Via Stereogum
When I posted Say God’s “Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of My Mind” I reiterated my respect for Daniel Higgs, talked about the influence he had on me as a youngster (via Lungfish), and his excellent solo material (that crusty combo of long-neck banjo, jew’s harp, noise, organ drone, bird songs, art, alchemy, his personal Gospel/life philosophy), etc. This time I can cut to the chase: Clairaudience Fellowship is Higgs’ gorgeous, expansively hushed (and not surprisingly devotional, profound) vinyl-only collaboration with Baltimore underground noise mainstay/Tarantula Hill community builder Twig Harper (see Scheme, Mini-Systems, especially Nautical Almanac). Harper explains the title (“Clairaudience: to hear beyond physical vibration. Fellowship: in a communal or collaborative way”) and the collection:
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Six-piece Family Of The Year have played around California for a bit, but they’re about to release their European debut, the Summer Girl EP. The band does include real family members, brothers Joe and Sebastian Keefe, but the band do all live together. “Let’s Be Honest” reflects their L.A. locale and their close quarters. It’s fully of warm, bright harmonies and surfy rhythms (and handclapped breakdowns). “Summer Girl,” one of those wistful, end-of-summer/summer romance songs, is nearly all vocal harmony with a little piano and guitar.
Our love for Das Racist’s dadaist dipthongs, pithy wit raps, and punched-up Amitabh Bachchan-referencing rhyme schemes conclusively established in a love letter to the Shut Up, Dude mixtape (and bowling also), news of its powered-by-Diplo sequel Sit Down, Man’s imminent arrival is a highly exciting prospect. Plus, it features production from Chairlift and Class of 2010 freshmen Teengirl Fantasy, among others from the Stereogum tag set. There’s a trailer and everything, which is below, but in the interim we have the video for Shut Up’s “Who’s That? Brooown!” to fall back on, an 8-bit video game styled adventure that follows the DR crew on a mission not far from a Saturday in their real lives, starting a day in Queens and bouncing around the greater Williamsburg, BKLYN/QNZ area on a mission to track down their own hype man/spirit guru Dapwell. And other things, too, probably.
Today Apple introduced iTunes 10 featuring Ping, a sort of social network based around your iTunes plays. According to Gizmodo:
This Exploding Motor Car-directed video for No Ghost’s second single “Restoration” was shot on location at “the Mataseje Family Farm” in Beamsville, Ontario. The footage of the band at their time-lapse BBQ is pretty standard nature-folk/pop whatever, but once the sun drops they make beautiful use of simple lighting on the surrounding trees, leaves, moths, etc.
As we prepare ourselves for this weekend’s pleasingly loud ATP NY (see: Holy Mountain, Superfuzz Bigmuff, Raw Power, Sunn O))) + Boris, SY, ATP regulars Fuck Buttons, etc.), it’s been announced that on 7/1 of next year Flaming Lips will do the 11-year-old The Soft Bulletin, Dinosaur the older Bug (one of my all-time favorites), and Deerhoof the less-than-classic Milk Man at London’s Alexandra Place as part of All Tomorrow’s Parties’ Don’t Look Back series. Tickets go on sale Friday 9/3. More info at ATP (via NME).
Fever Ray has some tour dates coming up, and Karin Dreijer worked with director Andreas Nilsson (who’s directed videos for Fever Ray, as well as MGMT and Yeasayer) on a look for her live show. Here’s a peak at the new makeup and costuming:
The ballsy Mammoth, Lakes California trio Valdur play blistering blackened punk/war metal (featuring a Norwegian-born vocalist named Thor). They aren’t crusty like Bone Awl. It’s a close-cropped brutal death-inflected BM sound: Think of the recent recordings of Philadelphia’s (great black hope) woe captured during a Western blizzard and with a more straightforward/traditional, less twisting/mathy/post-black forward push. Which isn’t to say this music isn’t complex: Valdur create an epic, dense atmosphere and display a surprisingly graceful ear for melody and a strong dynamic pull within all that buzzing. They also bring along an uncompromising DIY spirit to the table: As with their 2007 self-titled debut and 2008 split with Lightning Swords of Death, the band released this new “self-funded” full-length, Raven God Amongst Us, on drummer Sxuperion’s Bloody Mountain imprint. (You may recognize the album title from the name of a track on that Lightning split.) Its most immediate track is the single “Berserrker,” a kind of fight song for the band, and maybe USBM in general.
With fall on the horizon, we’re escaping a slow summer and shifting into that final, fertile phase of the music year’s release cycle. Which makes it a ripe time to get some perspective on the year, in terms of the big records from past favorites, and here, the bands that have introduced themselves as new ones. Recently, NME conducted its own exercise in surveying the “new” crop of bands, turning in a list that rankled some of you, because you felt some bands were “old,” or because some bands were not to your liking, or because it was a list. The subjectivity of what makes a band the best at anything is of course primary grounds for debate; what makes a band the best at being “new” gives the argument more dimension. We found ourselves arguing and emailing about our own picks, and rules, and said fuck it: let’s publish this.
So, qualitative concerns are one thing … but what qualifies one as a “2010 act”? After discussing various rules based on arbitrary cut-off dates (debut LP release by x date, or an EP by y, or a first blog mention by z, etc.), we quickly realized that no single formula would satisfactorily account for the shifting, accelerated nature of this new hype-cycle that saturates-upon-contact in some cases, and builds slowly over years in others. By our discussions, Sleigh Bells, a band of which we’re obviously quite fond, felt more like last year’s story than this one’s, staking their claim to newness and arrival in terms of exposure and discussion the week they landed a Band To Watch stamp, during CMJ ‘09. Meanwhile, Warpaint put out an EP earlier that year but it’s only now, with excitement over newer tunes and a cemented lineup that it seems to be their time.
So we settled on a sniff test: If it felt the band’s discussion, their moment, their arrival, was tied to this year in our minds, then it was eligible for this list. So, sorry Local Natives, though we love you.
We invite you to argue with us, and with each other (duh). Argue about the bands’ newness, sure, but mostly, argue about their merits. If this is your first exposure to them, well that brings us to the overarching point of a list like this: Introduction. Each member of this year’s class is listed here alphabetically (no rankings) with a free and legal MP3 for your downloading pleasure. At the bottom of this post all 40 tracks are compiled via two zip files so you can load ‘em up for your Labor Day roadtrip.
As I tweeted last month, you really can hear the Built To Spill influence on longstanding double-drumming Savannah quintet Kylesa’s beyond-excellent fifth full length, Spiral Shadow. It’s out 10/26 via Season Of Mist, will top year-end lists, etc. Until then, get a sense of how Doug Martsch-like guitar layerings are woven into anthemic psychedelic sludge metal via album opener “Tired Climb,” currently streaming at MySpace.
