The Generationals are an indie-pop band from New Orleans. Behind the scenes of the indie world, Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer are far from those the press covers praise, those that we hear (and see) too much. Astro-Caster, their second album, will not be a tube machine for radios this summer, you get it. However...
However, this year The Generationals shake up the scene, too much dibs for too little talent today... Knowing their chords on fingertips, they bombard us with their damned good songs : Ten-Twenty-Ten or You Say It Too for example. You may think of The Beach Boys while listening, and that would be normal, Joyner and Widmer are huge fans. Of The Beatles too by the way, you'll hear that.
We may, one day, find one these songs in a commercial for a bank or a toothpaste (sigh...), meanwhile let's savor their unpretentious and energetic pop.
Dirty Gold are from San Diego, California ; Roar, their first worldwide EP, was released a few days ago and may quickly become the must-have CD for this summer. Surf Pop and Lo-fi combined with afro sounds, their songs are sweet invitations to tread the hot sand of a beach and slice some waves. Understood ? Order a mojito, leave the flip flops and listen.
Close to Beach House and Vampire Weekend, this duo is, in only five songs, already very persuasive. They are not enough famous yet to get any more information, so we expect their first album with huge impatience.
PS : you can also find on their Bandcamp a link for a free download of their cover of TV Girl's On Land.
The Fruhstucks (apparently from the german word Frühstück meaning Breakfast) is a band formed in 2008 that works in a quite odd way : Sutja Gutierrez and Miguel Boxerinlove, the two founding artists, live 3107 miles (5000 km) away from each other. One of them lives on the Mediterranean Coast and the other lives in the Canary Islands. It might seem complicated or even impossible to compose in such conditions, yet the distance is far from being a handicap for The Fruhstucks. This hardworking and effective duo performs a very pleasant electronic dark wave music melting analog voices and fuzzy keyboards.
This Sorry, We Are The FruhstucksEP contains three tracks showing the great talent of both artists.
(Bonus : There is also a link for a free download of the Parade, I don't Care EP directly provided by the band.)
Nicolas Jaar is a young (20 years old) American-Chilean musician. He was born in NY but quickly relocated to Santiago de Chile with his mother and finally came back as a teenager. His childhood was marked by the popularity of his parents (his father, Alfredo Jaar, is a famous filmmaker ndlr), and became very dependent on his parents' artistic tastes. Portishead, Beck and Radiohead albums were listened again and again at home. Then, very influenced by Erik Satie, Nicolas started to make organic electronic music at the age of 14. His real debut was at 17, when he released The Student EP. Sometimes compared to Fever Ray, he is soon considered as an audascious promising musician, and is even elevated as a reference by some wise music lovers.
Nicolas Jaar is currently Junior at the prestigious Brown University where he studies comparative literature. He is also the owner and founder of his own label Clown and Sunset...
His first full-length album is called Space Is Only Noise. Slow, mysterious, hypnotic, modest, aerial, modern, pioneering, melodious and quiet are all adjectives that describe this perfect album. You can't miss it.
To conclude I'd like to share with you this excerpt from an interview he gave to Les Inrocks :
"I wanted a record where the songs could be jealous from each other, where some may even hate each other. There is for example this very pop song in the middle (Space Is Only Noise If You Can See) wich has little to do with the others, but could be the one most downloaded on iTunes. So the other songs would regard it as the whore of the disc. People do not spend anymore time to buy and listen a full album, they are happy with only one song, so I'm helping them by dragging this glib song in an experimental set. Tricky..."
Starfucker, an electronica band from Portland (USA), released this year their third album (if you consider that Jupiter is not an EP but an LP) intitled Reptilians. You may remember their famous sweet cover of Cindy Lauper's Girls Just Want To Have Fun that boosted their popularity in 2009. These four young americans led by Joshua Hodges are often (wrongly) compared to MGMT. But their electronic dream pop is far more sweet and delicate than the pop tart (a bit too commercial) of the two New Yorkers.
The group's name seems to be meaningless or at least doesn't have any real explanation (even from the members who were in fact "curious to see how far the band could get with a stupid name like that"). Although they tried to change the name into PYRAMID and then Pyramiddd, they finally reverted to Starfucker. Reptilians consists of twelve festive songs (+ two bonus tracks) between pop and electronica, as such as Bury Us Alive, that you can listen to from the dancefloor till your iPod.
Connan Mockasin is a psychedelic blues'n'pop musician from New Zealand. Originally the formation was a group called Connan and the Mockasins. Formed in 2005, the band was firstly concerned in blues production, shyly touring in New Zealand small theaters. In May 2006 they relocated to London and became more and more influent in the English blues scene till 2007, when they released a third album, Sneaky Sneaky Dogfriend, that get a rather big success in Northern Europe. Then the line-up of the band was deeply affected by departures and replacements, so it became a solo act under the name Connan Mockasin with the leading figure of Connan Hosford. He started touring with members of Late Of The Pier, Pete & The Pirates, The Veils, and more recently Mystery Jets. The group's popularity skyrocketed and so it was highly time for Please Turn Me Into The Snat, the forth album, to be released (in 2010) in UK and New Zealand. The rest of Europe waited till 2011 to get a re-edition called Forever Dolphin Love. This album is surely one the most beautiful thing I've ever eard. Connan's universe is simply amazing and his songs are all masterpieces you could loop listen tirelessly. By the way, this universe is very well transcripted into the clips that are splendid. That's the word.
Moriarty is a French-American group formed in 1995. Rosemary, Arthur, Charles, Thomas and Stephan draw together inspiration from traditional Irish music, blues and country, playing instruments like double bass, harmonica or kazoo to wich they add a caravan and nomadic atmosphere drafting sounds with typewriter, pieces of wood or hotelbells. After a stripped-down and beautiful cover of Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence in 2008 and a top-notch album intitled Gee Whiz But This Is A Lonesome Town released in October 2007, the band started a very successful tour all over the world : it spanned 19 countries through more than 270 concerts. Songs such as Jimmy, Private Lily or Motel (by far the best song of the band in my opinion) have been appreciated by millions of people, convincing everyone with this original poetry in music and lyrics. Restless fans couldn't wait anymore to discover this second album, and they will be pleased. The themes and sounds remain faithful to the first album, The Missing Room will not disappoint anybody. Moriarty can be sure of a new success thanks to so much quality and originality.
Battles is an american band, founded in 2002 in NYC. Tyondai Braxton, Ian Williams (formerly of Don Caballero), Dave Konopka (formerly of Lynx), and drummer John Stanier (formerly of Helmet) performed since their excellent debut album Mirrored (2007) one of the most gifted math-rock on stage as well as on records. Famous songs like Tonto or Atlas show how deep their mastering of instruments and musicality is. Besides in August 2010, the band announced that Braxton would leave to focus on his solo work. Thedepartureofleadsingerinabandcan lead to complete disappearance or to the fall into indifference, but it's not the case of Battles. Theremainingmembersdidn't give up anddecided to continue with its project and to release,fouryears later, a secondstudio album. In order to fill in the lack of a singer they invitedMatias Aguayo (from Kompakt), Gary Numan (formerly of Tubeway Army),KazuMakino (Blonde Redhead) andYamantakaEye (Boredoms) to add vocals on some tracks. Theresultis impressive.Battlesexperiments allthe possibilitiesthey can reach, andpushes away thevery boundariesofmath-rock.Forhavingseen them in livea few days ago,Ican say that theloss ofBraxtondidn'tdisabled the band.Stanierand hisbatteryon the frontof thestage to do theshow, the groupgavea very high quality concert. So thereis noneed to worry aboutthe futureofBattles,aftersuch agoodalbum, it bodesonly goodthings.
Intermsofmixtapes, theprinciple issimple:Igather songs of the last few months toshare with youthe best releasesof the moment. Listen to The Baked Mixtapes on 8tracks.
Here is the first one (from January to March 2011) :
Selection of tracks taken from albums released between January and March 2011. If you missed them, catch up now.
Here we are, today's the "vernissage" of WE ARE TOUGH COOKIES. Photography, mixtapes, sharing, cooking (hell ya, coming soon), and fucking mess (can't stop the 4chan trick).
The very first photos are online :
And my first mixtape is ready for the inauguration as well.
Prick up your ears :
More publications very soon : sharing content, photos and maybe some vids. So check out from time to time. You can also follow us on Twitter or Facebook if it's not too mainstream for you. Thx.
And finally, because a vernissage is nothing but shit without a party, let's have one right now. Just click here and join in.
