Let Me Spoil You

M!F! alum and new Bishop Allen bassist Keith P. corners bad cinema, spoiling the endings to films you should live without.

Let Me Spoil You

Keith was the original Patent Medicinist and is literally a poster child for Moth Fight:

Edward James Poolside Party Mix

Thanks to the midday Sun for hosting me as I write this. I've never depended on a stranger kindness.

I know compulsive behavior and passion have two distinct meanings but lately I feel like I've been incapable of distinguishing between the two. It's a terrible euphoria, acting without will and to your own detriment because the whole coded world translates into a costly song that must be written or a broom-of-a-girl you have to talk to (even though she lives on a steep hill and you're a terrible climber) or some-such nonsense. I've mentioned an unfinished Moth!Fight! song here before; one that uses the character of H.H. Holmes to prescribe meaning to this aspect of the human experience. I'm beginning to think he's not the best fabric to cover this armchair discussion in that he didn't experience any sort of financial, social, or emotional ruin due to his compulsion. His passion is of a different currency than Thomas Chatterton, Sarah Winchester, or Gary Wilson. Those denizens of creation that let blood so as to paint with the right shade of red! I'd like to hold a listening party with them, for them. It'd be an open invitation to everyone's romantic heroes and we'd absorb those whose style is art brut and whose medium is life itself.

Question overheard at this party:
Betty Page, were you bound for the promised land?

All About His Throat!

Image by Gabriela Fridriksdottir .: Tetralogia Series

M!F! helped itself to a heartening practice tonight; one brimming with clicks, whistles, synth-aesthesia, et al.

To collaborate with the ghosts in those machines rather than warring with them... now follows some well-earned simplicity. Pardon the disjointedness.

Woody Guthrie - I'll Eat You, I'll Drink You
Buy the album from Insound

As always, if anyone wants me to remove this mp3 for any reason, please contact me

Scott Walker teaches us to Moth!Fight!

Western Vinyl Advert

Western Vinyl had a sort of showcase at Emo's Lounge in Austin on Saturday night. I went to see Voices and Organs, who ended up canceling. All was well, though, as I caught most of MOM, featuring Joel North (who's been a friend since high school). I had to run after their set, missing what was undoubtedly a fantastic performance by the good people in Balmorhea, because their was a sleepover party at the Austin's Children's Museum.

Pink Floyd teaches us how to Moth Fight!

Scenes from "Hausu" (1977)

Antigonish

As I was going up the stair
I saw a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish, he’d stay away.
-William Hughes Mearns

My Gal Sal

Just finished a six hour practice wherein Mike, Clarke, Kelli, and I wrote a bunch of MIDI madness for a new song that I hope won't be called "H.H. Holmes". It interpolates a verse of the old revival number, "I'm Bound for the Promised Land", which fits in nicely with our covers of "My Gal Sal" and "When You're a Long, Long Way from Home" (a summer jam dating back to 1914). This was our penance for canceling our gig in Lubbock tonight with Xiu Xiu(!) due to poorly scheduled flights. Sincere apologies to those who we let down. We let ourselves down too, y'know?

We also just got back some pics from our photoshoot with Aubrey Edwards last month. Normally I wouldn't push promotional pictures or anything of the sort, but we actually put some effort into these...

Moral Animals v. Animal Morals

Austin radio station KVRX invited me to DJ their End-of-the-year Space-themed much-hyphenated Prom earlier this month. Here's a soundboard from some of my set. Enjoy!

Live at the Space Prom

As a rejoinder, I donned a tiara and doused myself in ketchup trying to affect an "Interplanetary Carrie" vibe, but the red lighting shining down on me rendered my efforts futile. I just ended up looking like I had a unmentionable skin condition.

Mothfight Seeks Percussionist!

Feel free to repost this information anywhere!



Do you play drums/fiddle with electronics?
Live in Austin, TX?
Would you be willing to practice twice a week?
Tour twice a year?
Would you like to learn and write some HAWT beats?

You might be just what we're looking for! We're seeking a full time drummer to help us get tour-ready (tour would be mid-Fall).

Influences include: Jodorowsky, Caribou/Manitoba, Matthew Barney, Olivia Tremor Control, Phil Collins, Steve Drozd, SMiLE, Merzbow, Jeremy Barnes (Hawk and a Hacksaw/Neutral Milk Hotel), J Dilla, The Octopus Project, Dylan Thomas, Need New Body, Incredible String Band, Sifl and Olly, Phil Spector, Samite, 77 Boadrum, Brian Chippendale, Jamie Thompson

If you're interested, write us at mothfight@gmail.com

Hope y-y-y-y-you're well!

Permanent Installation I

Casey Jex Smith, "Abinadi"


Monica Canilao, "Just Like Weeds We Will Grow"


Monica Canilao, "We Can Live Together"


David Hochbaum, "Garden of the Dispossessed"


Kareena Zerefos, "Rose Tinted Glasses"


Caroline Hwang, "Guilty Crush"

Cisum and Her Boys

As a child I'd go to bed every night listening to the local dance station's "Top 5 at 9'" (which informed my purchases of cassette singles every week after receiving my chore money). This led to a pretty hefty collection of tapes from Ace of Base, the Real McCoy, Ini Kamoze (whose derivation of Wilson Pickett's "Land of a Thousand Dances" beguiled me), and the like. My tape collection (which became more diverse once I found rock music), along with my stereo, were the only possessions of mine that I really attached any importance to and the arrangement of my room was as such that when friends came over, the first thing they'd see was a wall dedicated to a bookshelf of cheap plastic reel-to-reels and a well-dusted stereo. Maybe there was a little pride in that, but it felt more like an attempt to express my respect and love for music via pre-adolescent feng-shui.

Music was the common language I shared with my peers. In truth, I didn't understand how people maintained fluent conversations about much else (except academics). This is no conceit; I was superhumanly ungraceful in trying to relate to other kids and would spend busrides to-and-from school listening to endlessly re-dubbed mixtapes. Often these tapes were carefully constructed by waiting patiently for the radio to play a series of particular songs (when I managed to snag a seldom-played hit, I'd use that tape as a master for other mixes until it was inaudible). Occasionally I'd become so obsessed with a song that I'd save up and purchase a CD and record a looped tape. This was the case with U2's "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" and Duran Duran's "Come Undone". When I ran out of batteries, I'd spend a few days singing to myself.

One day in Second Grade, we boarded a reserve bus that was temporarily replacing our usual transport which'd apparently broken down earlier in the day. When I hopped on, I heard the beginning strains of Michael Jackson's "Remember the Time" emitting in pristine fidelity from an onboard speaker system. For the first time, I began (hyper)actively engaging my busmates, asking if they knew the song and if they'd seen the video with Eddie Murphy as the Pharaoh that'd premiered on FOX a few weeks earlier. The driver turned it off and I began begging him to let us finish listening to the entire song. I had the whole bus on my side and he said that as long as we didn't tattle he'd let us listen the whole ride home. Schoolmates who'd just as soon fight for fighting's sake were suddenly talking about Boyz II Men and asking "have you heard Shai" and I was talking with my neighbors for the first time ever.

Music is still very much the language through which I communicate:

Roswell Sacred Harp Singers - Jubilee
BUY V/A - "I Belong to This Band: 85 Years of Sacred Harp Recordings"

Earth Opera - The Red Sox Are Winning
BUY The Earth Opera - "S/T"

The Blood Group - Odin
BUY The Blood Group - "Everything Forgotten Gathers At the Ceiling"

Elf Power - The Sun is Forever
BUY Elf Power - "The Winter is Coming"

Iran - San Diego
BUY Iran - "s/t" (search for Iran)

I Belong to this Band continues my fascination with Sacred Harp Music. It really does a lot to capture the intensity of a Sacred Harp group. Earth Opera's "The Red Sox are Winning" was a staple of all my 60's psych-pop mixes in high school, along with Elf Power's mournful "The Sun is Forever". In fact, I've never heard another Elf Power song that comes close to breaking my heart like this cut from their "Winter is Coming" LP. The Blood Group's "Odin" is also draped in melancholy, though the sadness is interwoven with some intensely sinister poetry. The production on this song is devastating and haunting. Lastly is Iran! Both of their albums are folk-noise masterpieces and Josh from the Evangelicals tells me that they've finished another disc that'll be released sometime soon.

If anyone wants these mp3s removed for any reason, please contact me!

Mothfight has been in the studio (on and off) for a month now and we're only just finishing up one song (though the rest will be decidedly less "produced"). I'd very much like to record some 30 songs and try to stitch them together in some sort of grand symphonic gambit but that might prove to be a bit ambitious. We'll see if we can't assemble something __________.