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere, is such a welcome surprise in the Ricky Eat Acid saga. What was the recording process like?
Sam: Thank you! I’m so glad it’s welcomed because it might strike some people who have only heard select songs as pretty different. This past summer I was really fed up with the music I had been working on, so I began recording songs to my tape player for fun. They were originally under a different name, kind of a joke, and I played them for friends in online listening rooms and in my real room in ‘real’ life. I have a huge section of my heart, stomach and lungs reserved for ambient and drone music as well as piano compositions and field recordings… that kinda stuff, but I’m not sure if that had been represented in my music. I eventually gave up on the album I was already in the midst of recording and devoted my summer to finishing this project. So that’s basically what I did from May through August, in my room, after everyone else had gone to bed. Sometimes I’d sit outside during the rain and record on my porch, or other people’s houses. These songs aren’t outlets for any particular emotion, and are instead like a diary… each one has some story, or person, or place, or moment in time tied to it. In that way it is the most personal album I have shared.
FMLY: Every piece of this tape is such a warm and intimate experience, which instruments did you find yourself drawn to?
Sam:Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere was recorded with a handful of toy instruments I’ve collected like old toy keyboards, toy pianos, some guitars, pianos, etc… as well as some help from my computer. Everything was recorded directly to my tiny tape player I picked up from an estate sale. The idea behind the full project is to have a series of pieces that can exist in their own little world. I hope that when you listen to them alone at night in the dark with your eyes closed they can be in their own delicate dreamworld… I just became filled with this incredible wanderlust where I wanted to journey through the Super Nintendo RPGs that I loved as a kid.
We claim the right to exist, and we will defend it. We do not seek to overthrow anything. We do not seek to control anything. We merely wish to be left alone.
All we ever wanted was to live in peace with our friends and neighbors. For a long, long time we bore insults to our liberty; we took blows, we did what we could to avoid injury and we worked through the system to get the offenses to stop. That has now changed. We no longer see any benefit in working through the world’s systems. At some point, working within a system becomes cowardly and immoral; for us, that point has arrived. Regardless of the parties in power, their governments have continued to restrict, restrain and punish us. We hereby reject them all. We hereby withdraw from them all. We hold the ruling states of this world and all that appertains to them to be self-serving and opposed to humanity.
We now withdraw our obedience and reclaim the right to strike back when struck. We will not initiate force, but we do reserve the right to answer it. We did not choose this—it was forced upon us.
You are building cages for all that is human. In the name of protection, you have intruded into all areas of human life, far exceeding the reach of any Caesar. You claim ultimate control of our property and our decisions, of our travels and even our identities. You claim ownership of humanity far beyond the dreams of any Emperor of any previous era. Understand clearly: We reject your authority and we reject your legitimacy. We do not believe that you have any right to do the things you do. You have massive power, but no right to impose it upon us and no legitimacy. We have forsaken you. We are no longer your citizens or your subjects.
Your systems are inherently anti-human, even if all their operators are not. We are not merely angry young people. We are fathers and mothers; aunts, uncles and grandparents; we are business owners and trusted employees; we are mechanics and engineers and farmers. We are nurses and accountants and students and executives. We are on every continent.
This is not a burst of outrage; this is a sober declaration that we no longer accept unearned suffering as our role in life.
For long decades we sat quietly, hoping that things would turn around. We took no actions; we suffered along with everyone else. But after having our limits pushed back again and again, we have given up on your systems.
If our fellow inhabitants of this planet wish to accept your rule, they are free to do so. We will not try to stop them. We, however, will no longer accept your constraints upon us. From now on, when you hurt us, we will bite back. If you leave us alone we will leave you alone and you can continue to rule your subjects. We are happy to live quietly. But if you come after us, there will be consequences.
You caused this because of your fetish for control and power. The chief men and women among you are pathologically driven to control everyone and everything that moves upon this planet. You have made yourselves the judge of every human activity. No god-king of the ancient world ever had the power that your systems do.
You have created a world where only the neutered are safe and where only outlaws are free.
We seek nothing from you. We do not want to rule you and we do not want to control you. All we wish is to live on earth in peace. As always, we will be helpful neighbors and generous acquaintances. We will remain honest business partners and trustworthy employees. We will continue to be loving parents and respectful children.
We will not, however, be sacrificial animals. We reject the idea that others have a right to our lives and our property. We will not demand anything from you, and we will no longer acquiesce to any demands upon us. We have left that game. We reject all obligations to any person or organization beyond honesty, fair dealing and a respect for human life. We will shortly explain what we believe, but we are not demanding that you agree with us. All we ask is that you do not try to stop us. Continue to play the game if you wish; we will not try to disrupt it. We have merely walked away from it.
We welcome and seek the verdict of a just God, before whom we are willing to expose our innermost thoughts. Are you similarly willing?
We would stand openly before all mankind if it were not suicidal. Perhaps some day we will have to accept slaughter for our crime of independence, but not yet.
Your criticism and your malice are much deeper than mere disagreements of strategy or philosophy. You do not oppose our philosophy, you oppose our existence. Our presence in the world means that your precious ideals are false. Some of you would rather kill us than face the loss of your ideologies, just as those like you have either hated or killed every sufficiently independent human.
You present yourselves to the world as compassionate, tolerant and enlightened, but we know that your smooth words are costumes. Oh yes, we know you, servant of the state; don’t forget, we were raised with you. We played with you in the schoolyard, we sat next to you in the classroom. Some of us studied at the same elite universities. We watched as you had your first tastes of power. We were the boys and girls standing next to you. Some of us were your first victims. We are not fooled by your carefully crafted public image.
#1: Many humans resent the responsibilities that are implied by consciousness. We accept those responsibilities and we embrace consciousness. Rather than letting things happen to us (avoiding consciousness), we accept consciousness and choose to act in our own interest. We do not seek the refuge of blaming others, neither do we take refuge in crowds. We are willing to act on our personal judgment, and we are willing to accept the consequences thereof.
#2: We believe in negative rights for all: That all humans should be free to do whatever they wish, as long as they do not intrude upon others; that no man has a right to the life, liberty or property of another; that we oppose aggression, fraud and coercion.
#3: We do not believe that our way of life, or any other, will make life perfect or trouble-free. We expect crime and disagreements and ugliness, and we are prepared to deal with them. We do not seek a strongman to step in and solve problems for us. We agree to see to them ourselves.
#4: We believe in free and unhindered commerce. So long as exchanges are voluntary and honest, no other party has a right to intervene—before, during or after.
#5: We believe that all individuals should keep their agreements.
#6: We believe that honestly obtained property is fully legitimate and absolute.
#7: We believe that some humans are evil and that they must be faced and dealt with. We accept the fact that this is a difficult area of life.
#8: We believe that humans can self-organize effectively. We expect them to cooperate. We reject impositions of hierarchy and organization.
#9: We believe that all humans are to be held as equals in all matters regarding justice.
#10: We believe that the more a man or woman cares about right and wrong, the more of a threat he or she is perceived to be by governments.
#11: We believe that there are only two true classes of human beings: Those who wish to exercise power upon others—either directly or through intermediaries—and those who have no such desires.
#12: Large organizations and centralization are inherently anti-human. They must rely upon rules rather than principles, treating humans within the organization as obedient tools.
We are building our own society. We will supplement traditional tools with networking, cryptography, sound money, digital currency and anonymous messaging.
Our society will not be centrally controlled. It will rely solely on voluntary arrangements. We welcome others to join us. We are looking for people who are independent creators of value, people who act more than talk, and people who do the right thing because it is the right thing.
We will develop our own methods of dealing with injustice, built on the principles of negative rights, restitution, integrity and equal justice. We do not forbid anyone from having one foot in each realm—ours and the old realm—although we demand that they do no damage to our realm. We are fully opposed to any use of our realm to facilitate crime in the old realm, such as the hiding of criminal proceeds.
We expect to be loudly condemned, libeled and slandered by the authorities of the old regime. We expect them to defend their power and their image of legitimacy with all means available to them. We expect that many gullible and servile people will believe these lies, at least at first.
We will consider traps laid for us to be criminal offenses. Any who wish to join us are encouraged to distribute this declaration, to act in furtherance of our new society, to voluntarily excel in virtues and to communicate and cooperate with other members of the new society.
Composed by impulse and the stream of consciousness, seven juxtaposed artists came in union to create a collective vision; distinct and furthermore one. Seven of the Absent Fever artists collaborated to create one seven minute song. Each was given only the previous artist’s one minute to base their one minute off of, and was told to compose from solely initial creative reaction. In result is a seven minute long guide through the soundscape of Absent Fever. Videographer Library Voices then interpreted the entire stream of consciousness into a visual depiction of the landscapes visited. It sounds almost like an afterthought of a global-travel, and looks like it too. As if the sounds are soaring between the ivory coasts of the equator, wrapping their presence around the sphere. The travelers collected grains of sand and salt, blizzard and air-currents from each dwelling passed. Country, to corner, city, to village, without realizing, they’d had pieces of everything. And somehow, the diversity compiled itself into something more together than they could anticipate. Each had a map of their travels ingrained in the palms of their hands and the wiring of their subconscious; when each sat to make song, the song was together. There were seven travelers, and their retelling of their voyage was one.
order of appearance:
0:00) KYNAN 1:00) Gracie 2:00) Birkwin Jersey 3:00) Wonder Bear 4:00) Ra Cailum 5:00) Galapagos 6:00) Guerre
