Category Archives: NYC

A Farewell to Sound Fix

I read today that the Williamsburg record store Sound Fix is closing down in mid-April. Given that I’ve spent a fair amount of time there — both at their original Bedford Avenue location and at their current space on North 11th Street — this hits home in a lot of ways. It would be an understatement to say that I’ve bought quite a bit of music there over the years. And during the days when they had a performance space, I saw more than a few fantastic events: an Alex Ross reading; fantastic acoustic sets from Scritti Politti and Oxford Collapse and Arthur & Yu. I put together a couple of events there as well — a benefit for the East River Music Project and a music-themed reading.

And here’s where, maybe, I start pontificating. If you click on the Gothamist link above, you’ll note that the first two words in the slug for the story are “dying breed.” And…I don’t know about that. Rather, I think that “record stores are dying” meme has a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. But, at least in the northern Brooklyn area around Sound Fix, I don’t know if I’d say that record stores are dwindling. If you walk from Greenpoint down to, say, Metropolitan Avenue, your route will take you past a whole lot of record stores: Permanent Records and Record Grouch and Co-Op 87 and Sound Fix and Academy Annex and Earwax. It’ll also take you past the original location of Heaven Street, before they relocated to Bushwick. And I’ve seen nothing to indicate that Rough Trade isn’t still planning to open a store somewhere in Williamsburg — all of which leads me to think that, at least in certain neighborhoods, finding a record store isn’t hard.

That said, this quote from Sound Fix’s James Bradley, in the Gothamist piece, suggests the complexities of the issue — and, probably, will point some young economics writer to create a stunning analysis of North Brooklyn’s record stores in the future.

“We’ve been selling more and more vinyl, and I really thought for a period of time we could make it through just selling vinyl,” says Bradley. “But we kept running into the same problem: the record companies weren’t producing enough….”

As someone who’s been trying (to no avail) to find the new Nick Cave on LP at a record store in New York, I can see his point. Of the stores on my theoretical record-store pub crawl above, most have a sizable amount of used vinyl on sale. Finding a shop where I know that a particular LP is on sale isn’t always easy.

And, while I have good things to say about pretty much every indie record store in New York City, I’m going to miss Sound Fix tremendously.

Hockey Night in Brooklyn

Last Friday, I went with some friends to Floyd Bennett Field to watch Brooklyn’s New York Aviators take to the ice against the Long Island Stingrays. I’m going to rely on Wikipedia’s entry on the North East Professional Hockey League — to which the Aviators are/were affiliated — to explain some of the context here:

The NEPHL, wrought with financial problems from the day they dropped their first puck, is down to two teams with the Connecticut C-Dogs ceasing operations with the forfeited playoff game vs. Rhode Island. The New York Aviators will apply to the Federal Hockey League…

There’s something inherently enjoyable about a professional hockey game with a ten dollar ticket, seats close to the ice, and a friendly bartender upstairs. And the “human slingshot” contest between periods — which involved watching a khaki-clad guy riding an inner tube into the boards and, eventually, into five ten-foot-high inflatable pins — was likewise entertaining. The Aviators ended the night as 10-0 winners (to his credit, the Stingrays’ goalie did stop 53 shots). Players were checked into the boards, helmets were lost, “Song 2″ was played after many a goal. Not a bad night of hockey…

The Morning Bell

These days, my cellphone serves as my primary alarm clock. (It’s one of three, down from a peak of four alarm clocks a few years ago.) Lately, I’ve been trying to change up the sound that the alarm feature plays. The results have been surreal, and I thought I’d share some of them here. So: yes, this is a post reviewing assorted ringtones found on my phone in terms of their effectiveness at waking me up. This is what comes of getting positive feedback from my thoughts on the Mr. Belevedere theme.

“Whistling Wizard.” No, not a mid-eighties prog-rock band that opened for Dream Theater in Denmark once. It sounds, not unexpectedly, like background music from an off-hours cartoon I might have stumbled onto in, yep, the mid-eighties. The problem? It’s just whimsical enough that I want to hear it again and again when I’m waking up. My tastes, when half-asleep, are slightly questionable. Which segues nicely into…

“Like a Movie.” Deeply sappy synthesized cellos. Something that would have played over the ending of an early-nineties role-playing game for the NES: lots of trees and clouds and celebration. Once again, the sentimental bastard that is a not-fully-awake me eats this kind of thing up.

“Wahwah.” Exactly what you’d expect.

“L.O.V.E.”  Oddly, it reminds me of Club 8. One riff that has a Scandinavian electro feel to it; catchy, but also loud enough to jar me from whatever half-sleep I’m in. Probably the most effective of all of what I’ve listened to so far in terms of getting me up without leaving me severely disturbed. For that I’ll need to turn to…

“Froggy Night.” This one begins with the sound of crickets chirping, and then a bassline I’d call “jaunty” kicks in. But the problem is: stylized crickets chirping run through a cellphone speaker sound less like crickets and more like, I don’t know, a giant robotic centipede crouched next to my bed, wheezing. And so the first morning I heard this, I damn near started screaming. And while I don’t doubt its effectivness in waking me up, I’m reluctant to try it again, lest the anticipation of it give me nightmares. Seriously: it is fucking terrifying.

The Thursday Agitation: Tracy Wilson

One of the highlights, for me, of my zine-editor days came when I found myself in the basement of Brownies circa 2000, moderating a conversation between Tracy Wilson and Caithlin De Marrais. At the time, De Marrais was making music as one-third of Rainer Maria, while Wilson’s band Souvenir had begun playing shows around New York City; like her previous group Dahlia Seed, they had an utterly transfixing blend of righteous anger and blistering pop hooks. In the years since then, Wilson moved to Richmond, Virgina and, together with two friends, recently started Little Black Cloud Records. Her long-in-the-works solo debut Decimal, recorded under the name Ringfinger, saw release last year and includes contributions from members of dälek, Isis, Sunn 0))), and Engine Down. (Also, it’s damn good.)

[Previous interviews in this series can be found here.]

What led to the formation of Little Black Cloud Records?
The birth of the label began with my solo record (Ringfinger / Decimal) and truthfully and me not having the patience or ego to pitch myself to some other label in hopes they would want to sign me. After so many years of working in the music industry I was fortunate enough to have the knowhow and connections to self release my record as well as have distribution for it. The goal was never to be a full blown label but when I heard Cinemasophia I instantly wanted to release the record. As fate would have it two friends were interested in forming a label around the same time so suddenly we had our first band on the label (besides me) and a few other projects in mind for release in 2009. In a nutshell is was really Cinemasophia that kicked us into high gear as a label.

The vinyl/digital release configuration that I’ve seen on your site seems to be growing in popularity these days (Comedy Minus One also comes to mind) — as the structure of the label came together, was this something you had in mind from the start?
Yes. The one thing I have learned from working in music sales is that large pressings of CDs is relatively pointless unless you are a very popular and well established band (Animal Collective, M Ward) on a name brand label (Sub Pop, Merge, Matador) For new developing artists and start up labels it really makes more sense to begin with digital releases with tiny runs of CDRs and if there is momentum behind the group as they tour, earn more fans, build a press buzz, then you release it on vinyl. Vinyl isn’t cheap to produce so like any physical product you really have to be certain there is a market for it meaning there are fans out there to buy it. The economy is too sluggish to risk pressing anything that could potentially just sit in a warehouse or living room corner. The great thing with the digital format is there is very little overhead to get it out to people and for a new band or label, every penny spared is important. Thanks to the internet bands and labels can connect to music fans quickly and easily. It’s truly amazing how you can post a song on line and it can reach people’s ears all around the world literally seconds later.

I saw that Ringfinger has its first show coming up, with a tour to follow — how are you arranging the songs for a live setup?
It is with a bit of trepidation that I say this. I am singing to track (the instrumental versions of my songs) on this tour. There isn’t going to be a band because (a) all of the original players on my record are in profitable bigger bands who are always busy and on the road – in turn making it impossible to pin them down for a small tour where they probably won’t be making any money and (b) I dreaded the thought of trying to build a band from scratch. To make it a little more interesting than just a woman singing to her iPod I am working with the artist Chris Milk to help me recreate my living room via a theatrical set. I want the audience to feel like I am performing for them in my home (a more intimate setting than your typical show) so my goal is to have some people sitting on stage with me. I might bribe people with snacks at each show. I am still working out the details now so who knows what surprises are in store, ha!

Are there plans for a second album? If so, are you looking for a similar collaborative feel to the first?
A new record is in the works but it isn’t a Ringfinger record. It will be called Drekkingarhylur and it is a collaboration between myself and Runhild Gammelsaeter (solo artist / Thorr’s Hammer / Khlyst). I don’t suspect however this record will see the light of day this year. More than likely it will be early 2010.

Via the Dahlia Seed website, a lot of your musical history is readily accessible. Do you find that that’s helped as far as making people more aware of Ringfinger?
Perhaps a little but Dahlia Seed was such a cult thing that I don’t feel like all that many people have come across Ringfinger from that direction. Honestly I believe it is more likely that fans of all the musicians who played on my record (Isis, Sunn 0))), Cave In…) found me though the gossip circles of those bands. Maybe this is my lack of ego at work here but I feel like the attention Decimal has been given to date is much more about the line up of the players on the record rather than me, the singer from Dahlia Seed.

recommended music writing: 23 march 2009

1. For Tiny Mix Tapes: Emilie Friedlander on Rhys Chatham. More specifically, the piece concerns a revival of Chatham’s collaboration with choreographer Karole Armitage, Drastic Classicism, and takes a tone that’s alternately historical, analytical, and occasionally bewildered:

The five young musicians who appear in the production – each “movers and shakers in their respective fields,” Chatham insists – were selected, not only on the basis of their technical ability and experience playing Chatham’s music, but because of their perceived physical resemblance to members of the original cast.

2. Jessica Suarez on SXSW, CMJ, the evolution of the nature of said music festivals, and the role of writers in the same.

notes on press coverage + leaks

Following today’s earlier J.T. Ramsay shout-out, I’m once again linking his site, this time regarding his most recent post on release dates and press coverage, in which he argues for coverage more centered around an album’s leak date. More specifically, I’m responding to this section:

Even Pitchfork holds fast to release dates, which just seems absurd. We have to change the rules that print media set for us!

I don’t agree with this. While I won’t argue that, at this point, leaks can begin the dialogue about an album (see also: yesterday’s interview), I can also see why Pitchfork (or Dusted, or Tiny Mix Tapes) would choose to run a review close to a release date. People are still buying music — despite leaks, one gets the impression that (for instance) Merriweather Post Pavilion has done pretty well, sales-wise. Admittedly, this doesn’t take into account the growing trend of separating out digital and physical release dates, something that’s happened both with artists releasing music on their own: Radiohead, Eno/Byrne, Girl Talk; and via indie labels: Bound Stems’ The Family Afloat, Deerhunter’s Microcastle.

But if reviews begin to be run solely around a leak date, you end up in a situation where that dialogue has arguably started and ended before anyone can actually buy a copy of the album in question. Which, to understate things a bit, doesn’t seem like an ideal situation for the artists or labels involved — unless, essentially, every label above a decent size retrofits itself to be able to sell an album digitally (among other things) as soon as someone leaks a disc, which seems logistically nightmarish.

And given that release dates still have an effect — their relationship to touring comes to mind — I don’t know that there’s an easy way to make this work. Also worrisome is the fact that it essentially hands over control of the process to participants in what could at best be called an ethically grey activity, which, while arguably pragmatic, doesn’t necessarily seem like something to be encouraged. (Though that suggests an entirely separate “ethics of leaking” discussion…)

[Hat tip: I had a lengthy conversation on digital vs. physical release dates with Maria Tessa Sciarrino over the weekend, so this topic has been on my mind for much of the week.]

Holidays in the Outer Boroughs

We had the first snowfall of any significance in Brooklyn late last week. I spent most of the latter part of last week as well as this weekend holed up in my apartmen, under the weather and trying to wrap up a few long-term projects before heading back to the ancestral home in central Jersey for Christmas. Friday night, I left the apartment briefly to go pick up dinner from a takeout place a couple of blocks away. As I walked out of the restaurant, brown bag in hand, their radio began playing The Guess Who’s “These Eyes,” and I stepped onto an icy sidewalk flanked by snowdrifts, cars moving haltingly down Manhattan Avenue, pedestrians crossing gingerly as they went.

Since moving to Brooklyn, I generally feel a holiday behind: the lead-in to Thanksgiving convinces me that I should be ready for Halloween; the presence of Christmas decorations evokes a nostalgia for turkey and gravy. I don’t entirely know why; I have a few crackpot theories, some of them involving the lack of flora here relative to — say — the New Jersey suburbs, some of them involving a shift driving to public transit as my preferred means of transportation. But it was that strange hit of Sixties rock and the bracing cold and the undeniable quality of a New York winter that faced me as I stepped outside on that night that made it clear that I was, in fact, in the thick of it, holiday-wise.

Most of my family — at least the part of it that’s in the U.S. — is local. My parents, aunt, uncle and their respective families are all within a roughly four-hour radius; head further down the East Coast and still more of my family comes into view. When I was younger, there was an even larger familial presence in the New York metropolitan area, and that sequence of feelings the other night brought me back to something I’d nearly forgotten: annual holiday-season trips out to somewhere in Queens to visit my great-aunt and numerous members of my father’s father’s side of the family.

If I sound vague here, it’s not for lack of trying; thinking back on it now, it must have been well over twenty years since my parents and I last made the trip out there. I’m not sure where exactly in Queens the house in question was, and I don’t entirely remember who from the family was gathered there. The most vivid memories I have are of Queens itself — that first awareness that there were parts of New York that weren’t Manhattan, that weren’t museums or parks or avenues to stand and watch parades.

It’s possible I’m giving myself too much credit here. At that age, I had little sense of direction (it’s arguable that I have little sense of direction now) and I understood places mostly based on the length of the drive there rather than any specific geography. Eventually, there would be landmarks I’d come to recognize, but at that age — one in which I would spend most trips over an hour in length asleep in the back seat of the car — there wasn’t much I took with me. Parallel parking and oldies radio on the trip home; that feeling of cold as we’d step out of the car and the navigation of city sidewalks in winter. Two decades later, that’s what turns out to have endured. Strange.

Live: Frida Hyvönen; Church of Sweden, 11.12.08

Attendance, the flyer said, would be capped at 90. I’d guess that the chapel in New York’s Church of Sweden — on 48th Street just off Fifth Avenue, unobtrusive among financial offices and gleaming glass hotels — seated 75 at most, and a few songs into her set, Frida Hyvönen suggested that those standing come sit in the aisles. This they did.

I’ve been getting more and more enveloped in Hyvönen’s new album Silence Is Wild as the days go by. (I’m not as familiar with her debut, Until Death Comes, which I picked up tonight; I’ll be curious to re-read Jessica Hopper on both discs once I’ve given each more of a listen.) It’s somber and confessional in places, and joyous in others, and there’s a strange sense of detachment I hear in some of her songs that I find incredibly affecting. By way of a lengthy aside: I’m currently working on a review of Alejandro Zambra’s novella Bonsai. Zambra utilizes any number of distancing devices over the course of his narrative — extended metaphors, metafictional speculation, situations whose parallels feel elaborately constructed — and yet, those don’t hide the central ache that suffuses the book. Instead, their prominence ends up pointing out the specific emotions that they’re ostensibly cloaking.

The show was minimal: Hyvönen seated before a piano, sometimes signing a few random bars before beginning a song, sometimes standing to stretch between songs. A colleague joined her for harmony vocals for several songs, and the set seemed to lean more towards Until Death Comes than Silence Is Wild, if my post-show calculations were correct. Hyvönen’s voice resonated over the course of an emotionally winding set, and the crowd listened quietly, respectfully. The feeling throughout was a relaxed one, Hyvönen occasionally addressing the audience in Swedish. Towards the end of the night, she indicated that a song’s ending was something close to a sing-a-long. “Sing along,” she said, and then let loose a wicked grin. “If you dare.”

And after everything was over, the church’s rector blessed us all. It was not a bad way to spend a night at a small Swedish church in midtown Manhattan.

post-election: north brooklyn election night arrests

I’ve been meaning to post something here about the post-election arrests, which included a friend of mine, in northern Brooklyn since yesterday, but haven’t really been sure of what to say. Gothamist’s coverage has been solid, and their update on it today is well worth a read. (Also worth reading on the subject: New York Shitty.)

I wasn’t present when any of this took place, so my perspective is somewhat limited. That said, though, there is something that’s been unsettling me since I first heard about it. Consider the case of a country who, after eight years in office, votes out a head of state who by this point has become widely unpopular. The people take to the streets in celebration and, in some cases, are met with resistance from riot gear-clad police. In the abstract — if we were reading about this taking place somewhere distant, I suspect that we’d be appalled.

voting: greenpoint, brooklyn; november 4, 2008

I’ve voted in four Presidential elections now. The first of those — 1996 — occurred when I was in college, and I cast my vote via absentee ballot. I’ve voted in the three since then in the same polling place in Greenpoint, which is where I arrived today at a little before 8 am.

Normally, the line for each district is fairly short, especially in the early hours of the day. Five people before you, maybe seven: you check in, you step inside the booth, you make your choice. Or, to get all Tanner 88: you exercise your right to vote.

Today was a little different. The line for the information desk — i.e. where you find out what your district is based on your address — trailed up the stairs leading down to where you actually vote. I proceeded to the 99th District table to check in; the line seemed longer than normal, but not by much. Okay, I thought.

And then I checked in, and realized that the line to actually vote was a completely different one, and that it was three or four times the size of the check-in line. Multiply that by the five or six districts using the same polling place — though the 99th was particularly crowded, due to one of the two machines allocated to it being down — and you might get a sense of just how packed things were.

Once I’d cast my ballot and headed back up the steps to Leonard Street, thirty-odd minutes after arriving, one thing stood out: it had gotten even more crowded. As someone who occasionally vents his frustration over low voter turnouts, it made for an encouraging start to the day.

notes on urban spaces

This weekend, I finally took advantage of Open House New York, visiting both Marble Cemeteries along with my friends Molly and Jake. Each of them was a small rectangle of green, occupying roughly the footprint of a small tenement building. And each of them felt (appropriately) quiet — a marked contrast to the busier pace of the Lower East Side around them.

That said, in one of them, a large dog dashed through the grass, shaking a red object that, on closer inspection, turned out to be a stuffed devil. Which felt either surreal or as though we were observing the annual tradition of a small village somewhere in the middle of nowhere. (“Each year, children, the largest dog in town shakes the devil. And then we have a bountiful harvest, and it cures Martha’s rickets.”)