EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Roses Kings Castles - Entroubled
Most people know (or don’t know) Adam Ficek as the guy who keeps Pete Doherty’s band Babyshambles on beat; a thick-skinned drummer who makes sure songs like “Fuck Forever” don’t fall apart at the seams. This is, as you can imagine, no small feat. On the last Babyshambles arena tour, Ficek took his down time away from the insanity to map out some soft pop tunes of his own, eventually laying them to tape in a friend’s bedroom over two weeks when, as he puts it, “things in Shambles camp were halted due to incarcerations and other hiccups.” (What else is new.) The resulting album under the Roses Kings Castles moniker came out last week in England, led by a weightless lo-fi carousel joint called “Entroubled,” which we’re offering exclusively below. We've been playing the whole album for awhile now and, you know what, we're getting some goddamn ICE CREAM.
Sounds like: Babyshambles, Love Is All, Guided By Voices
STREAM: Starf*cker - Burnin' Up
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Starf*cker: Definition
#1: A person or persons who uses popularity and celebrity acquaintances to get further in business or social situations, sometimes without even having sex. (Thanks Urban Dictionary; Jamie Burke, we're looking at you).
#2: An individual who enhances his/her self worth by sexual contact with the perceived power figure in any given situation. (As Monica Lewinksy said herself, "I'm well-known for something that isn't great to be well-known for.")
#3: A Portland Oregon-based band that has the balls to take a well-known kareoke favorite, written by the biggest sex symbol in the world, (Madonna folks, it's Madonna) and turn it into dripping-basement White Williams-esque lo-fi grind, complete with gritty keyboard, synths, computer gadget whispers and slurring effeminate male vocals. A band unafraid to make sweet happy-go-lucky humorous pop unfettered by any petty, negative 'top 40' connotations. See: German Love and Rawnald.
Sounds Like: White Williams, Deer Hunter, Atlas Sound
Stream: Starf*cker - Burnin Up (Madonna Cover)
Download: Starf*cker - German Love
Download: Starf*cker - Rawnald
Starf*ckers @ Bad Man Recording Company
DOWNLOAD: That Ghost - I Crossed Out The Options
Santa Rosa, CA is about fifty-five miles north of San Francisco off the 101 highway, the largest city in California’s wine country and home at times to ultimo artistes like the late Charles Shultz and Tom Waits. That Ghost is Ryan Schmale, an eighteen year old Santa Rosa resident who makes fuzzy pop music that sounds like Guided By Voices dealing with the pressures of high school (which, I guess, is kind of what it is). According to dude’s MySpace, he’s already chalked up five out of print releases since December of 2006, including three full-lengths and two EPs (holler prodigies), but just finally released his first proper seven-inch on Brooklyn startup Two Syllable last week. We’ve got the A-Side for download—“I Crossed Out The Options”, a swift three-chord pop song sticky with over-trebled guitars and Schmale doing his best Jonathan Richman by mumbling lines about calling and walking down halls and wasting time and stuff like that. This, however, will not waste your time, unless you consider sitting around drinking Dr. Pepper and eating goldfish while listening to records a waste of time, which would be pretty lame.
Sounds like: Guided By Voices, The Strokes, Deerhunter
FEATURED: Jason Reitman at the SEEN RCRD LBL blog
Now that the hype has settled down, we think we can all agree that in retrospect, Juno was pretty awesome. OK, it might not be the Heathers that Diablo Cody had hoped for, but it’s a solid movie, with one of its biggest components being the soundtrack (which, somewhat randomly, landed a reunited Moldy Peaches on The View). Juno’s director, Jason Reitman, recently created a playlist of inspiring tunes for West coast radio station KCRW, and of course, where music and media cross paths, there’s always the SEEN RCRD LBL blog to report on the results. Check out their commentary on the playlist below.
DOWNLOAD: Richard Swift - Phone Coffins
Since we’re hooked on Richard Swift & his crazy eclectic music range- we thought we’d hook you up with two more tracks –both wildly divergent. “Phone Coffins” is a sassy blues track from “Richard Swift as Onasis,” channeling Beck & at times The Doors. Like “Knee- High Boogie Blues” before it, it’s got a playful edge. Then on a totally different plane is “Shooting A Rhino Between The Shoulders.” Part of Swift’s Instruments of Science and Technology, Swift carves a haunting, bare atmospheric plane- out of pulsing heart-beats, the mild clinking of computer keys, and subtle, psychedelic wheels of sound. It’s what I would play if I was shooting a rhino……on mars.
p.s. we included the two other downloads from last week below for your enjoyment....
SOUNDS LIKE: Beck, The Doors, Tangerine Dream
Download: Richard Swift – Phone Coffins
Download: Richard Swift – Shooting A Rhino Between The Shoulders
Download: Richard Swift - Kisses From The Misses
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOAD: Edward Bostitch - Balderdash
Edward Bostitch is a coupla 15-year-olds who might be the accidental Velvet Underground. This guy Alex, he taught himself piano in a week. The other kid, Benny ("Be"), he got a stack of 9th grade poems with Cs and Ds on top and hair like a squid. After school they get in the bathtub and knock out wobbly lo-fi dirges, one after the other like cans on a fence, right off the tops of their crumby heads.
Vocals are way underwater and at least seven layers deep, set to halfass Casio heartbeats, rusty crybaby accordion, pencil scratch percussion, whatever they got around, apparently. The songs, with their long gone, dislocated lyrics, stumble out - against the odds - with this wild far off sound that, by virtue of its innocence, comes across bracing, religious and desperate. Like their pubescent heads'd bust if they didn't let it out. Listen up.
DOWNLOAD: The Antlers
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Screw dismal shoe-gazing, The Antlers’s music is pure "star-gaze." Like Sufjan Stevens or The Shins, Peter Siblerman liberates his thoughts in whispering sing-song over acoustic guitar and slowly flourishing instrumental progressions. I call it ‘star-gaze’ because it’s not hard to imagine Silberman pondering up at the sky introspectively during songs like "The Universe Is Going to Catch You". After all, the 21-year-old produced and recorded "In the Attic of the Universe" on his lonesome, some in his Brookyln studio, some rustically recorded in his parent’s farmhouse. Hmm.....wonder how this one dude created a crescendoing symphony, with drums, handclaps, keyboard, xylophone and drums? You may have to ask them stars.
DOWNLOAD: The Antlers - The Universe Is Going to Catch You
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