Earlier this year, Woodsman released Rare Forms , a full-length in which the band explored both the grimy industrial labyrinth of '70s German experimentalism and the rustic, bucolic light flights that resemble sunshine-saturated psychedelia. During my interview with the band in early April, Trevor Peterson revealed that Rare Forms did not, conceptually speaking, represent where the band is now - a result of the gestation period required to properly release a record and Woodsman's never-ending creative stream. That was no hyperbole, as just nine months later, [...]
Though some would argue the contrary, Louisville's "indie rock" (whatever that is) scene can come off as a stridently dichotomous entity. On one end of the spectrum, the city is known for its prodigal sons of radio-ready anthems a la My Morning Jacket, Bonnie Prince Billy, etc. On the other, pupils in the Slint and Rodan school keep the flame of fringe alive - excellent acts like Nzambi, Phantom Family Halo, R. Keenan Lawler, and Softcheque who concoct boundary-decimating music that sometimes proves too challenging for the fried attention spans of the digital age sect. Very few artists have found [...]
Los Angeles-based sound architect Cameron Stallones, better known as Sun Araw , makes the kind of music that appeals equally to people on a spiritual quest and kids in need of a really wicked soundtrack for ripping that homemade gravity bong. Since 2007, he has ruled over his psychedelic sound kingdom with a sharp spear, and released a steady torrent of EPs, LPs, remixes, and singles unto the world. Stallones' forthcoming Ancient Romans , his fifth album and first for Drag City (via his Sun Ark imprint), feels palpably cinematic [...]
I never went through the quintessential American punk rock phase that so many of my peers did during our storied teenage years. I liked punk, particularly rotten sludge acts like Flipper, but I was never that guy. I had friends that sported all black with studded belts and Circle Jerks T-shirts. Me, I was a classic rock kid at heart, cuttin' class and making mischief in only my most badass Hendrix and Floyd threads. At the same time, though, I discovered the heavy hitters in more experimental realms - My Bloody Valentine, Boredoms, Mogwai, etc. - not a [...]
Sic Alps-collaborator, collector of cute animal photos, and summoner of rock music of yore Ty Segall returns not long after Metled melted the fucking faces off of dudes who sip on fair trade coffee. Goodbye Bread offers up vintage Nuggets-ready cuts that tend to run more subdued than his previous work. Don't think, however, that Goodbye Bread isn't packed with scorchers. "My Head Explodes" and "Where Your Head Goes" bursts with soaring choruses, nasty guitar fuzz, and tape echo that reaches high above the International Space Station. In a show of songwriting [...]
New York-based La Big Vic just dropped a game-changing debut. We got a taste of what the group's been cookin' with various tracks that have trickled in over the past year, but the whole of the eight-song, 45-minute Actually is simply breathtaking. Describing an album as "uncategorizable" or as an amalgam of multiple genres is just not an interesting description anymore, and one that does no justice to this kind of record. You hear a little of the fluid, utopian soundscapes of Talk Talk and Bark Psychosis, as well as occasional vocoder-heavy galactic shag grooves a la [...]
Compared to the warm, sample-heavy bedroom folk of her debut Isolation Loops and her mood-shifting, mood-altering sophomore effort My Electric Family , the latest album from Bachelorette is icy, distant, and minimal. Opting for the self-titled three albums in, Bachelorette exudes a particular air of foreboding... at least comparatively. That makes sense, considering the album was recorded and assembled in locales of turbulence, such as her native Christchurch, New Zealand (which suffered a devastating earthquake earlier this year) and, interestingly, Tripoli, Libya (I assume you're aware of that nation's current strife). [...]
Helado Negro is the nom de plume of the mercurial Roberto Lange, a multimedia artist who also serves as one-third of Prefuse 732s amazing Savath & Savalas project, as well as a go-to collaborator with the likes of Bear in Heaven and Julianna Barwick. Due to the great cosmic injustice of hype, Lange has yet to achieve indie cult hero status. Not that he probably cares, but it's still too damn bad. However, Canta Lechuza might help propel him a bit more to the forefront, where he belongs. For non-Spanish speakers, Helado Negro [...]
When Atlanta-based electronic spirit warrior Guillermo Scott Herren, a.k.a. Prefuse 73 , dropped One Word Extinguisher in 2003, it lit a fire under the ass of weak DJs and second-wave IDM trendriders. There was nothing like it. That, coupled with career-defining work from Four Tet, Caribou, Broadcast, Boards of Canada, and The Books released in the same 18-month window, Prefuse 73 helped spearhead a movement of truly envelope-pushing music that annexed disparate genres under an experimental electronic umbrella. Certainly music felt a little more daring then than now. Since that time, Herren has involved himself in a [...]
It boggles the hell out of my mind that NPR has all the sudden pushed their weight behind Tune Yards . The first tried to catch her live at South By Southwest at The Parrish Underground. The line wrapped around the block, so I skipped out. I later found out that this was NPR's SXSW showcase. NPR? Have they listened to Tune Yards before, much less her latest whokill ? Don't get me wrong, I'm totally stoked on her success. But listening to this record, I'm stunned. whokill comes replete with dissonant free jazz, broken song structures, tribal [...]
This blog has long championed and respected Disappears (even bringing them into town last June with Woven Bones ), meaning that we hold some high expectations for these boys. They certainly have the pedigree to weather such preconceived notions - what, with Brian Case of 90 Day Men and The Ponys on throat and songwriting duties coupled with the recent enlisting of one Steve Shelley (from The Sonic Youths, you guys!) hittin' skins and feelin' fine. Without any more fanfare... yes, Guider delivers, though not necessarily in a definitive sense. If anything, Guider [...]
I was never sure what exactly a bardo pond is. I mean, I thought it was a blatant LSD reference. But as guitarist Clint Takeda describes it, the bardo pond is only slightly a drug reference. Bardo" comes from the Tibetan Book of the Dead , and 'pond' just sounded cool in conjunction with the other word. Bardo is the point where a soul arrives upon its corporal body as it is dying. During the course of the Bardo there [...]
The art punk label gets thrown around a lot, maybe too much, so can it feel a little hokey to conjure it up yet again. However, nothing has ever encapsulated the legendary Wire more accurately. They were truly too punk for the art kids, and too artsy for the punk kids across their three decade trajectory. While Wire has enjoyed a prolific career, including Colin Newman solo efforts, a swath of collaborative projects, and their post-millennial reunion, the general gallery of ears tend to associate Wire exclusively with their flawless late '70s triage - Pink Flag , Chairs [...]
Good, a band I can actually Google. Better, a band with a sense of unfettered urgency rarely heard in 2010. Ladies and germs, Tjutjuna . Take notes. The real Tjutjuna is a mean motherfucker who supposedly resides in Siberia and may or may not be the missing link. Raskolnikov didn't say either way. The other Tjutjuna is a collective of equally bad dudes who come to us, geographically speaking, from "Denverwood" of the "Denvershire," where the air is thinner, the baseball club demonstrates varying levels of prowess, and the beer is yellow and fizzy. Musically speaking, Tjutjuna come to us [...]
I have this sneaking suspicion that more than one music writer will describe No Joy as the female version of No Age. While both artists' namesakes do negate an idea, boast two members, and dabble heavily in shoegaze ambience, such an opinion is lazy journalism and does a great disservice to this fine Montreal-based upstart. And without being too anally PC about shit, I do take umbrage with the term "girl group," which I've already seen in early press. You don't call Deerhunter a "dude group," do you (Whitney Petty's short tenure with the band notwithstanding)? And moreover, [...]
By most accounts from the 24-hour news cycle, the economy and culture wars really have the world in a shitter right now, and the world shall remain there for the foreseeable future. It doesn't get you pumped on life, for sure. And the news in our hyper-aware information ages makes you yearn for some comfort, in some way... but not by anything overly cheerful, as that can get obnoxious rather quickly. No, you want something soothing, understated, and escapist, and that's sort of the feeling I relished in after piping in the latest from Michigan's Thomas Meluch a.k.a. Benoit [...]
Add another noun-as-verb, difficult to Google, but nonetheless remarkable selection to your library - Soars . You'll be glad you did. Mystically floating in from the fertile crescent of Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, Soars' silky and slow burning self-titled album offers an ethereal half hour of aerodynamic, cathartic sounds. Dramatic, elegant dream pop sure to fire neurons in the Slowdive/Bark Psychosis/Talk Talk part of the brain, Soars' eight tracks congeal into a meditative yet engaging and accessible mood exploration. As such, there are [...]
Boduf Songs is a rather gloomy chum, no? Well, it's not that you would or should expect anything else from one of the few artists keeping the slowcore aesthetic of Bedhead and Low alive in the time of cholera and chillwave. More importantly than the color of Mathew Sweet's (that's one 't') mood ring is the moments of truly arresting, visceral dark melodicism found within his latest, T his Alone Above All Else in Spite of Everything . Sparsely arranged toy pianos, light and balmy electronic noise samples, and gigantic sonic space are the cornerstones, for the [...]
Is there a point in writing a review when you can just hear the album right now streaming on MySpace ? Probably not, and thus the inherent issues with music journalism in the digital age that has been discussed and analyzedad infinitum. But seeing as The Black Angels have been one of my favorite bands ever since I heard their Light in the Attic eponymous EP, I feel like I should. This is a psych rock blog, so we'd be way fuckin' remiss to not share some thoughts on a new joint from the 800 pound gorilla [...]
We don't write record reviews often these days thanks to the current paradigm of online music journalism. Considering our hyperactivie information age zeitgeist, why do you need some blowhard like myself describing a record to you when you can just pipe in the preview on Last.fm or whatever? With that said, it takes a certain type of album to convince me that I have some serious science to impart on others, and spirit warriors Cloudland Canyon 's latest, Fin Eaves , is just that type of work. This shit affected me. At the risk [...]
The Decibel Tolls
![Niki & The Dove - The Fox [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/l2f6UbMnlq4_130.jpg)
Skrillex Uses Satanic and Homosexual Influence to Win Grammys
Warm Brew – Creep (TLC Remix)
THROWBACK: Sam Cooke - Cupid
[Listen] The Decemberists - "One Engine"
