Do you like volume, drone and repetition? Do you like feeling completely tranced out in a psychedelic, dissociated way? Does the idea of being suspended in a state of transcendental heavy post rock seem appealing? If yes, I have just the thing for you!
Water Damage is an Austin based band/collective of people wholly committed to forcing the listener into a state of disorientation. Has the same bar been repeated for the last thirty minutes? Will my hearing be intact when this is over? The answer, honestly, is irrelevant. What’s important is this will probably be the best set of music you see this month, possibly this year. It is intense and all encompassing and completely unavoidable. You can try and ignore it, but eventually its enormous force will swallow you. Imagine being crushed by a glacier. That’s kind of what it felt like watching them destroy the room. As they say, “MAXIMAL REPETITION, MINIMAL DEVIATION.”
NY heads have a chance to catch them tonight (6/13/24) on an incredible bill at Union Pool with site favorites Weak Signal and Gift Horse. Do not miss this. Bring ear plugs.
I recorded this from the usual spot at the soundboard, and I’m very happy with how it turned out. On play back, listeners should set a volume that, as Marc Ribot says, makes you wonder if one is “really placing their amps at risk.”
The NYCTaper coverage of Tubby’s Fifth Anniversary returns with Idle Ray!
Idle Ray’s set in the arc of the Tubby’s anniversary party was crucial. The day had started pretty bleak. Massive storms had essentially made travel out of New York City impossible, and several bands, and fans, had to cancel travel arrangements. I had been at the venue the previous night setting up gear and staff morale was super high. When I got back that afternoon I arrived to less than peak vibes, but things started turning around quickly. A couple drinks, the first band hitting the stage, a surprise fill in from Wild Pink and suddenly things were looking good. By the time Idle Ray hit, no one was talking about the storm. It was party time.
Idle Ray’s inclusion on the bill made perfect sense. Fred Thomas, Idle Ray’s primary songwriter, is a long time veteran of Detroit’s vibrant music scene with credits on far too many records to list. He has performed several times at Tubby’s as part of the excellent Detroit based DIY/Punk band Tyvek and is also in Winged Wheel with one of Tubby’s owners. Recorded mainly during Covid, the Idle Ray project was created as an attempt at “going back to basics of recording on cassette four-track and having it be more about interesting sounds and feel than perfect performances or getting an industry-standard snare sound.”
The studio recordings are all Fred. For this show, Fred handled guitar and lead vocals with Devon Clausen on bass and Frances Ma on guitar and lead vocals, with backing drum machine tracks. I was unfamiliar with the material before this, but the hooks are there. It took all of half of the set opener “Overlook” to be glad I had hit record. The trio brought all the fuzzy power pop glory anyone could want to the evening. Great songs, well played and a nice bonus of some great stage banter. Fred mentioned one of the songs was about the time his ex ran for Mayor of his town. His summation of the experience; “SSUUUCCCKKKEEEDDDD”. It never occurred to me that the only way the endless forced misery of political campaign advertisements could be more hellish is if your ex was featured in them.
You can catch Fred back in town playing with Winged Wheel at Bearsville theater (with Guided By Voices!) on 8/10. You can also catch Tyvek, sans Fred, at Tubby’s on 7/27.
Recording for this set differed pretty significantly from the normal Tubby’s set up. Since they had two “stages” with two different sets of speakers, I had to set up two different sets of mics and recorders and start and stop each between bands. Thankfully, I was able to get a board feed from the main console in the back for each “stage”. I combined the front room mics with the board feed for the recording you have here. It sounds excellent; full of life and screaming guitars. Crank it!
The NYCTaper coverage of Tubby’s Fifth Anniversary returns with site favorites Mountain Movers!
The Movers have been at it for a while but still seem fresh. In fact, this was probably the most vibrant set I’d seen from them. They came out firing with “My Holy Shrine”; the first taste of the new material available on their forthcoming record “Walking After Dark”. This new gem was followed by old favorite, “Freeway,” with the Movers doing what they do best; washing the crowd in psychedelic guitar play, feedback and hypnotic rhythms. They are truly one of the most reliable purveyors of modern psych on the scene.
This excellent set gave us a first glimpse of some of the new material and the preview was mighty good. The new album is out May 17 on the always dependable Trouble In Mind records. NYC folks can also find the Movers as part of an excellent bill at The Broadway in Brooklyn on June 1. I expect, and hope, we will see move dates as the release gets closer.
I recorded this from the usual spot at the soundboard with my MBHOs and excellent board feed from Tubby’s FOH engineer Will. Enjoy!
In 2022 Rosali came to Tubbys and played the best set of music, by a significant margin, I saw that year. I always enjoyed her records. She is a masterful writer who brings raw-nerved honesty and beauty to life in every song. But what happened that night was something totally unexpected. Backed by David Nance’s band, Mowed Sound, they made those songs sound alternately like your favorite blanket during a thunderstorm or a freight train coming at you full speed. This felt like seeing The Band and Dylan finding their footing or Neil Young’s first jams with Crazy Horse. This serious praise probably seems hyperbolic, and maybe it is, but several people I spoke to after that night had similar feelings. At the end of that recording, you can hear me turn to Tubby’s ace FOH engineer Will and say, “HOLY SHIT!” I was hooked.
Flash forward to a few months back when Rosali announced her new album, “Bite Down,” (Merge Records) had been recorded as a band with this same ensemble. Excitement and expectations were high, and the final product delivered on every bit of that hope. The lead single, “Rewind” exhibits the ease with which this band finds its sound. A personal favorite, “My Kind,” is packed with the manic energy of love that makes you feel like you can run through a wall. It’s early in the year, but I struggle to see how this record doesn’t end up very high on my personal “best of” list.
The last test was the live show. Was the feeling in the room that night in 2022 an aberration? Was it really that good? Could it have been that good?
Yes. It’s that good. They are really that good.
Opening with the gentle “May it Be on Offer,” it’s immediately obvious that this is, somehow, a better version of that band from 2022. More comfortable with the dynamics of the songs and not as reliant on their obvious ability to lay waste to a room with force. The journey through the set list lets you experience that change in real time. Starting soft and ending with a ferocious guitar onslaught of “Bones.” If you close your eyes, you can see the faded glory of Rock and Roll and, for a moment, you can believe they are the last ones flying that flag.
I recorded this from the usually spot by the soundboard with my MBHOs and an excellent board patch from Tubby’s FOH engineer Wil. Enjoy!
Something truly magical happens when a band mixes extreme volume with extreme repetition. When you add atypical melodies, tones, and time signatures the result is a wildly transcendental, disorienting and psychedelic listening experience. Few people do it as well as Horse Lords.
I first heard about Horse Lords from EricPh’s post on this site back in 2015 and was immediately drawn in. I instantly knew this was the music I wanted in my life. The blending of polyrhythms and microtonality of West Africa with the propulsion of krautrock and the intensity of the best live punk band you’ve ever seen. This is a ferocious live band.
Over the hour long set Horse Lords marched through much of the material on their excellent, new live record, “As it Happened: Horse Lords Live”. The crowd was fully invested with the only interruptions in performance coming from an occasional ecstatic scream from someone in the audience having a moment. No judgement, I had a few myself. I’m honestly not sure how the band manages to maintain this level of intensity and precision. I was exhausted just standing there drinking beer.
The band just wrapped up a bunch of US dates and are about to begin a short swing through Germany and the UK followed by some West Coast dates in June. GO SEE THIS BAND.
I recorded this from the normal spot by the board with my MBHOs and an excellent feed from FOH engineer Will. The quality is outstanding. Play this one LOUD.
It’s been a minute since Real Estate has graced the site but our relationship with the band goes back to their early days playing clubs in Brooklyn. In fact, their label, Domino, released a set recorded by Nyctaper as a bonus LP to their 2011 album, “Days.” All these years later the band is still writing excellent material, still playing great shows and still finding cool ways to engage their audience.
This show was semi-secret. The band and Tubby’s arranged to not fully announce it until a few days’ prior. They also arranged to break Tubby’s tradition and do no pre-sale tickets and no happy hour prior. It was doors at 7, first come first serve. This was the first time I’ve ever had to wait online to get into Tubby’s. The time spent standing on Broadway offered a fun opportunity for curious locals to ask what was going on, chat with some new friends we met in line and, randomly, say hi to an old friend who happened to be walking by on a date. Don’t ever say music doesn’t bring people together.
Unsurprisingly, this sold out quickly and it seemed that everyone was fully invested in seeing the band. Once they started almost no one was at the bar and the live room was so packed I couldn’t leave my spot or I would never have made it back to my gear. We suffer for your listening pleasure.
The band opened with “Something New” from their just released album “Daniel” and the crowd welcomed it in like an old favorite. That continued to play out over the next hour as the band worked through about half new material and half old favorites. Seeing bands in a room this intimate is special and everyone, band and audience, seemed to recognize it.
Real Estate is about to embark on a massive tour that I’m sure will bring them near you so buy a ticket and have some fun. I sure did. Special thanks to bassist Alex Bleeker for giving me the ok to record and then going ahead and getting a page set up on the Live Music Archive for the band. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, we can get some of the older shows uploaded and get the artist page well populated.
I recorded this from my regular spot next to the soundboard with my MBHO’s and an excellent board feed curtesy of Tubby’s FOH engineer Will. Enjoy!
I first became aware of Primitive Air’s Drew Piraino sometime in 2016. He had recently moved to the same weird, obscure, little suburb of Kingston, NY that I had been living in for the past ten or so years. This “town” is so small you cannot get mail delivered to your house. Everything must be picked up from the post office, which is a converted porch attached to someone’s home. Seriously. One day I went to pick up some records I had been waiting for and while the post lady gathered them up, I noticed another stack off to the side. I asked about them and she said, “Yeah, some other guy gets lots of records too.” Inevitably, we became friends.
I remember when the original Primitive Air tape was released on Beyond Beyond is Beyond (RIP). I popped into the bar where he was working to talk about it. I am fairly sure my eloquent assessment was “It sounds like German commune music in a good way.” He hugged me and bought me a round. He was good enough to see through my clumsy review and realize I was holding it to a very grand standard. These songs do not aim for hooks or anything that might be misconstrued as “pop sensibilities.” They exist to get the listener outside of their head or, maybe, much deeper inside their head.
For this performance, Drew (bass and guitar) was joined by Jeff Mercel on drums, Jared Ashdown and Alex Kulick on guitars. The short but very sweet set is comprised of one tune from that 2018 BBiB tape and one new composition. Both tunes were great, but it was a joy to hear “Samadhi” stretched out with some impressive guitar interplay between Jarrod and Alex.
Primitive Air was the first band I ever record at Tubby’s way back in 2019. I’ve seen and recorded a lot of music in that room since so it was a pleasure to close out this year right where I started, in my spot in the back by the soundboard. It was doubly sweet as this was the first show I saw since the building was purchased by the employees. Tubby’s is now truly an independent venue. Enjoying interesting music in a supportive environment is the name of the game, and I hope we all get to keep playing for years to come.
Since the late 90’s Chicago’s music scene has been a constant source of excitement for me. It seems like every year some new gem comes out of the city’s endless pool of independent, creative, and adventurous musicians and labels. Old favorites like Tortoise, and their label, Thrill Jockey, continue to push boundaries while new favorites like International Anthem and Glyders demand my attention.
Black Duck is a trio of Douglas McCombs, Charles Rumback, and Bill MacKay; all veterans of Chicago’s fertile improv scene. Their self-titled Thrill Jockey debut has its roots in their collective improvisation experience with the bulk of the material being created in the studio. The Tubby’s faithful were lucky enough to be given does of both improv and arranged material.
The set started with one of two fully improvised pieces allowing the band to find their footing before moving into “The Trees Are Dancing” giving us a chance to hear a live treatment of the recorded material. It’s always interesting to see how musicians approach established songs that are rooted in improvisation. In Black Duck’s case, all the album material was stretched out. The evening ended with a nearly ten-minute version “Lemon Treasure” before heading into another impro piece based loosely on the album track “Light’s New Measure”.
I recorded this from my usual spot by the soundboard with the MBHO’s. The low end was a touch boomy early on, but things settled in rather nicely and I’m very happy with the quality. Enjoy!
Today begins our coverage of Tubby’s Fifth Anniversary party with deep Kosmische zones courtesy of Tengger.
The Pan-Asian traveling family came to town on day 3 of the event to play at the outdoor stage the Tubby’s team put together by turning Field Court into a block party. It’s hard to express how emotional this set was to see and hear. When I first moved to Kingston, nearly 20 years ago, the idea that I would spend a Sunday afternoon in a dead-end street off Broadway doing anything other than being mugged would have been an impossibility. Instead, several hundred people stood still and quiet and let Tengger’s sound fill their hearts and souls. The zones were so deep that at least two people were laid out across the ground; staring into the sky and probably much further while RAAI walked through the crowd chiming bells. It’s this exact spirit of adventurous acceptance that I’ve come to love and expect of Tubby’s crowds.
Tengger’s sonic makeup is an interesting dichotomy. In constructing their drones and soundscapes they often rely on making the very quiet seem very huge. This is a complicated issue from a sound and production stance because there is A LOT of gain involved and that often means a lot of feedback. A touch of that is evident during the first track, Water, but Tubby’s super team of Will on house mix and Kyle on monitors tamed the beast quickly. I recorded this from the Soundboard with my MBHO’s and the FOH team’s superb mix. The sound is excellent, and I truly hope it was heard throughout the entire town.
Special thanks to friend of the site Mike Newman for facilitating things with the band and getting the ok to post this!
The NycTaper coverage of the 2023 Deep In The Valley festival continues! For today’s installment we have Ned Collette, the Australian born, Berlin based songwriter and producer that came to town to play a beautiful early afternoon set for us all.
The set opened with “The Laughter Across The Street” from 2006’s “Jokes & Trials” immediately finds Ned, with Elisabeth Fuchsia on viola, occupying a space that feels unique in “folk” music. A strange and beautiful and dark space where the songs are a cross between Jim O’Rourke and Judee Sill. Listening to this now, with the leaves falling in the Hudson Valley, feels just right.
I had initially sent my mix of this recording to Ned who asked if he might take a crack at doing a touch more EQ. Eventually, I ended up sending him my masters which he worked on in his studio and the result is the beautiful sounding mix we have here. Using my MBHO mics positioned at stage lip for instrument presence and the excellent board feed courtesy of FOH engineer Daniele Stout for vocal clarity Ned gives us a mix far better than what I produced! Enjoy!
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