EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOADS: Miracles - Embedded + Out of Service
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I went to see Fugazi play a free show at the Washington Monument around the time that Red Medicine came out, and I can remember feeling this intense sense of energy and possibility. I kept looking back and forth between the stage and the monument and waiting for lightning to strike, like on the cover of the first Bad Brains record. I know that's actually the Capitol building, but its basically the same idea of righteous power raining down on Babylon. Brooklyn's Miracles don't really remind me of Fugazi musically, but these songs do have a certain D.C. feel about them, and they definitely stir up some of the same structure-toppling emotions. Plus they have a record coming soon on Baltimore label Creative Capitalism, which is right down the street from Chocolate City. Cop these two songs and stay tuned.
Sounds Like: Unwound, Lungfish, Universal Order of Armageddon
Download: Miracles - Out of Service
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]
