We're coming back to the EU for a brief tour of France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Netherlands and Germany packed into less than three weeks!

This time the lineup will be CHES SMITH (drums), SHAHZAD ISMAILY (bass), TREY SPRUANCE (saz, guitar), TIMB HARRIS (violin,viola, guitar), and JAI YOUNG KIM (keyboards). This lineup is the rhythm section from hell (or heaven, depending on your disposition), and we are very very happy to be bringing it to Europe for the first time.

We will be playing 3 short sets at each of these gigs (UR surf set, Ishraqiyun set and SC3 favorites set). There are two gigs where we'll be playing John Zorn's Masada material --- the Barcelona gig and at Northsea Jazz Festival. The NSJF gig will have an entire set of Masada, and the Barcelona gig will have a shorter Masada set as one of the three sets on the other gigs. All of these gigs are gonna be really crazy!

Official apologies to the UK, Scandanavia, Eastern Europe and Italy for not making it this time. We are building our base for 2010, and we PROMISE that an Eastern Europe / Balkans tour will happen, maybe including Turkey. If you want to help us put that together, just write us here and we'll refer you to the booking folks.

In the meantime, this summer there will be fires in Western Europe!

A show at Maxwells in Hoboken, NJ on 5/29 has just been added.

Tickets for the 5/30 Brooklynn show have been selling fast -- so if you're planning on going, you should get your ticket soon.

Thanks to the Maxwell's show, no one around there should miss out now. And the multiple-show masochists who'll stock up on the rare northeast SC3 appearance a second time will have a chance to debate which show was better... (you never can tell what makes for an "on" night)

Come to think of it, this is the first time SC3 are doing a show in Jersey.
(trivia fact: SC3 recorded the rhythm section for the Xaphan album at a great studio in Jersey City called Big Blue Meanie).

As with most of the other shows on this tour, Kayo Dot opens.

...oh, did we mention we are touring the Northern United States in May/June?

We're flying oringal SC3 drummer Danny Heifetz (also of Mr. Bungle) out from his home in Australia, and are constructing the show in 3 short sets like we did in the early days (back in the Eyes of Flesh, Eyes of Flame and Second Grand Constitution and Bylaws era). The material won't be a HUGE departure from what we've been doing lately (due to our usual 0 days to practice scenario we've grown unhealthily comfortable with) --- but, it will be a healthy departure in other ways. We'll have brilliant fellow compositionally-obsessed musician Toby Driver on bass.

Did I mention that his band Kayo Dot is opening the show on this tour?

Take that, all you naysayers who for a decade or more have been forced to settle for always-increasingly-intolerable-levels of electro-putrefaction, who might be tempted to look up from behind the confinement of your nihilistically bestickered laptop and announce "live music ensembles with traditional instruments playing creative/original music are a thing of the past, especially in this economy", and be right...

But no, not yet. Come on down to the show.

May 22 2009 8:00P

Turner Hall Ballroom Milwaukee, Wisconsin

May 23 2009 12:00P

Summer Camp 12 NOON SHOW! Chillicothe, Illinois

May 24 2009 8:00P

Hookahville XXXI Thornville, Ohio

May 26 2009 8:00P

Pearl Street Northhampton, Massachusetts

May 27 2009 8:00P

Space 538 Portland, Maine

May 28 2009 8:00P

The Middle East Cambridge, Massachusetts

May 30 2009 8:00P

Music Hall of Williamsburg Brooklyn, New York

May 31 2009 8:00P

First Unitarian Church Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Jun 2 2009 8:00P

Le Cercle Quebec City, Quebec

Jun 3 2009 8:00P

La Sala Rossa Montreal, Quebec

Jun 4 2009 8:00P

The Mod Club Toronto, Ontario

Jun 6 2009 8:00P

Wakarusa Music Festival late night 2 am, technically 7th Ozark, Arkansas

Jun 9 2009 8:00P

El Rey Theatre Los Angeles, California

Jun 10 2009 8:00P

Great American Music Hall San Francisco, California

Secret Chiefs 3: Traditionalists
Le mani destre recise degli ultimi uomini











We'll let the blurb below do the official talking, but this release (coming REALLY soon in May!) will undoubtedly come as a bit of a surprise --- that's how it works around here! This is an album by SC3 satellite band "Traditionalists". It's not "Book of Souls". It focuses exclusively on the cinematic sound of SC3 -- the dark side in particular. This one is NOT for the faint of heart!!! There's plenty of charm and beauty to it as well (listen to the clip), but when the shadows start crawling around you, don't say you haven't been warned!

Now for the blurb:

From out of nowhere Secret Chiefs 3 (operating here as Traditionalists, one of the seven ‘satellite bands' introduced on Secret Chiefs 3's album Book of Horizons) presents an elaborate "colonna sonora paranoica" — a paranioac film soundtrack. The film is imagined, but the horror is real. This entire project, as you might expect from this band, is a spiralling allegory that extends itself well-beyond its starting-point cliché as a "soundtrack for a non-existent film." But that's always been one of those potentially good clichés, in theory anyway. Pursuant to that potential, this particular work remains singularly, decidedly faithful to its sworn genre, the Giallo Horror Film Soundtrack.

At this point, it's fair to assume we can take the dizzying conceptual maelstrom that comes with anything SC3-related as a "given," right?
Alright, so we won't go into that here.

But a word on the strictly musical side of things is warranted. The first thing to note is that Giallo cinema music has the distinction of having been graced by nearly all the great masters of Italian film music in general: Bruna Nicolai, Stelvio Cipriani, Ennio Morricone, Goblin, Pierro Piccioni etc. And though this area of "B cinema" certainly has its appreciators, one still-underplayed element is that when considering the music, Giallo's harmonic language was developed by brilliant people who, by current musical and aesthetic standards, set the bar very high. For any of us wannabes to share in the magic of this lost artform, we have to bring a bit more more to the table than some vintage amps & keyboards and vague undeveloped musical ideas based only in hipster aesthetics. Because if you ignore the deeper intricacies of the music theory at work, the orchestration, the arrangement, etc., you're really only asking to make an ass of yourself (which is likely anyway no matter what you do). But the usual thing is to sample stuff or simply borrow themes from the masters and to then repackage them in a new "updated" context. Well, in a climate like that we should emphasize that Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini is quite simply an album of original compositions. The process should be likened to when someone is learning another language and begins to have dreams in that language. It's the same process in any style of music, really. So to state it plainly, these are original compositions that were dreamt into being in the harmonic language of the Giallo Horror Film Soundtrack. It's that simple. The point is not to be strictly period-specific, or culturally-specific, but to be psychically specific -- caring first and foremost about how to convey things that will affect the psychic state of the listener in the intended way. After all, the point of dreaming in this particular language, with all its sophistication, elegance and beauty, is to go that much more deeply into the territory of nightmare... and um, let's just say SC3 feel it's necessary to pursue this particular range of the human experience at this moment.

The album itself is a full orchestral score that fully capitalizes on SC3 stock of musical manpower (Trey Spruance, Ches Smith, Timb Harris, Shahzad Ismaily, William Winant, et al.) and adds to that a broad cast of A-list hired musicians (among them Laurie Goldstein and Hans Teuber). The material runs the gamut; dissonant violent strings receding to beautiful textures with flute and female vocals through echoplex; analog synthesizers, harpsichords and celestas over a tight '70s-style rock band rhythm section; crazed psychedelic freakouts with major payoffs; church organs granting repose, until tape treatments and a chorus of possessed shrieking voices force the listener to reconsider his position on the existence of Evil... If you can imagine all that produced to the standard found on any other Secret Chiefs 3 release, you've pretty much got the idea here.

The album was mixed analog to 1/2 inch tape. LP comes in 180 gram vinyl. CD is a mock gatefold LP, with a printed sleeve. Pure win.

*180 Gram vinyl LP Limited Edition!

*Mixed analog to 1/2 inch tape

*First SC3 album on Mimicry in 5 years

*CD is a mock LP gatefold with printed sleeve

*First "Apocryphon" and first full-length album by a SC3 "satellite band"

*sure to scare off some of the more timid SC3 listeners, but be a seriously coveted item for anyone even mildly into this kind of thing

*all original music and original paintings in artwork

*decidedly walking in the footprints of the Great Masters of cinema music. They don't call it Traditionalists for nothing, you know!

*If you're looking for Book of Souls, this definitely isn't it.

Pre-order at:
http://www.webofmimicry.com/catalog/index.php

LP is limited and flying out the door fast.

Understandably, we’ve had a few inquiries about the Brookdale Lodge show in the Santa Cruz Mountains, like "where the hell do I get tickets" (umm, important) and "how the hell do I get there". (also neccesary)

Question one:

online at
www.folkyeah.com
http://www.myspace.com/folkyeahpresents

This is Brett, the promoter for this gig. Thank God there’s a promoter like him in the area now -- I see he’s got Cluster coming. Amazing. Help him out: if you’re going to this SC3 show, buying now will help him know what to expect as far as capacity for the event.

We love this place. Here are some pics:



As far as how to get there:

From Highway 17 South, towards Santa Cruz:
Take Mount Herman Road exit at Scotts Valley
Go right at light
Follow Mount Herman Road through Scotts Valley
and all the way to it’s end at Graham Hill Road in Felton
Go Right on Graham Hill Road (there’s a light)
Very shortly thereafter you hit Highway 9, at another light
Take another right.
You will wind up the mountain, through Ben Lomond
A bit past Ben Lomond is Brookdale
The Brookdale Lodge is pretty much all there is in Brookdale
It’s hard to miss
look for a giant three storey painting James Dean

straight?
any further questions can be directed to Brett or google maps, which is more reliable than our home-brewed directions...

California will receive due punishment.

April 3rd we will be playing at the Brookdale Lodge
http://www.hauntedbay.com/features/BrookdaleLodge.shtml

This is a craggy old very strange and haunted place with a rich if ’chequered’ history, and is very special to us for it’s being very near our band’s home nest in the mountaintop forest outside of Santa Cruz. A new promoter in the area has opened up this spot to the appropriate kinds of performances (doom metal, freak folk, and us) and is to be commended -- opener Sean Smith heralds the evening’s conquest of the weirdness haloing this psychically troubled ’energy’ spot. Picturesque in the extreme, for those willing to make the trek. For weary Bay Area travellers, we suggest an early dinner and perhaps an overnight at the Tyrolean Inn.


April 4th will see us entering the massive and beautiful Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. This is an opening slot for Les Claypool. We just completed two weeks of dates with him and his band of gifted luminaries, and couldn’t resist addressing the Californians with the proper PA setup known to exist in such huge venues as he has access to.

April 5th the same idea, this time at the Warfield in SF. San Franciscans punished mercilessly.

athens on 3/6 at the forty watt
birmingham on 3/7 at the bottletree

Ok, we disappear for years & then suddenly it's "too much information" time.

Masada preview is up. It's just a weave of five or six of the songs (there are 11 in all), culled from the unmastered mixes. In the interest of keeping the mystery intact, we only gave away parts of three of the 'heads' (melodies) in this preview -- we're 'holding out' on you, it's true, but a little teaser never killed anyone.

We're springing two "secret shows" on you Seattle folks. They will be in a few days, both on Sunday Feb 24th at around 8 and 10 PM respectively, at the good old Chummery (former Sun City Girls pad and Sublime Frequencies home base, now occupied by Estradasphere). You have to reserve seats. Seating is very limited, so do it now if you want in. We don't even know what they're going to charge, probably between $10 and $15. Write to info@estradasphere.com to get your spot & directions etc.

Madness...

Well, at the last minute, you people in the South and Texas (Houston at least) who have missed out on everything SC3 in the last eight years can finally check this live event out.

We got the offer to open for Les Claypool, and going out with him will really help us plant the final transistors in our blacked-out portions of the U.S. map -- completing the circuit for future exploits. We're still going to lose our asses, but only the world's biggest jerks would complain about something like $$$ when passing through New Orleans...

Meh, we've been navigating the landscapes of certain ruin for a long time, so it'll be well worth it. Just to see a few of our longtime, very patient fans mixing with those many shining faces out there who depend on LSD and such to cognize worlds unfamiliar will be semi-priceless... some may whine of the pairing & perhaps lament over the stain that their precarious hip-ness will suffer in buying a ticket for a Les Claypool concert -- but these in particular, like us, should be very thankful to Claypool: because it's thanks to him that we are even really able to come to this region with our own depressing & world-despising colors. The other thing is *get over it* b/c that the musicianship of Les' 4 piece band with Skerik and Mike Dillon really can't just SUCK. We know these people well (though I'm not familiar with Paulo Baldi), and they are rather far from being the kind of goofball funk-metal ass clowns that both Les and Trey are guilty of spawning a generation of. FAR from it. Skerik is a totally jaded & top-shelf instrumentalist/arranger & is a perpetually nauseated human being who specializes in hurling lucid balls of syntactical projectile vomit in all directions. He's really one of the greats.

ha! just realized we've been so busy we haven't even asked Mike Dillon if he wants to play percussion on some of our songs he learned back in 2005 for a recording sesh--- how about we do that after we post this?

So here are the dates. Some more w/out Claypool interspersed here and there are still pending. Right now there are only two of those. But there are rumours of an Athens gig on the 6th... for now it's:

02/29/08 Charlotte, NC Neighborhood Theater
03/01/08 Asheville, NC the Orange Peel
03/02/08 Newport, KY the Southgate House (no Claypool)
03/03/08 Nashville, TN City Hall
03/04/08 Atlanta, GA Variety Playhouse
03/08/08 New Orleans, LA House of Blues
03/09/08 Houston, TX Walters On Washington (no Claypool)
03/11/08 Fort Collins, CO Aggie Theater
03/12/08 Salt Lake City, UT the Depot
03/14/08 Seattle, WA the Showbox
03/15/08 Portland, OR Roseland Theatre


The Newport KY is way off the beaten path for us & just came in the door. We know there's a hive of fans in Louisville, so this one's for you: and since we always seem to miss Ohio, we're hoping this one's finally close enough so some of you can make the drive --- if you're tempted to complain, meet us halfway on this & remember that for us it's a one-day sandwich between Asheville and Nashville.

Plus that venue, Southgate House looks pretty cool.
http://www.southgatehouse.com/