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.
The cruftworld continues with this latest single from Futon. This is the first single they recorded at Cruft Studios here in Shenzhen, aka Boomcity. Note the whirling distorted octaves on the lead guitar --- the result of investment in an authentic Leslie cabinet. Futon is easily one of the hottest Cruftbands and has been filling up Cruftclubs and Cruftpubs all over the Cruftplace.
