News :: Our Machine Watches Your Machine :: Bmore Musically Informed

Well, shit holler. Last month Baltimore music blog, Bmore, posted a double-sided mixtape of up-and-comer Baltimore bands. We're ripping the stump up by the roots here when with this post. Gotta give credit where credit's due, so head over to Bmore Musically Informed, cruise around, see what the north has got to offer. I like to check it pretty regular. See what's what. Been awhile. Then about a month ago, up pops this sweet set of sounds.

I've still got to give this one a few more listens, but already the stand outs for me include Zomes, Ecstatic Sunshine, Dope Body, and Winks (for delivering the best song title in the pack). I'd like to personally vouch for Weekends for delivering a solid, noisy set at a Friends Records event hosted by Subterranean A. Adventure, to his credit, put in one of the more surprising live contributions this year when Benny Boeldt's voice turned out to be as strong as his gaming thumbs at the Toro y Moi show at Rock and Roll Hotel. His newest record out on Carpark has some of the best melancholy synth work I've heard  in a while, swelling into a new style I like to call Ninja Gaiden-Goth.

Oh yeah, and add Dope Body's July 5 DC9 show to your summer viewing list.

Side One
[Side A] Baltimore: Spring 2011 // a bmoremusic.net mixtape by Bmore Musically Informed
1. Zomes - "Openings"
2. Weekends - "Home Alone (acoustic)"
3. Ken Seeno - "Cedilla in My Monogram"
4. Lands & Peoples - "Sexting"
5. White Life - "Real Things"
6. Eachothers - "Wild Yonder"
7. Microkingdom - "Aire Metal (Chopped and Screwed)"
8. Ponytail - "Honey Touches"
9. Adventure - "Feels Like Heaven"
10. Daytime - "Life / Afterlife (edit)"
11. Ecstatic Sunshine - "Hello Money"

Side Two
[Side B] Baltimore: Spring 2011 // a bmoremusic.net mixtape by Bmore Musically Informed
1. Celebration - "Only The Wicked (acoustic)"
2. Zu Shapes - "Olivia"
3. Moss of Aura - "Charter"
4. Winks - "Slap Me Choke Me Cum On You"
5. Dope Body - "The Shape of Grunge To Come"
6. Inflatable Mattress - "Green Tea Girlfriend"
7. Thank You - "Pathetic Magic (Dan Deacon remix)"
8. Avocado Happy Hour - "Daytime Television"
9. Gem Vision - "Untitled 1"

News :: Our Machine Watches Your Machine :: I Guess I'm Floating

Zoo Music and the blog, I Guess I'm Floating, have a ten day old mixtape up curated by Dirty Beaches. This one's made up of mostly older jamz, rap songs, and sonic graters.

It's hard to tell if the Alan Vega song classifies as tipping his hand or owning up to what we all already know about the Dirty Beaches sound. Tevs. I was definitely pleased to hear "The Night Collectors" on there from those commie hijacking Japanese, Les Rallizes Denudés, off of their Heavier Than A Death In The Family album.

Listen UP. Friday mixtape coming to your house. Hope your work machine streams--just one more thing the private sector has over guv'ment labor.

News :: Our Machine Watches Your Machine :: The Supreme Court of Canada

Headquartered somewhere deep inside of America's top hat, the fine folks over at the Supreme Court of Canada kick out the mixtapes like it was still 1992. I can't begin to count the number of great bands I've discovered as a result of their efforts. This week's special guest curator was none other than Mark Sultan aka BBQ of the King Khan and BBQ show. This garage rocker's the best thing to happen to Canada since the French discovered fur-trapping. If you can make it, dig The Inner Space's "Kamera Song," and the lost gem "Snacky Poo" (which is what I call a shot of Beam). I have to admit I get a little lost around the Ornette Coleman song here, but for the most part you get a great idea of where BBQ's head is at with this mix.

Postscript: I realize that we're totally ripping the mixtape and playlist from their site, so I urge you to click their link above and browse some of their other comps. You won't regret it. 

Post-postscript: the tape curated by Nick Isberg got me through a whole day at work. "Cocaine" by Dick Justice describes pretty accurately how I feel about tacos.

Mixtape 14 - Mark Sultan by Supreme Court of Canada

01. Raw Power - Fuck Authority
02. Charlie Feathers - Wild, Wild Party
03. Del-Mars - Snacky Poo
04. Five Keys - My Saddest Hour
05. Silver Apples - I Have Known Love
06. Ornette Coleman - Holiday For Heroes
07. The Zeros - Handgrenade Heart
08. The Inner Space - Kamera Song
09. The Falcons - Oh Baby
10. Eddie Gale - The Rain
11. Clara Rockmore - The Swan
12. Pussy - Comets
13. The Outsiders - Misfit
14. Lee Moses - Bad Girl Pt. 1
15. Ruth White - The Litanies Of Satan

News :: Our Machine Watches Your Machine :: Gorilla vs Bear

This past week GvsB posted a new winter track from one of our favorite 2010 bands. Somehow this is all I want to hear right now. It's the same light-streaked, yet bleak fare we've come to expect from the Baltimore duo (if it ain't broke, right?), and it's perfect for listening to while coaxing the last drop out from the bottom of the bottle. But then again, I'm also living out of a box right now, and I push a cart for a living, so maybe my opinion's not to be trusted.

Beach House :: I Do Not Care for the Winter Sun

News :: Our Machine Watches Your Machine :: MBV

  

I'm phoning this shit in. My mind was wiped today and now, because it's ringing in my head, I'm going to intentionally misspell the word for a big building full of books: libary. I sat in a chair all day while beams of light were projected at my cerebral cortex. Faceless voices kept mumbling rumors of my inadequacies. And now there's not enough beer in the house to get me drunk. So here's a preview of an EP coming out this month from the UK label, The Sounds of Sweet Nothing. Mucho grasshats, MBV, for the heads up. Right now my favorite track from this guy is "Nerve Damage," which you can hear over at the label's band camp page along with a few other sweet, hot shots of nothing. 

I need a few hours in the sensory deprivation tube, the sleep suck chamber, the babyhead coffin with the motherfuck lid.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra :: Thought Ballune

News :: Our Machine Watches Your Machine :: Weekly Tape Deck

Weekly Tape Deck in conjunction with Altered Zones co-premiered the new 7" from Pink Playground, which is out now on Zoo Music.

Zoo has been putting in the leg work these days, having released one of my favorite records of the year with Flight.  Actually, I can't believe I haven't talked about The Lead Riders here yet, considering how I shot an old man full of it the other day while he pissed his bus seat. Anyway, thank you, Zoo Music, for fucking up one more bus seat in Suck City.

Give Sunny Skies a listen, and while you're doing so, imagine you live in a town with the sprawling highway infrastructure of LA and the heat of Las Vegas, but with neither the beach nor the casinos. This time I mean Houston, a leading candidate for the most godforsaken city in the south. That's how you go around the rock bend and come back to shoegaze. Remember: it's not the heat, it's the humidity.

Listen to two tracks from the new 7" right over here. We're expecting an LP from these guys in 2011 thanks to the hard working folks at Mexican Summer. And here's an old track I was able to dig up from their FLA split with Bad Life.

Pink Playground :: Low

News :: Our Machine Watches Your Machine :: Altered Zones

This past week, Altered Zones posted an interview with the label founders of Not Not Fun Records. The label's most successful artist pick so far has been Ducktails, out on tour now with Deerhunter. I wish some of these younger labels coming up would sit down and put something more concrete down about their aesthetic, but what are you going to do? The best hint from these guys about what they're after--and I do think they're a label to watch--may be to check out the band Amanda Brown (co-founder/wife) plays in, LA Vampires.

B-T-Dubs, if I don't sound excited right now; it's because I just got back from the Grinderman show tonight where I watched Nick Cave dry-humping faces in the audience's front row, howling about getting his hand stuck in the cookie jar, while Warren Ellis leaped around and played the world's tiniest guitar; and all I have a taste for this second is music with some fucking testosterone.

Now you're not going to want to hear this track...but that's all I've GOT, motherfucker.

LA Vampires :: What is Woman? Magnetic

News :: Our Machine Watches Your Machine :: 5 Tunes

Everything in Philly is coming up pop these days, and Reading Rainbow are no exception. What a blissful, easy place it must be to live. Head over to 5 tunes to hear what the band considers essential to their own sound. It makes for great Friday listening if your office has three too many walls like mine. And just so we're clear, for those of you in the back who can't read the chalkboard, the site's gimmick relies on...fuck it, you're not that dumb. Follow the link for some great Middle East sounds.

Reading Rainbow :: Wasting Time