Two great videos surfaced today from the Primavera Sound Festival that wrapped up yesterday in Barcelona. Although both vids are shot from the outer rim of the crowd and are optically zoomed in to the max, the integrity of the audio remains pretty much intact (a surprise in festival settings).
The first video is of the inevitable cover of Wavves’s “So Bored” by PT-Music favorites Best Coast:
The second is a smooth recording of Real Estate’s “Fake Blues”. Enjoy!
———————————————————
And here is one more Primavera 2010 video dug up from the depths of youtube, this time “Cold Freezing Night” by The Books:
Still don’t know much about Chicago slow-mo beat maker Stalker, but if they keep making these molasses-flowing jams at the rate they’ve been doing recently, I think I can live with the veil of anonymity. Their latest track, the casually named “final_1″, is anything but a half-hazardly composed demo one might expect from the title. Coming in at a cool 52 bpm, the song is one of the fastest in Stalker’s repertoire. Maybe it’s a by-product of the increased speed or maybe I’m just getting used to listening to their songs, but “final_1″ seems to go down a lot easier than past tracks — resulting in more head-nodding and less twinges of uneasiness due to the crawling pace.
You can download an mp3 of the track below and, if you like it, check out a trio of other tracks from Stalker’s myspace page.
Although not packing as much punch as his “Prologue”, “Come With Me” finds Eric Berglund exhibiting the same playfulness he brought to the table with his group The Tough Alliance. This out-of-left-field LP is definitely turning into the most anticipated album of the year for me. You can snag the mp3 below:
After 18 straight months of riding the chill-wave, blasting the likes of Real Estate, Memoryhouse, Neon Indian, et al, I think I might be hitting my saturation point. The past two weeks I’ve pretty much imposed a moratorium on “sunny beach tunes” and have chosen instead to jam out more to some good ol’ fashioned indie-rock. Great timing for the Massachusetts group The Broken River Prophet to send me a duo of their mp3s as their tracks certainly have been hitting the sweet spot on my playlist.
Closing in on two decades as a band, The Broken River Prophet has certainly had its share of line-up changes that most collective groups experience. The current arrangement is that of a trio featuring Adam Brilla on vocals/guitar, Dennis Noble on bass, and Marty Rex on drums. The three are presently working on new material, opting to record on old-school analog tape machines in order to recreate the feel of some of their favorite albums that were captured with only tape and tubes — long before Ableton became such a household name.
I don’t have any songs to share from the new incarnation of the band, however, here are two stellar indie-rock tracks that they made in the past that are sure to please everyone:
For the past two weeks Dayve Hawk of Memory Tapes/Memory Cassette/Weird Tapes fame has been offering a free remix made available at the online distribution site RCRD LBL. Now these past two Monday releases might be just a coincidence, however it could also be an indication that new Memory Tapes stuff could be coming out via the site’s label (I guess no surprise that RCRD LBL has a label!). We’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the coming weeks.
These two remixes, the first of Brit-rockers Chapel Club’s “Five Trees the second of Matt Van Schie’s electro-pop ballad “Journey”, show that Hawk certainly hasn’t lost any of his pizzazz since releasing the stellar Seek Magic LP over a year ago. You can stream/download the two tracks below as well as one of my all-time favorite Memory Tapes remixes:
Got a mega-edition of this week’s video round-up, so let’s just jump right in:
The first video is the official cut for the Swedish percussion duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums track “Bleed Like There Was No Other Flood” (via It’s A Trap). The beautiful visual projections match perfectly with the mysterious, if not all out dark, tone of the chorally-dense song:
Switching gears a bit, this mash-up between Weezy F. Baby and The Office is unbelievable (courtesy of Get Off the Coast). Once you get past the initial shock of hearing the two paired together, you find that the two actually work pretty damn well together:
Although I’ve been a bit mum about them on the blog, I’ve been spinning the blissful lo-fi pop songs of Brooklyn’s Beach Fossils a lot lately. Here’s a stellar video put together by Wooden Lens for their track “Window View” (via Delicious Scopitone):
Behind Sincerely Yours, I would say that Labrador Records is my second favorite Swedish label. They somehow have a knack for finding and signing bands that pump out a great variety of pop songs. The latest music video from one of their artists is this treat by the Mary Onettes entitled “The Night Before the Funeral”:
Nice to see the behemoths over at Pitchfork give some love to PT-Music favorites Memoryhouse. Here is their official music video for their beautiful bedroom pop song “Lately (Deuxieme)” as premiered on p4k’s .tv spin-off:
David Greenwald posted this amazing video on his Rawkblog of Dan Bejar (of Destroyer, New Pornos, Swan Lake fame) acoustically performing “The Freedom”. Take a listen:
In case you’ve been living in a cave, here is the official video for The National’s “Bloodbuzz Ohio” (via IGIF). Great stuff as usual…
To wrap-up this mega listing of videos, here is a brand spanking new track by Philly uncategorizable band Man Man as posted by Matt over at You Ain’t No Picasso. Soooo excited for this record to be released!
NPR really has been impressing me with some of their out of left-field picks for their critically acclaimed Tiny Desk Concert series, particularly that of French/Lebanese multi-instrumentalist Abaji and Columbian jazz harpist Edmar Castaneda.
I couldn’t find an embeddable video of Abaji’s performance at music guru Bob Boilen’s desk (for that, you’ll have to go directly to the source — and trust me, you’ll want to do it), however, here is him performing “Desert to Desert” off his most recent LP entitled Origine Orients. This really is mind-blowing stuff.
As for Edmar Castaneda, check out his amazing fifteen-minute performance showcasing his killer harp skills that would even leave Joanna Newsom’s mouth agape:
I couldn’t find any freely downloadable mp3s of either one, but thankfully there is a wealth of videos uploaded on youtube displaying their amazing talent, so check them out!
It seems like NYC experimental pop group Twin Sister has somehow avoided having a single post by yours truly. I don’t know why I keep neglecting all these bands I love — Toro y Moi also suffered from the same affliction until recently — but I promise I’ll start to correct this phenomenon. And what better way to do that than featuring this kick ass live session recorded by the archivers over at NYC Taper.
When I don’t want to sift through the massive amount of live recordings housed at archives.org, I head over to NYC Taper where I know that I’ll wind up with a great listen every single time. Lately, the site has really outdone themselves, hosting stellar sets from PT-Music favorites Local Natives, Harlem, and, of course, Twin Sister — all from the past two weeks!
The song that you can hear below is the p4k approved “spacey disco” number “All Around and Away We Go” off their first EP Vampires with Dreaming Kids which you can download from their site for free here. If you like how the track sounds live, head over to NYC Taper and snag the whole set (available in both FLAC and mp3) gratis as well. Also, check out the video blog-pal Mark at yvynyl put together for the song:
I’ve been a big fan of the Norwegian electro-pop group Casiokids since I caught them live during one of the warm-up days at the 2008 Roskilde Festival in Denmark. Half art show, half dance party, this Bergen-based band certainly knows how to have a great time while on stage. After catching all of their thirty minute set, I said at the time that “the only direction I see them moving is up” — and boy was I right!
After signing to the famed Polyvinyl label a little over a year ago, the band is slated to release their first LP stateside, entitled Topp Stemning På Lokal Bar, and with it comes this potential B-side Stereogum-premiered Prins Thomas remix of their hit “En Vill Hest”. Also for your listening pleasure, I threw in an old Casiokids remix of Lindstrøm’s “The Long Way Home”. Check them both out below:
Alex, from the chilled-out psych group The Frequency, sent me a couple of tracks a while back that I’ve only just now gotten around to listening to. Hailing from Los Angeles, arguably the capital of the burgeoning fuzzed-out pop-rock movement, The Frequency creates similar “relaxed vibes” through smooth guitar rifts and soft vocals rather than masking catchy tunes in a sea of hazy distortion like their fellow West Coast lo-fi brethren.
Below are two of my favorite tracks of theirs — both featured on their upcoming Absence of Giants LP — that are sure to help you unwind this Tuesday afternoon. The first, entitled “The Stir”, is the beginning half of an 8-minute track that bounces around all over the place. From spacey whirls to twangy guitar, the song guarantees to have some snippet that is sure to pique your interest. Similarly, “Love is One” is a multi-part, 11+ minute piece that better exhibits the psychedelic tendencies of the band. If you dig the tunes, check out the band’s website for info on shows, free downloads, and videos.
