Air Waves
Listen: Air Waves “Warrior” ft. Kevin Morby
Mar 27, 2018
Brooklyn based musician Nicole Schneit revealed the final single from her third full-length as Air Waves today. “Warriors” features Kevin Morby and follows the politically inspired “Blue Fire” and the buoyant lead-single - “Morro Bay” . All are taken from her third full-length Warrior, due April 6th on Western Vinyl.
Here’s some background on Air Waves:
Like many queer women, Nicole Schneit is a warrior by necessity, fighting for basic rights, dignity, and acceptance. Such determination in the face of hardship and injustice runs in Schneit’s family; her new album was inspired in part by her mom who was diagnosed with fallopian cancer last year. As she explains, “The doctor told her she had a fifteen to twenty percent chance, and her response was ‘I’m going to get this mother fucker. So the title ‘Warrior’ and the song are about her. After chemotherapy, surgery, and then more chemotherapy, all the cancer in her body has left and she’s currently in remission. I feel like most of the people in my life, including myself, are warriors and have overcome obstacles that seemed impossible to defeat.”
Charlie MixwelH
Listen: Charlie MixwelH – “Get $$” and “Lyfted”
Mar 21, 2018
Music that ventures across many genre borders is always very hard to describe. But our ears are the ultimate decider of the final two categories to which the music belongs, good or bad. New Hampshire music producer/beat maker/DJ Charlie MixwelH skillfully incorporates elements of many genres into his catchy beats, ensuring his music lands in the good column.
Cleverly weaving short melodies over ambient keyboard washes with mellow hip-hop beats as a backbone, this bedroom producer manages to squeeze a lot of different styles into short and catchy instrumental pieces. But he’s especially adept at adding quirky little percussive sounds and pulsating bass lines that offer a counterbalance to the sublime harmonies and give the tracks depth.
What the tunes may lack in post-production mastering more than make up for in head-nodding noodling. Check out these two new tracks and visit Charlie MixwelH on Soundcloud to listen to his 2017 compilation, Instrumentals Vol. 1.
Gold Connections
Listen: Gold Connections “Bad Intentions”
Mar 20, 2018
Will Marsh emerged as Gold Connections with his Will Toledo produced self-titled EP last year. Marsh is now set to release his debut full-length Popular Fiction on May 11th via Egghunt Records and shared the first single “Bad Intentions” today with the album announcement. The new song taps into that blue collar, John Mellencamp, smalltown bar rock here and to good effect.
Here’s a little bit more about Marsh from the press release: “Gold Connections—once a scrappy sophomore-year passion project; now, aided by seasoned hometown producer Daniel Goans, a high-fidelity font of expression for the many lives he’s lived. We have a word for the kind of music Will makes, flush with heady, youthful firstness and stepped in the worn warmth of folk and blues. We call it timeless. These songs are a hundred years old, and they are brand new. Echoes of the Harry Smith anthology brush up against Big Star, Sonic Youth, R.E.M. When Will relates the facts of his life - his first loves, his fights, his late nights in hazy college bars…”
Moonface and Siinai
Listen: Moonface & Siinai “Run Through the Jungle” Cover
Mar 19, 2018
Spencer Krug’s project as Moonface with Helsinki band Siinai just resurfaced with a cover of the Creedence Clearwater Revival classic “Run Through the Jungle”. This is Spencer’s statement about the cover: “Don’t know why we did this, but we did. Recently learned this song isn’t actually about Vietnam, but gun control, so it seems apt as ever to bring a new version into the world, however untamed…This recording was originally 10 min long, a real jammer, so I cut out some middle chunks, which, if anything, is a testament to the steadiness of Markus’ drumming. No click track!” If you’ve ever listened to Moonface & Siinai, then you know they like psychedelic jamming. This one’s no different. Check it out:
Menke
Listen: Alva Noto Remodel of Menke’s “Moln”
Mar 09, 2018
Swedish multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter Menke has released the Alva Noto Remodel of “Moln”, her original debut single, out now via Size/Cosmos. Menke tapped German producer Alva Noto, which has Earmilk smitten:
“Menke’s vocal is hushed, haunting and otherworldly, but Noto’s subdued electronics and expert layering to knock this already stunning track into an entirely different galaxy.”
Here’s some more background on the artists from the press release:
Alva Noto is known for his unique ability to combine ambient sounds with outside environmental aspects. He showcased this skill effortlessly in his masterful score for the award-winning film The Revenant. As co-founder of the Raster-Noton label, he has also won the prestigious Golden Nica prize for his work on the critically acclaimed CD series 20 to 2000 and has collaborated with the likes of Iggy Pop and has previously remixed tracks by Bjork and John Cale.
Menke creates her own soulful world with small gestures. She plays piano, guitar, banjo, cello, vibraphone, but also more unconventional instruments such as lyre and wine glasses.
The words for Moln were taken from Karin Boyes poem of the same. Speaking of the poem, Menke says: “I more or less stumbled over Karin Boyes poetry by accident to be honest. I was just home one day, and out of boredom I picked a book randomly from the bookshelf. That book was a collection of poems by Karin Boye. I opened it up and read the first one, a poem called Moln. It struck me like lightning. The words had such a thorough impact on me and as I read along I kept hearing this music in my head. Music that grew and came alive as I read the poem for the first time.”
Jonny Greenwood
Listen: Jonny Greenwood Score Pieces & NPR Interview
Mar 04, 2018
Here’s hoping Jonny Greenwood receives a much-deserved Academy Award this evening. Check out his score piece “Dark Streets” from the upcoming Joaquin Phoenix film You Were Never Really Here and a piece from his Academy Award nominated score for Phantom Thread. Listen also to his interview with NPR about the nominated score.
Zola Jesus
Listen: Zola Jesus “Bound” Reinterpretation
Feb 21, 2018
The Darkwave singer, songwriter and producer Nika Roza Danilova, aka Zola Jesus, released her enthralling sixth album Okovi last year and today she has announced a new album of previously unheard tracks and remixes titled Okovi: Additions to be released on Sacred Bones Records. She shared the first single from the project “Bound”
Heres’s some information on the new experimental version from the press release: Okovi: Additions couples four previously unreleased tracks from the Okovi sessions with four remixes by a diverse cast of artists spanning a spectrum of genres including Johnny Jewel, Katie Gately, Wolves in the Throne Room, and Joanne Pollock (formerly one half of Poemss with Venetian Snares’ Aaron Funk).
“These four new songs were intended to be on Okovi,” Nika Roza Danilova explains. “Each of them represents a snapshot of my journey in making the record, and is just as precious to me as the songs that made it onto the final track listing. The remixes are beloved in their own way, as most were born from organic circumstances, and have drawn the original songs into completely new atmospheres.”
A Hawk & A Hacksaw
Premiere: A Hawk & A Hacksaw “A Broken Road Lined With Poplar Trees”
Feb 20, 2018
Albuquerque-based A Hawk & A Hacksaw, the duo of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost, are releasing their eighth album Forest Bathing released by the band’s own label, Living Music Duplication on April 13. The new record features guest instrumentation from Istanbul clarinet virtouso Cüneyt Sepetçi, Hungarian cimbalom master Unger Balász, Chicago trumpeter Sam Johnson, Deerhoof’s John Dieterich and Noah Martinez, of the band Lone Piñon. Under the Radar has the premiere of new song “A Broken Road Lined With Poplar Trees”.
“Forest Bathing,” comes from a Japanese term “Shinrin-yoku” for taking in the forest atmosphere and was inspired by travels in Bulgaria, Albania, Turkey, Greece and Romania. It continues the bands tradition of collecting music and inspiration through travel, resulting in unusually stimulating music.
“This is not an urban music.” It states on the band’s press release for Forest Bathing, “It’s rural; songs of the woods and roads where there are no sidewalks or street lamps to light your way.”
Some background on the band: A Hawk and A Hacksaw began in 2000 in the small town of Saumur, France. Initially a solo vehicle for Neutral Milk Hotel drummer Jeremy Barnes, the main impetus of the project was to focus on the gray areas in borders of music and geography. The first album was released in 2002 by Cloud Recordings. Barnes met violinist Heather Trost in 2004 and the band became a duo. The pair has since released six albums, and toured extensively around the world. They have learned from and collaborated with some of the great musicians of Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey. The duo has been invited to tour with Swans, Calexico, Wilco, Andrew Bird, Portishead and Of Montreal.
