Daily Doses: Kumon Plaza “River Spot” From River Spot Single (2011)

“When I leave, I’ll just disappear. At least until the day I show up, sit in your favorite chair, and pretend I was never gone.”

Having released the beautiful (And free!) LP Cliff in July of 2010. Dylan of Kumon Plaza has since been employing the time honored artistic tradition of doing whatever the hell he feels like under whatever name he feels like, releasing tracks and EP’s as Happy Trendy and Gay Boiz as well as a few other beautiful ambient works that he has since told me will not see the light of day.

While I love all of these projects, it’s great to see him return to the minimalist style that informed his early Kumon Plaza tracks.

“River Spot” lazily coasts about, building on some basic keys with some 606 drums and swirling synth work. It’s a song for drifting along quietly by yourself. Observing without action. 

Lovely.

Download Kumon Plaza’s “River Spot” 

Daily Doses: Jacques Greene “Another Girl”

Spent a little time today on Turntable.fm today, and ended up being joined by Teen Daze, Happy Trendy / Kumon Plaza and Ghibli as well as Jimmy Morris from Head Underwater and some other great people for the online party of the century! (Or at least the day)

If you have a chance to swing by the site give it a shot. It’s a great way to pass some time, and catch up with friends from across the world. This was one of the first tracks Thomas from Ghibli dropped in, and I was immediately smitten.

Based out of Montreal, Greene’s been garnering a bit of attention for a while now, and with tracks like this, and the rest of his catalog I’ve been listening to on his Soundcloud I’m not at all surprised.

Think I’ll be spending a lot of time with these tracks in the weeks to come.

Download Jacques Greene’s “Another Girl”

Daily Doses: Balam Acab “Oh, Why” From Wander / Wonder (2011)

I love labels that champion a specific sound.  

Much as most of my favorite records are concept records which sound out a story, the labels that tell the story of a sound are very near and dear to my heart. And near the top of that list for me would be Tri-Angle Records.

Comprised of Balam Acab, o0o00, How To Dress Well, Holy Other, Stalker, and Nowa Huta, Tri-Angle artists tend to embrace haunting solitude with abandon. And any new release I see coming out from one of their artists always gets my hopes up (in a melancholy way, obviously).

Enter Balam Acab, and their new album Wander / Wonder. Balam Acab’s first E.P, See Birds, was stunning (And my fourth favorite E.P of last year), which is a hard act to follow… Or, I would have thought. However this new track quickly tossed that theory out the window.

“Oh, Why” Dances by with subtle beauty, drifting lines, and gorgeous extensions as if intent on fulfilling and expanding on the promise of See Birds all by it’s lonesome. By the time it collapses to the ground, I was in love.

So, there you go.

My favorite track of the year so far. 

Bravo.

Download Balam Acab’s “Oh, Why” From Wander / Wonder

(Via GvsB)

Daily Doses: Chelsea Wolfe “Mer” From Ἀποκάλυψις (2011)

I just wanna fall in love with a track. 

I want it to twist around and find someplace in me where it can set up shop for about 20 listens until it fully assimilates and becomes something new, something I need to hear every day at least once. 

But, of course, that’s hard to find. Even harder with a full length release. So far Tune Yards, and Sun Glitters are the only full length’s this year that have really blown me away. Weeknd’s House Of Balloon’s is screaming with potential, and has 3 or 4 tracks that hit it right on, but just doesn’t have enough dynamics as an album. Tyler The Creator’s Goblin, while containing 4-5 tracks that absolutely slay, also falls way flat on the other 13 tracks, sounding in the end like what it is. A record that was rushed to take advantage of buzz.

Half complete.

So seeing there was a new Chelsea Wolfe track was like an oasis in the desert. Far from those casualties of hype, carelessly packaged and tossed out half formed into a world desperate for substance, Chelsea has been carefully building herself and her style both in the bay area and Los Angeles for years, only recently getting talked about in the kind of places she deserves.

In “Mer”, Chealsea speaks in apocalyptic tongues over bending guitar sounds and enough rolling drums to make Danny Carey from Tool get a little bit excited. The end result steeped in end of the world sounds, feels both completely confident, and completely complete. 

Artists out there take note. I know you think it’s important to keep the quantity of new tracks up in order to get noticed, but make sure once you start getting a little notice you can change gears and start upping the quality as well.

Or just ask yourself if you’d rather have an amazing three album run that lasted 5 years years or 60 tracks that were posted during that same period on some blogs, 5 of which were pretty good?

Download Chelsea Wolfe’s “Mer”

Order Chealsea’s last album, The Grime And The Glow, from Pendu Sound and keep an eye out there for Ἀποκάλυψις 

(Via P4K)

Daily Doses: Wintercoats “Delicate Position” Ft. Sea Oleena (2011)

Sometimes when I’m at the beach, I skip rocks.

Well, to be honest, every time I’m at the beach I skip rocks. 

And every time I do, I always end up thinking about the amount of time it took that rock to finally get washed up to the shore. The epic journey it undertook while never being able to move of it’s own volition. Then, when it finally reached the end of that journey, it spent exactly 10 seconds under the sun before being thrown right back in.

I like to tell myself that 10 seconds was better because it was so brief. And that if it’d washed all the way onto the shore, it would have just ended up yearning for the ocean again.

But then, I’m biased, and slightly jaded.

I also really like skipping rocks.

Sorry, realizing we’re two days away from the first anniversary of the first Wintercoats EP, Cathedral has me in a contemplative mood. Amazing to think of how much has happened in the last year…

Daily Doses: Seabright “Brule” From The Spring/Summer EP (2011)

From the beginning of this track, all I could think of was French New Wave comparisons.

Colliding transitions, voices overwhelmed by volume, thunderous movements made subtle by context. Like a beautiful movie trying to escape the confines of a soundtrack.

This is the first release from Seabright, AKA Justin Morales’, upcoming EP Spring/Summer. 

Download Seabright’s “Brule”

Daily Doses: Giraffage “Eschaton” From The Pretty Things EP (2011)

Poppin’ bottles in the club…

There’s a point a little before hammered and right after buzzed where everything just gets a little hazy. Not out of control, but just a little surreal. It’s brief, like that last point before the sun hits the horizon, but if you keep an eye out for it, you’ll feel it.

The track’s on Giraffage’s debut E.P., Pretty Things remind me of those points. Not too far gone, but not entirely there either.

Ephemeral yet strikingly present.

An indicator of crazy things to come.

Download Giraffage’s “Eschaton” From Pretty Things

Download Giraffage’s Pretty Things For The Price Of Your Choosing From His Bandcamp

Daily Doses: Teen Daze “Waves” from All Of Us, Together (2011)

There’s no such thing as one hit wonder’s any more.

Sure, there’s plenty of artists that only have one track that never takes them anywhere. But they die too quickly in this climate to ever really get any acclaim, and there’s just not enough money for them to have a hit that carries them for years.

Artist development and sustainability are where it’s at. Major labels can’t afford to sink all their money into a vessel that goes no where, so, much like the movie industry, they’re sticking with ships that already have a full head of steam.

On the the other side, indie labels have so much less overhead they don’t require that every artist breaks open the doors and let’s the money come flowing in. So there most of the artists scrape by, often with jobs on the side to support their dreams.

Then, of course, there’s the DIY side. Live and die by each song, each album, each release, but you have to answer to no one. You can also go through 7 band names without ever getting beyond the lower tier of the blogosphere.

However, blogs are voracious animals. We need tracks to live, we need albums to live, we hope that every track we open will be amazing. In an ideal world, we would get 10 tracks a day and love everyone of them. Buuutttt that doesn’t happen. So we listen to 30, 50, 70, in the hopes of finding 1 that we can talk about, and will continue to talk about.

No more one hit wonders…. Just the survival of those that adapt and change, and the disappearance of those who don’t.

One of my favorite things about Teen Daze is that how much he’s adapted and changed. Having seen him 4 to 5 times live, it always amazes me how many new things he’s utilizing, how much more proficient he is at his instruments, and how much more comfortable he is with them.

In recorded form, the jump from Four More Years to Beach Dreams was equally impressive and drastic. 

Here, on the first new track from an upcoming full length entitled All of us, Together, we see a lot of the same elements from Four More Years. But there’s a bit more lyrical attention and defininition, and some more subtle play in the instrumentals, all while hitting perfectly on what the Teen Daze moniker has always captured perfectly.

The beginning and dying days of Summer.

Download Teen Daze’s “Waves” From All Of Us, Together

Daily Doses: The Neighborhood “Always Make The Time” From The Neighborhood (2011)

“Oh! Hey there 80’s infused, Depeche Mode tinged, Darkwave! I haven’t seen you in a while, what you been up too?”

“Nothin’ baby, just blowin’ this track up.”

“Yeah man, I heard… You sound jet as fuck.”

“Legit.”

“Well see ya’ soon?”

“Probs, I always turn up somewhere.”

~

The Neighborhood, AKA Los Angeles’ Ryan Dolliver, has 6 songs available on his bandcamp. The purchase of those songs will get you a cassette with those 6 songs on it. 

It’s a pretty diverse bunch of synth-infused 80’s flashbacks, but after listening to them all, you’ll be completely prepared should you run into Ryan on the streets of LA, and a conversation like the one above spring up.

Get on it.

Purchase The Neighborhood’s Self Titled Debut From Their Bandcamp 

Daily Doses: Magical Options “Bad Vibe” From Channeling The Power of 4Loko to Create A New God (2011)

Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this son of York; And all the clouds that low’r’d upon our house, in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

~ Shakespeare

It’s going to be a dark summer… I can feel it.

Hot and sweltering, with that humidity that clings to your skin until it feels like it’s gotten beneath it and will never leave.

Fortunately the soundtrack that’s slowly being birthed from various artists like Weeknd, Frank Ocean, and James Blake will soundtrack the nights perfectly. Sweaty, sleepless, twisted nights of little sleep and a lot of heat.

I’m not putting Magical Options in that illustrious company yet, but there is something here that’s well worth spending sometime with.

Really, I’m still waiting for the artist that will take the R & Beatz game to the next level. I don’t think we’ve reached the heights this can get to yet. But there’s something there… Somewhere in the deep, dark, depths of summer there’s something waiting.

I can feel it.

Download Magical Options “Bad Vibe”

Download Magical Options  Channeling The Power of 4Loko to Create A New God For Free From Naive Dancers