16-07-2019 alter_MiX 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX

Priests

16-07-2019 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from the recent past] # Priests, The James Hunter Six, Niia, Eyes of Love, Le SuperHomard, Tallies, Pearl & the Oysters, The Heliocentrics, Bonobo, Cabbage, Juliana Hatfield, Dire Wolves

M U S I C

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

Frenetic post-punk quartet follows a long line of angular punk legends from its hometown of Washington, D.C. 
Priests
No Big Bang 2:48
Nothing Feels Natural 3:59
Pink White House 4:05
from Nothing Feels Natural 2017
The creative leap that Priests make from the Bodies and Control and Money and Power EP to their first full-length Nothing Feels Natural is reflected in the titles of both works: Bodies spelled out society's ills with literal (and literate) rants, but this time, Priests use a more poetic, existential approach to express these frustrations. When nothing feels right, change is a natural response, and the band uses the space afforded by a full-fledged album to introduce more sounds and moods to its music...

The gritty, passionate, longstanding backing band of British soulman, songwriter, and guitarist James Hunter. /English channeler of American soul from days of yore (Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, et al), cult following since the 1990s.
The James Hunter Six
If That Don't Tell You 2:34
(Baby) Hold On 2:45
A Truer Heart 2:38
from Hold On! 2016
Hold On! is the fourth album by the rocking soul man James Hunter and his stalwart sextet. Daptone's Gabriel Roth produced the excellent Minute by Minute in 2013, but this is the band's debut for the label. Hold On! was recorded live in the studio, but Roth and Hunter decided on mono to best capture the immediacy of the performances. The songwriter has recorded only original material since 2006, and these ten tracks are no exception. What separates this date from previous outings -- excellent though they all were -- isn't the mono production, but the diversity in songwriting, rhythmic invention, and arranging...

Singer and songwriter who broke through when featured on Wyclef Jean's "Sweetest Girl" in 2007 and went on to make her own jazz-inflected pop. 
Niia
Sideline 4:20
Nobody 4:08
Last Night In Los Feliz 5:55
from Niia I 2017
...Decay is the thing on “I,” Niia’s lavishly detailed full-length debut album, made in partnership with the producer Robin Hannibal. Together, they understand how to make songs melt, and how to make seismic shifts at a glacial pace. The result is trip-hop that strips away the pomp, leaving only the ooze...

Experimental pop band Eyes of Love are headed by New York-based songwriter Andrea Schiavelli. The group's 2018 debut album, End of the Game, features tightly wound, complex arrangements that are both playful and delicate.
Eyes of Love
Homeowners 1:36
Version of Tomorrow 2:39
Players of the Field 2:41
from End of the Game 2018
Andrea Schiavelli previously used the name Eyes of Love for a solo cassette in 2011, then debuted the band of the same name with a 7" EP of VU-indebted lo-fi rock songs in 2016. An entirely different lineup of the band recorded End of the Game, the first Eyes of Love full-length, and by this point the project had developed into a lushly arranged prog-pop unit. An entirely different lineup of the band recorded End of the Game, the first Eyes of Love full-length, and by this point the project had developed into a lushly arranged prog-pop unit. Joined by Palberta's Lily Konigsberg and two members of the Cradle (Sammy Weissberg and Paco Cathcart), Schiavelli pens soft, heartfelt semi-orchestral pop tunes with fractured rhythms and unexpected detours...  End of the Game is complex but not discordant; it never seems like Schiavelli is trying to out-weird anyone or attack the listener with an over-abundance of sounds. It could've ended up a jumble of an album if it wasn't so tightly composed, well arranged, and cleanly recorded.

French group who mix easy listening, '90s-style space age pop, and chamber pop into a frothy melodic concoction. 
Le SuperHomard
Door After Door 3:54
Meadow Lane Park 3:20
from Meadow Lane Park 2019
After releasing the very promising MapleKey EP in 2016, the French band Le SuperHomard were positioned as the next great band in the tradition of Stereolab, Broadcast, and the High Llamas. 2019's Meadow Lane Park makes good on that promise and should please anyone who ever loved the kind of retro-looking, futuristic-sounding pop those bands made in their prime. With songs written, played, and produced by Christophe Vaillant, then sung by Julie Big in breathlessly soft tones, the album is a gentle musical hug that plays on nostalgic strings, but also adds something special -- and perhaps left over from his days playing power pop in the Strawberry Smell -- to the template...

Possessing an extensive knowledge of early-'90s dream pop and the skill set needed to replicate the sounds they loved, the Toronto quartet Tallies balance nimble, effects-heavy guitars with extroverted vocals to craft songs on their self-titled 2019 debut album that wouldn't sound out of place on a mix tape between Lush and the Sundays.
Tallies
Trouble 3:32
Eden 3:58
from Tallies 2019
From the very first bars, the Tallies' self-titled debut album opens the young Canadian quartet to the slings and arrows of being written off as copycats; derivative at best, sonic bandits at worst. They sound so much like a note-perfect cross between the Sundays, Lush, the Smiths, the Ocean Blue, and other bands of that era that paired smeary guitar jangle with passionate reverb-drowned vocals that it's hard to believe the band isn't the offspring of those bands. Every note feels lifted directly from the past, every beat hits like nostalgia, and every word Sarah Cogan sings comes across like a voice beamed in on a distant college radio wave...

French duo living in Florida makes a breezy, uplifting pop music that draws from space age pop, novelty music, and the classic sounds of their homeland. 
Pearl & the Oysters
Water-Lily Waltz 1:46
I Fantasmi di Pompei 2:11
Girl on a Swing 2:32
from Canned Music 2018
Pearl & the Oysters' second album, Canned Music, combines the groovy sounds of '60s French pop, the zippy feel of '90s space age pop, the whimsical nature of the best novelty pop throughout the ages, and a joyful kitchen-sink approach to arrangements. The end result is a cheerful sonic treat that's frothy fun to the last bite. Multi-instrumentalist Joachim Polack and vocalist Juliette Davis may have deep musical training that includes degrees from the Sorbonne, but they aren't even the least bit interested in creating anything serious or important here. They'd rather make music that gives the sunshine in their adopted home of Florida a run for its money in the brightness stakes...

Eclectic U.K.-based ensemble blending influences such as hip-hop, jazz, soundtracks, Ethiopian funk, outré electronics, and more. 
The Heliocentrics
The Sunshine Makers 3:11
Sold Out 3:33
The Trip 3:22
from The Sunshine Makers (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) 2017
Styled in some regards as a 'real-life Breaking Bad', the documentary The Sunshine Makers documents a partnership on a mission to expand the consciousness of the '60s set by means of a domestic LSD laboratory. Who better, indeed, to soundtrack such an affair than London-based synapse-shakers The Heliocentrics, whose irrepressible melange of psychedelia, rhythmic drive and third-eye-cleansing jazz unites the questing spirit of the '60s with the here and now. The evangelical zeal of the era's metaphysical crusaders may be viewed with some wistful nostalgia in the here and now, but their cultural legacy finds an uncanny parallel in this invigorating and addictive score from these modern visionaries.

Simon Green's eclectic electronic project, encompassing elements of jazz, house, soul, and various world music influences. 
Bonobo
Migration 5:27
Outlier 7:55
from Migration 2017
Following the release of his most successful album to date, 2013's The North Borders, as well as an even more triumphant world tour, British producer Bonobo (Simon Green) returned in 2017 with his sixth proper studio full-length, Migration. The album was partially inspired by his touring experiences, but also by the death of a relative. Green's family is spread out across the world, and they all reconvened in Brighton, England for the funeral. These types of experiences cause Green to question what identity means, and where a person is from if he or she is constantly moving. As with all Bonobo recordings, Green absorbs a multitude of cultural influences here, from the underground club sounds of London to American folk songs...

Crashing onto the hallowed Manchester, England scene in late 2015, Mossley quintet Cabbage injected a fresh dose of vitality into the local scene with their irreverent brand of humor, wild live shows, and scuzzy neo-post-punk. The loutish lads of Cabbage -- vocalist Lee Broadbent, guitarist/vocalist/lyricist Joe Martin, guitarist Eoghan Clifford, drummer Asa Morley, and bassist/producer Stephen Evans -- released their first single, "Kevin," a raucous blend of the Clash, the Fall, and early Nirvana. 
Cabbage 
Preach to the Converted 2:28
Molotov Alcopop 2:55
Subhuman 2.0 6:56
from Nihilistic Glamour Shots 2018
After years of solid single and EP output, Manchester, England upstarts Cabbage delivered their proper debut full-length, Nihilistic Glamour Shots... Taking cues from that band -- as well as a few from Kaiser Chiefs, the Fall, Gang of Four, and Iceage -- Cabbage packed Nihilistic Glamour Shots with devilishly catchy tunes that groove with elastic bass and jitter off the hinges with jagged riffs and manic drumming... Dark, dangerous, and addictive, Nihilistic Glamour Shots is a strong opening statement from Cabbage, jolting listeners with sly humor, anti-establishment sneer, and enough sonic variation to hypnotize and invigorate.

After Juliana Hatfield disbanded the jangle pop trio the Blake Babies in 1990, she launched a solo career, performing similarly melodic indie guitar pop. Singing in an endearingly thin voice, Hatfield married her ringing hooks to sweet, lovelorn pop and startlingly honest confessional songs...
Juliana Hatfield
Staying In 3:32
It's so Weird 3:16
Broken Doll 3:18
from Weird 2019
A year before Weird, Juliana Hatfield delivered an album-length Valentine to her childhood pop idol Olivia Newton-John. Appropriately, some echoes of AM pop linger on Weird -- it's there in the occasional wash of analog synth and the insistent hooks, and it's there in exuberant closer "Do It to Music," a love letter to the complex joys of pop -- but the album is barbed by design, a return to the ornery personal pop that's been Hatfield's métier in the 21st century. The album title alone hints at what Weird is about: the feeling of not quite fitting in with the world at large. Hatfield chronicles those twisted, contradictory emotions of ostracization not with a heavy sigh but defiance...

Exploratory psych-rock, cosmic drones, and pastoral avant jazz-folk from this San Francisco collective. / A spacy, experimental collective of musicians based in San Francisco, Dire Wolves combine free-flowing improvisation and exploratory psych-rock to create a cosmic sound that ranges from trance-like drones to colorful, swirling rock and avant jazz-folk...
Dire Wolves
I Control the Weather 6:52
Discordant Angels 4:36
Crack in the Cosmic Axis 8:00
from  Grow Towards the Light 2019
...While the band's intellect-driven improvisations come from the whims of the present, their mystic spirit feels deeply rooted in San Francisco's 1950s and '60s counterculture heyday. A former Deadhead taper back in the '80s (the band's name itself is most likely derived from the Grateful Dead's 1970 classic "Dire Wolf"), Alexander's career since then has been devoted to exploring various forms of out-there music, and this continues to be the case on Grow Towards the Light. The band here consists of Alexander on guitar and Moog synth, Georgia Carbone on vocals, Brian Lucas on bass, Sheila Bosco on drums and piano, Arjun Mendiratta on violin, and Taralie Peterson on saxophone. All are capable players with a good sense of space and of each other...

29-05-2019 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX

The Duke Spirit

29-05-2019 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from the recent past] # The Duke Spirit, Charlie Hunter, Jackson MacIntosh, Jack White, The Yawpers, Ultramarine, Anna Domino, The Limiñanas, Anton Newcombe, Peter Hook, Emmanuelle Seigner, Priests, Giorgio Tuma, Matilde Davoli, The James Hunter Six, Niia, Eyes of Love, Le SuperHomard

M U S I C

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

A spirited melding of Northern Soul, garage punk, and noisy shoegaze. 
The Duke Spirit
See Power 4:48
Magenta 3:17
from Sky Is Mine 2017
Most of the Duke Spirit's albums are graced by only one or two of their stately ballads, but on Sky Is Mine, they're in the majority...  Indeed, the somber restraint they show on Sky Is Mine ends up feeling and sounding liberating, and the result is the band's most beautiful album yet.

Greatly talented jazz guitarist whose remarkably fluent style is suited to styles from early bop to fusion. 
Charlie Hunter
Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth 5:01
No Money, No Honey 3:52
from Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth 2016
Charlie Hunter's Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth is not only his first recording for a major label in nine years, but his first with a larger-than-trio-sized band since 2003. His personnel include drummer Bobby Previte, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes (who both played on 2015's Let the Bells Ring On and 2003's Right Now Move), and cornetist Kirk Knuffke. The album's title paraphrases a quote by former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. It's a metaphorical reference to the contrast between an envisioned plan for living and the reality that transpires later.
Hunter saturates his approach in blues and vintage R&B here. To get the vibe right, the band recorded live in a Hudson, New York studio; there are no overdubs -- everybody walked the tightrope. First single "No Money, No Honey" opens with a guitar hammer on, but the band quickly establishes a funky Meters-esque vamp that gets inverted by knotty jazz syncopation...

Charlie Hunter - 7-string guitar, Curtis Fowlkes - trombone, Kirk Knuffke - cornet, Bobby Previte - drums

Busy Montreal musician/producer known for running the Drones Club studio and fronting Sheer Agony, but also for his solo work. 
Jackson MacIntosh
Can It Be Love 2:40
My Dark Side 3:07
from My Dark Side 2018
... He decided to turn them into an album, and 2018's My Dark Side is the result. Digging into subdued '70s ballads like one might hear on a Todd Rundgren or Harry Nilsson record, dishing out heartbroken lyrics that were the result of two breakups in the span of three years, and keeping things sparse and simple, MacIntosh reveals himself as a very credible singer/songwriter in the classic sense. The record begins with a suite of slow, sad songs that showcase his aching, melancholy vocals and create a late-night, crying-in-a-drink mood that's hard to shake. Built around clunky drum machines, electric pianos, occasional guitars, and a thick coat of reverb, the songs come off like bedroom Memphis soul at times, only MacIntosh seems far too bummed to break a soulful sweat...

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

ALTER.NATiON
Big Thief, Brutus, Chasms, Control Top, Feels, Hatchie, Helado Negro, Julian Lage, Le SuperHomard, Lily & Madeleine, Martin Frawley, Palehound, R. Stevie Moore

Control Top photo by Vince Guglielmo @vincegphoto

weekly favtraX
02-03-2019

Control Top - Chain Reaction
The new track they’re sharing from it today, “Chain Reaction,” is all fiery rage and crawling fury, bashing drums cut through with peeling guitars. “No one likes to take the blame/ In the end, we’re all the same,” Carter screams. “Light the wick, pull the trigger/ What started small is getting bigger.”
“The song takes place in the middle of an argument,” Carter explains in a press release. “Vitriol is flying and emotions are running high. With our culture’s growing appetite for anger and conflict, a petty disagreement can easily escalate into a full-out shouting match.”

R. Stevie Moore -  Too Old (To Fall in Love) from Afterlife
R. Stevie Moore is a pioneer of home recording, a do-it-yourself musical aesthetic that took root and blossomed in the 1970s. RSM was an early adopter — since 1968 he's cranked out hundreds of album-length recordings as a growing cult discovered him over the decades. He's a pop craftsman who never feared cheap technology. In the 2000s his catalog exploded across the internet, and while he remains a cultural outlier, future generations will discover him as well. Every once in a while Stevie enters a pro recording studio and produces tracks with better fidelity. Afterlife is RSM's A-game collection. Some recent songs, some reimagined nuggets, all polished to pop perfection.

Lily & Madeleine - Analog Love from Canterbury Girls
Over the course of three albums with slightly different production philosophies, singing and songwriting sisters Lily & Madeleine have established a distinctive style that's rooted in patient, thoughtful melodies and elegant harmonies. That distinctiveness has transcended shifts from quiet acoustic arrangements to more expansive, part-electronic accompaniment, and it does so again on their fourth album...

Martin Frawley - What's on Your Mind from Undone at 31
Australian singer and guitarist Martin Frawley first broke onto the global indie radar as one of the co-frontpeople of Melbourne jangle pop quartet Twerps. The band's melodic and slightly ramshackle Flying Nun-inspired indie pop won over both fans and critics, leading to international tours and a 2015 sophomore LP released by established American imprint Merge Records. When the romantic side of Frawley's creative partnership with Twerps bandmate Julia McFarlane hit the rocks, their ensuing breakup also ended the band. On Undone at 31, Frawley's first outing as a solo artist, he sorts through the wreckage and manages to spin his personal upheaval into a rather charming collection of low-key pop gems. With the help of producer Stewart Bronaugh (Angel Olsen, Lionlimb), he constructs an appealingly minimalist home around 12 searching missives that play out the various stages of heartbreak, melancholia, and acceptance...

Feels - Post Earth from Post Earth
If you're an indie rock band and you want to play up the garage punk influences in your music, you would think having Ty Segall as producer would be the way to go. But a listen to 2019's Post Earth, the second album from Feels, suggests maybe the formula is more complicated than that. Segall produced Feels' self-titled 2016 debut album, which was a likable bit of pop-leaning indie rock with a seriously garage-centric undertow. But Tim Green was in the producer's chair for Post Earth, and this music sounds sharper, tighter, and distinctly punkier than the debut, with the garage moves more natural and the guitar crosstalk more expressive in round two...

Chasms - Deep Love Deep Pain from The Mirage
Just a couple of months after Chasms' Jess Labrador and Shannon Madden released their accomplished debut album, On the Legs of Love Purified, the unthinkable happened: On the night of December 2, 2016, a fire swept through the underground warehouse venue Ghost Ship that took a huge artistic and personal toll on the Bay Area indie music scene. Among the fire's 36 victims were Chasms' close friend and frequent collaborator Cash Askew of Them Are Us Too and Madden's brother Griffin, who was just 23. Chasms dealt with their loss the only way they could -- through their music. They played dates just days after the tragedy, and ultimately moved to Los Angeles for a fresh start to their music and lives. This sense of transformation permeates The Mirage.

Palehound - Killer
Musically, “Killer” is suggestive, quietly cinematic; it sounds like the smoke drifting upwards as a film character who’s seen some shit takes a drag mid-monologue. Kempner, too, sounds like she’s seen some shit here. “I wanna be the one who kills the man who hurt you, darling,” she sings on the chorus, her voice full of weight and curling itself around the word “darling” as if to conjure the violent cowboy mythology to which the song’s vaguely Western aesthetic and revenge narrative nod. In the end, we never get the explosion, that moment of vicious justice. Loose guitar lines tumble along, searching. And in a way all of this is more satisfying than volcanic distortion or cathartic screams. Instead, “Killer” lingers in the air, a whisper of furious resolve.

Julian Lage - Love Hurts from Love Hurts
Love Hurts marks guitarist Julian Lage's third trio date for Mack Avenue. The previous two, Arclight (2016) and Modern Lore (2018), were with bassist Scott Colley and drummer/vibraphonist Kenny Wollesen. The Love Hurts sessions were inspired by some live dates where Lage and bassist Jorge Roeder (who worked with Lage on 2009's Sounding Point) were joined by Bad Plus drummer Dave King. The trio recorded at the Loft (Wilco's recording studio in Chicago). Lage set down his trademark Telecaster for this date and picked up Jeff Tweedy's Gretsch Duo Jet instead. Cut live from the floor in mostly first takes, these ten tracks -- produced by Lage -- were completed in a day and a half.

Hatchie - Without A Blush
Hariette Pillbeam crafts hook-heavy, retro-tinged dream-pop as Hatchie. The Brisbane singer-songwriter debuted her project last year with one of the best EPs of 2018, Sugar & Spice. Its quick, sparkling tracklist gave us a few scenes from Hatchie’s cinematic universe — tender and nostalgic, fit for a ‘90s romcom soundtrack. “Without A Blush,” the lead single from her forthcoming debut album, takes us deeper as Pillbeam mourns the end of a relationship.
The song conjures a montage of memories, or a flashback to a meet cute. The synth tones sound borrowed and remixed from an ’80s high school slow dance song. The guitars are enveloped in a cloud of reverb, fading into her regretful sighs: “If I could kiss you one more time / Would it make everything alright? / Or would it just make me a liar? / I didn’t wanna end tonight, the dream.”

Big Thief  - UFOF
The alien abduction that happens in the lyrics of Big Thief’s new song “UFOF” is nearly as strange and beautiful as the one that happens in the music... From the start, Big Thief have excelled at finding new lenses for familiar scenes, and “UFOF” extends their scope to science fiction. The sweep of fingerpicked acoustic guitars and airtight rhythm forms a new type of groove for the band—their version, maybe, of an arpeggiated synth and a drum loop. “I imagine you taking me out of here,” Adrianne Lenker sings, gazing heavenward as the music tumbles in anticipation. And when nothing comes to save her, she has no choice but to do it herself.

Helado Negro - Running
Roberto Carlos Lange’s music as Helado Negro thrives on meeting listeners halfway wherever they may be in life. “Running,” the latest from Lange’s forthcoming sixth album, This Is How You Smile, fits snugly within that calm and comforting mold... “Running” takes on a circular shape, levitating on its refrains and instrumental cues. But Lange’s verses here are spiked with an illusory, personal sense of nostalgia: “I feel you/In my mind/All the time,” he sings placidly, before admitting, “’Cause I see you/In my hands/Every day/You got me running...” The song abides by Lange’s mission of crafting music that not only addresses intimacy frankly in lyrics but also sounds intimate, especially in its pop-minded yet free-floating structure and cooed melodies. Limned with vibraphone and gently plucked guitar, “Running” is a balmy, nourishing listen, inviting everyone to join step with its easy gait toward a better tomorrow.

Brutus - Cemetery
...“Cemetery” is the most exciting, ferocious, kinetic track on an album that consistently goes to 11 in categories like “Excitment,” “Ferocity,” and “Kinetic Energy.” “Cemetery” opens with a blistering burst of neck-snapping sludge — a bedrock provided by Brutus’ godlike rhythm section of drummer/singer Stefanie Mannaerts and bassist Peter Mulders — over which guitarist Stijn Vanhoegaerden stunts as if he were in Alcest or Explosions In The Sky, and Mannaerts snarls, howls, and roars as if she were a tornado. The track transforms, though, just after the two-minute mark. It transcends. All the furious, jagged metallic clamor is broken down and somehow rebuilt as a jet engine. The thing doesn’t just roar; it takes flight. Climbing, climbing … and then, as the piece heads into its final half-minute, it fires full-blast and jumps into goddamn orbit. This is the apex.

Big Thief, Brutus, Chasms, Control Top, Feels, Hatchie, Helado Negro, Julian Lage, Le SuperHomard, Lily & Madeleine, Martin Frawley, Palehound, R. Stevie Moore