[One in a series on new music by L.A. artists ...] "Staring at Yourself," the second EP from L.A. seven-piece I Make This Sound, doesn't leave you much time for navel-gazing. Rich with vivid imagery and lush, playful arrangements, Jonathan Price and his piano-man voice lead you through all manner of intrigue and orchestral derring-do; sometimes it feel like the band is packing 10-minute epics into four minutes. Like on "One, Two, Three!" -- one moment you're seduced by a [...]
Meet Kárin Tatoyan . She's the one who started her set Monday night at Spaceland on her knees, not so much launching into song as breaking into an incantation. Who jammed virtually breathlessly for the first 10 minutes, teetering between hysteria and rapture. Who commanded your attention despite the fact the faces of her otherwise nattily attired sidemen were streaked with glitter paint. Who had you believing, straightaway. Think of Tatoyan as a baroque Bjork. If her haunting vocals don't dazzle you, her odd music will -- counterposing, as it does, weird electronics, sound effects and loops [...]
Our Charlie Amter has the scoop -- the Viper Room has been sold to Harry Morton. Details at The Times' music blog, Soundboard .
Gary Folgner, whose Galaxy Concert Theatre will close at the end of the month when the Santa Ana space gives way to renovations for a mega-nightlcub, vows to return. "I think you'll see us pop up with another venue, maybe within a year," says Folgner, who runs the Coach House in southern Orange County but lost the lease on his central-county hub for live music. "We're in a funny market right now, with what's happening to real estate." Certainly, what happened to the Galaxy's piece of real estate came as a surprise after Folgner's 13 [...]
The weekend seemed to be all about glitz, glamour and Grammy, but not in the middle of the black-clad, dancing throng on Saturday night at the Wiltern, or among the bouncing youngsters Friday at the Echo, or among the sweaty, swaying masses who packed the Echoplex on Friday. With so many good bands visiting from across the pond, it made sense to get out -- at least more sense that it made to give a best new artist award to somebody for her sophomore album. Editors ' set on Saturday at the Wiltern was surprising, darned-near [...]
Bear with me if this is old news to you -- it'll only take a second. I wasn't aware until now that the Eels had attempted to buy a 1-second television ad during the Super Bowl to hawk its B-sides/rarities release. Super Bowl ads, after all, go for $100,000 per second, and that's about what the band could afford. It didn't quite work out. But they made the ad anyway:
Up-to-the-minute coverage of the Grammys, courtesy of Todd Martens' live blog. See Extended Play .
Call me overly starched, but I tend to distrust girls who stick their tongues out at me, write things like "Ur So Gay" and have a handbag full of A-list producers for their music. We need another manufactured pop diva like the Hotel Cafe needs another singer-songwriter. That said, it was impossible to deny the charisma and chops of L.A.-based Katy Perry on Thursday night at a very packed Viper Room. A musical diarist in the vein of January's diva-of-the-month, Kate Nash, Perry infuses her boyfriend-bending pop with plenty of bite and, for her age [...]
The Galaxy Concert Theatre , a staple of the live-music scene in Orange County for 12 years, is closing at the end of February, and new owners will debut an uber-nightclub in the Santa Ana space on June 1. Gary Folgner, the Galaxy owner who also runs the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, could not immediately be reached for comment. The Galaxy's transition will not affect the Coach House. A spokesperson for the Mor Project , a new restaurant/nightclub management group helmed by Anton Posniak, said the new, 25,000-square-foot club called RevolveR would [...]
When I last saw the Vacation , front man Ben Tegel was climbing all over the furniture at Safari Sam's, giving one of those boozy, sweaty, unhinged performances for which the L.A. quartet became known. That was over a year ago, when Tegel and bandmates were a bit drunk on the euphoria of having been picked up by Rick Rubin's American Recordings . The Vacation's debut album was re-jiggered and re-released in 2006, the band started to write and play songs for a follow-up, and ... poof. Rubin moved from Warner to Columbia, [...]
[If you're not going to a show tonight, you must be home with that bug that's been going around. There's plenty to choose from:] Gran Ronde , the L.A. quartet who's been playing its moody, angular rock around town for over a year now, finally has a couple proper releases on the horizon. This week, its debut EP "On and On" is released, and April 8 is the date for the foursome's full-length, "Secret Rooms." The band celebrates the EP release [...]
[This blogger is having a not-so-super Tuesday and is a little under the weather. Quickly and randomly:] Headphones on. Here's the new video from New York trio A Place to Bury Strangers , who will be back in Los Angeles spreading doom and distortion on March 1 at Spaceland: ◊ ◊ ◊ Spent some spare change at iTunes today acquiring a new benefit CD titled "New Orleans: You're Not Alone." [...]
Hot Chip's sold-out show tonight at the El Rey Theatre has been postponed due to illness. The British outfit played a show in New York on Saturday and apparently Felix Martin barely made it through that one, Brooklyn Vegan reported. A Goldenvoice spokesperson said tickets for tonight's show will be honored on the new date.
So serene and meticulous is the indie folk on Robert Francis' debut album, "One by One," that it's hard to picture the clutter in which it was birthed. "I kind of took over my dad's workroom, and he's a bit eccentric," Francis says of the space in his family's Brentwood home that holds 30,000 vinyl records and stacks of sundry magazines belonging to his father, Robert Commagere, a pianist-composer. "There's no space to walk, but there is a lot to draw inspiration from." It's but one reason the sepia-toned tunes on "One by One" [...]
You could balance all of the Bravery's critical mass on a guitar pick, but the New York City quintet's fashion rock is all over the radio, and the band is adept at replicating those hits in a concert setting. They did Saturday night in a manner that set the tone for the whole evening -- tight, energetic and professional. The occasion was the grand-opening bash for downtown's Crash Mansion, a seemingly nondescript brick box of a building at Grand and Olympic that has been dressed up just enough that it could become a player on the [...]
The early buzz on the new venue Crash Mansion has been mixed. The downtown venue has been up and running for a while, playing host to some lively club nights and the occasional live show and, recently, trying to overcome the black eye it received when a patron was gunned down in a nearby parking lot in early January. On Saturday night, the 1,200-capacity club -- the kid sister of the hot NYC venue Crash Mansion -- will put on its best face for its grand opening, featuring [...]
[Friend-of-Buzz-Bands Frank Farrar picks up a spare ...] When is Chris Robley going to catch a break? Maybe he really does need to fire his booking agent, as he threatened to do at Wednesday night's show. OK, so Robley actually is his own agent, and his band didn't really drive all the way from Portland, Ore., just for the show at Mr. T's Bowl (it was part of a short swing up and down the coast). Still, the singer-songwriter-guitarist deserves better. Accompanied by a [...]
[The press release today from Beck's people:] "The first pressing of the recent "Odelay" Deluxe Reissue was found to have gone out with unproofed lyrics that were taken from a lyrics website as place holders for layout purposes. Beck apologizes for this unfortunate oversight and is making arrangements for the corrected lyrics to be available gratis via Beck.com . Subsequent pressings of the "Odelay" Deluxe will also include the corrected lyrics." That is all. Enjoy your day.
The past three Airborne Toxic Event shows at Spaceland have been quite the rousing affairs -- great performances by the resident band and strong efforts by the supporting bands too. It was a little bit more intoxicating last week with the news that KROQ-FM had added TATE's "Sometime Around Midnight" (now up on the band's MySpace page) into regular rotation. Quite a feat for an unsigned band, though not unprecedented. KROQ's music director Lisa Worden says it's happened a handful of times over the years -- most recently with the Sick Puppies. Among the [...]
I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet. It's My Damn Channel , a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was , along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others. Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was) , has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance [...]
Buzz Bands: Kevin Bronson on the music scene in Los Angeles and beyond
Bison - Quill
Neutral Milk Hotel- Aeroplane Over the Sea
Shinichi Osawa – Big Beach Mix 2012
Mr Fogg - Eleven
