Responsible for showing the world The Globes, Brite Futures, The Lonely Forest, and many other KEXP favorites, EMP’s Sound Off! competition is a must know – especially if you live in the PNW. Now in its eleventh year, Sound Off! is an underage “battle of the bands” of sorts. Selecting some of the most promising music from the 21 and younger crowd from the PNW, 12 bands are judged on a set of live music at Seattle’s EMP. The 12 bands are split into three semi-final rounds where they compete for the finals. Each winner from the rounds and a wild-card band make up the finals set to take place on March third.

While only four bands compete in the finals, the semi-final rounds are not to be missed. This year is no exception. The three semi-final rounds happen February 11, 18, and 25. There’s at least one band for everyone at each round. Plus, wouldn’t it be cool to say you saw Seattle’s next big band at its incubation stage?

Read more about the bands and listen to their stuff here. Also, Tomten, who is the artist of our song of the day today, won the entire competition last year.
 
The finals are set to take place on March 3.
 
Other KEXP notables to have played Sound Off! are as follows:
 

Land of Pines

Ambulance

Dyno Jamz

Kids & Animals

Kithkin

Sol

Seacats

Man Down Medic (an early instance of Hey Marseilles)

The Lonely H

photos by Dave Lichterman

East Coast “chill wave” heroes Washed Out stopped by KEXP in October to play a fantastic in-studio to coincide with their show at the Neptune Theatre. Washed Out had a fantastic 2011, releasing the universally acclaimed LP Within and Without and expanding Ernest Greene’s laptop project to a full band setting. Greene isn’t letting the chill wave tag pigeonhole him by any means. With a full band, Washed Out sounds richer than ever in a live setting and does more justice to the emotional capacity of Greene’s songs.

If you haven’t given Washed Out a try, Within and Without is a great place to start. The album relies less on samples and loops than Greene’s past work and musically, and it’s an emotional roller coaster. If you are in to bands like Neon Indian, Toro y Moi, and Twin Sister, you might also want to check out the Life of Leisure and High Times EPs, where Greene got his start.

Watch Washed Out’s in-studio performance from last October right here. “Eyes Be Closed” and “You and I” are off of their LP release Within and Without, while “Feel It All Around” and “Hold Out” can be found on their EP release Life of Leisure. You might also recognize “Feel It All Around” as the theme song to Portlandia.

photo by Jim Bennett

by Jonathan Hamilton

I remember when I was barely a teenager I thought that a mosh pit happened at every concert and that proper concert etiquette required anyone at the front of the stage to participate in said pit. Eventually, I went to enough shows to learn that moshing is only appropriate for certain types of music and certain types of crowds. The all ages crowd at the Neptune for last weekend’s Los Campesinos! show never learned these valuable mosh pit lessons, and it led to one high energy and hilarious good time. When the first notes of single “By Your Hand” opened the set, the front half of the crowd in front of the stage immediately turned into a circle pit for the entirety of the show. It didn’t matter how fast, slow, loud or soft Los Campesinos! played, the moshing continued.

After lead singer Gareth had watched a few people get kicked by crowd surfers, he chimed in, “If you are going to crowd surf take off your shoes,” adding that it’s the polite thing to do. Despite this tip none of the future crowd surfers went shoeless. During “Hello Sadness,” the title track to their latest album, a young crowd surfer made it to the front of the stage just in front of Gareth who was standing with both hands on the mic stand. The young man pumped his fist and dove into the crowd as Gareth winced and slowly shook his head in disbelief. Those of us on the floor just beyond the back of the mosh pit laughed.

Los Campesinos! has cultivated a devoted following with a digital spin on a decidedly old school DIY approach to keeping in touch with their audience. In the last year, the band self-released two zines that each came with an exclusive 7” single. Add this to their constant blogging and Twitter updates and you have a UK band who connects with their audience on an almost intimate level, which leads to crowds who feel like they are part of the show. It also means that seemingly everyone in attendance knows the words to every song. It is that mutual personal investment that led to so many of the people on the floor losing it and needing to mosh to appropriately get out their excitement. And that’s why the rest of us on the floor moved back to allow for that space to happen. Instead of getting angry, we stood just outside the reach of the pit laughing and screaming along with every song.

Later in the night, the band announced that the evening’s show was being recorded for a possible live album. The crowd erupted which led to a great high energy version of their biggest commercial hit “You! Me! Dancing!” Sadly, the band would later find out that their sound equipment malfunctioned and there will not be a permanent record of this crazed Seattle concert at The Neptune — which I suppose isn’t so bad because really they needed video of this insanity to truly get across the sheer mad joy of this concert.

I have seen Los Campesinos! live a couple of other times, and while it is always a great show with lots of dancing, it has never been this crazy before. You should definitely see them live in the future given the chance, but you shouldn’t expect an experience quite like their show at the Neptune last Saturday. Whenever I go to a concert, I hope for some sort of unforgettable moment from the performance that will always stick with me. I think it is safe to say that years from now I will say, “Hey, remember that Los Campesinos! show at the Neptune? That was insane!” Pro tip: When you do see Los Campesinos! be sure to hang out by the merch booth afterwards. The band generally pops out to sign things and make small talk with any concert stragglers.

In total, the band played for close to an hour and half. But hey, what can you expect from a band who includes an exclamation point at the end of their name?

Setlist:
By Your Hand
Romance Is Boring
Death to Los Campesinos!
Life Is a Long Time
A Heat Rash In the Perfect Shape of the Show-Me State; Or, Letters From Me to Charlotte
Songs About Your Girlfriend
There Are Listed Buildings
Miserabilia
We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
Straight In At 101
To Tundra
You! Me! Dancing!
The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future
Hello Sadness
Baby I Got the Death Rattle
Encore break
Ways to Make It Through the Wall
Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks

Photos by Jim Bennett:

Photos by James Bailey from the VIP Club Concert at The Neptune earlier that day:

As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to pull back the curtain on a wealth of sights and sound from luminaries such as Decimus.

Private pressing are a marvelous occurrence; a brave endeavor that allows a musician to test their boundaries through a limited amount of media. So few are able to hear the transformation until such a time when the artist is ready to re-emerge in full bloom.

Pat Murano slightly usurps this province. His Kelippah imprint has allowed him to explore his latest musical alter-ego, Decimus, under the radar from fans of his previous work (most notably as a member of No Neck Blues Band). Yet the limited flow of material is rendered inconsequential due to the sheer number of albums Murano has released under the Decimus banner (seven of a planned 12 dedicated to the zodiac of Latin poet and project namesake, Decimus Magnus Ausonious, have already been released). Here we examine three of these self-released albums: 4, 8, and 9.

At the heart of Decimus lies synthesizer and guitar. 4 wastes no breath before blowing variable degrees of synthesized sound across its vinyl palette. The brilliance in Murano’s A-side composition is its stable instability. It rattles and hums with the ferocity of an ancient boiler, ready to explode as the mechanism is pressed to its limits. But Murano relents, organically changing course once the experiment yields results, effortless moving onto the next appliance to test. Side B, however, turns sinister. Its undercurrent reflects the opposite of the A-side; civilization destroyed after we’ve taken it all too far. The bellows become deeper and angrier, the hums higher pitched as the release valves vent steam with apocalyptic victory. The machines have won despite heavy losses.

8 is a far different beast. Still maintaining some of the metallic abrasiveness of 4, it’s also steeped in more traditional forms of music storytelling. Side A begins with a repetitive organ motif; a church organist trying to figure out where to go next with his latest fugue. It bleeds into the frantic party next door, with heavy club beats and synth streaks causing an epileptic rave. The third act takes into the final home on the imagined block, where the festivities next door have yet to affect the science-fiction marathon of intense drone and alien buzzing that soundtracks a pictureless film. The B-side finds the disparate homes combining into one inside the stomach of a demon who has swallowed them whole and taken them to hell. It’s a warped and scary hell Murano creates; each of us unable to prevent it when comfortably numbed by our own distractions.

Showing the variables at play with each Decimus release, 9 is a meditative affair. The vivid imagery of 4 and 8 give way to contemplation. Murano is far more subtle, though the intensity remains under the surface. Unlike 4 and 8, 9 also plays as a whole through both sides. The subtle textures of hushed synth are a theme running throughout, punctuated only slightly when Murano grows tired of his vast, nearly spotless wasteland. 9 is the nuclear winter to 4 and 8’s bleak station.

But Murano’s work isn’t to be feared. Through the gnarled strands of music, these Decimus releases rekindle the imagination and remind us creativity in the arts is still alive. With each listen, these albums change into narratives that match mood, lending Decimus a flexibility often missing from contemporary experimentation’s rigid progression. What lies next in Murano’s plan is eagerly anticipated as Decimus will find new labels to call home in 2012.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist whose work can be viewed at his website. You can also find him on Twitter.

This Valentines Day give the person you love the gift of music. 1980’s music, because nothing says I love you more than the gift of synthesizers, angular hair, brightly colored pants, tucked in shirts, and of coarse xylophones. Do you realize how many 80’s bands had xylophones? Oh and white shoes. And the music videos seemed to have very little, if any, structure other than a small budget for a hair stylist and zero attention to one’s lip synching abilities. NOW visualize and imagine a Junior high Valentines Day Dance circa Feb 14th 1982… sweaty palms, tight headgear, and feathered hair. Today we think back some of the best songs from the year 1982 for your Valentines Day Dance and look at their videos, which seemed so much better then.

Haircut 100 “Love Plus One”

You might look to Flock of Seagulls as your 1980′s New-Wave hairstyle poster boys, but I put my money on the band who slapped the word hair right into their name. Their video for the 80’s staple, “Love Plus One” seemed to have been filmed on the set of Gillian’s Island with about 2 hours to get this thing filmed. This song had one of the all-time best xylophone/ soprano sax musical intros in history. The real star of this song and video is front man Nick Heyward. He’s about the cutest front man of the new wave era and his infectious vocals on this track really make the song. Sadly after their success he left the band after becoming “Psychologically unwell”. They did reform for a show in early 2011 with Nick singing lead.

ABC “The Look of Love”

I’ve got a brilliant idea for a video- here’s what we’ll do- we’ll be hanging out in a zoo. Let’s have a nun flying around to set the mood. Throw in some lederhosen. We’ll dress up as vaudevillians in pinstriped coats with best in performance gear. The important thing remember here though is to make sure that its obvious that we have absolutely no script, no set plan, no budget to speak of and we should utilize any irrelevant props we’ve found on this circus set we’ve stumbled onto. Either way, the mix of slow jam and upbeat synths make it the perfect dance song for your 1982 prom.

Modern English “I Melt With You”

I don’t know if anyone can name a more seminal 1980′s love/dance song than “I Melt You” by Modern English. The song is about a couple having sex as nuclear bombs are falling. The 80′s! The video is brilliant and has everything- swooping hair, a seedy dark club, a Bohemian Rhapsody type interlude; Even the lip syncing seems to be in sync! This song charted during both the 80′s and the 90′s and was used for a Burger King commercial in the 00′s. Whoppers, nuclear bombs, hair gel-Modern English had it all and during the slow part of the song, you could make out. Radical.

Honorable Mentions

A Flock of Seagulls “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)”

I’d call them a guilty pleasure, but they made a few great songs in their day. Granted, their lead singer looks like an owl, but we overlooked that. What fries my brain is that he was a hair stylist so this hairstyle was a professional decision. The video is awful but 80′s awful. Awful as in- we’re in space, we have a $200 budget and god damn my hair is like an owl kind of awful. Don’t miss the video about 2:45 into the song. The dude is doing some pretty awesome high tech type stuff on a Commador 64 I believe.

Psychedelic Furs “Love My Way”

This song still sounds good. The video is brilliant because its just the band playing and Richard Butler being a bad ass Richard Butler. The whole video is in sepia tone. They do get penalized though for still looking and sounding relevant 30 years later.

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Each and every Friday we offer songs by local artists. Today’s selection, featured on the Morning Show with John Richards, is “Ampersand” by Kithkin from their self-released EP Takers & Leavers.

If you love drums, primal screaming, and drums AND primal screaming, then chances are you’re already a fan of Kithkin, a quartet of percussionists and vocalists and EMP Sound Off! alumni that seem poised to take Seattle (and beyond) by storm. Part Yeasayer, part Animal Collection, all concrete junglists, you’re hit with a wall of percussion that weaves between controlled chaos and utter mayhem from the moment you hit play. Their name (presumably taken from a quick and agile race of small humanoids –- or elves if you’re into the Magic side of things) seems most apropos when you see them live beating their drums in unison, the blur of their fingers as they strum their guitars, and the veins visible on their necks as they yell into the microphone. They just opened for the Welsh darlings Los Campesinos at Neumos, but no doubt they’ll turn up sooner or later around town. Until then, keep an eye on their Bandcamp page. Here they are performing “Move Slow” at last year’s EMP Sound Off! competition:

If you haven’t heard of the party-rocking mashup art-form known as Girl Talk, your life is about to change forever. Once a biomedical engineer, Philadelphia native Greg Gillis decided one day that he wanted to take songs and bash them together until they stuck. For over ten years, Gillis has been releasing music under the Girl Talk monicker. In 2006, with his release Night Ripper, Gillis moved away from the glitch-mash sound that he had been working with to try and create full-album sets of mashups that people could dance to. Taking top 40 hits from the past 40 years, Girl Talk made mashups that anyone could recognize pieces of, no matter what their musical preference was. Night Ripper was met with decent acclaim, but it was with his 2008 release Feed the Animals that Girl Talk caught fire. Gillis had perfected his live show, working manually triggered samples from his famously near-indestructible laptop. Girl Talk shows became a thing of wonder. His most recent release, 2010′s All Day, is the quintessential Girl Talk record. It’s an unadulterated 71 minute set of pure energy, and its available for free on his website.

More recently, a group of professional superfans have made a full-length, unofficial music video to Girl Talk’s masterpiece entitled Girl Walk. Director and cinematographer Jacob Krupnick of the creative collaborative Wild Combination assembled a group of professional dancers to make a film set to All Day. The film was released online and is available to watch in 12 chapters on the website. But who wants to watch a movie featuring professional dancers on the streets of New York City with music by Girl Talk on their laptop?!

This Saturday, February 11th, Neumos will be hosting the Seattle premiere of Girl Walk (get tickets here). This version of the film will not be in chapters, but rather, a full length endeavor at full volume. Seattle local acts Radjaw and Tigerbeat will open with short DJ sets. In short, it’s going to be a lot of dance party, and for only 12 dollars, it’s cheaper than going to the theater, but here you can dance and stand up and yell and have a drink or two.

The Buck Pets, like so many “alternative” rock bands of the late ’80s and early ’90s, coulda been huge. The Dallas band had a major label behind them from the release of their debut album (this one), a rabid fanbase (there are still many people waxing nostalgic for this band 20 years after their demise), and even snooty college radio DJs loved their loud, dirty brand of rock – major label or no. They seem to have been the victims of bad timing, though; when their label was bought by Polygram, it appears they fell through the cracks of major label limbo and never quite recovered (I can’t even pull them up on Spotify, dang it all). But let us now remember and celebrate the Buck Pets!

But first a word of warning for our more sensitive readers: this discussion gets pretty intense at times, occasionally veering into more R-rated talk than usual (seriously, some of these comments would earn a red dot – not even fit for safe harbor airplay!). Read with caution.

“KCMU welcomes to the Central Tavern on Thurs, July 27th w/Mary My Hope, Stumpy Joe & The Thin Man.” [I need to know: is that a band called Stumpy Joe and a band called The Thin Man, or a band called Stumpy Joe & the Thin Man?] “This here is loud, well played, heavy guitar rock ‘n’ roll. These guys would fit in well in Seattle. Management Co. is also that of the Flaming Lips. I see the major label and keep expecting a lighter AOR metal pop song or two. There isn’t one. Just great, loud songs w/a detectable edge. Best cuts (after one listen) 1-1, 1-2, 1-5, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4 (‘Iron Cock,’ despite title, has no dirty words).” “Definite M rotation.” “Dumb name, some dumb lyrics n’ song titles, but… I [heart] this! ROCKS.” “1-1 rocks hard; 2-3 is melodic; 2-4 – psych-o-delic; I tried it w/salt to go – but don’t like styrofoam cause of the ozone so I rented instead — made me [illegible].” [Ummmmmm...] “Charles Peterson goes national! Great LP! (We had these guys on cart 2 yrs ago…)” “H THIS ROCKS!!!” “Can I do an all rock specialty show and play this kind of music for two hours? This Rocks!” “But don’t you already do that for three hours? This rocks, by the way…” “YeaH!” “Y’know, it’s really not that difficult to ROCK. I don’t think this is groundbreaking enough to hear it every 4 hrs on KCMU, even though it does ROCK, and I like to ROCK as much as anybody else.” “You know, Craigster, nobody said it was difficult to rock. Merely that this record does. Just because something is easy to do doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done every 4 hours. Take fucking, for instance.” “So what you’re saying is that this ‘same ole rock’ album sound is as common to you as a boring fuck? I’d suggest changing perfume or a ‘let’s be creative’ ad in the personals. It worked for me!” “This record is like rocking and fucking — everyone can do it, but every few do anything besides the same old, overrated, repetitive motion. Let’s be creative! (‘Iron Cock’? What about his damn tongue?)” “Anybody who is enterprising enuff can go dig through the booty cabinet and find 3 yr. old versions of some of these songs on cart. Whoop-T-Doo, ROKK!”

The Head and the Heart at Mellow Johnny's during SXSW 2011
photo by Jim Bennett

The Head and the Heart have a new music video out for “Down in the Valley”. The video features footage of the band on the road and playing at different venues. It’s a quite endearing video to a beautiful song. Watch it below:

• Third Man Records founder and former White Stripes’ guitarist Jack White recently announced the release of his solo debut Blunderbuss. Along with the announcement came the digital release of the album’s first single, “Love Interruption” (the 7″ vinyl now also has been released). The single’s B-side is “Machine Gun Silhouette,” a track that will not be included on Blunderbuss. You can stream it via Hype Machine here.

• Lana Del Rey played an excellent toned-down set at Amoeba Records yesterday. After a successful Billboard chart debut at #2 and a good performance on Letterman, it seems like she might be gaining back some of the confidence she lost amidst the internet backlash over her SNL performance. The Amoeba Records performance is very good, albeit short. Watch most of the performance at Stereogum. Watch her performance of “Without You” below:
  • Shabazz Palaces recently remixed the Battles track “White Electric” for their Dross Glop 2 12″ remix release. This is the second of two remix EPs for tracks off of Gloss Drop. The 12″ also features a remix of “Futura” by The Alchemist and another of “Africastle” by KODE9. Listen to the Shabazz remix below:
  • Converse has been continuously surprising us with their “Three Artists, One Song” projects. Hot Chip, Bernard Sumner (of New Order), and Hot City contributed the wonderful “I Didn’t Know What Love Was” almost a year ago. Other combos include Vampire Weekend, Kid Cudi, and Best Coast, as well as Matt & Kim, Soulja Boy, and Andrew W.K. But this time around, Converse is going all out, and on February 23, “DoYaThang” will be released, featuring Gorillaz, James Murphy, and Andre 3000. The song will be available for free download on Converse’s website.
  • Last summer, San Diego legends Hot Snakes reunited for a number of dates, and now they’ve announced a West Coast tour that will bring them to Seattle, more specifically to Neumos on April 2. You can visit Pitchfork for a complete schedule, and check out their video for “Braintrust” below.
  
  ]]> http://blog.kexp.org/2012/02/09/thursday-news-roundup-61/feed/ 0 http://blog.kexp.org/2012/02/09/thursday-news-roundup-61/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=thursday-news-roundup-61 http://feeds.kexp.org/~r/KexpBlog/~3/QvuoCiHtz2A/ http://blog.kexp.org/2012/02/09/kexp-in-studio-mark-lanegan-band/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:42:21 +0000 KEXP http://blog.kexp.org/?p=75792 On the release day of his new album, Mark Lanegan made a special KEXP appearance at the Cutting Room Studios in NYC to perform live on the Morning Show with John Richards. You can now stream the full live performance and check out these amazing photos by Lauren Slusher:

  photos by Lauren Slusher

  On the release day of his new album, Mark Lanegan made a special KEXP appearance at the Cutting Room Studios in NYC to perform live on the Morning Show with John Richards.

  You can now stream the full live performance and check out these amazing photos by Lauren Slusher:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  

  
  ]]> http://blog.kexp.org/2012/02/09/kexp-in-studio-mark-lanegan-band/feed/ 0 http://blog.kexp.org/2012/02/09/kexp-in-studio-mark-lanegan-band/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kexp-in-studio-mark-lanegan-band