Square Zeros

Few musicians tell a story like Jamie Frey. His attitude and honesty make him a true pleasure to listen to, and as a native Brooklynite he offers a rare perspective on the city's music scene. In this episode, we talk with Jamie about how his experiences as a kid in Kensington informed the music he makes now as the frontman of NO ICE and The Brooklyn What. (This episode opens with "Summer Bummer" by NO ICE and closes with "We Are The Only Ones" by The Brooklyn What. Photo: Square Zeros/CC.)

"It was just a shit show man. I think our biggest influences in that band were Rage Against The Machine, Every Time I Die, and, like, Wu-Tang Clan." Stefan Mersch and Carlos Francisco of the New York garage-psych outfit Sun Voyager tell the story of their first attempt to forge a band together.

The Village Voice recently named Brooklyn noise punks Low Fat Getting High the best rock n roll band in the city — and there's hardly a band more worthy of the title. Low Fat delivers an un-fuck-with-able blend of grunge, fuzz, and shrieks that's unlike anything around. Frontman and guitarist Michael Sincavage sat down with us recently and gave us a taste of where it all came from. (This podcast opens with "Don't Believe You Anymore" and closes with "Start All Over Again" from Low Fat Getting High's self titled LP, out now on Money Fire Records.)

In a recent column for Square Zeros' ongoing In Defense Of series, Brooklyn-based writer and poet Alexandra Smyth wrote a thoughtful argument on behalf of Dashboard Confessional, wherein she challenged us to look upon one of emo-pop's poster children with a little more sympathy. Alexandra's piece excited such debate on social media that we decided to bring her on the podcast to elaborate on what she appreciates about Dashboard's music and to reflect on the legacy of the genre most of us call emo. If you were a teenager at any point between 1998 and 2005, you don't want to miss this one. (Pictured: Emo Alexandra Smyth, circa 2002. This podcast opens with two non-emo songs: "Striking Distance" by Faux Ferocious, and "Slug Shake Armageddon" by The Mad Doctors.)

You might know Brian LaRue as the Telecaster wizard in the indie rock outfit The Planes, which you’ll find playing scruffy pop tunes all over the north Brooklyn circuit. Or maybe you recognize him as the crooner at the front of the more aggressive four-piece Shelter Dogs or the bassist in brooding post-punkers Dialogue From A Silent Film. Have you been to a show at Pet Rescue, the cozy, off-the-grid DIY space by Cooper Park? Brian’s the brains behind that. And if you’re really lucky, you might have caught him performing a solo set as Women’s Basketball. He’s also a hell of a good writer, especially when it comes to music. If there’s a way to package all that, it’s this: when Brian leaves his stamp on something, it’s unmistakable.

The frontwoman of riffy indie rockers Slothrust shows some very cool and truly bizarre solo recordings she made with some basic recording software and a Casio keyboard.

Gymshorts are a scuzzy, high-energy surf punk band from Providence, and in the year or so since they formed they've covered a lot of ground. They've cut a killer debut record, maintained a constant presence on the east coast DIY circuit, and recently kicked off a cross-country tour. The four of them found some time in their busy schedule to sit down with Square Zeros and share some of the lo-fi hits they recorded long before they got together. This episode is sweaty, beer-soaked, and packed with awesome songs.

Jonathan Daily is one of those savvy, self-taught musicians who learned guitar, drums, and some basic recording techniques early on. And he's got a more than decade-long catalogue of original material to show for it. Jonathan plays guitar and sings in the dancey post-punk outfit The Black Black. They've got a new full-length album coming out next month on Brooklyn's Money Fire Records, and they've got a slew of local shows lined up. In the premiere episode of Season 3, Jonathan shares a few of his earliest and most primitive experiments in punk songwriting. We also bookend the episode with "What The World Needs Now" and "Until Death Do Us Party," two unreleased tracks from The Black Black's forthcoming record.

It seems totally appropriate that noise punk powerhouse Vulture Shit was conceived in the glow of a flaming piece of architecture. Almost everything about the band is an attack on convention and piety, musical or otherwise — from their dirty, guitar-less production to their biting lyrics to their name itself. And what's great about Vulture Shit is that, radical as they are (they really do believe that destruction of the nuclear family would be a good thing), it all comes with a wry and intelligent sense of humor. This episode features five tracks from the members' earlier days, plus a couple cuts from the new Vulture Shit/Clean Girls split.

If you wanted to describe Bezoar, you could throw out terms like heavy and doomy and psychedelic and stoner and experimental. And you could point out some similarities to Electric Wizard or Dead Meadow or Swans. But that really does a disservice to Bezoar, whose raison d'être is to defy those types of labels and comparisons. In this episode, the trio gives us an exclusive on a new track, plays a cut from their most recent LP, and shares some material from the bands they were part of in the early 2000s.

Joey Farber is one of the younger statesmen of Brooklyn garage rock n roll. He plays guitar and sings in The Jeanies and Greasy Hearts, both of whom are tearing it up on the King Pizza label. He's been a prolific songwriter since day one, and he brings us a sampling of early cuts, featuring some Orbison-esque balladry, dark synth punk, and grimy psych.

Burlesque. Hip-hop. Performance art, dance troupes. Heavy metal, DJs. Fire spinners. Punk rock, indie rock. “Nudity is unity.” To catch a Brooklyn Wildlife production is to surrender to a single concept — freedom — and the platform reflects the artist behind it, Chris Carr. Chris started Brooklyn Wildlife with his longtime musical collaborator Keith Lay in 2011 as a way to promote artistic expression outside of conventional, often commercial channels. His current hip-hop project — he performs under the name Stonehenge Parnhashnakovsky — operates under similar assumptions. As a result, Chris takes care not to label himself as a certain style of rapper. This episode features one of his recent tracks, "Live From The Bottomless Pit," plus two songs from one of his earliest recording efforts (circa 1999), and a live in-studio freestyle.

Know Your Record Store: Brandon Perry/Deep Cuts by Square Zeros

Noxious Foxes are a force of nature. Guitarist/synthesist Justin Talbott and drummer Richard Levengood play a dense, complex, and inventive breed of loop-oriented math rock that sets them apart from the garage acts that permeate the Brooklyn circuit. The duo shares some tracks from their teenage years, way back when emo pop and Incubus were lighting their way. We also get "Absinthe Makes The Heart Grow Fondue" and "Neanderthong," two cuts from Noxious Foxes' superb 2013 LP, EPOCHALYPSO.

With 20 episodes and hours of music on our hands, we think it's time we take things to the next level. With this podcast, we've spent the past few months talking to some superb musicians about their formative (so to speak) recordings, and of course the great music they make today. Right now, we have a de facto archive on our SoundCloud account of the old songs our guests have brought in. We want to start formalizing it, turning it into a large, organized, searchable archive of people's independent and unreleased music.

Seth Applebaum and Greg Hanson are two of Brooklyn's unsung rock n roll heroes. Seth shreds guitar and howls in the scuzzy garage outfits The Mad Doctors and The Fucktons. Greg is the sweating, shirtless power drummer in each. They live together in Bed-Stuy, where Greg runs the fuzz-tinged King Pizza record label and Seth operates the tape-only Ghostload Sound. We talk about their awesome contributions to the Brooklyn music scene and listen to three tracks from Seth's high school projects, which range from MC5-esque proto-punk to afrobeat.

Jim Wood is a drummer whose current projects range pretty widely from psych rock (Clouder) to garage-pop (Crazy Pills) to hip-hop (Dr. Breakfast) — and he's one of the more gregarious guys in the Brooklyn music scene — so perhaps we were naive not to assume that he would be totally game for anything. And sure enough, seemingly minutes after we first unveiled this site, Jim sent us a link to his high school band Deep Fiend. We get Square Zeros bread and butter in this one.

Winston Scarlett is the founder of Slackgaze, a zine, blog, archive, and booking agent based in Brooklyn whose goal, loosely speaking, is to promote and preserve the best aspects of the 90s revival wave. "Pre-Millennials with 90s panache," the Slackgaze tag goes. He books shows, curates art and video projects, and generally serves as an organizer for musicians and artists who share his aesthetics and DIY sensibility. He's also the bassist for Chimes and Surfing. We talk with him about Slackgaze and hear a couple songs from his college noise rock project, Bambeef.

Mayor Creep is composed of four guys who came to it from far-flung, pop-oriented projects. Jeremy was (and is) in the beachier Air Waves; Alex Heigl made polished garage pop with Brother Reverend; Nick played with the hooky, lo-fi indie pop act Dinosaur Feathers; and Alex Gruenburg fronted the moodier power trio We Run. Anyone who's seen them live, or picked up their dynamite split cassette Krangnitas (with headbangers Hounds Basket) is sure to have questions. To understand how they came by their current brand of lightning-fast, super-tight, and often hilarious hardcore rants, you've got to dig deeper.

Polly Watson, keyboard player for the power pop foursome 1-800-BAND, kicks off Square Zeros Season 2 with some hits from her punk-tinged early project, Crimson Sweet, and a far out song from Flaming Fire, an experimental folk collective she toured with.

Jimmy Doyle is the frontman for Long Island ska punks The Fad and Jimmy Doyle And The Engineers. The Fad has achieved veteran status on their home turf, and they're headlining an all day ska-punk fest this weekend in Amityville, N.Y., called Thing In The Spring. Jimmy came into Brooklyn recently and shared some of The Fad's earliest cuts.

Jordyn Blakely is a super-tight drummer who plays in Brooklyn's Butter The Children and Tom Blacklung & The Smokestacks. She talks with Square Zeros about her high school band, Free Addiction, and their pop punk odes to masturbation, as well as a smooth jazz project she worked on around the same time. (Songs: "Victim Of Choking" and "Maggy's Song" by Free Addiction, "Big Town Boogie" by Allan and Friends, and "Spit It Out" by Butter The Children.")

Square Zeros #13: Louis Ramos with Nova Luz (The Amputees, Mrs. Whitehead) by Square Zeros

Square Zeros #12: Marisa Cerio (Big Quiet, Murray) by Square Zeros

Square Zeros #11: Chris Tracy (Clean Girls, Shire) by Square Zeros

It was high time: In this episode, Square Zeros hosts Derek Hawkins and Jon Mann — with the help of first interviewee Stephen Selman — dig into each other in an attempt to find out what's beneath their impulse to find out what's beneath other people's music.

For most of us, bedroom rock stays locked away in the bedroom. Fortunately, that isn't the case for Amanda B. She shares a couple 10-plus-year-old shoegazey tracks that crisscrossed the Pacific Ocean and eventually got put to tape here in New York. (Songs: "Look Alive" by Crazy Pills, "The Stars Above" and "Bebe" performed by Adolescence, and "Break It Down" by Crazy Pills. Photo: Amanda B.)

Marta DeLeon, the dreamy frontwoman and bassist for The Meaning Of Life, has musical roots that stretch coast to coast. Long before she landed here in Brooklyn, she played cello and, occasionally, melodica in The Getter Flash, a Seattle-based outfit that carved out a spot in the Pacific Northwest indie scene in the early 2000s. In this episode, we get treated with a couple tracks from that project, plus some new stuff from The Meaning Of Life. (Songs: "She Never Screams" by The Meaning Of Life, "Weltschmerz" and "The Days Of Living Velvet" by The Getter Flash," and "Laura V." by The Meaning Of Life.

Combine equal parts folky blue-eyed soul, nu metal, Phish-obsessed jam rock and second-wave ska. Shake vigorously. Wait a decade or so. If you're lucky, in some universe, you'll pour out Typefighter. (Songs: "Back To The Basics" by Politicks, "When It Rains It Pours" by Noise Pollution, "Goodnight Stars, Goodnight Moon" by Kokopelli, "The Oldie" by Sidewinders Ska Club, "Much" by Typefighter. Photo: Ryan McLaughlin, Will Waikart, Thomas Orgren and John Scoops of Typefighter.)

Brooklyn-based guitar wizard and recording engineer Mario Viele plays in Spirit Of Danger and Chandeli'ers — two fairly different but equally shreddy rock n roll bands. He shares a pair of cover songs from his high school metal band, Chuck Of Death, as well as an unnamed, unreleased and relatively unheard cut from a project he worked on later with a late friend. (Songs: "Spirit Of Danger" by Spirit Of Danger, "Slaughter Of The Soul" and "Fault Of The Flesh" performed by Chuck Of Death, "Untitled Track," and "Broke And Alone" by Spirit Of Danger. Photo: Mario Viele, Don Pedro)

Aileen Brophy plays bass and sings in The Space Merchants, a psychedelic four-piece from Brooklyn. She did her first recordings in a dorm basement during her freshman year of college at Harvard. Some of the Minor Threat-inspired tracks from those sweaty, angst-laden sessions get showcased in this episode. (Songs: "1000 Years Of Boredom" by The Space Merchants, "Identity Crisis," Rebel And React" and "Comeuppance" by The Violent Against Themselves And Others, and "Defeat Song" by The Space Merchants. Photo: The Space Merchants. Aileen Brophy, bottom left.)

Kaleen Reading got her start as a teenager making music at School Of Rock in New Jersey. Now she rips on drums in Mannequin Pussy and The Amputees, both of which are busy recording and touring. She shares three early recordings that give an idea of how she developed her tight, powerful style. (Songs: "The Sea" and "Lorraine's Kitchen" by Dyslexicon, a clip from "Shed Sessions" by Destructotoad, and "Better Better Worse" by Low Fat Getting High. Photo by John Bedics.)

Keenan Houser, AKA Spaghetti Blacc, is an MC and producer from the Bronx who's well on his way to releasing 12 albums in 12 months. His music is gritty, chaotic and spaced-out, drawing from Tommy Wright III and Sun Ra in the same breath. He talks with Square Zeros about some of the first songs he put to tape. (Songs: "Goulash Colossal" from 2014, "The Rap Sphinx (Flawless Victory)" and "Third Rail" from 2011, and "Sold Out Food" from 2014. Photo: Spaghetti Blacc.)

Stephen Perry is one of the Brooklyn music scene's most enthusiastic and generous boosters. He plays guitar and sings in The Planes, plays drums in Big Quiet, and runs a blog called Hearts Bleed Radio where he interviews local musicians and curates great shows. He talks with Square Zeros about his work here and shares some gnarly tracks from his high school grunge-punk outfit Epinephrine. (Photo: Stephen Perry, Brian Gregory LaRue, Jeff Patlingrao and Jon Levine of The Planes. Music: "Gap Ad," "Had To Be" by Epinephrine, "Last Night" by The Planes.)

Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist and producer Stephen Selman talks about talks about his early experiments in songwriting and recording, and gives Square Zeros its first studio performance. Chords — lots of them. (Music: "Road Song" by The Bearded Bravados, "White" and "You Speak Last" by Stephen Selman.)