Category Archives: Music

Video Watch: Copenhagen’s Indians, I Am Haunted

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Søren Løkke Juul aka Indians released his debut album, Somewhere Else on 4AD this past January and I was lucky enough to catch him perform earlier this month at New York’s Mercury Lounge.

With the help of two additional musicians, Heather Woods Broderick and Laurel Simmons, the songs sounded extra lush. The added harmonies and a slowly grooving crowd were just what I needed to get lost in his hypnotic voice and electronic soundscapes. Check out the video for I Am Haunted and see why the Village Voice calls him, “Denmark’s Bon Iver“.

Hip Hop Quote Street Signs By Jay Shells

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Artist and designer Jay Shells is behind the twitter feed @TheRapQuotes.  He dispenses daily notable rap quotes as tweets.  He has since taken the idea to the street.  Shells creates street signs of hip hop quotes that mention specific places, then posts the signs at their mentioned locations.  Many of the lines are from iconic songs and legends of the genre – easily recalled.  Adding the context of an actual location with the signs adds further depth the memorable tracks they reference.

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Scottish Electro-Pop Trio Chvrches

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Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry performing at the Echo on March 12, 2013 – Photo by Raymond Lew

You could have blinked and missed getting tickets to this hotly anticipated show by Glasgow’s Chvrches at the Echo in Los Angeles last week. Opening the show was France’s Isaac Delusion who played very danceable music to the early arrivals and Denmark’s Karen Marie Ørsted aka MØ stirring up the crowd with her karate styled dancing and ponytail flipping… yup, I’m obsessed with her… check out the video for Pilgrim to see for yourself.

With a pumped up and lively crowd waiting, Chvrches took the stage and played a tight set starting with one of my favorites, Lies. Since this was only their second show ever in the US, their first being the night before at San Francisco’s The Independent, the excitement level was pretty high throughout the show. Other standout songs was their new single Recover as well as the very catchy, The Mother We Share that ended their short, but sweet set.

Definitely a band to keep an eye on, even with the buzz, they delivered a knock out performance. Check out the video for Lies and remember to act fast when they come back to town because I’m sure it will be another quick sell out. You can pre-order their EP, Recover from iTunes out on March 26th.

 

Australia’s Alpine Ready Their US Debut, A Is For Alpine

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Alpine performing at Bardot (School Night) on March 4, 2013

As I write this, Alpine just wrote on Facebook that while on tour in the US, their video for Villages went past two million views. With solid reports coming out of SXSW about their many performances and KCRW picking their songs Lovers 1 and 2 as a recent double header Top Tune, it won’t be long before this Aussie six-piece finds their way into your ears.

I was lucky enough to catch them live at both Bardot in Hollywood and at Brooklyn’s Glasslands and both shows had me dancing from the first beat. Filled with energy, singers Phoebe Baker and Lou James get the crowd moving with their catchy tunes and lovely harmonies. I guarantee that once their album is released in the US, you’ll be hearing a lot more of them.

Alpine’s debut album, A is for Alpine will be released in the US on May 21st on Votiv Records. Check out the video for one of my favorites, Gasoline directed by Kris Moyes and be sure to catch them when they’re stateside again.

 

Cod.Act’s Ingenious Choir Sings And Dances In The Air With The Help Of Hydraulic Jacks

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Cod.Act’s Pendulum Choir is an original choral piece for 9 A Cappella voices and 18 hydraulic jacks. The choir stands on tilting platforms, constituting a living, sonorous body. That body expresses itself through various physical states. Its plasticity varies at the mercy of its sonority. It varies between abstract sounds, repetitive sounds, and lyrical or narrative sounds. The bodies of the singers and their voices play with and against gravity. They brush and avoid each other creating subtle vocal polyphonies. Or, supported by electronic sounds, they break their cohesion and burst into lyrical flight or fold up into an obsessional and dark ritual. The organ travels from life to death in a robotic allegory where the technological complexity and the lyricism of the moving bodies combine into a work with Promethean accents. (via)

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Australia’s Gypsy & The Cat had their U.S. Live Debut at Hotel Cafe

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Gypsy and the Cat performing their U.S. live debut at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood, CA, February 19, 2013.

With the success of Australian bands like Cut Copy and a huge Grammy win for Gotye‘s Somebody That I Used To Know, I expect more and more pop-infused indie bands from Down Under will be making the long trek to try and win over American audiences. The Vaccines‘ recent show in Los Angeles had San Cisco open to a very enthusiastic crowd that sang along and went wild for most of their early set. Gold Fields performed to a sold out crowd last night at the Troubadour and Melbourne pop band, Alpine should be reaching our shores again any day now. When I was invited to the Hotel Cafe last week to see the American debut of Gypsy & The Cat, I had high expectations and wasn’t disappointed.

Xavier Bacash and Lionel Towers, former Melbourne DJs released Gilgamesh, their highly successful debut album back in 2010. It garnered rave reviews in both the Australian and European press, but failed to reach much of a U.S. audience. I’m guessing that’s why they ditched their major label and went with their own on their latest release, The Late Blue on Alsatian Music. It’s currently available on iTunes and definitely worth a listen.

Their U.S. debut at the Hotel Cafe was a perfect start to what should be a very fruitful year for the band. They played songs off both of their albums including their 2010 hit, Jona Vark that had more than a few people singing along. Newer songs like Bloom and Zombie World sounded very strong with the addition of a touring drummer and bass player. “Anyone here have our music?” Xavier asked the large industry heavy crowd to which a few clapped as they began playing Human Desire from their debut, Gilgamesh. The band were more than gracious through their short, but sweet set and finished with their new single, Sorry. Check them out this weekend and next when they perform at the  Future Music Festival in Australia.

 

Electronic Duo Matmos Release The Marriage of True Minds

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Photo by James Thomas Marsh

Matmos – ESP (Live at Thrill Jockey 20th Anniversary) from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

You do remember electronic duo Matmos, don’t you? They’re the DJ’s that worked with Björk on Vespertine and also toured with her around the world, that’s how I first heard of them anyway. Well, they just released a new album, The Marriage of True Minds on Thrill Jockey earlier this week and from their press release it looks like it could be something very special.

“The Marriage Of True Minds is Matmos’ first new full-length album in five years and follows 2012′s The Ganzfeld EP, which was the culmination of four years of parapsychological experiments based on the Ganzfeld (“total field”) experiment. Test subjects were put into a state of sensory deprivation by covering their eyes and listening to white noise on headphones, and then Matmos member Drew Daniel attempted to transmit “the concept of the new Matmos record” directly into their minds. The resulting transcripts of the videotaped psychic experiments became poetic and conceptual scores used by Matmos to generate the nine songs on this album, which prominently features vocalists and voices for the first time in Matmos’ work. Guest musicians include Dan Deacon, Dominique Leone, DJ Dog Dick, Leslie Weiner and Holger Hiller (Palais Schaumberg), Jason Willett (Half Japanese), Angel Deradoorian, Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak) and more.”

See what I mean? The whole project sounds incredible and they’re currently on tour in the U.S. with only a handful of shows left, including a date at Public Works in San Francisco on  Sunday, February 24th and a show at the Masonic Lodge at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Monday, February 25th. The last two shows before heading to Europe in March are at The ND in Austin, TX on February 28th and Zanzabar in Louisville, KY on March 2nd.

Check out their amazing version of the Buzzcocks‘ ESP that was shot live at Thrill Jockey’s 20th Anniversary show last September in Baltimore where they are currently based. This should cement the idea of seeing one of their upcoming shows.