back from a very strange gig in zürich. still processing it. i was unaware of the specifics of this gig until i arrived at soundcheck - to discover that the atmosphere was, let’s say… much too right-wing for comfort.
to my fans at the show - i offer my sincere apologies - i am very sorry you had to endure such a hostile environment to see me play, and please know i was just as uncomfortable as you. i look forward to playing in switzerland again, on friendly terrain.
to all gabber/terror/speedcore promoters - let me make this very clear: i do not want your business. please do not contact me about bookings. even if you are ok, your events attract a fascist element that i will not support. if you understood the true roots of my music, you wouldn’t book me anyway. we do not need more violence in this world.
08.14.08
Animosity is a top-notch band: technically amazing, intense in spirit, and inspired. They are brutal but original at the same time. Too many metal bands are afraid to stray from the clichés. But Animosity simply don’t give a fuck about fitting into that mold, and mix a heroic dose of San Francisco psychedelia into their artwork and sound. For them, it’s all about the jam and the music. It’s that crucial mix of serious dedication to their craft and creative playfulness that I love, so I was excited when they contacted me out of the blue and asked me to work on this project.
I can honestly say this is by far the most work I’ve ever condensed into such short tracks. I know ridiculous work doesn’t necessarily mean good music, but in this case the results are something truly special. We’ve taken great care to preserve the quality at every step, first by having the tunes mastered at our favorite place… secondly by opting for lacquer cutting to preserve the bass, kept at 45 RPM for crisp high end, cut to one side of a 10″ acetate and sent off. As those of you who have the other Drumcorps 12″s know, they sound BETTER than the CD, as vinyl should if it’s done right.
Thanks much to Animosity for taking such a bold step, in giving me free reign to destroy their tracks & piece em back together again… to Godcity for the excellent source material, to Manalive for the whole project and their over the top production and design. Here’s to more people branching out and doing more collaborations like this in the future.
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Animosity & Drumcorps - Altered Beast
Etched & Foil Stamped 10″ Vinyl out August 1st 2008
pre-orders up now at http://wearemanalive.com/alteredbeast
Thin Retro God
A Profit on Greediness
Mobs Over, Rob Me
Recorded by Animosity at Godcity Studios with Kurt Ballou in March 2007
Remixed by Drumcorps in July-Oct 2007 and mastered by Lupo @ D&M
Artwork by John Lause. Limited to 1000 copies
Vinyl Configurations
100 - ‘Birthday Cake’: Cokebottle Green Vinyl w/ White, Pink, Electric Blue, Purple, Tan, & Gold Splatter; with Hand screened and letterpressed jackets, pre-order only!
200 - ‘Cupcake’: Cokebottle Green Vinyl w/ White, Pink & Electric Blue Splatter
300 - ‘Wealthy Eggplant’: Cokebottle Green Vinyl w/ Purple, Tan, & Gold Splatter
400 - ‘Moldy Cheese’: Half & Half Cokebottle Green Vinyl & White Vinyl
07.08.08
maria last night @ josef - the small room with the cubes on the wall. wasted night, osaka invasion. shige, ove, bogulta, maurosa.
very new feeling in the air. everyone was there, everyone. this feels like an actual community. wasted1 was the initial euphoria, cool. this is the long haul and it’s continuing. here is the ad noiseam table, there is actually a body of work there. some shirts. some defined stuff. pablo’s book just came out. “pencilbreak” actual good quality book highlighting the design. when you’re in the thick of it, you don’t see anything but the chaos. it takes someone like pablo to filter through and put things together - and we on the inside realize what we have. themes, ideas, and an identity of our own. general graphic/emotional content themes that build off each other. the editorial is honest and i love that. it’s not promoting any kind of agenda - more like cultural anthropology from a design perspective. there still is a synergy of ideas going on and ever morphing. the oroborous, devouring itself and growing anew. a circular snake shedding and re-growing leopard/plaid/skulls/pixel skin.
it’s also beyond embarassing, seeing each other. everyone is older. there are a host of new people around too. british and irish and belgians, dutch, spaniards, japanese, bedding down in berlin. suddenly it seems i’m the old guard, or at least getting there. we have all known each other for a while now, berlin is the locus, the world is the web. we all look a little more ragged but we know how to get what we want out of life, a little more. more worn, more refined. i remember going to maria when i first moved to berlin, transmediale 2003, and not a friend in the whole city. wow, i want to play here. some day. in awe. it happened. now i walk into maria like it’s my living room. my friends have already made themselves at home, cranked the stereo, and they have beer. the british friedrichshain colony was out in full force. i know they will get mad at me for calling them that, because they don’t fit in in britain. as british as i am american, which is only partially. gentle people, eager for a better life. we are all cultural exiles - berlin is our new home. we’re building, bunkering down. we are all radically different from each other but hold a few common values. the desire for a simple, artistic, honest life, on our own terms. love. things that our home countries beat out of people like us. so we come here.
it makes me want to cry a bit. it’s lovely and sad and awesome. new. some people fell away and disappeared. so it goes. it will never be the same. gather your love. new lights being born. new music. experiments. barbeques in the park, strollers and blankets. everyone pitching in. cleaning up our trash at the end of the night, and leaving a bag for the bottle hobos. learning german and feeling weirder. more out of place, and more calm. not frantically running around like chickens w/ their heads cut off, over-worried about the rat race. superstructure is looming outside, the new ver.di building, mediaspree set to annihilate all. but for now, we dance. experiments. what happens from here on in?
07.04.08
redesigned music page here aaronspectre.com/music . two streaming players, full track mp3 downloads, and everything nicely arranged. beats the old one. some big site revamps will be coming in a little while. web design melts the brain…
07.02.08
hey. back and have been absorbed in new tunes. about last weekend…. big thanks to the netherlands promoters, for getting almost everything on the tech rider *correct*, and thus enabling the best possible show! wow, not rocket science. i could see, hear, and the gear worked. the set was great. it does add so much to the show when it all works like it should. of course when nothing works, it adds that extra FUCK YOU layer, which can be turned around into a good thing, but can go horribly wrong. i try to stay away from the escalating antagonistic feedback loop. nijmegen people got it right, mostly. my newly redesigned tech rider probably helped. i took a cue from the japanese, with their brilliant picture menus. when there’s a language gap, text is the enemy. PICTURE RIDER! well, it seems to have worked so far. i felt like a fool designing the thing, like i’m insulting their intelligence… but just make it easier on people so they can make it easier on you. next step is to build a 1/10 scale mesa boogie triple rec from toothpicks, a tiny guitar stand out of paper clips, spray them w/ shiny lacquer and put them in a little glass case. thoughts - i NEED to start doing van tours where i travel with 100% my own gear. being light and compact is fine for weekend one-offs, but if i could have all my own amps, guitars, stands, pedalboard, etc… instead of needing to break it all down into easily transportable rolling bags, and have the rest rented, the set could be that much better. yes, more gear. london saturday, was odd. not my favorite time in london. playing miles away from the crowd, in the corner of an echo chamber, through a redlining overblown techno soundsystem (extreme highs and lows, no clarity), and unable to hear anything but a big wash of echoey piercing highs and corner bassboom, tests the soul. nice organizers though, treated me great and handled everything else fine. oh it was my last jungle set in the uk for a bit. for those who came out, sorry about the muddy sound, i did my best, & thx for enjoying it anyway. bangface weekender was supposed to be the last jungle gig, but this one snuck in there. i have a few remaining jungle sets in berlin, czech, netherlands this summer and then will be doing only drumcorps….. more on that in a bit. be well.
06.20.08
mastering day is always a fun one. somehow i always end up forgetting some crucial detail back at the house, like the audio. but today i had learned for once and i had everything, on time. met some friends on the street, at 9:30, heading out for a leisurely cafe breakfast before work at hardwax. where else does that happen? berlin is so strange sometimes, you have to check yourself and remember that this isn’t normal. we’re musicians and sound enthusiasts making a cozy simple living, but it’s via the weirdest music on the planet.
walked all the way to kreuzberg, lovely morning, sun blazing, trees full green, pretty girls on bikes… and into d&m, where they have a pile of excellent esoteric audio gear sitting atop scavenged furniture. so berlin. no wasting money on a custom built swooping walnut desk that will look good in the fisheye promo shots, fuck it. get the best gear where it counts, build the rest yourself, and get on with it.
then it’s on to make decisions, but not too many. as i do this more, i offer less and less input at the mastering stage, put more and more trust in the engineer. just sit there and pay attention. my work is mostly done, just make sure there aren’t any glaring mistakes and we’re cool. things gradually shift…. okay, sounds a little bit better i guess. some squawky noises. what is he doing there? then with a certain microscopic flourish, he switches back into the unmastered version. the heavens open up and angels sing ten thousand harmonies. HOLY FUCK, my version sounds like charlie brown’s teacher, underwater. theirs sounds like a rainstick, or beans in a jar. ten million little details and full of life.
a few hours later, a new lacquer is done, and a new track mastered for an upcoming comp. the animosity record is going to be good. it was not easy to cram all that on a single sided 10″ at 45 rpm. we managed, and the test cuts sounded good. now it’s in the pressing plant’s hands. so many steps with making vinyl, something can go horribly wrong at every stage… this one is sorted so far. so we will see.
back home with the files on usb stick, to obsessively a/b/c/d the mastered version against my self-mastered one, the original, a few other different versions and tweaks. ears are shot at this point but i gotta just check it out so i can sleep right. next morning with fresh ears usually reveals the truth.
06.10.08
new jason forrest rmx up! i’m not focusing on these kind of tracks so much at the moment but i couldn’t say no to jason, he’s the man… learned a bunch. breaks and bass, fun. http://www.cockrockdisco.com/CRD2/albumpages/Crockp3-007.html
06.06.08
ooook, back from a spot of travel, 30686 miles in a month and a week. that’s 1x around the world with a roundtrip across the atlantic thrown in. so i’m a bit weary. sorting through all the a/v for you soon. right now, a quick thanks to all friends new and old who we met on the road, your support was brilliant. new japan/taiwan pics in the photo section, and there’s a bigger photo gallery on ye olde myspace. the upside of the berlin darkness is the berlin spring, and it was beyond awesome to step away from all that chaos and into the teleporter, a few hours later end up barbequeing w/ friends in the park, day of return….. berlin chillage is full-on now, like nothing has changed. be well.
06.02.08
