With September coming to a close and Fall in full swing, Impose's Week in Pop scans the headlines for a brief moment before we hand over the the stage to our week's indie heroes. First we have Kanye West's beef with Jimmy Kimmel (and at this point, just beefing with any and all media personnel) after an interview satire, word that David Bowie to perhaps be the new-old-fresh face for Louis Vuitton, Jack White railing against digital recordings, Andrew WK is gonna drop 'The Party Bible', and Britney Spears causing a hype row over the possibility of lip-syncing her Vegas show. All of this is water cooler fodder for sure, but here are some of the folks that took over the week by storm, hitting us with exclusive content, in-depth discussions with a few of the artists that are here to make Autumn rule, in particular order.
It is a great honor and privilege to present to you our new friends, Blackbear and The Surf Bums, as they premiere their video for “Western Spaghetti”. The Nashville trio of Ricky Hamilton, Jared Chapman and Carter Luckfield might be geographically located in the heart of the South, but their music traverses over the Atlantic, as much as it yearns for the legendary Western California shores. As we discussed in our previous debut of the song “Western Spaghetti” and further in depth today; former Cleveland by Tennessee and ex-Useless Eaters member Ricky Hamilton visually brings an All-American road movie that captures the road of Western destiny in all it's idyllic glory.
The video moves to the song's expressive coast to coast reflections through the evocation of image paired to lyric and chord strings. The black and white film captures portable cassette players, as drives from the suburb long for the Western seas that exists in a manner more visceral than slides. That California dream unveils the flag waving vision of American beauty in the moving images depicting an attractive woman of Westward leaning representation. What Ricky Hamilton and Mac Jones create with this video is a heart and homespun cinematic journey that works in different timing schemes, presenting the expanse of winding roads through highways, classic colonial home estates that delivers Blackbear & The Surf Bum's own art house style Hard Days Night, that functions like the patterned maps from the motion of memory.
Ricky took us further into the great American roadway journey, where we follow the interstates from Cleveland, to Nashville, the allure of California lines, paired to the Eastern Coast, and nostalgic trips coupled with today's realities.
What were some of the film aesthetics you were going for here? I feel like we are on some kind of Americana road trip from yesterday.
I have a good childhood friend and bandmate with the alias Goldface who often says true art should reflect the exact feelings the artist has in a certain time and place. For the film adaptation of Western Spaghetti, I took the moving picture reel aesthetic used by the great early filmmakers as inspiration. The video draws together many of the everyday places surrounding me on a day to day basis when I lived in Cleveland and illustrates the overarching theme of perspective when considering days, weeks, years, lifetimes, ages, and culture shifts.
How do you feel nostalgia impacts the song's meaning? Is it further indicative of your vintage global indie pop leanings perhaps? Or maybe a kind of All-American road trip classic film?
The song’s lyrics take place over a period of weeks during a pilgrimage out West on a great American adventure. That’s why you see the American flags, the wagon, 'both coastlines,' the houses that tempt travelers to slow their horses and settle down, and of course the beautiful girl we all hope is waiting on the shore. It seemed fitting that the video be shot in a day because what made my adventure west so thrilling was how surreal it all felt in a day, that turned into a week, and ultimately into a few months.
How did you all coordinate the video to the song? There is this visual following to the western sea where you get to see from sea to shining sea, and this whole idea of driving out west. From verandas, classic pictures, nature scenes and old houses; how important is time and place for you in the music as a whole?
My thought was that, if people relate to the absurd, beautiful and nostalgic moments strung together in the Western Spaghetti video, they may be able to connect to the foundation upon which the song’s lyrical content was built. Film in this case, is just another vehicle to explore complex themes music can sometimes evoke. As for anyone who didn’t catch the underlying themes of the song itself, Western Spaghetti is a nostalgic look at the contrast between childhood ambitions and reality. It juxtaposes my childhood ambitions of reaching the gorgeous Pacific coast on my own accord and hard work with the actual tour I did from coast to coast using music as a means to support myself. The dream and the reality were obviously different but very much alike and beautiful in their own rights. It was my hope and the hope of Blackbear and The Surf Bums [Ricky Hamilton, Jared Chapman and Carter Luckfield] that the video and song together could paint the gray area between naiveté and reality and if one person in this magnificent world got that, we will all be tremendously elated.
Blackbear & The Surf Bums' follow-up EP to El Año Del Surf will be available October 25 via Bandcamp.
QUARTERBACKS have resurrected their Miscreant Records release, Loveseat, on limited cassette from Double Double Whammy. The team of Dean Engle, Thom Christie and Max Restaino form a huddle and return with modern classics that give the 9 yard kickoff of the invitational exhibition of, “Point Nine”. The title track “Loveseat” presents the over self-awareness and nervousness full of idiotic optimism and the New Paltz group's shamblecore sound. The guitars and lovesick in the loveseat songs continue on “Stay in Luv”, and the jittering life plan deficiency lamentation, “Simple Songs”.
QUARTERBACKS have also nailed the condensed-economy minded punk vignettes that take on the growing pains of adulthood, responsibility and more, like on “Twenty”, “Don't Wanna”, “Never Go”. And though the songwriting thrives on acknowledging all the blemishes and shortcomings of the self but operates, the drive always is motivated by that glimmer of chance and this idea that everything great in life is possible. Their aims rings true on “Space”, “Invitation”, and “Lauren”, where the unending affinity for significant others lost, or ones that never were are placed on the pedestal of constant goddess worship. But never do they ever drop their indie punk cred, where the guitars gear out the very sound of affinity and lyrics that are at times completely dumb on purpose like on, “Schmictionary”, and “Last Boy”. Their upbeat “who loves you baby” and self-referential “writing songs about girls” stands as the band's raison d'être where their energy is going steady but their style is loose.
When news of the re-release broke, we tracked down Dean Engle to talk about the band's origins, getting all emotional over football, and all about the New Paltz scene.
How did the QUARTERBACKS trio first begin?
I've known Max and Tom for a long time but we didn't all play music together until we formed a Star Wars-themed hardcore band called Ken Griffey Junior with our friend Andy, who is now in a cool band called Sex Dream. That band played a few shows locally and then inexplicably opened for WAVVES in an old opera house and then broke up. I missed playing music with Max and Tom, and I had a pile of songs I'd written back in 2009, so I asked if they wanted to be a band and play those songs. And because we live in upstate New York and there's nothing else to do, they said yes.
How did you choose the name QUARTERBACKS? Was it like banter over Sunday Night, Monday Night, or Thursday night football kind of thing?
The name's been rolling around since I first started a band in middle school, and it was picked pretty arbitrarily from a text message full of potential names I sent to my first QBs bandmate. So: not very intentional. But now, 4 years into using it as the name for my music, I've started to care about it. I have a complicated relationship with NFL football and, specifically, the Buffalo Bills, a team with chronic QB troubles. I know football's a macho, shitty, exploitative thing, but I get really emotional about the games unfortunately. There's a Bills flag above my bed. No one in this band has ever played any kind of contact sport, so maybe it's a reclamation thing. All boy punks want to be jocks right. I'm watching the Thursday night game as I type this.
Romanticism plays a big part in your jangly lo-fi DIY sound from “Never Go”, “Space”, “Lauren”, etc. How do you all come together with this poppy fun little song vignettes?
I've been teaching myself guitar for something like seven years and I'm still so so bad. I just play the easiest chords and move the capo around and strum really fast. I'll play the same four chords over and over for a year and a half before a song falls out. The only good ones are about real stuff. “Never Go” was just me three years ago trying to write a twee song so we don't play it anymore. “Lauren” is about a friend I met at an Episcopalian youth conference in San Antonio, Texas. We play that song at every show even though I wrote it when I was 17. Maybe that's bad.
What's happening in New Paltz these days?
New Paltz has a long cool DIY history, but because it's a college town the collective memory sort of gets reset every semester. The show basements stay the same, the 'venue' names just change when someone new signs the lease. Kids have started booking on campus. We have shows outside of the record store where I work. There are shows at the library sometimes. People play acoustic sets in my apartment. It's improvised and unprofitable, just in it for the tunes, etc. More bands have started stopping here when they're on tour, but overall it's a pretty insular place.
QUARTERBACKS' re-released tape Loveseat is available on tape in a batch limited to 100 from Double Double Whammy.
It's been a few years, and at long last we are proud to present the return of Nima Kazerouni and his band, So Many Wizards. Have just caught up with Mr. Kazerouni after a long while, we discussed the previous album Warm Nothing, and Nima's side project Crown Plaza, when he hipped us to the forthcoming Night Chills / Daydream So Many Wizards 7” coming in November from new LA indie pop label, Lolipop Records. Now with a home in Tucson, AZ and a newborn baby girl; Nima has been working between Southern California, Arizona and everywhere in between that has contributed greatly the development expansions of his sound. With the new addition of Melody Carrillo's guitars, Erik Felix's drums and Devon Ratliff's bass lines; So Many Wizards cast spells that reach regions further than the extent of Merlin's shooting star like spells, and greater than all the land that King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table could ever capture and control.
The b-side “Daydream” opens with an awakened Nima exclaiming, “oh my god, where did the day go”, with a sleepy-eyed exclaimed whispered. The visions held tight to the awakened mind bring the half-panicked quandaries of piecing together fragments of thought, and the process of self-psychiatry that attempt to figure out what and why is going on within them. As Nima repeatedly states “I don't know what to do”, and the reasonable doubts of “what's wrong with me”; the romantic heart and core comes out with, “oohh, oh I need you”.
We spend a lot specifying a particular music concept to certain Seasons and times of year depending on our own individual time cognisant receptors. Time here exists as something almost immaterial, while the geography spaces from the sounds of roads traveled tell of these places through the dusty billows of auditory allusions. The guitars glow as if bathed in the Southwestern glow that follows those roadways between Arizona and California sunsets. The slow smoke sails of the guitar patterns, and sifting back up support rings of the definitive of LA West Coast indie core that connects scenes and sounds running from LA to San Diego. However, those deep pluming expansions of head-spaces presents Nima and company on a scale that is larger than ever that reaches from every sea corner to every sun shine-waking daydream.
We had the pleasure to catch up with Nima Kazerouni, as we follow the long trails and traveled roads that embody the “Daydream”, the evolutions and progressions of life, bouncing between LA and Tucson, and all about the newest and upcoming chapters from So Many Wizards.
From the guitar progression, your delivery, and love-drunk, twitterpation on the track; what is “Daydream” to you personified by sound?
All those elements play a huge part in sinking deep into the song. The sludgy repetitive guitar progression is like a hypnotic sound pendulum and when I daydream, I find that I’m thinking about the same thing over and over again. The heavy fast pace strumming that comes in half way in the track is like that jolt that sometimes takes you out of that repetitive thought and onto to the next tangent. This song is basically my typical daydream cycle in sound form.
The echoes play such a big part in the song, almost taking on a life of their own. What are the challenges of creating other worldly, daydreaming music?
There's always a fine line when using reverb, echos and other effects. Every song is unique and calls for what it calls for and it's basically a balancing act between effectively accentuating what you're trying to convey and avoiding interference with all the other elements next to each other.
How has your recent family expansion, moving from LA to Tucson, AZ impacted the “oohh I need you” romanticism of the track?
Moving from LA to the foothills of Tucson AZ turned me into a person with two lives; half the time a family man in the country and the other an urban gypsy staying in many different housing scenarios and situations. The constant going back and forth created a habitual and simultaneous yearning for both sides of the coin.
In what ways does the b-side “Daydream” give us hints of things to come for the follow up to Warm Nothing?
Daydream definitely drops major hints on the direction and sound we've been building upon. I'm pretty thrilled because we've zeroed in on a sounded we're all really stoked on. This follow up will definitely be a defining one for us.
How does the rest of the band feel about the move?
The rest of the band has been understanding and supportive. Huge efforts have been made to keep the band seamlessly chugging along despite the many technical obstacles that have come our way. I think the bottom line is we love this project so we'll do whatever it takes to keep it going; even if in the last year it meant having to figure out the logistics of flying over 30 round-trip flights and driving thousands of miles back and forth. But this craziness thankfully is finally over. I just moved back to Long Beach 3 weeks ago so things with the band are much easier to accomplish.
How has the move impacted the recording of the upcoming record, balancing between home recording in Tucson and at The Smell and elsewhere in LA?
We basically had to be much more strategic with our time. Whenever I was in L.A, we would go 150 % for days straight getting drums bass and lead guitar tracked. Thankfully, we had the support of our friends at the Smell and elsewhere to record at a moment’s notice. We couldn't have done it without them. Taking the recordings back to Tucson allowed the songs to breathe before working on them further. That part of it definitely came to our advantage.
Give us the lowdown on fledgling label, Lolipop Records.
We are more than stoked to be part of that family. Lolipop continues to consistently put out some of the raddest bands not only in Southern California, but all over the country. Their new record store in Echo Park has also become a staple in the neighborhood. It's right by Echoplex on Glendale Blvd. We highly recommend checking out both the store and the label.
Brooklyn's Such Hounds proudly premiere an exclusive advance listen to their I Hate Summer EP before it's release September 30 from The Sleepover Party. Referring to their sound as 'thick folk', the quartet of Matt Martin, Sean Kraft, Matt Giordano, and Ross Anderson inflate the confidence of cues from trad rock beginnings to today's stages stretched across the dives and performance halls of NYC boroughs.
Like greyhounds hitting the track running, the Hounds kick it off with The Devil and Daniel Webster-like-galloping crossroads of “Sold My Soul”. The race builds to a bit built up jam out where the band breaks into a chorus of “whoaaas” where the feeling of 'anything can happen next' permeates the song's atmosphere. Kicking into the next gear, “Too Late” keeps the clock racing while beating lap records with pub rock “la las” and energy that keeps things riding high with hopes set even higher. Such optimism revives with a familiar freshness, where the title track throws a wet blanket on the season of so-called fun, with the title anthem anchor, “I Hate Summer”. Docking at the energetic dock harbor on “The Other Side”, the EP slowly slips into the alluring guitar chime of the caterwaul guitar ether of “In The Night”.
By the closer I began to reflect how Matt Martin and crew develop these lasting sounds that are not just embedded on all 5 tracksof I Hate Summer but are also etched into your mind afterward. With souls steeped in the tradition of troubadours, they present the sound of the modern condition, an irritable dissatisfaction that keeps on trucking in the ongoing attempts to plot points on life's road maps with a contemporary New York groove.
Matt talked with us about the birth of the band, hot miserable NYC summers, behind the scenes recording stories, and the beautiful future of Such Hounds.
So first, why the name Such Hounds?
When we first started playing music together we ran under the name High & Tired. We eventually decided to shed that name and 'Hounds' was an idea we kept coming back to, but there were already a couple of punk bands around using it. A lot of people might not peg us for this, but we're all big fans of metal music. A few of us used to play in metal bands and the majority of our best buds are metal-heads. It was that world which led us to Such Hounds, as it's a bit of an homage to all the the heavy psychedelic bands out there including Dead Meadow who have a track called “Such Hawks Such Hounds.”
In titling the EP I Hate Summer, what is it about the season of sun that you all hate?
It's easy for everyone to love on any impending season, it's a chance to turn things around and a new opportunity do all of the shit you didn't get to do the year prior. The anticipation of Summer is always huge and why shouldn't it be. Beaches, BBQ's, beers, all rad things, but when Summer actually arrives it's usually a rude awakening. Most of the weekends are slept away under a cloud of hangovers. Your apartment is hot as shit and your motivation to venture out into the streets is at an all time low. There's a crippling pressure to live summer like it should be lived, but were not those people and were not capable of those things. We're not telling summer to fuck off entirely, we're just done with the charades.
From “Sold My Soul” to the heart baring “In The Night”, what were the writing and recording sessions for these songs and the whole EP like?
We recorded the EP entirely ourselves so there was a lot of learning along the way. From recording the drums in tiny, un-airconditioned vocal booth in the height of summer to tracking the guitars in our bandmate's basement just moments before a torrential downpour flooded the entire place. Maybe next time we will make it easier on ourselves and get all fancy…or maybe we won't! If we didn't go through all of the ups and downs involved in the DIY recording I don't think we would be as psyched on this EP as we are now!
Session for a full-length in the works?
Fuck yeah there is going to be a full length! We've got some material in the works now and we are constantly trying write new stuff and be productive.
Any word on what the full-length will sound like?
Who knows? As a band we try not to get caught up in a “sound” because then you develop expectations of yourself. It's better to just see how things unfold. Compared to our previous release, we see I Hate Summer as an exciting step forward for us. We are psyched to see what the next set of songs end up sounding like.
Most exciting things about Brooklyn these days?
We're still trying to figure that out.
Predictions and prospects for 2014?
2014 is going to be rad. We'll definitely be doing some touring and hopefully putting out some new tracks. We have a few ideas that we are sitting on that we hope to have out in late 2014 in one form or another.
Check out Such Hounds' Mark A. Smith video for “Sold My Soul”, giving you moonlit bicycle rides and moving narratives surrounding wild night life antics.
Dudley Perkins and Madlib are coming at you with the video for “State of Emergency”, where SomeOthaShip is connecting up with friends Mello Music Group bringing you some conscious gold from the Golden State's finest folks. Telling you “the writing is on the wall” and that “the walls of Babylon are falling down”, dropping the following word of warning to the wise; “Prepare for Dr. Stokley. A new album is in the works for this winter.”
And speaking of SomeOthaShip, coming straight off the mothership of the future is our hero Georgia Anne Muldrow as Jyoti, giving you some pizazz lo-fi snazz with the cut “Optimus Prime”. Reaffirming why Georgia is one of our most favorite singers and visionaries around, we are pleased to anounce the forthcoming of her new album Denderah available September 24.
From the ashes of DD/MM/YY, Matt King and company crash the cosmo vibes with the new vehicle, Absolutely Free into the still life audio impressionism and moments of observation with the On the Beach / Clothed Woman, Sitting 12″. Available October 29 through a cooperation between Lefse Records, One Big Silence, and Fat Possum; listen to the flip-side cut “Clothed Woman, Sitting” dives into a voyeur like observation of beach life. But this audio portrait pulls you in through the rhythmic construction arrangement that brings you into the bar building patterns of details sung like rays of illuminous sun.
With Sarah P. and RPR's new album At Home available now from Cascine, Keep Shelly In Athens prepares to set off on an October tour with labelmate Chad Valley, releasing the video for “Recollection”. Directed by Lamar + Nik, a hovering bubble follows actress Nina Wegrzyn-Van Zant around an abandoned building that brings remembrances of roads walked, lives past and left memories of youth. Gymnaisums, classrooms, and vacant indoor pulls stand like a haunted picture book of ghostly memories tagged with a graffiti representative of time's passage through the old school halls called history.
Cuushe on their second album, Butterfly Case is here to knock you off your feet. Taking notes from the directions of numerous contemporaries that read like the lists of the experimental-breakthrough acts that your favorite alt periodicals, sites and what have all been trying to claim some originality 'dibs' on bringing it to you first. Get ready to listen as the previous hypnotic atmospherics are sent you straight down the tunneled halls and viaducts where they present a kind of harmonic resonance in the world's continued survey into the audio institutionalized academia of translating the study of air into pop music. The new Cuushe light-flight of sonic fancy, Butterfly Case, is available now from one of Japans finest, Flau.
Xiu Xiu is prepping an album of Nina Simone covers for release December 3 from Graveface Records. With a listen to his wild, jazz-dodging take on “Don't Smoke in Bed”, Jamie Stewart provided the following statement behind the project:
“The idea came being back stage in Austin TX, opening for Swans and feeling like I did not play well. Michael Gira and I had the night before talked about our mutual love for Nina Simone and how her intensity and crazy political truthfulness always pushed us to try harder. After watching the Swans that night and knowing the difficult ups and downs of their history and now their epic and beautiful persistence, they made me want to try harder as well. Nina Simone’s singing is way over my head and while I was back stage feeling like i blew it that night, hearing the swans be amazing and thinking of Nina made me want to not give up. The idea came from wanting to honor her, challenge myself to be better than I think I can be and to say thank you to music. Ches Smith is the only person i know who could understand this in his heart and also handle the technical side of fearlessly reorienting such wonderful music.”
Mark Berg of Tropic Harbour follows up his single debut of “Golden Rays” with the video for “Colour”. The Keenan Kirk video takes over exposed shots of nature, waterways, harbors and street scenes to create a kaleidoscopic array of emotion laden colors. Listen for more tropical colors and harbors via Mark's Bandcamp, and let the seascapes whisk you away for a few minutes from your stressful day.
With Kitsuné bringing Jacques Renault, Gigamesh, Tesla Boy, Beataucue, Justin Miller, Moon Boots, and more to TomorrowWorld Festival 2013 this weekend on September 27, 28, 29; get your listen to the BeatauCue curated mix to get you all attracted, attractive and pumped.
Providing you with some substance from midway down the water's length is Midlake's new single “Provider” off their upcoming Antiphon album available November 5 from ATO Records. Memorable moments include lines like “follow me down a foxhole in the ground, don't delay”, where the guitars break against the understated percussion core organ key sustain.
Joe Tunmer directs the Acquaintance great-out-doors-mirror-blockhead video for “Telepathic” off the forthcoming Parapsychology EP from Anti-Ghost Moon Ray Records. Wander into the future, reflected and get reflected, find that cabin and get into the psychic secrets of the great world you thought you knew but never really knew until now. Find yourself, or find you other self as you move to the mellow dance beat glow like a sun streaked azure day.
Get a look at the Kill Yourself Dancing mini-documentary that tells the story of Matt Warren and Miguel Garcia from 1985 to 1989 via Sunset Records Inc. ahead of the compilation retrospective's release October 15 from Still Music.
Next up is the Bang the Box! mini-documentary that shows us what happens after Matt Warren left Sunset Records and founded AKA Dance Music, where Chicago dance music and the dawning of 'house' would never be the same. Also look or this comp dropping live from Still Music on October 15.
Brooklyn's Morgan Neiman, aka Ducky brings news of an upcoming single “U Turn Me Up”, dropping October 15 with remixes from Fort Romeau and Suzi Analogue that turns you up, turns the noise down and leaves “sneakers by the sea”.
(photo by Ringo)
Hannah Lew of Grass Widow is also Cold Beat, that approaches the catharsis of coping with life's difficult dark tunnels through the garage pop spectacular of “Worms”. Dropping the EP on Hannah's freshly established imprint, Crime On The Moon, November 5. The single comes courtesy of courtesy of a few of Lew's friends from Kyle King, Lillian Maring, Cody Blanchard, remixes from POW!, and our hero from Total Control, Mikey Young. Travel though the wormholes, and enjoy this Bay Area all star gathering.
Throwing some piano lined “Fuel to Fire”, Agnes Obel brings news of her upcoming album Aventine, slated for release on October 1 from Play It Again Sam. Obel's vocals wrap flames around the assembly of strings as notes and keys underscore and add kindling to the song's emotional weight.
With their Power Punch record available from Brownswood Recordings and on tour with Atoms for Peace, Owiny Sigoma Band gave us a taste of “Sunken Wrecks” performed Live at Village Underground with extra doses of energy.
Moonstone Continuum dropped the visuals for “Hors D’oeuvres” fresh off the recent Salon Edition LP available from Totally Gross National Product. Look and listen as the 6-piece Continuum gives you some smooth slice of slick vibes from yesterday's sentiments and winter moods for Fall.
Marbeya Sound, dropped their ITO video for “Semantic Drift”, off their debut Colonies album, giving you a ride through Mexico City along with Amecameca, Mexico in the prime of evening time.
Welcome to the “Solar Plexus”, courtesy of Hollow & Akimbo (aka the duo of Jon Visger and Brian Konicek) who give you the journey through the light valence quadrants, off their Pseudoscience EP, available October 1 from Quite Scientific Records.
Black Milk is currently on the No Poison No Paradise tour for his upcoming album of the same name accompanied by Quelle Chris and DJ Sober, giving you a listen to the album cut, “Dismal', ahead of it's release October 15 from Fat Beats. Listen as Quelle keeps the beats dropping like rain drops in a bucket while Milk stays on point.
Ripped from the heavy heart of dystopian ruins everywhere, Raime delivered “Soil And Colts” off their debut album, Quarter Turns Over A Living Line, available November 19 from Blackest Ever Black.
Made while stuck in an airport lounge, our friend Elliott Baker sent us his new CC/NN track, “Stand By” that presents the pensive form of waiting in auditory anticipation. The rhythm sequence creates the nervous time tick of standing by your appointed airline and flight schedule, as the whoosh of synths mimic the turbines of home-bound jets preparing their flight plan itineraries.
TRAAMS delivered the B-side “Foxes” off, their 7″ single with the A-side “Flowers”, from the album Grin out now on FatCat. The track takes off like a locomotive taking off a train from Chichester, UK and through every pub dive on the way. The trams TRAAMS takes the steady tube route of only the most skipping of rhythmic progressions that warrants multiple listens in vain attempts to exhaust it's infectious nature.
We bring together the sonic-chillsster trinity of Neil Halstead, Mark Van Hoen, and Nick Holton, otherwise known as Black Hearted Brother, dropped their new single “This Is How It Feels” that floats in like twinkling starlight. Ligning up guitar sky burst like constellation dots, “Feels” reaches into those places in the nervous system where sensation has not been dulled and frayed. BHB's debut album, Stars Are Our Home will be available October 22 from Slumberland Records / Sonic Cathedral.
Connan Mockasin sent word of his upcoming Caramel album coming our ways November 4 Mexican Summer / Phantasy Sound. “I'm The Man, That Will Find You”
Jump in the action comic with Castle, and get oriented with the cut, “Orientation” off his Gasface album available now from Mello Music Group.
Break the cycle, with Iron Reagan's metal-skull-crushing tele-tube video, “Cycle of Violence” directed by Dave Brodsky, from their debut album, Worse Than Dead, available from A389 Recordings and Magic Bullet Records.
Listen and peep the “Odyssey” lyric video from The Wyld taken from upcoming Abstract EP that combines the prosodic prowess of Mo and Brandon Black's melodic textures to drive the story forward.
Ain't nothing like a basement recording of Chicago's esteemed throne-watchers, Smith Westerns, as they drop an echo-y version of “3am Spiritual” before they head out on a November tour with Sky Ferreira. Maybe it's us, but the Westerns have always sounded best at their most unpolished. Find this single on their tour only 7″, dates are posted here.
TEEN give you a wild synth listen to Teeny Lieberson's shining, Daniel Schlett produced cut that sends voice going through that light flashing pop sound void that Lieberson, sisters and friends do so well. Get the single from iTunes October 8, and look for TEEN performing at CMJ, with their follow-up to the full-length In Limbo and Carolina EP in the works.
Off his tape The Golden Age, Funk Volume's own Dizzy Wright tells you what to tell 'em in the Armen Soudjian video for “Tellem My Name”.
So leave it to Lucy Schwartz, to dress up her dog Banjo in the following humorous video for “Boomerang” off her new album Timekeeper. So get it into the big bag, kick with these pooches, bust out the dishes, and get the “boom, boom” chant started.
Got “Out To Lunch” with Jay Arner and his Second Life-ish 3D avatar where his line about “I'm just dreaming big” takes on new animated levels of surreality. Watch as Jay, bandmates and co are pulled into the digital parallax of digital filmmaker for hire; Fred Spencer. Stay tuned after the video for a special infomercial from Fred himself. Jay Arner's self-titled is available now from Mint Records.
We had the opportunity to catch up with the man behind the video, Fred Spencer, who wrote us the following on translating the Jay Arner's “Out To Lunch” by taking the traditional music video approach into the art direction of something out of the pantheon of a Dire Straits' “Money For Nothing” style avatar rendering with the newer technologies of Second Life-esque surreality.
“The lyrics drew me to the images I created in the production of this video. In my mind I saw a love relationship which had gone wrong and I had the sense that the proponents would like to reconcile. This couple seemed to want to get to the ‘nest building’ stage of their relationship, or possibly to return to that phase after a period of separation. In the end I wanted to leave the viewer with the feeling that there was hope for reconciliation, hence the final beach scene.”
And as promised, here is the Tim & Eric worthy informercial from your new Canadian pal, Fred Spencer, that begs the question, “Who Needs a Movie?”. Check out his site, at Fred and Sharon Movies.
Melbourne, Australia artist James Wallace, aka Coloured Clocks sent a cable to our Bay Area offices with his latest recording, “Tell Her About The Gig”. Wallace dreams up a hazy song about spreading the hype, and getting the word out about gigs that buries beautiful piano notes somewhere within the eye of the swirling guitar storm.
The Ocean Blue dropped the video for “Ground Gives Way” off their Ultramarine LP available from Korda Records and via vinyl on Shelflife Records. After nearly 2 decades, Ocean Blue gives way the ground to a new future where new technologies provide effects on vocals, visuals, synths and the sound of amplified guitar strings.
Peep Bangs' Allie Avital Tsypin MOCAtv video for the ultra haute-bourgeois-ballroom video for Autre Ne Veut's “Ego Free Sex Free” off the Software Recordings disc, Anxiety.
Former Phenomenal Handclap Band man Quinn Luke, aka Bing Ji Ling, sent his “Everyone's a Winner” cover out to all synth strewn corners of the world, ahead of his album Por Cada Nube slated for release November 4 from RAK Records.
Chicago's Colette gets physical on the head thumping dance number, “Physically”, taken from her album When the Music's Loud available from Candy Talk Records.
Off the Primitive EP coming October 8 from Apollo Records, Makoto mess up your dance mix and takes you to the dawning of rhythmic times to present and then back again. How does he do it?
Holly Miranda gave out a “Desert Call” from one of her new single available October 1 from Federal Prism. Listen as Holly's vocals carry themselves like tumbleweeds through arid landscapes of desolation in search of comfort and maybe the nearest watering hole.
Watch All the Colours get tarred and feathered in performance pop spectacle in the Guy Franklin video for, “Shame”.
Get a listen to the double headed metallic snake drone attack with “BB-2” and flip-side “BB2-8”, off the single from 3:33's Bicameral Brain available October 29 from Parallel Thought. From intercepted cable leaked blaring sustains on the former to the ambient hunting adventurism on “BB2-8”; 3:33 more than ever is working in a sound ripped from the audio for film canisters that create a kind of horror and suspense that even vintage cult comparisons fail in comparative translated word relays.
Get your club on to the Little Boots remixing Adeline Michèle on Escort's “Caberet”, a single that dropped this week featuring reworkings from Jacques Renault, and Tippy Toes.
Ghost Wave get acoustic on you, dropping the unplugged and unchained rendering of, “Here She Comes”, originally found off their debut from Flying Nun Records via Captured Tracks.
LODRO gives us the lording noise cruiser cut, “If Life Was Like A Movie”, b/w “Snake Song” coming October 22 from Tracer Sounds.
Bay Area by Colorado's Lynx bangs the drum, sparks up the bright lights, “Light Up Your Lantern”, giving you the title cut video off the album of the same name available October 22.
CocoRosie's Bianca Casady released the video for “Gravediggress” that presents the interpretive dance moves of Biño Sauitzvy performing about Southern France. Their new album Tales Of A GrassWidow is available now.
More from KELELA, helping you “Keep It Cool” and real off the October 1 slated release CUT 4 ME from Fade to Mind.
We have your guitar-tinged cut, “Own Appeal”, that will twist your head around to way back when, and then right back to today and now from the man himself, Oddisee. The track is lifted from his upcoming Tangible Dream tape available as an exclusive with his upcoming instrumental disc, The Beauty In All available from Mello Music Group on October 1.
Salva dropped his “Power 106 FM Jump Off Mix”, after playing dates with DJ Shadow, bringing all those hip LA beats you crave.
Deptford Goth's Daniel Woolhouse gives you a “Bloody Lip” in the visual lifted from his Life After Defo album from PIAS. Embrace your inner elder, and sing along to the strange almost brainwashed karaoke lyric reciting sequencing.
Pedro Maia brings Tropic of Cancer's Sacred Bones album cover from Restless Idylls to super 8 light captured life, in the video for the mood casting melodies of “Plant Lilies At My Head”.
The Drums' Jonny Pierce brings a rhythmic slice of “Home”, from the forthcoming Kitsuné Maison 15 available October 21, joined by the likes of Years & Years, Chela, Portland, and The Swiss.
Wet brought the Brooklyn night-chill-pop beat with “No Lie” from their October 15 slated self-titled EP debut from Neon Gold Records.
Tape Deck Mountain takes you into the guitar gilded palaces of other places, other times, on his track “Half Life” from the the upcoming album, Sway, available October 1 from Nineteen98. With a sound that strikes with the power and lasting potency measured in half-lives; Travis Trevisan breaks through with a sound that rings with the sound of myriad cassette consoles piled on top of each other en masse.
To be touring this November with Quilt, Vermont fringe folksters, Happy Jawbone Family Band get really bleary, sedated and strange on tracer lensed Mercer West vdeo for “Stay-at-Home-Soldier”, off the forthcoming self-titled full-length available October 15 from Mexican Summer. Luke Csehak presents the video with the following thesis paragraph.
“This is our Brattleboro song for the album. It's about my life as a stay-at-home soldier. Don't worry, a stay-at-home soldier doesn't kill anybody. They don't even leave the house. They just sit around, slowly perfecting themselves. It's actually not as easy as you think it might be. There are many pitfalls to the life of a stay-at-home soldier, and the pay is shit. But in the end, it is one of the more rewarding careers available to the youth of today.”
Lose control and celebrate it through song with NYC's The Dig, on “You And I Lost Control”, ahead of their upcoming, You and I EP available October 22 from Buffalo Jump Records.
About to tour with Young Galaxy, Mister Lies put together the following Autumn Hymnal (a mix) to further embrace our transition to Fall. Nick Zanca wrote the following blurb about the mix:
“Since I was little i’ve always had a spiritual connection with the autumn season. Working on the second Mister Lies LP in vermont while the leaves change color has definitely rekindled that love, inspiring me in a brand new way… so I thought i’d celebrate it’s coming and its concurrency with my tour with an hour long mix. included are some songs by artists that I've had the pleasure of collaborating with lately, two Mowgli remixes and a b-side (the title track that didn’t make the cut because of a an unsuccessful sample clearance), and music that I’ve been just plain loving as of late. I hope you enjoy this little thing I put together while you wait for new material.”
Get a listen to Young Galaxy's second disc from the deluxe version of Ultramarine available now from Paper Bag Records. Listen as the Galaxy takes on your new wave memories now, and catch them on tour with Mister Lies.
Future Twin are playing the 1851 est. Smiley's Saloon in Bolinas, California; Friday, October 18 with Devotionals, featuring Tyson Vogel of Two Gallants, and Dyllan Hersey. Check the deets on the above flyer that showcases 'Bucky Fuller's tetrahedral floating city in the middle of San Francisco Bay', courtesy of Aaron Bray. You can also catch Future Twin in SF at Vesuvio's in North Beach, October 13 for A Fair to Remember in Jack Kerouac Alley, also playing Hemlock Tavern November 26 with their Fantasy Studios-Reto Peter recorded album Wavelength Sovereignty coming soon, with their video for “We're Here” on the way.
