Mixer, Engineer
Debut EP on Hardly Art Records. Produced Recorded and Mixed.
Warpaint's Jenny Lee Lindberg has announced her debut solo album. It's billed under the name jennylee and it's called right on!. It's out December 11 via Rough Trade. Find a teaser video below featuring the tracks "never", "boom boom", and "he fresh", plus some teasers she shared via social media. The tracklist and album cover can also be found below.
The album was recorded at Happy Ending Studios in Silverlake, California. Lindberg co-produced the album with Norm Block. She's joined on the album by Block, Dan Elkan (Broken Bells, Them Hills), Warpaint's Stella Mozgawa, and more.
Pre-orders from the Rough Trade store come with a patch and an autographed Polaroid picture taken by Lindberg.
jennylee and her band will perform at Baby's All Right in Brooklyn on November 4.
From the Forth Coming e.p.
Jennylee released her debut solo album right on! In December via Rough Trade Records.
jennylee follows this with the release of vibe as chill, a digital EP collecting acoustic takes of three songs from right on!, which give entirely new shape to the synth-and-bass-driven originals.
Track listing
1. boom boom (Acoustic)
2. never (Acoustic)
3. white devil (Acoustic)
Katie Burden's stylized atmospheric rock and shamanistic delivery often conjure up the ghost of Jim Morrison but in a modern context, falls somewhere between Bat for Lashes and Joan as Police Woman.
After being Raised in a small hippy town in Colorado, Burden spent her formative years bouncing around NYC and later San Francisco. In 2012 she moved to LA and after attending a meditation retreat, synchronistically fell in with a group of blue chip musicians including drummer/producer Norm Block (Mark Lanegan, Jennylee of Warpaint and Plexi) and guitarist Jen Turner of Here We Go Magic and Explanation Pony. Katie happened to have hundreds of song sketches recorded as voice memos on her phone and after she played them for her new friends there was no looking back. Block stepped into the roles of Producer while turner helped flesh out the recordings that became Burden's debut EP My BLind Eye.
Upon her return of promoting that Ep she felt pulled back into the studio where she began tracking her follow up full length Strange Moon again at Block's Happy Ending Studios, Silverlake, with her new tightly knit band of collaborators. The dark and moody undercurrents of the new material called for Burden to dig deeper into her emotional well, something that she struggled with when performing the songs. "I have a hard time feeling emotions sometimes" the songwriter notes. "Art makes me less afraid to feel and also less alone."
New Sweethead Full length LP out now!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/descent-to-the-surface/id1100330258
Mike Coulter's 'Saviors' is his first record since his band Lifter's 1996 album, 'Melinda'. More than a few years in the making, only after deciding to work with producer Norm Block did the record finally come about.
The fourteen songs on the record range sonically from country to psychedelia to electronic textures but the lyrics remain his signature heartfelt laments of loss and happiness and joy and dogs. Lots of dogs. He loves dogs. More than anything.
Saturnalia is the anticipated first album from The Gutter Twins, the collaboration forged in late 2003 by Mark Lanegan and fellow maverick singer-songwriter Greg Dulli. Saturnalia finds the axis Dulli nicknamed "the Satanic Everly Brothers" going even deeper into the shadows than ever before. Mystical, unpredictable, ultimately masterful, the album both embodies and defies any expectations suggested by the principals' individual notoriety. Pointedly not resting on the sonic laurels of their previous successes, Saturnalia instead proves rootsy but Baroque, handmade yet modernist, teeming with siren melodies that don't resolve. Produced by Dulli and Lanegan along with the band's unofficial third member Mathias Schneeberger.
There’s a new rock quartet in town whose sophisticated pop may include your next breezy summer melody. You can go ahead and thank Northern American for songs like the shimmering “Record Forever” to go with your ice-cold beer beside the pool and the bluesy “Don’t Be a Star” to go down with that warm whiskey as you look over L.A.’s nightscape. They should know a good soundtrack to the City of Angels after all; Nate Paul, Shane Alch, Augusto Vega and Bruno Calenda all grew up in L.A. and after playing together for three years, they’ve finally released their debut EP, “Happiness Hungover,” with a lending hand from Norm Block (Plexi) on production. This isn’t noise-rock, but it’s deliciously smooth. A full-length by Northern American is in the works.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/happiness-hungover-ep/id923006235
This was released as a box set and has THREE different EP's included. With a total of 12 songs.
Each EP is a different 'child' or 'baby' from Let's Make Babies in the Woods.
First Born
Middle Child
Baby
If you're inclined toward mind-alteration, or taking the edge off while living on it, there is good news on the music pipeline. Rain Phoenix's rotating, gypsy wanderer encampment that is papercranes will bring on a perfect buzz that will let you operate heavy machinery and explore the dark side without getting drowsy.
The songs of Katie Burden carry the collective sounds inspired from the tastes of colleagues and friends. Originally heralding from Colorado, Katie has traversed the musical roads from NYC to SF, and now currently stationed in LA preparing the release of her debut EP. Presenting the video for the title track, “My Blind Eye”, Burden is paired with the creature comfort of a furry cohort under the direction of Marta Dymek, Estefania Sequeira, and Matt Szymanowski, in a dramatic Traumnovelle filmed this past spring of 2014. Available through Cautionary Tail Records, Katie’s wide-eyed folk song fabrics are combined with the talented team of guitarist Jen Turner of Here We Go Magic and Exclamation Pony, Ben Shepherd, known for his bass work with Soundgarden, and Producer Drummer Norm Block.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/my-blind-eye-ep/id916332476
Like the morning after the best night of your life, Sweethead, the new project of Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen is a potent reminder of the sheer thrills in after midnight, rock’n’roll decadence. Best known for his participation in Queens Of The Stone Age, Van Leeuwen is joined by Serrina Sims, Norm Block on drums (Mark Lanegan Band, Plexi) and Eddie Nappi on bass (Mark Lanegan Band, Handsome) in his second ensemble. Named after a Bowie B-side
Rasputina's 1996 debut, Thanks for the Ether is a rare accomplishment. The Columbia release has a depth and playful creepiness just barely reminiscent of Kate Bush and the Beatles, but the record really has no sonic predecessor. The three cellos of "band" leader Melora Creager, Julia Kent, and Carpella Parvo make up almost the entire musical accompaniment for Creager's vocals, creating a subtle, weary soundscape that's perfectly in tune with the singer's diaphanous voice and cutesy-cruel thematics. With their strange goth-pop instrumentation and corseted image, Rasputina have all the trappings of novelty, but Creager proves herself a supremely talented songwriter and lyricist throughout Thanks for the Ether. Highlights include the spoken word "Nozzle" and "Transylvanian Concubine" with its rich, distorted basslines. Rasputina's pronounced concept never becomes corny or pretentious as Creager deftly mixes her sharp wit into her sometimes-gothic, sometimes-everyday tales of perplexed existence. If only more mope rockers, shoegazers, death metalers, and other dour stylists could be so clever, their music would become many times more listenable. Creager is no cutup, she keeps on message, insuring Thanks for the Ether is never fundamentally comedic or even ironic. But a little sick humor can go a long way. Rasputina paint a completely new gothic landscape on this debut, and fans of the genre or anything dark and artful simply must own it.
There's a certain "beauty & the beast" quality to the greatest male/female, singer/songwriter duos. Consider Jane Birken hooking up with Serge Gainsburg, or Nancy Sintra and Lee Hazelwood. And so it is with "Ballad of the Broken Seas", an album length collaboration between Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan.There's a similar contrast between Isobel's aching, pristine chill of a voice and Lanegan's wounded, regret-stewed burr.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/ballad-of-the-broken-seas/id392317857
Jesse “Boots Electric” Hughes, co-founder of Eagles of Death Metal with longtime pal Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age). On September 20, Hughes will release Honkey Kong, his solo debut under the moniker Boots Electric.
HAMMERED SATIN "GLAMORAMA" FROM THE AWESOME JUNKSHOP GLAM DEBUT OF THE SAME NAME!!! FEATURING NOAH FROM S'COOL GIRLS & TEACHERS PET!!! CASSETTE & SPECIAL EDITION LP OUT ON BURGER RECORDS!
Hailing from the wilderness of coastal California, The Child are a band filled with immense and unearthly paradox. Like a wild animal found deep within the crystal caverns of the subconscious brought to the concrete jungle and taught to function within the confines of the human's social world. Holly Marilyn Solem, a real white witch and performer since the age of 10 who eventually found herself honing her acrobatic stage antics in the city of Minneapolis before escaping to the west coast to live amongst the aliens that beckoned her name since youth. Norm Block, a wise Russian cleric whom has been sought to advise and aid musicians ranging from Plexi to Mark Lanagan and papercranes. These two wandering souls found each other amongst the starry night skies during a winter's solstice 2008 AD.Recording over 20 tracks during the first half of 2011, The Child was fostered by Los Angeles upstart label MANIMAL (Warpaint, Bat for Lashes, Papercranes, Sister Crayon) to release their debut 6 track EP titled simply The Child. The songs themselves embody the unorthodox mecca vs. orga method in which electronic sounds are bred with acoustic and electric guitars and live complex textured drums. When the calling for The Child to begin performing live, they incorporated two members Lauren White (aka Lauren Rocket) on synths/vocals and Peter Simon on bass guitar.
Electronic-infused pop/rock duo Night Terrors of 1927 features the talents of former Rilo Kiley guitarist Blake Sennett and former the Honorary Title lead singer Jarrod Gorbel. Although Sennett and Gorbel had known each other since 2010, it wasn't until Gorbel relocated to Los Angeles in 2012 that the journeymen indie rockers reconnected and began writing songs together. Naming themselves after a chapter in a journal Gorbel's great-grandfather bequeathed to him, the duo moved quickly, signing with Atlantic and releasing the five-track EP Guilty Pleas in 2013. In 2015, Night Terrors of 1927 released their debut full-length album, Everything's Coming Up Roses, which included the Tegan and Sara duet "When You Were Mine."
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/everythings-coming-up-roses/id953247805
Venus and the Moon is a new incarnation from Frally Hynes and Rain Phoenix. Their collaborative intersection cuts a unique new genre - "Galactic Country". Soaring harmonies and haunting vocals wrapped inside cinematic, raw and experimental folk melodies.
Channeling the energies of the planets - Venus, planet of love, beauty and feminine power; and the moon, ruler of the tides, emotions, intuition and reflection - Venus and the Moon aim to exalt the goddess while extolling the virtues of the masculine.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/hungry-ghost-albatross/id942048974
2011 album from Rain Phoenix AKA Papercranes. Born as a studio project in L.A., Papercranes quickly grew into a band splitting time between Florida and New York City. In late 2009, with the help of some of Rain's longtime friends, musicians, and writers she began work on her sophomore album, Let's Make Babies In The Woods. The recording sessions were experimental, allowing no rest or retakes as an exercise in 'stream of consciousness' writing - a recurring theme for Papercranes. Recorded in a garage studio in Los Angeles, the resulting nine-song collection delves into much darker themes.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/lets-make-babies-in-the-woods/id1023576014
Sweethead, the new project from Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age, A Perfect Circle, Failure), released their Self-Titled debut album today through The End Records. Named after a Bowie B-Side, Sweethead includes Serrina on vocals, Norm Block on drums (Mark Lanegan Band, Plexi) and Eddie Nappi on bass (Mark Lanegan Band, Handsome).
Sweethead‘s debut contains the slithering rock gem “Traumatized And Dumb,” which was previously included on their EP Traumatized and Dumb, which was only released in Europe. From the punk influenced track “Turned Our Backs” to the gritty “City Of Dirt” Sweethead is a potent reminder of the sheer thrills of rock ‘n’ roll decadence.
Recently, Venuszine.com premiered the video for the track “Traumatized And Dumb,” which was filmed while the band toured Europe with Eagles of Death Metal and Them Crooked Vultures last year. Watch it here: http://venuszine.com/clips/video/music/94/Exclusive_Premiere
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sweethead/id778420939
"Little Lady Death" is the latest batch of catchy cartoony hard-rock tunes from the Los Angeles-based band "shotty". These songs aim to capture vivid videogame nerd-angst imagery, and bottle it up into bite-sized energy driven fuzzy rock n' pop anthems. As a whole, "shotty" delivers a level of energy rarely seen in today's smooth, careful, "sonic texture"-obsessed indie music scene. Instead, shotty plays for our inner children. Teenagers will finally feel validated in their lonesome melodramatic crises and existential conundrums, while fun-loving adults pause mid beer-sip, shocked at the raw fervor and utter likeable-ness that shotty emanates in rainbow colored wavelengths of punk/synth/I-don't-even-know f***yeah rock. At its core, this music is action packed and easily digested, like opening and fiddling with a brand new Transformers toy, or finding a shiny new holographic Charizard in your latest Pokemon card booster pack.
Shotty formed in Seattle, WA when highschool dropout Pat Moon and nextdoor neighbor Miles Frank began playing loud music in the basement. Over the years the amps grew in size and volume, the drumset was decorated with paint and decoupage, and the songs and performance were refined to to an explosive and undeniably mosh-worthy level. In 2013 shotty relocated to Los Angeles to tap into the heart of the entertainment industry, seeking to push their music to new heights and spread their fantastical creations to the far corners of the world. They've since enlisted the bass/keyboard playing skills of former Floridian and 90's music fanboy Duffey Westlake, recording and releasing new material with producer Norm Block (Plexi, Sweethead) to be released through the indie label Cautionary Tail Records via INgrooves Music Group (part of the Manimal Label Group).
Why should you listen? These songs are fun, loud, fuzzy, irreverent, and they contain a healthy dose of angry teenage storybook escapism. In their own words, shotty is all Star Wars toys and flavored noise, to be enjoyed with a steaming cup of hot vanilla decaf tea. "Little Lady Death" EP features original cover artwork by Hanah Nance (Adventure Time, Regular Show).
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/little-lady-death-ep/id1043810414
Tell Me How You Died is poetry and pain delivered with a six-string hyperemic. Max Waller and Chuck Riviera play rock and roll as it should be played.
The band calls itself bad-ass Southern California Rock. I think that description just scratches the surface. This is head banging head music. Intricate, powerful, hypnotic and thoughtful. It is so good that it is habit forming, but you can’t OD on it.
These guys will wrench you out of your comfort zone like they did me at a club one night in Hollywood after the band I had come to see finished its set and I decided to stay for the next one, although I didn’t know anything about their music. It is Handsome as Sin and I was hooked.
Tell Me How you Died reminds you that rock is rebel music, dark music, music about real life and real feelings, real pain and real ecstasy. Their music is all of those things – powerfully so – but much more. Maxton Waller and Chuck Riviera have joined their talents into something far greater than the sum of its parts. Their music is totally male, stripped down and sharply pointed, it takes no prisoners and no excuses. And it is good, very, very good.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/tell-me-how-you-died/id740617471
MUSICIANS:
Megan Sexton: Viola, Lead and Backing vocals.
Lauren Sexton: Acoustic Guitars, Lead and Backing Vocals.
Dave Palmer: Piano, Wurlitzer, Hammond Organ, Synthesizers, Mellotron, and Backing Vocals.
Norm Block: Drums and Percussion.
Kirk Hellie: Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Sound Effects, and Bouzouki.
Kaveh Rastegar: Electric Bass, Upright Bass, and Nylon String Guitar.
Caitlin Sexton: Violin.
Dave Palmer: Producer, Arranger, and String Arrangements.
Jason Mariani: Recorded, Mixed, and Mastered all songs.
Recorded at Brotheryn studios. Ojai, CA.
The pop rock project of Connor Daniel, Next Door To the Moon have released a new video for their song Tell Me When It’s Over. The catchy track with hints of pop punk will grab a hold of you and have you hooked. Check out the video here:
Angelos was an original member of ’70s kiddie-rockers “Carriage”. After attending USC film school only to find himself whoring his talents for a limited home viewing audience, he returned to his first love — music. Angelos found Barragan go-go dancing at a West Hollywood bar and asked him if he played guitar. The two began writing together and sought inspiration at a Taoist retreat where they found drummer Norm Block. Block had recently left the Southern California cult he had been with since his childhood, and was at the retreat seeking much-needed solace and spiritual guidance. The three young men soon moved in together and formed a band
Lost Days is Ringside’s long awaited follow up to their 2005 self-titled debut. Ringside is singer/songwriter/guitarist Scott Thomas, who played most of the instruments and produced, along with beatmaker Balthazar Getty who co-produced. Title track “Lost Days” is a duet with Ben Harper, a somber rocker with a big uplifting chorus. Other notable guests include: Brian Bell from Weezer and Kirk Hellie on guitars, horns by Ozomotli, and Esthero, Res, Graph Nobel, Rain Phoenix and Joaquin Phoenix on backing vocals. Joey Waronker, Jim Keltner, Josh Freese, Norm Block, Sandy Chila, and Jon Pikus played drums. Self-financed and self-released, Lost Days is an epic album several years in the making, a journey down a long, dark road finally emerging into the light.
Produced by Scott Thomas Co-produced by Balthazar Getty
In the complicated world of band relationships, sometimes stepping out on the side as a musician and doing your own project can spell certain disaster. Jealousy, scheduling conflicts and lack of communication often arises and leads to the original band’s demise. Just like sexual relationships, sometimes musical ones only flourish if they are monogamous.
On the other side of the coin, some bands embrace the swinging lifestyle. No band could be more open to this share-the-love concept than Queens of the Stone Age. Not only does Josh Homme have Them Crooked Vultures, and his ongoing Desert Sessions, guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen has Sweethead, drummer Joey Castillo has Eagles of Death Metal (also with Homme), bassist Michael Shuman has Mini Mansions and Wires On Fire, and keyboardist Dean Fertita has The Racounteurs and The Dead Weather. And somehow, all parties involved make it work.
The latest effort from Fertita, in addition to his work with Jack White, is his solo project called Hello=Fire. Like many of QOTSA’s side projects, Hello=Fire has fellow bandmates Leeuwen, Castillo and Shuman coming along for the ride, as well as some help from Raconteurs cohort Brendon Beson and the Afghan Wigs’ Michael Horrigan. You’d think the ending result would be a bluesy, stoner rock album – and it is to an extent – but Hello=Fire steps out and does something quiet different here.
From the hand claps, the psychadelic twang and the warbling synth of the opening song “Certain Circles”, your mind is immediately trying to place where you’ve heard this before. The sound is straight-up out of the 1960’s. Late 60’s rock n’ roll, to be more specific. Think The Guess Who here. Hello=Fire has those same catchy, happy hooks, punctuated by Fertita’s amiable voice, distinct guitar work, and soaring harmonies that were present in not only The Guess Who but in many other remarkable bands of that period.
Hello=Fire isn’t trying to copy anyone here though, and that’s what sells it, along with some really solid songwriting. There’s an originality and genuineness powering each of these tracks and that keeps it from being a genre parody. From the full-on biker rock of “Mirror Each Other”, to the incredibly catchy power-pop of “She Gets Remote” and “Faint Notion”, to the trippy slow jam of “Parallel” (which sounds like it was plucked from some flower child’s Summer of Love memory), Fertita demonstrates that he’s found a nice niche here on the side.
The layered sound of the album and Fertita’s distant vocals ensure there’s just a hint of darkness present which prevents it from getting too sugary (this isn’t The Monkees, after all). However, Hello=Fire is still the kind of album you’re going to want to listen to when the sun is out and you just want to hear something that reminds you of better times – even if you weren’t alive for any of them.
Black Francis, The Flaming Lips and The Dandy Warhols are among the acts paying tribute to seminal neo-psychedelic/post-goth trio Love and Rockets on the forthcoming New Tales to Tell: A Tribute to Love and Rockets.
The 18-track compilation is due July 28 digitally and Aug. 18 on CD, andboasts cover art — featuring the iconic L&R logo — by Shepherd Fairey, creator of the famed Obama “Hope” poster. The comp’s producers also are promising “special bonus tracks and blue and red limited-edition vinyl.”
In the press materials for the forthcoming comp, the Pixies frontman declares his love for the trio — Daniel Ash, David J and Kevin Haskins — that rose from the ashes of Bauhaus in the mid-’80s: “Love and Rockets are many things, but what they are more than anything are agents of that mysterious force known as rock ‘n’ roll, a force loved by many but truly understood by a few.”
The album’s tracklist is appropriately heavy on cuts from the band’s 1986 classic Express (most of that album is represented), and the only holes, in terms of the trio’s better known songs/singles, would be “Yin and Yang (The Flowerpot Man)” and “Motorcycle” — and, of course, “Ball of Confusion,” but that already was a cover. (And what, no Bubblemen homage?)
Most curious to fans could be the head-scratching inclusion of generic ’90s alternarockers Better Than Ezra taking on Love and Rockets’ biggest hit, “So Alive.”
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/new-tales-to-tell-tribute/id735194659
Bathazar Getty is celebrating the release of his latest musical endeavor, Solardrive. Grab the self-titled album, recorded on Getty’s label PURPLEHAUS,
Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers is the second full-length and final album by the band Jack Off Jill. Produced by Chris Vrenna of Nine Inch Nails/Tweaker, it was released in July 2000 on the now-defunct label Risk Records. After Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers the band formally split up and moved on to establish other projects.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/clear-hearts-grey-flowers/id256457644
Frankel's tandem effort with wife and one half of Earlimart, Ariana, is a grand and necessary progression from his early albums to the multi-layered atmospheric direction now taken.
Seattle-formed, Los Angeles-based garage pop two-piece Shotty have shared a brand new clip for "I'm Glad It's Over," though the visuals are a blast from the past.
A press release for the video notes the duo's creation of "atmospheric juxtapositions between the banal mental state of a groundhog's day existence and the escapist fantastical world of videogames." Basically, we get to see the band jamming out in a tiny room (complete with a Pokémon drum kit), interspersed with footage from the exciting world of vintage videogames.
Cameos from the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog, Mortal Kombat, Legend of Zelda and Shaq Fu are also present, making it a nostalgia trip for anyone who can remember the '90s.
The duo are currently working on a series of EPs with producer Norm Block, which are scheduled for release later this year and into 2015, and you can order the "I'm Glad It's Over" single over here. Check out the clip for that same song in the player below.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/im-glad-its-over-so-long-single/id924348638
