!!! (Chk Chk Chk) will be be launching a US tour beginning with the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee. The band, based in Sacramento, Brooklyn, and Portland is supporting their 2007 release Myth Takes (Warp). They have two previous full lengths, 2004’s Louden Up Now (Touch And Go / Warp) and a 2001’s S/T release (Gold Standard Labs).
DeVotchKa talks about being cast as a gypsy band, overcoming tepid interest from record labels, and early personnel challenges.
Canadian prog-rock outfit Wolf Parade came on to the scene in 2005 and caused a stir with the release of Apologies to the Queen Mary (Sub Pop). The tentatively titled follow up Kissing the Beehive (2008 Sub Pop) is set to be released June 17th. According to Dan Boeckner (vox/guitar), the early tracks were discarded for sounding too much like cuts from Apologies.
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Video for “Eat Drugs,” titular track of the new full-length from LA prog-punks Bad Dudes out April 15th on Retard Disco. The dudes will be on tour for most of the summer promoting the delightful Eat Drugs, some of which can already be sampled on their myspace page. For links and tourdates,
…So many bands, so little time. Where else can you enjoy so many amazing bands while agonizing about missing so many other equally awesome shows at the same time? Thankfully since many of the performers played as many as ten shows throughout the five days of the festival- they were sometimes more impossible to miss than not.
ALARM threw a party in celebration of Dub Trio’s latest record Another Sound is Dying (Ipecac, vinyl on ROIR) at The Subterranean in Chicago on February 27. Sure, it was cold outside, but a night of dub and rock combined with generous specials from Red Stripe let concertgoers imagine they were far, far away.
On Wednesday, as I watched Joey Chestnut get a world record for most hot dogs and buns eaten in twelve minutes, I thought about how to assess my identity as an American. It is a confusing thing for me.
There are so many things about this place I love without fully understanding why I love them.
The release of last years Build A Nation (Megaforce), marked the 30th anniversary of rasta rockers, Bad Brains. Produced by Adam Yauch (MCA of the Beastie Boys), Build A Nation satisfied the restless ears of aging punks and impressionable youth worldwide. The album even found its way on ALARM’s Top 10 of 2007 list. Starting April 1st, fans have another reason to rejoice as the 7″ Build A Nation Box set is released.
Good things come in threes- such as The Raveonettes’ new record, Lust Lust Lust. When I talked to Sune Rose Wagner of the Raveonettes in December, he told me how appealing a three-piece band looks on stage. He wasn’t kidding- as the new bare-bones approach to the stage was only one of the aesthetic pleasures that the Danish duo brought to Chicago’s Double Door last Tuesday.
Since the 1960s, we’ve had a music filter with the major-label system. Now technology is putting that system to the test by giving artists and consumers new choices. But are these choices at the expense of an entire industry that has supported tens of thousands for over seven decades?
Stephin Merritt is a quirky and frighteningly prolific singer, songwriter, and multitalented musician whose multiple projects include solo work, four bands (The Magnetic Fields, Future Bible Heroes, The Gothic Archies, and the Sixths), musical theater productions, and film scores. Merritt has recorded a number of songs and albums as a solo artist (including a variation on the classic children’s song “The Wheels on the Bus,” for a recent Volvo commercial), but he is best known for his work with The Magnetic Fields, the group he founded in 1989 while living in Boston. Though the band’s lineup has changed over the years, Merritt has always retained the role of primary composer, lyricist, and arranger.
…the concrete floor—seemingly so solid and utterly inviolable—begins to vibrate in a steady, slow pulse. You feel it in your feet and then in your bones. You can’t hear anything but Studio One horns and overloud club conversation in this room, but you can definitely sense it: something serious is going on in a world down below, and Surya Dub—a monthly club night that celebrates “global dubwize vibes and dread bass culture”—is officially on.