Click here to see these photos all big and bright.

The energy in their music is immeasurably huge and undeniably infectious. They make an insane racket, but move in unison as one fast-paced, detuned punk rock ‘n’ roll machine. They are, for my money, one of the best live acts on the road these days.

Most of their recent show, February 2, at the Hemlock Tavern in SF — which, of course, I was front and center at — was captured on video and posted, in three parts, by Colin:

Photos by yours truly, which you can see at full size over on Flickr…

Roughly three months after the final show and subsequent implosion of Ovipositor, we (Colin and I) managed to get with Ben Adrian at Mr. Toad’s in SF to master the unfinished album, Everyone Has Their Tipping Point. Ben has a great ear, and I always love getting down into the basement mastering suite at Mr. Toad’s. It’s just a cool place to hang out for a few hours. I took these photos while we were there…

Anyway, I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen with the album at this point — Colin has mentioned releasing it in extremely short runs of several physical formats including, but not limited to, soundsheet / flexidisc, wax cylinder, 8-Track, cassette, and CD (seriously) — but it is done, and I assume it’ll end up on iTunes / e-Music / Rhapsody / etc. in the near future.

In the meantime, here are a couple of my favorite songs from the new record, streaming for your listening pleasure…

Ovipositor, “The Groper,” Everyone Has Their Tipping Point

Ovipositor, “More Than Good,” Everyone Has Their Tipping Point (This is an MX80 cover.)

Ovipositor, “Drown,” Everyone Has Their Tipping Point

In case you were wondering (I know you weren’t but I don’t care)…yes, I’m on to another musical endeavor, definitely in the fledgling stages, but promising. It’s low. And slow. Heavy. And loud. Bass and drums. More to come on that at a later date.

I broke character last Thursday 10/14 and headed to the Hemlock Tavern in SF to see friend and author Eugene S. Robinson read from his latest novel, A Long, Slow Screw. Though, given that the Hemlock is traditionally a live music venue, and Eugene is, more than an author, known as the frontman of archetypal art metal band Oxbow, the scene wasn’t all that far out of my comfort zone. Anyway…

Joined on stage by spur-of-the-moment ambient noise duo guitarist Chris Corona  (Floating Goat, Orb of Confusion) and bass player Monte Vallier (Jet Black Crayon, Swell), Eugene sipped briefly from a glass of red wine, removed his beanie and launched into a passage from the book, not reading it, but impressively reciting it from memory. Eugene is a showman — an actor and performer (if you’ve ever seen Oxbow, you know) — so there was a bit of drama in his recitation; nothing over the top but just enough to make it engaging and appropriately intense for a scene from a book about theft, graft and the general gritty ugliness of the NYC criminal underworld of the early 1970s.

The performance was brief, only about 30 minutes, but it was worth it. Here are some photos (see ‘em at full size over on Flickr)…

Bonus: Someone shot this video of Oxbow performing an acoustic version of “The Geometry of Business” at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Looks like a cool space, definitely a cool song (you should get the album, The Narcotic Story)…

At the Regency Ballroom in SF on Sunday September 12, SLEEP ran through nearly all of the seminal Holy Mountain album, and played some choice passages from Jerusalem / Dopesmoker — over two hours of music. I stood with my head on a swivel the whole time, nodding with the waves of sonic massiveness, controlled by the pulse of the riffs’ ebb and flow. The thick haze of weed smoke hanging in the room helped too. If there’s such a place as stoner metal heaven, this was it.

You can see my best photos from that night at full size over on Flickr (they look much better when viewed large), or scroll through the set here…

PS: For the gear nerds out there, Matt Pike was playing his High On Fire rig: custom First Act 9-string (see a video I shot of Matt talking to my friend Rob about this guitar in Austin, TX in March ’09) through a Marshall stack (I think it was the Kerry King Signature model) and a Soldano stack. Al Cisneros was on a Rickenbacker (I’m guessing a 4002), playing through two full Ampeg rigs (two SVT VR heads and two SVT 8×10 cabinets) and a full Marshall stack. Crushingly, devastatingly, deafeningly awesome.

PPS: Check out some great video of SLEEP’s Denver show (with Pike on a totally different guitar rig — Les Paul and Orange amps) over on Blabbermouth.net.

Incidentally, The Imps have been known to play a cover of the Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam Tejano-infused California country classic “Streets of Bakersfield,” which they did last weekend, and it’s been ringing in my ears ever since. (“Hey you don’t know me but you don’t like me / say you care less how I feel / but how many of you that sit and judge me / ever walked the streets of Bakersfield.”) I wish I had the forethought to to take my field recorder and capture the Duffy’s show. I’ve had to make do with listening to the original on YouTube, which just isn’t feeding my craving for The Imps’ stripped-down, amped-up rock version. Dammit.

I’ve been busy lately. Busier than usual. In addition to everything else I’m wrapped up in — which essentially boils down to working and being a father to my daughter — I went back to school, which has turned out to be sort of time consuming…I know, shocker.

Got a few other things in the works, including a new musical project (think low and slow) and a return to a semi-regular mix / podcast thing (maybe). More on those soon. In the meantime, click that picture up there to see a goddamn big ass version of the view from near the top of Tilden Park over Berkeley / Oakland. It’s one of best views in, and of, the Bay Area.

The panorama is a composite of four photos taken with my Canon S90 and stitched together.

I saw Shellac in May of 2009 at the Great American Music Hall in SF. I recently thought about that show and how awesome it was when this song came up in iTunes’ shuffle mode. Turn it up. Way up.

Shellac, “Steady As She Goes,” Excellent Italian Greyhound [Touch & Go, 2007]

1. Tilden Park; 2. Splash Pad Park; 3. New, Improved Recording. All locations, Oakland, CA. Shot on a Canon S90.