Witchbeam

Check it out, just finished. Thanks Brian for giving me the opportunity to make something beautiful.

I’ve been on a Nina Simone kick lately, thought I would do a portrait. Unfortunately it is a bit poorly rendered, but alas, here is the Vedic Nina Simone.

As a general rule of thumb I don’t use other people’s photos as source images, but Nina was a bit too difficult to go without an original. Check out the source image here:

New illustration for Justin Farrar’s radio show Kill The Head, on Fridays, 5 to 7 p.m. (eastern), you can check it out at www.ashevillefm.org

Wednesday 11/11 at 7pm (e.s.t.) Pledge Line: 216-687-6900

Our friend Lisa hit us up for some giveaways for this years radiothon at WCSB, specifically her radio show The Mysterious Black Box, and we were were all like heck yeah. Instead of just giving her some stuff we had laying around we decided to once again record some exclusive new tracks for her. She is a very kind & generous person and a true believer in freaky music. Chances are if you have spent any time at any fringe/out there/experimental music happenings in the greater Cleveland area you know her and know what I say to be the truth. So thank you Lisa for giving us the opportunity to create something that I am extremely proud of. This is a killer release and would never have happened without you!

Two black meditations from Telecult Powers, The first, “I was a Teenage Temple Prostitute” explores the more traditional long form jams they are the best known for, the second, “Mother’s Third Eye” marks a new but temporary direction to their ever evolving sound. The spiritual heir to last year’s Mysterious Black Box premium “Live From the Psychic Dancehall” this cosmic grimoire as CDR is limited to 5 copies with hand drawn veve covers by Witchbeam.

Samples:
I Was a Teenage Temple Prostitute

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Mother’s Third Eye

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A few notes about this release.
Both have a soft synth on them, the Synthesizer 2 application for Android for the G Phone. Generally we are appalled at the very idea of soft synths, but we just thought it would be interesting to switch it up just a bit. It actually turned out to be really fun, you can map the x & y coordinates of where the phone is to adjust volume, delay time, and a bunch of other stuff. It is all over the first track, and the second track it is the only instrument used, multitracked with me going through some new effects manned by Mr. Matthews.

I have no clue if we will be using the phone again, but I doubt it. The whole idea of Telecult has always been to jam synths Matthew builds exclusively with occasional variations.

Each copy has a custom veve illustration, channeled by Witchbeam from lucky hoodoo spirits to bring the listener good luck! I’m serious! Totally true. But for legal reasons I must say that this is alleged, and for entertainment purposes only!

The titles are homages to Fate Magazine, one of the greatest publications of all time. Do yourself a favor and check out this collection of Fate Magazine covers.

Gift Tapes Blog » Blog Archive » Witchbeam: The Playboy Interview.

Jason from Brother Raven hit me up a while ago about being interviewed for the Gift Tapes blog, which paralyzed me with fear for a couple of months. Who knew that typing about myself would cause me such anxiety? Well in the end I just laid back and thought of England… and tried to talk about as many of our friends as I could. You should check it out, if just to freak out to the Telecult track “The Joy of Hex.” It was going to go on a “horror electronics” comp that some guys were putting out but I don’t think it has or will ever see the light of day.  If it has, no copies have been sent to my mailbox. Anyways, while you are there, poke around the site a bit, they have some brilliant tapes available from some amazing artists.

Check out the interview HERE.

Just realized I never posted this!

John Fell Ryan as SETH, Witchbeam as Witchbeam… the track is from Dark Barbarians Vol. 1, a compilation on the Temple of Pei label.

You may know John from his band Excepter, one of Brooklyn’s best and brightest acts. Here he strips it down during a magick moment where his gear was droning on itself.

It was a really fun project to work on, John has all sorts of cosmic ideas that just kind of pop out of him in these fragments. Taking those little parts and crafting something out of them with my own spin was a delight.

Check it out on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHcGqa61rMs

Good friend Nate from Abandon Ship Records is doing a show at the Cake Shop on June 2nd, you should go check it out! Matthew & I will be spinning records.. expect lots of exotica, lounge, thrift, incredibly strange music kind of stuff.

I am really looking forward to seeing Zaimph, I have never heard or seen her play solo. Saw Double Leopards at what may have been their last show, a loft in Bushwick, and saw her perform with Matthew Bower a couple of times.

Gene Moore, Jeffrey Shurdut and Brian Osborne are total jammers, played a gig with them last night actually. We just put out a tape by Gene’s son, Danny. It is excellent.

Jeff Donaldson is a very friendly and cool dude and you probably know Prehistoric Blackout as Taylor from Infinity Window.

I did the flier last night, was up pretty late, the bird is referenced from a photograph of a statue from Egypt that my friend Andrew took on his vacation there in April.

I work for a sweet tattoo magazine, occasionally my professional and my real life merge and create something like this…