OH I LOVE IT, YES I LOVE IT #5

Apologies for being nonexistent lately. Big shiftings have been going on in the Jakob Battick & Friends camp as of late. Our last group show until September is tomorrow night at Slainte, free, alongside Mileagres (From Brooklyn) and Selbyville. Come out and see us, please, we implore you. This will be a big event for us, a Hillytown Presents show to dismantle ourselves for the summer. We will return in September with many new songs and tricks up our collective sleeves.



Some images from our performance WMPG appearance on Roy Ghim's Liberation By Sound:









In addition to performing "Nine Brothers & The Wolf" live for the first time ever as a group at WMPG, we also got to sit in as Dylan Metrano's backing band for his performance (Dylan is the mastermind behind New England underground legends Tiger Saw). I, personally, was geeking out the whole time. For our set, we performed the aforementioned "Nine Brothers & The Wolf" followed by "All That Really Lasts". Dylan performed "All of My Friends" and "The Tiger & The Tailor", with us backing him (Alongside Lazarus!). Many thanks to Roy Ghim for being such an excellent guy and being so patient with us sound-wise.

And now, apologies for the long, long gap between this and the previous installment, the latest OH I LOVE IT!:

Selected Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Chosen & Discussed by Jakob



Strange violence abounds, child-eating included. Strange beasts are hiding in the woods. Shining golden birds, talking foxes, old-world spirits, and even the devil figure into these little stories. Brilliant Nordic folktales full of light and darkness. I bought this book today at Strange Maine for three dollars and I am more than excited to read the whole thing over the course of this soon-to-be-extra-brilliant summer.

7 Year Rabbit Cycle
Chosen & Discussed by Sean Kennedy



7 Year Rabbit Cycle could certainly be referred to as a "super-group;" containing musicians formerly from Deerhoof, Mr. Bungle, and Ten Organs of Admittance, the band accommodates a great collection of influences. The group released 3 albums, "Wind Machines," "Ache Horns," and "Animal People." This band has remained in my library for nearly four years and "Ache Horns" continues to edure as one of my favorite albums.

"Ache Horns" contains numerous qualities from various genres ranging from free jazz to progressive, frpm noise rock, to ambient. Each track contains thick textures and rich atmospheres that are inspiring to say the least. They range in duration from a minute and forty seconds to ten minutes and thirty eight seconds, each being as equally moving as the last. The album opens with an untitled track which features a single xylophone and a simple chord progression which slowly becomes ambient, it acts as a beautiful introduction without exposing the contents of the rest of the album. Throughout the entirety of "Ache Horns" each individual sound communicates with one another. Each voice is emphasized; The bass slowly navigates through every progression, while the drums provide rich texture that compliment the stutters of the guitar, then vocals roll into each, playing off of the deeply textured rhythm. The sound has a structure similar to a book, it works to a crescendo and then gradually falls into the next composition. Within this structure one can feel a narrative, and through this each track - each movement - becomes a chapter.

With this direction of a "book" being known, I will not reveal the details of more individual tracks as that would be a "spoiler." What I will say though, is that I do not dislike ANY of the tracks, which is very rare. However, three personal favorites are "1234," "Puppies," and "Magic Yam Part 2." The composition of the album in it's entirety should also be emphasized, it is so well orchestrated. Each track transitions into the next remarkably well and it continues to remain fresh as well as deeply exciting throughout the whole.

7 Year Rabbit Cycle has been discontinued, but there a various projects now in existence featuring members from the band. Some of which are Badgerlore and Common Eider, King Eider.



"Howard's End" by E.M. Forster
Chosen & discussed by Wade Linebaugh



Don't let godawful publishing choices food you--the stupid cover on the Penguin Classics edition of Howard's End makes the book look like hours of pure boringsauce. Which, sure, if you hate books it might be. But if you're keen on really well-wrought characters loving and being funny and being disappointing (just like real people!), this book is real nice.

Here's the thing. Forster was a brilliant, progressive interesting fellow. All that's pretty nice but what i love is his willingness to interrogate his own interests with his characters. His distrust of the metropolis in Modern England wasn't revolutionary, but it wasn't dogmatic and simplified like, for example, Eliot's was (at times). Forster is much more like Joyce in that: Joyce left Dublin because of its "paralysis" but then spent every moment of the rest of his life reconstructing it, writing it literary love letters, viciously skewering it...Forster works out some fantastically interesting issues about urban decay in the Modern period in this slim book about two sisters, Margaret and Helen Schlegel. It's never as simple as a pastoral country set up against a browning, impersonal city: Howard's End explores space and in so doing also obliquely thinks about England's Imperial project which at the time was still in full swing.

The last thing worth noting in this brief OILIYILI is: sexual panic. Forster was closeted for his entire life; he stopped writing in the 1920s (the teens, really!) and lived until the 70s because he couldn't write about it and couldn't write about anything else. Howard's End is one of only a few novels he wrote and it's fantastic to see the way relationships work (and don't) in a text by an author haunted by affection.

I will do my best to continue making posts here over the course of this summer, though I will be focusing mainly on my songwriting in preparation for our debut full-length. The internet is very spotty where we live now.