{"id":425,"date":"2010-02-04T09:55:42","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T15:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=425"},"modified":"2010-02-04T09:55:42","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T15:55:42","slug":"j-r-hill-exists-your-argument-is-invalid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2010\/02\/04\/j-r-hill-exists-your-argument-is-invalid\/","title":{"rendered":"J.R. Hill Exists; Your Argument Is Invalid"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Taylor Burgess<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"JRHill\"<\/p>\n

In his disorderly Wolseley basement named the Mortfell Oktorium Studio, J.R. Hill has been focusing on recording and playing shows here in Winnipeg. \u201cI don\u2019t really wanna go on tour again unless I know that I won\u2019t lose thousands of dollars, because I can\u2019t afford it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Guitar pedals, a stuffed monkey, a pink flamingo, cardboard houses and utter amounts of crap looked like they were going to fall off the tin shelves at any minute. \u201cLike in the summer, I lost, like 1,500 bucks. I just finished paying it off last month.\u201d<\/p>\n

The math didn\u2019t add up: back in November, J.R. Hill undertook the psychotic challenge of making a 20-minute album by himself in just two days\u2014and then he released it on his website, free of charge. And after that, he did another six albums with the same expediency, all of them also free. Together, the seven albums are known as Malphor: Mono Octopi<\/em>. They are download-only, and are currently up on Hill\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole thing just started off on a whim. I recorded an album in two days, because I wanted to try and do it,\u201d Hill said. \u201cWell, I have tried to do it many times before, but this is the first time when I feel like my abilities have caught up to what I have had in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

But why would he give so much music away for free when there\u2019s a potential profit to be made? \u201cI dunno,\u201d he said, his back to the wood-paneled wall, \u201cno one buys my records anyway.\u201d The statement stings, but it\u2019s a painful and slow world for Winnipeg musicians who aim outside of the established folk, punk, and metal scenes.<\/p>\n

Back in November, J.R. Hill played with his backing band the Oktars in the University of Manitoba\u2019s Art Barn, and the crowd was eating it up, flailing their arms and losing their composure over the band\u2019s wild crescendos and the windups of tempos.<\/p>\n

\u201cAren\u2019t they blowing your mind?\u201d asked an acquaintance. They were. They did.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho are these guys?\u201d asked a stranger. \u201cAre they from here?\u201d<\/p>\n

The out-of-control set was some crazy art-rock smoothie that any fan of Devo, Butthole Surfers or Ween could dig. It was really refreshing to see a Winnipeg group so well practiced, so vastly improved over time, and so tightly together that they pretty much smacked everyone in the room across the face with their talent. With the current line-up of the Oktars, it\u2019s certainly a level of chemistry that Hill hasn\u2019t had before. \u201cIf we stop talking in a jam for one second we\u2019ll just start jamming for like ten minutes, and it just happens super automatically, which has never happened with any of my other bands before.\u201d In the band, his brother Jesse Hill of Right Through plays guitar, his friend of nearly ten years Steve Basham plays bass, and the Upsides\u2019 Toby Gillies is on drums.<\/p>\n

That being said, the Malphor: Mono Octopi<\/em> series was recorded and performed only by Hill, between midnight and 5 a.m., after coming home from work. (That is, except for the Oktars\u2019 Christmas album.) Even though the albums were all created within a couple weeks of one another, Hill had a concept of what he wanted each to be. COW-wow<\/em> uses strange tunings and loads up the wacko bedroom experiment sounds. With Figurine<\/em> is his acoustic album, which teems with intimacy. \u201cI like some of these songs, a lot,\u201d Hill says. His pause speaks for the rest of the songs, and then about them he says, \u201cI need to keep things more simple.\u201d Granted, not every song\u2019s a keeper, but from the sheer amount of material, you\u2019ll be able to find something for some mixtape for some friend of yours who likes Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, Sly and the Family Stone, or whatever.<\/p>\n

But of course there\u2019s always a catch, even with free music coming directly from the musician. \u201cI\u2019m taking them down soon, so that if people want to hear them, they\u2019ll have to download them now.\u201d Y\u2019hear that? Even if you\u2019re curious to hear these albums, you\u2019ll have to go to www.jrileyhill.com<\/a> just to listen to them.<\/p>\n

You can catch J.R. Hill with Ultra Mega at the CKUW FUNdrive Kickoff party on Thursday, February 4 at Platform Gallery. See him with his band the Oktars at Ragpickers on Saturday, February 6. Malphor: Mono Octopi<\/em> will come down shortly after that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Taylor Burgess In his disorderly Wolseley basement named the Mortfell Oktorium Studio, J.R. Hill has been focusing on recording and playing shows here in Winnipeg. \u201cI don\u2019t really wanna go on tour again unless I know that I won\u2019t lose thousands of dollars, because I can\u2019t afford it,\u201d he said. Guitar pedals, a stuffed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[371,460,563],"class_list":["post-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-free-album","tag-j-r-hill","tag-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}