December 28, 2009
Back when The Social Registry was supposed to release the second Christy & Emily record, Superstition, in the U.S. this past November, I wrote a review of the record for the Panorama issue of McSweeney’s. I don’t know what happened in the time since, but I can no longer find any reference to the record on The Social Registry’s site. This is a shame if it prevents people from hearing this outstanding album.
Looking back at the by-track enjoyment chart I made for Superstition, I feel like I was maybe a little harsh on the tracks I liked least. It holds up extremely well over time. Go out and buy it if you can find it (frustratingly, you probably can’t).
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Music | Tagged: Christy & Emily, McSweeney's, Panorama, Superstition, The Social Registry | 
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Posted by matthewderby
January 21, 2009
I am not sharp with this tool. I need to have at it with sandpaper and a razor.
In any case, for some months now a story I wrote has been available at the fine internet journal entitled Guernica. The story is called January in December. I have just now taken a quick look at it and I don’t regret having submitted it. I take no responsibility for any reaction you may have.
2 Comments | Fiction, Music | Tagged: Guernica, John Lennon, Literary Journal, Mark David Chapman, Matthew Derby | Permalink
Posted by matthewderby
October 6, 2008
For the past several months I have been working on a major overhaul of the Rock Band website, which has just gone live. This was a uniquely rewarding project, mainly because the team with whom I worked was given an unprecedented degree of freedom to design a site that both reflects the excitement of the in-game experience and extends the world of the game with useful tools and features. Sites like this tend to get emasculated early and often by executive mincing and short-mindedness. The innovative and captivating features that cultivate internal excitement about a project are regularly blowtorched by thick-browed men in glass offices who are crippled by their desire to protect and preserve the bottom line. Harmonix, on the other hand, stepped back and allowed us to make our own decisions about the site experience.
Once condition: we had to create an amazing, groundbreaking site that supports hundreds of thousands of users in about four months, concept to completion.
Given the time resource constraints, we had to make some quick decisions about what fans of the game would most like to see on the web. Topping the list was a method for users to link their game data to their site account, enabling them to create custom pictures of the characters they created in Rock Band. We also wanted to create a comprehensive library of all the songs available for in-game play, a catalog that would include difficulty ratings, gameplay tips, and trivia from the developers. We also wanted to support some of the new gameplay features in Rock Band 2 such as Battle of the Bands.
I’m partial, though, to the blog section of the site, which we dubbed ‘The ‘Zine’. This section of the site features, in addition to the weekly announcements of new downloadable tracks that users can play in Rock Band, a weekly series on how to make it as a real rock band, from the moment that a kid picks up her first guitar and feels that desire weigh down upon her soul to the difficulties of scheduling a tour and the glory of canonization into the annals of rock history. I’ve written the first installment of another section in the ‘Zine called ‘Sketchbook’ – this is a weekly post showcasing the work of the artists and developers at Harmonix that make the game what it is. The first installment focuses on a single garment created by Steven Kimura, the ‘Beast of Burden’, an unlockable outfit Kimura imagined might be worn by a Norwegian Black Metal vocalist. Several illustrations are included in the post, from Kimura’s initial thumbnail sketch to the orthographic projection that brought the outfit to life as a playable element in the game.
I have no idea whether I’ll be able to write more of these Sketchbook posts. If you like the one that’s live, please feel free to place comments such as, ‘This is a fine article,’ or ‘This is an acceptable post,’ or ‘I would rather read this than do something else.’
Leave a Comment » | Design, Music, Work | Tagged: Battle of the Bands, Harmonix, Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Sketchbook, Steven Kimura | Permalink
Posted by matthewderby
June 16, 2008
Tomorrow At Mount Zoomer will be released into the world. Of course, tons of people already have the record. It’s out there, right now, hovering in a torrent cloud somewhere, waiting to get sucked down. I have had an early version of the album since March. But I decided to stop listening to it when I finished writing the band bio. I think it was, in part, just because I knew that it was a strong album, and one people would be excited about, and I think there is something pleasurable about anticipating a release date.
When I interviewed him, Dan said, “You know, [the record] will probably leak when the review copies come out, and everyone will have heard it by the time it gets released, and that’s fine, I guess, but it kind of ruins it.” I have to say that I agree with him. When you compare the hollow, anonymous ‘community’ of torrenters, pulling down shards in their isolated chambers, with a real community of fans who are all taking part in something, even if that thing is an arbitrary date, it’s easy to see the benefits of delayed gratification. I’m not going to pretend I am not one of those lonesome men, casting a net into the radiosphere at night for bits and chunks. I am just saying that even though we can’t go back, it might be worth it to try.
And I’ve just received my copy of the record from SubPop, complete with a very insane poster of the band.
2 Comments | Music | Tagged: At Mount Zoomer, Dan Boeckner, SubPop, Wolf Parade | Permalink
Posted by matthewderby
June 7, 2008
Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to dismiss his contribution to the band. It’s just not entirely clear to me what he does. I know that he hits that chimes tree thing a lot during live shows, and sometimes he gets tangled in the chimes tree and it falls over and he gives it this look like it attacked him. Or he’ll bang on his guitar strings with a drumstick. And then he’ll have to urinate at some point during the set, and the audience is encouraged to cheer.
But how does he figure into the soundscape of At Mount Zoomer? Where is he weighing in? I’m not saying he’s not in there, somewhere, but where? Is it that breakdown in ‘Soldier’s Grin’ with the double-tracked guitars riding that open E, Crazy Horse-style? Is he responsible for those peripheral tones that haunt ‘FYC’? I concede that I am lazy about this stuff. It’s probably already out there somewhere on the internet. But I am willing to bet that if you’re the kind of person who can tell what he does, you’re also the kind of person who likes to tell other people.
Thank you in advance for your time.
11 Comments | Music | Tagged: At Mount Zoomer, Dante DeCaro, Wolf Parade | Permalink
Posted by matthewderby
June 4, 2008
Whatever you may think of At Mount Zoomer, you will not be able to deny that it sounds like a stone colossus moving through an army of men, effortlessly pounding through their ranks, flaying them where they stand with its cold, even stare. The architect of this sound is Arlen Thompson, an amiable, bearded man who serves as Wolf Parade’s drummer, producer, recording engineer, and goodwill ambassador. Thompson has always had a firm hand in the recording of the Wolf Parade material – he engineered both of the early EPs as well as certain of the tracks from Apologies. When I solicited a track from the band for the Believer 2005 Music issue (a cover of Frog Eyes’ ‘Claxxon’s Lament’) it was Arlen who patiently assembled the various stems sent in by the other band members who were, at the time, each on separate continents.
Shortly after Apologies was released, Arlen decided to assemble a studio of his own to record Wolf Parade and other projects. The convenience of having a fully-functioning studio is, in large part, what makes At Mount Zoomer sound the way it does, from the song structure right down to the aural separation of the individual instruments. Not only was the band able to record and sift through extensive improvisational sessions, editing together the bits that felt right and re-recording them, they were able to exert total control over the resultant sound.
“It was really important for all of us to preserve as much as possible not only the sounds of the instruments themselves but also the sound of the amps and the silences between the notes,” Dan said in the interview. “Producers tend to mute out a track whenever there are no notes being played, and then you end up with this really dry, tinny sound. We wanted to make sure that you could hear the sound of the amp just humming in the spaces between the notes.”
Recording the album themselves allowed Arlen to mix the drums first. ”We recorded the basic tracks,” Dan continued, “and then we left Arlen alone for a long time, and he worked exclusively on the drums until they were perfect. That’s why the drums are so present on the record.” Play ‘Soldier’s Grin’ next to any shitty record that’s come out in the last year and you’ll be able to quickly ascertain exactly what Thompson has done to his kit. There’s a tightness to each component underscored by the background warmth of the room. The drums manage to sound huge, but more like a tidal wave than a corporate high-rise.
1 Comment | Music | Tagged: Arlen Thompson, At Mount Zoomer, Dan Boeckner, Drums, Soldier's Grin, Wolf Parade | Permalink
Posted by matthewderby
June 2, 2008
One of the things I was most interested to find out about the creation of At Mount Zoomer was how the various band members juggled all of the peer projects they are involved in when they’re not making music as Wolf Parade. Note my unnecessarily longwinded attempt to avoid using the term ’side project’ – I think this is significant because here is a band that not only does its homework but is also involved in sports, mathletes, the school mural project, and yearbook. Wolf Parade is that kid. You don’t call the community service initiative that kid did to stop the pangolin crisis in Indonesia a side project. No more than you would call Sunset Rubdown a side project.
Spencer didn’t have a clear-cut answer when I interviewed him for the SubPop bio. ”It’s not like I have these buckets and I dump songs into the Wolf Parade bucket or the Sunset Rubdown bucket. It has more to do with when I’m writing the songs than anything else. When I’m working with Sunset Rubdown, everything I write tends to become a Sunset Rubdown song. Occasionally I’ll run up against a song that I try in the context of Sunset Rubdown and it doesn’t work so I’ll sort of put it in reserve for Wolf Parade, but that’s pretty rare.
“For this album (At Mount Zoomer) I found that I didn’t yet have the vocal range for some of the stuff I was writing. In the past I either sang really loud or really quietly, both for Sunset Rubdown and for Wolf Parade, and some of the songs this time around required me to sing somewhere in the middle, which was hard. I hadn’t really had to sing like that before. I’m really nervous about those songs.”
Listening to the record again, I was able to detect this new range – you can hear it in ‘Bang Your Drum’ and in the verses of ‘California Dreaming’ and ‘An Animal in Your Care.’ But I can’t say I’d picked up on it before. Which means that Spencer Krug’s modesty precedes him. Not a bad quality. John Lennon also reportedly hated the sound of his own voice.
PS- Have you pre-ordered At Mount Zoomer yet? Everyone knows you haven’t yet, and we are all embarrassed for you.
1 Comment | Music | Tagged: At Mount Zoomer, John Lennon, Pangolins, Spencer Krug, Sunset Rubdown, Wolf Parade | Permalink
Posted by matthewderby
June 2, 2008
One of the real strengths of Wolf Parade is the way that the individual projects they helm in their time away from the band ratchet up the quality of the Wolf Parade material rather than diminish it. Usually, it’s the other way around – side projects stink with vanity or else the main project amounts to an attempt to keep a floundering cash cow from disintegrating into the ether. With Wolf Parade, though, each project is afforded full attention, and the quality growth over time is exponential. The structure is almost like a torrent cloud, where the cloud itself only becomes stronger when a trusted cadre of users contributes more and more diverse content. That was a terrible metaphor, but when I listen to At Mount Zoomer side by side with Apologies to the Queen Mary, I find that although in the end Apologies offers more easily accessible pleasures, At Mount Zoomer is ultimately a stronger record. And I mean ’stronger’ in an elemental, physical sense. I don’t mean that it has better songs, or hotter licks, or more elaborate drum solos. I mean that it has more force. It is a cohesive, self-contained unit composed by a group of people who brought considerable skill and experience to its creation. I realize this is a bit of an unfair comparison, as Apologies was a patchwork of songs created in isolation from each other over the course of several years. But if you line up the songs in the order in which they were created, you can really see how each individual song borrowed the strengths of its predecessor and built upon it, with the result (for now) being At Mount Zoomer. I am talking specifically about ‘I am a Runner’ and ‘I’ll Believe in Anything’, two of the songs that were written closer to the recording of Apologies than, say, ‘It’s a Curse’.
Those songs remind me very much of the longer tracks on The Who’s Sell Out and A Quick One – namely ‘A Quick One (While He’s Away)’ and ‘Rael’. These two tracks were, at the time of their release, novel in their length and in the assemblage of passages and themes they contained, but they also served as prototypes for the longer, more involved explorations that would come next for The Who, namely Tommy, Quadrophenia, and the scrapped Lifehouse sessions that were stripped of context and reconfigured as Who’s Next.
‘I am a Runner’, similarly, feels more like a track from At Mount Zoomer than ‘Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts’, and I think this is a good thing. Because I think every track on Apologies is timeless, but I wouldn’t want to see Wolf Parade disintegrate into self parody by replicating the formula that generated those original songs. I’d rather see them hike out into the tundra at night with their shirts off and get totally fucked up by a polar bear. At Mount Zoomer is the sound of them packing their flashlights.
Leave a Comment » | Music | Tagged: A Quick One, At Mount Zoomer, Sell Out, The Who, Wolf Parade | Permalink
Posted by matthewderby
May 30, 2008
The working title of At Mount Zoomer was Fine Young Cannibals. SubPop, though, was just a little nervous about possible legal action by the irrelevant British one-hit wonders, so Wolf Parade eventually relented. They settled temporarily on Kissing the Beehive, a title they also bestowed upon the last track of the album (which had been previously referred to as ‘Crazy Horse’). Pitchfork was not happy about the choice, and the band caved. Personally, I wish they had just called the album ‘pitchforkmedia.com’ but I am now glad that I didn’t say anything because I’m going to use it myself. I hope no one steals my idea. Audience of zero, please don’t take my idea. You probably have three or four great ideas of your own. Could you please use those up first before calling your album ‘pitchforkmedia.com’ because it’s my only chance to do something pure and good.
I asked Dan Boeckner about Wolf Parade’s plans to call the album Fine Young Cannibals. ”I think it was just a state of mind,” he said. ”We were spending long stretches of time in the studio, just improvising and recording the sessions, and after a while I guess we all sort of felt like that. Like fine young cannibals.”
Spencer Krug had a slightly different response when I talked to him a few days later. ”The working titles for those songs (‘Billy Joel’, ‘Fine Young Cannibals’, ‘Crazy Horse’) – Sometimes a song idea would come out of a song we’d been listening to, and it would sort of stick. I can’t listen to ‘Fine Young Cannibals’ without hearing the Fine Young Cannibals.”
1 Comment | Music | Tagged: At Mount Zoomer, Dan Boeckner, Fine Young Cannibals, Kissing the Beehive, Pitchfork, Spencer Krug, Wolf Parade | Permalink
Posted by matthewderby
May 29, 2008
This is part two of my twenty part meditation on At Mount Zoomer.
I called Dan Boeckner to talk about the new record. Here is the transcript of that conversation.
“Hello?”
“Dan Boeckner.”
“Is this Matt Derby?”
“Yes.”
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Pretty good. And yourself?”
“I’m actually in the bathtub right now?”
“It’s 7:30 at night.”
“Can I call you back?”
“Yes.”
“Actually, I don’t have a pen to write down your number, because I’m in the bath.”
“I can call you back.”
“Yeah, can you call me back in a few minutes?”
“I could call in a half hour.”
“I just need to put on pants.”
“Okay. I’ll call you in five minutes?”
“Could you make it seven? I’m going to have to towel off.”
“That will take two minutes?”
“I’ve gained a lot of weight in the last few months. I have a lot more body mass.”
“Okay.”
“Cool.”
“Bye.”
“Bye”
2 Comments | Music | Tagged: At Mount Zoomer, Dan Boeckner, Hygiene, Wolf Parade | Permalink
Posted by matthewderby
