On Saturday, January 25th, 2020, I received an envelope full of amazing mail art courtesy of Mindaugus Zuromskas, from Lithuania!

This is some of my favorite art that I’ve received in the mail recently. Thank you, Mindaugus!

Back in 2011-2013, I enjoyed a great period of prolific recording, and mailing tapes and CDRs to people all across the globe. 

Unfortunately, due to a combination or things, my output had gradually decreased to the point where I had ceased production altogether for a while. These various reasons include: the increased expenses on international shipping rates; shortage of materials to burn/dub audio and/or print the artwork; my increasing amounts of live performances; personal matters; and of course, being burned-out in general.

Fast-forward to early 2017: after having contributed to the then-recent issues of HalZine, I was inspired to put together my own “visual noise” zines. But even these proved to be somewhat costly in the long run. I decided to become even more efficient, and start making postcards.

Lo and behold, they became a success! Multiple recipients would gladly post them on social media, and even send me their own mailart in return.

It was just like the good ol’ days of 2011-2013, except it was limited to just the visuals (which I felt was the centerpiece of a majority of the releases I did anyways).

But now I have decided to go a step further: I will be incorporating audio with my future mailart, without having to compromise the amount of postage. How, you may ask?

By slapping a QR code on the postcard!

For those who may not know: you can scan a QR code by opening the camera on your phone and holding it up to the code until a tab drops down with the link embedded into the code.

For example: here’s a screenshot of our good friend Hal McGee scanning the code (on a postcard I had recently sent him) with the camera on his phone:

Voila!

I understand there are some potential drawbacks: most notably this feature is not incorporated in every cellphone (specifically Android, which I think requires an app). Regardless, this is all in good fun.

I am planning on making more of these and being quite productive with it throughout this year, as I greatly enjoy creating and mailing these out.

If you would like to receive any future postcards from me, feel free to email me your address or PO BOX and I will add you to my mailing list.

And in the event that you can’t open the contents of the QR CODE with your phone, let me know and I’ll be more than happy to copy-paste the link your way!

Cheers,
​
-Dylan Houser
January 12th, 2020

Further reading:
​
Free QR Code generator

QR Code Wikipedia page

The second album by central Florida minimalist acoustic punk band THE QUAINT. 

11 songs in roughly 4 minutes. The longest song is 36 seconds. The shortest song is 1 second (spoiler: it’s about Jen Sändwich’s friend Dougie Jones).

​This makes the first album by the Quaint sound like a Bull of Heaven album, and the first EP by the Meat Puppets sound like the Grateful Dead (that’s because they are and junk. also "Jesus" by the Velvet Underground is actually by the Grateful Dead, just ask Hal McGee himself).

Recorded at the tail end of March 2019. Produced, mixed, and mastered on a rainy day inside of a black hole by the son of a hearing aid salesman.

"Kopp Out" was originally "Kopp Killer" but then Rob Lorei got his job back at WMNF the day after the song was written, so I guess he's alright.

"Burgled" is about eating brown Kool-Ade and why you shouldn't do that and junk. By the way, it was FLAVOR-ADE *pushes glasses up against my face* That's like saying Converse sneakers will get you a free ride on a hippie van trailing behind an asteroid or some shaving cream. This song was conceived while stuck in traffic on the way to the grocery store.

"Sugar Cubs": even Satan is terrified of them. Another song originally conceived in a car while waiting at a red light.

"Ordinary Guy" was originally written in 2005 and has been in developmental hell since 2006 until just a few days before it was re-recorded for the umpteenth time some 13 years later.

"Water is Wet" - Did you know that the president known as Donal Trum is a BAD PERSON? Here's your minutely reminder.

"Dougie Jones" - Dream Theater could never dream of writing anything as lengthy, complex, and intricate as this here song.

----------------------------------

On a side note, every track from the Quaint's self-titled debut (written and recorded the year before) has been remastered and sounds less like it was recorded in a potato in a beehive in a trashcan in a dishwasher on the moon inside of the sun. You can stream it here:

https://thequaint.bandcamp.com/album/the-quaint


----------------------------------

YA KNOW, ONE OF THESE DAYS THESE RELEASES MAY SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY ON EITHER A LATHE-CUT OR EVEN FULL BLOWN WAX!!!

Recorded from January - March 2019.

Dylan Houser: guitars; loops; distortions; splicings; ice cream trucks

So far 2019 has been a very productive year. The combination of the Sony ICD-PX470 recorder (I'm not sponsored, I swear) and finally acquiring a looping pedal last summer (it only took me, what? 15 years?!) have opened up an entirely new can of worms for me, creatively speaking.

Nearly everything you hear on this album is a guitar, except for the last song, "Tinker Galute," which is a looped toy keyboard riff and manipulated noise coming from the well-aged toy, plus what sounds like the occasional radio interference from having so many things plugged in. I originally wasn't going to include it on the album, but I re-listened to it and laughed all the way through. It was too hilarious to NOT have it be the closing piece.

I've also started trying to incorporate odd timing signatures in my music again for the first time in over a decade. So far there seems to be a lot of 15/8 or 15/4 or 4/4+4/4+7/4 or whatever the heck it might be.

"Molting Riviera" is one of my favorite pieces that I've ever recorded. On that I used the "Rock On Esteban" acoustic-electric guitar that I had played at Apartment Music #29:

​Tracks 2 - 4 were recorded during the first week of March and then the entire album was mixed down and edited on March 8th.

The album cover is a found picture I had laying around while I was putting the album together. The cover, the album and track titles...basically everything came together very spontaneously, which is my preferred method. Nothing beats that, really.

Enough of my rambling: I HOPE YOU ENJOY LISTENING TO THIS ALBUM AS MUCH I AS I DID CREATING IT!!!

XOXOXOXOX

Improvised and recorded on the morning of March 2nd, 2019 after a long and busy but yet somehow enjoyable night at my day-for-night job.

Vinci Signature strat knockoff guitar run through a BOSS looping pedal run into the "vocal" channel, and then the guitar run through the "instrument" channel, on a Roland Cube Street EX amplifier.

Recorded on a SONY ICD-PX470 dictamaphone and tweaked around in Audacity.

Artwork made in Instagram stories.
To me, album artwork is important, almost as much (sometimes if not more so), than the music itself.
Album artwork is still very important, especially now more than ever in the 21st century information age.

Dictaphone collage album.   

Everything recorded in December of 2018 on a pair of Sony ICD-PX470 recorders.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. PLAY THIS ON "SHUFFLE"  
2. LISTEN WITH(OUT) DISTRACTION 

LINE-UP:

Dylan Houser: voice, guitar, percussion, banjo, other stuff, pressing the "record" button, some other stuff that I probably don't remember   
Miscellaneous other people: etc.

Also: don't let the title fool you. This WILL be an ongoing series of dictaphone collage albums. There WILL be a Volume 2, eventually. and Volume 3, 4, 5, etc. As long as I don't die before assembling/uploading them, there will be follow ups.

I say this because one of my pet peeves is when an artist refers to an album as "Volume 1" but never follow it up with at least one more release called "Volume 2" or something...do they think their album title is just not long enough???

One of my favorite moments on this release: in the middle of "part 8," in the right hand channel, you can hear people yelling at each other. This moment was captured on December 31st, 2018, in Clearwater, FL on US Highway 19 (in front of Clearwater Mall). I was driving and waiting at a traffic light, when this guy two cars in front of me gets out of his vehicle to yell at the person in the car in front of mine (they had apparently cut him off). I missed the part where he yelled "HEY, THERE'S A FUCKIN' DISABLED VETERAN IN OUR CAR!" followed by someone a few cars behind me yelling at him to get back in his car, with him yelling and cursing and flipping those people off before he went back to his car.

Anyways, I hope you, the reader, will enjoy this here release in all of it's scattered glory.

A few months ago (I'm guessing December? My brain is still frazzled from this year's run of recent International Noise Conference shows), I received a lovely card in the mailbox courtesy of EC's own Aimee and Adam Naworal!

I love the different styles between the two drawings. ​

As an added bonus, I've also added a picture of a recent performance that their project Tomokie's Cup had played at the St. Pete Pre-INC show at the Paper Crane on February 3rd, 2019. I sat in on electric bagpipes. Photo courtesy of Emmy Lou.