Bay Area emcee DaVinci is from SF’s Fillmore district, he’s a standout among a small crop of artists who are poised to own independent rap music for 2010, and he absolutely murders this beat. Check this out…

This song is from DaVinci’s debut album, The Day The Turf Stood Still, which you can download for free, legitimately, HERE. Highly recommended.

Want more DaVinci? Check out this clip, a DaVinci interview from The Smoking Section, conducted by Corey Bloom, shot and produced by Thug E. Fresh…

A lot of bass players I know (and most I don’t know) would gag to hear me say this, but… I’m not really a big fan of Jaco Pastorius. There is, however, no denying the guy’s status as a bass god. His approach to the instrument and music in general was unique and inspired, his contribution to music and specifically to bass playing was mammoth, and anyone who says otherwise is just fooling themselves, fan or not.

As a loyal Fender Jazz bass player, however, I am interested in Jaco’s famed ’62 Jazz bass, the “Bass of Doom.” A certified pawn shop classic — bought in the early ’70s for $90 and modified like crazy — it was an otherwise average instrument that was elevated to legendary status through some weird mods (like prying the frets out with a butter knife and filling the slots with “plastic wood”), and Jaco’s skill and ability to play the hell out of it. Stolen from Jaco off a park bench in 1986 and lost for over two decades after his untimely demise at the hands of a club bouncer in 1987, the bass popped up in 2007 at a little music store in NYC’s East Village. It’s ownership status remained in legal question (read: a court battle between Pastorius’ family and the music shop owner) until Metallica’s Robert Trujillo donated some effort and a bunch of cash to helping the Pastorius family get it back.

My friend Craig McFarland — a great guy, monster bass player, big Jaco fan, and a friend of Trujillo’s who has actually played the Bass of Doom since Trujillo recently assumed a stewardship of the instrument on behalf of the Pastorius family — posted this link on his Facebook page yesterday, and I had to repost it here. The story, like Jaco, is just too crazy:

Read all about the Bass of Doom saga on the Fender site.

And before you ask why I don’t really get down with Jaco, let me just say that I’ve always hated fusion jazz, which is what he’s mostly known for. But this clip of him playing solo — a riff on Hendrix’s “Third Stone from the Sun” with a cool looped rhythm part and some awesome harmonic noise — is just a small example of not only how insane Jaco was a a person (clinically bipolar and a heavy substance abuser), but also what an insanely gifted player he was. So while I don’t necessarily love the guy, I’ll never hate on him either…

And don’t forget to mark your calendars for the Western Medicine release party at the Hemlock Tavern in SF, where Ovipositor and Cartographer will be lending their voices in support of the crushing power of the new order.

Enter Hessian Hobbies (I’m about to run down to the craft store for some popsicle sticks):

Thanks to Christen McFarland for the tip!

Holy shit I’m stoked on this… Sleep, the preeminent stoner metal band from San Jose, CA, reunited for the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in London back in May of 2009, and have just announced that they will be taking that act on the road for a brief U.S. tour at the end of this summer.

Here’s the press release and tour dates I got today:

LEGENDARY METAL BAND SLEEP ANNOUNCES SPECIAL U.S. LIVE PERFORMANCES

GROUNDBREAKING CALIFORNIA POWER TRIO TO PLAY RARE LIVE DATES THIS SEPTEMBER; PERFORM ENTIRE CLASSIC ALBUM “HOLY MOUNTAIN” AS PART OF 2010 “ALL TOMORROW’s PARTIES” FESTIVAL

Legendary stoner rock band SLEEP, who split in 1997 after the release of two hugely influential albums – Sleep’s Holy Mountain (1992) and Dopesmoker (2003) – has announced September, 2010 U.S. tour dates.  The iconic California band will kick things off by performing amongst the featured acts at the 2010 “All Tomorrow’s Parties” New York Festival (set to take place September 3-5 in Monticello, NY); sharing the stage with Iggy and the Stooges, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth and more and performing its now-classic Sleep’s Holy Mountain record in its entirety.  Live dates in Philadelphia, PA, Brooklyn, NY, Chicago, IL, Austin, TX, Portland, OR and San Francisco, CA have also just been announced.

SLEEP debuted with 1991’s Volume One album, recorded for San Francisco label Tupelo.  In the years that would follow, the band gained a devoted fan base within the growing doom metal scene and developed a sound and style that showcased a love of all things retro, from the blatant Black Sabbath / Blue Cheer influences, to its fixation with 1970′s-style tube amplification.  The group’s 1992 release Sleep’s Holy Mountain is widely considered a seminal album in the evolution of stoner metal.  Upon its release, the album became a favorite of the heavy metal press and the band was heralded, along with fellow Californians Kyuss, as leaders of the emerging “stoner rock” scene.  In May 2009, SLEEP performed the album live in its entirety as part of the All Tomorrow’s Parties-curated ‘Don’t Look Back’ series In London.  Now, the band will treat U.S. fans to the classic album in full as part of ATP New York this September.

In the years since the band’s self-imposed hiatus, its members have formed the critically acclaimed hard rock bandsHIGH ON FIRE and OM, and more recently Shrinebuilder.  For the upcoming September tour, original SLEEP members Matt Pike (HIGH ON FIRE) and Al Cisneros (OM) will be joined by guest drummer Jason Roeder of Neurosis.

Once referred to as “the ultimate stoner rock band”, SLEEP evolved in the early 1990s from the band Asbestosdeath and has exerted a considerable, consistent influence on modern heavy music ever since.  The band followed the release ofSleep’s Holy Mountain by signing a major label deal with London Records and then proceeded to deliver an epic, single 60-minute magnum opus that it refused to “edit or split up into sections under any circumstances.”  After years of red tape,SLEEP decided to break up rather than surrender the album in anything but its intended form, cutting short (at least initially) the career of one of the most talked about and talented heavy rock bands of the last two decades.  SLEEP’s music has been featured in films by Harmony Korine and Jim Jarmusch.

SLEEP tour dates:

September 3 Monticello, NY             * As part of the 2010 All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival (w/ Iggy and the Stooges, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, etc.)
September  7 Philadelphia, PA            Starlight Ballroom
September  8 Brooklyn, NY                  Brooklyn Masonic Temple (w/ Lichens)
September  9 Chicago, IL                   Logan Square Auditorium (w/ Lichens)
September 10 Austin, TX                      Mohawk (w/ Sub Oslo)
September  11 Portland, OR                 Roseland Theater (*As part of Music Fest NW w/ Scott Kelly, YOB, etc.)
September 12 San Francisco, CA        Regency Ballroom

For more info, check out www.myspace.com/rifffilledland

Someone posted the whole Sleep set from ATP for download on RapidShare, which you should grab because it’s awesome; and you can see footage of the band’s ATP reunion show over at the RoadBurn site.

Here’s the video for “Dragonaut.” I’ve posted this classic before, but it seems like an appropriate time to put it back up…such a dope song / video:

Have I mentioned how fucking stoked I am for this show? God damn.

Anyway… They make a lot of crazy-awesome effects at Dwarfcraft, and they’ve got something new in their catalog; it makes a lot of foul noise, which I’m definitely down with. Check out the Loop Mangler…

Some bullshit I shot out the back window of Murph’s car driving from 24th & Potrero to 25th & Mission, San Francisco, CA. Friday, June 11, 2010. Music: “Lacville ’79″ by Devin The Dude.

“A meditation on violence and visual tropes at the movies, ‘Pure’ celebrates the visceral pleasures of cinema. Music by The Jesus Lizard.” View at full size on Vimeo.

Thanks to Rob G. for the tip.

“Of all the things I have made in my life, this might be my favorite.” - Burlesque Design‘s Mike 2600

Ovipositor went into the studio last Tuesday, May 25, 2010 to record our fourth album (the second on which I am the bass player). Because we were (and still are) really happy with the way the last record, Oakland Minor, turned out, we decided to go back to Eli Crews at New, Improved Recording in North Oakland, a cozy, top notch recording space owned and operated by Eli and his partner John Finkbeiner, where a ton of great bands have captured a lot of great music.

We booked a single day to track all the basics, which meant setting up in the same room and bashing through all the songs as cleanly and quickly as possible. We managed to get 13 songs on tape in one session, recording no more than two or three versions of each (except for one song, tentatively titled “Ride The Mechanical Nun,” which I think we did five times, but only kept two takes on tape). We’ll choose one take of each tune, and go with it — no splicing or dicing, no surgical ProTool moves to add the drums from one track to the bass and guitar of another, etc.

That’s not the way a lot of bands / studios work, but we’d rather practice our assess off and spend just enough time in the studio to get something tight and visceral, than spend too much time in the studio and polish the skin off of, or choke the life out of music that we’re pretty adamant about maintaining some levels of spontaneity and transience anyway. Besides, its not like we’ve got (or frankly, want) record label budget money behind us. Ultimately, we don’t really make any money on this stuff, so we tighten up and do our thing as efficiently, effectively and affordably as possible.

Not only is NIR a perfect place for a band like us in terms of budget and general vibe, but it’s an analog-to-digital audio nerd’s ideal work space, where the best of 2″ tape and ProTools operate in harmonious conjunction. We’re all about that. Eli knows how to get the most out of the room and it’s temporary inhabitants, so we feel like there’s someone on the boards who not only has the skills to get the job done, but is a genuinely good person who genuinely cares about the product that comes out of his studio. When everything lines up like that — when the band works hard, and the engineer knows his shit and cares about his end of the bargain — it’s hard for things to not come together right. So needless to say, we’re looking forward to continuing the process through the completion of this as-yet-untitled record.

For tracking, the process was pretty basic, and I don’t recall every single mic Eli threw up around the room (I saw Royer and Blue mics, among others), nor did I pay attention to all the hardware doodad settings when I was in the control booth (if I was in there, it was to listen to playback). But here’s a little rundown of how things shook out from where I sat. But first, PLAYBACK IS A BITCH, the Ovipositor in-studio album trailer, shot and edited by Colin…

PLAYBACK IS A BITCH Trailer from Nadir Novelties on Vimeo.

We loaded into the studio at 9am and spent a few hours working with Eli and his assistant Carlos to set up the gear. Drums always take the longest because the process of mic placement is the most crucial, so Colin and I took our time with the guitar and bass rigs. My bass setup is really straightforward: Fender Jazz (US-made, DR Lo-Rider nickel strings) to pedals (Boss TU-2 tuner, Pro-Co Rat distortion heavily modified by Colin, Dwarfcraft Devices Eau Claire Thunder distortion), then into a DI box, splitting the signal out 1) directly to the board, and 2) into my Ampeg SVT 4-Pro amp, which was on the floor next to me, upright on its side; the amp lined out to my bass cabinets — Ampeg SVT 1×15 & 2×10 — which were miked in an isolation room behind me. (Isolation is important to keep each instruments’ signals clean and free of each other, especially with bass, which is omnidirectional and can/will bleed under and through everything else if it’s left out in the open.)

Colin plays through two small vintage combo amps, a ’60s era Sears amp that was set up in the live room behind a gobo, and similar era Silvertone in another isolation room. For two pretty small amps, each has a notable snarl to it, and together they round out a mean, growling tube-driven sound. He used two guitars on this session: a (nearly) brand new Electrical Guitar Company Custom all aluminum hollow body with Alumitone pickups in standard tuning (strummed with steel picks; metal up yer ass); and a generic Telecaster copy that he has dialed into some weird tuning. These were played through two homemade pedals, the Brayer (dubbed such because it makes awesomely awful noise) and the Rockalizer (which makes things more rock, duh).

Mark’s kit is a mix-and-match setup of various pieces (I don’t enough about drums to get more specific than that), but pretty straightforward: kick, rack tom, floor tom, snare, hi-hat, crash and ride cymbals. We played together in the same room, listening to the live mix via headphones so we could hear what it all sounded like, and we talked to Eli through the room mics, while he talked back to us in the phones through a mic in the control room. We recorded live to an Otari 2″ tape machine (used two reels throughout the day), which Eli then dumped into ProTools, and copied over to an external hard drive that Colin took home so he can load the sessions into his studio computer and take care of the vocals and guitar overdubs there (further cutting our studio costs), before we go back into NIR to mix the record.

The overall studio experience was loose and fun, and though we did a lot of laughing and joking around and nerding out on stuff, we were also pretty driven and focused on making sure we got as much as we could out of our time. And to be sure, 13 songs is a marathon session; ask most bands who have worked in a studio and they’ll tell you that five or six songs in one day is pretty good. We’re not professional musicians, we don’t make terribly complicated music, and we’re not shooting for the charts here, but we know what we want and we’re fairly certain we know how to get it, and we’re happy with what we’ve got so far, so we expect to end up with (another) solid record.

Stay tuned for more as the process marches on: We mix over two days in late July, we’ll have it mastered some time shortly after that, and then, hopefully, we’ll sell a few copies. Oh, and we’re playing a show on July 29th at the Hemlock in SF with our friends, and damn fine rock bands, Generalissimo (it’s their album release party), and the mighty Cartographer.

In the meantime, here’s a photo gallery of our day in the studio (or click over to the set on Flickr to see this set at full size)…