Read The Lastest Music News/Reviews

Chillwave, is that you?

Still probably best known for contributing the memorable theme to Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen’s comedy sketch show Portlandia, Washed Out (aka Ernest Greene) has now announced his highly anticipated second album. Produced by Ben Allen, who produced the album’s predecessor Within or Without, Paracosm will be appearing on the Sub Pop label on August 13.

From the sounds of the trailer (which you can view below) it feels like Greene is attempting to take his dusty chillwave to the next level, adding a Technicolor sense of Widescreen through samples that sound as if they’ve been pulled from the reels of aging Disney movies.

Apparently the producer used around fifty instruments (including the tape-loop-based Mellotron) on top of his usual collection of samples, so there’s definitely a sense that Paracosm will be somewhat bigger budget than what we’re used to from Washed Out. It’s certainly not lo-fi any more. [via Pitchfork]

Andrew Cedermark, the former Titus Andronicus guitarist and veteran of the home-recording limited-cassette-tape universe, is about to release his new album Home Life, and the songs we’ve heard from it are bigger, fuller, and prettier than anything he’s done before. We already posted the luminous early track “Canis Major,” and now “At Home,” another track from the album, turns out to be a quiet and reserved anthem, with resigned lyrics about lost childhood and a combination of surging guitar and honking harmonica that recalls prime Springsteen. It’s a great song, and you can hear it below.

Read More...

Washed Out’s Ernest Greene will release his sophomore album, Paracosm, on August 13th via Sub Pop. The follow-up to his 2011 debut, Within and Without, “explores the album

Boya Dee, a.k.a. Boya DeeMarko, of grime collective Nu Brand Flexxx, became an unlikely celebrity when his eye-witness Twitter account of yesterday’s savage attack in Woolwich, London was quoted by pretty much every newspaper going.

Good on Boya Dee then, for turning down some substantial sums of money to sell his story – a story which he had every right to sell, really – to the press. “Apologies to all the news reporters I ignored (including you Jon Snow) but I really do not have anything else to say on the matter”, Boya Tweeted today.

“Since the incident occurred, I’ve been offered up to £75k from media outlets for my story. I’ve turned them all down. This story is not about ME And doesn’t need to be sensationalised anymore by me selling my story for a few bucks.”

“Finally”, he concludes, “all u folk who gave out my number for a few hundred quid have officially been taken off my christmas card list!”. You can read Boya’s account of yesterday’s attack further down his Twitter feed.

Continuing our hard-hitting investigation into the tawdry world of catastrophic fan body art.

For a few months about a year ago, you couldn’t move for terrible fanboy tats and trims: the girl with the Skrillex chest ink, the man with the Drake-fro, and Yelawolf’s supremely ill-advised Johnny and June Cash tribute all indelibly etched onto our brains. Then, after a lull, came the worst of the bunch: step forward the Thom Yorke nipple tattoo.  

The latest tat-rocity comes to our attention via drill anti-hero Chief Keef’s Twitter account (which, after that infamous blowie image, has become a go-to for eye-melting images). The rapper posted an image of a fan’s full-back Chief Keef tattoo, rather awkwardly headed with his birth name Keith Cozart. We’re not sure how to best describe the image in mere words: a cross between Lando Calrissian and an incubus? Rick James doing an impression of a gremlin? A chiuhaha being gobbled by an Ood? View the image above, then have a lie-down.

The New York indie-pop band Caveman rounded up a pretty impressive cast for their video for “In The City,” the first single from their self-titled sophomore album. The clip stars Julia Stiles and the Dollhouse actor Fran Kranz as a tourist couple visiting New York, and it looks like a fun visit before a creepy hotel bellhop gets involved and things take a darker turn. Philip Di Fiore directs; watch it below.

Read More...

by Andrew Sacher

Owen (aka Mike Kinsella of American Football, Cap'n Jazz, etc) has been working on new material, which will result in his new album, L'Ami due Peuple, due out on July 2 via Polyvinyl. Usually known for his bare acoustic songs with the occasional extra instrumentation worked in, for his new album he's taking a more full-band approach. You can hear the new sound on the singles "Blues to Black," which you can listen to at Rolling Stone, and "Bad Blood," which you can stream below. The album artwork and tracklist are below too.

As briefly mentioned, Owen will be coming to NYC on Friday (5/24) at Bowery Ballroom for a show with Laura Stevenson and Field Mouse. It's the last date on Laura and Field Mouse's tour together. Tickets for that show are still available and we're also giving away a pair. Details on how to enter to win tickets are below.

Owen has some other upcoming dates after the Bowery Ballroom show. All of them are listed, along with the song stream, album art and tracklist, below...

Continue reading "Owen releasing new LP, playing w/ Laura Stevenson & Field Mouse and other shows (dates, streams, & a chance to win tix)" at brooklynvegan

In anticipation of their appearance at this weekend’s Sasquatch! Music Festival, Arctic Monkeys performed a warm-up show last night at the Ventura Theater in Ventura, CA. The band opened their set with a new song, a slow churner titled “Do I Wanna Know?”, which seems to pick up right where 2011′s Suck It and See left off. Needless to say, the band is probably big fans of

Party like the sun’s shining at Shoreditch’s Village Underground on June 22.

Influential French label Kitsuné are bringing their hugely successful Club Night back to London this summer, and line-up is making us think there might even be some sunshine to go along side it (we should be so lucky). Headed up by acclaimed Norwegian nu-disco pioneer Lindstrøm, the list goes from strength to strength with appearances from Kitsuné veterans Gildas & Jerry Bouthier, LA disco rockers Classixx, fidgety Kitsuné faves Punks Jump Up and fresh Gallic talent Pyramid.

Phew, it might be a pretty long list of names, but knowing Kitsuné they’ll make sure it’s a blissful affair, and promising to bring the sun, sea and sounds to grey old Shoreditch you’ve got to hand it to ‘em – they’re doing the Lord’s work.

For more information and tickets head here.

Krautrock figurehead Conrad Schnitzler might have passed away in 2011, but his influence continues to percolate. 

Training under Joseph Beuys, Schnitzler dipped in and out of some of the most iconic German outfits of the 1970s, working with Kluster, Tangerine Dream and his own Eruption outfit. His thrumming electronic music is often fingered as a crucial link in the DNA of techno and synth wave, and celebrated electronic artists have correspondingly paid tribute; he was “reconfigured” in a 2011 remix set from Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer. Those seeking to scrub up on his life and times were given a lifeline last year in the form of Vinyl On Demand’s ConTainer T1-12: 1971-1983 – an eight disc vinyl box set surveying his 1970/1980s purple patch.

Productive archivists Bureau B are just about to reissue two hard-to-find Schnitzler albums dating back to 1981. Contempora is an expansive compendium of short sketches and half formed pieces, composed on EMS Synthi A and Korg MS10 synthesisers. Conrad And Sohn, meanwhile, is a cosy split LP with his son Gregor; the father handles Side A, the son is represented on the flip.

Both records have been expanded for the occasion. The vinyl edition of Contempora now features eight new tracks, with the CD edition boasting one extra track. The CD edition of Conrad And Sohn, meanwhile, n...

Last night, a night after they served as musical guests on Letterman, the National returned to TV, bringing their debonair and sophisticated gloom-rock to The Colbert Report. On Letterman, though, nobody expected them to sit for an interview. And on Colbert, the clearly nervous-as-fuck singer Matt Berninger had to speak on camera to Stephen Colbert, who proceeded to murder him for being a boring interview. (For the record, I’ve interviewed Berninger before, and I found him to be a delightful talker. But he probably wasn’t nervous to talk to me.)

The band got a chance to redeem themselves, though, when they played the stately, surging Trouble Will Find Me track “Graceless” and then, as an online bonus, also charged through the single “Sea Of Love.” The Colbert website is having some embedding issues right now, but you can watch the full episode here. (The interview is the third segment, and the song is the fourth.) Check out the “Sea Of Love” performance below.

Read More...