15 December 2009

Javelin


Javelin - Jemz and Jamz (2009)

09 December 2009

Various Artists

Various Artists - Forge Your Own Chains (1968-1974)

Disappears

Disappears - Live Over the Rainbo (2009)

Zomes

Zomes - S/T

Letting Up Despite Great Faults

Letting Up Despite Great Faults - S/T (2009)

Sunset

Sunset - Gold Dissolves to Gray (2009)

Crocodiles, Graffiti Island, Dum Dum Girls, PENS

Crocodiles, Graffiti Island, Dum Dum Girls, PENS - 4-Way Split (2009)

Blakroc

Blakroc - S/T (2009)
black keys + hip hop = win

Beach House

Beach House - Teen Dream (2009)

Real Estate

Real Estate - Reality 12" (2009)

Animal Collective


Animal Collective - Fall Be Kind (2009)
like you don't already have this...

11 November 2009

10,000 hits




i'll be uploading more, shortly.

26 October 2009

Atlas Sound

Atlas Sound - Rough Trade EP (2009)

Washed Out


Washed Out - High Times (2009)

25 October 2009

Evangelicals

Evangelicals - So Gone (2006)

Evangelicals - The Evening Descends (2008)

Rain Machine


Rain Machine - S/T (2009)
*link fixed

24 October 2009

Devendra Banhart - What Will We Be (2009)

Ganglians

Ganglians - Blood on the Sand 7" (2009)

Real Estate


Real Estate - S/T (2009)

19 October 2009

Fungi Girls

Fungi Girls - Seafaring Pyramids (2009)
these kids are only 14-16 years old!

City Center


City Center - S/T (2009)

18 October 2009

Karen O And The Kids


Karen O And The Kids - Where The Wild Things Are OST (2009)

14 October 2009

Fever Ray with Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid


Fever Ray with Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid -
Stranger Than Kindness/Here Before LP (2009)

02 October 2009

Built To Spill


Built To Spill - There Is No Enemy (2009)

29 September 2009

Girls


Girls - Album (2009)

Ganglians

Ganglians - Monster Head Room (2009)

Air


Air - Love 2 (2009)

25 September 2009

The Flaming Lips


The Flaming Lips - Embryonic (2009)

23 September 2009

Various Artists

Various Artists - Deep Throat Anthology (Parts I & II) (1972-1974)

Ducktails

Ducktails - Ducktails (2009)

Inverness

Inverness - Forest Fortress (2009)

Harlem

Harlem - Free Drugs ;-) (2008)

Condo Fucks

Condo Fucks - Fuckbook (2009)

Various Artists

Various Artists - Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay (1968-1976)

Thee Oh Sees

Thee Oh Sees - The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending A Night In (2008)

The Beets

The Beets - Spit In The Faces Of People Who Don't Want To Be Cool (2008)

Them

Them - Again (1966)

Volcano Choir

Volcano Choir - Unmap (2009)

Black Lips


Black Lips - 200 Million Thousand (2009)

Various Artists

Various Artists - The World's Rarest Funk 45s (2006)

19 August 2009

Ducktails

Ducktails - Landscapes (2009)
We've been keeping a close watch on the Real Estate camp because, well, we like them ... and their camp puts out a lot of stuff. The other day it was bassist Alex Bleeker fronting the Freaks, a band that includes Real Estaters Martin Courtney and Matt Mondanile. Today it's a new track from Mondanile's Ducktails, who we last caught up with via "Parasailing," his contribution to a split Underwater Peoples 7". This time we have a track from the forthcoming Landscapes LP (from which we also heard "Landrunner"). It's a brief, melancholic, and somehow oddly pastoral guitar-lined piece with a certain airy lightness threaded throughout. Then again, it has me thinking of clear forerunner Azusa Plane, which makes the mood that much heavier.

Landscapes is out 8/3 via Olde English Spelling Bee. It can currently be pre-ordered at Insound (while there, take a moment to read Charles Berlitz's letter-as-release description.) You can also hear an unmastered version of the LP's "Welcome Home (I'm Back" at MySpace.) -stereogum

04 August 2009

The Dovers

The Dovers - We're Not Just Anybody (1966)

30 July 2009

Neon Indian

Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms (2009)
“Neon Indian delivers equal parts synthetic nostalgia, Dreampop lullabies, and grinding guitar noise to create something eerier than the sum of its parts. Forged after a hazy winter gathering in Texas, this initial batch of tracks were the result of field recordings, record samples, a collection of bizarre synth sounds. Orbiting around the themes of drug induced heartbreak, weary afternoons, and lost chances, this music provides a lush soundtrack to the deadbeat exploits of teenage ennui.”

Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs (2009)

jj

jj - jj n° 2 (2009)
link, doesn't have a mypsace or a website!

29 July 2009

Atlas Sound

[not actual album art]
Atlas Sound - Logos (Unmastered) (2009)
here's some background information on this release. it will be officially released on october 20. bradford cox (atlas sound, deerhunter frontman) has this to say:
My last album was a bedroom laptop type thing. Very introverted. Logos is an album that was recorded all over the world. It’s not about me. There are collaborations with other musicians. The lyrics are not autobiographical. The view is a lot more panoramic and less close-up. I became bored with introspection. This was also the case with Deerhunter’s Microcastle LP, which was written during the same period.
I started recording December of 2007. I recorded the first version of the album, which was not intended for release. Due to some unfortunate mistakes on my part, this ’sketch’ of the album was leaked. Many of the songs where simply ‘placeholders,’ songs I created quickly to help design the ‘arc’ of the album.
I did not react well to the leak, in retrospect. It became the kind of internet-fueled drama that I was quickly learning to despise. I had always desired to speak through music, not blog posts and interviews, etc. I considered abandoning the project.
I toured for a period in Europe with Animal Collective, whose band dynamic was very inspirational to be around. On the bus, we often played improvised iPod games. We would take turns formulating a theme or unifying concept and then play three songs. The goal would be for everyone to try and figure out the theme. During one of these games, someone played ‘What Am I Going to Do’ by the Dovers. I was amazed at the hook– a weird organ thing with drums and electric bass. I mentioned to Noah [Lennox] that someone should really sample that riff. He agreed and he taught me a little about sampling and matching up beats. This ended up as the collaborative effort ‘Walkabout’.
Each song on the album has a similar story. That might be my favorite thing about the album. It’s a collection of songs. There is no ‘filler.’ There are little scrapbook details everywhere. Sasha Vine [of Sian Alice Group] provided a double-tracked improvised violin part to ‘Attic Lights’ which was recorded backstage at a Deerhunter/Sian Alice Group show in Brighton. It might be my favorite moment of the album. I played it for some younger friends of mine. They cringed. They wanted more songs like ‘Walkabout’. Something with a big beat. I told them when they get older they will appreciate things like harmonicas and violins more.
Laetitia from Stereolab, who I idolized as a teenager and would later befriend on tour, contributed words and vocals to ‘Quick Canal.’ The song was originally about 15 minutes long. I had zero ideas for vocals and asked if she could give it a shot. Andy Ramsay [drummer for Stereolab ] took a dub of the original and recorded Laetitia’s vocals at his Press Play studio in London. It was quite a treat to hear the finished product, now at an economical nine minutes.
Almost everything you hear on the album is a first take. This makes it almost like a ‘live album’ where a band sets up in a studio and just rolls tape. There are songs on here I don’t even remember recording.

this unmastered release, though unfinished and not the final tracklist for the official release, is reeeeally good.

27 July 2009

Why?

Why? - Eskimo Snow (2009)

In abstract, WHY? is the process of adapting to the somehow simple business of existing. WHY? is the searching for something clearly unreachable, with hopes of finding small significance along the way. The attempt to understand what’s really going on by observing, neither by telescope nor microscope, but by naked eye, the intimate details in the most mundane of life’s happenings. The attempt to describe the gist of the feeling of the tiniest modicum of The Great Universal Unutterable Joke we are all always not laughing at—except when we are. WHY? is living out the set-up of that old gag over and over, until we finally reach a punch-line. Or we die and we don't.WHY? is, most often, a trio of handsome Midwestern men with a shared past, present and future. Today, they fiddle around with skins, strings and bells through microphones attached to tape, presenting their “findings” to the waiting world. In an earlier decade they were all born in Cincinnati. And in the time in between, much did happen. Yoni Wolf, for instance, grew up the second son to an art book editor and a rabbi. He got his start recording bad poems and sloppy beats on the family synagogue’s forgotten 4-track. In junior high he discovered hip-hop; in art school he learned how to drop out. His brother Josiah played drums at worship service as a tot, dominated Concert Band as a teen, and fell in love with the compositions of Thelonious Monk on his way to University of Cincinnati’s music conservatory. Doug McDiarmid would eventually get expelled from UoC for carrying a stun gun, but was first conceived by two French teachers and taught piano while in kindergarten. He went to high school with the Wolfs, where he played in Steve Miller cover bands. In various permutations together and with other now-notables (Dose One, Odd Nosdam, Mr. Dibbs, Slug), these three created and/or contributed to a number of freewheeling rap and lo-fi bedroom-rock related projects, some still unexcavated: Miss Ohio’s Nameless, Apogee, Greenthink, Reaching Quiet, and the now seminal cLOUDDEAD. Their wildest dreams were achieved when they relocated to the West to make pop-inflected psychedelic folk-hop.Yoni was the first to make the move. For four years, two EPs and one color-drenched album (2003’s Oaklandazulasylum), WHY? was his alone. He honed his trademark delivery—that sickly sweet, half-rapped, singsong-suicide style—shined up his wry, picturesque poetry on life, love and self, and developed a clip-and-collage composition aesthetic using keyboards, toys, guitars, samplers and anything worth banging on. When Doug and Josiah joined Yoni in Oakland, they brought a hoard of instruments and the ability to wail on every last one of them. By chops and imagination, WHY? grew into a thing of flesh, bones and fully fledged songs. In 2005, the band released Elephant Eyelash, and suddenly that once tenuous future seemed solid. Critics swooned; ladies lauded; WHY? did not rest. They toured (with Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, and Islands). They collaborated (with Danielson, Department of Eagles, and Subtle; Yoni made Hymie’s Basement with Fog’s Andrew Broder). They put out yet more music (the Rubber Traits EP and “Dumb Hummer” 7-inch).Thus, the impending release of WHY?’s latest, brightest, darkest smile-twisted opus,Alopecia, isn’t so much a return as it is an affirmation of something already in the air. In February of 2007, the trio temporarily relocated to Minneapolis and became five, officially inducting Andrew Broder and Mark Erickson of good-art friendlies Fog into the band, then recording their new work live. As can be expected, Alopecia is a fantastic offering of raw sweat and dreams inspired by nothing more or less than the infinite erring bits of daily existence.

21 July 2009

Discovery

Discovery - LP (2009)
Side projects are often insipid and indulgent wrecks-- random noise/techno/weird experiments tossed off by people who should know better. Thankfully, Discovery-- featuring Vampire Weekend keyboardist/producer Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot singer Wes Miles-- is not one of those side projects. Started as a fun, electro-pop hobby four years ago, the duo are finally ready to release their debut album, simply called LP, on July 7 via XL.

i'm a little late on this one... get it while it's here.

09 July 2009

Thee Oh Sees

Thee Oh Sees - Singles Collection (2009)
not the right album art but whatever, this collection fucking rocks.