1MM: Jay Reatard Plays to His Strangest Crowd Yet, A Stuy Town Mix of Geriatrics, Screaming Teenagers and Newborn Babies
Posted on July 1, 2009
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[Photos by Andrew Parks]
The last time we saw Jay Reatard perform, he killed a capacity crowd at our CMJ party. Said Glasslands gig was sufficiently scuzzy given the artists involved, so it was quite sobering to see Reatard and his one-two punch of a backing band (drummer Billy Hayes, bassist Stephen Pope) in broad daylight at the Stuy Town Oval concert series—surrounded by newborn babies and slightly disturbed senior citizens, no less.
To understand the only-in-NY scene before us, it might be best to reiterate Reatard’s last bit of stage banter: “Good news: This is our last song. Also, bad news: This is our last song. Pick a side.”
We’ll take the latter. Read more
COFFEE TALK: The Latest Posts, Profiles & Think Pieces on CocoRosie, Dirty Projectors, Busdriver, Sleep, PiL, Galaxie 500 and Many, Many More
Posted on July 1, 2009
Filed Under Coffee Talk, News | 1 Comment
- Vice somehow scored an interview with Sleep at their ATP reunion.
- Speaking of Sleep, Al Cisneros (also of Om/Shrinebuilder fame) just delivered a limited compilation for Arthur.
- The Believer’s annual music issue just hit stands. Here’s a complete Phil Elverum interview.
- Dublab has some solid video streaming at their site, including a tour of Echo Park with Busdriver. [via XLR8R]
- Warp just shared some test pressing pics of their sick anniversary box set.
- Dirty Projectors’ new video landed on Kanye’s blog today.
- Andrew Bird and St. Vincent are touring together this fall.
- Dysrhythmia’s new album is streaming here and highly recommended.
- Galaxie 500 are reissuing all their records on vinyl.
- Professor Genius (Italians Do It Better) and Duane Harriot (Other Music) have formed a new duo.
- Run-DMC is getting a street named after them in Queens.
- If you’re wondering how to properly get into metal, The Onion’s got you covered.
- Moby is Magnet’s guest editor this week.
- Newsweek thinks you need to read the following 50 books right…about…now. Oh, and Chip Kidd talked about his favorite covers. [via Pop Candy]
- Passion Pit have lent a remix to Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ “Heads Will Roll” single.
- So who’s this Drake guy again?
- Wow, it’s already the 30th anniversary of PiL’s Metal Box LP?
- Paste have issued their best-of lists for 2009 (so far).
- New CocoRosie! Kinda.
- If you’re a fan of Jessica Hopper, here’s a playlist related to her new book.
- Gotta love Wired’s “5 Audio Atrocities To Throw Down a Sonic Black Hole.”
- Lawrence, one of our favorite melancholic techno producers, will drop his fourth disc next month. In the meantime, he’s recorded a new podcast for Resident Advisor.
And today’s Peep Show clip of the day is dedicated to our former cover star, who’ll be playing to a “buncha rug rats” later today… Read more
1MM: Explosions in the Sky Make Us Feel All Emo Inside At Sold-Out SummerStage Show
Posted on July 1, 2009
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[Photos/Text by Andrew Parks]
We’ve always been on the fence about the post-Friday Night Lights era of Explosions in the Sky. On one hand, we’re happy the boys are making decent money by scoring TV shows, shifting 11,000 albums in a week, and drawing a crammed Central Park crowd after a decade together. And sure enough, the group’s SummerStage show sounded spectacular last night, filling the muggy air with melancholic meditations on life, death and peak/valley dynamics. Read more
Gang Gang Dance Ready ‘God’s Money’ Reissue, Month-Long North American Tour
Posted on June 29, 2009
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Four months after a fire destroyed all their equipment in Amsterdam, Gang Gang Dance have bounced back with a month-long North American tour that runs between an August 2 stop in Northampton, MA, and a Bumbershoot appearance on September 5. As we said in a review of their MoMa performance earlier this year, “Gang Gang Dance performances are percussive, celebratory affairs that graze everything from dub to demented pop on the way to creating a sound all their own…every GGD show we’ve ever seen has been strikingly different. That, and a blur.”
Highly recommended stuff in other words, just like the group’s finest hour, 2005’s God’s Money. Long out-of-print on wax, it’ll soon be repressed through Gang Gang’s longtime label, Social Registry.
And now, for some live dates and a clip of our favorite Money shot…
PEEP SHOW: Girls Cover Vivian Girls’ “Wild Eyes” Single At Cake Shop Show, Justify Recent Matador Records Signing
Posted on June 28, 2009
Filed Under Media, Peep Show | 2 Comments
So the word on self-titled’s street is that Girls nailed their NYC show last night, stirring our associate editor’s loins enough to make us all eagerly anticipate their Matador/True Panther debut. Since it doesn’t drop until September 22, s/t thought we’d share two things to show you what we mean: (1) the duo’s rather epic “Hellhole Ratrace” video, and (2) a scarlet-tinged Cake Shop cover of Vivian Girls’ “Wild Eyes” 7-inch, cast against a Vivian rendition of the original.
Enjoy, and expect more from the Girls camp and us soon… Read more
THIS WEEK IN TWITTER: The Michael Jackson Edition, Featuring Boys Noize, Islands, The Streets, Nico Muhly, Surkin, and Many More
Posted on June 26, 2009
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Since the Daily Swarm’s doing a mighty fine job of aggregating Michael Jackson material, s/t thought we’d treat this week’s Twitter column as a roundup of tributes (and one tasteless critique) to the King of Moonwalking Better Than You Ever Will. Here’s what we uncovered (click on the screengrabs to follow each artist)… Read more
FROM THE STACKS: The Rural Alberta Advantage
Posted on June 26, 2009
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[Photo by Marc Hodges]
We get a lot of crap CDs at the self-titled offices. But once in a while, a pleasant surprise slips into our promo stack. Here’s a recent delivery that knocked the S/T staff on its collective ass. Read more
THE S/T FIVE: Right About Now, The Funk Soul Brother Needs To Play a Song That’s Actually Good
Posted on June 25, 2009
Filed Under Reviews, The S/T Five | 2 Comments
[Photos/Text by Andrew Parks]
Bless the girl in the above photo and her undying devotion to Fatboy Slim despite the unfortunate frat-party approach of his New York ‘performance’ last night. Playing to a not-quite-full Terminal 5, Norman Cook started off strong with swift “Praise You” snippets and speaker-rattling sheets of acid techno and big beat, but overall, his rare 105-minute (!) set suffered from severe peak/valley problems. In other words, nearly every time he led the laidback crowd down a path of potentially-losing-their-shit, Cook lost his momentum somehow, either by wearing out a song’s welcome (do we really need to hear DJ Kool drops for six minutes?) or not ratcheting up the tension of the few familiar Fatboy tracks that made the mix (”Right Here, Right Now,” “The Rockafeller Skank,” the aforementioned “Praise You”). Read more
PEEP SHOW: Pelican Guitarist Shares Nightmare-Inducing Clip From Noise/IDM Project
Posted on June 25, 2009
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While self-titled already told you everything you need to know about Chord—the Fripp & Eno-channeling side project of Pelican guitarist Trevor de Brauw—we just received word of yet another de Brauw band, the free-noise/electronic trio Teith. Fresh off last year’s Oak City reissue comes the long-awaited “Writing With Bloody Mary” video, described by de Brauw as “a short little vignette about the world within the mirror of a haunted house…my bandmates from Pelican wrote me back to say they were disturbed.”
What he means to say is that Rob Zombie could have ghost-directed the following clip, which was filmed in Chicago and took a year to cobble together. Don’t watch this one with the lights out… Read more
Devendra Banhart Splits From XL, Wraps Sixth Record With Band of Bees Member
Posted on June 25, 2009
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Devendra Banhart has finished his sixth full-length for a fall release through a TBD label. (While the hairy fairy king is still listed as a “current” artist on XL’s site, he parted ways with the label recently.) Band of Bees frontman Paul Butler co-produced the effort with Banhart, which was recorded in a rented house just north of San Francisco with the following backing band: Greg Rogove (drums, backing vocals), Luckey Remington (bass, vocals), Rodrigo Amarante (guitar, backing vocals) and longtime collaborator Noah Georgeson (guitar, backing vocals). According to a press release, “all the musicians involved played a part in arranging the songs recorded.”
Hopefully that means they took it more seriously than the following clip… Read more
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