Monday, January 21, 2008

Sail On


Like the soft, almost lullabied rocking of a small sailing vessel, similarly sway you The Boats from Philadelphia, setting you to sleep not with their tender-hearted stories of unexpected reunions or of cutesy encounters with beautiful girls, but with their soft mesh of folk, southern/surf and strumrock that imitates the fabric of a homemade blanket found in a baby's crib. That woefully-skilled aesthetic that sets them in a category not easily identified, being almost the kind of music you'd expect people from all sorts of backgrounds to connect with. It's not a selfish, gimmicky, or contrived sound at all, it's sincere, and unapologetic for its pure rawness and amazingly well placed yelps and screams.
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The Boats have been around for a while, and after a break that deprived many from anything new from these guys, the wonderment left after listening to their debut album was all you could envelope. It became a favorite over time, and the lack of track listings and presence of any activity only added to the mystique of The Boats, of which I knew almost nothing. Only hoping for a new Boats record kept me from not checking up on them every couple of months. I checked up on them about two weeks ago and read a nice little blog on their myspace telling of new Boats recordings. I'll let you read it yourself.
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I don't know what their situation is, or why the hell they haven't been signed (causing the start of their own record label Future Furniture), but I know for certain there are plenty of waiting fans like me, just getting antsy to buy this new album. It was expected to come out this winter back in August, but regardless of the date, hype, or lack thereof, I have the full intention of getting this. Go listen, buy some of their songs off snocap (which ends up being the only place you can get any of the new recordings), and just enjoy. It's good music.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Temporary Listenence Unlimited.

How in the world can this happen? I missed a lot of great releases last year, but I guess a big part of blogging about music is not necessarily the speed at which you put something down upon, rather what you actually have to say about the music. Well, it may be really late, but I've recently acquired two-and-a-half albums released by Temporary Residence Limited in the fall of '07. When I say two-and-a-half, it's only because the first disc in a two-disc deal was mysteriously missing from the sleek cardboard quadro-fold case in which it came. Hopefully I can come into contact with the first disc of Tarentel's Ghetto Beats on the Surface of the Sun. From what I've heard on disc 2, this is extremely cosmic music. With titles such as "A Crystal the Size of Our Moon in the Heart of a Pulsating White Dwarf", and "Cosmic Dust" (heard off their myspace), the odd, often warped or electrically stimulated soundscapes take names fittingly. "Mirrors, Gardens" along with the following track remind me of a BBC Goosebumps-equivalent series called Moondial as if it had been made by robots. I can't say a whole lot more beyond only having half the release which actually came out in 4 volumes through 2006-2007. Hopefully Temporary Residence can send the first disc to me cuz I needs to hear it.



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The other two albums recently sent to me via postal service were Sleeping People's Growing, and Maserati's long-awaited (by me) Inventions for the New Season. I'll start with Maserati, which finally released "This is a Sight We Had One Day From the High Mountain" on an album. Watch super feet go!, and rest in the unexpected blissfulness you'll experience after viewing amazing music with amazing visuals. You can find the video on youtube, or in my other post, titled trl, which should be right below this post, anyway. Track 1, "Inventions", starts with an eerie wind blowing across what might be a deserted Colorado town out of Red Dawn or something. It then picks up into a Stevie-Knicks-type bassline that actually makes it a lot more fun to listen to, if I can rightfully say that. Another one of my fav tracks off this was "Synchronicity IV", which ends in a nice tribal drum-a-thon at about 6 minutes in; are those bongos I hear? maybe. The entire album comes off as a little more light-hearted and hopeful compared to The Language of Cities or even "Towers Were Wires", off the Cinemechanica/We Versus the Shark/Maserati split EP. This'll be playing in my reading time a lot this upcoming semester I'm guessing. Buy any Maserati release here.


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Now: Sleeping People. Dudedog, this shit's crazy, and I mean to say that in a Zurek voice. Besides the accumulation of all the broken strings and splintered nails that this album undoubtedly shed, nothing is more rough than tracks like "Grow Worm" at 47 seconds, or "People Staying Awake" throughout, speaking in a nonmetal sense of the word rough, of course. These tracks are welcomed in the midst of the pleasing mesh of smooth off-signatures along with the sharp blips of guitar and effect pedals alike. The chimes in "Underland" would set you to sleep if not for the creepy and barely audible symbols and wind blowing in the background. The entire album up to the final track would have you believe it is an instrumental album if not for the verses sung in "People Staying Awake", which come around at 3:48. Stay up, stay up, stay up, and they don't make it hard standing up to find out if that really is the last song, because you want more. Overall great listen-to, buy this, if you want to be mentally stimulated while listening to uncommon but beautiful musical prowess.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

trl

Expect a full report from me in the near future.
For now, enjoy this great video. Go! Super feet! Go!

Monday, January 7, 2008

Local show this Weekend!

anybody in or near junktown
should hit it up. aaron's rap team
will be performing along with some
killer acoustic folk/electronic kids.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Me Versus We Versus the Shark


I've got a beef. A beef against We Versus the Shark. With whom I fell in love with in 2005 with Ruin Everything, a sporadically spastic, adrenaloid-infused and injected straight into your brain occasionally poppy enough for Lance Bass to enjoy. Well, they're doing a cover album for 2008 titled Murmurmur, which is actually rather awesome. But there's one problem with it that I'll get to later. This is what they'll be doing:
"Starting today, January 1st, and finishing up on December 1st 2008, each month we'll be posting a new MP3 to Quote Unquote Records of other people's jams. Some of the songs are by artists who have gained accolades in some circles but remain obscure in others; a few will be Athens bands we're excited to big-up. We here at We Versus the Shark believe that "interpreting" (whatever) other artists is a good way to learn about structure, melody, and other things we're generally confused by. Enjoy "Murmurmur."

Basically they're releasing a 12-song LP of covers by bands you may or may not have ever heard. The first of which is Pattern is Movement's "Right Away". This is great news. I suddenly got really excited about it. First great thing to look forward to this year, happening the minute I wake up from a treacherous night of debauchery, vomiting high-schoolers, and hooking up in your best friend's bedroom. Now to the beef: it's going to take the whole year to receive this album. While I can't complain about an entirely free full-length of covers, I don't really feel like waiting around every month for it to come. I loved the Ep of Bees EP though, Murmurmur will be good I'm guessing.

Listen to the first track released earlier today below.
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Right Away- Pattern is Movement (We Versus the Shark cover)

Update:
expect a new full-length album this spring.