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One Track Mind: The Presets – “If I Know You”

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MP3: The Presets – If I Know You

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MP3: The Presets – If I Know You (Heartbreak Remix) (thanks Modular!)

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MP3: The Golden Filter – Solid Gold

I’ve already paid lip service to “If I Know You,” one of the Presets’ most triumphant, and definitely the most sublime, tracks off 2008′s Apocalypso.  Julian Hamilton’s lingering, sombre vocals gliding atop the distant, steadily pulsating backbeat and back-mixed synth chord progression gives the entire track a naked, vulnerable feel that stands hairs on end, like a brisk pre-dawn breeze drifting over your skin.  Subtle reverb lilts off the vocals, casting  a further haze over the track.  Three-fourths of the way through the track, the bottom drops out to give way to gorgeously appointed, understated vocal harmony that is crushing, reaching the apex of their weight and vulnerability.  The fact that they scored a tastefully edited, equally sublime music video showcasing a mixture of modern, ballet and various other forms of dance is just icing on the cake (video after the jump).  Not surprising, considering we found in our interview that Hamilton’s brother is involved in dance.

But even more great news just hit the wire: the Presets are releasing both a single for “If I Know You” (dropping early April and packed with remixes of the titular track, including a particularly fantastic instrumental by Tom Middleton) and a new collector’s edition of Apocalypso (dropping May 5th) that includes a second disc, also full of remixes.

The Presets are hitting the 9:30 Club in DC tomorrow, Wed Apr 1, with the Golden Filter.  The consensus from their tour opening for Oceania-mates Cut Copy seems to be that their live show regularly trumped the headliner’s, on all levels.  I can testify to it being a gloriously sordid and sweaty affair that really can’t be beat for good times and good tunes.

Vid, tracklist for collector’s edition and complete tour dates after the jump.

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Album Review: Dan Deacon – Bromst (Carpark)

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MP3: Dan Deacon – Snookered

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MP3: Dan Deacon – Slow with Horns / Run for your life

I’ve always appreciated Dan Deacon’s music in the same way I have symphonic music. Both have their places in my personal musical collection, and I can understand what’s good about them, but they’re not usually what I’d put in a mix and force my friends to listen to. Deacon was fun to enjoy live now and then, but there wasn’t anything particularly resounding about his recorded material that made me want to listen again at home.

His latest release, Bromst, has significantly changed my relationship with his music.

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Live Review: Cozy Mansion Evening With the Boys of Monument Piano Trio (2009.3.23)

Trio-in-residence at ADM

A recent (and ongoing) celebration of the piano at Strathmore’s Music in the Mansion put the boys of Baltimore’s own Monument Trio on lavish display. The rich wood of the Shapiro music room cradled the tones admirably, allowing the higher notes to sparkle.

I’ve heard these boys play all the pieces on the evening’s ambitious program at various An Die Musik performances since 2005, where they are the trio-in-residence. They know how to charm even as they induct audiences into composers unknown – like Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939) – first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

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Sound Off!: Ben Sollee

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MP3: Ben Sollee – A Few Honest Words

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MP3: Ben Sollee – Bend

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MP3: Ben Sollee – A Change Is Gonna Come

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MP3: Ben Sollee – Dear Kanye

You may or may not recall one of last year’s most remarkable releases, the self-titled LP from Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet.  I can’t emphasize enough how truly innovative that album is.

But it turns out 1/4 of the Sparrows, Louisville KY-hailing cellist Ben Sollee, happens to have some rather remarkable solo work as well.  Much like his elder contemporaries in the Sparrow Quartet (notably the legendary Béla Fleck who we interviewed here), Sollee takes his instrument of choice and stretches its sound to the limits, adeptly bowing, plucking, slapping, bending tones to his will.  Impeccably nuanced playing that steadily morphs from technical origins in classical conservatories to traditional styles rooted in deep rural, urban and mainstream America.

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Album Review: These Are Powers – All Aboard Future (Dead Oceans)

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MP3: These Are Powers – Adam’s Turtle

A trip to These Are Powers’ Last.fm page will tell you that they’re commonly referred to as noise rock, experimental, art rock, and their own made up genre, ghost punk (among other already poorly-defined terms). I’m not sure about you, but a couple of those don’t exactly measure up to the uncomfortable force these three Brooklyn-Chicago interminglers gravitate around. In reading some of the other press about this alienated trio, I have yet to find anything that accurately describes precisely what they do.

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Preview: Titus Andronicus, Here We Go Magic @ the Ottobar

titus-andronicus

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MP3: Titus Andronicus – Titus Andronicus

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MP3: Here We Go Magic – Tunnelvision

Do yourselves a favor and check out this show.  Tonight, the Ottobar plays host to two noteworthy bands.

Here We Go Magic deliver a mesmerizing brand of folk, their catalog full of growers ready-made for stargazing, drowning in melodies possessed of a mystical, shimmering quality and mastermind Luke Temple’s by turns lofty and earthy-warm vocals.

But Titus Andronicus is likely to be the highlight for the night.  Their music rips along like a happy dervish, an infectious offspring full of shoegaze, garage, punk and pop that can easily feel flat or contrived when listening to a recording.  Those reservations should be effectively lifted, if the buzz around their live show is to be believed.

Doors at 8PM, show at 9PM, $10 cover.

Album Review: The Thermals – Now We Can See (Kill Rock Stars)

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MP3: The Thermals – Misfit (Wipers cover) from Datrotter Session

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MP3: The Thermals – Back to the Sea from 2006′s The Body, The Blood, The Machine

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MP3: The Thermals – Now We Can See from 2009′s Now We Can See

The Thermals (Wiki) are probably one of my favorite projects to come out of the Portland scene in the past decade, and definitively made a case for pop-punk that matters.

In just their first 2 years, they released as many self-recorded albums (More Parts Per Million & Fuckin’ A), sprint-length and packed with the lowest-fidelity punk you could dream of.  Guitars shredding through your speakers like razors, rusty shards of metal being shaken up in a tin can.  The result was exhilirating, almost exhausting in purity.  A complete embrace of the founding elements of punk music: simple, short songs, high volume and distortion, and a DIY ethos.

Then along comes 2006′s absolutely remarkable The Body, The Blood, The Machine, a relatively lush and glorious pop-punk album, their lo-fi sound seemed to be a bygone era, and the Thermals brought us a whole different kind of apocalypse than we expected.  Continuing the trend of sylistic pairs of albums with their latest, Now We Can See (a sequel to the events and ideas from TBTBTM), Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster have packed another record to the gills with tight and slick gems.

So what do the Thermals bring to the table that sets them apart from their obvious forebears, groups like the Ramones, that similarly played simple, ultra-hooky pop-infused punk?

Lyrics.

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Top U.S. Orchestras 2009: New Conducting Prodigy Makes Angelenos Swoon for Martha Argerich (2009.03.12)

L.A. Debut: Calling the Woodwinds

L.A. Debut: Calling the Woodwinds

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 from Berstein Century (w/ NY Philharmonic)

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MP3: I. Moderato

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MP3: II. Allegretto

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MP3: III. Largo

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MP3: IV. Allegro Non Troppo

Fresh from what was hailed as “back-to-back triumphs of a truly historic nature” in San Fran, pianist Martha Argerich didn’t miss a beat. In San Fran, her prelude was Gyorgi Ligeti’s ultra-haunting Requiem…in L.A.’s Disney Hall, that whizzing exercise in Belle Epoque decadence – Ravel’s La Valse - lubed us up for some Martha-Lovin’.

For that, thank Yannick Nézet-Séguin.  This 34-year-old conductor’s Los Angeles debut destines him for conquering.(Boston had him first. Cleveland’s getting him next, and I’m fixing to catch him when he debuts at the Met.) If he stays sharp, he’ll prove the Kurt Masur or Charles Dutoit of our era.

 

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Album Review: Wavves – Wavvves (Fat Possum)

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MP3: Wavves – So Bored

Noise music doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Maybe I’ve been reading too much existential philosophy, but I’ve come to the realization that noise isn’t something a person can understand. Upon full comprehension of the music, you humanize it; you make it your own. You make it something that it’s not.

Noise music is irrational; it’s not supposed to make sense. Once you can claim to know it, you’ve gone about understanding something other than what the sound waves dictate. In this way, noise is something that us logic-bound humans can’t ever truly “get.” It’s beyond me how the stuff gets made; perhaps an absurd mental fixation is what causes a musician to create, or maybe some dude just records whatever sounds “cool” in his basement and then releases it. I’ll probably never find out for sure. I’ve never liked things that I can’t wholly comprehend, and that’s why I’m baffled by the satisfaction I gain while listening to this latest trend: noise-pop.

Wavves are the most recent subject of this ever-fickle hipster favoritism complex. Read the rest…

Interview / Audio Premiere: Double Dagger (w/ Bruce Willen, Denny Bowen, Nolen Strals)

double-dagger-1Aural States, in association with Thrill Jockey, are proud to host the premiere of “The Lie/The Truth” from Double Dagger’s upcoming full-length, MORE.

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MP3: Double Dagger – The Lie/The Truth

Disclaimer: Double Dagger is one of my favorite bands.  And on top of that, they’re exceedingly friendly guys.  So with great relish I met up with them pre-practice this past Saturday afternoon at the Copycat and we proceeded to discuss past, present, future and everything MORE, their first release with their new label Thrill Jockey, which drops on May 5.

Also, the boys have some shows lined up this week:

march-18-double-daggerWEDNESDAY, MARCH 18 (TONIGHT)
Towson, MD / Celebrated Summer Records
w/ Masshysteri (from Sweden, ex-The Vicious), Deep Sleep
All ages! 8:00 PM. (limited capacity)

THURSDAY, MARCH 19
Brooklyn, NY / Market Hotel
w/ Future Islands, Teeth Mountain, Liturgy
www.myspace.com/markethotelnyc

FRIDAY, MARCH 20
Philadelphia, PA / Danger Danger Gallery
w/ Future Islands, Reading Rainbow, Hot Guts

SATURDAY, MARCH 21
Baltimore, MD / Zodiac
w/ Future Islands, Child Bite
21+ only. 9:30 PM. $3 cheap!

Aural States: Let’s start with a brief history.  The abbreviated version of how Double Dagger started.

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