Last weekend I got a chance to interview Matt Papich, better known as Co La. The Baltimore musician was performing as part of the Lunch Bytes series at the Hirshhorn Museum along with Oneohtrix Point Never. We talked about everything from his approach to sample-based music to cultural implications of the exotica genre. The whole interview can be read over at Prefix.
New 20kUnderDC review up on Prefix. This time it’s the retrofuturist producer Com Truise:
The music Seth Haley creates under the moniker Com Truise can best be understood as a series of variations on the same theme. Not to undersell the producer’s talent, but hearing just one track—any track—is all you need to get a handle on what he’s trying to accomplish. In Decay— the new collection of unreleased and demo tracks out on Ghostly International— shows that Haley arrived at his cohesive synth-heavy sound early in his career and perfected it though endlessly reworking the same basic components over and over… [Read the rest over at Prefix]
Since it is a million degrees out in DC today I think it’s about time I post this: A few weeks ago I wrote a thing for KCRW’s Playing on Prefix feature about a band called Secret Colors. In my estimation, the band’s 2010 cassette makes just about the best soundtrack for stupidly hot weather there is.
Ever since the Beach Boys went on their first surfing safari, summer has demanded a soundtrack. Unfortunately for us, Brian Wilson’s utopian vision of a “Surfin’ USA” has proved less than prophetic — tunes about the simple joys of catching a wave and hanging ten just don’t hit home for everyone. This is especially true here in DC where the dog days only fetch heat waves, greenhouse humidity, and swarms of mosquitoes. Here we don’t wax our boards and hit the beach; we douse ourselves in Off! and sit on the porch. That’s where Secret Colors comes in…[Read the rest on KCRW’s blog]
New 20kUnderDC review up on Prefix!
Every copy of Black Tambourine’s OneTwoThreeFour should come with a disclaimer, a big Surgeon General’s sticker alerting listeners to exactly what they’re getting into. “Warning: This is not a comeback album. It’s not even really a reunion album, either. Expecting something monumental may cause disappointment.” Consisting of four covers of classic Ramones songs, this ten-minute EP isn’t about a pioneering twee band reclaiming its rightful place at the top of the fuzz-pop dog pile. Hardly a victory lap for the band, the EP was made to honor a different legacy. These songs were recorded as part of the 20th birthday celebration of Chickfactor, a DIY fan zine founded in DC by the band’s lead vocalist Pam Berry along with editor/photographer Gail O’Hara. It’s important to note this, because approaching this release with any grandiose narratives could make you miss what a pleasant little gem these dual 7-inches are… [Read the rest of Prefix]
We’re really late posting the latest 20kUnderDC review from Prefix. Woops.
If you’ve poked around the internet’s more tawdry corners you’ve probably heard of Rule 34. For the uninitiated, the rule reads: If it exists, there is porn of it. The general premise here being that due to the web’s diverse user base and the ease of distributing content, it’s possible to find something to scratch your itch, no matter how specific that itch is. I’d like to argue for another cyberspace axiom, albeit one with less anatomical concerns: If there is a song, there is a remix of it. San Francisco-based psych outfit Moon Duo does its part to support the theory with the release of Mazes Remixed. Featuring reworked versions of seven tracks from last year’s critically lauded Mazes, this set of remixes works much like niche porn. That is, not everyone will get the appeal but it will leave Moon Duo enthusiasts very happy… [Read the rest over at Prefix]
Another 20kUnderDC review is up on Prefix. This time it’s Ku Klux Glam, a collaboration between Ariel Pink and his mentor/sensei/Yoda, R. Stevie Moore.
Forty minutes into Ku Klux Glam, Ariel Pink and R. Stevie Moore’s sprawling 61-track double LP, is “Fadermasturbater.” Consisting of little more than audio taken from a Fader TV interview segment, the four-minute track manages to capture the spirit of the entire album: Speaking over the din of a city street the two collaborators tell a disjointed account of how they met, all the while cracking silly jokes, making random noises, and basically showing off what a great, weird friendship they have. Like the record as a whole, it’s all kinda charming if you’re a fan, but if you’re not sympathetic to the duo’s quirks and conceits there’s no way it can hold your attention for a full two-and-a-half hours… [Read the rest on Prefix]
20kUnderDC got the chance to interview Dirty Beaches as the reverb-laden trio rolled through town.
The timeless quality to Dirty Beaches’ music is no accident. Filled with ’60s surf-rock guitar work, deadpan Roy-Orbison-meets-Jim-Morrison vocals, and thick Spector-esque production, the band’s catalog feels like the result of endless hours spent listening to oldies radio. It’s not surprising then that Alex Zhang Hungtai, the soft-spoken man behind the Vancouver-based outfit, has done plenty of thinking about the past. We caught up with Hungtai outside the Rock and Roll Hotel in Washington, DC to talk about travel, movies, and how our relationship with the music by-gone generations can be central to our creative output in the present… [Read the interview over on Prefix]
The latest 20k Under DC review is up! This time it’s another artist that’s been popping up frequently on the show: Mo Kolours.
It’s easy to lean on geography as a lens for discussing the music of Mo Kolours. EP2: Banana Wine, the latest release from the half-Mauritian singer and percussionist, draws as much from the sega music of his father’s homeland as it does the sounds of South London where the artist resides. The second offering in a planned trio of releases on One-Handed Music, the nine-track EP builds on the success of its predecessor, EP1: Drum Talking. Here, Mo Kolours continues combining the ambling rhythms of Mauritian sega with the inventive studio treatments of London hip-hop, this time incorporating a wider sonic palette… [Read the rest on Prefix]
Occasionally the crew of 20kUnderDC leaves the subaquatic studio long enough to write some words for various other publications. We’ll do our best to link them here as well. The latest is a bit on one of our favorites, Black Dice:
From its inception, Black Dice has been undergoing something akin to reverse entropy. Beginning with unbounded slabs of free-range dissonance, the band has slowly been imposing order to its chaos, producing a string of albums which have gradually arced toward pop. Fittingly, Mr. Impossible, the group’s sixth full length and first on Ribbon Music, is the most structured release yet. The nine tracks presented here find the trio pushing the loops, electronic gurgles, and modulated shouts that defined their earlier work into straightforward, almost linear, compositions. The result is album of beats and grooves, alternately plodding and engaging, punctuated by the occasional bursts of Black Dice’s signature sonic playfulness… [Read the rest over at Prefix]
