Saturday, January 16, 2010

We're back, we're bad, you're black, I'm mad.


Apropos to reference the Danny Glover swansong Lethal Weapon 2 in this post title. Apropos because Sylphid is back, not only with teeth, but with a badassed, off-the-rails partner in plugging South African diplomats with hollow-tipped bullets. That's right - our very own PA system. You can call him Riggs.

Eon, Cora, and I congregated like cows huddled for warmth during a nor'easter yesterday and squeezed out an effluvium of pretty sounds for the first time since early October. We tested out our new PA system. Sounds totally dope. This year, we will test out our new live format. Anonymous background music.

We're now officially in the process of offering our minds and bodies (and the products thereof)to anyone who seeks slightly noisy, oft-unpredictable, textural drones and lullabies for their listening needs. Restaurants, parties in opium dens, art galleries, lonely insomniacs et al: we are here to offer you a delta-wave stimulating, narcosis electronic-helping hand.

Sorry Madame Rock Clubs. You were our first love. Freaking out onstage, drawing blood, and generally making a spectacle of yourself is fun... unless you're making ambient music. We do not write songs. Our music is bereft of a tangible personality. To showcase our ugly mugs bobbing several feet above a confused and underwhelmed crowd, conditioned to devote it's attention to us, makes very little sense to me. It's time for us to move on and find slightly less spotlight-driven venues. The less of a stage there is the better. We will however be providing background music and drones wherever it's wanted or needed.

One of the first of these performances will be this Thursday night at Sam's Pizza on Main Street in Northampton, MA. We'll be playing roughly 3 hours (6:30-9:30) of moody blip-bleeps. It's also free. We're being paid in pizza. And holy god of fleeting joy, Sam's pizza just so happens to be the best in town.

Other shows coming up:

-Sat. Jan. 23 Don't Go In the Basement house show @ 4 Caterbury Lane in Amherst. PONDS will also be rocking the show for the first time in awhile. Also appearing are Hornworm, Abortus Fever, Belltone Suicide, Two Tents, and the lascivious Gastric Lavage. Fuck. Go to this. Hornworm's dream machine will be in full effect.

-Sun. Jan 31 @ The Elevens. This is the Happy Valley Showdown. Sylphid will be appearing alongside Visited By A Giant, Johhny Mondegreen, Golden Boys, Almost Morse Code, and Tasha Yar. Come watch us play an ill-fitting show judged by folks who will sneer at our absence of onstage banter. Shit starts at 10pm and should be a party.

long-winded indeed

love,

Adam and Riggs

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Light Album FIN // The Trials and Tribulation Commit Bum-outs to Tape

Welcome back to this megalomaniacal trash heap overstuffed with half-chewed crusts of bloated self-importance. It's good to be back. It's been awhile. Super busy the entire month of December. Filing through the throngs of holiday shoppers to purchase whale penis-skin arm rests and other unneeded junk... enduring painfully awkward family get-togethers buffered only by convenience store wine... watching neighbors' homes leveled by a serial arsonist... the usual mixed bag of holiday tricks.

Eon's home was not engulfed in flames. His neighbor's was though and, sadly, did not survive the ordeal.

Amid the entire town burning, Eon managed to finish the 2nd Light album Beams of Light Like Insects Crowd the Floor. I received an advance copy and have been envy-stricken ever since. Shit sounds like the ghostly pleads of a malfunctioning transistor radio wafting up from the bottom of a frozen lake. I'm awaiting details regarding a proper release. But for now, you can hear some of the album tracks HERE and check out the album artwork AT THIS PLACE.

Changing topics, The Trials and Tribulations is slowly assembling to record an unknown number of songs with an unknown number of musicians and an entirely unreasonable number of instruments. Regardless of how many trumpet, violin, organ, acoustic and electric guitar, bowed and plucked bass, shaker and tambourine, glockenspiel, trombone, omnichord, flute, melodica, found-sound, banjo, and saw-players lead-depressor Jameson Lavo accumulates, I assure you it will be ten short of his satisfaction. I have no idea how this will sound but I'm absolutely fucking terrified. I'm sure the production team behind such a soup of unwieldy sounds - Justin Pizzoferato and Aaron Borucki (from Bank Row Studios [Dinosaur Jr., Bunnies] and Something Studios [Mire, My My] respectively) - could agree. I'll let you from the frontline once I'm deployed next month. It looks like Aaron posted an in-progress version of T&T's "...to Alaska!" on the Something Studios myspace. So go there and listen to this song in the most skeletal incarnation that it will ever appear in - only 12 instruments on this version.

I'm tired and don't feel like typing any more. Eat it.

no, I love you.

~Adam