It is Raining Down Some Boneclad Gizmos
[Lome Marsupial,
Released as 'Les Monstrelli']
(Released Jul 13 2011)
13 songs Runtime 41:36
Hello,
yes I miss that guitar, that gloss black EJ-200 Epiphone, that's right, the Epiphone not even the Gibson model--- pictured in that gaunting leery black and white portrait-- I miss that guitar very much. It was a Korean, no electronics, 2000 or pre-2000 guitar. With no cutaway. and even with a splint of card under the bridge saddle raising the action - because I didn't know any better than and still know not better in as many things today - it played so nice. And I got along well and had a good time with that instrument.
Did I get everything through soundwise via that guitar on this album?
I think the playing was formidable, given this was a similar album lyric and moodwise as Shadow Swoon Hiss The Dead Man, a 2CD a little prior to this release - one that fell short is no many ways and I never had the knack or humility to much listen back to. Like an album of that sensation of hearing yourself on an answering machine message call with the person you left it to, at their house, under some ballistic self-heaving disgrace.
With the guitar, however, I think the scratchyness and some applied gain and the scatching of it.. a grinding brightness and fullness was able to come clearer. It recorded really well soundwise and I miss that guitar a lot. If I could locate, ever, that released version, with it being full-bodied, and that gloss - everything about it - that'd be a treasure. but I only know it would be redeemingly authentic by the interior sticker down past the sound hole: a glamourous old style portrait in its oval emdroidered style of Italian Musiciansip, or maybe it was a Japanese Artiste... I'm not sure now that I think of it which actual detailed design was in thereabout but it wa a woman musician with this bronzen gold brown dated and aged design.
Regardless that guitar is gone now. Traded out. Because I was apt low on moneys and for whatever reason thought the direction of a natural and solid topped spruce was ideal. To this day, that guitar shop gives me pawnshop level values for trade ins and it took that long, maybe close to 3 years short of two decades, to say enough is enough about that. After clueing in and actually realizing that. Man I got ripped on that. But if it were me today I would have kept it, and just waited longer, for that dreadnought I traded out for.
It's funny commentating on music gear and guitars, tonewoods, styles and all of those things. Because my lack of training or how atrocious maybe, that organized players or musicians may harumph at this gritty and slangy, violently abysmal but curiously innocent approach to song and such.
There's a lot of rough work there.
But I think this guitar, regardless, and I was happy it wasnt a Gibson ultra expensive one.. because I liked to walk creeks with it, and take it all over the place.. I wasnt superstituous cautious about owning and playing and tampering with that instrument soundwise and what strings I'd put on it.
The It's Raining Boneclad Gizmos album, anyhow, was an album where that instrument had its say and its focus.
Lyric-wise there are a lot of things I'd change out. And in a re-release have so far actually done so. But it is January 3rd, 2023 right now. And that may be updated but I'm sure the old and original songs will be available, and there, and even listed out under Les Monstrelli. As aliases were going through the foundry so apt and often. That if anything did actually hit to more than a handful (ha!) of listeners, then tracking down separate releases would have been a gyrating, glonking pursuit.
So as for thoughts without listening through personally to comment, just about any feeling or recollection for this, and I can do that at a later time, to heckle myself playing and songwise or optimistically be content even on some of what was being aimed for, this at least can be bemused:
Wildly enough, and I don't know what I'd done wrong enough to get it right, but the levels of clarity for some of the guitar came out fine and well considering using a handheld photo camera with its digital audio menu there in stereo microphones and straight to wav 192 KBPS.
I had the opportunity available, with a pocket of peace in my life at that time - or some times of peace and brevity before it still up to this moment seems more so with hell and chaos - the ability to sit outdoors and record with a tripod.
So some of these songs fruited that way, and others just at a desk surrounded by other projects. And switching to and fro, would work on artistic projects of other sorts like illustration and heavily color variant visual pieces. Between all that on gentle warm weather days I'd just lay these songs down.
But the suffocation of sarcasm really blinking through with eyelash slashes is garnishing some sporadic kind of convoy mixing sour feelings toward the world structure while also wanting some patience and goodness and warm harmony.
Many things twisted were visible even then as a kind of implementation of societal collapse. But twang and the outdoors were there in a want to make something of a song. And not be a daunterly kind of shennaganin overblow which something like the Mind Sale series was guilty of on all occassions. But that was satire up to the brim.
And there is something all the more serious or reaching for humanity in Boneclad Gizmos even if "Shove your Cellphone up your Asshole" is one of the stand out songs, hard to avoid because of the brunt title, although disenfranchised to really convince anybody of anything at all. Side from some idea that Country Dick Montana from the band The Beat Farmers may have in some unconscious way influenced the high gain and putrid dissonance likely from a song he did called "trendy shitbag" and I think a handful of others on his album "The Devil Lied To Me."
Actually now, I am recalling the other few songs, but lead it to anyone else to find that album and listen through it and make a connection.
 1. It's Raining Boneclad Gizmos
But yes I those times of my life where the ableness to record outside in peaceful ambience whatsoall, I wonder if I had staved those opportunities. Yet the subject matter that formed was indeed the subject matter apparent here.
So for the "It's Raining Boneclad Gizmos" setting of lyrics in which are stomach turning and rather scrapey, vile kinds of lean ins to thinking "oh, this is some folky stuff.. you'd better be gentle about hillscapes, and predictable about the fluff of mule wool and the sweat furrowed to a single brow. With love songs and wooing and swooning.
But some of the ditties via ballads of murder and loss, and some of the images creating a scape of the absolute grit makes it a catchall for honing in to the darker subject matter.
Something that maybe was being dialed in more in a way where Shadow Swoon: Hiss the Dead Man as a previous double CD was really reaching for but not sending across so much as fully.
Maybe a deeper stirring and reach to the 'phantom story' idea.
In the last lyric delivery before the final chorus, it's that splay of honest vulgarity said off in a poem reading which holds nothing back of a sour taste of the present state of civilization surrender, and how it is so often painted typically as charming or fun. It's not like that at all in the forboding intention of these lyrics here. It seems discharming and in this ordering of songs, which I did think of quite a bit, having that as the introducing song on this album at least makes a preparing notion to know what you're in for. Though natural and harmonic tones and ideas and implemented throughout.
This happens a lot from this release and forward, I think.. a chance to some opera and at least an effort which I am trying to represent archetypes and bring out.
Let's move on to the next listed song. I'll trial myself to read out, at the entry of 2023 presently, this 2011 release and if it was just a flash in the pan or maybe possibly if anything was important about it in song writing or trying to put out topical songs. Because it is definitely more topical and on a point of atmosphere, regardless of what type of atmosphere, than a hypercollection like Chameleon Shelter or something as absolutely passable on like Mind Sale or the beginning recordings.
2. Cricket Bus
One thing that makes me happy about this one is that my dad dug this little short instrumental a lot and I recalled seeing it on a few of his playlists. Since he, and my grandparents, are passed now, and it seems like an entirely different ballpark or etheral realm, you know.. it's special in a way. I'd say my grandma down once and was excited when my Paige's Dragonfly video was finished. And it took a hell of a lot of work really and so much energy went into documenting and releasing that short film. Even if still, you know, it isn't shit to hardly anyone at all. My grandmother had a special connection to it and it meant a lot that it did. There was some grounding of maybe something innocent or honing to trying to showcase beauty in the world. When you have somebody in your life that actually cares about things you care to do, and they by their own choice celebrate it, it's a good omen. That's how this song was regarding my dad. And I don't play banjo. I can add in on banjo, or overlay it into songs.
I'd been with Lauren in those years and she was out that way, and I was here this way. Then we'd move closer and all of that. And be together, and I'd learned banjo. And she'd play at the banjo also, because I bought it when we were both out. It was strictly reduced in price, and a starter price. and I still have it and it sits there where whatever strings are left on it, it still sounds about the same.
Cricket Bus takes an alterior rode away from the prior opening song. It's innocent again. Its not somberly or wrying with strange etchings. Just a little springy, bouncy instrumental.
3. Sixty Dollars.
You'll by sometime, if you hear the update, know which area of lyric that'd be changed out. It felt suckerly and not so resplendant at all, listening back on it. And so the cruder wordings done so in a way to bring the real sandpapered tetanus intensity of other songs, while those were and still are perfectly fine and ok I think, here in this song it just defeated and made me amniable to feeling dour and de-plucked in this song.
Because otherwise it headed into that example of the instuments recording really really nicely. and I'm hit or miss regarding that sometimes. And entire songs have been completely ruined. Check "Dance Like a Human(e)" and most of that album was completely ruined and hardly listenable just due to the sound quality.
But that EJ200 Epiphone in this really just spliced through. It spliced and it was sharp, and kind of gritting and really just full bellowed full.
It was nice to have something sound the way you aimed it to... going off my memory and playing it back in mind, that is.
I'd be overwhelmed to do that now, to listen back in real time. it would be too personal. and having to remember between creator and created.. some idea of taking credit or taking fault, or taking 'explanative responsibility.'
Does the artist become a separate entity from, or a rightful holder to the credit or creating, when really its just the moment that crafts a song whether its a good one or a wonky one, or you hold it high on a good day, or dont want any association with it all on another. Well thankfully I think even for the way back stuff that feigned at being political, or had lyrics or moods, like that self-titled one way way back done with computer keyboards or on a college dorm, etc., that there's no regret really for learning and reaching out and trying.
and anyhow, percussively.. there's tambourines. There's piles of cardboard boxes being hit with drum sticks. All that kind of thing. And I'm learning and mixing the channels now and having fun with this altercation and communication with dropping out leads or subtracting a lot in order to form the sound. So what was intended was pulled off in those ways.
There's these huge mud puddles with oil slicks shimmering through in Cortland. And Sam and I hopped and didn't make it all the way. And toes and socks just smudged in this thick poison toxic Cortland mud. And wandering into some forest past buildings finally gone but those scathed buildings. And places so haunting and just sickening but also inspiring and beautiful, and places that arent lies at least or covered in excuses, and places that are what they are with no false advertising. They were raw and scenes and places and ongoings I'd seen straight forward were fucked up indeed.
This phrasing here with limericks or whatever in these songs rusted and stronged through. And no the singing wasn't on point. But I think I forced some people to listen to this one once or a few times, time to time. In car. on a decent enough speaker system. And its either you got it and the wrye and turmolous crooning got through, and the disdain of it was understood, or it was intolerable and the fear was there. From whoever was listening to it, too, with me there also, with it being freshly done. And trying to understand it. Listening and sharing it, and wondering if someone just had some soap icecream bar just swell whole into their mouth and they try to force some smile of just saying "yes, yes... this is... interesting" and hole that wincing until the damned song is over with.
I can understand that or see that, in a way.
But we'd skateboard and hop fences and go places we ain't weren't supposed to, you know.
You know the world had gone really square ever since then. Majorly so. Lots of like virtue repetance, and just feigning. So much feigning.
This was dragged arm sleeves all spotted up in rips and shitty sneakers gunked up. 60 Bucks, you know, Sixty Dollars, is about scraping up sixty dollars. Trying not to lose less. trying to get enough for what? A single ticket out of a really shitty enviornment, any last chance escape, and then hucking into something more from there.
It has its rhyhmes, and a format. It had an actual format, and a chorus, it's an actual song.
I'm not sure how often or if even ever, really, too much outside of this particular release, that songs done in the order or an actual legit format are fulfilled and played and written out. But I took time and somewhere there are scraps and lead ins to getting this one down. Most is without tight ropes, lots of the songs and expressions. Flowing or being a medium for music, but some planning was done for this and at least I think the idea of Americana and being a stray.. being a social fuck up and that kind of thing, was getting through okay with this song idea.
Just I hadn't hardened or calloused a certain character asset very much at that time but its fine and dates it, anyway. Like anything getting too kissy-wissy, at this point in time, I'm really just polar opposite of, for including in a songg. There's a few others I may re do just because of that.
4
. Hayleigh Hazel (pt. ii)
So Hayleigh Hazel (pt. ii) is the second instrumental here. It's suspected well enough and true that weaving instrumentals in and out of albums was a tactic ever since that whole self-released thing as Leemonster came to be. And as damned limited as that album was and rough around the edges and out of highschool just so it all was, the thinking was being applied there to try to ebb instrumentals throughout.
With little peaks and glints and hints of characters being referenced. Because I wanted this characters froom books and stories I was doing to have a vantage point into the sound scapes. Its more for Hayleigh Hazel to drop in and get a taste of the sound sphere or album that I was doing. Others like Dock Yawner or Tommy Langue and all these characters--- Aimee, a Fleck, the Fizzles (on other albums) can have their own perimeters to be a part of and to be a featurette in their own ways.
I'd expected so much more interest-wise from anyone at all though. and that seems to have spoiled exponentially, that, you know, dopping hints and puzzles and placements of characters weaving in via an experience - just doesn't matter at all, and people close to me in my life didnt even give all a fuck much of what I was trying to accomplish. And that's an extreme deflator. Likely why exponents of sardonic lyric and occassional madness come about at the nerve to even still create or write or release music.
Hayleigh Hazel is a character drawn and sketched and illustrated throughout the A Leme Harot time of releases with that bit mega shlew of ideas and projects.
And its naturely and wholesome in a sense and gentle and a sense of some upliftment.
5. Us Ones
It's feasible to the plastics and that plastic assocation of mass bodily and mental change. Even as a byafter of Poly Styrene from the band the X Ray Specs discussing what the future holds with aritifical substances and the consequences of such.
In some way this was a reference to a song by the band called Kiss. And its direct reference escapes me now, other than probably Motley Crue and other bands, the "we're with the boys" mentality. And probably GG Allin, as well, of that plastic and cheap leather imagery with guady rock music and so on. For the glamour rock and the sidewalk jaunters or whatever. It's a rousing and picking on that kind of mentality but also strewn in with DNA alterations and plastic microwave components stirred into fashion circles and chemical formation changes of the human being.
How it comes across now I will never have a clue as I refuse to really revisit it in the sake of listening to it.
6. Ode to Felina/Typewriter Assault
I had to, you know, drive around in this Chevorlet Lumina. It was alright until it fell apart. It had rusty bottoms and I think the frame had come undone.
No wait I think the brake lines went. or some lines went. maybe more than several kinds of lines. Something bunk had occurred. But I loaded it up with commandments and I loaded it up with things and utilities and superflued omens to the dashboard.
It had a remote start which was nice and especially nice for the winter time. Because I could hit the starter and have it toasty without having to slip and slide through ice glaciers right outside.
I don't really see shitty cars and bunk cars like that anymore. (Maybe I'm just not driving to the right places.) But it seems today and now that they're just handing out better bodied cars. Not better cars, mind you, just they arent in that condition which the Lumina was in.
anyway yeah I stand by Ode To Felina and Typewriter Assault.
I have a concern, now, about storing up as much instant coffee as I absolutely possibly can.
I recall things being more uglify pure then. Like what you saw was what you got. I liked that a lot. Things seem fishy and aritificial and so skewed to image-based now. Like, you better not make a false move, you know? You have to be 'in the in' and so perfectly postured and all that kind of thing.
Being a haggard and functional Chevy Lumina was ideal because it did what it could in every way. It had a multi disc changer. It stayed warm as hell. the seats weren't fake leather and you could soak into the plush and get a good nap there with multiple blankets pulled over. And people would turn their eye more often trying to be in a state or public park just for a night, swinging through, getting some sleep without a hassle.
7. Road for the Young.
Hell, this one, this song Road for the Young, you know.. if that song Shove Your Cellphone Up Your Asshole was removed, so it didnt brazely take attention off all of everything else--- Road for the Young made its point across, and got its sound intent across, an whatever was being set out to go - I'm just plain happy with this song. And if no one else in the world knows about it, and if people ever did and didn't like it at all- then that's all as fine as cherries to me, because I really am happy something bloomed or grew through. Because the guitar recorded really nice. And i ts ugly and pretty simultaneously.
Just frankly what needed to happen happened, and its like some of that gritty ass, storable instant coffee I was talking about storing up heaps of masses of. Or that moment of seeing Eerie just driving wandersome for hours and winding up there. And having some fresh tuna packet reachable, with tired eyes blinking, and being there as the only one. and stepping out of the car door and marching to the lake that just ushered in like some deluge mirage or derage meluge.
It's not poppy or pretty or seductive but its a travel song and its a -- I mean, well I never thought that venue of some poppy song... I could do that. it just never hit my realm of possibilities. But i cant imagine playing something the right or correct way or hitting some pretty note of voice or something. It'd be faking it or something by then. If anything I can convinced the guitar to do that but with voice, no, probably not.
Road for the Young, though--- I dont know what planet Im on. It'd be a good single to release but its like close to being so old now. I just make the stuff. Falling into how to hand off anything to anyone else and get other ears to hear it, I try a bit but its beyond me at this point. Its hard to stand behind a song because you are it, and it is also separate from you, and something is apt to speak on its own without the creator there in hind sight. So I'm a bit wishy washy and socially fucked when it does come to that.
So that's all very interesting then innit?
Well I'm not so entirely sure about that but
8. Hayleigh Hazel (Pt I)
You know, I did replace that EJ-200 Epiphone maybe 12 years later. With a cutaway, and with electronics. And it is a process of being played in. And since this Gizmo thing and now, I had been playing a lot more. And making music but not even releasing anything really at all since the 2012 gigantic shlew of songs and CDs and concept albums. Which was like, a double CD of A Leme Harot, and then another double with 'Triangle,' and 5 discs for Chameleon Shelter and on and on. Just put out all as a one-day finalization. Even from then until now I was playing or writing in a more comfortable or directed way. I'm not sure that's really represented at all and I'd been busied in life and hesitant, too, to really release or put anything out. But it's a lot different and maybe more comfortable with guitar structure and tone and word delivery.
There was too much that went on, too, with music rights and some gigantic headaches and trying to talk to real human beings and legal teams and all this and all that. For songs that didn't get any breath of outwardness or play anyhow. So having all this time and energy on reclaiming rights to stuff nobody was hearing anyway. And things going on in life just taking away from any access or clear window of even sifting through sound projects. But some things like Dance of the Guttersnipes and Gobekli Tepi, The Daredevil, It's AOK to E.M.P., and project ideas like Lavender Fields, Jester of Pandemia, Tommy Langue's Fun World and so many offshoots of character stories and the like... all those recipes of sound from that giant gap in time from this Gizmo thing, and handfuls of releases to that 2012 giant output. All the new music since that 2012 output, with the titles just mentioned above, would have aimed to have some growth in song idea. Just the worth of releasing anything was really impractical feeling. They're still yet to be out and released or anything. If I can be happy with editing them down and relaying some knowhow in my updating recording software and tools and all of those things, to find that groove of editing without major headaches and harware issues, then they can live on and be accessible.
What it was with Boneclad Gizmos was that the recording and editing was so straightthrough and pretty easy to do. And was raw and kind of brute in its own way.
Anyway there is nothing more horrifying than the social ego.
Aside from that:
9. Shove Your Cellphone Up Your Asshole
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