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[tempest-fragments]

"Beautiful and Damned" Charlie Chaplin art *Click. click click* 

[jesseforest]

Danny Brown - Grown Up

via discosalt

[everythingmusicwriting-blog]

*** Originally published on Discosalt ***

The Widest Smiling Faces is Brooklyn singer-songwriter Aviv Cohn.  On his second full length LP, Me and My Ribcage (available for free on The Widest

Q + A: THE WIDEST SMILING FACES

The Widest Smiling Faces is Brooklyn singer-songwriter Aviv Cohn.  On his second full length LP, Me and My Ribcage (available for free on The Widest Smiling Faces Bandcamp page), Aviv channels his subconscious mind, by creating an equally fragile and uplifting sophomore album sounding as if from within a lucid dream. I had the pleasure of talking to Aviv about the release ofMe and My Ribcage, the Brooklyn “visual” music scene, and spending 2012 in an underground bunker.

DISCOSALT: I know you live in Brooklyn now but where are you from? Where did you grow up?

THE WIDEST SMILING FACES: I grew up in Long Beach out on Long Island, about 45 minutes away from the city. It’s a really interesting community, that basically doubles in size every summer.

DS: Where does the name, The Widest Smiling Faces come from?

TWSF: It was originally part of a short story I wrote in college, the story wasn’t all that great but the syntax and imagery of the phrase really stuck with me. The overt attractiveness but latent sinisterness of a disingenuous smile is fascinating.

DS: Who or what was responsible for The Widest Smiling Faces coming to be?

TWSF:Art has been a major part of my life as long as I can remember. Growing up I had wanted to be a filmmaker, then for much of my early adolescence I was interested in being a video game designer. But when I started playing Guitar and appreciating the ability of music to convey elaborate, beautiful imagery through melody and timbre, I realized there was nothing in the world as compelling, and that it was how I wanted to spend my time. I began writing music even before I knew what I was playing, and have continued since then.

DS: I listen to Me and My Ribcage and I hear someone who grew up listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Sparklehorse – is that accurate?

TWSF:I did grow up listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins. I discovered Sparklehorse much later. I wish I had been listening to Mark Linkous when I was younger. Definitely a lot of Radiohead, Sigur Ros…I guess what you’d expect. As a young kid my musical taste was pretty bland, as I started writing more I began to gravitate to new things and looking at music a bit more deeply, and my taste changed accordingly.

DS: Who or what influences you the most?

TWSF:I’m not sure. Sometimes, I just feel weighed down and need to let something out, and then music comes. Sometimes it comes on it’s own when I don’t expect it – I don’t know where it ever comes from.

DS: The guitar work is amazing on this album. It’s trance-inducing and mesmerizing.

Who or what influences that unique sound?

TWSF:I’m really turned on by polyphony, and the feeling of multiple notes and melodies affecting one another. I was always drawn to playing guitar with my fingers as it allowed me to play multiple notes and melodies at once. It also feels really good to have the guitar strings in your hand, directly on your skin, where you can affect them more closely, it’s more visceral for me, and I feel closer to the instrument that way.

DS: When we listen to music, we have a tendency to tie it to our own lives: our own experiences, our hopes, dreams and desires. Throughout Me and My Ribcage, there is a definite melancholy vibe, but somehow, this record sounds more vibrant, more spiritual and optimistic than Rituals. Is that safe to say?

TWSF:I definitely would say it’s more spiritual, or at least attempts to be, and I suppose more vibrant as well. I had been thinking a lot about conceptions of God and reading esoteric religious texts during the recording of the album. I put a narrative together around those ideas and the way they affected my personal feelings.

DS: As the title might imply, Me and My Ribcage has numerous lyrics about the human body (eyes, fingers, hands) Lyrically, how important was that idea of basic human sensation?

TWSF:I’m one of those people who can’t take a blood test without looking away, because if I see those tubes full of blood I get pale. The idea of being alive, and basically being composed of all manner of liquids, with them moving around inside me has always been something that’s deeply affected me.

DS: The Widest Smiling Faces has always been a band heavy on visuals. Me and My Ribcage looks very different from Rituals; It’s oils instead of acrylics or mixed media instead of “other” mixed media. In your opinion, what other musicians or bands would you consider visual?

TWSF: I think all music can inspire feelings of synthetic color and visual imagery if one listens to it with the right mentality (or is predisposed to experiencing music in that way). Certainly though, some musicians clearly seem to have it in their minds more than others. I think of Boards of Canada as one example of a band that puts a great amount of attention towards the imagery their music inspires. Of course that’s just how it strikes me personally.

DS: Did you have it in your head that this was going to be a more stripped down acoustic record or did that evolve naturally?

TWSF: Well, I like the acoustic guitar/piano’s ability to be a “spine” for a recording – it has a percussiveness to it that can give music a certain “stability.”  But I’ve also always found the electric guitar to be a more evocative instrument, tonally, and we used electrics a lot on the album. So we were going for both, the “weight” of the acoustic instruments, with the “color” of electric ones. We didn’t have a set plan in terms of making the album’s sound, Chris Wojdak (producer) and myself just tried to do every song as compellingly and honestly as possible.

DS: What are your plans for 2012? Any possibility of a tour or will you be counting down the days on your Mayan calendar?

TWSF: Well, I plan to keep writing, and keep performing, touring is definitely something I really really want to do as well.

DS: Thanks so much, Aviv.

-Casey Bowers

[musicalifetr-blog]

Musicincolors'ın bu haftaki konuğu: Discosalt

Bon Iver - Hinnom, TX

This warm glowing atmospheric synth-pop ballad finds Justin Vernon dreaming of a burial place for strangers near Jerusalem, relocating the bodies to the heart of the Texas desert. But for a song about burying strangers, this is also a song about buying the stranger within yourself and starting anew; as much about the end of life, as it is about the beginning.

The Vaccines - Tiger Blood

With a little help from producer Albert Hammond, Jr., and some New York style and energy, the latest Vaccines track ''Tiger Blood'' is the latest band to shanghai the jittery pop-rock torch away from the Strokes. Possibly inspired by Charlie Sheen, this tracks awesome riffs, infectious drumming and super catchy hooks, are certainly ''winning!''.

Tame Impala - Expectation

This is the album MGMT fell short of making with Congratulations. A warm swirling psychedelic hypno-groove sonic cruise evoking a spaced out vintage soul with dizzying atmospheric guitar hooks washing over both brash and vulnerable sounding moody vocals. Brazen nods towards John Lennon, Hendrix and Floyd are assured, but Innerspeaker somehow manage to ameliorate mere 60's revisionist rock and emerge intensely modern and new.

Holy Fuck - Latin America

The third album from DIY lo-fi improvisational electronic band Holy Fuck is both as big as the Canadian landscape they hail from and an exercise in restraint. Latin condenses 9 epic electrodance tracks without the use of loops or laptops into one atmospheric 40 minute record, minus the fat from 2007's self titled EP. What remains is an infinitely more structured and conjointly accessible electronic album that is highly emotive, embracing such a diversity of effects and beats, it can still be considered experimental. This is anti-electronic / electronic music.

www.discosalt.com

[everythingmusicwriting-blog]

*** Originally published on Discosalt ***

  The Vaccines: What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? Label: Columbia Release date: May 31, 2011  You’ve heard this song

ANGLOPHILIA’S LATEST, GREATEST AND WHITEST HOPE: THE VACCINES

  Rating:

  The Vaccines: What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?

Label:

 Columbia

Release date: 

May 31, 2011 

You’ve heard this song before. You’ve heard this album before. You’ve seen this band live before, but it’s been so long – do you really care anymore?

The Vaccines are a UK band who, in the UK music press (read: NME) have been hailed as the new brit-pop darlings you must worship and adore lest you face the harsh ridicule of anyone claiming to be cooler than you.

Anglophiles both casual and fanatical will agree on this to a certain degree. Anglophillia or the severe interest/obsession with UK bands (or as a Greek goddess once put it “lad rock”) has been going in and out of style since the very first British Invasion. For every Guided By Voices geek, there’s a Manic Street Preachers nutter just like there’s a Strokes devotee for every Libertines junkie.

Some years are better for anglophiles than others. American Indie Rock has been kicking serious limey ass for a while now that the British Hype Machine hasn’t successfully reached our radars since Tony Blair left office and Arctic Monkeys were still culturally viable. Enter The Vaccines, a really young London foursome with a scrappy pub rock yet anthemic retro pop sound.

The Vaccine’s singer, Justin Young, has a strong, clear and distinctive yet still familiar voice (you might recall and compare to Doves, Embrace, Kaiser Chiefs, etc). Most of their debut, What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? is comprised of short one-two-punch numbers that concentrate more on the release and less on the build. It’s the aural equivalent of several satisfying quickies ( If You Wanna, Blow It Up, Post Break-Up Sex, Norgaard) and at least one incident of premature ejaculation (Wreckin’ Bar).  Like I said, they’re still young.

The Vaccines found their man with the megaphone in Zane Lowe, who is no Tony Wilson by any stretch, but he is a BBC radio dj. Add to this, Tom Cowan of The Horrors is your older brother (Freddie, guitar) and multiply that by the fact that it’s one of the driest times in British music history for guitar bands and you start to see the stars align for The Vaccines.

Don’t get me wrong, What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? is a fun album but it’s upsetting that the band with the The Horrors connection gets this much attention for doing the same thing that virtually every other band both in the UK and here stateside is doing, which is playing tried and true bar band/pub garage rock with  pop sensibility (See: Airborne Toxic Event, Gaslight Anthem, Detroit Cobras, etc) and some might argue, much better.

-Casey Bowers

[everythingmusicwriting-blog]

RADIOHEAD NOW: ECHOES OF THE PAST, GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE

“Radiohead makes music that sounds like the future.”

*** Originally published on Discosalt iPad Magazine *** I paraphrase, but this is, essentially, what every other review of Kid A, the album that marked a stylistic shift from UK alt arena rock – inspired and informed by IDM, left-field pop, kraut rock and avant-garde – to something much grander, that mirrored more than masked those influences. Labeled and branded everything from electronic pop, avant-pop, and alt-prog, the Radiohead that made Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail to the Thief scarcely resembled the Pablo Honey – OK Computer band from Oxford, England. Unlike many of their contemporaries, Radiohead consistently raised the stakes of the game with each new release while simultaneously changing it completely.

Everyone knows countless bands that based their sound on The Bends, or made an entire career out of writing lesser “Karma Police” knock-offs. So, when Radiohead detoured off course, some who were listening stopped and some who hadn’t, stopped and listened. It’s no secret that there is an entire generation of kids who knew the Kid A/Amnesiac Radiohead better than the previous album but these albums and that incarnation of the band are unmistakable influences for today’s most interesting artists – many from the indie world.

Electronica, in its every variation, has been in and out of style since the seventies and, yet there are still many music fans and freaks who don’t acknowledge it, don’t get it, or just don’t like it. For those who were born into the dance/electronic scene – like the hardcore kids of the Reagan era – there was a strict expectation to only be into that kind of music (at least, publicly). Kid A and Amnesiac became the OK exception to that rule though, because it sounded closer to Autechre and Aphex Twin than say, Travis or Coldplay.

While other respected rock acts noodled with knobs and flipped on the digital blips with mixed results, Radiohead succeeded by scrapping it all and starting from scratch.This sacrifice and surrender has taken the band in a completely different direction than “The Biggest Band in the World” is expected to go. All of a sudden, the fringe became familiar, the champions became challengers, and an entirely new approach, of taking the discordant and experimental and turning it into something tuneful and accessible, was born.

By the very nature of experimentation, this led the band and all musicdom to where it is now. Wilco, Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, Yeasayer, etc. And now we have The King of Limbs. Though it surprised us in its date and time of release, the material really hasn’t. It’s an amazing piece as a cohesive album and there are standout tracks, but it doesn’t feel like much has changed. Thom continues to become more comfortable exploring his entire range and register as a vocalist, The Greenwoods continue to perfect their unique, complex and melodic arrangements and explore guitar as texture, and Ed O’ Brien and Phil Selway marry precise, hypnotic, off-kilter and oddly timed rhythmic patterns. In other words, Radiohead continue to be Radiohead. They continue to produce semi-challenging/kinda-experimental music for a mostly mainstream audience. (Yes, indie is a sub of mainstream).

They’ve commercialized the avant-garde. They’ve sold us jazz by convincing us it’s rock. This is a great accomplishment. Though The King of Limbs is no departure from near recent efforts, it is still a Radiohead album and it’s better than most anything from 2010 to current. It’s another triumph, filled with jittery sexiness and sexy jitteriness.

  Musicianship and artistry aside, the marketing of Radiohead is exciting in and of itself. We’ve seen Kid A’s less-than-friendly “press interaction by email only” attempt to break the slack journalism cycle and we witnessed the band succeed in breaking the fourth wall of the music business with In Rainbows’ self-distributed, pay what you like industry-shaking power move. So, where do you go from there?

If you’re Radiohead, this time out, you surprise, delight and befuddle. First off, with little warning, they announced The King of Limbs release date, then released it even earlier, catching almost everyone and all of twitter off guard. At the same time, they released the black and white “Lotus Flower” video of a happy-looking Yorke busting liquid-like moves in a bowler, then watched it go viral and achieve meme status (See Yorke Vs. Bieber). Next, to commemorate the physical release of TKOL, they handed out a newspaper (The Universal Sigh) featuring essays, poems and Stanley Donwood artwork. With these efforts, the band and their camp have proven that they know what they’re doing – and love that the rest of the world still doesn’t.

Still, many have called the release a sleeper or grower – which is a fair enough assessments for cliquey hipsters and jaded critics – but like all things wonderful and strange, there are many levels of The King of Limbs to love. With the Record Store Day tracks “Supercollider” and “The Butcher,” as well as the most recent Limbs session release (and Glastonbury favorite), “Staircase,” adding even more complex allure and simple joy to the equation, fans and foes alike are getting another vital piece of the puzzle completing an already enthralling album from the only band making music that genuinely sounds like the future.

-Casey Bowers

[everythingmusicwriting-blog]

Summer Fiction - Summer Fiction

*** Originally published on Discosalt ***  Somewhere between The Shins, Belle and Sebastian and The Zombies, Philly’s Summer Fiction (singer-songwriter, Bill Ricchini) reside and play your local Garden Party with sleepy nostalgia and (what else?) Summer flare.

Channeling those timeless 60’s pop melodies and transforming them into something just as familiar but no less exciting, Summer Fiction is a gorgeous and promising debut. Ricchini’s genteel vocals pair well with his chamber pop production and though there is no evidence of straight beachgaze allegiance, Summer Fiction could find a friend (and fans) in a band like Real Estate.

One cop-out that isn’t is that this music almost sounds like it could have been made personally for grown-up versions of Wes Anderson characters from Rushmore. All the main offenders are here: 70′s am gold, Chicago-style soft rock, and imagery of affluence. It’s never decadent or dark. Easton-Ellis has no place here. In fact, it’s almost always innocent sounding. This is easy listening, indie style with boat shoes. So, yeah, there’s some trendy/tired bi-coaster nautical themes as evident in By the Sea, Diamond Beach, and Kids In Catalina (“Dig your feet into the sand/ Wade the ocean, take my hand”) but you instantly forgive when you you really listen up and just let go. The instrumental tracks serve this purpose near-perfectly, creating a soft and playful interlude and by carrying the drama on its way.

What you’ll find on Summer Fiction, Summer Fiction:

Coastal charmers, wordless waltzes, and even-toed ballads and bedroom duets with splashes of muted chroma and candle-lit lullabies.Echoes of Burt Bacharach, Tijuana Brass, xylophone solos, chiming, ringing guitar notes, even keeled drums, toe tappers and sway-to serenades.

The dude at your work with the Mogwai t might not dig it as much as you, the Fleet Foxes devotee but then again, he might and you might not. For clearing off your iTunes gift card or for $8 on bandcamp, it’s well worth finding out. Sail on, float on, drift by, and dive i – wait, no diving!

[everythingmusicwriting-blog]

Fang Island - Fang Island

*** Originally published on Discosalt ***  Dan Deacon, Mr Holland’s Opus, Joe Satanari, Early 90′s After School Specials, The Go! Team and Starburst (the candy). These are all things that come to mind after repeated listens to Fang Island’s eponymous EP. Band members say this music is the sound of “everyone high-fiving everyone.”  And I have to say, I agree: this album is just so easy to love. But a written description doesn’t do it justice. My advice? Buy it and give it a listen.

Since I experienced this album in such a different way, I figured I’d approach this review in a completely different way. Here is my freestyle take on Fang Island:

Only good things, guitar circles and drum rings, celebration, congratulations, block party booming bass,  tweeting, sweeping, smashing, crashing, putting a smile on everyone’s face. Is it Summer yet? It must be Summer. This is the new Summer sound. One foot planted firmly on the f/x pedal, the other never touches down.  Flash, Panache, Substance and style, even the organ seems to smile, Joyful handclaps and blissed-out beats, mighty tighty moogs and keys. Echo chamber echoes, criss-crossing melodies, soaring, soulful ooh’s and aaaah’s, childlike glee. Muscle car guitars, glitter, sparkles and stars. Indie Tabernacle Choirboy choruses blasting from Chevy Cavaliers and Ford Tauruses, reoccurring ditties and nothing remotely shitty. Rock, pop, chamber and twee, psych, freak, alt and of course indie.  Spin it some more and don’t let it stop. In with a snap and out with a pop.