I know my readership consists primarily of people who I see on a regular basis (thus rendering this announcement somewhat redundant) and people who I never see due to the geographical distance separating us (thus rendering this announcement somewhat irrelevant), but bear with me.

My band Astronaut Down is having a CD release party next Friday, 05/25, at Exchange.  For those of you in the city, take pretty much any train to Fulton St.  For those of you not in the city, take the Fung Wah or Jet Blue or whatever.  It’s free, the drinks are cheap, and it should be a lot of fun.  We’ll be hanging out, playing some acoustic songs, and listening to the CD until the wee hours.  Hope to see you punks there.

So, apparently Damiera broke up.  And only two months after I first discovered their music.  I’m hugely bummed by this news.  I can’t imagine having a label release our album and fund an international tour only to call it quits, but I guess stuff like that happens all the time.  Personally, if I were able to ditch my day job to play full-time with my band, it would take nothing less than an act of God to convince me to go back.  Meanwhile, I’m sure Nickleback will be together forever, cranking out album after album until the sun explodes.  There’s no justice in the world of music I suppose.

In other news, in case you’ve been feeling like I need to start another project in order for you to really satisfy your need for an Ultrajoebot fix, you can go check out my other band (which doesn’t really exist), Curse of the Deep Sea Panda.  It’s an outlet for Keith and me to unleash our happy pop songs on the world, three minutes at a time.  And don’t worry, no pandas were drowned in the recording of these songs.  Some booking company actually contacted us to offer us some shows, so in the event that Jeff gets married and moves to Canada, or Jeremy goes to dentist school, maybe we’ll throw some gigs together.  But most likely these songs will live in online form only.

With the current metalcore scene producing a new band every minute, each one tuning their guitars just as low as the last one, it’s easy to get lost.  Someone screams indiscernibly over pounding double bass, which then alternates with a catchy, melodic anthem of a chorus, and the occasional breakdown is thrown in for good measure.  The formula sounds great for about 15 minutes, after which the monotony takes over and the repetitive hollow structures start blending the interchangeable songs into a calculated blur, leaving you desperate for something with actual substance.  Going to see a show with four metalcore bands on the bill can be like listening to Atreyu on your iPod on the way to the venue, to see an Atreyu tribute band open for Atreyu.  When the house music blasts over the PA in between sets, you’re probably in store for some more Atreyu.

So it’s great to hear one of the bands who pioneered the genre, continuing to break new ground, unafraid of pushing the envelope even further.  On their new album Versions, Miami veterans Poison The Well largely abandon the hardcore roots that they had already begun shying away from on 2003’s You Come Before You.  Instead of the slow, chunky palm-muted riffs that were so heavily featured on their earlier work, Versions finds guitarist Ryan Primack employing a more blues-influenced style, exploring the whole spectrum of his instrument.  Like the dirty tone and dissonant chord voicings used to such brutal effect by bands like Tomahawk, it’s less of a swampy crunch and more of a spaghetti western jangle.  It’s loud, noisy, and beautifully discordant, but most of all, it doesn’t sound like anything their peers are doing.

The band also experiments with new instruments to produce some surprising textures, like the brass and guiro combination in “Riverside,” or the Portishead-esque Rhodes in “You Will Not Be Welcomed.”  The frantic tambourine in “Letter Thing” might even be reminiscent of a hyper blues hoedown, if not for Jeff Moreira’s brutal screams that propel the song‘s breakneck pace, begging, “Give me sunshine, make me happy.”  His vocals always preserve the delicate balance between a restrained, brooding tension, and completely over-the-top, end-of-the-world screeching.  Where the album sometimes falls short is the band’s reluctance to allow the occasional memorable sing-along choruses that were so carefully distributed throughout You Come Before You.  The strange and ambiguous tonalities that make up the bulk of these songs are refreshingly original, but a smattering of more accessible hooks could better sustain the sense of balance throughout.

Versions has a spectacular range, from the hushed and twisted atmosphere created by “Slow Good Morning” to the trademark earth-shaking cacophony of songs like “Naïve Monarch.”  In a scene so plagued by imitators with no real depth, we rely on bands like Poison The Well to remind us why we got into heavy music in the first place, and to hopefully revitalize the genre for everyone else.  No one expects them to rehash their past work, which is a blessing in a way, because an album like Tear From The Red wouldn’t have nearly the emotional impact today that it did five years ago.  It puts the band in the perfect position to create whatever kind of music they want to, and luckily the gamble pays off.  In the end, it’s as impossible as it is pointless to compare Versions to their back catalogue, so I think it’s enough to say that it stands up perfectly well on its own.

Jeff and I saw an ensemble called So Percussion play two pieces by Steve Reich at Miller Theatre on Friday. Although it could be argued that Columbia University is perhaps a tad over-enthusiastic about the man they seem to consider “America’s greatest living composer,” in this case I would say that their excitement is justified. The music of Steve Reich seems to have attained some newfound accessibility, or at least popularity, as of late. With multiple remix albums and countless re-issues and re-recordings of his back catalogue, it seems like he is the minimalist composer of the moment to name drop. I’m pretty sure the same people who put Reich Remixed on in the background while they sautee a Rachel Ray recipe, are the same ones I saw giving So Percussion a standing ovation after nodding off for 2/3 of the second piece. But enough about them.

My air of superiority aside, Steve Reich is definitely one of my favorite composers. I love his affinity for polyrhythms, and the way he will repeat a section over and over, before finally displacing one of the voices by a 16th note to make sure you’re still awake. The first piece played on Friday, Music For Pieces Of Wood, was performed by five percussionists hitting blocks of wood with various pitches. Although there isn’t much going on dynamically (or obviously tonally), the piece has some amazing rhythmic ideas. The individual players will be playing along in different time signatures, and everything will be on the verge of just sounding like noise, when they suddenly all pull together and play in unison for a brief moment. It’s a fairly simple premise, to keep building more and more contrupuntal movement, and stripping it all away at once, but the effect it has is pretty incredible.

The second piece is probably my favorite by Reich, Music For 18 Musicians. For the most part, all 55 minutes are built on a couple suspended chords that alternate gradually. The main reason I find this piece so beautiful is the different orchestration techniques he uses, and the various timbres he is able to create with his pallette. You will hear the same chord swell several times in a row, but each time it evolves. First it might be three female voices, a marimba, and a cello; next it might be a violin, baritone sax, bass clarinet, and piano, etc. The colors of the piece are amazing, and in the end, it really can’t be described. If you haven’t heard this piece, you should really check it out. It’s even more moving in a live setting.

The players themselves are obviously very talented, to be able to pull of something so complex, so effectively. It was definitely entertaining to watch, as the performers wandered about the stage between instruments, with three people sometimes squeezed in to play on a single marimba. Of course, the question now is how I will take this experience and use all these ideas in my own music. Jeff and I agreed that we would need another melodic instrument before we could pull off any additive rhythm type stuff, but it’s definitely something we want to do more of. King Crimson was able to do it on Three Of A Perfect Pair with just two guitars, so it is possible.

To summarize, here are the things you should take away from my ramblings:
1. Steve Reich is awesome.
2. So Percussion are awesome.
3. Rachel Ray is lame.
4. If you know anyone who plays guitar, tell them how they’re really not reaching their full potential unless they’re playing with Astronaut Down.

That is all.

So Jeremy and I went to see Killswitch Engage at Roseland last night, and they were amazing.  If it’s all right with you, I’ll just skip over He Is Legend and Chimaira, except perhaps to note the following common mindset between the two bands: “This is called 4/4.  Here is the downbeat.  This is where we change the chord, if we decide to change it at all.  Now everybody join the pit and see who gets injured.”  Both bands were mind-numbingly boring, but maybe that’s because I was too lame to participate in either (a) the moshpit or (b) the smoking of copius amounts of weed.  Those engaging in either of the aforementioned activities seemed to have an OK time.

Luckily, Dragonforce was all kinds of awesome.  Sure, they’re silly and over the top, but that’s the point, because they have so much fun doing their thing.  Their singer struggled to hit a good 30% of the notes, but I forgave him because of his enthusiasm and leather pants.  Both guitarists were absolutely sick, and their keyboardist, who had the best stage presence of all of them, even rocked a pink keytar for a couple songs.  I don’t know that their music is anything I would listen to on a regular basis, but their songs have so much wacky energy, making them a great band to see live.

Now on to Killswitch.  Unfortunately lead guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz is sitting out this tour due to back problems, and Jeremy and I were both excited to see him play.  Luckily the very skilled Pat Lachman (of Damageplan) was sitting in for him, and the band didn’t miss a beat.  The huge, chunky riffs in songs like “My Curse” and “The End of Heartache” sound amazing in a live setting, as do the faster songs like “Unbroken” and “Breathe Life.”   Vocalist Howard Jones was spot on all night, whether unleashing his trademark blood-curdling scream or singing the anthemic choruses (with the help of the sold out Roseland crowd).

There were of course a few songs I wish they had played but didn’t really expect them to, like “For You,” but there were also a couple surprising omissions, like “The Arms of Sorrow.”  All in all, it was a strong setlist, except perhaps for the ill-advised cover of Dio’s “Holy Diver.”  No matter how flawlessly the song is performed, it will always conjure images of South Park for me.  But overall it was a great show.  In a world full of so many “studio bands,” the live precision of Killswitch Engage is definitely an inspiring thing to see.  If you get a chance to check them out on the No Fear tour, do yourself the favor and go.  You just might want to show up an hour or two late to miss the weak openers.

From the beginning seconds of M(US)IC, the debut album from Buffalo’s Damiera, it’s clear that this is a band who likes playing at full throttle. Dual guitars ceaselessly interweave meandering angular melodies and beautifully discordant chord stabs, while a distorted bass throbs and crawls between sporadic drum hits, everything somehow melding together into this math-y marriage of noise. It’s a fusion of four integral parts, interlocking so precisely that they’re almost indistinguishable from each other, each contributing equally to the final result. The band careens along at a breakneck pace throughout this collection of ten songs, each track ending as abruptly as it starts, until the album is over and you realize you haven‘t exhaled in 31 minutes.

For someone like me, Damiera embodies a perfect balance of all my many musical tastes. The kid who listened to all that punk in high school revels in their constant energy, relentlessly pushing each song to the finish with the requisite number of shout-along choruses and bouncy yelps. The college prog nerd giddily closes his eyes while he tries to count along with the aid of a calculator as time signatures seamlessly shift and melt in and out of each other. And the self-assured certified music snob, so confident in the infallibility of his own preferences, charts out the whole thing to make sure all the right compositional elements are there. This is music with an immediate vitality, achieving a huge impact on first listen, but still rewarding repeat listens with a generous amount of hidden subtleties.

The band’s sound is like theoretical better versions of all the bands you might cite as influences. If Fall Of Troy learned to play to a metronome, or if Minus The Bear practiced their instruments for six hours a day, or if Further Seems Forever ditched emo and surrendered to their prog tendencies, it might come close to what Damiera are about. Undeniably confident, M(US)IC is a remarkably mature debut album, sounding more like the product of decades of careful perfection than a rookie band finding its sea legs on a rickety raft. While it’s true that the band cranks it to 11 for the vast majority of the album, they’re also clever enough to make the rare tranquil interludes really count, not to mention wise enough to cut the last song off before you have time to feel like you’ve been bombarded by such an onslaught.

If there is a weak element on this album, it’s definitely the vocals, which can’t help but be overshadowed by the robotic precision of the rest of the instruments. Dave Raymond sounds great when he’s half-singing, half-shouting at the top of his range, but as soon as he pulls back, the conviction leaves and he sounds vulnerable and limp against such flawlessly performed music. Luckily these instances are rare and they’re more than made up for by the transcendent moments like the chorus of “Immure,” in which Raymond perfectly belts out every single word over a jerky fist-pumping 5/4 groove.

Assuming the world is ready for Damiera, there should be no limit to what they can accomplish with this album. Though their dynamic range is perhaps a little limited, the diverse elements that make up their trademark sound should appeal to fans of indie, punk, prog, math rock, and everywhere in between. When the chunky “Obsessions” eventually stutters to its final cadence, you’ll probably want to either take the time to reflect on the experience, or you’ll start it over from the beginning. I usually find myself among the latter. I’ve been waiting for a band with this level of technical proficiency to manage a sound that is actually accessible from start to finish, and having finally found them, M(US)IC won’t be leaving my CD player for awhile.

Talking to my mom on the phone tonight, I realized just how bad I am at keeping people up to date on what’s going on in my world, so I thought I’d give you all a quick update. I’m still hard at work in the studio (my apartment) recording and mixing the “new” Astronaut Down album, which I hope to have done by March. All that’s left to record is a handful of vocal tracks, so we’re making good progress. I just have to work my studio wizardry and somehow make sonic sense of this densely-layered concept album madness.

We’re also trying to put some shows together for this summer around the northeast with Edensong. It’s a lot of work, but hopefully the payoff will be exposing our music to a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise hear it, and maybe even sell a CD or two while we’re at it. And, you know, maybe we’ll get discovered by some random A&R guy in Boston or Toronto and be catapulted into superstardom. Maybe.

Of course, the trade off for being this busy is that my mind is constantly preoccupied and I can’t seem to manage more than a single coherent thought a day. Today I used it up on a discussion about different laser sounds (specifically the red laser sound vs. the blue laser sound) with my friend Sandy. Tomorrow I think I will proclaim my hat itchy. It’s hard to say. With just one thought, you have to make it count, you know?

Oh, and it’s almost my Birthday! If you want to buy me stuff, I started a Wist, and of course there’s always Amazon. Or if you’d rather buy yourself a present, I recommend Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (which I *finally* finished) or the debut Damiera CD. It’s crazy, in the best possible way. I just might bore you with a long and meandering review of that at some point.

OK, that’s all for now.  Come see Astronaut Down at The Mean Fiddler on Saturday, OK?

So, it’s only been 2007 for 12 hours, but I feel like this isn’t going to be my year. Call it a forboding of evil. We woke up at 7:00 this morning because one of our bedroom windows is leaking, just days after our radiator threw up radiator water all over our floor, forcing me to obtain a second copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Two voicemails and five hours later and our super still shows no signs of caring. Super. Finally, our cheer-up waffles were tough and soggy, and I dropped mine *apple butter side down* on the chair.

So having concluded that this year is a lost cause, I thought I would recap my top 10 CDs of 2006. I wouldn’t be surprised if I lose an arm or get attacked by bears this year - possibly both, as bears often have an appetite for arms. But no matter how many times the super ignores my calls, there should at least be some good music. So let’s take a look at last year’s list, shall we?

01. My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
02. Brand New - The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me
03. Jeremy Enigk - World Waits
04. Boy Sets Fire - The Misery Index: Notes From The Plague Years
05. Muse - Black Holes And Revelations
06. Tool - 10,000 Days
07. Killswitch Engage - As Daylight Dies
08. The Mars Volta - Amputechture
09. Thursday - A City By The Light Divided
10. Mastodon - Blood Mountain

1. I’m having another song featured on RedFizz tomorrow.  It would seem their standards have lowered.  Or maybe they just really like my new, more mysterious picture.

2. Also tomorrow, Astronaut Down is playing at The Blarney Stone, 410 8th Ave between 30th and 31st St.  We go on around 11, should be a good time.

3. I wasn’t drunk when I called Archie last night.  If you talk to him and he implies otherwise, he’s lying.  I just wanted to set the record straight.

Jeremy Enigk played at the Bowery Ballroom last night and it was one of the best shows I have seen. The only real downside was the first two bands – I have to wonder if he only allows such mediocre opening acts so as to avoid being upstaged (as if that were even possible). The Digs were an overly sincere ambient/emo trio that were apparently pretty big fans of themselves, but their songs were little more than a single chord progression with maybe 25 words repeated slowly for 4-5 minutes. The King Left suffered from the opposite problem, avoiding sincerity altogether by affecting pseudo-British accents and stumbling through a series of indistinguishable bluesy jangling rock tunes. Their lead guitarist had a tendency to repeat the same bad jokes between songs and their drummer sped up every time he switched from the hi-hat to the ride cymbal, but by the end of their set, I think I was the only one who noticed.

Enigk’s band then took the stage and started with an extended version of “A New Beginning” from World Waits, a perfect overture to an enthusiastic 90-minute set, before kicking into “Been Here Before.” The song selection was well-balanced, covering both solo albums, as well as two covers and a song from The United States of Leland soundtrack. The band complimented him well throughout, adding energy but never getting in the way of the main attraction. Enigk’s voice (previously referred to as “the main attraction”) shined from start to finish, from the bottom of his raspy baritone in “City Tonight” and “Damien Dreams” to the anxious cries at the top of his register in “Shade and the Black Hat” and John Lennon’s “Mother.” He added a couple new vocal flourishes to increase the intensity in several songs, but still honored the album versions by keeping the big payoff moments largely intact.

Though it would have been great to hear “Ballroom Blitz” or “Burn” in a live setting (not to mention a Sunny Day Real Estate song or two), there was enough essential Enigk, old and new, to keep everyone happy. What struck me the most was just how humble and appreciative he was, stopping repeatedly to thank everyone in attendance for their support. I had spent the previous night agonizing over the track listing for the demo CD I intended to give him, but when the moment of truth came, I headed for the door. I was tired and I had to work in 8 hours, what can I say. Also I would have ended up in some embarassing combination of a shameless gush/swoon while I drooled over him, and making no impression at all might be better than making a bad one.

On the plus side, I received an e-mail this morning from a guy who stumbled across my music on Myspace and wanted to buy a CD, so I figure I’ll mail Enigk’s to him. Balancing the universe and all that. I’ll meet him one day. *sigh*