A cover of Nine Inch Nails' Hurt, performed at the Sound 08 Festival at The Sage in Gateshead. 

Hurt (Live with the String Quartet @ The Sage 08

Live from the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall, London. The BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus in an epic collaboration masterminded by composer/pianist Jon Hopkins and conductor Jules Buckley.

BBC Proms 2023 - Jon Hopkins with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Jules Buckley

We Said Never Again

Ariel Pink sets a serene but complicated scene for the next chapter in his curious career with “Another Weekend,” the first solo material heard since the prog-pop opus pom pom. Contrary to the lyrics of “Another Weekend” (and fortunately for both fanatics and the newly initiated), Pink is neither too shy or humble to have brought his singular style of pop music beyond the bedroom for the befuddled masses over the past two decades, but returned to the formative, familiar setting to craft what will surely live as another shimmering moment in an unrivaled canon.  Encapsulating the lingering euphoria of a regrettable weekend over the edge, “Another Weekend” speaks in morose volumes while whispering sweetly, the dichotomy of Pink’s pathos once again on display. Backed with “Ode To The Goat (Thank You)”, “Another Weekend” will be shared as a 7” single and through conventional music serving mechanisms on Wednesday, June 7.

Mexican Summer: smarturl.it/AnotherWeekendxOutp
Bandcamp: smarturl.it/AnotherWeekendxBC
iTunes: smarturl.it/AnotherWeekendiTunes
Amazon: smarturl.it/AnotherWeekendAmazon
Apple Music: smarturl.it/AnotherWeekendAppleM
Spotify: smarturl.it/AnotherWeekendxSptfy

Ariel Pink - Another Weekend

How Did I Find Myself Here?

How Did I Find Myself Here

e.m.m.a. preps her 'LA Mermaid' EP for Astral Plane with this new jewel. Lush electronics set against that club-aware rhythmic chassis. She tells us: "i think this sounds like the stars twinkling above the sea...."

LA Mermaid

Premiere: e.m.m.a. - 'Bijoux de Diamants'

From the self-titled debut by Lean Year.  Available October 20, 2017 on Western Vinyl

Pre-Order the album:
Bandcamp https://leanyear.bandcamp.com/album/lean-year
iTunes http://hyperurl.co/q612za
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv152

Lean Year is the debut, self-titled record by Richmond, Virginia based singer Emilie Rex and filmmaker/musician Rick Alverson. What for Rex was a departure from the structured life of academia toward the uncertain contours of a creative field, for Alverson was a return to form. Having released 5 albums with his previous band Spokane, Alverson took a 10-year hiatus from music to write and direct feature films. These departures and approaches bring a transience and listlessness to the album, like a walk interrupted by both curiosity and caution. 

Equally informed by the minimalist folk music of Elizabeth Cotton, Karen Dalton, and Fred Neil; the tenuous, ambient, and orchestral works of Harold Budd, Brian Eno, and John Cale; the quietly pointed but tender songs of Nina Simone and Bessie Smith; and the baroque pop subversions of Love and The Left Banke—the inspirations for Lean Year are as varied as Rex and Alverson’s biographies. Their childhoods—framed respectively by New-Age ideology and antiquated Catholic Catechism; anarchist Montessori and cold, cloistered ice arenas; the chaotic, upheaval of divorce and the strange, obligatory qualities of life-long marriage—provide footing on uneven ground for the record’s dream-like, oblique observations. In the wake of these dynamic histories, the two leaned on music as a kind of secular spirituality. 

Rex and Alverson co-wrote the album over the course of a year at their home in Richmond, VA and recorded it in three sessions at the home studio of Chicago musician/engineer Erik Hall (In Tall Buildings, NOMO), who also performs on the record. Alverson and Hall co-produced the album’s ten tracks, drawing on both Hall's and Elliot Bergman’s (NOMO) arsenal of instruments. For Hall and Rex, this project was a reunion of sorts, the two having met as undergraduates in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan over a decade before. Hall’s extensive vocabulary—ranging from jazz and pop to rock and afrobeat—informs his contributions to the record.

Alverson’s films [Entertainment (2015) and the cult-drama The Comedy (2012)] have premiered at Sundance, Locarno, Rotterdam and the Film Society of Lincoln Center among others venues and festivals worldwide. Rex left academia and her position as Indiana University's Assistant Director of Sustainability in 2014 to focus on music and pursue resilience writing and analysis as a consultant. This is her first record.

Hurt (Live with the String Quartet @ The Sage 08

David Limmer