I had a whirlwind weekend in Chicago that included a flight there with Mark Grace (he was in first class, of course), a canceled flight on Sunday, missing luggage that was eventually secured (eff you, American Airlines) and other assorted annoyances. Chicago, the great city, remains amazing.
So I’m still sorting through some emails and wanted to post this new video from New York-by-way-of-Phoenix brothers Lymbyc Systym. It’s for the song Shutter Release, off the 2009 album of the same name.
The video was directed and animated by St John Mckay Smith, and it contains some slight NSFW images. And if, for some reason, you missed out on the album Shutter Release – another epic collection of sweeping instrumentals from the Brothers Bell – you should most definitely stream it at Mush Records.
Lifting a four-minute nugget out of an instrumental LP probably isn’t the best way to get a feel for the big picture of the artist’s vision. But this leak has me eagerly anticipating the Aug. 3 release of El-P’s Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3 on Gold Dust.
The 15-track album contains original and remix instrumentals – including his Kidz in the Hall Drivin’ Down the Block remix. Physical copies of Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3 will include download links to the first two volumes, which were previously available only at live shows. (Though El did once give away Volume 2 a couple years back.)
And as El-P explains, this is more than some banal jumble of cutting-room material:
“its not just a collection of beats. there are transitions, breakdowns, blends… instead of throwing some shit on there and calling it a record i instead ended up crafting a record that (i think) actually makes sense sonically.”
So in that regard, it’s hard to listen to Meanstreak, a three-part suite, without proper context of the full album. But I’ll say this: It’s intense and dark and, even sans vocals, El-P sounds paranoid as ever.
ALSO: I’m headed to Chicago for the weekend, so it’ll be quiet around here (more so than usual!) for the next four days. In the meantime, enter to win that Radar Brothers CD to keep yourself entertained.
Epic Scottish rockers The Twilight Sad spent Memorial Day in New York recording a session for LimeWire. The result is a five-song acoustic EP, appropriately titled Live at Lime. This precedes a July 26 release (July 27, I assume, in States) of The Wrong Car EP on Fat Cat Records.
LimeWire has graciously offered one of the five tracks from the session – Cold Days from the Birdhouse – as a free download. The rest of the EP can be purchased here for about 4 bucks.
The Twilight Sad, Live at Lime EP tracklisting: 1. And She Would Darken the Memory
2. Cold Days from the Birdhouse
3. Seven Years of Letters
4. That Summer, at Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy
5. The Room
Three days after the Walkmen release their new album, Lisbon on Fat Possum, they’ll be taking the stage at the Clubhouse in Tempe on Sept. 17. And as if that wasn’t exciting enough, Japandroids – who already put on what is potentially the show of the year in April – are pegged as the opener.
If my calculations are correct, the Walkmen were last in the Valley opening for Kings of Leon in May 2009, but they haven’t headlined here since June 2006, also at the Clubhouse.
Tickets for the Stateside Presents show are $14 in advance and $15 day of and go on sale Friday, June 25.
It may be this blog’s five-year birthday when we celebrate with the Radar Brothers, Letdownright and Soft Drink on July 7 at Yucca Tap Room, but we’re offering you a gift (besides the chance to see a free show).
The kind folks at Merge Records – the label home of many a great indie band, including Radar Brothers, Spoon, The Arcade Fire, Teenage Fanclub, etc. – are giving me a copy of the Radar Brothers’ latest, The Illustrated Garden, to give away to help promote the show and foster some all-around good karma.
As usual, I’ll try to make this as easy as possible: Just e-mail me at kevin@somuchsilence.com with “Radar Brothers” in the subject line, or something even more creative than that. I’ll draw a name from a hat and contact the winner. I’ll open this up for a week, so you have until next Friday (June 25) to enter.
We got to see the Mayer in October, but if you haven’t, this is a good, 30-minute glimpse into the energetic live show, which he brought to Bonnaroo last weekend. He and his band have been touring like crazy, but here’s hoping Hawthorne slows down long enough to start plotting a follow-up to his great debut A Strange Arrangement.
If I procrastinate posting about Zilla Rocca’s new Fade to Blonde: A Summer Mix the way I have the 5 O’Clock Shadowboxers’ excellent Broken Clocks EP – and I have a draft that I started in March … sorry, Zilla and Douglas – then summer will be over and, well, what would be the point?
The past few strangely mild June days notwithstanding, summer in Phoenix is nothing like summer in other parts of the country, like in the Midwest and East, where memories of snow melt with the arrival of sunshine and shorts season. In Phoenix, we just melt. Oh, we brag in the winter, reveling in our perfect 70-degree days, getting a hearty chuckle at these news reports of “blizzards” and “snow flurries” in colder climes. Then summer comes, and nobody goes outside until October. Do you know what 95 degrees feels like at 10 p.m.? It feels like two cold showers a day, that’s for sure. Our poor bulldog, Oliver, even knows to stay close to a fan.
So there’s hardly a better way to beat the heat than with a cool mix and a cooler drink, and Zilla is offering both. Fade to Blonde draws from a wide range of artists (Caribou blended into Aaliyah … why not?), a soundtrack that sits well with Zilla’s favorite summer drink – 7-Up and vodka (step-by-step mixing directions included … for the drink, not the music).
Tracklisting for Fade to Blonde: 1. The Theme – Tracey Lee
2. Live Alone – Franz Ferdinand
3. Brew Barrymore – Diplo
4. Drop – The Pharcyde
5. Little Green Bag – George Baker Selection
6. Clap Hands – Beck
7. Nobody Beats the Biz – Biz Markie
8. Intervales Theme – Javelin
9. The Sun – Ghostface f/ Raekwon, Slick Rick, the RZA
10. Massage Situation – Flying Lotus
11. Yusef – Caribou
12. Try Again – Aaliyah
13. Take Your Mama – Scissor Sisters
14. Int’l Players Anthem – UGK f/ Outkast
15. One Track Mind – Mayer Hawthorne
16. Pretty Young Thing (Demo) (U-Tern Edit) – Michael Jackson
17. Bang a Gong – T.Rex
18. Son of a Preacher Man – Dusty Springfield
19. So Ghetto – Jay-Z
20. How High Remix – Method Man & Redman
21. Steady as She Goes (Acoustic version) – The Raconteurs
22. Naughty Girl (DJ Topsin Remix) – Beyonce
23. Throw Some D’s – Rich Boy f/ Polow Da Don
24. Danke Shoen – Wayne Newton
In Noah Baumbach’s 1995 directorial debut, Kicking and Screaming – a brilliant account of four friends unable to cope with the realities of post-college life – one of the characters, Max, makes a simple but somewhat profound statement about the sudden anxiety of moving on and letting go:
Max: I’m too nostalgic. I’ll admit it.
Skippy: We graduated four months ago. What can you possibly be nostalgic for?
Max: I’m nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I’ve begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I’m reminiscing this right now. I can’t go to the bar because I’ve already looked back on it in my memory … and I didn’t have a good time.
That dialogue amused me when I saw the movie – my favorite – the first few times. And then I graduated college, watched the film another 15 times and it wasn’t so funny anymore. Nostalgia can really fuck with you, and now all I can think of is Max when I listen to the new 7-inch single, Younger Us, by Vancouver garage-rock duo Japandroids.
Like they did on their full-length debut Post-Nothing (especially the song Young Hearts Spark Fire), Brian King and David Prowse truly capture the essence of fleeting youth, before said youth is even over. As Pitchfork smartly put it: “There’s a particular kind of nostalgia that hits you when you know you’re too young to feel nostalgic about anything.” And so King, in my brain, has become the musical equivalent of Max – letting the indiscretions of youth, even if they only recently happened, already become wistful memories: “Remember saying things like we’ll sleep when we’re dead / And thinking this feeling was never gonna end.”
The Younger Us 7-inch is the second in a series that features unreleased material as the A-side and a cover for the B-side. This release, out July 20 on Polyvinyl, features Younger Us and a cover of X’s Sex And Dying In High Society. Art Czars was the first pieces in the series.
Feels like it’s been awhile since I’ve been to a proper hip-hop show, and I’m excited about this one from the Universatile Music guys, even though I keep hearing horror stories about the heat inside the Clubhouse.
But, hey, what’s a little back sweat amongst friends, especially with the chance to see Murs, who’s touring in support of his new album Fornever.
After I was blown away – mostly my eardrums – by The Twilight Sad in Tucson last September, I was excited at the chance to see them again in Tempe in May. Sadly, the band canceled because it picked up support dates for Biffy Clyro in the UK. I mean, if it’s not one thing keeping Scottish bands from the Valley, like, say, volcanic ash, it’s another.
In the meantime, the folks at Bandstand Busking posted four videos from the band’s session in November, a less deafening – but no less powerful – acoustic performance. James Graham’s voice is splendid.
