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...

008 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX / 25-11-2018

ALTER.NATiON

Lake Street Dive, Mark Knopfler, Pearl & the Oysters, My Brightest Diamond, Art Brut, Oneohtrix Point Never, Alex G, Vessel, Laibach, Roine Stolt's The Flower King, DMBQ, DOG Power, Jacco Gardner

Lake Street Dive

weekly favtraX

25-11-2018

A fascinating blend of jazz at heart, with a D.I.Y. sensibility and a passion for classic rock and British Invasion aesthetics. 
Lake Street Dive - Who Do You Think We Are from Freak Yourself Out
Boston's Lake Street Dive play a rich, genre-bending blend of neo-soul and pop/rock informed by their various jazz, folk, funk, and country influences. The band, comprising singer Rachael Price, drummer Mike Calabrese, bassist Bridget Kearney, and trumpet-playing guitarist Mike "McDuck" Olson, first met and formed at Boston's New England Conservatory around 2004. Named after a Minneapolis, Minnesota (Olson's hometown) street known for its numerous "dive bars," Lake Street Dive initially drew fans with covers of songs by such influences as Hall & Oates, George Michael, Fleetwood Mac, and more. Over time, they began writing their own material, drawing praise for their soulful, stylistically varied sound.

The frontman for Dire Straits is also a skilled composer, tuneful singer, and one of the most celebrated guitarists to emerge in the 1970s and '80s. 
Mark Knopfler - Back on the Dancefloor from Down the Road Wherever
...He’s also just announced a corresponding tour for the album, which will take place next year and find him on the road with a ten-piece band. “My songs are made to be performed live,” he said in a press release. “I love the whole process of writing them alone and then recording them with the band, but ultimately the best part is playing them to an audience live. I enjoy the whole circus, travelling from town to town and interacting with this group of players is a total pleasure. I’m really looking forward to it.”

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 - I fantasmi di Pompei from Canned Music

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.

Mixing elements of opera, cabaret, chamber music, and rock, My Brightest Diamond was the project of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Shara Worden.
My Brightest Diamond - Sway from A Million and One
The daughter of a National Accordion Championship-winning father and a mother who was an organist for their Pentecostal church, Worden grew up in Ypsilanti, Michigan, listening to gospel, jazz, and classical music and performing in the church choir. She studied opera at the University of North Texas' music program, and after graduation, moved to New York City to continue her vocal studies. In N.Y.C., she became as involved in the world of underground rock as she was in the realms of classical music, becoming inspired by the likes of Antony and the Johnsons and Nina Nastasia and their intimate performances at venues such as Tonic, the Living Room, and the Knitting Factory. Worden began writing her own material, which had one foot in her classical training and the other in the avant rock she was discovering.

Irreverent British post-punk revival band earned its cult following in the '00s.
Art Brut - Kultfigur from Wham! Bang! Pow! Let's Rock Out!
 tuneful, zippy guitar pop!
Eddie Argos’s Bournemouth- and now Berlin-based band made a splash in the mid-2000s as exuberant, wordy indie-rock contemporaries of Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand. Now rocking a remodelled lineup and even more exclamation marks, Art Brut’s first album in seven years is trademark zippy, tuneful guitar pop, although there is perhaps more of a nod to new wave and power pop than there once was.
The guitars and brass don’t exactly trouble the zeitgeist, but the harmonies and choruses are singable, and surely pop is richer for such a haplessly engaging character as Argos. Something of a deadpan, Jarvis Cocker-like antihero, his stock-in-trade is wide-eyed, drily humorous songs about pined-for girlfriends and dreaming of being on Top of the Pops, littered with affectionate references to pop culture.

Project for experimental musician Daniel Lopatin that expanded from synth reveries to complex, genre-defying works. 
Oneohtrix Point Never - Babylon [Sandy Alex G] from Love in the Time of Lexapro
The project of Brooklyn-based experimental musician Daniel Lopatin, Oneohtrix (pronounced "one-oh-tricks") Point Never expanded from retro synth reveries to complex works that explored how history, memory, and music intersect. The flowing electronics of OPN's early albums -- which were gathered in the acclaimed 2009 collection Rifts -- suggested Lopatin was an heir to Tangerine Dream. However, he soon proved there was much more to his music with a string of releases that reflected his interest in high art as well as pop culture artifacts like video games, science fiction, anime, and advertising (which Lopatin sampled cleverly on 2011's Replica).

Bristol-based producer combining dub, house, techno, industrial, noise, and more into iconoclastic forms. 
Vessel - Glory Glory (for Tippi) from Queen of Golden Dogs
a gloriously weird electro-odyssey
The Bristolian musician Sebastian Gainsborough made their name with a strain of dance music that’s not really designed for the dancefloor. Their expansive, ambitious post-club compositions have drawn on everything from dubstep to post-punk in pursuit of an intelligent and often slightly contrarian sound. Their third album takes the template a step further, combining classical instrumentation with the clanging dissonance and glitchy, unnatural tempos of the internet age. The result is a record that feels pretentious – but in a good way: carefully considered and aiming towards something more philosophical than your average electro-odyssey.

Slovenian music and art collective mix agit-prop politics, Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, and stomping industrial-rock show. 
Laibach - Sixteen goin On Seventeen from The Sound of Music
glorious silly covers are bright as a copper kettle
Following their versions of 14 national anthems, seven takes on Sympathy for the Devil, and cod-fascistic covers of Queen and others, the industrial troupe alight on their kitschiest reinterpretations yet: songs from The Sound of Music, amusingly rendered in stentorian synthpop and the guttural vocals of Milas Fras. This already high concept was sent into the ionosphere by their decision to debut it in North Korea in 2015, making them the first western rock band to play the country. The notion that isolated North Korean culture vultures would presume western rock bands are typified by gruff, bearded Slovenians declaring their love for cream-coloured ponies and crisp apple strudels is hilarious, and Laibach get points for this masterful bit of culture jamming alone.

Gifted prog rock guitarist is a member of the Flower Kings and Transatlantic. He is also ex-Yes vocalist Jon Anderson's collaborator. 
Roine Stolt's The Flower King - Lost America from Manifesto Of An Alchemist
“Lost America is one of the longer tracks on my new album - it goes through a series of melodic themes and riffs - most of them familiar in style from the vast Flower Kings catalogue of course," Stolt explains to Prog of the new track. "The song, and much of the album, is interesting in the way it has fragments drawn from different periods of the last 25 years - song ideas that were never fully developed or utilized - even if parts may have been already on the table for both The Flower Kings and Transatlantic.  This particular song is kind of two songs - the first a melodic prog jigsaw - while the latter is a more straight riff-based tune - I do the lead vocal but both my brother Michael and Hammond dude Max Lorentz do quite a bit of backing me up with hairy vocals - Marco Minnemann on drums and Jonas Reingold on bass.

Part of Japan's vibrant underground experimental scene, this group tended toward fuzz-damaged psychedelic hard rock. 
DMBQ - No Things from Keeenly
"There is no band like DMBQ. They are unique destroyers of sound, and lovers of sonic beauty, existing in the places between. Masters of harsh tone and psychotic rhythm. Keeenly is an alien planet type record, evoking images of landscapes and weather patterns found in other galaxies. Purple wind and green fire.” — Ty Segall

DOG Power was formed in 2017 by indie pop, singer-songwriter Sam Perry and experimental musician Henry Nicol in Christchurch, with Perry and Nicol relocating Belgrade, Serbia, out of a desire for the freedom to make their music their life.
DOG Power - Not Human from Dog Power
...Intrigued by rock’n’roll, as well as non-musical and monotonous sounds, DOG Power’s music is rooted in their use of samples, live percussion, drum machines, synthesisers and guitars which lay a foundation for Perry’s deep, sonorous voice.
Taking equal ques from Sade and The Stooges, Serge Gainsbourg and Suicide, the seven songs on their self-titled recorded debut span genres, encompassing everything from industrial electronica to baroque pop, super-sonic rock’n’roll to something out of a seventies spy film… One directed by David Lynch...

The Dutch producer/multi-instrumentalist makes baroquely psychedelic music that's heavily indebted to the Left Banke, the Zombies, and their paisley ilk. 
Jacco Gardner - Privolva from Somnium
With his first two albums, Jacco Gardner was one of the missing links between the psych of old, the kind that was favored by the likes of Syd Barret led Pink Floyd and Incredible String Band, and the wave of revivalists in the new century. What distinguished Gardner from the rest was his deft touch in combining psych strands into something that was at the same time familiar, but still sounding like something that is coming out of today’s musical happenings.
A particular characteristic that defined Gardner were his excellent vocals, something that gave his music a particular tinge. Three years on from his second album Hypnophobia, a lot of changes came about for Gardner, which includes the release of his third outing, Somnium. A relationship took Gardner to Portugal’s capital Lisbon, where he resides now, but that also seems to have had a profound effect on his music, as evidenced on this new album.

Lake Street Dive, Mark Knopfler, Pearl & the Oysters, My Brightest Diamond, Art Brut, Oneohtrix Point Never, Alex G, Vessel, Laibach, Roine Stolt's The Flower King, DMBQ, DOG Power, Jacco Gardner