BASEMENT BABIES @ Echo

8:30pm / $8 / 18+

Candy Claws||Listen|| Watch
If you need to escape the crushing weight of the world, reach for Candy Claws’ Hidden Lands: The album is a delightful, gauzy trip through an aural wonderland. Ryan Hover and Kay Bertholf say they hadn’t a clue how to play the synthesizers they used to create the record, so they just started making stuff up. Their willingness to embrace the unknown led them into some wonderfully rewarding territory. Each track contains parts of all the other songs on Hidden Lands, and the lyrics were taken from Richard Ketchum’s 1970 nature book The Secret Life of the Forest. Hushed, reverb-soaked vocals, waves of ethereal synth sounds and spare rhythms make Hidden Lands my favorite headphone record of 2010. -Robin Hilton, NPR

Races||Listen
RACES (formerly known as Black Jesus) recently signed with Frenchkiss Records and will release their debut LP, Year of the Witch in early 2012.

“Big Broom” starts off with crunchy, textured, driving guitars and then evolves into a sweeping, slow burning psych-pop gem. – My Old Kentucky Blog

Moses Campbell||Listen|| Watch
Moses Campbell is a band. With their unconventional instrumentation, surprisingly young members, and emotionally intense live performances, Moses Campbell has sparked the attention of many people in the L.A. community and developed a dedicated following. The project was started in 2006 by Sean Solomon and Pascal Stevenson while they were still in high school. The band version of the project eventually formed but didn’t actively perform until 2008. Although the band has an occasionally shifting line-up, it is now a group effort with Sean Solomon, Pascal Stevenson, Miles Wintner, Pauline Lay and Andrew Mackelvie. With the help of LA’s biggest DIY run community oriented art and music space, the Smell and owner Jim Smith, the band was able to put out their highly anticipated first album in 2010. Their full-length, “Who Are You? Who Is Anyone?”, is released on olFactory Records, Static Aktion and their own record label, No Girls Allowed Records.

Basement Babies||Facebook
….In between sets from radio-friendly unit shifters Total Control, and the ratcheting call and response of Bakersfield guitar duo Righteous Acid, it was Echo Park-based Basement Babies who stole the show. If you believe in the power of emotional escapism (“I Heard”) and learn Los Angeles through free jazz on the freeway (“Highway to the Moon”), this is your band.

They’re doing something really cool. Not content to mimic the kind of earnest, nervy new wave pioneered by REM in the early ’80s, or the heavy swells and sighs of Nirvana’s Unplugged In New York, these songs really breathe, often unfolding into lengthy jams that end just as they began. If that sounds like a Krautrock mentality, it’s intentional. “We’re building this force that you get sucked into,” says bassist Martin Roark, “and takes you to different places.” It could have been the sun, it could have been the free-flowing keg, but for this too-brief set, the audience were not hipsters, they were not from Paso Robles, they were not graphic designers: They were in this thing that we will one day call our twenties. “I wanna get high,” sang lead singer and keyboardist Kate Linthicum, “as we make our way to judgment day.”

Basement Babies are currently working on a record with James Ferraro, a pop wizard who washes his dynamic melodies in a bath of outmoded technology. And while they’ve shared stages with Ferraro and fellow Ariel Pink acolytes Puro Instinct, Roark makes a crucial distinction: “We’re more influenced by the Beat Generation than the Lite FM generation.” Indeed, in the middle of their set, Linthicum lapsed into Allen Ginsburg’s “America,” an epic poem written at the dawn of the rock era.

“In the post-digital world, there’s a whole new set of references, and we’re compressing our lives into keys and screens,” says Linthicum. “So more than ever, we need to hear singers and the beat of the drum. The power of rock and roll is still there, but can we be, like, not too embarrassed to fully embrace it? That power is still relevant.” LA Weekly