Square Zeros

Joey Farber is one of the younger statesmen of Brooklyn garage rock n roll. He plays guitar and sings in The Jeanies and Greasy Hearts, both of whom are tearing it up on the King Pizza label. He's been a prolific songwriter since day one, and he brings us a sampling of early cuts, featuring some Orbison-esque balladry, dark synth punk, and grimy psych.

Burlesque. Hip-hop. Performance art, dance troupes. Heavy metal, DJs. Fire spinners. Punk rock, indie rock. “Nudity is unity.” To catch a Brooklyn Wildlife production is to surrender to a single concept — freedom — and the platform reflects the artist behind it, Chris Carr. Chris started Brooklyn Wildlife with his longtime musical collaborator Keith Lay in 2011 as a way to promote artistic expression outside of conventional, often commercial channels. His current hip-hop project — he performs under the name Stonehenge Parnhashnakovsky — operates under similar assumptions. As a result, Chris takes care not to label himself as a certain style of rapper. This episode features one of his recent tracks, "Live From The Bottomless Pit," plus two songs from one of his earliest recording efforts (circa 1999), and a live in-studio freestyle.

Know Your Record Store: Brandon Perry/Deep Cuts by Square Zeros

Noxious Foxes are a force of nature. Guitarist/synthesist Justin Talbott and drummer Richard Levengood play a dense, complex, and inventive breed of loop-oriented math rock that sets them apart from the garage acts that permeate the Brooklyn circuit. The duo shares some tracks from their teenage years, way back when emo pop and Incubus were lighting their way. We also get "Absinthe Makes The Heart Grow Fondue" and "Neanderthong," two cuts from Noxious Foxes' superb 2013 LP, EPOCHALYPSO.

With 20 episodes and hours of music on our hands, we think it's time we take things to the next level. With this podcast, we've spent the past few months talking to some superb musicians about their formative (so to speak) recordings, and of course the great music they make today. Right now, we have a de facto archive on our SoundCloud account of the old songs our guests have brought in. We want to start formalizing it, turning it into a large, organized, searchable archive of people's independent and unreleased music.

Seth Applebaum and Greg Hanson are two of Brooklyn's unsung rock n roll heroes. Seth shreds guitar and howls in the scuzzy garage outfits The Mad Doctors and The Fucktons. Greg is the sweating, shirtless power drummer in each. They live together in Bed-Stuy, where Greg runs the fuzz-tinged King Pizza record label and Seth operates the tape-only Ghostload Sound. We talk about their awesome contributions to the Brooklyn music scene and listen to three tracks from Seth's high school projects, which range from MC5-esque proto-punk to afrobeat.

Jim Wood is a drummer whose current projects range pretty widely from psych rock (Clouder) to garage-pop (Crazy Pills) to hip-hop (Dr. Breakfast) — and he's one of the more gregarious guys in the Brooklyn music scene — so perhaps we were naive not to assume that he would be totally game for anything. And sure enough, seemingly minutes after we first unveiled this site, Jim sent us a link to his high school band Deep Fiend. We get Square Zeros bread and butter in this one.

Winston Scarlett is the founder of Slackgaze, a zine, blog, archive, and booking agent based in Brooklyn whose goal, loosely speaking, is to promote and preserve the best aspects of the 90s revival wave. "Pre-Millennials with 90s panache," the Slackgaze tag goes. He books shows, curates art and video projects, and generally serves as an organizer for musicians and artists who share his aesthetics and DIY sensibility. He's also the bassist for Chimes and Surfing. We talk with him about Slackgaze and hear a couple songs from his college noise rock project, Bambeef.

Mayor Creep is composed of four guys who came to it from far-flung, pop-oriented projects. Jeremy was (and is) in the beachier Air Waves; Alex Heigl made polished garage pop with Brother Reverend; Nick played with the hooky, lo-fi indie pop act Dinosaur Feathers; and Alex Gruenburg fronted the moodier power trio We Run. Anyone who's seen them live, or picked up their dynamite split cassette Krangnitas (with headbangers Hounds Basket) is sure to have questions. To understand how they came by their current brand of lightning-fast, super-tight, and often hilarious hardcore rants, you've got to dig deeper.

Polly Watson, keyboard player for the power pop foursome 1-800-BAND, kicks off Square Zeros Season 2 with some hits from her punk-tinged early project, Crimson Sweet, and a far out song from Flaming Fire, an experimental folk collective she toured with.