Yet they followed up that debut with another great album in 2009 and then a blazing live album/video last year, and now that they’ve released their third full-length, Dead Reckoning, we’re beginning to believe they’re real, and here to stay.

Dead Reckoning sees the band focusing their creative telepathies a little less on simply riding the grooves, and more on shaping songs. You hear it right from the opening track I Broke The Vein, which begins delicately, building slowly. The first half of the song only hints at a payoff before all of the instruments finally gang up. It’s a mark of creative maturity to be able to hold back in the sort of way that makes the attack that much more devastating. And still the band manages to pull a card from the sleeve in the final quarter of the song, when they dive into the breakdown and slip thick harmonies under the driving riff by way of bass and keys.

The album features two songs that appeared on last year’s live album Where The Roots All Grow. The studio versions of It Came From The Sea and Black Elevator perfectly and very satisfyingly capture the live versions’ chemistry and deliver just sharper expressions of the same energy.

Most of the songs are built on timeless concepts that complement the band’s anachronistic vibe so to speak, and the most common such timeless theme is, of course, death. From the album’s title, to where that black elevator is headed, to what exactly came from the sea, to Lullaby’s opening promise to make “ashes of our bones:”

All Away is another of several tracks that display the sort of intelligently restrained, well structured maturity we mentioned on the onset, and while it directly references the opening track with the vocal melody, it takes a different turn at that halfway mark, riding out on a beautiful interplay between guitar and mandolin, with no percussion at all. The solemn Out Of The Mountain is another that knows it doesn’t need to compensate for an offhand composition with all five pistons screaming loudly.

Of course, that’s not to say that the other 60% or so of the album is hiding flaws in its ruckus. Rotten To The Core is anything but, with perfect stop-start trap doors, and a sharp left turn into a signature breakdown refrain towards the end. Moon Is On The March and We All Know The Way are better than average cuts, and Cradle On Fire is a scorcher, driven by mandolin and violin. It’s one of the album’s two most powerful rockers, the other being the aforementioned Black Elevator.

Dead Reckoning closes with Family Tree, which is part gospel-style hymnal and part blues ballad that vents: My family tree / it goes straight / right back into the ground… It’s a perfect closer, not overwrought nor dramatically understated, and ever so slightly wry without mocking the band’s methods, welcoming you to begin the journey over again.

With apologies to longtime Antiquiet readers already well aware of this band’s existence, We have to tease you with this spine-tingling clip of Bottom Of The Lake, and recommend the $10 purchase for the very well recorded performance from Mississippi Studios in Portland last March, entitled Where The Roots All Grow. Along with high quality MP3s, you’ll get a QuickTime video of the entire set. If you’re still into the whole plastic discs thing, you can order a CD version for $13, shipping included.

We’re confident the video will be enough to convince you of the merits of this unique, talented band. But you can rest assured that there’s more from whence it came. Where The Roots All Grow features magic performances of the band’s greatest songs from their two albums, including Black Dresses, Red Hands, Devil Town, Vampire Lake, Coal Mine Fall, and Slowed Down Trip To Hell, to name a handful. You can order Where The Roots All Grow directly from the band on their online store. I did. It was easy.

The album closes with When It Rains, from their split with Loch Lomond, a rare cut we’ve posted here.

Well… I’m a month late. But I just stumbled upon it, and it hit the spot. Happy Saturday.

The video was inspired by the work of the late Henry Darger, a very interesting case of a man I once spent a full weekend researching curiously. His Wikipedia page is rather extensive, and there’s a documentary called In The Realms Of The Unreal that’s worth checking out if your imagination is hungry.

There’s a line in their bio, describing the band’s migration from street corners into clubs and theaters, that begins to illustrate the chemistry and unique energy the band possesses:

At the early shows it was hard to distinguish the band from the audience, nothing was mic’d or amplified, and seemingly everyone in the audience had a shaker, washboard, or were just beating on the wall and singing. All in attendance saw something special happening…

We had missed the boat on their self-titled debut, but had the pleasure of interviewing frontman Ryan Sollee around this time last year. Since then, not only have we name-dropped the band countless times, but so has other amazing Portland bands, such as Portugal. The Man. After checking in with Portugal last week, we decided to see what The Builders & The Butchers were up to, and were pleasantly surprised to find a brand spanking new album waiting for our eight bucks, Salvation Is A Deep Dark Well. Come on publicists, you’re supposed to make sure we don’t miss these things!

As one could reasonably expect, the band’s sophomore effort is a more mature and elaborate work than their debut, with more harmonies, more instruments, and more layers, despite being recorded in a short five days. The able Chris Funk, aka Crutchy McGee of The Decemberists produced both albums.

The wider variety of sounds often translate to more pronounced contrasts; the loud parts are full, and hit hard, while the quiet parts seem that much more quiet in comparison. On a whole, Salvation is slightly less folk than the band’s debut, and more rock and roll… If you can imagine what rock and roll would have sounded like had it existed at the turn of last century.

Most of Salvation’s outstanding tracks feature obvious examples of this dynamic, including Devil Town, Vampire Lake, Down In This Hole, In The Branches, and my current personal favorite, Hands Like Roots:

In addition to soulful lyrics that were at times devilishly haunting, one thing that made the the band’s first album so interesting was the jug band harmonies and a sort of Mexi-Americana texture provided by mandolin and horns. On Salvation Is A Deep Dark Well, not only is this texturing more prevalent, but it’s used to a greater advantage, often becoming the star of a song, such as in the aptly named Barcelona, and in the second half of Raise Up Your Weary Hands.

The Builders And The Butchers are just one of several bands that have us wondering if any scene in the country is producing music of such consistent quality as Portland, Oregon. We’ll be catching them on Spaceland in LA on the 17th, perhaps with the video crew. If you like what you hear, stay tuned for more.

Salvation Is A Deep Dark Well
June 16th, 2009
Gigantic Music

01. Golden And Green
02. Devil Town
03. Short Way Home
04. Barcelona
05. Hands Like Roots
06. Down In This Hole
07. Raise Up Your Weary Hands
08. Vampire Lake
09. The Wind Has Come
10. In The Branches
11. The World Is A Top

When I stumbled upon their fairly amazing music video for Prehistoric Dog, it made my day. I was singing its praises from the rooftops until our resident hipster-killer Jeremy Azevedo compared the concept (dudes make armor out of beer cans and take on some LARPers) to last year’s buddy comedy Role Models, in which… dudes make armor out of beer cans and take on some LARPers.

Still, even Jeremy agreed- these guys would be super fun to hang with. During the course of our discussion, the word ‘party’ was used frequently as an adjective. And everyone here is in agreement on the most noteworthy detail: Despite the excessive drinking, generous helpings of actual on-camera puking, all around barbaric, immature shenanigans, this band has some fucking chops. We love our stoner rock around here, as big fans of Kyuss / QOTSA world and Clutch and the like, and these guys might not be able to see straight, but they must be practicing every minute they’re not drinking… and every minute they are.

Enjoy. Red Fang is going on the road with Clutch and The Bakerton Group in a couple of weeks. So if you like what you hear, head over to redfang.net for more music and tour dates.

P.S. I have to make a note of the fact that Red Fang links to Portland’s Draplin Design Company in their links section. As some of you may already know, we’re big fans.

Until recently, Portugal. The Man were the claim to fame for the tiny town of Wasilla, Alaska. That all changed, however, when a certain winking cancer on the ass of intellectualism, a total clown caricature of the average modern, patriotic American was added to the Republican Presidential ticket. From where? Wasilla. You bet’cha.

The band has since made no attempt to hide their disdain for Sarah Palin. Despite having relocated to Portland, Oregon in recent years, the band’s usually chipper singer John Gourley (who laughed more and sounded genuinely happier than any other interview I’ve ever done, hand to Heaven) posted a long, impassioned blog entry explaining his feelings on the new spotlight on their hometown, called Palin, Because We Don’t Need It.

Excerpt: We don’t need a wolf in sheep’s clothing… or a sheep in wolves clothing, depending on how you look at it. She has billed her self as this overly average “hockey mom” and it is just not what I see. I see the sport hunter, the censor, choice taker, the revelations reader, and the high school cheerleader. It is endlessly embarrassing to watch people fall all over this idea. This is not my Alaska. The Alaska I know.

Gourley gave us a call recently to set the record straight on how he really feels (ha), shed some more light on Portugal. The Man’s spontaneous approach to the writing and recording of Censored Colors, and explore the pitfalls of stage fright and anxiety attacks.

Antiquiet: Let’s get this out of the way right off. Your hometown is a lot more famous these days, since Sarah Palin became a household name. Your blog entry doesn’t mince words about your feelings on that.

John Gourley: Right. I think it was really scary at first, because she came out and she got everybody so pumped. It’s a blessing that people have come to their senses. What a mistake. What an obvious grab at youth and celebrity and the Hillary vote. Such a mistake. There’s so much wrong with this equation. It’s funny how many just straight out lies came up with her. Like the idea that she’s even been out of the country before two years ago, much less having been to Iraq.

Antiquiet: The fact that we, or anybody, is even having this discussion is ridiculous. It’s absurd that the GOP and the mainstream media have had to find a way to legitimize her, so McCain’s campaign wouldn’t come off like the desperate charade that it’s proven itself to be.

John Gourley: It’s insane. How great is it though that we actually have a portion of the population that’s still undecided? People that actually step back and look at this circus in the hopes of drawing something meaningful enough to sway their vote on.

Antiquiet: It’s absurd. But anyway, to the music. If my story’s straight, you wrote and recorded all of Censored Colors in the studio in less than three weeks?

John Gourley: Yeah, yeah.

Antiquiet: How?

John Gourley: I have no fucking clue, to be honest (laughs). We had two and a half weeks off from the Church Mouth tour, between our breaks with our families and our next tour. It came together really, really well. A lot more smoothly than it should’ve. There was a lot of pressure and it was very stressful, but it was great. We went into the studio with a totally different idea than what we came out with, and that’s just something you have to embrace. It really made me focus so much on songwriting, and just being really dedicated to structure. The song Created came together within, like, 30 minutes, which I think is so hilarious. It’s one of those really great moments that I’ve always really loved hearing about with certain bands who wrote this song or that in no time at all.

Antiquiet: As fast as everything was put together, there seems to be a lot more texture, as with the added instrumentation and the layered vocals.

John Gourley: We were just really really lucky to have had the collection of musicians helping out up in Seattle that we did. All of the band Kay Kay And His Weathered Underground played on that record at different points. The singer and the cello player were the ones that produced the album. It’s so crazy to think about- they’re such great musicians. Our band has always been big on jamming live, and whenever we’d go out on tour and roll through Seattle they’d always come onstage and play with us. So that spontaneous dynamic was already there.

Antiquiet: How was the experience of working with a classically trained group?

John Gourley: I just think that it’s great because normally, classically trained musicians, from what I’ve seen, can’t jam for shit. They need their arrangements, normally. They need to read music. There was nothing written for these guys, though. They didn’t bring anything in, and we didn’t give them anything. It was all spontaneous, and it came out really, really well. It was so cool. I’m really happy with it.

Antiquiet: How many takes did it take for an average piece to come together like that?

John Gourley: All the cello and violin, all that stuff- anything that they did was one take. It was just insane.

Antiquiet: As a vocalist, how do you approach writing a melody? Is there a particular method you use in songwriting?

John Gourley: No, not necessarily. And I think that’s become really frustrating for our producers to deal with. I only really first began to notice it on our last record, but how frustrating must it be to edit vocals that are written in the studio, and there’s different voicings and words every time. It’s mostly just done on the spot. I mean, we have some melodies here and there, but it’s really doing it and seeing what works.

Antiquiet: How have your label experiences been thus far? You’re in a unique position with your record deal.

John Gourley: You know, I’d like to say that we’ve broken away from all the pressures of the industry, but to be honest we’ve never really had pressures in the first place. We’ve always been very clear with labels, fearless, really, just saying fuck, we’re gonna make albums and tour like crazy. Let us do what we do, and you do what you do. We’ll work our asses off, you don’t have to worry about that. But really, in the end, it’s just money (laughs).

Antiquiet: What other bands are you into? Any Portland locals?

John Gourley: Fuck, man, Portland’s just obnoxious with music. There’s just so many great bands out there. You’ve got Menomena, the Decemberists, and Get Hustle. There’s a band that’s really, really amazing, and incredible live, who actually happen to be from Alaska as well- they’re called the Builders And The Butchers.

Antiquiet: Yeah, we covered them recently. Fantastic band.

John Gourley: Awesome. They’re just really great guys, too. And actually, their mandolin player was originally in Portugal. The Man. We actually played together with them the last time we came through. It was great.

Antiquiet: What’s the best part of the live show experience for you?

John Gourley: That’s hard to say. Probably the energy of it all, and lots of eye contact between myself and the other bandmembers. I rarely look at the people in the audience, and it’s no disrespect- I was always just such a shy kid growing up in Alaska. I was scared of everything. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t have neighbors growing up or what, but I’ve just been really shy and I get anxious if I stare at a bunch of strangers. But if I’m looking at the band, and we just play together and jam and have a good time, it works out for a much better show for everyone. I mean fuck, man, I love watching those guys play.

Antiquiet: What’s the worst?

John Gourley: I’ve had such bad panic attacks. It mostly comes from when we’ve had to do acoustic sets. But I have more fun at those shows, to be honest. Just to get up and say fuck, I don’t wanna do this but I’m gonna throw myself into the mix here.

Antiquiet: So what’s next? Where’s the rest of the year taking you?

John Gourley: Well, we’re doing this tour now with Earl Greyhound and Wintersleep, and then I imagine we’ll record again in December or January. At least we’ll get the pre-production together and find a producer, maybe. Someone nobody would expect. Like if we could ever work with the RZA, that would be the shit. But as far as new stuff, we’ve actually been talking about stripping down for the next record and bringing in some of the live jams that people seem to really enjoy at our shows.

It’s harder livin’ on the lam / a stranger’s blood is on my hands / We were caught red-handed / across the county line / but I’ll take my chances on the lam / I’m not doin’ time…

With the right eyes, a person could easily see the Cold War Kids huddled around this one, frantically taking notes.

Their live show is raucous and magnetic, an uptempo affair of sonic hypnotics and unconventional instrumentation ranging from megaphones to styrofoam swim tubes and oil funnels. They’ve been known to distribute assorted toy instruments to their audience, inviting them to play along, but this aint no gimmick band. The rawness calls back to their punk roots, while the atmosphere is much more Tom Waits than Fugazi.

The Portland-bred group recently finished their second album, and we caught up with Sollee to discuss the band’s beginnings, stealing music and the art of storytelling in a song.

Antiquiet: I just saw a few clips from the show you guys played with the Portland Cello Project in Oregon…

Ryan Sollee: Yeah, that was really fun. Basically, a lot of local bands have worked with the Cello Project, and it’s usually a really good show. It’s a different audience that would come out and see a local show, maybe a little bit older. It’s a great feeling to win over a new audience.

Antiquiet: How did things get off the ground with Builders And The Butchers?

Ryan Sollee: Basically we started playing in our living rooms, playing a few songs, and we decided we wanted to have a band that was really darkly themed. The first year of the band’s existence, we played all acoustically, and we’d just show up at places, set up in the middle of the room and just play. And as more people started to come… once you’ve got around 50 people or so at your shows, nobody can really hear the band anymore if you’re just acoustic. So we started plugging in little by little. Like this girl passed us a microphone, then we started actually using amps, and so it was very slow in coming, the band being what it is now. It wasn’t ever supposed to be like that originally, it was all kind of like a side project at first, it wasn’t a serious band, but it just kind of progressed and became something else, and we were happy with it so we kept things rolling. But it’s definitely the most organic band I’ve ever been in in terms of the progresion of the band.

Antiquiet: I’ve been trying to explain your sound to other people… how do you feel about a referential connection to the Saddle Creek movement, with less of an emo edge?

Ryan Sollee: Some of that stuff I’d say we’re more in line with, like… jeez I’m horrible with the names of these bands. There’s a band with one of the guys from Cursive, an acoustic folk project… if anything, we’re closest aligned with that.

Antiquiet: There’s an old blues, gospel essence to a lot of your material that gives your music a more timeless character. Is there a specific motivation behind that?

Ryan Sollee: We’re all into old gospel music, old blues and folk, anything dealing with the beginnings of those styles of music is what we’ve been into, but not necessarily- I mean, we all love the music, but we’re not a Christian band, we’re not trying to give you some kind of religious message. We’re just trying to capture that… what could I call it…

Antiquiet: Soul?

Ryan Sollee: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. A lot of contemporary Christian music is overly cheesy- It lacks that feeling. Old Christian music, old gospel really had heart and soul, and actually got its hands dirty.

Antiquiet: Are you still on Bladen County Records?

Ryan Sollee: Our first record is, but we’re kind of shopping the new one around… It just depends on where the best deal comes from. We’ve had several labels look at us, and we’re kind of in the process of finding out where our next home will be.

Antiquiet: It’s an interesting climate now in the industry, how do you feel, being in this position?

Ryan Sollee: With what the industry’s gone through in the last month, signing with a label’s not what it used to be. It used to be that you’d have to get signed, and that was it. That was the only way to attain any real kind of success. But it’s not that way anymore, no way. You can build a fan base from touring and do just fine, just touring, and not have to worry about record sales if people are getting good exposure to your music and they enjoy it. If people are ripping your music that’s fine, as long as they’re coming out to see you. It used to be that you’d tour to promote a record, and now you’re putting out songs to promote your tour. It’s an interesting shift. It’s a great time to be in a band, but it’s a horrible time to be a record label.

Record labels want to sign bands that are going to sell, and if it’s not a sure thing these days, they’re out the door. It’s much different than it was 10, 20 years ago. It’s not bad for bands, you just have to attack it in a different way. You have to be okay with not being home so much (laughs). But really. It’s all about touring now.

Antiquiet: That’s how things used to be, before the record industry. But labels still aren’t looking at the iTunes or Amazon model with an open mind.

Ryan Sollee: If I’ve learned anything, it’s to go for the better deal instead of the better label when you’re trying to put an album out. Cause at the end of the day, that label stature isn’t going to feed your kids. If you can make the fanbase by touring, you can do it right.

Antiquiet: When you can sample songs before you by them, nobody’s going to be spending $18 on an album on the strength of one single these days.

Ryan Sollee: Oh hell no. It’s different and fun, but it’s also frustrating, cause you don’t want to get in the wrong boat. You just have to do your homework. The internet can only be a positive thing as far as exposure goes. We’ll play wherever, and we always hear stories about people finding out about us through either MySpace or their some other place on the internet. That was never available before, so it’s enabled a lot of people to get exposure in ways they never could have before. But there are always gonna be people, especially industry people who say it’s not a good thing because people are downloading free music, but for a good band it’s the greatest thing there is. It’s been great to us.

Antiquiet: Your live shows are known for being high-energy and interactive.

Ryan Sollee: From the band’s beginning, from playing unplugged on the floor… it just erases that wall between you and the audience. Translating that now to an actual stage, we’re looking to erase that as much as we can from the first song of the show. To me, the best artists make everybody a part of the show at least a little bit. They make people feel like they’re a part of something special.

Antiquiet: Are there any bands you take cues from?

Ryan Sollee: We toured with The Helio Sequence for a bit, we did five dates in California with those guys, and they’ve created their thing very organically and slowly, and now they’re doing really well. Keeping it small and not getting caught up in anything but being a band and playing shows and really doing what you do really well.

Back in the day, Fugazi was like the flagship of DIY bands, and I think an entire scene really grew from that. People started believing that they could do it on their own. There’s a lot of cool bands out there doing it on their own now, and that seems to be a good way to keep a career going- if you get a shitload of press and build up expectations really quickly, there’s a much greater chance you’re going to fizzle out. But if you build that strong foundation on your own, nobody’s going to take that away from you.

Antiquiet: Where do you pull your inspiration from when you sit down to write?

Ryan Sollee: Whenever I’m feeling a little bit… dry, I guess, I go back to people who tell stories through songs. Like the way Johnny Cash could do it, or Tom Waits, and the imagery there is amazing. You could put a picture in somebody’s mind, and I’m in love with that idea. But aside from that, I try to write something that, if it sticks in my head for a few days, I know I’ve got something good- unless it’s just too terrible to forget (laughs). I think a lot of artists forget about how contagious a melody can be. Or a hook. They’re too afraid to be vulnerable.

Antiquiet: Well, you can embrace that vulnerability with a passion or you can run from it and stick to what’s safe. When there’s real soul to the music, though, you can’t help but give yourself to it. It’s take it or leave it- there’s no middle ground.

Ryan Sollee: Exactly.

Antiquiet: A lot of people made some stellar careers out of riding that middle-ground though, going through the motions.

Ryan Sollee: Totally. Unfortunately, yeah. It’s a sad fact.

Antiquiet: What do you say to a kid who’s trying to put a song together but doesn’t really know how?

Ryan Sollee: Song editing is important, being able to take the pieces apart and work on the strength of each piece. Ruminate with it a little bit, and if something bothers you in a song, don’t just stick with it. I just to just write songs and was like ‘whatever’. But you can always do better.

I think a lot of it also comes from finding your voice. As a singer that’s really important, to find a place you can sing from that’s captivating. But it comes down to pushing yourself to a point where you’re uncomfortable- that’s how you grow.

Antiquiet: What’s the rest of 2008 looking like for the band?

Ryan Sollee: We’re gonna go on a couple tours this fall, more full US tours this time. There’s no dates set but I think we’re probably gonna play CMJ, too, so that’s cool. We finished our record just recently and they’re probably not going to release it until early next year.

Antiquiet: What does it sound like?

Ryan Sollee: We had help with it from a guy named Chris Funk, who plays guitar in the Decemberists- [he] helped us with producing it, and he took our game to a much higher level. We recorded it in an actual studio this time instead of in our friend’s living room. So it’s a little bit more hi-fi, I guess, but it’s a lot more developed in terms of instrumentation. There’s just a lot more going on.

Antiquiet: Any guests this time around?

Ryan Sollee: We brought the Portland Cello Choir in for one of the songs, and they just did what they did at the show we did with ‘em. It’s a little bit more epic in places, but it’s not so… like the first record was a lot more stomp n’ grind the whole way through, kinda ramshackle, and there’s songs that are like that on this one, but it just goes in a lot more different places. It was really fun to make, and we made it really quickly. It just felt like a really organic process, and we’re excited to get it out.

The Builders And The Butchers are playing @ Spaceland in Los Angeles tomorrow night, followed by shows in San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. Get more tour details and hear more of their music on their MySpace.

What I’m posting here today is the uncut version, as I delivered it. I find it interesting that a particularly damning paragraph- on how a certain major record distribution company dropped the ball- was cut from the published version. I put a little red box around it. There was a large amount of dead, blank space after my interview, so I can’t imagine it was to save paper.

UPDATE 7/9: Record Of The Day dropped me a line this morning, and stated that the “censored” paragraph simply “went on too long and sounded like it was an ad for [my] company,” in their opinion.
I purposely avoided mentioning the company I work for by name to avoid that; furthermore, I’m simply a salaried employee and would have nothing to gain or lose either way. But I understand their position.
Record Of The Day also stated for the record: “In no way was it censorship, in support of major labels. We are a fiercely independent company and our only allegiance is to ourselves. We pride ourselves, in fact, on being neutral towards the industry here, only offering up comment when we feel there’s a strong need.”
Fair enough.

First journalism / music-related job:

Not that it counts, but when I was 18 or so, I started a “record label” with a friend in Philadelphia. We knew very little about running any sort of business at all, let alone running a record label. But we helped a few local electronic / dance acts record and release some albums, and we would go around to the high schools collecting email addresses to send updates out to. We never had a chance of even starting to earn any kind of return on our many capricious investments, but we did have a pretty advanced website, and this was 1998 or 1999.

My first (and surely last) “real” gig in the major label music industry was with Universal Music & Video Distribution, where I did graphic design for their new media department. I was grossly underpaid, but I loved the environment and the people I worked with.

Do you still go to record stores and buy vinyl / CDs?

I go to Amoeba Records in Hollywood a lot. I’ll spend $200 or $300 each visit, easy. Always vinyl though, only vinyl. It’s not that I’m an analog snob, but you just can’t download a record. CDs are digital, thus 100% transmittable without quality loss. The only real value left in CDs is in the packaging and sentimentalism. And vinyl not only has better, more substantial packaging, but it’s cheaper- and rarer- than CD. CDs are the worst of both worlds. Which brings me directly to the next question:

A recent trend which I’ve been enjoying is:

Artists doing more with existing formats. Packaging DVDs with CDs. Trent Reznor providing the multi-track files for his songs so fans can remix them. Embracing new ideas. Physical albums don’t have to die, if they can evolve.

A trend I have less time for is:

That unholy warbling auto-tune side-effect in all the hit hip-hop & pop singles!

The music that’s exciting me at the moment is:

Monday I saw a clip of Nine Inch Nails doing the song 1,000,000, live at rehearsal. You can check it out on Antiquiet. I was already casually acquainted with the song, but this performance was intense. That definitely excited me. The newest Electric Six album, entitled I Will Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master, is pretty damn exciting. We interviewed Dick Valentine in February- for Valentine’s Day. Him, and Tera Patrick. That was fun.

There’s a relatively unknown band called The Builders And The Butchers that I love. Let’s say Bob Dylan and Grace Slick had a child. Who was then raised by Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn. Who then picked a band off a street corner in Mexico. In 1929. Well, they would probably sound something like The Builders And The Butchers. We’re interviewing them today.

The best thing about my job is:

I’m nobody. I have nothing to lose. I don’t have to worry about not covering my bottom line and losing my job. I can take risks, and explore new opportunities the internet provides almost daily. I don’t know what the future holds. But I know I’ll be there.

The best interview we did recently was:

Johnny Firecloud, our head writer, did an interview with Joe Purdy. He’s an independent, unsigned artist here in Los Angeles. It was the first in-depth one Joe had ever done, and his camp has been passing the link around like crazy, using it as a bio of sorts.

Johnny said Joe was the coolest, most down to earth guy he ever talked to.

“To date, he’s sold more than half a million single paid downloads, and his song Can’t Get It Right Today has likely been all over your TV in Kia ads and on Grey’s Anatomy.

The reception has been huge, and the labels are foaming at the mouth to cash in on this would-be-could-be superstar, but Joe’s flatly turned down every offer that’s been made. He releases the records only the way he wants to, and has lucked out like a Vegas champion in the press.”

My worst interview nightmare was:

Oh man, this is an easy one. I did an interview with Page Hamilton of Helmet, when they were doing press for Size Matters. I don’t usually do interviews myself, but my go-to guy bailed at the last second, and I was (and am) too huge of a fan to let the opportunity slip by. But I was completely unprepared. I didn’t even have a tape recorder. It was over the phone and I’m not very good at multitasking, so I was frantically jotting down indecipherable notes by hand while missing half of what he was saying. I’m pretty sure I mixed up song and album names. I choked, hard. He must have thought I was a complete idiot. I had backstage passes at a Helmet show a week or two later, but I snuck out after their set, alone. I was just too embarrassed.

I predict that within five years’ time:

More music will be free. DRM will be dead. Terrestrial radio will be dead. Marketing firms will be starting to look like the new record labels. We’ll see some more experiments: Maybe we’ll have a sponsored album release, with ads printed in the booklets. Maybe free CD advances with audible ads between the tracks. Some experiments will fail miserably. Some won’t. Here’s more.

If I didn’t do this job, I’d…

Be serving Pizza at Lorenzo & Sons at 3rd & South in Philadelphia.

Where are you based?

The Culver City area of Los Angeles. I share an apartment with an amazing woman much too hot for an internet nerd.

What made you start a music website?

I knew I’d ultimately fail at anything I was less passionate about.

Anything to add about your policy for posting music?

My reputation may proceed me. But the bottom line for me is this: I live and breathe marketing by day, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that the best promotion an artist can ever hope to get is a friend or trusted source simply handing a good song or album to someone whom they suspect would be a fan. I take the rise of “illegal” distribution at face value: more people are listening to more music. Meanwhile, dwindling CD sales represents nothing more to me than an obsolete technology losing ground among consumers.