CD spine
About 15 years ago I shot a series of concerts by Dave Barrows and Mark Schleunes of earRotator (link below) with Dave on sax, Mark on guitar and vocals by both. Although Mark Schleunes later produced other albums, Holy Empire is the one and only album by earRotator.
CD booklet
design & photo by Mudhaus
The songs run from anti-war to humorous and irreverent. They recorded the music and made videos for each song (links below) incorporating and re-contextualizing news footage ripped from various sources.
Why Are We is a great and pretty fast, move-it-on-out dance song with a
samba beat. The refrain, "What did he know & when did he know it", pretty much spells out the theme.
Priest of the Abacus
is a slow stroll, almost a funk song with some new wave effects. A nice
slow-dance tune. This is probably my favorite song of theirs.
Daddy Goes Way Back has a nice harmonica and sax intro that goes into a similar tempo as
Priest but with a smooth feeling that is almost trippy; Mark Schleunes' sax playing is gorgeous.
Snake Food
has a moderately slow but determined tom-tom tempo with lyrics that
proclaim, "Find the love within before we tear the world apart", and
says it all. My runner up to
Priest as a favorite.
The Spin They Spawn has an almost but not quite
heavy metal
feel to it; with a languid beat it wanders and explores sonic
instrumental and vocal variations. A weird but interesting tune.
Do You Want It?
starts with a nice guitar by Dave Barrows and goes into a VERY fast
train beat that would be a real great tune to do a workout at the gym.
Some great guitar effects on this one.
All the songs are on YouTube (links below).
With one of the first
LCD screens
visible in daylight and a battery-powered, portable audio/video
projection system mounted on two hand-trucks, they pursued a guerrilla
performance strategy of quickly setting up in almost any urban location
to play the videos and songs.
After acquiring permits from the city of
Berkeley, they played regularly on the corner of Telegraph and Haste across from
Amoeba Records for over a year. It was at one of these performances that I first saw them.
I
photographed several of their performances. Although I did not get
photo credit, my images from them are used on their website (
link below).
earRotator stopped performing in 2006.
earRotator ~ Holy Empire
1. Daddy Goes Way Back (Radio Edit) - 3:55
2. Secret Perversion - 6:04
3. The Perp Walk - 4:11
4. Snake Food - 6:23
5. Do U Want It - 4:59
6. The Spin They Spawn - 5:11
7. Paranoid White Men - 3:59
8. Priest of the Abacus - 4:49
9. Why Are We - 5:31
10. Daddy Goes Way Back - 5:35
Release Date: 2004
Viewfinder links:
Net link:
YouTube links:
Styrous® ~ Monday, December 10, 2018
