(Any suggestions?)
3rding or 4thing Youngsbower, also look for the Splat! CDr, which has lots of loops given the Cloudz treatment. Loops from Judas Priest, Fleetwood Mac and "Rainbow Connection" btw.
― barranca jagger (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Thursday, 9 January 2014 02:52 (ten years ago) link
missed this. would've voted for hototogisu - 'prayer rug exorcism', 'pale fatal sister' or 'floating japanese gardens...' are amazing. if only because skullflower's output is kinda hit and miss. still, 'infinityland' is the bower record i listened to the most, and my fav skullflower.
― rusty_allen, Thursday, 9 January 2014 19:44 (ten years ago) link
I heard something a few years ago that wasn't harsh noise, wasn't droney Vibracathdral-type stuff, wasn't Kraut-y, but was a long bonafide (albeit noisy and fucked up) guitar solo, sounded like some crazy Japanese / PSF style psych thing mixed with Hendrix or something (but, again, fucked up). Does this ring a bell? I know Bower's had a lot of different styles over the years, but I've never been able to locate this track..
― Wimmels, Monday, 29 August 2016 21:14 (eight years ago) link
:-(
https://thequietus.com/articles/26017-skullflower-removed-from-raw-power-line-up
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 11 February 2019 15:09 (five years ago) link
yeah this is horrible
I've seen some people making the "well he's just really into the occult!" argument but there's no non-Nazi historical meaning attached to the Black Sun
that sentence about Moses is bonkers
― ⅋ (crüt), Monday, 11 February 2019 15:26 (five years ago) link
There's a follow-up piece:
Does My Black Sun Look Big In This? Skullflower’s Patterns Of Predjudice
― grawlix (unperson), Monday, 11 February 2019 15:49 (five years ago) link
man that's a fucking bummer, i had no idea he was garbage
― adam, Monday, 11 February 2019 16:40 (five years ago) link
He recorded a pro-Brexit song somewhat recently, not surprised.
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Monday, 11 February 2019 16:53 (five years ago) link
misanthropic noise dude in having problematic views shockah
― Paul Ponzi, Monday, 11 February 2019 16:59 (five years ago) link
not easy out there for a free noise fash man
― goats eat grandma (NickB), Monday, 11 February 2019 17:30 (five years ago) link
i'm kinda confused by this whole story -- did someone call out the festival or bring his "problematic" views to their attention ... or? I mean, it wasn't like he suddenly started going in this aesthetic/political direction just a few months ago
― sarahell, Monday, 11 February 2019 17:38 (five years ago) link
gross
― the late great, Monday, 11 February 2019 17:59 (five years ago) link
xp feel like it's quite possible to like Bower's music in a general/casual manner and have most if not all of the stuff cited in the article pass you by
― Terry Major-Ball Will Tell You (DJ Mencap), Monday, 11 February 2019 19:07 (five years ago) link
that's why the article was written in the first place, I assume? Fits right in with the whole series The Quietus has been doing.
― sleeve, Monday, 11 February 2019 19:12 (five years ago) link
yeah i've been enjoying his work for decades in a non obsessive manner and never picked up on this stuff. i guess i always associated him with freaky drone noise stuff more than like serial killer power electronics shit, where i assume everyone is a nazi until proven otherwise.
― adam, Monday, 11 February 2019 19:13 (five years ago) link
yeah, i'm just thinking in terms of the festival cancelling him -- I would think, if it were me, booking this festival, and I have done a fair amount of booking, that if these issues were important to me, I would have done more research prior to booking him. This is what makes me wonder if there was external pressure, or maybe internal pressure for an imperfectly organized event
― sarahell, Monday, 11 February 2019 19:13 (five years ago) link
can anyone tell me more about cold spring and how much they’re implicated with the fash?
― goats eat grandma (NickB), Monday, 11 February 2019 19:27 (five years ago) link
poxy phone
― goats eat grandma (NickB), Monday, 11 February 2019 19:28 (five years ago) link
the festival in question is largely booked by one guy aiui; I don't get the impression he is/was an especially rabid Skullflower fan
don't think I've ever researched a band's background to check their politics aren't beyond the pale as part of a booking process. arguably it should be done more often, in general... but benefit of hindsight etc
― Terry Major-Ball Will Tell You (DJ Mencap), Monday, 11 February 2019 19:41 (five years ago) link
feel like it's quite possible to like Bower's music in a general/casual manner and have most if not all of the stuff cited in the article pass you by
This is me, for sure. Also, I lost touch with what he was doing in recent years and had never looked at his blog until now. Plus, I have almost zero knowledge/interest in 'dark' metal, the occult, Nazi symbology etc, so something like the significance of the Black Sun would have passed me by anyway. As I say elsewhere on this thread, and probably elsewhere on this board, seeing a fantastic early morning VibraCathedral Orchestra performance, with Bower in the mix, at an ATP, and also a ferocious Hototogisu performance at David Keenan's Subcurrent Festival (circa 2005?) made me a convert to the Skullflower/Sunroof! etc cause. My impression of the music at the time was that it was hard-edged transcendental psychedelic bliss out shit, like a more full on Spacemen 3, and ultimately benign in intent/design. After Hototogisu ended (wonder why?) he seemed to dive more deeply into the metal/satanic/harsh noise side of things, that was obviously always present in the music, but not so entirely dominant (the early Hototogisu discs, w/out Marcia Bassett, sound like homemade variants on Taj Mahal Travelers, ffs). I don't know anything about the personalities of the noise music scene stalwarts, and I'm happy to keep things that way, but I am sad that an artist who gave me a lot of unexpected pleasure should turn out to be - or turn into - such a boringly predictable fash fuck. I thought he was a more interesting human being than that.
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 11 February 2019 19:55 (five years ago) link
i was once in a position where i was a member of a group that booked shows, and one of the members had booked a musician that had raped a friend of mine. The member that did the booking did not know about the assault when he booked this musician. However, politics and problematic imagery are right out there in public view. ... It just seems like there's something slightly off in this Skullflower incident. The dude I know who considers it "virtue signalling" -- I feel like he kinda has a point.
― sarahell, Monday, 11 February 2019 19:57 (five years ago) link
The follow up Quietus article from today has a lot more details that are, sadly, pretty conclusive at least for me:
https://thequietus.com/articles/26024-skullflower-matthew-bower-fascism-racism
I don't think he was always / secretly this way, but he definitely seems to have rather quietly taken a hard right turn in the last few years. Like others have posted, I would have never noticed and I haven't kept up on his music in a while. Massive fan of Sunrrof! / Vibracathedral and other stuff by him back in the day though. Pretty sad.
― Badmotorfinger Debate Club (MFB), Monday, 11 February 2019 20:00 (five years ago) link
I don't want to be too harsh on the festival guy, really, I mean, it's human to have second thoughts, and to make decisions you regret and try to fix them/make up for them.
I associate Skullflower with noise/power electronics dudes of my generation, some of whom are kinda fascist, and others who grew up where that kind of "edginess" meant something else, who are now "having to adjust" to different sociocultural standards
― sarahell, Monday, 11 February 2019 20:09 (five years ago) link
so the issue is, "Is dude seriously a fascist, or is it just something like Prurient's haircut?" -- Obviously, reading the article, we're not just talking about something on the lower level of Prurient's haircut
― sarahell, Monday, 11 February 2019 20:10 (five years ago) link
Xpost what a great way to look at it.
― nathom, Monday, 11 February 2019 20:33 (five years ago) link
politics and problematic imagery are right out there in public view
unless you're using 'in public view' to mean 'would eventually be found, given enough time looking into his personal online presence and recorded discography' then this doesn't really seem like the case at all here
― Terry Major-Ball Will Tell You (DJ Mencap), Monday, 11 February 2019 20:52 (five years ago) link
looking into his personal online presence and recorded discography
this is something one does when one is booking a festival and/or doing the promo/marketing for it ... i'm not talking about the casual fan
― sarahell, Monday, 11 February 2019 20:59 (five years ago) link
we're talking about a Gen X noise dude who puts out records called "Fucked on a Pile of Corpses" -- it's not a guarantee dude will have distasteful politics, but it's worth a look-see
― sarahell, Monday, 11 February 2019 21:02 (five years ago) link
yeah but you could dismiss that as some anti-pc avant-gammon bullshit, it doesn’t necessarily translate to hey guys check this cool swastika on my wall
― goats eat grandma (NickB), Monday, 11 February 2019 21:10 (five years ago) link
this is something one does when one is booking a festival
sure if it's a black metal or streetpunk or Prurient haircut noise kinda thing. would be surprised if this was done as a matter of course for most DIYish festivals that don't answer to this description
in the case of this particular one I suspect the intended context of Skullflower's presence was mostly related to their place on the psych/noiserock continuum, which is what most of the rest of the bill leans towards. as such if dude hasn't spent an hour or two googling and/or privately asked ppl 'anything dubious I should know about this act before I book it?', it's probably because it's not an issue he's had until now. still an oversight but not really seeing how it amounts to quote-unquote virtue signalling
― Terry Major-Ball Will Tell You (DJ Mencap), Monday, 11 February 2019 21:28 (five years ago) link
the "virtue signalling" comment came from another noise dude ... just exploring that perspective
― sarahell, Monday, 11 February 2019 21:31 (five years ago) link
Fucking Hell, Bower
― blood, loud screaming and nudity (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Monday, 11 February 2019 21:39 (five years ago) link
i second this comment - can anyone tell me more about cold spring and how much they’re implicated with the fash?
― stirmonster, Tuesday, 12 February 2019 00:55 (five years ago) link
"Is dude seriously a fascist, or is it just something like Prurient's haircut?" lol
― ⅋ (crüt), Tuesday, 12 February 2019 01:24 (five years ago) link
xpost FWIW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Spring_(label)
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 12 February 2019 01:33 (five years ago) link
https://www.discogs.com/label/9578-Cold-Spring
Laibach!
― ⅋ (crüt), Tuesday, 12 February 2019 01:38 (five years ago) link
I was pretty proud of myself when I showed up to the Hospital Records 20th anniversary show in my Fishbone FUCK RACISM t-shirt as counterprogramming to the fash fashion show
― ebro the letter (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 12 February 2019 02:01 (five years ago) link
actually, looking through the cold spring discography and there are definitely some fash acts in amongst them.
― stirmonster, Tuesday, 12 February 2019 02:12 (five years ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/fxCsu1Q.jpg
serious Super Hans gone wrong vibes
― blood, loud screaming and nudity (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Tuesday, 12 February 2019 02:44 (five years ago) link
is there anyone who's "fascinated" by nazi and right wing iconography that doesn't ultimately turn out to be suspect?
lemmy maybe? i don't know that much about his views
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 12 February 2019 03:33 (five years ago) link
Jeff Hanneman, Dee Dee Ramone, Gunplay
― ebro the letter (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 12 February 2019 03:45 (five years ago) link
my only exposure to this guy was a vibracathedral orchestra 7" that I probably played once so I'll sleep comfortably knowing I'm not actively supporting a nazi or some shit.
― akm, Tuesday, 12 February 2019 05:25 (five years ago) link
― beard papa, Tuesday, 12 February 2019 05:56 (five years ago) link
I'm curious to know how and where do we as listeners/supporters of problematic artists draw the line. Skullflower, Pure, Ramleh etc. have clear, decades-long ties to fascist and holocaust fetishizing scenes like Broken Flag; scenes that have evolved and are active today in the noise/industrial/PE underground. If we telescope out from Bower's associations we implicate a host of artists/labels who I'm certain do not espouse the same views. I listen to and, probably more importantly, buy records by artists who I know are atrocious people. Why?, because I fall back on the facile reasoning of 'all is permitted in art.' My tastes, though, and material support of music is worldly and omnivorous and I must believe on some level that it evens out. I've encountered IRL notable indie rock artists who are demonstrably terrible in their politics and actions though it's not evident in their art. I generally disengage with art when such is evident. I do not mean to point fingers or justify myself - just want to know how ilxors (a most informed and thoughtful forum) contend with all this.
― Yelploaf, Tuesday, 12 February 2019 18:08 (five years ago) link
it is challenging for me, for sure. I envy people who have stronger, simpler values whether they are based on the art or based on the politics/ethics. I do see a generational/age aspect of this in terms of the noise/industrial scene. But for me, there is a social aspect, that someone who has a normal life and is solely a listener/concert attendee doesn't have to deal with.
― sarahell, Tuesday, 12 February 2019 18:14 (five years ago) link
can you expand, sarahell, on your felt experience of the social aspect? no worries if you'd rather not. i'm a musician, too, and have shared bills with very suspect noise and metal projects and the general feeling between me and collaborators/promoters is, 'woah, those guys are on some shit,' but we carry on and maybe feel gross. it's a failure of courage and cynicism on my part that perpetuates this. i guarantee that this same scenario plays out regularly in punk and indie shows.
― Yelploaf, Tuesday, 12 February 2019 18:26 (five years ago) link
As a long-time DIJ/C93/NWW/Whitehouse fan, this guy has always passed me by for some reason but this incident has spurred me on to check him out. IIIrd Gatekeeper sounding particularly fine at the moment.
― the word dog doesn't bark (anagram), Tuesday, 12 February 2019 19:49 (five years ago) link
I know of him (MB) bc he did something with Richard Youngs iirc? On the social level, I’m generally uncomfortable around people who radiate their own discomfort — men who are miserable to the point of nihilism scare me. Fortunately I don’t really hang around many people like that, though I know they’re floating around. I think I’m actually pretty sensitive to harshly negative vibes because they can be aimed at me. This guy is definitely someone I would avoid at this point.
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 12 February 2019 19:58 (five years ago) link
Avoid consuming his music not hanging out socially. Sarahell is otm about the generational aspect of this type of behavior.
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 12 February 2019 20:00 (five years ago) link
oof
― blood, loud screaming and nudity (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Thursday, 14 February 2019 11:27 (five years ago) link
https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.20555/title.gunplay-explains-meaning-behind-swastika-tattoo🕸#TW: photo
― beard papa, Thursday, 14 February 2019 16:05 (five years ago) link
boy i sure am glad i spent my youth being down w/ crash worship instead of these guys"
the friend involved w/ the problematic festival was a member of crash worship
and even that turned out to be problematic!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Wolff
― the late great, Wednesday, February 13, 2019 12:47 PM (yesterday)
lol! different guy, but lol.
― sarahell, Thursday, 14 February 2019 16:31 (five years ago) link
southwestern desert state libertarian
as numerous as the creosote
― macropuente (map), Thursday, 14 February 2019 16:51 (five years ago) link
ha i was wondering if yr southwestern desert state libertarian Genocide Organ fan was the same one I knew, but ... well, at least they could become friends.
― sarahell, Thursday, 14 February 2019 16:54 (five years ago) link
is the 16 Horsepower/Wovenhand guy problematic or just weird? i can't tell...he's verged into neofolk-ish territory
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 14 February 2019 17:01 (five years ago) link
remember roger adultery? that guy was kind of responsible for putting me off this whole musical universe. thanks roger adultery! i'm much happier nodding along to larry heard
― macropuente (map), Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:03 (five years ago) link
He's on NPR now lol
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:06 (five years ago) link
woah
― macropuente (map), Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:07 (five years ago) link
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, February 14, 2019 12:01 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
we're keeping an eye on him
― Paul Ponzi, Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:07 (five years ago) link
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, February 14, 2019 10:06 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
what?
― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:09 (five years ago) link
He's the Wooden Wand guy right? Didn't he just record an album w Neil Hagerty?
― aquaman goes to college (Drugs A. Money), Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:16 (five years ago) link
i was thinking like terry gross style
― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:20 (five years ago) link
xp in 2015, yeah
terrible person afaict
― sleeve, Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:20 (five years ago) link
?
― ebro the letter (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:31 (five years ago) link
this is all terribly confusing
― the late great, Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:31 (five years ago) link
https://www.npr.org/search?query=%22james%20jackson%20toth%22&page=1
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:41 (five years ago) link
he does own a swastika flag fwiw
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ypvq9y/what-do-you-do-with-your-grandfathers-genuine-nazi-flag
― goats eat grandma (NickB), Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:44 (five years ago) link
there's plenty of ILX threads/posts that make it pretty clear he is a wannabe edgelord of the worst stripe
― sleeve, Thursday, 14 February 2019 18:48 (five years ago) link
was gonna say it's always struck me as curious that I've never heard it suggested he might have bad politics (or any, really) outside of this website where he managed to be banned at least once for terrible and inarguably racist posts
― Terry Major-Ball Will Tell You (DJ Mencap), Thursday, 14 February 2019 19:12 (five years ago) link
nah james isnt racist. He did like to troll ilx though.
― Friedrich B. Neechy (Oor Neechy), Thursday, 14 February 2019 20:36 (five years ago) link
doesn't that make him an "edgelord" who uses racism as a toy? idk, imo racism isn't a tool you use to irritate people unless you are in some way racist
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, 14 February 2019 20:39 (five years ago) link
― Friedrich B. Neechy (Oor Neechy), Thursday, February 14, 2019 12:36 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
he isn't racist he just liked to post racist stuff on a message board as a grown man in his late 20s
― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 14 February 2019 20:40 (five years ago) link
while I'm also not hugely interested in hashing out the difference between 'says racist things' and 'is actually racist' in this instance I went with the former
― Terry Major-Ball Will Tell You (DJ Mencap), Thursday, 14 February 2019 21:11 (five years ago) link
Would be surprised and devastated if this was true about DEE. He's very Old Testament in his religious beliefs, and has been drawing links with Native American spirituality, but apart from that I dunno.
― Elitist cheese photos (aldo), Thursday, 14 February 2019 22:22 (five years ago) link
cool...his dark folk thing could just attract that element...
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 14 February 2019 22:24 (five years ago) link