The Vine Underground is Ithaca's newest Indie music feature. Join your host Jason Kester weekdays at 3:30 pm for an exploration of rare and unheard tracks and artists . From vinyl cuts to rare B-Sides, the Vine Underground plays it all!
A Place to Bury Strangers are a New York–based noise rock band composed of Oliver Ackermann (guitar/vocals), Dion Lunadon (bass) and Jay Space (drums). The band plays a heavy, atmospheric wall of sound-influenced blend of psychedelic rock, shoegaze and space rock. The band is commonly known by the initials APTBS.
Collapse Under The Empire is an instrumental/post-rock duo from Hamburg / Germany. They formed 2007, when Chris Burda and Matthew Jason got together to develop their own music. They both released the first four songs for the EP Paintball in summer 2008. After that they came up with their self-produced albums, Systembreakdown (Feb. 2009) and Find A Place To Be Safe (Jan. 2010).Six months after the appearance of their second album, Collapse Under The Empire put out The Sirens Sound. (EU Release over Sister Jack/ Cargo Records on July 21th 2010; US release on October 05th 2010) The appropriate single Grade Separation was pre-publicized on May 16th.
Can was an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first "krautrock" groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.
Can constructed their music largely through collective spontaneous composition –– which the band differentiated from improvisation in the jazz sense –– sampling themselves in the studio and editing down the results; bassist/chief engineer Holger Czukay referred to Can's live and studio performances as "instant compositions". They had occasional commercial success, with singles such as "Spoon" and "I Want More" reaching national singles charts.
Through albums such as Monster Movie (1969), Tago Mago (1971), Ege Bamyasi (1972) and Future Days (1973), the band exerted a considerable influence on avant-garde, experimental, underground, ambient, punk, post-punk, new wave and electronic music.
Click here for their Myspace (actually no...don't...they are too old for a myspace)
San Francisco duo Girls make druggy, ethereal pop in the spirit of Spiritualized and Ariel Pink. Christopher Owens was born in Florida, son to a mother and father who were actively involved as members of the Children of God cult, and spent most of his childhood drifting. After moving across Puerto Rico, Asia, and Europe, and having his first experiences as a street musician singing carols in a Children of Gods kids choir, he became disenfranchised with his lifestyle after catching a peak of American pop culture on TV, and decided to break away and move to the States. At 16, Owens raised enough money by playing guitar on the streets for a plane ticket; he joined his older sister who lived in Amarillo, TX. Without a proper education, he resorted to stocking shelves at a grocery, and eventually became friends with some punks who regularly stole from the store. He shaved his hair into a Mohawk and joined a hardcore band called Hubris.
Four years later, with the help of an older, wealthy music enthusiast who took Owens under his wing and gave him a part-time job, he moved to San Francisco to pursue a new life as a painter. Once there, he met Liza Thorn, and started a band with her called Curls. In the bustling nightlife, she introduced him to Matt Fishbeck, who invited him to play with up-and-comers Holy Shit!, and later connected him to JR White. A kindred spirit, with a less-sprawling background, White had grown up in Santa Cruz with liberal-minded teachers, and besides playing in some punk groups and learning about recording, he'd spent the majority of his twenties in San Francisco as a cook by day and slacker by night. With a common love of drugs and music, the two started making music together and eventually earned a deal with Matador's baby label True Panther Sounds.
Avi Buffalo was once just the kid named Avi (short for Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg). He’s now singing and playing guitar, but was then a vaguely aspirational skateboarder living in Long Beach, who figured between hip trauma and a never-quite-conquered fear of dropping into a half-pipe that he might need to come up with something else to do with the rest of his life. (Maybe journalist? If there were gonna be any left?) His parents never got around to getting him the Game Boy he wanted, so he turned to a handily local guitar. Years of 12-hour days attacking that (plus lessons-to-mentoring with seriously iconoclastic local blues guys) revealed a pretty preternatural talent for making a very special kind of bent but lovely pop song. “You know why it’s good? Because it sounds OLD, but it’s NEW!” said Blues Mentor, sparing the world more labored analysis. And that is the connect-the-dots story of how Avi Buffalo became a band—boy meets guitar. It’s a good old story.
Then boy meets rest of his band at Millikan High in Long Beach—Sheridan Riley on drums, Rebecca Coleman on keys and piano and Arin Fazio (the old man at almost 21, whose dad was a session musician during L.A.’s glossier days) on bass. By the time you read this bio, they will pretty much all be out of high school. And that means we can push past the age thing into the music thing—yes, they’re young, and yes, says Avi, they can effectively metabolize even the most ill-advised tourslops, and yes, many an article is gonna haul out a word like “wunderkind.” But what can you do? They’re gonna graduate into a beautiful little album, and not everybody gets to do that. But even this young, it’s been a long time coming.
Avi (the guy) also loves (like his inspiration Nels Cline) noise. What he calls “really tasteless brutal speaker gargling;” is why the Long Beach Police Department no longer permits him to rehearse in his own garage. But he spent the mid-2000s singing quiet yet resolutely sophisticated songs into whatever free programs he could put on his PC. And they were about as lovely and scruffy as the songs analog guys like Pollard and Barlow and Fox would sing into tape decks during their own long late nights.
A solo show at a much-loved vegan restaurant magnetized Avi Buffalo into a full band; full-band Avi Buffalo magnetized L.A’s Eastside musicians (plus they hit all the major press in the city before they had ANY kind of record out at all); and engineer Aaron Embry (Elliott Smith and Emmylou Harris sideman, among others) invited Avi Buffalo to help him test out the new studio he’d built in his house. This was the big leap—except for some after-class time at a local recording school, Avi Buffalo had never existed anywhere but a laptop or a really good house party. One of the first songs recorded just for fun was “What’s In It For?”; it was also one of the first songs Avi put up on MySpace (“Because that’s all it takes,” says Avi, still a tiny bit shocked). And once Sub Pop came inquiring, “What’s In It For?” became the first single from the album (which hadn’t even been thought of as a possible album until all this). This all happened within a few months—it even screwed up their grades at Millikan. (Don’t worry, no catastrophes.) And then, says Avi, everything got kind of freaky!
That’s where they are now: about to follow their first ten songs into the outside world, and about to celebrate a 21st birthday, and about to figure out whose foibles metastasize in what way after ten hours in a little van, and about to settle into something that they could do for the rest of their lives.
Hope Sandoval was born June 24, 1966 and grew up in east L.A. with her Mexican-American family. She started her career together with her friend Sylvia Gomez in a band called "Going Home", a folk duo formed in 1986.
Hope had admired Kendra Smith as a teen-age Dream Syndicate fan. Sylvia Gomez handed Kendra Smith a demo tape which was comprised of Hope Sandoval on vocals and Sylvia on guitar. David Roback offered to produce some recordings for them and they went into the studio and recorded an album that to this day is yet to be released.
Hope and Sylvia played gigs in California throughout the mid '80s, and stayed friends with both Kendra and David. During the Opal tour in December '87, Kendra left the band and disappeared. David called Hope to see if she would be interested to take Kendra's place in Opal. They found Kendra and had some discussions. They did two more shows together but then she flew home. Keith Mitchell flew home and the next day he flew back with Hope. After that tour Opal became Mazzy Star.
To date, Mazzy Star has released 3 albums: She Hangs Brightly (1990), So Tonight That I Might See (1993), and Among My Swan (1996) (also see Mazzy Star Boulevard).
Hope writes almost all the lyrics for Mazzy Star. Hope is a very shy and private person, and doesn't seem to enjoy the popularity very much. "For me recording is better," says Sandoval. "Live, I just get really nervous. Once you're onstage, you're expected to perform. I don't do that. I always feel awkward about just standing there and not speaking to the audience. It's difficult for me."
In 2001, Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions released Bavarian Fruit Bread and toured the US and Europe in the fall of 2002. Two EPs were also released: At The Doorway Again and Suzanne.
In addition to Mazzy Star and The Warm Inventions, Hope has collaborated with a variety of artists including The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Chemical Brothers, Death In Vegas, Bert Jansch, Richard X, Air, Vetiver, and Le Volume Courbe. In 2008, Hope had a song, "Wild Roses", on a compilation CD from Air France titled In The Air.
Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions released Through The Devil Softly on September 29, 2009.
Sleepy Sun is a California band from many Californias. They hail from the rolling oak and sage hills of Sierra Gold Country, The San Francisco Peninsula, where Kesey raged and the Dead were once Warlocks, and the forever-sunshine climes of the Southland. They came together—young and garage strutting in the coastal Northern California crucible of Santa Cruz. And there they birthed the Sleepy sound—dead blues shaken alive, razor sharp and ramblin’, soul, sonic science and dead-on pop surgery. Wooden, earthy, stratospheric, and swinging…California music of beautiful contrasts for conflicted times.
Now, two records into a frighteningly fast-blossoming evolution, Sleepy Sun are a living machine of fire and focus. Their first release on ATP records Embrace illuminated the golden path to Sleepy land—hard-riffing, delicate, dreamy and cultivated. The latest ATP release, Fever, is arrival at the palace the path promised.
Fever is the honey harmonies and danger wailing of Bret Constantino and Rachel Fannan pulled from a tender tangle into steel-strong braid; the wing-on-wing guitars of Matt Holliman and Even Reiss in screaming dives and sweet ascending circles; the lowdown served up tough and thundering from drum and bass authorities Brian Tice and Jack Allen.
Fever is a band working, like the heroic combos of old—real, made by hand, eyes ahead on an unbridled future and giving two shits for the sideways glance of the lurking trend spotter.
A band working, and a working band—Sleepy Sun’s soaring and soul-stirring live shows are already mowing down audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. They’ve opened for Autolux and Mudhoney, rocked Primavera and Treasure Island, and relentlessly toured the capitals and humble hamlets of North America and Europe. And in their path, the converts are fast becoming legion.
They are a band of musical adventure too—tackling Graham Nash’s ‘Chicago’ for a forthcoming compilation celebrating the Hollie/CSNY legend’s work. English electronic collective U.N.K.L.E. have taken note of Sleepy Sun’s eclectic energies as well, working collaboratively on a track with the band for an upcoming single and LP.
Sleepy Sun won’t relent in 2010. Fever in May, SXSW and the Arctic Monkeys in spring. And as always, a hundred twists yet untold in a message—sent with burning love and rock-solid soul—from California to the whole damn beyond….
Apse (pronounced /‘apps/) is a cadre of ghosts that has been wailing into the cold New England wind for a decade. In recent years the group has channeled itself through ATP Recordings, reaching a larger audience so all can immerse themselves in its dark realms. Its sounds are heard on the tribal atmospheric swamp of Spirit, the drug-addled lo-fi montage Eras, or recently on Climb Up’s more rousing gesture toward the light. The group's live performances - often known for their unmistakable dark intensity and shamanic conjurings - are not to be missed.
Stooges (also known as Iggy and The Stooges) is an American rock band from Ann Arbor, Michigan first active from 1967 to 1974, and later reformed in 2003. Although they sold few records in their original incarnation and often performed for indifferent or hostile audiences, the Stooges are widely regarded as instrumental in the rise of punk rock, as well as influential to alternative rock, heavy metal and rock music at large.
The Stooges were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2010.
BEAK> were formed in January 2009 by three Bristol musicians, Billy Fuller, Matt Williams and Geoff Barrow. The band have very strict guidelines governing the recording and writing process of their work. The music was recorded live in one room with no overdubs or repair, only using edits to create arrangements. All tracks were written over a twelve-day session in SOA Studio’s, Bristol. The album is to be released on Invada records UK and Europe.
Sometimes a band can be no more than the sum of it’s parts, but BEAK> are an equation in which it’s impossible to define equivalents or totals. Instead the meeting of three talent’s form a foundation from which idea’s assimilate and propagate. Those talents are: Billy Fuller. Reared in Bristol, on an aural diet of anything and everything, facilitated later by his time working in the cities top independent record shop Replay Records, and also playing with handfuls of bands – including Invada’s first signing: Fuzz Against Funk, as well as Massive Attack, Robert Plant, and Malakai. Billy is BEAK>’S thoughtful pulse; his bass a forceful origin for their superlative narrative arcs. Matt Williams. Picked up a Yamaha keyboard aged three and never looked back, as Team Brick creates dissonance that immediately elucidates free forming thought, and impacts heavily on BEAK>’S rolling landscape. He enjoys playing air drums whilst cycling, singing lines from a favourite Latin prayer and doesn’t understand the music he makes himself. Geoff Barrow. Musician and producer born near Bristol. Best known for forming and producing popular music group Portishead and part owner of the independent record label Invada Records .
Commenting on working in BEAK> "its really good to create music under different conditions than your used too."
Bardo Pond was the flagship band of Philly's "Psychedelphia" space rock movement, which also included the likes of Aspera, Asteroid No. 4, the Azusa Plane, and tangentially the Lilys. Explicitly drug-inspired -- their titles were filled with obscure references to psychedelics -- they favored lengthy, deliberate sound explorations filled with all the hallmarks of modern-day space rock: droning guitars, thick distortion, feedback, reverb, and washes of white noise. Hints of blues structure often cropped up, but Bardo Pond's earliest roots lay with avant-garde noisemakers from the realm of free jazz and from New York's no wave movement and downtown Knitting Factory scene. As their musicianship improved, the band gradually incorporated more traditional influences, but maintained their affinity for the outer fringes of music. Thus, their brand of space rock echoed not just genre staples like Hawkwind and Pink Floyd, but jam-happy Krautrockers (Amon Düül, Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel, Guru Guru) and experimental indie heroes (Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and especially Spacemen 3). With a steady stream of releases on Matador, the band stuck around long enough to draw comparisons to the spacier, noisier contingent of post-rockers, like Mogwai and Flying Saucer Attack.
Bardo Pond was formed in Philadelphia in 1989 by guitar-playing brothers Michael and John Gibbons, who'd long had an interest in making free-form noise, though they didn't pick up nonpercussion instruments until attending art school in their twenties. Their first collaborator was guitarist Clint Takeda, a friend of Michael's who shared their enthusiasm for free music. Over the next two years, the band held twice-weekly jam sessions in their living room. At first, their aesthetic was one of naïve, unfettered freedom, but they slowly grew convinced of the need for some semblance of structure and proper instrumental technique. Takeda christened the band Bardo Pond in 1991, after a location described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. By that time, they'd picked up new members in vocalist/flute player Isobel Sollenberger and drummer Bob Sentz, both art academy classmates of the Gibbons brothers.
Over 1992-1993, Bardo Pond issued five self-released cassettes. Toward the end of that run, Sentz quit the band to concentrate on his painting, and was replaced by Joe Culver. Takeda had begun to drift away from the band after graduation, moving first to New York and then to Seattle, which gave Michael Gibbons a chance to develop his guitar playing further. The band came to the attention of the small, singles-oriented Compulsiv label, and issued their first proper 7", "Die Easy" b/w "Apple Eye," in early 1994; another one, "Trip Fuck" b/w "Hummingbird Mountain," arrived not long after on the Drunken Fish imprint. A third single, "Dragonfly" b/w "Blues Tune," was out by the end of the year, and the group began work on its full-length debut for Drunken Fish. Clint Takeda, who'd kept in touch with the band, decided he wanted to return, and was brought back into the fold as the full-time bassist.
Bardo Pond issued its first album, Bufo Alvarius Amen 29:15, in early 1995; its title was taken from the scientific name for the notorious hallucinogenic toad found in the western U.S. The CD version appended "Amen 29:15," a near-half-hour jam that marked Takeda's recorded debut with the band. Later that year, Compulsiv released a CD EP of leftover tracks called Big Laughing Jym. Bufo Alvarius sparked the interest of Matador Records, which signed Bardo Pond and issued their breakthrough sophomore effort, Amanita, in 1996. Titled after a little-known hallucinogen from India, the album won critical praise and substantially heightened the band's profile, as did their increasingly improvisational live shows.
1997's Lapsed was a leaner, more focused effort that refined and sharpened Bardo Pond's sound; it too was greeted enthusiastically, with many fans still ranking it as the group's finest effort. That same year, the quintet's side project with New Zealand guitarist Roy Montgomery, Hash Jar Tempo, saw the release of the first of two albums; titled Well Oiled, it had been recorded during a 1995 jam session, and appeared on Drunken Fish. The results of another jam session, this one from 1998, were issued a year later as Under Glass. Bardo Pond itself also returned in 1999 with Set and Setting, which had second drummer Ed Farnsworth beginning to assume some of new family man Culver's duties. It also found Sollenberger debuting her new second instrument, violin.
2000 saw the band embarking on several side ventures from Matador; there was a 10" limited-edition EP on Three Lobed called Slab, which featured outtakes from the Set and Setting sessions, and they also inaugurated a series of self-released CD-Rs (sold through their website and on tours) with Vol. 1. Like its followers, Vol. 1 was a collection of improvisational jams and home-studio outtakes. The band returned with its fourth Matador album, Dilate, in 2001; by now, Culver had officially retired from the band, leaving Farnsworth as the full-time drummer. A tour with Mogwai followed in support that spring, and Matador issued a small-scale EP culling performances from both bands. Three more volumes in the Bardo Pond CD-R series followed over 2002-2003, as well as another EP for Three Lobed, 2002's Purposeful Availment. In the meantime, Bardo Pond and Matador abruptly parted ways; after playing the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, the band signed with its spin-off label of the same name, and debuted with the full-length On the Ellipse in 2003. 2005 saw a wider release of the material from the CD-R series in Selections, Vols. 1-4, a two-disc collection of highlights. Ticket Crystals, a mellower, more atmospheric work, arrived the following year.
The great majority of artists spend their formative years (if not their entire careers) working to shake off the gravitational pull of their predecessors, and the many masters and masterpieces that came before them—what the literary critic Harold Bloom called “the anxiety of influence.” For musicians, in particular, this tendency is especially pronounced, for reasons having to do with the nature of their craft and materials. Unlike the contemporary novelist or filmmaker, say, there is presumably a finite number of choices remaining to the artist making music in the 21st century that have not yet been exhaustively mined after 500 years of popular and semi-popular song. It is for this reason that, when we are asked to describe what a piece of music sounds like, we inevitably talk not about the thing itself, but resort to the trope of metaphor or analogy—“a little Brian Wilson, a little Pink Floyd, a little bit of Kraftwerk.” Rare indeed is the artist who outgrows their early influences, and instead become one of the markers by which other groups are measured.??Almost alone among bands of the last two decades, Tortoise is a group that resists easy metaphors and analogies, who can be described as sounding like only themselves and no one else. Twenty years after its founding, the band’s signature and singularly inimitable sound—a fluid intersection of dub, dance, jazz, techno, rock, and classical minimalism, with no part overwhelming or dominating the whole—remains an American and international original. Even more unusually, they seem to have arrived at their sound with almost no apprenticeship to speak of; to judge from their early singles and albums alone, they seem to have come into being with their musical identity and DNA fully formed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. Further, while the group has spawned countless imitators, heirs, and followers—sincere, flattering, and otherwise—Tortoise remains unique in the world of contemporary music for their boundless intellectual curiosity, their unmistakable compositional voice, and their synthesis of seemingly contradictory sound worlds far from their doorstep.
Beacons of Ancestorship is Tortoise's sixth full-length album, and their first release of new material in five years, since 2004's It's All Around You. In the interim, the group also released and toured behind the 2006 career retrospective box set A Lazarus Taxon, and an album of covers with vocalist Will Oldham by the likes of Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Thompson, and The Minutemen, entitled The Brave and the Bold. Additionally, the individual members have kept busy with various other projects, including but not limited to Exploding Star Orchestra, Bumps, Fflashlights, and Powerhouse Sound.
A characteristic Tortoise album is one that traverses an encyclopedia of styles and reference points, a document of where musical intersections and dialogue are occurring at a given moment in time. Beacons of Ancestorship is no different, with nods to techno, punk, electro, lo-fi noise, cut-up beats, heavily processed synths, and mournful, elegiac dirges. We see these ideas working out in compositions like “High Class Slim Came Floatin' In,” an eight-minute track which playfully references the world of ecstatic rave and dance culture with a curiously ambivalent, multi-part suite overlaid with robotic, machine-sounding melodies that stop and start in several different time signatures before the song’s ultimate resolution; and again in “Yinxianghechengqi,” which begins as a straightforward uptempo math-rocker before steadily accelerating into a wall of fuzzy atonal sqwonk.
Neu! (trademarked NEU! in block capitals, German: New!, pronounced [ˈnɔʏ]) was a German band formed by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother after their split from Kraftwerk in the early 1970s. Though the band had minimal commercial success during its existence, Neu! are retrospectively considered one of the founding fathers of Krautrock and a significant influence on artists including PiL, Joy Division, Brian Eno, David Bowie, Stereolab, Gary Numan, Ultravox, Radiohead, The Horrors, Simple Minds, and much of the current electronic music scene.
Probably the most cherished element of the Neu! oeuvre is what is often called the "Motorik" beat (meaning 'motor skill' in German) - although the band themselves did not use this term, Dinger himself later referred to it as the "Apache beat". At least one third of their recorded output is in the Motorik form. Here they deconstruct the traditional rock song format, with its verses and choruses, intros and changes, stripping it down to a single minimalist 4/4 beat, which Dinger repeats continuously throughout the entire track. Neu! were a big influence on the sound of the 1970s band Hawkwind, particularly Simon King and Lemmy's driving Motorik bass and drum double act. The band's 1975 track "Opa Loka" is an homage to Hallogallo.
In terms of traditional western and rock music harmonic form, Rother would complement Dinger's rhythm by eschewing chord changes, and instead opting for a harmonic drone – a single chord, layering numerous electric guitar overdubs. Timbral change takes over from harmonic change as the main focus of interest. Conny Plank was renowned as a producer for creating a working environment where musicians could be free to explore such experiments, and also as a master of timbral texture and spatialisation. Many other Neu! tracks are very slow and gentle, sketching out traces of a song in what might be called an ambient style.
Phantogram is an American electronic rock duo from Saratoga Springs, consisting of guitarist Josh Carter and keyboardist Sarah Barthel. Barthel and Carter were friends since junior high school, but Phantogram didn't officially form until 2007. Phantogram's unique dance-friendly sound has helped them play as opening acts for more established bands such as Metric, Minus The Bear, Zero 7, The xx, Ra Ra Riot, Yeasayer, Brazilian Girls and The Slip. In interviews, the band has described their sound concisely under the genre of "street beat, psych pop." Electronic loops, hip-hop beats, shoegaze, soul, pop — each finds its way into their songs.
Delorean are a Spanish alternative dance band formed in 2000 in Zarautz, a Basque town. Vocalist and bassist Ekhi Lopetegi, guitarist Tomas Palomo, keyboardist Unai Lazcano, and drummer Igor Escudeo wanted to explore their mutual interests, from the local punk rock scene to electronic music. The quartet, who named the band after the iconic time machine featured in the Back to the Future series, released an EP and two studio albums between 2004 and 2006 to little mainstream success. In 2007, Palomo left the band and was replaced by Guillermo Astrain. Their songs are thoroughly modern while also reaching back to the heyday of Balearic beat, the electronic dance music that gave European clubs — and specifically the Mediterranean resort island of Ibiza — their soundtrack in the early ’90s.
Chew Lips are an East London based dance-pop trio, formed in spring of 2008. They consist of singer Tigs, and multi-instrumentalists Will Sanderson and James Watkins. Chew Lips have been described as "minimal dance-pop" and "coupling techno beats with smart-mouthed edgy vocals", influenced by LCD Soundsystem and Prince, and "Classic Pop". The Fly magazine, in reviewing the "Solo" single, said that Chew Lips made "electronic pop that will get wedged in your brain from first listen".
We Smoke Fags were a band from Stockwell, England who mixed punk, rock and electronic elements into their music. The band has been championed by DJ Steve Lamacq with their song ‘Eastenders’.We Smoke Fags are Joey, Lee, Harry and an old drum machine. Yes, they all smoke cigarettes, apart from the Drum Machine.
We Smoke Fags announced their split on the 11th June 2009 on their Myspace blog “We Smoke Fags…The End?” stating that they didn’t initially split but were too busy working on other projects and that they eventually decided to call it a day.The band are also well known for sampling, for instance in the song “Lust puppet” they sample the soundtrack from the game “SiN” quite heavily. They are influenced by Lizzy Mercier Descloux , Julie London, Billy Childish, Sonic Youth, and The Raincoats among others.
Airiel is an American shoegaze band from Chicago, Illinois, characterized by their melodic take on the shoegaze style. Airiel began as a solo project by Jeremy Wrenn in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1997. For a few years, Airiel was a duo: Wrenn on guitar, Sean Delaney on bass and a drum machine. Wrenn then relocated to Chicago and brought in Cory Osborne (bass) and John Rungger (drums), followed by Chris De Brizzio (guitar).Through Clairecords (Sacramento), Airiel released a series of four-song EPs titled Winks & Kisses. The EPs were also sold as a limited edition boxed set, capturing the evolution of Airiel in its current form. Airiel has also opened for some high-profile acts, including The Dears and The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
From the Chicagoist: "Is Airiel actually from Chicago? You wouldn't know it from their sound, which leans walls of My Bloody Valentine guitars against melodies plucked from the late-80's wave of Manchester pop. Top it off with trippy visuals projected during their performances and you've got a group unafraid to bring theatricality back to the scene."
Black Tie Dynasty was an American indie rock band from Fort Worth, Texas. The group signed with Idol Records in 2004, releasing their debut-EP the following year. Movements, their first full-length album followed in 2006 on the same label. It featured the single "Tender", which peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot Dance Singles Sales chart. The group toured with Guided By Voices, VHS or Beta, and Spoon following the release of the album. Their follow-up album Down Like Anyone was released independently on November 29th 2008. The band announced that it would be breaking up via MySpace on Monday, January 27th, 2009. They last performed on March 28th, 2009 at the Granada Theatre in Dallas, TX.
Their sound has been described as moody with an 80s new wave vibe, with influences from The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, and Psychedelic Furs.
Screen Vinyl Image debuted in 2007, formed by ex-members of Alcian Blue. They create a full sonic force of sound and have been compared live to Suicide, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine with a lot of John Carpenter sounds for good measure. Their influences range from Italo Disco/Hi-NRG and early Chicago House (think Ron Hardy, Frankie Knuckles) to biting 70's punk (The Stooges, The Misfits, Suicide) and obvious traces of their shoegaze past. (My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Curve)
Live, Screen Vinyl Image tour with their own massive PA system, psychedelic visuals & intense strobes, and all analog gear. They have toured and played with A Place To Bury Strangers, Ulrich Schnauss, Spectrum, A Sunny Day In Glasgow, Auburn Lull and The December Sound; they did a tour in 2009 in Japan with Ceremony and most recently played the 3rd installment of The Black Angel's highly successful Psych Fest in 2010.
800beloved is a Michigan-based group formed from the writing & production of singer/songwriter, Sean Lynch. The group's moniker, taken from a 1-800 telephone number, hints at the merger between two opposing themes - "800" representing the interest in popular culture's flimsiness while "beloved" alludes to the lyrical use of sacred, often dismal and ironically naive subject matter.
Having distributed music in many formats, including pill-shaped thumb drives and limited cassette singles before signing with the Moodgadget label in 2008, 800beloved delivered their long awaited debut album "Bouquet" in CD format on Valentine's Day 2009 at CPOP gallery in Detroit. Their second album, "Everything Purple" was released digitally in April 2010 and will be independently re-released on vinyl following Lynch's initiating an end to distribution & licensing agreements with Moodgadget.
The outfit currently rehearses and records in Milford, Michigan where Lynch also works as a cosmetologist & assistant for a funeral home.
Ceremony is a post-punk/shoegaze band from Fredericksburg, Virginia, featuring two members of Skywave. Ceremony utilizes tribalistic soundscapes, driving guitars, and rich atmospheres to bring a unique audio experience to each ear it touches.
This Fredericksburg , Virginia band markets themselves as Americanshoegazer music. Comparing themselves to the likes of Slowdive and Spiritualized , but the categorization kind of misses the boat. What Skywave come across as is a distortion band. Vocals tucked under a fuzz of guitar distortion. You know... the bands that were so heralded back in the mid 80's like The Jesus and Mary Chain, Galaxy 500, The Spacemen 3 and My Bloody Valentine generally for their master of guitar distortion combined with a pop sensibility.
Editors are a British indie rock band based in Birmingham, who formed in 2002. Previously known as Pilot, The Pride and Snowfield, the band consists of Tom Smith (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano), Chris Urbanowicz (lead guitar, synthesizer), Russell Leetch (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Ed Lay (drums, percussion). Their brand of dark indie rock is habitually compared to the sound of bands such as Echo & the Bunnymen, Joy Division, Interpol and U2. The band's third album, In This Light and on This Evening, was released in October 2009.
The Fratellis are a Scottish alternative rock band from Glasgow, Scotland. The band consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Jon Fratelli (born John Lawler), bass guitarist Barry Fratelli (born Barry Wallace), and drummer, backing vocalist, occasional guitarist and banjo player Mince Fratelli (born Gordon McRory). During live shows, they are assisted by pianist/rhythm guitarist, Will Foster. They took their name from the villains in the film “The Goonies” (although, by coincidence, Barry’s mother’s maiden name is in fact Fratelli).
Lyrebirds are four-piece band from Brighton, formed in January 2008, boasting a dark rock/indie sound influenced by Joy Division, Interpol, Echo and The Bunnymen etc. Quoted to be a band to watch out for by 'The Mag' and with a rapidly growing fan base. Their first single, "Closer," was produced by Stephen Street.
The Joy Formidable are a three-piece band from North Wales, currently located in London, England.Not so long ago, vocalist and guitarist Ritzy Brian teamed up with bassist Rhydian Dafydd to form The Joy Formidable, after leaving behind their previous project, Tricky Nixon, which featured a big transformation from the British indie rock style to a genre that suggested a more experimental, psychedelic and avant-garde sound: art rock. Just as soon as the duo was joined by drummer Matt Thomas back in 2007, the band’s dream-pop sound coalesced and very first single, “Austere”, was released the following year, along with different mini-versions of their now debut eight-song album, A Ballon Called Moaning.
What is most interesting about The Joy Formidable is the band’s usage of space to write, record and produce their very own music; the trio from Wales went for the ‘do-it-yourself’ approach as they recorded all the songs in small area of a bedroom studio. The homemade A Balloon Called Moaning is a great achievement, showing the band’s potential, by assembling an abstract musical story that seems to take place in a surreal world.
The XX are a three-piece band from London, England, formed in 2005. The four original band members met at Elliott School, notable for alumni including Hot Chip, Burial and Four Tet.The xx was originally a four-piece band, but keyboardist Baria Qureshi left the group in late 2009.
Strongly influenced by modern R&B-- the group made hay with an early cover of Womack & Womack's "Teardrops", while UK copies of xx come packed with their version of Aaliyah's "Hot Like Fire"-- the xx use a drum machine to complement their copiously tidy compositions. Unlike contemporary R&B fetishists Hot Chip or Discovery, who have clearly spent long hours internalizing Timbaland, the Neptunes, and other radio cognoscenti, the xx incorporate more abstract elements of the genre: a liberal use of bass tones and an unwavering focus on sex and interpersonal relationships.
I Am Your Autopilot is an English band formed in 2007. I Am Your Autopilot combine elements of a diverse range of artists from Air and Beck to Spiritualized, Simon and Garfunkel and the Animal Collective to the genius of Francois Couperin.The sound was described as 'bursting out all over with a surrealist pop reminiscent of Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)' by Dave Simpson. I Am Your Autopilot’s eclecticism gives them much in common with the folktronica scene that has emerged in New York in recent years and this has been seen in the support and collaborations that they have had with Stateside artists such as Fredo Viola. This has also led to I Am Your Autopilot being asked to write the music for the NY based director, Lucas Howe’s latest film ‘Spiderfly’ which they completed in early 2008.The band have been nominated as one of three for the ‘Best of Manchester 2008’ awards to be held at Urbis in August and the album is due for digital release on 28 October 2008.
Initially a three piece in 2007, The Fauns are now firmly established as a live six piece fronted by vocalist Alison Garner. . "...The Fauns have it all just right. Gorgeous songs, delicious sounds, glowing textures and a perfect shoegazing delight of a debut album..." (The Organ)
Last year the band released their highly acclaimed debut album "The Fauns" on Laser Ghost Recordings and have been promoting it with both electric and acoustic shows. Early versions of their tracks have appeared on "The Secret Garden" and "Just Like A Daydream" compilations.
With a moniker probably borrowed from the Sonic Youth album of the same name, Daydream Nation's indie rock guitar-driven sound is unsurprising. But they have plenty to brag about and catch your attention. Daydream Nation boasts Hunter Crowley, formerly of Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Warlocks, as half the core duo and it certainly does not hurt that Brent Rademaker, of Beachwood Sparks and The Tyde, and Dave Koenig, Brian Jonestown Massacre, make appearances. Dreamy vocals blended with thick instrumental fuzz result in an attempt at the ideal shoegazer sound on Daydream Nation's sophomore full length release, "Bella Vendetta."
Dark Night of the Soul is an album written by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse.It features a wide range of singers including James Mercer of The Shins, The Flaming Lips, Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, Frank Black of the Pixies, Iggy Pop, Nina Persson of The Cardigans, Suzanne Vega, Vic Chesnutt, David Lynch, and Scott Spillane of Neutral Milk Hotel and The Gerbils; these singers also had a hand in composing and producing the work.
Dark Night of the Soul is about as strange and gloomy as you might expect from David Lynch or Mark Linkous, who tragically took his own life earlier this year. (One of the guest vocalists on the album, Vic Chesnutt, also committed suicide last December.) But Dark Night has its uplifting moments, too, with catchy pop and rock hooks and rhythms. It's the perfect marriage of joy and sorrow, and one of the most memorable collections of songs from the past year.
Hartfield is a Tokyo based shoegaze band, formed in 2000. Their sound is similar to My Bloody Valentine – the same combination of feedback and distortion (singer and guitarist Takateru Kagawa uses about a dozen effect pedals) and catchy melodies. And like My Bloody Valentine, a guy and a girl share the singing duties.
Fleeting Joys is a psychedelic shoegaze trio formed in Sacramento, California in 2005. Reviews of Fleeting Joys say: "The California trio attack their songs a little harder than MBV ever did - kind of like a grunge friendly shoegaze." "Swirling guitars, layers of noise, drugged out soft male and female vocals sounding like part love, part death, part hope, part sadness."
Fleeting Joys are influenced by My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, and The Jesus and Mary Chain, among others.
Drop Nineteens were a Boston-based indie rock band active from 1991 to 1995. They were one of a few U.S.-based bands who styled themselves on England's distinctive shoegazing sound, taking their inspiration from bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Th' Faith Healers, and Bleach. The band was formed by former classmates Greg Ackell (vocals, guitar) and Chris Roof (drums), who recruited Paula Kelley (vocals, guitar), Steve Zimmerman (bass), and Motohiro Yasue (guitar).
Long Distance Calling are a German Post Rock band, formed in 2006 in Münster. Their melancholic tracks, usually lasting five or more minutes, are mostly instrumental, but some of them feature guest vocalists. Reactions to Long Distance Calling's debut, Satellite Bay (2007), were unanimously positive: "Off the beaten track, away from the hype fostered by bumptious music publications, away from all fashionable trends and the maundering zeitgeist, without a 3-minute corset but a with a lot of persistence," commented a reviewer in the magazine, Schallgrenzen, by all appearances covering all important benchmark data that mark Avoid The Light.
Tristeza (Spanish for Sadness) is a post-rock band from San Diego, California. Formed in 1997, the instrumental rock quintet is known as much for their consistent touring as their prolific output. Guitarists Jimmy LaValle and Christopher Sprague, keyboardist Stephen Swesey, bassist Luis Hermosillo, and drummer Jimmy Lehner came together after playing in bands like the Locust, Crimson Curse, Swing Kids, and Gogogo Airheart, among others, and recorded their debut 7", Foreshadow/Smoke Through Glass, soon after. In promotion of the single, Tristeza toured three times, making the 7" a best-seller and proving that they could pull off their intricate, involved instrumental sound on-stage as well as in the studio.
Ramona Falls is an indie rock project founded in 2009 by Brent Knopf and based in Portland, Oregon.
With a croon that possesses the same nasally excellence and sincerity of a Michael Stipe sound-alike, Ramona Falls is quite reminiscent of similarly influenced ‘80s alternative-pop acts, even recalling Celtic folk in the process.“I Say Fever” is not quite minimalistic, but its evolution from a bluesy guitar progression into an epic with roaring guitars and squealing brass is boisterously impressive.
Blonde Redhead is an American indie rock trio comprising Kazu Makino and twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace. The band performs in multiple languages including English, Japanese, Italian, and French. Named after a song with the same title by DNA, the band formed in New York in 1993. Blonde Redhead's chaotic, artistic rock caught the attention of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who produced and released the band's debut album, Blonde Redhead, on his Smells Like Records label.
Blonde Redhead's noisy, dissonant guitars, alternate tunings, and quiet, stilted lyrics have often been compared to early Sonic Youth.
Thrushes are an indie rock band from Baltimore, Maryland. Thrushes premise is strikingly simple. Rock music should be beautiful. Elevating grand canyon reverberation to high art and venerating Phil Spector as the patron saint of sonic emotion, Thrushes craft gorgeous noise pop and swirling dream rock lullabies.
Thrushes sound like and are influenced by The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Raveonettes, My Bloody Valentine, Pixies, Asobi Seksu, Serena Maneesh, and Sonic Youth.
Bear in Heaven is a Brooklyn-based rock band formed by Jon Philpot. The sound of the band incorporates influences from psychedelic music, electronic music, and krautrock. Jon Philpot has previously released music as part of the duo Presocratics, in collaboration with guitarist and composer Need Thomas Windham. Presocratics released two albums on the record label Table of the Elements in 2001; both were produced by Philpot.
Their most recent album, Beast Rest Forth Mouth, received the "Best New Music" award from Pitchfork Media, with the reviewer stating: "Beast Rest Forth Mouth is as familiar-feeling as it is difficult to pinpoint. Mostly made up of textural, spacious three- to four-minute pop anthems with towering choruses, BRFM is a welcome reminder that an album doesn't have to be bombastic to feel huge and important. Take out the earbuds and let it fill a space: This is music that's bigger than your iPod—music you'll want to feel all around you. Though not quite coming out of nowhere, BRFM seems like a surprise gift—a striking consolidation of the spiky psych-prog tendencies of their debut into a pop framework."
Here we have such an obscure band that its difficult to find anything on them. Don't they know about Myspace!? Oh well, youtube has our backs. Trustfall!
The Telescopes were formed in 1987 by Stephen Lawrie and could best be described as a noise/space rock band - the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3 being influences and contemporaries. Their debut release was a split flexi disc with Loop on the Cheree label in 1988, which was given away with the Sowing Seeds fanzine. They moved to the American What Goes On Records and released their debut LP, Taste and "The Perfect Needle" single which is perhaps their most famous song. A live album appeared on Fierce Records. Following What Goes On’s bankruptcy they signed to Creation Records.
In contrast to Taste's noise-rock, a more laid back, baggy influenced sound followed, described by journalist Alexis Petridis as having "an almost fragile sense of elegance and melody", and the band scraped the lower reaches of the UK singles chart with the single "Flying", and released The Telescopes, their second album, in 1992. Lawrie explained the change in direction: "Your idea of perfection changes as you move on. I think we still hold the same approach to our music now, we still try just as many mad ideas, it's just a lot more subtle and works to a different end".
Here is Everso released December 1990 on the Creation label.
Do Make Say Think is a Canadian instrumental post-rock band from Toronto, Ontario. Their music combines jazz style drums, distorted guitars and wind instruments as well as a prominent use of the bass guitar. The band formed in 1995 as a recording project for a Canadian youth dramatic production. They rehearsed for the production in an empty elementary school room. The four simple verbs 'Do', 'Make', 'Say' and 'Think' were painted on walls of the room, and the band adopted them as their name. In 1996, the band progressed as they practiced in the rehearsal room in the basement of the University of Toronto radio station CIUT.
The band has recorded a fifth full-length album, entitled You, You're a History in Rust, which was released on Constellation Records on February 12, 2007 in Europe and February 26 in the rest of the world. The band toured North America and Europe to promote the release of the album, and released a tour EP, The Whole Story of Glory, to promote the Japanese leg of their tour.
From their fourth album, Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn, is Horns of a Rabbit.
Upcdowncleftcrightcabc+start are an instrumental post-rock band from Kent who have been going since early 2000. They signed to Indie label Tap N Tin records in late 2004 and on February 14th 2005, released their first double AA 7” single “Stand shadowless like silence/Sadako’s fury”. This was proceeded by a live Xfm session with John Kennedy on May 5th and their second single “Shallows” (available on 10” vinyl only) on August 1st 2005. Their debut album “And the battle is won” was released on October 24th 2005 to rave reviews by the music press (see below).
In 2006 the band recorded their first Radio One live session at Maida Vale studios which was broadcast on the Huw Stephens show on March 7th. The band spent most of 06/07 recording/writing/mixing their 2nd album “Embers” and also had their first U.K tour promoting “And the battle is won". Since completing the album, 5 have become 4 as Martin has decided to work on other things.
If These Trees Could Talk are a post-rock instrumental group from Akron, Ohio. The band, commonly abbreviated as "ITTCT", plays a heavy shade of instrumental post-rock. ITTCT self-released their debut self-titled album in 2006. The debut effort was later picked up by The Mylene Sheath. The song Malabar Front, from their self-titled album, was featured in a preview for the PlayStation 3 game inFamous. ITTCT has two albums: their self-titled debut album, originally self-released in 2006, and "Above the Earth, Below the Sky" which was released in 2009.
Here is Track nine from Above the Earth, Below the sky titled Rebuilding the Temple of Artemis.
God Is an Astronaut are an instrumental/post-rock three piece band from the Glen of the Downs, Co. Wicklow, Ireland. They formed in 2002. Their name was inspired by a famous quote from the movie Nightbreed. They released their debut album The End of the Beginning (2002) on their own Revive Records label. Their two music videos for "The End of the Beginning" and "From Dust to the Beyond" received airplay on MTV UK and on other MTV European networks.
All Is Violent, All Is Bright (2005) is the band's second album. The single "Fragile" from the album received plays on MTV2 UK's 120 minute show and MTV's show The Comedown. God Is an Astronaut released an EP called A Moment of Stillness in 2006. Their third album, Far from Refuge, was released in April 2007 on Revive Records and as a download via their website. Their fourth, self-titled album God Is an Astronaut was released November 7, 2008 on Revive Records. In late 2008, the band began working on a new EP. However, they later announced that they would be releasing a new album instead, entitled Age of the Fifth Sun
This Will Destroy You are an American instrumental post-rock band from San Marcos, Texas. The band is made up of guitarists Chris King and Jeremy Galindo, bass player Donovan Jones and drummer Alex Bhore with Jones also playing the keyboard for live performances. They are currently signed to Magic Bullet Records.
The band formed in 2005 and has released one EP, Young Mountain, which was originally supposed to be the band's demo. The EP has received favorable reviews. They began recording their self-titled debut in February 2007, which was released on January 29, 2008.
The band recently released a new split EP, titled Field Studies, in January 2009 with the band Lymbyc Systym, although it was made available through mail order as of October 7, 2008. Field Studies includes two songs by This Will Destroy You: "Brutalism and the Worship of the Machine" and "Freedom Blade."
The Smiths were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1982. Based on the songwriting partnership of Morrissey (vocals) and Johnny Marr (guitar), the band also included Andy Rourke (bass) and Mike Joyce (drums). Critics have called them the most important alternative rock band to emerge from the British independent music scene of the 1980s. The group were signed to the independent record label Rough Trade Records, for whom they released four studio albums and several compilations, as well as numerous non-LP singles. Although they had limited commercial success outside the UK while they were still together, and never released a single that charted higher than number 10 in their home country, The Smiths won a growing following, and remain cult and commercial favourites. The band broke up in 1987 amid disagreements between Morrissey and Marr and have turned down several offers to reform since then.
During 1985 the band completed lengthy tours of the UK and the US while recording the next studio record, The Queen Is Dead. The album was released in June 1986, shortly after the single "Bigmouth Strikes Again". The single again featured Marr's strident acoustic guitar rhythms and lead melody guitar lines with wide leaps.
Pelican is an instrumental rock quartet from Chicago, Illinois, who have relocated to Los Angeles, California. The band is known for its dense combinations of different melodies and extended track lengths. Its distinctive sound draws from stoner rock, doom metal, post-rock, and other influences. Larry Herweg, Trevor de Brauw, and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec also make up three-quarters of the band Tusk.
Previously signed to Hydra Head Records (which is owned and operated by Aaron Turner of Isis), Pelican is now part of the Southern Lord Records roster. The label has also announced that Pelican will embark on a tour with new labelmates Wolves in the Throne Room and that their first release for their new label is an EP titled Ephemeral, which was released June 6, 2009. Trevor de Brauw stated that the new material would be darker, heavier and more "riff oriented" than on previous recordings, and Southern Lord stated that an undisclosed guest guitarist who "is very influential to the band" would be making an appearance on the new recording as well. What We All Come to Need was released on October 27, 2009. Greg Anderson and Aaron Turner both appeared on the album.
Mogwai are a post-rock band from Glasgow, Scotland, formed by Stuart Braithwaite and Dominic Aitchison in 1995. They typically compose lengthy guitar-based instrumental pieces that feature dynamic contrast, melodic bass guitar lines, and heavy use of distortion and effects. The band is named after the creatures from the film Gremlins, although guitarist Stuart Braithwaite comments that "it has no significant meaning and we always intended on getting a better one, but like a lot of other things we never got round to it." 'Mogwai' means "evil spirit" or "devil" in Cantonese.
Their style has been influenced by bands including MC5, My Bloody Valentine, Fugazi, and post-rock pioneers Slint. During 2004, the band supported tours by two major influences, Pixies and The Cure. Mogwai's style has easily identifiable connections to genres like shoegazing, math rock, art rock and occasionally instrumental metal. Debut album Mogwai Young Team was described as "stunningly dynamic...[shifting] seamlessly from tranquil, bleakly beautiful soundscapes to brain scrambling white noise and sledgehammer riffing". Douglas Wolk, writing for SPIN in 1999 said of the band "Their compositions have gotten increasingly drawn-out and austere over time, sometimes barely more than a single arpeggiated chord or two evolving for ten minutes or more, whisperingly brutal in a way that recalls Slint more than any other band".
At a running time of 5:30, this song appears on track 6 of Mr. Beast.
Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson(born 18 March 1986), better known by her stage name Lykke Li is a Swedish indie singer. Her music often blends elements of pop, electronic, and alternative rock; various instruments can also be found in her songs, including violins, tambourines, trumpets, saxophones, and cellos. She released her debut album, Youth Novels, in 2008.
Zachrisson released her first album, Youth Novels on LL Recordings in the Nordic region on 4 February 2008 and it received a wider European release in June, 2008. The album was produced by Björn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John and Lasse Mårtén. Lykke has become increasingly popular with indie music fans and took her particular flavor of music more mainstream with an appearance on Last Call with Carson Daly on February 18, 2009. She has received a great deal of notoriety for her cover of "Knocked Up", originally recorded by Kings of Leon who had approached Lykke to cover a song of her choice, and "Gifted" in which she performs with Kanye West. Going further mainstream, Lykke performed at the 2009 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 19, as well as the 2009 Lollapalooza Music Festival on August 8 as part of the promotional tour for the album Youth Novels.
My Bloody Valentine are an alternative rock band formed in Dublin, Ireland in 1983. The band's founding members are guitarist/singer Kevin Shields and drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig. The lineup during the band's late 80s/early 90s heyday included singer-guitarist Bilinda Butcher and bassist Debbie Googe after the band settled in London.
As My Bloody Valentine's music progressed, their use of distortion, pitch bending, and digital reverb resulted in a sound that came to be known as shoegazing. The group's 1991 critically-acclaimed album Loveless took two years to make mostly due to funding problems. Following Loveless, My Bloody Valentine became inactive, with Shields recording and shelving several albums' worth of follow-up material. In 2007, Shields announced that the band had reunited and were recording new material.
This vintage vine is track number eleven from the Loveless album.
The National are a Brooklyn-based indie rock band formed in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1999. The band's lyrics are written and sung by Matt Berninger in a distinctive baritone. The rest of the band is composed of two pairs of brothers: Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Scott and Bryan Devendorf. Aaron plays guitar, bass and piano, Bryce plays guitar, Scott plays bass and guitar, and Bryan is the drummer. Padma Newsome, from sister band Clogs, often contributes strings, keyboards, and other arrangements and instrumental flourishes. The band's influences range from Bruce Springsteen to Joy Division.
In 1991, Matt Berninger and Scott Devendorf met while attending the University of Cincinnati. There they met Mike Brewer, Casey Reas, and Jeff Salem to make the lo-fi garage band Nancy, which was named after Matt's mother. The band was together for five years, but only released one album, titled 3429 Ruther, on Wife Records. The group slowly dissolved when Matt, Scott, Jeff, and Casey moved to Brooklyn.
Bryan, Bryce, and Aaron were childhood friends who played in several bands together over the years. When their last effort Project Nim broke up in 1998, they joined Matt and Scott in Brooklyn via the Devendorf relationship.
When the band was formed in 1999, it was called The National (although the domain name of the band's website is americanmary.com because, according to Matt Berninger in an interview with Better Propaganda, "[i]t's a song off our first record. We never thought of changing the (website) name, although we should have.") Several of the members continued to work day jobs throughout the early years, including being involved in New York's dot-com boom in the late 1990s.
On December 17, 2008, the band released a letter to members of their mailing list letting it be known that they were in the beginning stages of recording a new album that could be expected in late 2009 or early 2010. During a Pitchfork interview in late March 2009, Aaron Dessner said the album was still unnamed, though lightheartedly suggested it would start with a "C" in the tradition of their previous two albums.
On February 17, 2009, a compilation album titled Dark Was the Night was produced by Aaron and Bryce Dessner and released by 4AD (the band's new label after Beggars Banquet Records merged into 4AD). The two-disc, 31-track compilation was released for the benefit of the Red Hot Organization, and featured a new song by The National and Nico Muhly titled So Far Around the Bend. In the same year, The National collaborated with St. Vincent to contribute a cover of Crooked Fingers' Sleep All Summer to the Merge Records compilation Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers!. On May 6, 2009, The National performed So Far Around the Bend on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
The National contributed a track to Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy in September 2009, an album in support of the former Polaris frontman, who lost his wife. They covered the Polaris track Ashamed of the Story I Told, from their album Music from The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
On January 25, 2010, the band released a letter to members of their mailing list stating that their new album, later announced as High Violet, would be released on May 11, 2010 in the US, and a tour supporting the new album would take place in Spring/Summer 2010.On March 10, 2010, the band performed the lead track off High Violet, "Terrible Love", on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. On March 25, the band released Bloodbuzz Ohio, the first single from High Violet, for free download at the official High Violet website.
The song you get to hear today is of fthe album Boxer...it's called Mistaken for Strangers.
Stardeath and White Dwarfs is an experimental rock band from Norman, Oklahoma, formed in late 2004. The band has released one album, one single Toast & Marmalade For Tea (on Half Machine Records) and an EP, as well as contributing to The Flaming Lips' 2009 Pink Floyd remake The Dark Side of the Moon.
The band consists of Dennis Coyne, Casey Joseph, Matt Duckworth and James Young. Lead singer Coyne is the nephew of Flaming Lips lead singer Wayne Coyne. Stardeath and White Dwarfs have toured with Deerhoof, British Sea Power, Band of Horses, Starlight Mints, Explosions in the Sky, and The Flaming Lips. They have opened for The Flaming Lips at the Tulsa, Oklahoma D-Fest Festival 2007, on their New Year's Eve shows in 2007 and 2008, and during a brief tour in 2009. They also played the 2008 Wakarusa Festival.
They released the "Stardeath and White Dwarfs" EP in 2005. They released their first full-length album, entitled The Birth, on vinyl (with digital download) on May 19, 2009 and on CD on June 9, 2009, on Warner Brothers. Also in 2009, the band contributed to The Flaming Lips' Pink Floyd remake The Dark Side of the Moon, along with Henry Rollins and Peaches. The song yo uget to hear today is off that album...it's called BrainDamage and it features Henry Rollins. Love it!
The Horrors are an English indie rock band who formed in mid-2005. They released their debut album Strange House, which reached number 37 on the UK Albums Chart in 2007. Their second album Primary Colours was released in 2009 and reached number 25 in the UK. The band have also guest starred in TV comedy The Mighty Boosh, under the pseudonym "The Black Tubes."
The Horrors have their origin in the early 2000s where they became interested in obscure vinyl and DJing. During trips to London and on the Southend circuit, Rhys "Spider" Webb met Faris Badwan (Faris Rotter) and Tom Cowan (Tomethy Furse) through their shared interests in '60s garage rock, and in 2005 the three formed a band with Joshua Hayward (Joshua Von Grimm, Joshua Third) and Joseph Spurgeon (Coffin Joe). The band formed around Junkclub, an underground club founded by Oliver Abbott and Rhys. Their first rehearsal consisted of two covers: The Sonics' "The Witch" and Screaming Lord Sutch's "Jack the Ripper" (heavily influenced by previous cover versions by The Fuzztones, One-Way Streets and The Gruesomes) - the latter would later find itself as track one on the band's debut album.The Horrors made their first ever live performance at The Spread Eagle on Kingsland Road in London on 16 August 2005 at a night they put on themselves under the guise of The Brothers Grimm. They played with one other band, London's new wave punk pop band LR Rockets.
The Horrors first gained noticeable exposure thanks to their debut single Sheena Is a Parasite. Their second release, Death at the Chapel, a high-profile show at London's 100 Club in July 2006, and an appearance on the cover of the NME in August, greatly increased their profile. As a result of this exposure, the band played the NME Awards Indie Rock Tour in early 2007 along with Mumm-Ra, The View and The Automatic which helped them to gain further publicity.
At the end of 2007, The Horrors announced the forthcoming recording of a new album. The album was produced by the band, Craig Silvey, Geoff Barrow of Portishead, and music video director Chris Cunningham. Recording took place in Bath during the summer of 2008. The band were forced to pull out of their planned appearance at the Underage Festival due to recording schedule conflicts. The band signed to XL Recordings after they left Loog Records in 2007. The only release from the band between the "She Is the New Thing" single in June 2007 and the new material in 2009 was a cover of Suicide's Shadazz, released by Blast First Petite as part of their tribute to Alan Vega in October 2008. A few weeks before the new album's release, a number of songs from the album were leaked. The album's first single, Sea Within a Sea, was released as a digital download-only single on 17 March 2009. A music video for the song, directed by Douglas Hart (former bassist for The Jesus and Mary Chain), was also posted on the band's website on the same day. The second album Primary Colours was officially released 4 May 2009 to critical acclaim and reached #25 on the UK Albums Chart. The single "Who Can Say" was released on 7" vinyl one week later. Primary Colours was nominated for the 2009 Mercury Prize. NME later gave the album first place in the 50 Best Albums of 2009.
After finishing touring for Primary Colours, The Horrors have said that they would like to build their own studio, so they can record at obscure hours. In a recent update on their official forums, singer, Faris Badwan annouced the band have already started working on their third album and have been in the studio for a month now.
So...I hope you love this song as much as I do...it's the new one titled Scarlet Fields.
Yo La Tengo is an American alternative rock band formed in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1984. Since 1992, the lineup has consisted of Ira Kaplan (guitars, vocals), Georgia Hubley (drums, vocals), and James McNew (bass, vocals).
Despite achieving limited mainstream success, Yo La Tengo has been called "the quintessential critics' band" and maintains a strong cult following.The band is renowned for its encyclopedic repertoire of cover songs both in live performance and on record.
Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, a husband/wife duo, formed the band in 1984. They chose the name "Yo La Tengo" (Spanish for "I have got it!") in an effort to avoid any connotations in English. The name came from a baseball anecdote. During the 1962 season, New York Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and Venezuelan shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would scream, "I got it! I got it!" only to run into Chacón, who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, "¡Yo la tengo! ¡Yo la tengo!" instead. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish and had missed a team meeting that proposed using the words "¡Yo la tengo!" as a way to avoid outfield collisions.After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn, "What the heck is a Yellow Tango?".
They placed an advertisement to recruit other musicians who shared their love for bands such as The Soft Boys, Mission of Burma, and Arthur Lee's Love.The group's debut recording was a 7" single entitled The River of Water backed with a cover of Arthur Lee's A House Is Not a Motel released in late 1985 with Dave Schramm on lead guitar and Dave Rick on bass. After recording Private Doberman for inclusion on a Coyote Records compilation entitled Luxury Condos Coming to Your Neighborhood, Rick left the band and was replaced by Mike Lewis, the founding bass player of Boston garage-punk bands DMZ and Lyres, who was also a member of Brooklyn garage rock band The A-Bones throughout his tenure.
Popular Songs, the band's 12th album, was released on September 8, 2009. The album was recorded in the band's rehearsal space in New Jersey and features two songs with elaborate string sections (composed by jazz composer Richard Evans). It entered the Billboard chart at #58, the highest entry of the band's career thus far. I hope you enjoy this classic from Yo La Tengo...it's called Sugarcube.
The Jesus and Mary Chain are a Scottish alternative rock band formed in East Kilbride, Glasgow in 1983. The band revolves around the songwriting partnership of brothers Jim and William Reid. They released a string of albums, singles and EPs between their 1983 formation and their 1999 breakup, and gained notoriety in their early days for short sets and violence that became common at their live shows. In 2007 they reunited.
Brothers Jim and William Reid had been inspired to form a band as far back as 1977, having heard groups such as the Sex Pistols, but it would be the early 1980s before they actually formed their own. William stated "It was perfect timing because there weren't any guitar bands. Everybody was making this electronic pop music." Before forming the band, the brothers had spent five years on the dole, and in those five years they wrote and recorded songs at home and worked out the sound and image of the band.Originally called The Poppy Seeds, and then Death of Joey, they initially told journalists that they had taken their eventual name from a line in a Bing Crosby film, although six months later they admitted that this wasn't true. Other accounts suggest that the name derived from an offer on a breakfast cereal packet, where customers could send off for a gold Jesus & Mary chain.
Playing in front of small audiences, during early shows the Mary Chain performed very short gigs, typically fueled by amphetamines and lasting around 20 minutes, and played with their backs to the audience, refusing to speak to them. In late December 1984, the band performed as part of the ICA Rock Week. During their performance, bottles were thrown on stage, with press reports exaggerating events and claiming that there had been a riot, and national newspaper The Sun running a story on the band concentrating on violence and drugs, the band attracting the tag "The new Sex Pistols". This led several local councils to ban the band from performing in their area.
In 2006 five albums were reissued through Rhino Records: Psychocandy, Darklands, Automatic, Honey's Dead and Stoned & Dethroned on 11 July 2006. Each album was released with a DVD containing three promo videos from that particular album.
On 22 January 2007, the band was confirmed as one of the acts for Coachella 2007. They were joined on stage by actress Scarlett Johansson for "Just Like Honey" as part of their 27 April 2007 main-stage performance.At the warm up gig on 26 April 2007, in Pomona, California, they were instead joined by Annie Hardy of Giant Drag. The band's first UK performance since reforming was at the Meltdown festival in June 2007.
In an interview to Uncut magazine, Jim Reid announced that a new album by the band is in the works.In March 2008, the band released a studio recording of All Things Must Pass on the soundtrack album to the NBC television drama Heroes. It is the first new song to be released by the Jesus and Mary Chain since 1998.
In September 2008, Rhino Records released a 4 CD box set entitled The Power of Negative Thinking: B-Sides & Rarities. The box set consists of material from the Barbed Wire Kisses, The Sound of Speed and The Jesus And Mary Chain Hate Rock 'n' Roll compilations, alongside unreleased tracks and rarities from throughout their career; including early performances, unheard demos, re-mixes, alternate versions of some songs and bootleg recordings.
Tobacco (born Tom Fec) is an American electronic musician. He is the frontman of the band Black Moth Super Rainbow, in addition to working as a solo artist; in both settings he works most conspicuously with pre-digital electronic instruments such as analog synthesizers and tape machines. Little is known about Tobacco, as he, along with the rest of Black Moth, is very private and rarely does interviews. It is known that Tobacco grew up in Pennsylvania, and graduated from Hampton High School in 1998 along with fellow bandmate Seth Ciotti. In a 2009 interview with Skyscraper Magazine, Tobacco said that his name derived from "a character that freaked me out as a kid, the Tobacco Man", referring to the character from the Troma film Redneck Zombies.
Tobacco released a solo album entitled Fucked Up Friends on Anticon Records on October 14, 2008. The album was recorded using entirely analog equipment.Rolling Stone said of the album, "one of the year's best stoner-rock records - only it's powered by synths, hip-hop beats and vocoders instead of guitars."Exclaim! called it "worthy of obsessive listening." The album featured a guest appearance from Aesop Rock. A DVD of the album had been released more than a year prior, on September 3, 2007, by the 70s Gymnastics Recording Company.
In an interview with Kotori Magazine in September 2008, Tobacco explained the difference between BMSR and Tobacco: "Mostly everything I've done with BMSR is made to be pop. And alot [sic] of people say BMSR is bordering on hip-hop beats. So with Tobacco, I wanted to embrace my beats and get darker and sleeker with it all. I want to make you feel paranoid in a good way. There’s something seriously f'd about workout tapes from the mid 80s, and just about everything obscure on beta tape. They make me feel awful, but really good and curious at the same time. With this Tobacco stuff, I’m trying to translate that feeling."
Tobacco's live shows mainly consist of him and BMSR bandmate The Seven Fields of Aphelion playing along with video projections from F'd Up Friends and F'd Up Friends 2.
In late February, an e-mail sent out to the Black Moth Super Rainbow/Tobacco e-mail list announced a new cd by Tobacco entitled Maniac Meat that would feature Beck Hansen on two tracks titled Fresh Hex and Grape Aerosmith. Tobacco revealed that in making the album, the two exchanged parts for songs via e-mail, and that they had never actually met in person. Maniac Meat is to come out on May 25 on Anticon Records.
Bassnectar is a freeform electronic music and social experimentation project based in San Francisco, California. Primarily a music project of Lorin Ashton, Bassnectar is also accompanied by various collaborators. Ashton describes Bassnectar's sound as "omni-tempo maximalism." The sound gravitates toward heavy tempos, playing with double time and half time, and using electronic methods to embellish and reinforce other styles of music, including ragtime, punk rock, blues, batucada, polka, salsa, film scores, gangsta rap, beatboxing, balkan gypsy music, ska, death metal, and dub. Bassnectar also has a podcast on iTunes called Bassnectar Transmission and regularly releases bootlegs on the official website.
What started back in the mid-nineties as an experiment fusing youth culture and social action has turned into a multi-faceted, multi-faced creature called Bassnectar. It is the brainchild of Lorin Ashton.
Bassnectar spans the spectrum of sonic style, covering every genre imaginable. He calls the end product “omnitempo maximalism,” which basically means no rules, no limitations, and no hesitation in fusing the familiar with the strange or the classic with the cutting edge. According to Ashton, “We are so blessed, and so deeply fortunate to be alive and awake right now…it’s a basic truth, but it’s very powerful. I think privilege confers responsibility, and Bassnectar is a reflection of that opportunity to give back; the motion of my cells bouncing back at the world.”
Bassnectar regularly tours across the United States and Canada, and performs at festivals such as Austin City Limits Music Festival, Lollapalooza, Rothbury, Coachella, Burning Man, Wakarusa, Ultra Music Festival, Bonnaroo, All Good Music Festival, Diversafest, and Shambhala.
Bassnectar's live show typically conists of sound and visuals. The music is performed by Lorin Ashton with the sound being managed by a separate part of the project. Sound systems are typically donated. Visuals consist of lighting elements along with three very large LCD screens showing the work of visual artist Videolicious which includes high definition video and photography with a close relation to the tempo and substance of Ashton's music. The song you get to hear today is the Bassnectar Dubstep remix of The Pixies...Where is my Mind. Incredible.
PS: Don't forget to check out Bassnectar live in Albany at Camo Bisco 9...July 15-17th!
M83 is an electronic/dream pop act by French musician Anthony Gonzalez. It is named after a spiral galaxy, Messier 83. The band was founded in 2001 by Gonzalez and former member Nicolas Fromageau in Antibes.The musical style of M83 owes something to the shoegazing genre in its extensive use of reverb effects and lyrics spoken softly over loud instrumentals, though M83's songs employ considerably less guitar than most shoegazing bands. Gonzalez and Fromageau parted ways shortly after touring for their sophomore album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts,and now Gonzalez records mainly on his own, often with the help of his brother Yann Gonzalez, vocalist/keyboardist Morgan Kibby, guitarist/bassist Pierre-Marie Maulini, and drummer Loïc Maurin.
In spring 2001, M83 released their self-titled debut album. The album's release didn't span much further than Europe until September 2005, when Mute Records reissued the album for a worldwide release. M83's second album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts followed in spring 2003 (and summer 2004 in North America) to widespread critical acclaim.After worldwide touring for Dead Cities resumed, Nicolas Fromageau left the band. Gonzalez returned to the studio to record the third studio album Before the Dawn Heals Us, which was released in January 2005. The same year, M83 provided a remix of "The Pioneers" by Bloc Party, which was also included on Bloc Party's remix album Silent Alarm Remixed. M83 has also remixed Placebo's "Protège-Moi," Goldfrapp's "Black Cherry," Depeche Mode's "Suffer Well," and Bumblebeez 81's "Vila Attack." Similarly, M83's songs have been remixed by Gooom labelmates Montag and Cyann & Ben.
In 2006, after the Before the Dawn Heals Us US tour, Anthony Gonzalez continued to explore a musical direction already heard on earlier M83 tracks and began writing and recording a collection of ambient works.The album was recorded primarily at his home studio with the assistance of Antoine Gaillet. The resulting project is called Digital Shades Vol. 1 and was released in September 2007 with a sleeve illustrated by Laurent Fetis (known for his work with DJ Hell, Beck, and Tahiti 80). It is intended to be part of an ongoing series of ambient works.
Saturdays = Youth, M83's fifth studio album, was released in April 2008. It was recorded with Ken Thomas (known for his work with Sigur Rós, The Sugarcubes, Boys in a Band, Cocteau Twins and Suede), Ewan Pearson (who has also produced for Tracey Thorn, The Rapture and Ladytron) and Morgan Kibby (of The Romanovs). The album features a more focused approach to song structure and form, and Gonzalez stated that the main influence of the album came from music of the 1980s: "I think that 80s music is such a brilliant period for music history. It was the occasion for me to do a tribute to this 80s music, but also a tribute to my teenage years.
Because the main theme of the album is being a teenager, and being a teenager means a lot to me."Four singles were released from the album: Couleurs in February 2008, Graveyard Girl in April, Kim & Jessie in July, and We Own the Sky in December. M83 also appeared on a limited edition split 7" single with Maps in 2008; M83 remixed Maps' "To the Sky," while Maps provided a remix of M83's We Own the Sky. The song Don't Save us From the Flames comes off their album Before the Dawn Heals Us. Hope you like it!
A Place to Bury Strangers are a New York–based noise rock band composed of Oliver Ackermann (guitar/vocals), Jono MOFO (bass) and Jay Space (drums). The band plays a heavy, atmospheric wall of sound-influenced blend of psychedelic rock, shoegaze and space rock. The band is commonly known by the initials APTBS.
A Place to Bury Strangers formed in 2003 when Oliver Ackermann offered to be the drummer for Tim Gregorio's band. He switched to guitar and vocals after the first practice. They played their first show at Luxx in Brooklyn in 2003. Jay Space and Jono Mofo, both from the New York City-based band MOFO, joined the band when Tim Gregorio left. It was then that they decided to focus on increasing the loudness of their music, rather than the quality. In 2006, APTBS handmade three different untitled EPs with different color schemes; these later become known as the Red, Blue, and Green EPs.
In 2006, the band gained some acclaim following their Webster Hall performance with Brian Jonestown Massacre. They returned to Webster Hall in 2007 to play with one of their major influences, The Jesus And Mary Chain.
Throughout these formative years, the band's live shows got increasingly chaotic which garnered them the title of New York City's "loudest band" from various indie reviewers and bloggers, as well as "the most ear-shatteringly loud garage/shoegaze band you'll ever hear" by The Washington Post. The New York Times applauded their revival of "the ominous, feedback-drenched drones of the 1980s."
In 2007, Jon Whitney from Killer Pimp Records wrote on a napkin the contract for their first release, a self-titled album. In August 2007, the band gained national attention after a favorable Pitchfork Media review of this album.
The band's first UK release came in May 2008 where they played a handful of UK shows and garnered strong praise from the British media with early support from NME and Kerrang!. In November 2008, the band returned to Europe and the UK on tour supporting MGMT. Their album, out the same month, once again made a stir amongst UK media.In early 2009, APTBS signed to Mute Records. The band also announced another European tour and appearances at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Seaport Music Festival, and Siren Music Festival.
Their second album, Exploding Head, was released in October 2009...enjoy this track off the album...it's called In Your Heart.
Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band that lean towards psychedelic rock and electronic experimentation. Since their formation in Cardiff, Wales in 1993, the band has consisted of Gruff Rhys (lead vocals, guitar), Huw Bunford (lead guitar, vocals), Guto Pryce (bass guitar), Cian Ciaran (keyboards, synthesizers, various electronics, occasional guitar, vocals) and Dafydd Ieuan (drums, vocals). The band are part of the Cardiff music scene, releasing nearly ten albums over their career.
The band formed in Cardiff after being in various other Welsh bands and techno outfits in the area. Rhys, Ieuan and Pryce had been together since the early 1990s and had toured the north coast of France as a techno group. After Bunford and Ciaran (the latter Ieuan's younger brother) joined, they then got to work on writing some songs, and in 1995 ended up signing to Ankst, the Welsh indie label. The band are considered to be part of the renaissance of Welsh music (and art, and literature) in the 1990s: other Welsh bands of the time include the Manic Street Preachers, Catatonia, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Gouge. The name of the band came from T-shirts being printed by Rhys' sister. She was making Super Furry Animals T-shirts for the fashion and music collective Acid Casuals (variants of whose name have appeared throughout SFA's career - for example, in their song "The Placid Casual", their record label Placid Casual). The band has also made reference to Blur, Elvis Costello, Collective Soul and Wynton Marsalis as major influences in their work
On March 16, 2009, The Super Furry Animals released their ninth studio album, Dark Days/Light Years, digitally via their website. The album's progress was recorded in a series of short films that were shown on the band's website in the build-up to the release.
Later in March, they performed the record in its entirety through an exclusive stream on their website. A physical release on Rough Trade Records followed on 21 April, resulting in a number 23 UK Chart placement. Dark Days/Light Years notably featured a guest appearance from Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand on "Inaugral Trams:" other highlights include the much-lauded track title, "The Very Best of Neil Diamond." Dark Days/Light Years received strong critical feedback, with The Guardian writing that "it has more spark and invention than most teen bands manage on their debuts."
Team Sleep is an American experimental alternative rock group led by singer/guitarist Chino Moreno, better known for fronting the Sacramento-based band Deftones.
Team Sleep's music touches on many genres, including dream pop, trip hop, post-hardcore, shoegaze, post-rock, and electronica. More so than the Deftones, many of Team Sleep's themes and lyrics are fantastical and imaginative in nature; drawing from such literary sources as Edgar Allan Poe and historical events like the Jonestown Massacre.
As of 2007, Team Sleep is composed of Moreno, guitarist Todd Wilkinson, turntablist DJ Crook, drummer Zach Hill and bass guitarist/keyboardist Rick Verrett.
The origins of Team Sleep started when Moreno and his friend Todd Wilkinson bought a cassette tape Portastudio-type four-track recorder in 1994. They continued this collaboration through the first two Deftones albums, though on a rather casual basis. Wilkinson said,
"We were never going to make a record, or start a band ... I was just sitting at home, playing guitar, and I started recording some stuff. It was never about trying to play shows, record in a studio, or anything of that sort. It was just bumming around. I had never been in a band, and I never wanted to be—we were just good friends."
A full album's worth of material was finished between 2002–2003, but Moreno was reportedly angered after Team Sleep songs were circulated on the internet, mostly by members of the Deftones' own official message board. This, coupled with the release and supporting tour for Deftones' fourth album, kept Team Sleep's recordings from being officially released. In 2002 there was also a Team Sleep world premiere on POWER 106 FM in Los Angeles, when Mercedes was played once.
On July 13, 2007 the band sent out a Myspace bulletin saying that they are currently working on a new album. They said that "Formant" would, in fact, be on the new album; this is referring to the (instrumental) song am formant that they have previously put on their Myspace page. No information on the current band line-up was given other than the fact that Zach Hill would be playing drums. Three other songs were then posted on the band's Myspace, each instrumental, called "Headhunter", "Seablock", and "Tennisface".
In an interview (October '07) Chino stated that Team Sleep will not be releasing a full-length album until 2010. In the meantime, the band will be releasing a series of free EPs that will likely contain the songs that have appeared on their Myspace page over the last year.
The band has debuted new songs on their winter tour, such as New Guitar, Fen Fen, March and Crook Vs Zach. The song you get to hear is Elizabeth off of their debut album...hope you love it!
Shellac (sometimes referred to as Shellac of North America) is an American group composed of Steve Albini (guitar and vocals), Bob Weston (bass guitar and vocals) and Todd Trainer (drums and vocals). Although they have been classified as noise rock and math rock, they describe themselves as a "minimalist rock trio."
Shellac formed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1992 as an informal collaboration between guitarist Steve Albini and drummer Todd Trainer. Former Naked Raygun bassist Camilo Gonzalez sat in on early rehearsals and played on one song on Shellac's first single before permanent bassist Bob Weston, formerly of Boston's Volcano Suns, joined.
Shellac has a distinctive, minimalist sound based on unusual and urgent time signatures, repetitive heavy rhythms, an angular guitar sound, and Albini's surreal, bitingly sarcastic lyrics. Songs typically do not have traditional verse/chorus/verse structure and the arrangements are sparse, to the point where some describe them as "amelodic". Shellac's signature sound is often associated with their enthusiasm for vintage Travis Bean guitars, a rare brand of aluminium-based instruments, and the Interfax "Harmonic Percolator" distortion pedal. Albini is also known to use copper plectrums and unique guitar straps that fit around the waist rather than over the shoulder. The band prefers the intimacy of smaller clubs and live appearances are sporadic.
Both Weston and Albini are renowned recording engineers, and use their preferred methods with Shellac. Albini prefers a very sparse, analogue recording sound with little or no overdubbing, and is meticulous about microphone placement and choice of equipment. This is reflected in Shellac's 'no-nonsense' approach to their own music, both in the studio and live.
In 2005, Shellac were recorded playing Steady As She Goes in an abandoned house as part of the second installment of a film project called Burn to Shine, organized by Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty and filmmaker Christoph Green. This is the only available recorded video footage of the band playing live that has been officially released. You get to hear that song today...and by the way....you also get to see the video in question. Hope you like it!
Oneida is a rock band from Brooklyn, New York. Their influences include psychedelic rock, krautrock, and hard rock, but the overall structure and intent of their music cannot be easily traced to any of these styles, or the myriad other styles they have drawn upon in recordings.
The most striking and consistent aspect of Oneida's music is their use of and fascination with repetition. Their 2002 LP, Each One Teach One, for instance, begins with two especially long tracks, Sheets of Easter and Antiobiotics, the former over fourteen minutes long, the latter more than sixteen. Both of these songs consist of one repeated riff (with a few short interludes on Antiobiotics).
In addition to the use of repetition that easily outstrips the patience of most casual listeners, Oneida's music can be distinguished by the bandmember's extensive use of and enthusiasm for antique keyboards and analog electric pianos. Repetition in Oneida's music greatly complements the strengths and uniqueness of the fuzzy or cheesy-sounding keyboard elements.
The band also runs Brah Records, an imprint of Jagjaguwar. The label has released records by Parts & Labor, Oakley Hall, Home, Company, and an Oneida/Plastic Crimewave Sound split 12".
In September 2007 the group celebrated 10 years of existence with a concert at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in NYC.
In June 2008, it was announced that the band would be releasing a triptych of new records, referred to as the "Thank Your Parents" series. The first of these is Preteen Weaponry, which was released in August 2008, and the second is a triple album, Rated O, released in July 2009.
The song Ghost in the Room is off their new triple LP Rated O...hope you love it!
Akron/Family is a folk-influenced experimental rock band that formed in 2002, and its members currently live in Portland, Oregon and New York City, New York.
Though each member of the band—Dana Janssen, Seth Olinsky, and Miles Seaton—can be relegated to loosely defined roles (drummer, vocalist/guitarist, and bassist, respectively), all members play several instruments and sing, as evidenced by their shows and recorded material: Live, the band uses improvisation and three-part harmonies in prominence. On their self-titled debut record, field recordings of a creaking chair, thunderclaps and the white noise of a television find their way alongside psychedelic and electronic elements, guitars and a glockenspiel.
Between 2003 and 2007 the band was the hub of a social scene in Williamsburg Brooklyn which revolved around the 'Gimmie Coffee' coffee shop. Many of the events of this period served as material for songs. On February 15th, 2009 Set 'Em Wild, Set Em Free leaked on the internet. Throughout the late summer and into the fall of 2009, Akron/Family headlined a tour with Slaraffenland as the opening band and Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard serving as lead support. Slaraffenland also contributed in much of Akron/Family's set, playing percussion and horns.
The Song you get to hear today is called River and it is the 2nd track off the Set Em' Wild album....hope you like it!
Daniel Victor Snaith (born 1978), better known by the stage names Caribou and Manitoba, is a Canadian electronic musician.
Snaith was born in London, Ontario and grew up in Dundas, Ontario. Snaith attended Parkside Secondary School and later studied mathematics at the University of Toronto and later at Imperial College London (PhD). He is the son of Victor Snaith, a mathematics professor at the University of Sheffield, and the brother of Nina Snaith, a reader in mathematics at the University of Bristol.
Snaith previously recorded under the stage name Manitoba, but changed his name in 2004 under threat of an American lawsuit by Richard "Handsome Dick" Manitoba, the stage name of The Dictators frontman Richard Blum. As Snaith himself commented, "It's like The Smiths suing John Smith or something".
Snaith usually performs with a live band when playing gigs, often assuming the role of percussionist. Currently, Snaith's live band is made up of himself, Ryan Smith, Brad Weber, and John Schmersal. (Former bassist Andy Lloyd now plays with Born Ruffians.) Sets also often include complex video projections on a large screen, a DVD of which was released in November 2005. "[I]n music I will have an idea to put some different sounds together or a melody that meshes with a chord sequence or a sonic mood," said Snaith in an interview. "I'm not the type of person who takes physical things apart and plays around with them, but I like taking mental ideas apart and playing around with them. That's what appeals to me about what I've spent my life doing."
He completed his Ph.D. in mathematics at Imperial College London in 2005. His thesis, titled Overconvergent Siegel Modular Symbols, was written under the direction of Kevin Buzzard.Snaith currently resides in London, England.
His 2007 album Andorra was named the winner of the 2008 Polaris Music Prize.
The song you get to hear today is off his brand new album Swim...it's called Odessa. Hope you like it!
Wow...what does one even say about Sonic Youth? To give you their full story I would need to fill a book! For now...here is a SMALL blurb about the powerhouse that is Sonic Youth...
Sonic Youth is an American rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore (vocals and guitar), Kim Gordon (vocals, bass, guitar), Lee Ranaldo (vocals and guitar), Steve Shelley (drums), and Mark Ibold (bass).
In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City. Part of the first wave of American noise rock groups, the band carried out their interpretation of the hardcore punk ethos throughout the evolving American underground that focused more on the DIY ethic of the genre rather than its specific sound. As a result, some consider Sonic Youth as pivotal in the rise of the alternative rock movement. The band has experienced success and critical acclaim throughout the last three decades, continuing into the new millennium, including signing to major label DGC in 1990, and headlining the 1995 Lollapalooza festival.
Sonic Youth have expressed a wide variety of influences, ranging from the influential protopunk musician Patti Smith to composer John Cage. The band has been praised for having "redefined what rock guitar could do",using a wide variety of unorthodox guitar tunings, and preparing guitars with objects like drumsticks and screwdrivers to alter the instruments' timbre.
The song you get to hear today is the 1986 classic Shadow of a Doubt off of the album EVOL. Hope you LOVE it!
Grizzly Bear is a Brooklyn-based folk rock band, comprising Edward Droste (vocals, guitar, omnichord, keyboard), Daniel Rossen (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Chris Taylor (bass, backing vocals, various instruments, producer) and Christopher Bear (drums, backing vocals). The band employs traditional and electronic instruments. Their sound has been categorized as psychedelic pop, folk rock, and experimental, and is dominated by the use of vocal harmonies. The band is one of the few non-electronic artists signed to Warp Records.
In summer of 2008, Grizzly Bear opened for Radiohead on the second leg of their North American tour.In Toronto, on their last date of the tour together, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood spoke of his love for Grizzly Bear, on stage, calling them his favorite band. Of the experience, Taylor has commented: “It was shocking, and kind of unbelievable. It still is unbelievable. Opening for Radiohead was a huge honour for us, as a band and as individuals. We’ve all had long-term relationships with Radiohead’s music, so we didn’t want to take that opportunity for granted, and do anything less than the best we could." Christopher has also commented that it "was like a dream."
The group then convened at a house on Cape Cod to solidify their third full-length album, Veckatimest, which released in May 2009 and was named "after a tiny, uninhabited island on Cape Cod that the band visited and was inspired by, particularly liking its Native American name." Upon release the album reached #8 on the US Billboard 200 chart, and met with widespread critical acclaim. Chris Bear has noted that compared to Yellow House, the band's 2009 release Veckatimest is more of an accessible pop record. He said: "I think that it’s kinda clearer, clearer equals more accessible I feel like clearer equals more accessible in general as a rule." Veckatimest made many Top Album lists for 2009 (#1 Wall Street Journal, #4 Pitchfork, #6 New York Times, #8 Time).
Both "While You Wait for the Others" and "Two Weeks" appeared in Pitchfork Media's Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s, ranking at #334 and #162 respectively.The album was ranked #42 on their list of the decade's top 200 albums.Official music videos have been produced for Two Weeks, While You Wait for the Others, and Ready, Able. Veckatimest was also voted Stereogum's 2nd best album of 2009. The song for today just happens to be Ready, Able off of this new album! Hope you like it! If you listen to the vocal arrangement you can hear heavy influence from Radiohead and Thom Yorke...plus the video is AMAZING!
Explosions in the Sky is an American instrumental post-rock band from Texas. The band has garnered popularity beyond the post-rock scene for their cinematic, elaborately developed guitar work, narratively styled instrumentals, what they refer to as "cathartic mini-symphonies," and their enthusiastic and emotional live shows.They primarily play with three electric guitars and a drum kit, although band member Michael James will at times exchange his electric guitar for a bass guitar
Originally called Breaker Morant, Explosions in the Sky was formed in Austin, Texas in 1999. Drummer Chris Hrasky is from Rockford, Illinois, and the rest of the band hails from Midland, Texas. The new name of "Explosions in the Sky" came from a comment Hrasky made in reference to the noiseor sightof fireworks when they left KVRX on the night they played their first set and recorded their first track, "Remember Me as a Time of Day", that would be released on a compilation.Their 2000 debut album, How Strange, Innocence, was locally distributed in the form of CD-Rs. Rehearsal footage is featured on the short film Cicadas, which won an Austin Film Festival award.
Explosions in the Sky quickly gained a reputation for themselves among other established local bands such as Lift to Experience. Temporary Residence Limited signed the band on the strength of their demo after only half a listen
Although the band's music deviates from pop, Hrasky said that they have similar goals "like immediately grabbing your attention and getting to your emotions."Rayani said, "We don't consider ourselves post-rock at all; we consider ourselves a rock band."
In a post-show interview clip on Austin City Limits, guitarist Munaf Rayani said about their status as instrumentalists, "I mean, I think we discussed singing for half a second, and then it just kinda, we just dropped it. We just didn't go back to it because we weren't comfortable enough." Drummer Chris Hrasky added "There were a couple of instrumental bands at the time that we were heavily into; Dirty Three and Mogwai; we were listening to those bands a lot. And I think we just liked the idea of a band that there was not a leader or main songwriter, everyone collaborating and has their own say. I don't think any of us want the sort of 'leader role', so a leaderless band is kind of the best option for us.
The song you get to hear today is a 9 minute epic from the 2007 Friday Night Lights Soundtrack...it's called First Breath After Coma. Hope you like it!
The Meat Puppets are an American rock band formed in January 1980, in Phoenix, Arizona. The group's original lineup was Curt Kirkwood (guitar/vocals), his brother Cris Kirkwood (bass guitar), and Derrick Bostrom (drums). The Kirkwood brothers met Bostrom while attending Brophy Prep High School in Phoenix. The three then moved to Tempe, Arizona (a Phoenix suburb and home to Arizona State University) where the Kirkwood brothers purchased two adjacent homes, one of which had a "shed" in the back where they regularly practiced.
One of the more notable groups on the roster of SST Records (who released most of their albums), the Meat Puppets started as a punk rock band, but like most of their SST peers, the Meat Puppets established their own unique style, blending punk with country and psychedelic rock, and featuring Curt's warbling vocals. The Meat Puppets later gained significant exposure when the Kirkwood brothers served as guest musicians on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance in 1993. The band's 1994 album Too High to Die subsequently became their most successful release. The band broke up twice, in 1996 and 2002, but reunited again in 2006.
The Meat Puppets have influenced various rock bands such as Nirvana,Dinosaur Jr, Pavement and Soundgarden. Speaking of Niravana, the song you get to hear today was made famous not by the Puppets but by Kurt Cobain. It's called Plateau...hope you like it! Remember, this is the ORIGINAL and the Nirvana song was a cover!
Empire of the Sun is an Australian electronic music duo which formed in 2006.The duo is composed of Luke Steele of The Sleepy Jackson and Nick Littlemore, who left the band recently to resume his duties with Pnau.
The duo achieved chart success with their first single Walking on a Dream which peaked at number ten on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart and reached number sixty four on the UK Singles Chart.
Their debut album also titled Walking on a Dream, released in October 2008, to date has been certified platinum in Australiaand has spawned the top 25 hit "We Are the People".Empire of the Sun has gained mainstream media attention for gaining fourth position on the BBC’s annual Sound of Music poll 2009.They are currently signed to EMI Australia and Virgin UK.
After several months of consulting on the material for the album, Littlemore and Steele went into the studio to record their debut album. Titled Walking on a Dream, the album was released on the 4th of October 2008. Prior to its release six tracks were put up on the social networking site MySpace for fans to see.The album debuted at number eight on the ARIA charts and eventually peaked at number six.Their first single titled Walking on a Dream was released digitally on August 30, 2008.The single received airtime from many Australian radio stations and has since reached #10 on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart, breaking the record for the longest time taken for a single to reach the top 10. That single is what you get to hear today! Enjoy Walking on a Dream from Empire of the Sun!
Autolux is a Los Angeles-based trio comprising Eugene Goreshter (lead vocals, bass), Greg Edwards (guitar, vocals) and Carla Azar (drums, vocals). The trio formed in 2000 and has since recorded one promotion EP, Demonstration, and released one full-length studio album, Future Perfect, in 2004. Autolux is currently working on a second studio album.
Autolux formed in 2000 in Los Angeles, California. Goreshter and Azar met while writing the score for Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo's play Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Azar had met Edwards when her (former) band Ednaswap toured with Edwards' (former) band Failure.In August 2000, Autolux made their debut, playing two shows at the Silverlake Lounge. On March 1, 2001, the band released a self-produced EP entitled Demonstration. It contained five songs recorded on an 8 track in their rehearsal space.
After impressing legendary producer T-Bone Burnett during a performance, Autolux signed to DMZ, a small label created by Burnett and the Coen Brothers.
In May 2002, Azar fell from a stage after Autolux had opened for Elvis Costello. Her elbow was shattered and she was told she would "probably never play drums again".However, due to an experimental surgery involving eight titanium screws, she made a full and complete recovery.
For their stage performances, Autolux has consistently employed hand-made lighting rigs. In 2007, the band offered to sell the "framed amber lights" they toured with throughout 2005 to any interested fans on their official website and eBay. Autolux is currently working on their second full length record, Transit Transit, which does not yet have a release date. According to a blog entry on the band's MySpace website by Robert Densworth dated November 27, 2008, the delay is due to the band "getting the business end of the music squared away". To tide you over...here is the song Sugarless off of their last album Future Perfect.
Kurt Vile is a guitarist and singer from Philadelphia . He is the lead guitarist in the band The War on Drugs and also has a burgeoning solo career. He was signed on Matador Records in May 2009 as a solo artist.
His music has been likened to Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and Tom Petty.His first album for Matador Records, is titled Childish Prodigy. In an interview with WWD (Women's Wear Daily), Sonic Youth singer Kim Gordon was asked, "Your guilty pleasure right now?" Gordon replied, "Listening to Kurt Vile's latest CD, Childish Prodigy. Guilty because I listen to it too much..."
He released two previous solo albums, God Is Saying This To You and Constant Hitmaker, on Mexican Summer and Woodsist, respectively. He plays solo shows as well as shows with a backing band called The Violators...notably opening up for Dinosaur Jr. at Castaways this past year. The song you get to hear today is off of the album Childish Prodigy and it is called Freak Train...I hope you like it as much as we do!
Noah Lennox, better known as Panda Bear, is an experimental musician and a founding member of Animal Collective. He chose the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas as artwork on the recordings he made as a younger musician. Lennox grew up in the Roland Park section of Baltimore, Maryland, and had attended high school in Pennsylvania. As a child and teenager, he played sports, mainly soccer and basketball, and had studied piano until he was eight and then cello. At the age of 17 he started to listen to electronic music styles like House & Techno and especially Aphex Twin, which turned out to be a huge influence on his later work.
At the age of 20 he finished his debut album Panda Bear which is also the very first Animal Collective related record. It was released in 1998 on Soccer Star Records. After focusing more on touring and recording with Animal Collective, he released the follow-up Young Prayer in 2004 and the highly acclaimed third solo album Person Pitch in 2007.
Lennox has his much anticipated fourth studio album Tomboy set to release in September of this year! Keep your ears and eyes open for it! For now, enjoy the song Bros off of the album Person Pitch! If you listen carefully you can really hear a defined Beach Boys influence in his music :)
Black Moth Super Rainbow is an American experimental band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their music contains elements of psychedelia, folk, electronica, and pop. Their distinctive sound is characterized by analog electronic instruments including the vocoder, Rhodes piano, and Novatron.
A Graveface insert included inside the album Dandelion Gum describes them as such: "Deep in the woods of western Pennsylvania vocoders hum amongst the flowers and synths bubble under the leaf-strewn ground while flutes whistle in the wind and beats bounce to the soft drizzle of a warm acid rain. As the sun peeks out from between the clouds, the organic aural concoction of Black Moth Super Rainbow starts to glisten above the trees."
BMSR has released four full-length albums to date, all with a electronic, trippy, jamband kind of sound. You will notice that the singer never lets his real voice be heard, using different effects to mask his voice...most notably a Vocoder. In some instances, the singer Tobacco has s uch stage fright that he hides during BMSR live performances. The song you get to hear today has a very interesting title, it's called Jump Into My Mouth and Breathe Stardust and was originally released on the 2008 album Dandelion Gum. Hope you like it!
Not much is known about The Depreciation Guild...here is what I could find...
The Depreciation Guild is a fuzzed-out, reverb drenched pop/electronic group consisting of Kurt Feldman (guitar, vocals, programming), Christoph Hochheim (guitar, vocals), and Anton Hochheim (drums). Backed solely by a Nintendo Entertainment System, the band blankets their sound with the crushing blows of its 8-Bit 2A03 sound chip. Drawing inspiration from classic dream-pop bands such as Pale Saints, and Cocteau Twins, as well as 80’s synth-pop masters such as Bill Nelson, Gangway, Scritti Politti and YMO, The Depreciation Guild have artfully cultivated a unique sound that strikes a balance between progressive and retro-chic.
The band’s first EP, Nautilus, released by 8 Bit Peoples in January of 2006, is a blissed-out, swirling, guitar-heavy epic that was received with international acclaim.
In December 2008, their first full-length, In Her Gentle Jaws was released, which takes the band’s songwriting and arranging to breathtaking new places. From the sonic attack of Sky Ghosts to the lullaby calm of Heavy Eyes, The Depreciation Guild have created a piece of music designed to be heard as a whole - an album filled with highs and lows, saturated in color, and drifting into dream.
Originally released as a free download, In Her Gentle Jaws is currently available through www.kaninerecords.com
The song Butterfly Kisses is one of the standout tracks on the above album...check it out!
Kay Pettigrew is a virtually unknown singer-songwriter who specializes in quirky folk and indie music. She is currnetly from Toronto and if you live in Canada you can find her playing out several nights a week. She has been playing and singing since age 14 and it shows! I came across this song months ago and loved it so much I had to share it with you!
For all you fans of bad television, this is Kay Pettigrew covering the Fresh Prince theme song in her own unique way! Hope you like it!
Battles is an American experimental rock group, founded in 2003 in New York City. The band's current line-up comprises guitarists Ian Williams (formerly of Don Caballero) and Dave Konopka (formerly of Lynx), drummer John Stanier (formerly of Helmet), and Tyondai Braxton (son of avant-garde composer Anthony Braxton), who plays keyboard and guitar and creates live voice samples.
Following a string of EPs, the band released their debut album on the Warp Records label in February 2006, which was titled EP C / B EP. It is a compilation of their early releases, EP C, B EP and the single Tras, which you are going to hear today.
Their first full-length album Mirrored, recorded by Keith Souza at Machines with Magnets, was released on May 14, 2007. The album received positive reviews and appeared on several top album lists for 2007.
The first single from the album, Atlas, was released on February 21, 2007 as streaming audio, and the accompanying streaming video was released on February 28, 2007. It was voted "Best Single of the Week" by NME magazine, and received a glowing review in the British Clash Magazine, as well as ranking at number one in the second Dandelion Radio Festive Fifty.
The introduction of the All Tomorrow’s Parties movie, which was released in October 2009, features a live performance of Atlas. This performance was recorded in May 2007 during the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival that took place in Butlins Holiday Camp, Minehead, Somerset.
Hope you love this VERY experimental band as much as I do!
Sybris is an American indie rock band from Chicago, Illinois. Sybris formed in 2003 in Chicago. The name is an intentional misspelling of Sybaris, an Ancient Greek city.They signed to Flameshovel Records for the release of their 2005 self-titled debut.A national tour followed the album's release.Their second full-length (Into the Trees) appeared on Absolutely Kosher in 2008.
In 2009 Sybris' song "Breathe Like You're Dancing" was used in the Movie "GRETA" starring Hilary Duff.
The song "Something about a Darkhorse or Whatever" comes off of the 2008 Album "Into the Trees." Sybris is so unheard of...I could not even find the studio version of the song on youtube! So...enjoy this low quality live version :)
The Books are an American music duo, formed in New York City in 1999, consisting of guitarist and vocalist Nick Zammuto and cellist Paul de Jong. Their releases contain a combination of electronic music and folk, typically incorporating samples of obscure sounds and speech. They have released three critically-acclaimed albums on the German label Tomlab, and are currently preparing for the release of their latest studio album, The Way Out.
The Books are commonly cited by critics to be of a genre of their own,described by Nick Zammuto himself as collage music.Although they have said that their influences include Nirvana, David Bowie, Roxy Musicas well as new wave and classical music, they do not show prominently in their music,though Zammuto was directly influenced by electronic musicians Squarepusher and Aphex Twin.The Books' music usually consists of acoustic instrumentation of folk melodies usually played on guitar, cello, banjo and more, combined with a diverse range of samples obtained from cassettes found in thrift stores,which are digitally processed and edited.They also do not use a drum kit in any recordings or performances, but instead using inanimate objects like children's toys and filing cabinets, which are sampled and looped.Some observers contend that their music is aleatoric,but Zammuto disagrees, saying the music is very tightly controlled.
The song Smells Like Content is an example of not only The Books' video editing and creation skills, it also showcases their unique musical ability.
How to Destroy Angels is a musical group featuring Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor, his wife Mariqueen Maandig and Atticus Ross. Nine Inch Nails' photographer and art director Rob Sheridan is rumored also to be involved in the project in some way.
The group is named after a 1984 Coil single of the same name.
In April 2010, it was announced via the group's press company Nasty Little Man that they will release a 6 song EP in the summer of 2010. Their first single, "A Drowning", was released as a digital single on May 4, 2010. It was mixed by another longtime NIN collaborator, Alan Moulder.
David Pajo (or Papa M) is an American alternative rock musician. He has played a wide variety of music, loosely fitting into several other genres: hardcore, math-rock, post-rock, electronica, folk and indie-pop. Though a multi-instrumentalist (including guitar, bass, banjo and drums), he is best known for his guitar work.
A native of Louisville, Kentucky, he played with three Louisville hardcore and hardcore-inflected bands in his early career. He got his start as guitarist for Maurice, but he first recorded with Solution Unknown. He rose to prominence, however, for work with the post-rock band Slint. Since its breakup, he has seldom held positions in other bands for very long, moving from one to the other quite often. As a result he has contributed to many lineups, playing and recording with Will Oldham, The For Carnation, Tortoise, Stereolab, Royal Trux, King Kong, Bush League, Zwan, and Peggy Honeywell.
He has also released music as a solo artist using various monikers, as Aerial M, M, and most notably, Papa M. Among his many 7" and splits with various bands, he has released (as Aerial M) 1997's Aerial M, and (as Papa M) 1999's Live from a Shark Cage, 2001's Whatever, Mortal, and 2003's Hole of Burning Alms.
In February and March 2005 he joined his old bandmates from Slint, Britt Walford and Brian McMahan, for a reunion tour, and in April released his first solo album not bearing a pseudonym, simply entitled Pajo. The follow up to Pajo, entitled 1968, was released in August 2006.
Around the middle of 2005, he helped to form the band Dead Child, with Todd Cook (from Shipping News, Retsin, The For Carnation, and Aerial M—and who also played guitar on the 2005 Slint reunion tour), Michael McMahan (from The For Carnation, Starkiller, and Phantom Family Halo—and who also joined Slint on the reunion tour), and Tony Bailey (from Anomoanon, The Party Girls, Verktum, and Aerial M).
In 2009, Pajo joined the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the tour for their third album, It's Blitz!.
Enjoy this song entitled Krusty....hint, if you listen real close you can hear the simpsons in the background. I bet that is why he called the song Krusty :)
The xx are a three-piece band from Wandsworth, south west London, England, formed in 2005. The four original band members met at Elliott School, notable for alumni including Hot Chip, Burial and Four Tet. The xx was originally a four-piece band, but keyboardist Baria Qureshi left the group in late 2009.
The group's debut album, xx, was met with critical acclaim, achieving a rating of "Universal acclaim" on Metacritic. Furthermore the album ranked well on "best of the year" lists, placing at #9 and #2 with Rolling Stone and NME respectively. The band placed at #6 in the 2009 NME The Future 50 list and in October 2009, they were named one of MTV Iggy's "Top 10 Bands with Buzz" (at the CMJ Music Marathon 2009).
They recorded the album in a small garage that was part of XL studios, often at night, which contributed to the sleek, whispery nature of the album. The band have toured with The Big Pink and Micachu. Their song Crystalised was featured on iTunes (UK) as Single of the Week, starting from 18 August 2009. Here it is...let us know what you think! The xx are going to be huge!
Deerhunter is an American four-piece indie rock group originating from Atlanta, Georgia. The band, consisting of Bradford Cox, Moses Archuleta, Josh Fauver, and Lockett Pundt, have described themselves as "ambient punk," though they incorporate a wide range of genres, including noise rock, art rock, shoegaze, and post-punk, as well significant pop elements. The band has gone through several line-up changes and the death of a member.
Deerrhunter have garnered a reputation for their intense live shows. Cox has worn sundresses and has performed with fake blood smeared over his face and hands, their live show being "much more savage" than their albums. In his explanation of the sundresses Cox has said, "I don't like the idea of going around stage in just jeans and a t-shirt. It seems anticlimactic."
They have also supported many bands on tour, including Nine Inch Nails, TV on the Radio, Project Pat, Liars, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Spoon, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Fiery Furnaces, Ex-Models and Battles.
The song Nothing Ever Happened is a tribute to Deerhunter's new sound and was originally featured on the album Microcastle. Microcastle is the third album by Deerhunter, release on October 27, 2009.
The Whitest Boy Alive is a musical group based in Berlin. The band comprises singer/guitarist Erlend Øye, who is also a member of the band Kings of Convenience, bassist Marcin Öz, drummer Sebastian Maschat, and Daniel Nentwig on Rhodes piano and Crumar.
The Whitest Boy Alive started as an electronic dance music project in 2003 in Berlin, but have since slowly developed into a band with no programmed elements. Their German record label is Bubbles. Their debut album Dreams was released on June 21, 2006 in Germany. In July 2007, Modular Records signed them to their UK imprint and the band played their first UK performance with New Young Pony Club at the London Astoria in September 2007. The album was released in the UK with the single Burning in November 2007. The band released their second album Rules in March 2009. It was recorded in a newly built studio located on Punta Burros, Nayarit, Mexico.
The Song Burning is their first track off of the 2006 album Rules.
The Klaxons are a dance punk band, based in London. Following the release of numerous 7-inch singles on different independent record labels, as well as the success of previous singles Magick and Golden Skans, the band released their debut album, Myths of the Near Future on 29 January 2007. The album won the 2007 Nationwide Mercury Prize.
The song Golden Skans is the best example of what this London Indie group sounds like. The Klaxons style can be defined as "acid-rave sci-fi punk-funk", a phrase lifted directly from Tim Chester's Radar feature in NME, while their MySpace page touts "Psychedelic / Progressive / Pop". However, they are one of the isolated acts being referred to as "New Rave", a genre term coined by Angular Records founder Joe Daniel, who released the trio's first single. Though the band's sound is rock-based, they draw upon some less common influences - notably the rave culture of the 1990s, which they appropriate and redefine in a post-modern fashion.
