Darren Hanlon

Entries tagged with: Darren Hanlon

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Go Sailor

This week is the fifth-annual NYC Popfest which happens Thursday - Sunday (May 19 - 22) at a variety of NYC and Brooklyn venues, playing host to around 30 bands from around the world. Previous years have seen the likes of The Radio Dept, Pelle Carlberg, The Drums, Love is All, Allo Darlin' and more.

Festival passes are sold out at this point -- as are tickets to Thursday's show at Cake Shop with Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Gold-Bears -- but you can still get tickets to any of the other individual events.

We're also giving away pairs of tickets to the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday shows. Line-ups for each night are at the bottom of this post. We've got:

1 pair of tickets for Friday night at Cameo
3 pais of tickets for Saturday night at Santos
5 pairs of tickets for the all-day Sunday show at The Rock Shop.

To enter, just send an email to BVCONTESTS@HOTMAIL.COM with the subject line "POPFEST" and the day you want tickets for, aka "POPFEST FRIDAY." We'll pick winners at random. Please note many of these shows are 21+.

This year's Popfest is a nice mix of new and old, jangly and loud. Every year at Popfest I've discovered at least two bands I'd never heard of before who've gone on to be favorites. I imagine this year will be no different. There are some MP3s above, plus a swell 24-song mix the Popfest folks made for your downloadable enjoyment. For this year's preview I'm just going to go through the events day-by-day. Keep reading below...

Continue reading "a guide to NYC Popfest 2011 (with lots of MP3s, day by day analysis & chances to win free tickets too)"

posted at 3:58 PM on May 16, 2011 in Contests | MP3 | music | Comments (16)

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Lawrence Arabia - Beautiful Young Crew (Mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Lawrence Arabia - Apple Pie Bed (MP3)

Lawrence Arabia

Kiwi popsmith Lawrence Arabia (real name James Milne) is back in NYC for CMJ (last here with Crowded House), playing a few shows -- the first of which is today's (10/19) early evening New Zealand showcase at Le Poisson Rouge. He's on at 6PM and the show is FREE but you do need to RSVP if you don't have a CMJ badge. (Free booze of some sort too, apparently.) The rest of the NZ line-up is Zowie (who is also playing the Fader Fort and Fat Baby on Friday), Kids of 88, Street Chant, Ruby Frost and Electric Wire Hustle.

Lawrence Arabia also plays Thursday, Oct. 21 at Bowery Electric (11PM) for the Bella Union/Yep Roc showcase with former Lucksmith Darren Hanlon, Savoir Adore, Jukebox the Ghost, Drink Up Buttercup, Alessi's Ark, and Heidi Spencer.

Lawrence Arabia's excellent second album, Chant Darling, was released early 2010 on the Bella Union label and ranges from gentle folk to ELO-style orch-pop. You can download two tracks from the album at the top of this post. It's really charming, tuneful stuff. In addition to his solo work, Milne has also spent time in the Brunettes, Ruby Suns and as a touring member of Okkerville River.

Some Lawrence Arabia music videos, the flyer and stuff, below...

Continue reading "Lawrence Arabia & other New Zealand artists here for CMJ (dates, MP3s, videos) "

posted at 2:13 AM on October 19, 2010 in music | tour dates | Comments (3)

Magnetic Fields @ Loews Theater, Jersey City in Oct. 2008 (more by Chris La Putt)

"We did soft rock on I, hard rock on Distortion, and folk à la Judy Collins on Realism," [Stephin Merritt] says. "They were conceived as a trio, but particularly with Distortion and Realism, I thought of them as a pair." The titles he had in mind at first were "True" and "False," which got set aside when he couldn't figure which label applied to which album. Of course, that creative cul de sac is itself vintage Merritt.

"I asked myself, 'Would it be too simple to say that Distortion is false, and that Realism is true? Or would it be too annoying to say the reverse?' So I scratched that," he says, pausing at length. "And now it is what it is." [National Post]

The Magnetic Fields will be touring in support of their new record, Realism, which is out today (1/26). Toward the beginning of the trip, on Saturday, February 13th, they'll be playing at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House, a show that's sold out or close to it (BAM directs you to their box office phone, 718.636.4100, for inquiries).

The tour returns to NYC in March, and they've expanded their run at NYC's Town Hall to three nights. The added show will be on Friday, March 12th. Tickets for the first show are still on sale (but not the second). The third goes on AmEx presale Wednesday, January 27th at 11am. General sale starts Friday, January 29th at noon.

Openers, who each focus on eclectic folk sounds, have also been announced: Canadian singer/kalimba player Laura Barrett plays March 10th, Australian songwriter Darren Hanlon opens March 11th, and Brooklyn electronic-instrument craftsmen Dewanatron play the final date.

All tour dates (including Magnetic Fields' European leg), a new Realism video, and clips of Dewanatron (half of which opened for Music Tapes last March) are below...

Continue reading "Magnetic Fields add 4th NYC show & openers - updated dates"

posted at 4:32 PM on January 26, 2010 in music | tour dates | Comments (17)

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Max Tundra - "Which Song" (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Max Tundra - Playboy (Hot Chip) (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Max Tundra - promo mix 2008 (MP3)

Max Tundra

Enigmatic Brit artist Max Tundra has been releasing music for 10 years but only just released his third album, Parallax Error Beheads You, back in October -- his first in six years. One of the reasons for being such a slowpoke probably has something to do with the way he makes them:

The main technology behind this and all of my albums has been the Commodore Amiga 500 - bestselling home computer at the time - running a $1 public domain software tracker program. The sounds don't emerge from the Amiga itself however; the machine is used to control various synths, samplers and the like. I look at columns of numbers all day on the screen of a black and white television; these digits relate to pitches, durations and tones. A lot of the noises on my record are real; the cello, bass guitar, drums, piano, trumpet and others are all rehearsed and played by me, but sometimes I will use realistic fake versions of these noises. Each song is recorded in a different way; drumkits are recorded on mono cassette recorders twice, then stuck together on the left and right of a mix; string arrangements are planned and then layered up; each note of an electric guitar is sampled so that it can be sequenced in ways too complicated for my fat fingers to play at full speed. And then I have a cup of tea and sing my heart out.

Seems like a painstaking and annoying way to make a record to me, but there's no denying the results: his albums don't sound like anybody else's. (Well, maybe just a little like Scritti Politti.) Max is making his NYC live debut this week, opening for The Rosebuds at Bowery Ballroom on Friday (1/16, tickets) and a headlining FIXED show at Le Poisson Rouge on Saturday (1/17, tickets). I'm curious to see how he'll pull it off his music in a live setting as well as how much equipment he'll have. What concert reviews of his I've read have been favorable (like this one from December).

Darren Hanlon

A few more options for you this week. Australian singer-songwriter Darren Hanlon has two NYC shows this week: tonight (1/13) at Googies (above The Living Room), and tomorrow (1/14) at the Bell House where he'll be trading off songs with Graham Smith of Kleenex Girl Wonder in the venue's front lounge. It's a free show. Hanlon's shows are as well known for his witty between-song stories and banter as he is his lovely folk-pop, so if you are fans of Billy Bragg, Robyn Hitchcock or fellow Aussies The Lucksmiths (with whom Hanlon spent a brief stint in the late '90s). He's a charmer.

As I mentioned a while back, Ida Maria is in town this week playing Mercury Lounge on Thursday (1/15) and Union Hall on Friday (1/16) and I am super-psyched for this. Both shows are sold out, but Union Hall usually has a few tickets available night of show if you get there right as doors open (which is 8PM, but Ida's not on till 10).

Also this week: The Muslims make their first New York appearances since switching their name to The Soft Pack. Their EP, which made my Best of 2008 list and has already sold out two vinyl pressings, is getting re-pressed in February under the new moniker with an additional three songs. Maybe they'll have those with them at the merch table for these shows? They play Mercury Lounge on Friday (1/16) and Union Pool on Saturday (1/17). Both shows also feature their 1928 Recordings label-mates the Browns.

Speaking of name changes, SpaceKamp, who I've written about before, now spell their name as SpaceCamp. Same great sound, now with more C. In addition to working with Adam Green, Spacecamp are helping Dev Hynes with the new Lightspeed Champion record as well. (Video of Dev and Spacecamp in the studio below.) They play Zebulon on Friday (1/16) and maybe you can quiz them on the new spelling if you go.

Videos and such after the jump...

Continue reading "Max Tundra, Darren Hanlon, SpaceCamp, Soft Pack, Ida Maria & more in this Week in Indie"

posted at 6:32 PM on January 13, 2009 in MP3 | music | To Do | Comments (7)