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Burn to Shine and I Need that Record: Two instrumental docos
Hi there my fellow out-of-tune hummers! Welcome to this week's Underground Hum
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Hi there my fellow out-of-tune hummers! Welcome to this week's Underground Hum. Follow me to the kitchenette and I will serve you up the most delicious news from the international and national music scenes! Let's begin and don't forget to hum along! Would you like some fries with that?
Reverb
International
Burn To Shine: Seattle, the fifth volume in a documentary series produced by Brendan Canty (Fugazi) and directed by filmmaker Christoph Green is finally out.
This Seattle edition is curated by Benjamin Gibbard (of Death Cab For Cutie) and features Spook the Horse, Tiny Vipers, Eddie Vedder (yes, from Pearl Jam everyone!) Minus the Bear, The Long Winters, Skinned Alive to Death, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter.
Burn to Shine is a one-of-a-kind music documentary. The premise is very simple yet captivating. Gibbard gathers eclectic bands and musicians in a house that is soon to be destroyed. All bands play one song each and perform their song twice. There are no overdubs, just pure spontaneity. Then the destruction of the house is filmed. That is the end of that.
Usually the owners of a house on the list for demolition, approach Burn to Shine, to let their house light up with music and life, before it goes out with a bang. The result is a musical rite of passage that is definitely worth watching!
To find out more about Burn to Shine, check out www.trixiedvd.com.
I Need That Record! The Death (or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store is a must-see documentary. Directed by Brendan Toller, it explores the reasons why independently owned record shops are getting few and far between by looking at the bigger picture. First off, the big corporations (in the music industry the world is dominated by the "big five") tend to disregard the interests of small businesses.
It also talks about why people nowadays want to buy fewer physical copies of musical artifacts when they can get them on the internet for free, and what the future holds for independent record stores that sell physical forms of music: CDs, cassettes, or even LPs.
The story is told through interviews with Ian MacKaye (Fugazi/Dischord Records), Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Glenn Branca, Chris Frantz (Talking Heads) and Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group) -- even MIT professor/political theorist Noam Chomsky speaks out. You can watch the trailer at www.youtube.com/user/ineedthatrecord before the DVD comes out.
I've seen the trailer and it makes me ache and yearn for the full version, I am sure you will too! This is instrumental, guys!
National
Yogyakarta's indie music scene fascinates me. During a recent visit I happily discovered Yes No Wave Music. Yes No Wave Music is a net label run by Wok the Rock and Bagus Jalang out of this Gudeg city. For those of you who are not familiar with net label, it is a record label that puts out music on digital format (MP3, WAV) and makes it available online for purchase, or for free even. So you will not find the physical format such as tapes or audio CDs on this label, instead you will find and be able to download MP3s straightaway from its website.
Yes No Wave Music is one of the few net labels existing in Indonesia at the moment. The idea is to help bands that have no access to CD or cassette production get their material out there. As far as their choice of music, they do not specifically pigeonhole themselves into releasing only one type of genre. They accommodate bands/artists/musicians with various style of music, hence resulting in a diverse range of sounds that make Yes No Wave Music home to sonically challenging bands.
As it is said on their manifesto: "We offer our site as a free online distribution channel for publishing the works of any bands or musicians in the MP3 format, from any genre".
Among their important releases are Kebun Binatang by Zoo, a unique grindcore band with noise element; New Age by Gegabah, a cheered-up synth-pop band with a 1977 punk rock layer; and Music Beyond No Borders Vol. 1 -- on this compilation you can taste a little bit of everything from Yes No Wave Music as it features their outstanding acts such as Dubyouth Soundsystem, Hengky Strawberry, Jaeger Boy Transistor, BondiNedHansel, Gegabah, Denda Omnivora & The White Liar, Coffin Cadillac, Armada Racun, Punkasila and Zoo.
These three releases really caught the attention of my high-maintenance ears, and now I'm hooked on the Yes No Wave craze. I suggest you all check out their website, www.yesnowave.com, and download everything you think sounds awesome! Don't forget to write them to tell what you think about their releases.
That's all there is on the menu for this week's Underground Hum, fellas! Don't forget to send us your questions, suggestions, praise or curses if you will to undergroundhum@yahoo.com. See you next week!
-- Ari Ernesto Purnama
For all of you indie bands or artists out there, let us know if you have a gig coming up so we can include it in future editions of Reverb. Be sure to include the name of the event you're playing, what other acts are billed, time, place, date, and entry fee if any.
