the blog of happy dreams

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2008-01-07T14:31:00.000-08:00

Circumscribe

2007-12-06T17:51:00.000-08:00

@ Family Bookstore on Fairfax 12-2-07

2007-12-03T19:52:00.000-08:00

I can't say enough good things about Family Bookstore. Click the pic and go buy lots of amazing things from their site.

I mean it this time

2007-11-16T08:35:00.000-08:00

some lovely vinyl of mine @ mutant sounds

2007-11-14T15:22:00.001-08:00

You can buy it now (click the pic)

2007-11-06T15:56:00.000-08:00

Steaming Coils - Complete : The Archive now up @ Mutant Sounds

2007-10-30T22:32:00.000-07:00

My Dusted Listed

2007-10-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/661

Former leader of shoegaze mainstays Medicine and Tigerbeat 6er Electric Company, Los Angelino Brad Laner has finally settled in to record a record under his given name. His solo debut, Neighbor Singing sounds neither like nor unlike either of his previous endeavors. It comes out in early November on the increasingly-worth-paying-attention-to Hometapes label.

1. Los Angeles Plays Itself (documentary film 2003)
A sprawling and righteously angry look at the history of the portrayal of my fair city in film. I'll never call it L.A. again. I'm also forever grateful to have had it pointed out to me that the LAPD slogan "To Protect and Serve" is written in ironic quotes on police car doors.

2. Mutant Sounds blog (http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/)
Eric Lumbleau and pals are the best kind of obsessive record collectors: they share. This is the absolute motherlode of impossibly obscure music impeccably curated and presented with love .They deserve a grant.

3. Jaki Liebezeit / Burnt Friedman - Secret Rhythms 1 & 2
The best Can member solo output ever. Easily my fave drummer and Friedman's production is perfectly unobtrusive so you can linger over every hit.

4. Family - every LP from '68-'73
Raging, drunk, violent, rootsy,experimental. utterly distinct lead vocalist Roger Chapman and his rather goat-like vibrato. "music from a doll's house" is a true early psychedelic masterpiece but every single album is fantastic and different from the last.

5. The Omnivore's Dilemma (book by Michael Pollan)
All about what to eat if you have any interest in not being a "corn person" and breaking out of the industrial food monoculture. "Eat food, not too much. Mostly plants"

6. Judee Sill - everything she ever did
She wrote perfect songs. I mean not one dud on any of her 3 albums. The weird Christian/narcotics/lovelorn lyrics are vivd and profound too. I want to go back in time and tell her everything's alright and keep going. Where's the doc or book already ?

7. The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky (DVD box)
After years of crappy 7th generation VHS bootlegs I'm so grateful to have these profound, gory and spiritually uplifting films to study and grapple with in pristine quality.

8. Yo Gabba Gabba (kid's TV show)
Having a 3 year old in the house has its cultural advantages, Otherwise I might not have found this great show. genius and insanely catchy music with a distinctly "indie" feel, which is a nice change compared with most other kid's over-cooked TV music.

9. John Cage- Mureau (http://www.ubu.com/sound/cage_mureau.html)
My favorite piece by Cage to actually listen to. It's alternately hypnotic and funny and beautiful and it's just the man speaking unadorned. A perfect voice, made easier to enjoy for it's own sounds' sake by virtue of the non-linear narrative text.

10. Quicksilver Messenger Service - Happy Trails
I just heard this for the first time recently and was pleasantly blown away by the dual guitar improv attack. Like Television but 10 years earlier and with more feedback.Top quality lysergic mayhem. It's nice to know there's always music I’ve never heard waiting to be discovered.

Mutant Sounds celebrates Steaming Coils

2007-10-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

Coming November 6 2007

2007-08-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

fun wikipedia fact...

2007-08-24T14:42:00.001-07:00

Evidently I'm a noted player of the Fender Mustang.

Show

2007-07-19T08:54:00.001-07:00

The Marzipan Library adhesives For Arthur Magazine #1

2007-07-17T08:55:00.000-07:00

Click the logo to hear an hour of music and talk from yours truly for the fantastic Arthur Magazine website and while yr there why not subscribe as well ?

June Gloom

2007-05-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

A video by Josh Laner for a song on my upcoming LP "Brad Laner- Neighbor Singing"

Rod Poole 1962-2007

2007-05-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

At one time Rod and I were very close friends. He gave me some very valuable guitar lessons and taught me techniques and exercizes that I still use to this day. He helped me out quite a bit with my gear back when Medicine was first starting out. His old pals from back home in Oxford in the band Swervedriver took us on tour partly due to his enthusiasm. He also made the beautiful live recording of Electric Company that I used on the "Creative Playthings" disc.
Have a listen to the full 40 minute live solo guitar piece that is linked to when you click on the picture and send your loving energy to Rod as he transitions out of this world sooner than he had planned.

Guitarist Rod Poole pushed the envelope on music
In the wake of his tragic death, friends remember 'a true artist' who loved to explore new sounds.

By Greg Burk
Special to The Times
May 19, 2007
Guitarist Jim McAuley had no trouble this week recalling his first meeting with fellow guitarist Rod Poole. It was at the home of Nels Cline, well before the three recorded their "Acoustic Guitar Trio" album.

"I was standing in Nels' kitchen, sipping coffee, when these amazing crystalline tones emerged from the living room," McAuley said. "Rod Poole was just tuning up, and already I was mesmerized by his sound."

Cline, a key player in L.A.'s experimental music scene and now a member of Wilco, described Poole as "a true artist, probably a genius" in a note on his website, posted after Poole was stabbed to death on Sunday in the parking lot of Mel's Drive-In.

His wife, Lisa Ladaw-Poole, was there when it happened.

The couple was walking toward the restaurant, after attending a concert at the Dangerous Curve art gallery downtown, when a car nearly struck them and other pedestrians. The musician spoke up; the vehicle's driver and passenger both got out, the latter allegedly with a knife, according to police. A half hour later, Poole died.

A security camera provided images that led to the quick arrest of Michael and Angela Sheridan. They were arraigned Wednesday.

Ladaw-Poole fielded a lot of phone calls this week, many of them from the parents of Poole's guitar students who hadn't gotten the news and were wondering why he didn't show up for their children's guitar lessons.

"These children loved Rod," Ladaw-Poole said Wednesday. "He was really kind with them."

Poole was a highly unusual guitarist, equally drawn to the distorted sound bombs of Jimi Hendrix and the spontaneous microcosmic tracings of Derek Bailey.

"I never could quite figure out how one man with one guitar could generate such an all-enveloping aural space," said Devin Sarno, an electronic drone artist who recorded Poole twice for Sarno's W.I.N. label.

Having left his native England in 1989 to find a more exploratory climate, Poole fell in with a devoted cloister of Los Angeles pathfinders that included Kraig Grady, Brad Laner and Motor Totemist Guild.

Grady, who composes in microtonal scales that employ the frequencies between Western music's traditional 12 tones, introduced Poole to his own mentor, Erv Wilson. Wilson is a pioneer in microtonal music and "just" intonation, which tunes to vibrations' natural mathematical ratios rather than the tempered scales used in orchestras.

Never one to take halfway measures, Poole lived in Wilson's house for more than five years and emerged with his own way of hearing.

He had a Martin guitar re-fretted to 17 tones and, using his already precise, shaded finger-picking technique, began improvising trance-bound variations on spacious arpeggios that could extend until time vanished.

Poole's solo, group and bowed-guitar recordings have appeared on the W.I.N., Transparency and Incus labels (the last being Bailey's imprint).

Poole's music was the first and last thing heard Wednesday on KXLU-FM's (88.9) "Trilogy" show, this night hosted by old Motor Totemist friends Emily Hay and Lynn Johnston.

Pinging and plucking, gently contracting and expanding, with "just" harmonies fluttering their intangible physicality throughout, the improvisation exuded an uncanny sense of peace. In contrast to its quiet beauty, it was titled "The Death Adder."

Earlier in the day, Johnston described Poole as "a low-key guy — he was only in your face about music."

Two words that surfaced repeatedly when people talked about Poole's artistic temperament were "passion" and "intensity."

Experimental guitarist Jeremy Drake, a curator of the "Sound" concerts at Schindler House in West Hollywood, wrote on a Poole tribute site: "Rod was always fully present. Good mood or bad, you got the full Rod Poole experience whenever he was in the room."

Cindy Bernard, a primary "Sound" series organizer, said Poole was extremely meticulous about the many recordings he engineered for the series' archive: "It's rare to know someone whose enthusiasm for music is so pure."

Instrumentalist and composer Vinny Golia, long the most pervasive influence in this city's edge-music community, agreed. Poole once recorded a performance Golia had done with German bassist Peter Kowald. When Golia wanted a copy, Poole broke down his equipment, carried it over to Golia's house and made the transfer there, not wanting to take any chances that the copy wouldn't be perfectly compatible with Golia's system.

Guitarist Carey Fosse, who knew Poole mainly in Poole's transitional period of the early '90s, called him "a wonderful improviser, very disciplined, and with beautiful articulation. I think his technique led him to areas he hadn't imagined."

Poole had been disappointed by the lack of opportunities to play forward-thinking music in Los Angeles. Though he had made few live appearances for several years, Bailey's death in late 2005 inspired him to help fill what he felt to be an artistic gap.

Poole's wife said he had been working on "just"-intonated interpretations of Irish folk songs, and that the noted film sound mixer Giovanni Di Simone had made new recordings of him.

Grady recently received an invitation to perform at a microtonal festival in Germany and was asked if he could help extend the offer to Poole.

He will be there in spirit.

Ladaw-Poole said she will take her husband's ashes back to England. A memorial service is being planned.

Laner Brothers Easter Music 2007

2007-04-14T20:18:00.000-07:00

Steaming Coils Live 1988

2007-04-14T20:16:00.000-07:00

Debt of Nature 1986

2007-04-14T20:15:00.000-07:00

excerpts from the final performance of my noise improv orchestra

Deep in the heart of the Valley....

2007-03-28T23:42:00.000-07:00

The Sugarplastic in 1995

2007-03-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

Featuring my bro Josh on the fabulously metronomic drums. Enjoy !

Austin Landing

2007-03-05T08:35:00.000-08:00

Strange but true, I'll be playing (solo acoustic guitar/laptop/singin') in Austin as part of SXSW. All of this because I've just signed with the fantastic Hometapes who'll be releasing my first proper solo album, "Neighbor Singing" this fall.

NVSO video by Josh

2006-09-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

What is the nexus between myself, the captain and tennille and pink floyd ?

2006-09-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

from toni tennille's blog :

PINK FLOYD, THE WALL, AND ME

In the late 1970s, BRUCE JOHNSTON and the late CARL WILSON of the Beach Boys, JOHN JOYCE, an LA studio singer, and I occasionally sang together as a background quartet for recording sessions. It didn’t happen often, because all of our schedules were very busy, but you can hear our work on a few notable recordings.... listen carefully to Elton John’s DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON ME and you might be able to pick out my voice in the background vocals.
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When constructing the harmonies we sang, we usually placed my voice in the center of the chord. My voice is in the male tenor range, and is very distinctive. The whole point of background harmonies is to have a seamless sound and vocally perfect blend. My voice stood out less, and blended better with the other voices if it were placed in the middle.
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One day in late 1979, Bruce called me and asked if I would be interested in doing a background session for the famous rock group PINK FLOYD. They were in LA, working on a new album, and needed some background work. To be honest with you, although I had heard their name, I wasn’t at all familiar with their music, but I ALWAYS keep an open mind musically, and I thought it would be really interesting to see how the “other half” works in a recording session. I told Bruce I’d love to, and a date was set.
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The session was set up for a Sunday morning at an unpretentious Hollywood recording studio called Producer’s Workshop. Daryl went with me...he was pretty curious, too. I guess I sort of expected to walk into a studio full of people lying around, smoking dope...lots of groupies..that sort of thing. What I found when we got there surprised me completely!
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We were met, almost as soon as we walked in the front door, by Dave Gilmore, who, along with Roger Waters, was the face and sound of Pink Floyd at that time (they have since parted ways). Dave greeted me and Daryl heartily with a smile and a handshake, and stated that he had seen us on television that morning. I immediately thought, “What was a rock star doing, watching Sunday morning television?” Daryl and I had recently taped a guest appearance on a children’s TV show called KIDS ARE PEOPLE TOO, and Dave told us he watched it that morning with his kids! So much for the “rock star” stereotype!
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It turns out I would be working that day on a new concept album they were going to call THE WALL. I had no idea at the time what a musical landmark it would be. When Bruce, Carl and John arrived, we set to the business at hand. People often ask me “Which songs did you sing on?” Well...at the time, we worked on sections of songs that had no name. They would play a section of a song, tell us what they wanted in the way of backgrounds, and we sang them.

Christopher Willits' subtle soundtracks

2006-09-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

Christopher Willits' subtle soundtracks
By Jennifer Maerz
Article Published Aug 30, 2006 in the SF Weekly

San Francisco is made for heady soundtracks. When a heavy morning fog reminds you that fall is just around the corner, there's nothing like bundling your ears up under a pair of headphones and watching the white skies compress the city into a misty oasis. It's perfect timing, then, that internationally recognized electronic musician

Christopher Willits just released a new collection of cinematic songs. The Bernal Heights resident's blissful, mostly instrumental compositions complement the aesthetics of a cloud town and its gray subway systems, giving new points of light to both types of visuals. Willits is an artist who seems to exist in the same ether as his music, hosting audiophile events in the East Bay under the Listen tag and eclectic live showcases here in S.F. as Overlap, when he's not globetrotting. He recently traveled to New York, the U.K., France, and Japan — sampling fresh fish and raw horse neck and connecting, collaborating, and recording with appreciators of his "folded guitar" technique. That phrase, which he brought into the name of his 2002 release for 12k, Folding, and the Tea, describes a custom-made process of merging his six-string and a laptop, crafting melodic patterns that drift through your eardrums. He's released more than a dozen discs in the past six years, for such esteemed labels as Ghostly International and Ache, and he's included on rosters in Japan, Belgium, and Ireland.

The latest output from this prolific Mills College graduate comes under the moniker the North Valley Subconscious Orchestra . The release, titled The Right Kind of Nothing (Ghostly), fuses Willits' skills with those of Brad Laner — best known as the founder of Los Angeles' '90s-era heavy noise poppers Medicine (Laner also records solo as the Electric Company). "I've always been a huge Medicine fan," Willits writes via e-mail. "Very inspirational guitar work for me." Linking up through mutual friends at the local label Tigerbeat6, Willits and his hero easily merged ideas. "The whole time I was just trying to ignore the 1995 part of my mind yelling, 'Holy fuck!'" he admits. "We kept talking, [and] it just seemed natural for us to get together and make some sounds. I luckily played it cool enough — no teenage-style autograph requests — to make it to his Eichler Studio in L.A. and jam a number of times throughout 2005. It felt very comfortable to work together, and I think the music shows that."

Songs on The Right Kind of Nothing are one- to five-minute bursts of ambient, shoegazing electronica, minimal electro pop, skeletal sketches of chimes and bird chirps, and thickening static rolling over wayward beeps and blips — like a sonic marriage between Slowdive and Plaid. "We just wanted to make an LP with all the sounds we wanted to hear, from sweet vocal melodies to krautrock grooves to huge walls of melodic guitar noise," Willits explains. Nothing is available only as a digital download, so you can pop it straight into your iPod (check www.christopherwillits.com for info) and let the ebullient human hums and sparkling guitar folds alight among your travels around the city.

Not one to sit and wait for the next project, though, Willits has another solo album coming out soon (Oct. 17, to be exact), and says it features more vocal harmonies, string arrangements, and drums alongside those cascading guitar sounds. And that's not even mentioning his myriad other collaborations — with famed Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and sound artist Taylor Deupree, both slotted for 2007. Oh, and in the meantime? "I'm learning how to make clothes, trying to make friends with these nasty raccoons outside my place in Bernal Heights, and I want to redesign my garden." Apathy seems to be one of the few options unavailable to Christopher Willits.

crushing, even annihilating. tee hee hee

2006-08-31T17:30:00.000-07:00

(click the text to see it in readable size)