Roy L'Ambas remixes "extramuros three"

Here's a noisy one-take remix of this.

extramuros three (r l'a remix) by Rope and Pulley Records

New Jersey Ambient 1

Sttutz: "Let the reins go slack."

New Jersey Ambient 1 from Rope and Pulley Records on Vimeo.

Says Stutz

"Live is hard."

extramuros three by Rope and Pulley Records

Inside Baseball

Did you like the hand claps in SIGSALY? Wonder where they came from?

We at Rope & Pulley have a long-standing policy forbidding the sampling of artists outside our roster. In the prehistory of the label (1999), however, one finds an outlier. The Royal Ambassadors, including the young and fresh Roy L'Ambas - at the time recording under the name of Doctor Peter Venkman - used their Casio SK-1 sampler to lift a second or so from a track by hip hop greats The Roots.

Apparently, the theft left a niggling thorn in Roy's side and so, when he set to work on current pop hit SIGSALY, he decided to steal from himself. Those drums and hand claps, performed by Roy's very own hands and drums, have made a ten year journey from Red Pig Studios at 299 Pacific Street, Brooklyn, NY to Rope & Pulley's 2010 New Jersey digs.

Here's the untitled track 16 from Lubra-Smooth by The Royal Ambassadors, circa 1999.

L-S Track 16 by Rope and Pulley Records

Thus The Dubious Sttuttz

"If I had had a father he would have told me 'My father always said 'Play it close to the chest, son.''"

"I would have ignored that advice, though."

Thus the dubious stuttz, on returning to musical life. Long time Rope & Pulley listeners will remember that our earliest mid-naughties releases issued forth from the untrained self-apparatus of avant-garde visual artist sttutz, who, having been given a PC loaded with cheap music software, was invited to produce tracks with the limitation that they be completed in one sitting. The results exhibit an idiotic, amateurish power. However, suffering from a short attention span and a nasty case of mysterious disappearance syndrome, stutz became unreachable, missing, withdrawn.

But no more.

We gave him this, this, this (Thanks, BH), this, this, and this.

And new rules:

1. Live mixes only. No edits or overdubs.

2. No software instruments or effects (exception: having grown enraged at this, sttuttz now demands that he be allowed to use this. Also, a bit of compression thrown on at the end never hurt anybody's purity.)

Good luck, sTutTz.

Love,

The Front Office

Behold:

extramuros one by Rope and Pulley Records

extramuros two by Rope and Pulley Records

SIGSALY

Bloodless, in the popular style. As you demanded.

SIGSALY by Rope and Pulley Records

Six Guns Eight Hands One Bullet

Cherishing each instant and refusing to let it go, Royal became cramped, loud, tense, unfun at parties. Friends approached him. "Stretch out. Embrace periodicity, transience. Widen your focus, man," they'd say. "No, no. That's okay. I'm okay. I'd like to fit it all in. All of it, you know. A detailed whole."

Days passed. For us. But not for Royal. He kept them all, not letting any slip by him. His hands full, he pinned seconds between his elbows and ribs, his apron pulled into a bag like a hausfrau coming in from the garden, fifteen minutes from 1997 even tucked under his chin. He knew it wasn't good for him. He knew he'd have to pay sooner or later.

Maybe if he'd been on point in 1968, surrounded by the NVA's invisible Kalashnikovs. Or standing in a trench, 1917, scrambling to stuff himself into a gas mask. Hell, Fallujah, 2004. Ugly enough to let go. Instead, even his worst days had seemed worth saving, hoarding even. Who knows, maybe he'd need them later.

Or maybe after he was gone, someone would find his notes, slog through them, see a pattern other than the trite one he'd found years ago and kept running his finger around the grooves of, over and over again.

Six Guns Eight Hands One Bullet by Rope and Pulley Records