With a name like Cloud Cult and some admittedly somewhat slightly mad-looking musicians, the band packs a sound that is more affable and subtle in tone than anything else. But here’s a fairly diverse and well-schooled group of virtuosos — it’s almost as if Julliard had a mental ward, and these seven had just managed to escape their straitjackets, get loose on the streets and find themselves a studio.
Twin Atlantic recently released their video for “What is Light? Where is Laughter?”, another in a line of catchy and melodic rockers that the Scottish quartet’s become quite famous for. With the release of Vivarium, magazines as diverse as Kerrang and Nylon have been praising the group’s ability to write some seriously infectious grooves, and TA will soon be touring all over the United States (especially at SXSW, where we’ll have more on them). Check out the new vid and below for tour dates.
All dates with The Fall Of Troy and Envy On The Coast
Sat/3-6 Rockford, IL @ House Café
Sun/3-7 Indianapolis, IN @ Emerson Theatre
Tue/3-9 Covington, KY @ Mad Hatter
Wed/3-10 Nashville, TN @ Rocketown
Thu/3-11 Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade
Fri/3-12 St. Petersburg, FL @ Orpheum
Sat/3-13 Orlando, FL @ The Social
Sun/3-14 Mobile, AL @ Mobile Music Box
Mon/3-15 Metairie, LA @ High Ground
Thu/3-18 Austin, TX SXSW
Fri/3-19 Austin, TX SXSW
Sat/3-20 Dallas, TX @ The Door
Sun/3-21 San Antonio, TX @ White Rabbit
Tue/3-23 Phoenix, AZ @ Martini Ranch
Thu/3-25 San Luis Obispo, CA @ Downtown Brew
Fri/3-26 San Francisco, CA @ Slims
Sat/3-27 Anaheim, CA @ Bamboozle California
Tue/3-30 Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
Wed/3-31 Seattle, WA @ El Corazon
Thu/4-1 Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw
Sat/4-3 Salt Lake City, UT @ Murray Theatre
Sun/4-4 Denver, CO @ Marquis Theatre
Tue/4-6 Lawrence, KS @ Bottleneck
Wed/4-7 Des Moines, IA @ House of Bricks
Thu/4-8 Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock
Fri/4-9 Chicago, IL @ Subterranean
Sat/4-10 Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
Sun/4-11 Grand Rapids, MI @ Intersection
Tue/4-13 Pittsburgh, PA @ Diesel
Wed/4-14 Buffalo, NY @ Mohawk
Thu/4-15 Toronto, ON @ Annex Wreck Room
Fri/4-16 Montreal, QC @ Underworld
Sat/4-17 Syracuse, NY @ Lost Horizon
Sun/4-18 Albany, NY @ Valentines
Tue/4-20 Allentown, PA @ Crocodile Rock
Wed/4-21 Philadelphia, PA @ First Church
Thu/4-22 Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar
Sat/4-24 New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
Sun/4-25 New Haven, CT @ Toad’s Place
See twinatlantic.com for more.
Over the course of the next week, ChinaShop will be featuring a series of pieces on the Chicago band Prairie Cartel. This is Part 2 from a 3-Part series chronicling the group’s dealings in the precarious racket that is indie rock n’ roll. Here’s another track off their latest, Where Did All My People Go:
PART TWO: SUMMER
By Blake Smith
We had just fled from what was clearly a witch’s curse placed on the band up in Lincoln Square. Only four songs had survived from a wealth of material that had begun to dwindle, vanish, abscond, and generally decamp straight off our hard drive in swift and mysterious fashion. Mike told us he had just rented a basement apartment in Wicker Park, which is kind of a nightmare if you are normal, but really great if you are the shade of orange that can only obtained from spray-tanning or walking through an Earl Scheib with goggles on. Couldn’t be worse than what we were leaving and Mike could ride his effete Honda Scooter to his job pretty quickly which left us more time to work.
Bob Self, a man of many hats and, most recently, host of Doctor Sketchy’s Los Angeles branch held his very first marathon. Intrepidly forsaking sleep, Bob welcomed a string of beautiful models and over sixty guests to Nucleus Gallery in Alhambra, where the twenty-six-hour event took place. Renowned painter Michael Hussar was among the attendees and created one of his famous alla prima portraits. Armed with tons of supplies, artists brought everything from watercolors and pastels to oil paint and digital tablets.
Influenced by both 80s New Wave and the folk sounds of their native Sweden, Peter, Bjorn, and John is right up the alley of New Wave/Killers fans hankering for a little bit of indie folk hilarity along with that unstoppable resurgence of old-school synth sounds. Their eccentric sense of humor (most fully appreciated in their videos) only enhances the listening experience of some infectious dance tunes. If you go to The Red Bull Music Academy website, you can check out a bunch more of their tracks off the band’s new album, Living Thing.
Splicers unite again! This time, it’s Saturday January 23rd at 12 noon, Woodbirdge Park in Austin Texas. Stick around afterward for a 2K-hosted Rapturian cocktail party and feel more inclined to be a part of the Rapture Family. It’s growing every day.
http://www.facebook.com/2KGames
Could Chicago electronica darlings Prairie Cartel have better luck? Could their misfortunes seem any crueler? After making their name on the soundtrack to the Grand Theft Auto video game series, P.C. seemed about to make some serious noise amongst the big boys, were lacking no acclaim from the underground music scene (being called “the next big thing out of the Windy City” by countless rags), and even receiving that rare accolade of being featured on NPR. The road to success has been anything but simple for these lads, filled with rabid dogs, Motor City Witches, and the overall flakiness that is par for the course in the business side of rock n’ roll. This is a track from the band’s Where Did All My People Go, which might help you judge for yourself:
The Prairie Cartel – Keep Everybody Warm
Over the course of the next week we’ll be giving an inside glimpse at the band’s damaged psyche, the trials and tribulations of an up-and-coming young rock band, and all the perils of rock and roll decadence (that a studio and Lincoln Square can offer).
PART ONE: SPRING
by Blake Smith
Mike and I had just gotten dropped from a major label. Again. And again we had taken a perfectly good band, gotten it signed, and then proceeded to watch it get bent, spindled, and mutilated by the machine. What started as something respectable was now a junked-out shell of a group hunkered out in the alley trying to blow you for radio play. The problem was that we were in the alley voluntarily. When fed that classic label bit that our album was great, but just needed that one immediate track that radio couldn’t possibly refuse, we didn’t fight it. Fuck, we would write you four songs for radio. By tomorrow, if it meant the good songs got to stay on. But to get on radio you have to write shit. And once you showed an A&R guy how easily you could turn shit out, you were doomed. Your record quickly ceases to resemble what you thought you had made. We were screwed (again). Why couldn’t we learn?
Read the full story
Because Music | Talk about relentless. Kap Bambino is perhaps the mother of fast-paced synth-electro-punk-dance-rock. It may even be the father, the sister, the god, whatever. Hailing from France, they are a blood-stained, boob-grabbing, beer-chugging musical Bonnie and Clyde, a couple of pervs who might be the equivalent of Slayer if Slayer…well, sounded like these guys. Which can only really be described by listening yourself, then trying to describe yourself, if your cerebellum hasn’t fused by the end of the record. I…don’t know what to say. They sound a bit like New Skin and some of the other bands that are responsible for the continued resurgence of electro-rock these days…but faster.
Their newest, Blacklist, is available now. Have a listen of their insanity-it’s one of their slower ones. (Check out ITunes or MySpace for the faster stuff.)
Kap Bambino – Batcaves (Jackson Remix)
Words by Jeff Nau
Mmm, cake. It’s delicious, it’s moist, it’s chewy, it gives you that rush of sugar when you need a pep in your step, it massages your taste buds with flavor…it puts you in “The Mood”…
Saturday night a huge line formed outside of Kiss My Bundt Bakery as people jittered with the anticipation of sampling mouth-watering and not-so-usual bundt cake recipes, the creation of owner Chrysta Wilson, who grew up in the South where a bundt was practically a member of your family. Wilson has come a long way from the days of a curious youth in North Carolina who would experiment on her Easy Bake Oven. She is now the mastermind behind a multitude of bundt creations, which she shares in her newly launched book Kiss My Bundt: Recipes From an Award Winning Bakery. Among the typical Red Velvet Bundt, vegan treats, and delicious chocolate varieties, Kiss My Bundt Bakery offers some more eclectic flavors such as: Maple Bacon Cake with Maple Glaze (includes actual bacon bits inside and in the glazing), 7 Up Pound Cake with 7 Up Glaze, Mac’n Cheese Baby Bundts, as well as a selection of aphrodisiac-flavored bundts such as Aphrodisiac Cherry Vanilla Almond Cake, and Riesling, Apricot, and Honey Aphrodisiac Cake.
Attention Prog fans– the music of Liars may take some getting used to, just because they don’t rely on any synths that whisk you away a la Yes or Rush (nothing wrong with that–after all they were the purveyors of the genre). But Liars seem a little angrier, not so much the class clown as the class troublemaker– yet possibly the ones more likely to cause a much-needed commercial music disturbance and break up all this indomitable emo once and for all. They alternate between the technical and anarchic, but aren’t above the subtle and sonorous. You might be able to determine whose mood dominates just by looking at the picture. Their upcoming and fifth album, Sisterworld, is due out on Mute Records in 2010. Indulge in their sprawling sonic canvas now on Red Bull Music Academy Radio.