Posted on 30 July 2010
Mirroring a post title from earlier this week (via Real Estate), here’s one angled toward the sundown new wave electro-pop of ‘Gum Bowl teamer Elizabeth Harper and her Class Actress project, and a session filed for the Daytrotter crew: Herein you’ll find two from the still-lascivious Journal Of Ardency EP (the title track and “Careful What You Say,” mislabeled “Careful What You Ask For”), along with a pair slated for its full-length followup, due this year. They have names (“Love Me” and “All The Saints”), analog synths, lots of promise, and in the case of “Saints,” a Raymond Carver reference. Here’s what we talk about when we talk about downloading them at Daytrotter.
Posted on 30 July 2010
Tracey Thorn released her solo LP Love And Its Opposite in May, and now she’s recruited a diverse list of remixers for a digital-only companion EP. Included on the EP is a remix by WALLS — bloggers Sam Willis and Alessio Natalizia (they have an album out on Kompact, so it’s not just bloggers dabbling). (Nothing wrong with that, though). Check their minimalist, spacious version of “Kentish Town”:
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Posted on 28 July 2010
Nice to see swine flu hasn’t roughed up the smooth, lacquered baritone of Mr. Lekman. Just a bit after giving us some Summer In 3/4 Time, though still without full word on an album to kill the anticipation, Jens drops a new single titled, typically lyrically, “The End Of The World Is Bigger Than Love.” He has a way with words, both within and without the track, so — listen and download, then read his background explanation.
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Posted on 28 July 2010
So far we’ve heard “Lights” and “Barricade” from Interpol’s upcoming self-titled fourth collection. The guys stay mopey and mid-tempo on “Memory Serves,” which you can hear over at The Hook (Thanks for the tip, Kunal).
Interpol is out in 9/14 via Matador.
Posted on 28 July 2010
Despite booking a series of metal shows in Brooklyn, I’m not really a show promoter, but when a particular tour or invented/imagined potential lineup seems particularly amazing, I pretend to be one and figure out how to make it happen. Which is why I teamed with Brooklyn Vegan to do the Altar Of Plagues show on Sunday, am working with Blackened Music/ISSUE Project Room on the Swans’ Masonic Temple show this fall, and recently sponsored Nachtmystium’s first North American headlining tour. Today I’m announcing another sponsored first North American tour, Triptykon’s debut jaunt to the continent. Amazing. As the metal amongst you will know, Triptykon is the post-Celtic Frost project of Tom G. Warrior and the Swiss band’s “debut” Eparistera Daimones — one of the year’s best by far — is a monster. The “Weltenbrand Tour 2010″ features Warrior & Co. with technical Norwegian black metal stalwarts/experimentalists 1349 and Chicago progressive metal crew (and authors of another of the year’s best albums, Of Seismic Consequence) Yakuza. Haunting The Chapel’s co-presenting it with Decibel, who co-presented the High On Fire tour with me. Check out the dates after you read Warrior’s thoughts on the trek.
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Posted on 27 July 2010
As suggested by a pair of previously posted Cerulean tracks, Baths, aka 21-year-old post-[Post-Foetus] Los Angeles resident Will Wiesenfeld, has a way with weird tempos and off-kilter pop-falsetto harmonies. If you didn’t pick that up last time, here’s an example via another complexly catchy/electronically soulful album tune, “Lovely Bloodflow.” (Note: The tUnE-YarDs-esque face paint suggests an aesthetic link that’s more than skin-deep.)
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Posted on 26 July 2010
“Heathen Child” is the sweaty fourth single from Grinderman’s forthcoming sophomore album, Grinderman 2. In addition to this bluesy thumb-sucking album version, you’ll find a limited-edition Kanye-approved 12″ with “Super Heathen Child,” a rendition that includes a guitar solo from King Crimson ace Robert Fripp. I can only imagine how his solo compliments Nick Cave’s intellectually lascivious (and just plain ‘ol lusty) bathtub sermonizing. (Also: The single art’s worth a curious eyeballing.)
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Posted on 26 July 2010
Princeton, NJ producer and ’80s nostalgia maker Com Truise produces a fully formed, fully formidable take on what people have resorted to calling chillwave, at a time when people are resolving to avoid any new artists that make anything resembling chillwave. True, we have enough. Though you have to make room for something if it transcends the tics, which is what Seth Haley (Com’s name proper) does, with his love of ’80s brass, hypnagogic haze and the soothing balm of hissing synths and luxuriously funky bass lines. Think Washed Out crossed with Neon Indian, if you haven’t thought about those dudes enough. And if Ernest and Alan are already on your playlists, which they probably are, then just think of this track as the entrance point to a worthwhile, free, five-track EP called Cyanide Sisters from an unsigned guy who will soon be signed, and soon be remixing his colleagues. It’s possible that Bundick, Greene, and Palomo may need to make room a little more room in their mindmeld wave pool.
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Posted on 26 July 2010
A couple of weeks ago José González’s rock trio Junip posted a free download of their four-song Rope & Summit EP. That was just a taste: The psychedelic Swedish folk-rock trio’s full-length Fields is out 9/14. It’s where you’ll find “Always,” a song they just upped to MySpace. The mellow track’s released tomorrow (7/27) as a digital single.
Posted on 26 July 2010
Philly’s Pakistani band-of-brothers POPO opened a show with Wavves and Real Estate at Bowery last summer, playing too early to make the review though I did note the then-trio had “a 7? out on Mad Decent, a couple of MP3s on RCRD LBL, and a MySpace page that after a quick listen will bring to mind the Black Lips or the Germs or various other strains of garage punk stuff,” and that we’d likely hear more from them because, like the rest of the bill, they “trade(d) in fuzz and reverb” at a time when that’s all anybody felt like talking about.
I finally did catch POPO, just a few weeks ago, playing a set at Glasslands after Shannon Funchess’s Light Asylum (a project I like a lot and should have a few posts on this site by now); this was a very different POPO though, with one less brother in tow and no instruments away from a table full of laptops, sequencers, and the typical et ceterals. This new single, “Bummer Summer,” splits the difference between POPO past and present: dingy hissy moans, thin guitars, a simple programmed beat with a lot of garage scuzz to the bass and some summer/raga to the vocals. It’s hot-season pop, for sure, a sweaty smile of laptop grunge. Grab away. (via RCRD LBL)
