Gloss - Front Porch

Minnesota’s Jordan Bleau sent me this top-shelf single and writes:

Hey Mark,

I moved to Minneapolis from Iowa to escape some serious demons, and the isolation that I experienced when I got up here was both live-saving and incredibly alienating. I knew no one when I got up here. I started going to shows by myself a lot, and I often wouldn’t talk to anyone and just get completely absorbed in the music. It seemed like a lot of the stuff I wanted to see didn’t draw a lot of people in a scene dominated by hip hop and bluegrass, which was fine with me.

I’d been recording my own music (that I never released) since I was 14 or so, often playing most of the instruments myself, so when I saw the same group of teenagers at shows two nights in a row (Frankie Rose/DIIV and then The Drums/Craft Spells) I decided to approach them. I told them I’d play whatever instrument they wanted and record them if they wanted to start a band. All of us are fairly detached individuals, but when we met up to practice the first time there wasn’t really a huge need for words. Not that it was spectacular right out of the gate or anything - we started off playing Cure rip-offs in the guitar player Sean’s parents’ house in the suburbs. But I could tell that these kids were excited, and I felt like a big brother to them in many ways, having played in bands before myself. 

We recorded a few songs last Summer and then studied I up on production techniques and spent hours and hours tweaking and refining them before we decided to release a single, “Front Porch”, which led to a massive response both locally and internationally. When I say massive I mean we got over a thousand plays in a couple of months, which is a huge deal to both myself and really any 19-year-old, but especially these kids.

The attention led to an offer from a good samaritan that had recently started a record label to press a 7” for us, an offer from another local label to put out our next release, and a bunch of show offers. Most importantly, we started to make some new friends, which I think can be difficult both for me and the rest of these dudes. And a lot of other humans. The 7” comes out in April via Manic Pop! Records. UK blog One For The People interviewed us about it. We’re going to record an EP at the end of this month and we’ve got some dates at the legendary First Avenue, which sort of still doesn’t seem real.

We’re underdogs, we’re young, and we’re trying to put out some music that disrupts the established local scene here. It’s tough, but I know that helping these kids do what we do and also just making music period is one of the only things that combats the isolation that most of us feel. We don’t party or socialize but when we get together and make music I feel like we can actually make people that certain sense of detachment. I hope you’ll enjoy these songs. Keep doing what you’re doing, and thank you.

-Jordan, Drums

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Afeefa & the Boy - The Old Man

Got this incredible letter about following your dreams despite all odds from Orlando’s Afeefa Ayube:

Hey ya Mark,

I hope my email meets you on a beautiful moment. Im stuck in an airport somewhere in middle American as I type, so you’re automatically better off than I anyway.

I grew up in a family where music, any kind of music was forbidden. I was in my twenties before I discovered who the beatles were. This was certainly not supposed to be my path, but here I am, and at home I feel.

my mother married my father when she was just a wee 15. he was 25. she is a free spirit somewhere hidden inside a women who has lead a pretty rough life. an artist, a believer of magic, and an amazing vocalist. but the life she was dealt pretty much crushed those parts of her.

when I say I grew up without music, I mean instruments, or radio, or movies…but my mother sang to us everyday. her voice is the most etherial thing ive ever heard. she wrote songs for us, my siblings and I.

often times, when I’m on stage, barefoot, with strangers listening to the words I’ve written, I almost can feel the energy of the SO many silenced women of the world. outside of America. somewhere far away. where creativity isn’t even allowed to hatch from the egg. i swear i can almost feel it. because that was very much supposed to be my life. 

My father years ago, was a real hippie. or so the people of his past have told us. then, something tragic happened. he, like many many people that suffer tragic unthinkable things, turned to religion to help him heal, or at the least cope. his interpretation of religion, meant at least for many things, to “shelter” his living children from the corruption of the outside world. music being one of them.

sigh.

i too, cannot imagine my life without music now.

A little over a year ago, with all things crashing around me, I started writing songs. And they would not stop coming. I knew nothing of “cool” or “indie” music. I barely knew music on the radio. The day before my birthday I spent a huge amount on cash, and bought myself my first Taylor guitar. I knew that I wanted to stum stum to the lyrics I was writing. I spent that summer teaching myself basic guitar, and braved an open mic about 2 months later.

afeefa & the boy starts there.

Jay, my now lead guitar player came straight towards me after I played 2 songs to an almost silent room. I had prefaced my shaky performance with “i only know 2 chords, i just started playing this thing.” We have been playing together ever since. A few weeks late, folks started booking us for local shows, I won a song writing contest, and “afeefa & the boy” was kind of born.

It wasnt until I wrote “the old man” that I knew we needed more instruments, but i knew, like Jay, it would happen at exactly the moment it was meant to. The very first time I asked our buddy Andrew to play with us live, to “the old man”, a stranger named Glen sat in the audience. Someone had told him to check out this girl that wrote songs.

He approached me after and said if I ever needed a cello player, he would love to be involved. I honestly didn’t even know what a cello was. He visited us the next day at rehearsal, and we have been playing together ever since. Since then, we have played some pretty cool shows on the Orlando scene, and are having the time of our lives making music together. We are exciting to finally be releasing our EP this April (in vynyl none the less:)  have for the most part self recorded it, and would love to share it with you.

thank you so much for taking a gander at it, peace & love

afeefa

PS. my dad still has no idea Im a musician :) and I see the guy a few times a week. haha. music is still forbidden in my parents house.

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Videotape - Monsters

Chicago’s Sophie Leigh wrote me this note with her band’s brand new single:

Dear Mark,

Lately, I’m feeling especially torn on some things. But, really, they can all be summarized into one simple question: ‘What’s next?’ I guess you could say this is just a biological aspect of human nature. It keeps us moving forward. It’s necessary for survival. We strive for things, the world moves, we move with it. Whether we like it or not, we mirror our evolving environment.

When I was a bit younger, my boyfriend ran his car off the side of a highway. Nothing was more disappointing than the sunrise that morning. I watched it from the porch with his younger brother, the sharp hues of yellow and orange streaming across the marsh. It didn’t seem right that the world was going to go about its business, without him. But it did.

And really, thank god it did. I don’t know what path I would have followed, but I can tell you that I wouldn’t have ended up here. And I am grateful to be here, in Chicago with such an inspiring musical community. There’s no better medicine than the Earth spinning. I should mention that this attitude comes from years of active striving for it. It’s easy to sulk; it’s way harder to find happiness. I’ve learned that we must take what we are given and make better.

I realized one fundamental thing that had been looming within me at the time of Billy’s death. I would return to music. This was kind of a vague notion, but I’d given up the instruments I’d learned as a kid and adolescent, always eager to jump to another activity. Billy was a talented bass player. He would stay up all night playing, then come to school zonked out from lack of sleep. I’d never seen anyone so committed, so driven. Not at our age. I decided I could honor his memory and fill (some) of my void. So I signed up for guitar lessons. This was my way of doing that, of making good out of bad. I continued these on and off over the next couple years, but where it ultimately led me to was to singing. And where that lead me was to one of the most wonderful things that has ever happened to me: Videotape.

Videotape is a noise pop/shoegaze band. I’m the vocalist and I write lyrics. That’s all, really, but it brings me immense joy. We released an EP in 2011, then a full length, This Is Disconnect, last year. We’ve been working on writing and recording new material lately. We have a forthcoming cassette tape, This is Disconnect + 4EP, which will be released on The Chicago label Notes and Bolts on March 12.

On February 26, we will release Monsters, the first single from the new EP. I think all of our songs mean different things to each member of the group. To me, this song, it’s about people sucking the life out of you, but being afraid of what else is out there. It’s about surrendering and fighting at the same time. Please feel free to offer it for free download from your site or stream it from our Soundcloud page.

It’s also worth noting that our cassette release show is March 7th, 2013 at The Burlington Bar in Chicago. This will be the first night of Divergent Interest, a new monthly event featuring live Chicago ambient, drone, and shoegaze acts. It’s also headed by Notes and Bolts. 

Thank you for reading this letter. I wrote it after reading other posts on your website. Thanks for the inspiration, time, and support.

Sincerely,
Sophie

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Milo&Otis - Tiny Soldiers

Owen Hill - the “Otis” to Jamila Woods’ “Milo” in this alt.RnB duo - sent me this fun video they made along with the following letter:

Dear Mark,

A lot has happened since this all started. Let’s be real - this is the tale of two young Brown University graduates, facing the harsh depressed 2011 economy with nothing but a dollar and a dream (despite receiving degrees in Mathematics and Performance Studies, respectively). A Baltimore native, I had been defeated by Atlanta’s soulless and depraved pringle-cans-on-its-shoulder music market, and now felt apparently destined for the indie-rock shores of San Francisco to join the ranks of Googlites and Girls (bands and otherwise). Trusting some old east coast gritty instincts, I took a chance and headed to the Windy City to attempt some musical adventures with a freshly-graduated Milo, who was headed back home to the South Side of the city to carve out a career in poetry and playwriting. After some hesitation and an exploratory Christmas album, Milo&Otis became a real thing, and we hunkered down for the icy Chicago winter in a windowless, barely-heated rehersal room in Humboldt Park…which also happened to be my place of residence. Don’t hate too hard, yuppies - that’s all utilities included, 300+ sq ft. for $350/mo. You can make a lot of food in a microwave. And shower at the gym.

In ATL, collaborating on a song translates to 20% mediocre music making, 80%  chatting about how rich we’re all going to get and how this or that marketing plan is going to blow up the video that’s going to get made, etc etc. It was a relief to hole up in a new city, feel out some tunes, and hibernate the business end of things. But the highs and lows and questions of the last year fermented in that space, and I was starting to feel like a hypocrit. I mean, c’mon, it was the Occupy movement and I was an artist amongst artists, yet I was paying my bills by helping the rich get into better schools via tutoring. Ouch.

What do you do when all of your heroes are dead, or gone quite crazy? I mean honestly, it is one thing to look up to Michael Jordan and quite another to look up to J Dilla, Jimi Hendrix, Kanye West, Michael Jackson. Here I am, wanting to be famous and upset that it is taking so long compared to some of our Chicago contemporaries, yet my idol of rhythm and texture did not even live to see his true rise to stardom. And the man who knows he’s the man, Mr. West, can’t seem to maintain any sort of normal life or happiness.

What is it that we really want, Mark? Success, happiness, art? From here, it seems like these may be each separate pinnacles (unless you’re Beyonce). And I tell you, when I look around at my friends with the big job offers, 24-year-olds making six figures, not a single one of them is happy. And none of them is making the art he or she wanted to make, either. Life on hold: everybody is waiting and wishing, but not sure what for (enough in the savings? a promotion? inspiration?) and just letting time tick by at a job they don’t even enjoy.

John Mayer said in a great lecture at Berklee that many of his music friends thought they would “just know” when they had “made it”. But it wasn’t true; they would sell millions and still be depressed. He emphasized defining what success looks like for you before you even get started. Not a bad idea right there.

Long story short, that was the Otis that helped Milo make The Joy. We dropped the album and without looking back embarked on a 10-week, self-booked slow-motion summer tour to learn a bit more about the music and ourselves. I, the bassist-turned-instrumentalist who produced all the songs, drove every one of the 9,476 miles. Milo, a prominent spoken word poet conned into being a singer, worked crowds with her smooth voice and awkward stage presence, helping to cover the bills by selling gorgeous hand-decorated cds.

The Joy has since gone on to a teensy bit of buzz, including a rave review by The Washington Post that put us in the same sentence as Miguel and Frank Ocean. But all in all the album was slept on as we figured out the best way to visually represent the music. I guess some artists get their marketing down first, and it’s all a lot smoother (Mayer has a point). But sometimes Mark, you just gotta go with what feels right in the moment. Writing this felt right in the moment. Not sure how I feel about it now lol but anyways…my good friend and old classmate Shruti Parekh helped me make this visual encompassing the many loves of Milo…I hope you guys enjoy it and the rest of The Joy :)

With Gratitude,

~Otis

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Club Girls - I Can Do a Lot

New Yorker Christen Cappello asked me to premiere this eye-bending video she directed (edited by Stephen Arnoczy) with this sweet letter:

Hey Mark!

My name is Christen and I’ve been making experimental pop music for a while now.  I feel that I must mention I create it all myself, as this is (still) always the first question people (maybe not you) ask younger, female, electronic musicians.

Originally from Connecticut I spent a bit of time in Boston at Berklee College of Music noodling around on my computer, breaking my computer and getting a hang of things in general before making the move to NYC, a place I had wanted to live since high school.

At the top of 2012 I found myself fresh out of significant 4 year relationship and was pretty terrified of everything. Financially unprepared for such a life change and half-brained from the sudden separation, I moved back to my mom’s place in Connecticut. Presented with what the reality of living with my parents full time would be like I decided to commute to New York City to continue to work at a well known gay-friendly restaurant in Chelsea.  I believed that if I just kept one foot in New York’s revolving door I would be okay. Looking back, I suppose I could have stayed home and let my mom take care of me for a little while but I somehow found it less horrible crashing on the couches & beds of friends new & old. Harlem, Astoria, Brooklyn: I got around.

Eventually I saved up enough money to rent a room and moved in with someone I found on craigslist, which could have been bad but in a twist of amazing fate, wasn’t! In an attempt to keep sane during this chaotic time I decided to launch Club Girls, a pop project I had been wanting to realize for a while. My original intention for Club Girls was to work with as many different producers as I could, acting only as the singer/songwriter, so as to focus on other work. However,I quickly realized I didn’t know many producers and didn’t want to wait, so I took on the role myself with gusto.  I tried not to worry much about the songs/production being “perfect” (as musician’s are prone to do) and was able to record more material than I ever had before. I didn’t have any instruments with me and couldn’t afford to buy new ones, so I created almost all of my music from micro samples of top 40’s songs. I started to think of it as Junkyard pop. Re-purposing bits n’ pieces of old songs to make new songs.

Around the same time Club Girls was coming into fruition I started to become involved with someone new which was exciting, but I was feeling a bit anxious and guilty about it because it happened so quickly after the aforementioned parting-of-ways. In an attempt to quell my own fears/anxiety (and also find some courage) “I Can Do A Lot”, the first Club Girls single, came tumbling on out. The song has many meanings to me but is mostly about letting anyone within earshot know that I was having my fun and ‘if you had a problem with it…’ well the song tells the rest. Since then I have continued to explore whatever style suited my fancy as evidenced by the forthcoming unreleased Club Girls single “The A.M.H.” a dark, industrial track with a pop melodies lain overtop.

To bring things full circle, one early September evening of last year I managed to wrangle together a bunch of my favorite scallywags and made them do silly things in front of a camera at McCarren Park.  The result is the music video for “I Can Do A Lot.”

Thanks for taking time to read my story and listen to my music!

Best,

Christen

PS - download the track here.

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Data Romance - Can’t Keep Your Mind Off

Amy Kirkpatrick sent me this killer Dexter-esque video and the following letter:

Dear Mark,

I’ve been sitting here in a coffee shop on Main Street in Vancouver, reading your “Letter to YVYNYL” debating my reasons for telling you to listen to my band’s music. Our album ‘Other’ is coming out Feb 19th, and it’s pretty much all that’s been on my mind the last year. Imposing this personal endeavor on you reminds of how I’m bombarded with endless wedding announcements and baby photos from my peers, and how I could talk about ‘Other’ with the same amount of pride and commitment. I even have a photo ready on my cell phone with the album artwork to show anyone who asks about it, and even those who don’t. “Isn’t she beautiful?” This is my band’s first born, and coincidentally also took about nine months of creating before it’s release.

Jay and I have been together as a band for about three years now, although in interviews we’ve agreed to always say two sort of as an inside joke to keep us entertained during routine interview questions. We’d written dozens of songs over the last three years but an album never quite felt right until now. We intently took the time to: sit down and write an album. We wanted it to have roots, so we recorded a choir made up of our friends in a church of the town we grew up in, that you can hear in “Something to Me”.

“Others” has harmonies by our friend Steph, who’s the person who originally said to me: “Hey, you should play your songs in public!” at the age of sixteen, and became Jay’s roommate down the road. We wanted the album to feel complete as a whole, not twelve detached songs, so there’s a story line and a landscape which draws from Jay’s past in writing soundtracks. There are vocal characters that come and go, which come from my four and a half years as a Theatre Major in university. That extra ‘half’ being the consequence of skipping classes to go record demos in my friends basement. There are sounds that are unique to us, like the wineglasses being played in our first single “Caves” which was written at Jay’s house when we both had somewhat of a writer’s block, and used and episode of BBC’s Planet Earth as inspiration.

We also didn’t want the album to only be about one thing, one breakup, or one person. Being in charge of the vocal storyline, I wanted something universal yet abstract. The twelve songs we decided on, after choosing from about twenty-four ‘maybe’s’, are all connected and somehow centered around the concept of caves. If a picture’s worth a hundred words, a song should be worth a million. At the same time, I’ll be quick to tell you a song’s meanings if you ask nicely, and how it relates to our caves concept. As much as I’d love to be as mysterious or as obscure as Lykke Li, that’s just not me. I’m okay being an open book that wears pleather and a spiked shirt to a coffee shop writing session on a Monday night.

When creating this video concept I told video director Alistair Legrand to take every word I was saying as if I was lying through my teeth. “If you can’t take the risk, I don’t blame you,” was my way of saying to someone “No really, it’s fine,” during a time when it truly wasn’t.

On that note, this place is closing, and I hope by now you’ve clicked on our album link either because I’ve convinced you to, or because you’re curious to see what else I may, or may not be lying through my teeth about.

Sincerely,

Amy

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(Source: youtube.com)

Sleeping Loops - The West

Kyle McCarthy sent me the following letter this week:

Hey Mark,

I’m a big fan of your blog, and I see that you like to feature music that has an interesting story behind it. So I thought I would give e-mailing you a shot since the record “Sorta” that I just finished in December has a strange story behind it.

Back in October I began to record songs for “Sorta” in the town I grew up in Long Beach, NY, a small beach community off of Long Island. I recorded a bunch of loops in early October [some instrumentals and some with vocals on them]. During that time, I coincidentally wrote a song called “Sandy.” The lyrics were written directly after the instrumentals were made and there was little thought given to what the lyrics meant. I just started singing “Sandy wants to know, but I don’t know why. / Sandy says the gold is hiding on the inside.” At the time I did not know anyone named Sandy, and I had not heard any news about the hurricane that was about to hit the East Coast in the week to follow.

When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast on October 29th it ravaged my town. My house was amongst the houses destroyed by the hurricane, but luckily I had hid my computer with the material I was writing in my sock drawer which was on the second floor of my house, the only part of the house not destroyed by the hurricane.

At the time my fiancee was pregnant with our first child so after a couple of days living in the destruction that was Long Beach, NY we headed upstate to Woodstock, NY to stay with family. Up there, with the help of my fiancee, I continued recording vocal parts for the album. After a week up there we went back downstate to stay with friends in Chelsea and Bushwhick Brooklyn. It was in that adventurous and strange time that I finished recording “Sorta.” 

We are currently living a couple of towns away from Long Beach since it will be at least 4 more months  until we can move back into our home. Our son was born last week so now it is time to start writing sleeping music for him and try to achieve some sort of normalcy post-Sandy. However, “Sorta” will always be a record dear to my heart because it is the reflection of a strange and semi-chaotic period in my life, but also a deeply beautiful moment in time. I hope you enjoy the record and are interested in sharing it.

Thanks for your time.

-Kyle

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Swiss Alps - Penpals

Central Pennsylvania-based musician Devan Kochersperger writes:

Hey Mark,

I never made a conscious decision to make the band that became Swiss Alps. What began as a joke idea of recording songs with my then-girlfriend, Jackie, to tour the country via Megabus and perform only felt real when blogs started covering what we had written together and concert offers started rolling in.

It was a fun, romantic notion that we could combine our abilities to craft songs together to overcome our individual weaknesses. I had been in plenty of bands before, but playing with her made the experience much easier and personal. But, as many people before us have also had happen, differences came up and we ended our relationship at the conclusion of the summer.

At age 23 I suddenly found myself to be alone for the first time in years, a college graduate without a real job, all while moving back into my parent’s house again. I realized that I could either continue feeling like I was in a bizarre dream, or I could fill the void in my life by writing more music. With a new band lineup organized this fall, we’ve been performing much more often in Philadelphia (a gig at The Fire last month with Suburban Living was especially memorable).

The long and frequently frustrating drives down the Schuylkill Expressway gave me plenty of time to reflect on what I miss from my past, and what I need to do in the future. Ultimately, these ruminations became Swiss Alps’ next EP, //. Although it was strange writing these songs alone this time, in many ways that became the self-fullfilling thesis of the entire project.

-Devan

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HUNGR - Wasted My Bullets

Cleveland’s Joe Yezbak writes: 

Hey Mark,

“HUNGR is the you that I hypothesize about existing,” as one of my friends put it best.  It’s a little more than that though, it was intended to be the all encompassing feeling I had hoped for, and possibly experienced, between two loves, from both sides of the coin.

HUNGR was a birthday present for my now ex-girlfriend, and by the time I had given it to her it had just about dissipated.   There is so much to the story, much of it is ineffable, so being the reason I packaged the present as a 2 song album.  Creating the whole thing became like a vacuum for me.  It was tailored to her, for her, and yet it had strong overtones of who I wanted to be; what we both wanted to be, at least I had hoped.

Part of it is the “shattered delusion” philosophy, where two people think of each other as “this person” only to realize that they were never that person they thought they were (I’ve had a few of these).  The other side of it is the possibility it might of been so good, that one of us felt guilty in finding and having what they wanted.  Then again, maybe it was a summer love that was dragged on much past its expiration date.  

But then I wouldn’t have these songs, and the few nights we had in the end - well, it went out on a high note.  When I sent her the link (which started as a tumblr with links to the music) she thought I was just trying to embarrass her by posting a picture of her ass on the internet.  After she listened to the music she sent me a short text, saying “thank you for my present.”  That was it.

A few days later I logged into the email account I made for the bandcamp and it was slammed with emails from blogs that posted it; one was even in Brazil that I couldn’t read.  I literally didn’t tell anyone except for her, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t tell anyone else.  But then again, I really don’t know much about how she felt about it at all.  That is probably what burned me the most.  I think on some level, I had hoped this present would save everything, and void all the past feelings that plagued us; that it would create some sort of fairy-tale ending, even though I wasn’t even sure that I wanted it.  

A few weeks later, I got a call from her in the middle of the night, and she was outside my apt.  We were sitting in the tub, and I asked her if she liked the songs - she blushed a little, looked down, and nodded her head.  That is all the response I got from it, and that was the last time I spoke to her. I’ve seen her in passing, but it feels like she was from another life.  I moved on fairly quickly, and I know she did as well - It was a pretty intense experience.  Volume I was the original present, and Volume II is what I just released as a follow up. Only one of the songs is about her; sort of. Half the song is about someone else, or maybe one quarter.  Either way, it’s the last picture I have of her.

Thanks,

Joe

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HARUKI NAGINATA - Black Tree Swallowed Us

Holli Featherstone sent me this excellent video with the following letter:

Mark Schoneveld,

I made this video for a song on my ex boyfriend’s 2012 release My Body is A Screaming Tiger.  He was the love of my life. Breaking up with him was the catalyst that launched me down a path of totally unstoppable momentum that moved my life to Paris and caused me to successfully mount a self made art-star saddle. I work as Baby Angel if you’re curious.

We were together/not together for 5 or 6 years. We made a lot of music and art, managing with creativity to support and explode that mad love. During two years we did this at a distance of about 1000 miles, I lived in Ohio and he lived in Boston. Then, we moved in together and the art and music started to die. It took the better (or horrible?) part of 2 more years to go.

It died all over the USA. Beginning in Ohio, then in his parents house in NY it choked in separate rooms, finally in different apartments in Boston we tried to put the love out of its misery. It took him being more of an asshole than I thought was actually possible for me to accept the concept. In thorough heart wreckage I picked up my life in Vermont and moved to Paris happy enough to live for only me. It took him about a half year to get the courage to talk me again.

Damn right you know, I may love him but I’m a proud girl and fuck that. In the last 4 months he’s persistently encouraging that little love seed I never really lost to be not afraid, he wants it to know he’s grown up. He wants to marry me.

I recently came back to the USA to get a work visa. I saw him briefly in NY before going home. I mean to say, I saw HIM and not a grave where I laid all of my love to rest. I make videos so I decided to make one (maybe more! I like how this one came out) for him. I gave him a list of things to film himself doing and asked that he give me a list too. This video is made from each of us completing about half of the lists. It’s who we were, and by the slurpy miracle of love it’s who we still are. The power of love and loss is just bananas.

I’m an artist and part of the subject so, for me this video already has a whole existence. I wanted to pass Black Tree Swallowed Us to you because I watch your blog in the same spirit. You host a lot of life on yvynyl. This is a life of love and love death, I guess it’s also a premiere video for a single on an album that hasn’t been released yet. He’s a great musician with a lot to show for it. His work has been in a few films by Red Bucket Films. His other band Moufro Moto is putting out a single this year on the Philly label Magic Death Sounds. Thanks for all the life Mark.

Truly,

holli featherstone

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Health&Beauty - The Speculum Pt3

Chicago’s Brian J. Sulpizio writes me about creating the video for a single off his new WINTERMAGIC LP:

Hi Mark,

My friend Tristan DeWitt came to visit me in April, for a week. He lives in the Boston area and I live in Chicago. Just two days before he arrived, I had broken up with my girlfriend. We had been living together, and she had just moved out. My car had been booted and impounded for non-payment of many parking tickets. I borrowed $1100 from Ben Boye to get it out of impound and was in the process of selling it so that I could pay him back. I had decided to leave my home in Chicago and spend a year in Ohio with my parents, so that I would not need to have a straight job and could spend more time touring the United States and performing the music of Health&Beauty for more and more people. Tristan had come to collect live footage to begin making a video for ‘The Speculum Pt3.’

He made the rest of this video in Byfield, MA, outside Boston. I saw it once at his house, in August, when I was on tour with Names Divine. We were in high spirits and we stayed up all night talking about other work of his, ongoing work of mine, and Cormac McCarthy. The next day Names Divine & I were headed to Pittsburgh and the ‘97 Lumina we were driving was impounded for not having license plates. We sold it for scrap out of the impound lot.

We have almost-daily phone conversations, Tristan & me, sometimes about the videos he makes for Health&Beauty but also about our lives and people and music and other things. In maintaining this frequent dialogue, one can be such a present influence in another’s life as to create a viable Third Party against the egocentric inward momentum of experience.

He introduces the video with a phrase from Virgil’s fourth Eclogue, which in English reads:

Now comes the final era of the Sibyl’s song;

The great order of the ages is born afresh. 

And now justice returns, honored rules return;

now a new lineage is sent down from high heaven.

Heraclitus says the Sibyls frenziedly talk of serious things, “unadorned & unperfumed,” and with the help of “the god” their words extend deep into the future. Isn’t this a nice idea: that we can break off from the words we first heard; that things can be remade; that we can start over; that we can move into the future without the emotions&affects of the past; that we can open up and allow these vicious sentiments to unravel.

I only kept my base in Ohio for four months. I am back in Chicago now and contemplating many things, writing new music, working on recordings for myself and others, about to start a job, and finding new configurations for performance. All any of us can do is keep working and hope we get better and better. I’m excited to have this video in the world; it is one of my favorite songs of mine, and I am blown away by Tristan’s work.

Thanks for showing us all the good stuff,

Brian

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