Coastal Bloodfest

On September 20, Portland trio Nurses will release their highly anticipated sophomore album Dracula. We asked band member John Bowers to undress the album and explain how retreating to an isolated coastal cabin in the middle of winter resulted in such an energetic sound. We also asked him if he remembers touring with The Brunettes. 

(EMJ) Your new album Dracula is out on September 20, tell me a little bit about it. How is it different from your previous album Apple’s Acre?
(John) Apple’s Acre was recorded over 9 months while Aaron and I were living in weird attics and basements. We just used the internal mic on a Macbook and sang right into the computer. With Dracula, we set aside a couple months to work on the record, living in a cabin on the Oregon coast for a month – just the three of us and a bunch of instruments. This time we had a few mics to work with and focused heavily on low end grooves, beats and bass lines – things that you feel in your body. Apple’s Acre is more of a bedroom record, I think, while Dracula has a more live and energetic feel. There’s still soul and emotion, but it’s a lot more extroverted.

You all worked on this record as producers. What exactly does that mean – can you be a bit more specific about your individual roles?
All of us have ideas for every instrument, and if we had an idea we’d just do it. We had a room full of instruments and would mess around with things until we liked what we heard, and then someone else would take someone elses idea and expand on it. A lot of samples, beats and grooves were built by all three of us feeding off each others previous idea until an entire beat was made or a bassline was made. Aaron sings basically everything on the record, but James and I would have ideas for vocals, bring them to Aaron, and he’d do his thing with them. I’d have an idea for a beat, so I’d play with a drum machine while James played live. Aaron would cut the beat up and we’d all make a bass line sample together. I think that’s just our natural way of working together.

I believe you took time away from the city during the making of this new record. Do you think being away from the city influenced the way Dracula sounds?
We’d been wanting to make the record for so long. We wanted to be in a place where that’s all we could do. It’s funny, Dracula is such an energetic pop record to me, but it was made in a quiet, dark, misty coastal forest. There’s a lot of hip-hop and funk grooves on the record, but there’s an underlying vibe in there where loneliness and dark strange feelings creep around. Being away from all our friends and daily routine really helped us to indulge in our own universe. There’s no way we would have made this record just hanging out on our porches drinking beer with friends.

Can you describe the cabin/ coastal setting where you recorded the album?
The cabin was tucked into a misty forest on the Oregon coast, about 50 yards from the ocean. Since it was January, we probably only saw, like, 5 people around the area the entire month, and it was covered in a beautiful thin fog that would move in and out with the tide. The beach was black, made up of piles of wet stones with giant rocks pushing up out of the ocean. The cabin was essentially one big room with a loft, so we were always around each other and always hearing what the other person was doing, unless we went on a walk to the beach or something.

You recorded Apple’s Acre through a Macbook microphone. How did that restrict you, and were there any things that you wanted to try, but couldn’t, that you’ve now been able to achieve with the new record?
When we were making Apple’s Acre we weren’t even thinking of what we couldn’t do. We were just excited that we could record that way, and we loved how it sounded. It was so fun, we just explored every angle and we weren’t really concerned with getting low end in there because we wanted to focus on other things. With Dracula we wanted more options.

The first single off the new album, titled ‘Fever Dreams’, has a lot more bass and percussion. Is that something that fans can expect to hear throughout the new record?
I feel like I’ve accidentally answered this in every question so far! Yeah, bass and percussion are all over the place.

James Mitchell is a new addition to the band, what has he added that was missing before?
When we started playing with James, he was playing drums on Apple’s Acre songs, and it made the songs feel different and awesome. He has such tasteful groove and style, I think sick beats just happen in his head all day long. It’s also just awesome to have a third person with great ideas involved in every aspect. It challenges me to make what I do better, and just elevates what we do all round.

Scott Colburn (who has worked with Animal Collective and Arcade Fire) played a part in mixing the new record. Did he add anything distinctly different to the record that you, perhaps hadn’t expected?
He really drove up the power of everything, and gave all our weird noises space to breathe – which is something we knew he could do. There are so many subtle weird sounds happening, and on a few parts he really surprised us by making the subtle things right up front and super loud. When we first started working together, he sent us a mix of a song where he took a super chill guitar part and made it rage really loud and we got all psyched. He’s super talented and has great taste for sure.

On your label website it says that Prince was one of the few musical influences behind Dracula. Which elements of Prince’s music did you adapt to your own music?
His song writing was the thing that really got us. His style and energy, of course, rub off easily and just made us stoked to do our own thing. We could put on a Prince record and feel really great and want to dance, but at the same time be all nerdy about what moves the song was making, or what the percussion was doing. Not many artists can nail classic song writing with such style and energy. I’ve heard people say the bass lines remind them of Prince, but Prince really doesn’t use bass much, he just funks out real hard on treble.

“There’s no way we would have made this record just hanging out on our porches drinking beer with friends.”

How has the local scene in Portland helped you grow as a band? Do you think being around so many other bands has had a positive or negative impact?
There’s a great community of musicians here, and everyone gets excited about everyone else it seems. It’s definitely not hard to play shows and have your band/project be seen, which is great for people just starting out. Tons of free shows, tons of friends to start bands with if that’s what you want to do. The people who don’t play music are totally supportive of everyone who does too, and it makes for a warm comfortable climate to do your thing. But, I do think that sometimes it’s so easy to be in a band here that it’s easy to be lazy about it if you want to be.

Tell me about some of the other bands you’ve grown up alongside of in Portland. Do you get a lot of encouragement and inspiration from them?
Oh everyone encourages each other all the time. It’s very friendly. Some people I’m stoked on in town are Grouper, Dragging an Ox Through Water, Operative, Explode Into Colors (who broke up. R.I.P.), and we’re playing our record release show with some awesome bands- AU, Houndstooth, and Jeffrey Jerusalem.

In 2010 (or was it 2009?) you toured with New Zealand band The Brunettes. Do you have any memories from that tour, and do you still keep in touch with Jonathan and Heather?
Oh man, I got an email from Heather the other day! It’s been a while since I’ve talked to Jonathan, but last I knew he was making a sexy calendar or something. Did that ever get released?  That tour was part of a gruelling 2.5 month thing we did in support of Apple’s Acre and we really bonded with those guys. We were going to make a short film where we forced each other to snort a mountain of Snuff, but it never happened.

I’ve read that you often play complete re-workings of some of your songs live. Do you still view some songs off your previous record as incomplete, or do you change the songs more with the idea of keeping them interesting to play live?
We just try to keep them interesting for us to play. Plus, when James started playing with us things just naturally shifted and we started writing new things with him right away.

I’m guessing you’ll be touring the new record. Where are you most excited about playing and who are you touring with?
We’re touring with a band called Dominant Legs, who are from San Francisco. I’m always really excited to go to NYC. I think we’re going to sneak to New Orleans on a day off and I’ve never been there, so I’m pumped!

Nurses- Fever Dreams: MP3

Pre-order Dracula and receive an instant download of the album

Nurses on Facebook

Posted by Nick Fulton under Oregon, Portland, U.S.A
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ORANGE is the new RED

After the success of their debut album, 2009′s Apple’s Acre, Portland’s Nurses have jumped to a new dimension of psychedelic pop music, adding percussionist James Mitchell to bulk out and accessorise their sound. On the band’s new single, ‘Fever Dreams’, it’s clear what direction they’re heading in, using Mitchell’s percussion skills as a spring board to unleash their new, improved psychedelic sound. Previous comparisons to The Antlers and The Cure seem no longer relevant as the sincerity in their songs has been replaced by a buzzy electronic slant, making ‘Fever Dreams’ more comparable to Glass Vaults or Animal Collective. Aaron Chapman’s voice is still a powerful tool in the band’s evolution, but the crooning storyteller’s emotional sensitivity is reeled in to provide more bounce and an upbeat rhythm. Unlike their previous album which was recorded through a Macbook microphone, Dracula had a more isolated approach, with the  band retreating to a coastal cabin in Oregon to produce the album as song writing engineers rather than taking up traditional instrumental roles. This, according to the band’s record label, has given the new album a “bolder, heavier” sound, with “deep grooves, dubby basslines and a focus on rhythm.”

Nurses’ sophomore album Dracula is due for release on September 20 via Dead Oceans Records. ‘Fever Dreams’, the album’s first single, can be previewed below.

Nurses- Fever Dreams: MP3

Nurses on Facebook

Posted by Nick Fulton under Oregon, Portland, U.S.A
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Life In The Dark

This Wednesday night Portland, Oregon’s Eat Skull will commence their first ever New Zealand tour. I caught up with Rob Enbom and his live band mate Hart Gledhill late one night as they sat around a computer in a dark basement somewhere in the depths of Oakland, California.

After apologising for taking so long to conduct the interview, due to time differences and an unusual sleeping pattern on Rob’s behalf… we start by talking about their New Zealand tour.

(EMJ) Will this be your first New Zealand visit?
(Rob) Yeah. I’m looking forward to it, I might not leave. New Zealand’s pretty strict about who they let in to stay in the country though.

I’ve read that you guys are fans of a lot of old Flying Nun music, was that a major motivation for your visit to New Zealand?
Music from down there was a big influence originally, there’s a ton of good bands from down there. I don’t think we sound like that but occasionally it can, like we accidentally ripped off a Clean song one time.

Do you know much about the other bands you’ll be playing with in NZ?
In New Zealand we’re playing with Pumice and The Axemen. I chat with Steve from The Axemen on the internet and I’ve met Stefan in the United States before.

The festival you’re playing in Auckland has a lot of country and folk music on the bill. You’ve got a background in country music right?
There’s definitely some of that going on, I don’t know how to say that, I mean there’s some of it we like.

Could you say that Hole Class (one of Rob’s previous bands with Beth from Times New Viking) was a country style band?
I don’t know if it sounds like country but we were definitely thinking along those lines. We were living in the country when we did that.

And you’re living in Oakland now?
I’ve been kind of nomadic since the summer, we come down here because this is where we have band practice and we have to get ready for tour.

What does getting ready for tour entail?
Well there’s new people in the band all the time, so you have to find out who they are, hang out, then learn all the songs again and stuff like that. This is a good line-up though, this tours going to be cool. It’s me, Hart, Ned and Oscar and Jay.

So the live line-up changes but the recording line-up stays the same?
It’s pretty solidly just me and Rod Meyer but he doesn’t want to tour so we’ve operated like this for a while now. We used to tour but he wanted to go to school. I think it negatively impacts his life to go on tour.

Do you do a lot of touring? Have you done much international touring?
Usually we don’t, but lately we have been. It’s been fun too. We had a couple of tours booked and I was like “Rod do you wanna do these” and he was like “yeah”, but then he was like, “no actually I don’t want to do these, I want to go to school”. But usually he’d do it, so we kind of got friends mostly and people who I’d played with before and we just figured it out and it ended working pretty good. That’s how it is right now, who knows what it’ll be like tomorrow.

It’s pretty tough to survive without touring isn’t it?
We live in a basement with no electricity. It fucks up your job because you have to give more to it and then if you have a job hopefully you can have a situation with your job where you can go and come back to your job so you don’t fuck up the rest of your life by going on tour. I already do it, I’m screwed now. I have to start all over pretty much if I decide to stop doing this.

You’ve been making music for a while now, so you’ve been following the musician path pretty solidly?
Yeah, with not much success. Although the amount of interviews we’ve been doing for this tour has been pretty crazy, but that’s probably just because New Zealand’s cool, the rest of the world isn’t.

Siltbreeze has a lot of fans here, so plenty of people know Eat Skull.
Yeah well Siltbreeze has always had a New Zealand connection. They weren’t even that popular down in New Zealand some of those bands, but they’ve definitely got (I’m thinking of The Dead C) fans here. Peter Jefferies has a cult following in America.

Touring is obviously what you’re focused on now?
We’re going to Australia and New Zealand and going to Europe because I’m ready to do that, I haven’t really got anything else going on. It seems like the best thing to do and we’ve been having fun with it so it’s been working.

Have you had time to sit down with Rod and work on any new music?
Rod and I have recorded something like 40 songs, or something like that. He’s been busy with going to school and other shit was going on too. There’s been delays in getting it done because we like to waste our time. We’ve been working on it, he might actually be down here tomorrow to work on a few overdubs, but we’ve got flakier since we don’t live in the same town. We have a new record that will come out, we’ve just been tweaking it and stuff. He wanted to learn better recording techniques, he went to school for that. So he’s been mixing things, but we still have a few overdubs to do and then sorting through the songs and figuring out which are the right ones to put together. It’ll come out this year I bet, we just kind of don’t care that much but it’ll come out. We care, we just don’t care when it’ll come out.

So the new record might be recorded a bit differently, because in the past you’ve recorded strictly to 4 or 8-track, is that right?
Mostly 8-track, very early on we recorded to 4-track because we didn’t have an 8-track yet. Some of it’s recorded on 8-track and some of it is recorded in a studio on 24-inch tape, but we tweaked it. We busted it back down to the 8-track, actually I don’t remember how he said he did it, he busted some of it back down from 2 inch tape I think down to quarter inch tape or half inch tape which made it sound better because 2 inch tape can sound real weird.

So Rod takes care of the recording  and you take care of the touring?
From one to the other I guess, as far as band activity. Because we haven’t been recording for a while although like I said, we have 40 songs recorded. We have a record, it’s just not done yet. It’s in all that post-production shit.

Have you played many shows with the current band ahead of this tour?
Sometimes we’ll play at a club because there’ll be club shows, but doing house shows… in Portland you can do that, and in Oakland as well. Oakland has got a lot of people living in warehouse spaces. They don’t have basements in California because of earthquakes. We’re going to play in Los Angeles this weekend.

Maybe that’s why New Zealand houses don’t really have basements, because we have so many earthquakes.
(Hart) That’s why California doesn’t really have them. It doesn’t make any sense in Portland though because everybody’s basement gets flooded because it rains so much there. Every house in Portland has one, and if you live in one or if you practice in one you’ve got to keep all your shit up off the ground.

Posted by Nick Fulton under Oregon, Portland, San Francisco, U.S.A
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Silent Tsunami

New from Liz Harris, on the eve of releasing two full-length LPs, titled Dream Loss and Alien Observer. She announced a little while ago that her follow-up to Dragging A Dead Dear Up A Hill was going to be spread across two LPs and that vinyl could be pre-ordered through Mississippi Records. The first vinyl pressing has already sold out, but from tomorrow both albums will be available in digital format. ‘Alien Observer’, the title track from one of the albums has surfaced and fans can take pleasure from its ruffled, earthy tones, with a familiar spaced-out guitar riff shadowing Harris’ angelic pagan-like voice. The song sounds drenched in grandeur, lying sullen in a dark church somewhere in rural Oregon. If it sets the tone for the album then it’s the foundations of a masterpiece.

Both Dream Loss and Alien Observer will be available April 11 from Grouper’s own Yellow Electric label.

Grouper- Alien Observer: MP3

Posted by Nick Fulton under Oregon, Portland, U.S.A
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International Date Time

Having been courted by Polka Dot Dot Dot‘s album Love Letter To New Zealand, Lane Barrington and Shannon Steele have announced they’re bringing The Ocean Floor to New Zealand this February. The duo has a twelve date tour booked, taking them from Auckland to Dunedin, with a few odd stops on the way, including Oamaru, Motueka and Campus A Low Hum in Bulls. Label mates of Polka Dot Dot Dot on Electricity/Lust, their brazen, upfront folksiness will no doubt win fans here, either through DIY hardship or their cute twee tinged pop songs. Check out their tour dates and get to a show.

5 February – Auckland – The Wine Cellar w/ Basketball Nightmare
11-13 February – Bulls – Campus A Low Hum
15 February – Wellington – Fred’s w/ Paper Ghost
17 February – Motueka – Hot Mama’s w/ Paper Ghost
18 February – Greymouth – Frank’s Cafe w/ Paper Ghost
20 February – Lyttleton – Wunderbar
22 February – Christchurch – RDU On-Air Performance
24 February – Oamaru – Harbour St. Theatrette
25 February – Chick’s Hotel – dunedin
5 March – Christchurch – Goodbye Blue Monday w/ Kim K, Paper Ghost
7 March – Wellington – Happy w/ City Oh Sigh, Wet Wings
9 March – Auckland – King’s Arms Tavern w/ Sam Hamilton

The Ocean Floor- What’s The Dream: MP3

Electricity/Lust website

Posted by Nick Fulton under Portland, U.S.A, Washington
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In my inbox this morning was the latest compilation from Portland shoegaze label Reverb Records. The compilation is a follow-up to the hugely popular 2004 release titled The Fuzzy Ball, which featured artists such as Asobe Seksu, The High Violets and Helen Stellar. The 2010 edition features The Raveonettes, A Place To Bury Strangers and Serena Maneesh, alongside Rebel Drones (featuring members of Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols) and Pete International Airport (Peter from The Dandy Warhols’ side project). The compilation is designed to serve as a tribute to the pioneers of the shoegaze/ psychedelia genre, while displaying the best modern day shoegaze artists. From start to finish the twenty track mix is sonically brilliant, perfectly track listed moulding each band in to the next. There’s tracks from bands who have gained international attention (The Raveonettes, Ringo Deathstarr, Serena Maneesh) and tracks from lesser known bands like Hawkeye, The Dazzling Strangers and Happy Prescriptions. It’s one of the best record label compilations I’ve ever heard and it will be released over two nights, coinciding with two live shows in Seattle and Portland. Each night ten bands will perform, playing one original song and three covers of past shoegaze experimenters. Each person attending the release shows will receive a copy of the compilation, and the remaining copies will be available for purchase from Reverb Records’ website.

The twenty bands featured on the compilation are: The Upsidedown, The Raveonettes, Ringo Deathstarr, Hopewell, Christian Bland and the Revelators,  Hawkeye, The Prids, A Place To Bury Strangers, The Dazzling Strangers, Insect Guide, Rick Bain & The Genius Position, Hypatia Lake, The Purrs, Serena Maneesh, The Spires, Happy Prescriptions, Ten Million Lights, The Vandelles, Pete International Airport and Rebel Drones.

The Vandelles- Lovely Weather: MP3

Ringo Deathstarr- Imagine Hearts: MP3

Posted by Nick Fulton under Oregon, Portland, U.S.A
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Watching Clouds In The Distance

On Monday, September 27, Liz Harris is returning to New Zealand to play two shows with support from her friend Stefan Neville (Pumice). Ahead of the tour I asked her to explain her often darkly lit, visually enticing live show; how touring with Animal Collective affected her live set-up and about the unusually morbid themes that run through her music.

Grouper and Pumice; Can you tell me how you and Stefan became acquainted?
Stefan and I did a tour together in New Zealand last year and came to be good friends. I knew him initially from playing with him in Portland.

Can you tell me about your travels in New Zealand, any experiences, memories?
I grew up on the coast of California in landscapes that look a lot like ones we drove through on that tour. The coast, the hills, all felt familiar, that dreaming sort of deja vu of being in a place I’d somehow forgotten I had been to and loved. I made really great friendships on the tour as well. Glad to be coming back.

Last time you played in New Zealand, at Whammy Bar in Auckland, the show was lit very dimly and you set up towards the back of the stage, somewhat distancing yourself from the audience. What is the nature of your live set-up now and how does it reflect your personality?
Similar to what it has been. It reflects a little bit about my personality, but only one facet of it. Being in bright lights doesn’t make sense for this music. The songs are about a world that’s better kept in half-light.

Can you tell me a little bit about your tour with Animal Collective in 2009, how did your two very different styles connect and how did the fans react?
We connected as people, as friends.

I only ever have a dim idea of what anyone truly thinks about my music. Their fans were there to see them. Some came up and said nice things. My records and shirts sold. A couple folks came out to see my part of the show.

My friend overheard a fan of theirs saying how sad it was I was selling my own merch. I don’t know how to approach that. I loved selling my own merch, it felt like one real thing to do each night, one real connection. When your fans expect you to keep a distance, want you to have to employ someone else to do shit for you—not my world.

When I saw you play in Auckland it was in a very dark, intimate setting, but I imagine most of the Animal Collective shows would have been in rather large venues. Did you have to make any adjustments to the way you perform to fit in with the larger setting?
It didn’t occur to me to do so in a very conscious way, but I did get some of my videos together to show for it. I think it was a good idea in the long run to have something for people to look at besides a person sitting still bent over their mixer for half an hour.

Your music relies solely on two instruments, guitar and voice. What other elements/effects do you use to form such a dense, melodic sound?
I don’t use many weird effects. Just old equipment, broken things, bad recording style. I don’t feel ownership of making the sound come out the way it does.

Many of your songs utilize a fair amount of reverb. Do you think reverb helps to give you, as a solo musician, a fuller sound?
I guess it does. I like the way it slows things down and makes them hover. Let’s you hover there too.

“Finding these mirrors and looking into them makes me feel human, a strength in submitting to my own vulnerabilities”

You’re also a multi-talented artist; can you tell me about your drawing, silk screening and visual art?
I like to be quiet and still and alone for long periods of time. Drawing and printing are a place to do that. I use them like a labyrinth, following lines that smoothly curve or straighten as a way of unwinding the confusion of thoughts and people colliding, swimming around together.

The visual projections that you use in your live show, are they all your own designs? How does it relate to the music you’re playing?
Yes. The connection is in the process and in the destination. Gently bending and making an imprint with something that is not mine, sitting with another in our divide for a little while until we have to separate. The video makes it more of an enveloping experience, its own structure.

Dragging A Dead Dear Up A Hill took a lot longer to make than any of your previous records, have you continued that trend with your current work? Do you now take longer to write and finish songs?
Everything drags out longer and longer. I am working on things I’ve had sitting here for three years now. It’s the sitting still and recording that takes long though. I write things faster than I can record them and then when I have time to record I’m bored with them, or I forget them. This used to agonize me but I feel OK with their passing now. Something beautiful in them fading away, keeping a secret.

What are you working on now, what can fans expect from Grouper in the next 6 months/year?
They can expect a lot of older material finally coming out that is pretty grimy and raw, and some newer very hazy pop. I’ve just finished a lot of new material that will come out early next year.

Your music has a certain lullaby feel to it, but it also always seems to be going somewhere, constantly moving. Do you deliberately try and write songs that have a sense of movement?
The songs tend to be processing change, turmoil, confusion, and all of that subject matter unfolds in a rolling sort of cloudy motion, it’s the way the things I am describing move on their own.

You said in an interview with Drowned In Sound in late 2008 that, “There has to be some blood. Darkness and decay are as fundamental as happiness and longevity.” You reference the themes of death and happiness a lot in your music, can you tell me your thought process behind connecting the two themes?
Acknowledging one without the other feels dishonest, or incomplete anyway. The things that make us happy often are things that make us sad. I think it is part of being human, part of the essence of everything, coming up and coming down. I suppose the best place to be is right in the middle in that blurred area, sitting with the anticipation of something beautiful, watching clouds in the distance.

The title Dragging A Dead Dear Up A Hill relates to a real event that happened during your childhood, can you tell what it is about the event that has remained in your memory for so many years?
It was the first time I stood in front of a mirror that was difficult to look into. I felt weak and humiliated. Finding these mirrors and looking into them makes me feel human, a strength in submitting to my own vulnerabilities.

Grouper- Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping: MP3

Grouper- Myspace

Posted by Nick Fulton under Oregon, Portland, U.S.A
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Summer Comes Every Year

Those of you who are jealous of the Northern hemisphere which is right now bathed in glorious sunshine can lie back and indulge in some sultry, sunny American folk music. The Ocean Floor is a band from Portland, Oregon, associated with the Electricity/Lust record label, home to other warm hearts like Polka Dot Dot Dot and Jordan O’Jordan. If you have a little bit of spare time go and have a little poke around the Electricity/Lust website, there are free MP3s to pick up and some very colourful looking vinyl to purchase.

The Ocean Floor’s main creator is Lane Barrington; a songwriter whose quest has taken him from Florida to Portland in search of the perfect musical arrangement and the ideal location to record music. He’s been joined along the way by a revolving crew of musicians, all helping to shape and curve a sound territorialised by traditional folk music and bluegrass pop. His current companion, violinist Shannon Steele, adds a country touch to the band’s latest album Pop Quiz. It’s The Ocean Floor’s fourth album and is based on a series of twenty seven questions, designed to provoke the idea of ownership over knowledge. Barrington plays the role of the theologist, asking thought provoking questions in his wavy American twang. His arguments are well-informed and come wrapped in lush string arrangements and princely analogue synths, finely tuned to precise sound modules. It’s an album of immense beauty, with a wealth of knowledge presented in an unobtrusive, well mannered style. Barrington reaches out but asks for very little, he provides the kindling to start the debate and takes the opportunity to explain himself thoroughly and effortlessly. Like a good Pop Quiz, the album provides questions and answers.

Pop Quiz was released on July 13, 2010. You can land yourself a copy by visiting the Electricity/Lust online store.

The Ocean Floor will be touring New Zealand in February 2010.

 The Ocean Floor- What’s The Dream: MP3

The Ocean Floor- Myspace

Posted by Nick Fulton under Portland, U.S.A, Washington
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Future Sex

In October last year we bought you White Hinterland’s fantastic cover version of Justin Timberlakes’s ‘My Love’. It was our first encounter with Casey Dienel’s soft, eloquent voice, and we’ve since discovered that White Hinterland has a new album, titled Kairos, coming out on March 9 via Dead Oceans (Bishop Allen, Akron/Family).

After releasing two previous albums, one under her own name and one as White Hinterland, Dienel has now been joined by Shawn Creeden, officially making the band a two piece. The result is a minor step-up in tempo and intensity, revealed on two tracks released off the forthcoming album. ‘Icarus’, first heard in mid-January, bounces on a pulsing electronic beat layered with dreamy vocal loops and a gentle keyboard whisper. It’s comparatively similar to Beach House, structured around the interaction between voice and keyboard. ‘No Logic’, unleashed yesterday via Gorilla vs. Bear has a rattling drum cackle, a very light bass riff and an often rigid guitar sound. It’s the most complex song we’ve heard from White Hinterland but it still keeps within their cone of making dashing dream pop.

Leading up to the release of Kairos, Dienel has been playing keyboard in Taken By Trees, Victoria Bergsman’s live band. White Hinterland also played support for Taken By Trees at the sold out Union Hall show in New York City on February 13.

If you pre-order a hard copy of Kairos (vinyl or CD) you will instantly receive a free download of the entire album. 10 pre-orders will also be randomly selected to receive a unique piece of art-work, designed by White Hinterland’s Shawn Creeden.

White Hinterland- Icarus: MP3

White Hinterland- No Logic: MP3

 White Hinterland- Myspace

Posted by Nick Fulton under Oregon, Portland, U.S.A
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Phosphorescent Shit Ripper

Driving across the desert listening to the Dead Man soundtrack just took another twist; try listening to Castanets’ latest album Texas Rose, The Thaw & The Beasts next time. With its concrete sounding blues grime and solid Americana core, Castanets’ fifth album oscillates wildly for 39 minutes giving you the perfect rusty awakening. It was released in September, 2009 on Asthmatic Kitty Records, a label packed full of underground heroes like Jookabox and Chris Schlarb, and Castanets has been in the AKR family since releasing their debut record in 2004.

Songwriter Ray Raposa is a nomadic warrior of the blues genre, writing songs that transcend time, echoing the pain and fury of the Mississippi Delta through to ’90s Americana, leading with wind swept rhythms and desolate whispers. Throughout his career he’s layered noise and experimented with free-jazz, but it’s always had a dark deserted quality filled with a menacing sense of loneliness and desperation. He often grinds his strings and delays his voice, an effect that makes him sound imposing and otherworldly.

Castanets is touring New Zealand this weekend, playing four shows with fellow Portland band Tiger Saw and Alps Of NSW from Sydney, Australia. All shows cost $15.

 Castanets- Thaw And The Beasts: MP3

Castanets- Worn From The Fight (With Fireworks): MP3

 Castanets- Myspace

Posted by Nick Fulton under Portland, U.S.A
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