Dispatches from the Commission

Now finished with their latest trip to “The Studio” (the group’s private low-orbit space station), the eminent experts of experimental post-electroskapunkafunkatronica, Hostile Respondents, have released their latest continuation of the “Leave It, Take It” opera. Entitled “Pile of Refusal,” the album follows the ongoing story of the young Faiakan, now living among the gleaming spires of the Emerald City, trying to survive his seemingly-harsh environment.

The reviews for the album are mixed, ranging from “amazing” to “life-changing.” The Seattle Times calls the album “sublime and delicious in all the right places,” The Stranger says “we actually saw the album in a store,” while the Seattle Weekly writes “this album got me to convert to Ba’hai, and I couldn’t even understand any lyrics.” Meanwhile, the Seattle P-I wonders “if we post a review, will anyone even read it before buying ‘Pile of Refusal?’” while the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner simply devoted their entire Arts section to a scathing review (causing an inexplicable 2.7m copies of both the paper and the album to be sold in a state of only 600,000 people).

“Pile of Refusal” will be available for download in .ram audio files with bad links, and will be available at retail in a pack of several HitClips, or on piano roll.

Track Listing:
1. The Wanting Comes in Waves (Decemberists cover / intro)
2. No Cause for Optimism / That Sinking Feeling
3. Story of a Man Who Carved Statues of Mid-90′s Clip Art (a Montage of Events of Limited Consequence)
4. Welcome to Plan B (Five Iron Frenzy cover)
5. The Ever-Elusive / One-Dimensional Communiques
6. I Feel Better (Hot Chip cover)
7. Mind The Perspective
8. Ethereal Beings are We / With A Skyward Gaze
9. Never Give a Knife
10. Nububug
11. Cream, No Sugar (interlude)
12. Video Kid (Birthday Massacre cover)
13. I Believe The Term is “Drone”
14. Surprise Bags / Not Hot Yet
15. Usual Haunting
16. Take Me Off Your List (Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand / Kiss On My List by Hall & Oates mash-up / cover)
17. He Really Took Charge of the Situation
18. Pile of Refusal
19. If Only A Year
20. The Slow Road to Progress (overture)

Announcing, brand new, from the scintillating seers of song, those magnificent musical masters, top-notch talented tune-makers, the phenomenal OR Smoot! The legendary group of pioneers that invented the experimental post-electroskapunkafunkatronica genre, have released a new Live EP in celebration of their collaborative west-coast tour with the legendary psychedelic post-acid-hop MC, DJ Gregor. Entitled Anchorage Syndrome, the album contains never-before-heard tracks from the tour itself, as well as recently-remastered, from the vault titles hailing back to OR Smoot’s 1972 Siberian tour.

The reviews are in and universally glowing. The Juneau Empire says they’ve “never heard” of OR Smoot, the Capital City Weekly calls Anchorage Syndrome “outside of our scope,” and The Stranger writes “new album? We thought they were on vacation.”

Anchorage Syndrome is available in stores now, in K1 Magnetophon reel and Fidelipac cartridge formats, or can be heard by dialing an unlisted 800 number. Just keep dialing, you’ll figure it out eventually.

Track listing (starred tracks from the west coast tour):
Here and Now
Unexpected Dichotomy / Blue and Gray
Wake The Fuck Up (Prodigy cover)
No Need To Explain / Ice Bat (feat. Adventuress)
Perpetual Past*
The Empire / Nickel Tour*
Geek Residence Transmogrification*
Better Fey Than Day / For Practical Reasons*
Anchorage Syndrome*
Pterodactyl Noises (feat. The Australis Commission)
Governor-General John R. Steadman / Pok-Poks*
Markedly More Pleasant*
Hotboxed An APC And Invaded Amsterdam*
Spectral Locomotive
Our Year
Maybe This Time (Cabaret cover)

After a long stint in the recording studio (during which they did, indeed, roll the marijuana up and smoke it like a cigarette), the reviled, renowned, and now revisited experimental post-skapunkafunkatronica group The Breadmakers has released their new album; “Haunted by Sourdough-Applesauce”. A partial continuation (non-canonical, they insist) of their previous work, “Leave It, Take It,” “Haunted” has already been hailed by critics; the Seattle Times calls it “almost certainly an album,” The Stranger raves that it “did not immediately set our stereo on fire” and the Seattle P-I says “we aren’t even printing anymore, dipshit.”

As an added bonus, the physical release includes a side-B, containing the, as the band describes it, “late-term aborted album” “Epidemic,” in its first-ever North American release (or release of any kind). The “Haunted / Epidemic” two-pack is expected in stores five minutes previous the moment this is read, and can be found in electrical transcription and elcaset formats, just in time for the holidays, wherever non-music is sold.

Disk 1: “Haunted by Sourdough-Applesauce”
1. Times Long Since Buried (2-2m Years)
2. A Man from New Zealand, a Trail of Devastation, an Apology Note Written in Green Highlighter (feat. M. Farrar)
3. Laundry Day / Not Waiting for the Hammer (feat. AB-Positive)
4. Jail and All (feat. Hosengott)
5. Unexplained Phenomenon (feat. AB-Positive, Hosengott)
6. The Dangers of Diablesque Games
7. Sarcastically Glad To Know You (feat. Rosetangle)
8. One Gate – Two Gate (feat. Rosetangle, Pohaku)
9. Just Don’t Go (feat. Pohaku, DJ Llysara)
10. Haunted by Sourdough-Applesauce
11. Install A Beak In The Heart That Clucks Time In Arabic (65daysofstatic cover)
12. Thankful (feat. MC Maddison, M. Farrar, Spanks, Thug Lyfe, DJ Llysara, MC Ooooooz, MC Johntrary, Zarina, Soupspoon, Dee Tan, Pohaku, Grindholme, Luvino)
13. Just Weird
14. A Year Best Left (feat. MC Llysara)
15. Upward Unto Dawn

Disk 2: “Epidemic”
1. The List of Things We Will Never Understand About Him (And Its One Entry) (feat. MC Farrar)
2. A Perpetual Christmas Eve
3. Oh Yeah, I Totally Know You (feat. MC Ooooooz, DJ Lancaster)
4. Welcome Home (Coheed & Cambria cover, feat. Arcadia)
5. Properly Animated Phaser Arcs or “Just Had To Know” (feat. Cryptic Studios)
6. Drove Through Ghosts To Get Here (65daysofstatic cover, feat. ClickPicTony, DJ ActionHero)
7. Epidemic
8. Gravity Belies Serendipity / You Lucky Bastard (feat. MC Johntrary, DJ Gothsheep)
9. Define “Serendipity” (feat. MC Johntrary)

Sanity is in short supply these days, but there’s a five-for-two sale on crazy.

Non-music is in the works.

and now I’m positively buzzing on it and the caffeine.

Few things can match Everything Goes Numb, though. Such memories of the times we listened. Halcyon days, those.

In accordance with my neurosis, I check the details on fire stations, police stations, museums, all that sort of thing, usually to rename them. The library had an extra button, besides “okay” and “rename,” one marked “ruminate.”

I clicked the button, and it resulted in this.

I very much relate to the way Gaiman thinks about cities, in this, but I imagine he wouldn’t be a famous author if his work were not relate-able on some level.

Also, this probably isn’t new to anyone who’s played an amount of SimCity 2000. Being that I played it mostly before the age of reason, it was quite new to me. Passing it along is a free action, anyway.

Setting the bar ever-the-higher, the famed artists known only as The Cascadian Envoy have produced the first-ever experimental post-skapunkafunkatronica opera: “Leave It, Take It.” The chronicle of one young Faiakan’s odyssey, and subsequent misadventures, the production proper is enjoying a very popular but limited release in a parallel dimension. The soundtrack, however, is widely available in this dimension, albiet in Betamax Audio Tape format.

1. Pretty Girls in Red Coats (opening)
2. Listen Close (MC Frontalot cover)
3. Don’t Panic (Never Mind, Panic) (feat. Mouse)
4. Be Well (feat. MC Ooooooooooooooooooz)
5. A Wretched Hive
6. The Old Country (interlude)
7. Home Never Changes
8. That Was Fun / Ravenholm Coffee House (feat. Glowdoll, Loadobject, Koyetay, Neu-man)
9. Oh, There’s Four
10. Close to a Distant Demise
11. Echo Base (feat. Gregor Q)
12. On A Boat (Lonely Island cover) (feat. Gregor Q., T-Pain)
13. Fifteen That, Mofo
14. Leave It, Take It (interlude)
15. The Charming Third Time
16. The Incomparable Faiakans (feat. Koyetay, DJ Pink, Seg7, Neu-man, Clifford, DJ Dono, LK Pants, Siff, MC Squikin, Loadobject)
17. Something Catty (Thanks for Boiling That Down) (feat. Gregor Q)
18. Redoubt, Delay
19. Hanging Around (Counting Crows cover) (feat MC Scuba)
20. The Real World Isn’t Easy
21. Be Well (reprise) (feat. MC Ooooooooooooooooooz)
22. Sunday (Alla’s Thing) or This Basement is a Goddamned Reliquary
23. To Be Continued (No Stopping Now) (feat. Gregor Q., ?? ???????)

I’m here. Come represent.

Conservative pundits seem to love intentionally mis-stating the Democratic Party’s name as the “Democrat Party.” Without researching it, I suspect this is because they wish to dissociate the party in the minds of their already-enamored viewers/listeners from the concept of “democracy.”

So, from here on out, I’ll be referring to the Republican Party as the “Republic Party,” with the aim of associating them with the concept of “republic.” Mostly for shits and giggles, but maybe it’ll convince someone to look up the definition of republic.

On this historic day, there is certainly cause for hope, even jubilation, as we welcome our new President, Barack Obama. It’s important to remember, however, that the bulk of his task, and our own, is yet ahead of us. If we are to restore America’s image internationally, if we are to heal our economy, if we are to rebuild our infrastructure, develop our technology, and become energy independent, then we must not lose the momentum and energy that we as a nation have built.

Celebrate, yes, but do not relax, for today begins a great journey for the American people. Today, we must realize that we all have a hand in America’s destiny, and that our differences in ideology and belief serve not to divide us, but instead strengthen the whole. Let us remain interested and involved as we begin to secure and improve our future. Let us continue to come together to debate policy, discuss solutions, and generate new ideas. Every American, young and old, conservative and liberal, religious and non, has something to contribute to this great undertaking — as long as we don’t return to apathy simply because power has been successfully transferred.

This is not the finish line. This is the starter’s pistol.

I hope you hear it too.