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starkweather



Last Updated: 11/16/2009

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Status: Single
City: Philadelphia
State: PENNSYLVANIA
Country: US
Signup Date: 6/7/2005

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Saturday, November 21, 2009 



Rx/OTC by Philly film-maker Troy Coffee... the theme piece composed by Dalek's Oktopus  for the short film is one of the soundscapes on our full length, this sheltering night,  for Deathwish Inc.

Oktopus reconfigured our racket into drones, drifts and deep noise to act as an accompanying pulse to latch onto during the unease of Rx/OTC.

For our release 3 soundscapes are by Oktopus and 2 are courtesy of Sophia Perennis.

The 6 starkweather songs are: "epiphany," "broken from inside," "all creatures damned and divine," "one among vermin," "bustuari," and "martyring."

47:40 starkweather ... 14:50 Oktopus & Sophia Perennis.
 
Release date for the full-length is looking to be May/June.  Expect the split with Overmars
to be early 2010.



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8:10 AM 
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Wednesday, November 18, 2009 

Starkweather join the Deathwish family, two new releases announced!!!

We are proud to announce that Deathwish is now the label home to Philadelphia's legendary Starkweather. Arguably one of the most important and and influential bands in heavy music, we are truly honored to be working with them on a variety of upcoming releases.

From Starkweather:

It's been a long four years since our last release.  In that time we've been to Europe, played some spectacular and not so spectacular shows in the States, and have written over two albums worth of new material in the bunker. After fulfilling a contractual obligation, we're finally ready to announce that we've signed with Jacob Bannon's Deathwish Inc. With a nearly two decade relationship, this union seemed like the next logical step for the sometimes difficult and idiosyncratic guys in Starkweather. Having known us for as long as he has, Jake is well aware of how obstinate, eccentric, and protective we are of what we do. 

 Our first release on Deathwish will be a split release with the colossal Overmars from France. Our contributions to the album are "Armed Memory", a seven and a half minute long jagged and aggressive song in the vein of "Machine Rhythm Confessional" from Croatoan and the second song "Nightmare Factory", a Black Sabbath by way of Fear Of God meeting Ved Buens Ende dirge that courses nearly 14 minutes. "Nightmare" was planned to appear on Croatoan but the version we recorded was sub par and thusly shelved. Both songs for the split were recorded October 11-13 at DeadVerse Studio in Union City, New Jersey under the unflinching eye of Alap Momin. Both songs are dense, claustrophobic, and evoke the paranoia that fueled their writing; containing layer upon layer of guitar, vocals that ebb and flow with the twisting rhythmic passages, and the near telekinetic foundation of the Rosa brothers backline. As a nerdy side note, there was no click track, no beat detective, and no vocal tuning; the drum tracks are one continuous take with us playing together in the live room. A release date and other specifics will be announced soon.

 Our next release on Deathwish, This Sheltering Night, was actually recorded before the split with Overmars at various sessions throughout 2007-2008 at DeadVerse Studios. This is six Starkweather songs ("Bustuari," "Epiphany," "All Creatures Damned And Divine," "Broken From Inside," "Martyring," and "One Among Vermin") and features soundscape interludes created by artist and musician Elizabeth Jacobs, under her guise as Sophia Perennis, and Oktopus from Dalek.  Also adding textural flourishes on some songs is Forbes Graham, ex Kayo Dot and long-time auxillary member Bill Molchanow.  The entire album can be played as one continuous 73:41 piece or as separate tracks. A release date and other specifics will also be announced soon.   

 In the pipeline: 

*Split CD with Singapore's Little Girl Terrorist (featuring the 30+ minute long Drug Holiday) that will be available on Swarm of Nails Records. 

*Artwork for the Little Girl Terrorist split will be provided by Alex Eckman-Lawn.  

*A split CD with Cali grindcore mavens thousandswilldie that will showcase a slightly different dimension in sound. Featuring a song that carries a spacious Pink Floyd aesthetic crossing angular dissonances of Deathspell Omega and Ved Buens Endes/Virus. This clocks in at about 15 minutes. Both songs will be recorded at DeadVerse Studio in October. 

*Another full length that we have 3 full songs written for and an overwhelming amount of other material to pull from.

 "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars."
- Khalil Gibran 

"There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be."
- Leon Bloy
5:59 PM 
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Friday, October 09, 2009 
Studio Notes (10/3/2009-10/7/2009)
SATURDAY
Started early Saturday afternoon.  Load in up the god awful fucking stairs.  Set up kit and spread Harry's shit out to easier mic.  Harry brought his junkyard goodies. Saw blade, hollow core drill bits, ribbon crasher, Hammerax noise maker. Tuned drum heads and set up mics. Vin's bass rig in the isolation room.  Same setup as last time.   Played through my rig for scratch tracks.

Started tracking Drug at about 8 o'clock.  Did 3 or 4 takes.  First keeper take 23 continuous minutes.  Take 2 better last 7 minutes.  Drug Holiday done.  Song so long that listening to the playback to find mistakes is difficult.  I cannot concentrate for 30 minutes straight.  Alap edited  2 sections together and we were set to record Space Jam.  

Exhaustion helped the laid back feel of Space.  Loose, relaxed, and very un-drug holiday-like. Went from being a 13 minute song to being a 17 minute song. A few takes later we were done.

Rennie got the idea to strip down the kit and surround Harry with some of the noisy metal shit. He and I recorded a 7 minute jam that we'll eventually use later. 7 hours and Harry had completed a full album's worth of music.  50 plus minutes.
   
Harry needed to get home so I drove him.  Union City to South Jersey to Union City. So fucking tired. Fell asleep for 15 minutes in a rest area on the turnpike. Missed customary trip to IHOP.  Bummed. Slept 2 hours.
 
SUNDAY
Got Vin's bass tone.  Monstrous.  Ridiculous.Worked on some bass line ideas. Played astonishing bass tracks.Finished his work in 3-4 hours. Machine.
 
Guitar time.  Simplified: One cabinet, one mic, 2 amps, 2 guitars. Struggled with capturing tone. Producer Jesse Cannon worked his guitar magic. Change compressor, twist some knobs. Crushing tone captured.  CRUSHING. 3 a.m... Time for bed.

MONDAY
Started recording guitars at 3 o'clock. Telemarketer firm below deadverse  hit with subsonic rumbling. Telemarketer cowardly approaches landlord. Landlord brokers uneasy cease-fire.  5pm: Resume black noise cannon. Realize the entire wing of the building is shaking.
 
Started laying down basic tracks. VERY tense. Slower tempos more difficult than tech parts. Frustration  and self hatred.  Fuel. Finished main Drug rhythms late that night.  I think. Rennie left. Has work Tuesday night.

Tuesday
Worked on unfinished 2nd guitar parts.Started tracking again at 5 o'clock.Tracked some sections with different tone.  Dynamics. Again very tense. Fucking miserable. Worked on Space Jam.  Fairly quick work.  Things blurry.  Started 2nd guitars for Drug?

Wednesday
Another 2 or 3 hours sleep. Deprivation becoming a factor.Write and tab 2nd guitar parts in iso room. Short temper.  Difficulty playing.  Rennie returns.  Alap arrives. Cubano sandwiches, empanadas.  Yes.

Learning 2nd tracks while recording.  Bad idea.Under prepared.  Self hatred.  No longer fuel. Grind through parts.  Dissonant. Detuned. Nauseous harmonies.  Sickening undertow.  Graceless. 2nd tracks channel the nightmare factory. Finish at midnight.  Satisfied with results.

Load out and leave.

You will probably despise this.

DECEMBER 18-22
Record Space 2nd guitars. Track vocals. Mix. Exit. Down those damned stairs.

Thanks to:  Alap Momin for his patience and skill, Jesse Cannon for his guitar expertise and loaner amps used on the textural overdubs, Will (Dalek) for the use of his room, White Castle, Spanish food, Red Bull, Diet Coke, Ritalin, and Clif Bars for sustenance, mouse traps and dead mice, the Silk Factory for the atmosphere.
TTF.
 
3:33 PM 
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009 
Pre-Production For Drug Holiday And Space Jam:

"Drug Holiday" was written about 2 years ago.  The title is medical slang for when a patient makes a conscious decision to stop taking his (or her) medications.  You figure it out.  It's roughly 28 minutes long and was written in a little over 2 days.  It is everything that has ever gone wrong compressed into 28 uncomfortable minutes.  There are moments of elegiac beauty but the vast majority of the song is downtuned and twisted; odd time signatures, dissonant stabs, warpath drums.   I do not think in 4/4 time and traditional melody.  There is something else inside.  I think in shards and images that feel like frames torn from a movie reel. Most will probably see it as self indulgent crap and not want to take the time to sit and absorb 28 minutes of difficult and at times baffling music.  I understand. 

We started work on Drug Holiday March 20, 2009.  It was Harry's idea, so blame him.  I'd been putting off working on it because it seemed like too much; too overwhelming in it's length, too overwhelming in it's creation, and too overwhelming in the knowing that I would have to recreate that initial mindset when it came time to record.  My goal was to leave the song, guitar wise, as close to the original as possible.  It seems to me that the songs we create need to capture passing moments like shaky hands holding a camera.  The image, however blurred,  gets captured, filtered through our lenses and then spit out in a rehearsal room in South Jersey.  This song captured a very specific moment, one that I'd like to capture in 0's and 1's, and then forget.  I didn't want to edit the original form too much, to make the end result less authentic.   The sections that were changed happened to be created during another "drug holiday" but this holiday was accidental and not the conscious decision the first one was.
  
We're 5 days away from October 3rd and in the final stages of tweaking and memorizing the song.  It has 22+ parts, endless variations within those parts and ranges from some of the slowest, most basic material we've ever written to some of the most physically challenging parts we've ever created.  I've voted for recording it as 3 or 4 separate songs and pasting them together, which kind of flies in the face of all of my 'digital recording/cutting and pasting/editing parts together sucks' rants but I think this song is a different beast.  Harry's vote is to record it in one take.  Harry usually wins.  At the very least we'll record 3 or 4 full takes and then assemble the best parts of each.  It's hard to say at this point but the idea of tracking a song that's nearly a half hour long in one continuous take seems absurd.
  
"Mania is a magical orange grove in a nightmare."  Robert Lowell

The song with the working titled "Ved Space Jam" is a completely different beast than "Drug".  It was the result of us fucking around in the rehearsal room one night and making some unstructured noise.  We've never really been a band that jams to come up with parts, things are usually pretty well planned out before we hit the rehearsal room.  By adding just a little bit of structure to the song and weeding out some of the mistakes we came up with a 13 minute long song that has as much to do with Pink Floyd and Radiohead as it does Negativa and Voivod.  It's a mix of tribal drumming, Tool influenced bass playing, and quietly dissonant chords.  Rennie's goal is to sing through the vast majority of it so this whole song is uncharted territory for us.   This song, if anything, is under rehearsed.  We'll go in with a basic structure and see what happens.  Very different for us.
  
I only have a few more days to come up with 17 second guitar parts for Drug and 8 parts for Space.  No pressure.  Again, the mindset has to be right.  This is the time when I start getting anxious, making crazy lists of things we need to buy, things we need to bring (most important Red Bull, Diet Coke, and Clif Bars), parts we need to remember, and some production ideas that we'd like to try.  The other guys are pretty relaxed.  I guess everyone has their role in our dysfunctional family and mine is to bug out and keep track of the details. 
 
Alright, that's way too much.  We'll have pictures and updates while we're in there. 
Enough.


11:25 AM 
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Friday, September 04, 2009 

BANDS/BOOKING AGENTS NEEDING PHILLY shows... we rarely play Philly... we are of no use when it comes to booking shows, trading gigs...
...Please contact these reliable promoters ~
jessica: www.myspace.com/hessianobsession 
johnny brenda's brandy@johnnybrendas.com 
heydayentertainment www.heydayentertainment.com
r5productions www.r5productions.com
pure death productions www.myspace.com/puredeathproduction
staggered works www.myspace.com/swphiladelphia   
praying mantis www.myspace.com/stevethemantis 

...There are others in Philly... we'll post more contacts later...

9:04 AM 
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Thursday, September 03, 2009 
It's official.  Starkweather has finally been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the digital age.  We now have a site on Facebook.  You know how to find us.  What the fuck is next, Twitter?  These are sad times.
10:45 PM 
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Thursday, September 03, 2009 
STARKWEATHER's interview in English on http://www.bizarrebizarre.net/

Click on the banner:





thank you, Michael D'Amour for conducting this interview.
1:04 AM 
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Friday, December 26, 2008 
Thank the great guys at www.grudgecityactivities.com  for the photos of the show. Three weeks later and we're still talking about all of the characters we met out there. Salt Lake City treated us better than we've been treated in our own home town. Thank you for that.

I hope Santa was good to you:


http://grudgecityactivities.myphotoalbum.com/slideshow.php?set_albumName=album39

Todd/Starkweather.
12:53 AM 
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Tuesday, December 16, 2008 

It was 40 insane hours. It was 2 time zones. It was 4 flights. It was one of the best shows Starkweather has ever played. It was one of the best shows ever because of you, not us. We were ragged, we fucked up, we were exhausted and sick from the altitude, but we were also given the opportunity to play in front of people that cared about us, people that felt, on a visceral level, what Starkweather is and will always be about.

There are the obvious people we thank: Nate for putting his money on the line, Clint who kept things organized on our end, Casey who apparently hatched this whole fucked-up scheme, the members of xReflectx, Trevor and the kind guys in Tamerlane who loaned us their gear, Jack for his bitter humor and for being the only only straight-up thug looking motherfucker to ever have Nietzsche tattooed on his neck, Mike for shuttling us from the airport to our hotel and for the kind words he shared with me, Sias, Blake, Este Pizza dude and staff for the hospitality, Slug Magazine, the SLWeekly Paper, my brother Colin for the hotel rooms, food, travel expertise, and calm American Psycho Patrick Bateman-like demeanor, Mister Murren for properly representing da Bronx, and last but definitely not least, Jan Vermeerbergen for making the trip from Antwerp, Belgium, for being the ONLY guy who could get Starkweather to Europe, for putting out the amazing Croatoan vinyl, and for providing endless humor when things got tense.

Not so obvious Thank Yous:

Every single person that walked through the door at Club Sound. You, and not us, made this show the success and amazing memory that it was. You made sure that Nate made his money back, made us feel like family, and whether you stayed for our set or not, you made us feel like the 20 year olds that we haven't been for a long time.

The Mormon Church for easing the guilt and condoning lecherous behavior.

The Red Iguana for serving up the best fucking Mexican food I've ever had.

Pat the van driver, Club Sound and their soundman, xReflectx, Tamerlane and Sleeping Giant for bringing their sizable followings and rocking the fucking house.

Follow this link to find photos of the show as well as some insight into Salt Lake:

http://www.grudgecityactivities.com/2008/12/one-week-and-two-mornings-after.html

http://grudgecityactivities.com/

Thanks,

Starkweather

7:44 AM 
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Friday, December 05, 2008 

It's now 1 day until we land in Salt Lake City and 2 days until we hit the stage. This show has been years in the making and the brave and crazy people at Grudge City Activities have rolled the dice on bringing Starkweather to Utah. This is more than likely the last time we'll ever play west of Pittsburgh so if you live out west and want to see us, please take a drive. If you want to see us play a bunch of material of off Crossbearer and Into The Wire before we put that stuff to rest, please take a drive. If you want to make sure that the GCA dudes make their money back, please take a drive. You get the message. Please take a drive. I remember the days when Rennie and I would drive to Boston to see bands like Poison Idea, 7 hours up 7 hours back, with little to no sleep. So again, take a drive.

Whether there are 50 people or 5,000, we hope to make it worthwhile not only to the GCA guys, but also to the SLC nuts who have flown across the country to see us play in NYC, as well as the many friends we've met online.

The bottom line... Throw down some cash, come in from the cold, and listen to us play a WAY too long hour and a half set.

Thanks,

Starkweather

 

http://www.slweekly.com/index.cfm?do=article.details&id=FE2832DF-14D1-13A2-9FDACF5A29FB80B0

 

http://www.slugmag.com/article.php?id=1485

7:23 AM 
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