Say Lady, Say: Natalie Prass, Lilly Lomein, Sarah Carter, and Odessa Jorgensen on Femininity, Music and Monistat.

You get a lot of listening and a lot of taking when you sit down with awesome women and ask them about music. I did just that the other night with some of the finest in town. (Full disclosure: all close friends, one lover, and I’ve played – currently or in the past – for all of them.)

The impetus for the conversation stemmed from a desire to hear what ladies I knew had to say about music. The in/equality, the un/fairness, and the sweet, fun aspects of it. I wanted to have a more robust understanding of it all, to get some knowledge dropped on me, which is precisely what happened. The content ranged from the wildly unpredictable to what you would expect. But it’s all fantastic. These are sharp ladies with surfeit knowledge about a razor thin subject and they do it all gracefully. In addition to what’s below, we also hit on Laurie Anderson, Janet Weiss/Sleater-Kinney, Carol Kaye, Lower Dens/Dirty Projectors, Tina Weymouth, and Madonna (they were all torn as to the opinion on her). It was a great chat, one that caused genuflection, and I’d like to share with it with you all.

These ladies are all at different points as to how they engage with music, thus the interesting fodder. You can download/listen to a track by each of them and their bands – as well as links/additional info – after the jump (click the German below).

Den Rest lesen…

Jerkwater Burg

The evening of November 3, Open Gallery – here in Nashville – will play host to an environment built up of corporeal experience. ‘Jerkwater Burg’ is the collaboration of Nashville artists, under the guise of Blacktooth Records (in the archival sense), who work in varying mediums, combining their abilities in order to manipulate multiple senses with the hope of wholly influencing and enhancing the physiological, psychological, and emotional state of its audience. It is not a gallery showcase, but a temporary hyper-reality, designed to encourage its inhabitants to feel something new, something strange.

JOTA ESE – Who’s Pimpin Who, Courtney Jaye?

Jota Ese will soon be crowned a little bit, perhaps noticed a little bit, maybe even take more shots of Tequila in a little bit, but suffice it to say – no matter what bit drops – he don’t stop. I don’t even know how many records the dude’s put out at this point, but I think I’ve heard them all. Most of them at least. I’m trying to pad my rep before I blast this record, nawmean?

Regardless, he put this one out at the perfect time. And that could mean a few things. Perfect time as in: The Mayan 2012 end-o’-the-world hasn’t happened, so that’s good timing. It could also mean in regards to the weather: Summer-bikini-babe-club-jams are out, smooth, break-you-open-with-a-thimble tunes are cropping back into rotation. It could also mean that the unspoken needed to be spoken and I’ll be damned if I saw it coming from this guy.

I won’t focus on the mildly-provocative title, because odds are it doesn’t matter to you. Make it abstract and you’ve got it. Musically, Jota just straight nails it on this one. You have everything that he’s been stirring together in his lounted pot for a long time, all finally marinating with each other and all the spices and herbs. You’ve got that jazz, the jive, the poetry – as Doodlebug would say. You got the psych-out freak-out, you’ve got the beats, the lows and the highs. You’ve got Bob James for heaven’s sake. It’s erudite and edgy. It’s full of late night groove juice and poppin’ off commentary (quietly). The video that goes along with it is well worth the watch. It’s good. Jota Ese’s good. I’m beginning to wonder if, like the album’s opening sample, he didn’t find some crossroads off of Dickerson where the green grass grows. Maybe he met the album’s Miss there.

Download here: <click!>

Watch the album’s movie here: <click!>

Majestico – Love Is God (Vid + 7″)

Majestico is releasing a fairly good take of their staple songs this Saturday. Get on it, get played on, get tape on it. The neon kind. Watch out for the punks that come your way, Bay-Bay say. Is Love God? say Jose but we don’t know so now you know. I’d personally rather see my teeth in drag than drag my teeth all around this town but that’s the city for you. Good luck.

Watch the video below. Shot by Jake Smith and Graham Fitz Fitz

The State of Kuwait: Several Tenses of Travel

Welcome again to “The State of Kuwait,” a reoccurring series here on Blacktooth.

This entry proves a little less polemic and a lot more global-village-y (thanks NPR! you bastion of liberalism, you). Ranging from some Nashville videos that are both entertaining and mawkishly sentimental, to Morocco and Thailand. East to West, y’all.

Without further adieu:

–

Hans Chilburg (no joke) put together this great, minute-long, smashed-up footage. He’s currently working on a full-length feature that we hope to have our hands in (somehow) called “Dreamscape” and it’s in post-production right now.

Kim McCulla put together this great, three-minute-long, smashed-up footage from our 4th of Joo-Lie party last year, where Ben Trimble of Fly Golden Eagle and the boys in Chrome Pony played the National Anthem every hour on the hour until something ridiculous like 3 AM the next day. It was awesome and so is this video.

–

In other news,

Natasha Pradhan is an artist/researcher in Morocco. We’ve read a little bit about her, and was exposed to her work by our friend Josephine Foster (Click for her music. Ben Trimble of Fly Golden Eagle played on her new record and Andija Tokic from the Bomb Shelter recorded it. Pick it up when it comes out later this year). Natasha’s visuals are stunning and with a little digging we found a pretty good paper she wrote on the indigenous Moroccan esoteric music rituals that was extremely knowledgeable, both from the writer and for the reader. Here’s an excerpt and click below for a video of the Hamatcha Lila in action. (It is highly suggested you read, if not the whole article, at least the excerpt. Which, in true Blacktooth form, is hardly even terrain as far as “presumed excerpt length” is concerned. You need to read more anyway.)

VIDEO: <click!> (Hamatcha Lila) <click!> (Breathing Room)

READ: <click!>

“This evolution of the Gnawa ritual as a secular performance is largely a matter of economics. Secular performances and collaborations energize a very needy community with the economic fuel to sustain themselves, and potentially their religious tradition in an increasingly modern economy. The Gnawa community has become visibly more well off (nowhere near wealth, but rather distanced from poverty) compared to other brotherhoods. Does this increase in wealth sustain the essence of the Gnawa tradition or fuel more performances that further articulate the distance from a space that was? A new economic relationship with their spiritual practice does have a radical rhythmic impact on life. While zaouia’s are kept up through the giving of small amounts of money in a ritual setting with the idea of baraka, the Gnawa ceremonies are now indirectly funded by large sums of money less frequently from secular sources.

The process of bestowing of money to sacred musicians is a materialization of listening, or receiving practices of the music itself. When the music of the Sufi brotherhoods is absorbed in a space of ritual with its sacred potency, the resulting economic exchange is an offering for baraka. When money is bestowed in exchange for work (secular performance) the musicians receive a salary or stipend. By the same means that practices of creative listening (Novak 2008: 30) are “a vital social activity and the cognitive basis of an interactive music culture.” The materialization of these listening practices directly to the musicians in turn alters their relationship to their performance practices.

One such instance occurred upon the removal of the sacred music of a town called Zahjouka from Zahjouka. Brion Gysin, an artist associated with the beat generation that spent a large part of his creative career in Morocco, describes his discovery of Zahjouka’s music in an interview with Terry Wilson: “I heard some music at that festival about which I said: ‘I Just want to hear that music for the rest of my life. I wanna hear it everyday all day. And uh, there were a great many other kinds of extraordinary music offered to one, mostly of the Ecstatic Brotherhood who enter into trance, so that in itself – it was the first time I’d seen large groups of people going into trance – was enough to have kept my attention, but beyond and above all of that somewhere I heard this funny little music, and I said: ‘Ah! That’s my music! And I must find out where it comes from.’ So I stayed and within a year I found that it came from Jajouka…[tape stops]” (Vale 1982: 47). Gysin proceeded to develop an economic relationship with the musicians in which he could hear this music all day everyday. “Oh the restaurant [1001 Nights] came about entirely because of them…I said ‘I would like to hear your music everyday’ and, uh, they said ‘Well, why don’t you just stick around and live in the village?’ And I said, ‘No, that isn’t possible, I have to go back and earn my living’…and they said, “Well, then why don’t you open a little cafe, a little joint, some place in Tangier, and we’ll come down and make the music and, uh, we’ll split the money?” (Vale 1982: 52)

Secular income from a performance concretizes the economic potency of the performance as work. A sacred ritual becomes a production of a commodity (music) to be consumed, an in turn transformed, by its reception unto secular ears.

What is lost by the popularization of sacred sounds and the assimilation of esoteric modes of existence into a secular economy? Attempts that understand the emergence of modern forms of old traditions, or the mechanisms to sustain traditional forms in modern contexts, as a preservation of these traditions commits the fault of reducing these traditions to their superficially extractable elements. Institutional attempts at preservation of the music of Sufi brotherhoods in this way (through stage performance and marketed recordings) are victim to a flawed essentialism that slightly alters the original meaning of the music each time it is employed for a commercial or popular purpose.

The ritual is the embodiment and sustenance of a particular mode of existence, a particular shared conception of time and situation of space. As life, the ritual is never fixed. Essentializing modes of understanding or recreating the ritual results in preservation attempts that do not transgress the superficial. The forces that endorse secular festivals featuring sacred music and musical recordings as “world music” perceive a space or experience and proceed to reduce this space to its musical performance. Such efforts fix the musical ritual in time and fuel folklorization. The case of the Gnawa ritual makes evident that an either/or attitude is in fact more harmful because it forces this distinction to be digested by the musicians; and as a result of imbalances in resources, the new ritual that articulates a modern and secular digestion of this music is that which prevails. Sacred understandings of one’s musical and religious practice becomes assimilated into modern understandings of one’s musical and labor practice.

Looking forward, subsequent research of the ritual practices of the Sufi brotherhoods and their evolving contexts in environments dictated by popular conceptions of music and musical performance should explore new avenues of preservation. Preservation practices of the Sufi brotherhoods can manifest itself either towards the sustenance of esotericism (or the re-introduction of esotericism), or through modes ofcreative preservation.

Esotericism makes spaces not susceptible to the deleting forces of popularization on the practice of spirit possession and faith-building through hadra. By simply placing restrictions on the dispersion of a music, its popularization, and subsequent economically-systematized secularization can be limited.

Perhaps more useful, however, is to explore existing and possible avenues of creative preservation. Creative preservation is to preserve not the rationally perceivable elements of a tradition – i.e. the music, costume, etc. but rather to preserve what is contained within the ritual and practices of sacred music. This preservation takes into account the space, the performance practices, the faith behind, and the experience of time and space as embedded within the space of ritual. Instead of understanding preservation as a freezing of particular aspects of a tradition that have penetrated popular consciousness, creative preservation sustains and reinvents the what is experienced within the music rather than facilitate reenactments of its forms. This bears into being new rituals, rather than staged reenactments that extract from whatwas and cage an entire way of life within the past.”

–

Luk Thung – Classic & Obscure 78s From The Thai Countryside is an awesome compilation that came out this year, curated by the Monrakplengthai music blog and others (read about it here: <click!>). In the attempt to seem less ethno-voyeuristic, deem these as simply good, grooving songs. Songs that are long considered as hailing from the the margins by the disfranchised people and continue to serve that function in the political turmoil that resides still today.

Listen:
Phloen Phromdaen – “Ruedu Haeng Khwam Rak (Season of Love)” by dusttodigital

And that, my friends, is the State of Kuwait.

With confluence,
BTR

Music for the Gift: Riley & Bombino (Reflections)

May 1st, 2012. Strange things coinciding, convulsing.
Terry Riley – 20th Century Avant-Classical composer – is speaking, along side a panel of others, at Vanderbilt University in conjunction with the premier by the Nashville Symphony of his newly commissioned piece.
Bombino is playing their initial – and presumed by some (although proven wrong) to be their lone, ever – show at the VFW Post 1970 in West Nashville.
May Day is happening. At once an ancient, cross-quarter pagan holiday, relatively neutered by Christianity, and (more popularly known as) the International Workers’ Day after the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago. A fine, lost-but-resurfacing memory of police brutality if there ever was one.

I decided to set out on all 3 of these events, all together in my life by happenstance, and to see if I couldn’t make something out of them. I don’t know if I did, but recount is worth explication.

The May Day event took place internally. A re-membering of mine and many others’ lives and stories to a Grand-Narrative scale, one that would serve true posturing, inward disposition, and personal politic.

Most likely, Terry Riley does not need an introduction. If you do, it’s relatively easy to sink into, and will probably be given by someone far more adequate than me. I am fairly familiar with his corpus of work – mainly from my brother – but I was also familiar with his thoughts and musings, spiritual or otherwise. I expected a sagacious old man; what my friends and I got was so much more – and so much smaller – than that.

As Riley spoke (he is who I will primarily focus on, although most everyone else on the panel had not only great insight, but convivial tales of running around New York with their buds as well) I got the more than slight impression of a reflective life. Not only because he was the oldest among the group speaking (77, the others 40-50), no, his internal pace was different. Unhurried and unsullied. When he talked about taking the “improvisational moments and composing from them to allow the architectural possibilities to get seen,” I didn’t hear pious or heady nonsense; I heard a light-gravity from a man who was (and still is) desperately seeking to convey beauty, and who seemed to know that to do that sifting through of life took a long, slow time, and was on nobody’s schedule but its own’s. He was truly insightful and quite the regular human being. Riley didn’t get classically trained players when he premiered (what would turn out to be) his monumental piece, “In C”: he had regular players because he felt that amateurs “get it”. (Of course when some of those amateurs happens to be John Cage and John Gibson, well…) He said he wanted to make consciousness music, not in melody, but in the sound of it all. He wants people who were open to that.

The crowd was sparse, tame (save when an impromptu jam session happened between violinist Tracy Silverman, which was electric), white and (probably) educated. The atmosphere was proper, clean and very conducive to thoughtful conversation and questioning. That’s not to say it always happened, but it was most certainly ready for it.

We left.

The sun was setting at the VFW as we arrived, full of fun thoughts and discussion. In this turn, the VFW was to become a hybrid for the evening. There were the regulars, presumably (always) there for the fried chicken and would soon – again, presumably – leave once the show began (spoiler alert: not so! entirely).

The Cherry Blossoms and William Tyler opened for Bombino, but again, my recounting will focus on the one.

Bombino might need an introduction. In brief: The GROUP is called Bombino, which consists of 4 players, but the MAN in question is Omara “Bombino” Moctar, a member of the pseudo-nomadic desert people, the Tuareg. The Tuareg have traversed the Sahara desert since time immemorial, allowing IT to provide for THEM. In some ways, they have kept their nomadic ways, and have settled in some. They are also a very matriarchal society. The fantastic musical group Tinariwen is also Tuareg. Their peoples’ movements (or lack there of) has caused rifts with the made-up borders that now exist (i.e., Niger, Mali, etc.) and have led to two uprisings of the Tuareg people. It is my understanding that after the first one, Bombino started writing songs for his people, both to encourage and educate, as well as help them remember their past (there’s that consciousness thing again). To say the least, they took to them quite nicely. As the second Tuareg rebellion, the government of Niger executed two of his fellow musicians/band mates and sent him into exile. After the “peace” (and Bombino’s rise in popularity) he was allowed back and…here we are? In short: I felt an immense respect to get to hear the music.

The scene was wild, sweaty, and fun. The usual walls were gone – or were at least not apparent within the crowd. The usual “cool” was gone; the new sincerity was gone; the irony was gone. The vibe felt cohesive. Something, in a crowd that diverse, I hadn’t felt in a long time. There were older people from poor to affluent amounts of money and culture. There were people who had their ear to the ground as far as music in Nashville. I never thought I’d see weed smoked in a VFW, which struck me as ironic at first, but later on not so much. There were people who had fought in wars, some which were just fine relegating themselves to the back bar.

Bombino struck a chord with a bunch of Nashvillians. So did Riley. (I later saw the premier of his piece via the Nashville Symphony, which I thought was ok.) It was very apparent that they were both after a third thing, on “the cusp of magic” if you will. The thing that happens apart from the self and creation of something. The thing that can change things. Both were equally as gracious to us as we were to them, and it seems fitting to me that on May Day I got to experience these workers in the field. The events themselves were very different in some ways, but were strikingly similar in others. It was nice having some sort of Classical Avant-Garde world sit nicely next to desert rock and roll AND have people enjoying themselves (we were not the only ones at both).

Alchemy by other means.

The State of Kuwait: WiLi//AmHo

(Welcome to our latest installment of the State of Kuwait)

- Amos House Community: A loosely to tightly affiliated group of people here in Nashville, TN that do the righteous thing, especially gearing toward those who don’t usually get the time of day, let alone dignity and decency.

- Brett Fleener: a “member” of Amos House Community, Blacktooth orbiter, and great dude. Knowledgable, flexible, and – in short – down.

- Wiki Leaks: Wiki Leaks.

Brett Fleener is spending time in London this summer working at a Catholic Worker house, gaining new traction and loosing some others. His concerns in life are valid and thoughtful, and he has written an excellent piece on the Wiki Leaks/Julian Assange extradition situation. The link to the article is posted below. We just deemed it pertinent to further the digging and the thoughts being swapped on this issue.

Read the article here: <click!>

“Who benefits from excessive reputation damage of Assange and Wikileaks?”

RSD

Get right with it everybody. Record Store Day 2012 is gwon be too tight.

There’s a lot of really good bands, free beer (I think?) and Black Diamond. Who is a Black Neil Diamond impersonator. Who will be on a roof. And that’s reason enough.

Plus The Groove carries all of the Blacktooth Releases and they rule on a personal level.

We’ll see you there. And so will he:

Karizma

Hello tin ears and wooden tongues (or any other charmingly gnomic conversation starters we could have started the charming conversation with).

Been a spit. For that, you won’t receive much. Only the promise of our time here at Blacktooth being spent well and with due diligence.  Everyone has been stirring good pots, the soups of which you shall all taste soon enough. I can tell you, however, that as of APRIL 11th, we here at Blacktooth Records will have purchased 14 pay-phone numbers in the greater Nashville area! We are honored to be included in this elite league of people, and we cherish each cenotaph as one would all great objects of antiquity. Other quarter-a-call owners in the greater Nashville area include Shoney’s, HCA, and the Clinton-Gore ’92 campaign! You will soon be able to order your favorite Blacktooth Records releases in complete anonymity, which is somewhat of a rare commodity these days. Be 0n the look out.

We appreciate the help and encouragement we’ve received thus far, and are haggardly going forth, leaving our caves and heading toward the light (or at least the fire). Fly Golden Eagle and Majestico are playing Friday (4/6) at the Basement for a Memetic Society release party, alongside Faux Ferocious. They were kind enough to release 45′s for us all here. Come have a good time!

Perch your hawks on the wrist of Caeser, be great, and carve deep heel-marks, to abuse the poet Robinson Jeffers’ lines.

-BTR

Po’ Me Granite

Obliged, thank you, gratitude, etc.

Here’s a “wrap-up” for you and yours via The Blacktooth Camp and co. We asked some rad people in town who we think do rad things to compile their top 5 records of the year (some released in 2011 and some they just dug the most in 2011). A diverse sprinkling, both in terms of records and choosers, it’s of interesting note that a lot of locals show up, as well as the absence (barring a few exceptions) of solely, new, released-in-2011 records. Maybe that has something to say, maybe it doesn’t.

At any rate, in addition to the top 5′s, we’ve culled together a mix from some of our favorites in town. The bands are entities that we’ve (mostly) talked about on here, one way or the other, as well as bands who’s records we’ve put out (or would like to put out. Or are in). This is a fantastic run of demos/unreleased/new songs from some of the most talented people in town (or, in the case of Dungen, who came to town):

You’ve got a Chrome Pony jam from their demo release (a song that wasn’t re-recorded for their Illegal Smiles EP); a new demo from Fly Golden Eagle; The Phantom Farmer brings hot fire, which is from Joel McAnulty’s (By Lightning) forthcoming solo release, Home On the Frequency Range: Alpha; James Wallace visits weird city with Jen Turner of Here We Go Magic; Jota Ese remixes the unflappable Mark Morrison‘s early-90′s slow jam, “Return of the Mac” and sends it straight to atonal hell; Natalie Prass shows how sexy mumbling can be on her demo of the slow, well-tempered-synth jam, “Bird of Prey”; John McSparran, puppeteer-extraordinaire, gives us a short introduction track under a misnomer (which should direct you to his very-rare project Cigarette Trees); a ghost by the name of Odessa chills all over it; the post-mortem Hepatitties give a demo from their progenitor days that never made it onto the now-cult-classic A Taste for Peaches EP;  a more sentient and palliative state is where you will find Majestico; and the nubile and raw-as-real-time-revolution men in Ranch Ghost cut a new track over at BIV town with Jitch manning the boards that acts as the auditory whiskey you add to your apple cider. (Speaking of Jitch, he recorded the Dungen-Sweedz when they came through town last year and Ben T. made it sound right.)

Download the mix after the picture below, and read on to see the top 5′s.

Nashville rules. Thank you. Seriously.

Download “blacktooth on Blacktooth” here: <click!>

TOP 5

Andrew Krinks (Editor, The Contributor):

Tom Waits – Bad As Me
Gillian Welch – The Harrow & the Harvest
Radiohead – The King of Limbs
James Blake – James Blake
Wilco – The Whole Love

Ben Trimble (Fly Golden Eagle, Majestico, Hepatitties, Blacktooth Records):

The Limiñanas – (S/T)
Brazilian Guitar Fuzz Bananas – (Compilation)
Unknown Mortal Orchestra – (S/T)
Serge Gainsborough – Les Annees Psychedeliques (1966-1971)
Natural Child – 1971

Sean Thompson (Nikki Lane, utility for anyone):

Michael Daves And Chris Thile – Sleep With One Eye Open
Nikki Lane – Walk Of Shame
Louvin Brothers – Satan Is Real (repress by Light In The Attic, I know, but this is a really important album that a lot more people will hear now.)
Charles “Packy” Axton – Late Late Party 1965-67 (Another Light In The Attic Repress but goddamnit this record rules.)
Kenny Vaughan – V

Chris Murray (Square People, Square People Jazz Maturity, Hepatitties, Toadies 2):

5. Dope Body – Nupping
4. John Maus – We Must Become the Pitless Censors of Ourselves
3. Fat Worm of Error – Broods
2. James Ferraro – Far Side Virtual/Condo Pets EP
1. LMFAO – Sorry for Party Rocking

Josh Habiger (Chef, The Catbird Seat):

Wugazi – 13 Chambers
tUnE yArDs – w h o k i l l
Tom Waits – Bad as Me
The Goat Rodeo Sessions
Lost in the Trees – Time Taunts Me

Graham Fitzpenn (Majestico):

The Mattoid – The Glory Holy
The Velvet Underground – Loaded
Bob Dylan – Desire
The Royal Greek Festival Company – Greek Folk Songs and Dances
The Breeders – Last Splash

Joel Macinulty (By Lightning, The Phantom Farmer, records everyone/anyone):

Matt Moody – El Baile de los Muertos
Fly Golden Eagle – Swagger
Wilco – The Whole Love
Shabazz Palaces – Black Up
Chrome Pony – Illegal Smiles

Richard Harper (Fly Golden Eagle, Majestico B-squad, Oh Dang Lo Mein, Hepatitties, Blacktooth Records):

Psalters – Carry the Bones
James Wallace and the Naked Light – More Strange News From Another Star
The Stepkids – (S/T)
Shabazz Palaces – Black Up
trog’low – Mellow Feats EP

Honorable mention for White Denim – D and Tinariwen – Tassili

John Stout (Jota Ese, Oh Dang Lo Mein, Day Old Records):

5 of my favorite albums of 2011 are:
Shlohmo – Bad Vibes
Charles Bradley – No Time For Dreaming
Samiyam – Sam Baker’s album
Blu – n o y o r k
James Blake – James Blake

5 of my favorite songs of 2011 are:

Panda Bear – “Last Night at the Jetty”
Radiohead – “Lotus Flower” (with the music video of course)
Tyler the creator – Yonkers
Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx – “New York is Killing Me”
Heavy cream – “Watusi”

John McSparran (Puppeteer, Wishing Chair Productions, Cigarette Trees):

FAVORITE ALBUMS THAT I FOUND OUT ABOUT IN 2011 (THOUGH THEY DIDN’T NECESSARILY COME OUT THEN)

1) John Adams – Nixon in China
2) The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
3) Washington Phillips – Spreading the Word Through Song
4) Leonard Cohen – The Songs of Leonard Cohen
5) Mike Patton – The Solitude of Prime Numbers

Matt Jernigan (Chicago-based artist):

The top five albums I played loud enough from the hours of midnight – 6 am to piss off my upstairs neighbors in 2011. There’s never any particular order from midnight – 6am.

Tommy Stangroom (Square People Jazz Maturity, Square People, Toadies 2):