It’s true, as of right now Matt Wright PR is officially CLOSED! In closely related news, I recently moved from Portland to San Francisco, where I am very excited to be working as one of two Campaign Coordinators at IODA Marketing Services. I will still be doing online PR as part of our broader marketing efforts at IODA, and look forward to working with many of you in that capacity. Thanks to everyone I worked with at Matt Wright PR, and please don’t hesitate to drop me a line at the new gig!

Click here for more on Pseudosix.

Somewhere beyond atmosphere but within gravity�??s pull�??nearly freeform yet defined by its unerring direction�??you�??ll find Anywhere Out of the Everything, the latest (mostly) instrumental full-length from Telephone Jim Jesus. Arriving three years after George Chadwick�??s auspicious solo debut, 2004�??s A Point Too Far to Astronaut, Anywhere offers further exposition of the themes and methods of its predecessor, but while that last album was celebrated for a lush etherea punctuated by bright bursts of rhythm and light, this one works its duality to the fullest throughout. The end result is a multihued textile of living song that can be admired both for its constituent parts�??mini opuses with aural narratives unto themselves�??and as a subtly evolving whole.

Anywhere Out of the Everything, is, as much as anything, a testament to the loneliness, abandon, growth, and madness of a life lived on the road. A European tour with Sole and pedestrian in the summer of 2005 coincided with the break-up of an eight-year relationship, one that stretched from the middle teens to the middle twenties. Without a home to return to in the U.S., on a post-traumatic whim TJJ decided to stay in Europe, and for about four months careened mostly between Sole�??s apartment overlooking Gaudi Park in Barcelona and a Lithuanian squat in South London, doing an occasional show to scratch up money for the train. The moment he landed back in North America, he took off through the South and up the East Coast, with stints doing reconstruction work in a Vietnamese community on the Gulf Coast immediately post-Katrina, improvising anti-war demonstrations on Capitol Hill, and for an odd couple of weeks labored and partied in a shuttered hotel on Cape Cod.

Wandering through the overgrown graveyards, thrift store treasuries, and unreconstructed gothic quarters of Western Europe, he found both staggering artistry and usable material in the corridors of the old world. His return voyage through the physical devastation of the Gulf Coast and the moral wreckage of Washington D.C. stirred the impulse to create once more. Anywhere Out of the Everything (the title is a riff on Baudlaire�??s �??Anywhere Out of the World�??) documents this period in great, if fractured, detail, from the cover art collaged out of London�??s trash to the variety of voices and sounds captured on Dictaphone and symphonically embedded in the music. So a violin sings in a London tubeway, a muezzin calls the faithful to prayer on a shitty speaker overhead, a crowd croaks out horrific noises, and the voices of he and his fellow travelers recite the desperate poetry inscribed in London tombstones and strain to describe what elsewhere emerges before them.

Click here for more on Telephone Jim Jesus.

Click here for tour dates, and here for more on Talkdemonic.

The critical response to The Shaky Hands’ debut has been immediate and overwhelmingly positive. SPIN, Magnet, Pitchfork, and a host of influential blogs all seem to agree: The Shaky Hands brand of soulful, rhythmic indie rock has resulted in one of the funnest, bounciest albums to come out this year.

Click here for tour dates, and here for more on The Shaky Hands.

Click here for more on Khan.

Click here for more on COPY.

Coinciding with the release of the Collected Remixes, Alias will be setting out on a national tour with Sage Francis from May 24th to July 12th. Full details will be announced shortly.

Alias remixes will also be appearing on the forthcoming remix compilations from My Brightest Diamond and Minus The Bear.

Click here for more on Alias.