Stream Speculator’s upcoming Underwater People’s LP (via Altered Zones) below. Love it. Then pre-order the album from UP’s store and love it even more.
Posts Tagged ‘Underwater Peoples’
Speculator // Nice
Sunday, September 4th, 2011Family Portrait // Other Side
Monday, April 11th, 2011
Really bummed that the only time I ever saw Family Portrait live was at a dark, weird, and, unfortunately, poorly attended Portland venue that was the second-to-last tour stop for them and labelmates Pill Wonder. Wasn’t really conducive to “good vibes”…
Thankfully, that bad taste from a year ago has been washed out of my ears with the news that Family Portrait is to release their S/T debut on PT-Music favorite Underwater Peoples Records. The first “single” from the new album is this killer-ly catchy vibe-inducing transcendental track “Other Side” which you can check out below (via Aquarium Drunkard):
Out of Office: Autoreply (II)
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
I am the worst blogger on the planet. Until I return (Friday?), do yourself a favor and pre-order the Tennis 7” on Underwater Peoples RIGHT NOW!
Julian Lynch // Droplet on a Hot Stone 7”
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
Got a sweet press release from the folks over at Underwater Peoples about an hour ago announcing an upcoming release from New Jersey native Julian Lynch. Although both tracks featured on the 7” aren’t anything new (“Droplet on a Hot Stone” and “Nen Vole” were both on the Wild Animal Kingdom Records released Born2Run cassette which you can somehow still purchase here), it’s always nice to have them in a vinyl format.
You can pre-order the 7” from UP’s store here and while you’re at it, I’d recommend snagging the re-issue of Real Estate’s Live on the Radio LP as well. It’s one of my favorite pieces of wax in my collection. For those who are unaware of what Mr. Lynch’s music sounds like, here is a track he did for the UP Winter Compilation:
Mountain Man Fest
Thursday, April 15th, 2010
Shane & Gabe have a dream. A dream to host the raddest festival that ever existed.
That’s the intro to one of the latest kickstarter music projects that caught my eye. I got to hand it to these two dudes, they certainly know how to dream big! Coordinating with the folks at Underwater Peoples Records, Shane and Gabe have decided to crank their music love affair to 11 and are trying to put on a very impressive one-day, listener-funded festival in upstate New York.
No doubt the largest obstacle this festival needs to overcome is the $65,000 that must be raised in a one month time frame — an amount that, according to a back-of-an-envelope calculation, equates to sixty-two $35 tickets sold daily — however, the coordinators seem undaunted by the challenge. Smartly, the group has already launched a kickstarter page to help generate funds, resulting in a type of transparency you don’t usually get with events of this magnitude. Not only can you track in real-time how many attendees the festival will have (something a data nerd like myself loves), but you also get a rough break-down of the expenditures: sound & lights = $4000, venue rental = $3000, and, impressively, $48750 = band fees, just to name a few.
So far the line-up includes:
- Islands
- HEALTH
- Real Estate
- Phantogram
- Woods
- Pill Wonder
- Family Portrait
- Julian Lynch
- Summer Camp
- Cults
- Eternal Summers
- Memoryhouse
- Yip Yip
Unfortunately, the most notable absentee (and Underwater Peoples alum) is the festival’s namesake: Mountain Man. But with line-up additions occurring somewhat regularly, there is a chance this might be remedied.
So if you know you’ll be in New York or a surrounding state on Saturday, July 24, do yourself a favor and reserve your ticket now and check out the most kickass festival Saratoga Springs, NY has ever seen!
Pill Wonder // Jungle|Surf 12”
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
It’s been a while since I’ve done a record review, but Pill Wonder‘s Jungle/Surf 12”, released on the much heralded Underwater Peoples label, is just what I need to snap out of my slump. Adhering to the records appellation to a T, the vinyl is thematically split — the A-side being more “earthy” and the B-side more “beachy”, as you would expect — showcasing the diversity of these Washington experimentalists. Producing some of the most original full-band stuff I’ve heard in quite sometime, it’s hard to pinpoint (or, as bands would say, “pigeonhole”) Pill Wonder’s sound. All your left with after an initial listen is a favorable impression and the desire to spin the record on repeat.
No doubt, the vinyl’s highlights are found in the mid-section of each side. Marked by a mishmash of percussion noise and a persistent squeaky sound, which I can only describe as a distractive recorder-gone-bad, the openers of both faces on the 12” (“Foggg Eater” and “Wasted By the Screen”, respectively) certainly don’t put the band’s best foot forward. However, all is forgotten and forgiven when the needle jumps to track 2. On the A-side, “What We Know” begins with an assortment of wildlife sounds which matched perfectly the animal projections they had displayed when I caught them live back in November. After about a minute of this, the melody begins to rise up from the jungle floor and whispered vocals — the type that is more secretive than seductive — take over the track. Towards the end, the “bubbling feeling” that is present throughout the song gets manifested literally by a rapid-echo on the “AAoohhs” before seamlessly transitioning into the next track. Arguably my favorite in the bunch, “Being Bored”, with its legato couplets at the beginning and end of each phrase and its bouncy beat, is a lot of fun to listen to and, I’d imagine, a lot of fun to record.
As for the B-side, the second track, entitled “Gone to the Market”, is a verifiable jammm. Equipped with a head-bobbing intro and chant-able repeated lyrics of “and they look you in the eye”, the track will easily rouse the most arms-crossed of hipster crowds and have them singing in unison to the “AAAAOOOooohhhs” by the end. After the dancing to “Gone to Market” ends and the dust is settled, the record concludes with two of Pill Wonder’s most ballad-like songs: “Family Vacation” and “When I Look Back”. The former is a pleasant-enough track that brings the listener off their high and back to planet earth while the latter is short and sweet enough to serve as a perfect palate cleanser to an otherwise raucous record.
Give a listen to “Gone to Market” and “What We Know” below as well as check out the amazing, but mildly-NSFW, video they put together for “Wishing Whale” (the closer to the A-side). And if you like what you hear, cop the record from Underwater Peoples’s store here.
Real Estate // Portland // November 19, 2009
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
There was a sweet show yesterday featuring recently crowned Best New Music inductee Real Estate alongside future Underwater Peoples labelmates Pill Wonder with Northwest homegrowns Rainbow Bridge sandwiched between. Holocene, the very slick venue where the bands were playing, also had a DJ spinning some 80s-tastic tracks in between sets with acid washed stock video footage playing on a huge projector screen — mixing nicely with the “chillwave” vibe of the acts.
I was excited to check out openers Pill Wonder just because I noticed they had a 12” in the queue and was hoping that they played some of their new material (a man can only gauge so much from four tracks on their myspace). I wasn’t disappointed as the seven piece (!) band exceeded their 30 minute time slot churning out their patented psychedelic tinged garage rock for a crowd of about forty. They ended strong with a solid funkadelic/r&b number with bassist Hans doing his best James Brown impression. All-in-all, it was a lively set.
Next in line was the male/female guitar/drums duo Rainbow Bridge. With a set of trolls on stage and the drummer donning a fake beard, I was halfway expecting a quirky kitsch act. Much to my surprise, they played some kick ass garage rock tunes which made me think about how Jack & Meg White probably started out playing to similar crowds in Detroit in the late 90s. Undeniably the crowd pleasure for the group (and arguably the whole night) was their hit track “Big Wave Rider“. With simply sung lyrics “big wave rider / try and ride a little higher / you’re a glider / smile wider” over sparse instrumentation, it didn’t take long for the audience to join in and sing out the chorus.
By the time Real Estate took the stage at 11pm, the crowd had swelled to around eighty or so folks, mostly clad in skinny jeans and eighties regalia of some sorts. In response to the size, the band said this was one of the best crowds on the tour — something that I am sure Porlanders hear quite frequently. Any questions about whether this band was overhyped or undeserving of a constant stream of buzz since their SXSW showing were put to rest when they opened up with the infectious guitar line on “Beach Comber”. Now most reviews I’ve seen of Real Estate tend to follow a madlib like recipe: “Their [adj. / wobbly] guitars invokes a sense of [childhood story of the beach] — with the repetitious [instrument] enforcing that feeling”, however, when you see them live you get a sense on how much more this group is than some band riding the “chillwave” fad of ’09.
Through the glimmering tautophony lies these bluesy syncopated guitar solos that Matthew Mondanile (aka Ducktails) and Martin Courtney shine on — not to mention the commanding power bassist Alex Bleeker has on his instrument (something that will surely translate over to his “solo” work with The Freaks). As time elapsed, you couldn’t help but be swept away by their performance and get lost in their sound. This partly affected my determining of the setlist, as I tended to loose interest in knowing the exact song they were playing and got caught up more with the feeling they were invoking through their tunes:
1 // Beach Comber
2 // Pool Swimmers
3 // (?)
4 // Fake Blues
5 // Suburban Beverage
6 // Black Lake
7 // (?)
8 // (?)
9 // Atlantic City
10 // Fake Blues
I think it goes without saying that if you get a chance to see this band play in an intimate venue, do it because these guys are just going to get more of a following as time goes by. Here is a video of them playing “Fake Blues” at SXSW this past year along with some songs of theirs:
