Here’s a bunch of great new music to look forward to in the coming year. This month we have sixteen songs, or one hour of new music to check out on LIVE EYE TV MIXTAPE #11, featuring bands with up-coming releases in 2012! Check out tracks from Lower Dens, Xiu Xiu, Disappears, Black Marble, Mind Spiders, Shigeto, Yasiin Bey, Lantern and a whole lot more. We cover a lot of ground here, from beat-up, garage punk to stripped-down, Detroit techno! You can stream the tracks below, download a copy from Soundcloud, or listen as a Podcast…iTunes. CONTINUE READING
This year Jana Hunter and her band Lower Dens will follow up their excellent 2010 release Twin-Hand Movement (Gnomesong) with two new works for Ribbon Music. On May 1st the band will release their second studio LP Nootropics, which was recorded in Benton Harbor, MI at Key Club Recording with Drew Brown, whose engineering credits include Radiohead, Beck, and Blonde Redhead. The band will also put out “Brains”/”Propagation”, an advance, double A-side 10″ with the track “Hours” on the back. To get a flavor of Lower Dens new work check out this track “Brains”, which marshals it’s slow building tension using a crisp, motorik beat, and meticulously layered vocals that seem to circle and rise on bronze slabs of guitar and keys.
MP3: Lower Dens “Brains” (Gnomonsong)
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Jamie Stewart’s unflinching ability to stare into the most difficult emotional corners of personal loss have made his body of work an eviscerating and cathartic experience. It’s been two years since Xiu Xiu‘s 2010 Valentine’s Day release, Dear God, I Hate Myself. Limited edition copies came with vials of blood, so it has been with nervous anticipation that fans have awaited the next chapter of couch-ready confessions from Mr. Stewart. Wait no longer, though, as Jamie recently revealed via his blog that on March 6th Xiu Xiu will release Always, on Polyvinyl. Limited edition copies will come on pink vinyl, and purchase the LP to receive a collage poster of Xiu Xiu scars and tattoos! Oh yeah, and if sex in all it’s strange permutations is your thing, check out Stewart’s recent blog post about trolling sex-cam sites, only to find them the, “greatest performance art space in human history.”
MP3: Xiu Xiu “Hi” (Polyvinyl)
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After joining them on their Guider tour, it looks like Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley has joined Chicago band Disappears as a permanent member. In addition, the band has recorded their third, soon-to-be released LP, Pre Language (Kranky), at Sonic Youth’s Hoboken studio, Echo Canyon West. On the track “Replicate”, a snakey, psych- line is reigned in by rigorously aligned bass and drums that hammer at each other until sparks fly, and Brian Case’s vocals emerge with cold swagger to posit, “New thoughts/Or new fake/Is it replicate?”
MP3: Disappears “Replicate” (Kranky)
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Death Grips debut release Exmilitary is a deranged barrage of tainted media, unleashing surreal visions of a culture at constant war with itself. The group’s shadowy membership includes stellar, avant-drummer Zach Hill, as well as up-n-comers MC Ride, Flatlander and Mexican Girl. Check out the track “Lord of the Game”, as it shreds through beats and styles at break-neck speed, while MC Ride spits out paranoid rants with some help from Mexican Girl. Exmilitary is available as a free download from the bands’s website, and you can also pick it up on vinyl.
MP3: Death Grips “Lord of the Game (ft. Mexican Girl)” (Third Worlds)
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Late last year Temporary Residence Ltd. reissued Bitch Magnet‘s 3 LP’s Star Booty, Umber, and Ben Hur in deluxe, limited edition sets on vinyl and CD. Forming in the late 80’s while at Oberlin College, and later moving to North Carolina, the band would greatly impact America’s post-hardcore sound, as well as 90’s indie rock. After only three records the band would break-up while graduating it’s members onto notable projects like, singer/bassist Sooyoung Park joining Superchunk’s Mac McCaugan in Seam, guitarist John Fine touring with Don Cabellero and forming his own bands Vineland and Coptic Light, drummer Orestes Morfin drumming for Walter Mink, etc, etc. It’s interesting listening to a track like “Mesentry” how much you can hear other notables from the period including Slint, Unwound, Polvo, Silkworm, etc., etc. I think you get the point!
MP3: Bitch Magnet “Mesentry” (Temporary Residence)
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Over the last decade Matthew Dear‘s output as a producer, musician, label owner, and artist has been huge. Matthew Dear followed up the smoldering, crepuscular romanticism of 2010’s Black City with the recently released EP Headcage, and now we can look forward to a new full-length this year, Beam, on his label Ghostly International. While the title track “Headcage” from the recent EP is a beat tweaked affair that shuffles along in a suspiciously sniffy manner, the tracks “Street Song” and “Around the Fountain” reduce the beats down to wind-strewn paper, or the rustle of bat wings, relying instead on vocal arrangements and synth. Wonder if this more minimal direction will be followed on the up-coming LP. Points to ponder…
MP3: Matthew Dear “Headcage” (Ghostly International)
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It looks like Dante Terrell Smith, aka Mos Def is dropping a new identity on us, Yasiin Bey, and the artist is working on a project called Top 40 Underdog on which he repurposes hit tracks by breaking them apart, and putting his own raps over them. On MLK Day he gave us a little sample, hijacking the Jay-Z/Kanye West number “Niggas In Paris”. The result really pushes the envelope, and because he chooses tracks of high status balanced against his own accomplishments and place within the hip-hop pantheon, the result is pretty radical. Not only does the artist breathe life back into hip-hop’s roots as a medium which repurposes pop culture, but he turns the cash-money ethos on it’s head to explore real issues in urban society. Don’t try that one at home Kanye!
MP3: Yasiin Bey “Niggas In Poorest” (self-released)
While Mind Spiders mine well-worn punk territory on this new track “Wait For Us”, they do it in earnest with nothing hokey, or tongue-in-cheek, nostalgic about their approach! The project is led by Mark Ryan, frontman forThe Marked Men, a garage punk band out of Denton, TX. On February 21st Mind Spiders will follow up last year’s self-titled LP with a new one called Meltdown, on Dirtnap Records. I think you’ll find “Wait For Us” on repeat, with it’s guitars and keyboard buzzing in just the right anxious timbre, and Mark Ryan’s baited, monosyllabic delivery drawing you ever closer to a chorus, which cuts to the quick, “You wait for us/You wait in fear now”. It’s always refreshing to see that well-used punk tactics can still bring the wood, leveling social critique, or at the very least, a challenge!
MP3: Mind Spiders “Wait For Us” (Dirtnap)
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Feel the arctic chill of coldwave, via Brooklyn, on Black Marble‘s debut EP for Hardly Art, Weight Against the Door. The duo of Ty Kube and Chris Stewart create achingly bleak gothic landscapes that recall early European experiments between punk and synthesizer. While the highly compressed and distressed beat on the track “Pretender” is factory cold and canned, there is something eerily romantic in the way the vocalist resurrects an old love using seven different incantations of her name.
MP3: Black Marble “Pretender” (Hardly Art)
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Chicago’s White Car is back with a second album, Everyday Grace, which will be out February 28th on the Hippos In Tanks label. Elon Katz and his counterpart Orion Martin have chosen to locate themselves on the South-side of the city, and listening to their music one imagines this was a very conscious choice to bring themselves closer to the birth place of House. What also comes through, though, in their industrially influenced music is that other Chicago institution, Wax Trax. Those familiar with their debut EP No Better will find that on the new work, especially a track like “Now We Continue”, the duo has delved deeper into the funk and space house, effectively warming up techno’s cold architecture.
MP3: White Car “Now We Continue” (Hardly Art)
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This month Bathetic Records teamed up with Alex Zhang Hungtai of Dirty Beaches and artist William Cody Watson to create a very cool mixtape featuring the oddball family tree of artists surrounding the label. If you are a fan of, “weirdos, outsiders, bedroom recording artists, bums, people with burnt dreams” then this is the label for you! Maybe you are also into huffing glue in the back seat of a speeding car, then you will love the Philly three-piece Lantern, and their ‘blown-out-proto-biker-punk-blues.’
MP3: Lantern “Where Are We Now” (Bathetic Records)
Nostalgic for a dose of shoe-gaze? Then, you’ll want to check out this new release on Bloomington, Indiana label, Flannelgraph Records. They have put together a split 10″ featuring covers of Starflyer 59, a mid-90’s post-gaze band on Tooth and Nail. In particular, you’ll want to try Candy Claws rendition of “Do You Ever Feel That Way” to get your saccharine coated fix of something resembling My Bloody Valentine!
MP3: Candy Claws “Do You Ever Feel That Way (Starflyer 59 cover)” (Flannelgraph Records)
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Thank god for Canada and it’s awesome state funded arts programs. I mean, they’ll give money to anyone! And look, it pays off. Canadian artist Mac DeMarco had been recording under the name Makeout Videotapes until a demo made it’s way into the hands of the folks at Captured Tracks. Now he will release Rock and Roll Nightclub for the label under his own name, on March 20th! I love how this track “Baby’s Wearin Blue Jeans” starts off like Loaded-era VU in a shambles, only to break down further into a nostalgic song about girls wearin’ Lees and Wranglers. You know, the important stuff!
MP3: Mac DeMarco “Baby’s Wearin’ Blue Jeans” (Captured Tracks)
This month Nathan Williams of Wavves posted to Twitter a bedroom cover of the Misfits song “Hybrid Moments”, calling it, “an ode to the band”. Now, that’s how to use social media.
MP3: Wavves “Hybrid Moments (Misfits Cover)” (self-released)
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Here’s another one off the Bathetic Records mixtape, Expressway. This time we have the LA duo Speculator, and their track “Picking Flowers”. Everything about “Picking Flowers” is slow motion and adorned in soft, oxycontin rain. Occasionally waves of 8-bit lunar energy wash thru, as the vocals set off pillows of gauze in your mind. Check out this interview with the band over at Tiny Mixtapes, to get a look into the band’s methods and aesthetic.
MP3: Speculator “Picking Flowers” (Bathetic Records)
Zach Saginaw records under the name Shigeto, melting Detroit techno and cosmic jazz into shimmering, back-to-the-future music. On January 31st the artist will have his third release for Ghostly International, an EP called Lineage. The track “Huron River Drive” builds organically from warm, spaced-out organ tones while slowly taking on stuttering arrays of beats and satellite chatter, until settling into a conversation with familial ghosts and spectral, musical forbearers.
MP3: Shigeto “Huron River Drive” (Ghostly International)
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