Dan Friel's Valedictorian/Exoskeleton

Hey, it's Monday again. I have a review up at Dusted.

Dan Friel
Valedictorian / Exoskeleton
Thrill Jockey

Dan Friel’s solo rig is a rat’s nest of keyboard interface, knobs, samplers, pedals, wires and switches, compact enough to fit in a suitcase, and jerry-rigged and vaguely bomb-like enough to make you wonder how he ever gets through airport security. Since Parts & Labor folded — and even before — he has been coaxing an extraordinary variety of sounds from this self-designed and self-made apparatus, coarse blares of feedback, delicate patterns of synth, pummeling rhythms, and the kind of triumphant, joy-bubbling anthems that, except for the lack of vocals, sound very much like Parts & Labor. This interim EP contains four very different cuts, two originals and two remixes from like-minded noise-inflected tunesmiths, Moss of Aura (who also plays with Future Islands) and Peaking Lights.

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There are also a bunch of MP3s at the Free Music Archive.

In sad weekend news, I dropped my iPod again and shattered the glass, so am trying to get it repaired via DigiExpress...let you know how that turns out. The iPod still plays fine, but it's hard to read the track titles.

Dusted Mid-Year

It's list time at Dusted, which runs a wrap of our favorite albums so far this year. Mine is Skull Defekts...others include Demdike Stare, Peaking Lights, Apache Dropout, Milk Music, High Llama, Anne-James Chaton, Tommy Guerrero, King Creosote and the Magic ID. I've heard probably 70% of this and it's all pretty interesting.

Have a look.

Peaking Lights

I was fooling around yesterday listening to WFMU, and I found this really beautiful, fuzzy, dreamy electro duo , Peaking Lights, whose first full-length Imaginary Falcons is out now on Night People records. (They have a cassette on Woodsist, too.) The two (married) principals – Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes – have been in a long string of bands that I’m not familiar with: Numbers, Dynasty, Rahdunes, Unborn Unicorn, Face Plant. If you like things like Beach House, Nite Jewel, Paper Cuts and so on, you’ll probably enjoy this, too.

I don’t have the record, and you can’t swipe any mp3s from the label, but check out the MySpace for streams:


Raven Sings the Blues likes them, too, and he’s put a couple of mp3s up. Try here