29-01-2020 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX

Aaron M. Olson / L.A. Takedown

29-01-2020 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from recent past] # L.A. Takedown, Roine Stolt's The Flower King, Buke and Gase, Cherry Glazerr, The Wood Brothers, Hurt Valley, Lake Street Dive, Spencer Radcliffe, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Bahamas, FIDLAR, Courteeners, Cursive, Whyte Horses

M U S I C

if you want excitement PRESS SHUFFLE!

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

LISTEN THE PLAYLIST ON DEEZER.COM

Los Angeles-based instrumental rock project equally inspired by Krautrock and '80s action movie soundtracks.L.A. Takedown is a cinematic instrumental rock project helmed by Los Angeles-based composer/musician Aaron M. Olson, along with a revolving cast of additional contributors. Inspired equally by prog/Krautrock as well as film and television scores, the group's music is equally suitable as a soundtrack for cruising through the desert as well as beach escapades.
L.A. Takedown
Bad Night at Black's Beach 2:50
L.A. Blue 3:40
City of Glass 5:18
from II 2017
Following a cassette on Burger Records and a self-titled LP consisting of a single 41-minute epic, II is the third release by Aaron M. Olson's L.A. Takedown project, and the first recorded with a full band. The group take their name from a 1989 made-for-television crime thriller, and they aim to re-create the soundtracks of that era, but of course it doesn't sound like an exact facsimile. The group twist Krautrock and prog influences into their sound, and the arrangements and rhythmic patterns are complex and a bit suspenseful, but they still have a generally easygoing, beach-friendly feeling. The full-band upgrade means that there's less of an emphasis on synthesizers here than on past L.A. Takedown recordings, and a much more fleshed-out sound...

Gifted prog rock guitarist is a member of the Flower Kings and Transatlantic. He is also ex-Yes vocalist Jon Anderson's collaborator. His distinctive guitar style combined David Gilmour's debonair midtempo, Steve Howe's sharp edges, and Frank Zappa's virtuosity. 
Roine Stolt's The Flower King
Lost America 9:50
The Alchemist 6:57
Rio Grande 7:49
from Manifesto Of An Alchemist 2018
With Manifesto of an Alchemist, guitarist/ vocalist/composer Roine Stolt looks all the way back to his 1994 solo date, The Flower King (hence the singular band name). His list of collaborators on this ten-song, 70-minute outing includes proper Flower Kings' members bassist Jonas Reingold, guitarist/vocalist Hans "Hasse" Fröberg, and Michael Stolt on bass and vocals, with Marco Minnemann (from Stolt's other collaborative project, the Sea Within) Max Lorentz on Hammond organ, Zach Kamins on assorted keyboards, Rob Townsend on reeds and winds, and Nad Sylvan on lead and backing vocals. Stolt claims that this is both a new and old album; most of these songs were developed from riffs, melodies, and arrangement ideas from more than a quarter-century of demos and notebooks grafted on to newly composed parts, most of which were created in the studio. Perhaps because of the treasure trove of older material he rummaged through, Manifesto of an Alchemist was completed exceptionally fast: it took only a month from first recordings to final mix. That quick turnaround time presents listeners with a clash of impressions. First, it is uncharacteristically "raw" sounding. The artist told an interviewer that, "A lot of the guitar work is actually my spontaneous 'demo' guitars ... I didn’t want to process ideas too much...."

Experimental duo from New York who use instruments and electronics they created themselves to make playful but challenging music. Playing unique instruments of their own design, Buke and Gase generate a sonic palette that's very much their own, rooted in the traditional functions of guitar and bass but thrown into different relief. Their songs, usually built from ideas generated during extended improvisation, mix fractured melodic lines and strong but jagged rhythms, generating a sound that's playful but also curiously alien.
Buke and Gase
Stumbler 3:26
Derby 2:30
Eternity 4:36
from Scholars 2019
If you remember Buke and Gase as that experimental duo who play the instruments they built themselves, you might want to adjust your expectations before listening to 2019's Scholars, their first full-length album after a five-year recording layoff. In their previous work, Aron Sanchez and Arone Dyer constructed their music around two instruments of their own creation, the buke, a large, six-string relative of the ukulele played by Dyer, and the Gass, a fusion of the guitar and the bass used by Sanchez. However, while both instruments are part of the mix on Scholars, this time around the duo have pared back on organic instrumentation and jumped deep into electronics...

28-11-2019 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from recent past]

Miranda Lee Richards

28-11-2019 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from recent past] # Miranda Lee Richards, The Paperhead, Holly Golightly, Fabienne Delsol, Dead Horse One, XXXTentacion, Sunshine & the Rain, L.A. Takedown, Roine Stolt's The Flower King, Buke and Gase, Cherry Glazerr

M U S I C

if you want excitement PRESS SHUFFLE!

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

LISTEN THE PLAYLIST ON DEEZER.COM

Singer/songwriter and 21st century heir to the Laurel Canyon sound who's also an active collaborator on the L.A. music scene. Miranda Lee Richards' songwriting career was shaped by her bohemian upbringing in San Francisco, where her parents, Ted and Teresa Richards, made a living as influential comic book artists. She grew up in the underground comic book scene, with R. Crumb serving as her de facto godfather.
Miranda Lee Richards
Existential Beast 5:48
Ashes and Seeds 3:15
On the Outside of Heaven 5:18
from Existential Beast 2017
Miranda Lee Richards' fourth album, Existential Beast, follows 2016's Echoes of the Dreamtime by just a year, a quick turnaround for a songwriter who's gone several years between records in the past. It comes with a lusher presentation, too, edging deeper into psychedelic folk-rock while hanging onto a country influence and her distinctly Laurel Canyon-esque sound. It's also, at least in part, a protest album, with songs motivated by the 2016 U.S. presidential election...

The psychedelic pop sound of the '60s courses deeply through the blood of Nashville group the Paperhead. Formed in 2009 by three friends (guitarist/vocalist Ryan Jennings, drummer/vocalist Walker Mimms, and bassist/vocalist Peter Stringer-Hye), the band began playing shows around town, some of them in the form of psychedelic happenings replete with trippy light shows.
The Paperhead
War’s at You 2:18
The True Poet 4:50
from Chew 2017
The Paperhead's third album, Africa Avenue, was where it all came together for the Nashville trio. Their retro-psych sound reached its full bloom, while they also added other elements to the mix like a little country-rock and some swanky bossa nova. These few left turns sprinkled in amidst the dreamy pop-psych freakouts turned out to be teasers for the band's next album. On 2017's Chew, they rip up their playbook and treat the record as if each song were a different AM radio station circa a mid-'60s dream world that only exists in the mind of retro bands like the Paperhead. It's a pretty fun place to touch down, full of wacky juxtapositions and a kitchen-sink approach to arrangements that always keeps the listener guessing...

Prolific songstress, and partner-in-crime with Billy Childish, whose blues-based swagger is rooted in early rock & roll, R&B, and rockabilly.
Holly Golightly
Hypnotized 3:53
I’m Your Loss 4:00
Satan Is His Name 4:20
from Do the Get Along 2018
Garage rock legend Holly Golightly began her reign in the early '90s and spent the following decades churning out countless volumes of searing, attitude-heavy '60s-modeled big-beat rock & roll. Even the 11 years between 2004's Slowly But Surely and 2015's Slowtown Now! weren't signs of Golightly slowing down, as the break from solo albums was spent producing upwards of eight albums with her side project Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs. Her 11th proper solo album, Do the Get Along, doesn't differ greatly from any other entry in her massive catalog, but that doesn't suggest stagnation in any way. With one of the more distinctive and expressive voices in garage rock, Golightly sounds every bit at the top of her game as she has on the majority of her albums, leaning even harder on the smoky atmospheres and simmering scorned-lover narratives that mark some of her most electrifying work... Throughout Do the Get Along, Golightly demonstrates her knack for restraint and effortless charisma. She breaks no new ground over these 12 songs, but in the case of an artist with this much mastery of her work, more of the same is happily welcomed.

019 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX 03-02-2019

ALTER.NATiON #019

Le Butcherettes, Strand Of Oaks, Gauche, Hand Habits, Better Oblivion Community Center, Brutus, Vampire Weekend, Makthaverskan, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Masaki Batoh, Unloved, Cherry Glazerr

weekly favtraX

03-02-2019

Le Butcherettes - nothing/BUT TROUBLE from bi/MENTAL
Le Butcherettes is a band out of Guadalajara, Mexico, and are currently based in El Paso, Texas. The band consists of: Riko Rodriguez-Lopez (guitar), Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez (bass) and Alejandra Robles Luna (drums). Le Butcherettes are lead by their firebrand lead singer, Teri Gender Bender (Teresa Suarez Coscio). Gender Bender is the center of the hurricane, and she keeps everything around her swirling with chaotic precision. Her voice is a work of art. When she sings, she sounds like a revolution.
Le Butcherettes’ last three albums were produced by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (At The Drive-In, The Mars Volta) on his own record label. Now with a new home, Rise Records, Le Butcherettes have brought in legend and icon Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads) to draw out a new and creative sound. Harrison both tightens and stretches out the guitar runs, and emphasizes the thump/thump/thump rhythm that Robles-Luna delivers—providing the intense immediacy needed for each track. Harrison handles Gender Bender in the most effective way possible – he stays out of her way. Harrison allows Gender Bender to tap in and bleed out her soul like an open vein...

Strand Of Oaks - Weird Ways
My Morning Jacket backing up Tim Showalter on a Strand Of Oaks record is such an inspired idea that I almost can’t believe it really happened, and the first song from that album lives up to all that promise. “Weird Ways” showcases so much of what makes both these bands special. Showalter has a gift for melodies that soar like wounded birds triumphantly returning to the sky; his hooks worked wonders when Strand Of Oaks was still a humble folk-rock project, and they sound even more spectacular in the context of ragged-glory arena rock... Showalter has talked about how he almost quit music before MMJ’s Carl Broemel coaxed him back into the game. Throughout “Weird Ways,” he reckons with that turnaround. “I don’t feel it anymore,” he laments at the start. As the music begins to swell up around him, he remembers the value of “what you make and the people you’ve loved,” and soon he’s facing down the prospect of getting back to work: “Grind your teeth and cut off all your sleeves/ A few good riffs and a sticky bag of green/ You said before, ‘It’s not as bad as it seems/ A grownup kid gets to live out all his dreams.'” By the end, a melancholy euphoria comes roaring across the ceiling, and he’s successfully converted his own redemption arc into the stuff of legend.

Gauche - Conspiracy Theories
The best punk songs can be built out of almost nothing: a singular feeling, a seething and focused rage. “Conspiracy Theories” is that kind of song. There are only a handful of words to it, but each time they’re uttered you can taste the bile behind it.
The track comes from a source of frustration in the DC music community — namely, that pizza place and venue Comet Ping Pong has become the center of a fringe theory that has resulted in a constant state of anxiety and fear for those that work or go there. “Conspiracy Theories” is an effort to shake all of that tension off, a wriggling wave of a song centered around a universal fuck you. Gauche has a strong pedigree — its members include Priests’ Daniele Yandel, Downtown Boys’ Mary Jane Regalado, and Jason P Barnett — and that means the song is tight and controlled, a circle of anger that invites you in, that cannot be silenced.

Hand Habits - can’t calm down
“What if I can’t calm down, and I don’t have that in my bloodline?” Meg Duffy worries on “can’t calm down,” the newest song from the upcoming Hand Habits album placeholder. Just as they pose the question, the anxious riff that snakes through the song’s verses breaks into a jangling sigh, Duffy’s voice intertwining in lovely harmony with Land Of Talk frontwoman Elizabeth Powell’s. Hand Habits’ music takes friction and pain and doubt and turns it into something profoundly comforting. And here, they contemplate the toll of “ancestral damage,” ingrained patterns of learned behavior that cast a long shadow over all of our future relationships. Can we ever break free of the cycles of trauma that shape us? There are no easy answers, and they don’t pretend there are. But on “can’t calm down,” the very act of trying becomes a thing of great beauty.

Better Oblivion Community Center - Dylan Thomas
Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers’ new collaborative project Better Oblivion Community Center is a gift endowed to a very specific kind of music fan. It’s a sick but welcome joke. Though they’re from different generations, the two songwriters mostly traffic in music that is depressing bordering on existential, funny and sad at the same time. Both craft lyrics that are hyper-specific streams of consciousness, and the best songs on Better Oblivion Community Center sound like two people jumping down one another’s throats — urgent and unkempt, totally in the moment.
“Dylan Thomas” best exemplifies that collision of ideas and energy. It’s named for the Welsh poet who died at 39 and was a legendary alcoholic. The protagonist they’ve developed is an alienated individual exhausted by the play-by-play headlines of today’s age and seeks out escapism in all of the wrong places: the bar, a pricey silent retreat, other people. In this song, everything is a stand-in for a certain truth, one that is just beyond the protagonist’s grasp. “The ghost is just a kid in a sheet,” Oberst and Bridgers sing, alluding to the cover of her breakout album Stranger In The Alps...

Brutus - War
Brutus’ new LP, Nest, opens with a song called — for real — “Fire.” Nest’s album-announcing advance single is called “War.” Now, if you’re gonna lead with shit like that? If that is how you are introducing yourself to the world? Man, you better be 100% ready to back it. To bring it. You cannot be fucking around. The first words out of Stefanie Mannaerts’ mouth on “War” are “Our world/ It’s gone.” She sings the line with enough focus and force to shatter glaciers, asserting in no uncertain terms: Brutus are not fucking around...The whole thing just gets heavier. It’s a breathtaking, heart-stopping, truly visceral piece of music. The song’s title comes in when Mannaerts sings the line, “Unleash your war.” Hear that? It is a challenge. If you want war? Baby, you got it. Brutus are ready. If you want fire? Man, it’s already lit. Brutus are bringing it. Right fucking here.

Vampire Weekend - Harmony Hall
“Some songs are essays, other songs are haikus,” Ezra Koenig told Rolling Stone in an interview previewing Vampire Weekend’s new 18-track opus Father Of The Bride... Whereas the five-minute “Harmony Hall” reads as a statement of purpose for a songwriter who’s been silent for the better part of a decade.
Vampire Weekend songs tend to be multilayered creations: refusing to be confined by genre, refracting big-picture epiphanies through personal experience. Thus “Harmony Hall,” a lament about the resurgence of anti-semitism in America’s “dignified” power centers, finds its shape through links to Koenig’s own life. The title refers to a dorm at Columbia, the Petri dish in which this band was cultured. The chorus repurposes a lyric from one of Koenig’s old songs (you call it lazy, I call it intertextual). The music calls back to his old affection for Paul Simon and ornate instrumental flourishes. You could not mistake this song for anyone else...

Makthaverskan - Onkel
At this point, you pretty much know what you’re going to get from a Makthaverskan song when you hit play. The Swedish crew has been pumping out towering dream-pop songs for a decade (!) now, but they consistently work at such an elevated level that they can pull from the same bag of tricks over and over again and still deliver. “Onkel,” the B-side to their latest 7″, has everything you’d want and expect from Makthaverskan — a soaring vocal melody, a jangly intensity, a crystalline finish. And here Maja Miller uses those sunny components to scrape at the confusion and darkness of loneliness and uncertainty: “I’ve had too much to drink/ And no one’s here with me,” she wails. “Where can I go?/ I just don’t know/ I’m so alone.”

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Cyboogie
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have always known how to boogie. They already have a song called “Cut Throat Boogie” and another called “The Bitter Boogie.” But now, they’re doing a different kind of boogie. They’re doing the “Cyboogie.”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have never known how to sit still. The Australian goon squad released a ridiculous five albums in 2017, ranging from freaked-out prog-psych to pastoral jazz-folk to hard-charging garage-rock. And yet “Cyboogie,” with its tongue-in-cheek novelty sci-fi flair, still feels different from anything they’ve done before.
For one thing, there are no guitars. Five of the band’s seven members play synth on the track. The result is a monstrous seven-minute electro-glam groove that sounds a little bit like Daft Punk singing about a depressed robot over Tame Impala’s “Elephant.” If you’re not sold by the 50th vocodered “BOOGIE!,” I just don’t know what to tell you.

Masaki Batoh - Devil Got Me from Nowhere
After three albums in two years with his psych quintet the Silence, ex-Ghost musical guru Masaki Batoh returns to his solo roots for Nowhere, an album on which he wrote all songs and played all instruments...  "Devil Got Me," is a wonky, psychedelic, slide-guitar blues in Japanese; the Skip James and Robert Johnson feel here is unmistakable...  Nowhere is Batoh's most provocative yet accessible solo album; its otherworldly strangeness is uncompromising, but somehow welcoming because of its deep focus. Its many textured ripples, fissures and psychic pathways resonate long after its playing timer expires.

Unloved - Devils Angels from Heartbreak
As striking as Unloved's mix of '60s pop and cinematic mystique was on Guilty of Love, at times their debut album felt like a soundtrack in search of a story -- which isn't surprising, considering that two-thirds of the band are respected composers for film and television. In BBC's spy thriller Killing Eve -- to which they contributed Guilty of Love tracks as well as a virtual album's worth of previously unreleased music -- David Holmes, Keefus Ciancia, and singer/songwriter Jade Vincent found their perfect project. The show and its brilliantly unhinged hitwoman Villanelle reflected Unloved's postmodern femme fatale vibe perfectly, and allowed them to push their boundaries with mercurial tracks that made the most of their seductive, dangerous sound. Unloved's evolution continues on Heartbreak, an album that presents the most skillful balance of their pop and experimental sides to date. With savvy, they kick things off with some of their catchiest songs.

Cherry Glazerr - Daddi from Stuffed & Ready
The winding path of Cherry Glazerr's evolution began with bandleader Clementine Creevy writing strange and often juvenile songs as a teenager and just several years later had moved through phases of quirky garage grunge to arrive at the cold, polished sheen of third album Stuffed & Ready. Always centered around Creevy's increasingly dark musings, each album has upped production and more accurately dialed in a re-creation of '90s grunge angst. The muscular power chords and hyperconfident thrust of 2017's Apocalipstick were a far cry from the spooky songs about grilled cheese sandwiches and house pets that the band started out with, and Stuffed & Ready pushes further in the direction of '90s-modelled loud-soft alt-rock. Nowhere near the garage punk outbursts or naïve pondering that earlier versions of Cherry Glazerr reveled in, the ten songs here use gloomy guitar blasts and mid-tempo rhythmic attacks as a steady framework for the distant, angular moods of Creevy's songs. The tracks that stray most from this formula are the most interesting. "Daddi" laces its eerie verses with synth arpeggios, ticking drum machine hi-hats, and manipulated vocal samples, with Creevy's ghostly vocals recalling early Blonde Redhead before exploding into huge choruses...

Le Butcherettes, Strand Of Oaks, Gauche, Hand Habits, Better Oblivion Community Center, Brutus, Vampire Weekend, Makthaverskan, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Masaki Batoh, Unloved, Cherry Glazerr

016 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX / 13-01-2019

ALTER.NATiON
Radiohead, Old Sea Brigade, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Ultramarine feat. Anna Domino, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Noname, Ibibio Sound Machine, Sharon Van Etten, Priests, Bill MacKay, Tørsö, Cherry Glazerr

weekly favtraX

13-01-2019

Radiohead - Ill Wind 4:14
Radiohead Rarity “Ill Wind” Is Now Streaming / The Moon Shaped Pool B-side is finally available
Radiohead have finally made “Ill Wind” available on streaming services. A B-side from A Moon Shaped Pool, the track originally appeared on a CD with the vinyl edition, alongside their would-be Bond theme “Spectre.”

Old Sea Brigade - Feel You 3:54
Old Sea Brigade will release his debut full-length album, Ode To A Friend, on January 4, 2019.  With this news, the Nashville-based, Atlanta-born singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist shares a new album track, “Feel You,” with an accompanying music video.
Produced by Jeremy Griffith, the 11 tracks on Ode To A Friend blur and break barriers. While the songs remain rooted in Americana, indie, rock, and ambient soundscapes, they also toss and turn between analog cinematic flourishes and provocative lyricism.

Lorelle Meets the Obsolete - Unificado 9:11
After recording three murkily psychedelic albums heavily influenced by living in the swirl of Mexico City, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete's sound changed when the duo moved out of the bustling metropolis to the more relaxed locale of Ensenada in Baja, California. Their music became more expansive on 2016's Balance, and shifted again when they built their own studio and had more time to experiment. When recording 2018's De Facto, they were joined by members of their live band -- synthesizer wiz José Orozco, drummer Andrea Davi, and bassist Fernando Nuti -- and the five musicians recorded much of the album together in one room, constructing songs from loops and fragments before masterfully patching them together....  "Unificado" is a desert-baked psych ballad that turns into a fuzzfest halfway through, with Obsolete wringing all sorts of nasty noise out of his guitar with the rest of the band locking into a sturdy late-'60s groove...

Ultramarine feat. Anna Domino - Arithmetic 6:47
Nearly 30 years after Folk, their debut long-player, Essex duo Ultramarine return to Les Disques du Crépuscule for Signals Into Space, their seventh album... Signals Into Space is what you'd expect from Ultramarine: it's airy, spacy, and pillowy, and its textures frame unassuming loops colored with synthetic and organic rhythms, carefully arranged reeds, winds, stacked keyboards, and samplers. The American singer/songwriter Anna Domino -- whose recordings on Les Disques du Crepuscule and Factory inspired the lads early on -- co-wrote and sings on four tunes...  Domino and Ballamy come together on "Arithmetic," where dubby club jazz, angular Prince-esque pop, and spindly Anglo funk collide with psychedelic effects, trippy echoes, and multivalently layered percussion, with organs and electronic pianos exchanging pulses amid the loops and beats in the foreground. That dubwise quotient meets Ballamy's improvising as tenor sax and jagged synth chords introduce Domino, who relates a nearly perverse tale of technology and intimacy. Sampled handclaps, bass loops, and chunky guitars expand the striated cadence into a nocturnal drift of sonic inquiry.

Anna Domino

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Bombs Away 3:47
Serge Gainsbourg had an old trick that he loved to pull, using his lascivious baritone to intone dark, fucked-up things over gorgeous, frothing pop music. On “Bombs Away,” Serge’s daughter and “Lemon Incest” duet partner does a sort of updated version. The track — from Charlotte’s Rest collaborator SebastiAn — is slick, itchy club music, its needling synth-pop arpeggios offset by lush lounge-singer piano. In her lithe whisper, Charlotte lays out apocalyptic scenarios: “The city’s quiet and awaiting the Blitz/ A candle’s lit where old Victoria sits/ Babylon’s burning, and a dynasty ends/ Enemies, enemies will never be friends.”

Noname - Song 31 (Feat. Phoelix)
“Song 31″ is a victory lap. Noname released it as a celebration for selling out three end-of-year shows in her Chicago hometown, all on the heels of her excellent Room 25, which solidified her as a critical darling. It’s also, at least partially, a rebuff against those who say that maybe Noname is a little too much vibe, and too few bars. Noname jumps all over “Song 31,” her silky voice shadowboxing with a gorgeous beat that’s part-and-parcel with the stuff that was on Room 25. On it, Noname grapples with the idea of “pain for profit,” using her art as both a tool for personal transformation and capitalist gain. “Everything is for everything, rhymin’ with casualty, ain’t no labels that’s backing me but my tickets be sellin’ out,” she raps...

Ibibio Sound Machine - Tell Me (Doko Mien) 3:44
We all know the longstanding, well-earned pop-music cliché about stiff and mannered white boys, from Paul Simon to James Murphy, looking to Africa for some hint of funky liberation. And so it feels especially liberating when an African woman comes along and swipes the stiff and mannered funk back from them.
On “Tell Me (Doko Mien),” Eno Williams, born in Nigeria and based in London, leads her band Ibibio Sound Machine toward nervous, jittery ecstasy. Williams’ voice is graceful and liquid when she’s singing in English and euphorically disruptive when she’s singing in Ibibio. In both languages, she expertly surfs over her band’s brittle synths and burbling bass, a disco-techno-funk hybrid that spans decades.

Sharon Van Etten - Seventeen 4:25
Pop music and youthfulness are always bound up in each other: a new artist cataloguing the travails of their teens or early 20s in real time, or the songs a young person chooses to soundtrack formative life experiences, or an older artist looking back on the time lost, the time spent, the paths taken or not, the summers gone. Aging, obviously, is universal — so you can find countless songs through pop history that try to reckon with the passage of the years, the old haunts disappearing, the person you become looking back on the person you were. In “Seventeen,” Sharon Van Etten is as meditative as ever, but sings over a song that’s more surging and hook-driven than her past work... I’ve heard a couple people compare “Seventeen” to Bruce Springsteen, one of the main influences Van Etten has cited for Remind Me Tomorrow and a patron saint for a Jersey-raised songwriter like herself...

Priests - The Seduction Of Kansas 3:35
...It’s striking how they mold their political vigor into a glossier finish. The band’s lyrics have long been fixated on an old-school Americana mythology that’s fallen out of favor for glitzy skyscrapers, a “drawn-out parody of what a country thought it used to be.” “The Seduction Of Kansas”‘s sonic framework writhes in that disconnect. It takes the geographical and purported ideological center of the country and presents to it a devil’s bargain of recognition. Katie Alice Greer’s sneering chorus echoes the litany of politicians and corporations that pander to middle America voters, turning them away from progressive values to embrace bad actors who don’t have their best intentions at heart...

Priests

Bill MacKay - Pre-California 2:57
Chicago composer Bill MacKay has announced a new album, Fountain Fire, that will be out in March. It’s his first solo work since 2017’s Esker... "Pre-California is a brief meditation on transitioning states. Lines are introduced as a catalyst for biological action and movement is improvised through a telescoping of perspectives. In the window we see california before California, before Califerne or Calida Fornax, the hot furnace in which matter and thought are free to unravel."

Tørsö - Grab A Shovel 1:59
...After some insane bass and drums combustion and a ceremonial pick slide, Tørsö are off to the D-beat races, violently flailing at dangerous velocity as vocalist Mae howls about futility and self-loathing: “I don’t need more time to self-reflect/ All I do is lose self-respect/ And in the end, it’s all the fucking same/ I fight myself every single day.” Halfway through the two-minute runtime, the band switches to a more primitive chug — proving they’re as adept at heavy lifting as cardio — while Mae instructs us to bury her alive. It’s hard to follow through on her command, though, when you’re being whipped around so savagely.

Cherry Glazerr  - Wasted Nun 3:18
The new Cherry Glazerr album, Stuffed & Ready, is incredible. Clementine Creevy has mastered the art of writing gleaming, glamorous alt-rock songs with ugliness at their core...
In a press release, Creevy explains: “Wasted Nun” is about a woman trying to come to grips with her life. She’s a tragic woman. She hates herself and is trying to move through the world but gets deflated by extreme self-loathing. She wants to harness the power of the universe but instead she turns to self-destruction. The song is aggressive and intense because I’m letting out my anger, I’m enraged. People want girls to be strong, I want to be strong, but I just feel angry, and those are two very different things. There’s a stubbornness there, I know."

Radiohead, Old Sea Brigade, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Ultramarine feat. Anna Domino, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Noname, Ibibio Sound Machine, Sharon Van Etten, Priests, Bill MacKay, Tørsö, Cherry Glazerr

011 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX / 16-12-2018

ALTER.NATiON
Karen O, Michael Kiwanuka, Mass Gothic, Art School Girlfriend, Nine Inch Nails, Unloved, Beach House, Gorillaz, George Benson, Hollie Cook, Shame, BC Camplight, Cherry Glazerr, Pangaea, Courtney Barnett

Karen O

weekly favtraX

16-12-2018

Karen O/Michael Kiwanuka - YO! MY SAINT
Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O returns for Korean soap opera inspired track with Michael Kiwanuka
The new track, ’YO! MY SAINT’, is released in support of fashion house KENZO’s Spring Summer 18 collection.
“For the music, I immediately wanted to do melodramatic and romantic and with lots of yearning and high stakes – all that good stuff that’s in any Korean soap opera.
“It just started owing through me.”
She added: “I wanted there to be something authentically romantic about it in some kind of slightly unconventional way. That’s where my head went with it.”

Mass Gothic - How I Love You
Mass Gothic are tripping over themselves with whimsy in 'How I Love You'
...As you'd expect, 'How I Love You' is a pure love song, led this time by Jessica Zambri. Over spare guitar chords she expresses her simple but deeply personal feelings regarding her life partner, as she watches him leave for the day and feels the pain in her heart as he recedes from her. As drums and distorted guitar are added to the song, it only intensifies the feeling of the deep love that is being expressed in the song...

Art School Girlfriend - Distance (Blank)
Art School Girlfriend Shares Crisp New Song 'Distance (Blank)'
The project is an outlet for Polly Mackey, a musician whose path from London to Margate has opened up possibilities both creative and personal.
New song 'Distance (Blank)' deals with this, the sub-zero electronics moving from crowded intensity to something a little more relaxed, pinned together by Polly's vocal.
"Lately I am in over my head," she comments, a testimony to the grinding penetration of London life, and a plea for something more.

Nine Inch Nails - God Break Down the Door
Reznor described the writing of the song, stating
"Looking around the studio and seeing the untouched baritone tenor and alto sax that are sitting there ... they're there because they remind me that I can't play them as well as I used to be able to. There they sit taunting me in the corner. We pulled them out and we just started fucking around really, led with Atticus arranging. I was just kind of going, an hour performance kind of turned into this thing that felt like we hadn't been there before and that started to reveal a whole different character. The space changed and then we felt motivated. When it came time to sing I was really just trying things out, just to see. I never had the courage to sing like that, I didn't know I could sing." (rollingstone)

Unloved - Heartbreak
Comprised of vocalist and songwriter Jade Vincent, producer/composer Keefus Ciancia, and DJ/ producer/composer David Holmes, Unloved share a fondness for 60’s girl groups and classic film scores, to which they explored on their haunting, dramatic and evocative 2016 debut Guilty of Love.
Two years on and freshly signed to Heavenly Records, the trio have new single ‘Heartbreak’, the first taken from their forthcoming second album. ‘Heartbreak’ continues where the spellbinding Guilty of Love left off; a jaunty, defiant and richly atmospheric pop song tempered by a deliciously retro ’60s vibe and Vincent’s rich, smoky and evocative vocals. Possessed of an aching, rich-smoked tone, it is where the heart of the songs lie.

Beach House - Lemon Glow
...Released late on Valentine’s Day, “Lemon Glow” is another entry in Beach House’s canon of makeout music; it’s a song about the thrill of intimacy, a breathless hymn to emotional connection. Atop a bed of the duo’s trademark organ and drum machine, Legrand sings about a lover with newfound rawness and lyrical clarity: “It’s what you do/This pulls me through/I come alive/You stay all night,” she sings. A metallic, strobing synth line constantly pushes the song forward; distinct and acidic, it adds a constant tension to the piece, a harshness that hasn’t felt present in the band’s sound before. As the song layers and builds, the synths become more urgent, finally reaching an ecstatic peak as a bass drum pounds. The song’s abrupt end comes as a shock; Beach House songs have always found beauty in a perfect synthesis of motion and stillness, but “Lemon Glow” is pure propulsion...

Gorillaz feat. George Benson - Humility
"Humility" is a single by English virtual band Gorillaz featuring American jazz guitarist George Benson. It was released on 31 May 2018 along with "Lake Zurich" as the first single from their sixth studio album, The Now Now.

Hollie Cook - Stay Alive
A vocalist who calls her music "tropical pop," Hollie Cook's songs are a light but refreshing blend of modern pop and vintage reggae influences, ideally suited to Cook's supple, sensuous voice. Cook certainly has the genes for a career in music -- her father Paul Cook was the drummer for the Sex Pistols, while her mother Jeni Cook was a backing vocalist for Culture Club. (If that's not enough, Boy George is her godfather, and David Bowie once babysat her for an afternoon.) Born in 1987, Cook left school when she was 16 to study art and make-up design, but she got pulled onto a new career path in 2006 when Ari Up, leader of the iconic all-female punk/reggae band the Slits, re-formed the group and recruited Paul Cook to produce and play on their new recordings...

Shame - One Rizla
The post-punk of London band Shame has a lot of heart
“One Rizla” is a punchy taste of their new album.
Beneath the sneering vocals and warring guitars, there’s a finely attuned sense of songcraft to the post-punk of south London band Shame. That’s evident on “One Rizla,” a full-throttle yet heartfelt guitar jam that’s the first single taken from their debut album, Songs Of Praise, coming January 12 on Dead Oceans.
Over email, Shame explained more about the song and video: “Embracing insecurity as a strength is what this song is about. It's the first song we ever wrote as a band and I think that's reflected in the simplicity of it. It's honest and raw, whilst attempting a stab at number one in the pop charts across the eastern hemisphere. We wanted to turn the album artwork into the video for ‘One Rizla,’ highlighting our vulnerability as individuals whilst paying homage to [U.K. cult movie] Withnail & I simultaneously.”

BC Camplight - I'm Desperate
BC Camplight presents a hellish vision of Brexit Britain in his new song and video 'I'm Desperate'
...The title 'I'm Desperate' should be taken both at face value and with a pinch of salt; Brian Christinzio has had a tough few years of forced emigration and institutions telling him he's unwelcome, but he has managed to keep a wry and playful outlook throughout the tumult, and infuses his songs with that same charm. When it comes to the visual accompaniment for 'I'm Desperate' he takes both of these poles to new extremes. It sets up with Brian and his unwell wife watching the news (never a comfortable activity anymore), and as she drifts off to sleep we are sucked into her nightmare where the frenetic and tense 'I'm Desperate' is the frantic soundtrack to her warped visions of Brian and his band playing the song...

Cherry Glazerr - Juicy Socks
Cherry Glazerr transitioned from their original lo-fi, garage rock sound to a more polished style on last year’s Apocalipstick. The Los Angeles band continues to showcase that evolution on their new single, “Juicy Socks”.
Influenced by ’90s era alternative rock like The Breeders, the new track gets off to an unassuming start with wispy melodies from lead singer Clementine Creevy accompanied by a catchy guitar riff. As the song reaches its climax, however, Creevy’s vocals intensify as more guitars enter the fold.
“‘Juicy Socks’ is about vocalization,” Creevy shared in a press release. “Using one’s voice as a strong weapon and needing to be heard in order to not feel like shit. Oh also, it’s about wanting to smash Donald Trump’s orange fuckin’ head into a brick wall!”

Pangaea - Bone Sucka
You don't have to look very far to find old-school breaks in house and techno these days. They appear right at the beginning of Kevin McAuley's new track "Bone Sucka," and there's something almost comical about them. They stay back in the distance and waddle across the stereo spectrum, from left to right and back again. Before you figure out what's going on they slam into full-force, creating the pulverizing banger you never expected. An impish mood heightened by vocal gasps and bleepy noises makes "Bone Sucka" a classic Hessle Audio track, balancing hijinks with brute force like Joe's "Tail Lift" and Pev & Kowton's "Raw Code."

Courtney Barnett - Sunday Roast

...A press release describes Barnett’s album-closing “Sunday Roast” as “an ode to friendship and the simple pleasures of sharing a dinner with loved ones.” Barnett’s atmospheric guitar playing and soft, heartfelt vocals result in a sweet and serene song, as the Australia native sings words of encouragement and acceptance: “I know it’s been a long week / And now you’re takin’ your time / Some kindness goes around / Some kinda backfires / It’s all the same to me.” The video is just as earnest and openhearted, with Barnett and her friends staging a charmingly simplistic instructional video on how to play the song...

selection from AllMusic Loves 2018

Karen O, Michael Kiwanuka, Mass Gothic, Art School Girlfriend, Nine Inch Nails, Unloved, Beach House, Gorillaz, George Benson, Hollie Cook, Shame, BC Camplight, Cherry Glazerr, Pangaea, Courtney Barnett