California's So Many Wizards have created their own brand of dream-pop; an amazing class of "bedroom pop". As the weather is finally turning from snowy, cold winters to bright, sunny days, we know we'll be playing So Many Wizards non-stop. Now it's time for them to put you in a great, warm mood, so have a read as we spoke to So Many Wizards about their creative website, ultimate concert line-ups, and the Lakers! AMBY: Hey So Many Wizards! Thanks for speaking with AMBY, how are you all doing? So Many [...]
ONE TO WATCH By Julie Stoller Typically when a person experiences a difficult breakup, they hide away in their apartment and drink themselves into oblivion. When Nima Kazerouni of Los Angeles' up-and-coming band So Many Wizards broke up with his longtime girlfriend, he went to the Los Angeles International Airport. Not to fly off to some distant land, but to live in his father's office somewhere in [...]
Wednesday was the Echo & Echoplex & Origami Vinyl “throwdown” at Cheer Up Charlie’s, and this embedded journalist perhaps became too embedded, as I ended up DJing the indoor stage and having my movements be tethered to the power strip next to a PA mixer for the better part of an afternoon. Luckily the event was pretty loose and disorganized, so much so that I arrived to the strains of a pretty amazing and possibly unlisted all-black soul group with male back-up singers. No later band really matched that energy. The crowd-pumping band leader wasn’t singing the most [...]
SXSW started off for me this year not with a bang, but a whimper: a faint little squeak, like the air slowly leaking out of a whoopee cushion. By Tuesday, the rock and DJ people had yet to arrive in Austin, yet the movie/TV/comedy folks from SXSW's first and more "official" leg (including my favorite comedians, e.g. James Adomian, Josh Fadem, and Johnny Pemberton ) had already split. This town was coming like a ghost town. And so Tuesday afternoon at Spider House's indoor lounge started off feeling a little lonely. The first act, solo guitar strummer [...]
GRAPHIC BY MADELINE ROSEMURGY Whether I feel it or not, this will be my fourth time down to Austin for SXSW. As you'd probably expect, I've learned new things about the festival each and every time - things that have become essential to my surviving the week-long music extravaganza. It occurred to me the other day that not everyone who takes part in the festival knows what to expect, so I decided that we'd lend a hand and share some tips on how to survive the festival and enjoy the amazing adventure that is SXSW. SXSW [...]
It's pretty much a Friday frenzy: ► South Bay punk icons Pennywise are celebrating 25 years — and celebrating having singer Jim Lindberg back in the fold — so the first of two sold-out shows tonight at the Palladium ought to be wall-shakers. Lagwagon opens. ► Femi Kuti & the Positive Force bring the good vibes to the El Rey Theatre. ► Abandoned Pools plays the Viper Room behind its latest album "Sublime Currency," with Lost In A Car Crash and Charming Liars supporting. ► Warships [...]
We've tallied the results for the Open Submissions stage of our LA Area Year End Poll. All of the submissions were ranked by Deli Editors from other scenes, and the list of acts that have advanced to our Readers'/Fans' Poll phase are below. We will also be releasing the list of nominees chosen by our local "scene expert" jurors very soon. Thanks to all the rad folks who submitted their heart and soul to us. Our open submissions pool was truly a celebration of the LA Area's talent and diversity. Total submissions [...]
Darlings of the east side indie scene, there aren't too many weeks that go by that you can't catch So Many Wizards playing somewhere. From their Echo Residency earlier this year to their involvement in The FMLY's underground events, and everything in between, this dreamy foursome hailing out of Long Beach are some of the hardest working musicians around. Their debut full length, Warm Nothing, released on JAXART Records, is an extremely well-crafted and thoughtful album filled with beach-hazed pop gems. - Jacqueline Caruso
Download now: High | Medium | Low Checkout a another Taylor Steele production "The Distant Shores... " and its accompany soundtrack. Surfing in Norway, whoa! Track list: 1. “ Magic Fingers ” by Hands 2. “ Lose Your Mind ” by So Many Wizards 3. “ Geri ” by Superhumanoids 4. “ The View From The Dihedral Wal l” by Tropical [...]
Alright so where were we... our look back at the year's downloadables brings us to the years end. The downloads this month are traditionally quite slim, but there is some tasty treats for your listening pleasure courtesy of some super rad samplers. So here it is 2012 Our Year In Sound: December. Starred; Call From Paris Fletcher C. Johnson; Messin' With My Mind Chelsea Wolfe; Tracks (Tall Bodies) F**K Buttons; Olympians So Many Wizards; Lose Your Mind [...]
What a year. More than 140 Los Angeles-sired albums passed through the Buzz Bands LA headphones this year, not counting EPs, mixtapes and singles. Judging from the detritus at my desk — handwritten lists, stacks of CDs, press releases — and my unopened emails, there were a lot more out there. It came in all flavors. 2012 was a robust year for folkies and faux-folkies, hard rock and harder rock, for electro and popgazers, for scads of seemingly interchangeable garage-rockers, for radio bands and scruffy DIYers, for electronic dance music and electronic dumb music, for R&B and glitch&B [...]
ILLUSTRATION BY LYDIA CONKLIN Another year has passed, and with that comes our best attempt to gather our favorite tracks and order them from best to, well, the very best. This collective is about as subjective as it gets - it's not something that necessarily represents what was popular or what certain sites wrote about. It's simply the music we loved in 2012. Without further ado, we present to you our list of the top 100 songs of 2012. While we had a blast putting this together, it didn't come without an argument or two. What [...]
By Seraphina Lotkhamnga It's been a great year of music. My ears have had such a good year that the task of selecting my top albums has never been harder. Perhaps it's because I've whittled down my usual list of 25 albums to 20 this year. Some artists on this list made their L.A. debuts this year and some of them have been in the neighborhood for years. Check out my top 20 albums of 2012, with my thoughts on the Top 10, and some honorable mentions after No. 1: [...]
Watch this newly released video for So Many Wizards ' song, "I Like it Here," off their latest album Warm Nothing, which was released this summer on JAXART Records . The video was directed by multi-talented local artist, Walt Gorecki of Walt! Productions. Sit back and enjoy the ride as the guys take you on a magical journey through the clouds and beyond. - Jacqueline Caruso
It's really hard to narrow down a list of Top Albums of 2012, especially when you have four contributors with different opinions. We gave the reins to Nathan.Lankford and Nicole Baumann on this one, since they write the majority of the album reviews, but we all have a little representation within this. Now, we do realize that our site has specialized tastes, so please realize that these are our OPINIONS . You're welcome to disagree, and, in fact, we encourage that process. Also, we're doing a Top 100 because so many records came out this year, it wouldn't be fair to narrow [...]
Filed under: Video of the Day Artist : Crown Plaza Video: "Reactor" Highlight: "Reactor is a monologue that explain my days waking up in such a strange place, so the images in this video compliment the song very well," frontman Nima Kazerouni says. "My pal Charles Mallison also did a fine job capitalizing on the alienation I felt during this time through his various shooting styles and techniques. The video has an almost creeped out haunting quality that represents these days perfectly." [...]
Crown Plaza is the solo project of So Many Wizards' Nima Kazerouni . Kazerouni recently released the new EP, Chem Waves Volume 1 an eight-song EP and is currently available on cassette via LA tape label Vanity Projects . Inspired after moving into his father's back office in the [...]
CROWN PLAZA, the side-project of SO MANY WIZARDS member Nima Kazerouni presents the video for it's new single Reactor. CROWN PLAZA creates a dreamy, soft sound - perfect for relaxing on the beach. Just as Kazerouni does in his new video. In the shot he is skating, dancing and singing at a beach in Los Angeles. And
Visual reverb? Yes, the ghost images in Charles Mallison's video are perfectly suited for "Reactor," the single from Crown Plaza's initial eight-song EP. The story here is that Nima Kazerouni — whose "day band" is So Many Wizards — embarked on his Crown Plaza electro side project in a particularly heartbreaking time period during which he shacked up in an office near LAX, complete with a "view" of the Crowne Plaza hotel. There, Kazerouni's sense of alienation was exacerbated by the proximity of an international airport and all its hustle and bustle. For the video, the [...]
Californian band So Many Wizards seem to get better each time you hear them. Their album 'Warm Nothing' is out now and you can get a free copy of the sunshine pop of 'Lose Your Mind' if you nip over here .
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