Thursday, April 28, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Laura Stevenson & the Cans offer up "Sit Resist" as a free download through the end of May!
Early Press:
"Second album Sit Resist (out April 26) mixes a whimsical drizzle of accordions and glockenspiels and brass and banjos and other indie accoutrements with a punchy blast of old fashioned guitar muscle. First taste "Master Of Art" uses the tried-and-true "Be My Baby" beat to slowly drive a reflective song into explosive Florence territory--a powerful blast of belting, bursting jangle-punk." Village Voice
"[Laura Stevenson & the Cans] is a tinge of Joanna Newsom minus the harp, Kate Nash if Kate Nash was cool and hell, let's even throw some Jewel in there circa those years she lived in the truck." RCRD LBL
"Once she truly lets rips with that lovely voice of hers, we’re left powerless to resist." Wears The Trousers
"Let's talk about how awesome Laura Stevenson is. First, there's her voice. It's a wonderful mix of confidence and precociousness—she can quietly sing soft lullabies, but she can also carry the climactic moments of more passionate anthems." The Stranger
"At SXSW in what is essentially a sea of indie rock bands, Laura and her band really stood out."Stereophile
"Laura Stevenson has music in her blood." Spinner.com naming the band to the top 100 acts of SXSW
"Laura Stevenson's work is always a little bit strange, a little bit sad, and a lot stellar." The Ruckus
Big Pauper's Beyond My Means is out now from Circle Into Square / Fake Four Inc.
Download and share "Big Sick" with your readership!
Early Press:
"A little jazzy, a little psychedelic, with electronic and synth elements and obscure film clips dotted throughout, it's much more Tribe meets The Books than amphetamine-addled top 40 mash up." RCRD LBL
"...cutting in on break beats, with odd sounds and audio clips you’ll be in the perpetual zone." Ghetto Blaster
"The Portland producer/DJ/visual artist is producing some of our favorite instrumental hip hop of recent memory. Listen." Gimme Tinnitus
"When Drew McIntyre puts on his nom de musique Big Pauper, no genre is safe. Since taking on this guise, McIntyre has laid his unique stamp on downtempo, hip-hop, ambient, and experimental." The Vinyl District
Tour Dates:
05.13.11 - London, UK @ Inspiral Lounge
05.14.11 - Amsterdamn, Netherlands @ TBA
05.15.11 - Hilversum, Netherlands @ Het Wapen van Hilversum
05.18.11 - Muenster, Germany @ Spec Ops
05.19.11 - Oberhause, Germany @ Drukluft
05.20.11 - Paris, France @ the Gambetta
05.21.11 - Berne, Switzerland @ Raum
05.23.11 - Zurich, Switzerland @ TBA
05.24.11 - Ausburg, Germany @ Schwarezes Schaf
06.22.11 - Eugene, OR @ TBA
06.23.11 - Santa Cruz, CA @ Parish Public
06.24.11 - Fresno, CA @ Bullfrogs
06.25.11 - San Francisco, CA @ Public Works
06.30.11 - Los Angeles, CA @ TBA
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Jim Guthrie's soundtrack to Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery is out now!
Today marks the premier of the game Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery for the iPhone and gamers couldn't be more excited as it rapidly ascends the best selling App chart at iTunes. Music fans have reason to rejoice as well, the original soundtrack was created by Toronto's Jim Guthrie (also one half of that wonderful band called Human Highway) and it's an ornate, moody, inspired piece of work that was created specifically for the game. It's out now on vinyl or digital formats at his BandCamp page!
Download and share "Little Furnace" off of Swords & Sworcery with your friends!
"Could this be the iPad's Dark Side of the Moon?" - Douglas Wolk
RCRD LBL PREMIERE: Laura Stevenson & The Cans - The Healthy One
Head over to RCRD LBL to download the second single off of Laura Stevenson & the Cans new album... Sit Resist out next Tuesday!
Spike Magazine interviews Phill Brown!
"“I was there!” exclaims James Murphy in LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Losing My Edge’, before listing his crucial interventions in the history of rock music. But Phill Brown’s ‘right place and right time’ memoir of his career in the studio reveals a man who really was there. Few people were in the room when ’Sympathy for the Devil’, ‘All Along the Watchtower’ or ‘Stairway to Heaven’ were recorded – and Are We Still Rolling? provides a fascinating background to each of these." Read the rest of the review and interview with Phill Brown at Spike Magazine
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
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Friday, April 15, 2011
Big Pauper unleashes his new psych, movie mix at Six Ton Armor!
With the new album imminent, Big Pauper is happy to share his new mix with Six Ton Armor! The blog features exclusive psych mixes from world-renowned deejays, producers and recording artists. It has featured the likes of Odd Nosdam, Wolf People & aside from being an amazing source for free psych music. Big Pauper contributed "At the Movies Vol. 1," a 3o minute mix of obscure and unreleased b-movie/arthouse psych from his personal collection. The mix plays back like a night at the the cinema (complete with trailers) and features everything from suspenseful Ennio Morricone freak-outs to softcore shower scene funk love-ins. Fire up the VCR and grab some popcorn with Big Pauper.
Tender Forever is song of the day at NPR!!
"Got to Let Go" concludes in a big way, with rolling drum thumps underlying Tender Forever's resounding statement to an ex-lover, as Valera sings, "I know I'm not coming back / I'm not erasing this track." Thank goodness." Read the rest and listen in at NPR!
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Brass Bed recorded an interview and mini-session at Ardent Studios!
The Vinyl District Memphis sat down at Ardent Studios with Brass Bed to record a wonderful little interview and two song set. Downloading the set is highly recommended!
POINT JUNCTURE, WA GEARS UP TO RELEASE "HANDSOME ORDERS" 5/17 ON MT. FUJI!
The fiercely independent creative culture that thrives in the Pacific Northwest has, of late, been receiving an upsurge of deserved attention, and for good reason. No band in the region embodies independence, practices innovative, artful living and is dedicated to their craft more than Point Juncture, WA., a collaboration between four Portland, OR. songwriters, instrumentalists, recording engineers, and friends: Amanda Spring (vocals, drums) Victor Nash (keyboards, vocals) Skyler Norwood (guitar, vibraphone) and Wilson Vediner (guitar). Point Juncture, WA live together in a house they purchased as a band and jointly own. Point Juncture, WA grows a lot of their own food, and camps on tour, cooking said food over campfires. Point Juncture, WA transformed a dilapidated barn on their property into a state-of-the-art, Dwell Magazine-worthy recording studio with their own hands so that they could have the perfect environment in which to create their newest full-length, Handsome Orders. Point Juncture, WA has always recorded their own albums, and they've printed their own records. Point Juncture, WA is not a band that is messing around, and it's their time to shine.
During their years together, the band has toured extensively. They've been out as main support for The Thermals, and Stereolab, Dirty Three, and Britt Daniel. They've spent years touring the Western states under their own steam, playing festivals like Sasquatch and Bumbershoot and basement shows in towns you've never heard of, building a rich and devout network of friends and devotees along the way. They are a band who knows what a good record sounds like, and not just because they've been self-recording for seven years: members of the band have recorded records for Horse Feathers, Blind Pilot, Talkdemonic, and collaborated on recordings with The Decemberists, Laura Viers, Thao with The Get Down Stay Down and several others.
The band's first two full-lengths, Juxtapony and Mama Auto Boss (2004 & 2005) were responses to what the band saw in clubs and basements at that time; love letters to hooky Northwest anthemic pop. 2009's more diverse, textural Heart To Elk (named as Amazon.com's Top 100 Records of 2009) was recorded at home over the period of two years by the band as they fully explored their influences and found new ground in the confluence of many different musical tastes.
Now having creatively explored what they've seen and what they hadn't, Handsome Orders shows Point Juncture, WA looking deep within at what, and who, they've become as a band. Direct songs like "Violin Case" and "Chronological Order" show the band sticking to a less-is-more compositional philosophy—a practice they weave throughout Handsome Orders. Previously, the band's catchy rock songs were often blanketed with vibraphone, synthesizer ambiance and layers of guitar feedback that would crest just at the point of obscuring the song's melody. Now, a driving dissonance is absorbed into the bass and guitar parts themselves, offering the same counterpoint to the pop song's format, but in a newly nuanced and elegant form. Keyboards, horns and guitar noise exist as textural layers above and underneath the fundamentals ofHandsome Orders' tracks, but each song has a dynamic range not common to a band so rooted in it's live performance.
Point Juncture, WA uses that range to maximum effect, often piling the biggest and most chaotic moments of orchestration right on top of its most intimate and transparent songs (like "Boston Gold", a whispered vocal melody over a slight but steady brushed drumbeat). The syncopated combination of Southern revival tambourine and auto harp glissando on "Baptist Jesus" (which features Steve Berlin from Los Lobos on baritone saxophone) is coupled with drums and an analog synthesizer right out of the Kraftwork songbook.
The band will tour throughout 2011 and 2012, and we couldn't be more excited to work with them!
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