The Alps: new album ‘Easy Action’ coming soon on Mexican Summer
March 21, 2011
Easy Action is the new album from SF’s The Alps, out March 29th on Mexican Summer. The noisier parts of “For Isabel” feel more abrasive than Le Voyage, the band’s previous record, but the song also maintains the group’s talents for genre-mixing and lush soundscapes. Below, revisit Le Voyage, streaming in full courtesy of Type Records.
Also, one note about the image above: the LP comes packaged in a “fold-out pyramid sleeve” that looks pretty awesome. Vinyl nerds, has this sort of 3D foldout been done before, or is this a first?
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KIT offers free remix album featuring remixes by Xiu Xiu, Stereo Total, and more
March 21, 2011
In anticipation of KIT‘s current European tour, the band invited a number of musicians to remix their song “Rain,” from last year’s album, Invocation. Names as diverse as Xiu Xiu, White Rainbow, Nero’s Day At Disneyland, and Stereo Total offered reinterpretations of the song. The remixes have been collected, along with some additional alternate mixes and outtakes, on a new album that the band is currently giving away.
Download the remix mixtape now. The link to the tape expires on March 24th, so be sure to act quickly.
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Recommended, 3/21-3/27: Antonionian, Burger Boogaloo, Parson Red Heads, and more
March 21, 2011
Every Monday, we’ll be offering you early picks for some of the week’s best concerts. Do you think we omitted something worthwhile? Let us know in the comments! Be sure to visit our Local Concert Calendar for an expanded set of daily listings.
Jordan Dalrymple (Subtle/13 & God) just released his first album of funky, electronic pop as Antonionian and he has an album release show on March 23rd at the Rickshaw Stop (8pm, $10). Doseone and Jel support their Anticon labelmate with a solo set and a DJ set respectively.
Antonionian – “Into the Night”
Burger Boogaloo: Three days of garage, punk, and rock and roll
The Burger Boogaloo festival takes place at Thee Parkside and El Rincon from March 25th-27th. The fest features a bevy of surf/garage/trash/punk bands like The Traditional Fools, Mean Jeans, Moonhearts, Ty Segall, Davila 666, Strange Boys, and more.
Davila 666 ‒ Esa Nena Nunca Regreso
Moonhearts – “Shine”
The Strange Boys – “This Girls Taught Me a Dance”
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Sonny Pete – ‘Where the Shadows Pass (Odes to Death & Transience)’
March 18, 2011
SF folk-rock arist Sonny Pete releases Where the Shadows Pass (Odes to Death & Transience) on April 5th, and you can stream the album above.
Where the Shadows Pass was first inspired by a collection of Japanese death poems and is conceived as a series of vignettes and meditations on the nature of death and passage. You see, in the Buddhist tradition monks would each write a single haiku on their deathbed to reflect on the shadowy journey ahead. Despite the grim circumstance of their creation, these death poems were also a celebration of life both in this world and on to the next. The album, while brooding and wistful, also finds cause for celebration along its path through ominous territory.
Pete’s SF release show is at Viracocha on March 25th.
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Review & Photos: Caroliner, Gumball Rimpoche, Tony Dryer, Coagulator, pantyKhrist at Cafe Du Nord – 3/16/11
March 18, 2011
The music collective known as Caroliner has been intermittently active in the Bay Area for three decades. Shrouded in ever-changing pseudonyms and elaborate disguises, they profess to be the holders of a songbook created by a singing bull named Caroliner in the 1880′s.
Here’s how then (possibly now) member B’Sau-Sau explained it in a 1991 interview on their now-defunct website:
“Well the original Singing Bull was from back in the 1800′s, and the whole trip was uh … let’s see. To start off, this gal had a singing bull on a ranch. She took it around, it sang all these songs, it could pick up songs, you’d relay these songs to it and then it would get it back to you, it would sing it back to you … like a tape deck… right? And then, uh, so what she did is, she took it around, took it to all these mine camps, made a small little amount of money, you know, and entertained people. . . Anyway she goes back to the ranch, there’s nothin’ to eat, everything’s gone to hell, there’s no food, nothin’, so she cuts up Caroliner and eats it, wraps it in its own skin and it keeps on singin’. And then all the songs are whatever, passed down, and I got ‘em.”
Whatever you make of that, the band is no joke, musically or productively. They have issued at least 16 albums since 1985, in homemade packages of corduroy or adorned pizza boxes, they have spawned or been associated with members of countless bands including Deerhoof and possibly Mr. Bungle, and they have lately been appearing around once a year to put on one of the most remarkable live shows.
I have always been both surprised and selfishly happy that Caroliner isn’t more of a celebrated institution. Given how they do an amazingly good job at being the logical extension of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Magic Band and The Residents, not to mention the progenitors of noise bands like The Boredoms, one would think the inquiring microphones of All Things Considered or such like would have sniffed them out and exalted them years ago. But, as I say, thank your stars they didn’t. As it is, Caroliner Rainbow (who also add florid subtitles to the band name for each album or show – tonight, for example, they are Caroliner Rainbow Shade is Natural Composure) enjoys a concentrated, passionate fan base for their yearly appearences.
I felt that a band of such multiple angles deserved a review made up of many voices. So I enlisted my librarian friend, Lia Thomas to see what she could turn up about the band’s carefully guarded story. And I asked my friend Gage Kenady, whose sketch of an earlier Caroliner show appeared in the British music magazine The Wire, if he would once again recreate his impressions in art.
Lia, with her usual breathtaking genius, took all of five minutes to deluge me with more content than I could possibly digest, let alone summarize for you, our discerning readership. She used some fictional-sounding web service called The Wayback Machine to grant me access to the above-mentioned web site, and also established the following:
Caroliner was possibly founded by Gregg Turkington, aka the “anti” comic Neil Hamburger, who allegedly left early. Despite major and minor players rotating through at a dizzying pace, the project has been largely under the direction of the singer, who usually goes by the name of Grux. Early albums utilized more traditional instruments like banjo and bucket, albeit heavily altered as were the vocals. An aggressive noise rock/free jazz element has always been present, but as time went on the emphasis moved to electric bass, guitar and organ. They reputedly went bankrupt and took a hiatus in the mid-nineties.
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Scenes from South by Southwest 2011
March 18, 2011
South by Southwest is half done, with plenty of great sets from Yuck, Cloud Nothings, Toro Y Moi and others already in the books. Expect a more comprehensive rundown of music highlights at some point, but here are a few elements of the Austin experience so far.
Going to church and enjoying it
Having attended a show in St. David’s Historic Sanctuary on Wednesday, and one in the Central Presbyterian Church Iast night, I have at present spent as much time in Austin churches as in bars, although I expect that ratio to change going forward. Do churches make all music sound better? No, actually, as the cavernous ceilings of the Central Presbyterian unfortunately left Twin Shadow more muddled and echoey than befitted the band’s sleek, tightly-wound pop.
But for groups relying more on the space between sounds, church acoustics have a wonderful way of adding extra gravity to those little gaps. Low, a band that has perfected drawing emotional resonance from weighty silences, sounded fantastic, performing a set of mostly new songs for a packed St. David’s house. The Central Presbyterian seemed, too, like an appropriately somber venue for James Blake‘s minimalist R&B, and his vulnerable voice called to mind an electronics geek version of Antony Hegarty. tUnE-yArDs‘ Merrill Garbus started out songs at their most stripped-down before transforming vocal snippets and drum samples into intricate loops, building an enveloping world of sound on the fly.
Is it just the acoustics, though, or is there something in religious iconography and architecture — a giant cross hanging above a stage, a devout audience sitting in pews — that makes a church show feel especially meaningful in some way? Or is it simply a novelty thing? The easiest/most likely answer is a little bit of everything.
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Video: Eux Autres – “Under Rays”
March 17, 2011
Eux Autres – “Under Rays” from Nicholas Larimer on Vimeo.
From their 2010 album, Broken Bow, the new video from Eux Autres for “Under Rays” is out now. The video features a number of Muppet-like creatures, including a scaly Kermit the Frog lookalike. Eux Autres are currently finishing up their European tour.
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Michael Musika releases Spells on Friday, 3/18/11
March 17, 2011
Michael Musika @ Chasing The Moon 6.07.09 from Scott McDowell on Vimeo.
As the story goes, San Francisco’s Michael Musika was stranded on the side of a road in Colorado, when a coyote approached him and told him a story. That parable, we’re told, inspired him to begin playing music and, ultimately, to create his debut album, Spells. The album, an ambitious series of avant folk vignettes, is the result of two and a half years of work, and you can stream and buy it above.
Friday night, Musika’s having a record release show at the Rickshaw Stop (8:30pm, $12), where his band will include Eric Kuhn (Silian Rail), Matt Adams (Blank Tapes), Indianna Hale, Sleepy Todd, Kacey Johansing, and Emily Ritz (Honeycomb), among others. Brass Menazeri and Toshio Hirano also perform.
