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Monthly Archive for October, 2009Page 2 of 3

A Dublin Madcap’s Seaside Retreat

antique beach resort

Sometimes I’ll gladly risk wasting half an hour on a band I’ve never heard of if the name catches me. Such is the case with how I got into the music of Bobby Aherne, a.k.a some Irish guy who makes music as Dublin Duck Dispensary. I can’t tell you what that means, but I assure you that the tunes don’t suffer from the same gap in translation.

At it’s core, DDD is in the business of outsider tape-folk similar to acts like Pumice, but no two releases sound terribly alike. Earlier this year, Bobby released the Ykes Basket EP for free on the internet label Rack & Ruin records. Unaware of the lo-fi obsession smoldering over in the US, he busted out manic sprints of fried pop tunes from his bedroom. The crunchy riffs were supplemented by kitsch decorations of bells, whistles, and some homespun tales of Dadaist situations.

Then he did something expected; he turned it down a notch. Retreating to the coastline, Bobby pinned ten stripped tracks that would become the two sides of his most recent cassette Antique Beach Resort. Trading his electric guitar for a rusty acoustic, these new songs embrace the full-body strumming style of Jeff Mangum and his damp, campfire psychedelia. The vocals, a droll combination of snotty and naive, extract everything from catharsis to celebration. “It’s the same key to the palace as the morgue,” he sings on side b as the melody is overtaken by possessed claps and howls. This tape is a fascinating polaroid of his time spent seaside, and worth saving from obscurity.

Antique Beach Resort is available now on Rack & Ruin records website.

For Fans Of: Pumice, Jeff Mangum, Ganglians

MP3 :::
Dublin Duck Dispensary – Zoo on Yr Back
Dublin Duck Dispensary – The Jester

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White Rainbow – New Clouds

krank137 White Rainbow - New Clouds

Effects pedals tweaker Adam Forkner, a.k.a. White Rainbow, has a lot going on for a relatively new artist. Besides touring Europe and supporting Deerhunter, dude also fist bumps Pauly Shore (see the Possibly Relevant links below). But what’s probably most relevant is that his new body of work for Kranky, New Clouds, is a funky, technicolor, rainbows-and-gumdrops psychedelic score for modern dance. Four songs, 60ish minutes long, and genre ambiguous, New Clouds is a beautiful and driving aural jaunt that, at the sake of sounding like a cheesedick, you just sorta get lost in. This is good vibes head music for folks who’s got, what Bad Brains called, that P.M.A. This album got my day started this morning.

I’ve tossed around the label “ambient music for people who don’t like ambient music” more than once, but it’s undeniably a good label for White Rainbow. There are no lyrics or verse/chorus actions (as you would expect from music often reviewed on this blog), but there’s lots of melody, lots of lush instrumentation, lots of texture, intricate rhythm, vague vocal chants, and a tension-and-release dynamic that makes New Clouds almost pop-oriented at times. If you haven’t peeped ol’ Rainbow yet, think of him as a shoegazey version of Growing that spent more time in the woods meditating, collecting cool threads, and partaking in the good peyote. And like Growing, who spent time frightening the Hot Chip fans on a supporting string of dates, White Rainbow also opens for a group infinitely inferior to him (Yacht… bleh) on a southeastern Asia vision quest. But hey, I can jive with whatever spreads his krautrock forest gospel.

New Clouds is a beautiful record, and surprisingly upbeat. Use it to get your day started. Or use it as the centerpiece in bong-rippin’ activities. New Clouds goes both ways. And it just dropped this week on Kranky. Go see about it.

For fans of: Belong, Growing, Cloudland Canyon

POSSIBLY RELEVANT :::
Most Psychedelic Times with White Rainbow, Pauly Shore, and the Hurdy Gurdy Bro
[Photos + Video] Deerhunter, Dan Deacon, and No Age with White Rainbow and More – 8.4.09 – Southgate House, Newport

MP3 :::
White Rainbow – All the Boogies in the World (excerpt)

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Nothing Says Halloween Like Horrible Noise at Zanzabar this Saturday!

3wolfmoon Nothing Says Halloween Like Horrible Noise at Zanzabar this Saturday!
Man, I had to. I couldn’t find a hi-res photo relevant for this event, so I threw in the three wolves + moon meme. Shit’s still funny to me.  I mean, c’mon… Wolf Eyes, Halloween, New Moon soundtrack. This was necessary and proper, ya’ll.

Anyway, back to the point… the most wonderful time of the year, the Reason for the Season – Halloween – is just around the bend. How do you plan to celebrate? Yeah, you could see Monsters of Folk at the Louisville Palace on this most ghoulish of holidays (whom are icidentally neither monsters nor fuckin’ folk). But it might be more festive and less sissy to bask in the horrifying power electronics and booty bass of new projects from 2/3 of Wolf Eyes and some excellent Derby City dirty noise thrashers foreboding enough to make Michael Gira change his cowboy hat. Think I prefer the latter for sure.

Headlining is Regression. From Boomkat: “Nate Young has taken the noise levels down several notches for his new solo outing as Regression, although the air of implicit, floating darkness cast over the whole affair is very much within his established oeuvre. You could neither classify Regression’s self-titled LP as a noise record or a death ambient record, instead the analog synth dissections and tape treatments more closely reference library music, horror soundtracks, or in its more austere moments, early electronic music. Regression is an outstanding album, proving to be more delicate than a Wolf Eyes full-length has ever been, yet it’s able to match the group’s sonic gravitas – and their uncanny ability to make the extremes of music sound so incredibly seductive.”

Library music? Oh shit yes. And his oft partner in crime John Olson is coming in as Spykes. He will probably still drink all the damn beer. The DIY-centric Nzambi is Louisville’s Christopher Cprek, who you may have seen tweaking knobs during the second (or maybe third) incarnation of Warmer Milks, as well as his other project Pax Titania. Cprek builds all his own shit, so no one could imitate his integallactic sounds even if they tried. Michigan’s Dog Lady opens up with some amplified violin, modified electronics, and various forest nymph summoning. In short, these guys put the “monsters of” in Mosters of Folk. Believe that.

Ya know what’s the weirdest thing though? This is all happening Saturday night at the Zanzabar! An insane noise show at the Zbar on a Saturday night! I guess somebody at the club owed Joel Hunt a serious favor.

Regression, Spykes, Nzambi, and Dog Lady
Saturday, October 24
Zanzabar
2100 S. Preston St., Louisville (map that shizz)
9 p.m. / $5
21+

“Black Vomit” is one of my favorite Wolf Eyes jams. It’s about having fun and making friends.

MP3 :::
Wolf Eyes – Black Vomit

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Adventures In YouTubin 4 – Failed But Epic Interviews

adventures in youtubin
There is a fine line between too much information and too little, which makes conducting interviews a bit like a game of Russian roulette. This is especially true when your subject doesn’t necessarily want to meet your questions half way. Luckily, with eccentric personalities and inflamed egos you’re likely to get something candid if you just let them take the reins. This edition of Adventures in YouTubin’ is dedicated to those journalists who had the good sense to bite off more than they could chew. Featured musicians include: Brad Cox, the Butthole Surfers, and more.

Brad Cox has never heard the term ‘camera shy’. His love of confrontational stage antics is only surpassed by his desire to make people as uncomfortable as possible. Well thank God for that. Skip to 5:00 minutes in to see what happens when he turns a question about Deerhunter’s first record into an opportunity to dig up a precious childhood moment. I would file this under ‘just enough information’.

Hey, we’re not all scholars. Dave Thomas of Pere Ubu understands that sometimes you gotta break it down in layman’s terms if you want people to really appreciate your point. Reflecting on the band’s career in 1989, he uses a simple prop to condense their entire philosophy into one easy lesson. You might want to take notes.

Thurston Moore is sort of like the Kevin Bacon of rock music, you can connect him to just about anybody. This segment is from the cutting room floor of the Minutemen documentary We Jam Econo. When asked about how he met the boys, Thurston instead decides to try out his Mike Watt impression. This video is worth watching for Thurston’s knowledge of Watt’s dietary regiment alone. “Seafood and Punk Rock”, sounds like a winning autobiography to me.

Saved the best for last. For this humble blogger, right here is the Holy Grail of pointless interviews. I don’t know what you expect to get out of The Butthole Surfers, one of music’s most playfully nihilistic children, but this is what happened when one dude tried to talk with them backstage. Looks like he got to the party a little late. I have no words that could do this video justice.

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High Times and Bedroom Surf

washed-out-high-times-art High Times and Bedroom Surf

…Cynicism can’t escape the chillness of Washed Out’s hazy electro rip-tide. His new EP High Times is sort of like an 80’s movie soundtrack á la M83 but instead of the bubblegum and popcorn of John Hughes we slide through nine tracks of Risky Business style seduction.

Producer Ernest Greene mashes the kind of retro-future synth touches common on Warp with sunny arpeggios and deep hip-hop bass. Only working on this project for two months, he’s already dropped the infectious, blog-approved Life of Leisure on Mexican Summer, a synth-pop EP drenched in beach coma ecstasy. On this follow-up, Greene rotates the vocals out more to make room for vaporous interludes that play like blissful alter-egos of those found on BoC’s Geodaggi. This cassette-only release is currently sold out (cue bummer), but allow these MP3’s to motivate you to stick around until we can get a restock.

The High Times cassette is currently being released in small runs by Mirror Tapes.

MP3 :::
Washed Out – Phone Call
Washed Out – Luck

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Blues Control and Sapat Play Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge in Louisville – 10/23

bluescontrol Blues Control and Sapat Play Lisas Oak Street Lounge in Louisville - 10/23

Fuck! I just reported today how The For Carnation is playing their first show in, what, seven years or so at the Speed Museum’s Art After Dark event, then I realized that’s also the same night that Siltbreeze patriots Blues Control and locals Sapat bust brains across town. OMG MULTITASKING LOL.

Ya know, it is possible that The For Carnation will play a lot earlier than the general 10 p.m. start times at Lisa’s, so you may be able to do both. But then again, perhaps you might want to show up to the Blues Control/Sapat gig early, considering that Lisa’s is small, Sapat draws a fairly large crowd locally, and Blues Control spent a chunk of this year supporting Animal Collective on tour and probably picked up lots of fresh fans along the way. Good gravy, ya’ll, don’t know what to tell you. I’mma try to do both.

I submit for your consideration some previous write-ups I’ve done on both bands:

Blues Control (from the Puff EP write-up) – “Always on Time” is straight from space.  It’s the sound emitting from the SETI experiments.  Large, cavernous waves of radiation and solar wind flush around a simple, rarely changing Neu-esque piano melody with the reverb turned up all the way and dripping in condensation for 12 big minutes. The harmonica on “Behind the Skies” is the only indication that Blues Control is going to attempt to live up to its name, a mid-tempo, fuzzed-out burner reminiscent of Lightning Bolt on purple drank (perhaps there’s a connection between Ride the Skies and Behind the Skies?).  R-O-C-K in the U-S-A.

Sapat (from the Jana Hunter/Crazy Dreams Band preview) – Sapat is a local collective that features between eight and one million people (depending on the type of show), all of whom have a like-minded approach to fringe music. Sapat is a pulsating orb of eclecticism and mysticism – never cateogorizable, but always freaky, funky, and brain splattering. Sapat’s expansive beauty and unwavering experimentation is what makes Louisville amazing. They are truly a breath of fresh air. Remember that part in Amistad when they’re in the court room and the bro is all ike “give us… free!”? Sapat gives you free with every show.

Blues Control and Sapat
Friday, October 23
Lisa’ Oak Street Lounge
1004 E. Oak St., Louisville (map that shizz)
9 p.m.-ish
21+

Blues Control Unleash the Dragon World Tour 2K9*
*= not actually the name of the tour, though that might’ve been the name of an Aerosmith tour

10.12.09 – Princeton, NJ – WPRB – in-studio 3pm EST
10.16.09 – Philadelphia, PA – Pilam
10.18.09 – New Haven, CT – Bar
10.19.09 – Ithaca, NY – The Shop
10.20.09 – Scranton, PA – The Bog
10.21.09 – Pittsburgh, PA – Garfield Artworks $
10.22.09 – Cincinnati, OH – Art Damage Lodge $
10.23.09 – Louisville, KY – Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge %
10.24.09 – Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle – early show @
10.25.09 – Madison, WI – Good Style Shop
10.26.09 – St Paul, MN – Turf Club
10.27.09 – Kansas, City MO – Record Bar
10.29.09 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court – early show
10.29.09 – Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge – late show
10.30.09 – Boise, ID – Neurolux
10.31.09 – Olympia, WA – The Northern – Halloween &!
11.01.09 – Seattle, WA – Funhouse &
11.02.09 – Vancouver, BC – Little Mountain Studios
11.03.09 – Portland, OR – Someday Lounge
11.05.09 – San Francisco, CA – Hemlock Tavern =
11.06.09 – Oakland, CA – Continental Club +
11.07.09 – Sacramento, CA – Luigi’s Slice <
11.08.09 – Santa Cruz, CA – CREPE PLACE >
11.09.09 – San Luis Obispo, CA – Crossroads
11.10.09 – Irvine, CA – UC Irvine ^
11.11.09 – Los Angeles, CA – Synchrocity ^
11.12.09 – San Diego, CA – Soda Bar
11.13.09 – Phoenix, AZ – Trunk Space
11.16.09 – Denton, TX – J&J’s Pizza
11.17.09 – Austin, TX – The Mohawk
11.18.09 – Houston, TX – Mango’s
11.19.09 – New Orleans, LA – Allways Lounge
11.21.09 – Nashville, TN – Dino’s
11.22.09 – Asheville, NC – Harvest Records
11.23.09 – Chapel Hill, NC – Nightlight

$ Puffy Areolas
# Kurt Vile
! Tyvek
% Sapat
@ Ga’an
Chinese Stars
& Little Claw
+ Sic Alps
= Hank IV
^ Pocahaunted
< The Duchess and the Duke
> Lucky Dragons

MP3 :::
Blues Control – Behind the Skies
Sapat – Dark Silver

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R.I.P. Dickie Peterson of Blue Cheer

bluecheer79b R.I.P. Dickie Peterson of Blue Cheer

Dickie Peterson, co-founder of pioneering San Francisco based heavy-as-fuck psych stoner metal juggernaut Blue Cheer passed away this morning in Germany. He was 61. Fuck Columbus Day, I’m bumping their 1968 LP Outsideinside all day in commemeration of Peterson and Blue Cheer (who I saw two years ago at The Dame in Lexington and felt the pain in my ears for weeks afterwards).

MP3 :::
Blue Cheer – Sun Cycle

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The For Carnation Quietly Returns… in Two Weeks!

77-1 The For Carnation Quietly Returns... in Two Weeks!

I’m not sure if the Slint/Tortoise/Shipping News supergroup The For Carnation ever officially broke up. Hence, we can’t call their return a “reunion” necessarily. So we’ll referred to this event as their triumphant return. While we haven’t heard new material since 2000’s eponymous record (not counting the 2007 Touch and Go reissue of Promised Works) and there are no rumors that they may be recording again soon, it does seem The For Carnation has been officially reignited when they agreed to make their first public appearance in years at All Tomorrows Parties’ Ten Years of ATP festival this December in the UK. That is, until last week… when it was quietly, almost nonchalantly announced that The For Carnation will be playing Art After Dark at the University of Louisville’s Speed Art Museum on October 23. Like out of nowhere. I just silently mouthed “holy shit” reading that.

The skinny:

Art After Dark: Remix (the first of three museum-wide events held throughout the year, each with a different theme) will tie together a lineup of music, visual spectacle, creating art, and fun. Remix will feature the premiere of a multimedia art collaboration between classically trained American cellist Ben Sollee (an NPR Top 10 Unknown Artist of the Year) and multimedia Louisville artist, Valerie Sullivan Fuchs. Also featured will be the uniquely dynamic, minimalist-informed, yet R&B inspired music of “The For Carnation,” a post rock band from Louisville formed by Brian McMahan (formerly of the legendary band “Slint”), as well as theatrical interpretations of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies created by the wacky minds of LePetomane Theatre Ensemble, and fire dancing performances from The Phoenix Collective on the museum’s front lawn. Visitors will also want to keep an eye out for break dancers, a critic at large, “un-tours” of the collection and films from Louisville Film Society.

The For Carnation is R&B inspired? Eh, I buy that. They’re dynamic dudes. I’m totally there, brah.

The For Carnation @ Art After Dark
Friday, October 23 @ 7 p.m.
The Speed Art Museum
2035 S. 2nd St., Louisville (map that shizz)
All Ages

MP3 :::
The For Carnation – Tales

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Phantom Family Halo – Monoliths and These Flowers Never Die

pfh-12jackgatefold-w-spine-web Phantom Family Halo - Monoliths and These Flowers Never Die

Louisville’s Phantom Family Halo adds another page to archtype-laden book of rock folklore. Right before their long-awaited grand statement to the world drops, the sprawling 2 LP Monoliths & These Flowers Never Die, and they begin their nationwide vision quest with Russian Circles, the band’s auxiliary drummer, Tony Bailey, suddenly passed away. As an esteemed and prolific member in the local music community, the news sent shock waves through the city. However, the band did not utter a word about it publicly. Phantfamlo never discusses peripheral information in any capacity, even when directly relating to the people in the band, and they’ve always kept things close to the chest. Undoubtedly this adds to their mystique. Monliths, despite its foreboding mood, is congruent to this attitude. The grainy, dry psychedelia found within evokes both an intimacy and mystery not often found in this genre. If you knew nothing else about them, you’d probaby be baffled as to who they are, where they came from, and what they want from you. They probably like it that way. Phantom Family Halo doesn’t float above the horizon line like the flower power groups do – they’re standing behind you.

Monoliths & These Flowers Never Die is a bold, majestic record that’s viscerally formidable and fresh – a crafty stew of swampy acid rock, haunting soundscapes, immense space, a slight gothic flavor, and eternal heaviness. Five songs in is a track called “Dec 2012,” and I’ll be damned if I can find a better brain-burning soundtrack for the apocalypse.

Opener “Blackouts and Runaways” truly makes use of playwright Bertolt Brecht’s assertion of “The past inside the present,” citing that “the rapidity of change and the increase of knowledge in the modern world have forced us to see history in a new light: not as a finalized past but as a process in which the new continuously transfigures the old.” Without sounding pretentious and wanker (I promise you I’m not going in this direction), Phantom Family Halo has synthesized this idea to great effect. “Blackouts and Runaways” meshes conventional garage rock/harsh vintage psych and hauntological retro-futuristic electronic flourishes to create art without a time stamp, a warped perception of what rock music used to be (as we understand it), and a proclamation that fears the future. In other words, it’s fucking heavy, and it sets the tone for the rest of the album – an body of work that’s chronologically ambiguous yet sonically pointed.

The motorik 10-minute opus “Monoliths” scares the shit out of me. It’s the sound of someone looking into your window after dark, donning a masquerade facepiece and wielding a nine inch blade, making your balls retract ten-fold. No one has written more paranoid krautrock saturated in impending doom. “Third World War” is nothing but pure mindfuck. A twinkling, bucolic melody carries you through over a minute of serenity before pure menacing proto-metal and a blanket of vehement, Link Wray-style reverberated vocals dicks you in the dick. And yet, songs like “Alive and Well” peak out from around the corner – a playful, aurally credulous three-minute ballad that mixes a bit of Boards of Canada atmospheric synths with orchestral samples that, aside from the melodic vocals, wouldn’t sound out of place on Aphex Twin’s Richard D James album.

There’s a surprise at every corner. And while the instrumentation can be somewhat sparse and rigid, each movement through the album’s massive 18 songs reveals strata of mysterious sounds, cavernous imagery, and lush evil. Monoliths & These Flowers Never Die an invigorating and exciting listening, while at the same time, provokes your eyes to constantly dark around for predators all the while. It’s weird and it’s awesome. It’s the heat-induced forest fire ruining the hippies’ fun during the summer of love. Most importantly, Monoliths & These Flowers Never Die does not easily fit in any genre or subgenre, acting more as an anthropomorphic, mercurial, growing beast that is certainly one of the most profound statements out of Louisville in years and, and in my opinion, one that holds up well against any given heavy hitter in the experimental rock field. Get lifted.

Phantom Family Halo’s Monoliths & These Flowers Never Die is available now on beautiful vinyl or in digital download format courtesy of Karate Body Records.

For fans of:  Six Organs of Admittance, Fever Ray, Spiritualized, Boris

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating
steelydan1 Phantom Family Halo - Monoliths and These Flowers Never Die

As some footnotes to the review above, why don’t you go on and have a real taste yourself. Here is some video of “These Flowers Never Die” from their show at Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge last July that I went to and had a sweet time. Of course, sadly, this footage is some of Tony’s last. But, tour’s still on. I’ll post those dates closer to their leave after the holidays.

POSSIBLY RELATED :::
Phantom Family Halo is Awesome (7.16.09)

MP3 :::
Phantom Family Halo – Blackouts and Runaways
Phantom Family Halo – Alive and Well

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Of All the Pigeons in New York

lunettes

There are certain sounds synonymous with the Summer of Love, but what about the winter that followed? Bronx trio Pigeons have a decent guess in mind. Their account of classic psychedelia is a much colder affair than most’. Stringing together a bizarrely addictive mix of paranoia, mystery, and seduction, their new 7″ Lunettes is something I could only describe as psych-noir.

Warm tape-splintered reverb follows defeated guitar lines on “Lowest”. Singer Wednesday Knudsen positions herself amongst the debris as a writhing chanteuse, evoking Trish Keenan from Broadcast if she had been coached by David Lynch. The sedate hymn, “Tendress”, with drums set to the rowing beat of a ghost ship, furthers the groups fascinating tension between neurosis and delicacy. This little taste is a pre-curser to upcoming LP Si Faustine dropping on Olde English Spelling Bee in the near future, hopefully in time for Halloween. Highly Recommended.

Lunettes is available now on Soft Abuse.

For fans of:  Broadcast, Pocahaunted, Religious Knives

MP3 :::
Pigeons – Tendress
Pigeons – Lowest

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