Stacks On Stacks

Previously unreleased song by El Perro Del Mar from 2005. 
Appears on the reissue 'El Perro Del Mar Deluxe Edition' released February 2015 to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of El Perro Del Mar.

Do The Dog

Field Music return with new 14 track album ‘Commontime’, set to be released on 5th February 2016 via Memphis Industries. 
The first song to be taken from the album is ‘The Noisy Days Are Over’, an insistent, sax-punctuated groove and a conversation between two friends struggling to say farewell to the bad old boozy days, when they should “get to bed like everyone else".

 
Over the past four years, North-East siblings Peter and David Brewis have threaded their way through one extra-curricular project after another but were inevitably drawn back to working together on their own songs. "As much fun as we might have had on our own or collaborating, we missed just spending time in the studio, the two of us, trying things out and playing together." explains David.

The space that Field Music vacated in those four years still appears to be empty. No one else really does what Field Music do: the interweaving vocals, the rhythmic gear changes, the slightly off-chords, but with the sensibility that keeps them within touching distance of pop music. But with Commontime, Field Music show off their unashamed love of choruses in a way they’ve only hinted at before.

Written and recorded in spontaneous bursts over six months in their Wearside studio, Commontime is built around the brothers playing and singing together again, but also features a wider array of players, including original Field Music keyboardist Andrew Moore, Peter's wife Jennie Brewis and new member of the live band Liz Corney on vocals, plus a panoply of other players.

“We wanted to embrace being a duo and, perversely, that made us feel more comfortable about all of those conspicuous cameos” reveals David.  Over the fourteen songs of Commontime, real life conversations are replayed, acquaintances come and go, hard won friendships are left to drift and diffuse snap shots of the everyday are pulled together into what must rank amongst Field Music’s best works to date. 

Commontime is available to pre-order at www-field-music.co.uk on limited edition 2 x 180gram green vinyl + download code, CD, and download. The first 250 physical orders include an exclusive signed print.   The album is also available to pre-order on iTunes with an instant download of ‘The Noisy Days Are Over’.



Commontime

The Noisy Days Are Over (Edit)

Field Music - The Noisy Days Are Over (Single Version)

SW016 - Boxed In feat. Formation - Running Out

Limited 12": smarturl.it/MariaUsbeckVinyl
Spotify: smarturl.it/MariaUsbeckSpotify
Apple: smarturl.it/AmparoApple
___

Maria Usbeck's solo debut, Amparo, is a collection of songs written and recorded across the span of three years in Ecuador, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Barcelona, Lisbon, Easter Island, Costa Rica, Florida, L.A. and her home in Brooklyn. Though the songs were composed electronically, Amparo called for an acoustic treatment, so Usbeck spent a winter in the studio recording the arrangements live with producer Caroline Polachek and mixer & engineer Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. Fleshed out in full sonic color on the marimba, xylophone, quena flute, piano, and harp, the album stretched into something hi-fi and expressive, meditative but not meandering.

Amparo stems from Usbeck's desire to compose in Spanish, her native language. Growing up in Quito, Usbeck was immersed in salsa, merengue, bachata, and Andean music, but was more attracted to German and American culture than to her own, and moved to America by herself at 17. After five years of fronting new wave outfit Selebrities and writing songs in English, Usbeck experienced a delayed-onset homesickness and knew it was time to "let the mother tongue speak." The impulse manifested itself directly: Amparo takes its title from Usbeck's middle name and her mother's name, and translates roughly as "to guide, protect, and embrace." Usbeck wields her Spanish lyrics cleverly while folding in snippets of several other far-flung tongues: Rapa Nui from Easter Island, Quichua from Ecuador, Bribri from Costa Rica, and Catalan. Because these lyrics were composed while visiting the countries from which they originate, their usage is more impressionistic than literal, like a mockingbird imitating fragments of other bird calls. Similarly, Usbeck reinterprets the Ecuadorian music that she grew up with as a newcomer, returning home with fresh ears, and as such the sounds are very much her own.

The backbone of Amparo is percussion, vibrating throughout with timbales, tumbas, a talking drum, bongos, shakers, and an Indian flat drum, with the gaps filled in by her field recordings of birds, beaches, and jungles. The songs were written and recorded chronologically, with the exception of the closing track, a cover of Colourbox’s “Tarantula” reimagined in Usbeck’s Spanish translation. Amparo is a reflection of the textures of Usbeck's childhood. It is also a distinctly grown-up pop record – a travel diary, music made by a visiting outsider to tap into a shared core of human expression. Emotively, Usbeck is her most powerful on piano ballads "Uno De Tus Ojos" and "Jungla Inquieta," but is a magnetic narrator throughout, moving between whispers, chants, and lullabies. Amparo pulses with many stories in many voices, but they flow together seamlessly like water, leaving behind a wordless hum.

Amparo is released May 27 via Cascine in North America, Labrador in Euope and Rallye in Japan.
___

Cascine on FB: bit.ly/1QTpyHQ

Maria Usbeck - Ciudad Desnuda

Icelandic trio Fufanu have released the third single from their upcoming album, Sports, which Nick Zinner produced. "Liability" is a frantic flirtation between post-punk and synthpop that reminds listeners of their responsibility to speak out against the increasing evils of an endlessly chaotic society. It follows previous Sports singles "Sports" and "Bad Rockets"; the album arrives February 3 via One Little Indian. 

Pre-order the new album 'Sports' here: https://OLI.lnk.to/Sports-LPSo

Sports

Liability

Full article: https://i-d.vice.com/de_de/article/premiere-diana-what-you-get

DIANA’s synthie-Pop sound is reminiscent of the 70s and 80s. You can listen to “What You Get” – btw for being in love – from their upcoming album exclusively on i-D.

premiere: diana, what you get

From the album Warrior, available April 6, 2018 from Western Vinyl

Pre-Order Warrior
Bandcamp: https://airwaves.bandcamp.com/album/warrior
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/warrior/1337353378?ls=1&app=itunes
WV: http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv167

The album cover for Warrior, the third full-length by Brooklyn-based band Air Waves, features a ominous, androgynous figure standing with a bicycle, wearing a gas mask adorned with a daisy.  The remarkable image was taken on April 22nd, 1970 at the inaugural Earth Day celebration in New York City by Nicole Schneit’s dad, Martin Schneit.  Forty-seven years later, artist Em Rooney hand-painted Schneit’s original black & white photo, resulting in an image that radiates with Warrior’s indefatigable spirit, strength, and love

Like many queer women, Nicole Schneit is a warrior by necessity, fighting for basic rights, dignity, and acceptance.  Such determination in the face of hardship and injustice runs in Schneit’s family; her new album was inspired in part by her mom who was diagnosed with fallopian cancer last year.  As she explains, “The doctor told her she had a fifteen to twenty percent chance, and her response was ‘I’m going to get this mother fucker.’ So the title ‘Warrior’ and the song are about her. After chemotherapy,  surgery, and then more chemotherapy, all the cancer in her body has left and she's currently in remission. I feel like most of the people in my life, including myself, are warriors and have overcome obstacles that seemed impossible to defeat.”

The dignified fighter archetype referenced in the album’s title is explored on each of Warrior’s eleven pieces of bittersweet, empowering indie pop.  According to Schneit the song “Gay Bets”, written after the 2016 election is “about being gay and being proud and open. I was thinking about hate crimes spiking and the current state of the world. My friend Jennifer Moore, who sings on the track, was my partner a long time ago, so I felt like I was writing a fuck you to Trump, for trying to take away queer rights, women's rights, people's rights.”  The song “Tangerine” was inspired by the film of the same name in which two trans women try to make ends meet as prostitutes. This movie, a dark docu-comedy shot in the contrastingly sunny setting of L.A., reflects Schneit’s battle between identity and society via Brooklyn pop rock that swings between the pastel-tinged and the downright melancholic.

On the album’s gorgeous closer “Blue Fire,” (inspired by the Adrienne Rich poem "The Will to Change") Schneit equates her post-presidential-election anxiety to a flame that grows and recedes, as she pleads for herself and listeners to remain calm. Like its namesake, the track burns slowly and brightly into one of the most glowing points on the record, leaving the listener smiling with thoughtful hope.  Warrior’s highlights, and all of the unmissable, satisfying pieces that tie them together show Schneit’s perseverance and resilience through crumbling relationships, personal adversity, and the current political climate, all leading to her most powerful collection of songs to date. Understated, subtly sophisticated, and equally empowering and comforting, Warrior launches Air Waves above the apolitical complacency of too many of the group's contemporaries.  Schneit proudly declares her mission statement: “I want these songs to be heard by people in my queer community, but also by anyone that wants to feels strong, powerful, and included.”

Warrior

Air Waves - "Blue Fire"

Substitutes

Grizzly Bear Yet Again - Live for KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic

Pre-order on limited Red vinyl - https://www.melodic.co.uk/product/cool-ghouls-at-georges-zoo/

Cool Ghouls - Helpless Circumstance

Indie label based in North London…
The home of many fine bands indeed.  Currently home to
POLIÇA, The Go! Team, Field Music, Blue States, The Phoenix Foundation, Haley, Dutch Uncles, Stats, Warm Digits, Weaves, NZCA LINES, Malihini, Menace Beach, Rozi Plain, You Tell Me, Odetta Hartman