Showing posts with label electronic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label electronic. Show all posts
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Tonight: Lesionread, UVB-76, Kristachuwan, and Copy Manager


A hybrid of experimental electronic and offbeat performance art, Lesionread has just released her new EP. Dogs was released in two parts, the first containing Lesionread's avant-electronic at its finest, and Pt. 2 being a collection of jumbled and contorted love songs. The EP will be for sale at the show in the form of a Lesionread flash drive. Dogs is a perfect showcase for Lesionread's successful marriage of soul gripping vocals and playful, violent electronic chaos.

Dogs Pt 1 heads off with the track "If/Then/Therefore" which is the most inspiring song I've heard in a long time. Lesionread shows determination in the face of opposition and disbelief, and kicks snow at it. This one will bobble around your head for quite a while, perhaps motivating you to step out of your boundaries and pursue your dreams. The track "Snowball Fight!" has a backbone comprised of dancy- brainwave, and stands strong as the EP's only instrumental.

Dogs Pt 2 may be the most accurate aural representation of the actual experience of love that I've ever heard. The highs, lows, excitement, confusion and anxiety are all present. On SoundCloud, lyrics are available for all of the songs except the one titled, "I Want to Fall in Love." Instead, the curious party is privy to this interesting message:  "(YOU WISH YOU COULD READ THESE LYRICS BUT NO THEY ARE PERSONAL I'M NOT GUNNA TYPE EM UP ON BANDCAMP."

This statement could be in place for nearly all of the tracks, as many of Lesionread's lyrics come across as the innocent, slightly awkward mental narrations of a torn lover with a shredded heart. You can connect with the songs on a basic human level, even as the instrumentation glitches around you like a bad tape, teasing at different strains while consistently remaining danceable. If Aphex Twin had a kid cousin who was a soulful singer, the music would sound sort of like this.

Tonight's performance (hint: click hyperlink for more info) consists of Lesionread, UVB-76, Kristachuwan, and Copy Manager, and promises to be a mind bending adventure the likes of which may never be reproduced. Lesionread is constantly topping her strange live performances which are thrashing wild and unpredictable. Past shows have contained props, lights, silly string, projectors, and audience interaction. If you walk through the door, you'd better be prepared to play. Come out to the show tonight and expect nothing less but to leave with a lust for enjoyable insanity.

Entrance is free, with a recommendation to donate or support the artists by purchasing their work.
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Tonight: Electric Thursdays


Local electronic producer Geoffrey Peters, who records and performs as JeffRepeater, creates bass-heavy beats from a range of influences that include glitch, dubstep, hip-hop, trance and electronica. His tracks have received airplay on 91.3 WBNY's "Upstate Soundscape" program and this past April, he released an album, Horizons, which can be downloaded from bandcamp. Tonight, along with DJ NOBEZ, you can catch JeffRepeater performing at Electric Avenue as a part of their weekly Electric Thursdays event. Admission is free and the music starts at 11pm.





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Album of the Week: Lesionread - I gave my robot a brain and it got scared and turned herself off


We did a spotlight on Lesionread after his first EP, 2012, in April. It was the first time I listened to Buffalo, New York student and artist Shawn Lewis’ music, and the beginning of a beautiful friendship. It was the start (for me, and in many ways for Lewis) of a madness that crept around the hardwood floors of Buffalo music venues and lighted our chins. Every time Lesionread performed was different and better, culminating in a dancetastic show at The Tralf opening for Wild Nothing that rallied our spirits, as if the silly string and plastic blow up pool critters were just a distraction from the open chest, the pounding heart of a Buffalo starship.

Lesionread’s latest EP, I gave my robot a brain and it got scared and turned herself off, is a bright light in the warp speed microcosm that Lewis created this year. It’s unifying and personal, but it’s also dark and assuming. It needs to keep moving or it will crack and bleed. Each track (there are 37) is a piece of earth, a chunk of metal, the slippery lips of a cavern. According to Lewis, the EP was inspired by Dan Deacon, Department of Eagles, and Dirty Projectors, especially their early, less conventional work. So it’s no surprise it has an amorphous, amebic quality; what does surprise me is how solid the framework is. Little arms of goofiness splatter the experience with somewhat unoriginal bullshit (Lewis counts to 100 on a track; a Yodaesque voice alerts the listener to the shared human experience of having first-day-jitters; a Spotify ad interrupts the EP midway; we recognize the calm voices of the local music world), but the music itself—the beats, the lyrics, the core—is beautiful.

The major course of Lesionread’s robot is cinematic and modern. The phrase, “I’m happy I’m changing with you” repeats on one track, while the music solders like a hexachord. Every purely musical track is stronger than the one before it, though there are moments of intense brilliance throughout. By the end, the music is simply excellent. Sunspots, robots, and the tiniest human notions, all rolled up into a hot little diamond.

Lesionread and fellow Buffalo electronic musician Kristachuwan are touring now (#LK2013), casting a handful of shimmering dust wherever they go. Check them out, and get Lesionread’s music, including I gave my robot a brain and it got scared and turned herself off, here. 



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Album Review: Holy Ghost - Dynamics


As divisive as electro-pop may be for some, Holy Ghost's Dynamics just might convert a few stubborn skeptics. The record is as enjoyable and exhilarating as anything its genre can hope to accomplish. While not as artfully expansive, subtly revolutionary, or chart-busting as Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, Dynamics is more consistently and immediately fun than even that towering monolith (though, alas, there is nothing on the level of "Get Lucky"'s catchiness).

The New York City duo open up the record with the crackling creativity of "Okay" and "Dumb Disco Ideas," tighten their control on the Pheonix-tinged "Changing of the Guard," and bring Peter, Bjorn, and John-esque pop precision to "Dance A Little Closer." Most impressively, this is accomplished within the record's first third. What follows from there is none the weaker.

Clearly indebted to the eighties, Holy Ghost still sound very much of the moment. There are songs on Dynamics that could easily find mass radio-play if the band gained a bit more recognition. In a world where M83, Capital Cities, and Passion Pit score substantial hits, there certainly is a place for Holy Ghost's brand of synth-pop. It only remains to be seen if they can reach the audience they deserve.

Grade: B+

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Album Review: David Lynch - The Big Dream


David Lynch has been away from film far too long. Admittedly as the master of disturbing cinematic dreams that transcend genre and all attempts at classification, Lynch never seemed to fit with the Hollywood scene. An artist seemingly oblivious to convention, the living icon of a man has unsurprisingly turned his sights away from the silver screen since 2006's Inland Empire. Focusing instead on transcendental meditation, his personal line of organic coffee, and occasional short flicks, Lynch has also increasingly dabbled in the world of the music.

The Big Dream, Lynch's second full-length solo record, arrives close to the release of Nine Inch Nails' "comeback" music video, directed by Lynch and featuring surreal imagery akin to his debut film Eraserhead. Such surrealism carries over to Lynch's electro-blues sophomore musical effort, a slickly produced, vaguely nightmarish, lyrically disjointed attempt at capturing his art in album form.

Reminiscent of the endearingly high-pitched, childlike vocals of Daniel Johnston, Lynch's distinct voice rambles along rather smoothly to a mix of sensual beats, noirish guitar chords, and folky train-hopping rhythms. Less experimental than one might expect from the lord of the strange, The Big Dream nonetheless matches simple "I want you" sentiments with offbeat reflections on sock colors, foreign beers, and shotgun suicides in a manner that feels characteristically Lynchian.

The album's penultimate track, "The Line It Curves," washed in a rich synthetic ambience, contains more clarity and achingly raw desire than a listener might expect from Mr. Lynch. The dreaminess of his vision seems to add up to something more lucid than previous tracks suggest, and by the time "Are You Sure" concludes the work, Lynch proves a "Wild at Heart" romantic. The Big Dream isn't as big as Lynch's greatest achievements, but it is dreamy and it is Lynch.

Grade: B



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Album Review: James Holden - The Inheritors


A work of strange and subtle ambition, James Holden's The Inheritors is a cosmically-minded, world beat-inflected, Space Age fever. Like an artifact from an alien civilization that has fallen through our atmosphere into the ears of unsuspecting listeners, the British electronica producer's ambient album merges the extraterrestrial with the earthly. Each tick, squeal, laser zap, organ tone, and recorded chant is crafted into a wider, sonically absorbing vision.

The frenetic drum-machine breakdown of "Renata" stands as an early album apex, bringing bursts of raging chaos that allow the ominous swell the record maintains to reach frightening, but sublime, heights. Yet even during steadier, duller, repetitive moments, as in "Inter-City," where clicking percussion marches alongside scattered horns, there is a sense of Holden as a postmodern composer with a measured approach to pacing and dynamics. The slow build of "Seven Stars" may require patience, but such patience is greatly rewarded by Holden's mindful sound-tinkering.

Although The Inheritors is ostensibly an album that warrants private listens only (unless your choice of club also happens to be an art gallery), the work's lack of public appeal is not of detriment to its inherent value. Intimate, carefully constructed, and containing fully immersive sci-fi soundscapes, The Inheritors is a rich addition to humanity's musical inheritance.

Grade: B+




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Tonight: Chippewa Electronic Music Showcase


In the spirit of Memorial Day weekends past, a group of Chippewa clubs is having an Electronic Music Showcase tonight! Resident DJs at The Guvernment, Mark Oliver and Manzone & Strong, will make the trip down to Buffalo and be the featured performers of this showcase. Some of Buffalo's most popular club DJs will keep it going until 4am as always. The events will be dispersed among Soho Burger Bar, Privato, Bottoms Up, and The Purple Monkey. Though it is not stated, there may likely be cover charges at the doors of the establishments. Also the schedule and time slots for the performers will not be released until today. Follow @buffaBLOG on Twitter to get updated when that information is released. 

james wild
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Album Review: Sun Kil Moon & The Album Leaf - Perils from the Sea

 

The smoky, death-obsessed collaboration between Sun Kil Moon and The Album Leaf (or more accurately, Mark Kozelek and Jimmy LaValle, the mesmeric forces behind the respective groups) could have been an awkward and unusual curiosity of a record. LaValle's autumnal electronic textures never seemed an ideal match for Kozelek's weary, somnolent desert croon. The meandering, stream-of-consciousness storytelling that propelled Sun Kil Moon was too dusty and distant to fit with The Album Leaf's warm synthetic tones.

And yet Perils from the Sea is a triumph. Its global vision, lyrically travelling from Israel to Australia to Korea to Mexico to Kozelek's familiar Americana settings, bundles up the world entire while retaining a stark human intimacy. The sprawling openness of each song finds shared ground between Kozelek and LaValle, making for a expansive, quietly ambitious, record. Perils from the Sea is not a throwaway just-for-fun collaboration. It is a stunning artistic accomplishment.

While most of the album's tracks stretch on longingly, the team's darkly comic yet emotionally compelling attempt at a pop song, "You Missed My Heart," finds Kozelek writing with uncharacteristic clarity and narrative focus. Chronicling the misadventures and rippling memories of a luckless impulse-murderer, the track presents new opportunities for both artists and is perhaps the most contained and careful demonstration of the duo's songwriting capabilities.

Elsewhere, nostalgia and sentimentality become complex and justifiable on the eleven minute "Somehow the Wonder of Life Prevails." The grim, profane "Gustavo" moves with switchblade menace while "Baby in Death Can I Rest Next to You" and "Ceiling Gazing" provide somber spiritual meditation on mortality. Perils from the Sea is indeed a perilous journey, but its dreamy stagger through the haze of life makes for extraordinary listening.

Grade: A-




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Album Review: Young Galaxy - Ultramarine


Young Galaxy sound neither youthful nor galactic, but the five-piece Vancouver dream-pop act do offer an enjoyable Beach House-gone-electronica brand of Canadian indie. On Ultramarine, the band's fourth LP, Catherine McCandless and friends seem confident, determined, and very much at home with the strengths and limits of their stylistic ethos.

Though parts of Ultramarine are fairly mid-tempo, the sensual shuffle of "Fever" and the 80s dance anthem enchantment of "What We Want" securely place the album in the indie-pop category. Even when the overdone retro groove of "Out the Gate Backwards" nearly undercuts McCandless's compelling vocals, the band still remains addictive and intriguing. Ultramarine may lack the variation and sweetness of a Stars album or the genuine innovation found in the work of Grimes or Björk, but it does have drive, zest, and joy that other similarly situated, more decidedly arty, acts often downplay. 

Ultramarine begins with the steady, pounding assurance of "Pretty Boy" and ends with the borderline cheesiness of "Sleepwalk With Me." Although the record's arc is imperfect and its lyrics over-simple, the songs themselves are frequently delightful. Ultramarine is a solid release with enough likable tunes to forgive its flaws. 

Grade: B




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Tonight: Conspirator and Break Science


Electronic jam super-group Conspirator have separated themselves from being just a spin-off of The Disco Biscuits. Forming in 2004, Disco Biscuits members Aaron Mangner and Marc Brownstien started a new musical journey that is now no-longer just a side project. Tonight, they are making what has become a common tour-stop at the Town Ballroom, one of their favorite venues to play in. Coming off their latest release, the Unleashed EP, the band has added Pendulum's tour drummer KJ Sawka along with Conspirator regular and Raq guitarist Chris Michetti. What's more is that on this tour, they have brought along their friends Break Science, Adam Deitch and Borahm Lee, whose duo has made waves and gained a lot of new fans in the electronic jam scene in the past two years. 

 Both bands will take the stage with a high level of good energy, so if you are a fan of this type of music this is a show you would regret to miss. Even if you can appreciate talented live drumming, the quality of these two individuals performing tonight in Sawka and Deitch is paramount and again not to be passed over. Tickets are $20.00 in advance and can be found HERE through MNM Presents. Doors open at 7pm. The event is All Ages. Town Ballroom 681 Main st. Buffalo, NY.



james wild
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Listener's Digest: George FitzGerald - "Thinking of You"


Debuted on his BBC Essential Mix last month, George Fitzgerald returns with another House monster in “Thinking of You.” Fitzgerald cloaks the buildup underneath an inhuman vocal sample, cut-up and smashed back together to sound like a constant come-up. The effect is kinetic and tactile; the almost overwhelming pay-off Fitzgerald leads you to is all metallic hand-claps and fat minor synth-tones. Unlike “Child,” Fitzgerald’s signature tune from last year, this track isn’t fun, it’s menacing and dark.



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Album Review: Autre Ne Veut – Anxiety


The anguished R&B on Anxiety, the second LP by Autre Ne Veut, brainchild of Brooklyn’s Arthur Ashin, may or may not be R&B at all. In an interview with Pitchfork, Ashin admitted that though “People who heard the album say, ‘This is so R&B’…. people who actually listen to R&B are not going to feel like this is a real R&B record.” But then just what is this electro-pop paradise of an album, ringing with falsetto vocals that soar and sear beyond expected R&B conventions?

Is it Top 40 gone indie? Is it a series of jams for nightclubs exclusively catering to art scene kids hopped up on ecstasy? There certainly is an inwardness and sensuality to the record, even as it seeks to be “Ego Free Sex Free.” Too breathless, tortured, and oddball to gain mass acceptance, Anxiety’s music still feels like it belongs on sweaty dim-lit dance floors. Its worried handwringing is nearly indistinguishable from a clubber’s bump-and-grind.

On Anxiety, Ashin takes that grind and grooves and moves with the vitality of a 21st century Prince, even if the work lacks Prince’s narrative velocity. Its cut-up, stilted, semi-coherent lyrics capture the incomplete, unfocused trajectory of the human thought process. Full of contradictions and blind yearning, Autre Ne Veut uses words to prompt impressions, tossing grammar aside for flow’s sake. Hazy half-finished phrases like “In the world that your heart is screaming, find it Neverland” and “Don’t deserve baby and you follow you wanted to me” are more felt than cognized. Recurrent obsessions with death and disconnection manage to register in spite of the record’s intentional blurriness, creating a tonal desperation that undercuts the frisky funk of Anxiety’s songs.

Autre Ne Veut is freakier and shriller than progressive R&B peers like Frank Ocean and Janelle Monáe. Employing tighter songwriting than the Weeknd, Anxiety nonetheless relies on similarly memorable moodscapes and emotional expansiveness. Though it may not be a traditional R&B album, its bluesy rhythms being overwhelmed by foggy synth-pop sensibilities, Anxiety is a slick and sexed-up production worth getting anxious over, worth diving and dissolving into.

Grade: B+




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The Return of The Postal Service?


A mysterious new update earlier this morning to the Postal Service website had fans and music bloggers speculating as to whether a long overdue reunion of the band was finally to become a reality.

According to Billboard.com, a yet unannounced tour that includes a Coachella appearance and a deluxe re-release of The Postal Service's acclaimed (and only) 2003 album Give Up have been confirmed. New music from the adored electronic pop group, however, seems unlikely based on previous comments from frontman Ben Gibbard.

Last year, Gibbard released a folksy, mostly acoustic, solo record, Former Lives, a follow-up to his work on Death Cab for Cutie's Codes and Keys. Jimmy Tamborello, the second half of The Postal Service, continues to release indietronic music as Dntel.




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Album Review: Indians - Somewhere Else


Søren Løkke Juul is a fortunate fellow indeed. The Danish musician’s new act, Indians, debuts on the 4AD record label, current home to Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Deerhunter, Grimes, and the National (among many others). Arising alongside such maddeningly good company, Indians, as a one man project, seems born for greatness. And Somewhere Else, as an introductory record, is more than a stellar start.

On Somewhere Else, the warbling richness of Juul’s falsetto tramples over lush musical foliage, shimmering layers of keyboards and guitars. Use of synthesizers is plentiful yet never makes the album feel overly electronic or coldly artificial. An organic ache to the record, competing with its celestial scope, humanly involves the listener while lifting the soul into space on a rocket ship full of sci-fi sounds.

A serenade in a planetarium of a record, Somewhere Else lies beneath familiar indie constellations yet somehow gives them new perspective, quietly accepting its place among the stars. From the shrill Devendra Banhart folk weirdness of “I Am Haunted” to the alien murmurs of “Melt,” Indians combine mad scientist experimentation with a hymn-like spirit, placing a ghost in its silvery machine and letting the phantom voice speak. The closing track, source of the album’s title, begins with an empty hallway longing that two minutes in builds into a Band of Horses meets Wolf Parade meets MGMT anthem, a stirring and cinematic climax that neither needs nor offers a denouement.

Although Somewhere Else owes stylistic fragments to bands like Grizzly Bear and the Antlers, the singular and personal tone of the album belongs to Juul alone. This disarmingly lovely record, soaked in reverb and sadness, requires patience but rewards with its expressive depth. Juul more than earns his place at 4AD, presenting superb low-key indie-pop that sends waves of emotion through the night skies of the wireless age.

Grade: A-



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buffaBLOG Road Trip: The Soft Moon


Tonight, the Soft Moon is altering the universe at the Bug Jar in Rochester. Their re-scheduled concert will feature the wild music and visuals of Luis Vasquez, Justin Anastasi, Damon Way, Kevin Tecon, and Ron Robinson. Producing terrifying electronic bursts of noise suitable for any horror movie soundtrack, the freaky post-punk outfit is now on tour in support of its sophomore LP, Zeros. Vasquez has described the San Francisco-based band’s sound as “layers of atmospherics/textures … express[ing] moods.” Their darkly surreal show will be opened by Montreal's Majical Cloudz and followed by Shakedown DJ’s at 11pm. Tickets are $8 for those over 21 and $10 for anyone under. Doors open at 7:30pm and music begins at 8:30.





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Album Review: Sigha – Living with Ghosts



James Shaw’s minimalist electronic outfit, Sigha, based in Berlin, eschews traditional musicality to create dense, dreary airtight techno. Living with Ghosts, a patient and plodding work of soundsmithing, marks his first full LP.

Though there is something grim and dystopian and, yes, even ghostly, to Sigha’s rhythms, the record’s cryptic ambience is often more tedious than immersive. With few exceptions, tracks on Living with Ghosts are relentless, protracted, achingly eerie affairs. “Scene Couple” contains an undulating interplay of insect-like noises that rub up against a steady hop of beats. Its follow-up, “Translate,” then presents a lengthy, murmuring industrial whir, unrolling in ticker-tape fashion, as if translating the private thoughts of machines, leaking a cyclical, looping, binary stream of encoded passivity as entrancing as it is exhausting.


The exhaustion becomes even more apparent on “Faith and Labor” when Darth Vader-style exhalations move with the music’s increasing heart rate. The heightened aural brightness of “She Kills Ecstasy,” flirting dreamily with synthesizers, provides some variation, but generally Living with Ghosts is icy and remote. As the synths glide into its finale, “Aokigahara,” named after Japan’s “Haunted Forest of Death,” home of untold suicides, the album floats gracefully but hardly memorably into a misty oblivion.  


Subtly constructed and precisely produced, Living with Ghosts feels like a clinical procedure, awash in anesthetic numbness. The joyless record, somewhere between a head-trip and a headache, is a draining experience. While not without artistic merit, the phantom musical meditations of Living with Ghosts are glum companions for eager ears to live alongside.


Grade: B-
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