ELLEN ALLIEN: The most minimal Magic Eye portrait ever

By Aaron Richter

As we all know by now, new releases hit record-store shelves and digital-download services each Tuesday. So every week self-titled presents a new release you’d be stupid not to own (Buy It), one worth checking out if you’re the curious type (Burn It) and something you might have heard about but probably should avoid (Skip It). Simple, ain’t it?

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IT’S GETTING BETTER

It’s fair to say that the Futureheads are the buzz band of the moment in the UK. Which is both strange and silly, really, considering they’ve been around for nearly eight years and already got tagged a ‘Next Big Thing’ band a few short years ago, as they headlined major festivals and everyday gigs above such contemporaries as Bloc Party and the Kaiser Chiefs. Why the sudden resurgence in interest, then? While bands like the aforementioned BP and Chiefs soared to relative superstardom, the Futureheads never quite made it. Floundering somewhere between their peers and the legions of young bands who would inevitably cop their styles, the grossly-talented foursome undersold all expectations on their sophomore effort and ended up dropped by their label, 679, in 2006.

So here they are two years later: self-releasing their third record, This is Not the World, and finding its lead single, “The Beginning of the Twist,” A-listed on BBC Radio 1. Meanwhile, the British press is championing them as poster boys for a new business model in which bands control their own destinies. self-titled caught up with Dave Hyde (drums/vocals) and Jaff (bass/vocals) in a Brixton Academy dressing room hours before they were to headline a celebratory gig for the popular UK radio station, XFM.

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NO MORE HEROES

Photos by Mark Slutsky

Efrim Menuck will be heard. As the guitarist and vocalist of his group, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band (originally formed in 1999 as a side project to the legendary Godspeed You! Black Emperor), Menuck will release his fifth LP, 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons, which contains four lengthy, sweeping songs that showcase the Canadian troupe at its most jarring and abrasive. In the face of desperate times, 13 Blues is a sprawling, in-your-face rock record bubbling with vital commentary that refuses to be ignored. Even the seemingly inoffensive twelve seconds-long tracks of noise that begin the album are somewhat of a clever “fuck you” to iPod-toting casual listeners, according to Menuck.

Here the musician speaks with self-titled about 13 Blues’ social, personal and political themes, losing his record collection and why he thinks the members of Radiohead are just a bunch of “con men.”

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CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM

[CW from top: Josiah Wolf, Doug McDiarmid, Yoni Wolf]

Photos by Jacob Hand

self-titled: Yoni, what’s shaking?
Nothing much. Just got back from a jog. About to have some coffee and relax.

Are you still out in California?
Sure am. No plans to leave just yet. There’s been talk, some talk about moving to New York. I don’t know. The girl that I’m seeing right now is moving out there. My brother is talking about moving out there. We’ll see. Are you in the city or Brooklyn?

I’m in the city. I got married recently.
Wow, you’re all settled down and shit.

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KNIVES OUT

Photos by Aaron Pederson

Cadence Weapon approached his second album, Afterparty Babies (Anti-), with one of the purest goals an artist could have: the desire to meet Tina Fey. Of course, the rapper/producer also finds time to gripe about girls and dis ridiculous hipster fashion. But that’s besides the point, really.

self-titled caught up with Cadence, known to his parents as Rollie Pemberton, to talk about Canada, songwriting and his former life as a music critic.

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SLAUGHTERHOUSE FOUR

[L to R: Dave Lombardo, Jeff Hanneman, Tom Araya, Kerry King]

Here’s something we would have never guessed about Tom Araya: the Slayer vocalist/bassist, one of the most important extreme music icons ever, still gets nervous before shows despite the fact that his cantankerous crew of thrash-metal pioneers formed 25 years ago.

“If I didn’t get nervous,” explains Araya, “it wouldn’t mean anything. Music would just be something that I’m ‘doing.’ Seriously; it wouldn’t have that same excitement.”

Fair enough, especially since Slayer’s last LP, 2006’s Christ Illusion, was hailed as their strongest in years, suggesting the band’s as tight now as they were the last time they played with founding drummer Dave Lombardo. (That’d be the double live album Decade of Aggression in 1991.) self-titled had a lot more questions for Araya, though, including the one question that was on the lips of many metal purists last summer: who’s idea was it to co-headline a tour with Marilyn Manson? So we got him on the phone and found out the most devil-horns-in-the-air fact about the Slayer frontman—he has a farm and his own beef cattle. Read more

THE UNDERGROUND GOURMETS

By Andrew Parks

Mike Patton’s only been in New York City for four days, yet he’s already written and recorded an entire album with avant-jazz architect John Zorn and his former Mr. Bungle bandmate Trevor Dunn.

“It’s a three-act rock opera with a mystical alchemy vibe,” says Patton of Six Litanies for Heliogabalus, which is described as “a startling blend of Metal, Contemporary Classical, Jazz and Medieval Music” on Zorn’s Web site. “Wait ‘til you see the artwork.”

Anyone who’s followed Patton’s career since his Faith No More days—believe it or not, they broke up a decade ago—knows the 40 year old is impossible to keep track of. In fact, one of the only ‘accessible’ projects Patton’s released in recent years was his long-delayed labor of love, Peeping Tom—a twisted pop project featuring a mail-order catalog of familiar (Norah Jones, Massive Attack, Kool Keith) and fringe (Kid Koala, Dub Trio, the Anticon. collective) faces. Now that he’s toured the hell out of that record, we’re hearing rumblings of yet another collaboration with Dan “the Automator” Nakamura, quite possibly the quirkiest producer to ever come out of the Bay area (see Dr. Octagon, Gorillaz, Handsome Boy Modeling School). Aside from a track (”Mojo,” also featuring Rahzel) on Peeping Tom, the duo best known for their faux Gainsbourg disc, Lovage: Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By. According to Wikipedia—not the greatest source, we know, but it’s all we’ve got—Automator and Patton may have a similar project up next. Described as “strange and bizarre R&B” (not, you know, raw fish coated in olive oil), Crudo has already announced an appearance at this year’s Sasquatch! festival.

self-titled locked ourselves in an office with Patton and a patched-in Automator (he was cruising through the streets of San Fran at the time) before whiffs of Crudo were caught by the ‘net, but the following exclusive Q&A gives quite a few hints as to its direction and, more importantly, the kind of beautiful friendship that’s characterized their on-again/off-again career together.

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JUST TRYING TO NAIL IT

Perhaps the only thing more shocking than the quality of Dan Bejar’s melodically nimble songwriting is how many of his songs there are to be shocked by. Not only does his main project, Destroyer, dependably release an album every two years, but he also keeps himself busy with side projects including Swan Lake (which features members of Frog Eyes and Wolf Parade) and Hello, Blue Roses (a collaboration with his girlfriend, Sydney Vermont). And then there’s that New Pornographers band. At this rate, even fellow Merge artist Bob Pollard is starting to look like a slacker. Bejar, who splits his time living in Spain and Vancouver, spoke with self-titled about his new album, Trouble In Dreams, and why he’s done with the harmonica.

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WHEN THE KITE STRING POPS

Before we met Dax Riggs, we’re pretty sure we’d never heard anybody mention Obituary and the Fairport Convention in the same sentence—much less as reference points for their own music. For shorthand purposes, we’d been referring to Riggs’ solo debut, We Sing Of Only Blood Or Love (Fat Possum) as the post-grunge Astral Weeks, but as the album spins on our turntable right now for what seems like the 400th time since it came out last year, that description is clearly an oversimplification. With songs about dog-headed whores, demons tied to chairs in Riggs’ brain, and a cover of Richard Thompson’s righteous post-Fairport hit, “Wall Of Death,” We Sing Of Only Blood Or Love is an infectious convocation of slow-burning Southern balladry, bleary-eyed blackened blues, and midnight suicide-soul, all of which Riggs presides over with the finest aw-haw in rock n’ roll and a little help from ex-Chavez/Zwan guitarist Matt Sweeney.

To back up just a bit: Many recall Riggs as one-half of Deadboy & The Elephantmen, whose 2006 album We Are the Night Sky stirred up a fair amount of well-deserved hype that year on the strength of Riggs’ songs and the fact that their lineup was not unlike that of the most famous candy-colored duo in the universe: guitar/vocal dude (Riggs) up front, and decidedly uncomplicated female drummer (Tess Brunet) in back. But Riggs has a rich musical history that stretches back years before Deadboy—a history rarely discussed and known only by the most dedicated underground metal scavengers. The truth of the matter is that our man cut his teeth as frontman for both Acid Bath and Agents Of Oblivion, the outcasts of the late 80s/early 90s sludge metal breeding grounds in and around New Orleans, Louisiana—the same swamplands that produced bands like Eyehategod, Crowbar and Soilent Green. As we hunkered down in our trusty green shitbox swilling tallboys before Riggs’ show at Spaceland in Los Angeles, the singer/songwriter took us on a trip down memory lane.

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The windfall of attention soon to hit Hot Chip is obvious. It has built steadily since the UK group’s debut, 2004’s Coming on Strong, and gained momentum with 2006’s The Warning, ignited by the top-of-its-game single “Over And Over.” This past year, Hot Chip set out to match the full-throttle intensity of its live performances by hitting the studio as a full band for the first time and constructing some of the year’s most ambitious electro-pop anthems. self-titled caught up with band members Joe Goddard, Al Doyle and Owen Clarke as they spent some time in New York to do patches of press and finalize details for their third album, Made in the Dark. Read more