23-11-2018 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX

Darlene Shrugg

23-11-2018 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from the recent past] # Darlene Shrugg, Arc Iris, The Limiñanas, Mark "Porkchop" Holder, Yuck, Battleme, Tash Sultana, P.O.D., Iglooghost, Moby & the Void Pacific Choir, The Besnard Lakes, Dhani Harrison, Anna Calvi, John Maus, Steve Mason, KATIEE

M U S I C

pres_perf_mix # The player always plays the latest playlist tracks. / A lejátszó mindig a legújabb playlist számait játssza. 

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Brash Toronto indie art-pop quintet featuring members of U.S. Girls, Slim Twig, and Ice Cream. 
Darlene Shrugg
Inherit the Wind (Meg Remy / Simone TB / Maximilian Turnbull) 4:23
Freedom Comes in a Plastic Card (Meg Remy / Simone TB / Maximilian Turnbull) 3:47
from Darlene Shrugg 2017
Representing a confluence of regional indie power sources, Toronto's Darlene Shrugg unites Maximilian Turnbull (Slim Twig), Meg Remy (U.S. Girls), Simone TB (Fake Palms), Carlyn Bezic (Ice Cream), and Amanda Crist (Ice Cream), who together form one surprisingly brash and unyielding rock & roll unit. Initially formed in 2013, the quintet maintained a somewhat shadowy presence over their first few years, honing a brutal but tuneful live set before entering the studio with engineer and co-producer Steve Chahley...

Arc Iris are a genre-blurring New England ensemble led and fronted by former Low Anthem member Jocie Adams. Arc Iris are a wildly adventurous, genre-blurring band founded in Massachusetts by frontwoman, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jocie Adams, formerly of the Low Anthem. Her bandmembers include the seasoned rhythm section of bassist Max Johnson, pianist and multi-instrumentalist Zachary Tenorio-Miller, and drummer Raymond Belli, with cellist Robin Ryczek and trumpeter Mike Irwin. Adams, a formally trained classical composer (as well as a former NASA researcher), formed the band as a wide-ranging ensemble informed by everything from sophisticated 1970s pop to folk, country, cabaret, jazz, classical music, and contemporary sources such as Grizzly Bear.
Arc Iris
$GNMS (Arc Iris) 6:24
Suzy (Arc Iris) 6:04
from Icon of Ego 2018
Each album by Arc Iris is an adventure. Over two previous albums, they created an original hybrid of indie art pop that was deeply infatuated with sophisticated archival pop to alt folk, cabaret, jazz, and even country. Given the quark strangeness and heartbreak that are the 21st century music business -- they lost their manager, their booking agent, and their record label -- this outfit has been pared down from its original incarnation as a sextet to its core trio of vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Jocie Adams (ex-Low Anthem), keyboardist/electronicist Zachary Tenorio-Miller, and drummer Raymond Belli (with a couple of guest string players assisting). Icon of Ego was released on Ba Da Bing, its third label in as many recordings. While their music has always been as exploratory and adventurous as it is accessible, they've honed their focus and concentrated on becoming a pop-prog outfit, mixing musical directions that include but aren't limited to '70s-era vintage electronica, dreamy pop, musical theater, and bigger beats...

Indie band that recaptures the glory days of '60s French pop. Working in the sweetly swinging tradition of Serge Gainsbourg and the yé-yé sound of the '60s, the Limiñanas have a sound that blends sunny psychedelia with vintage pop. Based out of Perpignan, France, the group is composed of drummer and sometime vocalist Marie Limiñana and bassist, organist, and jack-of-all-trades Lionel Limiñana, as well as a host of guest vocalists including MU.
The Limiñanas
Ouverture (Lionel Limiñana / Anton Newcombe) 3:19
Shadow People feat.: Emmanuelle Seiger (Lionel Limiñana) 3:11
from Shadow People 2018
On their 2018 album Shadow People, French duo the Limiñanas don't budge an inch from the formula they honed to a knife edge on all the albums that preceded it. Starting in 2010, Lionel and Marie Limiñana mapped out territory that hit the sweet spot where the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Velvet Underground, sultry French pop, and Italian soundtrack music all meet to smoke cigarettes and look hard...

Rough-and-rowdy slide guitarist who fuses the soul of the blues and the swagger of rock; formerly with the Black Diamond Heavies. 
Mark "Porkchop" Holder
Captain Captain 4:42
Death and the Blues 3:52
from Death and the Blues 2017
...This November Mark “Porkchop” Holder released his sophomore album Death and the Blues. This bluesman knows how to deliver some of the finest blues songs you’ll find today. This results in an album you easily listen for multiple hours. Expect harmonica tunes that Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf made famous and, badass guitar solos in the Hill Country tradition... The guitar-slinging, harp-shredding bluesman released  Death and the Blues. On it, Holder, along with Travis Kilgore (bass) and Doug Bales (drums), builds on the success of his previous album with eight newly penned tracks, along with three rousing covers.

British band whose update on shoegaze and American indie guitar rock of the early '90s is spot-on and often thrilling. Having seemingly been blessed with the Midas touch in terms of being at the center of mass music press hype, by the end of 2010 -- and before the age of 20 -- Daniel Blumberg (guitar/vocals) and Max Bloom (guitar/vocals) found themselves in their second project that had achieved just that. 
Yuck
Stranger Things 5:07
Yr Face 6:18
from Stranger Things 2016
...Unlike its predecessor, the new album is expressed with a confident ease rather than pent up frustration. If Glow & Behold detailed the tumultuous break up period for YUCK, then Stranger Things sees the band reach a positively fresh stage of letting go. It's onwards and upwards from here on in.

LIONS' Matt Drenik explores lo-fi electro-folk with his solo project Battleme. Perhaps best known as the singer and guitarist of the Austin, Texas band Lions, Matt Drenik explores lo-fi folk and electro with his solo project Battleme. Started in 2009 after he was diagnosed with uveitis, an auto-immune disease that affects the eyes, the songwriter began to find his writing moving in a more expansive and personal direction.
Battleme
No Truth 3:20
Lowlife 5:56
from Cult Psychotica 2017
Battleme gained early attention for the lo-fi psych-folk of their eponymous 2012 debut after several tracks showed up on the motorcycle gang drama Sons of Anarchy. Since then, lead singer/songwriter Matt Drenik has pushed the band in an even more road-hardened direction with a fiery garage and punk rock-steeped aesthetic. It's a sound they once again champion on their swaggering fourth studio album, 2017's Cult Psychotica. Imagine if Jane's Addiction's Perry Farrell jammed out with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and you'll get a good sense of the sound Battleme achieve here...

Indie rocker who broke through with viral live videos showcasing her command of multiple instruments and looping pedals. Sultana got her first guitar as a preschooler and went on to learn brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments, among others, always eager to learn more. She was busking on the streets of Melbourne by her mid-teens. Open about her battles with addiction at that time, she suffered a drug-induced psychosis at the age of 17. After recovering with the aid of professional help, Sultana started a Bandcamp page and began making videos of her performances and uploading them to YouTube.
Tash Sultana
Big Smoke (Tash Sultana) 3:58
Cigarettes (Tash Sultana) 5:22
from Flow State 2018
With the sales of electric guitars not what they once were, many music business commentators have spoken out on the need for a new generation of guitar heroes. Since Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck don't mean much to most folks under 30 these days, they'd like to see some younger fret-wrestlers who will inspire America's youth to step away from their laptops and pick up a six-string. As it happens, it might be a guitar heroine who does the trick, as evidenced by Tash Sultana on her first full-length album, 2018's Flow State. The 23-year-old Australian first found an audience through YouTube videos in which she created over-the-top guitar soundscapes through the use of looping pedals, and while Flow State is clearly intended to also show off her gifts as a vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist (she plays all the instruments on these recordings), her guitar work shines pretty bright on this album. These songs have more to do with contemporary R&B than rock & roll...

Highly successful rapcore from San Diego, with their born-again Christian faith central to their music. 
P.O.D.
Rockin' with the Best 2:42
Circles 3:27
from Circles 2018
Ever since coming off indefinite hiatus with 2012's Murdered Love, Southern California's P.O.D. have issued a handful of albums that recapture the band's early punk, reggae, and metal-inspired energy. Arriving in 2018, Circles continues this revitalized trajectory with a set of tracks that feel loose and emotionally present, as if the bandmembers were still teenagers rocking out in their basement, and not industry veterans quickly approach their 30th anniversary...

Irish producer blending hip-hop, juke/footwork, IDM, pop, and video game-like concepts into an intense, hyperkinetic rush. 
Iglooghost
Pale Eyes 2:24
Super Ink Burst 3:27
from Neō Wax Bloom 2017
Iglooghost is an Irish lad named Seamus Malliagh, and his music appears on Brainfeeder, the Flying Lotus-helmed imprint which often releases abstract hip-hop and jazz, but it could just have easily appeared on an obscure Japanese netlabel like Maltine Records, or experimental meta-pop collective PC Music. Malliagh's productions are giddy, cartoonish, and extremely busy, with densely packed samples and squeaky voices flying around at an impossibly rapid pace...

Another outlet for the eclectic dance-music veteran, initiated in 2015 with a pair of energized singles and a Robin Schulz collaboration. 
Moby & the Void Pacific Choir
Hey! Hey! 4:23
A Simple Love 4:39
from These Systems Are Failing 2016
Co-credited to the Void Pacific Choir -- a name derived from a D.H. Lawrence quote -- These Systems Are Failing is only slightly more collaborative than Moby's solitary ambient work, and its effect is the opposite of that. Fully energized and tightly concentrated, the producer's first studio album in three years is a concise and infrequently relenting set of nine songs that rail against those who have caused emotional and planetary harm. Moby revisits his punk and post-punk roots with a needling attack...

Montreal-based psych/space rock unit led by the husband-and-wife team of Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas. 
The Besnard Lakes
The Bray Road Beast 5:30
Pressure of Our Plans 5:21
from A Coliseum Complex Museum 2016
There are five musicians in the Besnard Lakes, but it sounds like some sort of pop orchestra was on hand to record the group's fifth full-length album, 2016's A Coliseum Complex Museum. The scope of this music is vast, combining the melodic angles of indie pop with the grand scale ambitions of prog rock, and group founders Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas are determined to make the most of it, filling every nook and cranny of these songs with banks of guitars, keyboards, percussion, and massed vocals, until the music takes on the shape of a vast ship at sea, moving deliberately but with a strong sense of purpose through choppy waters in the chilly nighttime...

Son of the Beatles’ George Harrison formed his own band the newno2 in the late 2000s. Dhani Harrison started his musical career relatively late, switching from the automotive industry to performing following the death of his father, George Harrison, in November 2001. Initially, Dhani served as the custodian of his dad's legacy, assisting family friend Jeff Lynne in the completion of George's posthumous 2002 album, Brainwashed...
Dhani Harrison
Never Know 5:23
Úlfur Resurrection 7:24
London Water 7:52
from IN///PARALLEL 2017
Like other children of the Beatles, Dhani Harrison found himself drawn to music and, like all of the members of this select group, he was reluctant to capitalize on his famous father. He initially solved this problem by burying himself within the confines of thenewno2, a band he formed in 2002, but after a decade of playing with the group, he decided to pursue a solo career. Maybe this 15 years of experience is the reason why 2017's IN///PARALLEL doesn't feel tentative in the way so many first albums do. Harrison exudes a quiet confidence, letting IN///PARALLEL unfold surely and steadily, keeping the music meditative and slightly trippy...

British singer/songwriter with influences ranging from Nick Cave's post-punk to Django Reinhardt's flamenco. Hailed as "the best thing since Patti Smith" by Brian Eno, as well as being included in the BBC's Sound of 2011 list, the hype surrounding London-born Anna Calvi came to a crescendo in late 2010. Gaining critical acclaim among music journalists, Calvi drew comparisons with passionate and brooding musicians like Nick Cave and PJ Harvey. The dense and rich musical influences that inhabit Calvi's world are broad and distinctive strokes of sultry flamenco, smoke-filled blues, and seductive goth pop/rock. Adding to this tapestry of influences, Calvi claims to have been inspired by the films of David Lynch, Gus Van Sant, and Wong Kar Wai; the cinematic element of her music contributes a mysterious and unyielding undercurrent to her work.
Anna Calvi
As a Man 3:46
Indies or Paradise 4:41
from Hunter 2018
Anna Calvi took a five-year break after releasing 2013's One Breath, but the intervening time didn't diminish the grand sound she's been cultivating since her debut. From the title track's breathy opening to the soaring melody of "Away," her gift for elucidating the drama of a bygone era is intact and just as effective. If anything, the lustily provocative nature of her artistry reaches its dizzy apex on Hunter...

Bizarre and beautiful synth pop solo work from this multi-instrumentalist who's worked with Ariel Pink and Animal Collective. 
John Maus
The Combine 3:38
Touchdown 3:41
from Screen Memories 2017
Arriving six years after his previous studio album, Screen Memories rejoins Minnesota musician John Maus after he finished his doctorate in political philosophy and set about building his own custom set of modular synthesizers to record it. As evoked by cover art that shows a sparsely furnished room with a snowy cathode-ray tube TV, Maus returns to a cinematic, turn-of-the-'80s-inspired synth pop, if a slightly more coherent one with his new setup...

Scottish singer, songwriter, producer, and former frontman of Edinburgh's acclaimed Beta Band. 
Steve Mason
Water Bored 3:47
Words in My Head 4:59
from Meet the Humans 2016
After the intensity and sheer breadth of 2013's politically charged Monkey Minds in the Devil's Time, Steve Mason returns with his most cohesive and fully realized solo effort yet. In a deliberate step away from the thematic sweep of his first two solo releases, the former Beta Band and King Biscuit Time maestro uncorks a set of pop songs that stand proudly as independent pieces, yet make for an even greater whole. Produced by Elbow's Craig Potter, Meet the Humans manages to distill Mason's lush melancholia and maverick pop acumen into 11 strong tracks that refer to his two decades of recording while delivering something new...

The free-flowing, electronic and jazz-influenced project of former Young People vocalist/percussionist Katie Eastburn. 
KATIEE
My Forgotten Man 2:48
4 The Good Times 6:11
from Out All Night 2016
Katie Eastburn's music has always fully transported listeners into her world. It's a place where nothing is simple and everything is direct, where joy and sadness are soulmates, and where old and new bring out the best in each other. As one-third of the criminally underappreciated 2000s band Young People, she combined traditional song forms with the avant-garde in ways that underscored her gifts as a passionate interpreter and singer. After Young People disbanded, Eastburn's music-making was delayed by a string of family tragedies. However, she continued to write and record, first on her own and then with a group including some of the finest from New York City's avant jazz scene as well as her husband Jim McHugh and composer Ray Sweeten. Out All Night, her first album as KATIEE, announces her as a solo artist with a bold vision while sharing Young People's gift for making innovative music steeped in tradition...