Shark Week " Santurce" on Analog Edition Records

The thing that I can't find any fault with the internet is how transparent the music 'business' has become. I know I'm not alone in thinking about music so much that I had to go put out a few records of my own. In an ever growing list, Matt from Everybody Taste is another one of those guys and today his latest from Shark Week comes out on his label, Analog Edition. On his blog Matt talked about being blown away by their soul-garage-surf sound live one night a couple years ago. The next step when you want to hear more of an incredible band is to put it out yourself. I don't know if you need much more of an endorsement than that.

A-Side's "Baby Maybe" has a break beat, shimmery high hat foundation and backup ahh's ooo's with Ryan sounding a bit like a hot Cramps style Caribbean party. He's got that tough as nails vocal with leather attitude while the backup vocals here are like some kind of Best Coast. Fluttery drum fills pick up on those garage sounds with a little bit of Hunx for good measure. It's big and heavily orchestral a variety of reverbs and vibrato electric's. Ryan is really breaking down by the end of this like a greaser crooner. As much as this was inspired by the Caribbean it's more like a groovy tropical inspired, bubble gum garage waiting for the mirror ball to drop. The reverb is heavy on this deep crooning baritone and when he gets to repeating 'I'm not like everybody else' it turns the track celibratory into island blues. Hinting at Ski Lodge and The Drums if they had grown up in the gulf of mexico with nothing but an old jukebox full of Sonics 45's

B-Side's "Go West" then drops in a harpsichord sounding electric and Ryan is back peering over his sunglasses and keeping things between funk and rock like a future Prince. It sounds hot, dripping with soul and froggy deep vocals, a tropical backbeat has guitars sounding like steel drums all shuffling. This vocal is the focus of these tracks, a little distorted and compelling like early Julian Casablancas holding maracas while tiki torches burn on the beach. Sounds pretty nice right?

Pick this up from Analog Edition. Black or blue vinyl.

Blake Mills on Analog Edition Records

Spending Monday with another release from Analog Edition Records, this one from Blake Mills who's been a touring/session guitarist for Band of Horses and Jenny Lewis among others and is younger than anyone is comfortable with, probably because of his already impressive career and the quality of these tracks. Both off his debut, Break Mirrors are available on vinyl for the first time.

The A-Side, "Hey Lover" is impeccably crafted and produced, with an impressive amount of clear layers of instrumentation, acoustic and bending notes on the electric with a lean towards a big country sound, plenty of brush rolls on the snare. It's a deep riff and unique melody that's in the vein of Ted Leo or Spoon, a contemporary take on songwriting with surprising combinations. As pop and catchy as the entire track gets, Blake counters the sunshine with plenty of lyric self depreciation:
sometime I hate myself / for trying to be so bold / but nothing else / seems to get the story told
The tongue in cheek sentiment with a little vocal gravel gives this essentially a love song teeth for the sincerity to sink in.

The B-Side, "Winter Song" starts out with a hushed acoustic tone, muted drums along with layers of vocal almost hushed with a little '70s Neil Young feel. The chorus features a distorted piled under effects miniature guitar riff that screeches in, and this combination of classic multi-tracking sound with the taking of great chances on the accidental experimental sound keeps it looking forward, firmly placing it in 2011. The crack of a piece of metal, an organ, some woodwind underscoring this rolling orchestral sound which after all is pure folk.
The tracks slows down to nothing but an acoustic for a second, and I have to check if this next section is even a separate track, a twangy loud guitar starts to rise out of the barreling train rhythm, and Blake is joined by an unnamed (?) female vocalist and all of a sudden the whole thing takes on a Rumours era Fleetwood Mac sound, to the point where I want to reconsider that album immediately. It doesn't feel like a conscious homage, it's just that what worked then, works now and Blake can't help but end up with that same conclusion. I lean to saying this is the standout track because of this unexpected change, but then I'll play "Hey lover" again and change my mind.
The two of them questioning back and forth in a slow building epic layered harmonizing vocal finish.
even when the love's gone / don't I show it?
even when your loves comes / baby don't I know it?

Black vinyl with a Marlboro man collage. Masculine yet sensitive, which says, I appreciate a low tar cigarette while swimming.

Get this one from Analog Edition Records who says:

Limited to 500 copies, the double A-side 7" features "Hey Lover" and "Winter Song" by Los Angeles musician Blake Mills.

The songs, now pressed to vinyl for the first time, come off Mills' 2010 debut album, Break Mirrors. While Break Mirrors may be Mills' debut as a solo artist, the musician already has years of experience under his belt touring with and working as a session musician for acclaimed artists like Jenny Lewis, Cass McCombs, Lucinda Williams, Band of Horses, Andrew Bird and Weezer. He also founded Simon Dawes (now Dawes) with Taylor Goldsmith. The only thing more impressive than the 24-year olds’ sizable resume is his knack for songwriting—an ability far beyond his years. With “Hey Lover” and “Winter Song” come the album’s uptempo one-two-punch: a nuanced lo-fi meets hi-fi production of timeless and highly original folk rock.

Breakfast in Fur on Analog Edition Records

Today is another unusual format for 7Inches, a 10" from Breakfast in Fur, served up by the fine folks that brought you the Analog Edition Zine, in which I wrote a little piece reminiscing about 1990-1995 and the lo-fi singles of the early internet days...when 7Inches was just a BBS board and AOL charged by the minute. Looks like Matt over there at Everybody taste is hitting the ground running with this label, also releasing a 7" from Blake Mills, I should get to shortly.

The A-Side's, "I don't care" is has a ramshackle, bedroom ideology in the layers of cheap nylon string guitar. A laidback, high, toy piano and a twee-pop lens.
"High Hopes" gets more weirdo orchestral like something on Edible Onion, (Br'er?) It's possibly a Caribbean folk cover of that classic track that I think Frank Sinatra definitely did, which means, who knows who wrote it. Washboard, triangle, every possible percussion kit used on the drum machine, making it almost unrecognizable like any good cover.
"Shine" has an acoustic line feeling like Solsbury Hill. All over opting for a more succinct melody, much heavier produced than the rest. The number of instruments is always staggering and definitely belies that bedroom 'new toy' aesthetic but is perfectly recorded and assembled to feel like a slick carnival ride while being a quiet, introspective collage like Dead Gaze...or the Annuals ( that brother track is still an acheivement). Fade out to the voices of kids playing which you had to see coming with the sketch of a kid in a squirrel suit on the front of the sleeve. It's working with that naive spirit, the tracks conceived on the playground, the vocals scrawled in the sandbox. You'll never get that back and will spend the rest of your life trying.

10"'s do have the advantage over the single of looking like they were made for the turntable, the perfect size of the slipmat. That got me thinking about that Volar comp running at 45...are these two basically the same length? I would think so.
"A Quiet Place", from the B-Side is a real hushed number (makes sense) with heavy folk instrumentation against this layered near whisper vocal. This 10" seems to be growing up in a way the more it goes on. The real innocence is gone, things are getting more serious. Big distorted overdriven drums come in halfway, blowing the serenity apart...definitely live, just a hair out of sync at times in laying on that epic slow smoulder. The very definition of the title.
"Flying Saucers" is a barrage of bells with heavy delay ending up in an actual rhythm. Eventually a New Order guitar melody makes it's way in fading around the samples with a slow organ. Sort of Railcars in it's effort to put an obscene amount of instrumentation together. The way shoegaze did, but instead of a straight severe wall of guitar, it's a dense jungle of a million different impenetrable elements. Or like A Faulty Chromosome, this is a little more folk leaning but the experimentation keeps you guessing in the same way.
Finally, "Ghost Story" seems to have a lullaby-esque Bright Eyes temperament...as if it was going to suddenly shift back into darkness and reality at any given time. More quiet layers of acoustic and waves of background vocals with that organ, the spirit ohhhh's steering it away from catchy and towards the eerie.

Get one of the 500 pressed from Analog Edition

Leather on Jade Tree

Just got a copy of this in from Jade Tree: the band, Leather from Philly who have barely have a single cassette release behind them. (I swear it's almost getting to the point where I'm really going to have to pick up one of those dual tape decks at the salvation army just to keep up. I thought singles were supposed to be the leading edge of new, self released music, but cassettes are really making something of a comeback for bands these days. I did read that no manufacturer is even making blank cassettes anymore...and it is great that all these cassette only releases are recording over terrible old Tiffany tapes.)
If there's one thing I like about this hardcore, it's the brevity of it's message....that's not a dig at all, what I mean is take the title track "No Motivation" which has a lengthy feedback introduction and fadeout, it still only clocks in at 1:37 and feels hugely epic, probably because of the packed together riffs and frantic energy that doesn't just push the limits for limits sake. This is actually pretty tame tempo if we're comparing this to traditional hardcore...it's weird actually, I don't know how they're managing the feel of this concise, fully developed track in a little over a minute. It's somewhere in the middle of that punk hardcore and post hardcore, At the Drive in and Fucked Up, The Obits and The Minutemen.
The second track "Zek" starts to pick up crazy speed, getting into that weird hyper territory that I can't imagine putting together, it's getting amazingly complex and rapid fire...there is a great layered chorus that takes this out of the frantic yelling into unexpected areas. A Helmet style huge refrain, and it's all of these changes and the combination of melodies that make it seem like the timing doesn't matter.

These two make "Relapse" on the B-Side feel like a complete operatic score. The bassline starts out reminding me of Dive from Incesticide with even the clean, distorted, big guitar sound from that album. It's also feeling like that raw angst arrangements of Nation of Ulysses, they're really combining a lot of influences here, and it nearly starts to feel like their own mini-genre, dabbling in a bunch of directions at once, without feeling gimmicky or way overboard, or some conceptual project I'm not going to understand. It's subtle...a natural outcome of listening to these unconnected things for years and it turns into Leather.
At their live show I'll make sure I'm standing way in the back against the wall, so I don't get caught in the swinging arm circle riot in front of the stage.

Get it from Jade Tree.

With only a hard to find cassette demo, one sold out 7”, a smattering of blog posts and some messageboard banter in their wake, Philadelphia’s Leather have just begun to emerge from an existence unknown to all but those “in the know.” Sterile is surely not the first adjective that crosses one’s mind when confronted with the noisy hardcore on this 4 song EP, aptly described by compatriot and Clockcleaner frontman John Sharkey as the likely result “...if Tad Doyle had owned Age Of Quarrel and actually listened to it.” It’s safe to say that picking up this vinyl will mean reliving these ten minutes hundreds of times over while waiting for the next recorded dose or a chance to witness a live show (likely to be in a dilapidated warehouse or a basement as grimy as their sound).

By the way, over at Everybody Taste, Matt posted a viewable version of my article I did for their magazine/label...check it out, pick up a copy if you're so inclined.

7INCHES in Analog Edition

Remember Zines? I do, I remember when instead of rambling all day in an html draft in blogger, you typed on a broken typewriter, or handwrote all over a piece of paper, copied them up and stapled them on the kitchen table and then got a couple of well hidden dollar bills in the mail and sent one off to a PO Box in Nebraska.

Well Matt from Everybody Taste invited a bunch of writers to see what it would be like to try reenacting that important underground ritual.

Here's your chance to get a taste of what it's like to read a bunch of great articles (not including mine) about Mississippi Records, Infinity Cat Records, and Father/Daughter Records; bloggers Aquarium Drunkard, Rollo Grady, Tympanogram, 7 Inches, Knox Road, Folk Hive, and Hugh Willett; and bands Sonny & The Sunsets, Lord Huron, and Levek. The rad cover artwork is by the ultra-talented Kaitlin Van Pelt of Breakfast In Fur.

Go get it from Analog Edition, Matt busted his ass to put together this mammoth zine, and I'm proud to be a part of it. I can't wait to read the contributing authors articles and interviews and I'm actually really honored Matt asked me.

Get a sneak peak here.