Monday, October 15, 2012

Fall 2012 Update

Hello babies.
Tired as all hell, but I feel like I should update this thing.
(Check out that layout!)

First things first: I put out a new album for a new solo project, called Thing-Worker.
Go download this thing!




It's hideously deformed industrial/harsh noise/power electronics/cybergrind/musique concrete. It's the most abrasive and heavy recording I've done yet and I'm very proud of it. That cover art was a collaboration between Aircraft and I.


Anyway,
I'll be embarking on a tour soon. I didn't update this thing, I don't think, but I was on tour for all of August, as well as 10 days in May, before that (which may have been posted about on this blog).
I swear, shows get better every time I go out. It's really empowering. I need to be out more often! I need to play more, with Bubblegum Octopus, with Ultra Death Men, and with anything and anyone that I can possibly play with!

The tour will be a brief journey starting in North Carolina, jumping through OH, IL, MI, and NY state.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

2012 Update #2: SPRINGTIME

Hello babies!
It's been a while, no?

Let's catch y'all up.

About two weeks ago myself and members of Giggle The Ozone, Pet Bottle Ningen, Ugh God, and others found ourselves in a warehouse studio in Philly, recording for the third Hybegnu release.
If you haven't checked out our first offering (which doesn't feature me) and our second (which does) you can grab them at our Bandcamp page for free (or money, if you want to donate to the Hybegnu coffers.)

Prior to that, I had been doing some really infrequent shows. Did a c@ show in Salem, MA and played Bubblegum Octopus sets around New Jersey. Last night I played at a fantastic house venue in Sussex, NJ, for the second time. The place is called Cigarette Hill On Anal Mountain. Despite the potentially off-putting name, the place is lovely, friendly, and enthusiastic. I was playing with Spreaders, Valerie Kuehne, and Joey Molinaro (who was doing electric violin and foot percussion renditions of Discordance Axis songs). By good fortune, the former vocalist of Discordance Axis, Jon Chang, a supreme idol of mine in the ways of extreme vocals and approach to album releases, happened to be in the audience. For me, that's quite a big deal. His voice has been the ideal sound of piercing screams, inhuman growling, and general vocal chaos for years >o<

Outside of that, I've been working with Jon of Ultra Death Men on the new Bubblegum Octopus LP, due out Fall/Winter of this year on Placenta Recordings. He will be playing drums (if you didn't already know) on about half of the tracks.
The album has taken a decidedly unusual turn, as far as Bubblegum Octopus material goes. In the process of trying to rework the album for live performance, I began playing more guitar on it. The result is a lot of super shoegazey and skramy parts, with equal parts Mukai Shutoku and Agata Ichirou, that somehow borders on accidental, transcendental psychedelia.
That, mixed with the heavy grooves and d-beats of the real drums, the freaked out, sputtering, glitchy breaks of the electronic tracks, the sometimes VGM, sometimes completely wacky synths, and my vocals has created something particularly unusual and "band"-like for the record.
It was a bit off-putting at first and I thought I was just going to scrap everything, but after rehearsing the songs in full form, I've found renewed confidence in what I'm doing with this. Jon's contributions are extremely valuable and integral.

As for Critters and Milquetoast, I'm leaving them on the back burner. I've foolishly begun writing yet another album in the past few months, but I am going to focus on splits and those two albums before I push that forward at all. I have splits lined up with Kool Skull, Kindergarten Hazing Ritual, Dingle, Watabou, Spreaders, and more and I need to get these things done!!

In future live performance news, I will be playing Ultra Mega Awesome Extreme 6 this Saturday, in Detroit. The line-up is downright sinister. If you're even remotely able to get to this, you really need to. I promise promise promise it will be worth it!
Then in May I'll be doing a really ramshackle tour just to get out of my comfort zone.

May 9th - Winston-Salem, NC - tba
May 10th - help needed for SC or GA
May 11th - Gainesville, FL - The Laboratory
May 12th - Panama City, FL - The A&M Theater
May 13th - I'll play whatever in FL!
May 14th - Orlando, FL - Uncle Lou's
May 15th - help needed for SC or GA
May 16th - Greensboro, NC - tba
May 17th/18th - help needed for SC or GA!!
May 19th - Philadelphia, PA - 8static @ The PhilaMOCA

In August I'll have a longer tour, covering the mid-west and Texas, that may actually feature the debut of a new, two-piece project, but I can't say anymore about that in case I jinx it.

For now, I'm out. I hope there are no obvious errors in this. I don't have the time to proof-read >_<

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

2012 Update

Hey all.
For those who don't know, I've been making much more frequent posts at jazzycattime.tumblr.com
I'm in the midst of an extreme recap of all of my touring escapades, starting in summer of 2009, extending all the way up until this past summer and beyond.

But let's talk here about the future of Bubblegum Octopus and other projects of mine.
All the meaty bits.
Hybegnu's second album (and the first to feature me) is available for download via bandcamp, or for streaming, what have you, at . The album is called SHE-MASK, and it's a bit of a... "trip".
Bizarro prog-sludge-doom, featuring members of Giggle The Ozone, PAK, Time Of Orchids, Ugh God, Scutopus, and Infidel?/Castro!.

Another release, since last update, was that of my soundtrack for a platforming game called Cheeseman. The soundtrack is available at .
It's mighty BgO-ish, but it's not officially a BgO release. What does that really matter though? ;P

Ultra Death Men, by the way, will finally see their two years overdue EP release. We have made tracklist cuts that have made all three of us happy and inspired, and our agenda for this week is to get the mixing 100%. It's very very close right now.

Other than that, you'll just have to see what I put out. I'm tired of letting people down with false hope!
Maybe that's my resolution for 2012?

Don't forget to just follow my facebook page for more frequent updates.
It's the easiest thing right now, eh?

Thursday, September 22, 2011

WAY overdue update

Well, fancy meeting you here, Blogspot. Long time no see.
Admittedly, you've not been out of mind entirely. I've sat down a few times to write something for you, but I get lost in the details, or overwhelmed by the sheer scope of all the things I'm trying to concisely iterate without compromising the integrity of.
But what can I possibly do? There is no way that I could ever, as an author or even as a speaker, convey everything that's happened to me since my last update. My life has been an absolute psychotic whirlwind of emotions and experiences: Things I thought I'd only be able to dream of, falling right into my lap; things I busted my ass for, crumbling in my hands. Moments of unimaginable bliss and confidence; crippling anxiety and sadness; completely unproductive rage. Highs and lows surpassing all past experiences in either direction. Personal barriers and comfort zone inhibitions completely destroyed.
Summer 2011 was probably the most eventful and powerful season of my conscious life.

After the annual music program I teach at concluded, I hit the road pretty immediately, and it was a weird tour. It was over a month long, but I played less shows than I would ever normally do while being out that long. My life at home situation was getting unbearable, and I desperately needed a breather. Not a "get out for the weekend" breather, but a "be gone for over a month and hardly talk to anyone from home at all" breather.

I went to MI, played a prom themed show that was an extension of Ultra Mega Awesome Extreme, with tons of friends, wearing something I'd have worn for such an event, and hung with some family for a few days after, before taking a plane to LA for three super intense shows and three completely crazy days off. I got to play with and hang with some incredible and diverse, mostly electronic artists, including Captain Ahab, NVR-NDR, Kool Skull, Kevin Blechdom, Essay, Cyn Cyn And The Pons, Vyncent Flaw, Wizwarz, 8bit Weapon, Computeher, and one of my closest friends, Yatagarasu.

I flew back to MI after my week had ended, drove up to super North Michigan to play out in the woods for Placenta Recordings' second Mental Spaghetti Fest, with a cavalcade of great music, including Watabou, Kessenchu, Crochetcatpause, Little Mack, BBQ, Free Love Association, Dental Work, a whole bunch more.
After that, I made the long drive to Iowa City, where I played one wacky, awesome show, followed by a week off, to hang out with friends new and old. I was so taken with the city that I've sort of decided to move there at some point. Were my life at home not turning around for the better, I'd be living there next month.
In IC, I actually started a new band, humorously called Piss Fist. It was a particularly angry day, and I was with a great metal drummer and a great metal vocalist... why not start a grind band?
http://bubblegum-octopus.com/Cats/DA%20thing.mp3 (I'm on guitar, by the way)
This is a low quality demo of the first 19 seconds of a song, before my computer died and I realized I had no cable to plug it in.
"No worries, we'll meet up again tomorrow and do full song recordings" we said, not knowing that tomorrow would be a busy day indeed, and we'd not play again together until a time that has yet to happen.

Before the end of the Iowa journey, I took my friend Weaver with me up to St. Paul, MN, where I played a BgO set at a grind/thrash/tech-death show.
For two songs, BgO was a two piece, with a second vocalist. We probably could have benefited from a rehearsal or two, but it made someone very happy indeed that I was able to play Life Story = Fire for the first time ever (I didn't write it thinking I'd ever play live and is hard to pull off, alone, as you can probably imagine).


We drove back down to Iowa, collecting some hilarious Christian extremist propaganda on the way (some of which is still in my car) and we got ourselves ready for a crazy house show.
Before the show, I was inspired to play Discomfort & Laughing, off my split with Dental Work, but I've never really liked the lack of low end and weakness of the drums on that track, so I used my car speakers to write a bass line and make a completely new mix of the song.
My set for this packed living room ended up being the single longest BgO set of all time, clocking in at about 47 minutes. I have no idea how my voice held up for that long.

Two more leisurely days in Iowa before I hit the road once more, for the final stretch.
I drove to St. Louis to play somewhat quietly, to a nearly empty gay bar, but still enjoyed myself.
The next morning, I was mauled by a chihuahua (seriously, the wound is just not healed) before going to Grand Rapids, where I had a bigger, though stoic, crowd of punks that seemed to enjoy my set. None of the fans I expected to show up made it out. Always something weird when I go to GR.
The next night I played a meadery in Columbus OH. The projected turnout was massive, but almost no one showed up at all, save for a friend and a few other fans she brought with her. The guy who helped book me on my last trip through Columbus eventually showed up and, through the most successful and proactive attempt to promote a show of all time, literally coaxed people from the dubstep show across the street that I was more worth their time, and they came/were apparently not disappointed.

As a side note, I'm far from an expert on the subject, but this place's mead is pretty delicious. Just saying. Brothers Jake is the name of the spot.

The second to last show of the tour was in Buffalo, at a cool little art gallery. The set was really awesome, the people were totally enthusiastic, and I was in good company for the night and the following day. Buffalo, by the way, gets an award for most dancey crowd. The house show in Iowa City and the boutique I played in LA were good, but Buffalo did great. It was a marvelous way to end the tour.

Well, it wasn't supposed to be the end of the tour, but Hurricane Irene had her way with my Brooklyn show, making it the second time a natural disaster has influenced a show of mine with Greenlander (last time we played together a rather fatal tornado tore apart the city next to where we were).
There ended up being a makeup show for that, which was the catalyst for a series of really dramatic and powerful changes in my life, but I've been cutting out the overly personal parts and nitty gritty details of this story.



So now that I'm home and have no upcoming tours scheduled, I've just been working on recordings. The Hybegnu album is finally being mastered, and it sounds gooood so far.
Ultra Death Men is in the same boat: severely overdue but at least it sounds great.
I'm also recording the next BgO album, a vinyl/mp3 only thing called "I can't ever know things"
It's not exactly a full length, but certainly not an EP. Why bother classifying these things anyway? It'll be out, hopefully by the end of the year, but I can't make any guarantees.
I'm also diligently working on composition and production of the next true BgO full length, Critters. It's so drastically different from all past BgO output that I've actually included some slightly older, super choice material that no one has ever heard, just to give it a tiny bit more continuity. The songs happen to work with everything I've done for the album anyway, so they aren't just going to be slapped on there, willy nilly.

Unrelated to BgO or projects you already know about, I'm going to be doing some production stuff for a few artists I really like. Recording vocals, mixing, all that noise.
I'll also be doing production stuff for some black metal my friend has written. I guess he wants me to play some of the guitar parts, too. I like working in contexts that make me uncomfortable.
I am also doing a soundtrack for an upcoming, platforming game for the iPad. I'm pretty excited about that.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'm pretty beat, so hopefully there are no horrible grammar mistakes or non-sensical sentences.
Take care, babies.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Bad Happy is out!

Sorry about not updating like I said I would, that's just how it goes sometimes I suppose.
Well, Bad Happy is out. It has been for a few days.

Want it immediately? Grab it up on iTunes/Amazon.

Want it in it's ultra nice looking physical form? head over to bubblegumoctopus.bigcartel.com OR come to a show (you can also send me check/money order, just email me)

Don't want it? What are you doing reading this?? GET OUT OF HERE!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Bad Happy: Final update part 1/4

On the 31st of this month, I will officially have all of the new album recorded! I know it's been a painful wait for some of you (myself included) but I really feel confident that it was worth the wait.
I really think that this is the BgO album you have been hoping for.

Punky, noisy, death metallic, power poppy, and psychedelic guitars, breakcore and IDM-ish percussion mutilation, SNES and x-bit chip sounds, synths of the analog, FM, ROMpler, sampler, and complex software varieties, circuit-bending, pedal chain harsh noise, occasional moments of grind, all kinds of vocals, self-sample mangling, and tons of other things.

I just tried to do an album the way I've always wanted to, without sacrificing anything that wasn't out of reach completely, and I think I've basically accomplished that.


By all accounts, there is no excuse for me taking this so long, but I'm glad I waited.
The Bad Happy I had planned to put out in 2010 was in no way as solid as the one that I will be releasing in the next two or three months.
I basically did not anticipate what touring was going to do to my life.
I'll be honest, I slacked off a lot when I shouldn't have. I have really terrible sleep problems and it can cause me to sleep through times when I could have been working, but sleep seems to be creeping back to my side. I also get really overwhelmed very easily and this album has tons of things going on at any given time.

Not only that, but I'm not just making the music here:
I'm doing my own PR work, I'm getting merch made, I'm selling merch, I'm managing all of my internet presence. I'm my own record label, manager, PR guy, booking agent, merch guy, recording engineer, and producer.
I have no one helping me in this at all, I have no studio recording me, and I'm not signed.

People will give me suggestions, they'll help me book shows, etc. but I'm still fundamentally acting as a whole band, a label, and the entire management team.
I don't even have other members to carry some of the burden (and people wonder why I'm slow with my orders and never do real self-promotion, heh)
It's all very detrimental to the creative process, but I am getting better at it.

Anyway, that all said... I've given myself this deadline and I plan on sticking to it!
Send me your positive energy, magical happiness, psychic pizza, telepathic cat cuddles, and your ESP caffeine so I can be productive non-stop!!

Next update will be after it's all recorded!

- m@ the c@
(^o^!)

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Busy time of the year

Hey all, I've been busy as of late.
Working myself mad on Bad Happy, trying to get The Kitten's Rejoinder prepared for release, rehearsing with Ultra Death Men and Giggle The Ozone, and trying to organize Christmasasaurus Vol. 5 as last minute as I thought possible, haha

Mob Boss recording has entered the pre-recording rehearsal phase.
For various reasons, I'm just going to do everything except for drums, which will be handled by Jon of Ultra Death Men. I don't know what I'll put this out on yet, but I'm feeling a semi-free album that will come with all future merch orders is the best idea.

Jayme is not out of the band, he's just too busy right now to put effort in, and because they are my songs anyway I'm going to just record them to kick start things.

I have my Bandcamp page up and running to fill the void left by myspace turning into a complete trainwreck.
Not quite a website, but I'm still working on that.

http://bubblegumoctopus.bandcamp.com/

I'm slowly filling in all the lyrics and some descriptions of the songs.
Nothing important, just some anecdotes about their origins, the recording process, whatever.
I know some people have wanted the same treatment I gave Possible Party: Part i to be given to TAFKA8LDM

Well, that's all for now.
Sorry there's nothing exciting...

...oh wait, just kidding! I have some shows!




Bubblegum Octopus December 30th, Yspilanti, MI @ a house party. Ask me for the address.

Bubblegum Octopus January 6th, North Hollywood, CA @ Hustle House with Monomate, NVR-NDR, Halloween Swim Team, and Vyncent Flaw

Bubblegum Octopus January 7th, Isla Vista, CA @ Biko Garage with Monomate, Treasure Mammal, and Coach McGirt

Giggle The Ozone January 21st, Brooklyn, NY @ Vaudeville Park

Bubblegum Octopus & Pyrrhic January 28th, Sunderland, MD @ tba w/ Watabou

Bubblegum Octopus January 29th, Baltimore, MD @ Hexagon Space w/ TALK TO ANIMALS

In March... I'll be playing South By Southwest, followed by another tour with Yatagarasu covering Texas, Oklahoma, and more on the way back to New York!
More details on that stuff soon.