On the morning of Friday, April 20th, 47 videotapes of the Brainwaves fest arrived at Brainwashed Central. These, along with five videotapes of offstage captures, are being reviewed and edited right now. There's a lofty goal of producing 10 DVDs containing all performances but this will take some time. In the meanwhile, clips have begun to trickle in to the Brainwashed Video Podcast, however, only iTunes users can view the videos.

April 16th marks Brainwashed's 11th birthday!  Thanks to everybody who has read, contributed to, worked for, played for, cared for, supported, hated on, publicized, deified, and demonized us for 11 years now. It's been a fantastic ride. (Don't worry, we're not closing down, this isn't a goodbye letter!)

There are times when it gets hard to do: people have fulltime jobs; fulltime lives; fulltime committments; so while brainwashed.com isn't the #1 priority in a lot of people's lives, we promise to continue on and hold true to our mission to the best of our collective abilities.

Last year the love and support and attendance and performers who came to Brainwaves was astounding. It was for me, Jon Whitney, undoubtedly the most amazing event I have ever been a part of and one of the most incredible experiences of my entire life. Friendships were made, friendships grew stronger, the support was unbelievable, the staff was flawless, the musicians were magnificent, the love was immeasurable.  There will be no Brainwaves for 2007 but talks are beginning for Brainwaves for 2008. Yes, talks are beginning.

I'm not a big nostalgia nut but I do somewhat feel that various artist collections (especially a ton of those cassette-only compilations) of the late 1970s and early 1980s were far more relevant than the bulk of the collections from the mid 1990s through now. From Brussels With Love is the latest LTM re-release to exemplify this.

This week the RIAA sent out hundreds of letters to colleges and universities across the USA saying their students can "settle" with the RIAA or face a lawsuit (Reuters).  Brainwashed, in turn, urges colleges and universities and their students to ignore such absurd scare tactics. 

It's almost as if Trans Am are trying to sneak something by all of us with their latest release. Sex Change doesn't come pre-packaged with some elaborate theme wrapped in an unclear fantasy/reality plot, and that's actually a good thing. For probably the first time since Surrender to the Night, Trans Am are simply a rock band of three guys who like to have fun making fun music.

Happy 2007 to everybody. 2006 was a banner year for Brainwashed and we hope to continue the tradition of providing the small corner of independent music a place. Look forward to new releases this year by hosted Kranky, Important, and Badabing!, all of which have release dates already posted in the new releases section as well as forthcoming records from Stars of the Lid, Aranos (on Soleilmoon!), Diana Rogerson, more Coil reissues, and a collection from Jessica Bailiff. More details will be posted when available. Stay up on the Podcast for the latest sounds from some of these current, forthcoming and classic releases.

Today we launch brainwavesfest.org, a site dedicated to the Brainwaves Festival. At the moment we're gathering diaries, stories, feedback, pictures, and will soon post videos to the site. So please feel free to contact us to share your experiences and images. Additionally, we intend to use this site if and when another Brainwaves is going to take place. We make no promises but after some discussion, the production team is pretty amped to do this all over again in the future.

The three brand new songs on this 12" only release continue in their movement away from more free-form noise bursts and pursue the beat-laden retro industrial/dub hybrid sound  often explored by the Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire sounds of the late '70s.

The first Four Tet compilation succeds as a decent demonstrational project, highlighting better Kieran Hebden's versatility with others' music than others' versatility with his own creations. While it is a good listen and a fantastic deal for two discs worth of material, I can't make a compelling enough argument for its absolute necessity.

Release: Oct 10 2009
ISIS AND AEROGRAMME In The Fishtank
http://www.konkurrent.nl

Upon first listen, this Fishtank session between Isis and Aereogramme
attracts attention solely for its sound. While both bands are known for
their love of metal and post-hardcore as well as experimental and
atmospheric approaches, here they not only show those skills, but also
reach an impressively high level of purity, roominess and emotion.
Putting two bands together with such different home-bases (Los Angeles
and Glasgow, respectively) in a small town near Amsterdam was a
challenge Konkurrent couldn't resist. In December 2004, the idea
grew concrete that these two bands would record in the Fishtank,
and all directions pointed to July 2005 for action. Isis had just
finished their European tour, so Aereogramme hit the road and the bands
played a warm-up show at the Amsterdam Paradiso the night before
entering the studio. When Konkurrent invited Isis and Aereogramme
to do a Fishtank session, we expected a loud and heavy session not yet
heard in the series. Expectations can be misleading.

Was it the extremely hot weather? The overwhelming 70s atmosphere in the
studio? The shitty hotel the night before? We may never know those
answers, but we know this: it's the analog warmth that makes the songs
tender, organic, and fragile. It's the unexpected that makes this a very
successful edition to us.

Tracklisting:
1. Low Tide
2. Delial
3. Stolen

While the most important relatively underground compilations of the 1980s have either gone lost or have been chopped up and divided on anthologies, LTM has actually taken a bold step in preservation, nearly restoring the complete original release and including material recorded at the same time but previously unreleased.

Reading about the recent RAND study suggesting that so-called "sexy music" triggers sexual activity in teenagers, it struck me what a load of fucking horseshit these suspiciously unscientific studies really are. We've all heard this kind of thing before; it's the sort of overfunded, specious bullshit study that makes the rounds once every few years when some parental group gets its collective dander up about hip-hop or pop music.

Sorry for the intermittent downtime on Brainwashed Radio these last few days. Record heat and power demand has caused a number of power outages at Brainwashed HQ so we'll do our best to keep the music going.  Thanks for your patience and support as always!

After all these years I haven't changed my mind about the first two Manitoba albums, now reissued under the new (but not improved) name Caribou and featuring a bonus disc each. Start Breaking My Heart is a decent record but it sounds even more uninspiring and dated now while Up In Flames is a spectacular modern classic.