Category: unsorted

Download Tons of Free Tunes from Bath’s Mellowed-Out Alter Ego, Geotic

Super chill cover art from "Hearth," by Geotic

Not to beat a dead horse, but Baths is playing the Troubadour on Saturday night (tomorrow!) with Braids and Gobble Gobble. His will be one of the best sets you’ll see all year, so you should probably see it. Also, I’ve posted about this before, but Will Wiesenfeld’s ambiently inclined side project Geotic has since made it onto the greater blogosphere’s radar, and it seems like a good time to remind all-a-y’all that his entire oeuvre under that name is available for free over here. <Click there. Get Hearth and Mend.

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Review: Jamie of the XX Reinvents Gil Scott-Heron for the Hipster Set

Jamie XX and Gil Scott-Heron, "We're New Here"

For more than two decades, younger artists have been reinterpreting the work of legendary spoken-word poet and rap forefather Gil Scott-Heron. He’s been sampled, quoted, name-dropped, and featured by Common, Blackalicious, Aesop Rock, and Public Enemy. One of his famous poems from the ’60s took up a startling amount of real estate on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy last year, even as Scott-Heron returned with a stunner of a new album, his first since 1994, I’m New Here. The man’s relevance is established (gilded), so is a remixed version of his latest necessary, or is We’re New Here—a reinterpretation by The XX producer Jamie Smith—simply hype-mongering?

Read the rest of the review over at the A.V. Club.

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Q&A: Baths Flips Through his Flickr for Photos from a Banner Year (plays Troubador Saturday)

Will Wiesenfeld lurks in the woods, sans Internet (!).

Baths plays the Troubadour on Saturday night with Braids!

This is a fun one. I’ve been a big fan of Baths since the little dude first popped onto my radar (LA Weekly ran the first feature on him), and we’ve stayed in touch since. For our latest collabo (ha), we sat down and flipped through his Flickr account as a way to look back on his huge, hectic 2010, and even to muse a bit on the future of Will Wiesenfeld’s music.

Here’s an excerpt: “It’s [pauses] everything I want in life, basically. A gay romance between Batman and Superman would be the best thing ever.”

Yeah, that was taken out of context. Read the whole thing at the A.V. Club.

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Underground Rap Takes on Gabriel Giffords Shooting, Tea Party Hate, Antoine Dodson

Sole, a.k.a. Tim Holland, rages amidst angry tea partiers.

Is it just me or is smart rap getting pissy these days? There’s something in the water east of California, I’m convinced, because Isaiah Toothtaker and his Tuscon, AZ, cohorts are whipping up some dastardly, devilish rhymes. And Big Sole, formerly of Anticon, is out in Denver, churning out what may prove to be the most fiery, on-point agit-prop rap of the new century. I had the pleasure of debuting a couple of videos from these dudes.

First, check out “White Rage,” by Sole and featuring a glorious sermon by the one and only Evangelist J.B. Best (a.k.a. Pedestrian). Then, watch the menacing clip from the Toothtaker, co-directed by Walter Gross.

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Review: …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead are Half Dead, Half Amazing

Conrad Keely vs. Jason Reece

Face it, music fans. …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead will just never — never — be what they once were. Source Tags & Codes is, excuse my french, a simply unfuckwittable album. A cornerstone of the “indie rock” canon. And everything since has been … alright. So there’s a new record out. It’s their umpteenth. And it mostly disappoints but for one, incredibly key exception. See what it is via my review at the A.V. Club.

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Inventory: Unconventional Recording Spaces (with My Morning Jacket, Gorillaz, Mike Patton)

Cartoon bands don't use studios!

The A.V. Club Inventory feature is simultaneously the geekiest and most well-regarded thing I’m involved with. Usually I’m stunned into silence at the endless sea of pop culture knowledge that the other contributors cup in their hands like so many haphazardly hocked loogies. It makes me a little ill actually, but just this once, I was able to pitch in. The subject: 24 Unconventional Recording Spaces. I wrote on: Mike Patton (#12), Gorillaz (#14) and My Morning Jacket (#23). <Click that for an ancient bonus.

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Hungry Like the Wolves: L.A.’s Odd Future are Spin’s Next Big Thing for 2011 (On Stands!)

Tyler the Creator, Mike G, Syd, Left Brain (L to R)

Run to the stands (now! right now! stop reading! do it now!) to pick up the new issue of Spin. It’s a great one cover to cover, but pages 50 thru 54 are my personal favorites. That’s right. It’s a five-page dive into the bizarre, exuberant world of rising L.A. rap stars Odd Future (OFWGKTA) penned by yours truly. A real labor of love that came with surprising little injury (well, people were hurt, but I wasn’t — it’s in the article). I spent hours with Tyler the Creator, Hodgy Beats, Left Brain, Syd, Mike G and the inimitable Taco (was there when he revealed his new brace-less face), and even more hours (days?) on the Internet, reading Tweets, blogs, obscure articles and thought-to-be-lost emails about and by these young, rakish web-savvy entrepreneurs. I even talked to Flying Lotus, members of Liars and Tyler’s old high school teacher.

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