Crickets
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Posted
by Leor Galil on
Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 12:00 PM
For most folks, Dischord will always be synonymous with the style of punk known as the "D.C. sound." In the 80s that meant hardcore, in the 90s it meant postpunk, and in the aughts things started getting weird—a lot of material Dischord put out challenged every notion of a local sound. Take
Beauty Pill, an excellent experimental postrock act fronted by Chad Clark (formerly of Smart Went Crazy) that fuses punk, jazz, hip-hop, funk, and anything else that pops into an irresistible whole.
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Tags: 12 O'Clock Track, Beauty Pill, Chad Clark, Dischord, Washington City Paper, Afrikaner Barista
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Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Posted
by Miles Raymer on
Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 3:43 PM
Through eight years and five albums the Hold Steady have earned themselves a reputation as the go-to act for big, broad rock anthems and life affirmation via power chords. Recently front man Craig Finn used some downtime between Hold Steady endeavors to record a solo album,
Clear Hearts, Full Eyes (Vagrant), that's considerably more subdued and introspective than anything he's done with either the Hold Steady or his previous band, Lifter Puller. Finn's first solo tour
comes to the Empty Bottle tonight. Last Thursday, the day after the first show of the tour, he and I talked on the phone. Hit the jump to see our conversation.
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Tags: Craig Finn, Hold Steady, indie rock, interview
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Posted
by Miles Raymer on
Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 12:00 PM
Po Po's
Dope Boy Magick (out February 28 on Mad Decent) is an odd duck of a record. For one thing, it's a rock-band release on a label that's known almost exclusively for its dance and hip-hop acts. For another, the definition of "rock" that Po Po seems to be using is broad enough to include everything from tribal psychedelia to boneheaded punk. Today's
12 O'Clock Track, "Let's Get Away," sounds like ambient chillwave spiked with Van Halen and heard from deep within a cough-syrup haze.
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Tags: Po Po, Let's Get Away, Dope Boy Magick, Mad Decent, 12 O'Clock Track, Video
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Monday, February 6, 2012
Posted
by Miles Raymer on
Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 5:24 PM
Ground Lift Media's beat-maker showcase, Face Melt, will reach its lucky 13th installment at Subterranean on February 24. In keeping with their usual MO, the Face Melt crew have released yet another compilation of instrumentals by local producers from the more experimental corners of Chicago hip-hop, who together form a slightly less whimsical and more pragmatic companion to the Low End Theory scene out in medical-marijuana-giddy Los Angeles.
Just like last time, downloading the Face Melt comp for free
via Bandcamp will get you free admission to the showcase, which will include some of the featured artists. One of them is Void Pedal,
who I like quite a bit.
Ground Lift will present another event slightly sooner: Saturday, February 18, is the latest Chicago installment of the annual Dre Day celebration, which with every passing year comes ever closer to federal recognition. Or at least I hope that's the case.
Tags: Face Melt, Ground Lift Media, Dre Day, Void Pedal
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Friday, February 3, 2012
Posted
by Miles Raymer on
Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 4:22 PM
- Big Sean teaches us the Spanish word for "ass"
For the past couple of days I've been in Michigan dealing with a family situation that's reasonably heavy. It was a hastily put-together trip, and neither my sister nor myself brought any CDs or iPod hookups; because my family lives in a rural area that requires a lot of driving around, I spent a lot of time listening to the radio. One of the highlights of the trip was the opportunity to spend some time with
WJLB, "The D's Hip-Hop & R&B" and one of my favorite radio stations in the entire country. Right now they're playing
Big Sean's "Dance (A$$)" remix with Nicki Minaj approximately every five minutes or so, which is great because that song is, along with Nicki's
"Stupid Hoe", one of the funnest, raunchiest things in pop music right at the moment.
From what I've heard from my friends, a lot of cases of Early Onset Februaries have been diagnosed around town, despite the recent heat wave. Luckily there is a cure, which is to make that motherfucker Hammer Time and repeat as necessary. To that end I've provided the "Dance (A$$)" video after the jump.
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Tags: Big Sean, Dance (A$$), Nicki Minaj, WJLB, hip-hop, video, Video
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Posted
by Leor Galil on
Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 12:00 PM
Nearly four years ago
Dan Friel of
Parts & Labor recommended I check out Brooklyn art-rock act
Extra Life at the now-defunct After the Jump Festival, and I'm glad I took his advice. The group played an acoustic set as a two-piece, and that unusually sparse setup highlighted the hypnotic somersaulting vocals of front man Charlie Looker and the lighter tones of his complex and beautiful arrangements, which on Extra Life's visceral, caterwauling full-band recordings sometimes get buried. I was instantly hooked.
Today's 12 O'Clock Track is "Righteous Seed," a thundering, boisterous, and slightly creepy cut from Extra Life's forthcoming third full-length, Dream Seeds. I'll have this song on repeat till the day Northern Spy releases the album.
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Tags: 12 O'Clock Track, Extra Life, Charlie Looker, Parts and Labor, Righteous Seed, Dream Seeds, Northern Spy, After the Jump Festival
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Thursday, February 2, 2012
Posted
by Miles Raymer on
Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 12:20 PM
The first thing I thought when I heard that the famously piracy-friendly file-locker site Megaupload had been raided and shut down by the Justice Department—and that in the wake of the bust most of the other major locker sites had gone dark to varying degrees—was that the raid had taken a surprisingly long time to happen, considering the amount of copyrighted material hosted on the site and how easy it was to access. But there are some important legitimate services, or at least semi-legitimate services, that Megaupload et al provided to music fans that are already sorely missed.
One is that such sites host a vast amount of hip-hop mix tapes, which is the aspect I zoomed in on in my column on the raid and its aftermath. The other is that file lockers act as repositories for an untold number of out-of-print albums that are otherwise nearly impossible to find. A friend of mine tipped me off to the addictive glammy 70s pop group Promises, and after a number of fruitless Google searches for a legitimate outlet where I could buy Promises' music, I really understood how valuable Megaupload was to me.
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Tags: Megaupload, Promises, Tim Daisy, Sweet Cobra, Mat Arluck, Gossip Wolf, Damon Locks, Eternals, Sun Ra, Experimental Sound Studio, Bobby Womack, Hail! Hornet, Slow Southern Steel, Radar Eyes, Slow Animal, Craig Finn, Video
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Posted
by Philip Montoro on
Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 12:00 PM
Last month an Invisible Oranges post titled
"Top 10 Weird-Ass Black Metal Albums of the Year" reminded me about French trio
Aosoth, who have some overlap in membership with the great Antaeus. I like the heavy low end in their sound, unorthodox in the genre; it gives the queasy, swooping dissonance in the guitars a kind of grotesque majesty. In this song—"V," from last year's
III—I especially enjoy the way the blastbeat changes metabolism at 4:37 and again at 5:06. And how about that bass fill at 6:58, ladies and gentlemen! It's not every day you hear clear evidence that somebody actually played bass on a black-metal track.
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Tags: 12 O'Clock Track, Aosoth, Antaeus, Agonia Records, black metal, III, V
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Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Posted
by Miles Raymer on
Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 12:00 PM
Lately the underground rock scene has become professionalized to an extent that would have been tough to imagine even during the 90s alt-rock boom. But while many of their compatriots hustle for ad placements and lucrative corporate-sponsored showcase gigs, the
Tough Shits are so half-assed about being a "successful" band that it's almost heroic. Though they rarely play outside Philadelphia and they have the self-promotional instincts of a pile of bricks, they've amassed a small but fervent cult of admirers drawn in by their genius-level pop hooks and infectious attitude of not giving a single fuck in the whole world.
Burger Records somehow managed to get the Tough Shits to pull it together long enough to record a self-titled album, and you can preorder the vinyl here. Judging by what I heard when my band played with them in November—and by the sample track, "Cats & Dogs," which you can hear after the jump—it's gonna be one of the best collections of jangly guitar pop to come out in 2012.
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Tags: Tough Shits, Cats and Dogs, garage rock, Burger Records, 12 O'Clock Track
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Posted
by Luca Cimarusti on
Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:53 AM
ARTIST: Craig Hansen
SHOW: Chairlift and Nite Jewel at Empty Bottle on 3/30
MORE ONLINE: artonomous.com
Tags: Gig poster, Chairlift, Empty Bottle, Craig Hansen
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