Thursday, January 31, 2013

Paul Buchanan interview

I'm not sure I mentioned this, but I interviewed Paul Buchanan of the Blue Nile just before Christmas. He's a fantastic interview, funny and self-deprecating and honest and his latest album Mid Air (his first solo record after more than 30 years in the music business) is excellent too.

I thought it came out rather well.


At the Source of the Blue Nile: An Interview with Paul Buchanan

By Jennifer Kelly 31 January 2013


“Being in a band is a very particular life. You’re sort of family to each other,” says Paul Buchanan, who from 1981 until fairly recently, headed up the synth-heavy, proto-new wave Scottish band the Blue Nile. The band formed as Buchanan and his friends Robert Bell and PJ Moore finished university, and lasted through more than three decades and four widely spaced albums. Though never wildly successful commercially, the band had an outsized impact. The super clean sound of the Blue Nile’s debut Walk Across the Rooftops is said to have inspired Phil Collins. The second album, Hats, set a standard for impressionistic, cinematic pop.


But when, at the end of the 2000s, it came to an end—about the same time that a close friend passed away—Buchanan says he found himself at a bit of a loss. “When it becomes obvious that things are stuttering, it makes you just stop and think about all those years of saying ‘Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow,’” he says, a palpable wistfulness permeating his thick Scottish vowels.

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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Konkoma

I've been really liking Konkoma's relatively recent (late 2012) self-titled, the first for this London-based afro-funk outfit. Mojo said that "These veterans are already better than The Funkees," and Uncut noted that "Konkoma's sound is rooted in 1970s Afrobeat, complete with blasting horn section and gloriously fuzzy organ, but shot through with touches of highlife, funk and rock."


It's been out since the summer on Soundway.



In other news, Sean had his Carnegie-Mellon audition today -- the longest of long shots and essentially either the Yale or the Harvard of undergraduate acting programs (Julliard is the other one, I'm goign to call it Harvard because it's mostly post-grad) -- and it went awesomely well. He was in there for a good 15 minutes, maybe more, did his two primary monologues and got an adjustment on one (the auditioner asked him to try another approach -- this is a good thing, they're seeing how well you take direction), then was asked for additional material, did one of those and got an adjustment on that, and then was asked to sing. He was also sent into the next room, which is like a call-back. So anyway, no idea whther he'll get in or not, but he did extremely well and is clearly justified in trying. I'm so excited about this, possibly even more excited than Sean. He's got DePaul and Syracuse on Friday and CCPA (Chicago College of Performing Arts) on Saturday. So we'll see, right?

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Julia Holter covers Arthur Russell

Leaving Records, an experimental beat-making/electronic/indie cassette label in LA, has teamed up with Stone's Throw to release Dual Form, a 53-minute, 19-track summary of a quirky scene, with tracks by reasonably well-known artists like Dntel, Sun Araw and Odd Nosdam, as well as some up and comers (Cyclist's track "Visions" is pretty good, as is Oscar McClure's "LaBelle Gross").

Julia Holter, who has made a name for herself with eerie, electronically enhanced art-pop sometimes inspired by Greek drama, sometimes not, contributes a cover of Arthur Russell's "You & Me Both." It's live. You can hear the audience background noise. And it's relatively simple, compared to some of the more elaborately constructed cuts on the comp. But it's very emotionally resonant, a tiny bit spooky, and utterly unaffected. You can hear it here:

Monday, January 28, 2013

Bobby Sutliff tribute

I'm going to be interviewing Bobby Sutliff in a week or so, talking about his run in the Windbreakers, his solo albums, the automobile accident that almost killed him last year and the way his friends have rallied to help. Meanwhile here's a review of the tribute album Skrang: Sounds Like Bobby Sutliff up today at Blurt.

THAT PERFECT IDEA A Tribute to Bobby Sutliff

A benefit for the pop songwriter and erstwhile Windbreakers member includes contributions from members of the Rain Parade, dB's, True West, Velvet Crush and others.


BY JENNIFER KELLY

Bobby Sutliff, who both solo and with the Windbreakers is one of jangle pop's great underrated songwriters, was in a serious car accident last summer. He spent weeks in the hospital, and even after returning home to Ohio faced a long, difficult recovery. His friends, led by former Windbreakers partner Tim Lee (pictured above with Sutliff during their band days), put together this tribute album, as well as a benefit concert in Atlanta. The Rain Parade, who backed the Windbreakers in a cover of Television's "Glory" on the 1985 album Terminal, reunited specifically for the concert. Tim Lee 3 and the Head filled out the bill at the show in Atlanta on January 19th.

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Here he is playing with Tim Lee last fall.


We're going to NYC tomorrow for Sean's BFA auditions...he's auditioning for theater programs at Carnegie Mellon, Syracuse, DePaul and Chicago College of Performing Arts, all almost impossible to get into, so wish us luck. If I have WIFI, I will have lots of waiting around time, so will try to post but can't guarantee it.





Friday, January 25, 2013

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Cold, nervous and Speck Mountain

Hey, welcome to the ice box...-4 this morning, and I've got to run outside today. Fortunately, very sunny today.

We are headed to NYC next week for unified auditions, a kind of combined cattle call for people who are auditioning for BFA acting and musical theater programs. Sean is trying out for Carnegie-Mellon, Syracuse, DePaul and Chicago College of Performing Arts, maybe a walk-in or two if he can manage it. They're all kind of lottery ticket schools that accept between 1-5% of applicants, so we're trying to be positive but also okay with rejection. Sean has been working very hard on his audition material, and I think it's really good, but what do I know? We were talking last night about all the mega-movie stars who probably couldn't get into Carnegie Mellon...anyway, that's what we're all caught up in, and I'll be glad when it's over.

Here's a review that ran yesterday of the new Speck Mountain.

SPECK MOUNTAIN
Badwater
(Carrot Top)

This third album from the Chicago dream poppers adds a certain amount of friction to the drift-and-drone aesthetic. As always, the main textures come from Marie-Claire Balabanian's codeine-coated, velvet-edged vocals, and from Karl Briedback's looming, echo-swathed guitar. It's the kind of sound that seems to settle in a haze, rather than moving forward, but here in Badwater, there's a new element. You can hear it the way Chris Dye's martial drumming punching through silky vocal billows in the title track, or the way that Briedback throws time-counting riffs into blues-y "Young Eyes." My friend Bill Meyer at Dusted once observed that Speck Mountain was a lot like Yo La Tengo, but without the rhythm. Well, this time, they've got the rhythm. Badwater is less about atmosphere, more about structure, and its songs seem more memorable but also less infinite than before.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

UV Race's Racism

The UV Race
Racism
In the Red

Melbourne’s UV Race plays stunned, woozy post-punk that sounds like it has been bashed through the forehead with a tire iron, yet lurches on, half-conscious. Even the bangers – on this album “Nuclear Family” and the scatological “Raw Balls” – veer wildly around tight corners, and the slower songs (“Bad Egg,” for instance) have a half-raw gentleness to them, as if the band knows they’ve been badly wounded and must take care not to jostle them too hard.

Like Homo, Racism is hard to pin down. The band is part of Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s scene, and like them, favors a stubborn simplicity in most of their songs. You can hear it in the band’s pick-dragging bass lines, its zombified four-four beats, its bull-headed insistence on the first rhyme that comes to mind – pig with jig, walking with talking, beach with reach.

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Heartthrobs, every one of them...

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Amor de Dias

Oooh, this is nice....

Amor de Dias
The House at Sea
Merge


“Voice in the Rose,” which leads off this second collaboration between The Clientele’s Alasdair MacLean and Lupe Núñez-Fernández, is an almost ideal blend of indie pop and bossa nova, its dual guitar lines lightly, buoyantly syncopated, its bright, sharp instrumental clarity softened at the edges with luminous drone.


MacLean sings lead in this one, as he does in about half the songs. His voice barely exceeds a whisper. A soft ache of nostalgia lodges in almost too pretty tones. The guitars are Latin, the vocals C86. And yet you can hardly see where the seam lies, it all fits so beautifully together. It’s the kind of daydream hatching pop tune that makes you sad and happy all at once, happy because the sound is so caressingly pretty, sad because it, like the good things flashing by in the lyrics, will be over any minute now, and then where will you be?

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Friday, January 18, 2013

Brokeback (not Mountain)

Well, actually, I guess it would be possible to organize a tour for two Thrill Jockey bands that we could call Brokeback/Mountains, but for now, let's stick to the idea that the movie and the band are two completely separate things...my review of the band's latest is up at Dusted today...

It's kind of hard to excerpt but here's a good bit:
The new album shares a good deal with older Brokeback material. There is, as before, an unhurried simplicity in the melodies, often played on six-string bass, which seems to be able to warm, polish and sustain the notes to a degree not possible on conventional bass or guitar. “Don’t Worry Pigeon,” in particular, has a lovely, languid resonance, every note rounded — no, let’s say fat — with lingering overtones. There is also a willingness to experiment with jazz-like time-signatures and textures. Check into “The Wire, the Rag and the Payoff” and you’ll think you’ve wandered over into Tortoise’s neighborhood, full of jutting, abstract architectures and off-kilter, unexpected melodic twists. It doesn’t take much to imagine the main guitar line on this track played by vibraphone, and the drumming, too, is free-form, irregular and very fine.

Read the whole thing here.



In other news, Sean had a session with a vocal coach last night to help him prepare for one musical theater audition, and he apparently has an unusually big range for a kid his age, 2 and 3/4 octaves, including a high C, which he is very proud of. I asked the coach if he had even the slightest chance of getting in, and she said "Sure, he's got a great voice, but it depends on what they're looking for." So that was a shot in the arm for Sean (and also me). He's doing the acting monologues for the head of his theater tonight in Brattleboro, so we'll see what he says and what, maybe, Sean can work on.

Also, I am becoming a little desperate about the lack of paid work I'm getting lately. I hear that we're coming out of the recession but this is the worst it's ever been for me personally in my line of work. If anyone has any ideas about what I could do for money, besides financial writing and (ha ha ha, money for this!) music writing, send them on. I have no idea what's going to happen to us if things don't turn around soon.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Arbouretum's in a fog...and so am I

I think I'm on a perfect roll with Arbouretum having reviewed and/or interviewed the band on every album since Rites of Uncovering (still my favorite). So I can't let that slip, can I? Even if it seems like they're sort of making the same album over and over...

My review of Coming Out of the Fog in today's Dusted.

Arbouretum
Coming Out of the Fog
Thrill Jockey

Dave Heumann’s Arbouretum is arguably the best of the millennial classic rock bands, a guitar-fuzzed powerhouse that follows Neil Young’s trampled trail, bending folk and country into surreal shapes through the sheer force of volume and distortion. Coming Out of the Fog is Arbouretum’s fifth full-length, and it is not quite a complaint to say that it is more of the same. Heumann has placed more emphasis on song structure this time out, less on open-ended, jammed improvisation, and the recording quality continues to improve. Still, the basic template is not much different from Rites of Uncovering. As always, these are loud, slow, ponderously heavy songs that explore the conjunction of feedback buzz and intellectual inquiry, 16-bar blues and spiritual struggle.

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Sean got into Columbia College, not the Ivy college in upper Manhattan but a small-ish, arts oriented school in Chicago, which sent him by far the prettiest acceptance package to date...including a sketch book and a set of stickers. So that's two safe schools, let's see what else he can wrangle.

Meanwhile his audition material is coming along really well. He's doing Trinculo from the Tempest for his comic/classical, Tom from the Glass Menagerie for a contemporary/dramatic and then he's got Edmund's bastard speech from Lear for a back-up. He's got one more that he's been working on, but it's not really coming together the way the others are, so he might try something else, not sure. The two main ones (Trinculo and Tom) are in my humble, biased opinion remarkably good. I'm starting to wonder if he might actually get in somewhere. We'll see.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Ensemble Pearl

Sun O))) founder Stephen O'Malley has a new project in the drone-ish end of things called Ensemble Pearl. It's kind of an all-star affair with Atsuo from BOris, and Michio Kurihara from Ghost in the main band, and people like Eyvind Kang contributing.

The album's not out until March 19th, which may explain why there's no audio or video available yet. So crap, you'll have to take my word for it that "Wray" (a Link Wray reference, I believe, though it's hard to make an overt connection) is mysterious and beautiful, full of cave-echoing electronic auras and uneasy swoops and twitches of viola (that's Kang). "Island Epiphany" is ominous, vaguely claustrophobic, its drum beat slowed to ritual pace, its guitar sounds loud but distant, detached, hovering like cloudy weather. (It reminds me of Om.) This is not a crushingly heavy album, though it's serious, slow and probably gut-shattering in concert. Indeed there's a leavening, a phosphorescent glow in darkness, even in long, ponderous "Sexy Angle." I'll put up media when it appears...but, for now, trust me. Good stuff.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

New single from Junip

Okay, so I'm posting something straight from a press release, so it'll probably be me and 900 other bloggers going on about this today...but that said, the new single from Jose Gonzales' Junip is pretty wonderful, soft and melancholy, but with a kind of ecstatic motor to it, so that it drives as well as caresses.



Tobias Carroll reviewed the last Junip album, Fields, for Dusted in 2010, saying, "Fields is a wide-ranging album, both musically and emotionally. As on his solo work, Gonzalez’s voice channels vulnerability exceptionally well, and in some cases the densely-structured songs the band creates trigger a sense of yearning. Elsewhere, that sense of layering and construction can meander a bit — “Howl”’s percussive evolution, mentioned earlier, is interesting, but I’d be hard-pressed to say exactly how (or even if) it works. But the chemistry between these three musicians is remarkably strong, and the genres that blend here, from folk to Krautrock, make for an interesting and (at its best) rewarding listen."

You can read the whole review here.


The new album, which will be self-titled, is out April 23rd on Mute.

Carlton Melton meets Buckminster Fuller

Yeah, about time I had another review up...I was about to do a surly little blog piece on Man Chest Hair, the Finder's Keeper comp of hirsute northern UK bands from the 1970s who wanted to sound like Blood Sweat & Tears and Jethro Tull. (It's not enough to be rare, right? It also has to be good?)

So anyway, I have this Blurt review of a very good, very drone-y album by Carlton Melton, published today.

CARLTON MELTON
Photos of Photos
(Agitated)

Photos of Photos was recorded in a geodesic dome, that aging symbol of futurism that delivers the maximum possible amount of interior space per unit of surface covering. The album - four tracks on the vinyl, an additional two on the expanded CD - was laid down in three days of musical excess, laid down in single takes filtered through omnidirectional mics. There were no overdubs, no pitch shifting, no edits, no manipulations, no vocals, no very overt song structures. This is as close as you can come to standing in a swirling sonic vortex, buffeted by tangible waves of sound, pushed this way and that, by careering howls of guitar, swollen surges of synthesizer, woozy thunders of drum and bass.

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Here they are playing an extended live set.

I'm doing two interviews today, one at 2 p.m. with Matmos on their new telepathy-inspired Marriage of True Minds, the other at 8 p.m. with Matt Korvette from Pissed Jeans. Kind of nervous about both, but in different ways, Matmos because they're probably smarter than I am and Korvette because he's so much louder...

anyway, busy day, more soon...

Monday, January 14, 2013

JSBX on Letterman, Cale on Fallon, Sean at Pitt

What a great band, eh?


Also quite liked the John Cale performance on Fallon last week, made me want to check out the album again. Though I guess the big surprise was his rendition of "Venus in Furs" after the main pitch was done.


Here's good news. Sean has been accepted at the University of Pittsburgh, his first acceptance but, I hope, not the last.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

The Late Call

Huh, must have missed this one, up last week sometime at Blurt.

THE LATE CALL
Pale Morning Light
(Tapete)

Johannes Mayer, the Swedish artist who has recorded three albums as The Late Call, has a deceptively simple way with melody and arrangement, couching tetchy uncomfortable sentiment in the jingliest, breeziest of instrumental terms. His super clean guitar work has the lightness and sway of beachside bossa nova, and only his voice, clear and high but cross-hatched with shadowy scratches hints at the downbeat subject matters. These are summery, pretty, ephemeral songs about loss, obsessive love, anxiety and futility.

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Friday, January 11, 2013

What do you think of this new Nick Cave video?



Kind of subdued, isn't it?

Yo La Tengo...first big record of the year

I'm liking Fade a good bit, maybe you can tell from my Dusted review, up today.

Fade is Yo La Tengo’s 13th album, mostly in line with Popular Songs’s relative softness and accessibility. There’s a certain amount of sporadic, muted guitar mayhem, a la I Am Not Afraid Of You’s “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind,” but they bury it under fuzz and hiss, like people who have learned to cough into their elbows during flu season. They favor repetitive grooves that are hard at the core but nebulous around the edges, snare and maracas popping out of an electrically-charged stew of tones and overtones. I like particularly the way that “Ohm”’s late blooming, fairly aggressive guitar solo cuts through and then is subsumed by the fuzz and static, a screaming statement muted to a murmur. Later, “Paddle Forward” shushes guitar feedback, so that you hear the crackle but not the roar, and so that barely exhaled harmonies from Hubley and Kaplan can float over top without straining.

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Thursday, January 10, 2013

Steven Cerio's Magnificant Pigtail Shadow

I've been listening to the soundtrack from Steven Cerio's The Magnificent Pigtail Shadow a good bit lately, the musical accompaniment to what looks like a very trippy movie, conceived by Cerio and narrated by Kristen Hersh. My friend Michael Duane (he of Dustdevils and Dustdevil and Crow) plays some guitar on it...it's a kind of shimmery, mysterious, atmospheric thing, very pretty but hard to get a real grip on. (I'm thinking that the narration probably makes more sense in the context of the film.)

Anyway, I found the trailer for the movie online and thought I'd post it.


Cerio teaches at Syracuse now, though he is best known, musically, for his long-time collaboration with the Residents. He has played drums for a lot of interesting bands and artists -- Dee Dee Ramone’s Sprocket, Railroad Jerk and Drunktank on record and live with Jad Fair (Half Japanese), Ron Asheton (Stooges), William Parker and Jemeel Moondoc. He's the main force behind Atlantic Drone (which Michael is also involved with and which sounds very similar to this soundtrack.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Howling Kettles' rabid hoe-down

I've got my first Dusted review of the year up now, a consideration of Howling Kettles' home-brewed string band rambles. Howling Kettles is another project from Sam Moss, who lives down the road in Brattleboro and has appeared on a couple of Imaginational Anthem comps. I still haven't met him or seen him play, but maybe some day...

The Howling Kettles
The Parlor is Pleasant on Sunday Night


When I reviewed Sam Moss’s Neighbors last year, I was struck by how solitary it was, how it explored the lonely, desolate side of the Americana experience in stark, slow-tempo combinations of voice and banjo (and a little guitar). The Howling Kettles, Moss’ string band collaboration with Jackson Emmer, is completely different: giddily communicative, celebratory, and wildly, rhythmically physical.

More here

You can hear the whole thing at the Howling Kettles' website.

In other news, a big shout-out to the cloud, which has somehow preserved a long-lost copy of Art Brut's Bang Bang Rock and Roll and, a couple of days ago, reinstalled it on my iTunes. I'm listening to it right now. What a fun record. Looks like there's also a Stereolab album with my name on it, good times.



Also, I have given up on Pictures in Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Music from Dust-to-Digital. Turns out that the music of past centuries, laboriously transcribed into pictograms and ressurrected just-add-water style sounds a lot like the static between radio stations (and also some of it sounds like calliope). Anyway, I'm willing to grant it's an interesting idea, but listen to its 28 tracks three more times in a row and then have them pop up sporadically on random shuffle? No thanks.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

9th Ward Marching Band

I spent some of my own youth in high school marching bands -- in Indiana where they take these things seriously -- but I've never seen anything like this.

It's the 9th Ward Marching Band from the famously watery neighborhood of New Orleans, putting sex and rebellion and rock and roll into the formation formula. The band's two best known members are Quintron and Miss Pussycat, but there are other locally prominent musicians, bar owners and scene followers in the ranks. In this clip, they're not technically marching, in the sense of going from point A to point B, but why would you when you're already in the bar that you knew from the beginning you'd end up in?

Anyway, fun stuff...



Monday, January 7, 2013

Drop Down Florida's one-string wizard

I'm repeating myself, I know, but still working through this truckload dump from Dust-to-Digital, and enjoying very much the archival Drop on Down in Florida: Field Recordings of African American Music 1977-1980. It's about a third blues, a third gospel and a third sacred harp singing, and all of it quite good, but I am especially loving the tracks from one-string virtuoso Moses Williams, from Inna, Bena Mississippi (he says), who constructed an instrument out of one length of wire. Williams has a fine, gravelly voice, but the fascinating thing is the way the wire reverberates, a very metallish sort of sound, almost industrial, quite at odds with the traditional melodies.



Pretty cool, isn't it?

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Lonnie Holley

Okay for one thing, I have put far, far, far too much new music onto my iTunes lately...neither my iPod touch nor my shuffle will update anymore because new stuff automatically goes onto them and there's more of it than will fit, even after taking a shitload of other stuff off the touch. I don't usually care about capacity because 2 GB is plenty in terms of what you can actually listen to, but this is a special case.

It happened mostly because I got a DL of three new releases from Dust to Digital, which I was, of course, pretty excited about and didn't even notice that, in total, I was adding about half a MG to the library in the process. So now I'm swimming through archival, oddball, field recorded music -- in particular a 53 track compilation of blues, gospel and sacred harp music from Florida -- and if I can catch up in two weeks, that'll be a good thing. There is also a lengthy Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Music recording, which I haven't even cracked yet. (Educed, apparently, means that the music has been represented in pictoral terms sometime in the past, and that the artists have turned it back into the sound...interesting idea, haven't really had time to listen yet.]

But meanwhile, I am fascinated by a shorter, more digestible album by the outsider artist Lonnie Holley, mostly famous for his sculptures, but also, on his own terms, a singer/composer, who improvises lyrics over weirdly apocalyptic, minimalist keyboard arrangements. His voice is, I think, untrained, but extremely soulful -- it's like freeform, hallucinogenic Marvin Gaye -- unbelievable stuff.

Here's a video with music and also some of his art.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Karriem Riggins' Alone Together

Karriem Riggins, as an unnamed DJ states during a fragment of an interview, lives at the corner of hip hop and jazz, drumming regularly with the Ray Brown Trio and Diane Krall, but also producing tracks for the Roots, Common, J Dilla and other hip hop artists. His latest, Alone Together, which has been out since late 2012 on Stones Throw, is a mercurial kind of pleasure, lots of tracks, mostly quite short, exploring fleeting rhythmic and melodic ideas, then flying off to the next new thing. It feels like lots of bright, shiny bits, rather than one cohesive statement, but the bits are quite, quite good.

Here's a video from Riggins' website for "Round the Outside"



Also pretty interesting podcast called "Karriem Riggins Produced That"

Friday, January 4, 2013

Black Forest Fire

Pretty sure I blogged this earlier when I first started listening, but now the review's up at Blurt, so I'm posting again.

BLACK FOREST FIRE
Transit of Venus
(Sedimental)

Black Forest Fire weaves brooding, reverb-drenched drones around soft melodies, well in line with the tradition of fellow psychedelic Austinites like Black Angels, Experimental Aircraft and Explosions in the Sky. Guitarist Jay C. Tonne and drummer Karen Skloss trade vocals, with Tonne's voice high and surprisingly pop-leaning on slouching-towards-oblivion ramps like "Tell It To Sara" and Skloss' ethereal in "August Spring"'s twitchy daydream.

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Thursday, January 3, 2013

Diablos del Ritmo

Diablos Del Ritmo is a really fantastic exploration of a corner of the world (and of music) that I didn't know existed...the afro-beat scene in Baranquilla, Columbia in, roughly, the second half of the 20th century. It's two discs, one very afro, the other more permeated by more indigenous, Latin forms like Cumbia, and all quite good. Blurt has turned my album review into a feature of sorts, so you can read about it in more detail here.

Or just have a listen.

Parquet Courts

I'm easing back into the music writing thing gradually, like the way you get into a really hot bath, one toe at a time. For instance, yesterday, I got my ass in gear just enough to finish a show preview for Parquet Courts, a scrabbly, guitar-banging post-punk outfit whose lyrics are smarter than they need to be, but not as smart as they'd be if they weren't mostly about weed. The band's main writer is Andrew Savage, whom you might remember from Fergus & Geronimo.

The album, Light Up Gold is getting a formal, commercial release on What's Your Rupture later this month, but it's been on Bandcamp since the summer, and you can still listen to it there.

Here they are playing CMJ not too long ago.

CMJ 2012: Parquet Courts performs "Yr No Stoner" at Death By Audio, Brooklyn from BlearyEyedBrooklyn.com on Vimeo.


Today, maybe an actual album review, what do you think?

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Pink Floyd...what's not to love?

In the Red is reissuing Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin's 2009 vinyl-only Reverse Shark Attack in late January...and it's a hella good time, highly recommended if you didn't catch it the first time. (Cronin is a mainstay in Segall's band now and kind of a co-writer on the really excellent Slaughterhouse.) The originals are terrific, but they really got my attention with this cover, from one of my all time favorite albums, the Syd-enhanced, acid-wreathed Piper at the Gates of Dawn



Sorry I've been off and on with the posts. I've been having some motivational problems, plus this college/financial aid application process is kind of all-encompassing. Be glad when it's over.

Aren't you happy we didn't all
go
right
off
the
cliff
?


!!!!