Posts Tagged ‘Grouper’

300th Post // Vinyl Giveaway

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

It’s been quite the journey. I started Part-Time Music about two and a half years ago while I was an engineering grad student in Denmark. Although a lot has changed geographically with me (Denmark -> Germany -> Texas -> Oregon -> Utah), the site has remained mostly the same since its inception — opting to stay with the “default” wordpress template throughout chieftly due to my ever-shrinking free time and my lack of web design skills. For me, the blog has never been about readership, or page hits, or ad $$ (the only one up is for an iPhone app my bro made), it’s been about the music. It’s always been about the music. I have nothing but the utmost respect for all the creative minds out there in the world doing things I know I could never do. With the site, all I ever wanted to do is piece together a few kind words to say about all the artists I’ve grown to love over the years and give a little praise (albeit a relatively small amount in this giant blog-o-world we live in) and maybe provide some motivation for them to keep going.

Anyways, enough sentimental stuff — let’s get on to the freebies! To celebrate this 300th post achievement as well as my recent move to Utah, I put together a collection of vinyl that I think best represents what my blog is about (starting upper left, moving clockwise):

  • Grouper // He Knows, He Knows, He Knows 7” // Incredibly super limited self-made vinyl by Portland’s dark experimentalist Liz Harris
  • Woods // I Was Gone 7” // Limited, one-time pressing (out of 1,500) of this Brooklyn psych-folk group
  • Sleater-Kinney // The Hot Rock LP // Sleater-Kinney is one of my favorite bands of all-time. This is one of my favorite albums of theirs (released in 1999, pretty sure this is a repress as it’s brand new in package).
  • Kurt Vile // He’s Alright 7” // First release on Matador Records by Philly lo-fi rocker Kurt Vile. A must have for any KV fan.
  • Dirty Projectors & Castanets // Unusual Animals Vol. 2 // A split 10” celebrating the Maned Three-Toed Sloth by experimental rockers The Dirty Projectors and alt country-ers Castanets. Released in 2006 on Sufjan Steven’s Asthmatic Kitty Records. Probably the most random release I’ve seen.
  • Hanoi Janes // Young & Dumb 7” // This five-song 7” (!!) is the second they’ve released for Captured/Tracks. Love this band so much…
  • Big Boi // Sir Lucious Left Foot… // Who wouldn’t want the best rap record released this year? (Alternate cover, limited edition!)

So yeah, that’s it! A lot of limited releases, a lot of my favorite bands, a lot of random (yet cool) stuff. Mad props to Slowtrain here in Salt Lake City for having a lot of these releases in stock.

To win, just retweet this here message and/or leave an inspiring comment below (US residents are only eligible to win, if you leave a comment be sure to include a valid e-mail addy so I can get back to you). Thanks again to all my long-time readers and cheers to my new fans! Hope you find something you like!

Kurt Vile // Freeway

Woods // I Was Gone

Grouper // Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping

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Grouper // Portland // January 24, 2010

Monday, January 25th, 2010

The good folks down at Holocene put together an awesome Haiti Benefit show yesterday that rivaled other efforts across town. With all of the money from the $10 tickets and bar profits going to Mercy Corps, the event, entitled “L’Union Fair La Force”, certainly generated thousands of dollars for a good cause. And hey, it didn’t hurt that the attendees got their money’s worthy from a bill including local-studs Grouper and Pyramiddd (formerly known as the less eloquent Starfucker).

I only caught the Grouper set because, well, I knew that all the other acts would pale in comparison to her performance (plus I had some Wire to watch). Like always, Liz Harris puts on a show not meant for musical entertaining but spiritual awakening. With cassettes of pre-made eerie sounds specifically designed for each song, Harris records, loops, and layers guitar and vocals lines and places them on top of the tapes’ creepy noises — kind of like a more haunting Imogen Heap.

To be honest, I don’t know how Harris draws enough courage to go up on stage for live performances. Her music isn’t particularly conducive to casual listening, requiring complete silence from the audience in order to fully experience it. In a town where casual listening is the norm and crowd chatter drowns out even popular acts, if I was Harris I would pull a Sally Shapiro and just let the records speak for themselves and stay away from the stage whenever possible. Thankfully for us true fans, she braved the inevitable disruptions and stage fright associated with solo performing and gave us a gift with her music while helping the people of Haiti at the same time.

Here is “Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping”, one of my favorite tracks from her hit album Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill that she unfortunately didn’t perform last night, and a new track entitled “Hold the Way” off of her new split EP with Roy Montgomery which she did play:

Grouper // Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping

Grouper // Hold the Way

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Did You Miss Me? Pt. III

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Closing out this series of catch-up posts, I’ll start with the end of an era with Lubbock favorites The Diamond Center leaving West Texas for the more fertile grounds of Richmond, Virginia. To say an appropriate farewell, a majority of Lubbock acts took part in “Texodus”, an all day free music fest, at the beginning of August. The show was funny at times, emotional at others, but always lively with act-after-act displaying the awesomeness that is the Lubbock music scene. Here’s a pic of La Panza that night:

Following the example of The Diamond Center, I left Lubbock later that month to make way to Portland, where since then I’ve settled down nicely. I’ve seen a handful of shows, but have only been able to document some of them (camera restrictions at venue, poor lighting, etc…). Here’s a brief list:

In mid-September, I also attended Music Fest Northwest (MFNW), Portland’s counter to Austin’s SXSW. Pretty much every hip-and-trendy venue in Portland takes part in this four day fest, with bands ranging from obscure locals to popular international acts filling up bills. The festival’s first set was at Berbati’s Pan courtesy of Okkervil River’s Will Sheff. Here’s a video from the performance:

Highlights from the festival included:

A lull in my concert going happened for most October, but I was able to check out the Danish act Choir of Young Believers. I caught them open for three acts while in Denmark, and then it was just a duo between singer/songwriter Jannis Noya Makrigiannis and cellist Caecilie Trier. Playing with a handful of more musicians, COYB shocked me at how much they have improved over the span of a year. Where once they seemed emotionally detached from their music live, during their Portland performance they were spewing energy and excitement left and right. Sure the sad ballads and whole-note based compositions were there, but they had a different air about them that made the performance much more intriguing.

Well this ends my recap of the past six or so months I’ve been absent from the blog. I have a string of shows I intend to see (Girls and Neon Indian are on tap just for today!), so I’ll be sure to post some more in depth reviews. I’ll also update a bit more regularly with daily blurbs of interesting acts, videos, and songs found throughout the interwebs. Plus, my vinyl collection has been growing and I have some ripped gems that I want to share with the world, so stay tuned!

Here are some tracks from the artists mentioned above:

The Diamond Center // Dos Fridas

Woods // Rain On

Grouper // Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping

Choir of Young Believers // Next Summer

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