Your tween-loving heart will be glad to hear that Icky Blossoms, the band composed of Tilly and The Wall’s Derek Pressnall, vocalist Sarah Bohling, and filmmaker/musician Nik Fackler, have signed to Saddle Creek. Signing with Saddle Creek means more than just a legally binding contract to clean Conor Obert’s teardrop-shaped pool and look after Rilo Kiley’s pet Gila monster — it means you’ve made it!
Icky Blossoms may sound like a rude attack on Mayim Bialik’s appearance and cool hats, but the name also represents a group of friends from Omaha, Nebraska that possibly make dance-pop reminiscent of a gross flower. TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek will help the gang record their debut in the studio, where it is likely that Cursive frontman and Saddle Creek member Tim Kasher will play hidden camera pranks on the band à la the masterpiece television series Punk’d.
If you want an idea of want Icky Blossoms sound like, you can check out two tracks on their Facebook page. That’s as far as I’m going to help you out.
Pelican is a large bird that resides primarily near the water. Pelican is also an instrumental metal band from Chicago. Ha! Got you with the classic bait-and-switch! You clicked this story thinking that it would be about your favorite bird, but now you have to read a story about your favorite instrumental metal band from Chicago. You’ve got to read this and… that sounds like it’s going to be okay for you. Really, what’s left to say about Pelican, the bird? There’s no blood in that stone, if you follow me.
But Pelican, the band? Plenty left to say about them! We could talk about how they haven’t put out anything since 2009’s What We All Come to Need and we just did. Let’s even talk about how they’re breaking that recorded silence by putting out a four song EP called Ataraxia/Taraxis through Southern Lord on April 10. Heck, while we’re chewing the fat, let’s touch on the fact that this marks a new stage in the band’s history, since all four members of Pelican live in different cities, leading to a greater focus on composition and utilizing different recording techniques.
All this talk about Pelican is making me thirsty and also hungry for fish. Let’s sit down and quench our thirsts. Sate our hunger for the sea’s delicious treats. While we’re sitting, we can talk more about Pelican. Did you know they’re going on a European tour in April? They are.
Time to take your pants off and show everyone that neon pink g-string you’ve been wearing since 2 Live Crew had you feeling so horny all those summers ago. There is no better time for a 2 Live Crew reunion, especially as the emcees are in their 50s at this point. If they were to reunite at 65, you’d probably have to see them play nursing home venues, where many a hips would be sure to pop out of joint.
Luther Campbell is all the wiser, so on his stop through the Sundance Film Festival — where he’s promoting a short called The Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke — he announced his group will begin touring this summer. Get ready to pop that coochie and shake that azz all summer long. We’ll have tourdates as they become available.
If there’s one guy the writers at Tiny Mix Tapes get a huge boner for, it’s Canadian stack-of-bricks bass saxophonist Colin Stetson, whose album New History Warfare Vol 2: Judges on Constellation made #3 on our year-end list. But for me, it’s less about his lumberjack physique and more about his enormous… saxophone.
This spring, Stetson will arrive in the East Coast with his mammoth horn to stir up our hormones. Alongside the beefcake will be the smoldering sexpot Sarah Neufeld, whose powers of seduction have overtaken the likes of Tim Hecker and who Stetson has performed with in Bell Orchestre and Arcade Fire. You might want to clean your pipes before going to any of these gigs.
Tourdates:
03.23.12 - Durham, NC - Motorco Music Hall $
03.30.12 - Kingston, ON - The Grad Club *
03.31.12 - Waterloo, ON - Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics *
04.01.12 - Buffalo, NY - Big Orbit’s Soundlab *
04.03.12 - Brooklyn, NY - Glasslands *
04.04.12 - Amherst, MA - Hampshire College
04.05.12 - Troy, NY - The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center *
The Roots did it with undun (TMT Review), and now the breath of fresh old-school air that is De La Soul (or at least 2/3 of them) have planned their own concept album under the moniker First Serve: the album is called First Serve. It’s the first De La-related album since 2004’s The Grind Date (TMT Review), but this time they’ll be spitting from the mouths of the fictional characters Deen Whitter and Jacob “Pop Life” Barrow, two brothers in Queens who want to get the hell out of Queens (can you blame them?).
Stream the first track, “Pushin’ Aside, Pushin’ Along” right here:
And be sure to watch the 40-something rappers dressed up as Whitter and Barrow living a cartoon life in the early days with Ma Dukes breaking down the door while they tryna get they smoke on. Catch that over at NME.
James Ferraro has returned to the mixtape game only a few weeks after making his biggest splash yet as the fueled-up, jet-setting bad boy DJ BEBETUNE$$$ (via the straight fire mixtape inhale C-4 $$$$$ that’s been spinning at the office for a minute). SILICA GEL finds BEBETUNE$$$ introducing a twisted new alias into the mix by the name of BODY GUARD — a wink, perhaps, to James’s growing female fanbase and the lengths they’ll go to catch him “off [his] game.”
SILICA GEL drops everywhere in less than a month (February 23), so get your fix in the buffertime with these #FRESH #UNRELEASED BEBETUNE$$$ AKA BODY GUARD beats:
Something tells us tunes these #LIQUIDMETALPUNK, #INFRAREDPUNK, #BLADEPUNK, and #FLAMETHROWERPUNK won’t stay unreleased for long.
