Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is known for two things: 1) being called “hippies” by Brian Jonestown’s Joel Gion in Dig, and 2) very strong live shows. So considering the latter, it’s fitting the group is set to drop a 2 DVD and CD live package, poignantly titled Live. The package spans a number of European shows on their Baby 81 tour. The jam hive hits shelves next Tuesday, November 10th. Wanna win a copy? Cool… well I have two to give away.

Just shoot an email over to kb@thedecibeltolls.com and tell me what you’d like to see more of on the blog. We’ve had a lot of discussions on how to better serve you, the smarmy blog reader. This way, we get something, and you get something awesome. Contest closes on Friday at 5 p.m.

You can peep the track listing and pre-order info here. Good luck.

MP3 :::
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Spread Your Love [Live]

The Big Pink currently enjoy an astounding wave of Intarwebz hype, but I certainly won’t let that affect my opinion of the their debut A Brief History of Love. However, the record itself just happens to suck, all things considered. No, the hype didn’t ruin the listening experience. It just epically blows, hype or not.

Yes, The Big Pink is a true and accurate nod to shoegazing, and yes, I love shoegaze and second-wave shoegaze. However, it’s bad shoegazing, dude. It’s The Jesus and Mary Chain AFTER Darklands. Ya know, when they made rad videos for “Sidewalking” and shit, with, like, their name on a big marquee behind them while the Reid brothers are fuckin’ rawwwkin’ (one of the few unintentional hilarious decisions of the Creation camp). Gross…

There are some worthwhile moments on this album, such as “Velvet,” wherein the band combines their natural pop-centric attitude with truly thick distortion swells and harmonies, coming off more like The Catherine Wheel or The Boo Radleys than, ya know, an even shittier version of Pop Will Eat Itself or somethin’. Maybe The Big Pink could rename themselves Pop Will Shit Itself. That would be poignant. But even if the whole album was packed with songs like “Velvet,” no amount of quality songwriting on A Brief History of Love can make up for “Dominoes.” That song gave me gastric pains. As Jeffrey said while we were listening to the record in the office, “it’s like Jesus Jones goes on a date with Kevin Shields, and JJ tells everyone they slept together, and Kevin is totally embarrassed.” Gotta do better next time, 4AD.

So yeah, this record is doo doo. I’m totally bummed. Gonna listen to the new No Age EP instead for a pick-me-up. Laters.

For fans of:  Jesus Jones, Shitty-period Jesus and Mary Chain, The Jesus (circa Big Lebowski)

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating

MP3 :::
The Big Pink – Velvet

The noise pop duo known as Fuck Buttons have released their second full length Tarot Sport, which hit the shelves a little over a week ago. The follow up to Street Horrrsing has gotten a considerable amount of attention from music journalists and the blogosphere for being one of the better records of this year. So what exactly did Fuck Buttons do on their second release? Power and Hung have cut back a bit on their noisy barrages and screaming backdrops and exchanged them for some pulsating beats and some heavy techno inspired melodies.

For the most part, however, a lot of elements that made Street Horrrsing enjoyable exist on Tarot Sport. Street Horrrsing was vast as well as deep, and the textures and depth that governed the record are still very much apparent especially on tracks such as “Surf Solar” and “Flight of the Feathered Serpent.” Fuck Buttons definitely introduces a new level of danceability on Tarot, however it hardly seems to compromise the variety of sound. They still have a knack for getting you hooked on their poppy nuance, while maintaining a level of obscurity. That being said, Tarot is a much easier listen, and I think that has a lot to do with the evolution of their songwriting. There seems to be more thought and purpose in Tarot Sport, despite its lack of noise experimentation. A lot of their melodies are less saturated and more precise while certain rhythmic progressions remind me a lot of some of the songs off of Tortoise’s latest release Beacons of Ancestorship. Maybe these dudes are just growing up. Regardless their growth is certainly worth listening to.

Tarot Sport is available on ATP Recordings. Also for all you Bostonians, check out their upcoming show on November 25th at Great Scott in Allston!

For fans of:  Kevin Shields, Holy Fuck, Black Dice, Growing

MP3 :::
Fuck Buttons – Flight of the Feathered Serpent
Fuck Buttons – The Lisbon Maru

I’m off to Chicago for the weekend, bros. Unfortunately, due to work constraints and leaving town immediately afterwards, I don’t have a lot of time to write a fun Halloween-themed entry. So… I’m kinda copping out and reposting what I put together last year. However, since there are a lot more readers now than a year ago at this time, perhaps many of you all missed these gems. To that end, reposing is warranted. Happy Halloween, folks. Hope you don’t see too many stupid zombie Michael Jackson costumes. Okay…

One of my favorite Halloween past-times is dusting off some of my old tapes, turning out the lights, and scaring myself.  In the spirit of the holiday, instead of my usual smattering of psych rock and other insane music, I wanted to share some choice insane recordings.

I discovered Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell when I was 13 (1998 by the Gregorian calendar).  I walked into my grandmother’s room one night to fetch something.  It was late at night, she was obviously asleep, and she usually slept with the radio playing.  It was the strangest call-in show I had ever heard – instead of, you know, railing on Clinton as the majority of AM radio did at that time, the caller was talking about a poltergeist in his house and its glowing red eyes, claws, et al.  As a fan of the macabre, I immediately ran to my room and tried to find the show on my stereo.  This happened to be the evening that Art Bell premiered the Sounds From Hell.  Though I was slowly approaching a sort of agnostic belief system at that time, it still made me want to shag-ass to the closest church.

Since then, I’ve amassed around 40 tapes of old Art Bell broadcasts, and I tend to listen to them to get “Halloween festive,” as it were.  Everything from remote viewing (controlled psychic phenomena), aliens, Y2K (remember that?), bizarre conspiracies, cryptozoology, exorcisms, wholesome apocalyptic scenarios, and more – I’ve got some of the greatest hits on tape, spanning about three years. Of course, during this time, I never shared with anyone that this was something I enjoyed doing. When you’re 15, it’s important that everyone knows how cool you are. This was not a cool hobby. However, I’m sharing it with you now!  Glad to get it off my chest.

The show, Coast to Coast AM (see the link under “Other Awesomeness”), still exists, but the smokey-throat, sardonic host Art Bell retired in 2007.  No host will really replace Art, who broadcast his program internationally in a double-wide trailer behind in home in Pahrump, Nevada in the dead of night.  A host sitting in a downtown radio studio just doesn’t transmit the same mood. Moreover, Art never screened calls.  Anyone, sane or nut, got equal time on the air.  This, unfortunately, is no longer the case, making Coast to Coast not nearly as entertaining as it once was.

As of right now, I don’t have a way of recording my tapes onto my computer, so I found some other folks’ recordings.  Of course, Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds will always be an excellent Halloween classic for me, but Art’s creepy and paranoid program has much more nostalgia for me.  Plus, that program was legitimately frightening at times, as some subject matter was right on the cusp of what was plausible.  Despite all the programs dedicated to the supposed Roswell crash and gnarly things that Freemasons might’ve been responsible for, Coast to Coast AM was one of the first talk shows that dedicated lots of air time to climate change, starting in the early ’90s, as well as new scientific subjects like nanotechnology and RFID.  This gave the show a more unsettling edge at times.  Cyborgs and aliens, sure, but climate change – that’s more scary to me.

So the first clip… about 10 years ago, as alluded to earlier, Art Bell aired the urban legend recording “The Sounds From Hell.” It can be a really bothersome clip to those with a nervous disposition, but also morbidly fun. It’s also completely a hoax -literally speaking, not theologically – so worry not (unless, ya know, your faith tells you to). The origin of this sound is as follows: Soviet scientists in the early to mid 20th century drilled a hole nine miles deep in the heart of Siberia to study plate tectonics. When they hit a heat pocket, their drilling equipment was destroyed, followed by the sound of millions of screaming souls. As any good scientist would do, they whipped out the mics and recorded it.  Part-ee.

The second clip is an infamous one.  From Wikipedia:  “At about 11 p.m. PST, Thursday, September 11, 1997, [Art Bell] designated one phone line for Area 51 employees who wanted to discuss the secretive base. Several callers claimed to work at Area 51, but the bizarre highlight of the night came when a seemingly distraught and terrified man claimed to be a former Area 51 employee recently discharged for “medical” reasons. He cited malevolent extraterrestrials at Area 51 (”extra-dimensional beings” who are not “what they claim to be”) and an impending disaster that the government knew would take out “major population centers.” Midway through this call, Bell’s program went off the air for about 30 minutes. After talking to network engineers, the official explanation was that the network satellite had “lost earth lock” or forgotten where the earth was. Network officials were baffled, and the cause remains a mystery.”

The third clip is a portion of a lengthy interview Art did with the Ghost Investigators Society, who record the “voices” of ghosts on blank, never-used-before audio tape.  This is also known as Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP).  The recording and history is EVP is immensely interesting, despite the shitty Michael Keaton movie based around EVP.  Jump to around the minute mark in the recording to skip the show’s bumper music between commercial breaks.

The last one is a exorcism.  It’s really fucked up.

Have a chill ‘ween.

MP3 :::
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell – Sounds From Hell
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell – The Frantic Area 51 Caller
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell – Electronic Voice Phenomenon
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell – Russian Exorcism

I’ve been on a bit of an ambient kick lately so it was a convenient time to discover Black Eagle Child. Plus he’s named at least one album after a Twin Peaks reference so I was already pretty much sold from start. The project’s sole member Michael Jantz crafts bright, fog-lifting meditations, sometimes with nothing but an acoustic guitar, digital delay, and an amp. Seeds That Sprout in the Summer, released earlier this year on Stunned Records, focuses on simple pastoral lines, creating waltzes of echos that patiently shift their core in natural directions. Distant synths ping at almost subliminal levels, thickening the organic drone of the music. More upbeat tracks like “Made-Up Name” pose wide-eyed among their backwoods fingerpicking for melting quality similar to Fi-era Bibio.

The most recent cassette Two Days features dual sides of one-take experiments with guitar loops. The songs were salvaged from a few jams conducted in the days following the birth of his daughter. Most of his tunes seem to be framed in a similar way, substituting a four-track or tape recorder in place of a journal. A one-man outpost of delicate accounts of events,  Jantz even offers his releases in exchange for a copy of your own music. What other artists can you think of that operate on the barter system? Until I heard Black Eagle Child, I was positive that Emerald’s Mark McGuire would hold my favorite ambient jams from 2009, but this stuff, especially Seeds, is some healthy competition. Next in line is the Poland LP coming out soon on Sturmundrugs Records, as well as a collaboration with Russian sound-scapist Kabyzdoh Obtruhamchi.

Here is a list of places you can find/purchase/trade Black Eagle Child releases.

For fans of:  Mark McGuire (not the baseball great), early Bibio, The Alps

MP3 :::
Black Eagle Child – Grass Swaddle
Black Eagle Child – Made Up Name

In the great tradition of Sleeveface (which I have participated in myself), I had to share something I inadvertently noticed concerning bald musicians on album covers while Anni Rossi stopped by our office today to talk shop and, well, album art. Which do you like the best? The above? Or…. this?

Or this?

Lot of love in this club, yes?

Sorry for the dumb bullshit today. Have some lovely MP3s.

MP3 :::
Seefeel – Starethough
Spiritualized – I Think I’m in Love

Strangers Family Band offers a fine pastiche of the various splinter genres of flower power much like The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s finer catalog (czech “Wooden Hands” and hear how the vocal interplay is almost dead-on Anton Newcombe and Mara Kegal via Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request). However, also like the BJM, Strangers Family Band do not amalgamate old sounds with new. They are unquestionably channeling the various strata of late ’60s mindbending west coast pop art experimental jangle – light garage rock timbre, pinch of British blues a la John Mayall, and homage to Ravi Shankar that became nothing but en vogue in the post-druggy Beatles summer of love. With that said, they take full advantage of recording technology today to really sharpen the feel and sound of classic true-blue psychedelia to cultivate a truly polyphonic headtrip. Nowhere is that more apparent than the seven minute “Transmission,” bolstered by crisp Twin Reverb distortion, lots of sitar (real sitar, not effect-created), and dark, thick Rhodes organ, punchy tablas – all of which almost play second fiddle to the distant, dark, saturated vocals.

I understand that, as either Kickergaard or Dick Van Patten said, to label me is to negate me. So I’ll stop the labeling and comparisons and let you all just peep the group. However, and this is the last thing I’ll say about Strangers vs. Jonestown – they also adopted the excellent “give your shit away from free and worry about sustainability later” model that Anton discovered when he started digging on the Interwebs. And it’s a great idea. Get your stuff out there, and if it’s good (which it is), people will come to the show and buy your merch. So to that end, czech the MySpazz, have a look at their dates, and see them live. Admire their sitar. Get lifted.

For fans of:  The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Outrageous Cherry, The Yardbirds, 13th Floor Elevators, The Black Angels

MP3 :::
Strangers Family Band – Strange Transmission

I am completely in love, perhaps an agape love, with the new song Broadcast has been ending all their shows with on the current tour. You know the one I’m talking about… the one with Trish Keenan shredding on a customized electric dulcimer. Like, total “My Dear Companion” meets “Astronomy Domine” meets “Autobahn” meets “Fight For Your Right (To Party)” action. Ya know, the krautrock hoedown. With the help of Pretty Creatures‘ warm analog tape bootleg of the show (you can download it here), I grabbed the finale, cleaned it up a bit (with just a couple of compressors, filters, and a peak limiter – no manipulation of the actual sound), and am providing it below for maximum damage (you can grab the cleaned-up-a-bit version here). No one knows the actual name of this song yet, so I’mma call it “Dulcimer Jam.” Because it features an amplified dulcimer. And it’s a jam.

MP3 :::
Broadcast – Dulcimer Jam [Wexner Center, Columbus, 10.25.09]

Is it safe to say that Woodsist may have the greatest batting average of any record label this year? Looking to put one more trophy in the cabinet, they plan to release the debut full-length from Real Estate next month. The garden state group uses phased surf guitar working in cahoots with autumnal acoustic overtones to produce something along the lines of a slacker Yo La Tengo. A dejected tropical palette forged by guitarist Matt Mondanile of Ducktails (although this is closer sounding to his recent work with Parasails), and vocalist/guitarist Martin Courtney, whose singing evokes a folkier Doug Martsch. This new self-titled album is largely a collection of rerecorded tracks from previous EP’s and 7″s . The changes are mostly on the mixing/mastering end, and while it’s usually a polarizing venture to polish up a band’s style, the smoother production more than suits Real Estate’s gossamer melodies. You can find all the dates for their current fall tour here.

The self-titled debut will be out on Woodsist November 17th.

For Fans of:  Yo La Tengo, Ducktails/Parasails, Best Coast

MP3 :::
Real Estate – Fake Blues
Real Estate – Snow Days

Having spent a few years wading through chest-level distortion, the L.A. based noise outfit Robedoor have built a cult following for their sinister tape explorations. Coming home to roost from an east coast tour with the recently departed(and dearly missed) Pocahaunted, the group sent six months preparing the follow-up to 2008’s Endlessly Blazing. Their new full length, Raiders, signals an effort to evolve beyond a strictly drone project into an iowaska-drinking mutant of heavy, creeping rock and psychic textures.

Raiders is a colosseum of reverb where inconsolable voices howl and apocalypse-taunting guitar lines smack against the gates of low end tones. With the addition of a new drummer, the group catchs a torch-carrying fever for a sonic witch hunt. A newfound focus on the vocals, coated in bile, kick fresh momentum into the group’s Sunn O))) influenced amplification obsession. This is set to be printed in a limited edition of 500 copies on vinyl, but will also be available in cassette format.

Raiders is available now through Not Not Fun.

For Fans of:  Magic Lantern, Double Leopards, Racoo-oo-oon

MP3 :::
Robedoor – Countdown to Depression