Visitation Rites

Sightings: Norse Horse, “Meat Whale”

Emilie Friedlander — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:59:21 +0000

This number from California’s Norse Horse seems way too sun-baked and lackadaisical for a title like “Meat Whale”, but who knows? Every time I think I have it figured out, Ryan Beal throws in a new monkey-wrench. What begins with a dubby bongo loop blossoms into a swirling pop fantasia when the guitar and vocals and bass kick in. Whether there’s one person singing here or a raft full of crooners is your guess as well as mine; either way, with all the twists and turns and subtle harmonic changes we hear on this one, the “lost at sea” metaphor feels pretty apt. The blistering guitar swell at the three minute mark surprises us like a port city rising up in the distance. Or is it the sudden recognition that we kind of enjoy this sensation of endless floating?

Norse Horse, “Meat Whale”

Words: Emilie Friedlander

Ancient Crux/Norse Horse split 7″ is out now on French label La Station Radar. Also check out the Jeans Wilder Simpler Times 7″.

Sightings: Secret Colors, “Hammock Vibe”

Emilie Friedlander — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 04:29:30 +0000

I haven’t heard Ducktails lay down any warped bongo samples for quite some time now, though this number by Seattle solo flyer Secret Colors brings me back to my first Ducktails experience, which was perhaps the first time he ever performed under that name: sitting Indian-style in a Northampton yoga studio that had to be hotter than 105 degrees, trying to wrap my mind around a rhythm that sounded a bit like this one only to blank out completely inside a tornado of pentatonic flute scales. It was a time before words like “chillwave” or “hypnagogic pop” even existed, still a few years before you could log on to the internet and find dozens of blogs rattling off the manifold pseudonyms of mystery tape collagists. In those days, even if they weren’t that long ago, naming your guitar store “Pentatonic Guitars” wouldn’t have automatically made sense. It’s hard to forget those moments when new horizons open up inside the listening ear, horizons that you never even imagine will harden one day into concrete, reproducible tropes. I thank Glow of the Cube blog for the tip on Secret Colors. I don’t think “originality” is what matters in psychedelic music, anyway; it’s the feeling that an artist is always still looking.

Secret Colors, “Hammock Vibe”

Words: Emilie Friedlander

dreamersss cassette is out now on Dial Square Tapes.

Sightings: Geoffrey O’Connor, “Now and Then”

Emilie Friedlander — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:25:35 +0000

“Now and Then”, the new single by Crayon Fields frontman Geoffrey O’Connor, feels like listening to Television’s Adventure for the first time after memorizing all the guitar solos on Marquee Moon like the cracks on the sidewalk on St. Mark’s place. Marquee Moon is the “perfect” rock record because it just feels so raw, funneling all the excitement and torment of youth through structures so elaborate and precise that the whole thing seems continually on the verge of collapse. With Adventure, we hear the sound of all that crude talent finally becoming aware of itself, shining its shoes and trading in its ripped jeans for tailored slacks. For better or for worse, the reverb-dripping, crystal-clear production on Television’s second album automatically signals that the band has reached a new level of “maturity” — and somehow this logic carries over to “Now and Then”, where Geoffrey O’Connor sounds like he’s finally read to trade in his Harry Potter glasses and reflect wistfully, even a tad elegiacally, on the salad days of his youth. Definitely couldn’t think of a better soundtrack for loosening your tie at the end of a date with a bottle of fine bourbon.

Geoffrey O’Connor, “Now and Then”

Words: Emilie Friedlander

“Now and Then” is the single from Geoffrey’s forthcoming solo record on Australia’s Chapter Music.

Sightings: Friendly Knowledge, “Delight Moment”

Emilie Friedlander — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:44:00 +0000

Ever since the Visitation Rites inbox became a horizonless sea of triumphantly homologous chillwave MP3s, anything with a beat that does not sound like an imitation of an imitation of Neon Indian is more likely than ever to feel like a preserver. Friendly Knowledge, a New Jersey (?) bedroom producer with one of the most poorly designed and spam-ridden MySpace pages I have ever seen, chops up Jazz of the Big Band and Bebop variety and rearranges these shards of collective consciousness over commercially viable hip hop beats. “Delight Moment” is a giant, teetering tower of shattered urban reference points, footprints of a glittering, sepia-colored New York where Sinatra might have plotted his rise as sailors kissed their sweethearts before Broadway box offices. Somehow, as if by a lucky toss of the dice, the illusion hangs together quite nicely.

Friendly Knowledge, “Delight Moment”

Words: Emilie Friedlander

Sightings: Mathemagic, “Breaststroke”

Marc Picciolo — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:49:34 +0000

I am not the kind of person who ever would use the word “magical” to describe math. And I would never use it to describe music I enjoy, either. To me, “magical” implies illusion or trickery. Toronto’s Mathemagic do not deal in audio fake-outs. The shimmering intro and steady rhythm of “Breaststroke”, a song off their recent split with Young Prisms on Atelier Ciseaux, transport you to a secluded swimming hole, a liquid fortress of solitude. This track doesn’t just send you away to enjoy a moment of “me” time, it gives you the desire to stay there. Why not? Who needs a job? Who needs money? Certainly not you. Why spend your life attaching resumes to emails when you can spend all night swimming in a pool lit by bright electronic noise?

Mathemagic, “Breastroke” (Mathemagic/Young Prisms 7″, Ateliar Ciseaux)

Words: Marc Picciolo

The Mathemagic/Young Prisms 7″ is limited to 350 copies and available now from Atelier Ciseaux.

Sightings: Big Troubles, “Modern Intimacy”

Emilie Friedlander — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:36:39 +0000

BIG TROUBLES “MODERN INTIMACY” from OLDE ENGLISH SPELLING BEE on Vimeo.

Last time Big Troubles dropped a promotional video for Worry, their debut LP, I got into a slightly ugly debate with Elliott Sharp of the blog Biomusicophy when he accused the band of glamorizing the over-consumption of fast-food, and thereby endorsing the capitalist values of consumerism, excess, and animal murder. Elliott announced yesterday that he will be deleting his blogspot in two weeks time, relocating to wordpress, and reducing his web presence to the occasional republication of features and reviews published elsewhere. Now that Elliott has defected from the world of memes to concentrate his energies on traditional, long-form criticism — where he will surely be happier, and probably really excel — Big Troubles is free to promote reactionary bourgeois values to their heart’s content. If the hidden agenda of their “Bite Yr. Tongue” video was to make throwing up look cool, then this new video for “Modern Intimacy” must be trying to foster the false illusion that dropping money on leisure class trifles like sky-diving will bring us a heightened sense of intimacy and communion with our fellow man. The gorgeous texturedness of the production, and the vertigo-inducing guitar lines, and the catchiness of the songwriting can surely be no accident; the more beautiful its vehicle, the more effective propaganda becomes.

Words: Emilie Friedlander

Pre-order Worry from Olde English Spelling Bee here. Albums ship September 3rd. In the meantime, you can stream the album in full via bandcamp.

Tracey Trance: “Fountain 1″

Emilie Friedlander — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:52:51 +0000

I haven’t been able to get enough of Tracey Trance and his miniature Leprechaun universe since Chocolate Bobka posted about him on the 2010 cassette round-up that Altered Zones launched with. His Fountain tape on Night People may be sort of “old news” in this cut-throat information economy, but Tracey’s is some of the most fully incarnated lo-fi music I have ever heard. It’s not just that he does the cassette sound “well”; it’s that his songs would simply lose almost all of their glowing, childlike strangeness if they DIDN’T sound like they were being played back over a warped VHS tape. Even on MP3, “Fountain 1″ feels like tuning into a May Day celebration in a Playmobil village via stethoscope.

Tracey Trance, “Fountain 1″

Words: Emilie Friedlander

Fountain cassette is available via Night People , with art by SDReed.

Altered Zones “Zoned In” Pick: The Gamut, Ghost Notes

Emilie Friedlander — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:16:57 +0000

Ghost Notes, the debut EP by New York electronic duo The Gamut, sounds like something Excepter might have dropped had they emerged from the spirited sweatboxes of North Brooklyn DIY instead of the narcotic haze of post-9/11 LES. The obsession with duration and group ritual is absent, and the offerings pack enough melodic punch to satisfy instantly, but the line of spiritual continuity is hard to ignore. Combining Suicide-era drum machines and real-time digi-percussion, Kosmische synths, and the bass of Berlin techno, the Gamut mobilize the history of electronic music to construct a seductive pre-technological illusion — a return to the primeval beat of the dance around the fire. If there’s one thing that Derek Maxwell and Christian Fuller know, it’s that all that imagined simplicity — that deep-riding boom boom, those two-note Yodel melodies that would lose all their staying-power if they were forced to accommodate a third — is really just the stuff of pop.

Reposted from Altered Zones

Ghost Notes is out soon via CD and MP3 download

Sightings: SUN ARAW announces “Off Duty” EP + Autumn Tour

Emilie Friedlander — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:00:28 +0000

Following July’s ON PATROL LP, Los Angeles zoner SUN ARAW has extended the LA Cop theme into a second helping of triumphal warrior dub that wins the prize for best EP title of the year. In Cameron Stallones’ own words, OFF DUTY “grips you in heavy end-of-shift panic.” If ON PATROL feels like a confident, sharp-shooting swagger down the endless corridors of the mind, its sequel opens with the cold sweat that sets in before we turn the final corner — hyperventilating through two and a half minutes of white noise and guitar squiggles, unsure whether to proceed or turn back. Just when we reach a nadir disorientation and despair, SUN ARAW fades in one of his signature walking-pace bongo grooves, intones a few blurred words of encouragement, and we know what we have to do.

SUN ARAW, “LAST CHANTS”

SUN ARAW’s OFF DUTY 12″ and OFF DUTY/BOAT TRIP CD are out October 12th on Woodsist. Cameron recently announced the dates for his European tour this fall. Scope them after the jump.

OCTOBER
Mon 25 DEN HAGUE, THE VILLA
Tue 26 BERLIN, WEST GERMANY
Wed 27 STUTTGART, FFUS
Thu 28 AALST, NETWERK
Fri 29 LYON, GRRND ZERO
Sat 30 NANTES, SOY FESTIVAL
Sun 31 MONTPELIER, LE BALOARD

NOVEMBER
Wed 3 MADRID, EL PERRO CLUB
Fri 5 LISBON, ZDB W/ US GIRLS, HIGH WOLF, SCOUT NIBLETT
Sat 6 LEIRIA, TEATRO MIGUEL FRANCO W/ US GIRLS
Tue 9 MILAN, HUNDEBISS, SECRET PLACE
Wed 10 GENEVA, L’ECURIE
Sat 13 AMSTERDAM, DE NIEUWE ANITA W/ PRINCE RAMA
Tue 16 BRISTOL, ARNOLFINI (SUN ARAW VS FELLINI’S SATYRICON)
Wed 17 LONDON, CAMP W/ ZUN ZUN EGUI + HYPE WILLIAMS
Thu 18 BRIGHTON, HECTORS HOUSE W/ ZUN ZUN EGUI + PEEP HOLES
Sat 20 NOTTINGHAM, THE ARTS ORGANISATION W/ ZUN ZUN EGUI
Sun 21 MANCHESTER, ISLINGTON MILL W/ ZUN ZUN EGUI + GNOD
Mon 22 GLASGOW, ARTS CENTRE W/ ZUN ZUN EGUI + BLUE SABBATH BLACK FIJI
Tue 23 LEEDS, BRUDENELL SOCIAL CLUB W/ ZUN ZUN EGUI + RUNNERS + QUWACK QUWACK
Fri 26 DUBLIN, JOINERY GALLERY
Sat 27 CORK, TRISKEL ARTS CENTRE

Sightings: D’EON, “What We Want to Be”

Marc Picciolo — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:00:03 +0000

I only recently became familiar with the loopy R&B stylings of Montreal’s Chris Deon, aka D’EON. For days now, my clicking finger has continuously compelled itself to press play on “What We Want to Be” in his embedded music player. I simply cannot help myself. D’EON’s forthcoming debut album Palinopsia may loosely be about the end of world, or an uncertain future. But I’m not to sure about this song. “What We Want to Be” exudes optimism. No one can dare deny the foot-tapping — and, ahem, booty-shaking — grooves that pleasantly flow in, out, and around your brain’s pleasure center for the song’s entirety. The track’s timeless sentiment also proves undeniable. I am in full agreement with Chris Deon. We really can choose what we want to be.

D’eon, “What We Want to Be” (Palinopsia, Hippos in Tanks)

Words: Marc Picciolo

Palinopsia will be available soon on Hippos in Tanks.