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Classic album: cLOUDDEAD - S/T
posted on July 17th, 2008 by matt in Classic Albums
From Allmusic: Culled from a series of limited 10″ releases, Clouddead’s eponymous debut isn’t so much a fully formed album as it is a well-executed exercise in seasick, proggist psychedelia.
With background textures that rival Boards of Canada in pastoral, tree-lined opacity and an obvious predilection for boggy atmospherics, Clouddead handily distances themselves from the rest of their hip-hop brethren. Indeed, this is something more considered and sinister — less about wayward braggadocio than it is about keeping your doors deadbolted at all hours of the night. Even their less-is-more approach to vocalism eventually starts playing tricks on your mind; when lyricists Dose and Why? emerge, it’s usually to puncture the pleasant fog of some dulcet, wavering sample.
The whole album reads like that; the sonic equivalent of your first legitimate drug trip as narrated by two jittery but triumphant kids who can’t bear to keep their choice hiding place a secret any longer. While it’s perhaps a tad overlong, Clouddead doesn’t suffer from any shortage of great ideas. It’s menacing, it’s enthralling, and it’s one of few modern-day records (hip-hop or otherwise) that honestly doesn’t sound like anything — or anyone — else.
2
Classic album: Deerhunter - Cryptograms
posted on July 16th, 2008 by matt in New Releases
From Pitchfork: In Dennis Cooper’s 1987 novel Closer, young George Miles gets totally fucked. Poor kid probably just wants to be loved– either that or trip out on acid and live in Disneyland, whichever is more realistic– but he falls prey to charlatans of all stripes. Old-fart perverts deface his flesh with loveless sexual violence. “Do you know what’s inside that cute body of yours?” one asks, then comes brutally close to exposing the answers.
Atlanta five-piece Deerhunter, who hailed Cooper as a primary influence in a recent Dusted feature, show their guts admirably on this vast, visceral second album. Arranged in chronological sequence from two distinct recording sessions, Cryptograms is alternately murky and ethereal, amorphous and incisive, shot through with Sonic Youth guitar squall, Spacemen 3’s blissful hymns, the morbidly introspective drum sounds of early Factory Records productions, and the abstract sonic richness of Harold Budd’s collaborations with Brian Eno.
The album’s willfully cryptic first half opens with a psych-out, both musically and mentally. Out of a nature scene’s tranquility, a foreboding bassline and bird-calling keyboards summon singer Bradford Cox, who kicks off the galvanizing title track with a declaration of regret: “My greatest fear/ I fantasized/ The days were long/ The weeks flew by/ Before I knew/ I was awake/ My days were through/ It was too… late.” As the song careens toward an increasingly chaotic climax, Cox finds his senses deteriorating until the final, indefinite repetition of the closing mantra: “There was no sound.” Underpinned by Josh Fauver’s primal bass and Moses Archuleta’s paranoid drums, the similarly bleak “Lake Somerset” is a scream-saturated stomper with largely obscured lyrics about murder and pissing. No wonder Cox endured daily panic attacks throughout its recording.
“The skinniest man on the face of the Earth,” claim the MySpacers. “He suffers from Marfan syndrome, try not to insult him,” others retort. The 1 in 5,000 Americans affected are typically tall, thin, and at risk of heart problems. Source(s): MySpace, March of Dimes.
Deerhunter aren’t content just to put their least welcoming side forward. Cryptograms also intersperses its loosely structured songs with a handful of extended, largely instrumental ambient passages. Guitarists Colin Mee and Lockett Pundt know their delay pedals– the drifting chords on “White Ink” ring with the same washed-out analog shimmer that made Flying Saucer Attack’s Further so powerfully nostalgic, gradually filling in with low end as keyboards and vocal effects add layers of texture off in the distance. The dream-like “Providence”, written on a Rhode Island tour stop with Lightning Bolt, sounds at once radiant and terrified. “Octet” finds Cox’s cries muffled behind the maelstrom, until the drums and bass lock together in the second half, erupting in a static-drenched propulsion that doesn’t let up until a busy-signal organ tone segues into the droning, bell-swathed “Red Ink”. The album’s first half concludes with the tape to which the band recorded literally spinning off its reel.
“She said, ‘Dream dreams the dreamer’/ I said it’s not my fault.” An earlier recording session was scrapped for, among other reasons, a poorly calibrated tape machine. At least one song here was written after several Ambien. Deerhunter’s original bass player died in a tragic skateboarding accident; he’d just gotten clean. Source(s): Television, Bradford Cox.
That first 30 minutes of Cryptograms is a slow but steady build towards the vastly more accessible latter half, recorded several months after the first. Opening with the perpetual climax of “Spring Hall Convert”, these songs depict a Deerhunter reborn– if not happy, then at least comfortably numb. Here, all that brooding sludge-psych and those airy backgrounds give way to swooning dream-pop and comparatively lucid songwriting: “Strange Lights” is the first track on Cryptograms with clearly decipherable lyrics, Cox waxing childlike about “walking to the sun,” bathed in bright, lambent guitars. The gauzy growing-up reminiscence “Hazel St.” asks for protection in pop-glorified sunlight; portentous finale “Heatherwood”, with its ramshackle percussion, promises another reincarnation. “Was not seen again,” several voices repeat, ending not with a bang but with an enigmatic whistle.
The Deer Hunter is a movie. “Deer Hunter” is a game. Deerhunter are a band that sometimes gets called Deer Hunter. Deerhoof are somebody else. Source(s): Twenty-five years on Earth, Google.
Of course, even the second recording session’s highly melodic space-outs aren’t fully coherent. As Cox laments in “Hazel St.”, “The subject is always just out of frame.” At this point, with an album called Cryptograms, you’re weird if you haven’t been wondering what, exactly, the encoded message might be– if, in fact, there is one at all. I like to think it’s that Deerhunter are a pop band.
After all, while Cryptograms presents its own obstacles, it’s easily enjoyed as a whole. Memorable melodies and an awkward, charismatic narrator are often peeking from behind the dissonance-laden mists that self-consciously choke them. From The Velvet Underground & Nico to Sid and Nancy, the sweetest romance of the rock underground’s life was always death. And the tragic beauty of Cryptograms, as to an extent with Cooper’s novels, is the way something as innocent as pop can be so mercilessly corrupted– and due to the ensuing tension, emerge as better art for it.
1
Featured album: Matt Mays & El Torpedo - Terminal Romance
posted on July 14th, 2008 by matt in New Releases
Mixing a wall of attack-mode guitars with steady rhythms and impassioned vocals, Matt Mays & El Torpedo have returned with Terminal Romance (Sonic Records), the follow up to the group’s 2005 breakthrough, self-titled debut. The album was recorded in England with producer Chris Tsangarides (Black Sabbath, Tygers of Pan Tang, The Tragically Hip) and mixed in Vancouver with Mike Fraser (Led Zeppelin, AC/DC).
From the road weary hook of “Tall Trees” to the towering title track, Terminal Romance offers eleven songs that merge thought and sound. Tales of a life where the days are just fading introductions to the night, each track strives to outdo the previous with a more over the top approach and delivery. The end result is a classic rock album honed through roots rock sensibilities.
MM&ET consists of Matt Mays (guitar, vocals), Jay Smith (guitar, vocals), Andy Patil (bass, vocals), and Tim Jim Baker (drums). Since forming in 2003 to perform shows in support of May’s self-titled JUNO nominated debut, the band has toured Canada countless times as well as performed numerous dates in the US and the UK.
The band’s self-titled album was released in Canada on Sonic Records in 2005 and a year later in the US on the 00.02.59 imprint. The debut was co-produced by the band and Grammy Award-winner Don Smith (Tom Petty, Keith Richards). The first single “Cocaine Cowgirl” was a massive hit and the album went on to win four East Coast Music Awards in 2006 (Album of the Year, Group of the Year, Rock Recording of the Year, Single of the Year).
From Allmusic: Culled from a series of limited 10″ releases, Clouddead’s eponymous debut isn’t so much a fully formed album as it is a well-executed exercise in seasick, proggist psychedelia.
With background textures that rival Boards of Canada in pastoral, tree-lined opacity and an obvious predilection for boggy atmospherics, Clouddead handily distances themselves from the rest of their hip-hop brethren. Indeed, this is something more considered and sinister — less about wayward braggadocio than it is about keeping your doors deadbolted at all hours of the night. Even their less-is-more approach to vocalism eventually starts playing tricks on your mind; when lyricists Dose and Why? emerge, it’s usually to puncture the pleasant fog of some dulcet, wavering sample.
The whole album reads like that; the sonic equivalent of your first legitimate drug trip as narrated by two jittery but triumphant kids who can’t bear to keep their choice hiding place a secret any longer. While it’s perhaps a tad overlong, Clouddead doesn’t suffer from any shortage of great ideas. It’s menacing, it’s enthralling, and it’s one of few modern-day records (hip-hop or otherwise) that honestly doesn’t sound like anything — or anyone — else.
2
Classic album: Deerhunter - Cryptograms
posted on July 16th, 2008 by matt in New Releases
From Pitchfork: In Dennis Cooper’s 1987 novel Closer, young George Miles gets totally fucked. Poor kid probably just wants to be loved– either that or trip out on acid and live in Disneyland, whichever is more realistic– but he falls prey to charlatans of all stripes. Old-fart perverts deface his flesh with loveless sexual violence. “Do you know what’s inside that cute body of yours?” one asks, then comes brutally close to exposing the answers.
Atlanta five-piece Deerhunter, who hailed Cooper as a primary influence in a recent Dusted feature, show their guts admirably on this vast, visceral second album. Arranged in chronological sequence from two distinct recording sessions, Cryptograms is alternately murky and ethereal, amorphous and incisive, shot through with Sonic Youth guitar squall, Spacemen 3’s blissful hymns, the morbidly introspective drum sounds of early Factory Records productions, and the abstract sonic richness of Harold Budd’s collaborations with Brian Eno.
The album’s willfully cryptic first half opens with a psych-out, both musically and mentally. Out of a nature scene’s tranquility, a foreboding bassline and bird-calling keyboards summon singer Bradford Cox, who kicks off the galvanizing title track with a declaration of regret: “My greatest fear/ I fantasized/ The days were long/ The weeks flew by/ Before I knew/ I was awake/ My days were through/ It was too… late.” As the song careens toward an increasingly chaotic climax, Cox finds his senses deteriorating until the final, indefinite repetition of the closing mantra: “There was no sound.” Underpinned by Josh Fauver’s primal bass and Moses Archuleta’s paranoid drums, the similarly bleak “Lake Somerset” is a scream-saturated stomper with largely obscured lyrics about murder and pissing. No wonder Cox endured daily panic attacks throughout its recording.
“The skinniest man on the face of the Earth,” claim the MySpacers. “He suffers from Marfan syndrome, try not to insult him,” others retort. The 1 in 5,000 Americans affected are typically tall, thin, and at risk of heart problems. Source(s): MySpace, March of Dimes.
Deerhunter aren’t content just to put their least welcoming side forward. Cryptograms also intersperses its loosely structured songs with a handful of extended, largely instrumental ambient passages. Guitarists Colin Mee and Lockett Pundt know their delay pedals– the drifting chords on “White Ink” ring with the same washed-out analog shimmer that made Flying Saucer Attack’s Further so powerfully nostalgic, gradually filling in with low end as keyboards and vocal effects add layers of texture off in the distance. The dream-like “Providence”, written on a Rhode Island tour stop with Lightning Bolt, sounds at once radiant and terrified. “Octet” finds Cox’s cries muffled behind the maelstrom, until the drums and bass lock together in the second half, erupting in a static-drenched propulsion that doesn’t let up until a busy-signal organ tone segues into the droning, bell-swathed “Red Ink”. The album’s first half concludes with the tape to which the band recorded literally spinning off its reel.
“She said, ‘Dream dreams the dreamer’/ I said it’s not my fault.” An earlier recording session was scrapped for, among other reasons, a poorly calibrated tape machine. At least one song here was written after several Ambien. Deerhunter’s original bass player died in a tragic skateboarding accident; he’d just gotten clean. Source(s): Television, Bradford Cox.
That first 30 minutes of Cryptograms is a slow but steady build towards the vastly more accessible latter half, recorded several months after the first. Opening with the perpetual climax of “Spring Hall Convert”, these songs depict a Deerhunter reborn– if not happy, then at least comfortably numb. Here, all that brooding sludge-psych and those airy backgrounds give way to swooning dream-pop and comparatively lucid songwriting: “Strange Lights” is the first track on Cryptograms with clearly decipherable lyrics, Cox waxing childlike about “walking to the sun,” bathed in bright, lambent guitars. The gauzy growing-up reminiscence “Hazel St.” asks for protection in pop-glorified sunlight; portentous finale “Heatherwood”, with its ramshackle percussion, promises another reincarnation. “Was not seen again,” several voices repeat, ending not with a bang but with an enigmatic whistle.
The Deer Hunter is a movie. “Deer Hunter” is a game. Deerhunter are a band that sometimes gets called Deer Hunter. Deerhoof are somebody else. Source(s): Twenty-five years on Earth, Google.
Of course, even the second recording session’s highly melodic space-outs aren’t fully coherent. As Cox laments in “Hazel St.”, “The subject is always just out of frame.” At this point, with an album called Cryptograms, you’re weird if you haven’t been wondering what, exactly, the encoded message might be– if, in fact, there is one at all. I like to think it’s that Deerhunter are a pop band.
After all, while Cryptograms presents its own obstacles, it’s easily enjoyed as a whole. Memorable melodies and an awkward, charismatic narrator are often peeking from behind the dissonance-laden mists that self-consciously choke them. From The Velvet Underground & Nico to Sid and Nancy, the sweetest romance of the rock underground’s life was always death. And the tragic beauty of Cryptograms, as to an extent with Cooper’s novels, is the way something as innocent as pop can be so mercilessly corrupted– and due to the ensuing tension, emerge as better art for it.
1
Featured album: Matt Mays & El Torpedo - Terminal Romance
posted on July 14th, 2008 by matt in New Releases
Mixing a wall of attack-mode guitars with steady rhythms and impassioned vocals, Matt Mays & El Torpedo have returned with Terminal Romance (Sonic Records), the follow up to the group’s 2005 breakthrough, self-titled debut. The album was recorded in England with producer Chris Tsangarides (Black Sabbath, Tygers of Pan Tang, The Tragically Hip) and mixed in Vancouver with Mike Fraser (Led Zeppelin, AC/DC).
From the road weary hook of “Tall Trees” to the towering title track, Terminal Romance offers eleven songs that merge thought and sound. Tales of a life where the days are just fading introductions to the night, each track strives to outdo the previous with a more over the top approach and delivery. The end result is a classic rock album honed through roots rock sensibilities.
MM&ET consists of Matt Mays (guitar, vocals), Jay Smith (guitar, vocals), Andy Patil (bass, vocals), and Tim Jim Baker (drums). Since forming in 2003 to perform shows in support of May’s self-titled JUNO nominated debut, the band has toured Canada countless times as well as performed numerous dates in the US and the UK.
The band’s self-titled album was released in Canada on Sonic Records in 2005 and a year later in the US on the 00.02.59 imprint. The debut was co-produced by the band and Grammy Award-winner Don Smith (Tom Petty, Keith Richards). The first single “Cocaine Cowgirl” was a massive hit and the album went on to win four East Coast Music Awards in 2006 (Album of the Year, Group of the Year, Rock Recording of the Year, Single of the Year).
From Pitchfork: In Dennis Cooper’s 1987 novel Closer, young George Miles gets totally fucked. Poor kid probably just wants to be loved– either that or trip out on acid and live in Disneyland, whichever is more realistic– but he falls prey to charlatans of all stripes. Old-fart perverts deface his flesh with loveless sexual violence. “Do you know what’s inside that cute body of yours?” one asks, then comes brutally close to exposing the answers.
Atlanta five-piece Deerhunter, who hailed Cooper as a primary influence in a recent Dusted feature, show their guts admirably on this vast, visceral second album. Arranged in chronological sequence from two distinct recording sessions, Cryptograms is alternately murky and ethereal, amorphous and incisive, shot through with Sonic Youth guitar squall, Spacemen 3’s blissful hymns, the morbidly introspective drum sounds of early Factory Records productions, and the abstract sonic richness of Harold Budd’s collaborations with Brian Eno.
The album’s willfully cryptic first half opens with a psych-out, both musically and mentally. Out of a nature scene’s tranquility, a foreboding bassline and bird-calling keyboards summon singer Bradford Cox, who kicks off the galvanizing title track with a declaration of regret: “My greatest fear/ I fantasized/ The days were long/ The weeks flew by/ Before I knew/ I was awake/ My days were through/ It was too… late.” As the song careens toward an increasingly chaotic climax, Cox finds his senses deteriorating until the final, indefinite repetition of the closing mantra: “There was no sound.” Underpinned by Josh Fauver’s primal bass and Moses Archuleta’s paranoid drums, the similarly bleak “Lake Somerset” is a scream-saturated stomper with largely obscured lyrics about murder and pissing. No wonder Cox endured daily panic attacks throughout its recording.
“The skinniest man on the face of the Earth,” claim the MySpacers. “He suffers from Marfan syndrome, try not to insult him,” others retort. The 1 in 5,000 Americans affected are typically tall, thin, and at risk of heart problems. Source(s): MySpace, March of Dimes.
Deerhunter aren’t content just to put their least welcoming side forward. Cryptograms also intersperses its loosely structured songs with a handful of extended, largely instrumental ambient passages. Guitarists Colin Mee and Lockett Pundt know their delay pedals– the drifting chords on “White Ink” ring with the same washed-out analog shimmer that made Flying Saucer Attack’s Further so powerfully nostalgic, gradually filling in with low end as keyboards and vocal effects add layers of texture off in the distance. The dream-like “Providence”, written on a Rhode Island tour stop with Lightning Bolt, sounds at once radiant and terrified. “Octet” finds Cox’s cries muffled behind the maelstrom, until the drums and bass lock together in the second half, erupting in a static-drenched propulsion that doesn’t let up until a busy-signal organ tone segues into the droning, bell-swathed “Red Ink”. The album’s first half concludes with the tape to which the band recorded literally spinning off its reel.
“She said, ‘Dream dreams the dreamer’/ I said it’s not my fault.” An earlier recording session was scrapped for, among other reasons, a poorly calibrated tape machine. At least one song here was written after several Ambien. Deerhunter’s original bass player died in a tragic skateboarding accident; he’d just gotten clean. Source(s): Television, Bradford Cox.
That first 30 minutes of Cryptograms is a slow but steady build towards the vastly more accessible latter half, recorded several months after the first. Opening with the perpetual climax of “Spring Hall Convert”, these songs depict a Deerhunter reborn– if not happy, then at least comfortably numb. Here, all that brooding sludge-psych and those airy backgrounds give way to swooning dream-pop and comparatively lucid songwriting: “Strange Lights” is the first track on Cryptograms with clearly decipherable lyrics, Cox waxing childlike about “walking to the sun,” bathed in bright, lambent guitars. The gauzy growing-up reminiscence “Hazel St.” asks for protection in pop-glorified sunlight; portentous finale “Heatherwood”, with its ramshackle percussion, promises another reincarnation. “Was not seen again,” several voices repeat, ending not with a bang but with an enigmatic whistle.
The Deer Hunter is a movie. “Deer Hunter” is a game. Deerhunter are a band that sometimes gets called Deer Hunter. Deerhoof are somebody else. Source(s): Twenty-five years on Earth, Google.
Of course, even the second recording session’s highly melodic space-outs aren’t fully coherent. As Cox laments in “Hazel St.”, “The subject is always just out of frame.” At this point, with an album called Cryptograms, you’re weird if you haven’t been wondering what, exactly, the encoded message might be– if, in fact, there is one at all. I like to think it’s that Deerhunter are a pop band.
After all, while Cryptograms presents its own obstacles, it’s easily enjoyed as a whole. Memorable melodies and an awkward, charismatic narrator are often peeking from behind the dissonance-laden mists that self-consciously choke them. From The Velvet Underground & Nico to Sid and Nancy, the sweetest romance of the rock underground’s life was always death. And the tragic beauty of Cryptograms, as to an extent with Cooper’s novels, is the way something as innocent as pop can be so mercilessly corrupted– and due to the ensuing tension, emerge as better art for it.
1
Featured album: Matt Mays & El Torpedo - Terminal Romance
posted on July 14th, 2008 by matt in New Releases
Mixing a wall of attack-mode guitars with steady rhythms and impassioned vocals, Matt Mays & El Torpedo have returned with Terminal Romance (Sonic Records), the follow up to the group’s 2005 breakthrough, self-titled debut. The album was recorded in England with producer Chris Tsangarides (Black Sabbath, Tygers of Pan Tang, The Tragically Hip) and mixed in Vancouver with Mike Fraser (Led Zeppelin, AC/DC).
From the road weary hook of “Tall Trees” to the towering title track, Terminal Romance offers eleven songs that merge thought and sound. Tales of a life where the days are just fading introductions to the night, each track strives to outdo the previous with a more over the top approach and delivery. The end result is a classic rock album honed through roots rock sensibilities.
MM&ET consists of Matt Mays (guitar, vocals), Jay Smith (guitar, vocals), Andy Patil (bass, vocals), and Tim Jim Baker (drums). Since forming in 2003 to perform shows in support of May’s self-titled JUNO nominated debut, the band has toured Canada countless times as well as performed numerous dates in the US and the UK.
The band’s self-titled album was released in Canada on Sonic Records in 2005 and a year later in the US on the 00.02.59 imprint. The debut was co-produced by the band and Grammy Award-winner Don Smith (Tom Petty, Keith Richards). The first single “Cocaine Cowgirl” was a massive hit and the album went on to win four East Coast Music Awards in 2006 (Album of the Year, Group of the Year, Rock Recording of the Year, Single of the Year).
Mixing a wall of attack-mode guitars with steady rhythms and impassioned vocals, Matt Mays & El Torpedo have returned with Terminal Romance (Sonic Records), the follow up to the group’s 2005 breakthrough, self-titled debut. The album was recorded in England with producer Chris Tsangarides (Black Sabbath, Tygers of Pan Tang, The Tragically Hip) and mixed in Vancouver with Mike Fraser (Led Zeppelin, AC/DC).
From the road weary hook of “Tall Trees” to the towering title track, Terminal Romance offers eleven songs that merge thought and sound. Tales of a life where the days are just fading introductions to the night, each track strives to outdo the previous with a more over the top approach and delivery. The end result is a classic rock album honed through roots rock sensibilities.
MM&ET consists of Matt Mays (guitar, vocals), Jay Smith (guitar, vocals), Andy Patil (bass, vocals), and Tim Jim Baker (drums). Since forming in 2003 to perform shows in support of May’s self-titled JUNO nominated debut, the band has toured Canada countless times as well as performed numerous dates in the US and the UK.
The band’s self-titled album was released in Canada on Sonic Records in 2005 and a year later in the US on the 00.02.59 imprint. The debut was co-produced by the band and Grammy Award-winner Don Smith (Tom Petty, Keith Richards). The first single “Cocaine Cowgirl” was a massive hit and the album went on to win four East Coast Music Awards in 2006 (Album of the Year, Group of the Year, Rock Recording of the Year, Single of the Year).
