EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Tangles - Tingaling + Momo
Some music is just so desperate to make an impression, battering you about the head with obnoxious noise, screaming at you in motto-punk couplets, blasting coruscating bass synths all over your sore, sorry face. But not Tangles. The impression Tangles make isn't immediately obvious. It sort of creeps on you and puts brains into drift. If you've clicked play you've not even reading this. I know you're not. But it's OK. You're entangled. Just let us know what you saw.
Sounds Like: Ducktails, Durutti Column, Emeralds
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Bombay Bicycle Club - Dust on the Ground (Banjo Or Freakout Remix)
Alessio Natalizia's world must be an endlessly rewarding place. His covers series eked new life from artists as diverse as Amy Winehouse and Burial and on the evidence of this the man seems able to listen to a fine but ultimately limited indie rock song and hear hidden galaxies, his take on Bombay Bicycle Club's "Dust on the Ground" exploding the Big Music ambition at the heart of the track into something satisfyingly vast. Shimmering with Katana guitar and evaporating horizons of fuzz, this Banjo Or Freakout version recalls a ton of bands and none all at once; too pop to be considered noise, really, but too noisy not to be compared to the sound of blowing brains.
Sounds Like: Aphex Twin, The Present, Phaseone
Bombay Bicycle Club - Dust on the Ground (Banjo Or Freakout Remix)
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: The Warlocks - Red Camera
For a name that didn't fit early incarnations of both The Velvet Underground and The Grateful Dead, The Warlocks has done right by Bobby Hecksher, who adopted the name for his then eight-strong band of pranksters in 1998. Since their inception, Hecksher's Warlocks have released five albums of very strong, cataclysmic psych-rock, and "Red Camera," from their newest one, The Mirror Explodes, extends the trip further. After building on python-ish drones and tambourines hits for the better part of four minutes, the band really hit their stride in the closing moments, when what seems like the trillionth guitar covers everything in inches of beastly drone. MP3 premiere below; The Mirror Explodes is out May 19th through Tee Pee.
Sounds like: The Brian Jonestowne Massacre, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Black Mountain
DOWNLOAD: A Broken Consort - The Elder Lie
A Broken Consort is Richard Skelton, a multi-instrumentalist from the northwest UK region of Lancashire. Skelton's obligue, string-heavy excursions under the pseudonym (one of his many) are usually released on his own Sustain Release Private Press, which he started in tribute to his late wife Louise, releasing her artwork alongside his music. Box Of Birch is the second A Broken Consort album, though it's the first to get picked up by Tompkins Square Records (home of James Blackshaw and the excellent Imaginational Anthem compilations) for release in the U.S. "The Elder Lie" is the record's closer, a delicate eight minute passage of tempting, bow-stringed drones.
The Wire also has an exclusive video made by Skelton to accompany the record, you can view that right here.
Sounds like: John Cale, Psychic Ills, James Blackshaw
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Night Control - CS + Good Looks
The reclusive Christopher Curtis Smith is Night Control, who used to be Crystal Shards, who doesn't do interviews and doesn't play live. The man's putting out a message: he does not want to be found. He's just as slippery on record, his Death Control album - a collection of tracks recorded at home over the years and out now through Kill Shaman - harbouring eternal pop elixir behind a cross-hatch of noise and guitar shrapnel, found sound and the songs from the last 30 years that are still cool even though everyone knows the words. You can't hear any of the words on Death Control - that would be too vain, probably, for Smith to hack. Instead there's the general feeling, despite the dischord, that all is or will soon be well in the world. And who doesn't want that feeling? About as many of you who won't like "Good Looks" or non-album, totally exclusive, future 7" cut "CS". Both sound freshly relieved of some painful ordeal and they're beautiful for it, frankly.
Sounds Like: Ariel Pink, Velvet Underground, A Grave With No Name
DOWNLOAD: Blues Control - Tenku You
The act chosen to warm-up the crowd on Tuesday night at Animal Collective's much jabbered over show in New York, Queens pair Blues Control's jams tend to be shyer, happy to exist at the peripheries Panda Bear and co. stalk rather than burst into those moments of explicit, ecstatic pop limelight we're sure you're more than familiar with. A fragile, mysterious and red-eyed wander through lush ambient territories, "Tenku You" will appear on a forthcoming 2x4 12" issued by the From The Nursery label, while Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse will release their third album on Siltbreeze later in 2009.
Sounds Like: Blancmange, Gentle Friendly, Attillio Mineo
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Psychic Ills - Meta
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Brooklyn noiseniks Psychic Ills took some time off last year to pursue various projects and home remedies; lucky for us 2009 finds them back with a new record, Mirror Eye, a renewed sense of vigor and cohesion, and this exclusive track. "Meta" is a study in variation through repetition that winds together the guitars, percussion and electronics that have long characterized their sound and forms into a drone behemoth. Listen carefully for the way the snaps and crackles play off the sheets of delay.
Sounds Like: Gang Gang Dance, The Black Angels, A Place to Bury Strangers
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Ducktails - The Mall + Daily Vacation
Remember when things were simple enough that when strangers at parties asked what music you listened to, you could reply with something as generic as "rock" or "dance" or "hip-hop"? Seems to me like those days of easy answers are gone - which in some ways is a bummer, because now all you have for those strangers is a shoulder shrug and some mumbling as you try to convey that you're really big on post-ironic, tropical psych-drone at the moment without sounding like an utterly obtuse f*ck. 23-year-old Matthew Mondanile is the man behind Ducktails, as any true fan of post-ironic, tropical psych-drone will already know given the smattering of his tracks that have surfaced online over the last month or so. What you might not be aware of, though, is that Mondanile can sing - musically "The Mall" follows a familiar meandering, sun-lit path but having the New Jersey kid's voice over the top gives it an extra dimension for you to plug into. "Daily Vacation", also from Ducktails' new self-titled LP (forthcoming on Not Not Fun), sees vocals shy away again, allowing gilded guitar and moseying drums to drift blissfully like a whole warm front through your drafty mid-winter window frames.
Sounds like: Ecstatic Sunshine, Durutti Column, White Williams
DOWNLOAD: Teengirl Fantasy - Now That's What I Call Volume 2
When I was younger my sisters used to lock themselves away with this game called Dream Phone. From what I can gather, the basic premise saw a queue of potential sweethearts forming when plucked from a deck of cards, leaving my sisters to figure out which cheesy suitor actually had the balls to pick up the phone and make his pitch down through the lurid pink handset. Teengirl Fantasy duo Logan and Nick seem to share the giddy infatuation of the adolescent female, though theirs is with an array of studs pulled from what you could vaguely call the dance music stable – “Now That’s What I Call Volume 2” shares the shapeshifting, saccharine delight of Lindstrøm's work, though doesn’t touch heavily on any of Hans Peter’s methods; leaving them free to meld the cool drone and glistening synth lines of kraut Godheads Harmonia with dubstep’s busy hi-hat hiss. As snares crack and ecstatic female vocals flutter ecstatically toward the back of the mix, you can hear Teengirl realising that it’d be impossible for any one individual to live up to the clubland pinup their minds had conceived – but they find conviction in that, retreating blissfully into the impossible dimensions of their own daydream.
Sounds Like: The Samps, Andy Stott, Jonas Reinhardt
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: The Present - Love Melody
With a major hand in the production of Animal Collective’s Sung Tongs, Panda Bear’s Person Pitch and Born Ruffians’ debut album, Rusty Santos is a man who could, you feel, afford to rest smugly upon his laurels for a month or two. Clearly that’s a sentiment the New Yorker – relocated from his native Fresno, California – does not share, as he prepares to release World I See with his own band The Present. As you’d expect in light of past adventures, World I See makes full use of studio wizardry; voices distant and pitch-shifted, effects otherworldly, the whole thing kind of sounds like Joe Meek may have done by now if he hadn't confiscated Heinz Burt's shotgun. "Love Melody" is representative of a listen that’s challenging, no doubt – but it’s a listen that ultimately rewards as stream-of-consciousness sections sleepwalk beautifully into each other, shedding light on an amusing, startling, expertly-melded record that truly needs to be heard in full for maximum effect.
Sounds like: Angelo Badalamenti, Ecstatic Sunshine, cLOUDDEAD
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