So, the show at the Subterranean last week was awesome.  Thanks so much to everyone who came out & special thanks to Rob for taking pictures!  We’ll be playing Ronny’s in a few weeks, so if you wanted to see us but missed us, you’ll have another chance before Chicago becomes unbearably cold.

Moving into the bright and shiny digital future, we’ve landed on CDBaby, and are now offering our “Illegally People EP” for $3 on their fine website.  Just CLICK HERE, as they say in the future, and you’ll be whisked away to an album-buying opportunity.  In a few weeks, once they’ve crunched all our 0′s and 1′s, we’ll be up on iTunes as well as Lala, eMusic & all those jazzy internets.

Mr. Todd Miller of New City was kind enough to give me and PJ a call Monday night to interview us for New City. Check out the supple and delicious fruits of his labor right here.

Also: We’re playing the Beat Kitchen tomorrow! With Ganges and David Darrens! Check out our Shows Page above for more info. Like I imagine lemurs say whenever they do that wacky sideways leap-run: YIPPEEEEEEEEEE!

-phil

Being a graphic designer, I typically check out illustration and design blogs rather compulsively throughout a normal day.  Among the many designers I admire and whose output I follow, one of my favorites is Frank Chimero.  He’s got a brilliant sense of typography and color, but his idea-based illustrations are top notch and something I aspire towards. He’s got a new website with friend/designer Ben Barry called Questionable Characters, which I find endearing and also somewhat revolutionary.

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It sounds filthy when you say it like that, doesn’t it?  If anyone is unaware (and I have no idea how that could be), there’s a man named Grant Morrison who is busy as hell writing comics these days.  My friend Vaughn steered me in his direction years ago, but like many things Vaughn tips me off to, it didn’t really sink in until years later.  After an awe-inspiring run on more underground titles like “The Invisibles,” “Flex Mentallo,” “The Doom Patrol” and his first D.C. project, “Animal Man,” Morrison has been redefining more mainstream characters…Superman, the X-Men, the JLA…most of them, really.  For the past few years, however, he’s been the main scribe on Batman, a run on the title which has culminated in the recently concluded “Batman R.I.P.” storyline, which I will gush about after the break…but before I do, check out this song… (more…)

As you may or may not know, the greatest English-language novelist of the last 50 years, Thomas Pynchon, will be publishing a new book next year, to be titled Inherent Vice. (You can read the official press release here.) This is big news for me, as I’ve been a Pynchon fan for some time now, having holed up with his genius for what must be, cumulatively, at least five or six months. . . .

While Pynchon has a reputation (mainly among people who haven’t read him, many of whom, ironically, probably enjoy many of the same things from which he himself takes inspiration–novelty records, comic books, genre movies, fetish porn, hallucinogens, conspiracy theories, outmoded math and geography textbooks, gourmet meals incorporating exotic fruit, newspapers and dirty jokes) for writing difficult novels, he’s also one of the best pop lyricists out there, as his books are full of elaborately detailed musical numbers.  (more…)

Hello.  So this is the new percolatormusic.com.  If you’ve been here before, it might not look that different, but we’ve entered into the world of web 2.0.  You can have a conversation with us!  Seriously, if you have any comments or suggestions to make the site better or about the music, let us know!  Comment!  We need a way to constructively spend our time during the day.  As Matt noted, we’ll be using the blog here to mention anything of interest related to the band.  To start: We will be on the radio! Check back for more details, but in late January or early February, we’ll be on WLUW performing a set and doing some interviews.  Yeah!