Josh Ottum

Pop Addict: Josh Ottum’s Watch TV

Every Thursday, Pop Addict presents infectious tunes from contemporary musicians across indie rock, pop, folk, electronica, and more.

Josh Ottum: Watch TVJosh Ottum: Watch TV (Tapete, 7/19/11)

Josh Ottum: “Fool in the Night”

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Just the second album from Seattle-based singer-songwriter Josh Ottum, Watch TV is a sonically diverse pop gem. Though it was recorded bit by bit from 2007 to 2010, Ottum was able to tie all of the loose ends together and deliver a cohesive, experimental indie-pop record, mixing cheese-ball hooks with interesting left turns and euphonic diversity.

Most of this experimentation comes from Ottum’s self-proclaimed love for GarageBand. Tweaking and toying with the program’s various loops and samples, Ottum was able to tailor and customize sounds to fit the aesthetic that was established a few years ago on his debut album, Like the Season.

Jarboe

Jarboe: Howling Artistry Born of Swans

Jarboe, a rare female crusader of the male-dominated metal scene, developed her formidable, performance-art-inspired presence as a member of influential no-wave band Swans.

Morrow vs. Hajduch

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Jim Guthrie’s Sword & Sworcery LP: The Ballad of the Space Babies

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Jim Guthrie: Sword & Sworcery LP: The Ballad of the Space BabiesJim Guthrie: Sword & Sworcery LP: The Ballad of the Space Babies (4/5/11)

Jim Guthrie: “Dark Flute”

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Morrow: With a list of accomplishments that includes a solo career, band collaborations, and the co-founding of Three Gut Records, Jim Guthrie is more than a notable name in Toronto’s music scene.  He has recorded as part of Islands, Royal City, and Human Highway and has worked with Arcade Fire, but his newest project transcends the realm of reality to explore a magical/digital world.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is a successful cross-platform game / music project for the iPad and iPhone.  Guthrie delivered a great score for it, and now the music is available to purchase on its own.

From the open, The Ballad of the Space Babies is sort of a Legend of Zelda-meets-Goblin blend of space jams.  But pieces such as “The Cloud” and “Under a Tree” — with ambient, chamber, and neoclassical influences — establish different moods entirely, and there are more percussive elements than one might imagine, as tracks such as “Bones McCoy” build around clattering drum fills.  “Ode to a Room” even has a synth line that acts like a reverberated, quasi-Italian-western guitar melody.

YACHT

YACHT: Electro-Pop Empowerment

Portland, Oregon-based dance-pop band YACHT, composed of Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, combines electronic beats and “inspiring” lyrics — with a little grunge mixed in for good measure.

Pop Sculpture

Zine Scene: Pop Sculpture

Tim Bruckner, Zach Oat, and Rubén Procopio: Pop SculptureTim Bruckner, Zach Oat, and Rubén Procopio: Pop Sculpture (Watson-Guptill, 10/19/10)

Action figures, to most of the world, are toys. To some fans or collectors, they’re a curio or a commodity, like baseball cards or commemorative plates. For the authors of Pop Sculpture, however, they are so much more. Pop Sculpture is a guide for the confused and curious, meant to inspire an interest in making your own designs, but it is also an argument that action figures are not toys, not commodities, but art.

Tim Bruckner, Zach Oat, and Rubén Procopio worked with Disney and DC Direct to reveal the secrets of designing, creating, and selling your own action figures (not dolls, they insist). Although Pop Sculpture is, first and foremost, a practical guide for the career-minded sculptor (and a great asset for those readers), it’s a treat for the casual collector or fan as well. As a degraded and commercialized art form, figure-making is rarely explored and explained in as much depth as it is here. The curtain is drawn back, and the process is revealed to be far more difficult than it previously seemed.

Pop Sculpture details the lengthy process of making action figures through the examples of a statuette-style Athena and a more familiar, pose-able Thor figure. Design and molding are described in easy-to-understand terms, with diagrams, cut doodles, anecdotes from the authors, and tips from pros along the way. Although the focus is mostly on comic-book characters and superheroes, you get the feeling that these techniques could be applied to a variety of models (in fact, some of the authors’ examples feature original characters with a more high-art bent).

Memory Tapes

Guest Playlist: Memory Tapes’ songs to drink and resent people to

Memory Tapes: Player PianoMemory Tapes: Player Piano (Carpark, 7/5/11)

Memory Tapes: “Wait in the Dark”

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On July 5, New Jersey-based multi-instrumentalist Dayve Hawk, better known as Memory Tapes,will release Player Piano, the follow-up to his 2010 debut, Seek Magic. Like his first album, Hawk once again recorded in his home studio, playing each instrument himself, without the aid of sequencing software. With its doo-wop harmonies and synth-soul intersections, Hawk described Player Piano as “a sort of Motown suicide note.” A little dark, a little humorous — just like his playlist for ALARM: a musical exploration of inebriation and indignation.

Songs to Drink and Resent People To
by Memory Tapes

1. Chris Bell: “I Am The Cosmos”

This is where it starts…arrogance and self-doubt.

Coalesce

Guest Spot: Sean Ingram of Coalesce explains hardcourt bike polo

Coalesce: OxCoalesce: OX (Relapse, 6/9/09)

Coalesce: “The Comedian in Question”

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Kansas City, Missouri-based hardcore band Coalesce has spent the last decade in flux, with shifting lineups, hiatuses, and sporadic shows prior to a full-blown reunion that spawned a new seven-inch, a full-length, and an EP.

But just because its output and appearances have been limited, the band isn’t out of touch. The scene has simply changed, and lead vocalist Sean Ingram wanted to rediscover the magic of its early days. Now, he finds himself on the ground floor of yet another nascent, independent movement: hardcourt bike polo.

Punk Living Through Non-Musical Means, or This Bike is a Weapon
by Sean Ingram of Coalesce

There was a point a few years ago that I was completely depressed by the world I had created around myself with electronics and new media. A fellow I knew had offed himself, and it was great sport to come up with the best pun skewering his illness in the comments. A band from Japan wrecked on the highway here in the States, seriously fucking some of them up, and the response was, “Van frip, Paypar prease,” in a mocking and fairly racist manner. For whatever reason, this kind of assholery was getting to me, and I made a pact with myself that I would turn everything off, and do my best to disassociate myself from cynicism. A major task, I know. But there is only so much one can take of faceless assholes telling them what is and isn’t cool. So it was done. I was out.

Without all of this extra noise, it was easier to focus on tasks at hand. Planting an orchard, building some old-school hemp rope-swings, not knowing what someone’s done for the last week before catching up with them in person for a beer. Little things were more enjoyable. As my attitude started to ease up, and I started to take more time to enjoy the little things, I noticed some guys on some bikes with big hammers, knocking the shit out of a little ball. I spent the day by the sideline checking these guys out. It was like hockey, but on these Mad Max-looking bikes. But these guys clearly weren’t jocks. These were guys that probably heard “Skate or die, fag!” yelled at them a million times in high school, just like me. So I gave it a shot.

Coalesce