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01. MP3: Indian Jewelry – Temporary Famine Ship from Free Gold! (2008)
02. MP3: Indian Jewelry – Swans from Free Gold! (2008)
03. MP3: Indian Jewelry – Lapis Lazuli from untitled 2010 release (World Premiere!)

Indian Jewelry are students of drone and psychedelia.  Formed by Erika Thrasher and Tex Kerschen in 2002, the logistics of this ever-evolving collective are baffling, seeming to expand and contract as frequently as the air we breathe.  With a rotating cast of members that is kinda like a revolving door, it’s a wonder they ever get anything done.  They have remarkably churned out two full-lengths (2006′s Invasive Exotics and 2008′s Free Gold!) along with refining a noted live spectacle.  Happily, they have a third album on the way and we are premiering the track “Lapis Lazuli” above.

The result is one of the catchier distillations of mind-warping visions you are likely to see. Uniquely, they manage to wrangle a balance of psych and drone that is rarely seen; more often than not, you encounter one predominating and the other playing the role of hook or kitsch.  IJ are relentlessly toeing lines: they teeter on the precipice of shoegaze with the clashing of distorted guitars, deploy drones that take them to the pearly gates of noise, paint often enough in textures to recall post-rock.  All done while keeping aligned with the fundamental vision of psych: providing a musical framework for melding and moulding of consciousness.

“Temporary Famine Ship” displays these qualities perfectly, a simple psych guitar riff twirls amidst a cacophonic din of reverberating vocals and droning synths that might be considered neon if not so sinister, driven by a stomping set of tribalist drum beats; a paradox that is catchy and unsettling at the same time.  ”Swans” feels appropriately ascendant in its guitar melody, leading to a gradual and righteous coalescence of the various droning components that feels not unlike basking in the sun after a sojourn through the dark woods.  Slow-burning grower “Pentecostal” has a pipe-organ-like drone that recalls a sermon or ritual of titular origin, primitive power, and low-range vocals that could easily be mistaken for tongues.  The excellently titled “Lapis Lazuli” shimmers with textures of guitars and synths in perhaps their most polished track to date; the track also brings them even closer to the sounds of post-rock, the proceedings having an ominous cloud above them.

With a sonic palette such as this, they’re well paired to open for Celebration along with Videohippos (premiering as a quartet featuring Jared Paolini and Adventure aka Benny Boeldt) at the LOF/T this Thursday Oct 15th, as part of the “Earth” installment of Celebration’s Baltimore Elemental series.

Check out the music video for “Lapis Lazuli” after the jump.

Read the rest…

So we’ve got a show coming up with So Percussion on Oct 28th. Here’s a sneak peek. The So guys were down teaching at Peabody in late September and took some time to shoot a performance of Steve Reich’s Drumming Part 1 in a Percussion studio with us and Polygon Tree, curator behind the web-show An Hour of Kindness.  Enjoy and be amazed.

I also took some photos of the shoot:

Last weekend, a wonderful conjunction took place among the Baltimore-Washington musical spheres: Bartók’s music overtook its two great concert halls on the very same night.

To compare Baltimore’s own playing Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and the NSO’s take on Bartók’s The Wooden Prince is like pitting a Shakespeare tragedy against one of his comedies, and venturing that one is far better.

While it may not be fair to pit a concerto against a ballet score, we’ll give the BSO, under Maestro Marin Alsop’s baton, the upper hand. Both orchestras did fantastic things we’ve never quite heard before. Bartók brings out the best of an orchestra because he’s not something you can take for granted. You can take Beethoven’s “Pastoral” for granted. You might even take Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto for granted, but James Ehnes’ ample sprezzatura helped the BSO make a great case for Tchaikovsky, perhaps better than the composer himself when he called it “One violin concerto too many” – despite its being the only one that he composed.

Here’s what tips the scales in favor of B-more…

Read the rest…

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01. MP3: Dark Party – Status from Light Years (2009)
02. MP3: Mux Mool – Nausican from Just Saying Is All (2008)

I’ll be up in Boston this weekend to catch Built to Spill’s run at the Middle East.

But I’m regretting it as there are some stellar shows happening.  Wye Oak is opening for Blitzen Trapper at a mammoth Saturday Ottobar event.  Following the show, everyone’s favorite DJ Jason Willett will be hosting the after-party at the Golden West.

Tonight though, all eyes should be on the Hexagon who hosts a phenomenal Moodgadget-anchored orgy of dance music, courtesy of local label Environmental Aesthetics.

Out of towners Dark Party and Mux Mool bring electronic dance bliss (lush with hip-hop beats and influence) to the Hexagon, while opener Cex blasts you with his particularly visceral brand of electronic and beats-master Mickey Free lays down some rhymes.   This is easily a can’t miss show.

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MP3: Sick Sick Birds – Your Machine from Heavy Manners 12″ (2009)

On a particularly idyllic and cool fall evening this week, I sat on the steps of Charm City Art Space with founding member Mike Riley (the Spark, Pulling Teeth, Toxic Pop & Firestarter Records) to reminisce and reflect on the past, present and future of the iconic, long-running DIY venue.

They celebrate a mind-boggling 1000 shows this Friday with a secret, 5-band line-up.  It should not be missed.

Doors at 7PM. All ages and donations appreciated, as always.

Aural States: To start, can you flesh out the circumstances leading up to the genesis of CCAS?  What factors contributed to you and the other founders’ desire to start up the space?

Mike Riley: Well since I moved to Baltimore in ’94, I went to UMBC.  I grew up in central New Jersey and there were shows left and right, bands I wanted to go see all the time.  When I came down here I didn’t have a car.  This was obviously not pre-internet, but pre the explosion of the internet.  My AOL search for Baltimore hardcore was this band called Compression, who are far from a hardcore band.

There were hardcore bands in Baltimore, just bands weren’t on the internet yet.  So I was lost as to where the shows were happening in the area, I couldn’t find any info on the Loft, or anything in the area.  So I decided I’d bring the bands in myself.  I started doing shows at UMBC in ’97.  Did them there for a while.  Then a friend told me about a space near University of Maryland, which was at the time the Supreme Imperial.  I got involved with them, they let us rent out the space.  Eventually when they got evicted we took it over.  That became the Chop Shop.  At that time, I met my friend Mike Wolf who had just moved to the area from Pittsburgh.  Well, not just, he had been here a little while.  He was involved in a space in Sowebo called Black Aggies, which was also the Laff n Spit.  So we just became friends, kept in touch over the years.

Fast forward to 2002, and neither of us have regular show spaces to work with.  DIY spaces.  I was doing a lot of shows at the old Ottobar and the Sidebar.  But we just wanted a non-bar venue where music was the focus.  Mike and I met up at a show at the Bloodshed, a warehouse space on Preston.  They had just moved in there, it was a cool, great space but I guess since people were living there, they didn’t want to do more than one show a month.  Mike and I were talking that night and we decided we really needed to get a space together, that’s smaller and can help out smaller touring bands.  So Mike found this place for rent in the City Paper Classifieds.  We came and checked it out, and downstairs it was all walled off into little, separate rooms.  Upstairs was a wig shop that had just closed down.

We thought, this’ll work.  It was cheap.  We tore down all the walls and that was our basement space.  To come up with first month’s rent we got in touch with everyone in the Baltimore and DC area that we knew who might be interested in a space like this: “We’re trying to raise money for security deposit, rent.  Help us out.”

We got over $1000 in donations, anywhere from $20 to $150.  And it’s never had to come out of pocket since. Read the rest…

If you’ve seen Built to Spill live in the last few years, you probably got a preview of a few of the tracks on There is No Enemy. “Good Ol’ Boredom,” “Life’s A Dream,” and “Done” are the kind of drawn out songs that originally had me suspecting the new album would follow in the vein of You In Reverse.  However, while those are some jammier tracks that probably needed road-testing, the band has largely reined in the more free-form, improvisation-based structures that carried the day on their 2006 release.  Instead, they have returned to the mastery of the sometimes overlooked process of recording and editing.  That same process set them apart from the alternative slacker icons who ruled the scene when they started (and have since become relics of the past).

Read the rest…

Download the entire album: MP3 or FLAC

Stream and download individual tracks:

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1. Baltimore Highlands – Drew Swinburne
2. Mike Stone – Gavin Riley
3. Jackson Whites – Mrs. Paintbrush
4. The World – PT Burnem
5. Escape Tune – Lesser Gonzalez
6. Baltimore Highlands – Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow
7. The Woods – King Rhythm
8. Code Of Love – San Serac
9. Twelve Strings – Jones
10. Standing Up Asleep – Authentic
11. Woods Reprise – Drew Swinburne
12. Travel Rap – C.Y.O. (http://www.lowdworld.blogspot.com/)
13. Cold And Shaken – AK of AK Slaughter

Don’t miss the official album release party at the Windup Space on Fri Oct 16th featuring Lizz King, AK Slaughter, and Lesser Gonzalez!

Aural States: What motivated you to do a full remix of the Baltimore Highlands album?  You were releasing remixes sporadically for download on the Wham City label site.  What made you want to undertake this project too?

Read the rest…

All Photos: Greg Szeto

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MP3: Lonnie Walker – Compass Comforts

A sweaty grower of a Thursday night show, from the blissful haze of expertly layered guitar loops to the serenity of nature, followed by big-riff country-fried rock and capped off with high-energy, soul-filled dance songs.

Jared Paolini’s measured performance matched his meticulous and painstaking live layering of guitars to produce vast and glorious escapist textures. Small Sur’s set was pitch perfect, some new cuts being played, while Andy Abelow often stole the show with his ever-improving, excellent sax work (nary a squawk or hesitant entrance in earshot, and rich, full tones abound). This is no small feat considering Bob Keal’s soaring vocal work and subtle, lyrical guitar, and Austin Stahl’s deliberate and expressive drumming. Future Islands provided the soulful dance party we have all come to expect, Sam Herring’s emphatic, raw vocals and uniquely theatrical delivery proving ever effective. Will Cashion’s bass work also proved spot on, providing a much needed, kinetic bass line you could feel, compensating for the somewhat hollow drum machine beats in the background.

But for me, the big find of the night was how much I absolutely fell in love with Lonnie Walker’s foot-stomping, knee-slapping, crunchy and rousing Americana rock. Building each song from rambling country riffs and vocals to huge guitar shredding payoffs, frantic vocals, and ramped-up, urgent tempi. So versatile was their approach that they even dropped one of their songs into something like a syncopated ska beat. Expect to hear more from them in these pages in the very near future.

All photos: Greg Szeto

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01. MP3: HEALTH – Die Slow (Tobacco Remix)
02. MP3: HEALTH – We Are Water

An odd night to say the least.  Two solo openers that relied heavily on iPod-beats to move bodies versus two bands using traditional instruments with ear-shattering consequences.  These evolutions of the spastic electronified rock that characterized many Wham City acts has morphed into a more “adult” realm of music with booty-shaking club influence weighing heavy on the proceedings.  The contrast is marked: the wide-eyed innocence and playfulness of Dan Deacon’s tunes meets the bump-and-grind, down and dirty.

Shams peddles his tonic well, selling his heavily distorted vocals through twin mics and iPod-backing tracks with a somewhat ritualistic spectacle of a live show, complete with amulet, and various charms.  Overtones of amateur voodoo shaman-ism, more for fear factor than any sort of true belief, echo in his vacant, ironic and subtle-as-a-freight-train lyrics: “I want to cut your face / while I’m fucking you.”  Yet something was strangely compelling about the sensationalized violence and misogyny that made it all work.  Maybe it is just the charm of depravity with a wink and a smile.

I found Pictureplane’s music was a harder sell (but clearly I was in the minority amidst the sweaty and dancing crowd).  Much heavier club and dub sounds filled this set, heavy beats that were easy to move to.  The fact that the house lights were cut, leaving on flashes and LED strips to light the way, didn’t hurt with the immersion either.  I think living in Baltimore has us spoiled though, as I kept thinking I was listening to a sub-par Bmore Club DJ you would find on any given weeknight.  While he no doubt dropped some smoking-hot cuts, these moments of dance-floor bliss were too few amidst a sea of shallow replicas.

HEALTH provided no small racket, their primal rhythms and screeching vocals hitting hard and fast.  But they seemed a pale shadow of themselves from their Ottobar performance a little over a year ago, and their luster was dulled.  I think they would be well served by some time off the road, to recharge their electricity.  The exaggerated swings of their guitars and flailing spasms seemed little more than half-hearted artifice.  Still, underneath such a din HEALTH didn’t seem so out of place with the previous two openers, most of their songs possessing strong tribal dance circle rhythms that can sway bodies.

Double Dagger however, was the odd man out.  Funnily enough, they possessed far and away the best bass lines of the night, yet they are the furthest removed from dance fare.  But with Nolen as front-man, I don’t think there will ever be a lackluster DD show.  Bruce’s frenzied bass and Denny’s frantic drumming only add fuel to the fire.  As Bruce’s bass cut out mid-song, Nolen finished the verse before apologizing and positing the hypothetical: “maybe we should’ve played with iPods like everyone else.”  Considering what came before,  I think it was clear that the answer to this is a resounding “no.”  I walked away from the night a little disoriented by the shifting styles, and not quite sure what to make of the line-up.  I was only sure that I had had my fill of iPod-backed acts, but could listen and watch Double Dagger another ten times before drifting to sleep.

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic is a brother project to the better known Mission of Burma.  Regardless of reputation, they were visionary musicians, producing a sound that might be argued as still ahead of its time.  They produce something akin to classical lounge music (but infinitely more interesting than that moniker connotates).  One might think because of their instrumental and prog-ish nature, Birdsongs’ compositions would be more akin to free-jazz, improv rantings and ravings.  But the reality is much closer to something uniquely cinematic, compelling linear narratives written with music.  Their music benefits from the structure of a somewhat classical approach to composition, punk’s energy, post-punk’s experimentalism, and tonal explorations fueled by jazz and classical.

Faultline is one of the watershed moments in Birdsongs history, as it marks the addition of reeds by new (and soon-to-be permanent) member Ken Field, as well as marking the first departure of Roger Miller.  On this, the jazz influence really takes root and grows on later releases.  I had the fortune to see Birdsongs when they played the Talking Head at the tail end of July this year and took some photos (lineup:  Bierylo, Miller, Lindgren, Scott).  Their sound, if a bit dated, still feels wildly inventive and utterly unique.  In a musical landscape that sees more and more brazenly experimental formulations every day, that is something of a testament to Birdsongs’ eclecticism and vision.

Here we present Side One of the record in its entirety.  Hopefully your interest in piqued and you go out and grab this great album.

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MP3: Birdsongs of the Mesozoic - Faultline Side One

Artist: Birdsongs of the Mesozoic

Album Title: Faultline

Label: Cuneiform Records

Release Date: 1989

Track listing:

Side 1

1. The True Wheelbase
2. They Walk Among Us
3. Coco Boudakian
4. I Don’t Need No Crystal Ball
5. Chariots of Fire