GANG$IGN$ was created by 24 year old Portland Oregon local, Nick Sisouphanh. At an early age he acquired a fascination and talent for music. Starting off with playing jazz music on the saxophone, which evolved to learning a wide variety of instruments. Nickʼs influences come from an assortment of different styles, anywhere from Jazz to Punk Rock. But early on he was intrigued by hip hop and later discovered a new found love for electronic music.
With the realization that lyrics were irrelevant to him and his admiration for music he began to focus on making beats and learning the technical aspects of production. At the age of 16, He started making electronic based music in FL Studio and later experimented with other DAWs such as Logic Pro, Pro Tools, and Reason. In 2006, Nick took a break from electronic music and started multiple hardcore/punk bands. During the years of being in bands, Nick has toured the west coast and played events such as the Vans Warped Tour. As the bands started to break up, he fell back in love with electronic based music and started producing electronic music again.
Today, as GANG$IGN$, Nick self released his first EP ‘GOOD IDEAS // HOOD IDEAS’. The EP features samples from Doris Day, The Postal Service, and French House producer DANGER. As a bonus, the EP included remixes of Timbalandʼs ‘Bounce‘ and Skrillexʼs ʻScary Monsters and Nice Spritesʼ. His remixes have been supported in the sets of Flosstradamus, and Big Chocolate. Nick has already played in cities across the west coast such as San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Seattle and Portland. He has also released a new EP, Amerika’s Most Blunted as well as self released free download tracks which have gotten a wide amount of attention and plays on BBC1 Radio.
Every now and again, someone will start proclaiming a band or an artist as the ones to “save” rock ‘n’ roll. But what they tend to forget is that rock music never needs resuscitating. The sound of ragged guitars, vocals with the right amount of snarl and wit, and unforgiving drums are never going to leave us, not as long as young people have something to shout about. And right now, the band making the most emphatic noise is Summer Cannibals.
This new outfit follows in the grand tradition of fellow fearless rockers from their hometown of Portland, Oregon like The Wipers, Dead Moon, and The Thermals. Vocalist/guitarist Jessica Boudreaux and guitarist Marc Swart grew the project out of their collaboration as members of well-regarded indie pop outfit Your Canvas. But where that band used fluttering keyboards and Boudreaux’s expressive voice to get their collective point across, Summer Cannibals do as their name would suggest: tear into the meaty parts with fangs exposed.
Boudreaux and Swart dispense with 10 songs in under a half hour on their debut albumNo Makeup, knocking out sinister kiss-offs (“I’m dreaming of this city on mute/where I can’t hear your band/And I don’t pretend to care”), charming come ons (“Let’s pretend I’m your favorite dress/You wear me everyday and ignore everything else”), and glitterbang guitar riffs with stunning ease.
There’s a fair amount of anxiety and self-doubt sewn into the creases of this album, but don’t let that throw you. Summer Cannibals are in complete control of their destiny. The group produced all the songs on No Makeup on their own, created the album’s artwork, and is releasing it on the band’s own label New Moss Records. Plans are also in the works for some music videos to be directed by Boudreaux.
In other words, there’s no point in trying to get in the way of what Summer Cannibals is aiming to do this year. This is an unfiltered broadcast straight from the garage. You don’t need a pair of rabbit ears to pick up on the frequency, though. The sound is aimed right at your heart and, trust us, it won’t miss.
Summer Cannibals debut album, No Makeup, is out August 6th, 2013 on New Moss Records!
Antwon is a new breed of rapper/musician that’s part of the new more eclectic style of Hip Hop embracing Internet culture and flourishing amongst the blogosphere and file-share sector. He hails from San Jose, CA, backed by his long time friend DJ Sex Play. Many have compared his flow to that of Notorious B.I.G. His topics range from death obsession/nihilism to love of women and praise of food. His live performances generate the raw energy of a punk show, circle pit and all. His first official mixtape, Fantasy Beds, was released in September 2011. Spin heralded his End of Earth mixtape as one of the top 40 Hip Hop Albums of 2012, while Gorilla vs. Bear named it one of the top 50 Albums of 2012.
RTX are splitting into Black Bananas!!! The fruit is ripe and the bread will be FRESH.
After three albums under the name RTX, Jennifer Herrema and her bunch decided to flip the script, to kick open the doors of perception a little bit. See, RTX was not Royal Trux, not a metal band, not a 70’s bar band and not a toxic substance; RTX was something, all of those things and none of them and way more, including Black Bananas bubbling in a witchy cauldron of their own herbaceousbrew. The tit le of a song on their RaTX album detailed a bit of the recipe, taking elements often tossed aside or thrown all the way out and combining them into something new and worthwhile…a new strain of the almighty green — to feed and elevate the hungry ones.
“I’m your garbage collector
I’ll turn your trash to gold
What you cast off is what I hold,
End loafs of bread, black bananas and broken crackers
Scratched records, too dark pictures and torn jeans
All the shit that rips at the seams”
Black Bananas is set for the next all-inclusive rock and roll crusade, the one that includes even and especially all the shit you don’t like, woven into all the shit you can’t live without. This has been the name of Jennifer’s game from day one; she owns the blueprints and if you don’t know by now, don’t even bother to Google it, cuz understanding is an investment not an action. Jennifer Herrema is not schizophrenic nor does she don many hats. She is simply a singer and simultaneously, a pioneer of comprehensive non-exclusive opposition rock, and Black Bananas is the latest addition to the oeuvre.
Brian Mckinley, Kurt Midness, Jaimo Welch , and Nadav Eisenman have been ripping and running with Jennifer since 2002, when one by one, they gathered serendipitously, borne by curiosity and the courage to be part of something new. Each passing RTX record saw them wrapped ever tighter in the burgeoning tongue of their own creation. Now, uttering their twisted slang fluently as a unified dialect, they emerge as Black Bananas.
If you wanna hedge (-fund) your bets its best to get out in front of this new natio nal currency they are creating with Black Bananas. These are the notes of the future; with Jennifer at the helm their worth will grow exponentially. Invest!
Black Bananas first album Rad Times Xpress IV runs the gamut from gnarly odes to reality TV in songs like “My House” to future electric metallic GoGo sounds all conceived with scraps of influence from Jennifer’s childhood passions zig-zagged with other currents out there, creating a sound that will take you to a specific place that only Black Bananas know how to find.
Most of all, Black Bananas is the new band in town — and they’re fucking righteous.
Music critics and fans agree, Redd Kross is back and delivering their signature brand of genuine rock ‘n roll with a vengeance.
“A purer explication of rock and roll’s essence would’ve required Jimi Hendrix and Keith Moon playing Chuck Berry songs while James Brown’s sweat poured from the sky.” —SF Weekly
Founded 34 years ago in Los Angeles during the first wave of LA punk rock by brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald (then respectively 15 and 11 years old), Redd Kross cut their teeth opening for Black Flag at a middle school graduation party. Their debut recordings caught the attention of Rodney Bingenheimer, who quickly became a fan as he spun their Ramones inspired songs like “Annette’s Got The Hits” and “I Hate My School” on the world famous KROQ.
Their following releases maintained roots still firmly planted in punk, but the band started to experiment with different musical elements and band members. Redd Kross boldly broke new ground by intuitively and inventively mixing their eclectic inspirations in song and performance. They understand and embrace the esoteric commonalities between the Partridge Family and the Manson Family; the Beatles and Black Sabbath; The Osmonds and the New York Dolls. The result was a band that was ahead of their time – daringly original, artistic and uncontrived. “Teen Babes from Monsanto”, “Born Innocent” and “Neurotica” became precursors to the Seattle bands of the 90’s, as well as becoming an inspiration to many indie and alternative rock bands world wide.
“Neurotica was a life changer for me and for a lot of people in the Seattle music community.” —Jonathan Poneman, cofounder of Sub Pop
“(Redd Kross) are definitely one of the most important bands in America.” —Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore
In 1990 the band released their major label debut, “Third Eye”. Taking their obsession with late 60’s bubblegum am radio to a new level, the song writing matured with more complex arrangements, harmonies and lush production. Redd Kross had their first single chart “Annie’s Gone”(#16 billboard modern rock), and began to tour with notable artists such as Sonic Youth, The Go-Go’s, The Posies, Jellyfish, The Lemonheads, and the HooDoo Gurus.
Robert Hecker took leave as lead guitarist and the McDonald brothers were joined by Eddie Kurdziel (guitar), Brian Reitzell (drums), and Gere Fennelly (keyboards). They released the critically acclaimed “Phaseshifter” album in 1993 featuring the hit songs “Jimmy’s Fantasy”, “Lady In The Front Row”, and a raucous cover of Frightwigs “Crazy World”.
Redd Kross toured relentlessly for the next several years, appearing on television sets across America performing on the Jon Stewart Show (pre Daily Show), Conan, and the Tonight Show. The band began working their magic on UK festival stages such as Redding Festival and Finsbury Park, and did a US arena tour with The Stone Temple Pilots and Meat Puppets.
In 1997, Redd Kross released one of their most polished albums, “Show World” featuring the perfectly crafted pop single, “Mess Around”. After supporting the album by touring with Sloan and the Presidents of the United States, the band went on a much needed hiatus. Fans wondered when they would return, and things seemed more uncertain after the untimely passing of guitarist Eddie Kurdziel in 1999.
The McDonald brothers launched www.ReddKross.com and began to reconnect with their fans and make new ones. They experimented with the new medium just as innovatively as they do with their music – Steven McDonald released an online only mashup album called “Redd Blood Cells” by adding bass tracks to the White Stripes album, Jeff McDonald began podcasting (“Hit It!”) before iPods or podcasts were invented, and also released a web based video series (Bitchin’ Ass”) far ahead of YouTube.
Redd Kross reissued their classic “Neurotica” album as they worked on a variety of other projects including “Ze Malibu Kids”, “The Steven McDonald Group”, and worked in various capacities with other bands on stage and in the studio such as the Donnas, Turbonegro, Imperial Teen, Anna Waronker, be your own pet, fun., Sparks, Tenacious D, Beck and OFF!
In 2006, Jeff and Steven announced their reunion with the “classic Neurotica” line up – and were joined once again by guitarist Robert Hecker (IT’s OK) and drummer Roy McDonald (the Muffs). Redd Kross have been playing to enthusiastic audiences at sold out select shows and festivals such as the Azkena Festival, Coachella, and Pop Montréal.
“Researching the Blues” is the highly anticipated new album. It is their first new album in 15 years and will be released on Merge Records August 7, 2012.
—Jonathan Krop 2012
Hailing from the rose city at the end of the trail, Chill Crew are two MCs on the move. The duo is a ying & yang of musical talent, seasoned verbal weapon Jon Belz King and introspective smooth guy Jesse PC combine as a force to put on for the pacific northwest in a major way. With their new album VV (Dublé Ve) produced entirely by Stewart Villain on the way, now is the time to check out one of Portland’s most promising duo.
EYELIDS are:
John Moen (Decemberists, Stephen Malkmus, Black Prairie)
Chris Slusarenko (Guided By Voices, Boston Spaceships)
Jonathan Drews (Sunset Valley, Loch Lomond)
Jim Talstra (Minus 5, Dharma Bums)
Paulie Pulvirenti (Deep Fried Boogie Band, No. 2)
So this is Eyelids… For a new band they have quite a collective history of creating music with and for some of the most legendary indie songwriters ever. Not only were these three longtime Portland, Oregon collaborators the principal instrumentalists for Robert Pollard’s Boston Spaceships for over five releases, but they have collectively worked in recent years with Stephen Malkmus, The Decemberists, Elliott Smith, Sam Coomes of Quasi, Black Prairie, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, Loch Lomond, Damian Jurado, and Peter Buck.
So where does that leave them, us or you? John, Chris and Jonathan have turned inwards to their love of New Zealand guitar buzz (anything Flying Nun is their bible), their teenage l.a. paisley underground obsessions, haunts of early Athens, the shape shifting of John Cale and all things beautiful, lopsided and rock to carry further their musical thoughts. (Although they have been known to throw on a Gun Club cover or two at their whim). Remember when your favorite songs could be both melancholy and bouyant–the same songs could make you feel justifiably sad or make you feel incredibly happily and empowered. That’s what these guys are onto. Catchy shit that worms into your brain and heart. They are currently recording their debut album and single with Adam Selzer (Red Fang, The Gossip, The Breeders) at Type Foundry studios and this show will be a chance to hear these songs bubble in their new found glory. The live lineup of Eyelids will be filled out with Jim Talstra (Minus 5, Needful Longings) and Paulie Pulvirenti (Deep Fried Boogie Band, No. 2) as well as some other surprise guests who will be stepping up to perform with them as well.
PRTLND representers, Green Team Official players, Calvin Valentine, Epp and Tope comprise the group TxE. Valentine is responsible for the sonic tapestries Tope and Epp weave stories and life philosophies over.
While Epp was born in Georgia, he has adopted Oregon as his home. Calvin Valentine moved to Portland from his hometown of Eugene in 2009. Already having a relationship with Epp from a DJ gig, he invited him over to the studio. Tope, a Portland native, had been working with Epp and the two were considering doing a collaborative record.
After one session in the lab the chemistry was undeniable and TxE was formed. Since then they’ve released three projects: Rain In Cali EP (2010), We Get It In True (2012) and Tetherball EP (2012).
TxE deliver a live show that is energy filled and exciting. They will bring the party and make sure you have a good time. The trio has opened for: Evidence, Lil Wayne, Mac Miller, Macklemore, Mos Def, Paramoure, The Pharcyde, Reel Big Fish, Trash Talk and many more. They have performed at the Rose Garden, home of the Trailblazers, and taken part in both PDX Pop Now and Music Fest NW festivals for multiple years.
Between the three members they have released eighteen projects and amassed half a million downloads since their formation. TxE are always creating and not to be missed whether they are rocking a stage near you or being featured on your favorite website with a new piece of content, watch and listen.
Hiss Golden Messenger is Durham, North Carolina-based songwriter M.C. Taylor and multi-instrumentalist and recordist Scott Hirsch, who lives in Brooklyn, New York. The pair has been making music together for twenty years in various incarnations, including six records with the San Francisco band the Court and Spark.
Since 2009, Taylor and Hirsch—in collaboration with longtime drummer Terry Lonergan, Nashville guitarist William Tyler, and members of Megafaun, the Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, D. Charles Speer & the Helix, Brightblack Morning Light—have released a string of universally acclaimed albums as Hiss Golden Messenger:Country Hai East Cotton (2009), Root Work (2010), Bad Debt (2010, soon to be reissued by Paradise of Bachelors),Poor Moon (PoB-02, 2011), Hiss Golden Messenger Plays Elephant Micah Plays Hiss Golden Messenger (PoB-04, 2012), Lord I Love the Rain (2012), and Haw (PoB-06, 2013.)
Drawing from the deep well of traditional and vernacular Southern song that Taylor has explored and documented as a practicing folklorist, as well as the more alchemical strains of 1970’s country-rock, dub music, and kosmische music, “like Van Morrison circa Astral Weeks, Hiss Golden Messenger confounds traditional-music genre expectations” (according to The Huffington Post.) Distinguished by their fascinatingly ambiguous conjuring of spiritual–and often specifically Biblical–concerns and characters, as well as a taut lyricism informed by writers as disparate as Ronnie Lane, Lew Welch, and Wendell Berry, Taylor’s unabashedly ardent songs rank among the most exquisitely crafted and eloquent of his generation.
Their 2011 LP Poor Moon (PoB-02) has been hailed as a masterful and moving country-soul statement on faith and family by Pitchfork, Uncut, Salon, and many others, leading to profiles of Taylor by NPR, The Oxford American, and Interview Magazine. In April of 2013 Paradise of Bachelors will released HGM’s eagerly anticipated full-length follow up to Poor Moon, the remarkable, and darker, Haw (PoB-06), which earned glowing reviews from the New York Times, MOJO, The Times of London, the Washington Post, and beyond, becoming one of the year’s most critically lauded recordings.
RICHMOND FONTAINE: HISTORY 2011
Richmond Fontaine was formed in 1994 at Portland Meadows racetrack in Portland, Oregon as songwriter/vocalist Willy Vlautin and bassist Dave Harding pored over the racing form and talked music between races. The two took their mutual love of Husker Du, Willie Nelson, X, The Blasters, and The Replacements and started playing music together. Before long, Fontaine was a solid four-piece outfit with an avid fan-base in the US and abroad.
In the 90’s Richmond Fontaine put out three albums on Cavity Search Records (Safety, Miles From, and Lost Son) and garnered praise for their powerful blend of rock, country, punk and folk. Critics took notice of Vlautin’s story-based songs, which have often drawn comparison to the short stories of Raymond Carver and Larry Brown.
In 2002 the band launched El Cortez Records and began work on a trilogy of albums that would earn critical acclaim in the US and UK, across Europe and as far away as Australia. 2002’s Winnemucca marked a departure for the band to a more introspective and acoustic-based style, broadening the band’s audience and catching the attention of critics. In 2004 Richmond Fontaine teamed with producer JD Foster (Richard Buckner, Calexico, Green on Red) on their lauded release, Post to Wire. Uncut named it Album of the Month and included it in their Top Five Albums of the Year, and Mojo called it a “must have Americana purchase”. Working again with Foster on 2005’s The Fitzgerald, the band again garnered rave reviews for this downbeat, stark, literary study of the working class American West. The Fitzgerald also received Uncut’s Album of the Month, calling it “absolute perfection”, and Q Magazine called it “the most beautiful sad album of the year”.
2005 was a big year for the band and especially for Vlautin, who says the band got him the luckiest break of his life while touring The Fitzgerald – meeting a literary agent who was a big believer in his work. After writing short stories and novels for nearly twenty years, in 2006 Vlautin finally saw the publication of his first novel, The Motel Life, on Faber and Faber in the UK and Ireland, and then in the US on Harper Perennial in 2007. The Motel Life earned Vlautin a Silver Pen Award from the state of Nevada and was one of the few works of fiction to make the Washington Post’s Top 25 Books of 2007. The novel solidified Vlautin’s reputation as one of the most adept storytellers working today.
Looking for a change of scenery, in 2006 Fontaine loaded up the van and drove to Tucson to record an album at the legendary Wavelab studio. JD Foster once again oversaw production on this collection of desert-inspired songs. Featuring guest appearances by Calexico’s Joey Burns and Jacob Valenzuela and Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb, Thirteen Cities counter-balances Vlautin’s clean, narrative lyrics with an array of instrumentation, from piano and vibes to accordion and pedal steel, strings and horns. The album was lavished with critical praise: The Independent called Vlautin “the Dylan of the dislocated” and The Sun said “Vlautin’s one of the most compelling songwriters working today, compared equally to great American novelists like Raymond Carver or John Steinbeck and musicians such as Bruce Springsteen or Tom Waits.”
After a year sabbatical and the death of his mother, Vlautin emerged with a notebook of songs that would become We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River (2009). A highly personal and intimate work, these songs are an inventory of love and loss, regret and pain, shot through with instrumentation that expresses a gauntlet of emotion with Fontaine’s highly evolved, hard to categorize signature style. Uncut gave it a five star review saying, ‘Raw, autobiographical brilliance’ and the Sunday Express called it, “A dreamy, reverb-laden masterpiece” – 5/5
To date Vlautin has published two more novels: Northline (2008), which was a San Francisco Chronicle Top Ten Bestseller, and Lean on Pete (2010), which won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and was Hot Press’s book of the year. In ten years Vlautin and Richmond Fontaine have produced seven albums, three novels, an instrumental soundtrack for a novel (Northline), two live recordings and an EP.
The Motel Life is currently in production to become a major motion picture starring Emile Hirsch, Stephen Dorff, Dakota Fanning and Kris Kristoffersen. Richmond Fontaine is currently wrapping up work on their next release, The High Country, due out September 2011.
Sirah – Too You To Die.
I started rapping “professionally” about 7 years ago, that included booking my own tours, sleeping on the floors of people I didn’t know, bathing in public restrooms, and accidentally kicking off a feminist revolution in Romania. I was taught how to rap by way of Project Blowed in South Central Los Angeles, it had a very “8 mile” vibe and when I got booed off stage I would come back next week a better rapper. They taught me how to paint my nails, rap with stage presence, and fight for the right to party. At the time I was in and out of homelessness which I pretended was camping, I stayed hungry in all senses of the word and somehow found my way. For the past few years I’ve somewhat transcended out of underground hip hop and now reside in musical purgatory, a place without genre where people try to label you themselves. I am in fact the “black guy” rapping on the Skrillex songs. Don’t mind the pale skin and breasts coming in short at 5’0 tall, I’ve somehow managed to stay true to my roots.
Now we pull up to what I’m currently doing, I released a mixtape called C.U.L.T. a few months back, it was about my life, peoples misconceptions, trying to box me in etc. We decided to rerealese it with two new songs on it, one’s called “Made It” that was basically a freestyle about where I grew up and how I’ve finally “arrived” the other song’s called “When I’m Gone”. I was really moved by my fans (Cult kids) and how they’ve held me down through this whole wave, so I wanted to make them their own song. People always say “I love my fans, they’re the reason I do this.” Hate to break it to you but they’re for sure lying, I love my fans but I do this because the alternative is a psych ward. The fact that I have fans is literally beyond my wildest dreams, I’m a kid who was never supposed to make it anywhere or do anything so I love the kids that feel the same and support me, we’re in this together till the wheels fall off. C.U.L.T. Too Young To Die will be available as a free download on Tuesday 9/25
Lonnie Holley was born on February 10, 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama, the seventh of 27 children. From the age of five, Holley worked various jobs: picking up trash at a drive-in movie theatre, washing dishes, and cooking. He lived in a whiskey house, on the state fairgrounds, and in several foster homes. His early life was chaotic and Holley was never afforded the pleasure of a real childhood.
Since 1979, Holley has devoted his life to the practice of improvisational creativity. His art and music, born out of struggle, hardship, but perhaps more importantly, out of furious curiosity and biological necessity, has manifested itself in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and sound. Holley’s sculptures are constructed from found materials in the oldest tradition of African American sculpture. Objects, already imbued with cultural and artistic metaphor, are combined into narrative sculptures that commemorate places, people, and events.
Holley did not start making and performing music in a studio nor does his creative process mirror that of the typical musician. His music and lyrics are improvised on the spot and morph and evolve with every event, concert, and recording. In Holley’s original art environment, he would construct and deconstruct his visual works, repurposing their elements for new pieces. This often led to the transfer of individual narratives into the new work creating a cumulative composite image that has depth and purpose beyond its original singular meaning. The layers of sound in Holley’s music, likewise, are the result of decades of evolving experimentation. “Just Before Music” features Holley’s first studio recordings made in 2010 and 2011.
The 4onthefloor’s new album, Spirit Of Minneapolis, evokes the spirit of American rebellion. That same pioneering spirit that brought us everything from modern aviation to rock & roll. Harnessing that spirit, the band is using it to break down modern music’s barriers down to our basic musical traditions. That ageless sound of rock & roll isn’t what it used to be, but the rumble of stomping feet emanating from Minneapolis is an omen of great things on the horizon.
The 4/4 beating of the bass drums recalls the American ideal of onward and upward, turning our prevailing spirits to the sky after a reaching the end of the land. The 4-barreled onslaught can be a train building up steam right behind you, the king of the jungle chasing you down, or your wheels on the highway. It’s the soundtrack of America moving forward.
Delta blues, classic rock, and a lifetime of attentive listening have produced a sound whose time has come. The energetic and powerful delivery of this band cannot be overstated. Their huge, soulful anthems leave nothing on the floor as Gabriel Douglas’ guttural howl soars through the ether.
There’s a readiness to be found in listeners now. The fervor of discovery and innovation is coming back to the American masses and the excitement surrounding the birth of rock & roll is now roaring out of the doldrums with a fury. Let go. Take flight. Indulge in life’s pleasures and stomp with them.
Rush Midnight is the solo project of Russell Manning, recent bass player for acclaimed new wave revivalist, Twin Shadow, and formally trained jazz musician. Russ is Brooklyn born and bred, and his music tells the sonic story of coming up in a nonstop city.
In the midst of a demanding Twin Shadow touring schedule and its endless nights on the road, Russ perfected his personal sound during rare downtime, recording a string of demos in hotel rooms and disparate studios along the way. For two years, Russ worked alone and with Twin Shadow frontman, George Lewis Jr.
After returning home and smoothing the material in New York, Rush Midnight is now set to release his debut EP, +1, to the world this fall via experimental pop label, Cascine. Directly inspired by travel across Europe, Brazil and Australia, +1 personifies the thrill, mystery and recklessness of the nightlife he experienced during his time abroad. The music captures Russ’s charismatic production style and ability to gently push against the walls of pop music. At times, his material drifts in a sea of nostalgic, rock-inflected R&B, nodding to icons like Sade and The Police. Other times find him cutting his own path with an undeniable sense of attitude and sexuality. Never once does it feel unnatural.
+1 will be released on October 30 via Cascine. It features select material produced by George Lewis Jr.
On a rainy Nashville Thursday last October, Justin Townes Earle leapt onstage at the famed Ryman Auditorium to accept the 2011 Americana Music Award for Song of the Year. The triumphant evening capped a turbulent twelve months for the gifted young musician categorized by significant hardship as well as notable achievement including debut performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall and on The Late Show with David Letterman.
Just one week later, Earle retreated to the western mountains of North Carolina to record his next album, Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now – an intriguing title given the importance of change in Earle’s approach to art. “I think it’s the job of the artist to be in transition and constantly learning more,” he says. “The new record is completely different than my last one, Harlem River Blues. This time I’ve gone in a Memphis-soul direction.”
Those who’ve followed Earle’s growth since releasing his debut EP Yuma in 2007 won’t be surprised he’s shooting off in another direction. For an artist whose list of influences runs the gamut from Randy Newman to Woody Guthrie, Chet Baker to the Replacements, and Phil Ochs to Bruce Springsteen, categories are useless.
“Great songs are great songs,” Earle says. “If you listen to a lot of soul music, especially the Stax Records stuff, the chord progressions are just like country music. And just like country music, soul music began in the church, so it has its roots in the same place.”
Perhaps then it’s also not surprising Earle chose a converted church in Asheville, NC to record Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now. Recorded completely live (no overdubs) over a four-day period with Harlem River Blues co-producer Skylar Wilson, the album sheds the rockabilly bravado of previous records in favor of a confident, raw, and vulnerable sound. Says Earle, “the whole idea was to record everything live, making everything as real as it could be, and putting something out there that will hopefully stand the test of time and space.”
The result: songs like “Down on the Lower East Side” and “Unfortunately, Anna” are equally timely and timeless. The former finds Earle channeling Closing Time era Tom Waits while the latter echoes the dirges of Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. That said, gentle heartbreakers like the album’s title track and “Am I That Lonely Tonight” are uniquely Earle, solidifying his role as one of his generation’s greatest songwriters.
K.Flay’s new EP, Eyes Shut, is a response to apathy. Thematically, the disc’s five tracks offer a dialogue about what it means to care—and not care—in the twentysomething era. K.Flay, the moniker for San Francisco-based musician Kristine Flaherty, reacts to this generational indifference musically. Her spit-fire rhymes and distorted indie-electro production are infused with unabashed passion and thoughtful concern.
Flaherty, who grew up outside Chicago and launched her music career while enrolled at Stanford University, arrived at this subject matter after spending nearly a year touring the country solo. Although she was opening for artists like Passion Pit, 3OH!3 and Wallpaper, Flaherty took the stage alone each night, urging a deep sense of introspection that initially resulted in a mixtape called I Stopped Caring In ’96. The mixtape, which Flaherty self-released last spring, initiated the writing process for Eyes Shut.
“I spent my first few years making music just messing around, not really having a sense of what I was about,” she explains. “With the mixtape, I started to realize my vision for the project. I made it in isolation, which was liberating in a creative sense. The songs on this EP start where the mixtape left off and reflect where I’m at in my own life now. There are no love songs. It’s really about a mindset, a perspective. A lot of the people I know are pretty apathetic and disillusioned. They’d rather check out than engage in something. I’m drawn to that myself at times and at other times I’m repelled by it.”
Isolation is a theme in Flaherty’s creative process. She is a songwriter, musician and producer, who works alone on many of her tracks from conception to completion, sometimes in her mother’s basement.
The five tracks on the EP were written during the spring and summer of 2011, with most of the recording occurring in September. Influenced by a diverse array of artists including OutKast and Lykke Li, the EP is an innovative combination of hip-hop, electronica and indie rock aesthetics, all bolstered by Flaherty’s undeniable rapping ability.
The K.Flay live show shines through the recordings as well. “Until recently my recorded stuff hasn’t captured what I’m trying to do,” Flaherty says. “It’s only been in the last nine months that I’ve honed in on that. You hear ‘white girl rapping’ and you get wary. But the live show has really shown people what I’m about and the production aspect of what I do. So with the EP it was about how I can replicate that accurately in a live setting.”
The EP is a precursor to K.Flay’s debut full-length, which she hopes to release in the first half of 2012. Meanwhile, between writing, recording and touring, the musician, who recently performed at San Francisco’s Outside Lands Arts & Music Festival, has been sharpening her production skills by remixing other artists, including Beastie Boys, Young the Giant, Walk the Moon, and Oh Land. And she’s not touring quite so solo anymore—Flaherty recently added a drummer to the mix.
“I feel like I’m taking the next step,” she says. “I’m in the process of taking something that was just nascent and, with the help of a few people, starting to flesh it out a little more. It’s been a real year of growth.”
Flaherty may write about apathy, but she’s anything but apathetic.
From Atlanta, Georgia, the origins of Deerhunter can be traced back to when frontman Bradford Cox first met guitarist Lockett Pundt at high school. Years later Bradford met Moses Archuleta and started jamming together. Other contributors to Deerhunter since its establishment in 2001 include Josh Fauver, Colin Mee and Whitney Petty. The current incarnation consists of Cox, Pundt and Archuleta plus bassist Josh Mckay and guitarist Frankie Broyles.
Deerhunter’s first album was a lo-fi experiment not initially intended for the wider world, but appeared in 2005 on a local Atlanta label, Stickfigure. Although officially untitled, it has since become known as Turn It Up, Faggot; a phrase that doesn’t actually appear on the sleeve but is an insult that Cox claimed was often thrown at the band during their early gigs. Their next album, Cryptograms (2006), was generally considered to be their real debut and as such things started to get serious for the band. They had moved to fêted Chicago indie, Kranky (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Low, Stars Of The Lid), and the world outside was starting to pay attention.
Then in mid-2008, Deerhunter and Kranky signed a deal with 4AD, allowing them to finally release music outside the US and the band’s next move was to prove epic in more than just musical terms.?? Recorded over the course of a week at the Rare Book Studios in Brooklyn, NY, the Can and Wire-inspired Microcastle (2008) was to propel them to further heights. However, the album leaked four months before release, leading the band back to the studio to record Weird Era Cont., an album in its own right added as a bonus disc to make Microcastle a 25-track colossus. Not content with such prolificacy, the band announced a new five track EP, Rainwater Cassette Exchange, in 2009 and that its release would coincide with the band’s extensive European, Japanese and Australian tour in May and June.??
Displaying few signs of slowing down, Halcyon Digest, the band’s fourth studio album was released in September 2010. Remaining in their native Georgia to piece together the album, Halcyon Digest took just a few weeks to complete. The recording sessions took place at Chase Park Transduction in Athens with Ben H. Allen helping to co-produce the album, while final track, ‘He Would Have Laughed’, was recorded separately by Bradford Cox at NOTOWN SOUND in Marietta. To announce the release, the band fully embraced the DIY mindset of their New Wave heroes from the 70’s and 80’s with a Cox-designed, cut-and-paste Xeroxed flyer. It’s with these kind of approaches that Deerhunter continue to widen their sphere of influence and impress with each subsequent release.
After a brief hiatus, during which time Bradford Cox and Lockett Pundt released their own albums as Atlas Sound and Lotus Plaza respectively, a new Deerhunter line-up (with additions of bassist Josh Mckay and guitarist Frankie Broyles) reconvened in January 2013 at Rare Book Studio in Brooklyn, New York. Produced by Nicholas Vernhes and Bradford Cox and recorded in the dead of night, Deerhunter’s new longplayer Monomania will be released in May. Monomania finds the group recalling its scrappy punk aesthetic; a perfect nocturnal garage rock album full of the layered and hazy vintage guitar sounds that define them.
Having spent nearly two years on the road touring in support of 88 Keys and Counting, Grieves found himself returning home to a fractured reality. Reeling from turbulence in his career and heartbreak in his personal life mixed with coming down from the high of the support he received on the road Grieves conceptualized Together/Apart, an album that would address the bond music creates between each of us as individuals and as a whole despite the many distances we experience be they geographical or emotional.
The end of 2008 saw Grieves enlisting the help of friend and collaborator Budo to co-produce Together/Apart bringing his signature swiss-army knife, multi-instrumental backdrop to Grieves’ hauntingly poignant narrative. The album began taking shape in New York as the two built off the success 88 Keys and Counting had generated and paired it with the intensity they developed from their live performances. The recording process began to shadow the theme of the album as it saw tracks recorded in Colorado and Washington in addition to New York, infusing it with a mixture of regional influences while still maintaining a cohesive sound. As the album neared completion the title took on a double meaning for Grieves as he explored new subject matter in the absence of trust, refuge in addiction, acceptance and honesty in self-reflection, and trying to find his place in the world without forgetting his roots.
Together/Apart concludes three years of self-discovery that has ultimately lead to Grieves’ most emotionally charged and daring album to date
Musical anthropologists interested in the study of just how fast a band can evolve need look no further than the six upright, upstanding men in Oregon’s Larry and His Flask. Formed by brothers Jamin and Jesse Marshall in 2003, the Flask (as the band’s expanding army of fans calls them) spent its first half-decade stuck in a primordial, punk-rock goop, where a blood-sweat-and-beers live show took priority over things like notes and melodies. Don’t misunderstand: The band was (somewhat) skilled and an absolute joy to watch, but the goal was always the party over perfection.
Over the past two years, however, Larry and His Flask has gone from crawl to sprint at breakneck speed. First, Jamin Marshall moved from gargling-nails vocals to drums. Guitarist Ian Cook became the band’s primary voice. And a trio of talented pickers and singers — Dallin Bulkley (guitars), Kirk Skatvold (mandolin) and Andrew Carew (banjo) — joined the family. (And no, you didn’t miss something. No one is named Larry.)
Determined to make music for a living or die trying, the six brothers set out in a van, intent on playing for anyone, anywhere at any time. From coffee shops to dive bars and street corners to theater stages, the Flask honed their sound and show through experience, attacking each gig like buskers who must grab and hold the attention of passersby in hopes of collecting enough change to get to the next town.
By 2009, Larry and His Flask’s train began gaining steam. The band’s new songs are a blurry blend of lightning fast string-band picking, gorgeous nods to old-school country, and sublime multi-part harmonies, all presented through a prism of punk chaos. The boys have grown and changed, yes, but their shows are still gloriously physical displays of live music’s sheer power. In other words, keep your eyes peeled, or risk taking the heavy end of Jesse Marshall’s flailing, stand-up bass right between the eyes.
A slot supporting the Dropkick Murphys in the Flask’s hometown led to an invitation to open for the Celtic punk kingpins across the eastern half of the United States, as well as an opportunity to finally record their new, twangier sound. The result is Larry and His Flask’s three-song, self-titled 7″ record, pressed in a limited run that’s quickly being snapped up by the band’s new fans, who’ve been clamoring for a sip of aural hooch to call their own.
In mid-2010, the Flask is holed up in their crash pad in Central Oregon, working on songs for their first full-length, playing gigs here and there, and, in the words of Jesse Marshall, “fixing the van and all our broken shit” in anticipation of the next leg of a lifelong tour. Keep up with the band’s never-ending tour schedule at www.larryandhisflask.com
Ian Cook – Vocals + Guitar
Jamin Marshall – Vocals + Percussion
Jeshua Marshall – Vocals + Double Bass + Trumpet + Harmonicas
Dallin Bulkley – Vocals + Guitar + Not Guilty
Andrew Carew – Vocals + Banjo
Kirk Skatvold – Vocals + Mandolin
What happens when your band’s debut album is a run-scoring hit with both music and baseball fans? If you’re The Baseball Project, you grab some friends to fill out your bench, take batting practice by writing songs for ESPN and deliver a strikeout pitch with Volume Two: High and Inside. The new album from Steve Wynn, Scott McCaughey, Linda Pitmon and Peter Buck is another winning collection of songs about the game’s greats that will be pleasing to those who love America’s pastime — and fans of intelligent, melodic and fun rock.
When the first Baseball Project album, Volume One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails, was released in 2008 Wynn, McCaughey, Pitmon and Buck had yet to play one note as a unit in front of an audience. But after playing throughout the U.S. in 2009 the quartet were — as McCaughey jokes — “a well-oiled touring machine,” which allowed the band to complete the basics for this new album in just two days. Wynn adds, “We definitely knew how to play as a band when we went in this time and I think you can hear that chemistry on the record.”
High and Inside is a collection that sees the quartet deftly mix witty lyrics about baseball players past and present with a sharp melodic sensibility and engaging choruses. Opener “1976” is one of the catchiest songs to ever be written about anything from Detroit. (In this case, it’s Tigers phenom pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych.) “Ichiro Goes to the Moon” is a manic punk-pop track that marvels at the Seattle Mariners outfielder’s ability to eat, build rockets, and yes, play baseball. High and Inside also explores more musical avenues than the first Baseball Project outing. “Pete Rose Way” is a slice of alt-country that echoes one of McCaughey’s and Buck’s other projects, Tired Pony. And closer “Here Lies Carl Mays” takes the story of the only pitcher to throw a ball that killed another player and turns it into a haunting ballad sung from beyond the grave.
“Fair Weather Fans” describes the band’s widespread allegiances to the Giants, A’s and Mariners for McCaughey, the Dodgers and Yankees for Wynn, and the Twins and Yankees for Pitmon. Yet the team most represented on High and Inside is none of those — it’s the Yankees’ rivals the Boston Red Sox. McCaughey imagines a world where Bill Buckner’s legacy wasn’t tarnished by a groundball in “Buckner’s Bolero.” Wynn sings of a different tarnished legacy in “Twilight of My Career,” which explores the glorious but sordid post-Sox career of Cy Young award-winning pitcher Roger Clemens. And “Tony (Boston’s Chosen Son)” is a violin-driven piece that recalls Bob Dylan’s Desire as it honors late beloved Boston player and announcer Tony Conigliaro. Wynn admits, “It’s weird that a Yankee fan like me would end up writing more about the Red Sox, but tragedy just makes for better songs and stories than a litany of successes.”
The quartet invited a lot of their friends to help out on Volume 2. Wynn explains, “We had wanted to include some like-minded baseball rocker pals on the first record but there just wasn’t time so we were able to open the door this time around.” Into that open door came contributions from Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard (who adds backing vocals to “Ichiro Goes to the Moon”), Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin, The Decemberists’ Chris Funk and John Moen, Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan and The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, who supplies lyrics and the lead vocal on the Minnesota Twins anthem “Please Don’t Call Them Twinkies.” Twins fan Pitmon had bonded with Finn over the team when the Minnesota natives reconnected in New York. And Pitmon says she was thrilled when Finn accepted the job of writing lyrics about their favorite team. She explains, “I think Craig perfectly captured the feelings that a lot of us Twins fans have for our team of humble, hardworking guys that seem to beat the odds more often than not, and Steve really nailed the mood of the lyrics when he wrote the anthemic tune we set it to.” Finn says, “The Twins don’t win every year, or even every decade. They don’t normally compete in the off-season arms race – they develop talent. Thus, when they do win I get to feel elation and bliss, and not just relief. In some way, it’s like music; many of my all-time favorite bands aren’t that great every night, but when it comes together it feels even sweeter.”
The success and critical acclaim of Volume One opened up new opportunities that these veteran musicians never imagined. McCaughey is still amazed they appeared on the long-running weekly Major League Baseball program This Week in Baseball. “I can’t say I ever thought I’d hear or see myself on TWIB — that was awesome,” McCaughey exclaims. “As a kid I dreamed of it, but I would have been making a diving catch in the outfield instead of bashing on an electric guitar.” The band also struck up a relationship with ESPN that saw them launch The Broadside Ballads series. Wynn and McCaughey took it upon themselves to write and record a song per month for the 2010 season that were available as free downloads at ESPN.com. Wynn says, “It’s very exhilarating and also exhausting to come up with tunes based on the calendar rather than the muse, especially since we were all busy and on the move with our own projects throughout 2010 but that made it even more fun. I loved that songs would begin in Virginia, for example, get shuttled off to Berlin, back to New York and then over to Portland all within a few weeks.”
The Baseball Project was born out of McCaughey and Wynn discussing their love of the game over dinner and drinks a few years ago. “It finally took flight at the R.E.M. pre-Hall of Fame induction party in New York,” Wynn remembers. “Everyone was happy. The wine was flowing, the food was incredible and spring training had just started. Scott and I talked baseball until most of the party guests had cleared out. And we actually remembered it the next day.”
Both Wynn and McCaughey’s love of baseball and its legendary players made its way sporadically into songs during their distinguished careers. The Young Fresh Fellows named-checked Seattle Mariners slugger Gorman Thomas on “Aurora Bridge” from 1986’s Refreshments, while Wynn tipped his cap to Hall of Famers Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial in his 1990 solo hit “Kerosene Man.”
So with another Volume down, the question needs to be asked — will there be a Volume 3? McCaughey says it’s a certainty, since he still wants to write tunes about “Ted Kubiak, Butch Huskey, Don McMahon, Don Moss, Kris “Iron Man” Benson and Wilton “Peanuts” Guerrero.” Wynn adds, “Just open the Baseball Encyclopedia or the 2011 MLB press guide to any page. There are still plenty of tales to tell.”
All young bands go through growing pains, and Gold Fields is no exception. It took three different tries before they made a version of their debut album, Black Sun, that met their expectations. Not that you’d ever guess that from listening to the finished product. Like their explosive live shows and the self-titled EP that preceded it last year, the Australian quintet’s debut full-length displays invention, drive, and a commitment to artistic expression that belies the group’s tender years.
Gold Fields’ lively originals teem with variegated percussion and interwoven vocals, from opener “Meet My Friends,” with its buzzing keyboards, wordless vocal hook, and an indelible chorus, to eerie closer “Anxiety,” animated by its play of elongated phrases against staccato rhythms. Though the band’s sound defies pigeonholing, and each song boasts a distinctive identity, a musical through-line unifies the album’s eleven originals: by juxtaposing light and darkness, Gold Fields imbues even its most ebullient performances with melancholy—and vice-versa.
This is particularly evident on the first single, “Dark Again,” a standout from its inception as a demo. “The lyrics were written about pulling yourself out of a rut,” singer Mark Fuller told Rolling Stone in September 2012. “More specifically, pulling a relationship out of a rut. It’s just about snapping out of a negative mindframe and realizing that you’ve got something pretty special.” Carried along on waves of percolating synthesizer and rippling guitar, the song builds momentum as it surges towards a powerful, sing-along chorus.
Interplay of layers, textures, and contrasting moods figures prominently throughout Black Sun. On “Happy Boy,” Fuller incants “I’m going to be happy” like the mantra of a man trapped at the bottom of a well, even as dirty disco bass and crisp hi-hat swirl around him. The syncopated rhythms and shifting dynamics of “The Woods” and “Treehouse” evoke the otherworldly ambience of venturing deep into the wilderness, slivers of light throwing shapes across the forest floor.
Gold Fields has already played major festivals throughout Australia, supported Crystal Castles, Metric, Pnau, and Datarock, and gone down a storm at intimate venues from Los Angeles to London. Featuring two full drum kits and plenty of handheld percussion, the Gold Fields concert experience explodes with kinetic energy. “We really like to have fun on stage and get into the show,” confirms guitarist Vin Andanar. In lieu of painstaking recreations of the studio recordings, the quintet’s mutable live arrangements build, wave upon wave, into propulsive, sinewy grooves that supercharge the energy in the room.
Some young bands have to prod unfamiliar audiences to dance, but not Gold Fields. They’d be hard pressed to convince crowds to actually stand still for 30 seconds, and the non-stop momentum of their sets ensures there’s nary an opportunity to do so. As the nod to the Police’s classic “Roxanne” in “Meet My Friends” underscores, Gold Fields are committed to writing songs that are accessible yet multi-layered, marrying rhythmic drive with lyrical gravitas. “All along, we’ve had it in our heads that we were writing pop music that we’d love to see at a festival or hear on the radio, but tinted with a bit of darkness and melancholy running throughout,” concurs Fuller.
The band self-produced the album at home in Ballarat, after initial tracking sessions in LA with producer Mickey Petralia (Ladytron, Peaches) and Sydney with producer/engineer Scott Horscroft (The Presets, Sleepy Jackson, Silverchair).
The recordings that emerged from all these sessions were polished and professional… but something felt off. In a daring move for a young band with escalating buzz, Gold Fields decided to start over yet again. With new knowledge and experience under their collective belts, they returned to the D.I.Y. methods that’d yielded their initial successes.
Gold Fields had written and recorded all its early material—not only the demos that secured their record deal, but also the tracks that formed the basis of their debut single, “Treehouse,” and subsequent self-titled EP—in Andanar’s bedroom. Once again they retreated home to Ballarat, a Victorian era boomtown located about an hour’s drive west of Melbourne. With help from friends and borrowed equipment, they fashioned an ad hoc studio in the Fuller family’s garage and customized it with strings of Christmas lights, early album art, and even an illuminated Gold Fields light box built by Fuller’s brother-in-law.
It was the dead of winter outside, so the boys staved off chills by keeping their bodies and imaginations in constant motion. As soon as basic parts had been laid down, the quintet devoted several days to the sort of playful experimentation that had characterized their earlier work, making beats by banging on chairs and discarded lumber.
Other bands might have buckled under the strain of devoting so much time and energy to making a single record, but Gold Fields is a tight-knit lot, the result of friendships that predate the group’s formation in early 2010. Now all those countless hours together paid off. Assisted by engineer and longtime colleague Malcolm Besley, the band’s performances flowed forth freely and fluidly, yielding the organic sounding results they’d sought. “This time we definitely knew what we wanted,” concludes Andanar. “We knew what the songs should sound like, and now realizing the sound in our heads was the challenge.”
Gold Fields traveled a long way, both geographically and musically, to get to this point; no wonder the boys were willing to go the extra mile to make sure their debut full-length sounded just as they’d imagined it should. With all its twists and turns, making Black Sun turned out to be a bit of an odyssey, but one that ultimately concludes with a very happy ending—and the promise of more adventures to come.
They may call Bloomington, Indiana, home, but since their 2000 formation, Murder by Death have been a band without musical borders. Theirs is a world where Old West murder ballads mingle with rock-injected Western classicism; where an album’s sequencing can take listeners from a haunted back alley in rural Mexico to a raucous Irish pub. All of which is to say, Murder by Death albums don’t just string together songs; they create experiences. With their fifth album (and second for Vagrant), Good Morning, Magpie (04/06/10), Murder by Death continue the tradition of border expansion that drove career standouts like 2006’s In Bocca al Lupo and 2008’s Red of Tooth and Claw. The difference, however, is that this time, the band literally went off the map to get there.
“Going into the woods helped me write in a way I never would’ve been able to otherwise,” says singer/guitarist Adam Turla, recalling the 2009 retreat into the Tennessee mountains during which, armed with little more than a tent, a fishing pole and a notebook, he wrote the 11 songs that would become Good Morning, Magpie. “There were days where I’d sit down and write for seven hours, make dinner, and then sit down and write late into the night with my little camp light going: just intense, nonstop sessions of pure writing. I’ve never worked that way, ever, because with all the business of being a band, I’ve never had so little to do! Every day I was either cooking, hiking while writing, or writing. I didn’t speak to a single person the whole time.”
Be that as it may, Good Morning, Magpie still speaks volumes. Recorded at Bloomington’s Farm Fresh Studios with Jake Belser (who most recently worked with MBD on their all-instrumental soundtrack to Jeff Vandermeer’s 2009 book Finch), and mixed by Grammy-winning Red of Tooth and Claw producer Trina Shoemaker, the album weaves 11 disparate stories into a whole that’s unlike anything else in the band’s catalog. “These songs definitely come together as an album; we just aren’t relying on a concept this time,” says Turla, referencing the conceptual storylines that drove Murder by Death’s last two albums as well as 2002’s Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them? “Being out in the woods with no pressure freed me up to explore different moods and different stories, all of which became linked through the experience I had writing them: just that sheer sprint of working in isolation.”
With its junk-pile percussion and ramshackle Vaudevillian flow, “You Don’t Miss Twice” is the only song on Good Morning, Magpie that directly references Turla’s time in the woods—but the song’s spirit informs much of what surrounds it. “I was telling a friend how I thought this was our most upbeat record, and his reply was, ‘Seriously?’” Turla recalls, laughing. “But ‘upbeat’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘happy.’ Take a song like ‘Yes’—it’s got this fun, shuffling beat and this amazingly catchy melody from Sarah [Balliet, cello], but the lyrics are all about accepting death. Or ‘Whiskey in the World,’ which is basically a sad bastard’s lament about how the whiskey that makes this character enjoy life is also what condemns him. That duality between the music and the lyrics is something we haven’t done much until now.”
Even though it was written in isolation, Good Morning, Magpie came together over six weeks of rehearsals back in Bloomington—ultimately marking the first time the band recorded a full-length at home. “We ultimately just decided to record in Bloomington because we had a friend here [Belser] with his own studio, and he’d already done a great job with the Finch soundtrack and our B-sides and 7-inches; and we also lucked out and had Trina [Shoemaker] basically making herself available to help us mix whenever we were finished. So then we started thinking, “Man, we have all this time to ourselves; we should just bring in our friends—musicians from Bloomington and Louisville, Kentucky, which is about 75 miles away—and just play parts here and there. It was great—the album ended up with a lot of different instrumentation, and we paid everyone in whiskey.”
In keeping with Murder by Death tradition, whiskey also plays muse to a handful of Good Morning, Magpie’s songs—including the Balliet-penned opener, “Kentucky Bourbon,” which sounds like a Bulleit jingle spun through an old Victrola. But as the album progresses, the songs wind through other locales and moods: from eerie Southern-gothic territory (the creeping, uneasy “White Noise”) to an old Spanish cabaret (“On the Dark Streets Below”) to the high-noon drama of the title track—itself inspired equally by Welsh legend (the title references a tale of the magpie as Satan’s messenger) and the American West. No mere genre exercise, Good Morning, Magpie feels like a travelogue from a band that’s logged the miles to write from experience.
“Travel is a big part of this band’s reason for being,” says Turla, noting that the past few years have seen Murder by Death’s passports stamped in Alaska, Greece, Norway and the Italian island of Sardinia, among other far-flung locales. They have challenged their fans to book them all over the world – in as many unique places as possible. “I personally love the sense of variety you get from traveling, and I’m sure that idea influenced the way I approached a lot of these songs. Trying to use different styles and throw in different influences—whether it’s the way you turn a phrase or play a certain note—you can suggest different places,” he concludes. “That’s the fun of fiction; that’s the fun of movies, and music can have that effect, too. It’s all about being able to transport people to another place.”
Vanaprasta knows where rock music has been, and the Los Angeles quintet knows where it wants to take it. “Someplace mystical,” singer Steven Wilkin says, “where there’s arena-sized sound.”
In less than three years, Wilkin, bassist Taylor Brown, drummer Ben Smiley and guitarists Collin Desha and Cameron Dmytryk have circumnavigated the nebulous L.A. indie-rock universe, releasing an EP, teasing with a couple of singles and turning in enough neck-snapping live performances to give Angelenos whiplash from Silver Lake to the Sunset Strip.
Finally, after three forays into the studio, Vanaprasta unveils Healthy Geometry (out Nov. 1, 2011), a forward-thinking, galactic-sounding debut that draws from the indie, experimental, psychedelic and R&B worlds to shape music that is at once visceral and visionary. Critics have name-checked the Killers (LA Weekly), Kings of Leon (Consequence of Sound) and Mew (Buzz Bands LA), but Healthy Geometry?s broad dynamic also finds antecedents in the work of Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Muse, Modest Mouse and Black Sabbath.
“For a while, we called our sound ‘guitarwave,’ and the guys joke around that it should be ‘Indie Rock Guitar Hero’ or ‘Epic Karaoke,’” Wilkin says with a smile. “But whatever it is, I?m glad we had the patience to find the best way to capture it, and to cultivate who we are as a band.”
And who is Vanaprasta? It is five technicians from divergent backgrounds (with equally broad tastes) who comingled in L.A.’s musical melting pot in 2008. From their first jam session, the mixing of molecules in the room generated an energy that was palpable, and end result of that night was, Vanaprasta.
The key ingredients in the quintet’s stew are the colliding guitars of Dmytryk, a former punk-rock kid from Oregon, and Desha, a native Hawaiian with a foundation in slack key guitar, which wrestle atop powerful, shape-shifting rhythms from Brown and Smiley. Wilkin’s balletic tenor (he was a child opera singer in Utah) holds the mold together.
The band’s stadium sound illuminates themes ranging from the highly emotional to the dauntingly intellectual. Vanaprasta (whose name derives
from the Sanskrit word for a forest-dweller who has given up much of his worldly possessions) is fascinated with numerology, geometry and patterns, and what any or all them might mean in a world seemingly ruled by inefficacy and chaos.
Healthy Geometry was produced and mixed by Dave Schiffman, who recorded the band using mostly live takes with minimal overdubbing. It was mastered by Howie Weinberg, who kudoed the band on what he heard. “Working with Dave was super smooth,” Wilkin says. “He came out and saw us live, and basically we let him run with his interpretation of our live show.
Healthy Geometry, which can?t be categorized into any particular genre but stands on its own as a complete body of work, encapsulates all the different moving parts and ingredients that make up Vanaprasta.
-Kevin Bronson
Trevor Powers, whose stage name is Youth Lagoon, began writing his debut album “The Year of Hibernation” in 2010. Based around the idea of psychological dysphoria, Powers tried to document the trails of his mind through songs of minimalism and hypnotic ambience. Powers later described his writing process as “my mind communicating with me, not the other way around… it can take me to scary places but I’ve realized those bizarre thoughts I have don’t define me.” After signing with Mississippi-based label Fat Possum Records in 2011, he toured much of the following year before going back into solitude to write.
“Wondrous Bughouse,” Powers’ sophomore album, was spawned from what he describes as “becoming more fascinated with the human psyche and where the spiritual meets the physical world.” During the time he wrote, Powers became intrigued with the metaphysical universe and blending those ideas with pop music. “Youth Lagoon is something so personal to me because writing music is how I sort my thoughts, as well as where I transfer my fears,” explains Powers. “My mental state is usually pretty sporadic… a lot of this record was influenced by a fear of mortality but embracing it at the same time. Realizing that human life is only great because it is temporary. Experimenting with ideas about dimensions. I’m not a gifted speaker, so explaining things is difficult for me. But music always makes sense.”
Young the Giant’s sound is as uniquely diverse and eclectic as its five members. Sameer Gadhia, Payam Doostzadeh, Jacob Tilley, Francois Comtois and Eric Cannata hail from, surprisingly, Newport Beach, California. An assembly of international names and assorted backgrounds that combine to produce a refreshing brand of sun soaked Indie rock. With lush experimental compositions complimented by subtle yet infectious pop hooks and unique, soothing vocals, it is a sound all their own.
Predominantly comprised of teenagers, the five piece delivers mature arrangements far beyond their years. As high school students they conquered the local Orange County music scene winning awards and praise, quickly developing momentum that was soon challenged by their new college lives. At 5 different schools, divided by hundreds of miles of the California coast, the band persisted, continuing to play shows and write new music for their EP Shake My Hand.With the release of Shake My Hand came the new and unexpected challenge of keeping up with the demands of critical and popular acclaim.With their single Cough Syrup becoming a local favorite on KROQ, and strong web chatter from sites like absolute punk who claimedthe EP was a “Slick set of rock songs… that for all of its cocksure maturity and tight, catchy production, can easily be confused with a veteran stadium show”, the praise was reaching much further than the shores of Newport Beach.In early 2009 the band decided to leave their textbooks at school and hit the road throughout California to a growing following from San Francisco to San Diego. In a few months they went from playing smaller coffeehouses and clubs to headlining a packed House of Blues in Anaheim. In between they showcased at SXSW and opened for Ghostland Observatory, The Whigs, and Kings of Leon.
Currently the band is working on their first full length album with Grammy winning producer Joe Chicarelli (The White Stripes, My Morning Jacket, The Shins) to be released on Roadrunner Records in 2010.
* OPB MUSIC PRESENTS
In early 2010, Holland Andrews began a solo project behind the alias of Like a Villain. She pulls her influences notable minimalist composers such as Arvo Pärt, contemporary vocalists such as Diamanda Galas, and is heavily influenced by broadway and opera music. Other influences include modern experimental music’s spearhead, Björk. By creating tapestry of live loops using her voice, clarinet, and glockenspiel, her aim is to put emphasis on the roots of organic sounds, and to create an emotional realm of sonic healing and magic.
Photo cred: Diana Markosian
I am Phil Elverum. Here is my brief autobiography for journalists and fact seekers:
I am 34 years old. I am from the town of Anacortes, Washington. Since 1997 my primary life’s work has been making studio-based music, first under the name “the Microphones” (1997 – 2002) and then “Mount Eerie” (2003 – present). In addition to this I have played in other bands (D+, Old Time Relijun), produced other peoples’ recordings and dabbled in painting, writing, and photography.
Aside from 5 years in Olympia, Wash. and a long winter in northern Norway (2002/2003), I have lived most of my life in Anacortes and much of the content of my music and other art is tied to the place. My music project Mount Eerie is named after the actual mountain, Mt. Erie, that lies just south of town. I try to make music that feels associated with this particular place in some way, whether it’s literally described in words or just an ambiguous feeling.
The “Microphones era” in Olympia (1997-2002) was very prolific, with 5 major albums (and many smaller things) being released by the K label. The most critically acclaimed was “the Glow pt. 2” (2001). Following that was an album called “Mount Eerie” by the Microphones.
I did not feel totally satisfied artistically with my exploration of the “Mount Eerie” idea on the album of that name so in 2003 I changed the name of my whole project to Mount Eerie. I did this partly to explore the idea more deeply and partly because the name had become more relevant to my songs than “the Microphones”, not to mention the appeal of being conceptually rooted to an actual place.
In 2004 I started releasing my own projects via the “P.W. Elverum & Sun, ltd.” company in an attempt to become even more self-sufficient and also to be able to explore unusual packaging ideas. The first major release was “No Flashlight” by Mount Eerie (2005) which came wrapped in a gargantuan poster. Since then I have released many fancy LPs and an extravagant art book of photography. I continue to explore new ideas for mass producing art and music in a homemade style. P.W. Elverum & Sun remains primarily a vehicle for my own projects only, not a real record label. Deeper simple self-sufficiency seems to be a good way to weather the tumultuous times we live in.
Here’s what the journalist Brandon Stosuy said to describe what my stuff is actually about (inthe Believer):
“Regardless of the moniker, the various collections include interlocking themes, references to earlier works, and are marked by Elverum’s distinctive naturalist self-recorded lo-fi analog sound that mixes a whispered, gentle voice, which can also yell and bellow, with various strains of sound: His work can be delicately spare or booming and ambitiously layered and noisy, often in the same song. Lyrically, he focuses on memory, first-person storytelling, myth, naturalism, the everyday as sacred, and a sense of place (in and out of Washington State), among other related things.”
Here’s another nice blurb (from Jeff Manson writing in the Bolinas Hearsay News):
“Mt. Eerie is the current incarnation of enigmatic sound wizard, nature philosopher, neo-beat, radical feminist, Pacific Northwest Shredder/legend Phil Elverum. I first became aware of his music in the late 90s in Santa Cruz when he came through town regularly performing in basements and on the beach in/as his old band name “the Microphones”. For the past 10 plus years I’ve witnessed Phil crank out an amazing body of work, from self-recorded albums, to photo-books, to goofy comics. He makes consistently mesmerizing bold work outside any particular genre and does so with an unaffected sense of humor that is rare in most artists.”
Harkening back to punk rock’s glory days of the 70s, Oklahoma outfit BRONCHO captures the aggression, DIY authenticity and youthful exhilaration of a bygone era and then drags it by the hair into the Here and Now, creating a fresh sound that’s unlike anything being played today. With echoes of The Replacements, Iggy and the Stooges and The Ramones, BRONCHO’s exuberant ten song debut Can’t Get Past the Lips is a blisteringly cathartic 20 minute flash of gritty, crunching guitar work supported by an assaultive rhythm section and made whole by songwriter Ryan Lindsey’s aggressive, yelping vocal work.
Lindsey’s vocals and guitar are supported by Johnathon Ford (bass), Ben King (guitar) and Nathan Price (drums). The project began as an off-the-cuff recording session for Lindsey (who also plays keys for Starlight Mints, in addition to performing as a solo artist). He quickly laid down early versions “Pick a Fight” and “Losers” with the assistance of King (Cheyenne) and Price (Native Lights), and then sent them to Ford (Unwed Sailor), asking for feedback. Ford loved the songs so much that he suggested they begin playing shows as a band.
“The next thing I knew, Johnathon had a show booked in Tulsa,” Lindsey says.
That first show, a manic, ultra-lean showcase of six songs that clocked in at less than 15 minutes, occurred in February of 2010, since then the band has toured across the U.S. and released their debut album Can’t Get Past The Lips to international acclaim.
The collective talent and cumulative experience of all involved with BRONCHO has resulted in an album that, for all its dirty-dishwater punk roots, is a masterwork of garage/pop simplicity. Speaking of the band’s reference points, Lindsey says “We all love the way those records sound so we naturally went in that direction, as far as fidelity goes. But more than anything, it’s the attitude of an era that I wasn’t around for, but feel a connection with. We didn’t set out to recreate a record from that era, we just took on that message and made it our own.”
Or, as Ford puts it: “It’s not nostalgia, it’s natural.”
Baritone vocalist, new folk songwriter Kris Orlowski writes from a real, unguarded place and that accessibility is tangible on stage and off. Sound on the Sound brands him as “a troubadour by definition, whose full bodied croon develops a charisma all its own.” With the significant talents of Mark Isakson on guitar, Torry Anderson on keys, Greg Garcia on drums and Tyler Carroll on bass, the northwest indie folk band is turning heads. Their new five song EP features a 17-piece orchestra keeps the band evolving in sound, with songwriting at the core of their future.
Royal Thunder is an Atlanta based, four-piece, progressive rock/metal, alternative band founded by lead guitarist Josh Weaver in 2006. After going through some lineup changes, Mlny Parsonz (bass/vocals) joined the group in 2007. Together, the two added drummer Lee Smith whom Weaver and Parsonz had played with in a previous band, and then last but not least Josh Coleman (rhythm guitar) was added to the fold.
Royal Thunder self-recorded and released a seven song EP in late 2009 before signing with renowned independent label, Relapse Records, who re-issued the EP in 2010. The band quickly gained critical praise, being described as “Led Zeppelin astride a psychedelic unicorn” by NPR.org and “Black Math Horseman or Johnette Napolitano of Concrete Blonde, fronting Black Sabbath.” by Brooklyn Vegan.
Royal Thunder is set to release their proper full-length debut entitled ‘CVI’ via Relapse Records in the spring of 2011. ‘CVI’ is a sultry, southern, hard rock thinker of an album that is an absolute must have for fans of the Atlanta and Savannah hard rock scenes (Mastodon, Baroness, Kylesa, Black Tusk, etc). Royal Thunder have crafted an unforgettable, truly soulful sound with ‘CVI’.
With a hard-hitting, hypnotic live show that is more of a ritual than a rock concert, the four piece has been capturing audiences with their passionate performances, sharing the stage with a range of artists including Scott Kelly of Neurosis, Wovenhand, Birds of Avalon, Kylesa, and many more. Keep this band on your radar in 2012 and beyond.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
HOTT MT (Hour Of The Time Majesty Twelve), is an enigmatic post-pop collective based in Los Angeles, CA. Thoughts and anxieties about myth, fantasy, and Thailand prompt the group’s sound, content, and actions.
HOTT MT made headlines in 2012 when they drove from LA to Oklahoma City to pay homage to Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips. The trip resulted in a collaboration between Coyne and HOTT MT on the song “Never Hate Again”, as well as music for Ke$ha and Erykah Badu. “Never Hate Again” was released by Origami Vinyl in August 2012 with an accompanying video also featuring Coyne.
HOTT MT have recently returned to LA after showcasing at the SXSW music festival in Austin TX, and are currently working on new music with Artist / Producer Pop Levi. Other highlights include work w/ The Flaming Lips on a Stone Roses cover album (release TBD), and live dates with Bat For Lashes, Wavves, Django Django, The Mynabirds, Vinyl Williams, Robert DeLong, NO, Hands, and The Flaming Lips on their Guinness World Record-setting event. Their debut full-length “I Made This” was released on May 21, and future plans include showcasing at CMJ and a West Coast tour in early-Fall.
As Geoffrey Chaucer was a forester/poet and Norman Jolly was a forester/cricketer, Lost Lander’s Matt Sheehy is a forester/songwriter. Sheehy’s day-to-day workplace is the mighty wooded expanse of the Pacific Northwest, where the landscapes are as newly raw as can be found anywhere on earth – where mammoth trees take root in fertile volcanic soil and a frigid ocean batters the rugged coastline. And with the same physicality that Sheehy works with the contours of the earth, so do his songs chronicle the terrain of the human heart.
DRRT is Lost Lander’s debut recording, but it is not Sheehy’s first foray into music. As a member of the duo Gravity & Henry, the former Alaskan released and toured behind two albums; after their dissolution, Sheehy released the critically lauded solo effort Tigerphobia in 2008. Through his work as guitarist for Ramona Falls - the project of former Menomena keyboardist/vocalist Brent Knopf – and in fronting his own band the Menders, Sheehy has established a firm foothold in the thriving Portland OR music scene. Now with a live backing band that includes musicians Patrick Hughes, Dave Lowensohn, and Sarah Fennell, Lost Lander marks the newest and most significant chapter in Sheehy’s musical career.With Knopf as producer, the two worked in a variety of locales ranging from the weather-beaten yet devastatingly beautiful Oregon Coast to the sodden interior of the Olympic Peninsula’s rainforest. Taking advantage of Knopf’s skill with systems and recording software, the pair sculpted an arresting collection of tracks that grew far beyond the song’s origins on Sheehy’s guitar. Sheehy and Knopf then enlisted a gallery of Portland musicians – including Nick Jaina, Akron/Family’s Dana Jenssen and Seth Olinsky, and many others – to contribute toDRRT, often spontaneously recording the guests’ parts as they were hearing the tracks for the very first time.From the first notes of the album’s stunning opening track, “Cold Feet,” it’s clear that the results are something uncommon. Lost Lander’s sound is that of mechanized complexity working in perfect tandem with cutthroat human honesty. There are dense clusters of guitars and heart-stoppingly pretty keyboards; there are intricate layers of human vocals and fat, squelchy bass notes; there’s percussion that chitters with all the complexity and grandeur of a forest of insects. But what matters here are Sheehy’s songs. Dealing with heartbreak, joy, and the never-ending mystery that is human interaction, his melodies maintain an endearing innocence even as they’re expertly assembled into watertight vessels. The album’s title itself, DRRT, could be considered a computer-esque version of “Dirt,” and one of Sheehy’s chief concerns – in both forestry and songwriting – is that marriage of nature and technology.The name Lost Lander came from a dream Sheehy’s mother had about Wisconson’s Lost Land Lake, where she spent much of her childhood, and it captures the dueling forces of memory and the unknown that permeates so much of DRRT. Lost Lander is a force to be reckoned with, one that’s as elemental and generative as the forests where Sheehy spends his days.Vice Device is the distillation of a musical collaboration between Portland, Oregon’s Andrea K and Bobby Kaliber. Frequently performing multiple instruments in tandem, Andrea and Bobby layer pulsating synth melodies with charged vocals and split the responsibilities of drumming by each performing percussion with one hand. Lurching bass lines are intertwined by Devin Welch to complete the band’s distinctive sound. Through reductive experimentation with analog synthesizers and live electronics, Vice Device create a raw and dynamic soundscape without the use of sequencers or backing tracks.
Vice Device’s vinyl debut, a split 7-inch with Hot Victory, features the track “Skin” and was released August 5th, 2011 on Megathon Records and Sweating Tapes.
Their new 7-inch, “Breathless” b/w “I Sign My Name With An X,” is out now on 2510 Records.
Fred Armisen is one of the most visible members of the current Saturday Night Live cast (his 10th season!), impersonating such public luminaries as U.S. President Barack Obama, New York Governor David Paterson, and Prince. Armisen is also a co-creator and co-star of IFC’s Peabody award-winning comedy sketch series Portlandia, along with his comedy partner Carrie Brownstein. Portlandia finished its 3rd season this year.
* OPB MUSIC PRESENTS
Dear Reader,
I once came very close to dying (bug-bite, failed organs), and though my life was spared thanks to thanks to modern medicine and a kidney given to me by my father, nonetheless I live with a persisting sense that my time is borrowed. My resolution–what I intend to do with my finite allotment– is to reach some small, yet conclusive understanding of my life in particular and the world in general; an understanding accomplished, in part, through a combination of music and words.
The last record we made, Hunger & Thirst, is a record that purposefully confuses physical sickness with ontological sickness, i.e. that most desires are only symptoms of the desire to be someone else. This new record picks up where we left off, though this time “purposefully confusing” the idea of time as a place. It imagines that my past is a composite of old houses and apartment buildings, that my memories are these little artifacts strewn about, and then there’s me with a single candle, picking up the artifacts one at a time and examining them by the dim light.
Songs as personal as these perhaps ought to be burned or buried rather than be paraded before an audience. But there is something transfigurative in playing music with so many close friends–what starts out as a solemn, solitary attempt is turned into something both communal and cathartic. I think we even have fun at times.
A New Kind of House (the title itself is borrowed from the brilliant poetry of Zach Schomburg) was artfully recorded on location (our house) by repeat-collaborator Paul Laxer; the artwork was beautifully realized by Ricky Delucco, and we have Tender Loving Empire to thank for so tenderly helping us put out a record a second time.
kyle ray morton / 01.11.2011
PRESENTED BY KIND SNACKS
Royal Canoe is a group of musicians on a mission to construct ambitious, inventive music. The songs are thick with catchiness, rich in rhythm and are consistently pushing against the boundaries of pop music.
Royal Canoe released their EP, Extended Play, in North America on February 21.
ex-koko and the sweetmeats singer and guitarist g vandercrimp goes solo, mastering the art of minimalism for MAXIMUM IMPACT. Prism Tats creates waking dream sub-realities that devastate and elate. get ready to be transported to an alternate dimension.
We’ve thought a lot about rock-music. One selects one’s influences and moves from there, a process made simpler in the networked age. The result often resembles a collage, unified by the aesthetic leanings of its maker. Music writers and peers in conversation map out the references and citations made by their favorite new bands – “just like early SST punk” or “frigid cold-wave resembling…”
As musicians in 2013, we wanted to produce a record of many thoughts and feelings without abandoning the time-tested format of rock-music. We were less interested in “resembling” our favorite bands and songs than in searching for the small, indescribable things within that made them special.
We wanted to make plain the conditions of rock-music’s existence and how it could be formed. In doing so, we sought to produce a substantive, affective entity beyond a series of reference points. We’ve participated in a feedback loop.
Our band was born between March 1991 and July 1992 but formed in 2010 while attending college in Portland. We started as many do, with a desire to write and play songs to and for our friends, evolving slowly, ever-mediated by our academic schedules. What Hardly Art will release this summer is a collection of songs written step-wise in Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles between March 2011 and January 2013, recorded at YU Contemporary in Portland by Dylan Wall.
Total then serves to document the evolution of our experience, to be understood in spite of and indebted to our time in school. Our tastes have changed and the emotions that informed earlier songs have faded into memory. In any case, music listening and playing has always remained crucial. As a result, our record is an assemblage of observations made by four different people collected in one place.
As a public document, Total allows us to extend ourselves into a broader dialogue. The beauty of rock-music lies in the expanse of terrain that it encompasses as a definition. Total aims to acknowledge that freedom; it is at times melodious and at others dissonant, all in all, a finished product, a totality.
The newest entry into John Vanderslice’s deep and undeniably remarkable catalog is White Wilderness, and it’s a record like no other he’s made before.
Here are nine new and wildly impressive JV songs captured live over three days in a unique collaboration with the Magik*Magik Orchestra, a collective of classically trained musicians in the Bay Area led by artistic director Minna Choi.
Did you catch that? Recorded live in three days! Never in his long career of super-smart pop songwriting paired with masterful recording and production has JV shed his reliance on hours and hours of agonizing studio wizardry. Never before has he passed up the chance to tweak and twist endlessly in mixing. For this album, all that went away. It’s simply a room full of friends playing music.
The Magik*Magik Orchestra have a comprehensive mastery of classic performance and repertoire, but also have a full appreciation of the aesthetics of indie and underground music. Choi arranged and conducted White Wilderness with 19 members of the Magik*Magik playing strings and horns, vibraphone, pedal steel and piano, an assortment of reed instruments, and much to JV’s benefit, the voice of Minna Choi singing backup at key moments throughout the album.
Recorded in San Francisco, White Wilderness was produced by John Congleton, whose resume includes albums by St Vincent, The Walkmen, Explosions in the Sky, Bill Callahan and many more.
The results are stunning, and White Wilderness is a breath of fresh air for JV, as well as a great stake in the ground for his career of making stellar records.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
Diamond Junk – the debut full-length from Sun Angle –creates, as the title suggests, exhilarating tension between beauty and chaos, propelled by artful, animalistic urgency.
Known and loved for their irreverent, expressive, spontaneous live shows—full of aggressive elation and gritty, raucous, surreal layers of sound—the Portland trio channels that same epic, improvisational energy into their debut album. Produced by Danny Seim (Menomena), Diamond Junk was recorded in a brief blip of space-time in a cabin lurking in the depths of Zigzag, Oregon—
musical immersion marked by the creative abandon of all-night psychotropic inspiration and oblique strategies.
The synergistic three-piece consists of Charlie Salas Humara on vocals & guitar (Panther), Marius Libman on bass (Copy) and Papi Fimbres on drums (Paper/Upper/Cuts). Central and South American footsteps traverse through Sun Angle’s veins, blending SST punk, Cumbia, and pop in a wash of psychedelic filth. Sun Angle ride the line between chaos and pop, making music all it’s own.Diamond Junk is out now on New Moss Records.
Sometime in the Spring of 2012 the musicians that would go on to form the Chicago & Minneapolis based trio ON AN ON found themselves at a tipping point. The three of them – Nate Eiesland, Alissa Ricci, and Ryne Estwing – had played music with one another in various capacities for the better part of a decade. Most recently, they had shared the stage and studio as three fifths of the indie-pop outfit Scattered Trees, which had seen its fair share of success. But with the band’s studio time only a few weeks away and the other members now spread out across the country pursuing other endeavors, they would chart their own course and come out stronger for it. What emerged was ON AN ON.
For ON AN ON, the precariousness of breaking new ground only three weeks before recording with accomplished producer Dave Newfeld (Broken Social Scene, Super Furry Animals, Los Campesinos!) provided a jolt of creative energy. The musicians had become disenchanted with their past approach to songwriting and recording, finding the process of striving for polished pop both tiresome and constrained. Newfeld proved the perfect counterpart to their initial vision for the record, encouraging them to push boundaries and go with their instincts.According to Eiesland, the sessions were something of an exorcism: “We really wanted to get away from the sterility of our previous approach to recording.” Eieseland, Ricci, and Estwing embraced musical risks that in the past they might have shied away from. In the studio, the band members explored a natural chemistry and honed their sound; synthesizers, scattershot electro beats and ambient ear candy gave guitars, bass and drums a ghostly sheen.While the melodies might clue one in to the trio’s evolved sonic palate, it’s through the album’s themes that the group members’ respective evolution becomes most apparent. Eiesland wrote the majority of the lyrics, in the process coming to terms with death and the traps that life springs upon us. Whether letting his intuition guide him on “I Wanted To Say More” (“You are a saint and you’re the devil / Every word I spoke to you, I thought that they were wings / But they were only feathers”) or owning up to life’s inevitability on “All The Horses” (“A family tree will split in two halfway through its life”), there’s a tempered calm to the thought-provoking imagery he espouses through his words. Estwing offered up his own lyrical seance on his lead vocal track “Cops,” although the bassist says his message – that the police can be surprisingly corrupt – is more direct.After smashing everything they knew to pieces, they pulled themselves together around Give In, ON AN ON’s ten-track debut album – a dream-washed textural journey armed with a biting perspective on life, love, and the commonality of loss. It is an affair that sizzles with electricity and calls one in with its unnerved openness.
BARONESS formed in 2003 in Savannah, GA, comprised of a group of friends who grew up together in Lexington, VA, a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Shortly after their formation, the band released two EPs and a split EP with Unpersons entitled respectively, First, Second andA Grey Sigh in a Flower Husk. From their origin right through the release of these EPs, BARONESS toured non-stop throughout America and Europe, building up a steady underground fan base.
In late 2006, the band began working on their first proper full-length, and debut for Relapse, Red Album. Recorded by Philip Cope (Kylesa), the album was a big step forward from the band’s earlier material; they began to develop a sense of melody and song structure as a counter-balance to the EP’s brute intensity. The release of Red Album saw the band touring world-wide and year-round for the next two years. The record received high critical praise, eventually garnering the #1 Album-of-the-Year slot in Revolver Magazine.
In between tours, and exactly two years after writing Red Album, BARONESS returned to the studio to record a follow-up record. The band enlisted the help of Grammy-nominated engineer/producer John Congleton (Explosions in the Sky, St. Vincent, Black Mountain, etc.). In 2009, Relapse released Blue Record, another comprehensive step forward for the band’s ever-evolving sound. The record continued the band’s growing sense of melody while directing the focus to an “album-as-an-art-form” concept. Blue Record was named 2009’s Album-of-the-Year by Decibel Magazine, and made an impact on the Best-Of lists in publications as varied as Pitchfork, Village Voice, PopMatters, Revolver, Rock Sound and Metal Hammer.
BARONESS’ mission statement has always been simple: keep an open mind, confront challenges, avoid repetition and take the music to diverse audiences. BARONESS toured constantly and extensively for two years straight with Blue Record, sharing the stage with such bands as METALLICA, MASTODON, DEFTONES, and ISIS. The band also played a variety of festivals, including Coachella (US), Oya (Norway), Bonnaroo (US) and Soundwave (AUS).
BARONESS took the year off in 2011 for the first time in nearly a decade in order to focus on writing a new and more challenging third full-length. After a year of writing and refining, the band entered Water Music Studios in Hoboken, NJ with co-producer John Congleton to record their highly anticipated third full-length, Yellow & Green. Tracked in both Hoboken and Congleton’s own Elmwood Studio in Dallas, TX, the new full-length was released in July 2012 via Relapse Records and debuted at #30 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album chart. The double-album was dubbed a “thrilling hard-rock epic” by Rolling Stone, the New York Times said the 18-track release included “a grand sprawl of riffs and ruminations” and Artist Direct, after awarding the band “Rock Band of the Year” honors said “they epitomize the spirit of the greats like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, while remaining wholly unique. It’s something we need more of. Baroness are everything that a rock band should be — and more.”
The band supported the album with a sold-out North American tour as direct support for Meshuggah and a main stage appearance at Metallica’s inaugural Orion Music + More Fest. In late July, they headed to Europe for a round of summer festival appearances and headlining dates which was tragically cut short due to a near fatal bus accident in Bath, England. The band and crew suffered a variety of injuries in the 30 foot plummet and have been at different stages of recovery since.
As the year came to a close, Baroness dominated year-end lists with Entertainment Weekly and Spin both naming Yellow & Green their #1 metal release of 2012 and iTunes awarding “Take My Bones Away” the distinction of best metal song of the year. Decibel (#2), Guitar World (#15), Loudwire (#4), Magnet (#12), Pitchfork (#3 on Metal Albums, #25 Best Albums of 2012), Revolver (#4), Stereogum (#18) and the Village Voice (#6) also gave the album top honors.
Internationally, the album fared similarly, receiving top honors from Terrorizer (#2), BBC Music (#13), Metal Hammer Germany (#4), Metal Hammer Norway (#4), Metal Hammer UK (#14), Close Up Sweden (#4) and Visions Germany (#4).
2013 is the year that Baroness will get back on their feet and come back stronger than ever. The band is planning a series of shows and festival appearances to show the world that even the worst of tragedies cannot hold them back.
Olympia is an album of transformation. Though it has only been two years since Austra’s 2010 debut Feel It Break, it presents a quantum evolution in the Toronto-based band’s sound, structure and style.
After three years of non-stop international touring with the likes of the XX, Grimes and the Gossip, when it came time to record Olympia, Austra had evolved into a complex collaborative effort between its six members. “Previously, I would flesh out songs before I brought them to the band, but this time I left them bare and let the others fill them in” explains Katie Stelmanis, the principal songwriter/vocalist.
Olympia is also the first confessional record for Stelmanis as evidenced by the heartfelt lyrics of piano driven lead single “Home” (stream now). “Home” expresses the anxieties of waiting up all night for a lover to return. “I was mad and upset and the song just wrote itself,” says the singer. The album touches on a range of sentiments that stem from a relationship ending, a relationship beginning, and friends’ struggles with addiction and motivation. Despite the sometimes dark lyrics written in collaboration with band member Sari Lightman, Olympia is bubbly and buoyant— fundamentally a dance record, which Stelmanis says was the band’s aim all along. “We are really into dense harmonies and big beautiful melodies, but I also love techno and dance music. I wanted to bring those elements together.”
Though Olympia is filled with electronic and synthetic sounds that reference everything from Trax Record classic cuts to Yazoo’s Upstairs At Eric’s, it’s free of programming and loops. Everything was played live by the band in the studio and all of the percussion including a wild set up of marimbas and congas is drummer Maya Postepski. “Maya played a huge role in the production of the album,” says Stelmanis, who has been playing with the drummer for eight years since their previous band, Galaxy. “There is a major percussive element running through every song,” Stelmanis laughs, “this is the album where we discovered rhythm.”
The album was produced by Austra with additional production by Mike Haliechuk, vocal production by Damian Taylor (Bjork, the Killers), engineered by Bill Skibbe and Leon Taheny and mixed by Tom Elmhirst (Adele, Erasure, Hot Chip).
Austra is Katie Stelmanis (lead vocals), Maya Postepski (drums), Dorian Wolf (bass), Ryan Wonsiak (keys), Sari & Romy Lightman (backing vocals).
Houndstooth is a five-piece rock and roll band, and they’ll break your heart and make you feel alive all at once. Their songs are basically electric folk songs in the way they talk about everyday sweetness and desolation in a manner that’s as singular and idiosyncratic as the singer of the song (in this case, the inimitable Katie Bernstein.) And this while speaking to a common uncanny experience of the world that we can all identify as the stuff of true life. The presentation, of course, is decidedly informed by the grand recent history of rock acts, but you might instead think about a William Eggleston photograph or an Alice Munro story, warm kodachrome and the narrative of bittersweet true life.
Houndstooth began in 2010 when Katie Bernstein and John Gnorski started writing songs together. A few months of work and a handful of lo-fi demos later, the two recruited their favorite local musicians to bring it all to life. The result is an elusive amalgam of familiar sounds – Verlaine-esque guitars, Nuggets-era organ, heavy melodic bass, and Kenny Buttery-like drums with Bernstein’s voice giving everything an elegiac and hopeful gleam.
Their debut LP, “Ride Out The Dark,” is a collection of songs that came out of the universally tumultuous year of 2012, and they speak to the light at the end of the tunnel we all made it through. Put the record on your turntable and sit with it for a while; it’s the kind of album that makes you homesick for an un-nameable place and puts you in its own sort of darkness on the edge of town where things are raw and alive and unchained, watching the road pass through a glass-bottomed sedan on a highway dark with spring rain.
On the heels of three well-received singles comes Ride Your Heart, the bombastic debut album by LA band Bleached. Sisters Jennifer and Jessie Clavin match their ability to blend a mix of freewheeling ’77 punk with vintage sunny Southern California melodic rock and roll; creating blindingly bright hooks and dark heartfelt lyrics about love, loss, and all the crazy fun moments in between. That’s the goal: the sugary and sour, repurposed by two aggressively harmonic musicians and songwriters, stepping into a new visceral dimension of sound. Their full length debut epitomizes this movement – gritty, raw, adventurous and frenzied, tossing you out onto the dance floor, hair mussed from make-outs, cigarette still dangling from fingertips.
Raised up deep in the San Fernando Valley, their suburban isolation nurtured a frenzied creativity, as they started making their own music at a young age. Sneaking into punk shows over the hill in Hollywood, they became teenaged underground scene staples at all-ages DowntownDIY venue, The Smell. “Me and Jen were punk kids who weren’t taught how to play instruments,” says Jessie. “We taught ourselves how to play, out in the garage.” Eventually signing to Kill Rock Stars and Post Present Medium, their all-girl punk band Mika Miko drew international acclaim, landing slots on tours with No Age, Black Lips, and The Gossip.
Bleached originally formed when the Clavin sisters resolved to continue working with each other upon the break up of Mika Miko. Plans were postponed when the sisters joined other bands. (Jennifer relocated to New York and toured extensively, and Jessie began to play with various bands in LA.) But in the fleeting moments they found together back home, the songs that became Bleached’s early 7” singles came together. Since Jennifer moved back to her hometown, Bleached now serves as both girls’ chief creative outlet. “I was going crazy being in someone else’s band,” remarked Jennifer. “Me and Jessie are so proud and happy to be able to focus on our own music, together.”
As a whole, the twelve tracks on Ride Your Heart reveal the many facets of Bleached’s music in a delirious vortex of playful harmonies, tangled guitars, and golden noise. Each song brings a new element, while also imbibing the classic moods of bands as varied and iconic in nature as The Ramones and The Cars to The Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. From the syncopated backbeat and two-part chorus of “Dead In Your Head,”, the rolling riffs and sparkling melodies of “Searching Through The Past” and the pulsating energy and urgency of “Dreaming Without You” and “Outta My Mind”, Bleached take you on a sweeping emotional rollercoaster that churns and burns. Ride Your Heart is a thrilling, beating, glorious wall of sound strong enough to withstand its own impact.
“I bump fades when I fuck. So what?” says the muscular, shirtless man, digitally rendered as part of the virtual-world game Second Life, as he cocks his head to the side and spreads his arms wide. This is the type of Internet art Mike Grabarek and Jeremy Scott, together known as electronic R&B duo Magic Fades, forge out of found images and post on Tumblr. They’re mild gamers, but it’s the images, not the games themselves, that hold so much intrigue for the duo. “People are creating what they think would be the ultimate human,” Scott explains.
This quest for perfection is not lost on Scott and Grabarek. Musically, Magic Fades is hard to pin down but can be geolocated somewhere in the bloggy, foggy Bermuda Triangle between “new alternative,” dreamy R&B and the emerging micro-genre referred to as “vaporwave.” In short, Grabarek says, their goal is “to make weird music that is also poppy.” Lyrically, their songs ooze with romance, swagger and sex. On “Sims Hunk,” from last year’s Mishka-releasedObsession, Grabarek promises, “I can do this for hours/ Let’s make this night ours.”
Although currently relegated to opening slots in Portland, Magic Fades has made a lot of fans on the Web. Last year, Scott and Grabarek took what they considered their best song, the twinkling, thumping “Endless Summer,” to the now-defunct Dior Nights Facebook group, a collection of like-minded influential artists and musicians across the U.S. With support from respected Knoxville-based producer Slow Head, Magic Fades saw its SoundCloud play counts rise considerably. Last month, along with fellow Portlander Vektroid, the group performed on Tinychat—a “very ghetto” live video-streaming site, according to Grabarek—and attracted so many viewers that the site crashed.
Magic Fades’ local rep is gradually increasing, especially after playing last summer’s Dark Arts Fest. Since then, requests to open for acts like Onuinu and Shy Girls have streamed in, and Scott and Grabarek bagged a monthly DJ night at Holocene, which they’re calling Real Emotion: Slow Jams & Cosmic Soul. “We’ve been fortunate to open for bands people love,” Grabarek says. “Normally if we get a response from a booking agent, it’s gonna be one word: no.” With Scott on keyboards and backing vocals and Grabarek singing lead and shredding guitar, Magic Fades’ sultry jams are difficult for a lot of club kids to grasp, and normally they elicit little more than the typical head-bob from uninitiated crowds. Bigger nights have seen other results, however. At their New Year’s Eve performance at Holocene, Scott says, “a group of girls were wasted and they were getting freaky.” Grabarek pauses: “Who’s that girl? I can’t remember her name. She was twerking pretty hard actually.”
Magic Fades isn’t planning to leave the bedroom world of SoundClouds, tweets and Tumbles behind, but you can bet that expanding into the club world will change how it operates. “It’s not just searching tags or whatever,” Scott says. “It’s about being friends with someone and trusting their taste.”
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
Hands can be so many things: welcoming, scolding, loving, clenched into a fist. With Hands as your name, you have to both capture emotion and prove that the music you create with your own is worthy of the moniker. Luckily these Hands are up to the challenge.
Hands makes music like a rip tide, swirling in overlapping loops and riffs, slowly enveloping you. The group’s members – Geoff Halliday, Ryan Sweeney, Sean Hess and Alex Staniloff – craft their hypnotic sound from a single dropping note that builds into a reverberating roar that crashes over you like a wave. It’s a mesmerizing trick that they pull off on their debut LP, Synesthesia. Building off the success of their Massive Context EP (Small Plates) released in 2012 and a 7” to be released on White Iris in January, songs like “Videolove” and “Trouble” show Hands’ innate ability to blend instruments and electronics into a deep texture that moves ethereally through genres. Hands moves from rock to synth-pop to skyrocketing stadium anthem, often within the same song. The interplay of Sweeney’s esoteric guitar riffs, Hess’ technical tempos, Staniloff’s thumping bass and Halliday’s soaring vocals and affected keyboards help Hands build a dynamic atmosphere, where a lesser band would only manage empty atmospherics.
A relative newcomer to the LA scene, Hands began as a two-piece from Philadelphia before Halliday and Sweeney headed west and added the low and thump of Hess and Staniloff. The band made a mark on the scene immediately, quickly playing packed shows across the country including stops at SXSW, CMJ and Deluna Fest, headlining Echo Park Rising, sessions with Daytrotter, and a west coast jaunt with Maps and Atlases. Hands’ ability to win over fans with their feverish live show and dance-party-ready sound has already earned them opening spots for the likes of Deerhoof, DeVotchKa, Foster the People, and Kimbra as well as playing shows to sold out crowds at venues across LA.
For now, Hands’ graceful and danceable indie rock is still under the radar, as evidenced by their spot in TIME Magazine’s “11 Bands You Don’t Know (But Should)” List, but they are quickly rising to the surface, bringing their melodies and thumping beats with them. Over the past year, Hands has built a devoted following for their evolving palette of sounds, soaring melodies, and complex looping song structures. With overwhelming responses to first listens of the record and Hands hitting the road for most of 2013, surely this is the year that Hands will start to make waves. Big big waves.
PRESENTED BY KIND SNACKS
“I suppose it’s never enough I you get what you want then you want what was I but I’d rather worry about my existential crisis I laying on a beach where the sun sets the nicest”- “Get That”
!!! will release their new album THR!!!ER on April22, 2012 on Warp Records. It is the fifth full-length from the sonically adventurous sextet and its third for Warp. THR!!!ER finds the band reconciling its love for building playlists from disparate dance singles with its continued devotion to the cohesive album format. Famous for its off the hinges live shows and relentless touring schedule, this time the group focused itself on lyrics and tighter song structures. To help ! ! ! on this mission, the majority of THR!!!ER was recorded with Jim Eno, the drummer in Spoon and one of key forces behind the boards for the lauded indie rock band.
Coming into THR!!!ER, the members of!!! knew that this was an album where they almost had to reintroduce themselves, showing a developed and impactful take on how they present their sound. “It’s the kind of the record that feels like more of everything,” says vocalist Nic Offer. “It’s more immediate, it’s more honest about our lives. There was a real focus in this band. We knew the lyrics had to be better, the choruses had to be better, it had to be more original. We went for everything. Everything was pushed.” Well, friends told her this and friends told her that/ But friends don’t choose what echoes in your head- “When The Water’s Cold”
!!! began the process for making THR!!!ER when Offer visited Jim Eno’s Austin studio during South by Southwest in 2011 with a few hours before their plane was supposed to leave. Eventually the whole band returned for several sessions in the spring and summer of 2012. ! ! ! and Spoon are longtime fans of each other, and guitarist Mario Andreoni explains, they were attracted to working with Jim because, “We all had a healthy respect for the sound, space, and vibe of Spoon’s LP’s and Jim forced us to economize … the playing … the structure … lyrics. Everything had to have a purpose and hold attention.”
Like many people, Jim was a fan of!! !’s live show, but he felt that they too often tried to capture these performances in the studio. Instead of trying to chase this feeling, Jim encouraged them to create a different type of excitement by using weirder sounds, inventing new dynamics within each song and introducing unexpected changes. “They had this working flow that was a little rigid and I wanted to break them out of it,” says Jim. “Those guys can play, and if you can play, you might as well just play your instruments and record it.” In the end, ! ! ! say it was Jim’s input that provided the cohesion that THR!!IER needed.
!!! is a bicoastal band with over a decade of history. Offer, keyboardist Daniel Gorman, and new bassist Rafael Cohen {formerly of El Guapo and Supersystem) all live in Brooklyn, drummer Paul Quattrone resides in Pittsburgh, keyboardist Allan Wilson remain lives in Portland, OR while Andreoni remains in Sacramento, where the group was formed. Understandably this situation isn’t the easiest for creating new music. “In the past we just put albums together any way that works,” says Andreoni. That usually meant a lot of jamming on loose ideas. For THRillER,!!! went into the studio with everything written and a strong sense of each song’s shape. This advanced preparation is reflected in THRillER’s catchier choruses, bulletproof structure and masterful twists. “One Girl/One Boy” is pure dancefloor candy built over subversive sounds, while “Get That Rhythm” (produced by Simian Mobile Disco’s Jas Shaw) rides the bassline to a much darker corner of the club. Centerpiece ”Siyde”-produced by the band and Patrick Ford-is a tribute to cut-and-paste classics in an era when sampling is prohibitively expensive, so ! ! ! devised all the imagined samples themselves. Rough-edged album closer “Station (Meet Me At The)” might be the most menacing song the group has ever released, and they execute the switchblade attitude naturally.
Though Offer handles most of the vocals on THR!!!ER, other voices populate the album. Cohen handles the moody and percussive “Fine, Fine, Fine,” and the roster of contributing female singers include fellow Sacramento-to-New York transplant Teresa Eggers, Heartless Bastards’ Erika Wennerstrom and Austin studio pro Sonia Moore (who did the yea yeahs on MC Hammer’s “2 Legit 2 Quit”). Says Offer, “We’ve never tried to make the same record twice, we might have accidentally, but we’ve always tried to push on. For this one it felt like we definitely shoved off from the shore.”
“If you’ve seen one cathedral I then baby you’ve seen ‘em all” I I asked her what they were like I she told me they were tall I she said “if there’s a god and he’s a heard one prayer I then baby, he’s heard ‘em all”- “Except Death”
Those familiar with the decades-spanning oeuvre of Bob Mould—from his pioneering early ’80s work with Hüsker Dü to his solo work in singer-songwriter, electronic, and rock modes, to the deafening pop sparkle of Sugar—might expect a new album bearing the title Silver Age to be a somber and reflective set in the mode of his last album, 2009’s Life and Times…and they’d be way off the mark.
Silver Age is an intense and concise ten song blast far more reminiscent of Bob’s latter-
day Hüsker Dü output—first marked by the monumental sprawl of 1984’s Zen Arcade which then gave way to the short, sharp pop focus of 1985’s New Day Rising—and his early ’90s tenure with Sugar, whose classic debut Copper Blue marks its 20th anniversary this year. That said, Silver Age is no nostalgia trip. Aside from lyrical content that shows Bob as in-the-now as ever, Silver Age came together quickly and organically in the wake of a series of electric solo dates in 2011 supporting Foo Fighters (where he guested each night on “Dear Rosemary,” the track from the Foos’ Wasting Light on which Bob shares writing and vocal duties) as well as a solo acoustic/book tour around last summer’s publication of See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, the autobiography Bob co-authored with Michael Azerrad (Come as You Are, Our Band Could Be Your Life). These events culminated in a tribute last November at Los Angeles’ Disney Hall that featured the likes of Dave Grohl, Ryan Adams, Spoon’s Britt Daniel, and Craig Finn and Tad Kubler of The Hold Steady celebrating the width and breadth of Bob’s body of work.
“I’d been batting around the idea of another aggressive pop record for some time,” Bob says, “especially as the 20th anniversary of Copper Blue kept getting closer. But it was really the shows with Foo Fighters that got me thinking when I started writing for this record: Did I just write a Sugar song? Or a Foo Fighters song? Or one of my own songs? And does it really matter? Once I got that out of the way, it freed me up to have some fun and set about making a simple rock record.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Silver Age careens out of the speakers with a sense of exhilaration that reflects the excitement with which Bob and his live band of bassist Jason Narducy (Spl:t S:ngle, Verbow) and drummer Jon Wurster (Superchunk, the Mountain Goats) cranked out the record in a tight whirlwind of a window from in early 2012. But that’s not to say that Silver
Age is a lighthearted romp—as ever, there’s plenty of dark matter at the center of these sweet melodic nuggets. First single “The Descent,” for example, is one of those perfect moments that lands firmly in the Mould wheelhouse, with walls of luminescent guitars, phantom choruses, and infectious hooks all leading toward the concluding refrain of “My world, it is descending.” The opening one-two of “Star Machine” and “Silver Age,” on the other hand, pairs abrasive riffs with equally harsh meditations on fame, immaturity, and the lessons and consequences thereof. Other Silver Age highlights include the bittersweet romantic epic “Round the City Square” (“It feels like people always look to my songs to help define their own failed
relationships,” Bob laughs); the upbeat and earnest celebration of “First Time Joy”; and the unabashedly literal “Keep Believing,” a rousing love letter to the records that shaped Bob’s personal and professional life. Listen closely and see how many of the references you can pinpoint:
Bring me thoughts and words, pass me the revolver I can see for miles, and everything’s in color
Rock and roll all night until I feel the thunder
I got a handle on some complicated fun
We’re all sniffing glue, pleasures so unknown
A circle drawn in blue, the murmur baritone
Picnic on a Pedro lawn, heaven took that monkey song
Never mind the battle won, could you be the loveless one?
“I don’t know if there’s an arc to this record,” Bob says. “But if I had to boil it down to one core idea, it would be: I love music. I love my life. I love what I do for a living. It’s right there on the lyric sheet; it references itself, really. More than any other record I’ve made, this one gives a real glimpse into how much making music means to me as a means of expression, as well as what music means to me as a fan.”
And so has it always been the case for Bob Mould, the music he’s created defining every phase of his life, both cataloging memories and propelling him ever forward: Hüsker Dü’s formation in 1979 and the hardcore anthems, tight, melodic, hard-pop chestnuts, and sprawling double-vinyl conceptual opuses it churned out in equal measure up to its dramatic 1987 flameout; Bob’s solo works ranging from his landmark 1989 debut Workbook to Black Sheets of Rain (1990), Body of Song (2005), District Line (2008), and Life and Times (2009); his forays into electronic music, including 2002’s Modulate and his Blowoff collaboration with Richard Morel; and of course, the soon-to-be-reissued body of work that Sugar packed into its brief existence, featuring the 1992 debut Copper Blue which Bob and his band have been playing front to back at recent live shows. It seems to be Bob’s summations and reflections on these major creative periods of his life and career that open up new wellsprings while coming to terms with the old works—a natural process that has produced winning results yet again in the form of Silver Age.
“It’s no coincidence that this record came at this point,” Bob says. “In 1991, closing the door on a run of all-acoustic shows led right into the beginning of Sugar and Copper Blue. So you could state a case that the solo shows accompanying the book readings through 2011—plus the Disney Hall show and knowing the 20th anniversary of Copper Blue was right around the corner—wrapping that all up led me right into Silver Age. I’m well aware that there’s no way to get into a time machine and go back to being the person I was 20 years ago, but it is nice to get three musicians in the studio together and get back inside that three-minute pop song structure again.”
Not a lot goes down in Casco, Maine. In the winter months, this sequestered hamlet around 30 miles from Portland in the North Easternmost tip of the United States acquires a Siberian stillness as suffocating snow descends and carpets this eerily remote and reclusive region.
Yet it was to a forest just outside Casco that The Joy Formidable singer/guitarist Ritzy Bryan and bassist Rhydian Dafydd retired at the start of 2012 to dream up their magnificent second album, Wolf’s Law, a record that teems with imagination, yearning and a Carpe Diem restlessness.
“It was just the two of us in this isolated spot where we hardly saw anybody else all the time we were there,” says Ritzy. “It snowed every day and the surroundings and the solitude gave us a different level of intensity.
“We had no phone signal, no wi-fi – it was fucking bliss! It is Stephen King country up there and we worried that we’d turn into The Shining and cave each other’s heads in. But it was very still, very beautiful – and in a strange way it reminded us of our home area of North Wales.”
Wolf’s Law is a driven, hugely emotive record, an alluring and attitudinal follow-up to The Joy Formidable’s keenly received 2011 debut, The Big Roar. It’s an album that was recorded in very different circumstances to its predecessor, both geographically and emotionally.
“We had a very difficult period in our personal lives making The Big Roar,” says Rhydian. “Ritzy’s parents were going through a very painful, long-drawn-out divorce and also we lost both close friends and family. We made it in very tight, enclosed studio spaces and it made it a very frustrated and aggressive record.
“With Wolf’s Law, some of the difficult personal circumstances have been resolved, so while there is still aggression there, the record is a lot more harmonious and focussed. It helped that we were completely lost in nature in Maine because it is really an album about reconnecting – with yourself, with nature and with spirituality.”
Such heavyweight and profound themes run through Wolf’s Law like a pulse. The album’s audacious reach and ambition is clear in the extraordinary film that The Joy Formidable commissioned for its title track: a breathtaking sequence of monochrome images of birth, death and the natural world.
“That track (Wolf’s Law) was always meant as an art piece, we wanted to make a visual that introduced the mood of the record. It’s a song about encouragement, reawakening hope and knowing that time is precious,” says Ritzy. “It’s very aware of its own mortality and how fleeting a moment can be.”
“It encapsulates the themes of the album,” agrees Rhydian. “It’s about how beautiful and cruel life can be and how it’s always moving, and also about seizing the moment, because life is short.”
It’s evident that the stark serenity of snowbound Casco impacted on the marrow of Wolf’s Law. Themes of the raw beauty and majesty of nature are laced throughout the album. The buzzsaw, ragged yet beautifully melodic Cholla was inspired by the giant cacti of the Joshua Tree National Park, yet also details familial breakdowns; The Leopard and the Lung was written in honour of a doughty environmentalist campaigner.
“It’s about a true hero – a Kenyan female activist, Wangari Maathai who fought against an entire corrupt establishment for nature and for women’s rights,” says Ritzy. “She was so fucking brave! Her name,Wangari, means leopard in Kukuru. She told Kenyan women to plant trees because she said that trees are the lungs of the earth.”
Yet not all of the audacious, propulsive Wolf’s Law is about such extraneous matters. Although Ritzy and Rhydian have been a couple since before the making of The Big Roar, they have never previously referenced their relationship in song. On the taut Tendons, a shimmering rock reverie powered by the martial beat of Joy Formidable drummer Matt Thomas, they courageously affix their hearts firmly to their sleeves.
“Rhydian and I were making music together before we became a couple, so we have never experienced our relationship outside of the bubble of this band,” muses Ritzy. “It can be a difficult dynamic to maintain and it sometimes makes me wonder – is our relationship based on the chaos of this band and our music, and if that were to change, where would it leave us?”
“The tendons reference is because we’re so inextricably linked,” adds Rhydian. “This band and music join us so closely together; we’re soul mates, but could it destroy us as well?”
Precarious relationships. Confessionals. Catharsis. The call of the wild. Life, birth, death and all points in-between. With such vast, profound and heartfelt themes, wrapped up in some of the most visceral and voluptuous art-rock-and-roll that has exploded since the halcyon days of the Pixies, it’s no surprise that a lot of people expect Wolf’s Law to be The Joy Formidable’s quantum-leap breakthrough album, a springboard to arena-filling status, this fiercely driven band’s tipping point into rock’s A-League.
Are they ready for this? Is it even what they want?
“If we can keep our artistic integrity,” says Ritzy, “and carry on writing songs that are important to us, and keep the thrill and the excitement of doing what we do, and carry on moving forward and evolving, and still manage to connect with an arena full of people – fuck it, that would be fantastic! But it’s not the reason why we do what we do. We won’t change to get there.”
“That’s true,” agrees Rhydian. “The point is to reach as many people as possible – but for all the right reasons.”
Their charming reticence may soon become immaterial. The Joy Formidable have made an album so colossal, so compelling that it may even put Casco, Maine on the map. If there is any justice in the world, 2013 will be the Year of the Wolf.
Friends and fans of The Love Language songwriter and frontman Stuart McLamb have learned to expect a lot, but rarely in a timely manner. Completing a triumvirate of spiritual transmissions spent lost (2009′s The Love Language) and found (2010′s Libraries), 2013′s Ruby Red exorcises the transient brilliance fostered by McLamb within the sheetrock walls of the album’s namesake artist space.
Featuring over twenty musicians and straddling several time zones, The Love Language’s lone puppeteer borrowed heavier equipment, and held on to it longer. Initiated in a windowless unit at the fabled Ruby Red, several failed attempts and false starts at a songwriting spree landed McLamb and his engineer/case worker/boxing coach BJ Burton in Black Mountain, North Carolina, consuming every square inch of a carpeted bungalow located a few acres too close to their skittish neighbors. Soon after, Burton’s relocation to Minneapolis effectively thrust McLamb from their shared nest, helping Ruby Red discover its inherent propensity for flight.
Ruby Red produces new standards for the Carolina pop songbook, finding The Love Language as an extroverted community art project made by responsible citizens of a loosely packed scene who know that McLamb will match whatever they contribute. The heartbreak is over. Now we’re getting somewhere.
With their fourth full-length album to be released in as many years, The Men proudly present the sweeping New Moon, their most intensely personal and immersive installment yet. Never content to draw on the same methods twice, nor to recline under the heel of expectation, The Men quit the city in early 2012 to head for Big Indian, NY – transforming a remote Catskills locale into a full-fledged stray dog studio home. Taking complete advantage of dry eyes and clear mountain mornings, the band has never before so thoroughly surrendered their writing process, or themselves for that matter, to the recording environment.
Entering with only the most skeletal sketches, the house was selected as an incubator for its technical limitations, 32-hour orbit and predisposal to celestial intervention. Familiar faces remain, the core of guitarists Nick Chiericozzi and Mark Perro, with drummer Rich Samis all returning from 2012’s much-acclaimed Open Your Heart. In addition, friend and producer Ben Greenberg (Pygmy Shrews, Hubble, Zs) officially joins the ranks as bassist on paper, and full-bore compositional partner in practice. Wayward brother Kevin Faulkner occupies his most substantial sphere to date, dreaming aloud on lap steel as before along with whatever else was demanded of him.
The Men’s oft-cited commitment to their “no-one-is-frontman” maxim surely insists itself all the more emphatically here… so much so that it practically creates a new band in the process. This unique situation induces a fresh fluidity amongst their roles and instrumentation, allowing for an expansion of palette and a contraction of focus. Piano, mandolin, harmonica, four-part vocal harmonies and even no-input harsh noise all weave their way through New Moon. Spiritually, it is hedged with as much leaden dirge and ecstatic abandon, as it is genuine saccharine steel-string levity, and an ever-tightening, no apologies pop concision. Summarily: New Moon is the remembrance of why green grass has to lean on the dirt beneath; it is a love letter devoted in bowed humility to the grand continuum, exposing the hoax of the great divide. Allegiances to the glowing patinas of Detroit and San Francisco, New York and Nashville all abound, but ‘nostalgia’ is not her name. The essence of New Moon is to revisit — never retread. Vibrational bonds are the silver that comes to line the long road home.
If the details seem scarce, it’s because that’s how Tobacco likes to keep them. Hailing from an unspecified burg in rural Pennsylvania, somewhere north of Pittsburgh, he has successfully made a name for himself even as he’s avoided acknowledging that name’s legal counterpart. As both the frontman of Black Moth Super Rainbow and the sole creative engine behind Tobacco, he’s earned the eager ears and prying eyes of doggedly loyal fans and smitten critics alike, a kindness he’s repaid by granting few interviews, obscuring his face in photos, and seeming wholly uninterested in the subject of his own identity. Such things just get in the way of the music after all, so if it’s easier, you might think of Tobacco as music’s one-man genre made of equal parts analog crunch, earthy psychedelia, fuzzed-up hip-hop, and outside pop. All the same, here’s what’s known.
Tobacco has a sister. He grew up in a decent neighborhood. He was nearly strong-armed into elementary school band after an aptitude test suggested he play an instrument. He hated the idea, so he didn’t do it. He didn’t like music at all, in fact, until he discovered MTV, and hence, the Beasties’ “So Whatcha Want” video one long summer bridging the middle of middle school. The first concert he attended was Butthole Surfers, and it’s still his favorite. His favorite record of all time is Beck’s Mellow Gold. Sticking to his childhood guns, he typically doesn’t like music released earlier than the late ‘80s. As for high school, Tobacco could have done without the classes. An extracurricular interest in freestyle BMX flatland was soon replaced by a growing zeal for music, even though his first band, called Wood, didn’t employ any instruments to its cause (its two main ingredients were flyers and hype). Acquiring a guitar and a four-track opened up new doors, to the purplish noise and busted ghetto-blaster tracks that now populate The Allegheny White Fish Tapes, which Tobacco self-released in 2009. This was before the gritty analog synths, the murky vocoder-ing, and the hypnotic aural crush that came with founding Black Moth Super Rainbow. Tobacco rounded up the group’s members before graduation, and until last year’s Dave Fridmann-produced collaborative affair, Eating Us, roughly treated BMSR as a solo project, penning three albums‚ and several EPs‚ worth of sludgy pagan pop for his cohorts to realize live. He designed BMSR’s album art as well, which occasionally involved scratch-n-sniff elements or hair.
But Tobacco would come to crave a more pure musical identity, one steeped in guttural sounds that hit harder and flashed brighter. This fixation reared its ugly head as 2008’s beat-oriented Fucked Up Friends, Tobacco’s official debut. Two years later, the man is back and beastlier than ever with Maniac Meat, a record designed to bully his previous works into a corner, gut them, and leave ‘em for dead. This is a good time to mention that Tobacco believes he is making pop music.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
Ra Ra Riot first met seven years ago while attending school in Syracuse, New York, and quickly graduated from basement rehearsals and student dance parties to blog buzz and press acclaim for their debut The Rhumb Line. After extensive touring for their meticulously recorded second record The Orchard and some membership changes, Ra Ra Riot decided to mix things up for their album Beta Love, leaving upstate New York for Sweet Tea, the Oxford, MS studio of producer Dennis Herring (Modest Mouse/Elvis Costello/Wavves).
Herring pushed singer Wes Miles, guitarist Milo Bonacci, bassist Mathieu Santos and violinist Rebecca Zeller to embrace spontaneity and rethink their roles. The band recreated themselves on Beta Love, a collection of giddy pop songs and heady lyrics that pull inspiration from futurist Ray Kurzweil, among others.
* NIKE PRESENTS
Known internationally as a curator amongst the world’s most cutting edge DJs, producers, and musical movements Wesley Pentz (better known as DIPLO) has experienced a variety of successes. The last few years have been spent running through the club circuit and having chart-topping hits with refreshing irreverence. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1978, Pentz spent most his childhood in Florida working in his fathers bait shop and being turned onto music thru then new mediums like MTV. Drifting North thru the state came Miami Bass and from the West came the sounds of Southern Hip Hop artists. The musical influence and variety coalesced and at 18 Pentz moved to Philadelphia for college at Temple University to study Film & Music. While a student he took a job in the South Philadephia community as a social worker and created the influential Hollertronix club night, which was the beginning of his fledgling career as DIPLO.
In 2004 Pentz released his debut album as Diplo called, Florida. It received praise and accolades in the underground community. The music embodied on this album led to an introduction via an A&R man at XL Records to M.I.A. In 2004 he partnered with M.I.A. for the mixtape Piracy Funds Terrorism. Pentz’s cultural impact had started to snowball. Together they worked on her first album Arular and much of her second Kala, including the 2008 mega-hit “Paper Planes,” which reached No. 3 in the US Charts and earned him a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year. His production credits have evolved since to include Santigold, Lil’ Jon and Missy Elliot, while remixing works by Beck, Radiohead, Britney Spears and countless others. In 2009 Pentz teamed with frequent collaborator Dave Taylor (aka Switch) to release the futuristic dancehall album Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do under the guise of Major Lazer, a Jamaican militant at war with an evil army of zombies, mummies and vampires.
Meanwhile, his record label Mad Decent has helped to introduce Brazilian baile funk, Angolan Kuduro and other marginalized music to clubs around the world, developing as a trendsetting force with which to be reckoned. With the same mission in mind, some of the varied acts Pentz has signed or produced include Rye Rye, Bonde do Role, Crookers, Blaqstarr, Boy 8-Bit, Buraka Som Systema, and Rusko, allowing Mad Decent to act as a launching pad or home base for many others while spreading its influence across the globe. Through the label, Pentz has founded a charity called Heaps Decent as a social relief program to help children in Australia as well as with additional efforts internationally. In early 2009 Pentz debuted his film Favela on Blast, a five-years-in-the-making documentary exploring the Brazilian slum favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the thriving baile funk music scene that exists within. He is currently developing a TV show to air in 2010.
Through a widespread assortment of releases and artists’ works – from cumbia to dubstep to punk and beyond – Diplo has shown dynamic range with interests that span far beyond any singular culture or musical realm, standing as a working model for the truly 21st Century artist.
I never felt American until I left the United States. In 2007 I went to Europe for the first time to tour in support of Spiderman of the Rings. At the time I, like many other young Americans, didn’t identify as “American.” The United States was an evil, Earth-destroying monster of war, corporate greed and bigotry. I had been touring for years in the DIY scene, trying to live apart from consumer culture, feeling detached from what I thought of as the American lifestyle. But when I left for Europe, I was slammed into reality. Never before had I felt so much like an outsider. I was alone in foreign lands with no friends. While it was a beautiful experience and a great tour, I realized that no matter which subculture I chose to identify or what kind of lifestyle I led I would always be American. Nothing could ever change that. As simple as that idea seems, it was a massive shift in consciousness for me.
When I was writing Bromst, I wanted a title with no pre-existing meaning, something free of any prior associations. For this album, I wanted the exact opposite. America is a word with an infinite range of connotations, both positive and negative. Even its literal definition is open to discussion. In using it as the title of the album, in a small way, I‘m contributing to the discussion. To me, the underground DIY and wilderness are just as American as their evil brethren, corporatism and environmental destruction. It‘s that juxtaposition of fundamentally opposed ideologies that makes up the American landscape.
Compositionally, America is layering of dichotomies: light and dark, acoustic and synthetic, celebration and contemplation. The result can be heard as simple or complex depending on how one listens to it. The music is rooted in triadic harmony set to a fixed pulse while the individual lines are complex, phasing layers of sound. The outcomes are dense asymmetrically rhythmic phrases of textured patterns framed as pop songs.
The inspiration for the music was my love of cross-country travel, seeing the landscapes of the United States, going from east to west and back again over the course of seasons. The lyrics are inspired by my frustration, fear and anger towards the country and world I live in and am a part of. As I came closer to finishing the album these themes began to show themselves more frequently and greater clarity. There seemed no better world to encapsulate both inspirations than the simple beauty found in the word America.
-Dan Deacon
Greetings from Astoria, Oregon!
The core members of what is now Holiday Friends met while attending college at the University of Idaho in 2008. Originally forming as a surf-rock band (Shitty Pete and the Fux) they wisely decided on a name change once it was time to get a bit more serious and begin writing original material. Brothers Scott and Jon Fagerland along with Zack O’Connor slowly relocated to Astoria while Jesse Wityczak stayed behind to finish grad school all the while remaining a vital ‘satellite’ member. The lineup was solidified when drummer Brian Bovenizer joined in 2011.
Last year the band self-released their (nearly-out-of-print) debut ‘Chicks’ and hit the road supporting Blind Pilot for dates on the West Coast. A sophomore effort (recorded at Portland’s Type Foundry Studio) has just been completed and is being readied for a late summer/early fall release.
With an in-depth understanding of Silent Majority, Turning Point, Quicksand, and Ambitions, their 2008 debut, Lens (Redscroll), was a comprehensive lesson of what melodic hardcore should sound like; effortlessly, post-hardcore-tinged melodies were merged with beefy power chords into politically charged battle cries. With that creative momentum, Hostage Calm took a two-year period to write their self-titled follow up for Run for Cover records. It’s safe to say that their knack for writing an intelligent tune is matched by that of their musical ambition. While the subtle hints of Dag Nasty progressions and the skipping, Descendents-esque back beats are evident, they’re cradled by the lush layers of jangling acoustic guitars, quick tambourine hits, and resonating piano accompaniments.
I think a good point of reference would be The Smith’s The Queen is Dead, with its blending of styles into one cohesive and all encompassing pop album. Hostage Calm never quite compromises their energy, but touches lightly on everything from doo wop (“Rebel Fatigues”) and new wave (“Ballots/Stones”) to Latin (“Wither on the Vine”) and power pop (“War on a Feeling”). Vocalist Chris Martin’s suave melodies are chosen with seemingly the utmost care; they have a particularly relaxed quality that certainly reveals a less excessive rendition of the 1980’s. And while he’s just about as political as ever, he won’t hesitate to delve into more personal narratives, yet sparing us of any cringe-worthy melodramatics. You see, “pop” isn’t a four-letter word, but in context to the substance-less drivel that excretes out the radio waves these days, it’s sometimes easy to forget. Hostage Calm makes a universally appealing effort, but there’s something inherently different… something beneath the shades of eloquence that’s aggressive and pissed. For those of us who grew up on stage dives and music with actual meaning, this is pop we can get behind.
* OPB MUSIC PRESENTS
Neal Morgan’s music consists of drumming and singing – his second full length solo album will be self-released January 24, 2012, with distribution by Drag City, who also distributed his debut album, To The Breathing World, 2009. Has accompanied Joanna Newsom since 2006. Arranged and performed the drums on Have One On Me. Has accompanied Bill Callahan and arranged and performed drums on Apocalypse.
CENTIPEDE Hz is the tenth full length Animal Collective album following the widely celebrated Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009) and also the first since Strawberry Jam (2007) to feature all four original band members: Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deakin. As the album’s opening bars of drum crashes and radio interference on ‘Moonjock’ immediately make clear, having returned as a four piece, Animal Collective have made their most widescreen and fully realized music to date.
Once touring for Merriweather Post Pavilion was concluded at the end of 2009, Animal Collective released their visual album Oddsac on DVD. The film was also screened internationally at theatres and film festivals. The band created Transverse Temporal Gyrus, an installation for the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and subsequently released a 12” single of the performance and launched a website to distribute music from the event. The period between Merriweather Post Pavilion and Centipede Hz also saw the release of two solo albums: Avey Tare’s Down There (2010) and Panda Bear’s Tomboy (2011).
Regrouping as a four piece with original member Deakin once more in the band, Animal Collective reconvened in their native Baltimore in January-March 2011 to write material for Centipede Hz with a further session later in the year. Rather than swapping ideas over the internet and file-sharing Animal Collective were, for the first time in many years, exchanging ideas in the same room by playing live instruments. As a result Panda Bear returned to playing a sit-down drum kit for the first time since Here Comes The Indian (2003) and Geologist began playing live keyboards again. Along with using some of the samplers and sequencers with which they had previously been writing, the sound of Centipede Hz draws on the dynamics and energy of Animal Collective playing together as a band. The return of Deakin is at its most marked in ‘Wide Eyed’, a song that he wrote, featuring his first ever lead-vocal performance and whose title captures the mood of Centipede Hz perfectly.
Part of the inspiration for Centipede Hz included the band’s memories of growing up listening to station announcements and commercials on the radio and imagining the after life of radio signals from the past, forgotten transmissions that are now lost in space and broadcasting music from other planets for other life forms. This is reflected in the sound of Centipede Hz, which features the white noise of radio interference and buried frequencies overlaid with the band’s peerless melodic sensibilities and compositional methods. The result is a panoramic set of songs that shimmer with the confidence and wonder of Animal Collective’s unique inner logic and the luminous warmth of their sound world.
I am Phil Elverum. Here is my brief autobiography for journalists and fact seekers:
I am 34 years old. I am from the town of Anacortes, Washington. Since 1997 my primary life’s work has been making studio-based music, first under the name “the Microphones” (1997 – 2002) and then “Mount Eerie” (2003 – present). In addition to this I have played in other bands (D+, Old Time Relijun), produced other peoples’ recordings and dabbled in painting, writing, and photography.
Aside from 5 years in Olympia, Wash. and a long winter in northern Norway (2002/2003), I have lived most of my life in Anacortes and much of the content of my music and other art is tied to the place. My music project Mount Eerie is named after the actual mountain, Mt. Erie, that lies just south of town. I try to make music that feels associated with this particular place in some way, whether it’s literally described in words or just an ambiguous feeling.
The “Microphones era” in Olympia (1997-2002) was very prolific, with 5 major albums (and many smaller things) being released by the K label. The most critically acclaimed was “the Glow pt. 2” (2001). Following that was an album called “Mount Eerie” by the Microphones.
I did not feel totally satisfied artistically with my exploration of the “Mount Eerie” idea on the album of that name so in 2003 I changed the name of my whole project to Mount Eerie. I did this partly to explore the idea more deeply and partly because the name had become more relevant to my songs than “the Microphones”, not to mention the appeal of being conceptually rooted to an actual place.
In 2004 I started releasing my own projects via the “P.W. Elverum & Sun, ltd.” company in an attempt to become even more self-sufficient and also to be able to explore unusual packaging ideas. The first major release was “No Flashlight” by Mount Eerie (2005) which came wrapped in a gargantuan poster. Since then I have released many fancy LPs and an extravagant art book of photography. I continue to explore new ideas for mass producing art and music in a homemade style. P.W. Elverum & Sun remains primarily a vehicle for my own projects only, not a real record label. Deeper simple self-sufficiency seems to be a good way to weather the tumultuous times we live in.
Here’s what the journalist Brandon Stosuy said to describe what my stuff is actually about (inthe Believer):
“Regardless of the moniker, the various collections include interlocking themes, references to earlier works, and are marked by Elverum’s distinctive naturalist self-recorded lo-fi analog sound that mixes a whispered, gentle voice, which can also yell and bellow, with various strains of sound: His work can be delicately spare or booming and ambitiously layered and noisy, often in the same song. Lyrically, he focuses on memory, first-person storytelling, myth, naturalism, the everyday as sacred, and a sense of place (in and out of Washington State), among other related things.”
Here’s another nice blurb (from Jeff Manson writing in the Bolinas Hearsay News):
“Mt. Eerie is the current incarnation of enigmatic sound wizard, nature philosopher, neo-beat, radical feminist, Pacific Northwest Shredder/legend Phil Elverum. I first became aware of his music in the late 90s in Santa Cruz when he came through town regularly performing in basements and on the beach in/as his old band name “the Microphones”. For the past 10 plus years I’ve witnessed Phil crank out an amazing body of work, from self-recorded albums, to photo-books, to goofy comics. He makes consistently mesmerizing bold work outside any particular genre and does so with an unaffected sense of humor that is rare in most artists.”
“…in firm command of a sound that has elements of hazed-out ’70s and slack-jawed ’90s, but sounds entirely up to date.” -Portland Mercury
“With Ziggy Stardusy swagger and a try-anything spirit… TWSM both entrances and shakes its audiences by the shoulders.” -MusicFest NW 2012 Guide
“Ever-steaming, the band’s pinched playing style gives way to inevitable and frequent firestorms of headstrong experimental rock coupled with scorching, blown-out vocals.” -Willamette Week
“…syncopated drum and bass lines slithered under lead guitar leads that, frankly, shredded. The We Shared Milk performed songs which did not really evoke or sound like any other band…” -SSGmusic.com
“The indie- garage trio’s fuzzed out tunes, explosive performances and relentless gigging has built them a momentum that’s taken them from playing house shows and dive bars to Musicfest Northwest.” — Deli Magazine
“It was like watching a rabid pit bull trying to fight his way out of a cage.” -twistedwirepdx.com
“Live, these guys are all power and energy. Whether it’s playing shitty house shows or opening for Portland big wigs, The We Shared Milk know how to play a crowd.” -Rose City Live
“A hopeful utopian future’ is how one of our friends best described our sound,” Ian Bevis, frontman of Vancouver based electro-dance band Bear Mountain, explains. Born and raised in Vancouver, Bevis’ affinity for experimenting with sounds and beats on his MPC grew quickly. He left Vancouver for the University of Victoria where Bevis became friends with, then Entomology major, guitarist Kyle Statham and the two began collaborating on various styles of music.
A few years and a few bands later, Bear Mountain was officially born as the bedroom project of Bevis and Statham in 2011. With their name drawing reference from the Jack Kerouac classic “Dharma Bums”, the two set out to find an alternative sound that blended live instrumentation with a dancing heartbeat. Soon after the recording of their first bedroom demos, the duo felt their sound was lacking a strong backbone and enlisted the help of Bevis’ identical twin brother, drummer Greg Bevis. Bear Mountain’s tight live performances and eclectic blend of sounds caught the attention of, now band member, Kenji Rodriguez. Flipping the traditional role of “band member” on its head, Rodriguez serves as the band’s visual and creative director. Also a collaborator at Tangible Interaction, one of the world’s premier trailblazers in interactive visuals and lighting, Rodriguez manipulates projections and lights live right from the stage bringing a unique look and experience to every Bear Mountain performance.
“Two Step”, the opening to Bear Mountain’s debut album, “XO”, begins with a tropical samba-style drum loop layered with tight, live drums, lush synth sounds, and chopped vocal samples. Hooky synth lines and Bevis’ powerful and emotive vocals lay atop nostalgic house-drenched production on “Faded”, the midway point of the album. “XO” is a collection of unmistakably fresh songs that manage to capture the feeling of the infinite and the impossible all rolled into one. “XO” is available on May 21, 2013 worldwide through Last Gang Records.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
Modern, yet timeless. If you had to sum up Larry g(EE)’s debut EP, “Weekends,” those three words would be a fine start. You can hear the echoes of classic Stax sides in the punchy horns of “Yo Mama” and feel the intense romanticism of vintage Motown singles in the piercing ballad “I’m Your Fool.” Yet, unlike so many musicians drawing inspiration from those fertile sources, Larry isn’t interested in meticulous recreation: “I’m anything but a pure traditionalist or revivalist,” he says. Indeed, in the era of Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, Larry g(EE) strives for something authentic and original, making a connection to eternal feelings through his music. Call it a proudly analog vision in a fully digital world.
Larry during a summer in Brooklyn, NY, Larry started writing “Weekends” and then returned to Texas to collaborate with producer Beau Bedford.
“Weekends” showcases a strutting blend of funk, silky soul and smart pop melodies that become irresistibly lodged in your brain. Critics have called Larry’s music “finger-licking … enlivened soul music” (Pegasus News) and dared listeners “to find a single thing to hate” (Under the Gun). Larry has showcased his unique, intoxicating sound on stages from Los Angeles to New York City, with stops at South by Southwest, a stint on the Vans Warped Tour and high-profile slots opening for an array of national artists, including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Bootsy Collins, Linda Perry, Ghostland Observatory and Skylar Grey. He recently made his national television debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Quite simply, “Weekends” heralds the arrival of a phenomenal talent, gearing up for a dynamic, exciting and artistically satisfying career, one as great and indelible as the artists he admires. The EP “Weekends” will give listeners a jolt – a burst of life-affirming, beautifully rendered music that evokes the past, even as it is firmly rooted in the present.
Michael Morley is a rock and experimental musician from New Zealand. Morley sings and plays guitar as a member of The Dead C, but also records on his own (and with collaborators) as Gate. Earlier, in the 1980’s, Morley was a member of Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos. Morley founded the Precious Metal label sometime in the late 1980’s to document, first on cassette and later LP and CD, his own work as Gate. Most of the releases on Precious Metal were limited to very small quantities. Morley is also a visual artist and teaches at Otago Polytechnic School of Art in Dunedin.
“..The group’s debut EP, You’re a Winner—released via CD and Internet download earlier this year—mixes crunchy electronic pop elements with lush live instrumentation and Sullivan’s crystalline, multitracked vocals. Considering its shared members, the group can’t help but remind of Eskimo & Sons, but—true to its name—Wild Ones is more playful and genre-defying. Early live shows have shown even more potential than the recordings: Wild Ones pulls off quiet numbers and full-on dance jams alike without the help of digital backing tracks, and it’s clear to the audience just how much fun this band is having..”
- Wweek Best New Band Issue 2011
“You’re A Winner teems with careful pop melodies that are perfectly ironed down by Sullivan’s captivating coo. Synthy keys careen around the unbearably smooth beats sneaking from Andy Parker’s drum kit on the track “Forever Jam”, which presses your body to dance lest the song passes you by, while the naptime track “Pacific” takes you into a daydream of coastline sunrises. Overall, I might call it perfect. I can’t want to see what these Wild Ones have in store for us next.”
- The Deli Portland
* OPB MUSIC PRESENTS
Behold the amazing, yet true, story of the third Titus Andronicus LP, LOCAL BUSINESS.
It begins with a plan of action. While the first two LPs were elaborate concoctions, requiring the contributions of 30+ musicians, the most advanced computer wizardry and transmissions from an alternate universe, LOCAL BUSINESS would be of the earth, the handiwork of a living and breathing entity. No more would Titus Andronicus the studious recording project and Titus Andronicus the raucous touring machine be two distinct beings; there would only be Titus Andronicus, rock and roll band.
At the center of the band remained, as ever, singer-songwriter Patrick Stickles. Flanking him was the dynamic duo of Eric Harm on drums and Julian Veronesi on bass, rhythm section and principal backup singers. Returning to the fold was recent college graduate Liam Betson on guitar, whose studies kept him off the road but not away from the recording of the first two LPs. Rounding out the band was the latest addition, guitarist extraordinaire, and founder of Brooklyn DIY haven Shea Stadium, Adam Reich, moving gracefully from the position of live sound engineer to band member following the abrupt departure of keyboardist David Robbins.
With an album’s worth of new songs in their pocket, Titus Andronicus took to the road in March of 2012, hashing out their new material night after night on tour, throughout the eastern United States and at the SXSW music conference. It would be the energy of the stage that they would strive to recreate in the studio.
The studio in question was New Paltz, NY’s Marcata Recording, domain of master producer and engineer Kevin McMahon, whose credits include the first two Titus Andronicus LPs. Beginning on April 1st, the rare confluence of Palm Sunday and April Fool’s Day, the converted barn became the band’s home for the next two months. The first phase of recording found the band amassing hundreds of performances, playing together without headphones, three guitars strong, day in and day out, striving in pursuit of “the perfect take.” A lengthy selection process followed, where the takes deemed most worthy of preserving for the ages were chosen. On top of these were placed much singing, still more guitars, and the contributions of an elite group of special guests – longtime Titus session keyboardist Elio DeLuca, famed violinist and string arranger to the stars Owen Pallett, and Eric’s father, Steven Harm, blowing on a harmonica. This tight-knit group is just one of the meanings behind the phrase LOCALBUSINESS. By the end of June, Kevin McMahon completed the mixing, and the mastering of the world famous Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound capped off the whole process.
But what of the songs themselves? While abandoning the linear narrative of The Monitor, the songs of LOCAL BUSINESS aim to make explicit the implications of the first two LPs, that the inherent meaninglessness of life in an absurd universe gives the individual power to create their own values and their own morality. This individual is celebrated throughout LOCAL BUSINESS’s ten songs, though surrounded by a world that pressures endlessly to consume and to conform. The title LOCAL BUSINESS speaks to this anti-consumerist agenda, but fear not; the contradiction of the LP as a consumer product speaking against consumerism will be discussed at length therein. LOCAL BUSINESSshould also indicate an interest in contemporary affairs, moving away from the historical content of The Monitor. Along the way, we witness a devastating automobile wreck, a food fight (that is to say, a battle with an eating disorder), an electrocution, a descent into insanity, and ultimately, a forgiveness of the self for its many faults. Titus Andronicus even finds time to broaden its emotional palette to include moments of pure positivity, brief respites from the usual doom and gloom.
LOCAL BUSINESS will be released on October 22nd, 2012. The release will be followed by a tour of the United States, which too shall be unique in the history of Titus Andronicus, as the band taking the stage every night will be the same band which made the record being promoted. So shall the story be complete, from tour to studio to tour again, the same band of brothers executing a singular vision. Five men, ten songs, no bullshit.LOCAL BUSINESS.
There’s something to be said about cohesiveness in music, most especially in this day and age where the art form of an album that provides the listener with an experience from start to finish is more and more becoming an antiquated concept. Evan Thomas Weiss (aka Into It. Over It.) however, who at 26 years and with his debut full length album “Proper,” has attained a level of depth in his songwriting not seen by most artists throughout their entire careers.
Having written, recorded and played with an eclectic pedigree of artists such as Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start, The Progress, Stay Ahead of the Weather and Damiera, IIOI’s culmination of experiences with said bands have stylistically fused together for the grand effort that is Weiss’ debut LP. The album’s release will mark a four year commemoration of his 52 Weeks project (where from September 2007 to September 2008 he wrote and recorded one track each week for a year, making them available online before being approached by No Sleep Records who released them as a 2xCD in June of 2009), as well as his Twelve Towns 7″ series/collection which featured recordings with artists such as Bob Nanna (Braid / Hey Mercedes), CSTVT, Everyone Everywhere, Pswingset, Empire! Empire!, and Such Gold, recently compiled for release on Topshelf Records. The new album also follows Weiss’ 2010 split release with friend Andrew “KOJI” Shiraki, named one of the year’s best overlooked releases by The Associated Press.
The lyrical concepts of “Proper” and it’s all around aura stems from autobiographical and literal exemplifications which have taken place over the past year of Weiss’ life, most of which occurring in Chicago where he now resides. The album culminates in a heady yet straightforward melodic stew resembling Sunny Day Real Estate, Death Cab For Cutie and Dismemberment Plan to name a few, along with impassioned songwriting executed with the potency and ardor of Chuck Regan and Colin Meloy . While not labeled as a concept album per se, the stories which form the basis of Into It. Over It.’s songs stem from Weiss’ own personal experiences, but are still relatable by one theme and one theme only: Life.
“Proper” was recorded at Blacklodge Studios in Eudora, KS and co-produced by Ed Rose. The album features contributions from Nick Wakim of Stay Ahead of the Weather/CSTVT on drums and Nathan Ellis of The Casket Lottery. Album art was photographed at Weiss’ apartment in Chicago by Ryan Russell. There will be alternate layouts for the CD/LP and a tour with Frank Turner will follow in the fall.
*OPB MUSIC PRESENTS
Dear Reader,
I once came very close to dying (bug-bite, failed organs), and though my life was spared thanks to thanks to modern medicine and a kidney given to me by my father, nonetheless I live with a persisting sense that my time is borrowed. My resolution–what I intend to do with my finite allotment– is to reach some small, yet conclusive understanding of my life in particular and the world in general; an understanding accomplished, in part, through a combination of music and words.
The last record we made, Hunger & Thirst, is a record that purposefully confuses physical sickness with ontological sickness, i.e. that most desires are only symptoms of the desire to be someone else. This new record picks up where we left off, though this time “purposefully confusing” the idea of time as a place. It imagines that my past is a composite of old houses and apartment buildings, that my memories are these little artifacts strewn about, and then there’s me with a single candle, picking up the artifacts one at a time and examining them by the dim light.
Songs as personal as these perhaps ought to be burned or buried rather than be paraded before an audience. But there is something transfigurative in playing music with so many close friends–what starts out as a solemn, solitary attempt is turned into something both communal and cathartic. I think we even have fun at times.
A New Kind of House (the title itself is borrowed from the brilliant poetry of Zach Schomburg) was artfully recorded on location (our house) by repeat-collaborator Paul Laxer; the artwork was beautifully realized by Ricky Delucco, and we have Tender Loving Empire to thank for so tenderly helping us put out a record a second time.
kyle ray morton / 01.11.2011
The Lonesome Billies shoot from the hip with their own take on a classic outlaw country sound that has been described as “boot stomping, gator hootin, whiskey swilling music”. Four men from the badlands of Hazel Dell who have stuck together from their early days and have developed a bond akin to brotherhood, all while playing unapologetic dark and dusty honky tonk music. Like the outlaw singers and guitar pickers who have come before, these fellas tell stories, playing a mixture of songs both capable of starting a whiskey-fed bar fight or a Texas two step.
Forming in early 2010, The Billies quickly began defining the dark world their characters came from.. A desolate gunslinger running from the law. A griseled mountain man down from the hills and looking for a good time. A man at the end of the road in a brokedown pickup truck with nothing but a bottle of booze. They began simultaneously pulling from personal experiences, the imagery of old spaghetti western films, and the sounds of the 70’s outlaw country music movement.
The Billies recorded and self released their debut EP “Useless Bay” in Nov. 2012 and began to expand the world these characters live in. Rough around the edges and stripped down, the songs drift between reality and fiction with songs like title track “Useless Bay”, which tells the tale of the miserable, lowdown hole in the ground that The Billies call home. “Eye For An Eye” tells how two of the Billies originally tried to kill each other, and lying on the groud, blood spilling from their bellies, finally see eye to eye.
With one small release under their belts and a growing audience, the Portland, Or. based The Lonesome Billies have begun work on their first full length record, tentatively titled “It’s Good To Be Lonesome”. Working with Brandon Eggleston (The Mountain Goats, Les Saavy Fav and many more) and recording at Cloud City Studios, they’re working on a collection of twang that cuts to the basics of country music: death, heartache, drinking, pain and sorrow. The forthcoming collection promises to brandish more of their musings on the places where hope crawls away to die, and deadbeats, misfits and lowlifes welcome a stranger with open arms.
The band was formed by Clayton McCune (lead vocals, guitar) and Jeff Gaither (lead guitar, vocals) as a two piece, but quickly evolved; adding longtime childhood friends Mike Scheidt (bass, vocals) and Glen Scheidt (drums) to round out the 4 piece. “From seeds to tumble weeds” the band as a whole grew up together in Hazel Dell, Washington and have been in and around the Portland music scene for many years. While much of their music is dark in it’s subject matter, the foursome is known for their fun, energetic live shows. Sighted influences include: Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams.
Old Light plays loud, bad rock music. Old Light sings pretty, catchy melodies. Disco songs about oblivion. Metal songs about love. Rock ‘n’ roll songs about transcendence. Love songs about music. Pop songs about computers. Space jams about black holes.
“No one wants to listen to old men talk about themselves.”
Jessica Hernandez is a singer-songwriter — but not THAT kind of singer songwriter. She has Latin roots, but we’re not talking Selena or Shakira here. She’s got soul (Hernandez does come from Motown, after all), but is not cookie-cutter contemporary R&B diva. She can be as heartfelt and melodic as any pop singer out there, but she doesn’t sound like a one of them. So if you’re trying to peg Hernandez — good freakin’ luck. Our advice instead is to just sit back and enjoy the kind of rare, genuinely individualistic artist that eschews any conventions and stylistic parameters and instead covers a lot of ground — and all of it well.
“I AM all over the place — everything from my fashion taste to my food taste to my choice of friends and groups of people that I associate myself with,” says Hernandez, who in less than three years has vaulted from late-blooming music-maker to a bona fide leading light in her home town of Detroit — and beyond, thanks to buzz-generating performances at South By Southwest and the Bonnaroo Music Festival. “I’ve never really been very distinct, so I think there’s a lot of different influences coming from a lot of different places at all times. I’m just trying to make sense of everything that’s going on in my head and then make something cohesive that people can relate to and connect with.”
Take a listen to any of the music Hernandez is making with her band, the Deltas and you’ll hear that mission is being accomplished. In spades. A Hernandez song weaves through gypsy style violin and New Orleans-flavored horns, funky rhythm patterns and strikingly detailed dynamics. Her tunes boast a rich, three-dimensional, cinematic cascade, running from gentle and serene to dramatic, swirling crescendos that convey beauty in their near chaos.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
Shy Girls is an R&B experience out of Portland, Ore. Producer and vocalist Dan Vidmar came to Portland several years ago by way of Pennsylvania, taking a loft apartment in the city’s inner Eastside industrial district. Working a day job at an emergency room, he’d return to the loft and craft his sultry, seductive pop R&B into the mystical pre-dawn hours. In late 2011, the “Shy Girls EP” surfaced on BandCamp: a four song collection remarkable for its irresistible grooves, clean production, and the immediacy with which its creator’s soulful vocal crooning turns listeners into empathizers. The source of the project’s soul is satisfyingly difficult to pin down – Vidmar pulls unabashedly from a wide range of pop influences. We find the bedroom eyes of late ’90s boy bands shining dewily upon these tracks, with a New Jack Swing vibe giving them attitude and grit. They also boast a certain proficiency for testifyin’ that reaches further back in time, to Motown funk maestros like Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson.
We’re experiencing a fantastic moment in pop culture for those both filled with nostalgia and fascinated by the possibilities of digital technology. in that sense, Vidmar will utter no complaints in being affiliated with the rising tide of young contemporary R&B artists. Yet Shy Girls is not to be reduced to one in a herd of laptop artists endeavoring pop pastiche. What sets Shy Girls firmly apart is the live experience. Vidmar has assembled a 7-piece band to realize every element of the music in its most authentic form. Live in concert, Shy Girls transcends its status as a solo moniker, and becomes a band of voices shouting “Hallelujah,” joyfully making believers out of their audience. The roster features Noah Bernstein (the saxophone god of tUnE-yArDs), backing vocalists Matthew Flowers (Feist, Chilly Gonzalez) and Jeni Wren, Akila Fields and longtime best friend Ingmar Carlson on keys, and drummer Dan Sutherland. Though less than a year into their tenure, this commanding band is already garnering significant attention, frequently lauded by local press as one of the best live acts in town. Their genuine warmth and exceptional showmanship has them poised for greatness, with a seamless fusion of pop R&B relevance and the undeniable appeal of classic Soul and Funk.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor began with Efrim, Mauro and Moya in the early 90s, playing a handful of shows and recording a self-released cassette as a trio before deciding to transform the group into a large band. Recruiting numerous Montreal musicians through 1995-1996, GYBEmounted sense-rattling wall-of-sound performances, featuring as many as 14 musicians and several 16mm film projectors, before recording their debut vinyl-only Constellation album in 1997.
They transformed a warehouse space into the Hotel2Tango, a DIY hive of activity with band rehearsal rooms, silkscreen and wood shops, and weekend shows that took place under the radar. The group settled into a permanent nine-member line-up by late 1998, with Aidan and Bruce on drums, Thierry and Mauro on basses, Efrim, Dave and Roger on guitars, and Norsola and Sophie on cello and violin respectively.
The band toured and recorded incessantly from 1998-2002 and gained a reputation for mesmerising live shows marked by orchestral dynamics, epic rock power and clunky, beautiful film loops. After four records, GYBE announced an indefinite hiatus in 2003; which lasted until December 2010, when the band returned to curate and performs at All Tomorrow’s Parties in the UK, followed by extensive international touring. October 2012 saw the release of ‘ALLELUJAH!DON’T BEND! ASCEND!, their first recorded work in a decade, to widespread critical acclaim.
Brian Posehn is a funny man who has been in lots of funny stuff and is known to many as “that one guy from TV”. If you pay attention to what you watch, you might know him best as Kevin; the weirdo mail boy from Just Shoot Me, or from any of his guest appearances on other sitcoms (Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, Bernie Mac, The Showbiz Show with David Spade) and movies (The Wedding Singer, Run Ronnie Run, Dumb and Dumberer, The Devil’s Rejects). Most notably though, you know him as part of the creative core of HBO’s legendary, Emmy-nominated Mr. Show, his Comedy Central special, and from the critically-acclaimed Comedians of Comedy Tour.
* A.E.P. & MFNW PRESENT: A SPECIAL MFNW EDITION OF FRESH
Video game deprived and pop culturally challenged, The Great Mundane grew up in a southeastern Michigan home where TV was made of cardboard boxes, the tree in the backyard was his best friend and the words “I am bored” were household blasphemy. Aside from occasional piano lessons, he passed time deep in his own imagination and on spontaneous road trips, a.k.a his mother’s famous mystery van rides, that seem to have provoked his current state of restlessness.
Itching to hit the road, The Great Mundane left his hip-hop roots in Michigan to delve into Chicago’s house/techno scene before arriving in the Pacific Northwest. Now based in Portland, Oregon he takes listeners on a journey exploring the complexities and intricacies of his minimalist and innovative approach to beatmaking. He invents fractured, heady instrumentals laced with lush synthesizer work that navigate the terrain of forward thinking hip-hop and electro/house, all while exhibiting genuine emotion and talented production skills. Each arrangement is collaged with friends, found sounds, synthesizers, and samples meticulously programmed to convey what it might feel like to fall in love with a tree, travel through a wormhole, or to never be bored again.
His debut LP “When Falls Arrive” (Psymbolic) was released in 2007 exposing him as one of the top underground electronic musicians to keep an ear out for. Since, he has released “The Wires Remixes” EP (2008), a remix of Deru’s “Peanut Butter and Patience” (Mush, 2009), his second full length entitled “Humdrum” (RunRiot Records, 2010), and most recently an EP entitled “This Is So You” (1320 Records, 2011). The Great Mundane’s music is featured on a long list of compilation albums including Portland’s annual “PDX Pop Now” series and “Gem Drops,” a benefit album for the American Cancer Society.* OPB MUSIC PRESENTS
If punk taught us anything—and it might have been just this one thing—it’s that loud, aggressive music can provide the sweetest release. Shouting out can clear your psyche of problems ranging from a copy-shop co-worker who won’t do his part to the realization that you, along with all your friends and loved ones, are hopelessly impermanent. It’s a fantastic tonic for a wide spectrum of ailments, like aspirin. Where do you hurt? Sing this—you’ll feel better.
Superchunk has offered up that sonic salve off and on for two decades, at various volumes. Like most great bands that started loud, they also explored the quiet, beginning the 1990s with a self-titled debut (which housed “Slack Motherfucker”) and ending them with Come Pick Me Up, a stately set that incorporated strings and horns. 2001 saw the even gentler Here’s to Shutting Up, but the rest of the aughts saw so little activity that the end seemed nigh.
And then Mac, Laura, Jon, and Jim decided to shout it out again: 2010’s Majesty Shredding is perfectly described by its own title—it’s a celebratory set of whoa-whoa-whoas from a group so thrilled by making music together again that they can’t contain themselves. It’s unsubtle in the best possible ways.
I Hate Music, which you’re hopefully listening to right this minute because you couldn’t wait to put it on, is Majesty’s dark twin. It’s similarly aggressive—often moreso—and every bit as energetic. It reflects the joys of a life spent immersed in music (“Me & You & Jackie Mittoo,” “Your Theme”), but there’s a dark undercurrent as well. That title isn’t tongue-in-cheek, but it’s really more a question than a statement: When you’re 20, lazy co-workers and romantic missteps number among your biggest worries; two decades later, life’s bigger questions knock louder and louder, demanding answers.
“Low F” finds Superchunk in classic mode—both classic Superchunk and a dash of classic rock: The rhythm section drops out for big choruses, and a guitar solo brings pure sunshine. “Trees of Barcelona” is similarly joyous; it’s “so happy, so happy to go with that flow.”
To borrow a phrase, I Hate Music rages against the dying of the light, and refuses to go gentle into that good night. The people and times that he’s missing haunt Mac’s lyrics this time out in ways both gorgeously sentimental (“You’re not around / but you’re still the window we are looking out”) and angrily cathartic (“All I see is a void”). “Your Theme” longs for someone and somewhere that he will never know again. (The original definition of “nostalgia,” as you may know, was “severe homesickness,” and it was treated like a disease. It applies here.)
But in the end, I Hate Music sounds to me like an album about love more than anything else: love of life, love of living, love of people, and yeah, love of music. It defies its own title so completely and diligently that it never even seems like a fair fight: There’s no pain this deep or yearning this severe without the type of love earned over a lifetime. “I hate music – what is it worth? / Can’t bring anyone back to this earth” goes the first line in “Me & You & Jackie Mittoo.” That song and its ten companions can’t relive the past or resurrect those lost, but they can keep them close enough to see and hear and celebrate. It’s dark in here, but if we conjure the right words and sounds, we’ll find our way out.
Life has its share of ups and downs and no one knows that better than Saves The Day frontman Chris Conley. For the past seventeen years Conley has been bearing his soul and reinventing his musical identity with each successive step, a process that is clearly culminating with Saves The Day’s seventh full-length Daybreak. The third part of a trilogy that also includes 2006’s Sound The Alarm and 2007’s Under The Boards, the act’s latest disc sees Conley moving past the anger and frustration that has defined the band’s last two albums and rediscovering a sense of wonder with the world that he can’t wait to share with his listeners.
Daybreak is also the first Saves The Day album to feature guitarist Arun Bali, bassist Rodrigo Palma and drummer Spencer Peterson (the latter of whom was replaced by Claudio Rivera shortly after the album was completed) and Conley insists that his band’s participation and encouragement was integral to the final product. “This album wouldn’t have been as good as it is now if we had put it out two years ago and I think the reason for that is because there’s a renewed energy in the band with this new line-up,” Conley explains, adding that many of these songs were initially recorded in 2009 with the band’s previous line-up but never felt right to him. “I feel like I have a united group for the first time ever and that feels like a gift.”
That transformed spirit is evident in every note of Daybreak (which was co-produced by the band and longtime collaborator Marc Hudson) from the ten-minute long, five-movement self-titled opener to instantly infectious pop gems like “Let It Go” and “Living Without Love.” That said, Daybreak also sees the band stretching out musically on the middle-eastern-inflected “Chameleon” and incorporating full-fledged guitar solos on “Deranged & Desperate.” “This album is so much more musical [then the past two albums] because my heart was coming back to life while I was writing this and I was starting to be okay with myself,” Conley explains. “In a way I was in the same mindset that I was in when I wrote [2003’s major-label debut] In Reverie. I felt like I was on cloud nine.”
Conley’s positive outlook took a dejected turn shortly after In Reverie’s touring cycle ended, due to both external and internal pressures—and the making of this trilogy is as much an artistic statement as it is a chronicle of Conley’s own cathartic journey from the depths of his own insecurity into accepting himself and the world for what they are. “I was so angry when I wrote Sound The Alarm and then I was looking back on all these situations with Under The Boards,” Conley explains, adding that a major turning point in his outlook was catalyzed by the recent birth of his daughter. “I didn’t want her to face the world the way I faced the world which was fighting, kicking and screaming so I decided I was going to bring myself back to life with this album.”
This therapeutic journey is evident on every song on Daybreak, mostly literally on tracks like “1984,” which starts with the Under The Boards-esque statement “I’m dead inside and dying every day,” but quickly resolves into “I need your love/I’m trying to rise above/I need you to bring me back to life,” during the song’s chorus. “I recognize what happened to me and now that I lived through it I can look back on it which is why I think the music breathes more on this album,” he explains. “The songs feel more expansive because there wasn’t the anger or confusion that dominated the first two albums in the trilogy,” he continues. “Daybreak feels like a huge sigh of relief to me.”
Conley is also quick to point out that despite its serious subject matter and introspective nature, he actually had a good time making Daybreak. “Trying to tie all of those strange themes and currents and raw emotions from Sound The Alarm and Under The Boards was an absolute a blast,” he says. “I had a huge chart where I listed all of the lyrics I had compiled for this album as well as the past two and I was drawing lines from one song to another; writing Daybreak was like trying to finish a screen play because I had to take all of these themes that just flowed out of me and through organizing this thoughts I was also able to make sense of my life.”
The word Conley says most while describing Daybreak is “acceptance”—and whether you’ve followed his music since Saves The Day’s hardcore-inflected ‘90s output or are a recent convert to the band, you’ll still be able to enjoy the album as a singular statement on what it means to let go. “This feels like I’ve wrapped up a chapter in my life and now I’m faced with a new beginning,” Conley says. “I can honestly say that I couldn’t be more excited about the future of this band.”
Hurray for the Riff Raff is Alynda lee Segarra, a 25 year old Puerto Rican from the Bronx. After leaving home at an early age to travel the country, she eventually settled in New Orleans where she began to perform and record with a revolving cast of musicians. She released two records (2008’s It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You and 2010’s Young Blood Blues) mostly consisting of delicate folk and country songs. In 2011, the UK record label Loose Music (Felice Brothers, Dawes, Deer Tick), released Hurray for the Riff Raff, an album that collected the best songs from those records. The Times of London named Hurray for the Riff Raff one of the Top Ten Albums of 2011. Phil Alexander, the Editor-in-Chief of Mojo Magazine, raved that they “have immense potential and seductive power” and named them second best band at SXSW 2011.
Back in the States, Alynda and her longtime gunslinger on fiddle, Yosi Perlstein, met up with a young honky-tonk band called the Tumbleweeds, just as Alynda began to expand her musical palette to include rock n roll, pop, and soul. In the tradition of Bob Dylan with Band and Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Alynda and Yosi recruited the Tumbleweeds to be their touring band, drastically altering the sound of Hurray for the Riff Raff.
Look Out Mama is the result of almost two years of Alynda and the Tumbleweeds criss-crossing the USA, playing over 100 shows in small bars and clubs. Recorded in Nashville by producer Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes), Look Out Mama is an exploration of classic American music as interpreted by Alynda lee Segarra. From the Swamp Pop of “Little Black Star” to the Classic Country of “Look Out Mama”, to the Psychedelia of “Ode to John and Yoko” and even the Surf-Rock of “Lake of Fire”, Look Out Mama covers a wide array of musical ground, with every song unified by Alynda’s soulful vocals and expert songwriting.
“NAPA ASYLUM” is the Sic Alps in 2010 — two and one half years since the fabled release of “US E.Z.”! Where were they?
Let’s see: the time…where’d the time go …well, there were a few comp tracks, half a split record with Magik Markers, a single on Slumberland. Beyond these already visible peaks lies “Napa Asylum.” It was a trip to get there!
Thistory: since 2004, Sic Alps have been sic- sagging towards resembled group-hood. Mike from The Ropers started the band with Adam of The Hospitals in 2004. Matt from Henry’s Dress mixed up the first album, “Pleasures and Treasures,” and joined in the process. “Ty Segall” stepped in for a NY minute at the end of 2008. Noel from Comets on Fire was drafted in 2009, after “U.S. EZ” was released. And since then, they got it together with pedal to the delay metal -
Further, “NAPA ASYLUM” accounts for the swift tilt of time since aught-eight with twenty-two crafted tracks bubbling in the reverb tank. The Alps are in the summer of their years, where they suddenly find a minute to reflect on the breaking down of
the years previous. “NAPA ASYLUM” is overfull with Sic pleasures, echoing half-emptily liked they do as the hooks slide into your flesh, animating you marionette-style to tip-tat your way across the dance-floor. Let’s away to the Tascam 8-Ball!
Themes from “NAPA ASYLUM” include re-incarnation, magic and schizophrenia.
SUCH AS: “The First White Man to Touch California” ties the “discovery” of California to the recent mortgage crisis. “Zeppo Epp” tells parallel tales from Midwestern homes: Zeppo Epley drives off to never be heard from again while Charlotte Muldeen breaks up with her girlfriend and joins the Navy. And there’s more, lots of it there, all dripping through a $100 preamp for your misunderstanding.
Yeah, the sound reflects a minimal set-up, but don’t let them fool you. The process is the flavor – and three albums in, you can still get in on
the ground floor, ‘cause Sic Alps always record in the basement. Get down your steps while you can, the songs are as short as they are bitter-sweet. But the one that ends just makes way for the one coming next.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
“Thanks for coming, man. Want some bum juice?”
“What the fuck is in this shit?”
“Tampico and Everclear. It’s pretty gross.”
When they started in 2009, seeing FIDLAR meant showing up to a house party and eventually having this exchange with one of them. Zac Carper, The bands guitarist and singer (well, one of ‘em) would hand you a red cup , throw an arm around your neck and probably end up blurting out how fucked up he was. Their set list would read more like a grocery list of party supplies than a list of songs: “Cocaine. Cheap Beer. Chinese weed. Four Loko.”
After a few years of being a band Zac still plugs in his pedals attached to a skate deck (“Pedal board”, get it?) and says “Hi We’re FIDLAR: F-I-D-L-A-R. It means ‘Fuck It Dog, Life’s a Risk”. Seeing a FIDLAR set consists of drinking and dancing with people that are twice as drunk as you are while the band rips through songs about what they know best: The girl doesn’t call, my ex is a whore, I lost my phone, my car is a piece of shit, my friends are pieces of shit, I do too many drugs, I’m really awkward, I love Del Taco.
FIDLAR is Zac Carper, Elvis Kuehn, Brandon Schwartzel, and Max Kuehn. Elvis and Zac met at Kingsize Soundlabs in LA and recorded a ton of demos with the band before playing a live show. Their first show was on a FMLY bike ride at a skatepark in Culver City. Three years later the band has played with Black Lips, OFF!, Japanther and toured with The Hives. They’ve released two EP’s and just got back from touring Europe.
Listening to them, you can tell that the band did their homework on punk rock and seem dead set on inflicting lessons on anyone willing to listen. Any given song will give you a Germs influenced guitar solo, the catchy “Ooo’s” and “Ah’s” of The Misfits , and lyrics in the same family as Black Flag’s “Six Pack” and “TV Party” . On the same token they can just as easily be compared to any of the bands they cover (Blink 182, FEAR, CCR, Warron Zevon), yet it all comes across entirely their own: Surfier, Faster, more fuzzed out, more personal and a lot more drunk.
FIDLAR’s first LP is coming out via Mom + Pop and Wichita recordings. Recorded at their home studio, The album is set to be 14 tracks long and out January 22nd. FIDLAR are your dumbass friends that find a beer, scrape the shit off their shoes, and tell you how the hardest thing about waking up late and trying not to fuck up your life is having to do it with no job, no money and everyone bumming your cigarettes.
PRESENTED BY KIND SNACKS
Emerging from rampant hedonism and desperate isolation is ‘II’, the new album from Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Behind the cartoonish colour of this collection of soulful, mind-addled psychedelia, lurks the fact that its author, Ruban Nielson, came close to never making it at all. “There were times when I felt that if I continued as I was that I would die, or some other bad thing would happen,” he admits, referring to the months following the release of Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s eponymous, self-recorded debut in June 2011, and a punishing, debauched touring schedule that would have a lasting affect on the 32-year-old multi-instrumentalist and songwriter.
Released after he swapped New Zealand for Portland and isolated himself from friends and family, Nielson’s first album as Unknown Mortal Orchestra fused Barrett and Hendrix to RZA and The Beatles. Coming midway through a journey that took him from cryptic, anonymous bedroom project borne of disillusionment and private amusement, to leader of a hard-touring, hard-living band; it marked his return to music after the messy break-up of Flying Nun punks The Mint Chicks, the band he started at home with brother Kody 10 years earlier. Now, building on the break-beat, junk-shop charm Nielson soon came to be renowned for, ‘II’ signals the solidification of Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s position as an infinitely intriguing, brave psychedelic band; unafraid to dig deeper and hit harder than the rest to lock into their intoxicating, opiate groove and bring rock’n’roll’s exaggerated myths to life. Time on the road may have eaten away at Nielson both physically and mentally, but, ultimately, it conceived an album that builds thrillingly on the jagged melodies, choppy percussion and meandering guitars on his debut. ‘II’ was recorded nocturnally (Nielson played everything but some of the drums himself) in the converted basement of his family home in Milwaukee, Oregon – an upgrade on the yurt where he and his wife and young children first lived after moving to America. Focus, inspiration and dedication streamlined his vibrant imagination during the sessions and extra time spent on the songs (compared with his previous one-night-one-song approach) gives the instruments space to flick between woozy stumble and nimble canter, highlighting the emotional turmoil that led to the revelatory bleakness of the lyrics.
“The album has a really specific mood,” he says. “It captures the way I was thinking when I was on tour and is surrealist and impressionistic. You try to fill the gap left by not having family and friends around, and you end up getting into trouble. The emotions I was trying to get into it were about relationships and drug taking.” Racked with paranoia and loneliness exacerbated by recreational chemicals, Nielson was exposed to an entirely new set of influences. “With the first record I didn’t have all these things to deal with, but this time I was running into a lot of situations…we were already a drug band but we were out of control, playing every day and not looking after ourselves. It’s hard to be away from my wife and children, they’re beautiful people, but my life at home is crazy too, I stay up all night. There are different problems, stories and weird impressions of my feelings, but this album is mainly about love affairs and how impossible it is to connect with people sometimes, and losing people.”
These conflicting themes are evident immediately; on the album’s sleeve is an unnerving image of Janet Farrar, the famous British witch, Wiccan, author and teacher of witchcraft. The chilling refrain of opener ‘Into The Sun’ sees Nielson deliver the line “Isolation can put a gun in your hand,” softly, his words starkly intelligible above a warm, slow-burning melody that quickly brands itself onto your brain. His playful imagery (‘I’m so lonely I’ve gotta eat my popcorn all alone’) mirrors the melody, before a solo that borders on psychotropic ends ‘II’’s introduction.
‘Swim And Sleep (Like A Shark)’ and ‘So Good At Being In Trouble’ plumb even murkier depths. Of the latter, Nielson says “It’s the best song I’ve written so far, there’s something really truthful about it”. Its grainy, lilting, Beatles-recalling simplicity allows delicate guitar and vulnerable, high-pitched vocals to fill a seemingly desolate sketch of Nielson’s touring problems with animated, life-affirming colour; especially with the line ‘Rolling alone I’m in a strange state of mind, it’s a strange old state of mind.’ On the swampy haze of ‘Swim And Sleep (Like A Shark)’ Nielson sings about escaping to an imaginary safe place at the bottom of the ocean, recalling his difficult childhood. But he explains that the apparent finality of the lyrics (‘I’d fall to the bottom and I’d hide ‘til the end of time) isn’t as morbid as it seems. “The song is about wanting to escape, not die. I’m not scared of death because it’s a release from the stress and pressures of life. It’s like an opiate song, about a state between life and death, so it describes the feeling of being at the bottom of the ocean and feeling really cold, drifting in a safe place, completely separate from being a human. It’s a feeling I’ve had since I was a kid, wanting to find a dark, cold place, crawl into it and just hide for a while until I get my energy back,” he explains.
As it unfolds, ‘II’ does find Nielson reenergized. ‘One At A Time’ and ‘Faded In The Morning’ boast dizzying choruses and instrumentals; these crusty hunks could have been excavated from a lost 1960s treasure trove. ‘Monki’ unravels over seven minutes like the yarn from a stoner’s cardigan with an eye-frying pattern. ‘Dawn’ is a minute of disconcerting noise that stands out between the nooks and crannies of the choruses, guitar solos, groove-heavy bass and drums that were recorded live by newly-recruited drummer Greg Rogove and Kody Nielson in a move away from the electronic percussion employed on album one. ‘II’ closes with ‘Secret Xtians’, a tender observational puzzle that fizzes to a satisfied end.
‘II’ is a precisely assembled insight into a frayed and frazzled period of a fascinating life; journeying from despair to euphoria with stops for highs, hangovers, communication failure, anger and love in between. Unknown Mortal Orchestra was once Ruban Nielson’s closeted, home-recorded concern. With an album that uses his singular musical imagination and extraordinary talent to parade his emotions with unyielding honesty, it is now a fully realized, reinvigorated, mature band operating at the peak of its powers. In making ‘II’ Ruban Nielson has taught himself how to survive as a musician again. He’s given away perhaps more than he ever intended; his musical craft and fragile mind are fully exposed. Now you know more about him than ever before. The words Unknown Mortal Orchestra have never carried so much meaning. – Ben Homewood
Crushed Out is an explosive hit of surf-garage momentum and rock & roll from Brooklyn, NY consisting of Frank Hoier on guitar and vocals and Moselle Spiller on drums. After four national tours and a well-received EP, 2010′s Show Pony, the couple, formerly known as Boom Chick, are set to release their debut full-length,Want to Give, on Nov. 6, 2012 on their own Cool Clear Water imprint. Want to Give is a pure guitar/drum adrenalin rush – plenty of fuzz, tremolo, riffs, chunky chords, slide and Black Sabbath power chords. The songs are tight and lean; no fat, no studio fairy dust. Recorded both at Brooklyn’s Bunker Studio as well as at Crushed Out’s own analog studio in a rural New Hampshire barn, the tracks were all self-produced and mixed by John Davis.
The bulk of Want To Give was created during Charles Shaw-fueled jam sessions at the duo’s practice space in Red Hook, Brooklyn in 2011. Moselle was working as a freelance graphic artist and Frank taught guitar lessons. At night, they’d jam in their industrial space in Red Hook’s Ohm Acoustics speaker factory. Deciding to escape NYC rents, they moved their gear up to Moselle’s childhood town in rural Effingham, NH, where they set up their own 16-track recording studio in the old barn on the property. Lacking a home base, they finished the songs on the road, writing lyrics to their many instrumentals and songs that had manifested organically through those late-night Brooklyn jam sessions. Four of their “barn demos” ended up on Want To Give. The other six were recorded over three days at Brooklyn’s Bunker Studio.
Along with early features in NYC publications (Village Voice, New York Post), Crushed Out’s early supporters included So-Cal skate bible Thrasher Magazine and Element Skateboards, who used several of the band’s Show Pony EP songs in their skateboard videos. Their song “Ghost of Bo Diddley” (as Boom Chick) was also featured in ESPN’s X series, The Kids.
Want to Give explodes out of the speakers, delivering on the promise of Crushed Out’s EP and live shows. It’s a testament to Frank and Moselle’s ecstatic love for early American rock & roll, surf guitar and country blues — what Bob Dylan called the “atomic era” of rock & roll.” They’ll be announcing tour dates soon; watch this space for updates.
When you think of Palm Beach, Florida, what comes to mind? Palm trees swaying gently in the balmy breeze? Scantily-clad bikini buxom babes rollerblading down an infinite slab of coral-colored concrete? How about anthemic, bombastic, life-affirming indie pop?
If the latter didn’t occur to you, let us introduce you to Surfer Blood: they call West Palm Beach home and, while still in their early 20s, have penned “Astro Coast”, an album’s worth of catchy, summery indie songs that even the most hook-laden power pop band would rightfully be jealous of.
Members JP (dubbed “The Mastermind” by the rest of the band), TJ and Thomas met one fateful night at an after party for Miami’s Ultra Festival, though they didn’t attend the festival itself (“We do not like the D’n’B,” they proclaim). After discussing music – what else? –for the remainder of the night, JP decided to recruit the other guys to perfect some songs he had been working on, and thus, the band was formed. Tyler and I had been playing with a few different people and nothing seemed to be working out. When Tom approached me at that party, he seemed dead serious about touring and trying to make the band work. I had seen how his previous bands had been; his old band had done a tour up to Atlanta over spring break when they were fifteen. It was exactly what Tyler and I needed. I gave him my phone number that night and he called me the next afternoon. He came by our rehearsal space and I showed him the recordings that would become “Astro Coast”. The fact that the other guys believed in the music from the very beginning was a huge catalyst”.
From then on, things moved at a breakneck pace. A mere two months after they met they started touring outside of Florida in July, up to New York in August and then to Chicago in September. On a recommendation from a friend, they started recording “Astro Coast” at a studio in Port St. Lucie Florida, but when they only finished the drums at the end of a two day session, Tyler and JP decided to take matters into their own hands, spending the next six months tracking and mixing the record in JP’s apartment in Boca Raton with a copy of Pro Tools which Tyler procured for “dirt cheap” through a community college where he was studying in Orlando. JP asserts, “It gave us the opportunity to give our album the time and thought it deserved”.
Their live shows started coming into their own as well, with the band practicing every day and touring nonstop, their newfound energy resulting in a constant evolution and refinement of their sound. “Our live set is always changing”, JP says. “Subtle things begin to work their way into the songs and before you know it people are coming up to you after shows and telling you that the live show is a completely different experience from the record”. The tipping point for the band, of course, was last year’s CMJ Music Marathon, where they played a whopping 13 shows in 7 days, catching the eye of the likes of Interview and The New York Times in the process. With the resultant excited chatter anointing them as the band to watch bar none, and a record deal freshly inked with Kanine Records, Surfer Blood released “Astro Coast”.
In the following months “Astro Coast” attracted accolades across the board. The album and its songs landed atop numerous Best of Lists, including Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and Filter, with Bob Boilen from NPR declaring “…dig into Astro Coast and you’ll hear why, song for song, this may be my favorite album of 2010.”
* A.E.P. & MFNW PRESENT: A SPECIAL MFNW EDITION OF FRESH
Natasha Kmeto is a Portland-based singer and electronic producer who turns heads everywhere she goes. Armed with a taut dance floor sensibility and flutteringly sensuous voice, she exudes the kind of beauty that can only come from confidence. Her tracks are sleek and energetic affairs, straddling the line between dance, pop, and RnB, percussively intriguing compositions that slide easily into the ear but aren’t so easily forgotten. Her beauty, energy, and talent coalesce into a truly visceral live show, moving both to the partygoer and the thinking person alike. Wherever her music goes, heavy breathing will follow.
Born into a musical family in California, Natasha began to develop her talents as an artist from a young age. It wasn’t until almost two decades later, on the verge of becoming a career session musician, that she grabbed the wheel and broke out in a direction that truly inspired her. Her arrival in Portland marked a big step towards new things. The past several years as seen her growth quicken, especially after signing with hometown label Dropping Gems. The string of releases that have followed showcase Natasha in her most self-realized form, in matters of love, independence, and outlook on life.
Natasha has a long list of notable live performances under her belt, including gigs at Coachella, Bumbershoot, MusicFestNW, Symbiosis, SXSW, Low End Theory (LA and SF) and Decibel Festival. She has shared the stage with a number of talented artists as well, including Squarepusher, Emancipator, Kid Cudi, Plaid, Gold Panda, Dam Funk, Shlohmo, Shigeto, and Morcheeba, just to name a few. Her radio experience includes live performances on Boiler Room and KEXP, and her tracks have been played by numerous noteworthy DJs including Mary Anne Hobbes. She is due to release her LP ‘Crisis’ June 18th on Dropping Gems.
Frank Fairfield is a young man and old time folk musician who plays fiddle, guitar and banjo while singing and hollering. An unbelievable word of mouth sensation who channels the spirit of another era in his spellbinding live shows.
From California, USA, Frank sings tunes he has worked hard to collect from around the world as well as his own well-dusted ditties. His eclectic sets feature soaring hillbilly ballads, arcane rambling songs and murder ballads delivered in a reedy tenor with that irresistible American Primitive quality. Still in his twenties but steeped in the pre-War Americana of Mississippi John Hurt and Dock Boggs, he cut his teeth as a street performer in LA and has the raw intensity and quick-fingered technique to make your hairs stand on end. Alternating between banjo, fiddle and guitar, he performs a different set of traditional songs and originals each night, drawing on his encyclopaedic knowledge of the American folk canon.
Fleet Foxes handpicked him to open for them on their 2008 US tour and since then he has found fans elsewhere in Ry Cooder, CW Stoneking, Charlie Parr and Grammy winning producer Chris King (Charley Patton, ‘People Take Warning’ box set). He has released two albums on Tompkins Square (home of Michael Chapman and James Blackshaw), a collection of traditionals on 2009′s eponymous album, followed by Out On The Open West (2010), featuring his own originals and a cast of guest musicians. Both picked up rave reviews across the board. An ardent 78 rpm collector, he has also compiled a selection of rare and unheralded gramophone recordings from around the world entitled Unheard Ofs & Forgotten Abouts on his own Pawn imprint.
San Francisco psych wunderkind Ty Segall continues a tireless musical assault on ears and minds with his third album Melted. Segall says it sounds like “cherry cola, Sno-Cones and taffy.” Indeed! Over the past two years he’s released records more often than most people do laundry, but somehow there is still a heap of anticipation for this new album on Goner packed full of truly psychedelic pop songs with great vocals and exciting arrangements.
On the heels of two critically acclaimed solo albums, Segall holed up in a basement studio with Mike Donovan of the Sic Alps in late 2009 and early 2010 to come up with Melted. It’s a carefree yet precise balance of acoustic and electric elements. Distorted echo and thunder mix together with enough clean guitar lines and addictive choruses to deliver an album that recalls the ’60s without sounding like anything created during that decade. Time melts away, vision melts away, minds melt away. Get Melted!
Universally hailed as a thrilling new figure in music for his edgy, lo-fi debut, The Headphone Masterpiece, back in 2002, Cody ChesnuTT is a soul troubadour whose frank, socially conscious ruminations on life continue to challenge popular notions of what modern soul music can look and sound like: a raw storyteller for the people wearing a guitar and a toothpick-chewing smirk; a wide-eyed, intense soul brother in a crazy-fly get-up singing about bedraggled love in the land of Lost Angeles- he’s all of that, but wiser now while still wearing poetic license on his skin like a battle scar. The Atlanta native has always stood his own creative ground ever since he first holed himself up in his bedroom to record The Headphone Masterpiece, armed with his DIY musical arsenal: a drum machine, an array of instruments, a dusty four-track cassette recorder and a giant pair of headphones to block out the world. The result was an unvarnished collection of songs – 36 in total, which alchemized his love of a multitude of styles: classic rock, rhythm and blues, pop, punk and gospel music.
A decade earlier, Cody explored the Atlanta’s early ‘90s R&B scene as a singer, and then toiled in his LA-based band, The Crosswalk. His time spent alone exploring raw new sounds in his bedroom finally paid off in 2002 with the release of The Headphone Masterpiece. Industry tastemakers like music writer dream hampton (and The Roots drummer and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon bandleader Questlove took to the record immediately, hearing in Cody’s music the kind of emotional intensity and savvy, irreverent wordplay that was sorely missing in Black music in the early 2000s as the neo-soul movement sputtered to a near halt, losing several of its key players to their own hiatuses. A song from The Headphone Masterpiece was re-tooled as “The Seed 2.0” for the Roots’ seminal album Phrenology, exposing Cody’s music to a wider mainstream audience. The song was nominated for two moonman statuettes at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, and his own album was nominated for the prestigious Shortlist Music Prize that same year. His fiery performance in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party added to his growing cult-fame status as an electrifying showman and daring genre-bender. The film was helmed by French video director Michel Gondry, best known for directing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and his pioneering visuals for the alt-musician Björk. A fan of Cody’s music, he also directed the stunning video for “King of the Game,” a song from Cody’s 2006 one-man stage project “The Live Release.”
Landing On A Hundred, Cody’s second full-length LP, marks his return to the music game after a period of family-man retreat and reflection that did a world of good for him after his meteoric rise to near fame. The title is a reference to the slang saying, “Keeping It One Hundred,” or telling the whole truth, and for lovers of true blue Southern soul this new album is a must-have — he recorded it with a ten-piece band in Memphis-based Royal Studios, the sonic birthplace of some of the deepest works by soul and blues luminaries like Al Green, Buddy Guy and Ike & Tina Turner. “The original tracks were cut on two-inch tape,” Cody explains. “My hands were tingling because I got to sing on the actual microphone that Al Green recorded with. Nothing has changed. The downhome acoustic treatments are still in place.”
Topics on Landing On A Hundred cover lots of grown-folks business: a man’s road to redemption after years of womanizing and crack addiction, the power and labor of slow-burning marital love that eclipses mere material expressions of affection. Keeping it truthful is ultimately what matters most in Cody’s songs: how it reveals itself in your darkest thoughts, how it can heal old wounds with a handclap and a foot stomp. Truthfulness emanates from Cody’s vocal chords and the strings of his guitar while his , strong, sensitive voice continues to command listeners with its riveting sound, leading them to their own higher ground.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
Within and Without is the debut album by 28 year-old Atlanta-based songwriter and producer Ernest Greene, AKA Washed Out. Long adored and critically lauded in the blog world, Greene first came to prominence in the summer of 2009 after unassumingly posting a handful of bedroom-recorded tracks to his Myspace page from his family home in the seclusion of the tiny rural city of Perry, Georgia. “I’d been writing music on my own for three or four years previous to that,” Greene explains, “mostly as a way to experiment with songwriting processes. Those were just the first I ever shared.”
Despite such modest intentions however, those first songs (many of which would appear on the acclaimed Life of Leisure EP of later that year) were about as complete an opening statement from an artist as imaginable. A heady, psychedelic concoction of what Pitchfork’s Mark Hogan termed “romantic nostalgia and homespun textures,” songs such as “Belong” and “Feel It All Around”—Greene’s biggest hit to date—artfully match the glossy melody of ’80s synth pop, the widescreen scope of early ’90s Balearic dance music and the slowed, heavy bounce of southern Hip Hop production to gorgeously wistful vocals with results as undeniably idiosyncratic and original as they are deeply accessible.
* NIKE PRESENTS
Flume is a 20 year old beatmaker from Sydney. He got his first taste for producing at age 13 from the most unlikely of places – a music production program he found in a cereal box. Taking a no-holds-barred attitude to music creation Flume takes inspiration from a wide variety of sources and scenes distilling his sound into a melodic bass heavy style of his own. International press has come from tastemaking sources including XLR8R (USA – 8.6/10 review), Lodown Magazine (UK – 8/10 review) & Electronic Beats (Germany). In Australia, Flume has received strong support from leading youth broadcaster Triple J (morning Host Zan Rowe naming ‘Sleepless’ as her “Catch of The Day”) and community radio nationally, with high rotation on RRR, PBS, RTR, FBi and 2ser.
Flume is getting significant buzz online with ‘Sleepless’ amassing 500,000+ plays on YouTube, and 120,000+ on Soundcloud and his facebook page has 23,000+ fans in less than a year of being online. Sleepless was soft released in August 2011 and has been #1 on the iTunes Australia Electronic Chart for several weeks and in the top 10 for several months. Flume has also featured on a vinyl co-release with Anna Lunoe and has released remixes for Hermitude, Junior Boys, Onra, The Aston Shuffle and Ta-ku.
Flume’s live shows have now come into full effect after 2 sold out national headline tours of 300-500 capacity rooms, Sydney and Melbourne supports for the xx and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (forthcoming) and festival bookings for Splendour in the Grass, a sold-out show at VividLIVE at the Sydney Opera House where he headlined alongside Jacques Renault & Isolee, and has been confirmed for the full national run for Parklife, as well as Harbourlife, Foreshore and several more New Years period festivals in Australia and New Zealand. He’s also been the main support for shows by Hermitude, Oscar + Martin, Chet Faker and New Navy.
Internationally Flume has been confirmed to perform at CMJ in New York in October 2012 and been signed for UK and European booking by Elastic Artists (Flying Lotus, Major Lazer) with plans for both a European and North American tour in 2013.
Flume’s debut self-titled album will be out on 12 November 2012 released worldwide by Future Classic (Flight Facilities, New Navy). It will be preceded by a vinyl/digital release of Sleepless on 24 September with remixes by Shlohmo (USA) and Midland (UK) and a video clip. In addition to lead single Sleepless featuring Jezzabell Doran the album features guest vocal contributions by Chet Faker, Moon Holiday, George Maple (aka Jess from Flight Facilities’ Foreign Language single) and Porto Rican LA based MC T.Shirt.
* A.E.P. & MFNW PRESENT: A SPECIAL MFNW EDITION OF FRESH
Guillermo Scott Herren is nothing if not proven. It’s hard to think of a name that carries as much weight in both hip-hop and avant-rock circles as Prefuse 73, who in the past year alone has been asked to remix TV On The Radio, Pelican, BLK JKS, Cornelius, and producing the L.A. duo: “Voices Voices” e.p. on Manimal Records. Not to mention his collaborations with School of Seven Bells and Battles. These interactions have clearly helped to shape the evolving Herren’s sonic aesthetic, which has expanded to include Diamond Watch Wrists twisted visions of prog-rock & “machine funk” and Savath y Savalas global psychedelia.
Last year, Prefuse 73’s Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian, Herren rejected the idea of straight digital recording and instead went the much more intensive route of recording to analog Ampex tape, giving the album the sound of a lost tape of exploratory studio musicians from the not-too-distant past. In addition to the recording process, …Ampexian also differs in its composition, existing as a tapestry of tracks of varying lengths and moods, albeit with a remarkable linear flow and, of course, unmatched rhythmic bump. The album features appearances by fellow Savath Y Savalas member Lange (also co-produced), School of Seven Bells vocalist Claudia Deheza, Zach Hill, Dimitri Grimm and Gaslamp KIller. He continued with an e.p. entitled: The Forest of Oversensitivity” and a Japanese Only release entitled: “Meditations upon Meditations”.
This past year has taken him on a whirlwind of of shows and tours in a number of configurations around the world and back. South America, Japan, random lofts in the middle of nowhere and so on. Now, into this new year of 2010, he has already completed a U.S. tour with: The Gaslamp Killer and Voices Voices. With plans to continue with more shows, tours and a full fledged composition and performance written for the: “Aukso Orchestra of Poland” in August.
Los Angeles based punk band “The Bronx” – aptly named after the left coast borough – has for the last 6 years redefined what punk means, sounds like, and doesn’t look like. After 3 self titled full lengths, countless tours all over the world, more 7 inches and eps then one can count, the band returns with their latest offering, yet another self titled full-length: Mariachi El Bronx
As follows: according to the band…
Mariachi el Bronx was probably conceived in August of 2006 in Los Angeles’ infamous “Downtown Rehearsal.” It all started as a way to flip the Electric goes acoustic performance garbage, because that’s never good. We were invited to play live on television but decided that a cheesy acoustic version of our song was not what we wanted to do. The Original El Bronx line up, or at least as it appeared on TV. featured guest appearances from Zander Schloss ( Wierdos, circle jerks) and Keith Douglas (Mad Caddies). The project triggered something inside all of us that was unexpected. It’s almost impossible to explain, but it felt like discovering a second soul within you. We instantly started writing new songs. The body of this record was written all over the world. As the Bronx played, El Bronx wrote. Inspired by the jungles and beaches of New Zealand, “sleepwalking” was one of the first songs written, along with “my brother the gun.” The music for Quincenera was written under the German summer sun. And so on, and so on. Once we were home the territorial pissings of punk once again worked their way into our lives as we completed writing what was to become Bronx III and Mariachi El Bronx. we discovered that we had more than enough songs for a record, now it was time to cement the sound. Vincent Hidalgo, son of David Hidalgo (los lobos, latin playboys) joined El Bronx in late 2007. Vincent really helped bring everything together. as a unit we poured our heart and soul into every song, musically and lyrically. Jon Avilla (Oingo Boingo) was picked out of a prison line up to produce the record. It was at his studio in the San Gabriel Valley where we put the finishing touches on the record. What had started as an act of rebellion had become something bigger than the sum of its parts. Alfredo Ortiz (beastie boys / money mark) plays percussion and an unnamed string quartet that did us a “solid” but wouldn’t give us their names due to contractual obligations to the television show “American idol”. Mariachi El Bronx touches on many facets of mariachi music, the most well know being norteno as well as jorocho, wasteka, bolero and corridos. It may seem strange for a band that blasts the audience into outer space every night to take this direction, but mariachi music is every bit as much of a soundtrack to southern California as punk. They are seamlessly intertwined.
The band will perform in a variety of different ways, sometimes incorporating mariachi into their punk set, sometimes 2 nights at a venue performing each band respectively, often times having one band open up for the other. Check your local listings.
We very much enjoyed making this album, and we hope that you receive the same enjoyment out of listening to it.
- Mariachi El Bronx (the Bronx)
Matt Caughthran – Vox
Joby J. Ford – vihuela
Ken Horne – guitar
Brad Magers – trumpet
Vincent Hidalgo – guitarron
Jorma Vik – drums
When you hold the kind of resume that Jessica Dobson does, you have options. You can continue to parlay your role as an established touring musician into enviable gigs that will earn you a paycheck, or you can choose to close that chapter for the chance to write another. Dobson recently opted for the latter, leaving behind her life as a touring guitarist lending support to a constellation of acts including Beck, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The Shins, to focus completely on her own band, Deep Sea Diver, which she helms along with drummer and husband Peter Mansen.
Deep Sea Diver has enjoyed a swift rise through the Seattle music scene, to which they are relative newcomers. The attention they’ve garnered is attributable in part to a spell-binding live show in which the physicality of Mansen’s drumming is on full display, along with Dobson’s ability to command a room with nothing but her voice.
The band’s relocation to Seattle came at the end of the recording process for their debut album, History Speaks. The move was a risk, but one that afforded them a much-needed opportunity to start fresh. Embarking on a slow burn, they began by playing some of the city’s most obscure venues for tiny crowds. Meanwhile, Dobson and Mansen engaged in a feverish DIY campaign from their bedroom, packing and shipping albums to prospective labels, making cold calls, working hard to gain traction amidst a sea of other clamoring voices.
Initially the silence was deafening. They wondered if they were deluding themselves. Was the record even any good? Despite the existential gut check, they continued to grind away. Within weeks they began to see results, graduating from the dives of Georgetown to the more reputable clubs up on Capitol Hill. Soon they were playing a sold out record-release show at the Columbia City Theatre, and being recruited to share bills at some of Seattle’s most prominent indie rock venues. In the midst of all this, public radio powerhouse KEXP put History Speaks into regular rotation.
Deep Sea Diver originally served as a vehicle for Dobson’s solo work. During a 2006 trip to Seattle to record with Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, The Walkmen), she met Mansen in a chance encounter at a coffee shop. Several years later, married and living in Southern California, they had begun working on new material with bassist John Raines and guitarist Sean Walker in a rehearsal space behind the Long Beach home of cult recording legend Matt Wignall. Upon overhearing them one day, Wignall invited the group to record in his analog home studio, a departure from the hermetic, digitized world of big budget studios Dobson was used to. History Speaks would be the fruit of those sessions.
The album is a study in dynamics. Mansen and Raines weave an interlocking lattice of angular rhythms, shifting smoothly between various time signatures and nuances of syncopation. Their foundation is accented by supplemental percussion from long-time Tom Waits collaborator Stephen Hodges. Across this bed of cadences Dobson spins taut, staccato figures with her guitar. Spooling out with a gentle insistence, they serve as a backdrop for her evocative voice, its clarion tonality a ribbon that runs through the entire album.
Fortunately, the group’s technical proficiency does not lead to imaginative atrophy. Rather than turning out a dozen variations on the same theme, History Speaks finds the quartet segueing easily between a variety of styles, from punchy, driving cuts like “Weekend Wars,” to the cavernous spaces that close the album.
They light a fuse with tense opener “Ships,” immediately showcasing their penchant for tightly knit arrangements over which Dobson’s vocals soar and bend. “You Go Running” begins with an airy guitar riff and hint of steel drum, only to give way to the lilting swing of “Keep It Moving.” As the album winds down it stretches and spreads out, svelte opening numbers giving way to the spare, mournful build of “Why Must A Man Change?” “Tracks of the Green Line,” and eponymous curtain call, “History Speaks.”
In recent months, the group has had an increasing number of opportunities to take their live show on the road, and the response from audiences has been remarkable. Following a co-headlining tour with Seattle’s Bryan John Appleby, Deep Sea Diver opened a series of dates for The Shins, during which, despite being the opening act, they received standing ovations in multiple cities. This fall saw the group co-headline a series of west coast shows with Chicago natives Wild Belle. They have dates booked throughout the remainder of 2013, during which they will be touring full-time in support of History Speaks.
WE THE COMMON OUT NOW ON RIBBON MUSIC, RECEIVES CRITICAL PRAISE
“Ms. Nguyen’s voice, wobbly and rich, is engaging, and her gently confessional lyrics… are equally beguiling.”—The New York Times
The video for Thao & The Get Down Stay Down’s “Holy Roller,” directed by Mimi Cave, is premiering at VEVO in celebration of the group’s critically acclaimed new album We The Common (out now on Ribbon Music). The video can be viewed/shared at http://vevo.ly/10eWSlc. “‘Holy Roller’ was the first song written for We The Common,” notes frontwoman Thao Nguyen. She goes on, “It set the tone of revival, gratitude and humanity for the entire record. Making the video with the fantastic Mimi Cave and the incredible cast and crew was a highlight and we had just as much or more fun than it looks. Note: That is me doing the running man. No stunt dancers were employed.”
On the heels of a successful North American spring tour that included sold-out stops in New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, Washington, DC, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver and Los Angeles, Thao & the Get Down Stay Down will hit the road this summer for additional performances including stops at the Austin City Limits Festival, Bumbershoot, Outside Lands and a free show at NYC’s Pier 84 with Foxygen. Please see below for a list of dates; additional dates to be announced shortly. SF Weekly praises Thao’s live show, noting that “Nguyen exploded with energy,” while Guitar World calls the group’s show “electrifying.”
“We The Common is music that makes you move from your bones out… it’s]keenly intelligent and original.”
“Quirky but cutting, playful but forceful, controlled but ragged, Thao Nguyen is one of the most commanding and distinctive young singers around. She infuses everything around her with electricity and mischievous boldness.”
“Thao’s most sharply written record to date…its 12 songs are smart, sometimes piercingly self- aware meditations on the creative life, teasing out the tension between life and art, the individual and the community—and perhaps most of all—security and restlessness.”
“Delightful”
“Nguyen is one of the most innovative guitarists around.”
“Singularly anthemic”
Recorded at San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone Studios and Dallas’ Elmwood Studio, We The Common was produced by John Congleton (St. Vincent, Bill Callahan, the Walkmen, Explosions in the Sky). Thao observes, “We The Common is an album about wanting to be a human who tries and is grateful for the opportunity. It is about wanting to be better and closer to people. I have had over a year respite from touring and recording—in this year I started really trying to be a part of the community I live in and the family I was born into.” The album is the follow-up to Thao’s 2009 release Know Better Learn Faster, which Pitchfork praised for its “warm exuberance that keeps the music spry.”
Based in San Francisco after growing up in Falls Church, VA, Thao Nguyen first picked up a guitar at age 12. She has worked with a long list of acclaimed artists including Andrew Bird, Mirah, Laura Veirs and producer Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens) and has recorded a pair of critically acclaimed records for Kill Rock Stars, 2008’s We Brave Bee Stings and All and the aforementioned 2009 release Know Better Learn Faster with her backing band the Get Down Stay Down. Since her last album Thao has worked with the artist advocacy non profit Air Traffic Control (www.atctower.net) and has volunteered extensively with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. This year, in addition to recording her forthcoming album, Thao has toured the U.S. with the nationally syndicated NPR program “Radiolab.”
Morning Ritual is the musical project of Portland musician Ben Darwish. The group features Darwish’s collaborations with different female vocalists. The group also features multi-instrumentalist William Seiji Marsh and drummer Russ Kleiner. Their unique sound is marked with inventive melodies, hybrid tones, and pulsing vocal harmonies over tight-knit piano-driven grooves. Currently producing a series of song cycles, their first piece, “The Clear Blue Pearl”, is a collaboration with unique sister-singers, Shook Twins. The music incorporates folk and other styles such as dubstep and jazz. Their second long-form composition, “Solitary Monastery”, is an R&B-leaning piece that uses “glitch vocals”, a rhythmic vocal technique that defies most modern music. It features Arietta and Nafisaria Scroggins, another sister-duo that have a wildly unique sound.
Touching on nearly every genre, Morning Ritual is hard to define. Each piece fuses different musical influences within the framework of a style that’s all their own. Instead of a series of single songs, their live performance is best described as an “experience” which will transcend your expectation of a live concert.
So many decisions in life and in the music we love can come down to a critical tug between the logic in our heads and the hot red blood beating through our hearts. Seattle’s The Head and the Heart live authentically in that crux, finding joy and beauty wedged there. Their music pulses effervescently-both explosively danceable and intuitively intelligent. With Americana roots and strong vocal harmonics that swell like a river, this band finds its anchor in solid songwriting that has even the jaded humming along by the second listen.
Leaving a variety of day jobs and academic pursuits, The Head and the Heart came together in the summer of 2009, during frequent visits to the open mic night at Conor Byrne in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. California-transplant Josiah Johnson and Virginia-native Jonathan Russell formed the core songwriting partnership, quickly adding keyboardist Kenny Hensley to the mix. Kenny, then 21, had packed up his piano and moved up to Seattle from California to pursue musical score-writing. The luminous Charity Rose Thielen, violin and vocals, had just returned from a year of studying and playing music in Paris. Drummer Tyler Williams cold left a successful band in Virginia after Jon sent him the demo of “Down in the Valley,” relocating across states to be a part of this. Finally, Chris Zasche, was bartending at Conor Byrne and mentioned one day that he’d be happy to play bass for the nascent band. It all felt right: The Head and the Heart was born.
Whether penning songs on the beach at Seattle’s Discovery Park, or working out melodies in the piano practice rooms at the Seattle Public Library, Charity describes the early months of the band’s existence as touched by a shared purpose and connection. She recalls an email she sent to Josiah that summer, confessing that she was “sleepless and penniless, but inspired nonetheless.”
The band entered Seattle’s Studio Litho in early 2010 to record these songs that had been kicking and twisting in the catalytic development of their live show. Recorded by Shawn Simmons at Studio Litho and Steven Aguilar at Bearhead Studio, the band was selling burned copies in handmade denim sleeves at local shows within a few weeks. Self-released in June 2010, the debut album helped build an impressive head-of-steam for the band through the second half of the year, gaining fans at influential Seattle station KEXP, local record shops (a consistent top 10 seller for Easy Street and the #1 album of 2010 at Sonic Boom), and venues up and down the West Coast, culminating with signing to Sub Pop Records in November. For the 2011 re-release of the album, “Sounds like Hallelujah” has been re-recorded, live favorite “Rivers and Roads” has been added, and the album has been re-mastered.
The songs resulting from those first inspired months pick at the multicolored threads of leaving home, finding home, and through that process of deconstruction, finding yourself. These are songs about crossing rivers and roads to get to the one you love, about family far away, and the desire to chase Technicolor dreams down foreign horizons. When people hear these songs, or see the band live, the first thing they have to do is tell someone else. Their shows are, simply, one hell of a lot of breathless fun. Each song explodes into a potent supernova on stage, where half the audience is zealously singing along with every lyric, and the other half is wishing they knew the words. The band has accepted nearly every show offered to them in the past year, from backyards strung with Christmas lights to coffee shops, open mics, and even high school classrooms in Middle America. From the first months of the band’s life, their reputation as a phenomenal live band has preceded them wherever they play.
The strength of Josiah, Jon and Charity’s vocal harmonies on the album makes it feel like these three were born to pour their voices together, as the band’s songs revel in jaunty bass lines with ebullient handclaps peppering the best moments. A palette of orchestral elements weave their way through the album, including cello, glockenspiel, and violin, all shading in the songs’ development. For all the times your toes tap while enjoying this band, often the lightness will deceptively belie the depth of ache in the lyrics when you sit down to really listen. There is magic in the music, but not magic contrived by trickery or posturing. “It seems actually that the more genuine and honest we are in the songwriting and performing, the more people relate to that transparency,” Charity muses.
This is an album for people who unabashedly sing and drum along on the steering wheel, and also for those who appreciate a well-crafted collection of songs that build into something wholly beautiful.
There is in this music a counter-cultural optimism, with roots that grow deep and melodies that lodge themselves far into that place inside you where the head meets the heart.
-Heather Browne
If there is one thing that great musicians have in common, it is the compelling way they combine an admirable fearlessness with something vulnerable, something relatable and truly inviting. It’s a tricky cocktail to mix, but it unifies the great singers of virtually every genre, from the the most understated folk singers to the very glitziest pop stars. Angel Olsen is one such artist, and she joins the Jagjaguwar family armed with a voice that is remarkable, evocative and stark, comforting and startling.
Raised in St. Louis and now based in Chicago, Angel Olsen began singing as a young girl. She described to FADER, “when I reached a certain age, when I reached 15 or 16, I started to sound really different, and I don’t know where it came from or what exactly inspired it. I felt really comfortable singing loudly and letting my voice go all over the place…experimenting with volume and different types of music. Recording a lot, like when I was a little kid I would record on tapes a lot and listen to the recordings and harmonize with those recordings and then try and experiment with sounds, and then re-record over them. I feel like that’s the most natural process of teaching yourself anything. Listening and recording and listening and recording.”
That process — of listening and recording and listening and recording — has imbued her music with a confidence and wisdom that extends as much to her arrangements as to the voice that defines her music. What accompanies Angel’s voice might be the ambient sigh of a guitar chord, or the somber march of a snare, or a twirling melody met with an itchy little shaker. But it is purposefully subtle, leaving her voice front and center at nearly all times, freeing it to occupy the smallest nook or command a seemingly endless space. Moreso than powerful, Olsen’s voice is unforgiving.
And it’s little surprise, then, that her work is inspired by what she describes as “being home, feeling home within yourself. Simple things like homes and existence and death and birth.” Her music is defined by many of the same signposts by which folk music first defined itself — resonant images, bold voices, deeply human tones. And so Olsen is, to turn a phrase, bringing it all back home.
1939 Ensemble are an instrumental duo from Portland, OR. Metal and wood. Drums and vibes. Beats and melody. Jose Medeles (The Breeders) and David Coniglio. Random precision through noise, 1939 Ensemble doesn’t just cross genres, they both embrace and exploit them, inviting each listener in through the familiar, and leaving them with something new to explore.
Drawing influences from Krautrock, jazz & no wave. 1939 Ensemble moves between ominous dissonance noise to sharp bombastic beats with a live show that has shared the stage with the likes of BATTLES and MEDESKI, MARTIN & WOOD.
Debut record “HOWL & BITE” out now on Jealous Butcher Records
“industrial art deco”-Pitchfork
“somewhere between jazz, ambient, and rock dwells a musical conversation by the name of 1939 Ensemble”-UTNE Reader
“at the crossroads where Tortoise meets Merzbow and Milt Jackson meets Slint-this is where you’ll find 1939 Ensemble”-Jealous Butcher
PRESENTED BY KIND SNACKS
Made up of mostly internet, and embodied in real life by Tyler Tastemaker (Tyler Sammons) and QUARRY (Cory Haynes), MOST CUSTOM has been inciting dancefloor riots with their unique take on dark hood, and ghetto club music. Having already toured the west coast, and played support to artist such as Baauer, UZ, Shlohmo, Salva, and EPROM. MOST CUSTOM’s intricate and syncopated sound is catching ears and pushing boundaries, along with their extremely successful club night, TRAP FUNERAL. 2013 looks to be a large year for the Portland based duo, with their debut EP set to arrive early June on the STYLSS imprint, and a full summer festival tour schedule.
GAYTHEIST is
Tim Hoff – bass
Nick Parks – drums
Jason Rivera – vocals, guitar, lyrics
• Started in January 2011.
• Calls Portland, OR home base.
• Self-released two albums “Pentagrams Are Super!” & “Rainbows Have
Nothing To Hide” in 2011
• Released “Stealth Beats” Aug 21, 2012 on Good to Die Records
• Their name was chosen because (lesser reason) Jason is gay & an
atheist, and (greater reason) it sounds cool.
• Tim doesn’t talk much. No time to talk. Or bleed. Busy with bass
playing and stuff.
• Nick has three small birds and a pair of gecko lizards, they all
live harmoniously in his beard.
• Secret Gaytheist song formula: Jason has a quick story to tell +
must do so over rad riffs = Gaytheist song
• 2013 will see the release of their 4th album on Good To Die Records…
The Chicharones have toured the world, solo and with live bands, and perfected their sound, fighting to make something of themselves for the people they left behind. From Sleep’s magic tricks and quick change routines, to Martinez’s beer balancing and hi-kicking Elvis dance moves, The Chicharones have become legends for their unique sound and one-of-a-kind live show.
Spin Magazine called The Chicharones “The Best Bar Band in America”. Using humor and harmony, they’ve created something entirely new, pushing the boundaries of what hip hop sounds like. Expect 5-part harmonies, speed raps, a razor tight band, costume changes, syncopated dance moves, stage magic, stand-up comedy and the joyful interplay of veteran performers Sleep and Josh Martinez as they constantly raise the bar on what live performance can be.
The Chicharones have played multiple overseas festivals in France, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and Canada including extensive North American tours as both headliners and main support.
The Chicharones have toured extensively with The Warped Tour, Atmosphere, Aesop Rock, Swollen Members, Devin The Dude, Pretty Lights, Sage Francis, Streetlight Manifesto, AwolOne, and many more.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
Aaron Mortenson and Jay Rutherford set out to make their debut Los Colognes album in the mold of the great JJ Cale records of the ‘70s. Working Together is parched desert country blues at its best—full of relationships gone south, one-liners that make you think twice, and slow-burning boogie woogie.
Driving to Nashville in 2010, Jay and Mort pulled out an old cassette tape with a funny label on it. “The Clones,” it read, an almost forgotten four-track recording from Mort’s uncle, circa late ‘70s—an unreleased mash-up of country and gospel music. Something about it felt right, so the duo appropriated the name for their new band.
When they got to Nashville, the Chicago singer-guitarist and drummer set up shop at the weekly East Nashville late night jam at The 5 Spot. It was here they built a forum for a rotating cast of Nashville musicians to come sit in. “It’s kind of harking back to the old Nashville—a singer, song, session cats, producers putting bands together on the fly,” says Jay. The core members including Micah Hulscher on keys and Gordon Persha on bass would soon be drafted as the backing players for Nashville artists like Rayland Baxter, Nikki Lane, and Kevin Gordon.
After a name change and three years tightening their sound and soaking up the remaining strains of classic country music in Nashville, Los Colognes’ Working Together reflects the simple but straight-on lyricism of John Prine, the unhurried grooves of Cale, with a touch Mark Knopfler’s mid-‘80s Dire Straits polish. “Just stay on the train until you feel like you got enough,” explains Mort on the band’s recording studio philosophy. The duo would bring in different players on each session, then take the tapes home to work on them some more, blending in a “soupy, random quality,” says Jay.
Working Together deals with what they joke is “the East Nashville ethos”—questions of getting older and settling down.
On the reggae opener, “King Size Bed,” with its long “Brothers In Arms”-esque intro, a woman calls out her lover—“Your king size bed has gone to your head / You thought I was sleeping but I heard what you said / You said I’d never even know you were gone”—before he tiptoes off into the night.
On “Working Together, ” the album’s first single, Jay sings about trading off domestic duties. “Honey, I’ll grant your wishes, if you mow the yard,” he sings, over an impossibly feel-good summer groove. “Working together is easy, but living together is hard,” he admits, though Los Colognes make living look pretty easy.
“My favorite writers, like Cale and Prine, it’s that little twist that makes them great,” says Jay. “It’s like a good blues song—you don’t need 15 lines. You need four really good ones,” adds Mort, who acts as Jay’s lyrical filter and shares songwriting credit on the album.
Working Together’s last song, “Bird of Paradise,” creates a hazy, ambient dreamscape to end the record. “You’re a bird of paradise flying over me,” sings Jay. “I’m an ancient beach, you’re the tide / Nobody knows if it’s low or it’s high.”
Though Working Together deals with the unraveling of one particular relationship, Los Colognes have distilled things here to their universal core. After a decades-long musical partnership—writing 500 shitty songs together, Mort jokes, and fully finding their sound—this is the good stuff.
Earth is the one good idea of guitarist, Dylan Carlson. Adrienne Davies has been the drummer for the last 10 years of the 24 year run that this idea has lasted. They continue to drive it till the wheels come off or death intervenes.
When you’re as naturally talented and driven as Carre Callaway is, it’s easy to get ahead of yourself. As a young girl growing up in Denver Colorado, it was always clear that she was going places, and getting there fast. Carre (pronounced “Car-ray”) taught herself to play guitar at the age of 13 and began performing in the local folk scene almost immediately afterwards. She had the kind of book smarts to gain so much extra credit at high school that she ended up graduating two years before everyone else her age did. And by the time she was 17, she was opening for Nine Inch Nails at their arena-sized shows for their 2005 With Teeth tour- at Trent Reznor’s personal behest. “When I told him I play music and he asked to hear some of it, I think it was a joke,” she remembers of the chance meeting at Reznor’s New Orleans studio that sparked his interest. “The songs I had written at the time weren’t the kind of thing you would expect he would be into. I think he expected me to suck and he’d get a laugh out of it. But he immediately said that I should record something.”
But the problem with being so precocious is that it can get you into trouble and while Reznor saw Carre had raw ability in abundance, it takes more than musical talent to survive the music business. “Trent really took me under his wing and taught me a lot but deep down, I didn’t even know what kind of music I wanted to do back then,” she remembers. “For a while, I was a part of that LA scene and people either just wanted to tell me how much I suck or what I should be doing. It was a rude awakening. I shut down for a while after that. I spent a couple of years in bed and stopped writing too. I was in the right place at the wrong time.”
It’s the sort of experience that would leave most aspiring artists defeated and desperate to return to a life of normality. But Carre has regrouped, refocused and realized who she wants to be when she performs- and that person is Queen Kwong. It might be a stage name but don’t be fooled into thinking it’s some kind of elaborate façade or a fictitious character. In person, she’s polite, pleasant and mild-mannered Carre Callaway but on stage, the wild, uncontrollable Queen Kwong emerges and those two contrasting sides of her personality have always been in place since she was young. “I was an angry, angry child,” she smiles. “I was out of control from a really young age. I used to have screaming fits that were so loud that the cops would have to come to my house. But there was also that part of me that was the shy, quiet kid who did well at school. Music was a way for both of those aspects of my personality to be reconciled.”
It’s a duality that you can instantly spot in Queen Kwong’s music. Her guitar isn’t merely an instrument she plays with her hands, it’s something she inhabits with her soul and the resulting shifts between beauty and brutality feel all the more intense because of it. Similarly, her voice has an elastic ability to go straight from a seductive purr to an enraged howl and it’s because she sings from the pit of her stomach rather than the back of her throat. What results is dangerously unpredictable blast of rock ‘n’ roll that sits in the lineage of such primal and visceral acts as The Stooges, Nirvana, early Hole, and even Queens Of The Stone Age. Of course, there are plenty of people who simply buy a couple of fuzz-pedals and use that as justification to name drop these acts as sonic influences, but Queen Kwong uses them as physical ones too. “I always associated with rock ‘n’ roll with not being square and wimpy but it seem like nobody wants to make noise or be loud or be aggressive right now,” continues Carre, as that angry side begins to gently simmer under her surface. “I’d rather sound like shit and put on a great show than sound perfect but wimpy. There needs to be something more in your face and more aggressive.”
It only takes a quick look and listen around to understand exactly what she means. Technology is a wonderful thing but it’s made it too easy to sound pristine- and rock ‘n’ roll is often at it’s best when it’s anything but. It’s a modern schism that Queen Kwong reacts to with her own recordings. Anyone expecting to be dazzled by flawless singing, technical wizardry and consummate production will be disappointed. Queen Kwong’s music is about power and volatility rather than panache and virtuosity and it’s exactly that which she is desperate to restore to the often-sterile world of modern guitar music. “I’m not sure when rock ‘n’ roll became this way, but it seems to me that everyone just wants to pussyfoot around when they play. I don’t want to go to a show and be yawning or listen to a record that fades into the background. I want to hear and see someone go at it, and really feel what they’re doing.”
Evidently, Carre’s period of convalescence has helped her redefine her musical goals but just as important is the manner in which she is going to achieve them, and it’s certainly not going to be via the fast-track. “When I was playing arenas with Nine Inch Nails, I was in a position that most bands never even get close to and it was an experience that probably helped shape what I am today,” she admits. “But I never really wanted to do that kind of thing. It was something that I was thrown into. Playing clubs and small venues is all I ever wanted. It’s fitting to who I am and the kind of music I want to make.” Having done a few soul-destroying laps around the music business matrix already, Queen Kwong is ready to forge her own autonomous path that goes from town-to-town and venue-to-venue. It’s the long way around to be sure but in the end, Queen Kwong is destined to finally end up in the right place, at the right time.
Hardeep Phull
Brooklyn, November 2011
Irony is a part of life. Though the music business may at times have nothing to do with “real” life, irony is a part of the biz. Just ask singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Shuggie Otis. Shuggie Otis, for those not familiar with him through David Byrne’s heroic disinterment of his 1974 album, Inspiration Information or through his authorship of the wonderful Strawberry Letter 23 – is the son of legendary R ‘n’ B bandleader Johnny Otis. A musical prodigy he was playing with his father by the time he was 13 and from the word go displayed an uncanny mastery of the blues guitar.
He wrote “Strawberry Letter 23,” a gold single for the Brothers Johnson that went to number one R&B and number five pop in spring 1977. George Johnson was dating one of Otis’ cousins who gave him a copy of Otis’ 1971 Epic LP, Freedom Flight. Immediately, Johnson liked “Ice Cold Daydream” and “Strawberry Letter 23.” The duo recommended it to their producer, Quincy Jones, and recorded a cover version that sticks pretty close to Otis’ original version of “Strawberry Letter 23.” By the time “Strawberry Letter 23” was a million-seller, Otis had been dropped from Epic three years earlier. The 24-year-old guitar virtuoso was sure he would get a new record deal. Ironically, the record executives would be impressed that he wrote a million-selling song, but they weren’t interested in anything else he’d done. Disillusioned, Otis dropped out of the music business before returning to it in the late ‘80s, playing with his father, Johnny Otis’ band. Later the axiom “good things come to those who wait” took effect. Spurred by sales and critical kudos of reissues of his 1974 Epic LP, Inspiration Information, from Sony Music Special Projects and David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label, Otis performed “Strawberry Letter 23” on May 2001 appearances on Conan O’Brien and David Letterman.
Though in recent years he has chosen to remain out of the spotlight, he continues to be revered through musical circles, as evidenced by his 2009 performance with Mos Def in LA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdalGmtuiYg). Feb 2013 see the re-release of Inspiration Information via Sony distribution, complete as a double album package with a set of sought after unreleased masters. He will perform his first live dates outside America in over 20 years. Booking now for November 2012 and onwards…
Booty Bassment
World domination, butts, drank, money, records. But mostly butts.
From its humble beginnings in 2002 as a small birthday party for a few friends, Booty Bassment has grown to one of California’s best rap-based dance parties. Veteran DJs Dimitri Dickinson and Ryan Poulsen have turned this night into a success with monthly installments in San Diego, San Francisco, and now, Portland with the dynamic team of Maxx Bass, Nathan Detroit and their very own twerk cheerleader Ms. Coco B.
New Year’s Eve always suggests a new beginning, and “Cynic’s New Year” welcomes Horse Feathers’ fans with the promise of something new. To be sure, old friends return. Wrapped around Justin Ringle’s unique vocals are sparkling guitars, dancing fiddles, and smoky banjo woven through the foundation of the lower strings. But new elements are everywhere: horn, woodwind and brass appear and fade, and drums drive the beat in places, providing new texture and heft. The lyrics traverse familiar themes from natural disaster to the deeply personal, each through Justin Ringle’s uniquely American linguistic lens. New vistas and new stories are explored with deep insight and fresh intimacy, always with an abiding respect and affection. The universe rises to threaten, inspire, and sometimes punish, but always to teach a valuable lesson. Souls, lost and found, embark on thoughtful emotional journeys.
The first single, “Fit against the Country”, describes a nation where working men and women shoulder their careworn lives with neither apology nor surrender. These are words that need to be held close, owing their poignance as much to the savor of their pure sound as to their meaning. “Where I’ll Be”, another single from this brilliant collection, has an infectious rhythmic cadence that marks it as one of the great songs evoking trains, with a compelling sentiment that belies the gray landscape it travels.
Again joining Justin is instrumental coconspirator Nathan Crockett, accompanied by a gathering of gifted Northwest musicians including Dustin Dybvig, Victor Nash, Justin Power, Catherine Odell, Jedadiah Bernards, Cory Goldman, Jenn Rawling, Adam Thompson, Scott Magee, Brandon Johnson, and sound engineer Skyler Norwood.
“Cynics New Year” does not fail to deliver something beautiful and new. It navigates a thoughtful, thought-provoking expedition from the wide sky and rolling ocean to the most private corners of the human heart.
From the music hot bed that is Portland comes a band of veterans reinventing themselves and the music that inspired them from that short time period between 1965 and 1968. The Pynnacles bring back the vitality of raw classic Psyche/Garage with some dance floor filling songs. Featuring members of Satan’s Pilgrims, Big Elf, Paradise and Crackerbash this crew has the experience without any of the burn out. Tune In, Turn On, Freak Out!!!!
Lonnie Winn is Dove Amber & Jason Albertini(Duster/Built to Spill) and Zeke Howard(Love as Laughter). They play simple rock songs from a woodshed in north Portland.
Dorian Duvall is Onuinu. He’s been crafting electro pop in Portland, OR for the past few years where the music community has been watching and waiting for this,his first full length album Mirror Gazer. Up til now there’s been a release on an Ape Tapes compliation and a video for the catchy “Ice Palace” replete with kaleidoscopic, melted visuals – directed by Andrew Sloan (Tender Loving Empire).
Dorian, a multi-instrumentalist, wrote and produced the album.
Jeremy Sherrer (the Gossip, Dandy Warhols, Hockey) co-produced, recorded/mixed the record and played drums.
Dorian calls the music Disco-Hop and is easy to cite influences like: Yellow Magic Orchestra, Michael Jackson, the Brainfeeder Crew and Stones Throw Records. The giant chorus of opening track Mirror Gazer, the 70′s shimmer of Happy Home, and the roller rink ready Always Awkward, point to his foundation in the disco, power pop and hip hop worlds.
“I was drawn more to guitar when I was a teenager listening to Hendrix and Jazz and then transitioned into more pop music Like the Beatles, Kinks, Zombies.”
“I didn’t really play in very many bands, I jammed with friends, attempted to start a few bands with friends and then decided to make music on my own – I did some early recordings with an acoustic guitar and a Casio. Then I bought my first sampler and synthesizer and with those I started making loops. The early influences with that stuff was all over the place from Eno, Bowie, Madlib, J dilla, Prince, and Jan Hammer.”
Shad is a critically-acclaimed MC, regarded for his humour, honesty, and intelligence. His fan base graciously received his first two albums, and his third LP, TSOL, continued to pique new levels of international interest.
Born in Kenya to Rwandan parents and relocated to Canada shortly after, Shad has nurtured a broad range of interests and experiences since his formative years, including, of course, a passion for music. After high-school Shad put his nose to the grindstone and wrote his first songs while studying business at Wilfrid Laurier University where he later graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. Sprung from his dorm-room and financed by the 17 500$ winnings from an unsigned talent competition, Shad’s first record When This Is Over was released in July 2005, and was characterized by overt introspection and social awareness. An unadulterated glimpse of young-adulthood, the self-made album bore promise of even greater accomplishments.
When 2007′s The Old Prince was released on Black Box Recordings, critics immediately incorporated Shad into the dialogue among the most well-regarded MCs in North America. The Juno Awards, the most prestigious honor in Canadian music, nominated the album as Rap Recording of The Year. The Old Prince was also named an official contender for the cutting edge Polaris Music Prize in 2008.
His third album, TSOL, continued his thoughtful approach which traverses soulful arrangements with sharp, progressive lyrics. Since its release on Black Box/Decon in 2010, TSOL was named a shortlist nominee for the Polaris Music Prize – Shad’s second consecutive nomination – and won the 2011 Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year.
Between tours and stints in the studio, Shad also completed a Master’s degree in Liberal Studies at Simon Fraser University, graduating with an M.A. in 2011. With a supportive fan base growing around the globe, Shad has been hard at work on his 4th album, hoping to continue to inspire hope and joy while exploring the depths of his wide-ranging ideas and experiences.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
The Woolen Men are three — two Oregon natives and a Washingtonian. They play punk influenced DIY music in the Pac-NW tradition of Dead Moon and the Wipers. More than a sound or style, that means a kind of work ethic — do-it-yourself and do it a lot. The band is happiest touring up and down the I-5 or bunkered in their practice space with the cassette 4-track rolling. And it shows. Live, the band is thunderous and energetic and the magnetic chemistry of the three of them playing together shines through in the recordings.
This self-titled album released by Woodsist Records is their debut LP, following a handful of largely self-released EPs. Instead of changing their technique of recording fast and loose to capture the live energy of their sound, they recorded and recorded and recorded until they had enough songs to make up an album only of material with that elusive spark of a great recording. The ten tracks here represent five different sessions, and as many songs made the cut as were left behind. The LP was made to endure, with little attention payed to current trends or “in” sounds — what matters to the band is that the songs are well written and executed with integrity. The whole thing was recorded to analog tape.
The Woolen Men are Alex Geddes, Lawton Browning and Raf Spielman. They live and work in Portland, OR. Raf previously released an album of solo material under his Polyps moniker for the Woodists sister label Hello Sunshine.
Nevermind the constant threat of a cease and desist letter, when Carrie Brownstein tells you that your band name is weak, you change it. But it isn’t as simple as a name change for Philadelphia’s minimal noise pop duo Reading Rainbow, significant line up additions facilitated the adoption of a new moniker. So…drum roll please…as we reintroduce Philadelphia’s Bleeding Rainbow, now a full-blown, Brownstein-approved, rock quartet. The name better represents the band’s evolving sound and is all around more badass and trippy as sh*t. The founding members, Sarah Everton, who moved from drums to bass to give her vocals a better chance to shine, and vocalist/guitarist Rob Garcia are now joined by Al Creedon on lead guitar and drummer Greg Frantz.
While 2010′s album release Prism Eyes gained significant attention and raised the band’s profile among the indie elite, even that set might not be aware of the previous self-released album Mystical Participation. If Prism Eyes is, by their own description, their attempt at writing pop songs, and Mystical Participation emphasizes an aesthetic of loud and drone-y guitars instead of focused song structure, Yeah Right, the band’s third album release set for October 9th, 2012 on Kanine Records, is the merging and maturation of all these ideas and sounds.
For Yeah Right, the band has opted for a bi-polar approach to production, pushing the extremes of murky, ominous and sometimes harsh and fuzzed-out guitar onslaughts (“Pink Ruff”) as well as a strong repertoire of hushed, ethereal moments (“Cover the Sky”) aiming to evoke a nostalgia for 90s slacker culture without sounding bored or contrived. While previous releases reside in the reverb-soaked psychedelic pop realm, Bleeding Rainbow says, “the sound this time around was more directly influenced by bands from our teenage-hood such as Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and Yo La Tengo to name a few.” Mixing hints of Greg Sage’s anthemic, anxiety-ridden punk riffs, with equal parts drone and noise swells reminiscent of Kevin Shields at his most inventive, with an overlaying of boy-girl harmonies, Bleeding Rainbow channels the Mamas and the Papas as if backed by early Smashing Pumpkins.
With the inclusion of two long time friends and supporters of the band, Bleeding Rainbow has not only freed itself from the limitations of a two-piece, but given themselves a chance to delve deeper into the mood of songs and allow for extended instrumental sections (“Drift Away”). A more collaborative songwriting approach has resulted in more complex songs, but that does not mean they are without pretty sounds or pop moments. So while Yeah Right opens up easy and welcoming (“Go Ahead”), the end will leave you feeling as if a wall of noise has permeated through your body (“Get Lost”). Bleeding Rainbow set out to create something beautiful from harsh noise, and Yeah Right succeeds wildly at doing just that.
Negotiations, the fifth full-length album written, recorded, and produced by The Helio Sequence, would sound different had it not been for a flood. In 2009, while touring in support of Keep Your Eyes Ahead, singer-guitarist Brandon Summers got an unexpected phone call in the middle of the night. Back home in Portland, OR, the band’s studio/practice space was under nearly a foot of water. Heavy rains had caused the building’s plumbing to overflow like a geyser. But Summers and drummer-keyboardist, Benjamin Weikel, were lucky: All of their best equipment was either on tour with them, or racked high enough off the studio floor to be spared.
Still, the band needed a new home. After three months of searching, Summers and Weikel settled into a 1500-square-foot, former breakroom-cafeteria in an old warehouse. They no longer had to work their recording schedule around loud rehearsals by neighboring bands, but were free to create late into the night in uninterrupted seclusion. With twice the square footage, the space also had room for more gear, a lot more gear. They decided to use this opportunity to try something different.
Summers and Weikel, who started playing together in 1996 and self-produced their first EP in 1999, have always been gearheads. But it wasn’t until the success of Keep Your Eyes Ahead that they could afford to step things up: The duo spent months (and many hard-earned dollars) retooling their studio. They left behind much of the cleaner-sounding modern digital studio equipment and instruments they’d always relied on, and embraced vintage gear that would color their recordings with a warmer, deeper sound: Tape and analog delays, spring and plate reverbs, tube preamps, ribbon microphones, and analog synths.
As the new studio came together, so did the songwriting. It proved to be the most spontaneous, open, and varied writing process they had ever experienced. Weikel, who was listening to minimalist/ambient composers like Roedelius and Manuel Goettsching, had created dozens of abstract synth loops of chord progressions and arpeggios. The two would put a loop on and improvise together with Summers on guitar and Weikel on drums, recording one take of each jam. Other songs like “One More Time”, “October” and “The Measure” quickly formed from rough one-minute sketches by Summers, while the down tempo “Harvester of Souls” was completely improvised musically and lyrically in a single take.
Tempering the free form approach to writing was Summers and Weikel’s meticulous attention to production and arrangement. Taking cues from the spaciousness, subtlety, and detail of Brian Eno and late-era Talk Talk records, they moved forward. Listening to the recorded live jam sessions, they set to work transforming the ditties into actual songs. “Open Letter,” “Silence on Silence,” “Downward Spiral” and the title track — some of the spacier, mesmerizing songs on Negotiations — came together in this way. Summers’ one-minute demos were brought to life in collaboration by Weikel spending weeks working on sound treatments and synth landscapes to enhance the songs.
Lyrically, Summers affirmed the improvised ethos, working deep into the night ad-libbing alone in front of the mic, abandoning pre-written lyrics and instead preferring to create in the moment. His delivery was largely inspired by the starkness and understated romanticism of Sinatra’s Capitol era “Suicide Albums”, imparting a more introspective and personal tone. “I used to view a lyric as a statement,” he says, “Now, I see it more as a letter you’re writing to yourself or a conversation with your subconscious.”
This collection of shimmering, reverb-heavy songs is a meditation on those inner dialogues (hence, Negotiations) with solitude, memory, misgivings, loss, atonement, acceptance and hope. Most of all, it’s a record that serves as a testament to the beauty, blessing, and excitement of a fresh start.
Booty Bassment
World domination, butts, drank, money, records. But mostly butts.
From its humble beginnings in 2002 as a small birthday party for a few friends, Booty Bassment has grown to one of California’s best rap-based dance parties. Veteran DJs Dimitri Dickinson and Ryan Poulsen have turned this night into a success with monthly installments in San Diego, San Francisco, and now, Portland with the dynamic team of Maxx Bass, Nathan Detroit and their very own twerk cheerleader Ms. Coco B.
If you’re looking for a story that best summarizes the last year in the life of Charles Bradley, you’d be hard pressed to find a better one than the night he and his band showed up in Utopia, Texas to play an outdoor show in the middle of a thunderstorm. “It was just raining, raining, raining,” Bradley recalls. “I walked out onstage, and there were about 800 people there – maybe more – all of them just standing out there in the rain and the mud.” The band settled in and fought their hardest against the elements, but – for a moment, anyway – it seemed that nature was too much for even the mighty Charles Bradley. About halfway through the show, the power went out, leaving both the band and the drenched fans in total darkness.
At any other show, that would be understood as the meteorological signal for “Quittin’ Time,” but if there’s one thing the last year of tireless touring before enrapt audiences has proven, it’s that Charles Bradley does not put on typical shows. “I could hear them screaming, ‘Charles Bradley! Charles Bradley we love you,’” Bradley smiles. “And so when the lights came back on, I said, ‘If all of you can stand out there in the rain and get soaking wet because you want to see me perform – to see me do something that I love to do – then you know what? I’m gonna get wet, too.’” And with that, Bradley jumped off the stage and into the crowd. “They went completely crazy!” he laughs. “We were laughing. We were hugging. We were getting muddy. It was just love.”
That’s his whole persona in a single tiny scene: Charles Bradley, victim of love. Other artists appreciate their audiences, just as many are grateful for them, but few artists love their fans as much and as sincerely as Charles Bradley. By now, his remarkable, against-all-odds rise has been well-documented – how he transcended a bleak life on the streets and struggled through a series of ill-fitting jobs – most famously as a James Brown impersonator at Brooklyn clubs – before finally being discovered by Daptone’s Gabe Roth. The year following the release of his debut, No Time For Dreaming, was one triumph after another: a stunning performance at South By Southwest that earned unanimous raves; similarly-gripping appearances atBonnaroo, Austin City Limits, Newport Folk Festival and Outside Lands (to name just a few); and spots on Year-End Best Lists from Rolling Stone, MOJO, GQ, Paste and more. Victim of Love, Bradley’s second record, is a continuation of that story, moving past the ‘heartache and pain’ and closer to the promise of hope.
“The first record taps into maybe two or three feelings,” explains Thomas Brenneck of Menahan Street Band, Bradley’s producer, bandleader and co-writer. “But the range of emotion on this record is huge. The last record was written by a man living in the Brooklyn projects for 20 years. This record is more than just a poor man’s cry from the ghetto. This time, he’s grateful.” Bradley agrees. “I was singing about all these hardships that I’ve been through. I wanted people to know my struggles first, but now I want them to know how much they have helped me grow.”
Drop into any moment of Victim of Love at random and that message is immediately apparent. Where the last record opened with the apocalyptic “The World (is Going Up in Flames), Victim begins “Strictly Reserved For You,” a track that sees Bradley grabbing his girl, jumping in a car and hitting the highway for a romantic getaway. In “You Put The Flame on It,” Bradley sings “My life is gold – you put the flame on it,” backed by a horn chart that sounds like it was lifted from a lost Four Tops single. And on “Victim of Love,” the song that gives the album its name, Bradley sings, “I woke up this morning, I felt your love beside me,” over the kind of gentle acoustic guitar that wouldn’t sound out of place on a classic Neil Young album.
Which brings up another point: with the new subject matter comes a broader musical scope. WhereDreaming hewed close to the rough-and-ready R&B sound Daptone has become known for, Victim is stylistically more restless, edging closer into the kind of psychedelic soul The Temptations explored in the early ’70s. “I’ve been calling it ‘New Direction Daptone,’” enthuses Brenneck. “People are not going to expect this. There’s a lot of psych influences on this record, a lot of fuzz guitar. I’m pushing the band & the arrangements further out, which in turns has to make Charles go further out.”
That new direction is most apparent in “Confusion.“ Opening with the kind of echo-drenched vocal and charging rhythmic cadence that characterized Curtis Mayfield’s “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” Bradley calls down fire on crooked businessmen and duplicitous leaders. “That song is about a lot of those big politicians who think they can make everybody’s decisions for them,” says Bradley. “The higher class think they can make up the rules for us. But a lot of those big wigs have never really been down to the harsh life. They don’t know how it feels. So I’m trying to talk to people who are going through those hardships.” As is typical of Bradley, the song comes off not as a roaring jeremiad, but as a deeply-felt note of sympathy for the oppressed and beaten-down.
But if the album has a summary statement, it’s “Through the Storm.” Over a deep gospel groove, Bradley expresses his gratitude – to his fans, his friends and to God – for their support, their dedication and their devotion. “When the world gives you love,” he sings, “It frees your soul.” This is the new message of Charles Bradley, the Bradley who has emerged from the heartache stronger and more confident, overflowing with love to share. This is Charles Bradley, victim of love — gratefully returning the joy that has been given to him.
“It’s all about what you give.” Bradley says, leaning hard into that last word. “I don’t care how great a singer you are. I don’t care how much talent you have. If you give, and if the people feel what you’re giving, you’re blessed.”
“Charles is deeper than me and you put together,” Brenneck says, “His message is, ‘I’ve lived through this. I know what you’re going through. And if I can make it, you can, too.’ He gets offstage every night thinking he didn’t give enough. I say, ‘Charles, if you gave any more, you’d have a heart attack.’”
“All I’ve been trying to show the world is the love I have to give,” says Bradley. “I hope that when you look at me, you’re gonna see a person who walks this planet in a way that, when the Lord calls him home, He says, ‘Well done, servant.’ If God can see that I’ve loved all as He’s loved us – that’s all I can do. And that’s what I fight to do.”
Chromatics are the reflection on the dark side of the street. With Night Drive, they were barely there but they seemed to weigh a ton. Beautiful vocals giving life to city phrases, rhythms that keep everyone moving but not quickly enough to miss the crash. There are times when you can’t listen anymore to them because it hurts too much, and then you press play again. There’s an intimate distance to their music, with just enough separation that you don’t really know what’s going on.
Chromatics’ new album, Kill For Love, was released March 26, 2012.
Team Dresch are a Queercore band who performed and recorded in the 1990s and made a significant impression on that movement, as well as on the independent music scene.
Donna Dresch, founder of the band, had been involved in the queercore scene in the late 1980s and early 90′s as creator of her own fanzine ”Chainsaw” and, in addition to contributing to other zines such as ”Outpunk” and ”J.D.s”, she was featured on the cover of issue five of ”Homocore” and appeared in the girl-gang film ”The Yo-Yo Gang” by G.B. Jones.
The line up of the group for their first recordings was Donna Dresch, guitar and bass; Jody Bleyle, guitar and vocals; Kaia Wilson, guitar and vocals; and Marci Martinez on drums. All were veterans of other musical outfits; Donna Dresch had previously played and recorded with such bands as Dinosaur Jr., Dangermouse, Screaming Trees, Rastro!, Fifth Column, Some Velvet Sidewalk, Lois, Mary Lou Lord and The Go Team; Jody Bleyle was simultaneously in the band Hazel while playing in Team Dresch; Kaia Wilson had been in the band Adickdid and Marci Martinez in Calamity Jane.
Their first single,”Hand Grenade”, appeared on Kill Rock Stars in 1994. ”Personal Best”, the album which followed it, appeared as a co-release on the independent labels Chainsaw Records, run by Dresch and Candy Ass Records, run by Bleyle. The next co-release by these labels was the compilation ”Free To Fight”, a double LP of all-women bands addressing issues such as harassment and rape and dedicated to self-defense. The band toured with self-defense instructor Alice Stagg, who spoke and gave demonstrations to the audience prior to the bands’ performance. The members were committed to a DIY ethic, running their own record labels and booking their own tours.
On their second recording Melissa York, previously of the hardcore punk bands Vitapup and Born Against replaced Marci Martinez. This LP, ”Captain My Captain”, also featured a guest appearance by Phranc, well known lesbian musician. As well, the song “Uncle Phranc”, written as a tribute to her, appears on this album.
After this LP Kaia Wilson and Melissa York left the band to form The Butchies, while Dresch and Bleyle continued recording with the addition of new member Amanda Kelly and Marci Martinez once again on drums. The band stopped playing in 1998, with Dresch increasingly involved in running her record label which was releasing many recordings by newer Queercore bands, including The Need, Longstocking, Sleater Kinney and many more. But in 2004, Donna Dresch returned to the stage with a new band, Davies vs. Dresch. They appeared as part of “Queercore Blitz”, a group of queer bands touring the U.S together. The same year Jody Bleyle also debuted a new band, Family Outing, which includes her brother.
The band performs and is interviewed in the documentary film ”She’s Real, Worse Than Queer” by Lucy Thane.
Brooklyn, NY’s Love As Laughter are no laughing matter. Alternately explosive and introspective, these Rolling Stone “Breakout Artist”s play psychedelic folk-punk. Floating high in a purple dream cloud, Love As Laughter are a slowly building storm. They are a clap of thunder, and then a lightning bolt going to ground. This is Neil Young fronting Black Flag on LSD. Think Henry Rollins singing for Deep Purple.
Psychedelic-pop sensibilities, dirty, irreverently fingered guitar work, and enigmatic songwriting have earned Love As Laughter comparisons to artists from the Rolling Stones and Shocking Blue to Led Zeppelin, Sonic Youth and Bruce Springsteen. From Tom Petty to The Buzzcocks to Jimi Hendrix to Jack White.
With nearly two decades of indie street-cred under his belt, LAL singer and lead guitarist Sam Jayne is the Harrison Ford of indie-rock. An enduring underground rock icon, Jayne has collaborated with some of modern-rock’s biggest artists. He has written for Beck and joined long-time friend and Glacial Pace honcho Isaac Brock on tour with Modest Mouse, singing in front of millions on the hallowed stage of Saturday Night Live. In the early 90s Jayne fronted Olympia, WA’s hometown garage-punk heroes Lync, a period recently covered in Pitchfork.TV’s Modest Mouse documentary The Lonesome Crowded West.
In 2012, Love As Laughter have embarked on an all-new journey with the addition of bassist Sonia Manalili and drummer Lee Hinshaw (Children). The two join long time LAL member Miguel Mendez of Dios Malos on keyboards. “This is absolutely the best lineup we have ever had.” boasts Jayne.
Love As Laughter gained a global following throughout the 2000s, crafting polished indie gems for underground standard bearers K Records and Sub Pop. The band has played to packed houses across the globe supporting indie-legends like Dinosaur Jr, Built to Spill and The Shins. Their dedication to the craft of rock and roll, and inimitable live show have garnered LAL die-hard fans the world over.
White Lung are known for their furious yet melodic approach to punk. Since adding guitarist Kenneth William in 2009, Mish Way (vocals), Anne-Marie Vassiliou (drums) and Grady Mackintosh (bass) have received nothing but critical acclaim for their distinct brand of punk and their tight, live stage shows. White Lung’s debut LP It’s The Evil (Deranged Records) was Exclaim’s Punk Album Of The Year in 2010 and the band was nominated for Punk/Hardcore Artist/Group of the Year at the 2011 Canadian Music Week Indie Awards.
Their second LP Sorry (Deranged Records) was released spring 2012 and pushed the band to a wider audience, receiving critical acclaim from SPIN, Pitchfork, Bitch, E! Music. Sorry landed on “Top Albums of the Year” lists Exclaim!, Magnet, amongst others while Rolling Stone marked Sorry in their “Top 10 Albums Of The Year”. Sorry was also nominated as “Best Album Art of 2012? by NME and made the shortlist for “Best Album Art” by Art Vinyl in London. A vinyl exhibit was held worldwide from Japan to Britain to Sweden. The band has toured through out North America extensively and went through Europe and the UK Fall of 2012.
In 2011, Nicholas Murphy recorded a cover of No Diggity late one night just for his friends. Shared by a handful of people, the song spread like wildfire until reaching #1 on the indie blog charts Hype Machine, and so the Chet Faker identity was born – an ode to Chet Baker’s singing style but incorporating the influence of a youth spent producing house and disco.
Before Chet Faker, Murphy spent his time in suburban Melbourne, Australia. Splitting his musical output between a penchant for soft and soulful singer-songwriter work and an appetite for electronic music production. But it was when he coupled his love of the analogue sounds of early dance music – only this time slowing the tempo – with his natural ability for RnB soaked vocals, that something truly exciting happened.
A handful of Chet Faker originals on soundcloud saw A&Rs from around the world knocking at his door, and he soon began recording his debut EP and creating the Chet Faker live show with 4-piece band backed by samples and an electronic soundscape.
An invite to SXSW quickly followed and by March 2012, he had played a stand-out performance at the festival’s Filter Magazine Party and was touted as a ‘must see’ act by The Austin Chronicle.
Soon after, his debut EP Thinking In Textures was released on Opulent / Remote Control in Australia, Chess Club Records in the UK and Downtown Records in the USA, to widespread acclaim.
Chet went on to sell out two tours across Australia, before taking off to the UK to perform at The Great Escape Festival with sold out shows in London. Meanwhile, his debut EP picked up spins from Gilles Petersen, Mary Anne Hobbs, Huw Stephens, Rob da Bank and was featured in Zane Lowe’s ‘Next Hype’ section.
Chet has since played at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Vivid Live Festival, played at the Laneway Festival, and been featured at LA’s tastemaker School’s Night.
Chet Faker was nominated for five Jagermeister Independent Music Awards, winning for Best Independent Single/EP and Breakthrough Independent Artist. He was also nominated for two Rolling Stone Awards for Best New Talent and Best Independent Release, winning Best Independent Release.
Recently, Chet Faker collaborated with fellow Australian up-and-comer Flume on the track Left Alone, which has been playlisted on BBC6, receiving support from Annie Mac and Gilles Petersen, and featured on DummyMag, Complex and Prefix Magazine.
Chet is currently recording his debut album when he isn’t lending his voice to the outback disco project Coober Pedy University Band on Soft Rock’s label Kinfolk, producing for Rainy Milo and working on an EP with Flume.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
Tree is a producer, artist, and musical visionary from Chicago. He is the embodiment of Chicago’s legacy of hustlers–a city established on creating a way when no other way exists. Tree paints a vivid picture of a place where cunning and caution are as quintessential as charisma and class. The future is now for Tree and his sound is as progressive as the new generation. The ability to create a vision through music is what separates the talented from the rest, and in a forest of artists so alike, Tree stands alone. Having been an avid student of music since a young age, growing up in the Cabrini-Green projects of downtown Chicago, Tree always knew he would be a standout producer and rapper. Emerging from the drill scene, where music is heavily influenced by trap drums and heavy bass, Tree learned the inner workings of creating music and developed his own self-proclaimed sound, “soul trap”. Following a very successful 2012 and the critically acclaimed mixtape, Sunday School, Tree is currently working on the follow up, Sunday School 2, featuring appearances from a number of surprise guests along with production by himself, Frank Dukes, and Keys N Krates.
Phil Merwin met Gary Walden while they were both employed as ‘orderlies’ at a Mental Hospital in North Long Beach, Ca in 1987. They talked about a shared love of Black Sabbath, the bad brains, Flipper, and black flag, and they found they were both members of the Sub Pop singles club. Eventually, they discussed starting a band. Gary introduced Phil Merwin to Preston Peck and Herb Gordon, and the band was formed. Many dirtclodfight lyrics came from conversations and experiences with patients at the mental hospital, and from Phil Merwin’s notebooks of poetry. The band cut their teeth at the club, Ugenes, in Pico Rivera where they played with ShoeGazer, L7, the Offspring, and Hole. They had more than a few standout shows with Clawhammer, Distorted Pony, Sandy Duncan’s eye, and the Paper tulips all over LA and Long Beach.
At the end of 1987 they wrote their first 7 inch, “the paper bag” EP. Al Flipside caught a few of their shows at Ugene’s, and made quick friends with band. Al decided to put out the first 7 inch on Flipside records in 1988, and this was followed with 3 more albums over the years on his label. The band was ecstatic to be part of the Flipside label/fanzine, as they grew up on the fanzine, and it meant a lot to them to carry that logo on their records. Fred Merwin, Phil Merwin’s twin brother, joined the band after Gary left before the recording of their first 7 inch, and has been on every release on lead guitar.
The interplay between the brothers Merwin on guitar became their ‘sound’, and was integral to the bands direction. They played a slower heavier version of punk with an odd ‘doors-like’ ethos hiding under the covers. They were not a typical Southern California punk band, at all. Their live shows were considered a heated battle of emotion and intensity, and garnered them a decent following locally, and on the road. Phil Merwin was known to pass out from screaming during shows, this was always both disturbing and ‘appreciated’ by fans. Phil’s screaming/spoken word/poetry/revivalist chanting became a trademark of their live shows and songs. The first album was ‘Everything that Isn’t, was produced by good friend Sean Greaves, and is regarded as a fan favorite with the song Brutal Flower becoming a staple request on the road for the band. The title track is a long bantering of spiritual dilemma solved through loud guitars and feedback laden baptism. They did many West Coast and Southwest tours, and one national tour after this album. This first record, also, formed a devoted following with fans in Australia, which eventually led to a 7 inch on Death Valley records out of Australia in later years, and picture evidence of kids in Australia with dcf tattoos!
The line up changed after the first album to include Bill Jackson on drums and Darryl Williams on bass. The songs changed into more complex, relentless dirges with strange pop ‘like’ elements thrown in. At this time the band started using experimental open and dropped tunings on their guitars, and found Darryl Williams and Fred Merwin contributing more to the song writing. This line up would put out their 2 final Flipside albums “Hunting Lesson” and “Suffering the Aftertaste” . Both of these releases were very well received, especially by other bands, and the band did many tours in support of them. They opened shows for TAD, Helmet, The melvins, Steel Pole Bathtub, the Jesus Lizard, and Rocket from the Crypt. They did many tours with Atomic 61, their brother band. Cavity Search and Feeble records co released a live 7 inch, LIVE in Texas, from one of their SW tours together. Atomic would go on to cover the dcf song, “the one that killed him” from the Hunting Lesson album during their live sets, and dirtclodfight recorded a version of Atomic 61′s “double boiler” along with a cover of John Entwhistle’s who classic, “Boris the spider” and this was released as a 7 inch on Truk records out of Costa Mesa, Ca, as a split 7 inch with the FH Hill Company. The song “I got crazy things” from their final Flipside release, Suffering the Aftertaste, was released by Death Valley records out of Australia as a split 7 inch with ChristBait, and was, also, included on the “the Devil You know/ The Devil you don’t” compilation released by KXLU’s DJ Mark Torres. This song was written by Williams, and it was the only dcf song Fred Merwin sang lead vocals on. Flipside, also released a 7 inch from the “suffering” sessions , the Denny 7 inch (named after the disturbing picture of Denny Swofford used on the cover), with the songs, “The rodent incident” and “…there might be a hole” included. Denny Swofford was co-producer of the Suffering the Aftertaste album, as well.
Because of their strong friendship over the years with Denny, dirtclodfight asked Denny and Christopher Cooper, co-owners of the Cavity Search records label out of Portland, OR, to put out their new album, “Hymnal”. Hymnal was recorded at Saturation studios on 2″ analog with Geoff Harrington at the board, and Merwin and Swofford producing. The band now had Chris Benton on drums, and Jason Locher on bass, as Williams left do sound for Greg Ginn. The content of this album had some of their most accessible songs mixed with their evolving heavy laden dirtclodfight sound. The album was a huge sounding record the band is still very proud of, and produced a crowd favorite in “Throttle Downer”. The band did 2 national tours to support Hymnal touring with Victims Family for 2 1/2 weeks, and a doing a few shows with No Means NO, the cows, and chokebore, and of course, Atomic 61. The band ended up moving to Portland, and were joined by Eric Johnson on drums. During this era they released a song called “Enduring you” on a compilation for Cravedog records, and they played many a great show at EJ’s in PDX with Mike Thrasher joining them on guitar. They did their last tour, a SW tour to SXSW with the Bali Girls in 1997, and then the band went into ‘remission’ for about 6 years.
Phil Merwin moved to Eugene, OR, and reformed the band with Austin Swartout on drums in 2004 as a duet. Austin has been Phil Merwin’s best friend since the age of 14, and the HUGEST dcf fan ever. Fred Merwin moved up to Eugene from Long Beach in 2006 to rejoin the band on guitar. With local Eugene friend, Rueben “the knife’ Markstrom on bass, the band recorded the album, “Healing in the key of free”. This era of the band found them producing the most ‘pop’ record they ever had, and performing some shows with only Minutemen covers in their live set. This line up opened for No Means No in 2006, and in 2010 with Phil’s son Zachariah playing bass. They have played sporadic shows in Eugene and Portland over the years, a few with Yob.
They are currently mastering an acoustic album, with Phil Merwin doing some old dirtclodfight songs solo, and some new acoustic songs. This medium has proved interesting for a band known for being very loud and intense, and Cavity Search has signed on to release the record in 2013. The band has plans to tour this summer, and hopes to record a new album titled, ‘The Main Sequence’ in the fall, and another new album in the Spring,’Sound Barrier’. Their new material is back to being very dynamic, and sordidly heavy, mostly instrumental, loud-soft, progressive, and sonic music. The band has been working this new material into its live shows recently, and is very excited about the new direction of the band, and the return of Jason Locher on bass.
PRESENTED BY KIND SNACKS
In the first flush of freedom, new eras, and new lives, Jordan Koplowitz and Reed Juenger met in 2008 as freshmen at the University of Washington. Their fate was sealed one night not long after they met, over a game of beer pong that turned into a discussion of mutual musical appreciation. In his younger years, Koplowitz had picked up the guitar so that he could play along with his favorite Metallica songs. Juenger had gone down a similar route with Nirvana, but found his friends cover bands to be boring and focused on bygone eras so he started learning how to create electronic music. In their new hometown of Seattle, Juenger and Koplowitz began crafting dorm-room beats on Garageband and venturing into DJing gigs, eventually working their way towards the sounds that would be become their first record, Surf Noir EP.
The songs on Surf Noir are at once dreamy and danceable, sophisticated and free, meant to evoke both golden sunsets and glittering city lights. Of the EP, Juenger has said, “This is an absolute indulgence, because the world is an incoherent jumble of perception. So in that spirit of cutting loose, let’s have a good time and not worry too much: Saturday night always becomes Sunday morning.” Two of the songs, the romantic pop tracks “In The Water” and “Silver Screen,” featured the duo’s roommate Tom Eddy on vocals; Eddy, a folk-rock singer-songwriter, nailed “Silver Screen” in one take. The rest of these songs are instrumental; cool, sweeping waves of synths, electric guitar, drum machines, and samplers. Beat Connection self-released Surf Noir in the summer of 2010; London’s Tender Age records, an imprint of the venerable Moshi Moshi would pick it up for an updated release in April of the next year.
In May of 2011, Beat Connection had toured the UK and Paris with such electronic luminaries as Holy Ghost!, Toro Y Moi, and Niki and the Dove. By June, in anticipation of their appearance at Seattle’s Capitol Hill Block Party, they had added a live drummer, Jarred Katz, another musical roommate and a modern jazz aficionado. In September they embarked on their first US tour, opening for Starfucker. They made fans of the Seattle Times, Pitchfork, KEXP, and the Seattle Weekly, who named them the Best New Band of 2011. They closed out the year in Spain, opening for Real Estate.
2012 is poised to become an even bigger year for Beat Connection, who’ve again expanded, this time adding as their fulltime vocalist and guitarist Tom Eddy, the only man they considered for the job. This summer, the new four-piece will release their first full-length, The Palace Garden, a record that fines the band meditating on the idea of unattainable beauty, an idea that encases magical evenings, flooding happiness, heavy regrets, and sky-clearing epiphanies. They’ve left all genre constraints behind and now, as four, their music can only broaden, rise, and take them on to new adventures and new audiences.
Whether falling of the stage or falling off his bike, P.O.S probably puts a little too much of himself into everything he does. His live show is machine-gun patterns, flailing, and giggles. Occasionally a bloody lip. Usually his, sometimes yours. His production is like a field recording of a drunken blacksmith. Disjointed but compelling, because yo, what is dude making?
Much has been made of P.O.S’s punk rock past; the tattoos and piercings, the skater fashion, the high school pictures of young P.O.S. sporting a frohawk. Fact is, P.O.S is not a cross-over artist. He has been rapping as long as he’s been thrashing. His punk sensibility doesn’t make him less of a rapper, it makes him more of a musician. P.O.S fuses the angst and sincerity of punk rock with the bass, wit, and lyricism of underground hip-hop. On his first album, P.O.S raps, “We went from lower-lower class to lower class to upper-lower class.” And he is living his own tongue-in-cheek rags-to-sportier-rags story.
Ipecac Neat, P.O.S’s debut full-length album, was self released to unanimous praise in 2004. Recognizing P.O.S’s raw energy and talent Rhymesayers Entertainment, the reigning princes of the underground quickly signed P.O.S and re-released Ipecac Neat. Since then P.O.S has been around the country three times performing with Atmosphere and has gained an increasingly enthusiastic fan base with every pass as he prepares for the release of his sophomore album, Audition on January 31st, 2006.
What forces conspired to create P.O.S? A chance encounter one day at a cousin’s house, seven year old Stefon discovered a bass guitar. Allowed to take it home, he banged the hell out of this old hobby bass for two years without realizing he needed an amp. The bass guitar led to stef unearthing the music of punk rock. It was easy to learn and had the right aggressive energy. He now had an outlet, music. Not just any music but punk rock. He knew this was for him but didn’t always feel the same open arms from the scene as a black punk.
Body surfing at a festival, a thirteen-and-a-half-year-old Stefon kicked a kid named Kai in the face. Two weeks later while moshing at a friend’s house party, he kicked Kai in the face again. They’ve been friends ever since. The two started the punk band Om and recorded a couple tapes with album titles like, Themes for Young Lovers. P.O.S also drummed for Cadillac Blindside before founding Building Better Bombs, who still tours today.
Punk Rock was P.O.S’s first love, but after being introduced to rap by Crescent Moon (Oddjobs/Kill the Vultures), BAMF (Mike Mictlan), Company Flow’s Funcrusher album and Rhymesayers Headshots cassettes he began rapping as a hobby. Back in 1996, at fifteen years old, P.O.S joined his first rap experiment, Room 237. Based on the hotel room from The Shining, this initial experiment generated nothing more than piles of cassette recordings but Hip Hop had taken hold of him. In 2001 P.O.S along with rapper Syst, and DJ Basis founded the group Cenospecies. The crew was short-lived, releasing only one album: Indefinition. In 2002’s City Pages Best of The Twin Cites issue, Cenospecies received “Best Band To Break Up In The Past 12 Months”. The kid even falls apart pretty.
Enter Doomtree. Remember the perpetually black-eyed Kai? Well along with Kai, P.O.S regrouped and formed a production duo known as Doomtree. Over the next couple of years, the duo grew into a formidable crew of rappers, producers and dj’s, including: Mike Mictlan, Sims, Dessa, Cecil Otter, Marshall Larada, Bobby Gorgeous, Emily Bloodmobile, Lazerbeak, Paper Tiger, Turbo Nemesis, and Tom Servo. Heading up this collective P.O.S delivered their first full-length album, Ipecac Neat. Boasting innovative production, and an emcee that managed to be clever and earnest at the same time Ipecac received much critical acclaim:
Album of the Year –The Star Tribune
“This is the type of record Hip Hop fans should be pleading for.”
–Minnesota Daily
4 Minnesota Music Award Nominations
4 Critics’ Choice Award Nominations
The letters of the P.O.S acronym remain the same today, but the meaning constantly changes. Promise of Skill. Product of Society. Piece of Shit. Pissed Off Stef. Everyday is different and each definition has a purpose. P.O.S, a rapper/producer that also fronts a punk band, an artist influenced by Minor Threat as much as Dr. Dre, a musician that is self-taught to play guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and can still ride a skateboard. From seventies funk to eighties hardcore to nineties rap, P.O.S has the unique ability to incorporate all his influences into a cohesive style without being calculated or contrived.
Audition, the sophomore album from P.O.S is his first real step, what he sees as his audition to the world. A first step after years of preparation, to say more with less and to present smarter songs while blending redefined styles. The songs are shorter, punker, louder and overall more abrasive while remaining grounded in Hip Hop. Audition features a unique blend of guest appearances; Slug of Atmosphere, Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, Greg Attonito of Bouncing Souls, Maggie of Digitata and Doomtree’s Mictlan. The majority of the album is self produced by P.O.S with additional production by Emily Bloodmobile and Lazerbeak.
Life prepares you with the experiences necessary to make great songs. Music provides the outlet. Performing cultivates the songs. Time gives you the patience to master your craft. It’s been a long time since a young Stefon picked up a bass guitar and P.O.S is definitely on his way to lower-middle class.
The drums hit you in the chest first, spraying your speakers like swift gunshots. But then Meric Long’s finger-picked chords kick in, cascading across Logan Kroeber’s brass knuckle beats like only the best Dodos songs can.
This forward motion feeling has driven the duo since 2005, but several key changes lift their fourth LP (No Color) to another level. For one thing, the band reunited with Portland producer John Askew, the man behind the boards of the Dodos’ first two full-lengths, Beware of the Maniacs and Visiter. Having an old friend around was like adding an honorary third member; a voice of reason who can isn’t afraid of vetoing ill-fated ideas. Ideas like glossy layers of vibraphone that lost their luster halfway through.
The main focus of No Color was to bottle the frenzied folk approach that’s been there since the beginning. And it works damn well, from the dagger-drawing dynamics and brain-burrowing choruses of “Black Night” to the hairpin turns and splashy percussion of “Good.” And then there are the songs that’ll make you want to dub old episodes of 120 Minutes, including the instrumental break of “Don’t Stop” and the sneak attack solo that weaves its way around the steely rhythms of “Don’t Try and Hide It.”
“I have a love for ’90s riffs that I haven’t gotten to showcase in this band,” says Long. “The most fun I had with this record was when I got to strap on the electric guitar and come up with Billy Corgan riffs while the tape was rolling.”
It’s as if Long’s finally got to live the flannel-era fantasies that started when he was a teenager, tearing guitar tabs out of magazines at a local pharmacy. The catch? There’s less room for error than there’s ever been.
“We’re more naked this way,” explains Long. “You can hide a lot of your mistakes on an acoustic, but with an electric, every single note is much louder and more piercing. So I have to be way more on top of my playing now.”
And so do we.
World domination, butts, drank, money, records. But mostly butts.
From its humble beginnings in 2002 as a small birthday party for a few friends, Booty Bassment has grown to one of California’s best rap-based dance parties. Veteran DJs Dimitri Dickinson and Ryan Poulsen have turned this night into a success with monthly installments in San Diego, San Francisco, and now, Portland with the dynamic team of Maxx Bass, Nathan Detroit and their very own twerk cheerleader Ms. Coco B.
The Bronx is what punk needs: they harness the genre’s classic fire but then bend it to their whim, forging rock n’ roll swagger together with hardcore grit. The L.A. quintet churn out raw riffs and piercing hooks, and their third offering, The Bronx (III), brandishes enough savage charm to spark a revolution. Matt Caughthran croons and screams about fun, family-friendly characters like “Knifeman” and the “Pleasure Seekers.” Joby Ford and Ken Horne’s guitar playing blasts like a machine gun, while Jorma Vik’s drumming is fierce, fiery and furious; amidst the aural assault, Brad Magers holds a tight bass groove. Over the course of their first two offerings, the band garnered massive critical claim and carved out a national fan base from touring with the likes of Mastodon, Converge and Every Time I Die. They even occupied a main stage spot on 2008′s Warped Tour. L.A. has been “in the know” about The Bronx for years, but with this new album, the band’s about to expose the whole world to their bleeding and ravenous rock n’ roll spirit. You’ve been warned.
On The Bronx (III), the band channels their kinetic live energy through razor sharp wit and unbridled aggression. Joby describes their style best: “The Bronx sounds like five guys playing their asses off. It’s very serious, but it’s witty too. The music is a channel of positive energy rather than negative energy. We enjoy what we’re doing.” The Bronx get brutal, but they do it with a huge smirk. Matt elaborates, “It’s a strange type of aggression. It always comes out of the same places—anger and frustration. The sound of The Bronx lies within its members. We have so many different influences, styles and quirks that somehow the chemistry between all of it works, and it creates something new.” Songs like “Past Lives,” “Young Bloods” and “Enemy Mind” rip and roar with a fresh ferocity, while Matt opens up a little bit on this album through cuts like “Inveigh.” He says, “There are a couple songs about being on the dark side of things. Going into recording, I was dead broke and trying to make a better life for myself. However, I felt like a criminal. It was a real dark time. As much as I hate dark times, they’re very inspiring. It’s nice to go on a little trip down the bad path sometimes.”
The Bronx came together in Los Angeles in 2002 with the core of the band initially comprised of Joby, Jorma and Matt. Quickly, the band developed a much-lauded and insanely intense live show, garnering attention around town. They became the talk of the underground and after 12 shows, found themselves signing a major label deal with Island/Def Jam. The band released their eponymous debut, The Bronx, in 2003 and toured the world endlessly for two years before hunkering down to create their breakthrough, The Bronx (II), in 2006. The press ate up the band’s no-frills approach to rock as well as their undeniably brutal live show. Suddenly, they’d become critical darlings. Yet in spite of all the attention, the band has always maintained a solid conception of their identity, keeping every album self-titled and utilizing Joby’s artistic talents for the cover art on each release.
The Bronx cooked up these tracks at their own studio “Big Game Lodge” in Van Nuys, CA, enlisting the production talents of Dave Shiffman (The Mars Volta, System of a Down) and the mixing mastery of Machine (Lamb of God, Velvet Revolver). After amicably parting ways with Island/Def Jam, the band chose to release The Bronx (III) on their own label, White Drugs, taking the independent route to focus on what matters most: the music. Joby explains, “I grew up on bands that played because they had to. They would go crazy if they didn’t play. They just played, and if someone gave them a deal, it was cool. If not, it didn’t matter because they were going to release their music anyway. Get back to square one — put out records, play shows, call it a day. That’s what we do. It’s very simple.”
The Bronx eschew Hollywood hipster snobbery, but they’re too clever for the Sunset Strip. They’re just real. “Los Angeles is our soul,” comments Matt. “The band taps into Los Angeles without overexposing it. We use the city for its history and art. I respect the city I was born in, and it feels good to have a kinship with it.” However, they’re about to bring that unique mystique to the masses. They’ll turn even the most discerning heads because they’re more than musicians, they’re something of a misfit artist collective. The Bronx also recently made their film debut in The Germs: What We Do Is Secret, playing the legendary Black Flag in the movie.
In the end, it’s about fun. Joby concludes, “This band has always been about friends traveling the world together and playing shows. It’s fun because all of us are doing what we want to do—not what someone else wants us to.” What’s more punk than that?
There is a stillness between kissing lips that belies the beating hearts connected to them, a calm in the simple gesture that holds tumultuous emotions close, keeping their caprice from pulling you apart. For the past three years, Radiation City has scored the soundtrack to relationships such as these. Moments where Quiet/Bombast, Future/Past, Man/Woman, Hope/Fear are conjoined; from their use of modern electronic sounds and the restraint of classic bossa records, to the urgency and harmony of northern soul, the band has codified seemingly disparate ideas into a sound and ethos that is at once refreshing and classic. Their second LP Animals In The Median will be released May 7th.
Founded in 2009 amid the glow of one budding love affair,Radiation City quickly blossomed into a family, finding itself with a second couple and another multi instrumentalist besides. If the quintet’s early live shows and debut LP The Hands That Take You quickly earned them a reputation as one of Portland, Oregon’s most promising young acts, the subsequent national tours and 2011′s EP Cool Nightmaremade good on that promise. The band’s expanding soundscape of new romanticism has drawn accolades from NPR, Time, and KEXP to name a few.The new full length features 12 songs recorded over the span of a year in both rural Washington and urban Portland. You can hear a focused songwriting, lush arrangements, and gorgeous harmonies. You can hear the celebration and lament of a sea change year which saw the passing of matriarchs, the betrayals and betrothals of loved ones, the baring and bruising of hopeful hearts in an increasingly dangerous world. Moreover, you can hear a band edified, coming into their own in rich and simple gesture.
Red Bull Sound Select Presents: Portland
The Thermals are a post-pop-punk trio from pre-Portlandia-Portland, Oregon. The band formed in 2002 and has since released five records and toured fifteen countries. The Thermals’ sixth LP and debut for Saddle Creek, Desperate Ground will be released April 16. The album was produced by John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth) in Hoboken, NJ. Agnello and The Thermals completed the record and evacuated the studio just hours before Hurricane Sandy ravaged New Jersey, a fate quite fitting when you consider the product. Desperate Ground is a true scrappy and scratchy return-to-form for The Thermals, with all the raw power and unhinged adolescent energy that made their early LP’s so insanely enjoyable. Lyrically, Desperate Ground is a brash and irresponsible ode to human violence, a black celebration of the inevitability of war and death. A dark and yet joyous affair, Desperate Ground tells the (murky) tale of a lone rogue in the night. One man, one path, one sword. An unceasing urge to destroy. A never-ending battle against the forces of nature. A destiny impossible to avoid.
The Thermals are Hutch Harris, Kathy Foster and Westin Glass.
“Yob might be one of the best bands in North America,” declared Ben Ratliff in a feature New York Times article in March of 2010 that can be best described as gushing. The Eugene, OR-based doom metal trio has seen similar praise worldwide, with a growing host of fans citing the band as one of the most profound and accomplished doom metal phenomena of the twenty-first century.
It’s all too rare for a band to reach such moderate success and massive acclaim based on sheer quality of music. There’s certainly no overt commercial bow on any of YOB’s five albums. Songs commonly stretch beyond the twenty minute mark, and to date there’s never been a radio edit or any effort to appease anyone but the band’s muse. Indeed, the shortest song on latest album opus The Great Cessation clocks in at over seven and a half minutes of bludgeoning heaviness and cosmic wandering.
The journey began back in 1996 when vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Mike Scheidt began composing classic doom metal riffs in the vein of his heroes, Sleep, Cathedral, and Black Sabbath. By the turn of the millennium, the band had recorded debut album Elaborations of Carbon, and was rapidly growing from a NW secret, to a highly sought after support act for tour stops by luminaries like High on Fire and Isis. By 2003, Candlelight had the rights to sophomore album Catharsis, a record with a side-spanning title track that breaks twenty-three minutes into a heartbreaking odyssey. Upon completion of Catharis, Scheidt invited drummer Travis Foster to join the band, and Foster’s immaculate percussive force became a signature element in YOB, as fundamental to the sound as Scheidt’s alternately monstrous growls and triumphant, soaring wail.
Full US tours commenced due to a symbiotic partnership with then-fledgling Nanotear booking agency, and YOB proved to audiences night after night that it had chops and sonic glory to deliver that exceeded the promise of its albums. Brian Slagel of Metal Blade records took note, and the man who discovered Metallica, Slayer, and Voivod took YOB under his wing. Two fantastic albums were released, 2004’s The Illusion of Motion, and 2005 masterpiece The Unreal Never Lived. By this time, YOB had shed the sound of its early influences, and was in turn creating a new and original doom sound that would in turn inspire others, from young upstarts around the world, to avowed YOB fans Tool. (Tool drummer Danny Carey went so far as to proudly sport his YOB t-shirt in promotional photographs).
Then YOB went into reclusion as the line-up shifted, and Mike Scheidt took several years to regroup and try his hand at other projects. Scheidt is a family man living in a small town, and in the real world, there are bills to pay. He trained hard in a form of Israeli self-defense called Krav Maga, eventually becoming an instructor. Between teaching this grisly martial art and reading extensively in eastern philosophy, Scheidt struck a fine spiritual balance which has led to seemingly endless creative inspiration.
In 2009, YOB re-awoke from its slumber, releasing the surprising and long-awaited The Great Cessation (it’s debut for Profound Lore records), which proved the band retained every ounce of inspiration, and accrued recognition on nearly every year-end list, from the Village Voice to Terrorizer. More surprising still was how much YOB’s legacy had grown during its hiatus. Invitations to perform at Scion Rock fest between Shrinebuilder and Pelican were followed by the unprecedented response at YOB’s first European appearance at the fabulous 2010 Roadburn festival in Holland.
By 2011, YOB stood at a crossroads. Would a world hungry for doom support the band, or would YOB remain cloistered in the grim northwest, appearing only when the moons align? The choice was taken from the band’s hands as sixth album ATMA was released to massive critical acclaim. Lengthy tours of the US and Europe followed, and YOB’s popularity went from speculative to soundly proven. Fans quickly lost count of year-end list appearances for ATMA. And at the dawn of 2012, something magical happened: TOOL called…
The future of doom looks bright indeed. And YOB has not had to compromise along the way. There will never be a sacrifice made when it comes to writing and producing the ultimate progressive heavy metal music. Nor will the live presentation be anything but stellar. YOB IS LOVE.
Booty Bassment
World domination, butts, drank, money, records. But mostly butts.
From its humble beginnings in 2002 as a small birthday party for a few friends, Booty Bassment has grown to one of California’s best rap-based dance parties. Veteran DJs Dimitri Dickinson and Ryan Poulsen have turned this night into a success with monthly installments in San Diego, San Francisco, and now, Portland with the dynamic team of Maxx Bass, Nathan Detroit and their very own twerk cheerleader Ms. Coco B.
Booty Bassment
World domination, butts, drank, money, records. But mostly butts.
From its humble beginnings in 2002 as a small birthday party for a few friends, Booty Bassment has grown to one of California’s best rap-based dance parties. Veteran DJs Dimitri Dickinson and Ryan Poulsen have turned this night into a success with monthly installments in San Diego, San Francisco, and now, Portland with the dynamic team of Maxx Bass, Nathan Detroit and their very own twerk cheerleader Ms. Coco B.
There is something inherently calming about large bodies of water. In times of emotional duress, standing at the edge of an ocean watching the waves roll in and out, centers the spirit in a way that standing on terra firma cannot. Kevin Murphy (lead vocals, guitar) chose to title the Moondoggies’ new album Tidelands in part because of a remote area outside his old stomping grounds of Ketchikan, Alaska where he used to go to escape from civilization. More importantly, as the sly recurring themes of water throughout the Seattle quartet’s second full-length underscore, these are songs crafted to provide solace, sense, and cause for celebration in a world fraught with turmoil.
“What the water represents can be taken many different ways,” concedes Murphy. “Many of the lyrics came to me while trying to be constructive in how I dealt with feeling depressed, rather than just getting wrapped up in my own head.”
Although full-throated vocal harmonies are still central to the band’s sound, the ten selections that comprise Tidelands embrace a wider range of timbres and dynamics than their 2008 debut, Don’t Be A Stranger. Stylistically, this sophomore set is a strong creative leap forward for the young band. There are selections fashioned from little more than hushed acoustic guitar and vocals (the haunting “A Lot of People On My Mind”), and others-like the robust “What Took So Long”-that rise and fall and accumulate momentum, veering towards gospel fervor with impassioned blasts of organ, then reeling back in quiet reflection. Tunes written almost exclusively by Murphy are juxtaposed with those born from long sessions improvising with his band mates: drummer Carl Dahlen, keyboard player Caleb Quick, and bassist Robert Terreberry. There are numbers that were composed at home in Seattle, alongside others created during Murphy’s isolation in Alaska (“Empress of the North”). “Lead Me On,” featuring violin by Seth Warren of the Maldives, sprang from the union of two different songs by Kevin and Carl. Further enriching the album’s sonic palette are pedal steel performances by another member of the Maldives, Chris Zasche.
Recorded in the winter months bridging 2009 and 2010, the record has a more unified feel than its predecessor. “On our first album, we crammed everything on there, because we didn’t know if we were ever going to have another opportunity,” admits Kevin. “This time I really wanted it to make sense as an album. There was a theme, and I felt that honing in on certain songs and a particular feeling made it a more interesting record, and not just Don’t Be A Stranger, Part 2.” (Songs deemed worthwhile, but inappropriate for inclusion on Tidelands, found a home on the EP You’ll Find No Answers Here, released in June 2010.)
The new album was produced and recorded by the band and Erik Blood (who also oversaw the making of their debut), with additional production input from Seattle stalwarts Phil Ek and Kurt Bloch. The quartet experimented and took risks during this process: multiple reads on the same song were tried, with various vocal and instrumental arrangements taken up and abandoned until the right balance was struck. While “Empress of the North” appears on Tidelands as a hushed acoustic ballad consisting entirely of acoustic guitar and pained, longing vocals, Blood convinced the guys to record an additional, vintage soul-style rendition of the tune. Bloch, meanwhile, recorded the quartet live-in-studio to capture the feel of their spirited live shows.
Though they sprang from Seattle’s vibrant roots music scene, the Moondoggies are a band schooled in much more than the common touchstones of the current Americana movement; there are no intentions of treading water stylistically here. It’s precisely this creative stretching that has resulted in the bands most artistic step forward to date: Tidelands.
To hear Pickwick tell it, their popular Myths 7-inch series was merely a group of rough sketches they’d been developing over the previous two years put to wax. That a CD collection of those “demos” held their hometown Seattle’s Sonic Boom Records #1 sales spot for a period of weeks in 2011 shows those six songs amounted to something more than tossed off basement recordings. With a successful year of festival invites and an ever larger string of hometown sell-outs behind them in 2012 the band refocused on recording and have a year later emerged with Can’t Talk Medicine. Upgrading from the basement used for Myths and setting up shop in their living room, the band’s own multi-instrumentalist Kory Kruckenberg served as engineer. The 13 finished tracks include three re-recorded and fully realized Myths cuts and a collaboration with Sharon Van Etten on lead single “Lady Luck.”
“A cool thing about this record,” says Kruckenberg, “this house has made its way onto the record. We’ve tried to include the quirks of living here.” Guitarist Michael Parker wryly spins the situation differently saying “our record doesn’t sound like a lot of other records because it was recorded in this living room.” The choice of a carpeted location may have been a double-edged sword, but the use of this unconventional space was fully compatible with the band’s own grittier leanings and desire to establish a unique musical aesthetic. By recording to 1/2 inch tape on an 8 track and incorporating found sounds, Kruckenberg was additionally using a canvas that provided for an intentionally different dynamic than a modern digital effort. Why tape? “It’s about dirtiness,” Kruckenberg explains referring to the distortion that the taping process itself can imbue on a recorded sound. He reports his final results with a grin, “It’s raw.”
An audiophile’s full attention to every detail shows in the final mix: voices and instruments have the space to assert their full identity and tones shimmer in lengthy decay. The percussive clang of the piano hammers in lead track “Halls of Columbia” are incorporated instead of hidden away. The organ drone in “Window Sill” is elevated from dissonant psych clutter to an eerie foundational element. The harmonies of Parker, keyboardist Cassady Lillstrom, and guest Kaylee Cole are at turns sweet, unsettling and epiphanic. It’s all orchestrated to support frontman Galen Disston’s gospel growl and build on the mood of his words.
“There is a layer to our songs that I don’t think very many people have picked up on,” says Disston, who prefers listeners delve into their own imagination with his words over providing a literal history of every lyric. What he will relate is that Can’t Talk Medicinemines themes of mental illness. “It’s about art making you go crazy,” he reveals. “We idolize and value that insanity when it’s in the name of art.” But as his lyrics also imagine it, life in creative overdrive can be nervous, desperate and grotesque. The refrain in “Window Sill” speaks of planning a defiant suicide and Myths crowd favorite “Hacienda Motel” recounts a risque homicide.
Many of the deeper answers about influences and a preference for mystery can be traced to the band’s own voracious interest in music that’s mired in obscurity. Reissues from Designer Records, the seminal output of the Black Ark. Robert Pete Williams, Alan Lomax, the Walkmen, The Sonics, and Abner Jay are among the diverse list of names referred to with reverence in the living room. ‘Famous L. Renfroe as The Flying Sweet Angel of Joy’ is a current well of inspiration for Disston who, like his idol Bob Dylan, has through his own deep exploration of American roots music developed a signature vocal delivery.
Pickwick’s DIY history of making & distributing their own records continues into 2013 with the Spring self-release Can’t Talk Medicine, initially available digitally via iTunes and on CD at your local CIMS-affiliated independent record shop. The Cold War Kids’ Matt Maust is guilty of the album’s cover design. The band travels to SXSW in March before embarking on a headlining tour of the continental U.S. in April.
There’s a special challenge to being an artist in this increasingly fractured cultural age; a delicate balancing act, between being of your time, and striving for timelessness. Few contemporary artists even try. Neko Case is an exception.
Case’s last album, 2006′s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, brought her to that nexus where critical acclaim meets commercial success. But Case’s impact can’t be measured merely in chart placements or press plaudits. It’s her ability to connect – on an uncommonly deep and meaningful level – with her audience. She’s one those artists, you see: the kind whose songs linger in your head, your heart and soul long after the record has stopped spinning.
While Case’s creative evolution has made for an impressive story so far, she’s about to write the most remarkable chapter in that continuing saga with the release of her sixth studio album, Middle Cyclone.
The tornado that blows through the title and several songs on Middle Cyclone is an apt metaphor. Neko has famously taken her own twisted route, lighting for a time in the South, in the West, in the Northwest, in Canada, flirting with as many musical styles as homes. She is settled-or unsettled-in Tucson for the moment, with dreams of moving full-time to the former dairy farm she owns in Vermont. She recorded the new album in both locations, as well as studios in Toronto and Brooklyn.
For Case, the beauty of making music, of creating, is that it remains a mysterious, confounding and, occasionally, contradictory process. ‘When I toured for Fox Confessorone of the things I said in interviews about that record was that I don’t like writing love songs, that I can’t write them,’ she recalls. ‘Of course, as soon as I said that, I ended up writing a bunch of love songs.’
It should be noted here that Case’s ‘love songs’ are not the typical boy- meets-girl variety, as the opening track, ‘This Tornado Loves You,’ dramatically attests. ‘What would it be like to be pursued by a force of nature’ asks Case. ‘That’s a frightening and exciting prospect.’
Case resists the temptation to see the tornado as metaphor for something more personal, like a destructive relationship from her past. ‘Of course, I’m fine if people want to interpret it that way, but for me, the song is very literal,’ she says.
Neko is equally earnest when she sings exultantly about the revenge of caged animals on their keepers, in the polemic ‘People Got A Lotta Nerve.’ The lyrics we’re tempted to read as ambiguous and layered (‘But you seemed surprised when it pinned you down/ to the bottom of the tank… I’m a man-eater, and still you’re surprised when I eat you’) are in reality the plainest. Neko’s killer whales and elephants really are killer whales and elephants. But with a magician’s gift for misdirection, she keeps us off balance, questing and questioning.
Like the old tale of the scorpion and the frog, Case’s message here seems to be that instinct is immutable. It’s an idea she explores further on the anthemic ‘I’m An Animal.’
‘I feel like one of the real tragedies is that, as a species, human beings are constantly trying to deny or sublimate our natural instincts,’ says Case. ‘And I’ve made a conscious effort not to do that, but to trust myself, both in my life and in my work.’
Instinct runs through Middle Cyclone as a theme and a goal, most often and most forcefully as the instinct for love. ‘But,’ notes Case, ‘only in the sense that the songs are about the need for love — no matter how cool you think you are. What other people might call ‘love songs’ I think of as homages. They can be to a person, a region, a feeling, even sad feelings.’
That notion is captured vividly on ‘Pharaohs’ – a kind of cousin to Fox Confessor’s ’That Teenage Feeling’ – as Case’s character pines wistfully for an idealized romance that seems to exist only in the imagination: ‘You kept me wanting…like the wanting in the movies and the hymns,’ she sings, ‘I want the Pharoahs, but there’s only men.’
As you listen to the album, Case’s evolution as a writer is, at times, almost overwhelming. The modest lyrical aims of her debut LP – - released just over a decade ago – - have been continually outstripped with each successive effort, and Middle Cyclone continues that trend in spectacular fashion.
And then there are the songs she didn’t write. Having covered everyone from Bob Dylan to Aretha Franklin, Case’s ability to re-make the material of others has long been celebrated. On Middle Cyclone she again flexes her interpretive muscles re-imagining a pair of early-’70s gems: Sparks’ ‘Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth’ and Harry Nilsson’s ‘Don’t Forget Me.’
Sparks’ 1974 song was an obvious choice, fitting perfectly into the foreboding nature-oriented theme of the album. ‘Plus, I just love Ron Mael’s lyrics,’ says Case. ‘Sometimes I go to the Sparks website and just read their songs as poetry. ‘Cause they’re bizarre and really controversial, and tongue-in-cheek and funny – all at once.’
With the Nilsson tune – an emotional farewell to his ex-wife originally included on his 1974 party album Pussycats – Case felt a deep tug in funny-sad couplets like: ‘I’ll miss you when I’m lonely, I’ll miss the alimony too/Don’t forget me…just for a little while.’
‘The song has a Roger Miller and Ray Davies quality to it,’ says Case. ‘That heartbreaking comedy line that punches you in the gut and makes you cry that much harder.’
Case decided the only way to record ‘Don’t Forget Me’ was to turn the original’s grand orchestral arrangement on its head. She began answering ads on Craigslist advertising free pianos, gathered half a dozen of them up in her disused Vermont barn, and invited a group of friends and fellow musicians to form a ragtag ‘piano orchestra’ to play on the song.
Middle Cyclone is awash in similar moments of sonic inspiration and homespun creativity. In one magical interlude we hear the sound of birds chirping, just as Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin begins a midi sax solo. ‘Which I think is so hilarious,’ says Case of the charmed collision. ‘We’ve got natural robins and unnatural midi sax. But somehow they work perfectly together.’
With Neko’s indefatigable touring band (guitarist Paul Rigby, bassist Tom V. Ray, vocalist Kelly Hogan, multi-instrumentalist Jon Rauhouse and drummer Barry Mirochnick) building the bedrock of the tracks, Case was able to bring in a collection of friends and fellow travelers including M. Ward, Garth Hudson, Sarah Harmer, and members of The New Pornographers, Los Lobos, Calexico, The Sadies, Visqueen, The Lilys, and Giant Sand, among others. ‘Everyone who worked on the record had their input and sculpted things,’ says Case.
Ultimately, for Case, the songs and themes on Middle Cyclone express a long internal struggle, a pitched battle between nature and nurture. ‘Things like animals and nature, they’re located in the tender receptor of my brain. And I’m just now trying to come to terms with the notion of loving people as much as I love those other things – because I grew up in a way that made me love the one but not the other.’
‘So, I guess I’ve been working that out for myself, and these songs are my way of reconciling those feelings.’
Hailing from Vancouver, BC and now residing in San Francisco, CA, ill-esha burst onto the North American electronic scene originally as a drum & bass vocalist featured on various releases for the likes of Breakbeat Science, Fokuz, and BluSaphir, gradually becoming known for the seamless incorporation of original vocals and MCing into DJ sets. Her multi-dimensional approach spans every color in the bass music rainbow, creating a dynamic live show which has set ill-esha apart amidst some of electronic music’s most groundbreaking acts.
With releases on trendsetting labels such as Muti Music, Daly City, Street Ritual, Subway, Haunted Audio, Dub Police and Simplify, ill-esha has ranked in the top 3 on Junodownload, Addictech, Beatport Electronic and Soundcloud. Since the release of her first 12” single in her teens, ill-esha has been honing her skills as vocalist, DJ and Producer who delivers studio efforts and live shows setting the stage for the future of electronic music. Her recent alliance with the Critical Beats project – a pioneering effort by artists to assist indigenous tribes in developing media centres for communication and culture preservation – is a resounding step forward on the path of an artist dedicated to creating social change and awareness through music.
Big Gigantic, whose blend of mind-bending beats, thunderous bass, and frenetic melodies has developed a rabid following since forming in 2008, has taken their sound to yet another dimension with the release of their newest album ‘Nocturnal’ (available now for FREE download at www.biggigantic.net). The album, by Boulder, CO-based saxophonist/producer Dominic Lalli and drummer Jeremy Salken, solidifies Big Gigantic as a key player in the worlds of electronic, dance, and hip-hop.
With a provocative sound that’s as thoughtful as it is danceable, Big Gigantic’s new songs like “Nocturnal” and “Hopscotch” weave whirling melodies into addictive beats and samples that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Kanye West or LCD Soundsystem single. No genre is off-limits for Big Gigantic, whose breakthrough sound channels everything from funk and dub-step to house and hip-hop.
After graduating with a master’s degree in jazz at the Manhattan School of Music, Lalli relocated to Boulder and began performing with Salken, experimenting with the idea of interpreting traditional DJ-based music with live instruments. The duo built up early hype in 2008 with local shows and one-offs around the country before releasing their debut album ‘Fire It Up’ in 2009 and embarking on a full US tour.
Already a smash on the festival circuit, Big Gigantic’s transcendent live shows are a showcase of brilliant improvisation and a tightly-knit bond between Salken and Lalli, who breathlessly alternates between keys, sax and laptop, building a futuristic wall of sound that keeps the crowd on its feet. The marathon shows feature a variety of songs new, old and unreleased, as well as outside-of-the-box remixes including Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow,” Aloe Blacc’s ‘I need a Dollar,’ and Notorious B.I.G.’s “Notorious Thugs.