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FEATURED: Apache Beat and HEALTH open for Crystal Castles tonight
If you were one of the lucky ones to score tickets to the Crystal Castles/Apache Beat/HEALTH/Team Robespierre noise-punk extravaganza at Mercury Lounge tonight, good on you for your concert-going skills. If you missed out well, we have consolation for you, in the form of free MP3s! A while back we released tracks from both Apache Beat (who played a leather bar at SXSW this year) and HEALTH, so here they are again.
Download: Apache Beat - Tropics (Bitchee Bitchee Ya Ya remix)
Download: HEALTH - Triceratops (Acid Girls 2STEPS2FREEDOM mix)
Download: HEALTH - Triceratops (Acid Girls Before the Dancefloorasaurases Ruled the Earth mix)
Download: HEALTH - The problem Is (Thrust Lab remix)
The first time we saw Apache Beat is was opening for Crystal Castles and Studio B last year, and the performance has been seared into our memory forever (and not just because of the strobe lights, ya dig).
DOWNLOAD: Ecstatic Sunshine - Little Big Dipper
If Beethoven had a.d.h.d. and tourette's and an advance copy of Please Kill Me, maybe "Fur Elise" woulda been "Little Big Dipper" instead of a McDonald's commercial. Reinforcing the "Baltimore got something in the water" theory, Ecstatic Sunshine virtuosically shred and shit on everything that came before them with playfully violent instrumental send-ups and throw-downs of classic punk ragers, playing with form like Lennie played with mice. It looks like this. It sounds like this:
DOWNLOAD: The Big Sleep - Pinkies
The Big Sleep, with their glistening forearms and permanent frowns, may end up being remembered as the last heroes of the lower east side before it went to high rise hell. Their music, 100% muscle, comes in vulgar thrusts too brutal to coexist with $6000 apartments and $15 hamburgers. Pure, relentless darkness.
DOWNLOAD: Health- The Problem Is (Thrust Lab Remix)
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Put on your Blu-blockers and play it all day. Frenetic waves of synthesized blistered rays- perfect whether you are kicking ass on X-box, cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway, or the world is burning down around you and you are scrambling to seek cover (with headphones on). The LA noise rock foursome gave us another remix and it is spicy, apocolyptic and energy-infused.
Health's SXSW Schedule:
FRIDAY 14TH
1PM - La Zona Tosa [Village Voice / LA Weekly]
4PM - The Side Bar [NAIL / Fanatic]
11:50PM - Flamingo Cantina [Lovepump / Panache Showcase]
SATURDAY 15TH
2PM - Austin Convention Center [SXSW Day Stage]
4PM - Volume [Stereogum / Paste]
8PM - Mrs. Bea's Bar - [Todd P]
DOWNLOAD: The Death Set - Negative Thinking
As you may have read, everything's been evening out these days. So, to even out the fact that today is my birthday, I give you The Death Set. And to even out my overwhelmingly positive attitude, the song of choice will be "Negative Thinking."
But e-goddamned-nough about me! The Death Set! In case you've been taking a nap in the bathtub, The Death Set is two skinny young punks with dopey hair who set up shop in the middles of basements and living rooms around the country, throw down their gloves and just go totally batshit mental, taking every living thing in earshot, eyeshot and noseshot with them. And it's not that angry-dudes-in-black-on-black-hats noise either. It's sugar. CANDY. Sisters. Brothers. Sisters! It's just plain berserk. The stuff of madman foamy-smile seizures. How can you not pump your arms until somebody gets hurt?!?! Remember that Mae Shi jam from a few weeks back? Remember Bert Hammond's old band the whatevers? Dudes. Same wave of raucous and ridiculous. I'm shimmying so hard, even now, as I type. Download, crank and ahhh ahhh ahhh ahhh stroke the fuck out.
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOAD: Xolotl - Track 1
Xolotl is a soundtrack for a Monday like this that's not real or happening. You spent the weekend away, your head's heavy and low and still on yesterday. The city has begun to offend you.
Xolotl can't save Monday but it can at least make it feel like a dramatic foreign movie. Untitled sound collages burble along, landmarked by chimes and haunts of singing saws and static. They're aggressively sleepy. One of the songs is like pirate radio Edward Scissorhands with a cough. There isn't much for melody or lyrics, but who needs them today?
Xolotl's from Chicago. Xolotl Coyo. Seventeen, probably a dude, but honestly not 100% sure. Not because of looks or laziness or any of that. Just because we respect Xolotl's privacy. Here's some music.
DOWNLOAD: Atlas Sound - Quarantined
Left to his own devices, Bradford Cox is one fascinatingly honest kook. To the eye-rolling annoyance of his sometimes bandmates, Deerhunter shows often devolve into slurred confessionals about homesickness, chemical dependency or whatever else happens to be on Bradford's mind.
As usual, bandmates' trash turns out to be our treasure, because that unapologetic rawness blabbers along with and defines every note of Atlas Sound debut, Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel. The result is like... if Xiu Xiu dropped the shock therapy theatrics and just plain old said something. No offense Xiu Xiu. We're certainly not mad at you. But instead of beating around the bush with screwy art school implications, Bradford comes right out and confesses at your feet. "I'M WAITING TO BE CHANGED." As for the art... he saves it for the music, which, in the case of this free download, is a plainly hypnotic chime loop that sounds how Tokyo looks in the movies, if that makes any sense. Take it.
FEATURED: A Place To Bury Strangers
We first saw Brooklyn noise punks A Place To Bury Strangers sometime in about 2003: they were pretty much unknown expect for a devoted handful of NYC music scenesters who began to hail them as the second coming of My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Suicide all at once. Thye fell off our radar for a second but bounced back in 2007, with a new, critically-acclaimed self-titled album. Culture Bully has some more info on the resurrection of APTBS.
Band Of The Day #18 - HEALTH "Triceratops" (ACID GIRLS Remixes)
When bodies lie in heaps, there’s little dignity in dancing to hardcore. Knees strut, muscles rupture and grind to this awkward racket; ‘til the wallflower goes mad with a blade and then the disco’s all to shit, all at sea among blood and oil spewed like milk and grease have been before in these pages. Obviously though, it’s not quite the same, and nor will the dancefloor ever be again after this twin rhythmic test; even if HEALTH’s rampant ‘Triceratops’ conducts all his menace in bedroom coreography now that the Acid Girls are interested.
Having had glitchers Crystal Castles shifting the bastard behemoth from its rust-ridden docking for a recent re-jig of ‘Glitter Pills’, Lost Angelese noiseniks HEALTH find their shrieking neu-kraut hardcore turmoil again lathered in lubricant for this pair of remixes from California’s fluo-kid affiliated Acid Girls.
Rubbing a Euro-pop stink up against HEALTH’s volatile noise, bleak beats are chewed up and regurgitated with a think-on-your-feet dancefloor ingenuity, putting a still-beating heart under the track’s detached neo-tribal stomp. Ultimately though, you can dress a ‘Triceratops’ up in whatever flimsy finery you want, it’s still gonne be a fucking triceratops.
“Are you broken? Are you leaving? Is your blood red? Are you breathing?”
Feet stomp, still-hearts beaten tonight.
Download: HEALTH - 'Triceratops' (Acid Girls 2Steps2Freedom Mix)
Download: HEALTH - 'Triceratops' (Acid Girls Before Dancefloorasaurases Ruled the Earth Mix)
- Samuel Strang and Kev Kharas
DiScover Christmas Party Special - TIRED IRIE, ROLO TOMASSI, ERRORS
A special three-way today, incorporating a previous Band of the Day and two Hot New Acts; all three play our free-entry DiScover Christmas Party this Saturday, the 15th of December.
First up: Tired Irie. This Leicester four-piece play jerk-punk for ADHD kids taken with the current stutter-riffs of Foals and stateside exponents of avant-rawk Battles and Q And Not U. Taken from their recently released self-titled EP, via Try Harder (Jonquil, Blanket, Youthmovies), ‘Sumerian’ is the sort of instant-fix frolic that so few bands master the composing of, but this sprightly foursome appear to have licked.
Listen: Tired Irie - 'Sumerian' @ MySpace
Next along: Rolo Tomassi. From Sheffield, these five young things craft the sort of cacophony comparisons to The Locust sell hella short. It’s wired, weird, wonderful: ‘w’ words yet to be thought and posted the way of the OED. Fronted by a diminutive female vocalist by the name of Eva, Rolo Tomassi are true charmers off stage and beastly brutes on it; their self-titled EP of 2006 earned itself a 9/10 review on DiS and an album’s expected in 2008. For fans of uncompromising modern rock with a wickedly menacing edge.
Listen: Rolo Tomassi - ‘Film Noir’ @ MySpace
And topping our trio: Errors. Hopefully you’ve already downloaded – sorry, Drownloaded – their ‘Hans Herman’ track; click to their MySpace page, though, to expand your knowledge before their headline set on Saturday. Our choice is ‘Salut! France’, issues as a limited-edition seven-inch in early 2007 and now all but sold out everywhere. You might be able to buy a copy from the band themselves, if you’re lucky. Glitch-fuelled dance rock for fans of Battles and Q And Not U and… oh look… we’ve gone full circle back to Tired Irie. Nice work, succinct blurb-spew.
Listen: Errors - ‘Salut! France’ @ MySpace
More details on the DiScover Christmas Party can be found here.
- Mike Diver
- Photography by Tom Barnes
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