(Northern Exposure is a feature where Mark incessantly rambles about music from his home country of Canada.)
I was an only child growing up, so I never knew what it was like to have siblings. That might explain why I’m such a loner now, but that’s a topic for another day. My main point is that one of the more improbable things in the world is three having siblings forming a band and actually be successful at it, but that’s exactly what Kidstreet are doing with their brand of hyper synth-pop.
The trio from Waterloo, Ontario is made up of siblings Karl, Cliff and Edna Snyder. It’s a unique situation to say the least but it’s definitely a formula that is working.
I’m very fortunate to live close to this band because that means I get the opportunity to see them live on a semi-regular basis. The reason this makes me so happy is because their live show is fun as hell. It’s one of those all out dance party situations when you go see Kidstreet. Even though last time I saw them there were only maybe 100 people there, the energy this band creates live was enough to whip even a reserved person like myself into a frenzy. There are a lot of bands that I would suggest you go see live if you get the chance, but if you like to have fun then Kidstreet should be at the top of your “bands to see” list.
Even if you've never heard of Kidstreet there is a chance that you’ve heard a song of theirs if you watch any TV. Kidstreet’s simply titled song, “Song” was featured in a Ford ad a few years ago.
Bands lending their music to commercials is an interesting topic that is worthy of it’s own post, so I’ll try to be brief right now.
Is it selling out? I don’t really think so. It’s not like Kidstreet are a filthy rich band who are just licensing their music to make more money. That fact is that they’re a young band trying to get known and what better way to have people hear your music than on a commercial that hundreds of thousands of people will see. On top of that they’re getting paid to have people hear their song. If one person found out about Kidstreet because of that commercial, then I think that’s awesome.
Kidstreet released their debut album titled Fuh Yeah back in September 2011 on the legendary Vancouver label, Nettwek Records.. Like their live show, it’s just a super fun album. I don’t think that you’re going to get anything deep or introspective from Fuh Yeah, but it doesn't really sound like that was the goal. I'm sure they just wanted to make a fun, catchy synth-pop album and I'd say they accomplished their mission. It was also cool hearing some reference to Waterloo in songs like “Out Loud”.
To add to their resume, Kidstreet have toured with acts like Girl Talk, HEALTH, Dragonette and Mother Mother.
So needless to say I’m excited to see what Kidstreet does next. I have no clue what they’re up to at the moment but getting to watch whatever they do from a close distance is something that I know I’m going to enjoy, hopefully you’ll enjoy them too.
Julia Holter has quite a number of fans within the YPOIW team (our discussion may have tipped you off), so of course we have to mention her brand new video for the song "Our Sorrows" off her excellent Ekstasis LP.
The dreamlike pop song is supported by appropriately surreal images of Holter playing with a bowl of water and a purple thread weaving its way across L.A. The video was directed by Naomi Yang (of the band Galaxie 500, dontcha know), and I can't help but suspect that the myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth was on the creators' minds during this shoot. Only instead of the thread leading Holter out of the maze as with Theseus, she seems to trap herself within the thread. Or something like that.
Someone has finally made a full hip hop mash-up album with In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and may I just say that it is about time. Bandcamper Psycosis has blessed us with In My G4 Over Da Sea by Neutral Bling Hotel.
Do you really need any further convincing that you need to hear this? It's better than you think.
Highlights include tracks such as "King Of Jesus Walks, Pts 2 & 3," "Miami, 1981," "Oh Dougie," and "Untitled Paint Job."
Kasar is German electronicist/pianist Arnold Kasar. I don't know a whole lot about him, but I do know that I like what he does with a piano, which you can see and hear (both are recommended) for yourself in the live performance of his track "En Automne":
Kasar proficiently demonstrates just how many tools and sounds the modern solo pianist can have at their disposal with the aid of a laptop and some wires. For percussion, he bangs on the piano's boards. For a punchy bass sound, he mutes the piano's wires. Towards the end, you can even see him use his own personal percussive potential to further add to the song's color. It brings to mind the way other artists, such as Zoë Keating with her cello or Owen Pallett with his violin, take advantage of every part of their instrument and combine it with looping to create wholly unique soundscapes. And as a fellow pianist, I really admire what Kasar is pulling out of his instrument.
I'm admittedly partial to this area of music where the modernity of electronics meets the antiquity of the "classical" instruments, but you don't need to delve too deep to appreciate the bounciness of what is a pretty fun song regardless of its construction.
Kasar has a full debut album The Piano Has Been Smoking that is out now (in Europe at least) on Fabrique Records, where you can sample some of the tracks. If the rest of the album is as good as "En Automne," you can guarantee I'll be talking about him again.
I listened to Welcome to Zabadak primarily because it promised a synthesis of two things for which I have quite the fondness: '80s Japanese pop and Celtic folk. And it delivers.
I haven't been able to dig up (i.e. Google) a lot of information about Zabadak. They originally started in 1985 as a 3-member band, but given this album art I'd say this 1987 record was made when the group consisted of only Tomohiko Kira and Yoko Ueno. I didn't know it at the time, but my first experience with Welcome to Zabadak was not actually my first experience with either Kira or Ueno. Yoko Ueno left the band in 1993 and went onto have several more musical projects, one of which was the band Oranges & Lemons, who provided the memorable Azumanga Daioh OP "Soramimi Cake." Tomohiko Kira has continued to release albums under the Zabadak name since Ueno's departure, but he has also contributed to other projects. Most notably (in my humble opinion) he produced the first Spice & Wolf OP "Tabi no Tochuu" sung by Natsumi Kiyoura. Moral of the story: you never know when anime knowledge will become real life knowledge.
Back to Zabadak proper, what I particularly like about Welcome to Zabadak is precisely how the folk influences are integrated in a way that enhances songs that would otherwise still be fine examples of quintessentially bouncy and interesting pop music. It's nice to hear, too, because more often when I come across modern music that hearkens back to Celtic and English folk, it is smothered by New Age hokeyness or just kinda falls into standard revival fare. This album has a unique approach that I appreciate.
The opening track "Blanche" is representative of most of the qualities I like here (so take a listen above!). The first notes communicate to the listener that the record is going to have a different kind of sound. The synthesized reed and drum invoke images that are both old and modern, and this juxtaposition creates an otherworldliness I love to hear. This is more of a personal connection, but the retro-sounding electronic folk also reminds me of the kind of music you'd hear soundtracking a town in a 16-bit RPG. This theme is vamped upon for a minute, but then the tune suddenly shifts from male-voiced ethereality to a female-voiced pop vehicle much more in.line with what you'd expect coming from 1987. Perhaps these two halves will be too disparate for some listeners to reconcile, but I find them to mesh perfectly together in spite of the initially jarring tonal shift. I don't have much to say in regards to the lyrics, but I think the track is about a journey through the "Blanche Forest," and if this is true it succeeds at encompassing both the mystery and the beauty of the woods.
Actually, mysterious and beautiful are good descriptors of the rest of the tracks to be found here as well. There's just something about recreating older instruments with synthesizers that pleases my ears like very few other things can, and doing this within a synth pop context makes it all the sweeter. The last track "Fairly Dreams" sounds like the sister of "Blanche," both of which bookend the record admirably, although I am more partial to the killer bass hooks on "Fairly Dreams." But I also enjoy the moments on Welcome to Zabadak that deviate from this formula. The sixth track "Luna" layers Ueno's voice on top of itself in order to create a one-woman chorus, which sings a tantalizingly short piece that wouldn't sound too out of place in a 15th century chapel. "Avenue" is another interlude-type song, which sounds like a marimba solo being played over a field recording of a city street. Honestly, I think the record would have been fine without this track (maybe even a little better for it), but it doesn't feel too intrusive when listening the full album. Finally, the penultimate track "In the Early Morning" is pretty much a standard piano ballad elevated by Ueno's wonderful delivery and the strength of the melody.
There's not a single dud of a track on this record. It's interesting, fun pop not necessarily similar to, but along the same lines of Jun Togawa, and I don't think a Kate Bush comparison would be out of line either. It's artful without being too obtuse, which is a very fine line to ride as well as Zabadak do. And I may have the '80s Japan bias, but that is a bias usually concerned with Yellow Magic Orchestra and associated works. For instance, when I learned that Togawa had a lot of Hosono-produced material, it didn't really surprise me, but I am a little surprised that not a single YMO member was involved in Welcome to Zabadak's production. That's high praise from me! So much respect to Kira and Ueno for defining their own flavor of creative pop.
I'm probably speaking to a very limited audience with this sentence, but if you enjoyed the Spice & Wolf anime, specifically the soundtrack, you should check out this album for a different approach utilizing a similar sound. For everyone else, if you ever doubted that Celtic Japanese synth pop could be a thing, let Welcome to Zabadak dispel your ignorance.
P.S. Many thanks to this Zabadak fansite for information on the background and history of this group!
(Steve Jones is your Samsonite samurai, at least until he thinks of a less copyright-infringing name. Like most uninteresting people, he has a Twitter @vestenet.)
As much of a metal fan as I am, I have a good deal of reservations when it comes to instrumental metal, especially when it comes of the progressive variety. To me way too much of it just comes off as an exercise of technique and skill rather than true craft; really what I like to call "wankery". I much prefer bands like Russian Circles, who aren't "progressive" in that they aren't flashy about technicality, but the way they create vast soundscapes and a gargantuan sound while relying on dynamics more than technicality brings out a force that's far more emotional, to me, than a lot of bands that choose to be "progressive".
But it's not like you can't be technical and emotional and dynamic. One of my absolute favorite instrumental metal projects is Cloudkicker, which is a one-man DIY project out of Columbus, Ohio. Recently on his tumblr he plugged an instrumental progressive metal project called Miroist, who as recently as last month released their debut EP entitled The Pledge.
Like Ben Sharp (the mastermind behind Cloudkicker) said in his post, the EP reminds me of his project's output around 2008, but even more heavy and "chaotic" than that, to use his words. While I wouldn't call it chaotic music, as what's going on here seems pretty damn tight, I will say that I like what I'm hearing. I was initially turned off by the opening riff on the opening track "i ; Non decipies me, fortuna" because it reminded me of the recent wave of "djent" bands that some consider to be a big movement, but I consider it to be nothing more than mindless Meshuggah worship. But it doesn't take long for the track to start going through some hills and valleys. This band even lists post-rock as an influence, which definitely contributes to the dynamics of these songs. I feel like if a band hits on the same riff endlessly with no variation (like all too many of these Meshuggah-copycat bands love to do) the music grows stale and quickly. Not so with this music.
The first track is nice, but the EP really gets going with the remaining two tracks, which are longer, and to me produce an "epic" vibe that not many EPs achieve. For a project that's just starting out, I see bright things in the future for these guys if they continue down this road of being more ambitious than the average band of their style. Stream the EP below via their Bandcamp page.
(It feels like Robby's the metal contributor for YPOIW. Well, if you're interested in the genre, be sure to visit his YouTube page for some metal-related reviews)
Following this year's release of his sophomore LP, Six Cups of Rebel, Lindstrøm has announced a 12" of remixes for tracks from the album. Among those commissioned for the release is Daniel Lopatin's Oneohtrix Point Never project, which contributes a remix of the track "Call Me Anytime."
The remix kicks of with sparse, New Age-indebted drones, but then begins introducing clips of trimmed vocal samples. The glitch-like nature of these snippets becomes gradually more prominent, eventually unfolding into a chorus of stuttering voices and angelic hums. This makes way for another set of lush, choppily edited samples, which carry the track from its climax to its close. In the five minutes this remix spans, Lopatin continues to demonstrate his knack for transforming pieces of audio into songs that bear marginal resemblance to the origins of their components.
Stream the reworking below, and look for a release of the 12", which also includes contributions from Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti and Emeralds' Mark Mcguire, on June 25 via Smalltown Supersound.
Genres have never not been strange to me. With music especially, I find it nearly impossible to communicate what any particular genre means to me in words. I think it is much easier to point to a piece of music and say, "Yes, that. That is what I think of when I think of _____." When I think of baroque pop, it's Owen Pallett's He Poos Clouds. When I think of shibuya-kei, it's Cornelius' Fantasma. And so on. I imagine when other people think of power pop, they're conjuring images of Weezer or The Replacements, which is fine. But when I need to consider the album that produced the picture-perfect piece of power pop, it is unquestioningly Spilt Milk by Jellyfish.
Let's break power pop down into its components. On one hand, you have pop; on the other, you have power. The "pop" implies music that is forthcoming, fun, and catchy, while the "power" means that the aforementioned elements are rocked up to the proverbial 11. So the perfect power pop album has to be as infectious as it is loud, and Jellyfish accomplish this on Spilt Milk with unparalleled finesse. It's 45 minutes without a single dull moment. 12 songs with not one clunker. This is the work of two gentlemen who burned bright and fast. Andy Sturmer and Roger Joseph Manning Jr. went their separate ways after this album, and I have enjoyed a fair amount of their post-Jellyfish careers, but they were never as strong as they were together on this album.
Spilt Milk often gets compared to the works of Queen and The Beach Boys, and the first track "Hush" is likely the culprit for this. A largely a cappella track, it possesses both Queen's theatrical flair and The Beach Boys' knack for harmony. But what follows is my favorite Jellyfish track, "Joining a Fan Club," which rocks hard and pops hard. It's one of those rare songs where the verse, chorus, and bridge are all equally dominant in their catchiness, and the bridge in particular is notable for both quoting "When You Wish Upon a Star" and ending with a fucking killer instrumental breakdown. I also the lyrical subject matter, which draws a lot of clever and tongue-in-cheek parallels between fanaticism over rock stars and religious belief, with lines like, "He turns me on when he wears that lampshade crown of thorns." It's pretty much one of my Perfect Songs, and I admire everything about it.
That's not to say that the rest of the album is not pure gold as well. The twists and turns of "Sebrina, Paste and Plato" bring to mind Sgt. Pepper's-era Beatles-esque baroque pop. And "New Mistake" is reminiscent of the way a band like ELO or Supertramp could turn a song about a failed relationship into something that's still irresistible to listen to.
I realize here that I'm making a lot of references to other bands in this write-up, which is something I don't like to rely on. I mean, it's appropriate in this case, since Jellyfish are so obviously influenced by a cornucopia of fantastic classic rock bands, but it undermines the other point I'd like to make that the Jellyfish sound is very much its own distinct flavor. For me, there are few key things that define what Jellyfish are, and what make them so exemplary in my ears. One is Andy Sturmers vocals, which are full of sonority and personality. They perfectly adapt to whatever the songs requires, whether it be some soft crooning on "Russian Hill," or some rock-punctuated snark in "The Ghost at Number One." Another component is Roger Joseph Manning Jr.'s keyboard work. Spilt Milk is full of his harpsichords and pianos and synths, and even though they are often not front and center in the mix, they make up an invaluable part of each track. There's also the production, which is crisply crystal clear and allows these intricately-arranged pieces to consistently shine. Now, this is in contrast to a lot of other power pop I've heard, which often favors noisier and fuzzier mixing, but the clean production on Spilt Milk definitely works best for its songs, and it helps further set the album apart.
But what is most important of all is the songwriting, and I am in constant admiration of how complex these pop songs are when you break them down. It's not something you're even going to notice on the first few listens, since the album is by design a easy and pleasant listen, but I don't think any of these tracks fit neatly into your simple verse-chorus-verse structure. On one hand I wouldn't exactly call it progressive pop, but it's definitely pop with a brain. It's pop made by musicians who wanted to create an album that was as sonically interesting as it was immediately accessible and enjoyable, and it succeeds improbably well at both. One of my favorite little attentions to detail is how the last track "Brighter Day" concludes with the same sustained violin note that introduces the opening track.
I hope you've kind of gathered by this point that I really want you to listen to Spilt Milk. Especially if you at all enjoy pop music in the style of rock bands with lots of power, because, like I've said, I think Jellyfish really perfected a genre here. At least, it's everything I want out of a power pop record: strong and catchy melodies, liberal applications of vocal harmony, playful song structures, dense and colorful arrangements, and plenty of moments where the band lets go and just rocks. It's a shame we couldn't hear more from Jellyfish, but Spilt Milk is enough of a masterpiece to immortalize them in my mind.
(Steve Jones is not crying over spilt milk. Nor is his Twitter, @vestenet.)
Make no mistake about it; Ceremony is one of the best bands in hardcore out there today. Part of what makes this so is their willingness to venture out of their genre’s perceived comfort zones and make changes and go places too many bands wouldn’t. Their debut, 2006’s Violence Violence has a sound equivalent to that title. It couldn’t figure out whether it wanted to be 80’s hardcore or powerviolence, and thankfully it decided to not force itself to choose. And with their next two releases, Still Nothing Moves You and Rohnert Park they continued to expand and flesh out their sound. I’m not going to sit here and say they’re the most original band to ever rear their ugly heads. But Ceremony were able to put themselves in a place where you could pick them out of a lineup. In my mind, that was enough to make them a band to watch.
Rohnert Park saw the band abandoning their more powerviolence tendencies in favor of a more straight ahead 80’s hardcore approach, along with some welcomed experimentation in the form of tracks such as “The Doldrums” and the “In the Wayside” tracks. Zoo, which came out back in March, goes even further away from the hardcore of today into more of a 70’s punk sound. That would all be fine and dandy if the changes Ceremony made on this LP paid off as handsomely as the changes on Rohnert Park did.
What I’m sure was intended to be an act of branching out and experimenting has unfortunately came out of the oven as derivative, lacking in any kind of energy, and frankly pretty damn boring. If you want a small example of this, listen to the first track to drop from this LP earlier this year, “Hysteria”. Unlike an album like Violence Violence, this track does NOT have a sound that even comes close to that title. The “hysteria” that singer Ross Farrar sings about (and repeats again and again and again) isn’t communicated in the slightest with the dime a dozen guitar riff, played at a nice safe tempo, and Farrar’s own lazy vocal delivery that doesn’t come close to the kind of character he showed in the previous three records. Yes I understand this record is shooting for a different sound so therefore the vocals should follow suit, but the character Ross decides to go with is a neutered Johnny Rotten impression that never changes vocal inflection. Not. Once.
And it doesn’t end there. Nearly every track goes down the same exact path, delivering just about the same results. All the ingredients are there: apathetic performances, all-too-familiar guitar riffs and patterns, cliched lyrics, and Ross’ aforementioned vocal “snarl”. “Citizen” takes a liberty of being somewhat faster, and being the only song on here that comes close to hardcore; but unfortunately it just ends up reminding me of bands like Off!, and therefore just making me rather listen to bands like Off!. Every once in a while the band somewhat changes up the formula I guess, but it just goes to show that the band’s idea of experimentation is reduced to simply using clean guitar on “Repeating the Circle”, a delay effect in the middle of “Break Yourself”, having a twangy rhythm on “Quarantine”, and an acoustic guitar section at the end of “Community Service”. All this just hits me as shallow attempts to differentiate a few tracks from the others, and nothing more.
It says alot when a band that started out with the sound that Ceremony did decides to change it up; I always encourage that kind of thing. But the band hits me with no interesting, new, or experimental sounds, and instead decides to travel back in time a little bit. Maybe it’s that I’ve been with punk rock all my life and I’ve heard all the oldies and what they already offer, and Ceremony doesn’t offer up anything outside of that. In fact I think they do away with quite a bit of it. All I can say is that if I wanted to hear an impersonation of The Damned, the Sex Pistols, or Wire — wait, screw the impersonation, I’d rather just hear those bands by themselves. Thanks, but no thanks.
You can buy the album via Matador if I haven't warned you enough.
score: lite 3 (the absolute litest a 3 can get)
(If you wanna hear Robby rant more bout music, check out his YouTube page.)
Two nights ago I went to see five punk and hardcore bands converge to create one of the funnest shows I've been to all year. Here's my video recap: Lineup:
Hot Water Music
Touché Amoré
Joyce Manor
Holy Fever
Ghostlimb
(For album reviews and live concert reviews, be sure to visit Robby's YouTube page)
Week In Review is the feature where I go over the noteworthy things from the past week. Sometimes this is music related, but often it is not. I'd like to apologize for the abbreviated version because it just wasn't a particularly noteworthy week. You can express your disappointment with me on twitter if you want, I definitely deserve it.
* Kudos for Buffalo Place and Funtime After Dark for landing artists like Built To Spill and Girl Talk to play on the waterfront this year. I've been a huge advocate for Buffalo building a permanent ampitheater on the waterfront and starting a huge summer music festival. The harbor is big enough that 40-60,000 could be accommodated easily, let's think bigger and do something special to get people into this city and spending money. Thursday at the Square Harbor has been going strong and producing big crowds downtown since 1991 and there's absolutely no reason that Buffalo shouldn't have a big time annual music festival.
* The Flaming Lips are attempting to break Jay Z's record of 7 concerts in a 24 hour period by playing 8 on June 27th. I'm just glad that I'm seeing them on the 16th because I can't imagine how short some of those sets are going to be.
* Last week the news was that Handsome Furs has broken up, this week there's much happier news to report that Dan Boeckner has formed a new band. The group, Divine Fits will comprise Dan along with Britt Daniel from Spoon and Sam Brown from New Bomb Turks. The band is on Merge and will release their debut album later this year. As a huge fan of both Spoon and Handsome Furs I await that record with much anticipation.
Dan Harmon has been ousted as the show-runner for Community. Do we even want #sixseasonsandamovie anymore? This is definitely the darkest timeline.
Savannah, Georgia's Baroness seem to be gaining more and more of a prominent role in the metal world with every given moment. In their earlier days alot of people gave them flack for being a "Mastodon ripoff", but their fans, including myself, knew they had a sound of their own, and thankfully the rest of the world is finally hopping on board. The band's work up to this point has been a potent and distinct meld of the worlds of sludge metal, stoner rock and progressive rock. As heavy and aggressive as their music could be, it never came across as brooding or misanthropic; rather, the band gave off more of a grand, righteous tone.
The band's third studio album, Yellow & Green has been largely anticipated for quite a while, and in the middle of this month we finally got a new track, "Take My Bones Away". I recognize that the band played this song when I saw them open up for Meshuggah at the beginning of this month; however throughout their set front man John Baizley's guitar was barely audible, and considering he plays the main riff, I didn't get the full experience of the song. But now that a studio recording is available I can hear it with clarity, and even if some fans are on the fence with it, I'm not; I love it.
The reason fans might be on the fence with this one is that the song is likely the most accessible thing they've released so far. The guitar tones have meat on them, but they're clearly less heavy than they were, and as far as Baizley's vocals go he is singing more than he is screaming, and the song has really catchy vocal melodies and an incredibly infectious hook. Even if maybe the hardcore metalhead inside of me is telling me that I shouldn't like it, I can't help but love it. I love it for the same reason I love bands like Torche, and I can even see this album beating Torche's latest, which I was a little lukewarm on.
Overall, not only am I liking this alot just as a change of direction for the band, I can see some readers of this site who aren't so much into metal digging on this. I'd even say that if you can only force yourself to listen to one metal record this year, let it be Yellow & Green.
Give the track a good hearty listen below, and be on the lookout for the new album on July 17th via Relapse Records. It's definitely one of my most anticipated releases, and one I will most certainly review
(If you like metal, or want to get into metal, Robby's your man. Check out his YouTube page for some older metal reviews and some new ones to come)
If you know me, you'd know that I'm a huge connoisseur of rock music of the heavy variety. Basically, I'm a huge metalhead; I frequent metal shows on a regular basis, and I've recently come across, and seen, a southern California band called Seven Sisters of Sleep. This band released their self-titled debut album on vinyl through A389 Recordings and on CD through Southern Lord. The beefiness and power of this band is comparable to other Southern Lord related acts such as Boris and Sunn O)).
This track, "Slower Downer" is from the band’s upcoming self titled 7″. The track begins with some feedback that teases towards something huge, and when the drums hit and the guitars come roaring in, it is nothing short of an eargasm. The sound of this track dwarfs the more lo-fi recording on their self-titled album, which I feel muddied up the heaviness and robbed the tracks of the greater power they could have had. That issue is clearly trampled over on this track; the frequencies are low and the sound is gargantuan. The riffs can be criticized for being too standard as far as sludge/crust/doom metal is concerned, but everything the band does is performed with such power and conviction that I couldn't possibly hold that against them. What you do is important, but how you do it is just as important. The vocals are extremely harsh and slightly muffled, but the passion is clearly there.
Stream the track below and look out for a physical release of the 7" next month via A389 Recordings.
Bands come and go all the time; that’s just how it works. Of course, some bands leave bigger impacts than others. Broken Social Scene announced a hiatus last year. The word “hiatus” has become kind of a dirty one in music circles; it seems like it’s just become a euphemism for “break up”. Whether or not Broken Social Scene are done for good, I don’t think there is another band that has left as big of an impact on Canadian music in the last 15 years.
Calling Broken Social Scene a band is a bit of a misnomer. I’m not sure what you would actually call them though. I guess maybe musical collective is a more accurate word since they have had as many as 19 members at one point, but I’ll call them a band for ease of typing. Whatever you want to call them, the main minds behind Broken Social Scene were Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning when they started the band in 1999. I’d call them the two real “leaders” of the group but over the years Broken Social Scene was home to many artists who went on to do great things in Canadian music. Are you ready for this list of musicians? Well, here we go: Brendan Canning, Alan Seib, Kevin Drew, Justin Peroff, Charles Spearin, Andrew Whiteman, Sam Goldberg, Jason Collett, David Newfeld, Leslie Feist, Emily Haines, James Shaw, Evan Cranley, Amy Millan, Ohad Benchetrit, John Crossingham, Martin Davis Kinack, Jo-ann Goldsmith, Bill Priddle, Torquil Campbell, Adam Marvy, Lisa Lobsinger, Julie Penner, Jason Tait, Elizabeth Powell, John McEntire.
Yep, Broken Social Scene housed artists that would go on to be in/have been in great Canadian bands like Metric, Stars, Feist, Apostle Of Hustle, The Weakerthans, Land Of Talk, Do Make Say Think, Treble Charger and many more. I think they were really one of the reasons that Canadian music is such a tight-knit community. If you name me a Canadian musician, then I can probably draw some parallels back to Broken Social Scene in only a few steps. The mark this band left was massive, and it’s something that will stay around Canadian music for a long time to come even if the band itself doesn’t actually re-form.
In 2002 the band released what I (and many others) consider to be their crowning achievement with the album You Forgot It In People. If you’ve never listened to this album, then I think it’s in your best interests as a music fan to do so. It honestly has so many twists and turns that you end up discovering something new about it with every listen. Even to this day when I put on You Forgot it In People, everything about it still feels fresh to me.
The other huge thing that I feel the Broken Social Scene camp left for Canadian music was the record label Arts & Crafts. The label was started by Kevin Drew and former Virgin Records executive Jeffrey Remedios in 2002. While the label was originally intended to be only for Broken Social Scene’s music, it has blossomed into one of Canada’s best independent record labels. Today Arts & Crafts is home to artists like Feist, Dan Mangan, Timber Timbre, Trust and Zeus.
So, even though Broken Social Scene may never reunite, I’m excited to see what comes from the pieces of the band. We’ve already seen Justin Peroff form Eight And A Half this year, while Brendan Canning released a new Cookie Duster album back in April. With that being said, seeing this group's core members get back together for another tour or album would something magical.
Today is the 78th birthday of Robert Moog, one of the most important figures in electronic music. While he is not Japanese, the sound of his Moog synthesizers defined a significant portion of the Japanese music I've come to love (Yellow Magic Orchestra, for instance). What I'd like to do, then, is highlight one of the earliest pioneers of purely electronic music in Japan--Isao Tomita.
In a world of grand, sweeping, reductive statements, my grand, sweeping, reductive statement about Tomita would be to call him the Japanese Wendy Carlos. It's not an entirely unfounded label, as the early careers of both artists were defined by the transposition of classical compositions into the realm of Dr. Moog, and Tomita himself was directly inspired by Carlos' work with Switched-On Bach. In the mid-'70s, Tomita chose to arrange the works of Claude Debussy (Snowflakes are Dancing), Modest Mussorgsky (Pictures at an Exhibition), Igor Stravinsky (Firebird), and, the subject of today, Gustav Holst's The Planets.
There are two things that, for me, significantly distinguish Tomita from Carlos. One is the choice of composition. Carlos worked with Bach, whose Baroque style fit rather easily into the textures of early synthesizers, while Tomita fixated on much more recent composers, whose Impressionistic, late Romantic, and Modernist styles presented a completely different set of challenges (though to be fair, Tomita had the luxury of working with slightly newer synthesizers than Carlos had had access to in the late '60s). The other difference comes from their approaches to arrangement. Carlos didn't stray too far from the original pieces and intent, while I feel that Tomita was much more liberal in his interpretations, which is exquisitely apparent in his work on The Planets. Actually, the original pressing of Tomita's The Planets was pulled from shelves rather quickly, because Holst's daughter Imogen was not too fond of the way it sounded.
In a very real sense, these are indeed bastardized versions of Holst's original compositions, but they are much stronger for it. While the tracks are undoubtedly the same classic favorites that many know and love, the atmosphere of this record is one steeped in the bleeps and bloops of science fiction and Tomita's own vision. It's obvious from the first moments of the record. The listener expects "Mars: The Bringer of War" to begin with one of the most identifiable marches of percussion in history, but what is heard instead is some spacey whirring that leads into a music box playing the most gorgeous part of the "Jupiter" movement. With a burst of static, it suddenly cuts out and is replaced by what sounds like a drunken vocoder duet of the same melody. Then that cuts into a dramatic spaceship alarm. Then that cuts out...and you get the picture. Nothing of the "Mars" movement is heard until over three minutes into the piece. But those first three minutes are vital for setting up the tone of the album. Yes this is The Planets, but this is also a journey to the planets.
Tomita provides the listener with over 50 minutes of alien electronic wizardry. His arrangements are alternately whimsical, ponderous, glistening, and kind of scary. When we finally do get to "Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity," I particularly love his treatment of the aforementioned "most gorgeous part," which he treats as a chorus of hushed voices floating around your headphones. It's subdued and chilling, and completely unlike the original piece.
I can understand the backlash in response to this album. One person's reinterpretation of another person's art is always a delicate subject, especially when the original is such a beloved work. Tomita had serious balls to remix Holst the way he did, and in the hands of a lesser musician this record could have been disastrous. But Tomita succeeded because he understood that the frontier of electronic music could be pushed into places traditional instrumentation would never go. His meticulously playful The Planets is not Holst's vision. It is all Tomita, and all the more fascinating for it.
This week, I'll be reviewing R.A.P. Music, the latest collaborative effort from Atlanta rapper Killer Mike and Brooklyn rapper/producer El-P. The nature of this collaboration was at first surprising and confusing. But I'm glad to say it's paid off handsomely.
Score: decent 8
Track Picks:
Big Beast
Go
Southern Fried
Don't Die
Butane
R.A.P. Music
(To see past reviews and subscribe, go to Robby's YouTube page, MrSplatterPlatter)
A (dirty as fuck) Pig (swine) in the Ukraine (hell) has the unique ability to predict the scores of Football (Soccer) matches. YPOIW has attempted to contact the pig in an attempt to post our year end 2012 features in July but our attempts have been met with only righteous indignance and a blank stare. Once again we here at YPOIW condemn the actions of pigs everywhere and recommend eating copious amounts of bacon. We will not stop fighting our evil Pig overlords until every chop has been consumed.
What does this have to do with music you ask? FUCKING NOTHING I'M LOSING MY MIND AND PIGS ARE ASSHOLES.
Alexander Borg (@HelloAlexxander): Seeing as how they're indie music's modern analogue to the Beatles, I listened to Animal Collective's back catalog this weekend so I can savagely abuse Centipede Hz if I don't like it or heap hyperbolic amounts of praise on it if I do like it. In other words: LION IN A COMA! LION IN A COMA!
Danny Spiteri (@dannyspiterijr): I had to set aside a lot of my music listening time for Clark's Body Riddle in order to complete the review I wrote for it, but otherwise, my week was defined mostly by Cocteau Twins' angelic Treasure and Stereolab's brilliant Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements.
Jack Hayter (@gonnahayt): My favorites from the past week have all been 2012 releases courtesy of Kindness, El-P and John Talabot
Kyle Shoemaker (@_Shoey): I've been listening to a bunch of new (to me) podcasts including About Last Night with Brad Williams, The Crab Feast, TalkS HIT and 5 Decisions Away with Matt Paxton. I'm completely out of spare time at this point but podcasts>music.
Mark Gillis (@Mark__Gillis): This week I've still been listening to a bunch of Weezer, I also listened to Beach House's Bloom which I thought was a really solid release. Besides those two I listened to some ever dependable Jay Reatard.
Steve Jones (@vestenet): Mostly Nine Inch Nails and Cocteau Twins for me. It's been a weird week.
*The Gaslight Anthem announced their 4th album entitled Handwritten this week and I certainly hope it's better than the cover art. I guess the artsy thing to do in 2012 is to take 4 black and white photos of every member of your band and put them next to each other Beatles style on your front cover. Oh, and way to tell me every member of the band... thanks guys... you saved me the 5 second search on Wikipedia. The lead single is below and I have no opinion on it.
*Sad news, Handsome Furs have broken up. This is an odd situation to be sure because Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry are married. The band's facebook post on the matter reads: “With a heavy heart the time has come to let all of you know that Handsome Furs are no more”. Handsome Furs' first 2 albums stand out to me as some of the best of 2007 and 2009 respectively, and their whole shtick of electronic post punk remains one of the better ideas a band has put forward in the last decade... I'll miss them dearly.
*Childish Gambino has released a new track from his upcoming mixtape entitled "We Ain't Them". The most impressive part of this song for me is that it's incredibly catchy yet doesn't have a hook. It relies on an airy synths and piano for it's melody, which speaks to Donald's improvement as a producer. The song's lyrics read as a seemingly random collection of thoughts directly from Donald's brain as if he's recalling the things that keep him awake at night. He even goes as far to say "Back of my mind though, I hope the show gets cancelled // maybe then I can focus.". We all know by now that Community is not getting cancelled, but the fact that the show's hardships are dwelling on his consciousness enough to start showing up in his lyrics is really interesting.
*Fang Island have released the first taste of Major in the form of lead single "Asunder". It's a pretty typical song from them that combines their knack for cool melodies with guitar tones straight out of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. This is far and away my most anticipated album right now.
I've always been a little taken aback at how little attention this album has garnered among the music community. In my mind, it stands out not only as one of the finest triumphs to receive the ever so controversial IDM label, but also as a classic in the realm of electronic music as a whole. Perhaps it is a victim of poor timing; Body Riddle was released in 2006, approximately fifteen years after IDM became a concept, and a decade behind most of the genre's landmark albums (e.g. Selected Ambient Works 85-92, Music Has the Right to Children, Tri Repetae), so it is possible that the then-current musical landscape was populated generally by music fans simply uninterested in the kind of statement Clark had to make. Or maybe I got lucky, and this album just happens to speak directly to my tastes.
Regardless of the reason for Body Riddle's relatively overlooked status, it is, to put it frankly, one of my favorite albums of all time. Don't let the IDM tag fool you; despite seeing a release via the UK's revered Warp Records, this album does not resemble the music of the label's definitive artists very closely. Sure, it shares with such releases an ambition for pushing the boundaries of electronic music, as well as the evasion of easy classification that prompted the inception of the IDM term in the first place, but rather than safely follow the path paved by the genre's pioneers, it offers its own highly unique take. In particular, the sonic palette with which Body Riddle works is notably expansive. Over the course of its eleven songs, the album manages to cover woozy synths, evocative drones, blissful walls of sound, and moments of beautiful, understated tension without missing a beat. Clark even went as far as to learn to play acoustic drums in order to sample and use as the rhythmic foundations for the majority of Body Riddle. What's more, the quality of these sounds is incredible. Without falling prey to overproduction, Clark fine tunes each sound for ideal clarity, placing them appropriately in the mix to balance boldness with breathing room. This wealth of sonic ideas truly lends the album a sense of dynamic, one that allows it to touch upon a wide scope of emotions. Yet, miraculously, it maintains a binding cohesion throughout its 43 minutes. The songs flow into each other with seamless ease, and each one feels like an indispensable component of a maturely visualized bigger picture.
It's a praise that I can only apply selectively to the rest of Clark's work. His first two albums, which he released under his full name, Chris Clark, were promising, but not as original and fully realized as his music would later become. Although the first, the criminally short Clarence Park, was brimming with great ideas, it ultimately felt like an incomplete statement. With its followup, the darker Empty the Bones of You, Clark developed his thoughts more conclusively; however, although both records did carry sparks of his personal flair, he had yet to tap fully into his potential. His first post-Body Riddle release, the bombastic Turning Dragon, was relentlessly engaging, but lacked in dynamic. Totems Flare welcomed a number of additions into Clark's sound bank, even including his own voice, yet the individuality that came with it was at the sacrifice of a sense of focus. And Iradelphic, which is just over a month old at the time of this review, continued down the road of sonic variety, incorporating a refreshing use of acoustic instrumentation, but suffering from inconsistency. Despite their flaws, I enjoy all of these albums a lot, and I wouldn't go as far as to call Clark a one-album wonder. However, I consider Body Riddle to be unquestionably his magnum opus.
The album kicks off with "Herr Bar," an intricate exercise in stuttering drum patterns led by a chorus of chimes. The percussion keeps up an incessantly stimulating pace, immediately announcing the important role it will play throughout the rest of the album. Structurally, the song fluctuates through subtle valleys and mountainous peaks with a captivating sense of drama. It climaxes with a thick sheet of tasteful noise and pounding drums, then dissolves into an ambient interlude that leads perfectly into the next song.
"Frau Wav" starts as a continuation of the previous song's ambient outro, except it adds Clark's polyrhythmic drums into the equation. Shortly afterward, a somber string instrument rises to the top of the mix, combining with the rest of the atmosphere to give the song a drone-like quality. The percussion eventually cuts out entirely to allow layers of vast, airy fog and unidentifiable clicks take control of the song, but then reemerges with a steady, repetitive tap for a subdued finish. It took me many listens to fully appreciate this song, largely due to the low presence of obvious melodies, but my patience eventually paid off.
It's easy to view the next track, "Springtime Epigram," simply as an interlude, but it strikes me as something much more significant. Clocking in at just over a minute and a half, the song merely features a lone synthesizer that repeats a melody with virtually no variation. In theory, it is simple, but the longing evoked by the melody pairs up with the nostalgic tone of the synth to create an emotionally gripping product. Although the nostalgia doesn't necessarily call to mind any specific era, I can't shake from the song an association with memories of the past.
"Herzog" is another beatless synthesizer spotlight; however, contrarily to its predecessor, it presents itself in a much more urgent light. Driving arpeggiating synth melodies lead the song while swirls of amorphous electronic sound fill out the background. Nearly halfway through the track, the melody becomes brighter, and a metronomic pulse of organic clicks begins reinforcing the rhythm. As the song cycles through its two primary melodies with emphasized dynamic, what sounds like a set of unintelligible vocoder-affected voices occasionally shows up to provide light harmonies. The track then tapers off with an assembly of toneless, percussive noises. Despite the absence of percussion, the song succeeds in taking the listener on a thrilling ride.
The beats return on the fifth track, "Ted," for one of the album's most immediate moments. Instead of taking the form of the elaborately sampled acoustic drums that appear on most of the record, the percussion here tackles moderately simple rhythms. However, this more straightforward approach works to the song's advantage. It is one of the few tracks on the album that actually prompts dancing, yet its melodies are among the record's strongest, so "danceable" is not to be confused with "dumbed down." The tail end of the song welcomes a return of the skittering drums for a brief outro that foreshadows the next track.
"Roulette Thrift Run" is one of the least melodic songs on Body Riddle, but makes up for it with its disorienting atmosphere, catchy scat-like vocals, and especially exhilarating percussion. The unsettling sounds that have been brewing under the track throughout its first three minutes eventually take over, ending the song in a cacophony of atonal noises.
The seventh track, "Vengeance Drools," hits hard with a bold attitude, supplying a sinister result. The beat wouldn't feel out of place on a hip hop album, but this isn't your average boom bap. With Clark's surgeon-like sampling precision under its belt, it has no trouble packing the technical impressiveness that makes the percussion on Body Riddle so consistently exciting, yet it doesn't forgo an irresistible head-nodding sensibility. It is certainly commanding, but its the descending plink that acts as the melody which loans the song its menace. Around the track's halfway point, the melody switches up and takes a backseat to drums, which somehow trump those in the first half of the song in intensity. They then retreat and gradually fade out as an ominous array of drones closes out the track.
Similarly to "Springtime Epigram," the next song, "Dew on the Mouth," is a short, drumless piece that barely surpasses one minute in length. Like its aforementioned sibling, its place on the record feels more important than that of a standard interlude. Its melody is memorable, its atmosphere is alluringly eerie, and its ending transitions smoothly into the following track.
"Matthew Unburdened" sees the complex drumming reappear once again, this time for one of its most excellent achievements. It begins in an odd time signature that straddles tantalizingly close to 4/4 without quite settling into it, working the listener into a sense of insecurity. Meanwhile, dissonant piano chords trod lightly on top of it, which further adds to the unstable vibe. The drums soon pull back to create a suspenseful break, then the song truly opens up with a straightened out groove and absolutely gorgeous stringed instrument arrangements. These strings eventually consume the mix, creating a euphoric wall of lush sound. It plays out for nearly two minutes, then dies down to make way for the emergence of another off-kilter beat that carries the track to its ending.
In a way, the penultimate "Night Knuckles" is proof of Clark's compositional ability. With the clinking of a music box serving as the song's primary sonic tool, and only a few ornamental sounds providing extra color, its instrumentation is among the most minimal of Body Riddle's tracks. However, the assortment of compelling intertwining melodies and coherent harmonies allows the song to retain its emotional grasp with confident fluidity.
I could hardly ask for a better closer than "Autumnal Crush," a positively overwhelming seven and a half minutes. The song introduces itself with somber minor synthesizer chords backed by soft, shuffling percussion, which continue on as a slightly obscured voice mumbles the words "and I still miss you." The instruments then rise abruptly in volume, which marks the first major development in a gradual buildup. After a few more bars pass, the intensity of the instrumentation increases yet again, bringing the song into full force. As the chord progression repeats, the noise in the atmosphere becomes increasingly more prominent, until eventually, it takes the track into the album's most crushing moment yet. The phrase "wall of sound" is no longer sufficient; this is the destruction of that wall, a climactic explosion of compressed aural bliss. At its resolution, only the droning bass line and distant melody remain standing. The two repeat together in harmony as they steadily fade out and allow the song to approach silence, leaving the listener the last few minutes of the record to contemplate the experience in the company of achingly beautiful drones.
In just under three quarters of an hour, Body Riddle says more than many artists have said in their entire discographies. And like many of the albums I dearly respect, it feels less like a collection of songs and more like a cohesive story. As great stories often do, the record presents a setting too mesmerizing to be observed from a distance; rather, it transports the listener into its world, traveling through numerous twists and turns, yet refusing to let go.
(Does anyone else think this record is as good as I do? Am I just crazy?! You can let me know on Twitter.)
Hello! I'm Robby and I'm new to the YPOIW crew! Kyle asked me to come on board to contribute video content to the site. I've been reviewing albums on YouTube since August of 2011 and I'm happy to find a new platform to contribute to.
For my first video contribution, I will be reviewing the new release from Beach House entitled Bloom. This is coming off the heels of their 2010 album Teen Dream, which was my favorite album of that year. I have more mixed feelings on this one, but I feel it's at least worth a try.
Score: Strong 6
Track Picks:
Myth
Wild
The Hours
Wishes
Irene
(To see past reviews and subscribe, go to Robby's YouTube page, MrSplatterPlatter)
The world of folky sounding singer-songwriters is a huge sea; it’s very easy to have one bleed into the next without even knowing the difference. One of the singer-songwriters that has really stood out to me in the past few years is Vancouverite Dan Mangan. It’s weird how someone can go from relative obscurity to almost being a household name in Canada in the matter of a few years, but that’s exactly what Dan Mangan has done.
Dan released his first album titled Postcards And Daydreaming in a relatively quiet manner: independently in 2005. Not to say that is album is bad by any means (it really isn’t), but the best was definitely yet to come for Dan.
In 2009, the release of his sophomore album was when Dan’s popularity really began to take off. The album, titled Nice, Nice, Very Nice was released on Arts & Craft records. I can personally say that I listened the hell out of that album, and for good reason; it’s a great album. Nice, Nice, Very Nice really took Dan’s popularity to new heights. It all culminated when Nice, Nice, Very Nice was shortlisted for the 2010 Polaris Prize. The award eventually went to Karkwa for their album Les Chemins De Verre, but Dan gained national recognition because of his nomination.
There were a lot great songs on Nice, Nice, Very Nice, but in my opinion the best of the bunch was “Robots.” I’ve been fortunate enough to see Dan live three times in the past year, and “Robots” is without a doubt the best sing-a-long song that I’ve ever heard. You can check out an example down below. It just gets every single person singing along and into the show so effortlessly.
In 2011, Dan released his highly anticipated third album in Arts & Crafts which was titled Oh Fortune. I’m still not personally sure whether or not I like it more or less than Nice, Nice, Very Nice, but I can safely say that it’s definitely a denser listen. The instrumentation surrounding Oh Fortune definitely adds a level that Nice, Nice, Very Nice didn’t have. Oh Fortune will surely garner a lot of consideration for the 2012 Polaris Prize.
Besides Dan’s gruff voice and captivating music, one of the reasons that he’s so loved in Canada is simply because of how nice he is. I know it seems like something that gets said about tons of musicians, but with Dan it feels more deserved. Staying late after shows and making sure that he speaks to everybody that wants to talk to him must get tough to do, but it’s still something he does night after night.
I, for one, hope that Dan’s popularity keeps growing. He recently won two Juno awards here in Canada, which will hopefully push him into the ears of many people who have never heard his music before.
Whoops, we completely and totally forgot to post this episode so if you subscribe to us on iTunes you've known about it since the 5th of this month. We're not exactly sure how this happened, but we also feel that endearing fuck ups are a huge part of what makes our podcast unique.
To hear this week's episode please search for us on iTunes or click HERE (please rate us and subscribe!). If you prefer a direct download please click HERE
**Special note: while the podcast is still ongoing it's on a brief hiatus right now, do not fear... it will return.
You might recall that last year I made a post concerning several musical Legend of Zelda tributes that caught my ear. If you do not recall, you can read it here. More to the point, one of my favorites was the collection of demos by one Cory Johnson, who took Koji Kondo's familiar pieces and added a healthy dose of post-rock flavoring. Despite their demonstrative nature, they were extremely enjoyable and left me waiting for the day that a polished post-rock Zelda album would come to life.
Well, that day is today. Or, more accurately, it was May 12, but it could be today for you.
The Legend of Zelda takes all of the promise from the original demos and hones and expands it into an almost 2 hour collection of 23 tracks spanning from the earliest days of the series all the way to Skyward Sword. Don't let the length be off-putting, as you'll be more likely to wish for more once the album finishes. The strength is certainly in the concept, which stands unique amongst a surfeit of remixes and covers for the popular Zelda series, but the execution should also be lauded. Johnson's arrangements, while homogenous enough to keep the album together, include enough variation and ornamentation to not wear thin too quickly. He also often highlights surprising parts of otherwise familiar tracks, which speaks to both Johnson's ear as a musician and Koji Kondo's (and others') prowess as a composer.
Some highlights include a blissful reworking of the exemplary "Hyrule Field" theme, a sweet piano-driven interpretation of the "Lake Hylia" theme from Twilight Princess, and a 10 minute medley of the various "Forest Temple" themes to grace the series. Perhaps my favorite piece here is the "Water Temple" medley, which uses the Great Bay Temple theme from Majora's Mask as its backbone. I cannot think of any other remixes or covers that even touch that track, but it works so brilliantly here. Also of note is the 5-part Majora's Mask suite that is found throughout the "second disc" of the album, culminating in an appropriately heavy arrangement of "To the Moon" (a.k.a. the track that plays when you have to get your shit together and get inside that moon's maw).
Anybody who enjoys the Zelda series owes it to themselves to check this album out. It's a refreshing take on some beloved soundtracks, and that is reason enough for video game and music fans alike to rejoice.
Score: Decent 8
You can stream the entire album for free from Cory's Bandcamp below. Even better, you can pick it up for free, or if you love it you can pay-what-you-want for the whole thing. It's worth it.
(Steve Jones enjoys playing Majora's Mask annually, so his Zelda biases may be slightly tipped. Confirm for yourself on his Twitter @vestenet.)
Our friends over at Death Grips have a new video to match their track "Hustle Bones." Let's take a look, shall we?
(I've heard of money laundering, but this is ridiculous!)
(I've heard of making the same joke 100 other people have already made, but this is just sad!)
I, for one, am still enjoying the boys' proficiency at making simple yet effective music videos. I also cannot help but enjoy their teasing of the Information Age via their continuing refusal to comment on their infamously canceled tour. Whatever your current feelings on the band, you can step back and admire how well they understand the internet--no information is always more interesting and more tantalizing than showing your hand all at once. It's refreshing to not know something.
Considering that nearly two years have passed since eclectic electronic producer Derwin Schlecker, a.k.a. Gold Panda, put his outstanding debut LP, Lucky Shiner, I'm hoping that a followup isn't very far away. Until then, we have this freshly released single, which consists of tracks "Mountain" and "Financial District," to chew on.
Each song finds the producer further exploring the type of Eastern samples that could be found in his past work, but also dabbling in a few other flavors. Perhaps most notably, the percussion resembles that of hip hop much more closely than Panda's music generally does. It apparently was a conscious decision; according to the beat maker's SoundCloud, "the 808 snares on 'Mountain' are a nod to Noah '40' Shebib and some-time Drake collaborators Boi-1da."
Stream the tracks below, and look for a physical release of the 7" on June 11 via Ghostly International.
Popular rave/dance crew Animal Collective have announced that their forthcoming album is called Centipede Hurts and is due in September. It's a concept album that concerns a young Panda Bear's addiction to Centipede. Pitchfork Media responded to the news by immediately awarding the album a 10.
What's everyone listening to this week?
Alexxander Borg (@HelloAlexxander): While I am capable of studying while listening to music lyrics, I spent my week listening to instrumental music while preparing for finals (#mylifesucksrightnow). Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Boards of Canada, and Steve Reich, I have you to thank.
Danny Spiteri (@dannyspiterijr): With the sun in full force, I found it to be a good time to return to Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, Panda Bear's Person Pitch, and Neon Indian's Psychic Chasms. I'm also really enjoying Zammuto's self-titled album, as well as Lone's new LP.
Kyle Shoemaker (@_Shoey): I've been listening to the debut album from the Tins entitled Life's A Gas and decided that it's really great. You should all buy it when it comes out. Otherwise, I bought the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft and I've been playing that like it's my job.
Mark Gillis (@Mark__Gillis): The only thing that has mattered to me this week is that I've listened to Pinkerton by Weezer. I'm ashamed to say that it took me this long to get to it, but I've basically had it on repeat, and I don't see myself getting tired of it any time soon.
Steve Jones (@vestenet): Cory Johnson just made one of the best Zelda tributes and if you are not listening to it I hate you. Otherwise, Depeche Mode and early of Montreal have been fun to like all over again.
