• Ovum Records

An Agaric is a polka-dotted, red-capped mushroom most closely resembling Toadstool from the Mario Bros. video game. It’s also the performance moniker for Berlin-via-Sweden techno producer Patrik Skoog, who’ll be making his Seattle debut May 18 at Lo-Fi, part of the Drop monthly put on by local party crew Innerflight.

Skoog has been producing teeth-rattling techno for well over a decade, the kind of stuff that strips paint from walls with its pure intensity. Since 2005, however, he’s evolved deeper into his Agaric project, creating mature, cerebral dance music, chock full of energy and emotion, and riding the fine line of techno and house to maximum dance-floor effect. In anticipation of his upcoming performance, I sent a few questions his way to learn more about how he crafts his sound, 20-hour sets with Derek Plaslaiko, and some of the standout gigs and parties of the last year.

How would you describe your sound?

Skoog: Like a house with a classic techno interior? Sorry, that's terrible, though it's early and I didn't have my morning coffee yet ;)

I LOVE that track “No Way I Know I Feel”; such crazy sounds and textures going on in there. What’s your studio setup like and some of the tools you used to make that track?

Nice to hear that! Well, my setup for the album is slightly different to now; I was using mostly software for everything but rhythm add-ons like shakers and percussions were recorded and also vocal bits. I think it makes a big difference to have some slightly "off" percussions. Now I use hardware drum machines for all rhythms though.

Top 3 tracks you’re playing right now?

That's hard, but loving me some older Dutch records, Sterac, for example, and new stuff by Shifted, Arttu, Unbroken Dub, and lots more I can't think of.

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• Sarah Cass
• Calvin Johnson Hunts chickens with guitar.

You could cut the tension with a dull butter knife!

How was the dentist?

It was very satisfying.

Have you been fighting the cavity creeps?

I guess so. I've been fighting and winning, because I haven't had a cavity for years.

Have you been flossing? I floss sometimes and it's a bloodbath.

Almost once a day. It seems like enough, according to the dentist. If you just did it every day for like four or five days, it wouldn't be like that.

Here we have "Live Hygienic Tips" from K Records and Calvin Johnson. Anything else you'd like to say about the hygiene?

Um, uh, no.

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Two of my favorite music critics—Simon Reynolds and Greil Marcus—recently engaged in an epic Q&A at LA Review of Books. If you are super geeky about incisive, big-picture music criticism in general and the life of Greil Marcus in particular, you will be richly rewarded. If you want to get into Marcus’ canon, start with Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century and In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-1992. For Reynolds, go with Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, and Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture. Don't forget to bring your longest attention span.

I spent the summer of 1997 listening to a tape of the Jody Grind while driving in a Volkswagen Golf. The singer for that Atlanta band was Kelly Hogan, whose career since then has included joining the Rock*A*Teens, four LPs, countless collaborations and an appearance on Aqua Teen Hunger Force. You may have seen her on stage last year singing with Neko Case at the Paramount. Kelly's going to be in Seattle early next week and was nice enough to reveal some pertinent info tidbits.

Hiya, Kelly Hogan! What's new?

Everything, man—everything. I'm at The Hideout in Chicago right now, practicing with my band fellas, Casey McDonough and Chris Scruggs, for our show at the Triple Door.

Yes, you're singing there on Monday night! How do you feel about Seattle?

I LOVE SEATTLE. It's good for my complexion.

Any things in particular that you like?

I like how y'all's fruit is so large. Your blackberries are like our apples. HUGE. Like the Barry Bonds of fruit.

Any memorable Seattle memories?

Back in July of 1995, I was painting houses in Atlanta, where I'm from — and I had been painting tri-color Victorian gingerbread trim in a week of 100+ degree heat, and I got off that 30-foot ladder and got on a plane and flew to Seattle, where it was a perfectly cool 68 degrees. I almost cried with happiness and relief. I did a week out on a pier stage with the Indigo Girls in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. It was insane.

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Did you guys collaborate with Jay-Z?

There was talk of that from the label, but it never actually happened.

Well, that's another reason to come to Seattle. Seattle is like Jay-Z's second home. He's here constantly. And Beyoncé. She can't get enough of the wheatgrass shots at Healeo. She pretty much chugs the stuff.

If you say it here, in this interview, that will make it come true. Us and Jay-Z. I did actually have a thing happen because of a previous interview. I unintentionally insulted the French DJ/producer David Guetta. Now in almost every interview I have to talk about David Guetta and something I said about him that I don't even remember saying. And there it is, translated in all these different languages, this insult.

What was the insult?

Apparently, I said I'd rather vomit on my own shoes than make music like David Guetta. In the interview, we were talking about where you go in your own head when you're writing an album. I was commenting on how we never listen to the radio when we write songs. I was trying to say I'd rather puke on my own shoes than listen to the radio—so we don't end up unconsciously copying and sounding like what's being broadcast and what's popular at the time, like David Guetta. I've seen the word vomit translated into multiple languages [laughs].

Read the whole weird thing here.

The Ting Tings play the Showbox at the Market tomorrow, March 28th.

• facebook.com

All the members of all four bands took the stage. The nearly sold out crowd fell to a hush and Harms, the MC for the night, took a deep breath... "This year's Sound Off! champions are... NUDE!" The crowd exploded with cheers. The bandmates hugged each other, then hugged all their peers on the stage. It was a well deserved win. Nude's mathy brand of indie rock, featuring an electronic drum kit, is both sharp and dreamy, intricate and noisy. They put on an awesome show.

The Deep Wake took second place, Feet came in third (and won the audience favorite prize), and Special Explosion took fourth (though, it was announced that night, they were selected by Catapult Music and the Lonely Forest to open for the Lonely Forest in June—more details about that later). We'll surely be seeing a lot of all four bands in the near future.

The members of Nude—Cody Thompson, Jeff Bass, and Nathan Mead—were kind enough to answer a few questions after their win, so we could get to know them a little bit better.

You won Sound Off! Congratulations! You get to play Bumbershoot this summer, you get a bunch of free gear and studio time and other awesome prizes. Were you surprised when you were announced as the winner on Saturday?

We were blown away when they announced us as the winner—really, it was surreal. We all felt sick. Or maybe we didn't know what we felt. We hadn't even joked about winning with each other. It just felt like such a big thing, such an unsure thing that it felt dangerous to invest too much hope in it (heartbreak is heavy). We practiced our brains out—we wanted to perform as best as we could—but if we dreamed, we did it quietly. It's been slowly washing over us since then. We're so thankful.

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Two of my favorite Seattle-based labels meet in this interview between Light in the Attic and Medical Records. The former entity distributes the latter, and in this Q&A with Dr. Troy on LITA’s blog, we learn more about the inner workings, aesthetics, history, and future of Medical, one of the world’s foremost excavators of classic, obscure synth-centric music from the ’70s and ’80s. (Disclosure: I’ve written liner notes for both companies.)

After the cut, hear a track off of Axxess’ 1983 LP, Novels for the Moons, the next Medical release, due in mid March.

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Place: Central District, Madison Ave. Safeway, chips aisle.
Time: 2/24/2012, 12:40 pm

What are you shopping for?
Baarth Sage: Snacks for a bus ride.

Where are you taking a bus ride?
Back home to Vancouver, BC.

You're both from Vancouver?
Yes?

What do you do?
I'm an R.A. at the University of British Columbia

What's the worst thing that's happened since you've been an R.A.?
Um, the worst probably is poop in the shower...

And...
Cheesy puke, like freshly eate n pizza.

Is there a lot of puke?
Yeah. Like a lot of puke.

They just puke on the floor?
On the door actually, all over the door.

What happened with the poop in the shower, who cleans that up?
Uh, not me, thank goodness.

A janitor?
A janitor.

Yeah?
We had to call him, it was like one in the morning. And they came in and cleaned it up.

Do you reprimand the whole floor for this kind of thing?
We had a floor meeting and we talked about how they can't poop in the shower anymore, they were pretty agreeable.

What has happened that's been terrible? Is there anything else?
A guy punched through a window a couple of times.

Was he drunk?
Uh, yes. His girlfriend had just broken up with him, so he decided to take it out on the window.

Um, it's a male only floor, I assume?
A boy and a girl floor, two.

Oh, it's co-ed?
One floor...

Oh, you're in charge of two floors.
Yeah.

Do they intermingle? Are they allowed to intermingle?
They are, but they don't at all.

Really?
The girl's floor is like ghosts.

What college is this?
U.B.C.

So that's a fairly liberal college.
Yeah.

What music do the kids like these days in your dorm?
[laughs] Dubstep and "Watch the Throne", that new song they've released, and "We're in Paris" (!).

Yeah?
Yeah, I heard that eight times last friday.

What else are the into? They play a lot of video games, watch movies?
They like to play sports in the hallways, sometimes...

Like football and stuff?
Frisbee, actually.

I guess that would be fun. And what kind of beer do they drink?
The cheapest, usually.

What is the cheapest beer in Vancouver, BC?
I guess pilsner is pretty cheap, Blue Ribbon.

Pabst Blue Ribbon? You have that in Canada? Really? I didn't know that.
And they also like this one called Caribou.

Uh huh.
It's super cheap.

Will you be an R.A. next year or is this your last year?
The last year. I've done two years.

What does it get you? Free housing? Or do they pay you?
They pay you like, a salary I guess. It goes towards your housing and food.

And what are you going to school for?
Psychology.

Are you almost done?
Yeah, one more year and I'm done.

That's cool.
Good times.

The always-engrossing journalist Philip Sherburne has an interview up at emusic.com with John Elliott, member of Cleveland cosmonauts Emeralds, prolific solo artist/side-project-haver (Outer Space, Imaginary Softwoods, Mist, etc.), and boss of Spectrum Spools, one of the most interesting record labels operating right now.

Recent Spectrum Spools releases by No UFO’s, John Turman, and Sensations’ Fix guitarist Franco Falsini are just the tip of a very substantial iceberg of transcendental sonic documents to spring forth from Elliott’s savvy curatorship. Read the interview here.

• atiba jefferson
• Andrew W.K.: Half Man, Half Bull

Are you wet right now?

Nothing that most people would notice. Sometimes when you get excited, whether you're a boy or a girl, you can experience lubrication. My nose has been running a bit. My eyes, fortunately, are nice and moist, not too teary.

Give me a party tip involving cabbage.

For that, we are going to have to move into the brussels sprouts. They are fantastic mini cabbages. When I think of sprouts, I think of those long green things that look like sperm. You cannot get more succulent than cabbage. It's like lettuce times a hundred. It's heartier, more leathery, more flavorful. So my party tip would be to never discount the power and heartiness of a baby cabbage.

The way you parlayed that into sperm was amazing.

Thank you. Sperm is an elemental archetype that you keep in your head at all times. At least I do. It's how I—we—came into this existence. If you think long enough about things, chances are you're going to end up thinking about sperm, or the sun.

The sun is the biggest sperm.

It's life giving, but it doesn't have a tail.

Read the whole interview here.

Andrew W.K. plays the Showbox at the Market this Sunday, March 4, with the Evaporators. You can buy tickets here.

A few months ago a friend posted a Portland Mercury story on Facebox regarding a record that Fleet Fox Robin Pecknold included on his top 10 of 2011 list for the Sub Pop website. Record stores in the Portland area were carrying a mysterious record by an anonymous artist with an intriguing 3D cover, Pecknold admitted that it was "easily the new album I’ve listened to most." Another link to a Bandcamp page revealed that the entire record could be downloaded for three dollars, but a glitch allowed only two of the tracks. I wrote to an email address on the page and received an apology as well as an offer to buy the actual record for only a few dollars more. It arrived a week later, sandwiched in between what looked like pieces of a cut up soda box.

To My Long Lost Love is a beautiful and hauntingly honest record. You can feel exactly what it's about with the sound alone, one of those records that takes you to the brain place of the person who made it. If you're not familiar, have a listen to "If You Say So" and "Believe It Or Not" over here.

Anonymous and I have traded some emails, and he seems to prefer to remain, uh, anonymous. From what I gather the record is about a particular person who might not know that it exists. I asked if I could do an interview, he accepted and proceeded to answer all of the questions with world wide web links. He also included an exclusive track not on To My Long Lost Love, with a somewhat different sound. Still delightfully charming, in my opinion, and for sale here.

Here's "Knock Knock," the interview is after the jump.

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British online zine The Quietus has a good interview up now with Seattle violinist/viola, tuba and erhu player Eyvind Kang. A fixture in international avant-garde/improv/drone circles, he’s performed with Sunn O))), John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Animal Collective, Secret Chiefs 3, Alvarius B, Six Organs of Admittance, Bill Frisell, Beck, and many others.

Kang’s music is marked by its delicate, intricate beauty, rich drone tapestries, and profound spirituality. My favorite Kang release is Live Low to the Earth in the Iron Age, a new kind of Scandinavian-Asian soul music (Kang is part Icelandic. Danish, and Korean). His latest album for Mike Patton's Ipecac imprint, The Narrow Garden, came out Jan. 31 (I've only heard a fraction of Visible Breath, another new release on Ideologic Organ). Garden sounds like impossibly rarefied court music composed by someone with roots in several different places and who has deep empathy for all. It’s freshly ancient.

Read the interview here.

I can't imagine that the influential reach of Eric Oblivian (nee Friedl) can be accurately measured. He was a founding member of the legendary Memphis rock band the Oblivians. He was also a member of the Royal Pendletons with Jay Reatard and King Louie Bankston. He's currently playing in the Dutch Masters, the New Memphis Legs and the True Sons of Thunder.

In 1994, Friedl started the Goner record label, which has become one of the best in the world. Also, according to Wikipedia, he's Hawaiian.

Hello, how are things?
Good, slow, sunny, fine. I have a feeling there's something else I should be doing.

What did you do today?
Bank deposit, kid to day care, suitcases from the attic, gave our one-eyed cat a catnip toy to chase around, gave treats to the dogs, did the wiggle dance and made my kid laugh.

What did you do last night?
Did the wiggle dance and made my kid laugh. Watched the end of a 5-hour tennis match and felt bad for the athletes. Planned trip to LA. Ate coffee candy from Japan.

How was your New Year's Eve? What did you do?
Worked at a University Of Memphis Tigers basketball game. Could have been better.

Have you eaten today? If so, what?
Goner Records Monday Lunch meeting at Golden India buffet. Delicious.

True Sons Of Thunder - "Get Away"

MORE AFTER JUMP, OKAY.

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