Video from Living Laser's Cassette-Release Performance

So if you missed it, Living Laser laid out yet another scorching set Friday to celebrate the release of their "Ragged Glory" cassette. Yes, cassette. It's the new vinyl. Anyway, Paul Thorstenson's creative camera-wielding became an unlikely part of the performance, and the footage obtained pretty much rules--a provocative document of a stellar set. Four songs are up as of now. Here's one of Living Laser's newest, Versus Pigs:

Versus Pigs - Living Laser live at the loft, Poughkeepsie 9-9-11 from paul Thorstenson on Vimeo.

The Life and Times and Winterlong

Winterlong is playing a show on Saturday, October 15 at the Loft in Poughkeepsie, NY with Kansas City's The Life and Times. Please check out both bands, get tickets, go to the show, buy records (or dl free songs--whichever applies), and check in often, as more details will be unveiled in the coming weeks.

Ragged Glory Preorders

Living Laser's tape is now available to order here. Chances are they'll be gone before you get one. Are you fast enough?

Ragged Glory

Living Laser’s first cassette, “Ragged Glory,” will be released by our friends at Trip Machine Laboratories in the near future. So, if a tape deck has broken or otherwise fallen off your playback apparatus list in recent years, it’s time to bring it back.

Get your yellow tape and other stuff, including a lot of awesome vinyl, at Trip Machine's Facebook page.

Fit this video in between cereal spoonfuls:

Living Laser from Dylan Kaplowitz on Vimeo.

Perhaps drool a bit.

Some Chum to Hold You Over

The end of Shark Week is imminent. To help you weather the coming year, Winterlong has posted two free, downloadable songs and expect to post another in the near future. These home-recorded tracks mark the initial products of a nascent Winterlong, and the band offers them to you while they work on their new yet-to-be-named 5 song ep, whose recording process has already begun and is moving along swimmingly. So enjoy these, tell your friends, and keep listening! We'll keep you posted on the new stuff.

Did you know that some sharks lose 30,000 or more teeth over the course of their lifetime?

WINTERLONG - Queen Elizabeth III by GlacialPK

WINTERLONG - FISHNET by GlacialPK

Las Sombras

Paul Thorstenson, Glacial collaborator and front man of the legendary Dissolve, is sharing his new film "Las Sombras." Red Baron provides a startling, mesmerizing performance, during which he ends up supine, as usual. Check it out:

Las Sombras from paul Thorstenson on Vimeo.

And if you have time, check out Paul's other videos. You'll laugh, you'll smirk, you'll puke. You will love them all.

Dissolve At the Chance

Right smack in the middle of adolescence, amid early sightings of emerging curlers breaking fresh dermal ground, amid awkward, inferential, and sweaty conversations with girls far out of my league, amid extreme urges to dismantle everything conventional society seemed to offer a young lad, I began going to $3 Dissolve shows at the Chance. Six bands. Three bucks. That was exactly one day's lunch money, which meant I could either skip a day of lunch or three days of beverage and just suck water from the fountain's tepid rainbow in order to earn enough for the show. These shows broke down everything pent-up inside me, gnawing off huge chunks of what the radio told me music was, shattering all my preconceived notions of what live music meant, what concerts did, how moshing operated, fanning some essential fire inside me that I knew was there but evaded me up until then. This was fucking Art. And this is why every time Dissolve decides to play some shows I think of the event as a religious-type ceremony, because it grounds my ever-pressing present in my own past, reminds me what is important about art and art-making, and douses youthful fires with fresh gallons of gasoline.

So I will go see Dissolve July 30th at the Chance in Pougheepsie. As at the $3 shows so long ago, they have some excellent bands playing along with them, including Now There Is Only a Signal and Living Laser, so you should go too, and get there early!

Dissolve Live (So you can see that they're just as good now, if not better, than they've ever been. But why would anyone think otherwise?)

Get Dissolve's album Caveman of the Future from Trip Machine Laboratories

Paul Thorstenson's short films

New Joshua album "Choices"

In 1999 I drove my car from Dover Plains, NY to Danbury, CT to Volt records. I remember it raining pretty hard and I believe my close friend B. "Cigway" was with me. We used to go to Danbury all the time to buy cds and records at both Volt Records and the great Trash American Style. Cigway and I would browse what the store had for awhile and then evaluate the selection together. Once we had our top two choices of albums we wanted to go home with, we would each buy one, this way we could make each other a tape of the selection that the other did not get. I got the album End Serenading by Mineral and Cigway chose A Whole New Theory by Joshua. I hadn't heard the record yet, but I remember Cigway raving about "...how great...!" this dude's voice is. We bumped it on the way home. Cigway was right about the dude's voice. Joshua quickly became one of my favorite bands and I would go see them play live every chance I got. Why is this story relevant you may be wondering? Because Orange County, New York's Joshua is back and they rock harder than ever. Their new record is called CHOICES and you can sample it at -joshuatheband. Check out A Whole New Theory so you can act like you knew... A Whole New Theory by Joshua (the band)

Fun shows that already happened in 2011

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. ~Benjamin Franklin

Or two men Ben, or two men...Medallions - Jan. 8th, 2011

Spare Parks also celebrated the new year by playing a show. Actually it just happened to be booked in January.

Spare Parks - Jan. 15th, 2011

Spare Parks - Plastic Witches of Toronto from paul Thorstenson on Vimeo.