dirtyrockmagazine.com

Earth
Angels of Darkness Demons of Light II
Southern Lord

Crafted from the same sessions as 2011′s Angels of Darkness Demons of Light I, and split into its own album, Earth’s Angels of Darkness Demons of Light II is heavy in tone and tempo, but not in volume as it takes a solemn, reverential and unique approach to American roots music.  For just as metal no longer seems an apt way to describe the output of Dylan Carlson (guitar), Adrienne Davis (drums and percussion), Lori Goldston (cello), and Karl Blau (bass), neither do folk, rock, or country.

At times it’s as if Earth have crafted their own branch of American music, steeped in the same traditions as familiar forms like rock and country, but distinct from both.  “His Teeth Did Brightly Shine,” for example, is a folk jam unlike any other.  It lulls the listener in the low end and features little, if any percussion as Goldston and Blau caress Carlson’s slow, sinewy guitar melodies.  In the process, it unearths an alternate spirituality, one separate from the Christian traditions of gospel and bluegrass.

While “Waltz (A Multiplicity of Doors),”  could be classified as a dance by virtue of having a 3/4 time signature.  However, Earth’s version is creaky, creeping and mournful, with a beat like an unsteady rocking char and Goldston’s cello sounding withered, decrepit and distorted.   Its pace is not one of joyfulness and freedom, of celebrating life and music, but of someone staring eternity in the eyes as they take their last, staggering steps.

Blues music also gets the Earth treatment on “The Corascene Dog” and “The Rakehell.”  The former features Carlson, Blau, and Goldston trading the same basic melody in the style of a showcase jam, slyly adding complexity as its eight minutes gradually unfold.  While on the latter, Carlson steals the show, as he patiently picks his chords, then meticulously layers one guitar track atop another; Some become complementary melodies; Some are nothing more than quick jazzy flares; And others, more elongated, meld seamlessly with Goldston’s cello and provide extra texture in the form of feedback.  During its twelve minutes, larger truths begin to emerge as themes of permanence, peace and majesty can be visualized in the quiet mind.

Yes, enlightenment can still be found in the oldest of forms, but with Earth, more so than any other band, one must be open and one must be dedicated.  One must be free of cell phones, laptops, and tablets blinking, beeping, and singing look at me.  One must basically detach his or herself from the modern world as we know it.  Patience may still be a virtue, but it’s one often lacking in 21st Century life and art, and when one comes across such an expression, as on both parts I and II of Angels of Darkness Demons of Light, it can be as jarring as any bass boy’s obnoxious, screechy, and synthetic beep.  9 out of 10 on The Rockometer.

MP3: Earth – His Teeth Did Brightly Shine

I Rock Cleveland

Mark Lanegan Band
Blues Funeral
4AD/Beggars Group US

Recently, I marveled at Mark Lanegan’s voice, that deep and leathery, wavering and seductive voice, and noted how I would not only listen to Lanegan reinterpreting the catalog of pop songstress, Katy Perry, but I would buy that collection, too.  That’s the power of having the voice of Rock ‘N’ Roll.

Blues Funeral, Lanegan’s first solo collection since 2004′s Bubblegum, presents the listener with a scenario tantalizingly close to my own dream/nightmare.  Squeezed in the middle of Blues Funeral’s twelve songs is a number called “Ode to Sad Disco.”  It’s a not a blues song about being at a discoteque.  It’s a disco song.

Those surprised that Lanegan would choose to go electronic should go back and peer through his long list of post Screaming Trees collaborations.  There’s Pj Harvey, Isobel Campbell, and Queens of the Stone Age; The Twilight Singers, and his album with The Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli as Gutter Twins; And listed  under the heading of other collaborations, there’s Soulsavers, and UNKLE.  Spot those last two?  Those are the electronics coming through.  They come through loud and clear on the rumbling doom of “Gravedigger’s Song” and again on the stomp and pomp of “Riot in My House.”  On “Harborview Hospital,” the beats are skittery and elastic with guitars and keyboards blurring the upper reaches, obscuring the bleakness of a broken life detailed within.  While “Deep Back Vanishing Train,” uses the studio to add ambiance and texture to what would otherwise be a barren landscape.

Whether or not Lanegan can do electronic music is not the issue.  He’s done similar work with UNKLE and Soulsavers and even his album as the Gutter Twins had an electronic spin to it. Like I said earlier, Lanegan could add his voice to just about anything and the resulting recordings would be captivating enough to require an extended listen (Doom Metal Mark Lanegan?  Yes!  Punk Rock Lanegan? Yes!  Gothic New Wave Lanegan with eyeliner?  Umm…OK…Yes!).

The question now becomes where does Blues Funeral fit within his larger body of work.  When was the last time you played any of the three albums he’s done with Isobel Campbell?  Have you listened to the Screaming Trees’ Sweet Oblivion lately?  More than Pearl Jam or Alice in Chains, that album has help up extremely well for coming out during the grunge explosion.  I’ll say it.  It slays.  That album was glued to my turntable for entire night, A side then B side and back again and repeat and repeat while I was supposed to be going over my notes on Blues Funeral.  Does that help?   6 out of 10 on The Rockometer.

MP3: Mark Lanegan – Gravedigger’s Song
VIDEO: Mark Lanegan – Gravedigger’s Song

I Rock Cleveland

It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with soft rock indie rock. It’s just that there’s so much of it and so much of it gets such grand praise when it’s all really, kinda boring. That’s all. That’s why soft rock has been my mortal enemy for my listening lifetime.

Consequently, one may expect me to pan the new solo music from Fleet Foxes’ one time drummer, J Tillman, and his new outfit Father John Misty. And as much as I’d love to slag a Fleet Fox, I can’t do it as his first single, “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings,” rises above the predictable, rustic beauty of his former band. Oh, there’s some of those classic signifiers of pastoral, Northwest folk — Lots of reverb, especially on Tillman’s voice and the sweet, Beach Boy pop harmonies, but then there’s that guitar tone. It’s a wonderful guitar tone, loose, deeply textured, damaged and distorted, and yet, strangely clear. It’s not only the star of the song, but also displays a sense of willingness and daring on the part of Tillman, hinting that Father John Misty may be more than another nice band with beards.

VIDEO: Father John Misty – Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings

Fear Fun, the debut album by Father John Misty, will be released May 1st on Sub Pop Records. You can read more about it here, where you can download “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings, too. The download will cost you an email address.

I Rock Cleveland

Pop. 1280
The Horror
Sacred Bones

The Horror is dirty, no filthy, no filthy as fuck. The Horror is a brutal, bulldozing, skronky, scuzzy, and screechy, dystopian cyber-punk rock record steeped in the tradition of The Jesus Lizard, SST Records, and John Carpenter soundtracks where “Two dogs fucking” is both the opening line and perhaps the most comforting line on its two sides.

And yet, for all the choice adjectives and all the ace references, something is missing from Pop.1280′s first full length for Sacred Bones Records, something keeping The Horror from being that brutal, skronk rock masterpiece of its own tortured dreams. That something is a song. Even the Jesus Lizard, that nasty, corrosive beast of a band from Chicago, the band against whom all scuzz monsters must measure, would break up the nasty with a two or three minute, blissfully, cathartic jam (See “Nub” on the album Goat, for example). The Horror, meanwhile, becomes numbing after a while. There’s only so many bruises a body can take and Pop.1280 delivers more than a fair share of bruises over songs like “Burn the Worm,”, “Bodies in the Dunes,” and “Beg Like a Human.”

Closing number, “Crime Time,” should be that song, the triumph where all of the elements, all of those adjectives come together — The spooky, sci-fi synths, the rhythmic, dance-rock beat, gnarled guitars, and an actual melody with a shouted punk rock chorus, but instead of claiming its place on the A-list of the American noise-rock scene, it feels more like a relief.

Something else The Jesus Lizard keenly employed in their arsenal was negative space, relying on the rhythm section and David Yow’s pipes to do the dirty work when the obvious ploys got old. Once Pop.1280 learns that beatings and melodies aren’t mutually exclusive, they will be that next great skronk rock band. As the old saying goes: You can pummel some of your listeners some of the time, but you can’t pummel all of your listeners all of the time because you’ll have no one left to buy your records and merch and then you’ll have no choice but to take that soul-crushing, cubicle job your Aunt Judy tells you about at every family gathering. 7 out of 10 on The Rockometer.

MP3: Pop.1280 – Bodies in the Dunes

I Rock Cleveland

It was one of those nights. The vibe was electric, the techno booming and energetic, and the winter-braving soldiers euphoric as Sébastien Léger closed out Saturday night at Igloofest for a record-breaking crowd of over 10000 people in Montreal.

The bar is set sky-high for week 3, as Léger’s brand of bouncy, high-energy techno had the massive crowd creating seismic waves in the Old Port as they bounced up and down with ferocious enthusiasm all night long. It was announced near the end of his top-notch performance that the previous Igloofest attendance record had been broken, with over 10000 partaking in an unforgettable night.

The UK’s Max Cooper set the stage perfectly for the French headliner, steadily building up the energy with his own brand of other-worldly techno. “Igloofest!….amazing event, thanks to everyone who came along last night….I’ve never seen 10 thousand snowsuit-clad ravers before!” Cooper said on his Facebook page.

But the lively, spirited crowd reached frenzy levels during Léger’s 2-hour set. Smiles stretched from ear-to-ear and though the thermometer read -20 degrees, the heat was turned way up! Take a look at what I mean in the NTD video below:

Clearly Léger himself had as much fun as the crowd did, writing after the show: “Igloofest – Montreal…… WOOOOOOOOOW !!!!!! tellement incroyable – Record d’affluence battue ce soir depuis sa création, vous étiez 10.000 fous a -20 degre C’est tres difficile d’expliquer ce que j’ai ressenti mais merciiiiii a vous, et aussi toute l’equipe qui dechire ! DE-LA-BOMBE !!!”

The 3rd and final Igloofest weekend trifecta begins this Thursday night, with the one and only Diplo returning to Montreal for the first time since he provided easily the wildest, most savage party of Osheaga 2010 – fittingly at the Piknic stage. Let me refresh your memory:

The Mad Decent records boss and one half of Major Lazer will be supported by Montreal’s own Black Tiger Sex Machine, and Turbo Recordings’ Nautiluss.

Check out BTSM’s special Tigers Building Igloos (Official BTSM North Pole Mix) Igloofest Podcast which they made especially to mark the occasion:

Tigers Building Igloos (Official BTSM North Pole Mix) – Igloofest Podcast by Black Tiger Sex Machine

Friday night sees the highly-anticipated Montreal debut of one of electronic music’s newest superstars, Maya Jane Coles, as well as the return of a city favorite, Green Velvet.

Get ready for heavy bass on Saturday night, as Marcel Dettmann & Ben Klock close out the festival with their brand of massive techno only Germans can bring.

It’s shaping up to be a booming end to the biggest Igloofest yet. If it expects to come even close to measuring up to Sébastien Léger, Max Cooper and Hakim Guelmi night, it will have to be!

neontapedeck | electronic music blog | indie rock blog |

Even as the term indie rock has lost much of its meaning in the 21st century, some of its ethos remain. Number one is be real. Number two, if you want to gain admission to our exclusive club, you better be real and wear our clothes, speak our lingo, and work our shitty jobs. Number three, if you’re not going to be real, you better be really fucking good, like Animal Collective meats Radiohead produced by Outkast with cameos from Kanye and Kelly Clarkson good.

The problem with Lana Del Rey, is not that she is a pre-fab pop star. The problem is the bungled marketing of this pre-fab pop star. To readers of Stereogum and Pitchfork and indie rock blogs and zines country wide, authenticity still means something.  Lana Del Rey, if you haven’t noticed, comes off as less than authentic. This truth became uncomfortably evident when Pitchfork first interviewed Del Rey and revealed her past name and career (Lizzy Grant), and the involvement of lawyers and music biz professionals in shaping her career to date.

Do you remember what happened when the Columbia-educated, world-pop influenced Vampire Weekend first broke? There was a literal shitstorm.  We sneered, “How dare these well off young men appropriate musical styles of less affluent young men! How dare they act and dress like Ivy Leaguers! We may have some money, too, but do you see us wearing nice clothes? We were thrift store clothes, because that’s the way we’re supposed to look. You and your preppy looks are ruining it for all of us middle to upper middle class musicians. How dare you!”

Lana Del Rey, like Vampire Weekend before her, got past our cultural guard and gained entry into our indie rock clubhouse, exposing uncomfortable truths and shaking our own notion of identity.

We still like to think that musicians that break on these websites did it the right way. We like to believe that they worked their arses off, playing hundreds of shows in sweaty clubs to crowds of ten, and then they were just noticed one day. We like to believe that they don’t have their content pushed by an army of under paid publicists. (I can attest to the army of publicists, receiving 500+ emails a week).  And, most importantly, we like to believe, us, the cultural class, have a role in the making of unknown artists. We listened and tweeted and shared and if it wasn’t for us, they would still be just be another internet musician.  Their success had nothing to do with the PR firm feeding links to tastemakers.  We are the tastemakers!

In contrast, to viewers of American Idol, a show that attempts to manufacture pop stars (With varying degrees of success) authenticity isn’t even a consideration. The singers go to camp to have their looks redefined. They don’t write their own material. Presentation is as important content. The whole point is to transform a struggling artist into a known commodity.

Now, let’s do a thought experiment. What if Lana Del Rey had came through the Idol ranks and not Pitchfork?  What if leading up to her first album, she released a clever DIY video, like the one for “Video Games,” embedded above?  The indie-rocking, cultural class would have been all over this mainstream pop musician with a keen sense of aesthetics. They would have pondered in amazement, “How can this mainstreamer could be so in tune with our culture?”

Instead, by trying to break through Pitchfork and Stereogum first, we had a backlash.  We had to answer questions we’d rather ignore.  What, you mean Lana Del Rey is some invention of the music biz? You mean she used to record under a different name and used to have a different face and smaller lips? You mean she may have used her womanly charms to make her first album on the cheap? You mean her womanly charms were surgically enhanced?

If Del Rey had broken the accepted mainstream way, and not by co-opting our culture, all of the secondary issues would have been moot. Of course a major label would help their new signee look better. Of course they would manage her name, image, and appearances. And, instead of celebrating her high profile failure on Saturday Night Live, we would have sympathized with her with encouragement, “You’ll get ‘em next time Lana!  Hang in there, girl!”

As it stands, there is nowhere for Lana Del Rey to go from here.  The early reviews of her debut album under her new name are in, and they haven’t been too kind.  She’s all but destined to be a cultural footnote of 2011 and 2012.

As for us, that was a close one, wasn’t it?  We saw through her shaky image.  We did not let a major label force feed us culture we didn’t want.  If Lana Del Rey had succeeded in breaking through our barrier there would have been more Lana Del Reys, and then we would have needed to find a new clubhouse.

Oh, screw you, music biz.  We have a fond saying in these parts, “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, won’t get fooled again.”  Or, something like that.

I Rock Cleveland

The fuzz pop of San Francisco’s Terry Malts is equally indebted to the flapping, mop tops and punk rock of The Ramones and the disaffected stares of UK shoegazers.  Yet, if one were to choose, pogo or pout, shout or sulk, songs like “Nauseous,” should make the choice easy — Make yourself a pit, do the pizza man dance and the gorilla dance, too.  There will be time enough for introspection once the music’s done.

MP3: Terry Malts – Nauseous

Look for Terry Malt’s debut full length, Killing Time, February 21st on Slumberland Records.

—

After a few detours, and some unlikely help from beat-maker Aesop Rock, Allyson Baker and her San Francisco band, Dirty Ghosts are on the cusp of releasing their debut record, Metal Moon.  Neither metal, nor necessarily a nod to Television’s Marquee Moon, tracks like “Ropes That Way,” feature a more modern take on guitar rock with programmed beats and a punk rock past reduced to short, pointed bursts of sound.  And while some may draw connections to acts like The Kills or Sleigh Bells, the clean production and even cleaner melody, suggest Dirty Ghosts have bigger designs on their minds.

MP3: Dirty Ghosts – Ropes That Way

I Rock Cleveland

On the heels of one very well-received album (2010′s Twin-Hand Movement) and one killer 7″ for Sub Pop (2011′s “Deer Knives”/”Tangiers”), Baltimore’s Lower Dens return with a new full length and a heavy theme. The band’s forthcoming release, Nootropics, is said center on the ways in which technology could be used to expand human capabilities.

Hmm…Well…Ok, I’ll bite. Indie rock has a solid history of human/machine concept albums (See Radiohead’s OK Computer and Grandaddy’s Sophtware Slump) and judging by the first single, “Brains,” the inclusion of more electronic music elements, like motorik rhythms, into their custom blend of shoegaze and dream pop is a step forward for the five-piece.

MP3: Lower Dens – Brains

Nootropics, the latest album from Lower Dens, will be released May 1st on Ribbon Music.

I Rock Cleveland

FROM DEEP IN THE SIBERIAN TUNDRA – Everything Goes Cold are terrified to announce the availability of their first new song since “vs. General Failure“, available exclusively with merchandise purchase from Combichrist on their upcoming tour with our comrades Aesthetic Perfection and Ivardensphere (and sometimes God Module), starting November 3! COMBI-ICED features the greatest song ever created by anthropomorphic appliances still dressed in fuzzy animal costumes for Halloween a week after all of your pumpkins have been smashed:

THE IRON FIST OF JUST DESTRUCTION.

Featuring guest vocals by Britanny Bindrim of I:Scintilla, this song will be the first look at “The Tyrant Sun EP“, the next release from EGC, and the final step in your grim, grim descent in to madness and despair.

Find your exclusive download code on the COMBI-ICED card in your merch bag, with a new label sampler from our dark overlords, BIT RIOT RECORDS, on the other side. Then go drink until you can’t see your own face after it has been torn from your skull and presented to you on a delightful holiday platter.

COMBICHRIST – MONSTERS ON TOUR

Wed, November 03 – New Orleans, LA @ Howlin Wolf
Thurs, November 04 – Austin, TX @ Elysium
Sat, November 06 – Scottsdale, AZ @ The Venue Of Scottsdale
Sun, November 07 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Music Box
Mon, November 08 – San Francisco, CA @ Slims
Wed, November 10 – Portland, OR @ The Wonder Ballroom
Thurs, November 11 – Seattle, WA @ El Corazon
Sat, November 13 – Denver, CO @ The Gothic Theater
Mon, November 15 – Minneapolis, MN @ The Cabooze
Tues, November 16 – Chicago, IL @ The Bottom Lounge
Wed, November 17 – Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre
Thurs, November 18 – Ithaca, NY @ The Haunt
Fri, November 19 – Hartford, CT @ Webster Theater
Sat, November 20 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr Smalls Theatre
Sun, November 21 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Starlight Ballroom
Mon, November 22 – Washington DC @ Fur Nightclub
Wed, November 24 – Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade

For more information:

http://www.bitriotrecords.com
http://www.everythinggoescold.com
http://www.combichrist.com

Bit Riot Records

Bit Riot Records artist and Electro-rocker Deconbrio has joined forces with the lovely Miss FD to put a new spin on Ray Parker, Jr.’s hit “Ghostbusters“. The remake titled “Ghostbusters (Not Afraid of Ghosts)” is available as a digital release through iTunes, but you can download the release for FREE HERE through Friday November 12th.

Check out what FEARnet.com and Side-Line.com is already saying about this freaky ’80s classic re-make.

For more information:

http://deconbrio.com
http://missfd.com
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/ghostbusters-not-afraid-ghosts/id398545327

Bit Riot Records