video: Ducktails on Sunday Brunch

Apple Walk

PT.2

Scorching afternoons spent inside call for Beer and a good soundtrack.

Don't kill the vbe.

Video by Ray Concepcion

video: Alex Bleeker on Sunday Brunch

Landslide Brought It Down

A few weeks back, in the midst of the World Cup, we rangled a few friends over to view the semi-finals while broadcasting Sunday Brunch on Newtown Radio live from Bobka HQ. It was hot. Very hot. Especialy since our Comfort Zone had just perished. It didn't matter much though, as Budweiser's popped and friends played songs while footballers scored 'sick' goals. The word 'sick' was thrown around a lot. It was a grand afternoon, captured by Ray Concepcion. Take a peek at Alex Bleeker's performance, with more to come very soon.

video: Pocahaunted at Pianos

Not Not Fun

Sometimes the 4th dimension isn't so sublte. Advocates of the Spirit Molecule break down this artifical barrier daily, while the majority of others only ever witness a glimpse of what lays below the surface. Hunting and gathering, foraging, peeking under caves and ancient rocks, one gets the sense that what our eyes allow us to see is only a icing on an extremely lavish and incredibly dank cake. Pocahaunted, known for spell inducing rave ups and communal freak-funk, hinted at the nether world when they were recently in New York. Psychotropic visual artist Ray Concepcion, whose always working in the shadows, captured the group jamming inside the hyperdimensional helix.

video: Oneohtrix Point Never

"Summer Time"

In the digital ether, fiction often trumps reality. Trapped in mid-mir, light is a luxury rarely earned and only seen one day a year: the vanishing. Digital gepetto Oneohtrix Point Never resides in the temporal darkness, sharpening his synthesized ginsu's with mirrored flange and tarnished lasers left over from the emoticon convention of 2005, pre-Mars landing, and wayy before Earth was settled by demonoid numskulls who traded Sunlight for eternal pleasure and immortatlity, only to find that no such thing exists with out the glowing star. OPN, confined to a fallout shelter miles below the great red spot, where circuit boards and memory cards are devoured like rice cakes, is a digital pioneer on the lam, sequencing data moshed tirates into synchronized anachronistic robo-toys, a gift to the children of the post-Google future. Captured in hi-definition by Ray Concepcion.

video: Fluffy Lumbers, Alice Cohen at CMJ

"Back to the Wall"


Lost in some blackhole-time warp, these two recently unearthed videos of Fluffy Lumbers and Alice Cohen live at the UP/OESB/BOBKA really bring me back to that hazy night at the now defunct Monkeytown during CMJ. To view is to be transported back in time to a realm that existed for a few hours on some odd day in October.

video: Sun Araw CoCo 66

"The Phynx"

Ray just sent me this recap of the Sun Araw show at Coco 66 this past Sunday, which was, to say the least, some really HEAVY shit. All night. (Aside: Bigs up to Upstairs CDR, the KGB Man himself, and DJ Bryce (?) who was in the front bar spinning shit all slo'd out and drawly-like.) OPN killed a set too, but thats a whole different story. Sun Araw came in from Cali the night before, after getting stuck in LA because of weather, Airline-delays, etc in NYC. Dude took the red-eye and landed at LGA at 9:30 AM Sunday Morning, days after his supposed arrival. Yet somehow, despite delays, Sun Araw instantly cast a mega-aura over the greater Greenpoint area. The sky got all neon green. Except the ooz sky wasn't poisonious, it was just glowing mist. Like tie-dyed fog. Everything was real fresh. Super zones. (RC on a different plane of existence with this one. Right on.)

video: Four Tet "Angel Echoes"

"Zones"


3D, a medium through which many have tried to replicate authentic life through film, has been in our collective consciousness since the '50s. It's never been that great, although, in theory it's amazing. Do you remember the first time you watched a 3D movie? I do. It was Captain EO at Epcot Center. I also remember playing Rad Racer in 3D on NES, which, instead of mimicking the harsh realties of the illustrious International race community, somehow communicated a vaulted hyper reality, one more akin to needing the chill out room at the Hacienda than "seeing things as they are." And so here we are, in the age of Avatar, the 3D age, and Ray Concepcion is downgrading the medium to its most commercial and most hypnotique. Armed with a janky pair of 3D glasses, made out of paper and what are most likely the worlds cheapest lighting gels, Concepcion takes Four Tet's recent performance at LPR to new hypnogigic states, reformatting an often alien tool in order to convey the ecstatic exuberance of one of those girls up front, grinding her ass (and her teeth), watching that EXIT sign in her peripheral expand and contract like her inner consciousness.

new: The Report

"Playboy Tunnels"
(Collage Art by Madalyn Merkey. Her work appears in the Report.)
It's been a few months since the silly thought of starting a bi-annual cultural compendium crept into the forefront of my brain. I was going out to dinner and was sorta pissed the tavern ran out of Fish & Chips. (Bummer.) Since then, my half baked idea evolved into the Report, a home for warped ideas germinating in the caves of our contributors craniums for god knows how long. In many respects, the Report is a home for stuff that doesn't have a home, a quasi orphanage for random thoughts, mind collages, one-off jams and nights that need remembering.

The Report started a Kickstarter project to help bring our ideas to life. In a shockingly short period of time the Report raised its goal of $1000. Shit, y'all were so supportive we exceeded our goal. In all honesty, its remarkable. Scott the Intern and I are working our asses off in the Bobka/Report HQ in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and we hope to have the Report packaged and ready to go in early February. Don't want to give too much away, because surprises are always nice, but I will disclose that the Report is a music, culture and art journal bundled with a DVD of live concert footage shot by Ray Concepcion and C. Axel Poekel (Chocolate Bobka's chief videographer) and a cassette compilation featuring new songs (and LOTS of exclusives) from Real Estate, Pure Ecstasy, Twin Sister, Mountain Man, Sharon Van Etten, Alex Bleeker, Holiday Shores and many, many more. The Report will be lovingly packaged for each individual order. This means no inventory, as we will only print as many as ordered. No more, no less, no excess. Pre-orders will be available in the next week or so, however, you can pre-order the Report by contributing to the Kickstarter project, which has lots of cool incentives, like, uh, the shirt off my back. Seriously. Really psyched for everyone to see what we've got cooking.

Donate to the Report Kickstarter.

video: Mountain Man at the Church

"Lay Your Head"

Ray Concepcion capturing Mountain Man at the Chocolate Bobka Church show two weeks ago. Amazing.

video: Marissa Nadler "Dying Breed"

"Summer of Love is Over"

By now its apparent how much I love the songs of Marissa Nadler. Little Hells, her latest record on Kemado, seems criminally overlooked this year, despite great reviews, extensive touring and a masterful step forward in both her songwriting and production. Sort of makes me wonder, What if P4K had bundled that 8.1 with a BNM? Either way, like most of Nadler's output, its a daunting affair, one that resonates strongly with grey skies and dead leaves. There aren't too many records this year that I'd say are must owns, but this is one of them. Grab her entire back catalog, if you can, it's well worth it.

Anyway, a few weekends ago, on a cold dreary night in Brooklyn, Ray Concepcion headed down to the haunting Union Hall to capture Nadler in all her haunting beauty. The audio from this intimate set is extraordinary, as Concepcion bottles the essence of the Union Hall basement, filled with flora and fauna, taxidermy, and the piercing eyes of Grandmothers long since gone, through soft focus and a peephole perspective, sort of the visual equivalent of the way Willa Cather paints her novella A Lost Lady.

video: Julian Lynch at Monkeytown

"Droner"

Breaking down the walls of retransmission, it was a must to beam Julian Lynch into Monkeytown during CMJ. Fortunately, the needed technologies are embedded in laptop machines we carry in over-the-shoulder bags and so, presenting Julian Lynch live from the his bedroom floor in Madison, Wisconsin wasn't that big a deal, technically speaking. It was, if anything, essential, a must, and even more so in retrospect, as Julian's cosmic raga pixelated the air in the room until all we could see were molecules and molecules made up of molecules. This is what I imagine lucid dreaming to be.

video: Big Troubles "Freudian Slips"

"Oh No"

Young fuzz devotees and Geocities enthusiasts Big Troubles have only played a handful of shows since their inception in late July, yet they've managed to damage the ear canal's of at least two dozen attendees, which, I guess, is sort of the point. These guys don't know the definition of "too loud," and if the sound guy at Cameo Gallery had known this he probably wouldn't have said "the guitars are still too loud." Everyone in the room could've agreed, but instead, they laughed it off, popped in ear plugs and let Alex Craig and Ian Drennen, backed by Luka Usmani and Sam Franklin, speed up our inevitable deafness. No saxophone solos or doo-wop vocal arrangements here, just delectable melodies ensconced in enough distortion to blow all the wax out your ears.

news: Bobka joins Tunnelvision Collective

"Oh Snap"

video: Alex Bleeker & Mountain Man

"Old Blue Jeans"

A rainy Saturday afternoon can be tough, especially after 4 days of non-stop showcases, free booze and incessant running around. Around 5 pm or so, I was beat. Everyone was beat. Sick of music. Sick of bars. Sick of bad sound guys. Then Alex Bleeker rolled into the Lovin' Cup. There were about 25-30 acquaintances, friends, admirers waiting for him to arrive with Mountain Man. When he crossed the threshold of the tavern, the place exploded in applause. Physically taken back, shocked even, Bleeker laughed and did the Kool Aid Man walk out the door, before returning a few seconds later to grace our weary heads with an acoustic, unamplified set accompanied by Alex and Molly from Mountain Man, and whomever else felt compelled to sing along. Serious coffee shop vibes. One of the most magical moments from this year's CMJ. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for news announcing a similar event in the near future.

video: Mountain Man, Air Waves

"Bright Baby Eyes of the Chickadee"

Saw LAKE, Karl Blau and Alex Bleeker and the Freaks get seriously down at Ash's Place last night. Got home late, passed out hard. Woke up, still dreaming, with these in my in box. A "music video" for Mountain Man's undeniable "Animal Tracks," which appears to be shot while the ladies were recording (re-recording) the song for future release. Rumor has it that we'll be seeing more than just a 7" in the not-so-distant future, which is very good news. Also, Ray C sent over the latest installment in his CMJ series, this one featuring Air Waves, who, despite playing after Mountain Man to a room not nearly full enough, managed to make me feel pretty darn warm and cozy, despite the monsoon in Brooklyn last Saturday night. Really looking forward to both Mountain Man and Air Waves future releases on Underwater Peoples.

video: Real Estate "Basement"

"Watching the Sea Birds"

One of my favorite new Real Estate songs, if not my favorite, "Basement" will appear on the forthcoming Mexican Summer 12-inch, due out sometime before the end of the year. As is usually the case with video shot by Mr. Ray Concepcion, I'll let the visuals speak for themselves, as words will do no justice.

video: Mountain Man at Monkeytown

"Amen"

I was pretty psyched when Mountain Man told me they could fill in for Ducktails at the Bobka Monkeytown show last Tuesday. Even better knowing that our friend Ray Concepcion would be on hand to document the proceedings. In retrospect, it was even more magical than I could have imagined. Never thought I would've woken up at noon the next day, foggy, still in shock as to the dream I witnessed the night before at the magical den that is Monkeytown. Enough words already though, Mountain Man at Monekeytown, by Ray Concepcion. Might have been the best show of CMJ (Editorial bias).

video: Holiday Shores "Edge of Our Lives"

"There is No One Like You"

Possibly the last evidence of a Bobka show before tomorrow nights throw down at Monkeytown, this jawn from the Cameo Gallery show in late August finds Holiday Shores coexisting with the last airs of Summer. Fitting for the Floridians, who will be back in NYC this week for CMJ and are playing the big Bobka show Friday at the Delancey. Make sure to catch them, as early as tomorrow at the Pop Tarts show, as they are definitely not to be missed. I also hear they have a tour-only cassette with them on this run, which features a choice Arthur Russell cover. My guess is its super limited, so pick it up if you get a chance.

Holiday Shores at CMJ
10.20 New York, NY @ Cake Shop (Poptarts Suck Toasted Day Party) @
10.22  Brooklyn, NY @ Shea Stadium (Myopenbar Party) $
10.23  Brooklyn, NY @ Trash Bar (Breakthru Radio Day Party)
10.23  New York, NY @ The Delancey (twosyllable records/Underwater Peoples CMJ Showcase) #
10.24  Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg (AAM Day Party)

@ w/Surfer Blood, Small Black
$ w/Javelin
# w/ Real Estate, New Villager, Inlets, Frat Dad, Pill Wonder

video: Julianna Barwick

"Sunlight, Heaven"

Despite the fact that he never actually made it to what we now know as the mainland United States of America, this video of Julianna Barwick performing at Littlefield wouldn't exist if it weren't for Christopher Columbo. Enjoy, then reflect on the history of this great land.

video: Wavves at Santos Party House

"The Thing In The Back Of My Brain"

Last Thursday, our boy Ray Concepcion and I headed down to Lafayette St to catch Alex Bleeker & the Freaks, Ganglians and Wavves at Mr. Andrew WK's pad. It was an interesting evening. Lots of kids, speakers, liquor, and, surprisingly, no fights! Ray, who was all over the place that night, covering nook and cranny of Santos, before heading back uptown, captured Wavves blistering set in a short three part mini-movie. Check it below, or head to Ray's Vimeo page to watch that shiz in HD. As you'll notice, it was basically "The Zach Hill Show." No surprise there.