NVLST vs ROCK N ROLL		07.09.08

the new Mr. & MRS. MIDDAUGH		06.29.08
Congrats, brother. So proud and happy. Welcome to the family Nicole. All my love.

LULL & BETA CLOUD Layout		05.29.08

CEREMONY III this weekend		05.23.08
poster by Abdale

IVORY MIRRORS Layout		05.19.08

NVLST vs Cleveland		05.15.08

TEETH SO SHARP - Limited Edition		05.15.08

mutus liber vs. Signal To Noise		05.14.08
from the forthcoming 50th issue of Signal To Noise... "The sepulchral hail that falls over Provided With Eyes, Thou Departest, the debut by Mutus Liber sounds like vestigial remnants of late 80s industrial experimentation. “An Exacting Master” could be any number of Soleilmoon veterans in new clothing—Randy Greif, Nocturnal Emissions, even early Zoviet France—but there’s a post-modernist bent to these gothic apparitions that rescues them from blatant selfindulgence. Anti-doom metal crafted in abandoned Eastern European crypts, music to raid frosted arks by." -Signal To Noise, Darren Bergstein

Suishou DVD - TOUR EDITION		05.10.08
full version in the works...

TEETH SO SHARP - CEREMONY III		05.06.08

NVLST vs. E SUNSHINE		04.14.08

NVLST vs. Baltimore		03.24.08

P'fork vs. G3		03.11.08
Rhys Chatham & His Guitar Trio All-Stars Guitar Trio Is My Life! [Table of the Elements; 2008] Rating: 8.7 If the most pure rock'n'roll is all about excess, emancipation, and sexuality, then 55-year-old Parisian composer Rhys Chatham makes Mick Jagger seem like a Sunday school teacher: Chatham's second 3xCD box set for Table of the Elements, Guitar Trio is My Life!, collects 10 performances from Chatham's 2007 14-city North American tour. Every night, Chatham and a different ensemble of musicians performed his most famous work, 1977's "Guitar Trio", twice. It's about time: For too long, Chatham's massed guitars have been a footnote to those of the more famous Glenn Branca. But Branca--- like Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, Swans' Michael Gira and Jonathan Kane, and the Modern Lovers' Ernie Brooks, many of whom appear here-- was an early student of and member in Chatham's New York ensembles. This exhausting, exhilarating collection, though, should confirm both Chatham and "Guitar Trio" as staples in the rock and 20th cenury composition canons. At the very least, from the first E note to the last E chord three hours later, it proves that Chatham-- also significant for his curatorial role at New York's The Kitchen in the 70s and in the establishment of No Wave later that decade-- fucking rocks. The "Guitar Trio" score is deceptively simple: "In this century, it has never taken more than an hour to teach 'Guitar Trio' to everyone's satisfaction and comfort level," Chatham wrote in the score notes circulated for the 2007 tour documented by Guitar Trio Is My Life! "So please don't worry about anything." Several guitar players gather around a drummer and an electronic bassist. Their amps are clean, loud, and high on treble. The drummer counts off, and Chatham strums an open low E string, his rhythm a bit like a jumpy 60s Brit Invasion tune. The drummer plays a cantering, steady rhythm restricted to the hi-hat. One by one, Chatham signals each guitarist to join. The bassist enters. After several minutes, Chatham begins strumming the top three strings and then signals each guitarist to do the same. Later, Chatham begins strumming all six strings, fretting only the second string to B. Eventually everyone stops playing except the drummer, still using only hi-hat, and Chatham, again playing one string. The entire process repeats, and it's generally a bit briefer the second time around. The music fades out with a final chord played on a conclusive downbeat. Chatham announces the ensemble, bows, turns to his band, and starts again in the exact same way. Except this time, the drummer is given use of his full kit, especially the snare and kick drums. The only previous version of "Guitar Trio" (available on the long-since out-of-print 2002 box set An Angel Moves Too Fast to See and on the 2006 disc Die Donnergötter) was eight minutes long (first cycle only). The shortest take on Guitar Trio Is My Life! is the second Brooklyn cycle, which ends after 16 driving minutes. But the "Guitar Trio" sound is surprisingly dynamic: Chatham does not specify when any given player should play above any given fret or for what length of time. Such inherent indeterminacy means that what begins as a stately, strummed guitar pattern begins to mutate and grow into surprising shapes. This variety of sounds builds cumulatively into a thick swath of high and low overtones bouncing off of each other like long-lost kin at a crowded family reunion. All of the sounds are made from the same E string or E chord, but none of them are exactly the same. By the time "Guitar Trio" hits its six-string segment, it's as thick as a furious blizzard. When the notes really come down, it's beautiful and overwhelming. Still, 10 versions of the same 16-to-30 minute piece of music? Boring, right? Perhaps were it not for the musicians included here-- from members of Tortoise, Sonic Youth, and Thee Silver Mt. Zion to an unknown but incredible Buffalo drummer named Jim Abramson, who gloriously mauls his 21 minutes of Table of the Elements time on Disc One. "Guitar Trio" ingests individual talents and funnels them into a composition loose enough for new ideas but tough enough to test physical and mental limits: On the full-drum version from Toronto, then, you get a six-piece string section (including Final Fantasy's Owen Pallet), thickening the guitar sound into a viscous smear. But after the one-string turnaround, it sounds like Chatham's worn them out. Same for Tortoise's John McEntire, who turns in the best brass-only drumming with his Chicago performance, riding his hi-hat with impeccable time and finesse. But he gets lost inside the nine-guitar storm on the full-kit version, unlike improvisational heavyweight and Collections of Colonies of Bees drummer Jon Mueller. Like he does on this year's solo drum Table of the Elements release Metals, Mueller rattles speakers from the frame. His kick drum and heavy snare slap fearlessly. They lash at the six guitars like the only way out is revenge. Same for Ernie Brooks' bristling bass pops on the second set from Brooklyn: With a rhythmic sense that sounds like whiplash must feel, he folds his own aesthetic beneath Chatham's masterful umbrella work. When considered alongside Chatham's statement that he can teach anyone this piece in an hour, such variety is exhilarating. "Guitar Trio" was composed after Chatham, then a New York composer taking a somewhat academic approach to minimalism, saw the Ramones play CBGB. Their music shocked him into redirecting his sonic approach within his own pre-existing ideas. The result is glorious, one-chord, electro-orchestral, garage-band minimalism. Anyone can learn this music. Anyone can play this music. Anyone can enjoy this music, rhythmically and tonally electrified as it is. This is a popular inroad for both understanding and participating in sound fields generally relegated to academia. "Guitar Trio" suggests infinite possibilities for this music, for all music, really: If you can combine basic "punk" ideas with basic "classical" ideas to create something that will forever alter the shape of both memes (see Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca), what can't you do? -Grayson Currin, March 11, 2008

ANNWN		02.09.08
absolutely mind-blowing!

Religious Knives layout for aRCHIVE Recordings		02.04.08

NADJA Layout for The End Records		01.26.08

GUITAR TRIO IS MY LIFE		01.09.08
Utilizing multiple electric guitars and a single chord, 1977's "Guitar Trio" is composer Rhys Chatham's signature work, and a euphoric, minimal-punk classic. It's an inspired amalgamation - the droning, shimmering harmonics of John Cale and Tony Conrad fused with the power and fury of the Ramones - that had a meteoric impact. It placed Chatham at the forefront of the burgeoning No Wave scene; its influence then spread further, as protégés and participants in Chatham's ensembles - including Glenn Branca and members of Sonic Youth - folded the sound into their own. "Guitar Trio" remains a composition with a half-life, an adventure in sound that continues to radiate influence and inspiration. Now, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of "Guitar Trio" on an epic scale, Chatham musters an all-star guitar army for the 3xCD set, "GUITAR TRIO IS MY LIFE!" The sprawling collection features members of Sonic Youth, Swans, Tortoise, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Hüsker Dü, Modern Lovers, Silver Mt. Zion, Town and Country, Die Kreutzen, 90-Day Men, Collections of Colonies of Bees, and many more; even Tony Conrad gets in on the act. Together these artists celebrate Chatham's wordless anthem, with its minimalist origins, rock & roll rhythm, ecstatic whorl of harmonics, and ever-evolving, ever-expanding nature. So, take a listen, and hear what one man can do with hundreds of guitars, 30 years, one chord, and a skyscraper of amps set to Liquefy. "Guitar Trio" endures. “[Rhys Chatham] is one of noise rock’s founding fathers. Without him, there would be no Sonic Youth, no Jesus and Mary Chain, no My Bloody Valentine . . . he remains a towering figure among six-string aficionados.” —Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune, author of Wilco: Learning How to Die “Blue Oyster Cult and Kiss might’ve made noises about guitar armies, but it took composer Rhys Chatham to actually deploy one. And there’s no other way to say this: It rocks” —Bill Meyer, Magnet “Surging phosphorescence . . . uplifting.” —David Fricke, Rolling Stone 3xCD SET OF PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED MATERIAL; INCLUDES 32-PAGE BOOK WITH LINER NOTES AND UNPUBLISHED PHOTOGRAPHS Available March 4th, 2008 on RADIUM/TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS * I appear on Disc One - Track 3 "Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Buffalo"

NVLST vs Cleveland		01.02.08
photos by Steve in Lakewood

NVLST vs Pittsburgh		12.28.07
Sun., Dec. 30 Yes, it's possible to have a guitar-drums duo and not sound the least like the White Stripes. One such group is Novelist, comprised of Chase Middaugh and Ryan McMullen. On the CD Where No Life Moved, Novelist combines avant-garde composition with metallic improvisation, traveling from sparse drum ruffles and icy fragments of melody to molten, doom-drenched dirges. Plus, Rhys Chatham says they're cool. Also performing tonight at Garfield Artworks are Street Smart Cyclist, from Bethlehem, Pa., and Puma Barrier. AJ 8 p.m. Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Ave., Garfield. $7. All ages. 412-361-2262 or www.garfieldartworks.com.

NVLST Tour Poster		12.11.07

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