Ē – ” ĒP “

Posted: June 30, 2019 in MUSIC
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Ē press picture

Describing themselves as a ‘lo-pop’ band, Oslo’s Ē formed when Ingvild Nærum (Are You Having Fun Yet) and Chiara Cavallari (FOAMMM) decided to join forces—Cavallari playing guitar and lending some vocals while Nærum takes charge of lead vocals and drums. With the addition of Sigrun Sæbø Åland (Hysj) on bass, Ē’s full line-up crystallised, and the band have just released their debut EP, snappily titled ĒP, via Bergen-based indie label Eget Selskap.

Thematically, the EP deals with the frightening size of the contemporary, globalised world, as well as the coping mechanisms we might employ to deal with it. This is supported by a loose and intuitive sound that focuses more on the feel of the music rather than any technical wizardry. “Instrumentally, we just try to run with what feels cool and exciting,” the band explain, “and even a bit silly.” The result is something at once thoughtful and organic, Ē’s double-punch of reflective and ramshackle.

Opening with lead single ‘Afraid of the Ocean’, ĒP throws you headlong into Ē’s distinctive world, carved out of retro-pop textures and supported by a relatable fixation on loneliness and insignificance. “Hiding in the dark,” they sing, “put a fence around my heart / it’s better to isolate / than sit around and wait, for someone to care.”

‘If You Asked’ is far heavier, a needling darkness pulsing at the edges of the track, portraying the insidious dread that marks the contemporary moment. Things switch up again on ‘Doing Stuff Alone’, the deadpan attitude bringing to mind the straight-faced humour of Patio in its way of transforming the mundane into the ridiculous through nothing but tone. “I’m always too much, but still not enough,” they sing, “when I’m surrounded I feel so excessive […] so I’m doing stuff alone.”

Closer ‘Now and Then I Feel Destroyed’ is something of an amalgamation of the dark and peppy style, twinkling with mischievous wit and anchored by a brooding weight. The song is indicative of ĒP and Ē as a whole, straining beneath the alienation of living today, fighting back with a self-awareness as though cynicism is not some negative force but rather a method of self-preservation.

ĒP is out now via Eget Selskap Records.

BODY TYPE – ” EP 1 and EP 2 “

Posted: June 30, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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A big Rough Trade tip for 2019! This jangly, buzzing, dreamy lot are just the right amount of grrrrrrl power that 2019 has been gagging for. Skirting between all kinds of lo-fi DIY punk with grace and glory. The songs channel the dream pop goodness of Lush/Alvvays and the joyous energy of a first listen to Big Moon. This gang’s (and they feel like a proper gang – I mean I’m not messing with them) first 2 EPs are now available on vinyl for the first time, and Rough Trade Exclusive slime-coloured vinyl at that.

Band Members: sophie mccomish (guitar + vox) // annabel blackman (guitar + vox) // georgia wilkinson-derums (bass + vox) // cecil coleman (drums)

This video was filmed in the Blue Mountains region. Body Type would like to acknowledge the Darug and Gundungurra people, who are the Traditional Custodians of this land. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded

“Uma” is lifted from EP2 out now via Partisan Records & Inertia Music:

USA NAILS – ” Life Cinema “

Posted: June 30, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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What can you say about the new album from London’s USA Nails? This is brutal. But also deftly melodic and catchy. Twelve tracks of pummeling, furious, joyous noise. ‘Life Cinema’ is an apt title. This is a cinematic effort, that aims to build the scope of the band. Personally, I’m hot for ‘Creative Industries’. What a jam.

So, seek this one out. It’s definitely one of the better noise punk/noise rock/no-wave/pigfuck/whatever you want to call it, albums released this year. Go see them live as they are touring with Metz, But then, you have this album to tide you over. Seek it out, it’s worth it.

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On their fourth album,These London, noiserockers USA Nails unleash another barrage of their sharp, feedback laden noise punk. It’s a rush of jagged riffs, hyper fast drums and pummeling bass, topped off by sardonic vocals. Like an English version of Pissed Jeans (if that band were heavily influenced by Wire), their lyrics take dead aim and the annoyances found in modern life. So, on this one they take aim at such topics as dead end jobs, consumerism and social anxiety to just name a few. They approach it with a sarcastic wit and a mordant sense of humor. The music goes hard and fast, as almost every song is a two minute blast of feedback drenched invective. It provides quite the rush. Also, quite the catharsis for people trying to keep sane in a world that gets more insane every single day.

JAY SOM – ” Superbike “

Posted: June 30, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Melina Duterte aka Jay Som, photo by <a href="https://www.lindseybyrnes.com/">Lindsey Byrnes</a>

Melina Duterte, the artist better known as Jay Som, has announced a new record called Anak Ko (“my child” in Tagalog). The follow-up to 2017’s Everybody Works is out August 23rd (via Polyvinyl Records). she’s shared the record’s first single “Superbike.” It arrives with a video that features a behind-the-scenes look into the making of Anak Ko.

Melina Duterte recorded, produced, engineered, and mixed Anak Ko at her Los Angeles home. It includes contributions from Vagabon, Justus Proffit, Chastity Belt’s Annie Truscott, and Boy Scout’s Taylor Vick, as well as her Jay Som bandmates Zachary Elasser, Oliver Pinnell, and Dylan Allard. According to a press release, the title was inspired by a text message from her mother, who often tells her, “Hi anak ko, I love you anak ko.”

“Superbike” hops and skips across the shoegaze spectrum, starting out jangly and pretty before winding up in a gauzy drone. The result is intoxicating, with all eyes on upcoming album  Anak Ko.

“Superbike” is taken from Jay Som’s new album, Anak Ko, out August 23rd, 2019.

SHEER MAG – ” Blood From A Stone “

Posted: June 30, 2019 in MUSIC
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The Philadelphia band Sheer Mag have announced their sophomore album, ‘A Distant Call’, with a new single, ‘Blood From a Stone’. On the fist-pumping track, vocalist Christina Halladay sings of poverty and struggle: “It’s hard luck living and I just make do/But if one thing goes the rest follows suit/What do you expect when you’re living cheque to cheque?”

According to a press statement, ‘A Distant Call’ is loosely based on Halladay’s own experiences going through a breakup, the loss of a loved one and being laid off. The album is due out August 23rd, two years after their acclaimed debut, ‘Need To Feel Your Love’, which was named among one of the best albums of 2017.

“Energy, desire and that indefinable cool that any great rock band must have burst from every angle. This album feels like a celebration, and Sheer Mag sure deserve one,” Sheer Mag will also be embarking on an extensive tour of North America, the UK and Europe.

“A Distant Call” is out 23rd August 2019

STEF CHURA – ” Midnight “

Posted: June 29, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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“Close the door to your mouth and get the fuck in the car!” It’s an order that Stef Chura half sings, half-speaks halfway through the chugging “Method Man,” a big fat rock song that embodies the rattle and swagger of the Detroit artist’s sophomore release “Midnight”, itself a big fat rock record that staggers and struts like a drunk trying to walk straight, its riffs as sticky as a dive bar’s beer-sloshed floor and Chura’s delightful yips and yodels bearing the slurry quality of just a few too many bottles of Bud. Though the record has its straightforward moments —“Lemme do a jumping jack over your heart,” implores Chura on giddy number “Jumping Jack”—this is not pop and the medicine isn’t going doing easy and rarely in less than 2 minutes. Like the old rock records of yore, Midnight rewards repeat listening, the better to savor the ways Chura and Will Toledo find to reshape her loosey-goosey song structures into songs with edges as sharp and polished as diamonds.

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Though Chura’s always been a creative, exciting guitarist, she’s equally as inventive with her vocals on Midnight.  On the chorus of tightly wound “Scream,” she sings, “If only you could hear me scream!” three times in a row, changing the inflection of the final word so it sounds like “scram” or “scree-yum,” playfully expounding upon the possibilities of language while her fingers explore the boundaries of the electric guitar. “My girl is 3-dimensional,” exclaims Chura joyfully on “3D girl,” and she is.

STARCRAWLER – ” She Gets Around “

Posted: June 29, 2019 in MUSIC
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Starcrawler are a ferocious punk band from Los Angeles, fuelled variously by rage and unknown dark forces. Lead Vocalist Arrow De Wilde is a creature stirs and a bedraggled waif with tangled hair hanging over her paint-smeared face, dressed in a tattered and bloodstained white dress  She half staggers, half walks , looking slightly bewildered. Then, she grabs the microphone and begins to snarl, roar, arch her back and generally contort and writhe her way through Stooges-esque garage punk rock.

Arrow de Wilde leaves all the talking to the guitarist Henri Cash, an energetic player with a certain New York Dolls flamboyance and Heartbreakers esque nihilism. Arrow drops to the floor in a protective crouch, Sometimes she collapses, spreadeagled, onto the stage.

But the performer Arrow de Wilde really embodies is Iggy Pop: She gurns, she writhes, she gyrates, Another touchstone may well be Courtney Love, but Courtney Love having a really, really bad day. Starcrawler play killer punk rock and while Arrow is an extremely charismatic frontwoman, what she’s goes beyond is a little girl lost performance:

Band Members
Henri Cash- Guitar
Austin Smith- Drums
Arrow de Wilde- Vocals
Tim Franco – bass

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MARISSA NADLER and STEPHEN BRODSKY – ” Droneflower “

Posted: June 29, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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I have a new side-project, Droneflower, out on Sacred Bones Records with my friend Stephen Brodsky. Steve, a fellow Massachusetts native and member of Cave In and Mutoid Man, worked on this full length collaboration mostly at my old apartment in Jamaica Plain and some at his place in Brooklyn. We co-produce this album and I can’t wait for you to hear the whole thing!

Brodsky met Nadler for the first time in 2014 at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus Bar when he came to see her play on her July tour, and they quickly became friends. Both of them had been wanting to explore songwriting that didn’t fit into their existing projects, and they soon became energized by the prospect of working together. One of the first ideas they discussed was a horror movie soundtrack, and while Droneflower isn’t that, it is a richly cinematic album. It’s easy to imagine much of the record set to images, though it wasn’t composed that way.

The first song that came together was “Dead West,” based around a beautiful acoustic guitar piece Brodsky wrote while living on Spy Pond, just outside of Nadler’s home base in Boston. By the time they started working on the song earnest, Brodsky had moved to Brooklyn. Nadler added lyrics and vocal melodies remotely, and even from a distance it was obvious there was real kismet in the collaboration.

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“It’s is a sprawling and expansive exercise in contrasts. It is the sound of the war between the brutal and the ethereal, the dark and the light, the past and the present, and the real and imagined.” The limited edition sold out really fast of this, but the vinyl is available at Sacred Bones. You can also  order a limited edition by joining the Sacred Bones Record Society : Edition of 150 hand-numbered copies, comes with alternate screen printed, wrap around sleeve, wax sealed LP pressed on Society-exclusive clear-and-yellow marble vinyl and with Society-exclusive mixed tape,

All the songs on Droneflower were recorded in home studios.
released April 26th, 2019

SHANA CLEVELAND – ” Night of the Worm Moon “

Posted: June 29, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Though she conjures up an electrical storm of rockstar fireworks with her main gig, La Luz, Shana Cleveland settles into a more contemplative mode on solo LP “Night of the Worm Moon”. A mellow set of sci-fi lullabies written on acoustic guitar rank, the songs on Night rank among the most haunted recordings of Cleveland’s career. “Fingerpicking feels more meditative to me so I go to a more introspective place lyrically and thematically when I play acoustic guitar,” Cleveland said in an interview about “Night of the Worm Moon”, and certainly her fingerpicked patterns create a gentle rhythmic flow that becomes nearly ambient in its soothing tones and pensive unfurling. But what anchors Night isn’t just Cleveland’s accomplished musicianship, but how she expertly excavates wisdom from weirdness on songs that toe the line between what is real and what seems half-remembered from a dream. “Nothing’s the loudest sound in a house when no one’s around,” Cleveland sings on the title track, a truly spooky song wherein the artist imagines herself as a constant presence who watches from within the walls. Throughout Night of the Worm Moon, Cleveland uses the potent power of such psychedelic signifiers to illuminate bright emotional truths in a darkening world that will probably never make sense again.

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what an exceptional collection of transcendental lullabies.  Night of the Worm Moon was recorded during a rare cosmic occurrence: 2017’s solar eclipse. “We took a break from recording during [the] totality and looked at the sun’s image through a piece of cardboard projecting onto a garbage can,” Cleveland says. “When we came back inside the studio was covered in dozens of tiny crescent suns, refracted from a mirrored disco ball that [engineer Johnny Goss] had hanging in a window.” Abetting Cleveland during the recording process was a familiar gallery of co-conspirators: multi-instrumentalist Will Sprott of Shannon & the Clams, original La Luz bassist Abbey Blackwell, Goss, pedal steel player Olie Eshelman, and Kristian Garrard, who drummed on Cleveland’s previous solo effort (with then-backing band The Sandcastles), 2011’s Oh Man, Cover the Ground.

SUFJAN STEVENS – ” Love Yourself / With My Whole Heart “

Posted: June 29, 2019 in MUSIC
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Just in, and out Friday! New Sufjan Stevens 7”vinyl only “Love Yourself / With My Whole Heart”. Limited European exclusive tie dye splatter vinyl.

In celebration of Pride Month, Sufjan Stevens is releasing two new songs on the topic of love: “Love Yourself” and “With My Whole Heart,” available on limited-edition 7” vinyl and on all digital platforms. “Love Yourself” is based on a sketch Sufjan wrote 20 years ago. The original 4-track demo he recorded in 1996 is included as well as a short instrumental reprise. “With My Whole Heart” is a completely new song that Sufjan wrote as a personal challenge to “write an upbeat and sincere love song without conflict, anxiety, or self-deprecation.” Sufjan also designed a new Gay Pride T-shirt that is available on his new merchandizing platform Sufjamz. A portion of the proceeds from this project will support two organizations that offer help for LGBTQ+ homeless kids in America—the Ali Forney Center in Harlem, NY, and the Ruth Ellis Center in Detroit, MI.

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Limited edition 7-inch available June 28th..

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