31 search results for ‘marko’
RX Bandits - Hope Is A Butterfly…
RX Bandits today premiered (finally) their first promo video for a Mandala track, namely Hope Is A Butterfly, No Net It’s Captor, one of the best tracks from my top album of 2009. This is the first promo vid the band have released that isn’t simply them performing a song somewhere, but despite the slick production it still has that home-made feel that encapsulates Bandits (large parts of the last 2 albums were recorded in vocalist Matt Embree’s garage, aka The Elizabethan, which also doubles as the head office of his record label Mash Down Babylon).
The video features the band dressed as Tarantino-esque henchmen, but with cardboard weapons and paper-bag masks, rolling around a neighbourhood and stealing coloured shapes. Yeah, it makes no sense but then most music videos don’t, and it looks nice so fuck it.
Marko
Walter Schreifels Solo Album
Legendary post-hardcore pioneer Walter Schreifels (Gorilla Biscuits, Quicksand, Rival Schools, Walking Concert) is set to release his first solo album through Big Scary Monsters this spring.
Entitled An Open Letter To The Scene, the 10 track album will feature covers of Agnostic Front’s Society Sucker and Don’t Gotta Prove It by CIV (a track Schreifels himself wrote in 1995). The opening track, Arthur Lee’s Lullaby is available now as part of BSM’s ‘10 Collection and it is definitely worth checking out.
If Walter Schreifels’ work has so far eluded you I urge you to check out what you can get hold of, especially Rival Schools’ fantastic 2001 album United By Faith. Here is the video for one of my favourite songs from that album, Good Things
Marko
New Ratatat Album
New York guitar-led electronic wizards Ratatat are set to follow up 2008’s fantastic LP3 with the imaginatively titled LP4 on February 15th. Although mostly recorded during the same sessions that yielded its predecessor, the new album will apparently most definitely not be LP3 part 2.
The album will feature a horde of unusual instruments including Japanese Biwa and Pipa (leading to rumours of tours with a string quartet in tow), as well as the usual mix of hip hop beats, electronic wiggery and 60’s psychedelia.
LP3 was one of the genuine surprises of ‘08, a huge jump forward from their self-titled debut and Classics, infectiously catchy and incredibly innovative. Let’s hope LP4 is even more of a progression.
For those of you unfamiliar with the duo, here is the video for the single Mirando from LP3
Marko
The Sentimental Engine Slayer
Omar Rodríguez-López - not content with being the musical force in The Mars Volta, forging a formidable solo career and working with everyone from John Frusciante to Erykah Badu - is set to release his first film.
Entitled The Sentimental Engine Slayer, Omar wrote, directed, produced and stars (alongside his brother) in this film due to make its premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival in February.
The plot revolves around brother and sister Barlam (played by Omar) and Natalia (played by debut actress Tatiana Velazquez) living in a sprawling suburb of El Paso, focusing on their uncomfortable relationship with each other and Barlam’s dwindling grip on reality.
Boasting an apparently labyrinthine plot and music by the curly-haired one himself, this could be a very interesting experience, if quite possibly a disturbing one.
Marko
2010 - An Alternative Preview
For those of you with an ear for the slightly less accessible, more experimental or just plain noisier, here is a wee preview of some of the releases 2010 has in store for you. If any of them are half as good as I’m expecting, this is going to be a good year for music…
My Top 5 Albums Of 2009
I haven’t posted anything for a while because I’ve been busy (read lazy) so as it’s the end of the year I thought I’d share my favourite albums of 2009 with you. Picking 5 releases was practically impossible so I have limited myself to full lengths only, and trying to put them in any sort of order has given me a headache I plan to drink my way through as soon as possible. 2009 has been an incredible year for music with fresh offerings from old favourites, new arrivals and more than a few surprises along the way. After careful deliberation, here are my top 5 albums of the year…
Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions
I love Biffy Clyro, I have since the first time I heard 57. Their first three albums (Blackened Sky, The Vertigo Of Bliss and Infinity Land) are absolutely stunning, filled with perfectly written post-hardcore songs only kept from the attentions of mainstream music fans by their spiky and comparatively awkward style.
Then Puzzle was released and Biffy seemed to have lost that something special that marked them apart from other alt-rock bands. Abandoning their unique sound for one far more conventional may have made Puzzle by far their most popular album, and although there are brief glimpses of Biffy’s brilliance I was hugely disappointed, a feeling that was only made worse by the release of the genuinely boring Mountains.
Adebisi Shank - This Is The Album…
I got the debut album from Irish 3-piece noisemonsters Adebisi Shank (Adebisi was a character in HBO series Oz who unsurprisingly got shanked) earlier this week and have been listening to it on repeat for at least 48 hours now. It is that good. It’s almost impossible to try and describe what they sound like so I won’t, all you need to know is they are mind-bendingly good and their album (This Is The Album Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank) is only £8 (vinyl with free cd) from here.
To give you some idea of what they are like, here is one of the bonus tracks from the album, Oyasumi. It’s 50% Ratatat, 50% Colonel Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade and 50% Refused. That’s 150% win. Turn it up real loud.
The band also released a pretty damn good summer mix-tape that can be found here (right-click and ‘save link as’ to download).
Marko
Idiosync - Symbiosis
I love independent record labels. I love them even more when they are run by bands/artists who understand the plight of the small British band. One such label is Godmonkey Recordings, started up in early 2008 by Gavin Filmer (Shapes drummer) with the intention of helping artists achieve exposure and release material, book tours etc.
One of the bands on their label are Birmingham ‘art-beat’ band Idiosync. Formed in August 2008 as an instrumental band, they burst onto the local scene in February of this year and have been forging their sound ever since through a constant stream of blistering live shows, culminating in the release of Symbiosis, a self produced 5-track EP mixed by Al Groves (Elvis Costello, The Zutons, Tantrums). As the band and EP names could suggest, this release sounds like a symbiotic relationship of idiosyncrasies – the art-rock sensibilities of Bloc Party, the dance-punk beats of Foals, the alt-indie sounds of ¡Forward, Russia! and the epic atmospheric soundscapes of Explosions In The Sky – creating an instantly recognisable yet unique take on the art-rock genre.
EP opener Initiate eases you in with lashings of delay-ridden guitar underpinned by break-beat drumming building to a crescendo and exploding into the stabbing guitars and shouty vocals of Shards. Track 3 Mediocre is most definitely a misnomer, opening with dance-punk riffage and gang-vocals before settling into a verse that reminds me of under-appreciated post-hardcore 4-piece The Honor System. Apricot Jam sounds like Bloc Party and ¡Forward, Russia! in a punch up with Pelican and EP closer D.N.V. has not only one of the catchiest hooks I’ve heard in a long while, but possibly the best use of a Whammy pedal since Tom Morello hung up his electric and went all folksy.
A wonderful blend of musical styles and incredibly danceable, Symbiosis is a strong first release from a small band sure to make big waves in the UK music scene. Here as a taster is Apricot Jam
Marko
Albums That Never Were
We’ve all heard the stories, a hotly anticipated album doesn’t get released for whatever reason, either its rejected by label, rejected by the band, or simply the band split up before the album can be released. Well in a new feature the AGCS team will be bringing you the stories behind, and tracks from, some of these lost albums. First up, Weezer…
Following on from the immensely popular (and to this date best-selling album) debut full-length ‘The Blue Album’, River’s Cuomo began work on what he envisioned as a rock-opera concept album entitled Songs From The Black Hole.
The story of SFTBH was in the style of a 60’s kitschy view of the future and space-travel, in which 3 guys (Jonas, Wuan and Dondó, voiced by Rivers, Brian Bell and Matt Sharp respectively), 2 girls (Laurel, voiced by Rachel Haden of that dog, and Maria, voiced by Joan Wasser of The Dambuilders), and a computer (M1, voiced by Weezer historian, webmaster, archivist, and unofficial 5th member Karl Koch) who, in the words of Rivers, “are on this mission in space to rescue somebody, or something. The whole thing was really an analog for taking off, going out on the road and up the charts with a rock band, which is what was happening to me at the time I was writing this and feeling like I was lost in space.”
During the writing of the album, Rivers enrolled at Harvard and his inspiration changed from science fiction, to the Madame Butterfly theme that runs through Weezer’s second album Pinkerton. SFTBH was abandoned, although reworked versions of 4 tracks (Tired Of Sex, Getchoo, No Other One and Why Bother?) made it onto Pinkerton, and yet more were reworked and released as b-sides. Over the following years demo versions of original tracks were leaked onto the internet, and others were released on Rivers’ collection of demos (Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo), yet this was not enough for Weezer fans who have petitioned for the recording and release of the entire album, unfortunately hindered by issues between the band and Geffen president Jordan Schur.
Possibly destined to remain an album of fragments, 8-track recordings and bootlegs, Songs From The Black Hole exists in unofficial forms floating around the internet, little more than roughly edited compilations of the available tracks. I’ve posted two tracks from the album below that have been floating around the net for years, so if you haven’t heard them before, enjoy :o)
Marko
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