This week saw Erykah Badu's beef with Wayne Coyne over an NSFW Flaming Lips video, Wisconsin's recall election that failed to remove union hater Scott Walker (and no, not the pop baroque one you're thinking of). Meanwhile Beach House is blazing up the charts but with so much to go over, let us examine what the week brought in no particular order.
Tonight at Underground SF (Friday June 8) is Push The Feeling featuring a live set from Yalls and a DJ set from up and coming Bay Area artist to watch Avalon Emerson, DJ sets from Push The Feeling residents YR SKULL and Epicsauce DJs. The party is free with RSVP with $1 Black Star beers from 9-11pm. Peep the latest track from Avalon Emerson here with the South of Market dancehall burner “Church of SoMa.”
Oddisee released the single “Way in Way Out” from his new full length LP People Hear What They See available now from Mello Music Group. Bringing in big concepts from a much bigger picture, Oddisee reps the divide between the haves and have-nots with an even bigger back beat equipped with strings to boot.
Grass Widow are back with their new self-released album Internal Logic and a spaced out “Twilight Zone” type of portal to the video for “Goldilocks Zone.” Internal Logic is out now and you can catch Grass Widow in DC, NYC's Northside Festival, Toronto's NXNE, etc before returning to their home zone of San Francisco for a show on June 22 and an official record release show on July 20.
Discover Phoenix, Arizona's Bogan Via with their single “Kanye” taken from their Cut and Paste EP released earlier this year. Madeleine Miller and Bret Bender met in college last year over theater and lit studies and decided to make the AZ cool again together with a slew of local shows and events in their home town beginning tomorrow June 9 at the Crescent Ballroom, June 19 at Tune in Tuesday and June 30 at Trunk Space. Listen and love.
LOL Boys are here to keep your disco beats fresh with “Get Close to Me” featuring Angelina Lucero. The Los Angeles by way of Montreal duo Jerome Potter and Markus Garcia will be igniting dance floors with their Changes EP out July 17 with 4 tracks plus a Shlohmo remix and Anenon cover. Be the first on your block to hear “Get Close To Me”
With a degree of anticipation building since the release of last year's Daydream Repeater, Co La returned with Soft Power Momento on NNA Tapes/Hands In The Dark. For the celebration of his heady brew, we invite you to listen to the electronic forging of beat charging production equipped with a horn and supper club deluxe groove on “Dr. Oblivion Soundcheck.”
Holy Other shared the track “Love Some1” with everyone who needed some more dragged out ambience for the week's conclusion. For those that still play your worn copies of Angelo Badalamenti soundtracks with religious fervor, consider this an update of the sounds that extend beyond the incidental background noise but mix in the passage of wind and vocals like swirling dominant voices from a crowded room full of indecipherable dialogues. Holy Other has pans to release his debut LP Held on August 28 on Tri Angle Records.
Like the intimate Blouse show you hoped you could guest list crash, we give you their performance of “Ghost Dream” at Room 205.
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Gensu Dean dropped the single “In My Head” featuring Brand Nubian. Hip-hop educates, though recently, it hasn’t been quite as cool to kick knowledge as it used to be. “In My Head” takes you back to staying up late to listen to E-Bro on KSFM 102.5 Sacramento to hear the latest backpack cut, with Lord Jamar and Sadat X spitting a guideline of staying away from lard while keeping your head screwed on tight and making your own heaven here on earth. Gensu Dean's Lo-Fi Fingahz is out now featuring help from the talents of Count Bass D, David Banner, Large Professor, Roc Marciano, Prince Po and others on this release from the Mello Music Group.
Exray's released their title track this week from their new album You Can Trust A Robot due June 26 from Howell's Transmitter. Their sound and topics circulates usage of colored lights, black boxes, doomed futures of digital antiquity; but the trick with the song “You Can Trust a Robot” is how far back in musical time their transmissions can blast through their visionary take on folktronic classics that are archaelogist ready to discover some 2,000 years later. Should you find yourself in SF this evening June 9, catch their record release show at the Rickshaw with Maus Haus, Mwahaha, devonwho and Cyclist.
Meet Arêtes who would like to present to you their debut EP Gods which is being offered as a free download via www.aretes.co.uk. Today we feature their track “So Sober” featuring the voice talents of Binisa Bonner on some of the latest dream dance sounds to come from London. We will be listening to them further in the future I feel.
Stop the presses and the servers because it is official that Seapony will releasing their new album Falling September 11 on Hardly Art. But because Fall is such a long way away, you can fill your summer days with their new single “What You Wanted” on repeat. From out of the blue, Seattle beauties Seapony get the Dub Narcotic Studios production bump treatment. Big things in the mix are all happening on grand levels thanks to the magic studio from Olympia, WA.
Tropic of Pisces is the project of Oberhofer guitarist Mathew Scheiner and bassist for Mon Khmer, who is skilled in the arts of how to make both a pretty and fluttering pop track. With NYC area shows scheduled for July, get a listen to the “Symmetry” single and get ready to let the time feelings roll and positive vibrations flow. Get in all the upbeat swagger on Scheiner's Marking EP coming soon, in the meantime check their Bandcamp for upcoming details.
Northport, NY's Nude Beach have made the cut with their signing to Other Music Recording Co. and bring us their single “Some Kind of Love.” The punk trio consisting of Chuck Betz, Ryan Naideau and Jimmy Sheltonpower dish out the lyrical wail and lament about complicated attachments of disregarded coexistences on “Some Kind of Love” saying, “Because you are always there, but you stay hidden from my vision” Nude Beach's upcoming album II is slated for release August 14 from Other Music.
Body Parts released their video for “Doing Things” from a collaboration between the group and direction from David Seger and Mike Karnell. The chorus is odd, but memorable: “Someone ask me, what I'm doing, I'll say, liking, what your, doing, I like the way you are,” and it is inspired by the documentary Pina, about the late Pina Bausch and her dance company. Alina and Ryder created the choreography along with their own creative hand motions that are more conceptual than interpretive making this one of the most entertaining videos of the week. Dig what they do with closed captioning too.
Lightouts release the single “Stray Boy”, containing the Cure cover b-side of “Push” which premiered here at Impose a few weeks back and proved Lightouts love for covering their heroes. “Stray Boy” presents the Gowanus group at their best, defining themselves by noisy guitar pop that can stand apart from the sum of its influences. The Big Picture maxi single comes out June 26.
Bass Drum of Death's single “White Fright” is here to assure – in case you had doubts – that garage rock is far from dead and gone. The Oxford, Mississippi rockin' duo BDOD are working hard on their follow up to GB City with members John Barrett and Colin Sneed presenting a taste of attractions to come with the Ty Segall-y “White Fright”, which in full comparitive disclosure could be influenced by the many recent releases of the aforementioned Bay Area rock smith. BDOD's “White Fright” will be released as a tour-only 7” through 3qtr who are also in charge of putting out the new album coming this Fall.
On the heels of “Stronger”, by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, comes the remix by Miguel Campbell that injects the original with electrified liquified silicone synthesizer implants. Campbell's remix will only be available through Beatport on June 18. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs’ debut album Trouble comes out June 12 from Casablanca Records.
We knew this was coming when Ariel Pink and R. Stevie Moore performed a sound check put to digital but we have for you the new listen from the kink of alt realm pop weird. This comes in the form of a cover of Donnie and Joe Emerson's “Baby” featuring Dam Funk helping out and inspiring Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti to take it even further than Before Today, with a soul slow jam that occurred long before '70s production would turn your favorite R'n'B groups into disco-ready boy band fodder. What Ariel, Dam, and the Haunted Graffiti create here is a magic that harkens back to the decline of the Golden Era where your parents or their parents parents were necking in cars parked at the dark, dead end of the road overlayng vast city vistas whilst playing “Baby” on one of car decks with the big push buttons. After long last, Ariel Pink will relese Mature Themes August 21 with the single released as a 12″ limited edition one-sided record July 10, all on 4AD.
Touring with Ariel Pink this September is Phèdre who just remixed “Hondo” by Toronto's Beta Frontiers. The lo-fi loving Canadians get their track upgraded with some slow pitched vocals with some very pointed focused keybooard progression patterns that makes for perfect late night long drive playlists. Phèdre rocks the Mercury Lounge June 9 before they return to help out Pink's Haunted Graffiti.
In case you missed it, here is the official video for Killer Mike's “Big Beast”, featuring all the action of your favorite car chase flicks and robberies gone wrong, with some top notch appearances from Bun B, T.I., and Mr. Mike himself in a series of situations that get thicker than a stack of unmarked bills wrapped up in duffel bag in the trunk while on the run. R.A.P. Music is out now from Adult Swim's premiere Williams Street.
Pressed And gave us a taste to their new single “Komusō Flutter Kick”. Andrew Hamlet and Mat Jones are the Brooklyn-by-North Carolina duo that create what sounds like one of those Japanese Super Famicom cartridges that was never shipped stateside for the SNES from '95. Also check out our coverage of Andrew's solo work under the alias Tom Kitty Oliver with his release Life on Loop. Pressed And will be making stops in NYC this month while their Hyper Thistle EP will be available July 17 from
We got the new single from Shout Out Out Out Out. It's one of the best titled singles we have heard all week, called “Now That I've Given Up Hope, I Feel Much Better.” Like the old Gene Clarkism of “I'll Probably Feel a Whole Lot Better” the band works it out with electronic affected vocals and a hand clap jam to bolster your summer house parties. The band's third album Spanish Moss and Total Loss is set for release July 17 on Normals Welcome Records.
Peep this; two titans; Balam Acab and Mogwai, touring this month, starting to tonight, plan accordingly people.
Chidren of the Night released a video for their track “Kids from Queens”. With a classic black and white film style employed by director Matthew Caron matching the vintage horn bits, the sites of Queens are the star attraction. Queens…Revisited is out now from MishkaNYC.
Supreme Cuts dropped a ringer that has the resonance of bells cut from a series of towers in synchronized time, like bassed out chimes, on their new cut “Ciroc Waterfalls.” That big bass cradles the melodic clangs, as slowly the drum machines warm up like old Maytag dryers that still get their checkups from the lonliest repair man in the world. Brace your subwoofers and noise cancellation domephones as Whispers In The Dark will be released July 10 on Dovecote.
We have the new track from Del the Funky Homosapien's collaboration with Parallel Thought with “Different Guidelines.” In no time flat Del and P will have you chanting the chorus, “standin' firm, my beliefs are mine they may not be yours, but hey, I do it different.” Furthermore, we want to hip you to the coming of Parallel Thought's upcoming July 24 release of the beat epic The Art Of Sound, but more deets will be soon be on the way.
Stop me if you have already seen this but here is Mac Demarco, formerly of Makeout Videotape, is here today with his video for “European Vegas”. We are proud to feature Mr. Demarco in our recent half-year apologies list of artists we have neglected to love enough. Mac DeMarco's EP Rock and Roll Nightclub is out now on Captured Tracks.
Helado Negro and Julianna Barwick when combined are OMBRE, who share with us their slow sun rising new single “Cara Falsa.” Look for their full length Believe You Me out August 27 from Asthmatic Kitty.
For the art rock loving bunch out there, we have the Dirty Projectors video for “Gun Has No Trigger” featuring the subtle strobe and silhouette approach from David Longstreth's directorial debut. Take note as the new Dirty Projectors album Swing Lo Magellan drops July 10.
Then we got Kool Keith's ICU directed video for his “Goodbye Rap”. The Ultramagnetic MC, Dr. Octagon/Dooom releases an “I don't rap no more” statement against the wackness of emcees who just learned how to rep yersterday with a piano tinged requiem for the game after he “coudn't find competition and threw it the garbage…rap hasn't been the same since I had it hostage.” Get Kool Keith's 13th album release Love & Danger Music produced by DJ Junkaz Lou for Junkadelic Music available through Fat Beats and iTunes.
