Florida
What a great year in music it has been, all these lo-fi seedlings popping up all around us and making our lives better. With that said, I bring you Florida, not to be confused with those other Florida bands. This Florida incorporates a ghoulish brand of lo-fi pop akin to John Maus and Ariel Pink but not to a point where it becomes bland or insipid, moreso Florida took some of the same influences of David Bowie that John Maus and Ariel Pink did, in that way they are alike. Of course just when I think I've pinpointed the bands sound I hear a song full of psychotropic drone, appeasing the John Cale fan in me. This band has a great 7 inch out on Shdwply Records and I most certainly encourage you to purchase it.
-Weekly Tapedeck
The G
It all started when long time friends Doug Foulk (Resist, Dead Memory, Shutterspeed BMX, The Goddamn Godamns) and Patrick Troxell (The Golden Boys, The Funeral Bird, NIGHTMOVES UK, BPiV, Fight Amputation, Here Comes Trouble, The Goddamn Goddamns, Gunna Vahm, No Grave But The Sea) ran 423 Tillery in Austin, Texas. Their DIY art space hosted many local punk shows/artists showings. Two years later, they both relocated to Philadelphia and formed The G.
Beginning in the summer of 2008, they recorded their demo, "Hidden in Plain Sight." Nicky DiCicco (The Chairs, Monster) joined as side percussion/keyboard to complete the album. After months of touring the east coast, playing with such bands as The Homosexuals, Bardo Pond, Gods and Queens, Easy Action, and Fight Amp, they returned to the studio to record their follow-up EP "This Mind and Motion Universe."
After the album was completed, Nicky DiCicco left the band to pursue a solo project (Rock and Roll Moron), and Pete Joe Urban (The Funeral Bird, BPiV, Gunna Vahm, Corrado) was recruited as second guitarist. With this change in line-up and the addition of Anna DiCicco on keyboards/vox, the G are out and about playing all over the east coast in support of the new LP "Hold My Gold".
Gary War
"...When an act comes along such as Gary War that seems to conjure the ever-changing zeitgeist of psychedelia out of the ether, it's remarkable...His tonal insobriety, from one song to the next is a true sign of the times, where artists are driven to explore different avenues, melding genres, vocal styles and instrumentation to arrive somewhere new.." -Victim Of Time on "New Raytheonport"
"Gary War is taking sonic wizardry to levels as yet uncharted by man. While we sleep he is fashioning lyric webs like a yellow brick path thru the rawest of the honest..." -La Maladie Tropicale
"The best modern psych sounds bar none" -Volcanic Tongue on "Zontag" 7"
Operating out of New York City, current Gary War releases include "New Raytheonport" LP (SHDWPLY), "Zontag" 7" (Sacred Bones), "Anhedonic Man" one-sided 7" (Hell Yes!), "Opens-Live at WFMU" Cassette (Captured Tracks), "Horribles Parade" LP (Sacred Bones) and "Galactic Citizens" 12" ep (Captured Tracks).
PC Worship
"Ranging from discordant, hazy slacker gems, stunted tribal jazz improv to woozy drunken psych pop. The general off-kilter madness is very fitting of this Shdwply imprint, I love the production on these records - proper old-school reel to reel tape recordings capturing progressive thinking musicians fannying around in basements attempting to hit on something new. I must admit there's a real odds'n'sods feel to this album but for fans of pioneering early 90's labels such as Siltbreeze & the likes of early Sebadoh or even some of the recent noise/dissonance output from acts such as Ashtray Navigations - this album has plenty of juicy sonic fallout & monged psychedelia to offer the casual yankophile." -Norman Records
"With plenty of contemporary lo-fi choices at your disposal, some of the best as of late have come from the Shdwply label. My personal favorite was The Super Vacations debut LP, but PC Worship is creeping its way up there. Surely a grower, the album boasts sonic noise paired with varying blends of off-kilter neo-psychedelia." -Baltimore Musically Informed
Sore Eros
Robert Robinson started Sore Eros as a home-recording project in Enfield, Connecticut, in the fall of 2002. He recorded the first Sore Eros record, the eponymous Sore Eros, in the spring of 2003, and self-released it as a CD-R on his own Light Dead Sea label. Over the past five years Robinson has lived in several American cities and collaborated with a number of different musicians. While living in Los Angeles he was a member of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti and he has also played with Panda Bear, Kurt Vile and Gary War.
In the summer of 2007, Robinson's father had a heart attack and he quickly moved back home to Connecticut to take care of him. With a lot of free time on his hands, he began writing a new album. When Robinson's father became healthy and well, he stated that he had been given a "second chance." This sentiment more or less became the source behind the title of the LP. Robinson states the record itself has nothing to do with heart attacks, but the experience probably had some influence on it. While tracking the batch of new songs, Robinson came across a cassette of friend Adam Langellotti's high school recordings. Inspired by the veracity of these songs, Robinson reached out to his old friend despite having been out of touch for several years. The impulse proved a good one, as the two were soon collaborating on the orchestration of Robinson's new songs. These efforts would become the proper Sore Eros debut album, Second Chants.
Quietly mind-blowing, Second Chants plays less like a document than a biological entity, something to complement the sounds of birds in the morning rather than compete with them. A fantastic collision of lush sounds and textures, the record touches on "Blue Jay Way"-style psychedelic drone, melodic pop, and fractured country-rock, all brought together by soaring, cathedral-like production and intonated vocals. Now a fully-fledged three-piece with Andy Tomasello (of Eat Cloud) on drums and slide guitar, Sore Eros has begun to take their music directly to the people with a live show described by one concert-goer as "frighteningly no-filler... [A] fifth-dimension bar band performing an exorcism."
The Super Vacations
The Super Vacations made their first recordings in August of 2007. They released their first LP on Shdwply Records in April 2008. Currently all of the band members are living in Virginia. Since the release of their first LP they have played a bunch of shows on the East Coast, had over 15 different members, toured the US with Gary War and Teeth Mountain, and have members playing in several other high-profile acts . In January of 2009, they began working on a new record. It will be out soon.
"The Super Vacations are an East Coast garage outfit who connect mutually-exclusive eras of teenage soundtracks; combining the whole surf style of early 60's outfits like The Pyramids and The Fantastic Baggies with new-wave stylings and glazed 80's pop. Think William Phelp's 1987 surf-movie, North Shore, meets Del Tenney's 1964 schlockfest, The Horror of Party Beach. The guitars have a snappy, clean-cut sound to them that works well with the slack puffs of vocals and the combination of auraless instrumentation and non-conventional song structures. It is beautifully confusing. The Super Vacations make exploratory psychedelia without invoking many of the usual shorthand; no jams, no endless guitar solos, no purple loons. In their precise understanding of the deep structure and sonic sleight-of-hand of the best psychedelic music, their debut feels as fresh as any first generation cosmonauts". -The Wire (Issue #303)
Teeth Mountain
Teeth Mountain are one my favourite things I've heard in ages. I've deleted that and re-written it about five times, because when I re-read it, it sounds like the kind of crass statement that a seven year old would flinch at. But, each time I've deleted I've written it again. And now I'm not worried, because I think it might be true. Blimey. A totally chance encounter (proving there's life in the old dog yet) led me to their door on an evening wander, and amongst the nauseating background sat diamonds. Musically, there are shades of this, elements of that, but I'm far too discreet to get involved in that kind of business. We're not fools. Photos suggest that it's a result of an upsettingly free collaboration, with the kind of thoroughly controlled bedlam that most bands could only dream of. Saws are bowed, drums are banged by whoever fancies a go, percussion abound, cellos drone, hints of electronic devilry, everything everywhere. Teeth Mountain should easily be wrong, but it's really not." -Tiny Dancing Blog
"The four tracks available for download on their MySpace are driven primarily by neo-tribal drums, which would seemingly put them in league with the rumbling sound of Bmore's Thank You. But "12 Plus Harsh Tanz" in particular is much more reflective. The guitar for me brings to mind the cracked post-1960s dream-psyche hangover of Pink Floyd, I'm thinking here of an instrumental interlude that might have been on Obscured by Clouds, or perhaps the contemporaneous Eastern-infused lines of Popul Vuh's Daniel Fichelscher. It's headspace music, to be sure, but in some places people dance to this sort of thing." -Pitchfork
