To Live and Shave in L.A. Live and Shave in L.A. (Les Tricoteuses, Savage Land Records, France, ......

TLASILA/Sudden Infant: Euro Tour 2008

•

To Live and Shave in L.A.

(Les Tricoteuses, Savage Land Records, France, 2007; painting by Gregory Jacobsen.)

To Live and Shave in L.A. (aka TLASILA) rip through sonic boundaries and demolish cultural mythologies with a kinetic mélange of violent, constantly shifting musique concrète structures, splintered electronics, and stark, dramatic vocalizations. Their powerfully evocative compositions can take the form of forty-

minute Kuiper Belt freak-outs or dense, demonic, two-minute pipe bomb pop. Their avowed enemy is genre itself, their ultimate goal, unknowing. Hyper-literate texts, ungovernable performances, and a ruthlessly meticulous production regimen yield recordings without referent, sounds that garrote taxonomy.

(TLASILA, live in Philadelphia, May 2007.)

TLASILA was formed in Miami Beach, Florida in 1991 by Tom Smith, an alumnus of late 1970s-early 1980s dada-improv outsider cabals Boat Of and Peach of Immortality, and the earliest (1985) incarnation of Jon Spencer's legendary Pussy Galore. He was soon joined in TL&S by Frank "Rat

file:///C|/Users/ommyth/Documents/My%20Webs/tlasila/tlasila_tour_pdf.htm (1 of 36)3/23/2008 10:36:47 AM


Bastard" Falestra, a veteran of many aesthetically disruptive South Florida projects (most infamously, Scraping Teeth, and since the mid-1990s, the Laundry Room Squelchers), and Ben Wolcott, a filmmaker and lifelong circuit bender whose mammoth screeching oscillators sent early Shave

audiences running for cover. Now a full-fledged collective comprising nearly 20 members, To Live and Shave in L.A. have released dozens of albums on a variety of international labels and have toured the world with jagged frequency for more than seventeen years.

(TLASILA on Murray Street, NYC, during a break in the Noon and Eternity sessions, November 2004. Left to right: Thurston Moore, Ben Wolcott, Andrew W.K., Don Fleming, Chris Grier, Tom Smith, and Rat Bastard.)

(Noon and Eternity, Menlo Park Recordings, USA, 2006.)

The ensemble has been featured, reviewed, excoriated, puzzled over, and praised in the New York Times, Le Monde, Washington Post, The Wire, Persona Non Grata, Village Voice, Spin, MTV.com, Entertainment Weekly, Kulttuurivihkot, Multitudes, Vice, Signal to Noise, Skyscraper, Voir, SF Bay Guardian,



Detroit Free Press, Chicago Reader (and dozens of other American alt-newsweeklies), Dusted, Blastitide, Perfect Sound Forever, Brainwashed, Pitchfork, etc.

TLASILA, live, MEG Festival, Montreal, 2006. Left to right: Andrew W.K., Ben Wolcott, Tom Smith, Graham Moore, Rat Bastard, and Chris Grier.)



(The official poster for the TLASILA USA 2007 tour.)

(TLASILA, live, Oakland, CA, May 2007; from left, Graham Moore, Tom Smith, Weasel Walter, and Rat Bastard. Hiding behind the amp is Rose for Bodhan's Grace Lee.)

Tom Smith is also a member of neo-Aktionist quartet OHNE.

(OHNE 1, Mego Records, Austria, 2002.)



(OHNE in Moscow, May 9, 2002. Left to right: Reto Mäder, Tom Smith, Daniel Löwenbrück, and Dave Phillips.)

European Tour April-May 2008

TLASILAFor this tour, TLASILA will feature its newest members: Chris Grier (US, guitar and treatments), Andrew Barranca (US, electro-acoustic



manipulations), Balázs Pándi (HU, percussion), Sickboy Milkplus (BE, electronics), Patrick Spurlock (US, electronics), Eva Van Deuren (BE, electronics), and founder Tom Smith (US, voice and laptop). Grier, Barranca, and Spurlock will join the tour at various intervals, engendering a

shifting, ever-mutating mosaic of sonic deformation.

SUDDEN INFANT Joke Lanz (aka Sudden Infant) creates an unique blend of physical sound-poetry and dadaistic vocal expressions, using contact microphones, prerecorded sound loops, and noises. A member of the infamous Schimpfluch collective and long time accompanist of Rudolf Eb*er, Lanz has

presented his work for more than 20 years in venues, art spaces, and asylums all over the world. Born in Switzerland, now based in Berlin, Sudden Infant has collaborated with the likes of Z'ev, Carlos Giffoni, Peter Kowald, Christian Marclay, Norbert Möslang, DJ Olive, G.X. Jupitter-Larsen, Christian Weber, Charlotte Hug,

Jorge Sanchez-Chiong, Roger Rotor, Strotter Inst, Evil Moisture, Small Cruel Party and many others. Lanz has also composed music for contemporary dance, theatre, sound-installations, and short-films. Innumerable albums have been released on many international labels, including Entracte, RRR, Tochnit Aleph,

Blossoming Noise, Artware, Klanggalerie, and SSSM. Artist residencies include Berlin (1999) and London (2004). Lanz also receives composition assignments from the Pro Helvetia Arts Council of Switzerland (2006).

(Joke Lanz, aka Sudden Infant.)

#

TOUR DATES(Dates marked "Venue TBA" are confirmed; we await additional information.)

April 9 Lille -- CCL 59

April 10 Brussels -- Domino Festival

April 11 Antwerp -- Scheldapen

April 12 Tilburg -- 013

April 13 Rotterdam -- WORM

April 15 Groningen -- Audio Office

April 16 Hannover -- Baukasten



April 17 Århus -- LJUD

April 18 København - Klub Argot

April 19 Lüneburg -- Jeckyll & Hyde

April 20 Berlin -- Festsaal Kreuzberg

April 21 Wroc•aw -- OPT (Osrodek Postaw Tworczych)

April 22 Warszawa -- Aurora

April 23 Poznan -- Rozbrat

April 24 Praha -- Chateau l'enfer Rouge

<Sudden Infant leaves the tour>

April 26 Bratislava -- urbSounds Collective

April 28 Budapest -- Venue TBA

April 29 Zagreb -- Venue TBA

April 30 Split -- Venue TBA

May 1 Ljubljana -- Menza pri Koritu / DRMK

May 2 Trevsio -- Venue TBA

May 3 Bologna -- XM24

May 4 Rome -- Venue TBA

May 5 Torino -- United Club

May 7 Marseille -- L'Embobineuse

<Gaybomb joins the tour>

May 8 Barcelona -- Venue TBA

May 9 Valencia -- Red Shoe

May 10 Madrid -- Venue TBA

May 11 Getaria -- Gaztetxe

May 12 Toulouse -- Le Lieu Commun

May 13 Lyon -- Sonic Lyon

May 14 Lausanne -- Cinéma Oblò

May 16 Geneva -- Club 12

May 17 Leipzig -- Noch Besser Leben



May 18 Hamburg -- Venue TBA

May 20 Paris -- Instants Chavires

#

(TLASILA, live at the Syrup Room, Brooklyn, 2006. Left to right, Ben Wolcott, Graham Moore, Tom Smith, and Don Fleming.)

BIOTo Live and Shave in L.A. was founded by Tom Smith in Miami Beach, Florida, USA. Smith had previously been a member of Boat Of (Athens, GA, 1979-1983), Peach of Immortality (Washington, DC, 1984-1990), and Pussy Galore (Washington, DC, 1985-6); the first TLASILA demos were recorded in July 1990.

A Short History: Smith met Frank "Rat Bastard" Falestra in 1991 at South Beach's Sync Studios. A co-owner of the dank, rambling facility,



Bastard quickly joined Smith in the nascent collective. Two years of continuous recording and local performances (under the Peach of Immortality moniker) followed. By the autumn of 1993, Smith and Bastard had amassed a larder of eighty songs.

During a Miami Beach rooftop party in the summer of 1993, Smith met electronics whiz, undisputed global oscillator overlord, and soirée host Ben Wolcott. As Miles Davis' Dark Magus album was the only music allowed on the stereo throughout the event, an invitation for Wolcott to join TLASILA was reflexively extended. Ben was convinced to join the burgeoning collective soon after.

Following a lengthy post-production regimen, To Live and Shave in L.A.'s debut album, 30-minuten männercreme, was released on the Love Is Sharing Pharmaceuticals label.

(TLASILA's 1994 debut album, 30-minuten männercreme. Sleeve design by Sam Patton and Tom Smith.)

After the release of 30-mm, TLASILA engine went into overdrive. Between 1994 and 1996, they recorded the primary elements of twelve studio albums. See DISCOG below for details.

In late 1996, Ben Wolcott spun off from TLASILA to join the remarkable mega-freak ensemble Frosty. A revolving cast of avant-garde and underground malcontents soon entered the Shavian fray... European tours in 1997 and 1998 featured Nandor Nevai, Billy Taylor, Greg Chapman, Julien Becourt, and for one exceptionally bizarre gig in Paris, Harry Pussy's Bill Orcutt...

The 1999-2000 edition of To Live and Shave in L.A. comprised Bastard, Smith, Nevai, Weasel Walter (of the Flying Luttenbachers and myriad aggregations), and Misty Martinez. By the summer of 2000, To Live and Shave in L.A. 2 had arrived, and soon after, a full-fledged clone explosion. Smith decamped for Europe to begin OHNE with Dave Phillips, Daniel Löwenbrück, and Reto Mäder. By December 2003, Bastard and Smith decided to haul the Lamborghini out of deep salt storage and get back on the demolition derby circuit. Ben Wolcott quickly re-upped, and Mark Morgan, Don Fleming, Andrew W.K., and Chris Grier followed. In the past three years, the group has metamorphosed into a collective, comprising nearly two dozen members. Newer members include Graham Moore, Andrew Barranca, Sickboy Milkplus, Balázs Pándi, Patrick Spurlock, and Eva Van Deuren (aka Orphan Fairytale).

#

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY1991

Spatters of a Royal Sperm EP (Noiseville, 7")

(Recorded as Peach of Immortality, this was the first recording exemplifying the underlying aesthetic of 30-minuten männercreme.)



1992

My Limp Went Husserl on Me

(Unreleased; a proposed studio compilation from which several of 30-mm's selections were eventually drawn; no cover art was created.)

1994

30-minuten männercreme (Love Is Sharing Pharmaceuticals, CD)

Prostitution Heute! EP (Nightcap, 2x7")

"Helen Butte" vs. Masonna Pussy Badsmell (Fused Coil, CD)

(The release of Helen Butte was delayed until 1996; it was initially to have been issued on Bulb, the late, lamented Chicago-based no-wave label.)

1995



Vedder Vedder Bedwetter (Fifth Column, CD)

Ride a Cock Overhorse EP (Menlo Park, 7")

(Ride a Cock Overhorse; artwork by Azita Youseffi of Scissor Girls.)

An Interview with the Mitchell Brothers (Audible Hiss, CD)

New Songs with Drug and Pornographic Themes EP (Audible Hiss, 7")

Wondrous, Failed Composites! / This Sore and Broken Blackpool Legacy EP (Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers, 7", split with Ceramic Hobs)



Marty Balin (Lady Granny), Spring '67 (EF Tapes, C-77)

"Her-Her," the So Her, the Put-Mouth (Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers, C-75)

Live Versions of Songs from The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg (Chocolate Monk, C-90)

1996

"23" of 26 State and Federal Obscenity Determinations (Chocolate Monk, C-74)



Angel Cash (36DD) and Carol Miller (44DD), Who Are Lactating (Love Is Sharing Pharmaceuticals, C-90)

Commmiinnggg! and Practis'd the Black Art (Western Blot, completed but never released; to be issued in a remixed/remastered version in 2008 via Savage Land)

1997

Tonal Harmony EP (Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers, CD)

1998

Where a Horse Has Been Standing and Where You Belong (Western Blot, CD)



(Where a Horse...; hand-stamped cardstock sleeves, design by Tom Smith)

Tony Conrad, Fat-Ass (unreleased)

(TLASILA spent a year attempting to complete this album, which reportedly comprised layer upon layer of black metal and grindcore cut-ups and equally distressed vocals; they abandoned the work when the then-unfinished Wigmaker was put into post-production by Menlo Park Recordings. Above, the first Internet ad for the album, ca. 1997.)

Vixens of the Mortal Ring (Spite, C-90)

2000

Peter Criss vs. Peter Christopherson (Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers, CDR; collaboration with KF36)



Tom Smith vs. Squarepusher (no label, recorded and performed by Gerard Klauder, CDR)

The External Organ (no label, recorded and performed by TLASILA 3, and credited to TLASILA 2; CDR)

Commmiinggg! and Rember'd the First Man or Astro-Man Album (no label, Klauder's TLASILA 2, CDR)



1975 (no label, recorded by To Live and Shave in L.A. 1975, aka Pengo, CDR)

2001

Born in East L.A. (White Tapes, recorded by the same-named TLASILA clone, single-sided CS)

Amour Fou on the Edge of Misogyny (Gods of Tundra, CDR; produced by Billy Taylor)

2002

The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg (Menlo Park Recordings, 2xCD)



Rare / Fave 1991-2002 (Western Blot, CDR; sold during 2002 OHNE tour of Europe)

2004

God and Country Rally! (The Smack Shire, CD)

2006

Noon and Eternity (Menlo Park Recordings, CD)

(Noon and Eternity; this version of the cover almost went to press, but was pulled at the last minute. The font was changed to a more classic serif style, and the sleeve was approved.)



Horóscopo: Sanatorio de Molière (Blossoming Noise, CD)

2007

Les Tricoteuses (Savage Land, CD)

1975 + /- 1775 (Blossoming Noise/Pygmy, CD-R; re-interpretation of TLASILA 1975's album)

The 300 Dollar Silk Shirt (X+Z=0 / ugEXPLODE, CD; recorded by TLASILA/TLASILA 2 in 1999-2000)



Live at the S.S. Marie Antoinette (Soccer Mom Ebonics, C-60, split with Sparkle Girl)

2008

Each Day Vomits Its Tomorrow (Teenage Whore, C-60)

Merely Resurrected (Heavy Psych, C-40)

FORTHCOMING

The Grief That Shrieked to Multiply (Important, 2xCD; 28 experimental sound artists remix TLASILA)

Reconquer Sleep or Disappear (Savage Land, CD; collaboration with Kevin Drumm)

Untitled Split with Totally Ripped (Isolated Now Waves, 12")

The Cortege (Blossoming Noise, CD + 12" LP)

#

COMPILATIONS

1995

Forced Cranial Removal (Fifth Column, CD)



Killing Ha Muerto... Cuantos Veces (Climax, LP)

1996

Easter, Puberty and Amplifiers EP (Ignivomous, 7")

Destroy All Music Pt. 1 (Destroy All Music, C-60)

2003

Tarot or Aorta: Memories of a PRE Festival (The Smack Shire, CD)



2005

Like a Rug in a Lake (Freedom From, CD)

2007

Fun from None (No Fun Productions, 2xDVD)

Savage Land Label Sampler 2008 (Savage Land, CDR)

FORTHCOMING



2008

Truculence (Mr. Fuckhead Records, locked groove 7")

13,000 Milliseconds (Ratskin Records, CD)

#

SELECTED RECENT PRESS



Another close oneBy Chris Sabbath

Noise luminary Tom Smith's nearly three-decade jaunt through the experimental rock abyss has been part of a sustained continuum of all his undertakings. Throughout the late '70s and much of the '80s, the main brain and entrepreneur of To Live and Shave in LA occupied his time in bands

such as Of Boat, Pussy Galore, and Peach of Immortality, before TLASILA took its first few breaths in July 1990. After migrating to South Florida in 1991, the Georgia native quickly stumbled on bassist and engineer Frank "Rat Bastard" Falestra and oscillator operator Ben Wolcott. Alongside contemporaries

such as Harry Pussy and Tamato duPlenty, the threesome submerged themselves in Miami's flourishing noise rock scene of the early '90s, carving a sonic palette void of any real structure but fraught with their influences: Throbbing Gristle, UK glam, kraut rock, and the avant-garde.

"We had no overt goal in mind, but we knew what we loved and shared a particular excitement for the things we deplored," Smith wrote in an e-mail. "It's all problem-solving, really - a race toward unknowing. I gravitate towards reproduction and demolition."

Wolcott agreed via e-mail, attesting to the Miami scene's love-hate relationship with the band. "We were respected for our perseverance but hated by the public. We were just reaching out to like-minded people, looking to commune with fellow extremists in the arts," he explained. "There is a slight obsessive

bent to spreading the Shave gospel. We logged a lot of hours touring, and it's hard to believe we would drive so many hours to blast our pedagogy that


http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=3469


would only last for 15 minutes in an empty bar."

Originally devised by Smith as a solo project, TLASILA's history is about as labor-intensive as it is legendary. Diligent - and sometimes violent - performances, a steady flow of albums and tours, and a rotating cast of players and slayers from a miscellany of eclectic musical realms have included

everyone from Thurston Moore to Andrew W.K. to the Bay Area's own Weasel Walter.

"Tom is a very peculiar, singular talent," Walter noted in yet another e-mail. "He is an outsider artist essentially. He is an obsessive organizer, and his inspiration comes from a wide swath of cultural vantages, from the highest to lowest. He puts Xenakis and the Dark Brothers on an even keel, and that's why his art is simultaneously so visceral and intellectual. His lyrics are almost James Joyce-like in their pure semantical deconstruction.... What he does

is absorb, cut up, and regurgitate everything in culture and spit it back out."

Following a festival performance in 2000, Smith broke ranks with the group and formed OHNE with Swiss performance artist Dave Phillips. With Wolcott already out of the picture, Falestra soldiered on with TLASILA, from which numerous spin-offs and clones surfaced, including TLASILA 2 and I Love LA. Falestra and Smith reconvened in 2003 and shaped the band into its strongest lineup yet: an 11-member ensemble residing throughout the country, in Atlanta; Las Vegas; Northampton, Mass.; LA; Charleston, SC; and Adel, Ga. Guitarist-producer Don Fleming, Sighting's Mark Morgan, stripper Misty

Martinez, Chris Grier, and Andrew "Gaybomb" Barranca are some of the noiseniks, along with Moore, Wolcott, and W.K., rounding out TLASILA's current incarnation. A touring version, of Wolcott, Graham Moore, Martinez, and Falestra, will undertake the group's West Coast dates - its first since 1996 - and

will support TLASILA's great 2006 full-length, Noon and Eternity (Menlo Park), and the forthcoming Les Tricoteuses (Savage Land). But the ceaseless TLASILA work ethic won't allow the ensemble to stop there: Smith promises that even more albums can be expected to materialize during the

ensuing tour. Live, shave, live again.

#



Genre is ObsoletePar Ray Brassier

Mise en ligne le jeudi 15 mars 2007

1. ‘Noise’ has become the expedient moniker for a motley array of sonic practices-academic, artistic, countercultural-with little in common besides their perceived recalcitrance with respect to the conventions governing classical and popular musics. ‘Noise’ not only designates the no-man’s-land between electro-acoustic investigation, free improvisation, avant-garde experiment, and sound-art ; more interestingly, it refers to anomalous zones of interference between genres : between post-punk and free jazz ; between musique concrète and folk ; between stochastic composition and art brut. Yet in being used to categorize all forms of sonic experimentation that ostensibly defy musicological classification-be they para-musical, anti-musical, or post-musical-‘noise’ has become a generic label for anything deemed to subvert established genre. It is at once a specific sub-genre of musical vanguardism and a name for what refuses to be subsumed by genre. As a result, the functioning of the term ‘noise’ oscillates between that of a proper name and that of a concept ; it equivocates between nominal anomaly and conceptual interference. Far from being stymied by such paradox, the more adventurous practitioners of this pseudo-genre have harnessed and transformed this indeterminacy into an enabling condition for work which effectively realizes ‘noise’s’ subversive pretensions by ruthlessly identifying and pulverizing those generic tropes and gestures through which confrontation so quickly atrophies into convention. Two groups are exemplary in this regard : To Live and Shave in LA, led by assiduous American iconoclast Tom Smith, whose dictum ‘genre is obsolete’ provides the modus operandi for a body of work characterized by its fastidious dementia; and Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, headed by the enigmatic Swiss deviant and ‘evil Kung-Fu troll’ Rudolf Eb.er, whose hallucinatory audiovisual concoctions amplify the long dimmed psychotic potencies of Aktionism. Significantly, both men disavow the label ‘noise’ as a description of their work-explicitly in Smith’s case, implicitly in Eb.er’s. This is not coincidental ; each recognizes the debilitating stereotypy engendered by the failure to recognize the paradoxes attendant upon the existence of a genre predicated upon the negation of genre.

2. Like the ‘industrial’ subculture of the late 1970s which spawned it, the emergence of ‘noise’ as a recognizable genre during the 1980s entailed a rapid accumulation of stock gestures, slackening the criteria for discriminating between innovation and cliché to the point where experiment threatened to become indistinguishable from platitude. Fastening onto this intellectual slackness, avant-garde aesthetes who advertised their disdain for the perceived vulgarity of the industrial genre voiced a similar aversion toward the formulaic tendencies of its noisy progeny. But in flaunting its artistic credentials, experimental aestheticism ends up resorting to the self-conscious strategies of reflexive distancing which have long since become automatisms of conceptual art practice-the knee-jerk reflexivity which academic commentary has consecrated as the privileged guarantor of sophistication. In this regard, noise’s lucid anti-aestheticism and its affinity with rock’s knowing unselfconsciousness are among its most invigorating aspects. Embracing the analeptic fury of noise’s post-punk roots but refusing its coalescence into a catalogue of stock mannerisms, Smith and Eb.er have produced work that marries conceptual stringency and anti-aestheticist bile while rejecting sub-academic cliché as vehemently as hackneyed expressions of alienation. Each implicates delirious lucidity within libidinal derangement-« intellect and libido simultaneously tweaked » -allowing analysis and indulgence to interpenetrate.

3. The sound conjured by To Live and Shave in LA is unprecedented : where noise orthodoxy too often identifies sonic extremity with an uninterrupted continuum of distorted screeching, Shave sculpt finely wrought twisters of writhing sound by coupling scrambled speech, keening oscillator, abstract shards of bass and guitar, and a dizzying array of sampled musics (glam-rock, metal, avant-classical, industrial, jazz, pop, and country) into a far from equilibrium maelstrom topped by Smith’s crazed croon, which spews reams of splenetic invective. Orthodox noise compresses information, drowning out detail in a torrential deluge ; Shave construct songs around an overwhelming plethora of sonic detail, challenging the listener to engage with a surfeit of information. There is always too much rather than too little to hear at once ; an excess which invites repeated listens. The aural fascination exerted by the songs is accentuated by Smith’s libretti, which feature verbal conundrums whose inventiveness baffles and delights in equal measure. Just as Shave’s sound incorporates an overload of sonic information, Smith’s words embody a semantic hypertrophy which can only be transmitted by a vocal that mimes the senseless eructations of glossolalia. Fittingly, Smith’s ravings evade decipherment through a surplus rather than deficit of sense. Refusing to yield to interpretation, his declamation cannot be separated from the sound within which it is nested. Yet it would be a mistake to confuse Shave’s refusal to signify and their methodical subtractions from genre for a concession to postmodern polysemia and eclecticism. The fitting analogue is the bracing formalism of Pierre Guyotat or Iannis Xenakis, rather than the agreeable pastiche of John Barth or Alfred Schnittke. Indeed, the only banner which Smith is willing to affix to Shave’s work is that of what he calls the ‘PRE’ aesthetic. PRE is « a negation of the errant supposition that spiffed-up or newly hatched movements supplant others fit for retirement [...] PRE ? As in : all possibilities extant, even the disastrous ones. » The imperative to innovate engenders an antinomy for any given genre. Either one keeps repeating the form of innovation ; in which case it becomes formulaic and retroactively negates its own novelty. Or one seeks constantly new types of innovation ; in which case the challenge consists in identifying novel forms which will not merely reiterate the old. But one must assume an infinite, hence unactualizable set of forms in order not to repeat, and the limits of finite imagination invariably determine the exhaustion of possibility. It is never enough to keep multiplying forms of invention ; one must also produce new genres within which to generate new forms. Noise becomes generic as the form of invention which is obliged to substitute the abstract negation of genre for the production of hitherto unknown genres. Generic noise is condemned to reiterate its abstract negation of genre ad infinitum. The results are not necessarily uninteresting. But ‘PRE’ intimates an alternative paradigm.


http://multitudes.samizdat.net/

http://multitudes.samizdat.net/spip.php?auteur1289


Since the totality of possibility is a synonym for God, whom we must renounce, the only available (uncompromisingly secular) totality is that of incompossibles. If all possibilities are extant, this can only be a totality of incompossibles, which harbours as yet unactualized and incommensurable genres. The imperative to actualize incompossibles leads not to eclecticism but to an ascesis of perpetual invention which strives to ward off pastiche by forging previously unimaginable links between inexistent genres. It is the injunction to produce the conditions for the actualization of incompossibles that staves off regression into generic repetition. Shave’s most recent recordings bear witness to this ascesis of invention by essaying textures, tempos, and techniques that abjure their own previous canons of heterodoxy without relapsing into any recognizable musical style. Where prior work had privileged the splenetic, the unbalanced, and the discontinuous, these recordings favour measured stateliness, brooding expansiveness, and epic continuity.

5. Where noise orthodoxy substantializes its putative negation of genre into an easily digestible sonic stereotype-the hapless but nevertheless entertaining roar of feedback-Shave and Runzelstirn construct the sound of generic anomaly by fusing hitherto incommensurable sonic categories : dub cut-up, free-glam, and electro-acoustic punk for Shave ; cartoon musique concrète and slapstick art-brut for Runzelstirn. Both deploy an analytical delirium which steadfastly refuses the inane clichés of sub-cultural ‘transgression’ on one hand, while obviating the stilted mannerisms of academic conceptualism on the other. Neither sounds like ‘noise’ ; yet it is their refusal to substantialize the negation of musical genre that has led them to produce music which sounds like nothing else before it. The abstract negation of genre issues in the sterile orthodoxies of ‘noise’ as pseudonym for experimental vanguardism, and the result is either the stifling preciousness of officially sanctioned art-music or (worse) the dreary machinations of ‘sound-art’. But by forcefully short-circuiting incommensurable genres, Shave and Runzelstirn engender the noise of generic anomaly. It is the noise that is not ‘noise’, the noise of the sui generis, that actualizes the disorientating potencies long claimed for ‘noise’.

#



(TLASILA, live at the Bug Jar, Rochester, NY, 2004; left to right: Andrew W.K., Tom Smith, Ben Wolcott, and Mark Morgan.)

BLURBS 1994-1999

America's most misunderstood band returns with yet another foray into the fractured world of (un)popular music. TLASILA boldly challenges the listener. - Carbon 14

TLASILA chew the sod of the long plowed hoop clop of harsh 60s masters (Dolphy, Ashton, Szabo) and combine it with an insanity seldom seen in our time. More American icon than a Carter family postage stamp. - Insample

This is the end of music. TLASILA is an apocalypse of writhing, swirling vocals, A-bomb kinetics, and even more confusion. - XS

An unbelievably advanced holocaust of sound. - ugEXPLODE

Mind-blowing double-tracked glamvocal throttling over dense layers of shit. - College Biker

Imagine a crowd of ranting maniacs slowly dragging nails down a blackboard and you'll have an idea of what's in store. If you like the discordant cacophony of Caspar Brotzman, early Swans, or noizecore music, this is for you. - Cover

A bizarre wall of concrete, stinking garbage, and fire ten miles thick and a thousand feet high that demands your attention. - Pit Report

Free jazz noise terrorism for a post-apocalyptic world making even the Boredoms sound accessible by comparison. - Suburban Voice

A prurient aural splash menacing noise clichés and smearing eyeliner on the crushed. - Ink Nineteen

TLASILA can't seem to gauge the immense havoc they incur. Tom Smith's skepticism of order pushes their confrontational, improvisational noise way up front but when the machinery pulls out, this man wails. - Muckraker

They sound like they picked up the mixer while recording, started running with it, lurching wildly through the streets, banging on car hoods and waving it about madly, with all the mikes and instruments trailing behind. - Dead Angel

This noisy, long-lived performance-art amalgamation (file under "free glam") is less a band than a giant Hoover that sweeps through the underground sucking in anyone who can keep up. Assess your own risk tolerance. - Chicago Reader

An unfettered noise-splay that caresses your ears with a wire brush. - Alternative Press

TLASILA examine post-Cold War industrial military complexes with the sort of scrutiny you expect from Guccione, Sr. on a three-day blow bender with a pair of field glasses tinted pink. They compress sound into the diamond bullet Brando mumbled about in Apocalypse Now. - Pop Watch

Powerful anti-music. - Washington City Paper

The Grand Mal of all epileptic seizures. - Tail Spins

A wind tunnel of 30-weight vitriol. - Bananafish



Seriously corrosive, out of phase, out of time anti-music guaranteed to traumatize your cochlea. - Weekly Planet

Imaginez Pussy Galore remixé par Costes ayant ingurgité une copieuse dose de peyotl. - Sortie

Sonic deconstructions that produce mind-stabbing dissonance. - CMJ

A subversive, monumental mindfuck. So, now you only have two options: To live, or to shave. - Seconds

#

LINKS

TLASILA Press Portal (new high-res images, mp3 files, Pro Helvetia logo links, and more)

http://www.toliveandshaveinla.com/eurotour2008/press_portal.htm

Four Paws Media (older high-res images, and more information)

http://www.fourpawsmedia.com/tlasila/

© 1991-2008 TLASILA


http://www.toliveandshaveinla.com/eurotour2008/press_portal.htm

http://www.fourpawsmedia.com/tlasila/

To Live and Shave in L.A. Live and Shave in L.A. (Les Tricoteuses, Savage Land Records, France, ......

Documents

Transcript of To Live and Shave in L.A. Live and Shave in L.A. (Les Tricoteuses, Savage Land Records, France, ......