RE: Maserati: End Of Man (post-rock/krautrock/electronic)
Just checked out Dot Hacker. Pretty cool shoegaze/explosions in the sky/pinback kinda stuff. Little bit of notwist and def muse influence as well. Besides having the current chili peppers guitarist, I noticed Jonathan Hischke is in it ... he's in with Juan and my buddy Nick from Tera Melos ... think he played bass in the four piece incarnation of Hella, also? Anyhow, he's part of that whole scene that has given rise to pedalsandeffects.com whose youtube is just the raddest.
As far as strange mercy goes, brother we are on the same page. It's consistenly one of my mix references for anything in that sphere and the synth and electronic drum work on that record eclipse just about anything else I've come across. Fun fact: Annie demo'd the entire record herself in the drummer from Death Cab's studio. Dude had closed the place down for financial reasons but had the lease for an extra month. He gave it to annie, who evidently was way down the writers block wormhole after actor, for either free or not much at all (not sure about that part) ... and she basically sketched the entire thing out in isolation, then brought it to john who took it to the stratosphere. I can't help but feel like the absense of this method is what has made her work progressively less jaw dropping to me.... but .... well that's like saying houses of the holy is less of a record than zep IV. I celebrate the whole catalog but strange mercy is the be all end all electronic lady guitar pop record forevermore, forever, for all time.
Your office space reference killed me dead in the middle of all that.
Yessss to Jonathan Hischke [and Josh Klinghoffer]. For my money, that's the best Hella album. It's the only material I've heard by a band that gets into the same zone as The Mars Volta, even though it's totally distinct stylistically. Pedals and Effects is theeee life. Juan and Nick are very high in my pantheon of rad musicians, as is Annie Clark of course. That story is super cool, I think I heard a whisper of it but never the whole situation. I agree about the method, there is something to Actor and Strange Mercy that the followups didn't quite capture, although it's still stellar work. Also we might have to have a fistfight or something, because I'm all about Houses of the Holy.
I remember hearing a while back that Juan was trying to put together a group with Annie, Kimbra, and Deantoni Parks. One can only dream how insane that project would have been.
Shut. Up.
Annie kimbra Deatoni (TECHNOSELF!!!) and Juan would be the be all end all supergroup to end all be all end all supergroups.