MP3: Dosh - “Yer Face”

MP3: Dosh - “Number 41″

If you’re in Minneapolis, preview the new Dosh album, Tommy, on the jukebox at Triple Rock Social Club

In setting out to create his fifth album for Anticon, Martin Dosh had two goals in mind. First: Get loose. 2008’s Wolves & Wishes took a step in this direction by way of its guests - freewheelers like Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Odd Nosdam - but Dosh records are well-known for their impeccable arrangements. To wit, Andrew Bird used W&W’s “First Impossible” as the rhythmic backbone for a song on last year’s critically acclaimed Noble Beast LP. (Dosh has been collaborating, recording and touring with Bird since 2005.)

Dosh’s second goal seemed to be in direct conflict with the first: To conceive yet thicker terrain for his already seething soundscapes. More drums. More vocals. And new to the Dosh catalog, lots of low end. Against all odds, Tommy skirts critical mass but stays organic, is never overwrought, and miraculously avoids becoming cluttered. Instead, this unique brand of maximalist, rhythmdriven post-rock sweeps lilting beauty, serious beats and even airy moments
into its comely whirlwind.

When Tommy begins, “Subtractions” is already in full swing, as a dark assembly of grunts, buzzing, and kalimba transitions into marimba plunks and note-hopping electric guitar. The song evolves throughout its four minutes, eventually resolving in Tortoise-y figures played out on an array of instruments. “Yer Face” opens on a loop too, but quickly distinguishes itself via standup bass, syncopated keys, and a rare lyrical performance by Dosh. Andrew Bird sings on “Number 41,” over pedal steel and a bassy beat chopped à la Radiohead’s “Pulk/Push Revolving Doors.”

“Town Mouse” plays like a warm, wide-open jam session, with different drum kits coming from different speakers, Dosh humming throughout, and bandmate Mike Lewis’ horns flying over fuzzy Rhodes blurts. True to Dosh’s letting go of control, Lewis actually wrote “Loud,” a gorgeously spare piece that ambles off into the horizon before “Airlift” wraps Tommy’s first half with lo-bit keys and a cut-up sample of Dosh and a friend covering Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell” back in ‘87. “County Road X” tills different soil still, largely focusing on improvised piano and glistening atmospherics.

Next is “Call The Kettle,” a live fan favorite dating back to 2001 that finally gets an official release, albeit one reinvented by the dense, mesmeric thicket of notes played on saxophone, acoustic guitar, and 200-year-old harpsichord (recorded at St. Paul’s Schubert Club music museum). Bird returns to lay his light twang over the heavy feedback wash of “Nevermet,” while the bright epic “Gare De Lyon” slowly builds - for eight and a half minutes - to the album’s close.

On this final song, Dosh stretches out immensely, nursing melodic sprawl through a tense percussive passage and on to a huge finish: an explosion of thrashing bass and drums that burns brightly before the record comes to a crashing halt. The abrupt finale fits Tommy, which is dedicated to and named after Dosh soundman Tom Cesario, a dear friend who unexpectedly passed two Christmases ago. Here, Dosh pays his respects best as he can, coming away with a record inspired by tragedy, but undeniably full of life.

DOSH

Fri 04/09/10 Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry
Sat 04/10/10 Minneapolis, MN - Macphail Center For Music
Sun 04/11/10 Minneapolis, MN - Bedlam Theatre*
Wed 04/14/10 Milwaukee, WI - Cactus Club*
Thu 04/15/10 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle*
Fri 04/16/10 Pontiac, MI - Pike Room*
Sat 04/17/10 Cleveland, OH - Beachland Tavern*
Sun 04/18/10 Toronto, ON - Drake Hotel*
Tue 04/20/10 Montreal, QC - Casa Del Popolo*
Wed 04/21/10 Allston, MA - Great Scott*
Thu 04/22/10 Brooklyn, NY - Union Hall*
Fri 04/23/10 New York, NY - Mercury Lounge*
Sat 04/24/10 Philadelphia, PA - Kungfu Necktie*
Sun 04/25/10 Washington, DC - DC9*
Tue 04/27/10 Asheville, NC - Grey Eagle*
Wed 04/28/10 Atlanta, GA - 529*
Thu 04/29/10 New Orleans, LA - Circle Bar *
Fri 04/30/10 Austin, TX - Emo’s*
Sat 05/01/10 Denton, TX - Hailey’s*
Mon 05/03/10 Tucson, AZ - Solar Culture*
Tue 05/04/10 Tempe, AZ - Sail Inn*
Wed 05/05/10 Los Angeles, CA - Echo*#
Thu 05/06/10 San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill*#
Sat 05/08/10 Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios*
Sun 05/09/10 Seattle, WA - High Dive*
Tue 05/11/10 Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge*
Wed 05/12/10 Denver, CO - Hi-Dive*
Thu 05/13/10 Omaha, NB - Waiting Room*

* with White Hinterland
# = w/ Baths

Dosh
Tommy
(Anticon)
Street Date: April 13, 2010

1. Subtractions
2. Yer Face
3. Number 41
4. Town Mouse
5. Loud
6. Airlift
7. Country Road X
8. Call The Kettle
9. Nevermet
10. Gare de Lyon

DOSH LINKS:
Band Page - www.doshfamily.com

MySpace - myspace.com/doshanticon

Press Materials - anticon.com/pr/dosh.htm

MP3: Noun - “Holy Hell”

With the band Screaming Females, Marissa Paternoster has been known to shred until her fingers bleed. But with her 5-year-old low-profile solo project Noun, Marissa dedicates less time to shrieking and soloing, and more to intricate studio work and lower-key instrumentation.

Holy Hell, the first official Noun release, incorporates keys, organs, and toned-down guitars and drums. The result is clearly different than Screaming Females: it’s mellower, more melodic, and whereas the Screaming Females’ songwriting process is a three-way discussion, Marissa writes all of the songs for Noun.

Similarly to Screaming Females, Marissa’s friends are an important part of Noun. Holy Hell features drum work by Angela Boylan (of Cheeky), Miranda Taylor (Hunchback, Black Wine, Full of Fancy), and Jarrett Dougherty (Screaming Females), plus bass lines by King Mike (Screaming Females). Her Mom designed the artwork, and her friends at New Brunswick label Don Giovanni are releasing the record.

Just as Screaming Females’ signature DIY mindset was born out of necessity (having nowhere to play shows led to booking their own, having no one to release their records led to self-releasing), Marissa’s solo project was also born organically. As a teenager she wanted to be in a band, but couldn’t find people to play with. Instead of waiting to find band-mates, Marissa played all of the instruments herself and recorded her own songs on her father’s laptop.

By the time Marissa started college at Rutgers University, she had around 40 songs recorded. She burned them to CD-Rs and packaged them with Xeroxed artwork. She then passed them around at Rutgers and mailed them to friends. A Noun song on an obscure compilation is even what ultimately led to her meeting Screaming Females drummer Jarrett, which led to the band’s inception.

Holy Hell surfaced naturally over the past year when Marissa began an internship at the Hunt Studio in New Jersey in 2009. She began recording Noun songs in her downtime which eventually evolved into a full length album. The 12-track album is set for release in June 2010.

Don Giovanni Records is holding a two-night showcase / mini-festival at the Mercury Lounge April 24 and 25, with Screaming Females performing the first night and Noun the second night.

NOUN

Apr 25 New York, NY Mercury Lounge

SCREAMING FEMALES

Apr 24 Mercury Lounge New York, NY
Mar 28 JJ’s Bohemia Chattanooga, TN
Mar 29 Vino’s Little Rock, AR
Mar 30 House of Blues Dallas, TX *
Mar 31 The Parish Austin, TX *
Apr 2 One Eyed Jack’s New Orleans, LA *
Apr 3 Club Downunder Tallahassee, FL *
Apr 4 Masquerade Atlanta, GA *
Apr 5 Cat’s Cradle Carrboro, NC *
Apr 6 Tipsy Greenville, NC
Apr 7 Gallery Five Richmond, VA
Apr 8 9:30 Club Washington, DC *
Apr 9 The Fillmore @ Irving Plaza New York, NY *
Apr 10 Paradise Rock Club Boston, MA *

* = w/ Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

NOUN LINKS:

Label Page - http://www.dongiovannirecords.com/

MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/noun

MP3: “Bright Orange Air”
VIDEO: “Bright Orange Air”

Directors: Benjamin and Stefan Ramirez Perez
Website
Vimeo page
A note from the directors: “We first filmed an actor on a rowboat in the studio and then rotoscoped the character and boat, slicing it up into different layers. The environment and lights are animated assets in Adobe AfterEffects. Lastly, we applied the animated textures and combined and overlayed them differently, to achieve the colour range (all the colours were created from 7 colour textures in different sizes and density).”

Bio:
A worrier, childhood choir member, and unfocused student of many instruments, Sebastian Krueger marries the darker ornaments of baroque pop with lo-fi intimacy. Far from his Wisconsin roots and perfunctory piano lessons, he works out of a small Brooklyn apartment as Inlets, incubating songs over the course of months and creating short, dusty suites.

Thanksgiving of 2006 brought the free online release of Inlets’ first offering, the Vestibule EP, an eight-song collection that won round praise from music blogs including Stereogum, Gorilla vs Bear, Said The Gramophone, and Le Blogotheque. Framed by eclectic layers of clustered woodwinds, brass, and percussive guitars, the record captured a personal and raw enterprise. The self-released Vestibule EP has since been downloaded over 40,000 times.

Rather than promote the new project, Krueger dug in and committed to the slow process of writing an ambitious collection of new songs. Now, Inter Arbiter picks up where Vestibule left off, but the scope is wider and the hues are sharper. Krueger has honed his arranging abilities, creating elegant high drama from bursts of strings and discord from jangly cheap guitars.

The somber piano placesetting of “[]” opens Inter Arbiter with wispy clouds of harmony. Delicate finger-picked banjo buoys “Great Exit Lights”, taking dark woodwind deviations through themes of hibernation. “Bright Orange Air,” with it’s winding rhythmic guitars and choired choruses, is an ode to the psychotropic effects of municipal lighting, while “Sunfed Shapes” heaves over lurching reeds and angular chords as an elegy to idleness and want.

Inter Arbiter congealed in the free spaces between working full time at a civil rights organization, adhering to acceptable and neighborly hours for noisemaking, and recurrent existential crises. The self-recorded album has an unexpectedly broad three-dimensional impact for an effort managed nearly entirely within the spartan low fidelity confines of a small apartment bedroom.

Throughout the process of recording Inter Arbiter, Krueger remained a busy collaborator, assisting My Brightest Diamond with woodwinds, playing banjo with Feist on Saturday Night Live, and contributing to records by DM Stith and Marla Hansen. The new record includes help from friends like Beirut frontman Zach Condon, Dirty Projector’s vocalist Angel Deradoorian, as well as cellist Maria Jeffers and violist Marla Hansen of the string quartet Osso.

Inter Arbiter is due April 20th via twosyllable Records.

INLETS

03/15 - Nashville, TN The Basement
03/17 - Austin, TX SXSW Force Field / Terrorbird @ Red 7 - 12 Noon
03/17 - Austin, TX SXSW Elysium - 8pm
03/18 - Austin, TX SXSW Unamplified Brunch @ The Hideout Theatre - 1pm
03/19 - Austin, TX SXSW Progress Day Show @ Progress Coffee - 12 Noon
03/19 - Austin, TX SXSW TwoSyllable / Transparent @ Tiniest Bar In Texas - 3pm
03/19 - Austin, TX SXSW Austinsound.net @ Paper Cloud - 7:30pm
03/22 - Washington, DC DC9
03/24 - Philadelphia, PA The Khyber
04/23 - Brooklyn, NY Union Hall ^

^ = Album release show!

Indian Jewelry is a van gang from Houston, Texas. I to the J. Blood on the streets.

TOTALED is their latest record, and their third album for We Are Free/Monitor Records.

TOTALED is weird, dirty and to the point, a direct line to the one true Indian Jewelry under Heaven.

No genre, no rules, no help.

IJ hasn’t turned away from cracked cymbals, feedback, and burning amps. They’re running them through more fx.

Erika Thrasher and Tex Kerschen wrote and recorded the record in 2009 in Houston and Los Angeles. TOTALED is the sum of hundreds of shows on the road and hundreds of hours under headphones. The songs were developed with Richard Durham, Mary Sharpe, and Rodney Rodriguez.

TOTALED is a crash course in sound + vision. In it is the swamp electro of 2003’s We Are The Wild Beast, the nightmare throb of 2005’s Invasive Exotics, and the sonic angel dream of 2008’s Free Gold. This is an encounter with the true and the truly fucked up… woozy and heartpounding and subject to double-vision.

It’s like arriving to the beach, headspun and weightless after a sleepless night, only to remember that a hurricane has come and wiped almost everything away. Hard grass crawls back over the improvised dunes, a few men fish in the surf, and Tejano music plays from the speakers of a parked pick-up.

If you’re hearing funk, that’s because they spend their time at home playing in Houston’s Prince cover band ‘Diamonds+Pearls.’

If you’re hearing anything else, that’s the sound of Houston underwater.

Other Things.

Erika Thrasher and Tex Kerschen curate the Persuasion exhibition series.
They also run the SWAMPBATS interview site.

SELECTED PRESS
“Indian Jewelry … seem to permanently inhabit a sensual, raw netherworld where curls of smoke drift before your eyes. While not exactly goth, their sound is dark and sort of organically industrial, a soft, ritualistic dronecore conjured from yawning electronic noise, tumbleweed guitar, and disco beats. It’s a growling, prowling, synthetic powwow stomp, glamorous in every sense of the word, but you won’t need a sage or a
sigil to figure it out. This is tantric, orgasmic, blood-warming, bone-rattling music, and I’d give my firstborn to join their cult.” Liz Armstrong, Chicago Reader, 2006.

“For a bunch of wayward hippies there is something completely savage, hypnotic and nocturnal about the psychedelic rumbles of this Houston, Texas-based ensemble.” The Independent UK, 2008

INDIAN JEWELRY

03/12 Denton, TX NX35
03/20 Austin, TX SXSW / Cheer Up Charlie’s AKA Ms. Bea’s
03/21 Monterrey, Mexico MtyMx
04/23 Austin, TX The Mohawk / Austin Psych Fest 3
04/24 Norman, OK Norman Fest

Indian Jewelry
TOTALED
(We Are Free)
Street Date: May 11, 2010

Oceans
Look Alive
Lapis Lazuli
Excessive Moonlight
Sirens
Vison
Tono Bungay
+++++++
Simulation
Diamond Things
Never Been Better
Parlous Siege & Chapel
Heaven’s World Destroyer
Touching the Roof of the Sun
Dog Days

INDIAN JEWELRY LINKS:
MySpace: myspace.com/indianjewelry

Band page: swarmofangels.com

Label: nowwearefree.com