TNT

Listening to Tortoise this cold, sunny Sunday afternoon in NYC. This is my favorite Tortoise album--what's yours? I read that they will have a new album out in 2009, first one in, what, five years?

John Eaton on the Syn Ket

I recently did a music trade and got 8 GB of electronic avant garde stuff. Lots (and lots and lots) of it is abrasive weird sounds that i probably won't listen to often, but there are some jams that are actually enjoyable, as well as some gems like this:

John Eaton is a guy who played a rare synth called a Syn Ket. I have a record of his, but it is more weirdo sounds, not funky like this 7" that was included.

My Girls

Screw it, let's just call it Animal Collective week.

This video is pretty cool. They are getting away from their hippy trippy imagery, and getting more into bugged out spooky space man imagery (?)

Lots of close ups of gear, which is cool. After listening to this album A LOT this week (and this is one of the stand out hits) it's cool to see the way they actually make the sounds.

AC/Panda Bear

I got that new Animal Collective joint. It's pretty good.

Here is a picture that i got from "Brooklyn Vegan.com" (?!?! some site that Rootless follows). This is noteworthy to me, maybe not so much to you... Panda Bear is rocking 2 Boss SP-404's and Mackie mixer... he also has a little drum set and a keyboard up there.



dc

Single Ladies

I am sorry I haven't posted for awhile.  Also, I am sorry I am posting this, but it is music related, and entertaining for at least a minute.  

School of Seven Bells

I've been reading the brooklynvegan blog lately, lots of good music info on there. They had a post about a show by the trio School of Seven Bells that got me to check out their album "Alpinisms". When I read stuff about "downtempo ambient beats mixed with textured kraut synths" and then about "vocal interplay that hints of Middle Eastern melodies over heavy tribal drum tracks", it's generally something I at least want to check out. And this was actually a huge score for me, really cool band, wish I saw them the other night at (le) possion rouge in the village. These guys toured with M83 and Prefuse 73, so that'll give some more insight into their sound. They sound a bit like Radiohead or that German band Lali Puna, and other times like M83 (they definitely have an 80s thing going on), and a bit of Boards of Canada. And I guess the two girls are twins and they're into lucid dreams, far out, man.

John Fahey

Listening to John Fahey's "Days Gone By", perfect music for waking up, snow on the ground, drinking coffee. I have five of his albums and I think this is my favorite, though I like the title of another the best, "Old Girlfriends and Other Horrible Memories". Fahey plays solo steel-string guitar that probably sounds more like folk than anything, but has strong elements of blues and even classical. His style has been called "American Primitivism", which I think is a cool description. On "Days Gone By" there is a two-part song called "A Raga Called Pat" that has some cool sound effects, a train going by, weird jungle birds, with the guitar lines moving in and out of focus in the background; the title track has trippy voices in the background. Recorded in 1967, it sounds timeless and ahead of its time.

Madlib part 2

After seeing the previous post, I felt compelled to mention Stevie by Yesterday's New Quintet. This is a really dope recording. Stevie Wonder compositions "re-imagined" by Madlib and his "band". I also have a digital recording of Elle's Theme and the Bomb Shelter EP too, if anyone's interested in a copy. Maybe someone else has a Madlib listening experience as well?

Madlib the bad kid

I've been listening to Yesterday's New Quintet, "Yesterday's Universe" today, such good stuff. How does the man do it? I mean in terms of being so prolific, having so many different projects that sound unique. And how does this music literally get made? I guess sometimes playing along with a classic jazz album, sometimes totally original instrumentation. Madlib the Beat Konducta!!

All right, you  afro-beat hipster motherfuckers...I rocked Afghan Whigs, Gentlemen tonight.  I don't know....I'm just sayin'.  Ever been in love with a girl, and maybe it didn't work out?  Ever wondered, like David Bryne, "Oh my God, what have I done?"  Yeah.  Yeah.

This is one of my fave songs ever

Sa Ra is a production crew (?... "band" isn't the right word) out of LA. The rest of the album is pretty OK but this is the joint right here. So unquantizied and funky.

dc-elbow

vacation iPod...

I haven't checked out too many new things lately, but a couple things here and there that I like; The Music Tapes and This Is Your Captain Speaking, for example.

But the real mark of what I am listening to (and that's what this blog is all about after all) is what makes it on my iPod when I leave home for a long period of time, like on my recent vacation to California and Oregon. (West Coast, son!!!)
So here are the most-played of my most-played items, the cream of the crop from my iPod vacation selections:

Bee Thousand - Guided By Voices
Chicken Run - Hallelujah Chicken Run Band (killin band from the '70s from Zimbabwe)
all of the Fleet Foxes stuff
the Funky 16 Corners "Funky Nawlins" mix/podcast
Heart Of The Congos - The Congos
Led Zeppelin IV
The Good The Bad And The Ugly - Ennio Morricone
Out There - The Heliocentrics
Studio One Rockers
The Sun - Fridge
A Thing To Live With - Fond Of Tigers
Trap Door II Mystery Mix
most of the Nirvana records
all Boards Of Canada recordings (yes Don, even the Beautiful Place EP)
Venus No. 17 - Squarepusher
4-Track Recordings - Green Arrows (another bad-assed west African band from the '70s)
White Light/White Heat - Velvet Underground
Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives - Prefuse 73
Standards - Tortoise
...and a bunch of Turkish gypsy stuff, mostly Selim Sesler. You know, this guy!
Turkish rom clarinet master!

VINYL

I'm not a big record collector, like...say...DC Looch. In my defense, whenever I see a cool record cover or a record I know is hot shit, I drop the bread and add it to my small but (self-proclaimed) awesome collection. Case in point:




Juan Garcia Esquivel was a Mexican arranger and composer. His is known mostly for his wacky, zany, '60s arrangements of standards that are anything but standard. He has an album called Space Age Bachelor Pad Music, and that pretty much sums up exactly how his music sounds. How could you pass up a record with a cover like that???




I didn't buy this next one, but it's at my house now, and I just thought I'd mention it. It's an album of standards sung by Tony Perkins. Yes, that's Anthony Perkins from the iconic film Psycho. He wears a creepy trenchcoat and croons.

Noteworthy

Savath y Savalas, Prefuse 73's cooled out latin side project, which is awesome, is now signed to amazing left coast label Stones Throw Records for their new LP due out in 2009.

"If you don't know now you know...."

Son Lux

The album is called At War With Walls and Mazes.  It's the creation of this guy nobody's really heard of previously, Ryan Lott, and it's awesomely strange.  It's trip-hop, electronic, emo rock, classical, and the songs sprawl and morph until I feel like I'm in a 15 minute Godspeed epic where you wind up on a different planet from where you started, though the longest track is 5:41.  His voice took me some getting used to, his singing sounds like he's about to cry, and lyrically he makes sufjan stevens sound like a godless tough guy, but the melodies are strong and the lyrics usually just 1 or 2 lines repeated over and over, so you make it through the first 30 seconds and the payoff comes when the beat and/or other sonic oddness kicks in.  

I just discovered there's a cover of don't you forget about me on his myspace, but I like him anyway. 

Merriweather Post Pavilion

Do any of you vinyl heads have this yet? I'm dying to hear it and it doesn't come out digitally for a while.

The Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton found dead at 60

Christ I am truly saddened, as crappy as their reunion stuff is Funhouse is my fucking Sgt Pepper. Anybody with me?

Monday Night's Records

I don't know what the fuck Lenny Breau is all about, never heard of him. Anyone? Got it for $1.00 at a flea market or something and it's awesome. I guess i can look him up on Wikipedia but like the fact that this is random goodness.

Also, those Music of Sudan joints are great. North African traditional music is funk-y.

dc

aventgardeproject.org

I've been getting more and more into early electronic music/avant garde stuff lately (Stockhausen, Cage, Mimaroglu, etc.). Early music research studio type stuff when synthesizers took up an entire room and you had tape delay machines, not Pro-Tools plug-ins.

It's crazy how much we take it for granted. You can go to Rite-Aid and get a $10.00 Fisher Price Synth, and you press "violin" and it sounds like a violin, and you press "xylophone" and it sounds like a xylophone. But that is not a violin or a xylophone, it is a sine wave compressed and accentuated a certain way, a tone which is molded electronically to resemble a particular instrument. These guys invented that.

Anywho, if you are into this type of shit or want to look into it check out aventgardeproject.org. Damn, the archive page has 130 rare recordings of "20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD". Uhhh... word?

They are bit torrents with CD quality WAV files (or MP3's if you don't give a shit like me).

Rootless, check the copyright policy.

If this appeals to you at all, run don't walk over there (virtually), this is like the equivalent of the funky16corners blog but for early electronic avant garde ish.

D-Nice

The Foley Room

happy new year, y'all.

gonna rap about this one, in case you don't know it.
Amon Tobin's The Foley Room.
Honestly, I was pretty lukewarm about this album, until I saw a documentary (that comes on a DVD along with the CD) about how it was made.
I totally respect this guy now. His approach to sound is very unique.
He used to make all of his albums (all of which are on Ninja Tune and are great!) by ripping samples from vinyl. Beats, basslines, melodies, noise, whatever; all sampled. Basically, your standard DJ approach a la Shadow or Rjd2.


But for this one, instead of using samples, he recorded tons of shit in a studio (the Foley room) and even more field recordings. Live drums. Toys. Machines in a manufacturing plant. Lots of weird home-made instruments abound. His buddy helped him record the sound of some insects walking. And for those of you more into the avant-garde, the Kronos Quartet was also recorded live. Then Tobin took all the raw recordings (which went to a reel-to-reel tape, nothing digital here) and worked his magic, creating really interesting stuff.

officially been chopped and screwed screwed

hahaha, I heard this on the radio while driving around in my Mom's Ford Focus while visiting my sister in Belleville, Illinois this week (birthplace of Jeff Tweedy, FYI).

This is everything terrible about top 40 Rap/R&B (the ubiquitous drum sounds, the obligatory auto-tuned out vocals) but the chorus is so bugged out I thought it was noteworthy. It's almost like Squarepusher it is so bugged out. Also it's catchy as hell... I've been singing it (faux auto tune effect and all) for three days, much to the wife's chagrin. At least stick around to the 1:00 minute mark for that chorus.

Also, it fun to change the lyrics for your everyday life like "You know my name is D-C Looch, Looch", or "I'm about to drink a fucking brew, brew, dude, dude", or "I have to make a call to Senior Goob, Goob" or "I need to go put on my shoes, shoes, what, what"...

hahaha, that shit cracks me up, I hope at least one of you feels me on this...

Freddie Hubbard-Open Sesame

Here's one that I'm listening to. I knew But Beautiful from it, but not much else from him besides the Red Clay LP.

DC hit me with it a while back. I listened to it a few times back then and then removed it. I've just dug it out and added it back in when I read about his passing.

Now here's something I'd like hear feedback on. Does it make me lame to be interested in the music of someone who'd just kicked the bucket? 

I feel a bit dirty, but this trumpet is nice.

Fuck Buttons

I don't know what it is, but I'm checking out all these bands that DC is going to freak out over. All of this is coming from the the many end of the year lists put out by critics, which has led me on a massive downloading spree.

I'm checking out the album "Street Horrrsing" by the Fuck Buttons, a duo out of England. This stuff sounds a little like Black Dice, simmering noise slashed through with laser-beam guitar or keyboards, occasional screaming, but often melodic, and always huge. Actually, it's kind of perfect music for sitting in a nearly empty office in midtown Manhattan, the machines humming quietly in the background, darkness falling.

Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill

That's the name of the new album by Grouper-Liz Harris's band from Portland-and the soon to be favorite album of DC's, taking the place of Valet's "Naked Acid". This sounds like a cross between Bon Iver and Brightblack Morning Light with PJ Harvey singing through an avalanche of reverb--etherial and strangely beautiful.

Christmas Time in The Roadhouse

I've been checking this out the last few years...

On the last Wednesday before Christmas, Greg Vandy at kexp.org has a Christmas-themed show on his 6-9pm (Pacific) time slot (a.k.a. "The Roadhouse"). I haven't heard confirmation that he's doing it this year, but tonight would be the night.

Blues, jazz, soul, funk, etc. Good shit. Always a nice change of pace from the standard holiday fare.

No worries if you can't catch it when it airs - it's up on their site for a couple weeks for your listening convenience.

His show is also a great one to check out any other week.

Happy holidays ya'll.

El Guincho

Another album I just got hip to is Alegranza, by the Spanish musician Pablo Diaz-Reixa. Anyone who likes Panda Bear and the album Person Pitch will dig this, it's a bit dancier and more Spanish, but that same kind of psychedelic, Beach Boys vibe. I'd be surprised if Noah Lennox isn't a fan of this, rocking out in Portugal or whever that dude does his thing.

The Future Sound of Cambridge 3

I've been playing these tracks non stop since I downloaded them from beatport. The disc has 11 tracks by 3 producers on U.K drum and bass label Hospital Records. Commix, Nu: Tone and Logistics, all three collaborate on 3 tracks. Check out Trademark and Intervention, two of the best tracks on the release. A couple of tracks are in the sub genre of dnb called liquid. What is it with all the genres and sub genres any way! If the bass is dope then I dig it! Check out KJ Sawka, he's a jungle drummer from Seattle. He has some bad ass drum skills on display on Youtube.

There's Nothing About Mary

One more post from me, this one is kind of a rant, but I figure if someone can post video of their own band here than I can rant about something music related.

So I checked out Tomas Fujiwara and the Hook Up last night in Brooklyn. Cool show, mainly because all the songs were great, really strong compositions, lyrical and edgy but not too atonal. 

Tomas had the ubiquitous Mary Halvorson on guitar in his group. Not sure how many of you have heard of her, but she is kind blowing up here in NY, playing in a bunch of different groups and putting out a jazz record this year that not one but two NY Times critics put on their Best of 2008 list. 

I've seen Mary play probably 6 or 7 times and each time I've tried to keep an open mind. A lot of musicians I really respect like her, and I'm really not the type to get all opinionated and hate on a local musician trying to make a career of it. 

But I honestly can't believe that everyone is so crazy over her. She plays guitar like someone doing a math equation--totally passionless. She manages to make a beautiful Guild hollow-body played through a tube amp sound brittle and cold. She plays like she is just running through scales, all brain and no emotion. And last night, more than any other, I thought she was just plain sloppy at times. I think people want to like her because she is a mousy, artsy-frail chick playing a guitar that's as big as her. But I give up, I'll go check out People because I like Kevin Shea's drumming so much, and I'd check out Tomas Fujiwara again because he writes great songs, but for now my mind's made up about Mary. 

(sorry about the post title, but I couldn't resist...)

Department of Eagles

Department of Eagles is one of the guys from Grizzly Bear and his old roommate from NYU.  I've been checking out their album "In Ear Park", which I think I like more than any of the Grizzly Bear albums. If you had told me this was the latest Grizzly Bear record I wouldn't have blinked, but if you listen closely you can hear a difference. One thing notable is the nylon-string guitar that sounds like most of the songs were written on, adds a different element. But it has the same kind of huge vocal harmonies as Grizzly Bear, and I guess the same rhythm section.

Seattle Dragon: Evil on the Rise

Yo! Is it self indulgent to post a video of your own band? Heck yeah, but I'm doin it anyway. Fortson where you at? This was recorded in North Hollywood in 2006 on a little handycam. Ator on bass, the Shadow on guitar, Gibby the First on vocal, Afrikaner on drums. I'm down to see a 2uo video on here. I got some really good dnb I'll post later.The Shza.