Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles’

The FLESH EATERS – ” Black Temptation “

Posted: February 18, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Image may contain: 6 people, people standing and outdoor

Founded 40-odd years ago by sole permanent member Chris Desjardins (known as Chris D.), the Flesh Eaters came from the same late-’70s Los Angeles. scene that yielded bands including X, the Blasters and Los Lobos—all of whom lent members to the Flesh Eaters’ touchstone 1981 album A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die. As luck would have it, that’s the roster that reconvened for the first time since then to back Desjardins on I Used to Be Pretty, the Flesh Eaters’ first new album in 15 years. Dave Alvin and Bill Bateman of the Blasters; John Doe and DJ Bonebrake of X; and Steve Berlin from Los Lobos form a powerful combo, surging along with Chris D. in what amounts to a master class in taut punk-rockology, with an antagonistic streak. Chris D. makes the most of his all-star lineup, revisiting songs from throughout the Flesh Eaters catalog and laying down what in most cases are definitive new versions. Though the versions of the songs on I Used to Be Pretty sound fantastic, it can be tricky messing around with the alchemy of previously recorded music. There was a certain charm to the ramshackle, handmade feel of these tunes as they appeared on the original albums. That said, these gussied-up, more professional arrangements show Chris D.’s songs in the best possible light. Their power, their attitude and their sheer trashy abandon have never been more evident, which means Desjardins in a way is finally getting his due.

The Flesh Eaters, LA’s unconventional “supergroup”, reunites classic 1981 lineup of Chris D, Dave Alvin, John Doe, Bill Bateman, Steve Berlin, and DJ Bonebrake for their first new recording in more than 35 years. The third single from the Flesh Eaters forthcoming album “I Used To Be Pretty” is “Black Temptation”, a new song written by Dave Alvin and Chris D.

FLAT WORMS – ” Into The Iris “

Posted: February 8, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Six new songs from Los Angeles-based Flat Worms, which features Tim Hellman, Justin Sullivan, and Will Ivy. The “Into The Iris” EP follows an LP on Castle Face Records (s/t, 2017). Filled with anxiety and angst, Flat Worm’s summon perseverance in an apocalyptic era, passing through decrepit strip malls and surreal headlines. These songs were recorded by Ty Segall in his home, and is now being offered on God? Records.
Released February 8th, 2019 ,Drag City Inc.

WAND – ” Laughing Matter “

Posted: February 6, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , ,
0

Wand Announce New Album <i>Laughing Matter</i>, Share Lead Single "Scarecrow"

Los Angeles psych-rockers Wand have announced the follow-up to their 2017 album Plum and 2018 EP Perfume. Their new album, Laughing Matter, will be released on April 19th via Drag City Records, they’ve shared the first single, “Scarecrow,” with an accompanying video directed by Gordon De Los Santos.

“Scarecrow” picks up where the understated psychedelics of Perfume left off with its rippling guitar line, downtempo rhythms, sparse piano and frontman Cory Hanson’s benevolent coo. Wand have always excelled at pretty, somber ballads, so if they decide to fill out the rest of their LP with a similarly quiet and majestic take on their transcendent sound, it should make for a soothing listen.

According to their Bandcamp page, “Laughing Matter offers bits of fuzzy parable, travel diary, pep talk and lullaby, amid a joyous, eclectic sense of pastiche and ascendant choruses. Wand form new music from the ashes of a world that can no longer suffer its human abusers, to inspire us to hold the spirit close and do what’s next.”

Listen to “Scarecrow” check out the Laughing Matter album artwork . You can preorder Laughing Matter on double LP, CD, cassette or MP3 via Drag City Records.

MIKE KROL – ” Power Chords “

Posted: February 1, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

Image may contain: 1 person, indoor

Fuzzy garage rock has rarely contained this much wistful heartache. The previous album from Los Angeles-based musician Mike Krol, 2015’s Turkey, clocked in at just 18 minutes, but packed in a year’s worth of rambunctious potency. His new record, “Power Chords”, clocking it at nearly double the length of its predecessor, feels almost indulgent in comparison, but with its added running time comes a bit more thematic focus. Power Chords is a distinctly ugly record, but that’s part of the appeal. Though its sonic palette isn’t wide-ranging by any means, Krol’s grubby rock is better when its knees are scraped, eyes are bloodshot and heart is ripped open. Krol risks overshadowing his angsty songs with his thick, Stroke-like vocal filters, but they bring this angst to life by adding a dimension of teenage nostalgia with its bedroom DIY feel. While the sonics can feel tiresome after a while, Krol ends on a high note with his extremely muddy cut, “The End,” which is nicely offset with a piercing synth interlude.

“Hold me close / Don’t ever let me go / Cause I’ve been waiting / All my life for the moment / To tell you so / With a couple power chords / I’m gonna let you know / That revenge is better / When you come from down below.”

That’s the chorus of the first song, “Power Chords,” on my new album of the same name, which is released into the world today. Touring for my previous album, “Turkey,” ended in December of 2015, and by February of 2016, I found myself without an apartment, without any money, and had just ended a 3 year relationship. I put all my belongings in a storage unit in Glassell Park, and got a one-way ticket to Wisconsin to move back in with my parents. I was 31. Completely disillusioned and frustrated with “music as a career,” I began searching for the spark of what made me excited about songs in the first place. I sat in my old childhood bedroom, with a guitar in hand, trying to fall in love with music again. Eventually I saved up enough money to move back to LA, got a new place to live, met new people, had new experiences, and slowly but surely I started to compile the songs that would make up this album.

Music is a crazy thing. It can make you feel a range of emotions within a few seconds. It can transport your mind instantly back to a person, a place, a time, or a memory, as soon as you hear the first notes. Find something that makes you feel invincible, that gives you hope, and changes your life. To quote my press release, “Music ruined Krol’s life. And then saved it. In chronicling that process, Krol has made his best record—painful, voyeuristic, and angry, but ultimately transcendent and timeless. It is the sound of Krol giving in to a force greater than himself, as though the chords are playing him rather than the other way around.”

Power Chords is much more lyrically mature and musically adept than your average garage rock record, and its teenage sheen might urge you to fanatically scroll the lyrics on your notebook or bedroom wall of choice.

“Power Chords” is OUT NOW on Merge Records:

ANGELO De AUGUSTINE – ” Swim Inside The Moon “

Posted: January 17, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , ,
0

Image may contain: 1 person, shoes, beard and outdoor

Angelo De Augustine writes and records music in Thousand Oaks, California — a suburb north of Los Angeles, where he grew up. His self-released debut album, “Spirals of Silence”, and 3-song EP follow-up, “How Past Begins”, earned praise from The FADER, Stereogum, Vogue, My Old Kentucky Blog, and more. His next project “Swim Inside The Moon” Written in the aftermath of a devastating breakup, Angelo De Augustine’s hushed journal of the stream-of-consciousness thoughts that fill the silence when a gaping hole opens up, revealing that there never really was anything else. De Augustine whispers intimately.

 

“Swim Inside the Moon” out now

ANGELO De AUGUSTINE – ” Tomb “

Posted: January 12, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

Image may contain: one or more people and beard

Few artists can quieten a room quite like Angelo De Augustine. You cannot help but admire the intimacy of this LA-based singer-songwriter, from his hushed whisper-vocals to the gorgeous finger-picked acoustic guitar, he can make a music venue feel like a living room, demanding the audience’s full attention by simply refusing to raise his voice. When the news of Augustine’s new record, “Tomb”, hit, it was announced that he was working with Thomas Bartlett aka Doveman, a renowned musician and producer who helmed recent records by St. Vincent, Rhye, Glen Hansard and Stevens.

If a lot of why earlier album Swim Inside the Moon was so heartbreakingly striking stemmed from its rough and lo-fi recording, how would a studio-produced release even remotely capture this same closeness? By and large, Bartlett’s cleaner mix works wonders for De Augustine. With cleaner vocals and an emphasis on a variety of instrumentation, Tomb is more direct than anything De Augustine’s has released prior.

By adding cleaner production, synth and string flourishes alongside poppier and catchier refrains, De Augustine largely hits the mark on Tomb. With a few curveballs thrown throughout, the warm and comforting lull of Swim Inside the Moon is long gone, replaced by a fascinating record that updates his prior work without losing any of its intimacy.

I’m gonna put this out there: ever since I found out about collaboration with Sufjan Stevens’ strong affiliation with church, I pretty much banned him from my earlobes. Anyway, this one slipped through the cracks because Angelo De Augustine is singing it instead

GIRLPOOL – ” What Chaos is Imaginary “

Posted: January 11, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Image may contain: 2 people, text

The music Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad release as Girlpool occupies a transient space. Their constant evolution makes it perfectly impossible to articulate exactly where their project falls within the contemporary musical canon; this is one of the many reasons Girlpool’s music is so captivating.
Never before has a group’s maturation been so transparently attached to the maturation of its members. This is due in large part to the fact that Girlpool came into existence exactly when Girlpool was supposed to come into existence: at the most prolific stage of the digital revolution. Both online and in the flesh, Tividad and Tucker practice radical openness to the point where it may even engender discomfort; this is exactly the point where it becomes clear why theirs’ is such a special project: they accept the possibility of discomfort—Chaos—and show you how to figure out why you might feel it. This is achieved through their ability to empathize as best friends and partners in creation, with the intention of making music that provokes.

http://

Our new album ‘What Chaos is Imaginary’ will be released 2.1.2019 on Anti Records

Release date:8th January 2019

 

JESSICA PRATT – ” Quiet Signs “

Posted: January 5, 2019 in MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

Jessica Pratt has announced her third studio album, Quiet Signs, due out on February. 8th, 2019, via Mexican Summer. “On some level I considered an audience while making the last record,” said Pratt in a statement. “But my creative world was still very private then and I analyzed the process less. This was the first time I approached writing with the idea of a cohesive record in mind.” The album was produced by both Pratt and Al Carson, who, along with Matt McDermott, also performs on the record.

Jessica Pratt is not a loud performer. She does not have to be. In a club of a few hundred, even the bar staff are known to go quiet while she’s on stage. Her third album, Quiet Signs, feels like a distillation of this power. The album leads off with “Opening Night,” a nod to Gena Rowlands’ harrowing, brilliant performance in the John Cassavetes film of the same name. It’s also an emblem of where this spare, mysterious collection of songs falls in the course of Pratt’s career.

“On some level I considered an audience while making the last record (2015’s On Your Own Love Again),” she writes, “But my creative world was still very private then and I analyzed the process less. This was the first time I approached writing with the idea of a cohesive record in mind.”

After a collection of demos and early studio recordings (Jessica Pratt, Birth Records, 2012) earned her a small, dedicated audience, Pratt moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles and recorded her first intentional album in her bedroom in a matter of months. That album, On Your Own Love Again (Drag City, 2015), would bring her around the world many times, leading many to fall under the spell of Jessica Pratt the performer, the songwriter, the singer with the heavy-lidded voice that feels alien and familiar at the same time.

Her first album fully recorded in a professional studio setting, Quiet Signs finds Pratt’s songwriting and accompanying guitar work refined — more distinct and direct. Songs like “Fare Thee Well” and “Poly Blue” retain glimmers of OYOLA‘s hazy day afternoon spells, yet delicate flute, strings sustained by organ arrangements, and rehearsal room piano now gesture towards the lush chamber pop and longing of The Left Banke. On the album’s first single, “This Time Around,” Pratt hits on a profound, late-night clarity over just a couple of deep chords, evoking Caetano Veloso‘s casual seaside brilliance. And before the curtain drops on Quiet Signs, Pratt provides a show-stopping closer, “Aeroplane.”

In the world of Quiet Signs, the black of night usually represents fear, despair, resignation; finally at home descending towards the illuminated city, she sings over black leather drone and tambourine shuffle with a newfound resolve. Quiet Signs is the journey of an artist emerging from the darkened wings, growing comfortable as a solitary figure on a sprawling stage.

The album was written in Los Angeles and recorded at Gary’s Electric in Brooklyn, NY over 2017 and 2018. It was co-produced by Al Carlson. He plays flute, organ and piano on some songs. Matt McDermott also played piano and string synthesizer.

It will be released on Mexican Summer on February 8th, 2019.

MOANING – ” Moaning “

Posted: January 1, 2019 in MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

On their self-titled debut album, Moaning captured the frenetic energy and uncertainty of 2018 across its 10 tracks. It was a big year for the Los Angeles post-punk trio as they released their first LP on Sub Pop and played live with The Breeders, Ought, Preoccupations, Mothers, Lala Lala and others. The album opens with the punchy “Don’t Go,” which captures the fragility of a relationship and the fear of depending on something that you know won’t last forever (“This might work out somehow / Might as well see / Cause it’s right, right now / Even if it’s temporary”). They master the coupling of rumbling, feverish guitars with starkly-delivered deadpan vocals, mercurial synths and tumultuous drums—sounding composed one second and effectively disheveled the next. Their volatile guitars mirror the distressed, anxious tone of their lyrics—“Tired” and “Useless” follow the end of a relationship with the latter laced with hints of regret and the rehashing of memories to find out why it soured (“There’s nothing we can do / You had to go / If I loved you / I guess you’ll never know”). Frontman Sean Solomon is at his best on “Artificial”—with an imitation of someone rather pompous (“Pardon me / Everything’s so easy”) and a vigorously delivered, reality check of a chorus.

Moaning dive into their self-titled debut LP headfirst with dissonant lo-fi guitar stabs on “Don’t Go.” It’s a prophetic and noisy shit-kicker of an opening single that foreshadows the LA trio’s furious brand of thrashy post-punk. Singer Sean Solomon’s deep, melancholic voice anchors this sharply-felt album in all its emotional phases – from angry and abrasive, to knotty and experimental, to fiery and passionate. “Tired” represents the band at their most sweetly melodic, with sleek new wave synths matching pensive lyrics in which Solomon expresses feelings of emptiness and exhaustion: “It’s all gone/ It caught fire/ It’s all wrong/ And I’m so tired.”

Dark, numbing bass lines and stormy shoegaze aesthetics contribute to a sense of mounting panic and frustration on tracks like “Artificial” and “The Same.” Meanwhile, “For Now” shows off Moaning’s knack for arpeggio-soaked riffs and rich, towering choruses. The band proudly wears its Joy Division influences on its sleeve while also expanding on that well-worn sound with thrilling layers of reverb and gut-punching moments of angst and self-reflection. Moaning is a striking debut balancing ice-cold moods and cavernous sonics, and it positions the band alongside other modern greats of the post-punk genre.

VALLEY QUEEN – ” My Man “

Posted: December 30, 2018 in MUSIC
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Image may contain: 4 people, people sitting and beard

Valley Queen – “My Man” It’s a band of distinguishable characters, and that is no exception when it comes to their main vocalist, Natalie Meadors. She seems to be the glue that holds the manic energy together, even though she is jumping on speakers and dancing around too. Her sultry vocals weave in and out of the pounding guitar lines, with an onstage confidence that is incredibly enrapturing. You can’t help but watch as the frantic chaos on the verge of total collapse manages to hold on, and you feel the catharsis of just letting go and getting swept away..Valley Queen invites you into their overwhelmingly sensory environment, where to dance and move will cure any temporal blues

Veteran and established artists dominated the music scene this year. Look at all the “Best Of” or “Favorites” lists, and newcomers barely occupy them. One band, however, was able to crack through this nearly impenetrable wall. It sure helps that Valley Queen‘s debut album, Supergiant, is a contemporary indie-rock classic.

The record is highlighted by a holy trinity that would rival any one-two-three combination in history. “Supergiant”is indie-rock perfection. It is anthemic yet gritty, rocking yet euphoric with front woman Natalie Carol’s siren-like vocals cutting through the blazing melody. Like Big Thief’s and Angel Olsen’s grandest anthems, “Chasing the Muse” commences delicately before slowly growing into a face-melting, titanic rocker. The emotional roller coaster “Ride” completes the trio, filling every space with searing guitar riffs and Carol’s bone-chilling delivery.

http://

Beyond these three are other stellar tracks. Autumn-like touches a la Fleetwood Mac filter through “Bedroom”while a calm, summertime atmosphere percolates on “Carolina”. Jubilation erupts on the short but blazing “Boiling Water”. On the other side of the spectrum, the tender and stripped-back “Gems and Rubies” is stunning at its floor and incredibly engrossing at its ceiling. This is also another way to describe Supergiant, which is flawless. It is a transcendent piece of emotional indie rock that reminds us music can be anthemic, beautiful, moving, and powerful.

Supergiant is out on Roll Call Records,

Band Members
Natalie Carol – Lead Vocals/Rhythm Guitar
Neil Wogensen – Bass/Vocals
Shawn Morones – Guitar/Vocals
Mike DeLuccia – Drums
Older Entries
Newer Entries