by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Gross Relations - You Don't Know Me (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Anika - Yang Yang (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Anika - Terry (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: ARMS - Floaters (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Martial Canterel - You Today (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Martial Canterel - Retrospective (Zip)
DOWNLOAD: The Vacant Lots - Confusion (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Don Giovanni Sampler (Zip)

Gross Relations

In addition to being Black History Month, National Bird Feeding Month and National Sweet Potato Month, February also seems to consistently have a lot of band residencies. You may already be aware of ones by ARMS (who I'll get to shortly) and Yellow Ostrich,  but I'd also like to point out that up-and-coming Brooklyn indie rock band Gross Relations starts a three-week Tuesday residency tonight (2/8) at Bruar Falls.

Gross Relations have been going less than a year, but seem to have a clear idea with what they want to sound like. Like Mr. Dream and Diehard, the band shares a love of '90s indie rock. With the prominent keyboard lead lines (or maybe it's heavily-treated guitar?) on both sides of their "Fuzzy Timelines" 7", it's pretty easy to make comparisons to The Rentals, but the band they really remind me of is Chicago's late, great Number One Cup.

Either way, it's a good thing. Gross Relations write some majorly catchy songs. You can download the b-side to their single at the top of this post. Tonight's residency also features The Toothaches (whose debut album is a free download), Gone Bad, and NT.

ARMS @ Glasslands in December (more by Andrew St. Clair)

I mentioned ARMS briefly above who are on Week Two (2/9) of their February Wednesdays residency at Pianos. Todd Goldstein and the rest of the band are finishing up work on their debut album (Kids Aflame was more of a Todd solo thing) with Shane Stoneback (Vampire Weekend, Sleigh Bells). So expect a lot of new songs, I'd imagine. Todd says of the record, "It's a vast, hi-fi album. We're doing everything we can to take full advantage of the studio... the songs are very poppy and a little weird, there are lots of beautiful/scary textures, copious-but-thoughtful use of reverb... sequenced into a song-cycle, a sort of sci-fi breakup album." ARMS are hoping to have it out by the summer.

This week's residency is especially strong I think. It includes the lovely Hospitality, who finally seem to be getting down to business, having wrapped up their long-gestating debut album (also with Stoneback) which could be out as early as the spring. Let's hope! Singer Amber Papini promises a couple new songs at the show.

Also playing: Radical Dads, whose new single is a free  for you (with email address) via the increasingly popular Download Widget (found below). And Translations (who share a member with ARMS) open who I am super psyched to finally be seeing live after months of digging their debut 7".

Show's eight bucks, will be a good one.

Martial Canterel

Also Wednesday is the record release party for Martial Canterel's You Today which came out today on Wierd Records. The show is part of Wierd's weekly Wednesday night party at Home Sweet Home. The flyer says performance at midnight, but I've never seen a band go on there before 1AM.

Martial Canterel is the non de synth of Sean McBride who is also one half of Xeno & Oaklander. McBride is kind of a luddite, making his records entirely on vintage equipment that was probably cutting-edge technology in 1980. Obviously it sounds very retro, but McBride's way of doing things also gives it a sound -- and authenticity -- you can't quite replicate on a laptop. Check out the title track at the top of this post. And if you dig that, also up there is a free downloadable Martial Canterel retrospective, including some rare songs.

Anika

In town this weekend is Anika whose debut album was a late-breaking entry into my Favorite Albums of 2011. Recorded in 12 days, live with no overdubs, it sounds like the missing link between The Slits and Lilliput. Portishead's Geoff Barrow -- his other band BEAK> is the backing band here -- gets the claustrophobic vibe just right. A lot of people have tried and failed to recreate that Martin Hannett Sound... Barrow nails it. And the material -- a mix of girl group covers and politically-charged originals -- suits Anika's Nico-esque delivery perfectly.

You can download two tracks from the album at the top of this post. "Yang Yang" is a Yoko Ono cover, and "Terry" was originally recorded by Twinkle, who is probably best-known for having made the original version of "Golden Lights" that was later covered by The Smiths. (Many Smiths fans' least favorite track, but not mine. That would be "Never Had No One Ever.") The album sort of snuck out at the end of 2011, so catch up now. So good.

Don't get too excited though, Anika is just over for some DJ gigs -- I'm hearing we'll get her performing in May (and probably later at ATP) -- but I'd recommend checking one of them out nonetheless. Especially as three of them are free: on Thursday (2/10) she'll be at Gallery Bar with Blu Jemz, then  Saturday (2/12) at Trophy Bar and a Valentine's Day set  (2/14) at The Commodore. The remaining three NY DJ appearances are atMercury Lounge tomorrow night (2/9) spinning between sets at the Cubic Zirconia show (tickets), and Glasslands on Friday (2/11) where she'll spin in between sets by Javelin, High Life, & Monster Rally (tickets), and finally Santos Pary House on 2/16 as part of the previously discussed Beans show with Edan, Paten Locke & Bluebird (tickets).

That Javelin show on Friday night should be fun, as Anika's tastes will nicely contrast/compliment the sounds of Javelin (always one of the better live bands saddled with the "chillwave" tag), Highlife and Monster Rally.

That's the big stuff this week. Some more picks, day-by-day, are below.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8

Gang of Four at Webster Hall, though really it's more like Gang of Two as it's just Jon King and Andy Gill from the original line-up these days. Their new album, Content, isn't bad. But most people will go to hear "To Hell With Poverty," "At Home He's  a Tourist," and other classics. And while Hugo and Dave will be missed, Andy Gill is still amazing to watch spit out those riffs, and Jon King remains possessed on stage -- especially when he's beating the shit out of a microwave on "He'd Send in the Army."

continued below...

Continue reading "Gross Relations, ARMS, Martial Canterel, Anika, Vacant Lots, Javelin, Abe Vigoda, Don Giovanni, more in This Week in Indie"

DOWNLOAD: Chain & The Gang - "Why Not" (MP3)

Calvin Johnson (photo by Sarah Lee)

For those of you looking for a little adventure on a Thursday night, you're in luck:

K Records founder Calvin Johnson and indie rapper Astronautalis will join in baritone-voiced harmony in Montauk on February 10. This is a once-ever opportunity to watch Calvin and Astronautalis perform individually and collaboratively against the backdrop of sunset in Montauk.

Tickets for a round-trip bus ride from Brooklyn to Montauk are only $30, only 40 are available.

The Montauk date kicks off a round of Calvin Johnson tour dates that continue with a Brooklyn show at Dead Herring the next day (141 S 5th St #1E between Bedford Ave & Driggs Ave) with Chain & the Gang (with Ian Svenonius), Girls in Trouble, and E-Prhyme. His full slate of Northeast/Midwest dates are below.

Calvin Johnson doesn't currently have any new musical wares (outside of K releases in general), but his K Records brethren Chain & The Gang do, as they just released their new LP, Music's Not For Everyone. The LP features the new track "Why Not" available for download above/stream below. Order a copy at K Records, and check out the song stream, art/tracklisting, and all Calvin Johnson dates below.

Continue reading "Calvin Johnson touring, playing Montauk w/ Astronautalis & Brooklyn w/ Chain & The Gang (whose new album is out now)"

photos by Tim Griffin, words by Andrew Frisicano

You Are Here (The Maze) is underway at Death By Audio. Last Friday (9/11) featured music from A Place to Bury Strangers, The Sian Alice Group, Nine 11 Thesaurus (pictured above and below), Experimental Dental School and Reading Rainbow. Tim stopped by early, before heading to Wild Beasts at Union Pool followed by The Intelligence at Market Hotel. Tim liked Nine 11 Thesaurus and appreciated the art, but wasn't a huge fan of The Maze from the point of view of someone actually wanting to see the bands who are playing. As you can sort of see in the picture above, you walk through a maze which ends at the stage where just a few handfuls of people can actually see what's going on... but maybe that's the point.

You can see more of the new setup in the pics below, or you can head over there yourself. Tonight (9/14) features music from a collection of K Records artists - label founder Calvin Johnson, Arrington de Dionyso and Desolation Wildnerness - with Regattas and City Center (who, with Desolation Wilderness, played at Cake Shop Sunday with the Intelligence). City Center, re-figured somewhat recently into a duo, is on tour (dates below).

Arrington de Dionyso, whose new record ,Malaikat dan Singa, comes out on the label November 3rd, plays two sets at Bowery Poetry Club's ESP Disk Live, with Calvin Johnson doing the other, on September 15th. He's also at Santos's Musicka Mystica Maxima Fest on September 21st and returns to DBA for a collaboration with co-curator Sam Hillmer on September 24th (full Maze schedule).

More pictures and tour dates are below...

Continue reading "The Maze is happening (pics) - continues w/ K Records crew ++ Calvin Johnson, Arrington de Dionyso & City Center dates"

Sam Hillmer (left) playing with Zs @ the Yard (more by Sarahana)

You Are Here (The Maze) is a performance festival in a sculptural maze taking place at Williamsburg's Death By Audio from September 10 - October 2, 2009. Emphasizing the sprawling and interconnected nature of New York's underground, a trip through the maze offers a peak inside NYC's diy art/music scene. A meditation on passage and desire, You Are Here engulfs the space and presents beckoning inhabitants, dead ends, and uplifting epitaphs. Medium and genre vary and overlapping and simultaneous performances are frequent, each performer establishing a different corner or dead end as his or hers.

The lineup and installation is being put together by TROUBLE (Sam Hillmer & Laura Paris). Acts in the three-week schedule include Calvin Johnson, Screaming Females, Mick Barr, Ty Segal, Grooms, Extra Life and others.

Skeletons kick off the first night of the festival on September 10th as the Skeletons Big Band, a 12-piece band (expanded from their usual four) that's also playing September 7-9th at Roulette. There they'll be performing "New Works for a Larger Ensemble" which includes "excerpts and new arrangements from their record in progress "PEOPLE," a long form piece based around conversations in Greyhound busses and stations, and beyond..."

The full schedule for the Maze (and the lineup for Skeletons Big Band) is below...

Continue reading "Death By Audio's The Maze - schedule (includes 1 of 4 upcoming Skeletons Big Band shows & much more) "

Remember Death By Audio's 12-hour benefit on July 25th for something called You Are Here: A Maze?

Sam Hillmer & Laura Paris, who dubbed their art collaboration Trouble, had the first You Are Here festival in 2007, at 44th street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Paris drew out the floor-plan of the maze, while Hillmer, who plays tenor saxophone for the Zs, booked bands to play in the space and coordinated efforts to bring people inside to interact with the maze.

"It didn't seem like the kind of thing that could just sit in a gallery, it needs constant traffic," Hillmer explained. "That is the piece, people dealing with the situation [presented by the maze]."

This year's festival, scheduled for Spetember 10th through October 2nd, will take up the entire space of Death by Audio and feature a maze constructed out of salvaged doors from Built It Green, a nonprofit organization that sells surplus building materials. The space will also have woodchip-covered floors ("to reference mazes built out of bushes," Hillmer notes). The twists and turns of the venue will be littered by some 200 of Paris' sculptures, molded from some of her pieces and then cast repeatedly. [Greenpoint Gazette]

According to the promoter, "Medium and genre vary and overlapping and simultaneous performances are frequent, each performer establishing a different corner or dead end as his or hers." Sounds fun.

The preliminary lineup (aka almost a month's worth of shows at the venue while the maze is up) mixes interesting out of town names (Calvin Johnson, Ty Segal, The Coathangers) with local acts like Skeletons (as 'Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities'), Mick Barr (he is local right?), Extra life and Stars Like Fleas. Full lineup to be announced soon but more of it is below, along with video footage of the first Maze (starring Dave Longstreth, Thee Oh Sees and others), and other details and the flyer for the new Maze...

Continue reading "Death by Audio maze installation running Sept 10-Oct 2 (Skeletons, Mick Barr, Calvin Johnson, Extra Life, Ty Segall)"

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: City Center - Open House (MP3)

City Center @ Nakamura House Party 3/14/09...

[Fred Thomas of City Center/Saturday Looks Good To Me]:

I leave tomorrow morning for Olympia to get it together for 2 months or so of touring with The Hive Dwellers and Chain & The Gang. Hive Dwellers is Calvin Johnson's new band/new songs and I play drums for the band. C&TG is Ian Svenonius' (Make Up/Weird War/Soft Focus talk show) new jam. I play bass in that one. After the last two months of playing lots of shows, recording all the time and hanging so hard with Ryan all in the name of playing some fucked up music with City Center, I'm really sad to be taking off for so long and putting the CC on hold. Luckily we're gonna play a few shows on this tour, and we also have a ton of things we're working on that will come to light soon... [City Center blog, 4.1.09]

One of those "things we're working on" (or maybe "worked on") is most definitely the forthcoming self-titled debut record from City Center. Fred announced the disc, to be released by Type Records, on his blog a week earlier: "The record will be released on LP and CD, with a UK release date of May 25th and a US release date of June 8. It will be distributed by Forced Exposure and available directly from Type or by getting in touch with us directly here or on Myspace, etc. There will be some sort of digital media for it as well, just not sure what yet." New track "Open House" is available for download above.

The Hive Dwellers + Chain & the Gang tour dates mentioned above include two NYC shows: Friday, April 17th at 92YTribeca and Sunday, April 26th at the Market Hotel. Tickets are available for the 92YTribeca show, which also includes City Center on the bill.

Svenonius-led Chain & the Gang's debut Down With Liberty... Up With Chains! is coming out via Calvin Johnson's K Records on April 7th. Art and press release for that album below.

All tour dates, and City Center art and track list - also below...

Continue reading "The Hive Dwellers (Calvin Johnson), Chain & The Gang (Ian Svenonius) tour + City Center dates, new albums, MP3"

Crystal Stilts @ Cake Shop, Dec 2007 (hot doorknobs)

"I think we're simultaneously influenced by post-punk from the '80s and proto-punk music of the '50s and '60s that influenced C-86: [the labels] Postcard, Flying Nun and, of course, Slumberland," said JB Townsend of Crystal Stilts, whose exceptional self-titled debut comes out on Slumberland on Oct. 28. "For instance, the Mary Chain was influenced by Dylan, [Velvet Underground] and Love, so we're going to sound like the Mary Chain if we're pulling from the same tree." [Express Night Out]

Calvin Johnson is in town to DJ not once, but twice this labor day weekend. 'Dub Narcotic Selector' (the name he goes by when selecting records) will be appearing at Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn on Saturday night (Aug 30) and then again at Santos Party House in Manhattan on Monday (Sept 1). Both events also feature DJ Ian Svenonius, and DJ Jonathan Toubin aka the host of New York Night Train's 'Declassified' which is the name of Monday nights at Santos.

Each Declassified party also features at least one live band. Past weeks have included a 2-piece Trail of Dead, King Khan & BBQ, and the Homosexuals. One of the future weeks will feature a performance by Andrew WK (who also happens to partially own the club). This week Puddin' Tang and Crystal Stilts are the bands that accompany DJ Calvin on the bill.

The Santos gig is not Crystal Stilts' only upcoming NYC show though. In fact, they have at least six scheduled in September. September 6th is for free at South Street Seaport. September 11th is at Le Poisson Rouge with High Places. All dates and flyers below...

Continue reading "Calvin Johnson (DJ) & Crystal Stilts - NYC shows & tour dates "

Calvin Johnson mural @ Dept of Safety, Anacortes, Washington (K Records)

Feb 14, 2008 - New York, New York
New York University, Shorin Hall - w/ Karl Blau 8PM All Ages

Feb 17, 2008 - New York, New York
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery - 4PM

Feb 18, 2008 - Brooklyn, New York
Lutheran Church of the Messiah, 129 Russell St (at Nassau, Greenpoint, Brooklyn G-Nassau or L-Graham) -w/ Karl Blau & Fred Thomas (Saturday Looks Good to Me) 8:00PM $7.00 All Ages

All tour dates below....

Continue reading "Calvin Johnson - 2008 Tour Dates, 3 NYC shows, Karl Blau"

CALVIN JOHNSON & THE SONS OF THE SOIL

In 2003, K recording artists Khaela Maricich (the Blow) and Jason Anderson had a vision. "What if Calvin Johnson played all his best songs from over the years, with a band of real music-making people?" This was their vision, and they decided to make it happen. Jason formed a band of other K music stalwarts that included Kyle Field (Little Wings) on bass with Adam Forkner (Yume Bitsu, VERSION) and Jason sharing the guitar and drum playing duties. Dubbed by Jason the Sons of the Soil, they set out to modernize the primitive. Khaela designed a graphic image that perfectly captured the Sons of the Soil's transcendental vibe. A tour was arranged that crossed paths with other fine Olympia types, including Rebecca Pearcy and Mirah. Songs were chosen that spanned the years and various combos, including songs originally recorded by Halo Benders ("Love Travels Faster"), Dub Narcotic Sound System ("Booty Run") and the Go Team ("Sand"). Rehearsals commenced, and then it was off across the Western United States for a rollicking, rockin' good time.

This album was recorded at the Dub Narcotic studio in July, 2003, immediately following their return to Olympia, Wash. It features a good cross section of the material from the tour and includes a few live snippets from the Sons of the Soil performance in Spokane, Wash.

Calvin Johnson is playing Don Pedro's in Brooklyn on June 1st. All tour dates below...

Continue reading "Calvin Johnson - 2007 Tour Dates"