New podcast is up - Episode 6

The 7inches podcast (episode 6) - itunes feed here

Your up to the minute seven inch news coverage for the tristate area. 

This week we cover:
The great Drag City, Ty Segall, Gemini debacle of 2013.

Post by Drag City Records.

The roundtable review of Gemini from The Firenote, The Polyvinyl 4-track seven inch club?!!!!!, The WFMU Record fair and the new Rough Trade shop in Williamsburg.

Darren’s pick for the week is the Mud City Manglers on Mind Cure Records - great record store releasing a new single from a new Pittsburg band every month.

Jason’s pick for the week is the new Minks record on Captured Tracks, Tides End and has trouble explaining why he's completely loving it.

The seven inches hotline is free for scared singles: (347)770-1469
Leave a message about the show and 7" singles we should check out.

Check out Darren’s releases over at Velocity of sound.

Asobi Seksu/Boris Split on Polyvinyl / Sargent House

Hey Black Friday shoppers...better off staying at home and picking up this holiday/shop day single on Polyvinyl from Asobi Seksu and Boris who cover each other...it's a preorder, but hopefully you could get this in time for xmas for the stocking.

Asobi Seksu are one of those bands I missed somewhere along the way, I know they've been around for over ten years and combine a sort of shoegaze with electronics and their cover of Boris' "Farewell" sounds to be applying those elements to the Boris massive wall of sound, especially when this thing takes off. Shimmery elements float under Yuki's upfront omnipotent vocal andlike the original it takes time to build and even when you know it's coming, the payoff is more insane than you imagined. They make this one completely their own while changing it entirely....the way the best covers can.
Boris takes a glitchy hammer to backwards samples, and push "Neu Years" into a cavernous hard space. Whirring mechanics grind and flail around this double kick beat and dreamy vocals. Haven't heard this kind of electronic approach from these guys before, and it's a new side of density to their ever changing style. A single that pushes both of these bands who toured together into new areas.

Get it from Polyvinyl Records, or Sargent House.

As part of Record Store Day's Black Friday event, former tourmates Asobi Seksu and Boris will be releasing a special split 7".

Limited to just 1000 copies, the record finds each band covering a song from the other.

Includes download code for both songs + two tracks from each band's discography.

The vinyl was pressed in collaboration with Sargent House and is available for pre-order in our store now.

Pre-orders ship Dec. 3. Available in stores Nov. 23.

Top 10 7 inches of 2011 with Darren from VOS

TOP

Darren, from Velocity of Sound and I talked about our top 7" picks for the year.
Spoiler Alert.

Darren:

10) Wilco - Dpm records

9) The Ketamines - Hozac records 

8) Fresh and Onlys - Sexbeat Records

7) Raw Blow - self released

6) The Boomgates - Smart Guy records

5) The Vivian Girls - Polyvinyl Records

4) The Lower Dens - Sub Pop

3) D Watusi - Cass Records

2) Diarrhea Planet - Infinity Cat

1) Tim Cohen - Captured Tracks

Jason:

10) Natural Child/Liquor Store split on Almost Ready Records

9) Snakeflower 2 - Southpaw Records

8) The Whines - Mt. St. Mtn. Records

7) Ty Segall - Drag City

6) Jeff Novak - Trouble in Mind

5) Real Numbers - Floridas Dying

4) Grass Widow - HLR Records

3) Art Museums - Dul-Ci-Tone Records

2) White Stripes - Third Man Records

1) Jay Reatard - Shattered Records

Now go listen to us play excerpts and defend our picks - download the show here (48mb).

Stay tuned for an upcoming TOP 30! with Styrofoam Drone as I reserve the right to completely change the entire list.

XBXRX 7" on Polyvinyl Records

My only experience with XBXRX comes from random split singles with An Albatross, and other noise based punk bands, until I finally started checking them out on their own. They fit into the Hella, Lightning Bolt, Aa, sounds... those periods of listening when I want extreme bombarding noise. It feels good to think that I might be annoying someone with the mess. Turns out XBXRX started after seeing an Unwound show, who tends to have that kind of awesome power. But really they had me at Unwound.
I haven't heard their earlier new wave style synth work from those early days but this 10 song EP/soundtrack is typical of their crazy start, stop style of distorted vocals. Taking timing to the limit, it's all about those dynamic extremes, the quietest, the loudest, the fastest. And with a jazz kind of sensibility, they have an impeccable work ethic to pull this arrangements off, like a noisier, less melodic Deerhoof. No one is going to cover them.
I like a band that takes a way of working to it's near end game and rides it out for a while, really interesting things start to happen when an idea gets pushed to the limits like this.
They're under appreciated, they've been around the block, they keep doing it, probably because they like fucking with these limits too.
Bless Polyvinyl for supporting these guys, and their extremist melodies...I know I'm going back to re-listen to their old singles tonight.

O is a 10-song 7”. Yes, that’s right – 10 songs! O is a return to form for the band harkening back to their Sixth in Sixes era.

Accompanying the single will be a Lawrence Cline directed mini-movie for the whole single.

XBXRX’s range of supporters run the gamut of Henry Rollins, Ian MacKaye, Sonic Youth, Peaches, Mates of State, and many more.

Maybe you’ve heard the term “artist’s artist.” That’s XBXRX. The core of the band is two brothers who have had as much as an impact on the SF/Oakland art/punk scene as the Kinsella brothers have had in the mid-West.

the one upstairs on Polyvinyl

How long will people still be listening to Cap'n Jazz? The echoes of their influence will be bouncing around probably forever. They will go into history like Slint...exponentially more influential every year.
It's almost like there is a weird mythology surrounding them...No one ever saw them live at this point, when they were first around, it's like 'My brothers friend saw them in this basement'....but Analphabetapolothology sells consistently, a touchstone for a genre.
I have to admit that's how I first came across this band, The One Upstairs, and their single. Formed by a member of Cap'n Jazz but before the current project American Football.
I'm making it way to confusing. Cap'n Jazz bass player formed The One Upstairs, they have a single just released on Polyvinyl but they are no longer.
Not to compare it at all, but it's somewhere in that emo world...slightly mathy with lots of feeling vocals from various leads, trading verses, yelling in their asides...a response to the main line of the vocal story. It's interesting musically enough to keep me coming back. It keeps doubling up the tempo and going back to slow it down, meticulously recorded....quiet...like Pinback even at times, really complex. Simple guitar, no effects, picking complex melody and somehow repeating it, working it into an entirely different vocal melody you don't see coming. A softer Don Cab with feeling....I could see liking this, but it's part of a very specific genre that I don't visit much these days.
They're hunched over guitars, working their asses off in rehearsal, the idea that the music is work, there's more to just a loud chord or sound for sounds sake..driving away the listener because they can't take it. That's my reference point anyway...a bunch of hardworking guys still doing what they love and not taking it for granted.

From Polyvinyl:

THE ONE UP DOWNSTAIRS-s/t 7” (Polyvinyl/PRC112) $5.50 “The One Up Downstairs is members of American Football, Owen, and Very Secretary. For years The One Up Downstairs was discussed on message boards and became the frequent recipient of questions sent to the Polyvinyl info e-mail account: were they actually a band, did they sound like American Football, did they ever record? The answers to all of these questions are a resounding "yes." In an effort to make the songs available to fans Polyvinyl released the band’s only recorded output a few years ago, which led to another question: would the songs ever see a proper release as a 7"? Long sought after, these songs are now available as a 7" that includes a digital download code for the entire release.”