The Tape

So the Go Team goes back in time about 35 years and buys an organ. Ninja grows up on surf rock and psychedelic pop. They record all their songs on a small 4 track recorder and then you’ve got something that sounds like Snake & Jet’s Amazing Bullit Band. Capturing the energy of the Go Team with the retro feel of it’s likely inspirations in the 60s and 70s. The tracks are fierce and have some seriously fresh organ work making it almost a punk band but much more melodic, and they’re from Denmark. I highly recommend checking these guys out.
Xray

Ten Cities

I saw the movie poster for the upcoming Charlie Bartlett the other day. I couldn’t help but notice it bore a striking resemblance to Calvin Harris’ album cover for I Created Disco. Take a look and judge for yourself.

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I stumbled upon this man a few nights ago, and it is awesome shit. They are really chopped up, awesome remixes of The Beach Boys album Pet Sounds. I posted two tracks from the album which are called “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows.” This guy is awesome.

Bullion-God Only Knows

Bullion-Wouldn’t It Be Nice

LIARS with NO AGE and IMA GYMNIST
El Rey Theater - 2/22/08

After waiting within the fire lines among the beer chugging punkers and Pitchfork hipsters awhile, the curtains of the El Rey opened to three teenagers. One wielded a bass guitar and a mullet. One mounted the drums and the emo hair fang. A girl stood in the corner, who bore a shocking resemblance to M.I.A, making this was obviously her secret side project. (jk) The three kids were definitely not over 18. As the first bass lines picked up, the drums kicked in loudly, and the show had potential. For a sec. The quiet looking girl in the corner, who i had seen walking around in the crowd before, flung the mic cord over her shoulder and began yelling into the mic, whilst jumping up and down. Unfortunately, the drums subsisted mostly on adolescent energy and not any kind of interesting drumming. The bass subsisted mostly on the bassist’s hair. He did play bass too, but he wasn’t very good at it. I imagined myself up there playing those instruments, which i have no training in, and doing it better. But the most important part was the vocals. To describe her voice pattern is to wrestle with destiny. Half shrieked, half yelled, half whispered (1 1/2 voice) lyrics repeated themselves loosely over the drum n bass… noise. Songwriting was lost, as the words coming out were barely, no, completely inaudible. I don’t want to spend any more time for this. I don’t like to give numbers to music, but i’m going to officially declare Ima Gymnist 0/10.

To really understand what I’m talking about, please, please, please spend 10 seconds on their myspace. It will make you feel so much better about the music you have. Ima Gymnist

After another wait, the curtains drew on No Age. To the left was a drumset, and on the front of the bass drum were stickers and posters of MIA, as seen in the pic below

On the other side of the stage Randy Randall stood in the stock-guitar-hero position, legs spread, face down, staring at his guitar.

He picked out the noisy first lines of Weirdo Rippers opener “Every Artist Needs A Tragedy” and as Dean Spunt smacked the drums and began singing into a special mic setup that made his voice sound as if it were floating over an old school radio. To describe No Age better I have to be less specific, and as it was said in the Pitchfork review of their album, “…the album builds into something much bigger than its constituent parts.” as is with their live show. Song highlights were the previously mentioned track, “My Life’s Alright Without You” “Neck Escaper” and “Everybody’s Down.” But the real highlight of the performance was the performance itself. The drums was raw, the guitar was reverbed and effected to the infinity and beyond, and the band was real. At one point Randy Randell tried to climb up onto the amps, but only managed to knock one half over and pull a plug out of the board he was using to loop a riff he had done seconds ago, until Spunt came over and hoisted him up, scampered back over to the drums, and as the soft guitar loop and ambient noise came to a head, Randell leaped off the amp, whacking at his guitar with a fury. Insta-Mosh. People were flying around, heads were banging, and shoes were lost, only to find their owners in between songs. No Age was loud, confident, interesting, different, and amazing. After a long built up intro to the last song, Randell tossed his guitar in the the crowd. Hands grasped and reached, and as people played the strings for seconds at a time before being ripped away, strings snapped and pieces of the guitar fell off. The noise was amazing and beautiful. He reached for the guitar back and the crowd sent it back to him, and even after the curtains closed he stayed there waiting for eveyrone to look around their feet and hand him back the bridge and various knobs that had fallen off. If I haven’t said this yet, No Age was fucking amazing.

No Age- Every Artist Needs A Tragedy

No Age - Neck Escaper

Now for the headliner. Liars are a highly respected band, and when I saw highly respected you know I mean I don’t like them. Now, there are a few tracks I really like, but as a whole I don’t really enjoy their music. The show was interesting, with the lead singer enduring a recent back injury which forced him to sit on the edge of a high stool for part of the performance, but he still was able to get his act on. Angus Andrew flailed around, waving his arms, making movements sometimes related to his lyrics, (”you” had him pointing to the audience, “no no no” was a shaking finger.) All in all, it looked like the time the band spent studying and researching witchcraft for their 2003 cleverly titled concept album They Were Wrong, So We Drowned had caused a spirit to possess Andrew, and it looks like it has not been excised as of yet. Jerky, inhuman movements were involved in most of his dancing.

I can understand why people love this band, but it’s just not for me. As with Vampire Weekend at Amoeba Hollywood where an underwhelming performance was brought up by my love of the band’s music, Liars at the El Rey was a phenomenal performance bogged down by my indifference to the music. I like this song a lot though.

Liars - It Fit When I Was A Kid

When you hear the word grum, many thoughts come to your mind. About 90% of them are unappealing. However, as unappealing as his name may be to your ears, his music more than makes up for it. Its maximal, yes. But it has those elements of funk that make Daft Punk so great. It’s groovy, yet very heavy. I’m trying to coin a term for the genre that he falls into. The one with Bloody Beetroots, Toxic Avenger, all the Ed Banger peeps, Hot Pink Delorean and so on. I’m thinking of “Blog House.” Simply, it is house that gets posted a lot in is often on the Hype Machine.

Enjoy Grum on Myspace

Panico is a fresh sounding group produced in a place you’ve never heard of called France from a place I hope you’ve heard of called Chile. They make some feisty garagey dance punk sounding like a Professor Murder meets Bonde Do Role in a bar with !!! after listening to Os Mutantes, The Clash, and The Black Keys. Underwater. In Space. They put out an album in 2005 which shouldn’t deter you from getting it because it’s still delicious (sounding I haven’t tried appeasing any of my other senses with it yet) They’ve got a new album coming out soon but in the mean time they’ve got an EP to keep you excited.

And some tracks from their album “Subliminal Kill”

Ice Cream

Lupita

I just got sent two tracks from Life The Great’s new album “The Ultrasound.” With no further ado here we go.

Life The Great-Stupid-Fresh

Stupid fresh keeps his too cool for school vibe strong with his epic introduction of synths. He talks about his eighties life with his members only jacket, he is all about putting you in his world and telling you whats up. I think the real thing to focus on in this song is the beats and the music, it’s got some seriously tight synth lines and a killer beat.

Life The Great-The Pager

The Pager opens up with a sick arpegiating synth line keeping his eighties vibe strong. Definitely in the background music you get a video game theme song vibe. The Moral of the story is these tracks are some tight tracks, so whether or not your a fan of “LTG” check them out.

 The Republic Tigers are an up and coming indiepop band from Kansas City, Missouri. They recently signed to Chop Shop Records. Chop Shop is owned and run by Alexandra Patsavas, music supervisor to Grey’s Anatomy,Gossip Girl, and formerly, The O.C. She’s gotten a lot of great indie bands on the map, and now will attempt to do the same thing with her label. Her first signing, the Republic Tigers are sorta mellow, very chill, but still have the “umph” required to make it big on the indie circuit. Best of luck to them and to the label, and look out for them in the future.

Buy the EP at Amazon.

The Enthusiasts are a hard rocking New York 3 piece of under 20 year olds who’s lo fi sound calls to mind The White Stripes and The Black Keys, some of their biggest inspirations. Their debut ep (and by debut I do mean myspace download) has lead singer and guitarist Joey F shouting/singing lyrics who’s poetic and intelligence accent the hard hitting riffs, drums and bass that fill up the sound of The Enthusiasts. I know it’s a departure from what we usually post here but I think you’ll enjoy these tunes as much as I do, so go feel good about supporting an up and coming group by blasting these tunes or sing/screaming along.

Cardboard Soldiers

Knockin’

Black Magic

Black Magic (Acoustic)

EP as a ZIP file

Okay so I found out about these guys because of the Kitsuné Maison Volume 5 Compilation. After a little more esnooping, I found that one of the members is Bloc Party’s Russell Lissack. The lead singer is Milena Merpis. The two met at the Knitting Factory NY in 2004, where Merpis’ old band supported Bloc Party. Their only two tracks are streamable via their MySpace.