#anna enfield

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I mantain that S1 Jon would besties with Anna Enfield. I can absolutly see an alternate reality where Sasha survived the worms and convinces the Archival Crew into suing the Institute for Workplace Endagerement and Anna ends up being their lawyer. Bonus points for Sam Enfield and Martin bonding.

[I can also easily see Anna as Gwen's lawyer. They have a mostly professional relationship buy Gwen has a crush on Anna and, as things worsen for Gwen, Anna's older sister instincts turn her a little protective over Gwen's well being. Bonus points for Alice deciding to buy Sam Khalid a poted plant as some joke and becaming friends with Oliver]

[sinceileftyoublog]

SML Interview: The Creative Umbrella

Photo by Joyce Kim

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The origin of one of the finest albums of the year is a now-defunct jazz club/oyster bar in Los Angeles. Well, not just any defunct jazz club/oyster bar: the Enfield Tennis Academy, immortalized on Jeff Parker's Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy record from 2022. The venue had become a hotbed for the ever-burgeoning experimental jazz scene in the city; over time, bar regular and studio engineer/producer Bryce Gonzales decided to set up a recording rig in stereo direct to Nagra, so that he could document the sets the nights he happened to be there. Such was the case for supergroup SML and their (sort-of) self-titled debut, Small Medium Large (International Anthem). The band started when guitarist Gregory Uhlmann and synthesist Jeremiah Chiu decided to act on a long-held desire to somehow collaborate. Each brought along some of their frequent collaborators--for Uhlmann, bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson, for Chiu, percussionist Booker Stardrum--and the just-formed quintet stepped on stage in October 2022 with one goal in mind: play.

After the members of SML got back the initial recordings from their two-night, two-sets-per-night residency at ETA, they were intrigued enough by the results for a repeat performance. After recording two more nights and four more sets, they realized they had enough material to make something out of it, so each member took recordings back to their home studio to rearrange and edit them into songs. (Cut from the same cloth, the band was heavily inspired by Miles Davis and Teo Macero's sonata form-influenced editing first explored on 1969's fusion masterpiece In A Silent Way.) With chronology tossed to the wayside and segues added, the result is an album that evokes the spontaneity of live performance while remaining a cohesive listen. Opening track "Rubber Tree Dance" is whirring and nostalgic, a smorgasbord of ping-ponging synth, fluttery saxophone, and subtly trickling hi-hats. Lead single "Industry" layers distorted saxophone, driving bass, and rubbery synths over a breakbeat, an appropriately genre-bending track for a band whose player's credits range from Leon Bridges to Lee Ranaldo. And not everything can double as a dancefloor filler: "Switchboard Operations" revolves around a humming drone, while the minute-long "Chasing Brain" is an exercise in maximalism, plucks of stringed instruments buzzing like a mosquito in conjunction with saxophone and stabs of guitar distortion, all over a lightning quick beat.

Rest assured, SML aren't trying to trick you. That is, many of the track titles, some of which started as funny working titles for the songs but stuck, are evocative of what lies beneath them. "Herbie for Commercials" imagines a world where the foremost post-bop bandleader of his generation was instead writing warped jingles, a mixture of garbled polyrhythms that are nonetheless catchy. The sax and drums on "Window Sill Song" indeed patter like rain. "History of Communication" sports interweaving synth lines, some of which sound like birdcalls. And closer "Dolphin Language" is like a slice of Reichian hyper-pop, synth vocalizations panning over shaky percussion and scraggly and disintegrating bass.

Back in June, I spoke with Johnson over the phone, just after SML was announced to play Chicago's inaugural Warm Love Cool Dreams festival at The Salt Shed, which takes place this weekend. At the time I spoke to Johnson, Small Medium Large was set to come out in a week, and the band was going to play two nights at Zebulon in Los Angeles in early July. Though four of the five members live in L.A., the exception Booker, who lives in New York, they don't necessarily practice their material. First and foremost, despite Small Medium Large being coddled together in post-production, improvisation is still a major tenet of the band's records and performances. They also have a long history of playing with each other, in one form or another. "We're all in a community with each other, hanging out and playing each other's music all the time," Johnson said. "There's a continuously collaborative thing happening with all of us. I'll see Greg a couple of times a week, and I'll play on what he's working on and he'll play on what I'm working on. Many members of the band have that relationship internally. That all is kind of baked into the cake."

In between their performance at Zebulon and Sunday, SML won't have played as a quintet since soundcheck. They're also likely not playing their debut album. "Part of the spirit of the thing is, 'Press play, and let's go,'" Johnson said. "That's part of the excitement, the trust of knowing that an interesting and compelling sonic experiment can be created because we trust each other, and we know that'll happen in real time." Wait, press play? Yes, the band is going to record their Salt Shed set. "It feels like it's kind of in our DNA of the band," Johnson said. "If we're gonna play, we should also record. Not necessarily because we're making an album, but as a document to check out later and see what's there to see if there's stuff we can built upon and contribute to the next album."

Tickets are still available to both days of Warm Love Cool Dreams. Go check out SML on Sunday, who play their set at 5:15 PM and back none other than legendary Jamaican dancehall DJ and singer Sister Nancy at 6! And read my conversation with Johnson below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: How did SML come to be?

Josh Johnson: The catalyst was Greg Uhlmann and Jeremiah Chiu. They had been talking about doing something together with International Anthem, presenting a night of new collaboration at ETA in Los Angeles. I don't know if they had yet played together, but they knew they wanted to do something together at some point, and it seemed like a good opportunity to do so. As they imagined what it might be, they thought of everyone else who is involved in it. Greg, Anna, and I have played a lot of music together, in many different settings over many different years. Jeremiah and Booker have played together a lot. I think they were thinking, "[What'll] it like to put it all together?" We did it once. It was very fresh. There was no conversation about what it was going to look like. It was like, "Let's start and see what happens." The cool thing about it was that Bryce Gonzales was there to record it. There was a feeling of, "We don't know what's gonna happen, but we should probably record this."

SILY: So there were no plans to make this more than a one-time thing, let alone an album. Did you then listen to the first recordings and at that point, think, "We should release this in some form?"

JJ: We did two, two-night residencies. The first one was in October 2022. The experience of playing was like, "Oh wow, there are some really cool moments in here. It feels like an energizing collaboration." We got those recordings back and listened to them and thought, "It would be cool to cultivate this a little bit more, do it again, and see what we're gonna get from that," with having the experience of having done it once. The first time we got back the recordings, it was exciting, and we thought it would be cool to collect a little bit more material and see what we have.

SILY: So it wasn't until after that second residency and all the recordings that you thought it could be a record.

JJ: Yeah. I think we knew there was some special stuff documented. From there, we took all those recordings. Each of these nights ,we played two sets of improvised music, so we thought, "Maybe it's not good to collect anymore and [instead] parse out what we have," take some beautiful moments and expand on what's there. Bryce Gonzales' recording rig grew and developed in that space. He had stuff wired in the room, so if he was free on a night, he'd record a show. Knowing that was a possibility was something we were aware of the whole time, but I don't think we knew we were making a record.

SILY: Does the order of the tracks correspond roughly to the chronological order of the days you played?

JJ: No. As things came together, sequence-wise, I think it was less important to us to document it that way and [instead] make a compelling album. Maybe International Anthem is this way, too, but all of the musicians in [SML] like to think of [records in terms of] Side A/Side B. Song-to-song is important, but the flow of the whole side of the record [is most important]. There are some tracks where you're getting a large chunk of the live energy of the live performance. Some tracks have some editing and overdubs where we're taking stuff from other parts of the recording and figuring out ways to expand what's there.

SILY: I had a feeling it wasn't chronological because there are so many segues, and the album seems cohesive in a way that isn't resulting from pure improvisation. I understand that the final recordings were then taken to your individual home studios. How did you manage to keep the sound of the album so cohesive considering all of you worked on the recordings separately after they were finished?

JJ: We'd each work on something we were drawn to. That was one part of the process. But another stage was coming together: Jeremiah and I would get together, or Jeremiah, Greg, and I would get together, or Jeremiah and Booker [would get together.] It was very collaborative, even in the editing. We'd each add something and would pass it on to the next person.

One of the beautiful limitations of this was that Bryce records straight to stereo, straight to tape. Practically, what that means is we're not dealing with multi-tracks where we can mute or isolate an instrument. It forced us to be really creative. Sonically, there's something already unique about the sound that Bryce captures that's integral to the sound of the record. And the way we approached edits and overdubs, we tried to preserve the spirit of what happened, really thinking about augmenting or connecting things more than masking the fact that it's live. Like on a lot of records, you're working on parts individually, but as the direction and specificity of the vibe becomes clear as more gets finished, then you start to see how the parts are inter-connected, and that influences how you proceed with the rest of it. The way it was recorded definitely helps, but the fact that the improvised recordings are featuring everyone being themselves, already, people's voices as arrangers, orchestrators, and editors is not disconnected from what's already documented in the recordings.

SILY: I like how the second-to-last song, "Greg's Melody", is the first time you can actually hear an audience clapping. It grounds you. If you didn't pay attention to the context of the album--and not every listener will--you might not know this was recorded in front of an audience until then.

JJ: We had a conversation about the applause. It felt like a nice reminder: "Hey, this is something that happened in a space with people." It's one of my favorite moments. You're immersed in this world sonically, and then it's like, "Hey, this is live."

SILY: The track titles are provocatively funny. How did you come up with them?

JJ: That's a good question. I think they all came from different people. Jeremiah and Booker were responsible for many of the titles, and some of them were working titles that do have some humor in them, that [Jeremiah and Booker] thought would be changed later but the rest of us really loved. The one specifically [we loved] is "Herbie for Commercials". I think it started as a joke, but it was actually perfect. It captures something. It speaks to the vibe in a way that is actually very clear to me. But the titles came after the music. A lot of these songs changed a lot. There are many different versions of them. There are times people work from a title, but for us, [titles are] not necessarily descriptive, always, but what are the things it evokes.

SILY: "Herbie" is just over a minute of music, and I suppose you could think that if in an alternate universe, Herbie Hancock was hired to write commercials, it could sound like that song.

JJ: Mhm. It's playful.

SILY: How did you come up with the band name?

JJ: Being in a band can be fraught. It's challenging. We had a shared Google Doc where everybody would contribute different ideas, and ones we liked would get more focus. Small Medium Large came from the feeling of a collective. Also, the idea that this thing is something that can expand and contract. There were a few nights it wasn't all of us recording at the same time, and we added pieces after the fact. We landed on the band name, and it spoke to the nature that it's a creative umbrella, and even if it takes slightly different forms, it's a collective spirit. It's compelling.

SILY: Why did you decide to make "Industry" and "Three Over Steel" the singles? Was there something about them exemplary of the album as a whole?

JJ: Good question. It's challenging to know what you're going to accomplish with the singles, but those two have some sort of magnetism, something that draws you in. I don't know if I can describe them as accessible, but there are many different access points. They have something sonically that's somewhat familiar but really different from this particular combination of instruments. They have an undeniability to their experimental nature and [a quality] that can make you want to dance but is not overly sweet. There's edge and a rawness to them. Both of those tracks feel very alive. They also have the quality of, for a while, [songs that] could be a studio recording, but you're kind of dropped into [that moment where you think], "This is definitely live." There's forward motion.

SILY: Was the band involved at all in the making of the "Three Over Steel" video?

JJ: That video was made by Miranda Javid, Booker's partner. She's an amazing artist. Miranda had already done the artwork, which we really loved, and is an incredible animator. I think there was a prompt from Jeremiah; I think Jeremiah was ultimately involved in some edits of the video. We're all fans of Miranda, like, "Please, do your thing," and her and Jeremiah sat and refined it. It was a unanimous yes.

SILY: Did the cover art have the same process?

JJ: Absolutely.

SILY: Would you ever appear in public as SML if it was anything other than the five of you playing?

JJ: There's a minimum number of core member for it to be under the umbrella, but within that, there's room to contract and expand.

SILY: Whether in L.A. or Chicago, International Anthem has roots in both places, so why wouldn't you leave the door open?

JJ: There are so many friends, incredible musicians, and artists who are like-minded who we know should hop in and join the fold.

SILY: What's next for you in the short or long term?

JJ: I put out a solo record in April, so I've been doing a lot of solo shows. It's a similar sonic world to what's documented on the SML record, but expanded. I also do a lot of playing with other people. Greg and I are working on a record which will probably be released in 2025.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, watching, or reading that's caught your attention?

JJ: I'm reading an autobiography of Henry Threadgill called Easily Slip Into Another World. It's very inspiring. It's part autobiography, but you get a lot of insight into his life and Chicago and New York creative music. It's an inspiring and interesting read even if you're not particularly familiar with his music. He's also kind of documenting community in a way that's really inspiring for me. You get to see the tributaries and the ways in which these creative practices are interconnected. It feels very connected to the spirit of what's happening on International Anthem and [with] this band right now.

Music-wise, I'm always listening to these compilations, Akora Radio, field recordings from different parts of the world. There's a collection of [music from] Burundi I find myself returning to very often. I'm really interested in how repetition functions in that music. I wouldn't say it's quite trance, but [it employs] artful use of repetition to take you somewhere and put you in a space. I'm often thinking about that. I'm listening and thinking about how you can establish direction through duration. That's part of what we get to explore in live performance. You get to a place, but how do you stay there? How do you keep people there? When you're in repetition, there's a moment where you think, "Okay, this is still happening. Then you push past that point, and you settle and think, "We're gonna be here for a while," it's a whole different experience that's fascinating to me.

SILY: On this album, you have some songs like "Feed the Birds" that pass the six-minute mark, but a lot of them are short. With this type of music, you don't often see these short little songs written the same way someone might write a perfect pop song. But "Herbie for Commercials" is a little taste that says all it needs to say. "Chasing Brain", too.

JJ: I appreciate that. I don't know. It's different than people liking short songs because of an attention span reason. It's side A/side B, what's the flow of the record? What kind of space are you trying to help people move through.

SILY: It's clear to me that the track lengths on here are of ultimate service to that idea. I was more commenting on how in this type of music, I rarely hear an idea communicated so briefly yet so effectively.

JJ: One of the things in edits that Jeremiah's really good at is being ruthless: hard start, hard end. Just a strong statement, then we're out. I think it's a different endeavor and skill to make something short but also feel complete.

SILY: Is there anything I haven't asked about that you want to say about the album?

JJ: I feel proud of it as a document of overlapping scenes. [When making the album,] we never talked about what we were going to do, as in, "It's gonna sound like this with these references." It feels like a very truthful collaboration in that way. "Here's a bunch of people with a unique point of view doing what they want to do in the moment and reacting to each other." You can do that, and all the elements don't always work together, but what feels special about this is everyone being themselves and a collective.

[nonesuchrecords]

The Way Out of Easy, the first album from guitarist Jeff Parker and his long-running ETA IVtet—saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, drummer Jay Bellerose—since their 2022 debut Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, which Pitchfork named one of the Best Albums of the 2020s So Far, is due November 22 on International Anthem / Nonesuch Records. You can pre-order the album and watch a video for the track "Late Autumn," made by Mikel Patrick Avery, here.

Like the previous album, The Way Out of Easy comprises recordings from LA venue ETA, where Parker and the ensemble held a weekly residency for seven years. During that time, the ETA IVtet evolved from a band that played mostly standards into a group known for its transcendent, long-form journeys into innovative, groove-oriented improvised music. All four tracks on The Way Out of Easy come from a single night in 2023, providing an unfiltered view of the ensemble, fully in their element. 

[acepodcastweek]

Don't know any of these podcasts? Pick one and go listen!

Did I forget your favourite? Are they a canon aspec character from a fantasy podcast? Let me know! There might just be a part 2...

Want to know more about the event? Click here!

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

SML - Small Medium Large

Regrets, I've had a few — and one of the more recent regrets is missing SML at Zebulon the last time I was out in Los Angeles. Just couldn't make it happen! Somehow, life goes on. And at least we've got SML's insanely good debut LP. Who the hell is SML? They're a supergroup of sorts — bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Small Medium Large sees this stellar quintet coming together at the recently shuttered Enfield Tennis Academy nightclub in Highland Park for a series of mindbending improvs that have been expertly edited down, Teo Macero-style, into bite-sized form. The result sounds something like Ornette Coleman's Prime Time band filtered through the beat science of J Dilla; extremely groovy, extremely experimental, extremely nice.

[ao3feed-jonmartin]

The threads are so loose now

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/ISWemnq by WD_Gaster A radio host. An archivist. A private investigator from the 40s. A government worker. The end of the world. (its explicit because I don't know enough about ratings) (also, explanation for the title which may spoilery the fic so do watch out: basically, after the whole- uh- Watcher's Crown, and DURING the Watcher's Crown, the arcane strings are really, really, REALLY malleable. and so: guess who helps little old sims? sam! and, of course, arthur is scared of being alone- but not even the fears can rip john out of him so he gets immunity from the fears as he is not scared of what they have to offer. not with john with him. and this results in- you guessed it- everything being way different! oh, also, the OIAR is immune to the Watcher's Crown. don't ask why. or do, actually, because it's due to a funny arcane circle. yes, i'm merging it all together! wahahaha!) holy shit that is a lot of parenthesis Words: 1262, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English Fandoms: Spirit Box Radio (Podcast), Malevolent (Podcast), The Magnus Archives (Podcast), The Magnus Protocol (Podcast) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: F/F, F/M, M/M Characters: Sam Enfield, Samama "Sam" Khalid, Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Alice Dyer, Basira Hussain, Oliver Boleyn, Arthur Lester, John (Malevolent), Kitty Enfield, Anna Enfield, Indi (Spirit Box Radio), Ingra (Spirit Box Radio), Bliss (Spirit Box Radio), Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood, Sasha James, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Melanie King, Georgie Barker, Arlo (Spirit Box Radio), Faroe Lester Relationships: Oliver Boleyn/Sam Enfield, Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James/Tim Stoker, John/Arthur Lester, Anna Enfield/Arlo (Spirit Box Radio), Ingra/Bliss, Kitty Enfield/Indi Additional Tags: I made Sam Enfield into a god to be a massive fix-it, Fix-It read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/ISWemnq

[dustedmagazine]

Jeff Parker ETA IVtet — The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem/Nonesuch)

The Way Out Of Easy is the second album by Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet. The combo, which comprises Parker on guitar and electronics, Anna Butterss on double bass, Josh Johnson on alto sax and electronics, and Jay Bellerose on drums, took its name from ETA, the Highland Park, Los Angeles oyster bar where it held down a periodic gig on Monday nights devoted to open-ended sets that were both unscripted and unified in intent. Like its predecessor, Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy (Eremite), it’s a double LP that captures the band stretching out and seeing where the vibe takes them.

The fact that the IVtet was able to sustain such a run says something about what making music this way means to its members. Not only does it take commitment to reconcile calendars beholden to the touring schedules of Tortoise, Robert Plant and Makaya McCraven, among others. It’s absurdly difficult even for players working at that level to get a regular gig in LA. It’s an industry town, and anyplace that capital concentrates, it’s liable to hog art’s oxygen. ETA, which had neither a stage nor a PA, was one of the very few places in LA where one could go to hear bands make music in real time, and when it closed at the end of 2023, the city’s heads mourned.

One ETA regular was a lapsed studio engineer named Bryce Gonzales. Burned out on the computer-bound processes of modern recording, he had dropped studio work in favor of hand-building compressors and preamps. When he heard Parker and crew at ETA, he found himself lured back into recording by the challenge of capturing a live band in a very particular and unforgiving setting. Gonzales’ liner notes for The Way Out Of Easy go into detail about the mixer that he built specifically for this job, which he has now performed twice for the IVtet, but you don’t need to know anything about signal paths to grasp what he ultimately learned from the journey; that in order to capture the band’s essence, you have to keep out of the way of their real-time rapport. Producers tend to be dubbed honorary bandmembers when it is obvious how they’ve shaped a record’s sound; Gonzales earns said honor by making sure by leaving no trace of his fingerprints.

Played back-to-back, the new album doesn’t sound drastically different from Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy. Once more, Parker’s unfussy and adroit guitar playing suspends lyric phrases within a matrix bound by Butterss’s supple lines, the peanut butter and jelly tonal compound of Johnson’s combination of sax and signal processers, and Bellerose’s endlessly inventive rhythmic variations. But the feel is different, not in kind but in quality. The quartet’s already natural grooves and spaces feel more like the product of a single organism, breathing and flexing in response to collective effort. Each reed + circuit smear, each contrapuntal bass figure, chain of plucked phrases that don’t change until they do, and each shift of percussive emphasis adjusts the music as inevitably as a rock thrown into one end of a pond ruins the sleep of the frogs on the other side. Parker gets plenty of cred for the production acumen he has exercised with Tortoise and the New Breed; his work with the ETA IVtet affirms his mastery of making music that feels and is felt in real time.

Bill Meyer

[bikebound]

The One Moto 2023: Trackers, Scramblers, Dirt Bikes, and More! • 1969 Triumph T120 Trackmaster by Caleb Grissom • Royal Enfield @build.train.race Tracker by Anna Serena (@dontstop) • 1992 Suzuki GSX-R750 hillclimber by Richard Crist • 2002 Honda "CR140" by Erik Bender (@bender_built) Photos: @astronaut_bear for @bikeboundblog. More today on BikeBound.com! ⚡️Link in Bio⚡️ https://instagr.am/p/CsYev0KuE_S/

[still-single]

Daniel Villarreal – Lados B LP (International Anthem)

Second solo album from Dos Santos percussionist Daniel Villarreal, in a trio with Jeff Parker on guitar and Anna Butterss on bass. Villlarreal’s previous solo album Panama 77 was fully embellished Latin fusion with funk and jazz and synths, yet he achieves similar, perhaps superior results in this stripped-down lineup from the same sessions (which tracks, given Parker’s esteemed pedigree of Tortoise and reams of others, most recently with the groundbreaking work he and Butterss achieved with their Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy album). Villarreal is a disciple of the 16-beat, a very busy drummer who fills each bar with hi-hats, congas, cowbell and various hand percussives all draped around an easy groove, perfect backgrounds for Parker to phrase around. Buttress' bass takes the lead on the pensive, lounge-borne “Bring It,” a highlight, as is pretty much every other track here. At no point does it feel like the strings are taking over, so if you wanted that, get lost – Daniel’s got a record to do here, and do he does. As some manner of challenge, the penultimate track is called "Things Can Be Calm," with Villarreal exchanging his kit for a thumb piano while Parker and Butterss meditate over top for a full nine minutes, which provides a nice breather around solid work by a vibrant Chicago talent on display. (Doug Mosurock)

[common-man]

Good one.

A share from another group..

Today is Madras Day Some details on Madras (Chennai):

Chennai - MADRAS

Chennai is the only city in India which will have 3 international ports, Chennai port, Ennore port, 3rd one coming up at Kaattupalli.

Chennai is the only city where ROYAL ENFIELD Bikes are manufactured, in the World.

Chennai has the Longest Beach in india, 12 kms urban beach, 2nd Longest in the World.

Chennai is the only city which houses a National Park within city limits. The Guindy National Park.

Chennai is the only city which has three rivers flowing through it, Adai aaru (Adayar), Coovum Aaru, Kottralai (Kosasthalai) Aaru. Aaru — river.

Chennai's OMR - Old Mahabalipuram Road is the Single Largest IT corridor in India.

Chennai is the Single Largest Automobile Manufacturer in Asia. Fondly called the Detroit of Asia.

Chennai is the 2nd city in the world to become a Municipal corporation next to London, in the year 1688.

Chennai houses the Largest Bus Terminus in Asia at Koyambedu.

Chennai is the birth place of Chicken 65, Hotel Buhari.

Chennai has the Largest Library in Asia, Aringnar Anna Centenary Library.

Chennai's Vandalur Zoo is the Largest Zoo in India.

Chennai's Guindy Engineering college, the Oldest in India, 1794.

2 of the Top Ten Engineering Colleges in India located in a single road, IIT Madras, CEG(College of Engineering — Guindy / Guindy Engineering College), at Sardar Patel Road, Chennai.

Chennai houses the Oldest Shopping Mall in India, Spencer plaza, 1863.

Oldest Human Habitat, in the world found at Athirambakkam, Chennai

The Madras High Court is the World's second Largest Court Complex.

Chennai is the only Indian city attacked during World War.

Chennai, City of Flyovers, Largest number of Flyovers in India.

Kathipara Flyover, is the Largest Clover Leaf Fyover in Asia.

Chennai is the Indian city with most number of Foreign Visitors Annually.

Chennai is the Health Capital of India, with most number of foreign and domestic foot falls.

Chennai has the Highest number of GrandMasters in chess.

Royapuram railway station, is the Oldest Functioning Railway station in India.

Integral Coach Factory(ICF), Chennai is the World's Largest Rail Coach Manufacturer.

Madras Medical college, the Oldest Medical College and Oldest Hospital in India, 1664.

The first ever flight in Asia flew in and around Chennai, 1910.

Oragadam is the Largest Automobile hub in South Asia, with 22 Fortune 500 Companies.

Chennai has the Highest number of Cinema Theatres in india. Quite obvious, Tamil Film industry has given 4 Chief Ministers to the State.

Chennai has the Oldest race tracks in India, both Horse Race, Motor Race (obviously, being the Auto capital of Asia).

Madras School of Art is the Oldest Fine Arts Institute in India(1850).

Higginbothams, Mount Road, Chennai is the Oldest Book Store in India (1844).

EID Parry, Chennai is the Oldest company in India (1780).

MRF, Chennai is the largest Tyre Manufacturer in India.

Madras Regiment is the Oldest Infantry Regiment of Indian Army(1750).

AVM Studio is the oldest surviving Film Production house in India.

St. George's Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School is the oldest School in India (1715).

❤️ CHENNAI 🌹

[just-an-enby-lemon]

Sam and Anna relationship just makes me insane. How different they are and how it is at the same time so easy and so hard for them to have an honest conversation. How they love each other and worry for each other. How they are at the same time super close and almost strangers. How Anna remembers things and by consequence a Sam that Sam himself doesn't. I love all the Enfiled dinamics but this two just hit hard for me.

[sigappurojakal]

*Today is Madras Day*Some details on Madras (Chennai):*Chennai - MADRAS*Chennai is the only city in India which will have 3 international ports, Chennai port, Ennore port, 3rd one coming up at Kaattupalli.Chennai is the only city where ROYAL ENFIELD Bikes are manufactured, in the World.Chennai has the Longest Beach in india, 12 kms urban beach, 2nd Longest in the World.Chennai is the only city which houses a National Park within city limits. The Guindy National Park.Chennai is the only city which has three rivers flowing through it, Adai aaru (Adayar), Coovum Aaru, Kottralai (Kosasthalai) Aaru. Aaru — river.Chennai's OMR - Old Mahabalipuram Road is the Single Largest IT corridor in India.Chennai is the Single Largest Automobile Manufacturer in Asia. Fondly called the Detroit of Asia.Chennai is the 2nd city in the world to become a Municipal corporation next to London, in the year 1688.Chennai houses the Largest Bus Terminus in Asia at Koyambedu.Chennai is the birth place of Chicken 65, Hotel Buhari.Chennai has the Largest Library in Asia, Aringnar Anna Centenary Library.Chennai's Vandalur Zoo is the Largest Zoo in India.Chennai's Guindy Engineering college, the Oldest in India, 1794.2 of the Top Ten Engineering Colleges in India located in a single road, IIT Madras, CEG(College of Engineering — Guindy / Guindy Engineering College), at Sardar Patel Road, Chennai.Chennai houses the Oldest Shopping Mall in India, Spencer plaza, 1863.Oldest Human Habitat, in the world found at Athirambakkam, ChennaiThe Madras High Court is the World's second Largest Court Complex.Chennai is the only Indian city attacked during World War.Chennai, City of Flyovers, Largest number of Flyovers in India.Kathipara Flyover, is the Largest Clover Leaf Fyover in Asia.Chennai is the Indian city with most number of Foreign Visitors Annually.Chennai is the Health Capital of India, with most number of foreign and domestic foot falls.Chennai has the Highest number of GrandMasters in chess.Royapuram railway station, is the Oldest Functioning Railway station in India.Integral Coach Factory(ICF), Chennai is the World's Largest Rail Coach Manufacturer.Madras Medical college, the Oldest Medical College and Oldest Hospital in India, 1664.The first ever flight in Asia flew in and around Chennai, 1910.Oragadam is the Largest Automobile hub in South Asia, with 22 Fortune 500 Companies.Chennai has the Highest number of Cinema Theatres in india. Quite obvious, Tamil Film industry has given 4 Chief Ministers to the State.Chennai has the Oldest race tracks in India, both Horse Race, Motor Race (obviously, being the Auto capital of Asia).Madras School of Art is the Oldest Fine Arts Institute in India(1850).Higginbothams, Mount Road, Chennai is the Oldest Book Store in India (1844).EID Parry, Chennai is the Oldest company in India (1780).MRF, Chennai is the largest Tyre Manufacturer in India.Madras Regiment is the Oldest Infantry Regiment of Indian Army(1750).AVM Studio is the oldest surviving Film Production house in India.St. George's Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School is the oldest School in India (1715).❤️ CHENNAI 🌹

[sinceileftyoublog]

Anna Butterss Interview: Los Angeles in 2024

Photo by Samantha Lee

BY JORDAN MAINZER

For much of their career, bassist Anna Butterss has constructed bridges between musical worlds. The classically trained Australian musician moved to Los Angeles a decade ago, not too long after beloved experimental guitarist Jeff Parker relocated there. Like the versatile Parker, who has made his mark in both the jazz and post-rock worlds, Butterss quickly became an in-demand player in the jazz and indie rock spheres, both as a session and touring musician. Shortly after moving, Butterss connected with Parker, joining his now long-running quartet, alongside saxophonist Josh Johnson and drummer Jay Bellerose. (I first heard Butterss' nimble work on Makaya McCraven's landmark 2018 album Universal Beings.) At the same time, Butterss, always on the periphery of hyped indie music through their friends, found themselves alongside Aughts stalwarts Jenny Lewis and Andrew Bird and then-up-and-comers like Phoebe Bridgers. Over the past five years, Butterss has buoyed career reinventions and risen alongside their peers.

2024, then, feels like the first year where Butterss is moving to the forefront. Though they released their debut album Activities and helped Parker immortalize the Enfield Tennis Academy in 2022, this time, over the span of a mere six months, they've been a part of three major improvisational jazz records. First, Butterss is one-fifth of SML, who I profiled earlier this year after their debut record release in June. SML Songs like "Industry" showcased Butterss' ability to steadily drive a track alongside freewheeling bandmates, while "Dolphin Language" gave them a turn to have fun splintering. The quintet played two sets at the inaugural Warm Love Cool Dreams festival at the Salt Shed in September, one performing material from Small Medium Large, the other backing Jamaican dancehall DJ and singer Sister Nancy.

Butterss delves deeper into the world of grooves on the just-released new Jeff Parker ETA IVtet album The Way Out of Easy, a follow-up recording to Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy. Like the latter, The Way Out of Easy was recorded at the ETA and mixed live by engineer Bryce Gonzales, on a night in January 2023. The four longform tracks that make up the record are certainly opportunities for Parker and Johnson's expressions, but don't discount Butterss' understated and underrated adaptability. Throughout "Freakadelic", an extended version of a long-time Parker composition, Butterss and Bellerose provide a hip-hop groove underneath Parker's prickly and sinuous lines, only to wake up a little bit as Johnson's saxophone whirrs and hypnotizes. Butterss mirrors Johnson's rounded mournfulness on the otherwise beatific "Late Autumn", while on "Easy Way Out", they emulate Parker's slow cascades, a perfect contrast to Johnson and Bellerose's expressiveness. Of course, closer "Chrome Dome" ends up a blissed out dub song, Butterss once again a masterfully stable counterpart to Johnson's garbled notes and Bellerose's polyrhythms.

It's clear, then, that all of Butterss' experiences informed their second solo album and International Anthem debut, Mighty Vertebrate, released last month. In early 2023, Butterss found themselves wanting to create while balancing their busy schedule. In order to force themselves to write freely without succumbing to their own judgements and internal monologue, Butterss adopted constraints similar to Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies. "Pokemans", for instance, arose from the goal to use the bass in a way that belies the instrument's typical role. But Butterss was careful not to let Mighty Vertebrate be an album solely reflective of its process, and it sounds loose. They created the stems of the songs before fleshing them out with percussionist Ben Lumsdaine; at that point, the songs were ready for tracking at Chris Schlarb's BIG EGO with Johnson and another SML bandmate, Gregory Uhlmann. As a result, Mighty Vertebrate is diverse and extensive. "Ella" creates a world out of a two-note guitar line and saxophone processed through a synthesizer. "Lubbock" juxtaposes wiry guitar and swirling woodwinds atop raining percussion. "Saturno"'s warped bells give way to a percussion and saxophone groove, Butterss leading the evolution into a rich tapestry. Standout track "Dance Steve" mashes up Malian desert blues and synth punk, a collage of samples, syncopated 808s, synths, and in a full circle moment, a Jeff Parker guitar solo. Perhaps most impressive is that Mighty Vertebrate is cohesive through natural patterns that emerged throughout its creation, Butterss paring its songs down before building them back up, just like on their work with SML and Parker.

In September, a week before the album's release and just before SML's sets at Warm Love Cool Dreams, Butterss did get to try out Mighty Vertebrate songs live with their band at Marz Brewing. They then played a proper record release show in Los Angeles at 2220 Arts + Archives, the day the album came out digitally and on vinyl. A few days later, I spoke to Butterss over Zoom about the making of Mighty Vertebrate, the L.A. scene and International Anthem, post-rock, album and song title meanings, and misheard lyrics. Next week, starting on Monday, Butterss will take a victory lap to celebrate their stellar year, playing in a three-night International Anthem residency at Public Records in Brooklyn: with Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, SML, and their band. It's safe to say you'll be continuing to hear Butterss' name a lot for the next several years. Not only is SML set to return in 2025 and Butterss working on their next record, but they've been a full time member of none other than Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit for a year. Add the Americana/alt-country genre to the list of worlds among which Butterss has built connections.

Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: Why did you decide to make a record using Oblique Strategies-inspired tactics? Was it out of necessity, or was it something you always wanted to do?

Anna Butterss: It's the former for sure. Writing music, I enjoy doing it, but I also find it very hard, because I'm incredibly judgmental, and it's hard for me to think in the moment and follow an idea without already judging it. I'm like this with other things as well. I've always practiced the bass with these very specific restrictions in mind, very structured, so this was a way to get myself to be creative.

I started writing music that way a few years ago. It was a little challenge to myself called "one-hour beats," which is exactly what it sounds like. [laughs] How much of a beat can you make in one hour? If it's bad, if you don't like it, you've only spent an hour and have probably learned something. I started [Mighty Vertebrate] off like that. I spent a lot of time working on the music, but I'd go back and open up one of the ideas and ask, "Is this one cool?" I'd work on that one for an hour or two hours and put it away. I spent the whole year doing that.

SILY: Did you ever fully stray from your initial goal? Or were the finished songs pretty faithful to their original restrictions?

AB: I strayed away. The restrictions were a means to an end, to get something written. Once you get an idea down, it's much easier to manipulate it and try different things, but getting an idea down firstly is the hardest part. Once I felt like I had a strong or compelling idea, I'd let myself do whatever I needed to do. If I was having a good time working on something, I wouldn't put more restrictions on it.

SILY: What ties all of these songs together? Is it the process you used to make them?

AB: Hmm...that's a good question. It's a pretty eclectic record. I think the thing that ties them together for me is that they're songs I wrote during a period of my life, during 2023. A lot of them have similar sonic tendencies, a lot of guitars because it's an instrument I can kind of play, and drum machine. But the thing that ties them together is emotionally how I was experiencing that year. With the band, we all play together a particular way, and that ties them together, too. If I listen back to them, I can hear melodic tendencies I have and forms I gravitate towards, but I wasn't trying too hard to push them all into the same zone.

SILY: At what point did you bring in the band in the process of making Mighty Vertebrate?

AB: Quite late. I brought in [co-producer] Ben Lumsdaine...almost a year after we started writing it. I tried to get as much of it done by myself as I could. I had demos that were in pretty good shape. All the parts were there, but I wasn't trying too hard to get quality recordings. Some of the songs don't have a live band on them, like "Bishop" or "Dance Steve". Ben and I worked on them a lot. We tracked drums, bass, and more guitars. The other two guys in the band, I wrote charts for everything and we rehearsed one time and recorded in the studio for two days. Ben and I did some more overdubs, and that was it.

SILY: The songs on the album that do have a live band don't sound too different from the ones that don't have a live band. That is, if you were to listen to the album without paying the utmost attention, you might not necessarily realize which songs had a band and which didn't. There's an abstraction to the aesthetic. Was that something you were going for?

AB: In a way, yes. I had experimented a little bit on Activities with blending live drums, and we did synths with live bass. I had that in mind when I was making the record. Also, the fact that you have Greg playing guitar on some of the tracks, me playing on some of them, Jeff playing on some of them, Ben playing on some of them, it blurs the lines. Both Greg and Josh use effects in an organic way when they're playing, so it gets blurred a bit in a way I find pleasing. I wanted it to be its own world, not just an acoustic jazz record or an electronic record. I wanted it to live in a between space.

SILY: Do you think the individual musicians' playing styles started to blend, too? For instance, there were some guitar solos that sounded like Jeff Parker that might not have been Jeff Parker.

AB: Definitely. Jeff's been a big influence on the four of us, for sure. We've all played with him, and when I started messing around with the guitar, I thought, "Oh, this is just me sounding like a very cheap version of Jeff," because that's the guitarist I listen to the most. I think I sound a little less like him on the guitar now. Playing together for a really long time in different combinations, there's a shared language, sonic world, and tendencies. I hope other people hear this record and think, "This sounds like something that came out of Los Angeles in 2024." I like records where we can still have that sense of place, even though we're making music in such a globalized way. I feel like we have a little scene in Los Angeles that has a distinctive sound.

SILY: Certainly. The International Anthem family, while based in Chicago, has so many artists who are based in L.A. There's also the Enfield Tennis Academy and its branches. It's like one of the last remaining active scenes.

AB: [laughs] I hope not! It's definitely an International Anthem-sounding record as well. Greg's from Chicago, Josh grew up near Chicago, Jeff spent a lot of time in Chicago, and Ben, Josh, and I all went to school in Indiana, so we have a strong Midwest connection.

SILY: Where did the vocals on "Breadrich" come from?

AB: The ones that are a little sing-song are me. It's [inspired by] a character from a Mexican TV series called La Casa de las Flores, a Netflix series I've watched about three times during the pandemic. It's like a telenovela, but it's very modern and revolves around a lot of drag queens. There are trans people and bisexual main characters, but it's also a telenovela, so it's very dramatic and the plotlines are kind of ridiculous. One of the main characters, Paulina de la Mora, is kind of iconic and has an iconic way of speaking. I was also listening to a lot of Madlib and MF Doom, and MF Doom has so many cartoon and comic elements, so "Breadrich" was my hint at that, with me reimagining what it would be like if [Paulina de la Mora] had a spinoff.

I got into hip hop...in my 20's, having come from a very jazz background. It fascinates me and I love it. I'm not super directly hip hop-influenced, but it's something I think about a lot when working on things.

SILY: I was going to ask, since you collaborated on this record with John Herndon on the video for "Pokemans" and the album art, whether you were influenced by any of his A Grape Dope material.

AB: Not directly. Also, I get a ton of Tortoise comparisons, and I get why, but I really tried to steer clear of listening to that type of music when I was making this record because I didn't want it to sound too derivative. But I love John and am happy he did such great art for the record.

SILY: The Chicago post-rock connection to this current wave of jazz is palpable, because Chicago jazz preceded Chicago post-rock.

AB: Definitely. I've spent a fair amount of time in Chicago but have never lived there. I'm listening to all these records 10-20 years after they came out, so I'm getting a picture and sense of it. I also play a lot with Jeff and am close with people who have been involved in those scenes, so I'm getting a secondhand version of it. But I think it's cool that music that's been around for a while is still very relevant and current sounding.

SILY: How did you come up with the track titles on Mighty Vertebrate?

AB: "Bishop", my grandfather was a bishop. [laughs] What else do we have? "Dance Steve", I put a dance beat under a sample I thought sounded like Steve Reich. It was stuff like that. I do have a note in my phone where I collect phrases people will say, if they sound interesting, which is where "Breadrich" came from. My partner said that we were "bread-rich" after a friend gave us a bunch of bread, which I thought was funny.

SILY: It can be somewhat of a Rorschach test. Some of the titles on Small Medium Large were working titles or joke titles that ended up being perfect. It adds a levity to the project.

AB: I remember talking with Greg when trying to come up with titles and being like, "It's hard to come up with song titles that are original," and he was just like, "Oh, don't worry about that. There will always be another song [that shares a title.]" I don't think it matters that much. The record title, more so. But at the end of the day, it's instrumental music. It's already pretty abstract, and I want people to be able to have their own experience with it, instead of saying, say, "'Seeing You' is about the time I saw this person." Anyone can interpret it their own way and have their own relationship with it.

SILY: So what's the meaning of the record title to you?

AB: That came from an Andrew Bird lyric I misheard and was singing wrong when I was touring with him. [On Inside Problems' "Stop n’ Shop", it's] supposed to be "Mighty bird of prey," and I didn't realize that until he mentioned it. [laughs] I think it's evocative of a lot of different things. It can be a made-up or fantastical creature, or a way of describing humanity or the dichotomy of humans being so powerful but at the end of the day, vertebrates who will die just like everything else. There's an element of that. It doesn't mean one specific thing to me. I like that it's open-ended.

SILY: The fact that it came from something misheard, but still makes sense, is cool.

AB: [laughs] Yeah. I tried to convince Bird to change the lyric. He wasn't interested.

SILY: Do you pretty actively listen to new music?

AB: I'm trying to more these days. KCRW's morning program, Morning Becomes Eclectic, plays a lot of different genres, and I listen to that pretty religiously. It's where I find a lot of new music. That's probably where I heard Jenny Lewis. I remember driving on the freeway, hearing it and thinking, "What is that?" It turned out a bunch of my friends played in her band. These days, I'm trying to listen to records right when they come out, because otherwise it gets overwhelming.

SILY: What's your approach to playing the songs on Mighty Vertebrate live?

AB: There's more room for expansion. All of the tracks on the record are pretty short; I like to get in and get out, not have anything excessive. [Live,] there's more improvisation involved. A lot of the songs, the way they're structured, the bass line holds everything together statically, and everything is moving around it. I love that. As a bass player, that's what I want to do. I want to be the center of things and everyone else swirling around on top. I had the easiest time playing it live while demanding a lot of everyone else. [laughs]

SILY: Do you foresee these songs taking new shapes the more you play them?

AB: Definitely. That would be ideal. I don't know how many opportunities I'll get to play them. Unfortunately, it's really hard. Everyone's super busy, and I feel like it needs to be these specific people playing the music, and our schedules are all packed. After our show at Public Records, I'd like to continue to play it live and tour, but I don't know how that would work. I don't feel a need to adhere strictly to what's on the record, because if people want to hear the record, they should listen to the record. That's always been my feeling about it.

SILY: What else is next for you in the short and long term?

AB: Some SML stuff, definitely, in the new year. I'll start thinking about the next record. But right now, I'm trying to get through the rest of this year without having an emotional breakdown. [laughs]

SILY: You're very prolific.

AB: I'm a bass player. It's a blessing and a curse.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, watching, or reading lately that's caught your attention or inspired you?

AB: Let me pull up my listening journal...I've been all over the place. My friends have a band called Twin Talk, [based] in Chicago. It's a great trio. They just put out a new record I've been heavily spinning. It's very beautiful. A lot of Brazilian music. We're reorganizing our record collection, so I've been going back and finding a lot of things. Honestly, it's all over the place. I like starting with my friends' records and going from there. Michael Mayo just put out a great record last week. I feel like a bunch of people put out records when I put out mine. Every Instagram post was about a new record.

[hangingslothcentral]

supporters on patreon just got early access to SBRR: a retrospective on Spirit Box Radio! This time around, I'm focusing on the Enfield Siblings, Anna, Kitty and Sam, with a particular focus on their response to their less than stellar upbringing

[acepodcastweek]

Did I miss your favourite? Let me know!

Wondering where Jon Sims is? He is too powerful and would skew the poll, but rest assured I have not forgotten.

Don't know any of these? Pick a show and go listen!

Want to know more about Ace Week Fiction Podcast Festivities? Click here.