05 May 2014 — Evelyn Malinowski
Newcomer to the Valcrond Video realm Ari Russo has excellently accented the driven, inquisitive mood of his track "Purple Earth" with Valcrond-appropriate imagery. Drawing stylistically from the material aesthetic of black plastic juxtaposed against green, boreal settings, an artist-specific approach awesomely called "OfficeFern," Russo's music reflects the texture and ether of such a juxtaposition. With "Purple Earth," the beat drags simiarly to the way a lot of Torn Hawk's work staggers and laments the end of the age of discovery (the 1980s); but, if hearing Russo's work by itself, without knowing that it is a Valcrond release, I wouldn't necessarily think it sounds like Torn Hawk, that is, they're similar but not alike. There's an essential difference in Russo's sound, perhaps it is the clarity and looping in tighter rhythms. Torn Hawk's loops are wider, and more protracted. I would, however, if hearing the music for the first time under impressionable circumstances, jump up to see who the artist was because the synth's pulsating repetition is just right. Then I'd get pulled into a happy daze of romantic feelings about the array of 80s throwback footage and the pace at which they fly around. You might get pulled into the same daze.
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05 May 2014 — Parker Bruce
Not going to lie, it was a classic case of knowing you'll like a song before even hearing it based off the title alone with San Francisco's Melted Toys and "Blush. The foursome put out a 2009 EP, and "Blush" marks their return with a first album that can be in your possesion thanks to New Jersey's Underwater Peoples on July 15. "Blush" calls to mind the early Girls days of yore when everything was all "Lust for Life". Times have changed, but vibes are forever, no? Guitars and Steven Harkins' vocals dither and dawdle like bangs swinging to and fro. It all gets even better when things shift down a gear and Harkins sings: "turn on the radio." Parts of the song remind me of an Irish band with a country Western and California propensity my dad and I enjoyed, The Thrills. This one's for you dad.
Melted Toys' self-titled debut may be pre-ordered here.
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03 May 2014 — Henry Schiller
Percussion is an invasive force on Julia Holter’s remix of “I’m to Blame”, shifting, squishing, and quashing Boardwalk’s new wave momentum with impunity. Holter’s chain rattling rhythms seems to sit outside the bounds of the actual song, like a skeleton that’s escaped from its body and now seeks to overwhelm it. Synthesizers, chain snaps, and jazzy bass stumble towards one another with sickening, jerking momentum, and couple in an emotive twist of emaciated limbs. Holter has turned Boardwalk’s lush pop storybook into a sinister lullaby whose components creep piece by piece out of a damp Arcadian night and into a melodic step of the loosest iteration.
Amber Quintero’s vocals make only a brief appearance, their waxy softness on the original track twisted through a chilly autumn wind. What is most impressive about Holter’s remix is how little she actually adds to the song. Holter has stripped “I’m to Blame” down to only its vestigial organs and then reassembled the corpus with twigs for bones and cracked, crumbling leaves for skin. The remix of “I’m to Blame” never reneges on the emotive force of the original; rather, it reveals the startled and oh so very human desolation that rests in the core of Boardwalk’s slick grooves.
Anyone who enjoyed Holter’s Tragedy LP or her more experimental earlier releases should find this remix to be a refreshing callback. This is a must listen for fans of the Boardwalk original. Boardwalk paints a wonderful picture of heartbreak, but Holter brings you the in depth interview with its subject.
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02 May 2014 — Dalton Vogler
Upon first listen of Monster Rally’s newest EP release, Sunflower, it’s easy to see why some critics have already started labeling this project the spiritual successor to The Avalanches, who brought plunderphonic music to the forefront back in 2001. The comparisons are meant as compliments, but let us not undermine the uniqueness that L.A. based producer Ted Feighan has worked so hard to cultivate during nearly four years of consistently solid releases.
Sunflower comes to us fresh off last year’s Return to Paradise, from which one of Monster Rally’s more well-known hits, the languidly lush “Orchids,” first debuted. His latest EP, however, is a notable departure from Feighan’s normally sunny tropical mixing. Starting with the narration in opening track “Chin-don-ya,” listeners are launched into a four-song journey through a reimagined feudal Japan with a hint of modernity. (One can’t help but note the influence of other Japanese fusions such as Samurai Champloo and Nujabes.)
Feighan has something really special on his hands here, and it’s no stretch to say that this is Monster Rally’s most thematically complete release. The EP oozes with traditional Japanese instrumentation that, when paired with familiar hip-hop percussive elements, breathes new life into these long-forgotten samples. With Sunflower, there’s an intimate working knowledge of the material that not only shows off Feighan’s expertise as a producer but also elevates his tracks above comparative bedroom artist productions. They’re easily listenable, but also contain subtle complexities that keep the songs from being labeled too repetitious, all while producing a distinct jazz feel.
Sunflower is nostalgia packed psych-pop at its finest. Whether you’re looking for a worthy "Since I Left You" substitute or diving into sample-based music for the first time…Monster Rally’s latest foray is worthy of your undivided attention.
Sunflower is out now through Gold Robot and can be streamed below or digitally purchased here.
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30 Apr 2014 — Henning Lahmann
Dublin-based men's clothes shop/arts website This Greedy Pig met up with recent Stratosfear alumni Ships aka Dublin duo Simon Cullen and Sorca McGrath to film a beautiful live rendition of their superb track "None Of It Real", the b-side of their 7" on our precious little label. Apart from performing, the two also talked briefly about having to leave their beloved home, where the duo's musical identity was formed over the past year, and where fittingly and wistfully the video was shot as well. Considering the circumstances, it's hardly surprising that the shot live version is more distant and sad than the interpretation found on the record, as observed by Cullen. It's mysterious and pretty, so go and watch it below.
The 7" is both physically and digitally available over here.
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29 Apr 2014 — Parker Bruce
Early last year, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart member of yore Christoph Hochheim's band, Ablebody, released the All My Everybody EP, which included tracks such as "Sally Hot Jazz" and "Phantasy." Now they have a new 7" out on May 20 called After Hours. Sounding more alert and enlivened than ever, title track "After Hours" also features Hoccheim's twin brother, Anton, on drums. Hoccheim sounds regal, prim, proper, assertive, and frankly rather grand as he sings in an occasionally staccato manner about what someone represents to him as obsessive guitar riffs dislodge around him. Ablebody are currently touring until May 22 with Hochheim's old band, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Check out the tour schedule and get your After Hours pre-order on!
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28 Apr 2014 — Trey Reis
It would be interesting to follow a two year trajectory of every band that ever released a tape on Night People. It’s something like the Madden Curse in reverse: almost every band to have a release on the St.Paul-based imprint goes on to larger labels and bigger releases. Anymore, it’s not uncommon for most bands to have some kind of tape release in their discography from some obscure label that no one has ever heard of. It’s the nature of tape labels, and the reason we obsess over them so much; the search for long sold-out copies of the often less refined pieces of a musician’s past. In this case, Minneapolis trio, Beat Detectives, seem to be the exception, with releases on 100% Silk and Moon Glyph under their belt before they ever hit the Night People roster. That’s quite the spread already, without the mention of their newest release ASSCOP, slated for release next month via 1080p.
On ASSCOP, the process from previous releases hasn’t changed much, which works just fine for me. Their radio tuned-in approach to skittering between dance floor styles was a breath of fresh air to begin with, amongst an always-updating Soundcloud stream of beat-driven uploads from beatmakers across the globe. Take this premiere for album single, “Summer in the City”, for example. The track begins with an audio wrestling match between radio stations, before the hi-hat driven beat comes oozing from the speakers like warm liquid. A wide scope of vocal layers, ranging from a kind of ever-present growl to throwaway home-video snippets, are added and dropped with the ease of pressing a button. The rough cut-and-paste style, which the group has slowly perfected over their previous releases, serves “Summer in the City” as a smattering of drops, each time transforming the beat throughout the spectrum of equalization.
ASSCOP is available in cassette form from 1080p on May 6.
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28 Apr 2014 — Henning Lahmann
In our postmodern age, sleeping on things for too long has the beautiful and really rather handy advantage that once you get around to finally dedicate your precious time to that certain instance of pop cultural production, enough analytical material is readily available to simplify the writer's job, because seriously, almost everything is somewhere already: that Gora Sou's latest tape Living XXL explores the New Age while unobtrusively touching upon the throwback topoi of library music; that everything is cut and dried from the start if you manage to open your work with a track called "Catalina Golf Rental"; that the whole thing has a vaguely sacred ring to it. There's more to say of course, much more in fact, which may come across as a surprise considering that Living XXL is calling it a day after only 33 short minutes. Still, the sound palette of RBMA alumn Marc Übel, the man behind Gora Sou, is strikingly manifold, and though the eight-track offering never leaves the familiar territory of alienated, abstract ambient music, the compositions are refreshingly focused – not once does an arrangement get lost in mere synth fiddling. There's more, especially against the theoretical backdrop of Joe Bucciero's deliberations on Ferraro's elevator music, because if anything should equip every Berlin elevator for the next months, it's clearly Living XXL; and then, the tape's title itself subtly alludes to several latter-day forms of net art such as vaporwave, but also to that distinct kind of aesthetic that Steph Kretowicz recently found and described in Dubai's shopping malls; it all may be read as another tribute to late capitalist commodification, which seems remarkable coming from an artist who also counts as one third of one of Germany's more well-known and indeed quite successful 'indie' pop outfits. Above everything on Living XXL looms the shadow of OPN's recent oeuvre, most obviously on "The Family Heart Center", which we consider the effort's true standout moment; all that without ever sounding like a pale imitation. You see, there really is more to say, or would be, if only we had more time, but we don't so we humbly suggest you simply stream the whole thing below, and let those further contextualise who were born to theorize, or don't have anything else to do, or even, just think about it, are getting paid for something like this.
Living XXL is out on Noumenal Loom. Get it here, highly recommended.
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