You may have noticed that operations at Crustcake have slowed down. One of you got quite agitated about it. Rest assured, devotees, we aren't going anywhere. In fact, we have big (we're talking Dino Cazares big) plans: site redesign, new columns, and a new approach to the way we profess our love for metal and the people who make it.
Unfortunately, those things take time and work -- and those assets have been in short supply recently, staff-wide. A wide variety of life changes have swarmed us, and as such, we've found ourselves short on time like never before.
We just wanted you to know that we are still here, but we are devoting most of the time we have towards a total site overhaul. We'll continue posting this summer here and there. We've got some tasty reviews and some illuminative interviews baking in the oven.
Soon, we'll have a new look and richer, better content. And it'll be more than new carpet and a fresh coat of paint, trust us. We'll be back (in black) with a new 'do and a new 'tude.
Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates in the meantime. You'll be glad you did.
One final note: In response to this impending expansion, we're ready to take on some fresh blood for the fall. If you'd like to contribute to Crustcake come autumn -- or if you know someone who would -- please email some writing samples to crustcake@gmail.com with "FRESH BLOOD" in the subject line.
Anyway, it's been a great summer so far. Chaos in Tejas and the plethora of great NYC shows have proven that most righteously. Get outside with some beers, BBQs, big riffs and enjoy yourself.
We'll see you soon.
<3 Sean, Van, Andy, Chase, Ilya
July 22, 2011
A MESSAGE FROM THE CRUSTCAKE CREW
July 20, 2011
COLUMN OF HEAVEN RELEASE VIDEO FOR 'ALTARS'
Miss The Endless Blockade? Some of the dudes, including past Crustcast guest Andrew Nolan, have a new group called Column of Heaven, who lean towards the noiser side of the sound The Blockade vomited forth. They just put out a tape, Ecstatically Embracing All That We Habitually Suppress, which Sean listed as one of his favorite releases in 2011 so far. Column of Heaven also have a brand new video out for the track "Altars," which you can view above. It's got boobs, blood, and and mystery - what more do you need? The video was directed by Justin Oakey, who also put out a live clip of Slaughter Strike we reported on earlier.
According to Nolan, Column of Heaven have written material for a 7" entitled Mission From God and are finalizing a lineup for that recording. We heavily anticipate what audio horrors will come from that.
July 12, 2011
CRUSTCAKE STREAMS: MASAKARI - "HEXENHAMMER" AND ALPINIST - "SUBJECTION"
Our love for Cleveland antitheist hardcore band Masakari just won't quit. They won our hearts with last year's The Prophet Feeds, and proceeded to beat the tar out of us at this year's SXSW. So when Masakari contacted us for premiering a new song, were we to turn them down? Hell no! They will release a split with German hardcore group Alpinist on August 3 through Halo of Flies, who are now accepting pre-orders for the record (European readers can pre-order at Alerta Anitfascista). Alpinist are fellow Southern Lord acquisitions, and while we'll admit Southern Lord's hardcore game has had a couple stumbles this year, Alpinist are definitely not one of them. They follow a similar path to Masakari - dark, metallic, PISSED hardcore. The split sees both of the groups staying true to their sounds while also upping their games at the same time. Your dirty black summer just got dirtier and blacker.
Check out Maskari's "Hexenhammer" and Alpinist's "Subjection" from the upcoming split below. Masakari and Alpinist will head out on tour next month - those dates are also after the jump.
Masakari - "Hexenhammer"
07 XXIII. Hexenhammer by crustcake
Alpinist - "Subjection"
02 Subjection by crustcake 
Masakari/Alpinist Summer Tour 20118/5 Cleveland, OH @ Now That's Class w/ Black September
8/6 Pittsburgh, PA @ Helter Shelter w/Full of Hell
8/7 Chicago, IL @ Albion House w/Weekend Nachos and Protestant
8/8 Denver, CO @ The Blast-O-Mat
8/9 Phoenix, AZ @ Inner City Youth Center
8/10 Las Vegas, NV @ Yayo Taco
8/11 San Diego, CA @ The Ruby Room w/ Bumbklaatt
8/12 Fullerton, CA @ Riff Haus Studios
8/13 Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex- Power of the Riff
8/14 Sacremento, CA @TBA w/ Caulfield
8/15 Oakland, CA @ The Womansion (5pm Show)
8/15 Oakland, CA @ Your House (Late Show)
8/16 San Francisco, CA @ The Mezzanine- Power of the Riff
8/17 Portland, OR @ The Rotture
8/18 Seattle, WA @ Neumos- Power of the Riff
8/19 Olympia, WA @ Eagles Ballroom- New Direction Fest
8/21 Minneapolis, MN @ Rat Hole w/ Enabler and Mares of Thrace
8/22 Appleton, WI @ BFG
8/23 Milwaukee, WI @ Wheel House w/ Protestant
July 8, 2011
CRUSTCAKE PICKS: BEST OF '11 SO FAR
It's ridiculously hot outside. That means we're halfway through the year. And that means it's time to get started on a best of the year list. By now you've undoubtedly made your own "best of the year so far" and read a few others here (and here, and here.) Crustcake has a list for you too. Check it after the jump and let us know what we've missed and what releases you're excited about coming up the next couple months.
A few many of us are digging:Gridlink Orphan
Selected others:
Autopsy Macabre Eternal
Loss Despond
Peste Noire L'Ordure à L'état Pur
Tombs Path Of Totality
KEN mode Venerable
Vastum Carnal Law
Earth Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light Part 1
Negative Plane Stained Glass Revelations
Batillus Furnace
Liturgy Aesthethica
Deafheaven Roads To JudahDark Castle Surrender To All Life Beyond Form
Van Damned's favorite cassettes so far:
Fucked Up David Comes To Life
Capsule No Ghost
Trap Them Darker Handcraft
Palehorse Soft As Butter, Hard As Ice
Krallice Diotima
Mitochondrion Parasignosis
Maruta Forward Into Regression
Rotten Sound Cursed
Column Of Heaven Ecstatically Embracing all that we Habitually Suppress
Psychic Limb Queens
Ash Borer Ash Borer
Primordial Redemption at the Puritan's Hand
Batillus Furnace
Tree of Sores Tree of Sores
Lifelover Sjukdom
Seidr For Winter Fire
Acephalix Interminable Night
Planning for Burial Untitled EP
Dethroned Emperor War Grind Hell
Avulse I am the Liquor
In Solitude The World the Flesh the DevilAcephalix Flesh Torn Twilight
Arizmenda Without Circumference Nor Center
Barghest Barghest
Iron Age Saga Demos
Whorelord 2011 Demo
July 7, 2011
FRESHLY BAKED: SERVILE SECT
In "Freshly Baked," we feature promising young bands or bands that are otherwise lacking the attention we think they deserve.
By Andrew Wilhelm (TX)
How outré can metal get? Quite a few groups have attempted to answer this recently, namely Portal with their Azagthoth meets modern classical musical approach and absinthe bender inspired costume, as well as Chicago kitchen-sink-of-nightmares duo Locrian. Servile Sect, who formed in Tempe, Ariz., but are now split between Brooklyn and Humboldt, Calif., are another group who cries "FOAD!" to the limits of metal music - and hell, music itself. The duo has taken the essence of the Star Gate sequence from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and injected it in their synthesis of black metal and dark ambient. Which is to say, they've probably seen and felt some things not even Jus Oborn or Matt Pike have experienced in their wildest magic carpet rides. Most likely, after listening to them, you will mutter "Daisy Bell" to a shell of yourself in the fetal position. All good music should have a similar effect, don't you think?
I interviewed one half of the group, Luke Krnkr, about the group's tremendous new record, Trvth (which is out now on R. Loren's Handmade Birds), why the record is optimized for vinyl, and how the duo consider themselves black metal.
Crustcake: From what I understand, Servile Sect was formed in Arizona, but the band has split off between Brooklyn and California. How does the distance affect the creative dynamic of the band?
Luke Krnkr: The distance slows our ability to record at the pace we'd ideally like to be working at, which can feel frustrating at times. It's been a good filter for us because when we do record or rehearse together we are very focused and intensely productive. Since we've lived on opposite coasts we've made a concerted effort to link up several times a year to work on our music. Somehow we now get done in a week what used to take us six months. Thanks to having decent internet connections, we're able to exchange ideas relatively quickly and easily, so the momentum stays alive. While we don't get to enjoy the fun of a typical band's rehearsal schedule or randomly jumping on the local metal shows like we used to, we don't feel all that affected musically. We've been playing together in varying capacities for almost 15 years, so by now we know what to expect from each other. Things are pretty much how they've always been, even when we were doing the weekly rehearsal schedule thing. Coming from the same background and interests then living between two such extremely different places with drastically contrasting daily experiences (Humboldt, CA and Brooklyn, NY), we have a lot of new inspirations and ideas that we wouldn't encounter otherwise. It's a nice contrast, these two places.
Crustcake: How much of the material is conceived in some form prior to record, and how much of it, if any of it, is improvisatory?
Luke Krnkr: Some aspects of our music have always been based in improvisation, but we try to approach things in a way that allows us to consistently reproduce the sounds and songs. We might present a riff, a beat, a texture, or maybe discover some crazy synth setting that we get stoked on - we basically just find a vibe and float on it. Sometimes we have no recollection of even writing a song, we just get so lost and consumed in the texture. To say there have been several eerie times that we felt we had "manifested" or "channeled" some of this stuff wouldn't be too far of a stretch - however, during the recording process we are very intentional with our structure, tones, everything, Once we're at the point of recording, we know what we're going for.
Crustcake: Is there a unifying concept - or at least a common theme in the songs - to Trvth?
Luke Krnkr: Without forcing too much abstract meaning into awkward explanations, the concept builds off of this sort of dichotomy of perceived collective/consensual reality versus true, pure being. No one has any idea what the hell is actually going on, yet there is this undeniable is-ness, a true "Truth" to reality, to the human experience, that is unknowable in every fucking sense. We can feel its presence and and we know for sure that we will never know, but we still attempt to understand and organize this shit into coherent thoughts and language. Everything about the record touches on this and pretty much everything we do as a band is a reflection of this struggle.
Crustcake: Did you intentionally set out for Side A to be more ambient and Side B to be more black metal?
Luke Krnkr: The record basically plays out in the chronological order of its creative process. When each song or side stands alone it seems unrelated, but when played in it's entirety a larger picture emerges. After repeated listens this picture becomes much more clear. There is cohesion and it all makes sense as a single piece of music. We were working on Side A when we had about 8,000 miles distancing us (Nepal/northern California). The first side is probably less "metal" because we were MUCH more limited with our equipment options during the process, given the distance from home and all. The second side was written with our normal setup, which is probably why it is a bit more "traditionally metal."
Crustcake: What led to having the record be released on vinyl only? Do you have a special attachment to vinyl as a format? Will the record be available in other formats?
Luke Krnkr: After sending the demos to Handmade Birds and discussing the material as well as the overall story behind the album in length, we collectively felt that it belonged on vinyl. We don't have an attachment to any specific format. The interactive aspect of leaving your seat to go flip the record is something very appealing to us, especially with both sides having such different vibes. It's a nice "reset" from the trance-like state Side A puts the listener in. As of right now we don't have any plans to release Trvth in other formats, although Handmade Birds only has a few copies of the record left.
Crustcake: How did you hook up with Kevin Gan Yuen to do the album art? The pentagram besieged by pills art on the back is quite trippy.
Luke Krnkr: Kevin did some typography work for the ITHI record on Utech (one Servile Sect side project) and while exchanging emails we realized that Servile Sect had played with one of his many projects in Oakland a few years back. We started corresponding regularly and began to realize how compatible all of our ideas about music, drugs and life actually are. We really feel Kevin's art is the perfect visual-extension of this music. We have every intention to continue collaborating in the future. And yes, that back cover is seriously fucking trippy. The smoked out pyramid is the best!
Crustcake: What approach do you use for creating BM riffs? They seem to alternate between Weakling-esque grandiosity and a more traditional, Transilvanian Hunger style.
Luke Krnkr: We don't really have an "approach" per se. We've listened to so much black metal over the years, at this point it's ingrained in our brains. With riffs we just try to find a feeling and really don't put much thought into it, we just allow it to be what it naturally wants to be. There are a few certain scales we tend to ride/hide within in and that seems to give us some loose direction of sorts.
Crustcake: I have seen Servile Sect classified as black metal, but a great part of the record is dark and droney in a way black metal is not. Do you think of the band as BM? Whether you do or not, how do you think BM fits into the overall sound of Servile Sect?
Luke Krnkr: We absolutely consider ourselves a black metal band, first and foremost, although we definitely don't subscribe to the genre assignments and boundaries that are expected of a black metal band. Some people will off course write us off for this or call us "hipsters" for treading atypical sonic territory, or talk shit for not being "true" to this 1993 Norwegian shit we had absolutely no part of, but all of that is fine. We're both so detached from it. We've never been involved in the scene so we don't feel any obligation to some abstract idea of a 'black metal music checklist' or some list of perceived regulations. We're just playing in a way that comes naturally to us - tremolo picking, double bass, 808 beats, laser beams or otherwise. We definitely embrace the values and political ideologies black metal harbors. We're metal dudes. While we may drift away from "typical" black metal musical aesthetics or instrumentation, it is always the reference point and will always be the foundation. We obviously listen to shit tons of other things outside of metal...
Crustcake: American black metal bands that have garnered attention from media and fans recently have a loose thread in common: many of them seem to subvert the European traditions and bring in many different musical elements, thereby making it more "American." What do you make of the ubiquitousness of American BM?
Luke Krnkr: No opinion.
Crustcake: The spacey feel of the record makes me feel like the music should be used in some form of ritual. Does ritual have a place in today's society?
Luke Krnkr: Side A feels somewhat "shamanic." The field recordings that appear on Side A are of various rituals. While these things are incredibly interesting, it's hard to say if they have any actual usefulness. Again, we don't think anyone has any idea what the fuck is REALLY going on, everyone is just grasping to understand. Ritual is just another aspect of that and it feels pretty nonsensical.
Crustcake: In your recent Stereogum feature, you express a fondness for Neptune Towers, who I thought no one else had heard of. As a fan of both 70s German electronic music and black metal, how do you think the two forms are related?
Luke Krnkr: Aside from kicking serious ass and making people extremely uncomfortable, it's hard to say if there really is anything else in common.
Crustcake: Ideally, what do you want the listener to feel when listening to Trvth?
Luke Krnkr: Stoned!!!
And now, some wisdom from a BrooklynVegan commenter when BBG debuted Side 2 of Trvth:
July 4, 2011
CRUSTCAKE INTERVIEWS: DEAFHEAVEN
All photos by Carmelo Espanola
By Andrew Wilhelm (TX)
Inside the savage beast of black metal, you may sometimes find that beauty still lives. Even better, the visceral and the splendid can co-exist. Such is the modus operandi of San Francisco's Deafheaven. When "Violet," the first track off of their new record Roads to Judah, first comes through your headphones, you may think you've just stumbled upon a lost Slowdive record. The prettiness collapses upon itself soon enough, and tremoloed malevolence reigns. Judah alternates between the two seamlessly, resulting in what great black metal does - mix majesty and pure hellfire - but Deafheaven also incorporate 90s emotive hardcore (aka "emo" pre-Hot Topic) into their vision. This is not just prevalent in the riffs, but also in the earnestness of vocalist George LeSage Clarke's performance. His black metal screams come from a hardcore approach - sometimes he holds a mic, sometimes he's just screaming at the audience. It's powerful wherever he howls and whoever he's howling at. The whole band, as a matter of fact, gives it their all, and it shows.
I spoke with Clarke about the Judah validity of "blackened emo," Bay Area black metal, and a little bit about Rhianna.
Crustcake: How was the overall SXSW experience for you guys?
George LeSage Clarke, vocals: It was awesome. It was actually something we've been looking forward to a lot prior to, and it exceeded all our expectations. A lot of people harp on how crowded it is and such, but we just had a great time. All the shows we played were a lot of fun and pretty successful as far as what we were trying to accomplish.
Crustcake: Did you guys do any shows aside from the BrooklynVegan/Profound Lore day party and the Feed the Beat Party?
Clarke: Those were the two big ones for us, and we did a few house shows also which ended up being pretty successful as well.
Crustcake: One of the big things about SXSW is that bands try and pack in as many shows as they can. How did you feel about doing all that? Must have been exhausting at the end of it.
Clarke: Yeah, it get a little tiring. I think we all kind of recognize that it is a pretty unique experience to be a part of, so it didn't get any of us down.
Crustcake: Did you happen to run into Odd Future at the fest?
Clarke: I went a Vice party Saturday night, and they played. It was a pretty intimate setting - small stage and maybe 400 people. It was awesome, they were great.
Crustcake: It'd be funny if you ran into them and Tyler, the Creator agreed to make a remix of y'alls album.
Clarke: The girl that we took along with us, our friend Sydney, she met a few of them - we got into the VIP area of the party. A couple of them were hanging out, so she did a little schmoozing…
"Violet"
Crustcake: One of the people I met at SXSW described you guys as "blackened emo." Would you say that's an accurate assessment?
Clarke: Not entirely, no. I think "blackened emo's" a little strong. We definitely harbor a lot of first-wave scream influences and certainly a lot of black metal influences, but to categorize us as something like that would be a little inaccurate.
Crustcake: Especially that emo still kind of has that bad connotation with the mainstream stuff.
Clarke: Yeah. Our music is emotionally charge, and it's written to invoke emotion. But yea, to have the tag of "emo" and especially "blackened emo," that's just not something we're going for, necessarily.
Crustcake: Some of the riffs, they're played in a black metal style, but they hearken back to classic emo. Would you say that's accurate?
Clarke: Yeah. That's more of a question that our guitar player Kerry [McCoy] could answer a little better than me, but I do know that, musically, we do use a lot of melodic chords. In terms of layering, I guess that's the more black metal aspect. We take the melodic chords and layer them and play them at a speed to where it would be more fitting as a black metal riff rather than an emotive hardcore riff.
Crustcake: You mention layering - Deafheaven reminds me a bit of post-rock and shoegaze. Would you consider those types of music influence your sound?
Clarke: Hugely, especially in terms of layering. We do focus on a wall of sound - multiple tracking, really just making everything as thick and loud as possible.
Crustcake: I know you guys are from San Francisco, and the Bay Area's become sort of known for the new strain of black metal with bands like Weakling and Leviathan. Is there a connection between y'all and the bay area black metal bands?
Clarke: I would say we sort of have the influence, especially with Weakling, and then you have Ludicra, which has really opened a lot of doors in terms of more of an up-and-current style of black metal. I think in terms of that, yeah, we certainly relate, and to a certain degree, we fit in as well. I don't necessarily think we're doing the exact same thing as those bands, but as far as we go, they're highly respected and we're happy to be mentioned in the same breath as they are.
Crustcake: It's interesting that the Weakling record was released in 1999, but it took a few years, with bands like Wolves in the Throne Room taking from Weakling, for the album to be recognized.
Clarke: Yeah, that band [Weakling], I think really revolutionized the sound and ushered in what people would call the New Wave of American Black Metal. That record is hugely influential on a number of bands.
Crustcake: Like Weakling, you guys favor long compositions. Is that something you take directly from them?
Clarke: Like i said, we definitely have that influence, I think a lot of those surging melodies and large buildups come a lot from our shoegaze influence, to be honest. And our post-rock influence, and very soundtrack-esque stuff from those type of bands, but yes, certainly Weakling, as I mentioned before, one of the first bands to really expand and use those types of sounds with aggressive black metal.
Crustcake: When the band first formed, it was just you and Kerry. How did the other guys [drummer Trevor Deschryver, bassist Derek Prine, guitarist Nick Bassett] come into the band?
Clarke: Kerry and I had originally recorded the demo, and it [Deafheaven] was originally just supposed to be a studio project that the two of us did for fun. And then when we started getting approached about doing shows, we thought maybe it'd be fun to do a show. Kerry knew a couple of players and we found some other guys who were likeminded and enjoyed what we were doing and wanted to be a part of it. We got them on board and played a couple shows, and after those went well, we decided to take the project full-on and began writing new songs.
Crustcake: Where'd you find your drummer? He seems kinda young.
Clarke: [laughs] We get that a lot. He is the youngest member of the band and he looks a lot younger than he actually is, so people usually get pretty surprised when they see him. He's actually originally from Sacramento and he had moved to San Francisco for a job and to go to school. We were pretty hard up for a drummer at that point, we had talked with a few people but nothing successful and actually, Kerry was on Craigslist and Trevor had posted an ad with a list of influences. So we sent him the demo and wanted to get his thoughts on it. He sent back some tracks he recorded to give us a taste of his style. After we heard it, we set up a meeting immediately and everything worked out really well and is continuing to.
Crustcake: What was the making of your record like?
Clarke: It was pretty easy. We actually, when we were approached by the label initially, we had half of Roads to Judah written. The process had been going along fairly smoothly already. So by the time we got to the studio, things were really well put-together already. We already knew what we were gonna do, and in terms of tones and production, we knew what we wanted, so we just kinda went in and hammered it out. The recording took three and a half days, so yeah, we did it pretty quickly.
Crustcake: Does the album have a unifying concept to it at all?
Clarke: Not necessarily, it's not a concept record, but there are universal themes as far as the lyrics go. A lot of the lyrics are kind of thematic, but no, it is not a concept record.
Crustcake: What do you express in your lyrics?
Clarke: The lyrics are all personal reflection. We have no political agenda, no social agenda. I don't talk about anything other what's going on in my life and my feelings and my reactions to those things that are going on. When the record was written, there was a lot of crazy, pretty crazy things going on in my life, especially in terms of alcoholism and drug use and just constantly going and never taking a break. Created a very chaotic atmosphere, and what comes along with that is lost relationships and disconnection and isolation and all those things that come along with that lifestyle. All the negative aspects of it. So the record really focuses on that primarily - the last year of my life, the insanity surrounding it, and my reflection based off those insane events.
Crustcake: Do you still do drugs?
Clarke: It's nothing that I would consider to be - as far as the drugs go, they happen here and there, it's whatever. It was just as a certain point, it got to be too much and I had to break away for a bit because when all that's happening, it's not good. But I take my life in moderation with everything I do, and I don't really have any qualms about what it is I do.
Crustcake: Does that become harder to manage out on the road?
Clarke: No, touring is fine because you're so busy all the time. It's a constant - you wake up, you're pretty much on schedule. By the time we do play a show, we generally have to leave soon after to drive to the next one. You drink here and there, it's nothing - what's bad is when you have nothing to do and you sit in your room all day and drink a bottle of whiskey to yourself and fall asleep at 8 PM and wake up at 3 AM not knowing what happened.
Crustcake: Going back to the record, what kind of growth or change do you notice between the demo and the new record?
Clarke: I would say there's a pretty significant change. We always had the same kind of idea of what to do. The demo was really written in a short amount of time, and Kerry just had some riffs, so we threw them together and we honestly didn't think that it was gonna turn out to be what it is today at all. Not to say we didn't put thought in it, but from a beginner's standpoint, I think it's a very amateur effort. I think that the full-length - we consciously sat down and thought "how can we take what we're doing already and expand on it as much as possible?" And especially with working with different players and other musicians bringing their ideas to the table, I think what the full-length is compared to the demo is just a very expansive version of it.
Crustcake: How did you guys hook up with Deathwish to put out the record?
Clarke: It was actually pretty unexpected. Deathwish approached us after our demo had hit the blog circuit. We had sent it out to a few friends that ran some blogs just to gather some opinions on what people may have thought of the demo. After that, it took off, and Deathwish had seen it floating around and liked it a lot. Trey from Deathwish emailed me initially wanting to release the demo, but at that point, we had already started the full band, and were already in the writing process for songs for Roads to Judah. I told him "I appreciate you wanting to put out the demo, but to be honest, this new material we're working on is far better and if you'd be interested in doing that instead, then I'm all for it," and he totally agreed. The strength of the demo allowed us to write this new record and [have Deathwish] put it out for us.
Crustcake: Van had emailed me saying one of the demo tapes went for 50-60 dollars on Ebay, which I think is kinda funny. Does the collector mentality in some elements of underground music bother you at all?
Clarke: No. I love it. I think that especially in a digital age, collecting is where it's at. You're gonna be either the guy that just downloads everything or you're gonna be a collector, so I think the underground scene really thrives on people that have a collector's mentality. I'm happy - if someone wants to buy a tape for 60 dollars, that's awesome. I would consider that support for our band, so it definitely is appreciated.
Crustcake: I definitely am a fan of physical media and collecting, I'd rather just give that money to you then bid it on Ebay.
Clarke: Yeah, I know, I get that, but if people wanna have everything and will go far lengths to get it, then it's obviously - it's material that's important to them and at the end of the day, if you are willing to spend that much money on a physical copy of something, it must have meant a fairly good deal to you.
Crustcake: My last question - I had saw that you had tweeted about digging Rhianna's new record. What do you dig about it? [ed. note - Clarke's Twitter account has since gone inactive]
Clarke: I am a sucker for a few Top 40 things. Top 40 music's very hit or miss, but when it hits, I'm usually really into it. I just like good production and I appreciate the musicianship of it. I think writing a really solid pop song is a lot more difficult than writing an aggressive styling. Sometimes I listen to music like that and I'm like "How did they do that? That's awesome!" I just appreciate the musicianship and ideas, which is kind of funny because most people would say that type of music lacks musicianship, but I disagree.
"Libertine Dissolves"
Deafheaven's next show will be at the Sound and Fury fest on the 24th at the Earl Warren Showground in Santa Barbara, CA. Bassett also has a shoegaze band Whirr that just signed to Tee Pee Records - their debut album, Distressor, can be streamed here.
