As regular readers know, Frequency was fortunate enough to readabout and fall in love, love, love with Shabazz Palaces a full two years ago, when it was still a mysterious, futuristic hip-hop project bubbling up from Seattle. So I’ve been anticipating for a while now the release of “Black Up,” the first full-length album from former Digable Planet Ishmael Butler’s amazing new project.
Anyway, release day is tomorrow, and y’all should all go cop the record from Subpop so you can get a sweet patch with your order. In the meantime, check out the final track on “Black Up,” below. It’s called “Swerve… The reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)” and it is without question one of my favorite tracks of the first half of 2011. The whole album blazes, but the smeared, shimmering synth line here marks “Swerved” as a standout. I cannot get enough of this track right now.
McMenamins Old St. Francis School hosts a whammy of a double-bill tonight in Father Luke’s Room as two rising nu-folk artists — Vandaveer and Cheyenne Marie Mize — perform both separately and together.
I’m hearing some buzz around Vandaveer’s appearance in Bend, and with good reason; the band’s newest album, “Dig Down Deep,” is a wonderful listen, full of modern, melodic Americana from the pen of Mark Charles Heidinger, who calls Washington D.C. home, but grew up in the great state of Kentucky.
There is no question that Heidinger knows his way around a song, and “Dig Down Deep” is a strong effort that’s well worth your time. But I’d argue that an even brighter — if slightly less developed — talent will open tonight’s show. Mize’s 2010 album “Before Lately” is a stunning collection of beguiling folk songs that tend to take the path less traveled to your ear. Her songwriting is slyly unconventional; she often zigs when you expect a zag, and she’s not afraid to challenge listeners with the occasional aural curveball, not unlike her stylistic ancestor Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) or one of her contemporaries, Sharon Van Etten. The result is an album that sounds like a warm summer night spent laying in the grass staring up at the celestial expanse above. Mize was born to be your tour guide through the constellations.
Here she is doing the “Before Lately” track “Waiting” last year in Portland for the Into The Woods folks:
All of that is the long way of saying that tonight, rather than saunter from dinner over to McMenamins at around 7:30 or 8, you should make a point to be there at 7 p.m. to catch Mize’s opening set. Then, as a special bonus treat, you’ll get to see her play with Vandaveer. (Mize is also from Kentucky, and has been touring and playing with Vandaveer for a while now.)
And, as usual, this show is free. Which … which is just crazy.
Hey, as long as you’re here, check out Vandaveer (with Mize) playing “The Nature of Our Kind” from “Dig Down Deep” in an abandoned pool, filmed by the La Blogotheque squad:
The buzz is loud around Silver Lake, Calif.-based rock band Vanaprasta. The L.A. media has identified them as one of that scene’s next big things, and the band has just returned from playing eight shows in four days at the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas.
Now, Vanaprasta is putting the finishing touches on its anticipated debut full-length “Healthy Geometry” and touring the West Coast, with a stop at Portland’s Holocene tonight, where they’re playing a free show with Hosannas and Hello Electric. If you’re in Portland or heading that way, you should check it out. (Hosannas has played Bend a couple times, and they’re great.)
Thanks to the band’s Central Oregon connection — guitarist Cameron Dmytryk is a 2004 graduate of Madras High School — I’ve had “Healthy Geometry” percolating in my headphones for a while now, and it’s easy to see why Vanaprasta’s hype wave is cresting. This is driving, dynamic, guitar-hero indie rock, where six-string acrobatics and swaggering rhythms create a comfy sonic bed for frontman Steven Wilkin’s versatile vocals. Most importantly, the band’s kaleidoscopic sound is presented not with a sense of shoegaze-y ennui, but the kind of verve often reserved for punk bands.
An L.A. website called The Deli described Vanaprasta as “a more talented version of Kings of Leon” and the band’s MySpace cites psychedelic Pink Floyd, dance-punky Bloc Party, funk-rocky Red Hot Chili Peppers and experimental supernovas Radiohead as influences. Fair enough. But when I listen to the band, I hear a cross between Portland’s proggy Portgual. The Man and the woefully underappreciated Seattle pop band Aveo. And surely with all those names swimming around in your head, you have some idea of what Vanaprasta does. If not, they have some downloads and streams over at their website.
Here’s hoping Dmytryk is able to steer the band’s ship over to his homeland one of these days.
Dark, blurry cellphone photo of Empty Space Orchestra playing last week in their practice space! Click to biggify.
Local instrumental titans Empty Space Orchestra have been relatively quiet this winter, spending more time recording in California and playing shows in Portland and Seattle than on Bend’s stages. Expect more noise over the next month as the space-jazz-rock quintet ramps up the hype for the release of its new self-titled album in May. Here are a few tidbits that have popped up recently:
–“Empty Space Orchestra” is nine tracks and 50 minutes long, and its official release date is May 10.
–ESO is planning a local CD-release show on May 19 at Century Center, with Diego’s Umbrella and (probably) another band opening. More details to come, obvs.
I mentioned this on Frequency’s Facebook the other day, but had no link to provide. Well, I’ve since found a link, but it’s a Soundcloud, so it could go away at any time, so you should just go ahead and listen right now.
Why?
Because I’ve listened to several great albums in the first quarter of 2011 (look for a roundup coming soon), but the best thing I’ve heard so far this year is a three-song EP of stray tracks that Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold released for free via his Twitter account several weeks back.
This stuff is gorgeous. The first — an aching duet with Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste — is my favorite. The second is a beautiful Simon & Garfunkelian tune that features some of Pecknold’s trademark vocal soarin’. The third is a cover of an old song from the ’70s by New Zealand folkie Chris Thompson.
The overall sound of the three songs is very influenced by ’60s/’70s British folk, with a totally vintage vibe, like you’re listening to old, timeworn Bert Jansch records on a dusty thrift-store turntable.
Of course, streaming these songs on Soundcloud is like the exact opposite of that, but it’ll have to do:
(Psst: The upcoming Fleet Foxes album sorta might’ve shown up magically in my iTunes and it is terrific. Friends, Pecknold is well on his way to becoming one of our finest songwriters. Dude is for real.)
As you may have heard, singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile will perform one night only at the Tower Theatre on May 5. Carlile sold out two nights last summer and one the year before that.
Tickets to the show go on sale to the public today, but if you want one, you’d better hurry, because Tower Theatre members have been able to buy them for two days, and they’ve already snapped up a bunch. In the picture at right, grabbed from the Tower site at 8 a.m., the seats that look black are already taken. The seats that are white are still available.
Tickets are available through the Tower, either at www.towertheatre.org, 541-317-0700 or the box office at 835 N.W. Wall St., in Bend. If you’re interested, here’s the feature story I did on Carlile last year, a bunch of excellent photos of her playing in Bend, and my glowing review of the show.
Short but sweet: Central Oregon’s fast-rising favorite sons, the acoustic juggernaut known as Larry and His Flask, will play every date of this summer’s Vans Warped Tour.
The Flask fellas will spend most of their summer as part of the biggest, longest running and most popular pop/punk/emo traveling festival in America, which will kick off June 24 in Dallas, Texas and will wrap up Aug. 14 in Hillsboro. Other artists on the tour include Unwritten Law, Yelawolf, The Ready Set, Reliant K, Lucero, Hellogoodbye, and probably other bands that are huge, but I don’t recognize because I am old.
This is huge exposure for these hard-working local dudes. Congrats, guys.
Bright future: Marc Brownstein and Aron Magner of Conspirator.
You won’t find anything about this in last week’s GO! Magazine, because I learned about it right after that issue went to press. And you won’t find anything in this week’s GO! either, because by the time that hits the streets, the show will be over.
But rest assured, Thursday night’s Conspirator / Break Science show at Silver Moon Brewing & Taproom deserves some ink, even if it’s just of the cyber variety.
This is a powerhouse bill of live electronica. Conspirator includes two guys from electro-jam giants Disco Biscuits (plus Chris Michetti of RAQ and Lane Shaw of Pnuma Trio), while Break Science features Adam Deitch, a wizard of a drummer who has manned the sticks for the John Scofield Band and Lettuce and has produced, oh, you know, just Justin Timberlake, 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg.
Neither act is just some dudes crouched behind a laptop. Both are live-band electronica; Conspirator specializes in glassy, ultra-cool beat music that soars and stutters in a way that’s somehow both mellow and urgent at the same time. Break Science mines a similar vein, but in a more aggressive way. Deitch and his keyboarding partner Borahm Lee make music that’s more menacing, more bottom-heavy, more drum & bass- and dubstep-flavored. You know that Bassnectar / Pretty Lights / Glitch Mob sound that’s getting to be huge at festivals? That’s Break Science’s part of town.
Get all the info and audible treats you need at their sites. Click: Conspirator | Break Science. And here are the details on the show. Click the URLs if you want to go to there:
Conspirator, with Break Science; 9:30 p.m. Thursday, doors open 8:30 p.m.; $15, available in advance at www.bendticket.com; Silver Moon Brewing & Taproom, 24 N.W. Greenwood Ave., Bend; www.silvermoonbrewing.com or 541-317-0700.
Now this is the right way to start a Monday. Here’s a new song from Fleet Foxes called “Helplessness Blues,” from the band’s sophomore album of the same name, due out May 3 on Subpop Records. (They also announced a show at Portland’s Crystal Ballroom on May 1.)
Fleet Foxes’ 2008 debut is one of my favorite records of the past few years, and I’ve been waiting to hear their next step ever since. This is a very promising start.
This is one of my favorite stretches of music of the past several years. Just beautiful.
Posting this is really just my roundabout way of reminding you that The Decemberists‘ new album “The King is Dead” comes out today, and it is excellent, especially if you love the “5 Songs” / “Castaways and Cutouts”-era of the band (or Tarkio) more than their most recent record, “The Hazards of Love.”
Stream all of “The King is Dead” here or here or here.
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