Bloomington, Indiana’s Landlocked Music and Russian Recording brought in quite few artists traveling through Bloomington in 2009. Having recorded each performance, they’re releasing a vinyl compilation set on Record Store Day (April 17th, 2010). It Happened Here will be a limited print LP and 7″ set; 750 will be pressed to be exact.

The list of artists is quite impressive: Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Lou Barlow, The Delicious, Maps & Atlases, Rooms, Magnolia Electric Co., Tremendous Fucking, The Entrance Band, Prizzy Prizzy Please, Wovenhand, Alexander the Great, Damien Jurado, Whoa!Tiger, and Phosphorescent.

The 7″ consists of two live in-store performances at Landlocked Music, called Live At Landlocked Music, and the LP will have twelve tracks recorded at Russian Recording Studio, called We Just Call It Roulette V.III.

David Woodruff (The Delicious) of Woodruff & Sons and In Case Of Emergency Press are designing the artwork. The work of David Woodruff can be seen on many flyers, album covers, and t-shirts around Bloomington.

Engineer Mike Bridavsky moved Russian Recording to Bloomington in 2008, located at the previous home of Secretly Canadian Records. Bridavsky has managed to keep his rates affordable for local artists without sacrificing the quality of equipment.

Landlocked Records is one of the best vinyl stores in the Midwest, located in downtown Bloomington. Landlocked is always stocked with the best and most obscure indie artists. They opened on March 3rd, 2006, so this announcement couldn’t come at a better time.

Live At Landlocked Music 7″
Instore Performances from 2009
—————————
Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Beware Your Only Friend (live)
Lou Barlow – Imagination Blond (Dino Jr song, live)

We Just Call It Roulette V.III LP
Recordings from Russian Recording Studio
———————————
The Delicious – Something
Maps & Atlases – Pigeon (live)
ROOMS – Radio Ghosts
Magnolia Electric Co. – Rider. Shadow. Wolf. (live)
Tremendous Fucking – We’ve Got Your Daddy
The Entrance Band – Lookout (live)
Prizzy Prizzy Please – Let’s Go to the Zoo
Wovenhand – Kicking Bird (live)
Alexander the Great – Built From the Ground Up
Damien Jurado – Kansas City (live)
Whoa!Tiger – Calm After the Storm
Phosphorescent – South of America (live)

Listen: The Delicious – Something

For more information:
Landlocked Music
Russian Recording
David Woodruff
In Case Of Emergency Press

Sean Hogan and Taylor Nelson of The New Monarchs digitally released a new album called Electrocaching on March 2nd, while the CD will be released March 23rd. As the album name might indicate, The New Monarchs have an interesting experimental electronic sound that doesn’t abandon the importance of vocal melodies.

Electrocaching was released on March 2nd on Soup Bowl Records, a Minneapolis imprint. During the recording and post-recording process The New Monarchs recorded the album with Jeff Marcovis (Me & My Arrow), and Brian Moen of Peter Wolf Crier, “crafted the visual accompaniments.”

Sean Hogan repeats in both songs Tangent and Electrocaching, “I am searching for a message in the electric sounds that are running through my head.” The sounds and lyrics feed off each other as Sean sings, “these sounds keep me moving `round,” suggesting a theme that Electrocaching taps the aural imagery in Hogan’s psyche.

Listen: The New Monarchs – Tangent
Interact: The New Monarchs on Myspace
Watch: The New Monarchs on Youtube

Several months ago we pointed you towards Peter Wolf Crier, a project by Peter Pisano (Wars of 1812) and Brian Moen (The Shouting Matches with Jusin Vernon). After hearing Peter Wolf Crier’s debut, Inter-Be, we wished that this band would be heard by the indie-world, and in May it appears that we may get our wish. We’re excited to inform you that Peter Wolf Crier signed to Jagjaguwar, and Inter-Be will be released in the US on May 25th and the UK on June 7th!

Jagjauwar wrote:
“With our ears tuned into labelmates Gayngs, Volcano Choir, and Bon Iver, Peter Wolf Crier fits firmly into our developing Midwestern curatorial.”

Peter Wolf Crier will be performing SXSW at Emo’s Main Room (with Miles Kurowsky, Rogue Wave, Local Natives, Adam Green, and Delta Spirit), so be sure to look them up if you’re going.

Listen: Peter Wolf Crier – Crutch and Cane
Interact: Peter Wolf Crier’s website
Connect: Peter Wolf Crier on Facebook
Watch: Peter Wolf Crier performing on The Current

Being a sucker for Icelandic artists, I was excited to find that Benni Hemm Hemm is releasing Retaliate EP in April. Benni now lives in Scotland and this album marks the first time he has sung every song in English.

Benni recorded this album using his own recording gear, while the previous albums were recorded in the studio owned by Sigur Rós. The title song of Retaliate reveal a stripped down Benni Hemm Hemm, without the brass instruments breaking his song open. While Benni plas most of the instruments on the album, he is joined by Emily Scott on double bass and Peter Liddle on trumpet and alto-horn.

“The resulting EP is a collection of five songs which feature knives, gold, lazy pioneers, confident talibans, blood thirsty vampires, Stan-Stan-the-caretaker-man and last but not least blood, lots of blood.”

The EP ‘launch night’ is set for March 29th at The Bowery in Edinburgh. This will be his second album released on Kimi Records, an imprint based out of Benni’s native island, and it will be released as a 10″ vinyl in Europe, US and Japan.

Benni Hemm Hemm, whose real name is Benedikt H. Hermannsson, has been performing and recording with a large brass band since 2003, but it has been three years since he released Kajak, Benni’s first and only full-length.

Listen: Benni Hemm Hemm – Retaliate
Interact: Benni Hemm Hemm’s website

(more…)

A Weather is releasing their sophomore album tomorrow, March 2nd, 2009, and Everday Balloons is one that I’m certain you’ll really get into. Released on Conor Oberst’s Team Love Records and Bad Panda Records, Everyday Balloons is a gentle indie-folk album that has an intimate and mellow sound. Produced by Adam Selzer (M. Ward, The Decemberists, Norfolk & Western), A Weather almost sings at a whisper, asking the listener to move in close and search deep within.

The album’s first single, Giant Stairs, has been released via Creative Commons (Creative Commons License: BY-NC-SA 3.0), an approach that we certainly embrace. If you’re new to their music as we are, you can stream their first music on their website.

Listen: A Weather – Giant Stairs
Interact: A Weather’s website

I have been blogging off and on since 1997, taking time off to focus on other projects, yet always returning to this habit of sharing music discoveries with you. I’ve seen the Internet change over time, shifting from pre-Google to the Social Networks of today, and I’ve always been interested in analyzing these trends and how they affect music. So with this in mind, you’ll understand that I’ve had this question floating around in my skull for a while: At the start of this new decade, what is the role of the music blogger?

Curators
While I have considered the blogger as a social broadcast of media, I was reminded the other day that we’re simply curators of our taste of music. A curator is bold enough to consider his/her taste better than most, and wishes to develop this experience by collecting (or posting) select audio files and bits of information that can be discovered by others.

In the 1950s and 1960s, radio personalities were free to play the music they enjoyed, and people tuned in to hear songs from the DJ they trusted. While the radio has largely destroyed the freedoms that DJs used to enjoy (college stations are exceptions), the music blog has embodied this role of music curation.

Parasites
Steve Johnson wrote about the concept of ‘Parasitic Media’ in his book, Interface Culture, stating that whenever changes are happening at rapid pace, parasites rise to the top to help us make sense of the changes. These parasites feed off of the content others produce. Though I hate to admit it, most music bloggers are doing exactly that. By not producing fresh content ourselves, we feed off of the music news we hear from others, post music that others created, and help our readers make sense of the changing world of music. Though the name, ‘parasite,’ certainly draws bad connotations, Johnson would argue that parasitic media is needed.

Filters
As curators and parasites, music bloggers have become filters. We sift through the hundreds of recordings sent our way and select the ones we wish to share. When all of these filters promote the same artist, that band experiences a similar boost that an artist experienced in the 1960s when hundreds of DJs promoted the same band.

Creators
We’re seeing more and more music blogs moving away from being parasites and are instead contributing. These creators are releasing vinyl+digital recordings, recording studio sessions, creating videos of artists traveling through, and in many other ways. When music blogging fully shifts in this direction as a standard, music blogging ceases to be parasitic.

What role do you see the music blogger fulfilling? Please share.

Toronto is home to a new independent record label called Hi-Scores Recording Library, managed by James Trauzzi. Knowing that vinyl+digital is the future, Trauzzi is only releasing Hi-Scores’ music on vinyl and digital. They have already secured distribution in Canada, US and Japan, so their goal is to market worldwide.

Wolf In A Spacesuit will be their first release, a limited 7″ with the electro-dance Bark of a Cedar on Side A and I Fee Nthg on Side B. The band’s full-length will be released on Royal Rhino Flying Records, a label in the US. Wolf In A Spacesuit is truly extending the play this summer with a seventeen track Pink Slip EP to be released digitally this summer on Hi-Scores… yes, a seventeen track EP.

The second Hi-Scores album will be Dinosaur Bones, also as a limited 7″. Royalty will grace Side A and Ice Hotels on the flip side.

Another sign that this new label seem to understand the future of music (in our opinion) is their iPhone/Touch application, the Hi-Scores LP Player. “In keeping with mixing vinyl and digital music, this new application looks and interacts like an old record player, plays music from your iTunes library and puts the vinyl crackling sounds over your music.” The app sells for .99 cents and is quite the enjoyable gimmick.

Listen: Wolf In A Spacesuit – Bark Of A Cedar
Listen: Dinosaur Bones – Royalty
Grab: Hi-Scores Recording Library

In the late 1990’s, Jon Sebastian began recording songs on his 4-track recorder, selling CD-R copies at shows under various band names before forming Paper The Operator. After dealing with rotating band members, Jon took on the writing and recording process by himself and released Goodbye God on Viper Bite Records. Goodbye God consists of twelve tracks, nine of which are under three minutesRochester. New York’s Viper Bite Records is owned and managed by Jason Woodson, a touring member of Paper The Operator.

Jon Sebastian explains the title of the album:

“I was listening to the Squeeze song ‘Goodbye Girl’, and I imagined how different it would be if the words were ‘Goodbye God’, sung over the same music. It would be a very complicated and stark thing to say in an almost throw-away pop song. Sometimes things are so heavy that the only way to state them appropriately is to understate them.”

Most of the album consists of driving rock songs with melodic hooks, yet it’s The Pendulum that really had us hooked. Visiting Paper The Operator’s website you’ll find twenty of Jon’s recordings from 2000 to 2005 packaged as a free album called Mount Bounty. If you enjoy easily accessible pop/rock songs then you’ll dig Paper The Operator.

Listen: Paper the Operator – The Pendulum
Engage: Paper the Operator on Myspace

Most of us are trying to make sense of the many tools the Internet and digital technology has brought to music, wondering how to use web applications and figuring out which website to promote our music. These swift changes we’re experiencing seem to draw our attention to the technology, away from the music. But this isn’t the case with the generation that has always had a personal computer at home; instead, experiencing these changes feel very natural to them,

I was reminded of this when I was listening to Swimteam, a band out of a suburb in Chicago. Having recorded their new album, Harlem, in their bedrooms, and then creating videos that correspond with the songs, Swimteam moves freely in this technological world.

The lo-fi experimental electronic rock that Michael Marais and Aidan Hair created during the month of December, 2009, is reminiscent of Radio Head’s Kid A, Madvillain, and Thom Yorke’s solo album. The songs on Harlem utilize drum loops intelligently, mix in intriguing and at times freakish sounds, blended with guitar riffs that add to the scenery.

Swimteam self-produced their songs, posted tripped-out videos on Vimeo, had their album professionally mastered, and are releasing Harlem on Bandcamp through Whales and Gravy Recordings. Swimteam did all of this at the age of 18.

Listen: Swimteam – Sun

Watch: Swimteam on Vimeo
Grab: Swimteam on Bandcamp
Engage: Swimteam on Myspace

Wichita from S.W. Imteam on Vimeo.

Click on the image for the animation

I wrote about Uniform Motion recently, praising their approach of mixing forms of media… by creating animated videos for their songs or projecting live sketches as Renaud Forestié, a graphic designer, reacts to the performance. They believe in this approach to the point of considering Renaud the other-half of the duo even though he doesn’t contribute musically.

With all this said, Uniform Motion created a highly entertaining flash animation that blew our minds. Mute layers of the music (drums, vocals, guitar) and notice how the guitarist’s arm stops strumming? Not only is this a fun and interactive way to promote the band, it’s a perfect tool for spreading their new album, Life, virally. Adding to the viral appeal, you can have the animated Renaud write a message on the screen when you email it to your friend. This is brilliant.

Note: Since the music starts automatically, we decided to take a screenshot and provide a link to the animation. But please check it out!

Listen: Uniform Motion – Roll Over
Interact: Uniform Motion animation
Grab: Uniform Motion on Bandcamp