Diamanda Galás much-anticipated compilation of tragic and homicidal love songs, Guilty Guilty Guilty, will be released worldwide by MUTE U.K. on March 31, 2008.

from the press release: 

In her 17th album – the first since 2004 –the dark queen of extended vocal techniques turns standards from jazz, blues, and country music into her own musical genre.  Using the full extent of her vocal arsenal and a virtuosic piano technique, Galás carves songs of doomed love into haunting works that promise to rip your heart out.  Featured on the album are her much acclaimed reinterpretations of Ralph Stanley's reaper song, "O Death"; O. V. Wright's "8 Men and 4 Women"; "Long Black Veil" made popular by Johnny Cash; "Time (Interlude)" sung by Timi Yuro; Tracy Nelson's "Down So Low"; her signature rendition of "Autumn Leaves"; and the favorite "Heaven Have Mercy", made famous by Edith Piaf.

 

 

Guilty Guilty Guilty delves into the grief and outrage of those whose love has been shattered. Sophisticated vocal weaponry combines with a driving, sometimes jaw-dropping, percussive piano style to conjure up raw emotions ranging from fleeting happiness to the terror brought upon by the death of love.  With this new album, the avant-garde diva reaches into the heart of blues to take it to new, unheard-of places of lonesomeness, occasionally breaking into Middle Eastern scales or the ululating wail of the Amanes (improvised lamentation from Asia Minor).

 

"Horror is Galás's great subject and her performances are an attempt to dramatize it," writes Greg Kot in The Chicago Tribune (October 2007). "But her music is also defined by empathy, an embrace of the abused, the underdog."

Guilty Guilty Guilty's tracks were recorded at "Diamanda's Valentines Day Massacre," the Knitting Factory, New York City, February 14, 2006 (7:30 pm & 10:30 pm), except for "Long Black Veil," recorded at Tonic, New York City, March 20, 2006, and "Interlude (Time)," recorded at Auckland Town Hall, Auckland, New Zealand, October 25, 2005. Recording and mixing engineer is Blaise Dupuy.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

August 2nd, 2007

Legendary culture jam-band Negativland announces upcoming release of My Favorite Things DVD (complete with doo-wop covers CD by the 180 Gs) and reissue of its 1983 conceptual masterpiece, A Big 10-8 Place.

Group launches first East Coast tour in seven years with a Time Out New York profile and performance at NYC’s Highline Ballroom.

Declared heroic by their peers for refashioning culture into what the group considers to be more honest statements, Negativland suggests that refusing to be original, in the traditional sense, is the only way to make art that has any depth within commodity capitalism... – The New York Times

Twisted genius...compelling...parody and satire as a grass roots weapon of consumer resistance. – Rolling Stone

Negativland isn't just some group of merry pranksters; its art is about tearing apart and reassembling found images to create new ones, in an attempt to make social, political and artistic statements. Hilarious and chilling. – The Onion

Negativland’s greatest hits become all new moving pictures in the amazing and long awaited  DVD release of My Favorite Things, to be issued via the Other Cinema (Sonic Outlaws, So Wrong They’re Right) imprint on October 23rd. Years in the making, this package is an epic career-capping project from Negativland. Sure to please the group’s old fans, this very accessible DVD is also an incredible introduction to Negativland's work for new ones.  Created with a crew of 18 other experimental filmmakers from all over the USA, Our Favorite Things is a collaborative project that takes a striking visual leap into the same legally gray area that Negativland has been exploring with sound for the last 27 years. A dark and charming film collection of unforgettable collage and classic cut-up entertainment for all ages, it also comes with over 90 minutes of bonus material, as well as a truly silly and bizarre 18-minute bonus CD of 100% acapella versions of Negativland's work by The 180 Gs, a five-person black acapella group from Detroit, that has endeavored to “cover” Negativland’s cut up collage work in R 'n B, Doo-Wop, and Gospel styles.  The resulting album 180 D’Gs To The Future! is extremely fun, funny, and very weird.

 

Also in the works is the long awaited re-issue of Negativland's legendary 1983 difficult listening conceptual suburban epic A Big 10-8 Place. Over three years in the making, and with ten-thousand-million-billion analog tape splices, this insanely cut-up and uniquely weird release remains the hands down favorite of many fans of Negativland's work. This re-issue, due out on September 25th, comes with a 60-minute bonus DVD of Negativland's No Other Possibility video, created in the mid-1980’s.

 

As if all of this Negativland activity weren’t enough to cause a government reaction, the band will bring a new version of its weekly radio broadcast (“Over the Edge” – on the air since 1981) to the live stage, mixing music, found sounds, found dialog, scripts, personalities, and sound effects within a “radio” theater-of-the-mind.  Time Out New York featured the band this week in anticipation of its first New York City performance since a sold-out show at Irving Plaza in 2000 (LINK). “It's All In Your Head FM” is a two-hour-long, action-packed look at monotheism, the supernatural God concept, and the all-important role played by the human brain in our beliefs. Dr. Oslo Norway is your “radio” host, and Christianity and Islam are the featured religions, as Negativland asks you to contemplate some complex, serious, silly, and challenging ideas about human belief in this audio cut-up mix best described as a “documentary collage”. “It's All In Your Head FM” is a compelling and uniquely fun presentation of sticky theological concepts, which has actually been known to provoke arguments for days after the show is over.

 

Opening the NYC performance will be two other significant contributors to the history of re-appropriation of found sounds – Steinski and Double Bee. In 1983, Tommy Boy Records held a promotional contest, in which entrants were asked to remix the single “Play That Beat, Mr. D.J.” by G.L.O.B.E. and Whiz Kid (members of Afrika Bambaataa's Soulsonic Force). The entry submitted by Steinski and Double Dee, “Lesson 1 — The Payoff Mix” was packed with sampled appropriations from other records -- not only from early Hip-Hop records and from Funk and Disco records that were popular with Hip-Hop DJs, but with short snippets of older songs by Little Richard and The Supremes, along with vocal samples from sources as diverse as instructional tap-dancing records and Humphrey Bogart films.

 

Double Dee and Steinski followed up this success with “Lesson 2 — The James Brown Mix” in 1984, which began with a sample from The War of The Worlds before quickly running through a montage of memorable breaks from classic James Brown records, with sampled appearances by Dirty Harry and Bugs Bunny.

 

In 1985 came “Lesson 3 — The History of Hip-Hop Mix” which attempted a survey of the great breakdancing favorites, along with snippets from Johnny Carson and Hernando's Hideaway.  The Illegal Art label, home to notorious musical collage artist Girl Talk will issue a definitive compilation of this long unavailable material in 2008.

 

Negativland Live:

08/02 New York, NY Highline Ballroom (tune in live at www.free103point9.org )
08/03 Philadelphia, PA International House
08/04 Baltimore, MD The Church on St. Paul St.
08/05 Washington DC Warehouse Theater
08/07 Charlottesville, VA Satellite Ballroom

 

Our Favorite Things DVD Chapter Listing:

180 d’Gs To The Future Bonus CD Track Listing:

Release Date: October 23rd, 2007

 

 

01. Learning To Communicate

02. No Business

03. Gimme The Mermaid (VIDEO )

04. U2

05. Time Zones

06. Freedom’s Waiting

07. Yellow, Black and Rectangular

08. The Bottom Line

09. Guns

10. Over The Hiccups

11. The Mashin’ of The Christ

12. KPIX News

13. Truth In Advertising

14. Why Is This Commercial?

15. The Greatest Taste Around

16. Taste In Mind

17. Humanitarian Effort

18. Drink It Up

19. My Favorite Things

 

 

01. Intro (Everything’s Going Fine)

02. Christianity Is Stupid (MP3 )

03. Helter Stupid (Excerpt)

04. Greatest Taste Around

05. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

06. Car Bomb

07. A Nice Place To Live

08. Seat Bee Sate

09. Roy Storey’s Sports Line

10. I Am God

11. Playboy Channel

12. Oven Noises

13. Theme From A Big 10-8 Place (Live)

 

A Big 10-8 Place Track Listing:

Release Date: September 25th, 2007

 

 

01. Theme from a Big Place

02. A Big 10-8 Place, Pt. One

03. Clowns and Ballerinas

04. Introduction

05. Four Fingers

06. 180-G, A Big 10-8 Place, Pt. Two

 

More About Negativland:

“Negativland, longtime advocates of fair use allowances for pop media collage, are perhaps America's most skilled plunderers from the detritus of 20th century commercial culture. Negativland are media addicts who see society suffering under a constant barrage of TV, canned imagery, advertising and corporate culture...the band's latest project is razor sharp, microscopically focused, terribly fun and a bit psychotic. – Wired

 

“Brutally hilarious...a compelling argument for the anti-copyright movement.” – Village Voice

 

“Fearless artistes or foolhardy risk-takers.... by constantly haranguing the audience with authentic advertising spiel and highlighting its transparency, they kill the messenger, kill the message and produce highly entertaining art simultaneously. – L.A. Weekly

Since 1980, the four or five Floptops known as Negativland have been creating records, fine art, video, books, radio and live performance using appropriated sound, image and text. Mixing original materials and music with things taken from corporately owned mass culture, Negativland re-arranges these bits and pieces to make them say and suggest things that they never intended to. In doing this kind of cultural opposition and “culture jamming” (a term coined by Negativland in 1984), Negativland have been sued twice for copyright infringement.

 

Okay, but what, you still ask, is Negativland exactly? That's hard to answer. Negativland definitely isn't a “band,” though they may look like one when you see their CDs for sale in your local shopping mall. They're more like some sort of goofy yet serious European-style artist/activist collective - an unhealthy mix of John Cage, Lenny Bruce, Pink Floyd, Bruce Connor, Firesign Theatre, Abbie Hoffman, Robert Rauschenberg, 1970's German electronic music, old school punk rock attitude, surrealist performance art, your high school science teacher…and lot's more.

 

Over the years Negativland's “illegal” collage and appropriation based audio and visual works have touched on many things - pranks, media hoaxes, media literacy, the evolving art of collage, creative anti-corporate activism in a media saturated multi-national world, the bizarre banality of suburban existence, file sharing, intellectual property issues, wacky surrealism, evolving notions of art and ownership and law in a digital age, artistic and humorous critiques of mass media and culture, and, of course, so-called “culture jamming” (a term now thoroughly and somewhat distastefully commodified by Adbusters Magazine.)

 

While they have been, since getting sued, aggressively and publicly involved in advocating significant reforms of our nation's copyright laws, and are often perceived as creative and funny shit-stirring anti-corporate activists, Negativland are artists first and activists second, not the other way around. Their art and media interventions have (often naively) posed questions about the nature of sound, media, control, ownership, propaganda and perception, with the results of these questions and explorations being what they release to the public. Their work is now referenced and taught in many college courses in the US, has been written about in over 30 books (including No Logo by Naomi Klein, Media Virus by Douglas Rushkoff, and various biographies of the band U2), cited in legal journals, and they often lecture about their work here and in Europe.

 

In 1995 Negativland released a 270 page book with 72 minute CD entitled Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2. This book documented their infamous four-year long legal battle over their 1991 release of an audio piece entitled U2. They were the subjects of Craig Baldwin's 1995 feature documentary Sonic Outlaws. Negativland also created the soundtrack and sound design for Harold Boihem's 1997 documentary film The Ad and The Ego, an excellent in-depth look into the hidden agendas of the corporate ad world that goes very deep into the gross and subtle ways that we are adversely affected by advertising.

 

Negativland is interested in unusual noises and images (especially ones that are found close at hand), unusual ways to restructure such things and combine them with their own music and art, and mass media transmissions which have become sources, and subjects, of much of their work. Negativland covets insightful wackiness from anywhere, low-tech approaches whenever possible, telling humor, and vital social targets of any kind. Without ideological preaching, Negativland often becomes a subliminal culture sampling service concerned with making art about everything we aren't supposed to notice.

 

A complete discography of Negativland's work is available at the band’s website.

 

On The Web:

www.negativland.com

www.myspace.com/officialnegativland

 

"Northern’s debut offering, another in Infraction’s sweet sleep-stream of supine-inclined ambience,
are bros of Canada, Davin and Kevin Chong, dealers in heating up cool digitalia with toasty warm
sample food. Drawn is a study in turning lost to found sound, capturing momentary guitar passes,
and releasing them, subtly altered, into enduring motifs, finding felicity in the fleeting and
making it stay awhile to become compelling. What happens is that this Northern music initially
seems to drift by asking nothing from you, but you gradually find yourself, oddly, wanting from
it. And it yields graciously. In being quiet, unwanting, you want to be quiet with it. It’s
the New Quiet.

The album opens with “Coasting” in zones that distantly recall those charted by Loscil
(Submers and First Narrows), the aqueous becoming a subtle leitmotif (cf. the later “Pacific”).
The architecture becomes more digitally-enhanced, espousing sound 12k principles. Shuttle358,
Taylor Deupree, and Fourcolor would all seem to be Northern touchstones, sharing a similar
delight in deployment of small gesture processed loopstrata, fluting, floating, fibrillating –
at once a surface over which to skitter a glitch-scatter and a cushion for repose. No fear of
Northern exposure here at the warmer end of digital, gently meshing textures, lapping into
laptop. It’s a deceptively small sound that can get big on you, like on “Migrate”, which
dwells in semi-stasis just long enough to lull, then spills over with swells before slipping
out of sight. Drawn’s digital means of generation takes on an increasingly naturalistic
sounding aspect helped by its manipulated guitar-enriched intake. The guitar tradition
drawn on Drawn is the ostinato introspections and plucked intimacies of 1 mile North,
Labradford, and Dan Abrams. Ostensibly different from Infraction stable signature sound,
it somehow sits comfortably within it.

The first 150 copies come bountifully endowed with a bonus cd-r, Jessa (INFX 025), a collection
which signals the next phase in Northern development, though the seeds of Jessa’s future-indicative
are retievable from Drawn’s present-past. It evidences a deeper denser dronier zone-out music,
minimizing digital intervention and renouncing microsonic patter. The gestures here are towards a
half-light almost-orchestralism, moving from the likes of Marsen Jules and the secular sacral of
Eluvium, shoulder-to-shoulder with the submersible slowcore starriness of The Lid (whose time of
greatest influence and recognition has finally now come). Sidenote: Northern bid their myspace
visitors: “be quiet with us.” More resonances of SotL, and their “Be Little with Me”? Sshhh. It’s
Northern. It’s the New Quiet." (A. Lockett)
Comes housed in Stoughton style mini-lp gatefold sleeve.  Down to 10 copies of the limited edition!


Info : www.infractionrecords.com/shop.html
www.myspace.com/northerncanada

Listen : www.infractionrecords.com/audio.html

artist: Charalambides
title: Likeness
catalog #: krank113
formats available: CD
release date: october 29, 2007

content: Likeness is the newest release from the duo of Tom and Christina Carter. Recorded over a period of several weeks during the Spring of 2006, the album is a return to the spontaneous composition of previous Charalambides records such as Houston and Union. With the exception of "The Good Life", which appeared in a primitive version on the Wholly Other CDR Home, all of the tracks on this release sprung forth after 'record' was pressed, and were fleshed out via overdubs, editing, and a malfunctioning space echo over the course of the next few months. Lyrical content largely derives from public domain American popular song from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, edited, rearranged, and largely deconstructed by Christina into abstract 'protest' songs for the century at hand. Musically, the album departs from the warm psych of A Vintage Burden in favor of the lush and layered vocal strata of Christina's later solo works, and a chillier, more abrasive guitar sound that favors the Velvets over the Byrds.  Though containing much of the compositional concision that gave A Vintage Burden much of its appeal, the sound here just as frequently turns the corner into the abstract echoing spaces that characterise the more discordant sounds of Charalambides at the dawn of their kranky residency.

context: Charalambides has been recording and performing live in various configurations since 1991. Originally a duo comprised of Tom and Christina Carter, Charalambides released a cassette called Our Bed Is Green on their own Wholly Other label in 1992. The two Carters showed a firm grasp on the haunting nature of American blues and country, as well as a mastery of tape manipulation, a disregard for genre boundaries, and a tendency towards vertically stacked guitar drone. Charalambides has released nearly two dozen albums in various lineups since then, and in late 2003 returned to concentrating on their duo work, fusing introspective, open-ended, and often spacious song structures with blasts of feedback and explosive sound often startling to fans familiar only with the band's deceptively low-key reputation.

track listing: 1. Uncloudy Day  2. Do You See?  3. Figs and Oranges  4. Memory Takes Hold  5. The Good Life  6. Saddle Up My Pony  7. Feather In the Air  8. Walking Through the Graveyard  9. What You Do For Money

quotes:
"This far into their musical careers, Tom and Christina Carter still sound as if they are still peeling back the layers of their souls, never completely defining who they are, which is good, as the music is still fresh and vital, not the sound of rehashed obsolescence." - Urban Pollution

"It would surely be possible to name check a few other rural space progenitors, but the references would be so arcane as to be ridiculous." - The Wire

"Charalambides are not suited for everyman’s record collection, but the netherworld they forge is a musical feast, a field of music that explodes finely, like the sparklers you burn in the heart of a summer night." - Stop Smiling

"With a sound that seems at once both spacious and intimate, Tom and Christina Carter showcase their seemingly innate ability to lock into a shared orbit across the darkening sky, their luminous drift scaled down to its essential, irreducible core." - Pitchfork

artist: To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie
title: The Patron
catalog #: krank112
formats available: CD
release date: october 15, 2007

content: The Patron is the debut full length release by To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie. The songs center around an underlying love story between two merging corporations that manage to capture the raw sentiment of isolation, profound discovery, and morbid betrayal. The Patron is about the corruption of an idea that is at first welcomed and later destroyed.

    The recording process typically began with a basic vocal and guitar structure which was then slowy developed by adding electronics and manipulating sounds, until the orignal outline is blurred yet still identifiable. The steady passing of sounds and samples are most important to TKAPB’s recording process, and they rely heavily on the loss of translation between each pass.

    But the importance of the technical details of any sound recording should be considered infinitesimally small when measured against the end result. Many sound artists have read both the pop and noise manifestoes and tried to join the two seemingly opposed theories into a cohesive whole, yet few have succeeded. Invariably, the artist makes a conscious or subconscious decision to stand firmly in the one camp where their beliefs truly lie and to occasionally tip the cap to the other to remind both themselves and the listener of their original intent. What TKAPB have produced however, is a near perfect storm of structure and chaos, melody and noise, the precise and the random, fused into their own unified musical theory of everything that at times soothes while simultaneously grabbing your throat.

context: To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie consists of Jehna Wilhelm, guitar and vocals, and Mark McGee, electronics and sound manipulation. Originally from Richmond, VA, the duo has been involved with this project for 4 years and has been supported by an ever-changing cast of players and musicians. They now reside in Minneapolis, MN where they run their own label, The Riley Bushman Recordings & Archives, which they use as an outlet to release various projects and collaborations.

track listing:
1. The Patron  2. The Man With The Shovel, Is The Man I’m Going To Marry  3. Lovers & Liars  
4. Long Arms  5. Dedicated Secretary, Liaison, Passionate Mother  6. I Box Twenty  
7. You Guys Talk, We’ll Spill Our Guts  8. With Brass Songs They’ll Descend  9. Very Lovely  
10. Window Shopping

artist: White Rainbow
title: Prism of Eternal Now
catalog#: krank110
formats available: CD
release date: october 1, 2007


content: After years of outer space exploration in Yume Bitsu and Surface of Eceyon, as well as stints as a hired gun for a multitude of artists including Dirty Projectors, Jackie-O Motherfucker and Devendra Banhart, Adam Forkner decided to turn his focus inward and began to record solo material. And focus he did, working at a dizzying pace that culminated in the production of the 5CD/1DVD White Rainbow Box (2006 Marriage Records). The remarkable thing about that album was not that it was 4.5 hours long, but that the overwhelming majority of it was of extraordinary quality and not mere filler.

    With the release of …Eternal Now, White Rainbow has surpassed typical solo project territory and is now a virtual elemental force. At a somewhat brief 71 minutes, his kranky debut pulses and flows with mantric chants, clattering percussions, sighing sustains and guitar leads unashamed of their scorching transcendence. He breathes new life into archaic sub-genres such as progrock, new age, and hippie folk incantations, while never stooping to the negative aspects of any of them, and at the same time remaining a step ahead of the technologically crippled and virtuosuo-less looper pedal scene. Prism of Eternal Now leaves behind the bounds of gravity for a free floating meditational headtrip of inner space exploration.

Note: the vinyl edition of ‘Prism..” is available via Marriage Records

context: White Rainbow is the solo moniker of Adam Forkner. He runs the Yarnlazer cd-r label with Honey Owens [Valet]. He works, lives and plays in Portland, Oregon, a small rural village near the bustling metropolis of Astoria.

track listing: 1. Pulses 2. Middle 3. For Terry 4. Mystic Prism 5. April 25th 11:14PM 6. Warm Clicked Fruit 7. Guitars 8. Waves 9. Awakening

quotes: "The real treasure in Adam Forkner's work is his innate ability to capture the perfect tone of sounds, whether it be a flanged guitar or an ancient drum machine."  indieworkshop

"Warm synths and reverbed-out layers of guitar pave a solid foundation for drum loops, vocal tracks, and various other instruments to weave in and out of at their own pace.  Tinymixtapes

"Each movement of ambient sound and melodic drone becomes impossible to dissect. It becomes a part of your memories."  Tinymixtapes

artist: Cloudland Canyon
title: Silver Tongued Sisyphus
catalog#: krank111
formats available: CDEP
release date: september 17, 2007


content: The first Cloudland Canyon release for kranky was recorded in Brooklyn, Germany and Memphis. It follows on the heels of the well received "Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004" album released on the Tee Pee label.

    Silver Tongued Sisyphus is a secular call to prayer with humming, looping and loping ambient passages interspersed with bursting rhythmic energy and agitated guitar lines. Recent live shows have sounded like an unauthorized soundtrack to netherworld versions of The Swimmer  or The Scorceror.

    Pulling influences from the foggy ether of generations past, Cloudland Canyon has staked their claim to the shadows of cult musical culture of the late 1960's and early 1970's German underground scene.

context: Kip Uhlhorn and Simon Wojan began collaborating under the moniker Cloudland Canyon in 2000. Both have toiled in various music scenes (hardcore, psych and punk) since the last century. Recent collaborations with kranky artiste Lichens and others have taken the duo into transcendental musical territories. Cloudland Canyon has toured throughout the United States and Europe. The group is in the final stages of mixing a new full length release to be made available early in 2008 on kranky.

track listing: 1. Dambala  2. Silver Tongued Sisyphus

quotes for the debut album:
"...a stunning neo-psychedelic experience where the musical spirits of This Heat, Ash Ra Temple and The Mahavishnu Orchestra are evoked, celebrated and absorbed inside Uhlhorn and Wojan´s shifting cloud formations of sound."  The Wire

 "The group´s debut album Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004 is a starry-eyed psych rock opus with mystical aspirations and a Ph.D in minimalist-drone composition. It´s as if they have read the world´s great religious tomes and studied drones under mastery minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Terry Riley."  Alternative Press

"Bolstered into a deep mystical vein of sonic poetry and rare melodic beauty they make most freak folkies sound like fey daisy-pickers."  The Stranger

 

SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN'S FIRE ESCAPE, PRODUCED BY FOUR TET, OUT THIS OCTOBER ON SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND

Sunburned Hand Of The Man's new album, Fire Escape, will be released by Smalltown Supersound on October 2, 2007. Produced by Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), Fire Escape consists of an all star line up, all of whom are members of the movement which is Sunburned Hand Of The Man. Led these days by John Moloney, Sunburned Hand Of The Man is not a band in the traditional sense, Sunburned is a collection of like minded artists and musicians gathered together for the purposes of group exploration and an undying search for the 'ecstatic truth'.

Kieran Hebden's relationship with Sunburned Hand of the Man began after Hebden read an article in The Wire that touted Sunburned Hand Of The Man as leaders of the "New Weird America". The story sent Hebden on a search of Sunburned records and he's been a fan of them ever since.  Sunburned supported Four Tet for a two-week tour in the spring of 2004. A couple of years later in March 2006, Hebden asked the band if they would like him to record them in a London studio (the Exchange) with the idea that he would take the recordings and construct his vision of a Sunburned record. Fire Escape is that vision.

Both Sunburned Hand of the Man and Smalltown Supersound are fans of Boredoms and they asked the band's leader, Yamatsuka Eye, to create the artwork for Fire Escape. The artwork Eye created perfectly captures the band, the album and the sound.

Sunburned Hand Of The Man on Fire Escape are:
Kieran Hebden (Fourtet) - piano, drum machine, production, mix
Robert Thomas - bass, samples
John Moloney - drums, beats, vocals
Ron Schneiderman - guitar, percussion, winds
Marc Orleans - guitar, casio, winds, percussion
Michael Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra) - trumpet, guitar, winds, percussion
Bridget Hayden (Vibracathedral Orchestra) - guitar, viola, winds, piano
Keith Wood - guitar, percussion, winds
Gozzy - wheels, map

Tracklist:
1. words to live by
2. nice butterfly mask
3. what color is the sky in the world you live in?
4. the parakeet beat
5. captain knowhere
6. fire escape
7. the wind has ears
8. triple, double, everything
9. raw backwards

White Williams' debut album, Smoke, will be released by Tigerbeat 6 on October 30, 2007. Preceding the release of Smoke, White Williams will tour the U.S. and Canada with Girl Talk and Dan Deacon.

"Nurtured in the arson-prone fatalism of Cleveland's DIY scene, 23-year-old Joe Williams, noise-rock dilettante and White Williams' mastermind, made a name for himself twice touring with Gregg Gillis (Girl Talk), Andrew Strasser, Frank Musarra (Hearts of Darknesses) and Luke Venezia (Drop the Lime). Together, through countless venues of ill-repute, they forced their cartooned audio effluvia in the ears of hapless art-students, transients and skin-heads. Inevitably, Joe was saved by pop music.

Smoke is his self-invented messiah. Recorded in various sublets over two years in Cleveland, Cincinnati, New York, and San Francisco, using a laptop, analog synths and a mutable selection of studio equipment, White Williams' first album is unapologetic pop that flirts with the vacuous nostalgia of the American dream; engaging ambiguous and schizophrenic instruments with impressionistic lyrics, driven by a casually heterosexual backbeat. Polished, familiar and addictive like the sound of sex in a futuristic hospital, Smoke portends a time where energy-drinking teenagers undress each other with night-vision goggles. As an amalgam of adolescent telepathy and mature awareness: White Williams is the soundtrack to our dreams of a lustful and indifferent prom night that lasts forever."  -- Jeffrey Blocksidge

Tour Dates:
Wed. Sept. 12  Toronto, ON @ Phoenix w/ Dan Deacon, Girl Talk
Thu. Sept. 13 Montreal, QC @ La Tulipe w/ Dan Deacon, Girl Talk
Sat.  Sept. 15  New York, NY @ Webster Hall w/ Dan Deacon, Girl Talk
Mon. Sept. 17 Philadelphia, PA @ Starlite w/ Dan Deacon, Girl Talk
Thu. Sept. 20 Charlottesville, VA @ Satellite Ballroom w/ Dan Deacon, Girl Talk
Fri.  Sept. 21 Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel w/ Dan Deacon, Girl Talk
Sat.  Sept. 22 Atlanta, GA @ MJQ Concourse w/ Dan Deacon, Girl Talk
Thu. Sept. 27 San Diego, CA @ Epicentre w/ Dan Deacon, Girl Talk
Fri.  Sept. 28 Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex w/ Dan Deacon, Girl Talk
Sat.  Sept. 29 San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore Auditorium w/ Dan Deacon, Girl Talk

Smoke Tracklist:
1. Headlines
2. In The Club
3. New Violence
4. Going Down
5. Smoke
6. The Shadow
7. Danger
8. I Want Candy
9. Fleetwood Crack
10. Route to Palm
11. Lice in the Rainbow

 
A real treat for the burgeoning ranks of A Hawk And A Hacksaw fans, this strictly limited EP includes the first fruits of the duo’s blossoming relationship with a group of extraordinarily talented Hungarian folk musicians, who have come together under the name The Hun Hangár Ensemble to tour Europe with AHAAH this summer. Consisting of eight newly recorded and songs, both original and traditional, the EP serves as an introduction for both the listener and the artists themselves as they get to know each other, providing a platform from which music and ideas can evolve.
 
In addition to the CD, a 20-minute bonus DVD (An Introduction To A Hawk And A Hacksaw) documents the last two years of almost continuous touring by the original duo of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost, with behind-the-scenes insight into their travels across Europe, as well as some great live footage captured (by director Dave Herman) in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Anyone not yet au fait with AHAAH’s blistering but delightfully intimate live performances would do well to sample some of the fun…
 
Jeremy and Heather’s first ensemble work came in 2006: their acclaimed third album, The Way The Wind Blows, was recorded with the help of celebrated Romanian brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia and fellow Albuquerque resident Zach Condon of Beirut.
 
Late in 2006 Jeremy and Heather, making an exploratory trip to Hungary, discovered Fonó, a music shop, venue and centre for Hungarian folk music based in the capital Budapest. Here they met musicians fluent not only in traditional Hungarian folk, but also in jazz and minimalism, with a real hunger to make original music using the palette of musical styles that they had acquired, and The Hun Hangár Ensemble was born.
 
Béla Ágoston, an open minded and highly influential character within the Budapest music scene, brings expertise on many an instrument including Hungarian bagpipes, the clarinet and the alto saxophone. Ferenc Kovács, who has played with Archie Shepp amongst others, was recruited for his outstanding ability on trumpet and violin. Zsolt Kürtösi’s talents lay with the upright bass and experience in traditional Hungarian and Transylvanian folk and klezmer, while a young maestro of the cymbalom (a dulcimer-like instrument central to traditional Hungarian music), Balázs Unger, completes the group. [For the European tour, the group will be augmented by British percussionist Alex Nielson]
 
Jeremy already had in mind the songs he wanted to record – a mixture of traditional Hungarian, Serbian, Romanian and klezmer melodies, as well as new compositions by himself and Heather - and brought rough drafts when he joined the ensemble to record in Budapest in December 2006. The Ensemble had just a week to lay down their parts before the tracks were brought back to AHAAH’s Albuquerque base for Jeremy and Heather to add their sections, once again supplemented by members of Beirut.
 
The songs were carefully chosen to showcase the individual prowess of each of the six musicians, in ensemble pieces (such as ‘Ihabibi’), duos (‘Kiraly Siritas’, featuring violin and cymbalom) and solo pieces (the virtuoso cymbalom of ‘Vajdaszentivány’). Perhaps most impressive of all is ‘Zozobra’, which features only Balázs (cymbalom) and Jeremy (everything else), and sounds like it ought to be soundtracking Buster Keaton…
 
There will be just 4,000 individually numbered copies of this release made available worldwide, in special gatefold card packaging, though it will also be available as a digital download worldwide from April 30.
 
The UK tour starts on May 5 in Oxford, and the ensemble will be playing around Europe throughout the summer. You can find an e-flyer for the UK tour here: http://www.theleaflabel.com/ahaah/flyer.html and a full list of tour dates on the Leaf website.
 
STOP PRESS: UK show with Fanfare Ciocarlia at the Barbican in London (May 30) just confirmed!
 
1.             Kiraly Siratás  (Trost)
2.             Zozobra  (Barnes)
3.             Serbian Cocek  (traditional, with additional melodies by Barnes/Trost)
4.             Romanian Hora and Bulgar  (traditional) live, somewhere in Europe, 2006
5.             Ihabibi  (traditional, with additional melodies by Barnes/Trost)
6.             Vajdaszentivány  (traditional Hungarian melodies)
7.             Oriental Hora  (traditional)
8.             Dudanotak  (traditional Hungarian bagpipe melodies)
 

A Hawk And A Hacksaw:

            Jeremy Barnes  (accordion, drums, glockenspiel)

            Heather Trost  (violin, viola, cello)

The Hun Hangár Ensemble:

            Béla Ágoston  (Hungarian bagpipes, clarinet, alto saxophone)

            Zsolt Kürtösi  (upright bass)

            Ferenc Kovács  (trumpet, violin)

            Balázs Unger  (cymbalom)

with special guests:

            Mark Weaver  (tuba)

            Zach Condon  (trumpet on 'Oriental Hora', ukelele, mandolin)

            Paul Collins  (bouzouki)

 

A Hawk And A Hacksaw – The Way The Wind Blows press:

 
“first-class folk”  The Guardian
 
“ambitious, ethnically rich… suffused with Eastern flavours, his
kaleidoscopic approach – from mariachi brass to klezmer to European
traditionals – is vivid and startlingly diverse. There’s something
experimental and faintly trippy too. ‘God Bless The Ottoman Empire’ could be
George Harrison’s ‘Within You Without You’ snaking through an ancient
Turkish bazaar”  4/5 Uncut
 
“a glimpse of a different kind of music, one that’s both unexpected and
unfamiliar, and yet richly rewarding. Magnificent”  Dotmusic
 
“music that starts in Eastern Europe, then stomps through every tradition
nearby… a passionate affair”  Stool Pigeon
 
“a captivating ragbag mixture of styles that blends Barnes’s meandering,
vaudevillian songlines with plangent melodies of violinist Heather Trost”
The Daily Telegraph
 
“a fascinating experiment that leaves you wishing more rock bands would show such adventure”  The Times
 
“Barnes and Trost obviously have a real feeling for the music and an
instinctive way of shaping it, building something quiet and unique… should
become required listening for attempting all such fusions”  fROOTS

Release date: July 24th, 2007. 

 

Release date: July 24th, 2007.

 

Release date: July 24th, 2007

Streamline is set to reissue the first and second Mimir full-length albums on August 28th. The eponymous debut release will be presented in a remastered and remixed format while Mimyriad will feature the version originally released on the LP edition. Mimir is the supergroup of Edward and the Silverman (from The Legendary Pink Dots), Christoph Heemann and Andreas Martin (from HNAS, and Mirror) and Jim O'Rourke (from Gastr del Sol, Sonic Youth, and many more things). Both titles will be manufactured and distributed by Drag City in Chicago.

 

Modeselektor will be releasing their second album, Happy Birthday! on BPitch Control on September 11, 2007. After playing tons of shows from Sydney to Iceland last year, Modeselektor's Gernot and Szary holed up in their mobile airstream caravan recording studio in order to give birth to this new album. The record is once again a description of the constant state of mind of the duo from Berlin-Wedding. Not only are they on the same wavelength professionally through touring and working in the studio, but in their private lives as well, as both will become fathers very soon, hence the title Happy Birthday!

Thom Yorke, Maximo Park, Puppetmastaz, Paul St. Hilaire, Otto von Schirach, Siriusmo and the French Rap gang TTC all make guest appearances on Happy Birthday! The repertoire of Happy Birthday! goes from hard rap à la French to Dubstep to Eurocrunk to Continental Grime to Tech-Rap and more.

Tracklist:
01. Godspeed
02. 2000007 (feat.TTC)
03. Happy Birthday
04. Let Your Love Grow (feat. Paul St. Hillaire)
05. B.M.I.
06. EM ocean
07. Sucker Pin
08. The First Rebirth
09. The Dark Side of the Frog
10. The Dark Side of the Sun (feat. Puppetmastaz)
11. Black Block
12. Edgar
13. hyper hyper (feat. Otto von Schirach)
14. Late Check-Out
15. The Wedding Toccata Theme
16. The White Flash (feat. Thom Yorke)
17. Déboutonner (feat. Siriusmo)
+ Bonus track: "I Can´t Sleep (Without Music)" (feat. Maximo Park)

(on original CD release only)

One of the largest surprise hits of 2006 was Beirut's Gulag Orkestar, which received widespread acclaim for its innovative combination of Balkan and pop melodies.  Even more surprising was that it was the
work of one 19-year-old kid, Zach Condon, and done almost completely in his bedroom.  Now, two years later, Condon has just completed six months of work on his follow up record, which evokes the forgotten
charms of older approaches to pop music.

 Release date: October 2007

Hera Ma Nono is the exhilarating sophomore effort from Kenyan and American cooperative Extra Golden. Kenyan benga music and American rock first met with a friendly handshake on the group’s 2006 debut, Ok-Oyot System, and are now fully integrated in a union that represents the vanguard of both styles and transcends the very notion of authenticity. 

 

On October 9, 2007 Robert Wyatt is to release his new album and first for Domino.