Monthly Archives: May 2013

MP3 + Video: New from Soulman Charles Bradley

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charles_bradley

“The Screaming Eagle of Soul,” no lie: above photo by our own Susan Moll, taken last March in Austin.

 By Blurt Staff

 “The Screaming Eagle of Soul” Charles Bradley has announced summer tour dates, with stops at a number of major festivals including Lollapalooza, FYF Fest and Bumbershoot. Bradley recently wrapped an extensive North American spring tour in support of new album Victim of Love (Dunham/Daptone; it’s reviewed here at BLURT).  Bradley has also just released a new track from Victim of Love. In “You Put The Flame on It,” he sings “My life is gold – you put the flame on it,” backed by a horn chart that sounds like it was lifted from a lost Four Tops single.

Hear the track here:

Also, see the just-released behind the scenes of Victim of Love video here:

Tour Dates

Jun 07 Richmond, VA – Friday Cheers at Brown’s Island

Jun 12 Paris, France – La Maroquinerie

Jun 14 London, England – Islington Assembly Hall

Jun 15 Bergen, Norway – BergenFest

Jun 16 Oslo, Norway – Norwegian Wood

Jun 17 Copenhagen, Denmark – Vega

Jun 19 Hamburg, Germany – Grünspan

Jun 20 Dresden, Germany – Beatpol

Jun 22 Ballinlough Castle, Ireland – Body&Soul

Jun 23 Duisberg, Germany – Traumzeit Festival

Jun 25 Aarhus, Denmark – Posten

Jun 26 Berlin, Germany – Huxleys

Jun 28-30 Glastonbury, England – Glastonbury Festival

Jul 02 Vienna, Austria – Jazz Fest Wien

Jul 03 Karlsruhe, Germany – Zeltival – Tollhaus Karlsruhe

Jul 07 Arras, France – Main Square Festival

Jul 08 Argelès-sur-Mer, France – Les Déferlantes Festival

Jul 11 Bilbao, Spain – Bilbao BBK

Jul 13 Juan-les-Pins, France – Jazz à Juan

Jul 14 Rotterdam, The Netherlands – North Sea Jazz Festival

Aug 03 Chicago, IL – Lollapalooza

Aug 04 Montreal, QC – Osheaga Music and Arts Festival

Aug 10 Burnaby, BC – Burnaby Blues + Roots Festival

Aug 11 Regina, SK – Regina Folk Festival

Aug 17 Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge

Aug 18 Lyons, CO – Folks Festival

Aug 20 Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom

Aug 23 San Diego, CA – Belly Up Tavern

Aug 24 Los Angeles, CA – FYF Fest

Aug 28 Salt Lake City, UT – State Room

Aug 29 Boise, ID – Visual Arts Collective

Aug 31 Seattle, WA – Bumbershoot

Sep 01 Bellingham, WA – Wild Buffalo

Sep 04 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall

Sep 05 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall

Sep 06 Arcata, CA – Van Duzer Theatre

Sep 07 Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom (Music Fest NW)

Sep 14 Burlington, VT – Grand Point North Festival

Sep 20 Brooklyn, NY – Williamsburg Park (Daptone Soul Revue, FREE SHOW)

Numero Group Dives into the Unwound Oeuvre This Fall

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Unwound Numero Box

Noise fo’ what ails ya, from one of the Northwest greats. Watch album trailer video, below.

 By Blurt Staff

 Beginning on September 6, the ace archivists at Numero Group embark on a lengthy campaign to reissue the complete works of seminal Olympia, Washington, post-punk trio Unwound. Their seven albums – Fake Train, New Plastic Ideas, S/T, The Future Of What, Repetition, Challenge For Civilized Society, Leaves Turn Inside You – will be expanded, remastered, and annotated in typical Numero fashion. Up first, however: all of Unwound’s recorded output from 1991 and 1992, prior to their debut LP.

Kid Is Gone is the “unquiet portrait of primal Unwound before 1993’s Fake Train.” Early on the band had been been Giant Henry, Supertanker, and Cygnus X-1 featuring Justin Trosper, Vern Rumsey, and Brandt Sandeno’s “first restive years,” and it might’ve best prepared the indie-sphere for what Unwound became, had Sandeno’s split not stalled their planned debut. Part 1 in Numero’s 4-part reissue project, Kid Is Gone documents the signal chaos in Olympia’s fertile scene before Unwound’s turbulent noise hit stride, in unrevealed period photos, 34 tracks, and three LPs-cassette-only demos, early 7″s, a KAOS radio broadcast, material tracked live in a local basement, and all of what became 1994’s Unwound, on which the band’s prehistory plays.

 It’s not the first foray into post-punk for the Chicago-based Numero Group, which initially earned its rep via amazing compilations and reissues of rare funk and soul; slo-core legends Codeine recently fell under the Numero lens via the When I See The Sun 6LP/3CD collection. A trademark of quality, no less.

***

  KID IS GONE TRACKLISTING:

 

Side A

1. Bionic        

2. LD-50                                           

3. Lying At Best       

4. Stumbling Block

5. Whilst You’re A Head

6. Rubber Band Heart                                                                  

 Side B

1. Crab Nebula                                            

2. Caterpillar             

3. Miserific Condition                                               

4. Love And Fear                            

5. You Speak Jealousy      

 Side C

1. Antifreeze                                                 

2. Rising Blood                                            

3. Understand & Forget                                           

4. Fingertips                                                  

5. You Bite My Tongue                                                                  

6. Stuck In The Middle Of Nowhere Again                       

 Side D

1. Warmth     

2. Prospect               

3. Kid Is Gone                      

4. Kandy Korn Rituals

5. Against      

6. I’d Die To Know You                                                       

7. Sugarfit                                                      

 Side E           

1. Understand & Forget (KAOS session)

2. Miserific Condition (KAOS session)

3. Against (KAOS session)

4. Ape Skins (KAOS session)                  

5. Awkward (KAOS session)                     

 Side F

1. Antifreeze (Live)                          

2. Rising Blood (Live)                                                         

3. Prospect (Live)                                                                

4. Stuck In The Middle Of Nowhere Again (Live)            

5. Hating In D (Live)

 

Chance – Johnny Cash’s Pal, No Less – Gets Reissue of Legendary LP

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Chance Martin 1

“In Search” will show ya how Chance Martin done it, psychedelic country style.

 By Blurt Staff

 The first-ever reissue of the legendary “In Search” LP by Chance Martin is en route from NC tastemaker label Paradise of Bachelors on July 16. For those of you not in the know, Martin was Johnny Cash’s stage manager, lighting director, and close friend in the ‘70s, and he recorded this “psychedelic country record” over a period of five years of woodshedding in his parents’ “bonus room” in South Nashville, nicknamed the Dead End. In Search was a privately-pressed record in ’81 of great personal import to Martin, but due to its very nature it remained elusive to all but the very privileged few among the inner circle of Nashville tastemakers (and maybe a few outlaws).

 Chance Martin Johnny Cash

 Otherwise referred to simply as “Chance,” he wrote many of the songs on Cash’s Martin guitar, and along the way, had (mis)adventures with many of Nashville’s legends. These days he’s Cowboy Jack Clement’s DJ partner on Sirius XM. The reissue includes a lengthy oral history with the man himself; according to the label, “his outrageous voice and story remind us of Charles Portis or Barry Hannah.”

 We’re not going to argue with that. Another winner from the PoB label, which has of late delivered gems from Steve Gunn and BLURT hero Hiss Golden Messenger. So that’s a goddam trademark of quality, ya know? And please, gentle readers, don’t confuse this gentleman with Chance The Rapper.

Video: Watch the new Track from Lightning Dust

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Lightning Dust

Album arrives in a month on Jagjaguwar. “It’s just the chemicals in your brain,” all you bipolar BLURT readers, and we love you for that…

 By Blurt Staff

 Lightning Dust, come June 25, will drop Fantasy on Jagjaguwar, their third full-length, and the band claims to find its inspiration “in skeletal synth pop, modern R&B beats, the films of John Carpenter and — in accordance with Lightning Dust’s only longstanding rule — absolute minimalism.”

Well, all right then! In the new video for core track “Diamond,” which is about the vicissitudes of relationships, and directed by Helen Reed, an aquatic facility is full of young people enjoying a soak. One by one, a small group of synchronized swimmers emerge. In “Diamond,” relationships end up being as ephemeral as a performance – “nothing’s promised or ever guaranteed to last.”

 Lightning Dust is Amber Webber and Josh Wells of Black Mountain and they’ll be on tour at the end of June. They’ll perform several dates in Canada, twice at the Pickathon festival, and additional dates up and down the west coast.

Watch People Listen to a Stereo Playing Boards of Canada

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Boards

Everyone’s a couch potato in this world!

 By Fred Mills

 Since everyone’s hanging on to every word, tweet and bathtub fart that Boards of Canada has been uttering of late – their new album Tomorrow’s Harvest drops on June 11 – it makes sense that a bunch of kids (presumably unemployed, or just out of college for the summer) gathered yesterday afternoon at Lake Dolores Waterpark in southern California. Or, technically speaking, the dingy, dusty rear parking lot of the business. That’s where Boards pulled up in an Airstream trailer, hauled out a pair of big-ass speakers, and proceeded to give a preview of the record. And naturally someone was there in the (rather smallish) crowd to stream it live via UStream – which you can now watch in this archived stream. Hey, it’s almost as great as that classic Replacements video for “Bastards of Young”!

Video streaming by Ustream

Seriously. As Pitchfork so helpfully provided, you can watch people sitting on the ground listening to music coming out of a pair of stereo speakers. Hey, in this economy, free entertainment is free entertainment! And as you have surmised, that free entertainment is a sure fire way to drum up free publicity for the band and its album….

Prefuse 73 Launches Monthly EP Series

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Prefuse

Scott Herren teams with photographer Angel Ceballos for Yellow Year label.

By Blurt Staff

Producer Guillermo S. Herren (aka Prefuse 73) has announced Yellow Year, a record label co-founded with photographer Angel Ceballos launching this June. The initial offering will be the first EP in the twelve volume Speak Soon series. Each release in the series pairs Prefuse 73 with a fellow production luminary for all new collaborative material. Upcoming EPs will feature collaborations with Teebs, Nosaj Thing, Lapalux, Synkro, Nathan Fake, Dimlite, and more to be announced. Watch a video trailer, below:

Yellow Year is just the latest creative chapter in Herren’sprolific career, encompassing forty individual releases spread across eight production monikers and eight record labels over the course of a scant ten years, jumpstarted by therelease of One Word Extinguisher on Warp in 2003.

Go-Go’s Bassist Kathy Valentine Sues Bandmates

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Kathy then

Meow!

 By Perez Mills

 And in legal news this morning, Kathy Valentine, bassist for the Go-Go’s, is suing Go-Go’s members Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, Charlotte Caffey and Gina Schock stemming from a dispute between the musicians in the wake of her March departure from the band. That was announced by the remaining Go-Go’s as due to “irreconcilable differences,” reports Billboard.com; Valentine is claiming that she is still entitled to 20% of revenues as that represents her stake in the business and that they are attempting to “deprive here” of that stake.

 The four recently established a new corporation, GoGoCo Corp., to handle licensing and revenue matters. Valentine is asserting that she could lose more than $1 million as a result.

 The Go-Go’s formed in LA in ’78, and while Carlisle and Wiedlin are the only remaining original members, Valentine came into the fold by late 1980 and was present by the time the group commenced making hits in the early ‘80s. Interestingly, original bassist Margot Olaverria sued the band in 1982 for wrongfully dismissing her from the band; that suit was settled two years later.

 Kathy now

The Go-Go’s have broken up a few times but have more or less been a touring entity since 2009, and Valentine was part of the ensemble until recently.

Eddie Spaghetti Knows Where the Stash Is

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Eddie

She’s definitely packing, uh, heat…

By Blurt Staff

On June 18, Eddie Spaghetti will release his second solo album with Bloodshot Records, entitled The Value of Nothing. Known to some as the frontman/bassist for Seattle band The Supersuckers, Spaghetti follows up his 2011 label debut Sundowner with a new album comprised entirely of fresh material.


Recorded in Austin, TX with the aid of Jesse Dayton (collaborator to country legends Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings), The Value of Nothing is a 10-song hybrid of the Supersuckers’ lighthearted humor, Eddie’s rock-as-king mindset, and Dayton’s expertise with real deal country.

 

Eddie will be on tour with The Supersuckers this summer and will embark on a solo tour later this year.

Indiegogo Campaign We Support: Fishaband.com!

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Fishaband

A good cause that you can help out with ease, music lovers.

 By Fred Mills

 It’s called Fishaband (www.fishband.com) and the Sawyer, MI-based organization’s mission statement is “to create a free music networking website and mobile app that connects music artists and venues with each other and with fans.”

 Emphasis on FREE. Think about all the times you get spammed by so-called “networkers” who really just want to make a buck off bands, fans, etc. We think this is a a project you can get behind, so please check out Fishaband’s current Indiegogo campaign, which of this writing (May 25) has 6 days left. Deadline is 11:59 pm on May 31.

 Fishaband at Indiegogo: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fishaband-com

 You can get all the details at the page and quickly see what premiums are being offered at the various levels of donation. By way of full disclosure, founder Klaus Nyman is a contributor to BLURT, and he rocks, trust us.Here’s the pitch video: