Enjoy this vinyl-rip off AFX’s Smojphace EP, a remix of the Bug & Daddy Freddy’s “Run the place red.”

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MP3: The Bug & Daddy Freddy – Run the place red (AFX mix)

At a recent party, when the DJ dropped a bass-heavy Baltimore Club track, a man turned to me and proclaimed, “I want my epitaph to read: Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom!”

Well said.

Bass is powerful, you feel it hit in the sternum, feel that air being pushed. Bass, the word itself, is such a great example of onomatopoeia; it reads like it sounds. I think of a recent King Lear production were Edmund delivers his bastard monologue accompanied by a bass player–apt given the heavy alliteration on the “B” sound and the pun on base/bass. “Why brand they us/ With bass!” would read the play if it had been written by another, more current, Londoner, Kevin Martin aka The Bug. His new album features a multitude of ragga-tinged guest vocalists, and of course centers around bowl shaking bass.
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Arbouretum & Pontiak play the Talking Head this Friday, Sept 5 with Psychic Paramount and Sri Aurobindo. Not to be missed.

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MP3: Pontiak – Dome under the sky

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MP3: Arbouretum – Buffalo Ballet

John Cale is the highly prolific co-founder of a little band called the Velvet Underground. There is no shortage of love for his work, but this masterful EP collaboration of Arbouretum and Pontiak may be the best expression of it.

Arbouretum and Pontiak are both highly respected and talented groups of rockers steeped in folk, psych and garage rock traditions. Arbouretum works in a bit more of a meta, grander scale working more in the realms of folk and an almost supernatural force while Pontiak explores a more micro level, bringing the visceral crunchier psych jams and freak-outs.

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As we delve further into the HD age, where the unplucked hairs on a famed celebrity’s face are readily visible on TV screens and radio and TV stations will be going all HD in the next year or so, there seems to be a sort of counter-revolution going on.

Flying in the face of all this fidelity and high-tech precision reproduction of everything we experience, there seems to be a corresponding backlash, yearning for sounds more pure to the artist’s intent and era. In this vein, I recently acquired this Mono edition LP of one of rock’s seminal albums, and a personal favorite, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. Read the rest…

Don’t miss Small Sur’s CD release show Aug. 9 @ 2640 Space, and their show at the Talking Head Aug. 30 with Duchess and the Duke.

With this first release on Tender Loving Empire, Bob Keal, ringleader for the motley crew of wilderness folksters Small Sur including one familiar face Andy Abelow, banks on a hypothesis…one he clearly bases on years of tradition and strength in circles of bluegrass, country and the many sounds of folk in rural Americana. He is betting that there is a well of universal memories, vivid images ingrained in our social subconscious, just waiting to be unleashed…triggered by a steady, knowing hand.

Here’s the good news: he is completely right. Read the rest…

Easily the most striking thing about the new Abe Vigoda album is its production, which is downright poppy relative to tour-mates No Age. Spindly guitars with bizarre effects take up odd angles against each other and tumble from the speakers like Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s used to do when he played in a rock band. Vocals are occasionally intelligible in the mix, performed with a discernible charisma, sometimes chanted, with a dedication to pitch and harmony that recall Eric Gaffney. They’ve also clearly taken a textural shade from another Pride of Baltimore, Animal Collective, minus their obvious influence of that fucking catbird that sits outside my Parkton window every morning and insists upon squaking until I wake.

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Everyone welcome our newest contributor, Julia Conny!  Her first piece is a review on a disc much-beloved in the ancient halls of Aural States’ labyrinthine lair…

Catch their show this Friday July 11th @ the Metro Gallery with Sonadors, Sun Tornado and Sawhorse.

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MP3: Imperial China – “There is no translation”

Methods: is a tumbling combo of post and experimental flavors. DC trio Imperial China are full-strength with their note-bending and stocked case of effects pedals. Post-rock, punk and hardcore, electronica, prog and even, dare I say, grunge are all celebrated and sampled. Slicing through like a house of knives in an earthquake, Methods: practices astute musicianship, expansive ideas of melody and layering, and a sort of fluidity that buff up the whole package.

But when the bass lines bounce of the scratchy riffs on the beginning of “Sirens”, the instrumental tangents are, in an odd way, predictable. Vocalist Brian Porter starts up his sing-speak, hollering like blunt DC visionary, Ian MacKaye or Marc Paffi (Bear Vs. Shark), and it’s almost too easy. The erratic guitar excursions. The pinpoint bounce of the snare. The spacey romanticism and hope on “Space Anthem”. It flows so well, it may flow too well.

But maybe that’s the point.

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