Walter Gross

Rotorcraft lyrics

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:12:34 -0400

1. Vestibule.

Who dominates the harshest? Who sends my mind the farthest. Volunteer as plaintiffs crawling out of the walls. Liquifying out the floor-boards. Crawling towards me. Gnawing at my cheek. I see them in the corners. They’re lookin’ like they’re goners, when they should be lookin over their shoulders.

Blackening my insides. Wage internal wars. Drowning in the riptide. As you struggle for the shore. Machinations of the host. Parasitic in its nature. Feeding off all our cores.

Ghosts in the machine.

Weakening subject. Let’s test him with more shit. Paralyzed from the waist-up. Wake up. Wake up. You better wake up. You better choose somethin. Gonna lose somethin. Because its a lot more fun to swallow it whole. Until your eyes pop out.

That’s right, time lapped us. You’ll be crushed if you don’t pass us. I ain’t on fire yet.

2. Angeldust

This embraced volatile future. My lust runs down my spine. They called on me to murder you. And take back what is mine?

Why you don’t shoot yourself. Save yourself a headache. And blast one through the throne. Everything they want they want you to speak your name and reap what they’ve sewn. Leaving no one to remember, leaving nothing but your crimes. Don’t put your hands up, die where you stand, and take with you their lies. Get ready to bleed bleed bleed. Get ready to see see see. Get ready to be hollowed through: bleed bleed bleed.. Get ready to be swallowed in the sea see see.

The luxury of my taste wanted me wanting you in my grave.

5. For Bessie

Watch that bitch burn at the stake. The witch. The devil. The heretic. They cry.

Her dead truths pulsate in the embers of the flame. While the skin melts right off of her face. The children are cruel. They spit on her skull. Because they know that they are next when visions lead you to your death.

You’re a brave, brave soul. You hung on that cross like a brave soul.

6. Hogtied

Hogtied. You’re face pressed up against the basement floor. Hearin footsteps upstairs. Hearin’ voices turn into terror. Down the corridor. You see a light. Lookin’ further, you seein Christ. The voice is clearer, you hear them boots stompin down the stairs. Watch the shadow, they have a shovel, now your skull is shattered and you float away. You weren’t a coward you took the blame. Your name skatters like a wind to flames. Engulf the masses and empty the vain. A choice so savage, unsustained. You’re the only voice that matters and its regarded profane. Well your voice is garbage but its not insane. And im not a martyr, but that could be arranged. You built yourself an altar, you want some champagne. For your delusion. Well, you’re hallucinating. The scar on your face, so blatant. They’ll always call you deranged.

67 masks still #LAWG

Sun, 19 May 2013 06:11:05 -0400

67 masks still #LAWG

@kthei spittin for youth:kill 7in summer ‘12 #DIY w...

Tue, 07 May 2013 19:53:02 -0400

@kthei spittin for youth:kill 7in summer ‘12 #DIY w @mcsole

Photo

Mon, 06 May 2013 07:32:31 -0400

Devilman helping each other carry the lager. #preciousmoment

Sun, 05 May 2013 19:32:31 -0400

Devilman helping each other carry the lager. #preciousmoment

#34/100 #animalstyle

Sun, 05 May 2013 10:44:02 -0400

#34/100 #animalstyle

SBH_PODCAST_003 - ‘Dylan Carlson’ [Earth] [+...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:45:25 -0400

SBH_PODCAST_003 - ‘Dylan Carlson’ [Earth]
[+ Interview]

© Small But Hard Recordings 2013 – All rights reserved. www.small-but-hard.com/
Artwork : Bryce Davesne (electiic)

Guitarist, folklorist, and occultist, drone doom pioneer Dylan Carlson has spent the last 25 years propagating sublime minimalist drone rock with his band Earth. From the early days of epic distorted walls of sound, Carlson’s legacy more or less spawned a whole genre, his name connecting the dots between much of the modern stoner rock drone doom scene. Still eminently active, Earth’s second wave incorporates elements of American blues and country traditions within Carlson’s favoured epic format. Those old connections remain, the band’s releases abounding through Greg Anderson’s Southern Lord records, home of all things heavy.

A fascination with the cunning-folk traditions of the British Isles has provided inspiration for his latest solo project DRCarlsonAlbion. Modern interpretations of the UK traditional folk music are presented with a book describing Carlson’s exploratory visit to various fairy-faith sites in England, Scotland, and Wales. This eclectic podcast reflects this journey, and the breadth of musics that make up Carlson’s unique sound.

“The stuff I picked is what I’ve been listening to a lot lately. The last Earth record (Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light: Parts I &II), and my solo projects have been heavily inspired by English folk music and English folklore. Under the DRCarlsonAlbion header, I sort of brought that all together.

I’ve always hated that idea of folklore as…well, it’s obviously preserving the past, but that idea that folk has to be kept like a museum piece, like it can’t grow. There’s that weird kind of collector, antiquarian mentality about it where it’s like you’re trying to preserve something.

The same thing happened with the blues, where the original bluesmen were recording, and were trying to have hits, but then white people got involved, and it was all about authenticity. They’d go out and grab some guy out in the woods, and say ‘This is the originator’, because he was sitting on his back porch playing a song. It would turn out that he would be playing songs that he heard playing off the radio. They’d wrongfully attribute it to him because he was the old guy out in the woods, as opposed to the guy who went to the city and tried to make money with it. It isn’t some static thing that doesn’t move or grow or expand.

The last project I did, the DR Carlson & the Hackney Lass was really an attempt to do some sort of modern folk. We took stuff from old folk and tried to update it to modern times. That’s generally what the playlist reflects to me: there’s some really old traditional stuff, like the Scottish stuff on there, and then some modern interpretations, but also some new electronic music. To me, folk music is popular music, and popular music is folk music; it’s not high culture, it’s all music created by people to be listened to.

The Scottish music I chose is interesting. There’s the ‘low’ Scottish music, which is the stuff people dance to, and then there was the high music, which were all funeral musics and songs, usually about some hero who had died. It’s a lot slower, and a lot more repetitive than the dance music or the party music. I found that very interesting for that reason. I’ve always wondered where that came from. For some reason I’ve always gravitated to slower, more repetitive music. That’swhy I’ve always loved the dub thing too. A lot of the times they’re using the same rhythm tracks over and over, but changing stuff on top of it.

For a long time I was sort of anti-technology curmudgeon, but recently I’ve decided that technology exists, it’s more about what’s done with it that determines the outcome. The technology itself is not necessarily bad or evil, it’s how it’s employed, so I’ve been becoming more conversant with digital technology and electronic recording. I mean, I miss analogue, I like analogue better. Sound is a smooth waveform. With digital, not matter how fine a sampling rate you get, you’re eventually missing spots. You’ve got a curve that’s the soundwave, and you’re sampling it here, here, here, but not matter how high the sample rate, and they always argue, ‘Oh well the human ear can’t tell the difference between…but whatever, I think the human ear can, and does.

There’s some older electronic music that I put on the mix. When it first came out I was interested in some of the jungle and the drum ‘n’ bass stuff. I would listen to that, but I’d never really integrated it into anything I did. When I did the Last Touch release for DR Carson Albion I did some remixes for digital download, where we put some electronic stuff on the tracks. Now I’m starting to think about doing a project maybe involving electronics, and also how to integrate it into what I’m already doing.

When I get into music, I try to wait, rather than rush into it. I’ve always felt like you can be influenced by music, but it doesn’t mean you need to sound like those influences. There are other ways that it influences you. I take on influences and then I try to let them integrate and affect what I do, rather than trying to replicate my influences. I think if you get really hyped on some kind of music, and then learn that kind of music, then want to just play that kind of music, you end up sounding like the genres that you’re into, whereas if you give it some time to absorb, and integrate it with your own playing, the influence will still come out, but it will come out more with your own angle, or vibe. Obviously I have been very influenced by American music, country music and blues and so on, but I don’t do country records, or blues records.”

Carlson approached his latest project, “Falling with a Thousand Stars and Other Wonders from the House of Albion” in a fascinating way, inviting fans to sponsor the project through Kickstarter. As well as an album of songs, it includes a filmed documentary of Carlson’s trip to the UK to visit sites of various megalithic and human/fairy encounters, an exploration of ritual and folkloric magical practices, elaborately packaged and designed by Small But Hard founder Simon Fowler in collaboration with specialist advice from Shepherd’s Bookbinders’ Matthew Phillips and Joe Dixon. The release will contain a book to accompany the music, with the aim of illustrating the lyrical content of the songs, as well as an historical essay about the subject and some more informational content about the trip itself.

“I’ve always been a big book person. That’s how it started. Being exposed to all the materials you can use to make really nice books, the kind that you don’t see any more. That was the genesis of that side of it, wanting to do a ‘proper’ old- style book as part of it. I think that’s the only way nowadays to really do this, because so many people download, so many people just do digital format that you have to make something special, you have to make something people are going to want to keep. That’s what’s become really tricky about doing music is making it…it’s not just about making good music now, you also have to be thinking about what object you can make that people are going to want and going to want to pay for rather than just rip it off.

The trip to do the environmental recording for the kickstarter project was in May of last year (2012). Most of the sites were in a book on sites of fairy encounters, except for the one in Scotland. That site was from the trial records. It was where this cunning woman, Bessie Dunlop, had met her familiar. In the tradition, a dead human is somehow translated into the fairy realm. When they meet another human, they then take them to meet the fairies. He [her familiar] was a Scotsman who had been killed at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547. She was accused of witchcraft and then later executed. I had read about her encounter in a book, and then read the trial records.

I’m going to take the environmental recordings and go through them and then use them as a background for the music, for the atmosphere they protract. The first solo thing I did was a cassette. I had done some recordings around Waterloo station, because Lambeth used to be, in the Tudor era, where all the wizards, and alchemists, and fortunetellers and so on lived. Waterloo station was the site of one of my own experiences, so I went and did some recording around that area. I isolated some kinda weird stuff on that recording and then used it with the music on the cassette.”

Carlson clearly approaches everything is with a similar intensity and rigour, combined with a clarity and patience in digestion. He lives and breathes this deep and dense presence, his whole being a mirror for the work he produces. Even talking to him, his tone is precise and slow, the conversation punctuated by long pauses and drawn-out laughter. We return to Earth.

“The last two albums was definitely more a band thing, because a lot of it was improvised in the studio; we worked them out playing them live and then in the studio we’d use that as a basis and then play and see what happened.

Right now Earth’s been stripped back. It’s just me and Adrienne. The new stuff I think is more…song oriented in a strange way. It’s a little more concise. The last album was sort of lay-back-and-let-it-flow-over-you sort of album, whereas the newer stuff is a little more dramatic, grabs your attention. It’s more of a hard rock record in a way.

This one has involved a lot more of me writing stuff beforehand. I’ve always written the same way I guess…I’ll find something while I’m practising, a pattern I like, and begin to work on it, add variations, and then repeat it, and sort of add variations. I’ve been writing a lot of stuff lately, and it’s been coming out quite rapidly, whereas usually stuff comes out a lot slower and I have time to think about it. I feel like I’ve always kind of written the same way, but it’s hard to say with this album, I guess because it’s so so new, I haven’t really had a chance to examine what is going on with it all yet.”

Find out more about Earth here:
http://www.thronesanddominions.com

Find out more about DR Carlson Albion here:
http://drcarlsonalbion.wordpress.com/

Further reading about Bessie Dunlop and her friends here:
http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/scotland/ayrshire/occult/bessie-dunlop-the-witch-of-dalry.html

For more information on the House of Albion project, watch the video here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/160700771/dylancarlson-wonders-from-the-house-of-albion-lp-c

Further information on Simon Fowler here:
http://www.cataract-operation.com/information/

Further information on Shepherds Bookbinders here:
http://store.falkiners.com/store

CHRIS DORNER/PKD/ROTORCRAFT

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 19:33:40 -0400

I keep on referring to Chris Dorner in relation to this album for many reasons, mostly because I finished it in LA almost exactly when the chase started and its an eerie soundtrack for it but also I think it’s clearer in the lyrics for this song that I wrote almost 3 years ago…

Not to mention Philip K. Dick was a huge inspiration for this whole creative, pain-staking process.

“…Why don’t you shoot yourself and blast one through the throne. Everything they want they want you to speak your name, and reap what they’ve sewn, leaving no one to remember, leaving nothing but your crimes. Don’t put your hands up die where you stand and take with you their lies…get ready to bleed bleed bleed…”

It’s also funny to me another song is about burning alive…

Check it out for yourself. #ROTORCRAFT

http://smallbuthard.bandcamp.com/track/angeldust

Im neither for him or against him, i am merely a vessel.

SmallButHard interview/podcast. Coming soon.

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:19:23 -0400

SmallButHard interview/podcast. Coming soon.

Rotorcraft cd on sale tonite. The record gets delivered later...

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 06:05:10 -0400

Rotorcraft cd on sale tonite. The record gets delivered later this month via @smallbuthardrec

StraightUPPP @finallevel #icet #ethos

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 04:04:16 -0400

StraightUPPP @finallevel #icet #ethos

U live in the internet lil doggie #doggieinthewindow...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 05:49:39 -0400

U live in the internet lil doggie #doggieinthewindow #foundpolaroid #keeper

Time to get arty w these bootlegs #dontsleep

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 05:47:15 -0400

Time to get arty w these bootlegs #dontsleep

Tape dubs for tour #bootleg #coward #LApinkfilth #timelapsesplit...

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 23:40:39 -0400

Tape dubs for tour #bootleg #coward #LApinkfilth #timelapsesplit #megametalmix #postconsumerism

#stopmotionstill #wgtv #finetuning13

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 22:27:14 -0400

#stopmotionstill #wgtv #finetuning13

Finished stop motion still

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 22:20:32 -0400

Finished stop motion still

#jenkylife

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 07:41:16 -0400

#jenkylife

PEE THIS SHI NEW ALBUM TEASER LACED UP NEW STOPMOTION

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:05:39 -0400

PEE THIS SHI

NEW ALBUM TEASER

LACED UP

NEW STOPMOTION

UK/EUROPE DATES - NEED MORE GIGS!!!

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 23:19:00 -0400

The UK/EU schedule, still looking for dates to fill, any help is mucho appreciated.
Check it out!!!

4/5 London: Cafe Oto
4/6 Northampton: Labor Club
_
4/9 Birmingham:tba
4/10 Cambridge: The Portland
4/11 Manchester: The Bay Horse
4/12 Cardiff: Buffalo Bar TBC
4/13 Liverpool: Drop The Dumbells
4/14 Preston: Mad Ferret
4/18: Dublin: TBA
_
4/25 Duisberg, Germany: Djazz
4/26 Maastricht, Netherlands: Landbouwelang
_
5/1 Brussels, Belguim: Cafe Central
5/2 Zurich, Switzerland: TBA
5/3 Vienna, Austria: FLUC
5/4 Stuttgart, Germany: Nordbanhof Waggon
5/8 Geneva, Switzerland: Cave12
5/9 Berlin, Germany: Berghain Kantine

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NEW ALBUM TEASER

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 01:05:43 -0400

NEW ALBUM TEASER