“Recaptured” is a series of old content – music, recordings, writings, photos I’ve been coming across in random shoeboxes and plastic crates. (Hopefully) by digitizing/writing this stuff up I will keep it from being lost forever.
In the summer of 2002, I was delivering pizzas…I think. Either that or I was just home from college, idle, waiting to start my sophomore year of college. Doesn’t matter. My friend Colin, who I have been friends with every day of my life, save for one (He was born one day after me, I think in the same hospital) is creative. I consider myself creative, but Colin is purely so. The creative part of his brain is larger than the rest. He’s about 90 percent creative ideas, and 10 percent other stuff. He’s amazing in the way that aggressively creative people are: odd, uncomfortably hilarious, and intimidatingly brilliant. We spent the better part of 6th grade making comedy recordings and selling the tapes in our respective classes. We made 50 bucks…which is about a billion dollars in kid money.
Anyway, in 2002 Colin had just started synthesizing his musical influences (shoeboxes full of old tapes, Boards of Canada, Autechre, old metal) into a project he named either L5d (see the play on letters there?) or Advanced Ants Dance, depending on the day you asked him. He’d pack himself into his parents garage/basement on Portland Avenue in Bloomington, Minnesota for hours with his sampler, an old busted floppy-disk sampling keyboard, his bass, and a collection of unspooled VHS tapes and cassettes with strange markings all over them, cutting…pasting…creating. The results sounded like Madlib filtered through Boards of Canada’s screened-in-porch.
One night in August…for some reason (a birthday?) he had some friends over to his parents house to “play” a little L5d “show” for everyone. It was me – in the early stages of my Palahniuk-reading academic paranoia, his friend Ariya – co-conspirator in their tapedeck-rap project Fumanji, Mark – another insanely brilliant madperson who at the time was studying Remote Viewing, and David – a small, absurdly nice kid they (and me, only once) used to call “Squeaky” in middle school, on account of his abnormally high pitched voice.
At the time I was gently fucking around with my own music, and I was attracted to “found sound”, so I brought my trusty Pressman tape recorder over to record the show. It was loose, but there were some snatches of real brilliance, all drenched in that unbelievably appealing tape-hiss sound that can only come from analog equipment and roughly chopped samples.
I came across that tape recently, and digitzed it to put up here. Because it needs to be heard. In the background if you hear a small laugh, that’s David. Who by that point had transcended the high school bullshit, and had a great crew of friends who loved him. He was doing well, working at Batteries Plus at the time (he was still wearing his work uniform that night I believe). About a year later, he was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I mention this not to add cheap gravitas, but to give him the credit he deserved as a good person. He’s here on this tape, and was really important to the moment. Rest in Peace man.
So check these out, they are definitely worth a damn…If you click “share” you can download the mp3
L5d – 8-20-02 – 1
L5d – 8-20-02 – 2
L5d – 8-20-02 – 3
L5d now goes as Omnii. Check out Omnii’s music here and look out for his completed album soon.
Also, this is Mark’s Myspace. I’ve written about his comics/writings/photography here before, check him out. His stuff is like Adult Swim’s editing floor…the shit that was too crazy for the craziest minutes on a late Sunday night.