In our latest edition of Silk Screens, Berkeley, California producer Yalls details the inception of “Remember,” one of the many standout tracks on his latest EP, The Voice.

Name your own price for The Voice here.

“Remember” started with a simple chord progression I came up with just playing around one day. I ran the chords through a simple soft synth and then later ran the midi out to a DSI Tetra and mixed the two. Usually, I’ll loop the chord progression and listen to it for a few minutes/days/weeks and think about whatever I’m thinking about and try to write or find vocals to sing over it.

In this case I added an a cappella sample vocal that I’ve warped so much I can’t remember what it is. I loaded it into a sampler, played with the pitch, and worked out a new melody by chopping up small bits that I could play like an instrument.

I added the bass line with a light bass synth and doubled it with a DSI Tetra again. It’s pretty much the same bass riff throughout.

Then I sampled a quick bit of Amber singing, “Remember the pain we put each other through?” and it made me think of elephants. I may have been thinking about elephants already because they are incredible creatures we should never forget (I have been told). But it fit what is the closest thing to a chorus in this song.

The elephant then reminded me of The Elephant Show, which I used to watch as a 3-5 year old. It was very musically important for me and it triggered a huge wave of sadness/nostalgia type feelings that inspired the higher pitched arpeggiating synth, taking the song in a much more melancholic direction.

I was probably eating Skittles® at this point and reading Wikipedia about the funeral habits of elephants, crying.

Then I worked on the drums. I always tap out the drums on a drum pad and quantize/edit afterwards to get a more live feel. I’ll usually manipulate everything a bit to try and create an interesting mix and then bounce it.

And lastly, here’s the elephant that inspired this song. This picture was the original album cover on SoundCloud:

In his second week as May’s Artist Resident, Columbia, South Carolina’s Mat Cothran (aka Coma Cinema) shares a new song he recently recorded with close friend John Forest Klein (aka EUPHORIA. AGAIN.).

So a few weeks ago my friend John Forest Klein (or, as I call him, “JFK”) flew to South Carolina all the way from Salt Lake City, Utah to record an album with me. I’m a big fan of John’s music so I was stoked. Here’s the first song we finished. It’s called “Void In Time (mama says)”, and it’s one of my favorite songs this year.

mama says I’m lucky
just a void in time
lookin’ back in warm frames
really warps your mind

livin’ ain’t so easy with
a leash around my neck
time has got a hold of me
burrowed
in
my
head

consider myself more a boy than a man
taken to the end

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

Spectrals (aka Louis Jones) takes us through a nostalgic story of how his father’s cover band changed his life forever.

When I was about 15, my dad and his mates started up a punk and new wave cover band. My dad had always played guitar. He would play it when my mam went out to work on a Saturday night. Maybe me and my little brother had gotten to pick a Playstation game or a film to rent earlier in the day, and we would watch that and he would play. I remember I could catch his eye while he cycled through chords and sang songs, and that his eyes would smile but he wouldn’t talk. I came to recognize that zone he got into a lot later when I started to play “guitar trance,” as he calls it. I feel like he and his mates had talked about starting a group at New Year’s Eve parties for a few years on the bounce, but at some point they got keen and the idea went beyond a “what if…” over a few pints. The three of them got together in my living room and rattled through some songs that they’d all agreed upon. To my shame, I didn’t really want much to do with them at that point, even though I was mad on guitar and deep into all sorts of hardcore and pop-punk by then. I could try to dress it up, but I thought I was too cool for it all! I was really sure of what I thought was “good” or “bad” in the way that only someone who knows very little can be.

What I had never banked on was that they’d all get their heads down and get a serious set of songs together. I can’t recall when, but my little brother Will got playing drums with them, and before long they’d roped in a friend of a friend, a proper singer, whose wife had a birthday do coming up, to front them, and they arranged to play at it. I can remember we all arrived at this Working Men’s Club in Cleckheaton in the early afternoon. It had a proper stage and a glittery curtain. As I kicked about in there, avoiding carrying people’s gear in for them, and trying to get my mam to buy me a pint, I was dead nervous for them but couldn’t put my finger on why.

And although I would have never admitted it to you at the time, I was jealous and wished I had just gotten over myself and my bedroom heavy metal mindset and asked to join in. That feeling grew as the night went on. They smashed through the set, buzzing off each other, and the wheels didn’t come off. People even got up and had a dance and a sing-along. I was left feeling like I wasn’t so smart and cool after all. I ended up playing with them for two or so years after that and got turned onto a lot of music that I would have never have had any time for otherwise, stuff that has stuck with me, Elvis Costello, Dr. Feelgood, The Stranglers, etc. More than that, though it was just a right laugh. We did all these little run down pubs and clubs around near where we’re from, Thursday, Friday nights, background music I suppose, passable versions of songs that people already loved. It was beyond you really, beyond showing off. Sometimes we got heckled, sometimes we played for no one, sometimes people went mad for it, but we always got a few pints and me and my brother could take away £50 from a good one. I know I came out of my shell a lot around this time and became a lot less militant about what I liked. My dad and his mates definitely set me going with what I’m on with now, and I’ll always have them to thank for that.

There was a video tape that someone took of us playing at a beer festival at a cricket club, and they caught this big fight that broke out on it. We were playing the Ramones’s “Blitzkrieg Bop” in the background, laughing our heads off while they went at it. I should ask around and see if anyone still has it.

PORTALS columnist Jasmine Zhu reflects on the role songs play in our emotional lives and the weight of the associations they carry.

Here are some palatable phrases—love of beauty, resentment of self, crippling anxiety tempered by brimming optimism. Waiting around at the witching hour, hoping something manifests itself. Escaping into daydreams while something gnaws at my stomach.

There are things everyone wants that they don’t dare voice aloud. Speaking of them would make it seem too real, and to lay something bare is dangerous and potentially ruinous. Better still to lie on my bed, half-asleep at 3 A.M. The same song on loop for the past two hours. Someday, I’ll stop listening to it altogether.

This isn’t about depression; it’s about being almost happy.

Maybe having tangible dreams would be better. I imagine it’d be nice to have something to hold onto. I think I spend too much time wondering what could become of me, instead of what will. I spend a lot of time revising my own history, making sepia-toned mythologies. It’s so easy to forget about real life.

The past and the future seem infinitely more interesting than the present. The expanses stretch out forever; two vectors in opposite directions. I’m in the middle dreaming of either end.

Nostalgia is overwrought with purpose prose—people grow tired of hearing about other people’s halcyon days and half-baked fantasies. The topic has been discussed ad nauseum, yet here I am writing about it.

I’m already nostalgic about prospective futures, the ideas of leaving and being left behind. I’m sorry for being gratuitous and I’m sorry again for being self-deprecating. I’m too busy trying to subsist on a languid cloud to hear any other complaints you might have.

Do you think that if you’d said the right thing, she’d have stayed?

Is the feeling you have transient?

How will you re-imagine the scene?

Are the images in your head real?

Why do you feel cheated of something important?

And will you ever be able to listen to that song again?

There are songs I can’t listen to anymore. The general idea behind my adamant refusal to even hear them—the complete blocking off of once-loved and familiar songs—is because I need the cauterization of some emotional wound. It’s a gut instinct, one that makes me hit “skip” on iTunes in the same instinctual way one would reflexively jerk away upon receiving an electric shock.

When a relationship has terminated, there are still vestiges of it that linger, frustratingly. I can’t get rid of it all—a sweater left behind from months ago, a scrap of letter—real objects, as well as more insidious ones. Certain songs are the hardest.

When I listen to something for a while, it’s impossible not to develop associations with it, to make it personal and relevant to my own life and circumstances and various relationships. It loses passive listening and becomes an emotional investment. Other mediums—TV shows, movies, books, art—they don’t carry nearly the amount of weight. I’m not as affected, they haunt me less. (I also lack the time to watch a two-hour movie on repeat.)

I listen to it, over and over and over, and I get my fill, and maybe this takes a while, and maybe I should’ve stopped months ago, when things had irrevocably ended, but I’m only human and a bit of a masochist, but someday, you know I’ll stop. I’ll have to. I’ll stop and find a new thing, new songs to imbue with personal narratives, and that’s just how it goes.

MVP aka Most Valuable Play highlights artists and their favorite records. This week we cornered self-described “industrial surf-gaze” trio Odonis Odonis and were pleased to get words from two of the three band members. The guys are currently on tour with similarly raucous trio METZ, so we’re grateful that they found some spare time to dish on some of their favorite albums.

Make sure to also check out the guys’ blistering EP Better, which was recently released by Buzz Records.

By: Dean Tzenos

This is pretty much an impossible question for me to answer because I don’t have just one favorite album. So instead, I tried to think of what influenced me most when trying to form the idea of Odonis Odonis… Skinny Puppy became inescapable. This band didn’t just leave a mark on me—it was more like a bloody gaping wound. When I first heard Skinny Puppy, I was far too young to understand them on every level, but the music scared me enough to be strangely aroused by it all.

This is a band that wasn’t afraid to take risks, break the mold and be hard without needing guitars or hardcore clichés. While bands like Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and Ministry broke into the mainstream, Skinny Puppy never really got there despite having paved the way for all those bands. They had one of the craziest theatrical, horror inspired and controversial live shows that blended performance art with music. While Marilyn Manson played up the one-dimensional shock rock angle, there was a message behind Skinny Puppy’s madness: animal rights, politics, religion, drug abuse, disease and environmental degradation. Their on-stage theatrics included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, playing with a hangman’s noose, raw meat, key cutting steel with an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush.

‘Cleanse Fold Manipulate’ is a solid record front-to-back, but it also lacks a lot of big tunes. I almost picked ‘Bites’ because it’s a killer album that arguably had the band’s biggest hit, “Assimilate”. In my opinion, this is where Skinny Puppy started to really establish their signature sound. I also almost went with ‘Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse’ as my Most Valuable Play. It has the most tracks that I still go back to even years later; “Dig It” takes the prize as my all-time favorite Skinny Puppy track. Trent Reznor admittedly took a few cues from this hard-hitting tune on “Down In It” from ‘Pretty Hate Machine.’ While this might be a cop out, I ended up choosing Skinny Puppy’s ‘The Singles Collection.’ It really is a great introduction to anyone even vaguely interested in the band’s catalogue. They aren’t the easiest band to digest in one listen, so the collection acts as a gateway drug of sorts.

You can go back and revisit Skinny Puppy records and they aren’t laden with ironic paste like so many other 80′s acts. It might not be easy listening, but it’s definitely still a mind bending and inspiring experience.

By: Jarod Gibson

Splatt.

That’s how it starts.

The flattest, driest snare / floor tom sound ever recorded to tape. Then, for the next 2 minutes and 38 seconds you are dragged / marched through some sort of weird musical goo. By this time, most rock songs are finished. However, in “Hey King,” the opening track to U.S. Maple‘s first album ‘Long Hair in Three Stages,’ this is just the start of the jokes. If you haven’t been forced from the room yet, it’s at this point that a kinda rock song emerges. But damn, it’s so absurd and fun I grin every time. And it’s one fantastic, abstracted rock music piss take after another for the next nine tracks.

I sometimes read reviews of this album and a common reaction is that of confusion and skepticism. Fair enough. I still recall the first time I saw them live. Every expectation about what a rock band was supposed to be and sound like was not just thwarted—it was crumpled, cut up, slapped back together with lousy gum and spit, paraded around and mocked with such severity that I had no choice but to laugh out loud. Pat Samson with his faked cymbal hits and snare spazz outs, Mark Shippy teetering back and forth mechanically with one eye peeking out between his long, swept bangs, Todd Ritman and his unsettling, jeering grin turning around at a well-timed moment to reveal a HUGE grass stain on the back of his white suit, Al Johnson sulking off in the corner like a shitty tough guy wearing the fucking weirdest sweater…When it was over I didn’t know exactly what had just happened but I knew that SOMETHING had happened.

It basically changed everything.

The album was originally released in a special limited metal cover which, for those in the know, is now legendary. I scored one off eBay last year. I pull it off the shelf every now and again just to remind myself, “Oh yea. Fuck you rock music. I love you.”

P.S.—This album is set to be reissued (in the classic metal cover!!) on Skin Graft Records soon.

Curated by Cactus-Mouth.

In our latest edition of Silk Screens, Corey Regensburg  (aka Moon Bounce) discusses the making of his single “She Goes 2 She” off his latest Wheelhouse EP, out now via Chill Mega Chill Records.

I’ve wanted to make a bunch of tunes with properly recorded piano for a long time but never really had the means or opportunity to get into a studio. I’ve had smatterings of shitty piano samples in early tracks, but nothing substantial. One of the first songs I put out, before I knew anything about microphones or audio interfaces, is centered around a piano lick recorded with my old computer’s built-in microphone.

Moon Bounce – Whipped

Fast forward to two years ago. I was living with my parents after graduation and had a lot of time to just play on a lovely Young Chang upright we have in our living room. My buddy Dave Aria is a kick ass musician and engineer who lived down the street from me at the time, and we both really wanted to get some recordings of the piano. One day, while the folks were out, he came over and set up his gear so we could record the piano. Nothing was really planned, just a lot of improv/elaborating on previous ideas. The results of that session are found throughout the ‘Wheelhouse’ EP and are the backbone of She Goes 2 She. Here’s a clip of some of the raw recordings:

Piano Sample

“She Goes 2 She” is definitely the most streamlined music writing experience I’ve had to date. Just organizing and slicing the piano recordings began to spawn little ideas. In a way, it was like remixing myself. I created new progressions and melodic ideas from the chopped samples that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. Once I had the piano progressions panned out, all the percussion and vocal ideas just came naturally. The phrase “she goes to she” sort of became a mantra for me—a glimpse of a lover’s selfishness, in a sense.

My favorite component of the track is the thin, high-pitched whirring noise that’s vaguely present throughout the track. That sound came from little brass ball bearings I spun around in a glass cup. The sample gets its own little melody but takes the backseat to all the other stuff going on. Makes me smile.

Ball Bearing Sample

I played around with a few different instruments/synths for the little diddy at the end. I spent a while writing the melody on guitar and transferring it to different soft synths. Eventually I ended up just recording and slicing the actual guitar. I’ve kept an alternate synth line I enjoy for occasional use in live performances.

Hi Mom!

Curated by Smoke Don’t Smoke.

Rhythm, classical and contorted, drives this mix made by Los Angeles producer Anenon of Non Projects.

A mix is always a good excuse for me to share some music that has currently been in rotation as well as a chance to dig for some tunes that I may have forgotten about. Arve Henriksen’s “Sanmyaku” (released on my favorite label, Rune Grammofon) remains strongly formative for me, while revisiting Squarepusher’s “My Sound” (‘98?!) reaffirms that music in 2013 is still quite rotted. Not one to hold back sharing recent personal developments, I have also included a couple of new Anenon works, showcasing different directions in both studio and live works. A portion of a completely improvised tenor saxophone with electronics and drum duet wth Jon-Kyle Mohr recorded live in downtown Los Angeles opens the set. Also, there is a new solitary beat production, revisiting mellotron samples recorded in Madrid during RBMA 2011. Finally, lest we forget Keith Jarrett taking on Shosatakovich, showing us again and again that we all have so much more to do.

Tracklist:

01. Motron Feldman Speaks on WBAI, 1967
02. Anenon with Jon-Kyle Mohr — “Live at Alexandria, Part 2″
03. Do Make Say Think — “Horns of a Rabbit”
04. Afterhours — “Salt on the Wound”
05. John Coltrane — “Dearly Beloved”
06. Aphex Twin — “Bbydhyonchord”
07. Arve Henriksen — “Sanmyaku”
08. Squarepusher — “My Sound”
09. Dmitri Shostakovich — “Prelude and Fugue No. 2″
10. Ketty Lester — “Love Letters”

Mat Cothran (of Coma Cinema) is our new artist resident for the entire month of May. His first entry features a video he recently made with longtime collaborators and friends Justin Blackburn and Delaney Mills (editor/director).

Hi, my name is Mat Cothran. My best friend Justin Blackburn, who helped me write most of my best songs, moved to Costa Rica last week. I’m going to miss him a lot, and before he left we got together and made a short film. His girlfriend Catherine and my friend Brian Barr are also in the movie.

When I first started trying to express myself, Brian and Justin were there to show me how. I can’t imagine what I’d be without them. Life can be so heavy—it’s nice to go out into the wilderness with your friends and make something out of nothing.

Thanks for letting me do this. Love you guys!

MVP aka Most Valuable Play highlights artists and their favorite records. This week Raphaelle of BRAIDS, whose In Kind // Amends 12″ will be out June 11th on Arbutus Records, discusses her old and lasting love for Deerhunter‘s Turn It Up Faggot.

It seems odd to talk about a record that I haven’t listened to for five years as being my favourite, but I listened to music differently when I was younger. It had a much more impacting and intense effect on me—and so when I think about the most important records for me, they were all ones that I listened to from the time I was 16-20.

That being said, after much racking of past memories, I think the record that changed my world was ‘Turn It Up Faggot’ by Deerhunter.

I had never heard anything so harsh, grating and confrontational. I was listening to a lot of Top 40 or folk music up until then. My friends had gotten into indie rock and were listening to bands like Modest Mouse and The Unicorns. I found most of the bands they were listening to to be rather annoying, and so I felt very embarrassed and confused when my friends would talk about Animal Collective or Tokyo Police Club, and I would fib and say, oh yes, I liked it very much. I started going to the record store down the street from my high school to try and find something that I could connect with.

I stumbled upon this record, ‘Turn It Up Faggot,’ one day after school in my final year. I spent the majority of the summer and fall listening to this record on my headphones, walking around the streets, taking the bus. I felt like I had found music that resembled how I felt—I guess, at that time, misunderstood, angry, lost—all of the cliché feelings that most of us experience during our teenage years. It felt harsh like I did. The playing was so loose and ragged. I was just learning to play electric guitar, so I tried to learn some of the songs with my reverb turned up really high, just thrashing on the guitar, pretending like I had found the chords.

Oh gosh, I probably listened to that record 200 times.

I’m not sure it’s the best record ever written, but I found it at a time when I really needed it. For all I know I could definitely still be covering Feist songs in my bedroom if I hadn’t stumbled upon this record. It showed me that confrontation and angst could be expressed in a modern time. I knew that the punk movement happened, I listened to my fair share of The Ramones and The Clash, but it felt like that time had passed, and people had closed up again. This album really opened up the emotional and honest aspect of expression for me.  

I met Bradford Cox a couple of years after I had heard the record, and I thanked him profusely for it. He said he didn’t really like that record. Whether or not he fully stands behind it, I’m not sure I would know how to stand as strongly without it.

Cayucas has just put out their new record, Bigfoot, with Secretly Canadian. The release comes just before frontman Zach Yudin’s favorite time of year: summer. And with a full-blown US tour ahead, the band will certainly have a jam-packed season. Here, we talk about Zach’s beginnings as a DJ, his favorite Paul Simon record, and the memories of summer months that fill Cayucas’s first full-length with the carefree bliss of the California sun.

When did you start writing music? Where’d you get your start?

Well, technically in high school. I bought turntables and started scratching & rapping. I think I wrote down some raps. I started writing actual songs in college.

Did you make your own beats?

Sort of, yeah, I would play instrumental records & scratch records.

Nice! What were some of your go-to instrumental tracks?

Well, I was buying hip-hop albums like Tribe Called Quest, Heiroglyphics, Schematics. I think I wanted to be a DJ. I watched ‘how to DJ’ videos.

What made you want to start writing more on guitar?

Well, I picked up guitar towards the middle of college, but I still like to make beats. Now I sample vinyl. My mom sold my turntables at a garage sale a few years back.

That’s terrible! Did you replace them yet?

No, I think I’ve given up on the dream of being a DJ.

Well, you’ve definitely got great things going otherwise. Who were the artists you were listening to when you started going more guitar based?

A lot of things from Radiohead to Paul Simon. My guitar playing skills are pretty basic.

Can definitely hear the Paul Simon influence. Which is your favorite record of his?

I like his early stuff, ‘Paul Simon’, ‘Rhymin Simon’.

“Let Me Live In Your City”—great, great song. So, I understand you lived in Japan for a while. How did that influence your writing?

Yes. Well, during that time I was listening to dance music and writing electronic dance music. I also started learning about sampling when I was there.

How much of that do you think carried over into Cayucas?

Well, the first couple tracks I wrote by sampling 60s vinyl and that gave me a clear direction of what I wanted Cayucas to sound like, but that’s about it.

Right, cool! So, Bigfoot came out a couple weeks ago. How long were you working on that record?

The record was recorded about one year ago, and I started writing songs for it about one year before that. So, it’s been about two years total.

Wow! So, this has been a long time coming. What artists have been your major musical influences along the way?

IDK, lots of stuff. Beatles, Zombies, Animals. Paul Simon, Mamas & Papas, Animal Collective.

You’ve released a couple videos with the record. The one for “High School Lover” features some really sick stop animation! What was the concept behind the video?

Well, the director, Cameron, had this glitch effect idea that he wanted to use. We thought it fit with the song, so the narrative is kind of the girl is the girl I should’ve dated in high school, basically. All the cartoon stuff is like the stuff you’d doodle in high school.

Like on the back of notebooks! Nice. Also, the video for “Cayucos” is set on a beautiful, sunny beach. Where did you guys film it?

That was a combination of Cayucas footage, and the beach in Corona Del Mar.

Makes me want to move to California.

You really should.

It’s raining in NY right now. Pretty grim.

Oh, it’s beautiful here today. Sorry.

It’s okay. I’ll make do. Anyways, so, many songs on the record, specifically “High School Lover”, have heavy overtones of nostalgia. Is that a conscious choice? Is there a specific theme to the album?

Yes, it is based around nostalgic moments in my life, from summer camp to high school, not all songs but it felt like a proper head space for the album. “Bigfoot” is kind of about going to a cabin in Lake Tahoe as a kid, sleeping on the third floor. Pretty scary.

You mention summer camp—are a lot of these moments during the summer? Such a summery record!

Yeah, summer was awesome as a kid.

Totally. Do you have any other favorite summer memories?

Yeah, everything from water balloon fights to rollerblading to summer camp to parties, haha.

Any beach bonfires? Those always seemed really fun.

Yeah, of course.

Jealous! So, what was it like working with Richard Swift as a producer? Where can you see his influence throughout the record?

Richard was an awesome producer! And he’s an amazing drummer as well. He played bass, guitar, he did it all. His influence is all over the record. Yeah, he played drums, bass, shaker. He wasn’t shy.

Righteous. The shaker—most underrated instrument in rock n roll.

True.

And now that Bigfoot is out you’ve embarked on a summer long tour. Where are you most looking forward to playing?

I’m really looking forward to seeing the east coast, I’ve never really been over there. I’ve never been to NYC either.

Really? Well, outside of the rain, it’s pretty amazing. I was giving it a hard time earlier.

OK, good.

How far south are you going?

I’m not sure, I’ll have to check again. I think we’re driving through Maryland.

Nice, get to see Baltimore and such.

Yeah.

You’ll enjoy the Midwest—I’m from Indiana. It’s a pretty good state.

OK cool, I’ve heard mixed reviews of the Midwest.

Just gotta find the cool towns. Chicago is pretty fun.

Chi Town.

Pizza, pizza, pizza…

Yum.

So, what records are your go-to tour records? What will you be bumping on the road?

I think we’ll just play everything via Spotify or something like that. From Timberlake to Sawyer Brown.

Got that Spotify game. What’s your favorite song from 20/20 Experience?

“Mirrors” or “Strawberry Bubblegum.”

I concur. Well, that’s all I got! Anything else we should know about Bigfoot and what Cayucas has coming up?

We’ll be touring June/July through the U.S. so please come and see us.  : )

I’ll definitely be catching you in NYC! Thanks so much for chatting, dude! Safe travels on tour.

OK great. I’ll see you then.