Archive for August, 2011

Angel Olsen // In the Morning

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Fresh off her Strange Cacti vinyl release on Bathetic Records (an exact duplicate of her stellar cassette from 2010), I’ve been dying to hear some new material from this heart breaking Chicagoan singer/songwriter. Fortunately, the folks over at Two Syllable Records has satiated that desire — albeit only partially — by releasing a fresh new Angel Olsen track for a Chi-town-centric compilation cassette.

Weekly Tape Deck premiered the near a-capella song last week and it’s taken me a bit to digest as Olsen takes you through the emotional ringer with her voice. Coming in at just under three minutes, “In the Morning” seems to be an inner monologue of a complex, depression-tinged mind, spitting out stream of consciousness style lyrics that take a while to decipher. Not Olsen’s best track, but for the time being it’ll do as we wait for more material. Check it out:

Angel Olsen // In the Morning

Glasser // Treasury of We (Delorean Remix)

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

Keeping the remix vibe going from yesterday, Delorean’s take on Glasser’s xylophone-heavy “Treasury of We” — taken from her stellar 2010 LP Ring — seems to be battling for the “remix of the year” title. Deloreans reinvention of the sparsely constructed track strips everything out except the vocals and reconstructs it as a Euro-tastic discoteque jam that’ll be danced to from Lisbon to Krakow. Check out both the original and remix below:

Glasser // Treasury of We

Glasser // Treasury of We (Delorean Remix)

Grimes // Crystal Ball (Stalker Remix)

Monday, August 29th, 2011

Holy.Shit. Just when you think you’ve heard all the Grimes remixes another comes seemingly out of nowhere to blow you away. Stalker’s take on “Crystal Ball” is not just a unique spin on a tried-and-true Grimes track, but it’s also a complete 180 from any other Stalker track you may have heard in the past year and a half.

For the first time in, well, forever, the tempo remains above molasses pace and you have elements with sixteenth note rhythms (snare taps, vocal cuts), but the “traditionalists” need not fret: the grinding warped guitars are still there and the track itself still has that overall uncomfortable dissonance to it that Stalker is known for (although not as pervasive compared to say “final_1″). What gets me most excited about this remix is the fact that Stalker seems to be branching out and experimenting more which makes me even more eager to listen in on his future stuff. Check out the track below and get ready to be blown away:

Grimes // Crystal Ball (Stalker 432Hz Mirroremix)

Mika Miko

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

Awesome gifs from an awesome band. [via]

While you’re at it, check out an old Mika Miko daytrotter session that was recorded back in 2009 but only posted after it was rediscovered this past week.

Work Drugs // Swimmer Girl

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

While the East Coast is getting hammered by a hurricane and the Pacific Northwest is rainy as usual, the weather couldn’t be any more beautiful here in landlocked Utah. Looking outside my window at another cloudless day, it’s kind of hard to believe that it’s just about time to say au revoire to summer 2k11. To kick us in autumn properly, we have a summer-ending smooth beach jam courtesy of Philly’s Work Drugs. Now I’ve talked about these guys a couple of times before, and with “Swimmer Girl” you getting much of the same thing (shimmering guitars, airy keyboards, vocals that don’t extend past an octave) but somehow they always seem to hit the sweet spot of what my ears like. You can stream the track below and if you got time, check out the Baywatch-esque video:

Swimmer Girl by Work Drugs

Pigeons // Dead Echo

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

It’s been a while since I heard a peep out of the forward-thinking Bronx duo Pigeons (who, by the way, have the best band website on the planet). Coming off an ultra-limited release cassette release on Japanese label Sixteen Tambourines, the group is back with an impending stateside release, an LP verbosely called They Sweetheartstammers, on Minneapolis’s Soft Abuse Records. To celebrate the upcoming November release, the label threw up a stream of the track “Dead Echo” on their soundcloud, with the tagged genre of “Avantpop” isbeing incredibly apropos. Check it out:

Pigeons “Dead Echo” by Soft Abuse

Colleen Green // Cujo EP

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

If someone asked me what are my three favorite micro-genres of music that I enjoy most at the moment it would be beat-laden electronica, “witch house” (in quotes), and girl-driven garage rock. Adding another hyperlink to the latter is Oaklander/LA-uh-er and recent Art Fag Recordings signee Colleen Green.

Admittedly, I don’t know much about her biography (and it seems like I’m not the only one), however, for all those that have been jaded by the recent transformations of one Bethany Cosentino will find a home with Green’s don’t-give-a-fuck songs. After blazing through what she has posted on her bandcamp — nine tracks, mostly covers — it makes me excited to hear what she has in store for her six-track Art Fag EP. After scouring the internet for mp3s from the new release, I could only dig up an acoustic version of “Cujo” Green did for Washington State University’s KZUU radio back in March, which you can hear below, and a link to what sounds like the vinyl ready version of the same track over at blahblahblahscience. Enjoy!

Colleen Green // Cujo (Live Acoustic on KZUU)

Outfit // Two Island’s 7”

Sunday, August 21st, 2011

There is a lot of things I miss about living in Europe, one of which that resides near the top of the list is the ability to get records from European labels without international shipping. Case in point: every single Double Denim Records release. Their latest is courtesy of the Liverpudlian (or more accurately Wirralian) un-googleable psych-pop band Outfit.

To celebrate the pre-order, Double Denim is streaming both sides of the 7” from their soundcloud page (which you can check out below). The A-side “Two Islands” is the clear winner of the two. Opening with experimental drones/groans for a good eighty seconds, the noise gets pushed aside (but not forgotten) by the pure pop sprightly vocals of singer Andrew Hunt. The six-plus minute song could be classified as noise-pop but not in the traditional sense: instead of meshing the two genres in a mess that you can sing along to, “Two Islands” keeps to its namesake and separates the noise from the pop making for a disjoint, yet compelling, listen. Check out it out below as well as the less impressive B-side “Vehicles.”

DD007 A1: Outfit // Two Islands by Double Denim Records

DD007 B1: Outfit // Vehicles by Double Denim Records

Slow Magic // ▲

Saturday, August 20th, 2011

When I first popped open the e-mail sent by the enigmatic artist known as Slow Magic, I didn’t know what to expect. With an album title like , one can’t help but think this is another B-rated witch house album that the internet seems to churn out on an hourly basis. However, the multilingual description (ranging from Icelandic to Japanese) of:

Slow magic is the sound made by an unknown imaginary friend.

遅い魔法は未知の想像上の友人が作った音です。

Slow galdur er hljóðið gert með því að óþekkt ímyndaða vini.

La magie lente est le bruit fait par un ami inconnu imaginaire.

made me think that this was some sort of an offshoot of a Sincerely Yours artist. However, all is settled when you finally get around to pressing play and slipping into that chillwave-tinged dream-pop trance.

With the likes of acts such as Weeknd and Cults seemingly coming out of nowhere to land on the big stage in a matter of nanoseconds, it’s becoming less and less surprising to be hit with an out-of-left-field e-mail from someone who has producing a high quality, exceptional album. Certainly Slow Magic falls in this category, and the three track geometric-titled EP is ready-made to be slapped on some wax tomorrow and sold through a worldwide distro by Tuesday.

The opener, and arguably the best of the trio of tracks, “Corvette Cassette” makes good use of the light, off-beat arpeggios to lift you up off the couch and float you in the clouds. The distorted vocal sample — which I can’t quite make out the language/lyrics — does a good job of keeping you suspended while the dueling keyboard lines at the two-minute mark push you past the atmosphere and into interstellar space. It’s pretty much everything you could ask for from a quote-unquote chillwave track: breezy, delicate, and surprisingly complex yet easy to listen to. Check out the song below:

Slow Magic // Corvette Cassette

Balam Acab // Wander|Wonder

Friday, August 19th, 2011

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF this is going to be so good! Out on August 29th via Tri-Angle Records. Damn, even these waveforms look good:

Balam Acab – Motion by TriAngleRecords

BALAM ACAB – Apart by TriAngleRecords

BALAM ACAB – Oh, Why by TriAngleRecords