Hey kiddies, happy Tuesday. We were disappointed that the turnout for last week's Harvey Milk show at Knitting Factory wasn't better, and it sounds like the Europa show was at about 50% capacity as well. Oh New York, you're so jaded...
Anyway, the Milk just announced a handful of West Coast dates that will followup their Euro tour with Julie Christmas (Made Out Of Babies) faves Oxbow. Left Coasters: don't be jaded like your NY brethren-- go see Mr. Milk and his Riff Rockers.
Check out Harvey Milk jamming the opening cut off their recently-released LP, Life.. The Best Game In Town (which you can hear in full right here), at the Milestone in Charlotte, NC:
Upcoming tour dates after the jump.
Harvey Milk, Oxbow - 2008 Europe Dates:Jul 7 2008 Club Schocken Stuttgart
Harvey Milk - 2008 US West Coast Dates:
Jul 8 2008 Festaal Kreuzberg Berlin
Jul 9 2008 Hafenklang Hamburg
Jul 10 2008 Worm Rotterdam
Jul 11 2008 Recyclart Brussels
Jul 12 2008 Supersonic Festival Birmingham
Jul 13 2008 Glasgow Stereo / ABC 2
Jul 14 2008 The Ruby Lounge Manchester
Jul 15 2008 Underworld London
Jul 16 2008 La Maroquinerie Paris
Jul 17 2008 FZW Dortmund
Jul 18 2008 Dour Festival DourJul 22 2008 Rubber Gloves Denton, TX
Jul 23 2008 Red 7 Austin, TX
Jul 25 2008 Solar Culture Tucson, AZ
Jul 26 2008 Relax Bar Hollywood, CA
Jul 27 2008 Great American Music Hall San Francisco, CA
Jul 31 2008 The Funhouse Seattle, WA
Aug 2 2008 Berbati's Portland, OR
July 1, 2008
Tour: Harvey Milk
June 24, 2008
Crustcake Interviews Made Out Of Babies
by crustcake gerf (NYC)
A few weeks ago, I met up with Made Out Of Babies' vocalist Julie Christmas for a drink and a conversation about her background in music, MOoB's new album The Ruiner (out today via The End), our mutual love for Earth, and more.
Crustcake: I want to ask you about influences. For the band, and you personally. I hear Quicksand, personally. I don't know if you guys get that at all.
Julie Christmas: I don't think that's come up just yet. But I could see why, definitely on this last album.
Crustcake: It's more of a drum thing, for me. Because I'm a drummer, and that's what I hear. It's got sort of that 90's post-hardcore energy. But what would you say you're influenced by?
Julie Christmas: I think everybody in the band has different, separate influences, but there are some that we all share. And those are like Melvins, Jesus Lizard. For me it's the singers, so... But I don't think I'm influenced by any of the-- I mean, I'm influenced by how creative Shannon from The Cows was... and David Yow, but my influences-- I don't think I really have any. There are people I'd like to sound like. Or be able to do what they can do.
Crustcake: Do you have formal training?
Julie Christmas: Yeah, I have some. I started singing when I was really little, which is supposed to be-- if you start singing at a really young age you naturally sing properly. But I also come from a big Irish-American family, so I've been singing my whole life. I was always involved in music in elementary school, and then for college I went to Juilliard for a minute. So I have some classical formal training, which I use when I'm doing warm-ups before shows or before we record. Classical music is-- opera especially is an influence of mine, especially now that I'm starting to work with the music and Made Out Of Babies made a conscious effort to sort of slow down the tempo of some of the songs.
Crustcake: I want to ask about the album cover. Was that your idea or was that Seldon Hunt's idea?
Julie Christmas: That was all Seldon. [T]here had been some discussion about how the album art should maybe encapsulate the idea of predator and prey and he came up with a couple different ideas that were all pretty stellar. I thought it was hilarious. I didn't get what everybody else did which is that they're actually running from something huge--
Crustcake: Oh yeah, I didn't get that either.
Julie Christmas: I thought it was like cave disco... But he did an amazing job.
Crustcake: It seems like I've seen a lot of album covers using photos from the Museum of Natural History.
Julie Christmas: Really?
Crustcake: Maybe not a lot, but definitely a handful. Like, last year-- the Interpol record.
Julie Christmas: Yeah, that's the one I've heard.
Crustcake: And there's a couple others I've seen too, but... pretty interesting, it's almost like a trend.
Julie Christmas: Huh...
Crustcake: Probably not, but... cave man porn.
Julie Christmas: Yeah. Cave titties.
[laughter]
Crustcake: Was there anything specific that influenced or inspired you at a younger age to want to be in a rock band?
Julie Christmas: You can explore huge feelings in classical music or in any music form, but for me there were none that were really raw. I have a lot of feelings that way, so that's the kind of music I've been drawn to. Also, I've always been loud.
Crustcake: Were you listening to The Melvins or those bands when you were young, or when you were a teenager, or...
Julie Christmas: I didn't find The Melvins until-- I saw The Melvins in high school at Webster Hall but I didn't get into The Melvins maybe until college.
Crustcake: The last track on the new album-- the beginning and end of that make me think of Boris, who were directly descended from The Melvins too, so... Any new records that you've really been blown away by?
Julie Christmas: I don't really listen to that much new music. I'm sort of cycling through the same stuff I've been listening to my whole life and then I add a couple things in here and there. But on the way over here I was listening to Barry Adamson. He was one of the members of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. But he does his own bluesy kind of stuff.
Crustcake: You like blues?
Julie Christmas: Love the blues.
Crustcake: Nothing new new, that you might have heard in the last few months?
Julie Christmas: The last Oxbow record was amazing. [T]here's this Belgian band Amenra whe were actually just playing here. They're awesome. And, I just heard Nadja for the first time and I really liked it.
Crustcake: They release like six albums a year.
Julie Christmas: I know! I looked at their discography and it was like 30 albums. [Also], the last Earth album.
Crustcake: Yeah.
Julie Christmas: It's good.
Crustcake: Did you see them when they were here a couple weeks ago?
Julie Christmas: Yeah.
Crustcake: You know what? I really wish they would have had visuals. You know, like Red Sparowes does. I love that music-- I put that one when I go to bed, it creates such a great mood. But that was the first time I'd seen them live, and it was great-- they play really well and they really have control of that music which is hard when you're playing that slow. But it's like, I want something to look at. It's so cinematic, you know?
Julie Christmas: I know. I do think Dylan Carlson-- well, he's amazing but he also-- to me he was pretty-- he held his own out there. He's very much the main focus point on the stage. I really was watching him very closely. Bands really fall flat when there isn't like a--
Crustcake: A focus point?
Julie Christmas: Yeah. If there isn't somebody that's got some presence on the stage, you might as well just pack it up and go home. Or back to the studio, you know?
Crustcake: Yeah.
Julie Christmas: But these guys... you know, Adrian too-- she's got it too.
Crustcake: Yeah I found myself paying more attention to her, just because I'm a drummer, but-- and again, I was blown away by how she was able to control those tempos. You know, the more space there is--
Julie Christmas: The harder it is.
Crustcake: The harder it is to be consistent, as a drummer. As a musician in general, but she was just so fluid. She laid it in there, you know?
Julie Christmas: She's really cool.
Crustcake: Who'd you guys work with in the studio for the new album?
Julie Christmas: We worked with Andrew Schnider from Translator Audio. He did an amazing job for us.
Crustcake: It sounds really good.
Julie Christmas: Oh man, he is fantastic. For anyone who doesn't know that much about recording, the engineer of producer of the album is as important as any instrument in the band. Andrew was really into it, he really gives tons of his own ideas. He works unbelievably hard, and he's also one of the best guys around.
Crustcake: He's New York based?
Julie Christmas: He's in New York, he's in Dumbo. Spectacular guy. He's really done some cool records-- he did the last Unsane record, he did some Cave In albums. And he's worked with Pelican.
Crustcake: How did that come about, working with him?
Julie Christmas: On Battle of Mice, another project I have with Josh Graham from Red Sparowes-- ex-Red Sparowes-- [Andrew] worked on that for a minute.
Crustcake: Did you guys do anything differently, consciously or sub-consciously, on the new album than on the two previous albums?
Julie Christmas: Everything was different, from start to finish. We rented an apartment that had a partially-formed recording studio in the basement. So we built the rest of the studio so we had a practice space, so we would spend a lot of time... The other two records, we were still writing-- or I was still writing parts of the lyrics while we were recording with Steve Albini in Chicago. It just didn't really-- everything for us has been really rushed.
So [guitarist] Brendon [Tobin] got the studio together and we all decided that we were really going to try and sink our teeth in. And we wrote the album in four months-- it's not like we spent a year on it, which would be nice at some point, but we all decided that we really wanted to try other ideas. See what worked, and not worry so much about making a specific kind of music or how we would be received or anything like that.
And what ended up happening was, because we had all this space to work with-- and time-- the boys started to work on the music-- [bassist] Cooper and [drummer] Matthew [Egan] and Brendan started working on the music during the week, and I would have what they made from week to week for a while, and be able to listen to it, which is how I've learned I write the best.
Crustcake: So it's not an active process with you and them? They write the songs and then you work off of that?
Julie Christmas: Yeah, usually. They map out the songs, and then when the vocals come in there's changes to the music. Because instrumentalists don't always think about how things go with vocals, so I would work on it and then me and Brendan would get together at a totally separate time and do vocals. So I almost didn't work with them at all. There were as many fights as ever about the music, but they were a different kind of fight. It was more ingrained into the music, not as much about who's gonna park while the other person writes the drum beats.
Crustcake: It definitely shows. It sounds like a progression from the last two albums. So, what are you guys up to now? The album comes out in June...
Julie Christmas: June 24th on The End Records. They've been amazing. And I should mention that Greg [Burns] from the Red Sparowes [is] on the album. And also Jason Watkins from Mouth of the Architect.
Crustcake: What songs are they on?
Julie Christmas: Greg is on-- you know, I don't know the names of the songs.
[laughter]
They tend to have working titles that stick in my head, and then it's very hard for me to learn the titles .
Crustcake: And you guys have a gig coming up soon...
Julie Christmas: Union Pool on the 24th, and then--
Crustcake: That's the record release party.
Julie Christmas: Yeah. Record release party with the Austerity Program and Dionogah. And we have a bunch of other gigs surrounding the record release, and then we're going to tour in August. And we'll do dates throughout the year.
Crustcake: Do you know who you're touring with yet? Want to spread any rumors?
Julie Christmas: I do want to spread rumors, but not about who we're playing with.
[laughter]
Crustcake: Fair enough.
Made Out Of Babies' record release party is tonight at Union Pool in Brooklyn. The Ruiner is out today via The End Records.
June 23, 2008
Crustcake Picks - New Music 6/24
[UPDATED 6/24] Duh. Wow, we really need to lay off the sauce and get organized. When we originally published this post we omitted Made Out Of Babies' scathing third LP, The Ruiner, which indeed has a release date of 6/24. Of all the great stuff coming out today, this is the best. More about that here. [end update]
Tomorrow, more 'thrash revival' (we don't care what you say, Warbringer, it's a revival), this time from the band that takes its name from Exodus' seminal debut, Bonded By Blood. While we're on that topic, did you hear that Exodus plans to re-record BBB with their current lineup? Why can't artists just leave their old shit alone. Let it be what it is, don't try to 'fix' it. Are you listening, George Lucas? To quote MetalSucks commenter 'Master of Puppies,' "classics should be left untouched." We couldn't have said it better.
Also out tomorrow, the vinyl version of Boris and Merzbow's Rock Dream, a 3XLP live album recorded in Tokyo in 2006. We're talking nearly two hours of music here, and for a live album this sounds pretty great.
Download: Boris & Merzbow - "Flower, Sun, Rain" [MP3]
And while we're talking Southern Lord and Tokyo, we should mention Coffins' Buried Death. Sludgey, dirty, raw Japanese death-meets-doom metal. Buried Death was released earlier this year via 20 Buck Spin, which quickly sold out. Southern Lord re-issues the album in CD and LP form tomorrow. It's being reissued tomorrow, with distribution through Southern Lord.
Download: Coffins - "Under the Stench" [MP3]
More after the jump.
Our picks:
Listen: Aborted [MySpace]
Buy: Aborted - Strychnine.213 (Century Media) [Amazon]
Listen: Bonded By Blood [MySpace]
Buy: Bonded By Blood - Feed the Beast (Earache) [Amazon]
Listen: Boris [MySpace]
Listen: Merzbow [MySpace]
Buy: Boris & Merzbow - Rock Dream LP (Southern Lord) [Amazon]
Listen: Coffins [MySpace]
Buy: Coffins - Buried Death (20 Buck Spin) [Amazon]
Listen: Cryptopsy [MySpace]
Buy: Cryptopsy - The Unspoken King (Century Media) [Amazon]
Listen: Daylight Dies [MySpace]
Buy: Daylight Dies - Lost to the Living (Candlelight) [Amazon]
Listen: Made Out Of Babies [MySpace]
Buy: Made Out Of Babies - The Ruiner (The End) [Amazon]
June 19, 2008
Crustcake Picks - NYC Shows 6/19 - 6/25
by theseseans (NYC)
Hey crustcakers. We are continuing with our initiative to have these posts focus more on their respective city's local music scene. We think these posts will be more valuable that way, and we want to support local music. If you live somewhere with a healthy local underground music scene and you want to write a weekly update on shows in your area, please get in touch with us. Let us know where you live and tell us a little bit about the local scene there. If you live in NYC or LA please feel free to contact us with info about local acts we aren't covering.
This week in NYC we have got a healthy amount shows, lucky for us they are accessibly spread out. This week's highlight is without a doubt two chances to see Harvey Milk, Friday night at The Knitting Factory and Monday at Europa.
Saturday, go see My Skull Your Closet at Fat Baby; the band features members of both Small Brown Bike and Thoughts of Ionesco. Monday you've got your second chance to see Harvey Milk, this time playing with (attention Neurosis fans) A Storm of Light, or you can go to the always excellent Precious Metal at Lit Lounge (feat. Ehnahre, Archon, Orphan, and Batillus.) And finally if we don't see you on Tuesday at Made Out Of Babies' album release party at Union Pool, we will hunt you down and make you look like the kid on their debut's cover. Ya' Heard?
NYC show picks 6/19 - 6/25:Friday 6/20 - Harvey Milk, Bloody Panda, Ocean, Deadbird @ Knitting Factory
See you out there!
Saturday 6/21 - My Skull Your Closet (featuring members of Small Brown Bike and Thoughts of Ionesco) @ Fat Baby
Monday 6/23 - Harvey Milk, Growing, A Storm of Light, PIGS @ Europa
Monday 6/23 - Orphan, Ehnahre, Archon, Batillus
Tuesday 6/24 - Made Out Of Babies, Dianogah, The Austerity Program @ Union Pool
April 29, 2008
Made Out Of Babies - New Album In June
It's hard to pinpoint why Made Out Of Babies' Ruiner sounds so familiar and yet so fresh. Maybe it's the album's potent mix of Julie Christmas' vocals (which occasionally call to mind Roby of Milemarker) with hyper-live drums a la Quicksand, chugging bass, and post-rock guitars. Maybe it's because Ms. Christmas is more attractive to us, as Homo sapiens, than the Homo ergaster woman on the Seldon Hunt-designed album cover. Or maybe it's just because The Ruiner is a badass album.
Check out the album's opening track, "Cooker," on the band's MySpace page. The Ruiner is out June 24 via The End Records.
