LA BIG VIC Live on WNYU 8/12/10 (mp3s + interview)

I was ecstatic to have Brooklyn's LA BIG VIC — one of my favorite new bands going right now — live on WNYU yesterday. Soaring with retrofuturistic direction, the band's music draws inspiration from past visions of the future. Using synthesizers, violin and percussive vocals, La Big Vic (Emilie Friedlander, Peter Pearson and Toshio Masuda) creates massive and sublime soundscapes — sultry, slow-moving space jams and pulsated, beatific atmospherics are perpetually ringed with a cosmic exoticism. The time-traveling all makes you want to get on a concord jet and head somewhere mysterious (or Utopian) and new (or old).

The band brought four tracks to the New Afternoon Show (the whole set is about eighteen minutes) and hung out for a quick interview, where they explained what they think the future will be like (green with floating shopping malls), their 70s Kosmiche and Krautrock influences, the many languages of La Big Vic, and their forthcoming release on Underwater Peoples.

++ Download: LA BIG VIC live set on WNYU, 8/12/10
++ Interview here, partially transcribed + surprises after the jump

Can you guys talk about your background and when you all met and formed La Big Vic?

Emilie: I think that you guys met before I met you.

Peter: Quite possibly. La Big Vic has a past that’s shrouded in mystery.

It seems like you guys would. The music is really mysterious. Around when did you form?

Peter: These guys played together last fall, about a year ago. My first show with the band was December.

Emilie: Before Peter joined we played a show I think at Market Hotel Yoga, it was totally protean at that point.

Toshia: It was just two of us. Still very cranky, very intense. Peter is peaceful.

Peter: It’s a lot more synthesizers now, too, before it was guitar and violin. They did a social at Camilla from Future Shuttle’s fabulous loft.

Emilie: Perfect Wave Gallery.

I read online that you guys met through someone named Vic and that’s why you’re called LA BIG VIC. Is that true?

Peter: Yeah. He’s like 6 ft. 8 or something. 7 ft. 1? He’s huge.

Emilie: And he isn’t anymore, but he used to be a pizza delivery guy, and he would deliver his pizzas on skateboard. And we wanted him to be in the band really really bad but he didn’t want to be in it. He’s a mysterious guy.

Peter: He’s kind of shy, even though he’s really tall.

So you guys are all from different countries? I read that on the Internet, too.

Emilie: There’s some misinformation out there. Toshio is from Japan, he’s from around Osaka. I’m from Brooklyn, born and bred, but I’m of Swiss descent.

Peter: I’m from the country of Wisconsin. Hi dad, he’s listening.

That’s interesting, because on the Internet people seem to play up this aspect of your music, like — “it’s music from people from three different countries!” That’s kind of interesting, the way people make myths about music.

Emilie: We like myth.

I like myths, too. I think there should be myths surrounding a band like La Big Vic. So you guys started around the fall, and you have a cassette out on Whip?

Emilie: Whip Casettes.

Peter: It’s out now, but I think we’re putting something out on Underwater Peoples soon. I don’t know if that’s official or not.

That’s awesome.

Emilie: More or less, it will be a tape.

That’s awesome. With new songs?

Emilie: A mixture of new and old.

It seems like you guys would fit in well with the Underwater Peoples’ roster. That’s cool. Another question, you guys get described as ‘futuristic’ a lot, and I was kind of wondering where you draw influence from in terms of making your music sound futuristic, if that’s even intentional. And what you guys think the future is going to be like?

Emilie: Toshio can talk about anything political. He speaks for political views of the band. On my end, well, we’re all pretty into synthesizers, and especially Toshio and Peter. And especially 70s Kraut-rock and Kosmische music, among other movements, and a lot of that music had a strong futuristic element, and was kind of an announcement through the synthesizer of this Utopian future.



Peter: Alternate futures of the past or something.

Emilie: Yeah, so when we talk about it today it becomes retrofuturism, meaning that we’re looking at how people in the past envisioned the future, and it changes it up a lot. It changes it from if we were just making music about the future, we’re making music about past futures. And our future.

Peter: The future is going to be green. And in space.

When do you guys think you all discovered that sphere of music that influences you?

Emilie: I’ve been listening to that stuff since high school.

Peter: It kind of starts with punk rock, I think, and branches out in all directions.

It’s interesting to hear an elaboration on the word futuristic, describing your music, because I feel like futuristic is so vague and you can think of…the Jetsons, or something, when you think of futuristic. But that’s...probably not what you’re going for.

Emilie: That’s sort of another retrofuture, I guess, when we look at it today.



Peter: It’s also because Toshio’s from Japan, and they live in the future. About twelve hours I think. [laughs] It’s probably already tomorrow there.

Toshio: Yeah it’s like 7:30 in the morning or something.

Emilie: Are your parents up to listen to it?

Toshio: I think so.

When did you move to New York?

Toshio: Like, two years ago, almost.

Ohh, cool. I read also somewhere, that you write your lyrics in a made up language. Is that true? Or is it just some language that we’ve never heard of?

Peter: Like the Cocteau Twins or something.

Emilie: There are many languages of La Big Vic. In one of the songs I’m singing in Latin.

Which song is that?

Emilie: Musica. On another song we’re singing in English. And there are some lyrics in the Heyo song that are more percussive than actually semantic but there are actual words for most of it. I’m singing about a sicada and a Silver Morning. But we wish that Toshio would sing in Japanese because Toshio speaks five different languages.

Are there any bands from Japan that you think are really good right now?

Toshio: That depends. The Japanese underground scene is kinda cool. Like, Boredoms. Or, Boredoms. [laughs] There are so many good local bands, especially in Osaka, northern Tokyo.

Is there anything else in the future of La Big Vic?

Emilie: We’d like to have guest collaborators. DM us.

Peter: If you want to have our music in airline commercials or anything like that.

Emilie: Oh yeah, that’s our main goal.

Peter: Air France.

Is that for any particular reason?

Peter: Someone told us that we should have our song in an Air France commercial and we thought it was funny.

Emilie: And probably pretty appropriate. That’s the one home I can imagine for our music.

There is this kind of…not otherworldly, but it reminds you of traveling or something.

Peter: Like concord jets or the new huge shopping malls with wings.

Calvin Johnson Played a House Show in Dublin (photos + video)

Last night we saw Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening and K Records play a house show in Dublin. The show was at a gorgeous penthouse overlooking the city — Calvin rendered the locale "poetic," which was spot on. It was very interesting to be at a DIY show at a venue without graffiti on the walls or a bar in the back. Calvin played acoustic and sang many of his songs a capella, incorporating theatrical and flamboyant body language.

Organized by local promoter/DIY celeb Dylan Haskins, the show was undoubtedly a highlight of my time in Dublin, and probably the most high-brow DIY gig I've been to in my life. Ecstatic Youth and Patrick Kelleher opened and were also incredible. A quick video of Calvin and more photos after the jump.

mp3s: My Majestic Star, Markus Mehr

RIYL: Tim Hecker, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive

mp3: My Majestic Star - "Crampling"
mp3: Markus Mehr - "Hubble"

I am always ecstatic to see new emails and records from Hidden Shoal Recordings, a Perth, Western Australia-based label who have quickly become one of my favorite experimental music outposts over the past year. They consistently release adventurous ambient/drone, shoegaze and pop that is radiant and textured and expansive and dense with incandescent ticks from around the world. (See our previous post on Rome's Elisa Luu.)

Above, download "Hubble" from Augsburg, Germany-based Markus Mehr's ambient debut, Lava. Also download My Majestic Star's "Crampling," an otherwordly piece of shimmering shoegaze pop with an entrancing cello line from the Perth band's 2009 album I Haven’t Got It In Me.

Big in 2k10: Sweet Bulbs

RIYL: Cocteau Twins, Black Tambourine, Jesus and Mary Chain

mp3: Sweet Bulbs - "Springstung"
mp3: Sweet Bulbs - "Dilated Sleep"
mp3: Sweet Bulbs - "Kissing Clouds"

It's rare that I play a track on the New Afternoon Show that sparks as much interest as one I played yesterday. The track was "Springstung" from Brooklyn's Sweet Bulbs, who make dark and extremely catchy Cocteau Twins-inspired noisepop, or gothwave.

The songs are very 80s and lo-fi, with a lot of texture and fun titles; shoegaze-style with reverby guitars, decisively finished with singer Inna's dark, dreamy vocals. (Also noteworthy: the male-female vox on "Kissing Clouds," above.) Their debut long-player, Cybergaze — at once moody and sharp — drops soon via an undetermined label, and will be sure to grab recent fans of Big Troubles, the Bitters and Veronica Falls. This will make you want to light some candles and dance around during a time when college radio still created bands like this.

Sweet Bulbs includes former members of hardcore noise-makers Michael Jordan — who, aesthetically, they couldn't be further from. The band formed in November when guitarist Mike (of Michael Jordan) decided to put a band together for a show at Silent Barn with Weed Hounds and Coasting, rather than play solo as planned. Vocalist Inna and drummer Ray (of Le Rug) joined and fell in love, followed by 17-year old bassist Jack. Their future plans are to quit their jobs and play more around New York.

Big in 2k10: Sultan

RIYL: My Bloody Valentine, Codeine, Grouper, Ducktails, Nite Jewel, Zola Jesus

mp3: Sultan - Commanded [removed]
mp3: Sultan - Picture
mp3: Sultan - There Goes My Girl

Sultan is the experimental project of Brookyln songstress Kayla Cohen, who fuses stark, airy vocals with droney guitars — her aesthetic is reminiscent of Grouper covering MBV. Playing with loops and reverb, Kayla sculpts sublime soundscapes that are at once ambient, noisy, and pristine, with Codeine, MBV, JAMC and Spiritualized as smart influences.

On her Spring 2010 CDR, openers “Night Loop” and “Small Talk” pair muted, acoustic guitars with high-floating vocals — indecipherable but enchanting whispers that drift over her repetitive guitar progressions. By track three, “Return” hits the CD’s first long-piece — reverby drones and loops build up and down to a hyper-hypnotic place where the stars align and its all mystical and Goth.

That is the CDR cover above — a skyline or graveyard.

“Commanded” stands out as the first track on the CDR with drums, unsurprisingly giving the strongest nod to her influences. Another highlight, the vox-driven “Picture,” showcases her voice breaking out of its super-subtle shell and building to a widening, choir-like hymn. Closers “There Goes My Girl” and “Venture” are some of the CDR’s longest experiments, most closely recalling other contemporary underwater ambience.

Something about listening to sunny, upbeat pop songs during the summertime seems forced to me. Sometimes I’d rather chill out with this and get kinda dark. Though I first got a hold of this CD in April, it’s unsurprisingly been a good soundtrack to my summer studies, which have included John Cage and Edgar Allen Poe.

Sultan's track "There Goes My Girl" appears on the recent Blackburn Recordings compilation Various Deficiencies Vol. 1, alongside City Center, Big Troubles and more. Her most recent self-released tape, The Moon — recently/appropriately spun on Bobka’s Underwater Takeovah — is out now. Sultan's first 7” is out on Blackburn this fall.

(For our “Big in 2k10 series, we previously wrote on Twin Sister and Blackburn Recordings ... both of whom are doin pretty okay.)

Vegan Brunch on Newtown Radio

Hello I am filling in for Chocolate Bobka's Sunday Brunch today - here is my live playlist!



Spectrals – Leave Me Be
Dinosaur L – Go Bang
The Raincoats – Lola
Galaxie 500 – Leave the Planet
The Soul Fantastics – Ain’t No Sunshine

---

Weed Hounds – Hard Drivin
Shangri Las – Give Him a Great Big Kiss
The Pastels – Nothing To Be Done
Pill Wonder - Gone to the Market

---

Velocity Girl - Audrey's Eyes
The Splinters - Cool
Arthur Russell - 5 Minutes R-r-radio mix
Rocketship - Kisses Are Always Promises
The Twerps - Dance Alone
Coasting - Coasting

---

Yo La Tengo - Some Kinda Fatigue
Alex Bleeker - Getting By
Vibes - Understand This
Big Troubles - Wouldn't Mind
Sultan - Picture

---

Bob Dylan - When I Got Troubles (home-recording)
Bob Dylan - I Was Young When I Left Home (home-recording)
Bob Dylan - Song to Woody
Bob Dylan - I'll Keep It With Mine
Bob Dylan - If You Gotta Go, Go Now
Bob Dylan - Hard Times in New York Town
Bob Dylan - Country Pie
Bob Dylan - One More Night
Bob Dylan - Suze (The Cough Song)
Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline Rag
Bob Dylan - She Belongs To Me
Bob Dylan - Talkin' New York

---

Arthur Russell - Soon-To-Be Innocent Fun/Let's See

Updated: 3:58 p.m.

Shellshag Playing Mercury Lounge, Played the New Afternoon Show (live set + interview)

Tonight, Don Giovanni will do their second showcase of the weekend at the Mercury Lounge, with Shellshag headlining! Shellshag are one of my all-time top five favorite bands around right now. Here is a blurb I wrote on a mega awesome house show they played at SXSW:

Tack more grit to Liz Phair's 1994 indie rock debut and you've got Brooklyn's Shellshag, a guitar/drum duo who show their love for all things punk and grunge with their recent album Rumors in Disguise. At midnight a crowd of 50 packed into a messy kitchen at a University of Texas student party, where guitarist Johnny Shell and drummer Jen Shag tore through a raucous set. Shag attached bells and shakers to a her sequined belt and clunky combat boots for additional percussion, and more came from the crowd, who hit her drum while hollering along to Rumors gem "Resilient Bastard." [SPIN]

Download Shellshag's recent WNYU live-set/interview here. (But pls skip the first three minutes to avoid my horrible voice.)

Shellshag have been playing/touring for 10+ years, and released their third record Rumours in Disguise on Don Giovanni in January. At WNYU, the duo told me about their early days back in California in the 90s — like how former Pavement drummer Gary Young recorded their first record in '99, inspired "Gary's Note" and convinced them to take Shellshag seriously. They also discussed their label Starcleaner, and the warehouse venue of the same name Jen helped run in the 90s.

Check out excerpts from the interview after the jump. And be sure to catch Shellshag at Mercury Lounge tonight with other awesome Don Giovanni artists — including Noun, the solo project of Screaming Females' Marissa Paternoster.


You said you did your first album with Gary from Pavement -- how did you meet him?

Shell (John): Gary came to a show that me and Jennifer, before Shellshag, which was pretty much Shellshag with sit down drums and a bass player. Basically, not Shellshag, but otherwise a lot of the similar style songwriting and a regular three-piece band. We played with Gary's band at Noise Pop 1999, Gary Young's Hospital, which is what he started doing after Pavement.

Shag (Jen): I met him when he was in Pavement because I was such a Pavement fan, so I assaulted him one night at a -- not assault, but verbally -- about drumming tips. And he just told me to hit as hard as I could. We kind of bonded on drums and stuff and then oddly enough we played with hospital.

Shell: Gary's a great guy, he invited us out to his house, and we thought we were going out there, swimming, hanging around. And the second we parked the car he was like, get in here. We went in the studio, and started working on stuff. He basically convinced Shellshag to not be a side-thing we were doing when we weren't playing with our other friends in our other bands, but to be the thing were were gonna do. And we suddenly had a record.

Shag: Yeah we weren't even prepared, we didn't have lyrics. Hence, Gary's Note, actually. That song's named after Gary.

Shell: There's two reasons -- not just because Gary was intrically involved in the recording. But recording that song, on the original recording, there's one long note at the end of the song, and that's Gary playing the food pedal on the Leslie organ. He was inspired on his own as we came to the end of the song, came flying through the studio, tripping over mics, knocking stuff down, and dove like a football player, and he played this note.

Shag: That literally is Gary's Note. He was holding new lyrics up because it was a new song. We had no lyrics.

Can you talk about Starcleaner?

Shag: We started the record label in 1995, but it wasn't intended to be a label. We weren't working it or anything, we were just 'releasing' things we wanted to put out. After all these years, we only have about 33 releases. We put things out when we want to.

And Starcleaner was also the name of your warehouse space.

Shag: From '94 til '98 we went real strong, and in the beginning Anton from Brian Jonestown Massacre, he was all about it. So he threw a lot of great shows early on at the house. Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols are probably the most well known bands that played there. But... Gaunt played there, we had Hickey, we had a lot of great performance artists play there like Miranda July, Michelle T., Tribe 8. There was a really amazing scene of girls in the Bay in the 90s, and they ruled the scene. They employed me, first of all, they owned almost every business in the Mission, and I learned so much from all those ladies, I got a lot of confidence from them. It was a happening time out there.

You guys have this really extensive history playing in California, and now you live in Brooklyn and are involved with a label that's based in New Brunswick. Can you kind of talk about how you got involved with Don Giovanni, and how your history from California has like influenced what you do today? 'Cause clearly you still carry that same work ethic and stuff.

Shell: We went through our younger playing years in California, we were there 12 years. I'm pretty sure whatever we have from that's gonna go with us everywhere we go. That's our backbone.

You mentioned Don Giovanni — we came in 2005, and we were touring 7 or 8 months out of the year. So it hardly felt like we'd moved to New York. These are some of the people we met almost right away, doing shows at Maxwell's and around. I believe Jennifer might have met Joe and Zac first.

Shag: I think Dead Dog, one of our favorite bands, they live in Athens, GA now, but they were in Brooklyn at the time. And they booked us with Screaming Females, and I almost had a heart attack. It was at ABC No Rio, probably '08. I was floored, of course. All the bands blew my mind. And the kids at the Fort, the band Stupid Party, we put out a single for them, they really hooked us up out here, because they helped us find our friends, and our peers. And I grew up in New Jersey.

And you guys kind of tour incessantly.

Shag: We've been touring for ten years but with this bands, five. I'm amazed, there are a million great bands out there, and people are organized. It's a new time.

Shell: It wasn't always like that.

Shag: In the 90s, when we would tour -- this is always fun to tell people -- we had no cell phone, we had no Internet, we were sending packages and we were on pay phones with maps. We had no GPS, and you were afraid you were going to get beat up at certain places. It was pretty intense. You didn't know what you were walking into. That had it's own charm.

VIDS: Dum Dum Girls at Mercury Lounge 2/21/10

Mercury Lounge was packed wall-to-wall for last night's Dum Dum Girls show, which also featured Frankie and the Outs, Happy Birthday and Coasting. I arrived in time for the last two bands; Frankie/outs sounded incredible on a real stage (I'd previously seen them only at Monster Island and in Frankie's living room) and Dum Dum Girls ruled despite the seriously blasé crowd. They even covered "Play with Fire" by the Stones! Here are a few DDG vids.


Dum Dum Girls - "Rest of Our Lives" at Mercury Lounge, 2/21/10


Dum Dum Girls - "Jail La La" at Mercury Lounge, 2/21/10


Dum Dum Girls at Mercury Lounge, 2/21/10

Big in 2k10: Blackburn Recordings

[download] Big Troubles - "Wouldn't Mind" (Blackburn 7" version!)

Twenty-ten will be our year. “It’s a nice even number. What could possibly go wrong?” (Wisdom from Liz Pelly.)

One label to surely look out for in 2010 is Brooklyn’s Blackburn Recordings. With a recently-released 7” from Ridgewood, NJ-band Big Troubles — who Real Estate’s Martin Courtney recently called his favorite new NYC-area band of 2009 — and an ambient forthcoming single from the mysterious, one-girl project Sultan, Blackburn are ‘bout to make their dreamy, lo-fi mark, from BK-streets and NJ-homes to the Midwest and beyond.

The Blackburn family is makin' moves this month, playing a number of Brooklyn shows; catch them live, stay ahead of the curve. Sultan plays MonkeyTown with Twin Sister and others on January 23. Show curated by Sharon Van Etten. Details here. Big Troubles play Bruar Falls on January 4th (curated by PopJew) and Silent Barn on January 14th. Details here.

Read on for another download and an interview with Blackburn founder (and fellow New Afternoon Show host!) Jonathan Williger covering some label history and plans for 2010, including a joint compilation with Infinite Best Recordings with tracks from City Center and Coasting. Oh and check out that precious photo above — Jon W and Big Troubles' Alex Craig, when they first met at NYU freshman year. Awwwrr.


JP: Yo Jon W. Can you please tell me a little bit about yourself and what led to you to start up Blackburn?

I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. That suburban Midwest lifestyle is almost more small-town than suburban, and it’s a huge influence on how I do things. Blackburn is named after a park in the town I grew up in, Webster Groves, that I went to a lot in high school. In St. Louis, no one really cares about local music except a small group of punk and noise kids, and if you play more melodic music you don’t get recognized by that group. There is a palpable feeling of apathy that surrounds the whole city because people don't support each other.

So, when I moved to New York for school and began to meet people who like a lot of the same kinds of music as me and saw smaller DIY labels popping up all around me, I decided that I wanted in on the action partially just to maybe expose some of the great music happening where I'm from. Although I live full time in Brooklyn and I'm releasing music from bands based in New Jersey and New York, I still think of Blackburn Recordings as a St. Louis thing.

JP: Can you tell me a little bit about the artists currently signed to the label — how you met them, current/present/future releases?

The first release I've done is a split 12" between two St. Louis artists, Falsetto Boy and Sleep In Sundays, The Sunflower Split. They're both in a singer/songwriter vein. Falsetto Boy is a bit more twee, and Sleep In Sundays is more depressive. I pressed 250 copies of that one.

[download] Sleep in Sundays - "Go to Sleep"

Coming out very soon is the debut 7" from Big Troubles. The 7" features an alternate version of "Freudian Slips", which has been floating around the Internet, as well as "Worn Out", "Little Hunter", and "Wouldn't Mind". Basically, they like the 90s, and loud guitars. Alex and Ian also play guitar in Fluffy Lumbers. 350 of these are gonna be pressed, 300 with normal artwork, and then a special edition of 50 with screen printed jackets which will be available through Blackburn mail order and from the band at shows.

I have two other projects that are upcoming that should be out sometime in early 2010. The first is a digital compilation that I'm organizing with my good friend Hunter who runs Infinite Best Recordings (Forest Fire, Twin Sister), which I'm really excited about. It will definitely include Sleep In Sundays, Big Troubles, and Sultan. Which brings us to the next vinyl release, which is a 7" from Sultan, who is based here in Brooklyn. She has a self-released cassette out right now, and I can tell you that the track “Of Man” will be on the Blackburn 7". Really great, dreamy, woozy stuff.

JP: Aside from the fact that it is currently in vogue, why do vinyl releases?

It’s mostly a fetish thing. I really love the way records feel and the packaging can be true works of art. I like the way it looks spinning on a turntable. The ritual is really comforting to me, pulling the record out of the sleeve, putting it on the turntable, carefully dropping the needle...It forces listeners to listen to every song, too, because you don't have the skip button. I'm obviously not the first person to say this, but I think vinyl is in vogue because it isn't so simple and easy to listen to; people are reacting to the ease and impersonality of mp3s.

(Disclosure: Blackburn founder Jonathan Williger and a number of the musicians on the label are seasoned DJs and managers at WNYU. Which means they really know their shit. And that I kinda like, know them.)