Jul 06, 2018

Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner have released four singles under the name Big Red Machine. The music comes from the PEOPLE collective, a website platform for unreleased music. Vernon and Dessner said that the four songs are part of a full-length album: “We have a 10-song record that we’ll be spraying out throughout the rest of the summer,” Vernon explained. “We just wanted to put something up in the player for now.”

Richard Swift was one of those musicians who fellow musicians adored and admired, always willing to play along and help them find their way in recording an album. He touched so many, as evidenced by the outpouring of sad recognition today from the music community he blessed. One of them was Walter Martin of The Walkmen. This was what he said about Richard in a recent interview about his solo album Reminisce Bar & Grill:

This new record has an expansiveness to it musically…and there’s a wider sound compared to your other solos…

“It was a lot from [singer/instrumentalist/producer] Richard Swift. Not that he worked that much on it. He mixed and recorded a couple of songs for it. But I learned a lot from him in just the two days we were out at his studio. He uses so much reverb with a very simple approach, something that I really believe in but it’s easy to forget how much I believe in that stuff. I hear a lot of him just in the way I recorded it.”

Walt’s current favorite song produced by Swift is Foxygen’s “San Francisco” and what a great one it is. RIP Richard. It sounds like you were one special soul.

Jul 03, 2018

About a year ago, Avey Tare of Animal Collective gave us his mesmerizing and transportative solo album Eucalyptus. Today he gave us the Essence of Eucalyptus EP with remixes by each of his fellow animals, Geologist, Panda Bear, and Deakin. Animal Collective is touring their legendary album Sung Tongs this month.

Jun 29, 2018

22-year-old Dublin-based vocalist-producer and multi-instrumentalist EDEN, Jonathon Ng, released two new songs today, “about time” and “stutter,” as an extension of his latest album Vertigo.

“The ethereal, guitar-driven “about time” features Ng’s half-sung, half-spoken vocals, while “stutter” is a propulsive, electronic instrumental that will be played as an interlude during EDEN’s live show. As with all of his music, the two songs were written, recorded, and produced entirely by EDEN at his home studio in Dublin, Ireland.”

Jun 27, 2018

Trevor Powers has left Youth Lagoon in his rearview on his upcoming project. His new solo album Mulberry Violence is set for release on August 17th on his label Baby Halo. Today he has shared the second couplet of tracks from the new album–“XTQ Idol” and “Dicegame”, following “Ache” and “Plaster Saint”.

There was a lot behind the creative formation of these songs and his direction on the whole:

“Early in the process of forming Mulberry Violence, I took a trip to the Czech Republic & visited Sedlec Ossuary, a small Roman Catholic church elaborately adorned with the bones of 40,000 people ::: many of whom died from the plague. Garlands of skulls. Crosses of femurs. Chalices of hipbones. A chandelier made from every bone in the human skeleton. This was all constructed as a way to honor the dead. For me, it was a labyrinth of mirrors. My reflection multiplied thousands of times in front of me, & I couldn’t look away. I saw myself as I really was. Trembling, I said a hushed prayer. Each turn showed me there was no escape from how it all ends; beneath this skin & without this spirit was just another heap of bones. As the tension through my muscles eventually lessened, a peculiar peace washed over me. My problems shrunk. My stress diminished. My pain was temporary. Maybe one day someone will use my tibia in a human chandelier.. ? I can only dream. Late that night, I started XTQ Idol.”

On “Dicegame” he commented: My favorite painter, the existential outcast Francis Bacon, described a work by saying, “It was like one continuous accident mounting on top of another.” This is entirely how I function — shaping ideas for weeks or months that lead absolutely nowhere.. it’s not until I fuck up & do something totally inadvertent that the path finally begins to glow. The mistake is always more captivating than the intention. Dicegame had 6 other versions before it. All of them different; none of them honest. The entryway refused to accept any of my passcodes; it wasn’t until the big blunder came & I typed that into the keypad that the gate finally swung open. I chased the accident, mutated it, made more mistakes along the way, viscerally put them together, & the song finally had life.

Jun 26, 2018

Mitski just shared her video for new song “Nobody” from her new album, Be The Cowboy, out August 17th via Dead Oceans. The video was directed by Chris Good and stars Mitski herself. Here’s some background on the video and upcoming album from the Dead Oceans site:

“We shot this video over five days in both sides of Kansas City. I’ve never been able to take this much time to shoot a video, so it was wonderful to have the space to get the details right, as well as actually hang out and have fun with everyone involved. This video made me fall unexpectedly in love with Kansas City.” Visit The Cut for a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the video with commentary by Mitski.

Mitski’s carefully crafted songs have often been portrayed as emotionally raw, overflowing confessionals from a fevered chosen girl, but in Be The Cowboy, Mitski introduces a persona who has been teased but never so fully present until now — a woman in control. She reveals she had in mind “a very controlled icy repressed woman who is starting to unravel. Because women have so little power and showing emotion is seen as weakness, this ‘character’ clings to any amount of control she can get. Still, there is something very primordial in her that is trying to find a way to get out.”

Jun 25, 2018

Brooklyn transplants Future Generations have announced their new album, Landscape which will be released via Frenchkiss Records on September 14th. Today the band revealed a video for the rather catchy first single, “All The Same.” Landscape follows 2016’s self-titled debut and features their full lineup of Eddie Gore (vocals) Mike Sansevere(synthesizer, guitar, percussion), Eric Grossman (guitar), Devon Sheridan (bass), and Dylan Wells (percussion).

Eddie Gore speaks of the video and the outlook of the band: “We always felt the video for ‘All The Same’ would have a retro feel to it. When we reached out to potential directors, they all came back with similar visions. We ended up working with Kenneth Polyak and Drew Lewis, whose work we knew through Yoke Lore, a mutual friend. Those guys made filming the video a blast. The video’s general theme is rebellion and nostalgia, which we thought perfectly aligned with the meaning and feeling of the song.”