O'er the course of its many histories, the Slender Means Society was many things to exceptionally few people: a confused, cloudy-edged Masonic sect whose oft-spouted manifestos were largely (and selectively) cribbed from found Futurist texts; a monthly gathering of multimedia performers banding together under the drooping banner of thematic conception; a publisher and storage facility for contemporary audio and visual records whose self-defeating financial strategy (and thimble-sized prospective audience) would be its eventual downfall.
Once a dignified social organization--affluent, exclusive, and well-bred--the society's assemblage of cultural dilettantes were gradually condemned by their own foolish arrogance.
Releases so far include Parenthetical Girls' (((GRRRLS))), Safe As Houses, and Entanglements, The Dead Science's Crepuscule With The Dead Science plus a slew of collaborative releases, including The Blow's Poor .. Love Songs, Thanksgiving's The Ghost and the Eyes..., Lucky Dragons' Nortenas, The Love Letter Band's This World Be My Church, Xiu Xiu vs. Grouper's Creepshow, Idol Fodder's Babytalk, and Final Fantasy's Plays To Please. Please enjoy.
AVAILABLE NOW!
OCT 21ST, 2008 FINAL FANTASY--PLAYS TO PLEASE:
On Plays to Please Owen Pallett pays tribute to the songs of Toronto's Alex Lukashevsky and his band Deep Dark United. Deep Dark United's music can be described as...undescribable. But under its waves of hazy unease lay perfectly made songs that Pallett had dreamed of giving a big band treatment to ever since he and Lukashevsky bonded on tour over their mutual love of Louis Prima and Marvin Gaye.
Working with The St. Kitts Orchestra, Pallett gives the songs a huge stage to strut around on and-were it not for the mordant and contemporary wit in the lyrics-you could mistake Lukashevsky's songs for Tin Pan Alley standards. Given that, why not try dropping "I Saved a Junky Once" at your grandmother's birthday this year?
An orchestral song cycle of grand sonic ambition, Entanglements is an eleven-song, linear narrative of ascendancy, adolescent sexuality, quantum mechanics, consent, and other moral ambiguities - all set to an elaborately orchestrated olio of Modern Classical and timeworn, traditional American pop forms.
Borrowing from the string-swept sentimentality of unlikely pop-ulists like Van Dyke Parks, Scott Walker, Jack Nitzsche, and Burt Bacharach, Entanglements draws colorful lines across the expanse between these orchestral pop antiquities and the more formidable strains of Modern Classical composers - its hues distantly reminiscent of names like Krzysztof Penderecki, Philip Glass, and Gavin Bryars. The result - as blended with Parenthetical Girls' already messily dripping palette - is an unsettlingly relentless emotional offensive; a gasping, restless confluence of cerebral and sentimental disparities, bound for their mutual allegiance to the uncannily timeless soundtrack that engulfs them both.
ENTANGLEMENTS will be in stores Sept. 9th, 2008 via Tomlab & Slender Means Society
With his self-titled full-length debut, Kazutaka Nomura, aka PWRFL Power, covers considerable aesthetic strides—from contemplative sparsity to bluesy dexterity to pure pop, and on through to a number scarcely definable alleyways in between—whilst spinning loving yarns about self-acceptance, internet dating, chopstick etiquette, loathsome cats, cocaine, obsessive-compulsive text messaging, and tomato throwing. And what’s most awe-inspiring is that, in spite of this innate humor, PWRFL Power manages to transcend the potentially cloying confines of its subject matter—seemingly by sheer will—with thoughtfully constructed, elegantly played, and catchy as fuck compositions. So yes, the songs are meant to be funny. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take them seriously.
It’s a perfect storm of frustrating oversight and contractual misfortune that has kept Family Fodder—perhaps the most important unsung band of the post-punk era—almost completely absent from the history books. As seemly every British band that recorded a single between 1979 and 1981 has been met with an extensive reissue campaign in recent years, the Family Fodder’s brilliant back catalog—the vast majority of which having yet to see digital release in any form—has floundered in relative obscurity for over a quarter century.
Though a musical collective in a sprawling sense—the band's initial five-year existence credits over 20 different musicians as contributors (a membership that at times included two-thirds of the seminal Post-Punk band This Heat)—Family Fodder evolved primarily from the home recordings of the band's nucleus, Alig Fodder. Following two full lengths, several EPs, and countless (okay, eight) brilliant singles, the band dissolved in the early ‘80s, after which Alig fronted a succession of equally brilliant (and increasingly obscure) projects (Lo Yo Yo, Officer!, Johnny Human, etc), paying bills along the way as a professional accordionist and busker.
Contacted earlier this year by our friends at Tomlab, Devon, England-based Alig produced a 7” for the label’s illustrious Alphabet Series (birthing the songs “Infamy” and “Death and the Maiden”, featured here with new mixes), as well as a track for their star-studded David Shrigley compilation, Worried Noodles—both under his own name. This soon gave birth to Bäbytalk, a collaboration with Darlini Singh-Kaul (daughter of Family Fodder vocalist Dominique Levillain!) that tackles the most literal interpretation of the Pregnancy concept thus far. A beautifully mature song cycle, Bäbytalk is a swirling, miniature masterwork—an accomplishment that beautifully defies expectations.
As with each release of the Pregnancy Series, the compact disc of Bäbytalk is strictly limited to 700 retail copies.
Through a particularly masterful slight of hand, the beloved rabble-rousers in Xiu Xiu have somehow convinced most of the world that theirs is a vision chiefly of bombast—of over-driven drum patches, caterwaul, and open-wristed scare tactics. The truth of the matter, of course, is that bombast is really only half of the story. And what makes Xiu Xiu so special isn’t Jamie Stewart’s sonic sadism so much as his subtlety—an obsessive attention to every detail buried in his band’s overwhelming squall.
The fifth artist commissioned in Slender Means Society and States Rights Records’ tandem Pregnancy Series, Stewart enlisted masterful manipulators of ethereal noise Grouper (Portland’s Liz Harris) in a collaboration exploring both artists’ subtle sides. The resulting EP is Creepshow—an ambient exploration into the power of silence and restraint. Sharing a childhood trauma at the hands of a certain popular horror film from the 1970s, Xiu v. Gru took this as a mutual launchpad to delve into the darker corners of quiet. The results are breathtaking.
SEPTEMBER 26TH, 2006 THE DEAD SCIENCE-CREPUSCULE WITH THE DEAD SCIENCE:
Featuring two lost songs from the sessions that produced the band's critically-acclaimed sophomore record Frost Giant (long-time live favorite "Child/Actress," and "All Ye Whom Love of Fortune," a cover of a song by 16th century Baroque composer John Dowland), along with three brand new tracks produced by bassist Jherek Bischoff (whose recent production credits include Casiotone For the Painfully Alone's Etiquette and Parenthetical Girls' Safe As Houses), Crepuscule With the Dead Science is a powerfully understated collection of twilight ballads that finds the Dead Science yet again skewing their ever-refining palette. The staggering drama of Frost Giant has scarcely quelled, but here seeps in with unexpectedly cinematic restraint. Crepuscules textures weep more deliberatelyits peaks struggling (occasionally in vain) to contain the restless Colossus just beneath its compositions.
JUNE 27TH, 2006 PARENTHETICAL GIRLS-Safe As Houses:
Recorded with the bands recent three-piece configuration (an ensemble made up of Zac Pennington and Dead Science members Sam Mickens and Jherek Bischoff--who also served as producer for the record), "Safe As Houses" embraces the groups shrewd attention to the awkward confluence of experimental and pop musics--creating a record that is at once more difficult and more intrinsically palatable (not to mention significantly darker) than anything so far bearing the Parenthetical Girls name. Which is to say, its much better.
APRIL 25TH, 2006 PARENTHETICAL GIRLS-(((GRRRLS))): Reissued, Repackaged, Remastered.
In anticipation of the release of Safe As Houses--the sprawling follow-up to (((GRRRLS))) tentatively scheduled for a June release-- Slender Means Society is issuing (((GRRRLS))) on CD for the first time, in remastered, yet equally confusing format.
In an attempt to maintain the distinct duality of the LP release, the CD version of (((GRRRLS))) features both editions of the album--but in two different, enhanced CD formats: version O (as mixed by Jherek Bischoff) plays on any standard CD player like your average CD should, while the X version (as mixed by Jamie Stewart), takes advantage of the near ubiquity of the iPod revolution by offering its tracks as super high quality MP3s, accessible via any computer. (Confused? Me too. Just put it in your computer--you'll figure it out). Additionally, the enhanced materials feature "Inspirational Shortpants (avec paroles)," a newly finished track not available on the original vinyl release.
Featuring ten tracks, the fourth installment of the Pregnancy Series alternates between a series of field recordings and ambient interludes (or "Landscapes"), juxtaposed with harrowing folk songs that finally realize the palpable darkness that had always existed as a subtext to the Love Letter Band's boyant indie pop. Stripped of much of the band's traditionally elaborate instrumentation, This World Be My Church stands in stark contrast to much of what bears the Love Letter Band's stamp.
The third installment of the Pregnancy Series, Nortenas is composed almost entirely of samples lifted from traditional Noreteno musics. Its shares the inimitable humanity, confusion, and staggering beauty of everything baring the Lucky Dragon's imprint.
By the way, I want to invite you to my MySpacefriends group. Can you join my group "HIROHO music friends"? Do you have any informations or news? If you join to the group, please post it at the group Forum please!! And then we can share the informations or news of group members!!
Thanks for adding me in your friends!! Series Two Records,Chris introduced you to me. I'm so happy to know you and glad to be your friend!! By the way,I have other myspace pages. Please visit "HIROHO/label" ,if you do not notice and make a friendship, if you can.
OCT 21ST, 2008
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