Museum Of Love – the New York-based duo of Pat Mahoney and Dennis McNany – returns with new single “Cluttered World” on Skint Records. Produced by the duo and mixed by James Murphy (DFA / LCD Soundsystem), “Cluttered World” is a super-futuristic torch song — it takes you by the hand and leads you down, down into a subterranean basement, all thick air and close heat. It pulls up a stool somewhere between the grand piano and the quaking bass bins and sets you right in the heart of the action. It’s a wild and disorientating place, yet it’s one you’ll want to return to again and again each time the drum track stops. “The song is about labor in the 21st century, and drifting and sifting through the hyper-abundance of our so called civilization,” explains Museum Of Love.
Mahoney, founder and drummer of LCD Soundsystem, and McNany, known for his production work as Jee Day, formed Museum Of Love in 2013 and released their lauded self-titled debut the following year. “Cluttered World” is their first taste of new music to come later this year.
Kindred spirits from far across the globe, Brooklyn, NY quintet Clone and Aukland, NZ trio Swallow The Rat announce their forthcoming split LP today, sharing one track from each band via New Noise.
New Zealand’s Swallow the Rat (featuring ex-My Education guitarist Brian Purington) and New York’s Clone (ex-Dead Leaf Echo, Squad Car) shared a stage in Queens, NYC on perhaps the last day before the city shut down in 2020. A mutual appreciation society was formed over drinks later that night. Swallow the Rat were in town to play the New Colossus Festival, while Clone were playing what was to be the first date of their debut tour of the East Coast. There were plans to share the stage again in New Orleans and in Austin at SXSW.
A global pandemic put an end to this, but the bands kept talking. Both had recently recorded EPs, and so a plan was hatched: a split 12″ with songs from both bands. Four tunes apiece, about the irony of memory recall, the loss of friends by their own hand, frustrations of gender role psyche and the fear of looking back. Dissonant delayed guitars and martial drums abound, despite the oceans and continents separating the groups.
Swallow The Rat / Clone split LP will be available on LP and download on May 21st via Headbump Records. Pre-orders are available via Rough Trade in the US HERE and Golden Antenna in the EU HERE.
International Anthem announces a new Carlos Niño & Friends album, More Energy Fields, Current (out on digital music platforms May 7th, in stores on LP/CD June 25th), and share the lead single “Pleasewakeupalittlefaster, please…” (featuring Jamael Dean). More Energy Fields, Current is a definitive new peak in the recorded continuum of Niño, a prolific producer, percussionist, and self-identified “Communicator.” Featuring heavy contributions from many of the most exciting instrumentalists in the creative music constellation of Los Angeles (of which Niño has been a central force for over two decades) including Dean, Nate Mercereau, Sam Gendel, and Jamire Williams, the album collects ten pristine gems of collaborative communication helmed by Niño, elegantly presented in his unique “Spiritual, Improvisational, Space Collage” style.
Lead single (and album opener) “Pleasewakeupalittlefaster, please…” articulates an Earth-loving, universalist ethos that imbues the entire 44-minute program, and comes accompanied by liner notes from Niño: “We’re all in this together. I look forward to living in a much higher, much more conscious, harmonious state, here, with You, on this Magical Planet Earth.” The track also features a gorgeously-keyed canonic infinity by pianist Jamael Dean. “I first met Carlos when I was in high school,” says Dean. “I was playing at The Del Monte Speakeasy in Venice around that time. Carlos invited me to play every month with my own band. It gave me an opportunity to try out a lot of new music with my homies. ‘Pleasewakeupalittlefaster, please’ came from an idea Carlos asked me to play, at one of his concerts. I played it again over the track he sent me, when I went back to New York because of College. I remember talking to Carlos about all the misconceptions about the history of music and the importance of proper education.”
More Energy Fields, Current is ripe with ambient passages that function like open portals between moments of consonance and clarity. But even in the occasional absence of drums, there is a powerful pulse implicit in the program’s frequency of consciousness. It’s a testament to Niño’s foundations as a DJ. His distinct ability to craft kinetic, cinematic sonic experiences from dozens of independent, often rhythmically-ambiguous improvisational archive memories is more fluently displayed on More Energy Fields, Current than anything we’ve heard from him to date. It resonates, lucidly, with the way Niño’s mentor Iasos – who is known to the world as an original founder of New Age music – has described his work: “Real Time Interactive Imagination, Flow Texturization.”
More Energy Fields, Current Tracklist: 01. Pleasewakeupalittlefaster, please… (with Jamael Dean) 02. The World Stage, 4321 Degnan Boulevard, Los Angeles California 90008 (with Sam Gendel, Jamael Dean and Randy Gloss) 03. Nightswimming (with Dntel, Jamael Dean and Jira ><) 04. Now the background is the foreground. (with Adam Rudolph, Aaron Shaw and Jamael Dean) 05. Thanking The Earth (with Sam Gendel and Nate Mercereau) 06. Salon Winds (with Jamire Williams, Nate Mercereau, Jamael Dean and Aaron Shaw) 07. Ripples, Reflection, Loop (with Laraaji, Jamael Dean and Sharada) 08. Togetherness (with Devin Daniels and Jamael Dean) 09. Iasos 79 ‘til Infinity 10. Please, wake up.
Earlier this year, Squid announced the release of their much-anticipated debut album, Bright Green Field, out May 7th via Warp Records. Today, they present a new single, “Paddling,” which follows the release of “Narrator” (feat. Martha Skye Murphy), and announce an onlineperformance as part of the official British Music Embassy SXSW showcase, airing Friday, March 19th at 6pm CDT.
“Paddling” has long been a staple of Squid’s incendiary live show. This psych-motorik stomper is a reaction to being thrust into an adult world as friends suddenly turn their focus to careers. Built around a drum machine loop and pulsing synth line, sonic details pepper the track as it lurches between dynamic movements. All the while, the band members share vocal duties with an infectious ease and confidence. Squid elaborates: “Written from two different perspectives, ‘Paddling’ is a song about the dichotomy between simple pleasures and decadent consumerism. Recounting a familiar scene from The Wind in the Willows, the song reminds us that although we are humans, we are ultimately animals that are driven by both modern and primal instincts, leading to vanity and machismo around us in the everyday.”
Bright Green Field is an album of towering scope and ambition that endlessly twists down unpredictable avenues. Each member – Louis Borlase (guitars/vocals), Oliver Judge(drums/vocals), Arthur Leadbetter (keyboards/strings/ percussion), Laurie Nankivell(bass/brass) and Anton Pearson (guitars/vocals) – played an equal, vital role in the album’s creation. Written in Judge’s old local pub and recorded in producer Dan Carey’s London basement studio, it includes field recordings of ringing church bells, tooting bees, microphones swinging from the ceiling orbiting a room of guitar amps, a distorted choir of 30 voices as well as a horn and string ensemble featuring Emma-Jean Thackray and Lewis Evans from Black Country, New Road.
Squid’s music – be it agitated and discordant or groove-locked and flowing – has often been a reflection of the tumultuous world we live in. As an album title, Bright Green Field conjures an almost tangible imagery of pastoral England. However, it’s something of a decoy that captures the band’s fondness for paradox and juxtaposition. Although the geography of Bright Green Fieldis an imaginary cityscape built from monolithic concrete buildings and dystopian visions, it’s also a joyous and emphatic record that marries the uncertainties of the world with a curious sense of exploration.
Swedish rock band Alastor share the first single from their forthcoming album Onwards and Downwards today via Metal Injection. Hear and share “Death Cult” HERE. (Direct YouTube and Bandcamp.)
Excelsior! It’s the hail of yore that one should go ever onward and upward. And so, fittingly Onwards and Downwards is the occultist Swedish band Alastor’s clever call to arms… and also a reflection of our collective dark state of mind these days.
“If our last album Slave to the Grave were about death, this record is more about madness,” says guitaristHampus Sandell. “You can look at the whole record as one person’s gradual slip into insanity. An ongoing nightmare without end. It also sums up the state of the world around us as this year has clearly shown.”
Alastor is heavy doom rock for the wicked and depraved. Drenched in heavy, distorted darkness and steeped in occult horror that will make your skin crawl and ears cry sweet tears of blood, the band is revitalized in 2021 with meticulously crafted songs and new drummerJim Nordström bringing a hard-hitting and precise energy.
“It’s a more focused record but at the same time it’s more personal and naked. More raw emotion and pain,” Hampus says. The band recorded the album with the help of Joona Hassinen of Studio Underjord, who has helped with mixing since their Blood on Satan’s Claw EP in 2017. Christoffer Karlsson of The Dahmers also assisted with overdubs and encouraged the band to demo the material early on, aiding in the album’s more deliberate and tighter feel.
From the first note of opener “The Killer In My Skull” the guitars are far thicker and out front than ever, and Nordström pummels the snare and kick like a young Dave Grohl. Bassist / vocalistRobin Arnryd’s chorus-drenched voice soars above it all like a one-man choir, at times harmonizing beautifully with shimmering Hammond organ notes. Nary a moment is wasted on the droning navel-gazing of lesser bands. Particularly, the driving anthem “Death Cult” which sounds like it would fit comfortably on QOTSA’s Songs For The Deaf, though there’s considerably more heft here. The title track pays its due to the Devil’s tritone in a marvelously woven framework of intertwining melodies befitting the album’s theme of descent into madness.
The quartet released its epic 3-song debut album Black Magic in early 2017 via Twin Earth Records, followed by the 2-track Blood on Satan’s Claw EP on Halloween the same year. Joining forces with RidingEasy Records in 2018, Alastor summoned the 7-track hateful gospel Slave to the Grave, which was packed with dynamic twists and turns, and funereal girth. It was met with considerable praise, setting the stage for the band’s greatest step onward (and upward… or downward, depending on your preferences.)
Onwards and Downwards will be available on LP, CD and download on May 28th, 2021 via RidingEasy Records.
Keep your mind open.
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Hailing from Athens, Greece, Holy Monitor (Alex Bolpasis – bass, Dimitris Doumouliakas – drums, Stefanos Mitsis – guitar, Vangelis Mitsis – keyboards, and George Nikas – vocals and guitar) combines psych-rock, kraut rock, stoner rock, space rock, and even ambient music on their new album Southern Lights.
Opening track “River” has fuzzy guitars, psychedelic organ chords, and heavy drums telling a lovely tale of the night sky reflected in moving waters. “Naked in the Rain” has a great 1960s garage-psych groove to it as Holy Monitor calls for us to “shine on” through tough times.
“Blue Whale” is a tale of a mystical creature or woman (perhaps one and the same) that exists in the mind of Nikas. The title track lays on the reverb, both on the guitars and the vocals, creating a hypnotizing brew. “The Sky Is Falling Down” seems to be a reaction to a large portion of the world going for each other’s throats in the middle of a pandemic (“It sounds like madness, but I know you’re feeling lonely. It sounds like madness, but we’re falling in a state of slumber.”). The song starts chaotic, then drifts into a neat dream-space before it fades out…and then rockets forth again with some of Doumouliakas’ biggest cymbal crashes and Vangelis Mitsis’ heaviest synth-stabs.
“Hourglass” is a nice, synth-based, instrumental palate cleanser before the heavy psych of “Ocean Trail” (with Stefanos Mitsis and Nikas upping the fuzz on their guitars even more). The album ends with another water-themed track, “Under the Sea.” It’s a nice slice of cosmic rock that, like “The Sky Is Falling Down,” talks about the COVID-19 pandemic, but with hope instead of concern. “One summer night, a stranger approached me, like people did before they got sick. He touched my hand and told me his story. I always had a curiosity,” Nikas sings. We all dream of returning to times when we could at least have the chance to engage in a meaningful conversation with a stranger.
We all dream of drifting away and leaving COVID-19 behind us, and albums like Southern Lights make the waiting easier.
Keep your mind open.
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More than just a collection of rap tunes about food, MF DOOM‘s MM…FOOD is a masterclass in hip hop, songwriting, beat mixing, and villainy.
The opening track alone, “Beef Rap,” uses samples to tell us the album will be comfort for our bodies and minds. It’s true. DOOM tells us it’s about the beats, not him, but his lyrics are so smooth and stunning that you can’t ignore him. You want to analyze everything he says because it’s coming out with references to cartoons, strippers, lesser MCs, kung fu, and, of course, food. The beat boxing on “Hoe Cakes” is outstanding, and DOOM tells tales of picking up chicks and then cutting out like D.B. Cooper.
Count Bass D. joins DOOM on “Potholderz,” which is pretty much about what you think it is as the duo name check O.J. Simpson and talk about being so high they forget they didn’t light the joint they’ve been trying to smoke. “One Beer” stumbles around with drunken beats but DOOM’s vocals are as deft as a circus acrobat’s. “Deep Fried Frenz” tackles sycophants, backstabbers, and gold-diggers while DOOM looks for true friends. “Jealousy the number one killer among black folk,” he warns.
“Poo-Putt Platter” is chock-full of weird cartoon samples rearranged into a weird mix that melts into the equally strange (and delightful) “Fillet-O-Rapper” and “Gumbo” – both of which have so many samples you can’t keep track of them all. One of the most clever uses is DOOM rearranging samples from cooking show hosts talking about wraps.
“Fig Leaf Bi-Carbonate” emerges from these three tracks like a massive ray gun rising out of a supervillain’s volcano hideout. The sample from a Fantastic Four cartoon telling the origin story of Dr. Doom is uncannily close to DOOM’s story, which, of course, is the reason he chose it. “Kon Karne” combines jazz beats with video game sounds and DOOM mentioning Sally Struthers and the Tower of Pisa in the same breath.
The groove on “Guinnesses” is downright slick, almost making you slide across your kitchen floor if you hear it while doing the dishes or, better yet, making dinner. Angelika and 4Ize add some killer lyrics (Angelika on the verses, 4Ize on the choruses) about how some relationships are like battles that often are best not chosen. “Kon Queso” has a cool bass lick running through it as synth stabs bounce behind DOOM’s nimble wordplay, which is available “to freaks and to pencil-necked geeks.”
Mr. Fantastic joins DOOM on “Rapp Snitch Knishes” – another song about fake friends (who in this case spread gossip or worse). “Vomitspit” cuts and loops a cool lounge track while DOOM reminisces about how he used to lose his game when a woman called him “Daddy” and how being a masked villain isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. “Kookies” might have the best bass line on the album, because it’s like a deadly sidekick to DOOM’s verbal gymnastics. You’ll lose track of how many references DOOM makes to cookies and uses them to refer to other things. It’s this kind of wordplay that made DOOM your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper.
MF DOOM left us far too soon, but at least he left masterpieces like this for us to obsess over for years to come. His master plan was fulfilled. He became a world ruler and then for mystic pursuits.
Lily Konigsberg: singer, instrumentalist, lifelong songwriter. Since her early childhood, the Brooklyn-born-and-based artist has occupied her time with music. “Basically I was born and immediately started wanting to be a rock star,” Konigsberg told Pitchfork in July of last year (she was a 2020 Pitchfork Rising Artist). By the time she won a five-borough battle-of-the-bands contest as a teenager Konigsberg had already been performing solo sets in cafes around her native Park Slope, and in 2013 she would link with fellow Bard classmates Nina Ryser and Ani Ivry-Block to form the egalitarian art-punk outfit Palberta, a beloved DIY scene fixturewho have recently come to wider attention on the back of their critically-acclaimed 2021 album Palberta5000.
Since the early days of Palberta Konigsberg has been posting solo material on her personal Bandcamp page. Between various other collaborations and musical projects she has released three official EPs under her own name beginning with 2017’s Good Time Now, a milestone split release with Andrea Schiavelli, 2018’s 4 Picture Tear, and 2020’s It’s Just Like All the Clouds, her first EP on long-time Palberta home Wharf Cat Records, and a release that began to bring broader attention to Konigsberg’s solo work. Today, Konigsberg is announcing a new compilation on Wharf Cat entitled The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now, a release that compiles her three EPs alongside unreleased tracks into a remastered (or in some cases mastered for the first time) collection. To announce the release Konigsberg is sharing “Owe Me,” an older track she initially demoed with It’s Just Like All The Clouds producer Paco Cathcart, that features keyboards from Matt Norman (Horn Horse) and final production handled by Nate Amos (This is Lorelei, Water From Your Eyes).
This compilation is a musical omnibus—the first widely distributed Lily Konigsberg physical release as well as the first vinyl treatment for both Good Time Now and 4 Picture Tear. The collection loosely parallels the melancholic narrative behind the latter, where a mental break triggered Konigsberg’s depersonalized sense of her past self. Of the 4 Picture Tear EP, Konigsberg says, “I would look at this photo-booth picture I took with Matt [Norman] and cry because I thought I was looking at the person I used to be in that picture and that person was gone.” In retrospect, these three EPs feel like distinctive vignettes of Konigsberg’s progression as a songwriter, each version of her past selves tethered by an invisible thread to the present through musical alliances and fervent introspection.
“Owe Me,” a song Konigsberg never felt fit on any of her previous releases, now serves as an opening curtain call. “Thank you all for coming to my show,” Konigsberg says to an invisible audience’s applause. “If you didn’t know, now you certainly know.” It’s a transportive moment that combines Konigsberg’s patient steps into the underground pop limelight with her exceptional ability to connect with a diverse and talented cohort of creatives.
“I wrote ‘Owe Me’ in Petaluma on a trip with my friend Matt Norman,” says Konigsberg. “I knew immediately that it was one of those bangers that was gonna rock people’s worlds, but after Matt added some essential keyboard licks, it disappeared into the abyss of my computer accompanying roughly 500 other songs still stuck there. When concept of The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now came together with my friend Trip Warner, I knew this should be released. With the help of Nate Amos who enhanced the beat, added the descriptive sounds, and basically just made it sound amazing, it was finally complete. For me, the lyrics to this song aren’t as important as how much collaboration and friendship can transform a banger into a BANGER. I love my friends.”
The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now will be released on Wharf Cat Records on May 21st, 2021. It is available for preorder here.
Keep your mind open.
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Kalbells—the collaborative synth/art-pop project of Kalmia Traver, Angelica Bess, Sarah Pedinotti, and Zoë Brecher—today shared their dreamy new single, “Diagram of Me Sleeping”, from the upcoming full-length, Max Heart, releasing March 26 via NNA Tapes.
Each track from Max Heart excavates love and creativity from a new and surprising ventricle of life—and “Diagram” fits right in as a lofty ode to sleep, brought to reality with jazzy bedroom-pop melodies, swoony sax, and playfully surreal lyricism. Traver explains how the song came to fruition: “I woke up one morning and my legs felt relaxed and pillowy like two lovers tangled together in mindless warmth and it was pleasant beyond the sensical and I wrote this song. I’ve come to crave sleep almost like love itself. Sleep is where so much of our creativity happens, in dreams & in the spaces between them. I love thinking of my body as a landscape, and sleep is the time I get to roam it freely.”
Traver adds about the recording/mixing process: “I especially loved tracking drums & bass on this recording. We were recording straight to tape at Outlier Inn in the Catskills and the sounds we were getting for Zoë & Sarah were sending shivers up our spines, we were prancing around all giddy. I mixed Max Heart (my first time mixing an album! – I taught myself the skill of mixing during the initial covid quarantine, alone for 4 months in my apartment NYC) and mixing this song was so easy because the sounds we got were so good and the song was simple. It was very satisfying and created a blueprint for mixing the rest of the record.”
The sophomore album from Kalbells, illustrates the formidable love Kalmia Traver (Rubblebucket) discovered with her touring band turned bandmates. Together, Angelica Bess (Giraffage, Body Language), Zoë Becher (Hushpuppy, Sad13), Sarah Pedinotti (Okkervil River, LipTalk) and Traver, practice both listening and accountability, rejoicing in their queerness, and promoting each other to be their most genuine selves. The result is Max Heart—ten vibrant and subtly layered tracks of mesmerizing psychedelic synth-pop. Common groove language is a rare medicine to happen across, which is why, as a group, playing together has been not only exciting, but healing. Max Heart harnesses this magnetic power for a collection of songs that are packed with inspired tension and daring surreality. Read the full bio here.
Max Heart is available to pre-order on standard black & “Salty Pickle” green vinyl, as well as on compact disc and digital formats here. The album will be available on “Red Marker” red vinyl exclusively from local indie record stores.
Los Angeles-based artist Rochelle Jordan announces her new album, Play With the Changes, out April 30th on TOKiMONSTA’s Young Art Records, and today presents new single/video, “NEXT 2 YOU.” For Jordan, a desire for sonic expansion has long been embedded into her fusion of futuristic and ancestrally soulful R&B. To hear a Rochelle Jordan song is to absorb a blend of sampledelic 90s pop, vintage UK house and garage, 31st century electronic bangers, airy late night ballads, and progressive hip-hop. On Play With the Changes, Jordan showcases not just her own personal evolution, but a path to pushing sound forward. Produced by KLSH, Machinedrum, and Jimmy Edgar, the album presents her as a modern heir in a lineage of powerhouse vocalists with style and imagination: everyone from Whitney Houston to Celine Dion, Aaliyah to Amerie, Kelis to Mariah Carey.
Following singles “GOT EM” and “ALL ALONG,” “NEXT 2 YOU” is an alluring R&B track backed by a 2-step beat and radiant, celestial synths. The accompanying video was directed by Lissyelle Laricchia. “When KLSH first played me this beat, I thought it was so jarring and unconventional that I fell in love with it,” says Jordan. “It really took me back to the days when I obsessed over Deadmau5 and Artful Dodger, but this was a very futuristic sound I hadn’t quite heard before. It’s as strange as it sounds, as it feels, and is as beautiful and unique as I love for my music to be. As far as the lyrics go, the song is about what it says. I’m trying to get next to you.”
Born in London to British-Jamaican parents, Jordan and her family relocated to the eastside of Toronto in the early ‘90s. Her father, a drummer, encouraged her love of art and instilled an appreciation for Northern soul, and Jamaican reggae and dancehall. Bleeding through the walls of her childhood bedroom, the adolescent Jordan soaked in the record collection of her older brother: funky UK house, nocturnal drum and bass, garage, and all the gospel samples contained therein.
Jordan’s first releases ROJO (2011) and Pressure (2012) revealed an effortlessness to her left-field R&B sound, blending sultriness with grit, confidence and a playful experimental streak. After relocating to LA, Jordan’s career swiftly elevated. She toured with Jessie Ware, collaborated with Childish Gambino(Donald Glover) on his 2014 Grammy-nominated album, Because the Internet, and landed a stint doing voice over work for the Adult Swim show, Black Dynamite, where she appeared in a memorable episode featuring Erykah Badu, Chance the Rapper, and Mel B. of the Spice Girls. Jordan’s first complete statement, 2014’s 1021, produced the acclaimed singles “Lowkey” and “Follow Me.” Pitchfork named the latter one of the most essential post-Drake Toronto tracks, calling 1021 “one of the best Canadian contemporary R&B albums of the last five years.”
After a contemplative period marked by spiritual and artistic growth, Jordan returned with a slew of ethereal soul – collaborations with Jimmy Edgar, Machinedrum, JacquesGreene, and J-E-T-S. It all led up to the radiant breakthrough that is her new album, Play With the Changes.
Defying categorization to create a project full of slinky, dancefloor-packing burners that channel her U.K. roots, Play With the Changes is reminiscent of Jordan’s childhood nights spent listening to her brother’s 2-step hymns from the other side of the wall. These are songs of experience: grappling with depression, homesickness, and struggles with an industry that rarely has room for true originals – especially ones who write all their own music. But they are unmistakably songs of triumph. Pre-order / Pre-save Play With the Changes
Play with the Changes Tracklist: 1. LOVE U GOOD 2. GOT EM 3. NEXT 2 YOU 4. ALL ALONG 5. BROKEN STEEL FT. Farrah Fawx 6. COUNT IT 7. ALREADY 8. NOTHING LEFT 9. LAY 10. SOMETHING 11. DANCING ELEPHANTS 12. SITUATION
Keep your mind open.
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