A Cave, A Canoo is Shelley Short's third release on Hush records and, to my delight, arrived at my door yesterday morning. I've been listening through her two other Hush releases, Water for the Day and Captain Wildhorse , a good deal lately and find her soft, sparse songs the perfect accompaniment to autumn's arrival. Short's music is ostensibly folk and, like much of that genre, feels intimate and personal, engaging the listener in a private, quiet world. Short plays acoustic guitar and sings, in a lightly affected, sweet and youthful tone. [...]
For my return to the fabled Natbib - now back up and running after more than a year - I thought I would hark back to May of this year to Magnolia , debut release of The Wooden Birds. As the newest project of The American Analog Set's Andrew Kenny , Magnolia does play like an AmAnSet album, albeit one recorded in a powercut. Vastly acoustic, and with a much higher emphasis on rhythmic tapping and strumming than any of Kenny's previous output, this album is an accessible and upbeat continuation [...]
The War on Drugs Taking the Farm Needle in your Eye #16 Arms Like Boulders Pushing Corn "Granduciel's plainspoken voice and his band's dreamily textured, ambient sound are alluringly compatible, lush and dreamy with a familiar rock 'n' roll bite"
Thanksgiving Adrian Orange, or Thanksgiving is recommended for fans of Phil Elverum, who produced and released Thanksgiving's 2005 Welcome Nowhere. Anyway, posted because he's (apparently) touring in September: September 22nd-Leeds, somewhere September 24th-London, Barden's Boudoir (w/ Mirror Mirror) Thanksgiving- While You Live Adrian Orange and Her Band- You're My Home also: Mt. Eerie- Mon. Nov. 17th- London, England- Tufnell Park Dome
Jacaszek- Treny Rytm To Niesmiertelnosc Martwa Cisza "Jacaszek has managed with "Treny" to assemble an album so heart-stoppingly beautiful and personal that we've been stunned into silence for its entire 55 minute duration. With string arrangements provided courtesy of Stefan Wesolowski, the foundations of the album are set with Cello and Violin painting fragile outlines coloured by subtle electronic manipulations, harp, piano and reduced, haunting operatic voices. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Michael Jacaszek doesn't make use of any [...]
In contradiction to what appears to be the accepted opinion I prefer Phil Elverum under the Mt Eerie moniker to his work as The Microphones. Now the ever prolific Elverum has put out another record, a six-track EP entitled Black Wooden Ceiling Opening, which finds him in a heavy mood, reinterpreting some old songs. The recordings were made in November 2006 in a session in which Elverum claims to have been exploring a new darker, more hardcore sound. Typically melancholy, and not lacking Mt Eerie's imagery or familiar lo fi sound the EP still marks a perhaps more marked deviation [...]
Last week comrade krushchev and I went to the deku tree organised Casiotone for the Painfully Alone gig at the brudenell, where I picked up this: The Old Panda Days 7" I really liked colour/picture/special records. I just bought a load of records including the Mt.Eerie No Flashlight LP/CD, Thanksgiving's Welcome Nowhere, Kenny Dorham's Round About Midnight and Talking Heads' Little Creatures. I love Francis Wolff's photography on the blue note [...]
This is a very busy time of year for those of us in university, hence the lack of posts. Anyway, it looks like i'm going to both the Pitchfork and EITS ATPs this year, so over the next few months i'm going to slowly write a little about all the bands i'm most excited about, and (when I get to hear them) those that are totally new to me. Pitchfork WEEN » SEBADOH » FUCK BUTTONS » PISSED JEANS » APSE » THE BLACK [...]
Throw Me The Statue released their Secretly Canadian debut E.P. About To Walk in December last year. Moonbeams will be their second release on the label which has provided us with such gems as Windsor for the Derby, Jens Lekman and Magnolia Electric Co. The band was originally the one man bedroom pop act of Scott Reitherman, who released Moonbeams on Baskerville Hill Records last year. Moonbeams is a jaunty and melodic album of washed out synth pop with more than a handful of sing-along choruses and some Casiotone-esque drum machine backing. Sounds lovely doesn't it?
I was led to the label Western Vinyl through the multi-monikered Keith Kinniff, who produces gorgeous electronic ambient music as Helios on Type Records and equally gorgeous piano music as Goldmund on Western Vinyl. Western Vinyl are purveyors of the kind of subtle and beautifully crafted home listening records that provide perfect accompaniment for a slow Sunday or an afternoon of reading. That's not to say this type of music doesn't stand alone, these aren't purely ambient records. Here's a taster of their output. Bexar Bexar Bexar Bexar produces the same kind of organic [...]
2007 was the year I truly delved into the Japanese post-rock scene with any real gusto, trying desperately to find any record I could get my slender Soviet fingers on, so I thought it apt to record my findings on the NatBibSoc blog - so here we are. The following is a selection of three of my favourite Japanese releases of 2007 (post-rock or otherwise - we shall not be confined by genre comrades!)... First up, debutantes Naan with their release Dokusa from March. This was probably my [...]
Boom Bip and Gruff Rhys I got the leak of Neon Neon's upcoming debut Stainless Style, a collaborative effort between Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals and Boom Bip, who as an aside has thrown me into confusion before with Circle- where he collaborated with nasal voiced avant hip hopper Doseone. Another chapter in Boom Bip's exploration of different sounds and genres Neon Neon sees Gruff Rhys (alongside guest appearances from Spank Rock, Fatlip, Sean Tillman and Cate Le Bon) singing over very 80s sounding synth heavy production. In fact some of the production [...]
The Young Mountain EP - circulated firstly by the band on CD-R as a demo in early 2006, then by Magic Bullet Records in June of that year - was the opening release from texans This Will Destroy You . That debut, in its confined demo format, packed an album worth of dynamic surges and climactic creaminess into thirty-odd minutes. Enough to whet the appetite, sure, but for those of us eager to hear (and enjoy) an entire record, their first album couldn't come soon enough. [...]
Our Brother The Native Next month Our Brother The Native release Make Amends For We Are Merely Vessels, their second Fat Cat release after 2006's Tooth and Claw. Tooth and Claw is a brilliant mess of acoustic guitar, happy child like singing and found sounds. Essentially this is a record from the new weird america camp, Ariel Pink minus the synth. There's a song from the album up on their myspace at the moment, We Are The Living, which is far more reminiscent of Yume Bitsu or the echoey whispers of former [...]
Psyche pop, and to a lesser degree afro pop seem to be the trends of the moment. Animal Collective and Panda Bear have really hit it big, along with the likes of Caribou, the Brian Wilson-a-like Miracle Fortress and indie message board favourites Of Montreal. With Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer and El Guincho all garnering considerate internet hype of late 2008 looks like the year of tribal sounding rhythms and Byrne worshipping. Two years before Person Pitch Noah Lennox released Berserker, under the JANE moniker with Scott Mou, a rhythm driven 4 track freak out which consists of the classic Animal [...]
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The Kills on Letterman (Video)
Circo Voador anuncia shows de The Kooks, Foster The People, Friendly Fires, Gogol Bordello e mais
Download: James Blake Live Album (Unofficial)
My Funny Valentines
