Names Proposed For "The USA is a Monster" Before The Current Name Was Chosen

A Hippogriff is a Mythological Creature

Godzilla is a Nuclear Dinosaur

The USA is a North American State

The USA is a Country, Within Which, Monsters, Such as Sasquatch Live

Sasquatch is a USA Yeti

The USA is a Nation of Approximately Three Hundred Million People (and Yetis) That Borders Canada, Mexico, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

The USA is Currently Undertaking Foreign and Domestic Policies with Which We Don't Agree, and That We Personally Believe Are Ill-Considered.

Godzilla is Horrific

The USA is Like Godzilla in the Sense That the Policies That It Is Embarked Upon are Pretty Horrific, Though We Are Not Necessarily Sure If This Is a Failure of the Current Administration or Represent A More Systemic Problem With American Democracy, or Like Overwhelming Corporate Greed, Reflect a Problem That Is Shared With Many Of the Industrialized Countries Driving the Globalized Economy Although This Reason Does Not Actually Explain the Godzilla Simile

The City of Tokyo is a Monster Center (Both in Terms of Overwhelming Corporate Culture,Which is Monstrous, And Also in the Sense that Actual Monsters, Like Godzilla and Mothra, Frequently Attack There)

The USA is Sasquatch Central and When You Pay Attention to the Whole Political Side of Things, Also Is a Sasquatch, Metaphorically.

The USA is a Sasquatch

What's That Noise?

So here's the first installment of featured record reviews that will posted here in some sort of "regular" interval. Today, we feature Matthew Bower's new Skullflower release, and below is the review I wrote for WXYC.



















Artist: Skullflower
Album: Tribulation
Label: Crucial Blast

You should really take this sitting down. The umpteenth release from UK underground noise god Matthew Bower’s Skullflower finds him taking the lone road to dissolve your version of reality. A stew of distortion densely packed into a psychic attack built to destroy your senses, the sound roars and roars through cascading guitars and sharp swells of bubbling, black euphoria. The tones harmonize, detune; float in and out, up and down, and now I can’t seem to lift my head off the floor. Trapped in scary suspended animation complete with shining knives and a blood red sunset, time careens by until it gets lost in space and drifts lazily down into the mire once again. The sheer depth of the tracks is mind-bending – Bower will take you on the psychedelic nightmare of your life, twisting and turning underneath the waves of unsettling undertones until you beg for relief. Whereas 2005’s Orange Canyon Mind contained more guitar riffs and swirling textures, Tribulations is much more difficult to digest, due to the marathon of shrieking intensity that just doesn’t quit. The noise here is bred organically from a volume-cranked guitar and static projections, and it will consume you. This is the thinking man’s metal, another fine offering from Crucial Blast, and a job worth applause for Bower. But don’t think too hard - you’ll get fucking cut.

Cole Goins
cgoins@email.unc.edu

Infiltrating the Times

Hello World.

Even though Kevin trumped the introductions, I’ll deliver a brief one to make it official. WE at WXYC-Chapel Hill love the internet. You can read about our first internet broadcast on the all-knowing Wiki. Now, we’re going to outright dominate the blogging world to give our listeners and the greater public a peak into the brains(hearts) of our beautifully knowledgeable DJ body. Free-format is what we're all about, and this weblog will attempt to violate your inhibitions and love you til you beg for more. Experience witty(sarcastic) monologues, brilliant(shitty) compositions, excursions(rants) in musical analysis(deconstruction). We’ll also have frequent audio downloads from interviews/performances that we host at our station, and hopefully some featured reviews of exceptional new music from our staff. Onwards and upwards is where we're aimed, and you're welcome to come with us. Please comment often and openly to the things you see posted here and tell us what you're thinking as well. We literally value feedback in all of its incarnations, and we want to be your friend.

Although we operate as a unit, it is important to note that our DJ extraordinaires are also individuals with distinct and different personalities. So with that in mind:

*********ALL VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS BLOG DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS HELD BY THE ENTIRE DJ BODY************

That said, we all share a common philosophy at our station that leans heavily on individuality along with the desire to provide an outlet for ideas of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds. So please check back often to feel the change and embrace its uncertainties.

As always, thanks for listening.

Cole Goins
Assistant Music Director
cgoins@email.unc.edu

Cut Up or Shut Up

What?? WXYC has a blog?? Hell yes we do. After ten years of wandering around, trying to figure *what else* we could do on the Internet, we have conceptualized and initiated our prototype of what we're tentatively terming a "web log." We are the very first ones to do something like this anywhere at all, unless I'm mistaken.

OK, so our blog probably won't end up in a Jeopardy question (answer?), but it is guaranteed good eatin'.

Let's kick it off the right way, too. None of this ninnying about, wasting time introducing ourselves and our mission statement. (If that's what you're looking for, I have no choice but to send you here. Sorry.) Let's get down to business instead:

I WANT YOU TO CUT STUFF UP AND SEND IT TO ME.

Before you go hacking away at newspapers, curtains, blocks of cheese, aunty's Burberry coat or whatever else you've got lying around, allow me to be more specific.

I've been a fan of audio collage, cut-ups, mash-ups, plunderphonics, and the oft-related "breakcore" when I started hearing the stuff on WXYC-FM while in high school. Ah, those fond memories of bumping along in my Ford Taurus '88 Station wagon with the speakers at full blast tuned to XYC, who heroically pumped out Evolution Control Committee's then-new "Rocked By Rape" at a mighty 400 watts every few hours. Dan Rather's chopped-up voice spoke to me like a prophet.

Inspired by the genre's irreverence, frequent humor, and, quite honestly, its profound abandonment of ettiquette, I've been going chop-chop-chop ever since. No one and nothing is safe.

Why don't you join me? If you're one of us who likes to chop up audio files or, erm, creatively take music, noises, and other things out of context, send me your stuff (only send .mp3 files less than 2 min. and .wav files less than 10 sec.)and I'll put the cream of the crop and the cream of the crap up here in later posts. Probably on my radio show. MAYBE on the Thursday Night Feature one week this coming winter.

Don't know what I'm talking about? I did this yesterday as an example (not appropriate for work, small children, and operators of heavy machinery). Also, read and you shall learn:

• here
• here!! (The Parker Tapes is required listening.)
• here, too
• also here
• wiki-here
• vicki-here
• yeah, why not here

Valuable introductions to a valuable art form.

The creative restructuring of cultural items, images, and sounds is a longstanding practice (e.g., "Dada" isn't just something you sing in a Volkswagen commercial). Collage, as a medium, has the immense power both to force relationships upon its subjects and to let the viewer/listener/experiencer/audience form his/her/their own. And with great power, comes great irresponsibility. And the potential for monkey noises, distorted beats, presidential speeches, and movie dialogue to show up in the mix.

Together, we can turn this wasteland into a cut-and-pasteland.

Kevin
clarkke@email.unc.edu

P.S. Remember, .mp3 files under 2 mins., .wav files 10 seconds or less., and bad words don't get radio time. Bleep away if you want.