It Writes You

When MC Benjamin Miles "Begin(s) The World," he starts talking about lyrical bars that expose the most honest exhibition of one's self, one's experiences, one's perspectives, the bars that act as one's "rebuttal" to the world, and the presentation of one's self through that righteous and rhythmic cadence distinctive to the hip/hop beat - over the meticulous arrangements of Eddie Logix, utilizing 70's soul nocturnes, left-field space-bop jazz and psychedelic surf grooves.

Their new album, "Play It Forward," came out over the weekend on Five30 Music. Spliced samples are intricately lain under Miles' earnest confessions and cultural call-outs (see: "Sickness & Health"), weaving together breathy organs and sinuous brass as smooth as silk at some points but snaky and avant-garde at others, while Miles words and voice sound girded by a cool and assured confidence.




Miles cut his teeth with hip/hop collective Of Mice & Musician and will be a featured cameo on Passalacqua's forthcoming follow up, out sometime this season. Logix, meanwhile, has his own songs out that you can you can dig, as well as a recent collaboration with Mobil.

2 (of 3)

coming up tomorrow...

As Autumn slowly sets upon our suburban scene, so does the long-awaited LP from Prussia...

who, you can see live Sunday night, as part of Ferndale's assuredly spirited musical-blowout, DIY 

Punx

Since I'm not ready to write about autumn leaves... I'll write about punx...

However curious and/or heartening, Detroit is developing some substantial bonds to out-of-towner rock acts - with the recently girded camaraderie between Conspiracy of Owls' Robert Harlow to the Anaheim-CA-based Burger Records and the sporadic returns of up-and-coming scuffed psyche twangers Natural Child to fill bills with Detroit's resident punk crowd (i.e., among others, the balls-out brevity bashers in Kommie Kilpatrick, who recently put out a new tape via their drummer's label).

Through the mid-to-late 00's, perceptions swirled amongst touring bands that we were somewhat of an unattractive stop that was an otherwise out-of-the-way-swing interrupting an ideal route from Chicago-to-Cleveland-to-New-York only to have an underwhelming, under-attended show.

Comes a time when we need to network outside of our state, just as Harlow (who recently welcomed warped-soul/psyche-pop song slinger King Tuff to our town to lay down tracks for a forthcoming record), other bands like Gardens are putting things out on California labels.

In any case - on Thursday you can catch Harlow's fellow Burger-ite, Hunx & His Punx (imagine if John Waters was the Ramones' manager), at the Lager House. Ypsi/Arbor sinuous surf-tinged rock quartet Swimsuit opens up, along with the aforementioned Natural Child (who hail from Nashville) and noisy charms and clattery pop-rock of the Pizazz (another recent Burger addition).

Frankenstein's PB & J

There's a very real possibility that...we've...
as the Carpenters once odiously cooed...

Only Just Begun

That, or I'm just an easily convinced Pollyanna...

Hindsight can render bluntly refreshed perspective. Local sensations flicker, seemingly incandescent with "buzz" that raises brows at the back of the bar and keeps the word on the street whirling - certain bands keep circulating as the go-to answer for the murmuring hipsters trading drowsy late-afternoon conversation about what shows they'll be checking out this weekend.

--Oh, well, ya know,... So and So's playin tonight at the A-B-&-C Bar...so I was thinkin...

--When do you think they go on?

--Man, they're so awesome. At their last show they...
Well, the heat of the moment can be deliciously/deliriously deceptive... I say this now because I'm reflecting, perhaps a bit mistily, that a considerable amount of local bands that were the humble, rough-hewn soundtrack to my local-music-maturation (or rock-refinement) have broken up, some considerably long ago, some just recently, or if not, just slowed down or fizzled in the past year.

But,
impressive performances of late from bands like K.I.D.S., GLOSSIES, Pupils and, yes, even Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr... (and probably 8 others that I'm forgetting), communicated to me the true benefits of living in a busy/animated arts community - call it the Frankenstein effect, if you want... (or, maybe I want to) - a new creature formed from an amalgam of other parts - re-utilization, reanimation, etc etc etc...

Bands formed from other bands, bands coalescing from the components of recently disbanded-bands.

A local band gets started, gets its buzz, gets its first album out-- turns some heads, plays some memorable shows and...inevitably... gets its own little tag for having this sound and this style and this character...somehow, ludicrously albeit, applying a sonic identity to the players involved in said-band. Oh, that one drummer dude from the goth band?

It's nothing new, it's just the sign that a scene's current generation (let's say it lasts, now, a good 5-ish years?) has reached a metamorphosis. Roots have gone real deep and intertwined...thus that, what blossoms above is that much more dazzling.

The network lines form a thick knotty web, this band knows that band knows the other band and you set up a show through that guy who knows this band who played that joint and also has friends in another band out of town.

It runs itself.

With bands placing their songs up on the internet for free, it suggests that, however mad it may make them seem in a capitalist society, it ostensibly means more to them to merely get their songs heard then to $ell an album. Is it too much a stretch to then suggest that they are just as capricious with locally-bred bands (or should we call them projects? Something more fitting to an experiment).

I've not had enough coffee yet to think through to the conclusion. Plus, I'm not in a band. I can't speak from experience on the bonds and convictions involved...

The rewarding part of being in this community is getting the chance to see so many musicians flex their adaptability to other styles and other players via these new bands -bands where they're mixing in with very distinctive musicians who, in turn, are also flexing their own signatures upon the undulating new aesthetic, who, respectively, are likely known 'round town for whatever identity the 'scene' applied them from whatever other past bands they had...

And, like that paragraph above, it all starts to spill atop itself... That girl from this band, this singer from that band, the artist who was doing this kind of sound is now blending with this bassist and now they're making something that's steadily finding its own weird voice...

And it makes you realize that you are attracted to this new weird voice more so than the initial weird voice that bent your ear a year ago...

Maybe...we should call it the peanut-butter and jelly effect?

Or maybe I'm just in the heat of the moment...

Maybe we haven't only just begun... Maybe the healthy thing is to just keep searching for...new beginnings? If not, then one gets jaded that much faster.

But I'm wrapping this up before I start sounding too ... too...

eh.

The Haunted Garage

Sometimes you're just a bit late to the boat... I've always felt the vigorous impression, the raw, whirling-dervish display of Thee Oh See's music. Murky, maniacal blues scraped out by sonic deconstructionists who just wanted to make the noisiest kind of psychedelic-pop possible within the three minutes that followed after pressing -record-

But now, with Castlemania, more than before, (more than those times two years ago when I'd sincerely defer to the converted with a knowing nod that hid my still-yet-unconverted true self), I get it, I'm on board, I'm converted. Castlemania has been one of my favorite records this year. Maybe I'm pissing off the older fans by saying so...

I don't know what it is - maybe their upping the synthesizer and brass infusions, the almost space-bop-jazz vibes, the playful marches and simple hooks burried beneath drones and dots of dissonoance, the somewhat-clearer/less-fuzzed-out vocals.... I can't place my finger on it...
(Frankly, we shouldn't be able to place a finger at all on why we like music... if it moves you, if it shifts you elsewhere, there's no use tracing the line of trajectory for clues - just appreciate the push).

All that said - the busy Bay Area quartet already has a new LP ready- which will tally it at about three releases in some 16-months or so. “Castlemania was more of a vocal tirade," said lead singer/guitarist and main See(r) John Dwyer, " (Carrion Crawler / The Dream) iss meant to pummel and throb.”

That's right - what was almost going to be two separate EPs just got slammed together (nine tracks in total) for a November release, the same month in which they stop in Detroit on a forthcoming tour. ("the Dream"  live, is viewable above)

More info from the band's site.

All sounds......as crisp as autumn air

Athens-bred psyche-pop aristocrats, Olivia Tremor Control, somewhat misperceived as having broken up, (yet, had only been on an extended-break), are back with new material. You can link to "The Game You Play In Your Head - pts 1, 2, & 3" -here, via NPR's music site.

Happy Autumn.

Help Free Health Care Clinic Open It's (Permanent) Doors - 9/10 - Benefit Concert

FernCare - Ferndale's non-profit, free health care clinic is commemorating one-full year of providing free healthcare to the area's uninsured and underinsured by establishing its permanent location (459 E. Nine Mile, at Paxton/Gainsboro), and as The Patch recently reported, it's merely "a matter of time and renovations" before the clinic can officially move in and open its doors. 

To assure those doors open as soon as possible, I highly encourage you to attend this week's fundraiser. Think about it: the money you'd drop here (the usual co$t of any ol' regular local concert) could be paid back to you sooner than you think, when you want a free check up for that October head cold or November chest cough...

FernCare(s) for Music VI

Saturday, Sept. 10, 8:00 pm - 1 am

$5.00 at the door and 50/50 tickets - drawing at 11 pm.

DB Coopers, 29028 N. Campbell, Madison Heights, MI

(corner of Campbell and 12 Mile Road)

featuring:
Sheefy McFly & the Delorean...freaky funk / rap-punk

Keith Dalton - acoustic harmonica and "old" songs

Saint Alan - acoustic... "Donovanesque"








Come out and support the clinic!

***************************************************************************************************

FernCare Free Health Care Clinic Inc --on Facebook

Tryin' t' get Out... (Belle Ghoul)

The last time Christopher Tait had a music project outside of the Electric Six, he gave us a mellodious new-wave dashed ballad about "leaving..." and now, collaborating with NY-based songwriter Jesse Paris Smith (daughter of Patti), he's singing about trying to get "(Out of) The Neighborhood..."

So goes the first single from this new band, Belle Ghoul (via Five Three Dial Tone Records).

It's a dazzling, space-pop strut; the punchy brass feels like the last humid hurrah of summer (just in time for this month's equinox). This song breaks out from the get go with an irresistably hand-clappable beat and sun-burst guitars strumming out their simple tinny purrs, while organs and pianos together ringing-round-the-rosey. Tait's vocals, marked with a mid-low charm somewhere between Costello and Richman, are complimented by Smith's airy back-ups, both lightly layered with a sheen of fuzz like a just-barely-tuned-in AM Pop station...

(E6's Zach Shipps produced these two ditties, with its B-Side diverging away from pop and into an ambient, autumanal, trippy traipse).

(Modern Music listeners likely heard this a few days ago). (You'll be able to find some hard copies in October.)

Happen-upon

These blogs can get repetitive... the main rags, too, for that matter...

The indie-hip-experimentalists acts, whether its the long-heralded go-to's or the hot new something's, pop up and ride a consistent carousel of props from blogs based all around this town, leaving  other bands, damned talented musicians, to fall through the cracks, so to speak.

There's so many shores whereupon music fans can doc their live-show-bound boats, whether it's cliques, niches, scenes, whatever you wanna label 'em - from Jazz, to Hip/Hop and even still, Techno.

So I had to remind myself to write about what moves me - regardless of where it ranks on the credability of ballyhooing hipstoblogs...I have to remind myself to write not for a paycheck and not to peek the next-new-thing...

And this is a good weekend for that, considering its the one of the few opportunities local audiences can see a number of bands they wouldn't otherwise get the chance to (as dictated upon whatever channels, indie-rock, blues, hip/hop, through which their tastes have compelled them to swim). ((Setting aside, any snide blogger-bemoaning that this opportunity has to be so ostentatiously swathed with Corporate curtains and flooded with people who are probably just looking to get cheap BBQ wings...)

Still, there's so many bands - it might be your first time happening upon any...of them (even Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr, ...or whoever).

But -

Take the Reefermen. This band's been churning for more than a dozen years, (more, even), known for their covers mostly due to their wide range, having honed their craft and capacity for rock, soul, blues and funk... This band holds it down.



There's a gritty, blue-color nobility in the preservationist charm of these bands - Whereas other bands are throwing out their guitars, getting turn-tables, or trying to make a Yaz record, these bands have are bolstered by their monsastic study of the classics... the origins of rock - R&B and seminal blues - as well as quintessential funk, soul and Brit-pop.

More videos from the Reefermen - They play Monday Night 8pm on the Bud Light Stage

Mixx Tape

Lo cal Mu sic
Internet digest...
~
There's enough noise roiling out there on the internet, sonic seeds blooming up from every inch of the known world, from any soul with the means (see: portable computer device), it's dangerously easy to overlook (to even be caught unaware) of the songs being written by your neighbors...

Here's a brief, humble round up of Detroit-new-ness:

Brilliant Violence - Spiritual Forest EP

Phantom Airmen - Sampler


Little Island Lake - Jawbones


Benjamin Miles & Eddie Logix - Play It Forward


or... try Streaming City Center's Lying To Second-Graders (via NPR Music)

or... download your digital copy of Prussia's Poor English -part 1 (the first four songs, offered on 10" vinyl, of a subsequent 3-part release)

Prussia: "Sleeper" (Prefix Premiere) by prefixmag

or... consider hip/hop duo Passalacqua, performing at the end of the month (9/29) @ the Pike Room in Pontiac...


Then again, you can see Passalacqua and much more live local music at this year's Dally in the Alley - take a look at the Dally line up for 2011

JWPP - Glass is Half Full

Ypsi's anthemic punk rock duo, JWPP, are known for raucous live shows...

...mad howls of empowering lyrics are hurriedly belted atop chopped riffs and rustling, slammed beats. These two shaggy gentleman ("Anonymous" and Jehan) bridge seminal 90's noise, to the raw valiance of 80's hardcore punk and tie it up with that almost-fist-pump-inviting, wild-eyed rile-up of classic rock n roll. loop and bend gnarled tones into whip-cracking hooks under squalls of fuzzy feedback and cathartic noisy scrapes

Once one appreciates the somewhat woolly nature of their signature sound (looping bent, gnarled tones into whip-cracking hooks under squalls of fuzzy feedback and cathartic noisy scrapes), one can see the unique challenge of capturing it onto a comprehensible recorded portrait...

...such was the task of Ypsi-producer(/songwriter) Brandon Wiard... and Glass Is Half Full displays the results. Side one is the keyed-up, cacophonous cuts while side two shows their, well - not exactly softer side, but certainly more melodic...Wiard's board work enhances their softer hues to display the full range of colors on the JWPP palette.

JWPP-Humans by DC/Milo

~Album's out on October 14th -

MORE http://www.facebook.com/pages/YpsiFest-2011/220326891334310