Marc Faulkner

tapedeckmountain: Our Homies Mrs. Magician just put out this...

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 20:51:51 -0800

Our Homies Mrs. Magician just put out this Amazing video! Check it.

hometapes: Wade into the river with us. This is Matthew E....

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:32:06 -0800

Wade into the river with us. This is Matthew E. White.
Hopscotch Music Festival performance announced today…and whispers of what’s to come.

Thus far, my favorite album of 2012 is a yet-unnamed, yet-unreleased collection of seven songs by Richmond, Va., songwriter, bandleader and visionary Matthew E. White. Recorded in Richmond by a full house of horn and string players, singers, drummers, guitarists and bassists, White’s massive musical debut under his own name magnetizes elements of gospel, rock ’n’ roll, country, soul and show tunes into life-affirming pan-American glee. In the service of wise new songs about loving something in spite of the odds and living happily in spite of the struggles, choirs of voices erupt, lines of horns radiate, and rhythms march toward something better.

On Thursday, Sept. 6, in Fletcher Opera Theater, White and about 40 musicians from Richmond will do something that they haven’t done before and will likely never do again: From the woozy slink of “Hot Toddies” to the Spiritualized-sized eruption of “Brazos,” they’ll perform these seven songs in their entirety as Matthew E. White: One Incantation Under God. That choir and those horns, that frontman and those strings: They’ll all be there to recreate an album that, for every day for the last four months, I’ve listened to at least twice daily. Today, we’re happy not only to announce this very special engagement but also to unveil music from the album—to be co-released in August by the indomitable Hometapes label and White’s own production house, Spacebomb Records—for the very first time.

You might know the name or the flowing brown mane of Matthew White from his time in two bands: Years ago, the wild-flying Great White Jenkins stunned several times at the once-fertile arts space Bull City Headquarters, sharing a free and adventurous update of The Band’s spirited uplift. Later, it was White’s other band, the especially malleable jazz outfit Fight the Big Bull, that split bills with Megafaun, including its 2010 residency at Duke called Sounds of the South, with Justin Vernon and Sharon Van Etten.

In those bands, White was certainly a driving force, but he was also part of a much bigger picture. Being a pivotal part of a larger project also became White’s goal with Spacebomb Records, the old-school production house he started with some friends and fellow players in Richmond. Essentially, Spacebomb’s goal synchs to the bygone days of Stax or any number of labels that would bring a singer and possibly some songs into a studio to record with a crew of musicians that had a defined, perfected aesthetic. Before they could convince someone else to surrender their songs, though, the Spacebomb crew first needed to prove that they could actually make the process work. White became the label’s guinea pig. He was ready.

“I felt like I finally knew how I wanted to write. I knew harmonically how I wanted to express myself, and lyrically, too,” he says. “I think I’ve begun to feel comfortable writing songs and writing words in a way that is honest to me, not something I was grasping at.”

Cutting a path between Lambchop’s Nashville to Spiritualized’s Heaven, from Bobby Charles’ Louisiana to Randy Newman’s Los Angeles, from the dustiest Southern roads to the brightest metropolitan sound studios, Matthew White’s music is an immediate and refreshing blend of a dozen bold forms. This is a record that has nothing to do with current trends or crossover possibilities. It’s too powerful for such temporary considerations. It’s ready to be heard now, later and always.

On the morning of Jan. 5, 2012, an owner of Hometapes sent me an early copy of the record. By that afternoon, Hopscotch Director Greg Lowenhagen and I were figuring out how to get White to perform this stunning piece of music in its entirety here in Raleigh. Of all the shows we’ve presented in three years, from The Flaming Lips in City Plaza to the lineup we’re announcing next Wednesday, this is possibly our biggest project yet. We hope you come experience it in September.

—Grayson Currin

Listen and get your tickets at hopscotchmusicfest.com.

Photo of Matthew E. White by the great Shawn Brackbill.

yes, indeed.

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 10:00:14 -0800

yes, indeed.

AU - Both Lights | album reviews | musicOMH

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:43:23 -0800

AU - Both Lights | album reviews | musicOMH:

give a try

Photo

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:22:06 -0900

peacekeeper

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 13:20:05 -0900

peacekeeper

kids are rad. fog? who cares?

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 13:05:06 -0900

kids are rad. fog? who cares?

Photo

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:30:30 -0900

Photo

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:56:05 -0900

Photo

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:30:05 -0900

Photo

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:30:06 -0900

Photo

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:58:40 -0900

hometapes: Megafaun play “Second Friend” in Leeds // On tour in...

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 09:36:37 -0800

hometapes:

Megafaun play “Second Friend” in Leeds // On tour in Europe now!

As we started pulling the curtain back on Megafaun, Phil, Joe, and Brad — and new live addition Nick Sanborn — were just arriving in Europe. Thanks to videos like these, we’re able to watch from afar…and get excited for their North American tour, kicking on September 22 in NC. All tour dates below.

Pre-order Megafaun Megafaun today.

Megafaun 2011 European Tour

09/04/11 - Larmer Tree Gardens, UK @ End Of The Road Festival

09/05/11 - Paris, France @ Cafe de la Danse

09/06/11 - Middelburg, Netherlands @Avonduren

09/07/11 - Cologne, Germany @ King Georg

09/08/11 - Hamburg, Germany @ Astra Stube

09/09/11 - Copenhagen, Denmark @ Musik Loppen

09/10/11 - Gronigen, Netherlands @ Take Root Festival

09/11/11 - Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso

09/12/11 - Tilburg, Netherlands @ Incubate

Venue names will link you to tickets.

Megafaun 2011 North American Tour

09/22/11 - Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle #

09/23/11 - Washington, DC @ Red Palace ^

09/24/11 - New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge*+

09/25/11 - New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge*+

09/27/11 - Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Tavern*

09/28/11 - Chicago, IL @ Schubas*

09/29/11 - Madison, WI @ High Noon*

09/30/11 - Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center*

10/01/11 - Omaha, NE @ Waiting Room*

10/04/11 - Seattle, WA @ Tractor*

10/05/11 - Vancouver, BC @ Electric Owl*

10/06/11 - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir*

10/07/11 - San Francisco, CA @ Cafe DuNord*

10/08/11 - Los Angeles, CA @ Satellite*

10/09/11 - Santa Monica, CA @ McCabes*

10/10/11 - San Diego, CA @ Casbah*

# w/ Perry Owen Wright
^ w/ Matthew White
+ w/ Cat Martino
* w/ Doug Paisley

I keep hearing folks saying that fall is in the air, well winter...

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 19:33:16 -0800

I keep hearing folks saying that fall is in the air, well winter is here.

Photo

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 06:38:34 -0800

Photo

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 06:36:09 -0800

Another folk singer

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:52:28 -0800

Another folk singer

"Uh, yeah, right. Well, when I saw you last I had just started to get the idea for the new novel and..."

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:51:00 -0800

“

Uh, yeah, right. Well, when I saw you last I had just started to get the idea for the new novel and it wasn’t really in a coherent form at all. Uh—but just within a short period of time it’s jelled quite a bit. And…uh…it—I saw my agent about it today. He said that, uh—I talked to him yesterday and I gave him some idea of it and I called him back today—and he said, “I got to thinking and I don’t think you can do it,” he said, “I don’t really think—” he said, “Are you sure you can do it?” Because what it would consist of would be, it would be from the viewpoint of a—a, uh, entity that was not human but from presumably another star system. Uh…and its view of us and our culture. That is, it would begin on another star system on a planet with a civilization quite different from ours…a civilization where there is no atmosphere such as we have, and as a result speech has never developed; they’re mute and they’re deaf. And as a result of the failure to develop, to utilize sound, they have no art that is predicated on sound.

Now, our art predicated on sound, of course, is music, and we take music for granted. Uh…but for them, since they do not employ sound, there is no analogue or correlate in their world for music. And what I want to do is, you know, the way we have, on our world, mystical visions of heaven, like at the end of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and these visions generally are that heaven is light…the concept of light is always associated with the next world to us. In fact, uh, when I was doing the Bishop Archer novel, I started noticing that almost all the religions—it doesn’t really matter which one it is: it can be Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, it can be Sufism, it can be Judaism, it can be Christianity—continually you see the word “light” will appear in connection with the next world. For instance in the Fourth Gospel, you know, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.” And John speaks of the light coming into the world and Qumran people use that dualism thing, light and dark, all the time.

Now, in this book, this planet, not having sound, utilizes color, uh, for language. Just as we use different audio frequencies, they use different color frequencies, you know, which are calibrated milli-microns by us, you know, so there are specific frequencies and so, for them, light is a utilitarian thing. Their world is one that employs vision and visual things entirely and no sound whatsoever. So, what I thought was, this is very interesting. Their normal world would be the way we envision the next world to be. So I thought: now what if I set the book on their planet and have a mystic of their species, that is, someone in their species and their civilization who is having mystical visions of this other world, only instead of having visions of light he has visions, he—they wouldn’t be “visions,” they would be some kind of, you know, experience, some kind of supernatural experience—of music, of sound. But they would have no word for this. They would have no concept of it, no word for anything. So it would be completely inexplicable experiences for him. And what he would be experiencing would be our world which—where sound is ubiquitous and music is the great art from developing out of sound. And I got to thinking: What if their world is our heaven and our world is their heaven? So for each civilization, the other one’s world is the way that they would view the next world, the afterlife, reward, heaven, paradise.

”

- Philip K. Dick from:

What if Our World Is Their Heaven? - The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick

edited by Gwen Lee and Doris Elaine Sauter

Overlook Press, 2000

ps fuck MLA, I’m outta school and my apologies for typos I couldn’t find and online text.

Robot nipple. (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:21:50 -0800

Robot nipple. (Taken with instagram)

Photo

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 18:12:45 -0900