Marching Banana @marchingbanana - Tumblr Blog

MBR-068: Civils “Birds Inert”

The latest from Drew Kirby (New Wives, Mothers) entitled "BIRDS INERT" strips back the density of production amassed on mission statement full-length "TAPE DOCTOR" (2017) and instead goes back-to-basics for the first 4-track tape recordings under the CIVILS mantle in a couple years.

Thematically "BIRDS INERT" follows suit, mostly trading out the searing personal exhumations for wider-reaching lyrics with a lighter touch - songs about pop music, late capitalism, the Boxcar Children - all recorded & dubbed with zero edits straight to cassette.

This is the first from the "autumn worktapes" lot, a series of 4-track tapes eked out over the fall/winter of 2017 which continued well into summer 2018. a massive idea dump of genre experiments and sonic goofs with near total abandon - it's worth thinking of these as MIXTAPES more than albums, or maybe its not worth thinking that. . more will come as soon as they're mixed down!!!

#lofi #dub #cassette #4track #four track #tascam #experimental music #experimental pop #Experimental #loud

MBR-067: Jianna Justice “The Movies” EP

THE MOVIES is the debut EP from NYC-via-Athens singer-songriter JIANNA JUSTICE and her crackshot ensemble, comprised of multi-instrumentalist Trent Johnson (Padre, Group Stretching) William Marks (Big Hart) and Colton Reeves.

Justice wastes no time on these five tracks, moving through poignant & pointed ruminations on caustic love & plant growth, drawing as much from 70's AM radio charm as it does steely post-punk. These songs were all cut live to 8-track tape, overdubbing only vocals and the occasional additional guitar.

The cinematic breadth of these pop songs effectively render them individualized vignettes, often revolving around issues of agency, autonomy and evolution; fittingly, Jianna moved up north to work for the white-hot A24 Productions (Hereditary, Eighth Grade, etc) right as we rush-released this EP just before the summer of 2018. A real-life happy ending!

>>https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/067-the-movies-ep

#a24 #athens #atlanta #georgia #Athens Georgia #University of Georgia #atlanta georgia #New Atlanta #new york #nyc #brooklyn #new york city #indie pop #indie #post punk #lofi #cassette #cassettes #Cassette culture

MBR-066: Futo “In Heaven, All My Jokes Will Kill” Futo is the solo recording project of Athens-based bedroom pop auteur Patrick Brick. With nods from TV Girl and Teen Suicide, alongside regional praise from publications Stomp & Stammer and Flagpole, Futo has cultivated a reputation over the past 5 years for releasing homespun Bandcamp mini-epics about the everyday mundanities of love, relationships with/to death, and an appreciation for dogs at a fast clip. The very-sober Brick released an album every 4/20 for three years in a row 2014-2016, so his choice to spend two full years to assemble “In Heaven, All My Jokes Will Kill” speaks to the uptick in soundscape flourishes as well as the sharpened lyrical and production chops displayed across its 11 tracks. Futo illuminates the corners of grief with a wit and candor that keeps the music from projecting cynicism -- “In Heaven, All My Jokes Will Kill” embraces life for the dark comedy that it is, buoyed by the vain yearning for an afterlife in which every joke we tell “will be a riot.” Purchase “In Heaven, All My Jokes Will Kill” and many more at our webstore... P.S. Catch patrick performing as one half of fellow MBR-mainstays Kissing Booth this tuesday @ the world famous in athens ga!!!!!

>> https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/066-in-heaven-all-my-jokes-will-kill

MBR-065: NO MORE SANITARY ART! Summer ‘18 Sampler

HELLO we upgraded to bandcamp PRO for this one - a sampling of 14 tracks from current, new and also upcoming works + videos from within the Marching Banana camp. Fresh cuts from the new Jianna Justice EP, new Futo album, the O Key demo (members of Art Contest), the blistering Dead Neighbors sophomore release, sultry Pleasure Point jams, woozy Delorean Gray, as well as upcoming CIVILS and Umas Thermos! this is all MBR-exclusive stuff folks and we are ROLLIN in it . . . . . . .

NO MORE SANITARY ART! is less a proclamation of goodwill than a challenge unto ourselves, an ideal to aspire to and a principle to operate under going forward. Navel Gazing can be a liberating respite from the very-real pressures of late capitalism, but age has started to demystify the idea of reclusive tinkering as an end-unto-itself. There is a safety, in a way, a sanitation applied to art rendered to appease outside expectations in order to further the myth of one's own purported ""genius"".

Rather, we hope to further our respective crafts as viable resources - tools of survival & bastions of personal fulfillment - always reaching inward, exhuming from ourselves & pushing out only what we can stand behind, & working with/for those whom we can stand beside. Being exacting & deliberate while rejecting water-treading fastidiousness.

More room for improvement. No more room for tepid centrism. No antiseptic pop. No more sanitary art!!!!!!!!!!!! >> https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/065-no-more-sanitary-art-summer-18-sampler

MBR-063: Dead Neighbors “Less”

LESS is the second album from Athens mainstays DEAD NEIGHBORS - bookish art punks that bring realness to the forefront with bleating sense of urgency and character - Sebastian Marquez plus Owen Hunt & Hale Woods (Harlot Party, Swamp). Honestly I love Shil Patel/Tiger Bomb promo’s bio so here is that in full ::

“Their story begins on a street in Newtown, a neighborhood in Athens, GA, where Marquez and Hunt lived directly in front of a funeral home. Marquez called on friends Howard Stewart and Alex Addington, to work on a new project, and they drew their namesake from the departed residents down the block: Dead Neighbors.

Their debut self-titled record, released June 2015, was recorded in a bedroom underneath an Athens antique furniture store called Vic's Vintage and mastered in the bedroom of local musician/producer Terence Chiyezhan. In Winter 2016, Owen Hunt took over bass duties. Dead Neighbors forego the noisy jangle of their last record for eight stripped down compositions on "Less", due March 3rd, 2018.

The trio was compelled to make their second full-length a departure from the aesthetic of their self-titled, shaving weight from the production and shifting the focus on to darker themes. Oscillating from driving catchy refrains to an eight-minute ambient track, "Less" is led throughout by Marquez's stripped down guitar and vocals, whittled from the noisy scuzziness of the debut. Introspective anxieties of youth come to the forefront of Marquez's lyrics, and the progression of tracks follows a shift in focus of his internal struggles from the question of purpose to reckoning with the death of a loved one. At some points, he grants, it's "accidentally emo." Lean on production and heavy in content, "Less" was recorded over the course of four days in Winter 2016 on 16-track tape at Chase Park Transduction by David Barbe. Since recording, Dead Neighbors have embraced a tonal shift in their live sound. Part of that change is due to a rollercoaster SXSW 2017, at which Dead Neighbors awoke on Day One to discover most of their gear had been stolen from the car. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, they raised the money to replace their gear in just 48 hours. Marquez appreciates the change, noting that they've never been beholden to the same template as what came before. After the departure of Howard from the band after SXSW, longtime friend of the band Hale Johnson assumed the role of drummer and new creative force in the band. Look out for tour dates later this year, as they set out with that harsh, albeit valuable, "Less"on in tow: "gear paranoia is the right kind of paranoia."

CLICK THE PIC to order tapes from our bigcartel page.

>> https://deadneighbors.bandcamp.com/album/less >> http://marchingbanana.bigcartel.com/product/063-dead-neighbors-less

MBR-062: Delorean Gray “Star Tropics”

STAR TROPICS is the debut album from DELOREAN GRAY, a.k.a. Jacob Chisenhall (Fake Flowers, Mr. Mustache) - a continuation of the psychedelic fairytale begun on the 2016's "Hokkaido Overwash" EP and a musical coming-of-age for a project no longer "side".

Delorean Gray filters bright, wide-eyed pop through a microchip with bleating synths, snappy snares and a general air of lounge-iness that, save for the sound collage aspects of opener "Little Pad" & mid-album "Delorean's Meditation Sequence", certainly never approaches lethargy. Peep the video for "Chrome Bikini" and you'll pick up on vibe pretty quickly: bouncy homespun psychedelia, earnest gesturing towards the pop canon, tongue ever so slightly in cheek.

Read the track-by-track diagnosis from Plasma Magazine or just trust trusted trustbuster Gordon Lamb’s take in this week’s Flagpole:

“Its 9 tracks work so well together in a near-perfect distillation of hazy imaginations of what the ’80s sounded like, vaporwave aesthetics and contemporaneous bliss. It’s full of appropriate synths and a slight amount of self-effacement, but mostly it’s an homage to what used to be called “adult contemporary” pop. The thing is, though, this only works because the influences are so clearly 20th Century. Anything more recent would render this as weak, pandering easy listening. To crib a phrase from a place I’ve forgotten, the tools of the past become the art forms of the future.” >>https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/062-star-tropics

MBR-061: The Pleasure Point “American Singles”

AMERICAN SINGLES, mixtape 2 from THE PLEASURE POINT, comprised of ATL/ATH mystofreaks JayCub Lake (Muuy Biien, Cottonmouth), Bobbie Rapp (Material Girls, Muuy Biien) and EA Shorts: dedicated spelunkers in the caverns of human form & feel.

Funny but never a joke, fun but with feeling, this release converges so many new & retro styles that it's shocking it goes over as such a breeze. There is trunk-rattling hard-on sleeve R & B bookended by dilla-esque sample heavy interludes and beat breaks. "BobHead" sounds like Timbaland backing the Residents. Occasionally the group’s punk roots peek thru; the spiked leads of “Too Many People” rendering a sound in the realm of Check Your Head-era Beasties. “Mayor” is perhaps the sweetest cut, until (OR because) a lilting John Mayer vocal sample repeats itself as the track blossoms. The nearly 6-minute “Salt of the Universe” finds the middle ground between later Dungeon Family & earlier Animal Collective. The project ultimately shines thru the sheer volume of influence seeping into this extended batch of songs, maintaining a persona that feels defined by its looseness, its eagerness to tinker with the boundaries of form.

Prurient nu soul tapered with basement rap abstraction -- join the journey to find the infinite peak! PLEASURE IS THE POINT!!!

>>cassette release show SATURDAY 1/27 @ Go Bar w/ Civils ++ 2/1 @ 529! >>https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/061-american-singles

ATTENTION :: “HALF-WAY” is the first single from ATL futurefreaks THE PLEASURE POINT & their upcoming mixtape AMERICAN SINGLES, out 1/19 on Marching Banana cassette + digital.

“...there’s quite a bit to unpack, a cavalcade of reference points to explore if you so choose (check out that sly slice of West Coast G-funk the follows the chorus). But mostly you’ll discover a steady flow of woozy beats and narcotic grooves that expand, contract, and then dissipate like so much blunt smoke. At times, it’s difficult to decipher whether the group is just goofing on their own version of seductive, late-night R&B, or if everyone is just really faded and reveling in the moment. Truth be told, I’m not sure it matters. Either way, it’s is a spellbinding listen, perfect for early morning smoke sessions or aimless midnight drives.”

Click the art (or below) to read the drop from Immersive Atlanta.

>>http://immersiveatlanta.com/premiere-pleasure-point-half-way/

MBR-060: Nathan Forsyth “Ashamed”

ASHAMED is the debut album from NATHAN FORSYTH, the newly Atlanta-based artist behind Soothsayer + curator/producer of the Hard Reset podcast.

Guitar sculpting as sharp & fitted as a pair of scissors, meticulous arrangements strewn about Forsyth's intuitive songwriting & impressionistic full-band production. Nathan's songs often stem from a central point or idea & expand outward, eschewing traditional start+end points in favor of more open-ended explorations of construction & arrangement.

Culling & adding to material from 2012's "Painkillers" EP as well its twin followup, 2013's "Loma City, the seed germinating since 2011 & dating back to our earliest recesses as marching banana, now a final blossoming bud from our bud. The cover features Kennesaw Mountain, which anchors the hometown that now every marching banana contributor has managed to vacate. In a big way this is a final send off to our spent youth, as well as a homecoming of sorts for a young talent we always had deep faith and trust in, a friend & guide in mutual learning and understanding - may we no longer be ashamed. To the new year!!!!! >>https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/060-ashamed

MBR-059: Civils “Tape Doctor”

HAPPY HALLOWEEN yall :: CIVILS celebrates with the release of debut album TAPE DOCTOR a 30-minute pocket odyssey of hard disco, sludgy pop & queasy electronic psychedelia from Athens own Drew Kirby (formerly of Mothers, New Wives.) What began as a collection of disparate reel-to-reel 2-track tape experiments soon gave way to a more cohesive, forward-thinking sonic vision for the "anything at any time" approach to Kirby's songwriting under the Civils project, blending elements of house music, chopped n screwed rap, and industrial noise into the lofi pop manifolds of TAPE DOCTOR. Themes of deterioration engulf the music, decay & loss, reckoning on the road to redemption. ole Jake Flowers called it “ Ugly Pop “ which seems on point. RIYL: King Krule, The Microphones, Tobbacco, a hypnagogic good time.

>>https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/059-tape-doctor

MBR-058: Bananagrams Vol. 4 >>click here to order the double-cassette...

It’s DIY to lose your tumblr password right?? It is autumn now and so much has happened since the February 10th, 2017 release of our heretofore magnum octopus BANANAGRAMS VOL. 4 the final installment of our collaborative recording project that puts Athens/Atlanta musicians in the same room to work out brand new, mostly live material and (this time) track it to tape via tascam 388 8-track. What a cool opportunity to have so much fresh talent (bear in mind these sessions first began nearly 2 years ago now- sheesh! february ‘16) coming thru to contribute what they could on what ended up being a 22-person, 24-song (or 25 if you buy the dbl cassette) collection of sludgey pop, kinetic folk and a touch of general avvant garde-dom. On hand were longtime friends & members of Mothers, Sea Ghost, Futo, Neighbor Lady, Material Girls, Meth Wax, Jianna Justice, Fake Flowers, Fuiste, Delphinium, & more & more & more. [I feel like i should plug volumes 1, 2, and 3 of the bananagrams series.] [[At the time, we really didn’t know it was the name of a beloved family game.]] Cover photo by Jhourdynne Winston & Cory Robertson. Engineered & mixed by Drew Kirby. Mastered by Garrett Burke. Featuring :: Matt Anderegg // Jack Blauvelt // Patrick Brick // Jacob Chisenhall Taylor Cooper // Noah Estrella // Abby Gregg // Trent Johnson // Laura Kirby Drew Kirby // Taber Lathrop // Kristine Leschper // Freeman Leverett Matt Martin // Dillon McCabe // Dariush Mirsajedin // Trey Rosenkampff Carter Sutherland // Daniel Tanghal // Ryan Taylor // Sam Wilson >>p.s. the debut album TAPE DOCTOR by CIVILS drops 10/31 >:) >>https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/058-bananagrams-vol-4

MBR-056: “Penalty Machine” - the debut album from GROUP STRETCHING a.k.a. Matt Anderegg of the band Mothers - is available now on cassette from our webstore! Click the picture above to purchase (only $5 +shipping)

Group Stretching traffics in bizzarro pop songcraft & minimalist electronic composition alike - this time expanding the pallette of last year's (brief, but promising) Wave Goodbye to Your Visitors EP, bringing these songs to new technicolor heights via a host of new sonic techniques & experiments that ensure PENALTY MACHINE sounds like it could have come from no mind but Anderegg’s.

Flagpole Magazine also slid the kid a positive review upon the album’s release, with writer Gordon Lamb praising the “subtle, sleepy “Fixtures” and the thrift store space-age-ness of “A Permanent Crease.” Read the whole thing here.

>> https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/056-penalty-machine

MBR-057: Kissing Booth “Year of the Dragon, Year of the Dog” EP

YEAR OF THE DRAGON, YEAR OF THE DOG is the fourth release from KISSING BOOTH, better known as the elite musical pairing of real-life mutual better-halves Erin Lovett (of Four Eyes) and Patrick Brick (of Futo).

First came Kissing Booth Vol. 1 & 2, initially an experiment in voice-memo improv as a means of emotional communication that blossomed into a fruitful working relationship upon Brick's relocation to Athens in early-2014. Then came 2015's "Perfecto", a full-length album of staggering depth following a storyline about a war veteran suffering from OCD compulsions & PTSD nightmares. PERFECTO was the project on which the power of their mutual affection was instead turned outward and used as a light of empathy to illuminate the suffering and pains of others. The project earned nods from Gold Flake Paint (UK) and Flagpole Magazine (US) and still looms large as Kissing Booth's heretofore magnum opus.

2 years later, we have YEAR OF THE DRAGON, YEAR OF THE DOG :: a five-track exploration of aliens, astrology and - again - love. There is no overarching theme or unifying pretense behind these tracks, but that is not to say that it's a step back in any traceable measure. Rather, Lovett & Brick's lo-fi charm is as intact as ever, maintaining the lilt and bounce of Kissing Booth's signature sparse acoustic arrangement but upping the ante in terms of utilitarian instrumentation. Every overdub seems precise, as if no superficial artifice was applied past the point of the song achieving it's own goal of communication.

Lovett is the standout voice here, bringing the pragmatism in both lyric & arrangement from last year's "Welcome to Earth" album under her Four Eyes moniker. Lyrics of emotional high-point "National Anthem" postulate escaping to a remote island with the "quietest national anthem you have ever heard". Surely anyone deafened by the noise of our current political climate wishes they could do the same. Brick seems content to play a secondary role, bolstering these stark songs with occasional Beatles-esque accompaniment on an eclectic variety of instruments. Still, when he breaks the wintery mood with closer "When We're 95", it's hard to not be reminded of the groups initial lovey-dovey innocence & at the same time be made aware just how much the two have grown in life and in artistic collaboration.

Forever onward Forward forever You are my best friend, my partner We get along And if we're still in love when we're 95 Let's keep going.

>>https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/057-year-of-the-dragon-year-of-the-dog

MBR-055: Dancing, Exhumed in the Night :: Spring 2017 Sampler

Death to the retrospective sampler! 13 new songs, a hot amalgam of revivalism-smashing new rock & futurefolk straight from the backwoods of the pop underground Athens, Georgia.

For the first time, we look to the year ahead as we debut brand new material from 2017’s impending release schedule - new tracks from Sea Ghost, Futo, Group Stretching, Fake Flowers, Kissing Booth, Civils, Weed Mario and more. Also features the first tastes of Bananagrams Vol. 4, the final installment of our ongoing recording experiment - the “marching banana modular recording orchestra” is credited for two songs here.

Marching Banana Spring 2017 Releases ::

MBR-054: CIVILS “Elliptical Peach” EP [1/6/17] MBR-056: GROUP STRETCHING "Penalty Machine" :: [1/20/17] MBR-057: KISSING BOOTH “Year of the Dragon” EP :: [1/27/17] MBR-058: BANANAGRAMS VOL. 4 :: [2/10/17] MBR-059: WEED MARIO “Collected Works 2016” [March 2017] MBR-060: FAKE FLOWERS "Fantasy Violence" [April 2017] MBR-061: FUTO “(4th album)” [4/20/17] Listen + download: https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/055-dancing-exhumed-in-the-night-spring-17-sampler

MBR-054: Civils “Elliptical Peach” EP

ELLIPTICAL PEACH is the third release from CIVILS, the home recording ethic and tertiary project of Drew Kirby (Mothers, New Wives).

This latest batch of songs continues to blend pop improvisation (opener “Wide Open”) with homespun experimentation, but adds flavors of dance punk (”Sad Songs”) and chopped/screwed elements for what is probably the first complete musical statement under the CIVILS moniker. While sister releases Young but Ugly (2015) & Hothouse Flowers (2016) were both recorded on 4-track cassette, this release marks the first jump to 8-track reel-to-reel tape with the fidelity boost to match - but not too much! On Elliptical Peach, CIVILS continues to blend pop improv with an array of disparate genre templates, resulting in music that is highly impressionistic, mercurial and organic.

CIVILS will be performing an extended improvisational set next Saturday, January 14th at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia for DRONEFEST, a standout all-day event curated by our buds in the band Art Contest. $5 cover, 2 p.m.

[p.s. - as previously stated, Marching Banana will be releasing ONE album EVERY week for all of January. stay warm yall.]

>>https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/054-elliptical-peach

MBR-053: Group Stretching “Wave Goodbye To Your Visitors” EP

GROUP STRETCHING stems from the mind of Matt Anderegg (acting member of Mothers, New Wives) and yes, a live band did exist under this name briefly in the summer/fall of 2015 but was later reigned back into a solo recording venture sometime late last year. These four (or five) songs comprise the total recorded output of Group Stretching thusfar - insular, inventive and impressionistic pieces that are the result of a lifetime of private practice. GROUP STRETCHING works from a palette more eclectic and studied than either of Anderegg’s other projects, allowing him the freedom to traffic in minimalist balladry & jittery beat-craft alike. On “Wave Goodbye to Your Visitors”, Anderegg emerges a fully competent songwriter and compelling figure in his own right, a luminous young mind cracked wide open for those brave enough to look. From Flagpole Magazine ::

"Although he's been across the globe this year with Athens band Mothers, musician Matthew Anderegg managed to squeeze out a new EP of songs under his Group Stretching moniker earlier this month. The four-song release is titled WAVE GOODBYE TO YOUR VISITORS. We previously heard from Group Stretching back in January via the single-song release “Rant Brittle.” Where that song made serious inroads into both earthy and atmospheric melodicism, including a patently 1960s-era swell just before the one-minute mark, this new EP barely makes such concessions. It's not atonal, but it is asymmetrical, and the only track coming close to easy listening is the opener “Fork.” That immediately transitions into the Jandek-ian sparseness of “Broken Measures,” which segues into the signal-bent mash of “Base Solo” before winding up with an Ameri-indie take on Kraftwerk, “Our Dated Reference.” Wave Goodbye functions less as a standard record and more like an AURAL FLIPBOOK . . . "

>>Group Stretching will be performing THIS FRIDAY @ Go Bar in Athens, Georgia alongside Midnight Boi - don’t miss it, 10 p.m. >>https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/053-wave-goodbye-to-your-visitors

MBR-052: New Wives “Hi I’m Alive”

HI IM ALIVE is the debut full-length album from Athens, Georgia based doom & gloom pop trio NEW WIVES, comprised of Drew Kirby & Matt Anderegg (who both pull double-duty together in the band Mothers) & Zach Gastley.

Conceived and written throughout 2014 and completed after returning from the group’s first full East Coast tour in the late-summer of 2014, HI IM ALIVE is an amorphous suite of minimalist pop & blistering noise that simultaneously dials back the heart-on-sleeve sentimentality of previous efforts (the twin WHITE and BLACK EP’s) while doubling down on the more clamoring, wide-eyed brashness and fun.

The result is a 31-minute swan song to the group as a live rock entity. Newer material has dabbled further in lo-fi minimalism (the field recording of “Do What You Like”) and, as recent live appearances have shown, a desire to blend more synthetic & eclectic elements - drum machines, samples, organs & the like - into the groups sound as a renewed, limitless studio-based recording project.

The closest springboard to that new NEW WIVES here is the closer, “Lisa (reprise)”, a 5-minute ballad(?) that begins as a simple Rhodes piano (played by Matt) duet with Kirby’s vocals, but slowly builds into a bombastic release, reworking & blending a host of melodic passages from throughout HI IM ALIVE into one final victory lap to close out the record. [[Mastered by Jason NeSmith (Casper & The Cookies, of Montreal, Supercluster) at Chase Park Transduction in the summer of 2016. Recorded way back in the spring of 2015 with Jesse Mangum at The Glow in Athens, Georgia.]]

CASSETTES COMING AS SOON AS I GET BACK INTO THE COUNTRY USA. FOR NOW, LISTEN TO “LISA” & FUTURE SINGLE “DON’T WAIT” OR CHECK OUT MATT’S MOST RECENT EP UNDER THE ALIAS GROUP STRETCHING ENTITLED “WAVE GOODBYE TO YOUR VISITORS”. ALL OF THIS IS AVAILABLE FOR FREE YALL!!!!!! >> https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/052-hi-im-alive

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Marching Banana