Diggin’ In The Crates “Giving Some Love To My Homies” Edition
This week, just like the title of this post says, I’m showing some love to some homeboys of mine who just put a new record out…

On October 30, 2004, I made my second pilgrimage in as many years to one of Philadelphia’s finest alternative/indie rock venues, The Khyber, to witness a performance by my good friend, punk legend Mike Watt (The Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Banyan, Iggy Pop & The Stooges), who was then touring behind his third solo album The Secondman’s Middle Stand.

Most likely by coincidence, all three of the acts on the bill were three-piece units. Only the first band of the night, the Perfection!sts, was a conventional guitar/bass/drums unit. Watt’s band on this outing, as on his then-new album, was an organ/bass/drums band. And then there was the band in the middle of the bill. I’ll let my paragraph on them from when I reviewed the show for PunkNews.org tell it:

Second opening act Northern Liberties (who also run their own Worldeater label and distribution company) — a trio consisting of bass, drums and percussion — played a high energy set of music from their debut full-length album Erode + Disappear. With K’s effect-laden, pick-driven bass covering all sonic frequencies and most of the melody, singer/percussionist Justin came off like a tattooed, ultra-hyper, depression-and-epilepsy-free Ian Curtis as he sang and played, unpreturbed by minor mishaps with both the mic cord coming out of his delay pedal and with accidentally knocking over a pitcher of water on the stage floor (where Mazich had to set up his organ right afterward – fortunately, no Stone The Crows like electrocution mishaps occurred) – definitely one of the best unsigned bands I’ve ever witnessed.

After the evening ended, I met lead singer/percussionist Justin Duerr, bought copies of his band’s first CD Erode + Disappear and their 7″ Easter Island off of him (the CD itself was $6 for a full-length album!). I played the CD in my car on the drive home and was hooked for life. Since then, I’ve been following the band’s releases (three more CDs, a limited edition DVD, a split 7″ and three side project releases by Justin) as well as keeping a good correspondence (and trading mix CD’s) with Justin (not surprisingly, my CDs had some J-pop goodness, which he dug immensely.) All are highly recommended by me.

Their newest release is rather interesting as it’s their first non-7″ vinyl effort. The record consists of one 29-minute, 51-second song entitled (what else?) Suffocation. Despite the length of the song, it seems to go by pretty quick. The band only intends to play this piece live twice, once on March 20 in Philadelphia and once in Bethlehem a week later. The vinyl itself (which Justin tells me is the band’s preferred way to experience the recorded version of the song) has a locked groove on side two, but they’re not putting CD and iPod owners out either, as every copy of the album has a bonus CD with some extra tracks (a few drones excerpted from the multi-track recording of the song, plus some live tracks from a California radio appearance). The album’s cover itself is silkscreened by NL’s bassist Kevin Riley.

Vinyl collectors may want to jump on this soon – there’s only 200 copies pressed, and mine was numbered 59. Check the band’s website at http://www.northernlibertiesband.com

— CJ Marsicano, re-posted from blog.

Every so often there comes along a piece of music that is so much more than a just a song. Because of its length and brilliant composition, as well as the other components of its complex structure, it becomes a work of art, a masterpiece. In my experience, this has only happened a handful of times, with songs such as: Nofx’s “the Decline,” Craw’s “Caught My Tell,” and Maiden’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.” Such songs are somewhat like the “A la recherche du temps perdu” (Marcel Proust’s literary masterpiece) of music. It would seem that every generation has its own “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” just as Iron Butterfly did in the late 60’s. And now, the Philadelphia avant garde punk and neo-progressive ghost-core band Northern Liberties has given the Suicide Generation its very own “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” The song is titled “Suffocation,” and it consumes a small piece of eternity with its many-layered and intricate parts, which begins with a well-constructed noise base of feedback and distant vocals and continues along a course of varying intensity and heaviness and range. For some odd reason, “Suffocation” reminds me of old Christian Death, the Theatre of Pain days, along with Craw, somewhere between Lost Nation Road and Strontium. It’s obviously a very personal song, with an undercurrent of fierce emotion, in addition to a deep intellectual well from which springs a mighty fountain of thought. All told, “Suffocation” is twenty-nine minutes in length, and it’s worth every second of time that it borrows from the universe.

“Suffocation” is a song that’s not afraid to run with scissors. Nor does it throw salt over its shoulder or knock on wood. It laughs off the seven years bad luck of broken mirrors. And if a black cat should cross its path, it will kneel down and run its cold hand over the animal’s sleek midnight-colored coat, pick it up, and take it home. In other words, it is a rather daring composition. And, to be sure, it leaves enormous footprints in the ground of its path, making it quite easy to track through the wilderness of the City Earth. And I will no doubt follow it to one or both of the only two shows at which Northern Liberties will be performing it live. One in Philadelphia. And another in Bethlehem. Currently we stand on that invisible line which separates the seasons, spring from winter. It’s time to bid farewell to the biting cold and the frost covered ground, to the seemingly perpetual gray skies and the stoical faces of passersby on the street, and the lingering piles of dirty snow melting into the gutters around the city. The sun heralds the approach of spring, and with it the funeral procession begins with head-swelling feedback and noise art, with duel percussion, with keys and thick strings and voice. So, we follow it. And in doing so we realize that we are about witness a “winter song” laid to rest. Simultaneously we lament the loss of one season and celebrate the arrival of another. I am among them. “Suffocation” by Northern Liberties is the music of the occasion. We will hear it live only twice, the first time in Philadelphia, the second in Bethlehem.

James Carlson
Philadelphia Indie Music Examiner