A Halloween Playlist.

Liars "Scissor" from A Bruntel on Vimeo.

Tunes of the week

Halves - 'Growing & Glow' (feat. Amy Millan)

Growing & Glow by halves

Strands - 'Temper'

Temper by strands

Houses - 'Soak It Up'

Houses - Soak It Up by future classic

Thread Pulls - 'Weight'

Weight by thread pulls

Spokes - 'We Can Make It Out' (Yppah remix)

Spokes - 'We Can Make It Out' (Yppah Remix) by Ninja Tune & Big Dada

BALAM ACAB - 'Big Boy'



Blue Hawaii - 'Blue Gowns'



Computer Magic - 'Teenage Ballad (High School)'

Teenage Ballad (High School) by Computer Magic

Starkey - 'Stars' (feat. Anneka)



Avey Tare - 'Lucky 1'

Lucky 1 - Avey Tare by Weirdbrowser

Sun Airway - 'Waiting On You'

Waiting on You by Sun Airway

Glasser - 'Plane Temp'

Video: Nite Jewel - We Want Our Things

One of my absolute favourite artists around at the moment. This track is from her current EP Am I Real



Nite Jewel, aka LA-based Ramona Gonzalez, deals in a kind of hazy, off-kilter, underwater strain of RnB-influenced pop. Check out also:

Odessa (Nite Jewel Remix) by Caribouband

Nite jewel - Weak For Me by pecachon

Nite jewel - want you back by pecachon

Halves - Growing & Glow

Halves' debut album It Goes, It Goes (Forever & Ever) gets its long-anticipated release tomorrow (it got the 5-star treatment on State: http://tinyurl.com/2vzoe48 ). As a taster, check out 'Growing & Glow', which features Amy Millan: Millan is a part-time member of Broken Social Scene, a full-time member of Stars and a pretty decent solo artist in her own right, so we're talking indie rock royalty here. What a coup. Halves' album launch takes place in The Workman's Club on Saturday night, with At Last An Atlas and Pablo Savage Trio supporting. The band were seriously impressive when supporting Bear In Heaven earlier on in the year - http://tinyurl.com/3yhfgxh. In other news, I really need to learn how to deep-link.

Growing & Glow by halves

(via Nialler9)

Further dates:

Nov 4: Roisin Dubh, Galway (upstairs)
Nov 5: The Model, Sligo

Xiu Xiu/Former Ghosts: 3 more reasons to attend

In my hastiness yesterday (http://tinyurl.com/3623rj9), I neglected to add some things of importance. Namely:

Cixous Ghost will also be playing. The blurb:

"A one-woman barrage of sound, a beat séance from the edge of the etheric, not so much beyond the veil as pushing through it with glove-fingered hands - Cixous Ghost's music is music that goes dum-ba-dum-bump in the night, screeches in the early hours of the morning and hums its way through the afternoon. Muscular and driven, a fragile beauty floats above the fray, translucent and wavering, as broken toys and lost souls writhe in a dance best described as 'otherworldly' or 'obscene' or 'oh..?'. A veteran of the femino-anarcho-punko-queero-pop-rock and everything in betweeno-scene, Emily Aoibheann (Party Weirdo, Janey Mac, Holy Ghost Toast, Avanti Maria!) takes a canny ear for a catchy beat and combines it with an unvarnished and unashamed blissful weirdness to produce a solo project that spits in the eye of phallagocentric rock and offers a vigorous back rub with its cold, clammy fingers."

http://www.myspace.com/ghostchips

Also:





Xiu Xiu/Former Ghosts/Cixous Ghost play the Grand Social Friday night.

Yeasayer

Meant to post this last week. Yeasayer played in The Academy, a good time was had. There's a review here, written (typed) by my own hand:

http://www.raggedwords.com/reviews/caught-live/caught-live-yeasayer-suckers-academy-dublin

But I also wanted to post this pretty cool video (for http://www.blogotheque.net/), it's taken from a while back but it's basically the band busking on the subway - with spoons! it's fantastic stuff:

Video: Former Ghosts - Taurean Nature

'Taurean Nature' is taken from Former Ghosts' much-anticipated second album New Love, which sees release November 9th, 2010 on Upset The Rhythm. The compellingly dark, goth-tinged project of Freddie Ruppert, with contributions from Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu, Nika Rosa Danilova aka Zola Jesus, and Yasmine Kittles of TEARIST, Former Ghosts will be playing with Xiu Xiu themselves this Friday night in The Grand Social, Dublin as part of the Darklight Festival (with other guests to be announced). It's a Skinny Wolves-curated affair and promises to be a superb gig.



(via Pitchfork)

Freddie Ruppert has also made a free preview mixtape available on the Former Ghosts blog, and there's some great stuff on it so it's well worth downloading. http://www.formerghosts.com/

On the subject of Skinny Wolves, their latest mix was put together by Children Under Hoof and is absolutely superb stuff: taking in PJ Harvey, Silver Apples, Thread Pulls, New Order covering Keith Hudson for John Peel and a slowed-down version of a HEALTH/Pictureplane remix. Download it now:

CHILDREN UNDER HOOF - MIX // October 2010 by SkinnyWolves

http://www.skinnywolves.com/

http://www.darklight.ie/

Thread Pulls - New Thoughts

As a child of the blogosphere (yes, slap me very hard in the face), it's always exciting to see a domestic band getting some attention from the more prestigious American-based blogs. Visitation Rites (http://www.visitation-rites.com/) and 20jazzfunkgreats (http://www.20jazzfunkgreats.co.uk/wordpress/) are two blogs who contribute to Altered Zones, Pitchfork's underground-focused sister site, and this makes them very influential indeed. Anyways, they've been getting behind Thread Pulls, the experimental Dublin duo who've just released their debut LP New Thoughts.

From Visitation Rites:

"Thread Pulls’ stripped-down, tightly-wound spin on post-punk is just as much a case for “feminine openness” as The Skaters or Oneohtrix, but it approaches this ideal from the opposite end of noise rock — purging where hpop oversaturates, refining and clarifying where hpop blurs. On their MySpace, Gavin Duffy and Peter Maybury confide in us that they are “only nearly a rock band, stripped back to a core of drums and bass”– though vocals, trumpet, and synths discover room in the equation as well. Little things start meaning a lot, the associations start flowing like crazy. A snappy note change in the bassline brings back James Chance and the funk he himself was bringing back (“Sink and Swim”); a twitch in the synth sounds vaguely arabesque, while also reminding us that ’60s psych was capable of swallowing anything (“Weight”)."

New Thoughts is certainly an excellent record, its pounding percussion and sinister basslines creating hypnotic patterns. Their aesthetic and approach shares much with other widely-acclaimed acts such as Liars, Gang Gang Dance or These New Puritans, and that's the kind of company most left-of-centre acts would only be too delighted to keep. Sample tracks from New Thoughts here:

How to talk by thread pulls

Sink and swim by thread pulls

Weight by thread pulls



Video by http://www.youtube.com/user/TrigFilms



New Thoughts is out now on Osaka Recordings.

Iron & Wine for Olympia show

The way things are lately, gig venue announcements should really come with a 'tbc'. Will Iron & Wine sell out the Olympia? Who knows, but Sam Beam and co are pencilled in for a date in the Olympia next March 14th. Tickets at euro 27.50 go on sale this Thursday. Upcoming album Kiss Each Other Clean is due for release early 2011, while they released the rarities/B-sides album Around the Well last year. If I sound a bit dismissive, I'm not: Iron & Wine are class.

R.I.P. Ari Up

Frontwoman of influential punk band The Slits.

ATP 'In Between Days' Mixtape

This mixtape is off the chain. 'In Between Days' is a sort of mini-ATP sandwiched inbetween the two main events - namely, ATP curated by Godspeed You! Black Emperor and ATP curated by Belle & Sebastian. It takes place Dec 6th-9th and features acts like Caribou, Four Tet and Wooden Shjips. Details: http://www.atpfestival.com/events/inbetweendays2010.php

Curators Amos have put together this freely downloadable mixtape. As a result, I think I've fallen in love with Factory Floor at first, eh, listen.

ATP In Between Days curated by AMOS mixtape by All Tomorrows Parties

Track list:

00:00 Super - Neu!
03:03 Escape - Moon Duo
09:19 A Wooden Box - Factory Floor
15:38 Angel Echoes (Caribou remix) - Four Tet
23:00 Machines and Muscles - Cave
27:33 Dead - White Hills
32:21 We Ask You To Ride - Wooden Shjips
37:04 Goodbye - Ulrich Schnauss
43:21 The Bouncing Wall - Autolux
46:53 It's Choade My Dear - Connan Mockasin
50:50 Omnivore - Nachtmystium
55:24 Sun - Caribou
1:04:20 Love Cry - Four Tet
1:08:24 Silva & Grimes - Holy Fuck
1:13:26 Candy Shoppe - Emeralds
1:18:00 El Mundo Frio (excerpt) - Corrupted

Oneohtrix Point Never - Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Creeping

It's amazing the stuff you'll find randomly browsing on Youtube. I don't know anything about this tune or when it was released, just that somebody's uploaded it. This is experimental drone/hypnagogic musician Oneohtrix Point Never with a remake of one of the most amazing pieces of music in the last decade, namely Grouper's 'Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping'. It's pretty deadly. The original is below too, and it still sounds incredible and otherworldly, as it always will no doubt.





OPN's acclaimed album Returnal is out now, as is Grouper's Split EP with Roy Montgomery

VisionAir

VisionAir is the new project of Richie Egan (aka Jape) and Niall Byrne, both of the dazzling post-rock collective The Redneck Manifesto. Just earlier today Egan posted a free download of their Autumn EP. The download link is here: http://www.divshare.com/download/12905912-a57 but you can also listen via Soundcloud:

01 TROLLS HAT by VisionAir

This is very much in a different ball-park to the Rednecks, as it's a low-key, synth-led, but still very rhythmic sound.

Full Soundcloud set: http://soundcloud.com/vvisionairr

VisionAir wil be playing a free show with the very excellent and very loud Logikparty this Saturday night, it's a U:Mack affair and it's free in to The Button Factory all night long, with U:Mack DJ's taking over after the bands' sets.

Logikparty recently released their High Risk Narcissist EP, which is well worth investigation:

A Sunny Day in Glasgow release free album

A Sunny Day in Glasgow released one of this blog's favourite albums of last year, the dreamy shoegaze soundscapes of Ashes Grammar. Autumn, Again is their new release, and seems to be regarded as more of a clearing ground for unfinished material than a new statement proper. I haven't listened yet but it's free so you can't really go wrong. It got a respectable 7.9 on Pitchfork.

Go to their website here : http://asunnydayinglasgow.com/ to download the album.

Review: Solar Bears - She Was Coloured In (Planet Mu)

Debut LP She Was Coloured In is a stunningly accomplished work, and in these times of attention deficit and free mp3s it’s important to stress that this is an album in the truest sense: from the kaleidoscopic opening track ‘Forest of Fountains’ to the ambient, pastoral strains of closer ‘Perpetual Meadow’, the listener is taken on a sonic journey that never stalls too long in any one place.

http://www.state.ie/2010/10/album-reviews/solar-bears-%E2%80%93-she-was-coloured-in/

Solar Bears - Forest Of Fountains by Ragged Words

Elbow for 02

Mancunians Elbow have a fifth album slated for early 2011 release, provisionally titled Lippy Kids. They'll be playing their biggest Irish headline show yet when they drop by at Dublin's 02 on March 31st. Tickets at the pretty sobering price of e44.20 (plus fees) go on sale Thurs. 28th October.

Here's a lovely performance they did for RTE's Other Voices a few years' back: