I went to college to study computer programming. After one semester and a B- grade-point average, I decided instead to focus on writing. A lot of good that has done me! I'm sitting in a shitty room in a house full of degenerates trying my damnedest to land any paying gigs I can. Had I [...]
Cleaners From Venus Reissues Captured Tracks Records [2012] Fire Note Says: Lo-fi tales of Swinging London from 80's cult legends Cleaners from Venus! The Cleaners from Venus are a pioneering lo-fi recording project featuring the talents of Martin Newell and Lol Elliott on the first three albums, issued here by Captured Tracks for the very first time [...]
• Space. The Final Frontier. Until, of course, it's not anymore. Then there will be a new Final Frontier, and we'll all have to start altering our dreams so we can desire to go there. You know what space has a lot of? Stars. Distant suns and planets. Lots of galaxies. But you know what there [...]
Hi friends. I hope each of your individual weekends were eventful. Mine sure was. Wait, what did I do on - oh, right. I celebrated my five-year LA anniversary on Friday night (sure it was a night early, but who cares?) at El Chavo. It was a pretty good time until it wasn't, at which [...]
As fans of our Facebook page know, Rocker Magazine loves a birthday. So it was a moment of real inspiration that found me spending a Friday night trying to track down the birthdate of one of my very favorite "Jangling Men", elusive pop king Martin Newell. Most famous in the US for the company he keeps (co-writing with Captain Sensible of The Damned, and his Andy Partridge of XTC 1993 album "The Greatest Living Englishman"), his position as a Cherry Red label stalwart and firmly on the outside of the [...]
![[Listen] Cleaners From Venus: "A Personal Issue"](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/3999942_lg.jpg)
Yeeeei! Por ahi de octubre les informaba que Captured Tracks dentro de su serie de reediciones clasicas de algunos albums de shoegaze estaria lanzando los tres primeros albums del proyecto de Martin Newell, Cleaners From Venus , y si en esa ocasion se llegaron a perder el track que les comparti, creo que deben de dejar en paz todo lo que estan haciendo en estos momentos para ir a darle una merecida escuchada a " Only A Shadow " ya que sin duda, es uno de esos grandes clasicos que merecen ser desempolvados para volver a ser [...]
![[Listen] Cleaners From Venus: "Only A Shadow"](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/3814725_lg.jpg)
Como seguramente ya sabran y esto es algo que me tiene muy muy contento, Captured Tracks estara editando ediciones de algunos materiales clasicos del shoegaze y algunos otros proyectos que tienen mucho que ver con el genero que maneja este sello y lo mas probable es que al menos una o dos de sus bandas mas recientes dentro de su catalogo ya se encuentre en su respectivo playlist ya que desde que arranco este blog les he estado hablando de algunos de ellos como Minks , Blank Dogs , The Soft Moon y recientemente [...]
MP3: Martin Newell - Sun Comes to the Wood So glad for the recent cottoning-on to Martin Newell and his Cleaners from Venus ; love for his brittle, psych pop beauty from contemporary favs like Big Troubles as well as Taylor Richardson (of Infinity Window ) and Gary War's Fixed Identity imprint is cementing his status as predecessor to much recent lo-fi and hauntological-leaning balladry. This solo jam is far from the soft focused sentiments of "Mercury Girl"; ghostly and preferring a more nervous, [...]
I gotta say, when I saw MGMT at the Voodoo Experience in New Orleans last year, I had a hard time concentrating on the music. Besides the fact I'd seen them in concert earlier that year at the Sasquatch! Music Festival, their Voodoo set was on Halloween … and they came out on stage dressed as Mystery Inc. Andrew Vanwyngarden made a fetching Daphne, as the sunset glinted from the synthetic strands of his orange wig. Ben Goldwasser and James Richardson stood at either side as Velma and Scooby Doo, with Matt Asti and [...]
Ex-Cleaners from Venus front man teams up with XTC's Andy Partridge for an insight into 1990s England.
Months after releasing the follow-up to their highly successful debut record, MGMT finally made it into the Daytrotter studio to record some songs off their 2nd LP, Congratulations as well as a Cleaners From Venus cover. The impressive session can be downloaded for free over at Daytrotter's website . A bit about the session and their sophomore effort, through the eyes of Daytrotter, can be found below. The upstate New York group will be taking it some what easy over the next few months as they only have a [...]
The Light Rays' lo-fi, up-tempo, reverb-saturated pop has echoes of the Cleaners From Venus or the Clean—but those are merely reference points to navigate by, not albatrosses around their necks. The Light Rays pull off the parlor trick of being fairly straightforward yet compellingly original. If only every group from Orange County could be as cool.
In 1985, the year before I became an official band member, one of Newell's regular mail-order clients in Germany took the cassette version of a collection of songs called Under Wartime Conditions , pressed it up as a vinyl album and distributed it to the stores. Newell was jubilant. This was, he reckoned, a real anarchist's triumph, a giant petrol bomb through the record companies' corporate windows. An album of songs made in his house in his spare time, using only a raddled guitar, an old piano with drawing pins in its hammers, a bass which was a barely [...]
6 Easy Pieces: Everybody's In Movies The Kinks, Celluloid Heroes. Velvet Glove, Movie Star. Prince, Movie Star. The picture pride of Hollywood. Too many fall from great and good For you to doubt the likelihood. Die early and avoid the fate. Or if predestined to die late, Make up your mind to die in state. Robert Frost, "Provide, Provide." Singers and songwriters, despite their arrogance,
Hi. I'm still here. It's been an interesting and slightly strange August. I resigned my full-time position at The Love Garden, where I had worked for 14 years. I don't recall ever talking too much about the shop here on the blog, but let me just say a couple of things: First of all, I'm extremely proud of the store. We frequently hear customers from all over the country telling us that it's one of the best record stores they've ever seen. We strive to be fair, friendly, and interesting, and I think [...]
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L.A. RECORD
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Little Hits
Hot Chip - Night & Day
Sleigh Bells - Demons (Official Music Video)
The Rains of Castamere by The National
A-Trak & Dillon Francis - "Money Makin'" (Official Video)
DIIV "How Long Have You Known?" (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
Michael Jackson - Bad (Afrojack Remix) [Preview]
A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS – « You Are the One »
Mojo’s Free Yellow Submarine Covers Disk
Florence + The Machine - Spectrum (Calvin Harris Remix)
