Spread out across venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn, this year’s CMJ Music Marathon provided a glimpse at some of the year’s best emerging artists in addition to a healthy lineup of veteran performers. With five days of showcases and concerts to attend, the festival offered something for everyone, with bands representing a variety of genres.
Music
Fund This: Lost in Concert, Volume One
Since 2010, Lost in Concert has been in the cataloging business. A group of writers and photographers who share a love for live music, the site has made it its mission to attend shows and bring the concert experience back to those who couldn’t be there. Its vivid photography and clear, enthusiastic words give readers the feeling that they were, sharing that special “had to see it” feeling that only a live show can give.
Origami gone wild in The Octopus Project’s stop-motion vid
The Octopus Project: Whitby digital EP (Peek-A-Boo, 11/6/12)
The Octopus Project’s new album, untitled at this time, has been described by guitarist Josh Lambert as “equally the poppiest and the weirdest thing we’ve ever done.” The video for the first single, “Whitby,” does its best to live up to this assertion.
Review: Emeralds’ Just to Feel Anything
Emeralds: Just to Feel Anything (Editions Mego, 11/6/12)
Cleveland trio Emeralds made queasy, sprawling, psychedelic drone music prior to 2010, when it released Does It Look Like I’m Here? That album condensed the music into concise, direct, and absolutely stunning takes on the formula.
Just to Feel Anything is a new mutation in the Emeralds pattern.
Watch Sole’s blistering “Assad is Dead” and download “Ruthless”
Sole: A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing (Black Canyon Music, 11/13/12)
DIY rapper and occupier Sole will be releasing his seventh studio album, A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing, next week. Titled from a letter by Marx and written as a member of Occupy Denver, the album is a call to arms, with new anthems for grassroots uprisings.
Review: The Casket Lottery’s Real Fear
The Casket Lottery: Real Fear (No Sleep, 11/6/12)
“In the Branches”
The Casket Lottery: “In the Branches”
After a five-year run as a full-time band from 1998 to 2003, Kansas City indie-rock trio The Casket Lottery was able to look back on three standout full-lengths and a handful of EPs. Come 2006, the perpetually underrated band had adopted the same attitude as fellow Kansas City notable Coalesce — which shares The Casket Lottery’s Nathan Ellis and Nathan Richardson — by lying low and working on other projects, but never officially breaking up. Flash forward to 2012 and The Casket Lottery has magically reappeared with two more members — Brent Windler on second guitar and Nick Siegel on keys — and a new full-length album, Real Fear.
Review: Grails / Pharaoh Overlord’s Black Tar Prophecies, Vol. 5 / self-titled
Grails/Pharaoh Overlord: Black Tar Prophecies Vol. 5 (Kemado, 10/30/12)
Grails: “Wake-Up Drill II”
Tied together by a mutual appreciation of psychedelia, this split record by Portland’s Grails and Finland’s Pharaoh Overlord is a fitting introduction to each obscure group.
Review: Neurosis’s Honor Found in Decay
Neurosis: Honor Found in Decay (Neurot, 10/30/12)
“At the Well”
Twenty-five years after the influential sludge- and post-metal band issued its first LP, Neurosis remains as stark and dichotomous as ever with its 10th studio full-length. Again led by guitarists/vocalists Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till, Honor Found in Decay pushes and pulls between anguish and ascension — between darkness and light — sometimes within the same passage.
Video: Om’s “State of Non-Return”
Om: Advaitic Songs (Drag City, 7/24/12)
Advaitic Songs, the fifth album from drone-doom duo Om, “pushed the [band’s] material to even greater heights.” Again combining Eastern mysticism with those elements of drone and sludge, the band this time emphasized softer moments and added more string accents. The chemistry between bassist/singer Al Cisneros and drummer Emil Amos (also of Grails), on their second album together, was apparent.
MP3 Premiere: Bush Tetras’ “Heart Attack”
Bush Tetras: Happy (ROIR, 11/13/12)
“Heart Attack”
Nearly 15 years after it was recorded, Bush Tetras’ 1998 album Happy is finally getting a release. The band, an under-famous staple of the New York post-punk scene, formed in 1979, breaking up and reuniting several times, most recently getting together in 2007. The record, produced by Don Fleming (Sonic Youth, The Screaming Trees), fell into release-and-copyright hell when original distributor Mercury was sold.