JIM"SPARKLE GIRL"EVANS @ DISSONANT PLANE 8/8/09
Category: Music
This was Jim Evans "ONLY" solo performance ever. A lot of what he brought broke down but like a true experimental artist you make do w/ what you have. Since he knew i was recording it (an i sent the wav file to him soon as i got home) he used his recorder as a player of sounds,the same w/ another tape player,a short wave radio and another piece of equipment i believe along w/ the wires hooked up to a patch an he was rubbing the carpet an his keys,it sounded clanky to rosshsshhhwosh kinda sound. I'm going to miss Jim, he always was cool to me, and i couldn't believe the small turnout. It was I, jennifer(empty remainz),lars(aural antithesis),gogher,cunt zero,ffejj,demian johnston, and the cashier.
They missed a sick set tho. I really liked the back up tapes playing w/ the shortwave,and all the extra knick knack scrapings..I was right in front this weird speaker he was using so downstairs wouldn't get disturbed even tho he came runing up stairs looking at jim like was that you doing that noise??Yes exactly,he was getting ready for his noise set.I'm glad i got to see him solo be4 he left.For those who missed it i'll let you imagine what it was like.See ya at the Rendevous for methfest kickoff.Crazy tho,Sparkle Girl have been here so long,kind of a Seattle staple.I'm sure will adjust an then enjoy the SG shows more since jim won't be around all the shows. Thats one thing jim, where yer going i don't know if theres much expermental or noise,but u do have a bunch of shows to catatlogue like me from over the years.
Jim Katatonic
Friday, August 14, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
Catch This Debacle Double Header In Store!
August 1st: Summon Thrull & Thunder Grey Pilgrim in store performance
FREE IN STORE PERFORMANCE
SUMMON THRULL
THUNDER GREY PILGRIM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 1st, 2009
6:00 PM
http://www.myspace.com/summonthrull
http://www.myspace.com/thundergreypilgrim
I raved about the Summon Thrull when I first started PIPE! and just picked up the new Thunder Grey Pilgrim cdr from Sam at Chaistock.
I was hoping to get a big Debacle writeup done before the hiatus for the move but that will have to wait. Suffice to say that Sam Melancon, head honcho of DBL Records, continues to put out some of the best local music in a variety of styles. Consistently beautiful and sleek packaging, affordable and I have yet to be disappointed by a release.
Do yourself a favor and check this double header of Debacle Acts at Dissonant Plane on Saturday. Summon Thrull (Dustin from Physical Demon) was not supposed to be a live project but I think the gangload of positive reviews might have coaxed him. This might be the only time though so don't miss out. Like what I have heard so far from Thunder Gray Pilgrim.
Dissonant Plane has many of the Debacle releases in stock and Sam always has his distro suitcase so save a buck or two and come out to support local music stores, bands and one of the label owners who is helping to redefine what a label can and should be. Much respect from the Soccer Mom Ebonics camp.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Sparkle Girl Salutes The World's Pirate Parties and this success story from Sweden
STRASBOURG, France (CNN) -- With his navy blue suit jacket and gray-tinged hair, Christian Engstrom barely stands out from the sea of delegates seated in the European parliament.
Christian Engstrom, deputy leader of Sweden's Pirate Party who is a democratically elected member of the European parliament.
Christian Engstrom, deputy leader of Sweden's Pirate Party, is an elected member of the European parliament.
Yet the 49-year old Swede is a politician with a difference -- he is the world's first democratically elected Internet pirate, and the leader of a growing international movement that Hollywood sees as a major threat to its movie-profit "treasure chest."
In April of this year the Pirate Party gained international notoriety during a much publicized Stockholm court case, in which the founders of a file sharing site, The Pirate Bay, were given jail sentences and ordered to pay a fine to the entertainment industry.
The much publicized tribunal and its verdict helped the Pirate Party (which is not affiliated with The Pirate Bay) ride a wave of popular support that saw its membership total triple from 14,000 to 42,000.
In June these figures translated into electoral support, as the single-issue party reeled in 7.1 percent of Sweden's vote in the European elections, securing one of the country's 18 seats in parliament.
According to Engstrom, who is the party's deputy leader, their goal in Brussels is now to "ensure that Europe chooses a better road into the information society."
The party's ultimate aim is to deregulate copyright, abolish the patent system and decrease online surveillance.
Party members hold up Linux, the free operating system, and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, as examples of what has been achieved through collaboration on the Internet, even though the trend is still in its infancy.
Engstrom, a former computer software programmer, believes the Internet's freedoms and participatory culture are under threat.
Don't Miss
* Join piracy discussion CNN's Facebook page
* Pirate party wins surprise Euro seat
* A-Z of online piracy
* Is online piracy a good thing?
"Things have been going in the wrong direction -- more surveillance, more control of everything we do on the net and also stricter copyright laws -- that's the wrong course for Europe," Engstrom told CNN. "We want to set a new one."
The prospect of reforming Internet laws has found particular resonance among younger voters. According to polls, nearly one in five Swedes under the age of 30 voted for The Pirate Party. Watch The Screening Room's piracy special online
The international film industry, on the other hand, is less than thrilled with the Pirate Party's objectives. They say global piracy is looting billions of dollars of their hard-earned profits every year.
A Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) study from 2006 suggested that pirate "booty" amounted to more than $6 billion worldwide. In the UK, campaign group Respect for Film says $818 million (£500 million) is lost to piracy annually.
Since the early 1980s the major Hollywood movie studios, represented by the MPAA, have fought hard to eliminate piracy -- both in the form of bootlegging, and more recently online file sharing. Punishments for file-sharers have ranged from fines and Internet bans to jail time.
"They have approached [piracy] in a very stupid way," Engstrom told CNN. "They're alienating their customers, despite the fact that they are making more money than ever. Hollywood had its best year ever [in terms of box office revenues] in 2008, so why are they complaining? I can't understand that."
Members of the film industry contend that arguments like these don't tell the whole story. Lavinia Carey of Respect for Film says that while box office earnings may appear strong, DVD sales are suffering.
"If a box office success is trumpeted in the media on the opening weekend, it makes the public think that copyright theft isn't actually doing any harm," Carey told CNN.
"But very often cinemas are just a showcase for the more profitable end of the market, which includes DVD sales and sales to television companies."
According to Carey, the slump in subsidiary sales has had a domino effect on the entire industry.
"Employment is affected, people who are actually making movies are affected, and in the long term the consumer will suffer because we won't have the high-quality content in the future that we have come to expect," she said.
Engstrom and his fellow pirates feel little compassion for this line of argument.
"That's the way life is when you're running a business," Engstrom told CNN.
The Screening Room
Bringing you the inside track on all aspects of the movie business around the globe.
See more from the show »
"Things change, technology changes and the business environment changes. Successful businesses adapt rather than whine."
Should file sharing be legalized or it is nothing more than theft? Tell us below in the SoundOff box or join in the discussion on CNN's Facebook page
Engstrom's views appear to be striking a chord with young activists across Europe.
Since its foundation in 2006, the Swedish Pirate Party has inspired officially registered sister parties in six countries including Austria, the Czech Republic, France and Spain. Germany's "Piratenpartei" is the second largest, having snared nearly one percent of the German vote during the European elections.
While Engstrom is proud of his party's influence, he is not surprised by its swift achievements.
"It's been three and a half years working constantly on it, on a daily basis. To someone from the outside it may look like we just appeared, but it's not like that to us."
With an armada of pirate parties forming across the continent, the movement looks to set sail into what Engstrom hopes will be a bright future.
"It's now that the pirate movement begins. It's now that we want to reform first Europe and then hopefully the world."
Christian Engstrom, deputy leader of Sweden's Pirate Party who is a democratically elected member of the European parliament.
Christian Engstrom, deputy leader of Sweden's Pirate Party, is an elected member of the European parliament.
Yet the 49-year old Swede is a politician with a difference -- he is the world's first democratically elected Internet pirate, and the leader of a growing international movement that Hollywood sees as a major threat to its movie-profit "treasure chest."
In April of this year the Pirate Party gained international notoriety during a much publicized Stockholm court case, in which the founders of a file sharing site, The Pirate Bay, were given jail sentences and ordered to pay a fine to the entertainment industry.
The much publicized tribunal and its verdict helped the Pirate Party (which is not affiliated with The Pirate Bay) ride a wave of popular support that saw its membership total triple from 14,000 to 42,000.
In June these figures translated into electoral support, as the single-issue party reeled in 7.1 percent of Sweden's vote in the European elections, securing one of the country's 18 seats in parliament.
According to Engstrom, who is the party's deputy leader, their goal in Brussels is now to "ensure that Europe chooses a better road into the information society."
The party's ultimate aim is to deregulate copyright, abolish the patent system and decrease online surveillance.
Party members hold up Linux, the free operating system, and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, as examples of what has been achieved through collaboration on the Internet, even though the trend is still in its infancy.
Engstrom, a former computer software programmer, believes the Internet's freedoms and participatory culture are under threat.
Don't Miss
* Join piracy discussion CNN's Facebook page
* Pirate party wins surprise Euro seat
* A-Z of online piracy
* Is online piracy a good thing?
"Things have been going in the wrong direction -- more surveillance, more control of everything we do on the net and also stricter copyright laws -- that's the wrong course for Europe," Engstrom told CNN. "We want to set a new one."
The prospect of reforming Internet laws has found particular resonance among younger voters. According to polls, nearly one in five Swedes under the age of 30 voted for The Pirate Party. Watch The Screening Room's piracy special online
The international film industry, on the other hand, is less than thrilled with the Pirate Party's objectives. They say global piracy is looting billions of dollars of their hard-earned profits every year.
A Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) study from 2006 suggested that pirate "booty" amounted to more than $6 billion worldwide. In the UK, campaign group Respect for Film says $818 million (£500 million) is lost to piracy annually.
Since the early 1980s the major Hollywood movie studios, represented by the MPAA, have fought hard to eliminate piracy -- both in the form of bootlegging, and more recently online file sharing. Punishments for file-sharers have ranged from fines and Internet bans to jail time.
"They have approached [piracy] in a very stupid way," Engstrom told CNN. "They're alienating their customers, despite the fact that they are making more money than ever. Hollywood had its best year ever [in terms of box office revenues] in 2008, so why are they complaining? I can't understand that."
Members of the film industry contend that arguments like these don't tell the whole story. Lavinia Carey of Respect for Film says that while box office earnings may appear strong, DVD sales are suffering.
"If a box office success is trumpeted in the media on the opening weekend, it makes the public think that copyright theft isn't actually doing any harm," Carey told CNN.
"But very often cinemas are just a showcase for the more profitable end of the market, which includes DVD sales and sales to television companies."
According to Carey, the slump in subsidiary sales has had a domino effect on the entire industry.
"Employment is affected, people who are actually making movies are affected, and in the long term the consumer will suffer because we won't have the high-quality content in the future that we have come to expect," she said.
Engstrom and his fellow pirates feel little compassion for this line of argument.
"That's the way life is when you're running a business," Engstrom told CNN.
The Screening Room
Bringing you the inside track on all aspects of the movie business around the globe.
See more from the show »
"Things change, technology changes and the business environment changes. Successful businesses adapt rather than whine."
Should file sharing be legalized or it is nothing more than theft? Tell us below in the SoundOff box or join in the discussion on CNN's Facebook page
Engstrom's views appear to be striking a chord with young activists across Europe.
Since its foundation in 2006, the Swedish Pirate Party has inspired officially registered sister parties in six countries including Austria, the Czech Republic, France and Spain. Germany's "Piratenpartei" is the second largest, having snared nearly one percent of the German vote during the European elections.
While Engstrom is proud of his party's influence, he is not surprised by its swift achievements.
"It's been three and a half years working constantly on it, on a daily basis. To someone from the outside it may look like we just appeared, but it's not like that to us."
With an armada of pirate parties forming across the continent, the movement looks to set sail into what Engstrom hopes will be a bright future.
"It's now that the pirate movement begins. It's now that we want to reform first Europe and then hopefully the world."
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Awesome Prick Decay Archive on Ubuweb!
Saw this posted on myspace. I first learned of Prick Decay in a fabulous interview in Bananafish where they portrayed themselves as incestuous siblings with a shared love of odd smells and dirty sound. It was a wonderful introduction into the UK underground tape scene and Dylan has continued to produce a mind boggling work of sound. This will be today's listening.
If you like this kind of thing youmight check with Dissonant Plane as I think they might still have a copy of the rare and lovely Prick Decay "Soup and Fruit" cassette I traded in.
UBUWEB
Current mood: blissful
ton of blood stereo and solo nyoukis works up now for free at the mighty UBUWEB
http://ubu.com/sound/nyoukis.html
dig in!
x
If you like this kind of thing youmight check with Dissonant Plane as I think they might still have a copy of the rare and lovely Prick Decay "Soup and Fruit" cassette I traded in.
UBUWEB
Current mood: blissful
ton of blood stereo and solo nyoukis works up now for free at the mighty UBUWEB
http://ubu.com/sound/nyoukis.html
dig in!
x
Thursday, July 2, 2009
More Releases, Videos and Podcasts On The Way
Later this week we'll have several new releases in various numbers as well as new videos on Soccer Mom Ebonics Television and new tracks on the podcast. Stay Tuned.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Older Merch Still Available from Soccer Mom Ebonics
Kurt was kind enough to post an update about merchandise we still have left in the Sparkle Girl/Soccer Mom Ebonics cupboard. In this case it is copies we still have of our split 7" with our fave SLF noiseniks Slicing Grandpa! First band we ever did a split cdr with so it was only natural that our first black wax offering was a split with the other SG we love so well. We enjoyed how it turned out and even more surprisingly some other people did as well (see below).
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
 | Sparkle Girl/Slicing Grandpa "Hexis/Daddy O Strangler" 7" Soccer Mom Ebonics Records SME040 "Hexis," backed with "Daddy O Strangler" is a total underground freakout in eight minutes or less. Guitars twist and melt in trembling piles, electronics hiss and churn, no apologies to taste talent or quality. Edition of 500 on Soccer Mom Ebonics Records. Inserts have words and images and stuff. Side A. Sparkle Girl "Hexis" (4:30) Side B. Slicing Grandpa "Daddy O Strangler" (4:31) $5.00 cash or trade. Paypal accepted. Contact sparklegirlnoise@yahoo.com or contact Kurt at myspace.com/sparklegirlnoise Reviews: "Split Seattle dual-duo 7-Inch with the heavy gritty industrial strength drone of Sparkle Girl (Kurt D, & Jim E.) on the A side. Their track Hexis fuzzes out to near silence like explosions in space breaking the needle with such heavily distorted bass shaking and vibrating in your chest. A ghastly snowstorm of metal chains and barbed wire to then just end abruptly. Side B is Slicing Grandpa playing a stoner doom-ish hypnotic rawk track. Lo-fi recording and experimental sounds keep it real and out of the any metal genre, but you won’t get a sense of their true sound from this track. I still like it." -No Eyed Bird (http://unfunrecords.com/wordpress/?p=70) "after about thirteen years of making noise, this is the first time that kurt and jim's music has graced the smooth surface of vinyl. they're no strangers to analog mediums, but tape (reel to reel and cassette) has been their preferable modus operandi. while this duo's name may lead you to believe that they don't take a serious approach to their music, that's far from the truth. i was really happy to hear that they play straight-forward experimental noise. not only that, but it's damn good as well. hexis begins by building itself around a layer of undulating mechanical drone. slowly, they'll implement shrill distortion over the lurching foundation, letting that ride before getting a little denser as hexis changes shape: all echoes and rumbles. not content to let one idea go on for too long, the track will shift once again for its noisy conclusion. i like how even though the piece moved along slowly, it never felt cold or dark, like is so often the case, and the more discordant aspects matched up well with the overall feel and never got to the point of being overbearing." Smooth Assailing (http://smoothassailing.blogspot.com/2007/09/sparkle-girl-slicing-grandpa.html) "Sparkle Girl = noise church, climbing up the spires. You thump your chest, and then what? Large chunks of unsorted text on Sparkle Girl’s Myspace page is either indicative of bigger problems, or just really enthusiastic and non-tech savvy. Slicing Grandpa is still slicing away at some dark, obscurant corner of goth, hometaper industrial, and outsider psych dirge. Pretty noisy, sludgy pacing, and doomy dreadful, but this guy knows what’s up as evidenced by past releases, so it’s not an act. Or it is an act, but it’s executed with a modicum of foresight. Either way, 50/50 on here." Dusted (http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/708) "a wildly dunting noise vortex that detonates their amp-destroying Dead C style with torrents of almost Whitehouse-styled electricity. On the flip Slicing Grandpa play cough syrup takes on the cyborg sound of prime Chrome." David Keenan (http://www.volcanictongue.com/artist.php?art=Slicing+Grandpa) "sparkle girl plays dark and crude drone noise that moves and shift in simple eletronic chunks....not a steady wall of drone but crude cut n paste approach. slicing grandpa is one of those trange bands that falls somwhere between TG and toll.... dirge oriented heavy bass playing soup and stew but with a washed out reverberated new wave camp. we like it. it has an underground scum and they keep putting out vinyl which is cool." Dominic Fernow Hospital Records "Slicin Grandpa ponied up w/their newest release, a split 7" between them & Sparkle Girl. Readers of this Blog knows that Slicin Grandpa can do no wrong, so let's focus for a moment on Sparkle Girl's admission. Hmmmm.......I'd say they sound very much like the grizzly mayhem spawned from that rotator blade off that helicopter just moments before/after it loped off Vic Morrow's head while makin that Twilight Zone movie. SG aren't quite so dramatic, eschewin decapitation for a good old fashioned aural vivisection & since it's unlikely they's ever gonna be invited to play halftime at the Super Bowl, the NFL's none the wiser to their gutteral hijinx. Released on the Soccer Mom Ebonics label in a rd ed. of 500" siltblog |
Soccer Mom Ebonics Television Has Launched!
Thanks to a variety of friends and colleagues, Scott Colburn, Octal, Katatonik, Dave G.R.A.V.E.S., Smitty, CursedChimera and Tim Boone to name a few we have begun to accrue a little bit of a video archive of Sparkle Girl performances and clips of other artists. Right now that includes some of the groups that helped kick everyone's ass at our 14th Anniversary Sparkle Girl/Soccer Mom Ebonics celebration. This includes ( and more are coming) vids from Goly Grim, Slicing Grandpa, the touring Sparkle Girl and The Sparkle Girl Finale to the 2.28.09 evening.
www.youtube.com/user/SparkleGirlJim
We hope you enjoy
www.youtube.com/user/SparkleGirlJim
We hope you enjoy
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
