Check out the Ocean’s 11 style music video for Aventura’s massive single, “All Up 2 You”, and get their new album The Last- it drops today!
Aventura
“Por un segundo” (mp3)
from “The Last”
(Premium Latin Music)
More On This Album
Release Date: 6/9/09
UPC: 171012080028
Territories: World
By Mike Madavi
Liechtenstein
“Roses In The Park” (mp3)
from “Survival Strategies In A Modern World”
(Slumberland)
More On This Album
Release Date: 6/9/09
UPC: 749846209627
Territories: Americas
Sweden’s latest indie post-punk export, Lichtenstein, has announced their first full length LP entitled Survival Strategies in a Modern World will be available this June. The all girl three piece has created much hype in their homeland over their 7’’ singles 2007′s Stalking Skills and last year’s Apathy and are slowly but surely gaining a fan base here in the states. Destined to be played in vintage clothing stores everywhere, your little sister will love it. Their full length features charming songs filled with interweaving vocal harmonies, bass hooks, and post punk jangle and reverb for their guitars. A Slumberland record, Survival Strategies will be released in conjunction with the band’s hometown label, Gothenburg’s Fraction Discs.
They sit somewhere between the Pipettes and the Detroit Cobras or Delta Spirit; often the counter melodies in the background harmonies form a duality with the main hooks, creating a sort of bittersweet mood, half dark and mysterious, half young and joyful. “Postcard” sounds like the title song for a 90’s teen comedy (think Letters to Cleo’s prominent part in Ten Things I Hate About You). “Roses in the park” has a Neko-like sweetness to it. For a darker selection, check out “Refelctions.” The Album concludes with the haunting and whimsical acoustic and appropriately titled “The End” (McCartney gonna’ sue a foo!). The girls manage to create a distinct sound amidst the emerging Swedish indie-rock juggernaut captained by bands like Peter, Bjorn, and John and Shout Out Louds.
Three cute Scandinavians playing catchy 80’s post punk revival, what’s not to like? Buy one copy for your little sister and keep one for yourself; this is a band to watch out for.
Check out this sweet stop-motion video for and older track, “Security By Design:”
By Mike Madavi
The Fresh & Onlys
“Endless Love” (mp3)
from “The Fresh & Onlys”
(Howells Transmitter)
More On This Album
Release Date: 7/14/09
UPC: 844185094900
Territories: Worldwide
San Francisco’s next great band The Fresh and Onlys have turned out a fantastic new self-titled record. Riddled with 60′s psych Tambourine jams, contemporary garage rock classics, and formidable pop sensibilities, The Fresh and Onlys is a record that doesn’t give everything it has to offer away on a first listen but rather reveals its true, multi-layered treats in a subtle, personal fashion. Their songs sound pretty simple initially (quality garage rock) but you’ll find yourself being drawn deeper and deeper in as you spend more time with the record. Those deceptively minimal and lo-fi recordings are actually incredibly well written by the six-piece including founders Tim Cohen and Shayde Sartin, who are no strangers to being in great bands, having spent time in Black Fiction and the Skygreen Leopards, respectively among many others. Both Cohen and Sartin are employees at Haight Ashbury’s legendary music Mecca Amoeba Records, and have clearly spent quite some time absorbing the wealth of musical knowledge within the store’s walls.
The new record sounds, of course, like good ol’ fashion garage rock, true to classic influences like the Monks with repetitive, catchy rhythm hooks accented by heavily reverberated guitar work and fuzzy vocals. A lot of it feels very psychedelic; it’s a good mixture of 60′s tripping, 80′s garage revival, and hits of addicting pop melodies. The opener “Feelings in My Heart” sounds like a slightly-less-fuzzy Times New Viking tune with some 60′s British invasion drumming. “Fog Machine” is classic garage attitude. “I Saw Him” is a psych number about looking into an abyss and finding a mysterious man within; very trippy.
Just when The Fresh & Onlys starts to feel a bit too psych-ie for the timid, the silly “Imaginary Friends” reminds you this is a lighthearted, lo-fi indie album. The next song and fantastic single “Peacock and Wing” is infectious to the core, showcasing the finest of the Onlys’ dual vocal attack from both Tim Cohen, ex of the underrated Black Fiction and now sometime supporter of Ty Segall, and his female counterpart. Both vocalists sing the same lines on top of each other which sounds unique, charming and disarming; it feels like the budding beginnings of a youthful attraction when the self-referencing hook “You should really be my fresh and only” melts away your tuff-guy shell. It’s damn hard not to like that song.
Overall, the Onlys are a fantastic and homely garage rock project with clearly evident talent and potential. They are definitely a group to keep tabs on as their newest album is honest and true to classic lo-fi garage recordings and only the beginning to what could quite possibly be San Francisco’s next big export. The Fresh &Onlys will be supporting the magnificently tender psych-soul legend Sixto Rodriguez once again for a West Coast tour that starts in Vancouver BC and ends in Los Angeles. Don’t miss this chance to see one of today’s best new bands with a hugely influential pioneer!
Check out this really cool/trippy video of the Onlys live at Amnesia (19th and Valencia for you locals!):
One of the catchier songs on Clues’ self-titled debut, “Haarp”, gets the video treatment as seen on Pitchfork.tv today. Clues offer up a highly original, intensely committed and hugely satisfying definition of indie rock from ex-Unicorns front man Alden Penner, former Les Angles Morts member Brendan Reed as well as other Montreal musicians. On hot May days such as these (at least in California), watching the band go kite flying on a snowy day in Montreal is better than air conditioning.
Clues
“Remember Severed Head” (mp3)
“Perfect Fit” (mp3)
from “Clues”
(Constellation)
More On This Album
“Operating under a variety of guises, including Heidika, Carousell, Harlassen and Clouwbeck, Richard Skelton, on Tompkins Square, creates powerful, instrumental music out of densely-layered acoustic guitar, bowed strings, piano, mandolin and accordion, often laced with delicate, shimmering percussion. The result is something utterly unique – a music which is both life-affirming and yet etched with memory and loss, evoking equal parts Arvo Pärt and Ry Cooder, Nick Drake and Henryk Górecki.
It is with A Broken Consort, perhaps, that Skelton most-assuredly draws these elements together, creating an ever-changing drift of rich textures and interleaved melody that effortlessly evokes the landscapes which inspired it. Box Of Birch, his second album in this guise, was originally published in a boxed edition that contained, among other things, birch twigs collected from the West Pennine Moors. For Skelton these things act as a synecdoche for the landscape itself, a physical connection to the places in which much of his music is recorded. In this new edition for Tompkins Square, Skelton has created an exclusive series of artworks which draw on the hidden histories of the English landscape, and their narratives of displacement and loss. The result is something which perfectly complements the music whilst adding another dimension, providing a fuller picture of the artist’s vision.”
A Broken Consort – Box Of Birch from Tompkins Square on Vimeo.
Artist: A Broken Consort
Title: Box of Birch
Label: Tompkins Square
Genre: Folk : Avantgarde/Experimental
Release Date: 4/28/09
UPC: 894807002134
Territory: World
Warning: Do not watch this while eating your morning fruit!
Via Pitchfork.tv
Artist: kid606
Title: Shout at the Döner
Label: Tigerbeat6
Genre: Electronic : Alternative
Release Date: 5/12/09
UPC: 751937349822
Territory: World
IODA’s Marketing team creates opportunities for artists across the digital spectrum, from blogs and podcasts to internet radio and beyond. We also work closely with the programming and editorial departments at all of our digital retail and mobile partners, to achieve maximum exposure and feature placement opportunities.
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