Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
BIOGRAPHY
Ariel Pink – or Ariel Rosenberg, as his mother probably called him – ascended to the periphery’s of public vision when he met the New York based Animal Collective through mutual friend Jimi Hey (All Night Radio, Indian Jewelry, Beachwood Sparks, The Rapture) and handed them one of his self recorded CD-R’s. As fate (or someone else, probably Jesus) would have it, the aforementioned popular noiseniks had just started their own label Paw Tracks. According to AnCon (It’s the new SuBo) member Josh Dibb the CD “sat on the floor of the van for a week or so [...]. Finally we played it and we were just like ‘Woah!’. Brian was, like, ‘I’m making it my goal in life to put this kid’s record out on our label’. How cool is that? I can’t remember a story so concise since Puddle of Mudd singer Wes Scantlin handed his band’s demo to Fred Durst and, well, you know the rest is history.
Pink became the first artist to be signed to the label aside from Animal Collective, resulting in a reissue of 1999 recorded The Doldrums, as well as two other recordings Worn Copy and House Arrest. Skip forward a few years and we’re back to the latest lump qui s’appele Before Today, an album which has been receiving nothing but praise from even the most difficult of sources. And with good reason.
There is something gloriously, befuddlingly unquantifiable about Before Today. Whilst depth may not be the right word as, for all its eccentricities, most of the album is made up of quite shallow pop, but there is an enormous breadth of intention here. Animal noises and strange throat singing abound in between washed out surf guitars and oscillating vocal swirls making at what first is a misleadingly eccentric listen, but one that slowly settles like a snow globe into a vision of aural clarity, something both cerebral and instantly palatable.
Ariel Rosenberg has gathered himself a somewhat clichéd reputation as a fanatical creator, an almost solipsistic artist in his unyieldingly interior denial of the outside world. However, a great deal of this comes from apocryphal stories and his furious output of corrugated cardboard bedroom recordings recorded on analogue 4 tracks and cheap tape decks. His last few issues were not so much characterised by their lo-fi production rates, but their complete and utter abstinence from any form of sonic clarity – from the beatboxed drums and swathes of tape hiss that often threatened to swamp all else. Nonetheless, while the sound is a million times clearer from the fuzzy tape hiss of yore, it’s still not CD-perfect. Now, the clarity is chill-wave level rather than that of a tape that had been dropped in a bath, then dried with a hairdryer. The murky pop sensibility that had previously reared its head swimmingly through the mud of Mr Rosenberg’s anti-production is now quite happy to bare its head in the public ear. We certainly like it - that’s why we’ve made Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti our band of the week. Dur.
DISCOGRAPHY
The Doldrums (2004)
Worn Copy (2005)
House Arrest (2006)
Lover Boy (2006)
Ariel Rosenberg's Thrash and Burn: Pre (2006)
Scared Famous (2007)
Underground (2007)
Oddities Sodomies Vol. 1 (2008)
Before Today (2010)
TOUR DATES
June 8th - Paris, FR @ Point Ephemere
June 10th - Brighton, UK @ Freebutt
June 11th - Bristol, UK @ The Fleece
June 12th - Nottingham, UK @ Spikey Van Dykes
June 13th - Glasgow, UK @ Captain's Rest
June 14th - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
June 15th - London, UK @ Scala
June 17th - Antwerp, BE @ Pekfabrik
June 18th - Amsterdam, NL @ De Nieuwe Anita
June 19th - Cologne, DE @ King Georg
June 20th - Berlin, DE @ Lovelite
June 21st - Hamburg, DE @ Prinzenbar
June 22nd - Lucerne, CH @ Triebhaus
July 9th - Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex
July 10th - San Francisco, CA @ Bimbos
July 12th - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
July 13th - Seattle, WA @ Neumos
July 14th - Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret
July 16th - Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
July 17th - Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
July 19th - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
July 20th - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
July 21st - Pontiac, MI @ The Pike Room
July 22nd - Toronto, ON @ Mod Club
July 23rd - Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa
July 24th - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
July 25th - Cambridge, MA @ Middle East Downstairs
July 27th - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brendas
July 28th - Washington, D.C. @ Rock N Roll Hotel
July 29th - Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506
July 30th - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
July 31st - Birmingham, AL @ Bottletree
August 2nd - Denton, TX @ Hailey's
August 3rd - Austin, TX @ Mohawk
August 5th - Tucson, AZ @ Plush
August 6th - San Diego, CA @ Casbah
August 7th - Costa Mesa, CA @ Detroit Bar
VIDEOS
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - "Bright Lit Blue Skies" from gorillavsbear.net on Vimeo.
Ariel Pink – Flash Back
Ariel Pink – Politely Declined
words and thoughts by Samuel Smith