Monkeyclaus was lucky enough to host Usaisamonster in the studio for our first official Monkey Session for a touring band. The Monkey Session is our version of spontaneous studio sessions first pioneered by John Peel of the BBC. Usaisamonster came with fellow Load label mates Kites and layed down a huge wall of beautiful noise over their trademark quirky rhythms and thick instrumentation.

USAisaMonster - Monkey Session Audio

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Kites - Monkey Session Audio

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Download this podcast:

www.monkeyclaus.org/cms/pdsFiles/rss133361.xml

As a two piece band Usaisamonster boggles the mind with their overly ambitious amout of gear and how they integrate these tools into their rock. Drummer Thom Hohman sings thru his (Time/Life Books infomercial) operator style head set mic, while playing a Moog taurus foot pedal with his left foot, nimbly adding sporadic keyboard lines with his right hand (on the remaining keys not yet shattered to bits) , and deftly pounding out brutal beats. In the track we captured here at Monkeyclaus he also shows his skills with the african thumb piano. Guitarist Colin Matthews rocks an array of pedals thru a huge stack of amps supplying the bass register as well as the soaring guitar leads. Bouncing around like an yeti under the influence, Colin's guitar work varies from stoner rock riffs to delicate repetitive African inspired grooves. He is truly one of the more important lead axe men of this new century.

Due to time restraints the Monster was able only to lay down one 10 minute track, a jam with Kites and gave us an insightful interview covering topics ranging from the Iraq war to the struggle of the Native Americans to the magical powers of nature spirits. Monkeyclaus also shot video of the entire session and made a three part feature DVD documenting the session. The video also includes audio of a live version of their Bulgarian folk song recorded by Monkeyclaus the night before. The session overall is a fantastic portal into the weird and engaging world of these punk nomads in action...ENJOY

As part of the same session Kites treated us to a diabolically gorgeous dose of noise. Christopher can whip up a maelstom with the best of them. His wizardly approach and vast configuration of foot pedals create a signal chain tapping into time and space. As in his live set the previous nite he set the mood with an oscillator, giving a familar reference of moogish tones to henceforth begin deconstruction. With devices such as the "Kites Beast" and a homemade "King Tubby style" electronic handshaker Kites began a focused assault that was both calculated and well executed. Tired of everyone thinking they can be a noiseband? And delivering noise wonk? Stacking his three amps like a crucifix, Kites will school all amatuers!

If you have never seen .xml before, you will love it.Trust us .xml is the future. monkeyclaus loves .xml. If you click on the link rather than follow the instructions below you might see garble de goop depending on which browser your using. What are Podcasts

Monkeycasts/Podcasts
We like the name monkeycasts better than podcasts. After all it is distributed by monkeys for monkeys. The easy way to get these monkeycasts is to download the latest version of iTunes on your mac or your pc. Follow these directions to download our monkeycasts.

1. Launch iTunes on your computer. (iTunes needs be version 4.9 or greater.)
2. Click on the Advanced button at the top of the iTunes menu bar.
3. Choose subscribe to pod-cast under the advanced tab.
4. Paste the podcast link above .xml into the advanced window...
5. Watch the link appear in the podcast section of iTunes.
6. Click ' get ' to start downloading each of the mp3s to your computer.
7. Enjoy and check back regularly for more podcasts.

*You dont need iTunes, we just say that because it is easy and most folks have it

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