Finding Old Ghosts In The Closet

My first post in three weeks goes to Glasgow art noise pop slackers Antique Pony. They apparently have an album on the way, but Gay Ghosts, their EP from the last tip of 2012, is pretty solid and worth a mention (I also found a copy of this cassette whilst in London last week). Its loose, funny, schizophrenic, noisy, tetchy - yet there are moments of aloof calm in amidst the Moore/Ranaldo hangover chaos that truly adds to the allure. The spoken word of 'Halloween', the Japanese 8-bit RPG score lurking in the DNA of 'Beautiful Atlas'... They are young, toying with concepts, and it will be intriguing to see what cocoons from their first longplayer later in the year.

You can grab Gay Ghosts here or here.

Antique Pony - Yung Satan Girl
Antique Pony - Manifold Town

Vinyl Orgasm, 2013 Style

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL RECORD STORE DAY!

There isn't much I can tell you, other than if you aren't out and about celebrating this at your local record store, I don't know why we are friends. So many exclusive releases, it's incredible! Here is a massive list of some of the things on offer. There is a lot of local gear too, so keep your peepers gleaned!

Here are four I'm pretty excited about:

Baltimore's Dan Deacon is a cuddly maelstrom of gummi-bear electronica, a sugar rush of giddy proportions, yet on last year's America produced a sliver of gravitas that further accentuated his relevance in the 21st century. He has a 500-press only 7" through Domino Records that utilises four - count 'em, four - drummers, two for each cut on the wax. The two tracks, 'Konomo Ripoff No 1' (essentially ripping off the Congolese Konomo No 1 - naturally), features ex-Ponytail skinsman Jeremy Hyman and percussionist Kevin O'Meara on one cut whilst the other sees ex-Double Dagger drummer/current Roomrunner frontman (and regular Dan Deacon Ensemble participant) Denny Bowen and regular Deacon cohort Dave Jacober take control. It's vintage Dan Deacon - therefore, vintage excellente.

Then there is this beautiful absurdity. Indianapolis label Joyful Noise have somehow managed to collate some serious shit under a 7" serious they are naming Cause & Effect, with the premise being an influential, historically-significant solo musician on Side A, and the modern result of that musical influence on Side B. And they ain't fucking around - the first cabs off the rank include Thurston Moore coupled with Talk Normal, Lou Barlow synced with Dumb Numbers, and David Yow vomiting arm-in-arm with Child Bite. The special, limited edition run that is available only to VIP Joyful Noise members is pressed on silver/clear split colour vinyl, while the regular edition for all the other people, is printed on black/clear colour vinyl. Amazing? Fuck yes. You can actually order too - try that here - and try some of the results here and here.

And as I mentioned last week, there is the new (posthumous) Double Dagger record 333 - only 1000, so they will sell like the proverbial. You'd be insane if you had the opportunity to pick this up and didn't - DD are definitely one of the unsung bands of the past ten years, full stop.

Double Dagger - Heretic's Hymn

Finally, for some local flavour, the excellent Tym's Guitar started a record label late last year in the form of a 7" record club (which I am a part of), and it's drawing some pretty special exclusives (including an amazing Earthless one-off). This is another pretty rad one - Californian nutjob guitar rippers The Shrines. If you don't know what they are all about, think Fu Manchu, in your teens, on waaaaaaay too many Red Bull-tainted bowls. Sweet, I know.


So get there. It doesn't even matter if you buy anything. I love going to Tyms, or Title, or Rockinghorse, or Jet Black Cat, or Woolly Bully (RIP), as much to listen and to chat as I do to buy. Many friends have been made in such a place. If these places die out, so will an integral part of why music is the amazing thing that it is. And to remind you, Brisbane is having some pretty cool parties at its stores. Head to any one of the below, and trust me, it will prove to be an outstanding day - it may even change your life.

TYMS - opens at 10am. Second wave of new stock rolls out at 1pm. Bands start at 12pm, including The Nation Blue (most likely their only show in Queensland for 2013 - an absolute must-see!), Bruce!, Midnight Wolf, Emperors, Roku Music and Cannon.

Rockinghorse - opens at 9am. Bands start at 12.30 and include Per Purpose, Living Eyes, Brainbeau and Half Spoken.

Jet Black Cat Records - opens at 9am. Bands start at 12 with We All Want To, with Thelma Plum at 4 and Morning Harvey at 6.30, with a mystery band thrown in for shits and giggles.

SEE YOU THERE!!!

Moore Heavy Light Moving From Chelsea

Much of the excitement over Chelsea Light Moving, Thurston Moore's new project (or at least one of many) has already died down some. Thurston played here late last year, the same time I was throwing a Sonic Masala night (Go Violets, Do The Robot, Tiny Migrants - great lineup) so I didn't see the confusion of many as Thurston, who was booked as a solo show, came on stage and proceeded to play predominantly new tracks off Chelsea Light Moving. Not that most people should have complained that hard - he is one of modern rock's geniuses, and the new record isn't all that far removed from latter Sonic Youth meanderings anyway. It cannot be avoided - the guitar, the dissonance, the laconic drawl. Shit, the man still looks the same he did in the late 80s! And it's a call to arms - a fuck you to the direction that most "edgy" rock acts take in the 21st century. And there are moments when it is clear that this quartet has the potential to become a fully formed band, such as when 'Empires Of Time' collapses heavily into a morass of chugging sludge - the sense of communal abandon feel real, and is something that has been missing in much of SY's latter releases, for better or worse...

That said, BECAUSE it's a Thurston Moore project, Chelsea Light Moving comes slightly as a letdown. The production values are a little too slick, taking away the punch from some of these tracks. That said, if it was another band you would find gravel deeply embedded in the skin underneath your jaw. Maybe it'd be the same last year, if the debut self-titled album from Metz actually had Ian Mackaye in it - sure it's good, but we've heard better from the original well-spring...

Nevertheless, Chelsea Light Moving has its moments, and it's great to see Thurston freaking out more. This band will get tighter, dirtier, louder - and then we could have an atonal masterpiece. Grab it here through Matador Records.

Chelsea Light Moving - Alighted
Chelsea Light Moving - Empires Of Time

And to prove how great this can be...

Don't Call The Curtain On This Team Of Ghosts

 

I enjoy a little M83 – 'Midnight City' is pretty rad, and their Before The Dawn Heals Us LP of 2005 was at one point in my life a high-rotation chillout album. But after the screw around that was their closing slot on 2012’s Laneway Festival in Brisbane (which wasn’t entirely their fault, but after a day of rain, ridiculously priced midstrength drinks and reviewing an entire festival ON MY OWN, my patience left the grounds hours earlier) I've cooled right off the French band. So when I saw that Team Ghost’s frontman was Nicholas Fromageau, once one half of M83, I was book/cover dubious.

Lucky I pay attention to well-worn clichés though – I dived straight into the Parisian quintet’s new EP Curtains and haven’t yet resurfaced, preferring to remain submerged in the glassy darkness. Fromageau describes the title track as trying to sound like Thurston Moore jamming with Peter Hook, with electronics filling in the blanks. It makes for a dissonant track and the perfect introduction into the squalling futuristic hell that Team Ghost champion. A good song that tips into serrated greatness halfway through, it’ll leave you salivating. Great stuff.

 

Curtains is out later this month through wSphere, with their debut LP Rituals following suit in March. Can’t wait. Don’t expect them down on Australian shores anytime soon – but they are playing in London – Birthdays to be exact (and a lead-in to my next post…) – in April, you lucky sods.

I Welcome You Back With A Second Groovy Helping of Chelsea Light Moving

Welcome back! I've had a lovely break, but it's time to get back into the brilliance. A week late, but here is the second track from Thurston Moore's new act Chelsea Light Moving, 'Groovy & Linda'. I'll let the man himself introduce the track:

Not to be confused with the 1968 coffee house folk song by Tom Parrott (recorded for Smithsonian Folkways), this chug n’ shred burner is a psycho reflection of late 60s NYC East Village hippie idealism slayed and splayed in an Avenue B tenement boiler room. Groovy was the boy born James Leroy Hutchinson from modest American means and Linda was Linda Fitzpatrick, she from a privileged nuclear household, both runaways to the lysergic pulchritude of peace, love and marijuana. When The Fugs went on tour in 1967 ringleader Ed Sanders enlisted Groovy to care take his Peace Eye bookstore at a “secret location on the lower east side” (E. 10th St., actually). An incredible underground poetry bookstore/art gallery/hip hang out and orgy hook up scene, Groovy turned it into a barefoot mantra crash pad for all the beautiful zonkers and speed freaks of alphabet city. It was hard for even a grouch like Sanders to get too miffed at Groovy who actually believed in the wild animal dreams of hippie. Groovy was in love with Linda, a starry-eyed goddess nymph and they were the power flower couple of Tompkins Square. Tragedy flapped its nightmare wings and the two were found brutally beaten and killed bathed in blood and mystery amidst their tie-dye rags and rolling papers. It signaled the end of the fairytale that the media presented in day-glo color come-hitherness in the pages of Life and Look magazine. The following year Charles Manson and his dune buggy motherfuckers would exact an even farther cry of chaos and killing in the bamboozled hills of Los Angeles. We, Chelsea Light Moving, want to mantra the names of these two angels of beauty, regardless of the cynicism and naïveté of youth, for these are the charms of the soul. “Don’t shoot!!” ----- we are your children……

Chelsea Light Moving - Groovy & Linda

Sonic Youth By Any Other Name Still Sounds As Sweet

Want the best solution to overcoming a Death March Monday? I have it.

The biggest news to come out of the weekend was the unveiling of the first track recorded by Thurston Moore's new band, Chelsea Light Moving. It's a six minute number called 'Burroughs', and it is close enough to the Sonic Youth we know and love that, combined with Lee Ranaldo's solo outings, makes it a little easier to know that the New York gods haven't left us. The band has Moore out front, and running the rest of this well-oiled engine are Keith Wood (Hush Arbors) on guitar, Samara Lubelski (Jackie-O Motherfucker) on bass and John Moloney (Sunburned Hand Of The Man) on drums. Moore's iconic guitar scrawl and purge is present and accounted for, as is the artistic connections (the lyrics are based on the last words of amazing Beat author William Burroughs). Another track has been promised for the end of the week - yay! So divulge, OD on this - and come out of your slumber for the new track on Friday.

Chelsea Light Moving - Burroughs

Putting Up A Smokescreen For These Religious Knives

Religious Knives are essentially Michael Bernstein (guitar, synth, vox) and Maya Miller (organ, vox). They have built their lives around exploring the extremities of noise, dabbling in industrial overtones and Kraut extrapolations before settling on their current band's blend of drawn out drones, haltingly played organ welts, repetitious structures and swirling melodies, all kept in some semblance of check by Todd Cavallo on bass and Ryan Nadieau on drums. Their last album on Ecstatic Peace was highly acclaimed and co-produced by label owner Thurston Moore. Smokescreen, the new LP out on Sacred Bones (sigh...) follows the blueprint that they have set in the past, and follow fellow sonic troubadours Moon Duo into the psychedelic wilderness, trheatening to envelop themselves entirely in their aural trips of double-helixing grooves. Nothing is in a hurry to get anywhere - just coast on the vibes and you'll get where you need to go...whether you want to or not...



Buy Smokescreen here.

Religious Knives - The Message
Religious Knives - Garbage Can

Beck's Nostalgia

Record Club: Yanni "Nostalgia" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Yeah, I know, yet more of Beck's Record Club with Thurston Moore and Tortoise - but I can't get enough of it. The whole of the Yanni Live at the Acropolis album is almost finished. This video of the track Nostalgia has a nice geeky bit at the start where you get to really see the banter in the studio, and no wonder - Nostalgia has some complex time signatures. Download below...

Beck’s Record Club, Tortoise & Thurston Moore – Nostalgia (Yanni cover)

Jellies Jive

Am I cool enough for you? Do I really care? Not really, and apparently that's cool...

Anyway this particular 12" from The Jellies is the coolest thing on the planet right now, apparently. The original 7" dates from 1981 and went down as one of those lost legendary indie 7" things. It popped up a couple of years ago on a few blogs, thanks Picnic Land, and now Trunk Records are putting out the track with a load of remixes on a very limited 12" all 'cos Thurston Moore (yep him again) found an original 7" and then played it to death. Read more here.

A perfect slice of weekend slow stomper cool to brighten your Monday blues, again! Enjoy.

The Jellies - Jive Baby On A Saturday Night

Until The Last Moment

Record Club: Yanni "Until The Last Moment" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

The Beck's Record Club project covering Yanni, featuring Thurston Moore and Tortoise, continues to put awesome video shaped slices of noise soaked genius so I just had to share the lastest track Until The Last Moment. The opening shot of Thurston with the drone growing around you is enough to send shivers down the spine of any Sonic Youth fan. Taste of the previous track Keys To Imagination below. Surly this has ATP special guest written all over it. Go on Barry book it!

Beck's Record Club - Keys To Imagination (Yanni Cover feat. Thurston Moore)

More of a Monday cover massacar from Beck

Sorry for the lack of a Friday cover up on Friday, again, work had other ideas about me posting. Thanks to Bren for stepping in with the ace Creedence Clearwater Revival cover but I did have a a few tasty tasty morsels up my sleeve and this one is too good to wait till the end of the week.

Now you may of heard of Beck's Record Club. The project was conceived as a way for Beck to get his mates to get together to re-record a favorite record or two, or as the official sources put it "an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day." Part having fun, part art project, it may not be an original idea for a bunch of musicians to get together and play some covers but what makes this a really special project is the cast of alt music's great and good that Beck can pull together to have a jam. Each track is 'released' with a documentary video, one a week, the whole process it makes for compelling viewing.

For the fourth edition of record club Beck brought together Liars, St. Vincent and Sergio from Os Mutantes to have a bash at Kick by INXS. (Yeah you read that right!!) Its awesome and you see more below...


Record Club: INXS "Mystify" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Beck's Record Club (Liars, St. Vincent, Sergio - Mystify (INXS)

But the cover up awesomeness doesn't stop there. In a surprising twist the Record Club's fifth album is Yanni’s Yanni Live at the Acropolis performed by no less than Thurston Moore and Tortoise. I know, sounds fucking amazing doesn't it? You can find out more here, but the first track and video from the session is below, blew me away!


Record Club: Yanni "Santorini" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Beck's Record Club (Thurston Moore & Tortoise) - Santorini (Yanni cover)

Thurston-backed purveyors of grunge to flay yr ears

Just a quick post - Club Fandango have joined with Rock Sound and are bringing Australian exponents of all things grunge Violent Soho to the UK next week. Good times for all! Recently picked up by Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore's ever-growing label Ecstatic Peace, and about to launch their 2nd album in the upcoming months (its been out in North America since March - fuckers! But its basically a rehashed version of their 1st album We Dont Belong Here - hunt that down), Violent Soho will do their best to destroy all in their path when they play alongside Japanese Voyeurs and Little Death at Chalk Farm's The Monarch this Monday. They've just finished a month long Statewide tour with The Bronx, so they are primed! 5 squid, can't go wrong! They play at 9.15pm. They will also be playing the Great Escape next weekend. Great way to continue the Aussie musical onslaught...

Thurston Moore lecturing young kids on Noise

If you were to choose anyone to explain the ins and outs of White Noise to your kids , Thurston Moore would probably be top of the wishlist...

Well, some lucky 8 to 12 year olds got to listen to an hour-long dissertation on the subject matter by the Sonic Youth founding member and had some fun twiddling knobs and messing about with distorted guitars with him...

Result? Check it out yourself on the video below...

6 Degrees of Sonic Youth #3 - Violent Soho

The 3rd piece in my Sonic Youth triptych is an introduction for you (most likely anyway), and a reunion of sorts for me. Hailing from Queensland, Australia (and as they proudly attest, from Mansfield, postcode 4122), young grunge worshippers Violent Soho have been ripping apart all and sundry for the best part of 5 years now. I had the pleasure of seeing them just before I left Australia back in 2008, and once again they made my head explode with their energetic fury. I always thought they had the opportunity to go far. Not long after I had arrived in London, they did a whirligig tour of Europe, dropping in at the 100 Club to fuck things up before they disappeared surreptitiously from my radar. But the boys from Mansfield have been anything BUT quiet, and 2009 was a watershed year for them, seeing them touring the US extensively with the likes of Band of Skulls, Built to Spill and the Dead Weather, all under the watchful gaze of Thurston Moore, who has signed them onto his Ecstatic Peace label. It feels great to have a 'I told you so' moment of seeing a small group rise up and get the recognition you knew they always deserved. Their 2nd LP (and the 1st under Ecstatic Peace) Violent Soho is out in a week - get it!!!

Oh, and they are playing with Society's Ills AND Thurston Moore (solo) @ the Ecstatic Peace showcase gig at SXSW on March 19...

Now enjoy a couple clips of the band, including a chat with Moore...

6 Degrees of Sonic Youth #2 - Society's Ills

As any music aficionado knows, we are fast approaching that time of the month where all eyes turn to Austin, Texas, for the annual South By South West (SXSW). One band that will have its space very cramped by the insistent push of an eager crowd will be Society's Ills. A supergroup of sorts, Society's Ills is the hardcore outlet for Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. The 1st incarnation of the band saw Moore ripping out 7 Seconds covers with punk alumni Mike Watt (Minutemen et al),Dez Cadena (Black Flag) and Dave Markey (celebrated punk film maker) back in 1994. Moore has dusted off the moniker to feed his DC Sound addiction, and he has a new cohort to make it happen - J Masics (of Dinosaur Jr fame), Don Fleming (Sonic Youth producer), Andew W.K. (do I hear a WTF?), and Awesome Allison (of Awesome Colour). Below is a cut from their rare and extremely loved Skins, Brains & Guts 7", entitled I Hate Sports...

6 Degrees of Sonic Youth #1 - Yoko Ono Plastic Band

Im a little behind the 8 ball here - first slow on the uptake with Mogwai's first podcast, now this - Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon jamming with Yoko Ono?!? Well its happening. Moore and Gordon are temporarily a part of Ono's Plastic Band, as the below clip attests. Its shot at a rehearsal at Brooklyn's Academy of Music a couple weeks ago. Two memorable nights ensued (so I can imagine), including a section where Ono, Gordon and Moore played as a trio! We really missed an occasion to see some great creative minds come together...

And as will be the trend for the next few pieces today, there are tenuous links to all of them via the almighty power that is Sonic Youth.

NB - Im laid up in bed with a bad back, so Sonic Youth appears to be the only thing with the requisite powers to get me through the day...