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...

10-28-2021 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [2019-2021] (2h 16m)

10-28-2021 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [2019-2021] # Sharon Van Etten, Field Music, Oceanator, Sue Foley, Routine, Juliana Hatfield, G. Love & Special Sauce, Pearl Charles, Still Corners, Little Barrie, Malcolm Catto, Circles Around the Sun

M U S I C (2h 16m)

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A singer of distinct, controlled passion, Sharon Van Etten carved out a loyal audience with her hushed, intense albums... A dedicated choir student during her childhood, Van Etten studied clarinet, violin, and piano before moving on to guitar. She began writing songs in high school and sang in a choir group, the Madrigals. She credits her choral experiences as indispensable in learning to musically notate, as well as to sing harmonies.

Sharon Van Etten 

No One's Easy to Love 4:38

Memorial Day 4:27

Malibu 3:23

from Remind Me Tomorrow 2019

For a decade, Sharon Van Etten specialized in understatement. From her 2009 debut Because I Was in Love through 2014's Are We There, she mined the tension generated by murmuring instrumentation clashing with her passionate delivery, a balance that proved quietly compelling. Van Etten maintains that sense of drama on Remind Me Tomorrow, her fifth full-length album, but she's radically shifted her presentation. Working with producer John Congleton, she's expanded her sonic palette, incorporating vintage synthesizers and drum loops while occasionally cranking up her amplifiers. Some of the sounds are conscious throwbacks, but they don't play like retro nostalgia, not in the context of Remind Me Tomorrow, which juxtaposes fearless aural adventure with keenly observed observations of easing into a satisfied life. ..

Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Michael Nau crafts reflective indie rock tinged with folk, psychedelic, and vintage pop influences. He's known for leading the like-minded projects Page France and Cotton Jones from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s before beginning to record under his own name in 2016.

Michael Nau 

Look Into Dance 5:22

Hoops 4:27

Grow My Wave 3:38

from Less Ready to Go 2019

Still a collaborative effort, and even more bustling than 2018's Michael Nau & the Mighty Thread in terms of arrangements, Less Ready to Go is Michael Nau's fourth album under his own name. Recorded at a studio in Joshua Tree, it was produced by Dr. Dog's Scott McMicken. As for its particularly colorful sound, Nau has explained that each song was recorded live with guests, who would then "switch instruments and do a live overdub on top." Alongside extra touches and sound effects, the results are often wonky and woozy on an album whose otherworldly quality extends to reaching back to the '60 and '70s for R&B, pop, and psychedelic influences. Rather than ever playing like a tribute, these elements seep into Nau's dreamy songs...

Hailing from Sunderland, England, indie/art rockers Field Music emerged in the middle part of the 2000s with a distinctive blend of smartly crafted pop hooks and an ambitious nature that pulled from a variety of rock subgenres. Helmed by brothers Peter and David Brewis, the group earned critical acclaim and a devout fan base...
Field Music 

Coffee or Wine 3:03

A Shot To The Arm 2:32

Only In a Man's World 2:46

from Making a New World 2020

...Their distinctive brand of indie pop has been constantly refined over the years as they smartly thread between bits of clever guitar rock, synth pop, soul, disco, and chamber pop, this time adding in some light prog-rock sophistication and the sort of aerodynamic new wave that harkens back to Thomas Dolby's early work. Like each of their previous releases, Making a New World is an ambitious, original, and exquisitely crafted work, full of rich details and compelling songs that translate the past into modern new shapes.

The stage moniker of Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Elise Okusami, Oceanator emerged in 2016 with a sound that combines heavy grunge, fuzzed-out indie rock, and deeply personal lyrics with synth pop-laced, incisive pop hooks. 

Oceanator 

Goodbye, Goodnight 4:03

Hide Away 6:11

Walk with You 4:20

from Things I Never Said 2021

The debut full-length effort from Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Elise Okusami, who operates under the moniker Oceanator, Things I Never Said is a delightfully understated grunge-pop paean to the disillusionment of early adulthood. Okusami is a nimble pop architect who knows how to bait a hook, and her songs, which marry the riot grrrl ethos of Sleater-Kinney with the neatly wrapped emo-pop earworms of Jimmy Eat World, frequently take abrupt instrumental detours that lead the listener into new sonic headwaters...

"Struggle" #114 ALTER.NATION.MiX - weekly favtraX 24-01-2021 (10 trax, 45m)

  ALTER.NATION #114 (10 trax, 45m)

The Second Hand Orchestra and James Yorkston, Still Corners, Palberta, Jordana, Yung, Rhye, Kiwi Jr., M. Caye Castagnetto, Brian Eno, Jeremiah Fraites

weekly favtraX 

2 4 - 0 1 - 2 0 2 1

"S t r u g g l e"

Scottish singer/songwriter who blends dark Leonard Cohen musings with Stuart Murdoch airs.

The Second Hand Orchestra and James Yorkston - The Wide Wide River / Struggle
Multi-faceted troubadour James Yorkston has explored many dimensions during his two decades of work... While its successor, The Wide Wide River, is collaborative to its core, it nonetheless feels like a continuation of his recent style, albeit pleasantly shaded by a new cast of players. Credited to James Yorkston & the Secondhand Orchestra, the project stems from the singer's longtime friendship with Swedish musician Karl-Jonas Winqvist, who, over a smattering of sessions in Stockholm, paired Yorkston with his own stable of musicians. Spontaneity has always been an element of Yorkston's style, but the loose group-mind feel captured here yields appealingly fresh and intimate results... The buoyant "Struggle" is a clear highlight with its airy harmonies and warming refrain...

English-American duo combining spacy psych experiments, glamorous '80s synth pop, and more.

Still Corners - The Last Exit / It's Woodoo

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...  In Murray, Still Corners are blessed with a vocalist who sounds great in just about any setting... While moments like these won't dispel comparisons to Mazzy Star and Julee Cruise, the gentle otherworldliness that has been vital to the duo's music since Creatures of an Hour is still distinctive...

Eccentric lo-fi trio whose unpredictable songs recall post-punk, no wave, and the vocal harmonies of the Roches.

Palberta - Palberta5000 / All Over My Face

New York-based abstract punks Palberta (Ani Ivry-Block, Lily Konigsberg, and Nina Ryser) went into the recording of their fifth album with the intention to create songs which were catchier and less abrasive than their previous material... Palberta5000 still has plenty of tracks that only last a minute or two, but the songs seem more planned out, with much more natural-sounding transitions between parts. They still come up with unconventional riffs and twitchy rhythms, but it's all executed with a bit more finesse this time around, and the trio's vocal harmonies have never sounded stronger... Palberta5000 is more mature than anything they've done before but just as playful, and more accessible while impossible to mistake for the work of any other band.

Kansas-born, Maryland-based singer/songwriter with a hooky bedroom pop sound. Classical Notions of HappinessSinger/songwriter Jordana Nye, aka Jordana, is known for her intimate and emotive electro-acoustic bedroom pop sound.

Jordana - Something To Say To You / Fuck You

Kansas-born/Maryland-based singer/songwriter Jordana Nye (aka Jordana) makes deeply intimate, handcrafted bedroom pop that brings to mind a wry combination of Cat Power and Beck. It's a potent, '90s-inspired vibe she first displayed on 2019's Classical Notions of Happiness and one which she further develops on 2020's engaging Something to Say to You. The album again finds her recording on her own with some production assistance from electronic artist Melvv. Though she primarily utilizes a guitar, bass, and drum set-up, there's also a kaleidoscope of instruments and effects on display here, including what sound like toy pianos, African kalimbas, reversed electric guitar riffs, and tape loops; all of which add to the homemade quality of the album... It's that alchemic sense that Jordana is conjuring pop magic out of the mundane details of everyday life that makes Something to Say to You a kind of revelatory experience.

Danish indie rock quartet who merge driving dance-rock with lush, brooding post-punk proclivities, Yung is led by singer and songwriter Mikkel Holm Silkjær.

Yung - Ongoing Dispute / Autobiography

...The quartet spent the next nearly five years preparing the follow-up, with bandleader and main songwriter Mikkel Holm Silkjær citing members' varied musical tastes as a challenge in finding the right balance of noise and tunefulness. The resulting Ongoing Dispute, their full-length debut for the PNKSLM label, does succeed in homing in on a consistently hooky, distorted, and dissatisfied sound. The album launches into grudges with a driving, rambling borderline dance-rock on "Autobiography," an uptempo track that has Holm mocking his guitar player, confronting a former mate, and ultimately asking for an apology "for the friendship you threw away." He's interrupted at times during the song by segments of churning, head-banging guitar unisons and, later, duetting, ultimately dissonant guitar solos that aren't quite able to see eye to eye...

Modern, low-key, R&B-inspired sophisti-pop from Plug Research staple Mike Milosh.

Rhye - Home / Sweetest Revenge

Two of the singles Michael Milosh released ahead of Home had more dancefloor zest than anything off Blood, his previous Rhye album... Milosh's approach as a songwriter and vocalist hasn't changed much. He's still addressing his lover, gently coaxing and assuring her, letting her know how he feels, communicating at all times on an intimate level. Throughout are references to (quiet) storms, waves, and rain made with literal and metaphorical purposes... This being the Rhye album with the most layers, Milosh was wise to employ the brilliant Alan Moulder (My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, the Killers) as mixing engineer. Every change pays off.

Toronto-via-Prince Edward Islands indie act that takes cues from a long lineage of collegiate slacker pop.

Kiwi Jr. - Cooler Returns / Cooler Returns

Kiwi Jr.'s 2019 debut, Football Money, was a long-labored triumph of intellectual slacker pop, burying nods to obscure influences under a whirlwind of bounding hooks. The brief album from the Toronto quartet flew by in a dazzled rush, with the energy of the first Modern Lovers' record juxtaposed with lazy, Pavement-esque melodies and lyrical barrages that were stuffed to capacity with esoteric references and culture-jamming imagery. Sophomore album Cooler Returns is much the same, but feels ever so slightly more refined, allowing the band's unique stew of influences and reference points a little more room to gel...

Peruvian artist who works with samples and sound manipulation for their murky, surrealist songs.

M. Caye Castagnetto - Leap Second / All Points North

Peruvian-born artist M. Caye Castagnetto architects a strange new world on their debut album Leap Second, building songs from samples that clash soft, organic instrumentation with murky electronics and surreal atmospheres. Castagnetto worked with musicians like Beatrice Dillon and Aileen Bryant in the creation of the source material for these wobbly, nocturnal songs, boiling down the sounds into the samples that make up Leap Second's ten concise selections. The span of time spent on the album shows up in how stylistically varied it can be from track to track... Leap Second feels like a filing cabinet full of layers and contrasting ideas, but it's surprisingly warm for how chaotically composed it sometimes seems. The album washes by quickly, and with repeat listening it becomes clear that all the strange detours and unrelated segments are connected by Castagnetto's curiosity and daring.

Glam rock star of the 1970s who became a hit producer as well as a trailblazer in ambient, experimental music, and electronica.

Brian Eno - Film Music 1976-2020 / Reasonable Question (From "We Are As Gods")

Aside from his productions for mega-selling stars like David Bowie and Coldplay, or his Windows start-up jingle, Brian Eno's work has received its greatest exposure through film and television. While his earlier Music for Films releases included pieces originally intended as imaginary soundtracks, many of which ending up being used later, Film Music 1976-2020 is more like a greatest-hits compilation of his most memorable cinematic appearances... "Reasonable Question," from 2020's We Are as Gods (a documentary about Whole Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand), has a scintillating melody and jittery IDM beats, and is easily the most exciting, kinetic track here...

Composer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist best known as the co-founder of the platinum-selling indie folk trio the Lumineers.

Jeremiah Fraites - Piano Piano / Arrival

After 15 years of belting out hearty folk-rock refrains to increasingly large audiences, Lumineers co-founder Jeremiah Fraites makes a surprisingly subtle solo debut with Piano Piano, a collection of tranquil piano instrumentals that occasionally veers into the avant-garde and quasi-classical wilderness. Like so many acts in 2020, the Lumineers' touring plans were waylaid by the COVID-19 pandemic, and Fraites -- recently transplanted to his wife's hometown of Turin, Italy -- found himself with time to contemplate his long-intended solo album. Sifting through years of musical fragments on phones and hard drives, a collection of melodies began to take shape, all of them played on the piano with little accompaniment...

The Second Hand Orchestra and James Yorkston, Still Corners, Palberta, Jordana, Yung, Rhye, Kiwi Jr., M. Caye Castagnetto, Brian Eno, Jeremiah Fraites