12 May 2014 — Henry Schiller
This is a bit confusing: Brooklyn’s Conveyor are releasing a double-LP, Prime, of their score for the 1971 George Lucas film THX 1138. Prime was composed and performed last December alongside two midnight screenings of THX 1138 at Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Cinema. The first track, "Theme I", has been remixed by LA's Monster Rally.
“Theme I” introduces listeners (and watchers) to the operatic scope typically associated with Lucas, as well as hinting at the film’s surprisingly intimacy. Indeed, THX 1138 steps, sometimes in an off-putting way, back and forth between being a grand, dispassionate epic and a more nuanced study of individuality and personhood. Monster Rally condenses Conveyor’s locomotive wash of guitar and synthesizer into something even more immediate and palpable. Snapped to a danceable drum loop, “Theme I” goes from anguished and distal to sharp, focused, even (delightfully) insensitive.
But both Conveyor’s original (which might be seen as a spiritual remix of sorts) and Monster Rally’s remix are steeped in the moody atmospherics of a mid-century version of the future. The faded horn sounds and marching drumbeat lock Conveyor’s piece decidedly to 1971, and Monster Rally’s version seeks to tear this apart in an almost classically dystopian fashion, seeming to disintegrate and recombine with every percussive flourish.
Have you ever wondered what was on Frank Poole’s iPod as he ran laps around the Discovery One? This'd be my best guess.
Conveyor’s Prime is out July 15 on Gold Robot Records.
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09 May 2014 — Johanne Swanson
Alisa Rodriguez, crouched and cradling a guitar over a pedalboard, is purging some demons in a Wisconsin basement. They’re the ugly inner kind of demons that can only be quelled by intense vulnerability. A young crowd surrounds Rodriguez, eyes shut, swaying to the noise. What the demons don’t know is that the bravery of expelling them is met with moments that make us more human. Misery loves company and, for Apollo Vermouth, the expulsion of grief simultaneously destroys and heals, binding us together.
Apollo Vermouth is the ambient project of Alisa Rodriguez, who has been quietly releasing an incredible body of work since 2010. You can download the entire discography, except for AV’s most recent, from a giant MediaFire folder linked from Rodriguez’s blog. Her process is worth noting, drafting artwork first “just to get an idea of what I want the album to sound like” and recording “whenever I feel like I have to express my emotions.” With a guitar, two delay pedals, reverb and distortion, Rodriguez records straight to a 4-track Tascam Portastudio and transfers the files to Garageband for editing.
Fractured Youth is the latest AV release. Closing at 30 minutes, it is disarming, minimal and melodic. It’s a departure from previous noisier releases, more contemplative and atmospheric. Rodriguez is returning to her initial ambient impulses here (which you’ll have to dig through that MediaFire folder for-- see 2010’s Florida EP.) AV's work is marked by doing what feels right, and revisiting these initial impulses is a sign of maturation and self-awareness. Rodriguez states that “Fractured Youth is about growing up. Making this album helped me immensely with depression and negativity I encountered all throughout my life. This album is not just for me, though, it’s for everyone.” Fractured Youth is dedicated to Jessie Blodgett, a 19 year-old musician and friend of Rodriguez, who was murdered in her home outside of Milwaukee last year. In the words of AV's label, “Fractured Youth is a memorial to the notion that internal growth comes not with age, but with the will for it.”
Fractured Youth is out now compliments of our longtime friends at Bridgetown Records. It is a part of their spring batch of seven tapes featuring releases by Big Waves of Pretty, Paper Armies, Filardo, Autococoon, Widesky and Reighbeau. Be sure to download the 14-track Bridgetown Records Spring 2014 mixtape and pick up a copy of Fractured Youth. Milwaukee residents can attend the Fractured Youth release show on May 31st.
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09 May 2014 — Parker Bruce
"Emanate" by Brighton's Phoria is sonically faithful to its title for the majority of its running time. One could even say things are waft as well as emanate. There's humming, buzzing, plops, piano that sounds like it's being touched by the most zen fingers, and husky singing. Synths start to expand and reach until a seismic stomp comes in making "Emanate" a most unexpected banger. The last minute plays like a stuck-in-molasses version of the part in Zedd's "Clarity" (this is a most awesome thing by the way) where it sounds like one thousand gladiators are singing a Gregorian chant as if the five members of Phoria had exponentially multiplied. They prove how valuable and rewarding it is to not give the listener everything at once. Their EP, Display, will be available June 16th as the first release by X Novo. Pre-order it now.
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07 May 2014 — Kelsie Brown
Our friends over at Ceremony know of our undying love affair of ambient techno producer Albert Swarm and invited us to share with you the debut video from his latest release, The Cage EP. According to the producer, the video for the EP's title track is "pretty much the first video (he) made from start to finish". The video follows the hazy landscape set in place by the track, with (ambient) imagery of skulls and ghostly faces underneath an eerie purple glow.
The Cage EP is available now through Ceremony Recordings. Check out the video for "The Cage" below:
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07 May 2014 — Parker Bruce
"Alkaline" by Brooklyn's Papertwin (aka Nick Shopa, Max Decker, Francis Cardinale) befits its unceasingly nimble synth that pointedly scans the room and stretched out Kate Bush "Running Up That Hill" intimation. Decker sings: "There's nothing like a smack in the head to show you my love." When the words "every little earthquake" show up one can't help but think of Little Boots' likeminded "Earthquake" from 2009. "Alkaline" is dizzy off itself and the precariousness of the situation it's describing, echoed by the track flickering, coming close to flaming out, and reigniting towards the end. And get a load of this: "I'm in disguise right now/ As your only friend" and "Every time you're working late/ Bodies shifting slowly apart." Papertwin are definitely not ones to skirt around pressure points. Instead they pinpoint them. Watch out for their Vox Humana EP, due June 17.
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06 May 2014 — Henry Schiller
Nicholas Nicholas’s “Meet Me In The Park” makes me think of the perfect Brooklyn outfit. It’s an outfit that catches your eye at a Bushwick house party and never lets it go. It’s an outfit that swoops you into a decadent grotto where you’re lavished in normcore fashion and a bacchanal of milk and honey hand soaps.
A navy corduroy button-down, two sizes two big, worn like a jacket over an off-white corduroy button-down: one size too big. Corduroy number two makes a hefty paunch over the rim of comfy-looking stonewashed blue jeans that narrow frantically at the ankle. Soft denim locks lips with the tops of milky New Balance running shoes purchased secondhand at a Buffalo Exchange. These may or may not have ever been used for running. Whatever horn-rimmed glasses are, there are horn-rimmed glasses. These may or may not be prescription (they aren’t). There’s a watch worth over $400 that needs to have at least one link removed from its band. An ink smear down the rim of the left pinky: he’s an artist, or maybe a writer, or maybe he owns a pen. A tattoo of King Henry II taken from a medieval illustration peeks out over the collar flap(s). Hair like a Givenchy model, skin like a vampire, and a voice like Nigel Thornberry on ketamine. The three-dimensional realization of a sexual awakening.
This is the kind of delicate lust with which Nicholas (Nicholas?), a member of Brooklyn’s Heavenly Beat, dazzles, charms, and divides on “Meet Me In The Park.” His is a lush, almost stoned take on the oozing London warmth of new-wave groups like Japan, with signals to the “we live under a Greenpoint dock” soul-punk of contemporaries like Ava Luna. But, and this cannot be emphasized enough, with like a million more synthesizers; think New Romanticism for the Todd Terje set. “Meet Me In The Park” is transparently, wonderfully, vague in its artistic intentions. The track seems like it could wallow comfortably in the ochre haze of a Gap, but it’s also penetrating and relevant, almost like Nicholas is calling direct attention to his own lithe stylistic inconspicuousness.
I’ll never miss Brooklyn, but maybe that doesn’t mean I can’t love it a little.
People like Nicholas Nicholas are making that possible.
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06 May 2014 — Evelyn Malinowski
Just when I thought I had to wait another few months or so to obtain more of her dreamy beatscapes, and as I was getting all cozy with my copy of her Chipped cassette, Ellie Herring posts this shatteringly fun remix of "Dynasty," which takes on the 90s attitude of "no duh." At first, I thought "no duh" referred to Ellie giving listeners another chance to name the vocal sample, and that this version would make it easier. But nah, it's just a 90s sticker collecting throwback, including 8-ball and Hello Kitty, "No Duh!" and, of course, "Whatever!" I'm hoping that she'll indeed do a full b-side tape, keeping the inverted colors of the original cover art but use a different sticker for each digital upload. "Dynasty (No Duh Version)" features Miss Piggy, as you can see.
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06 May 2014 — Parker Bruce
Southeast Norway's Kristian Torkelsen is putting out his sophomore album, Satelittskygge, on May 30 through Sellout! Music. Here is a song from it, "Jeg Velger Deg", meaning "I choose you" in Torkelsen's native tongue. It calls to mind Jai Paul's immortal "BTSTU", Prism House, and early on, even some of Vampire Weekend's more head-in-the-clouds moments. Drums trip and step all over themselves knitting a web while a light almost piano twiddles and dances. By song's end we're encased in Torkelsen's meshes of the afternoon.
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