Grape Room - Baby Bubblegum

While crawling around the country with his fanatical basement punk band UROCHROMES and the no-wave thrashers SEDIMENT CLUB over the last several years, Jackie McDermott somehow nurtured a bizarre alter-ego inside himself. This is Mark Cone, who showed up at Nicey Studio last winter with a miniature Casio keyboard and a meticulously programmed 8-bit drum machine. His first 6 songs echo the dissonant keyboard punk of The Screamers, with 12-tone compositions akin to the nonsensical home recordings of Harry Merry and outrageous vocal content from the camp of Fred Schneider. Averaging under 2 minutes apiece, these tracks pack maximum dynamics into a completely engrossing 7-inch experience, immortalized in wax for only 250 lucky customers.

Mark Cone is Jackie McDermott.
Recorded by Peter Nichols at Nicey Studio, Los Angeles.
backing vox - Louise Chicoine and Laura Bradford
trombone - June Rose
www.niceymusic.com

Mark Cone - Come On Aileen [from "Mark Cone Sings" out July 26 !]

Mark Cone - Downer

Mark Cone - XXX

Mark Cone - 91

Awaited for years by the large nationwide cult of Boggers in the know, Erin Birgy’s second LP at the helm of the fog-shrouded ship they call MEGA BOG is an instant and timeless classic. It’s equal parts nostalgic and futuristic, mapping a new, jazz-literate and free form of songcraft onto the model of the traditional guitar-based band. It’s poetry on roller skates, defying recognizable structures in favor of a stream-of-consciousness flow that guides Erin’s lyrics around their many soft and uncertain turns. It’s an inspiring example of a unique vision carried to it’s most honest and vulnerable realization. Happy Together was assembled on tape amidst a lot of movement, including Erin’s relocation from Seattle to New York. Like Joni Mitchell or Beefheart, Birgy has a seemingly magical ability to steer a diverse bunch of players into her own dream-world. And this album has a lot of players, many with big credentials we’ll refrain from mentioning (except for Zach Burba and Will Murdoch from IJI, and James Krivchenia from BIG THIEF, who earn mentions for being particularly present). Considering its variety of personnel and its long gestation, Happy Together is a remarkably consistent and complete record that cuts the deepest when experienced from start to finish, as it arcs from the surreal bubblegum tempos of “Diznee” and “Marianne,” thru the extended dreamscapes of songs like “192014,” and out to the free-wheeling catharsis of “Blackout” and “Fwee.” Take the journey.

Mega Bog - London

Mega Bog - Diznee

Awaited for years by the large nationwide cult of Boggers in the know, Erin Birgy's second LP at the helm of the fog-shrouded ship they call MEGA BOG is an instant and timeless classic. It's equal parts nostalgic and futuristic, mapping a new, jazz-literate and free form of songcraft onto the model of the traditional guitar-based band. It's poetry on roller skates, defying recognizable structures in favor of a stream-of-consciousness flow that guides Erin's lyrics around their many soft and uncertain turns. It's an inspiring example of a unique vision carried to it's most honest and vulnerable realization. Happy Together was assembled on tape amidst a lot of movement, including Erin's relocation from Seattle to New York. Like Joni Mitchell or Beefheart, Birgy has a seemingly magical ability to steer a diverse bunch of players into her own dream-world. And this album has a lot of players, many with big credentials we'll refrain from mentioning (except for Zach Burba and Will Murdoch from IJI, and James Krivchenia from BIG THIEF, who earn mentions for being particularly present). Considering its variety of personnel and its long gestation, Happy Together is a remarkably consistent and complete record that cuts the deepest when experienced from start to finish, as it arcs from the surreal bubblegum tempos of “Diznee” and “Marianne,” thru the extended dreamscapes of songs like “192014,” and out to the free-wheeling catharsis of “Blackout” and “Fwee.” Take the journey.

LP and CD available here: http://niceymusic.com/product/mega-bog-happy-together-lpcd/

Mega Bog - Black Rose

Mega Bog - Blackout

Mega Bog - TV MAC

It's last winter. Enter COLBY NATHAN, a sweating sack of cold Maine blood weirdly washed up in Los Angeles, fresh off at least a half decade of tours with his “strange Maine” kin CAETHUA and Tom Kovacevic, and The New England PATRIOTS (the Boston-based progressive clown-metal band he fronts when he can scrub the “country” from his soul). He's crashing on the floor of the Roach Motel, the now eradicated and sorely missed DIY venue and recording studio that his long-time collaborator GREG HARTUNIAN runs in an old mechanic shop on Eagle Rock Boulevard – where the first DIMPLES tape (released on BIG BLOOD's culty imprint Dontrustheruin) was gestated the year before and where Whimpers was fated to be gestated in turn. It seems that the duos famously eerie folkiness has been tainted by their own perception of “the spirit of the West.” The lagging dry rhythms of a desert locomotive carry us through 16 expansive soundscapes, sketched by desperate, almost brutal campfire strumming and accented with the reverbed leads and horsey percussion of Ennio Moriccone's most famous soundtracks. Falsettos in harmony blow in like distant wind from the hills, delivering a steady stream of introspective but untrustworthy lyrics like “I did my parents proud / but I guess they were just easy on me.” Richly tracked on the Roach's reel-to-reel 8-track according to Hartunian's long-perfected, Joe-Meek-inspired technique, this record treats the ears to a high grade of textural enjoyment, which, along with the songs' often lullaby-like deliveries, can transport a listener to a deeper place like between waking and dreaming. 

Limited to 330 copies, lovingly co-released by Feeding Tube Records, Dontrustheruin, and Laughable Recordings.

Dimples - Chains Of Shame [from Whimpers, coming 2/24/17]

Dimples - Pit of Bones [from Whimpers, coming 2/24/17]

Dimples - Whimpering In The Night [from Whimpers, coming 2/24/17]

NEHEMIAH ST. DANGER remixes BANNY GROVE's track "Earthling Sound of Longing" from the 2016 LP 'Who Is She?'

Banny Grove - Earthling Sound (St-Danger Remix)

CARS IN CONTROL EP coming August 11

Sometimes it takes a post-human character to stir the humanity in a citizen of the 21st century. Sometime there's no better role model than a woman in a wig, pointing down the path of righteousness with big, caricature-ized gestures. Louise Chicoine's alter-ego BANNY GROVE burst onto the scene in 2016, like a toon ripping thru the thin fabric of Los Angeles reality, and immediately found a devoted following of fans who uphold the fictional diva as some kind of messiah of loving neighborliness, or the Mary Poppins of DIY. Her debut full-length Who Is She? introduced Banny's uniquely candid vocal delivery, that skips between talky honesty and operatic ebullience, and her palette of punchy 80's drum machines and glittering, artificial, Nickelodeon-esque synth patches. Guitarist and synth player Peter Nichols's arrangements include sections of Prince-ly funkiness and Elfman-y goofiness, as well as a healthy dose of the odd-metered prog futurism we came to expect from his prior outfit Grape Room. In her first year on Earth, Banny has played more than 100 shows in 8 countries, and opened for such stars as Cherry Glazerr, Ian Sweet, and Palberta. Wherever she goes, she flies through the scene with the untiring energy of a person who's not the least bit confused about her purpose as a songwriter, a performer, and (as co-founder of Nicey Music) a culture-shaper: simply to spread the law of kindness as far as she can.

Now Banny Grove is returning with an EP of 5 very ambitious songs – Cars in Control – written and reworked obsessively over a hectic and disastrous year. The title track ridicules the absurdity of 'the oil man' while dreaming of a clean energy future, and “Trash Truck” is sung from the optimistic perspective of a child living underground when the surface world is an unseen desert of garbage. “Baby” and “The Manger” preach the importance of self-esteem, first in a contemporary mode and then in an utterly deconstructed composition of off-kilter 808s and orchestral pads. And “Dogs FM” employs a futuristic power-pop groove to imagine a media outlet with canine innocence. Through it all, Louise confronts the senselessness of our modern world with a clown's unshakable goofiness and goodwill, and a visionary idealism that's all her own.

Banny Grove - "Cars In Control"

Odyssey, coming spring 2018 from Nicey Music

Padraig Steadman - guitar, vocals
Claire Lambach - bass, vocals

GOSH - "The Dishwasher"

It took a very special album to convince us at Nicey Music to extend our reach all the way across the Atlantic for our very first international release, but the home-recorded songs of Glasgow-based artist Robert Sotelo are just too curious and charming to ignore. With it’s rhythmic oddities, it’s comically minimal counterpoints, and it’s nakedly low-budget sound-palette, BOTANICAL forms a mesmerizing melodic universe, through which Sotelo’s calm musings wander like a kid with a butterfly net. It’s a supremely modest album, and at the same time, a timeless masterpiece that everyone should experience.

Unable to perform any investigation of our own from all the way over here, we rely on this third-person transmission from Mr. Sotelo himself for the backstory:

“Recorded in his final weeks as a resident of London 2017, BOTANICAL by Robert Sotelo acts as a true summation.

Sotelo and his partner took to the canal ways and greenery zones of the Capital and retraced his steps, cataloging forgotten rooms, objects of note and the items acquired.

Negotiating the purchase of a Yamaha PSS 680 at a Manor House based Charity Store he then hit upon the idea of forging a ‘Message to the Future’. Something to be found again later, when everything else is forgotten.

The flat they were leaving became ever barren by the day and under the expert influence of Laurie Anderson, The Buggles, Mort Garson, Telex and John Bender, experiments with this new instrument galvanised into fractured structures, rhythmic anomalies and playful near-absurdist melodies, until a strange re-enactment occurred:

BOTANICAL replaced the furniture with a biosphere of music. Ideas that (however naive) fantasised and frolicked with the changing space around it, projecting a spectrum of memory, happiness and recognition deep into the subsiding foundations.

Imagine the living room as tropical Jetty off which they could travel up-river. The stacks of boxes and laundry bags a disassembly and new arrangement of life.The wild feral cats of the Palermo Botanical Gardens nullified in deep humidity, their purring entangled with bird song as the dawn approached.

Alone at home for days, Sotelo prepared food, visited a reservoir, a motorway, took out the bins, completing each task as he always did.

Soon he delivered the compositions to recording engineer John Hannon, to reproduce the results professionally. Hannon edited, mixed, mastered. Finally completed onsite at ‘NO Recording Studio’, the contemporary Farm setting and Essex countryside provided a fitting epilogue to the process.

Later in Glasgow, Ian McCall played Saxophone on several songs featured on BOTANICAL, bridging the old and new life expanse, completing final preparations to embalm the anthology with sensual vibes and (hopefully) levitate the electronic foundation.

A step away from Robert Sotelo’s previous CUSP album for Upset the Rhythm (itself a resolution of sorts), BOTANICAL is keyboard based, percussively eccentric plus highly unsure of itself and it’s attempt at pop music.

Upon it’s discovery far into the future, Robert hopes that the life they left behind together remains embedded in it’s sound, a coded celebration of time and it’s masterful sway.”

Medal

In preparation for October 2018's joint southwest tour, the "Universal Mood Tour," Jennifer Vanilla and Banny Grove produced a collaborative single.

Banny Grove x Jennifer Vanilla - "Long Distance Call"

"Historically, the split album has been a way for independent artists (and the labels that represent them) to share the burdens of production while sonically bolstering each other’s work. The reasons for a couple of punks to split a vinyl record are almost self-evident given the binary nature of the medium and its high cost of production. Such considerations are not entirely beside the point in the digital age, but the traditional half-and-half form of the split is almost arbitrated by our adapted listening habits (not to mention the can of worms that may come with rights to hosting, streaming, and direction of online traffic). It only seems inevitable then that those working at the fore of the new underground would modify the form inventively. 4 partners road is one such mutation.

The album volleys between the regal dreamstates of Lily and Horn Horse and zany episodes by Banny Grove. Each duo presents their own singular take on art pop. The resulting dialogue is confounding but exciting. Iconically absurd outbursts by dadaist diva Banny Grove soften the dry, mechanical precision that lends Lily and Horn Horse their sheen. Conversely, the bubblegum sensibilities of the latter bring out some of Grove and Co.’s tastiest work to date. 4 partners road is a whirlwind of an album birthed out of the closest of friendships. True affinity sits between these partners.

Banny Grove, the pop icon persona of Louise Chicoine, sits at the crossroads of Kate Bush, Hannah Montana, and Pee-Wee Herman. She lives in a material world, a Southern California doll house from which she comments upon the maladies–minor and grand–of the modern world. The work she puts forward with bandmate (and Nicey Music co-founder) Peter Nichols (a.k.a. Grape Room) reads at times like an American DIY response to PC Music: artificial and off-kilter but makeshift, approachable. Here, Grove takes her vocal performance to commendable new heights. The operatic soaring that punctuates her first contribution to the album, “So Happy So Good,” is a masterclass in how to make an entrance (Klaus Nomi anyone?). And little sums up Banny Grove’s disposition better than the melodramatic, tragic despair with which she delivers the condemnation, “I gave a damn for you/ Mr. Romeo,” atop a sugary ball pit soundtrack of an instrumental. One forgets that such sentiments aren’t typically expressed by the same voice that, only tracks earlier (and with equal lack of composure) boasted, “I feel so happy, I feel so good/ I want to tell the whole neighborhood.” Banny’s back and she’s got plenty to say.

Perhaps more centered in their expression (if all the more strange for it), Lily and Horn Horse hail from upstate New York. The still-young duo of Lily Konigsberg and Matt Norman unleashed their layered, expressive, mutant pop upon the world with their 2017 debut Lily On Horn Horse. Having sowed the seed for collaboration, they followed it up that same year with Next To Me, a perfectly distilled statement of their sound. Cruising through 19 tracks in 25 minutes, Next To Me was an accelerated take on the contemporary state of pop by a duo with equal admiration for both Herbie Hancock and Liz Phair. The duo’s contributions to 4 partners road are atmospheric and catchy, grooving yet mellow. Konigsberg and Norman sing with a calm demeanor, understating their more absurd lyrics, ones that might be just as comfortable on Banny tracks (“I went to school/ And then I bought a car”).

As a studied fan of both artists, I can’t help but hear each duo’s influence on the other, even if the resulting “sides” feel so distinct. It’s the sort of resonance between artists that comes from friendship and the exchange that occurs when you tirelessly share show bill after show bill at small venues across the USA. These groups recognized their affinity and managed to move ever-so-slightly nearer. Positive actual joy."

-- Ben Levinson

Mastered by James Krivchenia

Nicey Music

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