Drumcorps Live Summer 08
07.30.08
Animosity is a top-notch band: technically amazing, intense in spirit, and inspired. They are brutal but original at the same time. Too many metal bands are afraid to stray from the clichés. But Animosity simply don’t give a fuck about fitting into that mold, and mix a heroic dose of San Francisco psychedelia into their artwork and sound. For them, it’s all about the jam and the music. It’s that crucial mix of serious dedication to their craft and creative playfulness that I love, so I was excited when they contacted me out of the blue and asked me to work on this project.
I can honestly say this is by far the most work I’ve ever condensed into such short tracks. I know ridiculous work doesn’t necessarily mean good music, but in this case the results are something truly special. We’ve taken great care to preserve the quality at every step, first by having the tunes mastered at our favorite place… secondly by opting for lacquer cutting to preserve the bass, kept at 45 RPM for crisp high end, cut to one side of a 10″ acetate and sent off. As those of you who have the other Drumcorps 12″s know, they sound BETTER than the CD, as vinyl should if it’s done right.
Thanks much to Animosity for taking such a bold step, in giving me free reign to destroy their tracks & piece em back together again… to Godcity for the excellent source material, to Manalive for the whole project and their over the top production and design. Here’s to more people branching out and doing more collaborations like this in the future.
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Animosity & Drumcorps – Altered Beast
Etched & Foil Stamped 10″ Vinyl out August 1st 2008
pre-orders up now at http://wearemanalive.com/alteredbeast
Thin Retro God
A Profit on Greediness
Mobs Over, Rob Me
Recorded by Animosity at Godcity Studios with Kurt Ballou in March 2007
Remixed by Drumcorps in July-Oct 2007 and mastered by Lupo @ D&M
Artwork by John Lause. Limited to 1000 copies
Vinyl Configurations
100 – ‘Birthday Cake’: Cokebottle Green Vinyl w/ White, Pink, Electric Blue, Purple, Tan, & Gold Splatter; with Hand screened and letterpressed jackets, pre-order only!
200 – ‘Cupcake’: Cokebottle Green Vinyl w/ White, Pink & Electric Blue Splatter
300 – ‘Wealthy Eggplant’: Cokebottle Green Vinyl w/ Purple, Tan, & Gold Splatter
400 – ‘Moldy Cheese’: Half & Half Cokebottle Green Vinyl & White Vinyl
maria last night @ josef – the small room with the cubes on the wall. wasted night, osaka invasion. shige, ove, bogulta, maurosa.
very new feeling in the air. everyone was there, everyone. this feels like an actual community. wasted1 was the initial euphoria, cool. this is the long haul and it’s continuing. here is the ad noiseam table, there is actually a body of work there. some shirts. some defined stuff. pablo’s book just came out. “pencilbreak” actual good quality book highlighting the design. when you’re in the thick of it, you don’t see anything but the chaos. it takes someone like pablo to filter through and put things together – and we on the inside realize what we have. themes, ideas, and an identity of our own. general graphic/emotional content themes that build off each other. the editorial is honest and i love that. it’s not promoting any kind of agenda – more like cultural anthropology from a design perspective. there still is a synergy of ideas going on and ever morphing. the oroborous, devouring itself and growing anew. a circular snake shedding and re-growing leopard/plaid/skulls/pixel skin.
it’s also beyond embarassing, seeing each other. everyone is older. there are a host of new people around too. british and irish and belgians, dutch, spaniards, japanese, bedding down in berlin. suddenly it seems i’m the old guard, or at least getting there. we have all known each other for a while now, berlin is the locus, the world is the web. we all look a little more ragged but we know how to get what we want out of life, a little more. more worn, more refined. i remember going to maria when i first moved to berlin, transmediale 2003, and not a friend in the whole city. wow, i want to play here. some day. in awe. it happened. now i walk into maria like it’s my living room. my friends have already made themselves at home, cranked the stereo, and they have beer. the british friedrichshain colony was out in full force. i know they will get mad at me for calling them that, because they don’t fit in in britain. as british as i am american, which is only partially. gentle people, eager for a better life. we are all cultural exiles – berlin is our new home. we’re building, bunkering down. we are all radically different from each other but hold a few common values. the desire for a simple, artistic, honest life, on our own terms. love. things that our home countries beat out of people like us. so we come here.
it makes me want to cry a bit. it’s lovely and sad and awesome. new. some people fell away and disappeared. so it goes. it will never be the same. gather your love. new lights being born. new music. experiments. barbeques in the park, strollers and blankets. everyone pitching in. cleaning up our trash at the end of the night, and leaving a bag for the bottle hobos. learning german and feeling weirder. more out of place, and more calm. not frantically running around like chickens w/ their heads cut off, over-worried about the rat race. superstructure is looming outside, the new ver.di building, mediaspree set to annihilate all. but for now, we dance. experiments. what happens from here on in?
07.04.08
redesigned music page here aaronspectre.com/music . two streaming players, full track mp3 downloads, and everything nicely arranged. beats the old one. some big site revamps will be coming in a little while. web design melts the brain…
07.02.08
