Diplo and Dark Meat
Together on Record and Onstage
originally published July 9, 2008
Just back in town from its most significant tour to date, Dark Meat is enjoying a strong surge in forward motion unknown to most bands stuck on the Athens treadmill. As reported in this paper previously, the band has signed a deal with hipster sweetheart label Vice Records, a complementary pairing between the label’s hedonistic nihilism and the band’s sincere belief in the crossover potential between punk energies and hippie vibes.
Ever since forming in late 2005, the group’s been a love-‘em-or-hate-‘em one for many Athenians, with some digging the fried-out psychedelic punk explosion, and others shrugging their shoulders or getting even more enervated in their response. When frontman Jim McHugh chronicled the band’s two-month outing on a tour diary for Flagpole.com, a couple of online comments (anonymous, naturally) tended towards the “Dark Meat are a bunch of pussies!” end of the spectrum.
McHugh says he's happy that the partnership with Vice has been bringing the band more attention. "That's their job. I give them tons of credit for giving us complete room that we need, y'know, like 'do what the fuck you want,'" he says. "The advantage of Vice is how visible they are… They realize that concrete recorded music is basically worthless, so what people want to invest themselves in is the experience and the culture and personalities of the band. And we had that, with our personality and our show, and our history with Athens and all. I think that's why they dug us so much."
Later this fall, Vice will release a single for the Dark Meat song "Last of the Frontiersman" which will serve as a preview of the band's sophomore album, now set for a release in the spring of 2009. The single will have that song along with some remixes by hipster fave deejay/producer Diplo (born Wesley Pentz) out of Baltimore, who will also appear at the 40 Watt this Friday with Dark Meat.
The band hooked up with Diplo at this year’s South By Southwest festival in Austin, TX. Diplo first gained national attention by helping popularize Brazilian baile funk, organizing the Hollertronix dance club/collective and by collaborating with M.I.A. on the mixtape Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 and introducing her to the rabid Internet hordes before she became the dance superstar she is now. Dark Meat played a set at Vice’s party at SXSW, and so impressed Diplo that he asked the band if he could rework some of their material. His initial impression of the band? “Weird,” he says. And as for a collaboration, Diplo says he approached the band and “just said I want to come to Athens to play, ‘cause I never been, and you guys are nuts and we can all have a party.”
The first fruit of the Diplo/ Dark Meat collaboration comes in the form of a 7” vinyl release; one side will include Dark Meat’s version of the Iggy Pop tune “Success,” recorded while on tour in a Portland studio, and the flip-side features Diplo’s remixing of the track.
“Diplo is a very cool motherfucker, a real enthusiastic cat, and I think his take on restructuring sound is amazing,” says Dark Meat's McHugh. “For all of his dance floor gravity, he's extremely artful, and he rendered our bar band punk-strut on ‘Success’ almost beautifully unrecognizable. He's coming into the studio after the [40 Watt] show to do some crazy shit on the album sessions, and we're envisioning a 12” single, a dance-jam kinda thing where he takes the psychedelic skronk middle section of one our songs and does his thing with it. But you never know what he's gonna do, and that's what we like about him.” McHugh says Dark Meat sent the tracks to Diplo while he was in India, and he’d email back the remixes, and the results are apparently very “oblique and abstract,” according to McHugh.
Dark Meat went into the Downtown Athens Recording Studio last week to start work on the upcoming sophomore album. It’s the same studio where the band recorded the debut Universal Indians a few years back, though the studio’s relocated since those initial sessions. “There's some new shit I want to work on to come out on the record,” says McHugh, “and that might take a bit longer than originally planned. Optimally, we'll be done recording by the time we hit the road again in September.” As for what Diplo plans to pull out of the band, he’s keeping tight-lipped, though he does say “I guess I’m gonna milk them for some horns, right?”
Also up in the air are specifics for this weekend’s 40 Watt show. “In typical Dark Meat/ Diplo fashion, I'm sure it'll be unplanned and odd. Can't wait,” says McHugh. Diplo offers a few more details: “Man, total madness and lots of bass.”
WHO: Future Ape Tapes, Dark Meat, Diplo
WHERE: The 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Friday, July 11
HOW MUCH: $8 (advance), $10 (door)
Sex Vid Is Hardcore
Limited Promotion, Unlimited Potential
originally published July 9, 2008
Sex Vid
It's summer, and like every summer, bands are climbing into cramped vans to play across this expansive country in dives, clubs, arenas, houses, backyards and wherever else there is a PA and room for people to watch live music. This summer, bands have a heavily recessed economy to contend with, but this isn't stopping them from long, exhausting drives to play in front of few, if any, fans.
Sex Vid, a hardcore punk foursome from Olympia, WA, is embarking on its first U.S. tour. While the band has completed successful jaunts down the West Coast and traveled to the Northeast for festivals, this is the first time it has attempted a cross-country trip, and Sex Vid is taking an attitude of inevitability to the tour. “All of us work or are students, so it's difficult to make these things work,” says guitarist R.J. Sweeney. “It's an unfortunate time in terms of gas and the general economy, but it is only going to get worse. Now seems more opportune than in the more distant future.”
If Sex Vid finds itself playing to any particularly empty crowds on the tour, it could be said it's due to the band's own carefree marketing stance. The band has little to no Internet presence. You try to Google “Sex Vid.” [Editor's note: While this search does not avail info on the band, you must be 18 and over to view the material that it does. Also, adding genre info, i.e., "Sex Vid hardcore" does not help.] And don't get the members started on MySpace. Sweeney says he finds the music marketer of the month to be “tedious, disgusting and stupid."
"Fuck it," he says. "We have a P.O. box.” Singer Judd Taylor agrees: “MySpace never crossed my mind, ever. Not even an option. It wasn't until we started getting interviews that we realized how uncommon it is for a band to not have a MySpace.”
Even more frustrating for hardcore fans is the band's seemingly limited releases. Having released just three vinyl singles, the band frustrated many hardcore fans by only pressing 500 copies of its first single, “for no other reason than no one had any clue who we were,” says Sweeney. This ignited a ferocious bidding war on eBay, with curious parties paying triple digits for a single that was $4 previously. While the band has refused to re-press that single, it has pressed increasingly more of its subsequent two releases, and those will certainly be available on this tour.
While all of this might appear to be posturing or gimmickry, it's unimportant when the songs get played because Sex Vid is damn good at what it does. Sex Vid operates in the hardcore punk ghetto competently, but rather than aping the warmer, more inviting guitar tones one might pick up from Minor Threat or Bad Brains, the band deals in a darker, noisier aggression, one similar to Void, The Fix, or the earliest records by Touch and Go's Die Kreuzen. The speed is brisk with quick chord changes backed by pummeling drums with larynx-shredded vocals barking about the frustrations of daily life, internal anguish and aggravating participants of society. The self-titled track from the “Tania” single details the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army and the name she adopted after undergoing Stockholm Syndrome. Influenced by various other extreme music genres, it's not uncommon for Sex Vid's songs to degenerate into blasts of noise or detuned riffing. The song “Trainwreck” appropriately features a noisy breather that sounds like a band performing on a crashing train before the song ends in typical hardcore speed and rigidity. “Nests,” too, finds its traditional chorus interrupted by disjointed riffing.
Coming from Olympia, birthplace of Beat Happening, Sleater-Kinney, K Records and Kill Rock Stars, some might think Sex Vid is attempting to uphold some sort of indie legacy. "Not even close," Sweeney says. Those days are long gone. “Not that we were a part of it in the first place,” he adds. The band stays there because, much like Athens, it's a decent place to live. “It's pretty easy to do your own thing and not have to worry about anyone else,” Taylor says. “It can get claustrophobic, though.”
It's got to be rough to be out on the road on your own, but on July 13 Sex Vid will have some of the best bands in Georgia helping them out. Sunday's show includes American Cheeseburger, Atlanta's garage veterans Carbonas and upstart Atlanta thrash band Bukkake Boys (featuring an ex-member of Sex Vid). It's going to be a cathartic night.
WHO: Bukkake Boys, Sex Vid, Carbonas, American Cheeseburger
WHERE: Transmetropolitan Lounge
WHEN: Sunday, July 13
HOW MUCH: $5
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