Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles’

Roxanne Benjamin has been busy in the horror world of late, having made her directorial debut with a segment of this year’s anthology film “Southbound” after serving as a producer on all three “V/H/S” movies. Now she’s back with a throwback music video for Cherry Glazerr “Nurse Ratched,” The title of the song is, of course, a reference to the domineering nurse from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,”

In it, a girl wearing a red hoodie hitchhikes her way into a ride and goes on to confirm all your worst fears about people on the side of the road with their thumbs up; this leads to one of the bloodiest sequences you’re ever likely to see in a music video, especially for such a low-key song. From there, she takes the car for herself — and picks up an unsuspecting hitchhiker of her own.

Last month, LA rock group Cherry Glazerr announced that they were signing to Secretly Canadian to release their new full-length, Apocalipstick, early next year, The song originally appeared as the B-side to their 2014 single Had Ten Dollaz,” but it’s been re-recorded for the new album. Cherry Glazerr announces their new album Apocalipstick. The band’s first album was recorded at Hollywood’s iconic Sunset Sound studio with acclaimed producers Joe Chicarrelli (The Strokes, My Morning Jacket, The White Stripes) and Carlos De La Garza (Bleached, M83, Paramore).

Cherry Glazerr – “Nurse Ratched” from ‘Apocalipstick’ out on January 20, 2017 on Secretly Canadian

There’s something quietly reassuring about the slow rise of Los Angeles quartet Froth. The gentlest wave of hype has greeted their first two albums, they’ve toured hard, and now with confirmation this week that they’ve signed to Wichita Recordings.

We’ll have to wait until February to hear the bands third long player, Outside (Briefly) , but they have this week given us a taster, in the shape of new single, Contact. Starting with a clip of an interstellar space chat, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a new track from Public Service Broadcasting, but once the motorik groove and pulsing bass kick in you’re into an altogether psychier-place, the sort of record Hookworms would make if they were feeling particularly mellow. Froth have spoken about dialling back the noise on this record; if the songwriting is as good as this, that might just reveal something spectacular.

Outside (briefly) is out February 10th via Wichita Recordings. Froth tour Europe next month,

Recorded at the legendary Valentine Recording Studios, in the bowels of Studio City in L.A., the Allah-Las immersed their already-written tunes in the aural baths of their idols. The ghost notes of forgotten magnetic tape snippets and the reverberations of Beach Boy harmonies permeates the vibe of the band’s third record, Calico Review. Utilizing vintage equipment in a room with a lot of recording history, the band—as perhaps the most ardent (or at least celebrated) arbiters of the ‘60s style rock revival today—were able to tap into the past in a more obvious way than with their previous two records, 2014’s Worship the Sun and 2012’s self-titled Allah Las debut. Additionally, songwriting duties were dispersed generously between the four members of the band for Calico Review, making the record their first entirely collaborative jigsaw.

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The oxymoronic/pun title of Deap Vally’s second album sums it up. It’s a record stuck in an angry quagmire of annoyance at, and acceptance of, female stereotypes. With ‘Smile More’ very much the centrepiece of the album, lyrics like ‘I am not ashamed I am no-one’s wife, though the idea does sound kind of nice’ encapsulate the committed yet compromised feminism the duo espouses.

The girls do moody and bluesy better than bratty and shouty, and some of my favourite bits on the album are the likes of the grinding, scuzzed-up, stop-start guitars on ‘Bubble Baby’, which sound almost like trying to eke a riff out of a failing motorcycle engine. Deap Vally, the Los Angeles duo comprising of Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards, return with their new album ‘Femejism’ Produced by Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, it features tracks ranging from experimental prog and kraut-rock to good old- fashioned heart-melters and ball-busters

There are songs I don’t much care for on this record too, most of them near the start of it, but as track 6 says “everyone is a fucking critic” and “it’s easy to hide behind your computer”, so maybe I’ll quit while I’m ahead.

bloodboy cosores 02 Five Rising LA Artists You Need to Hear

Bloodboy, also known as Lexie Papilion, is an emerging LA artist who is bent on shaking up the pop world with thought provoking music and lyrics. She worked with producers, Justin L. Raisen and Thom Monahan to create a more human sounding, rough around the edges, pop sound. Originally influenced by the early punk movement, Bloodboy has hit the scene to push the limits of alternative pop and create conversation.

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Not many people would consider getting kicked off their high-school surf team “lucky,” but it’s hard for Lexie Papilion to see it any other way. The incident led her to focus more seriously on music, and the songs she ended up writing in college gave her more satisfaction than any competition trophy. Smothered in distortion and reminiscent of the punk she grew up listening to, those songs only sort of resemble the bracing, anthemic indie pop Papilion is producing today under the moniker of Bloodboy. Now in her mid-20s and about to release her debut EP, Bloodboy has found a comfortable home in the space between dirty, nasty punk and shimmering electropop. She doesn’t consider herself a pop artist, per se, but a voice as impressive as hers has nowhere to end up but the FM airwaves. Listening to a deceptively complex arrangements  it’s scary to think that the late-blooming musician only recently learned how to play guitar after stubbornly refusing for years. Scary, and a little unfair.

It is, that’s true. But sonically, because I was producing for such a long time at such a rudimentary level, I couldn’t execute the ideas that I wanted to. I could hear it, but I couldn’t get it to sound that way. So for a long time, I would take songs to producers, and they would be like, “This sounds like electropop.” And I would say, “No! That’s not what I want!”

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Music for Listening to Music to is La Sera’s fourth album and its first with singer/bassist Katy Goodman’s husband Todd Wisenbaker officially on board. Produced by Ryan Adams, it finds its way to a blend of Adams‘ alt-country and their winsome take on alt-rock. Goodman says Adams’ excitement about taking La Sera into the analog realm inspired her to embrace the back-to-basics approach. Considering that, it’s the slower, more spacious tracks — like the spare and moody “Begins to Rain” or the grunge-kissed closer, “Too Little Too Late” — that best illustrate how far La Sera’s come since 2011’s self-titled bedroom-pop debut and 2012’s brighter (if still emotionally overcast) Sees the Light. Goodman’s knack for swoon and gloom, first heard via Vivian Girls, is only enhanced by the addition of Wisenbaker’s voice. As she sings on “A Thousand Ways,” arguably Music For Listening to Music To’s dreamiest song, “Love can do all of these things.” Knowing Goodman there’s a sly wink in there, but it’s easy to imagine, if only for a beat, that the carefree flame of the oldies La Sera hold so dear still burns here

Tracklist:
1. High Notes (0:00)
2. A Thousand Ways (2:07)
3. One True Love (5:01)
4. Begins to Rain (7:58)
5. Take My Heart (10:51)
6. I Need An Angel (15:12)
7. Time To Go (19:01)
8. Shadow of Your Love (21:02)
9. Nineties (24:16)
10. Too Little Too Late (27:37)

La Sera’s 4th full-length album, Music For Listening To Music To, released March 4, 2016 (produced by Ryan Adams).

The Aquadolls were founded in Janurary 2012 by Melissa Brooks, the lead singer and writer of the band. Melissa began recording bedroom demos of her songs with guitarist Ryan Frailich and eventually formed a relationship with Southern-California based indie label Burger Records who released The Aquadolls We Are Free EP in early 2013, and their debut album Stoked On You in December 2014.

The Aquadolls are among my favorite bands right now. Their We Are Free EP is excellent. The EP was released on Burger Records last January containing 8 tracks. My favorite song on the album is “We Are Free”. This song is really catchy and relaxing. Also, not a lot of other bands will put Napoleon Dynamite quotes in the middle of their songs, so look out for that.

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I have a sexy Danelectro named Danny. She has amazing vintage tone. Both guitars are played out of vintage Fender Twin Reverbs from the 60s. We love to play loud live and blow out our amps. We know if our amps don’t blow out, it didn’t get crackin enough.

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The music of L.A.-based guitarist, singer, and songwriter Kayla Cohen is mutable and multivalent, richly allusive of the hermetic worlds of private-press canyon-cult mystics and East Coast noiseniks alike. Her adept fingerstyle guitar work—nimble but unshowy, always at the service of framing her plaintively unspooling modal progressions and gorgeous, moonlit voice—centers these melancholy pastorales in a hazy, heat-mirage space equally suggestive of familiarity and distance, community and anomie. Itasca’s enchanting, acid folk-inflected PoB debut is also the first to feature a full band.

Gorgeous acid folk reverie… A heady slice of lysergic ladies of the canyon, with the feel of tropical microdots that dominated the These Trails and Linda Perhacs sides given a slightly more baroque dream-time feel. Some of the guitar stylings have the kind of courtly appeal of Current 93 circa Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre, but when she gets into more complex vortices of steel strings she comes over like Robbie Basho circa Basho Sings. This one came out of nowhere and knocked us sideways.
Paradise of Bachelors is a Record Label, Soundsystem, and Archive located in the North Carolina Piedmont and in the subluminal ether. We are dedicated to documenting, curating, and releasing under-recognized musics of the American vernacular, with an emphasis on the South, broadly defined.

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Weird World are delighted to introduce Los Angeles‘ Singer Songwriter Alex Izenberg and his debut album proper, Harlequin, due for release on November 18th.

Harlequin is almost a study in distraction – a restless, feverish dream-sequence which variously invokes Scott Walker’s obtuse, off-kilter worlds of sound, Simon & Garfunkel’s psychedelic yet practical string arrangements, the vaudevillian pomp and preening of Wild Beasts’ early material and Grizzly Bear’s pastoral early steps. All this is cut through with moments of total silence, patches of noise, found sound and countless dynamic left-turns and moments of non-sequitur.

Or as he puts it “When writing I just ask myself, what does this song need from me? And then I give it what it needs.”

The album may be Izenberg’s debut proper but it also marks the culmination of over five years of highly prolific writing and recording under a variety of pseudonyms.

The first single to be taken from Harlequin is ‘To Move On’, along with its video directed by Nicky & Juliana Giraffe.

Alex Izenberg – To Move On (Official Video) taken from the album ‘Harlequin’ available 18 Nov 2016.

If you’re struggling to get motivated this morning, then Philadelphia-born, Los Angeles-based musician Joshua Ostrander aka Mondo Cozmo has the perfect song for you. Starting out as a soulful acoustic reverie before transforming into full arrangement complete with a mass choir, his latest single “Shine” is an uplifting, lighter-in-the-air instant rock classic that’s sure to leave you feeling like you can achieve anything in life today.

Music video by Mondo Cozmo performing Shine. © 2016 Republic Records a division of UMG Recordings Inc.