Castanets Bring Their "Old, Weird, Kinda Creepy America" to New Album, Summer Tour

By Liz Louche on

I first saw Castanets several years ago, in a preternaturally quiet little room on the opening afternoon of SXSW. Frontman Raymond Raposa effortlessly held sway over the audience, his voice rising above the steady whir of the cooling system, the backing band emitting unsettling country chords and creeping noise. It was spellbinding — and not just because my friend and I had driven 20 or so straight hours from Minneapolis to Austin and were barely managing to fight off collapse through an unholy combination of Sparks (the now sadly illegal caffeinated malt beverage), vodka, and enchiladas (although this did possibly play a very magical part in it.)

Over the years, Raposa and co. have continued to make some of the eeriest Americana this side of a noise band fronted by Faulkner, and they've done a darn good job of it. So it is with great excitement that I announce to you the upcoming release of Castanets’ latest, Texas Rose, the Thaw, and the Beasts, coming September 22 on Asthmatic Kitty. The band has some very special guests this time, rounded out by the likes of David J (Bauhaus), Jason Crane (Rocket from the Crypt), Pall Jenkins (Black Heart Procession), Andy Robillard (Gogogo Airheart), new Asthmatic Kitty artist DM Stith, Gabriel Sundy, Chris Cory, and frequent contributors Henry Nagle and Suzanna Waiche. Word is that the latest material has the expected experimental angle, alongside a little something known in pop music circles as “catchiness.”

Castanets are heading out on tour this summer, so you’ll be able to judge for yourself.

Texas Rose, the Thaw, and the Beasts tracklisting:

1. Rose
2. On Beginning
3. My Heart
4. Worn From The Fight (With Fireworks)
5. No Trouble
6. Thaw And The Beasts
7. We Kept Our Kitchen Clean And Our Dreaming Quiet
8. Down The Line, Love
9. Lucky Old Moon
10. Ignorance is Blues
11. Dance, Dance

Tourdates:
06.30.09 - New York, NY - Central Park Summerstage*
07.03.09 - Chicago, IL - Schuba's **
07.04.09 - Detroit, MI - Garden Bowl**
07.05.09 - Bloomington, IN -Russian Recording**
07.06.09 - Cleveland, OH - Skylab/The Shelf**
07.07.09 - Buffalo, NY - Soundlab**
07.08.09 - Boston, MA - Middle East**
07.10.09 - New York, NY - Cake Shop**
07.11.09 - New York, NY - Silent Barn**
07.13.09 - Baltimore, MD - Talking Head**
07.14.09 - Charlottesville, VA - Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar**
07.15.09 - Chapel Hill, NC - Nightlight**
07.16.09 - Charlotte, NC - Mileston**
07.17.09 - Knoxville, TN - Pilot Light**
07.19.09 - Nashville, TN - The Basement**
07.20.09 - Birmingham, AL - The Bottletree**
07.23.09 - Houston, TX - Rudyards**
07.24.09 - Austin, TX - The Mohawk**
07.25.09 - Lubbock, TX - Bash Riprock**
07.27.09 - Phoenix, AZ - Modified Arts**
07.29.09 - San Diego, CA - Casbah**
07.30.09 - Los Angeles, CA - Spaceland**
07.31.09 - San Francisco, CA - Hemlock Tavern**
08.01.09 - Santa Cruz, CA - Crepe Place**
08.03.09 - Portland, OR - Worksound**

* Explosions in the Sky, Constantines

** M.A. Turner

RIP: Charlie Mariano, jazz saxophonist

By Shane Mack on Jun 17 2009

From Jazzwise (via The Daily Swarm):

The innovative saxophonist and reeds player Charlie Mariano passed away yesterday aged 85 in the German city of Cologne.

Born in Boston, he earned his stripes playing in groups led by Stan Kenton, Shelly Manne, and later with Charles Mingus – performing on the classic album, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.

In the 1960s he travelled extensively around India and the Far East where he studied local musics and learned to play the oboe-like nagaswaram, which featured heavily in his work from the mid-1960s onwards. During the 70s Mariano became a founding member of the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble and also played with German bassist Eberhard Weber in his group Colours – performing on the acclaimed album Yellow Fields in 1975. Some of Mariano’s other key recordings include Boston All Stars in 1953, and Savannah Samurai in 1998 – showing the impressive multi-decade span of his career.

Mariano was for many years a highly respected educator at Berklee College of Music in Boston and also led his own successful ensembles, experimenting with east-meets-west fusion, of which he was a leading pioneer, and recording for the ECM label among others

- Charlie Mariano official website
- Charlie Mariano Wikipedia entry]

Dead Body Found During Bonnaroo Festival Cleanup

By David Nadelle on Jun 17 2009

Among the items found during the massive cleanup after Bonnaroo were:

- 1,647 cell phones.
- 1,210 single shoes. 3 pair.
- 314 tins of Skoal (159 empty; 155 containing negligible amounts of pot).
- The Holy Grail. And the much-less-known Jesus-attributed relic Crown of Ragweed.
- Their dignity.
- The last remaining members of the lost mud tribe of Pleasedontpublishthatphotomyparentswillkillme.
- Hasselhoff!
- Gogol Bordello (they live here year round in a gypsy caravan on blocks).
- Cave wall drawings.

- 1 body. White. Male. Mid-20s.

Workers cleaning up after this year's Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, held last weekend in Manchester, TN, discovered a body of a white male in his 20s in a single tent at approximately noon yesterday. According to Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves, there is no reason to suspect any foul play involved with the death of the still-unidentified man, who was alive at 3 PM on Monday afternoon. No missing persons reports have surfaced to aid with identification yet, but more should be revealed soon, as the body was moved to the medical examiner’s office in Nashville for an autopsy Tuesday afternoon.

Bonnaroo, like just about any mammoth festival, has a history of attendee deaths, but not a long one. In 2004 a 22-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman died while attending the festival and a year later a 32-year-old Huntsville, AB man died of an apparent methadone-related incident. Details are sketchy about the body found yesterday on the Planet Roo site, but all involved hope to have some answers regarding the man’s identity and cause of death sometime today.

The Flaming Lips’ Forthcoming LP Is Titled Embryonic, Is Due in September, Is a Double LP

By Mr P on Jun 17 2009

Photo: [mrmatt]

By Kat Gardiner on Jun 17 2009

Tropicália legends Os Mutantes are releasing a new album, Haih, September 8 on ANTI- Records. Not only is this their first full-fledged studio album in 35 years, it is also the first ever to be released to an international audience. Yow-zah! I wonder if these guys know what they're getting themselves into: Screaming music nerds everywhere! Sold out shows! Psychedelia fans who know no Portuguese, but do their best to sing along to the lyrics they've memorized based on pure phonetics! It'll be like ABBA reversed (or was that Ace of Base?). Word has it that Tom Zé and Jorge Ben are on a couple tracks, too. Double, triple extra sweet.

“Living the conception and birth of this album, as an individual, was the most intense experience," according to Sergio Dias, the brains behind the psycho-tropic beast, "for it was as if time has ceased to exist, and I was bouncing from life to life, decades through decades, revisiting myself as a 16-year-old boy playing guitar and feeling so free and, as any teenager, indestructible.” Sergio, you're not the only one who feels like a teenager right now. Mutant-mania, anyone?

Maple Leafers in Vancouver will be able to catch the pop masters on September 3 at The Commadore Ballroom and in Montreal at the Pop Montreal festival, which runs from September 30-October 4, and also features such acts as Faust, The Oh Sees, Tobacco, Destroyer, Wovenhand, The Butthole Surfers, Lou Barlow + The Missing Men, Dinosaur Jr., Matt & Kim, as well as others, both announced and unannounced.

Photo: [Sérgio Savaman Savarese]

Swedish Court Rules Judge Was Not Biased Against Pirate Bay (North Korea Would be Proud!)

By Brom on Jun 16 2009

The Pirate Bay has lost its change for retrial. Now, let’s get this straight… the sentencing judge who ruled against The Pirate Bay in their recent court case is apparently not biased, even though he’s a member of several groups that lobby for the rights of copyright holders. The ruling by a Swedish court means the four men convicted of operating the file-sharing site are unable to have the case against them thrown out.

Seriously, this sounds like a justice system delivered by those freedom-lovin’ North Koreans. The Swedish court’s argument was that the judge in question, Thomas Norstrom, “joined the associations to keep abreast of copyright issues and that it found no evidence of bias.” Unfortunately for the founders of The Pirate Bay, this throws a real spanner into their appeal since they were going to base it on Norstrom’s connections to these lobby groups.

I’m no expert on the rule of law in Sweden, but surely it must have occurred to somebody that there was a serious conflict of interest in this particular case. Kim Jong-il salutes you Sweden!

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