AIDS Wolf

Ma vie banale avant-garde

2011-10-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

Ma vie banale avant-garde is our 4th album and our first one as a trio. It includes 24 tracks, and is released digitally and as a Double LP vinyl 12".
Please note that capitalisation on titles is either following the french rule, or is purely intentional.

Out now for pre-order on Lovepump United Records.

Out in stores on October 4 2011.

A
Heaps of Sour Earth
No Females on Board
Despair Ritual
Cinq à sept
Wings of Inertia
Nothing But a Tape Recorder

B
Like PSHTS of Aerosol
Volunteer Decoys
Le cercle des ratés
I've had such an acrid taste in my throat
What's an aphid?
London's not like back home

C
Child of Wind, Creature of Dust
Why bother?
Pop a Candy Drop
Subconscious Snacks on Ha Ha
Self-defence Is Moral Dentistry
Breeding Grounds Are Burial Mounds

D
Chippers Takes a Sip
Please hold the line
The wise have no use for wisdom anymore
Born Dead
An Honest Miracle/Mistake
Snuffed Out Dreams

Personnel:
Yannick Desranleau - Drums
Chloe Lum - Vocals, electronics
Alexander Moskos - Guitar, electronics

Produced by AIDS Wolf.
Recorded at Dub Narcotic, Olympia, Washington, October 2010.
Engineered by Bob Schwenkler.
Mixed by Bob Schwenkler and Yannick Desranleau.
Mastered by Weasel Walter.

Design by Robert Beatty.

LPU036

AIDS Wolf 'Vie Banale' Tour 2011

2011-09-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

We will be on the road again, this time to play cuts from the new upcoming album Ma vie banale avant-garde. We have the extreme pleasure to have Henry and Hazel Slaughter and Unicorn Hard-On support us, each for half of the tour. It's gonna be a blast!

10/07/11 - Montreal, QC RECORD LAUNCH @ Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal w/ The Pink Noise

10/20/11 – Brooklyn, NY @ Death By Audio
10/21/11 – Cleveland, OH @ Now That’s Class
10/22/11 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
10/23/11 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
10/24/11 – Iowa City, IA @ Gabe’s Oasis
10/25/11 – Lawrence, KS @ Replay Lounge
10/26/11 – Normal, OK @ Opolis
10/27/11 – Austin, TX @ 29th St. Ballroom @ Spide
10/28/11 – Denton, TX @ Rubberglove
10/29/11 – Hot Springs, AR @ tba
10/30/11 – Birmingham AL @ Firehouse
10/31/11 – Athens, GA @ Farm 255

11/3/11 – Miami, FL @ Churchill’s
11/4/11 – Tampa, FL @ Crowbar
11/5/11 – Orlando, FL @ Will’s Pub
11/6/11 – Atlanta, GA @ 529
11/7/11 – Chapel Hill, NC @ Nightlight
11/8/11 – Harrisonburg, VA @ Festival Ballroom at JMU

11/10/11 – Washington DC @ Comet Ping Pong
11/11/11 – New York, NY @ 92Y Tribeca
11/12/11 – Binghamton, NY @ Pajama Kazama
11/13/11 – Boston, MA @ Church of Boston

All October dates w/ Henry and Hazel Slaughter; all November dates &
Halloween show w/ Unicorn Hard-On

Le cercle des ratés

2011-09-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

Lovely rehearsal zone from the Wolfies, in preparation for our epic Fall 2011 tour w/ Henry and Hazel Slaughter and Unicorn Hardon.

AIDS Wolf Eastern Europe Summer Rash 2011

2011-07-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

27.07.2011 Berlin (DE), Westgermany w/ Cotton Ponies

28.07.2011 Nuernberg (DE), K4 w/ Don Vito

29.07.2011 Kutna Hora (CZ), Creepy Teepee Festival
With IMAGES (US), STAR SLINGER (UK), R. STEVIE MOORE & TROPICAL OOZE (US), JAMES FERRARO (US) & FOOT VILLAGE (US)

30.07.2011 Frankfurt (DE), IVI w/ Kolter

01.08.2011 Ljubljana (SI), Menza Pri Koritu w/ Nikki Louder

02.08.2011 Graz (AT), Postgarage

03.08.2011 Vienna (AT), Fluc

05.08.2011 Katowice (PL), Off Festival on the Eksperymentalna T-Mobile Music Stage
With Omar Souleyman, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and tons more.

More details to come!

In the waiting here is a little preview:---in fact it's from one of our performances at NXNE 2011 last june:

AIDS Wolf from NOW Magazine on Vimeo.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Office Québec-Monde pour la jeunesse and the Délégation générale du Québec - Bureau du Québec à Berlin for this tour.

Eastern Seaboard Spring Tour 2011

2011-04-09T08:41:00.000-07:00

We are playing the cities of the Patrick Division and then some! Come and observe us perform! Sketch out a critical review of the artistic value of our performance in your head and utter it to all your aquaintances!
Grab a copy of An Insane and Abstract Hell (Dedicated To Two Dudes From Rusted Shut) and Chipped Teeth!

4/14/11 Easthampton, MA @ Flywheel w/ Bill Nace, Egg Eggs (mem of Sunburned Hand Of The Man & Fat Worm Of Error) //All Ages - 8$ early gig!

RSVP on the Facebook

4/15/11 Pawtucket, RI @Machines with Magnets w/ (((microwaves))) , Chrome Jackson , Human Beast // All Ages

4/16/11 Brooklyn, NY @ Death By Audio w/ Captain Ahab , White Suns , Controlled Bleeding, Telecult Powers // All Ages - 10$

4/17/11 Washington, DC @ Comet Ping Pong w/ The K-Holes

4/18/11 Philadelphia,PA @ Pageant: Soloveev w/ SATANIZED , Drums Like Machine Guns , Cat Vet // All Ages

RSVP on the Facebook

4/19/11 Pittsburgh, PA @ Helter Shelter w/ Skin Graft , The Others , Greenlander , Half Nelson , Casual Male /// 5$

RSVP on the Facebook

4/20/11 Allentown, PA @ Good Weekend w/ Secret Cutter - 10$

Chipped Teeth, North American Edition DELUXE

2011-03-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

Chipped Teeth is a 7" of improvisations recorded back in 2008, and was released by Slowboy Records in conjunction of our Spring 2008 European Tour. At the time because of time constraints or something, the label was not able to print the artwork in time, releasing the 7" with makeshift one-colour cover art made by the label, with made up titles too.
About one year later, we got the remaining of our copies through the mail and intended to print the original artwork ourselves... well that just took almost two more years! We finally found the time to do it last December.

So here it is, the real version of what Chipped Teeth was supposed to be, available only through the band's merch table at our North American shows. This is a rare recording of the Cities of Glass band at the height of its form.
Limited edition of 50. Come and get it before someone else does it!

Chipped Teeth North American Edition DELUXE will be available for the first time in the Land of the Free during our Spring 2011 Tour.

And for those wondering, those who already have the 7" or a digital bootleg ripped straight from the 7", here are THE REAL CREDITS AND SONG TITLES that were originally intended to be in there (no, it's not "Germans Know Where It's At" and "Yes We Do" or something, trust me):

Chipped Teeth

SIDE A:

Chipped Tooth & Pearl Shake

SIDE B:

1-Death By Paranoia

2-Lust In The Dustpan

Personnel:
Myles Broscoe (Guitar), Yannick Desranleau (Drums), André Guérette (Guitar), Chloe Lum (Vocals).
Recorded by AIDS Wolf February 2008 at the 100 Sided Die, Montreal QC.
Mixed by André Guérette.
Design By Seripop.

An Insane and Abstract Hell (Dedicated To Two Dudes From Rusted Shut)

2011-03-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

AIAH is a triple cassette set compilation of various AIDS Wolf live improvisations in different formations, from the year 2008 through 2010. TAPE 1 is a selection of improvs from the Badass Tour in the Spring of 2009, AIDS Wolf's last tour as a four-piece. TAPE 2 contains tree long improvisations with ex-Shearing Pinx Erin Ward, and features also other Shearing Pinx members and Steven Mattos from Athletic Automaton/Arab On Radar. Tape 3 is a selection of short improvs recorded during the rehearsal of the band as a trio right before the March To The Sea tour. This is the first release of the band as a trio.

Out March 2011, available at ZUM and at our merch table.

TAPE 1

SIDE A, Tracks 2 to 5:
Beerland, Austin TX, March 15 2009.

SIDE A, Track 1 and SIDE B:
Random locations across North America, March - April 2009.

Personnel: Myles Broscoe (Guitar), Yannick Desranleau (Drums), Chloe Lum (Vocals), Alexander Moskos (Guitar).
Recorded by AIDS Wolf on GE Cassette Recorder 3-5027A.

TAPE 2

SIDE A: "Getting Laids Wolf"
Le Divan Orange, Montreal QC, October 2008.
Personnel: Yannick Desranleau (Drums), Chloe Lum (Vocals), Steven Mattos (Guitar), Alexander Moskos (Guitar), Erin Ward (Guitar).
Recorded by Nic Hughes on cassette tape.

SIDE B, Track 1: "Shearing Wolf / AIDS Pinx"
The Royal Albert Arms, Winnipeg MB, April 9 2009.
Personnel: Myles Broscoe (Guitar), Yannick Desranleau (Drums), Nic Hughes (Vocals, Electronics), Chloe Lum (Vocals), Alexander Moskos (Guitar), Jeremy Van Wyck (Drums, Electronics), Erin Ward (Guitar).
Recorded by Some Dude on a fancy digital machine.

SIDE B, Track 2: "AIDS Ward"
Friendship Cove, Montreal QC, October 3 2009.
Personnel: Yannick Desranleau (Drums), Chloe Lum (Vocals), Alexander Moskos (Guitar), Erin Ward (Guitar).
Recorded by Mark McLean and Tyr Umback on digital video cameras.

TAPE 3
The 100 Sided Die, Montreal QC, June 2010.
Personnel: Yannick Desranleau (Drums), Chloe Lum (Vocals, Electronics), Alexander Moskos (Guitar, Electronics).
Recorded by AIDS Wolf on GE Cassette Recorder 3-5027A.

Compiled and mixed by Yannick Desranleau
Design by Seripop
ZUM031

In Their Own Words: AIDS Wolf and SHOW!

2011-02-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

In Their Own Words: AIDS Wolf

A collage of multiple interviews about AW, including a lot of talk about our creative process, with Chloe and Alex. Produced by Martin Simon Greizis, who also happens to be doing sound at the Casa Del Popolo once in a while. Part of a series on different local Montreal bands, originally broadcasted on CKUT during the Montreal Sessions show, and then syndicated at a bunch of different places. You should check out some of the other interviews that were done a part of this series, especially Dirty Beaches.

--------------

Talking of the Casa, we are playing there on Friday February 25 in a sort of Badmaster Records showcase with Ultrathin, Satanized, Drums Like Machine Guns and Dead Wife. This is actually a realease of a Ultrathin 7" on Badmaster, and at the same time I guess a commemorative show of the 1 year anniversary of the release of our split 7" with Satanized on the same label.

Coincidence is that the 25th of February 2011 is the 41st anniversary of Mark Rothko's Suicide---- Evan from Satanized mentioned the possibility of them doing a cover of Rothko chapel by Morton Feldman... If they do so that would be quite a feat!

Here are short descriptions of the event and release as provided by the label:

"GLASS CITY" b/w "DON'T MESS" is the debut 7" by Montreal palm punk trio ULTRATHIN. Two over-the-top, power punk anthems, barely contained within the grooves of this vinyl disc. Like a cherry red bullet ripping down the same high-way The Stooges & Mayyors used to get to the bank and back. Twisted, over-blown guitars, oozing bass sleaze, the relentless pounding of drums and a manic freak behind the mic, power this rock-n-ripper. 1st pressing of 300 on black vinyl on Badmaster Records.

BADMASTER RECORDS are a Philadelphia based label that have put out records by some of the current heaviest hitters in noise rock (such as AIDS Wolf, Drunkdriver / Mattin, Shit & Shine, Mutators and Pop. 1280 among others), as well as some of Philadelphia's best underground acts of recent times (Tickley Feather, Satanized, Hot Guts, Serpents of Wisdom, Drums Like Machine Guns, Mincemeat Or Tenspeed). Last year, they also released a free online digital compilation called "DIS-ADELPHIA," which features tracks by Philadelphia acts such as U.S. Girls, Birds Of Maya, Women, Hot Guts, Satanized, Drums Like Machine Guns and many others (available for download at http://www.badmasterrecords.com/)

AIDS Wolf AIDS Wolf EAST COAST WEEKENDER

2011-01-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

Short visit to our friends of Ole Newe Englande. Will leave behind us a path of pain and destruction.

1/14/11 Brookline , MA @ BATV w/ Ski Mask, Hunnie Bunnies , Arvid Noe // All Ages

1/15/11 Brooklyn, NY @ Death By Audio w/ RAT BASTARD , HUMANBEAST, HOLY SHEET, SHAWN GREENLEE ,BLACK DIAMOND HEARTED BOY, DUBKNOWN DUB // All Ages // RSVP on Facebook

1/16/11 Easthampton, MA @ Flywheel w/ Fat Worm of Error, Soil //All Ages

Suck Is Happiness music video

2010-12-27T14:03:00.000-08:00

"Suck Is Happiness" from the album "March To The Sea"

Director: Emily Pelstring

Catholic For Rent music video

2010-12-20T12:44:00.000-08:00

We tried making a music video for AIDS Wolf but it all went to shit.

"Catholic For Rent" from the album "March To The Sea"

Production Credits:

Production Company: Exploding Motor Car
Director: Brett Long and Winston Hacking
Producer: Winston Hacking
Editor: Brett Long
Assistant Editor: Adrienne Crossman
Camera: Winston Hacking, Brett Long, Adrienne Crossman
Puppet Builders: Shira Haberman, Anna Beikmanis, Yukiko Hara, Brett Long, Martin MacPherson, Winston Hacking
Production Design: Winston Hacking
Sound Design: Andrew Zukerman
Puppet Voices: Andrew Zukerman, Winston Hacking, Martin MacPherson and Brett Long
Production Assistants: Matt King, Adrienne Crossman, Martin MacPherson
Puppeteers: Brett Long, Winston Hacking, Martin MacPherson, Adrienne Crossman

Special Thanks:
AIDS Wolf
100 Sided Die Studio Co-op
Ben Jackson
Matt King
Shira Haberman
Martin MacPherson
Anna Beikmanis
Yukiko Hara
Andrew Zukerman

AW at Dub Narcotic

2010-10-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

Little interview conducted by Calvin Johnson. This was recorded during day 4 of our session at Dub Narcotic in Olympia WA... new jams to come out soon.

A-Dubs tube

2010-10-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

Now that we are in the studio recording for a couple of days, here are some videos from some our past shows on this tour--- watch them and it's just like we are playing in your bedroom/living room/whatever

In San Diego

In Phoenix

In Atlanta

In Richmond

In Pawtucket

In Montreal

Typical

2010-09-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

Sums it up. Eating dinner in the club's basement.

Orange Coax

2010-09-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

Freaturing Bobby the Big JAy McNeely of Dallas!

Yannick!!!!

2010-09-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

Pees in a field:

in a hottub:

Wolf tour van playlists

2010-09-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

Wolf Van Playlist

Sightings - City of Straw
Puffy Areolas - In the Army 1981
Ornette Coleman - Dancing in Your Head
Ornette Coleman - Skies of America
Alterity Problem - Alterity Problem
US Girls - Go Grey
Couch - Glass Brothers
Howard Shore - Crash OST
Booker Little - Out Front
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Bird of Fire
James Brown - The Payback
Nuclear Death - Bride of Insect
Fairport Convention - Leige and Leif
Wolfgang Voigt - Freiland Klaviermusik
Thelonius Monk - Monk's Dream
The Magic Band - Strictly Personal Outtakes
Jefferson Airplane - Live At Monterey Pop 1967

March To The Sea tour - a report

2010-09-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

As we are accomplishing the first third of our March To The Sea tour, and are having our first day off in Phoenix, we already have a whole lot of tour stories to tell--- and this one tour is particularly rich in stories.

After our stint in the South, here we are arriving in Austin. Once our gear loaded up and everything, we were having a little hangout with some of our local friends, an imposing guy with a giant beard approached me and requested the permission to do a poem about our band. I complied, and the next thing I know, he his amongst us on the stage reading his piece right before we go on. It really set up the mood of the evening, and the show went pretty amazingly, with the crowd being very responsive to our new material.

The poet in question is Thax Douglas and is a fixture of the Austin art scene--- even right before we met him, our friend Brian Maclaskey pointed him to us as 'The Poet'. Thax even has a documentary on him online. Here is the poem he wrote:

AIDS Wolf

Sinewy giraffe
neck
throwing you
off guard with its
grotesquerie
violates an entire
city out of
nothing while you
were dreaming
out snails of
glamour creeping
up and down
that luxuriously
long esophagus -
you just
have enough time
to live in that
city for one
lifetime before
you make up and
the rope tricle
city collapses
into something for
you to walk on

9/26/10
12:00 - 12:05 am
Mohawk

----
Thax told me after the show that we made him think of Xenakis's work, which is quite a compliment.

------------------------------------------

For those of you wondering where we are at with this tour, here are the dates that are coming up:

9/30/10 San Diego, Ca @ Pink Elephant w/ White Hills // 21+ *FREE SHOW*
10/01/10 Los Angeles, CA @ The Smell w/ xbxrx , LA Dies , Audacity// All Ages
10/02/10 Woodland, CA @ Operation: Restore Maximum Freedom w/ Ganglians , Fresh & Onlys , Wounded Lion // All Ages
10/03/10 San Francisco, CA @ El Rio w/ Zulus , no babies , BoysIVMen // 21+
/////////Secret Shit in Olympia/////
10/08/10 Portland,OR @ Backspace Cafe w/ Child Abuse , Terraform , Hotface // All Ages
10/09/10 Seattle, WA @ Black Lodge w/ Wet Paint, Gape Attack, Mountainss/// All Ages
10/10/10 Vancouver,BC @ Astoria w/ Nu Sensae , Shearing Pinx , Myths // 19+
10/11/10 Missoula,MT @ Zootown Arts W/ Cassandra , Fag Rag // All Ages
10/13/10 Minneapolis,MN @ 7th Street Entry w/ Gay Beast & D.Rider // 21+
10/14/10 Iowa City , IA @ Town Called White Lightning w/ D Rider
10/15/10 Kalamazoo,MI @ The Strut w/ D.Rider , Spykes //18+
10/16/10 Chicago,IL Hideout w/ D.Rider , Bad Drugs // 21+
10/17/10 Columbus,OH @ Bat Chapters w/ D.Rider //All Ages
10/18/10 Detroit, Larger House w/ D.Rider , Divorce Party // 21+
10/19/10 Cleveland,OH @ Now That's Class w/ D.Rider, Clan of The Cave Bear // 21+
10/20/10 Fredonia , NY @ BJ's w/ D.Rider
10/21/10 Philadelphia , PA , @ The Ox // All Ages
10/22/10 TBA
10/23/10 Brooklyn , NY @ The Knitting Factory w/ Ty Segal , Turbo Fruits , Pujol , Heavy Cream (Panache CMJ showcase) // All Ages
10/24/10 Easthampton, MA @Flywheel //All Ages

March To The Sea

2010-08-17T15:26:00.000-07:00

New AIDS Wolf album. Last studio release of the band as a quartet. Includes 6 new AW compositions, and a cover of Very Friendly, originally written by Throbbing Gristle.

Out now for pre-order on Skin Graft Records.

Out in store on September 14 2010.

Side A:

1-Teaching To Suffer

2-Family Romance

3-Wet Winds

4-Catholic For Rent

5-Suck Is Happiness

6-Cake On August 1st

Side B:

7- Very Friendly

Recorded by David Bryant in The Pines, Montreal, Quebec, August 2009. Mastered by Weasel Walter. Very Friendly written by Throbbing Gristle and mixed by Weasel Walter.

Very Friendly

2010-08-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

This is a new remix 12" of our version of 'Very Friendly' by Throbbing Gristle from our new album March To The Sea, made with an all-star cast!
Out now for pre-order on Lovepump United Records

Out in store on September 15 2010.

Side A:
1- Very Friendly (Weasel Walter Remix)
2- Very Friendly (John Olson Remix)
3- Very Friendly (Jason Forrest Remix)

Side B:
4- Very Friendly (Emeralds Remix)
5- Very Friendly (Nautical Almanac Remix)

Written by Throbbing Gristle. Recorded by David Bryant in The Pines, Montreal, Quebec, August 2009. Mixed by Weasel Walter. Mastered by Josh Bonati.

AIDS Wolf garage sale

2010-07-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

Sunday July 11
1pm untill 6pm
The One Hundred Sided Die
5334 avenue De Gaspé, suite1202
Montreal, QC

++NO HOLDS , RESERVES , DIBS OR WHATEVER ON ANYTHING.++
++SUNDAY 1-6 ONLY - NO EXCEPTIONS++
++NO SHIPPING - PICK UP ONLY++
We all live far from our studio and don't have the time to go back and forth to sell this stuff. If you wanna call dibs then show up on time w/ cash. Thanks for understanding.

Yes this is the time of the year when you look at your place and want to clear up to allow yourself more breathing space; or I guess this is the response to the infinite quest for emptiness. We looked around the practice space and decided to sever with items that had been waiting for way too long to be played on. We really want to get rid of those items, and they are priced to sell. CASH AND CARRY or reasonable trades. Here is the list.

Cherry Red Epiphone SG 125$
Mid 90's Korean Epiphone SG. Replaced one of the tuning pegs/machine heads. Era specific Corpusse and Neoist stickers behind the saddle. Killer axe. Was my kubelka guitar throughout the glory years. The neck's a bit to big for my new medieval jazz posture but is likely perfect for you. Brian from Mouthus uses the exact same guit. Was recently Belloughed so you know its all slick, tuned and feeling good.

Ibanez PZ47 25$
So you got a new SG knockoff and have been asked to join Chrome? Hold it there player, those dudes aren't letting you anywhere near the jam room w/out some phase to run your shit through. This little guy IS the Chrome pedal. Ibanez might has well just called it The Chrome. Also, used it on a draino recording this last weekend so the nutiness is still fresh within it. Willing to trade for an on/off pedal or some similar thing. Reason for selling: I quite Chrome.

MPC2000: 325$
The most aggressive sampler ever made. Entire hip hop classics were made using only this machine. You've seen pictures of Pete Rock n CL Smooth in the studio and all they have is this guy and some speakers. This is also famously the drums in the live Wolf Eyes rig. Heaviest sounding sampler ever kills me to sell it. The monitor is a bit faded but still fine. Remember this is a computer. Comes with the Zip Drive, Operating System disc, Solena sample set (Bowie's string synth). Plus its got the idividual outs for each sample track...BOOM!

Modified and presently not working Realistic Disco Mixer 5$
If you are into some industrial espionage this the prototype of the Kozzmophone. The channels are hard wired to a cross patch/feedback set up and there's a whole bunch of attenuation controls i built into the thing in order to reign the crazyness in. Long loved part of my Thames rig. Won't turn on but the power supply is likely blown. Never put batteries into it. Cool project for someone. Sounds great through a phase.

Trashed MXR Bluebox.5$
Made no sense asa a guitar pedal makes less sense now after I had a go at it. But seriously put a 9v in it and jack it into a space echo while running your fingers across the solder points on the back of the circuit board and you ARE the electronics dude in Hawkwind.

2 Boss pedals. Both shaky. Both work. 6 each 10 for both...

Ampeg B-25b

Yes. The vintage 1969 piece from the original Ampeg factory in New Jersey. Basically the successor of the Portaflex amp. 60 watts of terror. The speaker cabinet is from a more recent make, but is all original Ampeg stuff. No mods. The two 15 inch speakers are original and in perfect condition. Amazing guitar amp. Great preamp too look at the output jack in the back. Also jack for extra speaker. I plugged it on a SVT cab before and it sounds like 10 times itself. Brigeable channels too. How does it sound? Well check out the bass groove in the beginning of 'Some Sexual Drawings' on The Lovvers LP. There was not even a distortion there. You can totally get that 'JSBX' sound with this guy. A previous owner spraypainted the grill cloth silver. Works just fine, might need a tube replacement and a little clean up/checkup since it almost did not move in 8 years.
$350

Traynor Group One VC

Guitar amp, with this 'parametric eq' which is basically an imbedded fuzz kinda thing. Very good preamp. Great tremolo and reverb unit. 50watts at 4 ohms. Not even touched since I got it. From the late '70s or early '80s, very little got made of those. One or two of the pots may skratch here and there, totally fixable.
$50

Didgeridoo

Never played this guy since Chris quit AW. Makes you sound like an Aussie. When you play it you grow a front pocket. Hand painted or something.
$5

Hondo 'Custom Special 6000' bass

Gibson explorer knockoff, but way thicker and metal looking. It's 'Custom Special' too. It has 6000 of something as well. God, it's A HONDO BASS!!! Recently ovehauled and cleaned up by yours truly.
$20

Peavey Strat knockoff

Exactly that. Re-stringed funny.
$25

Musima Classical Accoustic 3/4 Guitar

Some german brand of guitar. This is the first instrument I ever had besides a Yamaha recorder! Right handed or left handed, it's your choice. Obtained when there was a music store downtown St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. Buy this and own a piece of history.
$10

Epiphone accoustic-electric (broken headstock)

Hours of fun for a novice luthier. Broken in some drunken stupor at the 100-Sided Die. Otherwise a decent guitar.
$5, maybe free if you are nice.

Electro-Voice Mixer

It works. That's it. Pots and knobs may/will skratch here and there, probably just needs a good clean up, decent board for a jam space.
$20

Random shells

Two 22 inchers or something and a 15 inch tom.
Bass drums: $5 each
Tom: $15

Snare shell

The mechanics work, I just didn't bother replacing the skins. Either a LP percussions or a Westbury, I can't tell the difference, i know you won't either. Ok shape. Maybe you can get the two 14 skins with it.
$10

Random skins

Two 14", a 12", a 20" bass drum, a 18" bass drum.
Used: free. New: $2. Free rubber muffler for the 20".

Random broken cymbals

You think I hit hard? Well this is the proof. Twenty or so random sizes of broken cymbals. Mostly hi-hats and rides, also some crashes too.
$1 each, leave with the whole shebang for $5.

Small baby kit floor tom

Cute. Missing one log screw, i know you can find that at a music store. Broken butt skin, the other one works.
$2

Random drum hardware

$2 a piece and less.

Current bands that rule, pt1

2010-03-09T07:53:00.000-08:00

Mayyors

We played that show too. It was the most awesome setting. The people living in the compound were super nice and allowed us to stay there the whole SXSW 2009.

Split 7' w/ Satanized , out now on Badmater

2010-02-01T21:46:00.000-08:00

This came out a few weeks ago and is going pretty fast.
Mailorder from Badmaster if you wanna grip one or get one from us at our upcoming Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal gigs. We don't have many copies though so act quick if you want one.

Split 7" with our palz Satanized , on Badmaster. Shouts out to Evan for the best sandwich hookup in Philly.

Yannick and I did the art did the art and screenprinted 'em inside 'n out. 4 colours out , 1 in. The vinyl is the colour of rotting meat.

Front Cover

^Back Cover.

^Insides. (silver ink.)

You can buy it here for 4.50$.

Here's what Badmater says about it w/ collector stats :

BM0021 - Aids Wolf / Satanized Split 7" -- Out Now

Limited to 500 marbled pink 7"es. Two un-released AIDS Wolf tracks & one long Satanized cut, housed in a 5 color silk screened jacket, inside and out, by Seripop.

Wholesalers and distros email badmasterrecords(at)gmail(dot)com for pricing.

Side A. AW- 1. Tango Fatal 2. In And Under The Snow | Side B. STNZD- Hope Is Lack of Information

AIDS Wolf (Montreal) and Satanized (Philadelphia) have joined forces to create a musical document of startling ugliness. The first of two Aids Wolf songs brings to mind a modern Harry Pussy piece or what it might sound like if 3 people with shotgun wounds to the gut were thrown in a pitch black room and left to scamper around looking for an exit that does not exist. (haha, who writes this shit?) The second is classic AIDS Wolf, that could have easily landed on their Cities of Glass LP (**Chloe's note : it actually was recorded during the same session so there ya go!**). The Satanized side sounds like a 24 hour shift at a steel mill turned mental institution that only employs the criminally insane. Lots of blood everywhere on this one. Brutal sonic violence. Satanized produce a truly great recording that captures everything that makes this band so awe-inspiring in a live setting. This 7" will leave you holding your lover a little bit closer at night and questioning the morality of bringing a child into this uncaring world. There are some sounds that you can't unhear... and why would you?

Philadelphia Weekly blogged about it here
And
This is Book's Music blogged about it here.

Enjoy!

We are 3

2010-01-28T21:49:00.000-08:00

Like I mentioned a few months back , we are now a trio.

(Photo by David Waldman )

This is AIDS Wolf part 2.We've been holed up in our jam space at the 100 Sided Die since Pop Montreal , figuring out our new rig and adding and substracting gear.

All our old songs are retired. We have an entire new set , and a new rig. Most of what you think you know about us is wrong.

We're now playing our first shows with our new set-up and new jams. Like when we started playing out almost 7 years ago , our first gigs where people can preview the new band will be Toronto , Ottawa and Montreal. NEW ERA OF BRUTALITY.

We hope that you can make it.

________________________

Thursday Feb 11th 2010::
Toronto Ontario
Burn Down the Capital Presents --

AIDS Wolf
Mouthus
Disguises
DJ Random

10$ @ The Garrison - 1197 Dundas St. West
Advance tix @ Rotate This and Soundscapes

Doors @ 9pm
RSVP on Facebook
________________________

Friday Feb 12 2010::
Ottawa Ontario

---house party // respect the space---

AIDS Wolf
Mouthus
More TBA

@ Random House - 854 Bronson Ave.
doors @ 8pm
RSVP on Facebook

__________________

Saturday Feb 13 2010::
Montreal , Quebec

Blue Skies Turn Black & Pirates of The Lachine Canal present::

AIDS Wolf
Mouthus
Velvet Chrome

10$ @ Casa Del Popolo - 4873 St-Laurent
doors @ 9pm

RSVP on Facebook

Buy tickets online You can also get tix at Casa , Cheap Thrills and maybe some other places.

Please note Casa is a small capacity room , it is STRONGLY encouraged to buy advance tickets or show up EARLY. Thank you.

__________________________

We will NOT be playing any other gigs till June.
We WILL be doing a proper coast-to-coast US tour in the fall.

xo

Chicken & Cheese 2

2009-11-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

For their new album titled Anti-Magic, Foot Village gave us the honor to cover the closing track, as part of a long medley involving about a couple dozen bands. Since Foot Village is all drums and screams, well, we had to come up with something for the guitars to give it some AW flavor to it. Here it is in all its no-fi grandeur:

Chicken & Cheese 2 by Aids Wolf

Recorded January 2009 at the 100 Sided Die on our GE mono cassette boombox.

Dustin' Off The Sphynx

2009-10-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

It's out now!
on Skin Graft Records

Dustin'Off The Sphynx e.p., 4 songs 7" (including a free password for downloading a new remastered version by Weasel Walter of the entire 'Pas Rapport' cassette), the cd version includes both the 4 tracks from D.O.T.S. and the 7 tracks from 'Pas Rapport'.

Dustin' Off The Sphynx:

A1) Old Fashioned Values
A2) Pressing Graphite
B3) Abortifacient
B4) Dustin’ Off The Sphinx

Produced by Weasel Walter. Recorded by Eli Crews at New, Improved Recording, Oakland, California, November 2007. Assistant engineer: Aaron Burnham.

Pas Rapport:

5) Police de la quéquette
6) P'tit débile
7) Elle est si cochonne
8) Débande
9) Hot dog élégant
10) Polie la poilue
11) Flaque de vomi/restitu

Recorded at the 100-Sided Die, February 2009. Remastered by Weasel Walter.
Design by Seripop.

Tonight

2009-10-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

hope you will come tonight to see our very last show as a 4 piece band.

TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS
DUCHESS SAYS
AIDS WOLF

@ Le National (1220 Ste Catherine Est)

8-11 pm

WE ARE ON A 8:30 SHARP --- IF YOU PLAN ON GETTING IN WITH A WRIST BAND YOU SHOULD PROBABLY SHOW UP EARLY.

Hanging out at this today , playing a special improv set with Erin Ward from Shearing Pinx playing guitar.

It's gonna be super fun. We're on at 230 pm.

AIDS wolf WINS THE POLARIS PRIZE!

2009-09-30T21:03:00.001-07:00

we love yous!

November Tour ==== CANCELED

2009-09-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

Hi friends,

Some bad news here. Our November tour is canceled due to the festival that was paying for our flights losing their funding.It's a huge bummer for us and we hope everyone understands.

As you can probably imagine not very easy to manage expenses while playing marginal music.

Our plans are to bunker down , work at our job-jobs to get outta dept , write and self record a million tapes / 7"s and 12"s at the 100 sided die over the next few months.

________________________________

In happier news , we'll be playing a THIRD show during Pop Montreal and VIA rail has some special Pop coupon , so get here for the best weekend of your year.

::: SECOND IN THE SERIES OF TWO DAYTIME SHOWS DURING POP MONTREAL, BROUGHT TO YOU BY: BLUE SKIES TURN BLACK, PIRATES OF THE LACHINE CANAL and CAMPAIGN FOR INFINITY :::

-BANDS WILL BE RUNNING FROM 12PM TO 8PM SO PEOPLE CAN SEE EVERYTHING!! GET HERE EARLY!!

-THERE WILL BE A BBQ, OH AND COFFEE FOR EARLY BIRDS!!

:::Saturday, October 3rd :::
/// DAYTIME SHOW ///

AIDS WOLF - http://www.myspace.com/aidswolf
TEEN ANGER (toronto) - http://www.myspace.com/teenangerrr
HOLY COBRAS (ottawa - TAPE RELEASE!) - http://www.myspace.com/holycobras
MAGIC CHEEZIES (toronto) -http://www.myspace.com/magiccheezies
GRAND TRINE - http://www.myspace.com/grandtrinemtl
HELL SHOVEL - http://www.myspace.com/hellshovel
ULTRATHIN - http://www.myspace.com/ultrathinmtl
FUTENSIL - http://www.myspace.com/futensil

+++ MORE TBA!!

DJS: BLAMDERSON AND BWAGG

NOON - PWYC ($5-10 suggested, no one will be turned away)
@ Friendship Cove (215A Murray St)

DO NOT STAND IN FRONT OF THE BUILDING!!!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=144238477092&ref=nf
______________

We're on around 2:30-3:00 (that's PM , fools) , all the bands are stellar though and it's gonna be a killer party to hit before going to see Diamanada Galas and Thee Oh Sees.

I Forgot My iPod

2009-09-10T15:06:00.000-07:00

When I went to the gym today. Lucky for me this played while I was lifting weights.

Dark in the city, night is a wire
Steam in the subway, earth is a fire
Do-do do do, do do do, do do do, do do do, do do
Woman you want me, give me a sign
And catch my breathing even closer behind
Do-do do do, do do do, do do do, do do do, do do

In touch with the ground
Im on the hunt Im after you
Smell like I sound, Im lost in a crowd
And Im hungry like the wolf
Straddle the line, in discord and rhyme
Im on the hunt Im after you
Mouth is alive with juices like wine
And Im hungry like the wolf

Stalked in the forest, too close to hide
Ill be upon you by the moonlight side
Do-do do do, do do do, do do do, do do do, do do
High blood drumming ony our skin its so tight
You feel my heart, Im just a moment behind
Do-do do do, do do do, do do do, do do do, do do

In touch with the ground
Im on the hunt Im after you
Scent and a sound, Im lost and Im found
And Im hungry like the wolf
Strut on a line, its discord and rhyme
I howl and I whine Im after you
Mouth is alive all running inside
And Im hungry like the wolf

-

(hungry like the wolf
Hungry like the wolf
Hungry like the wolf)

Burning the ground I break from the crowd
Im on the hunt Im after you
I smell like I sound, Im lost and Im found
And Im hungry like the wolf
Strut on a line, its discord and rhyme
Im on the hunt Im after you
Mouth is alive with juices like wine
And Im hungry like the wolf

Burning the ground I break from the crowd
Im on the hunt Im after you
Scent and a sound, Im lost and Im found
And Im hungry like the wolf

Strut on a line, its discord and rhyme
I howl and I whine Im after you
Mouth is alive all running inside
And Im hungry like the wolf...

Big News!

2009-09-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

We've mentioned this on our myspace but not here yet: AIDS Wolf is soon to be a trio.

Our guitarist Myles fell in L-U-V and moved to England.

He will be flying in to do 2 final shows with us during Pop Montreal. These will be the last ever chances to see us as a 2 guitar band in north America.

We're playing Thursday October 1st @ Sala Rossa w/ The Intelligence , Red Mass and TV Ghost .

On Friday October 2nd we'll be playing @ Le National w/ Teenage Jesus and The Jerks and Duchess Says.

Advance tickets for both shows are available on the Pop website and at various music stores around Montreal. These shows WILL sell out so advance tix are a must if you wanna attend.

For those traveling from out of town for the fest , there is A TON of amazing stuff going on, you will have plenty to do.

After Pop , we'll be doing a short euro tour with our buddy and label-mate Isaac Rotto from Gay Beast filling in on guitar.

Dates:

3.11.2009 B, Diksmuide, 4AD w/ Oxbow
14.11.2009 D, Bremen, Friese
15.11.2009 D, Koeln, Kulturbunker
16.11.2009 F, Paris, Glazart w/ Foot Village
17.11.2009 F, Poitiers, Confort Moderne
18.11.2009 F, Bordeaux, Le Saint Ex
19.11.2009 F, Lyon, Grrrnd Zero w/ Foot Village
20.11.2009 IT, Milano, La Casa 139
21.11.2009 TBA
23.11.2009 D, Nuernberg, K4
24.11.2009 A, Vienna, Fluc
25.11.2009 CZ, Prague, Klub 007
26.11.2009 D, Berlin, White Trash
27.11.2009 NL, Amsterdam, OCCII
28.11.2009 NL, Utrecht, Le Guess Who Festival

The new AIDS Wolf line up (trio with myself , Yannick andd Alex) will play our first show in Montreal in December. We will have an entire new set.

_____________

We joined Twitter a few months ago , just getting the hang of it now. Follow us for up-to-date gossip and info.

AIDS Wolf on Twitter

AIDS Wolf on Twitter

AIDS Wolf on Twitter

AIDS Wolf on Twitter

AIDS Wolf on Twitter

AIDS Wolf on Twitter

I also have a personal account so if you wanna know about my weird dreams , cats and Seripop stuff you can follow me too.

Chloe Lum on Twitter

Chloe Lum on Twitter

Chloe Lum on Twitter

Goodnight , sleep tight. See you in October or November.
xo,
Chloe

today

2009-06-27T07:19:00.000-07:00

As part of a special weekend of shows organized by Blue Skies Turn Black and the Pirates of the Lachine Canal for the Suoni Per il Popolo Festival, we will be holding a special afternoon show @ Lab Synthese on Saturday, June 27th. Doors will be at 5 PM (immediately following the NoMeansNo matinee show @ divan). The lineup will feature TALK NORMAL, an incredible tribal psych-no-wave duo from Brooklyn, along with new Montreal resident and kraut no-fi artist THE PINK NOISE and BLUE LIONS (feat. Myles Broscoe of AIDS Wolf, Les Angles Morts, ...). Finally, opening the show are JEREMY & FRIEND (featuring Susil Sharma of RED MASS). Doors are at 5 PM and show starts at 6. Here are the details :::

-------------------------------

Saturday, June 27th (AFTERNOON SHOW - 5 PM) :::

TALK NORMAL (NYC)
THE PINK NOISE (Toronto/mtl - Sacred Bones)
BLUE LIONS (Mtl - mem. AIDS Wolf)
JEREMY & FRIEND (Mtl - mem. RED MASS)

$8
5 PM (EARLY!)
@ Lab Synthese (435 Beaubien Ouest, #200)

-------------------------------

for more info visit :::

http://www.blueskiesturnblack.com
http://www.myspace.com/talknormaltalknormal
http://www.myspace.com/thepinknoise2
http://www.myspace.com/milobrosco

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-06-09T23:38:00.000-07:00

Set times ::::::

MISS LADY SWAMP PUSSY 9:30

NERVOUS SYSTEM 10:15

GAY BEAST 11:00

AIDS WOLF : MIDNIGHT

Wednesday June 10th

@@@ Friendship Cove 10$ -- ALL AGES

Be there early and party with us longer . Respect the space y'all!

Check out this cool GAY BEAST interview.

Gay Beast just 2 weeks ago ::

Nervous System ::

Miss Lady Swamp Pussy::

Pas Rapport - the download version

2009-06-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

Here is the downloadable version of our 2009 Spring Tour tape, Pas Rapport --- these are straight from the Master files! Perfect sound! This is the real shit! No crappy pirate tape dub! One generation down from us playing the tunes.

Download it here: AIDS Wolf Pas Rapport

For all the info and track listing, go here

For the complete artwork, go here and scroll down.

Slow Burn

2009-06-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

We're playing aloft party in Montreal June 10th with our good friends and one of my favorite bands around , Gay Beast. They are our newest labelmates on Skingraft and the their album is the bomb.

Apart from that we're bee playing Toronto on the 19th w/ Mika Miko and The Homosexuals for the Panache showcase at NXNE, then it'll be a longggggg break till the next one.

Tour came and went and I haven't really been able to talk about it much as we stared death in the face a lil' too often. So many close calls on the road , I'm still feeling shaken 2 months latter .

AIDS Wolf

Us @ The Smell , we melted one of the monoblocks , good thing with tour with 2!

Totally

2009-05-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

Touring with the Shearing Pinx was amazing. I find always awe inducing seeing bands that are able to navigate through their corpus of songs and take the whole show thing very casually--- seems almost like the most relaxing time of their live happens on stage. Although that did not stop them from playing extremely dynamic stuff. The interaction between the two guitar players, Erin and Nick, is unique. While Erin jumps and bumps around, creates sounds from these crispy passages to these non-sensical atonal riffs, Nick often holds ground with his growling low-end ---- and then they completely destroy that and do the most surprising compositions, or bring in brutally effective ideas. During all that Jeremy drums are super steady (he never fails!). It feels like he floats over the skins while playing, watching him is quite a learning experience.

Anyway Hamborghinni is playing tonight with Jeremy's side project Totally Ripped at the Frienship cove, in Montreal. I'm pretty excited to see these guys since their very good 12" split with To Live and Shave in L.A. on Isolated Now Waves has been a repeat player on our turntable since our come back from tour. Also from Vancouver will be at the show the Sex Negatives, which is pure sound nihilism--- one can understand knowing that Justin, previously in Mutators, is involved at the drums.

Pas Rapport

2009-05-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

This was our limited edition (80 pieces) 14 minutes Spring tour tape. Sorry if we sold out by the time we reached Regina. It's a bunch of instant compositions, in one stream on both sides, unedited (you can even ear some magical quirks within the 'silence' in between the tracks). Although we overdubbed an extra track of vocals on side B. Sounds pretty crusty. Our first official release with Alex in the band! Recorded at the 100-sided Die, February 2009.

The edition tapes were a bit too short, so each side misses about 3 or four seconds off the original master recording... whatever, does the job.

Here's the track listing:

A) Police de la quéquette
P'tit débile
Elle est si cochonne

B) Débande
Hot dog élégant
Polie la poilue
Flaque de vomi/restitu

Download it here: AIDS Wolf Pas Rapport

For the full artwork, go see this link, and scroll to the bottom.

Hiroshima Thunder

2009-03-14T07:55:00.001-07:00

I got asked to do a solo performance on drums in late January this year. Despite my excitement to perform and the fact that i have been thinking and putting together in my head since a while already how the performance would be delivered, I managed to put very little time into the actual physical preparation for the show. I guess I just thought about it so much that once getting to do the technical aspects of it ended up working somehow, but I still feel that for repeating such a show I will have to work my act out a bit--- especially since there are specific sounds ant things I actually want to achieve with this.

The generic idea is this: each piece of the accoustic kit is caught by a microphone, and then brought through a bass synth/envelope filter to isolate a specific note, then sent through a specific line of effects for each piece, mixed and amplified. I want to basically turn the kit into some music making machine, or a one man band, but still keep the vivual performance of the drummer going and have the impression that there is this accoustic quality to the performance via the kit--- something you can't get with an electronic kit for instance. also, using mics, the room quirks and the feedback would creat 'hopefully' happy accidents that will either push my improv in a new direction or just texture the auto-composition already going on.

Getting the stuff amplified really loud so the sound from our home-made p.a. matches the kit's natural volumes wasn't really a problem, the main thing that I had to constantly focus on and control was the feedback from the mics. Anyway, I guess working on the project a bit would help me figuring these things out a bit... maybe i should switch some mics for contact mics or triggers or something.

But it was loud and chaotic, and at least it created most of the impression I wanted to create within 15 minutes.

AIDS Wolf

fan mail:::

2009-03-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

Andrea from Alabama* writes :::

Music - or lack thereof

I just want to let you know that I unfortunately happened upon one of your..."musical" videos on the internet and I don't think I have ever heard such a fucked up, garbled mess of shit. Your "band" is the musical equivalent of someone jabbing sharp rocks into my ears. It's like a vomit enema. You're Canadian, right? That explains it. I didn't even know that people like you existed until a few minutes ago, and what has been seen cannot be unseen. The horrors that lie within this atrocious webpage have scarred me for life, and I can honestly say that the three minutes I spent watching your video were the most regretable of my life. WHAT THE FUCK is wrong with your singer? Does she have epilepsy? Last time I checked, shoving the microphone in your mouth and purposely gagging into it isn't singing, you washed up bunch of fucking basement geeks. Do you even know what you stand for? Because wearing black and white checkered framed glasses and performing fellatio on a microphone are not typically associated with socially functional human beings. I pray that laryngitis finds you all. Forever. Please don't ever have children. Please. If I had to choose one way of describing your "music", it would be by sending an actual piece of shit as an email attachment. Good day to you, sir.

TOUR UPDATE GIANT YAY

2009-03-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

06 March MONTREAL w/ U.S Girls + Grand Trine , ULTRATHIN @ Il Motore
07 March TORONTO w/ U.S Girls , THRASHED GENES , HEAVEN @ Sneaky Dee’s
08 March BUFFALO W/ U.S Girls @ SOUNDLAB
09 March PROVIDENCE w/ U.S Girls , CHROME JACKSON , TINSEL TEETH
@ AS220
10 March ALLSTON W/ U.S Girls , CAN'T@ Gay Gardens
11 March BROOKLYN w/ SIGHTINGS, U.S Girls , FIASCO , TALK NORMAL @ Death By Audio
12 March ANNANDALE ON HUDSON w/ U.S Girls @ Bard College
13 March CLEVELAND w/ U.S Girls , PUFFY AREOLAS , MISHAPS , GUILE @ Now That’s Class #
14 March CHICAGO W/ U.S Girls , CACAW , MAYOR DALEY
@ Co-Prosperity Sphere
15 March IOWA CITY w/ U.S Girls , TALK NORMAL , WET HAIR @ Public Space One #
16 March LAFAYETTE W/ U.S Girls , FIASCO , T.V GHOST @ Scagnoli’s Cajun and BBQ
17 March HOT SPRINGS W/ U.S Girls , FIASCO ,MONOTONIX @ Valley of the Vapours Festival
18 March SAN ANTONIO W/ GUARDS , THE SPARK @ The Warhol
19 March AUSTIN w/ MAYYORS , EAT SKULL , SNACK TRUCK , MAGIC JEWELS and more @ "Black Fontanelle presents A Compound Fracture" - 5615 Jim Hogg Avenue
(we play at 2:30 pm)
19 March AUSTIN w/ PRE , VIVIAN GIRLS , PONYTAIL , CRYSTAL STILTS + MORE @ Club 1808 --Videothing Party ( we play at 5:30 pm)
19 March AUSTIN w/ MONOTONIX , FINALLY PUNK , JAPANTHER +++ @ The Ballet -- KVRX Party (we play at 12:30 pm)
20 March AUSTIN W/ PRE , LOS LLAMARADA , NITE JEWEL , DUCKTAILS , MAE SHI ++ @ Quack's Bakery-- We Shot JR / Gorilla vs Bear party (we play at 5 pm)
20 March AUSTIN w/ TALK NORMAL , CLIPD BEAKS , CROCODILES, CHURCH OF THE SNAKE (we play @ 730 pm)
21 March AUSTIN W/ U.S Girls , FIASCO ++ ?? @ Mrs Bea's -- Todd P party ( we play at 4 pm)
21 March AUSTIN w/ PRE , HEALTH, MIKA MIKO , CLIPD BEAKS, MONOTONIX +++ @ Mohawk - Panache/Lovepump showcase ( WE PLAY ON THE MAIN STAGE @ 9PM)
22 March AUSTIN W/ PAST LIVES , PRE , MAE SHI , MIKA MIKO +++ @ Beerland - Panache daytime party (we play @ 230 on the stage)
22 March HOUSTON w/ FIASCO , PAST LIVES @ Numbers #
23 March ODESSA w/ PAST LIVES , MIKA MIKO @ Red Scare #
24 March SANTA FE w/ PAST LIVES @ Warehouse 21 #
25 March TUCSON w/ PAST LIVES @ Club Congress (WXWU Festival) #
26 March LONG BEACH @ Alex’s Bar #
27 March SAN DIEGO W/ ALL LEATHER , VAGINALS , WHITE MICE @ Che Cafe
28 March LA w/ BIPOLAR BEAR , WHITE MICE @ The Smell
29 SAN JOSE W/ TERA MELOS @ Nickel City Arcade
30 March SAN FRANCISCO w/ DEATH SENTENCE : PANDA! , PREYERS ,WHITE MICE @ Knockout
31 March OAKLAND W/ HAWNAY TROOF
, BOYS IV MEN , NO BABIES @ House of Nostromos
01 April DAY OFF
02 April PORTLAND W/ METH TEETH , WORMS , WHITE FANG@ The Artistry
03 April SEATTLE w/ LOVE TAN , WAH WAH EXIT WOUND , ARE YOU A CAT @ The Josephine
04 April VANCOUVER w/ SHEARING PINX , TWIN CRYSTALS @ Biltmore Cabaret (18+)
05 April CALGARY w/ SHEARING PINX , THE FAMINES @ Broken City
06 April EDMONTON w/ SHEARING PINX , THE FAMINES @ The Pawn Shop
07 April REGINA w/ SHEARING PINX @ The Exchange
08 April WINNIPEG w/ SHEARING PINX @ The Royal Albert (18+)
09 April MINNEAPOLIS w/ GAY BEAST , BRUTEHEART , UNICORN BASEMENT @ Big V’s
10 April MILWAUKEE @ TBA
11 April LANSING w/ DEAD MACHINES, CHILD BITE @ Mac’s Bar #
12 April Waterloo w/ THRASHED JEANS @ Commotion House

AIDS Wolf Present A Distinguishing Historiography of The Badass Genesis-2009

2009-03-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

At the farthest reaches of modernity, we still somehow pine for an aesthetic that borders on sociopathy. The badass has long brought this aesthetic principle forward, barely managing to deliver it to us here at our moment in the 21st century. Now the badass, though common in the vernacular, hyperbolically applied wherever, has sadly, like many of the towering concepts that were refined through the centuries only to really came of age in the 20th, gone the way of the fucking chucking spear. Clearly a distinction is necessary to distinguish real badassery from its overuse in language if there is any hope of salvaging this treasured relic of our cultural past.
The original event in the trajectory of this concept is portrayed in the film The History of World Part 1 in which a cave man discovers music by accidently dropping a huge rock on his friend’s foot, making him scream. Enriching the world around him by tuning the dischordancies of his fellow caveman’s screams by way of precise rock dropping, channeling the eternal human urge to savage his colleague, the original badass composed using the suffering of another for the sake of a poignant art. Meanwhile, the film itself takes on what history won’t. History streamlines and smudges out the idiosyncrasies, the weirdo’s and the dumb, blind luck, the colloquial, the jerks and flukes.
Not that man invented the concept, of course. Preternaturally, badassery of course began with God himself, apologies to the spiritually declined. The original creation bore all the signs and qualities. If lightning bolts, lighting up the edges of the black sky are God’s most decidedly badass aesthetic creation, wars are his most destructive, nihilistic and purging. In the case of war, plenty afoot as we speak, God takes on all of the typical behaviors of the badass gone over the edge: He ceases to even believe in himself, so much so as to defy his own basic principles. His conscience so astute and stolid most of the time is so completely out to fucking lunch the rest of the time. But still, geographically the world over, say, in this case Montana, we find mountain ranges, great sweeps of badlands so obviously displaying full color spectrums, scenes so geometrically concise, relationships with the sky so formally obvious. His aims seem to be complete beauty and precision, adulterated with constant, chiding, never ending danger.

The great poem The Odyssey involves a whole slew of early badasses. Homer, its author, setting off every possible plot arch to come through his flowing narrative, based on fact, colored by personality. The streamlined hoplite military regalia, decidedly fucking badass, provides the aesthetic and historical backdrop. Its protagonist, Odysseus, a flawed individual, albeit one who did things with heroic gusto...he who rolled back up on the spot and found his wife in the grip of suiters, as we all should well know, killed the bunch pretty much immediately. His journey itself is a typical badass journey up a river or equivalent body of water. The Return can only happen once a mental line is crossed and is ligatured with a mass of killing(1).
The original American badasses, of course, slung guns. Take Annie Oakley, sharpshooter. She, without much thought, and really slowing her breathing down to a nearly motionless flow of air in order to take aim, shot a cigarette out of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s princely Prussian lips. In fact, Oakley would take her sharp shooting on tour, with Wild Bill’s Touring Western Review. Every night a different gig, sleeping on floors, selling merch (Oakley posters all the rage) and of course, every day getting up on stage and sniping beer steins off people’s heads, splitting playing cards and so on. An aesthetic and entertainment principal based around high precision and felt danger: a few pre-gig sodas too many and the ensuing accidental burp, and that beer stein remains full while long, red strings of blood come out the back of your participating audience-volunteer’s head, if it doesn’t explode entirely. Especially a problem if the volunteer for a particular gig is a Prussian prince.
Throbbing Gristle, mixing true, worrisome mental illness, with a propensity to wish harm upon an audience, using a combination of 70’s art ritual and a keen interest in Burroughsian sonic weaponry(2). What TG lost in precision, their claims to being non-musicians never really borne out; their music actually very musical(3), they made up for in pure danger: getting into onstage fights with the membership of the local hipster class, nearly committing suicide on stage, ect. Oh and yes, the absolute highest form of late 20th century, unadulterated badassery is found in the TG press photo where the gang, nonchalantly lazes about the weaponry, a pile of Roland ampli and homemade electronics. Hanging in the background is the band’s logo, the aforementioned badass lightning bolt, the whole scene looking like some grim Victorian sci-fi abattoir/den. “Sleazy” looking, well, sleazy, Gen in tight leather trousers, ‘natch, Cosy looking the English northern bird part perfectly. There is real death in the air, but everybody stays cool.
And what of Lou Reed’s Take No Prisoners Lp? Yes, indeed badass, if only for the fact that it is ahead of its time, presaging new humor trends with an entirely eventless comedy lp. The jokes are perhaps so invisible, that flying past you in rapid fire succession, you are not aware of their presence. Lou’s mug in the gatefold helps. But the punch line to the whole thing is actually where you expect it least. Not after some pregnant silence following a long rap but on the record’s cover: cod piece wearing, yet still somehow sexless, a future Lower East Side alien from the planet Zorox standing in an pile of trash, stylish but not really, sorta well drawn, but not really. It is admittedly, pretty fucking badass. Sadly for poor Lou’s posterity, the joke as ghost paradigm never really caught on.
Perhaps, more badass still is the pranksterish John Cale, who during the mixing of White Light/White Heat suggested that Lou go take a smoke break while he tried a few vocal mixes on Lady Godiva’s Operation. Lou, feeling like some air, actually, complied and Cale quickly took to the mixing console. He immediately set himself to the task of making Lou sound like a wastrel, boosting Lou’s line “SWEETLY” in total disproportion to everything else. Sounds like a madhouse escapee here to add color commentary to the “operation”. Lou luckily decided to take a two smoke break, because Cale had time to dump the track down and order the studio engineer to sneak the tapes out the back door, hop in a cab and run them up to the Verve mastering facility, adding “We’ll leave the rest of the record unmixed.”
It should also be noted that while Lou’s dalliance with Vaclav Havel is a fairly refined form of badassery, his aimless improvisations with Laurie Anderson at the Stone are not.
And while we are on the topic of heads of state worthy of the term lets not forget Pierre Elliot Trudeau, on a wee vacay in New York City, wife Maggy obviously loosing a few bolts and in need of some “relaxation.” He could swing his ass around with the best of them, no Canadian reticence here, the pretty party boys at 54 all in their disco rigs, looking through disgusting, heavy, 5 am club air, as PET aka Fart Waterhole comes sweeping by doing the Disco Bolero to a Silver Convention cut.
“Who is THAT!?”
“Ohhhhhhh, Its the Canadian Prime Minister. My My!”
Yeah and you ain’t even met William Lyon Mackenzie King yet, led our nation through WWII, seanced with the dead, a practicing wiccan, deeply in love with his dog to a weird point where bestiality simply cannot be ruled out as a possibility.
Or Maurice Richard, learned to play hockey by beating frozen dung piles around an Alley with a curved tree branch. Had eyes so fucking steely they bore right through you, looking into a distance of pure hockey geometry. Plus, during one game against a struggling Detroit Red Wings, a rather flamboyant on-ice official gave the Rocket a two minute penalty simply for looking so good(4). And, add to this, the fact that someone set off a bomb in the Forum when Richard was suspended for clocking a referee(5).
To adumbrate further through elimination, we can rule certain 20th century aesthetic-psychopaths out of the category. For example, Charles Manson, a seriously devoted musician and fan of the Beatles , did seem to know of the existence of a weird thinline form based on the danger/aesthetic dichotomy, and furthermore knew of its desirability. But he lacked any sense of badass in his practice. His tipping over the line into the sorrowful category of murderer could have been cool were he somehow enforcing real justice, based on real Kantian imperative principles. Sadly, he was just another deluded sick fuck. And his record, even though it was released on ESP-Disk(6), perhaps the coolest record label in the history of record labels, was a tuneless pile of simpy-ass, hippy shit. Not Volk in its truest German sense, but Folk in the lame marketing sense.
Sadly, badassery cannot be separated from its roots in death, the overriding theme , aesthetically, politically, of the 20th century. From the vantage point of our Hyper modernity, we should begin to take more seriously the distinction. Badass, a real desert and badlands concept, which so tightropes along a fine long separating those who know the ledge, and those who so easily fall over it. But badass simply cannot describe goofball sneakers, a kid in a Michael Jackson video, scroungy hobo jammers living in an abandoned water tank and so forth. Because badassery, like Annie Oakley’s nightly routine, requires a delicate precision predicated on getting the danger on.
___________________________
(1) See Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and the subsequent Saturday Morning film version by Coppola, preferable the still unreleased 8 hour version, for equally cool variations on this theme...)
(2) There is, it should be noted, a line in one of the Bush era US Military budgets for a very cost overrun project simply called High Pitch Frequency
(3) Self-proclaimed non-musicians are typically the biggest bullshitters: Brian Eno, Captain Beefheart, Jad Fair’s claims to NO CHOPS never really pass the non-musicality test, they all end up being exceedingly musical people but, such claims are necessary to ensure a abandonment of the established order of process which so bores/strains/corrupts. The NO CHOPS CHOPS school is badass. Sun Ra had the opposite problem. He had a penchant for obsessive musical technicality and precision, but with clodhopper hands, his errant piano notes gave his pieces a bizarre NO CHOPS vibe... of course, he had REAL CHOPS!
(4) This was during the 1944-1945 season, which happened also to be the season in which Maurice, the first ever to do so, scored 50 goals.)
(5) Leading to the first of what is now simply referred to in Montreal as a Hockey Riot. There have been many, often involving the smashing of windows on St. Catherine’s street and overturning cop cars. The Richard Riot was in 1955. The most recent Hockey Riot was in Spring 08. To say nothing of the GNR/Metallica Banger Riot of ’92 or the ’03 Exploited Riot.
(6) The Manson jawn is part of the ESP-DIsk 2000 series, check out the Cromangon LP on ESP-DISK (ESP2001) for a sense of what you wished the Manson lp would sound like. The artists themselves, naturally, decide what goes on their ESP-DISK and why should be any other way.

AIDS Wolf are the preeminent Formalist/Unknown Wave quartet, formed in Montreal, 2003. They have released two full-length records on SKiN GRAFT Records and Lovepump United as well as numerous collaborations, splits and seven inches. The membership is Chloe "Deluxxx" Skum on flamejob scream, Yannick "NoNo" Desranleau on Total Downward Thunder, Myles "BOP" Broscoe on Electric Mountain Range and Alex "Kozz" Moskos on Split-Skreen Desert Guitar. The band works and lives in Montreal, where they are presently composing material for concept record on Canadian Prime Ministers and French Military Strategy circa 1759, working on a Throbbing Gristle cover and eating well. Please direct all media inquiries to Maria Catamero at soulkitten (at) blueghostpublicity (dot) com and booking inquiries to Michelle Cable at panachebooking (at) gmail (dot) com For all other inquires please contact Mark McLean at gogogogonononono (at) gmail (dot) com .

Text by Alexander Moskos.
Photo by Myles Broscoe , New Mexico November 08.

finally...some waterloo and london pix (by mclean)

2009-02-10T14:07:00.001-08:00

Dirty 30

2009-02-07T17:32:00.000-08:00

Kzzz turns 30 today , leaving Broscoe behind as the only AIDS Wolf member still a 20-something.

Check out his solo project , Drainolith , and give the boy , I mean man , some love.

___________-

Us In Hot Springs , AK. Fun fun.

__

Getting Them Priorities Straight......

2009-02-06T22:40:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I was forwarded an article about the "Montreal scene" that name dropped AIDS Wolf . One of the musicians interviewed (who I incidentally don't know , nor have I ever heard of his band) is quoted saying something along the lines of "I never met anyone in a band who didn't dream of making a living playing music."

Really? REALLY?

I find it sad that it seems the gold standard people measure the worth of doing something to be earning a living from it.

I don't see making music as a means to an end but an end in itself. And the enjoyment to be had making music without having a though about commercial returns is liberating.
Most of my musical heroes have day jobs, so cheers to the fulltime hobby and cheers to being a hobbyist.

Me and Mclean and a pile of awesome and wonderfully talented friends (who are in other bands you probably love , wether you know it yet or not) are doing this Thee Outernet, it's a music blog about stuff we love. Some old stuff , some bands that don't even have records out yet. I'd be stoked if you checked it out.

love,
Chloe

C.Y.M.

2009-01-29T08:50:00.000-08:00

i just made a myspace account and uploaded a song from the recording C.Y.M. did in july of 2007....this and 3 more songs will be a 12" ep in a few months.

http://www.myspace.com/cymcymcym

---mclean

AIDS WOLF Spring '09 Tour : What We've Got So Far

2009-01-20T23:56:00.000-08:00

Us doing "Cities of Glass" last Saturday in Montreal and then fucking around cause Yannick broke his bass drum pedal. They never last him much longer than a year , nevermind his ability to chew through cymbals. And sticks, I think we spend 50$ a week on sticks!

The show was a blast , both Red Mass and Fucked Up ( Fucked Up are probably one of the catchiest bands around , they have more hooks than a fisherman) played killer sets , and were held our own too. Sold out Sala's a lil' nerve wracking cause with all the bodies you can't ever locate your friends/bandmates.

At one point Damien jumped on and destroyed his own merch table , kinda scary as I was sitting inches away and didn't want a 300llb man or broken table chunks on my head.

Mclean spent a few days here and our band wrote 3 new songs! We have a 12" coming out soon and at least 2 7"s worth of material to be mixed.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Here's how the tour's looking so far , hopefully I'll have updates on the line-ups soon. # = first visit to that city.
I'm sooooooooooooooo excited to finally see Death Sentence : PANDA! !!!!!!! I can't believe we're playing with them!

06 March MONTREAL w/ U.S Girls + Grand Trine @ Il Motore
07 March TORONTO w/ U.S Girls , THRASHED GENES @ Sneaky Dee’s
08 March BUFFALO W/ U.S Girls @ SOUNDLAB
09 March PROVIDENCE w/ U.S Girls , CHROME JACKSON @ AS220
10 March ALLSTON W/ U.S Girls @ Gay Gardens
11 March BROOKLYN w/ SIGHTINGS, U.S Girls , FIASCO @ Death By Audio
12 March ANNANDALE ON HUDSON w/ U.S Girls @ Bard College
13 March CLEVELAND w/ U.S Girls @ Now That’s Class #
12 March TBA
14 March CHICAGO W/ U.S Girls , CACAW @ Co-Prosperity Sphere
15 March IOWA CITY w/ U.S Girls @ Public Space One #
16 March TBA
17 March HOT SPRINGS W/ U.S Girls , FIASCO ,MONOTONIX @ Valley of the Vapours Festival
18 March DAY OFF!
19 March AUSTIN @ SXSW
20 March AUSTIN @ SXSW
21 March @ AUSTIN SXSW
22 March HOUSTON w/ TYVEK, FIASCO , PAST LIVES @ Numbers #
23 March ODESSA w/ PAST LIVES @ The Roadhouse #
24 March SANTA FE w/ PAST LIVES @ Warehouse 21 #
25 March TUCSON @ Club Congress (WXWU Festival) #
26 March LONG BEACH @ Alex’s Bar #
27 March SAN DIEGO @ Che Cafe
28 March LA w/ BIPOLAR BEAR @ The Smell
30 March SAN FRANCISCO w/ DEATH SENTENCE : PANDA! @ Knockout
31 March OAKLAND @ House of Nostromos
01 April DAY OFF
02 April PORTLAND @ The Artistry
03 April SEATTLE @ The Josephine
04 April VANCOUVER w/ SHEARING PINX @ Biltmore Cabaret (18+)
05 April CALGARY w/ SHEARING PINX , THE FAMINES @ Broken City
06 April EDMONTON w/ SHEARING PINX , THE FAMINES @ The Pawn Shop
07 April REGINA w/ SHEARING PINX @ The Exchange
08 April WINNIPEG w/ SHEARING PINX @ The Royal Albert (18+)
09 April MINNEAPOLIS w/ GAY BEAST @ Big V’s
10 April TBA
11 April LANSING w/ DEAD MACHINES @ Mac’s Bar #
12 April TBA

100th blog post....how awesome!

2009-01-20T14:23:00.000-08:00

the pix from our little adventure playing shows last week will be up in a day or two....had to relearn basic html for pix (i suck) and then i went to montreal for the weekend and was too busy having fun to waste my time on the internet.

here's the hi-lites from this weekend.....

-seeing aids wolf and fucked up at casa (scary hxc dudes loved AW, whoa)

-watching aids wolf give a women's car battery a boost (what swell guys)

-hearing so much awesome new music with chloe and yannick (a.h. krakin=the shit)

-writing 3 new songs for my untitled band with chloe and yannick

-making and eating amazing vegan food back at the house

-learning the truth about "bad-ass" from alex

-chloe getting my band, thrashed genes, on the AW toronto show (thx chloe!)

-creating "THEE OUTERNET" with chloe (shit's gonna rule)

...and much more cool stuff. like i said before, i will post the pix i mentioned before soon, as well as hot new ones from this weekend. i also dug thru my laptop with chloe and yannick and found some older gems, such as pix from when i was in montreal with chloe and yannick in july 2007 making our first EP together (finally coming out soonish), pix and video's from the last canadian show with "muscle-man" on guitar, old aids wolf practice videos, etc.

judging by all this rambling, i think it's time to take a nap. fuck greyhound buses!!

---mclean

Montreal's ALL

2009-01-15T21:16:00.001-08:00

Support your local scene.

I know right away what you're gonna say , "But Chloe , my local scene sux." I understand and trust me , have been there all I can say is that right now it's a great time to move to Montreal.

Shit's happening in this icy 'burg and things are pretty exciting. We've got a huge amount of excellent venues , promoters busting their asses to get great touring bands to town on a daily basis and a few locals that make my heart explode with pride.

Here's my list of ESSENTIAL Montreal bands , so that you can fit in when you move here.

:::::::

Black Feelings
Psych-goth? It's dark , trippy and catchy. Ex-members of Les Angles Morts + Who's The Ghost? who aren't afraid to play in the rain.

Dead Wife
Bratty lowest-fi girl-punk. Ultra trashy and funner than a black eye.

Dreamcatcher
Musical mud-ghosts haunting you while you walk through quicksand.

Grand Trine
Un-Greatful , Un-Dead . Ex-Be Bad.

Monday Morning Erection
Playful abstractions , turntables + whirlygigs + lockjaw grooves.

Panopticon Eyelids
Hawkwind in a wind tunnel .

Red Mass
Choyce from CPC Gangbangs , Sexareenos ect leading this insane noise-garage-gospel collective through dark rites.

Triceratreetops
Jefferson Hovercraft , meet H.P Lustcraft.

Ultrathin
Everyone wants to fuck the guitarist-ist-ist-ist-ist-ist-ist , reverb motherfuckers.

____________________________________________________________________________

In other news , Skin Graft are having a massive sale.

Grab stuff from us , PRE , Made In Mexico , Ruins , Lake of Dracula ect for cheaper than usual.

_________________________

Some of our tour dates are now posted -- http://www.myspace.com/aidswolf , more to come. Anyone know the score in Iowa?

xoChloe

Rewind::::::::

2009-01-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

Got a slightly perplexing review in Now

Shows that rocked Toronto last week
Thu, Jan 8

critic's pick AIDS WOLF at the Boat Rating: NNNN

In the post-Avril Lavigne era, it’s hard to imagine punk rock evoking any trace of the transgressive and revolutionary ideas that once fuelled the movement. This sanitization of the genre is what makes the barely listenable, eardrum-grating cacophony of bands like Montreal’s AIDS Wolf important and worthy of the masochism needed to appreciate them.

Philly noise terrorists Satanized set up the headliners well with a barrage of angular discordant rock, often sounding like a thrash metal band playing free jazz. The club was already full, and the sloppy mosh pit was eager to bounce around to their chugging skronk rock.

AIDS Wolf also tread some weird middle ground between experimental improv and punk rock, but sound even less connected to anything musical. It’s like they took everything that normally makes a song pleasant to the ear and deliberately did the opposite. Repetition and rhythm are the only elements you can recognize as music.

On paper this sounds awful, and it’s even worse in person at deafening levels (which is kind of the point, I suppose). But there’s something inexplicably hypnotic and engrossing about this train wreck of a band.

They may look like wimpy art school kids, but their noise could have squeegee-wielding gutter punks covering their ears and running for the exits, terrify the most hardcore metal heads and make Green Day sound as threatening as Tom Jones. This is exactly what a modern punk rock band should be doing.

---Benjamin Boles
+++++++++++++++++++++++

And here's an older on from our show in Danbury last fall that was just sent to me:: Women who run with wolves.

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((000000000000))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

"Noise cannot be imagined as a synonym for dissonance , even if the judgement of noise by the then-surprised publics is imposed on modernist dissonance.. Dissonance works through it's rethinking of consonance , and composers using it tended to think of their work as reinvigorating the western tradition of music."
-Paul Hegarty:: Noise/Music: A History

2 Days!

2009-01-14T18:37:00.000-08:00

Till Mclean gets to Mtl for massive jams (anyone wanna put out a 7" of our band? , we don't have a name but we have tons of songs recorded + ready to go!) , 3 days till our show @ Sala.

Poster by Lisa Czech

Saturday Jan 17th @ Sala Rosa

Fucked Up

AIDS Wolf

RED MASS

12$ adv or 15$ at the door . Buy tix here

____________________________________________________

Here's the entire set for our Toronto show last weekend. Rowdy.

_______________________________________

I JUST SAW THIS list of bands playing SXSW '09 , and REALLY wanna see Factums and Naked on the Vague . Not sure how I'll manage that with us playing 7-8 shows in the 3 days we're in Austin but .......

Approaching Ashton (re: NO CHOPS!)

2009-01-13T18:53:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note about the passing of Ron Asheton. There is no denying this man’s influences on everyone, including the Wolf. The first song the young Myles Broscoe, aged 9, learned on his guitar was I Wanna Be Your Dog. Upon Arrival in the Greek town of Sarigakis, family vacay ’95, my cousin Stavros, a real card, pulled his Baz off the wall and fired up an uproariously feral version of TV Eye. Whether because there was a north american audience present or the copious amounts of ouzo and greek coffee running through his veins, he doubled, maybe quadrupled the length of the solo, turning the whole thing fully bonks, screaming in Greek, likely not the real lyrics.
They say everyone owns a fuzz and wah because of Asheton, which is likely not true. Jimi Hendrix used the fuzz and the wah to create an electric, multi-hued abstraction of the blues...which has of course come to be the dominant and played-out form and praxis of popular music. But at the time the gesture was huge.
Asheton, not long after and using the same raw materials, reduced everything to a purr. Did he even know what he was doing? Surely not. But there you go, he was the funkiest, the heaviest, and the sparsest. And the music, at times more violent than contemporaries like the Velvets or the MC5, was so amazingly streamlined. Real autoplant shit.
Of course, Asheton, dies the sad fate into an emptiness. His band is still not in the Hall of Fame, erasing any illusions about the venerability of that hacky sack institution. His final years, sadly, found him playing in a Stooges cover band, with the former bass player from Firehose, their equipment heisted from under their noses.
Whatever, in the cruel and thankless profession that is rock and roll, 60 is ancient. I’m sure when Death passed his little cart passed Eddie Hazel’s house, perhaps Ashton’s truest contemporary, nobody cared.
But, please, let us now put Asheton and his playing behind us. This long trend line, crawling out of the 20th century into our own, should be put to rest. The current bumper crop of underground bands are still stuck in Ashton’s style, if only because it remains the sexiest one to cop. Many of these bands I like, but now, more than ever, would be a good time, for some serious radical re-approaches. Which is what Asheton did, in the first place. His playing was Radical in the purest sense, modified “from the roots”.
There is always Brian Sullivan from Mouthus or the ladies in Mayor Daley both with different variations on the Insanely Non-approach Approach. Although I’m sure they’d disagree fervently , I’d argue there is no Ashton there. Or if there is, its in trace amounts, at the edges and perhaps simply guiding by way of no approach.

Something OLD

2009-01-13T07:09:00.000-08:00

No , not us silly.

We've been doing Chinese Roulette as an encore. Here we are in Ottawa.

Community Service...DONE!!!

2009-01-12T12:04:00.000-08:00

so i recently completed my community service sentance by spending about 36 hours with aids wolf last week. i also took some pictures that really get into the "AxWx BRAINSTATE" of how they live when they are not on stage, such as eating C grade chinese food while watching CNN in london, on.....those and many others will be up in a day or two. ---mclean

Jus' Like Them Olde Dayssssss....

2009-01-11T12:03:00.000-08:00

Micro tour of So.Ontario with Mclean on board , brings my mind backkk , way back. To Misassuaga house shows w/ Athletic Automaton and woodland chillin' w/ Uasisamonster.

However , them Funtario times are best enjoyed in summer or fall , to get the crazy legs a bit of action. January touring in Canada is precarious , snow , ice , slush all conspire against your life or at very least comfort , nevermind sound checks.

Thus we arrived late for our house show in Waterloo. Soggy , hungy (thanks to Foot Village this is now a constant in our lexicon , second only to imitating Lou Reed). Bleh bleh. We have no idea who lives at the house but quickly get comfy eating our shitty take out(touring in Canada would be 1000 x better if there were something equal to wholefoods with a hot buffet of healthy food for takeout) and chilling with Uncle Mark and the boys of DD/MM/YYYY. Rustle up some tea in the kitchen with help from the friendly hippie and start feeling "normal" again. Go down to watch the 2nd band but crowdedness = panik attack so head back upstairs . Watch DD/MM/YYYY perched on top of the washing machine , behind the band where no one can get me and the air won't run out.
They are excellent that night , the newer songs are esp. hectic and I'm feelin' PSYCHED.

We get out there , the basement is crowed but kids are kinda uptight . A few are even sitting on the the floor ( are we being mistaken for a postrock band just 'cause we're from Montreal?) , thankfully Tomas is there to bring the rowdy and after a song or 2 a few dudes join in but mostly the kids look paralysed . Mclean latter suggests they were scared. I hope so cause that's better than bored. Of course it wouldn't be an AIDS Wolf tour without a technical meltdown and Alex's Traynor (that we JUST got repaired days before) died in the first song so our sound = off.

Shit ends early and we don't know ANYONE in town , DD/MM/YYYY split for Toronto and capt. Hippie Poncho gets freaky in the living room with his crew. Uncle Mark , being a smart cookie , has brought a pile of DVDS and puts on The Jesus Lizard one so we can all chillax . Within minutes the room is cleared. It feels slightly awkward that no one wants to hang and slightly strange that we're the only Jesus Lizard fans in the house but whatcha gonna do?

Kids today! They just don't get that this is one of the best bands of the past 40 years and that David Yow is not only the best front man but is also the sexiest person alive.

But I digress . Eventually our party of 5 unrolled the sleeping bags and lay in the dark for a while until quiet came and brought sleep.

The next day we drove around desperately looking for food (the one vegan spot in town turned out to be a store , not restaurant) and waiting for the amp to be fixed. Nothing too exciting. Everyone is broke so no crate digging.

It snowed all the way to London , Kinda scary cause the new van desperately needs new tires and , again mapquest failed us.
WEe arrived an hour late but neither the promoter nor the soundman were there. And once the soundman got there we were told by the irate waitress that we couldn't soundcheck 'cause folks were eating downstairs. Thank goodness for the 5 pm load in!

I give a call to Evan to meet the Satanized boys for dinner but he tells me that cause of the weather , they are a good 5 hours away. They end up arriving around midnight , about 15 minutes after we get off the stage , and I think I must have called him a half dozen times.
Our set went well , there wasn't a ton of people but those there were ROWDY. And really , what more could ya want want. Lots of posi comments from the kids , Mclean latter said "You guys are a big band to them" flattering for sure , but rather absurd.

London pics

The Traynor DID however survive and once the Philly crew arrived we were treated to 2 most excellent sets , too bad most of the locals had split.
Right now I'd say that SATANIZED are one of my favorite bands and probably one of the best tour discoveries. They make technical , aggressive music that is sexy , catchy and fun. And very dark but with a sense of humor . I can't wait to hear their new record , that Andrew tells me is a concept album about anal sex.

BEST CONCEPT EVER. How can anyone not love this band?

Had some brief but sweet hangs with and men and after pushing the van out of the parking lot , did the late night drive to Toronto. Got to Mclean's around 4 , slept till well past noon and spent most of the day shopping for for and cooking that night's feast.

The feast (balsamic veggies + tofu over rotini with pesto + a hearty salad) was just the start to a near perfect night.
All the bands were great and from DIGUISES (one of the better bands coming out of the very fertile Toronto scene) on , there was the MOSH. So much mosh in fact , that I got a lil' scared. Mclean , as usual was a kick ass bouncer , keeping the rough at bay. I was glad kids went so wild over Satanized , seeing as it's their first Toronto show.

I love seeing quality recognized.

The night was fun , mostly. But right before our set some ugly jerk-assed douche got in my face. Dunno if he was just trying to bait me or was just your typical drunken aging hipster who doesn't do anything creative but thinks for some reason his opinion matters , either way it would have been a waste of energy to clean his clock. I need that adrenaline on stage , not off. It didn't really matter 'cause everyone who counted was hyped.

I gotta say , I love playing Toronto. It's a city filled with rad bands and the crowds are always good looking + ready for action. Never boring or apathetic .

Toronto picccccsss
AIDS Wolf's first feature in a Toronto weekly

Back to bed after watching the Can DVD and admiring Damo's package in red velvet .

Got up , ate , left for Ottawa. I'm feeling sicker by the minute. Most of the night's a blur for me , of feverish delirium and chugging hot tea. I had heard great things about the second band but the face pain made hearing difficult. The swollen glands made standing near impossible. I only noticed that the front man , shirtless , was kinda hot , although static. Of course it turns out that he's 19 and dating my friend. He could use a copy of that Jesus Lizard DVD.

We played , I had no energy or range . The men however , were on fire .
Fuck it , drove home listening to Kraftwerk and Wolf Eyes all the way home. BED.

Saw a few blasts from the past but in general I felt too shitty to really hang. I always feel weird playing the home town , it's like consorting with ghosts.

Pierre's photos

____________________\\Upcoming Show:::
Saturday Jan 17th
@ Sala

Fucked Up + RED MASS

12$ adv or 15$ at the door , Advance tix STRONGLY recommended.
We're on 2nd.

facebook event
++
Buy tix online

Anyone out there wanna videotape us?
________________________

Dates for March/April USA/CANADA fuckfest soon, kiddos.

A Week Of Wishes

2009-01-05T10:57:00.000-08:00

We've been back from the fall tour only a month and I barely remember what happened. I mean , I remember our collision in Philly , wet hair at the basement show and cooking a giant brunch with Megan . I remember getting the door welded shut in Baltimore and eating sauerkraut an Tarantula Hill . I remember being pulled over by the cops for no reason in Alabama , having to play our cd for them on the side of the highway while the drug dogs did their thing. Hiking in Chattanooga and crunching bits of fall under our shoes. I remember sticking my hand in the hot spring in ak and it being bright pink several days latter and I remember staying up till the morning in Oakland chatting with WW and doing in again then night night with 1/2 of A.H Kraken. I remember a billion and one burritos and new friends and crushes. Being a zombie in Portland and stopping at the co-op on the way. Laughing hysterically about Lou Reed and Arrington's imitations and stuffing myself with Erin's cookies in Vancouver. Singing with Gay Beast in MNPLS and having Isaack jam with us. Feasts with Anna and Pat in Chicago and candy all night , records all day in Toledo

But those thing don't make for stories do they?
Series of mundane but generally sweet events , with friends , strangers and those in between. Everything gets covered in a patina of excitement cause hangout times are short and rare and every once of "fun" gets crammed in. You feel so close to people you hardly know by playing together and sleeping on each others floors , that "knowing" becomes overrated and dull.
I like my music friends because they are brilliant and sexy but also a mystery and novelty.

We played with soooooooooo many good bands. Almost every night was an inspiration.

It's weird because I have some old friends I'm still touch with , from back in the day. They are all more or less the same age as me. Early 30-something. But instead they live in the past , shrouded with nostalgia for scenes long dead. You'd think their lives peaked at 19 and it's been downhill since. I can't understand this , esp with the present is so full of exciting challenging music + potential.

Doing it all again in March , dragging U.S Girls into the van for the first chunk , punk.

But , but but

till then we have LOVE:::::::
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WATERLOO:::

TUESDAY JANUARY 6TH 2009 @ 207 ERB West
4-7$ sliding scale
7:30pm

AIDS Wolf - bummer core comin to town

DD/MM/YYYY - you know'm. party rock for the year 2000.

LIFE IN A VACCUM - Bucketeers from the fifth dimension
http://www.myspace.com/lifeinvacuum

BreadCat - sleaze-wave pust-ponx
!!!!!!!!!!!!

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LONDON::::

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 7TH 2009 at The Blackshire Pub
511 Talbot St

AIDS Wolf

SATANIZED @ The Blackshire Pub

10$
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TORONTO::
THURSDAY, JANUARY 8TH 2009 at The Boat (158 Augusta Ave.), 9pm

AIDS Wolf
Montreal noise-punk band returns with more heavy hitting static-y guitar jabs & whining/screeching vocals. Distorted out of control, yet precise punk classics crafted/destroyed before your ears. Hectic as all hell.

SATANIZED
Philly thrash/noise-punk devil worshipers fueled by Atari games & the blood of virgins hit in Toronto for the first time. A not to be missed spectacles of angular guitars swirls, bouncing bass and the dark lord!!!!

DIGUISES
Still rolling hard with the release of their first LP "Post-Mortem Depression" Toronto's all star noise crew play it punk in an improv/free psych world. They re create the sounds of a thousand year old body functioning for the first time in centuries.

THE DEAD ARE THOSE WHO HAVE DIED

Toronto local lone gunman plays the guitar like it's water in a pan. Frequency blasts from all over the map, he creates jarring guitar noise soundscapes. Music for the future when we'll really need to communicate with robots or die.

JEFF BROWN DUPLEX
Best pals Jeff Brown & Brian McOmber tread through heavy stoner rock psych territory. They prod through the jams like a slow large mammal. On tour from Philly & on first, come early & wake up.

$8 adv at Rotate This & Soundscapes

FACEBOOK EVENT THING

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OTTAWA:::

Mocking Music Presents:
FRIDAY JANUARY 9 2009 — Babylon Nightclub — $8.00 advance (available on ticketweb.ca) — 19+/Licensed

AIDS Wolf (Montreal, Skin Graft Records—Touring in support of their brand-new album Cities Of Glass)

with special guests

HOLY COBRAS (Ottawa, Telephone Explosion, the best thing to happen to this city in, like, ever)

and

SAVAGE CRIMES(Ottawa, also incredibly awesome)

Facebook event thing
_________________

Hope to see beauty .

Welcome the new year! Dress warm , eat healthful.

xochloe

WEEKEND INSANITY IN THE CITY!!!

2008-10-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

Ok folks , the is kinda of a pre-mature pre- tour. We'll play with PRE and hopefully pre-vent any fun from going down. Cause if there's one thing AIDS Wolf HATES , it's fun.

Come check out KZZZZZ aka "The New Guy" , maybe grab our "New Record" or "New Shirts" , we'll play a "New Song". All in "New York".

Panache CMJ SHOWCASE!

FRI OCT 24, 2008 @ THE KNITTING FACTORY- ALL 3 FLOORS !

MAIN STAGE

Monotonix 1:00 AM

The Mae Shi 12:00 AM

An Albatross 11:00PM

Akimbo 10:00PM

Best Fwends 9:00PM

TAP ROOM

The Homosexuals 12:45 AM

AIDS Wolf 11:45PM

DMBQ 10:45PM

Shellshag 9:45PM

Catcall 8:45PM

OLD OFFICE

Aa 12:30 AM

Sole and the Skyrider Band 11:30 PM

Yip Yip 10:30 PM

FIASCO 9:30 PM

SCREENS 8:30 PM

Doors at 8pm. ALL AGES

Tickets available here in advance for $14
:

Buy tix

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Saturday, October 25th @ SCHMARKET SCHMOTEL

:: PANACHE / TODD P NOT-CMJ PARTY

12:40am :
The Mae Shi
12:10am :: secret guests we can't list here
11:40pm ::: PRE
11:10pm :::: Psychic Ills
10:40pm ::::: DMBQ
10:10pm :::::: Akimbo
-9:40pm ::::::: AIDS Wolf
-9:10pm :::::::: An Albatross
-8:40pm ::::::::: Sole and the Skyrider Band
-8:20pm :::::::::: Yip Yip
-8:00pm ::::::::::: Cloaks

[ SCHMARKET SCHMOTEL ]
1142 Myrtle Ave @ Bdwy | Bushwick, Brooklyn
JMZ-Mrytle, L-Jefferson, G-Myrtle/Willoughby | 8pm | all ages | no phone

[ curated by Michelle Cable ]

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They're Sayin'

2008-10-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

Because I seem to have some type of OCD , I've made a list of some reviews the new album's been getting.

Now Magazine on Cities Of Glass

Hour on Cities Of Glass

We Heart Music on Cities Of Glass

Tiny Mix Tapes on Cities Of Glass

Aversion on on Cities Of Glass

New Noise on Cities Of Glass

Megzeazez on Cities Of Glass

EVP on Cities Of Glass

Other Music on Cities Of Glass

The Montreal Gazette on Cities Of Glass

XLR8R on Cities Of Glass

Vue Weekly on Cities Of Glass

Eye Weekly on Cities Of Glass

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And because everyone loves Neue Deutsche Welle , here's some footage of Palais Schaumburg in 81.

The Best Part Of Being In A Band

2008-10-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

Is all the inspiring and creative people you meet via playing shows.

Still , having people to care about your tastes in music is kinda neat too. It's nice to know that we can spread a bit of love back to those who inspire us and hopefully introduce a few people to their new favorites . Since our band has more than one record nerd , we relish talking about the records that are getting us excited.

I only wish we could have each had our own list!

AIDS Wolf , Listed :

AIDS Wolf

AIDS Wolf formed during the great Wolf wave of 2003. Satirical and baiting, the Montreal foursome took immense joy in poking fun at the suddenly ubiquitous band nameand pissing off self-righteous folks everywhere. Funny thing happened, though: tasteless as they were, AIDS Wolf made pretty decent music, too. Their brand of danceable noise-rock incorporated the sounds of Captain Beefheart, Voivod and Throbbing Gristle well enough to catch the ear of Montreal’s best radio station CKUT 90.3 FM, which has been a champion of their music ever since. And as you might gather from this week’s Listed, Yannick, Myles, Chloe and Alex are each rabid record collectors. The band’s latest LP, Cities of Glass is out now on Skin Graft Records, and you can catch their debauchery live on the following dates:

Oct. 30 – Danbury, Conn. (Heirloom Arts Theatre)
Oct. 31 – Brooklyn, N.Y. (Danbro Studio Warehouse in Goldenrod Brewery w/ DMBQ, Ponytail, Homosexuals and more)
Nov. 1 – Philadelphia, Penn. (WPW w/DMBQ)
Nov. 2 – Washington D.C. (Velvet Lounge)
Nov. 3 – Baltimore, Md. (Otto Bar w/Deerhunter)
Nov. 4 – Richmond, Va. (The Triple)
Nov. 5 – Greensboro, N.C. (Square One)
Nov. 6 – Atlanta, Ga. (The Earl)
Nov. 7 – Chattanooga, Tenn. (JJ’s Bohemia)
Nov. 8 – Birmginham, Ala. (The Bottletree)
Nov. 9 – Hot Springs, Ark. (The Exchange)
Nov. 10 – St. Louis, Mo. (Bluebird)
Nov. 11 – Kansas City, Mo. (Record Bar)
Nov. 12 – Oklahoma City, Okla. (Conservatory)
Nov. 13 – Dallas, Texas (Club Dada)
Nov. 14 – Austin, Texas (Emo’s)
Nov. 15 – Lubbock, Texas (The Foundation)
Nov. 16 – Albuquerque, N.M. (Launchpad)
Nov. 17 – Phoenix, Ariz. (Modified Arts / Trunk Space)
Nov. 18 – San Diego, Calif. (The Casbah)
Nov. 19 – Los Angeles (The Smell)
Nov. 20 – Sacramento, Calif. (UC-Davis Firehouse w/ AH Kraken, the Mayyors)
Nov. 21 – Oakland, Calif. (21 Grand)
Nov. 22 – San Francisco, Calif. (Hemlock Tavern)
Nov. 23 – Portland, Ore. (East End)
Nov. 24 – Vancouver, B.C. (Biltmore)
Nov. 25 – Seattle, Wash. (Vera Project)
Nov. 26 – Missoula, Mon. (Badlander)
Nov. 28 – Minneapolis, Minn.
Nov. 29 – Chicago, Il.
Nov. 30 – Detroit, Mich.

1. The University of Minnesota Marching Band - 14th Annual Indoor Concert 1975 (Mark Records)
Picked that up in a Minneapolis used shop. Contains probably the most staccato and jerky pieces of pink noise ever. Completely recorded in some incredibly reverby arena, where the crowd screams mix with the drum lines to increase the confusion even more. The songs are complete bullshit arrangements from traditional and other SousaSousa-like favorites, but the fun of it rests mostly in the crazy-assed blend of the percussion that ends up sounding like a hurricane of treble without any tone. The army-like feel and whistle shots increase the uncomfortable feeling of the whole recording (Yannick)

2. The Karate Party “1, 2, 3, 4,” (from Black Helicopter on S-S Records)
The bass goes on a descending scale in 8, while the drums go in 4 – following an extremely basic repetitive pattern, and the guitar is in 2, strumming two huge super atonal chords back and fourth, the guitar meets up with the bass in the chorus, while the drums goes in 2 – the whole thing sounds super alienated but keeps it catchy – a garage unit that is not afraid of churning out completely atonal pieces without sounding like goth-drenched no wave. Like a better, weirder Crime. (Yannick)

3. Moussa Doumbi - “Yeye Mousso” (from Lipa Kodi Ya City Council on Mississippi Records

This tune is amazing because it makes an extremely atonal vocal line very very catchy. 1960s distorted psych from Mali. Its inspiring because its heavy and driving and simultaneously very joyful. The bassline is undeniably North American sounding but the vocal tone and melody is very otherworldly. That particular bassline turns up in a modified form somewhere on Cities of Glass. The rest of the record is beautiful as well, the gospel song at the end of the first side is particularly gorgeous. (Myles)

4. Donna Summer - “I Feel Love” (from Live and More on Casablanca Records)
This one might seem out of left field but the slightly distorted vocals and bizarre harmonies from the back up singers take this version to another level. She introduces her sisters and orchestra during the synth breakdown, which is charming. The energy of the performance and the audience make this one great. And the synth tone of course. (Myles)

5. Alban Berg - Wozzeck: Performed by the New York Philharmonic, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Conductor (Sony Classical Heritage Masterworks Series)
Opera is so abstract. When you get into the 20th century stuff and the music becomes less tonal and you have ladies really getting into the upper registers it becomes bonkers dissonant. This one tells the story of a soldier who is brutalized by the system, experimented on by a crazed doctor, constantly belittled and berated by his military superiors and ends up murdering his mistress...all the while failing his wife and child in untold psychological ways. Harsher than any current p.e. noise. Herzog made a film version of this story. Berg’s opera is better...if you can sift through the German libretto. (Alex)

6. The Scenics - Play the Velvet Underground - How Does it Feel To be Loved (Dream Tower Records)
Recently released, unearthed tapes of some scrappy Ontario boys belting out VU covers in various Toronto clubs circa ‘79-80. No frills, no skills versions of all your faves by some no-name jammers from hogtown. Lovely. (Alex)

7. Felix Morel - Journey Through Quebec’s Weirdo Underground (Live CKUT 90.3 Montreal Broadcast)
Felix is an amazing poster artist in Montreal who does collage better than anyone in the current crop. He’s also in a great Montreal band called Panopticon Eyelids, who have stuff out on Our Mouth and Abandon Ship records. Here he plays two straight hours of absolutely bent Quebec underground music from the mid ‘60s to present. From psychedelic jigs to gutter punk songs in French about mescaline. So amazing. Grip mp3 here. (Alex)

8. Albert Marcoeur - Albert Marcoeur (Atlantic)
A few years back, when we were on tour, we played a show in Munich that was a bit of a disaster. Our set was capped with a huge fight with our then guitarist, Christopher, who stormed out into the fog with the keys to the van leaving us stuck at the venue. On top of that we’d spent the day at Dachau, so were all feeling pretty fucked up and moody.

Trying to lighten the mood one of our hosts , Herman, poked his bearded face into the room saying “I hear you guys like prog?” and waved a giant slab of records at us. So, we all stayed up all night taking notes. This was the best record he played us, and lucky for me I found a copy at a record convention in Belgium about a month later.

Albert Marcoeur is a french avant-prog multi-instrumentalist who writes some of the most off kilter tunes this side of Captain Beefheart. On this record he sings, plays drums, clarinet, piano, wood pipes and a bizarre homemade percussive horn made from PVC tubing.

On songs like “C’est Raté, C’est Raté" and "Tu Tapes Trop Fort" he gurgles, barks, screams, slows and speeds his vocal lines and uses heavy breathing as percussion. These are the songs I studied while coming up with my vocals for Cities of Glass. This album is so disjointed and discordant, yet manages to be downright celebratory. It’s avant gardism that is FUN. (Chloe)

9. U.S Girls - Bit + Pieces CD-R (no label)
U.S. Girls is one girl – one girl who tours by herself on a Greyhound bus, sings over backing tapes played on a tube-powered reel-to-reel and makes some of the most hauntingly original music I’ve heard in a long time. It’s a one-woman goth-noise-girl group that’s amazingly catchy, using weird percussive elements in both vocal delivery and in the backing music.

The call and response vocals of the title track (a Dave Clark 5 cover, FYI) is especially interesting, it’s auditory schizophrenia! A demented one-person conversation that playfully and scarily subverts the original context of the song, the way few covers can. My fingers are crossed that these tracks will find a proper (meaning vinyl) home in the near future. (Chloe)

10. Country Teasers – The Empire Strikes Back (In The Red)
“All human life must be destroyed!!” Yes, Ben , I agree. The world’s greatest living lyricist doesn’t pull any punches here. His satirical lines might cause some of your friends some discomfort, so ditch ‘em – they aren’t too bright anyway. You deserve much better, smarter and funnier friends.

Being less abrasive than much of the Country Teasers output, I was initially surprised at myself for liking this so much more than everything else they’ve done. And that’s saying a lot cause I’ve been obsessed with this band for 10 years. It works in an “avant” context because of the epic nature of the album. Song to song there are subtle shifts in tone, and thematically, there is more cohesion than found on previous albums. What we have here is a concept album on race relations and misanthropy. This thing is a fucking opera and B.R Wallers is the smartest person I’ve ever met. (Chloe)

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Because I'm a space cadet I forgot to post this . Here yous go! AW live in Milan last May

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2 Sonic Youth Bios , One Month to Read 'Em!

2008-10-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

The Good :

Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth by David Browne

Playing the game of “follow the namedrop in the Sonic Youth interview” was what got teenaged me into acts like Jesus Lizard , Boredoms , Pussy Galore and Dead C (putting the missing links together was my own suburban Canadian Noise-Rock n' Roll Highschool.) so I’ll always owe them a major debt. This book is the 3rd major biography I’ve read on them and is , in my opinion , the best. It avoids the drama of many rock bios and gives us the SY brass tacks with tons of talk on process and sound , as well as the band’s ambivilance with fame and success. I'm especially into all the gear talk, in depth discussion of the recording experiences and in hearing about the early days and the influence of the No-Wave scene.

The Bad:

Psychic Confusion : The Sonic Youth Story by Steve Chick

This book is annoying and fawning. It's basically the author having a jerk off fest over how great SY are. Buddy , you don't need to sell 'em to me , I'm already reading the book! Too much fan boy drool , next to no substance.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Since Our record came out a month ago , and tour get closer , we've been getting a a few people writing about us too.

This one is from the
Platine Blog . Platine is a record store in Quebec City.

Les loups sida sont de retour avec une sanglante nouvelle galette. Enregistré en plein milieu de leur dernière tournée étasunienne, voilà un album auquel il faudra porter attention. Notons d'emblée qu'il fut produit par nul-autre que Weasel Walter, l'être le plus actif de la nouvelle scène no-wave, et que non seulement il y appose son sceau, mais il y fait aussi une réalisation remarquable. Puisque sur ce disque, AIDS Wolf y va fort dans leur destruction du rock, d'une façon si intense qu'on y perd parfois la notion même de chanson. Plus dur d'écoute que leurs précédents enregistrements, c'est toutefois avec une heureuse patience qu'on le ré-écoute encore et encore pour comprendre ce qui leur passe par la tête. Cities of Glass marque un retour très lourd mais aussi très efficace, d'une vivacité qui rappelle beaucoup leur énergie en spectacle. (Marc-Antoine Dion, Platine)

________________________________________
And here's an interview I did with Pulp Mag a few weeks ago (I REALLY need to mind the freaking typos , eep!) :

Aidswolf
Interview by Foxxy

A great band from Montreal Canada. A four piece band thats beyond" Very Artsy" that demands people to reconnect, react and recover from the tears of millions.

Love it and demand it......
My interview with Aidswolf!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Q & A'sssssssss

What does AIDS WOLF mean 2 you?

Dada in 2 words.or the world’s shortest sound poem

How did you 4 meet?

Doing our time in the montreal music ghetto , and travellin’ the inter galatic prog-waves.

Do you think that Montreal is the mecca of GREAT MENACING MUSIC from Canada? and why?

I’m not sure , I think vancouver might be leading the pack right now with the whole scene around the emergency room. I’ve been listening the mutators/shearing pinx split lp all week and it’s getting me pumped up on life! vancouver’s probably great for it cause it’s pretty depressing there.

Your track " We are all animals" how did this attack track occur?

We were recording at the hotel 2 tango after a few whirlwind days touring with cpc gangbangs and the brutal knights. On no sleep , raging headaches and covered in bruises from a rowdy weekend , we showed up at the hotel at 8 am Sunday morning. We laid down a few of our songs and then just started jamming with the tape rolling.
we are all animals was one of those jams.

the lyrics are basically about how being on tour reduces you to animal instinct and urges. They were made up on the spot.
it’s on our new split 12” with night wounds on nail in the coffin.

I hear that some of your band members are cutters?

We are armed with exacto knives , that’s the danger of have 2 graphic designers in the band.

Who are some of the bands musical influences?

Captain beefheart , yes , us maple , voivod , emerson lake and palmer , albert marceour , pussy galore , black flag , saccarine trust , sightings , trobbing gristle , royal trux , lake of dracula.

What does Mark Mclean mean to you?

the best friend we could ever have and a non stop source of inspiration and support. He’s the reason this band exists. His new band thrashed jeans is about to be the best thing in toronto.

How is touring in the states compared to Canada?

Less driving ,more vegan treats , rowdier crowds , whole foods , generally more of a scene and support network for noise rock.

Any crazy stories, of fun-unrest and despair on the road?

We all kinda broke down at our show in france because the 2 support bands were sooooo shitty and both played over an hour. It was TORTURE – I actually cried.. French mr bunglesque-emo-prog should be against the geneva convention.

Are there any bands from Toronto that you are listening 2 right now?

BRUTAL KNIGHTS!!! , career suicide , rozasia(rip) , disguises, and the creeping nobodies have all been on the turntable over the past few week.there’s lots to love in toronto .

Where do you think this band will be in 5 years?

Celebrating our 10th aniversary and coaxing john french to join as our second drummer.
hopefully there will be affordable hybrid vans by then.

The Cities of Glass event is coming up in Toronto, What are you hoping for?

To see all our friends in the audience , smilling, looking awesome and dancing up a storm! if we could get a nice brunch with mclean + team burnout on Sunday , all the better.

I really love your track" put yr head on a plate"- How did this song come together?

I don’t remember! it was too long ago!

What does "indie" music mean 2 you?

A band , a van , a plan .

Any last words to the public??

Love yourself!

Thanks

Getting Laid(s) Wolf

2008-10-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

WOW! Pop Montreal is over and I'm covered with bruises , have a split lip and a giant dazed smile on my face. The "Weird Punk" series was a success despite a few hiccups and I saw several bands who until recently , I knew only from their recordings.

After our show in Quebec city , Yannick and I were stuck in a very bright , very loud room and only slept an hour. That brought in a delirium that lasted the entire weekend and gave me hallucinations while I danced the nights (and mornings) away.Totally incoherent , any conversations I had on the weekend were nonsense babbling.

Thus , our set. Saturday Myles came down with a NASTY case of food poisoning and spent all afternoon and evening puking his guts out.By showtime , he was still vomiting so , being the "get-in-the-van) types we are , the show went on. We invited Erin (Ward , from Shearing Pinx) and Steve (Mattos aka Chrome Jackson , 1/2 of Athletic Automaton , ex-Arab On Radar , our very good pal) to join us from a 3 guitar psychedelic (the lack of sleep helped get those brainwave paterns running overtime , drugfree motherfuckers!) post-neo-wave freakout. We called it getting Laids(s) Wolf and played for about half an hour , part of that time I was hallucinating so hard the only way I could sing was to lie on the floor with my eyes closed.

It was probably one of the more satisfying sets I've ever played. Was it good? I was too tranced out to tell but my friend Jeff (aka Captain No-Pants) was having a blast watching the crowd's reactions and said we split their affections fairly evenly . I guess we'll know the results once Justin sends us the recording .

HOWEVER I offered guest list spots for our Sunday afternoon show to anyone who thought the jamz sucked and only 2 people asked.

Sunday , Myles was in better but not perfect shape and we managed to pull off a "normal " AIDS Wolf Set at the Cove . Afterwards I blushed and felt shy cause dudes from bands I really like lots told me we were good.

Having someone from a band you are a fan of , no matter what , is always akin to your secret crush asking you on a date.It's awesome and exciting and wonderful but deep down , your insecurities are making you paranoid it's some prank out of Carrie.

Or was I just an unpopular kid?

Either way , I hope the fine folks at the Cove start hosting more afternoon BBQ shows , this was seriously FUN , totally different vibe from nighttime shows. It felt so real and friendly , like we were all on the same team.

Shearing Pinx , Tyvek ,U.S. Girls & TV Ghost = Fellow Spaceways Travelers , possible new friends for lyfe. (It's true we played with Shearing Pinx a while ago so TECHNICALLY they aren't NEW friends but this Pop was our first serious bro-down with them.)

An Albatross = Old School crew , back in my arms at last! Can't WAIT till CMJ to spend more time with these truly wonderful men.

Black Feelings = one of the best bands in Montreal and total troopers for playing on the roof IN THE FUCKING RAIN!.

Some pics by Pierre:

MORE!

Only bummers were that both Neptune and Made In Mexico had to cancel , it just wasn't the same without them.

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ATTEN: ONTARIO/QUEBEC! We might do a few smallish shows inside you at the end of the month (between Oct 26-29) , anyone interested in booking us holla : andre (at) blueskiesturnblack (dot) com.

Anything fun will be considered.

xo.

We're Playing 2 shows

2008-10-04T01:41:00.000-07:00

October 4th Le Divan Orange (4234 St Laurent):::

02:00 AM --- AIDS Wolf
01:00 AM --- Neptune
12:00 AM --- Death Set
11:00 PM --- Shearing Pinx
10:00 PM --- CHROME JACKSON (feat. Steve Mattos of Arab on Radar/ Athletic Automaton)
08:30 PM --- screening of the new ARAB ON RADAR DVD "Sunshine for Shady People"

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Sunday, October 4th :::

@ Friendship Cove (215a Murray St - Bonaventure Metro station).

doors open @ NOON! ALL AGES!!!!!

05:00 PM --- Tyvek
04:00 PM --- AIDS Wolf
03:00 PM --- Double Dagger
02:00 PM --- Black Feelings
01:15 PM --- The Pink Noise
12:30 PM --- Many Mental Mistakes

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Last night was our second time playing Quebec city and , as last time everyone sat down while watching us. What's up QC? Do you guys hate us? Or just fun in general.
Cause shows are way more fun for both the band AND the crowd when you stand near the front and perhaps bang your head or shake your ass.
We're confused.

Shoot Me , NOW

2008-10-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

So yesterdayI got a lovely message praising our new record a part of it was a congratulation for how we made our cover of another band's song "our own".
Except it's not a cover . We have not recorded a cover to this date. If we did we would not change the title of the song and we WOULD credit the band.
I'm baffled.
UGHHHHJHHHHHHHHHHJ.

______________________
Speaking of covers , my on-and-off Black Flag cover band , The Sandwiches, played a few shows the other week. One of them being an after party for the
Mudhoney show across the street. As soon as I stepped of the stage , Mark Arm asked me if we could do it again.

As fun as it is to make fools out of ourselves playing all of "Damaged" , I think The Sandwiches , or at least this version of them are laid to rest for good.

________________________

In totally ancient news (aka I suck) we did the record launches aka 2 last ever shows with Andre and they were happy sad. As I've mentioned on this blog more than once , playing local shows always gives me crazy amounts of stress because I'm simply too aware of who's there , who's not and all the promotion details . Also as we generally bring outta town bands to join in the fun , I worry about them having a good time , being satisfied with the show AND getting a good impression of Montreal.
This time was no different. Yannick and I were up printing till 5 am the night before and the day of , I couldn't nap cause it seemed everyone I know was calling. Dancing around the kitchen and listening to The Intelligence while drinking homemade kombucha and taking every vitamin known to man only goes so far to replace lost hours of sleep.
So tired and wonky I got to the venue and as usual started panicking. Panopticon Eyelids were great , Indian Jewlery were great and we played to a very rowdy crowd (maybe 2 rowdy with one dude BLOWING in my face--wtf? multiple times , Tobias lifting me over his head and Eben grabbing my face and pulling it.) . In the rowdiness I realized that outta the 250 people there , I only knew about 20 and a wave of calm washed over me. In the 5 and a half years since our first sow at the defunct Pasalymany's , our local crowd has turned from mostly being people we know to being , what? Fans? Kids? I have no idea who these people are but I love that they move and I love that I no longer feel nervous.

Walking around outside with my friend Lisa after the set was kinda weird cause kids were all"oh is that the singer ?" , It seems strange to be anything other than just Chloe , especially on home turf.

The Toronto show was more "fun" and yet yet more drama at the same time. Since we hadn't been there in a year (!!!!!!!) pretty much ALLLLLL the Toronto crews came out (yes even TEAM BURNOUT) so just catching up with everyone all night was LOVELY! The poster art on the walls only made the night better as did the mock duck from Buddah's.
Mclean's new band thrashed jeans brought the flipper meets meets throbbing gristle jams (although I could only hear one of the guitars, not to guitarists 15 watt amps are for the bedroom , not the stage. ) and I really really impressed with Romo Roto

I had a few talks with a few intense fans (thanks Toronto , we love you tooooo) including Tavis who flew in From Winnipeg (your dedication is awesome and it reminds me of myself when i was your age) and one girl who started crying on meeting me. Awkward yet AWESOME. THIS is the reason to be in a band. If only a fraction of these people end up pursuing art or music making , it'll have been worthwhile.

Of course ,being an AIDS Wolf show there needed to be a bummer and our bummer starts and ends with a violent sack of hippy shit.First he climbed on stage ,stomping on a buncha gear , THEN he threw a bottle at Andre , hitting him in the face THEN he was onstage again , punching Myles in the back.I was in the crowd and had no idea anything was amiss until my bandmates walked off the stage 2 songs before the end of our planned set.

Afterwards we saw some REAL violence on the street while loading our van .

Some photos Pierre took

More.
_____________________________________________

Ends and starts , our first show with KZZZ is tomorrow night in Quebec City

Jeudi le 2 Octobre
L'Agitée
251, rue Dorchester:
Quebec, QC

Festival Antenne-A

LA soirée si vous aimez les sensations fortes et les performances qui résonnent pour les semaines à venir.
22h - 8$

An Albatross
An Albatross est un orgasme sonique, une bourrasque mécanique, saccadés des signatures des temps éclipsées par des pseudo-mélodies d'orgue Farfisa. Vous connaissez un groupe qui fait quatre prestations en une journée, qui offre un spectacle qui fait l'équilibre entre une attaque explosive de disco, une cérémonie Appalaches manipulateur-de-serpent et James Brown? An Albatross de Philadelphie est reconnu pour sa performance légendaire et sa musique est incontestablement parfaite pour la génération d'aujourd'hui : courte, complexe et remplis d'éclats viscéraux. An Albatross souligne la sortie The Family Album en tournant au travers l’Amérique et en nous rendant une première visite à Québec. Visite qu’il ne faut pas manquer!
An Albatross

Aids Wolf
AIDS Wolf est un groupe de noise rock canadien originaire de Montréal. Ils ont débuté chez Pasalymany tapes mais sont actuellement signés chez Skin Graft Records et Lovepump United. Citant Captain Beefheart, ils comparent leur son à quelque chose comme "une pieuvre mangeant de la bouillie dans un sac de polyéthylène" (a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag).
AIDS Wolf

Billets en feu chez Platine le disquaire et à L'Agitée.

AIDS Wolf , aids wolf, AIDS WOLF , AIDSWOLF
________________________________

Here are some olddddd and short videos of us in Orlando!

Mirror , Mirror On The Wall, Who's The Weirdest of Them All?

2008-09-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

If I had to say who the biggest weirdo in underground music , I'd vote for my buddy Jeff Schneider , formerly of Arab On Radar , currently of the excellent Made In Mexico .
Brilliant guitarist , hilarious guy and total superfreak.
He's pretty quiet in real life bro-downs but online , he's got alot to say. I love this dude.

On Reggeaton:

On Bands:

Making Money/ That D. Boon shit:

Influences part 1:

Influences 2:

Made In Mexico @ The Knitting Factory

***********************************************************************************

If you wanna see ME dork the fuck out , my Black Flag cover band, The Sandwiches , are playing tonight at Katacombs , tomorrow at Casa. We play all of Damaged. I "sing".
Please don't throw shit ,I'm not tough like Hank.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Bursted

2008-09-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

Playing the whole album tonight and tomorrow , and then some.

Goal: trying to take the perimeters of "rock" or "punk" and push the to the breaking point. ????

Tour dates are up , line-ups coming together .

Goal : to get to see all the exciting bands that will never make it to Montreal by playing with them. (and buy their tshirts and 7"s) !!!!!!

Saturday September 13 08
AIDS Wolf
Indian Jewelery
Romo Roto
Thrashed Jeans (Mclean's new band)
@ Whippersnapper gallery , Toronto.
All Ages - 10$

ALL there will be a poster art show featuring:
Seripop (me an' Yannick)
Autodestruck
Merchguy
Deadweight
Micheal Majewski
Jeremy Wilson
Gavin Dee
Michael Deforge
Doublenaut
Aaron Ber
John Kurmis
Haggard Beast
Adam Swinbourne
Steph Davidson
Tad Michalak
Leslie Predy
Tomas Del Baso/Alex Mckenzie
Mat King

Art Show starts at 6pm , bands around 8:30.

I feel weird about playing. Andre's last shows and the last time we played together was in Tel Aviv , a billion years ago. Montreal is pissing rain and the day is generally non-beachy. Listened to Panopticon jam last night and they have tapped into this heavy psych that goes perfectly with the clicks and drones of our printing press. SO GLAD they are FINALLY putting out an LP. Brace yourselves , Montreal has a few secret weapons.

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

This Is Spinal Tap

2008-09-11T08:07:00.000-07:00

We have a new guitarist. His name is Alex Moskos and if you've been following the Montreal avant scene over the past few years you might have seen him performing as part of the Unireverse , Et Sans , Goa , Thames or solo as
Drainolith. Or perhaps djing as Khozzy Mozzborne at Casa or Blackjack.

Myles and I have both know him since the old days , back in Ottawa and he's a chiller dude.

Andre is now the Chuck Dukowski of AIDS wolf and if you don't know what that means then you haven't done your homework and and
Get In The Van.

Andre's gonna be doing the Montreal and Toronto record launches with us this weekend as his last shows , Alex takes over in time for Pop Montreal and CMj.

16" x 22" 6 color screenprint .

Friday, September 12th in Montreal :::

AIDS Wolf

Indian Jewlery

Panopticon Eyelids

20h30
$8 / $10
@ La Sala Rossa (4848 St Laurent)

SOON!

2008-08-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

( the orange is dayglow in real life)

Front Cover.

Outside Foldout.

Inside Foldout. (photo by Yannick Grandmont)

CD Face.

And Under.

Backcover.

Close up of the photo (merci Yannick!) , masks by Morag Kydd .

Preview track for the curious , or morbid :Tied-Up In Paper

Track listing :
1. M.T.I.
2. Tied-Up In Paper
3. Cities of Glass
4. Ch-ch-ch-chatter
5. Down, Holy Ground
6. Gnarly Tooth
7. General _ _
8. A Sacriﬁcial Drone
9. Relevant Issues
10. So Many Plastic Pearls

Out September 9th , CD on Skingraft , gatefold LP on Lovepump United
.

Vinyl Pre-order here , tour dates on our myspace .

Please note , 300 of the LPs are mint and orange splatter vinyl. First 200 copies copies mailordered will be splatter.

xo
chloe

Impossible You Say?

2008-08-15T12:57:00.000-07:00

I must have fallen into BIZARRO WORLD 'cause actually got a good review from our Columbus show at the end of last March. It was a pretty fun night despite the kid who was stressing me out 'cause he was on so much drugs he kept hurtin' himself and freaking everyone out.

Hugs not drugs duder.

Our split with Night Wounds is finally out on Nail In The Coffin Skin Graft bought up a bunch of copies so if you're already ordering stuff from them you can grab one. This record was a loooooong time coming and we're pretty excited to finally have 'em in hand. Night Wounds are one of my personal faves with their weird disoriented no-goth. I know I've said it a million times but for me the best part if being in a band is getting to play and do splits with the bands I'm excited about. If i were cuter I would have become a groupie . I'm such a nerdy fan-girl I foam at the mouth thinking about all the bands I love.

Now the stats . There are 500 of these babies floating around , an undisclosed amount are red / yellow splatter but most are black.

xo,
scum

Nearly Forgotten....

2008-07-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

Momus wrote about us in his Live Journal. He has some interesting things to say about making culture outside of commercial ambitions .
_____________________________________________________________________________________

AIDS Wolf in Lyon , FR.
You probably can't tell in the video but I had a nervous breakdown (THE nervous breakdown?) right before we went on. It seems my mental faculties always fall apart in France.

It's weird though , so many people were filming and taking photos , this is the only evidence.
If you saw us on this tour and have photos/audio/pics/reviews (even bad ones!) ect please send us the link!

aidswolf .at. aidswolf .dot. net

merci!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

In other news , Montrealers into avant rock , cranky garage and weird punk could do worse than to show up at Time's Up on Thursday nights . It goes down at Blackjack , St. Henri's best neighborhood dive. This week I'll be be djing alongside some of the best in town.
My playlist will potentially include : The Rebel , Courge , Crack Und Ultra Eczema , Abe Vigoda , Yikes , The Dippers , Costes , Double Dagger , Clockcleaner , Love Tan , Singer , Harry Pussy and Deep Jew.

Save a dance for me ok?
xo,
c.scum

London!

2008-06-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

oh my gawd i loved this show. the rebel rule my ass . bromancer ruled my ass. dancing with keex and sophie ruled my ass.

from a show at death by audio last october. it's on the fingered dvd zine , montreal edition.

random and dull AIDS wolf newz:

-yannick and i get home next week and we'll be in the studio shortly to record a few new split 7"s. one of them involves us doing our first ever cover.

-for everyone who keeps asking about shirts , we're setting up an online distro and will have exclusive shirts for sale in the next month. these will be designs you can only get from us by mail order.we'll even have a few one of a kind shirts , made by me and yannick, aka seripop , obviously.

-our friends gay beast are on tour in the us/canada. go see them, they are the greatest thing to come out of the midwest since lake of dracula.

-i might have mentioned it before but we aren't playing any shows till september 12th. we have big stuff planned that we're working on this summer.

thanks so much to everyone who helped us out , played with us and came to see us in europe and israel. especially if you danced. even more so if you danced with me.

we love you tons.

tour is over , the sky is grey

2008-06-05T03:01:00.000-07:00

My tour diaries are random scraps that may take awhile to edit into something semi coherent , if ever.

Myles took some pics though and we'll get those up soon enough. I don't really have much to say other than I'm tired , happy and sunburned. Our week in Israel was bizarre and scary and fun . Playing a kibbutz in the woods outside of Jerusalem is one for the memory box , probably the weirdest show any of us will ever play. Fun too , if we forget the hostile jocko-punks and concentrate on the legions of sexxy.

Look , I did an interview!

AIDS Wolf live , at Hebrew University in Jerusalem . Another WIERD show. We are playing in the noonday sun and it's about 40 celsius. The "crowd" is 10 meteres away , in the shade. It felt surprisingly good but combined with being a tourist in the old city , made me sleep at the venue all night during our "real" show. Sleeping before our set makes me feel out of it and dreamy but doesn't make me too many palz.

Performing "We Multiply" in Tel Aviv @ Levontin7. (we both lie and we multiply our fears)

We'll be taking a bit of a break from performing now , with no shows planned until the fall. Our Montreal show in July is OFF as Mutators and Night Wounds have canceled their tours and we were only playing to bro down with them. We'll be hitting the road again in October for a full US tour . Send inquiries to Michelle at Panache Booking.

NEW WYNIL ON IT'S WAY!

xocdlux

2008-05-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

AIDS Wolf in Milan.

Tour has been pretty wonky lately. We're playing London tonite (with The Rebel = love love love love love. GREAT FUCKING BAND) but are not expecting much considering how the UK has been going. The only thing we're looking forward too is getting to play with The Intelligence in Brussels and Amsterdam on Saturday and Sunday. At least if those shows blow we'll get to see a band we like and have been wanting to see live forever.

Israel is a total mystery . The homous will be plentiful and tasty if nothing else.

xo,
chloe

So Austere

2008-05-14T16:37:00.001-07:00

AIDS Wolf in Graz, Austria. Playing to a very calm crowd.

AIDS Wolf

Downloadable

2008-05-04T02:06:00.000-07:00

Live in Bratislava, SK

SMASHISM

2008-05-03T11:09:00.000-07:00

Some recent live videos.....

In Providence....

In NY..........

Right now we're in Bratislava , Slovakia. Tour is having as many brodowns as throwdowns. A few minor altercations and many major lovefests.

We love HEALTH forever. And ever.

Hello , we're on tour

2008-04-24T03:06:00.000-07:00

I guess the dates would be useful.
We're in Cologne now , at Nikita's (our bookinng agent) place.
Hi!

24 Apr 2008 20:00
@ Kulturbunker Cologne, DE
25 Apr 2008 20:00
@ Molodoi Strasbourg, FR
26 Apr 2008 20:00
w/ OLD TIME RELIJUN + TV BUDDHAS @ Friese Bremen, DE
27 Apr 2008 20:00
@ Lades Kaelder Copenhagen, DK
28 Apr 2008 20:00
@ Hafenklang Hamburg, DE
29 Apr 2008 20:00
@ West Germany Berlin, DE
30 Apr 2008 20:00
@ Zoro Leipzig, DE
1 May 2008 20:00
@ Under13 Munich, DE
2 May 2008 20:00
w/ HEALTH @ DonauFestival Krems, AT
3 May 2008 20:00
@ A4 Bratislava, SK
4 May 2008 20:00
@ Forum Keller Graz, AT
5 May 2008 20:00
w/ OLD TIME RELIJUN @ Student Center Zagreb Teatar Zagreb, HR
6 May 2008 20:00
@ Mensa Pri Koritu Ljubliana, SL
7 May 2008 20:00
w/ OLD TIME RELIJUN + HIROSHIMA ROCKS AROUND @ Init Roma, IT
8 May 2008 20:00
w/ OLD TIME RELIJUN @ Circolo Magnolia Milan, IT
9 May 2008 20:00
@ Velvet Torino, IT
10 May 2008 20:00
@ L’Embobineuse Marseille, FR
11 May 2008 20:00
@ L’Ecurie Geneva, SUI
12 May 2008 20:00
@ Grnnnd Zero Lyon, FR
13 May 2008 20:00
@ Le Ferrailleur Nantes, FR
14 May 2008 20:00
@ Instants Chavirés Paris, FR
16 May 2008 20:00
@ Revenge (Great Escape Festival) Brighton, UK
17 May 2008 20:00
@ TBD (help!!) TBD ????, UK
18 May 2008 20:00
@ Captain’s Rest Glasgow, UK
19 May 2008 20:00
@ Edinburgh College of Art Edinburgh, UK
20 May 2008 20:00
@ The Star & Garter Manchester, UK
21 May 2008 20:00
@ Rainbow Birmingham, UK
22 May 2008 20:00
@ Clwb Ifor Bach Cardiff, UK
23 May 2008 20:00
w/ THE REBEL + BROMANCER @ Catch 22 London, UK
24 May 2008 20:00
w/ INTELLIGENCE @ Recyclart Bruxelles, BE
25 May 2008 20:00
w/ INTELLIGENCE + EATS TAPES @ OCCII Amsterdam, NL
28 May 2008 20:00
@ City Hall Haifa, Israel
29 May 2008 20:00
@ Uganda Jerusalem, Israel
31 May 2008 20:00
@ Levontin7 Tel-Aviv, Israel

OMG!!!

2008-04-18T00:35:00.000-07:00

We just *may* end up touring with my favorite new band (that features members of my all time favorite band)!!!
I hope this is real and not a hallucination or a false alarm!!!!!!!!!!!

Cross yr fingers for me?
xo
chloeeee

How'd ya get built like that? You ain't been here that long.

2008-04-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

"So do you wanna fuck?"

***********************************************************************************

Thursday :

When we were in Pittsburgh last week , one of the more hilarious things (((microwaves))) drummer , host with the most and general bon vivant , John Roman , said was (more or less) "sooner or latter every weird n' heavy band gets compared to Dillinger Escape Plan " . Thanks to local blog , Midnight Poutine , we too join the ranks of bands that sound nothing like D.E.P being compared to them. M.P. DID play us in their podcast so the youth can decide , Dillinger or not.

The show at Sala was fun , but like all local shows nerve wracking as all fuck. Personally , I find when we play Montreal , I'm just WAYYY too aware of what's going on. Thus , it's harder to get into "the zone". Things got off the a late start because of the hockey game and it was 1:15 by the time we played (and almost 4 when we got home!). Despite the lateness , things were more or less perfect. I was well chuffed at the line-up we chose and none of the bands disapointed. I thought that each brought a different take on what could loosely be described as "noise rock" , while still leaving a large margin of variety.

As usual , it was a joy to see Japanther and Sightings + Black Feelings are on the list of Montreal bands worth keeping an eye on. It was my first time seeing them but Andre's praise was right on.

I noticed tons of fresh faces , which is nice. As much as I love my friends coming to our shows , it's nice to know they aren't the only ones. One thing that was especially heart warming , was to read so much praise about our set on the local scene msg board. As a band , we've always felt a lil' outta place here , it feels good to see we aren't as alone as we thought.

a review , en francais + pics

Pics above and in link are by Sandra Lynn Belanger

Notable event: several couples making out HARDCORE during Sightings set , a couple fucking in the downstairs men's washroom (thanks for the tip Kyle) . I guess other people think the slow grooves are sexy too.

Friday :
Woke up at 8 to grab the guys and DRIVE, after packing it made for exactly 3 hours of sleep. RAD. Our van started dying once we got into the city and it took us a million years to arrive at the Knit so we missed soundcheck.

We ran out grab some food and were spotted by a few young fans who seemed really excited about the show , screams and all , giving us a nice boost of energy. On returning the same kids were crying , telling us their dreams were shattered (no , I'm not making this up. We s attract some pretty intense folks and we love 'em to death). Turns out a guy they were chilling with was getting drunk on the sidewalk and the bouncers weren't gonna let any of them in. Jake said he'd put in the word and we went inside to watch 2up.

And had our brains blown. 2UP , for those not in the know are a Japanese noise rock duo featuring our good buddy Tetsunori , also of Dmonstrations.

Got changed , played . The super fans were in the house (managed to talk their way in it seems) and by our 5th song the girl who was bawling just 45 mins earlier had her shirt off and was licking my boots! I got rowdy with several kids in the crowd and felt a surge of great vibes the entire show. Faces were grabbed , legs were bit.

Watched Pissed Jeans (great!) , banged my head HARD , chatted with a few friends and we were OUTTA there. Early shows and late arrivals don't leave much time for bro-downs , sadly. I only met 2 of the dudes from Pissed jeans and BRIEFLY. They both seemed sympathetic to my begging that they play Montreal , if for no other reason than to please Blam Blamerson , their super fan.

the word "Pissed" is a no-no?

All posted pics of AIDS Wolf at the Knitting Factory by Todd Fisher.

**
CMJ review + pics + DRAMA.

**
More photo documentation.

Notable : No , I will NOT sit on your face. (Do today's kids have no shame?)

Still Friday (show no.2) :

Arrived at the Market Hotel for the not-so-secret-secret Todd P party , our ex-bandmate , Christopher was already waiting for us at the back door to help load in.
By this point fatigue was setting in BIGTIME and I'm surprised I actually made it through our set. Most of the night I just got caught up with Christopher and my buds Josh and Harrison. Unfortunately , I was too tired and the venue was too smokey ( I've got wicked bad asthma ) to really watch the other bands. And I'm bummed 'cause I had zero clue Knyfe Hyts were most of Ex-Models , who I LOVE. My bandmates taunted me for missing the good stuff but I've only got so much juice in me. Instead I stood around with my eyes half closed (looking like a junkie on the nod) and got hit on by really hot , really young guys.

I met Josh from Deerhunter (and the lamented SIDS) and we had a nice chat about neo-no wave + Mark Mclean.

Zack from Knyfe Hyts seemed in worse shape than me as he slept under the merch table most of the night. Wish I had a photo!
Got Back at 5 am , crashed hard!

2 things about the Market Hotel: -AMAZING PA. Like holy crap , I can't believe a loft venue has such a great sounding LOUD system.
-Great ambiance , friendly and unpretentious folks running the place.

Clashing reviews (with pics) here and
and here .

Pitchfork hearts Deerhunter.

Saturday:

Woke up at 9 to bring the van in for repairs ( 3 hours of sleep is starting to feel like a theme here) , went broke. Had brunch with Jake and Michelle and Carlos and Chris , and then got locked out of their (j+m's) place for a few hours while they were looking at offices . Met their cute and friendly neighbor and talked about jam bands. Finally got in , put on our shoes and left for Providence. Our van filling with exhaust the entire drive .

Loaded in , ate burritos , hung with buds . Japanther had to bail due to injury (get better Ian!) so the bill was down to just us , Sightings and Trouble vs Glue , our buddy Toni's band all the way from Roma. T vs G is 2/3 of Dada Swing and they played angular , stripped down & noisy weird pop. Toni is also known for being the drummer in Hiroshima Rocks Around and for being an amazing host and wicked cook.

During Sightings set some really drunk , really messed up kid jumped on stage and grabbed the mic. Mark gave him a HARD shove offstage and the fucked landed on me. Ouch! Shaken , I went out side for the next song. When I came back in the same dude insisted on grabbing me in inappropriate places several times over . Harsh words were said and he left.

I got asked to fuck several times by a very good looking young guy (another theme? Am I the punchline to some joke I don't know?) and we played to a smallish but rowdy crowd. Several rows of positive vibes and spastic dancing momentarily cured any fatigue related blues.
After the show , we all went to this bar where Rebecca works and hung out with the crew (minus a few ). I think it's the first time our band has been to a bar after playing. We certainly don't do the party thing.
Crashed a Vik's with the meowers , ate salad and regained a sense of humanity. Some douches tagged out van with inanities while we slept , awesome.

Notable : I can carry Jeff Schneider with relative ease. Deadlifting , try it.

Sunday:
Met up with Dare and Rebecca for brunch at Jillian's (fellow vegans take heed : you MUST try the Saint Jamez Benedict while in Providence , it's heaven in your mouth) did the thing , saw peeps. Had a nice hangout with Quigley that I wish lasted a year. Drove to Boston and caught up with Neptune , ate pizza sat around and talked to dudes.

I had brought a Jean Louis Costes book to read on this micro-tour , in the spirit of offensiveness , but at this show had to put it away. Not because I was OFFENDED but because I couldn't surpress my gag reflex any longer.

White Mice are now a 4 piece and have a new oscillator guy + a guitarist . They sound better than ever (industrial jams are back in a big way) and played a short set. They had a bunch of new gear (helped the sound a bunch) and in general the material they played was "groovier" that the previous times I'd seen them.
Our set was totally frustrating as there was ZERO vocals in the monitors and our stage sound was mud - none of us could hear each other. I ended up staining my vocal chords pretty bad by over compensating - I still can't talk. AT ALL. Meh. . The same thing happened last time we played Milky Way. The PA there just isn't powerful enough for a loud band.

More memorable than PLAYING was grabbing this kid and carrying him around after our set.

Neptune had a few gear issues but played a great set of all new (well new since I last saw them) songs. Kickass , as usual . I got their new record , Gong Lake ( Table of The Elements )and have been jamming it all freaking day.
More bro downs and attempts to get caught up with various friends but the time at a show is never enough and such meetings are often less than satisfying . At 1: 30 we were in the van and drove to our motel in Vermont , to the consternation of our would-be hosts. We needed a head start home so Myles could spend time with his fam before Europe.

Notable : Dan with the mic duct tapped to his face! + Eating raw spinach , straight from the bag + Homemade tats.

Got home saw the doctor , got steroids and horse pills . Was told to stay away from second hand smoke (I wish!) and get plenty of bed rest (YEAH RIGHT) . My lungs are pretty seriously infected and we're leaving for tour in less than a week.

AIDSWOLF aids wolf AIDS WOLF aidswolf.

I'm not quite sure what these are for but we have one anyhow.

I'm making a move to formally start boxing training on returning from tour. I think it would be much more fun , productive and cathartic to fight those who have a problem with our band than engage in circular arguments. Besides , everyone's bored of music. Let's have a good ol' fashioned cage match or 2 , in good fun and good faith , to resolve issues and get our hearts racing and cheeks flushed.
HEALTHY, 'cause health = wealth .

Upcoming tour posters

2008-04-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

Okayyyy this is what we did for the upcoming European tour, there will be an edition of 200 screenprinted for sale at the merch booth by yours truly. I know there has been a whole bunch printed offset tabloid size, and put up here and there in venues etc already:

and here's a poster designed by our buddy Elzo from Brussels, created especially for our leg of shows in Israel:

AIDS Wolf , aids wolf, AIDS WOLF , AIDSWOLF

Art , Class , Accessibility

2008-04-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

My personal misgivings about "conceptual art" have always been about class and accessibility . Art that requires an artist's statement or manifesto to understand means it can only be understood by those educated in conceptual art. Art that requires the white walls of a gallery to contextualize it , fails to be accessible to to the majority of people who for reasons of class , will not step foot inside a gallery.

Because of this , the world conceptual art becomes a gated community where the entry key is connections , money , education and ample free time. Only the social elite need apply .

Brendan Fowler aka BARR , despite his "cred" in the D.I.Y scene doesn't seek to prove otherwise with the piece he made about our band and Jay Reatard. The piece in question (titled 11/16/07, 11/18/07) costs $3000, the most expensive piece in the show.

The price of the speaks loud and clear on WHO Mr.Fowler seeks as an audience. And it ain't "the kids" .

(In stark contrast , the most expensive anything by my and AIDS Wolf drummer Yannick's art factory , Seripop , was 150$ for a 16 color one-of-a-kind silkscreen monoprint.)

You better have a good job or large trust fund if you wanna buy some of this brand of empowerment.

************************************************************************************
Our buddy Jake overheard this BRILLIANT tidbit : "Why isn't Child Abuse ( Our LPU labelmates , FYI) in it?" and his friend said "Well, I
guess he knows those guys and knows they're good dudes".

No news on if he will be doing more of this deep , hard hitting work about the bands Child Pornography , Anal Cunt , Fag Cop , Two Dead Sluts , One Good Fuck or canuk punk legends , The Dayglo Abortions.

Read a review of the show here.

Unfortunately , Brendan declined an invitation to our Knitting Factory show this Friday. A shame because I have tons of questions to ask him about art , class and the controversial works of some of the artists featured in his magazine. Because if Raymond Pettibone's (bless his soul , I love him to death!) drawings aren't "socially questionable" , I don't know WHAT is. That's exactly why his work is so relevant.

Socially Questionable Is The New Pink?

2008-04-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

I don't even know WHAT the fuck to say about this....

"Fowler’s most recent performance project/band, Disaster, began as a direct address to what he sees as the growing roster of bands with socially questionable names (Aids Wolf, Jay Reatard etc.). In doing so, Fowler created a project he himself would find morally negligent in hopes of understanding their motives."

2 Watchdogs Watching Cable.........

2008-04-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

Never before Sightings have I ever met a band that is so cheerful and matter of fact about bumming out audiences . And when you are as far on the weird dial as these guys are , a bit of joy goes a long way to keep morale up. They are 3 regular , down to earth dudes who are making some of the most original and spellbinding music I've ever heard. A band that manages to be both fast and slow at the same time , where the grooves reside in the empty spaces between notes & beats .

Their latest record , Through The Panama ( Load / Ecstatic Peace!) is produced by Andrew W.K and manages to be both more clean and austere than their earlier work. Some noise fans might sniff at the queasy melodies but fans of Sightings' cathartic performances will dig the accurate representation of the live sound on record.

Personally , I find that shaving a layer of fuzz from their records does A LOT to expose the songs' scaffolding and shows off some next level playing and composition. In FACT , I personally challenge any jaded fuck insistent that music just ain't as good as it was "back in the day" to listen to 'This Most Real of Hells', the 5th track , a few times and then try to say with a straight face that there's nothing new under the sun.

It's danceble , hypnotic , paranoid and HOT.

Oh and very weird. It's become a bit of a single-player game for me to listen to this at the gym and mentally deconstruct the songs to see how they are put together but no matter how many times I listen , I can't get any insight on their compositional process.

Scarier and sexier (seriously , it's avant-rock that you FUCK to. When did that last happen? Not since Royal Trux and U.S Maple called it quits that's for sure!) than any other band around , last time we played with them I gave myself a concussion from banging my head too hard and hitting in on the monitor. And it was well worth it , even if I lost a few IQ points.

While the sound on this live clip doesn't do the band justice , it gives you an IDEA of what's in store.

10 Apr 2008 Sala Rossa Montreal, Quebec
Sightings w/ AIDS Wolf , Japanther , Black Feelings
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11 Apr 2008 Oxfam Cafe Medford, Massachusetts
Sightings w/ Baixa, Bezoar , Life Partners

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12 Apr 2008 AS220 Providence, Rhode Island
Sightings w/ AIDS Wolf ,Japanther , Trouble vs Glue

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Going Back In Time

2008-04-08T08:30:00.000-07:00

I never posted this before 'cause the bio is so lame it makes me cringe (Seriously , who come up with this shit? It makes me wanna eviscerate myself.) but in spirit of our Friday night show at the Knitting Factory I figured these vids of our CMJ show there made sense.

They actually sound/look pretty good so here ya go:

AIDS Wolf @ The Knitting Factory part 1

AIDS Wolf @ The Knitting Factory part 2
AIDS Wolf @ The Knitting Factory part 3

love love love
chloeeee

MORE BAD THOUGHTS

2008-04-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

One thing that's funny is that we ( being AIDS Wolf ) get put down for supposedly not having "songs". This confuses me greatly because to me , our songs are really obvious and pretty catchy. Often too much so. I find myself frustrated that while many of the bands I admire most form structure out of abstraction , AW is still highly rooted in "rock". My dream would be to escape any rock trappings , 100%.

))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))----(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

Anyway , we're playing a few shows this week for all to experience our non-songs in the flesh . And flesh is nice isn't? Bring your body to:

Montreal, Quebec APRIL 10 8:30 @ Sala Rossa
AIDS Wolf + Japanther + Sightings + Black Feelings

BUY TIX here

Screenprinted poster by Seripop aka me an' Yannick.

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NY , NY APRIL 11 7:00 (SHARP!)@ Knitting Factory (Main Stage)
Pissed Jeans + AIDS WOLF + UP UP aka 2UP

BUY TIX HERE

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Providence, RI APRIL 12 8:00 @ As220
AIDS Wolf + Japanther + Sightings + Trouble vs Glue

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Boston, MA APRIL 13 9:00 @ The Milky Way
Neptune + AIDS Wolf + White Mice

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Myles took a photo of the crowd in Chicago , look how cute everyone is.

!
Old newzzz

AIDSWOLF aids wolf AIDS WOLF aidswolf.

Kombucha > Cocaine

2008-04-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

" So you guys all play in a rock band and not ONE of you smokes???"

That's what the border guard said to us as we crossed back into Canada Monday evening. He wasn't the only one who was incredulous over our healthy lifestyles and low party threshold.

Easy going , not too exciting. Wholefoods and hot showers and laundrettes are where WE hang. Soccer fields and beaches when it's warm out.

The shows were all fun , except for Detroit which was a BUST. We were SUPPOSED to play with our palz ,Monotonix at this D.I.Y space called Scrummage University (totally sketchy!) and got press and everything . At the last minute they canceled our show (plus most of the other shows they had booked) without so much as an explination and held a DANCE PARTY instead. A dance party with a 5$ cover. Just another reason why "the kids" suck ass.

So we got added onto the BIG SHOW at the BIG VENUE and it was kinda weird. We played at 8:30 to an empty room and then drove an hour and a half to a motel cause we didn't have a place to crash. As the random guy smoking weed backstage said " AT LEAST YOU GOT PIZZA!"

The rest was a blur of rowdy times with dudes with beards and fros , drinking kombucha and eating salad and tofu. Chicago (with Monotonix) was especially fun and Pittsburgh , despite the small crowd was especially rowdy. And bearded.

Still , it was kinda chilly so there was no soccer to be had.

GOOD THINGS: new drummer in Monotonix is the HILARIOUS , Todd R. came to our show ,
John Roman , chillin' with Zack , Unholy 2 ,Italian Ice , weird kids in Ohio who get ROWDY , BEARDS , MIKE BUDAI + his awesome posters , very good looking dude in Pittsburgh who bit my hand , vitamins + supplements , the staff at The Empty Bottle , GT's Kombucha.

BAD THINGS: all having colds ,Scrummage University, coming home, smoke.

Here's a video of the Pittsburgh show , it's dark and you can't hear me-- just like being there!

This is the AWESOME band we played with , Italian Ice.

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Hot off the presses : AIDS Wolf NEWS!

- The tracks for our upcoming album all all mixed . Now they just need to put in order and sent to the pressing plant for a fall release.

- We'll be doing a split 7" with Santanized on Badmaster Records. We played with Satanized last fall in Philly and kinda fell in lust. They are one of my favorite bands we played with (they also have the best looking front man) and I'm really happy they asked us to do this 7" with them. Now we just need to record something! We love evil and we love goodlooking friends . Meow!

-We're playing a few shows next week. Yep.

-Our Nov.08 US tour is being booked now ,interested folks should contact Michelle Cable about setting up a show in YOUR city.

Secret Secretions

2008-04-02T06:54:00.000-07:00

Some of you keep asking for AIDS Wolf lyrics. While I'm flattered you are interested in what I'm yelling/mumbling I'd have to say , please hold off on the cover bands. At least until we break up .

The lyrics are mixed low , I slur and garble and spit and sometimes choke on the words.

It's all secret secretions , subliminal messages.
Not unlike speaking in tongues .

Like Beefheart said , "You got ears , you gotta listen".

It's all there and is an integrated part of the whole. Inseparable. My tongue stays in my mouth for now.

xo

SO SAD WE NEVER GOT A FUCKING PHOTO

2008-03-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

Columbus Ohio, we love you. You are the city they gave us our name and for that we give thanks and praise.
Columbus Ohio, we are not worthy to receive you but only say a word and we shall be healed.
Columbus , the most high , except our humble prayers and forgive us our trespasses.

Holy Columbus , we have prepared 5 long years for this pilgrimage .

THANK YE!!!!

We are ready to meet our maker and come face to face with the truest AIDS WOLF.

AIDS WOLF HATE YOU

2008-03-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

So dear readers(all 2 of you),

This is the AIDS Wolf band blog , there is no excitement. That's because lately we've just been holed up making things. Now like ugly butterflies we'll emerge from our shabby cocoons and play a few shows.
yes?
yes.

26 Mar 2008 21:00
SCIENCE VS WITCHCRAFT , CAGES
@ Soundlab Buffalo, NY

27 Mar 2008 20:00
w/ THE UNHOLY TWO and MUSCLE PUZZLE @ Bourbon St Columbus, Ohio

28 Mar 2008 20:00
w/ MONOTONIX , Bottomless Pit@ Empty Bottle Chicago, IL

29 Mar 2008 20:00
w/ MONOTONIX @ Scrummage University Detroit, MI

30 Mar 2008 20:00
w/ITALIAN ICE + ICE CAPADES @ Gooski’s Pittsburgh, PA

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

There might have been some small rumblings about our next record , CITIES OF GLASS. We had initially hoped for a late spring release but it looks like it's gonna be postponed a few months , probably until the fall as we are STILL in the mixing process with WW. It's been drawn out but all parties agree that the record will be better for it.

In the meantime we have a few 7"s , eps and splits planned. I'll post more about that shit latter.

Here's the layout for our newest 7" . It's called CHIPPED TEETH and is on the German label Slowboy . The sleeves will be screenprinted.

Front cover .

Back cover .

Insides

More insides...

And more...

Center Labels .

More to come....

My View of Your Naked Chest Dulls the Pain

2008-01-09T20:09:00.000-08:00

In not so breaking news , we posted a new track on our myspace like 2 weeks ago. It's called We Are All Animals and it's from our forthcoming split with Portland , Oregon's Night Wounds. The split will be vinyl only and will be on Nail In The Coffin .

And here's a lil' back and forth I had recently with John Webb from PRE. A band we've had the joy to tour and do 2 split 7"s with. Their debut record is one of my favorites of this year and I feel so amazingly lucky to have met them , both on a personal and musical basis.They are a big favorite here in camp AW so anyone with an interest in our music will be most likely pretty charged up by PRE. We did this talk a few weeks ago , but i **just** got around to editing it and posting now. that's why there's the references to NYE.
cheers,
Chloe

Chloe Lum / AIDS wolf :In many ways , since we first met you guys and got that PRE demo , I felt you were our twin band . Similar sounds , similar approach + attitude. I’m guessing others feel that way too as our bands not only done 2 splits , toured together but we are also label mates 3 times over (Skingraft , Lovepump United , Blood of the Drash) , something that I’d guess doesn’t happen often.

What do you figure the chances are that 2 bands , living so far from each other would end up so intertwined?

John Webb / PRE: That whole thing is so weird! I remember the first time I heard you guys. PRE had only been around for about 4 months and were thinking of recording a 'demo'. I remember ordering yr album from the Lovepump site and was so stoked when it arrived with a 3inch badge as well!!! I remember sitting in my room playing it to Kevin. We were both totally blown away. Artwork, songs, recording. Amazing. Then, by the time you guys came to London we had recorded 'the demo'. We came to your London show and I made Kevin give you a copy. That was a hard 20 minutes or so. We were both too shy to give it to do it.

Anyway... You liked it, we were really happy - we all had sex, you pointed us in the right direction - we sent out 2 demos, one to Lovepump and one to Skingraft, we all snogged and the rest is current history etc etc.

Hooking up again with you guys in New York in October really brought up that whole ' 2 bands intertwined' thing for us. It's like family meeting up after a years break, only better.

I know I'm sounding really emo here, but that's what is sooooooo amazing about music and the position PRE is in. We have only really hung out a handful of times, but along with Jake and Mookie (Lovepump United) and Mark (Skingraft) it all just makes me want to take my top off and carve FAMILY into my chest with a bicycle pump or something....

SO - HOW EASY IS IT DOING WHAT YOU DO FROM A DAY TO DAY BASIS. MAKING ENDS MEET, FINDING TIME TO JAM "FREEBIRD' ETC? WHATS THE FIRST THING YOU DO WHEN YOU WAKE UP?

CL/AW :
Yeah , you guys saved our asses that first time in London , what with Kevin putting us up. The fact that your band ruled was just icing on the cake 'cause we were pretty fast friends.
I gotta say I REALLY love the family vibe of working with Skingraft , Love Pump United , Panache (our US booking agent)- it’s great to be working with friends who really care about the music they’re putting out or booking. I’ve always said that for me , the camraderie was one of my favorite parts of being in a band. I love being excited by music and meeting people just as curious/passionate is always great. Even better when they have right-on projects of their own.
I also find it interesting that both in music and in visual art when I really enjoy someone’s work and they feel the same about mine we usually end up getting along really well and being fast friends.
I’d say many of my closest friends are people I met via mutual admiration- it’s funny how our other interests and personalities would mesh up so much.

I’m not really sure what Andre and Myles do in the morning but for Yannick and myself the basic routine is get up , check emails , eat , go to the gym , eat again. then we start working on Seripop stuff , often dealing with clients and getting sketches done and sent off. For Seripop we ideally do more of the client relation stuff early in the day and the creative work latter in the afternoon or even at night.

We’re in an interesting situation because we live off of Seripop YET so much of what Seripop does is for the band , or for our friend’s bands.

3 nights a week we jam with AIDS wolf , usually for 2-3 hours a shot. Yannick will often spend a fair bit of time at home going through our practice tapes and dumping them on the computer to make CDs for the guys. Otherwise nobody would remember the parts for the new songs. While he does that I usually work on lyrics for new songs or do band correspondence or draw.

If we’re not practicing and don’t have a huge work rush for Seripop stuff we’ll often spend our evenings drawing more casually. Sketching ideas or doing more “fun” stuff like posters or just drawing for the sake of it.

While we’re at home drawing we just listen to a steady steam of records all day. So the only times we’ll stand is is to flip the record or get another tea/coffee.

Every week or 2 we’ll have a day where ALL we do is pack and mail tubes of posters off. That’s probably the most mind numbing boring thing we do and we both hate it . Mailorder is a good income source for us and we’re glad folks like our print but fuck filling out customs forms SUCKS! And we are LAZY!

Sometimes managing time is tricky because we mostly make our money doing illustration jobs or record covers and we never know in advance how busy we’re gonna be in a given week.

Ideally , as we get more stable financially from our illustrations , we spend more and more time making music. And the easier it is for us to go on tour and the more money we can spend on amassing crappy gear.

Yannick and I have been slowly putting money on some basic recording gear and have both been reading up a fair bit on home recording , in a few months we’ll have a pretty decent set up for AIDS wolf (and our various side projects)to do demos in our practice space. Mostly we’re just buying lots of mics so that we can keep stuff more or less separated. We do our song writing from jamming so the better we can hear what each of us did on tape , the easier everything is.

Having our own company certainly gives us flexibility to tour , all we have to do is give a heads up to the folks who regularly hire us that we’ll be gone and that’s that. I mean there ALWAYS is tons of last minutes rushing to get everything we started done before we go but , ultimately since we don’t have bosses we can leave for as long as we want, as often as we want.

We’re pretty much busy all the time but will TRY to fit time for going to shows , going to the DJ night I do with some friends , attempting to see art , hosting bands at our house. There always time for Freebird. I guess the main thing that suffers are our social lives.

What about you? Do you have difficulties balancing life with being in a band? Your recent us tour was a month long , were lots of headaches and heartaches involved? Do you get homesick ?

JW/P : Yeah, balancing things can be really difficult and frustrating. Living in London is hard purely because it's so expensive. Apart from Keex, who works freelance, the rest of us have FULLLLLL time jobs. Making music is essentially a way to make the day-to-day stuff a little more bearable. We will rehearse once a week usually, but for whatever reasons it's kinda rare that all 5 of us make it. Me, Rick and Kevin are always there. Like Yannick, I always record our rehearsals, and burn cd's or send mp3's to pass around to everyone. that way, even if someone isn't around, they can still get up to speed, plus we always forget stuff.

Outside of PRE, me, Keex and Kevin do other music related stuff. For example, this week I'll be practicing with mine and Kevin's new band, Male Bonding - plus we are duping tapes for Paradise Vendors Inc (our tape label) first release. Talbot Tagora / Hand Jobs split . There is always time to go to shows, art or music. We are totally spoilt for that living in London.

The U.S. tour meant we all had to negotiate taking a whole years worth of holiday in one block, which was hard. There was no point in us going all that way just to do 2 weeks. I don't think anyone got homesick on tour. It was hard to really. We were out on our own (with constant help from the life saving Michelle at Panache), so there was always driving, navigation, rolling tees, counting out dimes, repairing broken windows, repairing broken teeth, trying to find fruit, trying to find floors to sleep on etc to figure out. We are all pretty big drinkers, so there were a few headaches along the way, but nothing that Fleetwood Mac couldn't smooth out. Remember Keex at CMJ???

It's hard being apart from girlfriends. You end up spending the equivalent of the airfare on calling cards. Plus when you get back it takes a while to switch your head back to London mode. It's easy to get selfish and self absorbed. I fucked up big time regarding this and hate myself for it. Matt's girlfriend wrote him a dated letter for every single day that we were away, which was super sweet. He opened the last one during the taxi trip back to JFK and shared it with us and the fruit consuming taxi driver - it made Keex cry.

The tour was amazing though, and it went by so quick. We are all such good friends that we felt invincible.

WHAT’S YR WORSE TOUR MOMENT (BROKEN FOOT?) AND WHAT"S THE WOLFS PLANS FOR 2008 - PLUS TELL ME WHAT YOU WILL DO ON NEW YEARS EVE PLEASE?

CL/AW: My worse moment on tour was smashing a guy in the face with a mic. It was in Baton Rouge and things SUCKED . It was a huge “hangout” type bar with pool tables . The staff and the other bands were very nice to us but from the beginning , when the first band started playing jangly garage rock I knew we were in for it.

During the 1st band there were about 80 people , by the time we started 15 or so were left. Half of whom split as soon as we started playing. The few people who stayed watching us seemed bored as shit and all I could think of was trying to get the set done as fast a possible so we could get the hell outta there.

In the middle of one of our songs , some Joe-college guy started heckling LOUD . I mean you know how fucking loud we play? The guy was projecting over us , basically SCREAMING that we sucked. I walked over to him and asked if he though he could do better several times while pointing the mic at him.
I was so boiling pissed I kept goading him , telling him to get on the stage . Finally when he just stood there muttering insults under his breathe I SMASHED his face and then spat a huge a chunk on him.
THAT was the worst part of our tour.

All I could think after was I was really glad I don’t drink cause if I hadn’t been so nervous about really hurting him I probably would have lost it on his face.

GNARLY.

In 2008 we gonna do few us shows through the winter and spring , hopefully we’ll make it to SXSW. Then we’re spending the end of April and all of May in Europe Plus a few dates in Israel .30 some shows. You guys better play some of them with us!It’s around that time that our new record will be out so hopefully people might care about that.HA!

Then, a full U.S. tour in the fall. Andre’s talking about Japan/Australia in late fall.... I dunno , I guess we’ll see what happens.

On NYE I’ll be helping my crew , The Pirates of the Lachine Canal , with a party. We have Clockcleaner from Philadelphia coming plus great locals the The O-Voids
, Panopticon Eyelids & The American Devices . I’ll be DJing the noise rock , weird punk , avant garage and space jams as long as I can hold up behind the DJ booth on crutches.

My pal Shaun , who’s the one who really put the show together , and I have a friendly competition going on over our record collections. We both DJ this weekly night he set up and I’m looking to show off with all the new records I picked up while on tour. It’s been frustrating being laid up with a broken foot cause I really wanted to DJ as soon as I got home!

Nerdy huh?
Most bands I know get laid or wasted , all we do is buy records and books , check emails and wash our clothes as often as possible ( I think we must be one of the most hygiene conscious bands out there , after the Chinese Stars that is). Oh and go to Whole Foods like every day .

You guys are for sure much more the party animal types than we are. Does this ever cause any drama?I know Keex was falling all over the place at CMJ , any interesting stories there? What will YOU be doing NYE?

JW/P:the 'party animals' side of PRE hasn't caused too much aggro so far. Matt can be rather urmm 'insensitive' at times, but so far this has just caused tons of laughter, rather than insult. in a similar vein to Chris ex-aids (Chris Taylor our former guitarist)! Keex was so wasted at CMJ. Jupiter from HEALTH and her were knocking back a lot of licker - she stole Andre's bottle of whisky and then lost it , I seem to remember! I KNOW that us and ***HEALTH could get into a lot of trouble together - we just haven't had the time yet.

There were some moments on tour that were 'interesting' but nothing too fucked up. Baltimore was BIG, but I opted out of that nights 'entertainment' and slept in the van. When I went into the warehouse where the rest of PRE were partying the next morning to clean my teeth, it was depressing as hell.

NYE is a weird one. I've not committed to anything yet. Might come to Montreal and see Clockcleaner.

So, what do you make of the whole 'sinraft' bootleg live split. Crazy eh? All of us topless in the worst venue in Brighton. Still can't remember how that materialised...

CL/AW:Considering how SHITTY and depressing the Brighton show was and how poorly we were all treated , it only made sense to take off our clothes. I’m waiting to be crucified . People are such fucking puritians!

We get so much flack for our photo in “The Lovvers” , journalists always get pissy thinking we are trying to shock.
I wish they’d just get it through their skulls that we like excuses to take off our clothes! It’s usually my fault! I make out with the audience and wanna get naked all the time.

I’m glad for the boot though , it’s helping me erase the memory of a terrible show and replace it with memories of Freebird singalongs and taking off our clothes in an empty venue while being heckled by the bouncer.

I guess that’s the better part of touring with friends , you can turn a shit show into a fun night just by hanging out and having a laugh.

Are people accepting of naked bands in the UK?
How do you feel your music and noise-rock in general is accepted in the UK vs. North America?

JW/P:
People seem pretty cool about naked girls over here. I work in a record shop (Rough Trade) so I got quite a lot of stick from from people when the 7" came into stock, but just dumb jokes. I don't get it when people think that by doing a record sleeve like that, it's an exercise in 'shock'. Who finds topless people shocking????? Keex gets a lot of questions about why she plays in her bra or pants (English folks call underwear "pants") or whatever. She gets hot really quickly cos she's so active, so she takes her clothes of to kool down. Why is it any different to a guy taking his top off? It isn't unless yr have issues with females - she still has everything covered. In write ups for our shows, people always mention stuff about Keex playing half naked like it's our shtick or something. that pisses me off.

It's hard for me to compare the noise rock scene here with North America, as I don't know what it's like there. It's ok here I guess. I haven't heard too many rad noise bands. Things are getting better though. I think people here are so into the NME scene that people are scared to like bands that they haven't been told to like. - maybe thats not true, but it feels like that sometimes. I like being out on our own though. I would much rather come to America and play show, then play shows in the UK.

A friend of ours lives in a warehouse and has just started putting on shows. That's so fucking kool. It's rare for London. That kinda thing happens all the time in the states (and Canada!). We need more of that kind of action over here, rather then rigid venue gigs.

Whats yr views on the UK / North American scenes? You have played to people both in the UK and North America, so in theory you must have noticed differences.

CL/AW:
Don’t even get me started about the double standard about sweaty , overheated gals shedding some clothes. It’s actually depressing how quick you get to see the real sexism and double standards that are alive and well in the underground music scene to this day.
It’s like as if riot grrl never happened.
Not only is a gal taking off an extra layer a shtick , her very femaleness is also! Especially if she happens to be somewhat cute.
I’m not sure who finds nude people shocking exactly but journalists at least love to state that they AREN’T taking in by our supposed attempts to shock! As if we were up to some serious G.G Allin stuff rather than in a tasteful naked pose in the nature.
As for the bootleg split , I love it cause the photos are soooo unflatering! it looks like an office party gone wrong!

I guess that’s one different we’ve noticed between the UK and the USA . In England people are much more into trend , hypes and fashions BUT it seems like folks over there are more open to being EXCITED about things there.
While in the US or Canada we get dumped on for our name or publicity shots , in England people are just “oh here’s a mad new band”.

It seems that while there are less noisy rock bands , those types of bands are seem as more legitimate than in Canada or the US. (perhaps due to The Wire?)

In the States , we do fine and have lots of like minded bands to play with (soooo many great bands!) but it’s more of a cult thing. People outside of the scene tend to be kinda snarky about noise rock . It’s certainly not seen as “cool” . In Canada , forget it! outside of Montreal , Toronto and Vancouver there is ZERO interest in this kinda music at all.

I mean , sometimes you can luck out on a decent show in some of the mid-sized cities but it’s soooo hit or miss and as far as I know there aren’t any active noise rock/no wave whatever bands in any of the other cities.
Except for Be Bad from Halifax but they just split up!

A few years ago , when we weren’t so world-weary , we went across Canada in some naïve hope of being noise-rock johnny appleseeds and came home wanting to end our lives. Let’s just say the general reception wasn’t very positive!

In the UK you at least get some curiosity ....

We’ll take touring in the UK or the USA over Canada ANYDAY.
What I’ve noticed similar in the UK and the funner cities in the States is that people tend to show they are having fun by getting rowdy, something that’s very inspiring to anyone performing. I just love feeding into the wild energies that crowds can give off. It’s one of the things that makes performing so satisfying.

Noise rock has never been very big here in Canada . I spent years just mailordering records of bands I’ve never get to see ‘cause until recently , most wouldn’t tour here and stores wouldn’t exactly be brimming with it.

It’s funny cause I spent my teenaged years in Ottawa , where there was a very fertile and active all ages scene but I really slowed down going to shows for a few years starting at around 17. In my most formative period I was strictly mailordering records and trading D.I.Y noise tapes with weirdos I’d find on the back pages of zines.

Being obessed with theBoredoms , U.S Maple , Lydia Lunch ,The Flying Luttenbachers,Royal Trux ect I just couldn’t get much satisfaction from the very PC post-hardcore scene in my backyard. I actually found it pretty alienating.

At least I was lucky enough to see U.S Maple early on , who for some bizarre reason came to play the Cave in Ottawa.

And for you guys, what are your main influences , interests and life changing experiences vis-à-vis playing music?

JW/P:
Influences are a tuff one as I can't speak for the rest of the band, but for me, myspace has opened up another world of bands that i/we would never have heard before. Bands like Pretty Thigh (R.I.P), Finally Punk and Hot Girls Cool Guys (R.I.P) Totally blew me away the first time i heard them, and are a huge inspiration. the direct result of that overwhelming feeling of excitement has resulted in the tape label I mentioned. Kevin and I are so jazzed about pairing up bands that we feel so lucky to have heard, like LOOK LOOK DANCING BOYS/PANTZ PARTY/TEMPERATURES/PAPER LEGS/TALBOT TAGORA /HAND JOBS etc.

I'm really interested in the No Wave scene as I know you are. Marc Masters current book "No Wave" is really great. - Mark Fisher (Skingraft CEO) has reviewed it for the current issue of The Wire! That scene and the way it included performance art, lo-fi films as well as bands/ music makes me HUNGRY. From where I'm at it seems like that kind of thing is maybe happening at The Smell in L.A a lot of those bands are an inspiration - Silver Daggers, HEALTH, No Age, Mika Miko etc. Maybe that's romantic of me, as I haven't been to L.A or The Smell, but that's what I like to think.(I've been there and it's pretty much paradise on earth!) I love that pop edge dood. In my world The Screamers have been as big as The Beatles. I'm really into the idea of making exposed, harsh music with a (for the want of a better word) 'POP' element. That's were PRE are heading at the moment.

As for in LONDON - I have an endless amount of respect for Chris Tipton and the Upset The Rhythm crew. I find their activities very inspiring. It's all about sharing the wealth.

Being in a band has changed my life so much. I know that without being involved in making music, I would be desperately unhappy and even more boring. I've met so many amazing and inspirational people through music. I've been stealing a little bit of those people's KOOL for a couple of years now. I plan to piece it all together over Christmas, like the ultimate jigsaw puzzle and relaunch myself in 2008. I am going to be so hot - and I will owe it all to the scene man...

Negative People Playing Negative Songs :Night Wounds & AIDS wolf speak out on Beefheart , alienating audiences and busted tape decks

2008-01-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

Hi folks .Happy freakin' new year! Mine was sweet as my crew, The Pirates of the Lachine Canal hosted a sick loft party and thee awesome Clockcleaner came up, all the way from the depths of Hell aka Philadelphia. I've been lazy on the updates the past few weeks but hopefully this one will be worth the wait!

See, Yannick from AIDSwolf and Toby from Night Wounds had a nice chat about all the important things in life. Hope y'all enjoy it.
xo
chloe
t-nw:

I guess the first question that comes to mind when I think about you all is"what is it like being a fairly inaccessible band from Canada?" I know
there is a great history of bands like the Subhumans and D.O.A coming from
up North but how did this music find you?

y-aw:

My first contact with music was through my brother, who was a big
ELP fan—
The appreciation for 70's British prog is still something that is going
pretty strong in Quebec, and all these bands enjoy a heavy mainstream radio rotation despite 30 years past their heyday; anybody with interest in music who has siblings born in the sixties can attest of this here. I was alwaysmore fond of the polyrythmic, noisier, atonal, heavier songs of ELP's repertoire, like 'Tank', 'Knife Edge', 'Tarkus' or 'Toccata' for example. As I grew in my teens, I wanted to separate myself from classic prog, and got into local punk bands that had a proggy sound--- At the time, these groups sounded more ferocious than their 70's British forefathers while still torturing atonalities out of Hammond B3's— this will sound totally cliché but the immediacy in the structure and the tempo had me hooked up big time at that point. Today though, I returned to listening to the older classic stuff,taking the time to weed off the duds ( i.e. The wankier pieces), and I completely stopped listening to the local punk prog-inspired bands, because they don't supply enough experimentation and atonality.

So, by meeting other people who had an interest in the same bands, this brought me to listen to the local college stations, and slowly learn about more difficult bands. Shows like 'Entertainment Through Pain' and 'Stereophobic' on CKUT and all the late Saturday night programation on CISM in the 90's totally touch my sensibilities then. The local CBC also had radio shows in both French and English of electroaccoustic and experimental composition, 'Le Navire Night' being one I could not miss. That's another thing about Quebec: experimental music history stops at boring orchestral
experimentation or electroaccoustics. There are lotsa groups and composers,
even a whole bunch of them who totally evolved within the realm of pop
culture (Raoul Duguay or L'Infonie for example), but nobody ever did atonal rocking stuff. That part of time was difficult for me because I truly wanted to discover more weird music, I wanted to invest interest in all this boring stuff but it ended up getting really hard--- despite buying records by atonal composers, there was always a voice in me saying 'It's boring'!! I just couldn't find anybody with a shared interest in atonal stuff who could direct me to the rockier bands. I was trying to broaden my knowledge even by getting soundtracks by visual fine artists working in sound installations, and making sound installations myself ( I was studying fine arts in college). I would never even listen to any of this crap anymore, so much of it puts me to sleep.

This at the time made up all I knew about difficult music. It was easier for
me to access 'classic' atonal works than more recent, rocking, no-wave or
now-wave. My only knowledge in these genres was Sonic Youth, Glen Branca and the likes and all their friends involved in brainy boring stuff like Christian Marclay etc. And at that point i was also getting pretty heavily into trashy garage rock (Oblivians, The Sonics and such) and slightly into
Japanoise. So I was basically totally unaware of the Chicago now-wave and whatever fucked bands that was talking the atonal language through rock dialogue until I paired up with Chloe in 1999.

To what level do your musical influences taint your compositional abilities?Is it hard for you to get rid of them, or do you want to embrace them? And what do you value the most in atonality: tones though instrumentation or structure? If both, how do you manage to balance them to make a good song?

t-nw:

I am not a very good guitar player. I spent my youth learning the basics on
drums, guitar and bass so that no matter what ideas I or whoever I wanted to play with got, I could at least somewhat pretend to play along. When I found post punk/no wave and even to a certain extent traditional goth, I was immediately drawn to bass/drums being very solid while everything else did as it pleased. This is probably the only influence I do not try to escape whole-heartedly. When I attempt to write something with a particular band in mind, it either comes out as a direct rip-off (and is tossed aside/changed/reworked) or it comes out nothing like I intended, which can almost be frustrating. I think what is most interesting about the type of music we all play is that it's so untraditional in terms of tuning/rhythm...whereas you can easily go to a teacher and say "I want to play this Aerosmith album" and he'll say "here is the tab"... I feel like a lot of people (or at least myself) fall into what they are doing now by trying to learn these almost unplayable no wave or post punk songs and kind of discovering their own way to play the instrument they we're holding.

I like when notes clash. I'm obsessed with rhythm. The only instrument I was ever confidently good at playing was drums, and I play my guitar in a very percussive way, so that causes a lot of what we do to rely mainly on the bass for any sort of melody. So I think we take the easy route and
create something very rhythmic based and atonal on drums and guitar, and let the bass make it a song. I feel like most standard songs if played out of
tune and off key could sound more interesting then they already do, at least
in theory.

What you said about finding the "rockier" bands is very true, and I can
relate because I feel like I was introduced to this sort of stuff by what I
thought to be at the time as the worst gateway drugs: like (Beefheart's) "Trout Mask Replica"... albums that I laughed at for months and listened to for novelty purposes before I started paying attention to what was really going on."Doc at the Radar Station" and "Lick My Decals Off, Baby" are my favorites now, but I'm honestly somewhat glad that I was handed something that ignored a lot of the shit that makes those other two albums memorable... I feel like those are accessible rock albums in comparison! But "Trout Mask" is memorable for completely different (and equally awesome and relevant)
reasons.

Most of the bands I'm influenced by that I got to see completely alienated
themselves from the audiences and/or embraced playing shows out of their element. I have to mention Arab on Radar (since I'm originally from New England). I saw maybe one show by them where people as a whole were moved by it. It seemed like they were fairly unpopular, but undoubtedly amazing.
I hate to reference myspace, but you guys have over 300,000 plays. Is it
unreal to imagine people listening to your songs that many times? How big
of a role do you feel the internet plays in keeping a scene going? Obviously it's much easier to find out about music these days because of it
but that hardly explains the overwhelming interest in what weird bands are
doing these days. Seems like we've gone a long way from relying solely on
college radio and picking albums by the art or record label that did it.

y-aw:

I have a hard time myself understanding the mechanics of the whole internet
diffusion thing. I am still skeptical of how representative of popularity
the traffic numbers are. But I get the point you are making about the
challenge in 'playing out off your element' or 'alienating the audience'--
This is something I was discussing recently with Mark and Richard from
Sightings; although it is always baffling to be in the position of being the bummer band, no matter how many successive times it happens, it seems that those situations create the best dialogues with the public, or provoke the most interesting encounters with individual persons who are genuinely interested in music. I find it also an interesting gauge for our music in an aesthetic point of view, although this could be skewed. I love being the
bummer band. I actually have a hard time working my music to be weirder.
Reaching the catatonic state, like Van Vliet said.

Working to make our music more difficult to access actually involves finding
new writing methods. One thing that has been working for us lately has been
taping our practices with a crappy mono tape player, and then try to reproduce the craziness by deconstructing it. Or I have been signing parts on tape, and we replicate these parts, and play them. The parts never really fit together (different time signature or canceling registers) but the result is often interesting, and brought us to push our exploration of polyrythms. It's interesting that you bring Beefheart up, because it's by knowing his material and deciphering it more lately that I feel it opened our
writing methods. I also decided to fully embrace our influences and just
play off our similarities with the stuff we like, because, you know that's our creative personality. I think it would be just unproductive to steer away constantly from what makes us exited about music when comes time to write.

I think the internet does make wonders for weird music by making things that would be hard to access otherwise available to more people, it actually made us able to connect with bands we like in almost every city in the US, and play shows with them on one tour, something that would have probably taken years to build up in successive tours before the nineties. It seems that there is at least one person per city that would come to our show, something unthinkable before, especially because of the genre we are into. I doubt the audience actually widened, I think it rather revealed this music to other people playing it or people interested by it, solidifying the
collaboration between bands, making the nerds come out of their cubbyholes, stop worrying about keeping their mailorder noise tapes collection in alphabetical order and finally go out and see shows. So I guess it became also partly alienating the audience and playing alienated sounds for the already alienated.

I often draw parallels between music and visual art when we write music---
often parts just come up in my mind, completely made up, just like a full
picture would sometimes pop up when I feel really inspired. I also tend to
be in favor of reproducing songs as close to the written original as
possible, unless some parts where pre-established to give leeway to the
player--- just because the aesthetic form as a whole would not be disturbed
there. Do you have this relation with music, where the language is very
monolithic, or do the players get total freedom during performance?

t-nw:

I feel like we are completely stuck between wanting to play tight songs and
be a complete free-form mess. I think the contrast between the two, when
placed together in one song, has not gotten boring to me yet. I used to be
under the impression that anybody could play in this band as long as they
could pluck two notes on a bass or bang something. That is somewhat true,
but it relies completely on how I and people I play with connect. I think
I'm over trying to control this band... it was always about having people
who had no idea what they were doing... total "I could be in your band if
you teach me how to play this instrument" sort of thing, but in recent
months of playing with people who kind of finish my thoughts for me
musically, I have realized this was a form of denial. Music is very sacred
to me... finding someone that I can play with (in any band, not just Night
Wounds) is like finding a boyfriend or girlfriend. Years and years ago
before this band even started I had played with a few people who came from
the same world as me, and when those projects broke up or people moved on
(myself included), I remember being left with a very bittersweet taste in my
mouth, like I had been dumped or broken up with someone. I think that
scared me away from being in a fully working band where everyone contributes
equally from that point onward till a few months ago. I don't like losing
people I connect with.

So no, people have not had freedom in this band to do as they please. But
it was over time that I realized that was by selfish choice as much as it
was necessity, as I automatically assumed no one would be okay with living
in a van for months or just getting up and moving across the country to
breath different air. But this theory has been proven wrong time and time
again, including recently.

To answer your question though, I like songs to be performed the way they
were written. But the free-form moments have more than once thrown everyone
off and turned the song into a disaster or sent it down a different path
with positive results. Usually things that are impossible to recreate...
things that will only be heard by the 15 people in whatever random city that
came that night... which is probably the best yet most-frustrating thing
about attempting to "jam" live.

You were subject to some pretty bad sound when we played together. During a few songs rhythms I didn't know where there would all come together and it started to make sense.Really WEIRD rhythms... more disjointed than I would have expected. Who creates these rhythms?Is it solely based on the drums or do you find yourself being guided by the guitars when you write songs?

y-aw:

It’s kind of a matter of chance. As I wrote earlier, we sometimes compose
out of laying a bunch of different ideas together, then learn our parts and
practice them as much as possible until me match up at certain points for
changes. We constantly practice with the tape recorder on. Since our playing
volume is pretty high, the sound on the recorder gets pretty distorted. Once
a week I put down the best moments on a disk and we start writing from
there. So the final result is pretty hard to predict, even though if I come
up with an idea all-made up on my own for a part with something in mind for
everybody to play--- you know when someone plays 7/8 and another plays 3/4
at the same time, it is hard to know in advance when and how cool stuff is
going to happen... I mean I have a good idea of the physics of it in
advance, but I know there is going to be surprises before we get on it and
play it. So it’s part planning and part chance.

I usually come up with drum lines basing myself on how the guitars are
acting. Even if I have an idea for a song, I usually build up or deconstruct
it starting form a guitar. In the practice space, we often start from one
guitar, where I interact and add my part as it comes along, or one guitar
and me will just fall on an idea together by chance, and then add the second
guitar as a consequence to that. This is not dictating most of the way we
compose together, but this happened in situations where I felt the most
productive or comfortable or that the songs resulting out of this process
where really successful.

I try to keep it minimal to not undermine the guitar work with more
wankiness. It’s also important that my lines keep simple but odd, so they
keep being playful and recognizable but at the same time feel like i did a
bit of research to get to the final result. But one thing I always try to
keep aware of is negative space: just like visual art, in music working with
negative space is a great way to create dialogue, create content within the
songs. I could repeat guitar parts, play against them, or play in the
‘holes’--- I also like the idea when i write of having the ‘drums sing’, as
if the tones coming off the kit will play in the register of the guitars to
compliment them.

t-nw:

I was wondering what makes an album memorable/important to you?

y-aw:

It’s a combination of fluidity from song to song and the intrinsic
qualities of each individual songs. Obviously, I thing a good album will
speak as a whole, but for that I think you should steer away from having
songs that are really similar. Just like different parts in a song, songs on
an album should Ideally kinda fall into each other, make the whole album a
giant ‘song’.

The thing is that is fine and dandy and shit to say that but I definitely do
not write with this in mind. It’s more like if we have a good dozen songs
ready for the studio it’s awesome— but we never really work following a
guiding concept for our writing. In other words, forcing the songs out could
work as a short term experiment, but not for a whole album--- or composition
methods are too organic and democratic for that. Actually I would find it
quite castrating to impose myself this working method— especially since I am
primarily a visual artist working with sounds. So good fucking luck if we
come up with a fluent album by any standard.

How do you place yourself vis-a-vis the crowd when you perform? Do you want
a confrontation somehow? Do you want to embrace them?

t-nw:

I've always had more fun watching bands play on the floor right next to me
as opposed to up on a stage (there are exceptions). My own personal anxiety with being up there was the initial reason, but after touring it seemed obvious that a lot of venues do not have sound engineers that grasp music like this.Someone from Animal Collective once told me that they had sound people gawk at the fact that their wasn't a bass guitar. They (the sound guy) just couldn't grasp it.I feel like that is a prime example of why I
don't like relying on a venue to sound good.It's much easier to play on the floor with our own PA, which also works well considering one night might be a big bar, the next could be a kid's living room.

But more importantly is the fact that we like both embracing and confronting
an audience at the same time. I like being uncomfortable at shows and I
like a band that is challenging to embrace. We are negative people playing
negative songs so it should be no surprise if you get a negative vibe from
watching us play, but every person who comes to a show is different and will
perceive the performance in their own way. There are certainly people who
embrace negativity and will come up and give you a hug after you play a set
of songs about hating work and letting depression control and suffocate your
mind.

And of course there is the one guy at every show who compares us to Flipper.So sometimes any emotion just completely goes over people's heads and they just embrace the musical side of things which is something I wish I could do myself more often.

Half of your band is responsible for a lot of really unique and exciting
art. Are Chloe and you responsible for the entire aesthetic side of things
or do you all sit down and talk about ideas with them before you draw up a
design? 90% of what I bought when I was in middle school was based off of
the art. I did not have the internet so chances had to be taken. This may
seem like a no-brainer, considering your day job, but how important is the
packaging side of things to your band?

y-aw:

Well i think you nailed it right, big part of what dictates how the final
product is going to look like visually is basically this: is it going to
look cool or not? The front cover has to be visually striking or the whole
cover art should be visually engaging, if not provoking or subversive. We
always try to push our own aesthetic agenda somewhat through our designs,
but obviously the visuals have to refer to the music contained in the
recording. I mean this is the most important part of our job, even when we
work for our band. So at the same time, representing the music somehow,
create visuals interesting enough to get someone interested in the record
just by seeing the cover, and also advance our general visual research by
doing this work--- these are the three elements we usually have to keep
aware of when we work.
Chloe and me got pretty much 100% Andre and Myles’ confidence in creating
the graphics for our band... We usually preview everybody with the work that
is being done before going to press when we are dealing with high
circulation pieces, like record covers for instance. But for t-shirts and
posters and most of the rest we basically just churn it out and everybody
else sees it once it’s out for sale.

The packaging side of the band isn’t really important per-se, it’s
definitely something that matters, the music goes first, of course--- but I
have a hard time imagining ANY music devoid of visuals- it seems natural
to me that any art has a multidisciplinary potential— music with packaging
and performance displays that very well.

I agree with your preference with playing on the floor- the closer to the
public, despite if they move or not, despite any of their reactions, the
closer the easier it is for me to perform. I guess this why, by being
involved in visual art as well, I seek to do dark or annoying or striking
stuff--- I want the spectator to at least come closer, to at least show a
millisecond of interest. Floor level totally helps translate that for a
band.

How’s your take on your own band’s visual image. Do you think the work that
has been done now really speaks who you guys are visually? Is there any
visual art or whatever image that provoke musical thoughts in your mind?

t-nw:

The only person we have had do art for us on a regular basis is Chris/
Steak Mnt. Cobatwoundedveteran was a band that came through where I grew up (which is a feat) and I remember being really blown away by how their records looked. I've always had that band placed in the back of mind, artistically as much as musically and I think what he has gone on to do now
is really exciting to us. The back cover of the LP was something that had
to grow on me, but now it's my favorite thing we've had done. I think it is
perfect and it was cool that he made up his mind for me because I was not
feeling it at first glance.

We used to just have tons of people make us stuff and a lot of it was cool,
but over time we had dozens and dozens of grindcore-looking logos and gross,
gory stuff which rules but has not been really fitting in my opinion since
maybe early 2005. I have always liked the looks of old no wave records... a
lot of them you couldn't necessarily even tell you were getting something
related to punk ("Off White", "Sonic Youth", the DNA LP are all examples).
I almost think they look slick... like big label new wave albums. I sadly
think the whole "abrasive (and sometimes challenging) music inside, cover
that would lead you to believe otherwise" thing was beaten to death by
metalcore bands over the past decade, but I still like when it works.

I had heard the name Aids Wolf ages ago. What is the actual history of the
band? Did you guys fall off the Earth and pop back up?

y-aw:

Yeah, we started back in March 2003 and managed to go through 2 guitar
players before we got the first recording down. Also we couldn’t do shit
during the summer of our first three years of existance because either Chris
went planting trees for months twice, Blake went to Russia once, then our
bandmates being gone we decided to do a Seripop tour instead (twice: 2003 and 2004) because of the impossibility of planning an AW tour. We managed to write 14 songs with Blake in one year, that was the most we where ever productive in terms of songwriting, but we still sucked. We only salvaged 6
songs from that era, and still play 4 of them. Once Blake out of the band
(April 2004), Nick replaced him and went on tour with his other band,
scrapping our plans to do shows that year (2004). The stint with Nick ended
with only two new songs written in a whole year. Fuck 2004 was a total
waste. Also Chris being in school made it impossible to do much during
school season. Then Andre joined in spring 2005, we recorded The Lovvers LP
sessions practically a month after, and then we tried to do some shows in
the us that summer. So between when the "live-deth" demo (summer 2005), and
the release of The Lovvers LP nothing much happened apart from a bunch of
new songs written and one seven inch split with the fugue that we had out
just before getting our copies of The Lovvers LP. We were technically barred
from the states from 2004 to 2007 (apart from some short 6 month period in
2005 where we could actually go to the US because of some legal loophole),
until one of us dealt with some court problems. So we played a dozen shows
in the Us in 2005, including CMJ and our 5 us shows leg of our 5 weeks
Canadian tour that year. In order to compensate for our incapacity to cross
the border, we did a 16 days European tour in early 2006 and a 6 weeks
Europe tour in late 2006, in conjunction with the release of The Aw –
athletic automaton split and the split of Chris from our band. Now that
Chris left, we got Myles in the band, did a 7 weeks North-American tour and
everything seems to go much better.

I dunno, we played the Montreal-Toronto areas LOTS, tried to keep the band
alive somehow by sustaining songwriting and trying new tecniques and keeping
releasing things, toured anyhow. Also, Chloe and me being in Seripop (that
basically means not being stable financially and busy working 16 hours a
day) made things a bit tricky for the band to get around at the start--- but
because we are unemployed, we always manage to find a way to liberate
ourselves from our Seripop duties –or just bring Seripop on the road with
Aw- in order to tour. Actually, the joint existence of both projects help
each other getting more known. It also solidified our relations with other
bands, being either our clients or our touring buddies.

What are you next projects? Tours? Releases?

t-nw:

Our first tour ever... which was more of a random vacation with shows in key
cities I wanted to visit... we played below one of your openings. Someone
at the door was mentioning the inability for half of you to get into the
country I believe.

Besides the split with you, we have splits with Twin Crystals,
Shearing Pinx, Cutter (new Fugue band), 10LEC6, Mutators... seriously too many to
name. After that is a one-sided 12" on Corleone and then an album, which
will either be the split with you and that combined or all new stuff. We
aren't sure. We will be touring as often as possible... this March, Summer
and Fall for sure. I am excited about the ability to be an active band
again as we have not had a set line-up since July 06 and it feels good to
have that period over with. This Fall will be our first venture to Europe
as a band. I like the idea of achieving things I've always wanted to do
(like traveling) through playing in a band. There really is nothing that
can compare, and it is totally possible for anyone to do and I wish more
people would.

NO CORE and a dose

2007-12-13T11:48:00.000-08:00

Here's the NO CORE podcast by our pal M.P Lockwood , aka Radio Shock , of some noisy rock. We're in there as are a bunch of our friends , a bunch of bands we love and some great bands we're hearing for the first time . Download it for pleasure .

He sez:
"Yeah, a long wait for this one. Maybe I can pick up the pace after the holidays. Anyway, we've got here some stuff I picked up in recent travels and listened to on recent travels. Largely "rock" music this time out?
MUZIKS FROM: Abiku, PRE, HEALTH, AIDS wolf, Taiwan Deth, Fat Day, Xrin Arms, Scissor Girls, (((microwaves))), Sword Heaven, The Druggies, Buck Gooter, Calabi-Yau, Diet Cola, Bermuda Triangles,
Silver Daggers, The New Flesh, and probably more stuff I'm forgetting right now. "

So that's that!++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Video of tripped out madness , AIDS wolf in Austin , by our pal Joey :

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

And finally a lil' plug for the raddest DJ night in Montreal , Time's Up.
Our guest this week is Pete from Born Dead Icons and resident DJs will be Linda Blair , Blam Blamdersson and myself , Chloe Scum.

I'll be playing a pile of sweet vinyl I picked up on the road . Stuff by Metalux , Abe Vigoda , Double Dagger , Skoal Kodiak , Daniel Johnston , XBXRX , Chanels 3 + 4 , Shearing Pinx , Factums , Psychedelic Horseshit , Los Llamaradas , Amoeba Men ect ++
Plus classic Time's Up tracks by Swans , The Intelligence , Lydia Lunch , Chrome , Hawkwind , Beefheart , Cheveu , Get Hustle , TV Ghosts, Landed and Throbbing Gristle.

TIME'S UP @ Black Jack - 3814 Notre Dame Ouest (near Place-St-Henri metro) - 9pm - 3am - EVERY THURSDAY
No Cover. Cheap beer. WEIRD PUNK, DEEP PSYCH, NAO WAVE, AVANT-GARAGE, etc..etc...

Oldest news

2007-12-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

Here's an interview I did withModern Fix magazine about 2 years ago. It's kinda out of date but Jeremiah's a good writer AND it just recently went online so i thought it might be of interest to a few people out there in blog-land.
I mean , that is if anyone actually reads this thing.

by Jeremiah Griffey

Montreal noise punk aficionados, partners and graphic designers Chloe Lum and Yannick Desrenleau head off to Columbus, Ohio with a few pals to check out the 2002 incarnation of the More Than Music Festival. They wander over to a house show featuring An Albatross. Fire crackers explode. Dust kicks up. People poke other people in the ass with drum sticks. It’s a party.

As the dust clears, Chloe gets caught up wrestling a friend on top of their van and loses her entourage. These same lost friends happen upon a few 40-something white trash dudes smoking crack or meth in front of some graffiti. It reads AIDS WOLF.

It’s now 2003. Chloe (vocals) and Yannick (drums) form a band called AIDS Wolf, in honor of said tag. The two take off once again for Columbus along with their Black Flag meets Merry Pranksters gang of hooligans for the 2003 More Than Music Festival they hadn’t heard was canceled. A friend of a friend owned a record store, so they set up an impromptu art exhibit comprised of posters the duo makes under the name Seripop so as not to make the journey a waste. Then they hang a poster of their first show.

“The owner of the store sees it and freaks,” Chloe says. “He apparently lived in the house where the party was - the AIDS Wolf house. He tells us about the rodent trapped in the walls they nicknamed ‘AIDS Wolf’ and about actual wolves spreading AIDS. We realized our band name is awesome and that we love the Midwest. Then we cause a 3-car pileup by dancing in the street with a sign reading ‘Honk if you’re horny.’ No one is hurt.”

Some people (who don’t know the story) find their name offensive. Some people (who don’t listen to any form of avant-punk) say their debut album, “The Lovvers LP,” makes them want to jump off a bridge. Other people (prudes, mostly) say their penchant for nudity is a shameless attempt at “shock.” One major publication even went so far as to call the band “shit in wolf’s clothing.” But that’s an obviously uninformed opinion because they tend not to wear clothes.

“When the negative reviews started coming in we weren’t surprised by the fact that people hated our record but by the fact that so many seemed to actually have a personal beef with our very existence,” Chloe says. “We got a lot of weird personal attacks. One review even went so far as to reprint and mock the Seripop bio from our website in order to try to invalidate our record.”

Maybe people are jealous of the fact Chloe and Yannick play in a band that shares a practice space with Wolf Parade (whose Arlen Thompson produced their record) and Islands, the Nick Diamonds and J’aime Tambeur post-Unicorns vehicle. Or that they’ve achieved this strange level of faux-hype as a result of their Montreal scene being raped and pillaged after the Arcade Fire blew up. Or maybe it’s because they all look hot nude.

“You know it’s pretty funny that so much press about our record (both positive and negative) has been focused on all the supposed ‘hype’ we garnered pre-release,” Chloe says. “That ‘hype’ was a few tiny side bar mentions in articles about Montreal (where we’d be one outta 50+ bands mentioned), a couple reviews here and there of our live shows in weeklies and student papers, one interview in a Boston weekly (we were playing Boston), one interview in a blog and one interview here in a Montreal weekly. Now we certainly can’t control the fact that the city we live in was deemed some type of ‘it’ spot by the media. As for everything else, I don’t feel that we got an inordinate amount of press for a band that had been gigging for 3 years and self-released a few things. The media likes to pretend a band only starts existing once an officially released debut comes out, but most bands without money usually spend a few years on the road before putting anything out. Getting a bit of coverage based on those shows isn’t really that unusual. What seems unusual to me is the way everyone with an interest in our band seems hell bent on blowing that coverage out of proportion.”

Chloe and Yannick have gotten guff for all their projects, including the now defunct Da Bloody Gashes with Bobo Boutin from Les Georges Leningrad, and have grown rather thick skin as a result. Even their work as Seripop gets maligned in the design world, despite having developed some amazing album work for bands like the Arcade Fire, Rocket from the Crypt, Glitter Pals and An Albatross. Maybe, once again, it’s jealously.

“The band was a fun side project but nowadays it’s kinda creeping over more and more where we’ll find half the designs we do are AIDS Wolf related, the tours intermingle and the two are viewed as the same thing by many outsiders,” Chloe says. “That’s frustrating as there are two other members of AIDS Wolf, Chris (Taylor, guitar) who is a talented illustrator in his own right and Andre (Guerette, guitar) who works his ass off booking shows and tours under the moniker Mandatory Moustache. For a couple of reformed Catholics, we have an extreme protest work ethic where in our design and in our artwork and in the music we do, we’ve been jamming a square peg into a round hole until the hole became square too. We are very stubborn people who have used the negative reactions we’ve gotten over the years as fuel. We take a lot pride on living on our own terms and building a livelihood based on creativity, supporting our friends (as well as those we admire and respect) and trying to live as much as possible in the world of DIY.”

Though AIDS Wolf is most often compared to Rhode Island post-punk gods Arab on Radar, Chloe and company find much inspiration from Captain Beefheart and U.S. Maple. She’s quick to rail off a laundry list of contemporary bands she loves too, from Get Hustle to Devendra Banhart to Deerhoof.

“We are living in a time of unprecedented good music. Not only do we have access to everything from the past via re-issues and mp3s but it seems like every city has its own pocket of weird, far underground sounds actually making stuff happen. A few years ago, I was feeling really jaded. I thought that I was resigned to listening to bands long broken up,” Chloe says. “But right now my band has tapped into a network that keeps getting larger and larger of like-minded bands, each having their own interpretation of “noise-rock” or arty punk or whatever. A cool part of it is that we play shows with brilliant bands who are still in high school, as well as playing with bands in their 40’s or older.”

“The Lovvers LP” does have some Arab on Radar-ish moments, particularly the opening guitar churns of “Spit Tastes Like Metal.” Chloe’s desperate screeches intermittently emerge before she’s swallowed by a whirlpool of gnashing guitars. For a vocal reference point, some amalgamation of Afrirampo’s Pikacyu and Oni (energy level) and Magik Marker’s Elisa Ambrogio (production level) might suffice. Tracks like “Vampire King” separate AIDS Wolf from their art-punk ancestors by infusing muddy circus punk with tornados of billowing noise. As “Lovvers” progresses more and more songs - and eventually Chloe - get swallowed.

“We aren’t dumb and we know our band isn’t for everyone,” she says. “We also know that in our genre, there are bands that are better than us. There are also noise-rock bands worse than us who get favorable or neutral reviews … Are we shit? Maybe we are. Then again, most of the bands we like are considered shit by the same people. And most of the bands we like seem to like our band back. I’ve always been more inclined to care about the respect of peers than admiration from the media. We never set out to create anything that was gonna be easy to digest.”

The album was actually supposed to be a limited edition vinyl release of 300 on a friend’s label and assumed their friends and die-hard fans would be the only ones to hear the album or see the nekked people on the album art - including difficult-to-find magazine shots of people at a nudist colony and Chloe and company free-balling it in the woods. Everything was done when Lovepump United (CD) and Skin Graft (vinyl) asked to put out the record. Soon they’ll be releasing a vinyl split with San Diego’s Dmonstrations on Lovepump, but don’t look for much of a departure - all of the AIDS Wolf contributions were recorded during the “Lovvers” sessions.

“There were a few delays caused by lost masters and art collaborations being slow but it’s finally on track and will be out early this summer,” Chloe says. “The Demonstrations tracks are nothing short of haunting and we all feel really lucky to be working with them.”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

After spending some very QUALITY time with 2/3rds of Dmonstrations on this past tour , we feel even luckier . Mr. Wade , you make one hell of a roadie.

aids wolf

Filth and Size

2007-12-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

Everyone is talking about the Camel cigarettes/Rolling Stone magazine "indie rock" cigarette ad fiasco. We were confused by our inclusion the "indie rock galaxy" 'cause , not only do none of us smoke cigarettes , 2 of us are fuckin' STRAIGHT EDGE.

It goes without saying that this was done without our consent or cooperation in anyway and we no have idea where they got the MP3 they put up under our name on The Farm website. It's funny cause they actually used an Athletic Automaton track from our split album with them.

I'm guessing the company who put this bullshit together just pulled the track from limewire or some shit and no one was savvy enough to figure out they had the wrong band.

I'm hoping if our name and music is ever used in an adversing campaign again , maybe we can at least get the cold hard ca$h and satisfaction that comes from selling out on our own accord.

Here's another recent feature on AIDS wolf , this time for Chalked Up magazine .

Photos from our Austin show by Matt B.

And one from the Dallas show.

Austin was WEIRD for us , it was one of those Dutch-style crowds. You know , they don't move around much and no one talks to you all night? You can just feel the waves of indifference permeating the room. After our set I was so bummed and alienated that I ran to hide in the dressing room. It was so obvious everyone in the room hated us EXCEPT for the fact that after I came back downstairs our merch table was buzzing harder than it had been all tour and all of the sudden i"m making new friends left , right and center.

We ended up befriending & staying with this kid Joey , the coolest noise rock-hippie I've ever met.

So I must ask of Austin , is it normal for you to all stand immobile , so far away from the stage?

In Dallas we played an art gallery rather than a club and it felt MUCH more normal.

and we decide to fall

2007-12-11T08:09:00.000-08:00

So everyone already knows we got back from tour a week ago and that I broke my foot falling down some stairs in Chicago. It all resulted in an instrumental set that night while I was in the ER , much to the confusion of the crowd. We skipped Detroit to drive straight home in really shitty weather where 30 hours after we left Chicago I went to the Montreal General where the nurse and radiologist INSISTED on x-raying my chest (WTF?). I had to pitch a fit so that they'd just x-ray my foot and be done with it. Gotta love Quebec hospitals . The one in Chicago was sooo much more clean and efficient.

Being back from tour is always rough , you never really know what to do with yourself and coping with the readjustment is usually kinda depressing. You no longer have the constant adrenaline of performing or the novelty of being around different people each day. Being back from tour while being stuck at home with a broken bone is the worst. outdoors is nothing but snow and ice and the 10 minute walk to the metro feels like a death march on crutches.

Despite that , I'm practically bouncing off the walls (and not just from the Vicodin) because our song Opposing Walls is being used in the new Bruce LaBruce film ,Otto: Or, Up With Dead People . If you aren't familiar with Bruce's work I really urge you to check out his site. He's BY FAR the most subversive filmmaker in Canada and melds black comedy with exploitation with explicit gay sex.

I first saw No Skin Off My Ass when i was a pretentious teen living in Ottawa and trying to be a performance artist. His work really inspired me and my whole troupe to get MUCH , MUCH more extreme (nudity , chainsaws , smashing things , smashing each other). He also had a column in Exclaim! magazine for a long time that was basically just his diary of sex , drugs , art , being flown around the world and hanging out with celebs and porn stars. It was some of the most exciting shit I ever read and I remember being in my early 20's , wishing to some day have a life as cool as BLaB.

Well , Exclaim! axed him in favor of more milquetoast can-con indie slop (cause reading about Emily Haines is soooo much more interesting - yeah fuckin' right! I swear most Canadians are allergic to excitement.) . Bruce's life is still probably 20000x more exciting than mine but having one of our tracks in a GAY ZOMBIE PORNO is EASILY one of the best things that's ever happened to AIDS wolf. Or to me for that matter.

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Photos of our 2 Brooklyn shows by Todd Fisher . We saw the set he did of our show at Death By Audio and loved em so much we begged him to spend more time with us on Halloween. We're pretty pleased with the end result.

Speaking of zombies..

Silen Barn show :

Myles' uniform was missing so we made him play in his underwear.. Latter it was Found in germaine's (From Old Time Relijun) drum kit. Hmmmmmmmm

This kid Matt just took off his mask and leaned in and kissed me in the middle of a song.

A studio shot in the basement before the show.

Punk on the wrong speed with blown speakers

2007-12-10T07:20:00.001-08:00

AIDS wolf in Dallas , playing.

Some lovely photos of our LA set taken by Adrian Saenz.

Photo of myself with Eben and Tobias of Be Bad , one the the best bands in Canada right now. Too bad they live in Halifax , a billion miles away from civilization 'cause otherwise I'd go see them weekly. Pic by Bridgette Sullivan

Tobias' impressions of our Halifax set:

"I saw them last night. Bring ear plugs or those construction site quality ear muffs. The toilet paper I stuck in my ears wasn't enough. They are the scariest punk band going right now. I know their new press release says "Remember when punk was weird?" but it's more like "remember when punk scared the shit out of the hipsters? and polarized the entire room. And pissed off the sound guy." The records might have good riffs/licks/beats/vocals but the live show is so pulverizing it becomes perverted.

They are louder than Motorhead or Slayer or Dinosaur Jr. And they take the concept of being a loud band as far as they can as human beings. Seeing them feels like getting the shit beaten out of you. And if you're the right kind of person you'll love that.

They don't sound like Arab on Radar like most reviews say, they sound like the mother fucking Boredoms in 1988. They are a bunch of weird looking kids with sections of their head shaved like lobotomy patients pounding everything, and endlessly touring the planet. They are on a really fucked up mission, and they are totally the real deal."

Cleaning house

2007-12-09T08:01:00.000-08:00

2 clips of our triumphant Vancouver show , November 24th . This show was especially awesome cause this rad dude , Christopher , gave Myles and I haircuts. We both look so stylish now.

The Blog Hate Something Beautiful gave us a nice review and posted a few pics of us and HEALTH's LA show at The Smell.

interview for a Danish 'zine :

Who are you guys and how did you end up as a band?
We all met while receiving group counseling for mental troubles. We quit the counseling and our troubles remained. Now playing together is our therapy.

What's up with the name? Who came up with it and what does it mean?
Our leader wrote it on the side of a building in Ohio, we are just following orders from beyond.

Can you try and describe your music? Which instruments do you use and what kind of sound do you seek?
We try to sound like a marauding horde of barbarians. We're high pitched, abraisive and annoying. Punk on the wrong speed with blown speakers. We have 2 guitars, drums and yelling.

Any musicians who in particular inspire you? Are you inspired by other things than music?
Captain Beefheart, Ceatano Veloso, Black Flag, Flipper, Throbbing Gristle, US Maple, Chrome, This Heat, Saccharine Trust, Sun City girls, Billy Childish, The Country Teasers, Sightings, Usaisamonster, PRE.
We are also inspired by nature, physical fitness, healthy food and each other.

How much have you released so far?
1 cassette, 1 cdr, 3 split 7"s, one lp , one split 12", one collaboration lp. Another lp is on the way in the spring on Skingraft / Lovepump united.

Do you play many gigs around Montreal? Have you played in other countries?
We play every couple of months in Montreal and have played all over Canada, USA, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Czech Republic, and UK.

What are your concerts like?
Usually rowdy, physical, sweaty and earbreaking. A total bummer.

Are there any other musical projects linked to the band?
Brother Hong Kong, Clyffs, CMY Disease!, Hamborghinni, Les Enfants Sauvages are all bands members of AIDS Wolf are involved in.