The Fucked Up Beat: Trireme (Perchance to Dream)

The Fucked Up Beat have a new album out: Watch Towers of Metropolis A.

RW Investigates The Fucked Up Beat: 2 Hours of Music and Talk with Eddie Palmer and Brett Zehner

The Rough Windows Radio Hour Investigates The Fucked Up Beat by Jimcheff on Mixcloud

The Rough Windows Radio Hour Investigates The Fucked Up Beat

This is a special two-hour edition of The Rough Windows Radio Hour: an interview with Eddie Palmer and Brett Zehner of the fantastic recording project called The Fucked Up Beat.

Investigates Strange Weather Patterns and the UFO Cults of Cold War Nevada

'Investigates Strange Weather Patterns and the UFO Cults of Cold War Nevada' by The Fucked Up Beat starts with a crackly recording of a man’s voice: “Alone in a room … 1,000 miles from Earth. My body lay dead before me. And yet, I spoke … and felt … and lived …” Then the music starts – and we’re off to the eerie landscape of strange weather and saucer-filled skies promised in the album’s title. Like last year’s 'Roswell Radio Cult', this Fucked Up Beat album has a vintage sci-fi feel to it. But it’s theme is more specifically defined. The album’s fragments of dialogue and description consist almost entirely of accounts of Cold War UFO experiences. The variety of these voices and the stories they tell give the album the feel of an event -- something that is happening all over, to a large number of people. It’s a bit like Orson Welle’s 1938 'War of The Worlds' broadcast, but with a schizo-noir, trip-hop beat. 'Investigates Strange Weather …' also reminds me of the feeling I get when I listen to 'The Conet Project'. 'The Conet Project' -- a real-life collection of mysterious short-wave radio messages -- gives me a sense of a world that’s wilder ... more dense and complex ... than the world we live our normal lives in. The difference between 'Investigates Strange Weather ...' and 'The Conet Project' though, is that 'The Conet Project' never makes me want to tap my feet or move with the music. As with the aforementioned 'Roswell Radio Cult,' the beats and grooves on this album are imaginative and irresistable. The album is fun too -- as fun as it is eerie. It suggests sinister nocturnal factories, dangerous government programs and ominous coded transmissions. But it also reminds one of old, lovably over-dramatic sci-fi movies, or the amusing ramblings of an eccentric neighbor who knows all about the visitors and exactly what they’re up to. Woman’s voice: …If they are from another planet, I hope they’re from Venus. Man’s voice: Yeah, why Venus? Woman’s voice: Well, then at least they’ll be peaceful. Man’s voice: Yeah, what makes you so sure? Any track on this album is fascinating on its own. But to me, The Fucked Up Beat are painters of sprawling sonic murals. 'Investigates Strange Weather Patterns and the UFO Cults of Cold War Nevada'is an album best heard in its entirety. The picture it paints is huge and fascinating, and the music of The Fucked Up Beat is, as always, entrancing. (cover art seen above by Anya Rymer of Brooklyn)

New Album from The Fucked Up Beat has 15 Unique Album Covers

The new album from The Fucked Up Beat "Investigates Strange Weather Patterns And The UFO Cults of Cold War Nevada" is available now at the thefuckedupbeat.bandcamp.com.  Each download of the album allows you to choose from 15 unique covers.  Here's a selection of four of them.

The first is by Anya Rymer of Brooklyn USA.

The second is by Mariana Borau, a Venezuelan artist based in Madrid, Spain.  marianaborau.com

Number three is by Thomas Schonne of Osnabruck, Germany.

And number four is by Shayne Gray of Toronto, Canada.  www.shaynegray.com

See the other eleven covers and download this fascinating album at the thefuckedupbeat.bandcamp.com

A New Release from The Fucked Up Beat

This is good news.  A new album from The Fucked Up Beat will be available tomorrow, March 20th.  It's called "Investigates Strange Weather Patterns and the UFO Cults of Cold War Nevada."  And it's every bit as strange and interesting as that name suggests.  I've listened to it many times since Monday.  I think it's fantastic!  More details in the days ahead.  Till then, why not visit The Fucked Up Beat -- click here .

'Hunting A Schizophrenic Wolf' by The Fucked Up Beat: CD Available Now!

A few months back, I had the pleasure of listening to 'Hunting A Schizophrenic Wolf' by The Fucked Up Beat (Eddie Palmer and Brett Zehner).

Here's what I wrote to them, more or less, after I had listened to it a few times:

"Hi Eddie,

Congratulations to you and Brett on producing a truly fine album. I listened to it several times today. I love it.

If I were in a writerly mood, I’d write something like “an entrancing, beautifully-shuffled sonic deck of beats, samples and shifting moods.” Which it is. But I’m feeling more casual, so I’ll just say I dug every minute of it.

The music on Roswell Radio Cult conveyed the era of 50’s sci-fi movies very effectively. The feel of HASW seems less identifiable to one specific time/place. This gives it a feel that is unsettling (in a good way) and very expansive. It seems to take place in a larger psychic territory. It propels a long strange trip to places that seem familiar, but on closer inspection, seem quite alien.

I like music pulled together from unconnected sources. HASW has a unity and smoothness and elegance that only the best of this type of music attains. It holds that high level of accomplishment throughout.

To be more specific though: Track 1 pulled me in right away. Track 2 deepened the mood. The sound heard at the beginning and end of track 3 I found very affecting. At the beginning of the track, it sounded like maybe a machine in a factory. But when it reappeared at the end of the track, there had been a really lovely shift of mood, and it made me think of a ghost turnstile, slowly spinning away in an unused train station (oh, maybe I am in a writerly mood).

I love how these slower, more poetic moments morph so easily into really incredible grooves, like the ones in tracks 7 and 9.

Track 6 was lovely and touching. I can listen to sounds like that all day. The last track is memorable, too. It began as sort of a perfect steel-drum (?) cool-down. But then it veered away into much stranger territory. A very good turn of events. Musically, I like a trip to leave me wandering in a weird desert rather than leave me tucked cozily back in my bed.

Great work!

Jim"

The CD is available now at Daddy Tank Records.

'Arrythmia' by The Fucked Up Beat

'Hunting A Schizophrenic Wolf' -- Coming Soon from The Fucked Up Beat

Last week, I wrote about ‘Roswell Radio Cult,’ by The Fucked Up Beat. I’m excited to write that ‘Hunting A Schizophrenic Wolf’ will be available for purchase on Daddy Tank Records in June. This will be The Fucked Up Beat’s 12th album, and their first ‘physical’ release.  I’ve had the privilege of hearing it, and it is fantastic.

The Fucked Up Beat is Eddie Palmer and Brett Zehner. Eddie Palmer recently shared some insight with me on their working method, which is conducted with Eddie in New York and Brett in San Diego. I’d been intrigued by their song titles and had asked about them. “In terms of the song titles,” Eddie wrote, “Brett sends me free form typewriting, and I take parts of his writing and cut it up into song titles. Some of the words are parts of poems by Allen Ginsberg, on a few songs. I create the album artwork before recording.

 “The songs for each album start when Brett sends me beats and field recordings. I then cut up and edit his beats and add my own bass, keyboards and synths. Then I go back and add some very short samples from 1920's and 1930's American jazz songs, all public domain. I sometimes loop these samples. Then there is a process of collaging and editing to get the final version.

“The process happens rather quickly. I work best when I do everything all at once. Brett and I are in a good place with the process, and we both have the same idea of what we want to do. He sends me things, then I add things and show them to him. It’s rather easy for us to work this way.”

One of the things I like best about the music of The Fucked Up Beat is how well its collage elements mesh together. The music has a terrific smoothness and unity, and it creates a fresh, independent vision from its diverse source material.

Here is a preview from ‘Hunting A Schizophrenic Wolf.’

'Roswell Radio Cult' by The Fucked Up Beat

In the movies of the 1950’s, the world was a sanitized and less bewildering place. But the sci-fi movies of that time were different.

In the sci-fi movies, the world was weird and disturbing. The government was conducting secret programs. Alien spacecrafts were crashing in the desert. The oceans were incubators for giant radioactive monsters. And mad scientists were everywhere, conducting bizarre experiments on their hapless victims.

This is the edgy psychological territory that “Roswell Radio Cult” by The Fucked Up Beat seems to place in. With track titles like ‘The Terror From Beyond/who traveled down highways of space and time’ and ‘The Groom Lake Flatwoods Monster/I’d like some gasoline please!’ it is an album built to inhabit that shadowy B- movie world.

The Fucked Up Beat is Eddie Palmer of New York and Brett Zehner of San Diego. They describe their music as ‘Experimental Schizo Noir Trip Hop.’ Regarding the album’s long, fantastic titles, Eddie Palmer says “On ‘Roswell,’ we wanted to create fake movie titles for American sci-fi movies of the 50’s. We usually finish all our song titles and the album name before we create the music. This gives us a thematic approach to each album, and a direction for the songs.”

The music on ‘Roswell Radio Cult’ supports this theme beautifully. But The Fucked Up Beat do not promote that concept so insistently that it becomes a limitation on the album’s musical or conceptual scope. The weird fusion of styles and beats and moods on ‘Roswell Radio Cult’ suggest places beyond one specific temporal, 
geographic or conceptual location. It’s great fuel for the imagination, and for highly personal psychic trips.

Listening to the album, it was easy to imagine it as a sci-fi soundtrack to my dad’s life in an alternate universe. Full of samples from American jazz songs of the 20’s and 30’s, ‘Roswell Radio Cult’ is largely built on the music he would have listened to.

In the real world, my dad did an honest day’s work, drove home, had a cold beer, and watched a ball game.

In the alternate universe that ‘Roswell Radio Cult’ suggests, he would have stopped in the desert after work to do peyote with the Mothman. When he got home, he would contact the saucers orbiting Earth on his short-wave radio. Then he would stay up most of the night, talking to little green men about The Plan.

The music on Roswell Radio Cult is extremely accomplished and inventively arranged. Beyond any conceptual framework or narrative the track titles might suggest, it stands up as a purely musical experience. It has many bizarre and abstract moments.  It also has plenty of outrageous and catchy grooves. This is experimental music that swings.

Perhaps the thing that impresses me most about the album, though, is how well it conveys a feeling of mystery. And, how well it suggests that we humans are a small part of a very big, and very strange, Universe.

This is a quality found only in the best works of science fiction, in any medium.