Stream: Rich Uncle-Skelleton’s “Bone Soup for Christmas” Mix

24 Dec 2013 — Parker Bruce

One third of Montreal group, Syngja, Aleks Schürmer, hosts concerts in Montreal under the awesome name, Rich Uncle-Skelleton. Just in time for Christmas, he's made a mix called "Bone Soup for Christmas" for The House of Grizzly Andrews, an arts house in Montreal officially launching in the spring that helps to fund artists' projects as well do their own projects. Schürmer said the mix was for all the art kids he knows who were leaving their art families to go back to their real families for Christmas. There's Syngja's now pretty much classic, "Pink Prism," with its unforgettable "you can't just leave a good thing" lyric as well as something from d'Eon's "Blackout (Music for Keyboards Vol. IV)." It also has amazing Montreal duo UN on it as well as ¡FLIST!, Bantam Wing, a remix of The Baby-Sitters Club theme song by Schürmer himself, and a bumping Hua Li chopped and screwed take on an Akua song. It all ends with the surreal "God Is An American" by Jean-Pierre Ferland which sounds like the theme song to a 70s cop show, a Broadway show tune, and a church hymnal all at different points. In other words, it sounds like a song on "Yeezus." It's the perfect ending. Stream the mix below and download it here. Tracklist below.

Peyotiki "Sunflower"
Syngja "Pink Prism"
Akua "Gravity (Hua Li 化力 Chop & Screw)"
Rich Uncle "Babysitters Club Theme (Parker bb Remix)"
d'Eon "The Birds Eat Our Corpses"
Mourning Coup "Eye'll Be Your Mirror"
Bantam Wing "You Keep Going On"
Dirty Organs "All Kinds"
UN "Wicked Child"
¡FLIST! "Tuberculoma (Live)"
Jean-Pierre Ferland "God Is An American"

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Flecs “Portmanteau”

24 Dec 2013 — Tonje Thilesen

Here's a lush track from London based producer Flecs, just because you know, it's Christmas eve, there's a storm outside, and I have nothing else to do than browsing through music submissions. No, but seriously though, it's a good one, even with the rather predictible (and strangely familiar) vocal samples aside. But it works for me. Merry Christmas. 

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Stream: “The Le Sigh Vol. 1”

23 Dec 2013 — Andi Wilson

One of my favorite current publications occurring in Brooklyn right now is The Le Sigh. This strong group of ladies are killing it in every aspect by covering feminism through new music, zines, features on rad local women/artists, beautifully curated mixes, and an abundance of interviews. In November, the site announced "The Le Sigh Vol. 1" on cassette with a zine released and printed through Birdtapes, the unstoppable and newly one-year-old label . The mix features a soft (A) and hard (B) side featuring some of the best twee, lo-fi pop, and punk female acts happening right now. Get ready to cry a little, crack a smile, and sway around your room. I wish I could have heard these songs when I was seventeen; dealing with highschool boys, rebelling from my parents, and smoking that very first cigarette. 

The tape and zine are sold out, but now available to stream and download below. Some of us from No Fear of Pop were able to attend the release party at Silent Barn in Brooklyn last month and had the time of our lives while watching Whatever, Dad, Baby Mollusk, Lizard Kisses, and Frankie Cosmos! We wish the best to the lovely Le Sigh gals and can't wait to see what the future holds for them. 

The Le Sigh Vol. 1 Tracklist:

SIDE A
1. "Nessa's Theme" - Whatever, Dad
2. "Empty Hands" - Baby Mollusk
3. "Being Cool Is Super Hard" - Morgan Spaner
4. "Duh" - Infinity Crush
5. "Apart" - Yohuna
6.  "See You Soon" - R.L. Kelly
7.  "Dark Skies" - Frankie Cosmos
8. "Little Things" - Lizard Kisses
9. "Find Me" - Winter

SIDE B
10. "Never What You Wanted" - Bam! Bam!
11. "Fuck It" - Numb Bats
12. "Dream Lover" - Love Cuts
13. "The Spins"- Potty Mouth
14. "Open My Eyes"- Burnt Palms
15. "Ice Age" - Loveover
16. "Sweetie" - Tomboy
17. "Watch You (Party Mix)" - Priests
18. "No Right" - Young Trynas
19. "Le Sigh (Theme Song)" - Mannequin Pussy

 

 

Photos by The Silent Barn and Jeanette Wall

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Watch: UMA “Vanity (Claude Speeed Version)” (exclusive)

17 Dec 2013 — Andrew Wagner

Berlin husband-and-wife duo UMA has just released a strangely enchanting new video for the Claude Speeed remix of their track “Vanity”. The original “Vanity” is a song that’s at once delicate and dangerous, with singer Ella delivering the vocals as though in a trance. In its casual darkness, the track conjures up moving through a city late at night, when the streets feel both peaceful and eerie in their isolation. While the Claude Speeed remix feels similarly suited for the late-night hours, his take on “Vanity” brings you to a dark and foreboding dance floor rather than the city. Speeed’s version adds powerful, booming bass synths while pitching Ella’s vocals down an octave or two and chopping up other of her vocals into rhythmic elements. There’s something oddly unsettling about the way Speeed manipulates the original track, mirrored by the grotesquely beautiful, grainy black-and-white video. In it, a man and woman (Ella and her husband Florian) rub their faces against a plane of glass. Mouths, noses and flesh become squished and distorted into strange forms, their bodies becoming uncanny in the process. If some gorgeous shots of pigeons flying away suggest a sliver of hope in “Vanity’s” otherwise hopeless soundscape, the last shot, of Ella’s face multiplying and then degrading, ends the track on a purely bleak note.

Watch “Vanity (Claude Speeed Version)” below. A full LP is forthcoming from UMA via Seayou Records in early 2014. Get the digital single of "Vanity" over here.

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NHK’Koyxen “762”

16 Dec 2013 — Lukas Dubro

People with a heart for experimental music are having a great time at the moment. Not only did sound ecologists Oneohtrix Point Never and Laurel Halo drop two fabulous albums in the last months and did star producer Burial upload a new fantastic EP last week; Bill Kouligas' dancefloor/experimental imprint PAN also got back to life with some great releases lately, most significantly Heatsick's sophomore LP "Re-Engineering".

Today, two well known faces are gonna return to PAN with new albums for the label: producer Jar Moff from Athens and Osaka-based musician and drawing artist NHK'Koyxen. While Jar Moffs second full-length album Financial Glam is said to feature "carefully wrought collage music, crafted from samples and field recordings" with comments on the politicial situation in Greece, NHK'Koyxen will pursue his dancefloor explorations on the third part of his Dance Classics series.

A prove for that is "762", the final track of NHK'Koyxen's eight-track LP. Here, the Japanese artist creates avant-garde techno music using highly resoluted and therefore ear-cutting sound samples and shakers and deeply pulsating bass and drums. Check it out below.

Jar Moff's Financial Glam and NHK'Koyxen's Dance Classics Vol. III are out today on PAN.

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Phondupe “Twofriend”

13 Dec 2013 — Parker Bruce

Phondupe (two guys originally from Australia but now in Brooklyn and London respectively) just came out with a new EP last week called Greenhouse. "Twofriend" has a chopped and screwed grumbling sound going on as if a scary animal is stirring in its sleep. Very good stuff here.

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Watch: Yiota “Descend (feat. Soliz)”

12 Dec 2013 — Trey Reis

The crew behind this Blankstairs label has been helping push the Pacific Northwest wav(e) of electronic music to a level as progressive and unique as any of the other bastions of creative, young beat music ringing out across the various locations of the American radar of Web music. Between their smatterings of Beatogether performances throughout the often unexplored all ages venues of Portland, their coast-combining audio-visual pieces, and guest mix appearances, it’s no surprise that the label, just under six months old, is only now seeing its second release. But it isn’t a matter of finding the time to focus on releasing 001’s, 002’s, 003’s, but rather a thorough approach to patient music in an age of production where flooding Twitter, Tumblr, and Soundcloud with hourly postings can bring as many new listeners as the quality of the music in the links or embeds posted.

"Isolation is the space in which I exist. But I am provided light through an Idea, an idea that defines me not as an individual in the infinite but as a part of a whole,” Yiota’s Teo Wollrabe says of his music.

It’s a fitting concept, considering the nature of the four tracks comprising the duration of his upcoming Blankstairs-released, self-titled EP, which move at a pace more often associated with textural ambience than dance music. But the far-reaching selection of percussive sounds and pitch-affected vocals repurposed and explored in the whole of current beat music switches places here with the wall of ambient waves, scattering all of the sounds typically considered the driving forces in a beat, among the barren branches of tree silhouettes in Winter, while a cold wind swirls into the foreground here, forcing our attention away from the “beat,” the “drop,” or the “harmony” toward the frigid textures skating the line between electronic music and noise. This is the isolation in which Yiota’s self-titled EP exists, and it’s not the kind associated with standing alone somewhere devoid of civilization, but rather a kind of solitary confinement on the top of a building comprising part of a desolate city landscape, where one can see the hustle and bustle of the crowds below, but can’t seem to find a way to descend down to join them.

The video accompanying “Descend (feat. Soliz)” communicates this isolation perfectly. Filmed by Blankstairs creators Nathaniel Young and Warren Mattox, and edited by Portland visual artist, Alex Geerken, the shots flicker in between flashes of cityscapes and jittery human movements, like light through tree branches as a movement of clouds slowly rolls in to devour it.

Considering every aspect of this release: from the music itself, to the label releasing it, to the visual accompaniment, the release of this EP serves as a statement of purpose from the entire Blankstairs collective, bringing thought, focus, and patience to a whole faction of music otherwise concerned solely with haste in its inherited attempt to maintain the fleeting attention of an overwhelmed culture. It’s a breathe of fresh air and it’s moving in with the heaviness of an oncoming storm front.

Yiota's self-titled EP is out December 17 on Blankstairs.

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