Destroyer - Ideas for Songs
2007-06-21 07:48:00
Ideas for Songs is a cassette by Destroyer
, released in 1997.Site: Destroyer Similar Artists: Sunset Rubdown, Wolf Parade, Frog Eyes, Handsome Furs, Swan Lake, The New Pornographers
Destroyer - We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge
2007-06-21 07:47:00
We'll Build
Them a Golden
Bridge is the impossibly lo-fi record that introduced Destroyer
to the world. The rerecordings of the songs "Breakin' the Law" and "Streets of Fire" are more well known on the The New Pornographers albums Mass Romantic and Twin Cinema. It was reissued by Scratch Records on October 24, 2006.Dan Bejar's long-swapped 1996 debut sounds about as good as primitive lo-fi folk can on this reissue, which doesn't mean that I'd recommend it to anyone not already obsessed with Destroyer or not already a student of how so many of the previous decade's home-tapers blossomed into the indie titans of today. Maybe this was always a "fake" lo-fi album, though, about the aesthetic's endeavors and limits: Much of the playing seems forcedly "bad" to the point of risking annoyance. "Revolution" is a near exact rip of an early Pavement tune. The refrain of the limp waltz "Saddestroyer" is, "I heard you were guided by voices." The ballad-with-a-heart-murmur "Rose" announces, "
Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand
2007-06-20 21:56:00
Midwestern obscure-rock archivists and curators Guided by Voices
are back before you could consider them gone with another fun-filled, hook-happy hodge podge of songs, half-songs, ideas, and vaguely pleasing sounds to get you through summer. How many influences can you find in this picture? A Beatles harmony and a Syd Barrett musing here and there are easy to spot, but how about the pack of no-name psychedelicists and prepunk garage dwellers that only Guided by voices have ever heard of? Could be thousands. GBV are so good at integrating references, in fact, their records sound like nothing more than well-groomed and quirky modern rock. Call them post-postmodernists--what else to brand a group that sings a song named "The Golden Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory" without even a smirk and doesn't come off disgustingly pretentious? Sincere? Timeless? We get the joke while they swear they never made one. --Roni Sarig The holy grail. It still stands as their best (or at least among th
Read more: Thousand
Skybox - Arco Iris
2007-06-20 19:03:00
A combination of Ragtime Jazz, Old Country Blues, Creepy Folk, 70s era glam and psychadlia, along with electronic/experimental soundscapes, played with soaring pop mellody's and cascading falsetto harmonies.Hailing from the deserts of Tempe, AZ, the five-piece Indie/Pop group known as Skybox has managed to attract a lot of attention for themselves.Having released their debut LP Arco Iris, recorded by Jamie Woolford of The Stereo and mastered by Jason Livermore (Rise Against, The Ataris, MxPx), Skybox’s music managed to catch the attention of Jesse Ledoux (ex. assistant art director at Sub Pop Records), who after hearing just one song offered to design their CD packaging.This band could easily catch the ear of the right group of people at the right time and become a major cult phenomenon overnight. They almost certainly won’t, but they have that sort of infectious pop vibe that you can imagine the cool kids in California suddenly making their Summer barbecue soundtrack, were they t
Clinic - Internal Wrangler
2007-06-20 19:00:00
From a seedy underworld of gothic malevolence and bad voodoo comes this, Clinic
's long-awaited debut album. On Internal
Wrangler, these four serious young conceptual post-punkers pull on their emergency-room overalls and go about dissecting the dark underbelly of rock history with a scalpel, sewing it back together in unique malformations. There are knowing references to the addled chug of the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat, the acerbic eclecticism of the Beatles' White Album, and even a dark, serious nod to Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" on the creaking workout of "TK." But really, Internal Wrangler sounds like nothing else past or present--a 30-minute death-rattle of caustic, shrieking garage-punk, interspersed with murky funeral interludes and malevolent post-folk nursery rhymes--even a song called "Hippy Death Suite." Surely, this is a band to kill for.
The Tuss - Rushup Edge
2007-06-20 18:05:00
This Artist has been speculated to be another monikor of Aphex Twin. The Tuss uses a synth of which there are only 4 in the country, and Aphex happens to own one of these.Think AFX style.
The Knife - The Knife
2007-06-20 15:55:00
The Knife
is the first full length album from Swedish electropop duo The Knife. It was first released in Sweden on 5 February 2001 on Rabid Records, and subsequently in the UK on 8 March 2004, also on Rabid. On October 31, 2006, Mute Records reissued this and the Knife's second release, Deep Cuts, in the United States. This marked the first stateside release of both titles.
Comets On Fire - Avatar
2007-06-20 15:07:00
What we have here is pretty simple: Men with beards. Blistering blues-rock riffs. Songs that refuse to die. On its fourth album, Comets on Fire takes the very foundation of rock 'n' roll (well, from the good years on) reheats it and serves it back up in gargantuan portions. We're talking the eight-minute solo-heavy opening track, which roughly approximates what it would have sounded like if the Stooges ever jumped on stage with the Grateful Dead. Produced just as well, too. Yes, this Santa Cruz quintet that shares member Ben Chasny with Six Organs of Admittance might occasionally qualify for jam-band status, but give them some credit. Phish could never come up with songs as euphorically ugly as "Lucifer's Memory" and "Hatched Upon the Age."The follow-up to "Blue Cathedral" is an earthy, more accessible, and downright beautiful album. "Avatar
" veers from swinging, bluesy explorations to piano-laced, progressive power balladry to pure tribalism, evoking everyone from the Allmans to Q
Mogwai - Kicking a Dead Pig
2007-06-20 12:42:00
Part 2Remix albums always sound like a grand concept, having a bunch of disparate artists remix an artist's work and then smacking together the results on one disc. Sometimes the contrasts work well, and sometimes they can pull it off. Mogwai
's remix album leaves me thinking "sort of." There are some nice interpretations here, such as the ones from Third Eye Foundation, Alec Empire and especially My Bloody Valentine, but a lot of the album is uninteresting and could be considered filler. None of them really capture the miserable quality of Mogwai's original music, which is why the Mogwai remix of "Fear Satan" is a standout.Site : Mogwai Similar Artists: Explosions In The Sky, M83, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion, Album Leaf
Read more: Kicking
Mogwai - Rock Action
2007-06-20 12:39:00
The Glaswegian lads in Mogwai
continue to tinker with their instrumental rock formula. Whereas Young Team featured the loud-soft dynamic gleaned from Velvet Underground and Come On Die Young copped Sonic Youths moody experimentalism, Rock Action
adds a dash of Yo La Tengos hushed ambience and Flaming Lips studio-savvy playfulness (no surprise there--Rock Action was produced by Lips collaborator and Mercury Rev-ster David Fridmann.) Despite quoting from such a heavy lineup of musical mischief makers, Mogwai craft their own sound, largely due to the melodic narratives they conjure up in the interplay between the three guitarists. With hardly a spoken whisper in the mix, they manage to create great moments of drama, tension, and resolution. "Take Me Somewhere Nice" is a meandering journey toward the promised land, "You Don't Know Jesus" wanders with mystical and loopy abandon, and "Secret Pint" thrums in stately glory. One of the great things about Mogwai is that they are still so damn
Mogwai - Come On Die Young
2007-06-20 12:38:00
Part 2Moody, bombastic, brooding, loping, thunderous, austere, chaotic: heap on the adjectives as the young boys in Mogwai
worm their way through a mostly instrumental set of guitar-heavy songscapes tinted with obscure samples and an occasional mumbled voice. Mogwai can transcend the distance between a loopy and delicate melody and a deafening and crashing crescendo in the space of a breath. Come On Die Young is a stunning, utterly original achievementSite : Mogwai Similar Artists: Explosions In The Sky, M83, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion, Album Leaf
Mogwai - MR. Beast
2007-06-20 11:54:00
With tune titles like "Glasgow Mega-Snake," "Acid Food," and "I Chose Horses," it should be clear Mogwai
hasn’t taken any easy, mellowing departures on Mr. Beast
. Sure, the album opens with the calming guitar atmospherics of "Auto Rock," but then "Glasgow Mega-Snake" comes bounding out with a crushing jog of a beat and a trademark granite slab of guitars. The Scots also indulge incrementally more beautiful and terrifying dreamscapes, especially the down-turned piano topping that hovers above a guitar storm on "Emergency Trap" and the layers of clear-toned melody that chime over a swirl of choked, feedback-drenched power on "Folk Death 95." There has long been talk of Scottish miserablism, and this colors and grinds the idea blissfullySite : Mogwai Similar Artists: Explosions In The Sky, M83, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion, Album Leaf
Mogwai - EP + 6
2007-06-20 11:50:00
While EP + 6 is certainly an uneven compilation, it contains some of Mogwai
's finest moments. Comprising non-album tracks pieced together by Chemikal Underground in the wake of their defection to Southpaw, it demonstrates that this truly revelatory avant-rock band has not only a grasp on the most astonishingly beautiful melodies, but also a keen understanding on how to warp them into vicious, masonry-cracking walls of noise in the blink of an eye. The very crystallisation of that approach is surely Mogwai's original recording of "Xmas Steps": from icy, stark bass drone to incendiary, dramatic math-rock fireworks to mournful violin lament in eleven heart-stopping minutes. Elsewhere, the material from Mogwai's 1999 EP easily ranks up there among the best things they've ever done: drifting epiphanies of noise that capture melancholy better than pretty much any band since Joy Division and even rope in Cowdenbeath Brass Band for the graceful "Burn Girl Prom Queen". In such company, the
Her Space Holiday - Manic Expressive
2007-06-26 18:09:00
It might not be quite as good a title as Her Space
Holiday
's debut, the fraught Home Is Where You Hang Yourself, but Manic
Expressive--the second full-lengther from Marc Bianchi's opium-for-the-ears solo project--finds this slow-core crooner expanding his experimental brief without losing the very tender heart that beats at the center of the Her Space Holiday design. Pieced together on electronic organ and soaring computer sequencer, and carried by what sounds like an orchestra of heavenly strings (all, of course, issuing from a groaning hard drive) this is far from a conventional slow-core album, and the furthest step that Bianchi's taken from his roots in the Californian hardcore act Mohinder. The sweet, electronic "Hassle Free Harmony," for instance, recalls the twinkly psychedelia of the Beatles' "Dear Prudence," but despite this re-creation of familiar reference points, Bianchi's sonic adventurousness on tracks such as "The Ringing in My Ears" and the spaced, glitchy "Lydia
Her Space Holiday - Audio Astronomy
2007-06-26 18:07:00
Thanks to Bluegrassish for helping with the "Her Space
Holiday
" albums
Read more: Audio
, Astronomy
Notwist - Shrink
2007-06-26 08:02:00
The Notwist are so creative they make you want to get a bullhorn and tell everyone you respect to PICK THIS UP. I can't imagine somebody being indifferent to this album, or Neon GOlden, though every song on this Cd is exceptionally phenomenal. I hate to compare, and you REALLY can't, but if you liked kid a or amnesiac or even hail to the thief, any autechre and/or are just open-minded to music that defies boundaries, please check this out. It'll change the way you listen to music.Shrink is experimental rock at its finest. It's a magnetic blend of instrument and technology that touches on various musical styles ranging from indie rock to jazz, and the vocals are both creepy and inspiring. This is a must for any fan of experimental rock such as Radiohead's "Kid A", Doves' "Lost Souls", and Swell's "Everybody Wants to Know". Check out the tracks "Day 7", "Chemicals", and "Electric Bear".
Robots In Disguise - Get Rid!
2007-06-26 05:40:00
Robots In Disguise
’ self-titled debut album was released in 2004 to critical acclaim. The Robots, members Sue Denim and Dee Plume, are back with their DIY attitude, while adding a dance floor factor. Produced by Chris Corner of the Sneaker Pimps, the second album has a broader appeal, with songs that are as refreshing as they are dance floor oriented – as evidenced by their intergalactic singles like "The DJ’s Got A Gun," and "Mirror Rorrim," or their daring cover of The Kinks’ "You Really Got Me."
Godspeed You Black Emporer - Lift Your Fists Like Skinny Antennas to The Sky
2007-06-25 11:57:00
Part 2Canada's Godspeed
You Black
Emperor raise the ante on their already ambitious orchestral rock by releasing a double CD of material as their second full-length album. The group combines the drums and guitar of typical rock-band instrumentation with horns and strings to create a music built around drones and slowly evolving melodic figures. It rises and falls from delicate introductory passages to unabashed grand climaxes. Their juxtaposition of drums with violins and lush romantic tonality brings to mind, but their compositional scale and the pounding repetitive intensity of their dynamic peaks evoke Glenn Branca's The Ascension. Although the two discs are indexed at only two 21-minute tracks each, the package includes a handy road map to the movements into which each is subdivided. The opening piece starts with five minutes of a 15-beat circular melodic pattern that is gradually embellished as the volume swells to an ecstatic roar. The release drops down to a pastoral drone tha
The Zombies - Odessey & Oracle
2007-06-25 11:08:00
The Zombies
were perhaps the most British-sounding of all British Invasion groups, and yet they never scored a hit record in their native U.K. The band released three great singles over here, including the wonderful "Time of the Season," which concludes this 1968 masterpiece, frequently called Britain's version of Pet Sounds. This 30th anniversary edition presents both the stereo and mono versions (and there are substantial differences) of the melancholic, keyboard-dominated pop that flowed from Rod Argent and bassist Chris White. The Zombies' main songwriters explored "psychedelic" themes from odd angles. Here songs address a letter to a girlfriend in jail ("Care of Cell 44") and war ("Butcher's Tale"). There's even a "flowers-in-their-hair" hippie anthem (the gorgeous "Hung Up on a Dream"). Totally of its time, and, nevertheless, a timeless classic.Covered by the likes of Dave Matthews, OK Go, and of Montreal.Site : The Zombies Similar Artists: The Beach Boys, Th
Read more: Oracle
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
2007-06-25 09:17:00
PART 2Illinois
sounds like The Sea and Cake collaborating with the high-school band from a Wes Anderson film on banjo-driven, pulsing meditations on Vince Guaraldi's music for Peanuts. Sufjan
Stevens
, the singer-songwriter behind the endeavor, is an earnest and whimsical young man who aims to record an album based on every state in the union, though this is just his second attempt since 2003's Michigan. Lavish praise has been heaped upon this precocious twenty-something, who weaves personal recollections, historical narratives, and strange facts together to create lush portraits of Midwestern life. It's not maudlin stuff, and the atypical instrumentation (strings, choirs, trumpets, vibes) is beyond gimmick. Halfway through "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.," when Stevens has you feeling true empathy for a serial killer, it's clear that he really is an artist of the highest order. These are weird and lovely middlebrow ditties; we eagerly await the Broadway adaptation.Site: Sufjan StevensSimilar
The Strokes - Room On Fire
2007-06-25 08:50:00
An acclaimed debut prompts one of two kinds of follow-ups: either the band strives to broaden their palate or they attempt to deepen the colors they splashed all over that heralded first effort. The Strokes
' second outing falls in the latter camp. In the tradition of the Ramones' Leave Home and Oasis' (Whats The Story?) Morning GLory, the Strokes largely stay the course with their second full-length release, producing an album that won't cause the stir that its did, but has a sneaky appeal all its own. Thanks to the quintet's Lower East Side roots, and Television references abound with these guys, but Boston new wavers the Cars, and in particular their hit-heavy second album, 1979's Candy-O, provide a more suitable point of reference for Room on Fire. As with Ric Ocasek and company, Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas and his cohorts have a Cars-like knack for sly riffs that creep deeper into ones consciousness with each listen. Not much longer than a half hour from start to fini
The Strokes - Is This It?
2007-06-25 08:48:00
With all the media hype that dogged the Strokes
before the release of their debut album, it's rather apt that they chose the title Is This It. On the strength of just five songs released on two singles, the Strokes were being hailed as everything from the saviors of rock & roll to the Savior himself. Surely, few bands could live up to the impossibly high standards set for this young five-piece, but the band needn't have worried: Is This It is one of the most exciting and energetic debut albums to spring from New York's long-dormant club scene. In fact, the Strokes are a New York City band through and through; like the Velvet Underground, these are a bunch of uptown artsy types elegantly slumming downtown to the tried and tested themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Their singer-songwriter, the fantastically named Julian Casablancas, delivers his lyrics with a weary nonchalance that belies his age on songs like the title track, "Soma," "Hard to Explain," and the altogether wonderful
Explosions in the Sky - All Of A Sudden I miss Everyone (Bonus Disc)
2007-06-25 08:11:00
Explosions In The Sky bonus disc of remixes of each of the album's six tracks.Site : Explosions In The Sky Similar Artists: M83, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion, Album Leaf, Mono
Read more: Explosions
, Sudden
, Bonus
Caribou - Andorra
2007-06-25 08:05:00
Dan Snaith AKA Caribou
has confirmed that his new record Andorra will be out on August 20th. It's the follow-up to The Milk of Human Kindness, and it is also rather lovely too. He says of the album:"Basically all the songs that I really love are 'lump in your throat' pop songs. I still can't really listen to This Will Be Our Year by The Zombies because it turns me into a big cry-baby. But it's all about trying to recreate that feeling."Music either has that effect or it's bullshit I've decided in the last year. So I wanted no bullshit on this album. Turned out that was incredibly hard."She's The One was co-written with Junior Boys' Jeremy Greenspan who also provides vocals on the track.Andorra tracklisting:Melody DaySandyAfter HoursShe's The OneDesireeEliSundialingIreneNiobeSite: CaribouSimilar Artists: Manitoba, The Books, Four Tet, M83, Broadcast, Dntel, The Notwist, Ratatat
Leftfield - Rhythm and Stealth
2007-06-25 06:45:00
Neil Barnes and Paul Daley, the Leftfield masterminds behind 1995's sumptuous dance stew Leftism have gone one better with Rhythm
and Stealth. A little darker than its predecessor, the long-awaited sophomore effort clearly ranks with dance music's most versatile and human albums, ranging from big blocking dance-floor beats to waves of ambient melancholy, all framed bewitchingly as actual songs. Kicking in hard with the sub-thumping hip-hop trip of "Dusted" and uppercutting it with a spacey "Phat Planet", the momentum is maintained by the looping pyscho-techno mantra of "Double Flash." It is "El Cid," all sleepy, warm, sunny Sunday mornings, that offers the first hint of the richer personality to come. And while "Afrika Shox" rattles cages and "Swords" is undeniably addictive, the lush mystery of "Reno" best personifies the beauty and brilliance of this album. The song encompasses the aura of Nusrat Fatah Ali Kahn with an enormous, beautiful bottom end and engaging waves of samplers
Godspeed You Black Emperor - Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada
2007-06-24 17:40:00
Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada may last only half an hour, but in that time it imparts an internal experience akin to that of watching a cast-of-thousands Hollywood epic. Godspeed
You Black
Emperor
! are a Montreal-based nine-piece ensemble that uses massed strings, ringing electric guitars, and martial drums to evoke endless vistas and stir strong emotions. "Moya" opens with a solemn drone overlaid with resonant violin overtones, then builds to a crashing, unapologetically melodramatic climax. The CD's second (and final) selection, "Blaise Bailey Finegan III," is more ambitious. Like a director who grabs his audience's tear ducts with both fists, the group inserts field recordings of a ranting paranoiac between sweeping spaghetti-Western passages that rise to exhilarating multiple crescendos, then fall away to ghostly, echoed violinsThis nine-piece Montreal collective sketches large-scale sonic landscapes using everything from strings to samples. Exceedingly plush and atmospheric, Slo
Read more: Black Emperor
Cathy Davey - Something Ilk
2007-06-24 17:35:00
Once every now and then, an artist arrives so crisply perfect that it's hard to believe that they weren't conjured up and manufactured in the wet dreams of a record company marketing executive. Cathy
Davey, it appears, is the real deal, and what's more, her debut album is striking enough to succeed across the musical spectrum; melodic enough for grown-ups, accessible enough for pop fans adventurous enough to explore rock music, and credible enough for the fickle indie crowd. Can't really fail? What about the music? Well, it doesn't let anyone down. As evidenced on the big single "Clean & Neat", Cathy Davey's vocal prowess owes a lot to ex-Catatonia frontwoman Cerys Matthews; all big lungs and stretched out dramatic vocal phrasing (minus the Welsh accent). What makes her unique, however, is the perfect blend achieved with the backing band she's employed and the material performed; where the voice on its own would be overwhelmingly sugary, the crunch of the band and the often mino
Andrew Bird - The Ballad of the Red Shoes
2007-06-24 13:25:00
Released in 2002, this album dare not be touted as new, but rather an instant classic. Why am I revisiting such old music? So few people know of this rare beauty, namely Brooklyn Serpico, I felt it my duty to share.Andrew
Bird’s The Ballad
of the Red Shoes has the magical ability to whisk the listener away to the olde world where pagans and christians danced together in the dark light of the moon. They drink improper beers and go to the tops of mountains to share happiness with the village below. If people are dying of the black death, it is okay because people still believed in heaven. This world was probably fictional just like the lie told about thanksgiving, but how romantic.In my perfect world, Andrew Bird is king. And as he decreed, The Ballad of the Red Shoes may only be listened to with a tall glass of dark beer in the comfort of your mother’s home plaid on vinyl with a box of photographs of people you never really liked, of people you can’t stand. By the end of the recor
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - The Letting Go
2007-06-24 13:10:00
Having long recorded as Palace Music or Palace, the enigmatic, elusive Bonnie
"Prince
" Billy
continues to confound musical expectations. His latest may well be his loveliest, a series of meditations and tone poems on love and mortality, with the autumnal strains of a chamber quartet and the vocal counterpoint of Dawn McCarthy supporting Billy's tremulous expression of his surreal, stream-of-consciousness lyricism. Results range from the dreamy, bluesy "Cursed Sleep" and the evocation of a British madrigal on "No Bad News" to the discordant propulsion of "The Seedling" and the call and response of the folkish "Then the Letting
Go." It all fits together in a manner that defies categorization and dares the listener to resist its aural seduction.Site: Bonnie 'Prince' BillySimilar Artists: Palace, Palace Brothers, Matt Sweeney, Smog, Panda Bear, Jason Molina, Beach House, Songs: Ohia, Hotel Alexis
Apparat - Walls
2007-06-24 13:03:00
Berlin-based producer and DJ Sascha Ring is better known under the pseudonym Apparat
. ‘Walls
’, his fifth full-length release, is his most accessible album to date and incorporates more traditional songwriting into his electronic laptop compositions. The organic programming and gliding electronic pulses also lend the track listing a soaring, continuous feel. The introductory “Not a Number,” with its plaintive, melancholic strings arrangements by Complexácord and repetitive vibraphone rhythm pattern, brings to mind the minimalism of Steve Reich. “Hailin’ from the Edge,” moves into hip-hop territory with an old-school drum-machine beat and Raz Ohara’s soulful vocals, while Ring’s vocals on the track “Arcadia” sound unnervingly like Thom Yorke. Apparat is at his best when mixing contradicting genres and on ‘Walls’ he goes beyond the limitations of downbeat electronica with his fusion of electrifying techno and atmospheric post-pop.Site: ApparatSimilar Artists: Au
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