Chris Weisman - Maya Properties (OSR tapes/Youtube???)

hey - im new around here and this is probably considered blasphemous but chris weisman has paid his cassette dues if ya ask me so im gonna do this anyways...

i spent the better half of my day listening to the entirety of "maya properties", a 3 hour, 11 part, 88 song YOUTUBE ONLY album by the prolific brattleboro based song-writer chris weisman.

it changed my life

(youtube only is a "lie": maya properties is available thru zach phillip's OSR tapes as an mp3 download for the sliding scale donation price of $0.00-$1,000,000,000,000,000,000 [infinity] and i'll be reviewing three of OSR's newest tapes in the next few days so it seemed appropriate to mention this gem.)

listen here
donate/download here

Three New Spooky Town TitlesNew Tapes From OSRNew Blanche Blanche Blanche LP

It appears that the task of being Brattleboro, VT's hype man always falls to me, but there are far worse ways I could spend a monday morning than listening to the lulling sounds of Horse Boys II or Chris Weisman's Bentonia.  After moving from the desolate cultural wasteland of the Hudson Valley, Great Valley guitarist and Spooky Town labelhead, Peter Nichols has set up shop in the quaint Connecticut river valley just over Vermont's border with Massachusetts.  It's here that Spooky Town has really begun to blossom as a label. I've enjoyed everything he's put out in the last calendrical year, but these three new ones might just be the best batch yet.  For all thing's Spooky, go here.

First off, before we get to the local jams, Spooky Town just put out a larger run of Guerilla Toss My Real Dad: Live In Nappa. I previously reviewed the band's self-released version here. If you were unable to get one of the original copies, you should have plenty of opportunities to pick up the re-release cause it's in a run of 200 copies. Fantastic stuff.

I'm very happy to announce that Bentonia, Chris Weisman's new tape on Spooky Town is one of the better entries in his vast catalog. I've only listened to it once through and I'll hopefully be writing more about it soon. Rest assured, it's worth purchasing.

Also out now on Spooky Town is another reissue of sorts, Zach Phillips fantastic Horse Boys II. This was one of my favorites a few years back in it's original run of 20 copies, and while this second release of a mere 50 tapes surely won't spread the good word on this album too much further, you would be foolish not to pick this up.  Now credited to Zach's Nals Goring moniker, it's a charming a delightfully weird collage of modern piano fugue type material (pulled that out of my ass) which also features some nursing home residents singing.  If you can only get just one thing...

Zach is also the keyboardist and co-songwritter/arranger of the duo Blanche Blanche Blanche who continue their warpath through 2012 with their 2nd tape and 4th LP (!!!) released within the confines of this year of our lord.  Papa's Proof, a vinyl LP on the French lable La Station Radar is perhaps the best thing I've heard from them yet, but you'll definitely want to get the Twice Twins 12" on Feeding Tube Records as well.  The BBB sound veers between completely saturated and dry as sand, and the new record really hits a perfect balance between the two. I simply can not get enough of the combination of Sarah Smith's wry voice and Zach's busy keyboard music. Everything you'll need to know about the record is enclosed within the label's website here.  You probably hear about a lot bands on the internet, but you've never heard a band like BBB. Find some youtube videos and you'll know what I mean.

Blanche Blanche Blanche also has a newish tape out on Zach's own OSR Tapes label. It's called Open Session Rock and it maintains the trademark of quality this gang is known for.  It's a bit more stripped down than Papa's Proof, but it's got more burbling sounds than the incredibly stark and bare sounding Our Place LP (also on Feeding Tube).  In trying to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes BBB so special, a few words come to mind: sincerity, craft, reality.  Shit, I don't think there are any words that can convey the secret of why they're so great! There's also a secret-ish BBB CDR that comes in a manilla envelope but you might have to ask nicely for that one. Codeword: #7.  OSR has some really exciting cassette releases planned: one from Howling Hex (Neil Michael Hagerty of Royal Trux fame) and one from Tori Kudo (Maher Shalal Hash Baz). Peep it all here.

Before I sign I'd also like to highlight one more recent Brattleboro endeavor: a compilation cassette of some current residents and alumni.  Standout tracks from King Tuff, Happy Jawbone Family Band, et al here. Not sure how to acquire the hardcopy, but there's digital love here.

BLANCHE BLANCHE BLANCHE / BRUCE HART splitCHRIS WEISMAN "Beatleboro"(OSR Tapes)

Brattleboro VT's Blanche Blanche Blanche is one of my favorite contemporary bands.  They are the duo of singer Sarah Smith and keyboardist Zach Phillips (who also runs OSR).  They play melodically complex but catchy pop songs about relationships and other life-type stuff.  The songwriting on 2wice 2wins is just as good as on their Night People debut, but there has been an enormous upswing in the production and recording quality.  If you haven't looked into these guys yet you're really missing out on one of the freshest new things in sound today.  This is the kind of music that should be enjoyed by way more than the 100 people who could possibly own this cassette.  While the instrumental parts may share some similarities with today's top sounds (who am I kidding? this is like if Frank Zappa or 10cc put out a tape on NNA), the vocals are completely unadorned with all that needless digital gobbledegook so prevalent in today's DIY marketplace.  Don't freak out, that's the sound of a real human voice! Get used to it, because BBB has four LPs and at least one more cassette coming out in 2012.  The B-side here contains music by Zach's solo project Bruce Hart which plays out like a slightly more expansive version of the BBB backing tracks, but with male vocals.  His tape on Not Not Fun was one of my favorites from last year and this release is just as good.  The sounds are more hazy in the Hartland, but this is a perfect companion piece.

Beatleboro is a nice amalgam of the fleshed out pop of the Fresh Sip tape (soon to be a 2LP from Feeding Tube - read my review here) and the more somber and skeletal songs on the recent Transparency 2CD.  These tunes are bursting with weirdo background vocals, bass lines and all sorts of guitars, keyboards & percussions, topped with Chris Weisman's dreamy multi-tracked voice.  Though some mild comparisons could be drawn to Lennon-McCartney, Weisman's pop-koans are entirely unique.  There's got to be something in the water in Brattleboro, because it consistently produces some of the finest music of this new century.  It's a shame that there aren't too many shows in town and none of these acts really tour, as they could surely take the world by storm with a little elbow grease.  Well you'll just have to bring the music to you then, won't you?  If you're in Southern Vermont or Western Massachusetts hit Chris up for a guitar lesson, or if you're far away, buy his book of oddball music scales here.  Also read Zach's interview with Chris here.

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Both tapes are HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Get 'em here: http://www.osr-tapes.info/

Although these two releases are listed as OSR 001 and 002, Zach has already put out a handful of great tapes on this label over the last few years: Horse Boys, Big French, Heat Wilson... Good luck finding those.

CHRIS WEISMAN "Fresh Sip" C62 (Autumn Records)

"Don't you people like anything simple"?

I was wondering when I'd get a tape that really made me want to write something...that time has come! Chris Weisman is a songwriter and bedroom multi-tracker from Brattleboro, VT. His brother Kurt was in the much celebrated band Feathers and he is the bass player in the much hyped (and really rather good) band Happy Birthday along with Ruth Garbus and Kyle Thomas (both of Feathers). Musically and lyrically he fits in comfortably with what I would call the artists of "Brattleboro Renaissance": a loosely connected group of bands and songwriters creating music that in my mind is the polar opposite of Feather's spacy sound, and definitely far removed from the brutal death trip (wink wink) of Noise Central: the Pioneer Valley of Western, MA, just 45 minutes southern. Theirs is a music that manages to truck in both surrealism and substantiality, all the while grooving to some impeccably crafted, and often complex, song structures. Besides the aforementioned acts, I would also include the Happy Jawbone Family Band and the music of Zach Phillips and Sarah Smith (Easy St./Sord/Horse Boys) in this category.

"Fresh Sip" is quickly becoming one of my favorite albums of recent memory. Coming off of his "Tape Walk" CD from last year (an album that collected a half decade's worth of songs) this cassette is just as diverse, yet it feels all of one piece and flows so beautifully from one song to the next. Utilizing a sonic pallette of guitars, simple percusion, and occasional primitive keyboard work beneath Chris's multi-tracked falsetto vocals the songs on "Fresh Sip"are his most fully realized to date. At first listen, I felt this music was begging to be the soundtrack to many a tasteful dorm-dweller's sleepy Sunday (in a good way!), but upon further examination there is a level of rigorousness to this music that defies easy classification and might take some people out of their comfort zones. {In fact, I'm listening to this right now on the stereo of my local coffee shop and I can tell it's seriously irking the guy at the table next to me. So much so in fact that he just slammed down his drink and demanded that the lovely barista turn it off at once! True story.}

"You can't really call an animal mean when she has to fight forces unseen in the popular dream".

What makes music like this succeed or fail, ultimately, is the quality of the voice, and Weisman uses a number of inventive phasing effects, self-harmonies and some tasteful delay to flesh out his already wonderful melodies. These effects are never intrusive and really add peaks and valleys to the album, where acoustic song follows electric barn burner, follows a capella diddy. The lyrics include some humorous cultural and musical references ("I get that, good for me" type stuff), but they also bare their composer's soul from time to time, as well as including some snaky twists that defy standard rhyming practice.

I've seen Chris perform twice, once by himself and once with a small group. I would say that if he can teach a band this music and perform it live then he would have something that could potentially be ever better than this work. Until then, we will have to be content with his frequent missives from the deepest parts of sound and emotion.


http://www.autumnrecords.net/ --- buy "Fresh Sip" and "Tape Walk"
http://chrisweisman.com/ --- download many of Chris's songs