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Windy Weber
I HATE PEOPLE
Available now – you can pick it up through the stormy site with paypal! Ask about shipping costs if you need more than 1 copy or you need an lp and a cd…….here is more info and a batch of reviews!!
Windy Weber
I Hate People
“At one time or another, in everyone’s life, each one of us wants an island…..a place to be away from the rest of the world, a place where no one can hurt or betray us. This record is about that island.”
Windy Weber, known for being half of the ambient drone duo Windy & Carl, has recorded a solo album. It is quite different from what you may be thinking – it has none of the soothing characteristics you may be expecting, and instead is full of heavy and brooding music. It’s comprised of two tracks – Sirens, coming in at 24 minutes, is instrumental, and is filled with the sound of guitars crying, rising and falling like waves crashing on the rocks. Sirens is ominous, and haunting. It is not music to sleep to, but instead could make you tense and anxious.
The second track is Destroyed. It is 32 minutes long, and comprised of 3 suites. The first being layers of vocals, woven together to make a chorus of breathing and breathlessness, layers to make you feel as if you may be drowning in the sea…..whether that sea be the ocean, or the sea of life, the day to day world in which you must deal. The second suite becomes noisy, agitated, rumbling and distorted guitars, bass and feedback, and makes you sit on the edge of your seat wondering what is about to happen. The third suite takes you to the end of the album with it’s subsonic frequencies and strange unrecognizible sounds.
This is not music for the faint of heart. Windy’s dear friend Jody found herself having to pull over while trying to listen to this in the car because it made her too tense. Others have described it using words such as Chaos and Dissonance. Born out of frustration and anger, I Hate People is the story of how in one’s life, your car, your dog, a dead bird on the ground, are not going to be as upsetting or devastating to you as another human will be – only people can make you feel so bad. Only people can hurt you, betray you, and make you feel like you want to die. I Hate People is the expression born of real life, and real pain, and is an expression of emotion that is universally shared. At one point or another, we all want an island. But most of us will never get there…….
I Hate People will be issued on cd by Blueflea and on lp by Kenedik. The lp will be on limited (1000 copies) beautifully colored splatter vinyl (500 on clear with blue and green and purple splatter, and 500 on clear with blood red splatter), featuring a completely different mix then the cd and with a shorter length on each song so as to provide the best sound quality. Cover art features a wonderful selection of photos by Christy Romanick, Windy’s dear friend and one of her favorite artists, and Windy’s passport photo from 1987 – showing a very angry, young, punk rock beginning to this musician’s career.
Mixed and mastered with Warren Defever (His Name Is Alive)
Windy Weber
I Hate People
Blueflea 014 compact disc
Kenedik KLP1005 limited edition vinyl – 250 of each color combination available for distribution – a combined total of only 500 copies for distribution
Release date April 15th, 2008
http://zk.stanford.edu/index.php?session=&action=viewRecentReview&tag=868653
Weber, Windy / I Hate People
Album: I Hate People Collection: General
Artist: Weber, Windy Added: 04/2008
Label: Blueflea
Album Review
Your Imaginary Friend
Reviewed 2008-04-24
The “Windy” of Windy and Carl. Beautiful lush droney noise, hypnotic and tasteful. Harsh in a certain balanced sense but lovely lush in another. With comforting low end drone to base it all on. This is some fine stuff, really fantastic. Two long tracks. I cant believe how beautiful this is. Though the tracks are long, just play them. Just do it. Flip a coin as to which to play. Mixed by Warren Defever from His Name Is Alive if name dropping makes any difference to you.
1) a masterpiece of drone
2) this one has audible breaths which after a time turns into swallowed subliminal speaking/words, so that always is disconcerting in drone, but if anything it makes it more interesting. Last minutes remind me of the locked groove at the end of Sonic Youth's Evol. Can this material get any more beautiful?
TERRASCOPE ONLINE
WINDY WEBER - I HATE PEOPLE (Blue Flea) Twenty-five years ago, the
Anti-Nowhere League burst (some might say vomited) on the UK post-punk scene
with their seminal 'We Are The League,' which included a blistering
interpretation of Ralph McTell's 'Streets of London' that's still one of my
favourite punk covers ever, as well as the hilariously vitriolic, 'I
Hate.People.' A quarter of a century later, Windy Weber, one half of the
ambient space duo Windy & Carl and one of the lovingest and caringest people
it's ever been my pleasure to meet steps out from behind her bass with her
debut solo album with that familiar title. She's chosen to adorn the cover
of the album with her 1987 passport photo, a moment in time frozen from her
punkette pixie days where she resembled a cross between The Cure's Robert
Smith and 'Eraserhead''s John Nance to illustrate that the music within is
not the sunshine, lollipops and rainbows you might expect. Windy recorded
the album completely solo with her muse, Carl Hultgren engineering the
tracks and His Name Is Alive's Warren Defevre mastering. The two sidelong
tracks clock in at 24 and 32 minutes, although both have been shortened for
the LP version to retain the sound quality. (The LP also includes a
completely different mix, so you basically need both!)
'Sirens' vibrates into the room, not unlike the industrialized
soundscapes on the soundtrack of David Lynch's aforementioned
post-apocalyptic nightmare, 'Eraserhead.' The nails-on-blackboard wailing
sirens that Windy creates on her guitar create metallic tears of pain and
shame, and the listener is left to compile their own (s)hit list of people
they hate who.rape the landscapes, pillage the rain forests, murder the
fauna, destroy the flora, strip-mine the countryside into oblivion, pollute
our oceans, streams and rivers, tear down historical buildings or cozy
little seaside cottages to put up McMansion eyesores. people who "paved
paradise and put up a parking lot" and "love the smell of napalm in the
morning." 'Sirens' is a screeching clarion call to sleepyheads to wake up
and stop the destruction of nature and maybe put a little love in their
hearts. Like the sirens that warned of the alien takeover in 'Invasion of
The Body Snatchers," Weber is imploring us to step back and realise what we
are doing to each other and the world we live in and make some serious
adjustments. Midway through this howling banshee of a tune, Weber discovers
her whammy bar and creates an eerie, theremin-like sci-fi skin-crawling
effect, and a fillings-rattling, ear-piercing shrill, achieved through an
extended sustain on her guitar creates the perfect siren-like wail from
which the track derives its title. It's like an extended Hendrix solo on
Quaaludes: time stops, heartbeats are suspended and you'll feel like someone
just jabbed a knitting needle into your eardrum. If that doesn't raise your
dander enough to get up and do something, it's time to call the undertaker.
The half-hour second track, 'Destroyed' is a three-part suite which
begins with multilayered "voices" gasping for air in a sea of madness. An
omnipresent electronic drone creates an ominous backing track, leaving the
listener with the sense of suspended animation. The classic sci-fi film,
'Alien' used the tag line, "In space, no one can hear you scream," and the
first part of this track sounds like Windy tried to capture the sound of
that dislocated plea for help falling upon deaf ears. The lengthy coda finds
Windy repeating the title, which is eventually swallowed by the middle
section, a cacophonous mushroom cloud explosion, which could symbolize man's
total chaotic destruction of himself and his surroundings. A supernova
implosion of feedback suggests our time on Earth may be drawing to a close.
With nation fighting and murdering nation and death tolls rising on a daily
basis, the end may truly be nigh. The track and album ends on a pessimistic
note of deprivation and, ultimately, death.
This album is for misanthropes who are "mad as hell and not gonna take
it anymore." French playwright Jean-Paul Sartre's most famous line appears
in his 1944 existential masterpiece, 'No Exit': "L'enfer, cest les
autres"["Hell is other people"] and Miss Weber has just created its
soundtrack. (Jeff Penczak)
Terrascope Online # 40
www.terrascope.co.uk
DREAM MAGAZINE
Windy Weber I Hate People (Blueflea) This first solo outing by Windy Weber of Windy & Carl features two long tracks of Windy’s guitar crying and emanating ominous tones into the ether. Far darker than her work as half of the duo, this album begins with the starkly eerie nearly 25 minute instrumental Sirens. The second track aptly entitled Destroyed is over 32 minutes of breathing layered vocals and droning that gradually increases in it’s unsettled scary atmospheric accumulation of details until the listener is overwhelmed and nearly drowned in haunted sounds.
George Parsons
Dream Magazine #9
www.dreamgeo.com
Mindaugas Mingela – personal friend, comic book lover extrodinaire…
Windy Weber is a personal friend of mine. She is co-owner of a record store I frequent. In the process of shopping, as well as, other social entanglements I have heard much about her solo record. This would include the muse, the concept, the technical difficulties, and the nightmare of finding someone who wouldn’t be… difficult about releasing it.
When I couple that with her personality, which is generous, warm, and often (for lack of a better term), bubbly, I was expecting something like Windy & Carl without the Carl. Mind you, she said the record was "dark." Although I have seen her irritable, in a rage, and depressed, and fully believe she is capable of a full range of emotion; dark is not one that I would have considered. So, in my head, I’m thinking "Okay, if you say so."
If you’ve listened to W&C before you’ve probably come to expect ambiance that is wispy, uplifting, and brings to mind the dream sequence of your favorite film. There are also the records that drone and hum. However, even those bring forth feelings of warmth and comfort. So, in my head, I’m thinking "Low droning tones with Windy’s out of body and ethereal vocals mixed in there with some wind chimes or something."
Because I’m fairly certain she’ll see this I should probably throw out a qualifying statement: I’m a moron.
On the surface Sirens recalls dank cave music, or maybe the soundtrack to the neighborhood haunted mansion. It isn’t until conscious analysis of the music takes a momentary break that the pitch and tone produced in this track begin to influence the mind in such a way as to feel… dirty. Dirty in the sense that your skin begins to itch and become uncomfortable. Imagine having OCD and needing to wash, not only your hands, but also your entire body repeatedly. At about the thirteen minute mark the "wugga-wugga" oscillation kicks in with oddly timed high-pitched "pings" that instill a fear of large machinery falling. Or at least certain doom. Thankfully by tracks close some sense of normalcy begins to return as the music slides into silence. Then your turn the record over (or advance to track two, as the case may be).
Destroyed doesn’t let up much in comparison to its counterpart. There is some sort of breathing that can be heard. And when it doesn’t sound like the breathing is blowing the clouds of some colossal storm of death it definitely sounds labored. At best, it is uncomfortable. Continue listening and that breathing turns into a voice that, at some point, repeats "destroyed" over and over again like a mantra of the damned. If it’s Weber’s voice, it certainly doesn’t sound like the Windy I know. It sounds out of body, haunted, and not of this earth. Eventually it seems like everything starts to fall apart as the mantra is punctuated by clamoring sounds from an abyss before the track bottoms out and safety is, possibly, close by.
Well crafted in its minimalism, this record hits the spot at those times I hate people and feel inhuman. Typically I reserve Godflesh and early Swans for such occasions when my disgust with the world and myself require a soundtrack. I believe I will file Windy Weber I Hate People nearby, in the event that such catharsis is necessary. Well done.
"We love music. But even so, it's not like we love everything. Here at the store, we've all got different tastes and enjoy different things to varying degrees. Regular readers will notice there are few unanimous picks, but pretty much everyone here loves Windy & Carl!
This release veers into much different territory than might be expected, but will still please plenty of W&C's more adventurous fans. Before hearing the record, we kept hearing how harsh it supposedly was, and how it sounds nothing like what we'd be used to. Well, after checking it out, that's true, and it's not. Many of the same sonic qualities are present: warm drones, whispy guitars, etc. Melodically is really where this diverges from the norm. Whereas W&C typically go for major-key, pretty drones, this work has a truly sinister quality to it. To really engage with the music, you need to at least become acquainted with the general concept.
On the surface, I Hate People sounds very unlike what we'd expect from the kindhearted dog-lover, musician, and record store owner we've come to know and love. So let's talk more about this specific release. Well, the cover sports her 1987 passport photo, which shows a very Siouxsie and the Banshees-esque, punk-meets-goth Windy. On the inside there is a short musing on Sirens, which can be summed up by one lparticular line: "at one point or another, we've all wanted an island." I Hate People is a record that openly paints human relationships as being a Self versus Other paradigm, and then juxtaposes that with the relationship between sailors and sirens. Windy hates people because people are the only thing that can truly hurt us. Okay, you get it. We don't want to get all pedantic. So what does it sound like? Sonically, the release definitely reflects a musical exploration of those ideas. At times more or less frustrated, but throughout it evokes a certain feeling of anxiousness and alienation, but never apathy. This record maybe be best suited for Windy & Carl fans who can stomach the idea of truly disturbing drones, or possibly even fans of leftfield, ambient black metal. Yeah. So if none of that scares you, dare to delve in! This is a great release, and we hope to see more solo work from both Windy AND Carl! Recommended!"
cameron from aquarius records
Okay, on to other news –
There will be a new windy and carl record out in the fall on kranky. It is called
SONGS FOR THE BROKEN HEARTED
It is 10 new songs about love and all the things that could entail. A very emotional record, it is also extremely pretty and has the most pronounced vocals I’ve ever sang. Since these are songs I felt truly inspired to sing, I really sang them. No buried words here – you can understand them all. 2 super long instrumentals, 2 shorter instrumentals, 1 interlude, 5 songs with words…….if you liked depths you will really like this record, and if you liked drawing of sound you will like this too. It will be on cd and double lp – kranky 125…….
You can hear sound samples on the windy weber myspace page….
www.myspace.com/windyweber
The Bohemian National Home has a jazz festival coming up!!!!
COMING MAY 30 & 31: The Third Annual Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music
Sponsored by: Robert Loomis and Assoc., Pat Frisco, Niraj Ganatra, Stormy Records, Barberella, Avalon International Breads, Modati.com, International Minute Press (now@ 450 W. Fort), Car City Records, Slows Bar BQ, Cass Cafe
A couple additions to the lineups:
Friday, May 30th doors at 5 pm
Matthew Shipp Trio with Joe Morris/Whit Dickey
The Raw Truth
Faruq Z Bey and the Northwoods Improvisers
Tatsuya Nakatani
Joe Morris/Ben Hall/Hans Buetow
Michael Carey/Piotr Michalowski
Saturday, May 31st workshop at 2pm; music at 3 pm
Fred Anderson/Skeeter Shelton/Hakim Jami/Ali Allen Colding
Sabir Mateen Ensemble (Michael Wimberly/Warren Smith / Jane Wang / Shiau-Shu Yu /
Raymond A. King)
Andrew Lamb Trio (Tom Abbs, Warren Smith)
Ellery Eskelin/Sylvie Courvoisier
Saris (Sara Schoenbecck, Harris Eisenstadt)
EDGE (Jason Hwang, Taylor Ho Bynum, Ken Filiano, Andrew Drury)
Jack Wright
The Vizitors
Hasan Abdur Razzaq/Ryan Jewell
members of New Music Detroit
CD mart by Stormy Records!
Food by Avalon International Breads and Slows Bar BQ!
General Admission: $25 Friday/$28 Saturday
Advanced 2 day pass: $45
Advanced reserved seating: $30 a day
The best deal in New Music Festivals!
You can mail a check made out to Joel Peterson to:
Joel Peterson
3009 Tillman St.
Detroit, MI
48216
Or you can pay using paypal at this account:
newdetroitsounds@hotmail.com
If you use the paypal option, please include an extra $1.50 to your order.
