Check it out below and here is the link. http://www.thefader.com/2009/07/21/stream-mndr-fade-to-black/

It’s tempting to picture currently-NY-based producer/vocalist MNDR 24-7 surrounded by hotwired gear, Frankensteinian drum machines and patched together pedals, a sort of musical robot extension of her arms—her crystal-clear pop voice and gleaming beat sequences just invokes that shit. “Fade to Black” is a total iPod burner, completely anthemic in a song-of-the-summer style with an outburst chorus that evokes the bigness of “Kids in America” or Pat Benetar’s “Invincible”—which is not to say it’s retro, just that it makes us want to walk down the street with our crew, amassing unrelated passersby until we have like a Puerto Rican Day Parade-sized posse following us down Madison, all singing the chorus of this in unison. So maybe MNDR is secretly Ferris Bueller? Listen to it on her MySpace, along with another epic, the wobbly new “Jump In.” story Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Girls are an amazing duo pop band from SF.  My friends have made a couple of videos for them.  This song is really amazing and makes me feel like throwing up flowers.  I really love it.  A lot of my friends from Oakland/SF are in the video.  Makes me miss it.  SF is such a beautiful city and it is nice to see it orchestrated by Girls.  Their record is out via Turnstilemusic/Fantasytrashcan and True Panther Sound

Check out their video directed by Aaron Brown.

Now that I have an ep finished I am embarking on my next set of songs.  Three of my songs are up on MNDR myspace.  I have kept one of the songs Sparrow in the vault as of now because it hurts that good.

My tastes and interests seem to always be shifting, evolving, or returning to past ideas. These next grouping of songs are reflecting my NYC life sonically and lyrically.
Peter Wade and I are experimenting with different sounds and textures for the new songs.
We have a new track we are finishing that is more cinematic and dramatic than the other records.  This is a picture of us running keyboards and drums out of some swag Peter received. It is a BMI ipod carrying case with an internal speaker. We ran beats and keys through it and recorded it on his Neuman.

I went to see Silk Flowers (members of Soiled Mattress and The Springs) record release show Saturday Night July 18th at The Cake Shop. Silk Flowers are truly one of my favorite bands.  I have seen them 4 times now, which includes seeing them in LA earlier this spring.  They have taken their own spin on minimal/cold wave and industrial pop.  It is truly zooming this style of music into a modern window and changing how to make pop music.  They play everything live, including live drum pads, keys, and samples with very little sequenced parts.  Also Aviram Cohen’s voice is haunting. One of my favorite voices I have ever heard and also his live performance is awesome and sounds even better.  The keyboard parts (played by Peter) are sonically distinct using new synth sounds and complicated parts with a lot of developtment.  The third layer and use of noise/concrete is played by Ethan and is no less some of the best use of sonic layers in pop set I have heard.  They play a lot and their blog is killer.  They just released their debut full length Silk Flowers Silk Flowers.  It is up on Amazon, iTunes, and Post Present Medium (record label).

Here is their video for Shadows In Daylight.

SILK FLOWERS “shadows in daylight” from brian degraw on Vimeo.

The other great thing about the show was Further Reduction.  A two piece featuring Shawn from Let er Est and his girlfriend Katie.  They also played a killer set and Shawn is really outstanding at live sequencing and song writing.  Cold Cave played and so did City Center.

Saturday was a day of awesome shows.  I went to see Xeno and Oaklander play at PS1 during the afternoon which also included DJ set from Peter Wierd Records.  Xeno and Oaklander executed a seamless highly involved synth/drum machine/sequencing live set like I have never seen.  It is difficult to describe people’s music because I always feel like I take role of a music critic, but descriptions are good.  Xeno and Oaklander are rooted in the tradition of cold/minimal wave with a dash of early pop industrial.  Their musicality is like watching a darker Vince Clark.  The most impressive thing is that their songs are highly involved with chord progressions, beat developmets/transitions, different multi-layered sequenced keyboard parts, and not to mention live vocals.  It is really impressive and is worth checking out evey single one of their shows. Here is a video.

My art band 0th played on July 15th at The Lab in SF for Mission Creek Music Festival.  This time JapJap was in Las Vegas so both JapJap and myself MNDR skyped in for the show.  The Lab is a space for multi-media art and proved to be an excellent venue for 0th.

Unannounced to us, CNET had heard wind of our skype performances and were interested in doing a piece about 0th on CNET.  So they interviewed Statue of Liberty and Gloat about the set up and the mission of the project.  For this performance JapJap and myself choreographed movements for the visual aspects of the show, along with contributing live synth, samplers, and singing.  Gloat played drums, MAX MSP, brought her robots, clarinet, and sang.  Statue of Liberty played violin, sang, and also performance art.  They smashed LEDS inside of glass and also contributed to movement.  The audio always turns out better than expected thanks to our friend Wobbly.  Here is the CNET permalink along with a screen shot of the produced piece on CNET.

We also uploaded the entire performance on youtube.

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I have been returning back to some feelings and classics that have really steared my sense of audio, melody, song structure, and rhythmic feeling.

The first is Todd Rundgren’s I Saw The Light off of Something/Anything?  I gotta say Todd Rundgren is especially hit or miss for me.  However, when he smashes it, it is truly undeniable.  He also played every instrument and sang every melody on this entire full length.

Next obsession from the past is Prince’s The Ballad of Dorthy Parker off of Sign Of The Times.  This was Prince’s first full length after dis-banding The Revolution.  It is one of his best complete works of all time.  However, The Ballad of Dorothy Parker shows the absolute genuis that is Prince.  Not only does he produce, write, and play everything, he also was able to quote Joni Mitchell, one of the most undeniable melodic freaks of nature, inside of his pop song.  The lyrics, its meandering song writing quality, and its devestating Linn Drum Machine programming is yet another example of Prince changing everything all at once without anyone knowing.  There is nearly zero bass on this track (one of the Prince tricks).

Brian Eno’s Another Green World and Here Comes the Warm Jets.  Using his discreet methods to obtain pop perfection.  He mastered melody outside of influence and could really let his ideas flow and ride on rhythms without being concernced with form.  And within that process form was created.  I like to listen to these when I feel like I am just doing the same thing over and over again.  Also, Eno was classic for singing stream of conciousness vocal ref’s and then distinguishing words out of those refs.  I like this style a lot, but often times, you still got to reign it in.  Usually what you are feeling and needed to say is just hanging in your brain.  At least the sort of message people can relate to.

MNDR played Whartscape and it was one of the best festivals I have played. Whartscape is a festival in Baltimore ran and curated by Wham City . It is four days of bands and parties. There were something like over 400 musicians playing the festival at several different locations with two stages at every space.  It was awesome to play Baltimore. The spirit of that town is lets party and be awesome. Music for music’s sake. Wham City are my hero’s. MNDR set was really fun. I blew the circuit right away with my sine wave/shepards tone piece. After that, I dropped a dub set of my pop songs over minimal techno/pop industrial/chicago Juke/house. It was fun. My beats were distorted in that Baltimore way that is oh so good.

Eats Tapes (Tigerbeat 6) from SF via Berlin have just released a free ep. I toured with them in August 2008 and will also be touring a “Nor-Easter” with them in early August 2009. Check www.myspace.com/mndrtronica and www.myspace.com/eatstapes for shows and dates.

They are a live techno duo that are by far the best I have ever seen for live sequencing with old school drum machines/sequencers/synths.  They also have some home made electronics and some circuit bent instruments.  A lot of groups got into live techno, but few if any really execute it live.  There is a lot to handle when you have drum machines, sequencers…etc on stage and still make a seamless set with builds, transitions, and boom kicks for a modern style set.  They are on par with the greats from Detroit and Berlin.

Download their new EP www.eatstapes.com and play it until you melt into a pile of blood.  Sweaty Blood!

John Wiese sent this to me.
I love it. The guitar sound is killer along with all the concrete aspects. I want all punk to sound like this. Thank you John Wiese.
Have any of you heard of Metal Urbain?

I have a couple of friends who hear music as colors. I am casually obsessed with this topic. I taught piano lessons to a kid who would say this is blue, green…etc.
I copied this out of Synethesia Wiki:
from the Ancient Greek σύν (syn), “together,” and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), “sensation”—is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. [1][2][3][4] People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes. In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia or color-graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored.

I wonder if there is a correlation between the visible color spectrum and Synesthesia.
A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 380 to 750 nm.[1] In terms of frequency, this corresponds to a band in the vicinity of 790–400 terahertz.
Here is a hypothesis; Maybe people who have an acute sense of hearing are able to hear terahertz, which enables them to distinguish some sort of color from the sounds they hear.
I am very curious about this topic. How people experience sound. Please share on this post.
I will begin one:
I experience sound and songs with some color, but more as a 3 dimensional space with momentum and movement. I see things as a connected thought that is visually represented. This visual representation also seems to move at what is a bpm. This is my experience when listening/performing “experiemental music” or more traditional concepts of songs and song structure.

…Ok so your turn….