2007-12-13

Jens Lekman Solo Radio Performance



Is Jens Lekman too quirky to break into the mainstream? His smooth crooning can sooth even the most jaded listener, and it's easy to see how his romantic sounds could appeal to a wider, older, less "hip" audience. He has called himself (here in the interview below) the "indie Frank Sinatra", although I have two arguments against that: 1. Jens's swagger doesn't have the tough streak of Sinatra's 2. Sinatra would probably never, even if the technology were available at the time, sing over a loop of his own beat-boxing as Jens does here. His newest, Night Falls Over Kortedala, is appearing on many year-end best-of lists, and also sees him exploring where he can take "crooner" music, encorporating various styles and offbeat musical elements. The combination of quirkiness (especially with lyrics) with pure pleasantness has won over much of the indie community, and it won't be long before a more mainstream crowd knows his name.






Jens Lekman
KEXP Seattle Nov. 6, 2007

01 The Opposite of Hallelujah
02 Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig
03 Interview
04 Your Arms Around Me
05 Shirin
06 Interview





Night Falls Over Kortedala would be an excellent gift idea for someone you wouldn't think would normally listen to indie music, and the cheapest price I found was directly from the label Secretly Canadian, 11 bucks for CD or vinyl.

Thanks also to your friend laura for the great photo of Jens, taken at an in-store he played the same day as the set above and a full show later that night.

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2007-12-12

of Montreal Cover 2 More Prince Songs

of Montreal are a band known for their great covers, both performance-wise and selection-wise, but I don't think before this year's tour that they ever covered more than one song from the same artist. First there was "Moonage Daydream" (*bows*), then came a slew of other David Bowie covers. Then earlier this year they covered "Raspberry Beret" and lately they started playing "Purple Rain" (which I saw in Austin), and have now gone even further into the Prince catalog. Both Bowie and Prince seem to be huge influences on the newer of Montreal sounds, so it's good to see Kevin Barnes acknowledging that fact outright and firmly by playing so many of their songs. The show these following tracks are from was in St. Louis on November 19, the second-to-last stop of this American leg on their massive tour, and were the opening two songs of the concert.


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2007-12-08

Karlheinz Stockhausen



Karlheinz Stockhausen died Wednesday (obit.). I had heard him mentioned several times as an electronic pioneer and an avant-garde composer who influenced popular music from the Beatles (he was on the Sgt. Pepper cover collage) to Sonic Youth, yet I admittedly (like most I presume) had heard little of his music. Like any kind of music, if you're interested in it, look to the pioneers and heavyweights, and if you missed their contributions while they were alive, a wake is an appropriate time to take a moment to examine somebody's work, so for the last couple days I've been diving in. I learned that Stockhausen (wiki) did much more than tinker with electronics, he was a quixotic visionary who (along with John Cage) pioneered the use of chance in music, even having musical scores which could be read by the performer upside down or begun at a random page. Stockhausen also experimented with atonal music, which even today sounds challenging, and probably much more so to audiences of the fifties and sixties. He was always looking for new possibilities in sound, and the music I've heard from him has very different styles, from noise to abstract choral arrangements to strange silence>note cluster collages. He is most influentially noted, though, for his electronic experiments, incorporating new musical equipment with his atonality and serialism experiments, like in his Kontakte, recorded from 1958-1960 in his studio in Cologne:









Below is an intriguing later example (early 90's) of his exploratory composing enititled "Helikopter String Quartet" (part of his LICHT [light] cycle of operas), featuring four classical instrumentalists matching dizzying tremolos to the rotary sound of the four helicopters they are riding in while performing. Here is a more in-depth description.




Karlheinz Stockhausen "Helikopter String Quartet" (edit)




If you take the time to explore Karlheinz Stockhausen, you'll inevitably come upon many internet opinions regarding him as everything from " unparalleled genius" to "unlistenable". As with virtually any artist, there is talk about how the later stuff is not as good as the earlier stuff. As with any music that is new (to you), try to ignore all of the words and focus on the sounds. They can be difficult piece to listen through, but good or bad, it brings up a quote I saw in an interview with Stockhausen, where he said that all music and sound effects you. You are different after listening to anything. Certainly the "Helikopter String Quartet" will, at least unconsciously, make you more aware of the interplay between what you think of as music and what you think of as daily noise.


Don't miss the multimedia page at the official Stockhausen site for more audio.

Amazon has a wide selection of interesting-looking Stockhausen CDs

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2007-12-01

The Joggers Cover Deerhoof, Grateful Dead

On The Joggers myspace page, they now link to a new Joggers blog. It's been going on for a month now, and has lots of info - I didn't realize Dan and Jake also play in a band called Pseudosix, which I will be checking out immediately, and Daryl the bassist is out for a while with a hockey injury. But the big news comes in the form of a link to PRA radio - Portland Radio Authority, which is a treasure-trove of Portland area recordings, including TWO shows from the Joggers, plus an interview, as well as a Damo Suzuki (Can) tribute featuring Dan and Jake from the Joggers. One of the Joggers' shows is the cover-laden set from NYE last year featuring the below songs, and, oh, Led Zeppelin. The links at PRA are working weirdly right now, though, to get to the Joggers shows you first have to go to the PRA homepage and then to the link for PODCAST - PRA Events. When I went to that link yesterday it showed me a page full of concerts including the above mentioned Joggers' sets, but now it seems to be directing to a Yahoo page to "add events to my Yahoo". It wouldn't be as fun if you didn't have to work to uncover it, would it?


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2007-11-26

A Birthday Mix

Yeah for me. I've managed to keep this blog going for a year now, and my download numbers keep increasing, so it's good to know I can still turn people onto music, take them on a slightly different musical journey than they would have. People always have a curious reaction when they first hear the name Funeral Pudding. It is actually an album by one of my all-time favorite bands, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - from San Francisco and often on Matador Records. The odd juxtaposition of words is what always caused it to stick in my mind, and when I needed a name for my old college radio show, it worked, especially with my oh-so-clever tagline "as commercial radio kills music...". So anyways, here's a couple of tracks from TFUL282's Funeral Pudding (buy):






TFUL282 "Waited Too Long"


TFUL 282 "23 Kings Crossing"














And here's a special birthday mix, it's quite nice if I do say so myself (go here and click "download now"):
















.
My first post was also a mix, and amazingly those original fileden links still seem to be working. It'll have to do for Christmas this season, because this year I'm working on a Festivus mix...

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2007-11-21

Ropeadope/Klock/Critters/9-11

I was thinking about this year's releases, reading some early lists, and catching up on some albums I might have missed or not explored enough. One of my favorite's was San, from japan's DJ Klock, finally released in America, just before his death. I was looking for something more from him or the group Cacoy he was a part of. San was released on Ropeadope Records, who have a regular page and forward-thinking Digital page, as well as artist-friendly terms, and I found this sampler:





...but that's a small selection of the mp3s they have available on their site (which definitely makes exploring it more worthwhile), just look around - on many album info pages you'll find mp3s, too. The music selection is indie and eclectic, but seems to have a good deal of avant-garde, DJ, and jazz- inspired artists, including DJ Logic; Medeski, Martin, and Wood; and Critters Buggin (who I love and saw in 2000 - TFUL282 opened, but lost track of). Ropeadope released the last Critters Buggin album (and links to a new DVD), and on the album info page (buy it) I found this mp3 sample:




______________________




And I just came across this at WFMU, possibly the most hilarious remix contest ever:




Whether you decide to try to remix yourself or not, just listening to the sound clip alone is worth the visit.

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2007-11-15

Brown Whornet is Back Hitting the Streets

Austin avant-meisters Brown Whornet (myspace) are like creeper weed: you kind of go "what the fuck? not bad..." at first, but slowly it envelops you. The faux-crooning and musical weirdness and tongues in cheek start to warble your own sensibilities a bit, and this is a good thing. Fans of Ween, Zappa, and Mr. Bungle / Fantomas should really like them, but they do have their own peculiarities, both musically and in their presentation. Chicago Reader says: "Brown Whörnet mangle free jazz, luv-me-baby R & B, parodically straight hardcore, and something that sounds like Yes on a boom box whose batteries are dying are all in their arsenal." They do musical scores for old silent movies ("Nosferatu"-1922, "The Adventures of Prince Achmed"-1926, and "The Lost World"-1925), their live shows often see costumes and slide slows, and have been as likely as (my heroes) TFUL282 (who they've toured with, along with Melt-Banana and Wesley Willis) to use outtakes from the studio or even a late-night hotel jam sessions on their releases. Brown Whornet have been on hiatus for a while, but are back with a series of new releases that they are making available as free downloads. They've got about 300 hours of audio that they're going to be releasing - two episodes a month, each episode containing more musical ideas than most bands' discographies. Releases like this are normally known as a podcasts, only, of course, these are called Brownloads. And to celebrate, they're playing a rare show Saturday night in Austin, I can't wait.



Although for some reason this stuff's not linked to on their main page, don't miss the other page with a Brown Whornet jukebox, plus downloads available HERE and HERE


This is a newer song that was a track of the week at garageband.com earlier this year:





And these are from a couple of older albums, the first three from Now I have A Pussy (funniest album cover of all time) and the fourth from Emena Pesticode, and both are available as a package deal along with a cassette as a Valupack HERE, along with lots of other releases sure to make your collection a bit more interesting.


Brown Whornet "Lik mye balls"

Brown Whornet "Outside World"

Brown Whornet "assboss"

Brown Whornet "Surf Song"



The first track holds special meaning to me - in 2002 I was doing my first stint on college radio before eventually moving to England for a bit, but before I left this was the last track I played.



Visit the Brown Whornet shop.

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2007-11-07

Two Compilation Albums For Free Download

Sorry for the lag, I've been using a lot of my storage space for the Booty Patrol. You should head over there at once and download the new of Montreal tribute album Aluminum Plums (and the several concerts available there). This tribute really is better than many others I've heard - the musicianship is elevated, and there's a good range of periods in of Montreal's music, and in the interpretations, and also a good range of experience levels - from bedroom recordings to an acapella group to Pitchfork-worthy bands like Tokyo's Elekibass and former of Montreal member Jason NeSmith's band Casper and the Cookies, who deliver a jaw-dropping version of "Penelope" that jumps across genres like a frog on a lilypad, from funk to alt-rock to Queen to bluegrass to reggae to heavy metal to chamber music, all effortlessly and without sounding contrived, just an enjoyable exploration of where that song can go. Here's that song, the album's closer, and the opening track, from Mimi and Flo mastermind Jeff Maksym:








Also, beloved Bay Area label Three Ring Records has a free sampler album available on emusic. I previously featured another great (charity) compilation from them, featuring Rogue Wave and other great Bay Area artists. Three Ring was recently voted "Best Local Label" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, who say "An impeccable design theme (circus nostalgia - how can you lose?), a community-oriented approach to music production and marketing, and some rockin' and folkin' good tunes from the likes of Rykarda Parasol and Boyskout make Three Ring Records our tune-savvy readers' favorite this year." Here's a couple of my favorites: Scrabbel (with Aislers Set keyboardist Dan Lee), and The Ebb and Flow (from download.com: "backhandedly progressive brand of indie pop... so catchy, you might not spot the avant-garde", don't miss Sam Tsitrin's side project We Is Shore Dedicated - mp3):







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2007-10-19

Thai Pop Spectacular

Sublime Frequencies is a label run by Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls (and filmmaker Hisham Mayet), with help from brother and fellow SCG (Sir) Richard, where they can share little heard or seen musical treasures from Southeast Asia to the Middle East. And with Thai Pop Spectacular, they've managed to compile an eclectic mix of Thai music from the 60's to 80's that I wish would have been a part of my musical language long ago. It's a wild mix of genres held together for English-only ears by not only the foreign, melodic, slightly melancholy longing warble of the singing but by a strange sense of familiarity with the music. The first two tracks below especially gave me the feeling I had heard them somewhere before (especially the second one, I'm almost positive this is a cover but can't find info on it, it's not the "Don't Deceive Me" listed on allmusic.com - anyone?). And in this album the funky grooves, killer guitar/bass/keyboard/horn riffs, surf and disco-wah-wah influences, and a reverence for standards and oldies aren't the generic pastiche or giant mess you might think, but rather like a glorious Thai Nuggets, like what you expect to find in the record collection of a hip Thai kid in the 70's or 80's, who wears the same new-wave sunglasses as his American contemporaries, only with more wistfulness, palm trees, heat, and coconut curries.






Buy it direct from Sublime Frequencies. This is #32 in their collection of unique audio and video, and admittedly the first I've come across, but I look forward to exploring their other releases, too, which are all listed on their main page.

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