Bounce.com follows up a previous report on new ART-SCHOOL releases with more details. The new mini-album, titled Illmatic Baby, contains six songs, while the best compliation, titled Ghosts and Angels, spans the band’s career on previous labels, including EMI. Both albums have an Oct. 15 release date. The title track of Illmatic Baby was produced by DOPING PANDA member YUTAKA FURUKAWA. ART-SCHOOL embarks on a tour with DOPING PANDA, OGRE YOU ASSHOLE, the telephones, THE NOVEMBERS, UNCHAIN and VOLA & THE ORIENTAL MACHINE as guests.
Billboard reports Sonic Youth has signed a one-album deal with Matador Records. The telling quote of the article is this one by Thurston Moore:
"Matador is a super strong, high-profile label with an indie distribution system that is exactly what a band like us in this current climate needs more than anything."
That’s a very diplomatic way to say major labels are in deep shit.
It’s interesting to see Moore admit to making the last three Sonic Youth albums somewhat accessible. I kind of got the sense the band was taming their sound, and to learn that was the intent still comes as a surprise, even more so the fact the next album will continue in that vein.
When I worked over at Waterloo Records, I always wondered why the store never hosted a classical in-store performance. (The simple answer: you have to pay to play, and classical ensembles don’t usually have that kind of promotional subsidy.)
But Russell McCullogh, who maintains the classical section of Waterloo, called to let me know about the store’s first ever classical in-store appearance happening Sunday, Sept. 7 at 4 p.m. (tomorrow.) It’s a signing by Conspirare artistic director Craig Hella Johnson and composer Tarik O’Regan, whose work Conspirare performs for its first album for Harmonia Mundi, Threshold of Night.
The label is releasing the album as a super audio CD (SACD), so the regular price is going to be mucho expensive. It will, however, be on sale for the first few weeks of its release. Tuesday is the official release date, but Waterloo gets the album early for the in-store signing.
Austin-based Conspirare has garnered a lot of acclaim since its inception in 1991. The ensemble’s second album, Requiem, was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 2007.
Do As Infinity is getting back together again, reports Bounce.com. The duo split up in 2005 to pursue solo careers, but singer Van Tomiko and guitarist Owatari Ryo were the secret guests at the Ajinomoto a-nation 08 concert, where they announced the reunion. No word yet on any future releases.
I can’t say Van and Owatari had very lucrative careers since Do As Infinity announced its break-up three years ago. Van released a series of uninspiring singles and two cover albums, while Owatari’s band, MISSILE INNOVATION, never really took off. At the same time, Van and Owatari complement each other wonderfully. Van sounds far better with Owatari’s muscular guitar work as a foundation, and Owatari is … not much of a singer.
ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION releases its next studio album, Surfer Bungaku Kamakura, on Nov. 5, about eight months after the release of its most recent album, World World World, reports Bounce.com. A new single, "Fujisawa Loser", precedes the album on Oct. 15. For this album, the band is making some sort of wordplay on the Enoura station name with the song titles. (Or at least, that’s how I’m reading it. I may be translating that incorrectly.) The band will embark on a tour to promote the album in November.
Every once and a while, Pause and Play has an actual tidbit of information that’s remotely useful to me. Case in point: the upcoming new album by Wendy and Lisa. Pause and Play lists Sept. 9 2008 as the release date for White Flags on Winter Chimneys.
The duo has been working as composers for film and television since the early ’90s, working on such projects as Crossing Jordan, Something to Remember, Bionic Woman and, perhaps their highest-profile gig, Heroes. When the writer’s strike truncated the 2007-2008 television season, Wendy and Lisa used the time to write and record a new album, their first in a decade.
Back in 1998, the pair self-released Girls Bros., an album about which I wouldn’t have known had I not run into a vendor at the Austin Record Convention who mentioned its release. Today, keeping up with Wendy and Lisa is as easy as finding their Myspace page. Or Facebook. Or Twitter.
It’s kind of weird, really. I bought their self-titled debut album when I was 15 years old. Back then, the label served as gatekeeper, determining how much interaction a teenager in Honolulu could get with a pair of artists who have worked with Prince. The label has long since been out of the equation, and the Internet essentially lets them get their music to me directly.
How cool is that?
By the way, the songs made available for preview? Typical hard-to-classify alt-rock. Something good really did come out of the writer’s strike.
[UPDATE, 10/26/2008 17:32] Wendy and Lisa are eying a November release, probably Nov. 11 or Nov. 18, according to one of their Tweets on Twitter. The duo are working with Topspin on the release.
Midnight Oil was the first band to teach me that a singer doesn’t need to sound polished, slick or appealing to be good. I could have learned that lesson from Bob Dylan, but the first Dylan performance I consciously encountered was "We Are the World". What an indictment on my generation.
The first time I heard "Beds are Burning", I thought, "Who the hell thought it was a good idea to give Peter Garrett a microphone?" Then my friends subjected me to the entire album, and eventually I gave in. The music was so urgent and awesome that I found myself championing the band.
When Sony Legacy remastered Diesel and Dust, I played it in excess all over again.
I know making myself accountable to write about the following albums may just lead to disappointment, given I’ve been feeling pretty apathetic about the whole blogging thing, as of late.
There’s only so much creative currency to go around, and Eponymous 4 has been taken a lot of my mind share (what a lovely and preposterous term), leaving all sorts of prose writing in a deficit.
I got rid of most of my cassette tapes in 2002, when I moved into a smaller apartment for a year and a half. One cassette I kept was a compilation titled No Place to Play, which featured ’80s punk bands from Hawaiʻi. I considered digitizing that cassette so I could listen to it on the computer, but I was curious to see whether someone beat me to it.
And someone has.
Dave Carr, a guy who was heavily involved with scene, curates the Hawaii 70s-80s Punk Museum, which features artwork, photos and — most importantly — audio files from bands of that era. It’s the first time I’ve heard more from these bands than what’s on No Place to Play, which is included on the site.
Funny thing: I didn’t like most of what I heard on No Place to Play when it was first released. The sound quality is mostly terrible, and at the time, the extent of my post-punk knowledge was Midnight Oil and U2. Today, I have a better grasp of what influenced these bands and can hear snatches of the Smiths, Jesus and Mary Chain, Bauhaus and Joy Division in the music. And the bands weren’t too bad themselves.