![[Contest] Death Grips and Rat King this Saturday at Headliners Music Hall!](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/5000527_lg.jpg)
Folks, this is one for the books, one of the can't miss live jams of the summer. Death Grips has kept both the heads and the backpackers captivated since 20112s brutal Ex-Militia mixtape, and concocted the type of cerebrally terrifying hip-hop that provides the perfect soundtrack for putting a hit out on someone. Even Swiffering your kitchen floor while listening to The Money Store makes it feel seedy. Since then, MC Stefan Burnett and drummer of Lightning Bolt's most formidable opponent Hella, Zach Hill, have continued to brilliantly meld punk, noise, and [...]
Cool, good, new Boards of Canada dropped early. Give it to me. Tomorrow's Harvest is out on June 11th. I imagine I won't be doing anything else that day but vibing.
Chicago's Meat Wave holds everything I've been looking for in a band lately. Their unabashed sense of marrying post-punk elements with tom heavy straight up rock n' roll leaves them at a unique position in Chicago's flourishing scene. I caught up with Chris (vocals/guitar) via email before their lofty gig opening for Jeff The Brotherhood at Subterranean and chatted about all things Meat Wave. === Davves: For three seemingly nice, chill dudes, you make some pretty aggressive music. Where does it all come from? [...]
The Memphis-based prophets Cloudland Canyon have gradually, over the course of myriad singles and collaborations the past few years, moved away from their hybrid form of guitar-meets-synths apache anthems found on 20082s masterful Lie in Light and 20102s indescribably gorgeous and emotionally complex Fin Eaves to angular space electro thrash and gritty proto-techno - to awesome results. The Sonic Boom-produced "Prophetic Frequencies" is the latest to get a video treatment with the help of Chris Hontos and Tim Krause, who've juxtaposed nasty and beautiful basement punk show documentation with funky fractal galactic travel, Autobahn trace, [...]
Mark Nelson redefined American post-rock in the '90s with the underappreciated Labradford, and continues to pen exciting new additions to the drone/ambient canon via Pan•American. Cloud Room, Glass Room is Pan•American's first album in four years, and sees the addition of percussionist Steven Hess into the fold, providing that intangible human element that helps largely electronic compositions from feeling too cold. The result is a new rhythmic muscle that could whet the whistle of fans of the presumably assimilated-by-the-Borg Boards of Canada. Lead track "Project For an Apartment Building" features a muted yet fervet percussive backbone only a [...]
![[Praise + Malaise] The Men – New Moon](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/4852355_lg.jpg)
It took a few decades, but the punk rockers figured out that classic rock radio offers a goldmine of decent ideas ready to get damaged. Dinosaur Jr. understood this to an extent, but their catalog always felt arena-ready. The acts who still, strictly aesthetically speaking, belong in the bars, basements, and DIY blowouts have begun crafting a way to take these notions of grandeur and apply them to the gritty house show ethic - an uneasy feat. The Decibel Tolls' album of the year in 2011 was The War on Drugs' Slave Ambient , a record that [...]
Ne'er you mind this show takes place on a Monday (or "the weekend" as it's known in the service industry), the rainbow spazz pop of Javelin , the twisted compressed circuits of Raleigh Moncrief, and The Pass' glitchmaster Brainbheats will offer up one of the most bizarrely high energy shows you're likely to see anytime soon. Why not save some money in these lean times and go for free? Alls ya gotta do is visit this post from The Decibel Tolls' Facebook , and comment for one (1) [...]
Mercurial multimedia artist Roberto Lange perpetually keeps his spear sharp with interesting collaborations - from the much loved Prefuse 73 project Savath y Savalas to last year's underrated OMBRE with Julianna Barwick. For his solo work, Lange truly couldn't have picked a better title - Helado Negro , directly translated from Spanish as "black ice cream." To wit, Helado Negro's radiant sonic chill conduit is pretty doggone prefect for balmy summer nights. Heavy shades of classic tropicalia, West Coast psychedelia, and analog-based electronica have always floated about Helado Negro's balmy approach to subdued [...]
A sad start to today as news that Kevin Ayers passed away in his sleep last night. Beyond his seminal work with The Soft Machine throughout the '60s and gritty prog outfit Gong, Ayers was a visionary psych folk artist, crafting one of my personal favorite albums, his career-defining Joy of a Toy. Ayers was 68. Blast these songs loud today, folks. MP3 ::: Kevin Ayers - The Clarietta Rag Kevin Ayers - Stop This Train (Again Doing It)
![[Photos] Shabazz Palaces – Zanzabar, Louisville – 1.29.13](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/4781868_lg.jpg)
Shabazz Palaces are spellbinding in a small room. I caught them in 2011 at the Pitchfork Music Festival, where they une-fucking-quivocally put on a better show than Odd Future playing the larger stage. While a larger stage belongs to Shabazz in theory, the intimacy a 250 person capacity room like Zanzabar provides did better justice to their nuanced sound. Ishmael Butler and Palaceer Lazaro took advantage of the confined space to breathe extra life into their sonic space. Shabazz Palaces were purely psychedelic - letting space pings and tape echo wash over the sold out crowd, while amazingly rearranging [...]
![[Review] My Bloody Valentine – m b v](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/4778423_lg.jpg)
It rules. POSSIBLY RELATED ::: My Bloody Valentine – 9.27.08 – The Aragon, Chicago STREAM :::
According to the good doctors of Nerves Junior , this EP is primarily a thirst-quencher for bigger and badder things coming in the pipeline. But it's no placeholder, Craters is a fantastic three-song document of a newly reformed band slowly sculpting their own supersonic pop. "Goodnight Nobody" is the standout for me, but all of 'em are bangers. It's out today, and you can stream it below. If you like what you hear, consider buying the high-quality MP3 download from Bandcamp and help get these guys down to SXSW! And if you're in [...]
Sometime between when Crain's John Cook passed away last weekend and this morning, someone uploaded Half-Cocked in high definition to Vimeo. Half-Cocked is the candid early '90s document starring the members of Crain, Rodan, Tara Jane O'Neil, Versus, and more in a fictional narrative, or if you replaced Singles ' Seattle and grunge with Louisville and art punk. A great tribute to Cook and Crain, and a great chance for people who weren't there to experience a very special time in the annals of punk lore.
Are you familiar with You Are Listening ? It's an online sound experiment that plants a bed of ambient music under police scanner chatter, providing a sort of experiential aural footprint of a city as a living, breathing entity. Imagine if you shifted the more aquatic tones of that experiment toward squealing, Albini-approved, sustain-heavy noise rock? That somewhat accurately captures the vibe of Teith 's "Build Me a Tower and Give Me a Gun." The static of their native Chicago catapults velvety guitars and janky percussion miles above the grid pattern, flying high with the likes of Fly Pan Am and Rodan. Teith [...]
The first Saturday in March, Tame Impala is coming and I think all my friends are going to that and I can't stop yawning at the thought. So I was bumming pretty bad thinking about sitting around at home and eating Go-Gurt and watching Hey Dude on Netflix until lo the angels of Cropped Out and The Other Side of Life came upon me, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them when they emailed "yo we got Matmos rollin' through." Cool, done. I don't think I have to introduce Matmos to [...]
It's been on Soundcloud for a couple of weeks, yet I'm just now hearing about this new Wire jam. Which means that someone is fucking up, or I've befriended/Twitter-followed the wrong people. When a legacy act like Wire still makes urgent and distinct music just like they did three decades ago, that deserves pervasive mention. To the former point, Change Becomes Us , their fourth post-reunion effort, culls from material and sound sketches originally written during their creative 1979-80 zenith. "Doubles & Trebles" appears on Change Becomes Us , out March 25th. Survey says it's gonna [...]
Between the release of their lauded 2011 debut As Bright As Your Night Light and their latest 3-song EP, Nerves Junior underwent major corporate restructuring. Such a tumultuous turnover could spell creative or pragmatic disaster to a less urgently determined outfit. Nerves Junior reinvented; switching rolls, adding new members, and to wit, new dynamics to an already adventurous brutal sonic entity. "Goodnight Nodody," from the forthcoming Craters , offers up the most propulsive and, truth be told, gorgeous songwriting in their toychest yet. Shimmering guitar and boyant vocals make full and tasteful use of the [...]
Rather than unleashing a wordy press release packed with superfluous information and how band A is the love child of band B and band C, can we do commercials that evoke Everything Is Terrible and TV Carnage mixed with some snippets of the rock product? I'd like that a whole big lot, and Purling Hiss figured that out. Glad to see these grody garage psych rockers on board with Drag City for their forthcoming Water on Mars (paging Richard C Hoagland ), out March 19th. Rock and roll is the best.
![[Contest] Win Tickets to The Helio Sequence with Shabazz Palaces or Freakwater with Julie of the Wolves!](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/4727055_lg.jpg)
Shabazz Palaces at Pitchfork Music Festival 2011 Do you like to go to rockshows? Do you like to go to rockshows but then also not have to pay any $$$ to get in? Well friends, the super cool fact is that if you like the former but love the latter, you're gonna love this blog post! We've got a pair of tickets to legendary Drag City slam twang outfit Freakwater and also, holy smokes, the return of the mighty The Helio Sequence with [...]
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