Woodsman is an experimental ambient post-psychedelic band based in Denver, CO. The quartet contains two totemic percussionists and two sonic animators who employ electric guitars, feedback loops, and recorded samples to build the dreamy astral soundscapes that define Woodsman’s sound. Influenced by hazy mountain passes, the cinema of Stan Brakhage, and early 1970’s improvisational recordings by Miles Davis Woodsman has crafted aural offerings that are uniquely their own.
WOODSMAN
Jun 29 Daytrotter Quad Cities, IL
Jun 30 Vaudeville Mews Des Moines, IA
Jul 01 The Slowdown Omaha, NE %
Jul 02 Replay Lounge Lawrence, KS
Jul 24 Underground Music Showcase Denver, CO
Aug 10 Hi-Dive Denver, CO !
% = w/ Candy Claws
! = w/ Woven Bones
Woodsman Mystery Tape EP
(Lefse)
Street Date: June 01, 2010
1. Beached
2. When the Morning Comes
3. Hocus Pocus
4. Balance
5. Smells Like Purple
Last year, Screaming Females toured relentlessly in support of their critically acclaimed third album Power Move. Their hard work landed them spots opening for Dinosaur Jr., Throwing Muses, and Jay Reatard, plus dates touring with Arctic Monkeys and the Dead Weather. The year brought them to a wider mainstream consciousness, gaining attention for their punk rock sensibilities and their raucous live shows driven by front woman Marissa Paternoster’s famed guitar heroics.
But Screaming Females’ success did not come overnight: it came after four years of playing over 300 self-booked shows at nontraditional show spaces, sleeping on floors around the country, self-releasing their first two albums, and breathing new life into the New Brunswick, New Jersey DIY basement show circuit. And on their forthcoming September 2010 LP, Castle Talk, the trio proves their abilities as more than just a pint-sized guitar shredder. Castle Talk showcases their growth together as a unit, as a band, with some of their most complex and confident songwriting to date.
“Power Move was the first record that a lot of people had heard by us, and after that came out a lot of people had the same reaction, that Marissa is a woman who can play guitar solos,” says drummer Jarrett Dougherty. “But we are more than just that simplistic observation and I think this record shows that.”
The Screaming Females story starts in New Brunswick in 2005, with Marissa on guitar and vocals, Jarrett on drums, and King Mike on bass. With no all-ages venues in town, the band met their biggest obstacle at the start: finding places to play. But the solution (if there is no venue to play, create your own show space in your basement) was the driving force behind the DIY work ethic that would eventually propel the band forward; the grassroots approach born out of necessity in New Brunswick ultimately.
Screaming Females developed into a mindset that the band now prides itself on. In 2006, the band self-released Baby Teeth, followed by a second self-release in 2007, What If Someone Is Watching Their TV? Simultaneously, learning from trial and error, plus inspiration from reading Our Band Could Be Your Life, the band booked hundreds of shows in DIY spaces, houses, cafes, and side-of-road co-ops. Power Move was Screaming Females’ first full-length with any label (or any outside help, really), released by New Brunswick label Don Giovanni Records. The label mirrors the band’s values, champions their hometown, and most importantly, is run by their friends.
In 2010, the band has continued their non-stop touring, including a February tour with Jeff the Brotherhood, two tours with fellow Jersey punk Ted Leo and his band the Pharmacists, a national headlining tour, and a spot on the Village Voice’s annual Siren Fest. The band says that thus far the highlight of 2010 was the sold out Don Giovanni Records showcase in February at Bowery Ballroom, which filled one of New York City’s biggest venues with the energy of a New Brunswick basement show. Like Power Move, Castle Talk was recorded at the Hunt Studio in New Jersey with engineer, Eric Bennet, but with a new approach to writing and recording. The record is out September 14th via Don Giovanni.
SCREAMING FEMALES
07/17 - Brooklyn, NY - Siren Fest
Screaming Females Castle Talk
(Don Giovanni)
Street Date: Sept. 14
Laura And Marty
I Don’t Mind It
Boss
Normal
A New Kid
Fall Asleep
Wild
Nothing At All
Sheep
Deluxe
Ghost Solo
Affected noises and guitar lines dance around the mist creating a current of shiny sounds, all underlined by a pulse of Rock and Roll. Electric Sunset is a new, solo project from Nic Zwart. The debut album, Electric Sunset [KLP221] is a distillation of ambient music into spiky pop songs with loud synthetic percussion and muscular bass lines. Lyrically, the album is a journal of sorts. The descriptions of loss, love, fear and self discovery coincide with the stops and starts of moving down the coast from the Pacific Northwest to San Francisco. Old memories rising through the windshield, new promises illuminated by headlights. Using synthesizers, guitar, modified samplers and computers, Zwart recorded this album over the course of three months in Washington and California.
Nic has toured the US and Europe extensively with his former band, Desolation Wilderness. Both groups have emerged as expansive expressions of movement; recordings about new places, the infinite possibilities afforded by never staying still long enough to take root. Now, he is primed to take Electric Sunset on the road following paths already travelled, and creating new ones, existing as an electric hum on the highway.
ELECTRIC SUNSET
06/30 - San Francisco, CA Sub-Art Museum !
07/07 - Berkeley, CA 2703 Fullerston St. $
08/21 - Rochester, WA Helsing Junction Farm
“It’s a simulacrum of what the band of my dreams sounds like,” says Brad Laner, the angled summer light pouring into his cozy home studio. LPs line the walls; Yes is on the turntable. A green lawn stretches outside. An easel, six-year-old sized, sits next to a guitar. A computer monitor glows. A dog taps down the hallway. “Natural Selections is unashamedly all artifice, all pretend, all construction. Now, for me, it’s all about making records in a painstakingly slow fashion, laboring over five seconds of music at a time for months on end only to trash it and start all over again ad infinitum or until I’m happy. In between packing lunches.”
The pop music of Brad Laner (a relatively new concept in its own right) has a respect for the inevitable tick-tock of time. Crafted in a sprawling mid-century house between multi-centuries of California mountains — with family in the next room over — there’s proven stability underfoot. But as wildfires desaturated the west coast sky last year, as the earth caught up to man, Natural Selections was born. Brad Laner’s second solo album is an evolution; the first adrenaline-stirring drum hit of “Eyes Close” gets picked up by the lava flow of voice upon voice upon voice (all Brad’s). The guitar climbs like kudzu. The beat kicks in. Eyes open. And you’re back on Sunset Boulevard.
Steaming Coils. Savage Republic. Medicine. Electric Company. Amnesia. Lusk. The Internal Tulips. The house that Brad Laner built spans twenty-five years and as many LPs, paving the way for shoegaze in North America and sewing the seeds of electronica in the median of that same dusty highway. His label resumé includes the likes of New Alliance (The Minutemen’s imprint), Creation, Def American, Island, Tigerbeat6, Planet Mu, and Astralwerks. In 2007, Brad Laner joined Hometapes and released his first true solo album under his own name. Born alongside his son, Julian, this “debut” was a hand-built bridge from one life to the next. Years of touring the world and balancing the machinations of band life provided the foundation for both looking back and looking beyond. A child provided a new lens. The light refracted: Neighbor Singing, a ten-track “sun-splattered psych-popper” (according to Stereogum), co-produced by Thom Monahan (of Vetiver and Brightblack fame), featuring tracks like “June Gloom” and “Find Out” that threatened to bring summer to the coldest climes and the electric-guitar-susceptible to their knees.
“I would like to hereby apologize to anybody who wishes to see my stuff played live. I would too actually, but only if I got to watch from a safe distance.” Echoing the history of voices that’ve run counter to the gospel of the music industrial complex (The Beatles, Brian Eno, XTC, etc.), Brad Laner makes records to be experienced as just that: records. “My albums always have a distinct side one and side two by design because that’s the language I grew up with. What else could you possibly need aside from great cover art?”
In the case of Natural Selections, Julian Laner, also an album contributor on “Vicky,” comprises the striking cover image. Brad himself caught this family portrait-cum-primitive study in a hillside park in their neighborhood. Brad, the elder Laner, appears elsewhere in the record’s packaging, walking the same path as Julian, viewing the expanse with a time-traveler’s gaze. It’s in that moment, and in moments across Natural Selections, where the mundane turns extraordinary, where a song becomes a brilliant event, and where a memory actually turns out to be a precognition. Brad Laner makes records that double as realizations. Realizations with really, really killer guitar solos.
Brad Laner Natural Selections
(Hometapes)
Street Date: Aug. 24, 2010
01. Eyes Close
02. Throat
03. Lancaster
04. Crawl Back In
05. Magnolia Doubles
06. Brain
07. Why Did I Do It
08. Dirty Bugs
09. Vicky
10. Runner
11. Little Death
Woodsman
