The piece, commissioned by the Unsound festival in Krakow, spawned from initial sketches improvised by Frost and Bjarnson to the Tarkovsky film of the same name (note, if you haven’t seen it, remedy your unfortunate situation poste haste). From there, the duo fed those sketches were:

fed into software designed to correct music which tried to turn their dense and distorted sonic input into a digital sequence of raw musical data. Working from data riddled with error and misunderstanding, a human score was orchestrated; the whole process deftly mirroring the core of the film’s own narrative of memory and loss, alien doppelgängers and emotional feedback loops.

Heavy.

Ben Frost’s By The Throat was my favorite record of 2009, and Bjarnson’s Processions just missed cracking the top ten last year. Even knowing this collaboration exists has me all tingly inside.

The tracklist is as follows:

1. We Don’t Need Other Worlds, We Need Mirrors
2. Simulacra I
3. Simulacra II
4. Snow
5. Reyja
6. Cruel Miracles
7. Hydrogen Sulfide
8. Unbreakable Silence
9. You Mean More To Me Than Any Scientific Truth
10. Saccades
11. Venia

Sólaris is out Nov. 7, 2011 on Bedroom Community.

I realize that 85% of blogs on the internet end with a post that starts: “Sorry, I haven’t posted in a while…”, so I was tempted to pick up like nothing had changed. I was prepared to ask you to pretend the last 251 days never occurred, and to suggest we’d both feel better about things that way. But the reality is, I’m now two organs short of a full body, and you deserve better.

Therefore, to get us back in gear, I decided to cull together a compendium of six random things I probably would have posted about had I been better at my not-job.

5. Wugazi

Another Chessboxin’ Argument by WUGAZI

I can already hear you. “Yeah, yeah, another mashup project.” Seriously though, it’s worth your time. Swiss Andy and Doomtree’s Cecil Otter spent a year sorting through Fugazi slices to find the perfect chunks for these Wu-Tang acapellas. Any project that gets the nod from both Dischord and Wu-Tang management, should get the nod from you. Download the full 13-track record straight away.

4. A Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools

Thanks to my friend Christine, I ended up blowing almost $100 at Pop Chart Lab. First, I had to have the above-pictured beauty of a print. But how could I possibly pass up The Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names or The Illustrious Omnibus of Superpowers. Visit them at your own risk.

3. Ford/Lopatin – Channel Pressure

Break Inside by Ford & Lopatin

Last seen 251 days ago in my year-end records post, Ford/Lopatin (then known as Games), dropped Strawberry Skies, my second favorite track of the year. Channel Pressure is their debut full-length, and it also rules. Oh, and it was record in Jann Hammer’s studio. What more could you possibly need to know.

2. The Weeknd Thursday Mixtape

I think I maybe missed out on talking about BOTH mixtapes from The Weeknd (251 days is a long time), but Thursday is the newest, so I’ll talk about that. It’s lush, soulful, downbeat, AND Drake guests on a track. Also, it’s free. Get to it.

1. Demdike Stare

Demdike Stare is a newish project from DJ MLZ (Miles Whittaker) and Finders Keepers cohort Sean Canty. In February, they finalized a triptych of releases (including Voices of Dust, pictured above). It’s three full slabs of dark and heavy, sample-based atmospherics. Plus the artwork is rad. You need to own it on vinyl, so track it down before it goes out of print.

Best Records of 2010:

Today, we kick things off with my “Best Songs of 2010″ list. You can click on the titles below for links to check out each song. Alternately, I set up a playlist on iTunes so you can easily follow, listen and purchase any of the songs that tickle your proverbial fancy.

Best Songs of 2010:

Title: March To The Sea
Artist: AIDS Wolf
Cover by: Seripop
Available in: LP/CD on SkinGraft Records

As with previous AIDS Wolf releases, art responsibilities were handled by Montreal’s Seripop (Yannick Desranleau and Chloe Skum, who also make up 1/2 of the band). Trading in the seizure-inducing, freehand, insano style of their screenprints, Seripop went with a photographic treatment for the cover of March To The Sea. That isn’t to say they toned things down. The chaos, destruction and bombastic nature of their work is still readily apparent, and for me, it’s exciting to see them show off their extreme talents in a fresh way.

Believe it or not, Brooklyn-based Buke & Gass (pronounced Byook & Gace, since I know you’re wondering) is a duo. Yes, that sound you hear coming through your speakers (or from that stage) is made by two people. Granted, these are peculiar sounds, but it’s the complexity that belies their true number. The peculiarity can be somewhat attributed to their self-built instruments. Arone Dyer plays the “buke” (a modified six-string baritone ukulele), and Aron Sanchez the “gass” (a guitar-bass hybrid), which are both filtered through various invented pedals and amps. Combined with complex percussion (played simultaneously with their feet, of course), Dyer’s intricate vocal melodies, and other miscellaneous hand-claps and snaps, and you start to see where this impressive racket comes from. In an attempt to gain some further insight into their process, we asked Dyer & Sanchez to talk to us about three tracks from their recent release, Riposte.

BUKE & GASS: As the concept of an Album (or: a body of artwork that involves a linear attention span for full comprehension and best results) is slowly diluted by easily down-loadable or quickly acquirable single hits, We, Buke & Gass, find ourselves clinging to the edges of this conceptual earthquake and wishing to clasp the listener’s hand through the conversation we’re having with them. With You. Art is only one side of this conversational equation, and without your active involvement, it has the potential to be a dry, tasteless picture separating us by a pane of colorless 1/4″ plexiglass. Looking out, looking in. This is just a fancy way of saying that we created Riposte with the hopes that someone would listen all the way through to understand how the songs fit each other, how they fit together, how they fit us, and what that means to you, as the listener. These are 3 pieces created specifically for that conversation, in which we aim to give you a short respite from the havoc of our language.

IMMORAL BUT JUST FINE, OKAY:
This was an improv that spanned an hour or so, and we manually whittled it down to a pleasant 4 minutes, smoothing out the transitions and adding vocals with lyrics that may or may not have anything to do with sex or food. I just kept thinking, “bad duck,” which stuck. However, “mauvais canard” is much more fun to say, as I found out in the process. The working title was “Patience is a Virgin”, but that was faaar too literal. Some day soon this will be on our next batch of tshirts.

This is, sadly, a song that we may never play live. It’s the only piece we created specifically for the album in the studio, and the many little added sound blips, running around upstairs pushing chairs and moving things (including a live vacuum cleaner at one point), probably wouldn’t be technically feasible onstage with just the two of us. At least as far as we’ve tried thus far.

NEUROSIS AND HER SISTERS:
“I found a lesion” taken from one of the interludes from our Ep, where Arone called Aron on the phone and he recorded her being an old lady talking about finding a lesion under her left arm, near her elbow. The music is an impromptu Arone on little keyboard and Aron on the kickdrum. The vocals and claps were secretly added shortly after by Arone while Aron was out of the city. It took a considerable bit of convincing for Aron to like it, but once he did, he fashioned the beginning and end to sound like a tube radio. Not very much production was done to the bulk of it, save for volume and levels mixing, and making it fit nicely with the intro to Bundletuck.

<3, HEART:
This is on the Ep, as well. It is the original improv of Aron on gass, and Arone with a shaker and singing the main vocal, with back vocals and claps added after. It’s fun to clap! That’s why we do it. So much sound with just your hands. The beginning was spliced on, happily, and the words are incoherent. Don’t even try to think she’s saying anything comprehensible, because she’s not. A happily indiscernible 40 seconds, designed to make you want to “hoo-wahh” along with at the end.
Have you, yet?

The always-resourceful Buke & Gass recently made a video for their song Page Break, and have announced a small December tour. Since we included both of them below, there is no reason for you not to check both of them out. Riposte is out now on Brassland Records.

12/2 — Boston, MA @ TT the Bears
12/3 — Montreal, PQ @ Casa Del Popolo
12/4 — Toronto, ON @ Sneaky Dee’s
12/6 — Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
12/7 — Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
12/9 — Washington, DC @ Rock and Roll Hotel
12/10 — Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie
12/11 — New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge

Should have seen this coming. This is what happens when food people become taste-makers—you get awkwardly hip hybrids like lobster corn dogs at Lollapalooza. Now, Anthony Bourdain is writing a graphic novel for Vertigo, an imprint of DC Comics.

Get Jiro! is an “ultra-violent slaughter-fest” that takes place in a world where food and the secrets of how to prepare it are the source of great power, according to a blog post on DC’s website. Jiro is a highly talented sushi chef whom this futurist world’s master chefs are all fighting over. Though it seems the mysterious Jiro has plans of his own.

Get Jiro! will be written by Bourdain and novelist Joel Rose (Kill Kill Faster Faster, La Pacifica) and illustrated by artist Langdon Foss (Heavy Metal).

Though the official word from DC came just over the weekend, Bourdain has been hinting at the graphic novel in recent interviews. He’s called it “Fistful of Dollars meets Eat Drink Man Woman,” in an article in the Omaha World Herald, and “Yojimbo meets Big Night and Babette’s Feast,” as he told Toronto’s Now Magazine.

Whatever the final food-and-gore formula may be, with Foss doing the illustrations, Get Jiro! has the potential to be a beautiful book. And while they’re working on it, you can get your gastronomic graphic fix with Iron Wok Jan, a Japanese cooking manga written and illustrated by Shinji Saijyo. This 27-volume series is full of its own ultra-violent chefs, big boobs and ridiculous, Iron Chef-style cooking competitions won by masterpieces like pomelo and orange pork and shark heart sashimi—complete with recipes.

As you can see, the crew is stripped down from the 200 or so people that performed live at The Last Prom On Earth back in May, but if this footage is any indication, the lean(ish)/mean crew has no trouble pulling their weight. It also appears that tour-mate Glasser will be joining Ryan Olson and company on stage (at least for Faded High).

Go see Olson dance around awesomely in the back left-hand corner of a stage in your town. Check the tourdates over at Gayngs myspace page.

photo by Greg Schaal

Minneapolis’ STNNNG has been honing their brand of chaos for 8 years now. Aggressive dueling guitars, spastic drumming and thundering bass lay the groundwork for vocalist/wordsmith Chris Besinger’s fitful rantings. It’s combative and contentious, but it’s also cathartic. There is an immense amount going on within every song, but it never sounds overwrought. If you break it down and listen closely, every member of this band is doing something insane and mind-blowing throughout. It’s a dizzying array of talent. It’s been four years since they released Fake Fake, and lucky for everyone, the drought is about to end. Smoke of My Will will be released in October on Modern Radio in a vinyl only edition. The aforementioned Mr. Besinger was kind enough to kick off our Pick Three series and discuss three songs from the new record.

STNNNG – Howling Man by lagmag

HOWLING MAN:
Since there has been such a long gap between The Smoke of My Will and the last record, some of this new material is actually pretty old to us, but this one is a lot more recent as it was the last tune completed for the record. The idea for the title and lyrics came from when we were banging out an early version of the song in the practice space and I started doing a high-pitched “oooh” in harmony with Adam’s guitar part. For a long time before the lyrics were finished, or really even before the song was finalized, I knew I wanted to call it “Howling Man”.

The main lyric came, like just about all of them do, from a fragment in a notebook. I eventually expanded it to a sort of narrative about Black Flag/Southern California/Charles Manson—at least those are the things its meant to conjure. It’s an idea I’ve been obsessed with for the past couple of years. Black Flag had “Family Man” and “Swinging Man,” I was thinking I couldn’t believe they didn’t have a song about a “Howling Man,” so I decided to fix that. Even though the music doesn’t sound anything like Black Flag, there was something really charging and raging about the guitar riff that made me think of them. This is a great one to play live.

STNNNG – New Black Hole by lagmag

NEW BLACK HOLE:
Here’s an example of a song that feels like we’ve been playing forever. I love the guitar noises that Adam and Nate do at the beginning of the song. Originally, we had planned to record this album ourselves in the practice space, but for various reasons that didn’t really pan out, but this one was recorded, almost entirely, in the practice space. The vocals I think are a mix of takes I did at the space and later on with Neil (Weir). Its a little weird listening to this because I can’t even tell what part is from where anymore. Neil went above and beyond mixing this one.

STNNNG – Some Raw Girls by lagmag

SOME RAW GIRLS:
Warning this song contains a drum solo, though Ben definitely nails it. I didn’t specifically write it about him, but I always think about Mike Lust (of Lustre King/Tight Phantomz fame who recorded out first two records) when I’m singing this, especially on the chorus. I probably should have gotten him to sing on it. The backing vocals at the end were Nate’s idea and I think work really well. I don’t really have a good head for thinking up backing vocal ideas, I have a hard enough time coming up with something for just me to sing.

To me even though this a newer song it feels like a bit of throwback to the songs from the first album, especially the main guitar lick. We’ve relearned some of those songs lately and its a little weird playing them, just because a few of are six or seven years old at this point and a lot times we play them and I think “how the hell did we come up with this stuff?”. So, in its way, this song reminds me of that feeling a little bit.

I’m really proud of this new album, I’m listening to the test press as I write this and I think for the work and effort that went into making the thing, its all paying off now. Of course, I could just be saying that because I’m glad its done. Hopefully, the next won’t take so long.

Smoke of My Will is available for preorder now through Modern Radio, it will be released in October 26, 2010. Record release show will be October 23, 2010 at the Turf Club in St. Paul, MN.

While Satan Worshipping Doom is Bongripper’s sixth release, it’s the first they’ve released on vinyl, and art-wise, they took full advantage of the extra inches.  It is a brutal (in the best way possible) full-color mess of blood, fire, demons, goats, tentacles and all manner of other evil shit.

The art was drawn by Mike Miller, who as far as I can tell has done other amazing work for bands in and around DeKalb, IL, including his own projects MZRCDXVL and Baptism. His MySpace page indicates a comic book might also be on the horizon, so parents, keep an eye out for that one (Christmas is right around the corner).

The album itself is a double LP pressed in an edition of 300 and self-released by the band. $18 dollars gets you the 2XLP and a digital download in FLAC or 320 kbps. It’s on sale now.