21-12-2021 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX (2h 15m)

21-12-2021 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX (2h 15m) [2019-2021] # Son Lux, TOY, Eerie Wanda, Rose City Band, Goat Girl, Benjamin Lazar Davis, Urlaub in Polen, Bradford Cox / Cate Le Bon, Lost Under Heaven, The Growlers, Pom Poko, Deap Vally, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Night Flowers, Desert Sessions

M U S I C (2h 15m)

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Originally the post-rock project of composer/keyboardist/vocalist Ryan Lott, Son Lux grew over the course of the 2010s to include guitarist/composer Rafiq Bhatia and experimental drummer Ian Chang. Combining live instruments with computer-manipulated acoustic performances, samples, and Lott's strained vocal delivery, Son Lux's bold, dystopic sound often correlates with anxious lyrics about a fearful future.

Son Lux 

Bodies 2:41

Warning 3:02

from Tomorrows II 2020

Son Lux released the first installment of their Tomorrows trilogy in August of a turbulent 2020. Fourth months later, and loosely reminiscent of the second movement of a classical symphony, Tomorrows II proves to be a relatively more hushed, introspective volume. Like Tomorrows I, it was recorded with group members and contributors separated in such far-flung locales as New York, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and Budapest... 

London's TOY borrow from shoegaze, Krautrock, and classic psychedelia to make pulsating, absorbing music. 

TOY 

Down on the Street 4:43

A Doll's House 3:35

from Songs of Consumption 2019

TOY started 2019 with one of their lushest releases and ended it with a study in minimalism. On the full-length Happy in the Hollow, they indulged in as many styles and sounds as they could pack into its songs, but on Songs of Consumption, they don't pile on layer after layer to keep things interesting. Both rawer and more electronic than any of their previous music, this covers EP finds TOY drawing on the evocative simplicity of vintage synth pop, minimal wave, and electro-punk as they reimagine songs by artists ranging from the Troggs to John Barry. Not only does the band have an enviable record collection, they know how to pick songs that challenge them. They begin the EP with one of their biggest departures: Their taut version of "Down on the Street" trades the Stooges' raw power for sullen synth rock with a cruise-controlled Motorik beat... The band gives Nico's "Sixty Forty" a makeover that's nearly as radical, miniaturizing its dark, rolling majesty into something more intimate but just as poignant... Their dedication to stripping these songs down to their bones yields especially fascinating results on "A Doll's House," where they translate the complexity of John Barry's composition with just a handful of instruments. Even when TOY returns to a more familiar sound, they do it creatively...

The Dutch band Eerie Wanda are led by vocalist/songwriter/guitarist Marina Tadic, whose warmly intimate vocals are paired with melancholy pop songs influenced by psychedelia (as on their debut album, 2016's Hum) or, as on their second record, 2019's Pet Town, sweet early-'60s ballads and rockabilly.

Eerie Wanda 

Pet Town 3:27

Rockabiller 3:32

Hands of the Devil 2:35

from Pet Town 2019

...There are traces of girl group sweetness, soda shop, rockabilly, and lots of Ricky Nelson's "Lonesome Town" in the sound Tadic and her mates create. It's quiet and peaceful, but never boring thanks to the richness of Tadic's voice and the power of her lyrics. There's a disarming directness to both the melodies and the words, and though one might miss Verhulst's pulsing basslines or the electric guitars, the unbroken mood Tadic creates is entrancing. .. Pet Town makes for the perfect record to calm down at the end of a typically bonkers day or as a brief respite from the storm during the middle of it. Tadic's vocals are endlessly soothing, the arrangements are comforting, and the warmth of the songs emanates from the speakers like gentle heat waves from a crackling fire. Stripping back from the already gentle sound of Hum could have been a step in the wrong direction' instead, it's a perfect evolution and a wonderful album.

After initially appearing as a semi-anonymous psychedelic country jam band, Rose City Band was revealed to be the project of Wooden Shjips/Moon Duo guitarist/vocalist Ripley Johnson. He worked with indie giant Thrill Jockey to reissue the band's 2019 self-titled debut after a self-released pressing quickly sold out. ..

Rose City Band 

Rip City 3:49

Rivers of Mind 6:34

Fog of Love 4:22

from Rose City Band 2020

Mysterious and calm, the debut album from Rose City Band rolls in slowly like the morning fog. Produced by Moon Duo/Wooden Shjips member Ripley Johnson, the project filters the softer side of the Grateful Dead's jammy explorations through a gentle, spaced-out haze. Where other late-2010s disciples of Garcia and Weir sometimes reworked the Dead's amped-up boogie rock tendencies, Rose City Band's self-titled debut leans more into the moments of soft, cosmic elegance that sometimes arrived deep into lengthy space jams... Rose City Band is ultimately less about the songs, or even the jamming, and more about the muted, textural palette it stretches out on.

06-12-2021 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX (2h 22m) [2019-2021]

06-12-2021 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX (2h 22m) [2019-2021] # G. Love & Special Sauce, Pearl Charles, Still Corners, Little Barrie, Malcolm Catto, Circles Around the Sun, Geese,Radiohead,Son Lux, TOY,Eerie Wanda,Rose City Band,Goat Girl

M U S I C (2h 22m)

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G. Love & Special Sauce are a Philadelphia-based trio whose laid-back, sloppy blues sound is quite unique, as it encompasses the sound/production of classic R&B and recent rap artists (the Beastie Boys, in particular). The group -- G. Love (born Garrett Dutton) on guitar/vocals/harmonica, Jeff Clemens on drums, and Jim Prescott on upright bass -- released their self-titled debut in 1994 on OKeh/Epic..
G. Love & Special Sauce 

Go Crazy (feat. Keb' Mo') 3:40

Fix Your Face 3:15

from The Juice 2020

Now that they're over a quarter-century into their career, it's time to come to terms with a simple fact: G. Love & Special Sauce are no longer youthful upstarts, they're veterans. Fittingly, their 2020 album The Juice is the kind of record that could only be made by musicians who've been around the block a time or two. It's not that The Juice is the work of untrammeled virtuosos -- it is most decidedly a vibe record -- but rather that it's an album that's casually confident that also happens to have an offhand sense of community. At its core, The Juice derives from a series of Nashville sessions held with Keb' Mo', who is credited as a co-producer and appears on a fair chunk of the album...

Singer/songwriter Pearl Charles has a knack for writing melodic, low-key indie pop with a jangling country tone. After coming up through the Los Angeles lo-fi and garage scenes, she made her full-length debut in 2018 with Sleepless Dreamer, a finely crafted slice of warm country-pop. She followed it up three years later with Magic Mirror...

Pearl Charles 

Imposter 3:25

Magic Mirror 2:58

Sweet Sunshine Wine 4:10

from Magic Mirror 2021

In a pleasing tangle of sun-warmed melodies and 1970s influences, Pearl Charles strikes a confident, if laid-back tone on Magic Mirror, her sophomore album. The Los Angeles native has been bubbling under the radar for nearly a decade, trying her hand in a variety of indie subsets from lo-fi Americana to garage and psychedelia before landing on a more polished amalgam of vintage-flavored country-pop and West Coast soft rock. Her 2018 debut, Sleepless Dreamer, showed plenty of promise and laid the framework for the more fully realized sound she achieves here... The production and arrangements throughout are impeccable, warm, and well-suited to the kind of thoughtful, low-key songwriting at which Charles excels. Neither basking in its vintage flavor nor overplaying its strengths, Magic Mirror is the kind of subtle record that reveals its pleasures through repeated listens. Even Charles' voice is a comfort; after a decade of mainstream mumblers and overwrought affectations, her enunciated vocal style brings a conversational tone to the songs...

United by Tessa Murray's delicate vocals and their love of otherworldly atmospheres, Still Corners' music is otherwise in constant motion. .. Still Corners formed shortly after Hughes, a native of Austin, Texas, met Murray by chance at a London train station. Taking their name from a phrase in Robert Frost's poem "New Hampshire," they soon began making music together...

Still Corners 

The Last Exit 4:41

A Kiss Before Dying 2:45

It's Voodoo 4:44

from The Last Exit 2021

More than a decade after they formed, Still Corners and their music remain in constant motion. Over the years, Greg Hughes and Tessa Murray have relocated from London to the English seaside to Texas' Hill Country, and their sound has shifted with every move. On The Last Exit, however, there's a slightly shorter distance between where they've been and where they are. They embellish on the sunbaked dream pop they introduced on Slow Air... Even if The Last Exit is sometimes a little too wispy, it's still a fitting soundtrack for getting lost on the open road.

Little Barrie are a London-based trio led by ace guitarist Barrie Cadogan, whose sound is an exciting blend of hard rock, blues, soul, and funk that calls to mind classic bands of the '60s like Traffic and Cream... By the time of 2020's Quatermass Seven, the band had staked out a place all their own sonically and Cadogan was firmly entrenched on the short list of best guitarists of his era...

Little Barrie, Malcolm Catto 

Rest In Blue 4:20

Repeater #2 4:02

After After 8:10

from Quatermass Seven 2020

After the release of their 2017 album Death Express, Little Barrie suffered the tragic loss of drummer Virgil Howe, and the remaining two members of the group, guitarist Barrie Cadogan and bassist Lewis Wharton, took some time deciding whether they wanted to keep the band going. When they did choose to make more music together, they called in drummer Malcom Catto of the London jazz group Heliocentrics. The trio began jamming in the drummer's basement studio, liked what they came up with, and turned their ideas into a set of songs. Recorded simply on vintage equipment, the seven-song Quatermass Seven album crackles with energy and shines like a gritty diamond as the three players delve deeply into grooves so deep they feel bottomless... It's a heady mix of vintage sounds, just like the band usually put on tape, but a little freer and tougher thanks to Catto's jazz background, the urgency of Cadogan's singing and playing, and the sense that the emotional stakes are a little higher...

Circles Around the Sun is a contemporary instrumental rock band that formed with the specific purpose of creating intermission music for Fare Thee Well, a series of reunion concerts played by the surviving members of the Grateful Dead during their 2015 tour. Those shows celebrated the band's 50th anniversary and served as their official send-off, while Circles Around the Sun was designed to reflect the Dead's spacy and grooving overall feel...

"Summer Madness" #111 ALTER.NATION.MiX - weekly favtraX 06-12-2020

 ALTER.NATION #111

Khruangbin, Joan of Arc, The Smashing Pumpkins, Urlaub in Polen, Kelley Stoltz, The High Water Marks, Son Lux, Lee Ritenour, Jahari Massamba Unit

weekly favtraX 

0 6 - 1 2 - 2 0 2 0

"Summer Madness"

Jet-setting Texas trio whose smooth, mainly instrumental music is heavily influenced by Thai rock and funk, among other styles.

Khruangbin - Late Night Tales: Khruangbin / Summer Madness (Exclusive Cover Version)

Texan trio Khruangbin's singular sound draws from a vast array of far-flung influences, yet it's accessible and familiar enough to captivate a widespread audience. The group are a logical fit for the LateNightTales series, which features notable artists presenting tracks much in the manner of a close group of friends hanging out at home, sharing personal favorites deep into the night... Khruangbin also sneak in a studio recording of their steamy cover of Kool & the Gang's "Summer Madness," a longtime staple of their live shows... After spending the album exploring different corners of the world, the final journey to the cosmos seems quietly astonishing.

Indie rock stalwarts led by Tim Kinsella, with a sustained focus on exploring the boundaries of their art.

Joan of Arc - Tim Melina Theo Bobby / Land Surveyor

...In true Joan of Arc fashion, final album Tim Melina Theo Bobby (the first names of the players who made the music) sees the group taking their sound in a new direction, even on the way out the door... Many songs are led by synth lines, and the curious instrumental track "Land Surveyor" has more in common with the moon-walking electro of early-2000s Mouse on Mars than the organic electronics-tinged rock of the band's last few albums...  It's a perfect ending note for a band whose unique sonic language relied on equal and interconnected shares of joy and confusion.

One of the biggest bands of the alternative era, who deftly mixed roaring rock with dark, insular alternative pop. Although they emerged alongside grunge acts like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the Smashing Pumpkins were the group least influenced by traditional underground rock. Headed by principal songwriter and frontman Billy Corgan, their sound was an amalgam of progressive rock, heavy metal, goth, psychedelia, and dream pop, a layered, powerful style driven by swirling, distorted guitars that churned beneath Corgan's angst-ridden lyrics.
The Smashing Pumpkins - Cyr / Wyttch

Cyr, the 11th studio album to bear the Smashing Pumpkins name, is another example of Corgan's knack for creating massive albums, only this time translating layered guitar rock into dark, moody synth pop... Unlike the electronic tinges that added to the cold elegance of that album, however, Cyr puts the synths front and center. Guitars are mostly buried under warm synth pads, buzzing electronic bass, and a mixture of programmed beats and lockstep live drumming... The angry metallic grooving of "Wyttch" is one of the few moments on Cyr where the band lean into the loud guitars and organic drums of their earliest albums...

Cologne, Germany-based post-punk duo known for their driving Krautrock rhythms and experimental synth textures.

Urlaub in Polen - All / The Witcher

Germany's Urlaub in Polen has always been a hard band to pin down. At their core, they are a two-man guitar-and-drums unit, though both members also handle the myriad synthesizers and ambient electronics that shimmer and buzz through their hypnotic songs... Reuniting after a nine-year gap, they return with their sixth album, All. If anything, the ten-song set feels even tighter than the band's earlier releases, paring away some of the harsh and cavernous sounds of Boldstriker and presenting a leaner, cleaner sort of minimalism that plays to their strengths... 

San Francisco singer/songwriter and longtime purveyor of melodic, lo-fi indie pop. Skilled at crafting pop songs under his own name, excellent at producing albums for others, and a good enough guitarist to be in Echo & the Bunnymen's touring band, Kelley Stoltz carved out an interesting career for himself on the fringes of the indie rock scene beginning in the late 1990s.

Kelley Stoltz - Ah! (etc) / She Likes Noise

Since the turn of the 2000s, seeing the name Kelley Stoltz on the cover of an album meant that the contents were sure to be guitar pop music of the highest quality, produced with a sure hand and played with consummate skill. 2020's Ah! (etc) is no different. It is of a piece with Stoltz' previous few albums that combined moody post-punk with jangling power pop and stripped down indie rock to come up with a sound that's immediate and a little melancholy, though also prone to moments of almost giddiness... and even indulges in some straight up New Wave novelty with the goofy "She Likes Noise."...

Dynamic indie pop group fronted by former Apples in Stereo member Hilarie Sidney and Palermo's Per Ole Bratset.

The High Water Marks - Ecstasy Rhymes / Accidentally On Purpose

The High Water Marks first album in over a decade shows that the pairing of Hilarie Sidney and Per Ole Bratset is still as strong as ever and the result is the band's best album to date. By far. In the past their winning mix of lo-fi Elephant 6 pop and fuzzy indie rock sometimes suffered from muddy recordings or songs that weren't as punchy as they could be. No worries about either of those issues here as the sound of Ecstasy Rhymes is clear and crisp with layers of strummed guitars, nimble bass and gleefully bashed drums form a safety net for the rambling lead guitars and the duo's home cooked vocals...

Dynamic, sound-manipulating post-rock project helmed by composer/keyboardist/vocalist Ryan Lott.

Son Lux - Tomorrows II / Bodies

Son Lux released the first installment of their Tomorrows trilogy in August of a turbulent 2020. Fourth months later, and loosely reminiscent of the second movement of a classical symphony, Tomorrows II proves to be a relatively more hushed, introspective volume... In the second half, the funky "Bodies" adds colorful choral voices, prepared piano, and Ian Chang's off-kilter drumming to a central bass line before ..

A prolific session player and musical chameleon, a guitarist whose speed, facility, phrasing, and technique are always flawless.

Lee Ritenour - Dreamcatcher / Abbot Kinney

It's hard to believe that in his over-50-year career, guitarist Lee Ritenour has never released a solo guitar album. He rectifies that fact on 2020's warmly delivered Dreamcatcher. The record follows Ritenour's star-studded 2015 album A Twist of Rit, in which he reworked songs from throughout his career with a bevy of special guests. Dreamcatcher finds him taking a more introspective, stripped-down approach, but one that still showcases his lyricism and adept fretboard skills. Recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ritenour produced the album himself at his home, working remotely with studio assistance by Gary Lee and Brian McShea. There's an intimacy to the recordings that has the feeling of a small private concert, or it's as if you're eavesdropping on Ritenour just jamming for his own pleasure... He even rips into far-eyed electric jazz-rock on "Abbot Kinney."...

Occasional future jazz and hip-hop recording project from Madliband drummer/producer Karriem Riggins.

Jahari Massamba Unit - Pardon My French / Du Morgon Au Moulin-À-Vent (Pour Duke)

Jahari Massamba Unit is the very occasional collaborative recording project between producer/mixologist/multi-instrumentalist Madlib and jazz/hip-hop drummer/producer Karriem Riggins... Pardon My French is an exploration and statement of Afro-futurist jazz refracted through hip-hop, vanguard, Eastern and Latin influences, and funk... The album's centerpiece is "Du Morgon au Moulin-à-Vent (Pour Duke)," a nine-plus-minute jam introduced by the sound of running water, incessantly rolling tom-toms, crystalline vibraphone, and acoustic guitar. Its long intro is anchored by a two-chord piano vamp, and the track eventually weds post-bop, Latin and Brazilian jazz, exotic percussion, and squalling trombone, all before Jackie Earley recites a brief poem...  It's difficult to pin down to be sure, but extremely listenable as a mind-blowing experiment to encounter and absorb. The future is now.

Khruangbin, Joan of Arc, The Smashing Pumpkins, Urlaub in Polen, Kelley Stoltz, The High Water Marks, Son Lux, Lee Ritenour, Jahari Massamba Unit