Here’s the latest singles and bands to watch with some really great tunes and sounds from the US and across the pond.
Recently added to the Mint 400 Records roster is a fast mod psyche band called Yes Sunshine from Coventry,England. We think they embody that fast paced feel we dig from UK type bands like Pete and The Pirates and a more polished version of The Jam.
Here’s a quick 5 question interview with the band Yest Sunshine to peak your interest. They will be featured on the coming Mint 400 Records Compilation “Patchwork” which is due out this September! So watch our twitter space for more.
What genre of music do you consider your work to be? Who are your major influences?
Well we consider our music to be a mixture of indie,rock,and punk. We are heavily influenced by artists such Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, Oasis, Pixies, Libertines and of course The Beatles. What are your songs about? (What specific themes do they cover?)
Well our songs are mainly about, social observations, experiences, teenage angst, and I guess you could say of course love and girls.
What are the differences you see between US rock and British rock at the present moment?
At present we are really enjoying the current New York scene. Bands like Skaters and Drowners are really influencing us. I think there is a visible punk vibe at the minute that new wave UK bands are representing more than US bands.
What has been your biggest challenge as a songwriters? Have you been able to overcome that challenge? If so, how?
The biggest challenge has been over coming the brick wall. Some days nothing clicks, tensions run high and you can’t even string a sentence of lyrics together. We find that the process of song writing can’t be forced. If it’s going to happen, it will happen when it’s ready. When it does, everything falls into place and everything flows. There’s a buzz and you know you’ve got a worthy song.
What advice do you have for people who want to form their own bands?
Be committed. Make the necessary sacrifices. Never give up. And practice, practice, practice.
Psyche, Grunge, Alternative rock whatever it is if it has distortion delivered like Friendly Faux we like it and if they “don’t make any rights” is what I’m usually known to say to my driver when I’m skunk drunk I think we’ll get along here people. We’re super simple this way especially if the bass player is digging in like he is in this mother fucker. Seriously, check out these Columbus Ohio rocksters who can swing the blues big time if they want and rock it out with a few classic arena rock Alice in Chains type backing vocals but yet keep it dirty like a diesel monster truck drag racing down main street. I’m a sucker for power trios and these guys hit it and quit it in all the right places with their no frills rock. These tunes are from their second digital release EP called Three Lefts and we think you should grab the whole thing from them on their bandcamp. The s/t lead track is the dope we’re talking about and make it one louder.
Next up is the UK’s Colour of Bone – which is this weird electronic mix of big house bass romp and roc-rave music on their single called “THE SUPERSTITIOUS TWIST”; whilst I’m not sure why all songs must yell at me in capital letters. This one at 80hz is sure to leave you a little deaf perhaps. The artwork is explosive in that BIG DATA kind of way but i guess people like their head exploding. Classify ‘Sympathiser’ under Alt-Elec-Rock along with your mescaline and speed. This music brings out certain musical texture you don’t actually need to be high to understand. It grunges out when need when the Beasties bring that beat around.
I don’t know much about this electronic slow dub project called Drunk Robots from Portugal but I like it. Here’s a track called “have you seen my glasses” from the 22 track album organiosed. Good experimentation with noise, ambient sounds and electronic rock. Pretty mellow but not put you to sleep mellow. Creepy yet carries a melody like Air intrumentals. Drop-off and explore Drunk Robots.
“Fortune and Fate” by Ryan Joseph Anderson from his record The Weaver’s Broom, which was recorded in Nashville by engineer/producer Andrja Tokic (known for his work with Alabama Shakes). Good alt country. Very dark stop motion video which is back by a great whiskey voice teetering on to raspy but much better than Deer Tick’s country swagger. We like this Ryan Joseph Anderson fella.
Ok now you know what to do and like this so your mom can see what you do with your day on Facebook. Thanks!
Honestly, I think I could tell you only one band that played Coachella this Spring Break and it was The Replacements who got a lot of cash to play songs from the 90’s. I can’t imagine one kid under 40 30 knew a single tune unless they brought their parents with them. I know this because my friend Andy posted a photo of them. He was actually working the event bringing grilled cheeses to the masses (probably) working 14 hour days having fun watching all the “space cadets”.
I totally had forgotten about this music festival and since I’m a real music fans I was just waiting to find my domestic break during the day so I could race to the nearest record store on Record Store Day. Sorry your loss kids but I don’t think you care about collecting records at all. I’m pretty sure CHVCHRES had a select release and bunch of other groups playing the event but none of them will own a physical copy. Their cool friends who actually like music might though. Twitter also reminded me of all the fun. I saw lots of ass photos (#ASSCHELLA) on the Vice blog called Noisy and useless articles about what people were wearing or not wearing, the different type of freaks, bro gangs and what the bitches were going to see. I have no idea who Haim is and apparently Pharrell is still wearing the same dumb hat even in that 96 degree heat.
I kind of liked it when all those kids went down to Florida or Mexico and they didn’t really make a mess of music festivals. Drank the light beer and twerked before it was a thing. The line-ups are all over the place and not that I’m organizing freak with my sub-genres or anything but Coachella is a mess of a “music festival”. I am glad nobody died like at SXSW this past year in Austin (that I heard of) smashing their car drunk into people –that was horrible. The masses of suckers going to these bloated events pay the really high-ticket prices more than likely because their parents forked over the dough. Not sure anybody noticed but the cost of entry goes up every year even as it’s off set by brands buying their way into the youth market. But alas this is some college kid’s Woodstock or Lollapalooza except they mostly listen to EDM (Electronic Dance Music). I totally have a problem with EDM. Hate me but there are no lyrics to most of the tunes right? It’s fabricated music unlike classic hip-hop which I have the most respect for. You’ll never be able tell me I really love it when they click play during that part and mix in this other part and we all jump up and down. You know with the keyboard thing? Impossible to describe and I suppose something you must experience completely live as you jump to the thumping in unison. Unlike if I say two simple words like “Jane Says” –You will probably sing the whole song from start to finish. See what I mean?
I love T&A hanging out of frayed denim shorts as much as the next straight guy but music needs substance. At the same time I know the general youth consumer needs to be entertained. Millennials get bored way to quickly these days. Truth be told through lies; it’s more fun to watch them make asses of them themselves from the side because that tattoo they got will need to be covered one day and I hear they have better drugs that we did in the 90’s. Hell even Burning Man has it’s own zip code(89412)! The more you know.
What was your experience at Coachella, pitchfork or SXSW etc? Lets us know in the comments and like this article on facebook!
The listening process is painful and sometimes it’s amazing. AMAZING. We don’t like being the curmudgeon that has heard it all. We’re not a bearded music historians yipster either but when we hear music that reminds of some cool things from the past and has a actual hook. Meaning a discernable verse and chorus that is not muddled. Our ears perk-up a little. We don’t know why but either so here’s some tunes that stood out this week. Don’t be shy about stalking us back on the bookface and titters. (Made you look)
Beauty Queen Autopsy – Good, Giving, Game MP3 Check-out from their Roughest Cuts- the demos. I don’t know when you make electronic music on a computer it’s hard to sound demo-ish. This reminds us the simplicity of Trio and the stranglers. Get the rest of this release on their bandcamp page.
Bad Suns – Transpose MP3 – This is the title track from their EP on Vagrant Records. It’s got noodley guitars like The Strokes and much better players than those guys were when they started. You will probably here this tune at the fall someday soon.
By Passers – How Do You Feel When Nothing Is Real MP3 Check these guys out by way of Finland and who have recently moved to London which I guess is the equivalent of somebody moving from Canada to Brooklyn. Morisseeeey like length pop song titles and a underlying clean guitar part that sounds like mission of burma (that’s when i reach for my revolver) except a lot cleaner over-all. Good stuff. Band site.
RIYL: Mitch Easter, We were scientists
A Million Billion Dying Suns – “True Reality Lies Beyond the Cosmic Horizon” – My mom made a quit that looks like this one back in the 70’s when I was a child. This tune has distorted bass riff akin to some Hendrix/Psych rock so it’s no surprise they are from San Fran. You may had heard this riff in a GoPro Commercial too with Shaun White snowboarding. Check out their strawberry EP for more. (Sorry DL so go support them)
The Rebel Set – Monster MP3 straight from their new surf punk and reverb drenched release How To Make A Monster! here’s a band from Arizona on Burger Records. This is super fun rock-n-roll. Don’t be scared of something new which is something new. Bandcamp | Facebook
RIYL: Link Wray, Gene Vincent, The Sonics, The Monks
West Coast Tour Dates:
01.24 • The Rogue Bar (Scottsdale, AZ)
01.31 • The District Tavern (Tucson, AZ)
02.07 • Blackbird Bouvette (Albuquerque, NM)
02.08 • Dive Bar (Las Vegas, NV)
02.14 • Yucca Tap Room (Tempe, AZ)
02.20 • Burger Records (Fullerton, CA)
02.21 • Billy O’s (Ventura, CA)
02.22 • The Redwood (Los Angeles, CA)
03.01 • Ice House Tavern (Phoenix, AZ)
This is a seriously mixed bag of tunes with semi jeff magnum homages, loud and jangly indie bands and some electronic based musiks but you’ll get the drift as we hip you to some cool stuff for your downloading and listening pleasure. We try to give you at the very least a incomplete sentence about each band.
Gloom Balloon –Summer Buzz And Summer Fervor MP3 by the dude named Tape Flemming from the band The Poison Control Center. Uplifting band name too. This tune is like joyous part of Christmas in a very Flaming Lips kind of way. It’s about celebration of living. Check it out. RIYL: Neutral Milk Hotel. Band Website / twitter
Dead Waves – Over Me MP3 from the EP Take Me Away. This is a trio based out of Brooklyn with two brothers from Queens. RIYL – early jesus and mary chain mixed with the thermals and some melviny screaming into the mic antics. Totally worth checking out in our humble opinion. Actual rock music with zero keyboard bullshit. Bandcamp / twitter
Tri-State – Hawk in the Fog MP3 from a self titled EP from a bunch of dudes from Maplewood NJ area. One of the members was in the band Dune Buggy. Which we have one of their 7″s somewhere in the stacks. This is a pure and adulterated “jangly” pop tune alla Real Estate (not sunny day). Super catchy. Like them on the facebooks.
Futuristic Blast – TheDifference-MachineMP3 from The Psychedelic Sounds of the Difference Machine This is total DJ Shadow shit here but we love it. Comprised of Dr. Conspiracy and DT who raps, freestyles, cuts and works a delay peddle. To be safe file under hip-hop but don’t corner them there. 16 song album avail as LP/CD from their bandcamp.
PANES –Choice Errors (Lee Gamble Remix) MP3 – This music reminds me of when you are coming down from a acid trip. It could be background music for walking around a neon lit airport. Worth checking out.
Let us know what you think in the comments section. Except for you spammers. We fucking hate you.
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More free MP3’s of the Day by NØMADS, Bill Janovitz from Buffalo Tom, Tim Larson, Jadeite and Slippertails.
SINGLE REVIEW: Art collective made-up of smart geeks is the quick high-level on Japan Soul. They have theorized that the beginning of the end started on or around 911 and life as we knew it in the 80’s has been spiraling out of control ever since. Their latest video/single shows us drones monitoring our every move with the track “Hey Yah Hey”. Apocalyptic yes. True? Probably.
Music pulp fiction and future storytelling is the great canvas that these brooklyn manipulators of sound have decided to tell on their dance pop release Plastic Utopia. This is the forth tease but no doubt in age of being able cut–n-paste our errors and revise your intention until it’s perfect here is another slice from the full release. So we’re sure it will sound as utopian and futuristically art-camp as they have shown previously. That is the irony of this all. When electronic music was still done to tape and mixed in analog you could tell there was a human element. It was man and the machine and his ability to reproduce things. So it’s the kind of thing if you have been revising history (as you work) it’s hard to wonder what is truth is even as it happens. The vocals are pitch processed with un-singable parts and with so many layers we’re always wondering if enough is enough already but hey we don’t have to try and reproduce things live. This is the magic of musical editing and the job a of a live band. Hell they could press a button and go from there or just let the DJ do the work. Anyway, enough of the semantics of this. The previous cut “transparent” was more on the Roxy Music side of things which shows more of instrument abilities but in all a good combo of the genre that started with kraftwerk and then co-opted by everyone. Regardless these dream pop rebels make good music and the lyrics are working to tell you real time what is happening as your every move is tracked by weird drones. I’m not sure why everybody would need to be tracked. That would be ridiculous like trying to read all of our email and making sense of it all. Oh Wait? Um, check them out.
BONUS STUFF: Computer World(“Computerwelt”) MP3 by Kraftworks/t (1981) Wonderdrug MP3 by APB from Cure for the Blues (Link Records 1986)
MUSIC REVIEW: Perth Australia, I don’t know much about this country but we sure do get a lot of amazing music from there and Water Graves are no exception. Their new EP is mystic. Like fluffy little clouds mystic. Like AIR meets… we’ll you get it. Born in a bedroom like the rest of us Coel Healy and Blake Hart create lo-fi synth music for the jet set. Soundscapes that may ease your ride up in mall elevator perhaps with the air conditioning cranked up to the point you need to wear a coat and goggles. This music will take your mind places in the same way psychedelic colors might distract you. You’ll end up rubbing the walls and seeing if this music is scratch n’ sniff. The Good shit or maybe you’ll just enjoy a nice cup of coffee while you listen. File under: psychedelic /Electronic
Who could guess that electricity could inspire sound. That’s what some engineers did many decades back and works with the simplest of contraptions to the most complicated machines to make some pretty epic music.
If you love the nostalgia of the Moog you should check out Synth Britannia Documentary from the BBC. Here it is in it’s entirety below. The first time punks and musicians really heard electronic music was via the soundtrack for the film Clockwork Orange where people were getting raped, tortured and beaten-up. Kraftwerk are the parents of electronic rock music which changed the soundscape forever and as the gear became more affordable punk groups started to adopt the instrumentation. This documentary goes into great detail on the evolution with Joy Division, OMD, Human League and many others making their own electronic music machines. Pretty great introduction to a very deep genre of music which takes you places by painting something almost plastic or lonely. Although considered cold this music paints you in there like you were part of a video game.
Most music chooses its own position in terms of your listening to it. Muzak wants to be back there. Punk wants to be up front. Classical wants to be another place. I wanted to make something you could slip in and out of. – Brian Eno
Download: Spectrum MP3 by Wreck & Reference from their new albumNo Youth. We welcome this second release with open arms as they have added another layer to the muck. This is some dark and dirgy music that incorporates snyths with progish drums and down-tuned distorted guitars like godflesh. It’s fucking out there like godspeed you black emperor. Picture guts of oil spilling out from the underside of a run-away freight train moving in slow motion. That’s their sound -errie as all get-out like pins and needles scraping the inside of your head. Get some >>
More music like that sound man: Atmosphere MP3 by Joy Division Hot on the Heels of Love MP3 by Throbbing Gristle Remember MP3 by Air from Moon Safari Just Can’t Get Enough (remastered version) MP3 by Depeche Mode Souvenir (Digital Remaster) MP3 by OMD from Architecture And Morality The Lebanon (12″ Extended version) MP3 by The Human League from Hysteria
We have no clue what Aabenbaringen over aaskammen means...
ALBUM REVIEW: Ok we lie, it’s Norwegian for roughly the “revelation over the mountain” but after a whole slew of singles this is technically their first end to end record after releasing piles of singles. I of course because I technically live in a cave on the weekend and during the week untangle a mountain of real work related riddles & sniglets it’s no surprise i never heard of them but thankfully I’m on Polyvinyl’s distro list so some sort of culture does make it my way. In order to describe this group we’ll need to take you into our 80’s time machine bit by bit. In order to confirm what the big corporate mags are onto. Quickly line-up if your a Kid A Moon Safari or Kraftwerk fan. We’re going take you a little deeper but not Autobahn deep (Ok maybe that is another lie). We’re going to keep it to one hot summer in 1986 or 88 and my Walkman was playing a couple OMD tracks, a bunch of Scottish songs by APB and even some DM. I know a girlfriend was making me listen to Yaz and I countered with APB. Anyway, Electronic pop is the kind of music that you either hate or like it very little as much as you do meaningless anagrams which happens to be another language. There is certain sense of soundscape artistry that vocalist Ketil Kinden Endresen has explained is a “result of them expanding their palette”. We’re not all about the grunge on the RS blog but however you want to explain these Casiokids make some pretty good ecstatic music. We get it. One day it will be re-interpreted music for time travel. We do think their is a need for analog electro pop music and just spacing-out in general with the sweet sounds of Casio’s holding down those giant monotone notes. Enjoy.
Det haster! MP3 by CasioKids from Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen
Something about this bands sounds man: Shoot You Down MP3 APB
Da Da Da MP3 by Trio (Ich Lieb Dich Nitch Du)- 1982
MUSIC REVIEW: Ambient music for movies about ghosts and televisions that could eat you. Lowland’sThe Void samples some tv, has some meandering guitar and low beats. I picture a pretty desolated cityscape with dim lights and nobody on the streets then the people are there suddenly; translucently floating by you. They are really just people’s left over auras from years gone by. Impressions in your imagination from the back of your eye socket. Then they are gone again like a blip or a blue screen of death (oh the bitter irony in this statement) the sense ripples away. You question if it really happened. If you think you’d like a sparser sounding grandaddy with a mix o’ Air and a serious nod to 80’s industrial or even the likes of the Notwist in your ears then you will appreciate the music of the lowlands. Summer of Regret MP3 [Get The EP for Free]
Sorta reminds me of these groups: Where in this World MP3 by The Notwist from The Devil You + Me (2008) Hey Cowboy, The Phone’s For You MP3 by Grandaddy from Now It’s On (2003) 1979 MP3 by Meat Beat Manifesto (ok maybe this one is a reach sound wise)
Backstory:
Literally 20 minutes after i drafted this fuckin review Saturday my hardrive decides to take a crap. Everything just froze. No recovery. No last rights. I’ll be back soon… Fuck You Computer it’s not ok.
ALBUM REVIEW: Something between the electronic gadgetry of grandaddy, Rufus Wainwright’s vocal flair and Mike Peters’s acoustic Alarm marches is Joshua Flowers’s SOMASEKLondon Recordings. Floating in spacey vibrations plush with wall to wall carpeting set for that modern music you may imagine in A Clockwork Orange’s record store scene. Where they cater to a debonair and young Malcolm Mcdowell’s taste as he flips through records and picks up some play things for a quick roll in the hay. Other times there are some wicked guitar tones in particular on the track “Time Bomb” which scrambles in-between 1-2 drum machine beats but Joshua’s fancy sleeves certainly are most pronounced in the elevated break-up hit “Hologram”. I don’t know maybe this is truly sexy 70’s milko-bar-music but with less of a perverted Eno thing. You definitely may need a compass to navigate these dreamy pop songs but the fantasy will be safe as each of these tunes floats like their own secret magical ruin. Check it out!
Greek Song MP3 By Rufus Wainwright from his record Poses to see what we mean.
Q&A:: Joshua Flowers answers the dreaded questions which albums would you take with you to a deserted island and goes into the making of London Recordings on a laptop and corresponding via email with the mixer/producer “…felt old-fashioned… It was like working through morse code or something.” — Read more »
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