new blog
7 years ago
tUne-yArDs
complete 180.
This girl for real. No bullshit. I swear to god Hatari rips me out...I'm not going to explain. and seriously the power and scope of it is something that is really majestic and is of a real artistic integrity.
Girl is on 4AD now, and supposedly she has a new album coming out called w h o k i l l (serious title right there)
I can't stop watching her live videos. She has a wonderful sense of presence and looks like she loves what she does: entertain.
It's honestly some of the most refreshing straight pop i've heard in while. So original.
Weird side note. She's on the blackberry commercial. Don't know how i feel about that. But whatever pays it for her right especially if that new album is as promising as the single.
Bird Brainssss
Dais Records
Dais is a label. Two bands i want to mention particularly on it.
I guess you could label this label (ha!) some industrial/punk/cold wave shit.
Really great stuff. Well anyway, Twin Stumps and Ice Age.
Twins Stumps are a massive Power Drill destroying every inch of your body in a slow motion shot in fading colors to black and white until only shadows remain of your desolate core.
Guys broke up i think.Round this time last year they put out a LP call SeedBed
and before that...they released this album or ep or Lp whateverr on Dais S/T.
And it's fucking brilliant. I was never able to get a copy, but I found one randomly out in LA.
Ah the beauty of travel.
The self titled record Is huge depressing and full of hatred. It honestly sounds like a murderer burning off your face then dumping you in a ditch out in the middle of a post apocalyptic nightmare.
IceAge is another band on Dais.
I know that they've been getting a fair amount of press (or growing press)...
and these kids are fucking 17 which is crazy
Their from Denmark (wtf?)
and their album is called New Brigade
I was not aware it was released on Dais, but i had recently listened to the lp and really enjoyed it. Further listens will take place.
New Brigade
burning star pop?
last time i checked this guy made noise.
It's good, but what the fuck. Really random.
Excavacations-Afternoon Future
The lost paradise of eternity. You've been sweating for days on end. No water, but water surrounds your body. The sun never sets and you've reflected on your death. It won't matter though because this beauty that surrounds lets you look back upon the life you've led. The good and the bad, and the highlights. And you'll find yourself sitting on your knees on the beach with a sense of worry, but knowledge that everything will be fine. Maybe there is no heaven maybe there is. But in the end you're already there. The Afternoon Future, the signaling to forever.
Matthew Albert Dunn
I know he's definitely released two tapes on Beniffer Editions.
Other than that this is heady album of acoustic layers and dazed out folk.
Really great set of two tracks zoned out in a mist of haze in beautiful tape foldout up there.
Lovely
and they still got presses.
Women
I'll get to some more tapeish and different stuff. Promise. But this post needs to get out of me.
Women are, were, a Canadian rock band. I'm not going to lump them into something indie. Cause it's better than something pitchfork would cry about. I think they covered them, but beside the point. Women released probably, in my opinion, one of the greatest albums of the last decade, their S/T debut, in the fall of 2008. I was really just starting to get a grasp on 'different' types of music and i heard this on WNYU (whose new afternoon show is classic, displaying a large array of different types of new and somewhat popular underground music as a whole.) This was their number one album for the week on their charts page on the website and i began hearing songs by them overlooking (i imagine it was black rice.) I think i tried to shy away cause i heard a shins reference by one of the hosts. That all changed when I heard 'Shaking Hand'. It was single-handedly one of the greatest music memories ever. I had seriously never heard anything like that. And I began to think 'is this what everything underground is like?' And i can answer that question now: no.
The chiming and skittering guitar lines build and pulsate with a rabbis and epilectic shock. And then the climax explodes and releases a air of excitement and drama. It was so serious and haunting, but so refreshing.
And I was lucky. I had stumbled upon something that the so called 'indie' world doesn't find every once and a while. An honest to god talented band that has a singular vision and creative force that other don't have. When buying the record I started to realize with multiple listens that this wasn't some pushover hype band. They were actually something. They had created a masterpiece. Something indebted to it's past but easily in touch with today. It was horrifying and frightening in songs like Lawncare, poppy in black rice and a complete force of nature through the last part of the album.
Their guitar lines were so singular. The drumming distorted and hypnotic. The noise otherworld. The melancholy and anger were staggering. Utterly raw. This was a gem.
In 2010, they released Public Strain. I was hesitant. I was worried. Especially how much I enjoyed the first album. And i was disappointed. It wasn't necessarily as instant or 'catchy' or jagged in the way their first album was. However recently I sprawled over and remembered the record. How i was going to buy it on vinyl to give it a better listen...'blah blah'. And you know what? IT's pretty good. Their sound is focussed in a different direction but still sounds like them. And it's sharp and distraught. But in other ways. Darker in other ways. To say it's shadowy would probably be an apt description. It almost resembles some Sonic Youth at it's most grim (go back like bad moon rising/evol) The music looks like the cover. It's a mentally insane person who's that sweet friend or brother that you've loved your entire life, but now is slowly turning psycho in the dead nights of freezing January.
I still am not as wild about this thing as much as their last record; maybe because their last was just so short and so perfect the way it was. Yet Public Strain is growing and and much stronger musical statement, showcasing their creative apex and getting ready for some inspired statement that I am hoping will come...
I say hope because the band is rumored to have broken up after a fight onstage. This would be a shame considering how idealistic and original this band is. Compared to other artists in the indie pitchfork machine, this is something that stands out. Women are incredible songsmiths and have been overlooked to an extreme. I'm hoping that they will receive their much deserved attention, whether it be with their next record, or tens years down the line when it's reissued and realized for it's brilliance. I'm hyping this up, but both Women and Public Strain are majestic albums that shroud and haunt it's listener with a nerve.
Abe Vigoda
There are a lot of cringe worthy moments in the album. Just like i wish I could stop the band and just say, 'no'.
But let me state openly right now that while not necessarily as good as their previous work on Skeleton, they grew up. And let's be fair they needed to.
This album is dark. No more sun or tropical heat, even if traces are still there. Instead now they have this whole broodin joy division/synthy cold wave thing going on. And the vocals are all deep, making it that much more grim. While I don't really feel the cold wave scene going around, their take on it is pretty good. They've translated their chiming guitar lines into reverbed and delaying synths (WHATT??!!) effectively. And when it works. It works.
And while it doesn't keep the energy all the way through, there are just some parts of this album i can't let go of. Even those cringeworthy parts are worth the glory that comes afterwards. And sure it slows down near the end. But when you've got killa tracks like sequins (holy shit seriously), November and Repeating Angel. whatever it doesn't matter dl it.
Excavacations Stunned Cassette
Instead, it's like
'what the fuck did they just go from drone plethora to indie rock?'
And not in the mashup kind of way either that artists like pocahaunted and now new robedoor do. I guess i could throw in the rest of NNF label.
In general this is different from that. While i could without a doubt see Nnf putting out a more grown up release by these guys, they are too strange for most regular indie listeners, and too mainstream for the regular eclectic tape fanatic (at parts).
I'm really bewildered why it didn't get much attention though. Even if i just explained why, maybe it did and i don't know. Anyway. At times they go from deep and massive washes of sound with percussions. Then occasionally they fall into a something that resembles a song. Then they make indie pop songs. And the songs. Well they are actually great. These guys could seriously make indie songs instead and end up getting mass blog appeal slash woodsist signing.
On the second side, there are less pop songs, but the song that comes out sounds like what would happen when Animal Collective and Noel Gallager started jamming in a basement, and you were only left outside wondering how the hell it would sound, just making out bits.
I haven't listened to it a lot, it's a substantial length, but I am expecting it to be on regular.
They just got a tape out on Avant Archive which should be great considering the band has changed all that much within the span of two years.
Also, I find this to be a great release coinciding with my last post on Oli Oli Oxen Free. The albums are a lot different, with Oli Oli Oxen Free more on the pop side, but they both seem to be pushing the boundaries of when and where drone can be used and in amount. I know that there are ambient tracks along lots of albums, but their noiser and denser tracks are better then those on most 'albums'. And the songs are great too. Idk enough of this.
Oli Oli Oxen Free
Oli Oli Oxen Free is a drone pop recording project.
To say they (he?) wear their influences on their sleeves is an understatement. However, it is done with care. To be frank it's fuckin sweet.
While scatterbrained, the first release, or so i believe, is an admirable work that combs through sampling a frenzy in 'duck dodgers', to the gripping murk of daniel johnston's recordings through 'haunted kitty Lips' and 'Goth Superstar', to the cascading drone scabs that close out the finale 'Hot Air Balloons'. There is a compelling grime to this release that always makes you feel an emotive distance, whether close or far away.
Songs like 'Chill Pill' are really liberating and melt with you into a frenzy of mass puddled colors that used to be bright, but now only show shards and traces of it's former perfections.
Sure, there are signs of wavves, whom I really loathe. Yet for some reason Oli uses his influence in such a way that it doesn't piss me off. Thanks Wavves?
Again, "Hot Air Balloons' is ridiculously pretty. I'll leave it at that.
Can't wait to see what else this guy(s) has cominn.
One Nation
Instead of comparing them to Salem, I'd rather compare them to the likes of Sun City Girls. Yes, that Sun City Girls. The two bands both sound worlds apart, yet they are so vastly similar. The greatest similarity in my opinion is that both really just don't give a fuck. They aren't making these albums to please you. Nor are they making this to go along with the hype of other bands and hopping on the bandwagon. Instead they truly have made their own sound from their wasted woozy synths, random and utterly perfect sound bytes, and almost off tempo drums. Sun City Girls had a vast discography, endless ideas sprouting from the same singular voice, and never created music to please...well sometimes. Instead they made what they truly wanted without any pretensions.
Hype Williams are a duo without pretensions. They don't give a fuck. With a scroll of their youtube page, one will come across several videos of them staring into a camera doing nothing, scaring you, and other random and bizarre clips. They aren't afraid to show their face either, but still they are enigmatic and shadowy. Who the hell is Hype Williams? Will the blogosphere remember them after witch house dies? Well I certainly hope they won't die. They are truly the experimenters in an age of constant revivalism and copying. To say that this is truly a leap to the future would be wrong. I mean they are indebted to 80's nostalgia that every other band copies. Yet there is truly something deeper about Hype Williams. They aren't just pushing for an eye of the past. Instead they are moving to the future in the horrifying internet void we all are amassed in. When the Chillwave era ends and some hyper-sonic or boring craze takes over the internet, Hype Williams will still stand time and continue to excel own their own weirdo plane. All bow down.
Stereolab's Cobras.
Stereolab are probably one the most inventive (Rip?) groops around.
Anyway this is their definite album. Many will disagree, yet truly Stereolab perfected everything they had been working for for the last ten years with Cobra and Phases Groop Play voltage in the milky night.
I don't know whether you like Stereolab. It all sounds the same to some. And lets face it the new albums are terrible. But if you are too pussy cause it got canned when it first came out. Man up. This is an essential masterpiece.
Inflatable mattress
Inflatable mattress real talk
is really old.
I mean not that old, like a year or so. Having revamp this blog (or start it?), i've been trying to decide what to post and what to claim myself and the style.
Well fuck style.
Cause obviously i can't decide what i want this to be.
But Inflatable Mattress. Well that sums up my tastes. Doesn't necasarily means I believe this album is
But this represents as a whole. The blog. I guess. Dissonant. Beats. A slight pop twist (?)
I don't know. But listen to it. I'm not saying you'll like it. Seriously, half da shit on here you don't have to like, or all. Just know that this is my best representation of the different varieties. Around here.
A bad excuse for a post. Just download Inflatable mattress and hope this guy releases something else as him. Cause it's damn good. And i'm not really familiar with happy family nor do i have an urge to follow through.
hud mo
This album is criminally underrated. Sure it's got it's terrible songs ( twistcap loop+ all hot avoid at all costs)
It makes up in the neon sheen of Joy Fantastic
the syruppy tones of 3.30
The anthemic stomp of Rising 5
My nickolodeon days are capped into a bottle and carefully shaken with soul, slime and Uk dance music.
I wish I had this when stick stickly was back on
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