Category Archives: Music
Brightblack Morning Light
Brightblack Morning Light. The New Weird America. A picturesque vision of languid soundscapes harvesting the star filled sky. Stars. Remember those? If you can think back real hard on your childhood, there was probably a time where your dreams were based on these magical, shiny spheres. If you can’t remember, most of them dissipated along with the wishes of other city children resulting from the infecting effects of rampant pollution and artificial light. It’s hard to see the natural skyline when it’s constantly washed out. Since we’re on the subject, can we change the subject… Now.
BML are Nathan Shineywater and Rachael Hughes, both Southern souls, who drift in a swamp of atmospheric slow-mo blues slightly tinged in gospel roots. Completely off the grid and from the land, it’s a Motion to Rejoice. A Spiritualized revivalism that is spatial, hypnotic, and laced with ambient harmony that can take you to the place of lost dreams if you let it.
Black Lips – Modern Art
The self described ‘flower punk’ band, Black Lips, sounds like if Anton Newcombe not only discovered his garage punk roots, but also discarded his perfectionist qualities into a 60s black hole of chaos. !@#$ it! We’ll do it live. The production is in a low-fi haze, and the raw delivery is kissing the lips of flower-power throwback and forever smearing them black. Good? Bad? Definitely not evil.
The Babies – Meet Me in the City
The Babies. Side project of Woods bassist Kevin Morby, featuring Vivian Girls Cassie Ramone, and Justin Sullivan, drummer for Brooklyn band Bossy.
It’s a shambling mix of guitar-pop hooks and low-fi surf sounds straddling the line between the Vivians’ garage pop vibe and the Woods’ alt-country stoner-folk melodies.
Battles – Gloss Drop
After a four year hiatus since Mirrored, Battles released their second LP album, Gloss Drop. This is their first album as a trio following the departure of vocalist / instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton. However, they recruited some proper guests to fill-in the vocal void including: synthpop musician Gary Numan, Boredoms cult leader Yamantaka Eye, Blonde Redhead singer Kazu Makino, and Chilean born world pop disco artist Matias Aguayo.
A little more accessible than their earlier material, it’s a refined expansion sprawling with complex propulsive grooves. It is a type of music with an uniquely creative blend culminating the technological fusion of human and machine, which may very well prove the theory of singularity. Frenetic and spastic, it shifts gears over a post modern atmosphere inter-meshing machine loops with precise instrumental complexity.