MP3: Outer Limits Recordings: "Burnin' Through The Nite"
MP3: Outer Limits Recordings: "$20 Dollar Bill"
An old Chinese proverb (or curse) reads, "May you live in interesting times"-- and indeed, we do. Today, for example, old media like radio and television embrace music from artists who spare no expense in multi-track digital recording and multimedia viral advertising, while the blogosphere gravitates to those who've reverted to the cassette and VHS formats. It’s a hell of a thing. Altered Zones readers are no strangers to this phenomenon, and an artist like Outer Limits Records brilliantly encapsulates it.
Outer Limits Records is one of many, many sides of the prolific Sam Mehran (ex-Test Icicles), one that sometimes includes hypnagogic hero James Ferraro and members of Jared Leto's favorite new band, Big Troubles. Sam spent much of 2010 leaving a breadcrumb trail to his woozy full-length, Foxy Baby, in the form of incandescent, humorous, tape-warped music videos. Sam just wants to have fun, as our conversation below suggests, while seeking out investors who believe in his business model.
AZ: Where in the world is Outer Limits Recordings based right now?
Sam: I'm in Little Port Morgan, New York City.
AZ: Last time I checked, you were involved in something like five different projects. What makes Outer Limits Recordings different?
Sam: "Outer Limits Recordings" has been the umbrella name for most of the music I've made. It's the only thing I'm involved in right now, other than building a “School for Confused Digital Teenagers and Twenty-Somethings” in Vermont, which has differently shaped rooms and whatnot. One is pyramid-shaped, one is modeled after the shape of a goat's head. They have all been commissioned to be painted by the editors of ArtForum and Mad magazine, respectively.
As 2010 draws to an close, Altered Zones brings you its collective year-end re-cap of its favorite albums, songs, and music videos. Stay tuned for our top tracks on Monday, top albums on Tuesday, and daily mix-tapes from a handful of surprise guests.
El Guincho: "Bombay"
Marc Gomez del Moral's video for El Guincho's "Bombay" is a self-sourced film collage, stitching together dozens of weird happenings into a deftly edited stream. There doesn't seem to be any method behind the director's choice of images, though they all seem to fall into one of two categories, or both: "sexy" and "uncomfortable". There's the nude women, the licking, the toe-sucking, the statue-seducing, the woman cutting off her underwear with scissors. And then there's the woman smashing eggs on her face, smoking a cigarette with laundry piled on one shoulder, the urgency lurking behind everything we see. With its hazy, archival-footage-projected-in-a-classroom feel, this schizophrenic sexploitation throwback makes for a stellar accompaniment to a fantastic song. --Ian Nelson
Gil Scott-Heron: "New York Is Killing Me"
Successful collaborations in any endeavor are a rare thing, let alone in music videos. And it's even more special when a director truly immerses himself in a piece of music, internalizes it, and returns with a new work of art that functions as a sincere companion piece to its source. English video artist Chris Cunningham, known for his work with Aphex Twin and Björk, puts a disturbing spin on the 61-year old proto-rap prophet Gil Scott-Heron's "New York Is Killing Me", transforming the original from a bizarro electro-schoolyard clap-jam to a hauntingly poignant portrait of urban decay. --Ric Leichtung
Outer Limits Recordings: "$20 Bill"
When visual artist Christian Megazord Oldham takes to Final Cut Pro, he unravels years of commercial abuse, dental ads, fragrances, and other idiosyncratic graphics and images in a concentrated mess of visual revelry. His work on Stellar Om Source's "Island's Best" does just this, while also channeling Christelle Gualdi's Argento-influenced aesthetic. The first time I saw this video, I wondered how he could have possibly concocted so many magnetic graphics. Then I realized that Megazord is the ultimate child of the digital era. Like the web, he sees all, absorbs all, and spits it out in whatever manner seems most fitting. --Michael McGregor
Sun Araw: "Deep Cover"
Summing up Sun Araw’s midnight dub séance “Deep Cover” is no easy task, but who could be more ripe for the challenge than Cameron Stallones himself? Shot by Brian Davila, Cameron's highly Lynchian interpretation of Track Five from psycho stakeout soundtrack On Patrol comes as close as anyone could hope. A 4 AM dance when you think no one is watching, a desperate intruder in the shadows, the skeletal remains of a party-- and, at the helm, Cameron Stallones, driving the farfisa like a bus through your consciousness. --Andy French
By Samantha Cornwell
Last week I sat down with Britt and Amanda Brown of the Los Angeles imprint Not Not Fun. Their Eagle Rock home, which doubles as the label’s headquarters, is located behind a questionable medical establishment that specializes in boil removal and botox. We discussed a wide range of issues, including the changing landscape of music distribution, how Amanda bounces back when Sade wont return her calls, and whether there is really such a thing as an "LA sound".
AZ: How did Not Not Fun get started?
Britt: It started in 2004. I had known Amanda about a year at that point, and she had talked about doing a label. We had started making music together, and I was in another band, and we had some other friends who were in bands. She decided that it would be fun if we made a two-song-per-band compilation cassette, and sell them for $3 to people we knew. We decided that as long as we were making a mixtape, we might as well act like we were a record label and call it something. The way we operate the label has changed tremendously since then. Now it's our full-time job that we both do 6 or 7 days a week, and we ship records all over the planet
AZ: What qualities do you look for as "curators" of music?
Amanda: Britt and I have really different tastes, so it's more where we overlap, and what we come together to like. If it were just me curating a record label, it would probably be just hip-hop and dance records. And if it was just Britt, it would probably be more esoteric music. I think when we come together, it's about looking for hardworking, soulful, creatively talented people. We care more about relationships.
Britt: Like with anything else, our tastes change from year to year and what we put out varies. Sometimes a genre that we did like will become a little uninspiring. Something like Garage Rock is something that Amanda and I have never been particularly into, but I would never rule it out if some band came along and seemed like they were doing it in some strange, unusual way.
Amanda: When we got sent a Ducktails album to put out in 2008, we had our minds blown, but after two years of Ducktails rip-off albums? You gotta be blowing my mind way harder than he was in 2008 if you want us to put out the music.
More pop perfection from Sam Mehran's Outer Limits Recordings, incarnated here in this totally goofball new video starring himself, Zak Mering from Raw Thrills and some other well-dressed pals. Look out for the cameo from James Ferraro, too; this rulez!!!! Looks like this is the new material we've been jonesing for after the Not Not Fun released cassette from a few months back; cool to see these VHS visionaries schleping more pop structures (than Mehran's other projects like Matrix Metals, Explorers, Yoga and Wingdings) onto the hypnogogics.
MP3: Outer Limits Recordings: "$20 Dollar Bill"
[Buy Outer Limits Recordings releases from Not Not Fun & Olde English Spelling Bee
Jammed up with smog from the L.A. skyline and gross odours from the pavement comes Sam Meringue's (aka Matrix Metals) new Foxy Baby LP under the name Outer Limits Recordings (also his label), and it's cluttered with a transient, all alien, FM/boombox glam. Couldn't stop pumping "Driving At Night" and its muffled end-of-the-night transcendence when we posted it earlier this year. "For blazers only" for sure, or just perpetual night cruisers; full of fuzzy memories of swimming in a Floridian rooftop pool as a 7-yr-old but this one's actually about babes and Berlin clubs with all manner of ranging gunky frequencies.
MP3: Outer Limits Recordings: "(Secret Track)"
Buy Foxy Baby from Not Not Fun
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