Plenty of great music to listen to this month! Finally, it’s Crazy Clown Time. After months of waiting for David Lynch’s first full-length musical release to arrive, it’s finally here, and like Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet, it’s a surreal, tour-de-fource right thru the heart of the American subconscious! Fans of Mr. Lynch will be quite pleased! Also up this month, look for new music from…Thee Oh Sees, Phantogram, Cloud Nothings, HTRK, The Soft Moon, Pure X and so much more! Stream the MP3s below or download them as a Podcast…iTunes. CONTINUE READING
I bet many David Lynch fans were curious as to how well the auteur’s noir and surreal vision would translate into his new musical pursuits? Lynch’s meticulous involvement with sound and score development in his films might suggest quite well, and early evidence provided on the Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse compilation, Dark Night of the Soul were intriguing, indeed. Well, now we have his first full-length offering, Crazy Clown Time on Sunday Best, and on it you will find many of the things that make Lynch’s work so interesting. On the title track, “Crazy Clown Time”, backwards slide guitar hangs on the edge of the subconscious like a curtain between waking and sleep, as Lynch seems to be transcribing the happenings at Amon Düül’s recording of Psychedelic Underground.
MP3: David Lynch “Crazy Clown Time” (Sunday Best Recordings)
BUY CD: AMAZON BUY MP3: 
BUY VINYL: INSOUND
John Dwyer’s project Thee Oh Sees has sure travelled a long distance from its’ days as an acoustic two-piece to it’s current status as an anything goes, garage rocking five-piece beast. The band’s expanding roster now includes The Intelligence frontman Lars Finberg, as well as keyboardist/singer Brigid Dawson. Their newest In the Red LP Carrion Crawler / The Dream was initially envisioned as two EP’s, and was cut to tape in only a week at Chris Woodhouse’s Sacramento studio in June. The fast turn around keeps it raw, and on the track “Carrion Crawler”, Dwyer’s and Petey Dammit!’s guitars strut and bark back and forth while tangling for a few drunk, Crazy Horse brawls!
MP3: Thee Oh Sees “Carrion Crawler” (In the Red)
BUY CD: AMAZON BUY MP3: BUY VINYL: INSOUND
Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter of Phantogram are onto some dangerously addictive shit! I guarantee one listen to “Don’t Move” will have you sweaty and exhilarated, coming back to get more! The band’s newest, Nightlife, which just came out November 1st on Barsuk, was written in clubs and hotel rooms as the band toured in support of their highly acclaimed debut, Eyelid Movies. Carter explains, “Nightlife is kind of an extension of the whole process of making and touring behind Eyelid Movies, and it feels in a lot of ways like the completion of what we were doing with the songs on that album.”
MP3: Phantogram “Don’t Move” (Barsuk Records)
BUY CD: AMAZON BUY MP3: BUY VINYL: INSOUND
Wow, bro, relax man. Your gonna break your voice cord or get some kind of Kurt Cobain stomach rupture! Cloud Nothings will have a new, Steve Albini produced LP, Attack on Memory, January 24th on Carpark Records. Till then, “No Future/No Past” is like walking into a sucker punch, with it’s Phillip Glass piano intro and slow building, bass broodings finally burning to the ground, as Dylan Baldi shreds his throat into a bloody mess.
MP3: Cloud Nothings “No Future/No Past” (Carpark Records)
NY producer GG Netter or Gg breaks apart Gang Gang Dance‘s “Chinese High”, and reassembles it in a kaleidescopic array of dubbed-out dance. Tightly compressed high hat makes for spazzy dance conditions, as Lizzie Bougatsos vocals get a big treatment of oscilating filters, until she sings in little prismatic bubbles. You can find “Chinese High” on GGD’s outstanding 4AD release, Eye Contact, a must-have for your interstellar travels!
MP3: Gang Gang Dance “Chinese High (Gg Remix)” (4AD)
BUY CD: AMAZON BUY MP3: BUY VINYL: INSOUND
Scottish band Errors have always moved between genres with cinematic ease, making albums like Come Down With Me and It’s Not Something But It Is Like Whatever the kind of listen that seems destined for somewhere. We can look forward to a new LP on January 31st from the band, Have Some Faith In Magic, their third release for Mogwai’s Rock Action Label. This track, “Earthscore”, will be on the newest, and it definitely channels a cthonic strain of pagan, as battlefield smoke clears on monkish strains before breaking out in tightly choreographed dance aerobics. Think Enigma “Sadness (Part One)”, minus the cheese and shirts-off bathos!
MP3: Errors “Earthscore” (Rock Action)
HTRK probe post-human boundaries with an erotic devotion to the synthetic on their newest LP Work (Work, Work), out now on Ghostly International. Narcoleptic beats and bass, Suicide-like drones, and Jonnine Standish’s haunted, androgynous vocal delivery make this the soundtrack for what androids dream of. You gotta love HTRK’s sustained inquiry of our post-human condition, and the way in which they locate their performance so vulnerably between our analog and digital realities.
MP3: HTRK “Synthetik” (Ghostly International)
BUY CD: AMAZON BUY MP3: BUY VINYL: INSOUND
Our ears can’t get enough of Italian sculptor and artist Emiliano Maggi, who performs music under the name Estasy. Looks like we will finally get a full-length, Locus Solus, to be released on the label Acéphale early next year! Often masked and with an arm-full of occult tats, Mr. Maggi might appear at first an imposing figure, but that’s until he opens his mouth and emits achingly beautiful, angelic tones of supreme weirdness. You can find this gem, “Wearhorses” on his Whitelaugh Blackcry release for Living Tapes!
MP3: Estasy “Wearhorses” (Living Tapes)
Carter Tanton‘s musical career began in the band Tulsa. After releasing their 2007 EP I Was Submerged, the band spent the next two years recording a follow-up, until finally disbanding when a series of label and legal troubles left them discouraged and frustrated. Tanton would go on to play guitar in Marissa Nadler’s band, touring extensively, as well as recording and arranging parts for her recent self-titled release. Ever busy and creative, it looks like Tanton has his own LP, Freeclouds, out on Western Vinyl. Check out “Fake Pretend” with some vocals by Ms Nadler, herself…
MP3: Carter Tanton “Fake Pretend (feat. Marissa Nadler)” (Western Vinyl)
BUY CD: AMAZON BUY MP3: BUY VINYL: INSOUND
Luis Vasquez’s San Francisco-based project The Soft Moon creates slowly smoldering rituals of malevolence, and the band continues to dish out the nightmares on the Captured Tracks EP, Total Decay. On the chilly, title-track fog horns of doom belch out sulfurous air to lascivious, Joy Division drums, as Vasquez’s voice parachutes down a nasty K-hole. Don’t try that one at home!
MP3: The Soft Moon “Total Decay” (Captured Tracks)
BUY CD: AMAZON BUY MP3: BUY VINYL: INSOUND
Like that perfect vintage store find, except not really vintage, Vancouver’s Chains of Love roll out a garage rock gem with their track, “Breaking My Heart”. The band has an EP coming out in 2012 on Manimal Vinyl, but this track will be on a new 7″ from the band December 13th. Set-off to the pistol fire of drums, and heading the wrong way down the tracks on a Jerry Lee Lewis keys hook, singer Nathalia Pizarro launches herself head-on into a doomed love pile-up at the sock-hop. Poor doll, it just breaks your heart.
MP3: Chains of Love “Breaking My Heart” (Manimal Vinyl)
Great attention to detail in layering beats on this track, “Spin Lights Over You” by the Tokyo bed-room producer Sapphire Slows. Made on a lap-top with some keyboards in a Tokyo apartment, one might not expect the organic feel this track has as it comes on in slow, warm waves of bass and beats, before floating off on clouds of cosmic air. You can find this on the Not Not Fun release, True Breath.
MP3: Sapphire Slows “Spin Lights Over You” (Not Not Fun)
Pure X would be perfect for a David Lynch soundtrack, as the Austin band creates vaporous and cinematic moodscapes that seem to hang just over the edge of waking. Recorded live without overdubbing, the songs on their newest LP Pleasure, out on Acephale, have a strange sense of place, which means when the trio distills their slow, crepuscular burnings, they have somewhere to expand and unfold. For instance, on the track “Surface”, guitar hangs on the hotel room air like a forgotten cigarette burning in the ashtray, as nodding happens to a narcoleptic beat.
MP3: Pure X “Surface” (Acéphale)
BUY CD: AMAZON BUY MP3: BUY VINYL: INSOUND
Hola! I’ve been following your site for a while now and finally got the courage to go ahead and give you a shout out from Huffman Tx! Just wanted to say keep up the good job!