As if his excellent collaboration with White Fence, Hair, wasn't enough, San Franciscan wunderkind Ty Segall has another album bearing down on us called Slaughterhouse, under the moniker Ty Segall Band (said band features the also amazing Mikal Cronin plus some other stellar members of the SF garage scene). It is a much more raucous effort that uses more bottom end and aggression, keeping in line with Segall's admission of wanting to do a more "metal" record. We posted the first cut "Wave Goodbye" here (the track is also linked below) - here is another track. When I saw that song title I immediately thought of a Simpsons episode - this is the one (naht nidit nyong):
Segall doesn't know how to suck, so this is an exciting release. Slaughterhouse is out June 26 on In The Red.
I mentioned only days ago the Dan Deacon show in January (still one of the best shows of 2012, in no small part due to the arresting performance by John Maus). Well, the Baltimore alchemist has brewed his next elixir, calling it America, and is giving us a booster shot with leading track 'Lots'. Seriously, this guy can always pull me out of a funk, and this track is as sugar-high, sonorous, orgasmic technicolour ear candy as always.
It certainly has been Prince fever here in Australia. I didn't go. And I dint care. It pisses me off that people tell me I should, too. I don't mind Prince, and his secret show idea is pretty rad, but I am not disappointed that I didn't see him play, especially for $360 that a certain friend paid for tix. So here is Hot Chip squeezing 'If You Would Be My Girlfriend' into their version of 'Night and Day' on some Zane Lowe BBC1 recording. Apart from the amazing drummer, I don't care about Hot Chip either. Enjoy...or not. Seriously though, the drummer is pretty killer.
I'm off to drink - sounds like I need it, huh? Well, I'm rosy, seeing Blank Realm support Zola Jesus in a second then backing up to see The Horrortones, so definitely cannot complain! Enjoy the weekend people!!!
Another miserable day to bring in the bullshit Winter season. I don't feel like doing work, and I KNOW you are playing Solitaire instead of whatever it is you are actually employed to do, so make your wasteful minutes count with some new music videos.
Noisy juggernauts A Place To Bury Strangers are on the cusp of unleashing their new hotly-anticipated LP Worship via Dead Oceans, and here is the clip for single 'You Are The One'. It includes typical NSFW fare such as dark hallways, hot ladies and sudden bursts of violence. All APTBS staples then...
UK act Trailer Trash Tracys have been riding waves of hipster adulation since the release of their debut album Ester, and although I enjoyed some of the tracks I felt the whole thing a bit inauthentic - much like any band that hipsters heap praise on. However, I didn't mind the song 'Los Angered' and it now has a cool video that evokes Battles' Gloss Drop conception art. Despite the TERRIBLE name, Trailer Trash Tracys could be onto something if they shirked the glossier elements of their persona and embraced their music more...
I found that the efforts of NZ goofy guitar pop kids The Eversons nailed their self-titled EP last year, and I'm glad to say they are releasing a full length called Summer Feeling on Lil Chief Records (a review of the album will be forthcoming). The following track 'Could It Ever Get Better' is off that, and the stop-motion felt cut out clip is the perfect complement to the band's aesthetic. Dumb, silly fun, done well.
Finally we have 'Summertime', the latest single from UK grungy 90s throwbacks Milk Maid. They will be releasing their debut LP Mostly No shortly, which promises to be a strong record. Sure, they are good - they ain't no Milk Music though (but Milk in the name is helping - does it really strengthen the bones???)
How about starting the day with a stream of the new Future Of The Left album, The Plot Against Common Sense? No review, as Im listening to it right now, and thought you should join in. Thanks to Spin for this!
Nihiti's album For Ostland came out this week. I posted about their 'The Ringing In (The Sun Is Rung)' track last year - what a crazy bag of awesome that was! Well, the longplayer does ramp up the insidious, glacier-cold electronics that grew out of the tail end of their last album Other People's Memories. I have to say I miss some of the no wave leanings that floated around the periphery of their earlier tracks, yet these new songs certainly hold a stronger sense of self for the band, albeit a dark, aberrant one, especially with the industrial noise that bursts forth in unexpectedly painful yet blissful waves. May these sonic vampires never come out of the shadows.
Seeing as the past few days has had me delving into some back catalogue stuff, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to talk about this record that has been slaying me all over again the past couple weeks. When Damon McMahon AKA Amen Dunes first came onto the scene, I was a little nonplussed. Unlike my first impressions of John Maus (that I didn't "get" it), the New Yorker just didn't grab me the way that other psych bands did. I appreciated some of his efforts - I was an immediate fan of 'Two Thousand Islands' and a couple other tracks off 2009's DIA - but I thought that Amen Dunes were going to be one of those bands that lots of people dug, but I didn't. It happens.
But then Through Donkey Jaw happened. When Sacred Bones put this out, as you can guess I didn't jump all over it like a virginal teen. I still felt that, whilst McMahon could straddle genres like a cowboy astride a rampant bull, he sometimes got swept away by the power of his ambitions - or even trampled underneath them. Not so here. The chopping and changing from drone to fuzzed out psych to intricate guitar meltdowns to falsetto soirees. McMahon's vocals transcend here, yet such confidence is evident across the board. His new-found band have helped to graft flesh on the bones, but truth be told they are only augmenting what is clearly inherent here. McMahon, and therefore Amen Dunes, are getting better with time. The erraticism fits within the paradigm of the band aesthetic now, much more controlled than its scattershot predecessors.
It's funny how much of an about-turn Through Donkey Jaw has been for me. If you haven't checked it out, you are doing yourself a major disservice. You can grab the record from Sacred Bones here.
Another 7" I've been itching to get to. Funny Not Funny Records have put some ace music out in the past - their Super Vacations/Eternal Summers and Elephant Child/Demon Beat splits were especially great - and here is a newie, a two track sprawler from Virginia act The Diamond Center. It's a delight to have a 7" run for almost quarter of an hour, and the quality on offer is devastating. The tracks have a heaving quality, an intake of breath, that pulses like a living organism. The quiet/loud dynamic that is prevalent in psych music is evident, but also warranted, driving the tension in these tracks, yet also handled with warmth and care rather than haphazardly bludgeoning their songs to death. It's a lullaby of a release - deceptively beautiful, seductively soporific.
Here's another 7" from the not too distant past. Massachusetts noise punkers Psychic Blood pumped out this dissonant, vitriolic 7" and it's a corker. Strain is two songs that disappear down a corrugated iron tunnel filled with miscreants and crushed syringes. Both the title track and 'Drudgefest' lay it down like an eczema rash, so bad for you but you can't help but frantically itch. Think Wipers with a rabid fascination for serrated glass. Dirty, tetanus stuff. I wish I could say more - and I probably could - but my gums are bleeding from gnashing my teeth. Psychic Blood have an album on the way called Autumn Curses. Can. Not. Wait.
A quick post about 'Powerslut', the new track by garage upstarts School Knights. The title pretty much speaks for itself. The Colorado quartet are priming their new release as a four piece (although whether they can get someone to put it out is another thing...come on someone, put up your bloody hand!) and this is pretty indicative of where they are at. 'Present Tense' is a slightly better song in my opinion - why I'm saying that I don't know. But these are some good dudes. That is all.
And now we move onto the second Gainesville, Florida act. Now these guys aren't new - Post Teens have been kicking around for a little while, and their self-titled 7" has been up and kicking for the best part of a year. But it's just so fucking good! Featuring members from Torche, Averkiou (there's the connection!), Dead Friends and Assholeparade, Post Teens spits six tracks down your throat in six minutes. Such abuse should be degrading - so why do I like it so much? Thrashy hardcore without the abrasive vocals, Post Teens kill, old school style. Seriously, this pisses over a lot of stuff floating around right now. And you know it.
Post Teens is also on Sound Study, make it the first thing you do and grab it here.
The first of two Gainesville, Florida releases to show off today (crazy, right?) is this EP The New Imperative by Averkiou (pronounced av er queue). It offers four tracks of warm and fuzzy guitars and vocal harmonies, like Yo La Tengo doing their best My Bloody Valentine, but with more heart. I can't believe I haven't heard of this quartet before! It makes me jump around my bedroom with giddy abandon like it's the late 90s all over again (when I used to jump around my bedroom with giddy abandon. Probably after writing bad poetry). If you could build a castle out of overdrive pedals and dig a moat with reverb, then but in that moat crystalline water from which sung the most alluring of Sirens, The New Imperative would be your blueprint. Awesome-o.
The New Imperative (look at that cat! Cats, man!) is put out through Sound Study Recordings, and can be gleaned here.
I know that 'No Title (Molly)' came out some time ago, but I just managed to pick up one of Domino Records' Record Store Day-sanctioned flexidiscs Smuggler's Way for myself, complete with accompanying zine, so thought Id have a quick chat about the John Maus track - and John Maus in particular.
I admit to not really "getting" much lauded album of last year We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves. I thought that it was too considered, too "now". Then I saw him live earlier this year when he supported Dan Deacon, and I had the inverse reaction to most. Whilst many who bought his albums found his self-flagellating, anguished performance perplexing and off putting, I thought it personal, gritty, and weirdly fun. Such efforts are rarely put into performances these days, yet Maus threw EVERYTHING into it. And he is a super guy too, willing to shoot the breeze afterwards.
'No Title (Molly)' isn't as dark as past releases, and could even be construed as a little poppier than most. The flexidisc itself is full of wonderful re imagined tracks too, well worth a listen. Expect more of the same on his rarities release - I'm after that one next.
I brought to your attention Evil Age, the second EP by UK duo Honeycomb Bones, last year. Here are four more tracks on their eponymous 3rd EP, and they are just as scuzzy and discordant as those that have preceded them, and still infused with swirling psychedelic flourishes. So nothing overtly different, then. But that isn't the point. Honeycomb Bones seem intent on slowly building up their oeuvre, tinkering here, tightening there - there is no need to reinvent the wheel when the wheel rocks as fine as it does. It opens with requisite claustrophobia and volume on 'Catherine Wheel', takes the pedal off just a tad with 'Devil In The Detail', 'Penny Black' stylises the content with an infected electronic beat that perturbs even as it remains buried under the rhythms, and closer 'Illuminator' proves a sting in the tail as it dissolves into a molten sludge of psych abandon. It's just a pleasant surprise to have some new material from these guys. I'm still awaiting their debut longplayer, but put the three EPs together and you pretty much have that anyway - and a cracker at that.
Ekra is a husband/wife duo from Queens, NY. Mr. Press (bass/vox) and Mrs. Press (drums/vox) have been playing together since 2004. In 2007 they reduced themselves to a two piece, and expanded their sound using effects pedals and drum machines. MEN is their second album (although they have recently put out a live release, Live at Spike's Hill), and it contains three mammoth tracks of experimental psych exploration. The duo call their musical stylings "okapi," after the distinct looking African mammal. These are intriguing sojourns into the labyrinthine chasms of darkness that can exist in elongated rock breakdowns - the shortest track here, 'A Lil' Called Strength', comes in at just under eleven minutes - and makes for a complicated, yet ultimately rewarding listen. Everything is in its right place then - and the band promise they are just getting started. We can only hope.
Damn if it hasn't been a batshit crazy week! I even missed posting on a Monday, that nigh on never happens. Well, after the sell out show Sonic Masala put on at The Waiting Room on Friday night (happy snaps on their way), it's no wonder. But I'm desperate to put my nose back to the millstone, so here are some vids to take your mind of the fact that it's Neck Yourself Tuesday, hmmm?
Per Purpose have been not so quietly killing all and sundry in Brisbane over the past couple of years. Here is a DIY video for their 'Warburton' track which I really enjoy. For some reason Per Purpose remind me a bit of The Drones on this one - certainly not a bad thing, although I'm not sure that was what they were working towards. Nevertheless, it's a killer track.
Last week I posted about Father John Misty, and even showed the excellent video for 'Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings' featuring the excellent Aubrey Plaza. Here is the third single from Fear Fun called 'This Is Sally Hatchet' - and it is even crazier in content than 'Hollywood Forever...' was! Love this drugged visionary. It's incredibly slick, and has me celebrating violence - win win?
Now I haven't mentioned Lyonnais before, but the Atlanta band's psych/drone meanderings are some excellent meditations on the existentialism of space...or something. It's great regardless, and this montage of natural desert landscapes and societies is a perfect complement to their music. I really rate this band, and so should you.
Finally we have the criminally underrated French garage band Strange Hands. Check out their debut album Dead Flowers - it's amazing technicoloured splattered vinyl, a great record, and can be gleaned from Azbin Recordshere.
I haven't had anything up for the weekend for the past few weeks, despite best intentions, but I couldn't resist. An overlooked album of late last year, this "latest" favourite by Omaha avante-garage rockers Digital Leather, Sponge, is an absolute blast. Shawn Foree's outfit have always dug into the lowest fidelity nether regions of music, procuring some filthy rocking tunes as a result, yet Sponge is a culmination of a seismic shift in their approach which has slowly come through over their last few releases. The stronger influence of synth to the mix has mellowed out these songs, so though rather there being a focus on balls to the wall batshit crazy garage rock, we see more cohesion and depth. And in my opinion, with such an approach Digital Leather has created its most consistently fun album to date. There are still some great rollicking tracks such as 'Deliver', but on tracks like 'Thrill Is Gone' or 'Chakras' what is offered is something more akin to early Guided By Voices if played on a Casio in a dumpster. There isn't much substance here, but that is the point. Its a fun album that jumps around a lot, yet strangely offering Digital Leather the direction in which they need to travel next.
Crash Symbols put Sponge lovely out on cassette, yet it is now sold out. However you can grab it digitally here.
This isn't normally my kinda thing, but some upbeat Robert Smith on a dreary Friday seemed like a good idea. The band is Lightouts, a Brooklyn indie duo who formed over a mutual love of The Cure front man and Emily Haines from Metric, not a bad launchpad really. This track has managed to fill me with some fuzzy bubblegum - I will admit that this sounds more like The Killers from their first album era covering 80s Springsteen than The Cure, but that is awesome too. Anyway, check it out - I reckon it does the trick.
i don't even know where to go with this. I looked at one warped release yesterday in Mutts' Pray For Rain. Well, although I'm finding it easier to digest Boom.Period, the debut LP from Michigan trashcan pop duo Biography, it is definitely not of this world. This is the kind of warm studio pop that talented ensembles of the 70s would have created in a parallel universe. It's wonky, unrefined, jagged, yet infused with an innate sense of fun and frivolity, like the house band in the background of a Cold-War era D-grade sci fi rom com. If that existed. Which I'm sure it must have - that sounds too good to have passed up, right Larry Cohen?
Boom.Period can be gat here - it's well worth it, it's grafting onto my inner ear as we speak.
It's a gloomy Friday in Brisbane - well it is a Sonic Masala show on tonight, and it has rained on every occasion, so it makes sense. So I needed music that would get me through. Fang Island's newie got the ball rolling - then I cam across London collective Super Best Friends Club. Seeing as I'm in a party mood, but don't have the requisite drugs available to get it going (working in a school has that issue...), their EP People We Forget This Is Love was my substitute. An ecstatic tribal drone explosion that sounds like members of Zen Zen Egui, Cave and Black Dice got together with Devendra Banhart and Alexander Ebert, then got tastefully fucked up and recorded the effluent that resulted. There are so many ideas floating about in here, its fair to say a few miss the mark. Nevertheless, its all done with so much gay abandon that its nigh on impossible to hold it against them.
You can get People We Forget This Is Lovehere. They also have two new tracks, 'Yes You Are!' and 'Universe Universe', here.
