Interestingly enough, I had the pleasure of seeing both Battles and Don Caballero play within a few months of each other last year at the ol’ music venue I used to help book and promote. This is significant as guitarist Ian Williams (pictured above, courtesy of Radio Free Chicago) brought his non-soloing fingertap riffage to Don Cab for years before Battles, and conventional lore suggests that the disbanding of the original Don Caballero lineup was not pretty. So the venue’s other talent buyer and I joked that Battles might have been supremely bummed if they knew we were playing the field with two of our favorite math rockers. If they read this blog, I guess they know now. Me and my big mouth.
Anyway, if you haven’t seen Battles yet, you can get a quick sample of their live show with the recently released (albeit on the other side of the world) EP Lives. Continue reading ‘Battles – “Tonto” and “Bad Trails” Live’
I love the new self-titled album by Women. It’s currently available on the near flawless Jagjaguwar label, and since it’s based in Bloomington, serves as possibly the only really awesome thing about Indiana. As you can see, Women is (presumably) four dudes. Sausage fest!
I was introduced to Women (that sounds so odd) by a fellow Tiny Mix Tapes writer who proclaimed that Women is prefect for anyone who “gets their dick up to Animal Collective.” I was certainly intrigued after that statement, especially since he said the word “dick.” And while I would concur that the Calgary band sometimes evokes the more menacing material on Here Comes the Indian and Danse Manitee, Women are by no means a knock-off. Whereas Animal Collective has always exuded a playfulness and childlike veneer, here be dragons within Women. The crescendo of the excellently titled “Lawncare” wants to pillage your village and breed with your women (pun intended, motherfucker). Continue reading ‘Women Shatter Glass Ceilings, Eardrums, Et Al.’
A while ago, I impulsively picked up this comp at the Wicker Park area Reckless Records. When I approached the counter, the clerk, temporarily abandoning the general affected demeanor of a record store employee, exclaimed “man, I was wondering when someone was finally going to pick that up!” So I figured I gripped something pretty rad that day.
Trap Door: An International Psychedelic Mystery Mix was compiled by San Francisco-based Dis-Joint Records, a label interested in all the weird freaky-deeky obscure shit that tingles my solar plexus. It’s a mixtape, in some ways, insofar as the compilation flows together seamlessly and features DJ-helmed breakbeats augmented by dub low end. In other ways, not so much, as the source material jumps between disparate sounds and genres within the psychedelic element of the ’60s and ’70s. Trap Door strikes a great balance.
The result is a sound straddling the median between Os Mutantes/Love and DJ Shadow/J Dilla. Fans of Ghost Box will also fervently dig. File this under the same categories as the Sublime Frequencies releases, Light in the Attic’s The Free Design: The Now Sound Redesigned, and Edan’s flower-power psych-hop ripper Beauty and the Beat. Continue reading ‘Trap Door: An International Psychedelic Mystery Mix’
I had to go through a labyrinth of amazing old school Geocities websites to find a decent photo of Lush. The mid-’90s was such a golden age for web design, ya’ll. Why don’t designers use wicked animated GIFs anymore? Man… fuckin’ Geocities… oooh weee. I had a Geocities website and it ruled so hard.
Anyway, conventional shoegazing history operates, for all intents and purposes, as follows. When the “Scene That Celebrated Itself“ collapsed on itself around the same time as grunge (roughly Q3 of 1994) your band did two things: either dismantled or went a very different direction. Lush chose the latter, and released some kinda shitty music toward the end of their career. However, Lush’s Gala compilation, which comprised of the group’s first three EPs collected on one priced-to-own record long before the Beta Band thought of doing it, is not just some of the best dream pop ever recorded – it’s just some of the best rock and roll recorded. Lush, along with Cocteau Twins, established what the 4AD sound was all about. Continue reading ‘Lush’s Gala Will Destroy You’
Since setting short or long term goals for yourself tends to keep you focused and away from the dangers of drugs, so as such, it is my short term goal to write a few entries this week digging through my archives. My archives are kept in a fortress outside the city proper and mote-protected. However, I will share certain gems from these archives on my blog, because sharing is caring. Here’s one from classic UK dream pop outfit Chapterhouse.
So, Chapterhouse’s 1991 release Whirlpool never made a huge, umm, splash in the shoegazing scene, but it was very good. Had they developed these sounds more, expanding on their sonic landscape instead of following-up with a corny, overtly poppy, overly slick, incredibly dated sounding album (1993’s Blood Music), Chapterhouse might have been as recognizable of a name as Ride.
Though Chapterhouse tended to be more poppy than many of their contemporaries, they made quite a statement when they weren’t going for verse-chorus-verse structures and soft guitar sounds.
This… this is a total brain melter. And it’s a rare treat. Continue reading ‘A Rare One From Chapterhouse’
Good gawd, ya’ll. The bootlegs keep coming in, but this time from the official source. WFMU just posted their archive of Growing’s performance at the absolutely immaculate All Tomorrow’s Parties. The attractive photo above is also from your menacing friends at Beware of Blog. Continue reading ‘Growing at ATP’
So here’s the drill. Gang Gang Dance’s Saint Dymphna is out on October 21st on Social Registry. I have an advance copy and am going to sit down, listen, and blog my review/experience live, and hopefully, won’t have the egregious grammatical errors that plagued the Deerhunter real time review.
As far as the music that you find on this blog, Gang Gang Dance is a rather important force, and they have their fingers in a lot of pies. From conducting the the Brookyln chapter of the 88 Boardrums to opening for Sonic Youth (which was my first exposure to the group at the CMJ Music Marathon opening party) to buddying up with Animal Collective and Black Dice, they tend to be looked at as an artist’s artist.
For the Gang Gang Dance novice, GGD specializes in complex rhythms and dense layers of equal parts noise and melody, with tribal/worldbeat influences in both the percussion and the vocal chants. Like the Dirty Projectors, Gang Gang Dance is a New York band extremely popular in the noise kids circle while also, and perhaps inexplicably, gaining notoriety among the indie pop dorks. As such, Saint Dymphna, the anticipated follow up to 2005’s God’s Money, has a lot of dudes muy entusiasmado. Continue reading ‘Gang Gang Dance – Saint Dymphna Review (In Real Time)’
That’s right. I’m joining ranks with some pretty big, arena-ready, major label blogs. I’m now a contributor/guest writer for I Guess I’m Floating, where I will helm a new feature called Reel Time Reviews. Continue reading ‘Kenny Bloggins Sells Out’
I’m really good at the Internet. I find awesome videos. I share some of my favorites with you. It’s a nice change from posting MP3s and waxin’ on why they’re awesome/not awesome. Continue reading ‘Adventures in YouTubin’’
You’ll remember that I’ve been impressed, amused, and intrigued by the Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt) and Brian Miller (Foot Village) online civic engagement brainchild Noise for Obama. No Age was very happy to chip in and offer an official artist statement pledging their allegiance to Senator Obama. They recently tried to do the same thing on late night broadcast television as well, but with less success. Did CBS censor No Age? Continue reading ‘Noise for Obama vs. CBS, A Legal Layman Discussion’
