EMA

First off, an apology for not posting more often. We have always aspired to be a "real blog" and post at least once every day (maybe even 10 times a day) but we're still trying to find things to say.

Luckily, though, finding good music isn't the problem nowadays. EMA, the solo project of Erika M. Anderson (formerly of Gowns), is just the latest example of seriously badass music that's been appearing in the past few weeks. Her new album, Past Life Martyred Saints (out May 10 on Souterrain Transmissions), is full of grungy guitar shredding/destruction and frantic poetry in the vein of Kim Gordon (h/t yvynyl for the apt comparison). She herself describes it as "basement bedroom garage," which I think is also pretty descriptive.

Check the video for "California" above, and make sure to listen to first single "The Grey Ship" over on Soundcloud. It has this awesome transition where it goes from lo-fi to hi-fi; she has a post on her (interesting, candid & unpretentious) blog where she talks more about the process that went into recording that track. Other attractions on her blog include a review of a Lil' B show, babies in Cthulu costumes, and her shotgun-wielding family.

Anyway, the whole album is awesome. Get it when it comes out. I'm gonna post the mp3 to "California" (or maybe "The Grey Ship") below later, so if it's not there yet, drop by later.

Johnny Whopper episode 18

Broadcast on 3/28/11:

01. EMA - Milkman

02. tUnE-yArDs - Gangsta

03. Craft Spells - Party Talk

04. Dead Gaze - Fishing With Robert

05. Farms - Just cuz I can't do a cartwheel doesn't mean I don't know how to party.

06. unouomedude - Frequency

07. Times New Viking - Ways to Go

08. Shimmering Stars - Dancing to Music I Hate

09. Muddy Waters - Let's Spend the Night Together [Adam's weekly column]

10. The Weeknd - What You Need

11. Birthdays - Howolding Girls

12. Bill Callahan - Drover

13. Coma Cinema - Caroline, Please Kill Me

14. Fabric - Camera

15. shortcircles - Iwishthatyouwould(pleaseloveme)

16. Anika - Sadness Hides the Sun

Super happy about the music on this week's show. I kinda found Farms and Birthdays out of nowhere, and they are making sick tunes. Ditto for somewhat more well-established artists Times New Viking, tUnE-yArDs, and EMA, who are also making next-level shit and have great new albums out (or almost out).

tUnE-yArDs

If you've listened to tUnE-yArDs before, through her debut album Bird-Brains, her new single and video "Bizness," or her (allegedly) electric live act, you don't need me to tell you that her new album w h o k i l l (out April 19 on 4AD) is going to be good. But having listened to it virtually nonstop for the past 36 hours, I can tell you that it's amazing. Just the most unbelievable and exciting thing I've listened to in a long while.

The way she - Merrill Garbus - uses her voice (in timbre and melody) is kind of reminiscent of Dave Longstreth from Dirty Projectors, but she doesn't seem as densely preoccupied with the compositional aspects of her songs. That's not to say they aren't excellent compositions; they just seem to come more naturally to her than to Dirty Projectors. And then there's the minor detail that she does all of this by herself. Guitars, percussion, insane vocal multi-tracking, all of it.

Check the link below for the video for her first single, "Bizness," on Pitchfork.tv. I was going to embed it but the code didn't want to cooperate. Also, keep your ears open for the excellent tracks, "Gangsta," "Powa," "You Yes You," and pretty much every song on the album, actually.

Video: tUnE-yArDs - "Bizness" (Pitchfork.tv)

A Fear of God Review

Pusha T's solo mixtape, Fear of God, dropped like yesterday afternoon. To be honest, I learned about the whole damn thing in one post on 2dopeboyz--I didn't even know the brothers Thornton were doing different stuff. It's one of those splits you're kind of thankful for but wouldn't admit it; listening to Clipse, I'm always like "No, Pusha goes harder," only to change my mind as soon as Malice's verse comes in. So now here's this Pusha T solo album.

It's probably the only album--or mixtape, I really should correct myself here--the only mixtape anymore that could open with a Scarface clip and it be like exactly how it should open. It's thirty seconds of Tony and Manny dialogue and it's enough to incite a kind of hermeneutics whereby you consider the notion of its being totally played out, but then arrive at the conclusion that it actually reaffirms everything you like about Pusha T. So then you're ready for the rest of the tape and after this intro it's a little disappointing. It's not grimey; it doesn't have much of that sparse-bombastic, straight-crushin'-you sound. A lot of the beats instead have that predictable epical grandiosity, like it was Cecil B. DeMille, coke dealer turned producer. It reminds me of Jay-Z's Kingdom Come in that it seems like why not do something different, have a bunch of guest spots that totally suck and have only one Neptunes song? And then lyrically, too, you can kind of tell Pusha doesn't really know what to do anymore, since he's even richer than he was when he was rapping about his niece was four when she felt chinchilla, and even more removed from drug-dealing than he was when he was rapping about yellow and blue making green (which is one of my favorite lines of all time, btw).

That said, there are a couple tracks where he kind of unveils a newer, smarter greatness--verses where he comes off more as a clever, intelligent guy who has a hard history than as somebody who's still on the grind, so to speak. His "Can I Live" freestyle would be better than Jay-Z's original, if it were the original. And then the surprising outro, "Alone in Vegas," pairs such smooth, pensive, self-aware rhymes with such a confident, nonchalant, jazz lounge-y beat (via this guy--who is this guy?)--the song can definitely hold its own as a Clipse classic. So when the album fades out, it's got enough to make you wish it wasn't ending. Yeah it's got a disproportionate amount of shitty overblown tracks--disproportionate for a Clipse album, you know--but it's a pretty dramatic King of Kings-type title anyway, and it's a mixtape, and really it's still got like 5 or 6 cool songs. So yeah I'll listen to it until the LP comes out and I mean I'll be pretty busy with other stuff/music anyway--it's not going to be exactly like listening to nothing but Hell Hath No Fury for like a month and a half--so it's kind of whatever, right?

"Can I Live Freestyle" - Pusha T

"Alone in Vegas" - Pusha T

Shortcircles

Via the always-interesting Life:Aquatic, I've come across the music of shortcircles. shortcircles is Matthew Tamariello of Oakland, and he makes wispy, glowing tunes that exist somewhere between Air France and Baths along with nods to the Avalanches and instrumental hip-hop. His debut 3-track EP is available for free download via the Mapzzz bi-weekly EP series, also something worth keeping bookmarked. The georgous slow-building opening track "Iwishthatyouwould(pleaseloveme)" features a litany of perfectly-chosen vocal samples plus what may be the best use of a saxophone since Cut Copy's "Hearts On Fire."

MP3: shortcircles - "Iwishthatyouwould(pleaseloveme)"

SebastiAn and other Ed Banger stuff

This video is pretty cool but like, it's just not really new and hard and kind of off and overall French supehr-kool the way everything on Ross Ross Ross was. SebastiAn was like my favorite guy for a while but when I saw him at like 4AM at I Love Techno a couple years ago, and his set was so uninspired, it was a drag;it was like the party was over. Since then I've been hoping for some triumph and I don't know Let the Children Techno was okay but then there was that Adidas commercial which was awesome it's just not as cool or not as exciting--something's missing. Which I guess: what can you do/life goes on/to everything there is a season.

So now, for SebastiAn anyway, there's this video for "Embody"--which is not bad, the song being pretty danceable and all, but--and then there's this actually pretty tiresome promo video for his forthcoming LP, Total. Whatever; after all, I'm probably still a SebastiAn fan.

And then below find an mp3 of a song that I think about pretty much every time I think of Ed Banger.

"R U Still Down" - 2Pac

Jungles

Wow so look, there's an explanation for our absence--some explanations, really:
I'm in Brazil and well it's a jungle out there. Last week + a few days ago was Carnaval, and then after Carnaval I went to the beach for a few days, and I mean the only music I've been listening to really is some samba from the 1950s and two OFWGKTA albums which I can't blog about because they're making their way into blog antiquity but I'm nevertheless addicted to.
And then that Toro y Moi remix of "French"? Oh, eff.
Meanwhile, the better two-thirds of us is marooned in an Amazon or else maybe it's more like a Congo of schoolwork. Wish them luck/get them an aid package it costs like $12 at Lake.

And all this stuff about jungles--well it's kind of funny because somewhere probably in a tropical rainforest in Mexico Danniel Radall recorded his totally rad new album, Pardo. Vibrant but relaxing, with a candidly clean-and-cool 80s feel, it's pretty much exactly what I would want to be listening to while cruising to the beach from like a nightclub. It's definitely Danniel's most refined and most exciting album; sample it below and chill or dance.

"Broke and Broken" - Danniel Radall

"Love is You" - Danniel Radall

P.S. It's SXSW coming up of course. Any of y'all going, check out Altered Zones's guide. Y'all not going, probably start figuring out a way to go.

Johnny Whopper episode 17

Aired on 3/7/2011:

01. Borrowed Beams of Light - King and Queen
02. Walsh - I Drive the Pervert Van
03. Lil' Daggers - Slave Exchange
04. Sweet Bulbs - Fell in a Cave
05. Jamie Woon - Night Air
06. Ponytail - Easy Peasy
07. Puro Instinct - Stilyagi
08. PS I Love You - Facelove
09. His Clancyness - Like A Champ
10. Cold Cave - The Great Pan Is Dead
11. J Mascis - Not Enough
12. Crayon Fields - All The Pleasures Of The World
13. A Grave With No Name - Sofia
14. Judee Sill - There's A Rugged Road
15. Die Jungen - When I Awake

Adam's music column is on hiatus this week while we locate his signal in Brazil. We'll have him back soon!

Good stuff/song titles from Walsh with "I Drive the Pervert Van," along with Ponytail's awesome track "Easy Peasy." Wish I had discovered PS I Love You earlier - they're also tearing it up.

Kruxe, Don't Stop Please added to Kudzu Music Fest

We can now finally get rid of that annoying "More TBA" line at the bottom of our poster, because we've added our final two acts to our bill.

Kruxe are from Memphis, and include Andrew McDougal, a former member of local JW favorites St. Anthony. They call their music "pseudo psychedelic future punk," which is surprisingly accurate (or at least evocative). Check out the video for their awesome track, "Tremors," below.

Don't Stop Please are a local folk/blues sextet who can rock out equally well on a back porch and in a garage. Grab their tunes at their Bandcamp.