photos by Winnie Cheung

"EXCUSE ME?! GIRL TALK AT TERMINAL 5?!?! TONIGHT????
WHY DID I NOT KNOW THIS?!?!" - Shaina

"I hate everyone that got Terminal 5 Girl Talk tickets. I hate you." - Al

"It's like woah at Girl Talk @ Terminal 5" - Amber Roussel

Girl Talk kicked off the second leg of his 2011 tour at a sold-out Terminal 5 in NYC last night (2/24). The first leg ended at Wellmont Theater earlier this month.

Max Tundra and Junk Culture (who both also played Glasslands on Wednesday) are opening all dates through March 23rd. That includes last night, though we missed them. Pictures from Girl Talk's set are in this post though.

$75 "Early Bird Tickets" went on sale yesterday for the Governors Ball, the new fest coming to Governors Island that will feature a co-headlining set by Gregg Gillis. It's unclear how many tickets were in the "Early Bird" allotment, but they are already sold out. $85 "Limited Advance Tickets" are on sale now. They eventually go up to $95 each.

More pictures from Terminal 5 below...

Continue reading "Girl Talk played Terminal 5 (pics), Governors Ball on sale"

photos by Brian Reilly

DOWNLOAD: Junk Culture - Weird Teenage Vibes (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Junk Culture - Summer Friends (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Max Tundra - The Rockford Files theme song remixed (ZIPPED MP3)

Girl Talk @ Wellmont Theater

Girl Talk completed the first leg of his current tour at Wellmont Theater in Montclair, NJ Saturday night (2/5) (one night after Lauryn Hill played the same venue). Penguin Prison opened the show, like they did on previous dates. Pictures from that show are in this post.

Now on a slight break, Greg Gillis will launch the second leg of his tour at Terminal 5 in NYC on 2/24. The show is sold out.

Opening all Girl Talk dates from 2/24-3/25 are both Max Tundra and Girl Talk's Illegal Art label-mate Junk Culture, both of whom will first play their own smaller show at Glasslands in Brooklyn on 2/23 with Nite Club and George & Jonathan. Tickets are on sale. All tour dates are listed below.

Junk Culture released "Summer Friends" this week. The full 5-song tracklist is listed below. Download two of the tracks for free above now.

"Oxford Mississippi native Deepak Mantena of creative pop-project Junk Culture developed the sound for his newest release, Summer Friends, from a lifetime collection of sounds he'd captured on a handheld recorder. Drawing on inspiration he found in the vibrant harmonies, psychedelic noises and dance rhythms that saturated his environment, he created alluring melodies using guitar, keyboard, and percussion and topped them off with choruses of his own explosive vocals. Experimenting with recording and sampling the symphony of sounds from his everyday life left him filled with a sense of freedom and a revived faith in the process of making music; the warm euphoric tunes he emerged with reflect a compelling range of influences that include everything from west-coast style pop to hip-hop mash-ups and raw punk-informed electronic dance tunes." [PR]

Max Tundra doesn't have a new release, but has been busy in the studio creating one. Meanwhile he is giving away a new track in the form of a Rockford Files theme song remix (grab that above). He has also recently released remixes for Marnie Stern, Abe Vigoda, Chilly Gonzales, Tune-Yards, Kele and others. Listen to those remixes below.

More pictures from the NJ Girl Talk show, all tour dates, and a pair of time lapse videos from the show in DC are also below...

Continue reading "Girl Talk & Penguin Prison played Wellmont Theater (pics), Max Tundra & Junk Culture playing Brooklyn & releasing stuff"

Dan Deacon has been tapped by Francis Ford Coppola to score his next film, Twixt Now and Sunrise, due later this year. The gothic romance stars Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Ben Chaplin & Elle Fanning. In addition to scoring the film, Mr. Coppola and Mr. Deacon are collaborating on a larger level, details of which will be announced soon.

The announcement comes on the cusp of Deacon's concert of new music for So Percussion on Jan. 20th at the Merkin Concert Hall in NYC and his first performance of new orchestral work Feb 3rd and 4th with the Kitchner-Waterloo Symphony in Kitchner, Ontario.

In not really related news, Dan's old touring partner Girl Talk was the topic of a much-talked-about article in the NY Times (again) this past Sunday. Girl Talk is on tour now. Max Tundra and Junk Culture are both opening the sold out Terminal 5 show. Penguin Prison opens the sold out Wellmont Theatre show.

The new Francis Ford Coppola movie is a horror movie, as the video below points out...

Continue reading "Dan Deacon scoring new Francis Ford Coppola film 'Twixt Now and Sunrise', Girl Talk in the NY Times"

DOWNLOAD: Junk Culture - West Coast (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: HEALTH - Die Slow (Tobacco RMX) (MP3) (via)

Junk Culture, which is made up of electronic artist Deepak Mantena and his younger brother Nitin Mantena on drums, got in position on stage and music immediately started flowing from the speakers. Everyone started dancing as if they were commanded to do so. They opened with a song which doesn't require any real dancing effort because your body starts swaying and your head starts bopping involuntarily with the beat. While they played, random videos like crashing ocean waves and a kid slalom skateboarding flashed on a large screen behind them. The random videos continued through the show with no pattern or theme, and later Deepak told me the videos were just '50s and '60s propaganda he chopped and assembled in the same fashion as he does music. [The Reflector on Junk Culture live Oct. 2009]

Junk Culture is the lo-fi pop/hip-hop beats project of Illegal Art's Deepak Mantena, with his brother Nitin on drums (they also make sketch comedy videos as Celery TV, see below). They'll be coming to New York this weekend as part of their tour with psychy indie-pop Common Loon, the Champaign, IL duo of Matthew Campbell and Robert Hirschfeld. Both bands play Friday, July 9th at Coco 66 with k.Flay and Ava Luna, and the next night (7/10) at Union Hall with the Diggs.

Junk Culture's West Coast EP came out in 2009 on Illegal Art (home of Girl Talk), and he has a new record due in the fall. Common Loons's The Long Dream of Birds came out in April - check it out streaming on their Bandcamp.

Coming up, Junk Culture has a September tour with Tobacco who are giving away a free mix tape, and whose HEALTH remix from the new HEALTH remix LP, you can download above. Tobacco's Manic Meat came out in May which is also when The Hood Internet released a free mashup EP using some songs from it.

Tobacco's Anticon labelmates Why? are playing the debut 2010 Pool Party on July 11th.

HEALTH are playing Santos Party House this summer.

Girl Talk is playing Camp Bisco.

Junk Culture videos and all tour dates are below...

Continue reading "Illegal Art's Junk Culture touring w/ Common Loon & then Anticon's Tobacco - dates, MP3s, videos & stuff"

DOWNLOAD: Junk Culture - West Coast (MP3)

"Junk Culture is a new project by Deepak Mantena, a recent signing to Illegal Art, home of Girl Talk, Steinski, Bran Flakes and more. Junk Culture's debut EP, "West Coast," features sound tapestries created from mixing fractured vocals with pop hooks and samples, all run through a handheld recorder, which gives his constructions a gritty, lo-fi, loop-based sound, and an overall euphoric warmth. Leading up to this release, Deepak would capture field recordings, samples of songs he really liked, and samples of himself playing instruments on a cheap pocket recorder, all of which sounded fresh to his ears. "West Coast" embodies these "fresh" sounds, and employs them for what Deepak describes as "a love letter to outer space -- it gets desperate and schizophrenic as the record plays out, but is a sort of celebration of spirit as a whole." It is essentially Deepak's manifesto of energetic raw sound that transcends rigid genres, and is textural, emotive and compelling."

Some may remember Deepak Mantena from his short stint in 2007 as a Brooklyn Vegan contributor (and a big Animal Collective fan). Check out the self-titled track from his new EP (out October 27, 2009), for free and legal/illegal MP3 download, above. His second still-unnamed EP will follow "in the spring of 2010".

Catch Deepak's label-mate Greg Gillis aka Girl Talk this Sunday, August 23rd, at the Williamsburg Waterfront aka this week's free JellyNYC Pool Party which I (and everyone) predict will be MGMT-packed (unless it rains maybe). Max Tundra and Wiz Khalifa open.

Catch Deepak (Junk Culture) when he opens for Girl Talk at three non-NYC shows in September. Those and other dates are below...

Continue reading "Junk Culture signs to Illegal Art (MP3) +++ Girl Talk Sunday"