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moth wranglers never mind the context -- it's the bi-coastal collaborative recording project masterminded by ld beghtol & chris xefos, with guest appearances by victor krummenacher, stephin merritt, bill tutton, allison faith levy, jonathan segel, ken stringfellow, christopher ewan, claudia gonson & casts of thousands -- all talking, all singing, all grasping at straws... |
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turnabout it's just a phase
perhaps a ruse it;s nothing bad -- he's just confused it's just a shame it;s just the truth no, nothing serious call it youth and rest assured it won't last |
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on raptured silver wings... PIXIES FUCKIN' DIE! (december 1999)
lifelike records tribute to the legendary boston weridos. moth wranglers contribute a back-yard barbecue version of "no. 13 baby" -- seven minutes of keyboard drone, foghorn, ultrasounds and detuned marxophone... who want's blue eyes anyway? check it out at: http://www.lifelikerecords.com/releases.html TURNABOUT / NEW MISSION TERRACE #47 (august 1999) The debut release from mw on mother west record -- seven vinyl inches of decon texas swing, brush snare, backwards violin and other assorted mayhem. (get down on your knees and pray to the jordanaires for fogiveness!) go to: motherwest.com to ordewr yours, big boy. *************************** notes from the under-funded MOTH WHO? WHAT? WHY? (part the first) "we come to break everything and everyone (including ourselves) down to their component parts -- for no reason other than it must be done!" this is but one of the happy sentiments soon to be written in the NEW POP MANIFESTO devised by moth wranglers, a two-headed momster of an art collective that promises no-holds barred pansexual melodrama played out before a backdrop of overwrought musical mayhem. the ringleaders of this post-millenmial/pre-apocalyptic enclave (ld beghtol/ny & chris xefos/sf) come comeplete with a varied pedigree of performance experiences including music (king missile, when people were shorter and lived near the water, flare, kiss me kate, vampire lesbians of sodom, church handbell choir) as well as other forms of media manipulation including the plastic and graphic arts (helveticorps, ltd., nice boys from good families) and interpersonal pyrotechnological studies. the moth wranglers’ extended family of cohorts/co-conspirators have been carefully selected by beghtol & xefos from among thousands of unsolicited applicants, who first heard about the project through salacious graffiti in public toilets and from the voices in their heads. collaborators making the final cut were culled from such prestigious, dedicated revolutionary elite activists outfits as the magnetic fields, the geraldine fibbers, sparklehorse, the klezmatics, futire bibles heroes, the loud family, bongwater, camper van beethoven and others too embarassed to mention. some may perceive the moth wranglers experience as (merely) an all-star indie rock vaudeville created to turn a quick prophet in this fickle consumerist era, yet all members share the idealistic (and possibly misguided) belief in freeing the self from the tyranny of the ego by any means necessary -- chemical, auditory or gustatory. the special form of encouragement moth wranglers practice -- with each other and with their often flabbergasted collaborators -- is what creates such a unique melange of texts and sounds. add a nice handmade cuban cigar and that’s some fun! moth wranglers’ first action was to re-capitulate/regurgitate an aural submission for lifelike records’ PIXIES FUCKING DIE cd, a semi-musical tribute to the infamous 80s boston post-punk band, the pixies, whose music has had a little or no discernable effect on the sex lives of either xefos or beghtol. regardless of this unfortunate oversight on the part of black francis & co., moth wranglers chose the pixies’ #13 BABY -- mostly for its imaginative combination of letterforms -- for de/reconstruction. the result is a surf-goth whirlwind of vocal harmonies pitted against organ, sludge guitar and marxophone. after this initial experiment in audio-terrorism, beghtol & xefos began in earnest to realize moth wranglers as entity. "the music (as opposed to our other art endeavors, which so far don’t exist) is basically a cross between the carter family and swans, with digressions along the way into all manner of musical styles..." says beghtol. that statement may only represent a narrow bandwidth of the moth wranglers’ “ciné-verité” stylings. “whether it's charles ives, palestrina or hank williams,” beghtol continues, “we’ve vowed to steal as much as we can from any and all available/known sources in the creation of the moth wrangler sound... after all, who needs plunderphonics when you have a library card -- and a really good rolo-dex?” the first exclusive mw “product” will be in the form of the archaic 7" vinyl single to be released on the mother west label sometime this decade. mw have some 20 songs in various states of completion which (they hope) will be made available sometime and in some form before the end of the 21th century. several performance extravaganzas are currently in the pre-production/promotion stage, which will unleash moth wranglers on an unsuspecting (and largely indifferent) public through a series of premieres in major cities across north america. as is to be expected, there will be the usual trails of paper, parchment made of human skin, random circuitry, hairballs and various other “stock” that will originate from the mw compound during this time period -- largely as an attempt to generate funds for further recording sessions and electroshock treatment (to which the creative team is mildly addicted). “moth wranglers is not about breaking any new ground or covering any ground whatsoever,” says xefos, “it’s about being grounded, period.” in defense of this arcane attempt at psychical closure, xefos freely steals the following statement from one of his soon-to-be-former friends: "it's just the fish that swim by the window of our imagination. what you hear are the ones that get plopped onto the grill of our recording devices." xefos is exclusively a red meat eater. xoxoxox (here endeth the reading) |
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