In Issue 13 Andrew W.K. explores themes of privacy and personal space through telecommunication in his ambiguously instructive and award-winning composition Welcome and Congratulations. Through issue 14 Walker and Cantrell deconstruct the genre of teen dramady in a 5 part mini-series inspired by the one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite. Ideas of glamour and fantasy are juxtaposed with absurdist performances and juvenile palaver. Finally, Ian Svenonius shares some meandering thoughts with us on post-apocalypticism and dream symbology in issue 15. Tom Bunnel and Brendan Canty provide a soundtrack to set the scene.
So with these records in hand and ear we spend this summer watching the music industry - and more drastically at this point the magazine industry - making transformations of their own. With social and economic conditions splitting editorial content between the web press and wordpress, we have to ask if these divergent dialects will still be able to carry on a conversation, and hope the answer is yes. B.Kalet - May 13, 2009
More precisely, Andrew WK is home. He has not been home in a very long while and it feels good. Music, the one constant in his life for many years, requires an unyielding devotion to movement, transience. A thought occurs. "Playing music," Andrew says, "should be no different than playing basketball, or playing with a child, or playing by yourself, or with yourself." A circle appears before him. The circle is a box containing a more perfect circle. A pizza. Delivered to him here. In his home. For this he feels immense gratitude. This is the same as nothing.
He hoists a slice to his mouth and quickly drops it back in the box. HOTHOTHOT, he says, fanning his lips. How is it still so hot? It's been out of the oven a half hour, easy, and he should be able to eat it right now. But he must wait and in this moment of thwarted desire his mind turns elsewhere. Outward. Outside and to others. And he hears the noise they make in their pursuit of nothing. It's happening right now and always. Below him on the street, loud and impending. Blurring as it rises up and through an open window into his home.
A circle appears and in it a message. If not for a certain confluence of biological events, goes the message, you would not be Andrew WK. Another circle appears. This circle says there are no mistakes. The two circles combine and the noise from below quiets.
The pizza is now cool but the first bite is bland. It could use some celery salt so he walks through his kitchen to the cupboard and opens it. There's the celery salt. Right in front of him up top. He reaches with his right hand and in doing so jostles other jars. A shaker filled with crushed red pepper squeezes forward and tumbles off the shelf. His left hand opens thoughtlessly and catches the shaker at his hip. All the while his eyes remain on the celery salt and his reaching hand. This is the same as nothing. - Daniel Mitha
(Excerpts taken from the 1999 Shoreline Interview)
On the other hand, Ian Svenonius's discography has been defined by the attention he's given to crafting context. In seminal late-80's hardcore band Nation of Ulysses, Svenonius and his cohorts utilized every available vehicle to promote the agenda and mythology-from liner notes to broken bones, the N.O.U. was far more than just a rock band. In his follow-up act, the Make-Up, Svenonius's every outfit and interview served to preach the new gospel. Later, as David Candy, he invented an entirely fictional persona as the centerpiece of tongue-in-cheek imagined creative utopia. But with his latest endeavor Chain and the Gang, currently on tour, Svenonius offers songs like "Trash Talk" and "Interview with Chain and the Gang" that reveal frustration with this overload of consumer context. Perhaps in the age of micro-celebrity, it's time to replace the cult of personality with a more obtuse approach.
So what is this recording of Felt Letters? When I asked Ian, he replied, it's just a rock band. Perhaps within the wider context of an overmediated pop culture, the next logically irreverent step is to exist without context. You'll find no clues in the meandering,
stream-of-consicousness musings on this 45. We may find out more on a forthcoming full-length release, but for now we'll have to enjoy this record without Svenonius's help - and draw our own conclusions.
Voice: Ian Svenonius
Andrew W.K.
Andrew WK is nowhere. He knows nothing and that is all he can know, and in this he takes solace. He feels that there is a perfection underlying everything: a network in perfect balance, a network of ways to feel, a network that at present appears to him as circles, in circles, infinite circles, orbiting and connecting. Beauty above him. Beauty below him. Beauty at his sides. This is the same as nothing.
Produced by: Andrew W.K. Engineered by: Frank Vierti
Creative Director: Mario Dane
Re-recorded at: Skyscraper Studio, Manhattan, NYC, USA
Mixed at: Guardian Sound West in Port Jeffrey.
Special thanks to: Jesse Ashlock, Greg Foley,
Geoffrey Wrightson, and Cherie Lily.Felt Letters
A record's context provides the listener a filter through which to experience music. The time and place of its creation, its artwork, the band's dress and personal style, or the interviews they gave (or didn't give), all help place the finished piece in a frame that the consumer uses to differentiate it from the vast melange of music made now and in the past. Today more than ever, listeners rely on these points of reference. By standardizing the presentation, and even going so far as to homogenize the song structures, the Journal of Popular Noise provides an alternative context. Here the content presented to the listener is not defined as much by an artist's self-wrought context as it is their approval of an association with previous contributors, the aesthetic presentation, and of the physical and compositional restraints.
Instruments: Brendan Canty and Tom Bunnel
Recorded by: Brendan Canty in Washington D.C.Walker and Cantrell
Byron Kalet - Tell me about how you two met and how that let to the formation of this project.
Sarah Waker - We were both working at NBC, I was a Page.
Jess Cantrell - I was an assistant to the talent executive at Last Call with Carson Daly.
SW Our paths never crossed, I was busy giving tours and feeling like an asshole in my uniform. Eventually, our mutual friend introduced us, and when we shook hands there was this electric shock and we both knew that we had to collaborate. I would even go so far as to say it was like in My So Called Life when Jordan Catelano finally held Angela Chase’s hand in the hallway and Buffalo Tom started to play and she totally missed her geometry review (again!).
JC Anyscoops, we've been writing and performing together ever since - for about four years now.
BK What was it that got you in to comedy and performing?
SW My childhood was dominated by organized sports and watching movies with my brother; Top Secret, Ghostbusters, anything with Steve Martin, SNL and of course In Living Color. So, as far as career choices went, it was either comedy or the WNBA.
JC Who cares. Not too long ago I found my nursery school report card, and it said "Jessie is very affectionate, and she entertains the class with little songs made up on the spot." So I guess I got into comedy around then.
BK Your record deals with teen culture and drama, what was the thinking behind using television as source material?
SW We really just like Gossip Girl and The OC - for the beautiful people, awesome clothes and longing glances over heartfelt indie rock.
BK Yeah, me too.
JCThere is something about our teenage years that we all still viscerally relate to. At that time of life, every emotion and experience is heightened. So the teenage experience makes the perfect fodder for television. The shows have eventually become formulaic, but at the same time try to up the ante. I mean, just compare the wardrobe of Dawson's Creek to Gossip Girl's.
SW Remember when the cast of Dawson's Creek modeled for the J. Crew catalogue? That was awesome. And I was jealous. Now Lively and Meester are licking each other on the cover of Rolling Stone. Point being, I'm still jealous.
Edited and mixed by: Byron Kalet