Showing posts in the “New Music” category
Eric Tullis ·
4 Mar 2010, 12:27 PM ·
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For those still trying to make sense of Little Brother’s announcement that Leftback will be the duo’s final LP, the Khrysis-produced lead single “Curtain Call”—released this week via, err, MySpace and available for download here—should debrief you, if not relieve you. The exit doesn’t seem to rattle Phonte and Pooh here, both of whom sound satisfied with the precedent they set for newer rap acts like J. Cole, Wale, Pac Div and Jay Electronica, to name a few. “You mad wit’ me/ tough tittie/ get a training bra,” spouts Phonte, foreseeing the disappointment that many of us going to be harboring when we wake up the day after Leftback’s release and realize that there are no more Little Brother albums. Much like LB’s career, “Curtain Call” is an elegant, but short showcase of the the husky fellas’ honest rap offerings, delivered on top of one of Khrysis’ gentler concoctions—a perfect fit for a denouement as heartfelt and funky as this one.
New Music Little Brother
Grayson Currin ·
19 Feb 2010, 5:55 PM ·
2 Comments
Good news for Schooner a few hours ahead of their release party behind the Duck Kee Sessions: Despite only mailing the minimum of 150 promo copies of the EP to radio stations nationwide, the disc has broken the CMJ Top 200. Landing at No. 99, just behind Merge’s Shout Out Louds and 10 spots ahead of the new Xiu Xiu record, this is the EP’s first week on the charts. The big show starts tonight at The Pinhook at 10 p.m. For more, see our review of Duck Kee Sessions this week.
New Music, News flashes, You Should Do This CMJ Top 200, Schooner
Grayson Currin ·
17 Feb 2010, 5:33 PM ·
1 Comment
Show me a better band photo this year, and I won't kill your parents.
This afternoon, big-time Indiana indie label Jagjaguwar finally dropped the official word on Gayngs, the psychedelic soul collaboration between all of Megafaun, Ivan Howard of The Rosebuds, Justin Vernon and Mike Noyce of Bon Iver and a slew of Minnesota and Wisconsin musicians culled from bands like P.O.S., Solid Gold and Andrew Bird’s touring unit. And that was a long sentence. We mentioned the project last summer, and Megafaun and Howard even unveiled the album’s sublime, surreal closer, “The Last Prom on Earth,” at last year’s TRKFest. But the band’s debut LP, Relayted, now has a release date of May 11 and a cover of, uhh, an intertwined pot leaf and vagina.
Helmed by Twin Cities beat man Ryan Olson, Relayted’s 11 tracks—all set at 69 beats per minute—cum flooded with stacked keyboards, thick bass and at least one shocking sax solo. There’s soul-singing, spectral harmonies and a Bone Thugs rap from Vernon. Meanwhile, the interludes that link the tracks lift all of it to a sort of rarefied Miles Davis Get Up With It space. It’s a project without a lot of precedents, especially given the music on which most of those involved have built their reputations. And as silly and preposterous as it might sound, it somehow works, thanks in large part to the excellent playing and surprising singing and its consistent, slowly unfurling aesthetic.
At any rate, it should be interesting to see the public’s response to Gayngs: Can what began mostly as a joke become one of the weird successes of music this year? Maybe.
New Music, News flashes Bon Iver, Gayngs, Megafaun, Rosebuds
Spencer Griffith ·
17 Feb 2010, 12:48 PM ·
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Old lineup, new record: American Aquarium
Since American Aquarium’s 2006 debut Antique Hearts, the Raleigh roots rockers have garnered plenty of (deserved) Whiskeytown comparisons. With rollicking E Street-flavored heartland rock like “Mary, Mary” and “Ain’t Going to the Bar Tonight,” last year’s Dances for the Lonely brought Bruce Springsteen references into the fold. Not that American Aquarium shied away from them, as they took on The Boss for this year’s Raleigh Undercover.
Recorded last November while holed up in Oxford, Miss., Smalltown Hymns—American Aquarium’s fourth—won’t do much to shake either of those associations, though Hymns has more in common with Nebraska and Heartbreaker than Born to Run and Faithless Street. Frontman B.J. Barham sent The Independent five tracks from the upcoming record, which was produced and engineered by Andrew Ratcliffe (Will Hoge, The Damnwells) and will be the band’s second for Last Chance Records.
Continue reading »
New Music american aquarium
Grayson Currin ·
4 Feb 2010, 3:46 PM ·
4 Comments
After playing a few games of basketball in Raleigh last night, I climbed in the car, turned on the radio and headed to a meeting across town. Sirius XMU, billed as being “like hearing college radio but never having to go to class,” was spinning Hot Chip’s “One Life Stand,” a college station standard of late. But when the DJ followed with “Lazy Lessons,” a track from the not-yet-released The Limbs EP by Chapel Hill’s Organos, I wondered if I’d actually switched the dial to WKNC 88.1 FM. After all, bandleader Maria Albani did all the press and radio mailing for her solo project’s new EP, and unlike Hot Chip or the next band, The National, an act like Organos and a label like Pox World Empire don’t have sizable PR budgets to pursue national DJs.
But it was indeed Sirius XMU, and, indeed, the non-traditional charms of the songwriting on The Limbs EP, described here, seem to be sticking. Pox officially releases the EP Tuesday, Feb. 23, though you can pick it up at the band’s CD release party tomorrow night at The Pinhook. To hear the song, and read the story behind the set, see this week’s newspaper.
New Music, News flashes Organos, Pox World Empire, The Pinhook
Eric Tullis ·
28 Jan 2010, 1:11 PM ·
2 Comments
“It’s fuckin’ over” were just a few of the words Phonte Coleman had to offer last week on his Gordon Gartrell Radio podcast, using a 12-minute segment of the show to thank fans for supporting Little Brother over the years and explain to listeners that, yes, the LB saga has reached its end: The duo’s next album, LeftBack, will be their last. Continue reading »
New Music Little Brother
Grayson Currin ·
14 Jan 2010, 1:29 PM ·
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It seems 2009 was largely a regrouping one for Raleigh six-piece Annuals: Such Fun, the band’s second album and first for major-label imprint Canvasback Music, was released in 2008 to mixed reviews and comparatively low sales. According to Nielsen Soundscan, Such Fun sold only 7,341 copies, compared to their debut’s 17,999. And Canvasback was cooling on Annuals’ former blog-buzz property, even as the band was working on new material back in Raleigh.
“We found out that our deal with Canvasback was getting messed up over the summer,” says Annuals bassist Mike Robinson. “So, we decided, ‘Let’s do an EP and have it out in November.’”
And they mostly hit their mark: The upcoming five-track EP, Sweet Sister, due now on March 23, has been mostly finished since October. That same month, though, Canvasback announced that it would be inking a deal with Atlantic Records at the end of its three-year contract with Columbia. So the EP, like the band, didn’t have a home. Ace Fu, who issued Annuals’ 2006 debut, Be He Me, to much acclaim and strong indie sales, contemplated releasing the EP, though the label hadn’t released anything new since 2007. That didn’t happen, and Robinson didn’t want to issue Sweet Sister on his own Terpsikhore imprint because he didn’t think the label—essentially staffed by himself—had the proper resources to devote to it when Annuals were touring.
So Banter Media, a new label run by Matt Halverson, formerly an Ace Fu intern, offered help. Annuals are the fifth band on the startup’s roster.
Robinson says, “It’ll be really different, for sure, but it seems everything we do is on a different record label, so why not? It’s exciting to have a fresh start on a modest-sized label that can still do good work.”
Robinson feels good about the work the band did on this EP, too, something that wasn’t always the case with the second album, the sarcastically titled Such Fun. It often took frontman Adam Baker out of his comfort zone—which is to say, late nights with pedals and gear, and long hours of fussing over mixes and adding quirks and textures to songs. The band recorded much of Such Fun in Asheville’s grand Echo Mountain studio, with high-dollar producer Jacquire King.
“Adam never seemed satisfied about it because he never got to put on his finishing touches, the weird stuff that a lot of people like,” says Robinson. “This is Adam, though. He’s back into being in full control of things. He reassumed his role on how everything goes, and I think these songs are much more of a return to the weirdness and quirkiness on the first album.”
Sweet Sister was recorded at Terpsikhore’s studios in Raleigh and at Flying Tiger Sound with B.J. Burton. Ian Schreier, who also worked on Such Fun, mixed the music at Osceola Recording Studios. The EP ends with “Flesh and Blood,” a Johnny Cash cover that Annuals originally cut for Hear Here: The Triangle, the great Terpsikhore compilation of local tunes released last year. It was first scrapped from the collection because the band hadn’t gained the proper permissions.
Meanwhile, whispers have been floating through Raleigh that Anna Spence, the band’s keyboardist, was leaving the band. After all, she sat out a tour late last year, originally booked to promote the ultimately delayed Sweet Sister. Robinson says there’s nothing to those rumors aside from a tour that simply conflicted with Spence’s college schedule.
“Anna’s still in the band. She had to finish up college, and she’s now done,” Robinson says. “We’re hoping to get back on the horse this year pretty quickly.”
New Music, News flashes Annuals
Eric Tullis ·
13 Jan 2010, 12:05 PM ·
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Following Michael Jackson’s death in June 2009, BET aired a show called Michael Jackson: 10 Things You Didn’t Know. In it, The Roots drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson made viewers privy to some comical trivia about the history of the King of
Not a Raekwon tribute...
Pop’s song “Bad.” According to ?uestlove, “Bad” was originally slated to be a duet that featured another member of music royalty—Prince. Prince declined the offer. Apparently, the opening line—“your butt is mine”—wasn’t too appealing to Prince. At a dinner, Prince told Mike, “You ain’t singing this line to me, and I sure ain’t singing this line to you.” Shortly thereafter, “Bad” was MJ’s No. 1 hit.
Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of my Prince knowledge. I’m on MJ’s team. But thanks to Rapper Big Pooh’s The Purple Tape project, I’m able to brush-up on some Prince history. Produced entirely by Detroit’s Black Milk, The Purple Tape (available here, at the big guy’s Bandcamp) captures Pooh rapping above Black Milk’s reinterpretation of close to a dozen of Prince’s most famed hits. Several months ago, Black Milk released this instrumental, Prince-inspired project, Music From The Color Purple, but with his blessings and permission, Rapper Big Pooh decided to make an album out of it. Pooh has been steadily releasing scrimmage projects like this, in anticipation for his next official LP, Dirty Pretty Things. This just happens to be his most outstanding, creative tease yet. For a short making-of documentary on the tape, see HOJTV.
In the Studio, New Music, News flashes Black Milk, Rapper Big Pooh, The Purple Tape
Eric Tullis ·
7 Jan 2010, 12:24 PM ·
5 Comments
Mic man.
The Wonder Years LP? Who cares anymore? While we’ve all been impatiently waiting on 9th Wonder to deliver his long-awaited album, we have a surprising new distraction here—9th Wonder as 9thmatic, the emcee. Yes, Mr. “Make-Me-Hot-P,” Pat Douthit, is rapping now. Oh, hell.
When hip hop producers decide to pick up the microphone and start rapping, they’re suggesting, in essence, that they’re just as verbally endowed as their rap peers, or they’ve come to the conclusion that sitting behind the production boards all day and making beats isn’t as thrilling as it used to be for them. The producer-slash-rapper title has become a venerable résumé builder and clout hoarder taken up by famed producers like Diamond D, Madlib and Pete Rock, just to name a few. They’ve all managed to turn emceeing into a mistress they parade around in hip-hop while also maintaining their production duties.
Oftentimes though, these producers have one of their go-to emcees ghostwrite their rhymes for them, which doesn’t really carry the stigma it would if the producer were a full-time emcee. In 9th’s case, however, it’s doubtful that anyone else had a hand in writing his verses. 9thmatic raps with the same down-to-earth enthusiasm that the producer offers in person and, at a few spots, his Winston-Salem, N.C. -bred Southern accent is highly effective. Skill-wise, he’s obviously not in the same class as many of the artists that he provides beats for, but at least now, we know that he can at least hop on a track with his favorite emcees without us wanting to skip over his verse.
After the break, you’ll find three fairly new tracks with 9thmatic. Also, notice that fellow Justus League producer and one of NC’s premier beatcrafters , Khrysis, picks up the microphone for his own, impressive, “fraggle naggle bullshit”. For now, in 9thmatic’s words, “Me and Khrysis are having LOADS of fun….fun fun fun…LOL …. workin on my ‘flow’ so to speak…..so it’s fun and a new challenge…..” Continue reading »
New Music, News flashes 9th Wonder
Bryan Reed ·
16 Nov 2009, 12:30 PM ·
1 Comment
"It's so very red," said Collar via Twitter.
For Durham’s Red Collar, self-releasing its first full-length album, Pilgrim, in February was an impetus to take the show on the road and make a full-time go of rock ’n’ roll. The CDs were pressed and packaged, a publicity campaign was implemented and dates were booked. The band members packed into “Vandrew Blass,” the vehicle named for former keyboardist Andrew Blass. And, so far, it’s been paying off: The band picked up favorable reviews and college radio airtime nationwide and earned a slot at the recent CMJ Music Marathon in New York.
But Pilgrim, save for local consignment, wasn’t in stores. “One of the big problems with not having a label is not having physical distribution,” says guitarist Mike Jackson. That, though, is no longer a problem. Suburban Home Records and brother company Vinyl Collective picked up Pilgrim for distribution starting Dec. 1. The distribution deal coincides with a re-issue of Pilgrim as a limited-edition LP, pressed in a batch of 500 by Loose Charm Records.
The vinyl version is different than the CD, as the band shifted and pruned the track order. “It was harder than we thought,” says Jackson. “We had to cut some of the songs … We just couldn’t fit the album onto one LP and still have it sound good.”
“Stay” and “Hands Up,” which also appeared on Red Collar’s Hands Up EP, didn’t make the cut. They remain, though, on the LP’s digital component, a download card featuring all 11 tracks from the original CD version, plus an acoustic cover of Jawbreaker’s “Jinx Removing.”
Plus, vinyl has its own rewards: “There’s something more physical and immediate about having the record,” Jackson says. “CDs almost seem disposable at this point.”
For a video of Red Collar playing “Tools” with Maple Stave at Troika Music Festival last weekend, hit the jump. And for more of Spencer Griffith’s videos from Troika (and elsewhere), hit Scan’s YouTube channel. Continue reading »
New Music, News flashes, Troika Music Festival Red Collar, Troika Music Festival
Listen up!
