Last year around this time, you were not able to say what I’m about to say in the second sentence. Grammy-nominated Foreign Exchange will be returning with their third album, Authenticity (+FE Music), which is said to be a deeper exploration into what both Phonte Coleman and Nicolay Rook have wanted in their sound as FE.
The album will be released on CD and MP3, and yes, as double vinyl. I’m very glad FE are choosing to keep the vinyl light alive, so vinyl junkies, so some support when the album goes on sale October 12th.
Put them together, and you have a remix EP Melvins are releasing through Scion. Yes, the car company, or in this case Scion AV, the audio/visual department of the automobile company. The Electric Flower EP features remixes by Doorly, Lovelock, MRK 1 and J Phlip. Since it is 2010 and the industry wants you to believe everyone is pro-digital, you can find this EP at the usual digital merchants. Fortunately for diehard fans, you will be able to find it on both vinyl and CD (phew).
Wild Beasts have released a 10″ with “We Still Got The Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues” on the A-side, and two tracks found on the B-side: “Two Dancers II” and “The Devil’s Crayon”. “Two Dancers II” was remixed by Jon Hopkins. You can order the record directly from Domino Records or from Insound.com.
The band will be heading towards this year’s Lollapalooza festival, check them out when they play in your vicinity:
Fri. Aug. 6 — Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle w/ Lone Wolf
Sat. Aug. 7 — Chicago, IL @ Lollapalooza Festival – 1:15 PM at PlayStation Stage
Mon. Aug. 9 — Toronto, ON @ The Mod Club w/ Lone Wolf
Wed. Aug. 11 — New York, NY @ Highline Ballroom w/ Lone Wolf
Fri. Aug. 13 — Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theatre w/ The Mimicking Birds
Sat. Aug. 14 — San Francico, CA @ Outside Lands Festival
One of the things being passed around in recent weeks is an article about how to create your own custom records. The article was written four years ago, but with the help of Archive.org’s Wayback Machine, someone was able to revive the article and photos and post it to the Twitter generation. Even though everyone is tech-savvy these days, there has been a movement of sorts to try out things the slow, old fashioned way, a D.I.Y. thing at a time when we live in an era where most don’t D.I.Y.
Of course, making actual records involves a bit more than just pouring a mold over an old record, but the article from 2006 shows that it can be done in a very lo-fi manner. You can read the article by clicking here.
Does it work? I don’t know, I haven’t tried it but wouldn’t mind doing it. However, if you do try it, a few things to think about:
Don’t play your new record on your good turntable. Record needles are expensive for a reason, so I’m hoping that you have a cheap turntable where you’re able to experiment.
Do not expect for it to sound like a record you can buy at a store or via mail order.
Logically, can this idea actually work? Believe it or not, yes. The grooves on a record are vibrations of sound, but unlike digital, creating a mold is like the old days of making a cassette dub. In this case it would be a cassette dub of a cassette dub of a cassette dub, times two or three. In other words, it’s an analog transfer of soundwaves, not digital, so the quality will obviously diminish. But as a fun project, why not?
If you are making molds as a gift for your brother, sister, father, mother, friend, or whomever, do NOT use their records for molds. Record collectors are a stingy bunch, and they like to have their records in minty condition. You don’t want to know what they’ll turn into if they want to play one of their cherished 200g audiophile jazz pressings and they see globs of grey. Most thrift stores, garage and yard sales have records readily available for dirt cheap, use those.
One thing you are not able to do with this process is change the speed of the record. If you’re making a mold of a 78rpm record, it will play as a 78, there’s no way you can adjust a mold so it’ll play on 33. It will sound slow, just as it would if you played the original 78 at 33.
Logically, you could also do this and remove a step, and what you’d have is a record that plays backwards without ruining your turntable or having to get technical with a computer audio program.
If any of you do try it, come back here and post your comments or a link to a video if you create one.
The only way you could obtain this was if you purchased this on Record Store Day this past April, but now everyone can buy and watch it over and over again.
Even with the release of Eric Krasno‘s solo album (as reviewed here), Soulive are still active and are about to be introduced to Beatles fans who are unfamiliar with them with the release of Rubber Soulive.
The album is an all-instrumental Beatles tribute albun, featuring new versions of “Revolution”, “Come Together”, and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. It will be released on September 14 not only on vinyl, but on the trendy CD and MP3 formats.
What to make of an album where the front cover consists of a mixture of people in suits or gowns, with an almost-nude man linked to another by his umbilical cord as some of the faces are in the middle of serious concern and laughter? Is this a church sermon, or an orgy involving the hottest lava lamps… in church?
They call themselves Captain Ahab, and The End Of Irony (Deathbomb Arc) is a semi-confusing collection of songs that range from futuristic pop anthems to techno dance tracks involving someone who says he has the power to make you come with his eyes (the tender/slender “I Don’t Have A Dick”, which at times sounds as if they’re making fun of Kanye West‘s 808′s & Heartbreak). Is it really confusing, no, but they’re a group who mix up a number of musical styles to create a set of songs that are meant to represent everything and nothing. On the everything side, it could be a concept album about living in a planet where not caring is simply about not having a care in the world, and it seems to be a good place. No concerns to hurt, no worries of fear, it’s about dancing for the sake of dancing in a world where disco and glistening bodies (!!!) are wonderful.
On the nothing side, maybe Captain Ahab poke fun at the various popular musical styles that are out there, enjoyed by the hoards, turn it inside out and show how much better it can be. Sometimes these songs are hard to take seriously, but the fun in that is that they are fun songs which could be turned into anthems if people were willing to unite and celebrate in song. If you’ve ever wondered what Daft Punk, Justin Timberlake, B.o.B., Drake, and The Lonely Island would sound like after basting each other in turkey juices, this is that wet experience you feared.
Humor aside, the production is really good with arrangements that a lot of mainstream artists should listen to. Perhaps if a lot of today’s mainstream artists didn’t take themselves so seriously, people would be moved to show support a group like Captain Ahab. Maybe Prince was right in “Let’s Go Crazy” when he said things are much harder in the afterworld, but if Captain Ahab are providing the soundtrack for the post end-times, I’ll be there with my congas.
Split albums are always interesting, it’s a chance to get what is essentially two EP’s in one, and it’s great to see and hear what a band will come up with. In this case, it’s a new split LP on Chrome Peeler between Unearthly Trance and The Endless Blockade, and they definitely do not sound like the other.
Unearthly Trance are a doom trio from New York who offer one and only one song on their side of the album, the very sinister-sounding “Blind Driving Through The Ghost Mountain”. The first half is musical with low-end riffs moving into sludge, while the second half gets into a drone and just turns into a mess of noise that just builds on itself until it ends. Lyrics like “eventuality is the one hundred and eleven fold/the world never stops spinning as life grows old/harrowing visuals pumped from satellites/spacefill of failed missions and bloated parasites/entering a new age of water torture/null and void, just how you all like it” speak of the world many feel we are experiencing, in a fashion that combines a bit of Black Sabbath, Bathory, and the crisp bite of Buzzov•en or Eyehategod.
The Endless Blockade are a Toronto band who offer up nine songs on their side of the album, each one as exciting as the next. The first song, “One Handed Christ Destroyer” seems to begin almost in the same way the A-side ends, with a lot of noise and feedback, but once the screams come in from The Endless Blockade, it’s a very different world altogether. The vocals are loud and hellish, think along the lines of White Mice or with the punch of Christ On A Crutch and OLD and they just rip through shit as if they don’t give a fuck, and I love it. They go through different tempos and textures in each song, sometimes in the shortest amount of time. The one band that did this well in a punk context is Schlong, although Schlong were equally influenced by punk as much as they were admirers of metal. Or imagine if Nuclear Assault were fronted by Mike Patton and/or Eye Yamatsuka/Yamantaka Eye, and then turn the intensity up by 13. Their lyrics range from the waste of our life existence to the uncertainty of time, and then the group will flip and create a noise track where the only lyrics are their own name, before it goes right into pleading guilty for believing in and fulfilling the sins of what they were told not to do. It’s reckless, but in the end they are looking at banality and showing it to those who choose not to admit to it. They do it in such a fun way, but not in a “ha ha, we’re sarcastic so let’s put on clown shoes and look like fools” manner, but rather as troopers of the army of the anti-banal.
One can take comfort in knowing there are bands like The Endless Blockade and Unearthly Trance. True to the record’s nature, they are perhaps two sides of the same coin and it’s a great and intense listen from start to finish.
(Those who order directly from Chrome Peeler can buy the split album alone, or part of a two LP bundle which includes the new Merzbow/The Guilt Of… album.)
In Stones Throw Records‘ continued methods of giving me a heart attack, Madlib and his gang of unknowns are collaborating with knows to come up with Volume 7 of his Medicine Show series of albums, with this installment scheduled for release on July 27th. Vinyl junkies will love the 3LP version of this album, subtitled High Jazz, for the third record will feature an additional half hour of music that is exclusive to the format.
For this album, Madlib provides a few more combinations to his musical Rubik’s Cube, including The Big Black Foot Band, Jahari Masamba Unit (featuring drummer Karriem Riggins), and RMC, which unites the talents of Madlib, Riggins, and longtime Roots collaborator James Poyser. The CD version features an homage to a well known Cannonball Adderley album, and like anything Madlib comes up with, this is indeed “something else”. Madlib Medicine Show No. 7: High Jazz can be ordered on vinyl and CD by heading over to Stones Throw.
Douglas Quin is an audio archvist of sorts, in his case he enjoys capturing natural sounds. In fact, there are a number of organizations, collectives, and mailing lists featuring people who enjoy going out in the open and capturing the sounds of oceans, ponds, birds, planes, whatever. I’ve always been a fan of that, capturing sound for the sake of doing so, and what Quin has done is gather some of his sounds and release them as a vinyl record called Fathom, released in May by Taiga Records.
Outside of the sounds on the wax, the cover is an incredible production put together by the folks at Beastpieces. The cover was done with letterpress, an old style of printing that I’ve always admired and hope to use for a future project, so you’re not only taking in the sounds on the record, but also taking in the cover in a number of ways. You can see different perspectives of the cover by clicking here.
The Taiga label has a number of other interesting projects in their discography, so I’ll be keeping an eye and ear out for future projects.
thisisjohnbook: @Tahj_Mowry What kind of record/vinyl collection do you have? Was doing a search here and was surprised to see your posts pop up. Inform. 2 months ago from web
thisisjohnbook: RT @vosp20: My Uncle has given me a box full of old Northern Soul vinyl records today for keeps. My ears will be in heaven tonight! 2 months ago from web
