DOWNLOAD: FOL CHEN - IN RUINS REMIX EP -
http://folchen.com/

Feat. remixes from Baths, Keepaway, Kárin Tatoyan and Julian Wass

MP3: “In Ruins” (Baths Remix) -
http://www.forcefieldpr.com/folchenbaths.mp3

It hit the webwaves like a virus, quickly spreading its way to the top of the charts on Hype Machine, making its rounds on blogs and creeping into tweets like an excited facial twitch. “In Ruins” is the dystopian feel-good dance track for spring, and signals good things to come on Fol Chen’s sophomore release, Part II: The New December, out in early July. Kárin Tatoyan takes vocal lead on “In Ruins” - whose playful escapism recalls Fol Chen’s earlier hit, “Cable TV” - as an Eastern melody rings out from a vintage Madonna-ish mélange of cutup funk, fuzz bass and tinkling ivories. The song speaks to a bleak landscape, a post-apocalyptic urban warfare, yet our protagonist finds a hope in the beauty of a lover as their face is illuminated by siren lights.

The virus has now mutated into remixes and alternate versions by drum-n-tape newcomer Baths, the woozy chant-funk of Keepaway, the ghostwhisperings of Kárin Tatoyan and the sunken treasure hunter and Fol Chen member Julian Wass. These new strains have been collected, identified and neatly displayed for further study. This collection proves that In Ruins proves to be sexy, deadly, and contagious as ever.

Starting today, the EP will be released for free through Folchen.com and Asthmatic Kitty’s website as part of the recruitment initiative spearheaded by the Subcommittee for Post-Adolescent Indoctrination.

PRESS QUOTES ON REMIX EP CONTRIBUTORS

Baths
“As Baths, Chatsworth, Calif.’s Will Wiesenfeld connects the dots between the sun-drenched haze of glo-fi torchbearers (Washed Out, Toro Y Moi) and the woozy beat math that lights the spliffs of Los Angeles’ Brainfeeder collective (Flying Lotus, the Gaslamp Killer).” - Pitchfork

Keepaway
“… equally at ease with infusing the sample-stitched Feels-ings (Animal Collective) with straight up indie rock guitars and instant hooks. This is one inevitable avenue for post-Pavilionblog-pop; Keepaway are already mapping its course.” - Stereogum

Kárin Tatoyan
“Haunting” is too terrestrial to ascribe to the voice and sounds of this 24-year-old LA-based chanteuse–when Kárin Tatoyan opens her mouth, ghosts gather to take notes. After a few years unraveling quiet etherea from a piano bench, Tatoyan was reborn as baroque banshee.” - Coachella Magazine

Bio:
For its second album, Highland Park sextet Fol Chen presents Part II: The New December, songs of malaise and miscommunication set to dark pop and glitch-riddled chamber funk. Since the band’s inception, Fol Chen has remained a mysterious entity - its membership disguised by masks and aliases, its lyrics appearing as transmissions from a fictional world. But just as the on-album narrative has congealed in bits and pieces, the group’s real-life story has grown in tangible ways.

Fol Chen’s wildly eclectic 2009 debut, Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made, spawned some healthy praise (from NPR, no less), a remix album (featuring No Kids and Junior Vasquez, among others), a BBC session, and a video collaboration with the Laker Girls. It also paved the way for a pair of uniquely inspired covers: Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones” (recorded for Spin) and Pink Floyd’s “In The Flesh” (for Mojo). Fol Chen’s bent, blackened takes on the pop eccentrics of yore provided fresh context for its own kaleidoscopic songs, and The New December shores up the group’s slippery identity further still. This is Fol Chen’s most focused work - as consistent as it is consuming, as enjoyable as it is unusual.

The plot, steeped in a Bowie-esque sense of puckish melodrama, picks up with the malevolent John Shade vanquished. Unfortunately, the struggle alluded to in Part I has left Fol Chen’s world frayed - covered in ash, plagued by acid rain - and its population dazed. The members of Fol Chen, once a ragtag team of insurgents, are now bureaucrats forced to sit back and watch as the cipher they relied upon to defeat Shade mutates into a virus that eats words indiscriminately. Things unravel as The New December progresses, with Fol Chen enlisting a handful of familiar voices - Angus and Aaron of Liars, L.A. chanteuse Kárin Tatoyan, singer-songwriter Simone White - to help tell the tale.

What the press has said about Fol Chen:

“Sinister fun” - Los Angeles Magazine

“L.A.’s best new band? Probably. Fol Chen’s beguiling, witty synth-pop with guitar, funky keyboards and West Coastian harmonies.” - LA Weekly

“[Fol Chen] has already garnered online buzz with the first single, “Cable TV.” The wildly infectious dance tune begins with a dash of sitar before digital blips and drum machine hand claps jump in, with smooth female vocals. “Won’t you come away with me?” she asks…The result is a record that balances light and dark, and is fresh enough to hold listeners captive.” - NPR

“Eclectic enigmas devise eerie pop conundrums.” - SPIN

“Fol Chen has a tasty way about them with a minty tang reminiscent of Hot Chip, Subtle and other quality contemporary layer lifters and psyche pokers…So hardtack-slippery, so jagged-smooth, so bouncing-still is what Fol Chen has wrought that pinning it down in “reviewer-speak” seems a disservice. It’s catchy as f*** in places and a touch scary in others but it’s never a dull ride.” - Jambase

“The music itself is alternately catchy and dark, following a typical story arc with moments high and low, jubilant and brooding…the result is a disc whose intricate songs fuel both cerebral readings and trips to the dance floor.” - Impose

“The Highland Park-based combo plays deadpan electro-pop that should be all arched eyebrows, but it’s arranged so warmly and invitingly that its precision feels less cold than careful.” - Los Angeles Times

“There’s a little bit of Grizzly Bear/Animal Collective density in their sound, but Fol Chen are poppier, sunnier, befitting a West Coast disposition.” - Brooklyn Vegan

FOL CHEN

04/27 San Francisco, CA Slim’s *
04/29 Portland, OR Hawthorne Theatre *
04/30 Vancouver, BC VenueCanada *
05/01 Seattle, WA Neumo’s *
07/06 Los Angeles, CA The Echo - Album release show!
07/13 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue *
07/14 Madison, WI High Noon Saloon *
07/15 Milwaukee, WI Turner Hall *
07/17 Detroit, MI Magic Stick *
07/18 Newport, KY The Southgate House *
07/20 Nashville, TN Exit / In *
07/21 Bloomington, IN Rhino’s Youth Center *
07/22 St. Louis, MO Firebird *
07/23 Lawrence, KS Bottleneck *
07/24 Denver, CO Bluebird *

* = w/ Liars

Fol Chen
Part II: The New December
(Asthmatic Kitty)
Street Date: July 6, 2010

1. The Holograms
2. In Ruins
3. Your Curtain Call
4. This Is Where the Road Belongs
5. Men, Beasts or Houses
6. C/U
7. Adeline (You Always Look So Bored)
8. The Holes
9. They Came To Me
10. The New December

FOL CHEN LINKS

Twitter - http://twitter.com/folchen

Band page - http://www.folchen.com

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

Press Materials - http://asthmatickitty.com/fol-chen

VIDEO: “Airlift” (Dir. by Shal Ngo)

MP3: “Number 41″ (Feat. Andrew Bird)

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

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 - http://www.doshfamily.com

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

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

MP3: “In Ruins” (Keepaway Remix)

MP3: “In Ruins”

For its second album, Highland Park sextet Fol Chen presents Part II: The New December, songs of malaise and miscommunication set to dark pop and glitch-riddled chamber funk. Since the band’s inception, Fol Chen has remained a mysterious entity - its membership disguised by masks and aliases, its lyrics appearing as transmissions from a fictional world. But just as the on-album narrative has congealed in bits and pieces, the group’s real-life story has grown in tangible ways.

Fol Chen’s wildly eclectic 2009 debut, Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made, spawned some healthy praise (from NPR, no less), a remix album (featuring No Kids and Junior Vasquez, among others), a BBC session, and a video collaboration with the Laker Girls. It also paved the way for a pair of uniquely inspired covers: Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones” (recorded for Spin) and Pink Floyd’s “In The Flesh” (for Mojo). Fol Chen’s bent, blackened takes on the pop eccentrics of yore provided fresh context for its own kaleidoscopic songs, and The New December shores up the group’s slippery identity further still. This is Fol Chen’s most focused work - as consistent as it is consuming, as enjoyable as it is unusual.

The plot, steeped in a Bowie-esque sense of puckish melodrama, picks up with the malevolent John Shade vanquished. Unfortunately, the struggle alluded to in Part I has left Fol Chen’s world frayed - covered in ash, plagued by acid rain - and its population dazed. The members of Fol Chen, once a ragtag team of insurgents, are now bureaucrats forced to sit back and watch as the cipher they relied upon to defeat Shade mutates into a virus that eats words indiscriminately. Things unravel as The New December progresses, with Fol Chen enlisting a handful of familiar voices - Angus and Aaron of Liars, L.A. chanteuse Kárin Tatoyan, singer-songwriter Simone White - to help tell the tale.

Tatoyan takes lead on “In Ruins” - whose playful escapism recalls Fol Chen’s earlier hit, “Cable TV” - as an Eastern melody rings out from a vintage Madonna-ish mélange of cut-up funk, fuzz bass and tinkling ivories.

What the press has said about Fol Chen:

“Sinister fun” - Los Angeles Magazine

“There’s a little bit of Grizzly Bear/Animal Collective density in their sound, but Fol Chen are poppier, sunnier, befitting a West Coast disposition.” - Brooklyn Vegan

FOL CHEN

04/27 San Francisco, CA Slim’s *
04/29 Portland, OR Hawthorne Theatre *
04/30 Vancouver, BC VenueCanada *
05/01 Seattle, WA Neumo’s *
07/13 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue *
07/14 Madison, WI High Noon Saloon *
07/15 Milwaukee, WI Turner Hall *
07/17 Detroit, MI Magic Stick *
07/18 Newport, KY The Southgate House *
07/20 Nashville, TN Exit / In *
07/21 Bloomington, IN Rhino’s Youth Center *
07/22 St. Louis, MO Firebird *
07/23 Lawrence, KS Bottleneck *
07/24 Denver, CO Bluebird *

* = w/ Liars

Fol Chen
Part II: The New December
(Asthmatic Kitty)
Street Date: July 6, 2010

1. The Holograms
2. In Ruins
3. Your Curtain Call
4. This Is Where the Road Belongs
5. Men, Beasts or Houses
6. C/U
7. Adeline (You Always Look So Bored)
8. The Holes
9. They Came To Me
10. The New December

FOL CHEN LINKS:

Twitter - http://twitter.com/folchen

Band page - http://www.folchen.com

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

Press Materials - http://asthmatickitty.com/fol-chen

Collection of ‘Lost Recordings’ out July 20 via American Dust in the US, Bella Union outside the US

STREAM: “Brightest Minds”

Daniel Rossen and Fred Nicolaus, known collectively as Department of Eagles, have released relatively little music together, and their catalog may seem a bit schizophrenic. How did they develop from college roommates goofing off with sampling software into the harbingers of an atmospheric and grandiose symphonic pop sound? Archive 2003 - 2006, comprising lost recordings by the pair, provides the missing piece in this process.

By 2004, Rossen and Nicolaus had grown weary of the piecemeal, tossed-off quality of their first album, 2003’s The Cold Nose. Partly inspired by bootlegs of SMiLE and Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, they began writing bits and pieces that reflected an interest in a kind of sophisticated, dark Americana. At the end of their time at New York University Rossen recorded a series of short piano-based pieces in the school practice rooms, included here as the “Practice Room Sketches.” These pieces were casual experiments in recording and layering, but they contain some DNA for both the style and substance of the songs he would write over the next few years, both for Department of Eagles and Grizzly Bear. (For example, a small section of “Practice Room Sketch 1″ became the basis for Grizzly Bear’s “Easier.”) Through 2005 Rossen and Nicolaus traded demos and decided that if they were going to record again, they would do so without samples, and the songs would originate from a more sincere place.

In January 2006 the band began a month-long session intended to produce their sophomore album. In retrospect, they had before them a rather ambitious endeavor - to produce and engineer a complete album using professional-grade equipment with which they were unfamiliar, recording every single part in about a month’s time. Alone in an enormous condo-turned-recording studio, they wrote and recorded songs in six-hour spans, staying up into the morning to write lyrics, teaching themselves to layer cello parts to create full string arrangements (what would become the epic ending to the low-key masterwork “Golden Apple”), but ultimately grew exhausted and discouraged.

In the end the “January Sessions” were deemed a failure, but as Nicolaus points out in the liner notes to this collection, they were a necessary failure. It was the first time the pair had tried to record a complete album.

In addition to the tracks from the “January Sessions” this collection also includes a b-side recorded in New York with some production by Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear entitled “While We’re Young.” Cobbling together home recorded vocals and sounds on top of a more polished rhythm section recorded with Taylor, “While We’re Young” blends the playful experimentation of Department of Eagles’ early days with the large scale arranging style later heard on In Ear Park.

Waggish and at times breathtakingly intimate, this set showcases the development of Department of Eagles’ detailed approach to crafting sounds. Archive 2003 — 2006 captures their songwriting at a few moments of critical development and provides the template for the ambitious, sprawling pop of their later accomplishments.

Department of Eagles
Archive 2003-2006
(American Dust)
US Street Date: July 20, 2010
UK Street Date: July 19, 2010

1. Practice Room Sketch 1
2. Deadly Disclosure
3. While We’re Young
4. Grand Army Plaza
5. Practice Room Sketch 2
6. Brightest Minds
7. Practice Room Sketch 3
8. Flip
9. Practice Room Sketch 4 (Tired Hands)
10. Golden Apple
11. Practice Room Sketch 5

DEPARTMENT OF EAGLES LINKS:
Artist page: http://www.departmentofeagles.com/

Label: http://americandust.net/