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viewing 1 To 12 of 12 items
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DEAD 078CD
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"The album started with visions of large monumental sounds inspired by Heizer and Turrell; American works on a grand scale, monuments, dirty hands and an epic American masculinity. Dust, stone, sky, earth. These broad, bold strokes would come to pass but not quite as expected. A sci fi aesthetic narrative emerged. Tackling distant pasts and future humanism, the pain and idiocy of our contemporary culture. How to deal with it open heartedly? The boredom, the sadness and speed. The plots within plots of Dune mirrored in many layers of sound. Creating 3D sonic atmospheres that our songs and singers inhabit. Our story, a story, all stories. Told in verses, in underground language, in sub frequencies. Not audible, only felt, intuited, imagined in some deepest psychic space that you are yet to know. A strange story. Of the future, of yourself. Of everyone. We are all we are, only this and yet we move forward. Along some line to somewhere. And who knows?"
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DEAD 082CD
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"On the heels of three well-received singles comes Ride Your Heart, the bombastic debut album by LA band Bleached. Sisters Jennifer and Jessie Clavin match their ability to blend a mix of freewheeling '77 punk with vintage sunny Southern California melodic rock and roll; creating blindingly bright hooks and dark heartfelt lyrics about love, loss, and the crazy fun moments in between."
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DEAD 061CD
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"Bill Fay is one of English music's best kept secrets. At the dawn of the 1970s, he was a one-man song factory, with a piano that spilled liquid gold and a voice every bit the equal of Ray Davies, John Lennon, early Bowie, or Procol Harum's Gary Brooker. He made two solo albums but his contract wasn't renewed, which left his LPs and his reputation to become cult items. But he never stopped writing, the music kept on coming. Now, in his late sixties, he has produced Life Is People, a brand new studio album that shows his profoundly humanist vision is as strong as it ever was."
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DEAD 066CD
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"Guitars as jet engines; guitars as haunted electronics; guitars as filling-melting white heat: A Place To Bury Strangers' new album Worship is explosive, visceral, and dark. APTBS' DIY-braintrust of Death By Audio wizard Oliver Ackerman and bassist Dion Lunadon continue the evolution of songwriting that began with Onwards to the Wall, the band's 2011 EP. Now on Worship, they interweave threads of krautrock, dream-pop, and 80s goth without ever losing the edge that is quintessentially Strangers. Unhinged dissonance is artfully framed within a fiercely dynamic and assured melodic sensibility. Standout 'You Are The One' is a coldwave white squall, with Ackerman coming through like an austere and menacing Damo Suzuki. Later on 'Dissolved,' the band methodically builds an atmospheric battle charge only to take a hard left mid-song into pure, shimmering Cure territory. There are ambitious, trend-bucking choices at every turn."
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DEAD 034CD
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"On Kairos, we find White Hinterland exploring the edges of minimal pop, accomplishing a delicate but lively seduction through deep, patient bass throbs, prismatic synth textures, and direct, intimate songs sung with an empowered gravitas. Here Casey Dienel tailors the acrobatics of her former songwriting into a slender focus, folding it into deeper grooves. Beneath the baroque arrangements and intellectual lean of Dienel's previous musical efforts was a sexiness that Kairos exposes, showing the artist for what she is: powerful and comfortable in her own skin, with a glittery voice weaned on pop R&B. With a sound so modern, so contemporary, Kairos fixes White Hinterland's gaze firmly on the future. Using just one mic, electronics, programming and an arsenal of percussion and instruments, the minimal, washy 'Art & B' of Kairos was born. Dienel compared making Kairos to swimming in a cave, trusting only the instinct to just keep swimming. This image perfectly embodies the enchanting and blue-lit atmosphere of the album. Sean Michaels of Said the Gramophone captured it well, after he witnessed a White Hinterland performance where they performed the bulk of Kairos live: 'The jazz has been taken out, simply removed. And what is left is so, so, so much space; so much space in which she and Shawn add dark beats, deep bass, dubstep stuff. And she sings in looped curlicues, ivies and gold rings, sampling and re-sampling. They were all new songs and they were utterly astonishing. Here are some names of things it was & wasn't merely: The Dirty Projectors, The Xx, Burial, Tune-Yards, School Of Seven Bells, The Neptunes, Thom Yorke, Arthur Russell, Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina. Any half-samples so far do it no credit at all. What a rediscovery.'"
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DEAD 028CD
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"In an underground music landscape where 140 characters equals 'journalism' and lone MP3s propel bands to momentary internet stardom, bands are here today and gone tomorrow. Califone is a band that defies this blueprint. Their albums are full of layers and textures, offering endless depth, entire universes to lose yourself in - and beyond the thick spectrum of sound, they do something even more important: They write great songs. Califone is a band that will stand the test of time. The band is at the peak of its powers on All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, its sixth song-based album. The long-awaited follow-up to 2006's acclaimed Roots And Crowns, the album is the strongest collection of songs in a career with no shortage of strength. The subtlety and detail of Califone's previous work is present here - the atmospheres are carefully nuanced, the percussion is both rattling and melodic, the melodies are rich and soulful, interspersed throughout softly strummed folk and electrified blues. All My Friends Are Funeral Singers is a dense collage of sounds, expertly formed into fully realized pop songs."
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DEAD 029CD
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"To immerse yourself in Nurses' Apple's Acre is to delight in a certain mental unravelling. These are songs where the vulnerability of pop with its heart on its sleeve engages in a double-dutch jumprope match with the euphoric surrender-to-the-weird that is essential to psychedelia. And Nurses is a band that scavenges beauty and wonder, uncovering Technicolor where others see somber hues. Their off-kilter psych-pop is driven by ever-swelling vocal harmonies, adventurous electronics, some serious wheelin' and dealin' on the Rhodes piano, and the kind of new-primitivist percussion that may or may not involve a standard drum kit. Apple's Acre is a record full of dysfunctional, hushed love, laced with elegance and grace and without angst and regret. But the plain courage of their songs is the secret ingredient that's already turning heads and blowing minds all over the Northwest-and if you think about it, in pop music, courage is always at a premium. Fans of Yeasayer, Deerhoof, Danielson and wild minded pop music should pay close attention."
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DEAD 018CD
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"Upper Air is the product of months spent away from nature and away from home, touring endlessly with the likes of Bon Iver, Phosphorescent and John Vanderslice and on their own, on both sides of the Atlantic. The fodder for songwriting has changed, and so have the songs. Upper Air moves away from the singular sound and sentiment; each and every song on Upper Air is a journal entry that stands on its own, each a unique, beautiful piece. The arrangements are subtle: acoustic guitars, organ, piano, autoharp, violin, percussion, upright bass and more are used throughout the recording. Usually though, it is just a few of these instruments delicately supporting Moore's voice, the anchor of every song. Everyone struggles when they try to describe this music, including us, but we'll try: it has the spirit of Richard and Linda Thompson, the currency of Devendra Banhart, the addictively sweet melodicism of Iron & Wine, but it churns with an underlying energy closer to a Beirut or something farther out, more raw, more wild. The most notable part is this: The songs don't hide behind the instrumentation, the deontological conviction, or, frankly, anything; and that is what makes Upper Air undeniable, simple, and breathtaking."
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DEAD 011CD
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"On March 10th, a promise from big brother to little brother will be realized. Benjamin Verdoes (vocals, guitar, percussion) hoped to motivate his younger brother Marshall to push forward in his drum lessons. Once Marshall got good at drums, Benjamin vowed, they'd start a band together, and now-13-year-old Marshall would have naming rights. That promise is officially made good with the release of Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band's self-titled debut full-length. Co-produced by Scott Colburn (the Arcade Fire, Animal Collective), the album at first blush recalls Wolf Parade; the band's frayed melodic sensibilities and Benjamin's urgent, driven vocals in particular. Of course, Wolf Parade borrowed a few ideas from Modest Mouse, whose beginnings were indebted to the Pixies. This is the sort of musical lineage that creates the foundation for Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band's debut LP. But Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band are not solely inspired by their contemporaries; dig a little deeper and strains of Queen's over-the-top epic rock peers through, while exhilarating guitar work that nods towards Thin Lizzy appears in more than a few songs."
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DEAD 011LP
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DEAD 017CD
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"'Only once every ten years or so does one hear a new band this good, this bursting with ideas, this audibly in love with music. It is beyond stunning. This band is the complete package.' Ears tend to perk up when a record review sings praises like these, especially when the praises come from the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, as they did recently on his Last Plane to Jakarta web site hailing the Bowerbirds' debut album, Hymns For A Dark Horse. Dead Oceans is overjoyed to be sharing the sounds of Bowerbirds with listeners worldwide. Hymns For A Dark Horse was originally released in July of 2007 on Burly Time Records, and is now issued in an expanded form featuring two bonus tracks. Upon the initial release of the album, Pitchfork graced it with an 8.4 and 'recommended' stamp of approval, saying: '[Bowerbirds] churn out deceptively pleasing folksongs about plants and animals and the unforgivable things we do to them... hypnotically pretty and a little bit weird, characteristics of the very best kind of Americana music. Bowerbirds do for backyards what the Hold Steady's done for parking lots -- translated place into sound.'"
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DEAD 008CD
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"An otherworldly place, full of psychedelic swirl, soaring harmonies and grandiose jams. Little Kingdom is the second album from San Francisco's Citay. It's an epic journey, and an album that sounds out of place in 2007 -- a classic in the purest sense. Like Citay's 2006 self-titled debut, the '70s rock sensibility is intact; Thin Lizzy, acoustic Led Zeppelin, Big Star and The Byrds all remain touchstones. But Little Kingdom moves further into ambitious composition, referencing Popul Vuh, Animals-era Pink Floyd, the Fripp-Eno collaborations, and early Mike Oldfield. The twin leads are still huge, the ballads still sweet, but Citay is reaching for more on Little Kingdom."
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