Mystechs.com

Here’s what Ink 19 had to say about Escape From Planet Love:

I’m not exactly sure what to make of the Mystechs, but their highly entertaining disc, Escape From Planet Love, lifts its musical groove from the classic disco days, updating the rhythm from the 4/4 160 BPM to a more hip-hop sound. The result breathes fresh life into a form that had long ago died and gone to rock and roll heaven, leaving behind arid techno and that vaguely embarrassing black dance music that features robust women in spandex doing energetic pelvic thrusts.

The title tune “Escape From Planet Love” layers the nuevo-disco sound with some rapping like you’d hear from the Bloodhound Gang. This track leads into “Bitchslap!” with its macho posturing and Superfly precision. Then comes my fav, “Orgasmatron.” It’s sexually explicit, down and dirty, and after a few listens, you’ll be singing along.

After the gangsta-flavored “Ghettoplex15,” the rest of the disc is not quite as high class, but the Mystechs’ sound stays in the disco rap channel while pushing what these styles can do in the 21st century. I’m not ready to get my hair permed or put on the leisure suit, but maybe we were all wrong in 1979 — disco might NOT be dead.

And here’s what they had to say about Hot Tub O’ Blood:

Talk about bipolar bands. I recently reviewed another disc by this band (Escape From Planet Love) which sounded like a Superfly soundtrack. Here, Mystechs morph into a cocky Norwegian metal band like Turbo Negro. These guys must have closets full of costumes, ranging from sparkly hooker spandex to a Che Guevara drag of belts and berets. Sartorially and musically, they are a set of hysterically-talented musicians who can tackle any style and make a parody better than Spinal Tap. To hell with the artistic requirement that you do the same thing over and over until your fans are bored to death.

While not a fan of grinding guitars, I do like clever lyrics and nasty social commentary. I was bowled over by “Ground Pounder,” a commentary on the war that observes “the only way out of your shitty hometown is go to someone else’s shitty home town and blow it up.” True words, indeed. Other songs reach lower heights — “Out of Her Misery” advocates that you “kill your grandma” in a sub-basso satanic, torn vocal chord style. The creepiest track on the disk is “Knife in My Hand” which sounds like Meatloaf singing about an abusive relationship that ends in a gruesome murder.

These guys are fascinating — not only for their raw musical talent, but for their raw take on life. It’s not clear if any of this will make it on Clear Channel, but these guys ought to kick butt and take names on college radio.

None May Say, a blog devoted to self-published books and media, had this to say about our recently announced “hiatus” (God, I hate it when bands use that word):

The members of Mystechs recently announced that they are putting the band on hiatus while they head to Hollywood to pursue their moviemaking dreams. It is hard to argue with their logic: after ten albums in as many years with limited commercial success, they feel it is time, at least for a while, to focus on other creative endeavors.

Happily, while moving forward, the band members appear also to value their years in the music trenches. As one member comments in a recent blog entry, “I don’t think I’m being full of shit when I say I wouldn’t trade the Mystechs experience to play in 98% of the bands that get lots of hype or sell lots of records.” Nor have they foreclosed the possibility of returning to music some day, even as they focus for the moment on their filmmaking.

In the meantime, the band leaves behind a substantial musical legacy recorded in several different pop and rock styles. The earlier albums tend to be a bit hit or miss, although they include some songs I truly love, like the bouncy, clever political dance pop of “Shouldn’t Be Dancing” from Showtime at the Apocalypse (2002). But the more recent albums, each of which is a witty pastiche of a particular genre, are much more consistent: Dixie Inferno (2008) is a riotous take on southern rock, Hot Tub O’ Blood (2007) is an equally warped take on heavy metal, and Escape from Planet Love (2006), my personal favorite, takes on ’70s disco and funk.

Straddling the early- and late-period albums is 2005’s Warriors and Warlocks, a (very) loose concept album about using fantasy to the drudgeries of the workaday world. Any horror movie aficionado will appreciate “Zombie Mountain,” an exhilarating three-and-a-half minute zombie flick with a hillbilly twang. But the highlight is title track “Warriors and Warlocks,” about a suburbanite’s dream to leave behind her “white-bread paradise” for a more exciting world where her inner elven princess can fight dragons, devils and demons. Not a novel theme, certainly, but one that the Mystechs handle with charm, sympathy, and a nicely propulsive chorus.

More information about purchasing all of the Mystechs’ albums (including iTunes links for the more recent releases) can be found at their website.

That about sums it up, as far as we’re concerned.

Like many rappers and musicians before us, the Mystechs will be stepping out of the music game for a little while in order to pursue a career in Hollywood. For the rest of 2008, Derek and Emil will be focusing on production of our first non-Mystechs-related feature film, a heartwarming family comedy / gut-churning gore fest called The Landlord (not to be confused with the 1970 Beau Bridges movie of the same title). This is going to be a much bigger / more expensive project than our two Mystechs movies (though still no-budget by Hollywood standards) and will likely consume all of our free time from now until January 2009, leaving no time for recording and touring and whatnot.

That said, while the Mystechs have released an album a year for the past 10 years, most other bands take breaks of one or two years between records and tours, so even if it takes us a year or two to find time for making music again, it’ll be as if we never left the scene. And if it takes five or fifteen or fifty years… well, I think we’ve saved up at least that many days off. Who can say what will happen… maybe this is the end of the Mystechs ride, maybe we’ll find a free week in 2008 to hit the road again and come back next summer with yet another album, same as always… the only thing that’s certain is, for now, the movie takes priority.

Not to get sentimental, but as much as the critics have despised us and the industry ignored us, this band has meant a great deal to a small number of very cool people, and those people continue to mean a great deal to us. I don’t think I’m being full of shit when I say I wouldn’t trade the Mystechs experience to play in 98% of the bands that get lots of hype or sell lots of records (though I’ve often thought it’d be cooler to be in Man Man, Scissor Sisters, or Of Montreal). So thanks for listening, and please check this website every so often in case we play the occasional benefit show around Chicago or post the odd b-side to our MySpace page. It’s been a blast entertaining y’all with our music, and we hope to continue entertaining you a thousand times as much with our movies.

Speaking of which, if you’re interested in getting involved in the production of “The Landlord” - either as an actor or crew member - please contact us at me@massiveegoproductions.com. We’re looking for talented people to help out in every department, from the cast to digital FX to makeup, etc.

NASA thought the 200 billion ton Apophis asteroid had a 1 in 45,000 chance of colliding with Earth in 2036, until a German schoolboy pointed out some variables they failed to consider. The odds have now been adjusted to 1 in 450, or slightly better than those of being dealt a flush in five-card poker.

If the asteroid hits, it will land in the Atlantic Ocean, generating tsunamis that will annihilate coastal cities on both sides of the ocean (goodbye NYC, Boston, Miami, Rio de Janiero) and kick enough debris into the atmosphere to darken the sky “indefinitely”.

So that gives us, what… less than 24 years to get our shit together as a species?

Not to say “we told you so”, but…

Here’s the night-by-night recap:

***

3/20 PROVO UT: When we got to the baggage claim in Salt Lake City, we learned that the airline lost my guitar in transit. We told them to deliver it to the house we were playing at, though I wasn’t sure it would arrive before we were forced to leave town. Amazingly, it showed up exactly two minutes before our set began, leaving me with mere seconds to tune it up and start rocking out. People went nuts, much merchandise was sold, much beer was ingested. Good times.

3/21 ST. GEORGE, UT: Digital Lov’s 1987 Chevy Beauville van overheated on a hill somewhere in the southern Utah desert, which got me a tad worried as to whether or not we’d find ourselves needing a tow truck at some inconvenient point in the tour. When we arrived in Saint George, the town was having its arts and crafts fair, with a lot of people selling paintings of ducks and landscapes. We played an 600-capacity venue for about 16 people, and I think they had our main mix running into the channel for the kick drum mic, which would explain why it sounded like a malfunctioning walkie talkie submerged in a fish tank. At the end of the night, they gave us some stale nachos and cold cheese for payment. Not having anywhere in town to stay, we decided we were better off driving to Vegas and getting a fleabag motel room there than hanging around in Utah. After checking into the Golden Spike, a moldy shithole on the edge of the old strip, I went out and blew $50 of my own money at the blackjack tables. Fortunately, I won back $20 the following morning, which I used to pay for a nasty breakfast buffet at the 4 Queens Casino.

3/22 LAKE FOREST, CA: Nobody told us that we’d be playing a wedding reception. Well, not a reception exactly, but a reception after-party for the bride and groom and a few close friends. They all got up and danced, and even bought some merch afterwards. The owner liked the show, too, and gave me half a bottle of whiskey to finish off, which left me pretty drunk. Unfortunately, nobody offered us a place to crash, so we wound up flopping at a Motel 6 in a seedy part of town, which was the beginning of the next day’s misadventures…

3/23 FRESNO, CA: The events of this day were detialed in a previous post, but to recap: upon awaking, we found that the lock on the door of our van had been bashed open with a screwdriver, and that someone had cracked the dashboard and begun fiddling with the ignition before abandoning the task for reasons unknown. Later in the day, I almost got a ticket for rolling several feet past a stop sign on a steep hill, but the cop let us off with a warning. At the venue, there was a PCP-crazed old skinhead walking around calling everyone “faggots” and threatening to rip our heads off. He tried to start a fight with me, but I didn’t take the bait.

On the plus side, we got to see the incredible Brian Kenney Fresno and his Warr Guitar, and our own sets went pretty darn well.

3/24 STOCKTON, CA: The Blackwater Cafe is a nice little coffee shop full of really nice punk and hippie folks of all ages. Middagh, the promoter who booked us there, is super cool. As far as the show went, it was all a small-time band could reasonably ask for on a Monday night during the school year, which is to say the handful of people present loved it and bought enough stuff to cover our gas to the next town.

3/25 SALEM, OR: The Space is a cute little storefront venue run by some really cool people. To my surprise, they actually have a few ravers up there… perhaps that endangered subculture’s on the verge of a comeback? Everyone danced, so we just left the “stage” area and joined them, until you really couldn’t tell where the show ended and the audience began. Fun stuff.

3/26 PORTLAND, OR: Portland rules. Powell’s is the greatest bookstore on the planet (with apologies to Recycled Books in Denton, TX). Berbati’s Pan is a great venue with killer sound. While the room was a tad too big for us, it was just crowded enough not to feel like an empty cave. Afterwards, Ehren McGhehey (a.k.a. “Danger Ehren”) from Jackass walked up, gave us props, and bought a ton of shit, which was pretty cool.

3/27 OLYMPIA, WA: Despite being a hole in the wall that doesn’t charge admission or pay bands, with a tiny back room for shows and a half-destroyed PA system, Le Voyeur is something of a legend on the indie circuit and lots of really good (or at least really hyped) bands make a point of stopping there on tour. But, alas, whatever magic it may possess wasn’t happening for us that night. Hardly anyone, customer or staff, set foot in the back room for most of the night, with the exception of three very drunk gay boys who came back and started dancing like crazy once they heard the beat of “Honky Tonk Homo” drift into the main bar. Nick found some shattered fragments of a clay jar in a corner, and started hurling them into the floor, sending dust everywhere. At the end of the night, the bartender came back and saw the beer cans and pottery dust all over the floor, and lectured us for “trashing” and “disrespecting” the place, as if we’d just pissed on the indie rock Alamo. Whatever. We didn’t break anything that wasn’t already broken, and the room could use a sweeping, anyway. New subject…

3/28 – SPOKANE, WA: I’m still not sure what went wrong. Our previous two visits to Spokane went wonderfully, and this one promised to be even better. When we arrived at the venue, promoter excitedly showed us the full-page write up we’d received in one of the local newspapers, plus the spotlight we’d received in the other. People had been buzzing about the show for weeks, the posters had drawn lots of attention, and everything seemed lined up for a grand slam.

Except… almost nobody came. All involved were baffled. Theories were floated. Perhaps it was the freak late-March snowstorm raging outside. Perhaps it was the big show at the bar down the street. Perhaps it was just one of those things.

Still, thanks to the fans who did make it out. We love y’all.

3/29 – BOISE, ID: As we left Spokane, our van spun out and did a 270۫ going up an icy hill towards the highway ramp. Though no one was hurt, we were all thoroughly spooked, not knowing if we’d make it to Boise alive. Graciously, the highway turned out to be much better plowed than the city streets, and the snow didn’t extend very far beyond the valley where Spokane is located.

Our show in Boise was a blast. With the exception of a few redneck schmucks in the back of the club (one of whom called me a “fag” and tried to start a fight), everyone got up and danced from start to finish. Afterwards, the audience showered us with love and the staff got us blitzed on free booze, then the promoter took us across the street to the local dance club where we partied the rest of the night away. If not for the fact that I left my jacket (and cell phone, and house keys) in the bar we played at, it would’ve been the perfect evening. Oh well… hopefully they’ll turn up in their lost and found, and all will be well in the world again.

***

That’s about it. Thanks to Digital Lov, Chrissey, the Passey fam, Glen, Devil’s Cuntry Rock, the Frontier Airlines delivery dude, the bike cops in Vegas who directed us to the Golden Spike, the staff at Boscoe’s, Mary, whoever scared away that car thief, the cops who let us off the hook, Brian Kenney Fresno, Audi, Apple Nasty, Middagh, Josh and Molly, Saucy Yoda, all the Feast of Fools fans, M.J. Cummins, Danger Ehren, Gino & the Gentry, Electric Children, our host in Seattle (sorry, can’t recall the name), Isamu Jordan, Spokane 7, Ryan, Justin, Gina, everyone who came out to the shows, and anyone I may have forgotten.

Easter Sunday was a day of disasters miraculously avoided.

First, upon awaking in our Motel 6 on the wrong side of the freeway just south of Los Angeles, we found that the lock on the door of our van had been bashed open with a screwdriver, and that someone had cracked the dashboard and begun fiddling with the ignition. They were pretty close to having it running when, it would seem, they gave up and took off. Were they interrupted by a passer-by or was it divine intervention? Given what happened later in the day, I’m thinking the latter.

After making sure nothing was actually stolen from our vehicle, we headed north towards Fresno. While making a gas stop, I misjudged the steepness of a hill we were driving down and rolled several feet past a stop sign. A county sheriff saw it and pulled us over. Though at first I slumped despairingly over the steering wheel, not looking forward to an expensive ticket on top of that morning’s scare, we were all relieved when the sheriff came back and let us off with a warning. Was it the Easter spirit that motivated his mercy? Who knows.

Finally, while we were loading into the venue in Fresno, a very ugly, very muscular, very psychotic old skinhead walked into the building and started getting in the faces of us and the staff, calling us “faggots” and threatening to rip our heads off. At one point he gave me a shove and ran the edge of his hand across my chest to illustrate how he was going to evicerate me. In case you’re wondering why, with all my martial arts training and whatnot, I didn’t clean the guy’s clock, allow me to add that he was walking around on a broken ankle, and didn’t seem too bothered that it had swollen to the size of a coconut. I figured it wasn’t worth messing with a presumably PCP-enhanced lunatic unless he actually tried to punch, grab, or bite me. However, the nutcase eventually walked off without incident to terrorize some other establishment. Was it the whim of a madman or did Jesus lead him away? You be the judge.

Just like the story of the crucifixtion and resurrection, our weird tale can be filed in the “all’s well that ends well” folder, as we had a rocking show in Fresno that night and were offered lodging by our new friends in the band Apple Nasty, whose wi-fi I’m currently pirating in order to post this for y’all.

Happy Easter to all y’all!

Since we won’t have a new DVD to shill on the upcoming tour, we’ve put together a remixes & rarities compilation, “$5 Buffet”. There’s fifteen remixes, five of which have never appeared on CD before plus nine others taken from our various remix EPs, movies, and compilations. Best of all, while it’ll be available for $5 with the purchase of anything else at our shows, you can also order it now, online, for a mere $7.50 (the extra $2.50 is for shipping and an envelope).

Here’s the track list:

1. Football Hero [Arimidex remix by Evarial, part 1]
2. Disco Hammer [I Openly Piss On Toilet Seats Remix by Hansel]
3. Bitchslap! [Miami Thong Snap Remix by Nagasaki Gold feat. Billy BA]
4. Mecha Jesus Walks [remixed by Books On Tape]
5. Honky Tonk Homo [Super Mario Lovers Remix by Alex Atchley]
6. Tryouts for the Human Race [Mael/Moroder/Mael]
7. Disco Hammer [Rent-A-Remix by Nagasaki Gold]
8. Shake What Darwin Gave ‘Ya
9. Football Hero [Guts & Balls remix by Nagasaki Gold feat. Billy BA]
10. Hearts & Chains [Unchained Harmony remix]
11. The Way Things Go [D. Cain]
12. Disco Hammer [Lightning Rod remix by Avenpitch]
13. Robot Jerks from the Planet Fuck You
14. Mecha Jesus [135 CG Explosions remix by Nic Heidt]
15. Football Hero [Arimidex remix by Evarial, part 2]
16. Swamp Thang [Swamp Gas Remix by MC Trachiotomy]

And here’s a button you can click to buy it:

If you think you’re man (or woman) enough to tame the bucking dancefloor bronco that is the Mystechs’ new single “Honky Tonk Homo”, then download this ZIP file with the vocal tracks and MIDI and have at it!

Honky Tonk Homo Remix Tracks (69)

(it’s a fat 48 MB, so please be patient)

The tempo is 124 bpm. The audio files should line up just fine if you insert them all at “zero”.

We’d prefer the results as a 24-bit, unmastered .WAV file. 16-bit is OK. MP3s and mastered files not so OK. Feel free to email us if you’re not quite sure what that means or how to get it in that format.

And, in case you haven’t heard the original:

“Honky Tonk Homo”

When you get done, email us at mystechs@yahoo.com so we can tell you where to mail/upload it!

Another year, another album, another West Coast tour…

This year we’ll be visiting the following cities with DigitalLov:

Thurs. 3/20 - Provo, UT @ Glen Manor (all ages punk rock house party)
Fri. 3/21 - St. George, UT @ The Electric Ballroom (all ages)
Sat. 3/20 - Still working on something for Southern CA
Sun. 3/21 - Fresno, CA @ Club Fred (21+)
Mon. 3/22 - Stockton, CA @ Blackwater Cafe (all ages)
Tue. 3/23 - Salem, OR @ The Space (all ages)
Wed. 3/24 - Portland, OR @ Berbati’s Pan (all ages)
Thurs. 3/20 - Olympia, WA @ Le Voyeur (21+, free)
Fri. 3/21 - Spokane, WA @ Empyrean (all ages, late show)
Sat. 3/22 - Boise, ID @ The Bouquet (21+)

For those of you under-21 people in Boise who emailed us and DigitalLov about not being able to go to the Bouquet show, we’re working on an all-ages in-store performance at a nearby record store earlier in the evening. Stay tuned.