your music seems a bit whacky. haha! are you a whacky guy in real life?? -A. Fan
No, I actually fit the brooding/tortured artist/self-hating Jew archetype quite nicely.
2011 + 2012
Hello friends,
How fitting that this incredible year is coming to an end in 11 hours! Before 2011 officially wraps, I’d like to shout out some very dear folks who helped make everything possible:
The DeHavens, for letting us rehearse in their beautiful home in Madison; The Chins, for keeping our gear nice and dry in Chicago while we were away; Suzanne Olbricht, for catching our shows on two separate continents and for the incredible meal in Austin; Vivian Isaak, for the empanadas; Brian and Kay Hacklander, for sitting in with us in Mpls and laughing at my stage banter, respectively…
Alex Durlak; Vineet Shende, for single-handedly saving our tour; Joe Wallace, for the great time in Tucson; Eric Laurin, for all the usual stuff; Neil Wadhawan, for the next-level Bay hospitality; Dan Sutherland, for— hold on a sec— SHUT UP!; The Days, for a delish Emerald City Easter dinner; Bryce Roe, for returning our rental car; Swiss Air, for allowing us to board an international flight 30 min before takeoff with overweight suitcases…
Christian “Kirmes” Kühr, for “Ah…cool!”; Johannes Zink, for being our muttie-away-from-our-mutties; Christian Döpping, for being the greatest human being who ever lived; Grinnnnnnnnnnni, for all the Jew jokes; Corey Duncan, for loaning me his purse; Budget CZ, for the humiliation we swallowed every time someone asked us about the huge logo emblazoned on the side of our rental van.
<3 to all the new and old friends who generously opened their homes to us, especially Katja Karlsen, Anais Blondet, Jimmy Jam, Christo Squier, Seamus Cater, and Emilie Lesbros. Extra mega super-duper special shout-out to Oli Garcia, who housed us countless times this year in Basel, loaned us his double bass, and let us use his excellent band’s rehearsal spot.
<3 to all the amazing bands we played with, especially Paper Mice, Lightning Bolt, HUME, Daniel Francis Doyle, Why I Must Be Careful, Deerhoof, Dead Western, SchnAAk, and Charles Hayward. Mad props to all the string players who sat in with us!
Besitos y abrazos y saludos para los tios cachas Edi y Pau de ZA!
The 2012 agenda is action-packed:
- 2 (!) new Capillary Action albums, already under-way.
- World Warrior and American Spirit Split 7” Series, wherein we share slabs of limited-run vinyl with our favorite local and imported bands. Stay tuned!
- Collaboration with ZA!
- C A P A C T, our new contemporary music ensemble branch.
- Tons of chamber music, including pieces for brass trio, string quartet, and wind quintet, harp, elec. guitar and two percussionists.
- Solo guitar/voice record.
- Three new collaborative projects, details forthcoming.
- Cappuccino Free Mixtape Series, which will feature my production work.
- Left Breast, Johnny’s new solo endeavor.
- Colin’s as-yet-untitled piano/cello/drums trio. Spring 2012 European Tour in the works!
We’ll be mostly laying low on the touring front but expect us to pop our puppy paws out of our puppy houses at some point in the year.
In the meantime, keep yourselves abreast of Cap-related happenings on Twitter and Facebook.
Deepest condolences,
Jon and the boys
My Favorite Music of 2011
///ALBUMS///
#1 - Shabazz Palaces – Black Up (Sub Pop)
Seething, contorted hip-hop from Seattle of all places. Black Up was this year’s dark horse for me, inching unexpectedly into the top spot at the 11th hour. 2011 was a strong year for hip-hop but nothing came close to this record’s depth or scope. In the tradition of Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein, this is the kind of hip-hop record that you’ll never be able to get to the bottom of. Plus it’s Butterfly from Digable Planets!
#2 - tUnE-yArDs – W H O K I L L (4AD)
Ah, the soundtrack to much of our touring this year. I’ll never be able to hear European ambulance sirens the same way again! Merrill’s a kindred spirit and in a lot of ways I see W H O K I L L as Capsized with two X chromosomes; we’re each addressing similar themes— namely, those related to the multifaceted “urban experience”— but in slightly different ways. It only makes sense that we share members (Matt Nelson, who plays tenor sax on So Embarrassing, is in the band now). Sidenote: I took my mom to see tUnE-yArDs play the old Spaghetti Warehouse in Philly on her birthday and she loved it.
#3 - Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson – Horpma (Carrier)
Truly unique and confounding music from an exciting young Icelandic composer. Horpma was written for real and imaginary instruments tuned to just intonation and is performed using real-time computer scores. Before this record, I had never heard music that resembled the abject pleasure of examining a bad case of Acne Vulgaris. RIYL: insects, mutating viruses, anxiety, grids.
#4 - ZA! – Megaflow (Acuarela/Discorporate)
This year alone, I saw ZA! perform at a tiny Fishtown art gallery, a chic restaurant in Manresa, a poorly organized festival in Lleida at 5am, and a mud-soaked tent in Northern Germany. The conclusion I came to after each of these very different concerts is that the pure, positive energy ZA’s music generates completely overtakes any space it inhabits and overwhelms any audience that enters its path. The sound Edi and Pau churn out is tempered by Meredith Monk-esque vocal experiments, Lowrider percussion, splintered guitar loops, and ecstatic bursts of noise. But if you make the time, you’ll experience something much grander than the sum of its parts on ZA’s sophomore effort, a sprawling 60-min opus about friendship, altered states, Spain, and the cosmos.
“Feeding Frenzy”
Filmed for Dirty Laundry outside Silver Lake Suds in Los Angeles, California on 4/20/11.
