Animal Nightmares World Premiere ! : The Peter Lynch short film Animal Nightmares will have it's world premiere at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival ! Peter loosely based this film on the song "What Are You Waving To Me For" off the debut Logo Hoax record. I did a bunch of animated realities for the film as well. For all the latest info go to the Film section of this site and follow the link. You can find the press release and stills from the short. Here are some screening dates :

First Screening : Thursday Sept. 11th, 6:30pm, R.O.M.
Repeat Screening : Saturday Sept. 13th, 9:45 am, Varsity 7
Industry Screening : Sunday Sept. 7th, 2:30 pm, Varsity 7

Cute Trauma : Please check out this fine passage by Lee Henderson, author of The Broken Record Technique. Lee saw the Friday the 13th black and white broadcast (hoax !) of the Quiting Patterns video on the Wedge. I'm told the true colour version will be airing in the next few weeks. Lee will also be writing a spotlight on Logo Hoax in Toro Magazine for it's August issue. The passage.

Contrived : Get To Your Stations ! The Hoax is currently animating and directing a video for the great east coast band Contrived out on Dependent. It's a wicked song off Pursuit of Plots. The hum of every number added at once.

o9 Church of the Ghetto P.C. : I just completed the artwork for the o9 record Church of the Ghetto P.C. out on Schematic from Miami. It's a fantastic label, with great stuff from the likes of Otto Von Schirach and Phoenicia. This was one of my favourite design projects to date. The record is a pretty heavy trip, gatefold double vinyl, gold plated and everything. Glimpse

How Far Out Are You ? : Brainchild of cult manchild Steve Munday, "How Far Out Are You" is a compendeum of everything that is wrong. You can hear it in the warbled voices. Steve has also done videos for Hawaii, By Divine Right and Junior Blue. Here's some Hoax bumpers. Snail-- Moon-- Stork

 

Only to be driven further underground.

The Rock of Jason Loewenstein : We recently bore witness to one of the most memorable rock shows in American/Canadian border history. Jason Loewenstein, of Sebadoh fame, played a small show at the Bug Jar in Rochester, NY. This tornado struck hard, and imploded the tiny room. The band was engulfed in flames, and here are the pictures to prove it. His record is a rock masterpiece, sculpted solely from his own hands.

Logo Hoax Site Update : After a span of diverse projects, outlandish travels, earthly careening and the touching of the monolith, the Logo Hoax website is fit for an update. A new Film section is online, with the first video "Quiting Patterns" available for download. The video was animated and directed by Logo Hoax. Video stills are also available. The Poster section has been updated with a number of the latest posters designed by Logo Hoax. The Photo section now includes an exciting new series of photos. Two new t-shirt designs are available in the Store section, along with the CD and art prints for sale. Some new links have been added to the Links page in the Info section. Feel free to browse. Please stay tuned to this website for updates from the future, sent via ghosts.

Strip Maul Records : Strip Maul Records will be releasing a new series of EPs from artists of upmost talent who get the picture. Expect releases from Steve Munday, Smocks, J. Joly, Decoy, Logo Hoax, and many others. These desired documents will soon be available from the trunk of this site.

CD Availability : If you would like to purchase the Logo Hoax debut CD, you can get it at Rotate This, Soundscapes and CD Replay ( so far ). You can also order it direct from me if you are outside Toronto ( in Store section ).

Logo Hoax CD Reviews :

"The name reads like that of an anti-G8 Summit protester's hardcore side band, but Logo Hoax -- the home-studio project of local producer Paul Watson -- isn't so much a call to deface billboards and blow up televisions as it is an audio analogue of a sensory-overloaded brain on the verge of a complete synapse meltdown, the first acid casualty of the 500-channel universe. In other words, this shit's really fucked up, feeding the most impenetrable, discordant elements of early-'90s indie-rock (Royal Trux's double-album mind-fuck Twin Infinities figures large here) through the devious electro-assassin aesthetic of Come to Daddy-era Aphex Twin. It's enough to provoke seizures even in non-epileptics, but Watson's chaotic collages are still built on pop structures: weepy guitar lines rise out of the multi-layered mayhem to bring some sweetness to the surface, and Watson's rhythmic use of dissonance is just as liable to make you dance as wince.". . . Stuart Berman - EYE Magazine . . . . * * * *

"In the wake of Warp's Satanstornade release, Planet-µ's carpet-bombing of Venetian Snares records and Kevin Drumm's Sheer Hellish Miasma on Mego, abstract noise has hit a new major threshold -- and what else should satisfy an intelligent but terror-stricken post nine-eleven avant-consumer? Whether or not it was intentional, the labels have taken action against the corrosive apathy of conservative-fearing liberal minds in the minutes before a cash flow war with the Middle East, and the response is total aural violence. Any axis of evil has its roots in the grass. A dose of the hardest of hardcore art is needed right now. When morbid thoughts are turned to morbid noise, the extraction is far more powerful than any CNN-induced communal catharsis or architectural pandering to an architectural disaster.

What's this got to do with Logo Hoax? I'm not claiming that any of these artists are reacting against terrorism, but more my point is that art made of destruction is a powerful (and peacefully) anarchistic statement in the wake of North America's most phenomenal destruction of private property. And a torrential sonic onslaught is what Toronto visual artist Paul Watson has bomb-dropped on the public. But the world is ready. Watson is bum-rushing the digital scene with a folk implosion of his own -- a one-man revolution in the glitch-rock hybrid. His unconventional sound is the fat suppository we've got to cram, like a scud missile bactracking its way down George W. Bush's sour pink rictus. Logo Hoax's cracked-out album was released on Watson's own label, and the guy is a one-man production company with an awe-inspiring array of computer-collaged poster art that's so ambiguously beautiful, the mind boggles at the sight. His videos (all this is available for a look-see at his web site) are paintings on the move, like the early work of David Lynch, where image and sound frustrate and mate, causing retina exhaustion and ear canal imbalance. The shit is so amazing you'll wish you could live in it. Watson creates utopias of horrible consequence, gorillas and women married on the tip of a tongue, that kind of thing. His posters have helped promote bands like Sebadoh and the Flaming Lips when they toured Toronto, and any musician could only be so lucky to have him on board. His artwork has more range, and a more intelligent sense of humor, than that of Frank Kozik, once-upon-a-time America's favorite indie rock artist, and his science book sepias and stunning juxtapositions makes Watson one of Canada's greatest poster artists.

This is Watson's first attempt the bring the noise to his visual armour. The album begins with "What Are You Waving to Me For", a frothy head of glitched guitar, an abstract and chilly track reminiscent of the digital burn of Fennesz and possibly Jim O'Rourke's challenging, Beckett-inspired hurdy gurdy work Happy Days. Like the art, Logo Hoax's music is an inventive collection of organic sources processed via Satanic computer applications, roasted over a ProTools hellfire and micturated back on humankind. I think about Sonic Youth at their most abstract, Oval at his most musical and Merzbow at his most accessible -- artists whose music has informed Logo Hoax to make this frightening and idiosyncratic freak out. The jaw-dropping "Quiting Patterns" is pure digital hardcore, like Alec Empire gone to Kensington market to fuck with the stuffed-up heads of Toronto's fake-ass bohemians. The track is goddamn outstanding.

But it's not an electronic album in the expected sense, and avoids many pitfalls of the genre; most notably, Logo Hoax lacks the technological fetishism so overwhelming to the scene. His music is as loosely psychedelic as a Super Roots, with a sense of humor far more grim than any Boredoms album has ever known. Imagine if Portastatic was a laptop project and you'll get a bit of the sense of nihilistic noise pressured up against the super chunks of indie rock expertise. The guitar is everywhere on this record, live and uncorrupted as often as it is pulverized and attenuated by Apple-friendly software. The punk rock vocals splattered all over the songs, especially on tracks like "Deflect, or Destroy", are going to give early Vinyl Communications fans a rush of nostalgia for Chula Vista blitzkrieg boppers Tit Wrench. Like Boards of Canada's Twoism, this phenomenal record is destined to become one of those wonderfully rare self-released albums at the start of a majorly impressive career." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lee Henderson

"The electronic scene is constantly being flooded with new material, and the majority of it isn't that original (or good, for that matter.)  But Logo Hoax, well he (Paul Watson) is out to make a difference.  One listen to this, his debut album, should clear out any doubts you may have. With a style somewhat akin to the likes of Venetian Snares and co., Logo Hoax knows how to please the discriminating electronica junkie.  Right from the opening guitar bit of "What Are You Waving To Me For," you can see you've got a good ride ahead of you. "Copies of the Master" is a nice, fast-paced mix of beats, melodies and vicious vocals.  "75% Quiet" is a creepy, moody soundscape that is at once atmospheric and accessible.  "Winslow," meanwhile, is the funkiest, most hip-shaking slice of electronic music to emerge in a long while - it's got a set of wicked beats and bass that just won't quit.  "Quiting Patterns" seems a bit weak at first, but is actually a fantastic, powerful track that has a bit in common with the DHR staple. The use of guitars in many of Logo Hoax's tracks is a very good choice, and it adds depth to pieces like "Deflect, or Destroy" and "Having Said That."  Watson's mixture of electronic elements and pop melodies works magically, and satisfies both your dancing and melodic requirements.  And to top it all off, this album's got some fantastic cover art designed by Paul himself." . . . Matt Shimmer indieville.com

"Too often computers are used to make music that sounds like it wasn't made with a computer. The fancy box is restricted to being a mirror to reality, capturing sound as an exact replica of how you imagine it sounds out in the world. The instruments remain in the hands of the musicians and the recording conceits are transparent. But those who capitalize on the trans-dimensional fuckedupness of computer sound editing are truly exploiting the powers of digital editing and using the tool as it should be. Referring to cyberspace seems kinda old hat but it's the necessary vision to explain how a computer can realize the potential of recorded music. The recording studio is a cramped box where the laws of physics and acoustics and anatomy and mechanics still apply. Once the sounds have entered the computer, if they haven't been created there in the first place, the rulebook goes out the window and no sound is taboo. It's like working in a vacuum, the air that surrounds each individual sound maker in the studio is sucked away, leaving more room to cram an unnatural array of sounds in one space, on one track. There are those musics that suffer from the cold isolation of digital recording. This is true. But there is also music of such density, materiality and detail that it can only be imagined as ones and zeros. Drum and bass would never have existed without the computer. Neither would Logo Hoax. This home studio project eviscerates boundaries, reveling in sound, overstimulating the ears at that line when pleasure and pain shake hands. Too erratic for the dance floor, never to be seen on stage, this is uneasy listening music for the concurrently agitated." . . .Terence Dick - Broken Pencil

"Nothing compact about this disc. Part of my brain...the part that I usually use for telling myself to wash, to eat, to fish, to not handle poisonous snakes...well oddly enough, even that part was enriched, like a hot iron on a cold magnet, upon listening to your beautiful ugly musical release. Congratulations, you will upset many children and make their mothers cry great huge tears of love lost, like any great artist should. Amazing collection of music...I laughed, I cried, I shit my pants, I hid in a drawer." CG

"Logo Hoax crackles with a raw verve and sheer nervous energy. This is an auspicious debut by the multi-talented Paul Watson, who really creates a wonderful musical world full of play and sometimes sheer industrial craziness. Logo Hoax has a sense of urgency so missing in so much of the overproduced music of today. It gets right down to it and cuts the crap. It's not afraid to assault you with its sometimes jagged dissonant edge or seduce you with its vivid graphic anthems. This music gives a haunting call from a distant mythic past with a primal scream that shocks your inner monkey from the dark side of Disneyland. It has the song of innocence of a young boy emerging from the goo and darkness of the machine. It's a delirious mania that screeches and turns the electroworld on it's ear. The Hoax has a kick ass jam with orgiastic beats that dance in your head as much as they hit you in your jelly roll." . . . Peter Lynch - Filmmaker

"If a case for the marriage of genius and insanity needed a calling card it would be Logo Hoax's debut album. Subversive in it's originality this album fixes sonic cubbyholes to stash spectrums of emotion. Disallusionment and intrigue couple well in tracks like "Having Said That" and "Quiting Patterns", while resentment and hope stare down in "75% Quiet". Expansive in it's subtleties, the impatient wonderment of "Winslow" or the clarivoyant and crystalline "Pieces of Treaties" shine among the mix. Celebrate your cultural escaping and heed the liner's advice, headphones in this case really do help resolve the argument." . . . DW - Hammer

Toronto Humane Society : Thanks for everyone's support at the Logo Hoax CD Release/Gallery show on July 28. Strip Maul Records has made a donation of $250.00 to the Toronto Humane Society with proceeds from the show. Like Bob Barker says, please have your pet spayed or neutered