VIDEO: Soda Jerk vs. The Avalanches’ “The Was”

The Was from The Was on Vimeo.

What this is is a music video but not just any music video. It’s the new one by The Avalanches to promote their brand new album called Wildflower and if you loved the sample-based collage that was their debut album Since I Left You, imagine them doing the same in a visual manner. No need to imagine, you can see what they did here pulling from different films of the last 50 or so years. This is easily the best music video of the year. The album will be released this Friday and you can pre-order it below via Amazon.com

REVIEW: Silent People’s self-titled CD

If you are to read the album credits on the back, all you would see is Silent People consisting of two people: Gianpaolo Camplese on drums and Stefano Meucci on electronics but with that said, what exactly would that entail? By saying this is on Aut Record,s you would know this is anything but tame or calm. It’s true, this music here is anything but calm but adventurous? Very much.

Silent People’s self-titled album goes in a number of places, beginning their album with a song (“Hydraulic Fracturing”) that sounds very close to Medeski, Martin & Wood’s “We Are Rolling” from their album The Dropper. Then as the album goes, I wasn’t sure if it was free jazz, basement trip hop in the vein of Antipop Consortium or some kind of Madlib side project but it’s a nice blend of the mellow to the insecure, with the listener being insecure as to where the music is going but harmonious at the most unpredictable moments. The label calls what they do electro-acoustic but even if you know what is behind that definition, it still doesn’t sound what you assume it could be and for me, that’s what makes it work. It’s a drummer just jamming on the one at times while he may get into some kind of far off playing as an electronics wizard scatters his creativity everywhere. Or it’s the other way around. It’s a nice place to find yourself to be in, if not an audacious place. I would very much like to stay in this neighborhood for awhile.

VIDEO: Seventeen Evergreen’s “Observatory Crest”

Epiphanie Solaire is not only the title of a new EP by San Francisco duo Seventeen Evergreen, the EP is out on vinyl (a limited edition one at that) through Spiritual Pajamas. The record came out on September 25th and they just released a video for one of its song, so check out their cover of Captain Beefheart’s “Observatory Crest” and see how you are immersed in its vibe. The video was directed by Brian Ziffer.

FREE DL: AM & Shawn Lee’s “Again And Again (I’CED Remix)”

Did you like the new album by AM & Shawn Lee Outlines? DID YOU, I SAID? Well good, for now there’s a new mix or I should say, a new remix for the song “Again And Again”. This one is done by I’CED and you can have a listen to his perspective

AM & Shawn Lee have some shows coming up, including one later this week in Seattle so head there and get into the groove like Madonna:
October 15… Seattle, WA (Crocodile)
October 20… San Francisco, CA (Rickshaw)
October 22… Los Angeles, CA (Mrs. Fish)
October 27… Chicago, IL (Schubas)
October 28… Brooklyn, NY (Knitting Factory)

REVIEW: Mark Van Hoen’s “Nightvision”

The way Nightvision (Saint Marie) begins, one would expect for the electronic music of Mark Van Hoen to be on the past of electronic music from the 1970’s and early 80’s, where it may appear to fans of elegant soundtracks. It’s relaxing. WHen it gets to song #2 (“Froese Requiem I”), the sound of sampled and/or filtered drums changes the composition, and it made me have to rethink of what may be ahead.

In truth, Nightvision does sound like the soundtrack to a movie that has yet to be made, or perfect mental music for night people, that would be the best way to describe this. It’s full of electronic wizardry, slightly dated at first but then I realized “it’s not so much dated as it is traveled, a music that has come from a place, it has landed and it is continuing its travels from where it was to where it’s going.” That’s the best way to describe it, and it may be an accurate way to talk about when it was recorded, as the credits say the music was done between 2008 and this year, a seven year destination that has lead us to here, to hear.

(Nightivision will be released on November 13th and can be pre-ordered directly from Saint Marie Records.)

SOME STUFFS: Audio Fidelity go “soundtracking” with new remasters

Holiday season will be a good one for fans of the Audio Fidelity label, especially if you are a soundtrack album collector. Come November 27th, the audiophile label will not just release one soundtrack, but three of them.

The first one is the soundtrack to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, which was done by John Williams, who won two Grammy’s for it. This will be the first time it is getting a (hybrid) SACD release.

The second one is for the 1980 film Cruising, and was put together by Jack Nitzsche, who brought in the then-new music of the era, which was new wave and punk, so it features tracks by John Hiatt, The Germs, Willy DeVille, Ruff Trade, The Cripples and much more. The album has circulated in circles for years, now it is getting its debut digital release.

The third and final reissue for the James Caan-starred film Thief, which featured a soundtrack done by Tangerine Dream. This reissue is vinyl-only, a nice 180g audiophile pressing, so this one will be a juicer.

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The Thief soundtrack is the only one currently available to pre-order through Amazon, so click the link below:
Tangerine Dream-Thief

REVIEW: Meanza&De’s “OU”

OU (Aut) is one of those albums where you’re unsure what you’re listening to and why but something hooks you, pulls you in and keeps you within its realm for its duration. At least that is how I interpret what Meanza&De do on OU, a mixture of electronic peculiarity where everything sounds chopped to the smallest detail and adjusted to create something that isn’t weird. In fact, I would call the music here a distant cousin of the familiar but it’s so off-center that you want to touch it if you could. Or with a track like “OSC”, things begin very beautifully and delicate and then it finds itself in a new world and things make you feel dizzy, if not queasy. The electronics are then mixed in with instrumentation of what sounds like found instruments, or instruments that may very well be custom made, but it may be a figment of my imagine as the two people involved (Bob Meanza and Filipe Dias De) are credited as playing two things: electronics and sitar. I hear what Meanza is creating and what I like is that it is meant to sound foreign, if not distant but what he does makes you want to come closer, to touch it and know what it feels or smells like. De’s guitar work may be subtle at first but concentrate on the sounds. Sometimes it sounds fairly normal, other times you wonder if the traditional pandits would cringe at the thought of the sounds being stretched to nth limits.

It’s very experimental in every sense of the world but it’s not annoying nor will it make you cringe. OU is a place you didn’t think you’d ever want to be in but once you explore the elements, you hope more people will come inside and populate the place.

REVIEW: Loop 2.4.3’s “Time-Machine_music”

At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Loop 2.4.3, even after reading a bit about them but Time-Machine_music (Music Starts From Silence) is very much like going on a journey, as the title may suggest, with uncertainty on where one will end up.

At first, I had thought the music created by Loop 2.4.3’s Thomas Kozumplik was electronic in nature and while some of it is, most of the sounds heard are played by Kozumplik himself. It may remind a few people of the Illuminati funk of Rise Robots Rise or some kind of major label effort that you may have read about once but forgot where you read about it. Don’t allow yourself to pass the music on this project, for it sounds like someone’s diary entries around the world, dropping into each different village and finding what sounds he can create. There aren’t any songs that could be considered pop-friendly, so don’t expect something to give you the moral to the story, for these are the stories you’re meant to interpret in whatever way you feel is fit. Different percussion instruments provide the heartbeat while his voice, while present, doesn’t dominate the pieces. Instead, they are decorations, mere ingredients to the full recipes he is putting on display. A live interpretation of these songs would be a trip to hear and experience but for the time being, Time-Machine_music consists of worlds ready to explore, which will lead to you realizing the world’s are all in one place.

FREE DL: Brother Saturn’s “The Road Less Traveled”

https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2606047556/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=5E6C94/tracklist=false/transparent=true/
Drew Miller is back with a new album under his Brother Saturn identity and like his previous works, this one is intense in its own way. Don’t let that be a reason to not want to listen to The Road Less Traveled, as the means to listen is free. On top of that, downloading the album is also free but please use the “Name Your Price” option to show some support.

SOME STUFFS: New album by Marco Vella streams to completion

Released today is a new collaboration album between Marco Vella and Kyle Jorgensen called Shadow Mountain (Average Negative), available digitally and on vinyl, which comes with a “limited edition” book. For some wonderful electronic textures, you’ll definitely want to check this out and you can right now, as it’s being made available to stream in full.

http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2787212906/size=large/bgcol=333333/linkcol=2ebd35/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/