Stop in Feb

Excelsior Recordings 2015

Excelsior Recordings

Afterpartees

Primer amor

Guy Blakeslee (The Entrance Band) delivers his first solo album in ten years. Produced by Chris Coady (Beach House, Yeah, Yeah Yeahs), Ophelia Slowly, takes a step back from the dense rock sound his LA-based neo-psychedelic trio is known for, delving instead into a sparse, spooky dreamscape where drum loops, synthesizers, and the occasional acoustic guitar frame his always haunting vocal delivery. Recorded in New York in the fall of 2013, the album focuses on Blakeslee’s recent descent; wrestling with demons and angels alike, he has come through it victoriously, expressing the hopeful message of a modern day spiritual. 
If this album conveys a type of conversion, Blakeslee doesn’t want you to forget his appreciation for tragedy; the title itself is a reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet heroine. Recording under his own name for the first time, Blakeslee seems to hint that the intention for this project is intimate and vulnerable, and as anyone who has caught his recent solo dates opening for Spiritualized or Cat Power will attest, he delivers on that promise. 
Blakeslee has always been a re-interpreter of early American Delta blues. On Ophelia Slowly, his love for the genre is felt not only in his upside down, left-handed electric guitar playing, but also in his soulful howl: needing no accompaniment at all, it’s as comfortable in an Echo Park nightclub as it would a 1920’s Mississippi street corner. “In a way, the words and the vocal performance are the focus of this record,” explains Blakeslee. “The music is there to create a mood for the voice to exist in. It’s the first time there’s not a lot of effects on my vocals, there’s a little reverb, but it doesn’t sound far away. In the past I was covering up my voice, turning it down and drowning it out.” 
Allowing his vocals to appear front and center, as opposed to his impressive guitar playing, seems to be a decision inspired, in part, by Chris Coady, who not only recorded Blakeslee’s last solo album, Wandering Stranger (Fat Possum), but was the first person to record him at all. The two grew-up together in Baltimore and seem to share an unspoken communication, having collaborated on music together since high school. “[Coady] came to see me play in New York last April and said, ‘I had chills the whole time you were playing.’ He was emotionally connected to the project in a way that I couldn’t find in anyone else,” explains Blakeslee. “It’s great to go back and work with an old friend. His work gets increasingly better every time,” says Coady. 
Ophelia Slowly was recorded almost entirely at Coady’s studio in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a neighborhood that informed these eight songs as much as anything else. During the first part of the production, Blakeslee was sleeping in the studio and at night he would walk around Tompkins Square Park and the surrounding neighborhood, listening to the day’s recordings and finishing up lyrics in his head. The opening number, “Haunted City,” written originally about Los Angeles, explores the idea of returning to one’s old stomping grounds, but no longer feeling as if you belong, which hits close to home for Blakeslee -- “I used to live in NY and I haven’t spent more then a couple days there in many years. So there’s ghosts of things that happened in the past in that area.”

In fact, Ophelia Slowly is bookended with songs that examine cities and the idea of home. The slightly more optimistic closer, “City in the Rain,” speaks to resolution and as Blakeslee explains, “getting back on the journey where it all began.” “I took the final mix of “City in the Rain” to the park in the morning,” says Blakeslee, who has an eye for serendipity and a love for the notion of transcendence. “It began raining just as the rain sound [that appears as an intro to the song] came through my headphones.”

Blakeslee’s 2003 version of Skip James’s “I’m So Glad” is currently heard in the soundtrack for Spike Jonze’s Academy Award nominated film ‘Her,’ appearing as the infectious song Scarlett Johansson’s O.S voice/character shares with Joaquin Phoenix, confessing she can’t stop listening to it. Hopefully Ophelia Slowly will produce a similar result.

Buy on iTunes

Guy Blakeslee -  "Smile On"

Daryll-Ann - Always Share

“Clear My Mind” by THE HIGH LEARYS will be released 7th November 2014.

www.facebook.com/thehighlearys
www.twitter.com/TheHighLearys

Upcoming Shows:
In November/December 2014, the band will embark on their next European Tour where they’ll be playing a number of shows in Germany, Spain and the UK. 

THE HIGH LEARYS - Clear My Mind

Red Bull

First/Last

Afterpartees komt in januari met het langverwachte debuutalbum. De jonge Limburgers hadden nog maar één single uit toen de band, in het kielzog van traumahelikopter, langs de Nederlandse clubs trok. Kort daarop bouwde de band aan hun live-reputatie met mooie spots op festivals als Pinkpop, Best Kept Secret, Paaspop en Into The Great Wide Open. Zo dook een geoliede machine de studio in met als resultaat een sprankelende plaat vol tijdloze liedjes en rokende reptielen. Glitter Lizard verschijnt op 19 januari op Excelsior Recordings.

De albumpresentaties vinden plaats in Area 51 (Eindhoven) en Bitterzoet (Amsterdam), gevolgd door een clubtour. Inmiddels is de band bevestigd voor het festival Where The Things Are in Zeewolde.

Pak de vrolijkheid van je kinderjaren, meng dit met het nihilisme van je puberteit en je krijgt Afterpartees. Draai Glitter Lizard huilend in je auto als je meisje weg is of lachend op je kamer als dat domme vriendje eindelijk huilend bij je is weggegaan.

Frontman Niek Nellen over Glitter Lizard: “Ik denk dat de plaat een mix van elementen is waar wij zelf groot fan van zijn: energie, melodie, licht cheesy zang harmonieën, hooks, refreintjes, alles. Ik denk dat we vooral een plaat hebben gemaakt die wij graag wilden horen, maar die nog niet bestond. Net zoals een glitter hagedis, die bestaan ook niet, en nu wel. We zijn trots.”


De parel Afterpartees vormde zich een aantal jaren geleden in het meest romantische gedeelte van Limburg, de gemeente Horst aan de Maas. Gedreven door hun liefde voor energieke 70's punk en hartverscheurende powerpop besluiten ze, met Iggy Pop, T-Rex en King Tuff in de cd-speler, als band het land door te zwerven. Teksten over falen in de discotheek, boomhut bouwende bankiers, modelabel Gucci en het verdrinken van zelfingenomen singer-songwriters. Daar worden de jongens gelukkig van. Op het podium spelen ze zich tegen de klippen van de hel op en daarbuiten helpen ze je moeder graag met boodschappen doen.

23/01 Area 51 - Eindhoven *
24/01 Bitterzoet - Amsterdam *
28/01 Muziekgieterij - Maastricht *
30/01 Hedon - Zwolle *
06/02 Het Paard - Den Haag *
13/02 Bibelot - Dordrecht *
14/02 Merleyn - Nijmegen *
20/02 Asteriks - Leeuwarden *
21/02 Metropool - Hengelo *
06/03 Where The Wild Things Are - Zeewolde

* + Mountain Bike

Afterpartees - Girls Like You (radio edit)

Alamo Race Track's fourth album entitled Hawks will be out March 20, 2015. 

Alamo Race Track - Everybody Let's Go

The Mysterons - Echoes

Jacco Gardner's new album “HYPNOPHOBIA" will be out on May 1st. 

Pre-order the album via http://www.excelsiorshop.nl/

Artwork by Julian House!

Jacco Gardner - Find Yourself

The Gospel Sessions - There's A Light

From the album Dignity & Shame, out now on Merge Records.
www.mergerecords.com/dignity-and-shame

Dignity and Shame

Buy from Merge

Crooked Fingers "Call to Love"

Buy Mwng at:
iTunes - http://smarturl.it/Mwng
Domino - http://smarturl.it/MwngDM

Or pre-order Mwng (Deluxe) at iTunes - http://smarturl.it/MwngDeluxe

Originally released in 2000 on the band’s own Placid Casual label (between deals with Creation and Sony), the Super Furries career-defining fourth album Mwng was the band’s only Welsh language long player. It reached Number 11 in the UK album charts and was their highest selling record globally up to that point. It remains the biggest selling Welsh language album of all time. On its original release, the record was praised in an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons for its significant part in promoting the language and culture of Wales.

The reissue comes in several formats. Deluxe editions (vinyl, CD and download) contain five tracks previously released on the US version of Mwng under the name Mwng Bach as well as a previously unreleased Peel session and a full live show recorded at ATP.

Mwng

Ymaelodi Â'r Ymylon

Super Furry Animals - Ymaelodi Â'r Ymylon

Single released 18 April 2011.  Available now from http://moshimoshi.greedbag.com/buy/little-surprise-0/

Little Surprise

Single released 22 August 2011.  Available now from http://www.wiaiwya.com/releases.php

In Her Kitchen

Single from Beer in the Breakers.  Released 13 June 2011.  Available from http://moshimoshi.greedbag.com/buy/blue-harbour/

Blue Harbour

Lykke Li cover, played live by Triggerfinger at GIEL! on 3FM

Triggerfinger - I Follow Rivers

“You know, it’s really weird”, opines Veronica Falls’ honey-throated singer/ guitarist/ lynchpin Roxanne Clifford when asked about their media-conceived “goth pop” tag. “Because when you start a band, and you start writing songs together, you never think anybody else is going to hear them. You’re just kind of writing it for yourselves. Songs like “Found Love in a Graveyard” and “Beachy Head”, we thought they were playful and not serious at all...”

Veronica Falls are used to wrong-footing easy assumptions. Initially grouped with the explosion of lo-fi bands associated with the fertile Brooklyn indie, the quartet of Clifford, drummer Patrick Doyle, fellow guitarist James Hoare and bassist Marion Herbain quietly released a series of limited edition, quickly sold out singles which gradually accrued them underground buzz and a cache of hopelessly devoted fans. Then they released a blinder of a debut LP in 2011, one which trumped all expectations and led to mountains of excellent reviews and two sold-out US tours. Casual listeners  who just assumed that they just made pretty, pristine pop songs were forced to reevaluate their preconceptions when they examined the lyrics more closely – lurking beneath the glacial surfaces were lyrics about suicide and spectral love. Now, with their sophomore album, Veronica Falls look set to pull out the rug from under people’s feet yet again.

“Waiting For Something to Happen” sees the band emerge as one of the most potent and affecting, fully-formed indie guitar pop acts we have around. Beautifully mature and poignant, this marvelously assured second record sees the band throw off the casually morbid references to elegantly distill the essence of an aimless twenty-something existence – the collective anxieties, tension and confusion of moving from adolescence into fully fledged adulthood – into a set of immaculately conceived, perfectly wrought pop songs.

“I’d say the word “wistful” really describes the mood of the album”, Clifford muses. “We chose the album title because to me it captures what people our age are all going through”. Indeed, the emotional through-line, from the title down, is one of slowly coming to terms with the process of growing up and eventually learning to face adult responsibility, of leaving behind the safe haven of “driving late at night, I’ll let you listen to the music you like...everything’s alright” (as they sing on the dreamy, dewy-eyed “Teenage”), and then searching for a “shooting star to point me in the right direction” (“Shooting Star”). Far from retreading the playful atmosphere of the debut, the band here mine a much more rich, emotionally resonant vein, be it weariness with dead end social scenes (“So Tired”), or the fear of your peers moving on with their lives before you’re ready (“Everybody’s Changing”).

Musically too, this album sees the band evolve into a more poised and confident pop entity, the melodies bolder and songs more muscular. Recorded with Rory Attwell (who has worked with everyone from The Vaccines to Male Bonding), these are tracks which spin gorgeous, sun-kissed melodies across their tales of growing pains and romantic dysfunction. So there are deliciously askew pop belters in the form of “Buried Alive” and “Everybody’s Changing”, but there are also achingly tender moments present too, from the touching love song “Broken Toy” (“I am broken too, a broken toy like you”), to the gentle reverie “Daniel”, which strips the track to its barest essentials – shimmering guitar lines and perfectly harmonized vocals sighing, “nobody needs to know what we know, nobody needs to go where we go” to perfectly heart rending effect. 
You may have had them tagged as goth-tinged pop fantasists, but with “Waiting For Something to Happen”, Veronica Falls easily shrug off any notions of a difficult second album to create something that is easily more polished, more affecting, and more enduring than their peers would dream of making, and stake their claim as one of the most gloriously unpredictable and invaluable bands on the scene right now. Clutch them close to your heart.

Out now on Slumberland Records (US and Canada) and Bella Union (Rest of the World)

Order: http://www.slumberlandrecords.com/catalog/show/245
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/waiting-for-something-to-happen/id589948598


Veronica Falls - Teenage

Beans & Fatback's Use Me, as heard on the Netflix series Hemlock Grove. Taken from the album With Skin Attached. Get the album via excelsiorshop.nl or listen here via Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/2N9cr7QrzDJomakFUVWjBh


Beans & Fatback - Use Me

Amsterdam’s Moss released their 2nd album last year. It all started in the confinement of an English farm on the outskirts of London. Inspiration came in many forms. A live show by the Brian Jonestown Massacre set the tone. A conversation in a pub with a man who insures satellites for a living was food for thought. The energy and vibrancy of the streets of London filled their heads and Phoenix played constantly on the car stereo to and from the studio sessions. Back home some credit has to be given to the old bomb shelter in Amsterdam, where they set to work moulding this collection of ideas into an intense, dark and driven sound. The band’s sound is hard to pin down, taking cues from a rich musical tapestry but always focussing on a finely honed song writing craft.