JULIA HOLTER @ Natural History Museum

5pm / All AGES

The Soft Moon || Listen || Watch
Coming up on a year since their debut self-titled LP release, The Soft Moon presents Total Decay. Luis Vasquez continues to conjure a sound fueled tempest that intoxicates with its own post-apocalyptic dust in this new EP, which will be released on Halloween, fittingly. What began as a side-project has quickly gathered a cult following that has culled a spotlight in its own right, no longer in a cloaked corner.

After two stirring 7 inches and a full album, it was apparent that Vasquez is digging his own niche, an intimate well-spoken whisper, carrying a heavy load of synths that creep and drums that command an uncontrollable pull from within. This intimate peak into another world, Vasquez’s mind, has garnered a number of comparisons to some of the most iconic and influential bands of the post-punk and krautrock movement.

Live, the band takes on Justin Anastasi and Damon Way to help transform the listening experience cogently with an array of sound and light effects that translate the energy of the recordings.Captured Tracks

Light Asylum || Listen || Watch
At once brutal and romantic, Light Asylum exists in that space where industrial gives way to goth, where the city meets the outer regions under the cover of night. Four songs here that showcase Shannon Funchess and Bruno Coviello’s fluid synth pop attack that shifts elegantly from midtempo industrial dance to subliminal futureballads that are deceptively uplifting when considering LI’s relentless dark sheen. Calling Funchess a commanding lead singer is an understatement; there is a heaviness and attack in her vocal delivery that is downright sinister. This is contemporary synth pop to a tee that comes to life during their revered live performances.

Julia Holter || Listen || Watch

This has been something of a massively superior year for the drift – superb transmissions from Tim Hecker, Grouper, Christina Vantzou, Kyle Bobby Dun, almost anything on the Low Point label, the wildly-fucked Ship Canal, Pan American, Fedicia Atkinson, Ensemble Economique, KWJAZ, Vladislav Delay, Sun Araw… Hell, I’ll happily argue that Thundercat’s The Golden Age of Apocalypse should be in there. At a stretch. But here, towering over all the former and everybody else in 2011 is this completely unique, beautiful, baffling and brilliant fucking planet of an album – Tragedy by Julia Holter. Conceptually rooted around an atmospheric “interpretation”of Euripides’ Hippolytus with an introduction, interlude and finale, Tragedy utilises voice, synths, drum machines, piano, cello, saxophone, samples, vocoders, ensemble musicians [CalArts New Century Players] and a chorus. Most lyrics are lifted directly from sections of the play (listed in narrative order) but “positioned by an aural logic rather than in the chronological order”. Holter has studied Electronic music at CalArts, worked with Human Ear (occasional home to Ariel Pink and John Maus) and has been collaborating of late with Linda Perhacs (of which more later) as well as juggling a variety of cassette-based projects with at least one more unreleased album in the can. But it’s this album that has drawn so much recent attention and the reason for this is simple –you’ll have rarely heard anything like it. ‘The Introduction’ is a gently head-wrecking three minute constantly mutating collage starting with insectoid buzz, starkly cold and isolated foghorn (weirdly displaced from any other environmental sound) quick bursts of sampled choir, opera and brittle strings – like constantly dialling a radio through channels of Hitchockesque noir. A muted instrument moves in intimately, initially muted and you experience a slight disorientation as it occurs that this is actually a voice. A brutal cut, a moment to breathe then hissing voices, trumpet-shell blow, more voices split between serenity and somewhere in the background something more insidious. ‘Try to Make Yourself a Work of Art’ explodes in to a clattering dirge – flat-bells maybe, percussive dissonance like an electro-acoustic savvy version of Nick Cave circa From Her to Eternity but also nowhere near – robotic chanting “What your mind/ so sound and safe/ cannot know. This was my plot.” ‘The Falling Age’ starts sweetly, melancholy over languid vast synth tones, immediately heart-ache affecting as Holter delivers a deeply poignant voice singing, “See, here the wretched sufferer comes / His youthful flesh and golden hair / have lost their beauty” before dissolving in hallucinatory fashion into a more menacing series of synth drones with background orchestral disturbances. The truly peculiar atmosphere here is not a million miles from Julee Cruise’s magisterial Floating Into the Night – dark troubling ambience evoked through the warmest of tones – emotionally disorientating sonic surrealism of the highest order. It’s impossible to convey the absolute shock, surprise and joy of what happens next, when ‘Goddess Eyes’ jolts you out of wired reverie with a mind-blasting and weirdly dry vocoder, Holter in another different voice, intoning “I can see you/ but my eyes are not allowed to cry…” as piano and synth melodies emerge to support the minimal electronic bass line. Laurie Anderson may be an obvious parallel to draw on here but it’s fair one – the out-of-usual-context appearance of the vocoder sounding as beautifully fresh as it did on ‘O Superman’ all those years ago. This is ambience as explored and defined by David Toop in Ocean of Sound and over a string of records in the 90’s (alongside other luminaries such as Paul Schütze): the constant movement of sound and incorporation of non-musical elements – samples, instrumentation and field recordings played live and re-edited – the breakdown of boundaries between useless ideas of what is organic and what isn’t and the dissolution of pop and avant-garde. Pull anything out at random: five minutes into ‘Celebration’ there are organ drones, echoing vocals, fizzing drum machine before weird rumbling swells encroach on the horizon, a piano comes to prominence, Casey Anderson squeals some improvised saxophone. The rolling piano is suddenly subjected to a couple of brutal cuts, the drone vanishes and a car rolls into earshot. One minute you’re in one place and the next you’re somewhere else entirely and you have no idea how you got there and yet you’re still in motion. Julia Holter’s current association with Linda Perhacs speaks volumes although apparently Holter had not been aware of her work until recently. In 1970 Perhacs released the astonishing Parallelograms album, the title track of which notoriously collapses from meditative folk song into psychedelic concrete without warning in a truly bizarre, head-wrecking yet paradoxically coherent move. And this is written all over Tragedy – completely unpredictable yet entirely logical. But if this all sounds very clever (ostensibly because it is very clever) it’s vital to understand just how emotional Tragedy is. The flow of sound and the remarkable journey Holter takes you on; across the whole of its 50 minutes you’re never less than captivated, enthralled and entirely lost within the peculiarities of its world. It’s the most remarkably sophisticated derangement of the senses I’ve heard in 2011 and although I can’t generally stand to say such things, to consider this as anything less than one of the very best albums of the year would be demeaning.Fact Mag

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Friday 02.03.12: Aquarium Drunkard Presents: TWIN SISTER / AVA LUNA / TALKDEMONIC @ Echo

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8:30pm / $10adv; $12dos / 18+

Twin Sister||Facebook|| Watch
Twin Sister create the kind of hypnotic pop you’ve been dreaming about since Galaxie 500 fizzled, cut with Tusk-era Fleetwood Mac thump, and a shot of Lynchian weirdness for good measure. Formed on Long Island in 2008, the band wrote and recorded extensively for two years before their second EP, Color Your Life, began garnering widespread critical acclaim, earning the band writeups in the New York Times, Spin Magazine, Pitchfork, Gorilla vs Bear, and hundreds more.

Signed to Domino Records in late 2010, the band spent that winter writing and recording in an isolated and snow covered beach house in northern Long Island, took the songs to a Philadelphia recording studio, and emerged with their most polished and wide-ranging release yet, 2011’s debut LP, In Heaven, another critical favorite. Throughout all this activity, Twin Sister have toured relentlessly, opening for Beirut, Explosions in the Sky, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Wild Beasts, Bear in Heaven, and Real Estate, not to mention numerous headlining shows around the country and in Europe.

Ava Luna||Listen||Facebook

Talkdemonic || Listen || Watch
“Kevin O’Connor and Lisa Molinaro, the duo behind instrumental outfit Talkdemonic, call their music “folktronic hop,” a description as cute as it is accurate. Still, it doesn’t give away all the secrets behind their complex layered sound. Talkdemonic began as a solo project for the Portland, Oregon based O’Connor, who released the overlooked and undr the radar Mutiny Sunshine in 2004. Beat Romantic is a remarkable step forward in many respects- highlighted by the permanent addition of Molinaro on viola and synth- which builds on an already sonically drenched palette of guitar, drums, keyboards and electronics. The album is certainly folk-based, in many respects: acoustic guitar can be heard weaving throughout “Mountaintops in Caves” and “Sept with Smith,” while banjo adorns the jaunty “Dusty Fluorescent/Wooden Shelves.” Arguably the most compelling elements of Talkdemonic lie with O’Connor’s precise and forceful work on the drum kit and Molinaro on the viola- which seems to sweep each song along, connecting the dots between each electronic and organic element. With post-rock currently at a new fever pitch, it would appear challenging for a band like Talkdemonic to break through the clutter, but with Beat Romantic, they have done just that, breathing some much needed linfe into the often undistinguishable world of instrumental rock.” -Andy Hurst, Skyscraper

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Friday 02.03.11: DJs SHANNON (LA RECORD / FULL TIME PUNKS) & BLAQUE CHRIS SPINNING GARAGE / GOTH / PUNK / DARKWAVE — FREE!!! @ Echoplex

9pm / FREE / 21+

DJs SHANNON (LA RECORD / FULL TIME PUNKS) & BLAQUE CHRIS SPINNING GARAGE / GOTH / PUNK / DARKWAVE — FREE!!!

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Saturday 02.04.12: BOOTIE LA @ Echoplex

9pm / $5 before 10 pm, $10 after / 21+

BOOTIE LA LA’s monthly mashup bootleg party

FRENCH KISSES!
Direct from Bootie France:
DJ RENO

Bootie LA resident DJs:
DJ PAUL V
ADRIAN & MYSTERIOUS D

Go-go dance crew:
R.A.I.D. (Random Acts of Irreverent Dance)

Midnight Mashup Show:
Faux Queen B. VERI

Photo Booth by:Scene Snaps

Get ready for some French Kisses this month, as Bootie LA presents one of France’s best mashup producers, DJ Reno. As the creator and resident DJ of Bootie France, DJ Reno’s high-energy sets always rock a crowd, as he’s proved on tours in both France and the United States.

Also on the decks will be Bootie LA’s resident DJs Paul V. along with Adrian & Mysterious D, spinning the best mashups from around the world. Resident dance crew R.A.I.D. will provide the go-go eye candy on stage, while for the Midnight Mashup Show, faux queen B. Veri will be making her Bootie stage debut! And of course, club photographers SceneSnaps will be in the house with their Photo Booth, ready to capture it all.

Launched in 2003 by A Plus D aka DJs Adrian & Mysterious D, Bootie was the first club night in the United States dedicated solely to the burgeoning artform of the bootleg mashup — and is now the biggest mashup event in the world, with regular parties in several cities on four continents. Mixing and matching every conceivable musical genre and era into one big dance party where everyone feels welcome, Bootie’s DJs keep your brain guessing and body dancing with creative song combinations, celebrating — and satirizing — the many different styles of music. Bootie provides the soundtrack for the A.D.D. generation, with free mashup CDs given away like candy!

FREE Bootie CDs to the first 100 people through the door!

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Saturday 02.04.12: FUNKY SOLE @ Echo

10pm / FREE / 21+

with DJs:
Music Man Miles
Clifton AKA Soft Touch

FMI: Funky Sole on Myspace

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Sunday 02.05.12: PART TIME PUNKS Presents: INDIAN JEWELRY / JEWELS OF THE NILE @ Echo

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10pm / $8adv; $10dos / 18+

Indian Jewelry || Listen||Watch
On Music and Table Manners
Indian Jewelry’s voice covers a wide range, from a wheezy giggle of delight to a loud “light tenor” call, or “demoniacal” scream; but attempts to claim it for anything approximating to a language have so far scarcely been justified.

For years the writer has been associated with Indian Jewelry. Shortly after their arrival, they were the chief guest of a luncheon party. They conducted themselves, until the arrival of the dessert, with the greatest propriety, touching no food with their hands, using table utensils and drinking out of a glass. When, however, at the end of the meal a large bowl of cherries appeared, Indian Jewelry could no longer contain themselves, and giving up their party manners for those of the wild, screamed with pleasure and plunged both hands into the fruit. The humans present laughed. But Indian Jewelry, who up to that moment had participated in the general merriment, did not join them. Instead they covered their faces with one hand, painfully embarassed by a sense of having committed a “social error.” This behavior on the part of Indian Jewelry refutes the assertions of those who believe a sense of shame is limited to humans.

Jewels of the Nile || Listen
Jewels of the Nile are a female duo formed out of Portland with an obvious influence from the dark Northwest. Formed early in 2010 by Meghan Christine and Jessy Montaigne (SUBTONIX) while playing in their other band MAGICK DAGGERS, the two bonded over a common love of primal, down-tempo electronic music, also sharing double air in the stars, combining to create a spark of desire and freedom of exploration. The two are joined by Amity Givens rounding out the live performance on drums and percussion.

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Monday 02.06.12: FILTER PRESENTS Monday Night Residency: ELECTRIC GUEST / SLEEPING BAGS @ Echo

8:30pm / FREE / 21+

Electric Guest || Listen || Watch

A lingering conversation (and walk to your car) with your crush after last call; the nostalgic daydreams of a memorable decade-old moment in time; the seductive taste of someone’s breath right before you first kiss them.

Every once in a while there is a band that breaks through the stale, inanimate boundaries of modern musical genres and seems to psycho-sonically sum up the story of one’s life.

For me, that band has become Electric Guest, the creative conception of lead singer, Asa Taccone, and drummer, Matthew Compton–with some inspired production by Brian Burton (a/k/a Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells fame). An unsigned band boasting only a handful of shows and a limited amount of internet fanfare, the mysterious Electric Guest are slowly, effectively gathering nods from industry élite and word-of-mouth promotion by savvy music appreciators.

“ Everything on the album is written out of something from my life.” Asa Taccone Electric Guest has held the attention of new fans with their captivating live shows and their ’60s-esque, melody-driven beatitudes dedicated to the dynamic viscera of feeling.

Even with the polish of production and the undoubted sparkle of talented musicianship, Electric Guest’s music lacks any of the contrived, mechanical ploys of many modern pop-rock bands…KROQ

Sleeping Bags || Listen
Maybe they’ve got superhuman powers (or maybe they just don’t sleep), but the Kivel brothers are on a roll with yet another musical project.

Twins Matt and Jesse Kivel, who we know from California indie pop groups Princeton and Jesse’s project Kisses, have just released the debut LP from the shoegaze collective Sleeping Bags.

Along with fellow music multitaskers Abe Burns, Dave Lewis and Mark Nieto, these guys make the kind of twisted, hazy sound that’s reminiscent of bands like My Bloody Valentine, with the same atmospheric vibe of Tamaryn or The Radio Dept…Nylon

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Tuesday 02.07.12: BLACK CRYSTAL WOLF KIDS / BIKOS / THE GHOST TRADE / HELLBAT!@ Echo

8:30pm / $5 / 18+

Black Crystal Wolf Kids ||Watch
The Black Crystal Wolf Kids are the first-ever indie-rock tribute act, playing your favorite songs of right now. Black Crystal Wolf Kids: ’cause there’s nothing ironic about singing along.

Bikos ||Listen || Watch
“bikos sounds like the most fun you can have without getting sponsored at happy hour, or without selling your soul to the synth devil. The Los Angeles art-punks new album “Make Your Sound Sound” binges on the pummeling rhythms and ecstatic licks of the B-52′s, Talking Heads and other bands who made the clamorous glamorous. Whether they’re shouting or singing, banging the drums or clanging the glockenspiel, the sextet of Gabriel Pearlman, Austin Wester, Jaron Halmy, Daniel Hur, Dave Jones and Michaella Burton pack their debut album with electric moments. “Make Your Sound Sound” (out this week) was made in concert with producer Dean Nelson, who’s done studio work for Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, Thurston Moore and Jamie Lidell, among others, and who took a shine to Bikos after his wife was passed the band’s demos. The results: Spazzy, smart songs that’ll hook you from head to toe.” -Kevin Bronson, BuzzbandsLA

The Ghost Trade ||Listen || Watch
Two sets of brothers from Los Angeles. Former/current members of Calico, The Cairo Gang, Cola Wars, The Planck Length, Say No To The Microchip, Think Alike, White Arrows.

HellBat!

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Tuesday 02.07.12: IHEARTCOMIX, Media Contender & LA Record Present: CHECK YO PONYTAIL 2 with COM TRUISE / TEENGIRL FANTASY / SOFT METALS / GREENHORSE + VISUALS BY DEMONBABIES @ Echoplex

Get Tickets Here

9pm / $15adv / 18+

Com Truise||Listen|| Watch
Com Truise is one of the many personas of producer and designer Seth Haley, born and raised in upstate New York and operating out of a 12’-overrun apartment in Princeton, New Jersey. An admitted synth obsessive, Com Truise is the maker of an experimental and bottom heavy style he calls “mid-fi synth-wave, slow-motion funk”.

Haley’s been making music on the side for roughly a decade—going through pseudonyms like toothbrushes (Sarin Sunday, SYSTM, Airliner)—first as a DJ, and currently, as an excavator of softer, window-fogging synth-wave.

While subliminally informed by both parental record collections and hints of faded electronics product design, Haley’s Com Truise project isn’t just nostalgia capitalization. There are fragments (read: DNA strands) of Joy Division, New Order, and the Cocteau Twins, but it’s like you’re hearing them through the motherboard of a waterlogged Xbox—demented and modern. He’s got a way of making familiar things sound beautifully hand-smeared.

The first Com Truise release was the Cyanide Sisters EP—distributed for free on the AMdiscs label—where mellow stone-outs like “Sundriped” and “Slow Peels” sat next to harder IDM bangers (“BASF Ace” and “IWYWAW”) and bumpy alt-funk trips (“Norkuy” and “Komputer”). After that came a single “Pyragony/Trypyra,” and a series of eclectic podcast mixes titled “Komputer Cast.” Now comfortably situated amidst the Ghostly roster, he’s prepping his next warped pillage, and hopefully not changing that name again.Windish

TEENGIRL FANTASY

Teengirl Fantasy is Logan and Nick, two friends at Oberlin College in Ohio. It’s tough to classify Teengirl Fantasy’s music within one genre – both Harmonia and CeCe Peniston serve as equal reference points. Teengirl Fantasy’s love of drone, 4/4, and warm gating synths force new classifications of electronic music.

Their debut album, 7AM, was released in September 2010 through True Panther Sounds/Merok labels.

Soft Metals||Listen|| Watch
Soft Metals is a multi-disciplinary electronic duo from Portland, Oregon now residing in Los Angeles, California. Its members Ian Hicks and Patricia Hall were brought together through a common love of 1970s and 80s synthesizer music and began writing and recording songs together in the spring of 2009. Inspiration came to them by way of experimental electronic sounds, film soundtracks, early industrial music, minimal synth, house, techno, synth pop, krautrock, psychedelic rock, and shoegaze. Ian and Patricia share songwriting duties and compose the music together before writing lyrics and adding vocals. Their songs are built from moody, improvised sessions together using exclusively electronic instruments. The meaning of the raw music they make is explored and interpreted afterwards with lyrical themes ranging from life experience, films, literature, history, science, love, conflict, and death. Soft Metals prefer to express themselves freely rather than adhere to a particular genre. This freedom gives them a diverse sound somewhere between dance music, austere synthetic pop, and experimental electronic composition. Their two best known songs, “The Cold World Melts” and “Psychic Driving” are demonstrations of this varied sound. “The Cold World Melts” is driving, assertive, and passionate. “Psychic Driving” is delicate, introverted, and vulnerable. Some of their songs remain in their unpolished improvised form to pay homage to authenticity, spontaneity, the joy of sound, and experimentation while others are studio based exercises, fusing new and old production technologies.

Soft Metals is signed to Captured Tracks and released their first record, an 5 song EP titled “The Cold World Melts” in July 2010. Their debut self-titled album came out in July of 2011. FACT magazine called Soft Metals “one of the most accomplished and ambitious of the myriad new synth-pop acts coming out of the States.” The duo have played shows on both coasts of the US and in Mexico City. They have shared the stage with bands ranging from HEALTH and Nitzer Ebb to Glass Candy and Chromatics. Captured Tracks

Greenhorse || Listen || Watch

Greenhorse is a post-pop trio featuring Chris Hackman, Shawn Day and Joel Saur, who first met at an antique music store in Wyoming. Following an online collaboration in 2009, while Day was living in London, Hackman in Los Angeles, and Saur in South Africa, they formed Greenhorse. The LA-based group recently recorded their second EP at Pachyderm Studios with Brent Sigmeth (Nirvana, Wilco, Polyphonic Spree) and released it on October 4th, 2011.

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Wednesday 02.08.12: LAURA GIBSON / BREATHE OWL BREATHE / DANIEL AHEARN & THE JONES @ Echo

Get Tickets Here
8pm / $8adv; $10dos / 18+

Laura Gibson || Listen || Watch|| MP3
On January 24, Barsuk Records will release La Grande, the 3rd album by native Oregonian songwriter & multi-instrumentalist Laura Gibson. La Grande is a town just east of the Wallowa Valley in northeastern Oregon, a place that “people usually pass through on their way to somewhere else, but which contains a certain gravity, a curious energy.”

It’s an album about strength and confidence – about the tension between wildness and domesticity and the courage required to embark upon either path, about asserting one’s will rather than submitting. Joining Gibson on the album are musicians including Joey Burns of Calexico and members of The Dodos and The Decemberists. Gibson’s previous album, Beasts of Seasons, was highly praised.

Breathe Owl Breathe || Listen || Watch
In the days when winter was for sledding, summer was for swimming, bedtime was for stories and sleeping was for dreaming, that’s where you’ll find The Listeners / These Train Tracks. For Breathe Owl Breathe, a release like this is nothing out of the ordinary – and at the same time it’s anything but. The perfect combination of printmaking, song, and storytelling all wrapped up in a beautiful package.

After years of writing one-off children’s stories, Micah Middaugh has created a limited edition canvas-covered book that reads from outside covers inward, ending at the center. And in the middle, slipped between a hand cranked copper block printed sleeve, are two new Breathe Owl Breathe songs pressed onto black 70 gram 7″ vinyl. A project that took close to 3 years to complete, and all within the confines of his home studio (Cavern Lantern Wonder Welding) in the Jordan River Valley of Northern Michigan. Every single cover, page, sleeve, and block was made in Michigan,

The overall goal was to create something that looked timeless, felt satisfying to the touch, and appealed to any and all ages. Micah believes that it matters how a thing is made – if it pleases the hands, eyes, and ears. These sensibilities, alongside letter press printing techniques, inform every detail of The Listeners / These Train Tracks. Hold it, open it, and listen to what’s inside.

Dedicated to friends, wherever they happen.

Daniel Ahearn || Listen || Watch

Sit down for moment…It started the way things fall into one another. Two musicians tumbling around the dark evenings of Los Angeles.MWhat if we just sang together? So the framework of songs written by Daniel Ahearn found the once in a generation voice of the beautiful multi-instrumentalist Mindy Jones and away we go….
All the songs are of course Love songs.
There is, after all, only one thing worth singing about.

The debut EP ‘It’s not you, it’s us’ will be released in early 2012. –

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Wednesday 02.08.12: DUB CLUB @ Echoplex

9pm / Free before 10pm, $5 after / 21+

with Resident DJs:
Tom Chasteen
Roy Corderoy
The Dungeonmaster
Boss Harmony

Spinning the best in classic reggae, dub and dancehall

Enter at:
@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

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Thursday 02.09.12: MARK LANEGAN BAND / THE LEGENDARY DUO SEAN WHEELER AND ZANDER SCHLOSS @ Echoplex

Get Tickets Here

8:30pm / $18adv; $22 dos; $23 walk up dos / 18+

Mark Lanegan Band || Listen||Watch
It’s been almost eight years since former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan released his sixth solo album, Bubblegum. But as has become customary in the nomadic Washingtonian’s 25+ year career, he spent the time collaborating with a wealth of amazing talent, including the formation of The Gutter Twins alongside Greg Dulli, and recording sessions with Belle and Sebastian’s Isobel Campbell, Dulli’s The Twilight Singers, and his former outfit Queens of the Stone Age. Lanegan is now combining the highlights of these multiple projects for his forthcoming LP, Blues Funeral.

Set for release on February 7th via 4AD, Blues Funeral was recorded in Hollywood, CA by Eleven’s Alain Johannes, and features appearances by former Eleven and Red Hot Chili Pepper drummer Jack Irons, QOTSA’s Josh Homme, and the aforementioned Greg Dulli.Consequence of Sound

The Legendary Duo ||Watch
Based on the resumes of vocalist Sean Wheeler (Throw Rag) and multi-instrumentalist Zander Schloss (Circle Jerks, the Weirdos, Joe Strummer), you’d expect a rambunctious sound emanating from the Legendary Duo, but you’d be wrong.

The twosome plays a hybrid of folk, country, pop, ragtime, bluegrass and gospel that includes all the frenzied energy and spirit of the duo’s aforementioned bands, but is executed with a soulful dash of Americana charm not often heard west of the Mississippi.

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Thursday 02.09.12: CLASS ACTRESS / SUPERHUMANOIDS / AMERICAN ROYALTY @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

8:30 / $10 adv; $12 dos / 18 +

Class Actress|| Listen || Watch
“Brooklyn’s very own Madonna.” – New York Press

“Unabashedly slick electro-pop beats juxtaposed with coy, romantically depressed vocals courtesy of star-in-the-making Elizabeth Harper.” –New York Magazine (Cover Story) Brooklyn’s Sonic Boom – The 40 Songs That Define the Sound

“[Harper's] passion proves to be the same kind of compelling counterweight to frosty sonics that helped make the music of her influences so memorable.” – Pitchfork (“Rising Artist”)

“sweetly spectral vocals over lush ’80s synths and beats.” – NYLON

“New York is no stranger to disco-influenced electro-pop, but there’s always room for another addition to the party….cool and collected vocal hooks from [Elizabeth] Harper’s sultry croon floating atop a straightforward dance beat rife with shimmering synths and bouncing basslines.” – XLR8R

“Any band that cites Madonna’s first album as a major influence is gonna get a listen from me…their super 80s vibe made the scene feel like the climax of a John Hughes movie, aka awesome. At the end of their short set, I had hearts in my eyes.”- BUST

Superhumanoids || Listen || Watch
L.A.’s Superhumanoids are kind of a quirky and eclectic band. They play super glossy pop that sounds very sunny and VERY polished. But underneath all the slick veneer, they’ll sometimes slip in some nice electro art-y madness on you. One minute, you think you’re listening to a standard radio track. And then BOOM. It shifts to something more interesting. The band’s diverse plans for their pop attack work together nicely.

Their music is at its best when it strays from that radio friendly fair. And I particularly appreciate part-time singer Sarah Chernoff’s vocals. It’s her breezy voice, along with the crazy synth twiddles, that helps carry these melodies to those far-out ethereal territories. Sure, I want to pop out to snappy choruses, but let me float a bit in far off lands too. You know?

Superhumanoids have received comparisons to everyone from The Smiths and Talking Heads to The Beach Boys and The Strokes(?). And to reiterate, this sound is definitely polished and definitely well-produced (like so many other Southern California bands hell-bent on the gloss). So that, coupled with their catchiness, could lead Superhumanoids to become huge like those aforementioned super groups. Or not. Guess we;ll find out soon enough! Oh My Rockness

American Royalty || Listen||Watch

Guitars, samplers, 2 singers, drums, synths… A never ending showdown of genres, American Royalty has been called everything from blues rock to electronic house. The Los Angeleno 3-piece has created quite a stir around the city with their unique sound and innovative take to the stage. Their live show involves equal parts classic rock swagger and psychedelic genius with an electronic pulse, fronted by the power vocal leads and airy harmonies of frontmen Billy Scher and Marc Gilfry.

The band has supported heavily in both the rock and electronic genres…. opening for everyone from Metronomy, Miami Horror, & 12th Planet to Hanni El Khatib, Kisses, & Mini Mansions. While American Royalty’s sound may not be easily defined (they’ve been called “an impossible cross between The Black Keys and Boys Noize”), the unrelenting energy of their live set makes them a must see for any music fan.

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Friday 02.10.12: OLD MAN MARKLEY / ELLWOOD / SON ARK @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

8:30pm / $10adv; $12dos / 18+

Old Man Markley || Listen||Watch||MP3
So, you’ve heard of Bluegrass, but what’s “Newgrass”? Well, it’s the affectionately coined style of music the kids in OLD MAN MARKLEY have been pioneering since 2007. Made up of nine musicians with punk rock in their hearts and traditional acoustic instruments in their hands, OLD MAN MARKLEY have adeptly bound the two genres, giving way to something fresh and exciting. If you’re having trouble with the concept think of it like this: What would happen if Mike Ness woke up drunk in bed with the guys from Old Crow Medicine Show and decided to just make a record rather than do the walk of shame? Or, for a more tangible description, look at what bands like Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys have done with Irish Folk music and you’ll get an idea of what OLD MAN MARKLEY are doing with America’s proudest Folk tradition, Bluegrass. Music that was initially conceived through casual front porch sing-alongs has steadily matured into a 12 song album recorded by Joby J. Ford of The Bronx. The album is called Guts n’ Teeth and the second we heard it we were hooked. Every spirited track on Guts n’ Teeth features captivating three part harmonies playing off of nimble instrumentation. Folks, we’re talking about banjos, fiddles, mandolins, harmonicas, washboards, and, hell, they’ve even got a homemade washtub bass in the mix, all of which the kids in OLD MAN MARKLEY can play faster than green grass through a goose. From start to finish Guts n’ Teeth showcases their irresistible twist on the genre, infusing a youthful party-first sensibility that has their crowds doing do si dos in the circle pit. From the get go the group has gained a reputation for putting on raucous, high energy sets and in their young career they’ve already played alongside Flogging Molly, Bad Religion, The Reverend Horton Heat, The Devil Makes Three, Against Me!, and Supersuckers. OLD MAN MARKLEY are poised to reinvent tradition and Guts n’ Teeth is the blueprint.

Ellwood || Listen||Watch
In this day and age everyone has a band, and it’s easy to get lost in the haircuts and the ‘this–core’ and the ‘post-that’ and the long band names that invoke bloody doom, so when a bunch of accomplished musicians get together and use their abilities to craft sun soaked Southern California reggae and laid back ska, it’s like, ‘finally, a band that I can just drink beer and dance to.’ That band is Ellwood and they’re the product of lazy days spent in California’s Santa Ynez Valley just jamming in the garage, the guest house, the barn and a bar.

Son Ark || Listen||Watch
son ark arrived in Los Angeles by way of Roanoke Virginia (which lays exactly between The Grand Ole Opry and Apollo Theatre) when they heard a rumor that Sam Philips was rebuilding Muscle Shoals on the west coast. Since then, son ark has been filling establishments across Los Angeles with their unmistakably unique brand of Americana roots rock and with lyrics that tell tales of bygone eras and heartbreaking love lost, son ark longingly reminds us of days gone by. The songs are not antiques, though. Influenced by the likes of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Patsy Cline, Andrew Bird, and Led Zeppelin, son ark tells their tales in a decidedly contemporary way.

In summer 2007, singer Robin Harris, guitarist Sherman Pascoe, and bassist Chris Sousa met by luck or by fate and began playing played at speakeasies, cafe bars, and street corners alike for the next year. Meanwhile, in Boston, banjo player Matt Sousa began hearing of his cousin Chris? escapades and decided to move West and join band. Pat Butterworth entered the ranks in 2008, completing the band. From that moment on, son ark has made stages throughout Los Angeles their stomping grounds.

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Saturday 02.11.12: LOS CAMPESINOS! with PARENTHETICAL GIRLS @ Echoplex

Get Tickets Here
8:30pm / $16.00 adv; $20 dos; $21 Walk Up Day Of Show / 18+

Los Campesinos! || LISTEN|| Watch
‘Hello Sadness’ is the fourth record by Los Campesinos!, and if 2009’s ‘Romance Is Boring’ marked a giant step on from their genesis – seven kids and a glockenspiel, ricocheting off the four walls of a Cardiff rehearsal room – ‘Hello Sadness’ constitutes another step, and a turn of the corner. Yes, these 10 tracks cover what we are coming to recognise as core Los Campesinos! concerns – love, loss, heartbreak, football (always football). But this is a record that’s wiser and more focused than its predecessors, confident in its abilities and clear in its aims. On first listen, ‘Hello Sadness’ might sound like a less fraught album than its predecessors. Gone is the hypertense, panic-attack rattle that characterised ‘We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed’, and the melancholy wallow that you heard in corners of ‘Romance Is Boring’ is in short supply. Play it more, though, and you hear an emotion that comes from somewhere softer, deeper, and – dare we say it – more authentic. Two weeks before recording, Gareth Campesinos! split up with his girlfriend, and, he says, “everything written before then became void.” While written at pace, ‘Hello Sadness’ finds Gareth’s lyrics reaching new levels of poetic articulacy. A strange menagerie of creatures – blackbirds, horses, woodworm – stalk and crawl the verses, and the landscape of the human form remains a preoccupation. On the title track, he charts the lines of a lover’s body – “The space between your navel/And your waist band was the ice/Where two fingers pirouette” – but any tenderness is unwanted, unrequited. On ‘Life Is A Long Time’, meanwhile, a catalogue of arguments manifest physically, in creases and wrinkles. “Aging is definitely in mind,” says Gareth. “I think a lot of people still think of us in this kind of youthful sense, but we’re in this weird place in our mid-twenties where you start to think like a grown-up. I feel more 30 than 20, but you’re not really allowed to – everyone wants to tell you how you’re still so young. The record in general is about this weird state of limbo – being in a band is an incredible privilege, but it can make it hard to find your place in the world.” All this, though, in a clutch of songs that are more accessible and more direct than anything that’s come before. Current musical preoccupations include such reliably lo-fi names as Bruce Springsteen, R&B smoothie The-Dream, and Paul Heaton of The Housemartins and The Beautiful South, who, says Gareth, “really inspired me to try to sing more, rather than shout or yelp, to really work on melodies.”

Parenthetical Girls || LISTEN|| Watch
Ever the pragmatists, Parenthetical Girls are in the midst of releasing Privilege–the band’s new full length–as a box set of five extremely limited 12″ EPs on their own Slender Means Society label. These EPs will be sold separately in sequence every quarter over the next 15 months, each as they are completed. They will not be distributed to stores. As the cycle concludes, the fifth and final 12″ will come packaged in a beautiful, aesthetically cohesive LP box designed to house all four of the preceding releases, forming the complete Privilege album. Limited to 500 physical copies per EP, the 12″s will each feature original art by renowned Swedish illustrator Jenny Mörtsell, and will be hand-numbered in the blood of their respective band members. The fourth 12″–subtitled Sympathy For Spastics–will be released on November 1, 2011, and will be
numbered in the blood of cover star/Parenthetical Girl Amber Smith.

Having taken pop extravagance to its logical conclusion with their critically acclaimed Orchestral Pop opus Entanglements, Parenthetical Girls have given the orchestra their leave–and the resulting transformation is no less momentous. Returning to its core membership of vocalist/creative director Zac Pennington and producer/arranger Jherek Bischoff, the group set about a path that they have heretofore never really charted: that of sonic restraint. And though the results could scarcely be called subtle, the language of Privilege is direct and unambiguous–a new creative candor that’s felt in both its words and music. It’s Parenthetical Girls in fighting trim, and the difference is both immediate and undeniable.

The group continues this ambitious experiment with Privilege, pt IV: Sympathy For Spastics–a bizarre and bombastic four-song suite of familial entrapments, the sexual politics of class warfare, and blissful resignation. The EP opens upon “The Privilege,” a meditative exploration of family discord and terminal nostalgia. “A Note To Self” follows, an uncharacteristically upbeat pop pastiche about coming to terms with critical failure, personal resentments, and creative responsibility. “Entitlements” is a spiteful attack on the indulgences of privileged self-pity (with wincingly direct allusions to a particular patron saint of privileged malaise), while “Sympathy For Spastics” explores the often bleakly patronizing intersection of class and sexual politics. Together, they comprise a bold, strikingly cohesive pop clarion call that further solidifies Parenthetical Girls’ place amongst the most surprising and uncompromising pop groups at work today. And there’s more where that came from.Force Field

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Saturday 02.11.12: THE NUMERO GROUP & FUNKY SOLE Present: SYL JOHNSON Backed by THE BREAKESTRA @ Echo

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9pm / $15 / 21+

Syl Johnson. ||Watch
I´m not old, I’m original. I’m not old, I’m modern.” To hear Syl Johnson tell it, the sound he was creating in the ‘60s and ‘70s was the only sound. It was good. He knew it then and still does, that’s why he hasn’t changed a thing about it. Despite a recording career that took him to prominent singles-era studios in Detroit, Memphis and Chicago, that one big pop hit had nonetheless eluded him, even if the songs were worthy. Johnson was among the first to directly confront the black experience through popular music. 1969’s “Is It Because I’m Black?” went on to reach No. 11 on the Billboard singles chart that year as his biggest hit, and he could write the sweet soul ballads with as easily as he could the redlining funk melees. He could howl like James Brown and croon like labelmate Al Green, but unlike the legends of funk and soul, the world never knew Johnson quite the same way.

That is until hip hop resurrected Johnson after institutional memory of his body of work had practically faded by the mid 1980s. Now, to know hip hop is to know Syl Johnson. Samples of his music can be heard everywhere from Eric B. & Rakim to Jay-Z and Kanye West. The wicked outro riff to his minor hit “Different Strokes” formed the foundation to Wu Tang Clan’s classic “Shame On A Ni**a” and literally dozens of other hip-hop staples…Yes Weekly

with vinyl funk sounds all night by

The Sole Traveller DJs
Music Man Miles (Breakestra) & Clifton & The Numero Group

FMI: Funky Sole on Myspace
Numero Group

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Sunday 02.12.12: AQUARIUM DRUNKARD Presents: Grammy-Nominated REBIRTH BRASS BAND Post Grammy Party! / Eli “Paperboy” Reed @ Echoplex

Get Tickets Here

9pm / $15.00 adv; $19.00 day of show; $20.00 day of show walk up / 18+

Rebirth Brass Band || Listen||Watch
Simply put, The Rebirth Brass Band is a New Orleans institution. Formed in 1983 by the now infamous Frazier brothers, the band has evolved from playing the streets of the French Quarter to playing festivals and stages all over the world. Rebirth is committed to upholding the tradition of brass bands while at the same time incorporating modern music into their show. Their signature brand of heavy funk has not only won over several generations of music lovers, it has become the soundtrack to an entire city. In the wake of the sometimes-stringent competition amongst brass bands, Rebirth is the undisputed leader of the pack, and they show no signs of slowing down.

Eli “Paperboy” Reed || Listen||Watch
“It’s been a wild ride, that’s for sure,” admits Eli “Paperboy” Reed, looking back at the incredible journey that took the boyish-looking yet preternaturally mature soul belter from a Boston high school band room to a Mississippi Delta juke joint, from Sunday morning gigs behind the organ at a tiny South Side Chicago church to headlining the coolest clubs in Brooklyn with his red-hot band, and now, signed to Capitol Records.

On his major label debut, Come and Get It, Reed proves to be the life of a soulful, sweaty party in which everyone eventually gets dragged onto the dance floor. As a performer, Reed approaches each song with nothing less than utter conviction; he’s as authentically gritty as he is ingratiatingly sexy. Reed incorporates the feel of classic R&B and soul into a largely self-penned, 12-song set, produced with Mike Elizondo, the bassist-turned-producer whose credits include, among others, Eminem, Pink, Gwen Stefani and Fiona Apple. Admirers have likened Reed to such luminaries as Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett; the Boston Herald called him “Boston’s answer to Sam Cooke.” But he’s not merely trying to recreate a sound; Reed is channeling his influences and inspirations into making something all his own.

“For me,” says Reed, “it’s all about writing pop songs. Soul music was the greatest pop music of the 20th century and its influence is so far-reaching. When I pick up a guitar to write a song, the influence of the music I love invariably comes out. For me, that music has been completely internalized. I’m not trying to put anything on; this is what comes out, this is what happens, I can’t sing or write any other way than I do.”

“I try to write from phrases that I think people will respond to,” Reed explains. “Turns of phrase are very important to me,” a point illustrated most potently on his song “Name Calling” (lyric: “You went from name calling to calling my name”). “I’m very inspired by Sam Cooke in that way and I learned a lot from country music too. To be able to create a mental picture for someone with just one line is very, very important. Sam Cooke talks about writing from conversation, personal stories, little turns of phrase that catch your ear and you can make a hook out of. That’s my songwriting m.o..”

Most of the material on Come And Get It, Reed says, “was written at home, when I was messing around on the acoustic guitar.” The title song began quickly when Reed’s guitarist Ryan Spraker, who co-wrote several numbers, dreamed up the title phrase, “If You Want The Love of A Man, Come and Get It.” But, says Reed, “That one actually took a little while because we wanted to get the sentiment across correctly without sounding cheesy.” As for the subject matter he favors – finding, seeking and holding onto love – Reed admits “I like writing love songs because they are easy for people to relate to and mostly it’s what I tend to understand and those are the kind of sentiments I come up with. Some of my songs come from personal experience, some of them are changed, just ideas that come to me, as most songwriting works.”

The opening track “Young Girl” is a tribute to little-known Boston soul singer Frank Lynch, who died tragically just as his career looked like it would take off with the release of this song. That’s part of Reed’s m.o. too: going back to the source of his own inspiration, finding unsung veteran artists and bringing them along with him, however he can. This past summer Reed helped organize the Brooklyn Soul Festival, featuring under-recognized soul legends like Barbara Lynn, Roscoe Robinson, and Otis Clay, in the borough he now calls home.

While he was making Come and Get It, says Reed, “I was listening to a lot of late sixties, early seventies soul music from Chicago, in particular Mel and Tim and Tyrone Davis. It’s all very lavishly produced stuff, a lot of horns, a lot of strings, but it’s also really tough, the rhythm section is always really funky. I was going for that sort of vibe. That was the plan.”

Producer Elizondo came at R&B from a markedly different angle than Reed, having deep roots in hip hop as well as contemporary rock. Says Reed, “It was definitely a different thing for him and it was a different thing for me, to work with a strong-minded producer, but it didn’t take him long to earn my respect. When we were cutting the string section he’d have the score laid out on the board, following along. He’s say, ‘measure 76, second violin, that note is flat.’ That is very impressive. Mike’s got great ideas and he’s got great ears, and he’s a great bass player. I definitely have a pop sensibility, but he brought more of an understanding of modern music.”

Even as a youngster, Reed displayed unusually sophisticated – and good – taste, working his way through his dad’s formidable record collection from the moment he learned to work a turntable. Reed absorbed early rock and roll (Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, The Coasters) before moving on to the Country radio hits of the day. (The first record he bought was Travis Tritt and Marty Stuart’s single, “The Whiskey Ain’t Workin’” – “I still think it’s really good,” Reed interjects.) Then he fell for Howlin’ Wolf and the blues. However, the defining moment in Reed’s youthful musical education came when his dad bought Atlantic’s Ray Charles boxed set on cassette: “That was my introduction into soul music, it really changed my life. During one summer vacation, when we were in the car, we listened to those three tapes over and over again.”

Along with passing on the record-collecting bug, his dad also gave him a harmonica, the first instrument Reed learned to play. In high school, he hung out in the band room with students as passionate about music as he was: “Most of them were way better musicians than me; I wasn’t very good at the time as a guitarist. I played tenor sax, too – but I wasn’t very good at that either.” But he harbored a gift as one powerhouse singer. At a Martin Luther King Day assembly, he performed “A Change Is Gonna Come.” As he recalls, “Everyone freaked out, I got a standing ovation.”

From there, his path to a professional career was built on movie script-worthy twists and surprises. His love of the music (and a series of amazing coincidences) brought him to Clarksdale, Mississippi. After having just graduated high school at the age of 18, Reed was frequenting juke joints and lounges and playing the blues five nights a week. He found mentors among the veteran players like Terry “Big T” Williams, Sam Carr, and Wesley “Junebug” Jefferson, and honed his skills as a fledgling performer in a fertile but unforgiving environment. When he wasn’t “on” during a gig, fellow musicians and onlookers told him in no uncertain terms that he’d have to leave the stage. But the baby-faced young man from Boston had guts to match his chops: “It was hard. I had never been away from home before. I learned a lot about growing up.”

He returned north with new skills, and a new nickname – Paperboy: “I used to wear this hat, my grandfather’s hat, a newsboy hat – it’s retired now. All the musicians in Clarksdale had a nickname. They gave me that one and it stuck with me.”

Reed did subsequently try college, getting accepted into the University of Chicago, but once again, he was drawn more to music than books, hosting a well-regarded Southern Soul show on the college radio station and exploring Chicago’s south-side for records and fried chicken. Given his fascination with the lesser known but seriously influential figures in R&B, he tracked down a former Chess Records artist named Mitty Collier (“I Had a Talk With My Man Last Night”), who’d given up soul-singing for the ministry. She not only befriended Reed but hired him to play keyboards and sing at her Sunday services, paying him a small stipend that he poured back into expanding his record collection.

He returned to Boston after the school year ended, determined to put together his own band. For a time he worked for a band mate’s florist mom, using her van to transport gear as well as to deliver floral arrangements. Reed put out two very well received albums while in Boston. His first – Sings Walkin’ and Talkin’ and Other Smash Hits! was independently released and the follow-up Roll With You was released by Boston’s Q Division Records. In the US, Rolling Stone named Reed a “Breaking Artist,” praising his “howling grooves and dirty down home R&B.” In the UK, Reed received a nomination at the 2009 MOJO Awards for Breakthrough Artist of the Year. The thunderous buzz eventually brought him to the attention of Capitol Records.

“People say you make your own luck,” Reed concludes. “I’ve definitely made it a point to seek some of these people out who’ve inspired me, but some of the things that have happened so far have just been amazing – and I have been unbelievably lucky that they’ve happened.”

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Sunday 02.12.12 : Part Time Punks Present: WEEKEND [Slumberland Records] + GRIMBLE GRUMBLE + TROPIC OF CANCER = 3rd Annual MY BLOODY VALENTINE NITE @ Echo

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10pm / $10adv; $13 day of show / 18+

resident dj Michael Stock spinning mutant disco * Postpunk * indiepop

FMI: Part Time Punks on Myspace

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Monday 02.13.12: FILTER PRESENTS Monday Night Residency: ELECTRIC GUEST / CUCKOO CHAOS / HAIM @ Echo

8:30pm / FREE / 21+

Electric Guest || Listen || Watch

Every once in a while there is a band that breaks through the stale, inanimate boundaries of modern musical genres and seems to psycho-sonically sum up the story of one’s life.

“ Everything on the album is written out of something from my life.”Asa Taccone Electric Guest has held the attention of new fans with their captivating live shows and their ’60s-esque, melody-driven beatitudes dedicated to the dynamic viscera of feeling.

Even with the polish of production and the undoubted sparkle of talented musicianship, Electric Guest’s music lacks any of the contrived, mechanical ploys of many modern pop-rock bands…KROQ

Cuckoo Chaos || Listen || Watch
This five piece is what some might call a San Diego “Super Group” – comprised of players from other bands including The Vision of a Dying World, The Paddle Boat, Black Mamba, and Cousins. The immense musical talent in this line up is apparent in Cuckoo Chaos’ live show. These players are tight, energetic, and show personality that is rare in a climate of “cool kids” stoic expression in indie music theses days. In 2010 they won “Best Alternative Band” at the San Diego Music Awards and are currently finishing their highly anticipated debut full length record.

Haim || Listen

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Tuesday 02.14.12: Filter Presents: THE ASTEROID GALAXY TOUR / VACATIONER @ Echoplex

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8:30pm / $14adv; $16dos; $17 dos walk up / 18+

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour || Listen||Watch
Denmark’s finest, The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, will be coming across the pond to play some U.S. shows in October, including stops in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles for Filter’s Culture Collide Festival.

The band is touring in support of their latest release The Golden Age EP, which features new cuts like “Fantasy Friend Forever,” “Runner,” “One Giant Freak For Mankind,” and a cover of Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance.” TAGT is also making an acoustic version of their hit “The Golden Age,” used earlier this year as part of Heineken’s “The Entrance” global ad campaign…Windish

Vacationer || Listen||Watch
Most people do not take vacations often enough, some not at all. Quality vacations let us recapture that feeling of childlike exploratory freedom, which we seem to experience less and less frequently as we age. We can have fun without worrying about the familiar consequences presented to us regularly in life. Taking a good amount of time away from our daily stresses allows us to return to our lives refreshed and better equipped to handle whatever comes next.

The eastern seaboard’s foremost relaxation specialists have teamed up to compile this unique collection of serenity-inducing sonic arrangements. The audio program you are about to experience was designed with the sole purpose of relaxing the listener and sending their mind on a well-deserved trip. No airfare needed, no reservations. Simply settle in, relax and enjoy; Vacation from anywhere at anytime.

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Wednesday 02.15.12: DUB CLUB @ Echoplex

9pm / Free before 10pm, $5 after / 21+

with Resident DJs:
Tom Chasteen
Roy Corderoy
The Dungeonmaster
Boss Harmony

Spinning the best in classic reggae, dub and dancehall

Enter at:
@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

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Wednesday 02.15.12: MUCHO WEDNESDAYS PRESENTS LOVE & LIBERATION! FEAT. 2 PERFORMANCES WITH LAS CAFETERAS / IRENE DIAZ + MUCHO DJ’S @ Echo

9pm / FREE before 10pm!; $5 after / 18+

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Thursday 02.16.12: HOWLIN RAIN / THE ALLAH-LAS plus very special guest NEAL CASAL @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

8:30pm / $10 adv; $12 dos / 18+

Howlin Rain || Listen||Watch
San Francisco Bay Area-based power quintet Howlin Rain’s third album The Russian Wilds passionately protests the currently popular notion that heroically conceived and executed rock music is a thing of golden ages passed. Having been formed by bandleader-singer-guitarist Ethan Miller in 2004, as a melodic offshoot of blazing new-psych innovators Comets On Fire, Howlin Rain soon caught the attention of uber-producer Rick Rubin, who signed them to his American Recordings label and involved himself deeply in their subsequent musical evolution thereafter. Rubin worked closely with Ethan for over a year and a half as he shaped and perfected the material being written for The Russian Wilds. Finally, the band entered the studio with producer-engineer Tim Green (The Fucking Champs, Nation of Ulysses), tracking at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, as well as at Trilogy Studios and Hyde Street in San Francisco, recording most of the overdubs at Green’s Louder Studios in SF, where Tim mixed the album with crucial input from Rick.

Arriving Valentine’s Day 2012, The Russian Wilds is a sprawling, Pynchon-esque labyrinth and a colorful, feeling-filled catalyst for hungry minds. It’s the masterwork earlier studio sets and Howlin Rain’s barn-burning live shows have hinted at given blood and bone by a group in their fighting prime. “There was a point when we were really trying to blend Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, Steely Dan’s Gaucho and Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness On The Edge of Town,” says Miller. “I love the Boss’ singing, where he’s just blowing out his voice even when it’s just a pop ballad moment. And we were inspired by some of the grooves and close mic stuff on Gaucho, and by how Electric Ladyland runs the gamut from super long jams to blues numbers to drifting psychedelic pieces. There’s a sense of audacity to these records – a band chasing down strong, invisible connections – and there’s moments like that on our record. We didn’t always do the smartest or safest things [laughs].”

Besides Miller, Howlin Rain comprises Raj Ojha (drums, percussion), Cyrus Comiskey (bass), Joel Robinow (keyboards, guitar, vocals) and Isaiah Mitchell (guitar, vocals). These musicians have drawn upon the basic vocabulary of classic rock but then stretch and reshape it to more arcane and ambitious ends. The results present a unique aural vision that expresses the fantastical and the practical in equal measure, resonating quite nicely with the work of kindred spirits such as Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Wooden Shjips, Chris Robinson Brotherhood and Vetiver. This New Cosmic California movement shares an exploration of song-grounded, psych-touched, emotionally charged boogie and blues; they are, in short, the next generation to carry on the viscerally charged spirit of the musical pioneers that once rendered the Fillmore and Winterland stages magic in decades long passed. Where Howlin Rain differs from some of their compatriots is their penchant for conjuring simmering soul grooves in unexpected places, marrying blue-eyed soul influences to strutting highway-ready rock. In addition, their latest work reflects increased focus on sophisticated harmony vocal arrangements, adding exciting new dimensions to their ouevre.

Allah-Las || Listen || Watch||MP3
Greil Marcus liked to refer back to “The Old, Weird America” when discussing a certain, famous set of recordings that emanated from a Woodstock cabin basement. ALLAH-LAS sound like the Old, Weird Los Angeles: Strains of true surfing music, American harmonies, Sunset Strip backbeat, desert ramble filtered through Goldstar Sessioneers; That pre-fuzz pedal ‘electrified folk’ music and pop groups hitting the California sound with the tambourine on just the right beat. This group sounds like bungalows in canyons; hidden deco stairsteps peeking from leafy hillsides; kustom kars and dovetails and chicks in OP shorts with long, long hair, like a Dennis Hopper photo come to life. You look at their well worn Fender guitars, their real surfer tans, their dusty suede boots – and you see it’s a sound natural to them; This isn’t an act.

Neal Casal || Listen||Watch
Neal Casal’s debut record, ‘Fade Away Diamond Time’ was released in 1995 to much critical acclaim. Produced by Jim Scott (Wilco, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash) in a sprawling mansion in the hills of Santa Ynez, California, the album introduced the intimate songwriting and lyrical guitar work that would become the foundation of his career. In between recording and touring with other artists such as Beachwood Sparks, James Iha, Lucinda Williams, Sheryl Crow, Mark Olson, and Rufus Wainwright, Casal managed to record multiple solo releases, including 1996’s ‘Rain, Wind, and Speed’and 1998’s ‘Basement Dreams’, both of which have recently been reissued with discs of bonus material by Fargo Records. MOJO recently wrote, “What made [Basement Dreams] so compelling was the tone, the simplicity and economy with which Casal approached each song and the naturalness with which he inhabits them . . . pieces of singer-songwriter perfection.”

Casal is also known as the lead guitarist of Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, with whom he recorded three albums: ‘Easy Tiger’ (which reached #7 on the Billboard chart), ‘Follow the Lights’ and ‘Cardinology’. His time in the band led to working with such luminaries as Willie Nelson and Phil Lesh and allowed another talent to be revealed when he released his first photography collection, ‘Ryan Adams and the Cardinals: A View of Other Windows’. In this lavishly produced volume, Casal captured not only the exhilaration of the stage and studio but also the harsh realities of life on the road and the creative process. Internationally lauded for his thoughtful and evocative photography both of the Cardinals and of more personal subjects, Casal described the process of creating his photographs as “the songs I cannot write; the music I hear in my head, but can’t yet play.” His photos were the subject of a solo exhibition at the Bauhaus Gallery in Tokyo in 2008 and have appeared in many magazines, such as MOJO, Harp, Rolling Stone, and Spin.

After the Cardinals went on hiatus in 2009, Casal moved his home base from New York to Southern California, where he has worked on a variety of projects. He released the self-produced solo effort ‘Roots & Wings’, ‘Connections’ – the third album by his rock-and-roll band Hazy Malaze – and worked as a technical advisor on the upcoming Gwyneth Paltrow film ‘Country Strong’, in which he also appears. Currently, Casal is finishing up his tenth solo record with noted producer Thom Monahan (Devendra Banhart, Vetiver, Pernice Brothers, Gary Louris). While listeners will recognize Casal’s strong yet understated vocals, his acoustic-driven melodies have been amplified by complex sonic layers, resulting in a new, expansive sound that is the culmination of this prolific songwriter’s multifaceted catalog.

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Friday 02.17.12: NEUTRAL UKE HOTEL (A ukulele-fueled sing-a-long of Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” album)/ MICHAEL EPSTEIN MEMORIAL LIBRARY / GOLDEN BLOOM / MIRACLE PARADE @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

7PM / $8adv; $10dos / 18+

Neutral Uke Hotel || Listen || Watch
It wasn’t long after Shawn Fogel worked on the recording project “The Beatles Complete on Ukulele’’ that he hit on a similar idea involving the instrument: performing the songs from Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 masterwork, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.’’

“It’s one of my favorite records ever,’’ says Fogel (right), whose guitar-pop outfit Golden Bloom sounds nothing like NMH. “And the album doesn’t just have fans. The people who love that album are obsessed with it.’’

It wasn’t until he listened to the album in the back of a tour bus with his pals in Guster after a show at UMass-Amherst that the work registered. “It was unlike anything I had ever heard,’’ Fogel recalls. “I was blown away. It wasn’t like any music I was listening to at the time.’’ Much like Amanda Palmer did last year when she enlisted students at her alma mater, Lexington High School, to stage a production of the album, Fogel’s recasting of “Aeroplane’’ on ukulele seems as ambitious as the album itself.

“I think its easy for people to look at it and say, Oh, it’s a gimmicky, shtick-y thing — and it’s not,’’ Fogel says. “One of the things that makes the ‘Aeroplane’ album incredible is the layered production and all the really fuzzy distortion and tape loops, and the nonpolished nature of it. But under all of that, these are unbelievable songs. That’s the goal of the project: to strip these songs down and get people in a room to share their love for this album. If everything goes well, it’ll feel like a campfire singalong.’’ Boston Globe

Michael Epstein Memorial Library || Listen || Watch

Like any other flourishing skill, many musicians believe that in order to improve and progress, practice can never hurt. For a few, this includes consistently releasing music in a timely manner: staying fresh and alert. For others, this includes immersing yourself in various projects where your talents remain attentive and invigorated. While dreaming about the vastness of music Michael J. Epstein realized that creating a cast of women – some chosen because of their outgoing personalities, in spite of their musical ability – would offer the opportunities to attack music with a new perspective. A literal professor on hearing science, as The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library, Epstein and Co. have delivered Volume One for a project that looks to have many solid moments in the future…Adequacy

Golden Bloom || Listen || Watch

Remember the name Shawn Fogel. It sounds like in the recent past he’s had some innocuous bands and I believe this is the first record he has done under the Golden Bloom moniker. Still, don’t let the rookie tag scare you off and don’t hesitate to give it a listen as Fan the Flames is terrific. A pop record all the way with hooks that are both occasionally obvious yet totally effective.

Opening cut “E.H.M” starts with some catchy roller rink organ and then a searing guitar hook to equal one of the catchiest songs you’ll hear all year while on “Doomsday Devices” you might mistake his vocals for Jeff Tweedy but Tweedy hasn’t delivered anything this snappy since Wilco’s debut record. He slows thing down a bit for “She Leaves Me Poetry’ which ends up diving into a lush pool of orchestration and melody while “The Mountainside Says” seems to veer off a bit into Dylan/The Band territory and again, to near-perfect effect. In the press kit Fogel stated that “these songs come from a frustrated optimism or an optimistic frustration.” They say the greatest art comes from the most pain and while I don’t claim to know where Fogel’s head was at when he wrote Fan the Flames , it’s ok. I don’t want to read too much into it. I just want to listen to these 9 superb songs and marvel at their simple beauty. Blurt

Miracle Parade || Listen || Watch
Christopher Pappas might be primarily known in tastemaker circles as the frontman for the sorely underrated Boston-based indie rock band The Everyday Visuals, not to mention the musical director of the award-winning theatrical production Pope! An Epic Musical, which was all the rage at the New York International Fringe Festival last year. But the New Hampshire-born songwriter/multi-instrumentalist begins a new chapter of his decade-and-a-half-long career with Miracle Parade, a rustic one-man project whose sound echoes the heady harmonies that billowed from California’s Laurel Canyon in the days when Judee Sill, Gene Clark and David Crosby held court in the hallowed halls of the Hollywood Hills. After sending a cache of homemade demos to Little Record Company, the label helmed by Rilo Kiley bassist Pierre De Reeder, Pappas’ Parade was quickly signed aboard the budding imprint. The musician subsequently moved to the inspirational heart of his new sonic muse, Los Angeles, to record this exquisite debut album with De Reeder behind the engineering desk.

What came out of these sessions is 11 tracks of shimmering rural beauty that showcases Pappas’ imaginative storytelling prowess with a sincerity that can be heard clearly on tracks like electrically enhanced “The Dying Physicist”, a song which could be construed as a more somber, melancholy spin on the life of Back To The Future’s Dr. Emmett Brown if he wound up going back to 1885 on purpose, as well as “Change of Heart”, a tune that appears as if it could have been lifted from a lost reel of the first Fleetwood Mac album with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. And how could one speak of Hark! … and other lost transmissions without acknowledging the presence of its most beguiling track, “Regarding the Haunting at 16 Fairfield”, a tune that may or may not be about the presence of ghosts at the notorious Connecticut mental institution, but whose lucid melodies split the difference between Elliott Smith’s Either/Or and Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends in spite of its disturbing lyrical origins.

Hark! is an album whose soul runs as deep as the sap that flows through the Douglas Firs permeating the landscape of its audible backdrop and aerated by weighty odes of sorrow that are kinetically buoyed by a remarkable sense of depth and grace. Blurt

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Friday 02.17.12: BEARRACUDA LA – Bears Love Honey – Featuring Honey Soundsystem (San Francisco) DJs Jason Kendig / P-Play / Robot Hustle @ Echoplex

9pm-2am / Just $5 before 10pm, $10 after / 21+

On Friday, February 17th, we’re taking a break from any mainstream hits and bringing down San Francisco’s Honey Soundsystem for one big night! It’s been quite a while since Honey played a full night in Southern California and we are delighted. Just to repeat: there will be zero pop music this evening, just sweet sounds from our favorite DJ collective.

PLEASE NOTE:
This is our final monthly party in LA. After that, we’ll be doing our LA events more infrequently (5-6 times a year).

The chunky visuals, giveaways, tasty snacks, go-go bears and friendly guys are all at Echoplex – 1154 Glendale Blvd. Valet service available.

Just $5 before 10pm, $10 after. 9pm-2am
BEARRACUDA

Join the Bearracuda LA mailing list at: Mailing List

You can also join the Bearracuda Facebook Group here:
Facebook

Enter at:
@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

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Saturday 02.18.12: EMILY WELLS @ Echo (Early 5:30pm show!)

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5:30pm / $8adv $10dos / all ages

Emily Wells || Listen
Emily Wells is an anomaly among musicians most of whom spend their careers striving for a major label deal. Before she was old enough to vote, a major label was courting Wells, two music-publishing companies were competing for the rights to her songs and she was recording with award winning producers. By the time she was legally buying her first drink, however, Emily had chosen a different path. With true indie ethos, she moved from New York, leaving in her wake a lucrative deal from a major label, the renowned producers, recording studios, and a manager. During that period of her life, Emily had been offered everything that most musicians want. Everything except what she, as an artist, needed most: creative control.

Attaining the ever-elusive artist’s dream of creative control, as Wells would soon learn, comes only at a price. Wells’ cost was the thousands of miles logged, traipsing across country, playing in and outside of bars, pubs, and juke joints. She traveled in a tiny car, dragging along guitars, a tiny bass, a giant old Linn 9000 drum machine, and a four track. When flush, Emily would spend the occasional night in a seedy motel room where she would tirelessly record with her archaic four-track and dirty old instruments. Emily didn’t look back to her swank days as a would-be priority artist on a major label and regret any of her choices; she saw each obstacle in her path as a challenge. Eventually landing in Los Angeles, Wells finally learned through recording and performing, how to have the creative control she craved. Slowly building her own studio, she taught herself how to record and produce. This is the studio in which she would create, record, mix, and produce ‘The Symphonies: Dreams Memories & Parties’ her latest release. To get the sound of a full orchestra, Emily didn’t take the easy way out and simply loop the layers of violins; instead, she played up to 21 separate tracks of violin on each symphony, often using an octave pedal to create the tones of an underwater cello or viola. In addition to the strings, there is a plethora of other sounds, electronic and organic alike. Two years ago, Wells found a bassist, Joey Reina, and a drummer, Sam Halterman, who add a richness to both the live show and the recordings. Their contributions to ‘The Symphonies’ give the compositions more depth as well as a little junk in the trunk.

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Saturday 02.18.12: FUNKY SOLE @ Echo

10pm / FREE / 21+

with DJs:
Music Man Miles
Clifton AKA Soft Touch

FMI: Funky Sole on Myspace

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Sunday 02.19.12: LA RECORD/ BLUNDERTOWN/ CITY OF DEVILS present: VEKTOR / WITCHAVEN / EXMORTUS @ Echo

5pm / $8 / All Ages

Vektor|| Listen
VEKTOR have returned from the future with a dire warning for mankind!
With the release of their debut album Black Future in November 2009, VEKTOR’s arrival sent shockwaves throughout the metal world that were felt in all corners of the globe. Having established themselves as pioneers in a genre thought by many to be exhausted of new ideas, the futuristic force known as VEKTOR now return with one of the most highly anticipated follow-up albums of 2011! In what started as a quiet buzz quickly grew to a deafening roar; rave reviews from the press and scores of comments from fans in hundreds of blogs, news sites and message boards from around the world tell the story of a band who had seemingly come out of nowhere to challenge the self-imposed limitations of the metal genre.

Conceived in 2004 by front man / guitarist David DiSanto and lead shredder Erik Nelson, VEKTOR quickly forged a formidable name for themselves amongst the Phoenix, AZ metal contingent for their unique mix of technical, speed, thrash and progressive influences. Going against the grain, VEKTOR created a wave of interest with their self-released CD entitled Demolition (2006) and the ferocious two-track demo Hunger for Violence (2007). The tracks, eagerly shared by early fans, spread virally throughout the web putting the band on the radar of many international fans for the first time. In search of the perfect rhythm section to complete their vision, VEKTOR’s line-up continued to evolve throughout 2008 before finding drummer Blake Anderson and bassist Frank Chin to cement the perfect line-up.

Gaining the attention of New York’s Heavy Artillery Records later that year, VEKTOR eagerly joined the label’s growing roster with the release of their now-legendary debut ablum Black Future in November 2009. In support of Black Future, VEKTOR hit the road for their first national tour alongside label mates EXMORTUS during December 2009 and January 2010, followed by their own headlining tour that summer.

Having set such a high standard for themselves with Black Future, VEKTOR pulled up their sleeves to meet the challenge and begin recording their sophomore album Outer Isolation in June 2011. With Black Future being hailed by many as an instant classic, the tetrastructural ensemble have a lot to live up to, and Outer Isolation will deliver! With their sights set at galactic conquest, VEKTOR employs an array of intricacy, virtuosity and a wholly unique sound which few of their peers can claim.

Witchhaven|| Watch
Witchaven started back in 2006,Releasing their debut in 2010 entitled Terrorstorm.Witchaven began touring the U.S. extensively while making stops at MDF,Slaughter by the water and SXSW.

Future plans involve trips overseas to Europe and Malaysia and a sophomore release in 2012

Exmortus||Listen
EXMORTUS are an entity amongst themselves and their music, both complex and thoroughly hook-laden, refuses to lend itself to easy categorization. From the technical death-thrash riffage and surgically precise drumming to their neo-classical, twin virtuoso lead guitar attack, fans of death metal, thrash, prog metal, traditional heavy metal and all true metal sub-genres alike enjoy having
their craniums crushed by the fury of EXMORTUS.

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Sunday 02.19.12 : PART TIME PUNKS PRESENTS: SMITHS/MORRISSEY NITE with with Guest DJ Jose Maldonado [Sweet & Tender Hooligans] @ Echoplex

Get Tickets Here

10pm / $8adv / 18+

resident dj Michael Stock spinning mutant disco * Postpunk * indiepop

FMI: Part Time Punks on Myspace

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Monday 02.20.12: FILTER PRESENTS Monday Night Residency: ELECTRIC GUEST / TOUCHЀ / COSMIC SUCKERPUNCH @ Echo

8:30pm / FREE / 21+

Electric Guest || Listen || Watch

Every once in a while there is a band that breaks through the stale, inanimate boundaries of modern musical genres and seems to psycho-sonically sum up the story of one’s life.

Even with the polish of production and the undoubted sparkle of talented musicianship, Electric Guest’s music lacks any of the contrived, mechanical ploys of many modern pop-rock bands…KROQ

Touché || Listen || Watch
Some people have repressed desires that they would prefer to keep secret. They may be dark, lustful, destructive or absurd. They might reveal themselves in a dream (or nightmare). Alex Lilly and Bram Inscore created Touché as an outlet for their repressed desires, for the most part expressing them ambiguously but sometimes with colorful clarity.

As teens, the two met in a San Francisco prep school where they became fast friends. They both studied Classical music in college and they each moved to LA at different points to pursue their musical aspirations — working with such luminaries as Beck, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore, The Bird and the Bee, and Mike Patton. Alex also fronted her own band, Obi Best.

The duo began writing in Bram’s garage, influenced by the sounds of Grace Jones, Arthur Russell, Todd Rundgren, rap radio station KDAY and Europop. The songs were constructed by chopping and arranging their improvisations, embellished with some previously unfulfilled desires such as 70’s style guitar shredding and brief forays into rapping. The name, Touché, refers to the sporting nature of their collaborative process as well as to the music’s softly confrontational style. French for “touch”, Touché also alludes to the music’s sensuality – it’s boy-girl harmonies and oscillating textures.

Bram and Alex are multi-instrumentalists with a penchant for classic pop songwriting as well as lush synthscapes and dance floor anthems. They are song-crafters that always end up in the rave tent.

Cosmic Suckerpunch || Listen || Watch
When your band is called Cosmic Suckerpunch, you had better be prepared to back that name up with some pounding, stellar rock and roll. Good thing songwriter Ari Welkom and company deliver on spacey licks and heady songs, rooted in blues and funk, and indebted to imaginative fantasy rock music in the spirit of Led Zeppelin. With a driving rhythm, Cosmic Suckerpunch has invaded the L.A. scene, and with their self-released debut, Good Morning, the band plans on waking up the rest of us with a primal scream.

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Tuesday 02.21.12: Passion of the Weiss Presents: BUSDRIVER / NOCANDO / OPEN MIKE EAGLE @ Echo

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8:30pm / $10adv; $12dos / 18+

Busdriver || Listen||Watch
Possessing a hyper-literate, intellectual style of rapping augmented with dizzying elocution that would tongue-tie even the fiercest auctioneer, Busdriver is eclectic and eccentric enough to cite vocalese jazz singer Jon Hendricks as a primary influence. Born Regan Farquhar, the Los Angeles MC was introduced to hip-hop culture early — his father wrote the screenplay to one of the earliest films focusing on hip-hop, Krush Groove. He began rapping at age nine, releasing his first record at age 13 with his group, 4/29, named after the 1992 L.A. riots. By the mid-’90s, Busdriver was a regular at the Project Blowed open mic, where he would meet future collaborators and underground luminaries like Aceyalone, Abstract Rude, and Freestyle Fellowship. And shortly after, the vinyl did flow.

Busdriver guested on upward of 20 singles, and by 2001 he could no longer be contained by guest spots, releasing his first full-length, Memoirs of the Elephant Man. There were just as many detractors as supporters for his singular style, which was so densely packed it made his chosen name seem a reference for multiple-personality disorder, and the lo-fi production also left more listeners scratching heads than nodding them. His next album, This Machine Kills Fashion Tips (2002), continued in a similar manner before being trumped by better production and more focused rhymes on Temporary Forever the same year. Joined by another West Coast avant-garde MC, Radioinactive, and the breezy, fractured pop of electronic producer Daedelus, Busdriver released yet another odd puzzle piece in 2003, The Weather. Fear of a Black Tangent followed on Mush in 2005. After moving to Anti-/Epitaph, the rapper issued RoadKillOvercoat, which featured production from Nobody and Boom Bip. His second Anti- release, Jhelli Beam, appeared in 2009. In 2010 he put out a full-length mix tape of unreleased gems and illegal remixes called Computer Cooties. It was released as a free album.

2010 saw Bus toiling over a new album that will shock fans and confuse the unconverted into unwilling servitude. It is called Beaus$Eros and will be released in January 2012 on Fake Four.

Other upcoming projects include a full-length release from Bus’ new experimental punk band, Physical Forms and a hip hop superduo with rapper Nocando called Flash Bang Grenada.

(photo: Shaun Bloodworth)
Nocando
The L.A. underground has many voices, some covered in grit and dirt, some slapping the asphalt, some hitting high and brassy — but none ring truer than that of Nocando. A seasoned member of the hip-hop community who isn’t content to count his battle scars by the dozens, Nocando brings fresh rhymes week after week at the world-renowned club night Low End Theory where he is the resident host, as well as to a variety of steazy joints all around the West Coast.

With a witty style and open voice, Nocando’s raps are unpredictable, funny and lean towards social commentary, although this MC is just as likely to tell you about a wild night on the streets of L.A. as to make a point about the fallacies of the music industry. Brash and confident while also being laid back, Nocando’s lyrical delivery is an apt representative of the California attitude. Winner of the MC Battle at the 2007 Scribble Jam, the largest hip hop festival in the nation, Nocando’s mouth often seems to have a life of its own, throwing an excited energy onto any crowd he meets and providing an important connection between the music and the dance floor.

Nocando’s debut album, Jimmy the Lock, drops on Alpha Pup Records January 26th, 2010; the initial single has garnered fat reviews from widespread locales and boasts beats from the top of the Los Angeles underground: Nosaj Thing, Nobody, Daedelus, Thavius Beck, Free the Robots, Maestroe, Th’ Corn Gang and with scratching by Gaslamp Killer. The MC has also released a myriad of collaborations with artists such as Subtitle, Aceyalone, Murs, Luckyiam, Busdriver, Abstract Rude, 2mex, and many others.

Never afraid to get dirty, Nocando has won (and lost) numerous rap battles. Countless Thursday nights spent spitting freestyle in Leimert Park in the Crenshaw District of South Central L.A. established him as Project Blowed’s new school poster boy and a Customer Service hard hitter. The tireless MC has traveled to New York City, Boston, Canada, France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, Japan and many other locations giving international music fans a taste of Los Angeles’ main exports: blue collars, brown skies, bright lights, and bullshit.

With almost a decade of active duty in the L.A. beat scene and plenty of battle trophies under his belt, Nocando has earned the respect of peers, veterans and newcomers alike. Unpredictable and vivacious, Nocando will light any night and every crowd with his clever words and dynamic delivery style. With the continued convergence of the hip hop and electronic music communities in Los Angeles and around the world, Nocando is poised to shout his drops from the peak of the movement all the way to the vibrating dance floor of the underground.

Open Mike Eagle || Listen
With eyes refocusing on the Los Angeles underground hip-hop scene, Open Mike Eagle is poised to become the latest in an illustrious line of MCs to step out of the Los Angeles underground and onto the national stage. Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Open Mike cut his teeth rapping with fellow broad shoulder underground MCs before moving to Los Angeles in 2004. He has since settled in with LA’s Project Blowed, co-founding the crews Thirsty Fish and the Swim Team, while earning a rep as both an intelligent rhyme writer and a formidable battle MC. Gifted with a facile style, knack for droll wordplay, and penchant for penning memorable hooks that recalls fellow Blowed alums Mikah-9 and Abstract Rude, Open Mike Eagle presents art rap for the masses.

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Wednesday 02.22.12: FYF + CFAER + ECHO Present: MATTHEW DEAR (LIVE) + Special Guests @ Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock

Get Tickets Here

8:00pm / $15 / All Ages

Matthew Dear || Watch
Depending on whom you ask, Matthew Dear is a DJ, a dance-music producer, an experimental pop artist, a bandleader. He co-founded both Ghostly International and its dancefloor offshoot, Spectral Sound. He’s had remixes commissioned by The XX, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Spoon, Hot Chip, The Postal Service, and Chemical Brothers; he’s made mixes for Get Physical’s Body Language and the Fabric mix series. He maintains four aliases (Audion, False, Jabberjaw, and Matthew Dear), each with its own style and distinct visual identity. He straddles multiple musical worlds and belongs to none—and he’s just hitting his stride.

Matthew Dear’s 2003 full-length debut, Leave Luck to Heaven, is a suite of sparse, wickedly funky house laced with Dear’s deep, distinctive vocals, and includes the much-loved single “Dog Days” (voted one of Pitchfork’s Top 100 Songs of the Decade). The record was met with rapturous acclaim from both the dance-music establishment and the critical press, including a four-star review in Rolling Stone. The 2007 follow-up, Asa Breed, is a considerable departure from Heaven’s dancefloor excursions, incorporating the polyrhythms of Afrobeat, the irreverent pop sensibilities of Brian Eno, and the austere beauty of Krautrock. More four-stars reviews followed (Q and Mojo magazines), and Dear subsequently began touring with a live three-piece band, Matthew Dear’s Big Hands, in which Dear acted as frontman, commanding the stage with a Bryan Ferry-like swagger and a gentleman’s grace.

Today, Matthew Dear finds himself in a unique position. His highly anticipated third album, 2010’s Black City, is the culmination of years of hard work and experimentation, a darkly playful sound-world that envelops the listener like the arms of a malevolent lover. After over a decade of exploring pop’s outer limits, Matthew Dear now inhabits a rarefied corner of the musical universe: no longer tethered to any one genre, respected by his peers, and blessed with a bottomless well of creative energy. Now is Matthew Dear’s moment, and it sounds like nothing else.

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Wednesday 02.22.12: PICKWICK @ Echo

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8:30 / $8adv; $10dos / 18 +

Pickwick || Listen || Watch
Pickwick was formed in 2008 when singer Galen Disston left Los Angeles and relocated to Seattle, Washington. Originally an alt-country group, Pickwick spent the following two years trying to establish themselves in the Seattle Folk scene. Amidst a barrage of similarly-minded artists, the band struggled to connect with audiences and was on the verge of disintegration.

Around that time Disston heard Sam Cooke’s classic, “A Change is Gonna Come.” Floored by the poignance of Cooke’s voice, the band began experimenting with music that would allow Disston the same kind of vocal freedom. It was not long before the band had completely revamped their sound.

Raised on the rhythm sections of indie rock staples such as Spoon & The Walkmen, this new undertaking led the members of the band to dive deep into the catalogs of the Stax and Motown labels. By combining these two seemly different points of reference, Pickwick was able to cultivate a sound that was more organic and unique to the six members that compose the band.

As a nod to music from the past as well as their own love of vinyl recordings, Pickwick has begun to release their music through a series of 45′s that are also available via digital download.

The band is currently working on writing material for their debut full-length album, expected to be released in 2012.

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Wednesday 02.22.12: DUB CLUB presents A night called “Dancehall Roots” with JOHNNY OSBOURNE / WAYNE SMITH / RANKING JOE backed by Echodelic Sound @ Echoplex

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9pm / $10 advance; $10 before 10pm at the door; $15 after 10pm at the door / 21+

A crackly slab of vinyl is placed on the turntables, a heavier than lead bassline oozes out of the speakers, followed by a cracking snare and kick drum. A performer takes to the mic and an echoed voice sings out, “way in my brainnnnn…” as the music is tweaked and dubbed out by the selector…then the record is spun backwards the needle lifted up and the 45 played again for the next vocalist…This is the classic style of sound system/dancehall reggae, which has influenced so much other music from Hip Hop to Dubstep. This show at Dub Club will feature some of the crucial performers in the history of dancehall and will be a night to remember.

Johnny Osbourne
The “Godfather of Dancehall” is the well deserved moniker for Johnny Osbourne describing his contribution to Reggae music as it evolved from the local Jamaican community to the international arena. A string of hits dating from the late sixties through the nineties defines Johnny’s longevity and artistic ability. Songs like “Buddy Bye” , “Truth And Rights” ,“Purify Your Heart”, “Ice Cream Love”, and so many others, have been played, remixed, recut and replayed nonstop by DJs right to the present moment. He has had the ability throughout many different eras and styles of Reggae to come up with that vocal hook, lyrics and delivery that will light the dancehall on fire and get the crowd dancing and singing along.
As Reggae historian Roger Steffens affirms , “ A 25+ year career that shows no signs of letting up , from soulful reggae to a massive dancehall catalog, Osbourne’s warm voice filled with conviction and yearning is one of the island’s best”.

Wayne Smith
Most people identify Wayne Smith with the digital super hit of 1984 “Under me Sleng teng”. In fact, Wayne Smith’s career started long before the digital riddim explosion in Jamaica, in the late 70s he recorded with the cult classic LP “Youthman Skanking” produced by Prince Jammy, which has recently been re-released, and the great roots 45 “Time is a Moment in Space” (adapted from a Barbara Streisand tune!) . But it was the riddim he composed on a small Casio keyboard that really brought him to fame. It was a totally new sound for Reggae and at first Prince Jammy did not want to release the record, it was only after he played it in a sound clash against Black Scorpio and the crowd went wild demanding to hear it over and over again that “Sleng Teng” was released, thereby popularizing the new digital style.

Ranking Joe
Ranking Joe is a longtime dancehall veteran and a favorite at the Dub Club. He is a disciple of the great U-Roy and learned his craft chatting on the microphone at innumerable dances in the ghettos and country yards of Jamaica throughout the 70s and 80s. Untouchable improviser, lyrical library, and rhythmatical warrior.

Echodelic Sound
The Echodelic crew have been running the Dub Club in Echo Park for over a decade now, bringing in legendary artists from Jamaica, and holding it down in their own fashion on the turntables week after week. DJ Tom Chasteen will be spinning the riddims for the artists on this show and has been well seasoned from countless hours working on the decks in the dancehall arena.

with Resident DJs:
Tom Chasteen
Roy Corderoy
The Dungeonmaster
Boss Harmony

Spinning the best in classic reggae, dub and dancehall

Enter at:
@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

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Thursday 02.23.12: DISAPPEARS / THE FRESH & ONLYS / WOUNDED LION @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

8:30pm / $8av; $10dos / 18+

Disappears || LISTEN || WATCH
Drawing on a combined reverence for reverb, heavy tremolo, distortion, delay and repetition, Disappears play minimal rock music inspired by everything from Kraut to American gospel to punk. Started as a recording project in 2008, Disappears inevitably left the studio – supporting Wire, Deerhunter, Tortoise, German legends Cluster and beyond.

Initially designed to explore the simplicity of early American music and it’s reinterpretation by UK acts of the mid 80′s, founding member’s Brian Case (The Ponys) and Graeme Gibson (Boas, Fruit Bats) started recording demos in search of something familiar but exciting. Eventually the tapes were passed onto Jonathan van Herik (Boas) and new comer Damon Carruesco, completing the group’s line up. Throughout 2008 the band self released a series of 7″ singles and a live album, signing to the Kranky imprint in 2009. Their debut album Lux was released in the spring of 2010. Sans a few early champions, Lux was initially met with little fanfare and went largely unnoticed. Dark and hazy, it showed the band experimenting with minimal arrangements married to the attitude of bands like Suicide and The Fall.

A series of US tours followed, the band crisscrossing the states playing to small but enthusiastic crowds. Undeterred, Disappears entered the studio a mere month after Lux’s release to record their follow up Guider. Propulsive and violent, Guider perfectly represented the state of the band – uncompromising and uninterested in a world deluded with hype and numerical evaluations. Anchored by the 16 minute “Revisiting”, Guider showed the band locking in on the minimalism hinted at on earlier releases as well as fully giving into the ideas of repetition and space explored by influences like the Staple Singers and Neu!. A chance meeting with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth proved not only instrumental in the band supporting Michael Rother on his Hallogallo tour (on which Steve played drums) but also to his eventual joining of the band following Gibson’s amicable departure. Bolstered by Shelley’s presence as well as the critical acclaim upon Guider’s release, Disappears launched a series of successful tours in the US, United Kingdom and Europe.Billions

FRESH & ONLYS || LISTEN || WATCH
When someone tells me an album has no bad songs, I get dubious– not about the claim, but about how ambitious a record that avoids failure could be. Well, there’s not a bad song on Play It Strange, and yet there’s ambition all over it. The Fresh & Onlys’ mix of Buddy Holly melody, Byrds twang, and beatific joy might seem conservatively retro, in line with the garage leanings of San Francisco comrades Thee Oh Sees, the Mantles, and Sonny & the Sunsets. But the band constantly stretches those parameters, whether in the sprawling, eight-minute “Tropical Island Suite”, the bombast of “Who Needs a Man”, or a deceptively dark opener ironically titled “Summer of Love”. So while it’s fair to call Play It Strange a non-stop hit parade, the Fresh & Onlys deserve just as much credit for shooting at tons of different targets.Pitchfork

Wounded Lion || LISTEN || WATCH

Wounded Lion || Listen || Watch
Led by fine-art painter Brad Eberhard, Wounded Lion titters and shakes at live performances, throwing appendages in the air at will. Eberhard sings with warbled gusto, wondering aloud about the mysteries of cave creatures, pony people, Muppet Babies, and the Dagobah system. The L.A.–based garage-pop act’s upbeat, occasionally frantic songs often include multiple band members banging drums splayed across the stage, resulting in frenetic beats. But it works with their messy, lo-fi aesthetic. Equally influenced by psychedelic acid-droppers Can and vintage Spanish fairy tales (the latter of which gave the band its name), Wounded Lion’s tunes mix innocent hand claps with dark guitar riffs. The result: audience faces plastered with unabashed smiles.San Francisco Weekly

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Friday 02.24.12: GRIMES / BORN GOLD / LADY TRAGIK @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

8:30pm / $10.00adv; $12.00 day of show / 18+

Grimes|| Listen || Watch
Grimes is weird pop influenced by styles such as R&B, Industrial, goth, hip hop and Western medieval organum. She is noted for simple but strong percussion, vocal virtuosity, and addictive melodies. Despite having little acquaintance with music before the age of 18, Grimes (born 1988) has overcome this barrier and used it to her advantage, exploding onto the music scene with a sound that is that is far different from that of her peers, and extremely broad in it’s references (Mariah Carey, Salem, Cocteau Twins, Gang Gang Dance, The Smiths, Prince). And yet, while all Grimes songs are different and genre-bending, there is a strong sound that is fully her own, characterized primarily by her chameleon-like voice.

She cannot read music and has no understanding of theory or notation, so her attempts to imitate often fail. Rather, the result is particularly unique, strangely beautiful, sometimes scary, frequently melancholic and catchy as hell.Windish

Born Gold||Listen||Facebook
The Canadian guys formerly known as Gobble Gobble, now known as Born Gold, are releasing their debut LP September 20th on the band’s imprint, Hovercraft, and Crash Symbols, a label brought to you by the folks from Get Off The Coast. Packed with a flurry of noisy fun, the debut track under the new name, “Alabaster Bodyworlds” is a pool party in the midst of a hurricane, confetti and lawn chairs dancing in the wind to future-heavy electro beats, only slowing down for breaths on the catchy chorus.

Frontman Cecil Frena relflects upon Born Gold’s current state of mind: “We have been slowly coaxing this caterpillar into a butterfly with our fists. Check it out, girl– a new face to fit both our past to date and the futuresex we are slowly growing into. Stand before a mirror, hold your palm over your right eye, and repeat Born Gold six times.” Bumps, bruises, broken furniture, and sweaty brows: these are the things that wild synth-pop is made of.
Altered Zones

Lady Tragik ||Listen || Watch

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Friday 02.24.12: THE BUDOS BAND @ Echoplex

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9PM / $17.00 advance; $20.00 day of show; $21.00 at the door / 21+

The Budos Band || Listen || Watch

Having scalded listeners’ ears with sonic lava on Budos I and stung them with venomous frequencies on Budos II, The Budos Band delivers on their promise to spread the epidemic of “Budos Fever” far and wide with the release of The Budos Band III. The cobra is poised to strike if anyone dares challenge The Budos on their quest. And, if there was ever any question whether the brotherhood of The Budos is instrumental afro-soul royalty, the Chateau de Budos that graces the back cover of The Budos Band III assures all that the group is strong – unstoppable even – and will use all of nature’s power to ascend to their rightful throne.

“Heading into the studio for Budos III, I really thought we were going to make the first psychedelic, doom-rock record ever recorded at Daptone,” recounts longtime Budos de facto frontman and baritone saxophonist, Jared Tankel, “but somehow it ended up sounding like a Budos record.” Recorded at the now infamous Daptone “House of Soul Studios” by the world-renowned production team of Bosco Mann and TNT, Budos III was tracked to analog tape and recorded live over the course of an intensely productive 48 hour period, much like its predecessors. The songs that emerged are unmistakably the type of tough sonic nuggets that have long earned The Budos Band the title, “the quintessence of Staten Island soul.” Replete with tight rhythms, blistering breakbeats, blaring horns and, yes, perhaps even a tinge of psychedelic doom-rock, Budos III promises to bring some added heat upon its release this summer from Daptone Records.

Composed, arranged and honed during weekly, beer-fueled Staten Island writing sessions – as well as more than 150 live gigs over the last two years – the band’s third full-length studio effort evinces the tight-knit and creative bond The Budos have come to share since the ten-piece ensemble’s inception in 2003. “The Budos have become more of a brotherhood,” explains bassist Dan Foder. “Egos suck, that’s why bands don’t last more than two records. Musically, we understand each other better now than when we were younger. That’s why this is our best record. We’re all on point – our playing and creativity are at a higher level – and we understand what The Budos Band means to all of us: family and friendship.”

The strength of the group’s bond and its music has allowed The Budos Band to accomplish feats rarely attained by instrumental groups. With collective sales of over 30,000 albums and tours that have spanned the US, Canada, and Europe, playing rock clubs and large festival stages, The Budos have developed a rabid fan base that spans genres and ages. At any given Budos show, one might see b-boys break dancing to the band’s funk and hip-hop beats; record junkies nodding their heads to the soul-infused melodies; metal heads thrashing to the dark and ominous guitar and bass riffs; and general music lovers who eagerly attend Budos shows and smile approvingly at the melting pot of music that takes place. Simply put, The Budos kill the live show and with each record, their ability to put the energy, sweat, and passion of the live experience to wax increases.

The sound of The Budos may be challenging for some to describe, but to the band, “Staten Island instrumental afro-soul” means internalizing such seemingly disparate influences as the Cairo Jazz Band, J.C. Davis, Mulatu Astatke, and Black Sabbath and coming together to form a mind-bending combination of rhythm and melody. The unique and signature sound of The Budos has become a favorite for music supervisors to use in TV, film and video games, as well as producers who have sampled The Budos on numerous hip-hop tracks.

The live shows, the long hot nights in the rehearsal studio, the diverse listening diets of the members – all of it – comes together to make The Budos Band III the most vicious Budos release yet. “We wrote a lot of this album together,” says trumpeter Andrew Greene, whose tune, “Black Venom” was named after two of his favorite bands–Black Sabbath and Venom. “There was a lot more collaboration as people would come regularly with ideas, even the percussion guys. We all had a say. Unlike our earlier albums, we weren’t trying to be Ethio-, or funk, or soul, we were just trying to be The Budos.” Guitarist Thomas Brenneck–who breathes psychedelic fire into “Reppirt Yad,” the album’s lone cover song–agrees. “We weren’t looking to explicit outside influences for inspiration as we were on previous records. For this album, we were looking more within The Budos.” And to help distill that unique Budos inner-essence, it didn’t hurt to have the ever-present ear of Daptone’s world-renowned Bosco Mann tweaking knobs and manipulating faders behind the engineer’s console. “With Bosco in the studio, doing what he does, the sky isn’t the limit,” says Tankel, “there simply is no sky.”

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Saturday 02.25.12: UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA with WHITE ARROWS @ Echoplex

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8:30pm / $12adv; $15dos; $16dos walk up / 18+

Unknown Mortal Orchestra || Facebook || Watch
Unknown Mortal Orchestra first dropped into the world in late 2010 as a bandcamp account carrying a single called ‘Ffunny Ffrends’.

‘Ffunny Ffrends’ was everything you imagined it might be – alien beatnik pop music that echoed 60s psychedelia and krautrock minimalism with just a hint of gentle weirdness that suggested its roots might equally lie in the verdant indie of the equally distant New Zealand scene.

Ruban Nielson is a New Zealand native who had transplanted to Portland, Oregon with his band Mint Chicks. UMO was a project conceived as Ruban’s escape hatch to a new musical dimension where his vision of junkshop record collector pop could be realized in a sound that recalled Captain Beefheart, Sly Stone and RZA jamming on some kids TV theme too dark to ever be broadcast.

Out of the home studio, Ruban was joined by local Portland producer Jake Portrait on bass and teenage prodigy Julien Ehrlich on drums. They have been on the road all year, sleeping in ditches and running drunkenly from venues when needs be, curling ears and turning heads with their intoxicating sound all the way.

White Arrows || Listen || Watch
“Louche and strung-out track from the LA band” Hottest Download Sunday Times Culture
“An impressive collection of songs that hint at their potential” Music Week

Following the release of their debut ep earlier this summer Los Angeles’ five-piece White Arrows are set to make their British live debut and release their first single, ‘Get Gone’. It is a groove-soaked, synth’-laden slice of what’s to come, on the band’s RAC produced debut album, scheduled for release in 2012.

A fusion of heavyweight melodic hooks, hip hop drum samples and analogue synths – the White Arrows sound is a potent brew cooked up by singer Mickey Church, Steven Vernet (bass) Andrew Naeve (electronics), Mickey’s younger brother Henry Church (drums) and half-brother, John Paul Caballero (guitar).

Church the elder is no stranger to the odd herbal infusion, born blind Mickey Church spent his first years railing against his fate and through an extensive program of eye excercises and superhuman determination regained his vision at the age of eleven. This transformation led to a degree at NYU in Ritualistic Shamanism. Church’s obsession with the alternative drew him to the booming NYC club scene : the cultural and philosophical blend was the prime ingredient in the formation of White Arrows.

Church returned to his native LA and there together with the newly formed band, White Arrows have spent the intervening time perfecting their art. A heavy weight touring schedule around the States has meant the band have performed with Cults, White Denim, The Airborne Toxic Event, and Portugal the Man among others

Their British live debut was late September and saw the band more gig-fit than ever. It is bracketed by a mammoth Stateside touring schedule that sawshows with Those Darlins and Weezer during August and then on the return from the UK, a 16 date run with Naked and Famous throughout October.

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Saturday 02.25.12: FUNKY SOLE @ Echo

10pm / FREE / 21+

with DJs:
Music Man Miles
Clifton AKA Soft Touch

FMI: Funky Sole on Myspace

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Sunday 02.26.12: ECHO & SLOW MOTION Present: PSYCHIC TV / BESTIAL MOUTHS / DANGEROUS BOYS CLUB @ Echoplex

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8pm / $22.00 adv; $25.00 day of show; $26.00 day of show walk up / 18+

PHOTO CREDIT: Yasuko Shiratsuchi
Psychic TV || Listen||Watch
Psychic TV was first born in 1982 at 50 Beck Road, Hackney following the termination of Throbbing Gristle the year before. Six months later the duo completed the nucleus of the new unit with ex-TG’er Peter Christopherson. By that time Genesis had already conceived, named and pioneered the genre “lndustrial Music” with Throbbing Gristle. Along with groups like The Velvet Underground, Throbbing Gristle is and remains one of the most influential rock groups of the last 30 years; if you haven’t heard their music, you will certainly have listened to someone who has. In Throbbing Gristle, Genesis and company synthesized the influences and philosophies of Gen’s close friends and collaborators, including Beat writer William S. Burroughs; Beat poet and painter Brion Gysin; psychedelic shaman Dr Timothy Leary; queer activist film maker Derek Jarman; and those of legendary occultist Austin Osman Spare, theorist John Cage and various seminal underground authors, thinkers, artists and film makers. The group “TG” produced some of the most unsettling and thoughtprovoking music of all time. Their pioneering “Industrial” sound and self-sufficient approach to record distribution has had a profound impact, becoming key elements of underground music production and distribution ever since.

Right from the outset, Psychic TV in turn made highly innovative and unflinchingly provocative music blending elements of psychedelia and dance with Industrial sounds (named “HYPERDELIC” by Genesis). As with TG, the details of Psychic TV’s packaging, marketing and the radical lifestyle of the musicians were all treated as equally crucial components of the final aesthetic statement. For some 14 odd years, Psychic TV recorded and released dozens of live and studio albums ending up in the Guiness Book Of Records for releasing more albums in one year than any other artist (even Elvis!). Psychic TV was terminated in the mid 90′s as Genesis pursued further musical goals with his spoken-word and expanded poetry/video installation project Thee Majesty.

In 2003, drummer Edley ODowd of New York City’s legendary rock band Toilet Boys gently but persistently persuaded Genesis to rekindle her rock spirit and Psychic TV. Edley succeeded and they played their first public show that December. The reactivated ensemble led by ODowd, has been touring the US, Europe and Russia and releasing music ever since. Presently motivated by a love of performance & recording, Genesis calls this most current lineup ‘the best version of Psychic TV ever’.

The full history of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and her varied seminal musical exploits of the past three decades as well as her soclo-cultural (or should that be politico-sexual? Or all the above!) adventures would easily fill a book (and has … Soft Skull/Shortwave Books published “Painful but Fabulous: The Lives and Art of Genesis P-Orridge” in 2003 and more recently with “Thee Psychick Bible” in hardcover in 2009 and paperback in 2010). Genesis continues to exhibit artwork around the globe (Most recently at Art Basel Miami and The Serpentine Gallery, London).

Already living a creative further chapter of her “life” book Genesis continues to provoke and explore in her very public private life; from replacing all her healthy teeth with solid gold permanent replicas in an homage to Pierre Clemente in Luis Bunuel’s “Belle De Jour.” Littering the dictionary and culture with new words for new, original ideas Genesis can be said to follow the serious process and joy-filled strategy of “When there is no example imagine it, when there is no word for it invent one.”

Bestial Mouths || Listen||Watch
Under a churning haze of harrowing vocals, buzzing synths and fitful drumming Los Angeles based Bestial Mouths create a unique sonic space that is at once dissonant and engaging. Drawing from a large base of influences including industrial sound collage, obscure early electronic pieces and experimental works, Bestial Mouths came together in 2009 from a desire to create original music that is foreboding without relying on cliché. Christopher Myrick (Synths) and Ebrahim Saleh (Drums) create an unpredictable ground for singer Lynette Cerezo to walk on. Hovering above the clamor, Lynette’s haunting, atypical vocal delivery transforms cryptic nightmarish imagery into tightly wound, barely controlled pop.

Early in their career frantic live performances combined with a self-released demo captured the attention of DAIS Records, whose catalog includes Cold Cave, COUM Transmission, Robert Turman, aTelecine and Iceage. Bestial Mouths divided their time in 2010 between the road and the studio, recording a split with Blessure Grave and sharing stages with Former Ghost, Soft Kill, Water Borders, Nervous Gender, The Delta Mirror, Soft Metals and Jewels of the Nile.

Hissing Veil, Bestial Mouths debut full length available this July on DAIS Records is 40 minutes of intense gloom. A meditation on the relationship between transgressor and victim conceived in a flurry of automatic writing, Hissing Veil is an urgent declaration revealed in a barrage of primitive rhythms and feral calls.

Bestial Mouths will be touring extensively this summer in support of Hissing Veil. Yes, a great silence is waiting. Prepare yourself.

Dangerous Boys Club
DANGEROUS BOYS CLUB aka DBC,
Like an explosion, DBC unleashes on assault of screaming synthesizers, demonic beats, laser lit fog and passionate singing akin to a Black Mass given by Morrissey.
The Dangerous Boys Club is the baby birthed by Aaron Montaigne (singer), Mac Mann (Synth/electronique Organ) of the legendary 90′s harcore bands Antioch Arrow and Get Hustle. Started in the fog of Portland Oregon in 2009, DBC adopted Mark Burden (bass) of Silentist / Glass Candy and Sam Ott (electronique drums) of Year Future to create a very Unique experimental / pop / noise / dark wave inspired by Roxy Music, Soul Side, Suicide the Misfits and David Bowie.
in 2010 DBC released “VRIL” on Nathan Howdeshell of the GOSSIP’s Portland lable Fast Weapons and toured the west coast numerous times and tour of the east coast playing with bands such as Cold Cave, Salem, The Soft Moon and Bronze.
DBC’s second full release “HEAVEN” will be released on DAIS records in spring 2012 and will be touring the states and Europe.

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Sunday 02.26.12: PART TIME PUNKS Presents: TERRY MALTS [Slumberland Records] / DEAD ANGLE / PERMANENT COLLECTION @ Echo

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10pm / $8adv; $10dos / 18+

Terry Malts || Listen
The shroud of mystery surrounding Terry Malts is no accident. It turns out that all three band members are also core members of another local band (plus a few instrumental switcheroos) that has received some notoriety over the years, even snagging a spot on the soundtrack of one of those beloved television shows about WASP-y rich kids.

But to call it a side project or a spin-off from those-who-shall-remain-nameless — as is often done around town among people in the know — is disingenuous to all that is Terry Malts, a solid, well-conceived musical effort in its own right. Straying from the cliché of the self righteous musician, the band members seem to take little seriously in conversation. They cite poppers and tall cans of beer as influences and joke about having never heard of the aforementioned “other” band. But the music is no joke.

When asked what the real deal was with this seemingly covert operation, guitarist Corey Cunningham replies that the band “wanted a fresh start” and thought it best to “let people reach their own perspective.” Plus, he adds, there is no line where one of their bands begins and another ends. “I see it as though we are different people in a different band.”

Perhaps that’s why people seem to pigeonhole them into a punk corner in an effort to understand who and what the band Terry Malts is. The constant Ramones comparisons — though understandable on a superficial level — should make eyes roll because Terry Malts is so much more than that: carefree bubblegum pop of the 1960s combined with the fuck-you attitude of 1970s punk and a layer of fuzz and feedback enough to please any jaded post-punk-post-indie pop music snob.

These guys tear it up live as well — Nathan Sweatt’s fast-pounding drums are tight enough to incite a dance riot, and Cunningham’s high-driving distorted guitar leads sound like he took a bubble bath with a blender. Phil Benson, towering in stature and personality, seems as if he’s singing love ballads to his bass guitar — hugging his instrument up high and smiling while bopping up and down. But don’t misread that as precious. The boys have ass-kicking spunk that results in live performances and recordings that keep you wanting — no, needing — more.

The band just released a 7-inch on Slumberland Records, the still-relevant Oakland via Washington, D.C., label that released recordings from such college radio chart toppers as Small Factory, Velocity Girl, and 14 Iced Bears in the early 1990s. “I’ve been buying Slumberland records since high school, so it’s a big deal for me,” says Cunningham. Owner Mike Schulman sought them out after hearing this year’s double-A-sided Distracted cassette on Loglady.

Three tracks were chosen for the 7-inch release “I’m Neurotic,” with “Distracted” and “Where is the Weekend” wrapping up the B-side. The title track kicks off with a blast of overdrive and propulsive drum beat and continues on a steady rhythm with intermittent bursts of feedback. The sing-songy “Distracted,” a song about moving on after a heartbreak, is so blissfully poppy and sweet that you could eat it. Perhaps “Where is the Weekend” is the most straightforward and in-your-face — an anthem for the modern proletariat working a crap-ass job for low wages in an overpriced city where the weekend fun can’t come soon enough.

When asked what’s on the horizon for this up-and-coming band, Benson wisecracks: “There’s been talk of a possible LP. Perhaps a series of three flexis, each featuring a different instrument, that while played together on three separate turntables reveal a single masterpiece. We shall see.” Oh yes, we shall.SFBG

Dead Angle

Permanent Collection || Listen ||Watch

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Monday 02.27.12: UNIQUE LA’S MOVIE NIGHT PRESENTS: CHINATOWN @ Echoplex

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Doors at 7pm / Movie at 8pm / $10 / 18+

THIS IS OUR DEBUT MOVIE!

Chinatown
A neo-noir classic set in Los Angeles in 1937, with a sinister plot about crime, adultery, and…wait for it…the DWP! It won Best Original Screenplay and was nominated for 10 other Oscars. Locations include Echo Park Lake, Catalina Island, a South Pasadena mansion, and one of our fav bars The Prince in Koreatown (standing in as the old A-List Hollywood hangout, The Brown Derby). This Jack Nicholson classic is a must-see whether you’ve watched it before or not. They just don’t make them like this anymore…

Details:
Drink specials, pizza from Two Boots, free popcorn, food and sweet treats from local vendors + more!
Please note that there are 200 Seats Available and tickets are going fast, buy yours now!

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Monday 02.27.12: FILTER PRESENTS Monday Night Residency: ELECTRIC GUEST / CHAINS OF LOVE @ Echo

8:30pm / FREE / 21+

Electric Guest || Listen || Watch

Every once in a while there is a band that breaks through the stale, inanimate boundaries of modern musical genres and seems to psycho-sonically sum up the story of one’s life.

Even with the polish of production and the undoubted sparkle of talented musicianship, Electric Guest’s music lacks any of the contrived, mechanical ploys of many modern pop-rock bands…KROQ

Chains of Love || Listen || Watch
Chains of Love started when Guitarist Felix Fung, the engineer and owner of Vancouver’s Little Red Sound, hatched a plan to start a girl group with guitarist Clint Lofkrantz. It wasn’t hard to figure out who the girls would be. Nathalia Pizarro, who shares the vocal and lyrical duties of the band, was known as one of the best singers and all around performers on the scene, and with her voice and the harmonic help of Rebecca Marie Law Gray, Felix and Clint knew that they had something truly amazing on their hands. The two had what they call a “memory of that girl group sound” and a free studio on Tuesday afternoons, so they started inviting their friends over to see what they could make of this fortuitous combination. What you have in your headphones is what came of these nostalgic happenings, Spector harmonies, Motown basslines and rich, thumping drums.

What sets Chains of Love apart from their throwback-y, reverb-drenched contemporaries is something in the philosophy behind the band. Chains of Love is truly a passion project—a group of musicians doing nothing what but they love and working as hard as they can at it. Chains started by referencing certain artists such as Gail Harris, Ike & Tina, The Ronnettes, and The Shangri-la’s by using their lo-fi recording styles as a blueprint for what they wanted to create. By combining this with modern, garage rock influenced, modern viewpoint, Chains of love has effectively bridged the gap between the nostalgic pop sounds of the 60′s with a modern and elegant twist.

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Tuesday 02.28.12: CHECK YO PONYTAIL 2 with DAS RACIST / MR. MUTHAFUCKIN’ EXQUIRE / YOUNG L @ Echoplex

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9pm / $20 adv / 18+

DAS RACIST || Listen || Watch
“Relax” by Das Racist. Anyone weary of rap music’s boring blasts of sexism and materialism should check out Das Racist. These guys aren’t cleaning up hip-hop, they’re just bringing back the weirdness. Critic Jim DeRogotis picked “Relax as one of his favorite albums of the year. “Wildly inventive, playfully psychedelic hip-hop that places these three Brooklynites as the proud inheritors of a tradition epitomized by De La Soul’s ’3 Feet High and Rising’ and the Beastie Boys’ ‘Paul’s Boutique,’ he wrote.Daily Press

Mr. Muthafuckin’ Exquire || Listen || Watch
Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire, is a Brooklyn based Emcee armed with a brash and rebellious personality. Described by Bonsu Thompson, Executive Editor of The Source Magazine, as “fucking dope”, by influential attorney and activist Kenneth Montgomery PLLC as “a breathe of fresh air”, and by URB magazine as possessing, “a brutal arsenal of hip hop vocals… a force to be reckoned with.” Unconventional, eccentric and groundbreaking eXquire is in a unique position to re-invigorate hip-hop with his ability to poke fun at tragedy, laugh at danger, and bend the boundaries of the genre imposed by stagnant gatekeepers. Since his debut mixtape, “The Big Fat Kill” eXquire has moved over fifteen thousand units without the support of media outlets.

Born in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, eXquire, born Anthony Allison, grew up in the projects with the desire to be an architect. At the age of eleven he was kicked out of gifted school for extorting other students with knives, “I literally went from the best school in Brooklyn to the worst, I.S. 55, first day I came it was a jungle, people jumping on tables, people fighting everywhere. My junior high experience was getting shot at everyday. I went to school until December of my ninth grade year, and I never went back.” At the age of fifteen with no direction eXquire fell into the familiar trappings of Brooklyn’s Crown Heights projects. Hip-Hop became not only his escape, but also his identity. From an early age the neighborhood took particular notice to his talents, and with that support the artist found himself being catapulted into the realm of New York’s cut throat underground hip-hop scene.

On the brink of his new release “Lost In Translation”, a scathing chronicle of the life of an anti-hero eXquire plans to raise more than a few eyebrows. Possessing the courage to ignore the industries narrow-minded conceptions of what a rapper should be, eXquire is ready to take what nobody will give him.

Young L|| Watch

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Wednesday 02.29.12: REPTAR / QUIET HOOVES / LUCIUS @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

8:30pm / $8adv; $10dos / 18+

Reptar || Listen || Watch

Hailing from the greater Athens-Atlanta-Asheville area, Reptar has been playing music ever since recorded history, but playing shows as Reptar since December 2008. Since then, the fast rising fabulous four has created quite a sensation around the Southeast. It all started with their debut 7″ recorded with producer Ben Allen, Sean P. Diddy Combs, Gnarls Barkley, Animal Collective, and Matt & Kim.

Reptar likes to first and foremost make people dance, and have been likened to The Talking Heads, Animal Collective, Prince, Marky Mark, Lake, Air, and the Jackson 5. The band is made up of Andrew McFarland, a Brazilian native, classically trained snare drummer, and sophmore at UGA, Ryan Engleberger, who currently attends Dartmouth College in the Artic Circle majoring in Jaco Pastorius’ fretless bass, Graham Ulicny, a hernianted African Soukous guitarist and AstroBioElectroPhysics student at the University of North Carolina in Asheville, and William Kennedy, greatgodson to Herbie Hancock’s ARP 2600 and connosiour of fine chocolate (85% cocao or above) and sophmore at UGA. With Reptar’s powers combined, they can topple small buildings, smaltzy restaurants, and shmuppy next-door-neighbors with their devastating wall of synthesizers and samples.

Quiet Hooves || Listen || Watch

In concert, skewed Athens collective Quiet Hooves operates with 12 members, give or take a few. For the band’s latest album, Saddle Up!, it abandoned its existing approach and turned over the reins to one member alone, multi-instrumentalist Javier Morales, who transforms Quiet Hooves’ ramshackle baroque pop into a singular, succinct work. Live, the band’s fun, funky accompaniments to singer Julian Bozeman’s mischievous, melodious tunes border on the vaudevillian. Here, Morales, a consummate fine-tuner, wipes out the songs’ existing backgrounds and starts fresh. They’re not remixes per se, but ground-up, reconstructed takes on the material. Given that Saddle Up! is essentially the product of two people, not 12, it’s not surprising that it’s infinitely more concise than Quiet Hooves’ live show — which flirts at times with muddled obtuseness. What’s shocking is the record’s preciseness. It’s delicate and bestial, dreamy and alive. Fans of pop music in any form would be remiss to miss it. Creative Loafing

Lucius || Listen

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Wednesday 02.29.12: DUB CLUB @ Echoplex

9pm / Free before 10pm, $5 after / 21+

with Resident DJs:
Tom Chasteen
Roy Corderoy
The Dungeonmaster
Boss Harmony

Spinning the best in classic reggae, dub and dancehall

Enter at:
@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

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Thursday 03.01.12: HE’S MY BROTHER, SHE’S MY SISTER / BAD WEATHER CALIFORNIA / THE LONELY WILD @ Echo

8:30pm/ $8adv; $10 dos / 18+

He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister || Listen||Watch
If you have yet to catch He’s My Brother She’s My Sister live, come see why they have been called “delightfully original” (Indieshuffle) and “forward thinking folkies forging new ground”(New Times)

He’s My Brother She’s My Sister is like a time warp to the golden present, wrapping nostalgia around the here and now with throwback flair and good taste. They make debauchery and estrangement so glamorous. The songs are as catchy as a radio pop jam, but throw off the trappings of plastic pop and wrap you in fur, folk, and the last drops of moonlight. (LA Record)

[Their] voices mingle like glamour in the desert” and serve up “party music for coyotes drunk on champagne,” (LA Weekly).
“Their mojo (has) the power to heal the afflicted” (LA Deli Magazine).

Bad Weather California|| Listen||Watch
“This Bad Weather California track could be looked at many ways: part roller rink alt anthem, part Tom Tom Club meets Black Lips meets Motown, and then there’s chorused big man sax, or maybe they all just meet up outside of the roller rink and drink beer listening from the outside, well, anyways, who cares what the parts are or how many ways you could look at it. Bad Weather California set out to make an album for the kids and here you have it: ‘You’re My Friend,’ the last track on BWC’s new album Sunkissed, is an anthem made to the middle school kid in all of us. In 2:30, the song has just enough time to roll by your house on a Friday night, see your bedroom light on, and convince you to go roaming the streets smoking cigarettes and looking for something at all to do and maybe that’s when you end up at the parking lot outside of the roller skating rink. Yes, that’s right, that’s how we got there, and from outside you hear the chorus, ‘Just remember what I always told you, you’re not a fuck up, you’re my friend.’ and you’re feeling better already.” Blurt

The Lonely Wild || Listen|| WATCH
The Lonely Wild began with a flood of haunting songs
In the fall of 2009, Andrew Carroll’s former six-year band had run its course, his grandmother died after a serious battle with drug addiction, and he married his long-time love. From pain to bliss, these events swirled into lyrics and melodies.

Over the course of the next six months Carroll woke each morning with a melody in his head that had to be turned into a finished piece by that night.

With an arsenal of songs, he then called on former bandmate Ryan Ross (keys, bass, trumpet, vocals) and newcomers Jessi Williams (vocals, percussion, keys), Andrew Schneider (guitar, percussion), and Edward Cerecedes (drums, percussion) to help transform these songs into orchestrated ensemble works.

The Lonely Wild looks to the American West, drawing influence from the ever-poignant Woody Guthrie, contemporaries Wilco, and the legendary Ennio Morricone whose sonic vision defined a genre for generations. Their music, at once spirited and woeful, accomplishes the contradictory feat of reminding a listener of something they’ve never heard.

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Thursday 03.01.12: !!!(Chk Chk Chk) with WILD BELLE @ Echoplex

Get Tickets Here

9pm / $15adv; $17dos; $18 dos walk up / 18+

!!! || Listen || Watch
!!! (generally pronounced “chk chk chk”) is a dance-punk band that formed in Sacramento, California, in 1996. The band’s name was inspired by the subtitles of the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, in which the clicking sounds of the Bushmens’ Khoisan language were represented as “!”. However, as the bandmembers themselves say, !!! is pronounced by repeating thrice any monosyllabic sound. Chk Chk Chk is the most common pronunciation, but they could just as easily be called Pow Pow Pow, Bam Bam Bam, Uh Uh Uh, etc.

Wild Belle || Listen
Wild Belle is one of Chicago’s newest bands. They’ve only played a handful of shows, and so far only released a single song, but it’s a good one. Listen to “Keep You” below and pick up the 12″ when it comes out on 2/21.

Formed by Natalie Bergman (singer) and Elliot Bergman (saxophonist/keyboardist) of NOMO, they’re joined live by fellow NOMO members Erik Hall (guitar) and Quin Kircher (drums), and a bassist. Erik, Quin, and Elliot are also all in In Tall Buildings.Brooklyn Vegan

Enter at:
@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

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Friday 03.02.12: Natural History Museum First Fridays with ZOLA JESUS / EMA @ Natural History Museum

6pm

Zola Jesus||Listen|| Watch
In the last three years, Nika Roza Danilova has gone from being an outsider, experimental, teenage noise-maker to a fully-fledged, internationally-celebrated, electronic-pop musician. It was a huge accomplishment, and, despite her age (young), her origins (mid-western, desolate), her accelerated scholastic achievements (high school and college were each completed in three years) and her diminutive physical size (4’11″, 90 lbs), she has triumphed. She has emerged as a figurehead — a self-produced, self-designed, self-taught independent woman.

Zola Jesus is not a singer, she is a musician. Zola Jesus is not a band, it is a solo project. That is not to say the people who have helped her along the way were not deeply important. Her irreplaceable live band (whose drummer Nick Johnson lends a hand on several tracks here) and her friend Brian Foote (who co-produced this album), in addition to the live string players who contribute here (Sean McCann, Ryan York), were all crucial in the process. Still, Nika is a woman who can command a room — any room — without needing a band, a stage, or even a microphone. Her voice is unmistakable; it cuts right to the core.

Conatus is a huge leap forward in production, instrumentation and song structure. The definition of the title says it all: the will to keep on, to move forward. From thumping ballads to electronic glitch, no sound goes unexplored on her new record. It is an icy exploration in refined chaos and controlled madness, an effort to break through capability and access a sonic world that crumbles as it shines.Sacred Bones Records

EMA ||Listen || Watch
Who: EMA is Erika M. Anderson, a 28-year-old South Dakota native whose solo debut, Past Life Martyred Saints, mixes up slow-boil acoustic intensity, blasts of fuzz, and stick-in-your-head alt-rock melodies. Anderson used to front dead-eyed drone-folk group Gowns, which she founded with then-boyfriend Ezra Buchla. When the band splintered in 2010 after Anderson and Buchla’s breakup, she returned to South Dakota and began writing Saints (out now), which maintains all the severity of her former band, but balances the desperation with glimpses of hope.

Tension Headaches: Gowns were known for their captivating live shows, which harnessed the emotional storm at the center of Anderson and Buchla’s relationship. Over time, though, the pair began to fray around the edges. “Every other show we’d be like, ‘Fuck this, I hate you and I’m never doing this again,’” Anderson recalls. “We just affected each other too much – which can be great for performances, but not when it’s, ‘OK, I’m ready to get in a van with you for a month.’”

Sound Engineering: Anderson’s songs are full of wintry layers of sound and startling left turns – which might have something to do with the fact that she developed her songwriting technique while editing avant-garde videos using Final Cut Pro. “I was taking all these weird film clips and putting them together to create a narrative from a bunch of different footage, and I think that really impacted my composition style,” she says. “I think, ‘Let’s improvise, let’s make some noises, lets get a ton of source material, and then I’m gonna put it together.’”

Pain and Suffering: One of the most arresting songs on Saints is “Marked,” where Anderson, voice cracking, murmurs, “I wish that every time he touched me left a mark,” over a scuffed and swollen acoustic guitar. “[That song is about] the idea of defining abuse. There are different kinds of abuse, and it’s easy to see the physical kind, but there are other ways, too.”

Joy Ride: Though Anderson’s songs may seem bleak at first, there are glints of sun flickering up from beneath the darkness. A note of youthful optimism bursts open at the end of insistent “California,” where a breathless Anderson resolves the song’s turbulence by playfully singing a snatch of “Camptown Races”; the soothing “Breakfast” opens as a lullaby for the uneasy, but crests with a delighted Anderson giddily howling, “Big fat breakfast!” “I think all the songs on the record are pretty poppy, but I keep reading all these reviews that are like, ‘This is dark and desperate and moody.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, come on, man! There’s a hook here! There’s some chords!’ It starts out maybe kind of bittersweet, but I always want to end on a triumphant note.”Rolling Stone

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Friday 03.02.12: CLOUD NOTHINGS / MR. DREAM @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

8:30pm / 18+

Cloud Nothings || Myspace || Watch
It’s been a crazy year for Cloud Nothings since they burst onto the music scene last winter. At the time main man Dylan Baldi was eighteen, living at home, and making lo-fi indie rock on a crappy computer in his parent’s suburban basement outside Cleveland. Since then, Cloud Nothings has released an EP and a handful of singles, and the band has put a few North American tours under its belt. With all the internet notoriety and their recent signing with Carpark, Cloud Nothings are now able to record somewhere besides the basement. For a producer, Dylan chose Baltimore’s Chester Gwazda, known for his work with Dan Deacon and Future Islands. Recorded this past August in a warehouse studio in Baltimore’s famed Copycat Building (home to the original Wham City and many of the city’s best musicians and artists), the self-titled Cloud Nothings album shines through with a crispness and boldness that Dylan has always envisioned. The songs now sound as they do live: full of energy, precision, and catchy bits. Dylan plays all the instruments on the album, but this time without the lo-fi scuzz. The excitement and emotion are practically jumping off the grooves.Windish

Mr. Dream || Myspace || Watch
After last years’ run of critically acclaimed singles (“Knuckle Sandwich”, “Knick Knack”, “Scarred for Life”, “Learn the Language”), Brooklyn’s Mr. Dream presents its debut album TRASH HIT. It’s an ambitious rock record that marries extremes: harsh noise and catchy melodies, and straight-ahead pop sensibilities. This is music unabashedly working in the tradition of some of the greatest rock acts: Buzzcocks, Pixies, Nirvana, Guided by Voices, and the Breeders. Mr. Dream picks up where those bands left off, further exploring the textures of aggressive rock music that’s unafraid to have strong hooks and thoughtful lyrics.

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Saturday 03.03.12: ELLIOT BROOD / THE PACK A.D.@ Echo

Get Tickets Here

5pm / $8adv;$10dos / All Ages

Elliot Brood || LISTEN || WATCH
Elliott BROOD have always been time travellers. The Toronto trio writes songs steeped in history that feel very present. They’ve done their share of actual travelling, too, these musical troubadours, acoustic guitars and banjos slung over their sharp suits as they barnstormed across Canada and beyond. For the new album Days Into Years it was century-old stories encountered an ocean away that brought them closest to home.

On the band’s first European tour back in 2007 they found themselves driving through the backroads of France. Vocalist Mark Sasso, guitarist Casey Laforet and drummer Stephen Pitkin, all enthusiasts of military history, raised on the harrowing stories of Canadians in World War 1, were simply looking to avoid the toll highways. Then they came upon a sign for a WW1 military cemetery.

“We’d been driving through Belgium and France, always passing by these historical war places and we decided to pull over and take this one in,” recalls Mark. “We saw all these Canadian names, and it really resonated with us, these young guys that had gone off to war. I knew all about it from reading books, but when you actually visit a place where the battles were, it hits you a lot harder. We said, ‘We need to write a record about it.’”

Days Into Years is Elliott BROOD’s third full-length recording, the follow-up to 2008′s Polaris Prize short-listed Mountain Meadows. Like its predecessors, including the 2004 debut EP Tin Type and 2006′s Juno-nominated Ambassador, it mines real history to connect songs that are deeply personal in a cinematic, narrative way. Unfolding like a series of movie scenes, it looks to the future by starting with the past. Opening track “Lindsay” invites you into process of revisiting one’s life while cleaning out an old family home. “If I Get Old” daydreams of making it through difficult times, be they in the trenches or a sickbed, and finding a nice place in the country to live out one’s final moments. Days Into Years presents these reflections as a celebration of life, particularly on the perfect summer single “Northern Air,” a love letter both to the rural Ontario landscape and the memory of a departed friend whose spirit now resides there.

Recorded with co-producer John Critchley at Green Door Studios in Toronto and Avening Town Hall (a former army barracks) in rural Ontario, the album showcases a more amped up Elliott BROOD that will put the knell to the “death country” tag that described their early work. Now, the roof-raising rhythm stomp and mandolin collides with luscious harmonies, piano and, for the first time, electric guitar in a mix Casey admits is “loud, heavy and rock ‘n’ roll.”

Since forming in 2002, Elliot BROOD has become a Canadian music institution. (The 2004 campus radio hit “Oh, Alberta!” remains a national treasure.) But after touring with acts like Wilco, Blue Rodeo, Corb Lund and the Sadies, playing festivals across North America, Europe and Australia and scoring the 2010 film Grown-Up Movie Star (for which they earned a Gemini nomination for Best Original Song), the band now also has a global presence. With Days Into Years they will bring their music, and of one of the greatest Canadian stories, to the world.Billions

The Pack A.D. || LISTEN || WATCH

In 1962, Neil Sedaka said, “Breaking up is hard to do.” Well, breaking up just got a whole lot easier with Unpersons, the full-on fourth album in The Pack a.d.’s indomitable catalogue. This is the album to vaporize those who shall not be named, and erase any trace of their existence with a dense cloud of fuzz bomb riffs, tribal rhythms, and hard (legal) drugs.

Braving a bombardment of devils, ghosts, mutants, and arseholes, the determination and prowess of drum demolisher Maya Miller and belligerent guitarist/vocalist Becky Black has never been so palpable. The Vancouver duo’s confidence in the studio and skill as musicians has grown exponentially between records, culminating with an epically fierce explosion of blues, punk, and garage rock that dwarfs all those before it. Neither mythological beast nor unrepentant dipstick stands a chance of surviving the aural onslaught of Unpersons.

Like their last two albums, The Pack a.d. recorded Unpersons at the legendary Hive Studios with engineer Jesse Gander. However, where famed Detroit producer Jim Diamond (The Dirtbombs, The Paul Collins Beat, The White Stripes) mastered 2010′s we kill computers from afar, he flew in – on his own insistence – to produce Unpersons first hand. After these sessions, the band went back with him to Michigan to perfect the mixing together.

The result is a flawlessly produced and performed record that projects all the snarl, piss, vinegar, venom and vitriol heard on their first three albums into a realm that is distinctly their own. Any reference one may wish to make to The Kills or White Stripes is no longer relevant. When Unpersons hits stores on September 13 of 2011, The Pack a.d. will have inarguably established themselves as a band by which to compare others. Riot Act Media

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Saturday 03.03.12: BOOTIE LA @ Echoplex

9pm / $5 before 10 pm, $10 after / 21+

BOOTIE LA LA’s monthly mashup bootleg party

Special guest DJ from GREECE, international mashup producer:
ROBIN SKOUTERIS

From San Francisco, resident DJs:
A PLUS D

Go-go dance crew:
R.A.I.D. (Random Acts of Irreverent Dance)

Photo Booth by:Scene Snaps

This month, Bootie LA is proud to present, from Greece, international mashup DJ Robin Skouteris. Born in London, but living in Greece most of his life, Robin Skouteris has recently made a name for himself in the mashup world with his innovative production work, combining songs from the ’70s, ’80s, & ’90s with the latest pop hits, accompanied with playful video editing. His mashups have been seen on the video screens of some of the world’s biggest clubs, in addition to being featured in fashion shows and posted about by celebrities on the internet.

Also on the decks, from San Francisco, will be resident DJs A Plus D, spinning all your favorite (and soon-to-be favorite) mashups. Resident dance crew R.A.I.D. will also be in the house, providing the on-stage go-go eye candy! And of course, club photographers SceneSnaps will be there with their Photo Booth, ready to capture it all.

FREE Bootie CDs to the first 100 people through the door!

Enter at:
@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

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Saturday 03.03.12: FUNKY SOLE @ Echo

10pm / FREE / 21+

funkysolenew

with DJs:
Music Man Miles
Clifton AKA Soft Touch

FMI: Funky Sole on Myspace

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Sunday 03.04.12: FIDLAR / PANGEA / LOVELY BAD THINGS / ANUS KINGS + DJ BLAQUE CHRIS @ Echo

6:30pm / $7.00 / All Ages

PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID BLACK
Fidlar || Listen || Watch
Know thyself. I imagine Fidlar isn’t that well-versed in Socrates, but the band’s members get the gist. See their influences: “Coors Light, King Cobra, Four Loko, Jameson, Taak, Steel Reserve, Natural Light, Bud Light, Miller Light, Bud, Miller, PBR, Taurino, Joose, JD, Evan Williams, Benders, PARTY, Simpler Times, Coors, 211, Mickeys, OE.”

Their band interests are: to party and play music, but mostly to party. So you can guess what’s included in the new video for “Wait for the Man.” Cartoon vomit and shattered bottles of Jack Daniels. Dancing girls and loud guitars. There’s even a cartoon outline of Beavis and Butt-Head that passes by in the epileptic blink of an eye.

The statement accompanying the Ryan Baxley-directed clip goes: “The concept for this video is based on stock footage and it’s generic purpose. We took footage of what a music video is ‘supposed’ to look like and ridiculed it. The drawings were inspired by the ads you see on the street or in subways, where people have scratched or drawn mustaches or other things like that on top of them. So that’s what we did to this footage, frame by frame.”

Like Hanni El Khatib, Best Coast, Wavves and plenty of other bands operating in Los Angeles, Fidlar channels both early rock and roll and punk rock, and dynamites that combination with adrenaline and abraded rawness. The song is a two-minute burner, all power chords and swagger. This sort of tune that makes you want to buy the strongest speakers money can buy, crank them up to maximum volume, buy a 24-pack of Bud Lite, invite some friends over, and terrorize your neighbors.LA Times

Pangea || Listen||Watch
“Living Dummy is Southern California punk the way it should be: crude without being obnoxious, funny without being crass, aggressively punk yet not totally insensitive, and, most importantly, FUN. Pangea burst straight out of the gate with the driving “No Feeling” and never lose that initial blast of energy as they tear through fourteen tracks of thoroughly infectious pop-inflected punk. Living Dummy is packed with enough catchy choruses, guitar solos, “la-la-la’s”, and naughty lyrics to delight my inner juvenile delinquent, but it’s the music that keeps me coming back for more. Pangea construct their songs in interesting ways, folding elements of doo-wop, girl groups, power pop, and even folk-rock into their sound, thereby sidestepping the homogeneity that plagues many a punk record. It gets pretty epic at times, but Pangea stay steady on course by keeping the focus where it belongs: on good songs, well played, with heart. Really, the only thing more fun than Living Dummy is Pangea’s live show.” – GET BENT!

The Lovely Bad Things || Listen || Watch
The Lovely Bad Things are an LA/OC band that began in October 2009 consisting of members Lauren Curtius, Camron Ward, Timothy Hatch and Brayden Ward. Their sound has often been described as a cross between Black Lips and The Pixies, garage/post-punk alternative pop and a little surf here and there. As a result of the varying influences each member brings to the group, every song sounds unique from the last and everyone seems to have a different perspective in regards to the Lovely Bad Things’ sound. No member stays in one place throughout the entire set with each member often playing every instrument at least once as the performance progresses. The members all also share the vocal duties which include four part harmonies. They began gaining popularity in the LA/OC collective DIY scene early on, which then expanded to a much larger spectrum opening up for larger acts and working with FYF. Acts they have supported include No Age, Wavves, OFF!, Peter Bjorn and John, The Thermals, The Growlers, Screaming Females, Crystal Antlers, Abe Vigoda, Slang Chickens and many more. Their first full length entitled “Shark Week” was released in September 2010 on cassette for UVR. They are currently working on the release of a 6-song EP sometime this summer, and are set to go on a West Coast tour in July 2011.

Anus Kings || Listen

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Monday 03.05.12: Monday Night Residency: NO @ Echo

8:30pm / FREE / 21+

NO || LISTEN || WATCH
The un-Googleable group released their first EP “Don’t Worry You’ll Be Here Forever” for free on their website a couple of months ago and it’s an excellent start. The gorgeous baritone Carter summons is impressive, reminding me of soulful crooner Richard Hawley and Matt Berninger from The National at times…KCRW

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Monday 03.05.12: TYPHOON / RAVENNA WOODS / MOTOPONY @ Echoplex

Get Tickets Here

8:30pm / $11 adv; $14dos; $15 dos walk up / 18+

Typhoon || Listen || Watch
“A dynamic 12-piece with a seemingly unending reservoir of energy, emotive vocals, arpeggiated guitars, horns, multiple drum kits and strings…Ladies and gentlement meet your new critical darlings”
-Paste

Ravenna Woods || Listen || Watch
Sounds like: The Dodos, the Cave Singers, Jose Gonzales.

Why they matter: Ravenna Woods provides a crucial reminder to Seattle’s current scene: Just because it’s folky and acoustic doesn’t mean it must be pastoral and warm. The three-man band plays haunting urban folk, full of eerie vocal harmonies, spiraling fingerpicked guitar, minimalist percussion, and the occasional toy piano.

You should know: Named after a Seattle city park, Ravenna Woods recently toured for their self-released second album, Valley of the Headless Men, playing cramped living room shows as often as conventional concert venues. Spin

Motopony || Listen || Watch||MP3
Motopony is a Seattle-based band that originally began as an outlet for singer/songwriter Daniel Blue’s poetry. Crafting songs on a three E-string guitar to match his voice, Daniel played as many shows as he possibly could in his then home of Tacoma. In the summer of 2009 his path crossed once again with producer Buddy ROSS (the hip hop pseudonym for Josiah Sherman). Having met years prior while working on other records, Daniel knew that fate had connected them again. The two worked through dozens of songs and by summer’s end Buddy Ross had joined Motopony, recruiting Brantley Cady (guitar) and Thomas Williams (drums) to round out the live band.

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Tuesday 03.06.12: THE TWILIGHT SAD with MICAH P. HINSON @Echo

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8:30PM / $10ADV; $12DOS / 18+

The Twilight Sad || Listen||Watch
Based outside of Glasgow, The Twilight Sad formed in late 2003. The band played a couple of gigs at the 13th Note in Glasgow, creating half hour-long pieces of music using guitars, bass, drums, theremin, tape loops from films and old folk/country songs, effects pedals, toy keyboards, thumb pianos, saws, computer games and a lot of noise in an attempt to try and discover a sound they could call their own and continue to develop. After these two shows, they rejected many gig offers, and became a more reclusive unit, spending any spare time they had in the studio focused on writing and sculpting away at new material.

In September 2005, they wrote four songs they thought gave a relatively good perspective of the band, and went into a local studio to record them, producing it themselves. Staying in the studio for many nights, they used a 24-track desk to build layer upon layer of sound, trying to get the best representation as possible. Thinking that the CD they came out with showed little more than some kind of raw potential, they posted it down to FatCat as a demo. After receiving a positive response and a request for more tracks, the band continued to expand on their song writing and kept regularly in contact with the label. Instead of paying for more studio time they began to make lo-fi recordings in bedrooms, bathrooms and their own rehearsal space, developing a more folk/experimental/noise sound. In mid-May the band came down to Brighton to meet the label and played on the bill of a FatCat night on the pier alongside The Mutts, Charlottefield, The Rank Deluxe, and fellow Glasgow band, The Frightened Rabbit.

Where the band’s recorded sound is layered with many melodies, their live sound is a more intense experience which replaces the intricacies of the recordings with a more visceral wall of noise.

Micah P. Hinson || Listen
Life has a strange habit of never exactly going according to plan; just when it seems even, life throws a curve ball to put things off balance. Some call it karma, while others call it luck. Life seems to right itself, in the end.

Micah P. Hinson experienced a turbulent period in his late teens, involving narcotics, jail time for forging prescriptions and a tumultuous relationship with a Vogue cover model – all before the age of 20, Hinson was homeless, penniless and abandoned by his family. He was eventually forced to declare himself bankrupt and moved into a motel and acquired a mundane telemarketing job. During this period, Micah still managed to write around 30 songs on borrowed instruments and equipment.

2004 saw Micah Paul Hinson catapulted from being a skate kid down on his luck to making one of the year’s finest and most critically acclaimed debut albums, Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress (which made numerous ‘Best of 2004’ polls, especially in the UK including Uncut, The Independent, the BBC and Time Out UK) and traveling the world playing with the likes of Iron & Wine, Antony & the Johnsons, Devendra Banhart, The Arcade Fire and most recent being invited on tour with KT Tunstall and Richard Hawley.

“I find it strange that the amount of prescription drugs I was taking during the recording and promotion of The Gospel Of Progress record was far less than what the press boys and girls were thinking and writing” recalls Micah. “At that time, I had somewhat found my way out of a great deal of those vices. I had found them overall very tiresome and if something, in the end, only serves to make you and your soul weary, it is in no way worth the time spent. Though once I had found this little bit of truth, the gods sent a bit of a gloomy look down on me and life went left, instead of maybe right”.

Left indeed. The turn of events that happened next was definitely ones of life’s curve balls. After celebrating Burns night in 2005 in his hometown (“quite a strange thing to do in Abilene, Texas”), a ’high spirited’ friend playfully hit Micah square in the small of his back. “I went paralyzed for a moment, sucked it up and went back to life”. However, “over the next few weeks the pressure caved in and I could barely stand up. I was hunched over in constant pain”. With a imminent tour of Europe in the Spring of 2005 to support The Baby and the Satellite EP, “I had to get back on the horse and ride it again. Like having to share a bed again with an ’ancient, ugly lover’ that was better left as a half-formed memory. It was 40 mg. of Codeine (Opiate), 100 mg. of Soma (muscle relaxer), 2 mg of Xanax (anti-anxiety and mind-eraser), 400 mg. Neurontin (anti-loony), and a few others and all this within every and any given day of my life”. Ironically, Micah found himself on the same prescription drugs as those he had been addicted to before he made The Gospel Of Progress, but under very different circumstances.

With little knowledge of just of how serious his back condition was, two months on the road aggravated his initial injury to breaking point. When Micah returned home to the US he was rushed to hospital to have back surgery. “I was in hospital for weeks, I couldn’t turn myself for over a month, had a walker, a corset (ironically a lot like the corset on The Gospel of Progress artwork), a shower chair as I couldn’t properly stand, I had to piss sitting down for awhile, basically a living nightmare.”

“The reason why I tell you all these things is because I want you to see and read where my life was when I began and finished this new full length record. I did the majority of the recordings sitting around the house, during the times I could actually get out of bed. Friends came to Abilene from all over to record their parts”. Eric Bachmann (of Archers of Loaf and Crooked Fingers) lent a helping hand and arranged the strings and horns, while Micah’s current touring partner and Gospel Of Progress veteran, H. Da Massa, traveled from Manchester, England to lay down Harmonica. Micah christened the band ’The Opera Circuit’.

The 11 songs that make up Micah P. Hinson and the Opera Circuit are the real deal – a document of friends “shooting the shit” on dusty summer evenings while creating some of the most beautiful and heartfelt music. This method of recording makes truly intimate and warm listen, from the sounds of crickets in the long grass on the opening front-porch lullaby ’Seems Almost Impossible’ to the surface hiss on prairie ballad, ‘She Don’t Own Me’, while the heavier, ’band’ songs on the album, such as ‘Letter from Huntsville’ and the epic beast, ’You’re Only Lonely’, sound as if they are straight out of a basement jam session. Perhaps the highlight of the album, though, is the beautiful piano led closing death-ballad, ’Don’t Leave Me Now’. While the album is layered with instrumentation, there is sense of space that allows Micah’s beautifully cracked yet warm vocal and matured songwriting to shine through with a real presence. Micah P. Hinson and The Opera Circuit maybe a little rougher around the edges than it predecessor, but its heart is definitely stronger and more honest.

That brings us back to where we started and life’s curve balls. “Looking back, it’s special. The sense that I was out of commission physically and here these friends came to create beautiful music that before never existed.”

Life certainly does right itself in the end.

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Tuesday 03.07.12: PETER CASE / PAUL COLLINS @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

8pm / $17.00 advance; $20.00 day of show / All Ages

Performing the songs of The Nerves * The Plimsouls and The Beat

Peter Case and Paul Collins play the songs of The Nerves, Plimsouls, Breakaways and The Beat. To coincide with this tour, Alive Recordings will release a Plimsouls “Live From The Golden Bear” in February 2012. Alive has previously released Plimsouls, Nerves, Breakaways and Paul Collins albums and will be very involved in helping to promote these shows.

In 1975 Peter and Paul first worked together in the now legendary band The Nerves, the band that spawned number one hits like “Hanging on the Telephone” for Blondie and “Come Back Stay” for Paul Young. The Nerves were trails blazers from their beginnings in San Francisco when they recorded their now collector’s item EP.

With the demise of The Nerves Peter and Paul carried on briefly with The Breakaways which spring boarded them into their own separate but equally influential bands…The Plimsouls (Peter Case) and The Beat (Paul Collins) which effectively defined the power pop scene in Los Angeles and America circa 1980.

For the very first time since The Nerves Peter and Paul will perform all the hits from The Nerves, The Plimsouls and The Beat

Peter Case || Listen || Watch
…..While the recovering Case was woodshedding and cave dwelling, life outside was rolling on. He was asked to prepare the reissues of albums by his early bands, the Plimsouls, the Nerves and the Breakaways (his post-Nerves collaboration with Paul Collins). “I had four albums released in the year I was off and they were all recorded from 1976 to 1981,” he says. “I had to do the mastering and spent quite a bit of time listening to the old records. I really dug hearing them again–the grooves, the guitars, the songs.”

But man cannot live by reissues alone and by summer, Case returned to work: “The PC Tour 2009 made three stops, one the weekend before surgery at a little joint up in the Sierra Madres, another in the late Summer at Jorma Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio and a final stop at McCabe’s in December,” he says. It was the McCabe’s show that lead to the making of Wig!

Case explains in his own words:

“Guitarist and singer/songwriter Ron Franklin flew in from Minneapolis and joined drummer DJ Bonebrake (X, Knitters) and me for my sold-out comeback show. The night went great, the audience was enthusiastic for the new songs, and the gig turned out to be very inspiring. Ron stayed over the weekend, and ideas began to flow. Several songs were written, more were worked up and played, I started pulling lyrics out of envelopes and drawers to match the music that was going down, and by Tuesday morning the three of us had reconvened at Grandma’s Warehouse Studio, in Echo Park, near downtown Los Angeles to cut an album to analog tape. We recorded eleven songs in two days.

I completed the live tracks (vocals, guitar and/or piano and drums) by overdubbing amplified harmonica and laying on the electric bass using a Hofner I picked up at a friend’s music store on Monday. It was my first time playing bass on a record since the Nerves. All the vocals, guitars and drums are live, and everything’s on two-inch tape. There’s one edit on the album, and it was made with a razor blade. One other song is included from sessions in 2005 at Infrasonic Sound in East Los Angeles with Duane Jarvis and several other musicians,” he says of ‘Somebody Told the Truth.’ It was a brand new song that day, and what you hear here is the first and only take of the number. It seemed to fit the mood of the program at the McCabe’s show, so I included it there, and the studio version here.

We got together for one more session, in April, at Village Recorder Studio B in Los Angeles, and cut three more songs, using the same style and technique of recording. ‘Dig What You’re Putting Down,’ ‘Look Out!,’ ‘Ain’t Got No Dough.’ Don’t bother trying to remember these song titles–soon they will be permanently emblazoned on your consciousness.”

For those who’ve followed the story so far, you know that Case left his upstate New York home in 1974 to travel west to California, As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport, which is also the name of the book about his reminiscences about that trip. Striking up his acoustic guitar as a street singer in San Francisco, Case made his way to Los Angeles and began to unravel the rock and roll mystery. As a member of the Nerves, he released one of the first seven-inch singles in the punk and new wave era and set out all across the U.S.A. as an opening act for the Ramones in 1977. Following that band’s end, Peter and Paul formed the Breakaways, till finally Peter launched the Plimsouls and scored a hit in the ’80s with “A Million Miles Away.” Case’s former bands continue to enjoy rediscovery by rock’s new generations, but it his solo career that his proven to be most enduring, earning him accolades and die hard fans. As a rocker turned acoustic player, Case opened a door through which others have walked ever since 1986 when his self-titled T-Bone Burnett-produced solo album earned him year end honors and his first Grammy nod. Set to a tribal-folk percussive blend of blues, country and rock’n'roll, its essences pour through everything he’s recorded since, from “Poor Old Tom” and “Two Angels” to “Beyond the Blues” and “Blue Distance.” His songs are continually revived by other artists (a three-disc set was recorded in tribute to him) and used effectively in contemporary film and television (most recently, on the hit HBO series True Blood). Over two decades he’s recorded ten solo albums–from the highly acclaimed and influential the man with the Blue post-modern fragmented neo-traditionalist Guitar, to 2007′s Grammy-nominated Yep Roc release, Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John. His 2001 Grammy nominated effort as a producer of Avalon Blues, a tribute to the music of his country blues hero, Mississippi John Hurt featured contributions by Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and Beck.

With Wig! Case recommits himself–to life, and his personal brand of rock n’ soul that’s made him a favorite among music aficionados, critics and his fellow songwriters for at least 25 years. Did Case ever consider giving up for a more sedate post-op life? “I’m what you’d call ‘very extremely overcommitted’ at this point,” he says with laugh.Yep Roc Records

Paul Collins || Listen || Watch
The Beat was founded by Paul Collins, who spent his pre-teens living in Greece, Vietnam and Europe before returning to his native New York. He studied at the prestigious Julliard Music School and eventually moved to San Francisco where he joined songwriter Jack Lee and bassist Peter Case to form The Nerves in 1974. The Nerves proved to be one of the pioneers of the burgeoning US punk rock scene, independently releasing their own 4 song EP which included the classic “Hanging on the Telephone,” later to become a hit for Blondie.

After The Nerves disbanded in 1977, Collins moved to LA and formed The Beat with bassist Steve Huff, drummer Mike Ruiz and lead guitarist Larry Whitman. Their friend Eddie Money recommended The Beat for management by legendary concert promoter Bill Graham. Under new management, The Beat toured with The Police, The Jam and Joe Jackson. They also made numerous TV appearances and recorded their debut self-titled album with producer Bruce Botnick (who had produced The Doors). The album featured Beatles and Byrds-influenced guitars and catchy choruses, defining the skinny-tied power pop which The Knack took to the charts. In the ’90s, The Beat re-formed as Paul Collins’ Beat and continues to write and tour.

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Wednesday 03.07.12: DUB CLUB @ Echoplex

9pm / Free before 10pm, $5 after / 21+

with Resident DJs:
Tom Chasteen
Roy Corderoy
The Dungeonmaster
Boss Harmony

Spinning the best in classic reggae, dub and dancehall

Enter at:
@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

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Thursday 03.08.12: CRYSTAL ANTLERS / SLEEPY SUN / FEEDING PEOPLE @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

8:30pm / $8adv.; $10 dos / 18+

Crystal Antlers || Listen||Watch
Long Beach’s Crystal Antlers covered the same Mose Allison song as Blue Cheer on their first 7-inch—which is now trading for upward of $100 among people who didn’t have the opportunity or sense to go buy ’em fresh at Long Beach’s Dyzzy On Vynyl. They grew from there into a fearsome beast that was part American fringe-garage freak-out and part early Funkadelic, with long, loping songs just bristling with guitar. After unfair hard luck when their label Touch and Go went under just after releasing their first LP, Crystal Antlers regrouped with a recording retreat to Mexico and a self-released single that added a strange, engaging pop sensibility to their much-loved heavy-rock madness. They haven’t made bands like this since the heyday of SST—independent, unpredictable and righteous in both riff and deed.OC Weekly

Sleepy Sun || Listen || Watch
Sleepy Sun is a California band from many Californias. They hail from the rolling oak and sage hills of Sierra Gold Country, The San Francisco Peninsula, where Kesey raged and the Dead were once Warlocks, and the forever-sunshine climes of the Southland. They came together young and garage strutting in the coastal Northern California crucible of Santa Cruz. And there they birthed the Sleepy sound dead blues shaken alive, razor sharp and ramblin’, soul, sonic science and dead-on pop surgery. Wooden, earthy, stratospheric, and swinging California music of beautiful contrasts for conflicted times.

Now, two records into a frighteningly fast-blossoming evolution, Sleepy Sun are a living machine of fire and focus. Their first release on ATP records Embrace illuminated the golden path to Sleepy land hard-riffing, delicate, dreamy and cultivated. The latest ATP release, Fever, is arrival at the palace the path promised.

Fever is the honey harmonies and danger wailing of Bret Constantino; the wing-on-wing guitars of Matt Holliman and Even Reiss in screaming dives and sweet ascending circles; the lowdown served up tough and thundering from drum and bass authorities Brian Tice and Jack Allen.

Fever is a band working, like the heroic combos of old real, made by hand, eyes ahead on an unbridled future and giving two shits for the sideways glance of the lurking trend spotter. A band working, and a working band Sleepy Sun’s soaring and soul-stirring live shows are already mowing down audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. They’ve opened for Autolux and Mudhoney, rocked Primavera and Treasure Island, and relentlessly toured the capitals and humble hamlets of North America and Europe. And in their path, the converts are fast becoming legion.

They are a band of musical adventure too tackling Graham Nash’s “Chicago” for a forthcoming compilation celebrating the Hollie/CSNY legend’s work. English electronic collective U.N.K.L.E. have taken note of Sleepy Sun’s eclectic energies as well, working collaboratively on a track with the band for an upcoming single and LP.

Sleepy Sun won’t relent in 2010. Fever in May, SXSW and the Arctic Monkeys in spring. And as always, a hundred twists yet untold in a message sent with burning love and rock-solid soul from California to the whole damn beyond…

Feeding People
“At one level, this is garage rock … But the music on Peace, Victory and the Devil breaks out of those constraints, not as if it’s struggling but as if it’s shrugging off any concern for rules, as if it’s easy to pioneer a new sound.

Whether [Jones] is channeling spirits, or whether Feeding People is simply a band of spirited musicians all pulling together to make her glossolalia of gloom the official soundtrack for these apocalyptic times, Peace will make you want to stockpile this album and hole up in your bunker to await the band’s next revelation.”

— Dan Collins, LA Record

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Thursday 03.08.12: KORALLREVEN @ Echoplex

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8:30pm / 18+

Korallreven || Listen || Watch
Korallreven are Marcus Joons and Daniel Tjäder.
It all started on the South Pacific island Samoa some years ago when Marcus was there for a longer vacation and one day, while chillin’ under a coconut tree, got a feeling of how he wanted the pop music of his dreams to be. Spiritual like the local Samoan Catholic church choirs, hypnotic like the breathtaking tropical nature and, overall, a feeling of that you finally had reached to ”the other side”.
So, since some summers he and dear friend Daniel – who aside of this play keyboard in The Radio Dept. – have suffered some blood, sweat and even tears to turn this South Pacific dream into reality

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Friday 03.09.12: ZULU WINTER / CHOIR OF YOUNG BELIEVERS / AU @ Echo

Get Tickets Here

8:30pm / $10.00 adv; $12.00 day of show / 18+

Zulu Winter || Listen||Watch
We’re all aware of the term ‘buzz band’, right? It’s something applied to emerging artists who are riding the (usually online) cultural chatter, the ‘band of the moment’ if you will. It’s obviously a horrific title to apply to any new band, as although it suggests excitement among the taste-makers, it’s likely to burn bright, but ultimately burn out as fast as it arrived. It’s temporary. It’s brief. It’s deadly and no bands want their hard work to be labelled as something that’s so instantly due for rapid decline. It’s the media coverage equivalent of striking a match – hot, bright and utterly useless in an instant.

So how do bands get set up for such a brief encounter? What are the boxes that need to be ticked in order for the buzz label to be unscrupulously slapped upon them, immediately starting the countdown on their career’s few seconds. Well, the hype of blogs is a good start, particularly those ones that post nine times a day in the endless race to be first to stuff, because being second is so, well, like behind yeah. Then a cracking debut gig at somewhere like The Shacklewell Arms or in some crackhead’s kitchen in Dalston or somewhere similar is a must. All this needs to be swiftly followed up by the debut single arriving through one of the hottest new labels in the UK.

London five-piece, Zulu Winter, have been busy doing precisely all of these things to the letter over recent weeks. The things is, they may well be labelled as the current buzz band, but rather than panicking, they’re not going to give a flying fuck. Their

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