My first attempt to make ambient music. I was having terrible trouble sleeping and listening to a lot of ambient and new age music as a result. (Thank you, graveyard shifts at The Last Bookstore.) Heavily influenced by Eno and Vangelis, but I think it stands on its own.
Homemade album of originals, made as a conscious attempt to return to songs I wrote, after what seemed like an eternity. Some songs had been written 10 years earlier. Some were written after moving to LA in 2016. I think the first half has some of my best writing ever.
Title is pretty self-explanatory. I had been threatening this album for years, after hearing about The Walkmen’s version of Pussy Cats. I wasn’t sure what Duck the Piano Wire was gonna be (still don’t really haha), but I figured this kind of project was Duck-appropriate.
The title is nonsense that was cooked up over a glass of whiskey with drummer Doug Johnson. Like No-No’s (see below), this is more a document of a 2-year period (and a band ending) than a proper album. But I liked the way it hung together at the time, and I basically still do. The original cover art above is not featured on streaming services because they claim it is misleading.
Brian Speaker recorded our Fustercluck!!! record release show, so it seemed a shame not to mix and master it, and then put it out. My first and only tape-only release; when it didn’t sell, it was put out digitally. The first of many great cover illustrations Chris Andersen has done for albums I’ve released.
Elastic No-No Band – Fustercluck!!! (2010)
Elastic No-No Band’s second studio album, and I went way overboard. 2 CDs, 45 tracks, nearly a dozen guest vocalists, and a total runtime commensurate to an average James Bond movie. As opposed to Paul McCartney, who publicly doubled-down on the White Album being better as a double disc… I feel like some of these songs could have stayed in a notebook. The messiness is the point, but sometimes I try to listen to a significant chunk of this album and I can’t. That’s why I put out the chopped-down Decayed reissue for the album’s 10th anniversary: those are the songs I can still listen to. The batshit and partly blasphemous cover art by Toby Goodshank and Preston Spurlock potentially promises an edgier album than we delivered. It does appropriately telegraph the weirdness, though.
Our first proper studio album, produced by Major Matt Mason USA (as the majority of our tracks were). I was inspired by the two-part structure of Willie Nelson’s Phases and Stages to make an album with a three-part structure. Each section is based around the three addictions named in the opener: Food, Movies, and Girls Who Won’t Date Me. My impulse is to make long sloppy albums, so the tight structure served to rein me in on the band’s first go-round. My former co-worker and current muckraking documentarian Daniel DiMauro did the great cover art.
I know the apostrophe is grammatically incorrect. This CD-R release reflects my anxious habit of quickly putting out low-stakes releases of any old recording because I’m too excited for people to hear it. Rather than wait a few months for My 3 Addictions to be properly finished, I had to put out demos and live recordings and other random goodies that had piled up in the half-year since the first album. If The Very Best is the A-side, this is the B-side. But honestly, they’re both warm-ups and woodshedding. Some fun moments here, though.
Some reviewers who received this disc in the mail assumed the title was a joke: har har the very best of a new band I’ve never heard of. It was supposed to be a chance for me to present my favorite tracks from the four homemade CD-R albums I had just made in a professional-looking form (actual pressed CDs!!). That tracklist also included rehearsal versions of songs from My 3 Addictions, because as I’ve said, I get anxious and feel compelled to just release things. Fun cover photo by Herb Scher and art direction by Daniel DiMauro.
Notable EPs & Singles (Newest to Oldest)
I miss playing with Debe (she also plays on some of the Fustercluck!!! songs). So in 2023, for my birthday, I put out this old computer file I found on a hard drive. Field recording by Elastic No-No Band drummer Doug Johnson.
Even though I’ve come to really like them, I sometimes feel like some of the ambient tracks on Joyce are long and unwieldy. This is mostly an effort to offer some bite-size pieces of that great honking album. “Feel (A Few Moving Passages)” might be one of my favorite things ever.
One-off single. It’s an electronic experiment that’s less Eno ambient and more Perrey and Kingsley bleep-bloop fun times. It was created through the layering and manipulation of clips from a 10-minute improvisation with an arpeggiator. The photo is me in 5th grade.
I had planned to incrementally release a mixture of Hanukkah originals and covers until it was enough for an album. It has stalled at present as a 4-song EP (5 if you count the 2022 reissue with a bonus lo-fi redo of the title track). Mostly produced and co-performed by Corduroy Patches (Patrick Trejchel).
Theme song for Ryan Stockstad’s short-lived web series about discussing cult films. I was a guest on some episodes and would do it again if the show ever comes back. Lead guitar by Corduroy Patches (Patrick Trejchel) and drums by Doug Johnson.
Single release for the stripped down remix I did of “Don’t Depend of Me” for the no-budget music video. “Don’t Depend on Me” is the best composition I wrote during 2020 lockdown and this mix was an attempt to put its message and music front and center.
A cover of the Urban Barnyard song for the Ain’t I Folk? compilation album. Single with instrumental and vocals only versions as B-sides released in 2021; single with new edit as A-side released in 2022.
The last of the 4 EPs recorded and released during the era of coronavirus lockdown. Includes a vocal and instrumental of “Don’t Depend on Me” plus the original 15-minute version of “Defend.”
Includes a vocal and instrumental of “Rumination: If I Should Die” (as heard on Dream Journal) plus the ambient rework of the track, retitled “Fulmination.” I’m still not sure about the mix on the main song, but I think “Fulmination” turned out great.
Major Matt Mason USA cover. I performed this version once before at a live MMM tribute show. Watching Matt’s videos during 2020 lockdown helped bring me peace, so I wanted to show some appreciation with this stripped down recording. My cover also inspired Sven Safarow to do a cover.
Includes a vocal and instrumental version of a new song “Optimism,” plus an ambient rework using the stems of the original record called “Solipsism.”
Includes a vocal and instrumental version of a new song “Fan,” plus a massive 23-minute ambient rework of the song called “Feel.”
My first major output as Duck the Piano Wire. A seven-part suite that uses samples from the Weemayk Music catalog to approximate a depressed drunken evening giving way to a hopeful if uncertain morning. Originally released as a 26-minute chunk in 2014. Released as separate tracks with 2 added bonus tracks in 2020. Great cover art by Chris Andersen again.
A cover of my favorite song from 2019. Kind of a ’90s electropop pastiche. I changed the pronouns to take on the role of the internet person Courtney Barnett was addressing in the original version.
A plunderphonics-flavored holiday single.
A Steely Dan cover, recorded for the lo-fi tribute Can’t Venmo a Thrill. Much like a Dan recording, this is purely a creation of overdubs and editing because I could barely play a phrase worth of those jazz chords in one go.
I originally conceived this as a big antifolk scene holiday release, but it eventually became just a handful of weird covers that I contributed to. The “Winter Wonderland” with Major Matt Mason USA has a ridiculous electric guitar solo that I love. Marks the first time I used the Duck the Piano Wire name.
This should have been the opening track on Mistletoe and Athlete’s Foot but because the music publisher on this song was being weird about clearance, it became a standalone. Tunetown Philharmonic’s rework of my vocal on this song is still on the EP though.
A split 7-inch with a difference. 4 bands tackle different parts of Meat Loaf’s epic song, exquisite corpse-style. The end result was released on red, pink and red/pink split vinyl.
I love the guy. What can I say?
A teaser of sorts or an outlet valve while recording Fustercluck!!! Three tracks wound up on that album (including the Toby Goodshank collab that gives this EP its name) and the other two (including my rendition of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”) wound up on Black No-No’s.
Archival / Compilation Albums
35 tracks, roughly half are previously unreleased. Featuring live performances, demos, and other alternate versions. Released 20 years after the first Elastic No-No Band CD-R albums were distributed.
35 tracks, from “Zaftig” to “Making Out at Work (Don’t Work).” Both parts of From Z to A constitute a collection of almost all of Elastic No-No Band’s original songs, in honor of the 20th Anniversary of the first release of an ENB song. Includes a previously unreleased demo of “Nobody’s Wife (You’re the One).”
35 tracks, from “Let’s Fuck” to “Abilene, Abilene.” The first release of the hidden track from Fustercluck!!!, “Hold Music” (feat. Major Matt Mason USA), as a discrete recording.
A 50-track, 6-hour Weemayk Music compilation of long songs. Includes cuts from Elastic No-No Band, Duck the Piano Wire, and Justin Remer.
A 25-track compilation of antifolk covers. Includes a mixture of newly minted recordings and tunes dredged up from the archives. Duck the Piano Wire covers Urban Barnyard, Major Matt Mason USA, and Joe Crow Ryan. Elastic No-No Band covers Major Matt and Thomas Patrick Maguire, and has its songs covered by Sven Safarow, The Telethons, and Joe Crow Ryan. Kind of an incestuous scene, right? Anyhow, Laura Michelle Burris’s cover art is freaking fantastic.
For the 10th Anniversary of Fusterluck!!! I created a new version of the album by chopping the double-CD down to one. I remixed two of the songs and completed work on the abandoned session for “Exception to the Rule.” The resulting new/old album was remastered by Major Matt Mason USA to be less compressed and more dynamic. Not satisfied to leave well enough alone, I restructured the new album in 2024 because I grew annoyed that I hadn’t figured out how to make the remaining 26 tracks flow in their new context. This “Old & Improved” edition is my preferred version of Decayed. Another great cover design by Laura Michelle Burris.
B side to Decayed‘s A side. Going through files on an old hard drive, I found a bunch of material from the making of the Fustercluck!!! album (and a little after). And, you know me, I can’t resist just putting every little thing out there. Two rehearsal recordings with Toby Goodshank were intended for this collection, but I couldn’t get the songs cleared by the time I wanted to release this, so “I’d Love Just Once to See You (Take 1)” and “Poor Jenny (Rehearsal)” came out as digital singles in 2021.
Our live appearance on the radio show Phoning It In, hosted by Nadav Carmel. This recording is mixed from the 14 Feb 2008 radio broadcast on WMBR Boston, via landline telephone, and augmented with a Macbook laptop recording in Herb Scher’s apartment in New York City. The song “Imaginary Girlfriend” on Fustercluck!!! was taken from this specific broadcast (and slightly edited – the original uncut version is presented here).
I’ve always been a fan of label compilations, especially the Warner Bros. Loss Leaders of the ’60s and ’70s. So I decided to make a 50-track compilation summing up the first 14 years of the teeny tiny record label I created, Weemayk Music. Chris Andersen’s cover art really captures the spirit of those old Loss Leader designs.
First career-spanning best-of. In honor of the 10th anniversary of the first CD-Rs, and also as a kind of final send-off and acknowledgment the band was finished. Chris Andersen’s Spider-Man-aping cover art is a thing of beauty.
In 2012, I got rid of elasticnonoband.com, which had been acting as a repository for all the mp3s of early ENB songs. So I made the Not Like Most Folkies compilations so that those tracks would have a home. It also gave me an excuse to get Major Matt to master The Very Best… So Far, since I had never had that album professionally mastered before I made up those pressed CDs. WHOOPS! Preston Spurlock’s cover art is unsettling and wonderful.
This is all of the covers from those initial CD-R albums, plus some other random covers I had uploaded to elasticnonoband.com when that existed. As with Decayed, I found myself restructuring this album at a certain point after release, to help it flow better. The running order on Bandcamp is my preferred version, but I don’t want to go through the trouble of re-licensing 30 songs to correct the streaming version. Toby Goodshank’s cover art is stately and uncanny.
Justin Remer 