You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2009.
“…This week, UK-based videogame music netlabel Pterodactyl Squad released The 8-bit Album, a chiptune tribute to geek rock darlings Weezer. Fourteen tracks strong and featuring everything from the straight-ahead electronica of Videogame Orchestra’s “Islands in the Sun (Belmont’s Revisal)” to the chipped-up power pop of I Fight Dragon’s take on “Why Bother,” The 8-bit Album is both a heartfelt tribute to Cuomo and company and a veritable who’s who of the bitpop scene itself. Better yet: it’s free!
Do you remember that dream you had, where the sound chips from the beloved games consoles of your youth all got together and formed a Weezer tribute band? Yeah? No? OK. That dream is about to come true whether you had it or not.
The songs on this compilation have mostly been created using original videogame hardware running home-brew software, and vary radically in style, from minimal ‘one man and his Game Boy’ compositions to 8-bit inspired full band performances. Pterodactyl Squad proudly presents the music of Weezer as you have never heard it before.” – wired.com
“catchy and poppy math rock / Hangin’ Nothin’ But Our Hands Down is a parallel universe of film noir, circuses, and vaudeville shows. It’s a soap opera for the intelligent ear. Each song has a charm and mystery of its own, embodied in catchy lyrics, foot tapping drums, quirky riffs, stumbling bass lines and spazzing vocals. Harnessed with interesting time signatures and engaging shifts in tempo, the album has variety and vigor. / A picture painted in paranoia, and manic ups and downs, the third song “Lots of Brass” is one of my favorites. Bass and drums drive the Nurses sound, and bellow strongly in this song. “Wait for a Safe Sign” is an engaging and experimental journey with a strong vocal hook. Each song is a single in itself, but the album as a whole is most impressive. A beautiful piece of work for a first attempt.” -absolutepunk.net (rating:91%)
” anachronistic horror-show pop… combination of glitzy cabaret theatrics with a Middle American upbringing… set of eccentricities to justify an otherwise grandiose, ambitious sound… vaudevillian/sharp-edged rock sensibility/minor-key riffs/Southern Gothic macabre acoustic closer” -p4k-isms
“Portland’s Nurses are what I’d like to call pop rock mavericks (not the Palin kind though). Why? Well their debut LP Apple’s Acre has all the makings of a great pop record – innovative lyrics, melody, and of course the hooks and catchiness. But instead of putting these songs together with the standard instruments and ideas, they traverse every road, genre, mood, world, night, day, life, and death to arrive at their new form of stunning pop rock.” / “…tends to lean towards the rustic dance around the yard folk pop tribal explosion of a sound.” – Pastaprima.net
riyl: Blood Brothers / Q&NotU / Maps&Atlases / Young Coyotes / Moros Eros / Oh No Oh My
“Within days of Alternative Press including Censored Colors on its list of 10 Essential Albums of 2008, the members of Portugal. The Man were trudging through the Boston snow to start work on their fourth release in four years, The Satanic Satanist. As John Baldwin Gourley, named the year’s Best Vocalist in that same issue of AP, explains the pace at which his band has turned out any number of the decade’s more inspired moments, “Honestly, I think we should be putting out more music. It keeps you thinking, keeps you growing and progressing. If you stop and let it sit for too long, I feel like you start to lose track of where you were going.”
For 2008’s Censored Colors, Portugal. The Man spent two weeks in Seattle with their friends in Kay Kay and the Weathered Underground making an album Gourley says he wrote in tribute to the music of a youth spent tuned to oldies radio as his parents drove around Alaska. One of his earliest musical memories, finding a tape of Abbey Road in a box of his parents’ cassettes, resulted in Censored Colors’ second side where all the songs are strung together in an epic suite.
For The Satanic Satanist, Gourley and his bandmates – Zachary Scott Carothers/bass, and Ryan Neighbors/keyboards, and the drummer for the album, Garrett Lunceford – flew to Boston’s Camp Street Studios to work with Paul Q. Kolderie, whose previous clients include both the Pixies and Radiohead, with additional production help from Adam Taylor (The Lemonheads, The Dresdon Dolls) and Cornershop sitarist/keyboardist Anthony Saffery.
“People Say,” the lead-off track, finds Gourley speaking out against the human cost of war. On “Lovers in Love,” the band works the groove like Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield in their blaxploitation days, while “Work All Day” could pass for ?uestlove slowing down the beat to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise).” The Satanic Satanist also finds them working more with loops and samples than they have since their 2006 debut.” – press release
The first EP from ?JeSTEr?, an Italian trio born in 2007 from ashes of ElfoGuelfo and TallGuy, already toured Italy and followed several stoner-rock bands in USA and Europe during 2008. Offering a unique indie-rock sound which embraces psychedelic atmospheres, bold heavy distorted bass guitar lines, catchy and powerful vocals,garage-punk to sludge, they are one of the most original and creative bands on the Italian scene.
electro / electronica / techno
“I NEVER LIKED MUSIC UNTIL I HEARD MY OWN”
“…Needless to say, every one of my assumptions was shattered and surpassed on levels that I didn’t even have a clue existed. Not only has the young wrecka created an EP that embraces and fully displays the sounds of modern dance music, but he’s also made the art of innovation stylish once again. That is, where I expected to hear a collection of four songs that all resembled his (and everyone else’s) past work, I was startled to experience the charitable use of complex rhythms, character of sound ranging from his trademarked banger synth to lighter, poppier noises not dissimilar to that of Simian Mobile Disco, and elegant eight bar chord progressions that work hard to draw every last piece of energy possible out of those 24 bits. Long story short, it took Felix less than a minute to establish himself in my mind as far more than just a Reason remixer. Skeleton EP is wonderful. Felix is wonderful. Dancing is wonderful. Group hug.” – uhohdisco.com
Discodust : Felix Cartal Mixtape
felixcartal.com – step by step mixing tutorial for ‘Montreal Dreams’
www.myspace.com/felixcartal
riyl : bloody beetroots / justice / simian mobile disco
Some People Ride the Wave 