Video :: Divorce :: Aids of Space

          
I have no idea what the fuck I'm hearing... it's like someone giving me a wet willy with a napalm-soaked finger.  Well-meaning, but entirely violent and corrosive.  Glasgow label Clan Destine has shepherded a number of regional artists and labels, one being Night School Records, home to Divorce (and Julia Holter, for balance).  Divorce just released their self-titled LP last week, and listening to it is similar to being accused of killing an entire family of Ewoks.  Full of "how could you?" and "you are the reason the galaxy is shit," alongside a fucking lumberyard of buzz-saws.  Watch this video then look me in the eye and tell me you didn't see the future.

Video :: Friends :: Mind Control

Hits all of the MD pleasure centers. The director, Hiro Murai, comes out smelling like roses again. Their new album (Manifest!) comes out on Fat Possum in June, and they'll be playing DC @ Rock and Roll Hotel @ 07/06. If you don't make it to minute 4, you'll never know what freedom feels like.

Video :: Blanche Blanche Blanche :: Music Overall

I'm convinced there's something in the water in Brattleboro, VT.  A small-town gem of so-far-left-you-go-cross-eyed pop, the art scene here must not give a fuck about the outside world.  It's completely plausible that they might not know it even exists.  I view this video as a sort of Voyager-sponsored message about the dangers of displacing too much air into a fragile receptacle.  The ultimate tension and release, the most fundamental story arc, edge-of-your-seat type stuff.  Wait for it.

Blanche Blanche Blanche plopped this ballad on last year's "Our Place" long-player (on their own OSR-Tapes), and now it sees re-plopping on vinyl by Feeding Tube Records.  Be on the lookout for the new LP "Papa's Proof" on La Station Radar soon.  They also do song poems for $10, so if you're feeling particularly profound, you can write them about it and they'll immortalize you.  Off the charts, anyone?

Video :: Sand Circles :: Motor City

Braindead. Beaten and abused. Nothing but a meat puppet from the scalp on down. Spent the day sucking down dirt like a grave robber on the hunt for a wristwatch.

Better keep this brief.

Ladies and gentleman, the past won't be haunting us anymore, the present passed us by, and the future failed to come at sundown yesterday. Welcome to the post-future world. What comes after the afterlife: Sand Circles. Robocop music straight out of Stockholm. Sounds like sitting alongside the highway with a radar gun waiting for somebody to beat sixty-five. Better believe I've ordered my copy from Not Not Fun.

Video :: Gremlins :: JonBénet

Been meanin' to pack this one into your brain and watch it squirt back out of that play-doh factory you call a head. I don't hate you--in fact, I like you--I just like play-doh more. I guess that means I'm a bit touched, don't it?

Gremlins is comprised of members from Ricky Eats Acid, Toro y Moi, Braids, and Coma Cinema, which in case you can't do the supergroup math means that by minute three, you'll be wishing you could get all that play-do back in your head and keep it there. Hold it...hold it. Now if your parents would only come and pick you up before anyone sees you sneeze.

Video :: Mode Moderne :: Real Goths

Real goths spend Valentine's Day in abandoned train yards. Sometimes up trees. But they sure as hell never smile. Goldilocks ruins her aspirations here at about the 3:25 mark. Shame. Actually, she was done when her radiant skin entered the screen.

Vancouver's Mode Moderne have a new record coming out in May. This track is from a 7" of the same name released last year. I'm not smiling til they come to DC. Goths, I mean. I've strapped three squirrels' tails to my ass in hopes that they'll come sulking my way.

Video :: Rich Aucoin :: It

Video :: X-Ray Eyeballs :: Deja Vu

Well, The Walking Dead is finally back on television, but already I can safely say I much prefer these girl(and guy)s' version of the zombpocalypse. What I really want in my zombie dramas are the banal details of a zombie's quieter moments - gnawing on deer carcases, tripping over tombstones, hanging out with other zombies, moaning out of sheer boredom. Something I can really relate to.

Xray Eyeballs - Deja Vu

This track is the b-side from their recent 7" on Hardly Art. Brains.

Video :: Dirty Beaches :: Lone Runner

DIRTY BEACHES /// LONE RUNNER from Kevin Luna on Vimeo.

The director, Kevin Luna, has produced one of the most compelling narratives of any music video so far this year, a perfect match for Dirty Beaches, one of the most engaging performers currently touring.  This video may be the first time I've been so keenly aware as my voyeurism developed into self-hatred that tapered finally into an apparently unanswerable moral ambiguity, umm...more or less like drinking alone at a children's toy store during the Friday night closing shift.

Alex Hungtai is currently on tour in Europe--great job if you can get it--and you can track his progress over on his blog. His new 7" (b/w Electric Chair) is out tomorrow on Suicide Squeeze.

Video :: The New Lines :: Voyager Program 1977

The New Lines - Voyager Program 1977

Not much to say about my absence on here other than that my new bionic blogging hand has been successfully installed and I'm still out to murder my father. Mainlined a shit-ton of metachlorians, kissed my sister, and I'm good to go. She even bought me a new lightsaber. I asked for coral, but it turned out more salmon. Apparently no one updated her Pantone chart. Here to propel us to the outer reaches of cool nonchalance is The New Lines from Princeton. It doesn't take long for this one to lift-off, and it never lands. Can't seem to dig up a release date, but their debut is due out on The Great Pop Supplement sometime in the next few weeks. Fasten your re-entry helmet and enjoy this video for the time being, you jerk.

Video :: Ganglians :: Bradley

The new DOUBLE Ganglians album is out now on Lefse Records. If you haven't heard of this label, they also just released the new Youth Lagoon album and Youth Lagoon will be playing tonight at DC9. So now you got your watchings and you got your news. How's it feel to be you, old-timer?

Video :: True Widow :: Skull Eyes

Been spinning True Widow's Kemado Records release for a while now, and they're garotting DC tonight at Rock and Roll Hotel with a serial killer lineup. The theme of this post is way more wan/fey/goth than any of the bands playing tonight. Gonna paint my nails black, and then go check out some freak folk.

RNR lineup...
7pm: True Widow
8pm: White Fence
9pm: Woods
10pm: Kurt Vile & the Violators

Video :: Remote Viewing :: Cold Showers

Cold Showers

"I Don't Mind"

Highlands 7"

Mexican Summer

The video by this new Mexican Summer band isn't for everyone, but I must admit that I've got quite a thing for squirting animal blood in my friends' faces. And, boy, do they love it. They can't get enough of the funny way I chomp my good tooth down into some raw meat right before their startled eyes. 

This is music made, apparently, for Mansonites. Just once I'd like to see a video that takes place at an ordinary party where people are just sitting around a quiet living room, occasionally spooning out potato salad onto paper plates and admiring carpet patterns while their jaws flap around on loose hinges like guppies. Instead I'm now one step closer to understanding what Sharon Tate went through.

Summer-loving times aside, Cold Showers has got a pretty sweet vibe going. The singer's voice will give you freezer burn if you sit to closer to your shitty macbook speakers. That's right, you'll smell like year-old corn dogs after you listen to him. MC Corndog on the mic.

Video :: CCTV Channel Surfing :: Mattress (aka Rex Marshall)

No, I'd never fucking heard of this guy. But the loose, cat blood scrawl on the floor beside my bed augured his coming. I write my dream diary in cat blood, so what? I bet you write yours with a Sharpie, downchuh, ya prissy fop?

Dirty Beaches covered the desolate "El Dorado" by Mattress at a recent Blackcat meltdown (and at other stops along the tour) and you would never guess how faithful he was being to the original. As mind-opening as the Dirty Beaches live set turned out to be, I realized that I'd have to chase this one to the root. Dismiss all the reverberations of Suicide and Roy Orbison and burrow my hands into the synth-loosened soil.

So without further fucking around, let's swivel our super awesome, spaceage Herman Miller chairs toward the CCTV. Now shut your eyes, little girl. Shut um and let's to see what we can see:

The opener from Low Blows:


Mattress :: El Dorado


Mattress :: Roll Roll Roll



From the Portland Mercury:
It wasn't mere '80s nostalgia that drew Marshall to synths. The groundwork of his appreciation for Gary Numan and Suicide was laid by his love of author J.G. Ballard, the sci-fi bard of synth-pop. Ballard spoke to Marshall's own pangs of future shock. "I'm overwhelmed by the pace culture's moving in," Marshall says with another chortle. "There no longer seems to be a zeitgeist. Or there are 1,000 tiny zeitgeists."

The Reservations (Rex Marshall's post-Mattress project) :: Live Forever


Mattress :: Bad Times
http://www.dirtybeaches.blogspot.com/


From Analog Beach (the Dirty Beaches blog):
Had the pleasure of finally meeting Rex tonight in Portland, AKA Mattress, AKA Reservations. Who was a huge influence on the conception of early Dirty Beaches back in 2006 after I saw him perform at Cagibi in Montreal all alone on a stage, crooning. Armed with tape machine back up tracks, pedals, and other machinery, he rocks the mic like a shadow dancer in the night. Incredible voice.

Mattress @ the Pink Room playing God knows what:


Mattress :: Pollution @ the Lafayette Footbridge:

From videographer's description:
On June 23rd Mattress brought his gritty, uncontrolled moves and electronic music to the railroad footbridge on 20th and Lafayette in Southeast Portland to perform his song “Pollution.” This turned into the craziest setup of any episode yet after the generator failed to start. We ended up powering the whole shoot (computer, mixer, amp, tape player and microphone) off of electricity from a car cigarette adapter. Our crack team of sound engineers — Matt Huiskamp, James Jacobsen and Clemeth Abercrombie deserve some recognition for their electronic miracle-making that day.

Mattress @ Burgerville (2 songs):



From Dusted Magazine writer's blog, Still Single:
There’s a little bit of sleaziness to the whole thing, like it could slip into some seedy, non-existent cocktail lounge or the middle of a Ween record, that really helps you notice that Marshall has written real songs and is not just dicking around with spontaneous, uninspired notions.

Now aren't you glad you let daddy have the remote?

Video :: Remote Viewing :: Craft Spells

Craft Spells

"You Should Close the Door"

Idle Labor

Captured Tracks

Video :: Remote Viewing :: Grouper

Grouper

"Alien Observer"
A.I.A. : Alien Observer (short LP)

Just in case you're in the mood for something atmospheric, or alternatively, if you thought the L Word could have used a little more black blood of the earth.

Video :: Remote Viewing :: Julianna Barwick

Julianna Barwick
"The Magic Place"
The Magic Place
asthmatickitty

For me, the loop-heavy veneration perfected here is what the lesser, more frustrated lads in Animal Collective could have accomplished had they not been too preoccupied with The Jungle Book.

Congratulations, Julianna Barwick, for actually making me feel something both weightless and profoundly sexual - in other words - music.

Video :: Remote Viewing :: Xander Harris

Xander Harris

"Tanned Skin Dress"

Urban Gothic

Not Not Fun Records

Finally, when I thought my fantasies were too twisted for public consumption, somebody comes along and mainstreams the most fringe sectors of my imagination. I feel completely absorbed by normality, human, oneness with.  This giallo inspired video ties hipster stereotypes to a stake and releases a knife-wielding stalker from its pen at the edge of the forest.

I should say that I'm drinking a new tequila right now, El Ultimo Agave, which I was persuaded by the clerk (?) at Metro Wine & Liquors to buy over the Cuervo Especial Silver, not because it's better but because "it costs three dollars more." So my bloodstream's full of unicorns battling kittens for dominance of teardrop island.

Video :: Remote Viewing :: Tyler, The Creator

Sure, sure this one's been making the rounds. Nothing new about posting it here. That's why I encourage you to just watch the whole thing on mute. And instead of Tyler sitting there on the stool, imagine it's me, and I've just been told I can't drink beer anymore because I've developed a deadly allergy. Or, plan B, watch and listen at the same time to see just why this band's been exploding lately. So much hype, I wouldn't be surprised if you called home this weekend to find out that Tyler the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt were your mom and dad now. And they will be from now on. And it won't be so bad, because you'll never be short on love. Embrace it.

Video :: Remote Viewing :: Millionyoung x Teen Gaze

Getting my feet back under me again, and I thought I'd start out with this new video of Millionyoung and Teen Daze performing a watery cover of Pink Floyd's "Us and Them," something to celebrate the end of winter and the beginning of the flood season.

Video courtesy of yourstruly courtesy of somebody else who actually got off their ass and did something.