EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: HECUBA - Sir (Lucky Dragons Remix)
Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to HECUBA, one of the stranger groups I've had the pleasure to write about. The Los Angeles-based duo thoroughly smash up pop songs and string together remaining shards with wide-eyed glee. Their latest single for Manimal Vinyl, "Sir," is a shambolic tune whose chorus deconstructs 60's pop songs and is backed by a remix from cut n' paste duo, Lucky Dragons. Their version is more cohesive but still off-kilter, densely layered with vocal snippets and shimmering with sampled bells. If normal music is your enemy, HECUBA (and Lucky Dragons) are the friends you were looking for.
Sounds Like: Pit Er Pat, Arthur Russell, Excepter
HECUBA - Sir (Lucky Dragons remix)
Previously:
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOAD: Edward Bostitch - Lone Wolf
Twenty days later and the fan mail's still pouring in for Edward Bostitch. Like we told you last time, E.B. is a couple of 15-year-olds spinning boredom into rambling atmosphere that can only roughly be labeled "song." Clearly they've been listening to M.Ward and Panda Bear but they're not trying to knock em off. Not trying to get signed or win fans or even really make music. More like they're letting us eavesdrop on their far out, and to most of us forgotten, young dude states of mind that go everywhere and nowhere and never really settle down or second guess themselves. Obviously growing older is a rotten idea. Here's some of the fan mail and two more exclusive Edward Bostitch downloads.
"that edward bostitch is so good it almost hurts my feelings."
"They deserve a greater audience on the basis of their music, not just their age, but the latter certainly amplifies the impressiveness of the former. I'm more worried they may grow out of whatever it is that causes them to make such a glorious noise than anything else. They need good looking after."
"can we get them famous???????"
Yeah let's try.
DOWNLOAD: Edward Bostitch - Lone Wolf
DOWNLOAD: Edward Bostitch - Riddles & Rhymes
DOWNLOAD: Edward Bostitch - Balderdash
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOAD: The Mae Shi - I Get (Almost) Everything I Want
If you have windows or doors or any fragile items or a roof, you better take this one outside. Disguised as experimental L.A. punk, it's actually a raging girlpower anthem that completely relieves this modern world of its need for Destiny's Child or whoever else. Forget girlpower. It's an everyonepower anthem. Dudes. Watch it define our generation. Seriously. It'll take like two minutes. For real. It's the new National Anthem. Twenty-five guys singing their absolute hearts and heads off only instead of words coming out they're just puking adrenaline all over the place and there are stars and fireworks and everyone's holding sparklers and your sister and her friends are all crying. We dare you not to get married to The Mae Shi. There's just no way you'll be able to resist. Listen to this goddamned song loud right now.
I WANT ALMOST EVERYTHING AND I GET ALMOST EVERYTHING I WANT.
The Ivy Wire #1; or, who doesn’t want to go to a carnival? A carnival in outer space?
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Eyes up, bleak beak. Here’s relief from the dread of deep-winter, a rope dangled down the pit.
Download: El Guincho – ‘Fata Morgana’
There may’ve been a few seconds doubt, but there’s not much at all, really, to be sticking ‘round for. Wait impatient ‘til they’re out of sight and break the evening news curfew; gripping the lax vine and taking leave of the damp, dark cave that’s England’s winter while Huw Edwards relates knife crime, his burring through static somewhere in the background.
Up and out, onto the roof, and there’s all the usual light and dark there, as well as the warming roar of a distant carnival.
“I just wanted Alegranza to be a space age-exotica kind of record. Like Martin Denny, Esquivel, Attilo Mineo, Arthur Lyman, Jimmie Haskell and all that. The kind of record you play and it makes you feel like travelling to all these places but never stopping at one and then finding an empty space in the middle for you to get into it.”
El Guincho is Canary Islander Pablo Díaz-Reixa, and his ‘Fata Morgana’ adequately occupies that empty, rarely-tapped upon space in your imagination, lulling you into a gentle doze of dazzled pans and vocal/mellotron samples from the days when even fatty Presley's tropical paradise couldn’t break the monochrome of TV.
“All the joy of young people in love,” proclaims some old card, arms open, before the song remembers what it was laying awake all night waiting for and leaps to it, chiming in with steel drums so brilliant they must be pure, space-age silver, an hymnal so unreal it must be exotica and an enthusiasm that makes you feel ashamed for spending your nights locked in the house, thoughtless in front of televised karaoke contests, lest the world should end somewhere in the middle of Rod Stewart; act III.
Alegranza can and shall be bought in its entirety from here.
Eyes out, stretching far across to the other side of the Atlantic like that tidal wave that’s gonna wipe out America’s East Coast pretty soon, to the fertile concrete growing Brooklyn’s avant-garde.
“My Girlfriend and I have been really into High Places since last summer,” continues Pablo. “They’re one of my present favourite bands for sure… what? I think there is maybe some similar approach in a way, yeah. Like working with major scales, giving that sensation of light. More light and less drama.”
There’s even less drama with High Places, their take on tropicalia more distant than el Guincho’s and slightly washed out, holidaying half-memories at the back of Brooklyn minds.
Download: High Places – ‘New Grace’
Nevertheless, Mary Pearson and Robert Barber should be commended on bringing palm trees to shade a ”New York [that]’s an expensive town with a lot going on.
“It's a hustle for almost anyone," continues Mary. "You can't really afford to sit around in this city. Plus, you know so many amazing things are being made all around you. I think that artistic impulse overshadows the grit and the noise. Or maybe it just sweetens it or something.”
Their noise is certainly a sweet one, gleefully realising it shares interests with el Guincho in “just trying to spread good feelings no matter which method you choose to express it.”
On ‘New Grace’, a track previously donated to a compilation for an Australian animal shelter (click), High Places choose to express it in a cheeky, slack-shouldered desert island-step playfight between insolent drum thuds and those ubiquitous steel pans.
“We do love the beach.” Yeah? Flick the lights out.
MURDER IN THE DARK!
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Invisible Conga People are the latest to be lined-up for a release through the flawless Italians Do It Better record-house, following, head-down, in the sequin-surrendering footsteps of Glass Candy and Chromatics before getting lost down a side-alley, the wrong turn leading, unalterably, to creepy ends.
And then there’s a man, speaking Turkish.
“We have a cheap MIDI-synced light setup of three clip-on light bulbs that we've programmed to pulse in time to our beats,” says Justin Simon. “Every time we play a show we ask the club to turn out all the lights so that the only light remaining is coming from us, but so far every place has refused.”
“I definitely feel like our music makes more sense in a dark room that pulses with a low light.”
Listen for immediate understanding.
Elsewhere, there have been changes in the ranks of Ecstatic Sunshine. The duo have become a trio, following the departure of guitarist Dustin Wong and the arrival of Kieran Gillen and David Zimmerman on electronics/percussion and electronics respectively.
Guitarists dropped to one, electronists tripled; you can probably see where the band see themselves in the future.
“I definitely have a feeling the guitar aspect is going to be rare in the new line-up,” says Justin the departed. “Definitely more in the positive drone electronic based direction. I'm curious what they are going to come up with.”
A new EP, entitled WAY, will be issued through Cardboard Records in April. You can be overwhelmed by a track from that at Ecstatic Sunshine’s MySpace page, here.
‘Til next week, then, when the Ivy Wire bothers gleaming again…
- Kev Kharas
[N.B. Oh, I forgot to mention an interesting tidbit of trivia linking your choice of bands. I (Rob) used to be in a band called Sachromanic Targets with half of (Eric) Invisible Conga People. And High Places' second NY show was ICP's first.
Thanks!
-Rob, High Places]
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