Wrote about our favorite place to eat vegan brunch while thrashing to some new noise. Where? Why, The Smell, of course (pictured above on the cover of No Age’s Weirdo Rippers). Read about venue and others over at LA Weekly.
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Aural Standards Picks Music for Hudson Jeans
We’ve been working with our director pal Matthew Desotell, handpicking music for the webs shorts he’s been making for Venice Beach-based denim demigods Hudson Jeans. More to come, but first up is a trio spots featuring the music of Superhumanoids and Sumsun (x2!), two of our favorite unsung artists.
13 Principles, with “A Crowded Hour” by Superhumanoids
AURAL STANDARDS PRESENTS: The Jesse Miller Talk Show with Musical Guest Bart Davenport of Honeycut on FRIDAY! (Also: Eric Andre, Jason Nash)
FIVE DOLLARS! Come out Friday night for AT LEAST five dollars worth of entertainment (maybe SIX!) brought to you by your boy Jesse Miller, talk show host extraordinaire. Guests include Eric Andre (one of the funniest dudes in L.A., as seen on Apt. 23 and The Eric Andre Show) and Jason Nash of Atom Films. As always, Aural Standards books the music for the show, and we’ve wrangled a very special fella: Bart Davenport, the singer of Honeycut, who’s got a new solo 7-inch out for the songs “Someone2Dance” and “Cheap Words.”
Meet Bart:
Meet Jesse:
The Best Karaoke Bars in Los Angeles
Wrote about our favorite place to get cross-eyed, leap on a buddy’s back and sing Hall & Oates like it hasn’t already gone out of style (but is, in fact, in the act thereof). Lots of fun text from the LA Weekly team. Read here. Happy Friday.
[VIDEO HAS BEEN REMOVED TO PROTECT AUTHOR’S DIGNITY]
The Best of Coachella 2012 Weekend One: M83, Jeff Mangum, Hologram Tupac, Refused, A$AP Rocky, At the Drive-In, Death Grips, Azealia Banks and more…
It was Aural Standards’ ninth Coachella (and tenth, counting Weekend Two), but it may have been our most memorable yet. While Sacramento’s Death Grips left a deep, seeping impression in our minds (boot-shaped) and Hologram Tupac enjoys a second life as a lasting meme, it was the reunions that did us in. Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come are two of our favorite albums of all time (At the Drive-In’s Relationship of Command flies high on that list as well), but never did we imagine we’d witness those songs performed live by the folks who actually made ’em (NMH auteur Jeff Mangum was billed as a solo act). Cheers to the folks at Goldenvoice for throwing scads of money at the problem until it resolved itself. Here are our five faves from each of the first three days. Below is a list of what we covered with excerpted bits. Click on the DAY to read full reviews at SPIN.
FRIDAY
1. Refused: thick, primal slabs of punk that seemed to rattle the scaffolding…
2. Death Grips: Run DMC meets Aerosmith, cranked on incredibly foul PCP…
3. M83: doors opening infinitely to bigger and bigger doors, a galactic gasp…
4. Frank Ocean: for the line about Coachella, the screams were deafening…
5. The Rapture: rogue groups of get-down circles spilling from the sides…
SATURDAY
1. Jeff Mangum: he opened his mouth and for 50 minutes, we were his…
2. Flying Lotus: a wild genre-crushing journey, heady but head-knocking…
3. Black Lips: Cole dropped trou and executed a searing solo with, well…
4. Azealia Banks: fast-rapping and boasting over minimal sub-bass rumble…
5. A$AP Rocky: a perfect storm of N.W.A., Public Enemy and Bone Thugs…
SUNDAY
1. Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg: who rose from below the stage but Tupac himself…
2. At the Drive-In: a high-octane inferno of post-hardcore mania…
3. AraabMUZIK: conducting a symphony of melody, effects and percussion…
4. Le Butcherettes: she ran out into the field, arms out like an airplane…
5. Gotye: the massive human traffic jam stretched 50 yards in every direction…
Tomorrow, we get caught up with Weekend Two.
Gone Festivalling: Coachella 2012
Coachella Weekend One begins TODAY! Aural Standards will be silent through the big hoopla, but I’ll be reporting on all that glorious madness over at SPIN.
News: Electric Daisy Carnival Promoter Arrested — Is This Part of the War on Raves?
Bad news (read here), but I’m hopeful for Pasquale Rotella. Seems to me he’s a good guy committed to giving EDM fans something special. This is an unrelated but tonally relevant quote from an interview I conducted with him last year:
“I’m gonna stick in there. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. The worst part about having to deal with this stuff is I just want to produce the best experience possible. I want to create something that’s really special, where people leave with something memorable. I definitely look forward to the day when there’s less politics in the way. I’ve had to put on a suit more than once this past year and be the politician. I’m not passionate about that role. When you work on an event year round, get it all set up, and the gates are about to open … that’s what I love. I want to lose the distractions.”
[photo by Caesar Sebastian]
Using the Beatles as a Weapon
In which the A.V. Clubhouse was asked which music we’d use to punish an enemy (a la the army and Metallica). Read em all here. My entry below:
Reading Kenny’s response makes me wonder at the long-term psychological effects on those fortunate (?) enough to have attended the Watch The Throne tour. Twenty years from now, our society will feature a sizable segment who flinches at the mere mention of words like CRAY-on and CRAY-fish (or Kreayshawn, but that might be for different reasons). I’ve used hardcore music, from Brotha Lynch Hung to Refused, to spite parents, roommates, and neighbors when occasion called for it, but as I get a little older, a little smarter, and a lot meaner, I think less about blunt-force trauma and more about the kind of psychic brutality that could drive people to question their very existence. Like “Revolution 9” by The Beatles, played not loud, but at a just audible level through a small speaker spackled into the wall between my apartment and the one next door, on some sort of standalone device hotwired to the building’s grid so it never runs out of power. Or a quietly nagging Skrillex loop somehow rigged to trigger every time the platinum-Jeep-driving douchebag down the street uses a kitchen appliance. “Honey, is the blender broken?” “No, it’s fine.” “Then why does it sound like an engine that won’t turn over?” I mean, really, people. We’re adults now. It’s time we start thinking like the terrorists.
Photo: Wavves Soundchecks at the ‘Jesse Miller Show’ Comedy Central Pilot Taping
And they say dreams don’t come true. Here’s Wavves soundchecking for the Jesse Miller Show Comedy Central pilot. We here at Aural Standards typically like to couch our bragging in faked newsworthiness, but we’ll make an exception (and a sudden perspective switch) here: I’ve been booking bands for the live Jesse Miller Show for the past few months in part with the goal of building to this. It’s thrilling to see some real-world results of your work, at least as an occasional alternative to writing about the real-world results of others’ work. Anyway, stay tuned for more Jesse Miller news, more live shows, and more great musical guests curated by yours truly. Me and Jesse are feelin’ buff.
Straight up.
Get It: Rising L.A. Rapper Jonwayne Drops ‘This is False’ Mixtape Full of Blunted Beats, Biggie Styles
Click the photo to get acquainted with your new favorite rapper, Jonwayne. He’s an ace beatsmith too, having dropped the fantastic Bowser beat tape last year on Alpha Pup (check out the titular banger below). 2012 LP on Stones Throw.
Chris Writes Things 