i think i better follow you around

Mild Orange have announced the release of their album, “Looking For Space”, out February 11th via AWAL.

TRACKLIST:

1. Colourise
2. F.E.A.R
3. The Time Of Our Lives (Extended)
4. This Kinda Day
5. Oh Yeah
6. What’s Your Fire (Extended)
7. Take A Moment
8. Aurora
9. Hollywood Dreams 10. Music.
11. Photographics

With the album’s announcement, a new single/video release also occurred. The new single is for the track “Oh Yeah”, the video was directed by Simon Levalois-Bazer.

This is Mild Orange third album and frontman/producer Mehrtens, lead guitarist Josh Reid, bassist Tom Kelk, and drummer Jack Ferguson aren’t just looking for space, they’re carving out grand landscapes all their own. Midway through recording the album, Mehrtens came down with pneumonia and pleurisy, a single breath capable of leaving him in excruciating pain. The experience not only changed the perspective of the rest of the record, but of Mehrtens’ life. He shared: “That put me into some pretty dark spaces, but I’m an optimist, so I was searching for the beauty in the dark.”

The New Zealand quartet will go on a quick USofA tour, they will play the Soda Bar on February 26 and they will also play Mexico City on March 4th, before going to Europe.

Los Planetas han anunciado el lanzamiento de su nuevo disco, “Las Canciones Del Agua” editado bajo su propio sello El Ejército Rojo.

TRACKLIST:. 1.El manantial
2.Se quiere venir
3.Alegrías de Graná
4.La morralla
5.La nueva normalidad
6.El negacionista
7.El rey de España
8.El apocalipsis zombie
9.El antiplanetismo

5 de las nueve canciones ya habían sido estrenadas desde el principio de la pandemia. Las otras 4 fueron escritas para completar lo que es el 10o album de Los Planetas. Jota ofreció sus comentarios sobre cada canción.

1. El Manantial: “Es un poema de Federico García Lorca que conocí hace unos nueve años. Me pareció fascinante, además, tiene una métrica muy musical. Lorca era también un músico, se puede escuchar en las adaptaciones que hacía al piano de canciones populares. Buscando un sentido al disco lo encontré en una frase de esta pieza; así dice el poema: “El resumen de un cielo de verano era el gran chopo./ Mansas y turbias de penumbra yo sentía las canciones del agua”, el manantial del que surgen todas las canciones, toda la música, toda la poesía. Es la canción más larga de Los Planetas [12 minutos y 23 segundos].

2. Se Quiere Venir: “Una versión de una canción del granadino Khaleb, ex del grupo Pxxr Gvng. Esta escena urbana surgió en un circuito totalmente distinto al del rock en Granada. Yo no tenía conocimiento de ellos. Los descubrí en YouTube, cuando empezaron a colgar sus cosas. Creo que es una escena muy interesante. Hemos hecho Se quiere venir con un ritmo diferente a la original. Hay algunos cambios ligeros, para darle un tono más personal”.

3. Alegrías de Graná: “Está tocada por un guitarrista flamenco, Edu Espín, que es el hijo de Carmen Linares y trabaja mucho con Soleá Morente. Es voz, palmas y guitarras, unas alegrías tradicionales. Una canción de rock tocada con un compás de alegrías. Al final el rock and roll y el flamenco son parecidos porque es música de guitarras. Partes de la letra están sacadas del cancionero popular. Voy apuntando cosas que me gustan o me parecen ingeniosas, como ‘la madre que te parió se merece una corona y tú te mereces dos”.

4. La Morralla: “Es de Carlos Cano, de su disco de 1977 A la luz de los cantares, donde también está La murga de los currelantes. Me gusta mucho ese disco. Lo escuchaba cuando era niño en Radio Granada. Está editado por el sello Gong que montó Gonzalo García Pelayo. De hecho estuve hablando con él para que produjera el disco entero, pero no cuadraron las fechas. Espero que trabajemos juntos en breve. Le tengo una gran admiración a Carlos Cano. En un concierto homenaje a él en Granada hace unos años toqué La morralla y me gustó cómo salía. Encaja mucho por estar situada en el disco como transición de la parte de Granada y la Global, porque es una canción que tiene mucho contenido social. ‘La morralla’ era la expresión con la que denominaban las clases dominantes a las clases populares, en plan despectivo. Pero Carlos Cano le da un sentido a la palabra totalmente opuesto y al final resulta hasta bonito”.

5. La Nueva Normalidad: “La compuse sobre las imágenes que encontré en internet de los asaltos y saqueos por la muerte de George Floyd y la irrupción del movimiento Black Lives Matter. Lo curioso es que esas imágenes apenas se han visto en medios. Y están ahí, en el vídeo de Los Planetas. Alguna vez habrá que pasar de las palabras a los hechos. Tenemos que reaccionar de alguna manera porque como sigamos perdiendo derechos y libertades al ritmo que vamos nos van a quedar muy poquitos. Alguien tendrá que hacer algo al respecto”.

6. El Negacionista: “La idea es no se puede confiar en un sistema que hace las cosas tan mal y que manipula la información o que utiliza tácticas para enfrentar a la gente. No me siento parte de eso. Ahora incluso hay menos gente trabajando en la sanidad pública. Hay un descontrol bastante considerable y no parece que se estén tomando soluciones. Si hay un problema sanitario lo que habrá que hacer es dotar más a la sanidad y no quitarle recursos”.

7. El Rey De España: “Es una canción sobre la estructura de poder a la que estamos sometidos y sobre a quiénes se piden responsabilidades de los problemas. En este caso es sobre el jefe del ejército, alguien impuesto por el ejército y la policía al que nadie obedecería si no hubiera una amenaza violenta. Pero no parece que tome nadie responsabilidades sobre lo que está pasando. Al contrario, parece que se pide responsabilidades a los jóvenes que salen de fiesta o a los que no se quieren vacunar”.

8. El Apocalipsis Zombie: “Son los zombies de las películas clásicas de George A. Romero. Son ideas sacadas de esas películas que representan muy bien hacía dónde van las cosas en la actualidad, con gente cada vez con menos capacidad de entender lo que está pasando, con menos recursos para afrontar la vida”.

9. El Antiplanetismo: “Está muy bien expresar las opiniones libremente, pero no está tan bien seguir como borregos las opiniones de otros. Eso es lo que me molesta, que la gente no piense por sí misma. Las clases populares son las que más están manipuladas por la propaganda del sistema: los típicos obreros de derechas. La propaganda llega a todos los rincones. Creo que necesitamos más pensamiento crítico, más análisis de la realidad. Lo que se ve es la pérdida de renta que tienen las clases trabajadoras y el aumento de renta que tienen las clases especuladoras. Está todo fabricado para este trasvase de la renta de las clases trabajadoras a los bolsillos de las especuladoras”.

Greg Puciato has teamed with Carpenter Brut launching the single and video “Imaginary Fire”, off what is Carpenter Brut upcoming album”Leather Terror” out April 1st.

TRACKLIST:. Opening Title
Straight Outta Hell
The Widow Maker
Imaginary Fire
… Good Night, Goodbye
Day Stalker
Night Prowler
Lipstick Masquerade
Color Me Blood
Stabat Mater
Paradisi Gloria
Leather Terror

The video was directed by Dean Sora.

Puciato shared this about the collaboration:
“This came out of the blue, my buddy and bandmate Ben Koller (Converge, Killer Be Killed, Mutoid Man) linked Carpenter Brut and myself. Peak excitement for me about this one. CB and I were already very familiar with, and fans of, each other’s work, so he sent me the instrumental, and I wrote the vocals, and that was that. Straight to the point, no real crazy process with this one. Here’s the music. Okay cool, here are the vocals to that music. Done. It came out really fast, one of the faster ones ever, for me at least, very lightning in a bottle feeling overall, where the melodies and phrasings and lyrics all sorta come through at once, in a really quick stream of consciousness burst. That’s a special thing that doesn’t happen too often, and you hope that it somehow now and then keeps happening. One-off collaborations are great because you can really just focus all of your energy on one track; not an album, not a band, not ten songs on your fifth album, just one singular song-length intersection. I’m really proud of this one, happy to cross these musical paths. I love how the video turned out too. Lyrically the song is pretty to the point. Two people frustratingly trying to get rid of their fears and their made-up bullshit so they can move forward, together or separate, free of outcome.”

Brut shared this: “After spending much of 2018 touring, I had decided to take a long break to compose the new album of the trilogy. The pandemic confirmed that my choice to stay home was the right one. I ended up taking over a year and a half to compose this album. I made a lot of decisions with the time I had that I wouldn’t have had time to make if the pandemic hadn’t happened. I wanted to make the whole thing as massive as possible. There is no guitar on this album. I did everything with synths. Even though I didn’t know exactly how I wanted the album to sound at first, I knew I wanted it to be massive and violent.”

The Smile have released a second single, “The Smoke, off their upcoming debut album which should/will? be released sooner rather than later.

The video was done by Mark Jenkin. The band is joined by tuba player Theon Cross and jazz trumpeter Byron Wallen, along with saxophonists Chelsea Carmichael and Jason Yarde, trombonist Nathaniel Cross and Robert Stillman.

The band has 3 shows scheduled at Magazine London on January 29th and 30th and in a press release said this: “The performances bring together a live show, a livestream, and a cinematic film, captured by award-winning director, Paul Dugdale and produced by Driift.” The broadcasts for the 3 shows are broken down as follows:

BROADCAST #1: London – 8PM Sat. / New York – 3PM Sat. / Los Angeles – 12PM Sat. / Sydney – 7AM Sun. / Tokyo – 5AM Sun.

BROADCAST #2: London – 1AM Sun. / New York – 8PM Sat. / Los Angeles – 5PM Sat. / Sydney – 12PM Sun. / Tokyo – 10AM Sun.

BROADCAST #3: London – 11AM Sun. / New York – 6AM Sun. / Los Angeles – 3AM Sun. / Sydney – 10PM Sun. / Tokyo – 8PM Sun.

Kee Avil has announced that her new album, “Crease”, will be out March 11th via Constellation Records.

TRACKLIST:

1. See, my shadow
2. Saf
3. Drying
4. Melting Slow
5. And I
6. Okra Ooze
7. I too, bury
8. Devil’s sweet tooth
9. HHHH
10. Gone Again

With the announcement of her new album also comes a new video for the new single “Saf”. Kee Avil shared this about it: ” ‘Saf’ is visualised by a mesmerising moving image based around a wax piece by Douglas Scholes. Experimentation with colour and texture, that maybe clashes or complements or both.”

Previously she had shared the amazing opening track of her new album as the lead single. The video for “See, my shadow” was done from a concept by Kee Avil.

Kee Avil shared this: “Songwriting, to me, is like sculpting. It stems from an initial word, emotion or sound, which I then build on, molding it into a more refined shape, glued into an artificial structure. Other times, my role is to peel it, scrape at its exterior, to reveal its natural state and its part within the whole. I’m led by these initial ideas; not to polish but to translate abstraction into sound and imagery. This process of decoding can be tedious; other times it’s immediate, each idea giving birth to another, together building their own cohesion. I like raw, tumbling sculptures, sometimes held together by nothing more than intent. Crease wasn’t written with a specific narrative in mind, it was produced over a period of three years, each song written and recorded subsequently. Each represents a certain moment in time, an emotion, exercise or spontaneous idea that creates its own world. Each of these worlds was built without consideration for the other. It felt impossible to me, once I would enter the atmosphere of a song, to try to start another until that idea was finished. Once assembled, the album presents a narrative as the songs want it told.”

No tour dates for the USofA (or Tijuana) have been announced yet.

Jake Xerxes Fussell has released his 4th album, “Good And Green Again” via Paradise Of Bachelors.

TRACKLIST:

1. Love Farewell
2. Carriebelle
3. Breast Of Glass
4. Frolic
5. Rolling Mills Ate Burning Down
6. What Did The Hen Duck Say To The Drake?
7. The Golden Willow Tree
8. In Florida
9. Washington

Album opener “Love Farewell”, featuring some beautiful singing by Bonnie “Prince” Billy, rings that bell with an elliptical tale of the folly of war, set to the world’s most heartbreaking goodbye march for a lover left behind.

“Rolling Mills Are Burning Down,” with its distant keening strings and capacious sense of space, observes and mourns the loss of work and community in the wake of elemental disaster.

Overall Good and Green Again sounds a little sadder and slower than Fussell’s past records, well, maybe we’re all a little sadder and slower these days. A smoldering mood of regret and loss pervades, a distinct vibe of vanitas. But three airy instrumentals, all Fussell originals—“Frolic,” “What Did the Hen Duck Say to the Drake?,” and “In Florida”—punctuate the program, offering respite and light in the form of crisp, shuffling play-party tunes, each in turn somewhat more hopeful and exuberant than the last. Their resemblance to lullabies is, perhaps, not coincidental. Fussell and his partner welcomed their first child into the world during the making of Good and Green Again. These lovely songs bear that promise in letters of bright gold.

He has one upcoming date in the West Coast and it’s: Thu. Feb. 17 – Los Angeles, CA @ Gold Diggers (w/ special guest Tom Brosseau). 

Papercuts announced their new album, “Past Life Regression”, out April 1st via Slumberland.

TRACKLIST:

1. Lodger
2. Sinister Smile
3. Fade Out
4. I Want My Jacket Back
5. My Sympathies
6. The Strange Boys
7. Palm Sunday
8. Hypnotist
9. Remarry
10. Comb In Your Hair

The first single/video off the new album is for “I Want My Jacket Back” which was directed by David Enos. Jason Quever / Papercuts said this about the song: “It started out as a bit of absurdist fun, as I was feeling at my wits’ end during the end of the US election cycle. I was thinking about someone I met in LA who seemed to believe every absurd conspiracy theory they heard, even some that seemed to contradict each other. At the same time, I was for the first time considering leaving the US. I felt robbed of a sense of security and faith in humanity, and was missing a sense of normalcy. It may have been an illusion in the first place, but a pleasant one.”

With the release of “I Want My Jacket Back” he also shared the B-Side for it, “The Strange Boys”, for which he said: “I pictured a Twilight Zone style black and white story about a group of teens that communicate with a supernatural entity. Later I realized it’s probably an analogy about what happens to the spirit upon death. Anyhow, it shows off what real mellotron flutes sound like when you abuse the pitch knob.”

He only has 2 dates scheduled to play this year so far:. 02/10 Los Angeles, CA – Gold Diggers w/ Massage.
02/26 San Francisco, CA – Bottom of the Hill w/ Chime School.

Geese released their debut album “Projector” via Partisan / PIAS.

TRACKLIST:

1. Rain Dance
2. Low Era
3. Fantasies / Survival
4. First World Warrior
5. Disco
6. Projector
7. Exploding House
8. Bottle
9. Opportunity Is Knocking

I’m anticipation of the debut album they released a few singles, and the first one was “Disco”, for which they said: “Disco” was our first big step forward as a band. It’s a very urgent and restless song, which was indicative of all our headspaces at the time. “Disco” has a lot of organized chaos at its core; the music, the lyrics, and even the way we recorded it all speak to a sort of manic energy we were all working through. It’s a song that sounds like it’s perpetually on the verge of collapse — and yet it always manages to keep itself together. There’s a bit of chaos in all of our songs, or a sense that they could explode at any moment. “Disco” represents that the most for us: the little bit of chaos each of us carry and bring to our music.”

They followed up “Disco” with the really really good “Low Era”. This is what they shared about it: “We had been trying to get everything to sound super heavy, creepy crawly, and complicated, really because that’s all we knew how to do. Four-on-the-floor songs like “Low Era” had felt a little like poison to us for a while, until we consciously tried to challenge ourselves to write something more danceable. Once we stopped enforcing certain boundaries, it ended up working out without us expecting it to, and even ushered in this psychedelic 3-D element that ends up appearing throughout the album. We like the idea of confusing the listener a little, and trying to make every song a counteraction to the last, pinballing between catchy and complicated, fast and slow. “Low Era” is one end of that spectrum, and ultimately broadened the scope of songs we thought we could make.”

The 3rd single from the debut album was the title track of their album “Projector”. For it, this is what frontman Cameron Winter shared: The opening riff on “Projector” was the first thing we ever wrote for the record. When the song was finished, it became a jumping off point for the rest of the album. We liked it because it was something decidedly different from the music we had been writing up to that point. Though we didn’t know it then, it’s fitting that “Projector” became the title track on the record; it’s the song that ushered in the album’s sound.

This album was made when the band members were just 17, they’re 19 now, and they are off touring in support of their album across Europe then they’ll do a Spring tour across the USofA, they will be playing the Casbah on 3/23, and finish their tour in their hometown of NYC by playing the Bowery Ballroom. After that they will head off as the supporting band of Spoon’s tour.

Mop Buckets have shared the video for their song “Happy” off their upcoming self titled EP out via Order 05 Records.

TRACKLIST:                                                    

1. Happy
2. Scroll
3. Drink I Am Drinking
4. Love Song
5. Making The Charts
6. Little Fucker

The animated video for “Happy” was created by Eric Allan Livingston / First Church Of The Void. The great thing about the video is you get to decide which is better, the video or the song. Also, the song as we found out is not a cover of the one by the same title as Pharrell Williams, BUT, it is much much better.

Mop Buckets is a Los Angeles quartet of underground scene veterans Michael Crain (Dead Cross/Retox/Cunts/Festival of Dead Deer), Ryan McGuffin (Niis/Rinse/Okie Dokie), Mathew Cronk (Qui/Cunts), and Kevin Avery (Retox/Cunts/Field Day/Planet B).