Feist in a crypt in Oct. (more by Jessica Amaya)

today in NYC
* White Light Fest
* David Scott @ Barbes
* Sasha Dobson @ Barbes
* Soulwax @ Webster Hall
* Wale @ Highline Ballroom
* 6th Degree @ Cameo Gallery
* Mike Lawrence @ Caroline's
* Mandingo Ambassadors @ Barbes
* Shelby Lynne @ Highline Ballroom
* The Ben Goldberg School @ The Stone
* The Big Terrific @ Cameo Gallery
* VV Brown, Jay Brown @ Mercury Lounge
* Caveman, Hospitality, JPF @ Brooklyn Bowl
* Erik Friedlander's Bonebridge Quartet @ The Stone
* Found Footage Book release party @ The Bell House
* Bobby Previte, Gabrio Baldacci, Tim Berne @ Zebulon
* The Veda Rays, Two Lights, Echogram @ Bowery Electric
* Colour Revolt, Empires, Mean Creek @ Knitting Factory
* Feist, The Happiness Project @ Brooklyn Academy of Music
* Matthew Sweet, The Shadowboxers @ City Winery (early, late)
* The Drums, Patrick Cleandenim, Regal Degal @ Bowery Ballroom
* Sundelles, Terry Malts, Wax Idols, Dive, Habibi @ Shea Stadium
* Caithlin De Marrais, Yellowbirds, Lindsay Sullivan @ Union Hall
* The Sounds, Natalia Kills, The Limousines @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
* Little Women, Hilly Eye, Pet Bottle Ningen, Nisennenmondai @ Death By Audio
* The Red Heroine, St. Claire, Ohbijou, Wildlife Control, Mandy Duffy @ Pianos
* Sam Mickens Ecstatic Showband & Revue, Les Bonhommes, Skeletons @ Public Assembly
* Cornelius Loy, Superhuman Happiness (Dia de los Muertos celebration) @ Union Pool
* Eola, MC^2 of Prince Rama, The Toothaches, Invisible Circle @ Big Snow Buffalo Lodge
* William Basinski, Antony Hegarty, Marina Abramovic @ Issue Project Room's 110 Livingston space
* Nite Jewel, Warm Ghost, Headless Horseman, Caged Animals, DJ Scott Mou @ Glasslands

CAVE have a new video for "Adam Roberts" off their new record "NEVERENDLESS". You can watch below...

What else?

Continue reading "What's going on Wednesday?"

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Cave - Adam Roberts (MP3)

Chicago spacerockers Cave release their new album, Neverendless, this week on Drag City. The band just kicked off a lengthy tour which this week takes them to Pop Montreal and then down into New York City for two shows: Saturday, September 24 at soon-to-be-closed Live With Animals (with Amen Dunes, K-Holes & PC Worship), and then Sunday, September 25 at Cake Shop. All tour dates are at the bottom of this post.

Like last year's Pure Moods (and many releases before that), Neverendless finds Cave locking onto a groove and staying with it in the Neu!/Spacemen 3 tradition. You can download the "Adam Roberts" (the album's spaciest cut) at the top of this post and watch the video for the album's chugging, motoroik single, "WUJ," below. Also: who can we talk to about getting Cave to tour with fellow Chicagoans Disappears?

Continue reading "CAVE release Neverendless, touring (dates, video & MP3)"

photos by Greg Cristman

Master Musicians of Bukkake @ Issue Project Room

Much like its inspiration, the Pan-devoted, beatnik-adored Master Musicians of Joujouka, the floating infinity conjured by the Master Musicians of Bukkake draws on a tradition that echoes across millennia. Around in various formations since 2003, the Seattle entity has coalesced into a seven-piece in time for its first East Coast performance, headlining a marathon tribute to avant-everything label Important Records in the Issue Project Room courtyard. MMoB's collaborative web includes psych-trance-ritual ecstatics from Earth, Sun City Girls and the free-improv world, which makes each new project a mutable feast of electronic drones, Buddhist temple bells, gamelan breakdowns, fuzz-box meditations, and innovations like "Rag-Dun Tibetan trumpet" and "leprosy synth." -[Time Out]

Despite the rain and subsequent relocation indoors, Important Records strutted like a peacock at Issue Project Room, showing off their roster with performances by headliner The Master Musicians of Bukkake, as well as Cave, Chord, Helena Espvall & Fursaxa, Kouhei Matsunaga, New Monuments, Duane Pitre, and Diane Cluck (no Ocean, unfortunately)).

More pics from the show are below...

Continue reading "Important Records showcased @ Issue Project Room - pics (Master Musicians of Bukkake, Chord, Cave & more) "

by BBG

DOWNLOAD: Master Musicians of Bukkake - "Perde Kaldirma" (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Master Musicians of Bukkake - "Patmos" (MP3)

Ocean at Show No Mercy (more by Justina Villanueva)

Important Records will round up a gang of bands from their roster to perform at Issue Project Room on August 15th as part of a collaborative effort between the label and venue. Master Musicians of Bukkake will headline the event, bringing along Jozef Van Wissem, Duane Pitre, Helena Espvall + Fursaxa, Arborea, Kouhei Matsunaga, Ocean, The New Monuments (C. Spencer Yeh, Ben Hall and Don Deitrich), CAVE and Diane Cluck. Tickets are on sale.

Master Musicians of Bukkake musically have very little to do with that depraved sexual act, but much more to do with the Pacific Northwest's penchant for experimentalism:

Featuring members of EARTH, ASVA, BURNING WITCH, THE DIMINISHED MEN, and special guests from Secret Chiefs 3 and the thriving Istanbul music scene... MMOB has now solidified into a 7 piece cosmic psyche force. Like a reverse dark side of the New Age sound, ...Master Musicians of Bukkake perform ritualistic electric excursions into the outer and inner reaches. Relying more on the electric power of psyched guitars, analog synth chants, and exotic heavy percussion. ...Outer spaced gamelan, dusty fuzz rock from celestial deserts, meditations of a deranged Krishna gathering, and the Blurry acoustic guitar majesty of The Cascade mountains all reveal themselves....

MMOB's latest release is Totem 2, is out now via Important. The LP was recorded, mixed and produced by Randall Dunn (Six Organs of Admitance, Sunno))), Earth ,etc). Dig on two songs from that LP above.

Meanwhile, a few of the bands playing the Important Records celebration have new releases to celebrate. Duane Pitre is celebrating the release of his new LP of guitar and string minimalism, out now via Origin via Thrill Jockey Records (stream excerpts). Fursaxa has a new-ish LP of freak folk in Mycorrhizae Realm featuring Helena Espvall on cello.

CAVE has another date on the eve of the Important Records show; look for the California psychedelics to take the stage at Cake Shop on August 14th (not The Studio at Webster Hall as originally announced). CAVE's Pure Moods 12" is out now via Drag City.

Full Cave, Arborea, and Diane Cluck dates, as well as some video are below.

Continue reading "Important Records bands playing Issue Project Room & other dates - Master Musicians of Bukkake, Ocean, CAVE & more"

Move over wolves, crystals, girls and bears. Caves are cool now. Following in the footsteps of cave granddaddies Cave-In (who recently reunited to cash in on the cave phenomenon) and Nick Cave, there seems to be a sudden influx of cave bands hitting the scene. Maybe it all really started back in 2007 when Pretty Girls Make Graves broke up and Derek Fudesco formed The Cave Singers (Pretty Girls Make Caves) who were almost immediately signed to Matador which two years later also became the home of Cold Cave. According to Wikipedia, Cold Cave have been a band since 2005, but the dark synthpop group with hardcore roots didn't actually release anything until 2008. Their Matador debut, which really made them a household indie rock name, came in 2009.

Earlier this year, the popular LA all-girl punk band Mika Miko broke up leaving prominent member JennifEr ClAVin without a musical home, but not for long. She quickly joined cave band Cold Cave, thus adding even more credibility to the cave scene. On April 29, 2010 (last night), Cold Cave played a headlining show at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC. How was it? They reportedly played for 35 minutes and it was their third NYC show in less than a week. The first was at Solar One, a free NYU Earth Day concert with HEALTH. The next was up at Barnard in a gym due to rain that forced it inside.

Continuing along with the partial inspiration or this post: Cave and Caves. This one was especially confusing me lately, in part due to the emails I get on behalf of both bands. I had to take a second and confirm in my mind that these were two different groups.

CAVE (I think it's all capital letters) is a psychedelic Chicago rock band with an impressive resume and a bunch of releases dating back to 2006. You may have caught them on their November tour. If not, don't fear, the band have a loaded show schedule this summer that includes the Pitchfork Festival, the Sled Island Festival in Canada, dates with Quintron and Miss Pussycat, and two NYC shows: August 14th at the Studio at Webster Hall and August 15th at Issue Project Room. A new 12" CAVE EP entitled Pure Moods will be released by Drag City in May (though the download seems to be available now). All tour dates below.

Caves (plural) started in San Francisco, but like the Morning Benders, now live in Brooklyn. Like Cave, they also fall into the psychedelic category. And though they are looking for a drummer, they actually have five local shows coming up including a record release party at Cameo tonight (4/30). Said the Gramophone has an MP3. You can listen to more at their SonicBids page. All dates below.

Caveman

Also tonight, 4/30, in the NYC-area: Caveman are opening for Here We Go Magic at Maxwell's. The four-part harmonizing Brooklyn band (who has opened for Here We Go Magic before) is the new project from Matty Pickles of The Subjects. Other members are Subjects guitarist Jimmy Carbonetti, Jeff Berrall of Elefant, Stefan Marolachakis from The End of the World, and Sam Hopkin. Maybe you caught Caveman at Cameo (or Caveo as some call it) on April 19th. Shannon did:

"I returned to the mystical back room just in time to hear Caveman self-deprecate and be casual and charming, then nonchalantly break into a pretty tight, polished set that would stop you in your tracks on Bedford Avenue if you heard it coming out of a record shop. I mean, check out the song "Decide," on Caveman's Myspace here. They have such a lovely, echoed lo-fi sound. I believe the band is somewhat newly formed. I gather this from something they mentioned in their stage banter and because I have their set list from that night in my purse, and more than one song began with "New Jam # ...," which I find incredibly endearing."

They are new (their first show ever was at Bowery Ballroom with White Rabbits in January), and I agree on the checking out their MySpace recommendation too. There you will find two beautiful songs (demos). "December 28th" is especially Grizzly Bear/Fleet Foxes-esque. If you miss them tonight, they also have a NYC show scheduled on May 19th (at Sway?).

Finally, last but not least, I'll wrap things up with Cave Bears. They, like Cleveland's Clan of the Cave Bear, have successfully combined both caves and bears, but the mind-expanding experimental, and sometimes silly, Massachusetts band has a sound all their own (at least compared to anyone else in this post). No wonder they recently shared a bill (the same night Cavebear played Cameo) at Death By Audio with guitarist and Thurston Moore collaborator Bill Nace, the Thurston Moore approved Fat Worm Of Error, and Darren Mabee's band We are the Seahorses. Video of their wacky live show with everything else, below...

Continue reading "Caves are the new Bears (except for Cave Bear) "

Modest Mouse @ Terminal 5 in March 2009 (more by Chris La Putt)

Modest Mouse will join Faith No More and Nas & Damian Marley (tickets) as one of the acts set to play at Williamsburg Waterfront in Brooklyn this summer. Their Friday, July 23rd show will be ticketed/non-free (like the others mentioned). Tickets go on sale Friday at noon (which is when the just-added Faith no More show goes on sale too).

Modest Mouse's Brooklyn show is a week after they play the Pitchfork Festival which recently updated its lineup. New acts playing the Chicago fest include Big Boi, Major Lazer, Neon Indian, Beach House, Free Energy, Local Natives, Robyn & more. Check that out in full below. Single day tickets are still on sale.

UPDATE: Modest Mouse's Brooklyn show is one day after they play one in NJ.

Modest Mouse will be reissuing their third album, The Moon & Antarctica, on vinyl for its 10th anniversary, on Record Store Day - this Saturday, April 17th. "The album features restored original artwork and replicates the infinite lock groove found in the original vinyl pressings of 2000. The new vinyl reissue includes a download card for the album." All dates the the P4K Fest lineup, below...

Continue reading "Modest Mouse playing Williamsburg Waterfront, the Pitchfork Festival (updated full lineup) & other tour dates"

The Pitchfork Music Festival celebrates its 5th anniversary this year at Union Park in Chicago. It runs from Friday July 16th - Sunday July 18th. Three-day passes are now sold out, but you can still get single-day passes on Ticketweb.

The Updated Lineup is below:

Continue reading "Pitchfork Festival updates lineup (Broken Social Scene, Jon Spencer, Panda Bear, Girls, El-P & more) "

by BBG

Cave

Chicago's Cave and NYC's White Hills will team up for a night of rip-roarin' psychedeli-madness at Brooklyn's Death By Audio on 11/16. The show is one of two lined up for the Cave. The second is an opening slot for Times New Viking at Mercury Lounge on 11/18, the first of three NYC area dates for TNV this month. Tickets are still available.

Cave are touring behind their album Psychic Psummer which was released earlier this year on Important Records. The first pressing sold out, but you can pick up a second press copy here. Important also has a few one minute snippets from the LP here.

White Hills recently dropped a new 12" on Thrill Jockey, Dead, their second release for the label, as Heads On Fire was reissued earlier this year. You can view a video for Dead below. White Hills played Roadburn 2009.

Speaking of Roadburn, the festival added some more high-profile bands to their already outstanding 2010 lineup including Yob, Kylesa, Church of Misery, The Gates of Slumber, Nachtmystium, and many more. The current lineup is below. Tickets go on sale 11/28.

The current Roadburn lineup, Cave tour dates and the White Hills video are below.

Continue reading "Cave touring (dates) - NYC shows w/ Times New Viking & White Hills +++ 2010 Roadburn lineup expands"