Pop! Pop! Pop Musik! Pop! Pop! Pop Musik! Hands up, who loves that single? Okay, now let's see who can name any other songs by M (aka Robin Scott)? Although he more than fits the definition of "one hit wonder", M also had a sizable body of work that unfortunately never reached as many ears as that single. But now we all get a second chance with this commemorative 25th anniversary compilation that reveals many more facets of M! The first half of this compilation is really strong, short blasts of catchy sort of punky commercial new wave but about halfway through veers dangerously into ultra cheesy, new wave/disco pap. But hell it's worth it for the first half alone. "Pop Musik" may be the only song you know by heart, but check out "M Factor", the just-as-good-B-side of "Pop Musik", "Modern Man" and a bunch of other little gems.
FYI: Actually Scott fostered a bit of a 'comeback' of sorts a couple of years ago when he produced Ex-Girl's last album and made a live guest appearance with them at SXSW (yes, performing *that* song... it was great!).
Holy crap. This album rules. Ragga, hip-hop, dancehall, infused trashy electro party pop jams! Quelle mix.
A few months ago, some folks came in the store while on holiday from Germany asking if we had anything like "M.I.A.? You know this? It is all over tha place in Germany." I had to say no, not in this neck of the folktastic dronedom of San Francisco. But now it is here, XL at last bringing us the domestic release of M.I.A.'s debut album, Arular, which follows up a mix-tape on which she collaborated with Diplo and raised a lot of eyebrows -- apparently German eyebrows in particular!
Seriously though, you know you want to party!! No says you? You're too bummed out on Karl Rove taking over the whole damn place to party? Well, her lyrics are very politically leaning so you don't have to feel all guilty about having a good time. We've been spinning this non-stop ourselves, and selling it non-stop too. Lives up to the hype.
Holy shit this record is amazing!!! What a charged and dynamic follow up to one of the hottest debuts of the decade. It doesn't surprise us though, as we knew from the first time we heard M.I.A. that she had some special power inside of her. She is that rare world voice in music that we desperately need so much right now. It's incredible how she crosses lines and borders like very few other artists seem able to.
Kala is one of the few records that we sell to every kind of person and taste. Metalheads, indie rockers, pop kids, dance-heads, hip-hop aficionados, experimental music lovers.... they're all going crazy for the new M.I.A. and for great reason. It's one of the most kick ass, colorful and fully realized albums to come out in a long time.
She was denied entry to the States repeated times when making this record, so her initial plans to record the record with Timbaland were thrown out the window. But this countries' insane border policies ended up being a blessing in disguise, as it forced M.I.A. to look elsewhere for producers, so she traveled throughout Africa and India where she did lots of raw field recordings which all come to life in such exciting ways on Kala. In fact Kala is kind of like what we imagine might happen if Konono No.1 were transported to Bollywood. While we've recently been swept up by the mystical power and strength of some fierce women of the past like Selda and Betty Davis, we can't think of anyone in the modern day who better conjures up that kind of unique energy and spirit than M.I.A.
This is a record meant to be blasted LOUD. So next time you have folks over, no matter what sort of music they dig, don't worry it won't be awkward just throw on M.I.A. and every single one of them will dig it like crazy. Guaranteed.
Without a doubt a contender for record of the year!
For all that's made of M.I.A.'s politics and persona, it's important not to forget that what makes her music so fucking special is how it taps into such a purely physical sensation. Her last album Kala was an absolute game changer. The kind of record that reshaped everything around it. You could almost use her name as a genre, as so many folks were inspired by it and after her debut, we began hearing so many people try their hand at the M.I.A. sound. From Santogold, Gang Gang Dance, Rainbow Arabia, Rye Rye, Bonde Do Role, Thunderheist, Buraka Som Sistema, and on and on. Her influence crossed so many cultural lines and on so many fronts, not just her sound but also her fashion, imagery and overall aesthetic. And it's easy to see why, there is something so dynamic, urgent, spirited and alive about what M.I.A. is doing.
It's so hard to follow up a record that was as close to perfect as we think an album can be, but god damn she has found a way to maybe do it. Maya blasts right out of the gate and makes it clear its going to be an uncompromising, visceral and frenetic ride. With great collaborating producers like Diplo, Switch and Blaqstarr back on board as well as bringing in dubstep sensation Rusko as well as Sleigh Bells guitar shredder Derek E. Miller. But much like Bjork, M.I.A. is a master of curating and surrounding herself with super talented producers and players, yet taking all the pieces of those elements and crafting them into something much bigger and more fully realized. The record is paced so perfectly, after an onslaught of charged, dirty and sweaty tracks she offers fresh breaths through some catchier pop minded jams and then its right back into the line of fire. Maya, is both the most angry and tender of the albums she is made so far. Because while its filled with so many unrelenting politically fueled anthems it also finds M.I.A. singing about the courage of falling in love and getting weighed down by gravity, which shows us the range she is capable of and will continue to explore.
It seems certain folks love to build people up only to knock them down. In recent months M.I.A was torn to pieces in a tacky/petty feature in the New York Times and many of the same blogs and online music critic establishments who championed her in the first place, and who are now taking cheap shots at her, personally and musically. But all that is meaningless. Truth is, M.I.A. continues to be an absolute force of nature. Creating music that really can and does unite so many different kinds of people and makes you sweat in ways that feels empowering and full of purpose. She has taken the spirit of punk, hip-hop and dance music to make a sound that is so singular and spectacular. Maya is another striking achievement from one of the most important, outspoken and brave artists of our generation.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Check out the review of M83's full length Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts for the complete low down, but if a dreamy, drone-y fuzzy mix of the Orb, Boards Of Canada, Stereolab, New Order, and My Bloody Valentine sounds good to you, then not only should you pick up the M83 full length, you should also be aware of this 3 track ep, with one track from Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, a live track, and a remix by fellow dream poppers and Gooom labelmates Cyann And Ben as well as a secret hidden track, a brief angelic wash of fuzzy synth. So nice.
We love M83. Here's how we described their import full length from a while back:
"A huge slab of fuzzy shoegazey electronica-flecked dream pop. We've been listening to this nonstop since it came in. Imagine the post rave swirl of the Orb, mix in the muted warmth of Boards Of Canada, the lalala Neu-worship of Stereolab, the catchy new wave of New Order, then wrap the whole thing in a thick shimmery distorted haze a la My Bloody Valentine and you'll be close. Now imagine that concoction as the soundtrack to the love scene in some super bizarre Anime. You know, the part where the girl is going into space because she can't live on earth because her tentacles keep killing cute little pandas, and her boyfriend is a giant panda, but they love each other so much her tears turn into jewels that the pandas can eat to make them invincible. It's that heartbreakingly good."
Wow, right? Well, as you can imagine we were super excited for more. And this ep just happens to have a lot more, three unreleased tracks, one of which is a massive 17 minute slab of fuzzy blissed out ambience. And a really cool video for the track "America" from their full length. Sounds great? Well take a second before you add this to your cart. M83's full length record, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, is being released domestically at the end of July with a bonus disc containing EVERYTHING on this ep, as well as two more unreleased tracks and another video! But of course that requires buying the whole album you already may own all over again. So if you haven't bought the M83 record for some crazy reason, wait until the full length domestic double disc comes out and then by all means pick it up. But if you already own the full length, and don't mind missing out on a track/video or two instead of buying it again, this is a good way to get another half hour of gorgeous bliss pop for a mere ten bucks. Up to you.
You'll be glad to know that M83 still basically sound like some strange and wonderful mix of My Bloody Valentine, the Orb, Boards Of Canada, Stereolab and New Order. And they most definitely are still the only band around making this sort of lush, fuzzed out, electronic bliss pop. But the new record takes a strange turn. Some around here think a not so advisable one. But we'll elaborate a bit and you make the call.
First, strap yourself in, and set the controls for the heart of... the eighties.
It starts with the ultra-cheesy cover art, a late night big city scape with the band name written in a thick white graffiti scrawl. If you didn't know M83 was a band you'd be forgiven for thinking that this was a Bacardi ad for some new drink.
And sonically it follows a similar time travelling path. Imagine the eighties is a big packet of Lick-Em-Aid, you know that weird colored sugar you'd eat as a kid. So after a year of listening to the first M83 record non stop, it's nice and wet, so go ahead and dip it into your packet of eighties Lick-Em-Aid and you've basically got Before The Dawn Heals Us. Where Dead Cities was almost timeless sounding in its seamless melding of eighties pop, anime soundtrack, modern electronica, nineties shoegaze and classic Krautrock, the new record is eighties through and through. Every song could be music for a montage from Gleaming The Cube or Pump Up The Volume or Back To The Future. When you close your eyes, you can almost visualize the credits rolling over garish splashes of pastel, listing all of the other songs on the 'soundtrack' by folks like Rick Springfield, Ray Parker Jr., Cyndi Lauper, etc. That said, this is still an amazing record. For every moment of cringeworthy fluff, there's three or four of utter pop brilliance. Totally alien snatches of shimmering synth, stuttering studio fuckery, the entire thing peppered with little sounds, electronic and organic, some barely noticeable, some completely defining the songs. Before The Dawn Heals Us sounds best when the band is going full bore, firing a warm beam of thick guitars and fuzzed out synths straight up into the starry sky, stretched out over a rigid framework of drum machine and pulsing bass, that gets so bombastic it almost sounds like Dimmu Borgir or Cradle Of Filth. On first listen the cheese factor was definitely too distracting, but on each listen, those bits of dated pop just sound like pieces of a glorious bigger picture. They may stick out at first but soon, you can't imagine the rest of the record without them. Which makes sense as soon as you spend some time with the record. The whole thing just sort of flows like some unearthed eighties arthouse soundtrack. A deliriously abstract, emotionally charged musical arc, with strange snippets of dialogue and spoken word moving the musical plot forward.
On its own this might not be the perfect record, but as the second part of M83's fuzzy, blissed out musical journey into the shimmery ether, it's an absolute masterpiece.
We hadn't even heard of this band until a handful of customers started mentioning them, so we figured we'd best check it out, and guess what? Turned out to be pretty fucking amazing. A huge slab of fuzzy shoegazey electronica-flecked dream pop. We've been listening to this nonstop since it came in. It's not really that new, but it's so good, we figured better late than never. Imagine the post rave swirl of the Orb, mix in the muted warmth of Boards Of Canada, the lalala Neu-worship of Stereolab, the catchy new wave of New Order, then wrap the whole thing in a thick shimmery distorted haze a la My Bloody Valentine and you'll be close. Now imagine that concoction as the soundtrack to the love scene in some super bizarre Anime. You know, the part where the girl is going into space because she can't live on earth because her tentacles keep killing cute little pandas, and her boyfriend is a giant panda, but they love each other so much her tears turn into jewels that the pandas can eat to make them invincible. It's that heartbreakingly good. This will totally hit the spot for electro geeks, shoegazers, pop kids, and everyone in between.
You probably already know if you like M83 by now. If you haven't heard them, go check out their brilliant debut Dead Cities RIGHT NOW. If you're already a fan of their fuzzed out My Bloody Valentine / Boards Of Canada dream pop bliss out then like us you can never get enough. This ep features "Don't Save Us From The Frames", probably the best track from their most recent album, Before The Dawn Heals Us -- a massively thick, multi layered psych pop confection with soaring harmony vocals and fuzzy synths all over the place. The reason to pick this up though (we'lll assume you already have the album) is the three unreleased tracks. "Until The Night Is Over" is a gorgeous eighties style ballad, with just enough fuzz and production fuckery to keep it interesting. Think Alan Parsons Project meets Air Supply meets the Flaming Lips. Then there are two remixes of "Don't Save Us...". The first is by Superpitcher, and he works some Kompakt magic, turning the original track into a stripped down, four on the floor, moody heroin house workout. The vocals soar unfettered over a simple pulsing rhythm and a relentlessly throbbing bassline. So good. Exactly how you dreamed a Gooom / Kompakt mashup should sound. The other remix is by Boom Bip, and is a shuffling, skittery IDM workout. A little like Autechre covering the Beach Boys. As always, so good!
Here it is, the long awaited new album from blissed out shoegaze eighties retro pop master M83, aka Anthony Gonzalez, whose gorgeous records have long been HUGE faves around here, so we were pretty excited about this new one, even though we had already heard one track with just a wee bit too much saxophone, but once we started playing it in the store, we knew we'd probably end up digging it a lot, although the most mentioned comparisons we could come up with were bands like Thompson Twins, Peter Gabriel, and Men At Work!! So yeah, the eighties thing is in full effect, and the opening intro, with Zola Jesus, is a primo slice of M83 blissout for sure, all soaring synths, and swirling melodies, Zola Jesus' voice a perfect match for Gonzalez' Peter Gabriel like croon, and the lush eighties slow dance psychedelia he seems able to so effortlessly conjure up.
"Midnight City" is the aforementioned song, and listening to it now, the sax is not too bad, tucked away at the end and buried in the mix, and the opening is thick and distorted and crunchy, with thick Justice / Daft Punk like synths, over a strange, but crazy hooky chirping melody, the song slipping from hazy synthy slow jam verse to distorto synth pop blowout chorus, and yeah, there's a sax solo at the end, but all our favorite eighties jams had sax solos, so why shouldn't these? And while that track was an obvious choice for a single, cuz it sounds the most like classic M83, the rest of the record definitely leans more toward the Thompson Twins / Duran Duran / Howard Jones eighties radio pop side of the spectrum, which when done right, still sounds so good, and c'mon, this is M83, so for every bit of total retro pop, is a blast of superdistorted in-the-red almost witch housey synth buzz or hazy ethereal droned out shimmerscape.
We really can't imagine anyone who LOVED M83 before to hate this, but you really have to dig the sound of the eighties, and we mean the REAL sound, not the ironic lysergic reinterpretation of the eighties, we mean tracks that sound like you might have danced to them at your eighth grade prom, or blasted it in your mom's car on the way to the mall. That all said, Gonzalez has a knack for pop songs, and he kills it here, hooks galore, the sound soaring and epic and shoegazey one second, cheesy and synthy the next, but always crazy catchy, every single track sounding like the inspiring, rabble-rousing score to the ultimate final montage in some classic eighties movie about the outsider finally getting the girl or winning the big game. We could all use a little bit of that sort of inspirational dream pop in our lives anyway, right?
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is the single for possibly the best track on M83's breathtaking Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts album (about to get reissued with a bonus disc!), a hazy shimmery Stereolab meets My Bloody Valentine sun dappled, shoe gazing pop gem. Could it get any better? We definitely thought not, as exhausted as we are by the endless stream of remixes and remix albums. But what do ya know? The remixes on this single actually do twist the song into new and totally appealing shapes. Abstrakt Keal Agram turns the track into a hiccupping hip-hop-shoegaze mash up. Stuttering samples and bumping rhythms totally restructure the wispy original. The main reason to pick this up though is Jackson's Midnight Fuck remix, which takes the original and adds some simple electronica skitter, and morphs the whole thing into a Mike Inc. / Gas / Force Inc. blurry throbbing soundscape of fuzzy synths, etherial vocals, rumbling ambient murk and a propulsive 4/4 rhythm. The final track gets the remix treatment from fellow Gooomsters KG and it's the biggest blast of the bunch, a way rougher and noisier burst of distorted haze and supernovas of white noise static, with the vocals and melodies buried under a thick wash of grit and skree.
Over the course of several records, M83 have virtually invented their own genre, we're not even sure what to call it, but it's some sort of gossamer, fuzzed out blissy dream pop, so much so that, the name M83 itself became an oft referenced descriptor when referring to bands of all stripes that borrowed bits of fuzz or buzz or bliss from M83's sonic palette.
The last record, Before The Dawn Heals Us, found the band shedding some of their more arty influences, much of the krautrock, some of the electronica, lots of the buzzy shoegaze, opting instead for some straight up eighties pop, replete with cheesy electronic drums, big choruses, super effected guitars, a gloriously retro chunk of sweetly dated pop, BUT, they balanced that with some seriously over the top fuzzed out bombast.
However, that record definitely hinted at what was to come, and now years later, the bombast is long gone, and if anything, the band has delved even further into our teenage years, and reinvented themselves as a band plucked right from MTV circa 1985, and we love it! This is total emo. Before there was emo. The soundtrack to hanging out in parking lots, crushes, love notes, first kisses, John Hughes movies, falling in love, break ups, mix tapes and all that stuff.
The sound of Saturday = Youth is that, the sound of Saturdays, no school, hanging out with friends, the sound of being young, your whole life ahead of you, but with every second feeling like it could be your last. So much angst, so much passion, so much hope, and so much fear. All perfectly represented by this collection of gloriously glistening sunshine-y pop and fuzzy synthy electro pop.
The record begins with melancholy piano and swoonsome synths, fluttery female vocals somewhere between Kate Bush and Elizabeth Fraser, an intro that quickly gives way to some straight up eighties style MTV pop, a la Tears For Fears, all wooshing and emotional and dramatic, but so awesome. Not sure if this would be quite as appealing to someone who hadn't grown up on this kind of stuff, but for those of us who did, it's pretty irresistible. The next song is all electronic drums, and super processed soaring female vocals, squiggly synths, electric piano, and more super dramatic soaring choruses.
Our favorite so far is probably "Graveyard Girl", with its Cranberries-esque intro, all big jangling guitars, and crooned vocals, the melody super sweet and melancholy, drifting over swooning synths and a relentless rhythm, this is perfect pop, harmonies and hooks, all filtered through that particular time. It helps that there's a video that pretty much perfectly captures the spirit of the song. With a cute gothy girl who visits the pet cemetery and leaves dog toys and kibble on gravestones, pining after the cute boy. Filmed all fuzzy and old, so it looks just like out memories feel. There's even a spoken word part in the middle, delivered by a young girl, talking about loneliness and love, it's pretty perfectly heart wrenching. And then the artwork, all fuzzed out photos of various teens, the jock, the goth girl, the cute guy, the hot girl, the nerd, the punk, all hanging out in some sun dappled park on a Saturday, killing time, being young.
The whole record is like that, so totally moving and jubilant and emotional and slightly cheesy but in a really good way. Whether they're channeling the electronic skitter of New Order, or the fluttery dramatic pop of Kate Bush, or the jangle rock bombast of the Hooters, it's the very best kind of retro. It all makes us feel either really really old, or secretly sort of young again. Or like we're in some awesome eighties teen movie. Regardless, we love it, and can't seem to stop listening to it...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
LIMITED LIMITED LIMITED!!!
OK, now that we've got that out of the way, we managed to get a dozen or so of these very limited, promotional only 10"s from AQ faves M83. And unlike the overlap between their singles and re-releases and imports, as far as we can tell these tracks are exclusive to this record. Two longish tracks of that perfect electronic bliss psych we've been freaking out over, although this time a bit heavier on the beat than the bliss (a decidedly steady techno-ish thump throughout), sounding quite a bit like New Order dipped in My Bloody Valentine. Nice.
Single number two (or is it number three?) from the recent M83 record and damn if that record doesn't sound better and better as we re-examine it single by single. A perfect warm flush of gossamer dreaminess, lush buzzing synths and breathy otherworldly vocals. You should really already have the title track by now, if you don't, for chrissakes order yourself a copy of Before The Dawn Heals Us and then come on back. So it's the two bonus tracks that are the reason to pick this up. There's the exclusive-to-this-single track "Addicted To Self Mutilation", a slow burning soundscape of falsetto harmonies, like the Beach Boys on peyote, slipping and slithering over a simple electronic shuffle and a jagged buzz-guitar drone. Hard to figure how a band can come up with sonic leftovers WAY better than most bands' main courses! The other track is a reworking of "Teen Angst", by Montag, a fellow Gooom Records sonic alchemist, who was responsible for the soaring string arrangements on both of the M83 records (and whose lastest record we'll be reviewing soon!). Montag takes the lush and fuzzy original and strips it way down, leaving just a skeletal electronic rhythm, with ghostly traces of the original synths swirling amidst the hushed vocals and mournful minor key melodies, eventually allowing the whole thing to build to an intense and chaotic rhythmic frenzy that simply blinks out, leaving residual traces of synth and skitter floating through your head.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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We'd been going through a sort of Shimmy Disc revival lately, digging out all of our old favorites, the first Gwar record, Bongwater, Dogbowl, Jellyfish Kiss... We had sort of forgotten how good all that stuff was. One of our favorites though was this little Brit pop gem by a band called The Mabuses. One of the most perfect slabs of clever hook filled pop ever. The track, "Kicking A Pigeon", has to be, all hyperbole aside, one of the greatest and most lyrically bizarre pop songs EVER. So much so that on hearing it, Allan went on a tear trying to track a copy down for himself (and fear not, Andee is trying to figure� out a way to reissue that record on tUMULt!).�
We were sort of just enjoying this pop flashback, when our pal Brian at WFMU emailed to inform us that not only were the Mabuses still in fact a band, they were playing shows AND had a brand new record. So we got in touch with the band and here it is, a glorious new record from one of our favoritest pop bands, The Mabuses.�
There's no point in comparing the sound of this record to the Shimmy Disc one, since most folks probably missed it entirely, but for those who remember, the sound is relatively unchanged, lush and slightly twee, jangly guitars, soft horns, strings, all very lush and classic sounding, with clever lyrics and dreamy vocal harmonies, but with some BITE too. Some songs are super washed out and dreamy, others are angular and propulsive. The sound borrows from much that came before, but manages to distill it all into something, that once you've been Mabused, can sound like no one else. Bits and pieces of bands like the�High Llamas, Steely Dan, Robyn Hitchcock, Cardinal, Jellyfish, that classic Flying Nun sound... that should give you a rough idea...
Every song here is a pop gem, but "Byayaba" might be the new "Kicking A Pigeon", a super catchy riff, sharp edged and distorted, the vocals doubled and delivered in a commanding baritone, like a pissed off more punk rock Magnetic Fields, then there's the strange garden party strings and horns jam of "Garden Devils", the fuzzy slithery grind of "Russian Roulette" featuring Kramer on bass, the harpsichord pounding Jellyfish jam of "Seasider"... it's just all so good...
To be totally honest, on first listen we couldn't help but compare Mabused! to their self titled record on Shimmy Disc, but the more we listen, the more this disc has grown on us, unfolding like a garden full of strange and wonderful flowers, and now, it seems to be permanently stuck in our players. Total pop nirvana! So so recommended.�
Gorgeously packaged too, a super elaborate die cut digipak, with a massive fold out poster / lyric sheet.
Can you imagine some strange mix of Black Bug, Depeche Mode and Varghkoghargasmal? Well you can now. Sounds like an aQuarius mad sonic scientist dream come true and it IS. This latest Captured Tracks single, from Mac Blackout, aka the dude from the Functional Blackouts and Daily Void, has to be our new fave single of the year, the A side is a ferocious and catchy as fuck chunk of gothy retro cold wave synth soaked gloom pop, stumbling and warped, with cool shrieky vocals, squiggly synths, total Nintendo wave, hooky and a little heavy, but so gloriously noisy and poppy and buzzy and twisted and fucking AWESOME. The flipside is just as good, taking that same sound, but mixing in some thick swaths of dense fuzzed out M83 style swirl, some super dramatic vocals, and crumbling crunchy almost industrial rhythms, still infused with some eighties pop jangle and some anthemic teen movie soundtrack pathos, but all blurred and blasted into something much more fucked up and far out. So good.
Circulations is an instrumental album in four sections, for four instruments: drums, guitar, harp and clarinet. And tape. Which we'll explain in a second. First though, let's just say: this is so GREAT. But it's been tough to review. 'Cause there's a lot of explaining to do. And it's the sort of thing where, yup, the construction of the music IS interesting, but reading about it sorta might make it sound like an academic exercise. Which it may be, in part. But our point is, that even if you don't know how it came about, academics aside it's a really really great listen! Like a crazy soundtrack, sort of (a lot of this would be perfect for some freaky '70s Italian horror/sci-fi/suspense flick). Sometimes bewilderingly dense, at others beautifully melodic and simple. There's a chaotic tangle of sounds but it's carefully crafted, moving through (and returning to) many moods.
You'll encounter moments of heavy distorto-percussion frenzy that sound not unlike Village of Savoonga, This Heat or Dead C. Passages of pretty melody carried by the harp or the clarinet. Intense, echoing drumscapes. Shimmering textures, loud stabs of skronk guitar, placid strings, stirring arpeggios, glitchy stutter. It's very dynamic indeed. Sometime simple and serene, sometimes seriously scrambled and spliced. A complex assemblage of sounds constantly morphing and mutating...
But let's give the background on this, 'cause we're sure that some of you will be intrigued. Basically, the deal here is that young French composer Pierre-Yves Mace (who has one other album out, on Tzadik), wrote out four solos for the four instruments (drums, guitar, harp, clarinet). The musicians in question recorded these solos. Then Mace took those recordings and created four processed tape-collage backing tracks to accompany each of the original individual solos, which were then slightly revised and performed again over the tapes that Mace created. Thus four movements, created in four stages, for Percussion/Tape, Guitar/Tape, Harp/Tape, and Clarinet/Tape. (It says "tape" here, so we will too, though we suspect a computer was involved at some point, not just old-fashioned cut and splice procedures.) The 'solo' instrument is the focus of each track, but you'll hear from all of 'em throughout the disc. Fortunately, Mace's talents extend beyond this disc's conceptual framework, however interesting. While it's fun to listen and try to pick out the sounds from each solo that have been processed and transposed and otherwise recontextualized in the taped accompaniment (you'll be cross referencing from one movement to another, looking for traces of a guitar lick or clarinet motif heard elsewhere), the end-result music is just as interesting and enjoyable without even thinking about how it was created.
It stands on its own as a highly-charged, detailed and often gorgeous instrumental piece of music, which could be a brilliant electro-acoustic improv session, kinda like Ground Zero or Supersilent or those Spring Heel Jack improv projects, that blend live instruments with live electronics and sampling (self-sampling in this case). But with a 20th (21st?) century classical feel. And it's definitely composed and purposeful. Very impressive. There's certainly been a few great releases lately from the Belgian label Sub Rosa (Tibetan Buddhist Rites, Mitchell Akiyama's Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep) and now this. Recommended!
It's been ages since we last heard from Macha (you might recall their glorious intricate ethno-infused pop albums, particularly the Cup fave See It Another Way). In the time that's passed since their last album, everyone and his grandmother seems to have hopped aboard the retro 80s disco-punk bandwagon. So when we took this new Macha album out for a spin, it was a little disconcerting to find that on the first track (also the title track) of their first releases in five years, it sure sounded like they too had bowed to the pressure/appeal of the '80s trend. It's a very Faint-ish, thumpin' highly danceable tune with high New Order-y synths and effected vocals -- fits in well with the current crowd of Killers and Franz Ferdinands. However we were pleased to discover that after that odd re-introduction (perhaps it's their 'single'?!), things fall back into more familiar sound. That is, coolly rhythmic and sultry songs interspersed with a few solemn atmospheric interludes. Each track is warmly populated with assorted Southeast Asian instruments (which oddly enough have become very much in vogue as of late as well).
These two great bands have joined forces to offer up a collection of songs that could gracefully slip into a loveseat with Yo La Tengo's new album. Pretty organ tones, marimba, zither, and maracas. Warm and lovely. And yes to top it all off, a sweet sensitive guy with a pushbutton phone covers Cher's smash hit "Believe".
Angus MacLaurin (a piano-tuner and pipe-organ builder who lives in a log cabin in Maine), has been a member of various indie-rock ensembles that we're not super-familar with...but here he's all on his own, recording his "finely-tuned glasses" (wine glasses, judging from the indistinct photos) onto five different reel-to-reel machines, and then carefully splicing and mixing the tapes. A bit of theremin, kalimba and bass is added on two of the tracks as well. The results are varied and beautiful, a kind of ghost music. Gently haunting, chiming, ringing, glistening drones. Occasional backwards voices are heard, adding further to the ghostly effect... And I just noticed that one of the songs is called "Ghost Ship". Nice!
The first pressing of this classic slab of modern minimalism sold out in a heartbeat, so we're guessing pressing number two will follow suit, and not surprising really, these archival recordings are fantastic. Rescued from obscurity by Gerard Malanga, this lp documents a handful of purely electronic recordings, a sound few knew MacLise had ever explored before, but listening to these now, has us wishing he had continued. The A side especially is a stunning sprawl of glimmering ambience, lo-fi, and full of ambient sounds, voices, room sound, chair scrapes and the like, but all of that is subsumed into the glorious field of shimmer MacLise conjures up. "Electronic Mix For 'Expanded Cinema'" does in fact live up to its title, the sound expansive and psychedelic, and yeah, very cinematic at points, sometimes devolving into wild little tangles are furious electronic squiggles, but just as often blossoming into something much more majestic and moving, long stretches of near silence too, at which point the ambient sounds seem to drift to the fore, as well as the sonic artifacts of the original medium, tape hiss and hum, but that hiss and hum only adds to the lush textures and constantly shifting sonic landscape. We'll admit that a lot of academic music and modern electronic minimalism can sometimes leave us cold, bleeps and scrapes and clicks, but the sounds here manage to feel lush and organic, the arrangements alive, the recordings raw and intimate, and definitely worth it for the A side alone.
But the B side is chock full of equally compelling stuff, murky expanses of drum driven (?) psychedelia, blurred, hazy ambience, looped and layered sounds, "Trance 1" especially is some sort of spaced out psychedelic jam, with Maclise joined by Tony Conrad and John Cale, with some of the other tracks moving back into purely electronic tonalism, the sounds gristly and in-the-red, flitting from pure tone phase to weird psych jam and back again.
Killer stuff. Here's hoping there's more lost gems like these still to be discovered...
Cow bell knockin', kick-ass hard rockin' seventies proto-metal here folks! Michigan power trio Mad Dog's lone album, cryptically entitled 617, was a private press LP originally released in 1977, though recording began back in '74. It features a raw production, heavy guitars, rough and ready vocal wailin', and songs that blend urgent, punkish energy with more languid psych stylings. Sounds like these guys didn't live too far from Detroit. And it's got a whiff of Blue Cheer and even the Pink Fairies, at least enough that we expect this tuff lil' low-budget obscurity might well charm those of you into that sort of thing.
In the same Collector's choice series that has brought us classics by Faust and H.P. Lovecraft, comes a single-disc reissue of the two albums ("Mad River" and "Paradise Bar & Grill") by this lesser-known '60s San Francisco psychrock outfit. Their guitars are employed in both the "acid" and "country/folk" modes common to other Bay Area bands. Mad River is comparable to a somewhat spookier sounding Quicksilver Messenger Service, I guess. Not really classic stuff, but cult material nonetheless for fans of the era/genre, certainly possessing some weird, dissonant charm.
With the recent reactivation of legendary NZ label Flying Nun, and the spate of recent reissues, it makes a weird sort of sense that legendary NZ indie pop outfit the Mad Scene would return with their first new record in nearly twenty years. It makes a bit less sense (at least at first), that the band has been expanded to a sort of indie rock supergroup, which now features, among others, Georgia from Yo La Tengo, and aQ pal and WFMU music director Brian Turner. But to our ears, that was a great move, cuz the the Mad Scene sound as great as ever, and really relatively unchanged from the MS records of old. If someone had told us that this was in fact a lost record simply being reissued, we would have bought it in a second. Still fronted by the inimitable Hamish Kilgour (he of the legendary Kiwi crew The Clean), Blip is warm and woozy, dreamily minor key, washed out and a little bit druggy, makes perfect sense that the group got Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3 to produce and mix, his fingerprints are definitely all over it, giving the record even more of a gorgeously murky haze. Beyond the sound though, the songs too are pretty magical, subtly catchy, a little bit dream poppy, a little bit twee pop, the hooks all tangled up in blurred guitar crunch, and simple propulsive drumming, the vocals buried way down in the mix, and all the songs rife with layered guitars, strap on some headphones, and hear buzzing rumbles beneath shimmery jangles, sinewy melodies atop chiming thrum, the backdrop to each track a constantly shifting guitarscape, with various elements deftly moving to the fore and then slipping right back into the mix, without ever sacrificing the group's pure poppiness. The Mad Scene somehow sound so timeless, at once right at home with the current crop of lo-fi, reverbed garage poppers, but also so reminiscent of classic twee pop, and ramshackle psychedelia, sounding in places like some lost Scottish or British pop group as much as a classic NZ Flying Nun band. So great!
Includes a download coupon as well.
Oh this is so lovely! A new Baltimore, MD quartet has joined the blossoming fray of young bands heavily influenced and inspired by traditional Balkan folk which includes A Hawk And A Hacksaw and Beirut. Madagascar takes a bit of an airier, more sprawling post rock approach than those two groups which in turn may also draw comparisons to Rothko, Pan American or Growing. A wistful gathering embraced by accordion, acoustic guitar, musical saw, non-verbal vocals, and glockenspiel.
Here's the second self-released ep from this brooding young SF band. Since their first cd-r a couple of years ago called Untrue, they've played feverishly around town, toured a bit and made plenty of steady progress. Their rhythm section has definitely gotten considerably tighter and more propulsive. As a result,�the band as a whole seems much more solid and in tune with each other. The very early-'90s Brit-inflected male lead vocals which formerly veered into strained melodramatic excess are now supported by backing vocals that serve to tempered and flesh things out quite nicely. Definitely makes for a more affecting overall presentation. Moody, sinewy guitars and atmospheric keyboards churn, harking back fondly to Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure�and Siouxsie & the Banshees. If you dig Madelia, you'd best be nabbing a copy of this cd-r soon 'cause we've heard word that they've already got a third one on its way!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Your introduction to this new SF band comes in the form of this four song cd-r ep. Very much wearing their influences on their sleeves, but moving towards defining their own sound. Untrue features some very '90s British shoegazer-esque waves of slinking guitars and wispy string synths. A frail, yet very present, male voice swoons and yearns over the proceedings. However, instead of deepening the shadowy dramatic mood crafted by the rest of the group, these highly emotive vocals overwhelm the the music. It seems that if they were melted into the mix a bit more, they'd be much more effective and the overall picture would be much more moving and impactful. Nonetheless, Untrue is quite a promising debut. If you've a penchant for music that broods and laments, you might wanna lend this young quintet an ear.
This local band of brooding lads have finally completed their very long-in-the-works self-released self-titled debut cd. You might already be familiar with them via the handful of cdrs they've released prior to this. Since those shoestring budget cdr recordings on which they wore their musical influences readily on their sleeves (the '80s post-punk of Gang Of Four and Echo and The Bunnymen, the early '90s shoegazerness of Slowdive and Ride, the late '90s grandeur of Radiohead), there's been some radical transformations. The band has matured and tightened up ship considerably, honing their own lush, dark pop/rock sound into something more tumultuous. A major factor in their development is that they recorded and mixed this in a top notch SF studio with professionals at the helm. The proof's in the pudding -- the recordings sound big and defined. Sure lo-fi home/rehearsal space recordings work just fine for less lavish artists, but for the ideas sprouting from the mind of Madelia's frontman and central creative force Bryan Bindloss, clearly more resources are required than a lone room microphone capturing the proceedings. Each of the nine songs are ambitiously composed with layers of guitars and synths, but the defining elements that really lock things in are the ornate piano embellishments. Also vastly improved (in both performance and production) are the vocals which in the past were strained with over-the-top melodramatic angst (and perhaps straining to be heard above the rest of the band). Now, the range of expressiveness is still there, but the delivery is much more controlled and effective with a bit more bite. Quite an impressive cd debut!
If you dug the recent album by fellow SFers The Very Hush Hush, definitely check out Madelia... and vice versa.
Do you like Sibylle Baier, Cat Power, Julie Doiron, Jolie Holland, Josephine Foster, Meg Baird, Rio En Medio, Diane Gluck, Jana Hunter, Jesse Sykes, Marisa Nadler, Beth Orton, and/ or Isobell Campbell? If so, then meet your newest friend.
We're up to number 6 in Madlib's 12 part Medicine Show series, all of them great, but THIS is the one we've been waiting for, a dizzying megamix of "global psychedelic, progressive and hard rock & funk circa 1968-1976", hell yeah, we were already way into Madlib, but the thought of him spinning a crazy selection of mysterious and amazing heavy funky jams, well shit, we were pretty much sold before we heard it. And it's pretty much just how you'd imagine, crazy fuzzy psych rock covers, buzzy guitars, fluttering flutes, exotic ballads, skittery rhythms, wild progged out organs, frenzied drumming, woozy grooves, lysergic jams, all chopped up and looped and woven together, laced with really funny spoken word bits, girls talking about all the drugs they've taken, Pee Wee Herman, comedy records, commercials, plenty of thrift store weirdness and tripped out effects peppering the otherwise heavy rocking proceedings. Separated into smaller mini mixes, each track is jammed with buzz and fuzz, howl and shimmy, tracks skipping and slowing down, voices sped up, garage rock colliding with surf rock, hard rock giving way to dreamy soul giving way to wah wah drenched acid rock, flutes and organs and jawharps and animal calls, wild crowd sounds, drum solos, totally drugged out musical meltdowns, this is definitely not a straight mix, or a selection of classic jams, instead it's a classic hip hop style mix, just sourced from prog and psych and hard rock records, and it's fucking awesome.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Despite her country-western look on the cover, this is Madonna with William Orbit again, continuing the rather successful electronica efforts of her last album, "Ray of Light". You'll be/have been hearing it.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
While Maeror Tri ceased activities and 2/3 of the band continued on with Troum last year, archival recordings of this very prolific outfit have finally resurfaced. With more than a dozen albums, Maeror Tri released countless limited edition�collects the best work from those tapes. Maeror Tri (as well as Troum) excel at the dynamics of the repetitive drone, from slow steady darkness to dense crashing guitar noise. One of Jim's all-time favourite bands... and this certainly does not disappoint!
"See me walking around like I own the whole place. Well, I do!" Yes, she's come a helluva long way since she first sang this refrain, but it still hold true. You may better know her as simply Lois. And who doesn't love Lois? Adore her. She kicks ass. Queen of the K Records / Olympia scene and beyond. Collaborator with many (to name a few: early on in the band Courtney Love with YoYo Records' Pat Maley, later with Calvin Johnson and Dub Narcotic, and here with Brendan Canty of Fugazi), and not one to shy away from something new. She's the whipsmart brain behind such wonderful tunes such as "Strumpet" (see lyrics above), "Davey"... songs that spoke truths to and for indie girls (and boys) everywhere. Well listen up, she's got a new album out now on Kill Rock Stars. Warm guitar strumming and piano melodies. Soft moments with a touch of twang. And her sweet voice.
Second solo record from Preston Nunez, whose 'day job' is playing in cosmic synth drone outfit Scantily Clad, whose three cd-r's were all big hits around here. A little while back Nunez sent us some copies of the debut record from his new group Guisher, which while bearing virtually no relation to Scantily Clad, still totally hit the spot, a head spinning bit of slice and dice audio collage weirdness, rhythmic and groovy and noisy and all over the sonic map. So we weren't entirely sure what to expect from this new project, Mafouka, which definitely has more in common with Guisher than with Scantily Clad, but where Guisher was a relentless sonic barrage, Mafouka sounds more measure and composed, at least a bit, it's still a bit of a barrage, 14 songs in a little under 20 minute, short bursts of hypnotic soundscaping. The opening track is all woozy and warped, a rhythms created from what sounds like a needle scratching across the surface of a record, not to mention some slowed down beats, looped female vocals, shimmery synths, it's like a super raw, primitive home brewed Portishead almost, that sort of washed out, late night vibe, then the next three tracks, all clocking in at well under a minute each, offer up brief snippets of sound, from a layered and looped but of easy listening, to some dialogue heavy, drum addled ambience, to a killer chunk of super distorted dirgey doom, again laced with bizarre samples, until finally another song that breaks the 2 minute mark, a synthy distorted creeper, the sound panning from speaker to speaker, laced with chopped up bits of drumming, layered voices, warm swirling melodic shimmer, which leads directly into another twisted, surprisingly melodic loopscape, from which unfurls the rest of the record, a sprawling selection of primitive sampledelia, equal parts Art Of Noise and Negativland, but all woven into something much more moodily musical, a glorious bit of home brewed 4-track alchemy that in some way plays out like a bedroom indie pop Endtroducing, albeit a bit more freaked out and fractured.
More super extravagant home mad packaging, this time, colored jewel cases with the art printed onto clear stickers which are affixed to the front, no tray, the 3" disc affixed to the inside of the trayless jewel case, over some photocopied artwork pasted into the bottom, which is also visible through the back of the jewel case, which has yet another clear sticker affixed to it. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!
Finally a long overdue, and totally necessary reissue of the first album from quintessential art-punk outfit Magazine. Howard Devoto founded the band in 1977, after parting ways with the Buzzcocks. Less than a year after the Sex Pistols exploded onto the world stage, Devoto recognized the problematic cliches of punk and sought to remedy the trad-rock banalities and the limitations of just being able to play a couple of chords. Real Life applies the energy of the punk rock that's full of piss and vinegar to the glammy dynamics of early Roxy Music and David Bowie. Surrounding Devoto were bassist Barry Adamson (later one of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds and accomplished solo artist in his own right) and John McGeoch (one of the longer serving guitarists for Siouxsie & The Banshees). The opening track "Definitive Gaze" defines what it means to be angular, with its catchy if choppy basslines, spryly jittery snare fills, and sci-fi synth leads punctuated by sneered vocals from Devoto. This track along with the two singles off the album - "Shot By Both Sides" and "The Light Pours Out Of Me" - mark three of the high water marks of what could be defined as post-punk. The album as a whole jerks itself between restless arm-flailing mania, tempestuous emotional outbursts, and melodic croons whose ghosts would eventually haunt the likes of Radiohead, Kaiser Chiefs, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs many many years later...
What to say? It's a reunion of Captain Beefheart's legendary Magic Band, sans the Captain, but with John "Drumbo" French doing his best impression of Don Van Vliet on the mic in his stead. Along with Drumbo, Mark "Rockette Morton" Boston, Gary "Mantis" Lucas, and Denny "Feelers Reebo" Walley are on board for this 17-song assortment of classic Beefheart tunes. As you might expect, these guys are still excellent musicians, and the songs are still as weird and angular as ever, it's just that age has seemingly tamed a bit of their wildness. That and the relatively comfortable recording environs they enjoy now, instead of the cruel taskmaster conditions under which they were directed by Vliet originally, probably takes off a bit of the edge. Mostly, we think maybe this would have been a bit more intriguing if there were no vocals -- or if Drumbo didn't emulate Beeheart's gravelly voice so closely. I mean, it's kinda weird -- why not see how these songs would sound with a different style of singing? Or at least take the Beefheart impression to an over the top extreme, maybe make it more of a black metal rasp or death metal grunt (Andee's suggestion) -- THAT would have been cool. We can definitely see the appeal of this reunion to Beefheart fans in the live context -- it's the closest you'll get in this day and age to actually seeing/hearing live Beefheart for sure. (The Beefheart vocal impression makes sense in that context.) But why exactly would you listen to this at home, instead of an old Beefheart album? Novelty I suppose, and curiosity, and some excitement that this music still "lives" in a sense. Excitement that is evident in the effusive liner notes penned by Matt Groening, a fan who is perhaps less put off by the seeming contrivance of this release than we were. Hey, it's not bad -- but it is what it is. If this was a new band, we'd probably be pretty into it, though we'd be wondering why the heck that guy is singing like that. So, all you Beefheart maniacs, we've got this if you want it!
If we were talent scouts for Slumberland records we'd be jumping all over San Francisco's Magic Bullets, who hit the scene with this self released 12", filled with a dreamy and dramatic '80s indie-pop sensibility. We're reminded a bit of the great Pains Of Being Pure At Heart record on Slumberland that we've been pretty addicted to, but there is something a bit more brooding and bittersweet in the sounds of Magic Bullets. A strong Smiths sensibility shines through these four songs for sure, and while everyone seems to be going the fuzz-pop route these days it's actually kind of refreshing right now to hear these flowing dreamy-pop nuggets that soar so nicely on their own without relying on lo-fidelity fuzz for instant credibility. We're sure these guys wish they could have come of age in the early '80s Manchester scene but we're super happy they are here now creating songs that while nod to that era still sound so fresh and relevant. We're kicking ourselves for missing their recent show opening for The Homosexuals and Brilliant Colors, but if this 12" is any indicator we're gonna be hearing lots more from these Magic Bullets. The band only pressed a limited amount of these records and they each come with a free download card so you can crank these jams on your iPod!
Great single from this awesome 80's inspired indie-pop band.
While Pains Of Being Pure At Heart perfectly tap into the breezy and carefree side of '80s glory in the vein of The Smiths, the Magic Bullets reside in a similar territory but there is more of an emotional urgency imbedded in their songs. We loved their debut 12" from last year, and when we heard they lost one of their members to the band Girls, we were worried that that meant the end of Magic Bullets. But luckily that is not the case as they have this brand new album and a new 7" (reviewed next time!) and the songs are sounding even more confident, catchy and punchy. While The Smiths are the band we're sure they'll get compared to the most, we actually hear much more of a Housemartians influence in their sound, which we think is awesome as we've always been surprised that the Housemartians never experienced the huge revival of praise and attention that they totally deserve. Magic Bullets have this great ability to tap into the best of romantic Manchester pop, yet never sound like a tribute or nostalgic act, as their songs are crafted so well with hooks and melodies that have been making us sway and swoon with total delight.
