Premiere Stream: DM Stith, “Thanksgiving Moon (Michna Remix)”
- story Peter Macia
- photo Andrew Henderson (F56)
With Turkey Day less than a week away, you may already be thinking about how you’re going to burn off a gallon of egg nog and three pounds of green bean casserole so that you still look good for holiday spooning season. We might have a remedy here in the form of Michna’s heavy duty remix of DM Stith’s brand new “Thanksgiving Moon.” It appears on Stith’s new EP of the same name and just made us jump up and do the most epic Grumpy Chicken of all times. Here’s how it goes: bounce on the balls of your feet so that your heels raise about half an inch, bend your arms at the elbows and flap them to the beat, grow a bunch of white hair and hit on 26-year-olds. So fun and so healthy! The dance of 2010 no doubt. We’re gonna show it to Michna when he plays Plan B in NYC the day after Thanksgiving. Meet us there and be a part of history.
DM Stith, “Thanksgiving Moon (Michna Remix)”
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posted on Nov 20, 2009 in MP3 / STREAMS tags DM Stith, electronic/dance, Grumpy Chicken, Michna, premiere
Premiere: Alex Bleeker and The Freaks, “Animal Tracks” MP3
- story Peter Macia
Alex Bleeker and The Freaks are undeniably indebted to a certain shakey-voiced, chord-slamming Canadian on this first single from their self-titled debut LP, but instead of doing impersonations it’s like they’ve extracted dopamine from his brain and dripped it into their beers, the sonic tension numbed by Bleeker’s simple short tale about drinking soda on a summer porch. We’ve met these dudes, and we would rather drink sodas on a porch with them than Neil Young about a thousand times over. That dude seems like he doesn’t even drink soda. With Bleeker, there’s no hand-wringing over how much certain things might suck—everyone knows—just relax and deal with it. The rest of the album is similarly raucously at ease, like the band’s native New Jersey has delusions that it is actually the deep, green woods (For a visual of what that might look like, watch them play “Never Going Back” in a gentrified shithouse). Alex Bleeker and The Freaks will be out on November 27th on Underwater Peoples. Make sure to pick it up.
Download: Alex Bleeker and The Freaks, “Animal Tracks”
Premiere: Chll Pll, “Pass Out” MP3
- story Matthew Schnipper
UPDATE: Just kidding, that song was actually “Now Then and When.” It’s a jam, so get the record. Check out the real “Pass Out.” It sounds like a regular band got trapped in a Lisa Frank commercial.
Download: Chll Pll, “Pass Out”
“Pass Out” is what we cannot believe drummer Zach Hill does not do halfway through every show he plays. We cannot imagine him performing this seven-minute (!) song live—clearly this has to have been taped together. Right? Right? Chll Pll, his new duo whose ridiculously titled debut Aggressively Humble (better hope your parents aren’t psychologists), is a vehicle for Hill to basically blast himself to the moon. It sounds sort of like “Here Comes the Indian” with blast beats, until its supple, wavy keys are pounded into submission with a snare. A friend told us he fell asleep listening to Brian Eno the other night and had good dreams. Though we know that wasn’t Zach Hill, it very well could have been, the arc of this song moving steadily from REM to zen whenever he moves from drum ping to butterfly winging the cymbals.
Premiere: Dave Nada’s Maxwell Club Mix MP3 & New EP
We’ve been on the Mayan Apocalypse 2012 tip since basically birth (shout out to the family curanderas) so it’s reassuring to see the paranoia seeping into mainstream popular culture (i.e. sick forthcoming movie starring John Cusack) and the subconscious of the club massive. Dave Nada is totally with us on this. The DC-based DJ/producer’s new EP on T&A (coppable here), is all about soundtracking the end of the world, and frankly he nails it: the demonic title track (uh, “Apocalypse”) sounds like a Bmore club as the earth opens up to swallow it into its magma belly. For a little calm before the storm, here’s an exclusive shot of Nada remixing Maxwell’s “Bad Habits” into a poolside, pre-magnetic polar shift relaxation joint.
Download: Maxwell, “Bad Habits (Dave Nada Club Mix)”
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posted on Oct 15, 2009 in MP3 / STREAMS tags Ayres, Bmore Club, Dave Nada, electronic/dance, Maxwell, premiere, Tittsworth
Premiere: Woven Bones, “If You’re Gold I’m Gone” MP3
- story Peter Macia
Ever since we asked her take a California road trip for our summer music issue, meeting up with lo-fi kids from San Francisco to San Diego, the mysterious Dee Dee of Dum Dum Girls and The Mayfair Set has been steadily revealing herself, both literally and figuratively. She’s played her first shows, signed her first big record deals and now unveils some more of her personal taste with the upcoming single on her Zoo Music label (with Brandon Welchez of Crocodiles), an appropriately scumbaggy little double-sided jam by Austin’s Woven Bones. The single, which you can purchase now right here, features an A and B side that both sound like drinking flat warm beer out of an old carburetor, which is actually not bad if there’s nothing else around. And since we stole a still from it for the image on the homepage, we included Oswald James’ video of Woven Bones playing another recent song, “Your Sorcery,” at Austin’s Psych Fest #2 a couple months ago. The band will be playing a record release party in Austin on October 18th at Beerland, while Dum Dum Girls will be at CMJ at the end of this month. Make sure to check them both out if you’re going to be in either town.
Download: Woven Bones, “If You’re Gold I’m Gone”
Woven Bones, “The Minus Touch”
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posted on Oct 13, 2009 in MP3 / STREAMS tags Crocodiles, Dum Dum Girls, premiere, rock, Woven Bones, Zoo Music
Premiere: Buraka Som Sistema, “Restless” Stream
This is a one-off new jam from the Portugal-based crew responsible for one of the best NYC nights of ‘09—their unforgettable live show + vast afterparty swaths—streamable in advance of its purchasable iTunes debut tomorrow (yo, preorder!). “Restless” slots Buraka’s signature kuduro rave into a subtler, smoldering house burner with a classic “Should I dump you or what?” vocal prepped for blood on the dancefloor. If you missed their North American tour dates earlier this year, A) we’re sorry and B) you’re in luck, because they’re coming back for a few select dates in late October/early November. Check the dates after the jump and do us a favor, would you, prepare to dance your ass off.
Stream: Buraka Som Sistema, “Restless”
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posted on Oct 12, 2009 in MP3 / STREAMS tags Buraka Som Sistema, electroni, electronic/dance, kuduro, premiere
Premiere: Lightning Bolt, “Flooded Chamber” MP3
- story Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
- photo Minoru Tsuyuki
Dear Art Bell, our hero: please help us translate these freakish transmissions, because we are pretty sure if the Lightning Bolt boys are not in fact alien life forms communicating in their real languages, they are in fact conduits for UFO sounds like unleashed, defrequencied satellites. The more we listen to it, the more we are convinced it is warping our brains like plastic in a microwave, reshaping our synapses until we, too, will morph into the pod people and finally be set free. Lightning Bolt titled their new album Earthly Delights, and they are coincidentally about to tour the blue planet—Japan, Auckland/New Zealand, and the UK, to be precise—so check the dates after the jump.
Download: Lightning Bolt, “Flooded Chamber”
Premiere: Pivot, “Colorado” (Grizzly Bear Cover from Warp20) MP3
- story Matthew Schnipper
- photo Jason Nocito (F61)
It is feasible that, since the release of their deservedly beloved Veckatimest, no one does not like Grizzly Bear. You could play them for your smelly calculus professor who only listens to Brahms, the dude who sold you that sweet riding lawnmower at a tag sale jamming Collective Soul b-sides, your tiny little nephew who only likes Destiny’s Child tracks from when they were a four piece and whose mom dubiously puts up YouTube videos of him dancing to “Bills Bills Bills.” All of these people are like, “Ah pleasant folk with a hint of eccentric percussion and peppy melody.” But “Colorado,” a track we’ve pledged our allegiance to before, is a bit different than the church harmonies of the current Grizz, more centered on Ed Droste’s lost plea of What now?. For Warp20, the anniversary box set celebrating the label’s history as a behemoth, features many of their artists covering or reinterpreting each other. Pivot, a newer Warp signing who make a hefty electronic rock, stay fairly faithful to the track, though keeping the vocal less obscure and adding a number of what can only described as bloops. The song—and Pivot and Grizzly Bear’s involvement—is a testament to the house that Warp built, a melding of genre, country and status.
Download: Pivot, “Colorado” (Grizzly Bear cover)
Premiere: The Amazing, “Code II” MP3
- story Peter Macia
Editors of The FADER have reveled in the acid rock psychosis of Sweden’s Dungen for years now, ogling Gustave Estjes’ skin tight flares and seeing really special Hobbit visions when the band performs live. But we understand these harsh times might call for a softer side of psych. New Estjes-less Dungen side project The Amazing might be just what the alternative medicine specialist ordered. We’ve been listening to their self-titled album (out now on Subliminal Sounds) anytime we want to daydream about being pot farmers in a sylvan bliss, running in slo-mo with armfuls of organic, yet lucrative crops, maybe naked with a pair of moccasins on. While that may not be your reaction, let it be the image that lingers in your heads. The band, which consists of Reine Fiske and John Holmegard from Dungen along with music vets Christopher Gunrup and Fredrik Swahn, rambles from gentle paeans like “Deportation Day” to heartbreaking sunset rock on “Dragon,” both of which you can hear at their MySpace. But Mexican Summer sent us “Code II,” a song that sits in the middle of the album and splits it open with some relatively sprawling electric guitar riffs, freaky keys and spaced-out vocals. The song will be available as a 10″ vinyl single in October b-sided with “To Ska and Back,” which hopefully sounds nothing like its title.
Download: The Amazing, “Code II”
Premiere: Panther, “Love Is Sold” MP3
- story Peter Macia
Portland-based duo Panther made their name on agitated indie rock and energetic shows, nothing spectacular but nothing embarrassing either. They were like many things in Portland when you don’t live there, peculiar for no particular reason but not offensive or anything, just easy to forget. Their new album, named Entropy, sounds like they’ve gotten old. Not old like broken hips and stool softeners, old like they can dazzle with good ideas now instead of showing off. The whole thing is less “angular,” as they say, but a ton more enjoyable, packed with subtle, smart songs and blanketed in layers of warm piano and a late ’70s mellow anxiety. It’s a little like Steely Dan. We don’t really like Steely Dan, but it’s like that, and we like it. It’s like other stuff too but this isn’t a book it’s a blog post. Enjoy the first single from Entropy and pick up the album on Kill Rock Stars on September 29th.
Download: Panther, “Love Is Sold”
