#brassland

[thevinyldigest]

2010 | The National - Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers Brassland #thenational #brassland #brasslandrecords @thenational @brassland https://www.instagram.com/p/CbSzcYCMXlF/?utm_medium=tumblr

[robmoro]

RobMoro TV | Hannah Georgas - ‘Just A Phase’

RobMoro TV | Hannah Georgas – ‘Just A Phase’

Toronto’s Hannah Georgas shares a new offering called ‘Just A Phase,’ a gracious track that blends electronics with Georgas’ balanced tones.

The accompanying video pieces together a view of the album’s recording sessions and what came after. Filmed at The National’s upstate New York studio and during Hannah’s time on the road in 2019 and features Aaron Dessner’s Long Pond studio — recognisable…

View On WordPress

[mediadigest]

2010 | The National - The National Brassland #thenational #brassland @thenational @brassland https://www.instagram.com/p/CBc5bpDp0kb/?igshid=10zg70qt121eg

[mediadigest]

2010 | The National - Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers Brassland #thenational #brassland @thenational @brassland https://www.instagram.com/p/CBctbhvJeC-/?igshid=omfdw5jw0901

[half-a-tiger]

FUSILIER - “Dancing In the Street”, from the new EP ‘Upstream’ out now via Brassland.

[thesearenotphotographs]

Fusilier, Bartees Strange, and WSABI Fox at The Sultan Room

On Thursday, March 12, 2020, The Sultan Room hosted a show featuring sets by acts from New York City (Fusilier and WSABI Fox) and Washington, DC (Bartees Strange). Strange released an EP of covers by The National the next day (Friday, March 13th) called Say Goodbye To Pretty Boy and performed them during his set. Since the show took place during the COVID-19 epidemic, the acts addressed it during their stage banter. WSABI Fox asked if everyone washed their hands before playing her first song, Strange thanked the audience for risking their health by attending and Fusilier also expressed gratitude for people attending despite the circumstances.

Full gallery available on my site here.

[recommendedlisten]

Album Review: Bartees Strange - ‘Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy’ EP

Bartees Strange doesn’t look a thing like Matt Berninger, and if you were to ask the average National fan what a fan of their music might look like, he’d probably not be the first to come to mind either. That’s a problem, and he’s aware of it. To fully grasp where he’s coming from, it might help knowing where’s he’s walked as well. At this point, Strange lived all over the world -- He was born in Ipswich, England to a military father and an opera singer mother, moved around globally before their family settled in Mustang, Oklahoma just ahead of turning 12, later immersed himself inside of Brooklyn’s diverse modern artist scene, and now works in D.C. as an environment lobbyist.Exposure to all kinds of music and communities is something he’s experienced first hand.

One thing that stuck out to him while attending a National show was how few people people of color were in attendance. Despite the National being an indie rock band defining of a generation more woke and less bound by genre lines (or any other labels, for that matter,) it felt like there was something missing in that space at that very moment of time. With Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy, his debut EP, Strange reimagines these spaces with the black community and its contribution to indie rock in view. Not only that, but he creates something with his own identity with these prexisting creations that proves how universally bound human emotion and art can be when we reflect them into our own experiences and culture.

On the EP’s early previews “About Today” and “Lemonworld”, Strange exchange melancholy tenderness for gleaming soul with dramatic post-rock arrangements as well as emotive synth texturizing. The listen also highlights some of his own original with tracks “Going, Going” and “HAGS” exploring his personal catharsis through a lifelong sonic voyages. Collectively, the EPs amounts to a political statement that focuses in on the once-hidden figures of black voices in indie rock, now brought to the front of the stage through Bartees Strange’s work.

Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy by Bartees Strange

Bartees Strange’s Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy will be released March 13th on Brassland. Physical | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify

[dustedmagazine]

Buke & Gase — Scholars (Brassland)

Blame it on the White Stripes, maybe, but since the turn of the millennium we’ve been living in the golden age of the indie rock duo. From the entrancing Japanoise racket of Baltimore’s Lightning Bolt to the Akron blues explosion of the Black Keys to the trebly, maximalist skronk of Sacramento’s Hella, the Husker Du-meets-MBV Zen Arcade of LA’s No Age, and the gleefully unclassifiable theatrics of Seattle metal heads Big Business, stick a pin almost anywhere on the map and you could find a couple of musicians making a convincing argument that they don’t need more than two people to make a sound vastly larger than the sum of its parts. To that list of inimitable pairs, you really ought to add New York’s Buke & Gase.

Formerly of Brooklyn, now of Hudson, Buke & Gase have spent the past decade refining a singular sensibility at the intersection of playful pop and insanely technical math rock. Lead vocalist/”buke”-player Arone Dyer and multi-instrumentalist/”gase”-ist Aron Sanchez confidently flex their chops with homemade instruments, tricky polyrhythms and heady, elliptical songwriting. Topped with Dyer’s nimble soprano, the net effect can be a bit like listening to Tori Amos front a drummer-free Don Caballero. If that sounds like it could be your particular flavor of weird, Scholars is the album for you.

For their fourth studio album, Buke & Gase have largely retired the hybrid stringed instruments that gave them their moniker in favor of working with a custom electronic console known as “the Arx.” In freeing themselves from the technical constraints of their namesake, it sounds like the duo are finally finding their groove. Fresh energy courses through the dancehall-ish strut of “Derby,” the tightly-wound Talking Heads-y paranoia of “Grips” and the laid-back prog-funk of “Flock.” Scholars is not without willful weird-out moments — the album abruptly closes with the one-two punch of expansive, Bjork-like aria “No Land” followed by “Ranger,” a spooky little number that channels the dark minimalism of Seattle post-punk trio A Frames. Like their earlier work, Scholars is peppered with odd operatic digressions, dissonant breaks and delightful lyrical puzzles (“Gotta call a cab / It’s raining rock stars”), but the flurry of ideas feels more readily graspable and recognizably pop-like than ever. Heck, you could probably even dance to it.

The title Scholars may be a gentle dig at Buke & Gase’s “band’s band” status. Since their 2008 debut, Dyer and Sanchez have earned their stripes alongside sonic adventurers like Laurie Anderson, Battles, Mike Patton, Deerhoof, and So Percussion, as well as the regard of mainstream heavy hitters like the National and Bon Iver, yet the two remain — perhaps unfairly — stuck in indie rock equivalent of academia’s ivory tower. On a deeper level, though, Scholars (apparently under consideration as a new band name) speaks to the duo’s restless intelligence and earnest yen for discovery. By making a boldly experimental leap in a career already full of them, Dyer and Sanchez have created a surprisingly accessible record that shows off some of their best work to date. Whatever they call themselves, their powerful alchemy shouldn’t be ignored.

Rachel Smith