Category Archives: Weird News
New video from DJ Nu-Mark features no toys, but kick-ass beats
When we first added ex-Jurassic 5 member DJ Nu-Mark to the Weird List almost a year ago, it was mainly because of his “toy” DJ sets, in which he wires up various noise-making children’s gadgets to his mixer and goes nuts like a hip-hop Willy Wonka. You won’t really see any of that in the video for his latest single, “Tonight”—but you will see a very cool portable/toy record player called a Columbia GP-3 and some nifty animation, including an Asteroids cameo. Oh and the tune is pretty dope, too.
Peep the video below; the song itself will be on Nu-Mark’s debut solo album, Broken Sunlight, due out this summer. You can also apparently buy the track as part of a single package on Nu’s website, but you may have to squint to make sure you’re getting the right one. Either I need new glasses or that dude’s online store needs better labeling.
New music from Rudely Interrupted: “So Tired”
It’s been awhile since we checked in with Australia’s leading “differently abled” power-pop band, Rudely Interrupted. So what have the lads been up to since June 2010? Well, they’ve apparently released their debut album, Tragedy of the Commons, available on iTunes, Amazon and elsewhere around the Interwebs. They’ve played North America, Singapore, New Zealand and various other places hither and yon. They’ve lost their only female member, “human metronome” Connie Kirkpatrick, who we can only assume has a solo album and/or an all-girl band with disabilities in the works. And bassist Sam Beke has acquired a really bitchin’ cape. So they’ve been keeping busy.
Most recently, they’re apparently putting the finishing touches on a new EP called Mystery Girl, due out later this year. A few weeks ago they released the first single from it, which we’ll attempt to embed below. It’s called “So Tired” and it’s a catchy little number that lead singer Rory Burnside describes as “cynical and not meant to be serious.” They can’t all be public service announcements, people.
Watch Insane Clown Posse’s Hatchet Attacks festival live on Ustream
Insane Clown Posse + Pay-Per-View? Genius! Why hasn’t anyone thought of this sooner? If there’s one thing Juggalos love more than road-tripping to the middle of fucking nowhere to see their heroes live, it’s getting baked and sitting in front of their computers watching videos. Everybody wins.
Anyway, yeah, for those of y’all that can’t make it to Farmington, New Mexico on May 26th for ICP’s big Hatchet Attacks festival, you now have the option of watching the whole thing at home on Ustream for a mere $19.99. That’s only like $2.50 per act, or about one-tenth of a penny for every time you hear a “Woop! Woop!” At those prices, you practically can’t afford not to order the pay-per-view stream.
Check out the 10-minute infomercial (with ICP, there’s always a long-winded infomercial) for more information. And by the way, in case you’re curious, this is where Farmington, New Mexico is. Did you think I was kidding about it being the middle of fucking nowhere? I’m amazed they can actually transmit video from there.
Zammuto, solo project from The Books’ Nick Zammuto, touring with Explosions in the Sky
The Books‘ Nick Zammuto released the debut album from his solo project, Zammuto, back on April 3rd on Temporary Residence and we were highly negligent in calling out how freaking awesome it is. Called Zammuto, the album definitely bears more than a passing resemblance to The Books’ cheeky sound collage pop, but it’s also got quasi-prog-rock workouts (“F U C-3PO”), Auto-Tuned electro-soul (“Too Late to Topologize”), spacey post-rock (“Idiom Wind”) and more stuff I’m currently enjoying too much to describe. So I’ll just shut up about it and instead leave you with this link to Zammuto’s Soundcloud page, where the album is currently streaming in its entirety.
Nick has assembled a three-piece backing band to help him recreate these songs live, and by all accounts they’re pretty awesome, too. They just wrapped up a handful of dates, but they’ll be back on the road this June opening for Explosions in the Sky. No love for L.A. on this tour (or the last one, even though they played San Francisco and San Diego), but hey, that’s cool. We’ll just be over here feeling sorry for ourselves if you change your mind, Nick.
6/17 Houston, TX – Warehouse Live
6/18 Mobile, AL – Soul Kitchen Music Hall
6/19 Tampa, FL – The Ritz Ybor
6/20 Miami, FL – Grand Central
6/21 Athens, GA – The Georgia Theatre
6/22 Charlottesville, VA – Jefferson Theater
6/25 Morgantown, WV – 123 Pleasant St.
6/26 Chicago, IL – Chicago Theatre
6/27 Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium
We’ll leave you with a video of the band rehearsing the track “The Shape of Things to Come” in Nick’s Vermont studio. Anyone know where I can get one of those little fisheye cameras? Those things are rad.
New Anklepants album available for free download
Good news for fans of our favorite penis-faced EDM producer, Anklepants: For a limited time, he’s making his brand-new album, Social Patching and the Pixel Pagent Facéd Boy, available as a free download on Bandcamp. Go get it while you still can, and if you dig it, be sure to grab the free bonus track, “Bellofacé,” which he just added yesterday. Yes, the man’s generosity knows no bounds. Now, who’s hungry for grapes?
Video: Dolchnakov Brigade cover the Muppets’ “Bein’ Green”
So we just heard from our buddy Yon Yonson, ringleader of the Moscow-via-Brooklyn synth-punk stormtroopers Dolchnakov Brigade, and apparently things are going well for them. They’ve been organizing flash mobs, getting booked on New York public-access comedy shows, and generally doing all they can to spread their message of “Palevish!” to the masses. Nice work, comrades! We hope your addition to The Weird List helped hasten your rise.
The latest and greatest thing Yon wanted to share with us is Dolchnakov Brigade’s latest video, a cover of the Kermit the Frog classic, “Bein’ Green.” Set on the mean streets of New York, it really brings home Kermit’s message of tolerance and mutual respect. Also, it’s a classic example of how most New Yorkers really couldn’t give a shit that there’s a dude painted green running down the street singing a Sesame Street tune.
Check out Dolchnakov Brigade’s “Upcoming Events” page to see where their quest for world domination is taking them next. Currently, it’s Harrisburg.
New Mike Patton live album coming July 3rd, featuring the music of Luciano Berio
By Mike Patton’s prolific standards, he’s been keeping pretty quiet of late. We haven’t heard any new music from the lead singer/screamer/vocalese-generator of two of our favorite weird bands, Mr. Bungle and Fantomas, since last November’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers, his soundtrack for the film of the same name. But come July 3rd, Patton’s months-long silence will finally come to an end with the release of Laborintus II, his live rendition of a piece by the Italian experimental composer Luciano Berio. And based on the clip below, it is weird shit indeed.
Berio wrote Laborintus II in 1965 to mark the 700th anniversary of the birth of Dante, who wrote a little poem called the Inferno that some of you may have been forced to read in a comparative lit class at some point. Apparently Berio himself performed the piece in 1972 with a blow-up doll and old car tires gracing the stage. Patton, in collaboration with the Belgian-based Ictus Ensemble and the Dutch choral group Nederlands Kamerkoor, plays it more straight—so don’t expect any Mr. Bungle-like hijinks here. In fact, he pretty much just recites poetry in Italian and leaves the ominous wailing to the chorus. (You can watch the whole performance on Vimeo if you’re so inclined. But that sorta feels like cheating, doesn’t it?)
Laborintus II comes out July 3rd on Patton’s Ipecac Recordings.
Christeene’s debut album, “Waste Up Kneez Down,” is coming on May 26
Good news from deep in the…uh, well probably not the heart of Texas. The colon? Wherever it’s being spawned from, Christeene’s debut album has a release date!
For those of y’all not familiar: Christeene is the self-styled “drag terrorist” we first blogged about back in March, when s/he was just days away from wrapping up a Kickstarter campaign to fund the release of her first full-length LP. She hit her Kickstarter goal of $10,000 just 24 hours after we made her our Weird Band of the Week, which was probably just a coincidence, but which Jake and I chose to believe meant that a.) this blog is more influential than we realized and b.) we really should come up with a Kickstarter campaign of our own at some point, because apparently you people are soft touches.
Anyway, the fruits of that ten grand are finally due to arrive at the end of May, in the form of an album called Waste Up Kneez Down. And there’s gonna be a release party in Austin that you freaky Texans (not an oxymoron, I’m told) will not want to miss. I’ll let Christeene explain:
It’s been some hard hittin and heavy winnin here in Austin, and we are stanked as all hell to announce that the Official Album Release for WASTE UP KNEEZ DOWN is going to be on Saturday May 26th, Memorial Day Weekend here in Austin Texas at Elysium Nightclub! Haaaaaay!!!
Elysium is a dank and stank club where we released our EP three years ago, and we wanted to return to the scene of the crime with the album release.
The new songs produced by JJ Booya (Brett Hornsby) are fugggggin phenomenal, yallz. We can’t wait for you to fill your ears with this stank.
The album has 12 tracks plus a bonus track that’ll make ur nay nay cry.
Jake and I have been to Elysium and we can confirm that it is, indeed, dank and stank.
Here’s the promo video for Waste Up Kneez Down, which will forever change the way you view gay porn, ’80s aerobics videos and The Brady Bunch.
Here Comes the Mummies are playing the Indy 500
We’re not sure what mummies and auto racing have in common. But something about the stanky-sweet undead funk of Here Come the Mummies seems to have the folks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway sold. After playing there last year for the 2011 Indy 500, they’ve been invited back for the 2012 edition of America’s most prestigious event that involves driving cars around in a big circle really, really fast. (So far, the only other confirmed musical act appears to be Lynyrd Skynyrd, who at this point are basically undead, too.)
I should probably point out that the Mummies are not playing the actual race itself, which happens Sunday, May 27th. They’re playing the “Pole Day Qualifications.” I was really hoping that’s some kind of stripper competition, but my one friend who actually cares about auto racing just burst my bubble and informed me it’s the day the drivers compete to see who gets prime position at the start of the race. “Pole Day” happens on Saturday, May 19th and unlike the Indy 500 itself, which is mostly sold out, you can still get tickets for it—for a mere 15 bucks—here.
The Mummies play the Coke Stage at 6:15 p.m. Wonder if Coke knows its corporate banners will be accompanied by a bunch of dudes in mummy costumes whose set list typically includes songs like “Attack of the Wiener Man” and “Libido Knievel”? We hear they do a “PG version” of their set for events like the Indy 500, though. Wouldn’t want to upset those God-fearing NASCAR fans. And yes, I know the Indy 500′s not NASCAR. Split hairs, why don’t you?
Let’s play this post out with a clip from the Mummies’ concert DVD, Undead Live. More cowbelt!
Watch the new Mission Man documentary, “Do What You Love”
I have to be honest: When I first heard that someone had made a documentary about Gary “Mission Man” Milholland, I was really hoping it would suck, because I was jealous that someone beat us to the punch. Actually, it’s surprising it took this long. Given the success of other documentaries about struggling outsider musicians (Anvil! The Story of Anvil, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, etc., etc.), Milholland and his defiantly weird brand of homemade hip-hop is practically begging to be the next great cause célèbre of the film festival circuit.
I’m not sure Lawrence Kim’s 30-minute day-in-the-life snapshot of Mission Man is going to be the toast of Sundance or anything, but it does not suck. In fact, it’s really, really good. Damn you, Kim! We’ll have to set our sights on making the first documentary about Dwarr now instead.
Kim’s doc, very fittingly titled Do What You Love, can be watched in its entirety on the film’s Facebook page. Or you can peep the first nine minutes of it below. It might not make you a fan of Mission Man’s music—you either “get it” or you don’t, and most people don’t—but if it doesn’t make you a fan of Gary Milholland, then you probably have no soul.
