DOWNLOAD: The Holograms Remix EP
VIDEO: “The Holograms” (Director: Keith Musil)
Highland Park, CA’s mysterious pop outfit Fol Chen just released its second album last month, now they are already releasing their second FREE remix EP to accompany the album – “The Holograms” Remix EP features the titular track remixed by Teen Daze, Primary 1, Hard Mix and FUR. The first remix EP for “In Ruins” is still available here. The band is also thrilled to announce that it will be hitting the road this Fall with two very different yet appropriate tour mates, !!! and The Apples in Stereo. This is in addition to their previously announced dates in NYC and Philly with Baths and their LA August residency at The Echo. The residency will feature some interesting theme nights: audience members can come onstage to record live samples for their future album on August 9th, the 16th will feature an “audition” for singers who responded to their Craigslist ad, and the heavy-metal band Viscera ( http://www.myspace.com/viscerathrash ) will be playing the songs of Fol Chen on the 23rd. Take a look at the tour dates below for more info. on those.
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.
FOL CHEN
08/02 Los Angeles, CA The Echo
08/03 New York, NY Mercury Lounge *
08/04 Brooklyn, NY Union Pool *
08/05 Philadelphia, PA Johnny Brenda’s *
08/09 Los Angeles, CA The Echo +
08/16 Los Angeles, CA The Echo #
08/23 Los Angeles, CA The Echo
08/30 Los Angeles, CA The Echo
09/22 Washington, DC Black Cat $
09/23 Boston, MA Royale $
09/24 Northampton, MA Pearl Street $
09/26 Toronto, ON Lee’s Palace $
09/28 Ann Arbor, MI Blind Pig
09/29 Chicago, IL Bottom Lounge $
09/30 Louisville, KY Headliners Music Hall $
10/01 Cleveland, OH Beachland Ballroom $
10/05 Pawtucket, RI The Met Cafe $
10/22 Denver, CO Bluebird Theater $
10/23 Colorado Springs, CO Armstrong Hall $
10/24 Salt Lake City, UT The State Room $
10/26 Seattle, WA Crocodile Cafe $
10/27 Portland, OR Mississippi Studios %
10/28 Arcata, CA The Depot at Humboldt State %
10/30 San Francisco, CA The Independent %
10/31 San Jose, CA Blank Club %
11/02 San Diego, CA Casbah %
11/03 Tuscon, AZ Plush %
11/07 Houston, TX Walter’s On Washington %
11/08 Dallas, TX Granada Theater %
* = w/ Baths
# = w/ Light Pollution, Crocodiles
$ = w/ !!!
% = w/ the Apples in Stereo
+ = featuring live sampling with the audience for source material for Fol Chen’s third album
& = featuring live Craigslist auditions for a new singer
@ = Metal band Viscera performs the songs of Fol Chen!
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