Posted on 05-10-10
New D. Rider Video
Posted on 01-30-10
Check out the new video by D. Rider for their song "Touchy."
As the band puts it:
"oily and rich for human skull. these are men and women to enjoy deluxe human feeling! go."
Racebannon's Acid or Blood Available on Vinyl for the First Time!
Posted on 11-24-09
This month Tizona released the vinyl version of Racebannon's "well-bred bastard rock" album Acid or Blood. Lauded by many at the time of its original release, the band finally sees its noisy/sludgy/thrash post-hardcore mind-bender on the high quality vinyl it deserves. The same artwork that Vice Magazine once awarded album cover of the month remains to shock and awe the unsuspecting youths and all the blood one band can produce covers the insert. The actual vinyl is white and encourages the listener to splatter their own blood on it to make a truly unique canvas.
Back when the CD came out Decible wrote, "total genre gangbang with metal, hardcore, sludge and art-rock all getting chances to unload...with drums like a zombie pounding on your roof, and guitar sounds that are either caterwauls of feedback or riffs heavy enough to sting your gums." The same gangbang exists but in a more fetishized package. Spill blood. Take acid. Watch the You Tube.
Great quality You Tube clip from last year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMkoLRh8v4I
A couple videos from Culture Shock 2007 in Bloomington, Indiana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sM2sRo2Qg4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMB2uLwnjDo
Two Lane Blacktop-type Lynch video to a singles collection from 2003
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wn69AVSZIc
"Genuinely Scary Band"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVg6HNA2BE
People Still Talking D. Rider
Posted on 08-05-09
....Tiny Mix Tapes says....
"Unexpectedly, after a few spins through Mother of Curses, one comes to the baffling realization that, despite the cacophony of traditional and unconventional ?instruments? (magic markers, spray cans), the vocals are contrarily clean, concise, and comprehensible. The music suggests that there should be a barrage of distorted screaming or vocodered barfing, but instead everything is discernible. The expounded messages tell tales of contempt for the world, but even when not so explicitly stated, you can sense D. Rider raging against everything from environmental neglect to government futility and misdeeds to our consumer culture. ?Feel? is everything on this album."
...And Prefix busts out the measuring stick.
"When that bass comes in to kick dirt in yer face into ?Dew Claw Don?t Claw,? we know what we?re gonna get for the next six minutes. Humming synth noises and stuttering kick-snare oscillate throughout, maintaining the squint-inducing, off-putting tension at a low boil. ?Touchy? is equally tense, its throbbing bass and whispered chorus, ?I can be a cowboy when you touch it/ Touch it/ You can be a princess when you touch it/ Touch it? succeeding at the sexy/creepy combo where Puscifer failed. Mother of Curses is mood music for American Psycho characters."
Todd Rittmann shows Chicago Public Radio the goods...
Posted on 08-05-09
"Todd Rittmann has been a fixture of Chicago's underground music scene for more than a decade. He made a name for himself in the notable avant garde rock outfit U.S. Maple. D. Rider is his newest project and it?s one that has Rittmann being nearly a one-man band in his basement studio. WBEZ?s Liz Bustamante has the story."
Stream the audio here:
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=35836
D. Rider with The Eternals and Sadhu Sadhu at The Hideout
Posted on 07-28-09
This Friday, July 30th, D. Rider will return to The Hideout once again! Last time they played a sold out show with Cheer-Accident that doubled as a record release party for "Mother Of Curses." It was an all-around great night. This time D. Rider will be joining Chicago Reader favorites The Eternals and the intense psych band Sadhu Sadhu.
A totally different vibe is expected this time around so make sure to show up early and find us at the merch table to pick up a copy of Mother Of Curses.
The Show starts at 9pm. 1354 W Wabansia Chicago IL 60622
D. Rider in High Definition
Posted on 04-29-09
Mike Carney and Stacey Goldschmidt shot some live footage of D. Rider performing "Body To Body (To Body)" off Tizona003's Mother Of Curses and a new track called "Motion and Heat (for Gary Sinise)." The two videos are in high definition and streaming on D. Rider's MySpace page right now.
Free D. Rider Show
Posted on 04-23-09
As a part of the Empty Bottle's Free Monday's series, D. Rider will be playing a free show at the venue on 4.27.09. Joining them on the bill are Gold and Kitty Rhombus.
"Mother Of Curses" Released
Posted on 02-18-09
D. Rider's "Mother Of Curses" saw its official release this week and many a respected critic found time to praise its worth. Below are some samples and excerpts from various publications:
"And Mother Of Curses finds Rittmann checking much of his affinity for musical abstraction and disjointedness at the door as he and his associates dole out a batch of tunes spooled on skulking basslines, some fractured Crazy Horse riffage, and heavy rhythms that lurch and lunge against the moorings? On the vocals, Rittmann's often in trademark form -- sometimes singing as if he had developed an entire book of style from the fragmented, schizoid narrative that Bowie laid down on "Breaking Glass," at others yammering about who-knows-what like David Yow on an amyl nitrate bender."
-Gapers Block
"Pieced together on cassettes, phones, reel-to-reel tape and other past-it gear, Mother of Curses is a hefty slice of junk science for your ears."
-Wired
"The result is a slinky, spiky, minimalist groove, clanking like some kind of extinct, rusty machinery. Lyrics are impressionistic, insinuated over heaving rhythms in not-quite-linear blurts of imagery, but they seem to consider the place of music in times of conflict. "Is the west treating you right?" asks Rittman in the slack funk zombie march of "Dew Claw Don't Claw. "Should they turn down the war / for you to enjoy your noise / in peace and silence?" How, it seems to ask, can anyone take art or music seriously when civilization has gone into a nosedive from which it may never recover?
War imagery turns up throughout the album, in the skittery-rhythmed "Body to Body (to Body)" and the ambiguously lovely "Welcome Out" (which seems to consider the aftermath of conflict or perhaps just death). But you could also read concerns about the environment into "Dear Blocks." Rittman repeatedly observes that "as it kills its hostess / the parasite does its best," a metaphor that fits our late, feeble efforts to contain global warming. You could, naturally, ignore all this and simply concentrate on the menace, the hiss and scratch and discord of the music itself, which is plenty disquieting on its own.
Dark and threatening as it is, Mother of Curses isn't without moments of tranquility ("Welcome Out") and even humor. "Touchy" puts a clanking no wave bass under the disc's most body-moving cadence, with Rittman murmuring insinuations about all the things you can be if you "touch it" (a cowboy, a princess, etc.). The moment of levity seems to suggest, if we're all going to die anyway, why not get together for a last-second hook-up? Better hurry, though, because it's pretty getting dark out there."
-Jennifer Kelly, Dusted
"Todd Rittmann wants to destroy rock music."
-Alyssa Vincent, HEAVEmedia
"The songs here really are not songs in a traditional verse, chorus, verse sense. Instead, they're huge vast areas of open music that wander around aimlessly hoping for signs of life as their noise and static filled brains slowly drift into insanity. This is disturbing stuff that will not sit well with most people. However, if you've ever found yourself drawn to bands like Earth or the Melvins, Mother of Curses will be the most exciting thing you hear all year."
-Paul POP! First Coast News
D. Rider Record Release Show at The Hideout
Posted on 02-06-09
D. Rider's "Mother Of Curses" will soon be available! February 17th to be exact. To celebrate, The Hideout is hosting a record release show on Friday, February 13th. Joining them on the bill will be Cheer Accident and Jessica Fogle. Tickets are available online through the Hideout's website or they can be purchased the day of the show. The track "Body To Body (to Body)" is streaming on the Chicago Independent Distribution website right now. Check it out and see you at the show!
New Projects in 2009
Posted on 01-14-09
Tizona Records will release several new projects in 2009. They include Japanese noise artist Merzbow's remix of an entire Racebannon record into two 9:36 tracks, a new disc from US Maple guitarist Mark Shippy and drummer Pat Samson with Matt Carson under the name Miracle Condition, and reissues from Bellafea and Racebannon. A proper recording is also under way stemming from the recent collaborations among the artists known as Wreckmeiser Harmonies.
Todd Rittman of U.S. Maple & Singer forms D. Rider. New album out 2/17 on Tizona Records
Posted on 11-04-08
D. Rider is a new rock band founded and fronted by guitarist/singer Todd Albert Rittmann. Founding member of U. S. Maple, Singer (both Drag City), and Robert Johnson and the Browns, T. Rittmann is also an occasional member of Cheer-Accident and has played with many other avant-music notables including cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and Rhys Chatham. In March of 2008 Todd recruited a 5-piece band to perform some songs he was working on. The lineup included keyboardist/cornet player Andrea Faught, who also works with Cheer-Accident, and saxophonist/singer Noah Tabakin, who is a member of punk marching band, Mucca Pazza. This early show the group performed was enough to convince Rittmann, Faught and Tabakin that they should continue to make music together and collaborate on some recorded material. These songs have become the album Mother of Curses, which will be released on February 17th on Tizona Records.