Finding Musical Nuggets In This Denver Goldrush

This is an incredibly exciting notion - a festival run by three ace of base blogs! Pity its in Denver...too far away! The rad dudes from Tome To The Weather Machine, Magic Teepee and Speaker Snacks have united to present the first annual GOLDRUSH Music Festival, in two weeks' time, September 16th and 17th at the Hi-Dive Rock Club and Sputnik in Denver, Colorado. This two-day event will cover a wide, varied selection of musical styles from across North America, featuring rock, electronic, pop, and ambient from over 30 nationally renowned artists, headlined by Tennis, CVLTS and How To Dress Well. The Tome's Crawf and Ryan H., Magic Teepee's Ryan P., and Speaker Snacks' Jake Martin are all longtime friends and avid supporters of all things music. Each site has had a careful hand in picking out the artists performing this year, making the artist invitations/acceptances and pending performances extremely personal and sacred. These musicians have been obsessively listened to, worshipped, and then subsequently written about—and for good reason. Its a veritable who's who od SM-endorsed artists like Vitamins, Junior Low, Tjutjana, School Knights, Candy Claws, Seven Feathers Rainwater, Slow Magic, StaG, the Kevin Costner Suicide Pact, Steffaloo and Teen Daze, plus a shedload more, GOLDRUSH promises to be something special.

The guys put together this compilation to showcase the event, and its pretty spectacular. You can get tix for the event here! Its uber cheap and will be an amazing weekend, so get on board!!

Video Vacuum - Kevin Costner Suicide Pact, Gagarin, Abbe May

I thought we could all do with starting this week with looking at some moving images and listening to some sounds strung together in an apparently cohesive strand, as it beats the hell out of doing anything constructive, right? And do I have some left-of-field doozies for you...

First up is Kevin Costner Suicide Pact, which had me chuckling for some time - that's just the name! Ryan over at Tome To The Weather Machine made up a video for the ambient-drone duo's track 'Decay' out of footage from the 2008 riot in Philadelphia after the Phillies won the World Series, combined with some skateboarding footage. It also helps to keep it in the family, as one half of KCSP, Peter, writes for the Tome also, and they all part of the Act So Big Forest Collective (which also features one of Paul Masala's faves, Candy Claws)!

The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact – "Decay" from Tome to the Weather Machine on Vimeo.

On 12th April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human to undertake a successful journey in space. He orbit ted the Earth in his Vostock 1 spacecraft - code 3KA-3 for 108 minutes. Taking his his name for his solo music project, London-based artist Gagarin plans to celebrate and commemorate this in a number of ways. One of those ways is with this video made for one of the two tracks of his 7", '3KA-3' (which is the code name of Yuri Gagarin's spacecraft). The track has audio commentary that Gagarin made back to Earth, and the vid actually features footage of the amazing historical event (there is a lot of love here!!) As an aside, Gagarin is playing a few shows in London, including a set at the Freedom of Expression night in Croydon next week, and a support slot behind Demdike Stare at The Lexington on June 17th. Gagarin's album Biophilia is due out three days after this show.



Finally (and no offence, but my fave of the bunch) we have Abbe May. With a growing reputation as an intense and exciting live performer, Abbe May has created her own moody, guitar driven sound over the last four years. Forthcoming album Design Desire is attracting comparisons to everyone from Portishead to Patti Smith, yet the music Abbe creates is best explained as a unique soundscape of crunching guitars with a seductively haunting vocal. I know that this isnt Marnie Stern, but for some reason she was the first person that came to mind. The video itself (of the titular track) is suitably slinky and trippy, filmed in a dried lake near Gin Gin in Western Australia. Ive even got the single for you to listen to sans video if you want it like that - cos Im a giving chap.

Abbe May - Design Desire



Now get back to work!!!