In our first of many installments spreading the word on some of our favorite artists and musicians, we hit up house-master Basso, who podcasts his show every sunday night.  We've played many a show with Basso and the OssoTerro crew, and no doubt you'll be dancing your ass off on this mix.  Check it out, and enjoy responsibly!

The weather is cold and damp and cold, your car is packed with gear and humans and barely making it over the Manhattan Bridge, the club doesn't have a sign on the front door, not to mention any sign of people remotely interested in free-jazz inspired prog/post rock.  You're a band dealing with identity issues at best, and basic philosophical musical disagreements at worst, and knee deep in a period of time (Winter 2008) where regaining the momentum of an adventurous Cabinfest/Fall gig schedule was proving difficult, and even more so with the production of It's Alright is Not Alright sitting in the background like a grimacing evil troll with a shotgun in his hand.

And so it came to be that on 12/6/08, the 4 gentlemen of Wounded Buffalo Theory staggered uneasily into the OS Arthouse (nearly impenetrably located in the basement of another bar called the John St. Grill), where by far the best thing about the place was a solitary "BUCK HUNTER: BIG GAME EDITION" in the outer hall.  The venue area itself has almost no light whatsoever; this proved to be a major factor when setting up, since the hip hop act that opened the night got into a fight with an audience member near the end of their set, and spilled what seemed like at least 3 drinks in the process on the stage and power units.  Since we couldn't really see where the drinks had spilled, we had some fun predicting which guitar player would get electrocuted first.  As it turns out, the fight cleared out a whole bunch of people, and so we took the stage to a massive cheering crowd of 4 (unbelievably dedicated and wonderful) people.

All that said, sometimes it's these moments that prove to be your creative catalysts in the long years spent together as a working band.  Without any reason to find musical consensus, for whatever reason, the band seemed to find ways of bringing pieces together in a fiery, angry blend of sounds, and in some ways, constructs the best sounding, most experimental show of that season, and maybe the entire year.

Not every track included here is dark and furious, although the opening "Pledge" and "Gutenberg" salvos that take up the first 30 minutes certainly lean more towards the band's harder inspirations, and the rest of the set certainly echoes that ethos.  "Killer Klowns", still a relatively new track at the time, brims with alienation and a beautifully uncomfortable middle section, and "Lay Me Down", rarely played at shows with larger, more dance-orientated audiences, seethes through its intro while building a fierce peak into its closing section.

Again, the softer tones still exist; "Bodies II," the closing section of "Gutenberg," and the intro of "The Boer," (a song off of Red that hadn't been played in nearly 2 years before this show) showcase a more textured dynamic, but retain a sharp focus highlighted throughout the show.  These sections may be quieter, but again, for whatever reason, whatever was pissing us off that night made for some very tight playing, crisp segues, and experimental playing that colored much of what we did in the months following the show.  Without question, some credit must go to visualist Justin Wood, who, as you can see by the videos we've included below, went above and beyond and was able to give us something to vibe off and work with.

So, for the first time, we're releasing a good portion of this show for free download, on our music page and on the various links scattered around this post:)  We couldn't include all the songs, due to sound problems, but this cross section is the real meat of the show.  So get angry, and help yourself to some WBT therapy music...take all your anger out on us today:).  Music To Murder By: Live at the OS Arthouse 12/6/08.

Additionally, we're calling on our fans and friends to help us get to Camp Bisco, and no we're not looking for your extra, brah...  This year, the folks who put on Camp are looking for your suggestions for bands you want to see rip it up.  Just CLICK HERE and fill out the form and help get WBT to Camp.  Plus 20 heady points.

See you on the 20th!

From the owners:

John "Dsan" Dennison:

The Dsan/Lord Lounge - Many of you may not know that I had a love/hate relationship with the DLL.  I would love the fact that a show was approaching and I could do all the things I felt were necessary to throw the bash.  I would hate that this process would consume me to the point of thinking only about the night for a full week before, and wishing the following week that it was still happening.  That's a full two weeks of thought!  It was worth it.  I didn't even have to invite anyone.  You all just showed up!  That's the amazing part.  The shape of the room was a rectangular cube.  You could have picked it up and put us on a flatbed truck.  More than half was taken up by humans.  Instruments and equipment took up an incredible amount of space.  The rest was sound.  But somehow it all worked.  Everywhere I looked people would be doing their thing, whatever that meant to them at the time.  For me, I could have been doing any of 10 different things at the same time, my favorite of course was going on stage and interacting with the band.  Because the Wounded Buffalo theory would be doing their thing - playing whatever the hell they wanted.  That was my other favorite part of their shows at the lounge.  Their dynamic range as a band was greatest in this space, and yes I mean both ends of the range.  There's a spacious quality found throughout this show - MDMA, Lies, NF and the Pledge all open up real wide.  Even Putin Bay opens up nice.  The fun is in Thriller and Elements because Shamellow free verse over wbt is just too good.  Elements feeds off of that.   So does the the remainder of the show, for that matter.  When I think back, this was probably the most successful night there.  Unless, by successful, you mean raising money to cure cancer, which we did there as well.

   Eric Lord:

madrigals, strains, and even a sweet-ass instrumental in 7/8 time. And so, we sweetly and soothingly give you, Songs That Got Us Laid, Vol. 1, a collection of  various versions of songs that, througout the years, have often gotten some of the best responses of anything we've preformed or recorded, while achingly playing second fiddle in setlists and albums to louder, more obnoxious stuff that we happened to like playing more.

 The first 4 songs are new, or, in other words, written in the last 5 years:).  There's a couple from John, and one each from Rob and myself.  The following 5 tracks, starting with Blanton's beautiful string version of "Traveler's Song", are various mixes, remixes, and demo versions of more familiar material.  "The Under Over", "Where's Crosby" and "Why Can't We Just Be Enemies?" are all live acoustic versions, and the album concludes with some golden oldies, including unreleased takes on "Butternuts", and a "McGuirk's" with alternate ending.

We should mention that besides John, Rob, Lucas, and myself, there are several incredible musicians who are playing on some of these tracks, namely, Hannah Hens-Piazza on fiddle on "Butternuts," and Mark Wise on guitar for several of the tracks (not to mention, "The Count" and "McGuirks" were produced in his apartment in Brooklyn in 2005).  There's also an undetermined keyboard player on "Underground," although signs point to that being WBT archivist John Dennison.

"Wounded Buffalo Theory Mostly Acoustic Collection - Songs That Got Us Laid vol. 1"

1. Ocean Prayer
2. You'll Have a Greatest Hits Album When You're Dead
3. Below the Fold
4. Acoustic
5. Traveler's Song (string quartet version)
6. Bottom of the World (acoustic pirate version)
7. The Count (enemys version)
8. Station (johnson demo)
9. Irish Drinking Song (enemys version)
10. The Under Over (live)
11. Where's Crosby (live)
12. Why Can't We Just Be Enemies? (live)
13. Underground
14. 9:09 Albany Time
15. Butternuts
16. McGuirks Last Chicken Bull
17. Traveler's Song: Coda

Download the entire "album" here, on our music page!

And, finally, to whet your appetite, here's some acoustifying video's...

Throughtout the years, Wounded Buffalo Theory has prided itself on trying lots of different genre's while synthesizing the overall sound, throughout different locales, personel changes, and at times, vastly different periods of writing and production output.  One of few constants, however, has been the band's affinity for dub music, and finding ways to integrate it into the general ethos of composition and improvisation.  Whether it was the most recent incantation of Buffalo exploring afro-beat and psy-dub at Cabinfest 2009, or the John Demming-era WBT, who was more inspired by the dub-remixes and jams of Bad Brains and how to combine post rock with spacey, funkier rhythems, WBT has retained a penchant for infusing dub into places it otherwise shouldn't be.

Indeed, 3 of the pieces included in this collection are some of the band's sturdiest jam vehicles, and they all owe their general template to reggae, dub, and the extended tension/release of such visionaries as Fela Kuti, him, and Antibalas ("Losing Points" is a "Pledge" excerpt, "Omnibot" hails from an 2006 version of "Putin Bay," and "Symetrics" grabs a piece of a Demming-era "White Lies Black Ties").

Also included are several studio outtakes and b-sides, exploring dub from the recorded side of things.  The opening track is a new Malko/Blanton piece entitled "We Can Sell That," so far unreleased, and there's pieces from Japan on the Moon, as well as the rarely heard Electronic Side Project, featuring Justin Wood, a integral part of the band's learning process with regards to the genre.

Get the whole "album" at the link above, and it'll be on our music page starting tonight for individual downloads..enjoy!

Interesting show to listen to here; really one of the peak preformances from a Buffalo era that found the band focusing on becoming more efficient, while still wielding the hard rock pallette that colored most of early 09.  Only months later, the band would discard that mantra for newer songs based in electronic and dance...indeed, the first hints of this can be found in "Killer Klowns," the only newer track played at Trash Bar.

  Otherwise, the show is a nice representation of modern takes on older Buffalo classics: "The Count" has an edgy bite not often found in the midtempo piece, and "Elements" speeds through it's intro jam to instead provide a Neu-esqe landscape in the middle section.  The latter is no doubt aided by some timely (and possibly careless) soundwoman work regarding the reverb of the snare drum.  Included is a rare cover of Radiohead's "Wierd Fishes," which segues smoothly into a brutal "Invisible Man."

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=79db607becc7775f4d287c5461e4af2207801c455753deac0897301e858a8174

our show scheduled for this Friday (1/15) at Dublin Underground has been postponed due to a closing of the venue that day.  We'll have more dates up very soon!  No Johnathan Malko sit in anniversary..