electronic – Page 2

PLAYING DETROIT: Odd Hours

The first half of my conversation with Natasha Beste of moody electro-pop duo Odd Hours is instantly dedicated to playing six degrees of separation between the two of us until we are able to piece our social puzzle together, realizing that we run in the same circles and are friends with the same people and both conclude that Detroit is a lot like high school.

“In Detroit, it’s really easy to make things happen if you are really motivated and dedicated. If you are snotty or mean or not serious about what you’re doing, it will get around fast,” Beste says. “I’m lucky to have met and become friends with people that make doing this fun, it never feels like work.”

This non-work-work Beste is referring to is Odd Hours latest EP noreprinphrine + dopamine, an assertive and pouty collection of songs that are as glittery as they are confrontational. Beste’s attention to duality, both in her personal life and in her Odd Hours world (she is also a teacher and video artist) resonates as a playful game of tug-of-war sonically. Beste describes the toggling of themes as a “constant up and down.” From asking for what you want and ending up bored by the instant gratification to feeling left out or misunderstood yet worthy enough to exert power, Odd Hours challenges themselves by provoking a polarizing experience. As it turns out, this very balancing act of various selves and influences resulted in what Beste considers to be the truest version of what they’ve been trying to accomplish since they formed. “I think with artists there are things that come out of you naturally. And for me things were coming out of me that weren’t matching what I was listening to, or what we were making,” Beste explains. “We’ve been morphing and changing our sound and we finally feel comfortable in our skin. We want to keep going with how we sound now.”

Odd Hours have been making noise around the city for five years. Beste and her collaborator and Hours guitarist, Timothy Jagielo, assembled after exhausting previous projects, wanting to expand beyond their old work and Detroit city limits. “I was in a lot of different bands before I met Tim but after a while I really wanted to do something that would allow me to be loud and raunchy,” Beste says “We were both in a place where we wanted to start something new.” With additions bassist, Clint Stuart, and drummer Randy Hanley Jr, each track on noreprinphrine + dopamine is a banger in its own right, successfully and collectively fulfilling Beste’s aforementioned desires of sounding loud and raunchy while remaining a compelling and polished production. When asked about the possibility of a full length release, Beste is uncertain, but unwavering in her convictions towards quality vs. quantity. “It’s the way that my brain works. My whole life of music I’ve really stuck with EPs. I’m not saying we would never release an LP. Everything that needed to be said was said within these songs.” she explains. “It could be the next thing we do, but it has to feel right.”

The accompanying video for their first single “SWTS” is a true testament to Odd Hours theatrics; a great introduction to their provocative landscape, their lust filled, odd world. Full of if-David Lynch-cast-Lindsey Lohan-in-a-music-video vibes (Beste laughs excitedly at this comparison) aligns with the estranged bossiness of the song where Beste howls: “I thought someone told me / Like Christmas / I would get to make a wish list,” a vulnerable plea paralleled with warbled rock vocals, a sensibility carried throughout the EP.

By the end of our chat we realize we share a friend in noreprinphrine + dopamine producer Jon Zott and that we were both on set for Tunde Olaniran’s video earlier this year and it is with this strange connectivity that we are able to commiserate over the special brand of small world-ness Detroit offers. I finish by apologizing for referring to her music as bratty, though meant as a compliment as it’s a trait I regard as honest and unapologetic, to which she assures me is a perfectly apt description. “It’s funny because my boyfriend Kevin (and partner in Gold House Media) as well as my guitarist Tim and Tunde all call me a brat because I get what I want. But I have a vision,” Beste explains. “I am always three steps ahead.”

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TRACK OF THE WEEK: Vacationer “Go Anywhere (TAPES Remix)”

Where are you going for summer vacation? Well, Vacationer wants to take you on a trip via a new remix of “Go Anywhere,” a track from last year’s release Relief. TAPES, an experimental electronic artist, transformed the track into a sultry song for the summer by slowing down the original’s bongo beat and adding tribal elements to the rhythm (and, of course, more reverb). The original “Go Anywhere” is a poppy, hopeful anthem, while the new version has the perfect touch of danceable playfulness: the sound of waves crashing on the shore, a pulsing beat, and squealing, squawking synths.

Check out both the original and TAPES remix of “Go Anywhere” below! (And, you can soften the blow of the end of summer by catching Vacationer on their Fall tour with Great Good Fine OK).

TRACK REVIEW: Xan Young “Passion”

“We had affection, but you couldn’t handle passion,” Xan Young sings on “Passion.” While I feel for anyone stuck in the friend zone, I’m kind of glad his heartbreak inspired this track.

Xan Young is new to the electronic music scene, and “Passion” is the first song ever released from the Brooklyn musician. It’s an impressive debut, with a sound that fills the whole room: a heavy bass, fluttering synths, and Xan’s whispery, soulful vocals. The siren-like squeal of synths and street drumming percussion during the bridge lightens the mood as he laments that, at least, “There’s pleasure in the pain” of his unreturned affection.

Check out “Passion” below, and stay tuned for Xan Young’s debut album The Flood in August.

LIVE REVIEW: The Juan MacLean @ Union Pool

I’ll be honest: when I hear the genres “house,” “techno,” or “dance” being used to describe a band, I picture a couple of dudes posturing behind laptops. But when The Juan MacLean took the stage at Union Pool on Thursday, I knew this show would be different. John MacLean, the core of the project, immediately put to use a theremin attached to his keyboard stand. Nancy Whang, of LCD Soundsystem, gripped the mic and sang brooding vocals, over endless synths and a beat by a drummer, who, though seriously overworked, never seemed to tire.

Apparently, MacLean decided after the first song that we weren’t dancing enough. “It’s very Thursday night in here,” he taunted the crowd, who countered with whistles and shouts. “It’s a very thirsty night in here,” Whang shot back, chugging a water bottle. The group had recently played three nights at the Cameo gallery, and on their first of three shows at Union Pool, they weren’t satisfied with just easing into their set, or letting the audience do so either.

Whang played percussion with a serious, stony look on her face. It never wavered, even when hitting a springy, rattling instrument earned her cheers. “That was a vibraslap,” she deadpanned, to more cheers. When she and Maclean began to trade vocal lines on “One Day,” it felt like at any minute the band was going to break into “Don’t You Want Me Baby”– they had all of the epic synths and a tense, emotional performance that had the whole room dancing as hard as they could, but none of the song’s cheesiness. And, no laptops.

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TRACK REVIEW: MALKY “Diamonds”

Enjoy a new track “Diamonds” from German-based duo MALKY. The song saunters into your ears slowly, sexily, before we realize it’s a song of sadness: “Don’t you know how much it hurts me?” asks singer and pianist Daniel Stoyanov, who together with producer Michael Vajna makes MALKY. Their name means “little boy” in Bulgaria, where Daniel emigrated from to Germany as a child. Apparently the two are inseparable “brothers in spirit” and share a nostalgic yearning that’s woven in the thread of their music. The 60’s-era blues on the track is bejeweled with modern beats to create a well-rounded songthat allows the boys to strut their stuff. Add them to your playlist that flows from Otis Redding into Twin Shadow.

Listen to “Diamonds” below. Their debut EP, also titled “Diamonds” comes out in the US April 7.

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TRACK OF THE WEEK: RAINDEAR “Veins” (WTNSS REMIX)

Raindear is the Swedish indie-electro artist 25-year-old Rebecca Bergcrantz. With dark purple lipstick, a septum piercing, and hair so fine someone would steal it to make extensions, the artist transcends her personal style through music and visual aesthetics to create a fairy tale with a perfect built-in soundtrack. We’ve seen a lot of this particular genre of music emerge from her homeland, so to say that she’s caught our attention isn’t so much jumping on the bandwagon, but rather finding someone who sticks out of the herd. “Veins” (WTNSS Remix) is a moodier take on the original, a well-tied version of lumbering bass sewn with joyful synths, all decked-out with her enchanting voice.

Check out “Veins” (WTNSS Remix) below.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Aradia “Citizen of Earth”

Aradia embodies a style similar to 90’s electronic freestyle without being dreadfully cheesy. Perhaps it’s because she is a multi-instrumentalist, a unique song-writer, and a woman of many sounds. She may be originally from New York City, but she is now based out of Seattle, where she released Citizen of Earth. Her new album is completely harmonious, electronic-driven, with dashes of striking guitar to create a capsule of mystical art.

While the 11-track album may sound playful, inspired with electro-beats and percussion, her lyrics deliver meaningful positivity. “To trust your instincts they’re always right. And now you know that you walk in the light. Don’t hold your breath ‘cuz another day is coming. It’s different now, you don’t have to keep running.” “The Light” was charged by Aradia—showing her fans that her new-wave electronic music isn’t only about dancing, but dancing in luminosity. She seems very in-tune with her natural surroundings, frequently citing examples from fire, starlight, and the how she is one with the sky and sea. “Isolation is a tragedy. The idea that we’re separate is just illusory,” she also remains poetic in “Trouble.” And being that she is in search of another “M-Class” planet, is she also revealing her dark side—a loss of hope?

Her complexity in the album can also be reflected by her unreal style, where she is known for out of this world (literally) fashion designs and style. When she’s not busy writing new songs or putting together a space-travel-star-princess costume, you can catch her performing in an upcoming West coast tour. In the meantime, check out one of my favorite tracks off Citizen of Earth below, “Trouble.”

ARTIST INTERVIEW: Mexico City Blondes

Mexico City Blondes are a musical duo from Santa Barbara, CA, that know how to place the packaged whipped cream with the homemade cherry pie, so to say, lovingly delicious. Or, put more succinctly, “Sort of marriage between the electronic and organic sounds,” says Greg, one-half of the Blondes.

The group recently released the single “Shot the Moon,” a delicately sewn sultry couture dress of a song with layered synths laced with Allie Thompson’s seductive vocals.

“It’s definitely a snapshot of our dark side,” says singer/songwriter Allie of the single. “A musical confrontation of some of my deepest fears, a way to address nameless faceless foes who don’t have the power to hurt us unless we let them. Even going to the dark side is more satisfying to me when there is redemption and light in the darkness, hence the imagery of a white moon in a dark sky.”

We spoke with Allie and Greg from Mexico City Blondes about fashion influences (Gwen Stefani of course, power to the blondes), the power of Black Sabbath, and getting in touch with their dark side.

AudioFemme: How’d you come up with the name Mexico City Blondes?

Greg Doscher: I came up with it on a flight to, of all places, Mexico City. Really loved it for the project, and Allie liked it immediately when I suggested it. It has a meaning to me, but I don’t like to spell it out for people. It can be whatever comes to anyone’s mind when they hear it, and it’s more fun that way.

AF: How did the band form?

GD: Allie responded to an ad I put on Craigslist a year or so after the last band I was in dissolved. I advertised myself as a local producer looking for singers/songwriters to collaborate with. I can handle the production and recording, but can’t sing to save my life. Allie and I hit it off immediately and seemed to be on the same page as far as influences and the type of music we wanted to make. She’s also a great songwriter and we’ve had a lot of fun collaborating.

AF: Who have been your primary musical influences?

Allie Thompson: Growing up, I was exposed to a lot of folk music with introspective lyrics. Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Paul Simon…The art of crafting a song was always revered in my childhood home, and the production was an afterthought. It wasn’t until I started writing songs that I began to experiment with production style in order to bring the songs to life in the way I wanted to hear them. Around that time I was listening to a lot of Portishead and Beachhouse, and around that time I met Greg who was able to translate my rudimentary descriptors into the songs I wanted to hear!

GD: Aside from those above, as a teenager I picked up a guitar because of Black Sabbath and that’s still with me. Was really into the big 70s groups like Sabbath and Floyd, David Bowie and Zeppelin of course. As I grew up my tastes evolved a bit and realized that electronic music could be as sonically nuanced as some of the rock I grew up on.

AF: Do you have any fashion influences?

AT: I grew up with posters of No Doubt all over my walls, and I guess I never really got over Gwen! 15 years later I still look to her for fashion influence both on and off stage. I’ve always been a sucker for red lipstick, and it sure is convenient that she’s a blonde!

GD: Haha, my wife.

AF: Much is made of labeling sounds, what words do you like best to describe your music?

GD: Hard to say, but from a production standpoint I’ve always been really heavily influenced by groups like Massive Attack and someone like DJ Shadow who’s made incredible music with a sampler. That being said, I’m a guitarist with a pretty extensive rock background, so there’s always going to be some elements of that in there. Sort of marriage between the electronic and organic sounds I like and that we try and use. “Shot the Moon” is a good example of that mix. The electronic elements are the Moog synth that pulses throughout and a drum machine, but we also recorded live drums and live piano on top of those.

AF: Will you tell me about the meaning behind your new single “Shot the Moon?”

AT: It’s definitely a snapshot of our dark side. A musical confrontation of some of my deepest fears, a way to address nameless faceless foes who don’t have the power to hurt us unless we let them. Even going to the dark side is more satisfying to me when there is redemption and light in the darkness, hence the imagery of a white moon in a dark sky.

AF: How much of your personal life gets worked into your songs?

AT: The songs are always personal. Sometimes I write in a moment of acute emotion, but often a song will take me a few months to complete. It takes me that long to process emotions and gain perspective. The songs have the most power for me in understanding a situation as a whole, and that often takes time to unfold.

GD: Just about all of it. Hard to separate the two because of course whatever you’re feeling emotionally or going through personally is going to bleed into the music in terms of the sounds you pick, the chords you play and more obviously the lyrics that get written

AF: What’s next for Mexico City Blondes?

GD: We have a single that’s sort of the B-side, companion to “Shot the Moon” called “Yellow Sunshine” that we’ll release soon and a video for “Shot the Moon” on the way. Aside from that, lots more music in the pipeline and we’ll try and get out and perform these songs wherever we can.

Listen to “Shot the Moon” below.

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TRACK REVIEW: GABI “Fleece”

If you’ve ever wondered what the perfect song for cloud-watching would be, this is it: “Fleece” by GABI is one of the track’s on the singer’s upcoming album, Sympathy. Gabrielle Herbst’s voice floats gentle by, sometimes as a whisper, other times soaring. A distant roll of percussion, droning strings, and the rustling of keys join her in a crescendo, before a chorus of horns swirl around the settling sounds. It’s quietly breathtaking, but only she knows: does “Fleece” represent a beautiful moment, or just the calm before the storm?

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VIDEO PREMIERE: Celeste “More Lives”

Monday morning doesn’t have to be glass half empty. With the video premiere of Brooklyn based Celeste‘s “More Lives” your glass can be half full, like the dirty martini you left on the record table as you drifted to sleep after an indulgent Sunday.

Directed by Elizabeth Skadden, the black and white video features Celeste in an evening gown and elbow-length gloves posed on a chaise lounge with the majesty of an Egyptian cat, purring “I’ve got more lives…” Celeste creates electronic R&B with southern-soaked vocals (her roots are in Birmingham, AL). A dancer turned musician, she makes sure she creates “music she can dance to.”

The current EP More Please combines the singer’s soul with elements of her producer Louis Sherman’s electro-psych influence. In the video her dance moves are utilized to seductively tell in motion the message she sings. Celeste captivates the camera with natural talent writhing from both her body and voice. Southern roots mingle in your eardrums with a hip hop snap as she drawls layered vocals while your eye lips peel back to admire the calm, collected cool of her satin-r0bed figure classically strut to the music.

We’ll keep this a post full of pleasures and include below a stream to the full EP More Please.

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TRACK REVIEW: Bonobo “Flashlight”

Bonobo Simon Green — photo by Dan Medhurst

Expansive rhythms and spiral synths mark Bonobo’s latest single “Flashlight,” part of a three-track EP due for release on Dec. 2 via Ninja Tune. New music from this British producer and musician, also known as Simon Green, comes after nearly two years of touring for his fifth studio album, The North Borders, released in 2013. Before another full album release, Bonobo heads back to North America to tour in several cities including Denver, San Francisco and Vancouver.

Bonobo relies on his dedicated instrumentation, not necessarily lyrics or guest features, to draw in his listeners. And with five studio albums and an enormous wealth of EPs, extra releases and hundreds of venues later, his fans continue to grow.

Bonobo’s brand of electronic music is introspective and entrancing with his use of intricate basslines and a variety of percussion. “Flashlight” stays with that formula; heavy bass anchors listeners and airy synths gradually illuminate a spacious soundscape on which to reflect in and vibe out. Hollow percussion adds a driving factor the track, always surging forward, never left to dwell too long on a single movement. Although it’s not a particularly innovative or exciting track, it highlights what Bonobo does best: ambient electronic music that shows skillful composition and attention to detail. Void of any lyrics with only the occasional whisper of vocal articulation, “Flashlight” invites listeners to shine a light onto themselves, to see what moves them the way the percussion moves the song.

A perfect companion for late night drives and early morning meditation, “Flashlight” showcases the best of Bonobo’s talents and offers listeners a chance to turn down and chill out.

Bonobo North America Tour Dates:
10/20: Vancouver, BC @ Celebrities Nightclub
10/21: Seattle, WA @ Neumos
10/22: Portland, OR @ Branx
10/23: San Francisco, CA @ 1015 Folsom
10/24: San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom
10/25: Los Angeles CA @ KCRW Masquerade Ball (Park Plaza)
10/26: San Diego CA @ House Of Blues

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LIVE REVIEW: Made In Heights @ Le Poisson Rouge

If you crept down the stairs and into the venue at Le Poisson Rouge last Saturday evening, you would’ve heard the disembodied voice of a woman gliding off the walls. It was silvery and sensual and the sprightliness of her breathy singing chilled the space. It was a little after 7:30 and I recognized the voice: Kelsey Bulkin of Made In Heights. And until recently, no one really knew the face behind the voice. It wasn’t until the duo started touring last year that fans who’d been listening to Made In Heights could put a face to both the singer and the DJ.

Made In Heights consists of Alexei Saba Moharjersjasbi (Sabzi) and Kelsey Bulkin; he hails from Seattle, and she, from San Diego. What’s convenient about a group that’s not well known is that the only information you have of them is from what they choose to tell the audience at live shows. It’s sort of ironic because this is a musical pair that garnered their audience through the internet, first through bandcamp, then through Soundcloud. I’d seen Made In Heights twice before, and in both those cases, the crowd was a skimpy handful of die-hard fans, people who might’ve been following Sabzi (he’s also ½ of Blue Scholars) or Kelsey’s creative trajectories since they debuted their first little EP on Bandcamp in 2011. When I got to the venue, I was surprised at how large the crowd was. It was a combination of young college students and people in their late 20s, early 30s, most of whom I assume were there for Tokimonsta (the main act). While the college students floundered wildly around with Sabzi and Kelsey to songs with “heavy drops” like “Wildflowers (Exhale Effect)” and “Murakami,” most if not all of the people surrounding me, seemed unfamiliar with Made In Heights. But strangely, it didn’t diminish the liveliness and energy of Sabzi and Kelsey’s affect towards the crowd.

It’s a funny era we live in these days. While putting music online can reach an indefinite number of computers, there’s still little information on the internet about the musicians that are sharing. So the details that artists choose to share when they have the opportunity to meet their listeners (and new listeners) in real life are crucial. What did Made In Heights choose to share? Sabzi and Kelsey met in New York and are now based in Los Angeles. He does the beats, she does the singing. They don’t know what genre they are so if you can think of a good description, please, do tweet at them @madeinheights. Some of the better suggestions fans have given them include: mythical filth (presumably a play off of the Seattle slang word “filthy”), artisanal (c/t)rap, and beauty slap. I’ve heard Sabzi recycle this script before, and it surprises me how charmed I still am by it.

One thing you should know is that Made In Heights loves synchronized dancing. People who watch Made In Heights will also love synchronized dancing after they see Sabzi and Kelsey busting out unimpressive moves in unison. When you’re watching a DJ and a vocalist—especially when it’s not about EDM, drugs, and light shows—it’s so easy for the set to fall flat, and this is their way around it. Made In Heights also has a particular kind of sound. Their music is lyrically poetic and sonically intoxicating with its juxtaposition of instrumental melodies and synth beats. This combination is what makes their performances interesting. Strip away Sabzi’s efforts, and the show might as well be another intimate acoustic session with Kelsey. Take away Kesley’s singing and the show would just be another experimental electronic set with people writhing into weird shapes. Put the two together and we have this chilling vocal performance alongside some really endearing choreography. By the end of their set, I even felt subtle nudges from my previously stock-still neighbors. Despite not knowing a single verse or who these people on the stage were, they, too, were feeling the endorphins flooding into the crowd.

With the internet and social media, we’ve become a culture that thrives from humanizing our famed musicians and celebrities; the problem with this is that it ends up blurring our opinion of the artist’s talent. After a short 30 minute set, the two snuck off of the stage, and disappeared into the green room. As much as I’d like to know more about Made In Heights—who they are as artists, what they consider their genre to be—it’s also refreshing to know that Made In Heights might not care about those categorizations.

The two will be returning for the CMJ Music Marathon, which takes place October 21-25, 2014. Check out their latest single, “Ghosts” below.

https://soundcloud.com/madeinheights/ghosts

ALBUM REVIEW: ODESZA “In Return”

Since its inception in late 2012, the Seattle-based electronic duo ODESZA (Harrison Mills/Catacomb Kid and Clayton Knight/BeachesBeaches) has been both prolific and consistent. In particular, the pair made an unlikely fan out of this usually-EDM-ambivalent listener last November with the soulful and sparkly NO.SLEEP Mix.01, which oozed with personality and R&B inflected melodies. In the two years they’ve been together, Mills and Knight have also put out two full length albums, an EP, and a handful of remixes. They already have a cross-country tour under their belt, and played Sasquatch! Festival last Memorial Day weekend in the luminous company of acts such as Bon Iver and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. ODESZA’s strength has always been their ability to infuse their songs with soul; amidst the bevy of synths and over-saturated shimmering, the music never pales to clinical.

In Return, the duo’s release, demonstrates a broad range of emotion, from the elated and catchy opener “Always This Late”–which reminds me of pretty much all of NO.SLEEP Mix.01–to tracks like “White Lies,” which draws on syncopated beats and the sharp harmonies of guest vocalist Jenni Potts, to the impressionistic and heat-sleepy “Sun Models.”

I appreciate the variation, though my favorites from this collection still exemplify the sweet soulfulness that endeared me to ODESZA in the first place. The record is front-loaded, with its catchiest, and ultimately most memorable songs listed as tracks one, two, and three– “Always This Late,” “Say My Name,” and Bloom.” However, on the group’s previous releases, there was a case to be made that their albums got boring in the middle. Some of In Return‘s back-half tracks, like “Koto,” show off new textures that liven up the repertoire and keep the music interesting, if sort of identity-less.

Having mastered lovable vocal riffs and bubbly musical landscapes, ODESZA turns, on In Return, to experimental new depths. The result drops September 9th on Counter Records, and you can go here to order the gorgeous vinyl pressing, or stream via SoundCloud below:

ALBUM REVIEW: Duologue “Never Get Lost”

The many worlds traversed in Duologue’s newest album, Never Get Lost, must be revisited time and time again in order for each crevice of its ethereal soundscape to fully reveal itself to the listener. The emotional experience of this London five-some’s latest work, however, is best summed up by the cover art – a soul continually falling through mist towards a dark forest bathed in unexplainable light. Like a dream remembered in vivid detail, Never Get Lost runs through the mind with a fervid passion for the story it has to tell.

The story is, according to its own creators, that of people isolated in a digital age, and the metamorphosis that their existence and relationships must undergo to adapt to this harsh new reality. Despite this inner dialogue on melancholy and seclusion, the album is no foray into despair. From the onset, Duologue insert their intention to make a statement about this oddly plastic reality we live in. They start with “Memex” (or memory index), a hypothetical technology proposed in the forties to store information and supplement the mind. From those first resounding notes of Never Get Lost, the listener is drawn deep into the swirling undertow of a pensive pulse, the gateway to Duologue’s mysterious land stalked by the beasts of both darkness and light.

Among the most achingly plaintive tracks is lead single “Forests,” a venture into the most mystical corners of the imagination, sparkling with plucked strings and enduringly wistful vocals from frontman Tim Digby-Bell. Each layer of the composition pierces the next with strangeness and mystery; meanwhile, its lyrics mirror the urgency of the beat that anchors the track: “Say the things you need to say / Let me down the easy way.”

“Drag And Drop” is sure to leave an imprint, albeit in an altogether different way, yet complimentary to the album’s scope and the band’s remarkable versatility nonetheless. Imbued with sexy electric rhythms and an intensely addictive refrain that coos and cracks, lamenting in sardonic simplicity “You’re stuck inside my heart,” the track makes good use of Digby-Bell’s richly elastic falsetto. It’s representative of the ways in which the group has grown – for this, their second studio album, they’ve carved away at their eclectic sound to craft a masterful style that melds booming electronic beats with eerily captivating melodies that drift from plaintive vocals.

Never Get Lost is an ironic title for this 45-minute journey steeped in myth and introspection. Above all else, you become exactly that – lost – deep in the folds of cascading melodies and electronic beats. But when you eventually come up for air, breaking the surface to bob a moment before the blue-grey sky, you long to submerge again into that deeply haunting space, finding yourself looking through wider eyes with a pulse calmed by the rocking motion of the waters below. When the pause finally ends and you are ready to move forward, you step off of that visceral cloud and firmly onto the ground, your insides expanded and your consciousness greater than before.

ALBUM REVIEW: Helado Negro “Double Youth”

After a slew of collaborations (Bear In Heaven, Devendra Banhart, Julianna Barwick, and others), Roberto Carlos Lange retreated inward to make Double Youth, his fourth full-length release as Helado Negro. Recorded largely in Lange’s home studio in Brooklyn, the album is constructed with simple tools: easy, percussive beats and lullaby-like vocals that swing between Spanish and English. The whole thing falls somewhere between abstract and danceable.

Double Youth‘s guiding theme–and its cover art–comes from an old poster from Lange’s childhood, which he had forgotten about until he pulled it out of the back of his closet one day, in the early stages of recording the album. The image of the two boys posing together, looking both twin-like and not, resonated with Lange. Twosomes crop up everywhere in the making and music of this album: the poster reminded Lange of the warmth of a familiar memory, but also of how far away from that memory he had come; his vocals overlap Spanish with English; the beats recall block party bass lines booming from car speakers, but they easily turn tranquil, with a delicate motif of watery arpeggios that cycles forlornly through this collection. Its components laid bare, Double Youth feels like a conversation, and a kind of imperfect twinship, between voice and computer.

The album’s front half floats by like a pink cloud: the bouncy single “I Krill You” and subsequent track “It’s Our Game” are the two catchiest songs on the collection, and Lange’s lullaby voice is like melted chocolate drizzled over the beat. But over the course of Double Youth, the music develops a huge amount of texture. By the time we get to “That Shit Makes Me Sad,” the cyclical and moody closer, melodies have grown into landscapes, and the early tracks’ sweetness subsides into a strangeness that’s still vaguely benevolent.

On September 2nd, Double Youth will waft gently down to earth, courtesy of Asthmatic Kitty Records. If you simply cannot wait that long to be soothed by smooth vocals and delighted by playful beats, you can stream the whole enchilada over at Pitchfork, in anticipation of the album’s release. Check out “I Krill You” to get a taste:
<a href="http://heladonegro.bandcamp.com/album/double-youth">Double Youth by Helado Negro</a>

FILM/LIVE REVIEW: Nightmares On Wax @ Santos Party House +N.O.W. Is The Time

In line with the cult of anniversary, Ibiza via Leeds mastermind Nightmares On Wax is celebrating his 25 years in music by popping all kinds of career champagne. On top of releasing Feelin Good on Warp Records (with whom he’s been signed for 20 years), he’s been all over North America for the last month on his biggest tour ever. It doesn’t stop there. Warp has also dropped N.O.W. is the Time, a best-of retrospective full of new jams, old hits, and plenty of remixes on two 12” records. As a supplement to the retrospective, an eight-minute mini-documentary of the same moniker came out mid June recounting N.O.W’s history. The man’s been damn busy.

Born George Evelyn, Nightmares On Wax (aka DJ EASE) has been integral to the British house and hip-hop scene since the late 80s. But before he was Nightmares, Evelyn was a Northern B Boy with a hunger for the latest sound. He met his eventual partner in crime Kevin Harper, aka Boy Wonder, in 1985 at a house party in their native Yorkshire:

“I walked into this guys house and he’s scratching on his mom’s Hi-fi with this big volume knob, right in front of my eyes and I was just like: “you’ve got to teach me that man.” So Kevin taught me to scratch and the rest of that day I met the rest of the guys and I became part of this crew called Solar City Rockers.”

When they weren’t winning dance competitions, Evelyn and Harper were making beats, hunting for rare records, tuning in to John Peel, and dropping their mixes at clubs around Leeds. Obsessed with having “the freshest shit” the duo was preoccupied with the obscurity of their sources, and used to soak their vinyl in the bathtub so that the labels would peel off…thus protecting their trade secrets.

The story of Nightmares On Wax is a truly endearing one. Interested only in making music for the sake of having fun, Evelyn’s screen presence in the documentary matches his mission. Laid back and jovial the entire film, he shows the viewer his recording space, which is seemingly built on a foundation of mixers, synthesizers and a behemoth record collection, which he admits, has no order whatsoever. In a moment of nostalgic reflection he presents his first-ever sampling keyboard- a Casio SA1-which allowed for only 1.6 seconds of sampling time. He’s since moved on to bigger and better equipment, but the SA1 is a sort of career milestone.

Being privy to this history of the man behind the wax made Wednesday’s N.O.W. gig at Santo’s Party House all the more enjoyable…though prior to the headlining performance, I wasn’t so sure how the evening would play out. Santo’s is never a place of extreme comfort for someone who only dances in front of her kitchen stove, and has no passion for men in flip-flops. Throw my guest into the mix-one of my more reticent, mumble-prone chums-and you have a recipe for extremes: this could go really well, or really badly.

The opener was DJ Que Bajo, who, I’m sure would suit a house party very well. Unfortunately, when you’re a DJ the appraisal of your live performance is not as codified in formalism as a rock band; that is to say: your sound alone will not save you. The quality of these sets relies entirely on the reaction of the crowd, and this crowd wasn’t feeling it. Dance music-at least live dance music-is dependent on contagiousness, and quite frankly, whether or not people are dancing. People, were not dancing.

This pre-headliner span of time always becomes the observational period of a show for me. So I leaned against the bar, sipped bourbon, and surveyed the audience. There was a grand total of five people dancing, a few couples sucking face, six people not smoking hash, and one balding gentlemen in Bermuda shorts giving me a nod of approval, perhaps for my non-Bermuda length cut-offs.

After Que Bajo’s set we made our pilgrimage towards stage right, hoping that N.O.W. would live up to his colossal reputation. It was a silly concern, because the moment Evelyn walked on stage the crowd rejuvenated. Holding down the beats was drummer Grant Kershaw. Vocalists Mozez and Ricky Ranking supplied textural R&B harmonies, and Evelyn volleyed between manning the dials, rapping, and singing. Whatever his given task at any moment, N.O.W. never failed to pump up the crowd.

“Feel Good” is not typically a phrase I assign to things I like, but when it comes to this show, it’s difficult to find a more fitting expression. Projected on the back of the stage were sunny, kaleidoscopic montages of flowers blooming and bursting orbs of color. N.O.W. was conjuring a range of sounds reaching from reggae and soul, to old school hip-hop, house, and funk. Newer songs were tossed in with early hits, and there was a steady balance of instrumentals and tracks with vocal accompaniment.

N.O.W. interspersed anecdotes between songs, taking time to plug his friend’s charity organization (Last Night a DJ Saved My Life) which filters proceeds into digging wells for drinking water in impoverished South India. I’m not surprised one bit that Evelyn has a passion for philanthropy, given that his livelihood is based upon lifting spirits. Expounding on why he makes music, he’s said:

“The real heartwarming sort of thing about doing this project, and celebrating this project, is that everybody I asked to do a remix was honored to do it. This is what this has been about is really, really getting back to why you even make music, what is this relationship to music. Because it is fun and I love it. Full Stop.”

You can’t blame a man for that.

Check out Now is the Time: The Documentary below:

ALBUM REVIEW: WIFE “What’s Between”

Shortly after Irish black metal outfit Altar of Plagues announced their breakup last summer, the group’s frontman James Kelly unveiled the first glimmers of a forthcoming album to come from his electronic side project WIFE. I–along with pretty much all the metal fans I know–wasn’t ready to be consoled. Altar of Plagues’ disbanding came on the heels of their third and best studio release Teethed Glory and Injury, an album that I loved for its ability to deconstruct and rework the music’s sludgy layers, its clipped, nightmarish, often waltz-time beats, and the near-visual landscape created by the album’s texture and subtle details. WIFE, on the other hand, was a kind of spacey electro-pop endeavor–no more metal. Was Kelly just being a contrarian? Was he trying to show off his eclectic musical range? Was he simply quitting while he was ahead?

Maybe, but a listen to WIFE’s new album What’s Between, which came out June 9th on Tri Angle, goes a long way toward elucidating the jump between Kelly’s work with Plagues and where he is now. From the first track, “Like Chrome,” What’s Between demonstrates a lot of restraint. It’s an establishing shot that takes its time in developing, expunging any other thoughts and sounds that may be rolling around a listener’s head, effectively clearing a space for the music to come.

That music is strange–slightly dystopian, slightly doom-y–and though I would not call the collection optimistic, Kelly finds a way to develop a sense of wonder, awe, and curiosity as a result of the spaciousness he creates. Even the scary songs, like “Tongue,” get their spookiness from suspense. If an Altar of Plagues album were a horror film, What’s Between would be a psychological thriller. “Tongue” uses every sound at its disposal, shaking and rattling twitchily, like a monster waking up from hibernation and flexing all ten of its talons. That said, the music’s aggression remains implicit, and at no point dominates the album.

The nine songs on this album run about average length, varying from two and a half up to just over seven minutes, but often feel as if they’re on the long side. Many of the tracks, especially “Tongue” and “Heart Is A Far Light,” contain several moods. A poppy and playful couple of minutes give way to larger dreamscapes or house-like heartbeat rhythms. It’s not as if Kelly was ever a conventional black metal musician, but those looking for something to put up the horns to will find it, sort of at least, in “Salvage,” whose distinct and aggressive beat hearkens back to the pounding three-four rhythms of Teethed Glory songs like “God Alone.”

Now that I’ve listened to the album, this observation sounds like it should have been obvious from the beginning, but Kelly’s fixations and devices aren’t all that different as an electronic musician than they were when he was making metal. The album–like the first two Plagues albums, White Tomb and Mammal–runs a little introverted, more interested in developing its themes than in engaging the listener. To be fair, it took three albums to make Teethed Glory. It seems like Kelly could have chosen any aesthetic–metal, electronic, pop, or any other–and go about making music in a similar way: he builds a minimal foundation and expands to fill the space between the walls he’s erected. In the case of Altar of Plagues, Kelly followed the black metal thread until he was satisfied he’d reached the end of the line, and then he moved on. If What’s Between isn’t a perfectly realized electronic pop album, that probably means that WIFE’s not done yet.

Listen to the eerie “Tongue,” off What’s Between, below via SoundCloud. What’s Between is out now on LP, CD and digital release via Tri Angle. Get it here!

ALBUM REVIEW: Alex Banks “Illuminated”

By the end of 2011, Brighton-based Alex Banks had already distinguished himself as a DJ and producer with distinctively complex and spacey live sets as well as a smattering of gorgeous remixes (Bonobo, Husky Rescue). His debut full-length, out June 2nd, has been two years in the making, and it shows: Illuminated is a meticulously crafted record, with beats that escalate and mellow, moods that warm and cool, and subtle textural intricacies that demand an immersive listen.

At twenty seconds shy of an hour, it’s a pretty hefty collection, with a full spectrum of instrumentals. Some of the loveliest moments on Illuminated come when Banks juxtaposes a pulsing beat against a string section, or highlights an instrumental melody with featured vocalist Elizabeth Bernholz’s pristine soprano. These revelations usually come from the combination of opposite effects. Conversely, when the album is at its most interior–in the middle section of Illuminated, somewhere around “Initiate,” “Lights,” and “Phosphorus”– its playfulness dials way down, and the music is too clean and rigid, too controlled. The album’s early tracks have great surprise twists, like the spot in “All You Could Do” wherin Banks layers his Bach-ish acoustic guitar arpeggios over Bernholz’s whispery vocal line as the rhythm builds to a sparkly crescendo. It’s awesome. Which makes it all the more disappointing when other parts of the album don’t live up to it.

In what’s perhaps a skill learned from his DJ career, Banks knows the importance of letting music absorb you. His process of recording the album consumed him, just as playing it will consume a listener. When Illuminated feels restrictive, it’s because its inwardness becomes too single-minded to know when to stop grooming the music and allow for coincidence and experimentation.

Illuminated will drop on June 2nd, and will be preceded by the All You Could Do EP, which will be available digitally and on 12″ vinyl next month. Check out “All You Could Do,” my favorite track off Illuminated, below!

LIVE REVIEW: Slasher Flicks at Bowery Ballroom

Embracing their name’s camp vibe, Slasher Flicks had the Bowery Ballroom decked out last Monday night in floaty columns of oversized white plastic skulls that hung ghoulishly in the pre-show spotlights. Skulls notwithstanding, there’s nothing all that spooky about this trio, unless you happen to be afraid of painfully hip indie musicians. The evening had been billed as “Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks,” but that maneuver was mostly strategic. To be sure, Animal Collective’s experimental guitarist Avey Tare, alias Dave Portner, was the biggest name in the lineup, and Slasher Flicks’ recent full-length Enter The Slasher House does bear plenty of family resemblance to Animal Collective’s dissonance and oddball angularity, but when they played live, it was ex-Dirty Projector Angel Deradoorian who had the biggest presence onstage.

“How you guys doing tonight? I can’t heeeeear yoooou,” she doofused between songs. “Just kidding. I can totally hear you.” The stage was lit up in technicolor, pixellated neon flashing across the skulls’ white faces and then, with similar effect, Deradoorian’s. Pockets of color lit up the band members’ faces, and between them, abysses of darkness cropped up. The shows’ aesthetic had been planned within an inch of its life.

Avey-love ran rampant in the crowd, even if Deradoorian was doing most of the talking. “I love youuuuuuu,” bellowed a slack-jawed, flannel-clad stick figure standing beside me. Between songs, he’d been overcome by emotion. “Play ‘My Girls’.” Portner looked up and grinned appreciatively. What looked like hundreds of super-fans were standing around the stage, all agog–stoner nerds who looked young and overgrown, many of them stand-spooning their girlfriends and staring up at the stage as if they were watching history get made. “Wow,” one of them huskily murmured into the hair of the girl he was holding the first time Portner emerged onto the stage. Very few of them danced–not even to Slasher Flicks bouncy and thoroughly dance-worthy single “Little Fang”–though standing squarely front-and-center was a blond guy who spent the entire set shaking his chin-length hair wildly in the technicolor beams of light aimed for the skull decor onstage.

The riffing between Portner and Angel Deradoorian–who, unsurprisingly, are a couple in their extra-musical lives–is at the crux of Slasher Flicks, and it was easy to feel a little sorry for drummer Jeremy Hyman (of Ponytail, Dan Deacon), whose complex, meticulously shaped lines resuscitate many of the hazier moments of Enter The Slasher House. He came across as a supporting member to Deradoorian and Tare’s musical synchronicity. In fact, Hyman hadn’t known the pair before Portner recruited him to be part of Slasher Flicks, but a bandmate from Ponytail, Dustin Wong, was there to open for Slasher Flicks’ set. It was a stark performance–Wong played alone on stage, with only a mic, a guitar, and the skulls that hung all around him–but the set’s minimalism added to the intensity of his vocal acrobatics. He zoomed in towards the microphone and then cut away just as quickly, with powerful vocal control. It was a pretty extraordinary set, with a sense of order and minimalism that contrasted effectively against Slasher Flicks’ chaotic and kooky performance.

The difference between studio renditions of Slasher Flicks’ songs and their live performance came mostly in vocal delivery–though much of Enter The Slasher House was catchy, I thought that its angularity often manifested as muddled, overworked production that stood in the way of the emotive power the album was able to hold over a listener. Like the group’s live aesthetic–the glowing skulls, the bursts of technicolor between abysses of darkness–Enter The Slasher House was too flinchingly self-conscious. However, “Catchy (Was Contagious)” and “Roses On The Window” were two surprising highlights of the evening. Deradoorian belted out her vocal line, flecking the songs with unexpected drama, even diva-ishness, that drastically dialed up their power.

Check out “Roses On The Window,” off Enter The Slasher House, below:

INTERVIEW: Juana Molina

Juana Molina’s music has an associative, evocative magic usually reserved for smells: it can time-travel you to different seasons, countries, and decades. She chooses rhythms over images, harmonies over words, and the spooky beauty of her albums etches out a world that feels familiar but that is usually only accessible through the subconscious. To call it electronic folk minimizes its strangeness. Molina’s records are feats of editing, but it’s difficult to consider them clinically as you’re mid-listen. That’s because each track is a fully-formed world, with not just characters and scenery but also laws of physics and tidal patterns of its own.

In the mid-nineties, Molina was a successful Argentinian television comedian with a hit sketch show called Juana y sus Hermanas. Her decision to begin making records in 1996 was unpopular amongst her fan base, who figured the music for a vanity project and refused to come see her perform. Outside Argentina, Molina’s recognition has come almost exclusively from her musical career for years, but within her home country, her sixth and latest release Wed 21 marks a milestone. It’s her most overtly danceable record to date, and also her most extroverted. Argentinian audiences have responded in kind, showing up for shows in unprecedentedly large, enthusiastic numbers. That Molina’s audience and her new record share a common mood–buoyant, joyful, and ready to be transported into the little world created by her harmonies–is no coincidence. Just as she tightly stitches her loops and melodies together without leaving a trace of their seams, Molina approaches each new record with her audience in the back of her mind. As the audience grows, the music gains momentum.

I called Juana Molina up last week to talk about Wed 21, her changing audience, and her intricate, solitary recording process. Molina spent her childhood in France and is trilingual, and she told me that the title can be pronounced three ways–she says the number twenty-one in Spanish, English, or French, depending on who she’s speaking to. Words have never meant much to Molina, but the way people experience her music always has, and so it’s fitting that Wed 21 holds different nuances in different ears. Read on for more:

AudioFemme: So, Wed 21 has been out for a little while. How has it been having it out there in the world?

Juana Molina: Well, we should ask the people, but I think it’s going well. I’m very happy with the response I’ve known about. I think it’s a very happy record somehow, without being too light. I don’t have–well, I shouldn’t say that, I do have preferences for my records–but I didn’t know that this one was going to be so well-received.

AF: Is this your favorite record that you’ve made?

JM: No, my favorite record is always the first one that I produced myself [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Segundo], because I think that that record, which I made in’98, kind of set the course for the path I was going to take. It’s like the seeds for every record I’ve made since.

AF: Did you know how you wanted it to turn out when you started making it?

JM: No, not at all. I wasn’t even thinking about making a record. We had just moved to Los Angeles at the time, and I had a few things recorded from earlier, I think from ’97. So I bought a computer and I was trying to understand how it worked. After a few months, or maybe more, I had something that I thought was a demo. I thought I would record the songs again later, in a real studio. I didn’t realize that all the takes, everything I’d done, would be impossible to repeat with the same freshness. So I decided to use it as a record, even though the quality of the recording wasn’t excellent. There’s lots of haze–things producers would hate–but I took as more important the feel and intention of the moment that I made it. And I think that’s why I love it so much. I had done a previous record, three years before that, but that record [Rara] doesn’t really belong to me, because a producer took charge of the sound. And I think he did a very good job, especially because I didn’t know how to transmit what I wanted to do. It was a time when everybody thought you needed a producer to make a record, that it wasn’t possible to make one on your own, but then the sound of the record doesn’t really represent what I do. So that’s why I consider Segundo my first real record.

AF: Has your songwriting process remained the same since your first records?

JM: I think what’s the same about it is the fact that I get taken, absorbed–I can’t quite think of the word–by what I’m doing in a certain moment. I just start playing, and some things I record just take me somewhere else. Somewhere else totally. I am not in a room recording with a guitar, I am somewhere else. When that happens, I start working on whatever it was that absorbed me. Now, I also think about the listeners, which I didn’t do before. Somehow, unconsciously, the public and the audience is present. I can’t get rid of that presence. They exist. They didn’t exist when I was recording Segundo. They have started to exist since. When I have this thing that comes and takes me, it’s like I’m absorbed and totally taken into this new world, and I think that can happen also to other people, too. I know I’ve said this many times, but when [I get absorbed into this world,] thought and thinking disappear. You have the feeling of things coming to you, like animals coming to Snow White. It’s a very special moment and I love it when it happens; I think that when that happens you have found a truth.

AF: Is there anything except for songwriting and recording that makes you feel that way? Can you decide to get absorbed into that other world, or does it always happen by accident?

JM: No, it is absolutely impossible to determine how to get there. You can’t say, okay, today I’m going to get into the right mood to record. Once I’ve started making a record, I keep being in that mood because I keep working every day. I need space and time to dive in, like a tunnel. If I’m not playing, I don’t get into that mood. If I’m traveling, say, touring, I’m only playing the shows. It’s rare that I would play somewhere else than the shows. Sometimes I get ideas during soundcheck. I get a bit of a feeling–I wish I were home, so I could work on this–and I record it somehow, but I usually can’t really use it afterwards. I can’t get back to the same idea. But occasionally there are a few songs, “Bicho Auto,” for instance. That song was created (to use a big word) in soundcheck.

AF: You’ve said before that lyrics come last for you. I don’t speak Spanish, so I can’t understand most of your lyrics, but I’ve always thought the way the words sound is a huge part of your music. Is rhythm the thing you think about most when you’re coming up with lyrics?

JM: Absolutely. The thing is that I think lyrics are the disguise for the true melody. I make the lyrics totally fit into the melody that was there before. Lyrics have to respect–or, to submit to the melody’s desires. Sometimes I need to change letters around, because it’s not always you can find words that fit your melody, but in general they’re pretty similar to the original. That’s why they sound so organic in the song–because they were there from the beginning, even though I write them after I’ve finished the last beat of the last little note of the song.

AF: Why do you occasionally sing in English?

JM: Very occasionally. On the first track [“Eras”] I sing in English because that’s someone else saying that to me [The lyric is “Come, come quickly.”]. That person spoke English in the story. It’s not me talking, it’s the other person talking. And then…when I moved to Los Angeles in the late nineties I wrote “The Wrong Song,” in Segundo. It was a strange track because it was in English. The English is really wrong, that’s why it’s called “The Wrong Song.” Even though I speak English, I am in Spanish. I could do it in French and I actually have done it, because I lived in France when I was a little girl, so French is really my second language, and English is still a borrowed language. I can use words but they aren’t my own words. I sometimes don’t know if I should write in English or not. I have a very good friend, a musician, she’s from Canada. She told me once, “Listen, we’ve been listening to your music for so long. The least you can do is write us a song in English.” If I see it from that point of view, I thought it was a nice idea. So I wrote a song in English, but I didn’t dare to publish it. It feels weird [to sing in English], and I can’t really be singing if I need to think about the pronunciation. I wish I could do it. I think it would be a good thing to do. But I can’t.

AF: Four years passed between your last record (Un Dia) and this one. Why such a long break?

JM: I don’t know what happened. Just life. Love and despair. Sadness. These kinds of things get me away from recording. Then last year I thought, Oh my God, it’s been four years, and I really, really didn’t feel that four years had passed. So I started to work. I forced myself, I needed to make a record now. I started working on nothing. I just really wanted to have a record out.

AF: Do you find that your records reflect your personal life?

JM: I wonder. I don’t know.

AF: You were talking about sadness, but as you said earlier, this record is pretty joyous.

JM: Maybe I was happy because I had gone away from those feelings, and because I was making a record again. But also, playing live has changed the way I write. When you’re on stage in a standing venue and you play very mellow songs, people get a little disturbed. They need something that takes them. I’ve discovered that I really love playing standing venues more than anything else. There’s an energy there that comes from people standing. If they’re dancing, and moving, we’re all going to the same place together. Sitting venues, even if people are really enjoying the show, I need to drag them a little bit. That’s why, when a tour is coming, I beg the booking agents to put me in standing venues.

AF: And you took all that into account while writing the songs on this album?

JM: Yeah. The possibility of there being a show influences me to do something different. Also, the audience itself has changed a lot. It’s like a party when I play, especially here [Argentina]. And I’m so happy, because that didn’t happen for years.

AF: Are you becoming more well-known for your singing, as opposed to acting, in Argentina?

JM: Yes, but it took a long time. People just didn’t like that I changed careers. Press was pretty mean, and absolutely ignored all the work I was doing, as a punishment. I kind of understand, it’s not that I am resentful. I was really popular making comedy, and people don’t want you to change. People just didn’t come to my shows because they thought that, because I was an actress, what I was doing was shit. But in the past five or six years, that has changed completely. Over the years I have built a completely new audience with completely different people, and only a few are fans of both things.

AF: Would you consider doing both comedy and music?

JM: No. I did, but it was a mistake. It’s such a different mood, to make someone laugh or to make someone listen–or dance. A completely different activity. I was so vulnerable when I started to play music, because while I was acting I was impersonating a huge number of characters and making fun of them all, so nothing could hurt me because it wasn’t myself I was being. I was someone else. Being someone else allows you to act and react in a completely different way. Playing music, it’s exactly the opposite. That’s why I think they’re absolutely incompatible.

AF: Even though you’re more vulnerable, music is more rewarding?

JM: Yes, because the whole point is not to be strong. I’d rather die–we have a saying, “to die with your boots on.” You’d rather die in war than be hidden away in your house. Meaning: you’re a real soldier.

Visit Molina on Facebook, and get your copy of Wed 21 here! Check out the music video for “Eras,” off the new album, below:
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ALBUM REVIEW: “Enter The Slasher House”

Avey Tare has put out some nine-odd albums with pioneering psych-electronic quartet Animal Collective, but this decade, he’s focused more on solo work than he has on the band that originally made his bones. His latest creation, Slasher Flicks, feels like a deliberate push towards something new, in part because it’s really more super trio than it is side project, featuring ex-Dirty Projectors multi-instrumentalist Angel Deradoorian and Ponytail drummer Jeremy Hyman, who recently collaborated with Dan Deacon. Enter The Slasher House bears obvious family resemblance to Tare-fronted Animal Collective tracks, with similarly off-kilter harmony and a grab bag of digital effects and reverb.

With a name like Slasher Flicks, you might expect the album to sound cartoonish–and you’d be correct. It’s more funhouse than b-movie horror, though. The album is packed with bouncy synths, surreally poppy hooks, and rhythms that appear to operate at the whims of a metronome gone psychotic. Often, the latter is a highlight. Hyman skillfully controls his ear-catchingly angular drum lines, which never shy away from being the focal point of the tracks on this album. In fact, sometimes they’re the scaffolding the rest of the music hangs around. On songs like “Outlaw” and “Catchy (Was Contagious),” the strength of the drum beat leaves Tare’s singing in the dust.

Slathered in production and reverb, the vocals come across a little wimpy. When the songs are at their most instrumentally complex, Tare’s voice seems faint and watery, as if he’s singing from far away or his voice has been unceremoniously inserted to echo the melody. Tare’s anxious, yelling vocal style is easily recognizable, but his presence on this album doesn’t match the authority he cultivated in Animal Collective. Instead, the vocal melody defers to the rest of the music, or we lose it altogether.

The exception to that comes with “Little Fang,” a fantastically catchy number that brings all this group’s elements into synch. A pop hook and an irresistible bass lines serve as the big draws for this track, but lyrical repetition (“You’re always crashing into teeth,”) bolsters its blissfulness. Somehow, despite all the clicks and crashes of its oddball underbelly, the song comes across as sweet and summertime-simple as a Beach Boys single. Sadly, the magic balance “Little Fang” nails doesn’t stick in place for the rest of Enter The Slasher House – the bubbliness soon gives way to manic obnoxiousness, and the angularity of the rhythms turn toward chaos.

Check out the terrifying video for “Little Fang” below!

TRACK REVIEW: Throwing Snow’s “Summus”

London based electronic producer Ross Tones, aka Throwing Snow, recently released his four track EP “Pathfinder,” and its closing track, “Summus,” is now available to stream online. The track has industrial sound, with a pulsating bass that acts as the song’s heartbeat. Though it starts off quite minimally, it builds and evolves into a densely layered work with multifaceted percussion and plenty of energy.

“Pathfinder” was released via Houndstooth, who say the EP is “a route into a greater portion of work” to come from Throwing Snow, so keep your eyes peeled! Listen to “Summus” in the meantime, below:

EP REVIEW: Panama “Always”

Jarrah McCleary, the classically trained pianist and experimental synth pop artist behind Sydney-based Panama, may be Australian on paper, but the title track opener to Panama’s sophomore EP Always tells a different story: he’s clearly got L.A. in his soul. Singalong-worthy and summery, “Always” starts the release off with piano-heavy pop that doesn’t overthink itself. That’s not a bad thing–the music perfectly evokes blissful hot summer car rides and uncomplicated friendships. Over the course of just three tracks (plus bonus “Strange Feeling,” on the version released on AudioFemme’s side of the pond!)–and corresponding remixes–though, Always moves inward, with the more introspective “How We Feel” and downright dark “Destroyer.” I’ve never been to Australia, but by the EP’s end, Always seems more reminiscent of the sparse but beautiful bush country where McCleary grew up.

“When I write I think about the long road ahead,” McCleary told Vice in an interview in late 2012. You can hear the nomadic leanings in his music, too: it’s not the lightness of “Always” that’s endemic to Panama’s music. McCleary’s songwriting style reflects the process of travel, and of a full absorption of the environment he finds wherever he goes. That approach makes for meticulous music–McCleary’s as much an observer as he is a musician. The attention to detail that goes into this album lends itself to shorter releases, too, which is why it makes sense that Panama has yet to release a full-length LP.

Like debut It’s Not Over, Always gears towards an electrically colorful synth pop, but on this release McCleary assumes a new assuredness over his music’s texture and subtlety. To that end, I could have done without the remixes–I would have preferred more original tracks on the back half of this thing. Whereas the remixes make up a recalibrating of an already complex balance of instrumentation and evocation, I would have rather seen McCleary take his travels further, and have more revelations like the external-to-internal move that happens in the short space between the blissfulness of “Always” and the lonesomeness of “Destroyer.”

Check out “Always,” off the new EP, below!

BAND OF THE MONTH: Leverage Models

“My only rules were that I would shut my conscious impulses as much as possible (my impulse to interrogate and analyze every gesture, ponder what imaginative impulse every sound was for, worry about what outlet would be used to release the music) and just make,” Shannon Fields has written, regarding his approach to music and his new project–and AudioFemme’s Band Of The Month!–Leverage Models. Fields’ creative impulses and internal landscapes are at the heart of this group. Friends and cohorts appear on Leverage Models’ self-titled debut, too, in such high and ever-evolving numbers that trying to count them would be futile, but Sharon Van Etten, Sinkane and Yeasayer all number among Leverage Models’ contributers. Fields, who dreamt up his first band, Stars Like Fleas, in 1999 and played under that name for nearly a decade, has always been inclined towards collaboration.

Listening to Leverage Models is a fantastically colorful experience, so much so that the first few times through the album feel like being in a brand new, exotic and densely stimulating city–it’s hard to have concrete thoughts on the music when you’re so busy just trying to take it all in. In a wonderfully interior journey, Leverage Models presents a mostly-joyous, always-elaborate layering of futuristic soul music, electronic riffs and repetitive vocal lines that sound more like instrumental licks than voices. It’s hard to see the seams of this album: the music’s many aspects seem like they must have simultaneously sprung, fully formed, into being. Since the album bears so little comparison to anything else in its category, finding the songs’ trajectories requires enough listening to get past just being dazzled by the bright lights and shiny metals, but once you do, the album is actually pretty accessible. Some of the songs, like “Sweet” (with Sharon Van Etten) are surprisingly catchy, with strong R&B influence and an endearing sense of excitement swelling beneath the melodies.

In the fifteen-odd years he’s been recording–first with Stars Like Fleas, and now Leverage Models–Fields has put out only four full-length albums, with a few years’ space between each. It’s easy to see why: each complex, densely compiled release packs a hefty wallop. None more so than Leverage Models, which feels like the summation of the full five years Fields took to create it, with an elegant blend of complexity in its instrumental arrangements and sweet simplicity in its intent.

Listen to the oh-so-stunning, “A Chance To Go”, here via Soundcloud

If you can’t catch Leverage Models at our SXSW showcase this Wednesday, cozy up with Shannon right here instead! Audiofemme got in touch with him and asked him a few questions about music, and the internet, and resurrecting his teenage self who would then listen to the new album. Here’s what went down:

AF: Tell us about the process of beginning your new project, Leverage Models. How did you want it to differ from your work with Stars Like Fleas? What inspires your music writing?

Shannon: Leverage Models didn’t really begin deliberately. Stars Like Fleas was a very large family of musicians that was so emotionally volatile, and so draining to keep afloat that when it finally ripped itself apart I just moved to the country and started spending all day in my home studio with absolutely no agenda except to find something to glue myself back together with. I suddenly had a surplus of time and space to create in. But also this sort of crushing weight of having a part of my identity, something I’d built for almost 10 years (Stars Like Fleas, my life in Brooklyn) vanish overnight. I felt free of the albatross it had become for me, but also a huge wave of “what now?” anxiety. The only way I could handle that was to entirely avoid thinking about the “what now?”, or about who I am or what I had to offer anybody. So that was a pretty radical change to my creative process. With the Fleas, the creative process was analytical to the point of compulsion – it was 2 parts sound creation / performance and 98 parts self-interrogation, willful deconstruction, avoidance of any convention, avoidance of anything that might work in an immediate or superficial way for anybody. And I don’t regret a moment of that. But Leverage Models originated in my just making songs that made me feel better and that I enjoyed living inside, without questioning anything (because at the time I had no intention of doing anything with those songs). Honestly, this was and still is straight up therapy….an approach I hadn’t previously had much respect for. I don’t want to suggest there isn’t still some of that going on with Leverage Models, but I try to keep the higher functioning parts of my brain out of the room until it’s time to take a step back and look at the big picture of an album, or a mix. Until then I let the lizard parts of my brainstem drive the bus. I think I’m more interested these days in the logic of craft and folk art rather than the trappings of modernism, that constant privileging of newness and confrontation of norms, so Leverage Models focuses much more on the shared conventions of pop music and just trying to be disciplined about writing and arranging well. (That said, lyrics are a different conversation entirely….a different ballgame, and equally important to me).

AF: Now that the album has been out for a few months, how do you feel about it? Do you have a favorite song?

S: I spent a year on the record and I’m completely happy with it. It’s not the record I would make today, but it’s a good snapshot where I was at a year ago, and I’m proud of the response I’ve gotten from some of the people whose opinions I care the most about. I don’t actually listen to my own records and can’t say I have a favorite song. Right now my favorite song to play live is The Chance To Go. With most of the songs I wrote and recorded them predominantly at home before bringing in the band to replace demo arrangements. But The Chance To Go came out of a live improvisational session with the band. One morning we woke up, I described a groove to the band, and maybe 15 minutes later we had that song. It feels more spontaneous and live than other things on the record because it is. Also….A Slow Marriage is one that ages well for me….it might be the most open, direct and personal…it feels simultaneously vulnerable and synthetic…which is how I feel most days.

AF: How do you feel about music in the digital age? Would you go to war in order to save the internet from extinction?

S: I’m a little bit confused and alienated by the new relationship to music that the culture has. Music is a little more of a disposable lifestyle accessory and a little less precious then it was when I was a teenager. I don’t know that I have a strong feeling about whether that’s a good or bad thing….I guess it’s a mixed bag, like all change. It’s what culture does. That said, I might not have any kind of social life or a career without the Internet….it’s easier to do everything (except make money), including just talking to people…which has always been difficult for me. It doesn’t carry over into performance, but offstage I have a crippling amount of social anxiety. So email is great. And I think when I moved to the country my music career might have been over in a pre-Internet world. Now it matters much less where I live.

AF: You’ve picked out of the way spots to do a lot of your recording, and Leverage Models was recorded in a farmhouse outside of Cooperstown, NY. Why do you choose such remote locations?

S: Ha!…because I live in that farmhouse in the country outside of Cooperstown! My band lives in Brooklyn but I left before Leverage Models happened. I record mainly in my home studio, in between barn chores (my wife and I are breeding horses) and other work around the property. Splitting my days between physical labor and creative work gives me a rhythm that’s really healthy for me. I feel like a better person for it…even if that’s sentimentalized nonsense, it’s a fiction that helps me get through the day. And I just feel physically and mentally more stable. NYC was breaking me. Also, I should mention that I generally record the full band and mix at The Isokon in Woodstock, NY, — mainly because D. James Goodwin, who runs it, is someone I trust and have a longstanding relationship with. He’s a powerful creative human and he gets me.

AF: What are your strengths as a musician? Would you say you have any weaknesses?

S: I’m not putting my head in either of those nooses. Is this a job interview, Annie?

AF: If one of your songs (while you’re in the process of writing it that is), were a small child (or pet), would you say that it would have a mind of its own or would it generally stay in line and follow the rules?

S: Oh I’m probably training feral animals here, metaphorically speaking. In my writing process I make a conscious effort not to know where I’m going when I begin a song. Sometimes I do try to generate ideas by throwing myself curve balls (horrible cliché’s, instruments and mixing choices that are steeped in cheesy baggage, pastiche, etc.) but mainly I just work really fast and intuitively up front…so fast I don’t have time to question what I’m doing….following my reflexes and my pleasure centers. I write/record in manic highs and edit when I’m miserable. Then if I’ve painted myself into a corner, finding my way out usually leads to something that’s better than it would be if I tried to really over-direct and control the process.

AF: If you could have any person, living or dead, real or fictitious, listen to a song off Leverage Models, who would it be? What do you think they/it would think about that song?

S: Hmmmm….the only thing that comes to mind would be my teenage self. And….I really have no idea what I would think. But I think I’d be pretty down. I would probably question all the slap bass.

AF: If you could experience your own music through one of your other senses, which would it be? What would it taste/smell/feel/look like?

S: Can I experience someone else’s music this way? That seems like a pretty heavy gift to use in such a self-indulgent way. I’m a little food-obsessed. I think Maurice Fulton’s music would make for a pretty satisfying combination of salt, heat and sweetness, without a lot of heavy starchy proteins.

AF: What is one of your favorite cities to perform in? Do you have any weird tour bus necessities?

S: We’re lucky to get a bar towel and some hot water on a hospitality rider and we tour in my 2008 soccer-mom minivan, packed so full of shit none of us can move our legs. I look forward to having weird tour bus necessities though.

As for chosen cities, I just like performing anywhere that people seem hungry for music and aren’t so self-conscious that they’re afraid to move their bodies at a show. But to be honest, I was just as uptight and self-conscious for a long time. It took a long while to get to the point where I really internalized that I am going to die – I think that’s what it pivots on – and was able to full let go of all those kinds of very Midwestern, probably very male inhibitions. So we love playing smaller towns that are usually passed over; where you play to a small crowd but everyone who comes up to you is grateful and excited. It makes me remember being that kid in Kansas City…remembering the feeling you have – living in what you think is the ass-end of the universe — when you see something that changes the game for you, turns a light on, makes the world feel suddenly larger and more nuanced and more capable of possibility and not limited to the values of whatever oppressive cool-crowd you’re stuck under, shows you a way out or inspires you to remake yourself. Anyway, we seem to find a lot of these places in the south. On our current tour, D.C. (a huge house party with a few hundred people, put on by the Lamont Street Collective), Asheville NC, Charlotte NC, and Jacksonville FL were all surprisingly bonkers. I just like to feel like I’m making some kind of real connection with every person there. If I don’t, I feel like a complete failure as a performer and as a person…no matter how much people might have liked it or how ‘on’ the band was. I always take crowd reactions personally, I’m very motivated to feel that connection, even when I know I’m doing things onstage to actively bait or confront them a bit (which happens).

AF: Do you have any words of wisdom for Audiofemme? Any secrets you’d like to divulge?

1. No wisdom, but a thanks to Audiofemme for helping to provide a balance to the music journalists’ boys club. I’m not sure boys clubs are our scene. I’m used to getting threatening looks in boys’ clubs.

2. I’m very good at keeping secrets. You first.

Tag: electronic