Sasquatch 2013

Somewhere between a hippie commune and a chemical laced rave lies Sasquatch. It's lineup is as eclectic as its representation of nature, ranging from pristine if out of reach, to messy and intimate, much like the picturesque visage of the Gorge and the- let's say less than sanitary- reality of thousands of people camping together. However sun scorched fields cut with the occasional rain storm are a small price to pay for such a vast and rewarding amount of content provided by this year's slate of artists. It was a lot to get through over a four day period so rather than my slightly long form reports on concerts, I've opted instead to just offer small synopses of some of the more noteworthy acts and let the supplemental media speak for itself. As much as I'd like to go on and on about every detail, some of those details have been obscured by several days of a fairly punishing schedule. I assure you that's not an allusion to drugs, although christ were there a lot of people on drugs.

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Playlist: Sasquatch

We're about 3 weeks away from Sasquatch 2013, and as you can imagine, I'm pretty excited. What started as part reaction to the dying out festival circuts of the 90s and part acknowledgment that Coachella was in fact, a pretty big fucking deal, Sasquatch's humble beginnings aspired to offer the pacific northwest an indie rock festival of their own. Over a decade later it has expanded in to genre sprawling line up and earned it's position as one of North America's premier music festivals. It also didn't hurt that it takes place at Washington's gorgeous Gorge Amphitheater. People must really like camping. Below is a play list of some of the featured artists I'm most excited to see. With such an amazing collection of acts, even the daft assortment of dancing hipsters that are heavy on affluence and low on shame will keep me away this. See you there, bring allergy meds.

Review: The Knife- Shaking The Habitual

Often times when people retroactively refer to music as ahead of it's time, they employ the term as an apologetic euphemism. It serves as an acknowledgement that whatever trends it was breaking away from or what new prescient one it was trying to set, it couldn't be easily integrated into the current musical zeitgeist. However years later it would prove not only trail blazing, as modern music caught up to its terms and expressions, but its hidden worth would finally be made apparent. You could say part of this dynamic has applied to The Knife in the last half decade or so. When their 2006 album Silent Shout album hit, the enigmatic electronic music from sibling duo Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson didn't really sound like anything out there. There was no easy analogue or corollary in which to categorize its dense, macabre, and lively journey into forested realms full of discovery and mystery. If any album in recently memory fits the quantitive descriptor of being ahead of it's time, it's Silent Shout. It took years and years but finally as we stretched further into this new decade, diverse musical acts from around the world started to analyze and adapt The Knife's sound, incorporating it into the main stream and elsewhere. Acts that range from poppy like Grimes and Purity Ring to more experimental outfits like Gang Gang Dance all began to exhibit the genes of The Knife. The key difference between The Knife and our initial hypothetical however, is right from the beginning, Silent Shout was ubiquitously considered to be a masterpiece- one of the best the decade had to offer. Around it developed such an awe inspiring reverence that even the mention of The Knife brought with it a flood of requisite accolades.

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Podcast: BMP Series- Red 1

I've got something new and exciting for you today. Rather than reading me drone on and on about whatever meandering thoughts occupy my attention, now you can listen instead. I've partnered with my friend Mickey Mcleod to bring you the first in what is hopefully a continuing series of podcasts. Mickey is the founder and owner of Boutique Music, a Vancouver based company specializing in audio design and consultation for local businesses (check out his site here). When he's not sounding so formal, Mickey is also heck of a producer and DJ. He had the idea of doing a series of podcasts that focus on specific types of genres and affixing colours to each one as a means of differentiating and cataloguing. The Red series focuses on indie electronica. Throughout you can listen to a series of artists in the field and then some thoughts from Mickey and myself about what we think makes them noteworthy. Give it a listen below or download it at your pleasure, and look out for the next podcast in the next few weeks. Big thanks to Blue Light Studios for letting us record there!

Review: Atoms For Peace- Amok

I can't help but listen to Amok by Atoms For Piece and think of what it means for Radiohead. I think it might be the end for them, or at least the beginning of the end. For a band with such a mythos built around it, and one that has proven so cunningly adaptable over the years, it's hard to imagine any kind of final extinction on the horizon. While Amok is not necessarily a harbinger of doom for its monolithic forerunner, if such an event is looming, this may be where the journey began (or maybe it was The Eraser). So much of Amok seems like a counterpoint to Radiohead, an antithesis to the storied dynamic. As Radiohead has mixed in more and more shuffling jazz and unpredictable expressions into their work helping them nurture a sense of humanity amidst an increasingly desolate soundscape, Amok is a much more benin and even morbid affair. Its flares of significance and awe, of which Amok has many, come not from gorgeous instrumental arrangements or Thom Yorke's laboured and transfixing voice, but detached and digitized synthesizes. While the ruminations of Radiohead have warranted enough analytics to fill libraries, Yorke's thoughts in Amok act as a negative to that, focusing instead on things he doesn’t want to say, almost to the point of existential minimalism. Such a departure may seem to reek of the trappings of creative gridlock, or some kind of artistic midlife crises, however Yorke's steadfast stoicism, and level heading musings on these issues convey he is still very much engaged and in tune with his skills- he simply wants to apply them to something different. Furthermore, that Atoms For Peace consists of the same group he toured his solo album The Eraser with, namely Nigel Godrich and Flea, implies a premeditation and sense of drawn out planing leading up to whatever he hopes to accomplish with Amok. Maybe he simply desires another break from heading up one of the most important bands in the world, maybe he wanted to plant the seeds for its dissolution. If the later is true, that Amok turned out quite compelling is both intriguing and unsettling.

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Playlist: Pop Music

Yes, really just some pop music. Such a broad and nebulously defined parameter might not seem like the best basis in which to construct a play list, but that's kind of why I'm doing it. I've been having a lot of conversations with people lately regarding exactly what pop music is. Ever since the Ed Sullivan show back in February 1964, people could agree on its complete ubiquity, but as for what pop music actually sounds like is a tricky question to answer. I've been offered a number of different answers, all of which support a degree of logic and evidence. Some tend to look at pop music based on exactly what is popular, looking to the top 40 charts and the like. Ever since the 90s explosion of boy/girl bands and the next generation of excessively saccharine female singers, a lot of people have been unable to separate the larger idea of pop music from just that. Others take a more constructivist view of the topic claiming pop music is any music that adheres to a traditional verse-chorus structure. Some look at pop music on more of a sensory level (perhaps rightly so) claiming pop music is nothing more than flashy music expressing cultural and instrumental trends. It's tough to say what the best definition is- probably an aggregation of all the above ideas. Whatever the case it got me thinking of what I think of when people bring up pop music. This is what I came up with, what I think is a broad and accomplished sampling of modern pop music. Give it a go and see what you think. What comes to mind when you think of modern pop?

I switched over to sound cloud for this play list, it's got a better layout and is compatible with most mobile devises as opposed to Divshare play lists which I used in the past. Play list is below with a track listing after the jump

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Listen To New Music From Atoms For Peace

As in all of it. It's been a long road leading up to the release of Amok, the debut LP from Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich's project, Atoms For Peace. So long, that with all the surreptitiously released tracks or incognito performances, not to mention the dulge of news and rumors surrounding the collaboration, it's hard to believe that only now are we finally getting an album out of it. Yet here we are. Atoms For Peace are streaiming Amok on their site in it's entirety along with a trippy internet warping visualizer to go with it (player embedded below as well). Amok is out Feb 25; preorder it from their site and give it a listen to see what you think. Check back here soon for a review as well. Early thoughts: It's damn good.

Review: FIDLAR

The origins of punk rock, at least geographically speaking are sometimes debated. Never too vehemently, as pinpointing it's actual genesis is sometimes tricky. The cesspool of filth and excess of New York, the bleak dystopian wasteland of Detroit, the alienated and isolated youth of the midwest (they're called fly over states for a reason), all have legitimate claims to fame in this regard. And then of course there is England. The different courses punk music took, as it was left to evolve in ecosystems separated by an ocean is an easier concept to grasp. Across the pond, punk rock ala The Clash and Sex Pistols was characterized by dire urgency, highly reactive to the perceived injustices plaguing the nation. However American punk music led by The Ramones (at least the highest profile of the genre's early adopters, but by no means all there was to offer) took the route of tongue and cheek vandalism hijinks, most commentary they provided being of the sardonic and mocking variety. It's this path, that some have followed with a commitment that has grown ever more intensified that has led to FIDLAR. If American punk was a less than reverent observation of the gimmicky idolatry and crass banality of American life, then FIDLAR thinks so little of it that they afford it next to no attention whatsoever. As such, FIDLAR's debut album is created in a vacuum, a volatile and hyperbolic expression of drug addled binges so crude and destructive, they almost couldn't be pulled of in the real world to the extent that they convince you they can. Their commitment to their own highly unstable and explosive life style is so insular, with such little regard to the environment in which they exist, that FIDLAR comes off as a group think version of solipsism. Such an approach leads to intensely raw, explosive music that distils and elaborates on every facet of their admittedly shallow existence, and at times is pulled off wonderfully. However with a lack of any kind of macro context, FIDLAR eventually becomes so unrelatable that no one but themselves can connect fully with this album. The parts that do seem accessible, lyrically, melodically or otherwise, are a hell of a lot of fun.

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Review: Beach Fossils- Clash The Truth

The realm of breezy indie rock, and it's slightly varied iterations built upon surf culture, shoe gaze, and low fi aspirations may not seem like perilous grounds to wander upon, but I fear this is increasingly becoming the case. The genre is reaching peak saturation; contributions to it, while still running the gamut all the way up to excellent, are becoming increasingly more homogenized, rendered less unique or poignant and more regressive. While various forms of pop, electronic, and hip hop have mutated and evolved, providing ever enlarging canvases in which groups can leave their mark, indie rock hasn't progressed at the same pace. This is not a slight against the genre or a claim that it is wholly stagnant, but when everyone from The Antlers to Wild Nothing are throwing everything they've got at roughly the same target for so many years now, there's not a lot of room left to make a splash. Beach Fossils may appear at first to be positioned at a disadvantage in this case, at least temporally speaking. Having only been on the scene since 2009 the gap for meaningful contributions while by no means shut, was certainly a lot more narrow than it had been during years prior. However last year, Beach Fossils member Zachary Cole Smith smashed right through that gap with his side project DIIV, making one of the best examples of what the genre can produce in a long time. Just a few months later he falls back in line behind vocalist and Beach Fossils founder Dustin Payseur with the release of Clash The Truth. Here, Beach Fossils do not follow in DIIV's wake as they are largely different conceptual offerings. Whereas DIIV conveyed nearly everything through it's guitars, it's messages weren't exactly nuanced, more representations of emotions and conditions. With Clash The Truth, Beach Fossils attempt to dive into more elaborate sentiments- ideas of youthful crossroads leading to wayward disillusionment, but also how to overcome them. As such, Beach Fossils not only has to find ways to properly articulate these sentiments, but face the added challenge of syncing them up with the tone and flow of the still guitar heavy collection of songs. They meet these challenges mostly competently, and at times quite remarkably. At times like that Clash The Truth really clicks, it's existence assuredly justified.

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Listen To New Music From The Knife, The Strokes, And Wavves

Well holy hell has this week ever been eventful. The last seven days have been filled with so much exciting content and announcements that even the comparatively boring stuff is still pretty interesting. When the agonizing wait for The Knife's imminent return finally ends with a weird as hell new song, and that's not the most noteworthy piece of news this week- hello new My Bloody Valentine record!- you know something is going right. Let's check out a few of this week's new releases.

Yes, this is happening. After six years, two very worth while side projects, and endless streams of accolades and hyperbolic reverence, The Knife are finally back. Just as we are really beginning to see the influence of their once regarded as a highly abstract and ahead of it's time music bleed into relatively more main stream artists, The Knife have returned with the first single from their soon to be released LP Shaking The Habitual. It's called "Full Of Fire", It's nine minutes long and it's all kinds of strange. What starts as a feverish industrial percussion lead beat starts sprouting numerous sonic and instrumental oddities. As may be expected, Karin Andersson's voice undergoes a variety of metamorphosis along the sprawling track. The tonal shifts led by the slightly sweeter tropical style sounds that The Knife has always employed are a bit jaring amidst the haunting buzzes and growls comprised of who knows what, but this is The Knife- it's going to take some time to get used to. Much of the internet is already fawning over "Full Of Fire", but I'm reserving final opinions until it sinks in a little more and I can hear it in context of the full release. Check out the video here, but be warned- it's only going to make things more confusing. Shaking the Habitual is out April 8, prepare yourself.

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