Jesse Jerome Jenkins has been writing psychedelic Americana songs as part of Texan quartet Pure X since 2009. Hard Sky marks his solo debut. Across material tinged with country, R&B, folk, blues, and jazz, Jenkins reflects on the peaks and valleys of life—his falsetto even more comforting in this pensive, heightened capacity—with “the languid sway of a porch swing at dusk, ” . Though largely a personal affair, friends from Pure X, S U R V I V E, and Inc. No World, joined in to fill out the album’s sound. It’s the maiden release on new label Uniform Group.
After a winter of recording new music and a party last weekend at Old Settler’s Music Festival, I’ve got a new/old…limited double EP coming out as well as a tour later this summer.
First off, thank you all so much for participating in Shakey Graves Day each and every year. Due to your requests and the need to give some of my songs the life they deserve, I am releasing two of my previous albums out into the world for good and I chose the shortest title I could think of…Shakey Graves And The Horse He Rode In On (Nobody’s Fool & The Donor Blues EP). Yes, this is a double EP and only a limited amount will be pressed on a clear 180-gram double vinyl, first come, first serve. You can head over to shakeygraves.com or my bandcamp page right now to pre-order the double EP on physical or digi. Orders will begin shipping one week prior to release date (June 30, 2017).
Secondly, me and the boys are headed back on the road this August for a quick mission as we continue to write and record new music in between. We’ll be inside you Missouri, Iowa, Montana, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Canada, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Birmingham, Georgia and more…full dates are below and at shakeygraves.com. On this August run we are going to be accompanied by my homie and brilliant friend, David Ramirez!
The Black Angels are a psychedelic rock band from Austin, Texas. This is their fifth studio album.
Produced by Phil Ek (Built to Spill, Father John Misty, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, The Shins).
Ambassadors of the current psych rock scene with not only their music, but as the founders and hosts of the annual Austin Psych Fest/Levitation Festival for the past 9 years . Their music has been used in numerous film, advertising and TV projects including HBO’s True Detective, Nashville, True Blood The Twilight Saga, Assassin’s Creed, etc.
The band has toured with Queens of the Stone Age, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Keys + more, and played festivals such as Glastonbury, Fuji Rock, Primavera, Coachella and Bonnaroo. “Heavy psych rarely feels as fresh as it does with The Black Angels“ .
The band “Deliver insistent, neo-psychedelic drones, reaching back to the most ritualistic 1960s songs of the Velvet Underground, the Doors and their hometown forebears from Austin, the 13th Floor Elevators, along with a touch of 1970s krautrock”
“Some of the heaviest material of their career…blistering“ – Consequence Of Sound
This RSD version of their album is on glow in the dark vinyl, black light cover, double LP, sticker, poster, download card.
Limited to 500 copies for the UK and Eire.
TRACK LISTING;
Currency
I’d Kill For Her
Half Believing
Comanche Moon
Hunt Me Down
Grab As Much (As You
Can)
Estimate
I Dreamt
Medicine
Death March
Life Song
Holy Wave’s relaxed and psychedelic pop sound is the perfect accompaniment for most occasions, especially as a bright pick-me-up on a dull day. Sharp songwriting that rewards with numerous memorable melodies
On their third studio album, Freaks Of Nurture, the band combines elements of psych, Nuggets-era garage pop, and surf rock before slathering the whole package in the requisite coat of reverb. It’s the kind of dream that would be easy to get lost in, but there’s always a warm guitar riff to guide you out of your reverie, like a ray of sunlight shining on closed eyelids.
Freaks Of Nurture will be released via The Reverberation Appreciation Society last March . Recorded at Cacophony Recorders in Austin, the album is Holy Wave’s most sonically expansive to date. “We wanted to get heavier and louder, experiment with more songwriting styles and traditional pop elements,” the band explains. “We wanted to freely express different influences regardless of their relevance to each other.” http://
From Austin, Texas, the nine piece Brownout are a Latin band formed by members of Grupo Fantasma. Following up their acclaimed 2014 tribute to Black Sabbath, Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath, the band are releasing Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath, Volume II, on October 28th.
Brownout’s Greg Gonzalez said how covering Black Sabbath came to be:
The idea started out as a half-joke. We were trying to brand the different nights of our weekly residency with different themes. We did James Brown’s classic album “Black Caesar” as “Brown Cesar”, we did a b-boy night and called it “Brownout 2: Electric Boogaloo” and in the process of brainstorming we mentioned “Brown Sabbath” as a night themed on Black Sabbath’s music. It sounded good, but the more we thought about it, the more the idea stuck. I think myself and the other guitarists were all Black Sabbath fans. It just kind of comes with the territory of playing electric guitars and such. We (the string players) all grew up on the border and BlackSabbath, Ozzy, and all things metal were all hugely popular back then.
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The first volume of Sabbath covers featured classics including “Iron Man,” “Into The Void,” “Black Sabbath,” and “Hand Of Doom.” Returning for round two, Brownout cover “Snowblind,” two songs (“Symptom Of The Universe,” and “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,”) featuring guest vocalist Aaron Behrens, lead singer of Ghostland Observatory, along with vocalist Alex Marerro, “Sweet Leaf,” and “Fairies Wear Boots” that appeared on their 1970 release Paranoid.
Brown Sabbath is the alter ego of Austin-based Brownout, delving into the catalog of the Hard Rock and Heavy Metalgodfathers themselves Black Sabbath. “Hand Of Doom” featuring Black Angels singer Alex Maas on vocals is the lead-off single with “The Wizard” on the flip, pressed on limited colored splatter 10inch
Launched in April of this year Hovvdy’s ‘Taster’ album with the premiere of its stand-out track, “Problem”, way back in early 2016, little did we know then that this small, bruised, lo-fi gem would go on to rack-up over 75,000 plays on Soundcloud alone.
The album that followed was just as affecting; the languid approach to it all, the scratchy, dim-lit tone of the voice and the music, creeping out of the speakers with a dulled charm that takes a few listens to truly appreciate. A duo from Austin, Texas, Hovvdy’s skill lies in the ability to sneak utterly captivating hooks in to songs that seem too weather and unadorned to do so. Like the sudden jolt of a treasured memory on the most listless of days, ‘Taster’ is a truly beautiful collection of songs dressed up as something dull and indifferent. Seek and you will find alittle gem of an album that you will keep coming back to play .
The best crunchy lofi drum and synth sounds, bedroom acoustics and honest vocal deliveries. This really follows up my LVL UP and Mitski obsessions well. It’s got melodies and vibes that feel like a nice morning/afternoon/evening on the couch. Hovvdy is Charlie Martin and Will Taylor. ‘Taster’ recorded and mixed by Hovvdy,
bass on 2, 8, and 10 by Sam Jacobson,
There are records that you end up writing about in varying different places, so much so that you feel, that everything you wanted to say has now already been said. Lomelda’s 4E* An acoustic take on her band’s wonderful 2015 LP, Hannah Read recorded this stripped-back counterpart late one night in a recital hall in Waco, Texas, and from the outset it positively burns with that aching, tender, world-weary heart .
Shaped by a sense of summer-tinged nostalgic longing the record unwinds beautifully across its nine-tracks, feeling like a true story, rich, vibrant, fully-realised, as Read’s incredible voice sings songs of travelling, of growing old before you’re ready to do so, of a land shaped by endless roads and endless nights, of the stars and the sun and the quiet lives that punctuate the stillness. “I’m not sure many of you will like it much. It requires more patience than I’d like. Forgiveness, even. It is static and small, privileged and careless, indulgent, digital, bare and a lil embarrassing,” Read said, when introducing her work and, aside from the embarrassment, is it every one of those things and more. A timeless, graceful dusting of magic .
AGiant Dog is raucous ear candy, culled from the hook-driven melodies of Slade, the glammy swagger of Marc Bolan, the morbid fantasy of Killer-era Alice Cooper, and the unpredictable wit of Sparks. Sabrina and Andrew’s lyrics, equal parts brutally honest, clever, and debased, have a knack for taking their idiosyncratic depravities and making them feel universal.These songs are by, for, and about the losers, freaks, and outcasts. The lonely. The terminally horny. Boozehounds and party animals. No band better speaks to the hearts of slackers, burnouts, rockers, sluts, and creeps everywhere than A Giant Dog.
Sabrina struts around the stage like Iggy Pop channeling Tina Turner. Andrew hurls himself from the summit of the speaker stack. Graham’s headbanging clobbers anything close to him. The audience rages, asses shake, and everyone leaves drenched in beer and bodily fluids.
Members
Andrew Cashen, Andy Bauer, Danny Blanchard, Graham Low, Sabrina Ellis
Texan four-piece Explosions in the Sky have developed an international cult following as their post-rock instrumentals have appeared everywhere from film soundtracks to TV trailers. However, drummer Chris Hrasky recently quipped that the last fate the band want for their sixth album is for it to accompany “rousing sports montages”. It’s unlikely, as the band have taken a detour from trademark glacial beauty into more pensive, sinister terrain. Thus, among The Wilderness’s gentle pianos and Eno-like ambience are percussive depth charges, industrial machine-like sounds and frantic math-rock.
Explosions In The Sky finally returned this year with their long-awaited followup to 2011’s Take Care, Take Care, Take Care. How they still find ways to make their brand of post-rock feel as fresh and angelic as it first did 16 years ago is one of the many alluring facets of the new album “The Wilderness” . It’s another sprawling epic, yawning with fresh air and stretching impressive muscles previously unused by the Lone Star post-rockers. Digitized bleeps and bloops punctuate their amber swells (“Tangle Formations”) while Chris Hrasky’s rousing percussion (“Logic of a Dream”) turns self-respecting atheists into believers.
The lovely Colors in Space suddenly erupts into jarring noise reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Psycho. It works, though, because the melodies are as strong as ever, and among the darker shades, the lighter moments wallop home. Tangle Formations and Infinite Orbit are terrific tunes, and the elementally softly rocking Landing Cliffs makes a spectacularly pretty climax to another beautifully understated epic.
Texas comes to Paris with concert Explosions In The Sky at Pitchfork Festival 2016
The year 2016 marks the return of Explosions In The Sky with the release of the album “The Wilderness” in April. The Americans returned in style with a haunting post-rock universe. Amazed by the fireworks illuminating the sky of the city of Austin , a quartet of musicians decided to form a post-rock band called Explosions In The Sky, This is the beginning of a long musical adventure. Today, The Texans unveil a seventh project with the album “TheWilderness” a new instrumental epic.
Every album the group is a world map with its reliefs and shadows, which runs through a trained eye imagining ever new frescoes tied into the fantastic. The charm of Explosions In The Sky music is in a timeless, ageless, that overcomes a culture under glass and immune elements which can violate the monastic genius of the Americans and the solitary pleasure of his inveterate.
Musicians, just as moviegoers, the four friends make up their albums in the manner of a soundtrack. So it’s no coincidence that the music of Explosions In The Sky inspired a number of films and television series with their score for the series ( Friday Night Lights , Kaboom , From Blood And Tears ...). “The Wilderness” is also experiencing a very noticeable output through signing more emotional .
Post-Rock band Explosions in the Sky perform at Pitchfork Music Festival Paris 2016. The post-rock band deliver an hour-long performance at the Grande Halle de La Villette in Paris.
The Fat Angel Sings 