MAY 26, 2015 (WEEK
# 21)
1.
ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO
U.F.O.-“BENZAITEN” (5/26)
2.
ALT J-“THIS IS ALL YOURS TOO” [EP] (5/26)
3.
ASTROBRITE-“DELUXER” (5/26)
4.
THE BARBARY SOUND-“LP1” (5/26)
5.
BEST GIRL ATHLETE-“CARVE EVERY WORD”
(5/26)
6.
BEST KISSERS IN THE WORLD-“YELLOW BRICK
ROADKILL” (5/26) (***The Best Kissers in the World
should have been huge. They're debut album, Been There, was a moderate success
with the singles "Miss Teen USA" and "Bleeder" getting
significant radio and MTV airplay during the first few years of the early 90's
Alternative Rock boom. However, just as their popularity was peaking, with the
lead single from their forthcoming second album garnering tons of acclaim, the
band had the rug pulled out from under them. That second album, Yellow Brick
Roadkill, is finally seeing release after nearly 20 years of sitting on the
shelf, following a label shake-up and merger that effectively ended the band.
Yellow Brick Roadkill was a huge leap forward for the band. The sound of the
album is tougher, the lyrics are more caustic, and the tone is darker. But it's
also an album that is full of hooks, riffs, and classic songs. "Hit
Parader," "They Give Each Other Diseases," and "Countin'
Out Dexedrine" are classic BKITW songs. A few of the songs on this
expanded release eventually found their way (in different form) onto lead
singer and songwriter Gerald Collier's first two solo albums.After the band was
dropped by their label and the record was shelved, advance copies of the album
were initially sold online for big money to hardcore fans of the band. We count
ourselves among those fans and are happy to finally make this release available
with a bonus disc of alternate versions, rarities, and unreleased songs. The
band has consistently maintained a passionate following who will now be able to
get this album through official and affordable means.)
7.
BEST KISSERS IN THE WORLD-“SKINNY MY
HEART BROKE MY KNEE” [COLLECTION] (5/26) (***Best
Kissers in the World were a beloved early 90's Seattle quartet. Frontman Gerald
Collier possesses one of the great rock voices of the era with a mind for witty
and irreverent lyrics. Combine these with the band's expert power-pop riffs and
hooks and it's clear why their multitude of diehard fans put them in the
lineage of artists such as The Replacements, Joan Jett, and Cheap Trick.
Skinned My Heart, Broke My Knee is an 11 song compilation made up of the band's
classic, out-of-print Sub Pop EP and their early 7 inch singles (which are
seeing life on CD for the first time.) Tracks such as "Working on
Donita," "Slightly Used," and "Broke My Knee" are
anthemic rockers. "Hungover Together", a duet with Hammerbox's Carrie
Akre, is a fine, lived-in country ballad (The Supersuckers would later record a
version with Kelley Deal of the Breeders.) A killer version of Tommy Roe's
bubblegum classic "Sweet Pea" closes out the album.Though they never
achieved breakout success during their time, groups like Weezer and Blink-182
would later take a similar musical template and spin it into gold. With a revived
interest in 90's alternative rock in full swing, Best Kissers in the World's
cult continues to grow.)
8.
THOMAS BRINKMANN-“WHAT YOU HEAR” (5/26)
9.
BRITISH SEA POWER-“SEA OF BRASS” [LIVE]
(5/26)
10. CINERAMA-“VALENTINA”
(5/26)
11. DEPECHE
MODE-“SHAME” [IMPORT SINGLE] (5/26)
12. FIRST AID KIT-“AMERICA” [EP]
(5/26)
13. WILLIAM
FITZSIMMONS-“PITTSBURGH” (5/26)
14. FOOL’S
GOLD-“FLYING LESSONS” (5/26)
15. JACCO
GARDNER-“HYPNOPHOBIA” (5/26)
16. RACHEL
GRIMES-“THE CLEARING” (5/26) (Rachel Grimes
is a pianist, composer, and arranger based in Kentucky – most renowned for her
work in Rachel's, the groundbreaking chamber-rock ensemble that introduced an
entire generation of underground rock fans to the unexpected similarities and
appeal of neoclassical music. Grimes has toured the world as a solo pianist,
and as a collaborator with chamber ensembles such as Portland Cello Project,
astrïd, Cicada, the Amsterdam Sinfonietta trio, and Orchestra Kandinskij.
Unhurried, at times fleeting, and stretching into the sky, The Clearing is a
winding path of transient moments exploring personal memory, relationships, and
mystery from a deeply internal place. The music is a wide spectrum of textures
in strings, harp, piano, woodwinds, and percussion. Featuring an ensemble that
includes Scott Morgan (LOSCIL), Scott Moore, Kyle Crabtree (Shipping News),
Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Jacob Duncan (Liberation Prophecy), and Helen Money, The
Clearing reveals a broad new chapter for Rachel Grimes.)
17. GROUNDERS-“GROUNDERS”
(5/26)
18. HOLLY HERNDON-“PLATFORM”
(5/26) (Holly Herndon has become
a leading light in contemporary alternative and electronic music by fearlessly
experimenting within the outer reaches of dance music and pop songwriting
structures. A galvanizing statement, Platform cements Herndon’s reputation as a
unique musician with a singular voice. Born in Tennessee, but reared on music
abroad, Herndon broke out from her formative years in Berlin’s minimal techno
scene to repatriate to San Francisco, where she currently lives and studies as
a doctoral candidate at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and
Acoustics (CCRMA). Herndon’s debut album Movement, released in 2012, showcased
Herndon’s fascination with trance and the disjunctive sampling techniques
pioneered by avant-garde composition. Offering what Herndon describes as “a
rupture, a paradisic gesture”, Platform is an optimistic breakthrough for
Herndon, an appeal for progress, and a step toward new ways to love.)
19. HUSKY
RESCUE-“LONG LOST FRIEND” [SPECIAL EDITION 2-CD] (2013/2015) (5/26)
20. ICKY
BLOSSOMS-“MASK” (5/26) (Three
years on from their Dave Sitek (TV on the Radio) produced debut, Icky Blossoms’
singular brand of mesmerizingly contradictory dance music has
evolved. Blending avant-garde elements with catchy and danceable pop,
threaded within dark, bass-heavy atmospheres, their songs nod to great
music of the past, whilst firmly propelling them into the future. For
the new album Icky Blossoms continue with their study of synthesizers and
drum machines, finding new focus by exploring the space
between their background in basement rock shows and their new-found
fluency in electronic music. They spent a year crafting the
next evolution of their sound, maintaining their core of throbbing
electronic grooves, but working to blend it with the drums, bass, and
screaming guitars of their chaotic live show. Hailing from Omaha, Nebraska,
The three members of Icky Blossoms - Sarah Bohling (vocals/synth), Nik
Fackler (lead guitar/vocals) and Derek Pressnall (guitar/vocals – also of
Tilly and the Wall) - wrote independently and then filtered songs back and
forth through each other, creating a collage of tastes, genres and
energies within each track. The band experimented with making electronics sound
organic and organic instruments feel electronic. Song skeletons were
embellished with tuned 808’s, hyper-effected mouth noises, screams as
instruments, and guitars run through synthesizers. Soon
the demos had mutated to a point of being studio-ready. With the
talent of longtime friend and collaborator Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Julian
Casablancas, Man Man, First Aid Kit) at ARC Studios in Omaha, Nebraska,
these songs became fully realized. Along with Mogis, the contributions
of assistant engineer Ben Brodin (Conor Oberst band), bassist Graham
Ulicny (Reptar), drummer Daniel Ocanto (Big Harp) and Todd Fink
(The Faint) helped the vision come into focus. Mask finds the
band capitalizing on the spontaneity of their live experience and the
ambitions of their writing and recording process, while not losing
their sense of self. Their influences range from Fad Gadget to Beyonce and
the subject matter varies from wrestling with the isolation
of existence to the emotional spectrum of love. The album
pulses with a vibrant sound that’s electric, confident, and new. )
21. EILEN
JEWELL-“SUNDOWN OVER GHOST TOWN” (5/26)
22. LANDSHAPES-“HEYOON”
(5/26)
23. LYDIA
LUNCH / RETROVIRUS-“URGE TO KILL” (5/26) (Lydia
Lunch has been collaborating with Herculean guitarist Weasel Walter (Flying
Luttenbachers), fret-destroying bassist Tim Dahl (Child Abuse) and Bob Bert
(Sonic Youth/Pussy Galore) under the Retrovirus flag. The album, “Urge To
Kill”, was recorded live in studio in November 2014 and offers new versions of
classics from Lydia Lunch’s immense catalog.
)
24. MOONBABIES-“WIZARDS
ON THE BEACH” (5/26)
25. NIGHTINGALES-“MIND
OVER MATTER” (5/26)
26. NIXON-“LINUS”
(5/26)
27. JIM
O’ROURKE-“SIMPLE SONGS” [IMPORT] (5/26) (***2015, and
the silence has been broken with Simple Songs. JIM O'ROURKE is ready to talk to
you again. First, he wants you to know he's not dead--yet. But you're not,
either--and really, what have you done lately? Certainly not made your first
pop album since 2001--and even if you had, it probably wasn't any good.
Meanwhile Simple Songs is more than just a first of anything since whenever!
It's an amazing record of musical song entertainment--because Jim O'Rourke
knows what he wants and how to get it.--musically, that is. The rest of the
world is still a mystery and a bottomless source of aggravation for the old boy.
What do we care? We get a great new album out of it. Yes, Simple Songs is an
album of songs sung by Jim O'Rourke all the way through! It has been ten years
since Jim's voice rang out from a new album. What Simple Songs sounds like....
At this point, the range of sounds and songs that have turned Jim's head are
numerous enough to have crushed together into something that is unmistakably
his--the vast, glossy and glittering O'Rourkian (yes, like Kervorkian) wall of
sound. The music's got OCD quality, played so immaculately by so many
instruments, and most of them by the creator's hand. This time's really the
widest screen yet for Jim's popular song-style, truly breathtaking!)
28. CHRISTOPHER
OWENS-“CHRISSYBABY FOREVER” (5/27)
29. THORE
PFEIFFER-“IM BLICKFELD” (5/26) (Meticulously
curated by Wolfgang Voigt, the Pop Ambient compilation series (and its latest
offspring, the Pop Ambient artist album series) has long catered to a unique
aesthetic sitting somewhere between experimental field recordings, no-age music,
and synth pop -- a proud tradition carried on by Thore Pfeiffer's full-length
debut Im Blickfeld. After inaugurating its Pop Ambient artist album series with
Leandro Fresco's stellar 2015 full-length El Reino Invisible (KOMPPA 001CD/LP),
Kompakt presents the next installment by up-and-coming soundsmith Thore
Pfeiffer. The young German producer turned heads with two excellent
contributions to Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2015 compilation (KOMP 120CD/KOM 315LP),
and he showcases the full breadth of his remarkable talent on Im Blickfeld.
Successfully carving out his very own niche on crowded terrain, he doesn't seem
too interested in merely repeating the established achievements of the genre,
but finds a personal approach to electronic enchantment. From the hot-wired
micro-loops of enigmatic opener "Allzu Nah" to the cut-up folk of the
title-track, the neon-tinged romance of "Was Ihr Wollt," or the mock
balearisms of "Kolibri," Pfeiffer seems to be less interested in
watering down the rough edges of his source material, focusing on the
relationships and juxtapositions of his samples instead. Rather than indulging
in multiple layers of textures, this is a decidedly concrete interpretation of
pop ambient, dealing with distinct musical objects and their different states
of aggregation in time. Nevertheless, there's a lot of purely emotional
adventure to be found in Im Blickfeld -- take the sophisticated soaring of
"Falke," for example, or the somewhat cozy dissonances of "Nicht
Genug": these are tracks that don't remain stationary, but take you
travelling into fascinating mental territory, thanks to their unique
arrangements and hand-picked sonics. "During production, I always had
these images in mind, of a hunter sitting in his deerstand, contemplating his
extended field of vision," Pfeiffer recalls. "He's got a lot of time
at his hands to muse about things and take in the silence before the
storm.")
30. ROBERT
POLLARD-“FAULTY SUPERHEROES” (5/26) (Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night
stays Robert Pollard from the swift completion of his latest brilliant record.
Faulty Superheroes jets off Pollard's vinyl-grooved runway like the prototype
for some new supersonic power pop fighter jet, and at this point in his career
is anyone surprised that the twelve tracks on his latest effort are uniformly
awesome? The answer is no. Exactly no one is surprised. The biggest thing with
which Pollard has to contend is his own miraculously consistent greatness. That
he rarely-if ever-stumbles is some kind of marvel, and perhaps implies
superpowers of his own. If you see what we did there. Faulty Superheroes has a
tossed-off, effortless magnificence for which the rash of indie-whatevers
trailing in his wake from Bee Thousand to the present constantly strive, and fail
to achieve. The constant sense of surprise, of wonder, of discovery that one
routinely finds in superbly structured instant bomp classics like "Faster
the Great" is not something that can be taught, or learned, or imparted,
or copied. Pollard largely abandoned the four-track 20 years ago and still gets
tagged as "lo-fi," which is a word that makes even less sense now in
the days of digital recording than it did then in the days of occasionally
tape-hiss smothered coulda-shoulda-been hits. "Take Me to Yolita" in
lesser hands might not have been much more than a bad one-liner stretched to
fit a pop song, but Pollard reverse-engineers the titular pun to build a
Kinks-like mini-epic that elevates the raw material to transcendent heights.
"She walks to him but that's not him." Damn. And so it goes. Are
there bum notes here and there? Recording-accidents-on-purpose left in like
crushed empty beer cans strewn around the miniature, glimmering pop / rock /
psych / prog construction sites left standing in the wake of each finished /
unfinished songs? You betcha. The Guided By Voices aesthetic was formed and
developed and continues to be improved by Pollard, which makes all the more
puzzling the hand-wringing that accompanies every announcement of a so-called
GBV "break-up" (or for that matter, "reunion"). "You
only need one," he sings on the song of that title. As long as we have
Bob, we need nothing else. And we have Bob. If you're counting your blessings,
don't forget that one. It's kinda crucial.)
31. PORCUPINE
TREE-“ANESTHETIZE” (5/26)
32. A
PROJECTION-“EXIT” (5/26) (A Projection
are an indie post-punk band from Stockholm, Sweden. With dark textures of
effects-driven guitars, lush synthesizers, and heartfelt, introspective lyrics,
their music has frequently been compared to that of Interpol, New Order, The
Cure, and The Chameleons. Formed in 2013, the band quickly became an
underground sensation, owing much of their success to their powerful and
atmospheric live performances. By combining a dense, sinister sound with
suggestive video projections, the band quickly established themselves as a
highly sought-after live act. Following the release of their eponymous demo EP,
the band was contacted by several record companies, eventually signing with the
Hamburg-based label Tapete Records. "Tapete Records offered us full
creative freedom," the band says. "Every track on the album is
exactly the way we want it to be." The album was recorded in Stockholm, a
city famous for its cold and dark winters. Naturally, that setting had some
influence over the overall mood of the album. Most of the recording sessions
were held at the band's regular studio, Melodibyrån, but they also had the
opportunity to record some tracks at the renowned Elektronmusikstudion (EMS),
which has played a significant role in the development of Swedish electronic
music. "2013 was a big year for electronic artists: More and more artists
are moving over to synth-driven music. It's very exciting. That development has
definitely had an effect on our production process -- we started out making an
overtly guitar-driven album, but as things progressed we found it very natural
to add a lot of electronic elements as well," the band agrees. "It
was an intense recording process. We wanted to make a record that was heartfelt
and honest, and yet true to form. We are very satisfied with the end
result." With their raw yet subdued aesthetics, the band bridges the gap
between modern indie rock and classic post-punk, and manages to create exciting
and accessible music without conforming to the mainstream.)
33. SOLEY-“ASK
THE DEEP” (5/26)
34. SPC
ECO-“DARK MATTER” (5/26)
35. SWEET
SPIRIT-“HAVE MERCY” (WITH BRITT DANIEL OF SPOON) [SINGLE] (5/26)
36. THEE
OH SEES-“MUTILATOR DEFEATED AT LAST” (5/26)
37. TWO
SHEDS-“ASSEMBLING” (5/26)
38. UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA-“MULTI-LOVE”
(5/26)
39. THE VACCINES-“ENGLISH
GRAFFITI” [DELUXE EDITION] (5/26)
40. VALET-“NATURE”
(5/26)
41. WOLFGANG
VOIGT-“RUCKVERZAUBERUNG 10 / NATIONALPARK” (5/26)
42. WHOMADEWHO-“EMBER”
(5/26) (Genre-bending Copenhagen trio
WhoMadeWho continue their string of acclaimed releases, including their 2005
self-titled debut (GOMMA 060CD), 2012's chart-topping Brighter (KOMP 097CD/KOM
254LP), and 2014's Dreams (DACD 001CD/DALP 001LP), which was touted by many as
one of the best things to come from the indie-dance sector of music in some
time. No surprise coming from a band that's played and toured alongside the
likes of Justice, LCD Soundsystem, Daft Punk, and Hot Chip, who, in 2011, also
asked to remix the trio's song "TV Friend" while WhoMadeWho covered
"Don't Dance" in return. Other remixers include underground
heavy-hitters The Mole, DJ Koze, and Michael Mayer, proving WhoMadeWho's
ability to go from mega-stage to basement seamlessly. Ember is another foray
into the world of machine music and dreamy soundscapes, in which the band stays
true to its pop tendencies while spinning things around and taking a trip right
back to its roots. Band member Tomas Barfod, who also produced the release,
says, "After many years of emphasizing 'the song' more and more, we felt
like just playing around with our instruments, like when we recorded our first
album... it was like renewing our band-wedding vows; we found our way back to
our fun and free approach of making music together." "Fun" and
"free" might very well be two of the best ways to describe this
seven-track creation of skewed pop, surf-rock, and slow, meaningful dance
music. Beachy guitar licks, ethereal crooning, and enough distinct flavor to
set each track apart from the rest, in the dreamy puzzle that is Ember.)
43. VARIOUS
ARTISTS-“DIAL RECORDS 15TH ANNIVERSARY COMPILATION: ALL” (5/26)
44. VARIOUS
ARTISTS-“LINEAR LABS: LOS ANGELES” (5/26) ("In less
than a year's time, Adrian Younge's Linear Labs imprint has made a very firm
impression on fans of forward-thinking, analog-based music from multiple
genres. One notable fan, among many, is DJ Premier, who produced his late-2014
PRhyme album exclusively using samples drawn from Younge's catalog. To give
fans a chance to revel in Younge's range and -- just as importantly -- give
followers a sneak-peek at four impressive 2015 albums, Younge is proud to
release the compilation album Los Angeles. On Los Angeles, many hip-hop
fanatics will impatiently skip forward to the graceful, galloping, and
appropriately dramatic 'Return of the Savage,' from the upcoming Younge-helmed
Twelve Reasons to Die II. The song features Ghostface Killah alongside Raekwon
and RZA. But track-skippers will soon head back to the album's opener, the dusky,
baroque soul of 'Memories of War,' from Something About April II, with vocals
by Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier. Also a track from the Adrian Younge/Ali Shaheed
Muhammad concept album The Midnight Hour, titled 'Feel Alive,' with silky
vocals by Karolina, alongside longtime Younge collaborator Loren Oden.")
No comments:
Post a Comment