The Voxtrot Kid

The Beginning of Something

2011-01-18T21:32:00.000-08:00

To All Concerned:

I have new music emanating from here:

First free download:

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/RAMESH/track/The_King

Official website:

www.rameshalwayswins.com

.

Thank you for everything.

Love,
Ramesh

Through the Looking Glass

2010-09-17T03:33:00.000-07:00

The Zurich Openair Festival is perhaps the muddiest festival I have ever been to, which is saying a lot, considering the meteorological reputation of such events. Lucy and I have been in Zurich for two days, and thus far, we have been, by all accounts, very good tourists. We have been to the Kunsthaus Museum. We have seen the geode-inlaid stained glass windows of the Grossmunster. We have saddled round the lake to one of my spiritual homing points-the Le Corbusier house, and we have even made time for a purely platonic dalliance with several Dominicana dancers in Zurich’s red light district.

This new scene (the festival one) couldn’t be more different. For me, Zurich is a kept jewel, rich in both beauty and little silver coins, unchanging and solid like some antiquated, luxurious material, perhaps like ivory. I have been imagining the festival will continue very much in this lavish tradition, but upon arrival I am immediately thrust into a realm of chaos and quicksand, somewhat reminiscent of Waterworld. Thin wooden planks provide the only form of transport between vast, hungry mud oceans, and in effect, festival-goers are reduced to ants, trailing one another in single file.

After much maneuvering, Lucy and I reach the stage on which Belle and Sebastian will be playing. To say I am a “super-fan” would be somewhat of an understatement. Having already inadvertently followed the band to Glasgow (and staying for three years), my fandom has now led me to Zurich, which, let’s face it, is not exactly a budget destination. The only difference is that, at this stage, I have the good fortune of being quite a good friend of several of the band members, making my access into Fan Babylon somewhat easier. A journey such as this one to Zurich requires a partner stocked with equal obsession, and in Lucy I have found my match. Over the course of the previous two days, the two of us have collectively hummed, recited, reminisced upon, and generally exhausted every song in the Belle and Sebastian catalogue, including side projects and rarities.

Waiting in the audience, I regret to confess, I feel a slight pang of irritation. For the past five years, I have been touring on and off with my own band, Voxtrot, and during that time I have become very accustomed to being on the “other side of the looking glass.” Now that I am in between active musical projects, there is some notion of failure, that I have left my gilded seat in the backstage and am now standing, caked with mud, alongside the best of them, glinting nervously towards the side of the stage, hoping for the blessed emergence of my musical saviors.
The instant that said saviors do in fact appear, all negative notions of superiority and disappointment dissolve and I am instantaneously thrust back into my teenage mirth. They say that, when people fall in love, we produce chemicals within that brain that cause us to behave irrationally, and over time, these chemicals decrease in presence, bringing us back to our original, dismal pragmatism. In this musical moment, I am defying science, for every rational thought (particularly those pertaining to cold, trench foot, the need to urinate, and general bodily discomfort) has left the building.

Throughout the entirety of the set, Lucy and I are bopping in unison and successfully mouthing every lyric, spoken like true hymns. As Stuart, the man himself onstage says, it’s as though “I was a kid again.”

And so comes the obvious realization: when you make the choice to turn your passion into your profession, you must put some effort into ensuring that the profession remains passionate. If you begin to measure your worth as an artist in terms of exclusivity and having the most toys, you will inevitably foster feelings of jealousy towards other artists, and henceforth create work that aims at increasing your toy count, as opposed to making someone’s world a little brighter. And if we’re dealing with adages, let’s face it, you might even throw the damn things out the pram.

After the show is finished, we are completely elated (due to aforementioned amorous mood enhancers) and have somewhat forgotten that we must now go about the process of actually making contact with our sung heroes, so that we may further bask in their presence. Telecommunication is not plentiful this afternoon, but eventually the universe works its strange magic and Chris (Geddes, keyboards) appears by the side of the stage, bin liners firmly adhered to his feet, and whisks us into the refreshingly mud-less realm of the backstage.

The majority of the band is here, and they are incredibly gracious and full of life. Stuart (Murdoch, vocals/guitar/piano) brings Lucy and I a Cinzano and within twenty minutes I am back in friend mode, forgetting the out of body adoration experience, which has occurred only minutes before. Around midnight, we caravan to the hotel in which they are staying-a nice, large modern one-and several of the band members, along with Lucy and I, engage in a bit more drinking and dancing. I am determined that I will somehow lead everybody, like the pied piper, into Zurich proper for further platonic dalliances, but alas, my affinity for fermented potatoes gets the better of me and within two hours I am effectively rendered immobile.

At this juncture, Stevie (Jackson, guitar/vocals) enters like a knight in shining armor and drags me to a flat surface where I can sleep off my abundance of good feelings. When I awake ten hours later, I am reminded that, age withstanding, Belle and Sebastian will forever be my true heroes.

The End of Something

2010-04-21T10:20:00.000-07:00

From the Voxtrot Website:

Recently, a friend in Glasgow asked me to submit a few paragraphs for a piece he was putting together, regarding the end of Optimo (Espacio). Part of my submission reads as follows:

"Optimo is a reminder of the value of a shock to the system. Give yourself over to something foreign without fear or hesitation, and the creative manifestations in your own art will be remarkable. "

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The career path of Voxtrot was truly one of long, simmering build, explosion, and almost instantaneous decay. Slowly, I am learning to replace any feelings of regret with positive memories of how amazing the whole thing was, and how it has, in an unexpected way, fortified my character.

Making great art requires one to be fearless, and sometimes I've given too much energy to fear. Whenever I read an interview in which a band
claims they are going to return to the sound of their earlier, more popular work, a small part of me aches for them. It doesn't work like that-the popularity of the earlier work is based upon the sense of newness felt by the musicians at the time of creation. So, how to get back the newness…?

Approximately eight months ago, I spoke to my friend Simon and indicated that I was ready to give up on music, or at least leave it for the indefinite future, but he reminded me that you can't dedicate yourself to another job or a degree, or some other distraction just because you've got nothing else going-if you have the feeling that you were born to do something, you've got to follow that feeling.

As he told me, "Do it because you love music. Do it with passion."

And so I did what I had to do. I swallowed my pride and got two jobs, one of which involved clearing the dishes of the filthy-and-not-so-pleasant-rich, and while this sudden change in lifestyle was not altogether ideal, I was constantly aware that I was building towards something.

For me, the most important thing in life is leaving behind something beautiful, something that finds its way into the lives of strangers, and forever alters them in a positive manner. Sometimes, being able to do this means that you have to work the shitty job and serve bread to rich idiots, but whatever, it's better than just cashing in your chips and spending the rest of your life wondering, "what if…?"

In the end, I've come to realize that there really isn't any cause for disappointment. The fact is, the songs still exist, and the music of Voxtrot lives on as a sovereign entity which, outside of all criticism, positive or negative, belongs to the guys and me, and to everybody who ever loved it or believed. Taking into account every person I've met, every place I have visited, every emotional exchange I have ever had with a listener, there is absolutely no room for regret.

In fact, the other day, I was thinking about it in the shower and decided that my situation was analogous to Peter Falk's glass eye. You probably don't know this, but I am a massive fan of Columbo-it is the only detective show in which there is no mystery, thus the entire reason you watch it is because you just love him (Falk) so much. It is a true testament to the power of a strong character. Anyway, when Peter Falk was five years old, one of his eyes had to be removed, due to a malignant tumor. Obviously, this is bad, BUT, had it not happened, he would never have developed his signature stare, which, let's face it, accounts for at least a small percentage of his overall appeal. Whatever I create from this point on, I will only create because of everything, good or bad, that has happened thus far.

Being in Voxtrot has been wonderful and amazing, but it is only one chapter in the book...

When I was in high school, I was a great fan of the Scottish band, Travis, and I have always harbored a secret desire to meet the band's frontman, Fran Healy. Not so long ago, at my friend Lucy's studio in Berlin, I had the fortunate experience of doing just this. He was buying a painting of hers, and we spent about three hours conversing. Eventually, our conversation drifted towards the ebb and flow of our respective careers, as well as the anger that comes with not knowing how to pull oneself out of a creative rut. Obviously, our two careers have been on different scales, but nonetheless, the associated concepts are universal. At the end of the conversation, he said to me, "You can't to keep writing the same song. You have to throw away the map. AND you have to keep creating, even if it goes nowhere for a while, you have to always keep creating… and it'll be great."

And he's right. I must leave again-take a risk, do something radical, but in order to do that, I need closure. This is not to say that Voxtrot will never play again, and certainly, if Voxtrot has never been to your country (or continent) we are open to ideas, but for all intents and purposes, this series of live shows will be the last.

Part of doing something with love is being able to say "goodbye" at the right time. Thank you for everything. On to the next one...

Love,
Ramesh

Youth Trip

2009-04-21T07:07:00.000-07:00

Dear World,

Voxtrot have begun the process of putting together material for a new album. As soon as there is more specific information regarding this, I will let you know. In the mean time, I have begun doing what I hope will be a monthly radio show for RADAR 97.8 FM , Lisbon (Portugal). This is a tremendous opportunity, and I am very grateful to the people at RADAR for asking me to contribute. The first show is called, "Youth Trip," and although it aired last weekend, it can be downloaded from the Voxtrot site (as a podcast) here .

If my attempt(s) at HTML is unsuccessful, simply navigate to www.voxtrot.net.

Thank you for listening.

Love,
Ramesh

Tracklisting:

YOUTH TRIP

1. Four Tet-My Angel Rocks Back and Forth
2. The Velvet Underground-Heroin
3. Allen Ginsberg-Kaddish (Excerpt)/
4. Glenn Branca-Lesson No.1 for Guitar
5. Cocteau Twins-Iceblink Luck
6. Unknown-Youth Trip (recorded outside)
7. The Cure-Plainsong
8. Judee Sill-The Kiss
9. Nina Simone-I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free
10. David Holmes-The Ballad of Sarah and Jack

[Pause]

2009-02-04T22:18:00.000-08:00

*Photo by Simon Ashcroft. Simon takes the best pictures, so I am always stealing them-forgive me, Simon.

Before the journal entry, here is an MP3 for the reader.

An Excerpt from an Unpublished August Journal:

Once upon a time I stood on a street corner and peered into the canal, thinking that it was just as good a reason as any for living. Certainly, I formed an analogy between its flowing water and my own blood, reflecting once again upon the minimal difference between that which is within us and that which is without (is there not a fantastic sameness in both form and function when considering trees and the lungs of animals?).

The powdered pinkness of the dying sun reflected in the water, the approaching ivory-on-saphire army of midnight swans, poised for majesty and intimidation, the ghostly cleaning boat of yesteryear, surrounded by its cloud of steam and guided only by a few piercing bright lights: these are the images that force one to remain motionless on the bridge, afraid to budge for fear of missing one valuable second. 'Rage, rage, against the dying day...'

For as long as I can remember, I have wished to hold images close to me, as though they were tangible objects. For a time, I believed this to be harmful or foolish, a fetishistic act of consumption useful only for the continual harvest of an insatiable hunger. But now I understand the way in which this reorganization of life informs my happiness; I call it Magical Realism.

When I was a teenager I lived solely in a place of magical realism. At some point I have been each and every one of my great heroes, a cause to which I remained dedicated regardless of whether or not another person was present to verify the occurrence. The first few times I allowed others to pass into my private realm were common but necessary, images so familiar they might have been plucked from any coming of age biopic-reading aloud from the Ginsberg anthology, enthusiasm fueled by stolen warm champagne, cross legged on the black cushion, youth tuned into youth (a concentration permitted only by the suspension of worry available in those days), giving finally a small performance of I Shall Be Released...

The morning after such exploits, when I climbed the hill near my parent's house and sat staring into the rising sun, its ageless puddle of light slowly engulfing every branch and stone, I had effectively transcended time. There was no great stopwatch separating myself from my heroes, for the experience of self-realization and initial discovery is always a virgin entity; its ability to repeat itself yet always be different lies in its being the definition of newness. The only absolute newness is creation.

As a creator of music, I sometimes forget what it is like to experience music from an entirely non-critical point of view.

So, what does this mean for me, Berlin and the life blood canal that once extended before my eyes? It is arguable that all the wandering souls of the world (people like myself) have inherited Christopher Isherwood's haunted, candlelit land of eccentric intellectuals and cabaret shows and morphed it into an aimless place of hedonism and anti-everything logic, but really, it just depends on how you see it.

If I can, for just one minute, block out the chattering buzz of the millions of technological advances that demand such an unending life force (phones, the internet, the ever-present flash of digital cameras), then I am left only with the advancing army of swans, the pink water, the beautiful memory of the ex-Soviet bar, competing musical instruments drifting into consciousness from afar...

In this moment, Rosie is Sally Bowles and I am Bryan Roberts, and when I get home, she will be there, "dolled up for Easter."

Thoughts from the Present:

So, many miles from Berlin, I am giving myself over to music again; this is my aim and my wish. Lost in a little village of guitar feedback and drum machines, I ponder the separation between the man and the music, the world and the single voice, the unceasing flow and the magic quality of a single moment.

Thrills, spills, mistakes, regrets, reflections, and most importantly, things to be thankful for, paint my vision in a rather kaleidoscopic manner, light refracting through a crystal lattice work. All the cities drift by, among them the seven hills of Lisbon, the unrelenting stone facade of Bushwick, the dark retro bars of St. Pauli, the mountain and warm cheese in Mexico, and of course, the chalky rose canal that carried me through Berlin, across the ocean and directly into this moment-this moment, in which I am forced to remember how much magic has truly transpired.

Here I must digest all of this magic, allow it to dissipate among my cells, forming a lightning-fast network of electrical energy. Slowly, it quells my anxiety and gets to work taking my little place of magical realism-the attic in Wimpole Street, the blue bulb of the stage light, the love affair with a guitar-from fantasy to the other side.

And so, once again, a handprint is stamped across time.

A Good Feeling

2008-02-14T07:29:00.000-08:00

Nico - I'll Keep It With Mine MP3

Photograph by Martin Parr, from "The Last Resort."

Today I had a good feeling. Having planned to meet my friends from Hamburg, Sonja and Niki, for a rare combination of sustenance and culture, I walked out my front door, turned right, and traced the almost straight line to the Samaritestrasse U-Bahn station. Before I could reach my final destination, Oranienburger strasse, I was required to make two changes, one at Alexanderplatz, and another at Friedrichstrasse.

Normally, such a circuitous route would spark in me some form of anxiety (I tend to be unnecessarily short tempered when traversing the urban landscape) but today I didn't mind. In fact, the whole process transcended me as though by some divine intervention, and while I was making the first change at Alexanderplatz I experienced the wonderful (see how it has been upgraded from good to wonderful) feeling of which I earlier spoke. The feeling was this: for the first time since moving to Berlin, I was not conscious of where I was or where I was going; my thoughts were elsewhere-perhaps I was mentally reviewing a new piece of music, or possibly just reviewing the vacuous space that was beginning to fill my stomach region-but either way, I certainly was not forcing myself to be continuously critical of my every move.

There's a certain self-consciousness, a kind of continual embarrassment, that goes along with being a new person in any place. You have sense that, at any given moment, every capable citizen is watching you, secretly laughing at your every misstep. But today I was just a piece of the machine, an ordinary gear in the ever-expansive clock of human interaction. Sometimes it's nice to be part of a machine, it just has to be the right one.

I arrived early, and spent about thirty minutes in the park, watching the sun's angle decline, appreciating the fact that I was using this civic gift just as it was intended to be used: reading, watching, depositing my cigarette ash in the ashtray provided for me by the government, understanding how parks act as little puddles of serenity, placed evenly around a city to balance out the madness. Parks are almost living proof that everyone, even those in charge, is aware that life is more stressful than it needs to be.

After lunch, we filed into the Martin Parr exhibition. I don't know how much you know about Martin Parr, but before today I knew absolutely nothing. The briefing I had received (from my friend Moritz) was that his work focuses mainly on the grotesque contrasts/contradictions of modern Western society, both at home and in areas of reduced financial prosperity. It is often the work of juxtaposition: statues of the Virgin Mary underneath a McDonald's awning, British tourists stuffing their faces at a Belgian holiday resort surrounded by garbage, sun-bleached couples seemingly miserable on a crowded ocean front.

Interestingly enough, there were quite a few photographs of Glasgow, which is obviously of great interest to me. Some, I did think, were particularly harrowing, specifically the photo of the men's barber shop, the walls of which were entirely covered with images of naked women. However, there were certain photographs that did not fill me with any sense of disgust. I remember, very specifically, a photograph which portrays a Glasgow street, one where most of the buildings have been demolished and thus there remains only one or two tenements, one or more of their sides exposed. In the foreground of the image one can see a Tennents beer sign, indicating the door to a pub. Obviously, the idea is that, amongst such urban desolation, the most popular escape is liquid mental abandon in an aesthetically-impoverished setting, but when I saw this, the first thought that flashed into my mind was, Sometimes life just looks like that.

I lived in Glasgow for three and a half years, and although I was a) a foreigner, and thus, in some ways, a tourist, and b) living in a very nice part of Glasgow, I still lived there, and I still frequented quite a few places that didn't look entirely unlike this one. Glasgow has a kind of grit and I don't think it's something to be ashamed of. During my time there, I picked up on an almost beautiful force, a simultaneous wisdom and madness that allows the people there to be drawn so close to each other, a sort of universal refuge under all that grey brick and grey sky. It is my belief that, an image such as the one I have described, is totally ignorant of that positive energy.

Two other images really captivated me. The first was of an elderly woman wearing a white cap and orthopedic shoes, eating alone in a McDonalds, hunched over the table. Even as I'm describing it now, it's nearly bringing tears to my eyes. I have knowingly done any number of things to destroy my body (drinking, smoking, whatever...), but this woman, why is she doing this? It's one thing to see a younger person eating a processed hamburger but it's entirely different when you see an elderly woman carrying out the same act. All I can think is that, either she doesn't know any better, or it's the only option she can afford, which brings me to my next thought: Why the fuck do fast food companies make this shit available to people?!

Yeah, consumers have a choice, but all people, especially those in the business of distributing food products, must be perfectly aware that not all are consumers are equally educated, and thus they knowingly provide the crutch for susceptible eaters. Drugs like heroin and cocaine are also really bad for you, and often a crutch, but they're fucking illegal, aren't they? I don't know why the powers that be, or people in general (who I suppose are the powers that be) are not bothered by this image of lonely old woman hunched over a styrofoam plate. I just keep imagining that it's my grandmother, who lived as a widow for the last forty years of her life, sat by herself in a soulless plastic box of a restaurant, thinking to herself, Life is so unfair. It fucking breaks my heart.

The second image which caught my eye is one which depicts a slew of tourists at a Brighton beach resort, waiting to get to the front of a fast food queue. It is somewhat of an action/motion shot, causing the majority of depicted individuals to appear blurred. However, in complete focus, at the far right of the shot, stands a boy of somewhere between eleven and thirteen years, his right arm akimbo as he stares thoughtfully out of the frame and into the present. The remarkable thing about this boy is that he has the face and complete composure of a grown man. Not the facial hair and wrinkles, or course, but rather the sense of understanding and inherent wisdom. During my time as a pre-school teacher, I noticed this trait in some of my students. The viewing of this phenomenon always fills me with a mixed sense of wonder, admiration and sadness, for in some ways, to understand too much too young is a hindrance.

Does this boy remember the day the photograph was taken? What was he thinking about? The photograph is from 1985. He must be in his mid thirties by now. As he walks the streets of whichever British town or city in which he resides, does he still have that same glaze of guaranteed assurance? Does he think to himself, I've got the answer-I've always had the answer? And on the day the photograph was taken did he surmise that it was grotesque, that he was grotesque, that the whole situation of Western capitalism was, for all intents and purposes, grotesque? Fat. Ugly. Unhealthy. Probably not, he probably just accepted that day as it happened, for that's how we live, isn't it? An image is capable of highlighting, later on, an essence that was present all the time, but went unnoticed. Its power resides in its retrospective quality.

And I suppose that's why Carr's work, or any artist's work is important, even if it sometimes neglects the fullness of the human experience: Be part of the machine, enjoy and accept the things around you, but don't forget, once and a while, to stop and criticize.

Summer in Hell:Belle and Sebastian/Michael Dracula/Mother and the Addicts/Voxtrot Collabortion... AND Berlin Odyssey

2008-01-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

I've just returned from Glasgow, where I've finished up a recording with members of Michael Dracula, Belle and Sebastian, Mother and the Addicts, and obviously, myself. I'm quite pleased with it. Not sure when it will be finished, if ever. The song was recorded at Green Door Studios.

In other news, I've relocated to Berlin, I'm not sure for what, some sort of inspiration no doubt, so if anybody is kicking about and wants to hang out or play music or whatever, please drop me a line. I'm ready to restart, rewrite, re-everything. No more fear, no more holding back, time for brilsolage. PLUS.... this pink chair in my sublet is BLOODY FANTASTIC.

Love,
Ramesh

A Very Long and Overdue Letter

2007-09-05T02:04:00.000-07:00

Novicat de Soeurs Missionaires de Notre Dame d'Afrique & four religious drummers - Yesu Ka Mkwebase MP3

Dear Lacey,

I was busy writing about something else, the loss of innocence and all this kind of shit, when I was suddenly distracted by your memory, or rather the memory of you, and thought that perhaps it would be better if I just wrote you instead. I believe it's because I was writing about high school, that miserable place which afforded us little more education than the camaraderie and independence that grew up inside of us, partially the product of choice, partially the product of necessity, that shared closeness that comes with the experience of being a social outsider.

More specifically, I was recalling the bit of forest behind the school, the one we were never meant to visit, past the portable classrooms and pick up trucks, and that horrendous chain-link fence, the one which separates truancy from athletic participation. There's something really beautiful about that piece of land, that delicate fabric of trails and open fields which reminds you, if only for a second, that perhaps central Texas is not the worst place on Earth, a beauty which is no doubt enhanced by its forbidden quality.

I'm sure it was you who made me go there first, or maybe it was Courtney. I can never be sure. You were always forcing me to do stuff like that, to bend rules, to push boundaries, not so much because you were a junior revolutionary, but more because you had the foresight to understand that these temporary rules enacted to govern the lives of young adolescents are, really and truly, complete and utter shit. Like the time you convinced me to ditch the career fair, and we spent the whole day mucking around South Austin; you bought me a sandwich, and then we rolled our pants up, halved a piece of cake, and climbed carefully but deftly down the root-encrusted bank to the still and forgotten creek behind the sandwich shop. I might not be pushing it if I said that was one of the best days of my life.

Yes, that's what I remember-little moments of freedom. I think we were quite good at that, our little group. We attended school in a place where it is customary to see Confederate flags, where the term "faggot" is thrown around with little to no objection, and where unconditional praise of the athletically gifted is encouraged (all typical traits of the southern experience, but one has to remember that it's disturbing that these things should ever become normalized). And so, in our own futile rebellion, we ate our lunches outside under the trees, sported our montage of paisley retro gear, pinstriped vests, and Goodwill t-shirts, celebrated Bob Dylan's birthday with chocolate cake at seven in the morning, and generally tuned out the world by filling our ears with music that was long ago forgotten by many-or so I thought at the time.

Of course this is a regular occurrence, that feeling of togetherness which is born out of isolation, but I like to think there was something a bit different about our situation -it wasn't identifiable as any nationwide youth trend, but it was instead a bond colored by a complete and total obsession with the past, a fundamental belief that things were inherently cooler in the sixties. And they were. The first week of school, I didn't even know you, but I knew you enough to think that I was in love with you. And then, with minimal provocation, you agreed to sew onto my bag all the patches which I had collected over the summer-The Grateful Dead, Jim Morrison, The Beatles, Bob Marley... The most obvious characters of retro obsession, which at that point, for me, held no cultural association of mainstream taboo. Yours was the most finite stitching I had ever seen, so evenly spaced, and with all the patches placed at angles that allowed them to exist in perfect harmony. As soon as I held the now-transformed vessel in my hand, I knew that I was definitely in love with you, and always would be.

Maybe that's the benefit of going to school in the middle of nowhere: the popular trends take longer to reach you, the only norm is mainstream country music, so you have to find something on your own, something that moves you and gives you shelter from your incongruous environment, the one that, as somebody quite clever once said, "says nothing to me about my life." There is one event that I remember quite vividly, sticks out in my mind, a party held on your mother's land, just across the creek from your father's, in that magical nowhere dip where the only signs of life were the distant silhouettes of cows, presumably in place for tax purposes. On this particular night, we had managed to craft something of truly Kesey-esque proportions:

Everything in my memory is shrouded in the flickering of several campfire lights, brief flashes of beards and naked skin, the competing strums of acoustic guitars, the kids from the neighboring school (namely your boyfriend and his team of beautiful hooligans) with their Kent III shirts, converse and gas station wine situated at the opposite flame, the constant sound of didgeridoos (by this point, the Alaskans had arrived and firmly planted themselves on your land and in your heart), and last but not least the incredible image of Courtney channeling Mountain Girl, wandering from person to person, offering each friend a poem from a jar, which had been folded into a pyramid shape (the poem, not the jar). "A poem for you..."

That night, as David and I were ascending from the wilderness and back into my car, I remember turning around for one last look at the circle below of fire, bodies, and drone, and remarking to David that it looked exactly like a National Geographic special, a fitting description, for earlier that week, you and I had fought because you assured me that, if given the choice, you would abandon all things familiar and Western, and relocate to a specific Aboriginal tribe where a popular game included forming a large circle with linked arms, consistently altering the resulting shape so as to avoid being touched by the shade of an overhead cloud. In this moment I believed that, maybe, just maybe, you were being sincere.

Just as well, then, that you left us for Alaska, left school early to pursue something that, all in all, was far more worthwhile. Sometimes I can't escape thinking that perhaps your decision to follow those bearded Alaskans up into the wilderness meant you knew that you were to die young. Although, I think everybody once and a while believes they are to die young, at least I hope that's a universal premonition, otherwise I should be concerned. Sometimes I try to imagine all the events I missed while I was sweeping away at the cinema: the day you cut off your, long, famous hair, the endless paths carved through such esoteric towns as Moab, Utah in pursuit of that great, northern paradise, the hours spent studying the teachings of a Western guru, and lastly the days spent in that cabin alone in Alaska, trying to understand, as you said to me, your relationship with God.

But there are things I do remember, things I don't have to imagine, like the many trips down to the University in search of several spoonfuls of bohemian insight, all of us lying in wait in my heavily shrouded bedroom, unanimously dreading the possibility that any parent might arrive before my father's decaying cassette copy of "Sounds of Silence" had come to completion. Or an evening spent in my now-donated Mercedes (used, of course); eyes closed as the song I'd written for you surged from the speakers, through my body, and eventually from my left hand into your right, all but filling the dense yet awkward-less silence.

And then, of course, the last time I saw you. You were leaving for Alaska or I was leaving for Europe, I can't remember which. That evening I was closing down the theater, clad in maroon vest and nylon necktie. I met you in the parking lot for a hurried goodbye (sometimes that's the only thing available). Standing outside in the vast space between the bookstore and the cinema entrance, one of us (I can't remember which) said, "I don't know when I'll see you again," and the other replied, "It doesn't matter," not as an indication of apathy, but instead a reminder that deep-rooted love is something you carry with you, like a talisman, or rather like that essential piece of metal sewn into the wall of my stomach lining. "Even when I'm not with you, my love is with you..."

Each year, on the anniversary of your death, I intend to write something and never do, a disservice I always regret. Instead, I'd like to remind you of something you wrote, something I had forgotten about until I saw your father at David's funeral the other day. There is more to say about David, but nothing you don't know, and now is not the time or place. He (your father) said to me that it's finally time to begin taking apart your room, to free himself of the many possessions left behind in that upstairs purple abode. As a start on the project of purging, I was handed a package containing photographs of you and David (I had forgotten how the two of you looked so much like identical twins), along with a story you'd written for school when we were fourteen or so, detailing where you might be in ten years. I stored these items somewhere safe (so safe I can't remember the exact location) and thus I am unable to quote your original text.

But here's what I can remember-I can remember the rough penmanship, the sort that can only belong to a girl of fourteen, and I can remember the happiness that it brought me years ago when first I glimpsed it, a happiness which was rekindled when it was re-delivered to me much later. Fortunately I can also remember the general outline of my favorite part. It had something to do with you joining NASA, training to become an astronaut and traveling to the moon several times. After that vision of yours was quenched, you married me, we had three beautiful children, and I like to think that we lived happily ever after. If you'd only known how, at the time, I carried this story inside of me, intentionally ignorant of its casual intent, and allowed it to foster all kinds of beautiful hopes within my being. But maybe it wasn't all disingenuous. As we discussed earlier, love is something that you carry with you always, regardless of its form.

So many years later, all I can say is this: I'm glad this was your dream-because it was mine too.

Love,
Ramesh

Llorando

2007-07-08T14:48:00.000-07:00

It's incredible to think of all of us out there in the world who want nothing more than to rest a head against a foreign body, passing each other in the street, continuing on with the same little empty space tucked somewhere deep inside. But it's all relative. I don't even need to elaborate upon why my concern of loneliness is partially ridiculous. Famine, hunger... these are much worse, and perhaps with my little plea I'm tempting the Gods of true loneliness. Let's hope not.

That's the thing- sometimes I feel like a spoiled fucking brat because I have a shell-shocked attitude regarding the things that surround me on a daily basis. I don't care about record reviews. I don't care about the internet. I don't care about the relative popularity of other similar bands who, apparently, the internet has told me I should view as competition. I care about writing music. I care about people, and they're getting harder and harder to hold close to me, or perhaps even to grasp in the first place.

Maybe it's because I'm lonely. Maybe it's because I'm hungover. Maybe it's because I came to the most beautiful city in the world and couldn't make it work. I wanted to relive that magical morning of my life with the marlboro lights and the window and the stack of NMEs.

Sometimes I get really scared because I don't care about anything, and that's just fucking stupid because in the moments where it's all seemed on the brink of loss I've never been more afraid. It's those seconds where you realize that you don't make your own rules that really shake you up.

When I get this way I have to comfort myself with the fact that I have music in my life. Music understands the fact that I run through life too fast and expect everything to happen instantly. I'm just going to give myself to the stage, go into hiding and write something great, bounce around and kick my feet and scream and strum and scream and strum...

Au Revoir Simone/Voxtrot/Favourite Sons Collaboration

2007-06-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

Twee as fuck: Here is a "synchronized" routine we devised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Check Matt (Favourite Sons)'s solo at the end.

On a lighter note...

2007-05-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

I've just fully realized that our album actually comes out tomorrow. That's really exciting. Today, we're filming our first music video, which is a process I had never even thought possible. Watching people film in double time is amazing! The video is for Firecracker, which I've decided is my favorite song on the record, along with Real Live Version (a song written for Judee Sill-it's supposed to sound like that) and Blood Red Blood. Or at least those are the songs whose outcome reached their initial intentions the best...

This Friday we start our tour, which continues for about five weeks, a daunting prospect but fun nonetheless. It's interesting, this process we've been going through recently of having to bring the songs from the record into the live set. It was nice doing a bit of experimenting with sound when making the record, but I suppose the trick is figuring how to give the songs an equal amount of live energy as their counterparts. At least in Austin and New York, we have Tosca on our side and that's never a bad thing!

Hope to see you soon.

Love,
Ramesh

Forward Motion

2007-05-20T20:01:00.001-07:00

I've just finished working up some new material with the band, something I've been dying to do for a wee while. It's funny how, when you don't have to do something, it seems to come quite easily. The songs are a bit more of a return to some of the more energetic and upbeat categories, similar to what we have released in the past. Well, similar, but slightly evolved, I think. I don't know- it's hard to make these judgements about one's own music, and frankly, why bother? Despite the fact that this process of working up new material has been really fun and gratifying and whatnot, the whole experience has actually given me a greater appreciation for our album that comes out on Tuesday.

Honestly, I hope that anybody who's reading this doesn't think that I sit around listening to my own music all day and patting myself on the back, it's just that working up new material has lead me to once again examine the creative process, and in turn come to grips with the notion that whatever you create should always be an accurate reflection of yourself at the time. Forced enthusiasm is usually transparent.

Sometimes you write a song because you think, as you're writing it, "this is going to be really fun to listen to," or "this has great energy," etc... It's nice to get excited about the parts which you feel will resonate with the audience. And then sometimes you write a song because, as ridiculous as it sounds, you kind of have to. It's cathartic. Perhaps the first method is more enjoyable from the standpoint of a listener, but it just kind of provides a different thing. One is something you almost connect to physically and the other is more of a voice or personality trying to work its way off the tape, desperate to be heard, and when you connect with that it brings a different kind of joy, maybe something that can't accurately be described as pleasure. Does that sound stupid? It's a bit like a bran muffin versus a cupcake. Now, I know there's no way THAT sounded stupid. Note, I am not implying that recordings which contain one quality do not contain the other, but sometimes these qualities are manifested in ways that are not immediately obvious.

Anyway, this is getting quite scattered and vague, but I'll close this by saying that I think it's important to keep moving forward, not to let yourself rest as a musician in one particular place for too long. That way, you can return at any time to your previous creations and think, "that was me at one time," and hopefully be able to mark the ways in which you have evolved, both as a player and a person. One fortunate (or unfortunate) aspect of music is that it is very much a record of yourself, a topographical map of your emotional landscape, and sometimes it takes a little bit of time away before you fully discern your own peaks and valleys.

Mint. Yellow. Chocolate. Orange.

2007-05-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

Before the entry, here is an mp3 of perhaps the best song I've heard in quite some time. If anybody would like it removed for any reason, just let me know and it will be taken down at once. (Gui Boratto- Beautiful Life).

I used to be really good at being alone. Not to say that I am especially bad at being alone now, but something has definitely changed. Perhaps it has something to do with touring constantly, acquiring more levels of management (upon whom it is easy to become dependent), and thus becoming, in some sick and indirect way, addicted to attention. Or maybe it's none of these things; maybe it's just a part of getting ever so slightly older and reevaluating one's priorities.

Today was a good day, though, even if it was, in its own cruel way, possessed of a certain sadness. But I've always maintained the notion that sadness is not always something to be avoided. Part of the reason that certain melancholy indie artists appeal to me is because they are not afraid to treat sadness with an even respect. Just like any other emotion, it is not flat and direct- it is multi-colored and multi-faceted and therefore deserves the same examination and dissection afforded to more positive chemical reactions. It's important, for the sake of this discussion, to separate depression from sadness. Sadness, in my definition, is less of an affliction, and more of a general sense that washes over you: for a brief second you can see the past, present and future at once. More specifically, you understand too much about loss, mortality, and the human condition to be in full possession of your conscious character.

But like I said, today was a good day. Sometime in the early afternoon, I watched "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner." the book of which I had read years ago, really enjoyed, and primarily forgotten. It's a really beautiful film, full of nuance and subtlety, even if it does mildly divert from the narrative structure of the original text. I have never been particularly good at vicious rebellion, but something about the silent protest of the main character, I found awe-inspiring. Following the film, walked to my local grocer and purchased an orange, but not just any orange, a really large, potentially-genetically-modified-now-that-I-think-of-it-orange, perhaps the brightest one in the shop. As I walked home I flipped it up in the air repeatedly, marveling at the mere wonder of its weight each time I caught it. Immediately upon arriving home, I placed it on my bed, enabling myself to employ both hands in the the act of shoe-removal. Just as I had removed the second shoe, I turned around to see the marvelous color combination of fresh fruit and fabrics: mint green top sheet, white quilt with some sort of yellow floral pattern, chocolate brown bottom sheet, and of course the orange of the day, large and luminescent as ever.

In this moment I realized that this is one of the benefits of being alone: to notice things like this, these sorts of bizarre simple pleasures. When you are alone, you suffer silence, you are more prone to contemplation, to noticing nature's little eccentricities that spring up round about you. Just for clarification, bear in mind that I am not talking about loneliness on a catastrophic level, the sort that is inflicted upon people against their will, but rather the kind of everyday loneliness known to many on a more basic level. And so, proceeding...Yes, I whole-heartedly agree- it's hard to live without real love in your life, but sometimes you have to use that particular silence to enrich yourself, to notice the wonder of brown against yellow against orange, to watch something that inspires you, and, eventually, to create. We have to learn to process the desire for human contact into something more positive, at least until something more substantial comes along.

And so this series of bitter and sweet realizations melts into something that I will once again refer to as a certain sadness- it is not necessarily a direct offense, but just that- a certain, inescapable sadness. For me this feeling is epitomized by the sunday evenings of my younger school days. That bizarre combination of fading light, dissipating energy, and terrible TV programs, iced with the threat of impending responsibility and anger brought upon by the school week. I can clearly remember sitting in my parents' old living room, the one with thirty foot ceilings and insanely large windows, watching as the angle of the sun decreased, and thinking to myself just how intense the silence was. Not so much an absolute silence, but more the sound of the last cello note played in the last symphony on the last day of humanity, forever decreasing and decaying to an almost inaudible buzz, across the darkening horizon that somehow managed to embrace the entire world.

In that moment, you know that, one day, you will be lucky enough and stricken enough to face bigger things.

Apology

2007-04-04T07:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

I´m sorry if my last entry caused anybody to feel as though I am not thankful for the support we, as a band, have received via the internet. On the contrary, I am fully aware of the fact that bloggers and blog readers and other internet go-ers (not sure how to spell that out correctly) have been very crucial in our development, and I in no way cast shame on the downloading/internet community (of which I am obviously a part). Over the past several years I have met some of the most amazing people and enjoyed some really rare moments, all due to this strange exchange of ones and zeros.

I merely meant to express my concerns regarding the connection between technology and the coming future, and what it means in terms of disposability and decreasing human interaction. Perhaps I have a habit of living in the past. For example, a service like Netflix terrifies me because it means that nobody has to walk into a video store and actually talk to somebody to receive a video. The more we use technology to separate ourselves from other people, the more we become emotionally mute, and that, in my opinion, is the destruction of a supportive community. On the other hand, without services like Netflix (and the internet, of course) people who live in more remote areas would not have as much access to a variety of media, so it´s a bit of an even trade.

I still maintain the ideas expressed in the last entry, but at the time of writing it I was really pissed off and rather in a bad place, so my delivery might have been a bit negative. But now I am in a better place I think (namely Madrid) and feeling much happier about life.

So, in conclusion, I´m sorry if I appeared ungrateful, as I am very much the opposite.

Love,
Ramesh

Get off the Internet (I'll Meet You in the Street)

2007-03-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

I'd like to add an ammendment to this entry: I am, in no way adverse to the idea that blogs/downloading help spread music in a grass-roots style. Obviously, without this kind of exposure our band would be pretty much nowhere. I support many of the blogs and bloggers existing in the world today. My main problem comes from the kind of disposable attitude encouraged in such a culture, which is discussed below.

MP3s
Le Tigre - Get Off The Internet (Remy Mac Totally Botched Mix)
MIA - Sister (Remy Mac Mix)

Before the entry, here are two remixes I made when I first got Ableton Live, three or four years ago. Coincidentally, they're pretty much the only remixes I ever made. The sound quality is completely horrendous and the beginning of the Le tigre one is totally fucked. But hey, they're kind of fun.

And now, the entry:

I have really mixed feelings about the internet. The last few days, I've received a lot of phone calls from people telling me that I should either check out the internet or avoid checking out the internet, and of course in an act of inevitable vanity I have read pretty much everything Voxtrot-related that I can find online. It's pretty bizarre being a band that exists almost entirely outside of print media, but instead resides in the ether of ones and zeros, that omnipotent force whose presence we trust in the absence of any real physical guarantee. Regarding the concept of internet bands, I recently did an interview with Pitchfork Media, a segment of which reads as follows (PS. I understand that quoting myself is a bit over the top, but the sake of time and efficiency, it's probably best):

"Because Voxtrot, quite early in their careers, found an eager audience among bloggers, the band has often been called a "blog band"-- a tag that doesn't much concern Ramesh, a blogger himself. "It's a label I'm proud of, I guess," the Voxtrot Kid told Pitchfork, "because that's the new, subversive media, right? So it's cool, it's really cool."

"But then it has a downside...do people have emotional loyalty to a band when music comes so fast? With blog bands, the shelf life of a song in people's minds is a lot shorter. Sometimes I think maybe that's good, because it puts less emphasis on the record industry half of things, but then maybe it's bad because it's hard to cultivate any kind of scene anywhere or any history, because everything is exposed so immediately."

He continued, "I remember when I was little, going to a record store and buying a record that you'd heard about, and then because you bought it you really labor over it for a long time-- the whole thing of becoming connected with it and sacrificing yourself to it. I don't think people do that anymore."

Let me talk about this in regard to our upcoming record, which is to be released on May 22nd. I guess when you make an album, as opposed to an EP, it's more likely to carry some sort of theme, or topical continuity, and the themes that characterize this record are struggle, conflict, death, loss of identity, and an unstable concept of the future (global warming included). Pretty dramatic, huh? The combination of leaving Glasgow, changing my life significantly to accommodate my career, losing my grandmother, and working under extreme constant pressure sent me into some kind of crazy mode in which I have been unable to relax or take anything lightly. The whole thing has been pretty work intensive, and I often find myself, at the most inopportune times, staring at nothing, wondering, "what happens when you die?" and what sort of artistic imprint will I leave behind?

Recently, during ye old SXSW, I was in the Emos dressing room talking to Zach Condon (Beirut) just after our show, and we were discussing the last time we'd met (just before his reported collapse, if that is indeed the correct vocabulary). I told him that I often get so worked up about everything to do with the band that I have the sensation that the ground is moving underneath me and my feet begin to feel unstable. If I remember correctly, he responded that this was the feeling he had had just before his incident, only in his case these "illusions" of instability came to pass. At this point I became kind of worried, as I realized how far I'd come from my previous light-hearted existence.

When I was writing/recording the Mothers, Sisters, Daughters and Wives EP, for example, my life was really easy. Most of it was written in Glasgow, during which time the majority of my responsibilities included going to Optimo and observing/absorbing culture. Oh, and being a waiter/student. When I listen to that EP, I get this wonderful image of heading to LA for the first time, traversing that remarkable bit of landscape where you can actually see the flat desert end and the mountains begin. I've always thought it was incredible that the change is so sudden and visible. During that tour I would listen to those recordings and feel really happy that I had this little secret, a secret I couldn't wait to share with whomever was willing to listen.

This new album, for all of the reasons listed in previous paragraphs, is very different from our previous output. Depite the fact that I'm quite pleased with the album, musically, it's almost difficult for me to listen to, and I imagine that, as a listener (or, a listener who is not me), it's something you have to kind of live with for a bit before it feels right. The album focuses on conflict and struggle, and on trying to do the right thing in light of the multiple forces that are beating down against you (sounds ridiculous in light of the present state of the world at large, but it's the truth). After a while, I found that the best way for me to find inspiration was to digest all of these negative feelings and reinterpret them in song form. I'm not sure if I can expect listeners to follow me through a journey of struggle, but I think that if anybody's willing, the eventually pay off might be worth it. However, I'm clearly biased.

So, how does this all relate to the internet? The internet is fickle. Everything is disposable. Everything is fleeting. The internet is a very dark place to be. Everybody's a fucking authority and everybody knows better than everybody else. You (I am now going to use "you" in a general sense, though I realize that it does not necessarily apply to the reader) may think that you deserve to be able to download an album at no cost, store it in your iPod, pass your particular judgement, and then immediately dispose of it or hype it at will, but you actually don't deserve that. Sorry if I sound a bit critical, but I guess that, at this point, I'm not talking so much about Voxtrot specifically as I am about the relationship that every band is forced to maintain with the internet. The other day I logged onto Myspace.com (well, the other day probably meaning 6 months ago) and saw a bulletin from a friend of mine that read, "New Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem, I think they're pretty good," followed by a link to a shareware site. I think that's shameful, not just in terms of ridiculously lax filesharing, but also in terms of inviting that kind of internet-informed snap criticism: I've made my judgement, so now you download it for free and make yours. Either way, nobody loses out because no money was exchanged. I'm just as guilty as the next person. "Immediacy" is a word that gets thrown around a lot in music industry and I think that now more than ever that word holds significant weight- I often find that, when presented with so much music I tend to have a very disposable attitude towards anything that doesn't set me on fire in the first five seconds, as it is instantly forgotten. It goes without saying that I take other peoples' art for granted. Big time.

So, why am I writing this? I'm not really sure anymore. It sounds as though I'm selling myself short, but that's not the case- I guess it's just an outlet for me to say that I'm reactionary and it's bizarre to see the thing you're labored over up for instant open-forum debate, but I'm pretty certain that these are universal human experiences, and sometimes it feels good just to say it out-loud. At the end of the day, I am proud of the things that I've created and just have to trust that I'm making something honest and actually representative for the people who believe in me. And I do.

Plus, it is, after all, only music.

Love,
Remy Mac

Homesick

2007-03-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

Judee Sill - The Lamb Ran Away With The Crown MP3

I really love the line in that Kings of Convenience song that reads, "Homesick, because I no longer know where home is."

That's pretty much how I feel. Today in Austin, it's seventy degrees, beautiful, and the magic hour is slowly setting in. Two days back home and my first instinct is to drive down to Airport blvd., pay my sixty dollars and hop on the bus to Mexico. I'm sick of worrying about the album, and of worrying about the fact that worrying about the album causes me to feel selfish and inconsiderate: in a world full of so many atrocities, is the viability of one's art really a valid concern? Is it something worth lamenting over?

Mexico. Why did Judee Sill go to Mexico? Many people think Judee Sill went to Mexico to die, but maybe she just got sick of everything. It seems to me that she saw things very clearly, a fact which resulted in a strange mixture of bitterness and spirituality. I would have liked to have met her, to have known whether or not she was afraid of death, and still I would like to understand the way in which she defined suffering.

Sometimes, everything round about seems pointless and vapid, and I suppose that's when you really turn to vices, the most artificial comforts of all. It's as though you can publicly operate in a world of artifice, eating it up, wearing it as you invented it, but still you must silently concede to the knowledge that under your feet runs a current of truth, fate, eventuality. An acceptance of the fact that nature is so big that it could swallow you whole at any time. Once, I visited a forest in Canada and night began to set in. As the last golden bits faded to black I became aware of how truly terrifying it would be to be lost in the dark wilderness comprised of indeterminate noises, wedged between the two huge mountains looming before me- how lonely it would be to be forced to accept a greater truth without the benifit of any company. In the face of the bigness of life, we are powerless.

So, why did Judee Sill commit suicide? Maybe it was an accident, I suppose there is no way of knowing. Perhaps she just desired escape-not because she wanted to die but because it had become difficult to be alive.

The Delicate Balance of the Skyline

2007-02-18T23:16:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel so excited about the future, and sometimes I feel absolutely terrified because I don't know if I'm making the right steps to achieve my desired end. It's so easy to feel like a failure, similarly easy to feel, temporarily, like a success, and so common to confuse the things that constitute actual happiness. There are times when your creations become like living extensions of your being, creatures that need to be coddled and groomed, looked after and evaluated. Measuring healthy growth and development is an abstract and arduous process, often resulting in a severe form of tension, which rests just between the shoulders.

But then there are times when it's easy to shed that sense of self-importance and confused priorities. This evening I was crossing the Queensborough Bridge, a journey which, at night, affords the most fantastic view of New York City. In that moment I recalled a thought that often clouds my mind-that the skyline is such a delicate balance. Trains, nightclubs, school systems: trust in these common commodities requres a blind faith that there is somebody at any given stage who is willing to fill the necessary occupational roles. If a train breaks down, somebody must know how to fix it; eventually the people who contain the intial, primary knowledge die off, and a new generation must inherit that reponsibility. We always trust that somebody is in control, that somebody can be depended on, and so it goes that the fabric of daily operation is so fragile, and if one role were to suddenly become universally undesirable, perhaps a small piece of that fabric would die, creating an eventual domino-effect deconstruction.

But who knows, perhaps society moves forward and the very chemical composition of the fabric morphs and adapts? I certainly hope so. I guess the point is that, in moments like this, we are required to remember that we all depend on each other, but there are always vast inequalities, and thus the world is thrust into a permanent cycle of sacrifice, loss, hope, and resignation. As Cassie (who I was heading to meet) confirmed, when we look at the skyline we think of it as a beautiful vast thing, a single object, by which we are preparing to be consumed. Rarely do we consider that we are actual constituents in its composition- things go on inside the skyline; we are part of its electricity. It and Us are essentially the same organism.

This evening, as I was heading over the aforementioned bridge, I thought to myself, "I am trying the best I can, and I am so lucky to be seeing this beautiful city, and to be melding with its kinetic force." And for a moment, I exhaled, smiled, lost the tension in my shoulders, and felt really young again.

I finally reached Wes(a friend I know through Cassie)'s house for a little photo shoot, consisting of Cassie, Anthony, Wes, and myself. Upon arrival, I shed my coat, sunk into a glass of whisky, and instantly began to feel a kind of relaxed warmth I haven't felt in quite some time. Occasionally, it's important to let go, reach out, and rediscover what is so good about letting human congress rush over you like warm water over tired muscles.

Wes Mann's Photography can be found here: http://www.wesleymann.com/

Jennifer Moore and Deathwatch (Regarding Response to the Last Entry)

2007-01-24T08:57:00.000-08:00

Stef: I did indeed see that movie with your brother and Dazzababes. My ticket from Dazzababes was a standard gift, whereas Emile's was somehow related to guilt springing from a tragic climbing related injury.

Thanks to everybody who has asked about "Dirty Version": That song is actually sung by Jennifer Moore, who still sings with us occasionally. She can be heard on "Sway", "Raised by Wolves", and possibly some of the new material. These days, you can find her playing with two wonderful Austin bands- The Carrots and Yellow Fever. I really wish I had a Yellow Fever mp3 to post, but alas I do not.

PLEASE check them out.

I hope to have an mp3 for them posted by the end of today. Here is an song from The Carrots:

THE CARROTS - Ladies of Givens MP3

Thanks!

Love,
Ramesh

Progress

2007-01-12T08:29:00.000-08:00

We've finished the bulk of the instrumental recording for the album, and are currently about half way through the vocals. The Tosca quartet is coming in next week, and at the end of February we'll travel to New York to do the mixing.

Not sleeping particularly well... more dreams about Scotland, my childhood home, this album.

Currently sitting in an internet cafe listening to Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush, which makes me reevaluate (is that really the correct spelling?), well, just about everything.

When I listen to Kate Bush, I remember housesitting for the wonderful Jill Mingo, who lived just around the corner from the Necropolis, a large grave yard/Cathedral that looms of the East end of Glasgow, imagery which was admittedly made more erie after the watching of Deathwatch, the 1980 Bertrand Tavernier film which is set mainly in 1970's Glasgow.

During the day I would walk take brisk walks to the top of the hill, and often experienced a similar sensation to that of viewing Arthur's seat, the beautiful land mass which rises over Edinburgh. Arthur's Seat is perhaps the most arresting inter-city land form I have ever seen, to stand on it is to feel the past and present converging at once. This is sort of the essence of Edinburgh, at least through the eyes of a foreign national.

After my walks, I would return home, sort through Patrick Wolf's fan mail (Jill was, at that time, his manager), feed her cat miles, her snake, and recline at the kitchen table to the sound of Kate Bush, particularly Hounds of Love, and would think long and hard about how passion has often lead me to do the wrong thing, particularly in terms of romance. But it's something outside of you, an external beast is responsible for making these choices.

At Long Last...

2006-12-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

Voxtrot - Sway (demo version) MP3

We are in the studio, setting up to begin recording on our first full-length album. Work should officially commence some time this evening, and hopefully I'll be able to provide pretty constant updates on the process. I apologize for being so lazy (concerning this blog) for the last wee while, but thanks to the wonders of in-studio wi-fi I shall have the opportunity to to rectify that error. Normally, I like to foster some kind of topical exploration in these posts, but for the next couple of months it will probably be limited to "just the facts." Perhaps I'll even relocate the cable that connects the digital camera to the computer and then I can put up pictures. Actually, I bet somebody else here has one (a camera, not the aforementioned cable).

Speak to you soon!

Love,
Ramesh

Music.

2006-09-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

Dont Make Me Over MP3
A Trip To NYC MP3

The above mp3s are from Sleeping States, the London-based recording project of Markland Starkie.

...Still unedited for grammar and spelling.

“Style? A certain lightness. A sense of shame excluding certain actions or reactions. A certain proposition of elegance. The suspicion that, despite everything, a melody can be looked for and sometimes found. Style is tenuous, however. It comes from within. You can’t go out and acquire it. Style and fashion may share a dream, but they are created differently. Style is about an invisible promise. This is why it requires and encourages a talent for endurance and an ease with time. Style is very close to music.”

John Berger

A list of things I am excited about:

1. This coming month we will be playing shows with Yellow Fever and Finally Punk. In this wave of "exciting new Austin bands" this is pretty much the apex, as far as I'm concerned.

2. We should (fingers crossed) be recording an album in London during November and December. I really hope this comes into being. I can't possibly describe how insane this entire process has made me. This is something I have been avoiding writing about, for fear of seeming dramatic in the face of something that, in the grand scheme of things, is really not that important. Still, in all honesty I have never felt such an immense sense of pressure and expectation. Sometimes as a band (in my brief experience) you do things, and perhaps it doesn't end up in exactly the desired way. It's not really an issue of good or bad, but more one of missing the intended mark. Now that I'm writing this I'm realizing that this is totally obvious and universally applicable to all pursuits. There was a time when these incidents would roll off me like water but now I find myself grossly obsessed with my mistakes, or rather my inadequacies.

Let me provide a little vignette of daily Voxtrot happenings. If this idea bores you, you should probably stop reading now. Normally, I try to write during the first part of the day and then at three o clock we convene for practice. These days, we're testing out quite a lot of new material so most days I play a song for the rest of the group, accompanied solely by my guitar, and then we build it from there. If I were to return to grade school now I might be really good at giving presentations, in my opinion that sort of thing is like an obstacle course for the nerves. On one certain occasion I brought in a song that received fairly poor response, and then we proceeded to sit down and discuss why that song was perhaps not as strong as others that had come before (or since). This is perhaps one of my least favorite conversations in the entire world, although I realise that, in terms of publishing and presentation it is sometimes a necessary one. When a musical project is new everything is a pleasant surprise and in that way no song is really considered in terms of its "ground-breaking quality." But obviously when that situation changes the chopping block motif comes into play and it's a very different scenario. More and more I find myself in a scenario where I am situated in a room with a group of people listening to one of our songs boom out of a set of speakers, and as the song plays people issue their various views about the song's strong and weak points. I fucking hate this. On the particular day in question as this was occurring, I pretty much lost it and burst into tears, which I know is completely ridiculous. Before I go any further let me say that I am totally aware that I have been very fortunate and there are so many terrible things happening in the world at any given time, that a mediocre song is not really something worth crying over. But this is exactly the problem-it's entirely self-obsessive, and in a way I think music business kind of encourages that nefarious trait.

When I have moments like that I realize how easy it is to become the person I always detested and criticized. People in bands/music industry/whatever are so laden with ego, probably because it's an occupation and industry based upon indulgence and glamor, and I think if you take a step back and examine it, it's a bit like a circus or something. I can't believe the extremes of hedonism, or the way that eccentricities or personality quarks that would usually just remain as those things are allowed to blossom into full-blown monsters. I imagine it must have something to do with the fact that, when you reach a crazy level of notoriety, you probably have the feeling that people are always looking at you. In theory, you are never unseen or anonymous.

I guess I have a certain sense of guilt about that fact that a career in music is not particularly noble, or brave, or something like that, not that I would trade it for the world, or that I am in any way above it, or any of those things. I feel badly even writing this, but then again I have always been filled with a certain sense of guilt, which in a fucked up way has, I believe, aided any productivity I've experienced. In living memory, I have always been terrified of letting people down.

Music is amazing, though, in terms of its cathartic or healing quality. Obviously different music strokes different emotions, and quite a lot of the music I love, I love because it's a reminder that there is somebody in some other place that feels precisely that way I do. Perfectly mirrored specific emotions, that's what I thrive on. And it's not just lyric-based, though that is usually the case. I think even electronic dance music serves this function. When I was in London a few weeks ago I was talking to my friend (who also works for the label we have signed to) Simon about the emotional quality of techno, and he explained it in the following way:

A dance track might repeat the same thing for six minutes, but when the change happens, when it's elevated to another level, that shift is so completely moving. I entirely agree. I think people don't consider that dance/techno music can be emotional. It's just a different kind of emotion, perhaps a bit darker and more serious. Dancing is cathartic and there are many times where I find myself on a dancefloor, listening to one of these harmonic shifts and thinking, I needed that.

Okay, enough about techno. I guess what I'm saying with this whole thing is that it's very clear that a band is not really that important, but I still take it very seriously. Since the conception of this band I currently play with, I have never viewed it as a temporary fix, but rather as something that would occupy the greater part of my life. Longevity and a healthy relationship between artist and listener. From the moment I wake up until I fall asleep I think about this band. I don't remember who it was, but some prominent musician once said that the best way to handle a career in music is to envision the way you would like it to be towards the end of your life, and just work towards that end. I suppose it's like looking 100 feet ahead when driving a car, as opposed to directly in front. For me, longevity means emotional resonance. For a long time music has been such a pivotal thing in my life, and if I can bring that to another person, or make another person feel better for a while, then I think I shall be quite happy.

First, There is a Mountain. (In Two Parts)

2006-06-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

Note: I realize that these posts are extremely long, and only seem to be getting longer. For this reason, I have separated this entry into two parts, not that it actually makes any differnce. Check back here very soon for mp3s from the people represented in this entry, I just need to get my "webmaster" to upload them for me.

...Still unedited for grammar and spelling.

Part One: First...

Approximately two years ago, my friend Noelle and I decided to visit Mexico, a trip which proved to be nothing short of magical. Last week was Noelle's birthday, and as a celebration we decided to return, but this time to Monterrey. I have to confess that my initial expectations of Monterrey as a city were not great, primarily because when we had driven through it previously I had felt as though I was once again in a typical American suburb, surrounded by the same twelve chain restaurants. Later I was to learn that this district comprises only one part of Monterrey.

The best way to go from Austin to Monterrey is to take the bus, an eight hour journey which costs approximately forty two American dollars. I had been up very late the night before, and thus was able to sleep for a good portion of the journey. We arrived in Monterrey at about seven in the morning in a rather half-woken state of bewilderment, a marvelous combination with my incredibly poor Spanish. After some communication trials we were able to jump in a cab and head towards a randomly selected hotel, coincidentally the most expensive hotel in Monterrey, but still very cheap after the currency conversion. Once we got into the room both of us collapsed on the bed and fell into something of a deep sleep.

At about one o clock we awoke and parted the curtains to get our first daytime look at this new city. From the sixth floor of the hotel it looked very much like an American city, though I was having trouble making any real aesthetic criticisms due to distraction from the largest coca cola bottle I have ever witnessed. Apparently, Monterrey consumes more coca cola per capita than any other city in the world, and as a sign of "thanks and recognition" Coca Cola has adorned the entire side of a tall sky scraper with a painting of the signature bottle. Bizarre and Orwellian though it may seem, there is something very captivating and almost pleasing about the painting, probably because it recalls the artwork of communist propaganda, creating a kind of pastoral appreciation that runs only as deep as the image.

After visiting the Museo del Arte Contemporaneao, we strolled through the more picturesque district of Monterrey and for the first time I witnessed an alternative Mexican youth culture. I have never been under the impression that youth culture is not present everywhere, but it's always incredibly fascinating for me to witness it up close- a spectacle which is inherently remote because we can never recreate time that has been lost. I cannot live somebody else's life but there is something draws me towards those lives.

Let me now provide a bit of background information that will enhance the remainder of the story:

I have a friend named Pepe (whom I have never met, though this is often the case in this age of internet business) who works for EMI in Mexico City. I often write to him for advice/information about how I can bring our music to Mexico, and initially Noelle and I had planned to visit him in Mexico City, before realising that the travel distance in a bus was too great. When we concluded that we would be visiting Monterrey I contacted Pepe to see if he had any reccomendations as to where one might want to go in Monterrey. He provided me with contact information for a man named Gustavo (Catsup) and instructed me to contact him, which I did by email prior to leaving Austin.

Switch back to the Art Museum and the cultural vouyeurism. After purusing the streets and watching two clowns in the main plaza, Noelle and I returned to the hotel to rest for a bit before night fall. There I checked my email and found a reply from Gustavo (Catsup), informing me that his band Quiero Club was playing that very night at a club called "Exit."

I will now switch verb tense.

We make our way to the nightclub, amid a veritable sea of youth. The recreational district of Monterrey at the weekend much resembles the downtown area of Austin, large groups of people swarming in and out of brightly lit on a sloping grid of streets. At the door of the club, we have another bout of linguistic confusion, but decide enter regardless. Inside the nightclub is very large, two stories with a small stage near the front. Above the stage is a video screen on which music videos are being projected, an eclectic mix of mostly eighties and early nineties classics. As the closing bars of Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" are fading out, Noelle and I are jerked into surprise by "The Start of Something" booming over the speakers. I peer into the DJ box to my right and witness what might be the two most jovial people in the entire world, a beautiful girl with dark hair in a pleasingly sixties cut and a slender man in a striped purple shirt, the pair of them in a constant state of joyous frenetic motion, passing back and forth between them the largest mug of beer I have ever seen.

I go to the box and introduce myself, and the man in purple emerges from the behind the box and provides both Noelle and I with a warm embrace. In this moment I am reminded of something- a phrase. When we tour is a band I often find myself repeating in my head the following words: "We depend on the kindness of strangers." And we do. Sometimes it seems like the craziest thing in the world, and sometimes it seems like the most natural, the instant community that has been forged by a combination of music and the internet. During our last west coast tour we were en route to a destination I have now forgotten. Incidentally, St. Louis was the city most equidistant so we put out a message on the internet asking if anybody would be willing to house us, attaching my phone number at the bottom. Instantly, I receive a phone call from a girl named Erin and five hours later we are sitting with she and her friend Tim in their living room, drinking beer and watching the Daily Show. There are so many people that have been so wonderful, and that we have cultivated relationships with in a similar fashion: Jill and Julie in Cincinatti, Michael in Chicago, Jason in San Francisco, everybody from Decibully in Milwaukee, and so many others that I am leaving out. For me, having the opportunity to forge these relationships is almost as important as the opportunity to perform the music itself. Last time we played in Chicago, of the aforementioned people, Tim, Erin, Jill, Julie, Michael (as well as my dear friends Ian and Emilie) were all present. To look out into the audience and see that is a truly wonderful feeling.

"We depend on the kindness of strangers."

In this same moment of meeting Gustavo I am also keenly aware of the fact that we are possessed of a similar intent, a mutual desire to "make something happen," born out of a love for music. I think there are millions of people who share this drive, whether or not they are musical performers, and that's such a great thing. As time progresses it will be very interesting to see what various manifestations arise from this kind of subverted global community. Obviously these communities are not limited solely to music, but this is the one with which I am the most familiar.

The rest of my night is rather hazy, primarily after Gustavo's girlfriend, Shantal, aids me in buying a half gallon styrafome cup filled with grape kool-aid and four shots of Vodka. We stop by a party taking place at a hotel pool, I decide to return to my own hotel, we walk outside and a drunk man in the street slaps me on the head with his hat, further enforcing my theory that I should really be in bed. Gustavo and Shantal drive me home and we agree to meet the next day to partake of both lunch and The Mountain.

Part Two: The Mountain

The next day I try to place a call from a pay phone to Gustavo's home, resulting in a nearly comic audio sketch. Sheepishly I ask the lady at the hotel desk to asist me, a task which she performs very professionally for a mere fifteen pesos. Gustavo agrees to come collect us and Noelle and I wait in the lobby. Soon I see his thin frame bounding towards the door and we step outside to meet him. In the daylight, I now understand the nickname: Catsup. Gustavo's hair is a really nice shade of red, reminiscent of my mother's in younger years. My mother has long held resentment against popular media based upon the unfair representations of redheads, and she's right. Think about it- Problem Child, Chucky, Pete and Pete, the list goes on. Red heads are rarely normal or serious, but rather wacky and one-dimensional. I would not describe either my mother or Gustavo as one-dimensional, though perhaps "wacky" has some bearing. Just kidding. Back to the story, we pile into the car and after lunch decide to head up to the mountain. Despite the fact that I have been staring at the mountain for the last forty eight hours I have not fully grasped its magnitude and as we climb higher in the car I am shocked into silence. The sprawling metropolis of Monterrey shrinks beneath us and the vegetation begins to take on an almost prehistoric quality.

We finally reach the point closest to the top and exit the car to find dozens of families recreating in this mountain top resort. For the next hour or so we explore the grounds like so many of the children in our surroundings: testing out echos in the drained concrete pool, cavorting across the astroterf amphitheatre, and being generally wowed by the view provided from the vantage point. Looking out from the ledge one can see even more of the city, to its farthest extents and beyond, a sea of buildings so accutely dwarfed by the surrounding mountains- once again, the inevitable triumph of nature of human progress. At one point I peer to my left and see Gustavo silently angling his body to photograph a group of incredibly large birds that I presume to be vultures, large beasts of the aforementioned prehistoric grandeur. His body adjusts to achieve the correct stance and for a minute he and the vultures are mirror images of each other. Snap. Moment Captured.

Eventually we recoil to a stone ledge at the top of the park and Noelle disappears to a spot where she can most accurately sketch the mountain, both as a souvenir for herself, and for the nursery school class we teach together. Despite having not known Gustavo twenty-four hours prior, the next conversational hour spent with him is one of the nicest I've experienced in recent days. We talk about music, Spain, and the internet among other things, the entire transaction being complemented by a constant and pleasant breeze. I could have stayed up there like that quite happily for an entire day, but soon reality sets in and we are forced to descend from the mountain in order to begin the long process of returning home. Leaving the mountain is difficult enough in a spiritual sense, but to add fuel to fire the downward journey provides Noelle with a nausea-inuduced stomach ache. After reaching the bottom we wind through a residential section of Monterrey in search of Gustavo's friend and business partner, Alejandro. The houses here are primarily modern and geometric situated on quiet streets lush with vegetation, a look not entirely incongruous with that of Austin. we find the house and bang on the door. A man with long hair wearing a suit appears, fresh from a wedding and subdued by the food and drink so often associated with those events. We each open a can of beer and retire to the back garden to rest. Instantly I am transported back to Rome.

Last October, I went to Rome with my friends Freya and Gaia, whom I had met when working in the CCA bar in Glasgow. On the third day of the vacation we went for lunch at Gaia's grandparents house in E.U.R., a Roman suburb just outside the city. Gaia is of Roman birth and lived in this house until the age of nineteen, when she was whisked away to Australia. The feeling of being in that house was very intense, primarily because I was keenly aware of the particular history of her family, and of the events that had taken place there. All houses are haunted, even if the ghosts are not necessarily extreme. I think one's experience depends on how perceptive one chooses to be. This house, however, is particularly remarkable. Large and circuitous, it winds around itself in a way reminiscent of secret passages. In the basement remains something of a discotheque, featuring not only mirror balls, but also a luminescent floor created to resemble the color-block paintings for which Mondrien is most remembered. And then there is the garden, completely linear and contained, square foliage pushed to the edges of neat concrete walkways, formulaic and sensible like everything else in the neighborhood, all part of Mussolini's vision. One source describes E.U.R. in the following way:

"This new suburb was intended for a Universal Exhibition celebrating Fascist Italy - planned in the 1930s and scheduled for 1942 but abandoned upon the outset of war. Only some of the the plans - by architect Piacentini - had been finished, and after the war work continued in a modernist style but without the same political agenda. The Esposizione Universale Romana is known by its acronym EUR (pronounced as one word: Ay-oor), and is now dominated by offices and wide boulevards where well-off young Romans like to race their sports cars."

It's interesting to think how the layout of gardens is specific to certain cultures. English gardens are usually overgrown and wild, French gardens are sort of somewhere in between, a kind of planned and imitated natural spontaneity. The gardens I witnessed in India were beautiful and almost intimidating, definitely implicit of the fact of how many people are required to maintain them. Back to Alejandro's garden. His, as I mentioned earlier, is more of the geometric reserved variety, and I find this model particularly pleasing, a small space of of order and predictability surrounded by a sloping layer of growth, a brief shelter from the inevitable chaos of the outside world. For a while we sit on the ground and then transfer to the inside, discussing a number of things, mainly politics and music and then the two things combined. I get the general sense that people like Alejandro and Gustavo are frustrated, extremely frustrated, by the state of popular music in Mexico. It is, I assure them, not much better in the United States. Most things worth listening to are on the margins.

Eventually it is time to go and Alejandro takes Noelle and I back to the bus station. As we exit the car he says to Noelle and I, "Please, please call me if there is any problem. I would come back for you any time." I realize that this is the kind of hospitality we have been afforded all weekend, and what a rare thing that is. One of my worst habits is that I never listen to names upon the first introduction, which is only a problem when the conversation has become to personal to turn back to that initial, casual process. I ask Noelle to remind me of his name and she replies, "I don't know but I feel instantly close to him. To all of them, actually."

"Me too."

We purchase some brightly colored candy for the kids, and wait patiently for the long journey home to begin. This part of the journey is (theoretically) easy for us, but for many others on the bus, it seems something much more terrifying. I settle into the window seat and wrap my extra t-shirt around my torso. Glancing beside me, I see Noelle withdrawing her sketchbook. She opens it to the page begun earlier and sets to finish off the drawing of that wonderful hour spent taking in the mountain.

Heavy.

2006-04-30T16:46:00.000-07:00

(Before the journal, here is a song for the reader. )

During this last tour, we were stopped in Atlanta, staying with my father, and we happened to have a few spare hours to watch the second installment of the Godfather. Having never seen one of these films before I have to say that I was completely gripped. The story is immensely compelling (partially due to its epic nature) and the characters are often well developed and believable, a fact which increases the viewer's shock when they (the characters) are terminated, a rather frequent occurrence. Obviously, the most important thematic juxtaposition in these films is life vs. commerce. Family values are often stressed, however the ascention to power within the business structure requires the destruction and debilitation of those same families, always by way of murder. This proves shocking to me not only because of the visual gore involved, but also because of the prevading notion that life is cheap.

Ever since my Grandmother's death I am filled with this constant and often overwhelming sensation that life is precious, all the time. When we are forced to contemplate the finality of death, one of the hardest things (in my experience) is picturing that deceased individual in action- perhaps a totally banal action such as cleaning the house or checking the mailbox, or conversely a more significant action such as birth or the attainment of financial success- and coming to terms with the idea that the pictured action is now automatically something which belongs to the past, and can never be repeated in the future. The image outlives the person, and that's very hard. Perhaps this is the point where it's important to start exploring those things that have seemed overly mystical in the past: the continuation of the soul, the concept of a person's energy lingering after their physical demise. This is what I mean by a constant sensation that life is precious. So much is left up to mystery, and thus the empirical things that we are allowed to experience and take part in are so, well precious, because they are eventually fleeting.

For a long time I had this notion that a career based in passion was the key determiner in life-fulfillment, the logic being that if I could bring some form of art to the world, or at least a small percentage of the world, then I would never be alone. These days I am finding that this notion is largely false, or not necessarily false but actually insufficient. I think this has something to do with the fact that, in a way, musicians are manufacturers of kitsch. Milan Kundera once defined kitsch as "the absolute denial of shit." Kitsch presents an image of the past that contains all of the pastoral elements required to achieve a specific emotion, yet lacks any of the visceral stuff, the shit, that belongs to those same moments in time, thus creating an innacurate picture of the human experience-memory in sepia. Songs capture a moment, often times a very specific feeling and that is why we respond to them. Perhaps very good song-writing does its best to capture the shit as well, but no song is ever a substitute for real human interaction.

In this way, it seems even more ridiculous to me that music, or art in general, has something so big built up around it. By this I mean the fact that there are music critics, and that there are cliques within music, and varying decided levels of 'cool.' When I was a bit younger and first started going to rock concerts, etc... I was very overcome by this notion that some musicians and the people they kicked about with seemed so inherently cool, and how did they ever attain these super left field, almost frightening aesthetic personas? In retrospect it seems ridiculous because obviously ninety percent of the population was raised in pretty similar circumstances, the same channels of media, the same ads on TV. Chances are that the process of human development was also uniform- the same new emotions, awkward experiences, small failures and gains. Thus, if the initial groundwork is the same for most people, then the construction of music or a whole image is a calculated move to tug the listener in one direction or the other, merely a new arrangement of the same twelve notes (this is specific to Western music) and the same basic noises. I hate seeing a critic rip apart something that the creator was emotionally invested in- where the fuck do they get the right to make or break a person's confidence based upon a hierarchy of kitsch?

This is not to disregard my love of music or desire to participate in it, OR my appreciation of the opportunities afforded thus far. On the contrary, I feel very lucky to be able to have done the little I have done. What I'm trying to say can be applied to any occupation or any community of people involved in that particular occupation: that these things fun like dressing up to go out, it's enjoyable to participate in these things, but also important to maintain the knowledge that real life is contained in much heavier moments.

Forces of Nature

2006-04-01T09:19:00.000-08:00

(Before the journal, here is a song for the reader. )

Now it's time for tour preparation, leaving home for another almost month seems a wonderful yet exhausting prospect, though to be honest, these days I probably find it harder to relax when I am home for too long than I do when faced with a constant schedule in a little black binder. When I am in Austin the most relaxing thing for me to do is to visit the pre-school where I used to work and while away time with Noelle and the kids. We chase, throw balls, all of that stuff, and then I just go into the classroom with them and sit and chat as they make pictures or hit each other over the head with plastic cars. They have no concept of where anybody's been, what they've been doing, advances or failures, and frankly they don't really care. The only thing that matters is the immediate present and so the interaction is pure. It's all new- all discovery.

That ignorance, or lack of experience, is a really amazing thing. It seems that the older you get, the more of your freedom you are forced to abdicate. In reality, I suppose the reverse is true because you are gradually gaining autonomy from your parents, aacademic instiutions, etc... and guiding the course of your own life. But it doesn't really seem that way, does it? I suppose it's a give and take. To fix your eyes on something and then seize it, you must gradually incorporate increasing levels of beaurrocracy, and thus increasing levels of external control and influence. Who is really the key determiner?

I'm standing behind two of my students, Evan and Emmitt, who are plying with a stick at something on a tree trunk. I lean down and ask, "What are you doing?"

In unison: "Killing fireants."

"Killing animals is cruel. Just imagine if somebody smashed you with a twig the size of a fire truck!" This logic is quickly superceded.

"No, the fireants are eating this caterpillar and he's still alive. We're trying to save the caterpillar. I wouldn't want to be eaten alive."

This is true, being eaten alive would be terrible. I start thinking again about wonderful ignorance, about how these two five year old boys are naive enough to believe that by the elimination of fireants they can save the caterpillars of the world, I think about abandonding the scary inevitability of natural processes. How wonderful to be completely oblivious of all the things around that control you, that will one day control you. And then I start to feel terribly sorry for them, mainly because the environment is going to shit. I mean, global warming is completely terrifying and nobody seems to give a shit. What can we do, realistically, about global warming? How can we preserve things so that blissful ignorance can continue to pervade? And how touching and simultaneously heartbreaking to know that this crushing weight and worry rests on not only you and me, but also on two clueless boys trying with all their might to save the world one caterpillar at a time.

Suddenly I am snapped out of my thought process.

"But it's a force of nature, right Ramesh?"

"What did you say?"

"A force of nature, what happens with the ants is a force of nature. Right?"

"That's right, Evan. It's a force of nature."

For My Grandmother

2006-02-22T16:14:00.000-08:00

*...Still unedited for grammar...

Once upon a time in 1924… my Grandmother, Peggy Marie was born in the small Texas town of Rising Star, Texas. As far as I understand, she lived most of the year somewhere in the Fort Worth area and spent summers on her grandparent’s farm in the aforementioned Rising Star. Sometime in during the Second World War, she was working in one of the mechanical positions allotted to so many women when the grand majority of men had been funnelled out to fill apparent soldier shortages, perhaps in drafting or design, when she met my Grandfather, Otis. I have never met my Grandfather because he died in 1972, but from what I understand he was incredibly charismatic, notably tall, and as it is often said of a good salesman, had the ability to “sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo.” The story of their courtship is the substance of a truly by-gone era for the most part: She was nineteen, he was 30, they eloped to Las Vegas (mind you this is years before there was ANY development whatsoever, when it was really and truly a one horse town), and continued to stay married until his death. I suppose in those days college education was not the banal standard for success that it is today, and thus with nothing more than his aforementioned fridge/Eskimo sales charisma he gained a job with Carnrick Pharmaceutical, where he would eventually become Vice President. Incidentally, he was also an amazing piano player, and in the days before high security and celebrity obsession once knocked on Bing Crosby’s door to seek help in finishing a song. As I understand, he was obliged.

One problem (or perk, depending on your point of view) of working as a sales representative is that it requires one to move a lot, and thus their little family nucleus (which soon contained my mother and aunt) was relocated several times across the United States before finally settling in New Jersey. Now I will make my blanket New Jersey defence: New Jersey is one of the most amazing places in the entire world, and I honestly believe that it receives quite an unfair amount of flack, regarding its lack of spectral beauty and the like. I will whole-heartedly concede that certain areas of New Jersey (ie. The industrial areas of Newark highly visible to travellers passing through Newark International Airport) are completely horrendous in appearance, and a total environmental sin, but labelling the entire state of New Jersey as an “industrial wasteland” based upon these isolated areas is rather akin to dubbing Paris an “eyesore” because of “all the fucking dogshit.” New Jersey contains some of the most beautiful and lush farmland I have ever seen.

Place is a very important thing for me, or rather, as I have written about before the nostalgia that results from an association of memory with place is something that for me is so overpowering that I almost can’t handle it. Sometimes the nostalgia arises from something I personally have never experienced, it’s something historical, a double thread of memory and loss that rips through me in certain parts of the world, usually certain corners of the world. And usually when it’s quiet, and for a moment a totally average street corner becomes deserted and you are suddenly keenly aware of the fact that at some point somebody conducted a totally average act in this very location, most likely en route to another point in the particular curve of her/his life; and let’s face it, everybody has a story, right? It’s also entirely possible that in this same location something far more epic took place: a death in any circumstance, a political rally, a brilliant piece of public art…. Anything. Either way, there have to be moments when nothing is happening, when it is practically silent, and in that practical silence you feel the negative space left by a lack of action, you feel the weight of other people’s lives.

My Grandmother’s house in New Jersey is very much one of these places for me. When I was a very young baby my older brother was violently opposed to my existence, and thus as a kind of temporary peace-accord, I went to live with just my Grandmother in this very house. She had no crib, and so put together two straw patio seats and made one that way, and as far as I can remember we lived wonderfully for a season in the little green house. Perhaps I refer to it as the green house because the feature that is most notable to me is the carpeting. Avocado shag carpeting may sound like an early seventies nightmare, but for me it was perfect. I remember the individual “shags” as such on the shag carpeting being about as thick as pencils, though I’m fairly positive that if I were to examine them now I would be slightly disappointed. In addition to the lush, plant-esque flooring, each room contained a different brightly colored wallpaper (vines with seasonal fruit, jungle-like stalks of bamboo with thick and nearly psychedelic leaves, twilight blue with small oil-painted flowers), the likes of which would never have been seen in my parents ultra-modern décor.

My favorite room, however, was the attic. Particularly during the early stages of my permanent sixties obsession, I would spend hours locked in the tiny attic, thumbing through anything and everything- photographs, report cards, every major paper from the day that JFK was killed- and wish that somehow through osmosis I could fuse the essence of that bygone era through the pores in my skin, somehow permanently retain that marvellous odor which is particular to old objects. In the years to come I would see these old objects eventually thinned out and redistributed, starting with the sale of the house. At a point it became evident that my Grandmother was not able to completely care for herself anymore, and my mother and aunt were forced to move her to a nearby apartment complex where other seniors in similar conditions (still basically fully able, yet marginally forgetful) all lived as neighbors. This was probably a huge blow because it represented an obvious loss of freedom. As my uncle Al said to me the other day, “Your grandmother Peggy is a tough old bird,” and that she was. Perhaps when I consider her that way I am able to understand that she is in fact a native Texan. Texas has some of the roughest vegetation and wildlife available on the market today, and this is because everything that has survived there has had to fight, it has had to struggle to rise up and live. The people are the same. If we were in the carport at my parents’ house and suddenly a tarantula was spotted, my siblings, mother and I would erupt in shrill screams, but my Grandmother would pick up her favorite brick, the one in the south east corner of the room, and march swiftly over and engage in a very brief and fatal battle with the animal. She lived alone from the death of my Grandfather in 1972 until she was forced to move out of her house about eight years ago.

As she was relocated to different homes and cities over the last several years, I witnessed the objects from her home decrease in number and even managed to obtain a few of them. Two days ago I was in her room in Chicago and noticed that only two or three of the originals remained- the curved Captain’s mirror, the antique dresser, the jade flowers… My mother received a phone call this past Wednesday, just as we were about to leave for tour, that she had finally stopped eating and only had a few days to live. I went to Chicago to say goodbye, an organized goodbye for somebody who is dying. When I entered the room the image of her contrasted the peaceful sight I had imagined. If you have never seen somebody fighting death, it is a very haunting sight. Maybe she was waiting for us to come, I don’t know. Her breathing was so hard a violent and she did not have the power to open her eyes. I was given some time alone with her, which I tried to use to its maximum, but there’s not much to be said at that point, especially if one can only hear and not respond. Eventually I had to leave and tried to catch the last flight to Dallas for the first night of the tour, resulting in a miraculous two song Voxtrot set. At the time it felt very heroic but in later reflection I might have stayed on in that bizarre corner of the world in which somebody’s life is slipping away and people are gathered to try and understand the fact.

She died yesterday afternoon. Apparently, when she died, she opened her eyes very suddenly (a common occurrence), seemed to take everything in, and then was gone. I wish I had been there to be taken in.

I know I haven’t actually said very much about her (my Grandmother) as a person, but this is the aesthetic approach to understanding. Build a history from objects. She was indeed a wonderful woman- she was more like a second mother than a grandmother, but these are things that only I need to know. All I can really think about in the public realm is actually process of the death, or the loss, because that’s a shared experience to which nobody is immune. No matter how scientific or practical you are, there is something else there, something we do not have the language for, something we cannot decode. There is a reason people have the look of taking everything in before they go away permanently, as such.

When I received the news by phone we were driving through a particularly icy extension of Oklahoma. I announced the event to the other band members and then attached my headphones to try and recede into myself, perhaps to try and foster the right kind of sadness that would provide accurate catharsis, but that environment is not the appropriate time or place. When is that time and where is that place? I sat pondering this and looking out the window, as repetitive stretches of dirty slush and highway slid by. Suddenly we zoomed onto a bridge, and were cutting across one of those terrifying and majestic lakes, that is dark in response to the overcast sky and stretches slightly out of possible view. This is always an arresting vision, partially because it’s beautiful, and partially because the thought of being lost in that expanse is one of the most haunting prospects imaginable. Suddenly I was reminded of the fact that nature is very powerful, and that there things that stretch beyond the human field of vision, things that are too vast to digest and understand.

In a way it’s like a form of tangible wonder, and I suppose it provides a little comfort, in the sense that it is inevitably consuming.

You Can Hide Your Love Forever

2006-02-13T09:34:00.000-08:00

I'm not usually into mixing news items with the blog, but I just thought I'd remind anybody who's interested that we are playing Emos in Austin tomorrow- Valentine's Day! Formal dress is encouraged, or rather festive dress is encouraged. I have just returned from a brief stint in Glasgow, so there should be a healthy bit on that tomorrow.

Love,
Ramesh

Dream Up (Austin Comes Alive)

2006-01-16T20:32:00.001-08:00

The spelling and grammar check on this program is really annoying. At this point I might just start leaving all of the entries unedited. I suppopse, being just a blog and all, it really doesn't matter.

As my dear friend Krista once so eloquently put it, "The place [Austin] is like a fucking womb." A summer camp, a velvet coffin, the list goes on... It is famously (or infamously) one of those places that vascilates between hpe and anonymity, yet somehow manages to always maintain the same sweltering, humid, self-satisfied nature. For a long time I was completely pitted against Austin, convinced that the real here and now was more likely to be found at such late night paradises as the Culture Club in Ghent, or in the Vice-land that runs through Brick Lane and all of Hoxton, but never sleepy old Austin. However, as much I still believe that (especially in terms of hedonistic culture) Europe and Britain are always going to be a wee bit ahead of the Yanks, I am starting believe more and more that Austin itself is experiencing a really exciting period of growth and fluency, something completely refreshing and unexpected. Perhaps this has been happening all along and I have just lived away for so long that I didn't recognize it, or perhaps this is not even happening and I am just excited tonight and therefore momentarily delusional, but somehow I doubt this is the case.

Recently, my friend Chris and I decided that we wanted to start some kind of a night where we could bring exciting musical acts to Austin, things Austinites probably "dig," but have not access to in a live setting before. Our first thought was Delia Gonzales and Gavin Russom, which did not work for a number of reasons, so we had to start making a list of possiblities. Exceptor, Chromeo, Jane, and of course Optimo were all things that came to mind, but then of course came the process of tracking these people down and gathering the necessary funds. We realised that, at least at the beginning, it was going to have to be local bands, and we could move outwardly from there. The first date was set with Single Frame and a band I had never heard called Cry Blood Apache. Now, let me just say that Chris and I were doing all of this ad-hoc without any kind of real experience, so when Single Frame took the stage what we'd thought to be a secure sound setup turned out to be a fucking mess beyond all logic and believe. Vocals were inaudible and completely distorted, there was raucus feedback and no monitors to speak of. Needless to say that ended really badly and the band stopped playing after two songs and left the venue as I sat cowering from embaressment in the corner. I sent Chris to inform Cry Blood Apache that if they didn't want to play we completely understood, and that on our opening night we were a little bit out of our technical depth. Surprisingly, CBA seemed totally non-chalant and agreed to take the stage regardless. The vocals were run through a single guitar amp, which I believe was projecting the drum machine as well but I'm not entirely sure. Regardless, when they began to play it was absolutely amazing. There was so much artistic presence on that stage that all I could think was "this is it." The crowd, despite the earlier misfortunes of the evening, was really responsive and really excited, and for the first time in a long time I began to think that Austin was suddenly really exciting, and that if people were into this crazy, delay-drenched, suicide-esque, Throbbing Gristle-esque, costumed montage, then that was really good news.

Other events included the Black and the Innocent, and in February we are bringing Optimo to Austin. This is a huge deal for me both in terms of music and personal history. As an entity (and this should be evident as the name is scattered all across this weblog) Optimo has enlightened me towards so many records and movements in modern musical history that I might otherwise have never considered. Bizarre though it may sound, this nightclub was definitely one of the things that made my years in Glasgow so special, or intersting, or memorable, or whatever. In addition, Keith and Jonnie are quite good friends of mine and I have only known them on the Glasgow turf. It's weird for me to think that they have reached such a point of popularity that they will be (provided all plans carry through) playing in my home town. Too bad I will be on tour with Voxtrot for the occasion. Either way, it's amazing for me to think that there is enough excitement (at least I hope there is) to bring this esoteric duo of Scottish DJs here, to the center of the Lone Star state. As the flow of information, and thus the speed of cultural absorption, increases, the world becomes a smaller and smaller place and perhaps the most obvious exampe of this trend is the recent mainstream success of MIA. I have to admit that when I first got hold of that Piracy Funds Terrorism mix tape it was one of the most exciting things I'd heard in years. By the time the actual record came out, I think anybody who had been throwing around mp3s for the last wee while was perhaps a bit overly familiar with the material. Either way I still think she's a brilliant performer and I hope she continues to make music, but I have to confess I am completely stunned at the amount of National, International, and mainstream radio attention she has received, and this is what I mean by the bizarre rate of cultural absorption. If a Middle-American Baile Funk DJ and a Sri Lankan MC out of London who crafted her style with the help of Elastica and Peaches can make their way into suburban homes in Texas by piecing together music based on Brazilian beats, something truly incredible is happening. It's like a culture free-for-all: nothing is sacred, but this truth acts as a mutual curse and blessing.

So maybe this connects to what I'm saying about Austin. The world is shrinking and Austin is shrinking. Trail of Dead are playing alongside country rockers and twee pop bands, and the same people are equally willing to pay money to see 1990's grunge ressurection or 1960's Supreme's-esque girl groups. God knows if Cult Hero had disposable we would be catching this wave of creativity in vinyl and disc form but other Austin labels are certainly picking up the slack. There are definitely bands like Sound Team and The Black that we have played with or been friends with for a couple of years now but it seems like these days I find there's much more of a community feel, and there are so many more exctiting new bands, and what's more, people are excited to be excited about the exciting new bands, regarless of the style or genre, because it's more about the concept and the philosophy of the supporting community than it is about the limitations. People are taking risks again. The other night I saw Peel and I had a similar feeling to the Cry Blood Apache feeling, despite the fact that the music was entirely different. There's a detectable energy in both bands that is simultaneously referential and fresh.

Maybe I'm being overly idealistic or romantic and this can all be blamed on the internet, file sharing, and myspace.com. Either way, it seems that suddenly it's okay for somebody to be into both Throbbing Gristle and Belle and Sebastian, and I'm pretty sure that's a good thing. Hopefully I haven't jinxed the movement by acknowledging its existence, but i don't think so. Austin has waited a long time for this kind of renaissance, so onwards and upwards.

PS. If anybody is interested, Optimo Espacio play the Whisky Bar (strange venue, I know, but good sound sytem for dancing) February 23rd, via Badd Taste (Opulence Krew) and Factory People. For more information on Optimo itself, you can visit www.optimo.co.uk.

Comments are still actively encouraged.

Hear Say

2005-12-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

Often times, if somebody out there in web-land writes something related to the band the address of the piece is forwarded to my inbox. If something is written about Voxtrot I am naturally inclined to read it, a fact that I don't think can be fairly classified as "internet vanity," but rather plain curiosity. During the past couple of days I have come across a number of strange threads and in response there are a few things I'd like to clarify about Voxtrot. Now I will make my usual disclaimer: It's not that I think the entire world is dying to know every detail about the origin of Voxtrot; in fact, I'm sure many people are new to the band and this is probably too much information. Frankly, I'm flattered that people are writing about us and taking the time to express their opinions. If you as a reader have no interest in Voxtrot this is completely understandable, and if that is the case you might want to stop reading now. Otherwise...

When I was nineteen I decided to move to Glasgow. Throughout the year preceding this move I had written a number of songs that I wanted to record with a full band prior to moving across the pond. This way I would have a solid piece of recording that reflected the kind of stuff I wanted to be playing with the band I would hopefully acquire. To fill out the pieces I gathered Matt on drums (who I have known and played music with since the age of eleven or twelve), Mitch on guitar (who I lived in a dorm room with in Boston), and Jason (whom I randomly approached at a party in Austin- perhaps the best impulse decision I ever made). We completed this initial set of songs over the course of the summer, and suddenly it was September. As I have discussed previously on this blog, when I arrived in Scotland I discovered something much different than I had expected and spent much more of my time in nightclubs than I did behind a guitar. However I still continued to write songs and when I would return home for summer or Christmas holiday we would work up the songs just for fun.

I had never had any expectation that Voxtrot would ever even be a live band. In fact the name did not come about until necessity forced it to do so. Jason managed to get us a show with out friend David Longoria, who was at that time playing with an incarnation of what is now The Black. In the winter of 2002 (I think) we recorded the Start of Something, which was followed by a handful of recordings with Carlos Jackson (The Shells), however there was never really any plan to release anything. It was mainly just passed around between friends and sold on CD-R's whenever we played out, which was not often. Gigs were usually either at Emos Austin or at House Parties, which is where we probably gathered the grand majority of our fans. Most of our "fans" were actually just friends that we knew from hanging out in Austin who liked the music and liked going to parties (who doesn't?).

Often times our live performance was (perhaps still is) a little choppy, technically speaking, but the atmosphere was/is really nice and people danced. In my mind this kind of enjoyment compensates for a little infidelity performance-wise but that's just me. I think that we have gotten much more solid in terms of playing live, and hopefully that improvement curve will keep on its path. Last year James Minor (who worked at Emos and 33 Degrees Record Shop and now lives in New York) offered to become our manager. James is a very good friend of ours and is one of the first people who I become close with I started actually meeting people in Austin. Before James, our friend Helen helped us to find gigs in Austin and is the one who initially sent James a Voxtrot CD-R but she was not exactly a 'hard-hitting, wheeling and dealing' manager. She was just a friend who wanted to hep us play somewhere other than people's living rooms.

James' offer was kind of terrifying because it meant putting off the remainder of my degree, but all I have ever wanted to do is to play music so I accepted and we about one year later trying to make it work. Now I will quote from a discussion thread:

"the general impression I have of voxtrot is 'exceedingly lame'.. I guess I totally want my music to be popular too, but I'm not going to write a bunch of crowd-pleasers just to make it happen. I want to write music that's good, whether it will be popular or not."

Okay, this notion that we made a conscious decision to abandon twee pop in favor of a more popular current sound is an unfortunate misaprehension. I have nothing against Bloc Party, The Bravery, etc... Primarily because I have never heard a single album by either one of those bands, not because I am a snob but rather because I have spent more of my time listening to dance records, and of course my old indie and sixties favorites. Belle and Sebastian, The Smiths, The Field Mice, etc... I still love all of that shit more than I can tell you but it would be ridiculous to keep writing songs in the same format and style year after year. Personally, I wouldn't exactly say we've strayed far from those twee pop roots. For me the main component of song appeal is melody and then lyrics; that's what really grabs me. However, over time I decided that incorporating a bit of drive and gusto in one's songs can be a beautiful thing. You come to anticipate the way a crowd will react when a certain energy builds in the song, and when it happens both the crowd and the perfomer are feeling the same wonderful thing. It's fun.

As an artist (perhaps this is true for every profession) you want to reach the greatest possible number of people. You also want to be able to support yourself, and I think a lot people have this notion that trying to integrate your band into the realm of being a 'profession' completely denies the purity of the experience. It's kind of a catch-22 because in a way I'm sure this is partially true, but this is where the argument against 'artist as commodity' comes into play. In some countries (ie. the United States) it is extremely hard to survive as an artist. There is very little government funding and let's not even talk about socialised health care. Despite any apparent growing popularity you still have to fucking struggle. And chances are you are doing it because you love music, not the other way around. Some people love attention more than music, but popularity is not necessarily an indicator of that trait, as many have surmised. Personally I think it's pretty shitty to see Austinites tearing down their own bands instead of supporting them. Sometimes we don't make the absolute best choices business-wise but trust me the prime motivation, the original motivation, is music.

Stuck Inside of Worcester with the...

2005-12-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, I would like to apologize to all of those who had intended on coming to see us over the past couple of days. We made every attempt to honor the bookings that had been made for us, but after a certain point it became clear that there were too many odds stacked against us. Here is the full story:

Friday night, we played in Boston at a club called P.A.'s Lounge. The weather that day had been disastrous to say the least and thus we left a rather large amount of extra time for our journey to Washington D.C. the next day. Little did we know that we should have left an extra four days. About 35 miles outside of Boston the van started to make this terrible noise that sounded much like a muffled machine gun, certainly not an unfamiliar sound considering that we had to have the spark plug replaced at the beginning of this tour (the reason we had to cancel our Dallas show). However, this time we were convinced that the problem was something different and we pulled off the interstate to find the closest mechanic. "The closest mechanic" came in the form of a non-descript mechanic shop attached to a Getty's petrol station immediately off the Mass. Pike. As soon as we pulled up, a man in a cap came out and told us to shut off the engine, which we did. He opened the hood of the van, took a quick glance, and simply proclaimed, "You have blown a valve, engine is destroyed." My knowledge of cars/trucks is limited to say the least, and I'm pretty sure this particular mechanic was aware of that fact; we were all panicked, pacing and trying to figure out the best way to get back on the road to DC. If the engine was in fact destroyed, it could take as long as a week to rebuild the damn thing and it would likely cost approximately two thousand plus dollars. Still, we were fixated on the idea of making it to the next show.

The most obvious plan of action: rent a van; a seemingly simple task, though finding a fifteen passenger van on Saturday in Worcester, Massachusetts is no easy feat. We managed to find one twelve passenger at the Worcester regional airport and promptly phoned a taxi to take us there. We arrived and were faced with a rather intimidating invoice, but were still prepared to pay as long as it meant we would make it to the remaining shows of the tour. As we were practically signing the dotted line on the contract, a woman appeared with her husband, two hours late to pick up two twelve passenger vans for a 5 hour family reunion. [Insert the sound of dreams being crushed]. It was now clear that there was no way we could make it out of Worcester in time to make it to any of the remaining dates and that the remainder of the tour would have to be cancelled. There was no feasible way to even reach another mechanic before Monday.

I phoned my Dad's friend Liam, who came and picked us up, helped us transport our gear to a motel, and bought us dinner at this Tex-Mex restaurant called "Williker's," the only dining establishment within walking distance of our motel. Upon entering Williker's, we were seated by a really nice girl named Erika, who informed us that the place hosted a karaoke night at the weekend, the first positive thing we had heard all day. That night we drowned our sorrows in tequila and proceeded to completely take over the event, churning out a wide variety of songs/artists, including: Johnny Cash, Soul Asylum, The Band, Journey, Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, The Spin Doctors, The Beatles, Guns and Roses, Otis Redding... the list goes on. By the time Mitch and company took the stage to perform a very drunken version of the Crash Test Dummies classic "Mmmmmmm, mmmmmm, mmmmm...." it was clear that things had gone too far. Perhaps our state of anxiety had become too much over the course of the day and karaoke was the perfect release. We all went a little nuts, and fortunately the entire thing is on video tape, some of which we hope to host on the Voxtrot web page soon.

Over the next four days, we made friends with our waitress Erika, who provided salvation from the all too familiar motel scenery, visited the Candy Mansion, and spent multiple hours propping up the bar at Williker's, our new local. I entered a rather Brian Wilson-esque phase where I refused to leave the bed, preferring to lay in bed pretty much all day, watching re-runs of MTV Cribs in my flannel pajamas.

Then came Monday, the fateful day where we could get our van to a real mechanic and find out what exactly had been the cause of damage to the problem and what the cost of fixing it would be. Three auto shops and one billion phone calls later it became evident that it was in fact a spark plug. A fucking spark plug. Those assholes at the first mechanic had lied to us and tried to weasel us out of our van, saying it was totaled and offering us a used minivan with no odometer in exchange for the title. By doing this they destroyed any chance we might have had of making it to the Washington, Chapel Hill and Georgia shows. In the end the cost of fixing the fan was approximately one half the combined costs of the Rainbow Motel and the bar tab at Williker's. However, as I said earlier I know nothing about anything auto related and this fix might not be a permanent one, so I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch. It just appears to me that they very knowingly tried to use our ignorance against us for malicious intent and it cost us the potential of completing the second half of our tour. That's pretty shitty.

Today we made it back to new york city and I have my fingers crossed that the van will stay safe and fixed. We are incredibly sad about the cancelled shows and have scheduled a last minute show tomorrow (Wednesday) at nine pm at Magnetic Field in Brooklyn to try and fundraise some of the lost money. Just as a brief update, when we return to Austin we are finishing off material for the upcoming Mothers Sisters Daughters and Wives EP that should be completed in January/February and officially released at the beginning of March. Touring will take place in February (West Coast), then we play SXSW, then more touring in March (East Coast). I shall keep you posted. We are very thankful for everybody's support and we hope to make up for the mishaps of this tour in the near future.

Love,
Ramesh

PS. If anybody would like to respond/comment I would really like that. I only realised today that I had the "member-only" response setting on. It has been changed.

I'm sure the grammar on this has suffered a little due to length. I shall try and edit it tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving

2005-11-24T20:00:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is perhaps (much like Labor Day) a holiday that never held much importance in my life until I had a proper 9-5 job with paid holidays. Money aside, I am genuinely thankful for this Thanksgiving. I have been meaning to add more to this blog recently but time has been hard to come by and tonight I am drunk from wine and stuffing. Thus, the only thing I can offer you is this new Voxtrot song from our forthcoming EP (Spring 2006, fingers crossed) entiteld Mothers Sisters Daughters and Wives.

Thus far we have three of the projected five recorded, and I can promise you it has been a lengthy yet rewarding process. One song had to be completely re-recorded, which resulted in kind of a major set back but it was completely worth it. In addition we were lucky enough to be helped out by some very talented musicians who contributed violin, cello, trumpet, and french horn to the new songs. They all played beautifully, and I cannot for the life of me remember their full names. I'm sure Jared would be able to fill you in on their names/side projects, if he happens to read this entry.

You can listen to the new song here.

Love,
Ramesh

Five Great Dance Records (Modern Classics)

2005-11-16T11:23:00.000-08:00

*Sorry, these picture are rather large and grainy. Still trying to master the blog format...

When I moved to Glasgow three years ago, I assumed that I would be entering into a world filled with retro-attired kids, all living and breathing for the same sort of brit-rock and indie pop music that captivated me, a kind of twee mecca if you will. Instead I discovered techno, or rather the marvelous world of dance music and the culture that surrounds it. This was amazing for me because I was able to unearth, for the first time, a plethora of new records about which I knew nothing. Most of these I heard in Glasgow at clubs such as Optimo and Divine, and there were several that I hold very near and dear to my heart and very rarely leave my playlist (I now do some DJing myself, primarily in Austin). If you were somebody who had grown up in Britain then some of these records might not have registered beyond something kind of new and catchy you heard in a club and then forgot about, but for me they still signify the beginning of what I'd like to consider a true affinity. They are a mixture of new and old.

PS. I don't consider myself an authority on music and I'm sure many readers will already know these tracks. so if you've no desire to read on, that's cool with me. I'm not trying to educate anyone, I'm just, well... blogging.

1. Dinosaur L-Kiss Me Again

This track is perhaps the most special to me and is by far the oldest on this list. It is an Arthur Russell composition from 1978 and I believe there are about twenty different versions of it floating around. Several years ago, it was reissued on a Disco Not Disco compilation, but I am not a very big fan of that remix. I recently obtained a copy on vinyl that had been issued on something called Underground Disco Classics, but it's not nearly as good as the version I will try to post in the next couple of days. For years I would hear it played at the Sub Club but nobody really talked too much about it. I remember one day obtaining a copy of it my friend Keith (Twitch of Optimo) who told me the history of the song and about its many incarnations, and the more I listened to it the more I began to appreciate the multiple instrumental layers (guitars, trombone, cello, etc...) and the constantly evolving feel of the song. Yes, that sounds a bit music school wanky but as a rule I am completely opposed to funk and soul and this track definitely swayed my feelings in the other direction. We would have these parties after Optimo that would go on for quite some time (that is, after all, the Glasgow way of doing things) and I can remember everybody listening to this song and singing in unison sometimes nine or ten times in the space of one night. For me it is a very sentimental tune.
*Interesting Side Note: David Byrne is playing the guitar.

2. Green Velvet-Flash

This is kind of an early nineties dance classic and it's difficult for me to explain why exactly it resonates so strongly with me. For a long time I had trouble figuring out who the song was by or what its title was because I could not discern the lyrics on the instrumental break (my favorite bit), but one day I was sitting in my parents' living room going through every song that had been imported onto my computer and I discovered that I already owned it, but had just never given it a listen. To me part of the magic of this song is that there is zero melodic content; it is all dance. (If anybody's interested in the marvelous and endless land of remixes I think the Timo Mas dirty dub version is amazing). CAMERAS READY PREPARE TO FLASH!

3. Monte Cazazza-Sex is No Emergency

This track is incredibly hard to find in its original format. Monte Cazazza seems an extreme character to say the least, a trait which is not incongruous to his Industrial Records counterparts, such as Throbbing Gristle. Anybody who is interested can find more information about him here. Perhaps the reason I like this song is because it is so continuously dark and the lyrical content is undeniably minimal yet smart, the best line being "love is more than just some fucking four letter word." I once tried to order The Worst of Monte Cazazza but the record store was unable to find a copy anywhere in the country. Now that I think about it, perhaps the Dinosaur L track is not the oldest on this list. I shall have to investigate...

4. Annie Lennox-Little Bird

Okay, this is not really a dance track but in my Glasgow life it was kind of an unintentional dance track. My friend marv and I used to do this night called Muzique, orginated and promoted by this crazy fashion designer who called himself Richie Sudo, and was undeniably larger than life. Sometimes he'd show up to the club wearing three pairs of ripped denim, a silk Louis Vitton neck scar, and a freshly shaven mohawk with a dollar sign drawn on the side of his head... with magic marker. His mission was to bring laughing gas parties and Italo Disco back in fashion and his charisma just might warrant him that victory, but when we were on the decks we played pretty much anything we wanted to. This Annie Lennox song became kind of a classic among our friends (still is)- probably because singing it makes you feel so damn good. It's the sort of thing that I would never have expected to like. but just grew on me over a period of time. At the end of Muzique dance night (which was about once every two months) we would play Enjoy the Silence (Marv's favorite tune) and loop the end refrain of "enjoy the silence" while fading in Little Bird. Then, depending on our particular state of sobriety, or lack there of, we would play about thirty more songs... just as a night cap of course.

5. Captain Comatose- $100

This for me is the perfect mix of pop and dark electro. There was a lot of great stuff with a kind of dark German edge that I was hearing at the time of its release, but this one for me just really epitomizes the kind of dance record that manages to be fun and trashy without being disposable. I have seen Kid and Khan (Khan being one half of C.C.) live before, but never Captain Comatose, a situation I hope to one day remedy. Khan's biography/discography is fairly amazing, as he's worked with Jimi Tenor and all sorts of other people. Long before Captain Comatose (in the early nineties I think) he released an album called 1-900-Get-Khan, and one of the tracks on that album features a sex-chat telephone intro. On a seemingly unrelated note, I spent much of the last year cat/house-sitting for my friend Jill Mingo in Glasgow, a wonderful woman who is a character in the truest sense of the word. One day we were talking about Captain Comatose and she happened to mention that she was actually the sex-chat voice, a fact that should have been more surprising to me. Apparently Khan also introduced her to Jungle Juice, a triple strength strain of poppers only legal in Germany. As I said earlier, the perfect amount of dirty.

Work Part Two (Baby Tiger)

2005-11-13T22:53:00.000-08:00

NOTE: Please excuse spelling/grammar errors. I have not figured out how to use the editing tools just yet.

Once upon a time there was a Voxtrot weblog. That was before the site crashed for the five millionth time and everything had to be transferred over. During the transition all previous content was lost and therefore making reference to those posts might seem a little useless. I will do so anyway. (Hopefully the weblog will return in its original form soon, but until then this will have to be sufficient. The weblog was more aesthetically pleasing. If anybody has suggestions for attractive, free blogs, please let me know).

One of those posts was a chronicle of my work day in Glasgow, at a nice little cafe situated inside the Centre for Contemporary Arts. Every Saturday was kids day, and the various activities of these children provided me with endless amounts of amusement. Now that I have moved to Austin my job consists solely of child interaction. I am a pre-school teacher at a nice little church about ten blocks from my house, and the work is a delicate mixture of strenuous and fulfilling. For a while it seemed to be the most amazing thing in the world: eight hours of engaging and educating kids (2 year olds in the morning, 4 year olds in the afternoon), and at the end of each day I had a certain feeling of satisfaction, that my day had not in fact been wasted, but rather that I was doing something worthwhile and important.

Although this is still the case, these days I find that I am becoming inreasingly tired and perhaps this job is not something I can sustain very much longer. The thing is, children are inherently selfish and it’s an easy thing to forget when the teacher-student pretense dissolves and you begin to interact with them as people. This is particularly true in the context of the 2/3 year olds. They are at the specific developmental stage of having the power of speech, but not yet being toilet-trained. There are days when I have had to fight (with a stellar hangover, mind you) a child for a plastic bowl of his own shit, a process that makes changing diapers seem like a luxury holiday.

However, it’s not all bad. I am exposed to many dlightful little factoids, statements and anecdotes that make my day a little brighter, such as the notion that I should never return to Spain, because that’s where Darth Vadar lives. Recently I was sitting with a two year old girl who has not yet grasped the concept of speech, but is learning. At one point she sneezed and I said “bless you,” to which she replied “thank you,” to which I replied “you’re welcome,” to which she replied “thank you.” At this point I realised that there was no system of logic that would allow me to explain why that cycle of niceties should stop at “you’re welcome,” or rather why it should begin in the first place. It’s interesting that the specific dialogues we perceive as cute in children are really just non-conformities that can only occur before full homoginization has taken place.

And so I have come to a crossroads. Voxtrot leaves to go on tour December 2nd and chances are I will lose my job. Sometimes it seems like a blessing in disguise, that it’s too much work for to little pay anyway, and then there are moments of intense guilt. The other day, around the time of Halloween, my class had dwindled to about four people and having worked the morning shift as well, I was ready to shove off and call it a day. I announced this to the class and as I was walking out the door, a little boy looks up at me with big eyes and says, “Why can’t you stay and play with us today?” Later that night I saw him at party hosted by one of the parents, running down a grass hill in a littke skeleton suit yelling, “Ramesh is here!” At points it can make you feel like an errant father.

As a family friend explained to me the other day, I am one of the first people they are trusting outside of their parents, and their language does not correspond with concepts such as occupational mobility. In fact their language does not correspond with ours on many accounts. They are much more founded in emotion than words, which for them are still merely signifiers, and this is why they bite, hit, and construct sentences that have no discernable meaning yet still produce unanimous laughter among the other children.

Just before breakfast while the children are washing their hands, I sit outside the bathroom by the water fountain with a bucket of “clean hand toys,” meant to occupy the children until everybody is ready. The other day I was particularly tired, having played a show in Austin the night before. Eventually I snapped out of my daze to realise that a child was standing in front of me with out-stretched wet hands, repeating the phrase “baby tiger peas.” I reached around, ripped off a paper towel, and wrapped it around his fists.