Karin Dreijer Andersson has unleashed another Fever Ray video, to accompany her forthcoming single, “When I Grow Up,” out March 31. As with the last visual endeavor, this one is full of minor chord progressions and ominous symbolism.
Panther “Like a Bridge on Fire”
Panther may have ditched the electro-based freak-out jams that first won him the attention of the music scene, but fear not. The man born Charlie Salas-Humara, along with drummer Joe Kelly, who was enlisted in 2007, remain dynamic songwriters, as evidenced by the hooks, high-pitched vocals, and off-kilter pianos on this track.
Odd Nosdam T.I.M.E. Soundtrack
Bay Area beatician Odd Nosdam sequences fuzz-addled dimensions steeped in ambient hiss, industrial blur, and record static with boom-bapping bliss-outs galore on the T.I.M.E. Soundtrack—a custom-made score for the 2007 Element Skateboards film, This Is My Element. On tracks like “Wig Smasher” and “Root Bark,” Nosdam channels Boards of Canada, glazing bass-bursting 808s and reverb-drenched synths over a slew of choppy, mechanized percussion, while “Top Rank” finds him tapping into sounds from around the globe with its dubby bounce and Indian-inspired drones. And though most of the album’s tracks clock in under three minutes each, Nosdam stews each composition with a bevy of ingredients that’ll stick to your gums for days.
Artist to Watch: Duchess Says
Who:Duchess Says
Location: Montreal, Canada
Fronted by the keytar-wielding vocalist Annie-Claude Deschênes, the Montreal folks that comprise Duchess Says are a live force who animatedly rip through dance-punk numbers that owe as much to The Slits as they do Don Caballero. Deschênes packs so much punch into her live shows—expect runny mascara, ripped clothing, and much stage-diving—that she even sidelined herself after an on-stage injury, forcing the band to cancel its debut U.S. tour last year. Keep an eye out for the make-up tour in ’09.
Listen: “Melon”
Watch: Duchess Says on Bande A Part
Psychic Ills Mirror Eye
A slightly less Thirteenth Floor Elevators-go-shoegaze-rock affair than 2006’s Dins, Mirror Eye sounds as if it’s been marinating for years in an LSD broth. Opener “Mantis” sounds like some epic, early-’70s synth composition, stoically modulating its basic tribal beat, cyclical bassline, warped-bell keyboard motif, and atomized vocals, suggesting what peak-time Hawkwind might sound like if they recorded for Kranky. The rest of the album follows the same hypnotic, stoned tone—the glassy-orbed, languorously seductive “Eyes Closed” is space rock dubbed to infinity. Mirror Eye shows the band’s deeply psychedelic m.o. to be shaped by shafts of mesmerizing, Eastern-ish space rock à la Grails and Scenic. Clearly, Psychic Ills have more than one way to inspire bliss.
The Return of Themselves
Adam “Doseone” Drucker and Jeffrey “Jel” Logan ended a six-year-long silence this week by announcing the return of Themselves, the pair’s production/rap project from which we’ve not seen a release since 2003’s The No Music.
The Oakland, CA-based boys haven’t been twiddling their thumbs all this long while though. Both are active members of avant-hop sextet Subtle, which released ExitingARM last year, and a Themselves mixtape is set to drop in March via anticon.
Says Drucker of the mixtape, which will appear “in various places around the internet” for free, “It is our version of a classic mixtape, featuring [all the] rappers I have ever shared mic’ed air with.”
If you know Drucker’s resume, this list includes Aesop Rock, Busdriver, WHY?, Buck 65, Passage, Pedestrian, Sole, Slug, and a whole host of others, all of whom appear on TheFREEhoudini. “It is an ever-developing posse cut to commemorate 10 years of rap-based art in the name of the ant,” says Drucker. In plain talk, that means a lot of guys are going to be on the mic at once during each track, singing the praises of the anticon. label, which is currently celebrating its 10-year anniversary.
Drucker and Logan also have plans for a new full-length, slated for release in August. The already titled CrownsDown will mark the third Themselves long-player.
In the meantime, they’ll play the usual round of festivals, SXSW and Coachella included, but if you can’t wait that long and happen to live in the Bay Area, head to the Apple store Saturday afternoon, for the Terrorbird/XLR8RNoise Pop party, where the duo will perform.
Pictured: Drucker (left) and Logan. Photo by Mathew Scott.
The Field Announces New Album
Axel Willner’s debut full-length under his guise The Field garnered words like “brilliant” and “beautiful” when it was released in 2007, and the pop-infused techno on From Here We Go Sublime found a fitting home at Kompakt Records.
The label just announced, via a posting on its site, that Willner has a new full-length in the works that has just been mixed and bears the title Yesterday & Today. According to Kompakt “fans should expect a much more organic-sounding affair if [the album is] compared to its predecessor.” The label also cites “some surprises” and a possible appearance by John Stanier (of Battles fame) as things to expect on the new album.
Yesterday & Today will drop May 25.
FINALE Becomes a Mario Brother
We briefly mentioned Detroit rapper FINALE‘s forthcoming debut album, A Pipe Dream & a Promise, a couple weeks ago, touching on the fact that Interdependent Media has created a Super Mario Bros.-themed videogame to go along with the release. More information on the game has surfaced this week, along with the actual player, so those wishing to revisit 1985 can do so now.
Super Finale is a straightforward affair: FINALE stands in for Mario, only he’s clad in a hoodie and jeans, rather than red overalls. Steer FINALE through a Mario-esque landscape and make him do things like spit fireballs and stomp on those strange brown mushroom creatures. Those who beat the game get a free download of the Black Milk-produced “One Man Show Remix.”
Super Finale:
A Pipe Dream & a Promise is out April 7 via Interdependent Media.
Duchess Says “Melon”
Runny mascara, a decidedly punk ethos, and outrageous onstage antics (that sometimes end with injury) inform much of the work of Montreal four-piece Duchess Says, and here’s a track that’s less dance-punk than it is an all out musical catharsis.
“Melon” is off Anthologie Des 3 Perchoirs, out now.
Modeselektor and Apparat Reform Moderat
Any good techno fan knows that 2009 is not the first year the name Moderat has surfaced. Fans of the genre (or electronic music in general) will recall that, in 2002, the Modeselektor boys (Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary) joined forces with Apparat (Sascha Ring) and recorded the Auf Kosten der Gesundheit EP. But when the title of your release translates to “at the cost of health,” something is probably wrong, and the boys found the process of recording that EP so daunting they disbanded before ever making a full-length.
Fast-forward seven years and it seems they’ve changed their minds. April 21 will see the release of said full-length, a self-titled album BPitch Control will put out. “Rusty Nails” is slated to be the first single and features Ring on vocals, as well as remixes by Shackleton and Booka Shade.
Also stay on the lookout for a limited-edition DVD version of Moderat, which will be produced by artist collective Pfadfinderei, who handles all visual elements of live Moderat performances.
Moderat
01 A New Error
02 Rusty Nails
03 Seamonkey
04 Slow Match (feat. Paul St. Hilaire)
05 3 Minutes Of
06 Nasty Silence
07 Sick With It (feat. Dellé aka Eased from Seeed)
08 Porc # 1
09 Porc # 2
10 No. 22
11 Out Of Sight
Photo by Melissa Hostetler.
