Dan Deacon - Call Me Maybe Acapella 147 Times Exponentially Layered

Too good not to post here.

Tyrannosaurusex - Cities of the Red Night

One of the best things about my years of playing in a no holds barred psychedelic noise-rock band in Colorado was meeting the dudes from a band called Lil' Slugger who were forged of similar ilk.  That band was and still is one of my favorites to have come out of that scene (me thinks a Lil' Slugger post will be in order in the future).  After the band went separate ways a few years ago (though an unfinished masterpiece album is apparently still in the works) the members have delved in to other projects.  Ben has an Austin based electro R&B outfit called Young Pharoahs while Joey has this here solo endeavor of Tyrannosaurusex.  This was one of the first releases I heard from Joey post-Slugger and was quite thrilled about the new direction.  Knowing him primarily as a well versed angular guitar player with incredibly tasteful licks that are hard to comprehend, this release showcases his movement towards experimenting with electronic sounds.  For much of this album, I feel like I'm stuck inside a game of pong where the boundaries and ball velocity are constantly shifting (Sunlight on Water).  There are washes of reversed keyboards and minimal drumbeats that ebb and flow in tempo but always in a way that seems natural.  There are also moments of just great sounding warped-as-fuck synths that create a nice atmosphere between the nonlinear drumbeat explorations (Strange Words in His Throat and A Hand That Shoots Blue Sparks).  But my favorite track is probably White Ship Gleaming On An Empty Sky.  Here, we have Joey's familiar angular guitar stylings superimposed with  melodic keyboard blips and feedback of some kind while the panning goes wild.  Just gorgeous, to the right set of ears I suppose.  The other highlight on here is the title track which sounds like it could have possibly been a Kid A outtake for being too weird.  Though the song is a slightly more straight forward listen than the rest of the album, the beat here is complex as fuck.  Throw in some warped/pitch shifted vocals and syncopated staccato keyboard loops, you have one hell of an album closer.  Prairie Fire Tapes put this album out and still has copies (though I don't see them on the webstore so you might have to email them direct).  Paint the city night red.

Also, here's a brand new Tyrannosaurusex track:

O Fool - Walk Off A Cliff

I know very little about this band but I believe they hail from St. Louis.  Released on Chicago's Manic Static, this release has been one of my favorites from the label.  I remember when I first heard this I think I described as if Ian Curtis had Tom Waits' band backing him. The music has a rare sort of baroque-ish/parlour music feel and is arranged exquisitely.  It's heavy on the piano and viola while the singer croons with a deep and dramatic vibrato with occasional female vocals backing him up.  Really nice sounding tape.  The Cliff.

Dust Bunnies - We Are Not Alone

Paul Nixon rules.  Hard.  I met Paul through mutual friends and subsequent singing in The Blue Ribbon Glee Club for a couple years.  We lived a couple blocks from each other in Pilsen some years ago and hung out frequently one summer when I recorded an album out of my apartment for Paul's band/moniker, Dust Bunnies.  Sadly this is not that album, BUT it's still an amazing effort from Paul.  Recorded and multitracked almost solely on the Zoom H4N, this album sounds far from what one might imagine to be recorded on such a device (for those familiar with the H4N).  They don't sound bad at all but the common use for the recorder is to capture live performances.  Paul surprised the hell out of me when he played this album and tells me it was multi-tracked on the humble device.  Some real mastery of one's tools went in to the process here.

As for the music, I recall Paul posting a Facebook event for a show a while back and called the Dust Bunnies "The Leaders of the Turn It Down Revolution." Or something to that effect, I think.  I always liked that idea for this band.  Thoughtful (and deeply universal) lyrics (complete with Crystal's elegant harmonies) and good feeling chord progressions sprinkled with careful keyboard/glockenspiel melodies sometimes break way for hypnotic grooves laced with a type of guitar shredding that only Paul Nixon can unleash.  Shredding gets old real quick, but Paul's take on it is dope.  I hesitate to reference other musicians here, but this album in particular seems to take notes from the school of Phil Elvrum, Stephen Merritt, and Tim Kinsella.  Decent company, I'd think.  Take a flight on Paul's Flugzeug.

Willow 2007 Field Recordings

I finally got around to organizing/editing my digitized cassette recordings of the '07 Willow Folk Festival.  If you are unfamiliar, see my previous posts here and here. That year's tapes seemed to be rolling during the more candid and lesser heard moments of Willow, though there are plenty of stage performances on this collection.  This was also the year of the infamous windstorm that took tents in to the creek and sent folks in to the church for a brief spell.  All was calm later that night and I recall staying up till dawn with the tape recorder in tow.  A lot of the fireside tunes are a bit more subdued on this one, likely due to the windstorm putting a damper on things.  I decided not to divide this collection in to stage and fireside recordings.  Re-live the magic: Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Molyneux - Called to Leave

The fantastic Lee Noble posted a link to this album online today.  Been on repeat ever since.  Really raw and honest folk/country stuff going on here.  I realize there is a ton of that out there these day but this stands out to me for some reason.  Maybe it will for you, too.  I don't know how to buy or download the album but you can stream it for free here.

Paul Yarn Bunkbeds - soft slacks=sweatpants

I've been wanting to post this tape for ages now and finally pulled out the digitized files from the vaults of my hard drive.  This warped lo-fi "folk" duo comes from two of the most interesting and inspiring people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.  Bryan and Lindsey made some of the most honest and unpretentious music I've ever witnessed.  The couple have an amazing(ly) cute dynamic that exists in real life as much as it does in their music that makes one long for the type of relationship that reaches a level of telepathic understanding that is rarely achieved these days. 

I lived above Bryan in an apartment building in Logan Square back in 2004  or 2005.  We had an immediate common ground after he stopped over and saw a Bicycle Day CD and a slew of other Scratch and Sniff Records swag strewn about as I had just received a lovely care package from Mark Nichols (see the Meanders Afoot post for Mark's music).  Turned out that Bryan and Mark were childhood friends and he was quite familiar with the Dekalb music scene that I was just discovering and falling head over heels for.  Bryan introduced the 21 year old me to a lot of neat things during the period I lived above him.  He was working at Intuit Gallery and recommended I see a show he booked there of the incredible jazz drummer Han Bennick.  Unforgettable performance.  He was also the first person to expose me to the Henry Darger phenomenon that was just being uncovered at the time he was working there.

I met Bryan's girlfriend Lindsey some time later and I was always a bit in awe of the level of intuitive communique they subscribed to as well as their shared interest in the weird (in a good way, of course.)  They just seemed like the penultimate example of a wholesome couple and their music is surely representative of that connection.  Paul Yarn Bunkbeds played a few living room shows over the next year or two (as well as the very first show at the infamous Treetop loft) before moving to Indiana and I always cherished the intimate gatherings in which they performed.  The song "3s come and go" made me so happy and I always requested it when they played.  Anyhow, enough of the personal ranting here.  This is the call.

NOGGINCRUSH - Wolf Gets Paid

Sometime over the fall I took a trip to the Noggincrush Windfarm and was invited to participate in a NC recording session.  This is the result.  If you're reading this, then you probably already know the deal.  If not, see the previous NOGGINCRUSH post.  The title comes from stories I was relaying about Little Howlin' Wolf.  Time Stops inquired: "When's Wolf gonna get paid?"

Walt Falbo - Digger's Demos Volume 2: The Lost Four Track Years

Round two from good 'ol Walt Falbo.  Walt expands his horizons on this release with the advent of keyboard usage and overdubs, presumably due to the discovery of the four track recorder for these sessions.  Here's the track list.  All songs by Walt Falbo except where otherwise indicated:














1. There Stands the Glass (Webb Pierce)
2. Everybody Let Up (The Apples In Stereo)
3. Quartermaster's Wintertime (Bill Fox)
4. One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong (Leonard Cohen)
5. Else (Built to Spill)
6. Gold Star For Robot Boy (Guided By Voices)
7. Camille (Bill Fay)
8. Watermelon Machine Gun (Leo Kottke) *note* Upon moving in with Walt earlier this month, he discovered in my collection the LP which this song was released.  When he was recording the Kottke song, it was all from memory and guessed at the name of the song.  The ACTUAL song he recorded here was The Fisherman, but we'll leave it as it is on the liner notes.
9. Red Shoes (Elvis Costello)
10. Ingrid Bergman (Guthrie/Bragg)
11. The Piano Has Been Drinking (Tom Waits)
12. There's a Place (The Beatles)
13. The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)

Download here.

***Just noticed I imported the GBV song as Gold Star for ROCKET Boy rather than ROBOT Boy.  Please make the appropriate corrections after you download.  Sorry all!***

NOGGINCRUSH - West Virginia

NOGGINCRUSH sounds pretty much like the name would imply.  These exclusively improvised workings of childhood friends Tim Stoops and Andy Herald come to you from the rural outpost of Anchor, Illinois.  The duo consists of Andy playing drums with one hand and keyboards with the other while Tim (Time Stops) navigates the realm of his subconscious to pull out some profound moments of lyrical genius.  Andy later overdubs some bass lines to glue it all together.  The result is a somewhat "krauty" juggernaut of a sound that feels like the wheels could fall off the whole thing at any given moment.  It can be a confusing listen to the untrained ear, but I think that is very telling of the cathartic mindset in which these gems are created. West Virginia is their "break-up album" if they ever had one, most obvious on the last song, Space Tether (personal favorite).  You can listen to more NOGGINCRUSH nuggets here: https://soundcloud.com/noggincrush

Get crushed.