by Andrew Sacher

DOWNLOAD: Blood Diamonds - "Grins" (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Blood Diamonds - "Heart" (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Blood Diamonds - "Aries" (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Holy Other - "Touch" (Blood Diamonds Remix) (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Apache Beat - "Another Day" (Blood Diamonds Remix) (MP3)

Tanlines at the Whitney in 2010 (more by Diana Wong)

As mentioned, Tanlines will headline Warm Up at PS1 on August 27, with other sets from Nguzunguzu, Teengirl Fantasy, Sun Araw, and Physical Therapy. According to Tanlines' facebook, the band "will be playing a new set and this will be the launch of [their] next phase, with the album coming out in the fall."

Tanlines will also DJ at Glasslands on August 26, the day before they play PS1. The Glasslands show is with fellow tropical pop producer Blood Diamonds (not to be confused with Blood Orange or Diamond Rings). Tickets are on sale now.

Blood Diamonds

The Vancouver-based producer Blood Diamonds (aka Mike Tucker) is set to release a new single "Grins" b/w "Move the Stars" this month on Transparent Records. According to Altered Zones, the single will feature a remix by Holy Other, who Blood Diamonds has also remixed. Grab "Grins" and Blood Diamonds' take on Holy Other's "Touch" above. He somehow turned Holy Other's dank swampy track into a sunny day at the beach. Should be interesting to see how Holy Other returns the favor. You can pre-order the single from Plastic in Paper. Also, grab two more older Blood Diamonds tracks and a remix he did for Apache Beat above.

All dates and another Blood Diamonds track below...

Continue reading "Tanlines to debut 'new set' @ PS1, Blood Diamonds remixing stuff, releasing a single (MP3s & dates)"

In what is now an annual tradition, we're playing catch up during this final week of the year. If this post seems outdated, that's because it is. Happy Holidays!

photos by Chris La Putt

DOWNLOAD: Apache Beat - Another Day (Aaron LaCrate Remix) (MP3)

Apache Beat

Apache Beat & Blood Red Shoes played a CMJ show at The Rock Shop. A set of pictures from that show continues below...

Continue reading "Apache Beat & Blood Red Shoes played the Rock Shop (pics)"

photos by Erez Avissar

Prince Rama's intentions are great: blending Native American tribal drumming, Eastern Indian mantras and cathartic howls, fantastical synth bits and a dose of pixie dust to make a cacophony of a melting pot played by the likes of two sisters, Taraka and Nimai Larson, and one guy, Michael Collins. It's all a little bit Kate Bush meets Bat For Lashes, a little bit Gang Gang Dance, but sadly, the voices constantly seemed off pitch so any attempt at musical grandness became kitsch, at least tonight...

The true cosmic dance party only began when Neon Indian took the stage. At this point, Brooklyn Bowl was packed and filled with half Halloween revelers, half frat types looking to pick up gals in itty bitty costumes. The night improved the more we focused on the stage and sound and let Alan Palomo's theremin as well as his pulsating beats, dreamer croon and the band's spacey pop take over. -[Sentimentalist]

Neon Indian headlined Brooklyn Bowl on 10/29 with Prince Rama and Apache Beat, part of a Halloween celebration at the venue that included a costume contest. The show was one of a few for the chillwave-r, who continues his tour in Buffalo (11/4) before calling it quits in Ithaca right after that. Neon Indian will then jet across the Pacific to play a string of shows around New Years leading up to an appearance at Field Day 2011 in Sydney.

The NYC show was at the beginning of a NYC Halloween weekend that also included Mr. Brownstone at the same venue one night later (turn down your volume and check out a bad cell phone video), and a Sunday night Todd P show at Ridgewood Temple which partially overlapped with the big parade.

Prince Rama have no NYC dates until December when the band will team up with Deakin (who opened for Omar Souleyman last night) to play The New Museum on 12/10 (tickets). The Brooklyn band will spend the days leading up to that appearance in Europe. Full (updated) tour dates are below.

More pictures from Brooklyn Bowl and all tour dates are below.

Continue reading "Neon Indian, Prince Rama & Apache Beat celebrated Halloween early @ Brooklyn Bowl (pics) "

photos by Amanda Hatfield

Lia Ices @ Bowery Ballroom

"The sweetest white lie of the CMJ Music Marathon came from the folky songwriter Lia Ices, leading her band at the Lower East Side club Pianos on Thursday night. While half the crowd chatted indifferently, she sang, "For only you I sing, for only you." Yet Ms. Ices, whose debut album is due in January, was playing CMJ, along with more than 1,000 other groups, for precisely the opposite reason. She was seeking a chance to be heard, sooner or later, by a larger audience." [NY Times]

Neon Indian co-headlined the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars?) Group CMJ showcase at Bowery Ballroom on Saturday night, 10/23. After a super long week of shooting day and night, Amanda didn't make it to their midnight set. She did get to the show though and caught openers Braids (6pm), Fake Problems (6:45), Lord Huron (7:30), Lia Ices (8:30), Lower Dens (9:15), and Wild Nothing (10:00). She left before Dom. I also went to the show but got there close to when Neon Indian was finishing (I caught Surfer Blood's entire 1am set).

Did you miss Neon Indian too? The next chance to see them is tonight (10/29), at Brooklyn Bowl where they're playing with the buzz-tacular lineup of Prince Rama and Apache Beat. Tickets are still on sale, and I have a pair you can win.

Details on how you can win, with tonight's flyer (under the pics), and more pictures from the Bowery Ballroom show (sans Neon Indian), below...

Continue reading "VFW CMJ showcase in pics (Lia Ices, Braids, Lower Dens & more) ++ Neon Indian tonight w/ Prince Rama (win tix) "

photos by alBerto Trevino

DOWNLOAD: Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms" (Apache Beat Remix) (MP3)

Wall Street Journal: How are you adjusting to the move from Austin to New York?

Alan Palomo: New York has a really funny way of lighting a fire under your a** and keeping you in that state of mind where you have to be creative just to even survive. Whereas I feel like Texas, as much as I love it, it's so laid back it inspires a breed of meandering.

WSJ: Are you feeling pressure to keep up the momentum?

Alan Palomo: As soon as we're off tour in late October, I'm going to start writing the new Neon Indian record. And I'm already halfway done with the VEGA record. I figure for the Neon Indian record, I need to get out of New York, given that I have so many friends there. I need to throw myself into that state of mind that helped spawn the first one, which is to isolate myself in some city that I don't know much about. The fantasy is Helsinki.

Neon Indian's pre-Helsinki tour includes that free, current-hometown show at Governors Island on August 14th, and that Converse-presented "Gone to Governors" show now has openers, and they are Nite Jewel, Prefuse 73, and Dom.

And this past weekend, while Dom was playing the Siren Festival (Apache Beat too) (they did the remix you can download for free above), Alan was busy in Chicago hanging out and then playing the 2010 Pitchfork Festival (Neon Indian's set was on Sunday). Some more pictures from his Pitchfork set, and all NI dates, below...

Continue reading "Neon Indian played Pitchfork (pics), touring (dates), gets Governors Island openers (including Dom)"

Stillwell Stage photos by Dominick Mastrangelo

"To close out the night, fans had the option of checking out Matt and Kim at the main stage or Holy Fuck at the alternate stage. The choice was clear, I went with the latter, and they easily turned out to be my favorite performance of the night. Their weird, intellectualized sound came to the forefront for the masses to witness firsthand and it's quite the process. With film reels rolling and making glorious sounds, lead singer Brian Borcherdt sporadically took the mic, shoved it between his teeth, and danced just as hard as any of the onlookers. It was clearly the most-lively show of the night. Holy Fuck as a satisfying headliner for the bill was a question on many people's minds, so the band had some expectations to live up to, but they totally thrived on those exact expectations and exceeded them tenfold. Even though the event was fully sponsored/curated, Holy Fuck performed in all aspects with the heart of any DIY performer." [Neon Musical Insight]

Our first set of Siren Festival pictures had a bit from both stages. Then came the main stage with some bonus shots of Matt & Kim in the ocean. We conclude with all the bands from the Stillwell Stage, with some more of Ted Leo from the main stage, and one more bonus shot of Matt & friends in the ocean, below...

Continue reading "Siren Fest 2010 in pictures (part 3) (Holy Fuck, the rest of the Stillwell Stage, more Ted Leo, Mabee & more)"

photos by Jessica Amaya

Molly Siegel (with a mysterious bulge) & Screaming Marissa Paternoster

"it was very hot out. i was covers in sand and sweat, it was not too nice. but it was fun just to go to coney island and to people watch..im a bit fan of that. also siri of ringo, have a banana has a boyfriend alex who is in the pains of being pure at heart, who played the show. i got to see her, we ran into each other while getting pinkberry from the booth they had set up. we were supposed to meet up after alex's band played and packed up, but my friend started feeling sick, and we were very uncomfortable and in desperate need of ice cold showers so we left a bit early."
[it girl, rag doll]

The heat was the story of the day, well after Molly's bulge anyway, at the 10th annual Siren Music Festival in Coney Island on Saturday. A set of pictures that contains the first seven bands that played, and a few videos including some of the energetic Matt & Kim crowd, and one where a girl almost hits the pavement while crowd surfing during Ponytail (bonus points if you spot Darren Mabee in the video) (some of you now know him as "Beans"), below...

Continue reading "Siren Fest 2010 in pics & video (part 1) "

The schedule (above). The pre-party flyer... (below)

Continue reading "Siren Festival announces schedule & Monotonix/Brahms preparty (Matt & Kim headlining the whole fest) "

Ponytail @ Williamsburg Waterfront 2009 (more by Bao Nguyen)

Ponytail, Dom, Holy Fuck and Apache Beat have been added to the lineup of this year's Siren Fest, happening Saturday, July 17th in Coney Island. Those are in addition to the fest's previously announced acts - the full current lineup is below. It'll be a great show, but maybe slightly less attended than previous years?

You can catch Dom sooner at the BV Northside Fest show at Music Hall on Saturday, June 26th (along with Memory Tapes, ZAZA and Twin Sister). Tickets are still on sale.

Ponytail also play their hometown fest Whartscape.

After the Siren there's an after-show is happening at Music Hall of Williamsburg with We Are Scientists and Solange-collaborating Lightspeed Champion. Tickets are still on sale. (Scientists' Bowery show a few days before is sold out.)

Full Siren Fest lineup is below...

Continue reading "Siren Fest adds four more bands to the 2010 lineup "

photos by Eric Townsend

"Beth Ditto started singing from somewhere in the ether, and when she finally set foot on stage, the crowd went berserk...but quickly reigned themselves in so as not to miss a single second of Bethtastic vocal goodness. The band's universally loved frontwoman sported a new shorter 'do in Kool-Aid red or Sunkist orange (depending on the lighting), She wore form-fitting black, knee-length dress covered in silvery glitter sparkles that shimmered as she shimmied around the stage to the beat, giving the impression that Beth Ditto is not the centre of the universe, but the universe itself...and we mere mortals are all just playing at her game." [I Was at the Show]

Apache Beat and MEN (JD Samson of Le Tigre) opened the show. More pictures and a video below...

Continue reading "Gossip @ Terminal 5 in NYC - pics & video "

photos by Ryan Muir

At what can only be described as one of the worst live shows I've ever seen, Das Racist took the stage of Public Assembly Sunday night (8/30) (around 11:30pm) (four hours after the Grizzly Bear show had ended right down the street) and proceeded to play 3 or 4 or was it 5 songs with an extended Wesleyan-related lineup (Ryan says they called the whole band "Spanish Broads").

The jokey trio, Das Racist, already permanently feature a member of Boy Crisis on drums. They also have a college in common with many bands that now call Brooklyn home. Santigold, MGMT, Amazing Baby, Bear Hands, Francis & the Lights, Extra Life, Mobius Band, Boy Crisis and Chairlift are all from, or have members who went to Wesleyan University in CT. Apache Beat might not be directly related to Wesleyan (I can't say for sure), but like Suckers, I'll just throw them into that MGMT-friends, Wesleyan-related group.

Despot somehow fits into all this too. We know he is tight with Islands who Das Racist recently opened for. And he's friends with Amazing Baby too. MGMT are also one of his top friends. And by the way he was getting all close with Das Racist on stage at Public Assembly, I guess they are good friends too.

Imagine 20 kids being introduced to instruments for the first time. They're brought into a classroom, at a 'touch museum' or in pre-school, and they're all handed various noise-making devices. One gets a triangle, another a tambourine. Some get to beat drums, while others rub a stick back and forth on a grooved piece of wood. They all start making noise at the same time. Now just replace the triangles and grooved wood things with drum machines and microphones. Throw in very loud, amplified volume, and you've sort of got Sunday night's show.

Despot did not rap at all. The Taco Bell song, or a version of it, was one of the 'songs' played. The person in the ET mask is a dude from Chairlift. Cerebral Ballzy opened the free show, but I missed them because I was next door at Music Hall of Williamsburg trying to figure out who Edward Sharpe was (more on that later). More pictures from the Public Assembly show below...

Continue reading "Das Racist w/ members of Boy Crisis, Chairlift & Apache Beat & Despot @ Public Assembly in Brooklyn - pics "

photos by Lori Baily

Matador Records helped Sonic Youth celebrate the release of their new record The Eternal with a party at Home Sweet Home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan last Friday. The semi-private show had local bands playing Sonic Youth covers while the actual Sonic Youth was hanging out in the crowd.

Bands included The Antlers, Tiny Masters of Today, Apache Beat, The Homosexuals (backed by members of Fiasco), and "The Goo Believers" (at least that's what I think they called themselves). They were Chris Brokaw (Come, Codeine), Jemina Pearl (Be Your Own Pet, Ecstatic Peace label), Matt Krefting (Ecstatic Peace label), Zachary Cale, John Maloney (Sunburned Hand of the Man), and Jaiko Suzuki (Electroputas). You can see Thurston Moore watching them from the sidelines in some of the pictures below...

Continue reading "pics from Sonic Youth's 'Eternal' party @ Home Sweet Home (Homosexuals, a supergroup of Thurston's friends, more)"

photos by Ryan Muir

DOWNLOAD: Casiokids - Fot I Hose (Axemax Remix) (MP3)

Slow Club

Sunday (3/15) night's pre-SXSW show at the new venue Cameo in Brooklyn had the impressive lineup of Norway's Casiokids, and England's Mumford and Sons and Slow Club with support from local bands Apache Beat and Tanlines. We posted the pictures of Casiokids already. The rest are below...

Continue reading "Slow Club, Mumford & Sons, Apache Beat & Tanlines @ Cameo in Brooklyn - pics"

photos by Chris La Putt

In late January the guard post at the top of the stairs in the Kimmel Center was eliminated.

But now, only a short month later, the guard is back because of the recent protest by Take Back NYU.

The NYU Department of Public Safety has reinstated the guard at Kimmel -- as well as an additional guard on the 12th floor of Bobst Library -- in order to increase security after the protests.

"These stop-gap measures were taken out of prudence and caution following ... [the] events at Kimmel," said Jules Martin, NYU's vice president of Public Safety. [NYU Washington Square News]

Just a few weeks after the NYU students refused to get out of the Kimmel Center cafeteria, Marnie Stern, Ra Ra Riot, A Place To Bury Strangers and Apache Beat shared a bill at a concert in the same building. Here are pictures of two of the bands that played the show last night (3/5)....

Continue reading "Ra Ra Riot & Apache Beat @ NYU Kimmel Center, NYC - pics"

As people have pointed out, A Place To Bury Strangers, Ra Ra Riot, Marnie Stern, and Apache Beat are sharing a bill at NYU's Kimmel Center (60 Washinton Square South) on March 5th...

CHILL 2009: Advance NYU Tickets on Sale Now! $10 NYU/$16 Public Doors: 7:30pm ++++++ 100% of Proceeds go to Charity+++++++ The Chill Concert is our annual fundraisiner concert to benefit the Chill Foundation, a charity organized by Burton; one of the snowboarding industry's largest players. The Chill Foundation seeks out at-risk, inner-city youths, and periodically gets them out of the city and to the mountain over the course of the winter.

A Place to Bury Strangers are also playing Psych Fest 2 in Austin...

Friends, Austinites, countrymen, lend us your ears: THE BLACK ANGELS and LIVE MUSIC CAPITOL present PSYCH FEST 2 Friday March 13th through Sunday March 15th, in Austin, Texas, spiritual birthplace and global epicenter of psychedelia. What better way to honor the cradle of consciousness than a festival of hallucinogenic sights and sounds celebrating the town's musical heritage and spotlighting the best new vanguards of the most mind-bending music ever played? Your three-day key to the doors of perception is a scant $45 (or one day doses for $15 ) available online on www.livemusiccapitol.com and Austin record stores beginning Friday the 13th, 2.13.09. With a lineup featuring such acclaimed acts as Austin's own THE BLACK ANGELS, joined by A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS, DEAD MEADOW, THE WARLOCKS, Sky Sunlight Saxon of legendary garage rock innovators THE SEEDS and a constellation of rising underground stars from Austin and around the world including THE WOODEN SHJIPS, INDIAN JEWELRY, THE STRANGE BOYS, THE GOLDEN ANIMALS and many more, those doors will be rocked off their hinges. This year's Fest also features Austin's psych cult heroes, THE GOLDEN DAWN performing their 1968 album 'Power Plant' from start to finish. Prepare your earthly vessel for lift-off.

Full lineup and all APTBS tour dates below.

Marnie Stern is also playing a March 10th shown in Philly which doubles as the first night of a tour leading to Austin for SXSW where she'll play the Kill Rock Stars party @ Club DeVille on March 18th (in the afternoon) with The Thermals, Thao Nguyen, Horse Feathers, The Shaky Hands, and the pAper chAse. She's also, like Yann Tiersen, on the bill of one of the ATP's in Minehead in May. All of her dates below.

Ra Ra Riot have another NYC show coming up at Webster Hall, as well as tour dates with Death Cab For Cutie, Tokyo Police Club, and Passion Pit. They also appear on the recently announced Sasquatch lineup.

Apache Beat are currently in London where they'll play a bunch of shows with School of Seven Bells before coming back for the NYU gig. They also share a bill at Santos Party House on April 11th with Violens.

All dates below...

Continue reading "A Place To Bury Strangers, Ra Ra Riot, Marnie Stern, Apache Beat - NYU, Psych Fest, other tour dates"

The new space at Webster Hall is hosting free shows all week long during CMJ 2008. More details below...

Continue reading "free CMJ shows @ The Studio, VICE & Stereogum included"

The new venue with an identity crisis. The popular former weekly party (and associated celebrities) that everyone loves to hate. A new website. A British band signed to Domino. Their labelmate on the ones and twos. Other stuff.....

Continue reading "Misshapes is back Saturday on TWO FLOORS of 100 Lafayette (Santos Party House), These New Puritans playing"