Montreal’s Elephant Stone was formed in 2009 by sitarist/bassist Rishi Dhir. As one of the most highly sought out sitar players in the international psych scene, he has recorded, performed and toured with Beck, the Black Angels, Brian Jonestown Massacre, the Horrors, and many more.
Thousands upon thousands of fans gathered in one space with hands aloft, screaming along to every word and their body shaking with adrenaline as track after track hits them like a tidal wave. That feeling, of being wrapped up in a band who seize the euphoric and turn it into something vital and real in front of your eyes, that feeling is what makes a band special. Emblazoned front and centre, it’s what Sea Girls burst and pulse with – a band aiming first and foremost at being the torch-bearing sing-a-long for a whole new generation and a band trading, at its core, in what may seem the simplest of sciences. Turn everything up a notch, write anthems to throw yourselves into and be that soundtrack for the best nights of people’s lives.”
‘Under Exit Lights’ EP
The label Speedy Wunderground is really on a roll. Led by producer Dan Carey, the label has been reliably presenting a whole new exciting generation of English musicians, artists like Squid and Black Midi who often exist on some kind of post-punk/art-rock spectrum. But now there’s also PVA, another buzzy up-and-coming act that’s doing something similar to their peers but also tapping into a slightly different history.
Like Squid’s “The Cleaner,” PVA’s new single “Divine Intervention” is like a mash-up of the past. In its synths there’s new wave with serrated edges, in Ella Harris’ deadpan delivery there’s an art-y no wave tint; it feels indebted to early ’80s Europe and mid-’00s Brooklyn in equal measure. PVA took all of that and crafted an addicting track that balances danceability and meditation. Its name might allude to godliness, but it’s a song about coming to a new realization of yourself after — fittingly enough — sifting through the past and memories. And while there’s no big climax, no one moment of revelation, the insistence of “Divine Intervention” tells the story well — a process steadily pushing forward towards a matter-of-fact self-renewal. According to label co-runner Pierre Hall, “It reminds me of Patti Smith fronting Factory Floor,” which is pretty spot-on.
PVA are Ella Harris, Josh Baxter, and Louis Satchell
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have dropped two new live albums on their BandCamp. The records, Live in Paris ‘19andLive in Adelaide ‘19, are the first live albums released by the band, with all proceeds going towards Wildlife Victoria and Animals Australia in the wake of the Australian wildfires that nearly a billion animals have died from.
Both records were mixed by frontman Stu Mackenzie.
The recordings draw a majority of their sets from the band’s recent “Fishing For Fishies” and “Infest The Rats Nest” albums (one is psych-pop, one is heavy metal – go figure), with both clocking in at 18 and 19 tracks respectively.
The band is set to kick off their 2020 with a huge North American tour that will see them performing three-hour sets, including two nights at the acclaimed Red Rocks Amphitheater. Not bad for a group of genre schizophrenic rockers.
Live at L’Olympia, Paris, France, October 14, 2019.
100% OF PROCEEDS GO TO WILDLIFE VICTORIA
released January 10th, 2020
The Band:
Drums: Michael Cavanagh
Guitar / Keys: Cook Craig
Harmonica / Vocals / Keys / Percussion: Ambrose Kenny-Smith
Vocals / Guitar / Keys: Stu Mackenzie
Drums: Eric Moore
Bass: Lucas Harwood
Guitar / Vocals: Joey Walker
Mixed by Stu Mackenzie
King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard have released a third live album to raise funds for Australian wildlife charities.
All proceeds from the new Brussels live album go to WIRES Wildlife Rescue, while proceeds from the Adelaide album go to Animals Australia, and proceeds from the Paris album go to Wildlife Victoria. Bandcamp has also agreed to donate its share of the revenue from the releases to fire relief charities.
This third recording of two Brussels concerts, captured October 8th-9th, 2019 at Ancienne Belgique, joins the two live albums the prolific psych rock group released on January 10th in their first fundraising effort. Those were recordings of their July 12th, 2019 concert at Adelaide’s The Barton Theatre and their October 14th, 2019 show at Paris’ L’Olympia.
Live at Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, Belgium, October 8th and 9th 2019
The Band:
Drums: Michael Cavanagh
Guitar / Keys / Vocals: Cook Craig
Harmonica / Vocals / Keys / Percussion: Ambrose Kenny-Smith
Vocals / Guitar / Keys: Stu Mackenzie
Drums: Eric Moore
Bass: Lucas Harwood
Guitar / Vocals: Joey Walker
Mixed by Stu Mackenzie
Tracks 1-9 recorded on October 8th
Tracks 10-17 recorded on October 9th
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard drop live albums in support of bush fire effort, the group, highly regarded for their incredible live performances, have yet to grace us with a live album – until now, and they’ve gifted us one, but two! live albums all available on their Bandcamp site.
The band has dropped Live In Adelaide ’19 and Live In Paris ’19to help with raising money for animals affected by bush fire’s, the former of which’s proceeds will go to Animals Australia and the latter to Wildlife Victoria.
East of Melbourne, everything shrouded by smoke… bushfires have been destroying some of my most treasured sacred spots, An amazing encapsulation of the genius that is King Gizzard. With so much music in their catalouge you never know what to expect from their live sets and it keeps things fresh and invigorating. These guys are truly a treasure and I love that these live album sales are going towards Australia in their time of need.
Mixed by Stu Mackenzie
This band from Philadelphia has always sounded like rock & roll purism with a future. With an imminent new album, “Dirty Pictures (Part 2)”, Low Cut Connie – led by singer-pianist-songwriter Adam Weiner – are now an act on the verge. Their sound is of Fifties rock & roll dynamics and controlled-Replacements vigor. Weiner swept the ivories of his road-beaten keyboard in a short-sleeve gold lamé jacket over a Stanley Kowalski undershirt – budget-Elton John flair meets Jerry Lee Lewis menace. A cover of David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” – recently cut for a Bowie tribute project curated by Howard Stern – highlighted the Seventies glam that runs through Low Cut Connie’s electric-roadhouse guitars.
But the first single from the next LP, “Beverly,” was next-level songwriting. Building on the solid hooks and charge of previous albums – set-list pillars like “Dirty Water” and “Shake It Little Tina” – Weiner has pushed the vintage-Philly soul in his choruses to a rousing elegance at the intersection of Todd Rundgren, Gamble and Huff and Sun Records.
Low Cut Connie showed their usual party-out-of-bounds. They have also brought a bonafide hit, ready for crossover.
American standard-bearers for glam rock and important precursors to punk rock, The New York Dolls reunited (at the personal request of longtime fan Morrissey) nearly three decades after their early-1970s heyday. Original Dolls David Johansen and Syl Sylvain still have all the sass and swagger of their prime on “Cause I Sez So”. Todd Rundgren had helmed the band’s debut and returns in the same capacity for this 2009 Atco album, helping the quintet push its sonic envelope a bit beyond the Stonesy racket of yore.
The reconstituted New York Dolls stack up awfully well against the original Seventies band, whose glam rock inspired thousands of acts. This Todd Rundgren-produced follow-up to the Dolls‘ fine 2006 comeback features new moves like reggae and Latin-tinged balladry. But the selling points are its Stones-y propulsion and the nuanced vigor of David Johansen. The singer delivers singalong choruses in his New Yawk bark, sweetly praises a lover who “treats [him] like a maharajah” and, on the funked-out “Let’s Get Radiant,” delivers the perfect middle-aged-rocker line: “If we don’t come back, call us on the Ouija board.”
A reggae-tinged reworking of their ’70s classic “Trash” may be the most striking example of this, but the beautiful pop melody of “Lonely So Long” and the propulsive R&B of “Nobody Got No Bizness” show the Dolls can wear any style and make it look great.
So give “Cause I Sez So” another spin in memory of the band’s drummer Jerry Nolan, who passed away on this day in 1992.
The sound of Glass Beach is a fusion of our diverse range of influences including 1960s jazz, new wave, early synthesizer music, and emo, but all presented with the harshness and irreverence of punk music. we embrace the trend towards genrelessness caused by the increasing irrelevance of record labels and democratization of music brought about by the internet and enjoy playing with musical boundaries even to the point of absurdity
“The First Glass Beach Album” is like peak-eccentricity of Montreal reimagined as peak-audacity fourth-wave emo. Or maybe if the Unicorns wrote a post-rock symphony about a jazz band that goes to war with a synth-pop band. Narrated in a histrionic whine by the artist formerly known as Casio Dad, it includes songs called “classic j dies and goes to hell, Pt. 1″ and “Yoshi’s Island” and “Soft!!!!!!!” and, naturally, “Glass Beach.” It’s a lot.
This album began with demos written in 2015 & 2016 when i first moved to Los Angeles and spent almost a year living on my friend’s couch. I met Jonas and William on facebook after they heard the Casio Dad album on their college radio station in Minnesota and we eventually ended up moving into an apartment together in North Hollywood. after showing them the new demos I had been writing, Jonas and William decided to join the band, playing bass and drums respectively, and we spent the next three years refining the demos into songs.
Thematically this album differs a lot from “he’s not with us anymore”, rather than focusing so much on internal feelings, this album looks outside, in an attempt to capture the external world in all its good, all its bad, and especially all its confusion. it revels in the lack of a focused narrative, portraying multiple perspectives at once and changing moods on a whim.
The Band:
Highly anticipated second album, 1.5 years after their critically acclaimed debut LP. If the end times are coming, we’re grateful to be spending them with the carnage of Tropical Fuck Storm’s sophomore album, “Braindrops”. The band have outdone themselves this time around (no small task following their incredible debut) making something that both captures the chaos of our real world and serves cynical narratives of a future and past that never were, corrupting the corrupt into imaginative despair and colorful mayhem that always reads as poetic. The album’s title track opens with the band’s manipulated sounds and a nimble groove that eventually devolves into the unhinged with layered percussion, soulful breaks, and all the mangled narrative poetics of Gareth Liddiard at his best: “you’re like a snake with its arse up its head man, stop thinking / its enough dealing with this heat and stink / school bus, street pus, the crushed skulls of a watermelons / flowing down a drain the colour of indian ink.”
Featuring members of the now-defunct band The Drones.
Recommend If You Like: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Nick Cave, The Slits, Protomartyr, The Drones, Gang of Four, IDLES.
“I’ve invented fake news as a genre of music,” Gareth Liddiard observes with a laugh. Heʼs talking about “Maria 63”, the closing track on Tropical Fuck Stormʼs sophomore LP ‘Braindrops’. The song takes aim at the once-marginalized alt-right conspiracy theories that now seem to be a driving force behind the rise of fascism in global politics. “It may be the most stupid song ever written,” Liddiard jokes. Heʼs wrong, “Maria 63” is emblematic of Tropical Fuck Stormʼs keen ability to mine the extreme edge of pop cultureʼs periphery for potent musical and conceptual spice.
Tropical Fuck Storm were formed around 2017 in the city of Melbourne, Victoria along Australiaʼs south-eastern coast. The band released their debut long-player A Laughing Death in Meatspace on Joyful Noise Recordings in 2018. Each of the bandʼs four members bring considerable experience to the group. Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin were part of the long-running and critically-acclaimed act The Drones, while Erica Dunn and Lauren Hammel have performed in a variety of well-received projects. Perhaps itʼs that wealth of rock and roll experience that allows Tropical Fuck Storm to so expertly deconstruct and distort the genreʼs norms. “Everything we do, we try to do it in a weird way. The whole album is full of weird beats, and just weird shit everywhere,” Liddiard explains. He cites Doc at the Radar Station-era Captain Beefheart as a key sonic touchstone, and Braindrops certainly shares the Captainʼs penchant for pounding abstract grooves. Tropical Fuck Storm have achieved a uniquely off-kilter sound on Braindrops Liddiard partly credits this to the groupʼs use of unconventional equipment, “We use lots of techno gear to make rock and roll because rock and roll gear is boring, and all sounds like Led Zeppelin.” Liddiardʼs own description of Tropical Fuck Stormʼs sound is nearly as interesting and evocative as the music itself. He describes the LPʼs title track as “Fela Kuti in a car crash,” and talks of creating a sonic atmosphere that “sounds like chloroform smells” for “Maria 62”.
Tropical Fuck Storm is Gareth Liddiard, Fiona Kitschin, Lauren Hammel and Erica Dunn.
A recurring theme on Braindrops concerns the various ways the human brain can be manipulated and controlled for exploitative gain. The bracing “The Planet of Straw Men” is a study of human behavior inside the social media comments section, a place where otherwise reasonable people are seen gleefully engaging in psychotic chest-thumping rhetoric. Listening to Braindrops is a jarring and exhilarating experience, full of pulsating grooves, dissonant experimentation, and unsettling dystopian plot-lines.
Braindrops is an unrelenting work, from an unrelenting musical ensemble. “Tropical Fuck Storm is a full on thing,” Liddiard offers. “Everything we do, we do it to death.”
releases August 23rd, 2019
Tropical Fuck Storm play everything except the violins, happy apples, nylon string chalk guitar and soviet space organ on MARIA 62, MARIA 63, and DESERT SANDS OF VENUS which are played by JP Shilo.
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