Q&A | ChinaShop

Featured Gallery Music Face To Face With Dead Sara

October 7, 2011 - 5:04 pm

Real rock ‘n’ roll is visceral. It can grab you by the throat or it can grab you by the balls. If you’re lucky, it’ll do both at the same time. It’s emotional, accessible and honest, and like Danny and the Juniors professed way back in 1958, rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay, especially if Dead Sara have anything to say about it.

Following in the great tradition of LA rock juggernauts, this four-piece is fronted by 25-year-old Emily Armstrong (singer, sometimes guitarist) and 23-year-old Siouxsie Medley (guitarist, sometimes singer), both of whom have the power to levy crushing cranial blows with their respective instruments. Their self-titled debut is full of massive numbers like “Weatherman” and “Lemon Scent” (available below), but also dips into catchy pop territory with “We Are What You Say.” It’s a bold body of work, and the band is just getting warmed up.

After opening for Bush on a select group of September dates, Dead Sara came home to blow the doors off LA’s Viper Room. (You can check out our photo gallery for evidence, or if you happen to see Grace Slick around, you can ask her about it. She was there, too.) Check out our interview with Emily Armstrong after the jump.

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Gallery Music Boom Bip: Sleight Of Hand

by Rich Thomas and Dustin Downing

September 20, 2011 - 9:25 am

Prestidigitation. It’s a five dollar word for magic, but when you’re surrounded by the opulence and tradition that is Hollywood’s famed Magic Castle, it’s precisely the word you’re looking for. Bryan Hollon, the artist known as Boom Bip, has invited ChinaShop into the hallowed halls of this labyrinthine establishment to discuss his latest album, the alliteratively alluring Zig Zaj.

Partly inspired by material mined in the Castle’s expansive downstairs library, it’s Hollon’s darkest and most aggressive collection of songs, but as you’ll read, this has more to do with age and geography than magic itself. A play off Zan Zig, the turn-of-the-century magician who famously pulled a rabbit out of a top hat, the album features a diverse group of guests, but the variation was a perfect compliment to Hollon’s decidedly more live and motley songwriting style. Less bedroom shoegazing, more late-night rehearsal room shenanigans. Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos lays a foreboding vocal on “Goodbye Lovers And Friends,” Luke Steele (of Empire of the Sun and Sleepy Jackson) guests on the raucous “New Order,” Neon Neon’s Cate Le Bon sings on “Do As I Do,” and the always unpredictable Money Mark helps turn “Manabozh” into the monster mash anthem of epic proportions. But it was Hollon’s collaborations with Josiah Steinbrick, Eric Gardner, and new Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer—as well as the inspiration gleaned from inside a little lockout in East Hollywood—that provides the most surprising reveal.

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Music Cymbals Eat Guitars Do Not Fist-Pump

by Rich Thomas

September 19, 2011 - 9:06 am

New band members, new record label, new producer, new album. It’s only been two years since Cymbals Eat Guitars released their debut full-length, Why There Are Mountains, but a ton has changed. Thankfully, the frenetic, circuitous manner in which Joe D’Agostino creates melodies has not. Lenses Alien, their new LP, is one of the most complex and beautiful albums you’ll hear all year, and D’Agostino’s lyrics present a substantial meal for even the most well-read intellectual. ChinaShop caught up with the young South Jersey native about writing, drinking whiskey before vocal takes, and why he’ll never talk to you about his totally sick tribal armband tattoos.

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Music Coming Down The Mountain: Milagres

by Rich Thomas

September 9, 2011 - 8:17 am

The following is a list of small but memorable swag items I’ve received in press packages over the past 13 years: rolling papers, gum (not good), finger puppets, cassette tapes (recently), M.U.S.C.L.E. toys (awesome) and a very tiny harmonica. Thanks to New York’s Milagres, I can now add trading cards to that list. Specifically, Glamour Shot style trading cards with little band member bios on the back. Why hand out traditional business cards with the requisite phone number and email when you can provide people with more relevant information, like how Jodie Sweetin from Full House was your first crush. This is what people really care about, and given how Sweetin looks these days, actually shows an astute level of foresight and tastemaking.

So the lowdown on this band, according to the press release, is that Kill Rock Stars label boss Portia Sabin signed them on the strength of their music alone. This never happens, regardless of how small your label is, how good the songs are, or how desperate the industry has gotten. And Kill Rock Stars is no upstart. The music is just that good, and if you check out the live clip of the band performing “Glowing Mouth,” the title track to their new album, at the bottom of this post, you’ll see they lose nothing in translation. Singer Kyle Wilson rapped with ChinaShop about the interesting (if not mildly unfortunate) circumstances that led to the writing of the record. Then he kicked us down with a hefty list of some of his favorite albums of the decade. Take notes.

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Music Fink: Biscuits, Distance, Revolution and Perfection

by Rich Thomas

August 5, 2011 - 10:31 am

“Oh, wow! Old school. Look at that. Shame Ninja didn’t spring for a gatefold.”

Fin Greenall, lead man of the three-piece better known as Fink, is looking over a vinyl copy of his 2000 debut, Fresh Produce, that I’ve pulled from my shelves at home and brought to our interview. Back then, Fink was a one-man operation, mining samples for smoker’s delight trip-hop tunes. Good stuff, too. Five years ago he swapped the decks for acoustic guitars, and in doing so, helped lead Ninja Tune’s deep dive into singer/songwriter territory.

Biscuits For Breakfast (2006), Distance And Time (2007) and Sort Of Revolution (2009) were “the middle bit.” Simple, lush acoustic records backed by everyman songwriting that cropped up on more than a few tastemaker best of lists. After Greenall co-wrote the John Legend mega-hit “Green Light”—which garnered the Brit two BMI songwriting awards—Legend returned the favor with two Revolution collaborations: “Move On Me” and “Maker.” Then, late last month, came Perfect Darkness. Changing up direction on everything from the songwriting and recording process to the cover art, Greenall has created a masterstroke of an album, tastefully embellished and sonically elevated with the help of producer Billy Bush (Garbage, Eric Avery). The title track may be the best tune Greenall has ever written, and “Yesterday Was Hard On All Of Us,” the latest single, isn’t far behind.

I caught up with Fin at LA’s famed Village Recording Studio—where he’s working on another hush hush collab—to talk about the long, strange trip leading up to the release of Perfect Darkness. And chicks. Gotta talk about chicks.

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Music Pretty Okay For A Weirdo: Buck 65

by Andy Hermann

July 29, 2011 - 10:08 am

By the time they reach high school, most aspiring rappers are slinging mixtapes and, if they’re lucky, getting scouted by major label A&R reps. But for Richard Terfry, high school was a time for furtively laying down tracks in his bedroom and getting scouted… by the New York Yankees.

“His name was Stan Sanders,” Terfry says, remembering the major league scout who drove all the way out to rural Nova Scotia, all those years ago, to tell a young pitcher he had “superstar” potential. “His claim to fame is that he scouted Mike Schmidt, who’s one of the greatest players ever.”

But Rich Terfry was not to be baseball’s next great hurler. Shortly after he was scouted, Terfry blew out his shoulder—and eventually, worked up the nerve to start rhyming in venues beyond his bedroom, first under the name Stinkin’ Rich, then as Buck 65. Fast-forward to today, and Buck has been rapping successfully for, as his latest album title proudly declares, 20 Odd Years. And he’s been doing it on his terms—constantly reinventing himself, first as a darling of the backpacker underground, then as a blues-hop experimentalist, most recently as a crafter of Gorillaz-like pop/rock/rap pastiche. If he really was a big-league pitcher, he’d be Tim Wakefield, a wily knuckleballer whose stuff dances over the plate, always keeping you off-balance.

Before his latest U.S. tour (dates below), ChinaShop sat down with Buck for a rambling conversation about baseball, Twitter, experimental cinema and how he’s been developing stage chemistry with his tourmate, singer Marnie Herald.

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Music Home Video’s Collin Ruffino gets political with NiveHive

by Rich Thomas

March 7, 2011 - 11:33 am

If you dial up your Home Video albums on iTunes, you’re bound to run across a track or two that touches on light sociopolitical discourse. But when singer/guitarist Collin Ruffino became engrossed in the ongoing WikiLeaks drama, he decided a track or two wasn’t enough, and that Home Video wasn’t necessarily the best avenue to deliver the particular message he wanted to communicate in support of the heavily criticized news source. Thus, NiveHive was born. (Download “The Stuffed Men Bristle” after the jump.) We got in touch with Ruffino to pick his brain about why the WikiLeaks drama is something everyone should be paying close attention to, and how he’s helping bolster their message in his own unique way: “WikiLeaks is not an organization, it is a backlash, a mutiny. NiveHive is here to provide the soundtrack.”

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Music New Stateless Album Is Worth Its Wait In Gold

by Rich Thomas

March 1, 2011 - 11:04 am

Not to be terse or anything, but let’s skip the formalities and just get straight to the part where I say the new Stateless album, Matilda, is one of the best albums of the year. On “Assassins,” decomposing chimes inlayed with hand-played Arabic percussion give the feel of a possessed children’s music box before the whole song explodes into a half-time, hard rock headbanger. “Miles To Go” is a post-rock ballad that gives Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” a run for its money, and don’t even get me started on “I’m On Fire.” Just pay special attention at the eight-minute mark of the Matilda Mini-Mix (after the jump). You’ll smell what I’m cooking.

The fact is, Chris James, Stateless’ lead singer, is a visionary composer whose grasp of soul music, electronica, rock and classical themes is relatively unparalleled. He also knows how to surround himself with players that squeeze every last ounce of inspiration out of any given tune. On Matilda, he teamed up with producer Damian Taylor (Björk, U.N.K.L.E.), whose programming DNA as kidkanevil provides a titanium-like skeleton on which the flesh of the album is wrapped around. I hooked up with James to find out a bit more about the collaboration, his friendship with DJ Shadow, and the stories that reveal themselves throughout the album’s 50 minutes.

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Music Lamb Return With Their First New Album in 8 Years

by Rich Thomas

February 24, 2011 - 9:36 am

Being an electronic music fan back in the mid-’90s was a magical thing. Fresh sounds and new movements were popping up everywhere. The era of the superstar DJ was in full effect, and the seeds were sown for what inevitably became the complete post-modern fusion of indie rock and electronic music. One of the most exceptionally relevant and unique artists of that time was Lamb, a group that could reduce tens of thousands of pogoing festival-goers to a weeping, motionless mass in the course of back-to-back songs. After releasing their fourth studio album, Between Darkness And Wonder, back in 2003, the group split. Vocalist Lou Rhodes went on to release three critically acclaimed solo albums, while Andy’s just released his first solo album (as LOWB) earlier this year. Last December, Lou and Andy announced that they were officially back in the studio working on new Lamb material. The album, entitled 5, will be released in May. We got a chance to hear it. Then we jumped online for a lengthy chat with the dynamic duo. You can read the interview after the jump.

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