Eye on New Releases: May 15th, 2012

Climb to the top of the Holy Mountain, and you can see the entire Metro Area with these new releases.

Label: Chemikal Underground
Album: Earth Measures EP
Artist: Holy Mountain
Genre: Alternative

Holy Mountain erupts onto the scene with their new Earth Measures LP.  Guitarist Andy McGlone, drummer Pete Flett, and bassist Allan Stewart shake the earth with their incredibly loud and powerful brand of rock and roll.  Earth Measures evokes the sound of Black Sabbath and Lightning Bolt, but with occasional 

psychedelic breakdowns a la MC5.  “Great Monkey,” the fourth track on the album, shows off the variety within their style the best.  Starting off heavy and deliberate, it breaks out into an airtight rollercoaster of tempo changes, all the while showing off the groups’ intuition for complex musical composition.  Indeed, the haphazard and maniacal sound of their track “Swifty” nearly belies Holy Mountain’s apparent musicality as otherwise exhibited in “Bolting” and “Kegs.”  Earth Measures LP is a studio-recorded release that almost sounds raw enough to be live.

Label: Environ
Album: Metro Area 5 & 6
Artist: Metro Area
Genre: Electronic, Dance

Do you prefer your electronic music smooth or funky? Well, as luck may have it, Metro Area’s latest release through Environ has both.  Metro Area 5 & 6 is a remastered, combined release of Metro Areas’s 2004 and 2005 releases, Metro Area 5 and Metro Area 6, respectively.  “Nerves,” gets us off to a smooth start with a focus on rhythmic side percussion, and ends with sultry strings, punchy horns, and glistening piano runs.  “Proton Candy,” mixes things up a bit with vibrating electric leads, vocoder-esque mumbling, and a flanging bass line that really cranks up the funky feel.  Metro Area’s “Honey Circuit,” lives up to its name; thick and rich bass synths underscore sweet female vocal samples, making this track digital honey to the ears.  Whether you’re a vintage roller rink skater or a earbud clad head nodder, Metro Area 5 & 6’s got something to groove to.

Eye on New Releases: April 24th, 2012

Spring is in full swing here at IRIS, which means there's a never-ending supply of new music! Here are a few of our favorites this week!

Label: Chemikal Underground
Album: Human Don't Be Angry
Artist: Human Don't Be Angry
Genre: Alternative

Former Arab Strap guitarist Malcolm Middleton returns with his self-titled debut album as Human Don’t Be Angry. Named in honor of the German version of board game Frustration, the album was recorded alongside producer and drum programmer Paul Savage, with live drum parts from Middleton’s old Arab Strap partner Aidan Moffat. "HDBA is a facade, a front so I can have fun again musically," says Middleton. "I thought I'd go back to what I enjoy, which is playing guitar and writing melodies." The original idea to create an album of gentle guitar instrumentals and drum-free ambient atmospherics was soon paid to when Middleton entered the studio with Savage, as drum tracks were added and lyrics emerged for some of the songs, albeit often as poetic repetitions of phrases rather than structured verse-chorus-verse affairs. The words fit with the laid-back air of the music and help showcase Middleton’s often under-rated skill as a guitarist, leaving the sense that he’s made "more of an album I'd want to listen to than the one I thought I wanted to make." Song titles like "Jaded" and "Getting Better (At Feeling Like Shit)" are a tongue-in-cheek diversion from an album which is musically breezy and upbeat, although the emotional bittersweetness you might expect from the man who wrote "We’re All Going to Die" is never far from the surface. So Human Don’t Be Angry is a refresher before Middleton returns re-energised to his solo career, but it’s also here to stay as a new creative avenue.

Label: kranky
Album: Oh Holy Molar
Artist: Felix
Genre: Pop

Oh Holy Molar is the second album from UK trio Felix. The group produces a bewitching, minimal chamber pop that works as the perfect framework for singer/songwriter Lucinda Chua's oblique and emotionally immediate stories of superstition and searching for protection against bad omens. As a follow up to their debut You Are The One I Pick, the band return with a collection of songs with a sound stripped back to its very core. Something is said to have "teeth" when it has the ability to make an impact. This record certainly has "teeth", and sharp ones at that. The album was recorded in a vast, spooky 1940s cinema in Nottingham, England, now converted into a studio. After recording was completed the band discovered that underneath the live room lay an abandoned Dental Laboratory. "Oh Holy Molar" indeed. Since the release of the first Felix album, pianist/vocalist Lucinda Chua, also an accomplished photographer, has been working on a number of projects, most recently with Wallpaper in Detroit. Guitarist Chris Summerlin has been recording and touring with his new band Kogumaza. The group is completed with the recent addition of drummer Neil Turpin who, when not performing with Felix, can also be found touring the world with French composer Yann Tiersen.

Label: Palmetto
Album: The Calling
Artist: Romain Collin
Genre: Jazz

You have to bring something extra-special to the table to attract the attention and involvement of the likes of Herbie Hancock, Terence Blanchard, and Wayne Shorter.  French-born jazz pianist Romain Collin does.  Armed with a killer instinct for progressive, spatially friendly instrumentals that present themselves in the form of mini-soundtracks, Collin rode a scholarship wave to Boston's Berklee College of Music and then onto the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.  His work in an ensemble at the Institute garnered more than passing praise from famous mentor-artists -- Marcus Miller, Wynton Marsalis, Charlie Haden. It garnered the honor of a ful tour with Hancock and Shorter in 2007 through India and Vietnam, as well as recognition and use of the Institute ensemble as a band of choice for Hancock, Blanchard, and Shorter. Described by NPR host Jon Weber as "a visionary composer, an extraordinary jazz pianist, and a very bright young rising star in the jazz world," Romain Collin continues to develop his vision on The Calling, combing the tradition of improvisation with sound designing and classical music.

Eye On New Releases: February 28th, 2012

It's a leap year, and an extra day in February means more time for more new music.

Label: imbalance computer music
Album: Ghosts
Artist: Monolake
Genre: Industrial, Ambient

Two years after Monolake’s Silence release, Robert Henke is back with a new Monolake album entitled Ghosts. Dark and colorful, with haunting and deep excursions into magic worlds of sound and grooves, held together by a fragmentary story as part of the artwork that indicates a continuation of themes present on Silence: Precisely crafted earthshaking beats, rough dirty noises, wide lush soundscapes and little sonic creatures inhabiting a fascinating planet in which a lot of things go badly wrong and nothing is taken for granted.  Music that augments reality when listening to whilst commuting, music to get lost in when experienced loud in a club. There is nothing minimal in that music, it is bass heavy and full of detail.

Label: Chemikal Underground
Album: Thirteen Lost & Found
Artist: RM Hubbert
Genre: Alternative

RM Hubbert is a guitarist from Glasgow in Scotland. He writes music about love, death, friendship, mental illness and occasionally a dog called D Bone. It’s not as depressing as the previous sentence suggests.  His second full-length album, Thirteen Lost & Found was produced by long-time friend Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand) and features collaborations with some very special artists including Hanna Tuulikki (Nalle), Emma Pollock (The Delgados), Luke Sutherland (Long Fin Killie, Mogwai), Aidan Moffat (Arab Strap), Alex Kapranos and Alasdair Roberts amongst others.  Having found that it was easier to connect with people through music, Thirteen Lost & Found was conceived by Hubbert as a way of reacquainting himself with old friends while making some new ones. Each piece was written collaboratively with the respective artists; with the emphasis placed on spontaneity and experimentation. The resulting collection is eclectic and beautiful: voice, percussion, violin, piano, banjo, accordion, vibraphone and gu zheng all joining Hubbert’s idiosyncratic guitar over the eleven songs.

Label: Galapagos4
Album: Volume 3
Artist: Maxilla Blue
Genre: Hip Hop

Solidifying in 2006 and releasing its debut album less than 2 years later, Maxilla Blue remains as a well preserved tribute to the classic raw hip hop combo of one producer, one DJ, and one emcee. Bolstered by each component's instrumentals and intricate cut work with power poetics, the Maxilla crew is perhaps most known for its affinity for captivating live audiences.  Led by the cue of DJ TouchNice, powered by the production of Aeon Grey and anchored by the vocal illustration of Asphate Woodhavet, the Des Moines based trio provides listeners with a dense, immovable, and often somber or "blue" bite of this reality as well as the next. Hailing from an often overlooked and undernourished locale, Maxilla's creative approach has found it unnecessary to bend to the common trends and popular evolution of rap culture. As a result, the crew's intepretation of music remains intact amidst failed fads, and followers of the work understand the natural encouragement to bend the enigmatic sound illustration to their own interpretations, adding to the timeless quality of each piece.

Eye On New Releases: November 22nd, 2011

Label: Chemikal Underground

Album: If Then Not When

Artist: King’s Daughters & Sons

Genre: Alternative

The ghost stories, murder ballads, and grimoires on the new full-length album  If Then Not When by Louisville, KY's King's Daughters & Sons are haunting, spare and at times explosively unsettling; part William Faulkner, part Led Zeppelin. Given the musical pedigree at play here, it should come as no surprise that every note, drum beat and vocal has been employed with an economy few bands have the sense to muster.  The album itself, clocking in at over 51 minutes despite there being only eight tracks, shows that King's Daughters & Sons are quite happy for the aforementioned ghost stories, murder ballads and grimoires to unfold at their own pace. The album's axis, in more ways than one, is the eight-minute-plus, fourth track, "The Anniversary": a rich cast of characters weave their way through a tale of love, treachery and murder while the music eddies, tumbles and roars in sympathy with the narrator. It's a phenomenal track, explaining the reference to Faulkner in their press release's opening salvo and clearly demonstrating that this is not your average album.

Label: Moodgadget Records

Album: No Body EP

Artist: Beacon

Genre: Electronic, R&B, Ambient

Beacon is Thomas Mullarney III and Jacob Gossett. Their No Body EP explores a combination of deep south bass music and ambient pop melodies, with R&B tinged vocals that accompany warm arpeggiated synthesizers. The EP's atmosphere and narrative recall brooding spirituality in the wake of first love and the allure of the paranormal in teenage romance. Jacob and Thomas’s extensive work in the video production and set building worlds has given them the techniques to produce their own unique vision for the release of No Body; a cheap prom set where real and imaginary moments continually conjure up feelings of love, lust and all things in between.

Label: Coco Machete Records

Album: Remix Your Face Showdown

Artist: Various Artists

Genre: Electro House

Here are the three winners of the Coco Machete 'Remix Your Face' Showdown from late spring 2011. The label offered up all the remix parts to three different classic Coco Machete releases setting them free for anyone to take a shot. There was one winner picked for each track based on quality and his or her own fan participation on Facebook...it can't get any more real than that. These are the ones to watch: Naeleck & Oddity are a production due based in both France and Japan, Sebastian Love hails from Italy, and D' Secret SVC, Coco Machete mainstay came in with a funk break remix of "In Da Club" that is undeniable....Just keep on watchin’!

Sony Music/PIAS Warehouse Fire and How You Can Help

If you haven't already heard, the Sony Music/PIAS warehouse has burned down this past week due to the riots in the UK, affecting about 150 independent record labels (including our very own Chemikal Underground). Although insurance may cover some of the losses, the fire may push some of the smaller labels out of business. Because we are indie music lovers, we are greatly saddened, and we hope that with the support of fans and others in the industry we can help these labels recoup their losses. Wondering how you can help?

1. LabelLove has set up a page where you can donate: http://cognitivedissonancerecords.com/labellove/labellove/


2. Indie label trade association AIM (sister of A2IM here in the States) is encouraging fans to purchase digital downloads from those labels that are affected. See affected labels here: http://www.musicindie.com/news/1131.


3. AIM has also created a fund with PIAS to support the smaller labels as they get back on their feet. To donate to the fund, see http://www.musicindie.com/news/1132

As always, support the indies!