Album stream: Uno Møller - Silent Riots.

05 Mar 2012 — Tonje Thilesen

Unless you have been living in a cave lately, you probably know that the Norwegian pop outfit Team Me have had a major break-through shortly after their debut album To The Treetops! last year. Not that the presence of Uno Møller as a member of Team Me is so important anyway; the sounds are after all quite different from one another. Maybe is it the earlier Team Me that strikes me when listening through Uno Møller's second album Silent Riots (following the gorgeous Songs From My Beautiful Colourball back in 2010) — that sort of hidden melancholy Team Me's original founder Marius Hagen introduced us to in the first place, before turning into a quirky pop orchestra of six, including Uno on bass. Compared to so-called singer/songwriters who have a tendency to strip down their music into the minimalistic, over-used "classical guitar and vocals" (and which also tends to sound incredibly boring), Uno Møller's composing and writing is, in my opinion, strong enough to keep your interest through Silent Riot's 44-minute spin. He also invited Oslo's own electronica goddess Lucy Swann on the single track "Riots", which you can find in the stream below. Silent Riots is out today via Lazy Acre Records, and can be ordered via their website. Read more → Unless you have been living in a cave lately, you probably know that the Norwegian pop outfit Team Me have had a major break-through shortly after their debut album To The Treetops! last year. Not that the presence of Uno Møller as a member of Team Me is so important anyway; the sounds are after all quite different from one another. Maybe is it the earlier Team Me that strikes me when listening through Uno Møller's second album Silent Riots (following the gorgeous Songs From My Beautiful Colourball back in 2010) — that sort of hidden melancholy Team Me's original founder Marius Hagen introduced us to in the first place, before turning into a quirky pop orchestra of six, including Uno on bass. Compared to so-called singer/songwriters who have a tendency to strip down their music into the minimalistic, over-used "classical guitar and vocals" (and which also tends to sound incredibly boring), Uno Møller's composing and writing is, in my opinion, strong enough to keep your interest through Silent Riot's 44-minute spin. He also invited Oslo's own electronica goddess Lucy Swann on the single track "Riots", which you can find in the stream below. Silent Riots is out today via Lazy Acre Records, and can be ordered via their website.

Aloonaluna: “Fall Like Leaves”.

05 Mar 2012 — Henning Lahmann

Deeply enchanting, anxious and frail outré pop offerings by Aloonaluna, the solo guise of California via Gainesville, Florida's Lynn Fister. With its shuffling rhythm and distant whistling, "Fall Like Leaves" initially appears to showcase some optimism, but once Fister's slightly distorted voice sets in, hidden behind a thick veil of reverberated haze, the light fades away until eventually all remaining confidence evaporates in a final synthesized sigh. Watch Rachel Evans' marvelous visualization of the highlight track of Aloonaluna's latest effort Bunny below, assembled with scenes from the 1971 film Social Seminar: Bunny. Bunny is out now on Hooker Vision. Order the cassette here. Aloonaluna - Fall Like Leaves Also check another Rachel Evans-made video, for the track "Watercolor Rabbit": Read more → Deeply enchanting, anxious and frail outré pop offerings by Aloonaluna, the solo guise of California via Gainesville, Florida's Lynn Fister. With its shuffling rhythm and distant whistling, "Fall Like Leaves" initially appears to showcase some optimism, but once Fister's slightly distorted voice sets in, hidden behind a thick veil of reverberated haze, the light fades away until eventually all remaining confidence evaporates in a final synthesized sigh. Watch Rachel Evans' marvelous visualization of the highlight track of Aloonaluna's latest effort Bunny below, assembled with scenes from the 1971 film Social Seminar: Bunny. Bunny is out now on Hooker Vision. Order the cassette here. Aloonaluna - Fall Like Leaves Also check another Rachel Evans-made video, for the track "Watercolor Rabbit":

Video Premiere: Lucky Dragons - “Mirror Makers”.

05 Mar 2012 — Jesse Thompson

Over the past decade, the Los Angeles-based experimental music group Lucky Dragons has created an influential body of work that's consistently challenged traditional song structures and musical expectations. With performances built on ideas of cooperation and collective experience of the unfamiliar, they are well-known for their high level of improvisation, crowd participation, and visual experience. The self-proclaimed meditative-punk group, comprised of Luke Fishbeck and Sarah Rara, puts on live shows that are as much, if not more, performance art as live music and has played a plethora of venues varying from popular avant-garde art spaces like Los Angeles' The Smell to the 2008 Whitney Biennial. NFOP is excited to premiere the new Miko Revereza directed video for the Lucky Dragons song "Mirror Makers" off their latest LP, Existers. The piece is highly communicative, as if someone was telling a story without words, only sound and gestures. After about a minute, bass synth bounces atop a swell of warbling processed sounds and thin, steady percussion, prompting the sentiment of an emphatic, more expansive narrative retelling. It's what happens when you finish a brief story, and the listener just blankly stares back at you with a confused look. It's that deep breath and okay-let-me-try-this-again moment, and with Revereza's spastic, minimally abstract visuals consistently lining up with the foundational components of the song, I have to say that I'm left with the same feeling I get after encountering more standard modes of storytelling, which is a much-appreciated and difficult wordless feat for the music world. Watch the new video for "Mirror Makers" below and stream the title track from the Existers LP, which is available now via Swill Children. Lucky Dragons - Existers Read more → Over the past decade, the Los Angeles-based experimental music group Lucky Dragons has created an influential body of work that's consistently challenged traditional song structures and musical expectations. With performances built on ideas of cooperation and collective experience of the unfamiliar, they are well-known for their high level of improvisation, crowd participation, and visual experience. The self-proclaimed meditative-punk group, comprised of Luke Fishbeck and Sarah Rara, puts on live shows that are as much, if not more, performance art as live music and has played a plethora of venues varying from popular avant-garde art spaces like Los Angeles' The Smell to the 2008 Whitney Biennial. NFOP is excited to premiere the new Miko Revereza directed video for the Lucky Dragons song "Mirror Makers" off their latest LP, Existers. The piece is highly communicative, as if someone was telling a story without words, only sound and gestures. After about a minute, bass synth bounces atop a swell of warbling processed sounds and thin, steady percussion, prompting the sentiment of an emphatic, more expansive narrative retelling. It's what happens when you finish a brief story, and the listener just blankly stares back at you with a confused look. It's that deep breath and okay-let-me-try-this-again moment, and with Revereza's spastic, minimally abstract visuals consistently lining up with the foundational components of the song, I have to say that I'm left with the same feeling I get after encountering more standard modes of storytelling, which is a much-appreciated and difficult wordless feat for the music world. Watch the new video for "Mirror Makers" below and stream the title track from the Existers LP, which is available now via Swill Children. Lucky Dragons - Existers

Kiss Kiss Fantastic: “Nothing Ever Changes”.

05 Mar 2012 — Tonje Thilesen

If you have been a frequent reader of music blogs as long as we have (which we can almost assume, due to the fact that you're actually reading this) you will most likely remember the fuzz around the Florida-California based duo Kiss Kiss Fantastic, and if so, you might also recall their raw and catchy The Red/Blue Shift EP from 2010. After a long absence of our dearest friend Rachel Levy, we are very glad to welcome her and Jeremy back to the surface. With their first full-lenght Dark Matter, it is a very desponded atmosphere we're approaching, embraced in layers of fuzzy guitars from some of the finest dream pop duos around. Thankfully, the record's 40-minute spin is not completely erased of hope, and all though there's a very carefree feel around Dark Matter, I'm stuck with the feeling of wanting to forget. Beautiful is it nonetheless, truly beautiful in fact, which is why you should click this link right now and download the whole thing for free. Oh, and Rachel? You know we love you. Kiss Kiss Fantastic - Nothing Ever Changes Kiss Kiss Fantastic - Red Velvet Domino Read more → If you have been a frequent reader of music blogs as long as we have (which we can almost assume, due to the fact that you're actually reading this) you will most likely remember the fuzz around the Florida-California based duo Kiss Kiss Fantastic, and if so, you might also recall their raw and catchy The Red/Blue Shift EP from 2010. After a long absence of our dearest friend Rachel Levy, we are very glad to welcome her and Jeremy back to the surface. With their first full-lenght Dark Matter, it is a very desponded atmosphere we're approaching, embraced in layers of fuzzy guitars from some of the finest dream pop duos around. Thankfully, the record's 40-minute spin is not completely erased of hope, and all though there's a very carefree feel around Dark Matter, I'm stuck with the feeling of wanting to forget. Beautiful is it nonetheless, truly beautiful in fact, which is why you should click this link right now and download the whole thing for free. Oh, and Rachel? You know we love you. Kiss Kiss Fantastic - Nothing Ever Changes Kiss Kiss Fantastic - Red Velvet Domino

Video Sunday vol. 18

04 Mar 2012 — Tonje Thilesen

After a brief hiatus last week, Video Sunday is back with an extra-large edition of the freshest videos by Shlohmo, CSLSX & I Break Horses, Blouse, Marijuana Deathsquads, Lenticular Clouds, iamamiwhoami, RxGibbs, and Oslo's own The Little Hands Of Asphalt. Enjoy, and have a great Sunday! Blouse - Ghost Dream (directed By Gusti Fink & Helmut Ash Kaway) Shlohmo - It Was Whatever (art direction by Monica Lek) CSLSX & I Break Horses - Violent Sea Marijuana Deathsquads - Crazy Master (directed by Isaac Gale) Lenticular Clouds - Supergravedad (by Layer One) iamamiwhoami - Drops RxGibbs - Silver (directed by Andrew de Freitas) The Little Hands Of Asphalt - Fitzcaraldo (by APPARATET) Read more → After a brief hiatus last week, Video Sunday is back with an extra-large edition of the freshest videos by Shlohmo, CSLSX & I Break Horses, Blouse, Marijuana Deathsquads, Lenticular Clouds, iamamiwhoami, RxGibbs, and Oslo's own The Little Hands Of Asphalt. Enjoy, and have a great Sunday! Blouse - Ghost Dream (directed By Gusti Fink & Helmut Ash Kaway) Shlohmo - It Was Whatever (art direction by Monica Lek) CSLSX & I Break Horses - Violent Sea Marijuana Deathsquads - Crazy Master (directed by Isaac Gale) Lenticular Clouds - Supergravedad (by Layer One) iamamiwhoami - Drops RxGibbs - Silver (directed by Andrew de Freitas) The Little Hands Of Asphalt - Fitzcaraldo (by APPARATET)

The Case for Ad Hoc.

02 Mar 2012 — Henning Lahmann

So, as you might already have noticed, the Kickstarter that was initiated a couple of weeks back to help finance Ad Hoc, that website/blog collective/quarterly zine that will launch soon and that we here at NFOP are more than happy to be a part of, is gonna be over in a few days, and at this point we obviously haven't collected enough money to make this thing successful. Now if you are one of the more than 600 backers that have given some money to support us, thank you so much; we really appreciate your help. If not, you might have already thought about it but eventually decided not to donate, which of course is totally legitimate. Still, allow us this one last time to try to get you on our side. Below, you can watch the editors Emilie Friedlander and Ric Leichtung explain once again their purposes and aims with Ad Hoc: In glancing at the Youtube comment board below the video, there was one comment that particularly struck me: "I'm still no closer to understanding why AdHoc is $33,000 more deserving than any other music blog ( - nominal print fees). I respect the passion behind the project but feel that asking for such an astronomical amount is arrogant and disrespectful to other music blogs. There are some brilliant blogs on the internet, specializing in all matter of subjects, that didn't require a $30k start-up fee, and just as importantly, didn't ask for it before launch (ie. before proof of quality of content)." First of all, good point. Of course, there already are brilliant blogs on the web. And they all come for free. So do you "need" some new site like Ad Hoc coming to you and asking for money all of a sudden, moreover, asking for quite a considerable amount of money? No. Still, is it "arrogant and disrespectful" of Ad Hoc to do so? I respectfully disagree. All the blogs I know (that includes NFOP) put an incredible amount of time and passion into their sites without ever getting anything financially out of it, which is fine because writing about music is what we love to do, and sharing our passion is why we've started in the first place. Still, I think it's not entirely fair if this is taken for granted, just as it's not fair to consider it somehow implicit that artists share their music for free, which is what they do via blogs and the internet in general. Bigger sites, on the other hand, more often than not have some kind of financially strong entity behind them, and still even those are not always able or willing to pay their writers and contributors. Altered Zones did, because the site's financier Pitchfork believes that even in the internet age, this is the way things should be when people work for you, and I agree. Ad Hoc wants to do things differently insofar as even without some solvent backup, the people who put their love and time into the site, in other words who work to provide you, the readers, with the stuff you want to read about and listen to and look at, should be paid. And in order to be able to do so, you're gonna need a considerable amount of money (apart from all the other costs of starting such a website, as explained in detail in the FAQ section of the Kickstarter site). As someone who gets one hundred percent of the information on the music I love from the internet, I do actually think this is worth supporting in itself, and that belief goes well beyond NFOP's involvement in this particular project. So is Ad Hoc $33,000 more deserving than any other music blog? Certainly not. But maybe you can see it as another approach in seeking a possibility to build something sustainable on the internet. Of course you could ask yourself, "why should I put money in something that I haven't even seen?" It's true, we haven't proven any quality of content yet, but we've told you what we've done before with other things (our blogs, Altered Zones, etc.), and we've told you what our plans are with Ad Hoc. And yes, we've even promised that it's gonna be awesome. Plus, it's not that we don't offer something in return beyond the project itself - just look at the amazing rewards like the compilation or the shirt (by the way that's the artwork for both above, made by the great Jeremy Earl of Woods and Woodsist), or all the other things that are up for grabs. Speaking of the compilation, Ric and Emilie have posted this wonderful mix on their Soundcloud, which not only includes the three tracks off the fundraiser compilation so far revealed, by How To Dress Well, Beach Fossils, and Grimes with Majical Cloudz, but also a bunch of other tracks that we here at NFOP totally dig, too, as you'll know if you're a reader of this publication: So in the end, I hope I've been able to convince some of you to help Ad Hoc become the amazing website and music resource we believe it's going to be. Thanks for your time. - Tonje, Jesse and Henning Read more → So, as you might already have noticed, the Kickstarter that was initiated a couple of weeks back to help finance Ad Hoc, that website/blog collective/quarterly zine that will launch soon and that we here at NFOP are more than happy to be a part of, is gonna be over in a few days, and at this point we obviously haven't collected enough money to make this thing successful. Now if you are one of the more than 600 backers that have given some money to support us, thank you so much; we really appreciate your help. If not, you might have already thought about it but eventually decided not to donate, which of course is totally legitimate. Still, allow us this one last time to try to get you on our side. Below, you can watch the editors Emilie Friedlander and Ric Leichtung explain once again their purposes and aims with Ad Hoc: In glancing at the Youtube comment board below the video, there was one comment that particularly struck me: "I'm still no closer to understanding why AdHoc is $33,000 more deserving than any other music blog ( - nominal print fees). I respect the passion behind the project but feel that asking for such an astronomical amount is arrogant and disrespectful to other music blogs. There are some brilliant blogs on the internet, specializing in all matter of subjects, that didn't require a $30k start-up fee, and just as importantly, didn't ask for it before launch (ie. before proof of quality of content)." First of all, good point. Of course, there already are brilliant blogs on the web. And they all come for free. So do you "need" some new site like Ad Hoc coming to you and asking for money all of a sudden, moreover, asking for quite a considerable amount of money? No. Still, is it "arrogant and disrespectful" of Ad Hoc to do so? I respectfully disagree. All the blogs I know (that includes NFOP) put an incredible amount of time and passion into their sites without ever getting anything financially out of it, which is fine because writing about music is what we love to do, and sharing our passion is why we've started in the first place. Still, I think it's not entirely fair if this is taken for granted, just as it's not fair to consider it somehow implicit that artists share their music for free, which is what they do via blogs and the internet in general. Bigger sites, on the other hand, more often than not have some kind of financially strong entity behind them, and still even those are not always able or willing to pay their writers and contributors. Altered Zones did, because the site's financier Pitchfork believes that even in the internet age, this is the way things should be when people work for you, and I agree. Ad Hoc wants to do things differently insofar as even without some solvent backup, the people who put their love and time into the site, in other words who work to provide you, the readers, with the stuff you want to read about and listen to and look at, should be paid. And in order to be able to do so, you're gonna need a considerable amount of money (apart from all the other costs of starting such a website, as explained in detail in the FAQ section of the Kickstarter site). As someone who gets one hundred percent of the information on the music I love from the internet, I do actually think this is worth supporting in itself, and that belief goes well beyond NFOP's involvement in this particular project. So is Ad Hoc $33,000 more deserving than any other music blog? Certainly not. But maybe you can see it as another approach in seeking a possibility to build something sustainable on the internet. Of course you could ask yourself, "why should I put money in something that I haven't even seen?" It's true, we haven't proven any quality of content yet, but we've told you what we've done before with other things (our blogs, Altered Zones, etc.), and we've told you what our plans are with Ad Hoc. And yes, we've even promised that it's gonna be awesome. Plus, it's not that we don't offer something in return beyond the project itself - just look at the amazing rewards like the compilation or the shirt (by the way that's the artwork for both above, made by the great Jeremy Earl of Woods and Woodsist), or all the other things that are up for grabs. Speaking of the compilation, Ric and Emilie have posted this wonderful mix on their Soundcloud, which not only includes the three tracks off the fundraiser compilation so far revealed, by How To Dress Well, Beach Fossils, and Grimes with Majical Cloudz, but also a bunch of other tracks that we here at NFOP totally dig, too, as you'll know if you're a reader of this publication: So in the end, I hope I've been able to convince some of you to help Ad Hoc become the amazing website and music resource we believe it's going to be. Thanks for your time. - Tonje, Jesse and Henning

Cursillistas: “Frontier Gothic”.

02 Mar 2012 — Henning Lahmann

Cursillistas used to be the principal project of Portland, Maine folk wizard Matthew Lajoie before his other critically acclaimed venture Herbcraft really took off. Though on indefinite hiatus now, Lajoie's own imprint has recently released Observe Ember Weeks, the project's "final studio album", gathering ten songs that were written, recorded, and mixed between 2007 and 2009. This is some superb music here, literally breathtaking free folk transmissions that are as psychedelic as they are noise- and drone-informed. The multi-layered improv-leaning monster "Frontier Gothic", which needs almost three minutes to fully kick off (just wait for it), is one of the most staggering instances of its genre that I've ever come across, effortlessly combining all elements that made the US free folk scene so exciting in the first place. This is heavy, dense, demanding, yet instantly accessible and thoroughly entrancing music, or in other words: truly sublime. Observe Ember Weeks is out now on L'animaux Tryst (Field) Recordings. Edition of 225, deluxe 150-gram virgin black vinyl held in a four-color, five-layer silkscreened art paper jacket. Get it here. Cursillistas - Frontier Gothic Read more → Cursillistas used to be the principal project of Portland, Maine folk wizard Matthew Lajoie before his other critically acclaimed venture Herbcraft really took off. Though on indefinite hiatus now, Lajoie's own imprint has recently released Observe Ember Weeks, the project's "final studio album", gathering ten songs that were written, recorded, and mixed between 2007 and 2009. This is some superb music here, literally breathtaking free folk transmissions that are as psychedelic as they are noise- and drone-informed. The multi-layered improv-leaning monster "Frontier Gothic", which needs almost three minutes to fully kick off (just wait for it), is one of the most staggering instances of its genre that I've ever come across, effortlessly combining all elements that made the US free folk scene so exciting in the first place. This is heavy, dense, demanding, yet instantly accessible and thoroughly entrancing music, or in other words: truly sublime. Observe Ember Weeks is out now on L'animaux Tryst (Field) Recordings. Edition of 225, deluxe 150-gram virgin black vinyl held in a four-color, five-layer silkscreened art paper jacket. Get it here. Cursillistas - Frontier Gothic