Midlake Emerge from the Forest, Reveal New Album Details, Tour
Those Midlake boys sure are a rustic bunch. They seem like the kind of folks that only break their schedule of endless camping trips and whittling sessions to write some songs about the mountains and bandits and the old country. Apparently the whittling block has seen a lot of use the last couple of years, as the Denton, Texas-based group has refrained from releasing a record since 2006’s The Trials of Van Occupanther (TMT Review). Perhaps they’ve busy been observing the growth patterns of the North Red Oak Encroaching Fern. Perhaps you think that’s a real plant and not something I just made up.
Whatever it is that has been possessing Midlake’s attention the last three years, it's over now, as the band has finished their third LP, The Courage of Others. Recorded at their custom-built studio in Denton, the record is set for a February 2 release via Bella Union. In the days leading up to the album’s release, the band will embark on a short East Coast tour. Or at least a tentatively short tour, as more dates are said to be announced soon. Being the group’s first live dates since 2007, the trek breaks another long silence for Midlake. Unless, I suppose, they played a show in a secluded forest somewhere. I wouldn’t be too surprised.
The Courage of Others tracklist:
1. Acts of Man
2. Winter Dies
3. Small Mountain
4. Core of Nature
5. Fortune
6. Rulers, Ruling All Things
7. Children of the Grounds
8. Bring Down
9. The Horn
10. The Courage of Others
11. In The Ground
Midlake tourdates:
01.05.10 - Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon
01.06.10 - Tallahassee, FL - Engine Room
01.07.10 - Orlando, FL - The Social
01.08.10 - St. Augustine, FL - Cafe Eleven
01.09.10 - Mt. Pleasant, SC - Village Tavern
01.10.10 - Asheville, NC - Grey Eagle
01.11.10 - Memphis, TN - Hi-Tone
01.12.10 - Little Rock, AR - Rev Room
The Brian Jonestown Massacre Announce New LP Who Killed Sgt. Pepper?
According to The Brian Jonestown Massacre's website, a new LP titled Who Killed
Sgt. Pepper? is set for release January 1, 2010. As of this writing, the same website is streaming 13 (possibly making up the entirety of the new album) new tracks via YouTube, in what seems to be a popular trend of exposing an entire album for free before its official release.
Before Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? drops, however, a four-tracked EP titled One will be coming out November 23 on Cargo Records. According to Cargo, "The first two tracks on the EP are from the forthcoming album & the other 2 are exclusive to this release. The vinyl is coloured orange & is 180 grm audiophile pressing."
The tracklisting for Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? was posted on their MySpace blog, but then retracted, according to onethirtybpm. Here's how it appeared (subject to change):
1. Tempo 116.7 (Reaching For Dangerous Levels Of Sobriety)
2. The Heavy Knife
3. Lets Go Fucking Mental (Melodica Mix)
4. White Music
5. This Is The First Of Your Last Warnings (Icelandic Version)
6. This Is The One Thing We Did Not Want To Have Happen
7. The One
8. Someplace Else Unknown
9. Detka! Detka! Detka!
10. Super Fucked
11. Our Time
12. Feel It (Of Course We Fucking Do)
13. Felt Tipped-Pen Pictures Of UFOs
Pixies and Pavement to Headline Primavera Sound Festival, and The '90s Have Never Been More Awesome
The San Miguel Primavera Sound Festival is always cause for excitement, because it sports a promising roster of great bands year after year, spanning the better part of three glorious days. While most Europeans can count their pennies and hop the nearest Ryanair flight over to Spain, those living stateside aren't quite so conveniently located.
But in case you are planning to attend Primavera, you'll be mighty pleased to learn that the recently reunited indie vets Pavement will be one of this year's headliners, along with the time-honored rockers Pixies. Indeed, for those of you lucky enough to be living within arm's (or plane's) reach of Barcelona and/or Madrid, Primavera Sound Festival is shaping up to be a serious blast from the past. I wonder if Sebadoh will be making an appearance as well? No? Just wishful thinking on my part then?
Four Tet Receives Nobel Peace Prize for Announcing New Album, Tour Details, Merely Existing... Oops, I Mean for "His Extraordinary Efforts to Strengthen International Diplomacy and Cooperation Between Peoples"
Has it really been four long years since we were blessed with Four Tet's last firewhirl foray into adventurous sound? Despite the lag in releases, Kieran Hebden doesn't seem to ever be out of sight or mind and is as hand-cuffed as anyone else in the public eye to celebrity trappings: fake twitter posts attributed to him, hot and cold running remix requests, house burglaries. Since Everything Ecstatic (TMT Review), Hebden has dabbled in explorative collaborations with Steve Reid, has curated a DJ-Kicks album, and has issued a couple of numbers of short-run, blink-and-you'll-miss-'em singles, but his next album proper, There Is Love in You, will be released as Four Tet and is available January 26 on long-standing label Domino.
Given his predilection for tangential walks outside you would think that forecasting forthcoming Four Tet sounds would be like attempting to predict the weather. Sure, you may come close, but there is a chance you may get caught in a torrential icestorm wearing a speedo and sun visor. Luckily, foretelling the future of Four Tet is more like predicting the weather in Hawaii. You might not know exactly what is in store but you know it will be aesthetically pleasing, will throw you for a great loop, and will be damned good. Musical meteorologists can judge the worth of There Is Love in You for themselves in the form of the 9-minute drone-loop-bliss "Love Cry" single which is out now in limited numbers in the U.K., can be heard on Hebden's MySpace page, and will be issued in the U.S. as a 12-inch single on December 8. "Our Bells" blows in on the B-side.
There is love in these song titles:
1. Angel Echoes
2. Love Cry
3. Circling
4. Pablo's Heart
5. Sing
6. This Unfolds
7. Reversing
8. Plastic People
9. She Just Likes to Fight
There is also love in these tourdates:
11.19.09 - Utrecht, Netherlands - Tivoli de Helling $
11.20.09 - Nijmegen, Netherlands - Merelyn $
12.11.09 - London, England - Plastic People $
02.12.10 - London, England - The Dome %
02.17.10 - New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge #
02.18.10 - Cambridge, MA – Middle East Downstairs #
02.19.10 - Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle #
02.20.10 - Austin, TX – The Mohawk #
02.23.10 - Seattle, WA – Chop Suey #
02.24.10 - Vancouver, BC – Biltmore Cabaret #
02.25.10 - Portland, OR – Doug Fir #
02.26.10 - San Francisco, CA – The Independent #
02.27.10 - Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex #
03.11.10 - Manchester, England - Club Academy
03.12.10 - Leeds, England - TJs
03.13.10 - Edinburgh, Scotland - Bongo Club
03.18.10 - Brighton, England - Concorde 2
03.19.10 - Birmingham, England - Custard Factory
03.20.10 - Bristol, England - Fiddlers
$ DJ set
% Joy Orbison
# Nathan Fake
The Music Tapes' Julian Koster And His Singing Saw to Go Caroling Again This Year
Julian Koster (The Music Tapes, Neutral Milk Hotel, Major Organ & The Adding Machine) and his Singing Saw -- Badger, I assume -- are once again going Christmas caroling in December! Want to see them? Great. All you have to do is grant them permission and they'll show up at your doorstep, singing songs, sharing stories, and being all Christmas-y. It's like a Christmas miracle spread across 15 dates!
To ensure there is no confusion (and because I'm feeling lazy), here's the exact wording from Merge:
You may invite the carolers to visit your house by emailing musictapescaroling@gmail.com or by mailing a handwritten letter to 450 N. Harris St. Athens, GA 30601 (due to time constraints, please send an email to let the "caroling ambassador" know you are sending a letter). Be sure to include an email address or telephone number for reply. Invitations where the hosts indicate that they would be willing to entertain outside guests on caroling night are preferred. Please note your permission to invite others from the area to your house and whether you can offer the carolers a place to sleep in your letter or email.Once the limit on houses on a given night has been reached, the address of each house that will welcome guests will be distributed via email to all who email musictapescaroling@gmail.com and ask to attend. The addresses of the houses will not be posted online.
Proposed Path:
December 7th, 8th, 9th: Georgia, Tennessee, Indiana & Lower Half of Illinois
December 10th, 11th, 12th: Chicago, Illinois, Michigan
December 13th, 14th, 15th: Ohio, Pittsburgh, Western NY
December 16th, 17th, 18th: Upstate NY, New England (CT, RI, VT etc)
December 19th, 20th, 21st: Philadelphia, NYC, Baltimore, DC, Chapel Hill
Antares Successfully Auto-Tunes Their Own Intellectual Property’s Illimitability; “App For That” Coming Soon
Pitch-correction technology developers Antares, progenitors of that infamous little auto-tune cult empire, want us to get one thing straight right the fuck now: the term “auto-tune” is NOT as ubiquitous as we all auto-tunitively assumed it was.
In order to set about the task of auto-tuning our perceptions, then, they recently sent their lawyers to auto-tune their trademark of the term in the face of a competing App created by developers Steamboat Mountain Designs (heretofore called “AutoTuner”), forcing the company to auto-tune the name of their auto-tuner.
Why all the fuss? Well, if you auto-tune your memories real quick, you’ll recall that Antares recently lent its auto-tune technology to the auto-tunious “I Am T-Pain” auto-tuning App for the iPhone, in auto-tuned conjunction with App developers Smule. As Digital Music News reports, Steamboat initially pointed in their defense to the hundreds of thousands of Google results for the phrase “auto-tune.” Yet in the end, the company -- being much smaller and less rich than Antares because they AREN’T the owners of an omnipresent-yet-trademarked term like “auto-tune” -- was auto-tuned into complete and auto-tuned accordance with Antares’ request. Steamboat Mountain’s developers have consequently auto-tuned their App’s title to “RoboTuner” instead of “AutoTuner” rather than bankrupting themselves in court and having to then plead (in an unpleasingly un-auto-tuned warble) with the federal government to step in and auto-tune them out of debt.
So, on that auto-tuned note, look for the newly auto-tuned "Robotuner" in an App Store near you. It’ll be on the shelf in the auto-tuner isle, right next to all of the other auto-tuners.
Oneohtrix Point Never Gets Stoked on Back to the Future Trilogy; Decides to Try Own Hand At That Whole Trilogy Thing; No Fun Issues Rifts
The idea of going backwards to a point in time that is forwards is a hard thing to grasp. I could probably write a 17-page article on the idea of going back to a time that has not yet existed. It boggles my mind! Anyway, here's my point: this all reminds me of the music of Daniel Lopatin's Oneohtrix Point Never. At first listen, you get the vibe that this music might be 30 years old, yet the music itself hones in on sounds from 70s- and 80s-era visions of the future. Indeed, Oneohtrix Point Never is simultaneously referencing music of the past and of the future, like, you know, the movie Back to the Future.
Okay, this'll probably make more sense once you listen to his latest release, Rifts. Due tomorrow, November 17, on No Fun Productions, the double-disc album is actually composed of remastered editions of three previously released records, Betrayed in the Octagon, Zones Without People, and Russian Mind. All three originally came out in limited, vinyl-only pressings on No Fun and Arbor and were made up of selections from "rare and out-of-print cassette and CD-R releases, with recordings spanning as far back as 2003." Rifts, according to the publicist, sees Lopatin "developing his unabashed worship of the analog poly-synth as a free standing musical apparatus towards a fully realized OPN world of sound; at once incorporating synth prog, modern noise, early techno, drone, minimalism and computer music."
Alright, alright, you get the idea, right? So, as the great Biff Tannen once said, "Why don't you make like a tree and get outta here!"
Rifts tracklisting:
Disc 1:
1. Behind the Bank
2. Eyeballs
3. Betrayed in the Octagon
4. Woe is the Transgression
5. Parallel Minds
6. Laser to Laser
7. Woe Is The Transgression II
8. Computer Vision
9. Format & Journey North
10. Zones Without People
11. Learning To Control Myself
12. Disconnecting Entirely
13. Emil Cioran
14. Hyperdawn
Disc 2:
1. Months
2. Physical Memory
3. Grief and Repetition
4. Russian Mind
5. Actual Air
6. Immanence
7. Lovergirls Precinct
8. Ships Without Meaning
9. Terminator Lake
10. Transmat Memories
11. A Pact Between Strangers
12. When I Get Back From New York
13. I Know Its Taking Pictures From Another Plane (Inside Your Sun)
Bonnie “Prince” Billy to Release Live LP in December on Drag “City” Records
Bearded shut-ins, rejoice, for Bonnie “Prince” Billy née Will Oldham will be giving publicists a marketing nightmare with a beautifully bizarro release on Drag City, titled Funtime Comedown: too weird for CD format. The vinyl- and digital-only full-length live-in-studio album Funtime Comedown will be credited to Bonny Billy and the Picket Line; the Picket Line, of course, being a Kentucky bluegrass band. Duh. Sez Drag City, they are also "the official dance band of Funtown, a metaphysical little community in the woods outside Louisville.” Are you really surprised? Didn't think so.
The record is a cornucopia of Oldham goodness, including new versions of his own songs as well as Palace Brothers tunes and country classics. It's due December 15. Check out this video of Oldham and his Picket pals:
Willy boy has also just released a 7-inch single for "Stay," which contains the song “People Living,” both of which are covers of Susanna & the Magical Orchestra's Susanna Wallumrød. And guess what? It's sold out. But you can still purchase a download (FLAC or MP3) here.
Dan Deacon Cancels Tour Due to Back Problems
According to Pitchfork, Dan Deacon has canceled the remainder of his tour after having been hospitalized with acute sciatica. The tour was originally scheduled to run through next Wednesday, ending at Baltimore's Ottobar.
TMT wishes him a speedy recovery!
Canceled dates:
11.13.09 - Troy, NY - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
11.14.09 - Worcester, MA - Clark University
11.15.09 - Ithaca, NY - Ithaca College
11.16.09 - Purchase, NY - SUNY Purchase
11.18.09 - Baltimore, MD - The Ottobar
Holy Hip-Hop: KRS-One's Philosophical Take on the “Kulture” Now Available in Book Form
Lawrence K. Parker, more readily known as KRS-One, finally saw the release of his book The Gospel of Hip Hop: First
Instrument this week. Originally slated for release
earlier this year, First Instrument is the first release from the
publishing firm I Am Hip Hop, an imprint of powerHouse Books. The Gospel of Hip Hop, set up in the format of a holy book, is described by the publisher as being “...a spiritual manual for citizens of Hip Hop Kulture that combines classic philosophy with faith and practical knowledge, for a fascinating, in-depth exploration of Hip Hop as a life path.”
Very few artists could pull off such a publication and still demand to
be taken seriously. KRS-One, founder of the legendary Boogie Down Productions and the Stop the Violence Movement, manages to not seem overly hokey in his philosophical treatise on hip-hop culture. The book also seems to serve as an introduction to a series of other projects that KRS-One is taking very seriously, one of these being the launch of The Temple of Hip Hop. As the subtitle of the book
suggests, it's only the first instrument, suggesting follow-up
titles, possibly written by other hip-hop gurus. Time will tell if the ideas
presented take hold with the members of the culture to whom Lawrence
is preaching.
The 818-page hardcover edition can be ordered directly
from the publisher here.
Fish and Chips Are Delicious and Hot Chip Are Releasing a New LP, As Well As Touring
Fish and chips, man! So British, so delicious! Hot Chip, man! Also British, though not necessarily delicious! Maybe they are, I wouldn’t know. Delicious or not, they do seem to have a knack for releasing a new LP of rather nice dance-rock every two years. And so it will be once again, as the group has announced that One Life Stand, their fourth LP, will be released on February 8 via Parlophone. The record will follow up 2008’s Made in the Dark (TMT Review), which in turn followed up 2006’s The Warning, which in turn followed up 2004’s Coming on Strong. See what I mean about them releasing a new LP every two years? Always on time, these guys.
Hot Chip will embark on a tour directly following the new record’s release, though if you want to see them and you don’t live in the U.K., you’re pretty much out of luck, buddy. At least for now. Buck up, I’m sure they’ll announce some dates wherever you live soon. As for me, thinking about fish and chips has made me hungry. I’m going to embark on a tour of dinner
02.12.10 - Glasgow, Scotland - Academy
02.13.10 - Edinburgh, Scotland - Picture House
02.15.10 - Nottingham, England - Rock City
02.16.10 - Leeds, England - Academy
02.18.10 - Newcastle, England - O2 Academy
02.19.10 - Manchester, England - Academy
02.20.10 - Birmingham, England - O2 Academy
02.22.10 - Bournemouth, England - O2 Academy
02.23.10 - Bristol, England - O2 Academy
02.24.10 - Norwich, England - O2 Academy
02.26.10 - London, England - O2 Brixton Academy
02.27.10 - London, England - O2 Brixton Academy
