Matthew Friedberger is one half of the brother and sister duo The Fiery Furnaces. After 3 years of work, he has completed his first solo release, a double album titled Winter Women / Holy Ghost Language School, which will hit stores on August 8, 2006 - it’s also the first release on the newly formed label 859 Recordings run by Keith Wood in upstate New York.

The first disc, Winter Women, clocking in at one hour, showcases Friedberger’s strength as a songwriter, and features some of the most accessible pop songs he’s ever written, including the infectious “Ruth versus Richard” and the 60s-tinged “Up the River.” Women is intended to be a summer record, full of memorable, catchy and un-ironic pop songs.

The second disc, Holy Ghost Language School, is more experimental - a 46 minute sonic novel with the requisite backwards guitars and strange samples which makes Matt’s work so original. It veers closer to some of the Furnaces’ more experimental outings, but it’s not outright noise, the album as a whole is bound by a strange sense of structure. Some reference points for this record might be Faust, The Residents, or the most “out” moments of Brian Eno’s solo records.

Matt wrote and arranged all the music, played all the instruments (except for some drumming from John McEntire from Tortoise on a few tracks), and sings all the songs. The record was co-produced by Bill Skibbe at Key Club Recording at Benton Harbor, Michigan in March of this year.

The Fiery Furnaces launch their European tour this Thursday in Manchester and will wrap it up with an appearance at All Tomorrow’s Parties on May 20th. In June they’ll be touring the US with a focus on the West Coast and Midwest.

Winter Women track listing:

1. Under The Hood At The Paradise Garage.
2. The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co. Resignation Letter.
3. Up The River.
4. Ruth versus Richard.
5. Her Chinese Typewriter.
6. Big Bill Crib & His Ladies Of The Desert.
7. Don’t You Remember?
8. Betcha Don’t.
9. PS.213 Mini School.
10. Theme From Never Going Home Again.
11. Motorman.
12. Quick As Cupid.
13. I Love You Cedric.
14. Servant In Distress.
15. Hialeah.
16. Wisconsin River Blues.

Holy Ghost Language School track listing:

1. Seventh Loop Highway.
2. Holy Ghost Language School.
3. The Cross And The Switchblade.
4. I Started Drinking Alcohol At The Age Of Eleven.
5. Do You Like Blondes?
6. Azusa St.
7. Topeka and San Antonio.
8. A Mystical Preparative To Lewdness.
9. Ship Scrap Beach Business.
10. First Day Of School.
11. Things Were Going So Well.
12. All In Vain Or The Opposite.
13. Moral and Epilouge.

www.thefieryfurnaces.com

www.859recordings.com - coming soon

Glass Candy and Chromatics, two Portland, OR bands on the Troubleman Unlimited label, will hit the road together this summer for US and European tours.

Both bands have recently released singles taking them into a decisively more dance / disco oriented direction - Glass Candy released the single Iko late last year and Chromatics have a brand new single, Nite. Glass Candy’s new direction embraces the stripped down stomp of current top 40 rap, while lyrically exploring a doo-wop tragedy over synthesized pulses. On Nite, Chromatics explore everything from a down-tempo narrative to a vocoder driven club song that sounds like Giorgio Moroder spilling his drink on Claudio Simonetti on the way to the dance floor. Both groups share a hazardous approach to making records.

The live shows from both acts are raw and even more unpredictable than they are on record. Using a live drummer to flesh out the 808 drum machine, Glass Candy rolls out the red carpet for its master of ceremonies, Ida No, to do whatever she pleases, which occasionally includes singing, while the band switches, without apology, between a mangled metal guitar and synth. Chromatics crash between punk and electro, successfully offending both camps.

Glass Candy has another single, I Always Say Yes, in the near future and both bands will have new full-lengths this Fall. The Chromatics album is titled Shining Violence and is slated for October, while Glass Candy’s Life After Sundown will drop in November.

http://myspace.com/glasscandy
http://myspace.com/chromaticsmusic
http://myspace.com/troublemanrecords

Fri May 12: Portland, OR Dunes
Thu May 18: Modesto, CA Mustang Bar
Fri May 19: San Francisco, CA Covered Wagon
Sat May 20: Los Angeles, CA Scene Bar
Sun May 21: Los Angeles, CA The Smell
Tue May 23: Juarez, Mexico TBA
Thu May 25: Austin, TX Room 710
Fri May 26: Denton, TX Rubber Gloves
Sun May 28: Houston, TX Rudyard’s
Wed May 31: Memphis, TN Murphy’s
Thu June 1: Nashville, TN The End
Fri June 2: Atlanta, GA MJQ Drunken Unicorn
Sat June 3: Charlotte, NC The Milestone
Sun June 4: Chapel Hill, NC The Nite Lite
Wed June 7: New Haven, CT Bar
Thu June 8: Allston, MA Great Scott
Fri June 9: New York, NY Don Hill’s
Wed June 14: Toronto, ONT Spin Gallery
Fri June 16: Detroit, MI Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit
Sat June 17: Chicago, IL Empty Bottle
Tue June 20: Omaha, NE O’leaver’s
Wed June 21: Kansas City, MO The Pistol
Fri June 23: Denver, CO Hi-Dive
Sat June 24: Salt Lake City, UT Urban Lounge
Fri June 30: Seattle, WA The Crocodile (Glass Candy only)
Sat July 1: Portland, OR Fogland Suites

The Montreal-based instrumental outfit Bell Orchestre will head out on the road on Monday, April 24 for more dates in support of their debut album Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light which was released last year on Rough Trade, including an appearance at the Music NOW festival in Cincinnati on April 30.

According to the band’s frontman / spokesman, Richard Reed Parry (also in The Arcade Fire) “we’re developing material towards a potential collaboration with Montreal dance company LaLaLa Human Steps, although it’s still tentative. We’re gonna be recording a new record later in the year and possibly an EP before that.” The band also plans to tour Europe again in July.

The band will be playing new material on this tour, including a piece Parry is particulary excited about “WITHOUT AMPS OR MICROPHONES! It’s unamplified double bass and french horn and the rest of the band play percussion on the floor/stage. Me and Pietro, the horn player, wrote it on tour in Europe, and without really rehearsing it we just decided to try it out in this beautiful theatre in Sweden that we played, and it worked really well so we’ve been playing it since.”

Tour Dates:

Mon April 24: Northampton, MA Iron Horse
Tue April 25: Clinton, NY The Annex / Hamilton College
Wed April 26: Minneapolis, MN First Avenue
Thu April 27: Cleveland, OH Beachland Ballroom
Fri April 28: Pittsburgh, PA Andy Warhol Museum
Sat April 29: Columbus, OH Wexner Center - Ohio St. University
Sun April 30: Cincinnati, OH Contemporary Arts Center (Music NOW Festival)
Tue May 2: Ferndale, MI Magic Bag
Wed May 3: Kalamazoo, MI Kraftbrau
Thu May 4: Louisville, KY The Clifton Center
Fri May 5: Chicago, IL Logan Square Auditorium (w/ Clogs)
Sun May 7: Milwaukee, WI Pabst Theater

www.bellorchestre.com

The Los Angeles-based Plug Research label announced plans this week to release Mistake Mistake Mistake Mistake, a solo album from James Figurine, AKA Jimmy Tamborello of The Postal Service. The album will hit shelves on July 11, 2006. Tamborello also records as DNTEL and was a member of the synth-pop outfit Figurine. This is his first official full-length release since The Postal Service’s 2003 album Give Up which has sold over 750,000 copies to date.

In November of 2001, Figurine went on a short tour of Germany with Lali Puna. Their European label, Monika, set them up with a driver to get from show to show. She only brought three or four tapes to listen to on the drives, mostly techno. Jimmy had never paid much attention to dancefloor-oriented electronic music, but listening to the same tapes over and over again (especially Kompakt’s pop-leaning Total 3 and some 7”s on Parfum) while driving through Germany made a giant impression on him. So, this record was supposed to be an extra melodic, minimal techno record with some sparse vocals. Instead, his technopop tendencies got the best of me, the songs slowly filled up, and five years later, this is what he ended up with.

John Tejada (Palette Recordings) assisted Tamborello along the way, adding sounds to some of the songs, helping write and arrange a few, and then mixing everything in the end. Sonya Westcott (Arthur and Yu) sang on “55566688833,” Morgan Nagler (Whispertown 2000) contributed some lyrics and vocals to “Pretend It’s A Race And I’m On Your Side,” Erlend Øye (Kings of Convenience, Whitest Boy Alive) sang some words written by designer/animator/poet Geoff McFetridge on ”All The Way To China,” and Jenny Lewis (Rilo Kiley) sang on “You Again.”

Mistake Mistake Mistake Mistake track list:

1. 55566688833
(Additional vocals by Sonya Westcott)
2. Leftovers
3. Ruining the Sundays
4. Pretend It’s A Race and I’m On Your Side
(Featuring vocals by Morgan Nagler)
5. You Again
(Additional vocals by Jenny Lewis)
6. Apologies
7. One More Regret
8. White Ducks
9. All The Way To China
(Vocals by Erlend Øye)
10. Stop