Kyle Gilkeson

The One AM Radio

Guest Spots: The One AM Radio on self-portraiture

The One AM Radio: Heaven is Attached by a Slender ThreadThe One AM Radio: Heaven Is Attached By A Slender Thread (Dangerbird, 4/12/11)

The One AM Radio: “Sunlight”

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LA-based multi-instrumentalist Hrishikesh Hirway is the force behind dream-pop band The One AM Radio. On the day before his new album, Heaven Is Attached By A Slender Thread, is released to the world, Hirway took the chance to get introspective with ALARM. Below, he explores the alignment (or misalignment) of various expectations and realities, including those of his own songwriting process, through the lens of self-portraiture.

On Self-Portraiture
by Hrishikesh Hirway (The One AM Radio)

Everyone confronts this question every day: how do I present myself to the world? This process is so ubiquitous and so fundamental that it often goes unnoticed, a blip in the subconscious. But when dealing with any work that’s declared to be a self-portrait, the process of figuring out who you think you are, and how you want to reveal that to others, becomes paramount.

For my new record, I wanted to make a conscious effort to step away from the adjectives that were often used to describe my music: somber, melancholy, introspective, East Coast. I thought, “I’d like to make something buoyant, happy, fun, LA. Dance music.” When the record was done, I realized that I hadn’t accomplished that at all. There was a huge divide between what I thought I could make and what actually came out.

DeVotchKa

Concert Photos: DeVotchKa @ House of Blues (Chicago, IL)

Last fall, when experimental Balkan-pop quartet DeVotchKa played a show in Chicago, it was at Lincoln Hall in support of its 2008 release, A Mad and Faithful Telling. Since then, the band has released a new album, 100 Lovers (Anti-, 3/1/11), and embarked on a new tour, this time playing with Nashville seven-piece Kopecky Family Band in support. Photographer Wallo Villacorta caught the multi-instrumentalists at a recent stop at House of Blues in Chicago.

DeVotchKa

Weirdo Records

Behind the Counter: Weirdo Records (Cambridge, MA)

Each week, Behind the Counter speaks to an independent record store to ask about its recent favorites, best sellers, and noteworthy trends.

Weirdo Records in Cambridge, Massachusetts lives up to its name. Rather than try to compete with the various stores selling indie rock and big-name artists, it’s found a niche in the esoteric and obscure — “records where people are literally just banging on their kitchen pots and pans and yelling,” according to store owner Angela Sawyer. We spoke with Sawyer and found out what makes Cambridge a haven for music (and book) geeks.

What was your motivation for starting a music store? / What is your background in music?

This year is my 20th year working in a record store. So I’d wanted to start one for a long time, but really couldn’t figure out how — mostly because I was always working in a record store, which meant living below the poverty level, and I couldn’t put together enough money to buy a car or a vacation, much less start a business.

When the Internet came into its own, I started using all my spare time to try and figure out how to build a website. I started with about 10 titles, and these days there are several thousand. I moved into a proper storefront at the beginning of 2009, and a few folks (mostly journalists) were surprised that I was opening a shop. Simply and frankly, I’ve been surrounded by and motivated by records my entire adult life. So I felt like, what was I gonna do — take up taxidermy?

Weirdo Records

What is the musical community like in Cambridge?

Flat-out amazing. Boston is home to more colleges and universities than any spot on Earth, so it’s the college town’s college town. All those students mean that it’s a real haven for book and music geeks. Right now, there are three different handmade paper pamphlets around town that are solely dedicated to listing different underground house shows (and they don’t overlap in what they cover). There’s a vibrant, world-class improvised music scene, and lots of crossover between noise, jazz, hardcore, avant classical, etc. There are also several unique regular DJ nights where people play all 45s or LPs, each focusing on something a little bit different (three different soul ones, several ’60s-only, one for international music, one for rootsy country, and so on).

New England is known far and wide for its adventurous and voracious record collectors, and the prices in town are cheap, and the selection is plentiful — especially for genres that are abstract or difficult. The record-collecting community here has been very good to me, and the shop is really theirs. I feel extremely lucky just to get to hang out in it all day, and I think that it just wouldn’t fly anyplace else.

Fredrik

Guest Spots: Fredrik’s exotic botanical tour

Fredrik: FloraFredrik: Flora (The Kora, 4/12/11)

Fredrik: “Rites of Spring”

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Fredrik is an experimental folk-pop band from Malmö, Sweden. On its newest album, the simply titled, elegantly crafted Flora, layers of organic instrumentation meet dark, thundering electronic elements. As its name alludes, it was recorded in the band’s own “ramshackle garden studio.” In this piece for ALARM, the band decided to go to an eccentric local flower store to explore the theme of its new album.

The Flowers of Flora
by Fredrik

As you may or may not know, we are Fredrik, a band from Sweden. We’ll be releasing our third album soon called Flora. People have started describing it as being about “things that grow.” Fair enough. But we always start out building on dream stuff and freewheeling association. So when a music journalist recently asked us, “Dewds, which flower is this record about?” we sort of didn’t agree.

One of us said, “All of them.” The other person said, “The ones that grow in darkness.” Third person said, “It isn’t.” So, to settle the confusion, we figured that we’d find out for real. In our neighbourhood in Malmö, there’s a really old, strange flower store that literally has 10,000 varieties of exotic plants (allegedly the biggest collection in the whole of Europe). So we headed there, intent on finding the all-star representative of this album’s alt-conscious musical theme. Here’s the top 15.

The Flower Store

The store entrance

15. Some damn orchid

Some damn orchid

Okay. Thank you. Nice. But here’s one for the record: orchids are for wimps.