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This past week we reviewed the perfect new album from Sweden's El Perro Del Mar, and mentioned how she would be appearing at Shuba's on May 12th. Well we wouldn't be giving you the full picture if we didn't tell you about her opening act and tour mate, fellow Swed, Lykke Li. Having already gained popularity in Sweden, her US debut ep, Little Bit, will be released on her own label LL Recordings. Her full-length debut, Youth Novels, will follow later this year. Her sound is tender much like El Perro, but Lykke's music has a little of a worldly feel. This could be attributed to her time spend traveling as a child. Her music brings together many cultures and sounds, while remaining fun and poppy.Listen to: Dance Dance Dance (mp3)
Turn Heads is the Third full-length from Sweden's Tobis Froberg. This journalist turned singer/songwriter has the ability to not only write a quality lyric, but to create melodies that sound new and familiar in the same three minutes. This album features guest appearances from Peter Moren [Peter, Bjorn and John], Ane Brun, Kathryn Williams, Teitur.Listen to: Just Behind a Brickwall (mp3)
The creative cover of their latest release is not the only creative aspect of this Portland, OR bands new album. Verbs (aagoo records) is in fact the second album from AU, and it promised to be one of the most surprising albums of the year. Verbs is padded out with contributions from nearly thirty collaborators, a list which includes featured vocalists Sarah Winchester (track 6; of Team Love recording artists A Weather) and Becky Dawson (tracks 2 and 4; of Ah Holly Fam'ly, Saw Whet), as well as members of Yellow Swans, Parenthetical Girls, and Evolutionary Jass Band, among many others-inadvertently resulting in a strange and singular snapshot of a very particular corner of the city's famously sprawling musical community. The resulting record-recorded over three days at Portland's Type Foundry Studios and finished over a subsequent two-month period in Wyland's own attic studio-seamlessly segues through new and unlikely ecstatic extremes with an arresting economy. Breakout Pop jams like "RR vs. D" rub shoulders comfortably with retreating meditations ("Two Seasons", "Summer Heat")-the record's several distinct movements working at once with more autonomy and cohesion-with arrangements that stretch in longhand across the album's length.
Over at L.O.A.F. Recordings you can download a free sample of the new Gable album to be released on May 27th. Check it out!
Also coming out on May 27th is the latest album from the Dallas band I Love Math. On the surface this album has a very southern feel with harmonica, banjo and steel guitar, but there is a natural lean to the indie pop sensibilities of Belle and Sebastian and others. Getting to the Point Is Beside It is a bouncy jaunt through Texas with many knowing glances toward the sounds of the rest of the country.
Ikey Owens (The Mars Volta) & 2Mex (Visionaries/SonGodSuns) are the Look Daggers. This is a concept album and the concept was simple: a Hip-Hop album performed by human beings. Straight from Long Beach, CA, this is a album for all of those who have been craving the sound we have come to love from the West Coast. The full-length debut Suffer in Style (Up Above Records) was released on March 25th, but check out this message dated April 14th from their myspace page."Here is your chance to ask 2Mex and/or Ikey Owens those burning questions you've been dying to know! We're going to have an interview section in our upcoming Look Daggers "Suffer In Style" CD+DVD and we want YOU to ask the guys some questions! The generic "How'd you guys hook up" questions will already be answered, so come original and ask those questions you won't find anywhere else...this is YOUR interview! Please e-mail all questions to mailto:%20BONUS@UPABOVE.COM - only the best questions will be chosen so make'em good! And please ONLY SERIOUS QUESTIONS!"
The Peel Back: Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded (B-Boy Records, 1987)
For me the year was 1990, my friends and I thought we were in the know when it came to hip hop. I had order several tapes from Columbia House (Digital Underground, Kriss Kross, Vanilla Ice, and my favorite 3rd Bass). We knew what was going on, and this was what hip hop was all about. Well we were wrong, very wrong. We grew up is small two street farm town in Illinois, and only new what was on the radio and in Columbia House. That was until Ann moved in across the street, she was in high school and could drive. She wore these huge pant's, Cross Colours, and had dread locks, as twelve year boys were intrigued. One day she walked by and we were blasting "Little Boys in the Hood" by Kriss Kross. She asked if we like hip hop, and in a speechless shock we nodded our heads. She then said "That's not hip-hop, follow me". She took us over to her car and pulled out a tape case that was so large it needed a strap to be carried. She lead us into her bedroom opened the case, and told me to close my eyes and point at randomly. I did and she had us all keep our eyes closed while she put the tape in her system.
There it was sparse drum, beat, scream, horn, scratch... primitive, not in sound but in nature, primal. We open our eyes, "When I enforce, to listen to the teacher and lesson, class is in session...", and it was in session. Ann says, "Boys, this is hip-hop!". We spent to the rest of the afternoon in her room listening to Boogie Down, EPMD, Eric B. & Rakim, and so much more. This was the first day I really listened to hip-hop.
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