Caught In The Loom

Brooklyn acoustic folk sextet The Loom has harnessed the emotional power and beauty of ensemble vocals and chiming instruments since 2006, drawing large crowds to their many live shows throughout the NY-area.

Now, with the release of its debut EP, the rest of the world can enjoy the group’s rich amalgam of folk and alt-country influenced indie rock featuring male and female vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, French horn, trumpet, piano, pedal steel, bass, drums, ukulele, accordion, and banjo.

The EP, At Last Light boasts soaring and lilting songs ranging from gentle to anthemic and built around subtle, affecting lyrics. The Loom’s sound has often been compared to affecting artists like Smog, Arcade Fire, Fairport Convention and The Waterboys. To me it sounds like The Cold War Kids if they lost power at one of their gigs and had a girl singing from the crowd. It's acoustic grooviness that's as far removed from being uncool as you can get.

Download: Song For The Winter Sun

the Legend of The Happy Hollows

The Happy Hollows is, put simply, transformative. That is, the young Los Angeles trio’s infectious and amorphous sound is one that immediately sticks upon first listen, evoking hints of bands that listeners remember not for the scene that launched them nor the trends of the era, but for the moment at which they first heard its music. Vocalist/guitarist Sarah Negahdari wields ominous riffs and finger-tapped arpeggios with skill reminiscent of Mary Timony of Helium while simultaneously singing and wailing like a hyper hybrid of Debbie Harry, Kim Deal and Karen O. Meanwhile, the agile rhythm section of Charles Mahoney (bass/vocals) and Chris Hernandez (drums) vault and lunge with precision.

The Happy Hollows’ raucous and irreverent noisy-pop sound is influenced by genres as disparate as 90’s college rock, Broadway show-tunes, garage punk, and 80’s pop. The band combines innovative song structures, surreal lyrics, and fiercely adept instrumentation to recreate reality into a jagged panorama of vibrant, kaleidoscopic collage.

Three years into its existence, The Happy Hollows have put forth Imaginary, an EP that is an amalgamation of contemporary alt-rock, distorted atonality, and exuberant yelp. Produced by David Newton (founding member of C-86 legends The Mighty Lemon Drops and producer of The Little Ones), Imaginary articulates the band’s inherent magic.

Download: Lieutenant
Download: Tambourine

I Got A Hundred In My Hands

In November 2007, following a US tour supporting the Boggs' third album, Forts, Jason Friedman and touring-Bogg Eleanore Everdell found themselves in the studio recording a brand new collaborative track without the rest of the band. "In the past, the collaborators I worked with would adjust what they did to fit my vision," says Friedman. "Working with Eleanore it was clear that the time had come to shift into a more equal partnership." the result of this new approach was "Dressed in Dresden", a fractured pop thumper that showed Eleanore assuming full vocal duties over heavy beats and staccato guitars.

In the 10 months since that session, the seven-year-old Boggs were laid to rest, and The Hundred In The Hands were formed. Their debut album, Summer of Fear should be released sometime in the near future. Until then, check out their debut single, Dressed in Dresden.

Download: Dressed In Dresden (zip file)
Download: Undressed In Dresden (zip file)

Kyle Andrews Crawls Out of His Room

After releasing his whimsical debut LP Amos In Ohio and the sad, stripped down EP Find Love, let Go on Badman Recordings, Kyle Andrews has decided to go it alone. It is appropriate that his self-recorded, self-produced Real Blasty should be released independently, relying on Andrews' own imprint, Elephant Lady Records.

Real Blasty takes Andrews’ homespun tunes to a happier place—the words still tell their fair share of sad tales, but the sound is brighter, dancier and crackles with more mature technical dexterity. The opener, "Sushi," has evolved over the years into a fuzzed-out club track; as the emotional intensity rises he implores the object of his affection, "You gonna save me or not?" The irresistible, synth-heavy "Naked in New York" adds a slight edge to the proceedings, as waves of noise crash and recede, revealing a narrator desperate to hang onto an unstable woman. "Polar Bear" tackles life on the road and the people you can't take with you. The ramped-up, guitar-driven "A Constant Wavering Between the Real and the Abstract" gets apocalyptic about love, asserting "Everything special fades away / all hearts will be erased." Standouts "Put Your Hands Up" and "Call and Fade" channel vintage anthemic pop, allowing Andrews to show off his ample skill with pretty melodies and infectious choruses.

Kyle Andrews third release Real Blasty drops Janurary 20th, 2009 and thanks through the miracle of modern technology you can hear two tracks NOW.

Download: Sushi
Download: Wavering Between the Real and the Abstract

Painfully Alone

In support of the just-released The Town Topic EP, original soundtrack to Laurel Nakadate's debut film "Stay The Same Never Change," Casiotone For The Painfully Alone announces a slew of new Fall tour dates.

Here they are...
10.10.08 - Northfield, MN - Carleton College
10.11.08 - Iowa City, IA - PS1
10.12.08 - St Louis, MO - Lemp Arts
10.13.08 - DeKalb, IL - House Café
10.14.08 - Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
10.23.08 - Medford, MA - Oxfam Cafe (Tufts University)
10.24.08 - Annandale-on-Hudson, NY - SMOG (Bard College)
10.25.08 - Ridgewood, Queens, NY - Silent Barn (7pm show)
10.26.08 - Hoboken, NJ - Maxwells
10.27.08 - Providence, RI - Club Hell
10.29.08 - Athens, OH - Crystal Castle
10.30.08 - Cincinnati, OH - Northside Tavern
10.31.08 - Louisville, KY - Pour Haus
11.01.08 - Indianapolis, IN - Locals Only

The Town Topic EP collects tracks from two limited, vinyl-only EPs plus bonus track “Lesley Gore on the Tami Show.” The Town Topic EP consists of thirteen instrumental pieces, book-ended by two vocal tracks. “Ice Cream Truck,” a simulated July soundscape of Mr. Softee jingles, cicadas and trunk-rattling bass from passing cars, tells the story of criminal-minded kids who go joy-riding in a stolen ice cream truck and make other poorly-informed decisions along the way. “Green Cotton Sweater (version),” features blown-out drum machine rhythms, clattering pianos, and loads of vintage amp abuse. Other stand-out tracks include “Town Topic (instrumental),” easily mistaken for the backing track of a long-lost Patsy Cline hit, and “Nashville Parthenon (instrumental),” which re-imagines the original electro arrangement as a lovely and minimalist electric piano lullaby.

Download: Ice Cream Truck

It Always Feels Like...Someone's Watching Me

Ok...so it's not that Rockwell. But hailing from Knoxville, Tennessee, The Rockwells are made up of two sets of of brothers: Fred and Jonathan Kelly, and Tommy and Trace Bateman. They met in high school and started The Rockwells as a long-distance recording project by Jonathan and Fred in 1999, while Fred was working in Memphis and Jonathan had moved to Knoxville for school. Tommy and Trace joined the band in 2000 when Fred moved to Knoxville. After recording four full-length albums and one EP by themselves (on very primitive equipment), the band recorded an EP at Studio 613 with Don Coffee Jr. of Superdrag. This EP was called Tear It Down, since the studio was leveled to make way for I-40 shortly after we finished recording. Talk about omen's.

Their latest album, Place & Time was recorded entirely by The Rockwells in both Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee. More than half a dozen locations were used, including various houses, a cabin, and local rock club The Pilot Light. The record was mixed by Howard Redekopp, who has mixed such Merge artists as The New Pornographers and AC Newmann (also of the New Pornographers.) He was in Canada at the time, and the band couldn’t afford to go up there, so the mixing process was done almost exclusively via email. Guests on the album include Jeremy Bain (May Gray, Slick) on lead guitar and Christina Horn (Hudson K) on piano on “Knot of Tension,” as well as guest vocalist Emily Robinson (Tenderhooks) on “Hole in the Wall.” Seth Hopper (Christabel and the Johns, Tommy Bateman and the Thunder Thieves) played all the violin on the record, as well as trumpet on “Hole in the Wall.” You mom may have made a guest appearance on the record as well...you'll just have to check the album's credits.

Place & Time is being released December 2, 2008 on Migrant Records.

Download: Microkorg
Download: The Quarterback

High Dials Go To 11

Montreal-based The High Dials make lush, intelligent psychedelic pop; dreamy anthems built on bittersweet melodies, bright harmonies and moody guitar sounds. The band has released two previous records: A New Devotion (2003) and War of the Wakening Phantoms (2005), which made year-end top-10 lists of many critics, including the Washington Post and Magnet Magazine, and won high praise from All Music Guide and Spin. The album also went to number one on Canadian college radio charts.

Notable High Dials fans the band have made along the way include Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre (who often turns up at gigs, hopping onstage to join in their songs (and then kicking everyone's ass with a series of kung fu moves and baseball bats), Andrew Loog Oldham, original 60s hustler and star-maker to the Rolling Stones, and Rod Argent, legendary songwriter of the Zombies, who performed on one of the High Dials B-sides.

Moon Country was produced by Joseph Donovan (Sam Roberts, The Dears) and is a celebration of the album as an art form in this MP3 age. The album is divided into two sides – Side A and Side B - like an LP, in the hopes that listeners will take it in as a sequenced, cohesive, self-contained piece of music. Parts of Moon Country were recorded in a remote cabin in Ireland (if you listen closely, you can actually hear the fire crackling in the background!), before the album was completed in a studio in Montreal.

Download: Killer of Dragons

O Mother Where Are Thou

Mother Mother have done the impossible. With their 2007 Last Gang debut, Touch Up, the Vancouver quintet won over the templar of indie discretion, Pitchfork, AND vapid celebrity blogger Perez Hilton. Upon reading Perez's love of the band Lindsay Lohan ran down to Amoeba and bought a copy

Not really, but that would be pretty funny. Lilo w/taste.

With all the accolades at their back, Mother Mother returned to the studio to work up their sophomore answer to Touch Up. The result is the nostalgic, novel, profound and playful O My Heart, recorded by Howard Redekopp and overflowing with 80s new wave energy, Brit Pop cheekiness, and indie rock's rough edges.

Download: O My Heart
Download: Body of Tears

How The Broken West Was Won

It was in a backyard of their L.A. neighborhood that Ross Flournoy, Danny Iead, Rob McCorkindale, Brian Whelan and friend/writing partner Adam Vine developed Now or Heaven, The Broken West's second full-length album. While many bands' second albums end up being about the road, Now or Heaven originates from home, the longing to get there and all that comes from being there. The perspective generated from the time spent on the road and the distance traveled led to a new, unnameable development.

Drummer Rob McCorkindale and bassist Brian Whelan tempered and extended the rhythms and the tone of longing first explored on I Can't Go On, I'll Go On. Each song on Now or Heaven contains clever guitars and sublime harmonies, while the drums and bass deliver driving, deliberate rhythms that are more than metronomic; these pulses literally and figuratively power the album. Now or Heaven also marks Brian’s songwriting debut with the dynamic romp, "Got It Bad."

The Broken West spent a year searching for "a diamond in a bag of ice," only to find what they were looking for in their own backyard. Ross, Danny, Rob, and Brian may have returned from their travels with a more sinister perspective on the world, but despite everything, each song on Now or Heaven is infused with an immediate burst of catchy familiarity and unquenchable charm.

Download: Perfect Games
Download: Auctioneer

An Old Wolf Is A Good Wolf

Amongst the slew of frickin' Wolf bands out there, perhaps the best of the bunch is We Are Wolves. (yeah, so Wolfmother is ADDICTIVE as hell on guitar hero and every time I hear I feel the need to reach for a five button axe but We Are Wolves are better)

We Are Wolves spit and hiss and growl and scream just like their furious name might suggest. Animalistic to the bone, their sound is decidedly unique, melding the frantic buzzsaw energy of electro with the angular intensity of post-punk to create a fiery, primordial din or, you know, the sound of the Cramps making nice with Add N to X.

But no matter how you describe it, the Montreal three-piece sure has wowed a throng of people on its way to creating 2005's Non Stop J rte Plie en Duex, delivered to endless fanfare via Fat Possum, and the equally energetic (and one of the best albums of last year) Total Magique, issued last year by Dare to Care.

Amazingly the band is STILL supporting this record and if you happen to live in Canada you can catch them live. (10-17 El Mocambo Toronto, Ontario10-18 Mavericks Ottawa, Ontario) For those of you in the States they were just on the west coast last month and they didn't even head east so tough cookies...and well if you're here in Florida..there's no chance in hell they'll EVER come here, but the Doo Wop Cruise does depart nightly from Miami, Cocoa Beach, Tampa, AND Jacksonville.

So unless you like walkers and arthritis, relive a classic and...

Download: Fight and Kiss

That's Konrad to You

Konrad is just one of many different musical persona's employed by studio savant/song constructionist Jeffrey Konrad. In the past he's recorded as an 8-bit obsessed electronic musician by the name of Robot USA, an emo indie rocker known as eggspout, and a folksy singer/songwriter called "Nigel Jeffrey" who cut an album titled Struggle in the Hive with Patrick Stolley of Marlboro Chorus and Daytrotter.com. And those are just his "official" credentials, he's also released dozens of underground mix tapes and collaborated on a countless number of other projects with musicians from across the globe.

Now he's dropping his full-length solo debut as Konrad called Loose Canyons; a seeming amalgamation of all his past and present musical personalities all mashed into one meticulously produced package. Combining the old school synth sounds of Devo, the ironic b-boy style of Dan Deacon and the sardonic wit of Hot Chip, and a bit of more recent blur for good measure Konrad is poised to be an underground pop hero or another reason why Jeffrey Konrad needs serious mental help.

Download: Osh Kosh
Download: Canyon Blue
Download: These Nights

The Volcano Erupts

Volcano Suns were founded in Boston in 1983 by former Mission of Burma drummer Peter Prescott. In 1985, the band, with Jon Williams on guitar and Jeff Weigand on bass, released their debut album, The Bright Orange Years, and followed it up a year later with another classic, All Night Lotus Party. Both albums were originally released on Homestead Recordsbut have never been available on CD.

The Bright Orange Years is so chockful of catchy songs that it could be any other band's greatest hits album. The opening track, "Jak", is an addictive head-nodder from its opening bassline to its chiming chords and lyrics. By contrast, All Night Lotus Party is a heavier and darker record, with more distorted guitars and bass-heavy production.

Merge will make both albums available on CD for the first time on January 27, 2009, with reissues remastered by Bob Weston and featuring loads of bonus tracks including radio sessions and other rarities.

Download: Jak
Download: All Night Lotus Party

Rebelling Against French Horns

FRENCH HORN REBELLION are brothers Robert Perlick-Molinari and David Perlick-Molinari. Residing in Chicago and the other in New York, the two create fun boombastic electro induced pop. With Robert as a French Horn major in Chicago where as David is a producer in New York (he produced the first MGMT EP), the duo are prepping to release their next full-length.

Their track from self-titled and self-released full-length "Up All Night" (download below) has been featured by the likes of MTVu and CMJ. The track is twee pop synth heaven in a kooky Magnetic Fields meets Paul Simon sort of way. The duo are also set to release this tune as a single with some extra bombastic remixes.

Download: Up All Night
Download: Bad Arse
Download: Ivy League - London Bridges (French Horn Rebellion Remix)

Kicking Ass

We would love to be able to say that the Donkeys are simply four California beach bums who love to surf, drink cheap beer and jam as the sun sets over the Pacific. The long legacy of music hailing from California – from Bakersfield to the Beach Boys, Sweetheart of the Rodeo through Slanted and Enchanted – has shaped our sense that everything and everyone "out west" is laid back, comfortable and cool.

And to be fair, when it comes to the Donkeys, some of this mystique is true – two of the band's members are indeed surfers, and all four have been known to down a six pack or two. But like California, the real-life Donkeys (best friends from Southern California, Timothy DeNardo, Jessie Gulati, Anthony Lukens and Sam Sprague) are much more... real. If their back story contains those top-down cars and suntanned Utopian surf tableau's, it also contains the malaise and the escape fantasies familiar to all suburban kids of the 80s and 90s. Miraculously, the music manages to comfortably communicate both moods at once. Any expression of existential ennui – "is this all there is?" – is simultaneously soothed by an unrushed guitar lick and a harmonized twang that becomes almost, dare we say, meditative.

Their album, Living on the Other Side is about rolling down the windows, cranking up the stereo, and hitting the open road. Maybe you're running away, and maybe you're not, but either way, every thing's going to be alright.

Download: Walk Through A Cloud
Download: Nice Train

It's So Downtempo

Between its title and content, the Phoenix-based trio Mr. Meeble’s sensual and soulful pop meets dark electronica record is bound to drop jaws, turn heads and offend, oh, maybe about a billion people. It’s nothing personal… well, except for the one nameless female who inspired this collection of songs that tell stories of the denial and despair of lost love, personal accountability, remembering, mourning and finally, just maybe, a glimmer of hope.

Reminiscent of fellow French band Air, Never Trust... has moments of smooth, breathy vocals over spacey synths, chilled-out Rhodes and orchestral strings. At other times, it sounds similar to Massive Attack’s Mezzanine and Thom Yorke’s Eraser with its emotive, pained vocals over minimal, tense electronics.

Never Trust's curious mix of stops, glitches, pops, whizzes, bleeps, stutters, and scratches together with sweeping, sometimes unnerving, visceral emotion is as close to opposites becoming singularly effective as you will find in music, or any art form, for that matter.

Download: Fine
Download: I Fell Through

With With With Mit Mit Mit

MIT are three German teenagers who used to make noisy electronic punk and now, with their first full length CODA, have mutated their sound to hypnotic electro-neo-kraut-extravaganza. America meet Tamer, Felix, and Edi.

It’s doubtful you’ll understand anything they’re singing about, unless you speak German, but these three young men will keep you interested with all their instruments, layers, computers, and drums.

Their resulting minimal electronic punk sound is soaked with urgent rhythms, aggressive tribal drums and of course, mesmerizing synthscapes. This is the sort of stuff that will beat you up and leave and you out on your own in the cold all by your lonseome and you'll love every minute of it .

It's good stuff in that oh so German cold as ice way and that's why you need it in your life.

Download: Beispiel
Download: Zwei
Download: Park
Download: Rauch
Download: Goodbook
Download: War War Es

Leopold and his Fiction

Leopold and his Fiction is the balanced reincarnate of a sultry era of Western darkness underneath big city lights and country back roads leading to the morning shore of a transpiring musical horizon. The honest and transcendent San Francisco Rock ‘n' Roll band escalating into the west coast music scene, Leopold and his Fiction acquires a moody-pop frame derived from distant genres and unwavering imagination in an attempt to reinvent what each member feels has dissipated from the greater measure of music.

Leopold provides Detroit filth and guitar orientation breathing parallel with rasped vocals soaring to a grave reflection. Of the trio's American bicoastal familiarity and British influence, Daniel, along with the recent addition of bassist Micayla Grace, and drummer Jon Sortland contribute to a very diverse sound through personal interests.

Together Leopold and his Fiction offers a morbid cohesion of California and a gentle open plains reminiscence stimulating a reason and energy for people to listen closely. A new vision in music and thought offers an alternate take to the repetition of a-sides with their own traditional sounds and elaborations.

Download: Come Back (Now That I'm Here)

Don't Quit Smoking Now!

Tobacco creates unique, compelling pop from the power and constrictions of his available technology. He makes music that is at once buoyant, danceable and unmistakably eerie. He plays "lo-fi" music for high yields, and he gives his simplest constructions a powerful dramatic sweep. He makes music with suave passion, burning vitality and cinematic depth. And he never stops searching for the perfect beat.

On F***ed Up Friends, his first solo album, Tobacco explores a darker, starker and altogether more badass dimension of his complex vision. With his group Black Moth Super Rainbow, Tobacco distinguished himself as a master of jagged beats, glowing melodies and pronounced tension. This time, he works alone, in rural Pennsylvania, away from conventions and interference.

As always, Tobacco recorded F***ed Up Friends using analog synths and tape machines, which gives his work a timeless distance from digital pop music at large. His tracks evoke sonar, mellotrons and deteriorating cassette tapes. His windshield-rattling beats thump hard against their technological limitations. His hooks emerge from thick ponds of distortion, which heightens their hypnotic power. His music is equally cosmopolitan and self-contained, the soundtrack for an imaginary underwater cop show, a welcome stranger anywhere in time and space.

Download: Truck Sweat
Download: Hood Internet vs. Tobacco (via Sendspace)
Download: Songs to Get Killed In The Woods Too (via XLR8R)

Remember Them?

Matt Sims began startling audiences since 2000 with his unusually provocative performances that mix equal amounts political satire , surreal imagery and sensual debauch. With three dancers (à la The Fall), this performance group explored the contemporary connections between media, consumerism, sex, and entertainment. Gaining comparisons from artist Paul McCarthy’s food work to James Brown’s hip work, this show caused enough of a stir to get the attention of DJ Hell who quickly signed them to his International DJ Gigolo Records label alongside the likes of Tuxedo Moon, Terence Fixmer, CROSSOVER, Vitalic and Linda Lamb. The release of Mt. Sims’s first album Ultrasex on Emperor Norton Records, now a cult classic electro-pop album, put Sims on the map internationally with the hit song “Hate Fuck.”

After releasing a second album Wild Light and touring extensively throughout Europe as a three-piece band (as opposed to a performance art piece as was the case with Ultrasex) Sims decided on breaking the band up and relocating to Berlin, Germany. It is here that Sims began working on the new incarnation of the band with Randy Twigg on bass, Andre Lange on drums, and Thomas Stern of Crime and The City Solution at the behind the sound and production. A long-distance friendship between Sims and Hungry Eye Records (New York City/ Montreal, home of The Bellmer Dolls, Sixteens, The Holy Kiss) led to a collaboration and the release of a limited 12”, the A Grave EP, and now the third full length, Happily Ever After.

This new album is an even further departure from electronic dance music and is creepier and more aggressive in its content than any other Mt. Sims album, featuring guest musicians Jessie Evans (Vanishing, Autonervous, Subtonix) and Toby Damit (Swans, Iggy Pop). Happily Ever After is set for release on Hungry Eye Records this fall and sounds something like a less electronic She Wants Revenge meets Joy Division stuck at the Hacienda on a lot of bad pills and blinded all the fog in Britain at once. It's manic dark stuff that rocks like a mother fucker. Who knew that Mt. Sims still had it in them, but they do and that's a good thing.

Download: The Bitten Bite Back

The Middle East via The Second City

Chicago by way of New Orleans duo Telefon Tel Aviv has signed to BPitch Control, who will release the band's third official full-length, Immolate Yourself on January 20, 2009. It's the band's first official full-length in five years. Judging by the track below, this record should be very very good and very reminiscent of old Mute Records stuff.

Prior to working on Immolate Yourself the band remixed tracks for the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Apparat and Bebel Gilberto, to name a few.

The band's previous albums were released via Chicago label Hefty Records but will now be available worldwide thanks to the fine folks at BPitch!

They will also tour North America this Fall with Ghostly artist Matthew Dear. The tour will stop at the following cities...
10/08 Seattle, WA Chop Suey
10/09 Portland, OR Holocene
10/10 San Francisco, CA Mighty
10/11 Los Angeles, CA Avalon
10/15 Montreal, QC Club Lambi
10/16 Toronto, ON Wrong Bar
10/18 Ann Arbor, MI The Blind Pig

Download: Helen of Troy

What's the Pattern?

Following their first three records and the transition from five-to-four-to-three-to-two members, Pattern Is Movement turned themselves inside out and made the record that started this frenzy: All Together.

Rising out of Andrew Thiboldeaux's and Chris Ward's left-behind evangelical childhoods (see Jesus Camp), best friendship (kindled as kids listening to The Chronic), and life in Philadelphia, All Together continues the mysterious narrative of the band, both documenting and foretelling the pounding energy of their near-legendary live show: Chris and Andrew side-by-side, hammering drums and keys (among other things), sweat flying, voices hollering.

And really if you don't have All Together yet, you should really get on that before they pass through your city on their latest tour.

Here are some dates...
10/01/08 – Los Angeles, CA - Spaceland
10.03.08 – Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of the Living Arts
10.04.08 – New York, NY - Webster Hall
10.07.08 – Austin, TX - Mohawk – w/ Balmorhea
10.08.08 – Dallas, TX - House on Swiss
10.09.08 – Atlanta, GA - Georgia Tech
10.11.08 – Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club
10.14.08 – Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506
10.15.08 – Harrisonburg, VA - Clementine
10.16.08 – Pittsburgh, PA - Carnegie Mellon University

Download: Right Away
Download: Bird