cruft for the world.

January 31, 2008

Cruftworld Issue #7


Available for your downloading and viewing pleasure is The First Cruftworld Zine Release.
(In Medias Res --- we're starting with Issue #7).

This is the result of my musings on a strange topic: what if, instead of trying to create personas to record music under and get reviewed in various music zines, I created my own zine as a fictional construct which contained all my various pseudonyms and recording projects?

Long question, boring answer. Another way of saying this would be: what if we viewed a city's music scene as a single MMORPG server, and all the bands interacted like Warcraft guilds?

Either way, I came up with the cruftworld project. This world is composed entirely of bands that I myself create all the music for, or, in a few cases, includes my friends' bands. All the listings of gigs and everything is fictional. I feel it's necessary to explain this in the beginning because I don't want to defame anyone's reputation.

Lots of the bars, bands and personalities are inspired by or parodies of corresponding places and people in Vancouver's music scene or the Pitchfork-influenced world indie scene in general. Some references will be more obvious than others.

I've invested quite a lot of time into the creation of this world and have recently purchased a metric ton of music gear to realize the tunes. The PDFs will be accompanied by MP3 available for download from this site, beginning shortly. If you followed my remake of Public House's "Remains of the Lost Amphibians" cassette, you should be able to understand the related review in this PDF.

Anyway this is the long intro by the dungeon master at the beginning of the game before the first yellow Cheeto stains have been rubbed on the first Clix model. From now on, everything else will be in character and no more fourth-wall breaking.

Thanks to [710w3] for his entirely analog layout work.
And stay tuned to this location for more Cruft content.

January 4, 2008

Cruftworld #4: Fifties





Here's the last installment from the original Public House cassette. This was a total throwaway song that we just recorded because we had extra time left over. It was written by me as a faux-sellout joke song. But in the end it turned out to be the most popular song from the tape, and my friends from the time can even remember the (deep, meaningful) lyrics.

However, it has a certain charm. I was happy to get the chance to play a solo for this one --- as I recall, I played it on a borrowed Japanese Telecaster. And as for my updated version, I've thrown in a harmony line in the chorus that I can't believe never made it into the original.

Anyway, I got no time to go into more detail because I'm moving to China tomorrow. But I will say that this cruftworld series is definitely going to continue in 2008 "if the good lord's willin', and the crick don't rise."


Listen to the original Public House Recording of Fifties - 2 MB

Listen to the 2007 version of Fifties - 2.3 MB