OUT TODAY: Guided By Voices "Half Smiles of the Decomposed" Red Vinyl Reissue
(Guided By Voices circa 2004. Photo: Jeremy Balderson)
Back in print for the first time in over 10 years, Guided By Voices' limited red vinyl reissue of Half Smiles of the Decomposed is available today.
"At the time of it’s 2004 release, ‘Half Smiles Of The Decomposed’ was meant to be Guided By Voices’ final album. As it turns out, Bob Pollard’s a better revisionist historian than the rest of us combined — it merely turned out to be the pause button being pressed on that particular incarnation of GBV, though given Doug Gillard’s contribution, one could argue this one sits pretty neatly alongside much of the 2010’s output. People will tell you “Girls Of Wild Strawberries” was the hit and since I’m not inclined to look up old CMJ charts (wasn’t very inclined in 2004, either) we can either presume that’s accurate or simply skip ahead to “Closets Of Henry”, which somehow didn’t make the greatest hits, ‘Human Amusements At Hourly Rates’ (sticklers for detail will claim that’s because the comp. came out in 2003, but just to put the subject to bed, let’s just say it was record company negligence).
After this, it would be another 8 years for a Guided By Voices studio album (and there were three of ‘em in 2012, OF COURSE)."
- Gerard Cosloy
Purchase Red Vinyl / Stream Half Smiles of the Decomposed HERE.
Guided By Voices Online
Website
OUT TODAY : Snail Mail - 'Habit' reissue
Just a reminder that today marks the release date for the LP and CD versions of our reissue of Snail Mail's 2016 EP 'Habit', also featuring a cover of Lois Maffeo's "The 2nd Most Beautiful Girl In The World" as a bonus track. Order/stream here.
Snail Mail on tour :
Thursday, September 5 Hopscotch Music Festival, Raleigh NC
Friday, September 13 NextNOW Fest, College Park MD
Friday, October 4 Middle of the Map Festival, Kansas City MO
Sunday, October 6 Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison CO
November 16-17 Corona Capital Music Festival, Mexico City MX
Snail Mail Online
Website
Algiers - "Can the Sub_Bass Speak", New UK / European Dates In 2020
(photo : Christian Högstedt)
stream/download "Can The Sub_Bass Speak"
ALGIERS have released a collaborative audiovisual piece, “Can the Sub_Bass Speak?”, a new work from the band and production duo Randall Dunn and Ben Greenberg. The new piece pits charged language and free jazz collage by ALGIERS multi-instrumentalist Franklin James Fisher, saxophonics pioneer Skerik and drummer D’Vonne Lewis against a maelstrom of visuals by award-winning filmmaker Sam Campbell and typographer Farbod Kokabi.
Inspired by a chance encounter with artists Moor Mother and Harrga at Wysing Polyphonic in 2018, “Can the Sub_Bass Speak?” contorts ALGIERS’ post-punk deconstruction of racial and class sonic politics into new collaborative directions. “Can the Sub_Bass Speak?” is the centerpiece of a larger web installation thereisnoyear
.
The film recalls the ‘visual abstraction’ and political radicalism of Lis Rhodes and John Akomfrah, situating Fisher’s lyrical examination of structural racism within the disorienting resurgence of fascism across Europe and the United States.
Fisher writes :
"Who has the cultural authority to designate origin and authenticity? ?'Can the Sub_Bass Speak?' is a frustrated regurgitation; a?re-contextualization; a re-appropriation; a shield and a mirror that?projects back onto the world a lifetime of interpellating language?rooted in weaponized ignorance and supremacist privilege.??The improvised punctuation is provided by Skerik on the tenor?saxophone and D’Vonne Lewis on drums and percussion.?The underlying cacophony traces the evolution of African-American?music, experience and identity.??This is not for the mercenary architects: the Jacks and Queens of?simulated experience.?This is for anyone who has found themselves on the sharp end of?insidious, rhetorical prying: 'Where are you from?' 'What are you?' ?This is for anyone who has had their identity assigned and determined?by the agents of patriarchy.?This is for the Subaltern."
In addition, ALGIERS have announced UK & European headline tour dates for 2020, Kicking off in Brighton on February 3rd, the band headline London’s Village Underground on February 5th, before continuing to further stops in the UK and Europe. Tickets for the 2020 shows go on sale Friday, August 30th, at 10am. A full list of current and upcoming dates can be found below.
BUY/STREAM THE UNDERSIDE OF POWER
Algiers On Tour, New 2020 Dates in Bold On Sale Friday at 9am GMT
Wednesday, August 28 Acquaviva, Montepulciano IT
Thursday, August 29 AMA Festival 2019, Bassano IT
Saturday, September 14 Soundsnoise Festival 2019, Dornbirn AT
Tuesday, September 17 Lido, Berlin DE
Friday, September 20 Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg DE
Friday, September 27 Street Mode Festival 2019, Thessaloniki GR
Sunday, September 29 Route 66, Ioannina GR
Monday, February 3 The Haunt, Brighton UK
Wednesday, February 5 Village Underground, London UK
Thursday, February 6 YES, Manchester UK
Friday, February 7 Stereo, Glasgow UK
Saturday, February 8 Whelans, Dublin IE
Monday, February 10 Brudenell, Leeds UK
Wednesday, February 12 Botanique Rotonde, Brussels BE
Friday, February 14 Club Volta, Cologne DE
Saturday, February 15 Manufaktur, Schorndorf DE
Monday, February 17 Zoom, Frankfurt DE
Tuesday, February 18 Beatpol, Dresden DE
Thursday, February 20 Hybrydy, Warsaw PO
Friday, February 21 Lucerna Music Bar, Prague CZ
Saturday, February 22 Flex, Vienna AU
Monday, February 24 Strom, Munich DE
Wednesday, February 26 Monk, Rome IT
Thursday, February 27 Ohibo, Milan IT
Saturday, February 29 La 3 Razzmatazz, Barcelona ES
Sunday, March 1 Cafe Berlin, Madrid ES
Tuesday, March 3 Rock School Barbey, Bordeaux FR
Wednesday, March 4 Stereolux, Nantes FR
Thursday, March 5 La Maroquinerie, Paris FR
Algiers Online
There Is No Year
Website
VIDEO: Belle and Sebastian – Pitchfork Festival 2019
Earlier this summer, Belle and Sebastian performed their 1996 classic If You're Feeling Sinister in full for the first time in North America at Pitchfork Festival in Chicago. Pitchfork has premiered two videos from that set today, "Me and the Major" and "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying."
Belle and Sebastian release their original soundtrack for the film Days of the Bagnold Summer in just two weeks. A link to pre-order the record and hear the lead single "Sister Buddha" is available HERE.
Belle and Sebastian on Tour
Friday, November 1 Pitchfork Music Festival, Paris FR
Saturday, November 2 Le Krakatoa, Mérignac FR
Sunday, November 3 Le Bikini, Toulouse FR
Monday, November 4 Baluarte, Pamplona ES
Wednesday, November 6 Aula Magna, Lisbon PT
November 8-9, Primavera Weekender, Benidorm ES
Belle & Sebastian online :
Official site
Coming October 11 : Kim Gordon - 'No Home Record'
"Sketch Artist" (director - Loretta Fahrenholz)
(photo by Natalia Mantini)
Multi-disciplinary artist Kim Gordon's first solo album, No Home Record is being released worldwide October 11th on Matador Records. No Home Record follows the recent opening of Gordon’s solo exhibition “She Bites Her Tender Mind” at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) in Dublin and “Lo-Fi Glamour” at Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. Among its nine tracks, No Home Record features the new single “Sketch Artist” accompanied by a video directed by Berlin-based experimental artist Loretta Fahrenholz and includes a cameo from actress and writer Abbi Jacobson. Fahrenholz notes, notes 'Sketch Artist' is a haunted car ride. Kim drives as 'Unter' Pool summons passengers throughout nighttime LA. The city drifts by, passengers intermingle in the back seat and Kim's deadly stare shocks pedestrians along her route.”
No Home Record was produced largely by Justin Raisen (Charli XCX, Ariel Pink, Sky Ferreira) at Sphere Ranch in Los Angeles, along with contributions from Shawn Everett (Jim James, The War on Drugs) and composer/filmmaker Jake Meginsky (L’appel Du Vide, 'Milford Graves Full Mantis'). Gordon’s solo debut album’s title is a nod to the French-Belgian director Chantal Akerman’s film No Home Movie .
‘Why a solo record? And why now?,’” Gordon mused of the upcoming solo debut. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have happened without the persistence of Justin Raisen. Living in LA the last few years it feels like home, but the transience of the place makes it feel sometimes like no home.”
Since co-founding Sonic Youth in 1981, Kim Gordon has remained at the nexus of music, fashion, art and (more recently) books and film. In the past few years alone, Gordon has debuted in the #1 spot on the NY Times Bestseller List with her 2015 memoir Girl In A Band, acted alongside Joaquin Phoenix and Jonah Hill under the direction of Gus Van Sant (in 2018’s “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot”), released music and performed as one half of Body/Head alongside Bill Nace, and opened multiple solo-exhibitions at internationally renowned museums.
stream/preorder 'No Home Record'
stream "Sketch Artist"
stream "Murdered Out"
Tracklist
1. Sketch Artist
2. Air BnB
3. Paprika Pony
4. Murdered Out
5. Don’t Play it
6. Cookie Butter
7. Hungry Baby
8. Earthquake
9. Get Yr Life Back
|
Kim Gordon Online :
official Website
Instagram:
With a career spanning nearly four decades, Kim Gordon is one of the most prolific and visionary artists working today. A co-founder of the legendary Sonic Youth, Gordon has performed all over the world, collaborating with many of music’s most exciting figures including Tony Conrad, Ikue Mori, Julie Cafritz and Stephen Malkmus. Most recently, Gordon has been hitting the road with Body/Head, her spellbinding partnership with artist and musician Bill Nace. Despite the exhaustive nature of her résumé, the most reliable aspect of Gordon’s music may be its resistance to formula. Songs discover themselves as they unspool, each one performing a test of the medium’s possibilities and limits. Her command is astonishing, but Gordon’s artistic curiosity remains the guiding force behind her music.
Gordon continues this pursuit on No Home Record, her first-ever solo release, produced by Justin Raisen (Angel Olsen, Yves Tumor, John Cale, Charli XCX, etc.) and recorded at Sphere Ranch in Los Angeles. Borrowing its name from a Chantal Akerman film, No Home Record is, in many ways, a return as much as it is a departure. When Gordon first began playing music in the early 1980s, she used a guitar, a drum machine, and some lyrics sniped from magazine advertisement copy. No Home Recordcontains echoes of that setup, in both form and concept. On “Cookie Butter” (produced by Shawn Everett), Gordon’s vocals jut out insistently over a tinny raindrop beat: “You fucked / You think / I want / You fell.” The song continues, hectic and driving, until finding resolution in the lines “Industrial metal supplies / Cookie butter,” perfectly illustrating Gordon’s singular lyric capacity to meld cultural critique, divulgence and humor.
This captivating ability is further exemplified by “Don’t Play it Back” (produced by Jake Meginsky) where Gordon’s wiry vocals slice the track’s circling electric floor: “You don’t own me / Golden Vanity / You can pee in the ocean / It’s Free.” This nod—with a wink—towards culture’s increasingly fraught (and increasingly commodified) relationship with identity and the self is one of No Home Record’s central themes. “Shopping off a cliff / You’re a breath on my eye / To lose a compass of teeth / Hash away at twitter,” Gordon recites, phosphorescent and dirge-like, on the album’s stunning closer “Get Yr Life Back Yoga,” “Everyday, everyday, everyday / I feel bad for you / I feel bad for me.”
It makes sense that this “American idea” (as Gordon says on the agitated rock track “Air BnB”) of purchasing utopia permeates the record, as no place is this phenomenon more apparent than Los Angeles, where Gordon was born and recently returned to after several lifetimes on the east coast. It was a move precipitated by a number of seismic shifts in her personal life and undoubtedly plays a role in No Home Record’s fascination with transience. The album opens with the restless “Sketch Artist,” where Gordon sings about “dreaming in a tent” as the music shutters and skips like scenery through a car window. “Even Earthquake,” perhaps the record’s most straightforward track embodies this mood; Gordon’s voice wavering like watercolor: “If I could cry and shake for you / I’d lay awake for you / I got sand in my heart for you,” guitar strokes blending into one another as they bleed out across an unstable page. Front to back, No Home Record is an expert operation in the uncanny. You don’t simply listen to Gordon’s music; you experience it. - Elaine Kahn
VIDEO: Snail Mail - Pitchfork Festival 2019
Two clips from Snail Mail's recent performance at Pitchfork Music Festival have been posted on the publication's YouTube channel, "Pristine" and "Speaking Terms," both from the 2018 breakout Lush.
In case you missed it, Snail Mail's debut EP Habit will be remastered and reissued with an additional track, the Lois Maffeo-penned "The 2nd Most Beautiful Girl In The World." The EP is available for PRE-ORDER now, and available online and at your local record store on August 30th.
Snail Mail continues her endless world tour in the western half of the U.S. this week. Tickets for all dates listed below are available now.
Snail Mail On Tour
Thursday, August 15 Twilight Concert Series, Salt Lake City UT
Friday, August 16 MAHA Music Festival, Omaha NE
Saturday, August 17 Bluebird Theater, Denver CO
Sunday, August 18 Taos Vortex, Taos NM
Tuesday, August 20 Rebel Lounge, Phoenix AZ
Wednesday, August 21 Music Box, San Diego CA
Thursday, August 22 The Wiltern Theater, Los Angeles CA
Saturday, August 24 THING, Port Townsend WA
Thursday, September 5 Hopscotch Music Festival, Raleigh NC
Sunday, October 6 Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison CO
November 16-17 Corona Capital Music Festival, Mexico City MX
Snail Mail Online
Website
OUT NOW: Jay Reatard "Hang Them All" / Sonic Youth "No Garage" Split Color 7" + "Watch Me Fall" 10 Year Anniversary
Split singles are usually the byproduct of shotgun marriages and/or sleazy cash grabs by labels eager to exploit even most the tenuous connections between two entirely unrelated artists. BUT ENOUGH ABOUT OUR JICKS/LA GUNS single!
For entirely different reasons we're not getting more records from the late Jay Reatard or the splitsvile-population-them Sonic Youth and it would be the height of exaggeration to claim this 2009 curio is a highlight of either's vast discography. But that's what Matador Revisionist History is all about, exaggerating heights! Primo Carnera might've been 6' 5 1/2 inches tall in reality, but look the fuck out for 7-foot tall Primo Canera appeals to the PT Barnum, PT Cruiser and PT Anderson in us in equal measures.
Also, maybe you slept on a chance to buy it the first time.
Purchase Split Color 7"/Stream "Hang Them All" / "No Garage"(All profits from this release will be donated to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital)
Coinciding with the reissue of the 7", to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of Jay Reatard's Watch Me Fall, take 25% off the LP on the Matador webstore worldwide through August 8th. All orders of the album will receive a Matador Revisionist History slip mat while supplies last.
Stream/Purchase 25% off Watch Me Fall
Jay Reatard - Website
Sonic Youth - Website
Steve Gunn - Tokyo & New Zealand Dates This November
Steve Gunn returns to New Zealand for 6 solo shows this November preceded by his Japanese debut at Tokyo's Shibuya 7th Floor on November 3rd. Ticket links can be found below.
Stream / download "Be Still Moon" and "Shrunken Heads"
STREAM/BUY The Unseen In Between
Stream "Motion Pictures" (Amazon Originals)
Steve Gunn on tour (new dates in bold)
Thursday, August 1st WTMD First Thursday, Baltimore, MD
Friday, August 2 Johnny Brenda’s Philadelphia PA +
Saturday, August 3 The Bell House Outpost at Industry City, Brooklyn NY ^
Saturday, August 17th Sole East Resort, Montauk, NY
Saturday, August 24 Merleyn, Nijmegen NL
Sunday, August 25 Cabaret Vert Festival, Charleville Mezieres FR
Monday, August 26 Patterns, Brighton UK
Tuesday, August 27 Bodega, Nottingham UK
Wednesday, August 28 Stereo, Glasgow UK
Thursday, August 29 Exchange, Bristol UK
Friday, August 30 End of the Road, Dorset UK
Saturday, August 31 OLT, Antwerp BE *
Sunday, September 1 Sidecar, Barcelona ES
Monday, September 2 Kafe Antzokia, Bilbao ES
Tuesday, September 3 Sala 0, Madrid ES
Wednesday, September 4 ZDB, Lisbon PT
Friday, September 6 Zonnehuis, Amsterdam NL
Saturday, September 7 Misty Fields, Asten-Heusden NL
Sunday, September 8 Brotfabrik, Frankfurt DE
Monday, September 9 Bumann & Sohn, Köln DE
Tuesday, September 10 Lido, Berlin DE
Wednesday, September 11 Trafo, DE
Thursday, September 12 Druckluft, Oberhausen DE
Friday, September 13 Helling, Utrecht NL
Saturday, September 14 Leffingeleuren, Leffing BE
Monday, September 16 Lost Lane, Dublin IE %
Tuesday, September 17 Omeara, London UK %
Thursday, September 19 Kuudes Linja, Helsinki FI %
Monday, September 23 Salon, Istanbul TR %
Friday, October 18 Lambert’s, Austin TX %
Sunday, October 20 Duet Jazz (The Bob Dylan Center Presents: An Evening with Steve Gunn, Tulsa OK
Wednesday, October 23 Showbox Theater, Seattle WA @%
Thursday, October 24 Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver BC @%
Friday, October 25 Wild Buffalo, Bellingham WA @%
Saturday, October 26 Wonder Ballroom, Portland OR @%
Monday, October 28 Slim’s, San Francisco CA @%
Tuesday, October 29 Slim’s, San Francisco CA @%
Wednesday, October 30 Slim’s, San Francisco CA @%
Sunday, November 3 Shibuya 7th Floor Tokyo JP %
Wednesday, November 6 Tuning Fork, Auckland NZ %
Thursday, November 7 Blue Smoke, Christchurch NZ %
Friday, November 8 Dog With Two Tails, Dunedin NZ %
Saturday, November 9 The Plant, Blenheim NZ %
Sunday, November 10 Moon, Wellington NZ %
Wednesday, November 13 Sitting Room Session, Hawkes Bay NZ %
+ w/ Nace-Truscinski Duo
^ w/ Hand Habits
* w/ John Prine
% indicates solo performance
@ w/ Dinosaur Jr.
Steve Gunn online :
Steve Gunn.com