Out of the Dungeon II

Welcome to Out of the Dungeon, a many part series detailing a decade of NSFTM noise, hip hop, 'n' adventures from top No Sunlite for the Media scholars, historians, fans, 'n' collaborators. Medians share their thoughts on the absolute values of various NSFTM rekkerds, while we provide free audio streaming 'n' hi-quality file purchase of all the albums at our bandcamp page.

Out of the Dungeon II: What Old Style?
The 2 Popular Live Bootlegs as Precursors to NSFTM Today
An Essay by L!Z

Most popular music, from Chuck Berry to Barry White to the Cranberries, encourages a head nod or a foot tap and maybe provokes deeper thought when successful. But every No Sunlite For The Media noise composition skips over the catchiness of pop to beg the questions: How? Why? Who? And, most especially – WHAT?

While No Sunlite For The Media’s band members and identity consistently fluctuated since the band’s creation in the early 2000s, nothing was perhaps more irregular than the band’s makeup in their early live shows. Though veteran member Matthew Horne has guided the band’s musical direction and artistic vision throughout the entirety of No Sunlite’s existence, and Horne’s co-founding members Ev Smith-Francis and Ted Gordon regularly participated in the band’s noise albums, it was not uncommon for No Sunlite to obtain band members who only played on certain albums, appeared at certain shows, or went years until resurfacing in the NSFTM lite. This is particularly evident when retrospectively examining two NSFTM bootlegs, Live at WMUC and Live and Lying in It.

Live at WMUC, which was recorded August 21, 2003, is comprised of 14 tracks, about 70 minutes in duration and bursting with intellectual and improvisational noise [download them here]. The liner notes and album art for Live at WMUC arrest one’s attention immediately. The album features simplistic Thrunjubar art drawn with a #2 pencil, a primitively inaccurate spelling of the band’s name (“No Sunlight Fer Tha Media” instead of the correct “No Sunlite For The Media”), advertising for their defunct first website www.geocities.com/mfxrkrds, and an extraordinarily detailed libretto for each track. The classic Thrunjubar figure is also featured on some of the original NSFTM tees, which were also a product of this era. The tees featured iron-on fashions with designs created in MS Paint. The foreign spelling of the now familiar name finds its source when producer John Wood slipped up and mixed up the name, knowing that spelling errors existed, just not in the right places. At this point in their history, the band had neither the monetary ability nor care to correct the mistake. That is just what happens in the underground.

NSFTM's Thrunjubar Tee was produced in limited quantities.
Here L!Z wears this vintage garment, while holding her copy of Live at WMUC and other gear.

Live at WMUC’s liner notes are presented as some sort of theatrical performance, with a “cast” consisting of Ted, Ev, Math, John, Russ, Mike, Sam, “Various Artists” and “NSFTM Tape” and a “script” that is so exhaustive one would be able to recreate versions of the songs to the same extent that John Cage’s 1952 notation for “Williams Mix” could be reconstructed. The liner notes also list every instrument, toy or item used during the recording – highlights of which are Ev’s Nintendo Mouth Effects, John’s Toga and Sam’s Two Hands Where Needed.

Live at WMUC (sometimes referred to as Live Radio Broadcast Rekkerding or NSFTM Live at the University of Maryland) contains tracks with lengthy song titles evocative of Panic! at the Disco’s song titles. Unfortunately for Panic! at the Disco, No Sunlite released Live at WMUC a year before the Las Vegas band even formed.

While the better part of Live at WMUC is formed out of the formless, the album is not entirely abandoned to live in a world of just noise. Just after the first two minutes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer Did Not Approve of the US’s 6 Week Occupation”, a guitar riff meets muffled drums, cymbals, and eventually Ev yelling “Awww” in order to create catchy rock and roll that foreshadowed much of No Sunlite’s later music. This catchy melody even continues into the following track, “A Scooter Now Being Sold on Amazon.com,” which eventually morphs into something like an ice cream truck in the middle of a space battle before transforming back into chaotic struggle.

The opening lines Ev yells in “Department of Peace Gives You a Quick Killing Cancer” self describe the environment, “musicians everywhere play instruments everywhere; it sounds something like this.” These lyrics also work to disagree with critics who refuse to recognize noise music as legitimate. No Sunlite considered indeterminacy and atonality as important to music as specificity and tonality. Also, on this track NSFTM introduce an avant-garde form of sampling as Ev sings the Super Mario Bros. theme song, simultaneously dipping into the tonal world and shouting out to Nintendo users everywhere.

Much like the title implies, “He’s Rapping/Singing,” foreshadows songs from the later No Sunlite release from 2006, Dungeon Records, which is heavily comprised of hip hop and folk. While this full crossover of genres did not occur for a few more years, it was well on its way on Live at WMUC.

WMUC DJ 'n' one-time NSFTM collaborator Mike pictured here with Ted (arm) offering him money,
at the Record and Tape Exchange, where they both worked. A sellout for NSFTM?

“We’re No Sunlite For The Media and we’re from Annandale,” explained Math Horne as NSFTM began one of its earliest gigs of the band’s history, on February 24, 2004. This noise experience was recorded half a year after Live at WMUC. Live and Lying in It, similarly to Live at WMUC, had a more than sizable band attendance [download this bootleg here]. 13 musicians crowded into the tight Plier family basement in Annandale: Alex Atwell and Jay Richardson represented percussion, Tyler Campbell on the xylophone and can ‘n’ pipe, Ted Gordon on the guitar, Liz Horne on the tuba, Math Horne with the vocals and recorder, Katie Jabro on the trumpet, Leah on the piano (her last name was never in print), Neal Livesay on the bass, Big “Brad” Martha on keyboard, Rob Plier on the drums, Ev Smith-Francis on the recorder and maracas, and Molly Wacek on the French horn. By this time in NSFTM’s career, Math, Ev, and Ted were no novices to the world of noise music. But, other band members for the show were much less experienced in the field, such as Wacek, and Liz Horne, whose previous experience had mostly consisted of playing classical music for the Frost Middle School Symphonic band, or Plier, who was also lined up to play for another, more traditional punk band that night.

The feedback-filled live recording was originally distributed via cassette tape, and is arguably some of the lowest fidelity music NSFTM has ever released (No Sunlite’s 2009 cassette release, Noise Dogs, comes close, but misses the mark). This version was then remastered with the efforts of Wood once again; this time he spelled the band’s name correctly. The Original and Official Version both appear on the CD release of Live and Lying in It. The Edited Official Version cuts off over a minute of music from the Original Bootleg Mix, 30 seconds of which is blank sound anyway. Both tracks hover around 20 minutes in duration. The liner essay calls the Edited Version the “perfected form,” stating, “[w]hile the Original Bootleg Version allows the listener to hear the ensemble as if from a step back, looking on bewildered, the Edited Official Mix actually thrusts one headlong into the minds of the players and paints a more accurate picture of how the music sounded to each individual member.” However, this viewpoint was met with contention among fans, many of whom contend that the original recording is the more sincere and authentic recording of what happened at the show that night.

Promotional button for NSFTM's Live and Lying in It, issued on Malfunxion Rekkerds after the bootlegging.
These are still (scarcely, but still) seen on backpacks in the Metropolitan DC area.

The Edited Official Version sounds more electronic and trippy than the Original Bootleg Mix. The vocals are even more distant in the Edited Version than in the Original, which is surprising considered the vocals are covered with feedback and rather remote in the Original Mix. Also, the distortion in the Official Version make the brass parts sound more mechanized. This contrasts with the Original Bootleg Mix, where the brass musicians merely sound like they are in an alternate reality of perpetual tuning.

In “Saltine Crackers Pts 1 and 2,” the Edited Version provides sounds that one could imagine sneaking out of a thick forest with nightmarish voices arising from the dark. However, the original “Saltine Crackers Pts 1 and 2” sounds more like the noises that result from fast-forwarding a VHS tape with a recorder layered on top rather than overwhelming doom. This difference in perception is precisely what the album explains to be the distinguishing factor of the two tracks.

Regardless of which edition, the harsh yelling of “Bhahdnjohha” is easily suggestive of NSFTM’s December 2006 assemblage of Vytautas Swordblade, which came out almost three years after Live and Lying in It. No Sunlite’s ability to use jazz instruments to generate black metal is promising of their future, where they would continue to fuse styles in order to eliminate potential genre stereotyping and continually challenge themselves in innovation. What Steve Reich has done for minimalist music, NSFTM has done for noise.

Eight years after No Sunlite For The Media’s birth, they continually look back to their early years of Live at WMUC and Live and Lying in It to stay tied to their roots. Even as they modify their sound, they are not turning their backs on the method.

-L!Z
Williamsburg, VA
Oct. 2k9
Alive 'n' Lying in It: