The New Young Pony Club

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing The New Young Pony Club play their first show in LA. I have to say that they are by far the best band playing the now sound of dance punk funk whatever... Tahita ,the lead singer ,was only giving 120% and I wonder what would have happened if she could have given more? I don't care much for rock bands going disco but NYPC are the exception to the rule. The bass lines were text book,the drums were 4/4 ,guitar was all angular,but for some reason it didn't sound tired or played out like a lot of other bands from a year or 2 ago. Tahita has a certain charisma that gets your attention and keeps it. Their hit single Ice Cream has been getting buzz and they are on Modular records so that is good thing. If you have the chance check out this band. They are sure to be the sound of 2000's era.

The Flowers of Hell

I talked about this band already. Here is the Full Length! If you like Spaceman 3 and Spiritualized and Spectrum, prepare to be very happy!

Jan Jelinek

tierbeobachtungen

The animal is experiencing a renaissance in music. It provides a reflective surface for our notion of the unbridled and irrational, of that Other the philosophers Deleuze/Guattari - as part of their ‘Animalisation’ - called the embodiment of artistic deliverance. And yet, how much of a liberation can art actually tolerate? To what extent can music truly throw off its fetters without descending into chaos?

Jan Jelinek’s new album title provides a first hint of this development: like the above, ‚Tierbeobachtungen’ (animal observations) deals with the issue of release and liberation. Recorded almost in transit, while preparing his move to a new studio, the tracks reveal and relish in their improvisational character, a drifting lost in sound, yet never lose sight of their underlying structure. ‘Tierbeobachtungen’ might constitue Jelinek’s freest and most personal work. Simple arrangements with tracks based on four to five layered and modulated loops, while his own studio equipment provides the main sampling sources, from synthesizer and guitaret to vibraphone. And, not least of all, more than any of his previous albums, ‘Tierbeobachtungen’ picks up on Jelinek’s live appearances.

Nevertheless, Tierbeobachtungen’ steers clear of all animal emulations, does not succumb to the myth of the wild and unfettered, but merely – as the title implies – aims to observe. The tracks’ intoxication never exhausts itself in unbridled expression - the observer’s post, a level of reflection, remains audible throughout. On the other hand, this is by no means intellectual, distanced music. On the contrary: Jelinek leads us straight into a thicket, an acoustic jungle where sumptuous splendour meets the uncanny. A long tradition of psychedelic music pervades the recordings – Amon Düül, Cluster, My Bloody Valentine … yet whatever musical memories might vie for our attention, these are no clear-cut references, just loose associations. Jelinek side-steps the overly tangible.

All tracks pursue a common principle. They well up slowly, a period of concentration, of taking shape, followed by equally rapid dissipation. On occasion, we might even be tempted to take them for field recordings - gems discovered, stored and returned from their travels by ethnologists fifty or a hundred years ago. Jelinek’s tracks provide tantalising glimpses of acoustic treasures from faraway lands, without ever divulging their true heritage. Similar to the pioneers of industrial music, like Cabaret Voltaire or Zoviet France, who back in the early 1980s experimented with field recordings to challenge western listening habits, ‘Tierbeobachtungen’ takes us to new, unknown territories and brims with sounds that defy geographic or stylistic classification, not unlike the semi-conscious state between dream and awakening, always a little cryptic, yet never overly romantic. Overt romanticism is also precluded by Jelinek’s sense of humour, which rears its head in titles like ‚Palmen aus Leder’ (palm trees of leather) and prevents us from taking the album’s mystic overtones too seriously.

Since the 1990s Jan Jelinek has been working with sounds as a musician, producer, using various pseudonyms for his many projects. Releases under his own name include the albums ‘Loop-Finding Jazz Records’ (scape, 2003) and ‘Kosmischer Pitch’ (scape, 2005), the latter a drifting loop vortex peppered with subtle Kraut references.

Prurient

In a relatively short space of time Dominick Fernow has become one of my favourite people on the planet. I say people of course because his influence and expertise doesn’t stop at merely being a musician and harbinger of extremity, he throws down some of the most interesting records available on his shockingly crucial Hospital Productions imprint and manages to stock a collection of musical insanity at his Manhattan-based record shop of the same name.

Pleasure Ground is originally a double cassette release on Hospital Productions (came with a lock of hair!) and this release takes this micro edition masterwork out of the hands of the lathe cut Ebay Nazis and puts it into, you, the consumer’s, hands (without the hair this time). With this tool, you have the ultimate jam. Blast this as the cannon fire destroys everything around you and rest soundly that the destruction is mutually assured." - Load.

The Plantlife

Bored with the constraints of existing genres, Plant Life set out to break down the barriers between hip hop, soul, rock and good old fashioned funk music. In the tradition of legendary funk and soul godfathers like James Brown, George Clinton, Sly Stone & Prince, Plant Life serves up a healthy dose of sensuality and politics while providing a groove strong enough to shake the system to its core. As a member of the Los Angeles based hip hop crew The Animal Pharm, Panda One (the shadowy figure behind Plant Life) helped spread the eclectic sounds of the west coast underground across the globe.

With several EP's and 12" singles under their belt (Including 1996's critically acclaimed "Pharmaceuticals-EP", 1998's underground hit "The Brink", and 1999's starstudded West Coast collab "You Will Lose" featuring Aceyalone, Spontaneous, & DJ Drez) The Animal Pharm decided to take a two year hiatus to work on their solo projects.

Panda One, after gaining critical acclaim for the tracks he produced for The Animal Pharm, as well as tracks for Medusa (Goodvibe), Buffalo Daughter (Grand Royal), etc., decided that it was time for something new. As Panda One explains it, “At first I wasn’t even sure that what we were doing was anything different then what I had always been doing. I just locked myself in the studio with Jack Splash (the lead singer of the group) and we started making what we thought was some progressive hip hop. It wasn’t until we finished that everyone started telling us that we were doing some different shit!”

With a heavy funk influence, The Return…, has traces of 70’s funk, 80’s electro, 90’s b-boy aesthetics and futuristic ideals. Highly recommended!

The Boo Radleys

Proving that not all bands from Liverpool have influences that stop at The Beatles, The Boo Radleys’ third album is their undeniable classic, a wistful, exciting and perfectly-formed journey through a colourful musical universe. Formed in 1988 by school-friends Martin Carr and Sice as a vehicle for Carr’s songwriting and Sice’s angelic choirboy voice, the Boos meandered through Ichabod & I and Everything’s Alright Forever, two competent but uninspiring albums of My Bloody Valentine-derived guitar pop, before creating Giant Steps, their genre-bending and stellar zenith.

Stealing its name from John Coltrane and its melodies from the purest pop heaven can muster, Giant Steps saw The Boo Radleys taking hold of everything they loved about music, throwing it in a big box, shaking it around and then letting it back out again in weird and wonderful new forms that only they could have come up with. Weighing in at a bloated seventeen tracks and 64 minutes, the album ought to be a chore but isn’t, simply because there’s so much going on, so many ideas, so many hooks.

Essentially Giant Steps is an album of simple, well-crafted pop songs, but they are embellished and fleshed out in such marvellous, creative ways, and twist and turn in such weird and wonderful directions that they are transformed into something rather more absorbing and special. The Boo Radleys seem to throw almost everything at Martin Carr’s songs to see what sticks, from Beach Boys hooks to Loveless scree and back again via reggae, jazz and Dinosaur Jr., each song designed to be “a room with many doors”, or full of other, little songs. The epochal “Lazarus” both achieves and encompasses the band’s ambitions in spectacular style, phasing in on a gorgeous dub skank, drifting through acoustic reveries and exploding in a wordless chorus of technicolour guitar noise and heavenly brass, the sound of a life dumbstruck by glorious God-baiting noise.

The synergy between trumpet and guitar is a major key to the success of Giant Steps, both instruments veering between polar extremes. Steve Kitchen’s trumpet emits Motown-esque melodies at some points, and honks like Miles Davis’ most freeform jazz at others, while Martin Carr divides his guitar between simple pop riffs and exhilarating cacophonous squall. The two sides of Martin’s guitar are probably best illustrated by the sweet pop of “Wish I Was Skinny” with its simple melody and swirling fairground keyboards, and the post-MBV feedback of “Leaves And Sand”. The former is innocuous bubblegum pop, beguiling and sweet, while the latter lulls you with faint acoustic strumming before pummelling you senseless with gorgeous layered noise.

How many wonderful things are there about Giant Steps? Too many to mention. Hidden in the cover artwork are a couple of giraffes. Faye Dunaway is harmoniously mentioned in one song, and no one seems to know why. There are songs about love, about God and his tendency to not exist, about childhood dreams coming true. There are songs with handclaps. There are songs about the victims of infamous racial attacks, which are dedicated to dead comedians. There are songs about being afraid of flying. There are songs about being full of beer and songs about being full of drugs. There are songs with clarinets and songs with cellos and there are songs with guitars that sound like clouds. There are songs about listening to The Beatles. There are songs about so many things and not one of them is dull.

Few albums manage to be so expansive, so personal, so excitingly imaginative and so joyously pop all at the same time, but The Boo Radleys managed it here. This is a record about being a young man in a strange, sad and sometimes wonderful world, tired of injustice and fed-up of platitudes, a record about racing for the prize, catching dreams and smashing prejudices. This is a record about realising that what you were told was “normal” is actually abnormal and unnatural, a record about stepping outside and grabbing the world. “If you want it, take it all / there’s nothing cool about / having to go without...”

If you’re lucky, this is one of the most wonderful records you will ever hear.

The Paradise Motel

The Paradise Motel formed in Hobart, Tasmania in the early 1990s, with Bickford, Aulich and Bailey. They moved to Melbourne in 1995. They found their new lead singer, Merida Sussex, working in the St Kilda Public Library. They were soon signed by Mushroom Records, and released an EP, Left Over Life To Kill. This was soon followed by a remix EP, titled Some Deaths Take Forever, consisting of experimental remixes of tracks and outtakes from the original produced by the band themselves; 2,000 hand-numbered copies were produced.

For a time they were managed by Bruce Milne under the name of his company "The Shinning Path".

In 1997, The Paradise Motel released their first full-length album, Still Life. A limited edition of this album came with a bonus disc, titled Junk Mail, consisting of one 30-minute track of outtakes. Several singles followed, as did a second album, Flight Paths, whose sound was somewhat more mainstream and less sparse than the early work. The band then relocated to London, though did not record again, and broke up in 2000.

The Paradise Motel's instrumentation featured two guitars (acoustic and electric), bass, drums and a Hammond organ, and occasional accompaniment from a string quartet. Their aesthetic was one of sparseness and melancholia, punctuated by bursts of manic loudness; or, as they once said in an interview, "the violence and the silence". Their lyrical subject matter often veered towards the melancholy and macabre, which resulted in comparisons to Nick Cave and Mazzy Star, as did Sussex's vocal style. Much of the Paradise Motel's songwriting came from Charles Bickford, whilst Matt Aulich was responsible for the string and instrumental arrangements in some of their tracks.

Flight Paths

Hello Saferide

Literally hundreds of articles published in 2006 have clamored to tell us about how Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys, or Sandi Thom have used the internet in their rise to fame. But while the media can drop as much pseudo-science about “MySpaces” or “web casts” as they want, these acts have actually followed fairly conventional routes into the public consciousness: PR companies, street teams, money. The end result? No.1 singles and hit albums. Meet the new biz. Same as the old biz. The 21 songs so far recorded by the Swedish act Hello Saferide, on the other hand, truly seem shaped by these new technological frontiers. They’re catchy, quirky, and interesting—the kind of thing you might download on a whim. It’s only a few listens later that some of the words or a musical phrasing hit home and these silly indie-pop songs blindside you with an unexpected poignancy. It’s schtick but it sticks.

“Highschool Stalker,” the song that first brought 24 year-old Annika Norlin and her varying band of instrumentalists and backup singers to wider attention, encapsulates Hello Saferide’s metier. Over guitar, handclaps, and trumpet Norlin details her amusing attempts to keep tabs on an unsuspecting beau. She steals dentist’s records and meets ex-girlfriends; she finds his yearbook; she’s “been on the Altavista… twice on the Yahoo.” You listen again to try and catch all the little gags and suddenly the naïveté cuts to the bone; she sings “It’s your birthday tomorrow, but I’m not supposed to know.” Over a muted trumpet her thin voice catches on the kamikaze optimism of every unrequited teenage crush. “The Quiz” plays a similar trick. It details the mundane particulars of a relationship, asking a number of questions seemingly designed to check her potential partner’s compatibility. Then the chorus turns serious, demanding the kind of commitment and care for which pop songs rarely prepare you.


various songs

Compilations

Here are some comps that are probably out of print. Lots of cool nuggets here.



The Tell-Tale Signs Of Earworm
disc 1
disc 2



Tracklisting:
1.01 Novak - Silver Seas (7:27)
1.02 Ma Cherie For Painting- Naeu (4:31)
1.03 Tank- (2) The Volcano Show (5:12)
1.04 Avrocar - Screen (4:15)
1.05 Magnétophone- You Should Write Music (5:42)
1.06 Gnac- Armchair Thriller (5:27)
1.07 Jon/Dave- Land Beyond The Sun (4:36)
1.08 Landshipping - Glitter (1:45)
1.09 Maps Of Jupiter - Wait (1:35)
1.10 Orange Alabaster Mushroom- Tree Pie (2:58)
1.11 Electric Sound Of Joy- Play Away (5:42)
1.12 Fridge (2)- Deadly Cube (3:27)
1.13 Avrocar- Tetra (3:42)
2.01 Southall Riot- How Flies Survive The Rain (4:19)
2.02 Southall Riot- Fireworks For The Earworm (2:28)
2.03 Gwens- Finger Lakes (2:08)
2.04 Matthew Ward- Bluebottle Reds (2:38)
2.05 Screen Prints- Evening Feel (4:57)
2.06 Vertical Smile- A Return To Satisfy (Opium Tears Mix) (6:23)
2.07 Kimonophonic- Bigger Than Yr Robot (3:04)
2.08 Magnetic North Pole- Clouds Of Red And Grey (1:12)
2.09 Wee Turtles- Collide (3:27)
2.10 Minders- We've Seen It All (2:06)
2.11 ISAN- Schema (3:58)
2.12 Earthworm- Diedra's Surprise (3:45)
2.13 Echoboy - Smiler (2:23)





brumario

1. Salir De Casa - Mus
2. The North On Fire 1 - Migala
3. The North On Fire 2- Migala
4. It's Business - The Bitter Springs
5. Su Mapamundi, Gracias- Los Planetas
6. Gato Al Sol - Nosotrash
7. Eurovision - Flow
8. Between Two Points The Montgolfier Bros
9. Silent Clown Tinsel
10. Coraje - Jr
11. Club 8 Que 80- Sr. Chinarro
12. A Thousand Loops of Perversity - Emak Bakia
13. Daily Sisyphus- Paloma
14. A Vantage Point Is a Top of a Tree- Gnac
15. Not Sleeping the Same Way- Ant
16. Little Black Tide- Pribata Idaho
17. I Don't Know Why I Want You- Jacques
18. Abrazame, Por Favor- Sukiyaki
19. Al Norte Del Norte - Nacho Vegas



Will Our Children Thank Us

Tracklisting:
01 Appliance- Throwing A Curve Ball (4:16)
02 Billy Mahonie- Glenda (5:20)
03 Pram- Carnival Of Souls (Ghost Train Dub) (5:34)
04 Electric Sound Of Joy- Fonk (3:00)
05 Wisdom Of Harry- Close Frank Falling (3:44)
06 Novak- Peggy's Well (4:18)
07 Piano Magic- Biggest Lie (8:27)
08 ISAN- Eeriel (6:33)
09 Rothko- Not Growing Out Of, Growing Into (8:56)
10 State River Widening- Moriko Mori Shoots The Make-Believe Ballroom (3:28)

The Spires Live tonight!

Here is your chance to see my favorite band from Ventura, The Spires. They have a new ep coming out in December but i am sure they will have copies tonight at the show.

Barzin

My life in rooms, and your life in books, and somewhere between, thats where we meet. Everything is a like a photograph, we'll hang it on the walls, picture frames and post cards, we're in love, with everything , that is lost. You and I know, that there is no god, so we clean the house, we go out for drives. And you go now to your books, and I to my rooms, and everything is so soft, When we are , hiding out, in these rooms.

Peter Bjorn and John

Writers Block is a GOOD record.

5 Albums You Listen To Alone

So i am going to try this out. Ask my friends or you what 5 albums you listen to alone. This is my buddy Christian's idea and here are his albums.



Here are 5 albums sitting in a pile on my floor.
im alone most the time here,hence the name of the post. some might sound fine with others but i prefer to hear them alone since most people cant shut the fuck up..
5. lydia lunch- drowning of lucy hamilton/in limbo double album
first album is instrumental lydia lunch playing piano with lucy hamilton(connie burg i believe of no wavers Mars) on clarinet. sounds like murder. a slow murder in a wet forest. second album is lydia with thurston moore and others doing some creepy lullabyerock with lots of slow bends and angles. watch the candle burn to both of these,then watch the house burn down,then your soul.

4.robert ashley-automatic writing.
album has something to do with this guy having mild tourettes or some shit.
i guess this guy is considered a modern composer or something. its a creep fest album with lots of minimal talking(if that makes any sense). repeated phrases and some girl taking bout a dude putting hands in her mouth. this shit might turn some of you perverts on. though you gotta be a real creep. if so we should definitely start a band. email me.

3.richard youngs-river through howling sky/advent- i love this wacko. first album starts off with the best evil bass rhythm to build a spookfest night i have heard in a while. then some restrained strangling guitar. lots of contradictions. even some wind chimes. and his always amazing yearning yet never lame voice. quiet stuff but youll be hanging on every note. and he is jandeks bass player. advent is his first album from like 90 or something and its droning charlemagne palestine piano and intense vocals. out of the gate and he was channeling this???!!!? holy fuck. oh yeah go on youtube and look at some of that charlemagne palestine footage

2. charlemagne palestine live in holland 1998
watch that shit!! he is chanting and droning on one chord while he shows footage of himself with his stuffed animals in a cemetary. if you feel the power of this give me a HELL YEAH!!!!
i cant believe a man with this power is not made the pope or branded a devil.
HERESY!!!!!!

1.David Coulter- intervention(young god records) im proud as fuck to say im on the danielle stech homsy(rio en media) cd coming out in february/march with this guy. he has played with everyone interesting from marianne faithful,pogues,test dept,tom waits,angels of light, the list goes on and on. he plays nose flute,didgeredoo,violin,electronics,ukelele,saw the list goes on!!!! this cd has a bunch of compositions all over the place but they all channel up spirits i tell you!! throat singing.wierd tape stuff,jews harp. sound like modern rituals. get in a trance. the other cd on young god of him remixing charlemagne palestine is essential too.

bonus track!!! scott walker-song called "darkness" on this new comp about the plague called Plague songs. some ok stuff on this cd that just came out. but the walker song is his usual boundary shattering style. some fucked up call and response blues chant done with crazed banshee opera singers. i still am wrapping my head around the drift. tilt is my favorite album of all time though. cant wait til the documentary on him comes out. check the clip on you tube.





send me your five all alone thoughts!!!

???????

If you go to this blog there is a new band that has the No Pussy Blues.
Check it!

http://ritmono.blogspot.com/

Acute ep

Acute are back in town!
They are playing the Glass House in Pomona tonight and then at the El Rey tomorrow here in Los Angeles. Be sure to pick up their ep:

Selections

1) Follow You Home
2) Saint
3) Take a Step Back
4) Guns
5) You Want It? Take it! It's Yours!


Here are the rest of the tour dates:

Tue 11/21 Pomona, CA The Glass House

Wed 11/22 Los Angeles, CA El Rey Theatre

Fri 11/24 Pomona, CA Glasshouse

Sat 11/25 San Diego, CA SOMA

Sun 11/26 Phoenix, AZ The Clubhouse

Tue 11/28 San Antonio, TX White Rabbit

Wed 11/29 Dallas, TX The Door

Fri 12/1 Philadelphia, PA Theatre of Living Arts

Sat 12/2 Pittsburgh, PA Mr. Smalls

Sun 12/3 New York, NY Irving Plaza

Mon 12/4 Boston, MA Axis

Wed 12/6 Washington, DC 9:30 Club

Thu 12/7 Atlanta, GA Masquerade

Fri 12/8 Orlando, FL House of Blues

Sat 12/9 Ft. Lauderdale, FL Revolution

Vice guide to Travel Free Screening!

rock plaza central

Rock Plaza Central is like a nightmare gone right. Folk music for the embittered and hollering, and the born again optimists in the face of Armageddon. Featuring the saw, accordion, trumpet, mandolin and banjo (along with guitar, bass and drums), they will shake the foundation of your harried soul. These guys are not inventing the wheel here but they can roll with the best of them. Their new record "Are We Not Horses" will put a smile on your sad face. Oh! They are from Toronto.




mp3s
"my children, be joyful"
"when we go, how we go, part 2"

Noise & Rhythm

Hot Chip

Hot Chip started making music because they were bored with alot of other music. Hot Chip loved the idea of 'pop' music but not the people who make 'pop' music now. They love Phil Spector and the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk and Robert Wyatt, timbaland and Madlib, Brian Eno and Devo, Anti-Pop Consortium and Aphex Twin, Will Oldham and Royal Trux. Hot Chip are a band different from most electronic music by playing everything live- no backing tracks, no computers. They use 4 keyboards and a drum machine, not all guitars. They write folk songs and record them on old synthesizers. The songs are honest words about food and love, and they try to make people laugh the way you laugh at richard pryor in the same song too. If your in LA tonight Hot Chip are playing at the Henry Fonda Theater. Here are some EPs from the band.

fat jon & styrofoam

Ahhhhhhh ShiiT!!!

This is probably the dopest rap shit i have heard in a while. Styrofoam and Fat Jon's "The Same Channel" is all over the place and yet still keeps it on a hip hop tip.
Check out the video for Space Gangsta. COMEDY!!


Yo! Morr records is turning out some crazy ass twee hip hop shit.