Day 10
You might look at my GEMS for the day and think it's another day of NIv being stingy with the big likes. But it's not just that, I hit a very special time in 2003. Songfight decided to have 2 simultaneous fights running. That was great because if you didn't like one title, you could shoot for the other. And I will say that it was nice to listen to some smaller fights after yesterday. But this was also a time of trolls (lots of them), including one of Songfight's most legendary. If you weren't around in 2003, allow me to tell you a little about Jeshimoth.
Jeshimoth was (is?) a record label put together by a group of friends who all decided to start Songfighting at the same time. There was Jute Gyte, Calfborg, Catknife Horsebomb, and Lightning Ear Fart. The music had different levels of palatability. Jute Gyte brought screamy industrial sounds but he's fricking brilliant. I still listen to his stuff. He has a musical mind like few others. Go to his bandcamp and you'll be absolutely blown away by the musical experiments that he does.
Here he is talking about his newest release:
Algorithmic music based on the rotation of a repeated sample's start and end points. The track begins with a sample playing from a start point of one to an end point of zero, meaning that the sample plays backward in full. With each repetition of the sample, the start point decreases slightly and the end point increases slightly, causing the sample to contract toward its center. At the track's midpoint, the start point and end point cross and the sample begins expanding outward to reach a start point of zero and end point of one. In four-part canon with binaural spatialization modulated by random LFOs.
See what I mean. He does wild stuff and brought wild stuff to SF. Calfborg was rawer and when he first arrived, he did lots of strange noise pieces. Later he would really find his groove and check out his Nur Ein run, it's wonderful. Then came Catknife, who did mumbly noise for another a minute per song. When it comes to my musical tastes- you can sing clean, you can scream your head off, but fuck you if you're mumbly and mushmouthed. CKHB hit all the wrong buttons for me but then again, that may have been the point. We don't know. It may have been trolling, it may not have.
LEF was surely trolling. Every song was a Gumby sample and then a collage of another samples. It drew a lot of hatred. And then Sober did the one thing that you should never do. He fed the trolls. He made a "rap" song calling out Catknife and LEF for trolling and that only made LEF troll harder and creepier. LEF started using a text to speak program and started making songs that they hoped would make Songfight happy. It's creepy as hell. I haven't gotten to the one where he starts calling out people by name. It was like knowing that a serial killer kept a picture of you under their pillow.
Probably more of that story later when I reach the Jeshimoth supergroup Pumpkin Buzzard.
Here are the GEMS:
- Bullseye Girl by Abbot Presley
- Bullseye Girl by Jute Gyte
- Angry All Over by The 'Over
- Field Day by The White Hat
- Stand In The Circle by Omphaloskepsis
- Foam Rubber by Jute Gyte
- Driving by Brother Machine
- Driving by Tbonius
- Hold My Calls by Piltdown
- Hold My Calls by tripped
- Toronto Star by Dirty Laundry
- More Than Soup by Starfinger
- Violet Wants It Her Way by Blind Mime Ensemble
- Violet Wants It Her Way by Lonbobby + M0bo1d
My memories don't deceive me, 2004-2006 really were the "golden years" of Song Fight.