[photo courtesy of Robert Loerzel]
Last week in the underground Pink Floyd live music collector community, a recording surfaced for the first time in over 40 years. A 1967 performance of the original band with Syd Barrett in Stockholm was recorded by a local archivist and at long last reached collectors around the world. The proto-psychedelic music was groundbreaking in the mid-60s, but across four decades even this technologically-challenged recording is still fresh and exciting. The palpable energy of the songs and the ferocious nature of the improvisation is breathtaking. Its no wonder that generations removed the original brand of psychedelic rock, there are still any number of excellent purveyors of the craft today. On Thursday night at Music Hall of Williamsburg, we witnessed a performance of perhaps the most pure neo-psych band around, San Francisco’s Wooden Shjips. On tour to support their latest album West — the band’s first release on the excellent label Thrill Jockey Records — Wooden Shjips made one of their infrequent visits to NYC. We have been fortunate to have captured the previous two, 2009 at 171 Lombardy and 2010 at Music Hall. The set on Thursday continued on the same vein as the previous shows, with the band visiting much of their full catalog and stretching the numbers out with rich improvisation. While Ripley Johnson’s crunchy guitar is forefront of the mix, each member of the quartet shined on this particular evening. As an example, we’re streaming “Fallin'” below , which features the swirling psych organ of Nash Whalen for most of the song structure before Johnson shreds the last four minutes. The show concluded with a number from the band’s 2007 self-titled debut, “We Ask You To Ride” which was so loud that I could literally feel my knees vibrate when each bass note was stuck. I closed my eyes and for a second imagined that the 1967 Swedish crowd probably felt a similar physical rush from The Pink Floyd.
I recorded this set with the four microphone rig from the front center of the balcony. We’re still struggling to find the proper recording technique for this particular venue, but after some post-production and tasteful EQ, I feel that this recording can now be classified as an excellent listen. Enjoy!
Stream “Fallin'”:
[audio:https://www.nyctaper.com/W3110WoodenShjips2292/05.%20Fallin.mp3]
Direct download of complete show in MP3 files (HERE)
Direct download of the FLAC files [HERE].
Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.
Wooden Shjips
2011-11-10
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY USA
Four-Track Digital Master Recording
Recorded from Center Balcony Rail
Neumann KM-150s + DPA 4021’s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, EQ, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)
Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper
2011-11-13
Setlist:
[Total Time 1:10:42]
01 Black Smoke Rise
02 Lazy Bones
03 [guitar tech]
04 Motorbike
05 Fallin
06 For So Long
07 Aquarian Time
08 Flight
09 Death’s Not Your Friend
10 Buddy [Snapper cover]
11 [encore break]
12 We Ask You to Ride
If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Wooden Shjips, visit their website, and purchase their new album West from the Thrill Jockey Records website [HERE].
Awesome. Thank you. And yeah, that Floyd recording is something else!