On The RCRD: Here We Go Magic
Here We Go Magic are gearing-up to release their third album, A Different Ship, via Secretly Canadian on May 8. Produced by longtime Radiohead and Beck collaborator Nigel Godrich, the record is a sonically-rich leap forward – exactly the sort of evolution we love for a band entering veteran status. So obviously wanting to know more, we got the group's guitarist, Michael Bloch, to go On The RCRD and tell us about how the IRS and Time Warner were influences, the addictiveness of tea and how a big dinner party with the entire music industry might be amusing.
On The RCRD: Clark
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Chris Clark faces his albums with a bold perspective – each one another step in his solo journey yet also an opportunity to explore something totally new. His new one, Iradelphic (out now on Warp), is definitely his, well, sexiest. I mean, it opens with a fingerpicked guitar, has more allusions to jazz and fusion than you would imagine and even features some soulful vocals. For a man with a mastery of skeletal beats, this is as between-the-sheets as it gets.
We got Clark to go On The RCRD and tell us about how Public Enemy changed his game, how Walter White of Breaking Bad fame served as an inspiration (be careful, kids) and how the music industry rewards artists for staying in a confined lane.
SPONSORED POST: Film Premiere - Bad Brains: A Band In D.C.
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Aside from the obvious – they were the first all-black punk band – two additional things must be said of the early Bad Brains: they were the most ferocious musical tornado ever unleashed; a frantic, thrashing monster of a group that had absolutely no competitors for the crown of being the most hardcore of all of the hardcore bands in Washington, D.C.
They were also the best, most skilled musicians of any of their compatriots. Sure, they played buzz-saw punk rock music that sounded like a Black Sabbath album spinning at 45rpm, but they actually came from a jazz fusion background (think Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra!) before the energy of the D.C. hardcore scene turned their attention to punk.
Lead vocalist H.R. was, simply put, one of the greatest frontmen of the punk era, up there with Johnny Rotten or Jello Biafra as a presence so incendiary, so crazed and so utterly unhinged that you wondered if he was possessed. Backed by Dr. Know (guitar), Darryl Jenifer (bass) and H.R.'s younger brother, Earl Hudson, on drums, the Bad Brains would explode onto the stage like a nail bomb had gone off. If that prospect seemed worrisome, well, stand back!
It wasn't long before the group found they weren't able to play shows in their hometown, hence their famous number, "Banned in D.C." which has been appropriated for the title of the new film about the group, Bad Brains: A Band In D.C. co-directed by Mandy Stein and Ben Logan. The film actually started as an offshoot of another project about CBGBs, but as Stein told us "What director wouldn't want to tell this story?"
The 30+ years of the Bad Brains' existence has been fraught with interpersonal conflict— one epic argument was caught on video by the directors – but it's that tension that makes the band so great that also, perhaps, prevented them from being as big as they might have otherwise been. Band in DC features some fierce archival footage, more recent live performances and interviews with Henry Rollins, The Beastie Boys, Fugazi's Ian MacKaye, British black punk DJ and filmmaker Don Letts and The Cars' Ric Ocasek, who produced the band in the studio.
In the clip below, co-director Mandy Stein and Bad Brains singer H.R. discuss the film and the energy of the early Washington, D.C. punk scene.
"Bad Brains: A Band in DC" Interview at SXSW from Largetail on Vimeo.
SPONSORED POST: Indian Jewelry – Buzz Band
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The angular industrial stomp of Houston's Indian Jewelry has much in common with the sonic depravities of Faust, Suicide and fellow Texan weirdos the Butthole Surfers. Their live shows are seizure-inducing whirlwinds of evil, stroboscopic energy and throbbing power electronics delivered with the force of being hit by a Mack truck, but by all accounts, bandleaders Erika Thrasher and Tex Kerschen, a happily married married couple with a newborn baby girl, are two of the nicest and most well-adjusted people around who also happen to make ear-splitting rock and roll drones for a living.
Indian Jewelry is currently out on their "Expect Delays" tour in the Western region of the United States.
Is it true that you never rehearse? How does that work, do you all go into some sort of hypnotic mind-meld before you walk onstage?
Not exactly, we have rehearsed before, but it didn't go well. Now we rely more on a technique we call 'just try to listen to the song on your own time and then go for it.'
Are you two the new Kim and Thurston? How does your daughter like touring?
The new Kim and Thurston? We're not even the new Sonny and Cher. But if Kim and Thurston were forever lost in a steaming subtropical strip mall of a city, if Kim and Thurston were a little slow on the draw and didn't get along that well with others, if musicality was completely out the window, social climbing was altogether forbidden, and Thurston had to use a stepladder to reach the books on the high shelves... then maybe we could draw a likeness.
We do tour with our infant daughter, and she has seen almost every graffiti-ridden alleyway in the US and she's barely seven months old. She gets five adults fawning on her day and night. She hates the carseat but she loves the constant attention.
You must play in Austin a lot, what are the things that people just in town for the festival shouldn't miss?
We're from Houston, not all that far away, and here's what long experience has taught us: All this talk of "beer" and "barbecue" is a throwback to the Bush dynasty; before their reign Austin was a wilder, freer, more psychedelic place. So go veggie (or at least Tex-Mex) and seek out the more illicit realms of pleasure. That is to say, that, like everyone else you'll find us in line at Tamale House!
Where will you be playing during SXSW?
Playing our showcase with Future Blondes and Lumerians Saturday the 17th at the Iron Bear. That and a party via Austin Psych Fest at the SpiderHouse sometime on the 15th.
This raw, single-shot video was recorded at an Oakland CA underground venue that must remain un-named to protect the complicit. Black out the room, then turn up the volume to make-believe you were there.
SPONSORED POST: Flosstradamus Exclusive Interview
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Chicago's Flosstradamus, J2K (Josh Young) and Autobot (Curt Cameruci) are in an-demand DJ duo, remix specialists and performers in their own right. Josh and Curt are closely associated with other Windy City acts like The Cool Kids, the irrepressible Kid Sister (who is in fact, Cameruci's older sister) and NY's ace turntablist A-Trak. They've performed on Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel and did some fancy footwork when they performed a song about peanut butter on kids show Yo Gabba Gabba.
In the video below, Flosstradamus talk about their music, the influence of Chicago House on their sound and plans for world domination. Their new EP is called Total Recall.
On The RCRD: Lower Dens
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Through hard work, great songwriting and visceral, intense live performances, Baltimore's Lower Dens became one of the more hyped, interesting indie rock bands with their debut LP Twin-Hand Movement. Now, the band is poised to return with a new one called Nootropics (May 1 via Ribbon Music) – a record which reached the peak of my anticipation list with its spellbinding, Kraut-infused single "Brains."
Read on as band member Will Adams steps-up to tell us about his (and our) favorite character actor, the positive influence of surrounding yourself with learners and how elusive the best qualities in a great song can be.
On The RCRD: Nite Jewel
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Nite Jewel, the project of LA's Ramona Gonzalez, explores the fine line between all-caps POP and textured sonic moods. On past work like the excellent Am I Real? EP, she found hooks in murky, lo-fi puddles, but she's really graduated on her latest effort One Second Of Love. As expected with a more confident, acclaimed artist, there's no hiding behind anything this time around.
We got Gonzalez to go On The RCRD to tell us about how TLC started her music journey, the influence of magical realism and why it's best to just ignore the world when you're making a record.
On The RCRD: Oberhofer
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Whether there's a single microphone in the room or glossy producer Steve Lillywhite at the board, Oberhofer practices a pointed hyper-melodic pop that's hard to resist. We got him to go On The RCRD and tell us why it's good for creatives to have scientist friends, what albums truly mean and how he would love to telepathically communicate with animals.
