With Love,
The Editors

Before even dipping into the latest Beirut offering The Flying Club Cup there’s a whole host of things to keep in mind.

For starters, while not a concept album, per se, Zach Condon was explicit with the intent of the album, and that intent is not so distant from Sufjan’s own 50 States project, on a much smaller (practical?) scale. Each song is meant to carry with it the air of a particular city in France, and as Joshua points out in his review, it makes atmospheres come alive with rich vibrancy through orchestration just the way the soundtrack for Amelie was able to. While listening to the album and trying to draw connections, it’s sometimes just as easy as a cursory glance at the track name to know which city it’s attached to, cities like “Nantes” or “Cherbourg” are directly connected to the track names (tracks #2 and #11, respectively), while others require a little more digging. Track #12, for instance commemorates the statue of Saint Appolina held at the church in Locronan, and still others are plays on French words (track #5: La Banlieu -> “banlieue” as French for “suburbs”). Translations aren’t always as fruitful, with tracks like “Un Dernier Verre (Pour La Route)” translating to “Last Drink (For The Road)” or track #8 “Forks and Knives (La Fete)” is fêteor celebration.

“Forks and Knives” celebrates with violins, and with easy-come drums that sway to-and-fro, backed by voices that almost cheer in the background, cheering for one old man easing and passing away “he means well, sang ‘I’ve got stories of wine, and of course my childhood forks and knives and then the hospital bed where I turn my life over and over again.” It is homage to the folks who live, breathe, and fade away from the lives of the cities themselves. If it wasn’t for the instrumentals, you might even well up, fortunately it is dosed up with a senile, blissful cheer and you can’t help but sway along.

Interestingly, that last track is followed up by “In The Mausoleum” which stings of piano work reminiscient of Charlie Brown, and for me at least, conjures up in those first few strokes an image of the children scurrying along concrete floors. I also can’t help but think of the famous bass-section keys from “Linus and Lucy“.

If you have a knack for Eastern-European instrumentals like I do, you’ll be delighted to know that Jeremy Barnes (A Hawk and a Hacksaw) is once again a real and strong driving force for the studio work on Club Cup, as is Owen Pallett (of Final Fantasy and Arcade Fire fame) present in supplying guest vocals and even some of the signature string arrangements he’s known for. The trio working in tandem like this is undoubtedly one of the reasons that Beirut, since Gulag has seemed to have aged nearly a decade, successfully generating a palette of decadent tracks, and without compromise can seamlessly move about between the playful and the emotional.

As a final and important note, the cover, lush with old-time beach fun (read: bold stripes and over-clothed women in lawn chairs) was Mr. Condon’s beloved inspiration that hung on his wall during his in-home composing sessions for The Flying Club Cup: “Back in the early 1900s, like the 1910s or 1920s, there used to be this hot air balloon festival in Paris– it’s titled after that and after this very bizarre 1910 photo I found. It’s one of the first color photos ever made, at the World’s Fair, and it…shows all these ancient hot air balloons about to take off in the middle of Paris. I just thought it was the most surreal image I’d seen in a long time.”

listen:
Beirut - Nantes
Beirut - Forks and Knives (La Fete)
Beirut - In The Mausoleum
Vince Guaraldi Trio - Linus and Lucy

The album is slated for an October 9th release on Ba Da Bing records, and Amazon has pre-orders up for when you’re ready.

[header image cropped from this photo]

Common to whole music journalism thing is this tendency for historical throwback references. Marrying one band’s sound to another in a yadda-yadda meta-matchmaking of sounds is kind of our thing, but we don’t always stick to that.

After relating The Most Serene Republic to calculus I thought I’d be done with the mathematizing of music for a while, but almost prophetically a new release made its way to my mailbox by the name of Supersymmetry. To be brief, because even the wiki article on the subject will just be a confabbled mess of physics jargon to most people, supersymmetry was a branch to physics bourne out of the field of quantum theory. It gives us an anchor with which we can wrap our heads around multiple dimensions, and in the simplest sense allows for the possibility of multiple possibilities. It is X·Y = -Y·X. Easy, right?

My initial line of inquiry on listening to this Underwater Getdown album is on trying to decide why they would use this title: is it some physical characteristic of their sound and style? Undoubtedly they are quite liberal with giving the music a number of different spatial qualities: drums with echoes, vocal harmonies, and a general sense of fog looms over the album often quietening the main narrative in order of best fit, and darkening it as though it were illuminated by a damp street light on a moonless night.

It’s interesting to discover which parts of particular songs are highlighted with a punchy, crisp production. A song like “Monrovia” is wrought with the same sound and romantic lyricisim that made Bishop Allen famous. This song, while novel and even full of some of the same emotional urgency you might expect of Bright Eyes, it still says nothing for this Supersymmetry.

Moving on (backwards, even) past a few tracks like “Power Grid” and “Awake At Attention” - forgettable ones as the band dips into salty and unsavoury waters, we move onto their single. This is the track that lured me into the whole thing. A stargazing song, spatial and swooning the instrumentals are fantastic, and the lyrics the X on our map.

“Slingshot” is the song that makes the album name swell up with meaning and is what we’ve been digging at all along. It is whole world of simultaneity as the narrator wakes to find himself someone else. A Freaky-Friday swap this is not, and a roundabout lecture in physics it is far from. It is, on the otherhand entirely: a bleeding-heart tale of woe, one in which the band ironically finds its strengths and comes across as a musical blend of malady. Instrumentally it sounds like a blend of Arcade Fire and Radiohead - sans lyrical grandiosity and obscure accent, respectively. Being simple as the songs are is far from a criticism of the band, and after giving the album a thorough going-over it’s a relief to find that it’s not shockingly geeky or post-modern physics babble of metaphors.

subatomically split (and then listen):
Underwater Getdown - Slingshot
Underwater Getdown - Monrovia
Underwater Getdown - Patterns

Underwater Getdown are as of yet a wholly untapped talent from the southern state of Arizona, doing their own thing and selling physical copies of the album from their own site. $10 via paypal and you can get Supersymmetry to your door, with the sweet serenity of knowing that your pennies will probably go toward paying for another of their picturesque holidays.

And yes, we’re still excited about Strawberry Jam which will be in stores in little over a week (you can pre-order your copy here!).

Animal Collective - Peacebone
Animal Collective - Winter Wonder Land
Animal Collective - Safer

A whopping 0.0 rating with a description as follows: “In a sense, This Is Next is totally dispensible; a silly and ill-advised compendium of material freely available to anyone with the initiative to seek it out… A shoddy, transparent, and poorly packaged ploy to sell indie rock cachet to the “casual” consumer, this compilation is far more condescending than some dude who gets pissed off when he sees a Shins CD at Starbucks.”

Here’s a tip of the hat to LeMay for telling it like it is.

This Republic not what one might think. Musically: a powerhouse of a band that sits comfortably among the ranks of another Arts & Crafts borderline-white-noise electro-pop act Broken Social Scene, The Republic is the embodiment of tranquility in the notion of sensory overload.

Having matured since their debut, the newest offering is instrumentally a powerful series of cascades in the grandest sense one might think that layerings of drums, bass, guitars (three), piano, and horns/bowed instruments may produce.

In calculus everything is a matter of limits. The way each mathematical concept will approach infinity, and most importantly, the speed at which that is achieved. It’s no grand stretch to put music into these same terms, with white-noise as our aural anchor of infinitude we can think of music as growing, expanding, approaching its own limit. Yet, the idea is never to reach it, as we all know white noise is not a pleasant thing (think: your TV’s snowy cackle). It’s enough to drive a man into the outer-reaches of madness.

We’re not there though. The snow is absent as this Republic makes clever use of its cast of seven members, in a way that each participates in order to build toward that central point. Each instrument adds a proverbial floor, wall, and cathedral ceiling to the body of sound all the while keeping a steadfast harmony, a clear and decisive plotted course, and more often than not leaving some head-space for vocals.

“Humble Peasants” is the most illustrative track of the band’s direction. It picks up pace as you hear each member don their instrument and find a place in the sound until the inevitable climax (infinity it is not). I can imagine this track playing inside the cabin of the space-elevator as it launches clear through our bubble, emerging from a made-for-theatre dust cloud meant to represent the atmosphere (fainciful, yes).

Population is a fitting title for the album, especially with a track like “Present of Future End” which dawdles around one lowly voice harking unto the world until at around the 2:20 mark it erupts into a crowd. You know those musicals where everyone has the same fanciful dream, and everyone’s mind is running the same circle of inner monologue as their feet run imagined dance-steps around the drabness of their everyday lives? Yeah, it’s just like that, only with drums and fuzz and horns.

The album is a hard thing to describe, but as Ryan Lenssen remarks (in one awesome article):

“[Population’s] juxtaposition between the music and the lyrics is just so grand,” Lenssen says. “The music itself sounds almost—almost—happy. People will look at the cover and see all the beautiful graphics but then they’re going to get into the philosophy of the record and that is much, much darker.” “If people were to truly understand what we were really saying and all of the musical choices and why they were there…this is way more calculated. This is murder in the first degree. This is malicious, unbridled anger and I think we’re sort of a little insane because of the way we present it. We are that scary clown. We are stabbing you in the front and smiling, brushing your cheek, saying ‘Isn’t it lovely? Isn’t it lovely?’”

It is, it really is.

listen (headphones recommended):
The Most Serene Republic - Humble Peasants
The Most Serene Republic - Present of Future End
The Most Serene Republic - Sherry And Her Butterfly Net

Population will land October 2nd, and A&C should like to have your back on the pre-ordering front soon enough.

The good news? We don’t have long to wait… as it drops September 4th from Dare to Care Records.

But! I have even better news: a sampler for the album has started making it’s rounds to the media featuring two tracks off the forthcoming album. And, it must be said, they are definitely on par with anything on Non Stop. These songs are, quite possibly, the best shit the band has ever recorded.

And so, I am ridiculously proud to present to y’all the dirty dirty dance, scream & drinkin’ tune “Fight & Kiss” alongside the title track off Magique. Love it.

We are Wolves - Fight & Kiss.
We are Wolves - Magique.

(you’ll be able to order the album here.)

Yellow House was among the top of my personal lists just based on the number of times it was heard throughout my apartment last year, and I just know when the frost encases the ground and the cold rolls around I’ll be back under a blanket accompanied by the sparsity that is Grizzly Bear, in one form or another. It does well in a cold environment, when my body isn’t so ready to brave the cold even for a dose of sunlight or energetic release. It is still summer now, and I’m going back to something that’s by no means new, but should in all regards be a seasonally appropriate take on this wintery band.

Remixes tend to break things down into simpler and more nostalgic elements, however emotionally barren they tend to be (they don’t have to!). Songs usually just get the “electronic treatment”, being jazzed up with drum machines, electronic glitch-noise, or splashes of synth. They often take on a punchy feel, and fare better on a mixtape, just by virtue of the newfound energy it takes on.

So I found my way to the remix album for Horn of Plenty (which was Grizzly Bear’s 2005 offering). I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was hoping for something palatable. It’s hard, I suppose when so much of Horn is so dark. The tracks begin soft, grow in depth of emotionality, but instrumentally don’t offer a whole lot of punch on their own, replete with delicate harmonies and atmospheric guidance. Truthfully, it could even see a broader audience if it were made to appeal to less adventurous ears, and I see that as being the inspiration for this series of remixes.

Unfortunately, it misses that mark by quite a distance. Tracks like Simon Bookish’s or Girl Talk’s are so far removed from the originals that you have to wonder, are they dressing this song up, or are they just doing something else entirely? The answer is the latter.

Simon Bookish’s track is a sad disservice to the original, almost as though it were a mockery (or at the very least, a simple weekend DIY mixing project). He followed the footsteps of many remix formulae and layed down a drum track, threw in synth, made a few spots for “Eavesdropping” vocal samples and worked his own words in. Even his words make no sense whatsoever in the context of the original song, and everything else is on par with your typical DMusic Fruity Loops artist. This is Simon Bookish doing Eavesdropping.

Girl Talk, on the other hand, takes the “where’s the original at”, over-top rap approach. It is as simple as it sounds, and they just pretty much just rap as though it were their own material, then make sure to play an awkward section of the song at the end of all their contextually huh? rapping. Fairly simple, really awkward, but somehow more respectable than Bookish’s. This is Girl Talk’s take on Knife.

Or hey, you know what. This world needs more bad lounge techno with heavily echo-filtered vocals. Thanks, Soft Pink Truth.

Among all the remixes, the ones that stand out are those from artists who actually share a common bond with Grizzly Bear, at least in terms of artistic approach. Castanets and Final Fantasy were the only two among the 17 who didn’t out-and-out butcher the music. It seems like they were the only candidates who even listened to the album at all, grasping some notion of its nature.

Silences are a terribly powerful thing in music, and they played a key role in bringing out emotional depth. The nature of the music was hidden among the thrushes of those silences, caught up in the reedy tones of the falsetto harmonies, and alight in the open drumming.

Owen Pallett saw to playing around “Don’t Ask” rather than to smother it or cover it up, and the violin and percussion definitely add something to the song that even the original could have seen, without sacrificing any of its momentum. Final Fantasy remix Don’t Ask.

While Castanets take a very different approach, attesting to the idea that the song need not be entirely in-tact in the re-versioning. Deep Sea Diver becomes somewhat of a play on concepts, and the sounds drift in and out as though, literally, you were swimming in and around an ocean of music. Castanets Remixing Deep Sea Diver.

One can only hope that if 2007 rolls around with a pile of Yellow House remixes, that the cast of players will be more conscientious, and actually do some research before embarking on their creations.

all in a line, just for you:
Deep Sea Diver (Castanets remix)
Don’t Ask (Final Fantasy remix)
A Good Place (Soft Pink Truth remix)
Eavesdropping (Simon Bookish remix)
Knife (Girl Talk remix)

So I just received in the mail a promo disc from Murdery Mystery. I’d been looking forward to it for a little while now, and the time spent in its snail-mail transition only served to raise my hopes even higher after one of the singles & promo tracks from their website had me hooked. “Love Astronaut” takes me back to some of the better straight-shooting unapologetic boy-girl pop, and I’d fallen in love with the 8-bit/guitar love solo so much so that seemed it was written just for me.

I was fully prepared to go flying off-the-handle with praise and resounding applause here. Something like “the horizons of my sonic palette were fully broadened by the pop sensibilities of Murder Mystery’s Are you Ready For the Heartache Cause Here It Comes” and then you know, throw in some awesome 60s references, like “Beatles-meets-Beach-Boys-meets-today’s-The-Strokes”.

So much for that. It seems the technical prowess of the members has done a number on their spontaneity, and this whole “awesome fun” that I’ve been told so much of their live shows is nowhere to be found. One thing I can’t stand in a studio production is when the director thinks it’d be swell to whitewash it, do thirty takes until it’s “perfect” and then every ounce of humanness is removed so it’s as though robots were singing to the drum machines that are playing alongside recordings of the guy that may-or-may-not have played a guitar twenty takes back. And that’s weird because I love synths and robots.

While I’d be happy to share a live video of these guys with you, and then chock it up to poor engineering & direction (Mark Dann engineer for ‘NSync was involved? ugh) I can’t seem to find anything wholly redeeming.

I don’t seem to be the only one with these sentiments: Kate over at The Glorious Hum is a little more forgiving than I am, recommending that you spread out the dosing and not take it all in one sitting, and then Matt from YANP likens it to this. I couldn’t agree more.

You may like it for what it is, and what it is may cater to your tastes for simple and highly refined pop songs, but for the whole I’d say listen to these tracks before you make up your mind, and even then: to go see them in person where the hefty weight of the producers is all but present.

listen:
Murder Mystery - Love Astronaut
Murder Mystery - Honey Come Home

And the album is on sale, if you really want it.

Jerome over at Burntpiano sent along a pretty awesome remix of Devendra Banhart’s “Autumn Child” in celebration of all the mama-jama hubbub with the new album. Originally a pretty slow track for Banhart is now a sort of creamsicle of flutters as Jerome somehow picked up and refracted through that electronic prism of his, the distinct wavering of Banhart’s voice.

It comes off as somehow reminiscient of Board of Canada (in terms of the “instruments” *cough*patches*cough* used), and towards the end of the breakdown, morphs into a bit of a house-y mix.

check it:
Devendra Banhart - Autumn’s Child (Burntpiano remix)

This isn’t meant as an attack on our fellow bloggers or the population at large… but seriously - Rogue Wave = Futureheads + Coldplay doing a half-hearted Shins interpretation. Which, to me, is not an interesting combination. So, screw it.

But, now that we are on a bad music kick… Let’s move onto something that one of my professors just exposed me to that is, arguably, just as horrible.

Here is the background: the professor in question is a Dylan fanatic. Such that, a group of us all went over to his place the other night for a night of drinking and visiting each of Bob’s albums in chronological order (needless to say, we only got to the early ’70s by the end of the night). He downloads live shows (in flac) and is constantly reading & discussing everything that is Dylan.

So, this morning, he comes into my work asking if I know Dylan’s “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)” and, of course, I said that I did. He followed this with a reference to a remix by a man named Mark Ronson, which is making a stir in the Dylan community because, I guess, Bob doesn’t really allow remixes. But! Mr. Ronson declared that his remix is, at very least, on-par with the original and so, somehow, it has seen the light of day.

Now, I like remixes. I like mash-ups. DJ BC’s Wu-Orleans is still on near-constant rotation around here. But there is just something about this remix that bothers me. The horns sound canned, that screeching noise is just annoying and the most interesting aspect of the song remains Dylan’s voice. The remix adds nothing to the original. I can see the song being played at a club to half-smirks for it’s novelty… but, as compared to the 1966 version, Mark’s better off not pillaging Bob’s library.

the proof is in the sample:
Bob Dylan - Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine).
Mark Ronson’s Remix - Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine).

Dragon lizards are born with beards, and male turkeys have the innate tendency to grow chest hair which we affectionately call a “beard”. We, like mountain goats, must brave this brazen landscape of follicular transcendence and nurture them to their fullest potential, all the while hoping for the best, most vikingest of beards to bristle forth from our chins.

Imagine to everyone’s surprise when they find out that the spirtually tuned James Blackshaw, like myself, can’t hardly even grow one. He can, on the upshot, play a mean 12-string though.

I’ve been dipping into the world of 12-string guitar, and not long after first setting foot in this realm did I find Sir Richard Bishop, who is perhaps the most prolific and worldly player alive today of this instrument. His fingers spider along the strings creating aural, sonic webs that entrap you in his state of mind, which is often one of spiritual dualism, both with a concrete appeal (often to the tune of an Eastern ceremonial tradition), and with an improvisational air that clues you in to the fact that he’s gone somewhere you can’t hardly imagine.

By no means is it a stretch to say that improvisation and spontaneity are a necessary condition for transcendence. That is perhaps one of the most fundamental ideas carried forth with Buddhistic (and related) religions. No amount of calculatable planning will ever lead anyone beyond; even modern-day thinkers like Maslow (of my own school of thought) knew that much.

James Blackshaw may not be as indoctrinated to the Eastern school of thought, but he certainly has technical ability nearly on par with Sir Richard. At 25, he’s already put out 6 full-lengths, 2 compilations, and a live CD. It is with his latest, The Cloud of Unknowing, that he abandons most any element that may soothe, in favour of those with a more characteristic light.

“The Mirror Speaks” for instance, has its entire atmosphere caked in the dirty tones of a frantic funerary ballad, and only in the hazy front of the piece do you hear notes that in their definition seem to be waging war on the darkness looming; a short-formed Ragnarok of sorts, as the demons dance on his 12-string. The end, a slow decay into one is as the two sides approach slumber, and for now rest.

It’s hard to describe what it is to be entranced by this music, but to say that he himself recognizes the drone-like features of his music is to say a whole lot. It is at once a fog of threaded states of mind, and it seems almost as though he were depicting the mind’s tangled activity itself in song as a microcosm, with the unconscious as the hazy overtone, and the conscious as the intermitently defined plucking of strings.

I think the one clear line to be drawn between his works and Sir Richard’s would stem from his young age; he has a furor that is hard to restrain, and because of this it tends to go fewer places within each 10-minute span - the places though, are assuredly just as rich wherever they may go.

entrance:
James Blackshaw - The Mirror Speaks

see also:
Cover art for The Cloud of Unknowing.
James’ own site.

The Cloud of Unknowing is out on Tompkins Square records, and can be had for $15, over here.

track stylez:
Islands - Rough Gem (Remix)

P.S. I think this is what’s going on in the first 30 seconds (lyrics wise):

“my cornea should be dissected
on a small table
in a bunker, basement to a silo
that we false comboble information of a location
the curators of my interrogation
would be three men varied in age of 36 to 51-to-2 months
they were a captive too (once)
and they rapped attention to the LED rhythm of my heart
of the beep-beep-beep sound”

Anyone think they can get the next 30 seconds?

Amazon has the import of this 7″ Islands single over here, but word is it may be coming over the seas (soon?).

After a loosely defined 2 year hiatus, NYC indie rock outfit Les Savy Fav (lay-SAH-vee-FAHV) is really back. As if the singles and compilation stand-ins weren’t enough to keep them in step, they’ve hit the touring circuit already a month before their record is slated for release. I’ve been waiting for this for the last 3 years, and not without good reason.

These guys have always had a vibe that is much more drenched in screaming vocals than it is in experimentalism. A sound that is distinctly idiosyncratic and imbues the same decade that gave birth to such notables as Q and Not U, and The Dismemberment Plan. One part punk, and one heavy part rock they’ve always made use of bass hooks and angular guitar work to bleed fuzz and drums around Harrington’s vocals, and the vocals (the words) are the shining point to the whole act.

The words, often a stinging air of critique for the very industry they participate in, and sometimes almost bleakly autobiographical like “Meet Me In the Dollar Bin” from Inches. “Meet me in the dollar bin” Tim pleads, “it’s a band I once was in; haven’t done much better since.” It reads as a tribute to all the artists who try and fail at the game; the lightning crashing, the day-job at the cannery, and the poor performing conditions all leave the impression of a struggling youth in the biz, “we passed and we passed, we passed out when we could”. That was probably my favourite of their last offerings, and it demanded to be on a dozen different mixtapes in the last 3 years.

Let’s Stay Friends showcases the same energy these guys had back in years prior, however modernized it is in terms of a playlist-begging pop-repeato drill-into-your-brain appeal, and laid out in the same distinct bleeding-throat vocals Tim does (that are horribly lacking among contemporaries - where is all the sensical screaming at?).

“Ragin In The Plague Age” is a new track that speaks to me, and not because I’ve been leaking from the ears or eyes or anything like that. Alber Camus’ The Plague is a book I’ve been reading on and off lately, and it concerns itself with the trails of a small town in France inflicted with the bacillus plague back in 194X. Savy Fav’s version is much less dun-dun-mysterious, and told from the eyes of a king back when kings were important. Here’s the gist: Scene one, King goes ill. Scene two, king is sacked. Scene three, the town gets trashed for lack of a solution. It is glorious, to say the least.

Right up until the release date of September 18th, there’s a video contest going on that is as humble as it is enticing, and judging from the looks of it there are some pretty awesome entries going up as we speak. Win 1000 clams and a trophy as they invite you to dress like them, go wild, and most importantly to get it on tape - this ain’t no sunday-morning dress-up, unless of course you like that sort of thing, power to you man.

listen up:
Les Savy Fav - Meet Me In The Dollar Bin (from Inches)
Les Savy Fav - Raging In The Plague Age (don your hazmat suit!)
Les Savy Fav - What Would Wolves Do? (awesome 80s drum machining)
Les Savy Fav - The Equestrian

see also:
Baeble Music has a full video stream of a Savy set from a few weeks ago.
Let’s Stay Friends cover art.

You can pre-order Let’s Stay Friends over at Newbury Comics (with a limited edition autographed booklet that you should be too punk to care about).

This here is probably the best audience recording I’ve found of them, and they play it so tight it just makes me squirm in delight. The only thing lackluster is how the camera caught the vocals, which isn’t such a bad thing considering the (distorted) extent to which these guys use them anyway.

I know it’s not very timely, what with their North American tour over, but if you happen to live in one of the cities across the waters where they’re playing: heed my advice and be sure to get tickets. Without further ado, here’s “Tonto” in all its glory:

high-res version (far more glorious):
Battles - “Tonto” @ The First Unitarian Church

Video is courtesy of eattapes.

But, at least, rejoice in the fact that in a few short weeks you will be able to put on Numbers’ Now You Are This as you return from your varied homes back to the chaotic web of life that is the “University Experience”. For, unlike previous recordings of this summer, we finally have an album that perfectly melds with it’s release date.

It is sloppy post-punk - with drums crashing everywhere, people shouting, guitars crunchin’ & distortin’… flailing epically between hopefulness & rejoice to soul-crushing worry. Even the song titles reflect this dichotomy, as the band goes from “Hey Hey Dream” to “I Ripped My Own Heart Out”, or “Everything is Fine” to “What Happened To You”. It is weaved from the less serious (we certainly ain’t talkin’ about a Kronos Quartet requiem or anything here) emotional tapestry that tends to accompany everyday life. And the band brings it all together with the same sense of lo-fi ease that accompanies my memories of classic Eric’s Trip or Sonic Youth.

The band cites some classy Krautrock in their influences, from NEU! to Can & Kraftwerk… and it shows. From the incessant drumming to the electronic, static & moog flourishes, it seems like Numbers wish to reinterpret the extremes of the genre in 3 to 5 minute pop songs. Which is a formidable endeavor. As far as contemporaries go, I’d say check this out if you dig the harmonized female/male vocal combos on The Evens albums but wish that the music behind the voice was a bit less conventional.

All I know, is that I can definitely imagine walking to school come September, listening to “Leila Mila” as the orange leaves fall towards the ground around me. It is a memory I look forward to living.

under a fuzz red sky:
Numbers - Kosmos Love.
Numbers - I Want To Believe.

Now You Are This will be released from Kill Rock Stars on August 21st. You can preorder it over here. It is certainly in your best interest to do your Numbers homework - you never know what kind of treats might be hidden therein.

The art of funerary violin began in the late 1500’s, and for nearly three centuries flourished as a mainstay to funerary ceremonies. It was music designed not to soothe the relatives or attendees (as it might today). Rather, this music was made to carry the souls of the dead into their afterlives, and beyond that, it reflected the times in such a way that it was meant to relate the greatness of the higher classes to the pale ears of the lower classes. One might say because of this, that it is both the saddest music in the world and a masterly compositional tradition without equal.

To put it into perspective, the tradition of Funerary Violin was so widespread throughout Catholic areas of the world, and it was such common practice, that members of the Guild in terms of sheer numbers were almost on par with priests of the time. There wasn’t a town or village without a Funerary Violinist, and understandably so for who in their right mind of the upper eschelon would want their beloved to sink down into the underworld?

As it would happen, for reasons unknown, in 1833 nearly all traces of this 200-year old tradition were locked away, incinerated, or altered beyond recognition. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that this previously unbeknownst tradition finally began to trickle back into the world of the living. Recordings were found even after the dark shroud of oppression had set in, and a man by the name of Rohan Kriwaczek has pieced together what remains known about the music along with recordings from the early 1900s.

On the topic of the oppression of this unfortunate art form, Rohan had this to say: “Had it survived until today who knows how it would have reflected our current disowning of death as a painful memory, but it is certain that it would have proved more profound and deeply cathartic than the contemporary tendency towards recorded music played on a ghetto blaster. But then maybe a spiritless age deserves a spiritless death. It is not for me to judge.”

As a Funerary Violinist himself, Rohan takes the idea very seriously, and not just because he wrote a book on it, or anything. His own personal website even offers funerary services if you happen to live in the South-Eastern portion of England, and if not, I guess you’ll have to ghetto-blast a CD.

What follows are a few tracks from the (incomplete) recordings of Littlejohn, an unfortunate man who was never able to fulfill his life’s work after tripping over a cat on the way down some flights of stairs and fracturing his skull. That very mishap is more than just a tragedy: it actually serves to sum up the very history of the art.

Sad, isn’t it?
Orlando Addleston, for Micheal Wise Esquire (1681) - III. Allegretto
Kaspar Ignaz Faustmann from Todesmusik (1722) - Intrada
Kaspar Ignaz Faustmann from Todesmusik (1722) - Trauermarsch II
(Performed by Herbert Stanley Littlejohn)

P.S. The real kicker is when you realize that the entire history of this art is a fiction, a gimmick for one artist to get by on. It’s a really, really elaborate fiction, and that in itself is the inspiring part. The publisher himself was even torn about whether or not to put it out there, and even today bookstores are at a loss as to which shelf to place the book on. It’s not history, and yet it’s not a fictional narrative. It’s a dry, humourless, ironical tale of an art that never was, but perhaps should be.

I know, I’m a bit of a romantic when it comes to music, and while I’ll be the first one with my grubby hands in the indie-rock dollar bin, I’m still attached to the idea that music should be epic and fanciful. That it should not only go the places it’s told, but take itself places as well, not unlike how fairytales are abound with dragons and mysterious foggy woods and all. I mean truly, the instruments speak a whole world of history when you let them, but that’s soon forgotten when everything is crammed into that 4-minute space; in a fashion where they just become one of the pack, right next to the 4/4 drumming.

Two artists that I’ll highlight here are by no means starving, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still have the potential of a transcendental street-urchin. I’m going to highlight each in turn with two often overlooked side-projects that you should turn your ears toward.

The first is The Decemberists, who, despite what it may seem, were not always picking their teeth over American politik or singing sea shantys. Back before the hey-day of Picaresque & their major label, they found the time to craft one EP by the name of The Tain, which was something of a masterpiece. An 18-minute seamless saga that was delicately synthesized from the Irish mythological tale “Táin Bó Cúailnge”. It has five movements in total, each one increasingly twisted & raw, and it literally bursts at the seams with instrumental guidance. I’ve listened to this enough by now that the words are second nature to me, and as the words turn the proverbial pages of the tale, moving from scene to scene, the instrumentals in their guiding light act to brush a scene behind it all.

Then there was Bell Orchestre, an instrumental supergroup that came together in 2005 involving many of the members of Arcade Fire. It was birthed out of the same singular silver lining as was The Tain, and it was something of a wonder. I had “Les Lumieres Pt. 1″ as my morning alarm for months. I would wake every morning to blinding sunshine and the slow rise of that track (which eventually erupts into the drum & horn madness that is Pt. 2 - but that was never part of my waking time). On the all, that album was a clever experiment, with tracks that drifted about as though they were scores to voiceless epic cartoons or otherwise just conceptually bizarre like the “Recording A Tape… (Typewriter duet)”, and still others that were merely progressions on an idea that carried themselves forward.

take a listen: (for The Tain, I recommend it in order, for obvious reasons)
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. I
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. II
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. III
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. IV
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. V
Bell Orchestre - Les Lumieres Pt. 1
Bell Orchestre - Les Lumieres Pt. 2
Bell Orchestre - Throw It On A Fire
Bell Orchestre - Recording A Tape… (Typewriter duet)

The Tain is, unfortunately impossible to buy new nowadays (wait for a reissue), but there are some used discs floating around, [see comment below] and Bell Orchestre’s Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light can be found over at Amazon for ~15 bucks.

(Header graphic courtesy of Lost Garden.)
(The Decemberists tracks were performed live @ The Metro back in 2005)

As far as music videos within the noise-psychedelia realm go, this one takes the cake. Set in California at what seems to be the largest dance party ever. This semi-political (note the flashes of war) video collage is taken from a multi-span of decades (mostly the 60s), documenting one craaazy night of people gettin’ down with their freaky-selves.

The party begins with all lights on, and everyone fully dressed, but then someone spins a record that ain’t never quit. One three-note guitar riff will drive everything instrumentally, everything being a vesicating wash of 60s verve psychedelia. The night pushes forward, clothes are lost, minds are shot from dance & binge, but it all comes together with the obvious east-coast run-through-the-beach-at-midnight scene, and everyone wakes up to carry on with their placid, innocent lifestyles.

Wooden Shjips have a new self-titled 7″ coming out on Holy Mountain not too long from now, and it’s more of the same, psych-repeato drone and orbital space-guitar fuzz, always set to something funky. Whether it’s the bass riff on the opening track “We Ask You To Ride,” or the organ on “Losin’ Time”.

The music found within is the kind you can fall back on a couch and lose yourself in. It never fails to take you on a journey with its laid-back attitude, one that only really embarks for somewhere when the mood strikes, and otherwise drones on as if in a void.

When it picks up, it’s often by peeling some brazen improv guitar riff, which brings you to rapt attention so the feeling of the song can gravitate toward something else, only to come back again. Always back again. It’s a careful balance like that, never departing for anywhere too foreign, and as focused as it is like that, it has a sort of meditative vibe, and a listening session is not unlike staring into a candle flame at night.

I’d tell you to go find somewhere to buy this, but it’s not out yet, and my guess is when it does deliver it’ll be on a limited run, so all I can say is good luck to you. If you happen to live in CA, you might catch them at one of the few festivals they’ll be at (Fuck Yeah Fest, and Diamond Days), but otherwise, you can just sink your teeth into these.

Listen:
Wooden Shjips - Lucy’s Ride
Wooden Shjips - Losin’ Time

Wooden Shjips: Official Site | Myspace

When last you joined us for news on the Devendra front, it was epic folking all-around as we rejoiced over the news and new tunes. Well, Devendra over at his place has been streaming two new tracks from Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon every week starting with “Seahorse” and now “Bad Girl” & “Carmensita”. This second batch is almost ad expiry, which means you better go check them out before the day’s up!

You may also be interested in his new video, though I don’t know why really, it’s a fairly obscure making-of clip (which also happens to be in Spanish). As for myself, I dug around for something a little more to tide over the time until his new tracks go up, so here I give you two really nice covers that he performed a little while back.

covered:
Devendra Banhart - Colorado Girl (Townes Van Zandt cover)
Devendra Banhart - Summertime (Gershwin cover)

One of the main people behind many of the “core” Constellation bands is Mike Moya, founding member of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who was also a lead member in both Set Fire to Flames and Molasses before forming HRSTA. As far as post-rock related resumes go, Moya is as well-decorated as one would think possible.

HRSTA’s previous work (see, especially, 2005’s Stem Stem Electro) were brazen affairs - featuring violas, organs & violins screeching alongside guitars & pianos over top drums & bass, the album was almost hard to listen to… but after repeated listens, it has since become one of my favourites. Check out “Swallow’s Tail” from the album over at Bricolage Fantasy’s Beautiful Summer Afternoon mix.

September 10th will mark the band’s latest offering, Ghosts Will Come and Kiss Our Eyes. Now, don’t get me wrong: the album is brilliant. Each song drones like the fog which settles over Lennoxville in the early morning, perfectly suited for film. Mike’s hushed vocals mix with Jackie-O Motherfucker’s Brooke Crouser’s pump organ beautifully, making music that is simultaneously both haunting & kitsch. The siren song, “Saturn of Chagrin”, which follows the epic “Hechicero del Bosque” build-up gives the album great contrast, with fuzzed out & disturbed vocal snippets, that sound like they were taped off of an old-tyme radio back in the 50’s, just adding to the atmosphere.

But, here is the thing - it is most certainly not a summertime album. Listening to Ghosts Will Come and Kiss Our Eyes this morning at work made our balmy 30 degree weather feel like -20. There is just something about HRSTA’s sound that makes me yearn to revisit this album come snow. Hell, even a song entitled “Beau Village” (which literally translates into “Beautiful Village”) sounds haunted & ominous.

The album is definitely a welcome release for both Constellation (the label is currently celebrating it’s 10 year anniversary) and the band. It is good to see Moya back at the helm, even if the ship is one as sombre & reflective as HRSTA.

slow-ghost-dub-motions:
HRSTA - Entre la Mer et L’Eau Douce.
HRSTA - Hechicero del Bosque.

COVER ART: available here.

To purchase Ghosts… check out Constellation Record’s store. For more information on the band, check out their official site & take a gander at some live pics, taken by yours truly, during their opening for the Evens over here.

October will see the release of two more LPs to join the ranks of that ever-growing list, Fire Escape on Smalltown Supersound Records while, under the moniker the Sunburned Circle, The Blaze Game will be available through Conspiracy Records. Exciting times, indeed.

Out of the two records, my excitement was undeniably higher for Fire Escape as, the story goes, Kieran Hebden (also known as the electronic entity Four Tet) fell in love with Sunburn’s albums. He decided that he must make a point to travel in search of the band & ended up befriending them. One thing lead to another (with Sunburned opening for Four Tet on a few occasions), and soon it was decided that Kieran would be able to take the band’s latest recordings to produce - making Fire Escape a Sunburned/Four Tet hybrid of sorts.

And it shows. The album features glitched-out interludes (check out the opening track, “Captain Knowhere” or around the 6 minute mark of “Nice Butterfly Mask”) and the cleanest production I can remember on any of the band’s releases. It suits them.

As far as the music itself goes, I’m finding the jams really reminiscent of classic Krautrock - they plod along, slowly building, mixing in traditional instrumentation with all sorts of rhythmic but bizarre noises. Imagine if NEU! superimposed their melodic/easy access tracks (i.e. Forever) with their ambitiously experimental ones, and you would probably be par for course.

Fire Escape won’t be for everyone - it lacks structure, any form of traditional vocals & blatantly features “non-musical” noise, but for anyone who is at all interested in this particular genre, I’d say that it is essential listening. Definite Recommendations: if you don’t listen to anything else from the album, make sure to check out the tracks below & the unstoppable title track.

drumz, noise & birds
Sunburned Hand of the Man - Nice Butterfly Mask.
Sunburned Hand of the Man - The Parakeet Beat.

The band has homes on myspace as well as a site on their own domain. You can find out more about Fire Escape from Smalltown Supersound Records.

You wouldn’t think it to look at their faces (or feet, for that matter) but this bearded quartet grew out of the New York City scene, which is to say, they grew out of it in sheer hermitistic isolation. The kind of isolation that drove one man insane actually divided itself within these four as a prugative, fractalistic musical religion.

Actually, there’s a pretty funny story that goes along with that last bit. See, after their touted isolationist episode in the hey-days of not-long-before-2005, they sent along everything they had recorded to Michael Gira, the singular force behind Angels of Light, producer & founder of the Young God label.

Gira loved the material, and after a long, paternal chat with the group decided that their whimsical choice to dub their creation “AK-AK” (pronounced ack-ack) was in fact a “quasi-religious sonic worldview”. Oh Gira, you silly nilly, they didn’t mean it like that. I mean, they don’t dress up like weirdo cultists in their free time or anything.

I’ve just spent the last three days in the embrace of their latest creation: Love Is Simple, and all joking aside, it’s not unlike the feeling one might experience sobering up to a southern Evangelist sermon with a boisterous chorus of large colourful folk all hyped-up on Our Lord, Jesus Christ. That’s not a bad thing, either.

The album frenetically moves about between songs of warm-hearted American folk “Love, Love, Love (Everyone)” and epic, swelling sonic collages like “Ed Is A Portal,” then to folk: “Don’t Be Afraid, You’re Already Dead,” and quickly back again.

Ironically, the catchiest song on the album begins painfully with a random plucking of strings, then a repeated schizoid verse, and then pops the question that inevitably goes through your mind: “Hey, have you noticed? Everyone is crazy.” which then cues the chorus, catchy like an Irish bar song that’s hard to resist singing back, though it’s not long before once again the song succumbs to distraction and its energy flows toward something else.

Love Is Simple derails at so many points that it’s almost hard to keep pace, but the calming moments in between its noisy, zany antics afford you a chance to catch up just before the next track slams you back in your seat. I’ve always found Akron’s albums to be like a catharsis in that way, as they touch on so many moods and literally blister with feeling (thanks to Ryan Vanderhoof’s heedy vocals and the overall tense instrumentals).

After thinking about that for a moment, I decided to go back through their discography and bring together three of the most cathartic tracks they’ve produced, for your own times of need, and in increasing order of magnitude. These tracks will always hold a special place for me, both in heart, and iPod. Enjoy.

now, purge? (make it loud):
Akron/Family - Running, Returning (from self-titled, 2005)
Akron/Family - Ed Is A Portal (from Love Is Simple, 2007)
Akron/Family - Moment (from Akron/Family & Angels of Light split, 2005)

If ye’ be wantin’ to buy from the Akron/Family catalog, simply meander over to Young God Records for all your needs. Love Is Simple should be landin’ there in 3 days short of a month (9/10).

P.S., dig that cover art:

The way I listen to music is not unlike reading an adventure book for the first time. I navigate on whim or fancy, barely taking the time to digest the names what’s being clicked through until something perks my ears, or the adventure suddenly comes to a dead end. It would seem that on my iPod this morning was something like a prophecy.

It’s been within my circle of friends for a while now an intricate series of debates on art, creativity, and essentially what it means to embody culture. Being a mash of artists, philosophers and psychologists, we each tackle these things with a head full of our own ideas, and I usually love what comes of it, but lately it seems that these questions, too, have been headed for dead ends.

After seeing to it that my iPod play something, the first thing that came about was this track by Deer Tick. The words, surreal:

“I am the dotted line,
You fill me in with whatever you like,
I am just going through the motions and,
And I need an old fashioned potion…
I have learned to stand back and never shine,
Now I feel stupid when I smile.”

When I talk about these debates we have, I see these dead ends in form of an apparition, which is to say in no form at all. They seem to be headed nowhere because honestly I don’t think anyone is taking them anywhere; part fear, and part fatalism I think we’ve forgotten that life and art are more than simple fill-ins. The mind is more than alchemical, the world is more than mere reductionism, and life is more than simply humble routine.

The trouble I think is in our education: this professional training is more like definitional exercise than mentoring, and when that mentality bleeds into other aspects of life (like the very core of creativity) we somehow think we can change the world by definition. Motile minds we have no more.

Anyway, I know I can only blather in philo-spaek for so long before Matt comes back from vacation and shuns me for being a weirdo. I prefer to talk about something real to me than simply gush about this track, so think about it, and think about this Deer Tick song: “Art Isn’t Real” - it’s more than just strings and strings of words. Pretty strings as they are.

P.S. If you really need a sense of the music, you can go by FEOW!’s description: “[It] is not going to be the record they play at the dance party in the warehouse that you got all done up for. This will be the record you listen to on the drive back, alone and after you’ve sobered up enough to make it.” Personally, it reminds me of a folked-out Black Heart Procession married to a stripped-down, early John Vanderslice.

isolate, (for just a little bit)?:
Deer Tick - Art Isn’t Real
Deer Tick - Standing At The Threshold
Deer Tick - Axe Is Forever

The album, War Elephant lands in just shy of a month on FEOW! Records. You can find Deer Tick’s website here, and then there’s also his Myspace.

[Your first helping of Gravy was back in June.]

I’m guessing you’re all familiar with the Now That’s What I Call Music! series of compilations, where big-wig corporation EMI tries to commercialize even further singles that were, to be frank, whored way too much throughout the industry already. The formula is simple: blindly throw together 40 chart-topping hits, slap a brand on it, and sell it to the slathering masses. There’s no discretion, there’s no sequencing appeal or concept behind it. Just full-out party cds for the kids who don’t listen to enough music to define their own tastes, but can quickly and easily fake it with a NOW mix.

Usually I glaze over things like this, you know, like the fact that they now have their 66th edition out, and the fact that it has dear Lily Allen right next to U2 and Beyoncé. As if that wasn’t heartache enough already, they’re now trying to capitalise on the indie market with their This Is NEXT compilation (it was originally thought to be called Now That’s What I Call Indie!). Maybe I’m a little protective of my baby, but seriously, just look at this tracklist:

01 Bloc Party - “The Prayer”
02 Yeah Yeah Yeahs - “Cheated Hearts”
03 Sonic Youth - “Do You Believe In Rapture?”
04 The Shins - “Phantom Limb”
05 Spoon - “The Underdog”
06 Bright Eyes - “Four Winds”
07 Cat Power - “Lived In Bars”
08 Neko Case - “Hold On, Hold On”
09 Of Montreal - “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse”
10 Deerhoof - “The Perfect Me”
11 The Hold Steady - “Chips Ahoy!”
12 Cold War Kids - “Hang Me Up To Dry”
13 Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - “Colleen”
14 M. Ward - “Chinese Translation”
15 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - “Satan Said Dance”

So now, even if you’re such a casual listener that you want in on the indie scene, but are too lazy to inquire into anything yourself, you can just snap up one of these priceless babies (sic) and rejoice! It saddens me that songs like Of Montreal’s can be taken out of context like that (Hissing Fauna, is afterall, a concept album), or that Clap Your Hands’ track is one of the least defining tracks that could have possibly been chosen to represent them. Clearly, we all need to start using the term post-indie now before it’s too late!

In some other news, there’ve been a few sweet covers I’ve been meaning to share. The first one I was turned onto by YANP, a cover of The Magnetic Fields done at a live performance by John Vanderslice & the sweet St. Vincent, like a match made in heaven:

… and here’s the original Yeah! Oh Yeah! by The Magnetic Fields.

Second comes to the tune of a song I’ve heard WAY too much. Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks” ohh that whistling… it haunts. There wasn’t a single bistro in all of North America that didn’t play this for the last three(?) seasons. Despite how many times I’ve heard it though, it still makes me grin like a fool. Kanye West does some rapping over-top the familiar sound, always and again rapping about who else but himself: Kanye West - Young Folks. (cheers to lycanthropy for finding this first).

And finally, to end on an even more laughable cover, the culture of me dug up one of Smells Like Teen Spirit over on the Tubes, and it’s not your typical band. They’re uh, Korean, and so there’s some missing “s” sounds on the end of words, and a lot of “l”s become “r”s, but you gotta give it to them, they really have the energy (and the lights).

just the sauce:
Kanye West - Young Folks
The Magnetic Fields - Yeah! Oh Yeah!
St. Vincent & John Vanderslice - Yeah! Oh Yeah! (The Magnetic Fields cover)