|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
ESPDISK 5058LP
|
Normal Street is another salvo in ESP-Disk's drive to revive weird rock! Writer/musician/film maker Chris Shields says: "Near the DIY venue, cooperative, and punk/freak haven, The Firehouse, in Worcester, Mass, there's a street ironically named 'Normal St.' I was lucky enough to be playing a gig with Painted Faces there a few years back. Driving up the steep, labyrinthine roads we spotted the green sign, had a laugh owing to some solid riffing by all present, and then, moved on. The gig was good, the people great, and the memories, the stuff that makes time on earth meaningful. Little did I know Normal Street would return. Considering David Drucker's body of work and his unique brand of free form expression and clever pastiche, I shouldn't have been surprised. When you listen to Painted Faces what you're hearing is a mind at work. When Drucker begins to write and record, every dumb sign, bad horror movie, seemingly innocuous turn of phrase, petty embarrassment, transcendent joke, and musical influence are drawn together like iron filings to a magnet. What results is a document of a particular point in time for the artist. There are infectiously haunting hooks and raw atonal passages, cheap synths (and as time goes on less cheap ones), simple but effective chords, ramshackle percussion (a plastic toy maraca passed among audience members that refuses to die), and a host of other elements that all add up to something very special and deeply personal. It's a portrait of the artist as a freak . . . Normal Street is a fractured collection of songs, sounds, ideas, sometimes brief and other times delicately sustained; its stream of consciousness mischievousness bringing to mind Zappa and the Mothers filtered through the angst of bedroom pop and tape label minimalism. Many artists hope to embody Drucker's "Outback Steakhouse" approach ("No rules. Just right") but few have achieved such consistently fun results..."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
ESPDISK 5032LP
|
Painted Faces is the long (strange/trip) running voyage of weirdo David Drucker, which began in Florida in 2009 and decamped to NYC in 2011. It has sometimes been a loose band in the past with a revolving line-up of outsiders and interlopers (known as The Freak Band), but is usually a solo endeavor, and the bulk of the recordings have been done as such. PF has always been a home recording solo project, one-man-band style heavy on psychOdelic/outsider folk/noise/experimental vibes. He started self-releasing CD-Rs in the early days and quickly jumped to tapes on a variety of labels including Already Dead, Lava Church, J&C, Null Zone, Tall Tapes. A "legendary" CD compilation on Gulcher Records and an LP from Already Dead and Almost Halloween Time in Italy brings us to the here and now. Tales from the Skinny Apartment is somewhere around the 20th or so Painted Faces release... he has long lost count. Drucker runs/curates gigs (and records at) the Skinny Apartment, his dwelling place in Ridgewood Queens, which some folks have called the "realest DIY zone in NYC". He also rips in Dead River Company, Big Hiatus, Shecky, Canyon River Blues, and countless other unknown subterranean improv zoner outfits. "Ripping" involves keeping it freaky and weird and ripping sets wherever/whenever, i.e. always being down to perform whether in a kitchen or a packed ballroom. Ridgewood Rippers are the crew of artists that populate Ridgewood and the loose "scene" around the Skinny Apartment. Much of it is in jest, a self-inflated mythology of nonsense which is pervasive in all rock and roll "scene" histories. As a student of rock/pop history, Drucker is fascinated by the loose associations that connect folks from various zones together... i.e. Miles Davis and The Grateful Dead... it's all the same though, the labels and genre distinctions are completely arbitrary. Drucker is known for falling apart on "stage", with performances heavy on humor, horror, stoned digressions, and cathartic bouts of therapy, part performance art/part standup comedy.
All music written and recorded by David Drucker at The Skinny Apartment in Ridgewood, Queens, 2017. Featuring Mike Green (Mezzanine Swimmers) on guitars on "I Took Too Much Acid in 7th Grade", Cop Funeral on electronics on "Seafood Special", Chris "Mr Transylvania" Shields on background vocals on "Massachusetts Is a Magical Place", Eva "Nighttime" Goodman on violin and backing vocals on "The Ridgewood Ripper".
|
|
|
|