London’s Fanzine just sent us over this brittle, wistful little slow-burner of a ballad that shows why they’re firmly lodged as one of our favourite new bands and not budging anytime soon. Full of feeling but delicately arranged, “Tough” is a gently pulsing, cathartic discourse that is stripped right down to expose the song’s sparse and soft, emotional intimacy. (via Transparent)
Spectrals' Louis Jones can write one hell of a lilting pop hook, but he doesn't need to slather on the emo frosting to make his confections taste sweet. Spectrals Extended Play, his debut EP on London label Moshi Moshi, will be immediate ear candy for fans of 00's slacker rock like Real Estate and the Twerps, but with one key difference: in their painfully intricate melodic core, songs like "Chip A Tooth (Spoil A Smile)" are really more Motown than anything else.
MP3: Spectrals: "Chip A Tooth (Spoil A Smile)"
Spectrals Extended Play EP is available for digital download via Moshi Moshi. A physical release is slated for January 2011
A CMJ Showcase co-presented by forthebeat + Transparent + ABC News Amplified at Public Assembly in Brooklyn
Free entry / RSVP by emailing forthebeat@gmail.com
English post-punk demi-gods Wire are releasing a new album called Red Barked Tree in January 2011. Recorded solely with its three core members Colin Newman, Graham Lewis and Robert Grey, "Two Minutes" shows that legendary artists can actually continue to be relevant rather than a pain in the ear.
Red Barked Tree will be available 1/11/11 via Pink Flag
Like any genre, web music videos have their own conventions. These days you often see found footage, colorized for a nostalgic effect. While this can be gorgeous, I’m thrilled when someone breaks the mold, and this Cindy Sherman-esque clip from Eagle Rock’s LA Vampires is a glorious example. Frontwoman Amanda Brown, formerly of Pocahaunted, sings to the camera in varying costumes and poses; her body language is alternately awkward, hilarious, and elegant, and it's refreshing to someone who is able to deploy physical performance with a sense of humor. Combined with the warped tape-deck sounds of Matrix Metals, Amanda's cyberborg-era vocals form a fine soundtrack to the end of a club night, stumbling home, searching for your far-off mind. (via Visitation Rites)
MP3: LA Vampires: "Make Me Over" (Featuring Matrix Metals)
So Unreal LP is out November 1st via Not Not Fun
Ian Drennan and Alex Craig of Big Troubles say:
We first heard "Mercury Girl" in early high school, and immediately latched on to Cleaners From Venus and their sentimental, melodramatic '80s pop balladeering, which is a big positive in our book. It wasn't until many years later that we realized they had produced a vast, brilliant, and largely home-recorded discography of cassette releases. On "Helpless", you can hear how their tape-centric aesthetic predates much of today's lo-fi warped pop scene.
A CMJ Showcase, co-presented by the blogs Microphone Memory Emotion, PIXELHORSE, and Visitation Rites at Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn
Tonstartssbandht is the band of brothers Edwin and Andy White, spread between Montreal and New York. Taken from 2009's Dick Nights, "Preston 'Great-Ass' Imfat" is a schizo-psych non-linear drifter that passes from '70s Southern acoustic rock to a rockin' Vince Guaraldii piano interlude, some Devendra Banhart freak folk, and, finally, a beautiful doo-wop ballad. (via International Tapes)
MP3: Tonstartssbandht: "Preston 'Great-Ass' Imfat"
Dick Nights is available now via DŒS ARE. After a high-energy show at Glasslands last week, guitarist Andy White stated that if Tonstartssbandht were to be on Altered Zones, the post would have to immediately precede or follow something from CCR's Chronicle Vol. 1. Below, we honor his request.
After their cover of Talking Heads tugged at my heart strings, I was sure Coolrunnings were well on their way to hitting their stride with bright strokes of genius--this new song/video confirms it. With what Im positive is an Andy Warhol short film, the song “When I Got High With You” is a flutters and pings in and out heavy synth professing a fondness for Spacemen 3 the pop-sensibility of Tears For Fears and the early gothic-experimentalist stylings of Legendary Pink Dots. (via Weekly Tape Deck)
You can get a ton of free Coolrunnings songs here to continue to feed your appetite.
Two Bicycles is the ambient/acoustic side-project of Canadian dreamweaver, Teen Daze. He's been creating under this moniker for over a year now, but it wasn't until recently that his sound evolved into the richer, atmospheric form it appears on his latest release, The Holy Forest. The six-song EP was written and recorded within 24 hours, influenced by Jónsi, the destruction of a once beautiful forest, and the wasteland that it became. The result was an ambient, 20-minute trek, “a total Fern Gully experience…as told by the trees themselves.” It most closely resembles its immediate predecessor, the Valerie EP, which is available here along with a few other albums, and if that's not enough, you can grab a bunch of earlier singles and demos from his Tumblr. Plus, be sure to catch Mr. Daze at one of these CMJ showcases. (via The Road Goes Ever On)
MP3: Two Bicycles: "The Holy Forest/Forever"
The Holy Forest EP is available here.
The ever elusive and previously Zoned In Clive Tanaka has a beautiful stop-motion, partially 3-D video for "Neu Chicago". Made by Tall Corn label-mate Brandon Domer of Kilroy with clay, action figures, and those sponges stuffed in capsules that turn into dinosaurs, the video (and song) was inspired by serial 1939 film "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century".
Offering some rare insight on his own work and creative process, Tanaka explains that "Buck Rogers is an astronaut who's life support systems aboard Ranger 3 accidentally froze him in orbit in 1987 and reawaken some 500 years later in 2491. Shortly after his freezing, Earth is all but destroyed in nuclear holocaust. Buck returns to the capital of Earth Defense Directorate in New Chicago, the domed inner part of Chicago that was rebuilt after the war. There, he meets Colonel Wilma Deering and they begin to fancy each other. Buck is lonely because everyone he knew and loved are long dead and Wilma, it seems, has been waiting for Buck her entire life... In the studio, people often have fun with song titles and changing labels. Someone in the orquesta thought it would be funny to label the reel Neu Chicago instead of New Chicago because it sounded nothing like Neu!. I like the neu name so much that it stuck." (The Road Goes Ever On co-premiere)
Jet Set Siempre 1° is available on cassette on Tanaka's website, LP coming 1/11/11 via Tall Corn
Check out Ariel Pink in a new internet sci-fi series called "The Multinauts". In the vein of "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace", this sci-fi parody is a loving ode to 80's late night television with its purposefully poor production value, rocky transitions, and ridiculous plot to match, all dressed up in its nostolgic VHS glory. In the first episode (above), Ariel's character performs "Flashback" (below).
Food Pyramid deliver MN-local "krautrock" to the world via Minneapolis label Moon Glyph. The project delves into an electronic experimentation in repetition, gazing back in time to their German forefathers with saxophone in hand. Their debut cassette I makes for an appropriately cosmic introduction, melding the blips and squelches of outer space with terrestrial rhythms found right on your doorstep or, perhaps more appropriately, slightly past the stoop and into the street below.
In "Southside Blacktop Beat" these rhythms immediately come off Latin, much like the sweltering dance music blaring out from open car windows in my Spanish neighborhood. Album closer "Speedboat Exit Miami Sunset" is more intent on taking its time, hip-shaking grooves creeping in and out of synthesizer mist and, yes, more saxophone. Someone please hook us up with a Food Pyramid moombahton edit. (via Friendship Bracelet)
MP3: Food Pyramid: "Southside Blacktop Beat"
I is out now on Moon Glyph
Themselves, the duo of Doseone and Jel, former possessors of the heaviest handle in hip-hop history, Deep Puddle Dynamics (sorry Leaders of the New Cool), recently re-released their CrownsDown LP with help from some pretty cool company. Anticon's barely-of-age ace, Baths, takes "DeadCatClear II"-- a song about playing caretaker to a stray cat’s corpse as a child-- and shoves it kicking and snaring into an etch-a-sketch for a righteous shaking and re-routing of its insides. Gross. (Yours Truly co-premiere)
MP3: Themselves: "Deadcatclear II (Baths Remix)"
CrownsDown & Company is available now on Anticon
It has been too long since we last heard from our pal RxRy, fortunately he sent us his new digital single, "Aertgo Lapsees". RxRy takes a slightly new direction and ditches the drawn out, strictly ambient sound for slightly faster songs that are more beat oriented and danceable at times. Either way he slices the beat, I'm definitely into it. (via Get Off The Coast)
Grab the entire Aertgo Lapsees single here, and keep an eye out for upcoming LP Ω
