I don't take much time to be a real blogger on this blog of mine, but I thought a new track out by Icky Blossoms was a good enough excuse. It's called "Babes" and I think it rules.
The band put on an awesome show this past Friday at the Slowdown. You can check out a shitty video I took on my phone. Just tilt your head to left, and you're good to go.
Icky Blossoms has pretty much been a well-kept secret, with Derek Pressnall (Tilly and the Wall, Flowers Forever) and Nik Fackler (Flowers Forever, InDreama) working in the studio and collab-ing with the likes of Jacob Thiele and Clark Blaechle (The Faint) and Teal Gardner (UUVVWWZ). They only have three tracks up on the web as of now, but have many on standby, as their set proved at the Slowdown.
Nik Fackler was probably shaking the sand out of his shoes when I got ahold of him to discuss his outfit InDreama. The musician/filmmaker just finished escaping the Los Angeles asphalt for an evening of ocean gazing, only to be met by a prolonged traffic jam on the returning commute. He needed some nature, he says, after spending the day putting his projects in line before his two-week leave to Omaha the next day.
With eight current projects — since first trekking to LA last summer with two — Fackler clearly hasn't become a beach bum. Over the past year, he’s finished InDreama's debut record and then some, collaborating with Flowers Forever pal Derek Pressnall (Tilly and the Wall) through their dance music project Icky Blossoms — swapping ideas and stepping in the studio whenever he’s back in Omaha. This time, Fackler’s back to celebrate the release of a four-way, double 7-inch split featuring Indreama, Icky Blossoms, Conduits and Darren Keen persona Touch People 9 p.m. tonight (April 15) at the Slowdown.
InDreama’s lineup is quite the array. Capgun Coup/No I’m The Pilot’s Sam Martin isn’t quite the beholder of the band’s art-rock style, Fackler says, “but I think he likes the challenge.” He accompanies Fackler with vocals and guitar.
A New Year music video by Nik Fackler, starring Capgun's Sam Martin
Film industry friend Aaron Gum is the poet on synth, he says. Percussion will be on the double with Craig D. (Tilly, David Dondero) and add-on Kevin Donahue.
And then there’s Dereck Higgins. The local bass virtuoso has been deeply connected to Fackler, he says, since Fackler's puppy days as a 21-year-old picking up the guitar with The Family Radio. So it’s not surprising that Higgins influences Fackler’s first legitimate LP. Fackler definitely did some growing first, though.
“Family Radio, I look back and sort of feel like that was learning to play music,” he says, “cause as soon as I learned guitar I kinda started a band, and was sort of putting it all together. But then once we recorded the music, I didn’t like how it sounded.”
InDreama picks up from where his first band left off. Initially just a recording project, Fackler found his bearings with recording and production through experimentation. He also took the time to feel out the sound, with the goal of harnessing something interesting, not normal.
“InDreama is sort of my way of learning how to make an atmosphere for a song to exist in,” Fackler says, “which I think I learned a lot from working on Lovely, Still, and growing as an artist over those two years,” he says of his 2008 first feature film, shot in Omaha.
The album is set for release by this summer on Slumber Party Records. It’s untitled, and may never have a name to put to its 12 tracks, he says.
“The world that I was living in when I was writing, mixing and making the record isn’t the world that I live in now, internally and mentally,” Fackler says. “So it’s sort of weird to name something when I’m not connected to it anymore.”
Fackler began writing the music as he traveled from film festival to film festival promoting Lovely, Still. The creative free time was a nice change from being 100 percent busy with the film, he says. Entirely new experiences and feelings, as well as falling in and out of love with a girl, shaped the album’s lyrics and variant of tones. He made sure to leave behind genre limitations and any doubts about what he was creating, he says. All musical expression had to be captured.
If there’s one word to describe the album, Fackler says, it would be eccentric. Interests in prog rock and classical music, thanks to Higgins, are mustered in with the experimental — the quality that really glares golden with an incredible range of sound elements, percussive and synthesized. Fackler touches totally different spectrums of vocals, something he says represents different characters within a story, on a journey depicted in a world called Dreama. In no way is he necessarily trying to sing like himself.
And possibly the most interesting detail: The album’s dynamic nods to a classical music listening experience (see the nine-minute electro-cadence epic “Exodus from Reunion, A + Storm ^ Great = End”).
Cameron McGill’s new LP, Is a Beast, began when he picked up an old acoustic guitar at his girlfriend’s apartment. It was her late grandfather’s and hadn’t been played for 20 or 30 years, he says. With the original strings intact, he began writing songs as his girlfriend shared stories of the man to whom the guitar had once belonged.
“It had an eerie quality,” McGill says. “In some ways it seemed to cast a shadow, maybe, over the light in which those songs were written.”
Cameron McGill & What Army is on tour supporiting the album and will stop at the Bourbon Theatre at 9 p.m. Thursday, April 7 in Lincoln as a part of a KRNU benefit show with The Betties, Life of a Scarecrow, Masses and Show is the Rainbow. You can catch them a week later at the Barley St. Tavern at 9 p.m. Thursday, April 14 in Omaha with openers Bryan Rogers and Manny Coon.
I caught up with McGill while he took a break in a tour bus stopped in St. Louis.
Bus engine off, he’s able to catch some time to hear himself think so he can work for a few hours, he says, while out on tour with Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s. With a forthcoming album under his main project, Cameron McGill & What Army, he has some pre-release work to hash out.
“This release has definitely had the most kind of set-up and promotion than any of my past records,” he says of the LP, due out physically April 12.
Since joining up with Margot in 2009 as the band’s keyboardist, a break from one band means time for the other, especially when you’re touring about seven months out of the year between the Chicago groups.
Or at least, that’s how it’s shaped up for McGill as he prepares to self-release his fifth studio album. Is A Beast is currently available for purchase on iTunes as well as for online streaming. The album holds McGill’s singer-songwriter sound while expanding upon the band’s music, lending to a nice mix of folk and rock.
It's not often that one sees more cops than showers over a week's course. After Noah's Ark Was A Spaceship's Midwest/Southern tour with Yuppies, vocalist/guitarist Andrew Gustafson can say he's done it.
Fresh off his spring break, unparalleled to any other college kid's, he tells me that with four run-ins with the cops at house shows and on the road, "I don't think anyone in both bands showered more than twice." Yikes.
Official tour group pic
The band introduced its debut LP, Hanga-Fang, to show-goers across the south and Midwest, even meeting a few song requests and synched lips in Denton, Texas, a city less than half the size of Lincoln.
"The kids we met were totally supportive and genuine," he says. "It's not something that you necessarily find everywhere."
"Opener" and "Warm Eyes" from Hanga-Fang. Free downloads here at Slumber Party Records.
Now back in Omaha, Noah's Ark is looking forward to a break before hitting the interstate west for a 10 (or so) day June tour. A break from playing, anyway.
"We’re looking forward to knowing that we’re coming back out again in June, but also knowing the time between now and then we can write and lay low," he says.
Along with the West coast tour, there's also talk of a weekend stint with The Answer Team, he tells me.
In part two, Noah's Ark goes Ninja Turtles for pizza...
Wednesday, March 23: house show in New Orleans We left Memphis after a long night of hard partying to New Orleans. The drive was a long, Southern-filled experience. The South is much different from Omaha. In a gas station we saw dudes with gun racks inside their trucks. There were Confederate flags everywhere and single-serving beer cans to-go on every corner. Wow!
We entered Louisiana (Gator Land). Apparently, Rob cornered one and tried to feed it some leftover bananas but it was not into them. The gator turned around and whipped Rob in the genitals. I guess he learned his lesson.
New Orleans is an incredible city still ravaged by Katrina. We played in a sweet house with Yuppies. Our sets were filled with sweat and beer. The show was so packed that things became unruly. Women threw their panties at the stage and the floor became so full of underwear that it needed to be swept before Yuppies went on. Yuppies were great and singer Boogs threw the crowd into a trance with his piercing eyes. He's a huge hit with the tranny crowd.
After the show, we hit the town with our friends Steevo, Liz and Eric from Omaha. We ate poboy sandwiches with a homeless guy before consuming gallons of Louisiana gator beer. We sang near perfect renditions of our favorite pop and R&B tunes at a karaoke bar. We stumbled home and immediately disrobed and danced the night away. We awoke the next morning nude and sweating. Off to Austin, Texas! — John (guitar/ bass/ vox)
