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The Up-Turn

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Category Archives: Indie

05/24/2012 Mixtape: Ace Mo- A Dream’s Depth

Ace Mo is the latest member of the experimental Makoshine collective to have his turn in the spot-light with his new EP A Dream’s Depth.  The release lives up to it’s name, acting as a sonic cloud pillow, of the memory foam variety, to rest my tired blogger ears.  The washed out sounds and soft textures coming through on this release sound somewhere in between the Final Fantasy 7 soundtrack and what I would expect the Final Fantasy 7 soundtrack to sound like when I’m dreaming.  That is to say, Ace Mo explores the dreamier and loftier side of electronic music while still rooting the tracks down so that they don’t fade into ambient obscurity.

-PK

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05/23/2012 mp3: Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang- Feba

Out of all the international sonic flavor palettes, afro-pop has always been a favorite of hipster culture.  From Talking Heads to Vampire Weekend, indie culture has taken a lot of inspiration from the rich scene of African musicians making highlife and other forms of afrobeat in the 1970s.  It’s about time that a fully formed afrobeat band win bloggers hearts across the internet as a buzz band.  Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang are earning some well deserved praise with their jam ‘Feba’.  While the song has its roots firm in the classics of the genre, Janka Nabay employs plenty of effects and synth washes which isn’t surprising considering that the Bubu Gang consists of some ex-Gang Gang Dance members.  En Yah Say drops August 7th.

-PK

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05/21/2012 mp3: Bayatas- aa

I’m super psyched that Bayatas has started releasing more again.  Although his recordings as the ultra lo-fi and yelpy Tree Hopping are past him, Bayatas is a more fully formed and polished project with some very strong singles already under his belt.  The biggest improvement from Tree Hopping to Bayatas is easily the singing.  While I had no problem with his unhinged and unrestrained sing-yelling before, it’s hard to deny the much more easy on the ears approach he is now putting over his always lushly tropical guitar work.  ‘aa’ demonstrates all the improvements and more with some additional atmospherics thrown into the mix.

-PK

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05/21/2012 mp3: Collider- You Didn’t Think This Through

When the dudes over at Tye Die Tapes aren’t putting out some of the best in underground garage-rock, they themselves are making some great underground garage rock.  As Collider, they are making some lo-fi rock with a heavy emphasis on the rock aspect of their sound.  With ‘You Didn’t Think This Through’, Collider show off some song-writing chops with a totally rawkin’ punk track with some guitar work that could have come from a 90s Modest Mouse release… or really any 90s indie-rock song.  Stream the track below and download the mp3 at their bandcamp…

-PK

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05/21/2012 mp3: Teengirl Fantasy- Motif

Teengirl Fantasy are a group that made it big right before the huge influx of producers we currently have flooding the blogosphere.  However, since making it big in 2010 they’ve remained relatively quiet allowing smaller producers to start to take the spotlight.  ‘Motif’ shows the group returning strong with a shiny new sound that takes influences from all over the electronic-music spectrum.  Over the course of the track’s 7 minutes, the group manages to twist and shift the same basic song idea into all sorts of psychedelic shapes.  The ‘Motif’ single will be dropping later in June off R & S to build up hype for an album they will be dropping later this year.

-PK

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05/20/2012 mp3: Bijou Winters – BreathingAirWearingLace

This is the kind of track that soundtracks a hipster’s dream.  A collaboration with Joey Pecararo, ‘BreathingAirWearingLace’ was my first introduction to the intimate, atmospheric brand of pop music coming from vocalist Bijou Winters.  Her breathy, pseudo-mumbling vocal delivery may not be for everyone but I couldn’t stop from being sucked in to the sultry world that Bijou Winters crafts with her songs.  While it’s not easy to discern the individual words Bijou is delivering, it feels like she’s whispering something secret and personal right into my ear.

-PK

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05/19/2012 mp3: Black Gum- Surf//Sludge

Tracks ‘Surf’ and ‘Sludge’ by Austin, Texas band Black Gum go perfectly together.  It’s probably not a coincidence that both song titles would become genres if you added “rock” to the end of them as ‘Surf’ and ‘Sludge’ together show off a unique sound coming from Black Gum.  ‘Surf’ sounds like a surf-rock tune from a group that has never actually hit the waves, while ‘Sludge’ sounds like a group that has too much pop-sensibility to write traditional sludge music… sort of like the soundtrack to someone surfing on an oil spill.  These tracks are gritty, dirty and definitely  catchy.

-PK

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05/18/2012 Video: Royal Headache- Girls

Royal Headache is one of the more notable lo-fi bands to rise up in the past few months with some killer Guided By Voices inspired singles.  Apparently Pitchfork has also taken notice of the Australian group having just premiered their video for ‘Girls’.  The video is everything we’d hope and expect from a group like Royal Headache with plenty of grainy shots of the guys having a good time…. (kinda like this and this).  It’s hard not to imagine how much fun it would be to tour with these guys.

-PK

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05/18/2012 mp3: Avalon Emerson- Church of SoMa

Avalon Emerson’s new jam ‘Church of SoMa’ is probably the least blogger friendly song I have ever attempted to write about.  Bouncing around between influences from tribal music to micro-house, Avalon Emerson is making tunes that force us bloggers to do more than stick an easy two word genre tag on it.  Avalon Emerson tries to help us out too.  Labeling herself as “coke-house”, “tard-wave”, “post-trill troll-gaze” and “Ed Hardy micropenis-step”, she is basically taunting our eternal quest to label every buzz artist.  Whatever she is doing is working and even has me pulling out a few of my zumba shoulder pops.  Just enjoy the music, it’s good.

-PK

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05/18/2012 mp3: Astronautica- Lowrider

Astronautica is doing a nice job carving out her own sound in an overcrowded producer scene with an incredibly mellow and laid back collection of tracks.  During our interview, Edrina talked about her musical background with guitar which is demonstrated nicely on this track.  Let me add one more entry into the total collection of blog posts you will read today that tell you to turn the music on, close your eyes and float away.  Let those ‘Lowrider’ vibes take over.

-PK

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