Say that you're
Bradford Cox [myspace]. You've already released one of the albums in the year with solo project
Atlas Sound's debut full-length
Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, your band
Deerhunter's newest
Microcastle (another triumph) is in the can and now you're asked to open up for your musical heroes
Animal Collective in Europe. So, what does the prolific frontman do? Take it easy and play the new Atlas Sound album with the new band he got together who are probably just now really gelling with the material? Nahhhh. He drops the solo band, packs up the sampler used by said heroes, and emulates them in the same venues they're about to play. Atlas Sound is more gentle and airy than Deerhunter, and Cox's sound had already drawn comparisons to Panda Bear and Animal Collective, but the aping that takes place (in this set at least) here is astounding for one reason: he makes it his own and makes it work. There are times in this set when his voice and guitar and sounds are whooshing through the Roland SP-404 sampler (I confirmed it w/ flickr pics, it's the glue to Animal Collective's sound) and assorted effects pedals, and if you didn't know better you couldn't be blamed for thinking it was a Panda Bear solo set. And this is no easy feat - I don't know how much Cox used a 404 before this tour, I know he's well used to samplers, but Panda Bear has talked about having to completely relearn how to write songs after getting one (it's also the lynchpin to El Guincho's AC-similar sound). To add an extra unknown to the musical equation, AC's Avey Tare wrote on the blog entry for
his micromix: "
"Bradford and i have been writing lines for each other to sing in the sets on this tour. Puts a little trickery into the improvized parts of our set ill say." And then, just as Panda Bear's Ma Fama session last year ended with an untitled song-of-the-year, Cox does it, too. And not just that one, but five of these seven songs are either brand new or improvisations that the
Deerhunter forum hadn't even heard yet, clearly showing Cox's sheer determination to stretch himself as an artist, and leaving me wholly impressed. And as soon as this small tour was over, without a break he was on the road with Deerhunter promoting
Microcastles.
HUGE thanks to the guy who recorded this show,
Stutter at
Dime. He also recorded the Animal Collective set afterwards, which can be found in its lossless flac entirety
here at the Live Music Archive. I won't get into the mp3/flac debate, but he originally didn't want these sets shared in mp3, but was convinced otherwise by my persuasive writing. He's got DPA microphones which are small stereo mics, small enough to wear which may have been what he was doing. Occassionally you may hear like a panning phase/whoosh on the overall sound, that's probably small body movements, or the air conditioner at the venue he hated so much, (edit: confirmed it was the air conditioning in the venue - the AC mixing with the AC) but it's weird how perfectly it fits into the overall sound. They're about 400 bucks, but damn, I think these mics might be what I'm going to look into getting. As soon as the lottery hits. Thanks,
Stutter, and to
smur89 for the Bradford pic in Dublin from the same European tour.
And out of respect to Stutter's great recording and thanks that he's shared it, I'm including a flac download for this one. If you plan on burning this to CD and aren't familiar with flac, now's a good time to start. Flac is basically compressed CD quality, but without the audio lossage that comes with mp3. Download
Trader's Little Helper to convert ("decode") flac into CD quality wav, or there are several free apps that play or convert flac (
VLC is always good for playing anything on any platform), google it. And if you want more free live lossless music and don't know where to turn, look
here. Thanks again, stutter.
Be sure
the Deerhunter blog is in your bookmarks, it's everything you'd think a musician's blog should be: a few frank thoughts and lots of great music. LOTS of music, as in "here's a vocal sample I recorded I thought you'd like"... "here's a free EP"... "here's another free EP of things I miss at home while i'm on tour"... "here's a couple of my dad's favorite songs that I recorded for him"... Every track may not hit a bullseye, but enough do, and I have mothing but the upmost admiration for any artist so willing to share with fans the nooks and crannies of their exploration, warts and all, especially somebody who has a way with playful, primal melody like Bradford Cox does. And besides
Avey's, don't miss
Geo's and
Panda's mixtapes done for the Deerhunter blog while they bused around Europe together (oh to be a fly on that bus, listening to vocal harmonies being traded back and forth), and all the other great music.
Buy Atlas Sound's debut
Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel direct from the label,
Kranky, on CD and 2xLP
Yesterday NASA's Phoenix (official UofA page / NASA page) lander confirmed the existence of water on Mars. They were pretty sure it was there when they saw on camera what appeared to be chunks of ice disappearing, but yesterday the Phoenix was finally able to get a good scoop of soil inside itself, and the TEGA equipment analyzed the samples and "tasted" the water, and confirmed it. Scientists have long concluded where there's water there's life, so it may only be a short time before we have the evidence of the first lifeform discovered outside Earth. The Mars Science Laboratory (rover) will be launched in the Fall of 2009 to further study the composition of Mars.
Jonathan Richman has a new record out, Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild, and there's no other way to put it: he's grown up (and that's not a bad thing). I guess you can only keep playing "Ice Cream Man" for so long, and Richman clearly doesn't want to rest on his laurels or trademark bubblegum-folk sound. He hasn't lost his simplicity entirely, but his newer music is more sophisticated than even many long-time fans expected. There's a few deeper themes than he usually writes about here, especially the last track, "As My Mother Lay Lying", but his common themes of love, life, and dead artists ("No One Was Like Vermeer") are still present, and it's musically that he's really grown the most. His songs are still sweet and breezy and charming, but there's a certain element of European troubadour about them now. The songs wear a pencil-thin moustache and often strum and pick with a definite Spanish (classical guitar) style, there are lyrics in both French and Spanish, and the sparseness of the music (just him plus Tommy Larkins on drums, sometimes some bass) helps easily conjure the image of Jonathan leaning against a white-washed wall at sunset while playing and singing these songs. His guitar chords and scale exploration are as jazzy as they've ever been, but it's never too much, just enough to keep the songs interesting. There's even some distorted guitar lead over one of the Spanish-rhythm strummers, a repeat performance of "When We Refuse To Suffer", sounding like a dare which somehow, of course, works. Every song is a winner, this is the perfect summer album and without a doubt one of the tops of the year.
And checking out Dan Friel's myspace, I noticed he was playing a gig with guitar-god Marc Ribot next month, a Ribot project I hadn't heard called Ceramic Dog. It's his new trio [with bassist Shahzad Ismaily (Laurie Anderson, Secret Chiefs 3) and drummer Ches Smith (Trevor Dunn's Trio Convulsant, Secret Chiefs 3, Xiu Xiu], what he calls his first rock band since high school, and as it turns out they have a brand new album out too, and I've got to say, even more than the Friel: "Holy shit." Like the Friel, there's a couple of slower numbers, but here they stretch out to epic proportions, including the spoken "When We Were Young And We Were Freaks" which sounds like it could be a Jad Fair song. There's more rollicking fun than introspection, but all the tracks have a sense of adventure musically, even when using gimmicks they are obviously trying to expand the boundaries of their art, using the familiar musical notions only as a springboard for their explorations. I hear the Sonny Sharrock influence when Ribot shreds, like on last year's release, in fact if Sonny Sharrock were alive this probably wouldn't be too far off what he would be doing. There are explosions of wailing, bursts of scales and squeals, Ribot bouncing his own melodic ideas off of one another (overdubs? I'd like to hear this live!), the whole band pumping furiously and jumping rhythms and excursions in genre-bending similar to Mr. Bungle, some fat electro-beats that could have come straight from a Trans Am album and other kitchy electro-funk Zappa-ish parts, and a Doors cover that has to be heard to be believed. It's a rare musical treat that simultaneously explores and boogies.
White Denim certainly don't need any hype from me - the British and European press are doing a pretty good job piling on the praise, if the review snippets on the Full Time Hobby (Hold Steady, Viva Voce) site are any measure, but I'll still wholeheartedly congratulate the local boys done good. According to this profile from Austin it-bookers Transmission Entertainment, White Denim's first proper US LP release, titled Exposion, should be out by the end of July 2008 (and it says a second album's worth of material has already been recorded!), just after they get back from this European jaunt, at which time they plan to enslave the human race and make every living man, woman, and child a dancing disciple of their junk/punk/funk. Their overseas excursion began yesterday with the following BBC set and an instore in London, and will see them hit several festivals (wtf - how long has there been a Mighty Boosh Festival???) including the storied Glastonbury Festival. Thanks to DimeADozen user paul_b35_uk, who shares an absolute ton of BBC 6 sets on Dime, for getting this set out so quickly, and to bakrsdzn for the pic. Also be sure you've downloaded White Denim's free EP here.
