Monday, February 15, 2010

US Maple - Sang Phat Editor (1997)

Like many teenage punk rockers, I first heard of US Maple via a catchy Alkaline Trio song. At the time, I was probably 15 and I thought I was into "some really crazy stuff" like At the Drive-In. Cool, man. US Maple, however, bummed me the fuck out, and that rules. Bum outs rule.

Those weirdo Napster found files stuck around in my life for awhile until I was ready for them, and, since then, US Maple has been dear to my heart.

Anyway, with any sort of modernist, deconstructionist what-have-you, you often run into the problem of "cool idea, too bad I never want to listen to it." This is not a problem with US Maple. Their damaged, chopped in half rock riffs have just the right style of discordant melody for my ears. Is it weird to say that the intro to "Mountaintop" is one of the catchiest things I've heard?

Also, I came across this video documenting US Maple recording Acre Thrills. The most fascinating part is the sequences showing the vocal tracking, because dude meticulously plans out and notates how his voice should sound on each part. Fucking awesome.


Also, please note that I made a guest mix for top-notch internet destination ILLOGICAL CONTRAPTION. The theme is "THE FUTURE" and I spent some time making something that I'm proud of that tells a narrative about what might happen someday. Please enjoy this music HERE.

4 comments:

apecock said...

this sounds like a noisy fugazi mixed with a baby jesus lizard

Todd said...

Brandon you're good at talking about music, put it on your blog.

daniel swan said...

the vinyl release of talker had copies of al's lyric sheets in it, fun stuff! - http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/myhappyentrails/usmaplelyrics.jpg

Todd said...

Hell yeah, the CD release has that too. "Acre Thrills" has the lyrics printed with dude's notes on them as well. So fucking awesome.