Episode059: MP3/Feed\Archive
Previous: Episode058 - Future Hunter
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♬Liner Notes♬: Welcome back to another eclectic blast of new sounds! This week rocks some Savages, Ex Cops, She And Him, Neon Neon and much more... Let's kick it off with new Deerhunter and Pump Up Tha Volume!
Deerhunter
"Back To The Middle"
'Monomania'
4AD, 2013
Note: We begin this week with the hotly anticipated new record from Georgia's Deerhunter, and as the Guardian says, "At this point, complaining about any of Bradford Cox's musical choices seems pointless: he does what he wants, and if you don't like it, you can go and listen to something else. You might as well suggest that oranges are all very well, but they'd be a whole lot better if they were peaches. Nevertheless, six albums into Deerhunter's career, Bradford Cox's decision to embrace ultra-low fidelity seems perverse."
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Los Amigos Invisibles
"La Que Me Gusta"
'Repeat After Me'
Nacional, 2013
Note: "In the early 1990s in Venezuela, a group of young musicians decided to compose and play music unlike any thing they heard in the clubs of Caracas... Amazingly, the original line up is unchanged over their twenty years of playing together. With an enormous Latin fan base they've garnered numerous award nominations and received a couple of Latin Grammys. "Repeat After Me" is their seventh CD release and true to form is choc a bloc with absolutely great tracks."
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Still Corners
"Fireflies"
'Strange Pleasures'
Sub Pop, 2013
Note: "While Still Corners first made a name for themselves with their 2012 shoegaze-inspired album, Creatures of an Hour, their sophomore album, Strange Pleasures, has moved the London-based group, now a duo, into 80s synth pop - but not the neon colored variety. The new album is like a clear dream about past love, cinematic and endlessly absorbing."
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Savages
"She Will"
'Silence Yourself'
Matador, 2013
Note: We last heard a single from this London quartet on Episode042, but now they're back for the attack! "In theory then, debut album ‘Silence Yourself’ is flawless. Just see its monochrome sleeve – even their eyebrows look deeply important. The studied angular riffs, motorik beats and flair for tension-and-release form a confrontational soundtrack to urban friction. Every distorted note sounds under control. Savages could manipulate the screech of fingernails running down a chalkboard and make it sound melodic."
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Neon Neon
"Mid Century Modern Nightmare"
'Praxis Makes Perfect'
Lex, 2013
Note: "Shortly after the release of Neon Neon's Mercury prize-nominated 2008 debut album Stainless Style – a brilliantly catchy, 1980s-indebted rumination on the life of roguish automobile engineer John DeLorean – Gruff Rhys had this to say about a potential followup to the BBC. "I don't know about making another Neon Neon album because it was quite a specific record about DeLorean's life story. If we did something in the future it would have to be something different." Five years later and Rhys and his production foil Boom Bip have finally announced the followup, the brilliantly-titled Praxis Makes Perfect, which is, of course, a musical biography of the controversial Italian leftwing political activist and book publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. One of the album's most political statements comes in the shape of the squelchy, mischievously upbeat Mid Century Modern Nightmare, premiered here, which features Asia Argento reading out extracts from a call-to-arms that Feltrinelli broadcast in Genoa in 1970, using a pirate transmitter wired up to his Fiat car."
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Small Black
"Free At Dawn"
'Limits of Desire'
Jagjaguwar, 2013
Note: "“Free At Dawn” is a fresh reintroduction for Small Black, giving us a clear and thriving picture of their present chapter as a band. Gone is all of the noise and reverb of New Chain... Limits of Desire is sure to thrill as well as to challenge listeners to a more serious emotional and spiritual encounter with Small Black’s work."
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She and Him
"Never Wanted Your Love"
'Volume 3'
Merge, 2013
Note: Death and Taxes says, "“Volume 3″ is a totally solid album, leagues better than the shrill (sorry) and oddly mastered (not sorry) “Volume 2″... “Volume 3″ legitmately sounds like the Patsy Cline / doo-wop sound that she’s been striving for all along – Zooey sounds free here – and it makes it work, it makes it click, and it makes for a great album... M. Ward, though, steps a little more to the center of the stage this time around, and it may just be exactly what She & Him needed all along – someone to bounce off of. It’s a much more different outing for both of them."
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Cécile McLorin Salvant
"St. Louis Gal"
'Womanchild'
Mack Avenue, 2013
Note: The Old Gray Lady says, "THE jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant, who recently turned 23 and is still mostly unknown to jazz audiences, though not for much longer... Her voice clamps into each song, performing careful variations on pitch, stretching words but generally not scatting; her face conveys meaning, representing sorrow or serenity like a silent-movie actor. "
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youryoungbody
"Sterile"
'Kurokabi' EP
self-released, 2013
Note: Song source KEXP says, "Known for eerie electronic music, Seattle duo youryoungbody has recently released their debut album, Kurokabi, which, like their two previous EP’s, USER and Mask, is forceful in its musical subtlety and ubiquity."
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Ex Cops
"Nico Beast"
'True Hallucinations'
Fat Possum, 2013
Note: Pretty Much Amazing says, "Throughout True Hallucinations, the debut from this Brooklyn duo, Harding and Bruun have proven themselves adept at creating infectious indie pop songs. Their songs are not only immediately appealing, but fluent in the indie pop and dream pop classics, and do their best to imitate their influences. The influences are diverse enough to make True Hallucinations worth exploring..."
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Freedom Fry
"Friends + Enemies"
'Friends + Enemies' EP
self-released, 2013
Note: Song source KEXP says, "Although they’re based in Los Angeles, Freedom Fry is comprised of New York City’s Bruce Driscoll and Paris’ Marie Seyrat, a pair that combine both of their home cities’ sleekest musical traits... Rolling with a DFA-style drum and bass pattern, “Friends + Enemies” squares Driscoll and Seyrat against one another to create a track filled with positive tension."
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Crimes
"Cloud Creep"
'Thin Sunlight'
self-released, 2013
Note: Reviler says this Minneapolis band's new record "pulls off a difficult task. It is a reverb soaked musical amalgamation, pulling together sounds from surf, garage and pop influences under one well manicured roof."
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Inc
"Lifetime"
'No World'
4AD, 2013
Note: Fact Magazine says the Aged brothers debut "is a luscious distillation of a range of R&B and soul: everything from quiet storm balladry to the sensual grooves of the Aaliyah / Timbaland catalog, but with a decidedly modern edge that feels more immediate than similarly influenced artists like How To Dress Well and the xx. The album is said to be “rooted in the brothers’ experiences” as session musicians for the likes of Pharrell, 50 Cent, and Raphael Saadiq."
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Kithkin
"Fallen Giants" single
self-released, 2013
Note: Our Pacific Northwest closer this week is more than a band, they're a self-described "Cascadian youth tribe"! This song "resonates with the kind of epic presence that’s usually only found during the closing titles of Peter Jackson films. As a piercing organ shines through the thick, pounding wave of drums, the song tells a majestic and sometimes odd...tale of starting anew."
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@PumpUpThaVolume Music News:
Damn, gonna miss Man or Astro-Man? @astrohq
well i can't stop watching this.. Chris Hadfield sings "Space Oddity" aboard the International Space Station
Some people say "Black Skinhead" sounds like former FADER label-signee Saul Williams.
Kanye West titles June album 'Yeezus,' reaches apex of megalomania
Stream Lana Del Rey's groovy "Queen of Disaster" leak
Stream ex-Harvey Danger frontman Sean Nelson's springy "Born Without a Heart"
Franz Ferdinand's new album 'Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action' is missing some recently debuted songs
Joy Division's Ian Curtis died 33 years ago today. Remember him with rare photos & snapshots from his journal
(Thanks again to KEXP, KCRW, The Current, Twilight Circus Dub Sound System and you!)
