03/09/10
It’s fair to say that although this site hasn’t had any Soft Riot news in – well – a year it’s not to say that nothing has been going on! This news thread is more of a general document of the creative activities that your author is involved in. After a year of writing and more recently rehearsing, Savage Furs are playing their (our?) first show next Thursday, Sept 9th at a small yet cool venue called The Drop in Stoke Newington.
We’ll be having a number of talented folks DJing the night including James of Brave Exhibitions, some members of the electronic group My Elastic Eye and our friend Zara, aka Miss Glitch playing a variety of music that roughly is summed up on the flyer itself: WAVE / SPACE / MINIMAL / COLD / POP / ELECTRONIC / GLAM / MUTANT / POSTPUNK.
After that there will be some writing and then I’m off to Canada for a couple of weeks. We’re then playing October 15th at the Buffalo Bar for the club night Bedsitland. Perhaps we’ll see you around.
Tags: Savage Furs, shows, Soft Riot
Posted in NEWS |
16/08/10
It seems out of place but the old city of London feels autumnal these days. I even had a mild chill despite wearing a jacket when waiting on the platform for the tube this morning. In a strange way it was comforting; good ol’ gray and glum England.
After a number of months of a hazy transition out of one old shell into a brand new shell, some clarity was found in regards to where my world of design was heading. The old hat that I was part of, The Wax Museum, is no longer and I have gone on my own to start anew under a more personal moniker: JJD Works. I thought about how to condense over 10 years of work under a number of different names and guises into something that was to-the-point and conveniently accessible, as well as being really easy to update as my track record tends to filled with eons of site neglect when the classification of editing gets anywhere out of the realm of “fast” and “lazy”.
I’m also happy to announce, at least in a pre-liminary form, that Savage Furs are going to be debuting the live show in September. The date and venue are set but just banging out the details right now so announcements will come soon. Thanks go out to Del Jae and Chris Flatline for spending numerous hours in a cramped Limehouse rehearsal room working out the musical points and maxing out a very small PA.
Finally, there’s been word buzzing around about the Texan video artist (just straight up artist?) Tommy Boy and curiousity led me to a mix he recently did with Vice Magazine. I highly recommend it; a wide variety of outsider electronic music from now and then, including Houston-based Indian Jewelry, who are quite good. You can find this mix here.
Tags: JJD Works, Savage Furs, The Wax Museum, Tommy Boy
Posted in NEWS |
09/06/10
So, still no Soft Riot material if that’s what you’re here looking for — all two of you that is. Not to say that there hasn’t been a lot going on. In fact, quite a bit has been going on. A lot of this activity has been going on with Savage Furs, who have finished another demo containing a set of four songs. For the limited distribution we’ve been handing out in this preliminary stage of the band, the tracks have been getting a lot of good feedback. I’ve provided a few links at the bottom of this little update should you be interested in reading.
Moving forward, the main priority is getting the band onto the stage! This is coming along rather nicely as we’ve been in midst of rehearsals. There will be more news on this soon as shows are coming right around the corner when that moment is right. You can check out the band’s various online guises in the near future for updates but there will likely be updates here as well.
I have also lent some of my time to helping out my friends in the London synth duo called A Terrible Splendour, who play “darkly luxurious synthesized pop”. We have been recording, re-recording, and working on a few tracks that are about to go into the mixing stage and I can assume they will have tracks posted from these sessions soon. It’s been been fun and interesting working on music that I’m not entirely involved in, and trying to suggest approaches to elements within the context of music other people have written. And having a chance to brush up any production skills I think I may have is always a plus.
Oh yes, and here’s those links:
SAVAGE FURS : An Interview with YouIndie.com (June 2010)
SAVAGE FURS : “The Throne of Satyricon” (Goldkicks, May 2010)
SAVAGE FURS : Review on mickmercer.com (February 2010)
Tags: A Terrible Splendour, interview, mixing, recording, review, Savage Furs
Posted in NEWS |
04/05/10
After 8-9 months of sporadic work and random late night sessions, there are now not one but three new White Lodge Mixes up on this site! The ideas behind some of these mixes have been brewing around in the back of my mind of seemingly years and I’ve finally put in the ear and brain muscle (well, the brain ain’t really a muscle, ain’t it?) to get them out of my mind and into a presentable format. The main concept behind these, especially mixes 003 and 004, are somewhat autobiographal: choosing tracks from a genre or movement in music that I was somewhat involved in at the time. These tracks are either favourites of mine, tracks that I myself felt were an important exhibit of that era, or tracks of bands/musicians that I had a bit of a personal relationship with.
Knowing that pretty much most of the people listening to this are going to be friends and people I know so these mixes, in themselves, are sort of friendship gifts in a way. Thanks for reading and listening!
A good window of a soundtrack to my teenage years as a hardcore kid and a lot of music springing forth from the underground scene across North America (and beyond) at the time. There’s a few 80s classics of the genre in here, including tracks by Embrace (not the British guitar band) and my favourites, Rites of Spring. There’s also a few groups more local to my area including Breakwater and Sparkmarker, who were quite impressionable on a young JJD and likely many young, doe-eyed kids across the Americas during their tours.
MORE INFO / LISTEN / DOWNLOAD
In the transition from the mid 90s to the late 90s (I hit the mark of age 20 sometime in there), there was a vague exodus of kids playing hardcore and resurrecting what was possibly quite unfashionable at the time; a music they had some fascination and history growing up with. This music involved synths, futurism, and was buried by the post-grunge/punk of the the late 80s and early 90s. A number of early tracks have been chosen from groups that a few years later became quite well known and others being trailblazers that released one or two records that were unkindly buried and out of print (such as The VSS, Satisfact, etc.)
MORE INFO / LISTEN / DOWNLOAD
A more sporadically built mix, “Synth Or Swim” features a lot of post-punk, synthpop, electro, and coldwave stuff that’s been in my library for a long time as well as a few more recent discoveries — some well known, some not — all roughly floating around in a time period between 1978 and 1984. There is a bit of a personal history history within; a story with me but all and all set up in a way that’s a good listen all round. Including tracks by John Foxx, Ike Yard, Japan, Ronny, Units, and more.
MORE INFO / LISTEN / DOWNLOAD
Also check out White Lodge 002 : Sparkwood and Twenty-One for a mix of ambient and late night/dark space soundtracks…
Tags: mix, playlist, podcast, White Lodge
Posted in NEWS |
19/01/10
Here. There. SAVAGE FURS are everywhere. Well, not quite yet. We’ve bled like a virus into digital arenas. Painting pixels with a blackening psychedelic cancer. My writing is getting a bit pretentious now. Oops. Yeah, please visit www.myspace.com/savagefurs, www.facebook.com/savagefurs/, and www.last.fm/artist/Savage+Furs at your convenience.
SAVAGE FURS are currently recording three new songs for a second demo and then gearing up to play live with an aim to playing by April at the latest. I’ve got some ideas to conclude a small batch of SOFT RIOT songs I’ve been working on but time and more importantly, the right frame of mind are hard to nail down right now. Finally, I’m cooking up two new mixes that I hope to have up in the coming weeks — two autobiographically compiled mixes of hardcore/post-hardcore in the early 90s and then the second being what I saw as it’s transition into the post-punk/new wave movement that sprung forth in the mid to late 90s and exploded in the naughties. It’s a bit hard to condense it down to 15-20 tracks but I think it should be a good one. Until then…
Tags: MIXES / PLAYLISTS, podcast, Savage Furs, Soft Riot
Posted in NEWS |
23/12/09
Well, after finishing mixing in October and since then doing some rehearsing and getting the other bits of the whole “package” together, SAVAGE FURS are available for listening on a 5-song demo and on our MySpace at www.myspace.com/ savagefurs .
We are currently looking for a third member who can play guitar or synth or both. Contact us through the MySpace or here if you want to hang out and play music with two gentlemen with a rather strange sense of humour.
Some new songs are being currently written and after a longer than anticipated stall on production of Soft Riot material, I foresee this lurching back into action quite soon. See you in 2010!
Tags: Savage Furs, Soft Riot
Posted in NEWS |
23/09/09
SAVAGE FURS are currently mixing and I in lieu of that have been incredibly busy. Should have some announcements on that next month.
Posted in NEWS |
05/08/09
This summer comes up a little past three years since I’ve started the SOFT RIOT project — a production that is usually executed in spastic bursts as a solo thing that I did on the side to playing in other bands. The first burst was spring of 2006 when I, under the influence of a few “things”, wrote about five or six tracks in succession to the to that inspiration of influence. A few other minor sessions occurred in the fall of that year. These endeavors were released as a CD-R. There was a gap — my band at the time, PRIMES, was busy writing, recording, and touring. I then moved to the UK and got massively disoriented for a while and started writing a few songs and then sat on them, not sure where it was all going. It all circled up in the spring of this year after relistening to the things I recorded in 2006 and saying; “Yes, let’s keep on that tangent — I think we got something going on there.”
Currently I’ve been rounding out a few new tracks to complement the older tracks in one entity — a deadly ball of sound quietly rolling down a hill. If all the “ducks line up in a row” this should see some sort of public release before this year is out. But a lot of my time has been spent lately writing material for a new band/project called Savage Furs (more info coming soon — it’s real good…).
So that’s the music end of things. I also do other things, like write and make ill-advised music mixes and playlists on trivial subject matter. This site houses those activities as well and there’s activity buzzing around in those parts of the site. Sort of an umbrella site for a few things I do really. Bon appetit (?).
Tags: Primes, recordings, Savage Furs
Posted in NEWS |