Excerpt: "The mood is relaxed, like everything in the so-called 'chillwave' genre that sprung up while Dntel weren't looking."
http://thefourohfive.com/review/article/dntel-aimlessness
Dntel - Aimlessness
I reviewed Dntel's album "Aimlessness" for The 405.
Excerpt: "The mood is relaxed, like everything in the so-called 'chillwave' genre that sprung up while Dntel weren't looking."
http://thefourohfive.com/review/article/dntel-aimlessness
Excerpt: "The mood is relaxed, like everything in the so-called 'chillwave' genre that sprung up while Dntel weren't looking."
http://thefourohfive.com/review/article/dntel-aimlessness
Karen Gwyer - I've Been You Twice
I reviewed Karen's Gwyer's new EP for the405.
Excerpt: "This is the second entry in Kaleidoscope's ongoing "limited dubs" project, where artists drape effects onto their music as it's recorded directly to tape..."
http://thefourohfive.com/review/article/karen-gwyer-i-ve-been-you-twice
http://thefourohfive.com/review/article/karen-gwyer-i-ve-been-you-twice
Tu Fawning - A Monument (review)
I've started writing about music for The405 at thefourohfive.com. Here's my first, for Tu Fawning's album A Monument.
Excerpt: "The songs end up sounding like stories, rather than personal confessions. We get the emotions second-hand. It's the difference between a photograph of a scenic view, and actually being there..."
http://thefourohfive.com/review/article/tu-fawning-a-monument
Excerpt: "The songs end up sounding like stories, rather than personal confessions. We get the emotions second-hand. It's the difference between a photograph of a scenic view, and actually being there..."
http://thefourohfive.com/review/article/tu-fawning-a-monument
Blacklisters
I reviewed the debut album of a Leeds band called Blacklisters, and then did a short Q&A with them. Both were for Soundshock.com.
Here's an excerpt from the review:
"...There's the same sense of danger; the same feeling that these songs are being played from underneath grimy bridges - trolls picking up instruments after a hard day eating billy goats..." [read more]
And here's an excerpt from the Q&A:
"...I want people to be perpetually sick on each other 'til the end of our set..." [read more]
Here's an excerpt from the review:
"...There's the same sense of danger; the same feeling that these songs are being played from underneath grimy bridges - trolls picking up instruments after a hard day eating billy goats..." [read more]
And here's an excerpt from the Q&A:
"...I want people to be perpetually sick on each other 'til the end of our set..." [read more]
Cursive - I Am Gemini
I wrote a review of Cursive's newest album, I Am Gemini, for Soundshock.co.uk.
Excerpt: "Well, the artwork's terrible. It looks like a visual representation of a mental breakdown, but to be fair it's breakdowns that have been putting bread on Tim Kasher's table since his music career started. He's even threatened to have one on purpose, just to sell more records..."
Read the rest of the article at Soundshock.
Excerpt: "Well, the artwork's terrible. It looks like a visual representation of a mental breakdown, but to be fair it's breakdowns that have been putting bread on Tim Kasher's table since his music career started. He's even threatened to have one on purpose, just to sell more records..."
Read the rest of the article at Soundshock.
Reminder: bands still make music in 2012.
I wrote a piece for the 49sVsDolphins Records website about this year's big festival line-ups, and the recent spate of band reformations. This is the first paragraph:
---------------
Apparently, the recent upturn in band reformations can't even be halted by the usually-effective method of death. Queen are headlining Sonisphere, with someone from American Idol playing Freddie Mercury. One of the biggest rock festivals in the country, in other words, is hosting karaoke. Can't wait for the Reading announcement: Jimi Hendrix's skeleton does a pub quiz? Father Ted's three ages of Elvis?
[read the rest]
---------------
Apparently, the recent upturn in band reformations can't even be halted by the usually-effective method of death. Queen are headlining Sonisphere, with someone from American Idol playing Freddie Mercury. One of the biggest rock festivals in the country, in other words, is hosting karaoke. Can't wait for the Reading announcement: Jimi Hendrix's skeleton does a pub quiz? Father Ted's three ages of Elvis?
[read the rest]
Band Members Day Jobs
I wrote a piece for BandMembersDayJobs about what it's like to be in a band in your mid-20s. I'll post the entire thing, but it's really worth looking at the rest of the blog too. When I'm at these little DIY shows watching out-of-town bands, it helps me think about what they're giving up to be there.
---------------
There are four of us, all working on relatively low rungs in the employment ladder. I’m casual member of staff at a local arts centre, which is wonderfully flexible and good in a lot of ways. It’s not, however, a career. People have only so much time, effort and money, and after you’ve spent most of it on practices, gigs and recording, there’s little left to use pursuing work or study.
Of course this is a choice we make freely and no sympathy is required or expected. Still, as people in our mid-twenties who left student-dom behind a few years ago, we’ve found that people’s expectations of us change. Friends get graduate jobs, flats and respectable pay packets. They have lofty ambitions within their field that all of a sudden don’t seem out of reach. I, on the other hand, explain that I want to be in a punk band. People ask if you’re “signed”, or how much money you make from gigs. I say that the lucrative record deal is basically a myth, and nobody makes any money from DIY gigs. It’s not a career - but I don’t need it to be.
Perhaps we fly down the motorway in that small early evening gap between finishing work and going on stage; 100mph for 150 straight minutes in the pouring rain, feeling genuinely worried for our safety but even more scared of missing our 25 minute set. The venue isn’t really a venue at all, it’s a pub without real microphones or stands - we fashion our own from sellotape and the radio mics they use for bingo. Later we fall to sleep on somebody’s cold wooden floor.
The point is that this stuff isn’t a means to an end. It’s simply what I want to do, and I find it as rewarding as any “proper” job could be. It can just get tough to talk to people who can’t see it that way. Without quantifiable achievements, you can’t justify yourself as a person of worth. Unfortunately it’s something that’s only going to get more difficult as time goes by.
http://bandmembersdayjobs.tumblr.com/post/18842331986/nick-oakden-without-maps
---------------
There are four of us, all working on relatively low rungs in the employment ladder. I’m casual member of staff at a local arts centre, which is wonderfully flexible and good in a lot of ways. It’s not, however, a career. People have only so much time, effort and money, and after you’ve spent most of it on practices, gigs and recording, there’s little left to use pursuing work or study.
Of course this is a choice we make freely and no sympathy is required or expected. Still, as people in our mid-twenties who left student-dom behind a few years ago, we’ve found that people’s expectations of us change. Friends get graduate jobs, flats and respectable pay packets. They have lofty ambitions within their field that all of a sudden don’t seem out of reach. I, on the other hand, explain that I want to be in a punk band. People ask if you’re “signed”, or how much money you make from gigs. I say that the lucrative record deal is basically a myth, and nobody makes any money from DIY gigs. It’s not a career - but I don’t need it to be.
Perhaps we fly down the motorway in that small early evening gap between finishing work and going on stage; 100mph for 150 straight minutes in the pouring rain, feeling genuinely worried for our safety but even more scared of missing our 25 minute set. The venue isn’t really a venue at all, it’s a pub without real microphones or stands - we fashion our own from sellotape and the radio mics they use for bingo. Later we fall to sleep on somebody’s cold wooden floor.
The point is that this stuff isn’t a means to an end. It’s simply what I want to do, and I find it as rewarding as any “proper” job could be. It can just get tough to talk to people who can’t see it that way. Without quantifiable achievements, you can’t justify yourself as a person of worth. Unfortunately it’s something that’s only going to get more difficult as time goes by.
http://bandmembersdayjobs.tumblr.com/post/18842331986/nick-oakden-without-maps
Too Split
I wrote an short article about the concept of the split EP in this 21st century. It was posted up on my record label's website, but here it is in full.
---------------
I downloaded some songs from a Example Band A's website. It said: "Our side of a split CD with Example Band B. We had 50 copies and sold them only at shows".
Great concept, the split. You love The As but you've never heard of The Bs. Now you've got no choice but to listen, no option but to form an opinion. 7"s are good, CDs even better; they run automatically from A's songs to B's. You become a fan or you don't, but one way or another both bands get their music in plenty more ears.
Example Band A's songs are great. I listen to them a lot. But when they finish, my speakers don't automatically blast out Band B. They're playing mp3s, not a CD. I didn't get my hands on one of those elusive fifty. I only have half of the split.
The ways in which we distribute and listen to music are obviously changing a lot, and this is just a tiny part of that. But it's worth focusing in on. The formats of 'album' and 'EP' seem to be doing well in a digital guise. Not so the split, which is born as a limited edition physical object, but is more likely than not to spend the rest of its life on two separate Bandcamp pages with no links between them.
Perhaps bands should trade files, and upload everything to both sites. Perhaps they should shove all the music into one mp3, and to hell with the iTunes categorisation consequences.
But they should do something, because - even though they're probably my style, even though I could love them, and even though they might well turn into my new favourite band - I've still never listened to Example Band B.
---------------
I downloaded some songs from a Example Band A's website. It said: "Our side of a split CD with Example Band B. We had 50 copies and sold them only at shows".
Great concept, the split. You love The As but you've never heard of The Bs. Now you've got no choice but to listen, no option but to form an opinion. 7"s are good, CDs even better; they run automatically from A's songs to B's. You become a fan or you don't, but one way or another both bands get their music in plenty more ears.
Example Band A's songs are great. I listen to them a lot. But when they finish, my speakers don't automatically blast out Band B. They're playing mp3s, not a CD. I didn't get my hands on one of those elusive fifty. I only have half of the split.
The ways in which we distribute and listen to music are obviously changing a lot, and this is just a tiny part of that. But it's worth focusing in on. The formats of 'album' and 'EP' seem to be doing well in a digital guise. Not so the split, which is born as a limited edition physical object, but is more likely than not to spend the rest of its life on two separate Bandcamp pages with no links between them.
Perhaps bands should trade files, and upload everything to both sites. Perhaps they should shove all the music into one mp3, and to hell with the iTunes categorisation consequences.
But they should do something, because - even though they're probably my style, even though I could love them, and even though they might well turn into my new favourite band - I've still never listened to Example Band B.
ATP: Nightmare Before Christmas band descriptions
I went to December 2011's All Tomorrow's Parties - Nightmare Before Christmas festival, curated by Les Savy Fav, Battles and Caribou. My friend Rachel Brook made a zine for the event, to which I contributed tiny descriptions of each act.
---------------
Les Savy Fav
Hoarse Post-hardcore storytellers, as wildly inventive as they are stubbornly direct.
Archers Of Loaf
Scratchy guitars, discordant everything and yet still tremendously accessible. 90s US college radio never got better.
Holy Fuck
To make someone dance? Either electrify the floor, or play them this. The live show's like both.
Hot Snakes
Punk rock, minus everything pointless. They use guitar chords like others might use a hammer.
No Age
The simplest little ditties, sung amid a raging storm. Half breeze, half hurricane.
The Dodos
Folk-rock in a rush. Pounding down the street, out of breath, not wasting any time.
Marnie Stern
More notes in a song, on her guitar and Zach Hill's drums, than in most careers. And yet, somehow, it's pop.
Wild Flag
Ex-Sleater-Kinney duo and friends celebrate how fun it is to make rock music.
Oxes
They're weird. They're awkward. But god damn it they're a rock band - no more, no less.
Simian Mobile Disco (DJ set)
They DJ, produce, mix, remix.....it's all the same really. They're just trying to make you dance.
Surfer Blood
Slacker indie busts out of the garage, goes surfing. The sepia videos practically film themselves.
Total Control
It's synth-pop; it's garage rock. Either way it's got post-punk's unsalvageable bleakness.
Violent Soho
Grunge. Loud, uncomplicated, just like your old favourite bands from the 90s. Grunge.
Future Islands
Take The Killers, scratch off their shiny surface and inject them with a serum of gruff, absolute truth.
The Budos Band
Brass-laden deep funk... picture the opening montage of a spy film from decades ago. Grooves suaver than Bond.
Battles
About as modern as music gets, in both songwriting and technology. Gleaming robot rhythms.
Flying Lotus
Jazz and hip-hop beats, broadcast out into space and remixed by aliens.
Gary Numan
Indestructible synth/post-punk hero; a perpetual influence on nearly everybody.
Bitch Magnet
Fuzzed-out post-hardcore through a steamed-up telescope. Their first show since 1990.
The Field
Minimal, hypnotic trance that manages to be ambient and cataclysmic, all at once.
Washed Out
Narcoleptic 80s pop, idly hummed in a summer daydream. Real life is a long way away.
The Psychic Paramount
Like a liquid, they fill any space they're poured into. Or melt it - corrosive acid, by just drums, bass and guitar.
Cults
Uncluttered boy/girl pop. Naive? Listen closer. There's something in the shadows.
Thank You
The colourful detail of, say, TV On The Radio (same producer), except twisted into challenging noise rock.
Nisennenmondai
Unbreakable patterns from Japan. One day they'll get up on stage and just forget to ever stop playing.
Walls
Time-lapse footage in a David Attenborough film. Pop crinkles out of its Spring buds, and blooms.
Phil Manley Life Coach
A guitar, looping and swooping and chilling the hell out. Man, feel those vibes.
Underground Resistance presents Interstellar Fugitives
They're not here to better the unimaginative techno programmers of this world - they're here to flat out destroy them.
Dead Rider
Picture a Mike Patton cabaret. A bit gothic, a lot unsettling. It definitely happens at night, and it definitely isn't safe.
Matias Aguayo
Sultry tribal rhythms, minimal techno and just about everything else, with love from South America.
Caribou (Vibration Ensemble)
Not just the liquid dance music pioneer, but his all-star band too, in their second-ever performance. Sound sloshes round the room.
Pharoah Sanders
A jazz saxophonist of unimpeachable repute. Once Coltrane's protegé, now arguably the world's best.
The Ex, with Getatchew Mekurya
Dutch post-punks' 30-year career gets dwarfed by the 60 of their legendary Ethiopian sax collaborator.
Junior Boys
Synth-pop, buffed up to a marvellous sheen. Somehow, the overblown 80s synths aren't overblown at all.
Omar Souleyman
Syria's streets brought to vivid, energetic life, through traditional folk-pop.
Sun Ra Arkestra
Legendary jazz emsemble, set up by the late, great cosmic philosopher Sun Ra. Now led by the 87-year-old Marshall Allen.
Factory Floor
Even machinery likes to dance sometimes. Double-click fun.exe.
Four Tet
Over a decade, Kieran Hebden's nightclub-honed, post-rock influenced electronica has been getting steadily more grown-up.
Theo Parrish
Hendrix. Chicago radio. Sculpture. Old soul records. All chucked into the melting pot that is Theo's DJ sets.
Toro Y Moi
Plant chillwave, grow it into funk, krautrock or R&B. Those branches are still reaching up.
Orchestra of Spheres
A fairly ridiculous group of Kiwis play, and wear, just about anything. Ancient future funk.
Silver Apples
A rock band, electronically? They practically invented the concept, on home-made synths in 60s New York.
Roll The Dice
A film from the past, about the future. Hidden music despite the strictest of rules.
Connan Mockasin
Whimsical psychedelia for curious children, by a becostumed New Zealand troubadour.
DJ Rashad & DJ Spinn
In Chicago? Got even a passing interest in dance music? Meet your new best friends.
---------------
Les Savy Fav
Hoarse Post-hardcore storytellers, as wildly inventive as they are stubbornly direct.
Archers Of Loaf
Scratchy guitars, discordant everything and yet still tremendously accessible. 90s US college radio never got better.
Holy Fuck
To make someone dance? Either electrify the floor, or play them this. The live show's like both.
Hot Snakes
Punk rock, minus everything pointless. They use guitar chords like others might use a hammer.
No Age
The simplest little ditties, sung amid a raging storm. Half breeze, half hurricane.
The Dodos
Folk-rock in a rush. Pounding down the street, out of breath, not wasting any time.
Marnie Stern
More notes in a song, on her guitar and Zach Hill's drums, than in most careers. And yet, somehow, it's pop.
Wild Flag
Ex-Sleater-Kinney duo and friends celebrate how fun it is to make rock music.
Oxes
They're weird. They're awkward. But god damn it they're a rock band - no more, no less.
Simian Mobile Disco (DJ set)
They DJ, produce, mix, remix.....it's all the same really. They're just trying to make you dance.
Surfer Blood
Slacker indie busts out of the garage, goes surfing. The sepia videos practically film themselves.
Total Control
It's synth-pop; it's garage rock. Either way it's got post-punk's unsalvageable bleakness.
Violent Soho
Grunge. Loud, uncomplicated, just like your old favourite bands from the 90s. Grunge.
Future Islands
Take The Killers, scratch off their shiny surface and inject them with a serum of gruff, absolute truth.
The Budos Band
Brass-laden deep funk... picture the opening montage of a spy film from decades ago. Grooves suaver than Bond.
Battles
About as modern as music gets, in both songwriting and technology. Gleaming robot rhythms.
Flying Lotus
Jazz and hip-hop beats, broadcast out into space and remixed by aliens.
Gary Numan
Indestructible synth/post-punk hero; a perpetual influence on nearly everybody.
Bitch Magnet
Fuzzed-out post-hardcore through a steamed-up telescope. Their first show since 1990.
The Field
Minimal, hypnotic trance that manages to be ambient and cataclysmic, all at once.
Washed Out
Narcoleptic 80s pop, idly hummed in a summer daydream. Real life is a long way away.
The Psychic Paramount
Like a liquid, they fill any space they're poured into. Or melt it - corrosive acid, by just drums, bass and guitar.
Cults
Uncluttered boy/girl pop. Naive? Listen closer. There's something in the shadows.
Thank You
The colourful detail of, say, TV On The Radio (same producer), except twisted into challenging noise rock.
Nisennenmondai
Unbreakable patterns from Japan. One day they'll get up on stage and just forget to ever stop playing.
Walls
Time-lapse footage in a David Attenborough film. Pop crinkles out of its Spring buds, and blooms.
Phil Manley Life Coach
A guitar, looping and swooping and chilling the hell out. Man, feel those vibes.
Underground Resistance presents Interstellar Fugitives
They're not here to better the unimaginative techno programmers of this world - they're here to flat out destroy them.
Dead Rider
Picture a Mike Patton cabaret. A bit gothic, a lot unsettling. It definitely happens at night, and it definitely isn't safe.
Matias Aguayo
Sultry tribal rhythms, minimal techno and just about everything else, with love from South America.
Caribou (Vibration Ensemble)
Not just the liquid dance music pioneer, but his all-star band too, in their second-ever performance. Sound sloshes round the room.
Pharoah Sanders
A jazz saxophonist of unimpeachable repute. Once Coltrane's protegé, now arguably the world's best.
The Ex, with Getatchew Mekurya
Dutch post-punks' 30-year career gets dwarfed by the 60 of their legendary Ethiopian sax collaborator.
Junior Boys
Synth-pop, buffed up to a marvellous sheen. Somehow, the overblown 80s synths aren't overblown at all.
Omar Souleyman
Syria's streets brought to vivid, energetic life, through traditional folk-pop.
Sun Ra Arkestra
Legendary jazz emsemble, set up by the late, great cosmic philosopher Sun Ra. Now led by the 87-year-old Marshall Allen.
Factory Floor
Even machinery likes to dance sometimes. Double-click fun.exe.
Four Tet
Over a decade, Kieran Hebden's nightclub-honed, post-rock influenced electronica has been getting steadily more grown-up.
Theo Parrish
Hendrix. Chicago radio. Sculpture. Old soul records. All chucked into the melting pot that is Theo's DJ sets.
Toro Y Moi
Plant chillwave, grow it into funk, krautrock or R&B. Those branches are still reaching up.
Orchestra of Spheres
A fairly ridiculous group of Kiwis play, and wear, just about anything. Ancient future funk.
Silver Apples
A rock band, electronically? They practically invented the concept, on home-made synths in 60s New York.
Roll The Dice
A film from the past, about the future. Hidden music despite the strictest of rules.
Connan Mockasin
Whimsical psychedelia for curious children, by a becostumed New Zealand troubadour.
DJ Rashad & DJ Spinn
In Chicago? Got even a passing interest in dance music? Meet your new best friends.
Without Maps - JCVD (single)
I did the packaging for Without Maps' single, JCVD. It was released on 49s vs Dolphins Records, on mini-cd and cassette.
I also devised an idea for the video, and helped to make it (over the course of one particularly productive evening). The art was done by Jake Kent, and the camerawork was done by Michael Ross Connell.
I also devised an idea for the video, and helped to make it (over the course of one particularly productive evening). The art was done by Jake Kent, and the camerawork was done by Michael Ross Connell.
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