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.

pillow

Luca di Mira (of Giardini di Miro fame) who, operating as Pillow, has plumped a soft and comfy selection of intricately melancholic compositions and entitled them ‘Flowing Seasons’.

Bitcrush

'In Distance,'' Bitcrush’s latest offering and first on n5MD, finds Ex-Gridlock beat-smith Mike Cadoo pushing n5MD further into a world where two disparate yet emotional elements, human and electronic, are merged into one. Recorded over a one year span, In Distance is ''very personal,'' by the artist’s admission. Cadoo has laid himself bare in an introspective ride where shimmering shoe-gaze-centric guitars, broken electronics, dual bass work, live drums, and Mike’s now trademark ''the one left behind'' vocal style meld together into long aural road-trips ending at dusk in the middle of nowhere.

Hammock

Hammock is a collaboration between Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson. The two met when Andrew became a member of Marc's band, Common Children. They continued to work together, writing, recording, and producing, after Common Children disbanded and began recording the music that eventually became Hammock when they both had free time between projects. Hammock’s debut, Kenotic, a record that All Music Guide described as “…in every way a contender for classic status in the Shoegazing genre.” is gorgeous! Darla records just put out a new record by them called Raising Your Voice...Trying to Stop An Echo.

120 Days

120 Days is a four piece band consisting of 3 synths, a bass, one cymbal and (sometimes) a guitar, something which places them somewhere inbetween electronic and rock. The bands obsession with German kraut rock of the 70`s, experimental artists such as Steve Reich and Arne Nordheim as well as 60`s rock group Stooges shines through in their monumental, dark and hypnotic sound. The album was produced by the band and recorded in Oslo in the winter 2006. The artwork for the album was made by Kim Hiorthoy. If you live in LA go see them play at Part Time Punks this Sunday at the Echo.

The Telescopes

The Telescopes were formed in 1987 by Stephen Lawrie. Their debut release was a split flexi disc with Loop on the Cheree label in 1988. There followed their debut single, "Kick the Wall", and "7th# Disaster" also on Cheree Records. They moved to What Goes On Records and released their debut LP, "Taste" and "The Perfect Needle" single which is perhaps their most famous song. A live album appeared on Fierce Records and following What Goes On’s bankruptcy they signed to Creation Records. A more laidback, baggy influenced sound followed and the band scraped the lower reaches of the UK singles chart with singles like "Flying", and released "The Telescopes", their second album, in 1992. It was a commercial failure and the band disappeared from the public eye. In 2002 they made a surprise return with "The Third Wave" on Double Agent Records. By this time they were a core of just Stephen Lawrie and Jo Doran and were a much more experimental band specialising in electronic soundscapes. In 2005 they released their fourth album "The Telescopes #4" on their own Antenna Records.

Altered Perception is a compilation of sorts, collecting a handful of previously unreleased tracks as well as a few vinyl-only rarities. Part of the early nineties shoegazer scene, but only peripherally, the Telescopes took the dreamy bliss of My Bloody Valentine and dipped it in thick tarpits of distorted guitar, howled feedback, laconic vocals, landing them sonically much closer to Loop or Spacemen 3. In fact sometimes the similarities are uncanny. Which is not a bad thing. This is supreme drug/head music. Definitely music to take drugs to make music by.

Fuxa & The Telescopes

If you are in LA on Thursday you should go to the Silverlake Lounge.

Valet

Valet is Honey Owens. Valet started off as an exploration of sound and video with video artist Jason Frank and has even explored the realms of audio/video installation, group dynamic performance art events and "happenings" of all sorts. Honey has played in many different projects in Portland over the last decade, most notably as a member of experimental electronic group Nudge (records on audraglint/tigerbeat6/kranky), as well as playing and singing on jackie-o motherfucker's flat fixed fucked, fig. 5, liberation and flags of the sacred harp albums. She co-runs the yarnlazer label with Adam Forkner and they sometimes play together as WORLD(check out Marriage Records for the World CD)... Blood is Clean is Valet's first official release after a couple of very small "private pressings" of DVD-Rs and CD-Rs over the last couple of years. Gone are most of the computer vs live instrument and voice experiments which were more prevalent in early Valet performances and recordings and instead we get a Jon Hassell style exploration of haitian voodoo drums and chants, Sade ice cream melt voices, dream-time feedback loop guitars, psychedelic paint spill washes, acid-fried guitar solos, hand-drum rhythms, ambient blues raga. Deep psychedelic tribal blues. This mixed with her own weird interpretation of a more Velvet Underground minimalist-blues style of song writing.


VALET - BLOOD IS CLEAN
TRACKS:
1. april6th (8:08)
2. blood is clean (4:57)
3. burmajuama (3:35)
4. tame all the lions ((4:43)
5. mystic flood (4:03)
6. my volcano (7:10)
7. sade4bri (6:11)
8. getnfive (Front Machine remix) (6:53)
total running time: 45:43

flowers of hell

The Flowers Of Hell are a London based 10 person collective encompassing side players for British Sea Power, The Tindersticks and The Early Years, with guest involvement from members of Death In Vegas and Spacemen 3. The group mix orchestral instruments with drones and twangy guitars, creating a sound which is reminiscent of The Velvet Underground & Nico and early Spiritualized, mixed with a classical twist.

Produced by Tim Holmes of Death In Vegas at the Contino Rooms, their self titled debut album comes out in November 2006 on Earworm Records and follows a trio of releases for the Shifty Disco label’s singles club in 2005. Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3/Spectrum/E.A.R. collaborated with the group on ‘Through The F Hole’ and mentored the band during the recording of the album. For mastering, the group tracked down Denis Blackham who’s credits include Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’ and classic releases from Elvis, The Who, Led Zeppelin, & T Rex.

Here is a full set from a gig in a nuclear bomb shelter under a castle in Slovakia.

Live at SubClub 6-15-2006

Lindstrom & Prins Thomas

Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas joint forces in 2003, after mutual admiration and inspiration of each others productions. Lindstrøm as muso-wizard and Prins Thomas as underdog remix-champ. They both have a background from different norwegian rather bad band-projects, ranging from punk to gospel via country to heavy metal to folk and psychedelia. They both share the same passion for collecting records as well, and run their own labels Feedelity, Full Pupp and Tamburin. Besides working on various solo-projects, their main priority is their joint venture into the always expanding outer limits of futuristic disko and UNIVERSAL BOOGIE !!! They both are dj's, as well as performing a semi-live laptop-set.


These 2 put out a self titled album last year and it was hard to find and if you did find it was like $30 bucks. Itunes has it. I have it and so should you. Lindstrom's comp of singles is getting lots of buzz thanks to Pitchfork and i agree with them for once. This album is what space age bachelor pad music is today. I guess? Smoooooth!



Lindstrom & Prins Thomas