DOWNLOAD: I Led 3 Lives - Dragracing
The walloping tribal electro-jazz of I Led 3 Lives’ “Dragracing” is about the closest thing auto sports and psychedelia have in common today. Swirling like smoke signals around a brisk amalgam of skittering breakbeats and Tony Williams-worthy chops, the guitars, keys, and bass of this New York trio build and build for nigh on six minutes here, pausing only to let one another breathe before dunking themselves back into the bubbling madness. I Led 3 Lives—possibly named after a short-lived fifties TV series?—just put out a record called Peace Now (word) on New York's Nublu, the label associated with the East Village space of the same name. If anyone’s caught the house band playing some of their marathon jam sessions in there on a Saturday night, you know what you’re in for here: pure intoxicating virtuosity.
Sounds like: Brazilian Girls, Secret Machines, The Tony Williams Lifetime
GHOSTLY WEEK EXCLUSIVE: The Sight Below - No Place For Us EP + Stream
All this week we’ll be releasing exclusive goodness from our partners at Ghostly International, who have a bevy of hot records coming out this fall. Check back every day for more tunes, and if you like what you hear, make sure to go cop some records over at their store.
Our week of Ghostly exclusives concludes in epic fashion today, as we look at some tracks from Seattle recluse and ambient drone fiend The Sight Below. The guy whose MySpace headline is “lonely is the new dance party” (really dude?) makes tunes that basically amount to humid marshes of tone, occasionally bolstered by a deadened low-end pulse but more often than not allowed to swell and grow as they please. These are artificial sounds interacting organically, playing off each other’s delay times and frequency, making really thick, goose-down noise in the process. Ghostly will be releasing The Sight Below’s debut album Glider this fall, and in anticipation we’ve got a stream of album track “Life’s Fading Light” as well as a download of the three-track preview EP, No Place For Us. If you’re clamoring for some ease-the-mind stuff tomorrow morning, this is your jam.
Sounds like: Atlas Sound, Valet, White Rainbow
The Sight Below At The Ghostly RCRD LBL Blog
Exclusive Download: The Sight Below - No Place For Us
Exclusive Download: The Sight Below - With Her Kiss (I'd Pass The Sky)
Exclusive Download: The Sight Below - Twice Failed
DOWNLOAD: Hopewell - Realms Of Gold
It sounds like Hopewell have seen some times. After ten-plus years of releasing records, touring relentlessly, fighting, staying in hospitals, recording with Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, CYHSY) and doing whatever else perpetually almost-there bands do (drink?), they’ve been hard at work on a sixth, self-produced album for the psych gurus at Tee Pee Records. “Realms Of Gold”—the first teaser from the sessions—is the sound of five dudes messing with war paint and black lights in their smelly basement, a battle anthem for those who kill brain cells and watch too much National Geographic TV and listen to too many early Cream records. The band will launch a trans-continental tour tomorrow night in Chicago (dates after the links), where they’ll open up for the deified My Bloody Valentine. So, if you’re headed to the gig, bring earplugs for sure and show up early, 'cause these dudes can get pretty loud too.
Sounds like: Cream, Fugazi, Grey Matter
Download: Hopewell - Realms Of Gold
Tour Dates For Hopewell:
09/27 - Chicago, IL Aragon Entertainment Center w/ My Bloody Valentine
10/01 - Youngstown, OH - Cedars Lounge
10/02 - Columbus, OH, Ruby Tuesday's w/ The Main Street Gospel
10/03 - Champaign, IL - Cowboy Monkey
10/04 - Lawrence, KS - Replay Lounge
10/06 - Aspen, CO TBD
10/08 - Las Vegas, CA - Beauty Bar w/ The Pandas
10/09 - Los Angeles, CA - Spaceland w/ Sky Parade
10/10 - Los Angeles, CA - Dublab Radio Session
10/12 - Pioneertown, CA - Clean Air Clear Stars w/ Dead Meadow, Black Angels & More
10/22 - Brooklyn, NY - CMJ Tee Pee Records Showcase
GHOSTLY WEEK EXCLUSIVE: School Of Seven Bells - Half Asleep / Caldo + Connjur
All this week we’ll be releasing exclusive goodness from our partners at Ghostly International, who have a bevy of hot records coming out this fall. Check back every day for more tunes, and if you like what you hear, make sure to go cop some records over at their store.
School Of Seven Bells make righteous space music for lovers. The suggestive but coy croon of sisters Claudia and Alejandra Dehaza can slide in and out of your ear canal like sonic fluid, but it’s the band’s fleshy shoegaze/stargaze dynamic that really elevates their tunes onto expansive plateaus. First single “Half Asleep” begins with crackly organic drum samples and builds radiantly outward, full at the chorus with unending guitarscapes from former Secret Machine Ben Curtis and the incessantly comforting coos of the Dehaza sisters. The track’s b-side is a short bi-lingual hymn messing in synth patches and harpsichord called “Caldo”, and you can grab the seven-inch wax with both right here. We're also offering “Connjur”, a heady pop track from the group’s Alpinisms album (10/28), for download, so check all three below, head over to the label’s RCRD LBL blog for more info and tour dates, and be on the lookout for more Ghostly material every day this week.
Sounds like: The Secret Machines, Daylight's For The Birds, M83
School Of Seven Bells At The Ghostly RCRD LBL Blog
Exclusive Stream: School Of Seven Bells - Half Asleep
Exclusive Stream: School Of Seven Bells - Caldo
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: The High Dials - Oisin, My Bastard Brother + Killer Of Dragons
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Almost four years ago at SXSW, after a long day spent collecting nothing but Tecate, hot sauce and ear damage, I managed to wearily see the High Dials on the insistence of a good friend. I think he’d managed to hear about them because he spent most of his week busking on the street for food, change, grass, or whatever and someone friendly had told him they were worth checking out. We were expecting the obligatory plug-in-and-play, twenty-minute SXSW set but what we managed to catch was a group of Canadians blowing the roof off the place like some psychedelic preachers of good vibery. They rocked the whole five-REALLY-normal-looking-dudes-playing-rock-music steez that Dr. Dog does so well but, instead of steeping it in loose Americana, sounded like they’d spent years tripping out to the baroque textures and harmonies of Fleetwood Mac and Love. Now the Montreal dudes are prepping their second LP Moon Country (out September 23 through Fontana) and today you can grab the album’s first single “Killer Of Dragons”—think a postmodern “Don’t Come Around Here No More” played by MGMT—as well as an exclusive track, “Oisin, My Bastard Brother”, which sounds like Duane Eddy playing with the New Pornographers. Grab them both below and check upcoming tour dates from the band (including a Brooklyn gig with Brian Jonestown) at their MySpace.
Sounds like: Dr. Dog, Fleetwood Mac, Drug Rug
Exclusive Download: The High Dials - Oisin, My Bastard Brother
STREAM: Grouper - Heavy Water & I'd Rather Be Sleeping + Invisible
Grouper is the insanely beautiful ambient project of Portland's Liz Harris. With Harris' Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill currently rocketing up my list of Records I Can't Stop Listening To And Crying With this year, I wanted very much to introduce to you quickly her lightly-gauzed acoustic pop tunes in case such an introduction was needed. Both "Heavy Water" and "Invisible" are cuts from said sophomore full-length and each are dreamscapes (think Cocteau Twins in Oregon green) worth exploring extensively. Seek this music out as quickly as you possibly can. Make haste.
Sounds Like: Cocteau Twins, Valet
FEATURED: Telepathe Are FInally Putting Out A Proper Release
Everything you want to know about Telepathe you can read in this feature on them Matthew Schnipper wrote for The FADER. Something unmentioned in that feature, though, is that my friend TJ lives with Melissa in that loft on McKibbin St. and that his bedroom door is actually featured rather prominently in the magazine. It’s also his twenty-first birthday this week so go him, drink beers. Since that feature, though, we’ve all been awaiting a proper release from the Brooklyn duo, and just this week IAMSOUND Recordings (home to Little Boots, The Black Ghosts and more) announced they’ll be putting out the Chromes On It EP, a two-song twelve-inch and download bolstered by hot remix goodness from the likes of Mad Decent and Free Blood. Pre-Order that here. We’ve still got “Chromes On It” up and available for download, so grab that below and get stoked for some art-club freaky shit from Telepathe when they come through your town this fall on tour with Diplo and Abe Vigoda (what a lineup, eh?), dates after the jump.
Sounds like: Diplo, Le Tigre, Bikini Kill covering Three Six Mafia
DOWNLOAD: I Heart Lung - Interoceans II (Strategy Remix)
Furthering our recent excursions into ear-melting nuggets of euphoric drone sounds, we give you mannered left coast free-jazz dudes I Heart Lung, who will release their Asthmatic Kitty debut, Interoceans, September 23. Preceding the album Asthmatic Kitty has prepped Interoceans Remixed, a (surprise!) comp of re-workings from artists like Greg Davis, Badun, and Portland-based Strategy. Strategy’s take on the slide-guitar opus “Interoceans II” sounds like interstellar trip-hop for band geeks, so check that our below and hear more of the band’s original material at their website.
Sounds like: Valet, Portishead, Praveen & Benoit
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Praveen & Benoit - Embers + Machinedrum Remix
Like the records they’ve made on their own for labels like Kranky, Neo Ouija, and Expanding, the album Praveen Sharma and Thomas Meluch (aka Benoit Poulard) collaborated on, Songs Spun Simla, is a dough of wide-open textures and percolating thump, like rainforest séance music for both shamans and streetwalkers. On “Embers,” Meluch’s operatic harmonies surround a bog of hand drum taps and clicks, accordion crescendos, and smoky echo from Sharma. And while these two have never even lived in the same city together (Sharma lives in New York, Meluch lays his head in Portland), their music creates a collective sense of place, a tropical pastoral in which they can both mess about with any sounds they dream up.
In addition to offering the fantastic “Embers” for download, we’ve got an exclusive remix from Machinedrum, who versions “Embers” as one big sample, bringing it in and out like a kid playing with scissors and tape, assembling a stiched-up, heady, collage. If you’re into Flying Lotus or any other crackly beat guru, definitely check this out.
Sounds like: Atlas Sound, Flying Lotus, Valet
Download: Praveen & Benoit - Embers
Exclusive Download: Praveen & Benoit - Embers (Machinedrum Remix)
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: The Secret Machines - Dreaming Of Dreaming
Patience usually warrants some great things, and one of those things happens to be new songs from dormant New York band The Secret Machines. Until this non-album b-side, culled from the sessions for the band’s eponymous new album (which will be self-released this fall with the help of World’s Fair), the last music that the band released to the public was 2006’s alchemic and juicy Ten Silver Drops. “Dreaming Of Dreaming” is one hell of a return to form, alleviating any worry that fans wouldn’t be hearing songs that sound like rocket journeys from the deserts of Texas to the (newly found!) waters of Mars. With an octave-jumping Rhodes riff at its core and the steady trap-slaying of drummer Josh Garza, this song sounds like everything we ever loved about the Secret Machines (read: losing braincells sonically), building and building over eight minutes until even the drums have slap-back delay on them and the whole thing sounds like the Hale-Bop comet crashing into the Garden of Eden. The track will be available on limited edition vinyl later this year, but download it now as a taste of what’s to come. Put on some sunglasses for this one, then sit back and bliss out.
Sounds like: Autolux, Boris, Led Zeppelin
Exclusive Download: The Secret Machines - Dreaming Of Dreaming
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