New Review on Knocks From The Underground – Buyu Ambroise

Buyu Ambroise

Jazz is all about the artist tricking the music into doing something it could never do within its own limited arithmetic; in jazz the mathematics of music are thrown out and simultaneously memorialized. Brooklyn saxophonist Buyu Ambroise accomplishes this musical double think as he brings the Afro-Beat and Caribbean influences from his Haitian origin, mixes in old-fashioned American Jazz, and keeps it all fresh and ready to face young audiences, a serious challenge these days for anything besides pop and indie rock.
[Read on at Knocks From The Underground]

Speaking of Afro-Beat: If you live in NYC, anywhere near, or are planning a trip, make plans to go see Fela! An Afro-Beat Musical on Broadway. It is a fantastic show, and the music of Fela Kuti still gets people’s feet moving, asses shaking, and blood cells boiling. There is nothing like this show anywhere in theatre today. It’s simply a MUST SEE. Here’s the real Fela having a dance party (listen to the square British documentarians get their knickers in a tizzy about a little rain):

Check out all my music reviews here.

New Review on Knocks From The Underground – Midsommar by U.S. Royalty

To be catchy, or not to be catchy? How come some folks get praised for being hybrid-uber-pop and some get called plastic-phony-cookie-cutter-rock? Where is the tipping point on this scale of double standards? Inquiring bands want to know.

U.S. Royalty

Pop driven and rock refined, the music of DC’s U.S. Royalty will definitely get some feet tapping. Their EP Midsommar, features four original tracks of Americana groove and a remix of one track, “Keep It Cool” by Passion Pit’s Bo Flex. There’s good news and bad news; the EP is a decent debut, but its main tracks are overshadowed by the one for which the band is least responsible.
[Read on at Knocks From The Underground]

Forget it. Just give me a monthly dose of Lady GaGa, and all my pop needs are met. Get out from under the rock and check out “Bad Romance.”

Check out all my music reviews here.

New Review on Kevchino.com – Two Dancers by Wild Beasts

Wild Beasts

Aside from the inevitable alt-country apocalypse on the pop and indie horizons, this year in music, America has seen a mini British invasion, with new quality releases from The Clientele, The xx, Fuck Buttons, and more. But if you missed Two Dancers you may want to put away a few pounds (or Euros I guess; one of those currencies that’s kicking the dollar’s honky ass) and buy it as soon as you bloody can. It’s become a favourite of mine.

Kendal, England rockers the Wild Beasts have fortified their second full-length venture with unyielding pop style, which, despite the mellow and overall laid-back pace of the music, enters in the traditions of Queen, Prince, and Boy George wrapped in the tinfoil boundaries of today’s British mainstream. Choral arrangements and a frequent falsetto take a record of gooey guitar and pulsing toms and transform it into a smooth and sexy experience for the ears.
[Read on at kevchino.com]

Speaking of dancers, I’d like to direct your attention to Marina and the Diamonds and a little video for a song called “Mowgli’s Road”.

Found the video on Neon Gold Records’ blog. They were thinking of calling it “All The Single Ladies (With Construction Paper Accordion Limbs)”, but Beyoncé would have made a fuss. Will Kanye support this video at next year’s VMAs? I won’t be watching, but I’m sure Twitter will tell me relentlessly. You could follow me on Twitter.

Check out all my music reviews here.

Sharon Van Etten, Natureboy at Union Pool Nov. 7, $10 Advance Tickets

Sharon Van Etten

Sharon Van Etten is one of my favorite Brooklyn talents, and Union Pool is a pretty terrific venue. I did a brief review of Sharon on Knocks From The Underground back in March. And here’s a review of Natureboy’s last album (I didn’t write it).

Come out in support of indie music!

Here’s the low-down from Kevchino.com:

Kevchino.com Presents . . . .
Sharon Van Etten, Natureboy , Rey Villalobos
Saturday, November 7th Union Pool
DJ Scot Bowman of The Sky Report will be spinning between sets
Reindeer Art show by Brad Nack in the lobby
$10 Advance online and $12 at the door. 21+

So excited to have Sharon Van Etten headline our 1st Kevchino Presents showcase. Sharon is currently on tour opening for Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio new project Rain Machine and sings two tracks on The Antlers Hospice which making tons of lists for album of the year! Her and Natureboy will be on my best of list!Hope you can make it out.

I’d also like to mention kevchino writer and owner of The Sky Report is throwing a pre-CMJ show. Check it out.

New Review on Kevchino.com – Everything Is New by Jack Peñate

Besides re-posting my reviews on my blog to show a few friends what I’m up to out in Internet Land, I also get the opportunity to take a second look at my original opinions. Jack Peñate’s Everything Is New still isn’t on my great list, but I have let a couple more tracks slip into my listening pool. Despite what I write in the review, one of the best tracks on the album is “Be The One”, which has a brand of Michael Jackson appeal to it. Still, an album needs more than three or four good songs to survive out there.

Here’s the review:

Heavily filtered vocals play with rhythmic, poppy melodies that could have come from 1983 to create the principal building blocks of Jack Peñate’s second album, Everything Is New, but only a couple of tracks are able to deliver the goods without being smothered by a hodgepodge jelly of world and jazz sounds, mucking up what could have been golden hooks and groovy themes. Peñate’s tunes get lost in their own musicality, and, at the end of the maze, it’s hard to find a reason to go through it all again.
[Read on at Kevchino.com]

One blog I’ve been following lately talks about a connection to another of Peñate’s tracks from Everything Is New, “So Near”.

It’s just another one of those songs that captures a great energy and represents those moments in life when you feel good and things are looking up.
[From Et Musique Pour Tous]

Check out all my music reviews here.

Time-Wasters, September 2009 – Everything Is Terrible

Have you ever been forced to sit down at a VCR and TV in the break room of your mindless job and watch an employee training video filmed in 1991? Have you ever been shipped free information about an infomercial product in the form of a video tape? Are you a regular blip on the Nielsen Ratings of public access TV? Good news, champ, there’s a place, deep inside the Internet called Everything Is Terrible, where instructional videos and reenactments of tough nineties situations are immortalized as the harbingers of domestic Apocalypse.

Why, just take a gander at a few recent favorites:

Young Thomas Edison almost went down the same path, but what about scarves?

Don’t you just love the cheery logo at the end of every video? Good luck making that floppy bow tie work for you. I’ll finish with a personal favorite:

Moms… they’re all exactly the same.

Time-Wasters, August 2009 – Texts From Last NIght

What? September’s almost over? It only means the Time-Wasters have been working their magic. I wasted all of August and most of September to bring you: Texts From Last Night.

Unfortunately (for truth) most of these texts seem to be from the next morning, explaining the drunken actions of the receiver.  Oh, and about 96% of the texts are about sex, so, you know, parental advisory.  These gems are sorted by area code.  Here’s the goodness from Brooklyn:

(718): They wont let us in. Theyve some sort of no Daft Punk costume rule

(646): Please don’t use social media to get back at me.

(718): i saw a guy balancing a black cat on his head last nite
(917): get a pic
(718): i tried he was too far away anotherguy was walking with paper bags on his feet explain that
(917): i want ur life

(718): you took a scissor and started screaming “I WANNA KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO BE BALD”

(646): Hey was my sperm eye the same day I crapped myself?

And from the rest of NYC:

(212): You are not answering and I think it is because you spent 80 dollars worth of drinks on you hot cousin.

(212): he was like Britney Spears in bed.. a little chubby and too medicated to perform.

(212): her vagina looked like bernie madoff

Now its time for you to rep your own hood.  Go to the site and search your area code, and reply to this post with the best from your neck of the woods.  Happy August!  Stay tuned for September!

New Review on Knocks From The Underground – Johari Window by Carlon

Meet Carlon, the Jersey band that’s about to wow the indie world with their cold, grunge country groove.

Carlon (Photo by Sam Friedman)

Next year, we’re going to have to stop acting so surprised about the multitudinous directions indie rock has taken, because it will all be old news and we won’t flinch when our Genius Playlists follow Weezer with Wilco. The shock of indie folk and alt-country will be over, and we can all spit our tobacco and pluck our banjos in peace, and bands with that certain cowboy quality will be able to relax into their genre to really begin experimenting. Unfortunately for those unnamed bands of the future, New Jersey’s Carlon are way ahead of the game. [Read on at Knocks From The Underground]

I know bands hate the term “alt-country.” It’s hard to put a genre label on this stuff, and the surge of music fitting the description is undeniable. I propose a contest to create an original genre term for “alt-country” that bands will actually be glad to have tacked onto their MySpace profiles and album reviews. Don’t send in your entries yet, I’m going to make this worth your while. Stay tuned.

Till then, stay clean and hydrated:

Censor This S***: Addeboy vs Cliff – Beep My Beep

Addeboy vs Cliff

Since I stumbled upon this sweeping self-censored single, I can’t get enough of it. And I can’t get enough of the discussion it opens so tactfully. Why is it so important for the censors to stop us from hearing what’s behind those beeps? I can make this song as dirty or as clean as I want using simple mad lib science. I’ll quote a pal; “There is NOTHING more erotic than censorship!”

Another dude I know was watching Snakes on a Plane on FX last weekend, and the monumental title line from the movie was slightly altered: Sam Jackson: “I’m tired of these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!” While it is funny, I’m still sickened by the moral adjustment. We try so hard to shield young people from things they end up figuring out on their own, and curse words become an enticing and exotic verbal rebellion for them. Authority invites antagonism.

Famous Fake Quotes of Teddy Roosevelt #3 – Texas Tee

The blood of the true patriot is slick as oil, and you’ll find more of both in Texas than the entire Eastern Seaboard put together.

Theodore Roosevelt
August 12, 1907
Washington, DC

President Roosevelt honored his dear friend and former U.S. Senator from Texas, Roger Quarles Mills, with this simple, heartfelt homage. However, it’s been used frequently as an all-inclusive, statewide endowment of mass praise. Mills was specifically being applauded by T.R. for his willingness to cross party lines when passing important legislation. Ironically, more people use the quote today as a method of defense for sticking to party loyalties within Texas; it’s a version of “my way or the highway.” They even went so far as to make a T-shirt:

Once again we see Teddy making a perfectly legitimate comparison (“slick as oil,” meaning, easily movable) without regard for posterity. We can’t blame the President though. How was he to know his every word was to be latched upon by Americana like a grouse? Today, a politician has to watch his tongue. Quotes can shoot across the globe in less than a second, and they can be misconstrued in half that time.

Previous Quote: Metaphor President