Drag Sounds: May 13, 2017 Our Wicked Lady

July 9, 2017
By

I’ve been aching to get a Drag Sounds recording up here ever since I saw them play at Hopscotch back in 2014. Of the very, very rich North Carolina music scene that gets showcased at the festival every year, Drag Sounds are at the top of the pile. Finally, the guys did a brief East Coast tour in May and I was able to get out on a rainy night to catch them indoors at Our Wicked Lady (originally scheduled as a rooftop show, can’t wait to get back to the venue for one of those). I had some good intel from Triangle-area folks that Drag Sounds were currently at the top of their game, but I was still surprised at how vital these guys are sounding—more swing here than you can shake a stick at. You’ll find a couple of these tracks like “Out All Night (For Love)” and “Messy Life” in various forms on the Bandcamp page, on the two-disc Sudden Comfort and earlier II. Newer song “Blessed Style” sounds like the band’s answer to “Sister Ray” if you ask me, but anyway it’s a monster. Drag Sounds are up-and-comers for sure so here’s the ground floor for ya, get on.

I recorded this with the mics set up in DIN stereo configuration, high up on the bar, combined with a board feed courtesy of Our Wicked Lady engineer, Rich Crescenti. It leans towards the rough side but rocks really hard. Enjoy!

Download: [MP3/FLAC]

Drag Sounds
2017-05-13
Our Wicked Lady
Brooklyn, NY

Recorded and produced by Eric PH for nyctaper.com

Soundboard (engineer: Rich Crescenti) + AKG C480B/CK61 (DIN) > Zoom F8 > 2 x WAV (24/48) > Adobe Audition CC (align, mixdown, compression, normalize, fades) + Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ) > Audacity 2.0.5 (tracking, tagging) > FLAC (24/48, level 8)

Tracks [33:27]
01. Out All Night (For Love)
02. Let It Me
03. Don’t to the Music
04. Messy Life
05. That Stuff’s Illegal
06. Blessed Style
07. Like Flies on the Board

• Buy Drag Sounds music via Bandcamp
• • Connect with the band via Facebook

Sunwatchers: June 24, 2017 Union Pool (Summer Thunder)

July 5, 2017
By

It’s been a short couple months since we last saw Sunwatchers, but picking up on the final date of the Feral Ohms-Sunwatchers-Honey tour, the band had a few new tunes to share with us. We hadn’t previously heard “Nose Beers” or “The Works” (except on this excellent recording from last year via Southern Shelter); and the perfectly-titled “Greeneyed Pigmen (Get the Blade)” also appears to be brand new. The centerpiece of their set is a wonderful cover of Alice Coltrane’s “Ptah, The El Daoud,” from her 1970 album of the same name. Coincidentally, none other than Pharoah Sanders plays on that record and he was in town the previous night for a free show in Prospect Park along with Brooklyn Raga Massive’s tribute to John and Alice Coltrane. No doubt the spirits were in alignment for this one.

I recorded this with the mics set up on stage, combined with a board feed courtesy of Union Pool engineer Doug. It sounds excellent. Enjoy!

Download: [MP3/FLAC]

Sunwatchers
2017-06-24
Union Pool (Summer Thunder)
Brooklyn, NY

Recorded and produced by Eric PH for nyctaper.com

Soundboard (engineer: Doug) + AKG C480B/CK61 (OS) > Zoom F8 > 2 x WAV (24/48) > Adobe Audition CC (align, mixdown, compression, normalize, fades) + Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter) > Audacity 2.0.5 (tracking, tagging) > FLAC (24/48, level 8)

Tracks [33:28]
01. Nose Beers
02. The Works
03. Greeneyed Pigmen (Get the Blade)
04. Ptah, The El Daoud [Alice Coltrane]
05. Eusubius
06. Ape Phase

• Buy Sunwatchers via Castle Face

Ovlov: June 23, 2017 The Bell House

June 30, 2017
By


[Photos by Rocketman]

Just when you thought it couldn’t be salvaged, here comes Ovlov to rescue Emo from the clutches of the mainstream garbage bands these kids today are listening to. (I’ll refrain from naming names.) Ovlov take me back to the nineties Emo I love with reference points like Hum, The Promise Ring, Jawbreaker and Jets to Brazil, Nada Surf—all touchstones of my high school CD collection. Naturally, they’re doing it on Exploding in Sound Records, whose taste in quality young bands is unimpeachable. This set opening for Spiral Stairs at the Bell House captures the band playing songs off their EIS album, am, plus a few new ones. Considering Ovlov have broken up at least a couple times now, it’s not insignificant that they’ve got some new songs to play us—Ovlov still clearly still have a lot of music in them.

I recorded this with the mics set up at the board in DIN stereo configuration, which I then combined with a board feed from the Bell House’s FOH David Hurtgen. A special thanks goes out to David for loaning me a mic stand so I could make this recording for you all. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Ovlov
2017-06-23
The Bell House
Brooklyn, NY

Recorded and produced by Eric PH for nyctaper.com
Photos by Rocketman

Soundboard (engineer: Dave) + AKG C480B/CK61 (DIN, ROC) > Zoom F8 > 2 x WAV (24/48) > Adobe Audition CC (align, mixdown, balance, compression, normalize, fades) + Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter) > Audacity 2.0.5 (tracking, tagging) > FLAC (24/48, level 8)

Tracks [34:21]
01. Grapes
02. Tru Punk
03. I’m Your Dini
04. Short Morgan
05. Half Way
06. Stick
07. Alligator
08. Where’s My Dini

• Buy Ovlov music via Bandcamp
• • Facebook

Feral Ohms: June 24, 2017 Union Pool (Summer Thunder)

June 29, 2017
By


[photos by PSquared Photography]

Though this was their NYC debut, Ethan Miller’s latest garage fuzzout band, Feral Ohms, began quietly releasing singles on his Silver Current label way back in 2013. What the hell took them so long? Well, Miller’s had some other stuff going on like Howlin’ Rain, Heron Oblivion, and the too-damn-short Comets on Fire reunion from that same year. So we’ll let Feral Ohms skate on their longtime absence from the East Coast. Besides, the band—that’s Miller on guitar and vocals, Josh Haynes on bass, and Chris Johnson on drums—made up for it and then some with this literally scorching Saturday afternoon outdoor set as part of Union Pool’s Summer Thunder series. They played the entire self-titled record to huge smiles all around as the packed crowd took in the sun and the tunes. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too long before the ’Ohms come back this way again.

I recorded this with the mics set up on stage, combined with a board feed courtesy of Union Pool engineer Doug. It sounds excellent. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Feral Ohms
2017-06-24
Union Pool (Summer Thunder)
Brooklyn, NY

Recorded and produced by Eric PH for nyctaper.com

Soundboard (engineer: Doug) + AKG C480B/CK61 (OS) > Zoom F8 > 2 x WAV (24/48) > Adobe Audition CC (align, mixdown, compression, normalize, fades) + Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ) > Audacity 2.0.5 (tracking, tagging) > FLAC (24/48, level 8)

Tracks [36:06]
01. Love Damage
02. Living Junkyard
03. Early Man
04. God of Nicaragua
05. Teenage God Born to Die
06. Sweetbreads (false start)
07. Sweetbreads
08. Value on the Street
09. The Glow
10. Super Ape

• Buy Feral Ohms music via Bandcamp
• • Instagram
• • • Facebook

Wilco: June 23, 2017 Solid Sound Festival (complete Being There and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)

June 27, 2017
By


[photos by Robert Loerzel from Underground Bee]

Being There was released in October of 1996 and I saw Wilco live for the first time a month later at Mercury Lounge for a show that would change the course of my musical life. Like many of the attendees of this year’s Solid Sound Festival, I’ve seen Wilco probably more than fifty times in a variety of locations. I’ve seen multiple shows supporting all of the albums of their career, I’ve seen acoustic sets, many guest appearances, the all-covers set. I’ve seen them play in small halls, big halls, theatres, baseball stadiums, a brewery, festivals, and even at Madison Square Garden. But the seminal event of seeing and hearing the band close-up play brand new Being There songs was an experience that took me down this path and permanently affixed those songs to my psyche.

Twenty-something years later, Wilco delivered on the now-traditional (2013-all covers, 2015-all acoustic) Solid Sound Friday request set by playing the album straight-through. It says something about the staying power of the material that almost all of these songs are either still set staples or occasional plays for the band’s “regular” shows. But hearing the material in sequence brings me back to the cramped confines of Mercury on that chilly November night and reminds me why I still go to such lengths to see Wilco. But oh, if the Being There performance was all you expected from Friday night’s set, the “encore” segment was a huge Wilco curveball. Upon returning to the stage, the band jumped into “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”, a not uncommon encore song. And then kept playing — the entire Yankee Hotel Foxtrot also in its entirety. Its took the opening notes of rarely played “Radio Cure” for our correspondent Gr8fulPete to recognize what was happening, but when it dawned on the crowd you can hear the shock and utter surprise of those witnessing this encore set for the ages.

Pete also recorded Saturday night’s set and the Sunday Tweedy & Friends set and those will be coming to the site in the coming days.

Pete recorded this show with his high end Neumann cards from directly at the soundboard cage area and the sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Download The Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream the Complete Show:

Wilco
2017-06-23
Solid Sound Festival
North Adams MA

Digital Master Audience Recording
Recorded inside Soundboard Cage

Neumann KM-185s > Sound Devices 702 > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (post-production) >
CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded by gr8fulpete
Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 2:14:13]
01 [Nick Offerman Introduction]
02 Misunderstood
03 Far Far Away
04 Monday
05 Outtasite (Outta Mind)
06 Forget the Flowers
07 Red-Eyed and Blue
08 I Got You (At the End of the Century)
09 What’s the World Got in Store
10 Hotel Arizona
11 Say You Miss Me
12 Sunken Treasure
13 Someday Soon
14 Outta Mind (Outta Sight)
15 Someone Else’s Song
16 Kingpin
17 Was I In Your Dreams
18 Why Would You Wanna Live
19 The Lonely One
20 Dreamer in My Dreams
21 [encore break]
22 I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
23 Kamera
24 Radio Cure
25 War on War
26 Jesus Etc
27 Ashes of American Flags
28 Heavy Metal Drummer
29 I’m the Man Who Loves You
30 Pot Kettle Black
31 Poor Places
32 Reservations

PLEASE SUPPORT Wilco, visit their website, and purchase their Star Wars and their other releases from their website [HERE]


[photo by Pete]

Spiral Stairs: June 23, 2017 The Bell House

June 27, 2017
By


[Photos by Rocketman]

It’s been nearly a decade since we’ve had new music from Scott Kannberg/Spiral Stairs—but the long wait is justified as his new album Doris and the Daggers is his best since Preston School of Industry disbanded in 2004. We caught up with Spiral Stairs for the first of his two night NYC stand and were rewarded with eighty minutes of tunes off the new record, plus some Pavement and Preston School of Industry favorites. If you needed reminding of Spiral’s crucial contributions to the former, the song selection here—“Date with IKEA,” “Kennel District,” “Passat Dream,” “Hit the Plane Down,” and “Two States”—will emphasize that Pavement had two major songwriters. For my money, I enjoyed hearing a couple from the criminally underrated Preston School of Industry, the wonderfully-lackadaisical “Whalebones” (which ranks up there with his signature Pavement compositions) and “Caught in the Rain.” (As an aside, there are quite a few PSOI tracks I’d still like to hear the Spiral Stairs band play live, like “Somethings Happen Always” and “Falling Away.”) But back to Doris and the Daggers: so many reviews have focused on the maturity of the record, which makes it sound overly serious. Spiral Stairs may be older and singing about real life, but he’s still doing so with a wink and smile and his penchant for an opaque but resonant turn of phrase.

I recorded this with the mics set up at the board in DIN stereo configuration, which I then combined with a board feed from the Bell House’s FOH David Hurtgen. A special thanks goes out to David for loaning me a mic stand so I could make this recording for you all. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Spiral Stairs
2017-06-23
The Bell House
Brooklyn, NY

Recorded and produced by Eric PH for nyctaper.com
Photos by Rocketman

Soundboard (engineer: David Hurtgen) + AKG C480B/CK61 (DIN, ROC) > Zoom F8 > 2 x WAV (24/48) > Adobe Audition CC (align, mixdown, balance, compression, normalize, fades) + Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ) > Audacity 2.0.5 (tracking, tagging) > FLAC (24/48, level 8)

Tracks [1:18:31]
01. Flesh and Blood [Roxy Music]
02. Dance (Cry Wolf)
03. No Comparison
04. Exiled Tonight
05. Trams (Stole My Love)
06. Date with IKEA [Pavement]
07. Kennel District [Pavement]
08. Emoshuns
09. Dundee Man
10. Passat Dream [Pavement]
11. Hit the Plane Down [Pavement]
12. Whalebones [Preston School of Industry]
13. Caught in the Rain [Preston School of Industry]
14. Angel Eyes
15. Hypnotized
16. Two States [Pavement]

• Buy Doris and the Daggers at the Spiral Stairs website
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