Friday Heavy: December 9, 2022

Cliff: Welcome to Friday Heavy Christmas Spirit Edition, your guide to the world of aggressive, abrasive, loud music, and also anti screwed sentiment. This Hess brought to you by the folks behind Tune Day, primarily me,

cliff, and you,

Kyle: Kyle.

Cliff: Kyle. Hey.

Kyle: Each episode of Friday Heavy, we try to concisely cover three things. First one, brand new release in the world of heavy music and why we think it’ll be worth a spin.

We got a great one today. Secondly, one playlist we’ve curated to help you explore a heavy sub genre or artist or scene often related to the new release in some way. Definitely the case today as. Thirdly, finally, most importantly, by far, one organization tackling a heavy issue by doing cultural impacting work, critical culture impacting work in their community.

So let’s get into it. Cliff, I think like he as legend was a very personal one for me. I, think the pendulum has swung back and we have a, quite near and dear one for you today.

In turn,

Cliff: For sure. We’ve gotten a couple of mid oughts blasts directly to our cerebellum in a row here.

so this week we are covering a new EP that feels like a surprise after a really long Haus from this band. But it just barely edged out us covering the surprise s a album that dropped today. And if you think I’m kidding, I assure you that I’m not, but we are talking about the sound of animals fighting today, a sort of super group from post hard Cordish bands like Circa Survive and our expand.

They

have dropped their first record in 15 years. Uh, it’s out now on Born Losers. personally, despite loving them early on, which I’ll come back to in a moment, some of the more recent efforts of this particular group were a lot less interesting to me so I got pretty stoked after hearing the one single that they dropped. The title track off the new ep, which is called the Ape She ep in, you can hear here, it’s a, it’s a return to the more complex and kind of frenetic songwriting that they had on their very first record called The Tiger and the Duke.

So actually more on the Tiger and the Duke in just a second. But for now, check out this new single ape.

Cliff: So, yeah, I’ve got pretty high hopes for a high energy ep, which Kyle knows is my favorite type of music deliverable. This, I absolutely want every band recording, high energy,

five song type

Kyle: It’s amazing. It’s amazing to me that you’re not a cocaine guy, cuz everything about your musical life is like, give me one, one thing, 16 minutes fast. Make it good. Make it feel like black coffee.

Cliff: I could never, I can’t get any more concise than I already

am.

If you like, the more kind of angular botch worship type stuff that’s coming out on the single we just played. You’re gonna hear a little bit less of that from the sound of animals fighting over more of the recent records. You’re gonna hear a lot of the more kind of, Electronic and progressive type of experimentation in the more recent records.

But if you go all the way back to 2000 and fours, tiger and the Duke EP from this band, from a time when they legitimately could not list their own names because of their recording contracts and adopted this idea of the band and taking on a different animal for each individual band member, I, I think they’ve probably just kept that around for shtick

these days.

Kyle: Notably prior to the movie, your Next Where they wore Animal Mask and also I think Queens of the Stone Ages lullabies to Paralyze where they gallivant it around in the woods for their album artwork.

Cliff: Fair point. Those two things were close enough together to where they did actually confuse me at the time, now that I think about it.

I’m one of the two people on this podcast, so I get to be incredibly annoying and objectively

correct all at once, and no one

gets to stop me.

Kyle: of your memoir Incredibly annoying and objectively correct.

Cliff: so speaking of Tiger and the Duke, which is a really cool record, and again, pairs well with this new one. The reissue of the ep.

The Tiger and the Duke EP was put out by Equal Vision in 2007, and it is not as good as the original ep. And I don’t just mean like I have a slight preference for the shitier tone on the previous pre-release version.

Like it’s extremely different. But the problem is that that original version of the EP is basically unfindable on streaming services, thanks to how metadata works or whatever. Uh, and so like the only way to find that version is one, I literally, it’s the only CD I own. It is literally the only music CD I own that I know of.

Because that’s one way I can get it. It had this old kind of brown and red cover that I remember ordering when I was in high school, and it was like one of the, I. I was way stoked about mail order CDs by that point. But then if you look around, there’s a rip or two on YouTube and I’ll try to link one up if we don’t cause it to be automatically taken down.

But the original version is like, it’s half the length, it’s like 30 minutes. It’s really focused and to me it sounds even better, this idea a post hardcore Mars Volta. Clicked better in that moment. I’m not saying that’s what it was or that’s what they achieved, but it feels a lot more that way.

Whereas the actual Tiger and the Duke that you’ll find on streaming services is. It tempted to be a bit more polished and filled out. But I think they missed the mark a bit. So this is not only a really weird band, but one that has very distinct timeframes from within their own career. So that’s, to me, that was why it was worth sussing all that stuff out so that you know where to go across their catalog.

Cuz

it’s

been a long.

Kyle: So once you go down the rabbit hole of how weird and interesting the trajectory of this band has been and how they’ve built up such a, a rabidly devoted fan base along the way, uh, we encourage you to check out Ape Shit Out. Believe as of yesterday on Born Losers Records. So strong move guys. Doing a Thursday drop.

Go listen to it however you want and then send this band your money through shows. They don’t do many shows, but they have a slate coming up here early in 23, which is a big deal. And merch. They historically, if I remember correctly, are a cool merch band and or a direct donation so that in 12 or 14 more years, you can get another sound of animals fighting record.

Cliff: Hello Band. I have invested in a United States

Kyle: far

Cliff: for you, So reading ahead in my own show notes, I see something, something Kyle says, okay, I was wrong. So

that’s

my intro to this section. Kyle, what are we talking about today?

Kyle: Cliff out here doing what my wife could never get me to do. this playlist is a fun, okay, I was wrong moment. And that, that, it’s not the headline, but it is a, it’s an entry point. Um, you know, admittedly, I’ve always thought that. Stuff in the ecosystem of Sound of Animals fighting and, and really the bands from which those guys come Anthony Green’s projects like Circus Survive and Rx Bandits, who I’ve always slotted a sounding different than they actually sound because of their weird name.

I think it’s the X that made slotted them with like MX PX or something, and certainly Chios being in its own white. Uh, shelf 32 at hot topic category. You know, I’ve always thought a lot of this stuff was one, just one little step outside my open world map of music exploration. Just one little thing about it tended to turn me off.

I had the perception that, that a lot of these bands were a little too my spacey or, wrong stage at Warped Tour for my taste. you know, nobody’s had to endure more than you Cliff. When, when the band is one step out and you’re just like, why, why is this a thing that broke the coding for you?

Like why, why this one in particular? When did we fall off a cliff? The. A lot of times it’d be like the vocals were a little too high, or they were strangely enunciated, or the aesthetics and the song titles, or the album artwork or the like side printed t-shirt were a little too sassy and contrived for me.

But, those were all individual things and putting this sort of world together through this playlist, I found myself discovering that. Essentially there was a whole group of post hardcore seeing kids who took the turn on tune and drop out route. Lsd, pink Floyd, post Hardcore kids.

And it had never really occurred to me how expansive that world was sort of under my radar and how musical and cool and obviously influential for tons of people in bands. That was. You know, earlier you compared Sound of Animals fighting to Mars Volta and I, I started seeing that and I’ve heard you say that, and that was a real Rosetta Stone for me.

And like, pushing through and finding a, a way to love this world. It’s all angular in some way, that that can take dozens of different meanings. It’s all very well produced. You know, with the exception of some of this really early stuff as the scene was forming. But a lot of the later stuff sounds great and it, it turns on a dial between really abrasive and, and really cosmic and the angularity.

So there’s great clean, ambient layered stuff. There’s great like picking guitar work. And then there’s really great riffing and tonality there. I would say if there’s a common thread, it reminds me of the Holy Fahn playlist where there’s a ton of space within the musical ideas these groups are trying to express.

You know, there, there’s like a thing they all are subconsciously getting after and they all do it really differently and a lot of bands do it really well. So where there can be a run of like, Blood Brothers or daughters, the Blood and some girls, that’s a really specific thing in One Direction. Or there’s Bt Bam and Moon Tooth and Inau in a little, probably 25 minute three song cluster.

Then there’s also stuff, there’s room for stuff like bummer music like Cata, Wald City going into Def Tones, Emma, Ruth Ru, Chelsea Wolf, me Without You. It’s a run on this playlist. I really like. If you’re like me and you hear the sound of animals fighting thing and you’re like, okay, maybe not quite this, but give me a different shade of chars on this thing.

There’s a lot of space in this one and it’s really interesting and it’s really compelling, like light up your brain, caffeinate your brain type stuff.

Cliff: I love it. And we finally had a way to work in one of my favorite little secret tracks, which is by this little band called Blueprint Car Crash. And they did this really, really odd mathy pop song that I’ve loved for so long cuz it came out of the militia group which back in its heyday was a cool.

Factory for that sort of thing. But I love seeing it right here between the Mars Volta and th rice. And just, yeah, to your point, lots of places to catch the edges of anything you might not like and find a quick hop over

to something maybe you do.

Kyle: There, there is in our specific, very specific musical overlap, sort of a, a third edge of the triangle, and that’s our buddy Collin who I know for a fact this is his favorite of these playlists or would be his favorite that we’ve ever made. This. There’s much more overlap in the then between you and Colin here than there is me, but there’s a lot for all three of us to collectively appreci.

Cliff: This is fun. We’ll see if we’re right about that, but I think you are

Last and never, ever, ever least, we always like to cover one organization doing really critical culture impacting work in their community. This week’s was pretty easy. We tossed this over to each other several weeks ago and we’re like the very next moment we have a chance to talk about an organization, we have got one.

So let’s talk about accessible festivals. So we wanna touch on this underlying issue. Because it’s, it’s close to our hearts and less touch on it because it’s, related to some current political wind or something like that. You know, we kind of have it a waffle between those two.

But this what we’re gonna talk about with accessible festivals and just the idea of accessibility in music. This matters to. Individually as people. It has mattered to us for a long time. We have admired people who have done something about this work and supported them as much as we can.

Uh, and it’s, all circling around this ethos that we try to bring forward. Uh, On this very podcast of this underlying culture that lives inside of music that can support one another in, in wild and diverse ways. And so we’re highlighting this week the Organization Accessible Festivals, which is a nonprofit quote, dedicated to making live music and recreational events fully accessible for people of all abilities.

Accommodations for a

diversity of physical capabilities and music venues is already something that me and Kyle, literally us as people, we expect, we demand and we support it however we can. It’s something we pay attention to. We note it when we’re buying tickets. We look at it when we’re in venues, right?

It’s really, really important that folks who want to come to a show have what they need to actually be able to enjoy that. We’re telling you, not cuz it’s like a virtue signaling thing, but because we want to encourage you to be that way about it. Also, the only way this happens is if everyone thinks about it more often, talks about it more often and just tells venues, Hey, where is this?

Hey, if my friend in a wheelchair came next week, where do they go? What does this look like? How does

this work?

Kyle: and you don’t realize how hard it is until the first time you’ve tried to do that. And then it’s one of those things, once you see it, you can’t unsee it and, and you want to fix it everywhere.

Cliff: So we encourage you to think about it that way. Think about it as a fundamental right for everyone in that, that plays out in a number of different ways in the scene, especially whether it is, paying attention to, like, when we go to drunken unicorn show, quite literally we’ve got some friends who are in wheelchairs who go to shows at the Drunken Unicorn, which is a, a super small local show.

But they’re a great one to point out cuz. It’s like a floor venue, right? if you can get in the door, you’re on one level with a small stage and you know, the stage is a little up from you, but the whole room is on, on one area, right? And one thing that is traditional there is that if someone else is in a wheelchair or an assistive, you know, device needing a mobility device, something they.

Effectively ushered to the front of the crowd. That is like a part of the culture. That’s what happens. So those things are, and can be accommodations for people when they actually work as expected. But on top of that we wanna see. More designation. Like we just went to a show at Bogs Social, another super cool local small punk venue.

But they have a little set of stairs that go down to where their stage is now. Not everybody can hit a little set of stairs to get down to where the stage is. And so we noticed that there was a primary area for people who had chairs who couldn’t use stairs to set up shop and watch the show. And in fact, they had a killer view and like that’s the way we.

Right. We, it’s not in a corner. It’s not beside the stage in some, you know, shit vantage point, right? And this is an opportunity where, you know, people who need accommodations can not only have those accommodations met, but we can build a culture that goes above and beyond and makes people feel especially welcome.

What’s also worth bringing up and why accessible festivals as an organization is doing such clutch work, right? Everything we just talked about even all of those tiny little things to consider are for tiny one day local shows, right? Festivals in particular are critical to get right for people who need any sense of accommodation.

Cuz if you’ve ever gone to a festival right, you know that there’s there’s logistics to work out, period. No matter what you need or who you are, right? Just trying to get to a multi-day thing and figure it out, especially if there’s, if you’re gonna be there for a long time, if there’s overnight, any of that stuff, that’s a lot to navigate.

People who need accommodations are navigating on top of all that, they’re trying to figure out if, if they can see through the opaque maze of like possible accommodations that can dramatically affect their own safety. And so when that stuff is clear, when festivals, venues, organizations don’t just accommodate, but also are clearly communicating about their accommodation.

Everyone benefits from that. It helps remove the stigma around disability, and it increases the transparency that leaves everyone able to make a better decision about what you might need and what matters to you. Like one, one key truth that I’ve learned in my own personal journey which luckily this crosses over into work for me, but, you know, I have to learn a lot about accessibility.

It’s really important to me. Uh, one kind of maxim that comes out of it is just like, um, everyone is temporarily. Everyone’s gonna experience something at a different point. And so this, again, removing the stigma, having transparency around basic things, where do I go? How can I get from place to place that helps everyone?

It keeps everyone safe, uh, and it helps us be able to enjoy more music, even when we might need something from an event. So this is critical, critical stuff, and we love that accessible festivals as an

organization is doing it.

Kyle: Very much so, to learn more about accessible festivals, to get a lay on what the accessibility situation is at a festival that you love or are planning to attend. Most importantly, to make a donation to support the great work that they do, go to accessible festivals.org.

Cliff: This has been Friday heavy. We’ll be back in two weeks.

Go to tunedig.com or follow us on Instagram and Twitter for links to the new release, the playlist and the organization that we talked about today.